Part 5 (1/2)
”Pleasant words are as a honeycomb, sweet to the soul and health to the bones.” It is the little disputes, little fault-findings, little insinuations, little reflections, sharp criticisms, fretfulness and impatience, little unkindnesses, slurs, little discourtesies, bad temper, that create most of the discord and unhappiness in the family.
How much it would add to the glory of the homes of the world if that might be said of every one which Rogers said of Lord Holland's suns.h.i.+ny face: ”He always comes to breakfast like a man upon whom some sudden good fortune has fallen”!
The value of pleasant words every day, as you go along, is well depicted by Aunt Jerusha in what she said to our genial friend of ”Zion's Herald”:--
”If folks could have their funerals when they are alive and well and struggling along, what a help it would be”! she sighed, upon returning from a funeral, wondering how poor Mrs. Brown would have felt if she could have heard what the minister said. ”Poor soul, she never dreamed they set so much by her!
”Mis' Brown got discouraged. Ye see, Deacon Brown, he'd got a way of blaming everything on to her. I don't suppose the deacon meant it,--'twas just his way,--but it's awful wearing. When things wore out or broke, he acted just as if Mis' Brown did it herself on purpose; and they all caught it, like the measles or the whooping-cough.
”And the minister a-telling how the deacon brought his young wife here when 't wa'n't nothing but a wilderness, and how patiently she bore hards.h.i.+p, and what a good wife she'd been! Now the minister wouldn't have known anything about that if the deacon hadn't told him. Dear!
Dear! If he'd only told Mis' Brown herself what he thought, I do believe he might have saved the funeral.
”And when the minister said how the children would miss their mother, seemed as though they couldn't stand it, poor things!
”Well, I guess it is true enough,--Mis' Brown was always doing for some of them. When they was singing about sweet rest in heaven, I couldn't help thinking that that was something Mis' Brown would have to get used to, for she never had none of it here.
”She'd have been awful pleased with the flowers. They was pretty, and no mistake. Ye see, the deacon wa'n't never willing for her to have a flower-bed. He said 't was enough prettier sight to see good cabbages a-growing; but Mis' Brown always kind of hankered after sweet-smelling things, like roses and such.
”What did you say, Levi? 'Most time for supper? Well, land's sake, so it is! I must have got to meditating. I've been a-thinking, Levi, you needn't tell the minister anything about me. If the pancakes and pumpkin pies are good, you just say so as we go along. It ain't best to keep everything laid up for funerals.”
_It is the grand secret of a happy home to express the affection you really have._
”He is the happiest,” it was said by Goethe, ”be he king or peasant, who finds peace in his home.” There are indeed many serious, too serious-minded fathers and mothers who do not wish to advertise their children to all the neighbors as ”the laughing family.” If this be so, yet, at the very least, these solemn parents may read the Bible. Where it is said, ”provoke not your children to wrath,” it means literally, ”do not irritate your children;” ”do not rub them up the wrong way.”
Children ought never to get the impression that they live in a hopeless, cheerless, cold world; but the household cheerfulness should transform their lives like sunlight, making their hearts glad with little things, rejoicing upon small occasion.
”How beautiful would our home-life be if every little child at the bed-time hour could look into the faces of the older ones and say: 'We've had such sweet times to-day.'”
”To love, and to be loved,” says Sydney Smith, ”is the greatest happiness of existence.”
V. FINDING WHAT YOU DO NOT SEEK.
Dining one day with Baron James Rothschild, Eugene Delacroix, the famous French artist, confessed that, during some time past, he had vainly sought for a head to serve as a model for that of a beggar in a picture which he was painting; and that, as he gazed at his host's features, the idea suddenly occurred to him that the very head he desired was before him. Rothschild, being a great lover of art, readily consented to sit as the beggar. The next day, at the studio, Delacroix placed a tunic around the baron's shoulders, put a stout staff in his hand, and made him pose as if he were resting on the steps of an ancient Roman temple. In this att.i.tude he was found by one of the artist's favorite pupils, in a brief absence of the master from the room. The youth naturally concluded that the beggar had just been brought in, and with a sympathetic look quietly slipped a piece of money into his hand. Rothschild thanked him simply, pocketed the money, and the student pa.s.sed out. Rothschild then inquired of the master, and found that the young man had talent, but very slender means. Soon after, the youth received a letter stating that charity bears interest, and that the acc.u.mulated interest on the amount he had given to one he supposed to be a beggar was represented by the sum of ten thousand francs, which was awaiting his claim at the Rothschild office.
This ill.u.s.trates well the art of cheerful amus.e.m.e.nt even if one has great business cares,--the entertainment of the artist, the personation of a beggar, and an act of beneficence toward a worthy student.
It ill.u.s.trates, too, what was said by Wilhelm von Humboldt, that ”it is worthy of special remark that when we are not too anxious about happiness and unhappiness, but devote ourselves to the strict and unsparing performance of duty, then happiness comes of itself.” We carry each day n.o.bly, doing the duty or enjoying the privilege of the moment, without thinking whether or not it will make us happy. This is quite in accord with the saying of George Herbert, ”The consciousness of duty performed gives us music at midnight.”
Are not buoyant spirits like water sparkling when it runs? ”_I have found my greatest happiness in labor_,” said Gladstone. ”I early formed a habit of industry, and it has been its own reward. The young are apt to think that rest means a cessation from all effort, but I have found the most perfect rest in changing effort. If brain-weary over books and study, go out into the blessed sunlight and the pure air, and give heartfelt exercise to the body. The brain will soon become calm and rested. The efforts of Nature are ceaseless. Even in our sleep the heart throbs on. I try to live close to Nature, and to imitate her in my labors. The compensation is sound sleep, a wholesome digestion, and powers that are kept at their best; and this, I take it, is the chief reward of industry.”
”Owing to ingrained habits,” said Horace Mann, ”work has always been to me what water is to a fish. I have wondered a thousand times to hear people say, 'I don't like this business,' or 'I wish I could exchange it for that;' for with me, when I have had anything to do, I do not remember ever to have demurred, but have always set about it like a fatalist, and it was as sure to be done as the sun was to set.”
”_One's personal enjoyment is a very small thing, but one's personal usefulness is a very important thing.” Those only are happy who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness_. ”The most delicate, the most sensible of all pleasures,” says La Bruyere, ”consists in promoting the pleasures of others.” And Hawthorne has said that the inward pleasure of imparting pleasure is the choicest of all.
”Oh, it is great,” said Carlyle, ”and there is no other greatness,--to make some nook of G.o.d's creation more fruitful, better, more worthy of G.o.d,--to make some human heart a little wiser, manlier, happier, more blessed, less accursed!” The gladness of service, of having some honorable share in the world's work, what is better than this?
”The Lord must love the common people,” said Lincoln, ”for he made so many of them, and so few of the other kind.” To extend to all the cup of joy is indeed angelic business, and there is nothing that makes one more beautiful than to be engaged in it.
”The high desire that others may be blest savors of heaven.”
The memory of those who spend their days in hanging sweet pictures of faith and trust in the galleries of sunless lives shall never perish from the earth.