A MAN who lived in an unhealthy region of country supported himself by preparing and selling a medicine which acted as an antidote to the malarial or other poison prevailing there. This poison was taken into the system through the air the people breathed, the water they drank, and the food they ate. The entire population was suffering from it. Unless its effects were arrested, they became in the end fatal. The medicine, however, was a certain cure. Nature had evidently provided it as a remedy for a people otherwise incurably smitten, and the man who made a business of preparing it put it up in such quantities that there was an abundant supply within the reach of all by whom it was needed.

But here was a curious thing: The man himself neglected to take of the medicine. This was not because he had escaped the prevailing infection. Signs of it in his own person were evident enough to his friends, and some of them who had been cured through his means took occasion to speak with him on the subject. Said one of them:

“No one knows better than yourself the value of this remedy. And though it be not always pleasant to take, and requires some self-denial while using, what is this to the risk of one’s life?”

To this reasonable appeal the man at first made no answer; but when further pressed, he replied as follows:

“Am I doing any harm, that I should be thus annoyed and interfered with? Is it not better that I should deal out this medicine than poison to the people?”

“It is indeed,” said his friend. “You are doing no harm, but good, to others, but are not resisting the harm that is being done to yourself.”

“That is a personal matter,” said the man, “with which nobody else has anything to do. I can attend to my own health, and have no wish that another should prescribe for me.”

So they could do no more, but had to stand by and see the fatal malady increasing upon him.

It was like looking at a man standing in the water, breast-deep, with the vessel sinking under him, and he, after handing all the rest into the lifeboat, turning a deaf ear when they begged him to come too, and be saved.

Leading another into the right path does not excuse me for continuing in the wrong one. Neither can his reaching the goal help me to get there while I walk in a different way.