THE COST OF CARELESSNESS.




How often do we hear as an excuse for some harm done or wrong committed, "I had no thought of causing any such trouble."  Certainly, "want of thought" draws after it evils, and leaves behind it a broad trail of cost and sorrow. We see the result of carelessness in all departments of life.

A nurse fell down stairs with an infant in her arms, and fifty years afterward there was a humpback man creeping about the streets. A switch-tender opened the wrong switch, and the heavy train dashed into a great building that stood at the end of the short sidetrack; and lives were lost. 

An operator gave a careless touch to his instrument, and there was a terrible collision on the rail. A boy shot an arrow from his bow; it went whizzing away from the string, and a comrade is blind for the rest of his life. 

A young man pointed a gun, in sport, at his best friend, playfully saying that he would shoot him; and one noble youth was carried to his grave, and another goes through life with an awful shadow of memory hanging over him. A druggist's clerk com-pounded the prescription in haste, and in an hour a sick girl was dying in terrible pain from poison.

There is a great deal of the same want of carefulness in ways whose consequences are not so manifest, yet are no less destructive. A man speaks light and careless words in a humorous mood, and while the laughter goes around, a heart is writhing in agony. 

The man did not mean to stab his friend, but he has made a wound which no after kindness can altogether heal. There is a manifold ministry of pain wrought by careless words.

A person's name is mentioned in a certain circle, and the most inexcusable liberties taken in speaking of him, his character, his business, his acts. No one means to do him harm or injustice; yet, in the guise of confidence, words are uttered which are like so many stabs. There is no part of this life we are living, day by day, that is not vital with influence. We are evermore touching other lives, and our touch today may decide a destiny.

Our silent example, as well as our words and deeds, is vital, and throbbing with influence. There is need, therefore, for the most unwearying watchfulness over every act and word, lest in a moment of unheeding we start a train of consequences that may leave sorrow and ruin in its track forever. 





S. S. Times.