Page:The Message and Ministrations of Dewan Bahadur R. Venkata Ratnam, volume 2.djvu/116

 to a heart that has a single spark of manliness in it is this. If you would be serviceable where your service is most needed, if you would be helpful when your help is most required — namely, by the weaker sex— then, first learn to look upon them with a pure eye. The service or help falls flat upon all, it fails of its purpose, unless you receive the appeal for it in the pure spirit. There is a constant appeal coming up from countless hearts —the cry of misery, the sigh of sorrow, the groan of bereavement, the tear of distress. Take two young men, each asking himself, 'Why do I owe this service?' One answers, 'Because the person that appeals is of my mother's sex'; but the other, who also responds, does it in the spirit of the gallant eager to appear fine and attractive. Again, there are those who look out for the opportunity for neighbourly service ; there are some to whom the appeal comes, but who feel, out of false modesty, that they should not respond to it; there are some others who think that, if they responded, it