The elements of character

by Mary G. Ware

Look in upon the assembled members of a school, of any grade from primary to collegiate, and you will see one set of pupils with stolid faces conning their tasks, as if they were indeed tasks in the hardest sense of the term, and then reciting them word for word, in a monotonous tone, as if their voices came from automata, and not from living throats. These are they who study only with their Thoughts, and whose Imaginations and Affections are untouched by all that passes through their minds. Scattered among the preceding another class may be found, with quickly glancing eyes, who seem all alive to everything they study, who recite with earnest tones, and whose faces are bright with expression. Here the Imagination is at work, and everything the mind seizes upon stands there at once a living picture. These are the brilliant scholars, who carry off all the prizes, and win all admiration. There is still a third class, of a calmer aspect. Its members may not shine so brightly, but there is more warmth in their rays. They will not learn so much nor so rapidly as those of the second class, but their whole being is permeated by what they know. They are constantly studying the relations of the things that they learn to each other and to life; and are endeavoring to form themselves in accordance with the rationality they thus acquire; for their Affections have fastened themselves upon it, and it is therefore becoming a part of their being.

When these three classes of pupils become men and women, and go forth into the various walks of life, the first, if they attempt any handicraft, are the botchers and bunglers, who bring little more than their hands to anything that they do; and who, therefore, do nothing well. They are the dead weights of society, that must be helped through life by their more active neighbors. If they are scholars, they are collectors of facts, which they pile up in their memories as a miser heaps his gold, for no end but the pleasure of heaping. They make physicians without resource, lawyers without discernment, preachers who dole out divinity in its baldest and heaviest forms.

Those of the second class are always better in theory than in practice; for with them zeal ever runs before knowledge. They will delight in telling how a thing should be done, but will find it very difficult to do it themselves. A blacksmith of this class will tell with great exactness how a horse should be shod, but if trusted to perform that office, ten to one the poor animal will go limping from his hands. So a carpenter of the same class will be full of plans and fancies that he will wish to carry out for the benefit of his employers; but his work, when completed, though perhaps elegant and ornamental, will probably be inappropriate in appearance, and not adapted to the use for which it was intended. From this class come inventors of machines that are never heard of after they get into the patent-office, schemers and speculators whose plans end in ruin, boon companions, brilliant talkers, sparkling orators, elegant and ornate poets who sing blithely for their own day and generation, preachers and statesmen who are ever led away by Utopian and millennial dreams; in short, men who may shine while they live, but are seldom remembered when they die.

The third class are men of mark in whatever walk of life they are found; —men to be relied upon for whatever they may undertake. They are men who can produce in Life what their Understandings know and imagine; or, rather, who know how to select from their stores of Thought and Imagination whatever may be realized in Life. If they are mechanics, their work is the best of its kind, and precisely adapted to the use for which it was intended; if they are machinists, their inventions are those that ameliorate the condition of society; if merchants or speculators, they do not run after bubbles; if devoted to intellectual pursuits, they are divines whose thoughts thrill the souls of men for centuries, founders of new schools of philosophy, lawgivers, and statesmen who are remembered with gratitude as the fathers of nations, poets whose words are destined to live so long as the language in which they write is spoken,—nay, who shall cause their language to be studied ages after all who spoke it have passed from the face of the earth.

The women who belong to these several classes are characterized in like manner, though their more retired lives prevent them from displaying their traits so conspicuously. Those of the first class are dress-makers whose work never fits, milliners whose bonnets look as if they were not intended for the wearers, servants who do nothing rightly unless the eye of their mistress is upon them, teachers whose pupils are taught as if they were beings without life or reason; and in their highest relations, as wives and mothers, they are those with whom nothing goes as it should, whose daily lives are but a succession of mistakes and catastrophies, whose husbands never find a comfortable home to which they may return for repose after a day of toil, whose children are "dragged up, not brought up."

In the second class are servants who have a quick perception of what is to be done, and who make all that is directly apparent to the eye look well, but a closer observation shows many an unswept corner and neglected duty; dress-makers and milliners whose work is ornamental, tasteful, and becoming, though the ornamentation is apt to be too great for the value of the material, and the work will now and then come in pieces for lack of being thoroughly finished; teachers who infuse brightness and quickness into their scholars, but whose instructions are more showy than solid. In their housekeeping they understand "putting the best foot foremost," and making a great deal of ornament where there may be but little of anything else; but they lack the practical skill that makes a housekeeper successful in the essentials that constitute comfort. They will seek to make their children accomplished ladies and gentlemen, who will be agreeable in society, rather than well-trained men and women, capable of meeting the duties and emergencies of life.

The third class of women are the reliable ones, wherever they may be found. They do everything they attempt well, because there is a sense of fitness and propriety in them which is disturbed by things badly done, and which gives them an almost intuitive faith, that if a thing is worth doing at all, it is worth doing well. They are not eye-servants, but faithful in all things. Thoroughness pervades whatever they do, in all departments of life. They are not satisfied with making a dress or a bonnet that is becoming, unless it is well finished and appropriate. They are the thorough teachers who are willing to have their schools examined every day in the year, who seek to know the capacities of their pupils, and to educate them accordingly. They are the mothers whose children are obedient and trained for the uses of life no less than for its pleasures; the wives whose husbands are happy in their homes if they are capable of being happy anywhere.

When we contemplate these three classes of human beings, we perceive that only one of them can be said to lead successful lives. Two classes, and both of them painfully numerous, fail. The question rises to the mind with fearful solemnity, were they created for this end,—created to fail? Can we for a single moment believe that a Father of infinite justice and mercy ever created one individual among his children, an accountable being, neither insane nor idiotic, and yet so imperfect that he must fail? Surely it were blasphemy to hold such an act possible. Infinitely various are the works of his hand in the forms of humanity, as in every other department of the universe, but even so manifold are the varieties and degrees of service which he prepares for every one to do. There is a place and a use for every one, and whoever fails of finding a place and a use fails, not because he was created incompetent, but because he refuses to cultivate the powers wherewith he is endowed. Indolence and selfishness, the moth and rust of Character, are corroding and devouring the delicate organization of the internal man, which can retain the wholeness and brightness of its powers only by constant use. We are weak and useless, not because we were created to be so, but because we do not listen to the voice of conscience when it tells us to serve the Lord with all our strength, in the very place where we now are, and at the very time that now is. It is not because the power of growth is not in them that our talents do not multiply, but because we fold them in a napkin of indifference, and bury them in the earth of our lower nature. Understanding and Affection are within us all, and if they do not develop into a life of use, into a Character that will fit us for heaven,—and this is what we should always keep before our minds as the only genuine success,—it is because we have not striven as we might and ought.

Understanding and Affection are within us all, differing, not in kind, but only in degree; and they are constantly at work, involuntarily if we do not voluntarily assume their control. In the little child they work as involuntarily as the heart beats and the lungs respire; but so soon as the child is old enough to begin to know the difference between right and wrong, the action of these powers should begin to be voluntary; should begin to be under the guidance of conscience.

Some persons call these powers into voluntary action from motives of mere worldly wisdom. Every one does so who places some object before himself, and cultivates his powers with a special view to attain perfection therein. The pickpocket, the gambler, the housebreaker, must do it before they can attain skill in their depravity. The worldling does it who follows an honorable profession with all his heart and soul and mind and strength, seeking only such rewards as Mammon bestows upon his votaries. Whether all these are to be successful in attaining the rewards they seek, is a matter of entire uncertainty; for Providence permits or withholds worldly success in a way that we cannot anticipate, nor but imperfectly understand. We may bear the heavy yoke of Mammon until it wear into the very marrow of our bones, and yet gain nothing but poverty and disgrace. They, however, who by a voluntary action of the powers endeavor to become perfected in the stature of Christian men and women,—who seek first the kingdom of heaven and its righteousness, using all things of this world only as rounds of that ladder whose summit is in the heavens, even while its base rests upon the earth, are sure of the reward they seek; and the yoke that they bear will grow more light and easy with each revolving year.