Page:Pleasant Memories of Pleasant Lands.djvu/411

 386 SELF-KNOWLEDGE.

But you, who are thus unconsciously garnering your self up in exclusiveness and self-esteem, go pitch your tent among a people of strange language, walk solitary along their crowded streets, be sad, be sorrowful, be sick, where &quot; no man careth for your soul.&quot; Go forth among the millions, and weigh yourself, and carry the humbling result onward with you through life, atom as you are, in the mighty creation of God.

This increase of self-knowledge often brings an en largement of mind, and deepening of charity. Dwell ing long in one nook, viewing the same classes of ob jects through the same narrow mediums, trifles assume undue magnitude, prejudices fix, dislikes become per manent, sickly imaginings take unto themselves a body, trains of morbid thought cut their way deep into the heart, and the mental tendencies take a coloring like monomania. A natural antidote for these evils is, to try a broader horizon, and become an interested ob server of masses of mankind, as modified by clime, cir cumstance, and varieties of culture. Perceiving all to be partakers of a common nature, whose springs are touched like our own, by joy or sorrow, by suffering, decay, and death, we enter into more affectionate broth erhood with the great family of man, and live more &quot; tremblingly along the line of human sympathies.&quot; &quot;We discover goodness where we had least expected it ; disinterested kindness in those who were denounced as heartless votaries of fashion; warm attachment and lasting gratitude among menials ; and learn, with the heaven-instructed apostle, not to call any one &quot;com-

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