NICE PEOPLE

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 484, 13 October 1928, Page 8

NICE PEOPLE

THE QUIET CORNER

(Written for THE SUN by the Rev. Charles Chandler, Assistant City Missioner.j T MUST confess, that in the main, I am averse from nice people. *** There are far too many nice folk, and not sufficient strong ones in the world. Being nice consists largely in doing little and in saying less. In agreeing with most, and in disagreeing with none. Nice people are like placid pools they have no force which can be harnessed into power. They reflect the opinions of others, as pools do the clouds and the stars, but they nevet give birth to one constructive thought, or risk public contumely by advocating an unpopular cause. Very few of the real world builders have been "nice” people. Most of them have taken a good deal of understanding, and have, in consequence, been almost as devoid of friends as frogs are of feathers. Loneliness has been the lot of these men who have trodden the thorny trail, or climbed the mountain peaks. It has never been said of them by their biographers, nor has it been inscribed on their tomb-stones, that they were nice, but rather that they were valiant and strong, stern for what was right, intolerant of wrong. Amos and Hosea; John the Baptist and Elijah were men of this ilk, and those who desire, even in the smallest degree, to measure up to their standard, must see to it that they avoid meriting the stigma of this spineless appellative. NEXT WEEK: TIGHT-ROPE WALKING