Now the way most people do when they see anything very miserable is to
turn away from the sight, and try to forget it. But Diamond began as
usual to try to destroy the misery. The little boy was just as much one
of God's messengers as if he had been an angel with a flaming sword,
going out to fight the devil. The devil he had to fight just then
was Misery. And the way he fought him was the very best. Like a wise
soldier, he attacked him first in his weakest point--that was the baby;
for Misery can never get such a hold of a baby as of a grown person.
Diamond was knowing in babies, and he knew he could do something to make
the baby, happy; for although he had only known one baby as yet, and
although not one baby is the same as another, yet they are so very much
alike in some things, and he knew that one baby so thoroughly, that he
had good reason to believe he could do something for any other. I have
known people who would have begun to fight the devil in a very different
and a very stupid way. They would have begun by scolding the idiotic
cabman; and next they would make his wife angry by saying it must be her
fault as well as his, and by leaving ill-bred though well-meant shabby
little books for them to read, which they were sure to hate the sight
of; while all the time they would not have put out a finger to touch the
wailing baby. But Diamond had him out of the cradle in a moment, set
him up on his knee, and told him to look at the light. Now all the light
there was came only from a lamp in the yard, and it was a very dingy and
yellow light, for the glass of the lamp was dirty, and the gas was bad;
but the light that came from it was, notwithstanding, as certainly
light as if it had come from the sun itself, and the baby knew that, and
smiled to it; and although it was indeed a wretched room which that lamp
lighted--so dreary, and dirty, and empty, and hopeless!--there in the
middle of it sat Diamond on a stool, smiling to the baby, and the baby
on his knees smiling to the lamp. The father of him sat staring at
nothing, neither asleep nor awake, not quite lost in stupidity either,
for through it all he was dimly angry with himself, he did not know
why. It was that he had struck his wife. He had forgotten it, but was
miserable about it, notwithstanding. And this misery was the voice of
the great Love that had made him and his wife and the baby and Diamond,
speaking in his heart, and telling him to be good. For that great Love
speaks in the most wretched and dirty hearts; only the tone of its voice
depends on the echoes of the place in which it sounds. On Mount Sinai,
it was thunder; in the cabman's heart it was misery; in the soul of St.
John it was perfect blessedness.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account