Whose everlasting purposes embrace
All accidents, converting them to good.
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Providence, Unswerving—See [Steadiness of Providence].
PROVINCIALISM
Provincialism is local pride unduly inflated. It is the temper that is ready to hail as a Swan of Avon any local gosling who has taught himself to make an unnatural use of his own quills. It is always tempting us to stand on tiptoe to proclaim our own superiority. It prevents our seeing ourselves in proper proportion to the rest of the world. It leads to the preparation of school manuals in which the threescore years and ten of American literature are made equal in importance to the thousand years of literature produced in Great Britain. It tends to render a modest writer, like Longfellow, ridiculous by comparing him implicitly with the half-dozen world poets. In the final resort, no doubt, every people must be the judge of its own authors; but before that final judgment is rendered every people consults the precedents, and measures its own local favorites by the cosmopolitan and eternal standards.—Brander Matthews.
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PROVOCATION, SILENCE UNDER
I have read somewhere the following arrangement for avoiding quarrels: “You see, sir,” said an old man, speaking of a couple who lived in perfect harmony in his neighborhood, “they’d agreed between themselves that whenever he came home a little contrary and out of temper, he wore his hat on the back of his head, and then she never said a word; and if she came in a little cross and crooked, she threw her shawl over her left shoulder, and then he never said a word.” As it takes two to make a quarrel, either the husband or the wife might often prevent one by stepping out of the room at the nick of time; by endeavoring to divert attention and conversation from the burning question; by breathing an instantaneous prayer to God for calmness before making any reply; in a word, by learning to put in practise on certain occasions the science of silence. Robert Burton tells of a woman who, hearing one of her “gossips” complain of her husband’s impatience, told her an excellent remedy for it. She gave her a glass of water which, when he brawled, she should hold still in her mouth. She did so two or three times with great success, and, at length, seeing her neighbor, she thanked her for it, and asked to know the ingredients. She told her that it was “fair water” and nothing more; for it was not the water, but her silence which performed the cure. (Text.)—J. E. Hardy, The Quiver.
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