Into a pearl it freezeth with her frown.”
Robert Southwell, in “St. Mary Magdalen’s Tears,” says: “The angels must bathe themselves in the pure stream of thine eyes, and thy face shall be set with this pearly liquid, that, as out of thy tears were stroken the first sparks of thy Lord’s love, so thy tears may be the oil to feed his flames.”
[THE WORTH OF FRESH AIR.]
Your neighbor, John Stedman, is set fast with aches and pains, and is very ill. You have just been to see him, you say, and you can not think why it is that people are every now and then attacked in this way with sickness. You have been told that God sends disease; but for your own part you can not understand why it is that some of your neighbors, who, like John Stedman, seem to be the most honest and deserving, get the largest share of it. I think, my industrious friend, I can perhaps help you to the explanation of the riddle. At any rate, there are many things touching upon this very subject, which as an old acquaintance, and one who has learned through long intimacy to take great interest in all that concerns you, I have for some time desired to say. I shall now seize this opportunity to make a beginning, and shall seat myself comfortably that I may chat with you more at my ease. Pray do not trouble yourself to move anything. This empty chair near the door will do excellently well for me. I know you will listen to me with attention and patience, first for old friendship’s sake, and then because you will very soon feel that what I do say is intended frankly and solely for your good.
You have a fine, smart-looking clock, I see, ticking away there opposite. But the old fellow can hardly be so correct as he seems; his hands point to eight, although the day wants but a couple of hours of noon. I fear there must be something wrong about him, notwithstanding his looking so vastly well in the face.
You say you can not make the clock keep time. You wind it up carefully every Saturday, and set it correctly, and yet before the next Saturday comes round, it has either lagged hours behind, or it has galloped on hours too fast. It goes as if it were moved by the uncertain wind, instead of being driven by regular machinery, and it was a shame for the man to sell you such a bad-going thing. If the clock never did behave itself any better, you are right in this: but perhaps you are too hasty in finding fault with the maker; he may not altogether deserve the blame. Let us just open the door of the case, and peep at the inner workmanship, and see whether we can not discover some cause for the irregular performance.
What is this? As soon as I open this little door I stumble upon something that looks rather suspicious; it is a quantity of light flue, and hair, and dust, mingled together. The clockmaker never put that into the case. Then, observe how every wheel and pinion is soiled with dirt, and every crevice and corner is choked up with filth. It really would be a very wonderful thing if the wheels did move regularly. The secret of the bad working of your clock is, simply, that you have not known how to take care of it, and use it fairly. I dare say it went very well when it was turned out of its maker’s hands, but he never meant it to be in the state in which it now is. You must send it back to him, and get him to clean the works and oil the wheels, and then you must try whether you can not prevent it from getting into such sad disorder again.
Now, your neighbor yonder with his aches and pains and his sickness, are you sure that he is not in very much the same predicament as this clock? If we could look into the works of his body, are you confident that we should not find them choked up and uncared for, instead of being in the condition in which they were intended to be? His aches and pains, are they not the grating and complaining of deranged and clogged machinery? I am quite aware that sick people generally are not sensible of having allowed anything to come near to their bodies which they ought to have kept away. But neither did you know that dirt was getting to the works of your clock, although we discovered it there in such plenty. The dust and dirt which collected there, first flew about in the air, scattered so thinly and lightly that you could not see them. So, too, other things which you can not see may have been floating in great abundance around you, some of them being to the living frame what dirt and dust are to clockwork. That there are such invisible things floating around living creatures, and that some of these clog and derange the working of their frames, I think I shall have no difficulty in showing you. I hope I shall also be able to point out to you, that many of them may be discovered, although they can not be seen, and may be driven away or avoided.