“I’m bound to state that it did,” confirmed Roger, still gently rubbing his nose as he lay in the shadow.
“It seems as if it might have held up for a little boy who didn’t know what he was going to get by disobeying it,” said Ethel Blue sympathetically.
“But it didn’t and it never does,” returned Mrs. Morton. “That’s one reason why we ought to try to learn what God’s laws are just as fast and as thoroughly as we can; not only the laws of nature like the law of gravitation, but laws of morality and justice and right thinking and unselfishness and kindness toward others.”
“Sometimes mighty mean people seem to prosper,” said Ethel Brown, with a hint of rebellion in her voice.
“That’s because those people obey to the letter the law that controls prosperity of a material kind. A man may be cruel to his wife and unkind to his children, but he may have a genius for making money. Some people call it the law of compensation. I call it merely an understanding of the financial law and a lack of understanding of the law of kindness.”
“I don’t see what law dear Aunt Louise could have broken to have made her have such a hard time,” wondered Ethel Blue. “Her husband being killed and her having to wander about without a home for so many years—that seems like a hard punishment.”
“Men have decided that ‘ignorance of the law is no excuse’!” said her aunt, “and the same thing is true of laws that are not man-made.”
“That seems awfully hard,” objected Helen; “it doesn’t seem fair to punish a person for what he doesn’t know.”
“If a cannibal should come to Rosemont and should kill some one and have a barbecue, we should think that he ought to be deprived of his liberty because he was a dangerous person to have about, even if we felt sure that he did not know that he was doing an act forbidden by New Jersey law. The position is that although a person may be ignorant of the law it is his business to know it. That seems to be the way with the higher laws; we may break them in our ignorance—but we ought not to be ignorant. We ought to try just as hard as we know how all the time to do everything as well as we can and to be as good as we can. If we never let ourselves do a mean act or think a mean thought we’re bound to come to an understanding of the great laws sooner than if we just jog along not thinking anything about them. I believe one reason why your Aunt Louise was so slow in reaching the end of her troubles after Uncle Leonard died was because she was unable to control her sorrow. She has told me that she was completely crushed by his death and the condition of poverty in which she found herself with a little child—Dorothy—to take care of.”
“I don’t blame her,” murmured Ethel Blue.