The Clergyman's Wife and Other Sketches/The Trustful
THE TRUSTFUL.
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he trusting, as a general rule, are the trustworthy. Those who "think no evil" are usually those who least deserve that evil should be thought of them. Ignorant of heart-treason, never looking for wrong from others because never doing wrong to others, never doubting because never deceiving, trustfulness is inherent in their natures.
Suspicion that vaguely roams abroad is the offspring of Deception, hidden in the generating warmth of our own hearts at home. An unconscious judging of others by ourselves, a measuring by our own height, and coloring by our own complexion, actuate the whole universe. There are no foibles which we so quickly detect in the concealed depths of other spirits as those with which our eyes are most familiar when their mental vision is turned inward.
Lavater warns us to "shun the man who never laughs, who dislikes music and the glad face of a child." The counsel implies that mirth, and harmony, and innocence are strangers to such a being. Upon the same principle should we avoid the man who mistrusts the motives of his fellow men, who always suspects that selfishness is the secret spring of every fair-seeming action, who mistakes courtesy for policy, who disbelieves in the genuineness of Virtue until she has passed through some fiery ordeal with unscathed garments, and thus proved her supernal origin.
"Treat your friends as though they might one day become your enemies," is the advice of these graduates of wisdom's worldly school; but he who darkens the genial sunshine of friendship by the shadow of this anticipated enmity, is incapable of becoming a disinterested friend. His admission of the possibility of change in another reveals the instability of his own sentiments.
When we speak of trusting natures we do not mean temperaments that are simply credulous, that, without reflection or discrimination, impulsively accept all offered hands, and believe all uttered professions, from a sort of quick-swallowing credulity, as capacious as Garagantua's mouth. By the trustful we designate those who are not given to causeless misgivings, who confide, where they love, with an unquestioning, uncalculating simplicity, a gentle reliance, which sometimes evokes sincerity even out of falsehood. Their trustfulness is often an unconscious shield, which turns aside the weapons of the wiley, and makes Deception blush and lay down her arms, as a giant ashamed to waste strength or stratagem upon defenceless infancy.
True, these trusting natures suffer much in life's combat. Disappointment deals them crushing blows; they find many of their idols made of clay; many a seeming oak, against which they lean, proves a broken reed; many a flower, cherished in their bosoms, exhales poison. They shrink, appalled, from the harsh lessons of Experience, who teaches them how few in the world resemble themselves; yet their very trustfulness is its own compensation.
It is the province of poets to condense truths in music that haunts the mind with its ringing changes. Among these haunting truths, wedded. to melodious verse, are Fanny Kemble's lines:
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