SCATTER YOUR FLOWERS AS YOU GO.
By O. S. Marden
(O. S. Marden, in Success.) THERE is no law by which a man, any more than a rose, can withhold and yet receive. He must give first, and give generously, broadly, magnanimously, if he would develop a magnificent character, if he would accumulate soul-wealth. Give or starve! This is nature's fiat. Give of your sympathy, of your money, of your encouragement, yourself, or starve, mentally, morally. The man who refuses to give, to share what he has received, is as foolish as the farmer who was so wrought upon by the conviction of a coming season of drought and the probable destruction of crops, that he refused to plant his corn. He said that he would keep it in the crib, that he would not risk putting it into the ground, lest it might rot and be left without provisions for the winter. The drought did not come, however, and the result was that he went hungry, while his neighbors who had planted, generously reaped an abundant harvest. A great philanthropist said that he had saved only what he had given away, that the rest of his fortune seemed lost. What we give away has a wonderful power of doubling and quadrupling itself on the return bound. It is the greatest investment in the world. It comes back in geometrical progression. Give! give! give! It is the only way to keep from drying up, from becoming like a sucked orange—juiceless, insipid. Selfishness is self-destruction. The man who never helps anybody, who tightly shuts his purse when there is a request to give, who says that all he can do is to attend to his own affairs, who never gives a thought to his neighbor, who hugs all his resources to himself, who wants to get all and give nothing in return, is the man who shrivels and dries up like the rosebud, who becomes small and mean and contemptible. We all know those poor, dwarfed souls who never give, who close the petals of their helpfulness, withhold the fragrance of their love and sympathy, and in the end lose all they tried to hoard for themselves. They are cold, lifeless, apathetic; all their sympathies have dried up; they can not enter into the joys and sorrows, the higher and nobler emotions of human life. Their souls have been frozen by selfishness and greed. They have become so narrow and stingy that they fear to give even a kind word or smile lest they may rob themselves of something. They have rendered themselves incapable of radiating sunshine or happiness, and, by the working of an immutable law they receive none. A strong man, watching one who was delicate and undeveloped exercising in a gymnasium, said to him, "My dear man, how foolish you are to waste your energy on those parallel bars and dumb-bells. You are weak, physically and ought to save that13strength you have for your day's work. You can not afford to squander your vitality that way." "Oh, but my good sir," replied the other, "you don't see the philosophy underlying the exercise. The only way I can increase my power is by first giving out what I have. I give my strength to this apparatus, but it returns what I give it with compound interest. My muscles grow by giving it out in effort, in exercise."