The new Northwest. [volume] (Portland, Or.) 1871-1887, 1874-10-09
ImpulsiYe People.


No people are more to be pitied and
none are more harshly Judged than
those who to natural impulsiveness add
limited means, a good heart and that
kind of instructive unselfshness which
never takes count of the difficulties or
disagreeables standing in the way of
kind acti0ns-zeal for Others, dwarfing
considerations for themselves, and i'm
agination going the same way. In their
honest desire to help where help is
needed, they are always offering more
than they can give, and undertaking
more than they can make good. Being
people of lively imagination, they sink
the details in the result, and overlook
the obstacles standing between them
and the fulfillment of their generous de-
sires. They fancy they can clear a
mountain in a leap; but when they
come to measure the height of those in
accessible looking crags, when they see
how the waves are breaking against
their frail boat, they then have to throw
back and that thing is beyond them.
On which they are accused of half
heartedness, unreliability, unfriendli-
ness; they are turncoats and deserters
men of words, and not deeds-whereof
the latest stage is Sudden death, and
death indeed !" The offer, which was
to give one few hours pleasure at the
cost OF days of damage and weeks of
pinching or pressure to the other, is
withdrawn-vituperation, the loss of
the warmest strain of friendship, and
the casting of scornful proverbs notwith-
standing. And in general the with
drawal is the right thing.
1t is impossible for some people to see
or hear of distresses in any form without
longing to relieve it. And from longing
to offering it is only the passage of a
breath. Is friend i'll ? "Let me sit
up with him tonight" Willingly;
your sitting up tonight will give ease
and good spell of rest to the tired
watchers, and save the substitute stand
ing reluctantly in the gap. Let us state,
however, that the substitute is a stout,
well-conditioned person, who has the
strength of man, and can bear any
amount of fatigue without failing, and
may be a person of leisure with nothing
on earth to do but amuse herself, and
bury her hours with as much enjoyment
and enlliri as are compatible with pro-
priety. If she watches through the
night she can sleep through the day,
and by six O'Clock next evening will be
as blithe as n bird and as fresh as n
daisy. You, on the contrary, are frail,
lallLuGu llllA6 NOulduf viii -
| family and the afllictiOn of neuralgia.
Every hour of your day is occupied with
work that can never be delegated nor
/ laid aside. You have your lessons to
give, your articles to write, your part To
study, even your pudding to make, and
your children's mouths to feed gener-
ally. But you are warm-hearted, i'm
pulsive little woman, worn out as you
are, and you offer great things out OF
your great soul, which, when searched
for, are not to be found in the compass
of your small body. Your husband,
who is not impulsive, and whose idea
of masculine duty is taking care of you,
even against your will, laughs you and
your quiXotic offer to scorn when he
hears of it. He will have none of this
folly, he says trenchantly; you have
enough to do with your own affairs, and
he will not suffer you to add your neigh
boris loads to your own. Forthwith
your sick friends household is informed
that you are q defaulter, and that the
well-constituted substitute must take
your place; that you cannot receive the
children; that you cannot do this or
that as you had oflered-when you come
to consider it your strength was not
sufficient, and your husband would not
allow it. From that hour you have lost
your standing among them, and are
ranked with those who make grand pro-
fessions, then throw over the wretched
dupes who trust them-at the eleventh
hour back out of the agreement.
Nothing can be a more untrue way of
putting il. You neither offered for your
brag nor draw back for your unseltish-
ness. The first was honest sympathy,
and the second incapacity; and the sole
fault you committed was letting your
kindly impulse run away with your
Judgment, and your desire to be of use
obscure your power of calculation.
If impulses of loving generosity are
apt TO come to grief, the impulses of un-
friendly wrath are still more sure to find
evil issues. 1t is strange how often an
unkind impulse proves itself untrue.
The suspicious fear, the passionate de-
nunciation, the vague adherence, if
acted on, are almost certain to be found
: wrong before the thing is done with,
J and many an impulsive hater, hitting
hard, and thinking he or she is hitting
J righteously, has cause to regret to the
last day of life the incautious acceptance
of belief as truth, and the unfriendly
sincerity" which gave utterance to the
: same.
Without being sentimental or sickly,
there is no question the more generous
the Judgment the more likely it is to be
true; and the fewer the hard words we
have uttered the less we shall have here
with to reprOach ourselves when we
come to measure the amount of unmer-
tied mischief we have done our fellow
men. Undoubtedly, the less we yield
to unfriendly impulses, the more safely
shall we walk, and the more surely We
shall be right.