You stagger? Yes, I repeat: in the crook himself.
Doesn’t the confidence man, for instance, do everything in the power of his trained imagination (in his first approaches, at least), to make his victim happy? Doesn’t he study his come-on’s every whim and taste? Is there anyone more tactful and polite, more considerate and anxious to please than a shoplifter? Oh, charming, truly charming, thoughtful and heart-wise must he be who marries eleven wives; even though afterwards he murders them for the insurance money and buries them all in the cellar. He knows how to anticipate his victim’s least desire.
Well, why not be as shrewd as the crook, then, yourself, to discover what will please and satisfy the friend you love? Get-rich-quick Wallingford had a perverted heart, ’tis true, but it had taken its degree in the Art of Pleasing.
Not much like your millionaires who ask their poor relatives, “You don’t mind sitting in front with the chauffeur, do you?” or give their country cousins horrible little black hats with a stick-up in the back!
MUST you dance with all the wallflowers, then, and always be nice to old ladies? Well, no—I won’t go so far as that, although that, too, would certainly show an Educated Heart. It would prove that you had imagination enough anyway to put yourself in another’s place.
No, all I ask is that, when you try to do a favor—to be kind—you do it to the full length of the rope. Don’t send your telegram “collect,” or in just ten carefully selected words. Economize elsewhere, but add those few extra phrases that make the reader grin and perceive that you cared more for him than you did for the expense.
No one with the Educated Heart ever approached a clergyman, or a celebrity, or a long-absent visitor with the shocking greeting: “Oh, Mr. Spoop, you don’t remember me, do you?” No, he gives his name first. No one with the Educated Heart ever said, “Now do come and see me, sometime!” Well he knows that that merely means: “Don’t come at all.” The Educated Heart’s way of putting it is apt to be, “How about next Wednesday?”
And strongly I doubt even if the Educated Heart is ever tardy at that appointment. It knows that even if only two minutes late a person has brought just that much less of himself. Oh, he came, yes—and we put over the deal, after all. But forever you will remember that he made you wait.
YOU understand, don’t you, that I’m not trying to discuss unkindness, or even impoliteness? Nor merely legitimate half-kindness do I mean. It would be absurd to assert that one shouldn’t say, “Here, you may have this hat—I don’t like it.” But wouldn’t it be still more absurd to call that sort of thing kindness?
No, what I impugn are thoughtless attempts to be kind. Slipshod sentimentality masquerading as kindness. Near-sighted benevolence—generosity run down at the heels, like the husband who conceives himself to be liberal because he gives his wife money—though she always has to ask him for it.