Page:Life of Isaiah V Williamson.djvu/162

138 with a heart that could do even better work than he, if free to choose and use without criticism, the sling and stones he can handle best to fight his battle.

How much the little man from Bucks County, low in stature, high in thinking, deep in feeling, suffered in the forty years of dignity, patience and silence while he was in the wilderness of public opinion, nobody knows. It is only certain that the breath of his neighbors, by prejudice and carping, kept his thermometer close to zero. The obituaries, after the man travelled into the bourne beyond, might have added fuller, brighter, longer years to his life and enabled him to do what he had left undone, if anything like their contents could have been published for him to see while he was walking through the street, conscious of being misunderstood as an unfeeling speculator, if not forgotten altogether.

When the right word is spoken, it will help and not hurt. The poorest little man that lives and does something to help his neighbor is more than the finest bronze statue planted in the park or on the plaza. It is not the gun, but the man behind the gun, that counts. It