Living Dust's KEM will be back soon.

In the meantime, I hope you will enjoy one of my favorite little bits, called The Kind Voice. I found it once upon a time in an old children's books of virtuous stories, poems and short essays. No authors are listed, unless I'm missing a credits page, which is possible as some of the pages are loose. The book is titled Story after Story and published by McLoughlin Bros., New York. Do not have the year of publication, but it seems quite a long time ago from the pictures, maybe even 100 years old. Most of the pictures show the artist's signature, which if I really wanted to go crazy with research (Google, anyone?), I might be able to accurately determine the age of the book. I love old books on manners and etiquette, things truly were sweeter and gentler back then in lots of ways. People cared and felt for others more than themselves, seems to me.

The Kind Voice.

There is no power of love so hard to get and keep as a kind voice, and there is no one thing that love so much needs to tell what it means and feels. One must start in youth and be on the watch night and day, at work, at play, to get and keep a voice that shall speak at all times the thought of a kind heart. A kind voice is a lark's song to earth and home. It is to the heart what light is to the eye.

Isn't that beautiful?
KEM