MRS. HART'S IDOL | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Nov 18, 1880

MRS. HART'S IDOL.

"Won't you come and drive this lovely afternoon, Annie?" said Mr. Hart to his wife as he was rising from the dinner-table.

"Oh, I can't," said Mrs. Hart, in a tone between the positive and the complaining. "I must wash the dishes, and I've got to bake, and I've some sewing I have planned to finish this week, and it's impossible."

"Oh, let the work go, Annie," said Mr. Hart good-naturedly. "We can buy bread for once, and the sewing can wait, can't it?"

"No. I have planned to have it done this week, and I can't possibly have it round afterwards."

"I wish you would go, really, my dear," persisted Mr. Hart. "I have to go out to the Red Mills, and we could call on Mrs. Barry and see how the old lady is. She thought so much of your mother, Annie, and has wanted to see you so long. It seems unkind not to go. She wont always be there, you know."

"I wish you would not tease me, John," replied his wife with a shade of irritation. "I have my work to do, and must do it. I can't help it if my duties keep me at home."

"Then I must go back to the old subject," said Mr. Hart, smiling and keeping his temper in a very wonderful manner, considering that he was a man arguing with his wife, "and say that I wish you would keep a girl. You know that I can afford it quite well, and I would so much rather not have your time taken up in washing dishes. Come, Annie, say that you will begin to look out for a girl to do the work, so that I can have my wife's society now and then."

"Now, John, I thought we had settled that question," replied Mrs. Hart, the more positively that some inward feeling which she was resolved not to recognize as conscience was worrying her with certain half-heard whispers. "I hate having a girl. You know how particular I am, and there never was a girl yet that could understand my ways and do my work as I want it done. I should be miserable to have my pantry get into the state a girl would have it in a week. As long as I can do my own work I can have my house respectable, and when I can't it will be time enough to talk to me about having help."

While the discussion had been going on Mrs. Hart had been gathering her dishes together on the waiter, and she now carried them out into her spotless kitchen and began to wash them with a certain air which, perhaps, it would be harsh to call one of self-conscious virtue, but which it is not easy to describe by any other term.

"Anne will work so hard," Mr. Hart said, with a little sigh, to Aunt Susan Willis, who had been a silent listener to this little discussion. "I wish she wouldn't. It isn't as if there was any need of it."

"Anne is very neat and particular, thee knows, John," said Aunt Susan, in a tone so carefully regulated as to suggest the idea that the speaker was trying to keep some inward feeling from outward manifestation.

"Yes, I know; but, Aunt Susan, it does seem to me as if I would compound for a cup out of place on the pantry shelf or even a little dust now and then, if Anne would but give me a little more of her society, or would go out a little more to cheer and encourage others. She does not return any calls, she can't find time to go anywhere with me, not even to see her dead mother's dear old friend. But there," said Mr. Hart, catching himself up with a sort of shock as he realized that he was almost complaining of his wife to a third person, "I don't mean to find fault. Anne is a good wife and a good Christian. I only wish she'd spare herself a little more;" and with that Mr. Hart went away.

Presently Mrs. Hart came in and sat down to her sewing,—an elaborate pair of pillow shams, ruffled, tucked, embroidered. If there be other decorative verbs applicable to pillow shams they were applicable to Mrs. Hart's.

By-and-by there went past the window a low basket carriage in which was a lady and as many children as could be packed into the little vehicle.

The lady, who was prettily dressed, nodded, smiled, and waved her hand as she went by.

"I see," said Aunt Susan, looking out, "Cousin Alice has taken those two little Elberts that have been sick out for a drive with her boy and girl. It will be a treat for them."

Something in Aunt Susan's remark some way seemed to annoy Mrs. Hart. Her needle flew faster.

"Alice can find time for such things," she said quickly.

"She's looking better since she came home from New York," continued Aunt Susan.

"Such a quantity of finery as she brought home," remarked Mrs. Hart. "Really, I do think Alice is not consistent. She's too much taken up with dress and society, more than I could see would be right for me to conform to the world."

"What does thee mean by the world, Anne?" asked Aunt Susan, who had been brought up among "friends" and often used their fashion of speech.

"Why, what does any one mean, aunt? I mean gayety and trifling and dress and amusement, things, I am thankful to say, I never had any taste for."

Aunt Susan smiled over her knitting.

"And does thee think a Christian ought to give up all these for Christ?"

"Certainly, aunt; don't you?"

Aunt Susan was silent, and took up a dropped stitch.

Mrs. Hart looked up a moment.

"Now, aunt, I know you think I am to blame some way," she said, a little inclined to be injured. "You may as well say what you have on your mind."

"I only want to ask thee a question or two, Anne. When a person gives himself to Christ ought it to be wholly or in part only?"

"Why, Aunt Susan, what a question. We ought to consecrate ourselves wholly to Him, of course."

"And thee thinks it is a sin to spend too much on ourselves and make idols of our own pleasures and pursuits?"

"Certainly I do," said Mrs. Hart, "and really it has troubled me to see how much Alice dresses lately and how much she goes about. She and Charley are driving round with the children half the time, and her dresses—really I do think it's sinful extravagance. It really has troubled me to see how close Alice and Charley are getting to the world."

"Thee thinks then," said Aunt Susan, laying her finger lightly on the pillow sham nearest to her, "that silk ruffles are worldly but cambric ruffles are pious?"

The color rushed over Mrs. Hart's face.

"This isn't for myself," she said stiffly; "it's for the house."

"To spend one's time, then, in decorating one's body is sinful, but in decorating one's house is righteous?" continued Aunt Susan placidly.

"Well, Aunt Susan, I can't bear that everything about my house should not be as nice as other people's."

"That's why thee will do all thy own work, I suppose."

"Yes. John worries about it. And he wants me to have a girl, and to go out more and return calls. But I can't. It would just make me miserable to have my kitchen not just exactly so and things as girls will have them. I dare say I do think too much of it, and am too particular," continued Mrs. Hart, in that tone of complacency with which people sometimes confess their pet sins; "but when I have planned to do certain things I must do them. I know it annoys John sometimes, but it's my way and I can't help it."

"That is to say, child, to put it in plain words, thee must please thyself, no matter who suffers, and thee says that thee can't help it. Anne, did thee ever try to help it—once in all thy life?"

Mrs. Hart put down her work. She had a great mind to be very angry, but she could not. A light seemed suddenly to shine into her soul to show her that something she had hitherto cherished as an adornment and a glory was in fact something too closely resembling that ugly little idol selfishness.

"I think you are rather hard on my weakness, Aunt Susan," she said with a trembling voice, "if it is a weakness."

"Anne, is thee really calling this thing by a right name?" said Aunt Susan gently.

"We all have our ways, I suppose," returned Mrs. Hart.

"And when thee gave thyself to Christ, Anne, did thee arrange with thy blessed Lord that thy 'ways' and thy 'weaknesses' were to be left to thyself and were not to be transformed by his Spirit where they were not conformable to him and his example?"

Mrs. Hart said nothing in reply and Aunt Susan went on quietly with her book and her knitting. Presently, Mrs. Hart, saying something about a spool of thread, rose and went out of the room. She did not go for the thread, however. She went up to her own chamber and sat herself down and thought.

Was it possible that all her persistence in doing her own work, her scrubbings, her scourings, her window-washing, her arrangements of dishes and cups and platters, her beautiful hand-sewing, on which she had so prided herself, and on which she had built up such a sense of her own superiority, were after all sacrifices to the idol of self, instead of righteous self-sacrifice? She had saved for her husband the cost of a servant when he had wished to keep one; she had made his shirts when he would have preferred to buy them; she had spent hours in cleaning, and scouring, and sweeping, and baking for him, when he would have preferred to have her drive with him or read with him, or receive or visit his friends; but had she ever really cheerfully given up her own way?

She thought of old Mrs. Barry now with an actual pang. Had she only been willing to give up for a little time some of her "plans," some of her cherished "ways," she might long ago have cheered and comforted an aged sister in Christ, her own dead mother's dearest friend, whom she had put aside that very afternoon for the sake of the pillow shams, which, having resolved to finish, she could not put aside.

Mrs. Hart was a proud woman, and she had built up unawares a wall of self-righteousness against which she had leaned for support, and in her self-satisfaction she had forgotten to depend on the Rock that was higher than herself.

It was hard for her to confess to herself that she had been selfish, pharisaical, unkind; but she was a truthful woman, and was really desirous to follow her Saviour.

The struggle was a hard one, but she sought for help and conquered. In the course of an hour she came down again, the traces of tears on her face, but with them a certain softened, transformed expression that made her seem ten years younger. Just then Mr. Hart drove up to the door, having come back to the house for his gloves.

"Can you wait till I get my things on, John, dear?" said Mrs. Hart in a low voice. "I have been thinking it over—and I should like to go with you—I ought to have gone to see Mrs. Barry before."

"Of course I can," said Mr. Hart, who was one of the best tempered men in the world. "Besides, it doesn't take you an hour to put on your bonnet."

Aunt Susan watched them drive away with a smile.

"John," said Mrs. Hart, after they had gone about a mile, "I have been thinking about what you said—and—and I think I will look out for a girl."

Poor Mrs. Hart! No one but herself knew what it cost her, that resolve to introduce into the temple where she worshiped the goddess of order with solemn rite and sacrifice that outer barbarian, the average "girl."

"Will you?" said Mr. Hart, surprised and delighted. "O Anne! You don't know how glad I am to hear it."

"I—I think I haven't been right, John," said Mrs. Hart, humbly enough. "I think I have been selfish and unkind—and you've been very patient with me. I'll try not to be so fussy if I can help it—any more."

And from that day to this Mrs. Hart has never, even to herself, pleaded "her way" as an excuse, and I am happy to say that she so far conquered her "weakness" as not to fret or to be absolutely miserable even though she never found a servant who would scrape out the corners of the kitchen floor with a hair-pin.

The man or woman who has learned to say of any unchristlike habit, "It is my besetting sin," instead of "It is my way," "my weakness," "my natural disposition," has made a great advance on the road to the heavenly kingdom, an advance which it is a priceless advantage to have gained, even though the path lay through the Valley of Humiliation.—Christian Weekly.