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Page 51
One does not wish to go through life trying to be agreeable; but life
is a great failure if one goes through it disagreeable.
Yes, little friends, believe me, you may be very learned, very
skillful, very accomplished. I trust you are: I hope you will become
more so. You may even have sound principles and good habits; but if
people generally do not like you, it is because there is something
wrong in yourself, and the best thing you can do is to study out what
it is and correct it as fast as possible. Do not for a moment fancy it
is because you are superior to other people that they dislike you, for
superiority never, of itself, made a person unlovely. It is invariably
a defect of some sort. Generally it is a defect arising from training,
and therefore possible to overcome.
For instance: two girls in the country have each a pony phaeton. One
drives her sisters, her family, her guests, her equals, and never
thinks of going outside that circle. Another does the same; but, more
than this, she often takes the cook, the laundress, or the one woman
who often is cook, laundress, housemaid, all in one. And to them the
drive is a far greater luxury than to her own comrades, who would be
playing croquet or riding if they were not with her. Now and then she
invites some poor neighbor, she takes some young sempstress or
worsted-worker to town to do her shopping, she carries the tired
housewife to see her mother, she asks three little girls--somewhat
crowded but rapturously happy--three miles to see the balloon that has
alighted on the hill; she drives a widowed old mother-in-Israel to a
tea-drinking of which she would otherwise be deprived. These are not
charities. They are courtesies, and this bright-faced girl is sunshine
in her village home and, by and by, when her box of finery is by some
mistake left at the station, a stalwart youngster, unbidden, shoulders
it and bears it, panting and perspiring, to her door-step, declaring
that he would not do it for another person in town but Miss Fanny! And
perhaps he does not even say _Miss_ Fanny--only Fanny. Now she could
get on very well without the villager's admiring affection, and even
without her box of finery; yet the goodwill of your neighbors is
exceeding pleasant.
Another thing Fanny excels in is the acknowledgment of courtesy, which
is itself as great a courtesy as the performance of kindness. If she is
invited to a lawn party or a boating picnic, whether she accept or
not, she pays a visit to her hostess afterward and expresses her
pleasure or her regrets; and she pays it with promptness, and not with
tardy reluctance, as if it were a burden. If she has been making a
week's visit away from home, she notifies her hostess of her safe
return and her enjoyment of the visit, as soon as she is back again. If
a bouquet is sent her,--too informal for a note,--she remembers to
speak of it afterward. You never can remember? No; but Fanny does. That
is why I admire her. If she has borrowed a book, she has an
appreciative word to say when she returns it; and if she has dropped it
in the mud, she does not apologize and offer to replace it. She
replaces it first and apologizes afterward, though she has to sacrifice
a much-needed pair of four-button gloves to do it! Indeed, no person
has as little apologizing to do as Fanny, because she does everything
promptly; and you may notice that what we apologize for chiefly is
delay. We perform our little social duties, only not in good season,
and so rob them of half their grace. It takes no longer to answer a
letter to-day than it will take to-morrow. But if the letter requires
an answer instantly, and you put it off day after day, your
correspondent is vexed, and your tardy answer will never be quite a
reparation. Remember that no explanation, no apology, is quite as good
as to have done the thing exactly as it should be in the first place.
JACK'S CHRISTMAS
BY EMMA K. PARRISH.
Jack had just heard of Christmas for the first time! Ten years old, and
never knew about Christmas before! Jack's mother was a weary,
overworked woman, and had no heart to tell the children about merry
times and beautiful things in which they could have no share.
His parents were very poor. When I tell you that they lived in a
log-house you might think so, although some people live very
comfortably in log-houses. But when I say that the snow drifted through
the cracks in the roof until the chamber floor was fit to go sleighing
on, and that it was so cold down-stairs that the gravy froze on the
children's plates while they were eating breakfast, and that the little
girls had no shoes but cloth ones which their mother sewed to their
stockings, you will see that they were poor indeed. Mrs. Boyd, Jack's
mother, generally went about her work with a shawl tied around her, and
a comforter over her ears, on account of the ear-ache; and on the
coldest days she kept Jack's little sisters wrapped up from head to
foot and perched on chairs near the stove, so they wouldn't freeze. No;
she didn't feel much like telling them about Christmas, when she didn't
know but they would freeze to death, or, may be, starve, before that
time. But Jack found out. He was going to school that winter, and one
learns so much at school! He came home one night brimful of the news
that Christmas would be there in three weeks, and that Santa Claus
would come down chimneys and say, "I wish you Merry Christmas!" and
then put lots of nice things in all the stockings.
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