—Matthew Arnold.
To some minds there is nothing more pathetic in human experience than the patient resignation with which average men and women accommodate themselves to the most disastrous and distorting of griefs and disappointments, nothing more amazing than their power to endure. If something of the brute nature is in us all, it is not always and altogether the animalhood of greed or of ferocity, but far more commonly the mute, uncomprehending submission of sheep and oxen. Though the futility of revolt is so apparent, the infrequency of it in human lives does not cease to surprise. The modern Rachel mourns for her children, and will not be comforted, but she goes about the streets in conventional mourning, orders her house with decent regularity, and probably, in the end, goes abroad for a time, and returning, enters with apparent cheerfulness into the social round. The modern Guelph or Ghibelline, banished from the political or intellectual activities which made life to him, finds readily that raving against time and fate is no longer good form, reads his daily paper with unabated interest, and enjoys a good dinner with appetite unimpaired. Very probably the man’s and the woman’s heart is broken in each instance, but what then? Life goes on, and the resiliency of the mainspring in a well-adjusted piece of human mechanism may be usually guaranteed, with safety, to last a lifetime.
In a year after her marriage Anna Burgess was diligently at work along the conventional lines of activity of her day for religious young women at home,—writing missionary reports, distributing literature, collecting dues. She saw nothing better to do. Her own private and innermost relation to God, it was true, had been dislocated, but the heathen remained to be saved.
One morning, Keith being away from home, Anna came into Madam Burgess’s sitting room, her cheeks slightly flushed, her eyes shining, a letter in hand.
“May I read you this?” she asked eagerly; “I have been invited to give an address at the foreign missionary conference next month in H——. What if I could! I should be so glad.” Her eyes told the new and eager hope which this summons had stirred within her.
An added degree of frost settled upon her mother-in-law’s face.
“You can hardly mean, Anna,” she said, “that you would be willing to speak in public?”
“But our missionaries do, and sometimes others,” Anna replied anxiously.
“The case of missionaries is, of course, entirely exceptional; and they should never be heard, in my opinion, before mixed audiences. As for other women making spectacles of themselves, it would seem to be enough to remind you, Anna, of the words of the Apostle Paul on that subject. You would hardly attempt, I think, to explain them away.”
Anna was silent.