And dear old country grandmother—who used to urge on us, nay, force on us that third generous helping of pudding. Grandma’s heart was big enough—but it wasn’t quite the right shape.
WHAT’S the rarest thing in all the world? Intelligent sympathy. Why? Well, each one of us is working out his own evolution, I suppose, and our own interests must be paramount and absorb us, or we lose in the race.
Still, it is rather pleasing to recall, in pessimistic moods—upon receiving a letter written in lead pencil, for instance, or one undated, or with no address, or, most irritating of all, with an illegible signature—it is even encouraging to recall that it isn’t always these inconsiderate, unimaginative, egoistic people, after all, who succeed most brilliantly in the world. Sometimes a good, plain writer, desirous of making it easy for his reader, gets to the top, too, God bless him! And my faith in kindness as a policy is restored, too, by the glaring fact that of all my acquaintances the one least to be suspected of an inferiority complex is the only one who begins a telephone conversation by decently introducing himself:
“B. Ganning talking!”
instead of peremptorily demanding my name, like a census man breaking in the door.
As many of our acquired habits, like walking, for instance, have been passed from the domain of the conscious to the subconscious and become automatic, so, perhaps, with the behavior of the Educated Heart. You set it in the direction of true kindness and courtesy and it will function without deliberate thought.
And, alas, vice versa! It steers as well towards selfishness.
AND now, right there, before I find more fault, do, please, get my point of view. Am I fastidious? Why, all I ask is an unadulterated drop of your emotion. Am I querulous? Why should I be? No one is important enough to hurt me. Surely the very inadequacy of their feelings proves these skim-milk saints to be unworthy the time and energy it takes to resent or protest. Am I ungrateful? Not if you have done the least friendly act and done it wholly. Do I demand too much pay for my favors? If I long for a little of the old-time courtesy to color life, must you accuse me of preferring the glib, lace-sleeved, powdered-hair flattery, of the French salons?
Not at all. These modern, downright, shirt-sleeved ways of ours, open-air, golf-playing ways, man-and-woman, give-and-take ways—making up the jocose and slangy warfare we call friendship, nowadays—they’re well enough, so long as the thought beneath is honest. But mere words, words, words—aren’t you, too, sick of them? Don’t you want deeds or nothing?
Actions speak louder. . . .
FOR the fact is that such thoughtfulness, such consideration as I desire is not merely decorative. It is the very essence and evidence of sincerity. Without it all so-called kindness is merely titular and perfunctory. Tact is what makes kindness real, makes it effective; just as the perfume proves which is the genuine, and which is the artificial violet.