That Eurasian

by Aleph Bey

To be good and to do good is the highest aim of man. It is to know the physical, moral and social laws and to obey them. A good man, from the necessity of his nature, will do good. To be good and do good, is good or Godlike, and to be Godlike is to be saved. This is the sum total of life. O God! help me to be good and do good, that I may be saved.

CHAPTER XXXVI.

The years were passing and very little occurred to break the humdrum of our life. We never were idle, for if not occupied in the duties that succeeded each other, as the night the day, we were engaged in our mutual studies. I had never told my wife of my father, or of Mr. Smith being my half brother. Somehow, I never could muster up courage enough to do this. Not only that, but I felt that if I should once begin, I should have to go through the hateful story from a to izzard, and I shrank from the task. The longer I delayed the less inclined I was to do it. There was so much in it that was awful and disgusting, that I would have given much to have blotted it from my own memory, and did not wish to soil her pure mind with its recital. Somewhere, I have read of a painter who said that he never looked upon a bad picture but he carried away a dirty tint. My wife was to me as a priceless painting by the greatest of masters, and I wished to preserve her in all her loveliness and purity. I tried constantly to cultivate this feeling, and with this thought uppermost, I very often restrained myself from saying or doing what might soil her mind. I may be peculiar in this, as I am in so many things, yet I am what I am, and what else should I be?

I am reminded of something Mr. Jasper told me in one of his interesting conversations. It was about one of his visits in Paris. One evening, looking at a shop window on one of the boulevards, he was approached by a young man who presented his card and offered to be his guide. “What have you to show me?” asked Mr. Jasper.

The proposed guide enumerated a list of the most disreputable sights and places, and then Mr. Jasper interrupted him with “Who goes to see these things?” And the reply was in a list of prominent men, distinguished divines from London, a prominent minister from Brooklyn, some from New York and Chicago, and other noted men. He had a long list of those he had shown around to these stys of vice and pollution, and as Mr. Jasper questioned him about the characteristics of the different men, they were so correct it was evident that the guide had not made up his story.

Said Mr. Jasper to me while relating the story: “I wonder if these men ever thought that their names would be quoted as recommendations to future visitors. They probably thought, as they were away from home, their salacious doings would never be known, but if so they were greatly mistaken. The world now is very small, only a large neighborhood in this age of fast travel, and there is no concealment of anything from your fellow men, much less from yourself and the all-seeing eye of God, yet people fool themselves that it is otherwise. When the guide had completed his descriptions of the sight-seers, I asked: ‘For what purpose did these men go with you?’ He was somewhat taken aback by the question, and then with hesitation replied: ‘Some of them for scientific purposes, but the most of them to see, and they seemed to enjoy the sights.’ Then I said, ‘Young man, you see my clean clothes, should you throw any filth on them I would knock you down, yet I could easily have them washed, and it would be only an offense, but here you deliberately propose to take me around and show me foul sights that would make filthy stains upon my mind to remain for life and throughout eternity, that neither I nor God himself could ever remove. You are an infamous dirty dog, and the sooner you leave me the better, or I will give you something to remember,’ and the guide shrank away like a dog that had been kicked.”

I have often thought of this lesson taught me by my friend and further added my own reflections. Suppose I had some valued painting by one of the great masters that I was protecting with the greatest care and some one should soil it, if only just for a joke, what would I think of him or do to him? Yet I have heard of men, and I regret to say, some Christian men and clergymen too, and of women in society, who take special pleasure in gathering up all the obscene bawdy stories they can find and pride themselves on being racy raconteurs of these unsavory bits to their fellows. They are the devil’s best agents in corrupting humanity, that is if they are not each a devil himself. What puzzles me is that some people passing good at home, should take special pleasure in hunting up the nasty things when they go abroad.

What affects me more than all, is what relates to myself, for it has always been a habit of mine to bring everything to a personal test, to weigh it upon my own scales. These questions I have often asked, “Why was I created as I was, in a condition where I had to come in contact with vice in my earliest years? Why was I thrown on to the dirt heap of the world? If the all-wise, loving God, intended me to be pure in heart, why did He not with His almighty power create me where I could have had the best opportunities for a noble life?” My questions have never been answered.

Another question might be asked that would be personal and from which I do not shrink. Why do I tell the story of my life that has so much of evil in it? If I told anything, what else could I tell but the truth? A man can only paint what he himself has felt. I have not told it with pride, but with the deepest humiliation. I have not rolled my story as a sweet morsel over my tongue. I have had a motive of good in the telling, to show up the wrongs I have suffered and to reveal the infamies of others who have made me suffer, as a warning, or as the theologians say when they excuse the scripture descriptions of the frailties and sins of the Bible worthies, that these are given as warning lessons to mankind. So I am on safe ground. But I have wandered again.

I think I was speaking of my wife as my choicest treasure, the priceless painting of my life and home, which I wished to keep from every evil touch or injurious thought. This is why I never told her of the worst, the meanest parts of my life. With her I always followed the Hindu proverb, “Tell your troubles to your own mind, tell your happiness to the world.” An incident occurred to remind me again of the old subject. I tried to forget it and to do this more effectually, became absorbed in various things, yet doing our best we cannot always avoid the disagreeable. Even the best of roads will have holes in them. There is an irony in fate, something in our destiny that ever upsets our wisest endeavors, plan them as we will. I have frequently noticed that when I have congratulated myself on the smoothness of my life, the success of my plans, something suddenly came to upset them all. “The best laid plans of mice and men gang aft aglee.”