Living the Radiant Life: A Personal Narrative

by George Wharton James

Think of the tragedies and sorrows thus crowded into one life in the short space of twenty years! Yet during the whole of this time, though I have been as close to the family as though I were an uncle or older brother; though all their affairs have been regularly and fully unfolded to me, there have been absolutely no wailings, no repinings, no complaints, and only the few tears that it is a relief to let flow when loving hearts sympathize. Instead, this brave woman, her heart fortified by an abiding faith in and love for God, has been "abundant in good works." She is the "right hand support of her clergyman," and every poor and needy person in the parish has experienced her practical interest, help, and loving sympathy. Though unable personally to contribute of material things, she has interested those who could, and has thus made her sympathy practical and genuine. Her home for many years was the rallying ground for homeless young men—mainly, of course, belonging to her own church—who have been immeasurably blessed by her motherly sympathy, loving counsel, and helpful advice.

There radiates from her and her family a living belief in the goodness of God, an assurance that "all things work together for good to them that love God," and that faith in God produces a living courage, and daily strength, a power to overcome affliction that is nigh to the marvelous. To some it might appear almost like indifference; yet those who know, as I do, can testify to the keenness of the inner feeling, the longing for the companion whose dear presence was so awfully and suddenly removed, the heart-crushing losses of children, the terrible burden of the mental disturbance of the brilliant-minded and noble-hearted son. To be brave, cheerful, helpful to others, and strong to do under such burdens is to prove one's self possessed of the power of the living God. It is the radiation of the truths of religion more potent than all the arguments of all the theologians of all the ages.

Still another case comes to mind while I write. It is of a woman who braved disinheritance by a stern father in order that she might marry the man she loved. She came to the United States with him, and on a vineyard in California they struggled happily together, with a poverty that was almost sordid in its piteousness. After two children were born the husband died, leaving the wife with these little ones, together with another child whom she had practically adopted, and a mortgage at heavy rates of interest upon the home place. The house in which they had lived for several years was poor and altogether devoid of comfort, but shortly before the husband's death it had been made comfortable by the addition of several good rooms.

Without a word of complaint this delicately nurtured, refined woman, who, in her English home, had been the organist and director of the choir of a large church, took up the burden of running a California fruit farm. Heavily in debt, interest imperatively demanded every three months, knowing little of the practical working of such a place, she personally took hold and learned. She milked cows night and morning, took them back and forth to pasture, bred calves for the butcher, made butter, raised chickens, drove weary miles summer and winter giving music lessons, and yet kept home more comfortable for her growing brood than does many a woman well provided with funds and help. In time the mortgage was paid off, and a windmill and water tank added to the equipment of the place. The children helped as they grew up, and yet they were kept at school.

When apricots and peaches were ripe I have seen her for days and weeks at a time cutting and pitting them for drying, until a half score or more of tons were lying in their drying trays on the alfalfa. For hours at a time, in the hot sun, she sorted raisins and stacked them up in the sweat-boxes, and did it happily, cheerfully, uncomplainingly, in memory of the husband she so much loved.

Can one come in contact with such a life without feeling its blessed radiancies of courage, energy, triumph over unpleasant circumstances, cheerful doing of disagreeable work, and the power of love to sweeten all things? To know this woman is to be helped, strengthened, and blessed. The bravery of such heroines far surpasses that of much lauded military and naval heroes, and a few such women are worth more to the race, in my judgment, than all the Napoleons, Pompeys, Cæsars, and Nelsons that ever lived.

Certain men impress you with their calm self-reliance. They are not disturbed by precedents or adverse judgments. They do what they deem to be right and refuse to be swerved from the path they have laid out for themselves. Ruskin radiates this influence, so do Carlyle and Browning. Every man who has dared to make innovations, deviate from the "ways of the old," has had to be self-reliant. Every reformer of every age and in every field has had no other staff to lean upon than the assurance of his own soul. Galileo in his astronomical deductions; Savonarola in his criticisms of the existing political conditions; Luther in his fulminations against the evils of the church; Cromwell in his stand against the doctrine of the "divine right of kings"; Jefferson, Washington, and the whole of our fathers, who, according to English law, were rebels and revolutionists, in the Declaration of Independence; Lincoln in his war measures and Emancipation Proclamation—all these and a thousand others radiated such self-reliance upon the principles they enunciated and advocated as to convince their followers.

Every political party based upon real principles (rather than upon a desire for spoils), is organized as the result of the radiation of those principles held in the self-reliant hearts of a few men. Every school of thought, in philosophy, theology, medicine, law, ethics, or political economy, is based upon the radiation of ideas from self-reliant men.

Yet there is a marked difference between this quality and that of self-conceit. When Carlyle said of the grammarian who criticised his grammar, "Why, mon, I'd have ye ken that I mak' language for such men as ye to mak' their grammar books from," he stated a fact. He was self-reliant, but not conceited. So with Ruskin, when, in response to my question as to what literature I should read to cultivate a pure style of English, after commenting on the worth of several masters, concluded somewhat as follows: "And there are those who say you should read what I have written, and I agree with them, for I believe I have written more carefully than most men." That was critical self-judgment, not self-conceit. Still we are all more or less familiar with the conceit of ignorance, the assumption of men and women who do not know the mere alphabet of the subjects they profess to be experts on. Recently, on our sleeping car, when a few people got together to sing, one of the passengers, with a self-conceit that was as ludicrous as it was ignorant, spoke of the baritone voice of one of the women and discoursed learnedly upon the bass of the man who was singing tenor.

We have a writer in California who knows so well that he knows, that some of us think he knows "by the grace of God," without study or effort. His whole radiancy is one of cocksure self-conceit.