THE PERFECT WORK OF PATIENCE.
A slender little treble was singing it over and over again in childish
sort, with so little appreciation of the meaning of the words that the
oddity of the ditty was the first thing to attract my attention to it.
"You'd better bide a wee, wee, wee!
Oh, you'd better bide a wee.
La, la, la, la, la, _la_,
You'd better bide a wee."
The elf was singing her dolly to sleep, swinging back and forth in her
little rocking-chair, the waxen face pressed against the warm pink cushion
of her own cheek, the yellow silk of curls palpitating with the owner's
vitality mingling with the lifeless floss of her darling's wig. The picture
was none the less charming because so common, but it was not in admiring
contemplation of it that I arrested my pen in the middle of a word, holding
it thus an inch or two above the paper in position to resume the rapid rush
along the sheet it had kept up for ten minutes and more. I mused a moment.
Then, with the involuntary shake one gives his cranium when he has a
ringing in his ears, I finished the sentence:--"sideration, I cannot but
think that patience has had her perfect work."
"You'd better bide a wee!"
lisped the baby's song.
I smiled slightly and sourly at what I called mentally "the pat
incongruity" of the admonition with mood and written words. A swift
review of the situation confirmed the belief that I did well to be
angry with the correspondent whose open letter lay upon the table
beside the unfinished reply. The letter head was familiar. Of late the
frequent sight of it had bred annoyance waxing into irritation. The
brisk interchange of epistles grew out of a business-matter in which,
as I maintained, I had been first ungenerously, then unfairly, finally
dishonestly dealt with. There was no doubt in my mind of the intention
to mislead, if not to defraud me, and the communication now under
advisement was in tone cavalier almost to the point of insult. Aroused
out of the enforced calm I had hitherto managed to preserve, I had
seated myself and set my pen about the work of letting him who had now
assumed the position of "that man," know how his conduct appeared in
the light of reason and common sense. I had not even withheld an
illusion to honesty and commercial morality. I had never done a better
piece of literary work than that letter. Warming to the task in
recounting the several steps of the transaction, I had not scrupled to
set off my moderation by a Rembrandtish wash of shadow furnished by my
correspondent's double-dealing, and to cast my civility into relief by
adroit quotations from his impertinent pages. When I said that
patience had had her perfect work, it was my intention to unfold in
short, stinging sentences my plans as to future dealings with the
delinquent.
The singing on the other side of the room meant no more than the
chirping of a grasshopper upon a mullein-stalk. I did not delude
myself with the notion of providential use of the tongue that tripped
at the consonants and lingered in liquid dalliance with favorite
vowels. Yet, after ten motionless minutes of severe thinking, the
letter was deliberately torn into strips and these into dice, and all
of these went into the waste-paper basket at my elbow. I had concluded
to "abide a wee." If the sun went down that once upon my anger, he
arose upon cold brands and gray ashes. I had not changed my
intellectual belief as to my correspondent's behavior, but the
impropriety of complicating an awkward business by placing myself in
the wrong to the extent of losing my temper was so obvious that I
blushed in recalling the bombastic periods of the torn composition.
Since that lesson, I have never sent off an angry or splenetic letter,
although the temptation to "have it out" upon paper has sometimes got
the better of my more sensible self. If the excitement is particularly
great, and the epistle more than usually eloquent of the fact that, as
the old-time exhorters used to say, I had "great liberty of speech," I
have always left it to cool over night. The "sunset dews" our mothers
sang of took the starch out of the bristling pages, and the "cool,
soft evening-hours," and nightly utterance of--"As we forgive them
that trespass against us,"--drew out the fire.
"You'd better bide a wee!"
I have sometimes thought of writing it down, as poor Jo of "Bleak
House" begged to have his last message to Esther Summerson
transcribed--"werry large,"--and pasting it upon the mirror that, day
by day, reflects a soberer face than I like to see in its sincere
depths--as one hot and hasty soul placarded upon her looking-glass the
single word "PATIENCE." To people whose tempers are quick and
whose actions too often match their tempers, one of the most difficult
of daily duties is to reserve judgment upon that which appears
ambiguous in the conduct of their associates. The dreary list of slain
friendships that makes retrospect painful to those of mature years;
the disappointments that to the young have the bitterness of death;
the tale of trusts betrayed and promises broken--how would the story
be shortened and brightened if conscientious and impartial trial of
the accused preceded sentence and punishment!--if, in short, we would
only "bide a wee" before assuming that our friend is false, or our
love unworthily given.
In a court of justice previous character counts for much. The number
and respectability of the witnesses to a prisoner's excellent
reputation and good behavior have almost as much weight with the jury
as direct testimony in support of the claim that he did not commit the
crime. To prove that he could not, without change of disposition and
habit, violate the laws of his country, is the next best thing to an
established alibi. I should be almost ashamed to set down a thing
which everybody knows so well were it not that each one of us, when
his best friend's fidelity to him is questioned, flies shamelessly in
the face of reason and precedent by ignoring the record of years. He
may have given ten thousand proofs of attachment to him whom he is now
accused of wronging; have showed himself in a thousand ways to be
absolutely incapable of deception or dishonorable behavior of any
sort. A single equivocal circumstance, a word half-heard, a gesture
misunderstood; the report to his prejudice of a tale-bearer who is his
inferior in every respect,--any one of these outbalances the plea of
memory, the appeal of reason, the consciousness of the right of the
arraigned to be heard. Were not the story one of to-day and of every
day, the moral turpitude it displays would arouse the hearer to
generous indignation.
Taking at random one of the multitude of illustrations crowding upon
my mind, let me sketch a vexatious incident of personal history. Some
years ago--no matter how many, nor how long was my sojourn in the town
which was the scene of the story--I accepted the invitation of an
acquaintance to take a seat in her carriage while on my way to call
upon a woman well known to us both. The owner of the equipage, Mrs.
D----, overtook me while I was trudging up the long street leading to
the suburb in which our common acquaintance lived. The day was bleak
and windy, and I was glad to be spared the walk. Mrs. C----, to whom
the visit was paid, came down to receive us with her hat and cloak on.
She was going down town presently, she said, and would not keep us
waiting while she laid aside her wraps. No! she would not have us
shorten our call on her account; she could go half an hour later as
well as now. A good deal was said of the disagreeable weather, and the
bad sidewalks in that new section of the city--as I recollected
afterward. At the time, I was more interested in her mention that her
favorite brother, an editor of note from another town and State, was
visiting her. She asked permission to bring him to call, and I
consented with alacrity, thinking, as I spoke, that I would, after
meeting him, arrange a little dinner-party of choice spirits in his
honor.
When we were ready to go, Mrs. D----, to my surprise and
embarrassment, did not propose that our hostess should drive down-town
with us, although we were going directly back, and a cold "Scotch
mist" was beginning to fall. To this day, I do not know to what to
attribute what I then felt--what I still consider--was gross
incivility. The most charitable supposition is that it never occurred
to her that it would be neighborly and humane to offer a luxurious
seat in her swiftly rolling chariot to the woman who must otherwise
walk a mile in the chill and wet. She had the reputation of
absent-mindedness. Let us hope that her wits were off upon an
excursion when we got into the carriage and drove away, leaving Mrs.
C---- at the gate.
Glancing back, uneasily, I saw her raise an umbrella and set out upon
her cheerless promenade directly in our wake, and I made a desperate
essay at redressing the wrong.
"It is a pity Mrs. C---- must go out this afternoon," I said,
shiveringly. "She will have a damp walk."
"Yes," assented my companion, readily. "That is the worst of being in
this vicinity. There is no street railway within half a mile."
She went no further. I could go no further. The carriage was hers--not
mine.
Mrs. C---- 's brother did not call on me, nor did she ever again. The
latter circumstance might not have excited surprise, had she not
treated me with marked coldness when I met her casually at the house
of a friend. In the busy whirl of an active life, I should have
forgotten this circumstance, or set it down to my own imagination, had
not her brother's paper contained, a month or so later, an attack upon
myself that amazed me by what I thought was causeless acrimony. Even
when I found myself described as rich, haughty and heartless,
"consorting with people who could pay visits to me in coaches with
monograms upon the doors, and turning the cold shoulder to those who
came on foot,"--I did not associate the diatribe with my visit to the
writer's relative. Five years afterward, the truth was made known to
me by accident. Mrs. C---- had judged from something said during our
interview that the equipage belonged to me, and that I had brought
Mrs. D---- to see her instead of being the invited party. I was now a
resident of another city. The story came to me by a circuitous route.
Explanation was impracticable. Yet it is not six months since there
fell under my eye a paragraph penned by the offended brother
testifying that his opinion of my insignificant self remains
unaltered.
Had he or his sister suspended judgment until the evidence against my
ladyhood and humanity could be investigated, I should have had to
look elsewhere for an incident with which to point the moral of my
Talk.
Rising above the pettiness of spiteful grudge-bearing against a
fellow-mortal, let me say a word of the unholy restiveness with which
we meet the disappointments which are the Father's discipline of His
own. "All these things are against me!" is a cry that has struck upon
His loving heart until Godlike patience is needed to bear with the
fretful wail.
Nothing that He lets fall upon us can be "against" us! In His hottest
fires we have but to "hold still" and bide His good time in order to
see that all His purposes in us are mercy, as well as truth to His
promises. In the Hereafter deeded to us as a sure heritage, we shall
see that each was a part of His design for our best and eternal good.