American citizen. [volume] (Canton, Miss.) 1864-1890, 1872-06-01


stones or an unhandy bridge, and eternity
lying not foot's pace from the splash
board. But, with all these possibilities
before them, those who have learnt the
grace and practice of small sIoicisms can
command themselves, and not show the
fear they may perhaps feel just as keenly
as the rest; and if women would only re
member that screaming and clutching
hold of working arms, and distracted de-
mands on the attention of those employed
IN regulating the course of things, are
just so much dead weight thrown into the
scale of danger, perhaps they, too, would
learn that very useful stoicism of keeping
quiet when there is, or seems to be, aperil-
Gus hitch in matters, and at the most
content themselves with sympathetic
squeeZes exchanged with some sister, as
frightened as they are, but outwardly
Self-restrained.
Another of the small stoicisms, which
unfortunately seems to be dying out as
an element of education, is that of eating
what we do not like with Il good grace.
Some foolish person set it afloat as an
article of belief that cnild's appetites
were instructive, and that it should never
therefore be forced to eat what it did not
like some people add, and allowed to
eat all that it does like. Bat we have to do
now with the former of these two classes.
To those who have not tried it, it may seem
a very small inconvenience to have the
companionship of one who will not eat
what he or she does not like, with the in
variable cOrollary that he or she likes very
few things indeed. But try it for your
selves, and then see what you make of it.
Let us premise that you yourself are cath
Ole in your tastes, and can Tor say you
can, and do in fact, which is the same
thing eat everything. You have no inder
erDuryatorius in your bill of fare, and you
have certain pride in your own stoicism
of not being dainty. Your companion
can eat only three or four things, and
these three or four cooked only in a par
ticular way, and with such and such adj
juncts. You go to a place where the
cookery, to put it mildly, is primitive,
and adjuncts a science of which the first
principles are not known. For yourself,
you can make yourself comfortable
enough on what you can get if you
have no venison, you can eat mutton; and
if mutton runs short, you can fall back
upon eggs and bacon, or on eggs alone if
the bacon is myth. If you have no
wine, you can drink beer, and you do not
disdain milk or the pump if the brewer
has played the district false. But your
companion can eat nothing. The mutton
is boiled, and he never eats boiled NUT
ton; or it is baked, and he abhOrs baked
meats; bacon and eggs are his taboo, and
he would rather have crust of bread
and cheese than either; but the bread is
stale and he eats only new, or new and
he eats only stale; the butter is SALT and
the cheese hard; he hates milk water he
never touches; beer is fit only for the
people who can eat fried bacon; if he
cannot have wine such as he is used to,
he will have nothing; and so on. AT first
you do not mind this enforced self-ab-
negation; at last it becomes cross laid
on you as well as on himself, and even
your stoicism is not sufficient to bear you
up under it. You only wish that you
could take your friend back the thirty
years or SO that would put him into the
educable age, and that you might have
the ordering of the nursery dinner, till
you had taught that dainty mouth some
of the catholicity you have learnt for
yOurself-or at least till you had taught
him such amount of self-control as would
enable him to make the best of what he
has, and when he cannot get white bread
to put up with brown. Besides the weak
ness of this form of Sybaritism, there
is its rudeness to be considered. In
a large dinner it may escape atten-
ton; and, moreover, in large dinner
there must be something even the most
fastidious person can eat. But in small
entertainment, or maybe Il ttte-0-ttt6 OF
family dinner, is it cheerful, think you,
to have your guest blandly refusing every
thing offered with a quiet. "Thank, you,
no, | never eat salmon. l cannot touch
boiled beef Is that duck stuffed with
onions? none, then, thank you, for me-"
and so on? Perhaps winding up with
''Have you any cold meat in the house?
May 1 ask for it if you have?" This is
not a fancy sketch, it is a reality; and be-
cause it is reality, and to be found ac
with many sweet and charm
ing virtues of another kind-else it would
scarcely need demonstrating as an evil at
alive advocate SO strenuously this small
stoicism of eating everything set before
one, as part of the self-education abso-
lutely necessary for us all to learn
In other words, these small stoicisms
are commentaries on the law of unselfish-
ness, and part of the very essence of pO-
likeness. Put selfindulgcnt Sybarite
and one of the old knights of chivalry to-
gether, and say who is the better gentle
man of the twO-he who cried out if Il
rose leaf was orumpled, and who knew
nothing of self-control but the name; or
he who could brave hunger, thirst,
pain, peril, and every kind of
bodily misery, with a calm face and
steady heart, keeping secret all his own
gricfs, while giving. himself up to assuage
the griefs of others? We do not think
there can be two answers to that question.
-6iodey's Lady's Book