LXXXI.GRUMBLING.
IT must be that a certain class of people find pleasure in fault-finding and grumbling, or they would not search so industriously for an opportunity to exercise their talents in this direction; or, failing to secure a legitimate occasion, willfully manufacture one. In the family, this habit is, unfortunately, often carried to a great extent, even among those who are, undoubtedly, sincerely attached to each other. The first word in the morning is usually a querulous inquiry or complaint about some trivial thing which they merelysuspecthas been neglected or unsatisfactorily performed. They do not take the trouble to inquire if their suspicions are well founded. Such inquiry might deprive them of the luxury of grumbling. If it were not so sad to hear the early morning hours thus desecrated, it might furnish much amusement for a looker-on to notice how often these unfortunates are caught in their own trap, and the fact made evident to all that the foolish words were but the ebullition of arrogance and irritability, having no foundation.
“My dear!” (you will notice that agentlemangrumbler begins a complaint with a strongly emphasized term of endearment,)—“my dear! why could you not heed my request that our breakfast might be one half-hour later this morning? I told you I was very tired, and needed a little more rest. But it is useless for me to imagine you would deviate from your rules one minute just for my comfort.”
“Why, Tom! how unreasonable you are! You are so in the habit of finding fault, that you never stop to learn certainly if there is any cause for dissatisfaction. Yourbreakfast is just three quarters of an hour later than usual. I delayed it just as long as I could, expressly for your comfort.”
“I saidhalfan hour,not three quarters. That was every minute I could spare. Now, I shall be too late for some very important business. But you are always interfering, as if I didn’t understand my own business best!”
But when the grumbler has had a good cup of coffee or tea, and the “inner man” is suitably refreshed by an abundant breakfast, he seems to be in no great haste to attend to that important business; but has leisure to look over the papers, play a moment with the children, and can really speak gently to the one so rudely censured in the morning, before his appetite was appeased.
“Now, I call this real cruel, John. I must go to market right off after breakfast, because you forgot to bring home the marketing last night. And I asked you so particularly; as we have company to dinner, I have hardly time to get ready. But I might have known if I wanted anything in season, tired or sick, I must always do it myself. It is really too bad!”
“My dear! if I might slip in a word, I would like to inform you that Ididbring home the marketing according to orders, and gave it to the cook. You will doubtless find it in the store-closet.”
“O John! that’s just like you. Why couldn’t you have told me last night? It wouldn’t have hurt you to have taken that trouble, I’m sure.”
“You had company, you recollect, when I came home. I had an errand to do after tea, and you were fast asleep when I returned. What chance had I to tell you?”
“You couldn’t have told me quietly, even if we had company, I suppose?”
“Why, child! how eager you are to find fault!”
“O, yes! of course I am the only one to blame.”
It is not necessary to multiply examples, though, we are sorry to say, they could be brought from every class and position. But such things are not pleasant to hear, and certainly do not look well on paper. It is to be feared that we all have some germs of this same malady,—enough, at least, to understand the symptoms, and warn us to vigorous efforts to eradicate them. If allowed to take root, they deface our own characters, and disturb, if not destroy, the comfort of home. When parents indulge in this sin of grumbling, they cannot wonder if their children follow their example, and even go beyond it. A whole family of grumblers! what can be more wretched?
Another class, whose behavior at home is unexceptionable, spare their families, reserving their grumbling for business hours, giving their servants or clerks the discomfort that the first class lay by for home consumption. There is hope for those. By and by some high-spirited sufferer from their waspishness and fault-finding, having endured their wearisome grumbling till patience is no longer a virtue, may teach them a lesson, through their self-interest, that will perhaps prove effectual.
But we have a few words to say of another class,—grumbling travelers. At some of our hotel tables, where travelers “most do congregate,” one can read a chapter of absurd and ridiculous weakness to be found nowhere else. We have known people to sit down to a table where we could find no occasion for complaint, and grumble loudly at every individual article. Coffee, “horrid”; tea, “an insult to set such stuff before any one”; soup, “too thick,” or “too thin”; and so on through the whole bill of fare. Nothing set before them that was not made a subject of criticism or rude comparison between the hotel fare and the wonderful perfections of their own table. This habit offault-finding is, by a certain class, considered a certificate of superiority which cannot fail to convince the public that they are persons of wealth and high-standing at home. A mistaken idea. Even the waiters at public tables, who, in consequence of the variety of guests to whom they are called, are usually good judges of character, are not deceived by this vain pretense; but many sly glances, that can only be interpreted as contemptuous, may be detected; and as these complainers leave the table, the waiters whisper to each other, as they pass to and fro, “Shoddy,” with looks that cannot be misunderstood.
This class of travelers leave their homes, not for information and improvement, but for the opportunity of grumbling, on a new and more extensive scale than can be attained in their own families. They leave home in search of some yet untried cause for grumbling, and by a long stretch of conscience and imagination they contrive to find it, and return with a large store of freshly gathered material, over which to expatiate for some weeks, quite to the relief of their families.
All this kind of grumbling appears to us most unreasonable and ridiculous; but if not inclined to find fault in any of the ways mentioned, we are beginning to fear that every one meets some point in life where he imagines dissatisfaction and complaint to be perfectly justifiable. Something in their surroundings is out of joint. Their most carefully laid plans and well-grounded expectations fail; friends grow cold; where lies the fault? Is none of it with you? The foundations of our worldly prosperity seem built on solid rock, but they slide from under us. We take to our hearts one dearer than our own life, and in an hour when we think not the bond is severed. Time and again the cradle is left empty; or a sweet and loving spirit emerges from it, and step by step grows toward clear companionship, when, as in a moment, God calls, and we are left in sackcloth and ashes.We murmur and repine,—God’s dealings appear so unequally distributed. In the same vicinity one family grows up unbroken, from babyhood into vigorous manhood, while another home is left desolate, and they cry out in their anguish, “I do well to be angry.” They forget that God deals with his children as they deal with the rich but uncultivated lands committed to their care. What is more beautiful to the eye than a large grove of wild orange-trees?—but how useless if left unimproved! Who complains when their beauty, for the present, is destroyed, the trees cut back and pruned till they stand bare and unsightly? But the buds and grafts which have been introduced will soon start into new life, the branches begin to shoot upward, and the sweet, pure blossoms and golden fruit will clothe the tree, which a grumbler would have thought wholly destroyed, with new beauty. The old beauty was defaced only that the tree should, in the end, become fruitful, and thereby more gloriously perfect than at first.
Yet we murmur when our wild orange groves are cut back, pruned, and grafted, and the “seedlings” from our nurseries transplanted. We forget that
“Sweet fields beyond the swelling floodStand dressed in living green,”
“Sweet fields beyond the swelling floodStand dressed in living green,”
“Sweet fields beyond the swelling floodStand dressed in living green,”
“Sweet fields beyond the swelling flood
Stand dressed in living green,”
which are made more gloriously beautiful by every rare and precious plant that our Father transplants from this beautiful but stormy earth to his garden,
“Where everlasting spring abides,And never withering flowers.”
“Where everlasting spring abides,And never withering flowers.”
“Where everlasting spring abides,And never withering flowers.”
“Where everlasting spring abides,
And never withering flowers.”