A PLEASANT PICTURE

Seventh-Day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Thursday, January 22, 1880

FromThe Advent Review and Sabbath Herald, Vol. 55, No. 4

A PLEASANT PICTURE.

ONE of our exchanges furnishes us this: “There is a man,” said his neighbor, speaking of a village carpenter, “who has done more good, I really believe, in this community, than any other person who ever lived in it. He cannot talk very well in prayer-meeting. He is not worth two thousand dollars, and it’s very little that he can put down on subscription papers for any object. But a new family never moves into the village that he does not find them out to give them a neighborly welcome, and offer any little service he can render. He is usually on the lookout to give strangers a seat in his pew at church. He is always ready to watch with a sick neighbor and look after his affairs for him; and I’ve sometimes thought he and his wife kept house plants in winter just for the sake of being able to send little bouquets to invalids. He finds time for a pleasant word for every child he meets, and you’ll see them climbing into his one-horse wagon when he has no other load. He really seems to have a genius for helping folks in all sorts of common ways, and it does me good every day just to meet him on the street. Ah! this genius for helping folks—what a rare sort of genius it is! Why can’t we understand that there is no such way of becoming strong ourselves as by helping to strengthen others?”