Even as he held that thin,
white hand the low-moving pulse took an lower beat--lower and
lower--until the long-suffering heart grew still, and the freed
spirit went up to its reward.
"My benefactor!" sobbed the cripple, as he stood by the wasted form
shrouded in grave-clothes, and looked upon it for the last time ere
the coffin-lid closed over it. "What would I have been except for
you?"
Are your opportunities for doing good few, and limited in range, to
all appearances, reader? Have you often said, like the bedridden
man, "What can I do?" Are you poor, weak, ignorant, obscure, or even
sick as he was, and shut out from contact with the busy outside
world? No matter. If you have a willing heart, good work will come
to your hands. Is there no poor, unhappy neglected one to whom you
can speak words of encouragement, or lift out of the vale of
ignorance? Think! Cast around you. You may, by a single sentence,
spoken in the right time and in the right spirit, awaken thoughts in
some dull mind that may grow into giant powers in after times,
wielded for the world's good. While you may never be able to act
directly on society to any great purpose, in consequence of mental
or physical disabilities, you may, by instruction and guidance,
prepare some other mind for useful work, which, but for your agency,
might have wasted its powers in ignorance or crime.
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