World War, 1914-1918 -- Gift books; World War, 1914-1918 -- Miscellanea
There are so many people in this world who are Impoverishers! They don't
know it. Most of them wouldn't even know what you meant if you told them
they belonged to the great all-round cheapening class. Yet there they
are, always making everything about them look worse than it is. Some of
them are so far gone in want of style that if they went to Buckingham
Palace they would immediately make it look like a shoddy place in Acton
or Wandsworth. On the other hand, there are a few rare and blessed souls
who would make a pigsty look a proper abode for royalty.
It has nothing to do with money. It has nothing to do with clothes. It
has only to do with Self.
My Little Yeogh Wough is one of these.
From the first week of his life he made everybody about him live up to
their income. He mutely demanded the best of everything, even while his
mere presence lent a charm and glory to the worst of things. I had had
ideas of a four-and-sixpenny woollen hat and a ten-and-sixpenny pelisse
as quite good enough for any baby; but when I looked at him I saw that
it had to be a thirty-five shilling hat and a four-guinea cloak.
Somehow or other, he made his nurse quite a distinguished person to look
at, while he himself soon became a delight to the eye, with his big,
brown velvety eyes, his exquisite skin, his mass of shining curls and
his portly little body--so portly that it looked as if it were
artificially inflated and a puncture by a pin might cause a collapse.
"I can't understand how it is," a friend said to me once. "As a rule,
babies, like cats, make a place look common, but he never does. He's got
a sort of kinghood about him."
This was true of him then as it is true of him to-day. And I was
reverent. But there were times when I was afraid. For I am a believer in
Compensation, and I know that where your special pride and joy are,
there shall you only too surely be stricken.
If you are proud of your bodily beauty, then in that beauty shall you be
degraded. Not for you then shall be the disease that comes in the leg or
the toe or in some wholly unobtrusive place where no one need know of
it. To you it will come either in the eye, so that you have to wear an
eyeshade, or in the form of a skin disorder, so that the fairness and
perfectness of your complexion may be lost to you. I have read of one of
our most successful business men that his great passion in life being
the taking of country rambles with a botanical interest, he had told
himself that when he had made enough money to be fairly comfortable in
life he would give up working and devote himself to walking as a hobby;
but just as his business began to be successful he became paralysed in
the lower limbs, and thenceforward could only go about in a bathchair.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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