That’s the way we ended our controversy about wounds.
But he may say what he likes. I consider myself rather a dab at healing bodily ones. As to those of the heart, I haven’t had the experience, for I am not a father confessor to galls, and of course ain’t consulted. But it appears to me clergymen don’t know much about the right way to treat them. The heart is a great word. In itself it’s nothin’ but a thing that swells and contracts, and keeps the blood a movin; a sort of central post-office that communicates with all the great lines and has way stations to all remote parts. Like that, there is no sleep in it day or night. Love, hope, fear, despair, disappointment, ambition, pride, supplication, craft, cant, fraud, piety, speculation, secrets, tenderness, bitterness, duty, disobedience, truth, falsehood, gratitude, humbug, and all sorts of such things, pass through it or wait till called for; they “are thar.” All these are dispersed by railways, expresses, fast and slow coaches, and carriers. By a figure of speech all these things are sumtotalized, and if put on paper, the depository is called the post-office, and the place where they are conceived and hatched and matured, the heart.
Well, neither the one nor the other has any feeling. They are merely the edifices respectively designed for these operations. The thing and its contents are in one case called the heart; but the contents only of the other are called the mail. Literally therefore the heart is a muscle, or some such an affair, and nothing more; but figuratively it is a general term that includes, expresses, and stands for all these things together. We talk of it therefore as a living, animated, responsible being that thinks for itself, and acts through its agents. It is either our spiritual part, or something spiritual within us. Subordinate or independent of us—guiding or obeying us—influencing or influenced by us. We speak of it, and others treat it, as separate, for they and we say our heart. We give it, a colour and a character; it may be a black heart or a base heart; it may be a brave or a cowardly one; it may be a sound or a weak heart also, and a true or a false one; generous or ungrateful; kind or malignant, and so on.
It strikes me natur would have been a more suitable word; but poets got hold of it, and they bedevil everything they touch. Instead of speaking of a critter’s heart therefore, it would to my mind have been far better to have spoke of the natur of the animal, for I go the whole hog for human natur. But I suppose nobody would understand me if I did, and would say I had no heart to say so. I’ll take it therefore, as I find it—a thing having a body or substance that can be hurt, and a spirit that can be grieved.
Well, as such, I don’t somehow think ministers in a general way know how to treat it. The heart, in its common acceptation, is very sensitive and must be handled gently; if grief is there, it must be soothed and consoled, and hope called in to open views of better things. If disappointment has left a sting, the right way is to show a sufferer it might have been wuss, or that if his wishes had been fulfilled, they might have led to something more disastrous. If pride has been wounded, the patient must be humoured by agreeing with him, in the first instance, that he has been shamefully used (for that admits his right to feel hurt, which is a great thing); and then he may be convinced he ought to be ashamed to acknowledge it, for he is superior to his enemy, and in reality so far above him it would only gratify him to think he was of consequence enough to be hated. If he has met with a severe pecuniary loss in business, he ought to be told it’s the fortune of trade; how lucky he is he ain’t ruined, he can afford and must expect losses occasionally. If he frets over it, it will hurt his mercantile credit, and after all, he will never miss it, except in a figure in the bottom of his balance-sheet, and besides, riches ain’t happiness, and how little a man can get out of them at best; and a minister ought to be able to have a good story to tell him, with some point in it, for there is a great deal of sound philosophy in a good anecdote.
He might say, for instance: “Did you ever hear of John Jacob Astor?”
“No, never.”
“What not of John Jacob Astor, the richest man in all the unevarsal United States of America? The man that owns all the brown and white bears, silver-gray and jet-black foxes, sables, otters, stone martins, ground squirrels, and every created critter that has a fur jacket, away up about the North Pole, and lets them wear them, for furs don’t keep well, moths are death on ’em, and too many at a time glut the market; so he lets them run till he wants them, and then sends and skins them alive in spring when it ain’t too cold, and waits till it grows again?”
“No, never,” sais the man with the loss.
“Well, if you had been stript stark naked and turned loose that way, you might have complained. Oh! you are a lucky man, I can tell you.”