Friends and Neighbors Part 17

Avoid, particularly in your intercourse with those to whom it is of most consequence that your temper should be gentle and forbearing--avoid raising into undue importance the little failings which you may perceive in them, or the trifling disappointments which they may occasion you.

If we make it a subject of vexation, that the beings among whom we tire destined to live, are not perfect, we must give up all hope of attaining a temper not easily provoked. A habit of trying everything by the standard of perfection vitiates the temper more than it improves the understanding, and disposes the mind to discern faults with an unhappy penetration. I would not have you shut your eyes to the errors or follies, or thoughtlessnesses of your friends, but only not to magnify them or view them microscopically. Regard them in others as you would have them regard the same things in you, in an exchange of circ.u.mstances.

Do not forget to make due allowances for the original const.i.tution and the manner of education or bringing up, which has been the lot of those with whom you have to do. Make such excuses for Others as the circ.u.mstances of their const.i.tution, rearing, and youthful a.s.sociations, do fairly demand.

Always put the best construction on the motives of others, when their conduct admits of more than one way of understanding it. In many cases, where neglect or ill intention seems evident at first sight, it may prove true that "second thoughts are best." Indeed, this common slaying is never more likely to prove true than in cases in which the _first_ thoughts were the dictates of anger And even when the first thoughts are confirmed by further evidence, yet the habit of always waiting for complete evidence before we condemn, must have a calming; and moderating effect upon the temper, while it will take nothing from the authority of our just censures.

It will further, be a great help to our efforts, as well as our desires, for the government of the temper, if we consider frequently and seriously the natural consequences of hasty resentments, angry replies, rebukes impatiently given or impatiently received, muttered discontents, sullen looks, and harsh words. It may safely be a.s.serted that the consequences of these and other ways in which ill-temper may show itself, are _entirely_ evil. The feelings, which accompany them in ourselves, and those which they excite in others, are unprofitable as well as painful. They lessen our own comfort, and tend often rather to prevent than to promote the improvement of those with whom we find fault. If we give even friendly and judicious counsels in a harsh and pettish tone, we excite against _them_ the repugnance naturally felt to _our manner_. The consequence is, that the advice is slighted, and the peevish adviser pitied, despised, or hated.

When we cannot succeed in putting a restraint on our _feelings_ of anger or dissatisfaction, we can at least check the _expression_ of those feelings. If our thoughts are not always in our power, our words and actions and looks may be brought under our command; and a command over these expressions of our thoughts and feelings will be found no mean help towards obtaining an increase of power over our thoughts and feelings themselves. At least, one great good will be effected: time will be gained; time for reflection; time for charitable allowances and excuses.

Lastly, seek the help of religion. Consider how you may most certainly secure the approbation of G.o.d. For a good temper, or a well-regulated temper, _may be_ the constant homage of a truly religious man to that G.o.d, whose love and long-suffering forbearance surpa.s.s all human love and forbearance.

MANLY GENTLENESS.

WHO is the most wretched man living? This question might const.i.tute a very fair puzzle to those of our readers whose kind hearts have given them, in their own experience, no clue to the true answer. It is a species of happiness to be rich; to have at one's command an abundance of the elegancies and luxuries of life. Then he, perhaps, is the most miserable of men who is the poorest. It is a species of happiness to be the possessor of learning, fame, or power; and therefore, perhaps, he is the most miserable man who is the most ignorant, despised, and helpless.

No; there is a man more wretched than these. We know not where he may be found; but find him where you will, in a prison or on a throne, steeped in poverty or surrounded with princely affluence; execrated, as he deserves to be, or crowned with world-wide applause; that man is the most miserable whose heart contains the least love for others.

It is a pleasure to be beloved. Who has not felt this? Human affection is priceless. A fond heart is more valuable than the Indies. But it is a still greater pleasure to love than to be loved; the emotion itself is of a higher kind; it calls forth our own powers into more agreeable exercise, and is independent of the caprice of others. Generally speaking, if we deserve to be loved, others will love us, but this is not always the case. The love of others towards us, is not always in proportion to our real merits; and it would be unjust to make our highest happiness dependent on it. But our love for others will always be in proportion to our real goodness; the more amiable, the more excellent we become, the more shall we love others; it is right, therefore, that this love should be made capable of bestowing upon us the largest amount of happiness. This is the arrangement which the Creator has fixed upon. By virtue of our moral const.i.tution, to love is to be happy; to hate is to be wretched.

Hatred is a strong word, and the idea it conveys is very repulsive. We would hope that few of our readers know by experience what it is in its full extent. To be a very demon, to combine in ourselves the highest possible degree of wickedness and misery, nothing more is needful than to hate with sufficient intensity. But though, happily, comparatively few persons are fully under the influence of this baneful pa.s.sion, how many are under it more frequently and powerfully than they ought to be?

How often do we indulge in resentful, revengeful feelings, with all of which hatred more or less mixes itself? Have we not sometimes entertained sentiments positively malignant towards those who have wounded our vanity or injured our interests, secretly wis.h.i.+ng them ill, or not heartily wis.h.i.+ng them happiness? If so, we need only consult our own experience to ascertain that such feelings are both sinful and foolish; they offend our Maker, and render us wretched.

We know a happy man; one who in the midst of the vexations and crosses of this changing world, is always happy. Meet him anywhere, and at any time, his features beam with pleasure. Children run to meet him, and contend for the honour of touching his hand, or laying hold of the skirt of his coat, as he pa.s.ses by, so cheerful and benevolent does he always look. In his own house he seems to reign absolute, and yet he never uses any weapon more powerful than a kind word. Everybody who knows him is aware, that, in point of intelligence, ay, and in physical prowess, too--for we know few men who can boast a more athletic frame--he is strong as a lion, yet in his demeanour he is gentle as a lamb. His wife is not of the most amiable temper, his children are not the most docile, his business brings him into contact with men of various dispositions; but he conquers all with the same weapons. What a contrast have we often thought he presents to some whose physiognomy looks like a piece of harsh handwriting, in which we can decipher nothing but _self, self, self_; who seem, both at home and abroad, to be always on the watch against any infringement of their dignity. Poor men! their dignity can be of little value if it requires so much care in order to be maintained. True manliness need take but little pains to procure respectful recognition. If it is genuine, others will see it, and respect it. The lion will always be acknowledged as the king of the beasts; but the a.s.s, though clothed in the lion's skin, may bray loudly and perseveringly indeed, but he will never keep the forest in awe.

From some experience in the homes of working-men, and other homes too, we are led to think that much of the harsh and discordant feeling which too often prevails there may be ascribed to a false conception of what is truly great. It is a very erroneous impression that despotism is manly. For our part we believe that despotism is inhuman, satanic, and that wherever it is found--as much in the bosom of a family, as on the throne of a kingdom. We cannot bring ourselves to tolerate the inconsistency with which some men will inveigh against some absolute sovereign, and straight-way enact the pettiest airs of absolutism in their little empire at home. We have no private intimacy with "the autocrat of all the Russias," and may, with all humility, avow that we do not desire to have any; but this we believe, that out of the thousands who call him a tyrant, it would be no difficult matter to pick scores who are as bad, if not worse. Let us remember that it is not a great empire which const.i.tutes a great tyrant. Tyranny must be measured by the strength of those imperious and malignant pa.s.sions from which it flows, and carrying this rule along with us, it would not surprise us, if we found the greatest tyrant in the world in some small cottage, with none to oppress but a few unoffending children, and a helpless woman.

O! when shall we, be just!--when shall we cease to prate about wrongs inflicted by others, and magnified by being beheld through the haze of distance, and seek to redress those which lie at our own doors, and to redress which we shall only have to prevail upon ourselves to be just and gentle! Arbitrary power is always a.s.sociated either with cruelty, or conscious weakness. True greatness is above the petty arts of tyranny.

Sometimes much domestic suffering may arise from a cause which is easily confounded with a tyrannical disposition--we refer to an exaggerated sense of justice. This is the abuse of a right feeling, and requires to be kept in vigilant check. Nothing is easier than to be one-sided in judging of the actions of others. How agreeable the task of applying the line and plummet! How quiet and complete the a.s.sumption of our own superior excellence which we make in doing it! But if the task is in some respects easy, it is most difficult if we take into account the necessity of being just in our decisions. In domestic life especially, in which so much depends on circ.u.mstances, and the highest questions often relate to mere matters of expediency, how easy it is to be "always finding fault," if we neglect to take notice of explanatory and extenuating circ.u.mstances! Anybody with a tongue and a most moderate complement of brains can call a thing stupid, foolish, ill-advised, and so forth; though it might require a larger amount of wisdom than the judges possessed to have done the thing better. But what do we want with captious judges in the bosom of a family? The scales of household polity are the scales of love, and he who holds them should be a sympathizing friend; ever ready to make allowance for failures, ingenious in contriving apologies, more lavish of counsels than rebukes, and less anxious to overwhelm a person with a sense of deficiency than to awaken in the bosom, a conscious power of doing better. One thing is certain: if any member of a family conceives it his duty to sit continually in the censor's chair, and weigh in the scales of justice all that happens in the domestic commonwealth, domestic happiness is out of the question.

It is manly to extenuate and forgive, but a crabbed and censorious spirit is contemptible.

There is much more misery thrown into the cup of life by domestic unkindness than we might at first suppose. In thinking of the evils endured by society from malevolent pa.s.sions of individuals, we are apt to enumerate only the more dreadful instances of crime: but what are the few murders which unhappily pollute the soil of this Christian land--what, we ask, is the suffering they occasion, what their demoralizing tendency--when compared with the daily effusions of ill-humour which sadden, may we not fear, many thousand homes? We believe that an incalculably greater number are hurried to the grave by habitual unkindness than by sudden violence; the slow poison of churlishness and neglect, is of all poisons the most destructive. If this is true, we want a new definition for the most flagrant of all crimes: a definition which shall leave out the element of time, and call these actions the same--equally hateful, equally diabolical, equally censured by the righteous government of Heaven--which proceed from the same motives, and lead to the same result, whether they be done in a moment, or spread out through a series of years. Habitual unkindness is demoralizing as well as cruel. Whenever it fails to break the heart, it hardens it. To take a familiar ill.u.s.tration: a wife who is never addressed by her husband in tones of kindness, must cease to love him if she wishes to be happy. It is her only alternative. Thanks to the n.o.bility of our nature, she does not always take it. No; for years she battles with cruelty, and still presses with affection the hand which smites her, but it is fearfully at her own expense. Such endurance preys upon her health, and hastens her exit to the asylum of the grave. If this is to be avoided, she must learn to forget, what woman should never be tempted to forget, the vows, the self-renunciating devotedness of impa.s.sioned youth; she must learn to oppose indifference, to neglect and repel him with a heart as cold as his own. But what a tragedy lies involved in a career like this! We gaze on something infinitely more terrible than murder; we see our nature abandoned to the mercy of malignant pa.s.sions, and the sacred susceptibilities which were intended to fertilize with the waters of charity the pathway of life, sending forth streams of bitterest gall. A catalogue of such cases, faithfully compiled, would eclipse, in turpitude and horror, all the calendars of crime that have ever sickened the attention of the world.

The obligations of gentleness and kindness are extensive as the claims to manliness; these three qualities must go together. There are some cases, however, in which such obligations are of special force. Perhaps a precept here will be presented most appropriately under the guise of an example. We have now before our mind's eye a couple, whose marriage tie was, a few months since, severed by death. The husband was a strong, hale, robust sort of a man, who probably never knew a day's illness in the course of his life, and whose sympathy on behalf of weakness or suffering in others it was exceedingly difficult to evoke; while his partner was the very reverse, by const.i.tution weak and ailing, but withal a woman of whom any man might and ought to have been proud. Her elegant form, her fair transparent skin, the cla.s.sical contour of her refined and expressive face, might have led a Canova to have selected her as a model of feminine beauty. But alas! she was weak; she could not work like other women; her husband could not _boast_ among his shopmates how much she contributed to the maintenance of the family, and how largely she could afford to dispense with the fruit of his labours.

Indeed, with a n.o.ble infant in her bosom, and the cares of a household resting entirely upon her, she required help herself, and at least she needed, what no wife can dispense with, but she least of all--_sympathy_, forbearance, and all those tranquilizing virtues which flow from a heart of kindness. She least of all could bear a harsh look; to be treated daily with cold, disapproving reserve, a petulant dissatisfaction could not but be death to her. We will not say it _was_--enough that she is dead. The lily bent before the storm, and at last was crushed by it. We ask but one question, in order to point the moral:--In the circ.u.mstances we have delineated, what course of treatment was most consonant with a manly spirit; that which was actually pursued, or some other which the reader can suggest?

Yes, to love is to be happy and to make happy, and to love is the very spirit of true manliness. We speak not of exaggerated pa.s.sion and false sentiment; we speak not of those bewildering, indescribable feelings, which under that name, often monopolize for a time the guidance of the youthful heart; but we speak of that pure emotion which is benevolence intensified, and which, when blended with intelligence, can throw the light of joyousness around the manifold relations of life. Coa.r.s.eness, rudeness, tyranny, are so many forms of brute power; so many manifestations of what it is man's peculiar glory not to be; but kindness and gentleness can never cease to be MANLY.

Count not the days that have lightly flown, The years that were vainly spent; Nor speak of the hours thou must blush to own, When thy spirit stands before the Throne, To account for the talents lent.

But number the hours redeemed from sin, The moments employed for Heaven;-- Oh few and evil thy days have been, Thy life, a toilsome but worthless scene, For a n.o.bler purpose given.

Will the shade go back on the dial plate?

Will thy sun stand still on his way?

Both hasten on; and thy spirit's fate Rests on the point of life's little date:-- Then live while 'tis called to-day.

Life's waning hours, like the Sibyl's page, As they lessen, in value rise; Oh rouse thee and live! nor deem that man's age Stands on the length of his pilgrimage, But in days that are truly wise.

SILENT INFLUENCE.

"HOW finely she looks!" said Margaret Winne, as a lady swept by them in the crowd; "I do not see that time wears upon her beauty at all."

"What, Bell Walters!" exclaimed her companion. "Are you one of those who think her such a beauty?"

"I think her a very fine-looking woman, certainly," returned Mrs. Winne; "and, what is more, I think her a very fine woman."

"Indeed!" exclaimed Mrs. Hall; "I thought you were no friends?"

"No," replied the first speaker; "but that does not make us enemies."

"But I tell you she positively dislikes you, Margaret," said Mrs. Hall.

"It is only a few days since I knew of her saying that you were a bold, impudent woman, and she did not like you at all."

"That is bad," said Margaret, with a smile; "for I must confess that I like her."

"Well," said her companion, "I am sure I could never like any one who made such unkind speeches about me."

"I presume she said no more than she thought," said Margaret, quietly.

"Well, so much the worse!" exclaimed Mrs. Hall, in surprise. "I hope you do not think that excuses the matter at all?"

"Certainly, I do. I presume she has some reason for thinking as she does; and, if so, it was very natural she should express her opinion."

"Well, you are very cool and candid about it, I must say. What reason have you given her, pray, for thinking you were bold and impudent?"

"None, that I am aware of," replied Mrs. Winne, "but I presume she thinks I have. I always claim her acquaintance, when we meet, and I have no doubt she would much rather I would let it drop."

"Why don't you, then? I never knew her, and never had any desire for her acquaintance. She was no better than you when you were girls, and I don't think her present good fortune need make her so very scornful."

"I do not think she exhibits any more haughtiness than most people would under the same circ.u.mstances. Some would have dropped the acquaintance at once, without waiting for me to do it. Her social position is higher than mine, and it annoys her to have me meet her as an equal, just I used to do."

"You do it to annoy her, then?"

"Not by any means. I would much rather she would feel, as I do, that the difference between us is merely conventional, and might bear to be forgotten on the few occasions when accident throws us together. But she does not, and I presume it is natural. I do not know how my head might be turned, if I had climbed up in the world as rapidly as she has done.

As it is, however, I admire her too much to drop her acquaintance just yet, as long as she leaves it to me."

"Really, Margaret, I should have supposed you had too much spirit to intrude yourself upon a person that you knew wished to shake you off; and I do not see how you can admire one that you know to be so proud."

"I do not admire her on account of her pride, certainly, though it is a quality that sits very gracefully upon her," said Margaret Winne; and she introduced another topic of conversation, for she did not hope to make her companion understand the motives that influenced her.

"Bold and impudent!" said Margaret, to herself, as she sat alone, in her own apartment. "I knew she thought it, for I have seen it in her looks; but she always treats me well externally, and I hardly thought she would say it. I know she was vexed with herself for speaking to me, one day, when she was in the midst of a circle of her fas.h.i.+onable acquaintances.