Walking Too Big.
Uncle Maurice and his little niece, Minnie, had gone through the whole book together; looked at the pictures, talked over the stories; and now there was nothing else to be done but to shut it up and put it aside. There had been many a laugh during the hour spent upon it, and, though it was a mere baby book, I doubt if the child had enjoyed the time more than her tall uncle had done.
Minnie gave a little sigh as she put down the volume, and looked around, as if asking what was to come next. She was a blue-eyed, curly-haired, five-year-old lassie; her uncle’s special pet and darling, and I am afraid that, knowing how dearly he loved her, she was a little bit of a tyrant, and ordered him about as if he were the child, and she a grown-up aunty.
Uncle Maurice obeyed her commands almost too well. We generally say and think that obedience is a lesson that should be learned whilst we are very young, but we are often no longer young when we conquer ourselves, which is really the same thing.
“What shall we do now, Uncle Maurice?” was the child’s inquiry.
“Go for a walk,” was the prompt answer, “the same as we did yesterday. We have been sitting a long time, and I want to stretch my legs. Besides, it is lovely out.”
Minnie shook her head, and with a child’s bluntness, retorted, “Your legs are too long already, Uncle Maurice.”
“I am sorry for it, dearie; but I cannot help it. It would spoil them to cut pieces off. They are better for walking with, anyway, so let us go.”
“No. I don’t want to walk with you, because you are too big.”
There was something ludicrous in the child’s way of measuring her tall uncle with her blue eyes, so wide open, as she let them travel from the tips of his toes to the top of a head as curly as her own, and then down again.
Uncle Maurice looked quite perplexed and troubled by his little niece’s words and actions.
“But, Minnie, darling,” he said, “you went with me to the park yesterday, and I thought you were very happy. If I am big, you can always reach my hand.”
“You walk too big,” retorted Minnie, retreating before her uncle’s outstretched arm, and taking refuge by her mother’s side, as if she were afraid of being carried off against her will.
“What does the child mean?” he asked, addressing his sister, for the little one’s manner puzzled him.
Mrs. Payne understood her tiny daughter better than even Uncle Maurice did, for of course mothers can read their children’s thoughts and know all about their wants, better than anybody else in the world.
“I think she means that you took too long strides,” she answered. “Even if you walk slowly, her little feet would be kept on the trot all the while. It is not Uncle Maurice that Minnie objects to, as a whole, but to his long legs which walk too big. Is not that it, Minnie?” she asked of the child.
Minnie nodded approvingly and said “Yes.” Mother, as usual, knew all about it.
“I remember,” replied Uncle Maurice, “that the child seemed hot and flushed, and complained of being tired. I wanted to carry her, but she resented the proposal. She was too big for that, she told me. Poor little woman, I am sorry. The walk seemed nothing to me.”
“Nor would it have been to Minnie, if you had accommodated your long step to her short one. It was the ‘walking too big,’ that did the mischief. To-day, now, as you looked over the pictures, you were like two children together. You brought yourself down to her level, laughed at what pleased her, and looked sorrowful when her young heart was stirred to pity. There was true sympathy between you, hence the happy hour you spent together.”
“And yesterday, I was always a little ahead, and Minnie toiling on behind, and never able to keep beside me, unless she had my hand, or kept at a steady trot.”
“The sitting down in the park was nice, Uncle Maurice,” interposed Minnie, who did not wish him to think that yesterday’s struggle had no bright side to it. “I will go again, only you must walk little, because I am little.”
Uncle Maurice promptly agreed, and once more the two started off together, to return equally happy. Minnie herself proposing numberless walks in the future.
When the child’s curly head was peacefully resting on her pillow, Uncle Maurice and her mother sat talking together about the household pet and her winning ways and quaint talk.
“That was a queer expression of hers, ‘You walk too big,’ was it not?” said he, laughing again as he recalled it and her face to mind. “I should not have understood her meaning but for you. Since you threw light upon it, I have thought of the many ways in which we all ‘walk big’ without considering the effect of our so doing upon our neighbours.”
“You are finding out far more in little Minnie’s saying than I did, Maurice, and turning it to better account. What unconscious teachers are our little ones,” responded Mrs. Payne.
“Yes; Minnie set me thinking, first of all how, as a boy at school, I often walked too big, when I might have accommodated my step to that of a weaker companion, and perhaps helped him on the road. I had great strength, and was proud to display it, and the height which was beyond that of other boys of my age. I liked to look down from it on some little lad whose growth had perhaps been stunted by illness, or the want of the abundant nourishment which I had never lacked, and so I made him feel the difference all the more keenly.
“How often have I, and such as I, put out our God-given strength to mortify our weaker fellows, boasting, perhaps, ‘I can hold you down with one hand, although you are my senior in years,’ and so making the poor fellow writhe both in body and mind.
“How often have I boasted of God’s good gifts which were mine, not because I deserved them better than the rest, but because He had graciously given me more! Or been proud of the place in class that I had attained without effort, when one who had worked ten times as hard, perhaps, was sighing over his failure. I can see that, as a schoolboy, even when beside my fellows, I walked too big. I boasted where there was no real merit, and I discouraged others, when, by slackening my speed, and shortening my step a little, we might have walked side by side, cheering and being cheered on the path.”
“There are so many ways of doing this walking too big,” replied Mrs. Payne. “In entertaining our friends, for instance. From a children’s party up to one at which we prepare to receive our most honoured guest, and those amongst our acquaintances who stand highest in the social scale, we all try to walk big, do we not? Quite lately, our friend, Mrs. Longworth, gave a juvenile party. She is a large-hearted woman, and a loving mother. Every child interests her, and she would like, if she could, to add to its happiness. Moreover, she has a well-filled purse, and can afford to entertain her friends right royally, old or young. And she does.
“I will venture to say that it was purely out of this large-heartedness of hers, and not with a thought of outshining her neighbours, that she gave her youthful guests a spread fit for a prince to sit down to.
“The rooms were beautifully decorated, and the supper-table was laden with all sorts of dainties, probably more than the children had ever seen together before, or dreamed of being permitted to partake of at will. Professional amusers were engaged, lest the little people should not be able to amuse themselves and each other. In short, all was done that kindness could suggest, and money provide.
“I am not in a position to say whether any of the guests suffered in body after such unwonted indulgence, but I do know that the moral effect of the entertainment was not altogether satisfactory.
“Some of the children were made envious, some discontented by this effort to give them pleasure.
“‘Why cannot we have as nice things at our party as Mrs. Longworth gave us?’ inquired one.
“‘Because,’ said his mother, ‘we are not so rich.’
“‘Then don’t let us have a party,’ was the next remark; ‘I should hate for the boys to come here and say, “How different it is from Mrs. Longworth’s!”’
“And yet, until then, there had been happy gatherings of bright children under the roof where the speaker lived, and the unwonted luxuries seen on the richer lady’s table had neither been missed nor wanted.
“The mother of another young guest ventured to invite her children’s friends to a simpler feast, in accordance with an annual custom, though she, too, rather dreaded an allusion to Mrs. Longworth’s grand doings, and it came at last.
“‘Are you enjoying the party?’ said one of the youngsters, who was looking as happy as possible, to another who was standing aloof, as if Blind Man’s Buff were a degradation after conjurors and marionnettes.
“‘Fairly,’ was the cool reply. ‘But I don’t call this a party, it is only going out to tea, you know.’”
Uncle Maurice laughed as his sister finished her account of the grand spread and its results.
Dear, kind Mrs. Longworth was, all unconsciously, walking too big, both for her child guests and their parents. When she racked her brain to give them pleasure, and neither spared trouble nor purse, she little imagined that she could possibly do harm by the very lavish nature of her kindness.
I had a similar experience after a grown-up party where the entertainment was magnificent, not at all beyond the givers’ means, but such as few of their guests could return in kind. A lady amongst these, when saying farewell to her hostess, thanked her for the delightful evening she had spent.
“But,” she added frankly, “I shall never dare to ask you to my house again, because we live so plainly in comparison, and cannot entertain in similar style.”
“Then I shall come without being asked,” was the prompt reply. “I should be grieved indeed if the good gifts which God has bestowed upon us were to be the means of robbing us of others which we value far more highly still—the society of our old and true friends.”
In this case again, the givers of the entertainment had not thought of displaying their own wealth and resources, but of honouring and giving pleasure to their guests. Nevertheless, they too had unthinkingly “walked too big,” for most of them, and made them feel small by comparison.
“Ah, Maurice, we walk too big in so many ways. In dress, in social surroundings, even sometimes in our Christian profession and work. For instance, if I am going to pay calls, I am tempted to consider what dress is the handsomest and most becoming, instead of combining with this idea a thought for those I am about to visit; but two old friends of mine joined in teaching me a lesson.
“One of them is a dear old gentlewoman who has come down in the world, but who, in her prosperous days, was very fond of rich attire. She cannot now indulge her taste for it; but she likes to see pretty things as well as ever. So to her I go in all my bravery. She discusses the style of my gown, appraises my bonnet, perhaps asks the loan of some garment as a pattern, and is sure to thank me with a hearty kiss, for having come in my newest and prettiest things to her little bit of a place which two people almost fill.
“‘But there is room for me to turn you round in, my dear,’ she says; ‘and light enough to see you by, for, thank God, the window is large and the sun is sure to shine on me, if it shines anywhere.’
“I come away feeling that all my garments are worth double the price they cost, and I feel glad for my old friend that poverty has not changed her bright nature, and that she is large-hearted enough to enjoy the mere sight of whatever is beautiful or pleasant to look upon, without envying the possessors. No fear of ‘dressing too big’ and thereby paining her.
“I have to deal differently with another old friend, who is similarly placed, owing to an unexpected reverse of fortune.
“I always walk either too big or too little to please her, and I invariably enter her presence in fear and trembling. I would not wilfully pain her for the world, and I have tried to make her understand this, but I am always wrong. If I go very plainly dressed, she will scan my garments, and, after the first greetings, remark: ‘I suppose you are not on your way to call on Lady Hope?’
“‘No,’ I reply cheerfully; ‘I set out early in order to have a long pleasant chat with you, if I were fortunate enough to find you at home and at liberty;’ hoping to please by showing that I did not look in merely on the way to a luxurious home. I failed utterly.
“‘I need not have asked the question,’ she answers. ‘A glance at your dress might have told me that you would not call at Hopefield in that gown, Marian, but anything is good enough for my poor little hut of a place. It was different when you and I were at school together, for then, Sir John Hope’s father was working for weekly wages, and mine was member for the county. As to my being at home and at liberty, there is little fear of my being out. People who have come down in the world are not overdone either with callers or engagements.’
“I listen in silence and not unsympathetically, for I know it must be hard for my old friend to compare the past with the present; but all the while she is speaking, I cannot help contrasting her with that other clear friend who has suffered similar reverses, but finds brightness in everything, and is ever looking out for causes of thankfulness. I try to tell her, perhaps, how well I remember those old days, and how gratefully I think of the hospitality I received under her father’s roof. I even venture to reproach her for refusing my invitations, when she knows no guest would be more honoured here than herself. Then she tells me, with tears, that she cannot bear to meet people who are mere nobodies, but who would look down upon her on account of her poverty.’
“What an unpleasant old lady!” said Uncle Maurice. “Have you tried the effect of going in all your grandeur, or of a little wholesome neglect in the matter of invitations?”
“I have tried both and with equal success,” replied Mrs. Payne. “When I went in my best bib and tucker, I heard remarks made about the taste which induced people to flaunt their finery before the eyes of those whose birth and social position entitled them to similar luxuries, but whose purse would only provide bare necessaries. I was once so annoyed at her ungracious reception of my invitations, that I resolved to give no more, but the result was too terrible.”
“Is it worth while to concern yourself about pleasing a person of such an unhappy temperament?” asked Uncle Maurice. “I feel with you that if by slackening our pace, or shortening our steps we can strengthen the weak, encourage the timid, or stimulate the fainthearted to renewed effort, we ought to make the attempt, but in cases like the former—”
“It is perhaps still more incumbent upon us, and that because they are so unhappy. I have no doubt that during her solitary hours, my discontented friend would be more miserable still but for my efforts to please her, and I am quite sure that I am the happier for having tried to do it, whether successful or not,” said Mrs. Payne.
“True, Marian, and it seems to me that there is hardly any act in our social, even our religious life, about which we might not advantageously ask ourselves, ‘Am I walking too big?’ Sometimes, the timid Christian is afraid to offer his services, though he is longing to do something for God’s glory and the souls of his fellow-creatures, because he thinks that others are dedicating five talents while he has only one. By comparison, his powers are so contemptible. Or, he does not like to give shillings where his neighbour gives pounds. He sees him stride on boldly, both in his work and gifts, and he shrinks into himself and fears to step out at all, because he cannot keep pace with him. Ah! I have often thought that in addition to the magnificent generosity of the poor widow who gave her two mites, there was also magnificent courage in the mode of their bestowal.
“Surely, if ever there was a place when people were trying to walk big and look big, it was when the rich were casting in their coins by handfuls, and with an ostentatious clatter into the treasury of God’s house in old Jerusalem! Yet she of her penury gave more than they all, though it was the least the law permitted, and was all her living.
“She dared to step beside them, and her Lord saw and valued her offering at true worth.”
Uncle Maurice spoke from his heart, and his sister sympathised with his enthusiasm.
“Yes, dear Maurice,” she said, “we have to be careful neither to walk too big, for the sake of our neighbours, nor too little, for our own sakes and for God’s cause. But, simply remembering that He judges and rewards every man according to his works, to walk, as the disciples of Him who left us an example that we should follow His steps, in a manner worthy of the vocation to which we are called.”