Part 26 (2/2)

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?

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