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Arthur Leland
by
He glanced at the house; he knew his wife was in it, engaged in her morning duties; gentle, lady-like, loving him so dearly. He glanced at his sobbing child, and saw how healthful and intelligent he was. He glanced over his garden, and orchard, and lawn, and saw how pleasant was his home. He thought of his circle of friends, his position in business, his own education and health. He saw how much he had to make him happy; and all jarred and marred, and cursed by his miserable fits of irritation; the fever, the plague increasing daily; becoming his nature, breathing the pestilent atmosphere of hell over himself and all connected with him.
As he thus thought, his little boy again forgot himself, and strayed with heedless feet toward bis father. Leland dropped his hoe, reached toward his child. The little fellow threw up his hands, and writhed his body as if expecting a blow.
“Willie,” said the father, in a low, gentle voice. Willie looked up with half fright, half amazement. “Willie, boy,” said the father in a new tone, which had never passed his lips before, and he felt the deep, calm power of his own words. “Willie, boy, don’t walk on pa’s plants. Go back, and stay there till pa is done.”
The child turned as by the irresistible power of the slow-spoken, gentle words, and walked back and resumed his seat, evidently not intending to transgress again.
As Leland stood with the words dying on his lips, and his hand extended, a sudden and singular idea struck him. He felt that he had just said the most impressive and eloquent thing he had ever said in his life! He felt that there was a power in his tone and manner which he had never used before; a power which would affect a judge or a jury, as it had affected Willie. The curse cursed here too! It was that hasty, nervous disposition, which gave manner and tone to his very public speaking; which made his arguments unconvincing, his pathos unaffecting. It was just that calm, deep, serene feeling and manner, which was needed at the bar as well as with Willie. Arguing with that feeling and manner, he felt, would convince irresistibly. Pleading with that quiet, gentle spirit, he felt would melt, would affect the hearts as with the very emotion of tears.
Unless you catch the idea, there is no describing it, reader. Leland was a Christian. All that day he thought upon the whole matter. That night in the privacy of his office he knelt and repeated the whole matter before God. For his boy’s sake, for his wife’s sake, for his own sake, for his usefulness’ sake at the bar, he implored steady aid to overcome the deadly, besetting sin. He pleaded that, indulging in that disposition, he was alienating from himself his boy and his wife; yea, that he was alienating his own better self from himself, for he was losing his own self-respect. And here his voice sank from a murmur into silence; he remembered that he was thus alienating from his bosom and his side–God!
And then he remembered that just such a daily disposition as he lacked was exactly that disposition which characterized God when God became man. The excellence of such a disposition rose serenely before him, embodied in the person of Jesus Christ; the young lawyer fell forward on his face and wept in the agony of his desire and his prayer.
From that sweet spring morning was Arthur Leland another man; a wiser, abler, more successful man in every sense. Not all at once; steadily, undoubtedly advanced the change. The wife saw and felt, and rejoiced in it. Willie felt it, and was restrained by it every drop of his merry blood; the household felt it, as a ship does an even wind; and sailed on over smooth seas constrained by it. You saw the change in the man’s very gait and bearing and conversation. Judge and jury felt it. It was the ceasing of a fever in the frame of a strong man; and Leland went about easily, naturally, the strong man he was. The old, uneasy, self-harassing feeling was forgotten, and an ease and grace of tone and manner succeeded. It was a higher development of the father, the husband, the orator, the gentleman, the Christian. Surely love is the fountain of patience and peace. Surely it is the absence of passion which makes angels to be the beings they are.
Men can become very nearly angels or devils, even before they have left the world.