But henceforward I shall always understand with a
darker and more delicate charity those who take tythe
of mint, and anise, and cumin, and neglect the weightier
matters of the law; I shall remember how I was once
really tortured with owing half a crown to a man who
might have been dead. Some admirable men in white
coats at the Charing Cross Hospital tied up my small
injury, and I went out again into the Strand.
I felt upon me even a kind of unnatural youth; I
hungered for something untried. So to open a
new chapter in my life I got into a hansom cab.
The Advantages of Having One Leg
A friend of mine who was visiting a poor woman in
bereavement and casting about for some phrase of consolation
that should not be either insolent or weak, said at
last, “I think one can live through these great
sorrows and even be the better. What wears one
is the little worries.” “That’s
quite right, mum,” answered the old woman with
emphasis, “and I ought to know, seeing I’ve
had ten of ’em.” It is, perhaps, in
this sense that it is most true that little worries
are most wearing. In its vaguer significance
the phrase, though it contains a truth, contains also
some possibilities of self-deception and error.
People who have both small troubles and big ones have
the right to say that they find the small ones the
most bitter; and it is undoubtedly true that the back
which is bowed under loads incredible can feel a faint
addition to those loads; a giant holding up the earth
and all its animal creation might still find the grasshopper
a burden. But I am afraid that the maxim that
the smallest worries are the worst is sometimes used
or abused by people, because they have nothing but
the very smallest worries. The lady may excuse
herself for reviling the crumpled rose leaf by reflecting
with what extraordinary dignity she would wear the
crown of thorns—if she had to. The
gentleman may permit himself to curse the dinner and
tell himself that he would behave much better if it
were a mere matter of starvation. We need not
deny that the grasshopper on man’s shoulder is
a burden; but we need not pay much respect to the gentleman
who is always calling out that he would rather have
an elephant when he knows there are no elephants in
the country. We may concede that a straw may
break the camel’s back, but we like to know
that it really is the last straw and not the first.
I grant that those who have serious wrongs have a
real right to grumble, so long as they grumble about
something else. It is a singular fact that if
they are sane they almost always do grumble about
something else. To talk quite reasonably about
your own quite real wrongs is the quickest way to go
off your head. But people with great troubles
talk about little ones, and the man who complains
of the crumpled rose leaf very often has his flesh
full of the thorns. But if a man has commonly
a very clear and happy daily life then I think we are
