p. 12 | ON TEASING by Eleanor A. Hunter

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Aug 19, 1889

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 15, No. 32.

ON TEASING.

By Eleanor A. Hunter

It seems to me that one of the most annoying traits of character which one can possess is a disposition to tease, for when that disposition is freely indulged there is nothing that can cause more unhappiness to others. To be obliged to spend one's life with an inveterate tease, is like living in a bramble bush, or suffering constantly from the torture of innumerable pin-pricks. To be sure one pin-prick is nothing much, but when one has to bear ten thousand of them it is quite another matter.

"Pshaw!" says the tease, "I did not hurt you any. I wouldn't make such a fuss about nothing. I did not mean anything. I was only teasing."

Exactly. And it is just because there is no meaning in it, nor necessity for it, because it is only "teasing," that poor, tormented, insulted human nature cries out sometimes in a passion against it. If the tease cannot find anything else to annoy, he will torment an animal or a little child, and he thinks it is fun; but it is the most malicious, most dreadful, and most dangerous fun in this world. I once knew a lady who was literally almost frightened to death by a miserable man who followed her home through the twilight; she reached shelter, and dropped fainting upon the floor, and the thoughtless fellow who occasioned the distress explained that "he just followed her to tease her, because he knew she was timid, and he did it just for fun." He found that it was not so funny as he waited while she hovered between life and death, the victim of his wretched joke.

I think that a genuine tease is always a coward, for he never attacks his equals; his victims are the helpless animal, the little child, and the timid woman. If you will notice, it is never the smallest boy who teases the larger one. And then a tease can never bear to be teased himself. Nothing makes him angrier than to be paid back in his own coin.

But really, the most distressing thing about the whole matter, is the effect which the habit of teasing has upon the nature of the one who indulges in it. A confirmed tease becomes positively heartless. He can look upon mental or physical distress quite unmoved.

If there is a boy who reads these lines, who likes to tease his little sister until she runs in tears to her mother, or who torments some little fellow at school just to see him flush crimson and bristle with impotent rage; if you want to make a man of yourself, stop it. For it is a most ignoble and unmanly thing to take delight in causing pain to any living creature, especially if it is smaller and weaker than yourself.—Eleanor A. Hunter, in Christian at Work.