Wreaths of Friendship: A Gift for the Young

Thetwo cousins;
or, how to act when “THINGS go wrong.”

“There, mother, I knew it would be so.  Lucy Wallace has just sent over to tell me she can’t walk out in the woods with me.  There’s no use in my trying to please any body—­there’s no use in it.  I’m an odd sort of a creature, it seems.  Nobody loves me.  It always was so.  Oh, dear!  I wish I knew what I had done to make the girls hate me so!”

This not very good-natured speech was made by a little girl, whom I shall call Angeline Standish.  She was some ten or twelve years old, as near as I can recollect.  Perhaps my readers would like to know something about the occasion which called for this speech; but it is a long story, and hardly worth telling.  The truth is, when little boys and girls get very angry, or peevish, or fretful, they sometimes blow out a great deal of ill-humor, something after the manner that an overcharged steam boiler lets off steam—­with this difference, however, that the steam boiler gets cooler by the operation, while the boy or girl gets more heated.  The throat is a poor safety-valve for ill-humor; and it is bad business, this setting the tongue agoing at such a rate, whenever the mercury in one’s temper begins to rise toward the boiling point.

As is usual, in such cases, Angeline felt worse after these words had whistled through the escape pipe of her ill-nature, than she did before; and, for want of something else to do, she commenced crying.  She was not angry—­that is, not altogether so—­though the spirit she showed was a pretty good imitation of anger, it must be confessed.  She was peevish.  Matters had not gone right with her that day.  She was crossed in this thing and that thing.  Her new hat had not come home from the milliner’s, as she expected; one of her frocks had just got badly torn; she had a hard lesson to learn; and I cannot repeat the whole catalogue of her miseries.  So she fretted, and stormed, and cried, and felt just as badly as she chose.

Not long after the crying spell was over, and there was a little blue sky in sight, Jeannette Forrest, a cousin of Angeline’s, came running into the room, her face all lighted up with smiles, and threw her arms around her cousin’s neck, and kissed her.  This was no uncommon thing with Jeannette.  She had a very happy and a very affectionate disposition.  Every body loved her, and she loved every body.

One not acquainted with Angeline, might very naturally suppose that she would return her cousin’s embrace.  But she did no such thing.  Her manner was quite cool and distant.  Human nature is a strange compound, is it not?

“Why, cousin,” said the light-hearted Jeannette, “what is the matter?  You are not well, are you?”

“Yes, well enough,” the other replied, rather crustily.  Take care, Angeline, there’s a cloud coming over your cousin’s face.  Speak a kind word or two, now.  Then the sun will beam out again, brightly as ever.  Jeannette was silent for a moment, for she was astonished, and did not know what to make of her cousin’s manner.  It would have appeared uncivil and rude to most little girls.  But the sweet spirit of Jeannette—­loving, hoping, trusting—­was differently affected.  She saw only the brighter side of the picture.  So the bee, as she flies merrily from flower to flower, finds a store of honey where others would find only poison.

“Dear Angeline,” said her cousin, at length, “I’m sure something is the matter.  Tell me what it is, won’t you?  Oh, I should love to make you happy, if I only knew how!”

Angeline seemed scarcely to hear these words of love.  That is strange enough, I hear you say.  So it is, perhaps, and it may be stranger still, that she read not the language of love and sympathy that was written so plainly in her cousin’s countenance.  It is true, though, for all that.  She did not say much of any thing to this inquiry—­she simply muttered, between her teeth,

“I don’t believe any body loves me.”

Jeannette was no philosopher.  She could not read essays nor preach sermons.  Her argument to convince her cousin that there was, at least, one who loved her, was drawn from the heart, rather than from the head.  It was very brief, and very much to the point.  She burst into tears, and sobbed,

“Don’t say so, dear.”

Jeannette could not stay long.  Her mother had sent her on an errand, and told her she must make haste back.  Perhaps it was as well that she could not stay—­and perhaps not.  Human nature is a strange sort of compound, as I said before; and it may be that the ice which had covered over the streams leading from Angeline’s heart would not have melted under the influence even of the warm sun that, for a moment or two, beamed upon them so kindly.  For one, however, I should like to know what would have come out of that conversation, if it had been allowed to go on.  Jeannette went home, and Angeline was again left to her own reflections, which were any thing but pleasant.  It was Saturday afternoon; and, there being no school, she had hoped to be able to ramble in the woods with some of her little companions.  But here she was disappointed, too, and this increased her peevishness; though the reason why she could not go was, because she did not learn her lesson in season, and that was her own fault.  Toward night, when Mrs Standish had leisure to sit down to her sewing, she called Angeline, and reminded her of the ill-natured spirit she had shown in the early part of the afternoon.  The child was rather ashamed of what she had said, it is true; but she tried to excuse her conduct.

“Every thing went wrong to-day, mother,” she said; “I couldn’t help feeling so.  Oh, dear!  I don’t see how any body can be good, when things go in this way—­I mean any body but Jeannette.  I wish I was like her.  It is easy for her to be good.”

“Your cousin has, no doubt, a very different disposition from yours,” said the mother.  “But it is much easier for you to be always good-natured and happy than you suppose, Angeline.”

“I wish I knew how, mother.”

“Well, you say things went wrong with you this afternoon.  I think I know what some of these things were.  They were not so pleasant as they might have been, certainly.  They were troublesome.  But don’t you think the greatest trouble of all was in your own heart?”

“No, ma’am.  I was well enough until the things began to go wrong; and then I felt bad, and I couldn’t help it.”

Mrs Standish laughed, as she said, “So, then, as soon as the things begin to go wrong, you take the liberty to go wrong too.  Every thing works well inside, until it is disturbed by something outside?”

“That is it, mother.”

“And when the things inside go smoothly, because every thing is smooth outside, you have a very good and happy disposition?”

“Pretty good, I think.”

“And so, when there is a hurricane inside, because the wind blows rather more than usual outside, you are cross, and unhappy, and bad enough to make up for being so good before?”

“Yes, ma’am, I am afraid I am, sometimes.”

“No, my child, you are wrong, all wrong.  If all was right inside, the other things you speak of would not disturb you so, if they should happen to go wrong.”

“Why, mother, wouldn’t they disturb me at all?”

“They might, occasionally, but not near as much.  Do you remember that our clock went wrong last winter?”

“Yes, ma’am; we couldn’t tell what time it was, and it used to strike all sorts of ways.”

“What do you suppose made the clock act so, Angeline?  It goes well enough now, you know.”

“I believe Mr Mercer said one of the wheels was out of order.”

“That was all.  It was not the weather—­not because we forgot to wind it up—­not because things did not go right in the room.  Now, your mind is something like a clock.  If it is kept in order, it will run pretty well, I guess—­no matter whether it rains or shines—­whether it is winter or summer.  Milton says, very beautifully, in his poem called the ’Paradise Lost,’

  “’The mind is its own place, and of itself
  Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.’

“He means by this, that our happiness or unhappiness depends more upon what is within us than it does upon what is without.  And he is right.  Do you understand, my child?”

“I understand what you mean, but it is not so easy to see how I am to go to work and be good all the time, like cousin Jeannette.  I’m not like her, mother, and I never can be like her, I know.”

“True, you will always be very unlike your cousin.  But I don’t know of any thing to hinder your being as good and amiable as she is, for all that.”

“Oh, mother!  I’d give every thing in the world, if I only knew how!”

“I think you can learn, my child, with much less expense; though, to be sure, you will have to give up some things that perhaps you will find it hard to part with.  You will be obliged to give up some of your bad habits.”

“That would be easy enough.”

“Not so easy as you think, it may be.  It is a good deal easier to let a bad habit come in, than it is to turn one out.  But ’where there’s a will, there’s a way,’ you know.”

“Well, mother, what shall I do?  I should like to begin pretty soon, for scarcely any body loves me now,”

“Before you learn much, it might be well to unlearn a little.  When any thing goes wrong, as you say, you must, at least, not make it go worse.  You must not make every body around you unhappy, if you do feel a little cross and peevish.”

“Oh, mother, I can’t speak pleasantly when I don’t feel so.”

“Then, in most cases, you had better not speak at all.”

“I never thought of that.  I can stop talking, if I try.”

“So you can, and you can do more.  You can get into the habit of finding ‘the south or sunny side of things,’ as Jean Paul says, and if you do, you will not be likely to have a snow-storm in your heart very often.  Besides, you ought to remember, that all these disappointments and crosses are a part of your education for heaven, and you should endeavor to improve them as such, so that their good effect will not be lost.  And another thing, my child:  you ought to ask God to assist you in this self-government—­to make you his child—­to give you a new heart—­to teach you to love Christ, and to be like him.  Then you will seldom feel cross and fretful, because things go wrong.  You will be cheerful and good-natured.  You will make others happy—­and you will very soon forget the old story, that nobody loves you.”

Now, many little boys and girls—­possibly some who read this story—­would have thought this task too hard.  They would have regarded it as a pretty severe penance.  Perhaps they would have concluded, after having put all these difficult things into one scale, and the thing to be gained by them into the other, that the reward was not worth so great a sacrifice.  So thought not Angeline, however.  She began the work in earnest, that very day.  She went over to her uncle’s, with an unusual amount of sunshine in her countenance, and made it all right with Jeannette.  In the evening, she told her little brother James what she intended to do, and invited him to help her; and before they retired to rest that night, they knelt down together and offered up a prayer, that God, for Christ’s sake, would help them in governing themselves.

One day—­perhaps some six weeks after this—­Mrs Standish said, smilingly, to her daughter,

“Well, my dear, does Lucy Wallace love you any better?”

“Oh, mother,” said Angeline, as a tear of joy stood in her eye, “every body loves me now!”