p. 171 | REMARKS UPON OTHERS

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Apr 14, 1881

REMARKS UPON OTHERS.

There is a practice common in many households and among familiar acquaintances which ought to be thought about and then done away with forever. It is not only contrary to good sense, but a due regard for politeness and the observance of good manners demand that it shall not be indulged in. It is the practice of remarking upon each other's looks. It is bad enough in the family, where the questions and the searching glance are the expression of kind feeling, unless, indeed, the apparently anxious inquiries as to how you have slept, and how you are feeling this morning, are about as meaningless as the remark upon the temperature; but it is absolutely insupportable from any one but a very dear friend. Who has not had the experience of going out for a walk, or into a neighbor's house, and being greeted with the assertion that she is not looking well? “Seems to me you are pale to-day,” or, “I think you are! You have been sick, haven't you? You don't look as you did last summer.” The truth very likely being that you are stronger and weigh more than at that time. It is a great confession of weakness, but I have gone home from a walk out of which the sunshine has all been taken by some such thoughtless remark, and have looked in the glass to see if I could discover the sign of some fatal disorder. “John is not well this summer, and I am troubled about him; but don't tell him he doesn't look well,” said John's wife to a friend; “he is so nervous that it makes him downright ill to be spoken to in that way.”

It certainly is not kind, and it may be very injurious. Suppose that he does look wretchedly, it does not help the matter to force him to dwell upon it. St. Paul evidently knew what he was about when he repeated that great lesson of his, all embodied in the word “rejoice,” and it seems we need to have it shouted down to us from the hill-top to-day. Were it not for the fact that we are constantly meeting with expressions of the kind mentioned, it would seem that we do not need to be told how necessary is cheerfulness in the family, in the street, and wherever we may be. A generous concealment of our own trifling ailments and a laudable desire to help others to bear their troubles, and possibly to forget them, ought to characterize our every-day life. The people who deal so lavishly in commonplace phrases of pity, remind one of the little boy of three years old, who upon being told to be silent unless he had something to say, looked up to his mother with wide-open, innocent eyes, and said, “But, mamma, I want to talk when I haven't anything to say.”—New York Evening Post.