XVII.
HOLD! ENOUGH!!
The other evening it chanced that a combination of disastrous circumstances wrought havoc with my temper. I lost my train; my head hummed like a bumblebee with weary pain, and the elastic that held my hat to its moorings broke, so that that capering compromise between inanimate matter and demoniac possession blew half a block up street on its own account, and was brought back to me by a youthful son of Belial, who took my very last quarter as reward for the lively chase.
"There's no use!" said I to myself as I jogged along through the gloaming; "blessed be the woman who knows enough to cry 'hold!' against such odds!"
And just then I spied a wizened little mite of a woman trotting by, carrying a gripsack bigger than herself. She grasped it, and held it against her wan little stomach, as a Roman warrior might carry his shield into battle—plucky to the last.
"Now," said I, "look here, Amber, have you a fifty pound sachel to tug through the darkness? No! Then you might be worse off."
And I went on a little farther and I met the brave firemen going home drenched and worn from the big fire. "You coward!" said I to myself, "what if you were a fireman! Something to growl about then, I guess."
And I went a bit farther and I saw a little white coffin in a window. "How about that?" said I. "If the darlings were gone to their long home you might talk about trouble!"
And a few moments later I ran across an old man without any legs, peddling papers. And then I said: "Do you call your life a grind, madam, with two legs to walk upon, and a sufficient income to admit of an occasional fling? What if you had wooden legs, and peddled papers?"
Now, I have told you this for a purpose. However dark your lot may be there are worse all around you. You may be inclined to think that the bloom and the brightness have gone out of your life, leaving nothing behind them but what remains of the carnation when the frost finds it—a withered stalk. But if you will take the trouble to watch, you will find that there is always something harder to bear than your own trouble, and, put to the test, you wouldn't change crosses with your neighbor.