How much better would it be if we were more generous and lavish of our good words when our friends can be cheered and blessed by them! Sometimes we get the lesson of keeping silence over-learned, and let hearts starve for lack of kindly words which lie meanwhile on our tongues ready to be spoken. It is not the want of love for which we are to be blamed, but the penuriousness that locks up the love and will not give it out in word and act to bless hungry lives. Is any other miserliness so mean? We let hearts starve close beside us when we have the bread to feed them, and then, when they lie in the dust of defeat or death, we come with our love to speak eloquent funeral eulogies. Would it not be far better to give out the kindliness when it will do good?
“Why do we wait, and coldly stint our praises,
And leave our reverent homage unexpressed
Till brave hearts lie beneath a roof of daisies,
Then heap with flowers each hallowed place of rest?
“For every year the veteran ranks are broken,
And every year new graves await our flowers;
Ah! Why not give to living hearts some token
Of half the love and pride that throb through ours?
“Bring blooms to crown the dead; but, in your
giving,
Forget not hearts that still can strive and ache:
O give your richest garlands to the living,
Who offered all, in youth, for honour's sake!”