1 1 •l ii. '4H •fk- '^i- ite ■* B 1 ! i-r. _ . s ' yC-NRLF r.Vy.VJ'c'.^v.-Vj iji m il jJ^^JJ*?:^;- mnis.^wn. VAcKiwnv^ e< im .'>'/>;•' ,-9 '.V 1^ i"^ •, ■■/;».', . -^ ■ o VtWaWfAOT* LITTLE FOXES. LONDON: rBIMEO Br WILUAJl CLO\VES AND S0^■?, STAIIFOUD STREET AND CHAJtl^G CKOSS. LITTLE FOXES; OR THE INSIGNIFICANT LITTLE HABITS WHICH MAR DOMESTIC HAPPINESS. BY MRS. HARRIET BEECHER STOWE. [AUTHOR'S EDITION, REVISED.} LONDON : BELL AND DALDY, 186, FLEET STREET, AND SAMPSON LOW, SON, AND MARSTON, MlLrON HOUSE, LUDGATE STREET. 1866. \ 8tfc> PiKEFATOKY NOTICE. From a desire to respect tlie moral right of every Author to reap the fruits of his or her pen, the Pub- lishers have made arrangements to share the profits of this reprint of " Little Foxes " with the Writer. 750 F CONTENTS. Inteoduction 9 1. — Fault-finding .. 15 2. — Ireitability 39 3.— Eepeession 63 4.— Self-will 90 5. — Intoleeance 118 6. — DiSCOUETEOUSNEPS 144 7. — EXACTINGNESS .. 164 LITTLE FOXES. INTEODUCTION. "T)APA, what are you going to give iis this winter JL for our evening readings ?" said Jennie. " I am thinking, for one thing," I replied, " of preach- ing a course of household sermons from a very odd text prefixed to a discourse which I found at the bottom of the pamphlet-barrel in the garret." " Don't say sermon, papa, — it has such a dreadful sound; and on winter evenings one wants something entertaining." " Well, treatise, then," said I, " or discourse, or essay, or prelection; I'm not particular as to words." " But what is the queer text that you found at the bottom of the pamphlet-barrel?" " It was one preached upon by jonv mother's great- great-grandfather, the very savory and much-respected Simeon Shuttleworth, ' on the occasion of the melancholy defections and divisions among the godly in the town of West Dofield ;' and it rims thus, — ' Take us the foxes, 10 LITTLE FOXES. ' the Utile foxes, that spoil the vines : for our vines have tender grapes.' " " It's a curious text enougb. ; but I can't imagine what 3'ou are going to make of it." " Simply an essay on Little Foxes," said I ; "by which I mean those imsuspected, unwatched, insigni- ficant little causes that nibble away domestic happiness, and make home less than so noble an institution should be. You may build beautiful, convenient, attractive houses, — you may hang the walls with lovely pictures and stud them with gems of Art; and there may be living there together persons bound by blood and af- fection in one common interest, leading a life common to themselves and apart from others ; and these persons may each one of them be possessed of good and noble traits; there may be a common basis of affection, of generosity, of good principle, of religion ; and yet, through the influence of some of these perverse, nib- bling, insignificant little foxes, half the clusters of hap- piness on these so promising vines may fail to come to maturity. A little community of people, all of whom would be willing to die for each other, may not be able to live happil}' together; that is, they may have far less happiness than their circumstances, their fine and excellent traits, entitle them to expect. The reason for this in general is that home is a place not only of strong afiections, but of entire unreserve ; it is life's undress rehearsal, its back-room, its dressing- room, from which we go forth to more careful and guarded intercourse, leaving behind us much debris of INTEODUCTION. 11 cast-off and every-day clothing. Hence has arisen the common proverb, ' No man is a hero to his valet-de- chambre; and the"" common warning, ' If you wish to keep your friend, don't go and live with him.' " " Which is only another way of saying," said my wife, " that we are all human and imperfect ; and the nearer you get to]|.any human being, the more defects you see. The characters that can stand the test of daily intimacy are about as numerous as four-leaved clovers in a meadow ; in general, those who do not annoy you with positive faults bore 3'ou with their insipidity. The evenness and beauty of a strong, well-defined nature, perfectly governed and balanced, is about the last thing one is likely to meet with in one's researches into life." " But what I have to say," replied I, " is this, — that, family-life being a state of unreserve, a state in which there are few of those barriers and veils that keep people in the world from seeing each other's defects and mutually jarring and grating upon each other, it is remarkable that it is entered^ upon and maintained generally with less reflection, less care and forethought, than pertain to most kinds of business which men and women set their hands to. A man does not undertake to run an engine or manage a piece of machinery without some careful examination of its parts and capabilities, and some inquiry whether he have the necessary know- ledge, skill, and strength to make it do itself and him justice. A man does not try to play on the violin without seeing whether his fingers are long and flexible 12 LITTLE FOXES. enough to bring out the harmonies and raise his per- formance above the grade of dismal scraping to that of divine music. What should we think of a man who should set a whole orchestra of instruments upon pla3-ing together without the least provision or fore- thought as to their chording, and then howl and tear his hair at the result ? It is not the fault of the instru- ments that they grate harsh thunders together ; they may each be noble and of celestial temper ; but united without regard to their nature, dire confusion is the result. Still worse were it, if a man were supposed so stupid as to expect of each instrument a role opposed to its nature, — if he asked of the octave-flute a bass solo, and condemned the trombone because it could not do the work of the manj^-voiced violin. " Yet" just so carelessly is the work of forming a family often performed. A man and woman come together from some affinity, some partial accord of their nature which has inspired mutual affection. There is generally very little careful consideration of who and what they are, — no thought of the reciprocal influence of mutual traits, — no previous chording and testing of the instruments which are to make lifelong harmony or discord, — and after a short period of engagement, in which all their mutual relations are made as opposite as possible to those which must follow marriage, these two furnish their house and begin life together. Ten to one, the domestic roof is supposed at once the proper refuge for relations and friends on both sides, who also are introduced into the interior concert without any INTRODUCTION. 13 special consideration of wliat is likely to be the opera- tion of character on character, the play of instrument with instrument ; then follow children, each of whom is a separate entity, a separate will, a separate force in the family ; and thus, with the lesser forces of servants and dependents, a family is made up. And there is no wonder if all these cbance-assorted instruments, playing together, sometimes make quite as much discord as harmony. For if the husband and wife chord, the wife's sister or husband's mother may introduce a discord ; and then again, each child of marked cha- racter introduces another possibility of confusion. The conservative forces of human nature are so strong and so various, that, with all these drawbacks, the family state is after all the best and purest happiness that earth affords. But then, with cultivation and care, it might be a great deal happier. Very fair pears have been raised by dropping a seed into a good soil and letting it alone for years ; but finer and choicer are raised by the watchings, tendings, prunings of the gardener. Wild grape-vines bore very fine grapes, and an abundance of them, before our friend Dr. Grant took up his abode at lona, and, studying the laws of Nature, conjured up new species of rarer fruit and flavour out of the old. And so, if all the little foxes that infest our domestic vine and fig-tree were once hunted out and killed, we might have fairer clusters and fruit all winter." " But, papa," said Jennie, " to come to the foxes ; let's know what they are." 14 LITTLE FOXES. " Well, as the text says, they are little foxes, the pet foxes of good people, unsuspected little animals, — on the whole, often thought to be really creditable little beasts, that may do good, and at all events cannot do much harm. And as I have taken to the Puritanic order in my discourse, I shall set them in scA^'ens, as Noah did his clean beasts in the ark. Now my seven little foxes are these : — 1. Fault-finding. 2. Irritability. 3. Kepressiox. 4. Self-will. 5. Intolerance. C. Discourteousness. 7. Exactingness. " And here," turning to my sermon, "is what I have to say about the first of them." 15 I. FAULT-FINDING. A MOST respectable little animal, that many people let run freely among their domestic vines, under the notion that he helps the growth of the grapes, and is the principal means of keeping them in order. Now it may safely be set down as a maxim, that nobody likes to be found fault with, but everybody likes to find fault when things do not suit him. Let my courteous reader ask him or herself if he or she does not experience a relief and pleasure in finding fault with or about whatever troubles them. This appears at first sight an anomaly in the provi- sions of Nature. Generally we are so constituted, that what it is a pleasure to us to do, it is a pleasure to our neighbour to have us do. It is a pleasure to give, and a pleasure to receive. It is a pleasure to love, and a pleasure to be loved ; a pleasure to admire, a pleasure to be admired. It is a pleasure also to find fault, but not a pleasure to be found fault with. Furthermore, those people whose sensitiveness of temperament leads them to find the most fault, are precisely those who can least bear to be found fault with ; they bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and Ja}^ them on other men's shoulders, but they themselves cannot bear the weight of a finger. 16 LITTLE FOXES. Now the difficulty in tlic case is this : There are things in life that need to be altered ; and that things may be altered, they must be spoken of to the people whose business it is to make the change, lliis oj^ens wide the door of fault-finding to well-disposed people, and gives them latitude of conscience to impose on their fellows all the annoyances which they themselves feel. The father and mother of a family are ftiult- finders, ex officio ; and to them flows back the tide of every separate individual's complaints in the domestic circle, till often the whole air of the house is chilled and darkened by a drizzling Scotch mist of querulousness. Very bad are these mists for grape-vines, and produce mildew in many a fair cluster. Enthusius falls in love with Hermione, because she looks like a moonbeam, — because she is ethereal as a summer cloud, spirituelle. He commences forthwith the perpetual adoration system that precedes marriage. He assures her that she is too good for this world, too delicate and fair for any of the uses of poor mortality, — that she ought to tread on roses, sleep on the c]ouds, — that she ought never to shed a tear, know a fatigue, or make an exertion, but live apart in some bright, ethereal sphere worthy of her charms. All which is duly chanted in her ear in moonlight walks or sails, and so often repeated that a sensible girl may be excused for believing that a little of it may be true. Kow comes marriage, — and it turns out that Enthu- sius is very particular as to his cofiee, that he is ex- FAULT-FINDING. 17 cessively disturbed if his meals are at all irregular, and that he cannot be comfortable with any table arrangements which do not resemble those of his notable mother, lately deceased in the odour of sanctity ; he also wants his house in perfect order at all hours. Still he does not propose to provide a trained housekeeper ; it is all to be effected by means of certain raw Irish girls, under the superintendence of this angel who was to tread on roses, sleep on clouds, and never know an earthly care. Neither has Enthusius ever considered it a part of a husband's duty to bear personal incon- veniences in silence. He would freely shed his blood for Hermione, — nay, has often frantically proposed the same in the hours of courtship, when of course nobody wanted it done, and it could answer no manner of use ; and thus to the idyllic dialogues of that period succeed such as these : — " My dear, this tea is smoked : can't you get Jane into the way of making it better ?" " My dear, -I have tried ; but she will not do as I tell her." *' Well, all I know is, other people can have good tea, and I should think we might." And again at dinner : — "My dear, this mutton is overdone again; it is always overdone." *' Not always, dear, because you recollect on Monday you said it was just right." " Well, almost alwaj's." " W^ell, my dear, the reason to-day was, I had com- 18 LITTLE FOXES. pany in the parlour, and could not go out to caution Bridget, as I generally do. It's very difficult to get things done with such a girl." "My mother's things were always well done, no matter what her girl was." Again : " My dear, you must speak to the servants about wasting the coal. I never saw such a con- sumption of fuel in a family of our size ;" or, " My dear, how can you let Maggie tear the morning paper ?" or, " ]My dear, I shall actually have to give up coming to dinner if my dinners cannot be regular ;" or, " My dear, I wish you would look at the way my shirts are ironed, — it is perfectly scandalous ;" or, " My dear, you must not let Johnnie finger the mirror in the parlour ;" or, " My dear, you must stop the children from playing in the garret ;" or, " My dear, you must see that Maggie doesn't leave the mat out on the railing when she sweeps the front hall ;" and so on, up-stairs and down-stairs, in the lady's chamber, in attic, garret, and cellar, "my dear" is to see that nothing goes wrong, and she is found fault with when anything does. Yet Enthusius, when occasionally he finds his some- time angel in tears, and she tells him he does not love her as he once did, repudiates the charge with all his heart, and declares he loves her more than ever, — and perhaps he does. The only thing is that she has passed out of the plane of moonshine and poetry into that of actualities. AVhile she was considered an angel, a star, a bird, an evening cloud, of course there was nothing to be found fault with in her ; but now that the angel has FAULT-FINDING. 1^ become chief business-partner in an earthly working firm, relations are different. Enthusius could say the same things over again under the same circumstances, but unfortunately now they never are in the same circumstances. Enthusius is simply a man who is in the habit of speaking from impulse, and saying a thing merely and only because he feels it. Before marriage he worshipped and adored his wife as an ideal being dwelling in the land of dreams and poetries, and did his very best to make her unpractical and unfitted to enjoy the life to which he was to introduce her after mar- riage. After marriage he still yields unreflectingly to present impulses, which are no longer to praise, but to criticize and condemn. The very sensibility to beauty and love of elegance, which made him admire her before marriage, now transferred to the arrangement of the domestic menage, lead him daily to perceive a hundred defects and find a hundred annoyances. Thus far we suppose an amiable, submissive wife, who is only grieved, not provoked, — who has no sense of injustice, and meekly strives to make good the hard conditions of her lot. Such poor, little, faded women have we seen, looking for all the world like plants that have been nursed and forced into bloom in the steam- heat of the conservatory, and are now sickly and yellow, dropping leaf hy leaf, in the dry, dusty parlour. But there is another side of the picture, — where the wife, provoked and indignant, takes up the fault-finding trade in return, and with the keen arrows of her woman's wit, searches and penetrates every joint of the 20 LITTLE FOXES. husband's armour, showing herself full as unjust and far more culpable in this sort of conflict. kSadelest of all sad things is it to see two once very dear friends employing all that peculiar knowledge of each other which love had given them only to harass and provoke, — thrusting and piercing with a certainty of aim that only past habits of confidence and affection could have put in their power, wounding their own hearts with every deadly thrust they made at one another, and all for such inexpressibly miserable trifles as usually form the openings of fault-finding dramas. For the contentions that loosen the very foundations of love, that crumble away all its fine traceries and carved work, about what miserable worthless things do they commonly begin ! — a dinner underdone, too much oil consumed, a newspaper torn, a waste of coal or soap, a dish broken! — and for this miserable sort of trash, very good, very generous, very religious people will sometimes waste and throw away b}'^ double-handfuls the very thing for which houses are built, and coal burned, and all the paraphernalia of a home established, — their happiness. Better cold coffee, smoky tea, burnt meat, better any inconvenience, any loss, than a loss of love ; and nothing so surely burns away love as constant fault-finding. For fault-finding once allowed as a habit between two near and dear friends comes in time to establish a chronic soreness, so that the mildest, the most reasonable suggestion, the gentlest implied reproof, occasions burning irritation ; and when this morbid state has FAULT-FINDING. ^I once set in, the restoration of love seems well nigh impossible. For example : Enthusins having got np this morning in the best of humours, in the most playful tones begs Hermione not to make the tails of her ^'s quite so long ; and Hermione fires up with — "And, pra}^, what else wouldn't j^ou wish me to do? Perhaps you would be so good, when you have leisure, as to make out an alphabetical list of the things in me that need correcting." " My dear, jon are unreasonable." " I don't think so. I should like to get to the end of the requirements of my lord and master sometimes." " Now, my dear, you really are very silly." "Please say something original, my dear. I have heard that till it has lost the charm of novelty." " Come now, Hermione, don't let's quarrel." "My dear sir, who thinks of quarrelling? Not I; I'm sure I was only asking to be directed. I trust some time, if I live to be ninety, to suit j-our fastidious taste. I trust the coffee is right this morning, and the tea, and the toast, and the steak, and the servants, and the front- hall mat, and the upper-story hall door, and the base- ment premises ; and now I suppose I am to be trained in respect to my general education. I shall set about tbe tails of my ^'s at once, but trust you will prepare a list of any other little things that need emendation." Enthusius pushes away his coffee, and drums on the table. " If I might be allowed one small criticism, my dear. 22 LITTLE FOXES. I should observe that it is not good manners to dnim on the table," said his fair opposite. I.. " Hermione, you are enougli to drive a man frantic !" exclaims Enthusius, rushing out with bitterness in his soul, and a determination to take his dinner at Del- monico's. Enthusius feels himself an abused man, and thinks there never was such a sprite of a w^oman, — the most utterly unreasonable, provoking human being he ever met with. What he does not think of is, that it is his own inconsiderate, constant fault-finding that has made every nerve so sensitive and sore, that the mildest suggestion of advice or reproof on the most indifferent subject is impossible. He has not, to be sure, been the guilty partner in this morning's encounter ; he has said only what is fair and proper, and she has been un- reasonable and cross ; but, after all, the fault is re- motely his. When Enthusius awoke, after marriage, to find in his Hermione in A^ery deed only a bird, a star, a flower, but no housekeeper, why did he not face the matter like an honest man ? \\ hy did he not remember all the fine things about dependence and uselessness with which he had been filling her head for a 3'ear or two, and in common honesty exact no more from her than he had bargained for? Can a bird make a good business manager ? Can a flower oversee Biddy and Mike, and impait to their uncircumcised ears the high crafts and mysteries of elegant housekeeping ? If his little wife has to learn her domestic role of FAULT-FINDING. 23 liouseliold duty, as most girls do, by a thousand mortifi- cations, a thousand perplexities, a thousand failures, let him, in ordinary fairness, make it as easy to her as possible. Let him remember with what admiring smiles, before marriage, he received her pretty profes- sions of utter heljDlessness and incapacity in domestic matters, finding only poetry and grace in what, after marriage, proved an anno^^ance. And if a man finds that he has a wife ill-adapted to wifely duties, does it follow that the best thing he can do is to blurt out, without form or ceremony, all the criticisms and corrections which may occur to him in the many details of household life ? He would not dare to speak with as little preface, apology, or circumlo- cution, to his business manager, to his butcher, or his baker. When Enthusius was a bachelor, he never criticised the table at his boarding-house without some reflection, and studying to take unto himself acceptable words whereby to soften the asperity of the criticism. The laws of society require that a man should qualify, soften, and wisely time his admonitions to those he meets in the outer world, or they will turn again and rend him. But to his own wife, in his own house and home, he can find fault without ceremony or softening. So he can ; and he can awake, in the course of a year or two, to find his wife a changed w^oman, and his home unendurable. He may find, too, that unceremonious fault-finding is a game that two can play at, and that a woman can shoot her arrows with far more precision and skill than a man. 24 LITTLE FOXES. But the fonlt lies not alwaj's on the side of the hiTsband. Quite as often is a devoted, patient, good- tempered man harassed and hunted and baited by the inconsiderate fault-finding of a wife whose principal talent seems to lie in the ability at first glance to discover and make manifest the weak point in every- thing. AVe have seen the most generous, the most warm- hearted and obliging of mortals, under this sort of training, made the most morose and disobliging of husbands. Sure to be found fault with, whatever they do, they have at last ceased doing. The disappoint- ment of not pleasing they have abated by not trying to please. We once knew a man who married a spoiled beauty, whose murmurs, exactions, and caprices were infinite. He had at last, as a refuge to his wearied nerves, settled down into a habit of utter disregard and neglect; he treated her wishes and her complaints with equal indifference, and went on with his life as nearl}^ as possible as if she did not exist. He silently provided for her what he thought pro])er, without troubling himself to notice her requests or listen to her grievances. Sickness came, but the heart of her husband was cold and gone : there was no sympathy left to warm her. Death came, and he breathed freely as a man released. He married again, — a woman with no beauty, but much love and goodness, — a woman who asked little, blamed seldom, and tlien with all the tact and address which the utmost thoughtfulness could devise ; and the passive, FAULT-FINDING. 25 negligent husband became the attentive, devoted slave of her will. He was in her hands as clay in the hands of the potter ; the least breath or suggestion of criticism from her lips, who criticised so little and so thought fully, weighed more with him than many outspoken words. So different is the same human being, according to the touch of the hand which plays upon him ! I have spoken hitherto of fault-finding as between husband and wife : its consequences are even worse as respects children. The habit once sufiered to grow up between the two that constitute the head of the family descends and runs through all the branches. Children are more hurt by indiscriminate, thoughtless fault- finding than by any other one thing. Often a child has all the sensitiveness and all the susceptibility of a grown person, added to the faults of childhood. No- thing about him is right as yet ; he is immature and faulty at all points, and everybody feels at perfect liberty to criticize him to right and left, above, below, and around, till he takes refuge either in callous hard- ness or irritable moroseness. A bright, noisy boy rushes in from school, eager to tell his mother something he has on his heart, and Number One cries out, — " Oh, you've left the door open ! I do wish you wouldn't always leave the door open ! And do look at the mud on your shoes ! How many times must I tell you to wipe your feet ?" " Now there you've thrown 3'our cap on the sofa again ! AYhen will you learn to hang it up '?" 26 LITTLE FOXES. ** Don't put your slate there; that isn't the place for it." "How dirty your hands are! what have you been doing ?" " Don't sit in that chair ; you break the springs, jouncing." " Mercy ! how your hair looks ! Do go up-stairs and comb it." *' There, if you haven't torn the braid all off your coat ! Dear me, what a bo}' !" " Don't speak so loud ; your voice goes through my head." " I want to know, Jim, if it was j^ou that broke up that barrel that I have been saving for brown flour." *' I believe it was you, Jim, that hacked the edge of my razor." *' Jim's been writing at my desk, and blotted three sheets of the best paper." Now the question is, if any of the grown people of the family had to run the gauntlet of a string of criti- cisms on themselves equally true as those that salute unlucky Jim, would they be any better-natured about it than he is ? No ; but they are grown-up people ; they have rights that others are bound to respect. Everybody cannot tell them exactly what he thinks about everything they do. If ever}" one could and did, would there not be terrible reactions ? Servants in general are only grown-up children, and the same considerations apply to them. A raw, un- FAULT-FINDING. 27 trained Irish girl introduced into an elegant house has her head bewildered in every direction. There are the gas-pipes, the water-pipes, the whole paraphernalia of elegant and delicate conveniences, about which a thou- sand little details are to be learned, the neglect of any one of which may flood the house, or poison it with foul air, ot bring innumerable inconveniences. The setting of a genteel table and the waiting upon it involve fifty possibilities of mistake, each one of which will grate on the nerves of a whole family. There is no wonder, then, that the occasions of fault-finding in families are so constant and harassing ; and there is no wonder that mistress and maid often meet each other on the terms of the bear and the man who fell together fifty feet down from the limb of a high tree, and lay at the bottom of it, looking each other in the face in help- less, growling despair. The mistress is rasped, irritated, despairing, and with good I'eason ; the maid is the same, and with equally good reason. Yet let the mistress be suddenly introduced into a printing-office, and required, with what little teaching could be given her in a few rapid directions, to set up the editorial of a morning paper, and it is probable she would be as stupid and bewildered as Biddy in her beautifully-arranged house. There are elegant houses which, from causes like these, are ever vexed like the troubled sea that cannot rest. Literally, their table has become a snare before them, and that which should have been for their welfare, a trap. Their gas, and their water, and their fire, and their elegancies and ornaments, all in unskilled, blun- 28 LITTLE FOXES. (lering hands, seem only so many ginis in the hands of Satan, through which he fires at their Christian graces day and night, — so that, if their house is kept in order, their temper and religion are not. I am speaking now to the consciousness of thousands of women who are, in will and purpose, real saints. Their souls go up to lieavcn — its love, its purity, its rest — with every liymn and prayer and sacrament in church ; and they come home to he mortified, disgraced, and made to despise themselves, for the unlovely tempers, the hasty words, the cross looks, the universal nervous irritability, that result from this constant jarring of finely toned chords under unskilled hands. Talk of hair-cloth shirts, and scourgings, and sleeping on ashes, as means of saintship ! there is no need of them in our country. Let a woman once look at her domestic trials as her hair-cloth, her ashes, her scourges, — accept them,- — rejoice in them, — smile and be quiet, silent, patient, and loving under them, — and the con- vent can teach her no more ; she is a victorious saint. When the damper of the furnace is turned the wrong way by Paddy, after the five hundredth time of expla- nation, and the whole family awakes coughing, sneezing, strangling, — when the gas is blown out in the nursery by Biddy, who has been instructed every day for weeks in the danger of such a proceeding, — when the tumblers on the dinner-table are found dim and streaked, after weeks of training in the simple business of washing and Aviping, — when the ivorj^-handled knives and forks are left soaking in hot dish-water, after incessant explana- FAULT-FIXDTNG. 21) tions of the consequences, — when four or five half- civilized beings, above, below, and all over the house, are constantly forgetting the most important things at the very moment it is most necessary they should I'emember them, — there is no hope for the mistress morall}^ unless she can in very deed and truth accept her trials religiously, and conquer by accepting. It is not apostles alone who can take pleasure in necessities and distresses ; but mothers and housewives also, if they would learn of the apostle, might say, " When I am weak, then am I strong." The burden ceases to gall when we have learned how to carry it. We can suffer j^atiently if we see any good come of it, and say, as an old black woman of our acquaintance did, of an event that crossed her purpose, " Well, Lord, if it's you^ send it along." But that this may be done, that home life, in our unsettled, changing state of society, vnscy become peace- ful and restful, there is one Christian grace, much treated of by mystic writers, that must return to its honour in the Christian Church. I mean — the grace of SILENCE. No words can express, no tongue can tell, the value of NOT SPEAKING. " Spcecli is silvcrn, but silence is golden," is an old and very precious proverb. "But," say many voices, " w^hat is to become of us, if we may not speak ? Must Ave not correct our children, and our servants, and each other ? Must we let people go on doing wrong to the end of the chapter ?" " Ko ; fault must be found ; faults must be told, errors 30 LITTLE FOXES. coiTected. Reproof and admonition are duties of house- holders to their families, and of all true friends to one another. But, gentle reader, let us look over life, our own lives and the lives of others, and ask, How much of the fault-finding which prevails has the least tendency to do any good? How much of it is well-timed, well-pointed, deliberate, just, and so spoken as to be effective ? " A wise reprover upon an obedient ear," is one of the rare things spoken of by Solomon, — the rarest, perhaps, to be met wjth. How many really religious people put any of their religion into their manner of performing this most difficult office ? We find fault with a stove or furnace which creates heat only to go up the chimney and not to warm the house. We say it is wasteful. Just so wasteful often seem prayer-meetings, church-services, and sacraments ; they create and excite lovely, gentle, bol}^ feelings, — but, if these do not pass out into the atmosphere of daily life, and warm and clear the air of our homes, there is a great waste in our religion. We have been on our knees, confessing humbly that we are as awkward in heavenly things, as unfit for the Heavenly Jerusalem, as Biddy and Mike, and the little beggar-girl on our door-steps, are for our parlours. We have deplored our errors daily, hourly, and confessed that " the remembrance of them is grievous unto us, the burden of them is intolerable," and then we draw near in the Sacrament to that Incarnate Divinity whose infinite love covers all our imperfections with the FAULT-FINDING. 31 mantle of His perfections. But "vvhen we return, do "we take our servants and children by the throat because they are as untrained and awkward and careless in earthly things as we have been in heavenly ? Does no remembrance of Christ's infinite patience temper our impatience, when we have spoken seventy times seven, and our words have been disregarded ? There is no mistake as to the sincerity of the religion which the church excites. What we want is to have it used in common life, instead of going up like hot air in a fire- place to lose itself in the infinite abysses above. In reproving and fault-finding, we have beautiful examples in Holy Writ. When St. Paul has a reproof to administer to delinquent Christians, how does he temper it with gentleness and praise ! how does he first make honourable note of all the good there is to be spoken of! how does he give assurance of his prayers and love ! — and when at last the arrow flies, it goes all the straighter to the mark for this carefulness. But there was a greater, a purer, a lovelier than Paul, who made his home on earth, with twelve plain men, ignorant, prejudiced, slow to learn, — and who to the very day of his death were still contending on a point which he had repeatedly explained, and troubling His last earthly hours with the old contest, " Who should be greatest." When all else failed, on His knees before them as their servant, tenderly performing for love the office of a slave. He said, " If I, your Lord and Mastei', have washed your feet, ye also ought to wash one another's feet." 32 LITTLE FOXES. When parents, emploj-ers, and masters learn to re- prove in this __spirit, reproofs will be more effective than they now are. It was by the exercise of this spirit that Fenelon transformed the proud, petulant, irritable, selfish Duke of Burgundy, making him humble, gentle, tolerant of others and severe only to himself: it was he who had for his motto, that " Perfection alone can bear with imperfection." But apart from the fault-finding which has a definite aim, how much is there that does not profess or intend or try to do anything more than give vent to an irritated state of feeling ! The nettle stings us, and we toss it with both hands at our neighbour ; the fire burns us, and we throw coals and hot ashes at all or sundry of those about us. There is fretfulness, a mizzling, drizzling rain of dis- comforting remark ; there is grumbling, a north-east storm that never clears : there is scolding, the thunder- storm with lightning and hail. All these are worse than useless ; they are positive sins, by whomsoever indulged, — sins as great and real as many that are shuddered at in polite society. All these are for the most part but the venting on our fellow-beinsrs of morbid feelincrs resultins: from dyspepsia, overtaxed nerves, or general ill health. A minister eats too much mince-pic, goes to his weekly lecture, and, seeing only half a dozen people there, proceeds to grumble at those half-dozen for the sins of such as stay away. " The church is cold, there FAULT-FINDING. 33 is no interest in religion," and so on : a simjDle out- pouring of the blues. You and I do in one week the work we ought to do in six ; we overtax nerve and brain, and then have weeks of darkness in which everything at home seems running to destruction. The servants never were so careless, the children never so noisy, the house never so disorderly, the State never so ill-governed, the Church evidently going over to Antichrist. The only thing, after all, in which the existing condition of affairs differs from that of a week ago is, that we have used up our nervous energ}'', and are looking at the world through blue spectacles. AVe ought to resist the devil of fault-finding at this point, and cultivate silence as a grace till our nerves are rested. There are times when no one should trust himself to judge his neighbours, or reprove his children and servants, or find fault with his friends, — for he is so sharp-set that he cannot strike a note without striking too hard. Then is the time to try the grace of silence, and, what is better than silence, the power of prayer. But it being premised that we are neiw^ to fret, never to grumble, never to scold, and yet it being our duty in some way to make known and get rectified the faults of others, it remains to ask how ; and on this head we will improvise a parable of two women. Mrs. Standfast is a woman of high tone, and possessed of a power of moral principle that impresses one even as sublime. All her perceptions of right and wrong are clear, exact, and minute; she is charitable to the D 34 LITTLE FOXES. poor, kind to the sick and suffering, and devoutly and earnestly religious. In all tlie minutia3 of woman's life she manifests an inconceivable precision and perfection. Eveiything she does is perfectly done. She is true to all her promises to the very letter, and so punctual that railroad time might be kept by her instead of a chro- nometer. Yet, Tvith all these excellent traits, Mrs. Standfast has not the faculty of making a happy home. She is that most hopeless of fault-finders, — a fault-finder from principle. She has a high correct standard for every- thing in the world, from the regulation of the thoughts down to the spreading of a sheet or the hemming of a towel ; and to this exact standard she feels it her duty to bring every one in her household. She does not often scold, she is not actually fretful, but she exer- cises over her household a calm, inflexible "^severity rebuking every fault ; she overlooks nothing ; she excuses nothing ; she will accept of nothing in any part of her domain but absolute perfection; and her reproofs are aimed with a tnie and steady point, and sent with a force that makes them felt by the most obdurate. Hence, though she is rarely seen out of temper, and seldom or never scolds, 3'et she drives eveiy one around her to despair by the use of the calmest and most elegant English. Her servants fear, but do not love her. Her husband — an impulsive, generous man, some- what inconsiderate and careless in his habits — is at times lierfectly desperate under the accumulated load of her FAULT-FINDING. 35 disapprobation. Her cliildren regard her as inhabiting some high, distant, unaiDproachable mountain-top of goodness, whence she is alwaj'S looking down with reproving eyes on naughty boys and girls. They wonder how it is that so excellent a mamma should have children who, let them try to be good as hard as they can, are always sure to do something dreadful every day. The trouble with Mrs. Standfast is, not that she has a high standard, and not that she purposes and means to bring every one up to it, but that she does not take the right way. She has set it down that to blame a wrong-doer is the only way to cure wrong. She has never learned that it is as much her duty to praise as to blame, and that people are drawn to do right hy being praised when they do it, rather than driven by being blamed when they do not. Eight across the way from Mrs. Standfast is Mrs. Easy, a pretty little creature, wdth not a tithe of her moral worth, — a merry, pleasure-loving woman, of no parti- cular force of principle, whose great object in life is to avoid its disagreeables and to secure its pleasures. Little Mrs. Easy is adored by her husband, her chil- dren, her servants, merely because it is her nature to say pleasant things to every one. It is a mere tact of pleasing which she uses without knowing it. While Mrs. Standfast, surveying her well-set dining-table, runs her keen eye over everything, and at last brings up with, "Jane, look at that black spot on the salt-spoon! I am astonished at your carelessness!" — Mrs. Easy 36 LITTLE FOXES. would say, " ^^'lly, Jane, where did yon learn to set a table so nicely ? All looking beautifully, except — all ! let's see — just give a rub to this salt-spoon ; — now all is quite perfect." Mrs. Standfast's servants and children hear onl}' of their failures; these are always before them and her. Mrs. Easy's servants hear of their suc- cesses. She praises their good points ; tells them they are doing well in this, that, and the other particular ; and finally exhorts them, on the strength of having done so many things well, to improve in what is yet lacking. Mrs. Easy's husband feels that he is always a hero in her eyes, and her children feel that they are dear good children, notwithstanding Mrs. Easy some- times has her little tiffs of displeasure, and scolds roundly when something falls out as it should not. The two families show how much more may be done by a very ordinary woman, through the mere instinct of praising and pleasing, than by the greatest worth, piety, and principle, seeking to lift human nature by a lever that never was meant to lift it by. The faults and mistakes of us poor human beings are as often perpetuated by despair as by any other one thing. Have we not all been burdened by a conscious- ness of faults that we were slow to correct because we felt discouraged ? Have we not been sensible of a real help sometimes from the presence of a friend who thought well of us, believed in us, set our virtues in the best light, and put our faults in the background ? Let us depend upon it, that the flesh and blood that are in us — the needs, the wants, the despondencies — FAULT-FINDING. 37 are in each of onr fellows, iu every awkward servant and careless child. Finally, let us all resolve, — First, to attain to the grace of silence. Second, to deem all fault-finding that does no good, a SIN ; and to resolve, when we are happy ourselves, not to poison the atmosphere for our neighbours by calling on them to remark every painful and disagreeable feature of their daily life. Third, to practise the grace and virtue of praise. We have all been taught that it is our duty to praise God, but few of us have reflected on our duty to praise men ; and yet, for the same reason that we should praise the divine goodness, it is our duty to praise human excellence. We should praise our friends, — our near and dear ones ; we should look on and think of their virtues till their faults fade away; and when we love most, and see most to love, then only is the wise time wisely to speak of what should still be altered. Parents should look out for occasions to commend their children, as carefully as they seek to reprove their faults ; and employers should praise the good their servants do as strictly as they blame the evil. Whoever undertakes to use this weapon will find that praise goes farther in many cases than blame. Watch till a blundering servant does something well, and then praise him for it, and you will see a new fire lighted in the eye, and often you will find that in that one respect at least you have secured excellence thenceforward. 38 LITTLE FOXES. When you blame, whicli should be seldom, let it bo alone with the person, quietly, considerately, and with all the tact you are possessed of. The fashion of re- proving children and servants in the presence of others cannot be too much deprecated. Pride, stubbornness, and self-will are aroused by this, while a more private reproof might be received with thankfulness. As a general rule, I would say, treat children in these respects just as you would grown people ; they are grown people in miniature, and need as careful con- sideration of their feelings as any of us. Lastly, let us all make a bead-roll, a holy rosary, of all that is good and agreeable in our position, our sur- roundings, our daily lot, of all that is good and agree- able in our friends, our children, our servants, and charge ourselves to repeat it daily, till the habit of our minds be -to praise and to commend; and so doing, we shall catch and kill one Little Fox who hath destroj'ed many tender grapes. 39 II. IRRITABILITY. IT was tliat Christmas-day that did it ; I'm quite con- vinced of that ; and the way it was is what I am going to tell you. You see, among the various family customs of us Crowfields, the observance of all sorts oi fetes and fes- tivals has always been a matter of prime regard ; and among all the festivals of the round, ripe year, none is so joyous and honoured among us as Christmas. Let no one upon this prick up the ears of Archaeology, and tell us that by the latest calculations of chrono- logists our ivy-grown and holly-mantled Christmas is all a hum, — that it has been demonstrated, by all sorts of signs and tables, that the august event it celebrates did not take place on the 25th of December. Supposing it be so, what have we to do with that ? If so awful, so joyous an event ever took place on our earth, it is surely worth commemoration. It is the event we cele- brate, not the time. And if all Christians for eighteen hundred years, while warring and wrangling on a thousand other points, have agreed to give this one 25th of December to peace and good-will, who is he that shall gainsay them, and, for an historic scruple, turn his back on the friendly greetings of Christendom ? Such a man is cajDable of rewriting 40 LITTLE FOXES. ^lilton's Christmas Hymn in the style of Sternhold and Hopkins. In our house, however, Christmas has always been a high day, a day whose expectation has held waking all the little eyes in our bird's nest, when as yet there were only little ones there, each sleeping with one eye open, hoping to be the happy first to wish the merry Christ- mas and grasp the wonderful stocking. This year, our whole family train of married girls and boys, with the various toddling tribes thereto be- longing, held high festival around a wonderful Christ- mas-tree, the getting-up and adorning of which had kept my wife and Jennie and myself busy for a week beforehand. If the little folks think these trees grow up in a night, without labour, they know as little about them as they do about jnost of the other bless- ings which rain down on their little thoughtless heads. Such scrambling and clambering and fussing and tying and untying, such alterations and rearrangements, such agilities in getting up and down and everywhere, to tie on tapers and gold balls and glittering things innumerable, — to hang airy dolls in graceful positions, — to make branches bear stiffly up under loads of pretty things which threaten to make the tapers turn bottom upward ! Tart and parcel of all this was I, Christo- pher, most reckless of rheumatism, most careless of dignity, the round, bald top of my head to bo seen emerging everywhere from the thick boughs of the spruce, now devising an airy settlement for some gossamer-robed doll, now adjusting far back on a stiff IRRITABILITY. 41 branch Tom's new little skates, now balancing bags of sugar-plums and candy, and now combating desperately with some contumacious taper that would turn slant- wise or crosswise, or anywise but upward as a Chris- tian taper should, — regardless of Mrs. Crowfield's gentle admonitions and suggestions, sitting up to most dissipated hours, springing out of bed suddenly, to change some arrangement in the middle of the night, and up at dawn, long before the laz}^ sun, to execute still other arrangements. If that Christmas-tree had been a fort to be taken, or a campaign to be planned, I could not have spent more time and strength on it. My zeal so far outran even that of sprightly Miss Jennie, that she could account for it only by saucily suggesting that papa must be fast getting into second childhood. But didn't we have a splendid lighting-up ? Didn't I and my youngest grandson, little Tom, head the pro- cession magnificent in paper soldier caps, blowing tin trumpets and beating drums, as we marched round the twinkling glories of our Christmas-tree, all glittering with red and blue and green tapers, and with a splendid angel on top with great gold wings, the cutting-oiit and adjusting of which had held my eyes waking for nights before ? I had had oceans of trouble with that angel, owing to an unlucky sprain in his left wiilg, which had required constant surgical attention through the week, and which I feared might fall loose again at the important and blissful moment of exhibition : but no, the Fates were in our favour ; the angel behaved beautifully, and kept his wings as crisp as possible, and 42 LITTLE FOXES. the tapers all burned splendidly, and the little folks were as crazy with delight as m}^ most ardent hopes could have desired ; and then we romped and played and frolicked as long as little eyes could keep open, and long after ; and so passed away our Christmas. I had forgotten to speak of the Christmas-dinner, that solid feast of fat things on which we also luxuriated. l\Irs. Crowfield outdid all household traditions in that feast : the turkey and the chickens, the jellies and the sauces, the pies and the jiudding, behold, are they not written in the tablets of Memory which remain to this day? The holidays passed away hilariously, and at New- Year's-Day I, according to time-honoured custom, went forth to make my calls and see my fair friends, while my wife and daughters stayed at home to dispense the hospitalities of the day to their gentlemen friends. All was merry, cheerful, and it was agreed on all hands that a more joyous holiday season had never flown over us. But, somehow, the week after, I began to be sensible of a running-down in the wheels. I had an article to write for the Atlantic, but felt mopish and could not write. My dinner had not its usual relish, and I had an indefinite sense everywhere of something going Avrong. My coal-bill came in, and I felt sure we were being extravagant, and that our John Furnace wasted the coal. My grandsons and granddaughters came to see us, and I discovered that they had high- pitched voices, and burst in without wiping their shoes, IRRITABILITY. 43 and it suddenly occurred poweifully to my mind that they were not being veil brought up, — evidently, they were growing up rude and noisy. I discovered several tumblers and plates with the edges chipped, and made bitter reflections on the carelessness of Irish servants ; our crockery was going to destruction, along with the rest. Then, on opening one of my paper- drawers, I found that Jennie's one drawer of worsted had overflowed into two or three ; Jennie was grow- ing careless ; besides, worsted is dear, and girls knit away small fortunes without knowing it, on little duds that do nobody any good. Moreover, Maggie had three times put my slippers into the hall-closet, instead of leaving them where I wanted, under my study-table. Mrs. Crowfield ought to look after things more; every servant, from end to end of the house, was getting out of the traces ; it was strange she did not see it. All this I vented from time to time, in short, crusty sayings and doings, as freely as if I hadn't just written an article on " Little Foxes " in the last Atlantic, till at length my eyes were opened on my own state and condition. It was evening, and I had just laid up the fire in the most approved style of architecture, and projecting my feet into my slippers, sat spitefully cutting the leaves of a caustic review. Mrs. Crowfield took the tongs and altered the dispo- sition of a stick. " My dear," I said, *' I do wish you'd let the fire alone, — you always put it out." 44 LITTLE FOXES. "I was merely admitting a little air between the sticks," said my wife. *' You always make matters worse when you touch the fire." As if in contradiction, a bright tongue of flame darted up between the sticks, and the fire began chat- tering and snapping defiance at me. Now, if there's anything which would provoke a saint, it is to be jeered and snapped at in that way by a man's own fire. It 's an unbearable impertinence. I threw out my leg impatiently, and hit Kover, who yelped a yelp that finished the upset of my nerves. I gave him a hearty kick, that he might have something to yelp for, and in the movement upset Jennie's embroidery -basket. " Oh, papa!" " Confound your baskets and balls ! they are every- where, so that a man can't move; useless, wasteful things, too." " Wasteful ?" said Jennie, colouring indignantly ; for if there's anything Jennie piques herself upon, it's economy. *' Yes, wasteful, — wasting time and money both. Here are hundreds of shivering poor to be clothed, and Christian females sit and do nothing but crochet worsted into useless knick-nacks. If they would be working for the poor there would be some sense in it ; but it's all just alike, no real Christianity in the world, — nothing but organized selfishness and solf-indulgence." " My dear," said Mrs. Crowfield, " you are not well to- IRRITABILITY. 45 night. Things are not quite so desperate as they appear. You haven't got over Christmas- week." " I am well. Never was better. But I can see, I hope, what's before my eyes ; and the fact is, Mrs. Crow- field, things must not go on as they are going. There must be more care, more attention to details. There's Maggie, — that girl never does what she is told. You are too slack with her. Ma'am. She will light the fire with the last paper, and she won't put my slippers in the right place ; and I can't have my stud}'- made the general catch-all and menagerie for Eover and Jennie, and her baskets and balls, and for all the family litter." Just at this moment I overheard a sort of aside from Jennie, who was swelling with repressed indignation at my attack on her worsted. She sat with her back to me, knitting energetically, and said, in a low, but very decisive tone, as she twitched her yarn, — " Xow if /should talk in that way, people would call me cross, — and that's the whole of it." I pretended to be looking into the fire in an absent- minded state ; but Jennie's words had started a new idea. Was that it? Was it, then, a fact, that the'house, the servants, Jennie and her worsteds, Eover and Mrs. Crowfield, were all going on pretty much as usual, and that the only difficulty was that I was civss ? How many times had I encouraged Eover to lie just where he was lying when I kicked him ! How many times, in better moods, had I complimented Jennie on her neat little fancy-works, and declared that I liked the social com- panionship of ladies' work-baskets among my papers! 46 LITTLE FOXES. Yes, it was clear. After all, things were mucli as tliey had been ; onl}^ I was cross. Cross. I put it to myself in that simple, old-fashioned word, instead of saying that I was out of spirits, or nervous, or using any of the other smooth phrases with which we good Christians cover up our little sins of temper. ** Here you are, Christopher," said I to myself, " a literary man, with a somewhat delicate nervous organization and a sensitive stomach, and 3'ou have been eating like a sailor or a ploughman; you have been gallivanting and merry-making and playing the boy for two weeks ; up at all sorts of irregular hours, and into all sorts of boyish performances ; and the consequence is, that, like a thoughtless young scapegrace, you have used up in ten days the capital of nervous energy that was meant to last you ten weeks. You can't eat 3'our cake and have it too, Christopher. AVhen the nervous- fluid source of cheerfulness, giver of pleasant sensations and pleasant views, is all spent, 3'ou can't feel cheerful ; things cannot look as they did when you were full of life and vigour. When the tide is out, there is nothing but unsightly, ill-smelling tide-mud, and you can't help it ; but you can keep your senses, — 3'OU can know what is the matter with you, — you can keep from visiting your overdose of Christmas mince-pies and candies and jocularities on the heads of Mrs. Crowfield, Eover, and Jennie, whether in the form of virulent morality, pun- gent criticisms, or a free kick, such as you just gave the poor biute." " Come here, Eover, poor dog !" said I, extending my IRRITABILITY. 47 hand to Eover, who cowered at the farther corner of the room, eyeing me wistfully, — "come here, 3"0U poor doggie, and make up with your master. There, there ! A\'as his master cross ? AVell, he knows it. We must forgive and forget, old boy, mustn't we ?" And Eover nearly broke his own back and tore me to pieces with his tumultuous tail-waggings. " As for 3^ou, puss," I said to Jennie, " I am much obliged to you for your free suggestion. You must take my cynical moralities for what they are worth, and put your little traps into as many of my drawers as jou like." In short, I made it up handsomely all around, — even apologizing to Mrs. Crowfield, who, by-the-by, has summered and wintered me so many years, and knows all my airs and cuts and crinkles so well, that she took my irritable, unreasonable spirit as tranquilly as if I had been a baby cutting a new tooth. " Of course, Chris, I knew what the matter was ; don't disturb yourself," she said, as I began my apology ; " we understand each other. But there is one thing I have to say ; and that is, that your article ought to be ready." "Ah, well, then," said I, " like other great writers, I shall make capital of my own sins, and treat of the second little family fox : and his name is — IREITABILITY. Ireitability is, more than most unlovely states, a sin of the flesh. It is not, like envy, malice, sjDite, revenge, a vice which we may suppose to belong equally 48 LITTLE FOXES. to an embodied or a disembodied spirit : in fact, it comes nearer to being physical depravity than anything I know of. There are some bodily states, some con- ditions of the nerves, such that we could not conceive of even an angelic spirit, confined in a body thus dis- ordered, as being able to do an}^ more than simply endure. It is a state of nervous torture ; and the attacks which the wretched victim makes on others are as much a result of disease as the snapping and biting of a patient convulsed with hydrophobia. Then, again, there are other people who go through life loving and beloved, desired in every circle, held up in the church as examples of the power of religion, who, after all, deserve no credit for these things. Their spirits are lodged in an animal nature so tranquil, so cheerful, all the sensations which come to them are so fresh and vigorous and pleasant, that they cannot help viewing the world charitabl}', and seeing everything through a glorified medium. The ill-temper of others does not provoke them ; perplexing business never sets their nerves to vibrating ; and all their lives long they walk in the serene sunshine of perfect animal health. Look at Eover there. He is never nervous, never cross, never snaps or snarls, and is ready, the moment after the grossest affront, to wag the tail of forgiveness, — all because kind Nature has put his dog's body to- gether so that it always works harmoniously. If every person in the world were gifted with a stomach and nerves like his, it would be a far better and happier world, no doubt. The man said a good thing who made IRRITABILITY. 49" tlie remark tHat the foundation of all intellectual and moral worth must be laid in a good healthy animal. Kow I think it is imdeniable that the peace and happiness of the home-circle are very generally much invaded by the recurrence in its members of these states of bodily irritability. Every person, if he thinks the matter over, will see that his condition in life, the character of his friends, his estimate of their virtues and failings, his hopes and expectations, are all very much modified by these things. Cannot we all remember going to bed as very ill-used, persecuted individuals, all whose friends were unreasonable, whose life was full of trials and crosses, and waking up on a bright bird-sing- ing morning to find all these illusions gone with the fogs of the night? Our friends are nice people, after all ; the little things that annoyed us look ridiculous by bright sunshine ; and we are fortunate individuals. The philosophy of life, then, as far as this matter is concerned, must consist of two things : first, to keep ourselves out of irritable bodily states ; and, second, to understand and control these states, when we cannot ward them off. Of course, the first of these is the most important; and yet, of all things, it seems to be least looked into and understood. We find abundant rules for the govern- ment of the tongue and temper; it is a slough into which, John Bunyan hath it, cart-loads of wholesome instructions have been thrown ; but how to get and keep that healthy state of brain, stomach, and nerves which takes away the temptation to ill-temper and anger E 50 LITTLE FOXES. is 'a subject which moral and religious teachers seem scarcely to touch upon. Now, without running into technical, physiological language, it is evident, as regards us human beings, that there is a power by which we live and move and have our being, — by which the brain thinks and wills, the stomach digests, the blood circulates, and all the differ- ent provinces of the little man-kingdom do their work. This something — call it nervous fluid, nervous power, vital energy, life-force, or anything else that you will — is a perfectly understood, if not a definable thing. It is 13lain, too, that people possess this force in very different degrees : some generating it as a high-pressure engine does steam, and using it constantly, with an apparently inexhaustible flow ; and others who have little, and spend it quickly. We have a common saying, that this or that person is soon used up. Now most nervous, irritable states of temper are the mere ph3'sical result of a used-up condition. The person has overspent his nervous energy, — like a man who should eat up on Monday the whole food which was to keep him for a week, and go growling and faint through the other days; or the quantity of nervous force which was wanted to carry on the whole system in all its parts is seized on by some one monopolizing portion, and used up to the loss and detriment of the rest. Thus, with men of letters, an exorbitant brain expends on its own workings what belongs to the other offices of the body ; the stomach has nothing to carry on digestion ; the secretions are badly made ; and the imperfectly assimi- IRRITABILTTY. 51 lated nourishment that is conveyed to every little nerve and tissue, carries with it an acrid, irritating quality, pro- ducing general restlessness and discomfort. So men and women go struggling on through their threescore and ten years, scarcely one in a thousand knowing through life that perfect balance of parts, that appro- priate harmony of energies, that make a healthy, kindly animal condition, predisposing to cheerfulness and goodwill. We Americans are, to begin with, a nervous, excitable people. Multitudes of children, probably the great majority in the upper walks of life, are born into the world with weaknesses of the nervous organization, or of the brain or stomach, which make them incapable of any strong excitement or prolonged exertion without some lesion or derangement ; so that they are continually being checked, laid up, and invalided in the midst of their drugs. Life here in America is so fervid, so fast, our climate is so stimulating, with its clear, bright skies, its rapid and sudden changes of temperature, that the tendencies to nervous disease are constantly aggravated. Under these circumstances, unless men and women make a conscience, a religion, of saving and sparing something of themselves expressly for home-life and home-consumption, it must follow that home will often be merely a sort of refuge for us to creep into when wo are used up and irritable. Papa is up and off, after a hasty breakfast, and drives all day in his business, putting into it all there is in him, letting it drink up brain and nerve and body and 52 LITTLE FOXES. soul, and coming home jaded and exhausted, so that he cannot bear the cry of the haby, and the frolics and pattering of the nursery seem horrid and needless confu- sion. The little ones say, in their plain vernacular, *' Papa is cross." Mamma goes out to a party that keeps her up till one or two in the morning, breathes bad air, eats indigestible food, and the next day is so nervous that every straw and thread in her domestic path is insufferable. Papas that pursue business thus, day after day, and mammas that go into company, as it is called, night after night, what is there left in or of them to make an agreeable fireside with, to brighten their home and inspire their children ? True, the man says he cannot help himself, — business requires it. But what is the need of rolling up money at the rate at which he is seeking to do it ? Why not have less, and take some time to enjoy his home, and cheer up his wife, and form the minds of his children ? Why spend himself down to the last drop on the world, and give to the dearest friends he has only the bitter dregs ? Much of the preaching which the pulpit and the Church have levelled at fashionable amusements has failed of any effect at all, because wrongly put. A cannonade has been opened upon dancing, for example, and all for reasons that will not, in the least, bear look- ing into. It is vain to talk of dancing as a sin because practised in a