Friends and Neighbors, or Two Ways of Living in the World

T >> T. S. Arthur >> Friends and Neighbors, or Two Ways of Living in the World

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PREFACE.

WE were about preparing a few words of introduction to this volume,
the materials for which have been culled from the highways and
byways of literature, where our eyes fell upon these fitting
sentiments, the authorship of which we are unable to give. They
express clearly and beautifully what was in our own mind:--

"If we would only bring ourselves to look at the subjects that
surround as in their true flight, we should see beauty where now
appears deformity, and listen to harmony where we hear nothing but
discord. To be sure there is a great deal of vexation and anxiety in
the world; we cannot sail upon a summer sea for ever; yet if we
preserve a calm eye and a steady hand, we can so trim our sails and
manage our helm, as to avoid the quicksands, and weather the storms
that threaten shipwreck. We are members of one great family; we are
travelling the same road, and shall arrive at the same goal. We
breathe the same air, are subject to the same bounty, and we shall,
each lie down upon the bosom of our common mother. It is not
becoming, then, that brother should hate brother; it is not proper
that friend should deceive friend; it is not right that neighbour
should deceive neighbour. We pity that man who can harbour enmity
against his fellow; he loses half the enjoyment of life; he
embitters his own existence. Let us tear from our eyes the coloured
medium that invests every object with the green hue of jealousy and
suspicion; turn, a deal ear to scandal; breathe the spirit of
charity from our hearts; let the rich gushings of human kindness
swell up as a fountain, so that the golden age will become no
fiction and islands of the blessed bloom in more than Hyperian
beauty."

It is thus that friends and neighbours should live. This is the
right way. To aid in the creation of such true harmony among men,
has the book now in your hand, reader, been compiled. May the truths
that glisten on its pages be clearly reflected in your mind; and the
errors it points out be shunned as the foes of yourself and
humanity.

CONTENTS.

GOOD IN ALL
HUMAN PROGRESS
MY WASHERWOMAN
FORGIVE AND FORGET
OWE NO MAN ANYTHING
RETURNING GOOD FOR EVIL
PUTTING YOUR HAND IN YOUR NEIGHBOUR'S POCKET
KIND WORDS
NEIGHBOURS' QUARRELS
GOOD WE MIGHT DO
THE TOWN LOT
THE SUNBEAM AND THE RAINDROP
A PLEA FOR SOFT WORDS
MR. QUERY'S INVESTIGATIONS
ROOM IN THE WORLD
WORDS
THE THANKLESS OFFICE.
LOVE
"EVERY LITTLE HELPS"
LITTLE THINGS
CARELESS WORDS
HOW TO BE HAPPY
CHARITY--ITS OBJECTS
THE VISION OF BOATS
REGULATION OF THE TEMPER
MANLY GENTLENESS
SILENT INFLUENCE
ANTIDOTE FOR MELANCHOLY
THE SORROWS OF A WEALTHY CITIZEN
"WE'VE ALL OUR ANGEL SIDE"
BLIND JAMES
DEPENDENCE
TWO RIDES WITH THE DOCTOR
KEEP IN STEP
JOHNNY COLE
THE THIEF AND HIS BENEFACTOR
JOHN AND MARGARET GREYLSTON
THE WORLD WOULD BE THE BETTER FOR IT
TWO SIDES TO A STORY
LITTLE KINDNESSES
LEAVING OFF CONTENTION BEFORE IT BE MEDDLED WITH
"ALL THE DAY IDLE"
THE BUSHEL OF CORN
THE ACCOUNT
CONTENTMENT BETTER THAN WEALTH
RAINBOWS EVERYWHERE

FRIENDS AND NEIGHBOURS.

GOOD IN ALL.

THERE IS GOOD IN ALL. Yes! we all believe it: not a man in the depth
of his vanity but will yield assent. But do you not all, in
practice, daily, hourly deny it? A beggar passes you in the street:
dirty, ragged, importunate. "Ah! he has a _bad_ look," and your
pocket is safe. He starves--and he steals. "I thought he was _bad_."
You educate him in the State Prison. He does not improve even in
this excellent school. "He is," says the gaoler, "thoroughly _bad_."
He continues his course of crime. All that is bad in him having by
this time been made apparent to himself, his friends, and the world,
he has only to confirm the decision, and at length we hear when he
has reached his last step. "Ah! no wonder--there was never any
_Good_ in him. Hang him!"

Now much, if not all this, may be checked by a word.

If you believe in Good, _always appeal to it._ Be sure whatever
there is of Good--is of God. There is never an utter want of
resemblance to the common Father. "God made man in His own image."
"What! yon reeling, blaspheming creature; yon heartless cynic; yon
crafty trader; yon false statesman?" Yes! All. In every nature there
is a germ of eternal happiness, of undying Good. In the drunkard's
heart there is a memory of something better--slight, dim: but
flickering still; why should you not by the warmth of your charity,
give growth to the Good that is in him? The cynic, the miser, is not
all self. There is a note in that sullen instrument to make all
harmony yet; but it wants a patient and gentle master to touch the
strings.

You point to the words "There is _none_ good." The truths do not
oppose each other. "There is none good--_save one._" And He breathes
in all. In our earthliness, our fleshly will, our moral grasp, we
are helpless, mean, vile. But there is a lamp ever burning in the
heart: a guide to the source of Light, or an instrument of torture.
We can make it either. If it burn in an atmosphere of purity, it
will warm, guide, cheer us. If in the midst of selfishness, or under
the pressure of pride, its flame will be unsteady, and we shall soon
have good reason to trim our light, and find new oil for it.

There is Good in All--the impress of the Deity. He who believes not
in the image of God in man, is an infidel to himself and his race.
There is no difficulty about discovering it. You have only to appeal
to it. Seek in every one the _best_ features: mark, encourage,
educate _them._ There is no man to whom some circumstance will not
be an argument.

And how glorious in practice, this faith! How easy, henceforth, all
the labours of our law-makers, and how delightful, how practical the
theories of our philanthropists! To educate the _Good_--the good in
_All_: to raise every man in his own opinion, and yet to stifle all
arrogance, by showing that all possess this Good. _In_ themselves,
but not _of_ themselves. Had we but faith in this truth, how soon
should we all be digging through the darkness, for this Gold of
Love--this universal Good. A Howard, and a Fry, cleansed and
humanized our prisons, to find this Good; and in the chambers of all
our hearts it is to be found, by labouring eyes and loving hands.

Why all our harsh enactments? Is it from experience of the strength
of vice in ourselves that we cage, chain, torture, and hang men? Are
none of us indebted to friendly hands, careful advisers; to the
generous, trusting guidance, solace, of some gentler being, who has
loved us, despite the evil that is in _us_--for our little Good, and
has nurtured that Good with smiles and tears and prayers? O, we know
not how like we are to those whom we despise! We know not how many
memories of kith and kin the murderer carries to the gallows--how
much honesty of heart the felon drags with him to the hulks.

There is Good in All. Dodd, the forger, was a better man than most
of us: Eugene Aram, the homicide, would turn his foot from a worm.
Do not mistake us. Society demands, requires that these madmen
should be rendered harmless. There is no nature dead to all Good.
Lady Macbeth would have slain the old king, Had he not resembled her
father as he slept.

It is a frequent thought, but a careless and worthless one, because
never acted on, that the same energies, the same will to great
vices, had given force to great virtues. Do we provide the
opportunity? Do we _believe_ in Good? If we are ourselves deceived
in any one, is not all, thenceforth, deceit? if treated with
contempt, is not the whole world clouded with scorn? if visited with
meanness, are not all selfish? And if from one of our frailer
fellow-creatures we receive the blow, we cease to believe in women.
Not the breast at which we have drank life--not the sisterly hands
that have guided ours--not the one voice that has so often soothed
us in our darker hours, will save the sex: All are massed in one
common sentence: all bad. There may be Delilahs: there are many
Ruths. We should not lightly give them up. Napoleon lost France when
he lost Josephine. The one light in Rembrandt's gloomy life was his
sister.

And all are to be approached at some point. The proudest bends to
some feeling--Coriolanus conquered Rome: but the husband conquered
the hero. The money-maker has influences beyond his gold--Reynolds
made an exhibition of his carriage, but he was generous to
Northcote, and had time to think of the poor Plympton
schoolmistress. The cold are not all ice. Elizabeth slew Essex--the
queen triumphed; the woman _died._

There is Good in All. Let us show our faith in it. When the lazy
whine of the mendicant jars on your ears, think of his unaided,
unschooled childhood; think that his lean cheeks never knew the
baby-roundness of content that ours have worn; that his eye knew no
youth of fire--no manhood of expectancy. Pity, help, teach him. When
you see the trader, without any pride of vocation, seeking how he
can best cheat you, and degrade himself, glance into the room behind
his shop and see there his pale wife and his thin children, and
think how cheerfully he meets that circle in the only hour he has
out of the twenty-four. Pity his narrowness of mind; his want of
reliance upon the God of Good; but remember there have been
Greshams, and Heriots, and Whittingtons; and remember, too, that in
our happy land there are thousands of almshouses, built by the men
of trade alone. And when you are discontented with the great, and
murmur, repiningly, of Marvel in his garret, or Milton in his
hiding-place, turn in justice to the Good among the great. Read how
John of Lancaster loved Chaucer and sheltered Wicliff. There have
been Burkes as well as Walpoles. Russell remembered Banim's widow,
and Peel forgot not Haydn.

Once more: believe that in every class there is Good; in every man,
Good. That in the highest and most tempted, as well as in the
lowest, there is often a higher nobility than of rank. Pericles and
Alexander had great, but different virtues, and although the
refinement of the one may have resulted in effeminacy, and the
hardihood of the other in brutality, we ought to pause ere we
condemn where we should all have fallen.

Look only for the Good. It will make you welcome everywhere, and
everywhere it will make you an instrument to good. The lantern of
Diogenes is a poor guide when compared with the Light God hath set
in the heavens; a Light which shines into the solitary cottage and
the squalid alley, where the children of many vices are hourly
exchanging deeds of kindness; a Light shining into the rooms of
dingy warehousemen and thrifty clerks, whose hard labour and hoarded
coins are for wife and child and friend; shining into prison and
workhouse, where sin and sorrow glimmer with sad eyes through rusty
bars into distant homes and mourning hearths; shining through heavy
curtains, and round sumptuous tables, where the heart throbs audibly
through velvet mantle and silken vest, and where eye meets eye with
affection and sympathy; shining everywhere upon God's creatures, and
with its broad beams lighting up a virtue wherever it falls, and
telling the proud, the wronged, the merciless, or the despairing,
that there is "Good in All."

HUMAN PROGRESS.

WE are told to look through nature
Upward unto Nature's God;
We are told there is a scripture
Written on the meanest sod;
That the simplest flower created
Is a key to hidden things;
But, immortal over nature,
Mind, the lord of nature, springs!

Through _Humanity_ look upward,--
Alter ye the olden plan,--
Look through man to the Creator,
Maker, Father, God of Man!
Shall imperishable spirit
Yield to perishable clay?
No! sublime o'er Alpine mountains
Soars the Mind its heavenward way!

Deeper than the vast Atlantic
Rolls the tide of human thought;
Farther speeds that mental ocean
Than the world of waves o'er sought!
Mind, sublime in its own essence
Its sublimity can lend
To the rocks, and mounts, and torrents,
And, at will, their features bend!

Some within the humblest _floweret_
"Thoughts too deep for tears" can see;
Oh, the humblest man existing
Is a sadder theme to me!
Thus I take the mightier labour
Of the great Almighty hand;
And, through man to the Creator,
Upward look, and weeping stand.

Thus I take the mightier labour,
--Crowning glory of _His_ will;
And believe that in the meanest
Lives a spark of Godhead still:
Something that, by Truth expanded,
Might be fostered into worth;
Something struggling through the darkness,
Owning an immortal birth!

From the Genesis of being
Unto this imperfect day,
Hath Humanity held onward,
Praying God to aid its way!
And Man's progress had been swifter,
Had he never turned aside,
To the worship of a symbol,
Not the spirit signified!

And Man's progress had been higher,
Had he owned his brother man,
Left his narrow, selfish circle,
For a world-embracing plan!
There are some for ever craving,
Ever discontent with place,
In the eternal would find briefness,
In the infinite want space.

If through man unto his Maker
We the source of truth would find,
It must be through man enlightened,
Educated, raised, refined:
That which the Divine hath fashioned
Ignorance hath oft effaced;
Never may we see God's image
In man darkened--man debased!

Something yield to Recreation,
Something to Improvement give;
There's a Spiritual kingdom
Where the Spirit hopes to live!
There's a mental world of grandeur,
Which the mind inspires to know;
Founts of everlasting beauty
That, for those who seek them, flow!

Shores where Genius breathes immortal--
Where the very winds convey
Glorious thoughts of Education,
Holding universal sway!
Glorious hopes of Human Freedom,
Freedom of the noblest kind;
That which springs from Cultivation,
Cheers and elevates the mind!

Let us hope for Better Prospects,
Strong to struggle for the night,
We appeal to Truth, and ever
Truth's omnipotent in might;
Hasten, then, the People's Progress,
Ere their last faint hope be gone;
Teach the Nations that their interest
And the People's good, ARE ONE.

MY WASHERWOMAN.

SOME people have a singular reluctance to part with money. If waited
on for a bill, they say, almost involuntarily, "Call to-morrow,"
even though their pockets are far from being empty.

I once fell into this bad habit myself; but a little incident, which
I will relate, cured me. Not many years after I had attained my
majority, a poor widow, named Blake, did my washing and ironing. She
was the mother of two or three little children, whose sole
dependence for food and raiment was on the labour of her hands.

Punctually, every Thursday morning, Mrs. Blake appeared with my
clothes, "white as the driven snow;" but not always, as punctually,
did I pay the pittance she had earned by hard labour.

"Mrs. Blake is down stairs," said a servant, tapping at my room-door
one morning, while I was in the act of dressing myself.

"Oh, very well," I replied. "Tell her to leave my clothes. I will
get them when I come down."

The thought of paying the seventy-five cents, her due, crossed my
mind. But I said to myself,--"It's but a small matter, and will do
as well when she comes again."

There was in this a certain reluctance to part with money. My funds
were low, and I might need what change I had during the day. And so
it proved. As I went to the office in which I was engaged, some
small article of ornament caught my eye in a shop window.

"Beautiful!" said I, as I stood looking at it. Admiration quickly
changed into the desire for possession; and so I stepped in to ask
the price. It was just two dollars.

"Cheap enough," thought I. And this very cheapness was a further
temptation.

So I turned out the contents of my pockets, counted them over, and
found the amount to be two dollars and a quarter.

"I guess I'll take it," said I, laying the money on the shopkeeper's
counter.

"I'd better have paid Mrs. Blake." This thought crossed my mind, an
hour afterwards, by which time the little ornament had lost its
power of pleasing. "So much would at least have been saved."

I was leaving the table, after tea, on the evening that followed,
when the waiter said to me,

"Mrs. Blake is at the door, and wishes to see you."

I felt a little worried at hearing this; for I had no change in my
pockets, and the poor washerwoman had, of course, come for her
money.

"She's in a great hurry," I muttered to myself, as I descended to
the door.

"You'll have to wait until you bring home my clothes next week, Mrs.
Blake. I haven't any change, this evening."

The expression of the poor woman's face, as she turned slowly away,
without speaking, rather softened my feelings.

"I'm sorry," said I, "but it can't be helped now. I wish you had
said, this morning, that you wanted money. I could have paid you
then."

She paused, and turned partly towards me, as I said this. Then she
moved off, with something so sad in her manner, that I was touched
sensibly.

"I ought to have paid her this morning, when I had the change about
me. And I wish I had done so. Why didn't she ask for her money, if
she wanted it so badly?"

I felt, of course, rather ill at ease. A little while afterwards I
met the lady with whom I was boarding.

"Do you know anything about this Mrs. Blake, who washes for me?" I
inquired.

"Not much; except that she is very poor, and has three children to
feed and clothe. And what is worst of all, she is in bad health. I
think she told me, this morning, that one of her little ones was
very sick."

I was smitten with a feeling of self-condemnation, and soon after
left the room. It was too late to remedy the evil, for I had only a
sixpence in my pocket; and, moreover, did not know where to find
Mrs. Blake.

Having purposed to make a call upon some young ladies that evening,
I now went up into my room to dress. Upon my bed lay the spotless
linen brought home by Mrs. Blake in the morning. The sight of it
rebuked me; and I had to conquer, with some force, an instinctive
reluctance, before I could compel myself to put on a clean shirt,
and snow-white vest, too recently from the hand of my unpaid
washerwoman.

One of the young ladies upon whom I called was more to me than a
mere pleasant acquaintance. My heart had, in fact, been warming
towards her for some time; and I was particularly anxious to find
favour in her eyes. On this evening she was lovelier and more
attractive than ever, and new bonds of affection entwined themselves
around my heart.

Judge, then, of the effect produced upon me by the entrance of her
mother--at the very moment when my heart was all a-glow with love,
who said, as she came in--

"Oh, dear! This is a strange world!"

"What new feature have you discovered now, mother?" asked one of her
daughters, smiling.

"No new one, child; but an old one that looks more repulsive than
ever," was replied. "Poor Mrs. Blake came to see me just now, in
great trouble."

"What about, mother?" All the young ladies at once manifested
unusual interest.

Tell-tale blushes came instantly to my countenance, upon which the
eyes of the mother turned themselves, as I felt, with a severe
scrutiny.

"The old story, in cases like hers," was answered. "Can't get her
money when earned, although for daily bread she is dependent on her
daily labour. With no food in the house, or money to buy medicine
for her sick child, she was compelled to seek me to-night, and to
humble her spirit, which is an independent one, so low as to ask
bread for her little ones, and the loan of a pittance with which to
get what the doctor has ordered her feeble sufferer at home."

"Oh, what a shame!" fell from the lips of Ellen, the one in whom my
heart felt more than a passing interest; and she looked at me
earnestly as she spoke.

"She fully expected," said the mother, "to get a trifle that was due
her from a young man who boards with Mrs. Corwin; and she went to
see him this evening. But he put her off with some excuse. How
strange that any one should be so thoughtless as to withhold from
the poor their hard-earned pittance! It is but a small sum at best,
that the toiling seamstress or washerwoman can gain by her wearying
labour. That, at least, should be promptly paid. To withhold it an
hour is to do, in many cases, a great wrong."

For some minutes after this was said, there ensued a dead silence. I
felt that the thoughts of all were turned upon me as the one who had
withheld from poor Mrs. Blake the trifling sum due her for washing.
What my feelings were, it is impossible for me to describe; and
difficult for any one, never himself placed in so unpleasant a
position, to imagine.

My relief was great when the conversation flowed on again, and in
another channel; for I then perceived that suspicion did not rest
upon me. You may be sure that Mrs. Blake had her money before ten
o'clock on the next day, and that I never again fell into the error
of neglecting, for a single week, my poor washerwoman.

FORGIVE AND FORGET.

THERE'S a secret in living, if folks only knew;
An Alchymy precious, and golden, and true,
More precious than "gold dust," though pure and refined,
For its mint is the heart, and its storehouse the mind;
Do you guess what I mean--for as true as I live
That dear little secret's--forget and forgive!

When hearts that have loved have grown cold and estranged,
And looks that beamed fondness are clouded and changed,
And words hotly spoken and grieved for with tears
Have broken the trust and the friendship of years--
Oh! think 'mid thy pride and thy secret regret,
The balm for the wound is--forgive and forget!

Yes! look in thy spirit, for love may return
And kindle the embers that still feebly burn;
And let this true whisper breathe high in thy heart,
_'Tis better to love than thus suffer apart_--

Let the Past teach the Future more wisely than yet,
For the friendship that's true can forgive and forget.

And now, an adieu! if you list to my lay
May each in your thoughts bear my motto away,
'Tis a crude, simple ryhme, but its truth may impart
A joy to the gentle and loving of heart;
And an end I would claim far more practical yet
In behalf of the Rhymer--_forgive and forget!_

OWE NO MAN ANYTHING.

THUS says an Apostle; and if those who are able to "owe no man
anything" would fully observe this divine obligation, many, very
many, whom their want of punctuality now compels to live in
violation of this precept, would then faithfully and promptly render
to every one their just dues.

"What is the matter with you, George?" said Mrs. Allison to her
husband, as he paced the floor of their little sitting-room, with an
anxious, troubled expression of countenance.

"Oh! nothing of much consequence: only a little worry of business,"
replied Mr. Allison.

"But I know better than that, George. I know it is of consequence;
you are not apt to have such a long face for nothing. Come, tell me
what it is that troubles you. Have I not a right to share your
griefs as well as your joys?"

"Indeed, Ellen, it is nothing but business, I assure you; and as I
am not blessed with the most even temper in the world, it does not
take much you know to upset me: but you heard me speak of that job I
was building for Hillman?"

"Yes. I think you said it was to be five hundred dollars, did you
not?"

"I did; and it was to have been cash as soon as done. Well, he took
it out two weeks ago; one week sooner than I promised it. I sent the
bill with it, expecting, of course, he would send me a check for the
amount; but I was disappointed. Having heard nothing from him since,
I thought I would call on him this morning, when, to my surprise, I
was told he had gone travelling with his wife and daughter, and
would not be back for six weeks or two months. I can't tell you how
I felt when I was told this."

"He is safe enough for it I suppose, isn't he, George?"

"Oh, yes; he is supposed to be worth about three hundred thousand.
But what good is that to me? I was looking over my books this
afternoon, and, including this five hundred, there is just fifteen
hundred dollars due me now, that I ought to have, but can't get it.
To a man doing a large business it would not be much; but to one
with my limited means, it is a good deal. And this is all in the
hands of five individuals, any one of whom could pay immediately,
and feel not the least inconvenience from it."

"Are you much pressed for money just now, George?"

"I have a note in bank of three hundred, which falls due to-morrow,
and one of two hundred and fifty on Saturday. Twenty-five dollars at
least will be required to pay off my hands; and besides this, our
quarter's rent is due on Monday, and my shop rent next Wednesday.
Then there are other little bills I wanted to settle, our own wants
to be supplied, &c."

"Why don't you call on those persons you spoke of; perhaps they
would pay you?"

"I have sent their bills in, but if I call on them so soon I might
perhaps affront them, and cause them to take their work away; and
that I don't want to do. However, I think I shall have to do it, let
the consequence be what it may."

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