Impedimenta We Meet With
By Julia H. Johnston
The use of the word “impedimenta” in designating the traveler’s baggage, is very significant. The term really means hindrances, and especially those that hinder the feet. The hastening pilgrim often finds his progress stayed indeed by hindering trunks and bags, because of delays in transportation that make him wait when he wishes above all things to speed on. The literal traveler is not the only one thus hindered. The pilgrim along the daily life-path often finds himself encumbered and impeded. Possessions are to be desired and to be valued, but when they multiply till they overflow all reasonable space, when the things cease to be treasures because there is no place for them, then they become impedimenta. They are hindrances to be removed with resolute hand. One peculiar snare of womankind is the tendency to keep things. It is not necessarily for sake of hoarding that one refuses or forgets to part with her accumulations, but because of the instinctive reluctance to throw away or to be rid of superfluous belongings. The old tradition that a thing kept seven years turns up useful, is partly to blame for many a moth-eaten store in rag-bag and attic. ‘Maybe I shall want this sometime,’ is the reflection that stays the destroying or the distributing hand, and the ‘things’ are put away again after each house-cleaning rummage. Then, there are the papers that heap the library table and overflow through the house, to be piled up in closets and on shelves, waiting to be looked over and read again, and scrap-book pieces cut out from them. The fancy that this will ever be done—any of it—is usually a delusion and a snare. It is as much as mortals can do to read once the papers that come to an ordinary household. Who will ever reread them? Pity ’tis, ’tis true. Some of the best and most inspiring of stirring prose and rhythmic verse float by in the drift of print, and the temptation is strong to island it for a while, in vain hope of going over it again. But the time does not come, and by and by the accumulation is appalling. It would seem often as if the feet were indeed hindered by such impedimenta. It is hard to make a path through. What is the remedy for the keeping habit? How shall possessions be kept from becoming impedimenta? The only way is to clear up as we go. It takes a deal of determination to do this. The clothes and “pieces” that we may want sometime, but probably never shall, should be relinquished, and given away where they will do good, and while they may. There must be discrimination in such distribution, of course. We are not to make ourselves destitute of all bits and relics, but the congestion must be relieved, the really hindering “things” taken out of the way betimes. There may truly be much sentiment in connection with what has outlived its usefulness, but the thing itself should not be allowed to become a disgrace to its associations. A grimy piece of bric-a-brac or an outworn bit of decoration may have been purchased with pleasure, and may have held its place with pleasant memories, but this only entitles it to that destruction which is honorable retirement, instead of being thrust into a corner to gather more dust and look disreputable still. If things can be bestowed upon waiting and worthy recipients before reaching dilapidation, how much good they may do! There are always those somewhere within reach who have very few “things.” As for the periodicals, we ought, every one of us, if possible, to keep a paper mission in active operation. There are hundreds of places to send reading-matter. We need to be very resolute with ourselves, and silence the suggestion that “another time” we will read them over. We know we won’t, because we can’t. Let us save at once those treasures too precious to let slip, and pass on the rest with promptitude and regularity. It is vandalism to destroy good papers. Time, trouble, and postage spent in passing them on, will be found a good investment. Thus our hindrances may become helps.—Julia H. Johnston, in Northwestern Christian Advocate.