Page:Ralcy H. Bell - The Mystery of Words (1924).pdf/156

 in life and through all the mutations of death. At times, words shape our attitude toward life; they are responsible for our acts; and they govern our thoughts. Wantonly they have scarred and maimed millions of hearts. They have sowed the seeds of bitterness in childhood—seeds that grow into evil plants. They have filled prisons with felons, asylums with pathetic wrecks, and homes with needless pain. They have robbed the soul of courage, and they have thronged it with the phantoms of fear. They have driven light and love from the brain, and they have put the serpents of hatred and the beasts of prey within the dark cavern of the skull. They have wrapped the earth in a mantle of misery.

The volume of meanness encompassed by a word uttered, or by one withheld, is astonishing; and the amount of goodness and joy released by the simplest of words, is equally amazing. The weak have been made strong and the ill have been healed by a word. Barren ways are changed in a trice to flowery