Conduct of life; Courtesy; Generosity; Interpersonal relations; Kindness
BUT let’s pass, now, to the last cage in our menagerie. Here’s a
dangerous galravaging beast--one of those terrible creatures who “mean
well,” even while they rend you. One historic remark of this emotional
reptile there is, that in the annals of mental torture, surpasses in
heartlessness all other expressions of good intent. Oh, I have said
it--you have, too, I suppose. May God forgive us both, for there are
those who never, never will!
Galna it was who has dramatized it for me best. A dreadful suicide it
was, no horror lacking. Galna, alone in the house--alone, save for her
maid and that shocking wreck of one she had loved. And in her anguish,
her despair, her bewilderment, the telephone bell rang. Lo, Mrs. Spick,
kind, effusive Mrs. Spick, had rung her up to coo conventional
condolence.
“And now, if there is anything I can do, Galna,” she concluded, “be sure
and let me know!”
Ah, my friend, sometime you, too, must have suffered--suffered and
known not where to turn; and, as sure as most hearts, alas, are
ignorant, sometime you, too, must have heard that frightful phrase--
that mockery of friendship. The very epitaph it is upon the grave of
affection: “_If there is anything I can do, be sure and let me know!_”
But as Galna, dazed, lonely, aching, staggered back to her room, behold,
upon her bed she saw an unfamiliar thing. Tear-blinded, she groped for
it. A hundred-dollar bill!
“Why, where did this come from?” she asked, wondering.
“Oh, Miss Felice left it there,” said her maid, “she thought perhaps
you might happen to be short of money.”
“Felice?”
“Yes, she’s downstairs now, helping wash the dishes and putting the
parlor to rights, and sending telegrams.”
Ah, Felice needed no one to “let her know” what to do. She had
imagination. She had the Educated Heart.
For the Educated Heart always knows. “He seeth with his heart.” The
language of suffering, ordinarily, can no more be learned without
experience than can the language of Mars; but upon some blessed few, in
this world, thank God, has fallen the Gift of Tongues.
TRULY, as Sadie said, nothing is so rare as the Educated Heart. And if
you wonder why, just show a kodak group picture--a banquet photograph--a
photograph of a class. What does every one of us first look at, talk
about? Ourself. And that’s the reason why most hearts are so unlearned
in kindness. Yet none of us likes himself to be forgotten or neglected.
Almost any wife, I verily believe, would prefer actual rudeness to
having a husband pass over her wedding anniversary unnoticed. Even a
blow would prove that she was of some importance in his life.
So it isn’t always the big, climactic misfortune that we suffer from
most. We can rally, after we’re stunned, and go on, somehow. But it’s
the little stings that we can’t forget. It’s because of the
Uneducated Heart that love-mad women kill.
“Why don’t you get a smart hat like Carrie’s, dear? She’s always so
well-dressed!”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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