More than Kin. "'BYjAMbS VILA BLAKE THOMAS RUTHERFORD BACON ME-MO^!4L LIBRA.RY //) v-J (T By tfye Same Ctutfyor. ESSAYS. Cloth, 8 x scinches $1.00 ST. SOLIFER. Cloth, 8x5^ inches i .00 The same in paper 50 POEMS. Cloth, 8 x 5% inches i.oo A GRATEFUL SPIRIT AND OTHER SER- MONS. Cloth, 8 x 51/2 inches i.oo HAPPINESS FROM THOUGHTS AND OTHER SERMONS. Cloth, 8 x 5% in. . i.oo NATURAL RELIGION IN SERMONS. Cloth, 8 x 5% inches i .00 LEGENDS FROM STORYLAND. Cloth, 7x5% inches 50 MANUAL TRAINING IN EDUCATION. Paper, 6 x 4% inches 25 To be Issued in February. AN ANCHOR OF THE SOUL. Cloth, 8x5^ inches More than Kin: A BOOK OF KINDNESS: THINGS GOTTEN OF LIFE AND FOS- TERED OF THOUGHT: IN WHICH THE AUTHOR is MORE OBLIGED TO A DEAR AND NOBLE OTHER ONE THAN TO His OWN WIT: By JAMES VILA BLAKE, CHICAGO: CHARLES H. KERR & COMPANY. 1893- KfQt, COPYRIGHT, 1893, BY JAMES VILA BLAKE. PRESS OF THOS. P. HALPIN & Co. 178 MONROE ST., CHICAGO. tf. I - To my Sister, Counselor, Friend. 267945 Preface. Reader, if you read with friendliness and belief, I have naught to say to you but what already is said in the book. But if you come with unbelief, and with scorn of the simplicity of romance, then let me tell you I deny not that fancy has some vein in these pages; notwithstanding, the book is truth. Incidents, persons, thoughts, char- acter, the life, the language, are real; of which I have joyful knowledge. J. V. B. June, 1893. Contents. I. More than Kin, II. The Proof III. Two Parts of Kindness, . IV. The Amount V. The Discipline, VI. A Labor of Love, VII. The Invisible Heart, VIII. The Responsibility, . . IX. Meanness of Unkindness, X. Reciprocity, XL Making an Average, XII. Vanity XIII. Calmness XIV. Invention, XV. Happiness, XVI. Encouragement, XVII. Recommendation, . . XVIII. Truthfulness, XIX. Fault-Finding, XX. Helping, XXI. Advising XXII. Respectfulness, XXIII. Education XXIV. Outcasts, XXV. Children XXVI. Beauty, XXVII. Grieving the Spirit, XXVIII. Sporting, XXIX. Conclusion, . . 9 12 15 23 30 36 53 67 74 78 83 106 in 153 164 I6 9 180 193 209 216 228 247 267 278 296 3ii 328 More than Kin. I. It is my Sister's good will that names this little book "More than Kin." In letters, more than kin by one char- acter. In life, more than kin by all the world! Kind is more than kin by one letter to the eye; but to the "mind's eye," by all the wide world. Men have been vultures, cormorants, wolves, foxes, to their kin. But no kind soul has plotted injury, even against an enemy. Therefore a kind man is more than a kinsman. To be kin, yet being not kind, is to be like a gnarled bit of wood, or a poisonous root mayhap, cast up on a river bank. For a mere kinsman by lineage is no more than a bit of body cast up on the banks of a certain blood-stream. He may be like the drift-wood, taking unkindly to any good. I mean, as I have said, that one may be kin without being kind. But no man can be kind without being kin a kinsman of the soul, by right of the com- 9 More than Kin. mon nature of us, who are all of one spir- itual fountain. Now, if this be true, what matters it how high the kin? To be a kind man is more than to be a kinsman, though of a king's line. Here then is a royal thing, this kindness! more royal than a king's son! If one be high in kin, even of a king's blood, but low in kindness, he is of base degree; but whoever is low in kin, even but a stevedore's son, but ex- alted in kindness, is very high. There is a fable of a man driving a donkey laden with a heavy sack of corn. The load slipped off the good animal's back to the ground. Just then came by the owner's brother. "Thou art come at the very nick of time, brother," cried the donkey-driver; "pray help me up with this corn sack." "It were a hard lift for three men," said the brother. " But try a little; two hearts in one heave may do much." "What folly! 'tis too heavy, I tell thee;" and he went away. " Master," said the donkey, "what can not be done by main force may come little by little. I will lay me down; rest you one end of yonder rail on my back, and belike you can roll up the corn-sack upon me." The man did so. "Ah!" said he, caressing the soft ears of the donkey, " Poor creat- 10 More than Kin. ure, thou showest me there is something more than kin." " That is like the hawk and the nightingale," said the donkey. "What is that story?" asked the master. The donkey recited: "A mellifluous night- ingale one day was pounced on by a hawk. 'As you sing so charmingly/ cried the hawk, 'how deliciously must you taste!' That was as foolish," said the donkey, "as to think that if one be kin he needs must be kind; for the two are different." 11 The Proof. II. From what I have said to the effect that, however low in social place, a man may be royal by kindness, my mind went suddenly on a journey from step to step of associations, thus, A lowly rank but a royal mind; then the value of the inward state over the outward lot; then, the text, " Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment ? " then, the lilies of the field, and King Solomon; then the de- scription of the good wife and mother in the last chapter of Proverbs. By this path I came round again to kindness; back from my little journey to find myself again in the home of my theme, in the text which is part of that glowing praise of the good wife, namely, " In her tongue is the law of kindness." It is a point and a very notable one herein that it is not wrkten that she is a loving character; only that "in her tongue is the law of kindness," and that all her life is kind and dutiful works. Did not the singer well? say I. Should he 12 The Proof. present to us a mountain, and say, Take note, this is a mountain? If behave given us brave deeds, should he say, Take heed now that here is a hero? Are not the true proofs above words ? Should he draw up for us this portait of a blessed wife, and say, Take note now that here is love? Behold, the face thereof is shining on us. There is no proof of love except the deeds. of it. Ossa on Pelion of car- esses and wooings will not reach the heaven of love like the wing of a kind deed. Words and tendernesses are like spires and pinnacles in architecture, beau- tiful if plainly they stand on good piers; otherwise, false things and terrors. There is no sign nor measure of love whatever but the doing of kind deeds. I recall often the right reason of a woman who said she found it hard to bear that her husband should caress her on one arc of the pen- dulum and profanely revile her on the next swing. I warrant you he would have had no oaths tripping to his tongue if the while before he had been busy, not with caresses, but with some kind deed for her, some needful care, thoughtful consideration, in- venting somewhat or disposing things for her pleasure or ease. Here comes not ill a fable or story of this truth, that only the deed of love is 13 The Proof. the proof of love: A man wished to marry a maiden. " Will you be my wife?' 1 said he, "I love you." " That turns,' 1 said the maid, " on how much love you have. How many yards of it have you?" " Yards?" quoth the man. "Ay, and pounds?" "Pounds?" "Ay, and baskets?" "Bas- kets?" "How many times daily will you take steps for me?" said the maid "that is the yards of it; and how much will you lift me the tubs of water? that is the pounds of it; and how much will you chop me the chips for the fire? that is the baskets of it." "A woman must do her work," said the man sullenly. "Ay," said the maid, "but belike you want the work, not love the woman. In this same way the lamb answered the wolf." " How was that?" said the man. The maid recited: "A wolf said to a lamb, ' O you beautiful creature, how dearly I love you! ' But the lamb's mother was a wise sheep and had instructed her. 'You mean/ said the lamb, What a good meal I should make you,' and skipped away." 14 Two Parts of Kindness. III. My Sister in my mind is the better por- tion of any theme like to mine, and I can not part my thoughts from her. She is the very image and dream of kindness. By deed and by word in our happy life together she has given me many thoughts and much instruction concerning this kindness, what truly it is. Therefore if I turn waywardly, as it may seem, from my theme to my Sister, and back, to and fro, let the reader remem- ber that I have intended no better order, but only to write on as heart and mind should work together not treatise-like. As over my life, so over my writing my Dozen is like a sky over a landscape; sometimes I am conscious of the sky mainly, anon of the land-view, again of both, sometimes the sky is night-hidden, now sun-gleaming, again breaking in with a rain or a breeze. A glance up the page shows me that I have written her name "Dozen." Ah! well, I will not remove it. What shame in my fancies? Why blush for my quips and sports? Know, then, friendly reader (and 15 Two Parts of Kindness. if thou be not friendly, why, beshrew thee ! Go learn of birds and flowers, which think neither of decking nor undecking them- selves, nor of showing themselves nor hid- ing!) that Dozen is my name in brief for my Sister. You may count twelve letters in " Sister Marian;" whence I call her < < Dozen " for short. What say you ? That perhaps it were well to draw a silence around my carolings? Go to! Do I con- strain you? And may a bird not fly in the air lest some one think him too blitfre, or say he should nest his raptures? For the light of kindness which streams over me from my Dozen, what return make I? Ah! I fear it is long since I have bethought me enough of that. I must consider it. I will invent some delight for her, some bit of surprising thought. For it is the best sweetness of a kindness to be the fruit of thought, of consideration. Neither shall she upbraid me with a sacri- fice of our few pennies for her sake. Noth- ing is cheaper than the best pleasures are. Yes, I must contrive some kind thing, to charm her. I will give heed to it. If it be only a word well considered, it is rich. What says the ancient wise singer, "Shall not the dew assuage the heat? So is a word better than a gift." It has been said well, "A small unkindness is a great offence." 16 Two Parts of Kindness. Well then, a small kindness, if it be thought of well and invented cunningly, is a great offering, belike a rich benefit. Kindness has two parts: i. Unwill- ingness to inflict the least needless pain, either of body or of mind; this is the neg- ative part. 2. Wish and effort to add to the sum of joy; this is the positive part. Now I shall be far from saying that it is nothing to have the negative part of kind- ness without the positive; for merely to be merciful and avoid giving pain is some- thing. Besides, I fear me much that if I were strict to grant no virtue to this indol- ent mercy, I should refuse to think a half of the world, and mayhap a larger portion, kind, so vastly does the negative goodness of not giving pain abound more than the positive virtue of kindness, which is to in- crease joy! Moreover, many a man (if I may trust my eyes which many a time have beheld it) who will not set his lump of a body in motion to give a pleasure, will show himself no little spry to relieve a pain if it come close before him; and I must not say there is no virtue in this. Nay, it hangs on the brink of being very vir- tuous with the very heavenliness of kind- ness, by as much as it is not done without an active bestirring of the man. Finally, it is plain sight, if we but open our eyes by 17 Two Parts of Kindness. day, that unmercifulness, even to a delight in seeing pain, or at least in sports which inflict suffering, not yet has gone the way of other barbarisms, but often is to be met in young persons; for youth is cruel. A lover of our dumb fellow creatures, I mean the brutes, even laments that "the same in- stincts of cruelty, love of sport and de- structiveness, break out at a later stage among adults of the highest ranks, includ- ing royalty itself, when they revel in the butchery of battued pigeons or hares. " For these reasons, then, I will not say there is no virtue in negative kindness, the not giv- ing pain, nor in the little higher leap of goodness which is the relieving of pain if we see it. Yet I can not say there is much excellence or a very human loveli- ness in it. To let men alone while they suffer no sad pangs, careless whether they have any good joys, is but a meagre leanness of heart which will singrno carols of praise. Two parts in kindness: i. Not to give pain; 2. To give joys; here is a doctrine for life, here is a store of food and a well of water, here is "daily bread." Ah! I can hold me from pausing here no more than from lifting my eyes to a break of light. With the words "daily bread " comes the thought of my Dozen to my mind; and when enters she the doors of 18 Two Parts of Kindness. my heart (which truly she keeps swinging) but a blessing enters with her like light over her shoulder? But now she comes as a memory, with the words, "daily bread." Once said she to me, "Thou art my daily bread, my dear." For in sooth, though I seem to do little service for her, yet she will have it that I do much, saying I am like a river which so disperses and exhales of its substance that it does wide kindness by its flowing on. But I know well that, like Eve looking into the pool, she but sees herself in her imaginary river and fancies the figure another creature. "Thou art my daily bread " said my sister, meaning that she fed of love and did her work by the nourishment of it. Well! well! But this analysis of kindness, I say, namely, that it has two parts, which I will phrase again thus, i. Non-unkindness; 2. Invention and giving of joys this is "daily bread" for daily life; this is doctrine to take to heart seriously. Ah! the differ- ence of the parts! Ah! the deep pit be- tween not being unkind and being indeed kind! How little do I if I cause no pains, if therewith also I make no joys! Let me not plume me with virtue if I hurt no one. That is but the lower part of kindness, the feet of it. If I rise to the heart, the head, 19 Two Parts of Kindness. the eye of it, kindness is the consideration how to give joys, and increase them. This is the teaching of the Master in the splendid and terrific place in the Gospels wherein he sets forth the tests or reasons which shall part the sheep from the goats. For the Master lays no ill deeds to the charge of those whom he drives headlong from him, to the fire prepared for the devils. Their misery is that, however they have done no evil acts, they have done far worse, for they have done no good deeds. He says not to them, Ye made men hungry, ye stole their meat, ye spilled their drink, ye robbed them of their gar- ments and left them naked, ye poisoned ; and sickened them, ye threw them into .dungeons. No, not with one such evil ,deed doth he face them. But he says they have not done the good deeds, they jiave not fed men, not given drink to the thirsty, not clothed the naked, not nursed the sick, not visited the prisoner. This is all their condemnation; but a mill- stone about their necks in a fiery sea. For not to make men famished, thirsty, naked, sick, enslaved, is not the same as to be merciful and loving-kind unto them. Neither as to the good sheep on the other side, doth the Master commend them whom he calls into his light and kingdom, 20 Two Parts of Kindness. for not having done this sin, or that one, or some other; of these he says naught; but lie receives them because they have done good deeds of mercy and loving-kindness. A story has it that a wise, albeit a strict Dervis, about to go on a journey, was besought by a pleasant fellow in the town that he might go with him. "Not so," said the sage. "Why, what fault can you find with me? " said the man. "None." "Why then, give me your hand." "Not so. I am too poor myself and need too much help on the way to go with one of whom I can say only that I can find no fault with him." "Why, what more would you have than to find no fault in me? " "I would find some virtue in you. 'What fault? ' say you: < None,' say I; but if you asked me, 'What virtue?' again I should say, 'None.' For to do no ill is not the same as to have virtue, not to run away is not the same as to be brave, not to hate is not the same as to love, to keep clean of evils is not the same as to engage with virtue, to behave so that no bad actions can be charged is not the same as to be a noble man. This is what the Roman slave whispered to his donkey." 21 Two Parts of Kindness. "What is that story? " said the man. " The slave Crato," answered the Dervis, "came one day to the stable and whis- pered into the long soft ears of his ass, < Woe is me, Asellus, that I must serve such a master.' 'Is he then so cruel or wicked?' asked the donkey. ' Nay, 'said Crato, 'he has not a fault in the world.' 'Why this lamentation, then?' cried the donkey. 'Alas! good Asellus,' said the slave, 'neither has he a virtue.' There- fore, friend," continued the Dervis, if I can find naught in you but that you do no ill things, I will jog along alone, till I come to one who does good things." 22 The Amount. IV. Kindness then has two parts: i. Not to give pain; 2. To give joys. This brings the question, How much must we bethink and bestir ourselves to give joys? The positive side of kindness is a husbandman's work. Joys will not grow unless they be planted first and tilled continually. I mean that to be kind in the way of adding joys to the daily walks of the persons about us, is first a work of invention and seeding, and then a work of fostering. Now, how much must we do this? To what amount turn aside from our own path or stop our journey, that we may plant corn in an- other's field or border another's path with box and poppies? Bacon avers that great lovers of their country or of their masters have not been fortunate, nor can be, be- cause he that considers another man "goeth not his own way." 'Tis not to be denied that to make a business of giving joys is sacrificial. Yet this steady business is the only positive kindness. If it be not steady, then a man may spot his life here and there 23 The Amount. with kind acts, but the spots will not be the hue, nor will this make a kind man any more than sometimes to tell the truth is to be truthful. Therefore, joy-giving is sacri- ficial not to be done without cost of ease or substance. Therefore, it is a question how much we must do it. How much must I be kind, by the posi- tive side of it? How much must I invent joys and bring them to pass? I answer, All I can. All I can. There is no limit but the end of my power. Kindness is not like a bar- ter, so much for so much; or so much by contract, and my duty done. But kind- ness is like a righteousness or like a wor- ship, not done unless it be done all I can. For the heart must run forth without meas- ure like a child, and kindness be wound around like a child's arms about the neck, not by measure, but as tightly and as long as they can be. But now you will say, very like, that thus a man may throw himself all away. He may waste away his substance and time and mind on other persons, till he have no more left and no means for getting, and has become a mere cast-up, having attended to every one till he can do so no more because he has destroyed himself. Surely it is fool's doctrine that a man must 24 The Amount. be busy giving joys to others all he can, for he has the power to do nothing else, and so come to naught even in that. But, friend, I mean not a physical can, but a moral. True, a man may empty gold or food or books into the sea. He has them; they are his; he stands on a wall or a ship-side; 'tis but a turn of the wrist; he can do it. Yet if he consider of it, if he weigh the act, if he put it in place in his mind and compare it with wisdom and rea- son, then he can not do it; and the moral inability outreaches all the physical power, so that no more he can do it than if he were tied; and in truth his hand is held tight by his mind. If there be a poor hun- gry wayfarer somewhere, and two men pass by, and one of them has no food in his wallet nor money in his purse, and the other has both in plenty, but a hard heart, unpitying of others and gripping his own possessions tightly, there is then no differ- ence in them as to ability, and no power in either to relieve the famishing poor man. One no more can than the other. There- fore, when I say I must do the positive part of kindness, to make joys abound, all I can, and there is no limit but the end of my power, I mean not to speak to myself as if I were a brute force only, pitted against so much or so much weight of 25 The Amount. things which the so much brute force is able to toss about and away. If I must do kindness in the positive part thereof all 1 can, this means not that I must wear away all my time and substance therein, for this I can not do, if I take account of justice and reason. I am such a creature that to take thought of justice and reason may tie up my hands so that no more I can do a certain act with them than if they were bound with strong cords. Therefore, the rule to invent joys and pour them around other persons all I can, is not an unsafe rule nor improvident. But mark this now, that the rule and wish to do all I can, is the only one which will show me what I can. Never shall I know truly how much I can give unless it be mightily in my heart to give that sum whatever it be. Can I know where justice and reason will stop me unless I feel their tug by going to the end of them? If I say not, "I will give joys all I can, and see to it and invent for it," but say, "I will do this as much as I must," or "As much as circumstances require of me," or "As is thrust in my way," or "As much as others do and as manners go, "it is surprising how little I shall deem required of me, what a small measure I shall mete out for my duty. Whoso seeks to do all he can 26 The Amount. is in the state of heart to know truly what he can, but he whose point is to do as little as he must will think often that he can do nothing. And how much indeed it is to do all we can! Little or large, what a vast sum it is! This rule and duty is the great leveler, which brings all things to our view of one size, as God sees them. To do all we can is so vast a sum in love and kindness, that to receive from one all he can, how little so- ever, is a much dearer thing, and a greater, than to receive from another only a part of what he might, though it be a great amount. This principle of the amount of due kindness, that it must be all we can, is the intent of a story which herewith I will relate: When a certain Calif once was roaming Bagdad with his vizier, in the disguise of an oil merchant, he saw a wretched, fam- ished beggar by the roadside, and over him was stooping a poor water-carrier. "Come hither," cried the water-carrier, as soon as he saw them, "come hither to this man who is faint from being famished, and I wager I will do as much for him with my own as you will." "You are an impudent fellow," said the Calif, "to promise that you, a common water-carrier, will do as 27 The Amount. much for this poor man as I who am* a rich oil merchant." "Softly, Master," said the water-carrier; and therewith he drew out one penny and gave it to the hungry poor man: "Now," said he to the Calif, "I have done all I can, for the penny is all I have; let me see you do all you can; and then you will but equal me. I said I would do as much as you with my own\ only a man's will is his own, to do all he can; his possessions, wherewith he may work, are all Allah's, may he be praised forever! That is like the answer of the Ant to the Elephant." "What story is that?" said the vizier. Then the water-carrier narrated the fol- lowing: " An Elephant who was carrying ten men looked at an Ant who was bearing a bag of eggs out of the ant-hill. 'You poor contemptible little thing/ said the Elephant. 'You big, dull, logy, swollen-up crea- ture,' said the Ant, 'let me see you carry five times your size and weight, as I am doing. But perhaps you are doing all you can; then we are equals; all else is Allah's may he be praised forever!' 'You are right, 1 said the Elephant; 'in that way the water-drop answered the cloud.' ' How was that? ' said the Ant. 28 The Amount. 'A cloud,' replied the Elephant, ' saw a rain-drop, and said, 'Poor falling thing, why do you not float as I do?* 'I fall,' answered the drop, 'because I have come to the state of doing all the good that is in me, my substance being gathered home compactly. You float because you are dis- persed abroad idly. Therefore, my falling is more than your floating, however fine you look.' " The next day the Calif sent for the water-carrier and made him Master of the Charities; "For," said he, "I must look after the poor of the city, and the man whose view is that I must do this all I can is the one who will learn truly how much I can." 29 The Discipline. V. An ancient Stoic said we must keep in mind continually that "men are not born wise but have to become so." This is to bethought of also concerning kindness and love. "What!" you will say, "are men born, then, with no more feeling than knowledge? Come they hither and set forth with no more love than wisdom?" Truly, friend, I think that very much it is so, if not altogether. Much have I ob- served men on this point, to see whether love has the advantage of wisdom in being given to men without labor and discipline; and to my seeing, it is as little a free gift as knowledge is, and waits to be acquired no less than wisdom. Nay, I have become persuaded that a great store of ill and of pain in the world runs like water from this one fountain, that men think love belongs to them so by nature that it will thrive and come to its fruit without discipline of themselves in it. Yet this is no more so than with knowledge or wisdom or music or any art, or any beautiful and good thing. 30 The Discipline. But appears not love in the very begin- ning, comes it not forth at once and strong- ly in the child, as soon as the infant, while yet speechless, can evince himself at all? It is so, indeed; and so it is with wisdom, if we include therein the common instincts and openings of knowledge and the many items of apprehension needful for self- preservation, such as to avoid pits and falls and fire, and to seek food or to creep into a shelter. For these appear with the first pushes of sense, or very quickly are gotten; and in our brute fellow beings, and even in the insects, such knowledge much more is born with them than with us, or gotten far more quickly and wonderfully. But it is of the higher knowledge and wis- dom that we speak when we say "Men are not born wise, but have to become so." And this is true no less of the higher love and real kindness. But let us distinguish. Kindness, as I have said, has two parts; the negative, which is unwillingness to give pain and a tendency to relieve suffering when we be- hold it; and the positive, which is a con- cern and consideration how to give joys, and an active going about it. Now, the negative part seems to be born with us in some plenty, in our present stage of moral unfolding. We come hither with the ad- 31 The Discipline. vantage of being not cruel; we delight not in seeing pain, nay, we shrink from it. This is to be taken with some abatement, and "pity 'tis 'tis true;" for, as I have said, there is much cruel sport of many kinds, like pigeon-shooting and some kinds of hunting, in which, if there be no pleasure in giving pain, at least it is inflicted indif- ferently and lessens not the sport. Yet, even with all reserve, we have come to this in the moral evolving of mankind, that we are born with a good share of the neg- ative kindness. But the positive kindness comes of discipline. To observe other persons, with thought whether there be a chink for a kindness from us in their lot at the moment; to set a high value on joys; to count a good pleasure a precious thing; to invent a plan how we may make a good surprise, give a leap of delight to some one, drop benefit at some one's feet like a staff for the weary, or dewy love like a rose at morning; and to go about to do these things when they are planned, to take trouble and time, steps, work, expense, to do them, this kindness comes only by reflection, conscience, labor and discipline. I have said in the chap- ters foregoing that kindness is a royal thing, a splendor greater than any rank of kindred; that there is no proof of love but 32 The Discipline. the deed of love, as said the apostle, "Let us not love in word, neither with the tongue, but in deed and truth;" and that there is no limit of the law of kindness but power, so that in kindness we must do all we can, and fall not short of our utmost, and study to know what our power may be; these things have gone before herein, I say, and every one of them is a point of will. They come not save by willing and striving unto them. Loving-kindness is a fruit of discipline by virtue of the second part, the positive. No man becomes kind but by labor. If we trust to impulse, without labor on our- selves, we may become not unkind; but that is not the same as to be kind. A certain Dervis, famous for his piety and learning, came in his travels, to a certain town where he called the people together and preached to them. After the sermon, a man approached him and said: "Holy Dervis, peace be with you! I give you my thanks for the blessed words you have spoken." The Dervis answered, "Is not your name Hassan?" "Yea," replied the man, "but how do you know me, holy Dervis?" "Know," said the Dervis, "that three days back in my journey I sojourned for a 33 The Discipline. day in your village, and I beheld your* wife and spoke with her." "Allah be praised!" cried Hassan. "How did my wife look?" "Very beautiful," said the Dervis. "That," said Hassan, "she cannot help. How did she seem to you in the things wherein she has chpice and can do good or evil?" "She appeared gentle and pleasant in manner," answered the Dervis. "That again," said Hassan, "she is compelled to be, for she attended to her parents' instruction and learned to rever- ence the elders." "But I saw that she was charitable to the poor," said the Dervis. "In that too," said Hassan, "she is what she must be, for she has so soft and kind a heart that she cannot resist any supplication." The Dervis smiled. "I noticed," he said, "that she was very religious. She listened with fervor to my discourse." "How can she choose as to that?" cried Hassan, "for she has a nature so pious that the stars in the heavens at night fill her eyes with tears." "I observed also that she was very duti- ful," said the Dervis, "for she cared well for your children." 84 The Discipline. "Neither can she do otherwise in that," answered Hassan, "for she has a conscience so tender that any evil fills her with terror and grief. " "But tell me, my son," said the Dervis, "what are the things in which she has choice and can do good or evil?" But to this Hassan made no answer, for he could not think of anything and knew not what to say. "You deceive yourself , my son," said the Dervis, after waiting a little. "Think not that any good thing comes without labor and prayer. You behold all the graces, but you see not the inward labor by which they exist. Even the beauty of the face is only the victory of the soul. When you return home, salute your children with joy and your wife with reverence, and believe that she is not good without prayer and endeavor." 35 A Labor of Love. VI. It is possible to begin a day with rapture, and so begin I this day. I am writing daily at early morning. I have no other time. "The cares that infest the day " stir up their camp about me all the working hours till late evening before they " fold their tents like the Arabs and as silently steal away." Therefore, when I had become like a full well with the sister-song in me, which had risen to the light of the brim and no more could be confined but must flow out over, there was no way whereby to gather the drops but to arise early at morn to fetch the filled vessels from the well-side. Besides, I was resolved to keep this little book from my Dozen till it should be all done. Daily thereupon I began to sit me for one hour at my desk before breakfast, and write in the light of the morning. It is seclusion and quiet. My sister is table-busy. The Arabs have not gathered. The freshness of morning is a dew on my thoughts. To the young day, nay, not 36 A Labor of Love. even young yet, but a very child, warm, yet brisk, a flush without a taint of fever my thoughts come forth as to a child they come, by nature, and sallying gladly "from the round tower of my heart," as the poet saith. Now, it is with a singular joy of spirit that I sit me down to write this morning; and when this joy, rejoicing like a child danc- ing, comes at early morning, it must be by effect of yesterday. Yesterday's twilight refracts around the sphere of sleep to be the dawning of to-day. My yesterday was a day for memory to feed on. In earth and sky it was one of those days of perfect glow which report a heavenly tropics from which they have been transported, but cooled in the descent through space. How delicious was the temperate warmth of it, the rich, serious, reserved sun-heat! And my soul was glad. The day before, indeed, shadows which had been thick, had begun to take themselves away, like clouds swarming seaward to fall into the ocean. But yesterday what so had begun was ful- filled. The shadows fled utterly, each one bidding me farewell with a caress, like swarthy friends departing. The light on my heart was like the seeding of a field, and so swiftly the shoots of joy sprang and flowered that the day was one blooming- 37 A Labor of Love. slope to the still waters of the evening. Even my failures, faults, errors, ceased their threats and all but smiled on me the day long. Naught could extinguish my quiet joy, my simple exultation. I can pierce with my eye but a little way into the fog of questions which encloses me round about. I steer my little boat with pain. Rocks are to right and shoals to left. Difficulties, problems, anxieties, wishes without means and wants without wishes, cares, misgivings, obscurity, claims with- out resources and demands without claims all these are thick as their wont is, very thick, around me and before me. But they mattered not yesterday. They could not disturb me. Nay, they had power to stay the stream of my joy no more than a babe's finger in a river. The day was my minister, the living air waited on me as if I were a king. No Grecian was ever stronger of limb than was I in my walking, nor Aurora more "rosy-fingered" to Homer than to me, nor the Hours scatter- ing more blossoms in Virgil's Song or Raphael's vision. So passed the hours and events over me, as if the sky were a vast organ and these its melodies, wonderful, but counterpointed to a harmony more wonderful. Then came mild evening on. The far and fading sounds charmed me, 38 A Labor of Love. withdrawing into murmurs as the light into shadows. I enjoyed the softened rustle of the town nestling to its domestic rest. My lamp shone like wisdom. My books looked at me friend-like. My desk failed me not, and I was pleased to say to myself, "This sound oak w r ill fail not some other who will sit at it, very like, when this body of mine shall have use of it no more." My pen was like a blossoming rod or a living wand. Then drew unto me the images of the dear who are near about me, or of the far absent who are dear; and a soft voice said within me, " Peace be with us! " So was yesterday to the end or without end; and so I say that when we begin in the morning with a singular joy, as this morning I have, it is by effect of a yester- day, whose twilight refracts around the sphere of sleep to be this day's dawn. "Peace be with us" ah! it was no dream-voice, but the living voice of a dear body that said the words; a gentle frame compacted of earth's lovely substances, and almost as precious to me as the spirit of love and truth that lives in it my lov- ing and delicate Sister. When the fine hours of yesterday had come to stars and shadows, I stretched me on a low ottoman in the veranda and was giving myself to friend-dreams, as I have said, when came 39 A Labor of Love. my Dozen, drew a low chair to my side, facing me, sat her down, and said, " Peace be with us," also at the moment laying her hand for an instant over my eyes and with- drawing it with a little downward sweep. Never from any other have I heard that greeting. The ' < Pax vobiscum " of priest, or sometimes of jolly friend, is common. To you the good wish is; " Peace be with you" so the form is. But my Sister says always " Peace be with us," as if there could be no peace sole, ' but only twin. Neither ever have I had from another, nor seen anywhere, that strange caress, the hand laid over my eyes for an instant with touch like air, and lifted away downward, like a clearing of vision; and in truth my eyes ought to be cleared of all selfishness before looking into hers. So sat she by me, saying naught after 1 ( Peace be with us," and I, being tired, very blissfully, was given to silence under the stars and the pluming shadows. And now have I still the crowning bliss to tell of all the blissful day. Presently my Dozen arose and went away, withdrawing as she did so, the low chair to a spot be- yond the end of the ottoman, behind my head. Soon she came back and sat her again, and I was conscious of her more by love than by sound, when suddenly crept, 40 A Labor of Love. half-timidly and appealingly, yet richly and firmly, an array of musical chords out on the air, then a short figured introduc- tion, then a melody, "Muss i> denn" a favorite with me, played very tenderly and perfectly on that most appealing of instru- ments in good hands, the guitar of Spain? I spoke not, nor indeed could I, for sur- prise and love. When my Dozen had played the tune, she continued into an in- terlude and then repeated the melody, and ceased. Still said not I a word nor moved. I had come to my senses, and suppressed an exclamation. How knew I her pretty plan and what steps she had devised for discovering her art to me? I would wait her pleasure and not break in on it. After a little silence she played again, this time a melody of old romance, with a drum and other devices of the pretty instrument em- ployed in it; and so one piece after another she played to me charmingly for a half- hour, while I stirred not, except that I was careful by an intelligent murmur now and then to show that I was not asleep but entranced. Then my Sister laid aside her guitar fell on her knees by me. I could feel her cheek flush with the exercise bodily and spiritual. I put my arm about her and a hand on her head, silently waiting 41 A Labor of Love. for her to make her own end of it all; which she 'did thus simply " I shall play better by and by." "Better?" I cried; "Why, thou hast played wondrously; thy fingers on the strings have been like breezes on the tree tops. But what is all this? Kow came this art to thy hand? Tell me of it, my sweet Sister, my Dozen." Then she reminded me of an evening a year ago, like to this one, when I had laid me as now under stars and veranda-roof, tired and musing, and she had come as her wont was and sat down by me in the low chair. Sometimes she came with all man- ner of blithe noises, carols and rustles and tapping feet, sometimes quietly; nor ever did amiss, for whether one way or the other, either she knew mysteriously to meet my mood or she drew me into hers; nor ever knew I which it was, but only always that she was right. That night she sat in silence. At last, " Thou art a sweet quiet," said I. "I would I were a sweet sound," she answered; "for a fine music is a silence and something more." "Ah! yes," said I, "and this day have I heard it. Thou knowest, Marian, that this morning came a note from our lovely Dr. Agatha Hickes, asking me to come to the 42 A Labor of Love. hospital. So this evening at the edge of twilight I went. She wished me to see a young mother and child there, to be- speak my interest by letter in a possible country home for her thou knowest at the Clover Farm, and I have written the letter which I think will bring a pleasing answer. After the visit to the nursery, Dr. Agatha took me about among the patients; and I tell thee, dear Dozen, it was an an- gelic progress. If meeting her anywhere thou hast joy in her, as thou knowest, to go with her there is to have a joy rising on itself, like one billow on another. It was a heavenly sight of kindness and love to behold her go from one to another of the sick and aching people. With a touch or two, as deft as a whiff of air, she refreshed some bed-clothing, or smoothed or turned a pillow. Anon she laid her palm on a flushed forehead; or again felt a pulse, or took a hand, or curled aside a lock of hair. All with a few words wondrous for joined sympathy and cheeriness, sometimes in English, sometimes German, as either would be mother-tongue. Her very shadow seemed a ray, not a shade, and the sick faces awoke like pictures in a dark place when a lamp is brought in. Hope went before her, Light came with her, Peace followed her. 43 A Labor of Love. Soon broke on my sense a music. It lay in the air like a diffusion, as light does under clouds, no source of it being vis- ible. It was like a rill entering a fen, gone as a running course, but become a spread of vapor like a cloud meshing with the earth. "I will take you to them," said Dr. Agatha. "They are a sister and a brother, Spaniards. There were two other brothers; and if they were like to this younger sick one, they loved their sister worshipfully. They went off westward by two paths, to look for land. Both were seized with a swift malady, The girl was writing pitifully to each of them in turn, asking to be told why she heard not from the other; and they both were dead. Be- fore word of this desolation reached her, she had brought hither the younger one, with fever plainly the nursling of them all; and he knows not of the death of the others." With this we came to the bed. He was a lad of twenty years, mayhap; far gone with fever and the drying of life's fountains. Plainly the brother and sister were of good nurture; there was a fine- ness. The sick lad's face had a silvery light in it, very ominous, very beautiful. The girl was slender, delicate, with a lovely spirit and much discipline showing under the warm color of her country, like the 44 A Labor of Love. effective sweet blue of the sky under a crim- son dawn. The music was of the sister's guitar; and it was exceeding beautiful and wonderful. 'Twas then I had the same thought which just now thou hast uttered, dear Marian, that music has a silence and something more. For the sister's playing had the very silence of the coming shadow in it, and of the others already fallen. She changed the music as I listened, from a tender melody to a blithe whirl with the very tripping of gay feet in it; but the same stillness was therein, like the quiet and pathos of twinkling stars. It recalled to me what our friend Franklin said last evening to us thou wilt remember of Mozart's music, that however gay it be, in its gayest and most lightsome pranks, its careerings as of birds paired with breezes, always there is an appeal and a pathos. 'Twas the most haunting music I mean the Spanish sister's guitar that ever I have heard, and I fear that by the holiness of the spectacle I was not stilled so but I brought away a din of selfishness in me; for I conceived what delight it were, what rest and refreshment, and source of fancies and thoughtful dreams, if my Dozen, my Sister, so could play to me on that lovely instrument. Ah! thou see'st my selfishness, dearest Marian to wish 45 A Labor of Love. thy 'refined gold gilded,' the 'lily' of thee ' painted/ a 'perfume thrown on the violet ' of thee, a ' hue added to the rain- bow,' and 'the beauteous eye of heaven' in thee, thy perfect sister-love, ' garnished with a taper light! ' Well, well! " Hereat my Dozen looked wondrous pleased; which I thought strange; for it were more like her to be grieved that she could not play to me, than pleased because I wished that she could. All this befell a year ago; and now in truth had my Dozen played to me as lus- trously as my memory of that music shines! Now had my wish to lay me after labor to a resting eddied about with music, come to pass like a fairy-gift! "Come," I cried to my Sister, "confess thee. What is this? Thou rogue! thou secrecy! thou naughty mystery! thou am- bush! Knowest not that hidings are for- bidden in this house? Ah! knowest not that all is to be between us like the air to birds' wings or the water to fishes, a com- mon vehicle shared in every particle? Knowest not? Shrive thyself now!" "A fine thing in thee, truly," said Sister, " to be so full of such claim! thou, with all thy tricks and plots and wiles, as thick as sun-rays. By which as thou knowest, I have been driven to name thee Sir Prize, 46 A Labor of Love. my only bit of wit because thou pelt- test me with thy surprises in such man- ner! " - " Pah! " said I, "all my tricks and plots, as thou callest my innocences, put together, amount not to such as this of thine. Con- fess, I say, unfold, relate, describe, and quickly! " " But never hadst thou more to tell me of the Spanish sister and brother?" said Marian. "No," said I, "when I went thither after a fortnight, they were gone; the brother had died." " But I went to them next day and made friends with the sister," said Marian. " Margarita is her name. I engaged her to teach me her music, and she was very willing. She told me of a guitar which was very good that hung for sale in a loan- shop, for a small price, and she obtained it for me at my wish. For a year she has taught me weekly. That is all." " But the payment for the lessons," said I, " whence was that? We have so little. 7 ' " Dost forget my small store put by? " "But that was for " " Hush! A foolish vanity. Could it be used better than to fill my hands with an invisible beauty of skill and my heart with a most visible joy (I am sure it were visi- 47 A Labor of Love. ble if thou couldst get at it), to be sweet sounds and light and dreams unto thee? " "And a unity in us, dearest Marian," I said, deeply moved, "a unity in us. Surely thou lovest it too." " It has been an increasing charm to me and is now an exceeding delight," she answered. "But the time," said I. "Thou wert busy enough before. Thy day already was like a fresh nut packed with sound meat. There was no room for more." "Nay, time is not like a shell but like a heart. Fill it full with one love, and thou hast but stretched it to give room for another. Didst ever know time that would not stretch? Now, time and heart and life being so filled with my Brother were en- larged the more for music." "Ay, but a minute is a minute and no more, and - "Oh, well," said my Dozen, " I got me up an hour earlier in the morning and hastened a bit. Love-work is spry work. And for the practicing, why, thou art not always a baggage in the house, thou knowest. Thou goest out daily." "An hour earlier in the morning! " cried I " like to me for my Sister-book." "What is that? " said Sister, quickly. It was too late to get back the flown 48 A Labor of Love. words to their cage. Unwary in my de- light, I had let out my secret, like a linnet from a wicker, and Dozen's ear was not slow to it. But I put a bold face on it. Said I, with a frown, " What! wilt thou be curious? wilt question me? Go to! go to! Not a line shalt thou see of it till I have brought it to the end, and wrought it over, and put it to labor once and again. Then shall thy chaste fancy take note of it, and amend me. "A fine consistency thou!" cried Mar- ian. "Thou secrecy! thou naughty mys- tery! thou ambush! Knowest not, etc., etc. And thy fine figures of the equal air for birds and water for fishes ah! ha! " "Pooh! pooh!" said I; "what says a wise man A prying mind is like thorns, it either catches rags or makes them." " But applies not that equally to thy own curiosity? " "By no means; for I first have applied it to thee and there's none left for applying to me. . Therefore I will bear patiently the sore of my curiosity, but thou shalt be cured of thine." "Oh!" "In proof," said I, "tell me of thy teach- er, the Spanish maiden. Was she to thy mind, as acquaintance ripened? Was she overflowed with thy heart? Whatever is 49 A Labor of Love. washed in thy love must be white at first and it comes out whiter, like a lily laid in a swan's breast." "She was lovely, Brother. Her music was not fairer or gentler. The lessons be- came charming hours of affection to me. Yet always she had a reserve, a distance; not proud so much as tender, like haze in a far meadow. I could not enter it. She had taken her brother's mortal part to the crematory, and the ashes were in a small beautiful bronze vase engraved with his name which always was on a corner of the low mantel of her room, and the western sun always was streaming on it at my lesson- hour. Above the vase hung the cage of her bird, a beautiful songful linnet, with a 'lay of love' indeed, as the poet calls it; for sometimes the lesson would be hindered by the bird, who would join in the music. The cage door always was open and the bird often out, flying about the room. During the lesson he liked to be on Margarita's shoulder or hand and thence pipe his wilful duet with my playing, till Margarita would throw a gauze over him which stilled him. The loving creature became used to me during my year of lessons and would come to me as freely as to his mistress, and always greeted me with a chirp and by flying to 50 A Labor cf Love. me as soon as I entered. The room was very clean, but plain and poor. It was manifest she had strained no little to ac- quire that sacred bronze urn. One day I perceived she was not feeling well indeed often she drooped, though bravely. She asked me not to come for one week or till she should sead for me. Three weeks passed and I heard not. Then I sought her 'twas yesterday; but the little room was shut. She was gone and no one thereabout could tell me of her." "Surely we shall find her again, " said I. "She will come back." "Oh! Brother, I long for it," said my Dozen; "my heart is sad with wishing her. She became very sister-like to me. Yet she was proud, and never admitted me to any troubles, pains or privations." I took my Sister's hand and looked at it. "This little hand," said I, "looks no otherwise than as before; but what a dif- ference! I am reminded of friend Roper's remark (thou wilt remember) when he stretched forth his right hand before me and said, 'That hand looks like any other, but it is worth fifty thousand dollars to me by reason of the invisible mechanical skill in it' a fine thing to say, Sister. What a glory the hand is!" 51 A Labor of Love. "I remember truly a noble thing to say." "But who can compute the value of this hand, this faithful small implement of thy love, Marian? who can put a value on the rest, peace, joy and refreshing of mind in me nay, selfish fellow that I am, in us which lies in its skill, like balm in the Bayberry, exuded by a touch? Take thine instrument again, . dearest Sister; play to me some more. To grand music thy guitar compares as to 'the bards sub- lime/ compares 'the humbler poet whose song gushed out from his heart.' Play to me. Ah! the delight! And sit where I can see thee too. The eye and music con- sort well. Play as thou wilt. Ramble in melodies. Thy music will hang up in my mind like Melilot in a room, breathing balm by being housed." 52 The Invisible Heart. VII. Strange that I thought not of the hos- pital; nor did my Sister. Yesterday, immediately after the morn- meal, came a messenger from Dr. Agatha, bidding me come to the hospital at once. When I arrived there, the Doctor told me she had sent for me for the Spanish girl whose music so had charmed me a year ago. "She came hither some weeks ago," said the kind physician, "with fever, and has been very ill, but turned convalescent, and we thought she was recovering. Sud- denly last night befell a change for the worse, with great sinking, and now she is going fast. She has refused all along to have any friend sent for, but at the last hour something bade me call you without asking her. It can do no harm. She is too near the mystical door to be distressed, and possibly a new kind presence may be like a fresh breeze to spread her wings on." "You have done better than you know," said I; "a good angel led you." And I 53 The Invisible Heart. told her of my sister's music-hours with Margarita. Immediately I was by her, where she lay a little propped with pillows to stay up her head, as she had desired. I knelt at the little bed and said quietly and cheerfully, "I am the brother of Marian who had music lessons of you." The closed eyes opened and kindled. "She has grieved after you," said I. "She would have hastened to you like a sister if she had known you were here." Again the eyes kindled and this time a smile followed, faint, but with no taint of sadness. Then her eyes turned from one to another of the three things present which belonged to her, the bronze urn, her guitar, the linnet in his cage, and then came back to my face with an invoking look. "Do you wish me to give the guitar and bird from you to my Sister, and shall we keep and guard the urn?" A glad and grateful look gave me full assurance. Then she suddenly grew a little whiter and there was a slight spasm of the mouth. "About yourself," said I quickly, "have you no wish?" The lips moved, and bending very close I caught the words 51 The Invisible Heart. "No choice because no way." I knew she meant no money. I told her in a glad tone that she should have my grateful care, because she so had blessed our home with her love and music. ' 'Would you not like" said I, "to have this body you are dropping exhaled to the air with flaming purity, as you did with your broth- er's, and the ashes mingled in the bronze urn with his, and your name engraved on it with his?" A delightful joy broke in her face and her eyes thanked me infinitely. "It shall be so," said I. Then as if that sudden unexpected vast delight were too much for the frail frame, the spirit made wings of it and flew at once. The flight shook the body a trifle, as a bird does a twig in launching from it. Then all was still, and nothing woful. When I told my dear Sister what had happened, her tears flowed womanly. She received with grateful tenderness the lega- cies, the splendid antique guitar, and the linnet, which delicate little creature I per- ceived at once knew my Sister and showed it by many chirps, flutterings, and cries of love, and instantly alighted on her finger which Marian thrust into the cage. Forth- with his cage was opened and he was given the liberty of the room, of which his first 55 The Invisible Heart. use was to alight gn Marian's shoulder and peck at her ear and mouth. The trust, also, the bronze urn, my Sister received reverently, and placed it on the corner of the mantel in our study whereon the west- ern sun shone daily; for so it had been placed in Margarita's poor little room. ' 'Of ten did I think," said my Sister tear- t fully, "of trying to win my sweet young teacher to come and live with us. Once I tried toward it, but she shrank so quickly that I thought the time had not come. I wish now I had sought it more boldly. Mayhap I should have won her, and may- hap then she would not have fallen ill, or if she had I could have nursed her." Herewith came tears again with a most precious look of sorrowing love, while she handled the guitar tenderly. Presently she said, looking up, "Hers was a deep nature, dear Brother. There was a great- ness in her. I was not given to explore it much, with all her sweetness to me and she kissed me earnestly when she dis- missed me for a little, as she said, and it was for all. I am very glad of that kiss now. No, I could not explore in her, but she had a deep life. I caught a few bits of light which flashed from deeps, reveal- ing for an instant a greatness of soul with tragical experience, joys and sorrows, 56 The Invisible Heart. both great. She was like a rich delicate vessel of adamant in which lay a jewel'such as never was known, shining a little through the adamant, but neither its shape nor light to be discerned truly, and the adamant not to be pierced nor broken to get unto the jewel." These words of my Sister clung to me and set me brooding on the unknown life of each person. Respect unto it hath great place in the law of kindness. Mari- an's words attended me in the streets of the great city whither I went in the after- noon. I looked more lovingly and intent- ly at the faces of the hurrying people. "That living flood," says Teufelsdr6ckh r "pouring through these streets, of all qual- ities and ages, knowest thou whence it is coming, whither it is going? Aus der Ewigkeit, zu der Ewigkeit hin. From eter- nity onwards to Eternity." And what a, thing, what a fact, awful, tender, mysteri- ous, are the drops in this flood, the per- sons. I walked the thoroughfares and searched the faces, under the spell of my Sister's soul, not like a naturalist to whom. all is grist, but like a miner who looks only to the gold. What unknown saints, I thought, were passing me in the throngs! What brothers, careful, gentle, loving their sisters tenderly and manfully, protecting,, 57 The Invisible Heart. respecting. What fathers, devoted, toil- ing by day and by much of the night for their poor nests of wife and children, faith- ful, kind, not counting fatigue, denying themselves, indulgent, sympathetic, heroic, obscure. What sisters as lovely before God as my own, following some wayward or selfish or sullen fellow of a brother, and never giving him up, enduring, working, saving for him, giving to him, Hiding tears, because he had lain on the same mother's breast. What lovers, lads and girls, to whom love was devout, reverential, tender, great, an exaltation, a being crowned, a glory and praise above all ambitions, trap- pings, fames. What mothers, out on anxious errands, now hastening back to bend, like the mercy of God, over the sick or the lacking or the ungrateful. All these and other saints pass me, bearing great tragedies, which they, the true poets, sing unto heaven by their bearing of them, and no other poets can sing nor have the might to tell what incidents, what struggles, what vast covered sorrows boxed in pa- tience and lidded with smiles; what cour- age, daring deeds and thoughts, unspeak- able natural longings in holy quiet kept, like a tragedy enacted at a fane or shrine! Here passed me great sins which had come to sincere repentance and penance. 58 The Invisible Heart. Here was religion walking by me in its most simple devout form " How know I what prayers ye lifted this morn," said I, looking into some faces, "at what poor bedsides kneeling, or under rich tapestries where wealth excludes neither woes nor tempta- tions; and what thoughts unto God are walking by me in the humble trust and self- watchfulness and many a silent uplift of souls; and what prayers of lowly praise for one more day's safety accomplished ye will lift in shabby stalls or under fine hangings to-night, with the same temptations, pains, struggles and spiritual victories in the poverty and in the riches, and some kinds in each unknown to the other lot! " These worlds and mysteries of saintly things passed me in the unknown lives of each person, and other things black and dreadful all passing, beautiful, tremend- ous, terrible, in the persons who hastened by me like phantoms. O let me stand before each one with awe for what may be in him, what nature, feeling, experience! When we read the tender or the grand passages of poets we are appalled at the depth or the majesty of the experience. If we read the Indian serenade of Shelley which Poe so much admired, which indeed has a very delicate atmosphere of love; or if in his "Prometheus Unbound" we read 59 The Invisible Heart, such descriptions as in the talk between Panthea and Asia in scene third of the second act; or such lines as these in the same poem: Panthea. Alas, I looked forth twice, but will no more. Ionia. What dost thou see? Panthea. Awoful sight; a youth With patient looks nailed to the crucifix. Ionia. What next? Panthea. The heaven around, the earth below Was peopled with thick shapes of human death, All horrible and wrought by human hands, And some appeared the work of human hearts, For men were slowly killed by frowns and smiles; And oth^r sights too foul to speak and live, Were wandering by, or if we read the amazing and glorious picture of Beatrice in her dreadful despair, writhing in the "clinging, black, contam- inating mist," whereby The beautiful blue heaven is flecked with blood, The sunshine on the floor is black, or when she cries defiant to the judge: Tortures! Turn The rack henceforth into a spinning wheel! Torture your dog, that he may tell when last He lapped the blood his master shed not me! My pangs are of the mind and of the heart And of the soul! Ay, of the inmost soul Which weeps within tears as of burning gall ! or as she is in her wildest anguish followed by despair, followed again by a high calm 60 The Invisible Heart. after the death sentence, or in the child- like simplicity of the pathos of the words with which she ends the grand terrific play; or, if we take the calm, religious Wordsworth, as he speaks in the glowing lines in which he describes how the wand- erer, when a boy, "from the naked top of some bold highland beheld the sun rise up and bathe the world in light;" or in his great ode of immortal life; or in the soaring of his soul from the banks of Wye, perhaps the most majestic flight of all his holy verse, in these, and all such glorious readings, we stand wonder-struck, awed, glorified before the deeps of the soul. Now such experience is not an inven- tion of the poet, but a record. He con- trives not, matches not part to part, as inventors plan machines; but only writes down the miracle of the things that strug- gle within him, the history of what the poet sees and feels and is. Therefore, often in reading these bursts of emotion, of pathos or of thought, I have had the poet rise as a vision before me, as the place or the sphere in creation in which the great things came to pass. But when I have looked closer at him, I have found him with calm manner and appearance, as if by my intrusion and looking on him grown quiet and common and shrouded in Gl The Invisible Heart. himself. If one should come on Shelley with the pen in his hand streaming with the agonies of Beatrice, launching the sublim- ities of the Titan's patience, or played around and over by the rainbows of the gor- geous scenery of Prometheus, the poet would drop that same p.en quietly and rise from his desk unmoved and calm, with a quiet eye and look of polite address. I should see only a common sight, only the usual outside of men, while in the soul Beatrice, Panthea, Asia and Prometheus would be consorting in illimitable heavens. Often have I thought thus, often thus have visited in imagination the great writers, and have returned again humbled, and up- lifted too, with a more tender regard for human beings. Wordsworth exclaims: Oh, many are the poets that are sown By nature; men endowed with highest gifts, The vision and the faculty divine, Yet wanting the accomplishment of verse. How can I judge by the exterior, how shall I tell what is in any soul by the com- mon inertia of the clay? How shall I know what passes inside? If I could meet Wordsworth and pass him by, and no Tin- tern Abbey rise in my mind's eye; if I could meet Shelley and toss pebbles with him into the Genoese gulf, and never know I was with the sky-fire of the prayer at 62 The Invisible Heart. Prometheus's rock, how know I what may be passing in the mortals around me what deeps may lie beyond those pas- sive shores of bodies sometimes what storms, and wild or dreadful glory beyond sight, while the shores are bathed in quiet sunshine? Every one has a vast deep in him compared to anything he may say of himself. No Homer or Shakespeare or Milton ever uttered himself, but only strove, and stammered forth a little of the things that were in his sight in earth and sky. What then of the tongue-tied? those who can only lift their hands or kindle in their eyes silently? All are poets in deeps of struggling experience, of holy living, of love, of sin, of repentance, of prayer, of valor. Sometimes, these come forth in few and simple words, which are rifts in clouds. Sir Walter Scott said that when he had been listening to the common expressions of simple folk speaking their thoughts of life, and of their experience in their sim- ple sorrows and troubles, sometimes he had heard sublimities in thought and in simplicity of expression unequaled in his knowledge outside of the Biblical pages. What can we do but remember this un- known and unshown part in dealing with each other, and treat every one like a mys- 63 The Invisible Heart. tery, with reverence? For neither can we tell what the child will be nor what any one is. But a little we are let in and given the freedom of any one's body and soul. We must walk like St. Paul in the Athen- iian streets, with eyes and heart open for he altar of the Unknown God. Neither ;, overgrown with forest, record a vast vanished history whereof not even a mem- cory remains? What hand graved those ^sculptures, what muscles strained to roll those huge fanes from the quarry, what ielt the heart that drove the blood to hands and feet? And thou who art beside me, what hath graven thee to this shape or to that, sometimes so strange, always so hid- den and so awful? I have seen an uncouth man, inveterate and untimely in his jokes, trivial sometimes; I set him down as little ^worth, except that he was good-natured and behaved himself cleanly. But there- after, one day, I saw him burn with a white heat of generous and grand earnestness, jkindle and flame up to heaven; and all for 61 The Invisible Heart. love of poor, hard-worked men of whom he thought and spoke. It was a lesson. I came suddenly on the altar in the Athen- ian streets. Let me look on every soul which is hidden from me in my ignorance as perforce by ignorance I would look on some Arabian manuscript scribbled all over on cover and margin by a jester, or perhaps even by a wanton hand; but hold- ing, for aught I can say, a lost treatise of Averroes. "We are fearfully and wonderfully made," as open as day, as hidden as night. Beware what we may come to, what our ignorance may be! And as a means of grace, kindness, undistorted heart, have respect to the unknown life of each person and learn to feel how another is feeling. A man said to me, " My difficulty in re- fusing a beggar or any beseeching person is that, however my judgment may instruct me, I am feeling so intensely how more intensely still the suppliant is wishing what he asks and hanging on my decision." This is a beautiful openness of the win- dows, and it may be into heavenly air. Can one go very far wrong, be very unpiti- ful or obtuse or ignorant, who feels thus what is outside his own station or sensa- tions? I trow not. To have respect for the unknown life of each person is to go 65 The Invisible Heart. far to know all life by sympathy and con- ception, to see as God sees. My visit to the city had the purpose of getting engraved on the bronze vase the name of the Spanish maid. It is done. This day, in the late hours, toward twi- light, we shall hold a tender vespers for her. We take the mortal part changeable, perishable, but ah! so sacred, so precious to the almost spiritual purification of the flames; and when, save a handful of sweet mineral, it all has gone forth into the wide air, we will say, with very happy meaning and sweet images, as one might of a dried rose-petal which had exhaled its color and fragrance, "The body returns to the earth as it was, but the spirit unto God who gave it." Dr. Agatha will go with us. 66 The Responsibility. VIII. Kindness is a particular seemliness or duty laid on every person. It behooves us to be kind by a general law, that we must be gentle to fellow creatures and con- cerned to make them happy. But there are some specific facts which make us answerable for kindness, chiefly three: First, I myself do ill continually. I fall into many sad errors, by which I make heavy drafts on others' forbearance; yes, and even on my own patience with myself, unless I will despair utterly. Therefore how reasonable it is and how beholden am I and how due it is from me to extend that same kindness to others which continually I need. It is one of the strange things in human nature, which is a reasoning nature, that continually we do things the most fool- ish and senseless without a thought how absurd or insane they look to the eye of reason. Says William Law in his "Serious Call/ 1 "He that can talk the learned languages and repeat a great deal of history, but prefers the indulgence of 67 Responsibility. his body to the purity and perfection of his soul, is in the nearest state to that natural who chooses a painted coat rather than a large estate. He is not called a natural by men; but he must appear to God and heavenly beings as in a more excessive state of stupidity, and will sooner or later certainly appear so himself." But now, if while choosing the painted coat and flour- ishing in it ridiculously, a man should be in a rage in good earnest with any one making the same choice, and should berate him as a simpleton, how much more a nat- ural would he appear then! Yet just so does one who, being often in error himself, has no pity nor aid nor kindness for those who displease him. To the eye of reason, how more can one condemn himself, or by what greater folly invite harshness toward himself, than by unkind acts while in his heart, and with voice too, he cries out for mercy to himself. It is no more than reason, therefore, and no less than a wise and modest forecast, as well as beauty and nobleness, to act by the saying of Pliny, "He is best and purest who pardons others as if he himself sinned daily, but avoids sinning as if he never pardoned." And be sure that if he come to that point, of avoiding sinning, it will be by reason of a most faithful kindness; for to be unkind, 68 Responsibility. or even to neglect to be kind when God has brought us opportunity, is a great sin. Secondly kindness is according to simple common sense, if we will but consider what Seneca says, that " He who knows that men are not born wise, but have to become so, will never be angry with the erring." Surely it needs no great knowl- edge to see so plain a fact; the more as every man can look back to a time when he was very foolish indeed, or at least far from the wisdom which now he has, and did things which now he cares not to talk of, seeing that they were very silly. And it is rational to conclude that by and by we may attain a higher place where much that now we hold by will look to us, as it is, very ridiculous. Therefore, according to common sense, we should act by this plain fact, that either we must be foolish to the end, or else grow in becoming wise, since we start not so. And as all are stumbling on together, some more, some less, but none without staggers that will look ungraceful by and by, how reasonable kindness is between those who are all afloat in one boat of folly on a wide sea of effort! And how reasonable to return not unkindness with the like, for this is but to avoid the bad bog that another's flounder- ing shows us. 69 Responsibility. It is a third point that if we can not teach, we have small right to complain of those who go untaught, and if we have no art of healing, it is but stripping bare our own ignorance if we cry out on those who are not cured. Marcus Aurelius says, "If thou be able, teach others what is right; but if thou be not able, be mindful that meekness is given thee for this." Here stands by a man doing some wrong. He is a dwelling of some meanness, malice, treachery, violence, or of some madness, like rage or drunkenness. If we be able to cure him, it may be not ill to let ap- pear our disgust for the disease of which we have rid him. Or if we have the heavenly power to show him the right way and impart strength to walk in it, it may be not amiss to contemn the pack of sins he has cast off. But if there be no healing power, no virtue in us to go out of us, no potency to teach or strengthen, this is a cause for meekness in us, as Aurelius says. If, as reason is, we be busy with right shame for our weakness, we shall have little time and less heart to rage at another's. For if there be a real, noble, lofty strength in us, with no abatement by vanity, nor pretence, nor sanctimony, but a simple, clear, sincere, kind manhood, meet whom you may, and whether he will or no, or 70 Responsibility. whether he show it or not, 'tis like he will take a share of your strength in some measure, and lay an unfelt hand on you to stay himself till he can stand alone. I say not this surely will be so in every instance. Natures differ very widely. "There be land rats and water rats," wolves in the woods and wolves in the streets, beasts in the jungle and beasts in the city, and they will act by their natures wherevlr they be. As not alone a red sky is necessary to rosy sight, but an eye able to perceive the color, so there must be a nature impres- sionable and a power to drink of moral in- fluence; else one will stand in vain at the overflow of holy persons and will not be moved by the goodness of the good, any more than an eye by a lovely color for which it has no store of vibrations. For as a wolf will devour a child that smiles in his face, so will some men do and have done. How many belike were there in the mob crying, "Crucify him," how many, that neither were moved nor could be by the sweet meekness and the heavenly goodness of the Nazarene? Wherefore, I say (for I would speak carefully and in limits) it is not sure that any one will be moved and won by sincere kindness and nobleness. But I say that seldom we can be sure whether 'tis the unmoved one who 71 Responsibility. is insensible or we who have not the pure simplicity of goodness ; nor can we tell surely how long a patience is needful to give fair trial of any one. This much, therefore, seems very plain, and a good guide for us, and a warning to be very careful and slow, namely, that if a traveler have fallen by the way under a heavy load, and we be of such puny muscles as can not lift the burden by so much as a penny- weight, it is unreasonableness, which is folly, and also it is unkind, cruel folly, to be full of fury that he can not toss it up alone, and even to add to that heavy weight a heap of reproach or contempt. Therefore let us be able to teach, or bear very long and patiently with those who go untaught. A fable of the vine has a good touch of this doctrine. A man said to a vine, " See how that idler throws your fruit about, let- ting fall more than he eats and treading it under foot. You should not bear grapes for him." " But I am not sure," said the vine, " whether he be an ill man or I be a poor vine that can not win him by good grapes. That is what the thistle said to the donkey." " What story is that," said the man. Whereupon the vine narrated: "A donkey said to a thistle, ' I must eat you.' ' But eat my leaves, spare my flow- 72 Responsibility. ers/ said the thistle. < But the flower is the sweeter/ answered the donkey. ' But it is seed,' said the thistle, 'and if you forego it now, it will make more thistles for you and others/ 'No, I must have the sweet morsel now,' cried the donkey. The thistle sighed and said, ' I know not whether this be because you are a donkey or because I am a poor, ill-grown thistle; so after all I am pleased to be sweet to you in dying.' So" said the vine, " I must put forth my grapes again and again be- cause it is my part, however the people may use them; and belike if the grapes become better, the people may be per- suaded to use them more carefully." 73 Meanness of Unkindness. IX. Can aught be plainer than that it is but a mean spirit which will be unkind? For what is unkindness but a selfish or cruel use of some power fallen to us by strength or by some chance? Now, he who will be cruel when he has power will fawn when he is under power. It is an old saying, "It is excellent to have a giant's strength, but tyrannous to use it like a giant." Now if the tyrannous giant were pared down into a dwarf, as a carver may cut down an image by shaving it away, the manikin, I am very sure, would be large enough to hold all the courage that so strutted in the big carcass. Seneca says well that no one can be des- pised by others unless he has, his own con- tempt, and that "no one is more ready to tread others under his feet than he who has become used to taking offences." This is a principle much used by composers of plays whereby to obtain those sud- den contrasts in character or action which they know to inhere in mean dispositions. 74 Meanness of Unkindness. Thus have I seen a servant kicked by his master for some inattention, and standing muttering indignantly at the meanness of the affront. Presently enters a boy to call the man, whereupon the servant kicks the stripling in his turn for interrupting him. But as surely as the man took a kick from the master before giving one to the boy, so will the master take one servilely from his master, from king or governor or any ruler over him. For it is the same mean- ness to give a kick and to take it; nor ever will one give it till he has taken it, or has the servility in him to do so. Wherefore if you see any one unkind when he is in power if, being a wit, he make a butt of slow parts; if, being large, he be a fury among the small; if, being rich, he parade himself and flaunt his lux- uries before the poor be sure he is craven at heart. Trust not him for any service; hang not on him for any office or stead- fastness of soul. Yet put him not away, bar him not from your goodness. For the more servile he is, the more he needs of two good things, pity and patience. I have run upon a fable of that mean- ness which is like to show forth if much power be confided to a small spirit. In a forest there dwelt a hermit. One day a 75 Meanness of Unkindness. crow flew over the hermit's head and from his bill fell a mouse at the hermit's feet. He had compassion on it, and took it up, fed it with rice and revived it. Soon he saw that a cat alarmed it and was seeking to destroy it. So by the sacred powers of a saint, he metamorphosed his mouse into a cat. But the cat was afraid of his dog, so the saint changed him into a dog. The dog being terrified at a bear, at last he was transformed into a lion. But the holy man regarded the lion as in no way superior to his mouse. Now the people who came to visit the hermit used to tell one another that the lion which they saw had been made so by the power of the saint, from a mouse. This being over- heard by the li-on, he was uneasy and ashamed of his extraction, and he said to himself, As long as this hermit is alive, the disgraceful story of my former state will be brought to my ears. Saying which, he went to kill his protector. But the holy man penetrated his design with his super- natural eye. " Be a mouse again," said the hermit, and instantly he was reduced to his first estate. "Ah," said the hermit, "you were only a mouse looking like a lion. If truly you had been that noble beast, you would not have turned on your benefactor." 76 Meanness of Unkindness. "Alas," said the mouse with a sad squeak, " I am like the ape that was brought down by going up." "What is that story?" the hermit asked; and the mouse narrated: "An ape who was more cunning than his fellows and had a good countenance, prac- ticed walking upright, got him garments, carefully kept his mouth closed, and passed himself off for a man. This went well till one day, being puffed up by his new station, he determined to take a high seat. Then the people looked up at him care- fully in the high place and saw his tail; and they drove him out." "Ah!" said the hermit, " thou say'st well, little mouse. If a small soul be thrust into a large sta- tion, he will be either foolish or cruel; and either one is a show of his meanness." 77 Reciprocity. X. Reciprocity means the interchange of actions, offices, influence. It may be be- tween two or many. It has a good law of its own, which is like to a law or fact in physics, to-wit, that action and reaction are equal. If you pound an anvil with a ham- mer, says the philosopher, the hammer is pounded every whit as much by the anvil. Or if a great heat be changed into a motion of some vast mass, the moving of the mass cools the heat by just as much as the heat moves the mass; and if the mass cease moving, then just as much heat is turned forth again as was consumed in setting the mass in motion. Or if a stone be dropped to the earth, the earth' rises unto the stone as much as the stone falls unto the earth. For though the earth move but an invisi- ble and insensible distance, yet if the globe be conceived as divided into portions of the size of the stone, each one of those little portions moves so far toward the stone that all of those small distances together make just the length of the stone's fall. So 78 Reciprocity. that the earth meets the stone in a manner midway. Now this law is observed very strictly in all dealings and exchanges. The things exchanged must be equivalents, pound for pound or the value thereof. In higher matters, it is the aim to give teachers, writers, artists their own value again. I mean they must be paid for the pleas- ures they bring to our firesides in sums that will enable them to adorn their own hearth- stones in like manner. In yet higher matters, things of the heart, we return love for love, kindness for kindness. This is simple Reciprocity. But is this the whole law of these high- est of dealings, wherein precious boxes of spikenard are broken? What shall be returned to the unkind? What shall be measured to those who threaten our bodies, wound our feelings, sting us with their tongues, plant traps with their gossip? To answer this reasonably, consider in what way we look on the malevolence we have suffered. Call we it praiseworthy? Think we it graceful, lovely? Rather are we not very loud in complaints when any one is f roward or malicious ? If then we denounce this temper when some one disobliges us with it, is it not incredible folly if we give back to him straightway the same 79 Reciprocity. affronts? This is so strange a folly, so outrageous to reason, that it can be thought no better than a certain madness at the moment, as any emotion is like to be if it overcome. For madness is but an overcoming of the reason by some feeling or fancy or wish. And if still, after the affront has passed awhile, and we have had time to grow cool and to collect ourselves, we be bent on some reprisal, to do some in- jury in return, it is no better than a settled madness and were as worthy of confine- ment as any lunacy. For how can that which we are so loud to call hideous and hateful in another suddenly change to excellence and comeliness in us? It is the law of reason, therefore, that kindness must be offered, and again offered, and still held out continually and unwear- ied, even to the unkind, ungrateful and injurious. To this law the heart comes leaping like a child to a friend. And so teach the sages. A very gracious author- ity has admonished us that if we love them only that love us, there is no reward or virtue. Aurelius says we should " beware of feeling toward the cruel as they feel toward others; " and, says he, " It is pe- culiarly human to love even those who do wrong. And this happens if when they err it occurs to thee that they are kinsmen, 80 Reciprocity. and that they err by ignorance and uninten- tionally, and that soon both of you will die; and above all that the wrong doer has done thee no harm, for he has not made thy ruling faculty worse than it was be- fore." This is not feebleness nor servility, but a nobility and vastness of character, and very manly. Nay, it grows into the divine; for it is divine, as said the Master, to cause the sun to rise on the good and evil and to send rain on the just and the unjust. Seneca teaches likewise: " My kindness is not returned; how shall I act? Like God, most bountiful author of all things, who begins to bless us in our ignor- ance and keeps on doing so in our ingrati- tude." Elsewhere he says, " The immor- tal Deity is neither willing nor able to harm us," for " all his power is to do good," and "no sane man is afraid of God." If I may compare things divine with human and surely I may, for as all things come forth from God, all things must be like unto him and bear some image of him and have some manner of comparison; and in such a probation I would not say that it is comparison of things human with divine, so much as of things divine with Divinity if this I may do, then a fine story preserved of one of the Sultans Solyman 81 Reciprocity. will be a fair image of sound Tightness of soul 'unto God, which is void of being afraid of him. Some soldiers had de- spoiled by night the little farm of a wid- owed dame, and driven off her sheep. Straightway she went to the Sultan and made complaint, very simply and with much reverence. "You must -have been very sound asleep," said Solyman, grimly, "if the men could drive away so many sheep without your observation." Then the woman looked at the great monarch simply, void equally of being bold and of being afraid, and answered, "It is true, sire, that I slept soundly, the hour being my slumber-time; but it was with full faith that the king's eye was watching over the people's safety." In this way our kindness ought to be like to Divinity, that no sane man could fear an- other could do him a hurt, and we should be void of all terror one of another. 82 Making an Average. XL "Brother," said my Sister, at breakfast yesterday. Ah! these morn-meals with my Sister! Naught had we but some small and thin biscuit, baked apples with cream, and co- coa-cups; but the biscuit were a melting ambrosia, the apples, done to a golden brown, quivered on the verge of liquidity and with the cream became a unity of nectar, and the cocoa was as balmy and del- icate as a- brew of grape-blossoms unpur pled to the fat fruit. The breakfast room receives the morning sun through the stained windows of a church close against it, so that soft glints and tender lights flick the white table. But my Sister at her place, so sweet, so cool, so kind and bright, gives the chief light by the light of the love of her eyes, and her blithe piety (for always, however I meet her, she af- fects me as if on the brink of beginning a thanksgiving song) diffuses a fragrance. 'Tis a place of flowers, my morn-meal, from which daily I cull a vase of blossoms 83 Making an Average. for my study table, sometimes wholly the fragrancies of affection, sometimes also the foliage of thoughts. " Brother," said my Dozen, " there is a play called The Merchant at the Academy Theatre, said to be a good play, and I want to see it." " Pooh," said I, " I don't believe it is as good as ' The Merchant of Venice.' " My Sister opened her eyes, but said with a lovely gravity, "A safe judgment, dear, and a wise Daniel." " Good, "said I; "the wise always are safe." "It has seemed to me of late, dear Brother," said my Sister, with a very de- mure gentleness, "that thou hast attained a high admiration of thyself." "Certainly, my Dozen," said I, " be- cause no one else admires me. One must keep up the average. The man who has the most clear title to admire himself is he whom none others admire.*- Else were all equality destroyed and everything topsy- turvy. And it is seen everywhere that the man whom no other admires is he whom Nature has endowed with the best capacity to admire himself." "Ah!" said my Sister, "thy last sen- tence has brought thee to shore in some wit. But indeed, Brother, thy speaking 84 Making an Average. of 'keeping up the average/ reminds me of what our neighbor John Rivers' wife told me of poor Zack, yesterday, and I have brooded over it no little." " And who is poor Zack?" said I. " Her brother Zackary; she calls him poor Zack. Thou must know I made a long call there yesterday, indeed, passed the whole afternoon with Mrs. Rivers while thou wert in the city. At first we sewed, and afterward arranged flowers. She talked all the time. She needs no more than a good listener to wing up her eloquence. But she is no magpie. She talks well. And her discourse of poor Zack cost her some tears as well as much breath." "Tell me of him," said I. " She says he is a large man, generously made everyway, large and impressive in body, ample in mind and wide in heart, and withal very simple in his manners and feelings. But his wife is scornful and ambitious, disparaging, and measures her manners to people by her conclusions of their importance. To bring Mrs. Rivers 1 long story to the space of a sentence or two at first her brother was very well-to- do, then poor, then successful again, even richer than before. During these fortunes up and down, his wife was haughty and 85 Making an Average. selfish in the rich days, full of wails, moans, and base mortifications in the poor days. All of which had a very bad effect on the son and daughter, now nineteen and seventeen years of age, who came out of it as cold and worldly as the mother. At last they gave poor Zack the one blow too many and too much." "Ah! thou speakest a grave truth, Dozen," said I. "It is one of the risks and scourges of the selfish and unloving that never they know when they have come to the limit till they have passed it." "Yes," said Marian, "a terrible fact of the heart. Love has its conditions of liv- ing and its conditions of dying, like the body, or like reflection, or any other power of soul. Well, so did they to poor Zack. They went on in their ways till they thrust them on him once too often. Mrs. Rivers said that her brother, being a large and serious spirit, was attached warmly to his church, and he had in it a class of young girls whom he had been teaching for many years. Now, to a party of young people, given by Zack's wife and children, all of these girls were bidden except one. That one, moreover, was Zack's special favorite, by reason of her gentleness, character and fine intelligence. But she was omitted be- cause she was a small green-grocer's 86 Making an Average. daughter. This was too much for poor Zack. He said a few indignant words, which were received with a dogged con- tempt. Then his heart quite broke. He said no more, r but he brooded long and sternly.'* " Again thou hast the right word," said I. "A vivid sternness seizes on one who, after forbearing long, is given one blow too many." "The word was Mrs. Rivers', dear," said my Sister, gently, " and I quarrel not with it; only, it must be a due fitness of judgment, not a mere stubborn anger. Well, Zack settled on a behavior; after brooding over it with a sickness at his heart for many weeks, said his sister he settled on a behavior. He fastened on two principles, which he named, ' Equal- izing things,' or ' Making an average.' He settled it firmly in his mind that this equalizing of things or effecting an average was one of the ways in which it was right for a man deliberately to essay a part in divine Judgment and Providence. One of the two principles pertained to giving at- tention to others. He said there was a certain due amount of consideration, I mean of being thought for and planned for, which belonged by Divine intention to every one; and this due amount ought to be 87 Making an Average. had, and no more. Now, if any one thought so much for himself as to confer on him- self that due portion, then no one should think for him, because then he would have more than his own portion, which is the same as to get another's rightful portion, and all is disordered." " Truly," said I, "that was a shrewd bit of thinking in poor Zack. I begin to guess where thou art coming out. What was the second principle? " "Why, that was the same," said Mar- ian, "only it pertained to the bestowal of gifts and pleasures. Zack said that when any persons had an abundance of pleas- ures, opportunities, enlivenments, and re- fused to share them affectionately with the less favored, it became the Providential business of some one, whoever might have the power, to take away a due portion of benefits from them for distribution to others, thus to equalize things and keep a right average. And this Zackary said should be done quietly and privately, not with lecturing or assertion, and those whose possible pleasures were withheld, to be given to others, should not be told of their losses; for this would serve no good pur- pose and do no more than stir up content- ion; even, mayhap, it might -defeat the equalization many times." 88 Making an Average. "This principle," said I, " hath not quite the delicacy of the first one, but it is firm enough. But thou said'st he settled on a behavior." "Ay, so he did; by which to put in practice the principles." " Ah! now comes the fine part the be- havior. Human conduct is like music. One may theorize, conceive, render a son- ata in one's mind; but to perform it with the hands is another thing. And any one may do somewhat f the conceiving, and many may make a very fair piece of business of it, how the piece should be rendered; but few can do any performing at all. So it is in life's compositions, in the music whose notes are the footfalls of the daily walk. What was poor Zack's behavior? " "Mrs. Rivers delighted in it hugely,"" said Marian, " and filled a long time and a hundred instances with unfolding it. But in short it was thus: First, he decided (and amply; he set aside a large slice, his sister said) how much of his income he ought to devote to amusements and pleas- ures, and this he divided, with much care, and much consulting of his diary, between winter pleasures, concerts, dramas, social parties, and the like, and summer out- ings, boat excursions, journeys, rides, pic- nics, and the like. Thus he made a fund 89 Making: an Average. to maintain and guide his behavior, and took care that the fund should serve duly for the whole year, each season having its own appropriation." " Truly, poor Zack is a man of method, " said I. " His sister says he is as regular in all his doings as the earth in its path," said Marian. "Well with this fund, he "set about his purpose to essay a part in Judg- ment and Providence. 'Why should a man be a victim, a slave, a fallen foe, tied to the wheels and dragged along in the Divine triumph? ' said he; < let him take his part in it as one of the army, and pipe music in the march, and do his portion in- telligently, for justice, for delicate and poetic justice.' Whereupon he ceased wholly to do any suggesting or planning of pleasures for his family. 'The whole amount that they ought to be thought for, they think for themselves,' said he, ' there- fore I will not think for them too, for then they will be thought for too much and the right order overthrown. And they do no thinking at all for any others; therefore Tvhat they fail in I will supply by turning :my thoughts to the others, and so effect a right average.' Besides, he said they had a very good time anyway. All manner of pleasant things, a goodly dwelling, fine 90 Making an Average. fruits and meats, draperies, garments, so- cial pleasures, ease, enlivenments sur- rounded them, for which he saw no grati- tude and no affectionate sharing of the good things with others. 'Nature,' said poor Zack, ' nurses inequality of powers because this is the means of progress; but for that very reason it is a man's duty to override inequality of powers, as much as can be, with an equalizing of pleasures, because this is the way of happiness.' " " Truly," said I, " poor Zack has made a good use of ' Evolution.' " "Has he not, Brother? Now, it had been his way to keep watch of the pleas- ant things that offered, good music, plays, excursions, and the like, and if he knew not their value but they had a good air with them, he would take pains to inquire about them, and thereupon speak of them to his family, and buy places for them if they wished. He continued to watch and inquire as before, and bought places at the good things, but he spoke not of them at home, and the places he gave to many per- sons who not often had such pleasant befallings. This was Zackary's behavior under the .first principle, namely, that as his family thought for themselves to the whole of the amount due them to be thought for, he would give his thoughts 91 Making an Average. to others. But he went further still under the second principle. If his family woke up of themselves and demanded to go to some amusement, he would provide it; but in- stead of the best places, which always be- fore had been their privilege, he would take less showy, but comfortable and good places, and with the money so saved he would give a place at the same en- tertainment to some person to whom it was a rare treat. If his family wish to give a social party, he is nothing loth, but he relentlessly cuts down enough of their desired elegancies, kickshaws, and lolli- pops, to provide, with the money thus saved, some delightful outing for persons not bidden to that feast, nor often to any. There is much surprise and no little anger over these ' parsimonies,' as the sufferers call them; but Zackary says shortly that he can afford no more, and ends it. Be- yond a dim feeling that some kind of change has come about which they under- stand not, his family know not their many losses. Mrs. Rivers says that poor Zack is satisfied well with his invention and is much more at ease in his mind. He calls it 'dispensing poetic justice' 'justice' because it is right, and ' poetic ' because they who lose are so unwilling. For Zackary says, as I told thee, after an old 92 Making an Average. Stoic (the Stoics are great favorites with him, his sister avows), that whoever will not walk of himself in the Divine triumph is dragged at the Chariot wheels, though as little he wot as will; which is a base station, but ' poetic justice.' Zackary acknowledges that toward his family there is thus a certain contempt in his acts, and their position is a humiliation, because they are dealt with like wayward and self- ish children; but for this, he avers, there is no remedy, and, if one tell the whole truth, it is a portion of the 'poetic justice.' What think'st thou of all that, Brother?" "Indeed," said I, "there is much to be said." " On both sides? " cried my Sister. " I know not," said I, " I must consider; there is much in it." "Well," said Marian, "I have consid- ered, and I cast my vote for poor Zack intoto. How often hast thou said, Brother, that it is the most saving wisdom in life to acknowledge everything to be what it is, and to treat it so. Acknowledge, then, every form of the I-am-better-than-thou spirit to be what it is, unkindness, and thereupon mete out to it the stubble that is due it, not the fruits of kindness." "Ah! but, my Dozen, who shall judge assuredly, one above another?" 93 Making an Average. " But we must judge, Brother. We can not look on all things indifferently. Re- member what our Saint Matilda used to say, that it is right to play on the follies of men, if one do it as an artist." " Which means," said I, "without any tincture of the same folly. A fool chas- tising his own folly is a humor much used by playwrights. Sir Anthony Absolute in a mighty rage commands his son to be calm as his father is." "But disgust is not bitterness nor harsh- ness," said my Sister. " I think it were no ill in poor Zack if he had a loathing of the harsh vanity which he shut round with his < poetic justice.' ' This talk with Marian befell just after I had written the foregoing chapter, "Reci- procity." But for poor Zack and my Doz- en's view of him, belike I should have rested in that chapter without further con- sideration or modification of it. For surely no principle can be plainer or better than that we are to be kind to the unkind. It is a thought which gives a good heart a golden content. But mayhap the heart may seize on it too unwarily. The prin- ciple needs specification by reason. Must our behaviors be alike to the kind and the unkind? No; for this were to treat things as the same which are different. In what 94 Making an Average. manner, then, may our behaviors be as dif- ferent as the things? This is a right and needful question touching the sweet grace and duty of kindness. It is not doubtful that there are ingrates in the world; and thinking of them it is* matter of course that we call to mind ^Esop's fable, the viper which was warmed by the compassionate countryman on his hearth, and, being thawed thus from its stiff and frozen condition, turned on its benefactor with its fangs. Now the moral of this story is, not that it is possible to waste kindness, but that the countryman's act was not rational kindness, and hence in a way not kindness at all. This unrational behavior occurs when any creature is treated as if it were something which it is not. In the Sermon on the Mount there is explicit command to this effect. "Give not that which is holy to the dogs, neither cast your pearls before swine, lest haply they trample them under their feet and turn again and rend you." This is the whole philosophy in a marvelous convincing figure, in a state- ment of the two consequences of the folly of doing as a kindness what is so unfit to the nature of the recipient that it is in fact and effect not kindness, but only a mis- taken softness of heart. What possible 95 Making: an Average. kindness in giving pearls to swine? Pearls .are valuable and pearls are beautiful, but the swine have no market for their value and no feeling for their beauty like Bot- tom when the fairy queen offers to send her fairies to gather new nuts for him. The ass' head on him answers: " I would rather have a handful or two of dried peas." Now, the pearls not being suited to the swine, and, therefore, no real kindness to them however soft-hearted the donor's act, the two consequences follow: i. They misuse the good things already misused by being offered to them they trample the pearls under their feet. 2. They are in- grates, turning and rending the giver of the pearls in their rage that the jewels are not corn or other fodder. There are many oriental maxims to this effect: "What! are silk tassels to be tied to the broom?" *' Will you give a fair flower to a monkey?" "Who would cast rubies into a heap of rub- bish?" "What! are you giving ambrosia to a dog?" The rabbins called the deli- cate and deep meanings in the law its " pearls," so that the injunction not to waste them on swine is but a highly figur- ative way of uttering the warning in Prov- erbs (xxiii., 10): "Speak not in the ears of a fool, for he will despise the wisdom of thy words." 96 Making an Average. The simple truth is, there are kinds of in- fluence which have no rational application to certain natures, and there is nothing rational but to treat every creature, a man included, like what he is, and like what he is at the moment too, however we may wish he were different. No good ever comes of treating any thing or creature like what it is not. If we have an ingrate to deal with, we are not to think we shall make him grateful by treating him as if already he were so. Place an ingrate on the one hand and opposite to him the law of kindness. It is then the wisdom and moral of ^Esop that we have to study rationally what the law of kindness is and commands in that case. To define kindness for this present pur- pose, I think we may say it has two parts: To do things for another which will bene- fit him; to do things for another which will please him. Obviously these two parts of kindness may not be present, in all cases, in the same act. Very often whether they can combine in one act will depend on the character, whether noble or mean, of him who receives the act; for a right deed will not please a wrong mind. Now, suppose we are dealing with an in- grate, like the viper in the fable, how must we apply the law of kindness? 97 Making an Average. First, it is certain that the negative of kindness never is to be allowed. No mat- ter how basely ingrate a person may be, never purposely are we to do what will dis- advantage him or what will displease him, I mean for the sake of causing him injury or annoyance. As to the positive side, we must be ready to do what may be for the profit, including discipline, of the ingrate; but I must hold that we are not bound to plan and take measures to please him. For he may not deserve to be pleased, and so far as he " is an ingrate he does not; and however we give him pearls of love, they may not please, because, being ingrate, he may not know them for what they are. And if they please not, or even if they please, so very swinish is the ingrate he may turn and rend you, and will do so if you stand in his way to a trough, though you have made his very bed of pearls. Therefore, I must say that, just as if a swine once had trampled pearls and then should take a fancy to have some, they should not be given him, because of the nature of the creature, so an ingrate has no claim on others that they should seek to give him happiness. Let him look to that himself. No one is bound to consider him and to plan for him. The whole duty of others 98 Making an Average. toward him is, negatively, not to do him injury, and, positively, to be ready un- revengefully and mercifully to do him any fair service that offers; but not to consider how to deal joys to him or to delight him. For this is to treat him as a loyal, faithful, grateful heart, which is the opposite of what he is. To put it in a sentence, every one has the right (I should say the duty) simply to move away from an ingrate and make a solitude around him. Caution, loving caution, must be had in deciding that any one is an ingrate. Also there are many degrees of the vanity and conceit with barrenness of heart ^which mingle to make ingratitude; and what proof is needful, or how much ungrateful- ness first is to be overlooked, must be con- sidered in a merciful way. But once any one is seen clearly to be an ingrate, I say it is right to leave him quietly in a solitude. For he is to be treated as what he is, not as what he is not; and he is one at whose feet loving favors are as much out of place as pearls under hoofs. To sum up all, it is certain, as I have said, there are such characters as ingrates; and dark indeed they are. I think there is no manner of person so dangerous as the ingrate. It is sound caution to move away and beware of any one who shows little 99 Making an Average. sense of small favors and gentle atten- tions. This is not to say that we may try to disoblige him; but that we are under no duty to please him, if perchance it would please him to receive any favors or confidence or trust. "All should unite to punish the ungrateful," says Thomson; " ingratitude us treason to mankind." Is there any kind of mental deformity so great or so menacing? One reason of this is that ungratefulness is based on the most intolerable and gross vanity. The ingrate can not be such unless he has a Very great and fine opinion of himself, so that never he thinks himself treated well enough; and, besides, an inordinate vanity will be offended with benefits, because of the implication or proof that aid was needed. It has been said shrewdly, that "whenever the good done to us does not affect the heart, it wounds and irritates our vanity." But the slightest good ought to affect the heart; and if it do not, 'tis vanity that hinders, sickening us with anger by the double poison of it, to wit, the idea that everything is due us, and resentment that we can be supposed to need benefits. I have been used to hold that an extreme shrinking from being under obligation to a fellow-being is an indication of ingrate character, and that it will be prudent to 100 Making an Average. remove from the person showing that trait. La Rochefoucauld puts it that 'everybody takes pleasure in returning small obligations; many go so far as to acknowledge moderate ones; but there is hardly any one who does not repay great obligations with ingratitude." Let us take comfort, however, to think this an in- genious overstatement; at best it means no more than that heroes of battle-fields are more common than heroes of noble self- respect and humility. I have met a tale in the Gesta Roman- orum which may point these thoughts: A man was a slave of a rich master who was blind. The man found favor in his master's eyes, which I must think was because he was blind, for the ingrate and selfish face not easily is to be mistaken if one will observe well. Yet sometimes meanness wears a mask stolen from gen- erosity. The master being blind and so having fewer pleasures than many men, delighted himself the more in his own ex- cellent singing. For he had a fine voice and good ear and great love of music, as very often the blind have. He rejoiced to do all kindness to his servants and often assembled them at evening when the day's labors were over, that he might talk to them from the stores of his reflection, and es- 101 Making an Average. pecially he was wont to sing to them and bring them also to sing with him; so that his abode became renowned for its plenti- ful and pleasing music, and especially the master himself for his fine voice and his perpetual use of it. For hardly he seemed to cease to sing day or night, and sweet sounds flowed from his house like a stream from a fortunate hill. Now, the slave who had his master's favor was made a free- man by him; and then, though poor, being free, he solicited the hand of a rich lady, for he had an eye to place and fortune. But she reminded him of a law of Rome at that time, to wit, that no poor man should marry a rich woman; first he must have wealth equal to her own. She desired him, therefore, to find means for comply- ing with the law. He departed in much grief, but after a little he bethought him- self of his master who had loved him and sung him his sweetest songs and at last freed him. Might not he bring the old man to his death and seize on his wealth? No sooner thought than planned. He set about it watchfully, for the aged master was guarded in the day by armed domestics and at night by the vigilance of a faithful dog. He contrived, however, to kill the dog from a distance with an arrow, and then rushing upon the old man, despatched 102 (Making an Average. him. With the wealth thus obtained he returned to the rich lady. He informed her that he had accomplished his purpose, and being asked how this had been done in so short a time, he told her all that had happened. The lady desired him before the marriage should take place to go to the spot where the master was buried, lay himself on the tomb, listen to what he might hear and then report it to her. The man did so. In the middle of the night he heard a voice saying: "O aged master, that liest buried here, what askest thou that I can do for thee?" The answer was: "O Jesus, upright judge, all that I require is that my blood, unjustly spilled, be avenged." The voice answered: "Thirty years from this time the punishment shall be fulfilled." When the man, terrified, re- turned with the report to the lady, she re- flected that thirty years made a long time and resolved on the marriage. When the thirty years, filled with pleasures, but not with peace, nearly were passed, they built a strong castle and eight days before the expiration of the thirty years they entered it. All the gates and approaches were guarded by slaves and by ferocious wild beasts and dogs, and great care was taken that only very sure friends should come in. All the servants were examined, and only 103 Making an Average. the lady and her daughters were allowed to serve as cooks so careful were they against poison. A great feast was made to last during five days. All seemed well. Not an event happened amiss. 'Twas not to be seen how any mischief or punish- ment could enter that stronghold. On the last day of the thirty years especial revelry was held and all the guests were in great hilarity and the lord and lady in great show of ease, when a bird flew in at the window and began to sing with uncommon sweetness. In heaven the same voice had spoken which the man had heard at the grave, and said: "O aged master, the thirty years are ended. Now comes the vengeance on the slayer." But the master, whose kind heart had relented, cried: "Nay, Lord, what harm did he me that he sent me to thy heaven? But to himself he did harm, for he has had pleasures without peace; and now is he still harder of heart. Let me go in some shape to his presence, and belike my songs, to which once he hearkened before he was so evil, will soften him yet, that thou may'st save him." The voice said "Go." So came he in the shape of the bird. But when the man heard the bird's song and knew the melodies which he had heard the master sing, he took his bow in wrath and shot an arrow through 104 Making an Average. the bird in the presence of all the company.. Instantly the castle was rent into two parts and with the man and the lady and all the guests who were in it sank to the lowest depths of the infernal regions. The story adds that on the spot where the castle had stood there is now a spacious lake, on which no substance whatever floats, but immediately is plunged to the bottom. 105 Vanity. XII. No doubt there is a great conceit and vanity of soul in being unkind. And in- gratitude, a hideous vice and very hateful form of unkindness, has the same source, as in the last chapter I have said, namely, a vain and puffed-up view of ourselves. For this, as says Seneca, "makes us think that we deserve everything, so that we take a service as if it were our due and never think ourselves treated well enough." I heard John Weiss say that by what rivers you can you may clean out what Augean stables you may, but no streams or lavations can wash the virus from the heart pf a man who conceives other per- sons made to serve him, and verily allots himself a claim to every obligingness and deference from the world, not by reason of aught good that he has done, but on the merits of what fine things his fine powers might do if he pleased. Plainly a lowly and simple mind count- ing his own merits modestly and "not thinking of himself more highly than he 106 Vanity. ought to think, "will tend to the positive kindness of good offices, because he will have so much eye to spare for others and will see their needs; and to the nega- tive kindness of doing no unkindness, of being not morose nor captious nor venge- ful, because he that lays no mighty claims not easily will be offended. It is the being puffed-up and highly vaunting ourselves that makes us to be jealous and either to put on haughtiness and sternness or to retaliate an unkindness with the like of it; because we have so great an idea of our merits and of the obliging treatment which is due to us. It is sad, wanton and hope- less when for good things done us we credit not others' goodness, but our own value. For this reason we are suspicious of slights, hasty, obstinate, severe and swift in retaliation. Therefore lack of kindness, and by much more an unkindness, whether by itself or in return of an unkind- ness, is a silly and weak-minded thing to the eye of reason, like the undraping of a mis-shapen body with the fond persuasion that it is beautiful. We show ourselves then swelling up in spirit, more watchful of another's slips than of our own, atten- tive to our virtues, but not to our short- comings, and ridiculously puffed-up. A foolish opinion of ourselves is stark blind- 107 Vanity. ness; also a pitiful feebleness, as if a blind man should dress himself in scarlet and yellow and strut for admiration. But what- ever soul is afflicted by the ills in himself and wrestles with them in humility of spirit, like the publican who would not so much as lift his eyes to heaven, whither then on the down-striking wings of his eyes his soul flew, such a one never will be cruel nor think himself so ill used by the malice of another as to retort with a like unkind- ness. The vanity which is the toughness of unkindness is the motive of the story of Drusilla and her daughter Drusillina with a gallant named Marcellus. The learned will have it that the tale is but Ceres and Proserpina meddled with by folk-cronies. But that weighs not; if it be so, the cronies have given a good moral to the ancient myth. Thus it is: Drusilla was born under a lucky star, and a strange god-mother sud- denly appeared by the babe's side and foretold that she should have the power of changing any person into whatever animal he most resembled. But Drusilla was good at heart and used not her terrible gift. Only once in her life she had been provoked to it, when a robber had fallen on her on a lone highway and threatened both body and purse. Drusilla dipped her 108 Vanity. hand in a pool and dashed some water in his face, crying, "Be what you are like." Instantly he became a cowardly wolf and slunk away among the bushes. When Drusillina, who was as good and as like to her mother as their names were of a piece, was a fair young woman, she was snatched up one day and rapt away by a wicked dwarf who had his abode inside a black and rocky hill near by; and soon after he seized and carried off Marcellus in like manner. Now Marcellus had paid court to the young girl; but she had not liked him, and he was angry. When he found himself with her, prisoned in the hill-gar- den of the dwarf, he made his court again, saying that now being companions in mis- fortune they should comfort each other. But the weeping girl would have none of him. "It is bad enough," said she, "to lose my dear mother whom I love without taking you whom I love not." With this Marcellus was still more wroth and indeed raged in himself vengefully. Now Drusilla looked for her daughter sorrowfully every- where and mourned sadly; when suddenly in this great strait appeared to her the strange kindly old quean who had stood uninvited god-mother to her and never since had been seen. The mystical dame told Drusilla where her daughter was 109 Vanity. and gave her a talisman which would open the hill and oblige the dwarf to set free Drusillina: but only if in the hill-gardens she neither had eaten nor drunk anything. With this charm Drusilla went into the hill and embraced her daughter and was about leading her forth from the scowling dwarf for Drusillina said she had tasted neither morsel of food nor drop of drink in the place when Marcellus came near and said: "I saw you under a rose-tree, and when you reached up your face to smell of a rose a drop of dew fell from the flower upon your lip and you drank it." "Ah! ha!" said the dwarf with a vile leer, "the pretty weeper will not get out of the hill yet awhile." "Become what you are like," cried the angry mother, dashing some water into the face of Marcellus. And in- stantly he became a peacock. 110 Calmness. XIII. Calmness, if it be not a base phlegm, is both a kindness and a means of preventing unkindness. A vast bulk of unkindness is done in sudden passion; and a worse kind, more hurtful, though not so plenti- ful, is done in obstinate and prolonged fevers of hatred, which are the most un- reasonable and inexcusable manner of the lack of calmness. It is pitiable when one continually is ambushed by sudden rages and hot gusts as if a blazing and smoky wind swept down on him, fogging the eye's sunlight with the nitre and soot of frowns. But worse is it, and very bad, blame- worthy, savage, when the rage lasts, and even grows day by day. 'Tis then like a pack of wolves invading a hamlet which a hurricane has overthrown. Now, by calm- ness done away, either by a sudden flush or a settled fever of rage, great unkindness is heaped up. Sad sufferings, incurable wounds then are inflicted by comrades, friends, lovers, on each other. Very bitter may be the repentance, but ineffectual. It ill Calmness. is well to say over and over, till we learn to think of it fearfully, that as in the body here are small wounds which heal and leave no memory or mark, and great hurts, like the severing of a member, which can not be cured so as to make the body what it was before, so in the heart there may be many healings of hurts and even no scars left, yet with one blow may be given a wound for which no repentance can bring balm nor make the heart to arise from it to be what before it was. It may help us if in our sane hours we will reason on this point and throw up as many as may be of works of meditation against ambushes and surprises of anger, simply resolving not to be foolish. It needs no more than this, that we be not foolish. For it is plain good sense in Seneca when he says that "if there were any reason for beginning to be angry there could be none for ever ceasing to be," and that "it is madness to think we can fix an end to passions which we cannot control at their beginning." Also says Seneca: "There is nothing grand that is not also calm;" which is much to our purpose now, for calmness, I say, is a kindness, and kindness is a great- ness, truly a grandeur, being a species of love, or an act of it. Calmness is more 112 Calmness. than a cursory quiet, a lull between up- roars. It is a quiet like the sea, too deep to be plowed. In such a peace, meditation hath a watch-tower, and the mind's eye sees things as they are. Reason hath its full headway in this quietness. Kindness is so reasonable we need argue no more than this, that it is reasonable and an excellence so natural to thinking beings nay, very manifest and abundant in many gentle creatures among our dumb fellow- beings, who await the unloosing of their tongues and with them the unloosing of their minds unto the general thoughts with which we have advantage, that any one who can think of these things in calmness and then invent and inflict a hurt, or be careless whether he do what may hurt, surely must have his reason only about his neck as a millstone, or, by another figure, surely must wear his reason as no better than a hide of cunning and claws, and be more cruel than beasts that act from un- reflecting fury. A noble calmness, which conveys a re- proof by a quiet deed, but not in manner, still less in words, has a mighty power to form and to convert. For a reproach by words can not but make some noise, and reproach by manner may be very irritating by as much as it is undefined andunanswer- 113 Calmness. able; but reproof by the right deed, with calmness, is like a still fair pool and the offender brought suddenly to see himself in it and to reflect what manner of man he appears. I am reminded of a very fine story of the Cid in illustration; which I will take from Southey's " Chronicle:" "Here the history relates that at this time Martin Pelaez the Asturian came with a convoy of laden beasts, carrying provisions to the host of the Cid; and as he passed near the town the Moors sallied out in great numbers against him; but he, though he had few with him, defended the convoy right well, and did great hurt to the Moors, slaying many of them, and drove them into the town. This Martin Pelaez who is here spoken of, did the Cid make a right good knight, of a coward, as ye shall hear. When the Cid first began to lay siege to the city of Valencia, this Martin Pelaez came unto him; he was a knight, a native of Santillana in Asturias, a hidalgo, great of body and strong of limb, a well made man and of goodly sem- blance, but withal a right coward at heart, which he had shown in many places when he was among feats of arms. And the Cid was sorry when he came unto him, though he would not let him perceive this; for he knew he was not fit to be of his company. 1U Calmness. Howbeit he thought that since he was come he would make him brave whether he would or not. And when the Cid began to war upon the town, and sent parties against it twice and thrice a day, as ye have heard,* for the Cid was alway upon the alert, there was fighting and tourney- ing every day. One day it fell out that the Cid and his kinsmen and friends and vassals were engaged in a great encounter, and this Martin Pelaez was well armed; and when he saw that the Moors and Christians were at it, he fled and betook himself to his lodging, and there hid him- self till the Cid returned to dinner. And the Cid saw what Martin Pelaez did, and when he had conquered the Moors he re- turned to his lodging to dinner. Now it was the custom of the Cid to eat at a high table, seated on his bench, at the head. And Don Alvar Fanez, and Pero Ber- mudez, and other precious knights, ate in another part, at high tables, full honor- ably, and none other knights whatsoever dare take their seats with them, unless they were such as deserved to be there; and the others who were not so approved in arms ate upon estrados, at tables with cushions. This was the order in the house of the Cid, and every one knew the place where he was to sit at meat, and every one strove all 115 Calmness. he could to gain the honor of sitting to eat at the table of Don Alvar Fanez and his companions, by strenuously behaving himself in all feats of arms; and thus the honor of the Cid was advanced. This Martin Pelaez, thinking that none had seen his badness, washed his hands in turn with the other knights, and would have taken his place among them. And the Cid went unto him, and took him by the hand and said, you are not such a one as deserves to sit with these, for they are worth more than you or than me; but I will have you- with me; and he seated him with himself at table. And he, for lack of understanding, thought that the Cid did this to honor him above all the others. On the morrow the Cid and his company rode towards Valencia, and the Moors came out to the tourney; and Mar- tin Pelaez went out well armed, and was among the foremost who charged the Moors, and when he was in among them he turned the reins, and went back to his lodging; and the Cid took heed to all that he did, and saw that though he had done badly he had done better than the first day. And when the Cid had driven the Moors into the town he returned to his lodging, and as he sate down to meat he took this Martin Pelaez by the hand, and seated 116 Calmness. him with himself, and bade him eat with him in the same dish, for he had deserved more that day than he had the first. And the knight gave heed to that saying, and was abashed; howbeit he did as the Cid commanded him: and after he had dined he went to his lodging and began to think upon what the Cid had said unto him, and perceived that he had seen all the baseness which he had done; and then he under- stood that for this cause he would not let him sit at board with the other knights who were precious in arms, but had seated him with himself, more to affront him than to do him honor, for there were other knights there better than he, and he did not show them that honor. Then re- solved he in his heart to do better than he had done heretofore. Another day the Cid and his company and Martin Pelaez rode toward Valencia, and the Moors came out to the tourney full resolutely, and Mar- tin Pelaez was among the first, and charged them right boldly; and he smote down and slew presently a good knight, and he lost there all the bad fear which he had had, and was that day one of the best knights there: and as long as the tourney lasted there he remained, smiting and slay- ing and overthrowing the Moors, till they were driven within the gates, in such man- 117 Calmness. ner that the Moors marveled at him, and asked where that Devil came from, for they had never seen him before. And the Cid was in a place where he could see all that was going on, and he gave good heed to him, and had great pleasure in beholding him, to see how well he had forgotten the great fear which he was wont to have. And when the Moors were shut up within the town, the Cid and all his people re- turned to their lodging, and Martin Pelaez full leisurely and quietly went to his lodg- ing also, like a good knight. And when it was the hour of eating the Cid waited for Martin Pelaez, and when he came, and they had washed, the Cid took him by the hand and said, My friend, you are not such a one as deserves to sit with me from henceforth, but sit you here with Don Alvar Fanez, and with, these other good knights, for the good feats which you have done this day have made you a companion for them; and from that day forward he was placed in the company of the good. And the history saith that from that day forward this knight Martin Pelaez was a right good one, and a right valiant, and a right precious, in all places where he chanced among feats of arms, and he lived alway with the Cid, and served him right well and truly. And the history saith 118 Calmness. that after the Cid had won the city of Val- encia, on the day when they conquered and discomfited the King of Seville, this Martin Pelaez was so good a one, that set- ting aside the body of the Cid himself, there was no such good knight there, nor one who bore such part, as well in the bat- tle as in the pursuit. And so great was the mortality which he made among the Moors that day, that when he returned from the business the sleeves of his mail were clotted with blood, up to the elbow; insomuch that for what he did that day his name is written in this history, that it may never die. And when the Cid saw him come in that guise, he did him great honor, such as he never had done to any knight before that day, and from thence- forward gave him a place in all his actions and in all his secrets, and he was his great friend. In this knight Martin Pelaez was fulfilled the example which saith that he who betaketh himself to a good tree hath good shade, and he who serves a good Lord winneth good guerdon; for by reason of the good service which he did the Cid, he came to such good state that he was spoken of as ye have heard: for the Cid knew how to make a good knight, as a good groom knows how to make a good horse." 119 Invention. XIV. I have bethought me of the little thing, the little fetch of love, which I will do for my dear Dozen. Much have I pondered what little atten- tion or gift I could bring to pass for her which should cost no money (of which fine dross I have none nor can compass any), but should be concocted of time and thought. And now I have a fine and sim- ple invention. I will write her a letter. Not too long, else she will chide me for time or mind or rest too much spent; nor too short; for there must be a duty and a reverence in it. It shall be of the exact length to join dear love with good sense. Blissful thought! I will delight her. In this early morn now will I write the letter; for after the morn-meal (the cheerful clat- ter of her utensils and the trip of her feet while she prepares the same now pierce through doors and my ears, straight drop- ping into my heart like spent arrows into a pool) I must go to the city to-day and be gone until night; which rare excursion 120 Invention. opens a door of opportunity to me. I will mail my letter early in the city and it will come back hither to her by the mid- afternoon. Ah! I think I can see afar the sparkle of her eye when she shall read it, not without a watery glimmer, per- haps, my dear Dozen like the winking gleam of a star, such tenderness lodges in distance. What? A shame on my years? A boy's freak? The idling of a lover who has not passed the " sighing furnace" and the "woful ballad made to his mistress' eye- brow? " Not so. Mix up like with unlike by error of the eye, and call chalk swan's- down, if you will, good reader. Not L No "sighing furnace" would I make of any love; yet that were better, so only it would sigh forever, than an ashy heap where dies a "poor remains" of fire,, with a small glow in the dark, but more gray than age if but a beam of light fall on it. And for being a boy why, if a man love like a boy, he loves doubly; for he must love like a man, being one, and if then with that he keep his boyhood and add a boy's loving, he is twice good, "With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come;" ay, and with love's most frisking mirth! For love and innocence are the only things that sport truly; and of all 121 Invention. love's tricks and wiles and plots, not one jot will I abate till I lay me down in my white quiet at last. And as to my years, what has love to do with time? I have brooded at moments over the thought that by virtue of the love of God it is that to him a thousand years are as a day. For his wisdom we must conceive perfect, infinite, accomplished from all eternity; wherefore it has naught to do with time, neither taking thought of a day nor of a thousand years nor of ever- lasting cycles. But his love is nev.er ac- complished, for it speeds and spreads to every new creature that comes forth unto him; wherefore it is busy continually with time, but in love's mighty fashion. For love, after a vast period, hath wavered no more than in a day. And human love hath so much of Divinity as that it counts not years nor grows old, and "the most ancient heavens " are to it as a day. Go thy way, friend; call not my years frosty. I tell thee I will have heart- games and invent love-traps for my sweet Sister while head and hand keep their cunning; and when they become stiff in all else, by use they shall be spry in this, and I will gladden me in it like any boy. Now to my letter, for time goes, and I hear the symphony of the breakfast clatter 122 Invention. giving forth a certain tinkle or melody which apprises me it is near done: OUR STUDY, June My Dear Sister: Ah! ha! Say no more that I have not a fine wit! Confess that I can surprise thee, my dear! Shall I not send this, my shadow, back to my gentle Dozen, to linger my going and to foredate my return? Ay, verily will I. And I will show thee that when a shadow is cast by love's light, it has substance sufficient to knock at the door, and, after that, at the heart. Surprises what mangers of daily affec- tion they are, where 'gentle herds of joys feed! 'Tis the short paths of daily life, the habitudes and recurring hours that make surprises possible. Long paths, like as if one go a journey, and be wandering from place to place over the earth, may be set thick on every side with wondrous and cu- rious and strange things; but with surprises, no; because where all is new and naught expected, there is no marking of the unex- pected. But the daily-trodden paths of common life give place for sudden turns or surprises. If, my Dozen, thou take a flight to some strange place and there find a fine statue on a pedestal, thou wilt admire, but not be surprised. For why, 123 Invention. mayhap, should there not be ten statues, or any things whatsoever? But if thou go about thy gentle daily walks and pass in the morning a niche in thy garden which always thou hast seen empty and this very morning it is empty and this noon thou pass again, and lo! a figure, a breathing marble, then hast thou not only admiration but a surprise. Now surprises are love's food and love's cheers, dearest Marian; and the short paths of daily life are very precious oppor- tunities. We have to visit the same places, see the same persons, return again to the same abodes, do the same tasks, take up the same cares,' over and over each week, every day. Here is room for sur- prises blissful room, a many-nooked gar- den, a court of marble columns with abundant corners, a chamber of bright tapestries with plentiful hidings. If any one of the common things or repetitions vary a little, lo, a surprise! This is a field to seed with love's blossoms. Naught is needed but a little brooding, a bit of in- vention, a thought, a care. Let one drop a flower for the other at a corner turned every morning. At the door to which the one returns every night, let the other set up a statue, I mean a bit of help or welcome or other attention, not there in the morning. 124 Invention. At bed-time let some little pleasure be found on the pillow, like a charm thought- dropt to please Sleep that his angels, good Dreams, may be let in. At the waking, or the coming down in the morning, let some beam of love-light unexpected mingle with the expected daylight. These are sur- prises which give health and good pulses of strength. So, now, thou good Dozen, thou Sister- heart of me, confess! Shrive thyself I Say thou art surprised when the postman shall deliver thee this epistle! Say that it flashes a bit in thine eyes, like the sun which will dazzle thee when thou shalt open the west door at the carrier's knock! Own that I have the best of thee ! Verily I have dug a pit for thee; but I have poured in a measure of downy words that it may be soft enough for thee till I re- turn and pull thee out ! I must tell thee of a sight I had when early this morning I walked out-doors to "snuff the morning breeze" and wash my eyes in the East. I came on a flock of about twenty small birds, feathered darl- ings, who seemed to have found some sort of cold pickings on the grass between the house and the church, and were very busy with their pretty bills. I went cautiously off close to the road-side and passed 125 Invention without causing so much as a flutter of a wing, or even seeming to attract their at- tention. "There is a pretty item for Sister to fall on," said I (having this letter-pit for thee in mind), and went on happy. Ah ! little birds, did ye think as ye as- sembled there that ye had a mission for me, to put into my heart a pleasant image for a gentle Sister ? She is ever in my soul; but did ye know that ye came to ar- range me for an instant into a special nest for her and for you (fit company for each other as ye are, ye birds and thou womanly spirit), and give me so good a nesting of joy? I trow not. So serve we each other, we creatures of one Father,, when we know it not. I bless you, ye little birds; and when my Dozen shall read these words, she will bless you. Ah ! how well did I owe it to you to walk cautiously by you, that not a breast or wing of you might be fluttered ! Well, farewell for a little, my dear. And look thou, thou rogue of a Dozen have me an extra-brown toast at tea-table and uncork thy most precious marmalade. I come home in no humor for odds and ends picked up, nay, but for goodies. There- fore look to thy toast and the rest of it. But chiefly see to thyself. Have on thy pink ribbon. Come not near me with 126 Invention. toast without thy pink ribbon. See that thou look thy prettiest. Meet me at the door. Fail not. Beware. . Thy admirable BROTHER. So. Now when I go forth I will toss my letter in the air like a dove. It will fly to its cote, by that kindliest of all human in- ventions, that straight air-path and light- path, the postal service. But, sooth, the dove's breast burns on my palm with some sad moralizings of love. For with gray hairs I find the sadness of age is its emin- ence to behold the mistakes of the young. I see young" lovers marry and build their argosies of sun-beams and go sailing forth. But they have not thought how to keep their love; no, but rather they think they will be kept by the love. Sad, plaintive error ! Strange and sad it seems that youth is the season of so bright love, when indeed it must set forth there is no other way and yet love is so great a thing that only age hath learned the secret and trick of it, how to keep it. But how may love be kept ? This is to be done by not trusting to the love to take care of the consorting, but by using the con- sorting to take care of the love. This is the secret of joy; "the straight and narrow 127 Invention. way," and many there be who find it not. The lovers say in their hearts: "Now we are safe; the reefs are passed; we love, we are married; all is done; our joy is made; love takes care of that; we will ride at rest in the harbor." Sadness, say I, sadness, sadness, naught but sadness. Love is that very thing which must be taken care of. Nay, it will not grow with- out exceeding care. Naught but a weed will come to fruit without looking after. 'Tis the very notion of a tare that it thrives on neglect. Weeds, it is said, poetically, are plants whose uses we know not yet. Ah! but let a use be known, instantly we need to improve the wild herb. Then there is a tussle with it, and no longer it is a weed. What if one set out a rare rose in a bed and say, "Grow now," but tend it not, shade it not, nor water it, nor dig about it ? Will it come to flower ? Yet so the thoughtless young plant love in marriage, saying, "Bloom now," and go about their business; and their Plant of Paradise dries and is eaten of worms. 'Tis done before they know it. Belike some day they bethink them of the rose- tree and go to it fora flower, but find none. Therefore, trust not to the love for the marriage. 'Tis the business of the mar- riage to till the love. Now, what other 128 Invention. way of nursing aught is there but by fore- thought and invention ? They must scheme for it and wax ingenious for it. Let the wife consider at morning, "What can I devise whereby to send off my hus- band this day with a bit of attention which shall cling to his heart till he come back to me?" Let the husband plot at evening, "What can I invent now whereby to bring home not only myself to my wife, but good proof that I have had thoughts of her in my busy cares ?" There wilfr lack no genius for the invention if there be but thought of the need of it. Two stories have I which put love's carefulness of itself, like a good body's clean hygiene, in a brief and amiable way. A poor man was to wed a very rich lady. A friend bewailed with him, foreboding: "She has everything she can wish," said the friend, "and is not likely to set much preciousness on more." "But," said the man, "do you reckon me at no more than her stuffs? Each bit of her furniture has but one service; it is a stock, with that one office and no more. But I, who am a mind, can invent. I will devise gentle deeds more than the day has hours, and more expressions than I shall have meet- ings with her." The other story is of a wife who would not go to a merry supper, 129 Invention. wherein she had good company and much reason and right to have part, but still she would not, because her husband had affairs to keep him at home. "But he will not sup alone," cried her friends; "there are others in the house and at the table. Well enough for once he can do without you." "But," said the wife, with a sweet flush, "I wish him not to discover that he can do without me." 130 Happiness. XV. Fun was my Dozen's postman our dog. The little creature was a stray being, a waif. Marian found her one cold morning last winter shivering and sleep- ing at once in the small shelter of an up- turned box in a corner of the garden. She was very dirty and very suspicious, yet from a distance gave signs of a piteous friendship which agitated all her little body wonderfully. As Caesar said, "I rather tell thee what is to be feared than what I fear, for always I am Caesar," so con- versely the sad and willing little being by every quaver of her frame seemed to say, "You see how foolish and how fond I am, but rather I tell you what is to be hoped than what I hope, for I mind me of all the kicks and harsh words I have had." It was only after much kind and delicately- mannered feeding for some days that she consented to be touched, and then after a little very shyly entered the house. At that point my Sister judged it well to use some gentle compulsion for the little 131 Happiness. creature's better comfort and conversion; she promptly seized the dog and plunged her into a delicious warm bath. There was much trembling but no resistance while the balmy soap was spread, rubbed to a lather and gotten into the matted meshes by the fingers of my Sister, who talked and cooed the while without ceas- ing to the sensitive little being. When she came from the bath her long hair was of a lustrous pearl, her skin a blush of pink, and the spherical brown of her eyes from the misty locks that hung about them showed a very soft gleam and pathos. From that instant she was one of us, and her ecstasy of refreshment both mental and physical was more than she could ex- press by the most wonderful agitations of her little frame. Soon she considered us ; so much her own as to be under her care; -.she must keep a watch for trespassers. Her bark and growl have a humor, they are so big and opinionated from so small a source. She is a doughty little being, a tender friend, but not obsequious. Well, this Fun I say (my Dozen named her Fun) was made my Sister's postman in answering my letter. When I arrived at home last evening, methought I could snuff, or rather feel pervading me as if in a warm perfume, a somewhat uncommon 132 Happiness. in the house and around my Sister, a man- ner of pulsation, a certain light; but not a word said she, nor could I gather any sign save that she wore the pink ribbon and the toast and marmalade were duly on the table. She preserved a sweet ease, with now and then a frank look at me, which I found exceeding charming and vexatious. For, look you, I had made up my mouth for much rapture over my fine letter and to be greatly bepraised and hung upon. But I observed that after our evening meal my Dozen took possession of me. Commonly she is very respectful in that point. She waits at a loving distance, with a reverence, to learn whether I will enter the study and sit me to write; and if so I do, a sweet cool stillness falls on the house, and after a little for she knows she is to me at such times like a breeze of clover coming in at a window, bathing but not interrupting my solitude she will come in with a spiritual footfall with which "Si- lence is pleased." And if I write late, much absorbed, anon she will come to me, bestow a kiss, murmur a good-night and be gone, all so soft as would not distract an angel intent on catching a new melody from a strange conjunction of stars in "the music of the spheres." O beautiful respect! O fair and delicate 133 Happiness. carefulness! Thou high reverence, which movest with scruples and puttest off thy shoes in presence of the things of mind in the chambers of thought! What help cometh from thee, what quickening of powers, what freshening of vision, what rejoicing of labor! Truly not only he writeth who hath the pen in his hand, but she as much, or more, who holds the hand in her hand. What words can tell how much my Sister composes what I write because she composes me! I breathe of her, as of the air, and what were the body without the air in the blood? She is the fuel in my heart, and what have I in head which comes not from heart? To be so encompassed with respect, as with an illumined air, to behold always that I am deemed worth guarding and helping yet not so much I as the things of thought to be nourished at need with a sacred silence full of love, such as a worshiper takes with him into a church, how can I describe what a fountain this is to dip a pen into! Gentle and dear Marian, thou mindest me of some truthful words of D'Israeli: "A woman friend," says he, "amiable, clever and devoted, is a pos- session more valuable than parks and pal- aces; and without such a muse, few men can succeed in life, none be contented." 134 Happiness. When my Sister shall review these pages, belike I shall have a struggle with her; nay, I know that I shall. But let her be advised; she shall not spoil my book by taking herself out of it. But belike she will be more appeased if also by another woman I give example of these nursing and brooding graces, these tender rever- ences and spirit-bred considerations where- with Marian brings the power of me to its best and makes it joy. I mind me well and happily of my Sister's delight in this * woman and praise of her; nay, Marian allowed herself even some strong words about the crimes of women who spoil thoughts and crush visions, and "no woman," said she, "is love-fit to cook or housekeep for a man's body who reveres not her offices to his business or his art." "And would you say not the same of a man's offices to a woman?" said Sidney Morse, who was present at the time. "Assuredly," said Marian, "I draw no unnatural lines; I say only that whosoever respects not another's gifts of mind, and makes not way for them reverently, is no lover." These words befell by reason of a report which Sidney had been giving us of the words spoken to him by one of our elder poets, of the precious ministries and ven- 135 Happiness. erations of the poet's wife. "She is a fount of inspiration just by her reverent care, " said the poet. "Often, " said he, "I have sat at my table a long forenoon vainly gazing after a fancy that flitted like a song- bird about me but would not be seized; and so, I being just on the verge of obtaining the coy sprite of thought, has come the hour of the midday meal. But there was no piercing clang of a bell allowed, and no rude bursting into my study nor breaking of my quiet, to drive away, belike forever, the fair image I ' just was coaxing near; not any such thing, but a slow opening of my door and my wife's never any other pretty head softly looking in, and a contented smile, and a voice like a love-silence, saying, ' Dear, it is the hour, but there is not the least need of your coming if you are too sacredly busy.' And I tell you, friend Sidney," said he, "that the best things that ever I have done with my pen have been written after such a reverence from my wife. It was as if she poured her religious mind before me, and said, < Dip your pen therein/ and I did so." Such-like is my Sister, the fine rever- ence of her perfect love is "daily bread " on which feeds the Hope of my dreams. But last evening, as I have said, she kept 136 Happiness. not her wonted loving distance, her rever- ent waiting, but took possession of me. Soon then we were seated in the little porch in the last tenderness of the twilight, my Sister on a little low chair to which she has taken liking since she acquired her gui- tar music. My thoughts were reverting: to some work I had in hand and had looked to continue in the evening, when I was recalled by my Sister's hand gently pressed into mine. Looking down on her face, I saw instantly that her heart was quite full, and even the mist of a tear in her eye. Thereupon I clasped her hand closely; but said lightly, " What is the matter with thee? Art glad or sad?" "Both," said she. " Thou'rt always full of thy paradoxes, " said I. "Come, account for thyselL Open thy fine reason and show me how thou art glad and sad at once." "Why, thousee'st, Brother, I found some time to-day to sit me at thy table to read a bit, which was ' good, very good, very excellent good; ' but there I found a song; written by thee, which was ill, very ill,, very excellent ill." "What, the song?" " No, but the finding of it." " Why then lose it again/ where it was,, and all is mended." 137 Happiness. "It was a song to thy Sister, dear;" there was just the faintest unwontedness in the voice which might betoken a hurt feeling. I laid my other hand on that dear head. But I said lightly, "Ah! yes, I remem- ber. A little thing." "Thou should'st have given it to me, Brother. " "Why, troth, I set it aside to cool, that then I might judge whether it had good flavor enough to offer thee." "What is the matter with thee?" cried :my Dozen, raising her head. " I have told thee over and over thou art not fit to judge thine own things. Belike thou wilt have me din that at thee every morning and inquire of thy obedience every night." "Ah!" "'Tis so. Is it not enough for thee to write, but thou must make shift to judge too? I tell thee again, I will do the judg- ing, and the instant a song has fled thy pen, it is to nest in my mind. It is not to ^wing-weary itself in a void, like the dove out of the ark, which could find no place for the sole of its foot. Dost think I am no better than a waste of waters? " "Ah!" "Besides," continued my Dozen, "if it l)e a song to me (and methinks it is an un- 138 Happiness. pardonable long time since thou hast writ me a song), then the more I am to have it instantly, good or ill. If it be as homely as Audrey, it is ' a poor thing, Sir, but mine own.' " "Come," said I, "for truly I have for- gotten that song read it me, if the twilight will serve yet, thatr-I may know what color it hath when washed in thy voice." " I will do better," said Marian blithely, "I will sing it thee. Thou canst not con- ceive my delight when I found it, Brother, except for my displeasure aforesaid. When I had read it over many times, and ex- amined its beauties of form in the way thou hast taught me, suddenly came to mind with it a German folk-melody which we like," ge/i 1 zur ruh\ 'Tis long since we sang it, even many months. Then we had only our voices, now the voices of the strings too." So, to the guitar's music we sang the sincere, religious little folk-melody: H5 Happiness. Weary am I, go to rest; My two eyes with sleep are pressed. Let thine eyes, my Father, be On my bed and over me. All to me who precious stand, Lord, let rest within thy hand. All men, great and small, shall be Safe enfolded, kept by thee. Send to grieving hearts repose, Weeping eyes in slumber close; In thy heaven delay the moon, The still earth to look upon. Then, "Good-night, dear Dozen," said I, and quoted, "Sleep give thee all his rest." "With half that wish the wisher's eyes be pressed," quoted she, gaily and affec- tionately. The evening had been so delightful that wholly I had forgotten my letter. But as I lay my head on my pillow it recurred to me. What could mean Dozen's silence about it? Had she not received it per- haps? But yes, the pink ribbon, the toast and marmalade had appeared duly. Those could not be chance haps. Much puzzled, I fell asleep. But I was awaked this morning with a doing away of the mystery. I was aroused by a leap on my bed and the cool nose of our little Fun thrust into my face. Hanging about her neck by a 146 Happiness. pink ribbon was a letter, my Sister's letter in answer to mine of yesterday. As I said in the beginning of this chapter, Fun was my Dozen's chosen postman. Ah! the wiles of my Dozen, her inven- tions, her freaks, her changes, her frolics, her soberness at one time as still as the deep sea, as votive as an altar, as serious as the sky, at an other time as babbling and freakish as a "bickering brook." What say you, reader? "You see nothing in the device? It was foolish, forsooth inane, a silly-girlish thing, to send the letter by the dog? " Well, I pray thee let be my Dozen's follies. I like them. I would not have her cured no more than Orlando would be cured because "Mon- sieur Melancholy" liked not his doings. When Jacques disparaged him for marring the trees with his verses, Orlando bade him mar no more of his verses by reading them ill-favoredly. Read not you my Sis- ter's whimseys ill-favoredly. Without doubt you can mend many things in the world, good reader, and chiefly yourself; but not my Dozen. Soon I was ready to sit at open window with the letter, mingling the reading of it with the freshness of the morning and a delicious composition of odors from patches of earth newly worked, from a flower gar- 147 Happiness. den, a trellis of yellow roses, a clump of arbor-vitae, and the fine grass of a neigh- boring lawn mown the day before. Here is the letter: OUR STUDY, June Good morning, thou Brother mine. As thou didst surprise me yesterday with an early-eve letter to forerun thy return from the city, I have arisen early to open thy day with a letter. 'Tis a rarely beautiful morn. The air is full of the stir and fra- grance of green things growing, and the cheery little birds are sounding their joy-notes. Mayhap they are the very "feathered darlings" of which thou didst write so gently in thy surprise-letter yester- .day. Yes, I do own to being surprised. ,At first I thought it but a business note, .about something forgotten, or the like; but -soon I knew my mistake. Deeply moved was I by thy letter, my Brother, and by thy thought to write it. It brought memories of our parted years. Dost remember that then thou didst write me every day? Never didst thou fail, but sometimes sur- prise me with two letters. They were my wells of joy in a desert land, reached by a day's journey. But I will not talk of the past, but of the bright and happy present. And yet, Brother, happy as it is to live 148 Happiness, together, there was some loss when thy letters ceased. Our neighbor, Mrs. Rivers, came in, just as I had finished reading thy letter, and I showed it to her, being very proud, thou knowest, of a certain Brother of mine. She praised it to my content and said a kind word of thy thoughtfulness in writing the letter. Mayhap I will tell thee what she said when thou shalt come to breakfast, if thou wilt coax me to do so. Dost remember the gentle girl who passes by every day, the one who dresses so shabbily that even thou hast noticed it? Well, I learned, from our neighbor, that she has been supporting a brother through an art school on her pay as a teacher. Just think what privations she must suffer for her brother's sake. Yet our neighbor, who knows her well, says that she is one of the cheeriest of bodies, always ready to "lend a hand," and, though she loves beautiful things and would fain have them, never impatient because of her privations or apparently conscious that she is doing aught noteworthy. Thou must know our neighbor better, Brother, for she is a delightful companion and hath a mind stored with fair thoughts. She told .me of another of her "mind- pictures," as she names them. It was of a 149 Happiness. gentle brown-eyed girl who is alone in the city with her father, and as she is em- ployed during the day and he during the night, they see each other but once a week, on Sunday. But each night she writes to him, telling of all that has hap- pened to her during the day. Does not that bring a fair picture to thy mind? Because of my early rising breakfast is nearly ready, and I bid thee hasten down; else will the cocoa be cold and I shall greet thee crossly. Have I not heard thee talk wisely of the beauty of starting on the day aright? Make it possible for thy Sister by coming quickly. I expect thee to praise me exceedingly for being able to keep these bits of nothings over night, and in return mayhap I will talk of thy surprise-letter. Bring Fun down with thee. I warrant she will curl up on the white counterpane. DOZEN. Ah! the immensity of the value of per- sons to each other, and of kind deeds and affectionate inventions between them, for the making of happiness! A common thought, very common. Who will gainsay it? Who will not hasten to say it is so, and then mayhap think he has said naught to much purpose, because "it goes with- out saying? " But to confess a fact of na- 150 Happiness. ture, as one may admit a fine picture to be hanging on the wall, may be far from hav- ing a feast of soul, but rather like a smack of cold victuals of knowledge, very far from a deep understanding and heart-feel- ing of the meaning and power of the fact like as when the eye clings to the picture intelligently, ravished with its beauty. So one may confess, without feeling, the in- estimable value of kindness and loving in- vention for bringing happiness to pass. Belike we shall feel the truth keenly if we consider how dreadful this earth would be, with all its beauty, if one were alone in it. The sun might be fresh and young, beaming on hills and vales radiant, dewy, filled with innumerable colors and odors of fruits and flowers, washed by pellucid brooks like air. Yet a man doomed to live alone therein hardly could keep a sane eye to know the beauty; nay, belike he would be like a maniac fleeing from his own fancies. And how he would run to the gentler creatures among the beasts if he should happen on such, how he would clasp them about the neck and gaze in their eyes with rapture, invite their voices and immerse him in the sounds, though inarticulate, coming from living throats, from sensitive creatures. Solitude is so dreadful that it is thought tc add much to 151 Happiness. a prison-sentence of many years if even one day of solitary confinement be added. Consider, therefore, that though such utter loneliness would be very terrible, still it were better than a cruel companion, better than a being like to us, who therefore might be a fellow in joys and thoughts, but should spurn us unkindly, fence himself to live apart morosely, or hurt us treacher- ously. By such thoughts we so may clear the mind, wiping from its true surface the dust of custom, that kindness will be im- aged therein brightly, and we shall see vividly what a source of happiness affec- tionate fellowship is. Surely we shall feel strongly the immensity of the value of per- sons to each other if they be very kind and given to affectionate invention. In re- newed eyes and ears thereupon, such music and light will be apprehended, that all voices will be sweeter with influence and all eyes splendid with reflection. The air of that quality of love will fill houses as the sea fills a shell and feeds the creature in it. And it is past computing what sum of hu- man joys will be created, or what beauty a warm happiness will make grow in the human face with invention. 152 Encouragement. XVI. Well I remember a letter from my Sister which greatly heartened me both by its. love and wisdom, and by a word of re- proach for a weakness in me which I had discovered to her. I was absent from that most precious friend of my spirit for three years in a far place (Ah ! a long and lonely time it was!) where I had hard duties and heart-sickness, with sad short- coming of sound plans so they seemed and sore anxieties about my Dozen who was toiling beyond her strength and alone at her place; for it was before we had be- come able to make this town-cottage home for ourselves ever blessed be it! I wrote my Sister a plaintive letter in which I let slip an indication that I had turned on my- self a small rill of pitying concern from a kind person whom I encountered. This, she liked not. It has been a trait of Mar- ian always that she is averse to commiser- ation, and indeed by no means can bear it. For, says she, "to pity myself were the most pitiable thing that could befall me. 153 Encouragement. How then can I permit from another what even from my own soul to me is too dis- respectful?" This was the occasion of a letter from her which was full of good meat done up with love, but not a word said she of my atony, until the last sen- tence. Thus she ended: " Finally, Bro- ther, cheer thee! take heart! be of good courage! and above all, wear a brave face. The world loves courage, Brother, and it is noble." Ah! triple steel around me and a Damascus blade in my hand did those words arm me withal! And a force of heart, without which breast-plates and swords are baggage! And some shame! Yea, verily; but only as salt to joy. For Avhat joy have I on earth like to my rever- ence for my Sister and the beholding her grand? The worth of encouragement is very great. Kindness has a very far-going iorce in it by the virtue and wings of en- couragement. For courage is the force with which we begin a work, and it is little like that we shall grow in power if we begin faintly. For difficulties, in any -endeavor, are as certain as drops in a rain or gusts in a wind, and commonly they cluster and jostle at the beginning while the hopes wait modestly behind. If there- iore we begin timorously and with boding 154 Encouragement. heart, the first two or three of the difficul- ties will trip us up before a hope can get us by the hand. Whatsoever we have to do and howsoever we be faithful in the study of it and be full up in skill, yet if we go to it shaking and with faint heart, we can not do what we can do, but gasp and tremble, by the vicious fingers of our terrors clutching the throat of our skill. This we may see when the diffident present them- selves to speak or sing or make an instru- ment of music discourse, ' ' Where I have seen them shiver and look pale, Make periods in the midst of sentences, Throttle their practiced accents in their fears, And, in conclusion, dumbly have broke off." Qualification will help, 'tis true, to give bottom and firmness, but if these be cut from under by a shrinking and apprehen- sive spirit, down topples the mastership with it. Wherefore who has not seen the bold go farther with small parts or little proficiency than the misgiving can attain with much faculty and sound instruction? Therefore Kindness which applies it- self to encouragement may have a vast force of service for any one; for " courage can erect our powers as much as faint heart or fear cast them down." Courage is heart-age, if the first syllable of it come of the Latin cor, as through the 155 Encouragement. French it seems. To encourage, there- fore, which is to put courage in, is to pour of our own full heart into another's lacking one, like that transfusion of blood from the full veins of a strong body to the fluttering and empty pulse of one who has lost much of the vital fluid or has had it turn watery and thin. For then by uniting the two bodies by some vessels, the strong blood flows from the full heart into the fainting channels and revives the pale frame with flush and force*. So is it when of the abundance of a strong spirit a con- tact by love is made with a fainting soul and courage poured in. It is a virtue of encouragement, and a great force or value of kindness therein, that it comes to us, very like, when the sight greatly is perplexed or obscured and we see not the way. On all sides are many ways, and perforce we must walk in one; yet all set out dimly and vanish soon in darkness. 'Tis then that a great blessing of hope may be raised in us by the kind- ness of a warm encouragement. Nay, the more dim and cloudy the affairs, the more may hope expand, as then the more it is needful, if kindness give a light of encour- agement; for they who now have little substance and least can augur the future, may hope the most, and "hope never 156 Encouragement. spreads her golden wings but on unfath- omable seas." In this saying Emerson is like Paul, who says, "Hope that is seen is not hope; for who hopeth for that which he seeth? " Therefore it is in the low and dim places of experience that hope can be bred and trained up by encouragement. The kindness that pours in the courage gives us credit to "borrow of the future," which is a wholesome debt, without usury; for when the future is come it is ours, and we inherit the debt with its increase. Now, kindness always has power to give encouragement. This is not a hard thing. A bit of good reason, a scrap of cheery wisdom, nay, a word, nay, a look, a smile, an eye of love and sympathy, may go far. If any one have taken a fall, there is one good thing which always we may say to him, with loving kindness, to wit, " One failure is not final." No, nor many. Wherefore if there have been many falls, we may change the phrase to this, "No failure should be the last effort." It may not be amiss to bring forward the homely proverb, "He who gets up every time he falls, sometime will get up to remain standing." So may kindness speak; and more, with but exclamations, inspiriting, martial, as "Up! " " Cheer thee! " "Hearten thee! " 157 Encouragement. "Give me thy hand!" and such like words without discourse or reasoning, but swift, and like arrows not aimed but shot at random, sure to hit if they come thick enough, or as one in a rain is wetted though no drop be launched at him. It is a very beautiful encouraging in this kind which Orlando gives old Adam. The old man " can go no further," but " here must lie down and measure out his grave.'* "Why, how now, Adam!" cries Orlando, "no greater heart in thee? Live a little;. Comfort a little; cheer thyself a little. * * Thy conceit is nearer death than thy powers. For my sake be comfortable; hold death awhile at the arm's length. * * * Well said! thou look'st cheerly. * * Cheerly, good Adam! " Thus may kind- ness discourse heart in words and beam in them with life, like the coming of morning in a sick-room. A great and good manner of encourage- ment is praising. To praise is the oppo- site of cheering one up. The one com- forts in failure; the other rewards in suc- cess. The one inspirits for a new endeavor to do something; the other increases de- light to go on to do more. The one en- kindles again a flickering spirit; the other pours sweet oil on a fire already flaming. But now, praising is a kindness both very 158 Encouragement. great and very needful. It gives a very rich and just delight. To a noble spirit, it is true, the great rewar<4 of doing is the doing and the prospect from the height thereof. This is a heroic peak; but unless there be a beloved heart with good gratulation and approval for us, 'tis a cold peak, and praise is needful. For one works at advantage if one receive good meed, but at odds if labor yield no fruit of human approval; and this is no weakness, but rather the dis- covery of a heart in us. We must preach faithfulness and devotion for themselves, whatever come of them, and say they are heroic, religious; and so they are. Yet will I say too that it is a sad and bitter loneliness to go on with faithful labors and hidden good achievements with never an eye taking note of them and never a tone of love delighting in them and praising us. Nor know I aught more churlish, yea, or more, thievish, than so to walk by a comrade's side, inconversable, un- praiseful of good things done or sweet virtues maintained. It is a very unloving lack of kindness, by as much as praise is both a sweet joy, even unto tears sometimes, and a good girding. At this moment, as I write, I mind me of a man who fell to scoffing at the heaven of heavens as in the gospel it is promised^ 159 Encouragement. for, said he, "I see no real and good joy promised, but only feasts and crowns and pleasures and ease; which are base tinsel." "Yet," said one who listened to him, "there is a passage wherein is described a very great joy, a most worthy and deep rec- ompense, enough for heaven;" and then told him to read the first twelve words of Matthew xxv, 21, and he should find that wonderful great guerdon. Then the man looked into that place in the book and iound these words, "His Lord said unto him, Well done, thou good and faithful servant." Take heed of this, ye who be near to each other; for in what way more than in this way can ye be God's husband- men unto others, being as Paul names you, " God's husbandry" yourselves? Praise each other in truth and love, and admire one another, and give it tongue, ye friends, ye brothers and sisters. Ye husbands, praise your wives; ye wives, praise your husbands. And this is a mating that ye can do on the wing, like birds, and a syllable is great discourse. It is one of the joys of love that the vocabulary of praise is increased by it; for large measures of praise, and the joy of it, may go in a look, a touch, and that, too, with the greatest privacy in large companies. Encouragement, whether by a cheering 160 Encouragement. up if we faint or fall or struggle, or by praise if we run well, is a delicate need to every one. Some need it more, some less, but there is no one who has no need of it, and all are the better for it. Yet the need is a hidden thing, like love's ache; and so must it be; for no one can go about saying, "Encourage me." You may go into any company, reader, where souls are fainting and gasping and sickening for medicinable esteem or encouragement, and you will not know them. Nay, they will laugh into your eyes and be more modest to the quick to cover their souls with smiles than their bodies with garments. There is no as- sembly but is a stalking place of vast needs behind faces; nor can you tell who needs encouragement the most, or when. Here- in is a great office laid on kindness, to con- sider and to watch, to look on others at- tentively and with a certain awe, as one peers into deep water. But if you can not discern the famishing, this is certain the while, that all ought to be fed at due seasons and plentifully, nor can you tell how far the word of encouragement, nay, but the tone of love, will go with any one, or work what wonders. Even the un- speaking, inexpressive horse, whose feel- ings you can not guess because nature has penned them in such small gates of ex- 161 Encouragement. pfession, weary, jaded, overstrained, will move an ear quickly to catch the kind word, will feel the pat on his neck and the pitiful voice, and resume his strength. Then " On the level way he goes proudly, And the arch of his strong neck is lofty; A strange sound smites him and he stands; He tosses his head with power; His eyes are like burning coals which throw sparks, And his nostrils are like swinging gates. He comes to a high hill, and forsakes his pride; He bends to his labor with humility; The muscles are knotted in his thighs, And his knees straighten like bended oak; He hangs his head to the ground; He throws all his weight into his labor. When he has gone up, he has overcome and is strong; He takes one deep breath and is refreshed; He looks back at his driver; He goes swiftly for the voice that he loves." I have heard that a kind-hearted girl passing a little boy in the street, a small merchant of matches, tape and needles, and seeing how thinly he was clad, the air being biting, smiled and said, "Are you not cold, little man?" Then spoke the small ragged knight, and said, "I was, ma'am, till you passed by." All the fire of the sun could not have raised that glow in him. Stretch thy fancy, reader, to his sleep- 162 Encouragement. ing place (there is naught that more I do than consider of people where they sleep); is it a far stretch that mayhap the small cavalier made a few more pence that day, working later by the heat of that fuel in him, whereby his poor place had more coals that night and more food? 163 Recommendation. XVII. Encouragement is the speaking of the right word to any one, heartening him at need. But also to speak a good word for any one, is a great part of kindness. Like- wise a great power withal. To recommend well goes far. Encouragement rouses our own minds at a fainting point; but recom- mendation puts knowledge of us in an- other's mind, and mayhap just when he is alert to catch at such a service as may be had from us. Such a kindness, to recom- mend, often may turn the current of a life. From a deed of it may date a career of honorable achievement, or years of gentle inconspicuous happiness which are very fair to the discovering eye the violets of life, under the oaks and pines which roar back to the storms. The benefactions of one who has entrance and influence where he disposes and conciliates others to us at point of need, are like vapors from fortu- nate green places of the earth, stirred about and falling again in "rain upon the mown field" which is athirst. Such bene- 164 Recommendation. fits come not of selfish people; for too little they are aware of others to do such wake- ful work for them; or worse, they give strict heed to them to jostle them aside out of the way, or to make draught-beasts of them at their chariots. Recommendation is in three kinds. The first kind is the seeking out of a place whereto to recommend one who lacks a labor-place. This is a good and loving work; it is a very positive kindness, which is excellent, not waiting to speak a good word if the chance happen, but carrying the good word in search of a place where it will have effect. The second kind is the speaking warmly and well when a chance happens wherein we may prefer another to some good place, though we have not looked for it. Many persons speak never warmly of others, never generously, never with a, rush and fervor of heart like waters of praise pent and glad to be opened; but always with a coolness and an eye half-shut, as if to con- sider whether on the whole the balance be with better or worse qualities. This is a sad and cold blindness of the heart. Is it too much to call love the eye of the mind? This at least will I say, that love is the color-sense of the mind's eye, receiving nature's hues, rich, warm, lovely; nay, two 165 Recommendation . senses in one, letting in a fragrance round the heart, for which expression I may avail of Milton's credit; Adam, first made and waked, says: "About me round I saw Hill, dale, and shady wood, and sunny plains, And liquid lapse of murmuring streams; by these, Creatures that lived, and moved, and walked, or flew; Birds on the branches warbling; all things smiled; With frag ranee and with joy my heart o'erflowed." All life's color and odor (as Milton, again, speaks of the "sweet odor of the Gospel") wash in vain on one who has no herald tongue for the good graces of others. If the tongue be not a squire, 'tis because the heart is not a knight and hath no gentle- hood wherein to become apprised of virtue. Or if the heart be not such a dullard, such a color-blind eye, but will give no currency to the virtues of others which it appre- hends, then it is worse off and more un- knightly, for this is a thievishness as Emerson says, "Our very abstaining to re- peat and credit a fine remark of our friend is thievish;" and if this be so, as to but a bit of our friend's wit, how much more as to his sweet and valuable virtues. Under this thievishness lies often a base envy and gluttony, which grudges what is said good of another as so much cut off from oneself. Truly I have seen this unkind and wretched 166 Recom mendation . covetousness, this clog on the tongue brak- ing it from a warm exercise with another's virtues, this letting another man's good parts make, miserably and enviously, a burning spot just below the heart, as it is the manner of envy to affect us physically. The third kind or manner of recommen- dation is that which always is ready and expressive. It hath a heart of such sweet and kind joy in admiring others that it must be uncovering it continually; not waiting for a chance to offer wherein some prefer- ment may be made, nor going about to find a profitable place for our friend who has forced it on our eyes that he needs our speaking for him not waiting for these things, though they be good things to do; but constantly speaking warmly of excel- lencies which we have taken note of in others. How lovely is this habit of mind, this triple affection in us unto excellencies, to see, to admire, to commend. How sweet and comely are they who do this, by nature or reflection, how lovely, and what beautified faces they come to. "It ye have love one toward another," says an apostle, "God dwelleth in you;" and Paul, "Know ye not that ye are God's temple?" Now, such beauty being builded in the body by this triple kindness of seeing, admiring, commending, and bethinking us of the 167 Recommendation. apostles' sayings, we must cry, for very gladness, with the psalmist, "How lovely are thy tabernacles, O Lord of Hosts!" Let us have eyes for the inconspicuous, in whom often is a very rare beauty. Go not agog and staring at what all men are agog with, the great and high-placed and far- shining; but look about closely for what is passed by. Having therewith seen it and made worthy observation of it, thereupon utter it. Noise abroad our discovery mu- sically. Have good words for the good things, like the gentle maid in the folk-tale who could not open her mouth to speak but with the word dropped out a pearl. This may go very far, never we can tell how far, in bringing some one to profitable notice or helping him to a good start; and surely it will go very far in cheer and cour- age. To set some good thing going whose end or spread of benefit we can not tell, is creative, like working with God. 168 Truthfulness. XVIII. After speaking of the kindness of recom- mendation, I have come perforce to truth- fulness as kindness. From the last chap- ter to this one the path of thought is thus: If justly we be not able to praise de- sirably, then kindly we can refrain from dispraising willfully; if with good heed we can not speak a good word, then at least we can look to it not to speak an ill word carelessly; now, speech which, being ad- verse, disserviceable, hurtful therewith, is. careless as to seasons, occasions, motives of speaking, is heartless; but adverse speech which is careless and adventurous as to the truth, is heartless and lying too. If Emerson's saying, before quoted, be true, that abstaining to hand on and credit the good and fine things we meet, is thiev- ish, what then is the spreading of the bad? This is war; and not open war, declared and under rules, which, frightful evil as it is, at least may be generous; but private war, every man for himself wantonly, and also unproclaimed, ambushed, skulking 169 Truthfulness. and hateful war. War it is, with all that belongs to war, the chief traits whereof are destruction and lying. Now as to the ruin wrought by private war, where are shot forth detraction, strict- ure, odium, fling, sneer, cavil, this needs but few words. As I have spoken of the power and virtue of recommendation to lift up and preserve, the like power as- persion has to cast down and destroy. Nay, more power; for in affairs men are more fearful than trustful, frightened away by a libel more than attracted by good report. Therefore a defaming word is a terrible thing very often, having a vast power of destruction, and once discharged not to be stopped again. It is like some poisonous and horrible odors, one drop of which will fill a vast space, nor can it be told what it will infect or how long per- sist. But it is worse than this; for ill words not only will shake or overthrow outward fortunes, but, so bad are they, they will infect the man himself of whom they are spoken, to make him worse if he be at all ill. For the more people there are who think unworthily of him the harder it is for him to do well and not to do ill. As a man in a sickness may be poisoned further by his own exhalations if they be confined about him, so may unkind defam- 170 Truthfulness. ^ ations for a fault make an atmosphere in which it is very hard to be cured of the evil. Thus the more an invidious report is spread around a man, by- unkind tongues, the harder it is for him not to stumble into that ill more deeply, or into some other. For it is very hard to keep a straight and steadfast course over the slippery drop- pings of kindless tongues. And this is the same whether the report be true or false. For even if false, it makes all grace and virtue harder, which already are hard enough, needing muniments with the best of us, and most of all with any who boast and flourish themselves as self- propped. But if the unkind report be true in some measure, and there be in a man a grain or more of that fault which is charged, then the more spread the evil words are, the more is he hemmed in with the fault and the harder is made the con- trary virtue. Such is the destructiveness of evil-speaking, the hateful state of pri- vate war, which has no laws because it is too unhonorable to be considered a bat- tle of ambushes and skulkers such is its destructiveness, which not only may shake down fair outward fortunes or stop their building, but has an inward effect on the heart of the victim to make courage and virtue harder for him. But of this I will 171 Truthfulness. say no more because it is so plain; for there have been good precepts enough on this point at all times, and if knowledge of how filthy and black this private war is could have destroyed it, it would have ceased ages ago. But hordes of cannibals survive with us whose mouths are never happy but when chewing on the tender flesh of men. Most I wish to say, what not so much is reflected on, how vast and bad is the lying which is in this treacherous war. And this I mean strictly, in the full circle of what it is to lie. I mean not merely that one who spreads ill words is like to spread unfounded words; I mean he is of a piece with a willful liar who devises and tosses forth a bold falsehood, The principle and precept is that careless and adventurous speech adverse to any one, is direct and abominable lying. I am sure this is not considered well and strictly; for either people miss the fact of it and see it not, or else the world is full of liars more willful than I can think them. Liars they are, but yet with a grain less of willfulness than some; but liars still, and bad ones. To see this, attend a little to the notion of truthfulness, and what it requires of us. Has one fulfilled the law of truthfulness when he has refrained from saying what he 172 Truthfulness. knows to be not true? By no means. We must be careful to say only what we know to be true; or, in reverse way, if that will state it more clearly, we must be careful to know anything to be true before we declare it. Not to put forth what we know to be not true, is but one part of truthfulness, and the smaller, ah! very much the smaller. The other and the larger part, is to take good heed to know what is true be- fore we declare aught. Why should one be called a liar who willfully puts forth what he knows to be not the truth, yet called no liar, but by some milder name, if he toss about averments, hints, implica- tions, advices, with no care or steadiness to know whether they be true or not? I say he is a liar, in very point of the larger and more glorious part of truthfulness; which part is, not merely to declare no known untruth, but to be delicately con- cerned to know the truth before we aver or adventure anything. For uninformed speech, if we adventure much in it, as if we had taken the pains to be informed which rightly may be expected of us, may be as great a lie, in very spirit, as the boldest falsehood. To speak boldly with- out knowledge, as if we had knowledge, is not this as lying a thing as to aver against knowledge? And when the budgets, bulle- 173 Truthfulness. tins, hearsays, averments, nods or head- waggings which a man thus adventures, concern the good fame of others, and bear hard on their interests or labors, then is he not only a liar but a most accursed liar, whose words are spits of snaky venom; nor can it be told what filthy spray the wind will make of them, nor whom they will sicken or kill. It is but a whining, driveling plea, if he make it, that he said only what he supposed to be true; for it is his being void of due care before he speaks in points so precious, which is the lie in him. Belike if these words seem too sturdy, I can make this matter clearer to my reader by a parable. A man went forth one morning into the streets of a city, carrying a gun. Coming to a street which was full of people, many coming and going and crossing in different ways, the man said, II Here have I an itching to let off my gun; I will aim at no one." But when he had done so, it chanced that one of the throng was hit by the ball and fell dead. "Un- fortunate," said he; "but I aimed not to hit the man;" and forthwith he let off his gun again, and the ball struck in the heart of another one who fell dead. "Bad luck," said the man, "but I intended not his death, nor intend any man's; I but 174 Truthfulness. fire my gun." Which then he did again, and another of the thronging people was killed. But now came the amazed people and seized him, saying, " You are a mur- derer." "Not so," answered he, "I sought no man's death, nor aimed at any;, I but let my gun off." "But to shoot carelessly into a throng of men is murder- ous," cried the people; and he was held for a murderer. Let it be said, now, whether the people were not right. To shoot from a gun at random in an unpeopled place were not murder, though neither were it shooting, with rectitude; but to shoot wildly into a thoroughfare, is a degree of heedlessness of life and a hardened hazarding of it which is murderous in spirit, and murder if one be killed. Likewise is he a liar who puts forth carelessly averments that are blows and missiles. If he speak them in a desert, it counts nothing, though even then to utter them is not truth; but if he let them fly amid companies, where they may strike and maim or kill, it is of the nature of lying, and he who does so hath no awe of the truth and is a liar in spirit, and thereafter in effect too, if the words prove false and work harm. For not merely a willful falsehood is a lie, but there is a degree of carelessness about the truth,, 176 Truthfulness. Avhen others' fame or fortunes are in sus- pense therein, which is altogether lying. And this is a lie very accursed, base and mean in some points of its own. For first, it may be a lie without temptation, no stress of fear or gain in it, but a wanton- ness or cruelty unto the feelings and struggles of others. Or if there be in the reckless words a pushing of anger or spite or self-importance or self-interest, then it is the baser and worse still, a most direct and faithless lie; and secondly, it is a skulking lie, not bold and taking the risk of itself, but ready with such shelters as, "I supposed it was true," or, "I told it as I heard it," or, "I argued so or so," under which these liars impudently claim to be received for truthful persons. If a man have a strong motive against the truth and thereby fall from the truth, still it is a lie. But if there be that which ought to be a strong and high motive unto truthfulness, like the pains or dangers of other persons, then reckless speech is very wanton lying, as the man heedlessly shoot- ing into a busy highway is murderous in a hardened manner. To sum up in precepts (and is there aught for human happiness and love more worthy of summing?) / The law of truthfulness requires equally 176 Truthfulness. / that we aver not what we know to be not true, and that we aver not what we do not \ know to be true: Especially if pangs or burdens or in- terests of others be in question, this latter and more delicate part of the law hath great virtue and claim: But to be regardless of the virtue and claim of truth is to be a liar: And to utter regardlessly, without knowl- edge or surety or any effort thereunto, averments which sting the peace or the labor of others, is to be singularly a mean liar, unctuous with excuses, as that he did no more than any man, said no more than he heard or thought, and the like, slip- ping out of responsibility like a greased swine from the hands, well oiled with pre- texts, and no offence in him by which he can be held. As this little book may blessings go with it, and with her whose it is more than mine, by her spirit within me! treats of kindness, it befits that I return to that theme, to say what a good kindness as well as righteousness a careful truthfulness is. Few words are needed thereof. I said in the beginning that speech against any one and careless of occasion and motive, is heartless, and if careless also about the truthfulness of the averment, then it is 177 Truthfulness. heartless and lying too. But on the other side for how much better it is to look on the beauty of truthfulness than on the ugli- ness of untruthfulness ! how fair, sweet and heavenly is the kindness that lays hand on another's fame as a good physician touches the body, never but in love, to heal, and never without an awe of that living thing which is l ' fearfully and wonderfully made !" But the heart is made more fearfully and wonderfully than the body. We can de- fend the body from the hurts of criminal bungling and impious ignorance by decrees of senates and colleges. Not such muni- ments can we build around hearts. They have no other defence than pious kind- ness. Young ^Etasflorens looked with joy on his fine body and resolved to find a perpetual youth for it. Long he sought some elixir which could bestow his desire, and at last besought the oracle. " There is no elixir of youth," said the oracle, "nor can be, until a young man be found who will give his own youth to be made into an elixir." " That will I," cried ^Etasflorens. "Go, then," said the oracle, "and at the very top moment of your youth you shall be changed into a wash which shall give per- petual youth to others." So ^Etasflorens lived ruddily and charmingly till the very 178 Truthfulness. top of his youth was attained, when sud- denly he was changed to an ever-flowing fountain. Whoever bathed therein gained immortal youth. As thus the elixir to be- stow youth must be made of youth, so heart only is medicinable to heart, and naught but a sweet and heavenly kindness can deal with the fame or the shame of a soul, or knows to take in hand what affects the labors, the pains and the joys of others. And how beautiful is this kindness, which walks always among the feelings, the names and fames and interests of others with slow and reverent footsteps. Such kindness will have always the beauty of a truthful spirit, to say naught but with a holy carefulness, and to aver not anything which we know not surely; nor aught that we know, save by occasion and with love. 179 Fault-Finding. XIX. Fault-finding either is an honor unto him who is censured, or else an extreme un- kindness. For in either case it is an inflic- tion of pain. Now if we be handled painfully because we are worth mending and our life is to be promoted, that is hon- orable to us. But pain without this aim, and but ruthlessly or heedlessly flung on us, is exceeding unkindness. I like not in my writing especially as my sweet Sister has yet to rule and pronounce on it, and she sees never any ill thing, having her eyes so filled with the good, unless the evil be pushed verily against her eyes till they smart with it; and even then, ill things, like flying dust, rather shut up her orbs instinctively, not to be filled with the irritations by staring at them I like not, I say, to treat of things unkind, kindness being my theme and beautiful. But this looking at an opposite evil must be done sometimes, especially as it may be that we know not how much we are infected with some bad thing till we 180 Fault-Finding. look at it enough to see how bad it is and apply our sight of it to ourselves. There- fore I must write a chapter to say how ugly and ungracious fault-finding is; but first I am glad to perceive and say that one manner of it is very honorable to him who is censured and to the censor too. This honorable kind of fault-finding is seen when one on another, as friend on friend or any manner of lover on another, lays a claim which is an honor or trust, and then censures a falling-short of that claim. If one claim of another some- what to which must go a fine intelligence, a firm will and decision, a strong work- power, an ideality, such a claim is an honor, by ascribing these qualities; and if there happen a shortcoming, then to find fault with it is the same honor in another form; as if we conferred the two styles of the honor thus: "What? You have these high qualities? Then I claim this or this of you." Or again, "What! you have these high qualities, and fall short of this or this? That is censurable!" Thus may all manner of lovers do each other honor by large claims, and large censure therewith. And it will be well, before one resents a good piece of fault-finding, to consider how much honor the censure does him, and whether the hidden praise in it 181 Fault-Finding. may not make up for some sharpness. For fault-finding may be like a harmony, wherein a grave lower tone of true moral love and decorating claim may bear up and embosom pleasantly a shrill note, else too shrill. At this moment comes to me an instance in memory, wherein Marian, my Sister, my faithful counselor, did me this kind of honor with a stern love. It befell on a birthday of that gentle Blessing of my years, during that same long parting of us which I have mentioned. On that day I sent to her a letter; for she had signified to me that an epistle written day by day for some time beforehand would be the most acceptable gift I could devise for her birth- day. Now, I had been busy, with much running hither and thither; but that is no excuse, and truly I know not how it befell, and it seems that Love like Homer may nod sometimes (and thereupon let him sleep a bit, say I, or if thou must awake him, remember that it is Homer and Love whom thou stirrest, and rouse him rever- ently with music from his own songs), but certain it is that my letter to my Sister was a trifling and unthoughtful thing. I mean that no care and pains went into it. That letter my Sister returned to me with some austere Draconian words, saying that her 182 Fault-Finding. heart had wept plentifully over it, but that they were fiery tears; and that she must ask not to keep a letter which did her no respect, and still less was worthy of me. "When I asked for the gift of a letter," said my Sister, "I asked for a share of thyself; but thou hast done no more than toss me the rind of thy days." Now, at first, under the unexpected rebuke, as if a dove had flown in my face, I was annoyed, verging to anger; but on thought I per- ceived that my Dozen's fault-finding and her disowning of a trifling thing from me, was honorable to me; for well I knew that if my unmindful scraps were all I had wit to do, her sweet spirit would have covered them with love. But fault-findfng, when not thus an honor, but a small pecking at small faults, is a bad unkindness; very mischievous. This fitly is called nagging] and I observe that the learned say that the verb nag is another form of gnaw, and truly nag- ging bites and eats the heart to pieces, I mean of him who is nagged; and as for him who thus has battened on another's heart, it seems to profit him little, for he goes as lean and ill-favored as before. I know not how to treat this unkindness as it deserves without falling into epithets and declamation, which I like not; and 183 Fault-Finding. there is no need, for any one will be round enough in his disgust with it who will consider but what it is, and how exceeding unkind, and what a fell fire-bug to the best edifices of human happiness. It is not hard to tell what nagging is - on a general view, not too curious, for it has ten thousand forms. Its essence is that it comes of settling the eyes on bad things when good are by us. For the bad will loose the tongue as well as the good if only it strike us as much. Now to talk about bad points continually, is to nag. The only avoidance is not to see the bad, or to see it but as a spot on the good sur- rounding the spot everywhere, like the small pits, or big pits, if you will, yet small by comparison, in the sun. Where- fore nagging, in essence, is the having an eye for little trespasses and small things. The unbearable issue of it at the mouth is but the belching of a bad rumbling in the heart. But though it be not hard to say what nagging is, loquacious fault-finders in this manner are hard to deal with. For nagging is too little to be made an oc- casion and yet too much to be borne. What then one can do if he be nagged I know not, unless he will be ridiculed on the one hand, like one who berates an ass 184 Fault-Finding. for braying, which is a solace to the creature, though it rend rounder ears, or unless, on the other hand, he will be a victim, like one who sweats under a bur- den and must bear it, though his driver be a clown. It is sad that a nagger's voice goes so- far, but there is no help for it; for he who- will screech will be heard, though he say ill things or even nothing. Time is said to be a great conqueror, but naggers are too much for him. The great bard says, " Time's glory is to calm contending kings; " but however the ancient Saturnus may fall on monarchs that fall on each other, he is no match for bickering clowns, which naggers are. They are not quieted so easily, for their wrangles and snarls are not on great occasions, which come rarely and may be done with, but on the small occasions of which life is full. But in an- other way old Saturnus makes tools of carpers and naggers for his overthrowings. Shakespeare says again that one of Time's offices is "to waste huge stones with little water drops;" but by constant dropping of the spume of naggers and prodders Time wastes greater things than huge stones even huge saintly patiences and hilly wealths of happiness, till nothing is left but a dust-bin. 185 Fault-Finding. Charitable people who by their own sweetness, or by reading of the Stoics, call every bad quality a sickness (of which good company I fain would be one, and the more the better) these, I say, will have it that this nagging is a disease. Truly it is like a sickness in this, that it grows fast if not taken in hand. Also in this, that it fills the whole place with pes- tilent vapors. Like some diseases also in this, that it is very hard to cure. Like others again in this, that it is infectious, for few are nagged very much but they will catch the habit in a degree, or else the dis- ease will take another form in them and they will grow sullen or dispirited. But even if it be an illness and not a crime, what then? Why should moral sicknesses be borne with more than physical, if they be even more pestilential? If one have an infectious disease spreading pain and death at touch, he is put in a pest-house, where, if he must die of it, he may not kill others; but if he recover he may come out. If this be reasonable with ills of the body, why not more still with moral ills, which truly cast around worse and deadlier germs than fevers and poxes? At the Sandwich Islands, which are burdened with leprosy, they have a special island set apart for the infected; which is merciful 186 Fault~Finding. and just, for there the sick are no worse, and they are spared making the healthy like to themselves. I think and I would be un- derstood soberly that it were well if there were a mid-sea island convenient to all shores where the naggers of the world could be gathered. And this would be the better in their case, for possibly it may be hoped that nagging is curable, though I fear rarely. Then not only would they cease, so banished, to drive Quiet into a corner and twist the face of Peace awry, but in time they might come out cured and able to live with their fellows again. I have heard of a rare healing for quarrelsome married couples, namely, that they be shut in a small room for a time with only one utensil of every kind needful, as one knife, one fork, one spoon, and so a cup, a plate, a chair, and so on, only one of each; by which the patience, concession, and po- liteness enforced by duly taking their turns with the articles, so prevails that they grow to a habit of mutual consideration, and come forth changed. Now, if the like device were followed, not with utensils, but in a moral way, it would not be one article, but one kind of temper or quality a company would be furnished with, to wit, their own. Thus, if the dishonest were islanded by themselves, it would fol- 187 Fault-Finding. low they must steal all together, if at all, which were the same as not at all, since none could gain above another. Or, if the ugly were gathered apart, they must be uncomely all together, which were the same as not at all, for there can be no ugliness without distinction; and this I think were as true of moral ugliness as of physical. Or, if the angry were walled in, the like were true; for if one were no more contentious than another, it were the same as all being at quiet. In like way, if these pecking fault-finders were shut off on a bald rock in the sea, as they would have only one kind of tongue between them, to wit, the nagging tongue, they might learn to make no victims where all must be victims, and so get the habit of peace in their tongues, and come out cured. But I should advise to receive them again by small boat loads. In soberness, naggers are to be resisted and put out of mind; and if one take the quickest way to put them out of mind, which is to put them out of sight, who is to be blamed? A prodder, and grumbler, and scolder, is the exact opposite of a warner; for they come after the event, when only they can give pain; but good warners before the event, when their words do service. Therefore you will not 188 Fault-Finding. find one who warns and one who nags in the same person; and one is useful and the other a torment. O ! friend Filemar, well remember I, and often have I bewailed for thee what thou didst reveal to me, unwittingly, as if a curtain were lifted an instant by an escaped gust of thy emotion (I wonder whether my Dozen will permit me this recollection, to set it down here, for she loved Filemar well and he was often at our humble hearth, a gentle presence), well remember I, O my friend, when thou wast helping us, as thy ready hand was wont, in putting up some book-shelves and decking them with draperies, thy unwonted re- mark thy first and last by which a fervid pain escaped, as a fiery trickle from a cu- pola if the luting of clay be broken a little. "Ah! that is well done," said I, " and the hangings robe the books fitly." " Yes," saidst thou, "but my wife will not like it." "Why not?" said Marian, open-eyed. " Because she did not or- iginate it," saidst thou. Then fell a si- lence, for very shame and tenderness. It was not easy to talk more. There was a fog in the air, and we became indistinct to each other. Our guest left us soon, Ah! Filemar, my friend! And not long after he departed this earth also. Some said, 189 Fault-Finding. under breath, that she who never was satisfied with aught which she brought not to pass herself, should be content with that; they said she killed him with slow poison, decoctions of herself in small doses at every eating and drinking. I know not. But with us thou livest in thy manfulness, Filemar, my friend. One principle is sure, namely, that there should be no fault-finding if there be no season of praising therewith. It may be allowed to censure a failure, with pre- caution and good intent (and still more a habit of failing, for it is a good rule to pass over single mishaps and censure only what grows habitual), if also duly we praise a success. Otherwise, fault-finding is wan- ton unkindness and brutish grumbling. Praise is the salt that seasons censure; and without it, rebuke has a savor which no one can stomach. One day there came to our table our friend D , a wife at the nether verge of youth, and strangely unsmiling, I had remarked. After that tea-time (it was a chance coming and then a staying with per- suasion to our evening meal) I understood the unlifting gray of the face. It was a dainty spread of the table thou hadst made, my Sister; and never better, thou chef of simple-lovely cooking, were those delicate 190 Fault-Pi ndtag. tea-biscuit which thou knowest I much affect. Ha! how often hast thou taunted me with 'revealing to thee too plainly the means to keep me in good nature! I have retorted, getting the better of thee easily, with some high-flown fancy, such as that it is no wonder I am mollified by a dainty viand which thou hast mixed with thy dropping smiles. Dost remember my finding thee in the kitchen, before one of thy favorings of me with this particular fine delicacy, smiling broadly to thyself? I know well thou wast foretasting my praise, as I returned to our study with a lively foresmack of thy biscuit. That same evening at table, the evening of our friend D 's presence, I com- mended thy dainty handiwork. I per- ceived the gray of our friend's face deepen; and she said, "Ah! my husband never does that; if things be good, he is silent, but always mentions the fault if aught have gone ill." Verily what a creature to cater for. His mouth is no better than a mill, which has no grace to make music when it has grist, but sets up a great clatter when it has none. I say without fear that there is no worse kind of a creature for human society than* one who snaps like a wolf at a bad point, a weakness, a fault; but never goes 191 Fault-Finding. grazing, like a lamb in warm weather, in pastures of good qualities, though these be wide and green. We are good, bad, poor, rich, noble, ignoble, faithful, un- faithful, loving, hating, failures and also great achievements, darkness and light; all these, I say, we are together, and every one of us is all these qualities, each with different measures of them. But your true nagger sees only the one kind, the dark, and roams in the dark with nocturnal animals. Whether it be better to have much fault-finding and therewith much praising, or little blaming but also small commend- ing, I know not. But the good and profitable way is to praise much, with a kind of flush and current, but do little fault-finding, and that slowly, with con- science. 192 Helping. XX. It is a saying of Sidney Smith that there be Samaritans enough, omitting the oil and twopence. Doing and giving are the tests and proofs of feeling which is so plain and simple a principle, and so sweet a thing withal, that like a homely, sweet melody, it needs but to be said, without enforcement or ornaments. Yet if Sidney Smith's saying be true, it is well that the simple melody of giving be sung often, till its sweetness be at home in all ears. After encouragement comes kindness to the point of helping. To give help is kindness which is like an inn, full of food, fruits and strength. If one end with en- couragement, like a Samaritan without oil and twopence, he may do much in pointing the way to the hospice; but he will miss more if he give not a push to the gate and help in unto the food and shelter his neighbor who has need of them. Timely help is great power, and there- fore large kindness. A task may be too great for the strength however encouraged; 193 Helping. and a man may carry well a load, once up, which he cannot toss to his shoulders. If then we do more than cry " Heave ho!" if to the weight we put our own hands and give a lift, it is past all seeing what a great effect we may do, what losses forestall by our seasonable help, what success begin, what riches, honor or content set running. I need not enforce this to my reader farther, especially as in this little book be- fore I have said what seems needful of deeds as the proof of feeling, and kind deeds therefore as the test and exhibition of kindness at heart: also of the two divisions of kindness, the negative, namely, which consists in giving no pain, and the positive, which is direct effort to give joy. The same distinction applies to helping our neighbor. Not to hinder any one is negative kindness; and I would not call it little, or nothing. Indeed sometimes it is much virtue simply to keep out of another's way. But to help is positive kindness, and far exceeds the negative, as a bright and glowing light is different from non- darkness. Every man has three things which he may give for help of others, and there is no man but has two of them in some quan- tity if he will but measure and use them well; these three are: Exertion, Time, 194 Helping. Money. Exertion and Time are the Samar- itan oil which every one possesses. It is a question only how much of them he will bestow on his neighbor's need. To undergo exertion and labor, to take trouble, to spend time, are great positive kindnesses, which many give, and therefore there is much good help in the world; but many also who negatively are amiable, and fain would see others prosper, have not the positive will or enough love to bestir them- selves, break their ease, take trouble, give time; and therefore there is not enough help in the world. Of money, the Samaritan twopence, it is true that many have not much; but true it is also that they who have least of it give the most, and true that many who, having very little, give nothing, might slice a small bit for another from their small loaf and be the more fed thereby in soul and not too much less in body. They are kind 1 ' Who, be their having more or less, so have That less is more than need, and more is less Than the great heart's good will." The beautiful pattern of this devout manner of giving, shining unto all eyes forever, is the poor widow whom the Mas- ter took loving note of and commended, 195 Helping. saying that by her little she cast in riches. And good is the saying of commentators that the two mites are what give such savor to the poor woman's devotion, for she might have kept one; but it was her heart to give all that she could. Therefore was her gift so acceptable. The same wisdom and reverence were in the Rabbinical air around Jesus. The sacrifice of the poor, said the Rabbins, is the most acceptable in heaven; for they give double, first, what offering they bring, secondly their own flesh. This they enforced with legends. " Once, " said they, "came a woman bringing an offering of a mere handful of flour; and the chief priest spurned her, saying, "That is a wretched nothing even for eating; how contemptible then for an .offering!" But that same night he was warned in a dream, and a Voice from heaven said to him, "Spurn her not, for her offering is the same as giving herself, her very life." There is no real giving unless there be sacrifice therewith. Can one in truth be- stow anything unless he set apart for another what well and sensibly he might apply to his own comfort? Doth he give fuel and paint rooms fire-ruddy who lets the poor pick up his chips which he will not stoop his own back to? It is to be 196 Helping. questioned whether any but the poor can know the savor and sweetness of giving, yea, or of getting. " There is a spiritual pleasure in patching a garment," said to me a good woman, " which no one can have who can buy a new one for the opening of hi$ purse." The lovely and beloved Mary Waterhouse, wife of William Ware, told me merrily of a bit of quaint old-fashioned furniture, an escritoire, which they looked at with great desire, exposed at the door of the shop of a dealer in such fine articles; but the cost was too much for them. Yet the temptation continued, as they passed the place daily in their walks, and with the desire they counted their coin, and at last, having collected enough and silenced some scruples whether it were not a worldly in- dulgence to which their conditions had no title, they brought home the coveted bit of elegance; and great was their admiration and comfort in it and their satisfaction with each other in the obtaining of it; and no king was ever prouder of a conquered province, said she. These are the joys of the not rich; and likewise the full sweet- ness of giving, is reserved for them, unless the rich will do in bestowing what the poor must, to wit, bestow so much that they pinch themselves somewhere. But it is seldom they will do that; yea, and the 197 Helping. easy souls can not conceive it is reason that they should. " I will give all I can afford," say they; which means, "until I begin to be abridged in some comfort," or mayhap even in some pleasure, so wholly do they imagine that what they have in their hands is their own. Here comes to me a memory of that most sweet friend of my life and treasure of my labors, my Sister. It was during that dark time when we were parted, too poor to make together the home that now she blesses " With the sunlight, moonlight, starlight; With the fire-light" of her love. I had need of some money in my distant place; for I was earning even less than she with her skillful swift hands and her nine hours' hard labor every day. Therefore she pinched herself in many ways to save the wherewith to send me help, and to abate the debts which weighed on me. The winter was cold and her walk to her labor long, in the biting mornings; but she denied herself the cheap muff which she needed, and tucked her hands up her sleeves for warmth, for my sake, which she called "wrapping them up in love," when I drew the truth from her long afterward; "and thus, thou see'st I 198 Helping:. made a muff of thee," said she, with a very arch look and just a perceptible cir- cumflex on "muff" giving it a very objec- tionable savor. But to my doubtful look she answered with a kiss and ran away. Ah ! my Dozen, what a light shines from thee around me! "After the day cometh the darkness, but the light of wisdom never goeth out;" and love is the great wisdom. And joy it is to be sure, my sweet Dozen, that, lovely as thou art, there be other sisters that do likewise, and other brothers better than I, though not more blest, many of both. Else would the heavens fall. The world is made glad by sacrifice. There is no real giving but is sacrificial, a kind of sacrament, a devo- tion, by the dedication unto another of what we prize and could turn to account for ourselves and fain would keep fondly but that still more we have a heart to give it. But to give what for ourselves we need not and want not is naught. " How can that leave a trace which has left no void?" He who gives only a bit of his overflow and touches himself in no way in the giving, may see himself in Bacon's remark of one who has hoarded everything his life long and now bequeaths it, that he is "rather liberal of another man's than of his own." For does a man own 199 Helping. aught before God which he can put to no comely use for himself? Rather then is he a steward or porter of it unto some one, and God is the giver; but if the man give what he might apply to himself in some fair good way, and forego something by reason of what he invests another with, then he adds himself piously to God and becomes a giver with him. Now, if help be loving and devout, which is to say, with sacrifice at need, ihen it is to be done wisely, which is matter for consideration in many points; but always one great point in giving help with wisdom is timeliness. Kind- ness often moves far and finely in an- other's affairs by the saving of time to him. It may be a matter of vast moment whether some task be done in a day or in a week; yes, the interests of years, the turning point of a life, may lie in that issue. If at such a point we "lend a hand " we can not dream how far the effects may travel. Nay, we may do kind- ness, if we be alert in it, ignorant that we are serving at a crisis. Add to this all the saving of time a little well-imparted knowl- edge, if this be the help or a portion of it, may grow to, spreading on many sides for many years, and who can count the effects of a little pains kindly taken, or imagine 200 Helping. the harmonies of it, so timely it drops into the world's business and so long goes on singing its part! Giving help being so very great a part of kindness, it follows that whatever gives power .and means of helping is to be looked to by a kind spirit. Economy and care are the sources of the means of help- ing. To be lavish and heedless in the use of money or material is great unkindness; in other ways, too, it is offence against nature, but especially it is great unkind- ness. He who will not make all things go as far as they can, by care and economy, cuts off another's part in what he has. A. penny saved is more than a penny earned, for certainly if I dropped it carelessly by the way in my own use, then to save and not drop it is a penny of power in me for my neighbor's good. It was a wise saying of a Chinese Emperor that if but one woman were idle in the Empire, some one suffered with hunger in some province of the dominion. Especially it is an easy and plain kind- ness to be economical and careful with our overflows of useful things. This will have great effect on the interests and- priv- ileges of others. For in every house how many things collect which we use not; or using them once, we are done with them- 201 Helping. A careless spirit will let them lie in heaps in garrets or barns; but conscientious kindness scatters them where they may be useful. Kindness is a great foe of waste, .for it seems cruel to destroy or abuse things which still are full of service for others, albeit spent for us. Kindness, therefore, will not suffer the pang of seeing rubbish heaps where lie decaying many things which others need. I have known persons very conscientious in this matter, keeping and selecting everything carefully to bestow it where it may continue its serv- ice. Kind and thoughtful minds save -disused reading matter, books, pamphlets, papers, and send them to cheerless places like prisons and sick chambers, or to dwellers in some remote hamlet where precious products of art come but rarely and scantily, falling like a few feathers from birds of passage. Of Lucretia Mott her grandchildren say, "It was contrary to her system of household economy to allow any one to use or tear up newspapers indiscriminately. She assorted them care- fully in several piles; and woe be to the unfortunate who took a paper from the wrong pile! Only the dailies were taken for kindlings, and not even they until they had attained a venerable age. The weeklies and monthlies were given away, 202 Helping. some regularly to friends who could not afford to subscribe for them, while others were made into packages for distribution at country meetings." She saved the inside of the envelopes that came by mail, on which to write memoranda, notes and comments and quotations from fav- orite books; she used "ravelings in sew- ing carpet rags, and in many kinds of mending where strength was not required." Some persons liked not these habits and even were harsh and ridiculing in regard to them, and of her own family some wished she would be more comfortable to herself when economy so sharp was not needful and she was both aged and famous. But it was an economy which had a double grace, it was religion, a reverence for things, and it was kindness; and, says a grandchild, "it is not for one who profited by her generosity to criticise as excessive the economy that made such generosity possible." Her husband was like her in these pre- arrangements for giving, and what they bestowed "was a large portion of what was never more than a moderate in- come. It was not given to ordinary chari- ties, as a rule, but was quietly passed over, five dollars here, ten there, or fifty perhaps, to help some poor overworked 203 Helping. seamstress to a holiday, to alleviate a case of temporary distress, or to furnish an un- expected treat to some self-denying drudge." A dainty instance of her econo- my is told; a member of the household, going into her room one morning, found her diligently mending a rip in her pillow. She glanced up and said, "Will thee please open that bureau drawer for me? Right in front in the corner thee will find a feather that I want." The feather was given her; she tucked it into the pillow and sewed up the hole. At this same time several of the family, children, grand- children, greatgrandchildren, were pre- paring for a journey. She called them to her severally in turn during one day and gave each one " a sum of money sufficient to cover the whole expense of the journey." Ah! well remember I one spirit like to this Quaker dame. But why say I "re- member." Is she not with me still? Comes not a light from where she is, and that light still on earth? Belike I say "re- member " because the preciousness of my many memories gather all in one, by reason of a certain unity and entire coherence in her character, so that always my past days with her mingle with the present. - I retain still with me the first time I saw St. Matilda (this is the name Theodorus gave 204 Helping. her, and her friends accepted at once the rechristening it was so suitable), thirty and odd years ago, when she was not so old as I am now, and I was a college lad. At an evening party at her sister's house she passed by, a slight, delicate woman, with iron-gray locks which allowed some curls at the temples, deep eyes like wells of insight, and a brow, nose and chin like Crawford's Beethoven by some indefinable touches made feminine. From that hour she has been a singular perfectness to me, like some fairness existing in the eye-sight itself; for I have looked at all the world very much through her. She is like a Quaker, with an acceptable unlikeness. I mean she has the sweetness, serenity, spiritual loveliness, stillness, government, with no touch of the mere precision and other limitations. She delights in music, and I knew just in what very chair to find her quaint sweet company for many years at every Symphony and Oratorio. Her house was used and open all the time, to a point of wonderment to common mortals. Rich and poor, learned and ignorant alike were at her table. To know her and fre- quent her house was to have a near sight of life as impartial as the far and myster- ious sight of it to be gotten in walking the streets. Well recall I one of her weekly 205 Helping. guests on a Monday, Miss C , a quaint, queer, lone ancient maid, knotted up in some places with rheumatism, but tall and very stiffly erect, with gray hair back of a big forehead and done up in a high knot with a large comb behind. She ate with relish and smiled not and said little. I can recall but one observation she was pleased to make, repeated with emphasis, to wit, that she ate the fat of meat because it kept her warm. It was St.. Matilda's loving good pleasure to have the antique dame pass all day of every Monday with her, that the lone rheumaticky body might have golden loop- holes at set intervals along her dusky way; and no doubt she eased the time between the chinks of light by anticipating the next one a fine and perpetuating charity, for anticipation hath a gusto of its own and is much more than the ghost of a feast. Throngs of persons came continually to St. Matilda for advice, sympathy, help of every kind, and she held levee daily like a queen or great officer, but one who kept no state nor antechamber and treated the poor and forlorn like fellow-queens. She made it the mission of many of her best years to take "unfortunate babies" (so called she them that had no name) and keep them in small private places, little asy- 206 Helping. lums, of her own, till she could find homes- for them; and for many hundreds of in- fants did she provide thus, yea, for hun- dreds more than a thousand. Never was there a house more hung with light "spread out like a curtain," nor more adorned, yet never one whose orna- ment and beauty so lay in the persons, not in the things. Her generosity was notable, lavish in- deed, but secret. Slyly or swiftly would she put money, large sums too, into a hand wherein she divined some need; and she is one who understands the need of food before starvation has set in. She could feel by conception a rare and per- haps a saintly, power; I mean, that by a loving imagination and wide spirit she so could apply her own experience as to con- ceive what she had not experienced and understand the things of others though not touching herself. She had a power which she called "Sensing." She could "sense" from afar, and it was not often that I could surprise her. She knew be- fore I came or spoke. When she came at my ring at the door, she has said, " I have been expecting you; I have felt you in the air all day." If I wrote to her from a dis- tance, though I had been silent a long time, she would answer, "I have been so 207 Helping. certain that what you tell me had happened to you or was about to happen that I have made ready for it." Such, though but in little, is Saint Matilda. To know her is to dwell below an upland whence a stream falls, and the bright waters provoke thirst, and to drink thereof is reverence and knowledge of loving-kindness. 208 Advising. XXI. To advise is a power possessed by kind- ness, and without kindness it is not pos- sible. This is important, because advice is the access of the old to the young; and because no one can stand alone. Trust is necessary to any power of ad- vice with us; for no fruit can grow unless the advice come from a trusted person and be given purely, which means with no taint in it either of vanity or of self-interest. But thus to think of another with a mind as single-eyed as for a need of one's own, is perfect and pure kindness. Hence ad- vice is a force of kindness. In a small wise essay on Advice, Sir Arthur Helps says, " You should not look about for the wisest thing which can be said, but for that which your friend has the heart to undertake and the ability to accom- plish. You must sometimes feel with him, before you can possibly think for him. There is more need of keeping this in mind, the greater you know the differ- ence to be between your friend's nature 209 Advising:. and your own. Your advice should not de- generate into comparisons between what would have been your conduct, and what was your friend's. You should be able to take up the matter at the point at which it is brought to you." All this is simple and truthful kindness, a "pure and perfect sincerity " of kindness, which is the con- dition of advisory worth. Besides, advice not always is welcome in itself. "In general," says Sir Arthur Helps, "it is with advice as with taxation; we can en- dure very little of either, if they come to us in the direct way. They must hot thrust themselves upon us. We do not understand their knocking at our doors." Now must I say I feel not like the essayist in this passage as regards tax- ation. For when I stroll the fields of a fair country and behold what men have done over forest and plain and hill and sea by leaguing themselves, or when I walk the streets of a rich city and see the same in architecture and many wondrous and beautiful arts, and feel a vast protection around me also, and whereas I am but one man and insignificant, yet I know that I am under care of all men and my claims are not counted insignificant, then I desire to pay my portion of the cost of this ex- cellence and to do all my part in the gen- 210 Advising. eral order, justice and architecture, and never yet I paid my taxes but willingly and feeling the better for it. And I must say the like regarding ad- vice too, in a measure. For one who is unwilling to be helped will miss very much good, and whoso thinks he can stand all alone will be very like to shore himself up so hard on one side that he will fall in some other way, if no worse mischance be- fall him. Yet also there are things which we need much, which yet must come delicately, like love, or censure, or religion. And advice is another such thing. To have it thrust on us boldly is very unwelcome and even mayhap sore to a not unwholesome pride, as an intrusion; and belike the reason is that advice is so good a thing and so excellent a power as to be worthy of delicate approach and preparation, and also that one who feels not this delicacy of it, and has no sense of the personal realm, but plunges at us boldly with his counsel, with never a " by your leave " or a respect, is like to be so presumptuous and over- weening that he is unfit to advise and can have no power in it; or even if he have some strong sense (which, however, is like to be twisted by his vanity and self- importance), surely has no soft and gentle 211 Advising. skill. Advice, therefore, must come for- ward with a most kind face, which is to say a countenance wholly filled with re- spect and love unto us, unshadowed with pride of doing a fine thing in advising us, and lighted with a reverent mindfulness of the personal realm. This is simple and pure kindness, which is the wedding gar- ment of advice; and advice shall not enter our doors without it. Touching the potency and value of acceptable advising which I have men- tioned, to wit, that it is the access of the old to the young, it is a precious power. By this means experience may be saved, and the tough lessons of life be cobbled into sandals for young feet thronging the same way, if only the youth can be led to put on the sandals. But this "if" ah! it bars the way like a little sand heap be- fore a wheel a small matter, but quickly it stops the traveling. The world would grow wise very fast if only the experience of one generation were taken at cost and set to purpose by the next. But "such a hare is madness, the youth, to skip o'er the meshes of good counsel, the cripple," that a youth of spirit who will listen to advice is a "rare bird" indeed, and they who have no spirit fail to listen by dull- ness or belike by sheer obstinacy, and many 212 Advising. others are careless, and all youth is like to be conceited; so that one way and another it is a hard matter for the old to advise the young. Well I remember that in my callow youth I thought ail persons verging fifty years, or even forty, were "old fogies" who had not caught life's trick, and the quick world had gone by them. And many a hard buffet had I, and many shames stomached and many woes suffered, before my pin-feather impudence took flight. And now succeeds another genera- tion, unshod as I was, to whom in turn I am a fogy, and all my cobbling with my experience can make no shoe which any of them will put on. So hardly can the old arrive at the young. Therefore if at all, only the purest kindness can do it, a kind- ness so pure that it is memory, sympathy, humility, confession, tenderness and em- brace, a turning about and holding the young to heart while over their shoulders we look back, with contrition for ourselves and yearning for them, at our traveling of the same road. La Rochefoucault says: "We give advice, but we can not give con- duct." His words are precise, " On donne des conseilsj mats on n'inspire point de con- duite." After the precept, then to move the conduct is inspiration, and this is the overflow of limpid love. 213 Advising. Touching the other reason of the value of advice which I have mentioned, namely, that no man is able to stand alone in his life, this also is a great value of it; for as to meeting life's straits alone, two things are to be considered: first, as I have said, that no man is able to do it with wisdom, and, secondly, that if one could do it, he would miss therein life's sweetest and most instructive joys, the unions of the heart. Wisdom and virtue are such qualities that all possible helps and re- sources are no more than enough to attain to them. All muniments wherewith we can wall ourselves in, are needful. There- fore good advising is a precious thing. And for giving advice the quality of the heart and soul is the most valuable part of intelligence. Nay, I know not what wit and sharp parts are worth in anything if the heart be hard and the soul greedy; for then wit is like swift feet on a wrong road; the swifter thereon the worse for them. " In seeking for a friend to advise you," says Sir Arthur Helps, in the wise little essay before quoted, "look for uprightness in him rather than for ingenuity. It fre- quently happens that all you want is moral strength. You can discern consequences well enough, but can not make up your mind to bear them. Let your Mentor also 214 Advising. be a person of nice conscience, for such a one is less likely to fall into that error to which we are all so liable, of advising our friends to act with less forbearance, and less generosity, than we should be inclined to show ourselves, if the case were our own." Simple truth is the greatest kindness if there be love with it. "The highest com- pact we can make with our comrade is, Let there be truth between us two for ever- more," says Emerson. But it must be truth with 4ove and loving-kindness which is taken for granted in Emerson's remark; and this shows the ground-value of love. 215 Respectfulness. XXII. I know not whether there be any practi- cal kindness so great as respectfulness, and I am sure there is none greater. Especially this is a kindness which is more precious by so much as the person who re- ceives it is nobler to prize it; -and few in- deed, I happily think, but would prefer a great and manifest respectfulness for them and unto them, to any other benefit, or all others together, without that grace of honor. Moreover, it is one of the bases I know not but I should say the main one, but certainly as needful as any other, such as sincerity, and the like of all other forms of kindness and of the possibility of them; for no man will busy himself much for what he respects not, neither will the person who is unrespected be able to re- ceive much good from us, and not at all the best benefits, such as encouragement, knowledge, counsel, of which I have been speaking. And if there be a deep and subtle disrespect in us unto a certain per- son, even though it be curbed well or be 216 Respectfulness. such as breaks forth into appearance only rarely or on delicate occasions, still there will be a vague pain and obscure unhappi- ness caused in him, and though he may get many benefits from us he will not receive the best one, which is inspiration, lilt of heart, and fine spirit to live. It is not easy to describe how vast and efficient a kindness respectfulness is, when it is warm, deep, at heart's center, ever ready to break forth into sight and action. It is an extreme and precious kindness, and confers a very active joy. Is there anything that so will hearten us day by day, suffuse us with such a might of joy around the soul, so make us equal to all occasions and endue us with faith that we shall not try great things in vain, as a deep consideration and respect for us overflow- ing from any one, especially if that one have a place in our love? Moreover, this manner of kindness is a very beautiful thing, and as unto our favored ones it is rooted in the finest quality of love, so unto the general company and usual bevy around us respectfulness hath root in a large and religious heart for men. A gentle woman of the family of Ware, friends and lovers of Orville Dewey, told me that on inquiry as to the source of a certain respectfulness emanating from him 217 Respectfulness. and stirring like air and light around any one who came to him, she found the grace sprang from a deep reverence for the hu- man soul. Many there be, I am very sure, nay, I have seen such, and a sad sight it is who fall short of what they might do in life, and shrink into themselves or betake them- selves to lone ways, because they have not had the heartening kindness of a warm and sweet respectfulness put forth unto them and spread around them. For it is a very hard thing to lift the head much above the importance which the persons near to one assign him by their manners; and it is easy for a modest spirit that never is regarded much and never shielded from intrusion or interruption, but every labor and care laid on him, and no fine consider- ations offered him, and no advocate of his dignity or due place to be found in any bosom for such a one, I say, it is easy to think, and it is great odds but at last he will be persuaded, that he is worth no more than these neglects and infringements express of him. For there is nothing in the world worth so much to a soul that hath a scrap of nobility in it as a rich and consistent and steady respectfulness ac- corded him. Even affection is not so precious. Sometimes, no doubt, he who 218 Respectfulness. is disregarded, especially by the persons nearest to him, has some lack of weight in himself, some inscrutable deficiency which effects a slightness or lightness about him, so that he commands no observance; but sometimes too, it is one of the ill points, and a punishment, of disregardful, un- respectful persons, that they pass by " modest merit " to expend themselves on flaunting " parts; " and they know not how ridiculous and unlovely they appear to a sound and a kind eye that, by reason of the soundness of kindness, comes nearer to seeing things as they are. Moreover, even if any one be of slight make and no Weight, it is one of the sweetest and fairest offices of kindness to do such manner of observance to him as can shield him from secret despair and support him to make the most of himself. I said just now that unto our favored ones, respectfulness is rooted in the finest quality of love; which leads me to a thought that often hath arisen in me to a great height namely, that between lovers respect and the observance thereof should rise into a passion. I would define a noble love, whether friend-love or that friend-love with a somewhat more which is marriage-love, as a passion of respect mingled with a deep tenderness of affection. 219 Respectfulness. N And the passion should be in the respect; for the respect is a sky whence the pure trans- port will rain into the tenderness also, that it will blossom with all manner of fervid things. But if the passion be not first and by origin in the respect, but in some other feeling (like the "passion to possess " the bad name of a worse thing), ,in that measure the love is abased; and there be degrees of that abasement and of selfish- ness therein which have no right to the name of love. I would speak only of beautiful things in this book so far as may be, as I have said before; so here rather of the beauty of respectfulness than of the ugliness of im- pudence. Yet the evil must be known sometimes, "because often it is of the nature of a pit-fall, which is no more than a black hole if we know well where it is. Perhaps if I bring some of the shadow of impudence under the light of respectful- ness, the bad shadow may appear more truly as its nature is. And bad it is, gross, base. Sometimes I have thought that impudence is the greatest offense one can do another. For other wrongs may be escaped or amended or overlooked or forgotten, because they are like robberies. But impudence is like a blow, a slap on the face of the spirit, a 220 Respectfulness. desperate offence, a slave's lot if it be borne. It is not to be revenged, but it is not to be borne. One should choose to sit in a desert and feast off his soul while the body should dry unto death, not to consort with an impudent person who can use a bludgeon on the spirit. A blow always has been felt a base in- dignity and horror. It is so. Even to touch another, save with great conscience, is an offence, such is the sense of personal sphere and inviolate retreat. A blow is a gross horror. I have read somewhere a story of a servant in an oriental country, the man of some Frank or Saxon, who killed himself on being struck by his master. He started back, a look of horror spread on his face, and drawing his dag- ger, he said, "You are my master, and I have eaten your bread; I can not lay hands on you, neither can I survive such abase- ment," and he struck the steel to his heart. Therefore an impudence is such an immense wrong, because it is a blow struck on the spirit, a private wrong, a wrong against personality. Other wrongs fall on belongings only, like reputation, property, opportunity, friendship (if it be undermined slanderously), and so follow- ing; but insolence is an offence against in- ward rights and personal state. In " The 221 Respectfulness. Ring and the Book," the Tertium Quid of Rome, answering the charge that Guido should have killed at first or not at all, exclaims, "Sooner? What's soon or late i' the case? ask we. A wound i f the flesh, no doubt, wants prompt re- dress; It smarts a little to-day, well in a week, Forgotten in a month; or never, or now, revenge ! But a wound to the soul? That rankles worse and worse." This vulgar extraction of impudence for it is both high-flown and truly menial has many faces and styles. Direct abuse, insolent speech, are but louder swells of impudence, like the blare of a horn made loud, but the same brassy thing whether louder or softer. Sneers, intrusions, meddling, undue questions, the habit of lecturing other persons, flippancy, pre- sumption, any manner of forwardness, boldness with other persons, are titles of impudence, though they be done in breath- ings or shake their little fool's-bells softly. I have noted also many impudent persons whose notion of ill temper in another per- son is that he will not put up with their impudence, a very grotesque notion, yet I conclude, one of the natural evils of im- pudence, and a punishment of it, to be so ridiculous, and sticking close to it. Yet 222 Respectfulness. what defence have we from an impudent man? The only way not to be hurt by an impudence is to despise the source of it. But some persons can not feel that con- tempt for anything above a monkey, and so by their own virtue are open to the thrusts of the impudent. I know not whether it be needful to en- force with circumstance; yet examples may do more than words. I have culled some instances from my observations which may serve to dress up this Punchinello for sight. I heard a bold woman ask a scholar whether it were not time he brought some- thing to pass with all his studying and fix- tures; a gross impudence also base igno- rance therewith, which always is like to cleave to impudent spirits. I have been told of one who, having hurt another by some ill manners or inconsidered act, said easily, "I didn't mean anything, child;'* an impudence, a complacent impudence, though belike too fine a point to be seen by a saucy eye. Of another I heard that she called loudly down-stairs to bid the maid dismiss her company because the clock had struck ten; wanton, vile impudence, a yokel's trespass, a grievous injury and unkindness, flagrant ill-breeding. A cus- tomer desired a printer to bind his pam- phlet as the printer should please, in any 223 Respectfulness. pleasing way, and when the books were delivered to him, wrote, " I am sorry you have chosen for the cover two such ugly colors;" insolent, very insolent, a puffy im- pudence, rude, boorish unkindness. All such-like manner of impudence is very vulgar, base-born or very ill-taught, and has a coarse grain of selfishness in it. From the Percies I have a story that a "Lord Abingdon who was remarkable for the stateliness of his manners, one day riding through a village in the vicinity of Oxford, met a lad dragging a calf along the road; who, when his lordship came up to him, made a stop and stared him full in the face. His lordship asked the boy if he knew him. He replied, ' Ees.' ' What is my name?' said his lordship. 'Why, Lord Abingdon,' replied the lad. ' Then why don't you take off your hat?' 'So I will, sur,' said the boy, ' if ye '// hold the .calf.' " If the selfishness, unkindness, commonness, ignorance, all that makes up the lump of impudence in a person, could be taken out and set up to sight on the road, and moulded a bit, and legs gotten forth from the shoulders as on the king's charger in the Parsee legend, it would be as stupid in face and in fact, and as spraw- ling and perverse over the road, as any calf; and if the person from whom it was 224 Respectfulness. extracted were still tied up with it in some manner and obliged to drag it along, as much as if still it were in him, such a one might say very seasonably to any man who should complain of his impudence and de- mand of him to carry himself regard- fully, that he would indeed if but any one would hold the calf. Contrariwise, what a beauty and grace, how kind and heartening, from what a fine root of nature or nurture, is a constant re- spectfulness of feeling and manner. Em- erson went to call at an intelligence office in search of domestic help, and the poor woman who kept the place said afterward that " he treated her like a queen." I was present once by a good chance for the picture hath hung on the walls of my heart till this day when a student came to take farewell of his teacher, an aged scholar known to the learned of two hem- ispheres. The young fellow said a few words of gratitude, to the effect that if ever he attained to any rank in letters it would be the forthcome of the love of scholar- ship, the ideal of it which his instructor had inspired in him; and there was more in face and voice than in the few words. The venerable scholar was silent a little, and then said, "Sir, your words are very welcome to me, and I thank you for this 225 Respectfulness. farewell. I should have been specially grieved if you had gone away without it, for all through your course of study with me you have shown me a manner of respect- fulness if I may say so, an affectionate respectfulness very agreeable to an old man." I knew once a little girl bless- ings on the lovely maid she has grown to, if these words ever shall meet her eye! who is the heroine of a fine picture in my mind's gallery. She was much in love with her uncle, a student; the little golden- haired damsel, three or four years old, regarded him with admirable reverence.' One day she was seen sitting in her little chair drawn close to his feet looking up at him with great worship, while he, ab- sorbed in his book, paid no regard to her. But no discontent appeared. She was perfectly respectful of him. The little fine creature knew by soul the balance of observance and familiarity, that double-star of the domestic heavens, and was ceremonious to the scholar's mood while waiting to resume the playmate's freedom. Such is the ugliness and the beauty over against one another. King Lear said it was " worse than murder to do violent outrage on respect; " which is like what a friend said to me, that he thought no im- 226 Respectfulness. pudent person had a right to life. And why it is horrid crime to stab the body, but none to thrust daggers of impudences, to "hack one another in the sides" of the soul, who can see reason? On the other hand, how fine and far shines a loving respectfulness! With what a-light! What a sweet virtue of love it is, with a light above common virtues! It diffuses a bliss! Respect means originally to look back on, to look twice or sundry times on, and so to give heed and care. Let them who would dwell in one another take note that there is a bare lack of the due heed, with- out more offence, which may hurt more cruelly than a stranger can do with what- ever scoffs and open impudence. There is no high fervency of loving without much thinking, and again thinking. 227 Education. XXIII. The effects of kindness in affairs are past numbering, of which Encouragement, Recommendation, Advice, Respectfulness, Help in many forms, Knowledge imparted, Economy of matter and time, are but a few 'titles. Indeed these effects are mir- acles, and if all were written down, "the world could not hold the books that should be written." Yet another must be added, to wit, Education; for this is one of the .great results and powers of kindness. Truly Education must be the work of lov- ing-kindness; for it is but the drawing of us forth, and we shall come forth to naught but kindness. Of course I mean not, in the office of training others, young or old, to commend a weak or yielding spirit which can hold never to a steady purpose nor go onward firmly to one sure point, foolishly fond, cruelly indulgent. For such feeble tempers commonly are very cruel in effect, however they be in mean- ing. For very often, being weak, they are unstable and capricious, at one moment indulgent, at the next harsh, and each without reason or reflection. But to be 228 Education. indulgent without consideration may be as cruel in near effect (if one, for example, let another take a poison because it tastes pleasantly), and as calamitous in far result, by breeding a foolish or perverse char- acter, as an unreasonable gusty harshness. Besides, a weak yieldingness of temper drags after it another injury, namely, that it despoils others of loving; for only firm- ness and force, decision and steadiness, can draw forth much love or good love. Continually it is seen that it is not weak parents or teachers who are beloved by children. In many ways, therefore, it is plain that the feeble, unbraced, unresolute, bending temper is in effect a cruel one as much as a harsh spirit. But Education must be done by a large, unwearying, ever hopeful loving-kindness, which also is wise withal and has an eleva- tion and, if so I may say, a sternness in its love, like a mountain, very kind and full of prospects to a climber, but stooping its head not a whit to loiterers and feeble- legged gentry at its foot. For who will be drawn to knowledge or to any good thing by cruel acts or fierce manners', or by coldness, indifference, void of atten- tion, or by weakness? And yet what young person or creature can withstand forever the entreaties, example or instruc- 229 Education. tion of a firm kindness which never tires? " Consider," says Marcus Aurelius, "that kindness is unconquerable if it be sincere and not an affected smile or acting a part. For what will even the worst man do to thee if thou continue to be of a kind dis- position toward him, and if at opportunity thou admonish him gently and calmly cor- rect his errors at the very time when he is trying to do thee harm, saying: ' Not so, my child. We are constituted by nature for something else. I certainly shall not be injured, but thou art injuring thyself, my child;' and show him with gentle tact and by general principles that this is so, and that even bees do not as he does, nor any animals which are formed by nature to live in company. And thou must do this neither with any double meaning nor for a reproach, but affection- ately and without any rancor in thy soul, and not as if thou wert lecturing him; nor yet that any bystander may admire, but when he is alone." This sage says herein that kindness enough prolonged, which means unfailing, surely will educate if it be perfectly sincere. But what an "if!" What a necessity! That it be simple, purely genuine, without selfishness, pride, or any falsity in it! Now recall I at this moment a man and a 230 Education. woman who set about to correct or change somewhat in the situation and action of a friend to which they objected; and an excellent good motive they said they had, and it is but fair to take their word for it, since the soul is invisible, and believe that there was much spice of desire to benefit their friend, and that they little were con- scious, as animals perceive not their own odors, of the wanton pride, ugly vanity and sanctimony wherewith they set to at their friend. They were so wantonly pleased to turn lecturers and admonishers that in that soda-flame all else in them turned ghastly. They were so eager for their vantage that they perceived not how they danced at a funeral of his hopes to the tune " I am better than thou." Then were they much wonder-struck, in their heart- blindness, and displeased with him, be- cause he pushed back their boldness and would not be admonished of them, being too much afflicted by their skipping gait and impudence and satisfaction with them- selves. Yet so must it be; for a jealous or complacent or impudent state of mind has an exceeding intensity of color wherewith to stain a considerable mass of good in- tent, and make it as worthless and nauseous as fair-looking butter in its yellow pride which has imbibed some bad odors, tar or 231 Education. oil or garlic, set near it. For a correcting, admonishing, advising, educating can be done only by the most pure simplicity of love and unadulterated sincerity. Even very common natures, yea, and very bad characters, whose wits and senses are very blunt, will detect a false ring, a vanity, or a mere hue and cry, in an attempted re- proof or instruction, and will set it at naught. Deservedly; for even if they would do well to twist a bad thing to their own profit, the bad thing has no claim to it. But to a great, simple, clear loving- kindness, all things will yield at last in time, in good time. If it be a far time, kindness must be patient, for some things dissolve slowly. Also, kindness must be wise and expect not things beyond conditions. We must act toward all things according to their nature and " acknowledge everything to be what it is." If I wish to try the vim of kindness on a tiger, I must take measures first which to the creature will not seem kind, and very surely will not be pleasant to him, nor soft and gentle; for else he will eat me at once. It is not kindness but folly to enter into conversation with a tiger on supposition that he is like a lamb, or that he is a lamb in fact though 232 Education. to our eyes a tiger. I profess no non- resistance, nor feel I any qualm or reluc- tance to say so, as if half-fearful that I put away a good or ideal thing. Force has a place in nature, and it is due and should be active in some moral conditions or events. If a man may lay constraining will on himself, I see not why he may not lay constraining hands on another in an exigency. For why inward and mental energy and decision is good, but becomes bad when it passes forth into- the outward and physical at need, I never could see. I have read credibly that Tolstoi, being pushed on his doctrine of non-resistance, was asked whether, on occasion of a furious man holding up in the air a child and lashing the quiv- ering little creature with a rod, one might interfere by force; and he answered, "No." "But what may be done?" "We may reason with the man, talk to him, beseech him." "But if he be deaf with rage and either hear not or will not listen, and continue whipping the child?" "Then we have done w r hat we can." ."And we must let him flog the helpless infant because we may not take hands to him we must stay by and see it to no purpose, or run away from it, be- cause we may use no force?" "So." 233 Education. What a besottedness is this! And all be- cause it is written in Scripture, "Resist not evil," or "the evil doer," which- ever we shall translate it. I have no way to follow the story, to explore it in its source, and I must ask forgiveness of Tolstoi if this tale be mythical, which pur- ported to be an interview with him; but I suppose it is of a piece with his doctrine, though it be the extreme of it. Neither have I read what he may say for himself in this vie^w, nor cared to read it; for it is but to expound texts, or at least to ground on them, sticking as fast and as dangerously as a ship on a sandbar while the living ocean beats on it. And truly I have no time to read any one wherein he is not free of his own soul, but ties himself to some text, and has but one answer and reason, "It is written." Now simply I say, I would deal with everything after its kind, and not with a furious man as with a calm one, nor with a robber as with a peaceable man, nor with a violent and bullying fellow as with a gentle one. I -would not leave them to do their will un- hindered if belike the rage, the thievish- ness or the impudence have smeared them with an unction from which bland dewy words roll off. It may be useful and vir- tuous and needful to knock a man down. 234 Education. Do it, then. But do it with love, as a surgical tour de force, inwardly as calm and beneficent as the heavens that insphere the act, the soul thus being as righteously busy as the fists, each after his own fashion. I say with conscience that I believe in fists on occasion, and in staves, and in bind- ing with cords, and all other means of de- fence or offence short of killing; and by no means would I fail to perceive, or perceiv- ing, shirk, an occasion for them. I would advise all young men to understand sparring and attain to skill in it, so that on proper occasion they may be found equipped with science against brute-force. Moreover, the sense of right power and of good ad- vantage over common muscle goes very far to keep the heart calm and benevolent and make the blows uncruel. Naught is so disturbing and fury-engendering as a sense of weakness and non-mastery when one must launch himself into an emergency. Here will I avail me of a good bit of wisdom from my Sister, my dear Marian. She will be no stranger to these views when she shall review these sentences. For this is no new matter with me, but old thoughts, and I have had them over with her and " tumbled them up and down " in our talks more than once. And her loving soul has agreed with me. " For," said my 235 Education. Dozen, with a smile, " as nature has not given hard fists and knotty biceps to women, but to men has given them, the meaning is both peace and war, but that one fighter is quite enough for two persons; and," she added, with a roguish beam at me, " also it means that in time peace shall prevail utterly and there shall be no fighters at all." "Oh! ho!" said I, "how makest thou out that?" "Why, thou see'st, brother," answers my Dozen demurely, "if Abel had had a sister instead of a brother, she would not have asked, ' Am I my brother's keeper?,' because she would have known well that she was." Hereat I began, "Thou art very much too" . But she put her hand over my mouth, and with that advantage continued, "And thou knowest the adage, ' The keeper can lead the elephant with a hair.' 'Tis true, we, the sisters, are keepers of rather wild creatures, who will be still snarling and clawing on a chance; and sometimes the wild creature of one of the keepers breaks loose and falls on the keeper of another with tooth and nail. Then there is trouble; and I would be loth to think my brother would not fight for me on such occasion." With this my Marian, who is given to quick changes (you have seen a mantled pool, gentle reader, which lies under stars 236 Education. and trees like crystal, so adamantine seems the diamond surface; but so tenderly mo- bile is it that a sigh will rock it, nay, a pencil of light seems to carry breeze enough in its fan to ripple it; such is Marian) looked at me with a sweet ser- iousness and loving trust which moved me; but my satisfaction somewhat was dimmed by her action; for she took my hand, whereat methought a doubtful look stole in, and she doubled my unpracticed fist and regarded it, and methought an intelli- gent amusement flickered a moment at her mouth. "We are agreed as to the goodness of fighting on occasion," said I, "but all turns on the occasion, and how we are to know it without misadventure. For one person will find never an occasion, like Benedict Button who agreed that a wife must be ruled, but when it came to the point of an occasion, never found aught in which he thought he should rule his own wife; and others, contrariwise, make so light of it that anything is occasion for a setting to, even with weapons. There- fore, between these, how may the right oc- casion be known with a wisdom sure enough for so great a matter? " Now this I said not to disprove the virtue of a "holy war," (for I would be as loth as my 237 Education. Dozen to think I would not use my fists for her, or any oaken staff at hand, in a pure fury, at need), but as a perplexity. For it was what a good disciple of George Fox had said to me but recently when I was opening this subject with him. "I grant thee," said he, "that there may be occasion for fighting; but I would remind thee that it is not given to human wisdom to know the occasion. That what may seem like an occasion truly is an occasion, is what neither thee knows nor can any man." I answered that this rule would cut off a vast portion of all human judg- ment and action, for the greatest matters must be conducted often in uncertainty; but he replied that it was right to do many things in ignorance and hope, but that fighting was so horrible a thing that it should be done only on absolute assur- ance. "But," cried I, " who can have absolute assurance except the Infallible?" "True," said he; "therefore leave war to God." Now when I told my gentle Sis- ter this conversation, there came forth from her that bit of good wisdom to which I have referred. " I think the Friend is mis- taken in two ways," said Marian: " First, it seems to me not true that fighting is the most horrible and worst of things; for not to fight, supposing the occasion real, is far 238 Education. worse, as I think, Brother. Therefore it may be very much worse to err by not fighting on real occasion, than, by fight- ing on mistaken occasion, to err the other way. And the second point is that we are not left without due guidance in this matter, but we have an eye specially able to discern the color of occasion and know it efficiently. That eye is Peace. The man who is loving-kind at heart and dearly seeks peace will know when there must be war. He will know the occasion when it is present. But the unkind will mistake occasion and rush to it when there is none; and therein is one of the sad penalties of unkindness." So said my Marian. Ah! thou loving one and my beloved, thou mindest me of the fragrance of a Kempis when he saith r 11 No one knoweth to speak but him who loveth to be silent, and no one knoweth to command but him who loveth to obey." 1 We have been very poor, my Sister, and young were thy feet when they came to the treadmill, and long were the many yoars of thy labors. No academe has waved its shades over thee, and the sciences are unto thee like stars in a far firmament. But how ripe is thy mind with the ripeness of thy soul! How sweet is thy wisdom with the sweetness of thy love! How 239 Education. clear are the humors of thine eye to see truly! How reflecting the loving quiet and devout patience of thy spirit which keepeth thee pellucid to receive into thy- self and to shape again in thyself all things as they are! And how vain and astray are those who think to ripen in portions, and without the heart. For no more than a fruit can be red-ripe on one side and green-crude on the other, can a man be open in mind and shut up in heart. If the fruit so be soft on one cheek and hard on the other, it is but a false ripeness, unperfected, rather indeed an untimely advance to decay, and it is an un-fruit-ed fruit, not brought to any true soundness, and the part which to the eye so is seeming-ripe, to the taste and to the stomach, which are the true tests, but is fair falseness, for to the stom- ach it is unwholesome and to the taste it has a bitter or else a flavorless savor from the crude portion of it. Such-like is a man who being still untender in heart thinks therewith to be wise in mind, or being thoughtless, untutored, unearnest in mind, uncareful to get knowledge and to reflect, thinks therewith to come at any good virtue and perfectness of heart. If a man have the learning of Sir Thomas More and have not his heart, be 240 Education. sure he will have not his wit and wisdom. Nor if he have the soft and gleeful heart without the carefulness of reflection, neither that way will he come at the ripe- ness, to be large and wise. For neither can one think well without loving, nor love well without thinking. And yet I would put love first and count it most, as more leading unto thought and unto the seeing of things as they are, and thoughts the more following after love, and then falling back unto it, to die in it, as it were like leaves in the soil, to enrich it and thereby lift themselves from it to a new life, more in numbers and in beauty. Great wit without love is a corner; but great wit with great tenderness is all Na- ture. A man may swell, be impudent, strut, in the corner, and not seem therein very ridiculous to himself, nay, nor to others much out of keeping, because the corner is so small. But in Nature there is no impudence, nor figuring and posturing, because it is unlimited, and all things are harmonious together therein, which is its greatness. It is strange to me how topsy- turvy and flatly upsidedown the witty do place these things and make up their rank. A woman said to me and "a. woman well reputed," much regarded, being witty and well knowing her wit and claiming much 241 Education. on account of it and assuming foremost places in right of it this woman said to me, "Oh, I am not tender, I make no claim to be tender! " and she might have added, for so did her actions loudly, "I claim not to seek to be tender nor to bring myself to that condition." Now in saying this she spoke with no compunction, but rather as if it were no shame to a woman to lack that grace; nay, rather as if she were lifted above a human frailty thereby, and could see the better unbefogged in it. She knew not what a portion of the soul's sight is blinded in untenderness. But never, even to her secret self, would she have avowed a like lack of under- standing, or if secretly conscious of it, that she would have been ashamed of, and by no means declared it, nor allowed others to mention it. This is what seems to me a strange topsyturviness, a putting of last things first, and the reckoning of first things as of no place. Because of this inverting and transposing of things the Nazarene Master foretold another turn- ing over, that the order should be set right again, and the things now first should be made last and those now last be made first; and in like manner Paul says, "The wisdom of this world is foolishness with Him. It is written, He taketh the 242 Education. cunning in their craftiness. For God often hath chosen the things accounted foolish in the world, to put to shame the wise, and the weak things of the world that he might put to shame the things that are strong; and the abased things of the world and the despised things hath God chosen." With this thought, that in love groweth wisdom, comes back my mind to my Mar- ian, my heart-dwelling Sister. Equally doth my eye rest on her, and my mind, with my eye beholding her joyfully when she is present, and with my mind's eye making a presence of her when she is absent. How inexpressibly do I de- light in her delicate, lissom beauty, her loveliness, her tenderness, her aerial pres- ence, her spiritual pervasion round about me, her strength as of a fine Damascus blade, and her mental touch of rare and singular genius. These qualities all are joined together in her loving goodness like colors in white light; but on prismatic oc- casion they break forth, and she, the sim- ple, the sweet, is clothed in the rainbow. How often I sit looking silently at the fine ellipse of her brow over from her eyes to the gentle obscurity of the curve in her soft hair above her neck. It is a fine and genius-carrying symmetry, that same fair curve, rising from the valley of her eyes, 243 Education. not like a masonry or cliff, as do some foreheads, straight and barren, or bulging, and square-angled at the temples, but like the enriched breast of a slope full of seeds and roots of all manner of bloom. Nature, in the external perfections that answer to spiritual, hath been careful of lines, and of the continuance of them, that they should sweep over and around in fine curves; and howsoever we view her figures and heads, the boundaries should be lovely lines un- angled. Often have I observed that the head and brow which, from the eyes over, follow a gentle graceful recession unto a fair round of the top and again a like curv- ing descent and gentle ingress to the neck that this, I say, is the manner and shape of head which shows, not a genius, for this or that, but genius in wholeness, not parts t(as with a fine ironical instinct we dub -smart wits), but a unity, of fair sane power, harmony, "poetic justice," and an eye of the mind to see things as they are. Therewithal have I noticed also that this same symmetry of curving and un- angled contour is sign of expressiveness, of the gift to put forth ourselves, by speech or other arts, in forms which are beautiful, poetic, musical, tender, humane. Compare the heads of Bacon and Shakes- peare, that massive rampart, that forti- 244 Education. fication, that hostile masonry rising square and beetling from the eyes of the one, and the other's invitation of brow, if so I may call it, the humane grace and harmony of the refluence. Prate not to me that one was a changeling of the other in the cradle of poetry. Their heads are enough. That square brow, of front and angles, is the wall whence " parts" spy out from the eye; but Shakespeare's genial forehead is a casement where the man in whole, with grace, love and song, sits at window. In that massy cube of Bacon's forehead could not have been conceived the things Shakespeare has done, even if the cold essayist had mayhap the grace to envy the poet righteously; nor would Shakespeare have cared a doit to leave his persons and the human heart to take up with the philosopher's frigid cheapenings, nor put his large fervors to that cynical work, " though it cried " hon- ors " never so! " Shine still in me and around me, dear and gentle spirit, my Sister, fringing thy loving-kindness and thy wisdom with the colors and corona of thy delicate genius. Bright and fair is the morning wherein these words are written, Nature's gracious- ness according to the season; but more full of light than the sky hath my Sister 245 Education. dawned in me. Soon she will call me to our morning meal. Know I not her ways? Her feet will come like feather-falls to the door, and softly as a violet opens will the door swing to her hand, and cautiously will the ray of her eye creep in, like morn- ing over hills, and her voice, like a rustle of silence, will say, " Hidalgo," which is her way of announcing a meal, referring to the " Hidalgo's dinner " of the poet, "very little meat and a great deal of table cloth; " for this is her ideal of a repast if the cloth be snowy. Or perhaps she will nod only, or look quietly, if I seem abstracted; and all lest she dim or break some "great thought " which I may have. So will she come; but already, by such manner of coming which is known unto me, and by all her loving reverence of spirit, lest aught be disturbed, she has arisen in me and come unto me more than the sun and shone over my matin page. And here she is! "Good morning! Come in, Blessing! Didst hear that robin- whistle among the sparrow-twitters this morning, the first of the Spring? Ah! I knew it would not escape thine ear." 246 Outcasts. XXIV. Kind reader, though I am pleased to write this chapter, and by no means would omit it, yet it is written by my Sister's bid- ding. I had finished my writing, and Marian had it in hand, when she said to me, "I see naught herein of kindness to the outcast. " ' i All are outcasts who receive no kindness," I answered. " But some are outcasts first and thereupon unkindly used," said Marian. 11 How often have we agreed," continued my Sister, " that the present dealings with criminals make a blot on our civility; and thou hast visited many of the cages and barred places and seen the abominations of them." "But, Sister," said I, "the book hath its plan and now is builded ac- cording to it. If I add another chapter, will it not be like hanging out an unsightly and unconformed wing on a house, an ex- crescence which upsets the beauty and the gracious outline?" "That is naught," said Marian. "Thou writest not for beauty but to do good, and gatherest beauty by 247 Outcasts. the way because it is one of the tools for doing good withal. " " Beauty is its own excuse for being," I murmured. "True," said my Dozen; "wherefore, seek the greater beauty. If thou can write words which will count in one heart anywhere, to awake the thought that society shares in the crime of the criminal, and the ques- tion what duty lies therewith on society, thou wilt build a greater beauty in that soul than the architecture of a book. And if thou add some discourse for the sake of kindness and justice, I mistake much if it will be found like a hanging ugliness, but rather like a fair part which was latent and has grown forth. Besides," so continued my Dozen, " I think not only thy book lacks a virtue if thou neglect this justice and mercy in it, but thy discourse of education therewith, which thou endest with speak- ing of children, lacks a fair and round out- line if thou omit to speak of the educing and disciplining of wayward persons and outcasts." Bethink you, reader and if there be two reading together, a brave man and tender woman, who mysteriously, being invisibly one in love, have become visibly one in children, in the perilous joy of them, in the anxiety of them because they must meet the world's temptations and be 248 Outcasts. washed around with the eddies of society,, bethink you the more whether we share not sadly and be not very answerable in the fate of the shameful creatures who now are in the small cages in the prisons. Have not we, though free, accessory guilt with those who are confined? What* say you? That you can recall no prison-like act of yours, nor ever did you set any one going toward the cages? Nay, I would not imagine your souls to be bruised in that manner. But tell me, if society so be formed and so act in body and soul as to make rotting and sore places which exhale criminality, where is the conscience about it? Who is to be loaded with that foul- ness? Who must feel guilty of it? Shall no one be burdened with the festering heaps except those whom the noisome steams, have made sick? It is a hard thing to find the conscience of the whole; but your con- science, my conscience, must be aroused, till at last and at least we use our mouths and cry aloud and say, Shame on usE Then will the little leaven have entered which will raise the whole lump after a season. Here is the simple truth, namely, that the whole social structure is accessory ta crime and in complicity with it; and being so, we do worse than the criminals if we be 249 Outcasts. indifferent to our part in making criminals, and then the more and worse if we hale them out as aliens and castaways, and trample on them already down, and con- sume the last of their self-respect in the vileness, shames and hardships of small -cages. That society, however bad, must defend itself, I admit; because there are many innocent, and because if the social structure be preyed on too much by its own spawn of crime, it will reach no bet- ter state, nay, will be eaten up. There- fore there are men who must be imprisoned, and women too (what woe it is!); but why should lodgings for prisoners be so mean, so hateful? Why should there not be a progressive discipline? Why, by steps of discipline should not the felon be housed comfortably, treated kindly? Would room, light and furniture be follies? If these help up self-respect and have some healing -virtue when healing may be possible, what else should we seek? And if no cure be possible and we must immure the man iorever, is there good reason for doing it cruelly, and with degradation, or not rather as kindly and peacefully and elevatingly as we can, and with sorrowful conscience? What? Say you such measures of com- fort and kindness are too costly? I think they would be a part of a vast saving; for 250 Outcasts. such good things never will be until the selfishness of social life be purged much, and then withal crime itself will be done away or abated greatly; and the costliest of all things is crime. But what if a right manner of detention, firm and un- wavering, sure, unfickle, but gentle, kind, nursing self-respect, be more costly than our cages? 'Tis a question not of cost but of who is answerable and what is right. If society by its ignorance, greed, selfish- ness, iniquities and frauds of many kinds, league with the criminal's temptation and crime, then shall we skulk from the cost of things favorable to salvation? Besides, what aim we at? If revenge, we are barbarous; if prevention, we are foolish; even looking but at the useless cost, foolish. What could be a more costly gigantic failure than the cages? Have criminals become rare by them? Have the cages awed the starving, the brutal, the lustful? What reformation and re- pentance, or revenge and hatred rather, have they cast up on society when they have disgorged themselves of their uneasy meat at the end of the term of sentence? When rescued they ever a sinking pride, revived a forgotten hope, roused an un- manned spirit? Wherefore I say again that it is no ques- 251 Outcasts. tion of cost, to a manly heart, but of what the aim shall be, and of who is answerable, and whether there be not a divided blame- worthiness and society be not accessory to the making of the criminal. Look with enough love (which is the secret of seeing anything) at the sources . which recruit "the dangerous classes" (so we call them, but they are no more dangerous to us than we to them), and one of two things is clear, namely, that either we are not enough intelligent nor have knowledge to deal with men, boys, women, girls, with- out cages, or we are callous, brutally in- sensible to the madness and misery behind the bars, and the distresses, vagabondage, filth, vicious education, which rear the in- mates of cells! On this sunny morning, when now I write these words, ah! how delicious is my life and liberty! But under this sun, not seeing it, men are lying in the iron cages of many cities, because they are what every thing and every influence around them from babyhood has made them. My liberty, say I ! Just my liberty this sunny morning! How precious it is! My power to go whither I will what a bliss! The sun, the verdure, the sounds of the earth, the rustle of the business of men, the voices of creatures, birds, trees, and my 252 Outcasts. life among them, how delicious! What ecstasy! But what is my desert of it all? Is my fine freedom the meed of my virtue? Or of my virtue? We who walk about free, fortunate, glad, we, the well-dressed, well- fed, amiable, we, who never were vagrants nor felt the lash of disease or appetite in- herited whence come the fine feathers that we plume ourselves withal? In some tribes only the tried brave may wear eagles' plumes. Where were we tried? Were we vagrants from infancy? Were we beggars, whipped at home, kicked abroad, loafing in stables, gaming-dens, drink-shops? Sometimes the city is startled by a sudden bulging crime, a huge embezzlement or a dreadful violence, in the " best society." It is thought a terrible marvel. Who could have conceived it? Who could have suspected that he, the courted, the ad- mired, the trusted, could fall in that man- ner? But it amazes not the thoughtful. They know the unhappy man had not been tried and his seeming virtue was no more than circumstance and fortune. Mayhap in a finer chemistry known in heaven there is a qualitative analysis that often finds but the same substance in fine free worth- ies and in caged outcasts. Who may not be humbled sadly if he reflect how much of his respectability he may owe to circum- 253 Outcasts. stance, and how little of a feat then his character or life is, it having been so sheltered and so safe! And even if we have a fine endowment by nature, what of it? Is it ours? Made we it? On what ground can we stand to puff up ourselves and be elated about our personality? Con- fronting the deeps of the issues of life, we are all alike. I heard a preacher once speak slightingly of " second or third rate persons." I know no second rate persons. " In all people I see myself, none more and not one a barley-corn less, And the good or bad I say of myself I say of them." Wretched and accidental are the dis- criminations of human justice. They pierce not to reality. Here every day we may charge ourselves with freedoms for which many a poor son of man has suf- fered the knout in Russia or beheading in Turkey or disemboweling in China or dungeons in France or tortures in Spain, or hanging in this country a while back. Both as to vile guilt and as to mischief it is possible to sin worse outside the law than in its clutches. Easy and comfort- able is it to steal enormously by ways that law troubles not itself with, nor would if it could. These ways are common shames, well known. They pad the shoulders of 254 Outcasts. public service, of dealings in land and in stocks, and of much trade. But this is stealing, of a piece with the pickpocket, sneak-thief, shop-lifter, housebreaker. I can see but one line, one face, one flesh. The safe sinner is a little criminal, the criminal is a large sinner; nay, nor may they be called little or large but inter- changeably, and the prison not deciding. Often what odds is there but courage? and the daring spirit very like is the no- bler, and no more harmful mayhap, than the secure thief who from the vantage of a base prudence or a puny muscle or respect- able opportunity or the law's blindness, squints at his big brother in a cage. Speaking of the fine feathers we flaunt withal, we, who never were tried, but housed, nursed, guarded, blest from the beginning, calls to my mind's eye a strange, sharp, careless, pathetic youngling face, a boy I saw and knew long ago; nor know I what became of him, and I feel it a shame that I know not. He was running wild and in great danger. A skittish urchin, a bright-eyed little fellow, with naught coarse or brutal in his face. But there was need of vast skill, tact, heart, patience, humility in dealing with him, He could not be kept at school some places he would not endure, others would 255 Outcasts. not endure him. He was whipped habit- ually by his father. If now perchance he be in a cage, is it all his fault? For he was out and free once. Had the whole community not wit enough to keep him so? Or not soul enough to care, or think, or pay for it? The question between society and that boy (and his name is Legion) is one of interest in a moral doom. How important think we it that the boy should be followed with divine constancy, not left to himself, but walled with all the re- sources of society, like a mother's arms around a babe in his first steps? And what are the resources of society? What wit have we to invent, what love to apply, what devotion to pay for appliances equal to that labor? Feel we, as if in our own ilesh, for that boy the pitfalls of idleness and passions? Rather give we not flaunt- ing vice and dissolute men full scope to do their worst on the unguarded or the way- ward? See the ten thousand hands stretched out to pull him down. He is like a child floating in a sea full of water- devils invisible except by the hands rising from under the surface to snatch at him. Want, hunger, libertinism, drunkenness, avarice, all play for him. What is .the counter-move of respectable, sheltered, happy people? What skill or fervor have 256 Outcasts. we in that desperate game for a soul? Have we either morality alive to it or wit equal to it? I see it not; neither feel I it in myself, nor find I it. Well then, the time may come when the little sad vaga- bond, who had no choice in his inheritance as to body or soul or conditions, may be an injury or a threat to society so bad that he must be seized and caged. But he will not be so extreme a failure as our boasted knowledge and civility, able to lock up the man and willing to pay for it, being hurt by him, but neither able in wit nor having the good will of our pockets to redeem the child. Nor know I how we dare, fronting the face of this huge failure in ourselves, to cage him in a grated cell like a wild beast, bare, comfortless, in- decent ! But to the indifference or ignorance of society a sad and large count must be added. Not only negatively, by indiffer- ence, the community is answerable for criminals, but by the positive way of direct temptation and incitement. Will there not be of necessity small stealing where large stealing flourishes? Consider the power of riches how great, ambition how venturesome, competition how bitter. And especially in a new country where chances are so many and society foams 257 Outcasts. and lashes itself after money, consider how great belike will be the individual wishes . and envies. Consider then the effect on a poor, ill-provided, ill-balanced man, or on one untaught, with no trade and little edu- cation, thereby driven to subsist by what wits he has in what way he may con- sider the effect on such a man of the sight of enormous stealing stalking all over the country in the management of corpora- tions, in the trade-confusing gambling of speculators, and in the notorious corrup- tions of municipal governments. Can aught be more suitable to confound moral distinctions? What thoughts will such sights nurse in hungry or greedy men? What indeed but that life is a game be- tween ' ' ins " and ' ' outs, " in which it is their ill luck to be out; that thereupon if they snatch their small prey when they find it, they are guilty of naught worse than the vulgarity of picking up small things! Add the compounding of felonies, in which be- like the detective taxes both his employer and the thief to his mind before aught can be gotten. Add the infamous intimacy of the police with bad classes in large cities, wherein it has transpired often that officers collect hush-money from evil places under threats of disturbing them. Truly society has forcible ways of provoking the pas- 258 Outcasts. sions and breaking to pieces the moral sentiment of the unreasoning and needy. The untaught it makes soon the ill-taught. Such things are sources of moral disease which far and wide spread bane and poison. To eyes smeared with that pitch, society looks like no more nor better than a clash and warfare of private interests, in which any one may have what he can seize and hold. But not only by suggestion and example do these abominations of selfishness teach and nurse crime, and the more because the large thieves com- monly are powerful and sought after, since there are so many who wish to share the spoils not only so, but, more or worse, they induce a perverted eth- ical doctrine. Willful thieves, who steal by trade, it is well known often show no moral sense in the matter. It has be- come their ethical doctrine that " the world owes them a living" and they sim- ply take their own when they help them- selves and the only evil is that they are vulgar in it because they can lay hands on so little. So spreads the poison of selfish greed, and the same disease which makes the fortunate man obese covers the lean and luckless with little sores. But consider again (although this lies in what I have said already, yet consider 259 Outcasts. again and more particularly) that the trade doings of society tear to pieces all sense of human brotherhood. Conceive a man affected by severe want, stung by shabby, cold or hungry children in his home, igno- rant, able to take sides and make cause, but unused to think closely or widely. Now consider the effect, on such a man, of gross monopolies, speculations, cun- ning and violent interference with natural distribution, "corners" in the necessaries of life, in wheat, corn, fuel, sewing- machines. If he think at all, and, by not thinking to the full, think ill, consider how it must affect his feelings and impulses to know that every man he meets in the street would be glad at any moment to seize the supplies of all necessaries, so as to trade on his hunger or his nakedness at gains swelling to riches in a day. Under this breaking of humanity to pieces, and such provocation, if a man steal by violence or craft, what can we do? What is left us? To sit down and weep plentifully for him and for ourselves? No. He must be locked up, or otherwise con- trolled. One of the bad parts, because it is strong, must chastise the other bad part because it is weak; for the weak must not prey on the strong, else whence shall come any progress? But the society that has 260 Outcasts. taught the felon how to steal and flaunts itself in stealing grandly while whipping his small robbing, sinks lower than he has fallen if it turn thievish also of every moral hope of him by the infamy and pol- lution of a cage. Stern and strong belike must be the discipline by the state at first, but progressive, careful, and done humbly by society, to the end of ministry, pity, sympathy and help. But if we speak of the positive incite- ments which the community composts crime withal, what shall be said of liquor retailing, that rank offence" which "smells to heaven," the crime of society against sanity, adding mania to misery and spurring temptation with frenzy! Who will argue this matter? Who will enter to debate it? Would not any one think it a strange thing if I should argue to him that he must love his little children? "We take some things for granted." What a monster were that man who should ply his boy with unclean sights, sounds, opportunities, thereupon to chain, torture or kill him for a bad act or fancy! But how otherwise acts society if it pour into the veins a liquid fire and then slay for arson? if it ply the wretched, discontented, un- taught, the fierce, the diseased, with burn- ing drink till the nerves be ruined, 261 Outcasts. character gone, reputation killed, want gnawing like a wolf, animosities turned to fury, and the woe, anger, moral blindness and madness break out in robbery and murder; and then it torture its victim in an iron cage or hang him from a gibbet? How society may deal with that pander of woe and sire of criminals, the liquor- seller, I am not wise to know. Sumptuary laws are very hard to apply. But until society be stirred by a sense of responsi- bility, by an unselfish fervor and a deeper religion, to learn how to sweep the liquor- seller from the earth, it is meet it should bow its head in ashes before the victims whom now it but gets out of its sight into the cages. But alas! the liquor-seller is himself a criminal, an extra-legal criminal. I would deal no more harshly or scornfully with him than with any criminal. Society shares with him the responsibility of his being. Rather would I heap my judgment and scorn on myself if ever I helped support him by drinking anything at those tragical counters where the drunkard buries his sanity, where pass the funerals of domes- tic peace. But here must I fend off a wrong infer- ence from these reflections. I would be careful not to weaken the individual's ac- 262 Outcasts. count with himself. It is not for naught nor by any accident that the sense of will, of power, of choice, and of our own an- swerableness and fault "if we go wrong, is so deep in us. It is sure that each one is more than a bit of flotsam and jetsam driven just as the waves may wash. It is wholesome and truthful to say to the criminal that for his own health he must fasten his eyes on his own fault and know that he has himself to reproach if he fall into the base cages. But no less true is it that if the criminal can come to no health without conviction of his own fault, neither can society chastise or help him to health but by humbly acknowledging therewith its own blame and share in his disorder. And soberly I see not how any one who will survey the whole can conclude less than that it is the selfishness, the greed, the cruelty, overreaching, lies, luxuries, stealing, ignorance and barbar- ism of society which is most answerable for the wretchedness and evil of the doers of crime. But the word "barbarism" in this last sentence recalls me to a just patience with all free offenders as well as for the caged ones; I mean, patience with all of us, with society. Society is but an inheritance; and when we consider from what state and 263 Outcasts. origin it has come forth, it is a wonder, and a proof of God, that it has come forth at all and is as good as it is. Harshness continually laps over from a lower to a better state of society; so that what first was a barbarism among barbarians, per- sists far into a milder state, by reason of "imperfect sympathy," lack of attention, force of custom, sluggish imagination; until it is a revolting incongruity, out of all likeness to the conditions about it. Hence comes a deal of that penal cruelty with which society has been drenched from the marshes of its origin, as any one may learn and illustrate abundantly by study of the changes in venerable penal codes. Therefore I would not spend harsh words on society for its harsh blows on the criminal. The community is not vicious. There is much desperate selfish- ness and distressing callousness; but mainly this is vulgar more than vicious. Society is ill-taught, with a brutal inheri- tance to wrestle with, and so ignorant as not to perceive that to cage men vindic- tively is but to harness itself as a draught beast to the cages. "We are all alike; " and if we call to the mind's eye an ideal humanity, we shall conclude we are all bar- barous together, and know it is impossi- ble, by decree of nature, for a corner of 264 Outcasts. the community to be savage except as- therewith society throughout is barbarized. Meantime, there is one person whom every man should watch strictly, to wit, himself; first to see to it that he commits not under delicate shelters deeds which truly are of a piece with those that hurry men to the cages under vulgar exposures; and secondly to examine himself humbly - whether he have good wit and good culture enough to be capable of moral sympathy. "Any one," says Lecky, in his " History of European Morals," among some wise, words on our treatment of criminals "Any one can conceive a fit of drunken- ness or a deed of violence; but few per- sons, who are by nature very sober or very calm can conceive the natural disposition that predisposes to it. * * * To realize; with any adequacy the force of a pas- sion we have never experienced, to con- ceive a type of character radically different from our own, above all to form any just appreciation of the lawlessness and obtuse- ness of moral temperament inevitably gen- erated by a vicious education, requires a power of imagination which is among the rarest of human endowments. " But when- ever this power be not a happy "endow- ment," I would not toss it away on that account, as no one's concern. For if a 265 Outcasts. man be born eyeless, he is to be pitied; but if he will not have a sick eye cured that he may see, he is contemptible. I would put it forward that this heavenly imagination, conceiving after that divine manner which " sees the thought of the heart," may be labored unto and attained by reflection with conscience and love; Tvherefore a man should be ashamed to be void of intellectual and moral sympathy, the power to feel by conception what we have not felt in our own fibres, to enter into a mental and moral condition and into a force of circumstances all alien to us. This is a hard thing, nay, the last rare feat of a generous culture; but let any one be ashamed and class himself but vulgarly till he shall have come to it. It is an angel who never will lay a cool hand on one who crowds selfishly through life, see- ing men only as thjey may be pressed to aid him while he seizes what he can, and crying vindictively, when the criminal, an- other plunderer, rends the same social order, " Away with him! To the gallows! To the cages!" Intelligent justice comes of humane reflection and of a habit of look- ing on men curiously and tenderly in our daily walk as creatures plunged in a social struggle wherein few are much above the common, and few much below. 266 Children. XXV. I have read of taming the hyena and the wolf, till they pine after their masters; even the wasp has been educated till it has been made "placable and mild." If fierce brutes are to be softened and edu- cated by kindness, it is known well that better or needfully they should be taken very young. Likewise among men, child- hood is the instructor's " prime of w'orld." In the training of children, kindness stands on the hill-top of its realm; it may travel widely around, but it can go no higher. I have said hereinbefore that kindness, to be of force for education, must be, first, perfectly pure and sincere, without vanity or self-importance; secondly, not a weak- ling's pliancy, but firm, and disciplinary if occasion be; thirdly, applied according to the nature of things, differently to a tiger and to a lamb, to one disposition and to another. In these three traits of a kind- ness good for educating, shine well forth what the child needs, namely, a kindness that is very pure and utterly loving, un- '267 Children. selfish and devout, and this firm and strong, and then studious withal, studious of the child's special nature, and wise to deal with him as truly he is, with under- standing. Let blows be put away. The hand that leaps quickly to give a blow to a child, has not escaped the temper and subtle memory of having been a claw afar back. I say not that whipping never is wise and always brutal; yet he is brutal in it who does it without an awful conscience. I would lay down this rule, that the only case in which it is right to apply whipping except (if in- deed there be any exception) after long and sorrowful reflection and with a shrinking conscience and after a multitude of patient, vain efforts by other means, is a case wherein it is necessary for the child's bodily safety to make a sudden effect on him. For example, I knew a father whose little girl had a habit of running up to strange dogs and throwing her arms about them, hanging on them. And-this she did in spite of warning. The habit was too dangerous. There was no time to await the slow work of reason. One decided whipping was effective, and the child dropped the practice. But mark well that one source, and mayhap the greatest, of the effect of the punishment was, that it Children. was rare and momentous. If the tender creature had become used to blows by dodging or suffering chance slaps day by day, little power would have been left to the chastisement. How is it possible to look on a child without a kind of heart-ache at the pathos of its helplessness? How cruel harshness is, or cold neglect, how dreadful fierce and angry blows, upon these little beings who cling to us like clusters on a vine! It is by our good juices they must be ripened. If the vine be bad, what hope for them! Children can be brought to that bloom and blossom of young life which is so exqui- site, or to that excellence of ripe mid-age which is so honorable and blest, only by a raining and beaming on them of many forces as sweet and tender as dew and light, I mean, utmost loving-kindness, exceeding forbearance, just eyes to see our own faults in the child, quickness of sym- pathy, inventiveness to give pleasure or grace, much companionship, much liberty too, confidence given and won, contrivance and ingenuity in gentle leading. And withal, as I have said before that there is a large vanity and conceit in unkindness, so there will be no very good parental kindness without humility; for sad or bad is he who can look on his child without 269 Children. awe, or compare its needs and his attain- ments without remorse. It is very important, under head of kind- ness, and especially of kindness to child- ren, that we reckon highly the value and authority of a wish. I like Wollaston's principle in his "Religion of Nature." "Those pleasures are true," says he, "and to be reckoned into our happiness, against which there lies no reason. For where there is no reason against, there is always one for it, included in the term," The question is, Which should be the disposition of mind, whether to say "yes" or to say "no? " Since there are so many requests in life, and asking and wishing . make so large a part of experience, it is a question not a little important how we should be predisposed' to entertain^ re- quests. Now this we shall answer wisely if we look at all things in the two classes in which naturally they stand, to wit, things moral and things indifferent. As to moral matters, the answer is easy that neither "yes" nor " no " should have prescription, but that each case must stand by itself. For when once a moral quality is settled, action also is settled, if it shall be dutiful. But in respect to matters indifferent there will be a balancing of judgment which 270 Children. must decide. Herein is room for predis- position, and this should be to say "yes. " For though judgment be called into ser- vice, yet in many cases the asking itself must weigh in the judgment. And, be- sides, there will be many instances in which the thing asked will be neither wise nor unwise, expedient nor inexpedient in itself, but a privilege or pleasure, or even it may be a whim. Now the principle should be this; that if anyone ask any- thing of us, his wish is a good reason why he should have it and why we should grant it, unless there be some better reason against the same. This has wide application and no day passes but we meet occasions for it. But though it be useful for all, and though life would be an Eden if always this principle ruled, the dearest and best application of it is to children. For the requests of children are many; wherefore to grant or to deny them makes constant points of pleasure or of disappointment. And with this, children are so much the less able to bear disappointment with philosophy, and so much the more jubilant in their pleas- ures, that either way, the "yes" or the " no " is of much matter. It is a kind and wise remark of Buckle that it is a very serious thing to diminish the pleasures of 271 Children. any one; and it is but a kind addition thereto to say, that not to enlarge them when we can is the same as to cut them off. A poet has the same thought, "To stifle righteous wishes is a murder." It is beyond doubt that joy and sadness store themselves in the soul. They sink into the heart, making a state thereof which meets life's difficulties well or ill. For if a child grow to a soul in which joy has become a habit, he will look for the joy in all paths, and looking find it; since what we find is in the eye, because all qualities lie in all paths to be picked out, though proportions differ. But con- trariwise will be the child's collections from experience if sadness be the habit. And besides, the one is strength, the other weakness; joy is force, grief inertia; hap- piness is concentration, pain disper- sion. Wherefore the child whose spirit has been dowered with kindly-given pleas- ures in right manner, is armed for life's conflicts and has a strong place whither to retire if in any combat he be worsted. Therefore it is a great thing to have erected this tower of joy in a child's soul. To give joy in the present which becomes strength in the future is a divine act. Of this a poet says, happily: 272 Children. " Make beautiful to children their young days. Despise not nor neglect the smallest joy. Thou makest them for the day as little gods; Nay, for their lifetime thou implantest in them A gladsome mood and ever cheerful heart. The pleasures of their youth will pass away, And it will come one of these pleasant days They will know nothing more of the ripe nuts They knocked down from the tree; the leaping pole. No more they know the smile their mothers wore To see them bring the basket full of grapes. Yet as all joy struck down into the soul, They always hope for kindness from the world." And the same poet, Schefer, writes to a mother of five children: 41 Five suns thou hast created; five earths, too, And moons no less; and many hundred springs, And many hundred thousand roses, fruits; For to glad hearts alone creation is, Five mothers, one to each, five fathers, too, Hast thou created for love's tenderness." And the same poet also instances the pleasure which is stored, when a child, grown old, can talk of his father or mother to his own children, because his parents were such joyful pleasures to him: 11 In the days to come They to their children will delight to talk Of thee, as thou to them wast wont to talk About thy mother, and they will listen there As to the story of a miracle, With reverent stillness and with frequent sigh." 273 Children. One secret of the disposition to say "yes," is quickness of memory; and this is the same thing as continuance of youth. For many times we say "no" to children because of imperfect memory, unmindful of our own thoughts at that age. Forgetting how we felt, we snap a little childish stem of pleasure ruthlessly. But I know not how, in the cares of life, this memory can be revived without thought and pains. Therefore he who can say each day, while yet the child is little, " Let me see here again what I was, and happily vault the wall of time to that early garden which I walked in, that I may cut off no flower from my child's path which I shall rec- ollect my delight in " he will tend always to say "yes." Sometimes again, parents deny or force their children unwisely or harshly be- cause of lack of experience. For new things spring up for children, new kinds of exercises the like of which the child- hood of the elders knew not; and of these we are often too ignorant to judge well, and it is a great safeguard if then we have the leaning to say "yes." For this dis- position helps out our ignorance by means of the children's judgment, which is better equipped in these new facts than our own. This reflection I but quote from Marian. 274 Children. She delivered it, as I remember well, on a night when she surprised me with an early return from a visit to John River's family. She came across the two gardens, through the shrubbery. The night was misty and pitchy. She wore a scarlet drapery. When suddenly she appeared in the gar- den door of our study, what with the color of the garment, the beam of her smile and her streaming hair (for it had fallen down), methought a bolt of light had broken from the darkness and all the room was fire with it. " Wait a bit, thou fiery ghost," said I, "and I will put out the lamp, not to be dazzled by both of you." "That were like putting out the sun in order to enjoy the moon," said Sister, "for the moon would follow the sun into darkness. There must be a light in thine eye before I can be visible." "Ah yes!" said I seriously; "which shows the difference between the eye and the mind's eye. Thou thyself wouldst enkindle my soul to behold thee." "Nay," said Marian, "they are not so different. There must be light in the soul first. 'Tis only light that knows light; as Galileo said, i You can not teach any one anything; you only can help him to dis- cover it within himself!' Which reminds 275 Children. me," continued Dozen, " of what neighbor John this evening said of himself and his boy and their wheels. Having set up his lad with a bicycle, he then required of him its constant use, as an economy, to save the pennies which otherwise he must pay for riding on errands and to school. And often he forced this, calling the lad's un- willingness laggard. But afterward, hav- ing learned the use of the wheel himself, he found what it was to cope with long stretches of rutty and slippery street and with crowding teams, through which lay the lad's course to school, and no longer pushed him on that score, not because the boy was more willing to traverse the slime and furrows, but because the father grew wiser than to wish it, by dint of hav- ing tasted it." I feel not so sure of many things as of this gracious principle, that a wish carries its own reason for granting it unless there be a stronger against it. And be it said that sluggishness, or languor, or inatten- tion in us, or some effort or inconvenience required of us, make no good reasons for denial; for he who will refuse a child, or any one, wished things because he must move his body a little to get them, is either very lumpish flesh or a very slug- gish heart. I have thought that of all sad 276 Children. losses, the saddest are the openings for giving happiness which we enter not, but rather again close up. This will be known to anyone who will count but for a day or two what he might have done to raise a little joy, but did not, and will reflect how keen a thing enjoyment is when he feels it himself, and what wings it gives to time, what riches to memory. Especially, per- haps, if we consider how much of our own enjoyment is made or hindered by others, and often by very little things which they do or do not, we shall judge better of our own disposition as to saying "yes" or saying " no." 277 Beauty. XXVI. It is worth a chapter to say what a great beauty is the beauty of kindness, both what it makes in the home and what it makes in the face, and in the whole body indeed; for with its grace it overflows all parts. This beauty bred an incident for me recently that has hung an oddly fair picture in the chambers of my soul. I will not say that kindness is the most beautiful thing in the world, and makes more beauty than any other thing. For then forthwith arise in judgment all noble moral qualities honesty, truthfulness, sim- plicity, faithfulness, patience, gratefulness, modesty, piety. All these have and impart a beauty which is the beauty of God; and kindness can do no more. But kindness can do as much, and has a very great beauty and inlays the same, and is not surpassed in it by any of the good qualities. Consider the beauty created in the home by kindness in its two parts, the negative part, that we do no one any harm, and the positive part, that we do every one all the 278 Beauty. benefit we can. For kindness in these two parts in the home is like the two parts of cultivation in a garden, namely, the keep- ing of the ground free and open, not seized on by undesired things, and then, in second and even better part, the cultiva- tion of the things desirable and lovely. But much is done if even the first part be done, which is to keep the ground free; for when noxious and weedy things are warded off and the surface is open, fair and fine things will till it for themselves and with themselves, springing up because there is place free for them. For beauty ever is on the watch to come in. If then to the place left ready and open, cultiva- tion of delicate and sweet plants be added, and beauty be helped in, what a double and fine loveliness grows thereupon ! Then do the lawns look like smooth mo- saic-bits from the green horizon of twilight, and the parterres are harmonies of every manner of blossom, color, fragrance. So is the home. If but the negative part of kindness be in it, much beauty springs up, because the unlovely has not preoccupied the room, and if there be no bad seeds sprouting, there will be sure to be some good ones. But if now positive kindness be added, then is cultivation brought into service. Choice is made of 279 Beauty. the good things that shall grow, and they are trained to grow at their best. Whence comes great beauty in the home. That there is no unkindness is a fallow field which then active kindness fills with fine and rich growths. By another figure, simply the negative part, of kindness, that no one does harm or pain to another, is like a bare wall in a house, well made and ready and of a good tint; then comes posi- tive kindness, that every one does all the pleasure and grace he can to the others, and hangs the wall with pictures. "It is good government," says Con- fucius, "when those who are near are made happy and those who are far are attracted; " but when the near are made happy, it is sure the far will be attracted. The kindness and thence happiness in a house draws company, and the best com- pany, gracious, cheerful, gentle, sincere, akin to the atmosphere which draws them. It is kindness in the home that makes the door swing and peals of sweet voices and laughter and lovely faces come in. It makes the tea-table, the ring of china and glass, sweet bread, the steam of urns, good cheer, good talk, the lamp, song, and the odor of melilot. What beauties be these! And only in a "house where great kindness is do they break forth. 280 Beauty. Kindness invents. It sets forth happy things for others as objects, and considers inventively how to compass them. And this cannot be done without many beauties and adornments issuing. Also there is no- source of more gracious beauties in a house than good hospitality; and kindness makes this and keeps it good, not osten- tation, pride, expense, surfeit, crowds, but sincere, simple, frugal, loving, private in dear groups, and not rare and on oc- casions, but perpetual, habitual. But consider not only the house but the persons, the beauty fashioned in the face by kindness in its two parts. The nega- tive kindness, that we do no hurt or harm,, leaves the face free, like good ground weeded. It is much that no ugly passions, hatred, envy, jealousy, greed, occupy the face. There is so much beauty in the soul awaiting exit and so much beauty outside pressing for entrance, and the two so do invite each other, that if the face be but left free and open by the negative kindness, a fairness will begin to over- spread it like a thin verdure. For beauty can be prevented altogether in no wise but by the preoccupancy of ugliness. But when to the negative kindness is added the positive that we consider how to make joys and benefits for persons around us ? 281 Beauty. then springs beauty wonderfully in the face, and in the form too, in postures, mo- tions, in the outlines that come of exer- cise. For power in the face is but life in the face, and bad life gives power, being life though bad, but good life gives the strength which is beauty also. Beauty of body is a moral fact. I mean it lies truly in the soul, which the face expresses or exposes to us. I deny not that 'there may be a lovely soul in an uncouth body, like a fine thought in a clumsy sentence; but not for long, because the soul never ceases working at the body by the continual ex- ercise of the gestures and motions which express the goodness; and never all nor mainly ugly, for under the sweet impulses combined motions of features and of members continually will occur which will shed graces and beauties. We are surprised by them as if some fair portions or shapes of the body had escaped us in shadow and suddenly a light is thrown on them. And sooth it is light light that breaketh out from within. And again there be faces which have no fault in them except that there is no good in them. In shapes they are very fair, but in shape they are not fair. Ex- amine the nose, you can not improve it. Discourse of the eyes, you must sing. 282 Beauty. Tell of the cheeks, you must be a limner with color and a soft touch. Speak of the hair you must be poet, seeing streams of bronzed cirrus sweep the horizon. De- scribe the brow, it has a good fullness, and is draped like an ivied wall. And the mouth hath the curves of Apollo's bow. And yet in these features all together there is no beauty in the face. For it is not enough that the nose might example fine curves and the eyes give pleasant ellipses and the skin make delicate parchment and the hair be golden braids and the brow be a shapely aegis and the mouth be like a del- icate carving; for all these can not make a face, because a face is a thing of soul. Therefore all these parts may be faultless in it, and yet there be no beautiful face. Whence it is that artists who fail in faces tyros or poor limners fail not by making a vicious face, which never they do, but by making no face. I mean there is naught in it; it is vacant, dead, or rather never came to life. Emer- son has spoken of a preacher whom once he heard, who was "spectral." "He had lived in vain. He had no one word intimating that he had laughed or wept, was married or in love, had been com- mended or cheated or chagrined." There be such faces, as if naught had come to 283 Beauty. life in themselves or their ancestry. They have no deep. It is impossible to think that much grieving or rejoicing or conceiving goes on behind them, and the eyes are no better than spy-holes after victuals and drink. Yet these faces may be symmetrical and well colored. At least it is not easy, no, nor possible, very like, to tell what is the lack in outline, or in the lines of the outline; and to many eyes there is no lack, the lines and tints are sufficient. They say it is a handsome face. But beauty comes only of the moral; and the vision for it from the same. I say not that shapely features are worthless. No doubt a fine crystal vessel filled with clear water will have a com- pound beauty, the beauty of the vessel and the beauty of the water (albeit the flagon's beauty is some maker's soul in it and the beauty of the water is the soul of the rain and the sea); and so it may be with the features and colors of the face, when the features have lovely lines and the complexion is pellucid warmth, if then kindness be carried in them like the gathered rain in the crystal cup. But as a wooden bucket dripping from sweet spark- ling springs hath more beauty than the crystalline flagon filled with befouled stag- nation, so an ill-featured face filled with 284 Beauty. kindness hath a beauty which an admirable cast of features filled with avarice hath not. I would not put kindness absolutely first for the making of beauty as I have said, since every virtue is an artificer of it; but Emerson ventures more. He says, " There is no beautifier of complexion or form or behavior like the wish to scatter joy, and not pain, around us." And surely, if the virtues be conceived as angels exercising and modeling the features and muscles into harmonies and lovely shapes, it is not too much to call kindness the master- workman and overseer of them. Says George Eliot, and with all my soul I go with her, making italics of the words which I conceive she would emphasize, " My own experience and development deepen every day my conviction that our moral progress may be measured by the degree in which we sympathize with individual suffering and individual joy." Verily it is the truth that any one may be beautiful who will; for this virtue of kindness continually is urged on us within and without, nursed with kind deeds. Therefore it is to be achieved. And then comes beauty. I have in the mind's sight 'tis one of the pictures hung in my courts a girl the sight of whom I enjoyed rapturously on an occasion. She was not matched well in 285 Beauty. features, no, nor in the members of her form, and it was a common remark, "How plain she is." And I said so too, for I was as unperceiving as the others. But one day I had been talking with her, and at the farewell she came with me kindly to the door. The sun in the west, an hour high, came half slant-wise over the lintel, sifted and quivering through a tree at the veranda corner, hanging a singular web of light around her. As she stood in that array briefly, listening to me, her eyes were downcast attentively, and her face and form so were filled with gentleness, meekness, simplicity, thoughtfulness, that suddenly her beauty broke on me. My soul did her reverence and said in me, " What a picture! How can any one call her plain! Good sooth, she is wondrous lovely!" Another like sight of exceeding fairness had I in a young mother, who, in truth, save a pair of soft eyes, was very ungraciously ill-featured. Many said, "What drew her husband?" But one day I saw her with some children, and when she looked up from them, there was a smile so celestial and such a light of kindness, love, sincerity, thought, in her face, that fairly I started with the beauty there shining, and conceived easily that any one might love her devoutly. 286 Beauty. I said, in beginning this chapter, that this kindness-made beauty had bred an in- cident for me which had set me up a pic- ture forever, both odd and very lovely, in the halls of my mental habitation. And I am reminded besides of another one, a little interchange with my Sister, but one I for- get not. She told me awhile ago, with a strange peculiar look, common, I conceive, to women, that she was fading. (AM ye little cares, observations, anxieties,, regrets of women, and of the best women,, let others call you " vanities " if they wilL I like you. Ye touch me.) "No, "said I,, somewhat shocked, and scanning atten- tively her sweet face. She showed me that angles, furtively and peepingly, if so I may say, and hiding in some lights, as if ashamed to be there, yet beyond peradven- ture, were breaking into the lines of her features, and the smooth round surfaces were becoming (albeit hoveringly and evanescently, "like dove's-neck lustres") a joinery of squares like a mosaic. This she averred was the effect of time and growth on the soft contours of the face. "Yes,, my dear," she said gaily, "it is certain that what thou hast been pleased to call my beauty in days past, is fading. And surely it is time. We are not so young as. we were, Brother. One can not have 287 Beauty. dignity-years of labor and then peace- years of home-life like ours, without their counting as years, my dear." " Ah! " said I, " avaunt with thy squares and angles " but with a tear in my eye. "The truth is, thy sweet soul has been doing some carving on thee, being not content with even thy loveliness as it was, but would have it more like herself. Thou never hadst such beauty as at this moment, my Dozen, and thou wilt have more yet. Years, sayest thou? Thou art pushing out youth with perpetual youth, which is to say, Time with Eternity." The fair youth of my Sister was no more than a promise that she should come easily to a greater beauty. It was like the first chapter of a beautiful book, a lovely peace- iul promise of a wealth of beauty further on, though it must be woven with marks of storms, passions, pains, joys almost like pains, and deep devotions. But to that incident of which I have spoken; it happened in this wise: One evening it was not long after Marian's words about her fading, which still were lingering with a strange yearning in my heart a half-hour before tea time we came in from garden-work, and, after a draught of cool water and laving with warm water, I seated me in a large chair 288 Beauty. in our study; and Marian, looking like a dewed blush-rose, quietly brought a low ottoman to my feet and took her place on it with her guitar. Rain had begun to fall, with no wind, or only the gentlest breath at moments. Very cheerful and sweet was the music from the shrubbery and the veranda roof. I knew my Dozen would tune her music in full accord with it, and prepared me to enjoy delightfully. Usually she played awhile before joining her voice with it (which often indeed she did not at all unless at my request), but this evening, with a few sweeping chords and a delicate short prelude she began to sing at once. Now, no sooner had a few notes come forth than the linnet, which had retired to his cage and roost for the night, was agitated, and showed every sign of excitement, and soon came from the cage, flew to Marian, perched on her shoulder and so stayed, palpably vibrating to the music till the song ceased. Then his little throat swelled and he opened his beak and poured forth such a song as surely must have burst him if it had had no exit. "He knows the song," said Dozen, rapturously, taking the bird in her hand with caresses, " he remembers the song I sang, Brother." 289 Beauty. "The bird knows much better than I do," said I. " What is thy song? I never heard thee sing it before." 11 1 have not had it before," said Marian, "the words, I mean; I set them to the melody this morning. It is an old Anda- lusian love-song, a folk-melody, which Margarita loved. She sang it often to me in Spanish; and one day she told me the meaning of the words, translating them one by one, and I wrote them down. Margarita said softly that the song showed there were good lovers in her country. Since my gentle teacher died, the mel- ody has been haunting my memory. This morning I took Margarita's translation and Englished it in the rhythm of the music." With this, at my request, while I listened more critically, Sister sang me the song again, thus: My sweet dear love, Who fillest me with joy, Of all the joys I have of thee What is the joy thou givest me That will my song employ All other joys above? Is it that I love, Lifting my heart to thee, And each night fall from thee asleep, Awake to thee, and love's watch keep All day? Nay, not to me Is this all joys above. 290 Beauty. That thou dost love, Stooping thy heart to me With thy sweet life dost gird me round, And tenderly my being sound With thine? No, not to me Is this all joys above. My dear, dear love, That I thy beauty see, That I behold thy sweetness so, So true, so high, so heavenly know Thy soul this giveth me My joy all joys above. " Oh that I had a voice, a real voice!" said my Dozen, with a sigh, when she had finished the lovely lay. " Thou hast a most engaging, beautiful voice," said I. "Brother," said Sister, "I expect truth of thee." " It is the most heartfelt truth," said I, " and scientific too. The voice is like the face, or aught other sensible thing: 'tis not needful that it should be mechanically per- fect that it may be beautiful, but only beau- tiful in what it conveys. 'Tis true, dear Marian, that thy voice has not a fine musi- cal timbre\ there is I-know-not-what lack in thy throat. Notwithstanding, truly thy voice is beautiful, and always I both am delighted and am moved by thy singing, for it hath thy kind and sweet soul and thy very truth in the voice of it. I must tell 291 Beauty. thee what our friend, Franklin Hughes said to me but yesterday when I met him in the city which indeed very blame- worthily I have forgotten to mention to thee till this moment. I asked him of Miss Leigh thou wilt remember whom he had let go from his quartet. ' I thought she had a good voice/ said I. Franklin answered that she had a good vocal mech- anism but could not sing. ' You mean she has no knowledge of music,' said I. 'No,' said Franklin, ' I mean she has a bad dis- position and spiteful temper.' i Is sing- ing, then a moral performance?' said I, surprised. 'Assuredly it is,' Franklin answered; 'the least spite in the heart at the moment will pervert the finest voice, and execution too. So will a settled un- kindness, jealousy, envy, moroseness. No unkind person can sing very beautifully.' ' But if thus unkindness will undo a voice, will kindness make one?' I asked. 'In a manner it will,' said Franklin; 'I mean it will give one to sing acceptably with no great quality of organ. A tender, sweet, devout soul,' said he, 'will fill a song with music and move the hearer deeply without gifts of tone.' Ah! yes, I have delight in thy singing, my Sister. Thy voice hath a psalm in its sound. Praise and love meet . in it. Not the least, but rather the greatest, 292 Beauty. boon of thy new art thy guitar, I mean is that I have thy voice with it. For- merly thou didst no more than warble and chirrup sometimes at thy work, but now thou singest songs to me delightfully." Here arose suddenly a great stir and whir, as of a merry exercise, in the dining room, a very lively leaping and scamper- ing. "Fun and Linnet," said my Dozen, laughing, and running to the door; where meanwhile the frolic had fallen suddenly to a perfect stillness. "Come hither, Brother," called my Sis- ter, delightedly, "thou shouldst see the rogues." Going quickly, I saw an odd spectacle indeed. Fun was on the floor, with her fore-quarters crouched and her head stretched out between her paws, her hinder parts raised, full of action and ready for a leap. On the dog's head stood the bird, cocking himself nonchalantly, looking very triumphant. Here all together was the tableau vivant I have mentioned, odd and very fair. Nature might have dubbed it "A Study in Kindness," for kindness was the light of it. My Sister's kind look and beaming countenance, her lissom form and the attitude in which her eager movement had been stopped, the postures of the dog and bird too, the saucy kindness of 293 Beauty. Linnet's air and the admirable expression that filled the shaggy kind eyes and wrink- led the nose of Fun, made a composition not to be forgotten. Suddenly the bird threw his little weight forward and delivered an excellent peck on the dog's nose. Fun leaped up with a growl and the romping game began again. 'Twas all a very fine picture for the wall of the chamber within me wherein most I must live. It is fit that I record, as no little thing, but rather as I would write of any love, the love of the linnet for my Sister and for Fun. The bird is very respectful and pleasant to me, but it is plain that he gives his heart entirely to Marian and the dog. Sooth, he makes this very plain indeed. He has no thought of that politeness which, as says a Frenchman, consists in pains to prevent the several persons of a company from observing that you prefer one of them. He lavishes his quaint caresses and frolics on my Dozen and on Fun per- petually. The romps of the dog and bird are delightful; charming is the pleasure they have in each other. And sometimes when the rustle and clatter of one of their games is stilled, I have come on them resting together, the dog stretched out on her side and the bird half hidden in the long silky hair of her throat, Fun's eyes 294 Beauty. closed, perhaps asleep, but Linnet looking out saucily, as who should say, "Disturb me if you dare." 295 Grieving the Spirit. XXVII. Growth, moral and physical, is slow; destruction is swift. Life and beauty are long a-making, but death or disfigurement may do its all in an instant. A flaming fury an hour long will make a black heap of a century of buildings. A master, with years of study that his soul may be charged full of his art, and thereupon with more years mayhap of dreaming for one work of his art, and thereafter with innumerable days of labor and prayers and faith, may bring to pass a great canvas of color and form, a vast thought in a picture; and an imp with a knife may make tatters of it with the freedom of a few slashes. Nor could the master rear his creation at all if the imp were by him continually with the knife. I know not how slow and long the currents are which secrete a diamond; but I have seen the gem inflamed into gas in an instant. Truly, a moment of the wan- tonness of violence has power to overthrow what years of the piety of labor have up- reared. 296 Grieving the Spirit. So may one unkindness overweigh, out- run and undo the effect of many good- offices, yes, even of many years of favor- ing acts. Now having observed this fact often, I could not but fall to thinking whether it were wholly, or in the main, or sometimes- even in any manner, unamiable. For very like it is said by us, rough and ready and exclaiming our first thought, that to receive many apparent kindnesses and then to count them for nothing and say they all are undone because we have received thereafter one unkindness from the same hand, is but the wantonness and vanity of an ingrate. And so indeed it may be there are ingrates, and sad creatures they are; but so also I am very sure it may not be. There is a power and a law in un- kindness that it may undo in an instant what the pleasant offices long have beeu effecting. And if this seem a terrible law, , a frightful tooth that unkindness has, it is right enough that unkindness should be a terrible thing. For this power of unkindness, that it may overthrow suddenly the works of many and long fair-looking favors, I have perceived some strong reasons, as follows: i. The general truth with which I have begun this chapter has bearing. Kindness 297 Grieving the Spirit. hardly can build so mightily but that a strong unkindness may hurl it down and make a crash and ruin of it, because to destroy is so much easier than to build, and one stroke is enough if it be hardy enough, like a launch of lightning. 2. Pleasant good offices, however very pleasant and very long applied, may not be kindness in good truth, but only a quality of leisure, a mere ease, a manner of indulgent and pliant humor met with a fortunate hap of opportunity, a liking to keep things agreeable, still and smooth about one. But this is not kindness, for kindness has a mixture of firm principle in it; nor is it love, but rather a self-consider- ing. Therefore if an unkindness be done, it may be such a malice or unfeelingness as instantly shows there was no real love or devotion in all the foregoing pleasant offices. Whereupon they are undone and count for but their worth, not because of an ungrateful forgetting of them, but be- cause they wore a mask and now are stripped. 3. Indulgent disposition is general, by its nature, spread forth toward every one, though more intent on the more favored or on those near by. But unkindness, con- trariwise, is like to be, or at least to seem, Very special, direct, individual, and more 298 Grieving the Spirit. directly applied to us than the good offices which spread farther. Hence the good which seems general tends to be made of no effect by the ill turn which so sharply is individual. 4. Kindnesses, I mean good and pleas- ant offices done us, may have many motives. It \s possible to think of them as cajoleries, traps, compliments, decoys, solicitations, done to us but really not for us. But un- kindness can have but one source, which is lack of due love, and is very definite; nor can mean anything but just itself, namely, that the heart has failed, which is to say that never it was deep toward us as it seemed to be. Therefore the definite meaning of unkindness may undo the effects of previous good offices, because these are overshadowed with suspicion by the unkindness; and if the unkindness be faithless and treacherous in nature, it will do so perforce. For treachery is a terrible thing. 5. An unkindness may include a very agonizing and shameful unrespect or dis- respect. Now not only is such disrespect a very hard thing to bear and one of the sorest wounds that can be done on us, but the disrespect would be impossible if the foregoing good offices had been kindness in truth, which is principle and love, a 299 Grieving: the Spirit. reverence and seriousness of loving duty. Thus the unkindness which has any touch of presumption or impudence in it, throws back a long black shadow of doubt on the forego.ing apparent kindnesses; and if it be very impudent, it may undo them al- together. 6. An unkindness is a wound in the heart; and I know not why it may not be fatal like a wound in the body. If one have dressed and fed and lodged and caressed a friend's body never so long nor so well, if then he drive a knife through the heart, it is all over. And how if he cut through a love and rend the quick and the life of it? Will a mortal blow not be mortal because of fondnesses before it? How is it to be escaped that a wound in the heart, if it be cruel enough, may be mortal? And even if not mortal, it may be incurable, as a blow may disfigure the body forever. Oh! the truth of this truth, the sad truth of it, that an honest, dear and sweet love may be killed! or if not mor- tally struck, yet scarred forever! Says Thackeray in that very wonderful book of his, " Henry Esmond," " You do not know how much you suffer in those critical mal- adies of the heart, until the disease is over and you look back on it afterwards. Dur- ing the time the suffering is at least suffer- 300 Grieving: the Spirit. able. The day passes in more or less of pain, and the night wears away somehow. * * * O dark months of grief and rage! of wrong and cruel endurance! He is old now who recalls you. Long ago he has forgiven and blessed the soft hand that wounded him; but the mark is there, and the wound is cicatrized only no time, tears, caresses or repentance can obliterate the scar." 7. It is to be noted that there is a law of evanescence in physical pain. I mean it can not be retained in memory. The occasion of it, the scene, accessories, these may be recalled very well, but the pain itself is not to be lived again in imagin- ation; the tortures can not be felt in mind when they have ceased in body. It is the nature and blessed law of physical suffer- ing that it expends itself utterly at the moment, and there is no more it can do, and no continuing of it in pangs of con- ception. But heart-hurts are hurts of the center where conception lives. Heart- hurts bruise the very quick of feeling itself hence may be unending. And especially is this so of unkindnesses which are disrespects, indignities, intrusive in- solences or wanton presumptions the severest of all wounds of the soul, r though treacheries are to be added as very 301 Grieving the Spirit. close upon them. These hurts are lived over and over in memory with all their first force of pain nay, often more, be- cause reflection on them and slow penetra- tion reveal their gross nature very fatally. They will be keener pangs of heart as they become closer acquaintances of the judg- ment. Therefore unkindnesses have a sad power to undo the effects of many pleasant offices which have seemed very kind, be- cause the unkindness not only is a wound of heart and may have any effect from a pang to killing, but if it be a hard wound it is like not to grow better, but worse, and not to ache less, but more, with time. For this may be the effect of judgment and the slow penetration of a fatal truth which was too shocking and benumbing to be conceived truly at first. 8. There is no so sweet other result of kindness and love as trust. The rest, peace, repose of spirit in a friend, the en- tire confidence, that would go anywhere with him blindfolded and take his eyes for our own, is a heavenly chamber unto us. But one unkindness, if it be of the more fatal manner of it, like a treachery, a very deep selfishness, or a gross impudence which shows that no reverence hath builded under the shows of love, or a wanton measure of vanity which hath a 302 Qrieving the Spirit. pleasure to sit like a high judge over a friend, this will stab in an instant, with a shocking astonishment, to the very heart of a trust which sundry favoring things have been rearing up. Sorrowful is it when one who has had a dear esteem of another's heart as a friend, gets a key to a Bluebeard chamber in it, or to a miser's den in it, or to a secret cellar of plots, or to a gilt and white, glittering, cold gallery of vanity-pictures, wherein we get locked, awhile and forgotten almost to starvation. And thereafter the place is hateful, what- ever be the fair architecture of the outside of it, or the other chambers of it which afford some comforts. I have observed these eight reasons, now, some of which may be but different appearances of the same thing, like the varied faces of a crystal why one un- kindness may undo many foregoing favors and grieve the spirit forever, to wit, that in general destruction is swifter than build- ing up; that obliging acts may not be real principle and heart, but only indolent ease and indulgence; that a favoring and easy disposition which has the look of kindness, is general and spreads abroad, but unkind- ness is a sharp personal blow; that ap- parent kindnesses may have a selfish motive and aim in them, whereas unkindness is 303 Grieving the Spirit. -very definite and can mean nothing but itself; that an unkindness may be after the manner of a gross impudence, which is a terrible wound in itself and also throws a .doubt on all foregoing good offices what truly they are; that heart-wounds have a possible fatality like body wounds, and one may suffice; that hurts of heart affect perforce the memory and often in- tensify by the slow culmination of judg- ment; that trust, the sweetest of all effects of love, and again the most nourishing of that love, may be destroyed by the logic of one bad act. To these there is now a ninth reason to be added, which is a fine and delicate un- .derstanding of love, namely, that love requires a perfectness or completing of truth and kindness, and nothing is com- pleted which has come to a stop. And no matter how far it has been builded, if it : stop uncompleted, it hath failed, and is .only a portion of the natural body of itself, and can have no right to its full name. In love the fine and precious thing is not this kind favor, nor that, nor any host of them .together, but the fervent, tender and loving .edification of a heart toward us; in brief, perfectness; the proof of which greatness, or full station of it, arrives only with the last moment, if so I may say, with the com- 304 Grieving the Spirit. pleted thing. And one unkindness, if it be special and harsh, may be in effect a stop of the love toward us, leaving it unfinished, and show all the foregoing pleasant and seeming-kind deeds to be not from a perfect state of heart toward us, not from a hum- ble, reverent, pure, devout love, but from some quality which hath halted short of the worth and virtue of fulness. There is an eastern fable which utters well this truth: If a man set forth to build a mountain and has poured but one basket of earth on a plain, he is building a mountain; but if there lack one basketful at the top, and he fail to carry it up, he has not builded the mountain. To the same purpose were the dying words of the Cid, when "King Bucar with seven and thirty kings whom he brought with him, and a great power of Moors," was coming to besiege Valencia. The Cid was hero of a thousand victories, and no man had stood against him in his life; yet he feared to be overcome with im- perfectness if even his body after death were vanquished or handled by enemies. So "the Cid Ruydiez stood up and made a full noble preaching, showing that no man whatsoever, however honorable or fortunate they may be in this world, can escape death; to which, said he, I am now full near; and since ye know that this body 305 Grieving the Spirit. of mine hath never yet been conquered, nor put to shame, I beseech ye let not this befall it at the end, for the good fortune of man is accomplished only 'at his end." But now I have to say that although this power of one unkindness is real and fatal, and often is the fact and history in an overthrow of love, yet very often too it is only apparent; for what seems like one ill turn is in fact a vast troop of them in- deed all that ever were done. This comes of a deep law affecting the delicate and precious mystery of love, the law, as I may call it, of insensible accumulation. I mean, it is a great and lovely quality of the heart that it may swallow up many unkind- nesses and love on; but also it is a terrible and perilous nature of the heart that the injuries, unfaithfulnesses, selfishnesses, un- kindnesses which are swallowed up and disappear, are not destroyed. They be- come not as nothing. They have a life in the fearful "round towers" of memory. There they will accumulate, and the heart, which likes not to visit those tow- ers, may know it not. Each hurt, as it goes in, may seem to drop into naught, but it falls in fact on a heap and makes one more in it. Then when is done the very hard unkindness, that which for some reason, either by treachery or impudence 306 Grieving the Spirit. or particular harshness, is excessive, this works the evil not by its own force alone. Nay, if it were the first or tenth, or one hundreth mayhap, even that grossness might be swallowed away into darkness, as others have been. But it undoes the bars of the "round towers;" out troop all the imprisoned unkindnesses, and do a fatal havoc. In plain speech, one last cruel unkindness may call into action again the host of previous injuries that seemed buried and gone; and the ravage is done not by the last one but by them all. I may illustrate this law by the sea and its waves dashing up on a shore. However wave after wave wash over me and recede, it is nothing; I am left as before. But if a violent surge breaking on me, sweep me out into the deep where they all are, I drown in them. Or again I may liken the thought to a wilderness where wild crea- tures rage, surrounding a pleasant dwelling. Every unkindness that may get in is chased forth from the dwelling into this wilder- ness, to its place among furious beings. But if in struggling with one bold wolf of unkindness which will not out easily, I be rapt away with it to the wilds, I am fallen on by the whole pack and devoured. Nay, it is not even necessary that the last unkindness which unlooses all the 307 Grieving the Spirit. others before done, or (mayhap it is more exact to say) makes the long, sad, invisi- ble strain of them apparent by adding the last weight up to the breaking-point it is not necessary, I say, that this be a peculiar harshness or some gross thing like treach- ery or impudence. Simply it may be the one blow too many, though a slight one, the once too often, though a small oc- casion. The thousand-and-first stroke, no matter though it be no more than just the common blow, may have effect with the power of all the thousand together; for it is the one blow too many. Withheld, the other thousand will be carried; but with the one too many, there is effect from them all, and the heart breaks suddenly. Very sad and critical too is it, in this law of the delicacies and dangers of love, that neither :the one who gives the blows nor the one who takes them, can discern, nay, nor guess never so little, how near the end is, how impending the one time too many. I may illustrate by a magnet of unknown strength. To the armature a weight is hung. No effect is visible. Yet nothing is more sure than that the whole effect is had, but is carried. Increase now the weight by small increments, nay, by but the weights of hairs, and at some moment, while yet there is no visibility of effect, the 808 Grieving the Spirit. point has come when another hair is too much, and the armature falls, overweighted. It is true this figure compares spiritual things with mechanical; and I know well the soul is a living body which can re- cover of wounds perfectly so that there is left not the least trace of them. But we recover not of wounds while still being struck with them. There is an analogy in the illustration though mechanical, and a solemn law of the heart's life is imaged therein. Oh! the once too often! the sad once too often! How many times hath it foundered a good bark of love, which first hath labored gallantly with freight in a stormy sea. From the lingo (for his Latin is little better) of the youngest Egometus, some- times called Verevidens, I will transcribe here Escanaba's dream; which, in what- ever vulgarity of diction, it were well if all would lay to heart. Egometus has dressed it up with many fancies, but the bare par- ticulars will suffice. Escanaba had come in, and stood looking at his sleeping wife. He had been neglectful that day, and she had said naught; and unthankful, but she had said naught; and harsh once she had said naught. And now she lay in another silence, sleep. Half angrily he said to himself that she seemed not so affectionate 309 Grie/ing the Spirit. to him as she was wont to be, and lay down in his place. He fell asleep soon, but instantly, in his dream, arose from the bed; for a red light suddenly filled the room, and he beheld an ugly dwarf, red- clad from liberty-cap to pointed shoes, and his face as scarlet as his tight jerkin. The gnome, paying no heed to Escanaba, went to the bed, turned down the coverings and unloosed the breast of the wife's night- robe. Then plunging his red hand into the mid-recess of the gentle bosom, he opened the left half of it like a lid and pulled forth the heart, the while a chilled and waxen whitehess spread in the face and neck of the sleeping woman. The gnome placed the heart in the pan of a balance which he held, and carefully weighed it. " Nearly full," croaked he; "light yet, by a hair; but near! Soon! Once more! Once more 'twill break! Soon, soon! Ha! ha! " Then with a chuckle, grin, and horrid laugh, he replaced the heart, shut the bosom, drew the robe and coverings, and went out the door, the red light following him. The frightened man, by the light of the returning flush of the face, seeming like a faint phosphorescence by which he could see his wife, fell on his knees by her and vowed his life away if he gave her the one hurt too many; all in his dream. 310 Sporting. XXVIII. Let me speak for those who can not speak for themselves. Gentle reader, they have feelings to be "hurt," they love, they hate, they suffer shame, hope, despair, they writhe with tor- tures of body, as w r ell as you. I should not have forgotten to give them a chapter in this morn-made book, for a dawn in June is not lovelier nor in October is more glistening and refreshing than is Fun's greeting to me of a morning. Ah! good little being, the rapture of thy ex- pression, the ecstasy of thy small life, tops the morning for me as thou knowest not, when I come to seat me here to the friend- ship of my pen. But why say I thy "small life? " Truly I know not how large it is, nor what awaits thee in the " many man- sions." And thy friend the linnet had a morning chirp and sometimes a fine lay for me, and happily flew to me sometimes, setting my heart a-stir with j.oy in Creation. No, I should not have forgotten you, ye 311 Sporting. speechless of words, but ye rapturous ones in sounds and motions. For I love you well, nor ever look into the eye of one of you without tender wonder and a fervency of acknowledgment of your pathos. Yet this chapter has a special reason or cause of it, a sadness and loss, and I write while my heart is still very warm with it. It happened thus: The very fine morn- ing three days past, warm, with temper- ance, bright, with a veil, and breezy, my Sister was at work in our garden, with Linnet and Fun near as usual. For the linnet often flew out-doors, and always when my Sister was garden-working, or lingering out in fine weather, and Fun was inseparable from both. The kind and radiant little dog seemed never able to admire enough her winged friend's abilities in the air, and would race after his flights, barking and leaping under his alighting places with ecstasy. On this morning the usual delights of dog and bird were going on in the shrubbery and especially in and under a small cherry-tree much liked by Linnet, when the bird suddenly launched forth for a clump of trees in the farther corner of the meadow on which our little garden borders, to which sometimes, though rarely, he flew; and thither after 312 Sporting. him raced Fun, bounding and barking as if desirous to do all she could in the thin medium in which her little friend was so agile. My Sister, busy with her plants,, unmindful of her pets for a little, was startled by the report of a gun, and, rais- ing herself, with sickening heart, she saw the misty smoke near the trees and a bird falling. In a few moments Fun, with drooping ears and every sign of distress, came running, with the bird in her mouth, and laid the little bleeding being in her mistress' hand. Linnet opened his eyes, addressed his mistress with a feeble flutter and faint chirp, and died. Marian came to me with streaming tears, pale face and quivering mouth. She could not be com- forted, not only for the loss of the little being she loved, but also for the so radiant life barbarously quenched; and of men who carry guns she spoke more passionately^ harsh words than ever before I had heard from my sweet Sister. Marian kept by her for a day, on the mantel, by Margarita's urn, the little feathered winged body which had been so airy, so swift, so songful and so loving. Then, making a very intense fire, she laid tearfully the cold stillness of the little sweet-singer in a porcelain crucible and gave it thus to the air. The thimble of 313 Sporting. ashes she mingled with the earth around the roots of her favorite rose. Our dumb fellow beings (dumb as to ar- ticulation, but full of amazing expression) are of two classes the helpless faithful servants of men, and the wild creatures, the radiant beings of forest, fen, moor and mere. Touching duty of gentleness, kind- ness, protection, to the domestic creatures who serve us, there is no dispute. Often they are treated very cruelly indeed, but the harshness is held disgraceful, is de- nounced, and even punished by law. But of the wild beings there is need to speak, because still we are killing them for sport. Killing for sport! I pray my reader to consider this matter with me, and let me speak to him of the wild free creatures to whom my soul yearns. If you be a skill- ful hunter, I have to confess, though not as a merit, that I share not the marks- man's ecstasy nor indeed have any skill. Only once in my life I have fired a gun, and then at a large target, which I hit not so much as the edge of. Whence I have no part in pursuit of game, on land, in air, or in water. Notwithstanding, I were of small mind if on that account I understood nothing of the pleasure. I can conceive the delight of the skill which you have with your weapons in contending with the 314 Sporting. intelligence, cunning, speed of the animals. The exercise of any power is pleasurable. Yet here indeed I must depart a little from approval if not from understanding. For I fear that part of the pleasure lies in a certain ecstasy in destruction. Otherwise, why not shoot at marks, and if special skill be what is sought, then at flying marks, arranged to pass with swift motion across the field, for which I have seen some devices? This would not take the place of field sports? No; but even when the open air, the brisk breeze, the fragrant forest, the wide landscape, the ample space, all are thrown in, still I fear that at bottom there is a certain delight in de- struction which has survived from savagery; for I can think it nothing else than bar- barous. What are the rights of the lower ani- mals, and what man's rights over them? We have the right to exterminate rfoxious creatures, as venomous serpents; of which, indeed, there are few here, but they throng in India and other such climates, killing thousands of human beings every year. So likewise tigers, hyenas, wolves, and the like. Wallace thinks we may look to a time when the earth shall bear only culti- vated plants and domestic animals, since now the reason of man has risen over the 315 Sporting. bodily evolution of nature. I know not. For myself I would not have it so. I love the wild things, the beautiful untamed creatures, the fauna, and the slender flora of woods, lowlands, uplands, which no gardener's art matches for delicacy and rare beauty. But the harmful creatures we must do away. Again, we have the right to take all we need for use. This is a part of nature's general order. So all animals do whose nature it is to live by prey. And man, I must confess it, seems to be a preying creature, indeed, the chief of them; for others prey on only a few creatures, but man on all, and it would seem, even on his own kind. Aurelius says that the spider is proud when he has caught a fly, and a certain man when he has entrapped a hare, and another when he has netted a little fish, and another when he has taken a wild boar, and another when ne has conquered the Sarmatians; but that the same principle is in all, and the act if wanton is robbery in all. But it need not be wanton; and for use we may seize rightfully the creatures, either wild or tamed. But has man a right to exter- minate for his use. That is, by such ex- cessive, unsparing consumption that the species on which he preys becomes extinct before him? No. Looks it not greedy, 316 Sporting. immodest? And have we no duties to com- ing generations? May we rob our coming fellows of the beauties or the uses of cer- tain creatures ? The author of ' 'Upland and Meadow," tells of his chagrin when a gray- beard said to him, " You seem to know something about animals, but we had the critters themselves." To use unsparingly is unreverent of the limits of nature. For if Nature make and cherish the species, is not a limit set thereby to man's consump- tion of it, namely, the boundary and duty of non-extermination of what Nature has made in harmless beauty? But whether use unto extermination be moral or not, this is sure, that it is not wise, but foolish, improvident; for sometimes it destroys a needful balance in Nature whereby in- sidious, unlooked-for ills come trooping on us; and always it sacrifices future plenty to present superfluity. Moreover, if hunting for use has been so hard on Nature, hunting for sport I sus- pect has been no less spendthrift, and the two together have made such havoc that Nature hardly can wrestle with man's wantonness, and often has been undone. I know, indeed, there are many hunters (the best and gentlest of their kind) who, never are wanton, will not shoot birds at seasons when the killing of the old birds 317 Sporting-. starves the brood, nor even at their mating times before the brooding, because this cuts nature's stream at the fountain; and such good hunters, indeed, see to it that their game is used somewhere for human benefit, and do nothing wantonly. But these I fear are not very many among those who hunt for sport. It is plain the waste is prodigious; for to this bear witness our plains stripped of their great splendid creatures, our woods de- spoiled of deer, our coast ravaged of birds, our small lakes drained of fish. Now this waste is wrong; I fear not to say grossly wrong, even an impiety. Cite not for answer the prodigality of nature, which scatters thousands of seeds where one takes root, peoples her domains with crea- tures which destroy each other, and fills interminable plains with flowers unwit- nessed, fruits ungathered, answer not thus; for there is no destruction in nature without purpose. The ends of the vast and glorious profusion around us are, first to supply other creatures who live by prey; secondly, to keep room in plenty, whence the fact of death, which if it be not occasioned by creatures that prey, comes by natural limitation at last, that other beings may have living space; thirdly, the evolution of new and finer 318 Sporting. forms, for thus assuredly the long and holy processes of creation come tread- ing on the heels of destruction; fourthly, just beauty and grace for the time and the place where it is. In Gray's oft quoted " Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, And waste its sweetness on the desert air," I confess I like not the word waste. Em- erson says better, that beauty needeth no reason but itself, nor ever is it a waste to Nature that hath produced it, even though no other portion of Nature's wealth of creatures witness the same. This, says the ancient poet, is the way of God, To cause it to rain on the earth where no man is, On the wilderness wherein there is no man, To satisfy the desolate and waste ground, And to cause the bud of the tender herb to spring forth. Job xxxvia:26. Thus the prodigality of Nature, her endless tribes forever appearing, passing, disappearing, answer plainly these four ends; and how many more I pretend not to know or guess. But in these decrees there is no wantonness nor waste, but preservation and right balance of exuber- 319 Sporting. ances; but man's wanton destruction is without use and a sheer waste, an inter- ference with the natural movement of the orders of creatures, as if one lay a bold arresting hand on divine machinery. A/Vhat shall I call this? Impious? These are true thoughts I am sure, and, I think, with a due and right piety in them. But my subject specially is Kind- ness, which is " more than kin," and is the most sweet manner of justice. Therefore my question is not one of economy, nor even of respectfulness, but of love. May we destroy for sport? No. We have no dominion, except a tyrant's, over the life and pain of any creature for our pleasure, even if sadly we be able to enjoy destruc- tion and pain; and not any more over the weaker creatures or the lower, as they are called, than over our own quality. Who gave us this authority? Who placed us in ownership of all Nature? Time was when it was believed the strong man might kill or torture a weaker enemy for his pleasure; but it was a savage time; we wonder at it now. Time will be, I am sure, when a gentler people will wonder at us, because toward the weaker creatures in our power we claim the same right of death or tor- ture which more barbarously our father* used over each other. 320 Sporting. "The marmot has his right too, in his house, Until the marmot-digger comes upon him, Beats him to death and takes his household goods 'Takes', say, the man; 'no,' the marmot, 'steals;' ' Man,' he would say, ' thy right is mastery, Right of the stronger.' " Is there reason, tell me, why might should make right between me and a dove more than between you and me, my fellow- man? Is there reason why royal reason itself should free the creature who so is crowned from bonds to defend the weak, to treat the defenceless tenderly? Consider the reverent quality of love which all creatures should rouse in us. Reverence for delicate and mysterious things marks a high mind. A gentle soul approaches anything rare and exquisite with a kind of awe, a feeling akin to relig- ion. Now so should we feel toward the creatures around us, whether living with us domesticated, or ranging in wild freedom. Think of their beauty of form! Who would esteem himself if he injured care- lessly a statue or a painting? Who would injure such a work wantonly and for love of doing the injury deftly? If the statue or painting were the only one in the world, how it would be guarded and cher- l