"The prison unto which we doom ourselves,
No prison is."
And I was every day making discoveries about life, and about myself. I
had naturally some elements of the recluse, and would never, of my own
choice, have lived in a crowd. I loved quietness. The noise of
machinery was particularly distasteful to me. But I found that the
crowd was made up of single human lives, not one of them wholly
uninteresting, when separately known. I learned also that there are
many things which belong to the whole world of us together, that no one
of us, nor any few of us, can claim or enjoy for ourselves alone. I
discovered, too, that I could so accustom myself to the noise that it
became like a silence to me. And I defied the machinery to make me its
slave. Its incessant discords could not drown the music of my thoughts
if I would let them fly high enough. Even the long hours, the early
rising and the regularity enforced by the clangor of the bell were good
discipline for one who was naturally inclined to dally and to dream,
and who loved her own personal liberty with a willful rebellion against
control. Perhaps I could have brought myself into the limitations of
order and method in no other way.
Like a plant that starts up in showers and sunshine and does not know
which has best helped it to grow, it is difficult to say whether the
hard things or the pleasant things did me most good. But when I was
sincerest with myself, as also when I thought least about it, I know
that I was glad to be alive, and to be just where I was.
It is a conquest when we can lift ourselves above the annoyances of
circumstances over which we have no control; but it is a greater
victory when we can make those circumstances our helpers, when we can
appreciate the good there is in them. It has often seemed to me as if
Life stood beside me, looking me in the face, and saying, "Child, you
must learn to like me in the form in which you see me, before I can
offer myself to you in any other aspect."
It was so with this disagreeable necessity of living among many people.
There is nothing more miserable than to lose the feeling of our own
distinctiveness, since that is our only clue to the Purpose behind us
and the End before us. But when we have discovered that human beings
are not a mere "mass," but an orderly Whole, of which we are a part, it
is all so different!
This we working-girls might have learned from the webs of cloth we saw
woven around us. Every little thread must take its place as warp or
woof, and keep in it steadily. Left to itself, it would be only a
loose, useless filament. Trying to wander in an independent or a
disconnected way among the other threads, it would make of the whole
web an inextricable snarl. Yet each little thread must be as firmly
spun as if it were the only one, or the result would be a worthless
fabric.
That we are entirely separate, while yet we entirely belong to the
Whole, is a truth that we learn to rejoice in, as we come to understand
more and more of ourselves, and of this human life of ours, which seems
so complicated, and yet is so simple. And when we once get a glimpse of
the Divine Plan in it all, and know that to be just where we are, doing
just what we are doing just at this hour because it is our appointed
hour,--when we become aware that this is the very best thing possible
for us in God's universe, the hard task grows easy, the tiresome
employment welcome and delightful. Having fitted ourselves to our
present work in such a way as this, we are usually prepared for better
work, and are sent to take a better place.
Perhaps this is one of the unfailing laws of progress in our being.
Perhaps the Master of Life always rewards those who do their little
faithfully by giving them some greater opportunity for faithfulness.
Certainly, it is a comfort, wherever we are, to say to ourselves:--
"Thou camest not to thy place by accident,
It is the very place God meant for thee."