An hour before, I had started from my home an invalid. I had long deliberated whether an exposure to a chilly east wind would not injure rather than improve me. I was melancholy, too; my only daughter was about to be married—there was confusion all over the house—the event was to be celebrated in fashionable style. Ellen's dress had cost what would have been a fortune to this poor seamstress, and I moralized. But I had forgotten myself; the cough which had troubled me was no longer oppressive. I breathed quite freely, and yet I had walked more briskly than I had done for months, without so much fatigue as slow motion caused, so that when I returned, my wife rallied me upon looking ten years younger than when I left her in the morning; and when I told her the specific lay in my walk with a little prattler, and the satisfaction of having left her happier than I found her, she took the occasion to press the purchase of a diamond brooch for Ellen, affirming if the gift of half a dollar made me so much happier, and that, too, to a little errand street girl, what would fifty times that amount confer upon one's only daughter, upon the eve before her marriage?
I gave the diamond brooch—I paid the most extravagant bills to upholster's, dry goods establishments, confectioners and musicians, with which to enliven the great occasion, and yet I found more real satisfaction in providing for the real wants of little 'Gusta Taggard and her mother than in all the splendid outlay of the wedding ceremony; and it was not that it cost less which made the satisfaction, but it was that all extravagant outlays, in the very nature of things, are unsatisfactory, while ministering to the necessities of the truly needy and industrious confers its own reward.
I had seen the glittering spangled dress—but it was made ready by some poor, emaciated sufferer, who toiled on in patient trust, and the embroidered vest as finished by the strained vision and aching head of another, who was emphatically one of "God's poor," upon whom blight or disgrace had not fallen, save by his appointment; and the diamond brooch was borne off by admiring throngs but to be envied and coveted, while the simple coin bestowed upon my little street acquaintance had introduced me to a new species of enjoyment that never cloys in the retrospective. I had learned to do good in small ways—my morning walks have now an object and aim. I pass by splendid palaces to hasten to Sullivan court, and thence on to yet other sources of enjoyment, so that my invalidism is fast leaving me by the new direction which is given to my thoughts.
I am free to acknowledge that while I cheerfully pay for flannel robes, and silverware, and servants, and all the requirements which fashion imposes, I derive far less pleasure from surveying them, than in sitting beside some worthy recipient of charity, who tells me that "the little sum you gave me saved me from despair and self-destruction, and enabled me to become helpful, so that no other assistance is now necessary." Such a confession fills a void which administering to a luxury never can; and all the satisfaction originated in first helping a little child over the crossing.
| STOP AND LOOK AROUND! |
| Life is full of passing pleasures That are never seen or heard, Little things that go unheeded— Blooming flower and song of bird; Overhead, a sky of beauty; Underneath, a changing ground; And we'd be the better for it If we'd stop and look around! Oh, there's much of toil and worry In the duties we must meet; But we've time to see the beauty That lies underneath our feet. We can tune our ears to listen To a joyous burst of sound, And we know that God intended We should stop and look around! Drop the care a while, and listen When the sparrow sings his best; Turn aside, and watch the building Of some little wayside nest; See the wild flower ope its petals, Gather moss from stump and mound; And you'll be the better for it If you stop and look around! |
