Part 2

But if you, however brilliantly, make fun of your wife, if you humiliate an inferior, insult a debtor, if you promise and keep not your word, if you fail to flavor your kindness with sincerity, if you give only the counterfeit money of politeness--then I perceive that you have not the Educated Heart. Indeed, the Educated Heart is rare enough anywhere; but it is found quite as often among those who know not your artificial social code, as it is with those of the six-fork dinner.

AHA! Now you think you have me in the old conventional corner by the altruistic what-not, and the goody-goody seashells, eh? Copybook stuff. Mass morality. Herd-minded optimism that finds good in everything and why find fault--“it’s not constructive.’’ But, no--I’m not trying to prove “’Tis only noble to be good,” but only that to be good, or even pleasing, is a severe aesthetic problem. Well, I know that

_“Hearts just as pure and fair_ _May beat in Belgrave Square_ _As in the lowly air_ _Of Seven Dials,”_

but, at the same time, one of the highest orders of the Educated Heart, I must tell you, is found in the criminal classes.

You stagger? Yes, I repeat: in the crook himself.

Doesn’t the confidence man, for instance, do everything in the power of his trained imagination (in his first approaches, at least), to make his victim happy? Doesn’t he study his come-on’s every whim and taste? Is there anyone more tactful and polite, more considerate and anxious to please than a shoplifter? Oh, charming, truly charming, thoughtful and heart-wise must he be who marries eleven wives; even though afterwards he murders them for the insurance money and buries them all in the cellar. He knows how to anticipate his victim’s least desire.

Well, why not be as shrewd as the crook, then, yourself, to discover what will please and satisfy the friend you love? Get-rich-quick Wallingford had a perverted heart, ’tis true, but it had taken its degree in the Art of Pleasing.

Not much like your millionaires who ask their poor relatives, “You don’t mind sitting in front with the chauffeur, do you?” or give their country cousins horrible little black hats with a stick-up in the back!

MUST you dance with all the wallflowers, then, and always be nice to old ladies? Well, no--I won’t go so far as that, although that, too, would certainly show an Educated Heart. It would prove that you had imagination enough anyway to put yourself in another’s place.

No, all I ask is that, when you try to do a favor--to be kind--you do it to the full length of the rope. Don’t send your telegram “collect,” or in just ten carefully selected words. Economize elsewhere, but add those few extra phrases that make the reader grin and perceive that you cared more for him than you did for the expense.

No one with the Educated Heart ever approached a clergyman, or a celebrity, or a long-absent visitor with the shocking greeting: “Oh, Mr. Spoop, you don’t remember me, do you?” No, he gives his name first. No one with the Educated Heart ever said, “Now do come and see me, sometime!” Well he knows that that merely means: “Don’t come at all.” The Educated Heart’s way of putting it is apt to be, “How about next Wednesday?”

And strongly I doubt even if the Educated Heart is ever tardy at that appointment. It knows that even if only two minutes late a person has brought just that much less of himself. Oh, he came, yes--and we put over the deal, after all. But forever you will remember that he made you wait.

YOU understand, don’t you, that I’m not trying to discuss unkindness, or even impoliteness? Nor merely legitimate half-kindness do I mean. It would be absurd to assert that one shouldn’t say, “Here, you may have this hat--I don’t like it.” But wouldn’t it be still more absurd to call that sort of thing kindness?

No, what I impugn are thoughtless attempts to be kind. Slipshod sentimentality masquerading as kindness. Near-sighted benevolence--generosity run down at the heels, like the husband who conceives himself to be liberal because he gives his wife money--though she always has to ask him for it.

WHY, even in conversation there is plenty of chance for the Educated Heart. Of course, unless you are a moron, you must have found out by this time that very few people ever really listen. They are usually merely waiting for a chance to say something themselves. It may be laid down as an axiom, then, that no habitual talker can have the Educated Heart. Even though these wordy pests go through all the motions of listening, say “Oh,” and “Ah,” and “Really, is that so?” and “How awful!” the moment you close your lips they pounce upon you with their own narrative.

Or if, peradventure, they do listen, is the story of your trials or disappointments heard with real sympathy? Not often. Your illness? Your divorce? Your losses? You are merely providing them with a more or less amusing entertainment.

Why, one of the best ways to make yourself popular--an infallible way-- is to tell a story upon yourself. Give yourself the worst of it, and they’ll all roar.

But did anyone ever laugh with joy when you informed him that you had made ten thousand dollars, or won a beauty prize? How faint, oh, how pale are their congratulations! The lips move, but does the face really glow? Tell them you fell down two flights of stairs, though, and you’ll see a fine abandon of mirth. They’ll slap you on the back, by Jove, and invite you to dinner, so that you can repeat it to the wife.

YOU think I’m fooling? Not at all. A psychological fact it is, that, in nine cases out of ten, if you tell of an accident of which you’re the victim, your hearer will instantly laugh. Just try it yourself, and see.

Oh, of course, if you paint a vivid enough picture, if you say “I had three ribs and a shoulder blade broken and four others were killed,” then possibly you may awaken their sympathy. But the ordinary tale of suffering has pretty hard work getting more than half an inch inside people’s ears. Women love to tell of their operations, I hear, but do they love to listen? Doesn’t everyone smile when you say you haven’t slept a wink all night? Yes, all, save the one with the Educated Heart--and he’s your sweetheart, probably.

Queer, but the world, alas! is very hard of hearing. Unless people see the blood actually streaming, every sufferer is considered merely as a comedian. The banana-peel joke is still typical of our reactions to another’s woes.

AND so, it is my fearful opinion that but seldom has the Educated Heart a keen sense of humor. Didn’t an eminent mid-Victorian advise, “Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever!” Aren’t you already thinking over your own friends?

Am I not right? Is it the sparkling bright apostle of pleasantry to whom you go to borrow that ten dollars, or to the serious, kindly dub who never sees the point? Which dentist is most apt to drill that horrid millimetre too far into a shrieking nerve--he who tells you diverting anecdotes, the while, or the solemn conscientious drudge?

To whom do you tell your troubles-- the agile wit, or the bromide-minded, solid, respectable Philistine, your uncle, with the shoestring tie? No, no; oh, no, my friend, you can’t be too quick on the comic trigger, if you would have the Educated Heart!

There is “a time to weep, and a time to laugh,” said the Preacher; the Educated Heart knows well how to control his mirth.

YOU call once or twice at the hospital. Do you ever call again? Not unless you have the Educated Heart. Yet the patient is still perhaps quite as ill. The plain truth is, if you must know it, most people really dislike illness. It bores them. It interferes with their happiness and convenience. It thrusts upon them, too, a disagreeable burden of sympathy.

But, one there was--d’you remember? will you ever forget?--who used to bring that cute scrapbook, every morning, pasted in with funny newspaper items of the day’s news. One there was who wrote you letters every day. One who rescued the clock that _always_ had something in front of it, so you couldn’t see the time, who was careful never to hit the bed, who talked to you, yes, to poor sick _you_, instead of to the distinguished caller who happened to be present.

But still I insist I don’t mean mere kindness. Others were kind to you. They bought you things. But such acts as these required more thought and invention than the others spent, when they sent the jelly and champagne.

And oh, what do these Uneducated Hearts do at your first brave smile (though the effort kills you), at your first would-be, will-be cheerful letter, or at your first timorous step on crutches? They beam. Oh, how they beam! “Oh, you’re all right now, aren’t you!”

It may pain you for months to breathe, you may limp on that broken ankle to your grave--but it’s much more convenient for them to have you well again.

And so, isn’t it lovely you’re cured!

ASK any invalid. Ask poor Luraine. “I’m afraid I’ll have to wear glasses,” wept poor Luraine, after that accident when her eye was injured. “Well, my dear,” said her would-be comforter, “I do hope you’ll get some of those smart tortoiseshell goggles--they’re so becoming!” And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what often passes for sympathy.

Ask any partially deaf person who is the cruellest of her would-be friends. Isn’t it that kind and thoughtless one who says, so sweetly: “Why, I think you get along awfully well, you know. Really no one would ever know you can’t hear!” No one but the Educated Heart ever knows or cares for the tearful nights of wild revolt, the days and years of stoic suffering that remain, just the same. Yes, just the same.

BUT let’s pass, now, to the last cage in our menagerie. Here’s a dangerous galravaging beast--one of those terrible creatures who “mean well,” even while they rend you. One historic remark of this emotional reptile there is, that in the annals of mental torture, surpasses in heartlessness all other expressions of good intent. Oh, I have said it--you have, too, I suppose. May God forgive us both, for there are those who never, never will!

Galna it was who has dramatized it for me best. A dreadful suicide it was, no horror lacking. Galna, alone in the house--alone, save for her maid and that shocking wreck of one she had loved. And in her anguish, her despair, her bewilderment, the telephone bell rang. Lo, Mrs. Spick, kind, effusive Mrs. Spick, had rung her up to coo conventional condolence.

“And now, if there is anything I can do, Galna,” she concluded, “be sure and let me know!”

Ah, my friend, sometime you, too, must have suffered--suffered and known not where to turn; and, as sure as most hearts, alas, are ignorant, sometime you, too, must have heard that frightful phrase-- that mockery of friendship. The very epitaph it is upon the grave of affection: “_If there is anything I can do, be sure and let me know!_”

But as Galna, dazed, lonely, aching, staggered back to her room, behold, upon her bed she saw an unfamiliar thing. Tear-blinded, she groped for it. A hundred-dollar bill!

“Why, where did this come from?” she asked, wondering.

“Oh, Miss Felice left it there,” said her maid, “she thought perhaps you might happen to be short of money.”

“Felice?”

“Yes, she’s downstairs now, helping wash the dishes and putting the parlor to rights, and sending telegrams.”

Ah, Felice needed no one to “let her know” what to do. She had imagination. She had the Educated Heart.

For the Educated Heart always knows. “He seeth with his heart.” The language of suffering, ordinarily, can no more be learned without experience than can the language of Mars; but upon some blessed few, in this world, thank God, has fallen the Gift of Tongues.

TRULY, as Sadie said, nothing is so rare as the Educated Heart. And if you wonder why, just show a kodak group picture--a banquet photograph--a photograph of a class. What does every one of us first look at, talk about? Ourself. And that’s the reason why most hearts are so unlearned in kindness. Yet none of us likes himself to be forgotten or neglected. Almost any wife, I verily believe, would prefer actual rudeness to having a husband pass over her wedding anniversary unnoticed. Even a blow would prove that she was of some importance in his life.

So it isn’t always the big, climactic misfortune that we suffer from most. We can rally, after we’re stunned, and go on, somehow. But it’s the little stings that we can’t forget. It’s because of the Uneducated Heart that love-mad women kill.

“Why don’t you get a smart hat like Carrie’s, dear? She’s always so well-dressed!”

Yes, and because of the Uneducated Hearts of their wives, husbands grow seedy, silly and old.

Why, one can tell, almost, by the looks of a man--his posture, his very clothes--whether or not his wife truly loves him. For many a wife, dubbed by his undiscerning friends a shrew, a harridan, has proved her real interest in him by so ballyragging him for his faults that he has, despite himself, improved to meet her criticism, become ambitious, become persevering and successful--while as many others have been slowly kissed and praised into an intellectual apathy; most affectionately murdered by the Uneducated Heart. Ah, ’tis not only cats and lap dogs that are killed with kindness!

There is another side to the Mary and Martha story. I know them well, those two sisters. Mary loves Martha well, she will tell you, and be shocked at your question. But dear Martha is, before her time, an old woman, round-shouldered, bowed down by caring for others. In the years, has Mary ever said, “Straighten up, dear! You are growing crooked.”

Not once. Her own head high, she walks beside a sister almost deformed--whom, with an Educated Heart, she could have saved from ugliness.

AND by this time you’ll understand of course that the Educated Heart isn’t really educated at all, in the sense that it has had to learn how to be kind. It merely is wise. Its gesture is instinctive, its knowledge innate. But, you ask, can’t the uneducated heart be instructed? Don’t the churches and Sunday-schools teach How to be Good? How about the books of Ethics? Ah, the trouble with them all is that they teach what to do, but not how to do it.

And the trouble with this little study will be, perhaps, if you and I don’t look out, that it will educate us as to others’ faults but lead us to forget our own. It’s so easy to be petulant and critical; it’s so easy to deny that we ourselves are morally round-shouldered. If you have even the rudiments of a heart culture, long before this you will be saying to yourself:

Have _I_ an Educated Heart?

SO, if you are not content with increasing your chest expansion or your biceps, if you want to enlarge that mystic organ whence flows true kindness, you must cultivate your imagination, you must learn to put yourself in another’s place, think his thoughts. There is but one substitute for imagination, and that is experience. If you have deeply suffered, perhaps you may have found from your very pain, what real kindness is. Like Confucius you may have learned politeness from the impolite. And if you haven’t--well, I scarcely think it should be necessary for you to break a leg or inoculate yourself with the germs of typhoid. You might do a great deal, really, by exercising just your common sense.

Take a little thought, therefore, upon what style really is. In costume, you’ll see that style is not what most people, but what the best people, wear. If you wished to be strictly up to date, then, you’d go to the leading shops for your clothes, wouldn’t you? You’d haunt the Opera, the smartest assemblies, the most aristocratic homes, to see what fashionable people selected. If you wanted to learn modern surgery you’d visit the clinic of the most eminent surgeon, wouldn’t you, to observe his technique?

THEN, if you desire to be really kind, elegantly kind, artistically kind, why not seek the highest authorities on kindness, and emulate their expert taste and method? Wherefore, let me recommend to you the greatest examples of altruistic love, past masters of sympathetic consideration, whose kindness is directed by an inspired imagination.

Two perfect exponents of the Educated Heart there are--only two, but I am sure you have known them. The mother, who sees her child as truly a part of herself; and the true lover whose imagination is fired with romance. In those two is most perfectly manifest the love which passeth understanding. Forever, unconsciously, they demonstrate the radiant truth:

“The heart hath its reasons, which the reason knoweth not of.”

THE END