Aunt Kitty's Tales

by Maria J. McIntosh

"Well, my love," said I, "you wish to know why I did not tell you at once how much pleased I was with your intention to help Alice. It was because I wanted first to hear your reasons for doing it, and so to know whether you were acting from an impulse or a principle."

Now my little readers are doubtless very much puzzled by this "acting from an impulse or a principle," and so was Harriet, too. She looked up in my face with a very thoughtful air for a minute, then shook her head, and said, "Aunt Kitty, I do not understand you at all, I do not even know what impulse means, or principle either."

"I did not expect you would, my love; but I hope to be able to explain them to you, if you will listen very carefully to what I am going to say. Persons are said to act from impulse, when they are led to do a thing from feeling, without pausing to ask whether the feeling be right or wrong. Thus, if you were eating a piece of cake, and a very poor child should come up to you, and saying she was hungry, ask you for it, and you should give it to her without a moment's thought, from a feeling of pity for her, this would be acting from impulse."

"And would it not be right, Aunt Kitty, to give the poor little child my cake?"

"Very right, my love, and if you had asked yourself what it was right to do, you would have given it, perhaps, just as quickly, for you know your Bible tells you, 'Be pitiful'—'Feed the hungry.' Your feeling of pity, then, was a right feeling, and your readiness to give your cake was what we call a good impulse; but you know there are some very wrong feelings, such as anger, which sometimes makes little girls give hard words, and even hard blows, to their brothers and sisters, or playmates, who will not do as they wish. This again is acting from impulse, though it is a bad impulse. So you see, my dear Harriet, as the best-natured people in the world sometimes have very wrong feelings, if they are accustomed to do just what their feelings tell them to do, that is, to act from impulse, you can never be sure whether their actions will be good or bad."

"But, Aunt Kitty, when I find out my feeling is a right feeling, I may do just what it tells me to do?"

"No, my love; even when a feeling is a right feeling, it will not be well to do always just what it tells you, for a right feeling may lead to a very wrong action. You think this strange, but I will tell you a story which will show you that it sometimes is so. A little girl was once sent by a lady who was making a visit to her mother, to a thread and needle store, to buy a spool of cotton for her. The lady had given her a shilling, which she held carefully between her finger and thumb, for fear of losing it. Another girl who was passing saw the shilling, and wanted it very much. Being a very wicked child, she began to cry, or at least, to seem to cry, saying that she had just lost the only shilling her mother had, as she was going to the baker's to buy a loaf of bread with it; that they had nothing to eat at home, and she was afraid her mother would beat her when she went back and told her what she had done. The little girl who had the shilling felt very sorry for her, and offered to help her look for the money. They did look for it a long time, the wicked child crying piteously all the while, and saying that her mother would kill her, till the other little girl felt so grieved, that she gave her the shilling which she had in her hand. Now, as she believed the wicked child's story, the sorrow she felt for her was very right, and yet you see it led her to do a very wrong action—to give away what did not belong to her. Nor did the wrong-doing stop here; when she went home, her mamma, to whom she intended to tell all about it, was gone out, and the lady asking for her cotton, she was afraid to tell her what she had done with the money, and so she committed a greater fault by saying what was not true,—she told her she had lost the shilling. The lady thought her very careless, and thus she got blame which she did not deserve, and as she was really a good little girl in general, she was quite miserable for several days about the story she had told, until she summoned courage to let her mamma know the whole truth. Here you see, Harriet, a very kind feeling made this little girl act very badly; but if she had been accustomed, when a feeling inclined her to do any thing, to ask herself if it would be right, before she did it, that is, to act from principle instead of impulse, she would have said to the wicked child, 'I am very sorry for you, and if this shilling was mine, I would give it to you, but it is not. You must wait till I have bought the spool of cotton I was sent for, and then, if you will go home with me, I will ask my mamma for another shilling for you.'"

"Now, Aunt Kitty, I think I understand you; if I had given my money to Alice yesterday morning, when I first heard she was blind, and before I had thought what was right for me to do, I would have acted from impulse, would I not?"

"Yes, my love, and though it would have been a good impulse, and you would even then have had more pleasure than in spending it in any thing that was only for yourself, yet I am afraid your pleasure would not have lasted long. You would soon have begun to think of your books, and if other people offered to help Alice, you would have thought you had been very foolish to give them up."

"But I shall not think so now, Aunt Kitty—I shall always think it was right to give them up to do Alice good."