is the "_No_" form. Now we maintain that great self-denial is often put
forth, and intense mental pain incurred, in the "Yes" form; _i.e._, the
gradual acceptance of wrong-doing. Conscience killing is a slow,
torturing process, and the successful muffling of the protesting voice
of one's better nature is at the expense of days and nights of misery.
The son, whose every perverse step away from a loving home is on his
mother's heart-strings, cannot at first plant them firmly; many a
backward glance, many a sigh and tear, many a half-retraced foot-track
marks his downward progress. Is there no self-denial in these abortive
attempts? Can he forget at once all her pure aspirations and fond hopes
for her boy? Are there not kind words, more dreadful to remember than
would be the bitterest curses? Can he turn _any_ way, in which proofs of
her all-enduring love do not confront him, and shame him, and sting him
into acutest misery? Again, can the husband and father, who screens
himself behind the love of wife and children, to perpetrate acts, the
constant repetition of which wears away their hope and life in the
process--can he, while saying "yes" to the fiends who beckon him on, be
deaf to the despairing sighs that follow him, and blind to the wrecks of
broken promises that lie thickly strewn around him? Does he suffer
nothing in the attempt to extinguish all that is best and noblest in
him? can the mother, who, stifling the voice of nature, perjures her
daughter, for ambition, at the altar, face calmly that daughter's
future? Are there no misgivings, no terrible fears, no shrinking back at
the last retrieving moment, from a responsibility so dreadful? Can she
kiss her away from her own threshold, and forget the little trusting
eyes of her babyhood, and the clinging clasp of her fingers, and the
Heaven-sent thrill of happiness when she first pillowed that little head
upon her bosom? Can she _ever_ cut the cord, strive as she may, by which
the Almighty has solemnly bound her to that child for this world and for
eternity? Has it cost _her_ nothing in the process, this denial of her
better nature? And so, through all the relations of society, wherever a
sacred trust is abused, and a confidence outraged, and obligations rent
recklessly asunder, there this self-incurred species of suffering, in a
greater or less degree, exists accordingly as the moral sensibilities
are blunted, or the contrary. The Almighty has not ordained that this
path shall be trodden thornless. Coiled in it is many a deadly serpent;
the balmiest air it knows is surely death-laden. Following its tortuous
windings to the close, its devotee comes to no refuge, when his heart
and soul grow faint, and he casts a backward, yearning glance for the
holy "long ago."
_THE CRY OF A VICTIM._
There's eight dollars gone! If I thought it was the last time I should
be cheated, I shouldn't mind it; but I know it isn't. In this case it
was friendless eighteen--_female_ eighteen--sole support of widowed
mother and an indefinite number of small children, and all that; got her
money, and turned out a humbug. I hope the recording angel will remember
that in my favor. Not to speak of the man who rushed into the area to
tell me that he had just had a baby--I mean that his wife had--and that
they needed everything; when I immediately scooped up an armful of
whatsoever I could find; and, thanking me with grateful tears, he
hastened to pawn them for rum. Then there was the gifted but unfortunate
artist, who had been sketching at the White Mountains and wished me to
"lend him" a greenback to carry him home, because he had read my books,
and because he wanted it, and because there was not another person in
the world of whom he could possibly ask such a favor; oh, no! Then there
was the man who looked like the ten commandments on legs, and _must_ see
me, if only a few moments; whose sepulchral errand turned out to be a
desire to sell me some Furniture Polish, which I bought to get rid of
him, and which, when uncorked a few days after, caused the family to
rush into the street without the usual ceremonial hat and bonnet. Then
there was the interesting child whom I brought in to feed and warm, who
helped himself to several things without leave while I was looking for
others. And there was the old gentleman who sent me an illegible MS.
story to read and get published; whose i's I dotted, and whose t's I
crossed, and for whom I furnished commas and semicolons and periods ad
libitum; whose grammar I touched up, and whose capital letters in the
wrong place I extinguished; and who abused me like a pickpocket because
the Editor to whom I sent it thought that Dickens or Thackeray wrote
quite as well as he. Then there was the young man with a widowed mother,
for whom I wore out several pairs of boots "getting him a situation;"
who used to lie in bed till noon, and go to it when it didn't rain, and
spend all he earned in cherry-colored cravats.
Now, I'm going to stiffen myself up against all this sort of thing in
future. I've done giving pennies to the little street-sweepers to buy
cream-tarts with. I hand no more hot buckwheat cakes through the grating
of my basement window to red-nosed little boys with ventilator trousers.
I buy no more pounds of lucifer matches from frowsy-headed women at the
area door, or "Windsor soap" for sweet charity's sake, knowing it to be
only common brown, with a counterfeit label. I shall turn sternly away
from the Liliputian venders of flimsy boot-lacings and headless
shawl-pins. I wish it distinctly understood that I have no use for
corset-lacings, or home-made pomatum, or questionable "Lubin" perfumes
in fancy bottles.
I have looked upon the humanitarian side of the question till I don't
know whether to be most disgusted at my own credulity, or the perfidy of
my fellow-creatures. Now let somebody else take a turn at it.
* * * * *
A HINT TO ORGAN-GRINDERS.--It is a curious fact that organ-grinders
prefer to select for their purpose that house whose windows are
ornamented with statues or flowers. There is philosophy in this; since
the lady who is fond of beauty and of sweet perfumes, is also fond of
music. And though some of our street strains are sufficiently wheezy and
harrowing, yet much of it also is sweet and soothing, and suggestive of
past luxurious evenings, and of happy faces, and of hours that flew all
too swiftly. But alas! for the uplifted pen, with its suspended drop of
ink, at such moments! Alas! for the printer's devil waiting on one leg
in the hall! Why won't organ-grinders learn where scribblers abide?
_STONES FOR BREAD._
Some of our papers publish, the latter part of every week--and a very
good custom it is--a list of different preachers, their places of
worship, and the topics selected for the ensuing Sunday. We often read
over this list with curiosity and interest, and lay it down with a sad
wonder at some of the topics selected for the sermons. We sometimes say,
why _don't_ they preach about something that will come home to the worn,
weary, tried heart--vexed enough already with its life-burthens--instead
of entangling it in theological nets, till the blessed voice that says
so sweetly, "Come unto Me," never reaches the perplexed ear? We say this
in no spirit of fault-finding, or dictation, but because we are _sure_
that hungry souls, who every Sunday beg for bread, receive only a stone;
and go away to take up their daily burden again on Monday, with
faltering, hopeless step, when they might and _should_ march--singing
the song of triumph!
If a mother weeps over her lost babe, if a wife mourns her husband, or a
father bends over a dead son, whom he thought would live to close _his_
aged eyes, do you choose that time to distress them with abstract
questions and transcendental theories? "No--you see before you an
aching, tried heart; and you yearn with all your sympathetic nature to
comfort it. Your words are few but earnest, and full of love. You go
softly with them and look at the dear, dead face, which perhaps you
never saw living, and say with quivering lips, "God help you, my
friend." Just so, we long sometimes to have clergymen look at the dead
faces of men's lost joys and hopes, and pity the bereaved, lonely hearts
that want something to lean upon besides cold, dull abstractions; that
yearn for the warm, beating, pulsating heart of Infinite Love, and yet
_cannot_ find it. Oh! what mission on earth as blessed as to teach them
where and how?"
"_Come unto Me._" These words, thousands of years old, and yet never
worn out! "Come unto Me." Oh, shake off the dust of your libraries, and
say, as _He_ said it, "Come unto Me!"
THE END.