WHEREFORE?
NOW, I am afraid you will laugh over the matter which appeared next
to Ruth Burnham in the shape of a trial. Yet, if you have not lived
long enough in this world to be in sympathy with the _little_ trials,
which, in certain states of mind, look large, either your experience
is not extensive or your _sympathies_ not large. It was no greater
matter than the hair which belonged to Judge Burnham’s daughters. But
really if you _could_ have seen the trying way in which they managed
to disfigure their heads with this part of their adorning, you would
have felt that some action was demanded. Ruth knew exactly how each
head ought to be dressed; she could almost see the effect that would
be produced by a skillful and easily attainable arrangement. Then
where the trial? Why, perhaps, if you are not made up of that cruelly
sensitive type of women—and I am sure I hope you are not—it will be
difficult to make plain to you how Ruth shrank from touching that hair!
Human hair, other than her own was a thing which she desired to keep
at a respectful distance. She could admire it, when well cared for,
and she did most heartily. But to _care_ for it, to comb and brush and
fondle over _any_ person’s hair, was to Ruth, or would have been had
she ever been called upon to suffer in that line, a positive martyrdom.
Now add to this the fact that this shrinking from the work increased
tenfold when it had to do with any person who was not _very_ dear and
precious, and possibly you can comprehend why she wore so troubled a
face that Saturday evening, and gazed at those hopeless heads opposite
her, and wondered how a transformation was to be brought about. She was
hopeless as regarded teaching the intricacies of any becoming twist or
curl. In time, with patience and with often taking hold and obliging
the refractory hairs to lie in their place, it might be accomplished;
and here poor Ruth shivered over the horrors of a possible future
experience. But to get them ready to appear at church the next morning,
without a personal encounter, was not to be hoped for.
This Saturday evening, although the family had been three weeks in
their new home, was the first in which they were planning for church.
The little church in the village had been closed for a longer space of
time than that, undergoing repairs, and the first Sabbath after their
marriage Ruth had contrived to plan and work herself into an exhaustive
headache that had to be succumbed to and petted all day. The next they
had been forced to spend in the city, by reason of having missed the
last train out on Saturday. Now here they were on the eve of the third,
and Ruth at least had been planning toward the little stone church
around the corner. Everything was in readiness. The new dresses and
the new bonnets and the new gloves, and all the new and bewildering
paraphernalia of the toilet had arrived from the city, the last
package only the evening before, and but for that dreadful hair Ruth
would have been happy over the thought of the effect to be produced by
the next morning’s toilet.
It was Susan who at last, and in an unexpected manner, came to the
rescue, just as she had stepped in and rescued Ruth from a hundred
trials, both seen and unseen, during the experiences of the last three
weeks. She did her part so naturally, too, as one who simply happened
along at the right moment, without having understood any special need
for it. Perhaps there is no rarer or more perfect way of bearing one
another’s burdens than this apparently unconscious one.
They sat in the cheery sitting-room—Ruth would not have it called a
parlor—and in no part of the house had the transformation been more
complete than in that square, rag-carpeted, paper-curtained, and
unhome-like room. Judge Burnham was reading certain business letters
that seemed to perplex him. The girls were wishing that they could
invent some excuse for escaping early from the room to their own, that
they might have another look at all the beauties of their wardrobe,
and Ruth was gazing at them with a distressed air and manner, and
thinking of hair! Susan, glancing up from her glove-mending, followed
the direction of Ruth’s eyes for a moment, then she spoke her thoughts.
“I just _long_ to get hold of your hair.”
The remark seemed to be addressed to the two girls, and was so in
keeping with Ruth’s thoughts that she started and flushed, wondering
for an instant whether it were possible for Susan to know what they
were. The girls laughed, and looked pleased at her interest.
“Your hair would curl beautifully,” Susan added, addressing the elder
sister. “And those wide braids in which heavy hair is arranged now
would just fit Minta’s face. Don’t you think so, Ruth?”
“Yes,” said Ruth, promptly, “I am sure of it. But I don’t know that she
could get them looped right.”
“Oh yes, she could. It is very easy after one knows how. Girls, I am an
excellent barber. Suppose we go up-stairs and try my skill? I can show
you so that you can arrange that part of your toilet in the morning in
less time than it usually takes.”
This plan was immediately carried out, the three going up-stairs with
merry voices, Susan’s cheery one being heard to say:
“Oh, you don’t understand half my accomplishments yet; there are ever
so many things I can do.”
“That is a fact,” said Judge Burnham, with emphasis. “She is a very
treasure in the house. I used to pity you, Ruth, but, upon my word,
so far as she is concerned, I am not sure that there was any room for
pity.”
“There was not,” Ruth said, heartily. “It took me a long time to
realize it, but she has been from the first day of her coming to our
home a blessing to me.”
And so strange are these hearts of ours, touched oftentimes by words
or deeds apparently so slight, Ruth felt the little episode of the
hair-dressing as something that called forth very tender feeling for
her sister. She began to have a dim idea of what a blessing might be
hidden in a simple, quiet life, constantly unselfish in so-called
_little_ things.
So it came to pass that, on a lovely Sabbath morning, the Burnham
family were one and all making ready to appear as a family in the
little stone church. The girls had been there, more or less, on
Sabbaths, during their lives. Years ago Judge Burnham used to go
occasionally, when he felt like it. But it had been many a year since
he had been seen inside the unpretending little building. Ruth, of
course, had never been, and the circumstances surrounding them all were
so new and strange that it was almost like a company of strangers being
introduced into home-life together.
The two girls came down a trifle earlier than the others, and were
in the hall near the doorway, where the soft, yellow sunlight rested
on them, when Judge Burnham descended the stairs. Half-way down he
paused, with a surprised, irresolute air, as his eyes rested on the two
apparent strangers, and then, as one of them turned suddenly, and he
caught a glimpse of her face, the surprise deepened into bewilderment.
Who _were_ these young ladies who were so at home in his house in the
privacy of a Sabbath morning? This was the first thought. And the
second, “It is not—can it be _possible_ that they are my daughters!”
Then, it is almost surprising that he did not at once feel humiliated
over the fact that outward adornings had power so to transform!
It was certainly a transformation! Rich, quiet-toned silks, just
the right tint to accord well with skin and eyes, made in that
indescribable manner which marks the finished workman, to those
eyes skilled in translating it, and to other eyes it simply
says, “The effect is perfect.” Wraps, and hats, and gloves,
and handkerchiefs—everything in keeping. And, in place of the
stretched-back hair, were soft, smooth, rolling auburn curls,
completely changing the expression of the wearer’s face. Also, that
unbecoming mass of shortish hair which had hung in such untidy
uncouthness, was gone, and in its place wide, smooth braids, tastefully
looped here and there with knots of ribbon of just the right shade.
Ruth should have been there at that moment to see the two, and to see
Judge Burnham as he looked at them. She would have felt rewarded for
her work. It certainly _was_ strange what a different manner the
hitherto awkward girls now assumed. A sense of conscious becomingness,
if it were nothing more, had fallen upon them, and in the effort to do
justice to their new selves they almost unconsciously drew the stooping
shoulders straight and stood with heads erect.
“Well, upon my word!” said Judge Burnham, recovering himself at last,
and advancing toward them, “I didn’t know you. I wondered what strange
ladies we had here. Your fall suits are certainly very becoming.”
He chose to ignore the fact that fall suits were new experiences to
them. Perhaps he really did not yet understand to what a new world they
had been introduced. The two laughed, not unpleasantly, and the flush
on their cheeks, toned, as it was, by the billows of soft ruchings
about the throat, was certainly not unbecoming. They had taken long
looks at themselves in their mirror, that morning, and it was not
unpleasant to them to think that their father did not recognize them.
They had already reached the place where they had no desire to have
their past recognized. Some seed takes root promptly and grows rapidly.
You may imagine that the entrance of the Burnham party to the little
stone church was an event in the eyes of the congregation. They had
known the Burnham girls all their lives; but these “young ladies” they
never saw before. It would have been curious to a student of human
nature to have studied the effect which their changed appearance made
on the different characters present. Certain ones looked unaffected
and unconcealed amazement; others gazed up at them, and returned their
nods of recognition with respectful bows, seeming to look upon them as
people who had moved to an immense distance from themselves; and there
were those who resented the removal, and tossed their heads and said,
with their eyes, and the shape of their mouths, that they “considered
themselves quite as good as those Burnham girls, if they were all
decked out like peacocks!”
As for Judge Burnham, the shade of satisfied pride, in place of the
mortification which he had schooled himself to feel, repaid his wife
for her three weeks of effort.
Then she tried to turn away from the question of personal appearance,
and give herself to the service; but she was both surprised and
pained to find that, in her well-meant efforts to place these girls
in their proper position before others, she had, someway, lost ground
spiritually. It was all very well to resolve to turn her thoughts away
from the girls, and their dresses, and their bonnets, and their hair,
and their manners, but it was another thing to accomplish it. She found
what, possibly, we have each discovered by experience, that it was not
easy to get away on Sabbath, in church, from that which had absorbed us
during the week, and indeed, a fair share of the early Sabbath itself.
Try as she would to join in hymn, or Bible-reading, or even prayers,
she found her mind wandering to such trivial questions as whether,
after all, a shade lighter of the silk would have fitted Minta’s
peculiar complexion better, or whether those gloves were not a trifle
large. These thoughts were very hateful to her. She struggled hard to
get away from them, and was amazed and distressed beyond measure to
find that they held her captive. She waited eagerly for the sermon,
hoping that it would be such an one as would hold her attention for
her, since she was not able to control it herself; and behold, the
text announced was one which, indeed, helped her wandering thoughts,
but threw her back into the very midst of the gloom which had pressed
her heart the last time she heard those words: “Wherefore do ye spend
money for that which is not bread? and your labor for that which
satisfieth not?” Again her answering conscience said that was what she
had been doing. Money and time and strength freely given for that which
was not bread!
It had not fed her soul; on the contrary, it, or something else, had
starved her. Well, what was the trouble? She had surely done that which
was her duty? Yes, but did a revealing spirit whisper the words in her
ear, just then?—“These ought ye to have done, and not to have left the
other undone.” She had been _absorbed_ in her labor; she had put these
things first. She had risen and gone about the day, too hurried for
other than a word of prayer—too hurried for any private reading. She
had retired at night, too wearied in mind and body for any prayer at
all! She was starved! much time gone, and no bread for her hungry soul!
Also, having not fed herself, how could she have been expected to feed
others? Even yet she had said almost nothing, to these daughters of
hers, about the all-important matter. She had talked with them, often
and long. All the details of the toilet had been gone over carefully,
exhaustively, and she and they, and Judge Burnham himself, were
satisfied with the results of her words in that direction. What about
the direction which “_satisfieth_?”
How was Ruth to get away from her heart?
No, I must do her justice; that was not her cry. She did not want
to get away from the awakening voice. She was distressed, she was
humiliated, she was unhappy; but she wanted to find rest only through
the love and patience of Jesus. She felt like a sheep who had wandered
outside, even while doing work that she surely thought was set for
her—as, indeed, it was; but her eyes were just opening to the fact
that one can do work that the Master has set, so vigorously as to
forget the resting-places which he has marked for the soul to pause and
commune with him, and gather strength. She had been _working_, but not
_resting_. And then, again, it was most painfully true that, because
of her lack of spiritual strength, she had done but half her work. The
important human side she had held to its important place, and worked
faithfully for it. But the forever-more important spiritual side she
had allowed to sink almost out of sight of her vision; and even, when
roused by His Spirit, as He had spoken to her through that very verse,
but a little time before, she had allowed her roused heart to slip back
and absorb itself in the cares of this world and the adornments of
fleshly bodies, while the souls waited.
Truth to tell, Ruth was not troubled any more that morning, by
wandering thoughts; neither did she hear much of the earnest sermon
which was preached; but, if the preacher had but known how the Holy
Spirit took his text and preached to one soul for him, he would have
gone home to his closet, on his knees, and thanked God for using his
lips that day, in reading to that soul that questioning word.