Читать книгу Caper-Sauce: A Volume of Chit-Chat about Men, Women, and Things. - Fern Fanny - Страница 9

Was there ever a romance in that man or that woman's life? I used to ask myself, as I looked upon a hard face which stoicism seemed to have frozen over, through the long years. Was there ever a moment when, for that man, or woman, love transfigured everything, or the want of it threw over the wide earth the pall of unrest? Have they ever wept, or laughed, or sighed, or clasped hands in passionate joy or sorrow? Had they any life? Or have they simply vegetated like animals? Did they see any beauty in rock, mountain, sky, or river, or was this green earth a browsing place, nothing more?

I never ask those questions now; for I know how much fire may be hidden under a lava-crusted exterior. I know that though the treasure-chest may sometimes be locked when it is empty, oftener beneath the fastening lies the wealth, which the right touch can at any moment set free. There are divers masks worn in this harlequin world of ours. Years ago I met, in travelling, a lady who seemed to me the very embodiment of fun and frolic. Like a humming-bird, she never was still; alighting now here, now there, wheresoever were sunshine, sweetness and perfume. One day, as we were rambling in the woods, we sat down to rest under a tree, after our frolicking. Some little word of mine, as I drew her head into my lap, and smoothed the hair on her temples, transformed her. With a sharp, quick cry of agony, she threw her arms about my neck, weeping as I never saw a woman weep. When she was quiet came the sad story. The trouble battled with, and bravely borne. The short, joyous years – then the long days, and nights, and weeks, and months, so full of desolation and bitterness, and life yet at its meridian. How should she meet the long, slow-moving years? That was the question she asked me. "Tell me how! you who know – tell me how!"

And this was the woman I thought frivolous and pleasure-seeking. Wearing beneath that robe the penitential cross, reminding her at every moment with its sharp twinge of pain, that try as she might, she could never fly from herself.

How often, when I have been inclined to judge harshly, have I thought of that Gethsemane cry. It is sorrowful how we misjudge each other in this busy world. How very near we may be to a warm heart, and yet be frozen! How carelessly we pass by the pool of Bethesda, with its waiting crowd, without thinking that we might be the angel to trouble the waters? This thought is often oppressive to me in the crowd of a city hurrying home at nightfall. What burden does this man or that woman carry, known only to their Maker? How many among them may be just at the dividing line between hope and despair! And how some faces remind you of a dumb animal, who bears its pain meekly and mournfully, yet cringing lest some careless foot should, at any moment, render it unendurable; haunting you as you go to your home as if you were verily guilty in ignoring it.

Have you never felt this? and, although you may have been cheated and imposed upon seventy times seven, can you wholly stifle it? and ought you to try, even though you know how well the devil can wear the livery of heaven?

I think it is this that, to the reflecting and observing, makes soul and body wear out so quickly in the city. These constantly recurring, unsolvable problems, which cloud faith and make life terrible, instead of peaceful and sweet; which lead us sometimes to look upon the little child, so dear to us, with such cowardly fear, that it would be a relief to lay it, then and there, in the arms of the Good Shepherd, lest it, too, stray away from the fold.

Swearers and Swearing. – Profanity is such a cheap accomplishment! "Damme!" "Damn it!" The idea that "gentlemen," so called, should use these expletives, in which the commonest laborer, who can scarcely "make his mark" to a document, can excel him! As a matter of taste, setting aside any question of morality, the practice of it by "cultivated persons" is our daily wonder.