XXIII.

LITTLE TRIALS.

IT has been often said that it is harder to bear little trials than great ones, and many persons make the remark as if it were an excuse for being vexed at trifles, or for making trifles into mountains. Of all possible troubles in this world, perhaps no one source is more full of trial to the temper and the patience of mankind than disagreeable weather. It would certainly disturb the peaceful equanimity of soul which is this moment enjoyed in this old arm-chair if the wind should shift around to the east, as it did last week, and another cold storm should set in, and set down. It kept me in-doors for two days; and when I came out here to have a little penchat under the trees, the seat of the chair was a pool of water, and the trees themselves shed drops of grief, as if they were mourning in their solitude; and the ground was so damp that it was unsafe to be a man of letters out-of-doors, and I was obliged to give it up. And even then and there, or else by an open window, the change of air with the cold northeast wind might give one a touch of that most deplorable of all the isms that infest the state—the rheumatism—a trial to the faith and patience that may fairly claim to be equal to any other of which flesh is heir.

John Wesley was visiting a very wealthy gentleman, who was greatly annoyed by a servant leaving the door

open, and he said to his guest, "You see what annoyances I am compelled to endure." Mr. Wesley took the occasion to preach him a little sermon on the duty of being patient under such trifling vexations of spirit, when he was surrounded with all the good things that heart could desire. And it is not likely that the possession of good things, by the thousand even, tends to make one patient under the infliction of a petty grievance. Rather it tends to create the feeling that money, or what money buys, ought to purchase exemption from the little troubles that are the necessary lot of the poor. "It is a great pity that I can not be comfortable," says the man of wealth and ease, “with all these servants about me, and this great house, and all this furniture." And the woman who flatters herself that a costly establishment, with a retinue of men and maids, will keep her from little trials, will find herself so sadly mistaken that she will often sigh for a cottage of three rooms in which perhaps she began her married life.

And these little trials, among the rich and the poor alike, are for the most part imaginary, or at most so nearly ideal that they are not worthy of being fretted at by an intelligent man or woman. Who has not seen a fullgrown man, of average sense and fair reputation for virtue, out of humor because his dinner was not ready when he was, or not cooked to his taste when it was served? He could meet with the loss of a thousand dollars, and not speak of it at home; he could bear that in silence, with patience and serenity; but to be compelled to wait half an hour for a rail-train or his dinner would throw him off his balance, and provoke him to use such impatient words as hardly become a man of average self-control. His wife is a notable housekeeper, with an

awful eye for dirt, and she can put up with any thing if the house is only clean. But a few specks on the windows or an undusted parlor will put her into fits, that nothing but cold water and rubbing-not of her, but of the windows and furniture-will cure.

Indeed, it is not unusual to see good people more disturbed by the little vexations of life than they are by real trials, such as come home to their hearts, and might reasonably be supposed to overwhelm them with sorrow. The reason of this inconsistency may be that the little trial is so insignificant itself that one scarcely thinks of calling in grace or philosophy to help in bearing it. Instead of resisting, the soul worries and frets till the trouble irritates and wounds and festers, and then breeds others. Seven evil spirits come home with the first, and the house is turned upside down by the fretfulness of the soul now under the power of the evil one.

If we had a higher sense of the greatness of our present comforts, and a deeper sense of our unworthiness to have them, we would be less disposed to repine when we suffer for a time the loss of some of them. He was wise who, when he had the toothache, was thankful that he had not a broken leg; and when the leg was broken, that it was not his neck. And if we compare our enjoyments with our trials, and take the balance as the sum that we have a right to make the most of, we shall discover that there is no reason in the world for being discontented with our lot. More than this, it is the testimony of Infinite Wisdom, confirmed, if confirmation is wanted, by the experience of all good men who have left their experience on record, that little trials and great trials are means to ends, and those ends are the greatest and best in the moral universe. When the young eagles in the nest

where they were hatched have grown to be too large for it, however much they may love to stay in it and be fed by indulgent parents, the old eagle stirs them up and crowds them out, and compels them to do their duty in the sphere to which eagles are called. It will not be permitted to any one who has work to do, to dwell at ease in his nest and be fed all the time; to take comfort, as we call it, forgetful of the duties of life and the calls of a world suffering around us. These little trials are to stir us up, and drive us out of ourselves. We would not mind them at all if we had our eyes and hearts on the great business for which we were put into this garden.

And nearly all these little crosses and vexations which we dignify by the name of trials, are not worth speaking of, and to-morrow they are quite forgotten, though to-day they seem to be intolerable.

XXIV.

TALKING TO MAN AND BEAST.

HAD I my life to live over again—how often we say or think these words, and it were well if they lead us to put what remains of life to better use-I would, with God's good help, never speak a harsh word to man or beast.

I have been in state-prisons, and studied the system and practical workings of the theories of various overseers and governors; and in reformatories and asylums, and houses of refuge and penitentiaries and jails, and also in Christian families and boarding-schools; and in all of them have earnestly, candidly, and anxiously sought to learn the best way to make men better; and the result of all this observation and study is that no good and only evil come of harsh speaking.

The other extreme, the milk-and-water system, coddling the wicked to make them good, coaxing a villain to induce him to be a saint, giving a child candy to stop crying, or hiring him to do what he ought to be required to do this or the like of this is just as far from the right way of dealing with the wayward and refractory.

Children are not fools generally, and convicts are usually smart. They who are under parental government, or in the hands of the law, undergoing the penalty of crime, very soon get to know the measure of those who are over them, and act accordingly. They see the inconsistency and folly of the sugar system, and learn to despise those

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