Concerning Littleness
Let not the littleness of people disturb you. Remember that if you have been made big enough to do big things in life, you have been made large enough to overlook little things. So do not imagine you are great, so long as by sifting yourself you find jealousy, hatred, malice or even the spirit which frets, in your heart. These and Greatness sleep not in the same soul.
John Trotwood Moore.
Stories of the Soil
The Little Things of Life, Happening All Over the World and Caught in Ink for Trotwood’s Monthly.
He was a fine-looking old gentleman, well-dressed and had the air of a well-to-do business man. A silver-white mustache set off his cheery-looking, full, round face, and something in his eyes told me he wasn’t at all struck on formality and would not mind talking to a stranger, to pass away an hour or two in a sleeping-car. |An Unfinished Race.| I noticed, too, that his left sleeve had no arm in it, and then that he had on a G. A. R. button.
“That old fellow is all right,” I said to myself, “and I’ll bet he left that arm down in Tennessee. There are a dozen good yarns tucked away under that derby hat that have never yet seen the color of white paper, and I am going to get one of them. I should say that he fought from Shiloh to Chickamauga and from Chattanooga to Nashville, and made a good one, too, or else he wouldn’t have left that arm in the enemy’s country.” “He fought the war out,” I said, after I had studied his countenance more closely and noticed the big bump of benignity that made up his back head and ended in kind, mild countenance; “and after it was over he let it stay over, forgot all its meanness, inhumanity and cussedness generally, came on up here to Indiana and went into business, attended strictly to it, and is now a well-to-do business man.”
Satisfied that my diagnosis was correct, I went over, and taking a seat by him, began to slyly get in my net for the fish I knew was there.
“From Middle Tennessee, you say?” he said after awhile. “Well, I guess I know every foot of it, nearly.” He laughed. “Under a little black locust tree near Murfreesboro is what is left of this,” he said, as he touched his empty coat sleeve. “I have often wanted to go back there and see some of those pretty farms and good horses and bluegrass hills when I didn’t have any guard duty to do and wasn’t looking for an enemy, but friends.”
I cordially invited him to come, and mentioned how many of the veterans come down every now and then to go over the battlefields of the South.