p. 492 | Her One Talent by Margaret E. Sangster

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Aug 13, 1885

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 11, No. 31.

Her One Talent.

By Margaret E. Sangster

SHE is neither beautiful, graceful, nor specially accomplished. She is past the first rose-bloom of early youth, and her means is limited. Of the higher education, such as girls receive now at Wellesley and Vassar, she knows nothing, for, having been a delicate child, she studied in a desultory fashion with her father at home, picking up such crumbs of learning as fell from her brothers' table, when they were preparing for college.

Ten years ago, when she was married to Tom Dean, everybody said it was a wonder that Tom had fancied that plain little thing—Tom, who had only to choose, and he might have had the loveliest bride in three townships.

"What a pity," thought the wiseacres, "that young men will be in such haste! The other Dean boys have married so well, too!"

Ten years ago Lottie Dean realized that she was extremely unlike her brilliant husband. She did not, in fact, do herself justice, in her modest self-deprecation. She knew she had not Leila's charm of manner; that when Gertrude, with her rare coloring and starry eyes, came into the drawing-room, she herself grew shadowy and pale by contrast; and when Margaret, with her culture and wide, keen intelligence, was present, she, silent little Lottie, was more than ever a timid mouse in the corner. Yes, Lottie concluded, George and Harold and Louis had all more reason to be proud of their wives than Tom had to boast of his; yet here the brown eyes would grow soft and misty, and the sweet look on the sallow face well-nigh transfigure it; she loved Tom, and Tom loved her, and she would try, please God, to make him happy.

Ten years ago Lottie Dean had bemoaned to herself her lack in any striking peculiarity, any distinctive talent. "Some have so many," she thought; "I have not even one. Not one to fold away in a napkin, and take out, now and then, to look at. There never in this world was a creature so stupid as I."

Meanwhile, distressing as was the thought of her lack of ability and attainment whenever she dwelt upon it, she did not often sit down and brood over it sadly.

"There's one comfort, I can keep house tolerably," she whispered to herself, as she planned the delicate, dainty meals, abundant, well cooked, and well served; or as she arranged the homelike apartments, where no speck of dust or grimy spot was ever suffered to remain, but which still were not aggressively and forbiddingly clean—which invited a tired man to rest, and were not too fine to be littered with books and papers, if it pleased him to bring work home from the office, and write in the evening, with the little wife sitting by, her knitting or fancy-work in her hands.

Margaret, Gertrude, and Leila all had more trouble in the home management than Lottie had, for Lottie had the gift for guiding the house without friction, and attaching her warm-hearted Irish girl to her with the grappling-hooks of real affection. And this is, in these days, a gift to be grateful for.

Tom observed one day, as he tucked his wife's little hand under his arm, on their way to a concert:—

"There's one talent you have, my darling, beyond any one else in the world; it's the talent of having time enough for everything."

The question of the talent had often come up between them, and was almost the only one on which they had a decided difference of opinion. So sure was the husband that Lottie was endowed beyond most of her sex, that he regarded her diffidence as a positive merit, and surveyed her with ever-increasing satisfaction, while, from the vantage-ground of a home so entirely his ideal that he accepted it as though it were a suburb of paradise, which by no possibility could do aught except grow constantly more beautiful, he went forth to the competitions of life, steadily successful in all his enterprises.

Society, observing that each year was bringing some new honor to Tom Dean, was pleased to see its predictions fulfilled, regretted that he had not the knack of making money faster, but admitted that a man couldn't have everything, and still held firmly to its early opinion—that he would have risen higher with a more aspiring wife to help him. Society was mistaken.

The quiet wife, who had time to love him, to share his hopes, listen to his views, consult with him as to his plans, and make his life supremely happy, was an element in his success which counted more largely than even the husband knew.

For good husbands, being only human after all, are very apt to take good wives for granted, and it is not often in this world that any truly unselfish person gets all the credit to which he or she is entitled. Tom was better than the average of his sex.

He had characterized Lottie's talent happily, and definitely, too, when he said she always had time for everything.

It is rarer than you may imagine, unless you have given your attention to it, to find in this hurrying world a being of the elect few, who is at work without haste, but with an air of repose; who can pause in any engagement to listen to another's story of gladness or of sorrow, and who has a heart touched to so responsive a key that sympathy in a friend's good fortune is as ready as pity for a friend's calamity.

Then, too, to give freely of your best, without everlastingly boasting of the matter; to be kind and merry and cheerful, without making yourself the pivot of every conversation, and furtively seeking compliments; to please as a flower does, unconsciously; the power to be sweet, without carrying round a label marked suggestively—all this demands spiritual grace of a high order; and this Lottie possessed.

Granting that a woman begins life in her girlhood on this plane, and in her wedded life she does not lower her standard, she must of necessity develop into something stronger, better equipped, and every way more charming in middle life than she was in the immaturity. If, starting from her own home, she fulfills every obligation there, blithely and fully, not like a drudge, but gaily, she gradually widens the circle of her influence. She will, by degrees, become a social power.

This has come to pass in the case of my friend. I happened into her home one Thursday evening, lately, and as I was admitted I heard the hum of fresh, girlish voices, and saw the table in the sitting-room covered with pretty bits of feminine work. "Lottie's Sunday-school class," I said to myself, and presently I was in the midst of the bright circle. No, it was not her class; not, at least, the class I was accustomed to seeing round her, with eyes intent and heads bent eagerly forward, while she unfolded the lesson.

She presented me to the young ladies, and I gathered, not from anything in her manner, nor in theirs, but from scraps in the conversation, that they were saleswomen in the neighboring stores, just around the corner from Lottie's quiet home, and that three or four worked in factories down town. They were much interested in some stitches she was teaching them, and when by and by she went to the piano, played and sang, they ceased talking and listened in well-bred silence, and with what looked like intelligent pleasure.

After a while they had a little treat of cake and fruit, and at ten o'clock they said good-night to their hostess and each other, and went home.

"Lottie Dean, will you explain this proceeding?" said I, gravely.

"There is nothing to explain, dear. It's only a happening. I was shopping in R's one day, and I couldn't help seeing how pale and fagged out those poor girls were. I made acquaintance with one or two, asked them here, and they invited the others. The thing has grown. It does not trouble Tom, for I have them only on evenings when he has to be out, and I am making my pretty house of use to girls who haven't anything very pleasant to go home to at night. And," pursued Lottie, shyly, but with a brave uplifting of the eyes, "you know I always did think it was at least as Christian a work to keep young girls from temptation as to save the poor remnant of their ruined lives when once they had fallen."

With which sentiment I fully agree.

"Mrs. Dean cannot be induced to take part in our temperance work," had been said to me of Lottie, only a few days earlier, and I had replied that perhaps, though she took no large share in such a reform, she was in reality doing her part. I knew that Tom would be annoyed to have his wife in any way prominent or conspicuous before the public, and that Lottie was wise enough to respect his feeling in this matter.

But here she was, very unobtrusively doing much truer and more efficient service than many a woman eloquent in speech and "gifted" in prayer. Saying nothing about it, too! It was not Lottie's way to sound a trumpet before her.

Altogether, when I think of the sick-beds by which this little woman sits, the heartaches she soothes, the confidences of which she is the trusted recipient, the happy home life which is hers, and the good she is doing silently, I am quite sure her one talent is bearing interest for the Master.—Margaret E. Sangster, in Christian Union.