There are people to be sure, who may not open the path, to whom it is appointed to wait. "They also serve who only stand and wait," said the blind poet. And we shall find those who really seem to have little else to do than to wait: perhaps they lost their places early in this great procession of travelers from one darkness to another, and so nothing comes to them at the appointed time; they wait for love, for home, for happiness, for work, for wealth, for fame; usually they wait in vain, and at last they have only to wait for death. Whether it is owing to some of the cross purposes of fate that these people are so unfortunate, or whether it is the fault of their own organism that they have failed to profit by occasion, there is always something very pathetic about the thought of their unsatisfied lot. Others of us know something of the annoyances of waiting, are acquainted with the impatience, the nervousness, the disappointment, if not anger, the vexation of vainly expecting some trifle that in reality is unimportant; some of us know the misery of waiting for those who do not return; every one has listened for desired footsteps, heard them coming from afar, heard them go by; and if such waiting be misery, we can paint to ourselves what a lifetime of waiting is. Of course, with the patient sufferers there is not the poignancy of acute disappointment in a matter of pressing present interest, such as that where hangs the life or welfare of a beloved one, or the pivot of our personal fortunes; but with them it is one dull expectancy, one long ache; other waitings come to an end, but this knows neither the piercing pang of certain sorrow and denial, nor ever any sudden lifting of gratification and content. The outlook, the hopes, the experience, narrows as chance never arrives, and fruition never happens, and they who look at the enduring patience of one thus waiting are sure that, if for no other reason, there must needs be an immortality in order to do justice to those thus wronged of what their soul most craves, although they have everything else in the world. For it is of no consequence to any what else they have in the world if they have not the one precise thing wanted. He who wants the hymns of Homer can not be put off with the Mecanique Celeste, or, to go from great to less, it makes no odds to the woman who has no gloves that she has two dozen handkerchiefs; under no conditions will she who longs for a home of her own be quite satisfied with the home of other people, and he who wishes for recognition of genius does not care to be pointed out for his fine eyes. He waits foi recognition ; she waits for love and home ; another waits for a chance of self-education ; another for freedom from a hated bond ; and whether they wait all their lives, or get the desire at last, while they are waiting it is pitiful. It seems as if there were not happiness enough in this world to go round. "There's chairs enough, " said the suddenly inundated country host, "but there's too much company;" and in this case there is no help for it but that some must go to the wall and wait.
Possibly there are some of these waiting ones who are waiting for something more serious than any of the small affairs of the daily paths, who await an answer to the great riddle of life, for the first glimpse of the things beyond, and have girded themselves with the armor of patience, till sight and knowledge shall be vouchsafed ; and others there are who, undisturbed by such emotion, wait only for the leading of the power that rules the universe to do the will of that power, and help onward its work; and yet others who, all hope of further helping over, fold their hands and wait only for the word that gives them the freedom of the eternal city. But all such are waiting in good company they wait with the hosts who stand with folded wings about heaven's throne.
If there is something lofty in this sainted waiting, not for the blisses of this life, but for the communion of saints beyond, all the other waiting depends for its merit upon the spirit in which it is taken. If it is quarrelsome, petulant, impatient, we fail to be touched by it; if it is idle and shiftless it renders us indignant, and disapproval almost destroys pity; if it is, on the whole, merely a waiting for opportunity to come, as the boy waited for the river to flow by that he might cross, unaware that opportunity is almost always in the passing moment if we have the knack of seizing it, it receives only a pity that is too near contempt to be pleasant.
Yet it behooves us, be the waiting of what sort it may, to keep some sparks of a better pity undestroyed, as we hope for it ourselves, for in one shape or another we are all of us waiting for something that in all our three-score years and ten we fail to find.
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