Idle Regrets

Dripping that wears the stone.

      Last year's toothache does not hurt us; it seems as though it hurt some one else; in truth it seems as if that tooth might have been saved. Last year's affront makes us smile to think we should have been such fools as to mind it; the misery we endured a twelve-month since, in our old bonnet, from the contumelious stare of somebody in a Paris hat, is now, in the distance, too infinitesimal for us to condescend to remember. But then it is quite possible that we have a new hat ourselves this year, that nobody is affronting us, that our teeth are in fine order; we should not dream of allowing ourselves to be unbalanced by such trifles anyway now what are they to be compared to the sore hangnail of the present moment, to the sudden cracking and unexpected shininess of our best silk, to the bill with no money to pay it! Yesterday's troubles vanish in the perspective of two narrowing lines, today's hover just before the sight, and shut out everything else. We cannot, to be sure, forget the facts of the past troubles, but all their sting and anguish is over and gone.

      Of course we are not speaking of the real and significant griefs, the vital sorrows of the past, the unavailing regrets, the losses never to be made good events whose meaning has entered into our being, and incorporated itself with our soul. Those things die only when we do, and will not, it may be, die even then, for their discipline may have been the thing we needed most, and nothing that is really valuable and necessary for us can ever be lost out of our posssession.

Expectancy a much more emphatic thing
than hope.

      In "My Summer with Dr Singletary," Whittier says: "The present will live hereafter, memory will bridge over the gulf between the two worlds, for only in the condition of their intimate union can we preserve our identity and personal consciousness. Blot out the memory of this world, and what would heaven or hell be to us? Nothing whatever. Death would be simple annihilation ot our actual selves and the substitution therefor of a new creation in which we should have no more interest than in an inhabitant of Jupiter or the fixed stars." Still, although memory may thus be the vital current of our identity, we doubt if we shall carry with us into any life whatever, memory of the little teasing details of our annoyances, although their effect may be felt forever in countless touches on cur natures, like the fret of that ceaseless dripping which wears a stone. It is, indeed, only the exceptional nature, and often the morbid one, that is able to recall pain, that is saddened by its recollection, but we can all of us thrill again with the recollection of old joys; and the optimist might well argue, from experience of the truth, that pain is perishable, but joy is immortal.

      Perhaps if we recognized this more forcibly, the petty provocations, the little teasing troubles, that are so "tolerable and not to be endured" while we are laboring through them, would cease to make the present uncomfortable, would wear less detestable aspects as they came, would no longer excite, in the rebellion against them, our ill temper, malice, hatred, and all uncharitableness, and would make less final impressions upon our nature than even now they do; we might refuse to be provoked or teased by them, and remembering the evanescence of pain and vexation, and the permanency of joy, we might yet learn a lesson from the trees of the forest that heal their wounds with precious gums; from the oysters that mend their shells with pearls.

Led by a kindlier hand than ours,

We journey through this earthly scene,

And should not. in our weary hours.

Turn to regret what might have been.

And yet these hearts, when torn by pain,

Or wrung by disappointment keen

Will seek relief from present cares

In thought of joys that might have been.

But let us still these wishes vain;

We know not that of which we dream ;

Our lives might have been sadder yet;

God only knows what might have been.

Forgive us. Lord, our little faith.

And help us all. from morn till e'en.

Still to believe that lot the best

Which is not that which might have been.

by G. Z, Gray.

The bright drapery of dreams and pleasant fancies.

Back                                                                                                                                             Forward