Seyton. You are the most long-suffering of men! But is not even your patience strained to the snapping point in a wretched lodging like this?
Percival. Very nearly, sometimes, I confess: at least it was so a little time since. Not great trials, but little ones, made it almost give way. It is not the heavy blow; but constant friction, that wears out the chain. I bore with tolerable fortitude the doctor's verdict which condemned me to a life of helplessness and pain, with no prospect of my sufferings ending on this side the grave; I saw before me a cross, and was given grace to take it up; but—but—
Seyton. But the thousand and one worries of existence in Fog Street; a servant's slatternly habits and sullen temper; bad cooking; loneliness; the absence of anything to give a colour to existence—would make a saint's temper and patience give way.
Percival. I own that I was anything but philosophic in regard to some cornet practice in the room just below this. Every evening, sometimes till late in the night, the horrid discordant blare effectually chased sleep from my eye-lids. Difficult passages were practised over and over with a resolute patience which all but exhausted mine. A hundred times I felt disposed to strike the floor violently with my stick, in hopes of stopping my tormentor below. In fact I did strike more than once: but the trumpeting went on all the same; its noise, perhaps, overpowering that which I made.
Seyton. Why did you not speak to your landlady about the annoyance?
Percival. I did; but was silenced by her reply, "Oh dear, yes: the poor gentleman loves his horn as if it were his child. I think it is the only pleasure he has; for he is hard at work in his office all day, and never goes out of an evening." Then I asked myself whether it would be reasonable or right to tax the kindness of a stranger by asking him to forego his one indulgence; and that a harmless one too. Would it not be better, thought I, to train my own mind to bear the petty annoyance?
Seyton. Not a petty one to an invalid, with a refined taste for music. Did you succeed, my dear fellow, in training your mind?
Percival. Fairly well—after a time. I was most helped by trying to fix my thoughts on the daily trials which were, no doubt, the Master's portion on earth. We are apt to think of the great temptation in the wilderness, and the sufferings in Gethsemane and on Calvary; as though they included almost all that Christ had to endure: but there were doubtless a thousand minor links of pain and annoyance which made Christ's earthly life a net-work of trial.
Seyton. Yes, even His brethren did not believe in Him; and his dull-minded disciples were always mistaking His meaning.
Percival. I was alluding to commoner trials than these. Hunger; thirst; the sense of privation; the extreme weariness, which caused the Lord to sleep on in the midst of a tempest: very often must such trials have oppressed Him, who was "made like unto" us in all things. Our Saviour travelled on foot: how often must He, like ourselves, have felt "the languid pulse, the aching limb;" have longed in the noonday for shade; or, dragging His weary steps along the dusty highway, have wished for some stream in which to lave His burning feet!