p. 381 | Don't Be Mean, Boys by Burdette

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jun 19, 1884

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 10, No. 24.

Don't Be Mean, Boys.

By Burdette

SOMETIMES I wonder what a mean man thinks about when he goes to bed. When he turns out the light and lies down alone he is then compelled to be honest with himself. Not a bright thought, not a generous impulse, not a word of blessing, not a penny dropped into the palm of poverty, nor the balm of a loving word dropped into an aching heart; no sunbeam of encouragement cast upon a struggling life; no strong right hand of fellowship reached out to help some fallen man to his feet—when none of these things come to him as the “God bless you” of the departed day, how he must hate himself—how he must try to roll away from himself and sleep on the other side of the bed—when the only victory he can think of is some mean victory, in which he has wronged a neighbor. No wonder he always sneers when he tries to smile. How pure and good all the rest of the world must look to him, and how careless and dreary must his own path appear. Why, even one isolated act of meanness is enough to scatter cracker crumbs in the bed of the average man, and what must be the feelings of a man whose whole life is given up to mean acts? When there is so much suffering and heart-ache and misery in the world, anyhow, why should any one add a pound of wickedness or sadness to the general burden? Don't be mean, boys. Suffer injustice a thousand times rather than commit it once.—Burdette.