Talkers Part 22

That night, as she lay in her bed, she could not go to sleep for thinking of the dreadful wrong she had committed against her brother and against G.o.d; and she resolved that night to tell her mother the next morning. When morning came, however, she felt as if there was something kept her back; she could not make up her mind to confess the sin; it did not seem so great as the night before. It was not much, after all, her silly heart said. As day after day pa.s.sed, Bessie felt the burden less and less, and she might have fallen into the same sin again had a temptation presented itself, but for a sad event. One morning, when she came home from school, she found Ben ill with a frightful throat distemper. He had been so all the forenoon. He continued to grow worse, and the next evening he died.

Poor Bessie! it seemed as if her heart would break. Kind friends tried to comfort her. They told her that he was happy; that he had gone to live with the Saviour who loved little children; and if she was good, she would go to see him, though he could not come again to her.

"O!" said the child, "I am not crying because he has gone to heaven, but because I told that lie about him; because he got the punishment which belonged to me."

For a long time she refused to be comforted.

Several years have pa.s.sed. Bessie is now of woman's size; but the remembrance of that lie yet stings her soul to the quick. It took less than one minute to utter, but many years have not effaced the sorrow and shame which followed it.

A mother sat with her youngest daughter, a sprightly child, five years of age, enjoying an afternoon chit-chat with a few friends, when a little girl, a playmate of the daughter of Mrs. P., came running into the sitting-room, and cried,--

"Where is Jane? I've got something for her."

"She is out," said the mother.

"What have you got? Show it to me," eagerly exclaimed Hannah, the mother's favourite. "I'll give it to her."

The little girl handed Hannah a bouquet of flowers, which she had gathered for Jane, and returned home with the faith that her kindness had not been misapplied. She had scarcely left the room, when Hannah, standing by her mother's chair, talking to herself, said, loud enough to be heard across the room,--

"I like flowers--she often calls me Jane--she thinks I am Jane--I'm going to keep this bouquet."

The mother made no objection to the soliloquy, and Hannah immediately began to pick the leaves from the handsome rose, for the purpose of making rose water. She had not completed her task when Jane bounded into the room, and seeing Hannah with flowers, exclaimed,--

"I'm going to have a bouquet pretty soon. Sally Johnson said she would bring me one this afternoon."

"But she won't," said Hannah.

"I'll go and see," returned Jane, tripping as she spoke towards the front door.

"Here, Jane," said the mother, "Sally brought this bouquet for you, but you were not in, and she gave it to Hannah."

The tears started in Jane's eyes. She felt that she had been robbed, and she knew that Hannah had been preferred to her. Hannah had been encouraged in a deliberate falsehood and in deception towards her sister. Many a time since has that mother felt herself obliged to punish her daughter for prevarications, and often has she been heard to say that she wondered where so small a child learned so much deceit.

This is a small affair at best, some may say; but do not

"Large streams from little fountains flow-- Tall oaks from little acorns grow?"

And do not the "small beginnings" of instruction lay the foundation of man's or woman's character?

The following lines are a solemn admonition against this sin, spoken by one who had committed it and fallen under its terrible punishment:--

"My sin, Ismenus, has wrought all this ill; And I beseech thee to be warned by me, And do not lie, if any man should ask thee But how thou dost, or what o'clock 'tis now; Be sure thou do not lie, make no excuse For him that is most near thee; never let The most officious falsehood 'scape thy tongue; For they above (that are entirely Truth) Will make the seed which thou hast sown of lies Yield miseries a thousandfold Upon thine head, as they have done on mine."

XXIII.

_THE CENSORIOUS._

"Judging with rigour every small offence."--HAYWARD.

He is a judge pa.s.sing sentence upon persons and things without justice or charity. Benevolent works in Church or State are failures unless he has been a prominent party in their execution. Personal motives are weighed in the balance and found wanting. Thoughts, ere they are expressed, are even seen and censured. Actions are p.r.o.nounced false and defective. Appearances are judged as realities, and realities as nonent.i.ties. Things straight are seen as crooked, and things beautiful as deformed. Where wiser men perceive order, strength, utility, he perceives confusion, weakness, and uselessness. An enterprise of which the community approve and co-operate in he stands aloof from, and satisfies his unhappy disposition with carping criticisms and ungenerous censures. A neighbour who does not reach his standard of moral excellence in character and action he p.r.o.nounces lax in principles and delinquent in life. One who does not agree with him in his peculiar views of some disputed doctrine of Christian faith or principle of Church discipline he judges to be little better than a heretic or a heathen.

It seems the instinct of his nature to find fault. He hears no preacher, reads no book, looks upon no work of art, without some expression of disapproval. G.o.d, Providence, the Bible, Religion, do not escape his sharp and keen criticisms. His perception is so fine and his taste so exquisite that points of failure which a generous mind would overlook he discerns and speaks of with unfailing fidelity. He would at any time rather rub his nose against a thistle than smell at a flower.

"Mr. Smith is a very excellent man," said a friend of mine one day in conversation to Mr. Pepper.

"Yes, he may be," said Pepper in an indifferent way; "but perhaps you don't know him as well as I do."

"What a n.o.ble gift of Lord Hill to the town of Shenton, that park of one thousand acres!"

"True, it was; but what were his motives in its bestowment? Did he not expect to gain more than its value in certain ways that I need not mention?"

"How sad that the family of Hobson have come into such circ.u.mstances."

"It is only a judgment upon them for the old man's sins."

"Have you heard that young Dumas has entered the ministry?"

"Yes, and what for? Only for the loaves and fishes."

"What a kind Providence it was that provided so suitably for widow Bonsor and her family."

"Providence, indeed! Was it not rather the benevolence of Mr. Lord and his friend Squance?"

"What an admirable picture that is in Mr. Robinson's window in Bond Street. It is a splendid piece of workmans.h.i.+p. Don't you think so?"

"A bad sky--very bad! Cold as winter. That trunk of a tree on the right is as stiff and formal as a sign-post. It spoils the whole picture."

"Then you don't like it?"

"There are a few good points in it; but it is full of faults."

"The Rev. Mr. Benson, of Queen's-road Church, is, in my judgment, an eloquent and powerful preacher. Don't you think so, Mr. Pepper?"

"Well, as you ask me so pointedly, I am free to say that I think him a very good preacher _on the whole_. But, you know, he is far from perfect. I have again and again perceived his false logic, his weak metaphors, and his unsound expositions. Still, he is pa.s.sable, and you may go a long way before you hear a better."

Thus the censor meets you in every topic which you introduce in conversation.

"All seems infected that the infected spy, And all seems yellow to the jaundiced eye."

If you ask reasons for his censures, he cannot give you any, excepting one similar in kind to the following:--

"I do not like you, Doctor Fell, The reason why I cannot tell; But I do not like you, Doctor Fell."