Part 1

Chapter 14,142 wordsPublic domain

HAVE YOU AN EDUCATED HEART?

_By_ GELETT BURGESS

Author of “Are You a Bromide?” “The Maxims of Methuselah,” “The Romance of the Commonplace,” &c.

BONI AND LIVERIGHT Publishers :: New York City

_Here the heart_ _May give a useful lesson to the head,_ _And Learning wiser grow without his books._ Cowper: _The Task._ ----------------------------------------------------------------------

THE EDUCATED HEART

NOW, Sadie, I knew, was temperamental. Sadie was sensitive. But surely there wasn’t quite enough in that dull musical comedy, that afternoon, to make anyone weep. But, as I had noticed Sadie dabbing at her eyes with her handkerchief, off and on through the first act, when the curtain went down, I demanded the reason.

Somewhat reluctantly Sadie handed me a letter. “Did you ever see anything as heartless as that?” she asked. “It’s about a package I sent to Eldora, last week.”

I read it. Then, uncertainly: “Why, I don’t know,” I replied; “seems all right enough to me. ‘Ever so much obliged for the birthday package.’ What’s the matter with that?”

“Why, she might just as well have said, ‘Yours of the 16th at hand and contents noted’!” And as Sadie snatched back the letter she was already emptying the vials of her resentment.

A while ago, it appeared, when she was visiting Sadie in New York, Eldora had raved over some fawn-colored gloves she had seen, with those awfully wide black stitchings down the back. Though fairly weak after a bad attack of the flu, poor Sadie had tramped through shop after shop, from 34th Street to 56th Street last week, to find those particular gloves; actually fighting for them, at the last, with a mob of wild women at a bargain sale. Well, Sadie had gone and bought a fancy box. Sadie had wrapped that package with neatness and with fondest care. Sadie had walked twenty-one blocks (so she said) to a Post Office. Sadie had stood there in line for half an hour, more or less, to have it weighed and insured.

“And I just loved it all--I loved doing it for Eldora,” wailed Sadie. “And now all she says is that she is ‘ever so much obliged’!”

“Oh, well,” said I loftily, “we oughtn’t to give things just for the thanks, you know.”

“Never mind the thanks!” snapped Sadie, “but did she _like_ those gloves? Good gracious, you want to know whether you’ve pleased a person or not, don’t you? Were they the right shade? Did they match her gown? Were they the size? Did they fit her? Has she worn them? Why, she might have said _something_ about them!”

“Well, at any rate,” I offered in appeasement, “she answered you promptly. That’s something. Why, loads of people don’t even acknowledge gifts at all, nowadays.”

“Yes, and that’s just the point,” declared Sadie. “I’ve no doubt she thinks she’s really quite polite and kind. Oh, she ‘means well,’ I suppose--they all do. But the trouble with Eldora is simply that she hasn’t got the Educated Heart.”

“The Educated Heart?” I queried, amused, “what d’you mean, the Educated Heart?”

THE lady was growing a little calmer now. “Why, I’ve called it that to myself so long that it seems as if anyone ought to understand. Well, it’s this way. You know you can usually tell an educated man, can’t you? There’s something about him that’s--oh, I don’t know--extra. Finish, it is, perhaps. Distinction, or something. He knows how to--”

“But the Educated Heart!” I insisted, “prithee, the Educated Heart!”

“Why, it’s just the same with hearts as it is with heads,” quoth my Mentor. “Some hearts seem to be self-made, you know--rough-dry--unvarnished--amateurish. And then some hearts are just as if they’d been to college, and been graduated in Kindness. They’ve got their B.K., or D.K., even, sometimes. Yes, I know at least one Doctor of Kindness. Why, I mean, oh, they have that extra touch of consideration--thoughtfulness, you know--imagination--and--oh, dear, why do we like to have flowers on the dinner table? They’re not necessary, of course; but doesn’t that extra touch always make the soup taste perfectly wonderful? It’s all the difference between just eating and dining. Ever see a woman without style jam on a beautiful hat and make it look like a waste-basket? Well, some people are like that, when they try to be kind. Style--that’s what it is! It’s just style in kindness that most people lack. Oh, it’s the rarest thing in the world--the Educated Heart!”

THE Educated Heart! Late that night, alone, I pondered it . . . midnight, and still it haunted me . . . the Educated Heart. . . . Superkindness, she might have called it. She might have called it Tact. Vainly, I tried to coin a new word for it. But at the end, Sadie’s simple term stayed with me--the Educated Heart. And so, using that test, I found myself at length classifying my friends.

And first of all came Crystabel. Last October, you see, I sent Crystabel a book. She acknowledged it, and promptly. But, two months afterward, hadn’t she--yes, she actually had--written me another letter, telling me what she thought of that book; and she proved, moreover, that she had read it--actually read it! Now, reader, I ask you: Isn’t that a strange and beautiful experience in this careless world? Yes, Crystabel had the Educated Heart.

Indeed, receiving, simply receiving, is one of the greatest tests of the Educated Heart. To such as possess it, thanks are something like mortgages, to be paid in installments. Why, after five years, Crystabel often refers to a gift that has pleased her. Yes, and lies about it, too, sometimes! Mind you, I didn’t say that Crystabel was always really sincere. I said that she was really kind. She may dislike that gift exceedingly; she may stick it up in the garret, or give it to her laundress. But Crystabel, having the Educated Heart, appreciates kindness in others. It is the motive for that gift she cares for, not its value; and hence her tactful, iterated gratefulness. But the others--oh, the thousand negligent others!

YOU give your friend a bottle of perfume. She thanks you, and pop it goes immediately into a bureau drawer, and she begins to talk about Harry’s wife. You give her a lovely veil, and, right before your incredulous eyes, she wads it into a bunch, jams it into her bag and takes another chocolate. That bunch of jonquils you brought the invalid--haven’t you seen it carried off into some far corner, as if it were deadly mandragora, or hustled into a miscellaneous mass of wholesale offerings and the subject hurriedly changed?

Last month I visited my young cousin Frizia. “Why, what a pretty jet necklace!” they all cried, at dinner. In pleased, self-conscious expectancy I waited for Frizia to say, “Oh yes, my cousin brought it to me.” Did she? No. Not a word except, “Oh, d’you like it?” I should have been grateful, I suppose, that my little cousin even wore that necklace.

Haven’t you, too, often moaned:

_I shot a present into the air;_ _It fell to earth, I know not where!_

WHY, there are innumerable ways of insulting the giver of a present. Listen, for instance, to this acknowledgment, from Zeroine: “All my life,” she wrote, “I have given away pink azaleas to my friends; and this is the first time I ever received one.” How’s that for egoism? Compared to her noble, extravagant and advertised generosity didn’t my one gift loom pretty small?

Rather clever she is, that Zeroine, a positive genius, sometimes--you know them--at making one wish one hadn’t tried to be nice to her. As the bride of one of my confreres I met her first in Paris. To celebrate her marriage I racked my brains for something charming enough with which to greet a new friend. Something not costly, you know, yet perfect and unique. Well, the loveliest things of that sort I had found, were the marvelous ribbon roses made by the Comtesse de Laumont for the benefit of the widows of officers. Every one is a work of art--a beautiful and faithful portrait of some particular rose from her own garden on the Marne.

To her house on the Avenue Malakoff I went (her only son, last of his line, had just been killed at the front, but her work must go on), and three exquisite William Allen Richardsons I picked out from all the rest. Late that night, too impatient to wait, through the narrow, shuttered, unlighted Paris streets I walked--no taxicabs in those war days--over the river to deliver my initiatory tribute at Zeroine’s hotel. And with it I left a letter telling her the roses’ pathetic story.

This is what Zeroine replied:

“Yes, I know the De Laumont roses. They’re lovely. I saw the wife of the Ambassador wearing one last week, and got the address. I have been intending to buy some of them; but you have kindly saved me the trouble.”

BUT for the most extraordinary misunderstanding of all that gifts should mean, I think I must, after all, award the prize to Mrs. Hilking. The Christmas tree that day at Mrs. Hilking’s was heavily hung with presents--piled deep on the floor they were. Mrs. Hilking was happy--oh, she was awfully happy! Didn’t she have good reason to be happy? “Why,” gurgled Mrs. Hilking, so proudly, “baby has received so many, many Christmas presents that I didn’t have to give him a single one myself!” Selah!

DO you begin to see, now, what Sadie meant by style in kindness? Style is what a smart hat has, isn’t it? It’s what an expensive motor car has--or a beautiful dancer. It’s the perfect technique of any artist--a successful clergyman, or a good novelist, or a clever burglar such as Mr. Raffles. In short, style is a combination of good taste and imagination. Then what is style in giving? To give what you’d like yourself may be kindness. But the Educated Heart isn’t quite satisfied even with the Golden Rule. It amends, or, rather, translates it thus: “Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, _were ye such as they_, do ye even so to them.”

But perhaps you don’t know what your friend wants. Ah, but the Educated Heart makes it its business to know, to remember, or to find out. “A man’s heart,” you know, “deviseth his way.”

One friend I have to whom I can’t express a taste or desire that isn’t treasured up against need. If I happen to mention liking a Japanese writing set, it is only a question of time when that set is mine.

I said to the Prandials once that I loved watercress, and lightly wished that I might have it for every meal. Never a meal have I ever had at the Prandials’ table, since then, without finding watercress bought specially for me.

D’YOU think it’s easy, this business of giving? Verily, verily, I say unto you, giving is as much of an art as portrait-painting, or the making of glass flowers. There really ought to be a four years’ course in the art of making presents in every college for those who are not born intelligently generous.

In one’s freshman year one would be taught, perhaps, not to present an $85 inlaid umbrella with a gold dog’s-head handle with rhinestone eyes to a gentleman of culture like Mr. Richard Mansfield, for instance, as was once done one Christmas by an ardent but unillumined friend. If a lady has saved your son’s life, the Educated Heart doesn’t reward her by offering her chastely appointed apartment a two-ton carved ebony chair upholstered in red plush.

Oh, no, it’s not easy. People nowadays haven’t the artless gratitude of that easily-satisfied girl who used to sing:

_“He promised to bring me a bunch of blue ribbons To tie up my bonny brown hair!”_

The people I know usually prefer to select their own ribbons--and gloves and boudoir caps and neckties--rather than have them chosen, however expensively, by--well, by those who do sometimes have the audacity to choose them for you.

Now taste, you will say, cannot be disputed. Each one has his own. Perhaps it can’t even be educated. We’ll see, later.

But imagination surely can be brought to bear. Suppose we suggest a few ways, in illustration.

ARE you sailing for Italy? Ah, it isn’t the basket of fine fat fruits that brings the tears to your eyes, nor the flowers with trailing yards and yards of red ribbon--all that’s mere kindness, ordinary everyday kindness. Even the Vanderbilts can do that. But it’s the things--oh, it’s the things Mr. Rockefeller never would think of--it’s that little purse full of Italian currency, bills and small change all ready for you when you first trip ashore at Genoa. It’s the little nest of spools of colored silk Minnie made for you to catch up the first threatened run in your stocking. I may, oh, yes, I may forget the three hundred dollars you lent me that time I was broke; but the little corkscrew you so thoughtfully added when you gave me that bottle of your pet malt extract--that I shall never, never forget!

No, he didn’t have much style, I admit, to his dented, dusty derby, poor old Westrose, but, God bless him, his heart was certainly up to date. He may have got a lady’s coat upside down occasionally when he helped her on with it--but he understood the Fourth Dimension of Kindness, all right. Never a friend of his wife’s did he ever puffingly put aboard a street car, but he’d tuck, apologetically, into her hand the nickel to save her rummaging in her bag.

Real elegance, the gesture of inherent nobility, I call that. It’s like the flourish to the signature of Charles Dickens. It’s kindness with a kick to it. In short, it’s the manner and custom of the Educated Heart, that makes you turn over at night and decide to add a codicil to your will--why should brother Fred have it all?

Well knows the Educated Heart that the doctor’s clients usually pay slowly, and itself therefore pays without delay. Which lover has the Educated Heart--he who orders the florist to send, every day, five dollars’ worth of flowers, or he who himself selects and presents a single rose? Ask the sweetheart--she knows that

_“’Tis not so much the gallant who woos, As the gallant’s way of wooing!”_

* * * * *

“I’m so sorry I couldn’t send you anything this Christmas,” said Millicent, “but I’ve been awfully hard up!”

Too hard up, in fact, to afford two cents to stamp a letter, sending her love!

* * * * *

AND now, I beseech you, consider the usual Christmas present. No one but a boor would present a diamond wrapped in a scrap of newspaper, would he? No; and so the most trivial of gifts, when sent by a civilized donor on Christmas, is, by universal practice, carefully wrapped in a pretty paper, red or gold, is tied with a fancy ribbon and decorated, mayhap, with a sprig of holly.

Now, that’s what I mean by the Educated Heart. That package is symbolical of what all friendly acts should be--_kindness performed with style_.

Is it sufficient, then, simply to offer your seat in a street car to a woman? The merely kind person does that. But he does it rather sheepishly. Isn’t your graciousness more cultured if you give it up with a bow, with a smile of willingness? Besides the quarter you give the beggar, can’t you give a few cents’ worth of yourself, too?

So everything can be done beautifully by the Educated Heart, from the lacing of a shoe so that it won’t come loose, to passing the salt before it is asked for. Even if you say only “Good morning,” it can be done pleasingly. Observe how the polished actor says it, with that cheerful rising English inflection. But the ordinary American growls it out with such surly downward emphasis that in London he is apt to be asked, “What’s the matter, old chap--headache?”

Why, merely to speak distinctly is a great kindness, I consider. You never have to ask, “What did you say?” to the Educated Heart. An old maid I knew once confessed that the only proposal she ever received was from a timid, low-voiced suitor, whose question she failed to hear.

“Lucky escape,” we all agreed. “You might have married him and been tormented all your life by his mumbling!”

OF course you’ve heard that “he gives twice who gives quickly,” but how about the giver who gives but half his gift? It isn’t the procrastinator, I mean. The half-giver is one who “wearies in well-doing,” stops part way on the road to kindness, with the goal plainly in sight. If you want to have the Educated Heart you must dot all the i’s and cross the t’s. Otherwise your gift is apt to be as the grapefruit without the sugar.

HALF giving! Instances of such gold-plated parsimonious generosity I could cite all day--from the old-fashioned “thrifty” housewife, who used to cut all the buttons off the clothes before she gave them to the poor, to sweet, sympathetic Oval, who visited an invalid.

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” she said, “I bought the loveliest bunch of roses for you, but I forgot them--left them in the hotel.” And Oval, after that (although the flowers of course never came), fully expected to be credited with a kindness.

Oh, you know them. You must know them! The half-giver who invites his party to supper after the theatre, but fails to reserve a table. How surprised and apologetic he is to find all the places taken! The gent who escorts his lady to the theater, too, and, when they come out, exclaims: “Gee, doesn’t this fresh air seem good, after that stuffy house! Let’s walk a way!” How bright his smile! Truly the heart, as well as the clothes, can be shabby-genteel. That kind of liberality he has that many women possess. Oh, yes, they insist upon paying for their half of the dinner, but they always forget to share the tips!

You remember those Liberty Loan subscribers who used to say, “I’ll subscribe one thousand if you’ll take another!” That’s the way these half-givers usually leave you to complete their gifts or go and get them or something--to pay some part of the price yourself, anyway, in trouble or in work.

Dear Alfredine was kind enough to bring her friend from abroad several pairs of earrings. But, alas! as they were made for those grandmothery old pierced ears her friend had to pay a jeweler to have them fitted with screw fastenings, just nine dollars, a sum she could ill afford--at least for earrings.

* * * * *

“I’d rather not try, please,” said Alice. “I’m quite content to stay here--only I _am_ so hot and thirsty!”

“I know what _you’d_ like,” the Queen said good-naturedly, taking a little box out of her pocket. “Have a biscuit?”

* * * * *

KIND you may think you are, and never know you are not kind. And worse than all the rest are those who force their presents on you.

My indulgent uncle, once, presented me with theatre tickets to see Bernhardt. Now it so happened that day that at the last moment I had the opportunity to meet a man, a famous man, whom I had long wanted to know, and who proved to be of the greatest help to me.

When I told my uncle, was he pleased to hear of my good luck? Not at all. Never did he forgive me for not using his tickets.

How many men who have taken the pains to secure a friend a good position are pleased to hear that he himself has discovered a better one? Only those with the Educated Heart. Like my uncle, most care more for that self-flattering glow of kindliness than for another’s best happiness.

Who ever really forgave you for being ill and missing a dinner engagement? You had no right to be ill. You gave your kind hostess a great deal of trouble and disappointment with that ptomaine poisoning of yours!

“Be happy _my_ way!” says the parent “Marry this nice, rich man I have chosen for you--not the poor fellow you love!” But no, putting a cushion behind a man in an armchair isn’t kindness unless he happens to want it there. It may make him uncomfortable.

And dear old country grandmother--who used to urge on us, nay, force on us that third generous helping of pudding. Grandma’s heart was big enough--but it wasn’t quite the right shape.

WHAT’S the rarest thing in all the world? Intelligent sympathy. Why? Well, each one of us is working out his own evolution, I suppose, and our own interests must be paramount and absorb us, or we lose in the race.

Still, it is rather pleasing to recall, in pessimistic moods--upon receiving a letter written in lead pencil, for instance, or one undated, or with no address, or, most irritating of all, with an illegible signature--it is even encouraging to recall that it isn’t always these inconsiderate, unimaginative, egoistic people, after all, who succeed most brilliantly in the world. Sometimes a good, plain writer, desirous of making it easy for his reader, gets to the top, too, God bless him! And my faith in kindness as a policy is restored, too, by the glaring fact that of all my acquaintances the one least to be suspected of an inferiority complex is the only one who begins a telephone conversation by decently introducing himself: “B. Ganning talking!” instead of peremptorily demanding _my_ name, like a census man breaking in the door.

As many of our acquired habits, like walking, for instance, have been passed from the domain of the conscious to the subconscious and become automatic, so, perhaps, with the behavior of the Educated Heart. You set it in the direction of true kindness and courtesy and it will function without deliberate thought.

And, alas, _vice versa!_ It steers as well towards selfishness.

AND now, right there, before I find more fault, do, please, get my point of view. Am I fastidious? Why, all I ask is an unadulterated drop of your emotion. Am I querulous? Why should I be? No one is important enough to hurt me. Surely the very inadequacy of their feelings proves these skim-milk saints to be unworthy the time and energy it takes to resent or protest. Am I ungrateful? Not if you have done the least friendly act and done it wholly. Do I demand too much pay for my favors? If I long for a little of the old-time courtesy to color life, must you accuse me of preferring the glib, lace-sleeved, powdered-hair flattery, of the French salons?

Not at all. These modern, downright, shirt-sleeved ways of ours, open-air, golf-playing ways, man-and-woman, give-and-take ways--making up the jocose and slangy warfare we call friendship, nowadays--they’re well enough, so long as the thought beneath is honest. But mere words, words, words--aren’t you, too, sick of them? Don’t you want deeds or nothing?

Actions speak louder. . . .

FOR the fact is that such thoughtfulness, such consideration as I desire is not merely decorative. It is the very essence and evidence of sincerity. Without it all so-called kindness is merely titular and perfunctory. Tact is what makes kindness real, makes it effective; just as the perfume proves which is the genuine, and which is the artificial violet.

Suppose I propose your name for membership in my club. Have I done you (or my club) any real service, unless I also do my best to see that you are elected? So then, if I go to every member of the committee, if I urge all my friends to endorse you, is that a quixotic feeling for punctilio?

I think not. It is merely the completion of my regard for you. It is like salt--“it’s what makes potatoes taste bad, if you don’t put it on.” It is a guarantee of my true feeling. It is the hug without which the kiss means nothing.

NEITHER do I insist on obedience to custom. You may violate any of the folk-ways, for all I care. If you refuse to take off your hat to ladies, I shall think only that you do not feel yourself bound by the elaborate rules of romantic love concocted by the lazy troubadours and sentimental chatelaines of the Middle Ages. Offer your left hand to me, if you like, I care not. We carry no daggers now. I know that most of us would prefer to dine with a polite murderer than with an honest tinsmith who eats with his knife. But, by that same token, I know that all such artificial distinctions are not based upon kindness. They are merely the unwritten laws of society.