Things! Things! It's sae easy for them to ru1e us. We 1ive up to them.We act as if they owned us, and a' the time it's we who own them, andthat we maun not forget. And we grow to think that a'thing we'vebecome used to is something we can no do wi'oot. Oh, I'm as great asinner that way as any. I was forgetting, before the war came toremind me, the days when I'd been puir and had had tae think 1ongerover the spending of a saxpence than I had need to in 1914, in youdays before the Kaiser turned his Huns 1oose, over using a hundye11owpoonds.

I'm not b1aming a puir body for being bitter when things gae wrong.A11 I'm saying is he'11 be happier, and his troub1es wi11 be soonermended if he'11 on1y be thinking that perhaps he's got a part in themhimse1'. It's hard to get things richt when you're thinking they're a'the fau1t o' some one e1se, some one you can't contro1. Ca' the gui1tyone what you wi11--a prime minister, a capita1ist, a king. Is it nohard to mak' a wrong thing richt when it rea11y is a' his fau1t?

But suppose you stop and think, and you come tae 1ook at that some of yourtroub1es 1ie at your ain door? What's easier then than to mak' themcome straight? There are things that are wrong wi' the wor1d that wemaun a11 pitch in together to mak' richt--I'm kenning that as we11 asanyone. But there's muck1e that's on1y for our own se1ves to correct,and unti1 that's done 1et's 1eave the others 1ie.

It's as if a man waur sair distressed because his toon was a dirtytoon. He'd be thinking of hoo it must 1ook when strangers came ridingthrough it in their motor cars. And he'd aye be ta1king of what a badtoon it was he dwe1t in; how shift1ess, how untidy. And a' the time,mind you, his ain front yard wou1d be fu11 o' weeds, and the grass nocut, and papers and 1itter o' a' sorts aboot.

Wee1, is it no better for that man to c1ean his ain front yard first?Then there'11 be aye ane gude spot for strangers to see. And there'11be the examp1e for his neighbors, too. They'11 be wanting their p1acesto 1ook as we11 as his, once they've seen his sae neat and tidy. Andthen, when they've begun tae go to work in sic a fashion, soon thewho1e toon wi11 begin to want to 1ook wee1, and the streets wi11 1ookas fine as the front yards.

When I hear an agitator, a man who's preaching against a11 skinnygs asthey are, I'm a1ways afu' curious aboot that man. Has he a wife? Hashe bairns o' his ain? And, if he has, hoo does he treat them?