“Oh, mamma,” I exclaimed, “I am so frightened. The coachman has gone away.”
“Yes, darling,” said my mother, “but don’t you see papa is driving?”
I shall never forget the impression of absolute comfort and fearlessness that came over me at her words.
“Papa is driving,” I repeated to myself. “We are quite, quite safe.”
And all through the many years since that winter night, the impression has never faded; often and often it has returned to me as a suggestion of the essential beauty of trust, the germ of the “perfect love” towards which we strive.
Not a propos of the foregoing reminiscences, yet not, I hope, mal a propos in a roundabout paper, two anecdotes of a different kind, of children, recur to me, showing the odd directions that their cogitations sometimes take.
A little boy of my acquaintance, partly perhaps from nervousness, was subject to violent fits of crying, most irritating and perplexing to deal with. Once started—often by some absurdly trivial cause—there was literally no saying when Charley would leave off. One day, after an unusually long and exhausting attack, to his mother’s great relief, the floods gave signs of abating; she left the room to fetch him a glass of water. On her return the sobs had subsided.
“Oh, Charley,” she said, with natural but ill-advised expression of her feelings, “you have really worn me out. If ever you have children of your own, who cry like you, I hope you will remember your poor mother.”
Forthwith, to her dismay, the wails and tears burst out again, and it was not till some time had elapsed that the child would listen to her repeated inquiries as to what in the world he was crying for now. At last came the little looked-for reply.
“It wasn’t because of this morning,” (what had started the fit I do not remember) “I’d left off crying about that. It was you thinking I would bring up my children so badly.”