260 Visiting of the Sick. soul. It may be done effectually by the contagion of that God-given influence which . flows from a good-hearted man, whose hopeful presence cheers the sad heart. The spirit of the august sentence I have quoted may be fulfilled by little acts of kindness done from a heart which stays upon God, acts of kindness done, not to the poor alone, but to sufferers among our own kith and kin, in our own circle, within our own society. Thus both the parson and the friend may be in the highest sense a spiritual nurse to the sick man; where it seems advisable, holding intimate converse with him about the disease which affects his soul, but in any case showing tenderness and comfort fresh from a godly heart. For if hopeful, decisive, considerate treatment is always wholesome in a sick-room, it is most blessed and contagious when it springs from deep, conscious communion with the Great Giver of Peace and Life. We cannot conclude these thoughts about nursing without seeing how widely the word has been used. We nurse projects, prejudices, quarrels and a very vigorous maturity do these last two sometimes rapidly gain; an infant grievance, a childish offence, is capable, with care, of growing up into a war, of setting Infant Thought. the world in flames. 261 How great a matter a little fire kindleth. But I don't want to dwell over these. All I can say is, that if a young suckling of a quarrel be born to you, expose it, strangle it, apply the most effectual form of infanticide you ever heard of, or some day it will grow beyond your management and wish. But remember, in regard to the nursing of thoughts and projects, that the very same principle as I have advocated still applies. Force nothing, or it will either grow crooked or die soon. Give an infant thought plenty of play; let it run about in the fields; and, if it is to grow, the unconscious mother of all growth will help it on. You will find fresh matter accumulate around the original idea; and some day, the once baby may be sent out into the world full-grown, to make its way with such a constitution and brain-power as it may have inherited from you its parent. ( 262 ) TEMPER. HERE are many kinds of temper, and categorically. The moment, however, that I summon the crowd of varieties to my mind, the phlegmatic generally presents itself first (probably because it is too slow to have gone far), as the most permanently irritating. There is no excuse whatever for a man who cannot be provoked. His native excellence is in itself vexatious. Not only does he get a character for good nature under false pretences-being considered amiable by shallow observers but he is directly and personally objectionable to those who really know him. He sets up a fallacious test of goodness. The mischief he does is double: he perverts the judgment of the multitude, and exhausts the patience of the man. Reflect for a moment. He cannot be provoked. There is some unnatural defect in his constitution. It is small The Phlegmatic Man. 263 praise to a broken-legged soldier to say that he didn't run away; it is equally meaningless to extol a phlegmatic man for never being angry. I dare say he would be angry if he could; but he can't, and I wish I might say there was an end of the matter. No such thing he is as obstructive and provoking as a street that is blocked up; he checks the rush of feeling with no soft word, but with dogged motionless hindrance; he fails in that undefinable but respondent sympathy which is mortar to the bricks of society; he is persistently unfeeling; he will be neither with you nor against you; and perhaps his only use is to perfect the temper of saints, who must not only be tried by the froward and malicious, but survive the searching ordeal of dull indifference. I take next a character in many respects unlike this last, but one with also much negative power of provocation-I mean the compliant man. He is unpleasantly pleasant; he responds, if that may be called response, with so little capacity for opposition. You deliver an opinion; he assents with a smile, and will do the same to your opponent. The sportsman does not value a fish which yields immediately to the pull of the line. An easy capture is an 264 The Compliant Man. ill-compliment to the angler; you prize a remonstrant little fish far more than a great scaly sluggard who suffers himself to be towed at once into the landing-net, and gapes out immediate submission the moment he feels the point of your argument. Just so the compliant man disappoints you: you suspect your own reasons when they are at once assented to. Your wit is thrown away unless it has a little tussle for supremacy. You have said a rich thing; he laughs, but in a tone of vacant readiness which shows that he would have done the same at a poor one. You ask him to carry all the umbrellas at a picnic, to ring the bell, to sit at a side-table, to fill a gap-he complies, gratefully. Anything to make himself agreeable-forgetting, kind soul, that of man's aims and capabilities, this perhaps is not the highest. However, he piques himself upon his amiability, and must take the consequence. I think the compliant man is most disagreeable when you try to take him into confidence. He shuts his book to listen; he lays down his knife and fork; he lets his soup grow cold; he runs the risk of losing the train. Well, you make the first move: you look oppressed, mysterious, sympathetic, and you begin. Before you can disclose your intentions, he approves of them. Before you |