In the inability or unwillingness of people to let other people alone, may be summed up all the aggravation of living. The bane of my life has been never being let alone. People seem to think they have come into the world with a special mission to give me advice, and from my babyhood up, I have never been allowed to carry out the best-arranged plan of operation, without interference. As each man and woman is the representative of a certain class, I conclude others have had the same experience with myself; and there is a gloomy satisfaction in reflecting that there are many who have been made as essentially uncomfortable as I. The result has been, I have come to the unalterable determination never, under any circumstances, to either advise anybody or receive it myself where it can be avoided. If it is ordained that I am to make a fool of myself, it shall be done on my own responsibility, and not with the assistance of meddling friends—though if they have any desire to take the credit of it, I shall make no objections whatever. I doubt if they will. The longer I live in the world, the clearer appears the fact that half at least of our unhappiness is unnecessary. We seem perversely bent on tormenting and being tormented. We visit people for whom we do not care one straw, because our position in society or our interests demand it. We sacrifice our own judgment to the whims of others as a matter of expediency, and almost ignore our own capacity in the eagerness to agree with everybody. We suffer because a rich snob snubs us, and agonize over unfavorable remarks made concerning our abilities or standing. These things ought not so to be. No man can find a substitute when he lies a-dying;—why should all his years be spent in the vain endeavor to find a substitute for living? An endless dependence upon the opinions, the whims, the prejudices of others, is the bane of living, and the mark of a weak mind, made so oftener by education than nature.
When the young forget to abuse the old, and the old to run down the young; when mothers-in-law cease to hate their daughters-in-law, and to improve all opportunities for sowing strife; when wives take pains to understand their husbands, and husbands decide that woman nature is worth studying; when women can remember to be charitable to other women; when the Golden Rule can be read as it is written, and not 'Do unto others as ye would not they should do unto you;' when justice and truth rule men, rather than unreason and petty spite, then the aggravation of living will die a natural death, and the world become as comfortable an abiding place as its inhabitants need desire.
Till then, hope and wait. Live the life God gives us, as purely and truly as you know how. Have some faith in human nature, but more in God, and wait his own good time for the perfect life, not to be reached here, but hereafter.
THE LESSON OF THE WOOD.
In the same soil the family of trees
Spring up, and, like a band of brothers, grow
In the same sun, while from their leafy lips
Comes not the faintest whisper of dissent
Because of various girth and grain and hue.
The oak flings not his acorns at the elm;
The white birch shrinks not from the swarthy ash;
The green plume of the pine nods to the shrub;
The loftiest monarch of the realm of wood
Spares not his crown in elemental storms,
But shares the blows with trees of humbler growth,
And stretches forth his arms to save their fall.
Wild flowers festoon the feet of all alike;
Green mosses grow upon the trunks of all;
Sweet birds pour out their songs on every bough;
Clouds drop baptismal showers of rain on each,
And the broad sun floods every leaf with light.
Behold them clad in Autumn's golden pomp—
Their rich magnificence, of different dyes,
More beautiful than royal robes, and crowns
Of emperors on coronation day.
But the deserted nest in silence sways
Like a sad heart beneath a royal scarf;
And the red tint upon the maple leaves
Is colored like the fields where fell our braves
In hurricanes of flame and leaden hail.
I love to gaze up at the grand old trees;
Their branches point like hope to Heaven serene;
Their roots point to the silent world that's dead;
Their grand old trunks hold towns and fleets for us,
And cots and coffins for the race unborn.
When at their feet their predecessors fell,
Spring covered their remains with mourning moss,
And wrote their epitaph in pale wood flowers,
And Summer gave ripe berries to the birds
To stay and sing their sad sweet requiem;
And Autumn rent the garments of the trees
That stood mute mourners in a field of graves,
And Winter wrapped them in a winding sheet.
They seemed like giants sleeping in their shrouds.
DIARY OF FRANCES KRASINSKA;
OR, LIFE IN POLAND DURING THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.
Castle of Janowiec,
Wednesday, May 27th, 1760.