Bits about Home Matters

by Helen Hunt Jackson

I watched him on in his pathetic pilgrimage round that dreary room, seeking help from that dreary circle of women.

My heart aches to write down here the true record that out of those scores of women only three even smiled or spoke to the little fellow. Only one gave him money. My own sympathies had been so won by his face and manner that I found myself growing hot with resentment as I watched woman after woman wave him off with indifferent or impatient gesture. His face was a face which no mother ought to have been able to see without a thrill of pity and affection. God forgive me! As if any mother ought to be able to see any child, ragged, dirty, poor, seeking help and finding none! But his face was so honest, and brave, and responsive that it added much to the appeal of his poverty.

One woman, young and pretty, came into the room, bringing in her arms a large toy horse, and a little violin. "Oh," I said to myself, "she has a boy of her own, for whom she can buy gifts freely. She will surely give this poor child a penny." He thought so, too; for he went toward her with a more confident manner than he had shown to some of the others. No! She brushed by him impatiently, without a word, and walked to the ticket-office. He stood looking at the violin and the toy horse till she came back to her seat. Then he lifted his eyes to her face again; but she apparently did not see him, and he went away. Ah, she is only half mother who does not see her own child in every child!--her own child's grief in every pain which makes another child weep!

Presently the little basket-boy went out into the great hall. I watched him threading his way in and out among the groups of men. I saw one man--bless him!--pat the little fellow on the head; then I lost sight of him.

After ten minutes he came back into the Ladies' Room, with only one basket in his hand, and a very happy little face. The "sterner sex" had been kinder to him than we. The smile which he gave me in answer to my glad recognition of his good luck was the sunniest sunbeam I have seen on a human face for many a day. He sank down into the red-velvet stocks, and twirled his remaining basket, and swung his shabby little feet, as idle and unconcerned as if he were some rich man's son, waiting for the train to take him home. So much does a little lift help the heart of a child, even of a beggar child. It is a comfort to remember him, with that look on his face, instead of the wistful, pleading one which I saw at first. I left him lying back on the dusty velvet, which no doubt seemed to him unquestionable splendor. In the cars I sat just behind the woman with the toy-horse and the violin. I saw her glance rest lovingly on them many times, as she thought of her boy at home; and I wondered if the little basket-seller had really produced no impression whatever on her heart. I shall remember him long after (if he lives) he is a man!

A Genius For Affection.

The other day, speaking superficially and uncharitably, I said of a woman, whom I knew but slightly, "She disappoints me utterly. How could her husband have married her? She is commonplace and stupid."

"Yes," said my friend, reflectively; "it is strange. She is not a brilliant woman; she is not even an intellectual one; but there is such a thing as a genius for affection, and she has it. It has been good for her husband that he married her."

The words sank into my heart like a great spiritual plummet They dropped down to depths not often stirred. And from those depths came up some shining sands of truth, worth keeping among treasures; having a phosphorescent light in them, which can shine in dark places, and, making them light as day, reveal their beauty.

"A genius for affection." Yes; there is such a thing, and no other genius is so great. The phrase means something more than a capacity, or even a talent for loving. That is common to all human beings, more or less. A man or woman without it would be a monster, such as has probably never been on the earth. All men and women, whatever be their shortcomings in other directions, have this impulse, this faculty, in a degree. It takes shape in family ties: makes clumsy and unfortunate work of them in perhaps two cases out of three,--wives tormenting husbands, husbands neglecting and humiliating wives, parents maltreating and ruining children, children disobeying and grieving parents, and brothers and sisters quarrelling to the point of proverbial mention; but under all this, in spite of all this, the love is there. A great trouble or a sudden emergency will bring it out. In any common danger, hands clasp closely and quarrels are forgotten; over a sick-bed hard ways soften into yearning tenderness; and by a grave, alas! what hot tears fall! The poor, imperfect love which had let itself be wearied and harassed by the frictions of life, or hindered and warped by a body full of diseased nerves, comes running, too late, with its effort to make up lost opportunities. It has been all the while alive, but in a sort of trance; little good has come of it, but it is something that it was there. It is the divine germ of a flower and fruit too precious to mature in the first years after grafting; in other soils, by other waters, when the healing of the nations is fulfilled, we shall see its perfection. Oh! what atonement will be there! What allowances we shall make for each other, then! with what love we shall love!