WHAT GOOD WILL IT DO?
Thus I translate the Latin _cui bono_. In whatever language the query
is put, it is the most valuable balance-wheel ever attached to human
action and speech.
The principle is old. The pithy phrase in the shrewd Roman's mouth was
two-edged, and had a sharp point. The enterprise that led to no good
was not worth beginning.
A friend of mine who has written long, much, and, so far as I can
judge, always profitably, told me that in 1865 she wrought out what
was, to her apprehension, the most powerful book she ever composed,--a
story of the Civil War. She was a Unionist in every thought and
sentiment, and this she proclaimed; she had had unusual opportunities
of seeing behind the scenes of political intrigue, and she had
improved them. When the last chapter was written she carried the MS.
into her husband's study at dusk one evening, and began to read it
aloud to him. She finished it at two o'clock a.m. Her auditor would
not let her pause until then. Hoarse, but with a heart beating high
with excitement, she waited for the verdict. The husband walked up and
down the floor for some minutes, head bent and hands clasped behind
him, deep in thought. Finally he stopped in front of her.
"That is a marvelous book, my dear,--strong, true, dramatic. It will
sell well. It will make a noise in the world. But--_cui bono?_"
Chagrined, mortified, angry, the author took the words with her to her
room, and her brain tossed upon them as upon thorns all night. At dawn
she arose and put the MS. into the fire.
"I shudder to this day in thinking what would have been had I acted
differently," she says. "What I had written in a semi-frenzy of
patriotism would have been hot pincers, tearing open wounds which
humanity and religion would have taught me to heal."
Into many lives comes some such crisis, when the text I would bind
upon my reader's mind would act as a breakwater, and save more than
one soul from sorrow, perhaps from destruction. In the everyday life
of everybody, crises of less moment accentuate experience, and tend to
make the nature richer or poorer.
I incline to the belief that nine-tenths of the remorseful heartaches
which most of us know only too well, might be spared us did we pause
to repeat to ourselves the Latin or English sentence. It may be a
relic of barbarism, but it is an undeniable trait of human nature that
all of us feel the longing to "answer back," or, as the children put
it, to "get even with" the man or woman whose speech offends us. The
apostle showed marvelous knowledge of the weakness of sinful mortals
when he affirmed that the tongue was an unruly member, for it is
easier to perform a herculean feat, to strain physical strength and
muscle to the utmost, than to bite back the sharp retort, or repress
the acrid reply. And there is such a hopelessness in the sentence once
uttered! It is gone from us forever. We may regret it and show our
repentance in speech and action, but we cannot blot the memory of the
cruel words from our minds, or from the mind of the person,--perhaps a
mere acquaintance, oftener bone of our bone and flesh of our
flesh,--in whose heart the barbed arrows of our eloquence rankle for
months and years. The dear friend may forgive freely and fully the
bitter censure or unjust reproof, but a scar is left which, if touched
in a moment of inadvertence, will pulse and throb with the remembrance
of pain.
"Leave the bitter word unspoken;
So shalt thou be strongly glad,
If there lies no backward shadow
On dead faces, wan and sad."
"To repress a harsh answer, to confess a fault, to stop, right or
wrong, in the midst of self-defence, in gentle submission, sometimes
requires a struggle like life and death, but these three efforts are
the golden threads with which domestic happiness is woven."
How frequently we exclaim,--"If I ever get the opportunity, I will
give that woman a piece of my mind!" or, "I shall some time have the
satisfaction of telling that man what I think of his behavior."
It is a very melancholy and most _un_satisfactory satisfaction to know
that you have made a person uncomfortable. It is folly for you to
suppose for a moment that an angry speech of yours will turn a man
from a course of which you do not approve. It will make him hate you,
perhaps, but it will not change him. It is not only foolish, but
un-Christian to triumph in another's discomfiture. Then why "give the
piece of your mind," which you can never take back? What good will it
do?
The same question may be asked with regard to the uncharitable remarks
which nearly all of us make daily. Once in a great while, we meet a
human being, still permitted to dwell on this sinful earth, who rarely
says anything unkind of anybody, whose rule is, "If you cannot say a
kind thing say nothing." In the course of a long and varied experience
I may have known half-a-dozen such. But what man has done, man may do
again. What is the baneful spirit which tempts the gentlest of us to
take more pleasure in calling attention to a fault than to a virtue?
If a woman is a tender mother, a model wife, and an excellent
housekeeper, why, when her virtues are discussed, is it necessary for
some one to "think it is such a pity that she does not read more?" or
what good comes from the remark that she is "sprightly, but not very
deep?"
There is no habit more easily contracted than that of wholesale
criticism, and it is a habit that grows with fungus-like rapidity.
Washington Irving says "that a sharp tongue is the only edged tool
that grows keener with constant use," and with many people the unruly
member has acquired a razor-like edge which contains in itself the
faculty of keeping sharp, and never needs "honing" or "setting."
I have in mind one man to whom I hesitate to name a friend, unless it
chances to be one over whom he has cast the mantle of his approval.
Those who are fortunate enough to live up to his standard are very
few, and all others he criticises unmercifully, employing in his
condemnation a ready wit and fluent speech that might be used in a
nobler purpose. Such a reputation as he holds for all uncharitableness
is not an enviable one, and one wonders what would be his answer to
our _cui bono_. When there are so many truthful and pleasant things
that may be said of everybody, why call attention to disagreeable
points, which after all, are fewer than the agreeable ones?
The office of the gossip is so thankless that it is a marvel any one
accepts it. To certain natures there is positive delight in being the
first to relate a choice bit of scandal. It never occurs to them that
the old maxim with regard to a dog who fetches a bone can possibly be
applied to them. But it is as true as the stars that if a person
brings you an unsavory tale of a friend, she will carry away as ugly
a story of you, if she can find the faintest suggestion upon which to
found it. The gossip acquires a detective-like faculty for following
out a clue, but unfortunately, the clue is oftener purely imaginary
than real. A little discrepancy like this does not disturb the
professional scandal-monger. So tenacious is the habit of making much
of nothing, that, deprived of this, her sustenance, she would find
life colorless and void. So, if material does not present itself, she
manufactures it. One must live.
There is also a habit, which, while comparatively innocent, is likely
to bring trouble upon the perpetrator. It is that of making many
confidantes. Here comes a very serious _cui bono_. Undoubtedly there
is a momentary satisfaction in telling one's woes and sorrows to an
interested listener. When the auditor is a friend, and a trusted
friend, whose sympathy is genuine and whose discretion is vast, there
is a comfort beyond description in unburdening one's soul. But there
is a line to be drawn even here. It is not deceit to keep your private
affairs to yourself when you are sure that you are guilty of nothing
dishonorable or hypocritical in so doing. You are often your own best
and safest counselor. I know one woman who long ago said a thing which
should be a motto to those susceptible persons who in a sudden
expansion of the heart tell all they know and which they would most
wish to keep to themselves.
"My dear," she said, "in the course of a somewhat checkered life I
have discovered that while I have often been sorry for things which I
have told, I have never had cause to regret what I have kept to
myself."
If you have a secret and wish to keep it, guard it jealously. It
ceases to be yours alone when you impart it to another. Your
confidante may be discretion personified, and, yet again, she may have
some nearer and dearer one to whom she "tells everything," even the
secrets of her friends. Or, you may in time learn to be ashamed of the
confidence which you have reposed in this person, and the knowledge
that she knows and remembers the thing, and, it may be, knows that you
feel a mortification at the thought of it, will gall you unspeakably.
Perhaps the hardest struggle that comes to the average human being is
to let others be mistaken. Yet what good will it do to point out to
them their mistakes? If your husband or son tells several people that
he met John Smith last week in New York, and you know that he was in
that city three weeks ago, why correct him? He is talking hastily and
does not stop to measure his words or time. The mistake is
unimportant. Why antagonize a man by exclaiming:
"My dear John! This is the third week in January, and you went to New
York immediately after Christmas."
When you hear your friend tell your favorite story, and change some
minor detail, she will love you not a whit the more if you correct her
with--
"No, Mary! the way it happened was this"--and then proceed with the
tale in the manner which you consider best.
There are so many things which we all do for which there is no honest
reason, that I will mention only one more. That is the exceedingly
uncomfortable trick of reminding a man of something he has once said,
when he has since had occasion to change his mind. Perhaps some years
ago when you first met your now dear friend, you thought her manner
affected, and did not hesitate to mention the fact to your family.
Since then you have become so well acquainted with her delightful
points that you forget your early impression of her. How do you feel
when you are enthusiastically enumerating her many lovable attributes,
if the member of the household with the fiendish memory strikes in
with--
"Oh, then you have changed your mind about her? You remember you once
said that you considered her the most affected mortal whom you had
ever met."
Under such provocation does not murder assume the guise of justifiable
homicide?
There is no more bitter diet than to be forced to eat one's own words.
Never tell one of an opinion which he once held, if he has since had
reason to alter his views. There is no sin or weakness in changing
one's mind. It is a thing which all of us--if we except a few victims
to pig-headed prejudice--do daily. And, as a rule, we hate to be
reminded of the fact. Then why call the attention of others to the
circumstances that they are guilty of the same weakness, if such it
be? Again I ask, _cui bono?_