"Papa, what are you going to give us this winter for our evening
readings?" said Jennie.
"I am thinking, for one thing," I replied, "of preaching a course of
household sermons from a very odd text prefixed to a discourse which I
found at the bottom of the pamphlet-barrel in the garret."
"Don't say sermon, papa,--it has such a dreadful sound; and on winter
evenings one wants something entertaining."
"Well, treatise, then," said I, "or discourse, or essay, or prelection;
I'm not particular as to words."
"But what is the queer text that you found at the bottom of the
pamphlet-barrel?"
"It was one preached upon by your mother's great-great-grandfather, the
very savory and much-respected Simeon Shuttleworth, 'on the occasion of
the melancholy defections and divisions among the godly in the town of
West Dofield'; and it runs thus,--'_Take us the foxes, the little foxes,
that spoil the vines: for our vines have tender grapes._'"
"It's a curious text enough; but I can't imagine what you are going to
make of it."
"Simply an essay on Little Foxes," said I; "by which I mean those
unsuspected, unwatched, insignificant _little_ causes that nibble away
domestic happiness, and make home less than so noble an institution
should be. You may build beautiful, convenient, attractive houses,--you
may hang the walls with lovely pictures and stud them with gems of Art;
and there may be living there together persons bound by blood and
affection in one common interest, leading a life common to themselves
and apart from others; and these persons may each one of them be
possessed of good and noble traits; there may be a common basis of
affection, of generosity, of good principle, of religion; and yet,
through the influence of some of these perverse, nibbling, insignificant
little foxes, half the clusters of happiness on these so promising vines
may fail to come to maturity. A little community of people, all of whom
would be willing to die for each other, may not be able to live happily
together; that is, they may have far less happiness than their
circumstances, their fine and excellent traits, entitle them to expect.
"The reason for this in general is that home is a place not only of
strong affections, but of entire unreserves; it is life's undress
rehearsal, its back-room, its dressing-room, from which we go forth to
more careful and guarded intercourse, leaving behind us much _débris_ of
cast-off and every-day clothing. Hence has arisen the common proverb,
'No man is a hero to his _valet-de-chambre_'; and the common warning,
'If you wish to keep your friend, don't go and live with him.'"
"Which is only another way of saying," said my wife, "that we are all
human and imperfect; and the nearer you get to any human being, the more
defects you see. The characters that can stand the test of daily
intimacy are about as numerous as four-leaved clovers in a meadow; in
general, those who do not annoy you with positive faults bore you with
their insipidity.' The evenness and beauty of a strong, well-defined
nature, perfectly governed and balanced, is about the last thing one is
likely to meet with in one's researches into life."
"But what I have to say," replied I, "is this,--that, family-life being
a state of unreserve, a state in which there are few of those barriers
and veils that keep people in the world from seeing each other's defects
and mutually jarring and grating upon each other, it is remarkable that
it is entered upon and maintained generally with less reflection, less
care and forethought, than pertain to most kinds of business which men
and women set their hands to. A man does not undertake to run an engine
or manage a piece of machinery without some careful examination of its
parts and capabilities, and some inquiry whether he have the necessary
knowledge, skill, and strength to make it do itself and him justice. A
man does not try to play on the violin without seeing if his fingers are
long and flexible enough to bring out the harmonies and raise his
performance above the grade of dismal scraping to that of divine music.
What should we think of a man who should set a whole orchestra of
instruments upon playing together without the least provision or
forethought as to their chording, and then howl and tear his hair at the
result? It is not the fault of the instruments that they grate harsh
thunders together; they may each be noble and of celestial temper; but
united without regard to their nature, dire confusion is the result.
Still worse were it, if a man were supposed so stupid as to expect of
each instrument a _rôle_ opposed to its nature,--if he asked of the
octave-flute a bass solo, and condemned the trombone because it could
not do the work of the many-voiced violin.
"Yet just so carelessly is the work of forming a family often performed.
A man and woman come together from some affinity, some partial accord of
their nature which has inspired mutual affection. There is generally
very little careful consideration of who and what they are,--no thought
of the reciprocal influence of mutual traits,--no previous chording and
testing of the instruments which are to make lifelong harmony or
discord,--and after a short period of engagement, in which all their
mutual relations are made as opposite as possible to those which must
follow marriage, these two furnish their house and begin life together.
Ten to one, the domestic roof is supposed at once the proper refuge for
relations and friends on both sides, who also are introduced into the
interior concert without any special consideration of what is likely to
be the operation of character on character, the play of instrument with
instrument; then follow children, each of whom is a separate entity, a
separate will, a separate force in the family; and thus, with the lesser
forces of servants and dependants, a family is made up. And there is no
wonder if all these chance-assorted instruments, playing together,
sometimes make quite as much discord, as harmony. For if the husband and
wife chord, the wife's sister or husband's mother may introduce a
discord; and then again, each child of marked character introduces
another possibility of confusion. The conservative forces of human
nature are so strong and so various, that with all these drawbacks the
family state is after all the best and purest happiness that earth
affords. But then, with cultivation and care, it might be a great deal
happier. Very fair pears have been raised by dropping a seed into a
good soil and letting it alone for years; but finer and choicer are
raised by the watchings, tendings, prunings of the gardener. Wild
grape-vines bore very fine grapes, and an abundance of them, before our
friend Dr. Grant took up his abode at Iona, and, studying the laws of
Nature, conjured up new species of rarer fruit and flavor out of the
old. And so, if all the little foxes that infest our domestic vine and
fig-tree were once hunted out and killed, we might have fairer clusters
and fruit all winter."
"But, papa," said Jennie, "to come to the foxes; let's know what they
are."
"Well, as the text says, _little_ foxes, the pet foxes of good people,
unsuspected little animals,--on the whole, often thought to be really
creditable little beasts, that may do good, and at all events cannot do
much harm. And as I have taken to the Puritanic order in my discourse, I
shall set them in sevens, as Noah did his clean beasts in the ark. Now
my seven little foxes are these:--Fault-finding, Intolerance, Reticence,
Irritability; Exactingness, Discourtesy, Self-Will. And here," turning
to my sermon, "is what I have to say about the first of them."
* * * * *
Fault-finding,--a most respectable little animal, that many people let
run freely among their domestic vines, under the notion that he helps
the growth of the grapes, and is the principal means of keeping them in
order.
Now it may safely be set down as a maxim, that nobody likes to be found
fault with, but everybody likes to find fault when things do not suit
him.
Let my courteous reader ask him- or herself if he or she does not
experience a relief and pleasure in finding fault with or about whatever
troubles them.
This appears at first sight an anomaly in the provisions of Nature.
Generally we are so constituted that what it is a pleasure to us to do
it is a pleasure to our neighbor to have us do. It is a pleasure to
give, and a pleasure to receive. It is a pleasure to love, and a
pleasure to be loved; a pleasure to admire, a pleasure to be admired. It
is a pleasure also to find fault, but _not_ a pleasure to be found fault
with. Furthermore, those people whose sensitiveness of temperament leads
them to find the most fault are precisely those who can least bear to be
found fault with; they bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and
lay them on other men's shoulders, but they themselves cannot bear the
weight of a finger.
Now the difficulty in the case is this: There are things in life that
need to be altered; and that things may be altered, they must be spoken
of to the people whose business it is to make the change. This opens
wide the door of fault-finding to well-disposed people, and gives them
latitude of conscience to impose on their fellows all the annoyances
which they themselves feel. The father and mother of a family are
fault-finders, _ex officio_; and to them flows back the tide of every
separate individual's complaints in the domestic circle, till often the
whole air of the house is chilled and darkened by a drizzling Scotch
mist of querulousness. Very bad are these mists for grape-vines, and
produce mildew in many a fair cluster.
Enthusius falls in love with Hermione, because she looks like a
moonbeam,--because she is ethereal as a summer cloud, _spirituelle_. He
commences forthwith the perpetual adoration system that precedes
marriage. He assures her that she is too good for this world, too
delicate and fair for any of the uses of poor mortality,--that she ought
to tread on roses, sleep on the clouds,--that she ought never to shed a
tear, know a fatigue, or make an exertion, but live apart in some
bright, ethereal sphere worthy of her charms. All which is duly chanted
in her ear in moonlight walks or sails, and so often repeated that a
sensible girl may be excused for believing that a little of it may be
true.
Now comes marriage,--and it turns out that Enthusius is very particular
as to his coffee, that he is excessively disturbed, if his meals are at
all irregular, and that he cannot be comfortable with any table
arrangements which do not resemble those of his notable mother, lately
deceased in the odor of sanctity; he also wants his house in perfect
order at all hours. Still he does not propose to provide a trained
housekeeper; it is all to be effected by means of certain raw Irish
girls, under the superintendence of this angel who was to tread on
roses, sleep on clouds, and never know an earthly care. Neither has
Enthusius ever considered it a part of a husband's duty to bear personal
inconveniences in silence. He would freely shed his blood for
Hermione,--nay, has often frantically proposed the same in the hours of
courtship, when of course nobody wanted it done, and it could answer no
manner of use; and thus to the idyllic dialogues of that period succeed
such as these:--
"My dear, this tea is smoked: can't you get Jane into the way of making
it better?"
"My dear, I have tried; but she will not do as I tell her."
"Well, all I know is, other people can have good tea, and I should think
we might."