第20章

I wonder sometimes if good temper might not be taught.In business we use no harsh language, say no unkind things to one another.The shopkeeper, leaning across the counter, is all smiles and affability, he might put up his shutters were he otherwise.The commercial gent, no doubt, thinks the ponderous shopwalker an ass, but refrains from telling him so.Hasty tempers are banished from the City.Can we not see that it is just as much to our interest to banish them from Tooting and Hampstead?

The young man who sat in the chair next to me, how carefully he wrapped the cloak round the shoulders of the little milliner beside him.And when she said she was tired of sitting still, how readily he sprang from his chair to walk with her, though it was evident he was very comfortable where he was.And she! She had laughed at his jokes; they were not very clever jokes, they were not very new.She had probably read them herself months before in her own particular weekly journal.Yet the harmless humbug made him happy.I wonder if ten years hence she will laugh at such old humour, if ten years hence he will take such clumsy pains to put her cape about her.

Experience shakes her head, and is amused at my question.

I would have evening classes for the teaching of temper to married couples, only I fear the institution would languish for lack of pupils.The husbands would recommend their wives to attend, generously offering to pay the fee as a birthday present.The wife would be indignant at the suggestion of good money being thus wasted."No, John, dear," she would unselfishly reply, "you need the lessons more than I do.It would be a shame for me to take them away from you," and they would wrangle upon the subject for the rest of the day.

Oh! the folly of it.We pack our hamper for life's picnic with such pains.We spend so much, we work so hard.We make choice pies, we cook prime joints, we prepare so carefully the mayonnaise, we mix with loving hands the salad, we cram the basket to the lid with every delicacy we can think of.Everything to make the picnic a success is there except the salt.Ah! woe is me, we forget the salt.We slave at our desks, in our workshops, to make a home for those we love; we give up our pleasures, we give up our rest.We toil in our kitchen from morning till night, and we render the whole feast tasteless for want of a ha'porth of salt--for want of a soupcon of amiability, for want of a handful of kindly words, a touch of caress, a pinch of courtesy.

Who does not know that estimable housewife, working from eight till twelve to keep the house in what she calls order? She is so good a woman, so untiring, so unselfish, so conscientious, so irritating.

Her rooms are so clean, her servants so well managed, her children so well dressed, her dinners so well cooked; the whole house so uninviting.Everything about her is in apple-pie order, and everybody wretched.

My good Madam, you polish your tables, you scour your kettles, but the most valuable piece of furniture in the whole house you are letting to rack and ruin for want of a little pains.You will find it in your own room, my dear Lady, in front of your own mirror.It is getting shabby and dingy, old-looking before its time; the polish is rubbed off it, Madam, it is losing its brightness and charm.Do you remember when he first brought it home, how proud he was of it?

Do you think you have used it well, knowing how he valued it? Alittle less care of your pots and your pans, Madam, a little more of yourself were wiser.Polish yourself up, Madam; you had a pretty wit once, a pleasant laugh, a conversation that was not confined exclusively to the short-comings of servants, the wrong-doings of tradesmen.My dear Madam, we do not live on spotless linen, and crumbless carpets.Hunt out that bundle of old letters you keep tied up in faded ribbon at the back of your bureau drawer--a pity you don't read them oftener.He did not enthuse about your cuffs and collars, gush over the neatness of your darning.It was your tangled hair he raved about, your sunny smile (we have not seen it for some years, Madam--the fault of the Cook and the Butcher, Ipresume), your little hands, your rosebud mouth--it has lost its shape, Madam, of late.Try a little less scolding of Mary Ann, and practise a laugh once a day: you might get back the dainty curves.

It would be worth trying.It was a pretty mouth once.