Emilie the Peacemaker

by Mrs. Thomas Geldart

"Well, I hope I shall not get quarrelsome at school again, but I wish I was in a large school. I fancy I should be much happier. Only being us five at Mr. Barton's, we are so thrown together, somehow we can't help falling out and interfering with each other sometimes. Now there is young White, I never can agree with him, it is impossible."

"Dear me!" said Emilie, without contradicting him, "why?"

"He treats me so very ill; not openly and above-board, as we say, but in such a nasty sneaking way, he is always trying to injure me. He knows sometimes I fall asleep after I am called. Well, he dresses so quietly, (I sleep in his room, I wish I didn't,) he steals down stairs and then laughs with such triumph when I come down late and get a lecture or a fine for it. If I am very busy over an exercise out of school hours, he comes and talks to me, or reads some entertaining book close to my ears, aloud to one of the boys, to hinder my doing it properly, but that is not half his nasty ways. Could you love such a boy Miss Schomberg?"

"Well, I would try to make him more loveable, Fred, and then I might perhaps love him," said Emilie.

"Ah, Emilie, your 'overcome evil with good' rule would fail there I can tell you; you may laugh."

"No, I won't laugh, I am going to be serious. You will allow me to preach a short sermon to-night, the last for some time, you know, and mine shall be but a text, or a very little more, and then 'good night.' Will you try to love that boy for a few weeks? really try, and see if he does not turn out better than you expect. If he do not, I will promise you that you will be the better for it. Love is never wasted, but remember, Fred, it is wicked and sad to hate one another, and it comes to be a serious matter, for 'If any man love not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen.' Good night."

"Good night, Miss Schomberg, you have taught me to like you," and oh, how I did dislike you once! thought Fred, but he did not say so.

Miss Webster's foot got well at last, but it was a long time about it. The lodgers went away at the end of the six weeks, and aunt Agnes and Emilie were quietly settled in their little apartments again. The piano was a little out of tune, but Emilie expected as much, and now after her six weeks' holiday, so called, she prepared to begin her life of daily teaching. Her kindness to Miss Webster was for some time to all appearance thrown away, but no, that cannot be—kindness and love can never be wasted. They bless him that gives, if not him that takes the offering. By and bye, however, a few indications of the working of the good system appeared. Miss Webster would offer to come and sit and chat with aunt Agnes when Emilie was teaching or walking; and aunt Agnes in return taught Miss Webster knitting stitches and crochet work. Miss Webster would clean Emilie's straw bonnet, and when asked for the bill, she would say that it came to nothing; and would now and then send up a little offering of fruit or fish, when she thought her lodgers' table was not well supplied. Little acts in themselves, but great when we consider that they were those of an habitually cold and selfish person. She did not express love; but she showed the softening influence of affection, and Emilie at least understood and appreciated it.

Fred had perhaps the hardest work of all the actors on this little stage; he thought so at least. Joe White was an unamiable and, as Fred expressed it, a sneaking boy. He had never been accustomed to have his social affections cultivated in childhood, and consequently, he grew up into boyhood without any heart as it is called. Good Mr. Barton was quite puzzled with him. He said there was no making any impression on him, and that Mr. Barton could make none was very evident. Who shall make it? Even Fred; for he is going to try Emilie's receipt for the cure of the complaint under which Master White laboured, a kind of moral ossification of the heart. Will he succeed? We shall see.

Perhaps, had Joe White at this time fallen down and broken his leg, or demanded in any way a great sacrifice of personal comfort from his school-fellow, he would have found it easier to return good for his evil, than in the daily, hourly, calls for the exercise of forgiveness and forbearance which occurred at school. Oh, how many will do great things in the way of gifts or service, who will not do the little acts of kindness and self denial which common life demands. Many a person has built hospitals or alms houses, and has been ready to give great gifts to the poor and hungry, who has been found at home miserably deficient in domestic virtues. Dear children, cultivate these. You have, very few of you, opportunities for great sacrifices. They occur rarely in real life, and it would be well if the relations of fictitious life abounded less in them; but you may, all of you, find occasions to speak a gentle word, to give a kind smile, to resign a pursuit which annoys or vexes another, to cure a bad habit, to give up a desired pleasure. You may, all of you, practice the injunction, to live not unto yourselves. Fred, I say, found it a hard matter to carry out Emilie's plan towards Joe White, who came back from home more evilly disposed than ever, and all the boys agreed he was a perfect nuisance.