Kitabı oku: «Caper-Sauce: A Volume of Chit-Chat about Men, Women, and Things.», sayfa 18
CONSCIENCE KILLING
People seem to think that there is but one form of self-denial; and that is the "No" form. Now we maintain that great self-denial is often put forth, and intense mental pain incurred, in the "Yes" form; i. e., the gradual acceptance of wrong-doing. Conscience killing is a slow, torturing process, and the successful muffling of the protesting voice of one's better nature is at the expense of days and nights of misery. The son, whose every perverse step away from a loving home is on his mother's heart-strings, cannot at first plant them firmly; many a backward glance, many a sigh and tear, many a half-retraced foot-track marks his downward progress. Is there no self-denial in these abortive attempts? Can he forget at once all her pure aspirations and fond hopes for her boy? Are there not kind words, more dreadful to remember than would be the bitterest curses? Can he turn any way, in which proofs of her all-enduring love do not confront him, and shame him, and sting him into acutest misery? Again, can the husband and father, who screens himself behind the love of wife and children, to perpetrate acts, the constant repetition of which wears away their hope and life in the process – can he, while saying "yes" to the fiends who beckon him on, be deaf to the despairing sighs that follow him, and blind to the wrecks of broken promises that lie thickly strewn around him? Does he suffer nothing in the attempt to extinguish all that is best and noblest in him? can the mother, who, stifling the voice of nature, perjures her daughter, for ambition, at the altar, face calmly that daughter's future? Are there no misgivings, no terrible fears, no shrinking back at the last retrieving moment, from a responsibility so dreadful? Can she kiss her away from her own threshold, and forget the little trusting eyes of her babyhood, and the clinging clasp of her fingers, and the Heaven-sent thrill of happiness when she first pillowed that little head upon her bosom? Can she ever cut the cord, strive as she may, by which the Almighty has solemnly bound her to that child for this world and for eternity? Has it cost her nothing in the process, this denial of her better nature? And so, through all the relations of society, wherever a sacred trust is abused, and a confidence outraged, and obligations rent recklessly asunder, there this self-incurred species of suffering, in a greater or less degree, exists accordingly as the moral sensibilities are blunted, or the contrary. The Almighty has not ordained that this path shall be trodden thornless. Coiled in it is many a deadly serpent; the balmiest air it knows is surely death-laden. Following its tortuous windings to the close, its devotee comes to no refuge, when his heart and soul grow faint, and he casts a backward, yearning glance for the holy "long ago."
THE CRY OF A VICTIM
There's eight dollars gone! If I thought it was the last time I should be cheated, I shouldn't mind it; but I know it isn't. In this case it was friendless eighteen —female eighteen – sole support of widowed mother and an indefinite number of small children, and all that; got her money, and turned out a humbug. I hope the recording angel will remember that in my favor. Not to speak of the man who rushed into the area to tell me that he had just had a baby – I mean that his wife had – and that they needed everything; when I immediately scooped up an armful of whatsoever I could find; and, thanking me with grateful tears, he hastened to pawn them for rum. Then there was the gifted but unfortunate artist, who had been sketching at the White Mountains and wished me to "lend him" a greenback to carry him home, because he had read my books, and because he wanted it, and because there was not another person in the world of whom he could possibly ask such a favor; oh, no! Then there was the man who looked like the ten commandments on legs, and must see me, if only a few moments; whose sepulchral errand turned out to be a desire to sell me some Furniture Polish, which I bought to get rid of him, and which, when uncorked a few days after, caused the family to rush into the street without the usual ceremonial hat and bonnet. Then there was the interesting child whom I brought in to feed and warm, who helped himself to several things without leave while I was looking for others. And there was the old gentleman who sent me an illegible MS. story to read and get published; whose i's I dotted, and whose t's I crossed, and for whom I furnished commas and semicolons and periods ad libitum; whose grammar I touched up, and whose capital letters in the wrong place I extinguished; and who abused me like a pickpocket because the Editor to whom I sent it thought that Dickens or Thackeray wrote quite as well as he. Then there was the young man with a widowed mother, for whom I wore out several pairs of boots "getting him a situation;" who used to lie in bed till noon, and go to it when it didn't rain, and spend all he earned in cherry-colored cravats.
Now, I'm going to stiffen myself up against all this sort of thing in future. I've done giving pennies to the little street-sweepers to buy cream-tarts with. I hand no more hot buckwheat cakes through the grating of my basement window to red-nosed little boys with ventilator trousers. I buy no more pounds of lucifer matches from frowsy-headed women at the area door, or "Windsor soap" for sweet charity's sake, knowing it to be only common brown, with a counterfeit label. I shall turn sternly away from the Liliputian venders of flimsy boot-lacings and headless shawl-pins. I wish it distinctly understood that I have no use for corset-lacings, or home-made pomatum, or questionable "Lubin" perfumes in fancy bottles.
I have looked upon the humanitarian side of the question till I don't know whether to be most disgusted at my own credulity, or the perfidy of my fellow-creatures. Now let somebody else take a turn at it.
A Hint To Organ-Grinders. – It is a curious fact that organ-grinders prefer to select for their purpose that house whose windows are ornamented with statues or flowers. There is philosophy in this; since the lady who is fond of beauty and of sweet perfumes, is also fond of music. And though some of our street strains are sufficiently wheezy and harrowing, yet much of it also is sweet and soothing, and suggestive of past luxurious evenings, and of happy faces, and of hours that flew all too swiftly. But alas! for the uplifted pen, with its suspended drop of ink, at such moments! Alas! for the printer's devil waiting on one leg in the hall! Why won't organ-grinders learn where scribblers abide?
STONES FOR BREAD
Some of our papers publish, the latter part of every week – and a very good custom it is – a list of different preachers, their places of worship, and the topics selected for the ensuing Sunday. We often read over this list with curiosity and interest, and lay it down with a sad wonder at some of the topics selected for the sermons. We sometimes say, why don't they preach about something that will come home to the worn, weary, tried heart – vexed enough already with its life-burthens – instead of entangling it in theological nets, till the blessed voice that says so sweetly, "Come unto Me," never reaches the perplexed ear? We say this in no spirit of fault-finding, or dictation, but because we are sure that hungry souls, who every Sunday beg for bread, receive only a stone; and go away to take up their daily burden again on Monday, with faltering, hopeless step, when they might and should march – singing the song of triumph!
If a mother weeps over her lost babe, if a wife mourns her husband, or a father bends over a dead son, whom he thought would live to close his aged eyes, do you choose that time to distress them with abstract questions and transcendental theories? "No – you see before you an aching, tried heart; and you yearn with all your sympathetic nature to comfort it. Your words are few but earnest, and full of love. You go softly with them and look at the dear, dead face, which perhaps you never saw living, and say with quivering lips, "God help you, my friend." Just so, we long sometimes to have clergymen look at the dead faces of men's lost joys and hopes, and pity the bereaved, lonely hearts that want something to lean upon besides cold, dull abstractions; that yearn for the warm, beating, pulsating heart of Infinite Love, and yet cannot find it. Oh! what mission on earth as blessed as to teach them where and how?"
"Come unto Me." These words, thousands of years old, and yet never worn out! "Come unto Me." Oh, shake off the dust of your libraries, and say, as He said it, "Come unto Me!"
