With his lower lip twisted oddly under the bite of his strong white
teeth, Stanton began to unwrap the various packages that comprised the
large bundle. If it was a "portrait" it certainly represented a
puzzle-picture.
First there was a small, flat-footed scarlet slipper with a fluffy
gold toe to it. Definitely feminine. Definitely small. So much for
that! Then there was a sling-shot, ferociously stubby, and rather
confusingly boyish. After that, round and flat and tantalizing as an
empty plate, the phonograph disc of a totally unfamiliar song--"The
Sea Gull's Cry": a clue surely to neither age nor sex, but indicative
possibly of musical preference or mere individual temperament. After
that, a tiny geographical globe, with Kipling's phrase--
"For to admire an' for to see,
For to be'old this world so wide--
It never done no good to me,
But I can't drop it if I tried!"--
written slantingly in very black ink across both hemispheres. Then an
empty purse--with a hole in it; a silver-embroidered gauntlet such as
horsemen wear on the Mexican frontier; a white table-doily partly
embroidered with silky blue forget-me-nots--the threaded needle still
jabbed in the work--and the small thimble, Stanton could have sworn,
still warm from the snuggle of somebody's finger. Last of all, a fat
and formidable edition of Robert Browning's poems; a tiny black
domino-mask, such as masqueraders wear, and a shimmering gilt picture
frame inclosing a pert yet not irreverent handmade adaptation of a
certain portion of St. Paul's epistle to the Corinthians:
"Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels and
have not a Sense of Humor, I am become as sounding brass, or
a tinkling symbol. And though I have the gift of
Prophecy--and all knowledge--so that I could remove
Mountains, and have not a Sense of Humor, I am nothing. And
though I bestow all my Goods to feed the poor, and though I
give my body to be burned, and have not a Sense of Humor it
profiteth me nothing.
"A sense of Humor suffereth long, and is kind. A Sense of
Humor envieth not. A Sense of Humor vaunteth not itself--is
not puffed up. Doth not behave itself Unseemly, seeketh not
its own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil--Beareth
all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things,
endureth all things. A Sense of Humor never faileth. But
whether there be unpleasant prophecies they shall fail,
whether there be scolding tongues they shall cease, whether
there be unfortunate knowledge it shall vanish away. When I
was a fault-finding child I spake as a fault-finding child,
I understood as a fault-finding child,--but when I became a
woman I put away fault-finding things.
"And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three. _But the
greatest of these is a sense of humor!_"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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