Talkers Part 26

"Foul suspicion! thou turnest love divine To joyless dread, and mak'st the loving heart With hateful thoughts to languish and repine, And feed itself with self-consuming smart; Of all the pa.s.sions of the mind thou vilest art."

SPENCER.

The words of his mouth live with a spirit of doubt, incredulity, and jealousy. Actions, thoughts, motives, are questioned as to their reality and disinterestedness. Good counsel given in time of perplexity is attributed to some ulterior purpose which is kept out of view. Gifts of beneficence are said to be deeds of selfishness--patronage is expected in an affair you have on hand, or you antic.i.p.ate as much or more in return in some other ways. A family visited with a severe affliction is suspected to have the cause in some secret moral delinquency in the father, or mother, or elder son or daughter. A merchant meets with reverses in his business, and he is suspected of something wrong, for which these reverses are sent as punishment. A traveller meets with an accident, by which a member of his body is fractured or life taken away: he is suspected of having been a great sinner before G.o.d, for which His vengeance now visits him.

The suspicious talker may be found in one or other phase of his character in almost every cla.s.s and grade of society. How often the husband suspects the wife, and the wife the husband; the master the servant, and the servant the master; brothers suspect brothers; sisters sisters; neighbours neighbours; the rich the poor; the poor the rich.

The talk of the suspicious is bitter, stinging, exasperating. How often it ends in jealousy, strife, quarrels, separations, and other evils of a similar kind!

This talk seldom or ever effects any good. It more frequently excites to the very thing on which the suspicion has fixed its demon eye, but of which the subject of the suspicion was never guilty.

Suspicious talk, like many other kinds, has frequently no foundation to rest upon, excepting the fancy of an enfeebled mind or the ill-nature of an unregenerate heart.

"That was a very nice present which Mr. Muckleton sent you on Christmas-Day," said Mr. Birch to his neighbour.

"O, yes," he replied in a sort of careless way; "I _know_ what he sent it for--that he may get my vote at the next election of town councillors. I can see through it."

"Did not Mr. Shakleton call at your house the other day? and were you not pleased to see him?"

"So far as that goes, I was pleased; but I _know_ what he called for; not to see me or mine. It is not worth saying, but I _know_."

"Has not Mrs. Mount recently joined your church? She is an excellent lady, of very good means and intelligence. I should think you will value her acquisition to your number."

"Well, as for that, I cannot say. I like persons to act from pure motives in all things, especially in religious. Don't you know Mrs.

Mount is a widow, and there is in our church that Squire Nance, a bachelor? I needn't say any more."

"The Rev. Mr. Wem has left our church and gone to a church in London."

"Indeed! I was not aware of that, but I guess it is to obtain more salary."

"How do you know that?"

"How do I know it? You may depend he wouldn't have gone unless he could better himself."

"My dear," said Mrs. Park to her husband one evening as they were sitting alone, "Tom has gone with young Munster to the city, and will be back about ten o'clock."

"What has he gone there for?" asked Mr. Park, rather sternly. "No good, I venture to say. You know the temptations that are in the city, and he is not so steady as we would like him to be."

When Tom came home at ten o'clock, he had to endure a good deal of suspicious tongue-flagellation, which rather excited him to speak rashly in return.

"I do really think," said Mrs. Lance, snappishly, to her servant one day, "you are guilty of picking and biting the things of the larder, besides other little tricks. Now, I do not allow such conduct. It is paltry and mean."

Mrs. Lance had no ground for this utterance but her own suspicions. The servant, conscious of her integrity, became righteously angry, and gave notice to leave at once. So Mary left her suspicious mistress. She was not the first nor the sixth servant she had driven away by her suspicious talk in regard to the "larder," the "cupboards," the "drawers," and the "wardrobe."

Squire Nutt one day went a drive of twelve miles in the country to attend "a hunt dinner," promising his wife that he would be home by eleven o'clock at night. This hour came, but no Squire. Twelve struck, and he had not returned. One struck, yea, even two, and no husband. Mrs.

Nutt all this time was alone, watching for the Squire, and suspecting with a vivid imagination where he had gone, and what he was doing. At half-past two a sound of wheels was heard coming to the door, and in a few minutes the suspected husband entered the hall, and greeted his little wife with signs of affection. Instead of receiving him kindly in return, and waiting till the effects of the dinner had escaped before she called him to account, she began in a most furiously suspicious way to question him. "Where have you been all this time? Have you been round by Netley Hall? _I know all about what you have been up to._ This is a fine thing, this is, keeping me watching and waiting these hours, while you have been galavanting--ah! _I know where._"

Thus, not within curtains, but within the hall, Mrs. Nutt gave her husband a "caudle" lecture, but with little effect upon him. She had nothing but groundless suspicion; he had the inward satisfaction of a good conscience on the points respecting which she suspected him.

As an ill.u.s.tration of another aspect of this talker we may take the friends who came to talk with Job in his troubles. His wife was bad enough in her utterances, but his "friends" were worse. Coleridge, in speaking of Satan taking away everything he had, but left his wife, says,--

"He took his honours, took his wealth, He took his children, took his health, His camels, horses, a.s.ses, cows, And the sly devil did not take his spouse."

But his wife was kind and considerate to what his _friends_ were. She spake as one of the "foolish women;" but his friends came as philosophers, the wise ones, to converse with him; and yet, when they spoke to him, they had nothing but suspicions and doubts to utter as to his sincerity, motives, and purity; told him not to plead innocence in his circ.u.mstances, but confess all with candour, and show that he had been a profound hypocrite, and that G.o.d had visited him with His sore judgments as a punishment for his sins; for _they_ knew that all these things could not have come upon him if there had not been some "secret thing" with him.

Although Job sometimes spoke "unadvisedly with his lips" in reply to the unjustifiable suspicions of his "friends," G.o.d stands on his side, and defends him in his rect.i.tude and integrity. He rebukes with severity Bildad the Shuhite and his two companions, because of their uncharitable suspicions uttered against His servant. He was "angry" that they had not spoken truthfully "as His servant Job;" "and they were to go," as one says, "to this servant Job to be prayed for, and eat humble pie, and a good large slice of it too (I should like to have seen their faces while they were munching it), else their leisurely and inhuman philosophy would have got them into a sc.r.a.pe."

Suspicion in talking is a disposition which renders its subject unacceptable to others and unhappy in himself. Persons will have as little as possible to say to him or do with him, lest they fall under his ruling power; and this is what no one with self-respect cares to do.

Who likes to have himself, in his motives and deeds, put through the crucible of his narrow, p.r.i.c.kly, stingy soul? He cannot see an inch from himself to judge you by. He "measures your cloth by his yard," and weighs your goods in his scales, and judges your colours through his spectacles; and of the justice and trueness of these nothing need be said.

"Suspicion overturns what confidence builds; And he that dares but doubt when there's no ground, Is neither to himself nor others sound."

The true remedy for suspicion in talking is more knowledge in the head and more love in the heart. As bats fly before the light, so suspicions before knowledge and love. Throw open the windows of the soul, and admit the truth. Be generous and n.o.ble in thoughts of others. Give credit for purity of intention and disinterestedness of motives. Build no fabric of fancies and surmises in the imagination without a solid basis. Be pure in yourself in all things. "The more virtuous any man is in himself,"

says Cicero, "the less easily does he suspect others to be vicious."

XXIX.

_THE POETIC._

"I begin shrewdly to suspect the young man of a terrible taint--poetry; with which idle disease, if he be infected, there is no hope of him in a state course."--BEN JONSON.

Sc.r.a.ps of poetry picked up from Burns, or Thomson, or Shakespeare, or Tennyson, are ready to hand for every occasion, so that you may calculate upon a piece, in or out of place, in course of conversation.

If you will do the prose, rely upon it he will do the poetic, much to his own satisfaction, if not to your entertainment. In walking he will gently lay his finger on your shoulder, saying, as he gathers up his recollection, and raising his head, "Hear what my favourite poet says upon the subject."

Sometimes the poetic afflatus falls upon him as he converses, and he will impromptu favour you with an original effusion of rhyme or blank verse, much to the strengthening of his self-complacency, and to the gratification of your sense of the ludicrous.

Talking with Mr. Smythe, a young student, some time ago, I found he was so full of poetic quotations that I began to think whether all his lessons at college had not consisted in the learning of odds and ends from "Gems" and "Caskets" and "Gleanings."

Speaking about the man who is not enslaved to sects and parties, but free in his religious habits, he paused and said, "You remind me, Mr.

Bond, of what Pope says,--

'Slave to no sect, who takes no private road, But looks through nature up to nature's G.o.d.'"

The subject of _music_ was introduced, when, after a few words of prose he broke out in evident emotion,--

"Music! oh, how faint, how weak, Language fades before thy spell!

Why should feeling ever speak When thou canst breathe her soul so well?