Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

  “Well, now, in the case mentioned by Helen, when two or three people with whom you are in different degrees of intimacy call upon you, I think she is perfectly right, as she said, in talking of roses, and canary - birds, and even of bonnet patterns, and lace, or anything of the kind, for the sake of making conversation. It amounts to the same thing as ‘good-morning,’ and ‘good-evening,’ and the other courtesies of society. This sort of small talk has nothing instructive in it, and yet it may be useful in its place. It makes people comfortable and easy, promotes kind and social feelings; and making people comfortable by any innocent means is certainly not a thing to be despised.”

  “But is there not great danger of becoming light and trifling if one allows this?” said Miss B. doubtfully.

  “To be sure; there is always danger of running every innocent thing to excess. One might eat to excess, or drink to excess; yet eating and drinking are both useful in their way. Now, our lively young friend Helen, here, might perhaps be in some temptation of this sort; but as for you, Anna, I think you in more danger of another extreme.”

  “And what is that?”

  “Of overstraining your mind by endeavoring to keep up a constant, fixed state of seriousness and solemnity, and not allowing yourself the relaxation necessary to preserve its healthy tone. In order to be healthy, every mind must have variety and amusement; and if you would sit down at least one hour a day, and join your friends in some amusing conversation, and indulge in a good laugh, I think, my dear, that you would not only be a happier person, but a better Christian.”

  “My dear uncle,” said Miss B., “this is the very thing that I have been most on my guard against; I can never tell stories, or laugh and joke, without feeling condemned for it afterwards.”

  “But, my dear, you must do the thing in the testimony of a good conscience before you can do it to any purpose. You must make up your mind that cheerful and entertaining conversation — conversation whose first object is to amuse — is useful conversation in its place, and then your conscience will not be injured by joining in it.”

  “But what good does it do, uncle?”

  “Do you not often complain of coldness and deadness in your religious feelings? of lifelessness and want of interest?”

  “Yes, uncle.”

  “Well, this coldness and lifelessness is the result of forcing your mind to one set of thoughts and feelings. You become worn out — your feelings exhausted — deadness and depression ensue. Now, turn your mind off from these subjects — divert it by a cheerful and animated conversation, and you will find, after a while, that it will return to them with new life and energy.”

  “But are not foolish talking and jesting expressly forbidden?”

  “That text, if you will look at the connections, does not forbid jesting in the abstract; but jesting on immodest subjects — which are often designated in the New Testament by the phraseology there employed. I should give the sense of it — neither filthiness, nor foolish talking, nor indelicate jests. The kind of sprightly and amusing conversation to which I referred, I should not denominate foolish, by any means, at proper times and places.”

  “Yet people often speak of gayety as inconsistent in Christians — even worldly people,” said Miss B.

  “Yes, because, in the first place, they often have wrong ideas as to what Christianity requires in this respect, and suppose Christians to be violating their own principles in indulging in it. In the second place, there are some, especially among young people, who never talk in any other way — with whom this kind of conversation is not an amusement, but a habit — giving the impression that they never think seriously at all. But I think, that if persons are really possessed by the tender, affectionate, benevolent spirit of Christianity — if they regulate their temper and their tongue by it, and in all their actions show an evident effort to conform to its precepts, they will not do harm by occasionally indulging in sprightly and amusing conversation — they will not make the impression that they are not sincerely Christians.”

  “Besides,” said Helen, “are not people sometimes repelled from religion by a want of cheerfulness in its professors?”

  “Certainly,” replied her uncle, “and the difference is just this: if persons are habitually trifling and thoughtless, it is thought that they have no religion; if they are ascetic and gloomy it is attributed to their religion; and you know what Miss E. Smith says — that ‘to be good and disagreeable is high treason against virtue.’ The more sincerely and earnestly religious a person is, the more important it is that he should be agreeable.”

  “But, uncle,” said Helen, “what does that text mean that we began with? What are idle words?”

  “My dear, if you will turn to the place where the passage is (Matt, xii.) and read the whole page, you will see the meaning of it. Christ was not reproving anybody for trifling conversation at the time; but for a very serious slander. The Pharisees, in their bitterness, accused him of being in league with evil spirits. It seems, by what follows, that this was a charge which involved an unpardonable sin. They were not, indeed, conscious of its full guilt, — they said it merely from the impulse of excited and envious feeling, — but he warns them that in the day of judgment God will hold them accountable for the full consequences of all such language, however little they may have thought of it at the time of uttering it. The sense of the passage I take to be, i God will hold you responsible in the day of judgment for the consequences of all you have said in your most idle and thoughtless moments.’”

  “For example,” said Helen, “if one makes unguarded and unfounded assertions about the Bible, which excite doubt and prejudice.”

  “There are many instances,” said her uncle, “that are quite in point. Suppose in conversation, either under the influence of envy or ill will, or merely from love of talking, you make remarks and statements about another person which may be true or may not, — you do not stop to inquire, — your unguarded words set reports in motion, and unhappiness, and hard feeling, and loss of character are the result. You spoke idly, it is true, but nevertheless you are held responsible by God for all the consequences of your words. So professors of religion often make unguarded remarks about each other, which lead observers to doubt the truth of all religion; and they are responsible for every such doubt they excite. Parents and guardians often allow themselves to speak of the faults and weaknesses of their ministers in the presenee of children and younger people — they do it thoughtlessly — but in so doing they destroy an influence which might otherwise have saved the souls of their children; they are responsible for it. People of cultivated minds and fastidious taste often allow themselves to come home from church, and criticise a sermon, and unfold all its weak points in the presence of others on whom it may have made a very serious impression. While the critic is holding up the bad arrangement, and setting in a ludicrous point of view the lame figures, perhaps the servant behind his chair, who was almost persuaded to be a Christian by that very discourse, gives up his purposes, in losing his respect for the sermon; this was thoughtless — but the evil is done, and the man who did it is responsible for it.”

  “I think,” said Helen, “that a great deal of evil is done to children in this way, by our not thinking of what we are saying.”

  “It seems to me,” said Miss B., “that this view of the subject will reduce us to silence almost as much as the other. How is one ever to estimate the consequences of their words? — people are affected in so many different ways by the same thing.”

  “I suppose,” said her uncle, “we are only responsible for such results as by carefulness and reflection we might have foreseen. It is not for ill-judged words, but for idle words, that we are to be judged — words uttered without any consideration at all, and producing bad results. If a person really anxious to do right misjudges as to the probable effect of what he is about to say on others, it is quite another thing.”

  “But, uncle, will not such carefulness destroy all freedom in conversation?
” said Helen.

  “If you are talking with a beloved friend, Helen, do you not use an instinctive care to avoid all that might pain that friend?”

  “Certainly.”

  “And do you find this effort a restraint on your enjoyment?”

  “Certainly not.”

  “And you, from your own feelings, avoid what is indelicate and impure in conversation, and yet feel it no restraint?”

  “Certainly.”

  “Well, I suppose the object of Christian effort should be so to realize the character of our Saviour, and conform our tastes and sympathies to his, that we shall instinctively avoid all in our conversation that would be displeasing to him. A person habitually indulging jealous, angry, or revengeful feeling, a person habitually worldly in his spirit, a person allowing himself in skeptical and unsettled habits of thought, cannot talk without doing harm. This is our Saviour’s account of the matter in the verses immediately before the passage we were speaking of—’ How can ye, being evil, speak good things? for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh. A good man out of the good treasure of his heart bringeth forth good things, and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart bringeth forth evil things.’ The highest flow of animal spirits would never hurry a pure-minded person to say anything indelicate or gross; and in the same manner, if a person is habitually Christian in all his habits of thought and feeling, he will be able without irksome watchfulness to avoid what may be injurious even in the most unrestrained conversation.”

  HOW DO WE KNOW

  It was a splendid room. Rich curtains swept down to the floor in graceful folds, half excluding the light, and shedding it in soft hues over the fine old paintings on the walls, and over the broad mirrors that reflect all that taste can accomplish by the hand of wealth. Books, the rarest and most costly, were around, in every form of gorgeous binding and gilding, and among them, glittering in ornament, lay a magnificent Bible — a Bible too beautiful in its appointments, too showy, too ornamental, ever to have been meant to be read — a Bible which every visitor should take up and exclaim, “What a beautiful edition! what superb bindings!” and then lay it down again.

  And the master of the house was lounging on a sofa, looking over a late review — for he was a man of leisure, taste, and reading — but, then, as to reading the Bible! — that forms, we suppose, no part of the pretensions of a man of letters. The Bible — certainly he considered it a very respectable book — a fine specimen of ancient literature — an admirable book of moral precepts; but, then, as to its divine origin, he had not exactly made up his mind: some parts appeared strange and inconsistent to his reason — others were revolting to his taste: true, he had never studied it very attentively, yet such was his general impression about it; but, on the whole, he thought it well enough to keep an elegant copy of it on his drawing-room table.

  So much for one picture. Now for another.

  Come with us into this little dark alley, and up a flight of ruinous stairs. It is a bitter night, and the wind and snow might drive through the crevices of the poor room, were it not that careful hands have stopped them with paper or cloth. But for all this carefulness, the room is bitter cold — cold even with those few decaying brands on the hearth, which that sorrowful woman is trying to kindle with her breath. Do you see that pale, little, thin girl, with large, bright eyes, who is crouching so near her mother? — hark! — how she coughs. Now listen.

  “Mary, my dear child,” says the mother, “do keep that shawl close about you; you are cold, I know,” and the woman shivers as she speaks.

  “No, mother, not very,” replies the child, again relapsing into that hollow, ominous cough. “I wish you wouldn’t make me always wear your shawl when it is cold, mother.”

  “Dear child, you need it most. How you cough tonight!” replies the mother; “it really don’t seem right for me to send you up that long, cold street; now your shoes have grown so poor, too; I must go myself after this.”

  “Oh, mother, you must stay with the baby — what if he should have one of those dreadful fits while you are gone! No, I can go very well; I have got used to the cold now.”

  “But, mother, I’m cold,” says a little voice from the scanty bed in the corner; “mayn’t I get up and come to the fire?”

  “Dear child, it would not warm you; it is very cold here, and I can’t make any more fire to-night.”

  “Why can’t you, mother? There are four whole sticks of wood in the box; do put one on, and let’s get warm once.”

  “No, my dear little Henry,” says the mother soothingly, “that is all the wood mother has, and I haven’t any money to get more.”

  And now wakens the sick baby in the cradle, and mother and daughter are both for some time busy in attempting to supply its little wants, and lulling it again to sleep.

  And now look you well at that mother. Six months ago she had a husband, whose earnings procured for her both the necessaries and comforts of life; her children were clothed, fed, and schooled, without thoughts of hers. But husbandless, friendless, and alone in the heart of a great, busy city, with feeble health, and only the precarious resource of her needle, she has gone down from comfort to extreme poverty. Look at her now, as she is to-night. She knows full well that the pale, bright-eyed girl, whose hollow cough constantly rings in her ears, is far from well. She knows that cold, and hunger, and exposure of every kind, are daily and surely wearing away her life. And yet what can she do? Poor soul! how many times has she calculated all her little resources, to see if she could pay a doctor and get medicine for Mary — yet all in vain. She knows that timely medicine, ease, fresh air, and warmth might save her; but she knows that all these things are out of the question for her. She feels, too, as a mother would feel, when she sees her once rosy, happy little boy becoming pale, and anxious, and fretful; and even when he teases her most, she only stops her work a moment, and strokes his little thin cheeks, and thinks what a laughing, happy little fellow he once was, till she has not a heart to reprove him. And all this day she has toiled with a sick and fretful baby in her lap, and her little shivering, hungry boy at her side, whom Mary’s patient artifices cannot always keep quiet; she has toiled over the last piece of work which she can procure from the shop, for the man has told her that after this he can furnish no more; and the little money that is to come from this is already portioned out in her own mind, and after that she has no human prospect of support.

  But yet that woman’s face is patient, quiet, firm. Nay, you may even see in her suffering eye something like peace. And whence comes it? I will tell you.

  There is a Bible in that room, as well as in the rich man’s apartment. Not splendidly bound, to be sure, but faithfully read — a plain, homely, much worn book.

  Hearken now while she says to her children, “Listen to me, dear children, and I will read you something out of this book. ‘Let not your heart be troubled; in my Father’s house are many mansions.’ So you see, my children, we shall not always live in this little, cold, dark room. Jesus Christ has promised to take us to a better home.”

  “Shall we be warm there all day?” says the little boy earnestly; “and shall we have enough to eat?”

  “Yes, dear child,” says the mother; “listen to what the Bible says: ‘They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more; for the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them; and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.’”

  “I am glad of that,” said little Mary, “for, mother, I never can bear to see you cry.”

  “But, mother,” says little Henry, “won’t God send us something to eat to-morrow?”

  “See,” says the mother, “what the Bible says: ‘Seek ye not what ye shall eat, nor what ye shall drink, neither be of anxious mind. For your Father knoweth that ye have need of these things.’”

  “But, mother,” says little Mary, “if God is our Father, and loves us, what does he let us be so poor for?”

  “Nay,” says the mother, “our de
ar Lord Jesus Christ was as poor as we are, and God certainly loved him.”

  “Was he, mother?”

  “Yes, children; you remember how he said, ‘The Son of man hath not where to lay his head.’ And it tells us more than once that Jesus was hungry when there was none to give him food.”

  “Oh, mother, what should we do without the Bible?” says Mary.

  Now, if the rich man, who had not yet made up his mind what to think of the Bible, should visit this poor woman, and ask her on what she grounded her belief of its truth, what could she answer? Could she give the arguments from miracles and prophecy? Could she account for all the changes which might have taken place in it through translators and copyists, and prove that we have a genuine and uncorrupted version? Not she! But how, then, does she know that it is true? How, say you? How does she know that she has warm life-blood in her heart? How does she know that there is such a thing as air and sunshine? She does not believe these things — she knows them; and in like manner, with a deep heart consciousness, she is certain that the words of her Bible are truth and life. Is it by reasoning that the frightened child, bewildered in the dark, knows its mother’s voice? No! Nor is it only by reasoning that the forlorn and distressed human heart knows the voice of its Saviour, and is still.

  HOW TO MAKE FRIENDS WITH MAMMON

  It was four o’clock in the afternoon of a dull winter day that Mr. H. sat in his counting-room. The sun had nearly gone down, and, in fact, it was already twilight beneath the shadows of the tall, dusky stores, and the close, crooked streets of that quarter of Boston. Hardly light enough struggled through the dusky panes of the counting-house for him to read the entries in a much-thumbed memorandum-book, which he held in his hand.

  A small, thin boy, with a pale face and anxious expression, significant of delicacy of constitution and a too early acquaintance with want and sorrow, was standing by him, earnestly watching his motions.