One of the most interesting pictures of a priest in American literature—which of late abounds in pictures of good priests—is that of Père Michaux, in Miss Woolson’s novel “Anne.” He believed that “all should live their lives, and that one should not be a slave to others; that the young should be young, and that some natural, simple pleasure should be put into each twenty-four hours. They might be poor, but children should be made happy; they might be poor, but youth should not be overwhelmed by the elders’ cares; they might be poor, but they could have family love around the poorest hearthstone; and there was always time for a little pleasure, if they would seek it simply and moderately.”
But Père Michaux was French: he had not been corrupted by that American Puritanism which has, somehow or other, got into the blood of even the Irish Celts on this side of the Atlantic. Pleasures are not spontaneous or simple, and joy is only possible after a long period of worry. Simple pleasures—the honest little wild flowers that peep up between the every-day crevices of each twenty-four hours—are neglected because we have not been taught to see them. Life may be serious without being sad; but, influenced by the Puritan gloom, sadness and seriousness have come to be confounded.
Man was not made to be sad. Unless something is wrong with him, he is not sad by temperament. And sadness ought to be repressed in early youth. The sad child in the stories is pathetic, but the authors generally have the good sense to kill him when he is young. The sad child in real life ought not to be tolerated. And if his parents have made him sad by putting their burden of the trials of life on him so early, they have done him irreparable wrong. Simple pleasures are the sunlight of life; and the little plants struggle to the sunshine and find light for themselves, darken their dwelling-place as you will. The frown in the household, the scolding voice, the impatience with childish folly—all these things are against the practice of the Church and her saints. The Catholic sentiment is one of joy—not the Sabbath any more, but the Sunday, the day of smiles, of rejoicing; the day on which, as old Christian legends have it, the sun is supposed to dance in honor of the first Easter.
How much the French and Germans, who have not lost the Catholic traditions, make of the little joys of life! If the grandfather’s name-day come, there is the pot of flowers, the little cake with its ornaments. And how many other feasts are made by the poorest of them out of what the Americans, rich by comparison, would look on but as a patch upon his poverty! There should be no dark days for the young. It is so easy to make them happy, if they have not been distorted by their surroundings out of the capability of enjoying little pleasures. The mother who teaches her daughters that poverty is not death to all joy, and that the enjoyment of simple things makes life easier and keeps people younger—such a mother is kinder to her girls, gives them a better gift than the diamond necklace which the spoiled girl craves, and then finds good only so far as it excites envy in others.
Children should not be made to bear a weight of sadness. That girl will not long for an electric doll if she has been taught to get the poetry of life out of a rag-baby. And the boy will not pine for an improved bicycle, and sulk without it, if he has learned to swim. The greatest pleasures are the easiest had—
“Each ounce of dross costs an ounce of gold;
For a cap and bells our lives we pay;
Bubbles we buy with a whole soul’s tasking:
’Tis Heaven alone that is given away,—
’Tis only God may be had for the asking.”