Page:Forty years of it (IA fortyyearsofit00whitiala).pdf/168

 a kind of fear, the trembling distrust of age. But I know that in the life concept to which Jones came in his study of this principle, every act of his life, no matter how trifling and insignificant it may have seemed, suddenly took on a vast and vital significance; so that the hasty glance, the unkind word, the very spirit in which a thing is said or done, were seen to have an effect which may reach farther than the imagination can go, an effect not only on one's own life and character, but on the lives and characters of all those about him. He was always human; I say that to prevent any impression that he was solemn or priggish; he deliberately took up smoking, for instance, toward the end of his days, because, he said with a chuckle, one must have some vices. And sometimes when the Golden Rule seemed not to "work," he would truly say it was only because he didn't know how to work it. And he used to quote Walt Whitman:

The song is to the singer and comes back most to him;

The love is to the lover and comes back most to him; The gift is to the giver, and comes back most to him—it cannot fail.