I was twenty-one when I stood as groomsman for my youngest and favorite
sister Emily. I remember her now as she stood at the altar,--a pale,
sweet, flowery face, in a half-shimmer between smiles and tears, looking
out of vapory clouds of gauze and curls and all the vanishing mysteries
of a bridal morning.
Everybody thought the marriage such a fortunate one!--for her husband
was handsome and manly, a man of worth, of principle good as gold and
solid as adamant,--and Emmy had always been such a flossy little kitten
of a pet, so full of all sorts of impulses, so sensitive and nervous, we
thought her kind, strong, composed, stately husband made just on purpose
for her. "It was quite a Providence," sighed all the elderly ladies, who
sniffed tenderly, and wiped their eyes, according to approved custom,
during the marriage ceremony.
I remember now the bustle of the day,--the confused whirl of white
gloves, kisses, bridemaids, and bridecakes, the losing of trunk-keys and
breaking of lacings, the tears of mamma--God bless her!--and the jokes
of irreverent Christopher, who could, for the life of him, see nothing
so very dismal in the whole phantasmagoria, and only wished he were as
well off himself.
And so Emmy was wheeled away from us on the bridal tour, when her
letters came back to us almost every day, just like herself, merry,
frisky little bits of scratches,--as full of little nonsense-beads as a
glass of Champagne, and all ending with telling us how perfect he was,
and how good, and how well he took care of her, and how happy, etc.,
etc.
Then came letters from her new home. His house was not yet built; but
while it was building, they were to live with his mother, who was "such
a good woman," and his sisters, who were also "such nice women."
But somehow, after this, a change came over Emmy's letters. They grew
shorter; they seemed measured in their words; and in place of sparkling
nonsense and bubbling outbursts of glee, came anxiously worded praises
of her situation and surroundings, evidently written for the sake of
arguing herself into the belief that she was extremely happy.
John, of course, was not as much with her now: he had his business to
attend to, which took him away all day, and at night he was very tired.
Still he was very good and thoughtful of her, and how thankful she ought
to be! And his mother was very good indeed, and did all for her that she
could reasonably expect,--of course she could not be like her own mamma;
and Mary and Jane were very kind,--"in their way," she wrote, but
scratched it out, and wrote over it, "very kind indeed." They were the
best people in the world,--a great deal better than she was; and she
should try to learn a great deal from them.
"Poor little Em!" I said to myself, "I am afraid these very nice people
are slowly freezing and starving her." And so, as I was going up into
the mountains for a summer tour, I thought I would accept some of John's
many invitations and stop a day or two with them on my way, and see how
matters stood. John had been known among us in college as a taciturn
fellow, but good as gold. I had gained his friendship by a regular
siege, carrying parallel after parallel, till, when I came into the fort
at last, I found the treasures worth taking.
I had little difficulty in finding Squire Evan's house. It was _the_
house of the village,--a true, model, New England house,--a square,
roomy, old-fashioned mansion, which stood on a hillside under a group of
great, breezy old elms, whose wide, wind-swung arms arched over it like
a leafy firmament. Under this bower the substantial white house, with
all its window-blinds closed, with its neat white fences all tight and
trim, stood in its faultless green turfy yard, a perfect Pharisee among
houses. It looked like a house all finished, done, completed, labelled,
and set on a shelf for preservation; but, as is usual with this kind of
edifice in our dear New England, it had not the slightest appearance of
being lived in, not a door or window open, not a wink or blink of life:
the only suspicion of human habitation was the thin, pale-blue smoke
from the kitchen-chimney.
And now for the people in the house.
In making a New England visit in winter, was it ever your fortune to be
put to sleep in the glacial spare-chamber, that had been kept from time
immemorial as a refrigerator for guests,--that room which no ray of
daily sunshine and daily living ever warms, whose blinds are closed the
whole year round, whose fireplace knows only the complimentary blaze
which is kindled a few moments before bed-time in an atmosphere where
you can see your breath? Do you remember the process of getting warm in
a bed of most faultless material, with linen sheets and pillow-cases,
slippery and cold as ice? You did get warm at last, but you warmed your
bed by giving out all the heat of your own body.
Such are some families where you visit. They are of the very best
quality, like your sheets, but so cold that it takes all the vitality
you have to get them warmed up to the talking-point. You think, the
first hour after your arrival, that they must have heard some report to
your disadvantage, or that you misunderstood your letter of invitation,
or that you came on the wrong day; but no, you find in due course that
you _were_ invited, you were expected, and they were doing for you the
best they know how, and treating you as they suppose a guest ought to be
treated.
If you are a warm-hearted, jovial fellow, and go on feeling your way
discreetly, you gradually thaw quite a little place round yourself in
the domestic circle, till, by the time you are ready to leave, you
really begin to think it is agreeable to stay, and resolve that you will
come again. They are nice people; they like you; at last you have got to
feeling at home with them.
Three months after, you go to see them again, when, lo! there you are,
back again just where you were at first. The little spot which you had
thawed out is frozen over again, and again you spend all your visit in
thawing it and getting your hosts limbered and in a state for
comfortable converse.
The first evening that I spent in the wide, roomy front-parlor, with
Judge Evans, his wife, and daughters, fully accounted for the change in
Emmy's letters. Rooms, I verily believe, get saturated with the aroma of
their spiritual atmosphere; and there are some so stately, so correct,
that they would paralyze even the friskiest kitten or the most impudent
Scotch terrier. At a glance, you perceive, on entering, that nothing but
correct deportment, an erect posture, and strictly didactic conversation
is possible there.
The family, in fact, were all eminently didactic, bent on improvement,
laboriously useful. Not a good work or charitable enterprise could put
forth its head in the neighborhood, of which they were not the support
and life. Judge Evans was the stay and staff of the village and township
of ----; he bore up the pillars thereof. Mrs. Evans was known in the
gates for all the properties and deeds of the virtuous woman, as set
forth by Solomon; the heart of her husband did safely trust in her. But
when I saw them, that evening, sitting, in erect propriety, in their
respective corners each side of the great, stately fireplace, with its
tall, glistening brass andirons, its mantel adorned at either end with
plated candlesticks, with the snuffer-tray in the middle,--she so
collectedly measuring her words, talking in all those well-worn grooves
of correct conversation which are designed, as the phrase goes, to
"entertain strangers," and the Misses Evans, in the best of grammar and
rhetoric, and in most proper time and way possible, showing themselves
for what they were, most high-principled, well-informed, intelligent
women,--I set myself to speculate on the cause of the extraordinary
sensation of stiffness and restraint which pervaded me, as if I had been
dipped in some petrifying spring and was beginning to feel myself
slightly crusting over on the exterior.
This kind of conversation is such as admits quite easily of one's
carrying on another course of thought within; and so, as I found myself
like a machine, striking in now and then in good time and tune, I looked
at Judge Evans, sitting there so serene, self-poised, and cold, and
began to wonder if he had ever been a boy, a young man,--if Mrs. Evans
ever was a girl,--if he was ever in love with her, and what he did when
he was.
I thought of the lock of Emmy's hair which I had observed in John's
writing-desk in days when he was falling in love with her,--of sundry
little movements in which at awkward moments I had detected my grave and
serious gentleman when I had stumbled accidentally upon the pair in
moonlight strolls or retired corners,--and wondered whether the models
of propriety before me had ever been convicted of any such human
weaknesses. Now, to be sure, I could as soon imagine the stately tongs
to walk up and kiss the shovel as conceive of any such bygone effusion
in those dignified individuals. But how did they get acquainted? how
came they ever to be married?
I looked at John, and thought I saw him gradually stiffening and
subsiding into the very image of his father. As near as a young fellow
of twenty-five can resemble an old one of sixty-two, he was growing to
be exactly like him, with the same upright carriage, the same silence
and reserve. Then I looked at Emmy: she, too, was changed,--she, the
wild little pet, all of whose pretty individualities were dear to
us,--that little unpunctuated scrap of life's poetry, full of little
exceptions referable to no exact rule, only to be tolerated under the
wide score of poetic license. Now, as she sat between the two Misses
Evans, I thought I could detect a bored, anxious expression on her
little mobile face,--an involuntary watchfulness and self-consciousness,
as if she were trying to be good on some quite new pattern. She seemed
nervous about some of my jokes, and her eye went apprehensively to her
mother-in-law in the corner; she tried hard to laugh and make things go
merrily for me; she seemed sometimes to look an apology for me to them,
and then again for them to me. For myself, I felt that perverse
inclination to shock people which sometimes comes over one in such
situations. I had a great mind to draw Emmy on to my knee and commence a
brotherly romp with her, to give John a thump on his very upright back,
and to propose to one of the Misses Evans to strike up a waltz, and get
the parlor into a general whirl, before the very face and eyes of
propriety in the corner: but "the spirits" were too strong for me; I
couldn't do it.
I remembered the innocent, saucy freedom with which Emmy used to treat
her John in the days of their engagement,--the little ways, half loving,
half mischievous, in which she alternately petted and domineered over
him. _Now_ she called him "Mr. Evans," with an anxious affectation of
matronly gravity. Had they been lecturing her into these conjugal
proprieties? Probably not. I felt sure, by what I now experienced in
myself, that, were I to live in that family one week, all such little
deviations from the one accepted pattern of propriety would fall off,
like many-colored sumach-leaves after the first hard frost. I began to
feel myself slowly stiffening, my courage getting gently chilly. I tried
to tell a story, but had to mangle it greatly, because I felt in the air
around me that parts of it were too vernacular and emphatic; and then,
as a man who is freezing makes desperate efforts to throw off the spell,
and finds his brain beginning to turn, so I was beginning to be slightly
insane, and was haunted with a desire to say some horribly improper or
wicked thing which should start them all out of their chairs. Though
never given to profane expressions, I perfectly hankered to let out a
certain round, unvarnished, wicked word, which I knew would create a
tremendous commotion on the surface of this enchanted mill pond,--in
fact, I was so afraid that I should make some such mad demonstration,
that I rose at an early hour and begged leave to retire. Emmy sprang up
with apparent relief, and offered to get my candle and marshal me to my
room.
When she had ushered me into the chilly hospitality of that stately
apartment, she seemed suddenly disenchanted. She set down the candle,
ran to me, fell on my neck, nestled her little head under my coat,
laughing and crying, and calling me her dear old boy; she pulled my
whiskers, pinched my ear, rummaged my pockets, danced round me in a sort
of wild joy, stunning me with a volley of questions, without stopping to
hear the answer to one of them; in short, the wild little elf of old
days seemed suddenly to come back to me, as I sat down and drew her on
to my knee.
"It does look so like home to see you, Chris!--dear, dear home!--and the
dear old folks! There never, never was such a home!--everybody there did
just what they wanted to, didn't they, Chris?--and we love each other,
don't we?"
"Emmy," said I, suddenly, and very improperly, "you aren't happy here."
"Not happy?" she said, with a half-frightened look,--"what makes you say
so? Oh, you are mistaken. I have everything to make me happy. I should
be very unreasonable and wicked, if I were not. I am very, very happy, I
assure you. Of course, you know, everybody can't be like our folks at
home. _That_ I should not expect, you know,--people's ways are
different,--but then, when you know people are so good, and all that,
why, of course you must be thankful, be happy. It's better for me to
learn to control my feelings, you know, and not give way to impulses.
They are all so good here, they never give way to their feelings,--they
always do right. Oh, they are quite wonderful!"
"And agreeable?" said I.
"Oh, Chris, we mustn't think so much of that. They certainly aren't
pleasant and easy, as people at home are; but they are never cross, they
never scold, they always are good. And we oughtn't to think so much of
living to be happy; we ought to think more of doing right, doing our
duty, don't you think so?"
"All undeniable truth, Emmy; but, for all that, John seems stiff as a
ramrod, and their front-parlor is like a tomb. You mustn't let them
petrify him."
Her face clouded over a little.
"John is different here from what he was at our house. He has been
brought up differently,--oh, entirely differently from what we were; and
when he comes back into the old house, the old business, and the old
place between his father and mother and sisters, he goes back into the
old ways. He loves me all the same, but he does not show it in the same
ways, and I must learn, you know, to take it on trust. He is _very_
busy,--works hard all day, and all for me; and mother says women are
unreasonable that ask any other proof of love from their husbands than
what they give by working for them all the time. She never lectures me,
but I know she thought I was a silly little petted child, and she told
me one day how she brought up John. She never petted him; she put him
away alone to sleep, from the time he was six months old; she never fed
him out of his regular hours when he was a baby, no matter how much he
cried; she never let him talk baby-talk, or have any baby-talk talked to
him, but was very careful to make him speak all his words plain from the
very first; she never encouraged him to express his love by kisses or
caresses, but taught him that the only proof of love was exact
obedience. I remember John's telling me of his running to her once and
hugging her round the neck, when he had come in without wiping his
shoes, and she took off his arms and said, 'My son, this isn't the best
way to show love. I should be much better pleased to have you come in
quietly and wipe your shoes than to come and kiss me when you forget to
do what I say.'"
"Dreadful old jade!" said I, irreverently, being then only twenty-three.
"Now, Chris, I won't have anything to say to you, if this is the way you
are going to talk," said Emily, pouting, though a mischievous gleam
darted into her eyes. "Really, however, I think she carried things too
far, though she is so good. I only said it to excuse John, and show how
he was brought up."
"Poor fellow!" said I. "I know now why he is so hopelessly shut up, and
walled up. Never a warmer heart than he keeps stowed away there inside
of the fortress, with the drawbridge down and moat all round."
"They are all warm-hearted inside," said Emily. "Would you think she
didn't love him? Once when he was sick, she watched with him seventeen
nights without taking off her clothes; she scarcely would eat all the
time: Jane told me so. She loves him better than she loves herself. It's
perfectly dreadful sometimes to see how intense she is when anything
concerns him; it's her _principle_ that makes her so cold and quiet."
"And a devilish one it is!" said I.
"Chris, you are really growing wicked!"
"I use the word seriously, and in good faith," said I. "Who but the
Father of Evil ever devised such plans for making goodness hateful, and
keeping the most heavenly part of our nature so under lock and key that
for the greater part of our lives we get no use of it? Of what benefit
is a mine of love burning where it warms nobody, does nothing but
blister the soul within with its imprisoned heat? Love repressed grows
morbid, acts in a thousand perverse ways. These three women, I'll
venture to say, are living in the family here like three frozen
islands, knowing as little of each other's inner life as if parted by
eternal barriers of ice,--and all because a cursed principle in the
heart of the mother has made her bring them up in violence to Nature."
"Well," said Emmy, "sometimes I do pity Jane; she is nearest my age,
and, naturally, I think she was something like me, or might have been.
The other day I remember her coming in looking so flushed and ill that I
couldn't help asking if she were unwell. The tears came into her eyes;
but her mother looked up, in her cool, business-like way, and said, in
her dry voice,--
"'Jane, what's the matter?'
"'Oh, my head aches dreadfully, and I have pains in all my limbs!'
"I wanted to jump and run to do something for her,--you know at our
house we feel that a sick person must be waited on,--but her mother only
said, in the same dry way,--
"'Well, Jane, you've probably got a cold; go into the kitchen and make
yourself some good boneset tea, soak your feet in hot water, and go to
bed at once'; and Jane meekly departed.
"I wanted to spring and do these things for her; but it's curious, in
this house I never dare offer to do anything; and mother looked at me,
as she went out, with a significant nod,--
"'That's always _my_ way; if any of the children are sick, I never
coddle them; it's best to teach them to make as light of it as
possible.'"
"Dreadful!" said I.
"Yes, it is dreadful," said Emmy, drawing her breath, as if relieved
that she might speak her mind; "it's dreadful to see these people, who I
know love each other, living side by side and never saying a loving,
tender word, never doing a little loving thing,--sick ones crawling off
alone like sick animals, persisting in being alone, bearing everything
alone. But I won't let them; I will insist on forcing my way into their
rooms. I would go and sit with Jane, and pet her and hold her hand and
bathe her head, though I knew it made her horridly uncomfortable at
first; but I thought she ought to learn to be petted in a Christian way,
when she was sick. I will kiss her, too, sometimes, though she takes it
just like a cat that isn't used to being stroked, and calls me a silly
girl; but I know she is getting to like it. What is the use of people's
loving each other in this horridly cold, stingy, silent way? If one of
them were dangerously ill now, or met with any serious accident, I know
there would be no end to what the others would do for her; if one of
them were to die, the others would be perfectly crushed: but it would
all go inward,--drop silently down into that dark, cold, frozen well;
they couldn't speak to each other; they couldn't comfort each other;
they have lost the power of expression; they absolutely _can't_."
"Yes," said I, "they are like the fakirs who have held up an arm till it
has become stiffened,--they cannot now change its position; like the
poor mutes, who, being deaf, have become dumb through disuse of the
organs of speech. Their education has been like those iron suits of
armor into which little boys were put in the Middle Ages, solid,
inflexible, put on in childhood, enlarged with every year's growth, till
the warm human frame fitted the mould as if it had been melted and
poured into it. A person educated in this way is hopelessly crippled,
never will be what he might have been."
"Oh, don't say that, Chris; think of John; think how good he is."
"I do think how good he is,"--with indignation,--"and how few know it,
too. I think, that, with the tenderest, truest, gentlest heart, the
utmost appreciation of human friendship, he has passed in the world for
a cold, proud, selfish man. If your frank, impulsive, incisive nature
had not unlocked gates and opened doors, he would never have known the
love of woman: and now he is but half disenchanted; he every day tends
to go back to stone."
"But I sha'n't let him; oh, indeed, I know the danger! I shall bring him
out. I shall work on them all. I know they are beginning to love me a
good deal: in the first place, because I belong to John, and everything
belonging to him is perfect; and in the second place,"----
"In the second place, because they expect to weave, day after day, the
fine cobweb lines of their cold system of repression around you, which
will harden and harden, and tighten and tighten, till you are as stiff
and shrouded as any of them. You remind me of our poor little duck:
don't you remember him?"
"Yes, poor fellow! how he would stay out, and swim round and round,
while the pond kept freezing and freezing, and his swimming-place grew
smaller and smaller every day; but he was such a plucky little fellow
that"----
"That at last we found him one morning frozen tight in, and he has
limped ever since on his poor feet."
"Oh, but I won't freeze in," she said, laughing.
"Take care, Emmy! You are sensitive, approbative, delicately organized;
your whole nature inclines you to give way and yield to the nature of
those around you. One little lone duck such as you, however
warm-blooded, light-hearted, cannot keep a whole pond from freezing.
While you have any influence, you must use it all to get John away from
these surroundings, where you can have him to yourself."
"Oh, you know we are building our house; we shall go to housekeeping
soon."
"Where? Close by, under the very guns of this fortress, where all your
housekeeping, all your little management, will be subject to daily
inspection."
"But mamma, never interferes, never advises,--unless I ask advice."
"No, but she influences; she lives, she looks, she is there; and while
she is there, and while your home is within a stone's throw, the old
spell will be on your husband, on your children, if you have any; you
will feel it in the air; it will constrain, it will sway you, it will
rule your house, it will bring up your children."
"Oh, no! never! never! I never could! I never will! If God should give
me a dear little child, I will not let it grow up in these hateful
ways!"
"Then, Emmy, there will be a constant, still, undefined, but real
friction of your life-power, from the silent grating of your wishes and
feelings on the cold, positive millstone of their opinion; it will be a
life-battle with a quiet, invisible, pervading spirit, who will never
show himself in fair fight, but who will be around you in the very air
you breathe, at your pillow when you lie down and when you rise. There
is so much in these friends of yours noble, wise, severely good,--their
aims are so high, their efficiency so great, their virtues so
many,--that they will act upon you with the force of a conscience,
subduing, drawing, insensibly constraining you into their moulds. They
have stronger wills, stronger natures than yours; and between the two
forces of your own nature and theirs you will be always oscillating, so
that you will never show what you can do, working either in your own way
or yet in theirs: your life will be a failure."
"Oh, Chris, why do you discourage me?"
"I am trying tonic treatment, Emily; I am showing you a real danger; I
am rousing you to flee from it. John is making money fast; there is no
reason why he should always remain buried in this town. Use your
influence as they do,--daily, hourly, constantly,--to predispose him to
take you to another sphere. Do not always shrink and yield; do not
conceal and assimilate and endeavor to persuade him and yourself that
you are happy; do not put the very best face to him on it all; do not
tolerate his relapses daily and hourly into his habitual, cold,
inexpressive manner; and don't lay aside your own little impulsive,
outspoken ways. Respect your own nature, and assert it; woo him, argue
with him; use all a woman's weapons to keep him from falling back into
the old Castle Doubting where he lived till you let him out. Dispute
your mother's hateful dogma, that love is to be taken for granted
without daily proof between lovers; cry down latent caloric in the
market; insist that the mere fact of being a wife is not enough,--that
the words spoken once, years ago, are not enough,--that love needs new
leaves every summer of life, as much as your elm-trees, and new branches
to grow broader and wider, and new flowers at the root to cover the
ground.
"Oh, but I have heard that here is no surer way to lose love than to be
exacting, and that it never comes for a woman's reproaches."
"All true as Gospel, Emmy. I am not speaking of reproaches, or of
unreasonable self-assertion, or of ill-temper,--you could not use any of
these forces, if you would, you poor little chick! I am speaking now of
the highest duty we owe our friends, the noblest, the most sacred,--that
of keeping their own nobleness, goodness, pure and incorrupt.
Thoughtless, instinctive, unreasoning love and self-sacrifice, such as
many women long to bestow on husband and children, soil and lower the
very objects of their love. _You_ may grow saintly by self-sacrifice;
but do your husband and children grow saintly by accepting it without
return? I have seen a verse which says,--
'They who kneel at woman's shrine
Breathe on it as they bow.'
Is not this true of all unreasoning love and self-devotion? If we _let_
our friend become cold and selfish and exacting without a remonstrance,
we are no true lover, no true friend. Any good man soon learns to
discriminate between the remonstrance that comes from a woman's love to
his soul, her concern for his honor, her anxiety for his moral
development, and the pettish cry which comes from her own personal
wants. It will be your own fault, if, for lack of anything you can do,
your husband relapses into these cold, undemonstrative habits which have
robbed his life of so much beauty and enjoyment. These dead, barren ways
of living are as unchristian as they are disagreeable; and you, as a
good Christian sworn to fight heroically under Christ's banner, must
make headway against this sort of family Antichrist, though it comes
with a show of superior sanctity and self-sacrifice. Remember, dear,
that the Master's family had its outward tokens of love as well as its
inward life. The beloved leaned on His bosom; and the traitor could not
have had a sign for his treachery, had there not been a daily kiss at
meeting and parting with His children."
"I am glad you have said all this," said Emily, "because now I feel
stronger for it. It does not now seem so selfish for me to want what it
is better for John to give. Yes, I must seek what will be best for him."
And so the little one, put on the track of self-sacrifice, began to see
her way clearer, as many little women of her sort do. Make them look on
self-assertion as one form of martyrdom, and they will come into it.
But, for all my eloquence on this evening, the house was built in the
self-same spot as projected; and the family life went on, under the
shadow of Judge Evan's elms, much as if I had not spoken. Emmy became
mother of two fine, lovely boys, and waxed dimmer and fainter; while
with her physical decay came increasing need of the rule in the
household of mamma and sisters, who took her up energetically on eagles'
wings, and kept her house, and managed her children: for what can be
done when a woman hovers half her time between life and death?
At last I spoke out to John, that the climate and atmosphere were too
severe for her who had become so dear to him,--to them all; and then
they consented that the change much talked of and urged, but always
opposed by the parents, should be made.
John bought a pretty cottage in our neighborhood, and brought his wife
and boys; and the effect of change of moral atmosphere verified all my
predictions. In a year we had our own blooming, joyous, impulsive little
Emily once more,--full of life, full of cheer, full of energy,--looking
to the ways of her household,--the merry companion of her growing
boys,--the blithe empress over her husband, who took to her genial sway
as in the old happy days of courtship. The nightmare was past, and John
was as joyous as any of us in his freedom. As Emmy said, he was turned
right side out for life; and we all admired the pattern. And that is the
end of my story.
And now for the moral,--and that is, that life consists of two
parts,--_Expression_ and _Repression_,--each of which has its solemn
duties. To love, joy, hope, faith, pity, belongs the duty of
_expression_: to anger, envy, malice, revenge, and all uncharitableness
belongs the duty of _repression_.
Some very religious and moral people err by applying _repression_ to
both classes alike. They repress equally the expression of love and of
hatred, of pity and of anger. Such forget one great law, as true in the
moral world as in the physical,--that repression lessens and deadens.
Twice or thrice mowing will kill off the sturdiest crop of weeds; the
roots die for want of expression. A compress on a limb will stop its
growing; the surgeon knows this, and puts a tight bandage around a
tumor; but what if we put a tight bandage about the heart and lungs, as
some young ladies of my acquaintance do,--or bandage the feet, as they
do in China? And what if we bandage a nobler inner faculty, and wrap
_love_ in grave-clothes?
But again there are others, and their number is legion,--perhaps you and
I, reader, may know something of it in ourselves,--who have an
instinctive habit of repression in regard to all that is noblest and
highest, within them, which they do not feel in their lower and more
unworthy nature.
It comes far easier to scold our friend in an angry moment than to say
how much we love, honor, and esteem him in a kindly mood. Wrath and
bitterness speak themselves and go with their own force; love is
shamefaced, looks shyly out of the window, lingers long at the
door-latch.
How much freer utterance among many good Christians have anger,
contempt, and censoriousness, than tenderness and love! _I hate_ is said
loud and with all our force. _I love_ is said with a hesitating voice
and blushing cheek.
In an angry mood we do an injury to a loving heart with good, strong,
free emphasis; but we stammer and hang back when our diviner nature
tells us to confess and ask pardon. Even when our heart is broken with
repentance, we haggle and linger long before we can
"Throw away the worser part of it."
How many live a stingy and niggardly life in regard to their richest
inward treasures! They live with those they love dearly, whom a few more
words and deeds expressive of this love would make so much happier,
richer, and better; and they cannot, will not, turn the key and give it
out. People who in their very souls really do love, esteem, reverence,
almost worship each other, live a barren, chilly life side by side,
busy, anxious, preoccupied, letting their love go by as a matter of
course, a last year's growth, with no present buds and blossoms.
Are there not sons and daughters who have parents living with them as
angels unawares,--husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, in whom the
material for a beautiful life lies locked away in unfruitful
silence,--who give time to everything but the cultivation and expression
of mutual love?
The time is coming, they think in some far future when they shall find
leisure to enjoy each other, to stop and rest side by side, to discover
to each other these hidden treasures which lie idle and unused.
Alas! time flies and death steals on, and we reiterate the complaint of
one in Scripture,--"It came to pass, while thy servant was busy hither
and thither, the man was gone."
The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds
left undone. "She never knew how I loved her." "He never knew what he
was to me." "I always meant to make more of our friendship." "I did not
know what he was to me till he was gone." Such words are the poisoned
arrows which cruel Death shoots backward at us from the door of the
sepulchre.
How much more we might make of our family life, of our friendships, if
every secret thought of love blossomed into a deed! We are not now
speaking merely of personal caresses. These may or may not be the best
language of affection. Many are endowed with a delicacy, a
fastidiousness of physical organization, which shrinks away from too
much of these, repelled and overpowered. But there are words and looks
and little observances, thoughtfulnesses, watchful little attentions,
which speak of love, which make it manifest, and there is scarce a
family that might not be richer in heart-wealth for more of them.
It is a mistake to suppose that relations must of course love each other
because they are relations. Love must be cultivated, and can be
increased by judicious culture, as wild fruits may double their bearing
under the hand of a gardener; and love can dwindle and die out by
neglect, as choice flower-seeds planted in poor soil dwindle and grow
single.
Two causes in our Anglo-Saxon nature prevent this easy faculty and flow
of expression which strike one so pleasantly in the Italian or the
French life: the dread of flattery, and a constitutional shyness.
"I perfectly longed to tell So-and-so how I admired her, the other day,"
says Miss X.
"And why in the world didn't you tell her?"
"Oh, it would seem like flattery, you know."
Now what is flattery?
Flattery is _insincere_ praise given from interested motives, not the
sincere utterance to a friend of what we deem good and lovely in him.
And so, for fear of flattering, these dreadfully sincere people go on
side by side with those they love and admire, giving them all the time
the impression of utter indifference. Parents are so afraid of exciting
pride and vanity in their children by the expression of their love and
approbation, that a child sometimes goes sad and discouraged by their
side, and learns with surprise, in some chance way, that they are proud
and fond of him. There are times when the open expression of a father's
love would be worth more than church or sermon to a boy; and his father
cannot utter it, will not show it.
The other thing that represses the utterances of love is the
characteristic _shyness_ of the Anglo-Saxon blood. Oddly enough, a race
born of two demonstrative, outspoken nations--the German and the
French--has an habitual reserve that is like neither. There is a
powerlessness of utterance in our blood that we should fight against,
and struggle outward towards expression. We can educate ourselves to it,
if we know and feel the necessity; we can make it a Christian duty, not
only to love, but to be loving,--not only to be true friends, but to
_show_ ourselves friendly. We can make ourselves say the kind things
that rise in our hearts and tremble back on our lips,--do the gentle and
helpful deeds which we long to do and shrink back from; and, little by
little, it will grow easier,--the love spoken, will bring back the
answer of love,--the kind deed will bring back a kind deed in
return,--till the hearts in the family-circle, instead of being so many
frozen, icy islands, shall be full of warm airs and echoing bird-voices
answering back and forth with a constant melody of love.