The Burden of False Pride
By Eleanor Kirk
"May I say something to you now, Miss Branscombe?" the patient asked, half an hour later. "Anything you please, dear," said her companion. "I thank you very much for your obedience." "I never obeyed any one before," said the young lady, with a smile that transformed her face, "and perhaps it will be the last time, as well as the first," she added, archly, "but what did you mean by saying that—that—your—your deformed back was the best load that you could have been called upon to carry?" "Because it was the heaviest that could have been given me—the hardest for my pride to bear," was the quiet answer. "Hadn't you a right to your pride, I should like to know?" "I should have said false pride, Miss Edgerton," added the nurse. "My knowledge that a humpback would render me forever unattractive, as far as external charms go; that I could never be admired, flattered, and sought after; that my wealth, social position, and accomplishments could avail nothing in this direction, drove me to the depths of despair. What had I done that I should be thus afflicted? This was the burden of my cry month in and month out." "Well, what had you done?" the sufferer inquired, sharply. "I am sure you were as good as your companions, who never had such trouble to bear." "There are none of us very good," the nurse answered, serenely, "but I have learned to be happy in exact proportion to my usefulness, and am just so much better than I used to be, as an industrious woman, with a conscience, is superior to a butterfly. Without my humpback I should have lived a butterfly's life, for it was the only existence I cared for. Do you think I should have cared to alleviate human sorrow if I had not been sorrowful myself? Do you think I should have loved you to-day if I had had a symmetrical figure? No, dear, I was so constituted that I should have spent my time in adorning it." "But why shouldn't you have adorned it? Is it not right to look pretty?" "It is our duty to make ourselves as attractive as possible, but not to ignore the adornment of the spirit in our desire for physical beauty." "But how many do it!" said the sick girl, her face all aglow with a new interest. "Sooner or later the cross has to be borne," said the nurse. "If you will take the trouble to look about among your friends and your mother's friends, you will see that very few are permanently happy. There is a loving and a powerful hand at the helm, Miss Edgerton, and discipline and development in one form or another comes to us all; and you may be sure, my dear, that to have full redemptive power it must touch the tenderest, the most vulnerable spot." "But I don't want to be disciplined," the sufferer protested. "I know I could be just as good a woman with a straight back as a crooked one." "You think so, but the choice is not left you. You must now be just as good a woman as you can be with a crooked back," was the smiling response; "and the first step towards bodily health and spiritual growth is to accept the fact of your incurable deformity; the next to make the spirit as straight and as strong as possible. You have been suddenly and awfully wrenched from the place where you thought you belonged." "But my niche suited me," was the desperate reply. "But you did not suit it, or you would doubtless have remained there," said the nurse. "You will have a better place, Miss Edgerton, a nobler destiny, I have full faith to believe." "Then you do not think there can be such a thing as a humpbacked butterfly?" the sick189girl asked with tearful eyes and quivering lip. The nurse leaned over and took the sobbing girl in her strong, loving arms. "It is impossible," she said, softly. "A butterfly could not stand it," and now her own voice broke a little and it was a moment before she could go on. "There are no mistakes made in the distribution of burdens, my dear, you may rest assured. And you will find that you are strong exactly in proportion to the weight of your cross." "No one ever talked like this to me before," said the sick girl. "They have said everything else, but none of it ever made the least impression." "My child, when the time came, God sent you a nurse who had suffered and rebelled in like manner as yourself, one who had found her only development out of her humpback. You needed the sympathy of suffering, and others will require from you this sympathy, and out of the travail of your own soul shall you help others to bear their burdens." Like vital seed in a fruitful soil were these words. The advent of this nurse into this benighted household worked almost a miracle, so firm was her faith, so unflinching her courage, so untiring her patience. And her prophecies were all fulfilled. Chastened and developed by her supreme suffering, Julia Edgerton was able to bring to others that for which they hungered and thirsted—the bread of immortal life.—Eleanor Kirk.