GOOD EXCUSERS.
AX.. LL good lovers are not good haters. On the contrary, some are good excusers. It would seem natural that this charitable habit should be an acquired thing, the outcome of instruction, experience, circumstance; but we do not think that this is usually the case. Good excusers are born. We met one not long ago of nine years old. She was excusing a little dog grown old and short in the temper. " I do not call him really crusty," said she; " he has snapped at me some- times, but not very often, and it was partly my fault. I think only a very disagreeable person would call a dog crusty if he had only bitten them twice." It is a gift of the gods, this instinct to excuse.. A. child who could thus excuse a peocant dog is almost sure to excuse her parents, and later on her husband, and later still her children, or fate for giving her none, or other people's children for not being hers. She is born with the philosopher's stone in her pocket, or perhaps we should say in her mouth, and it will be worth many silver spoons to her. The place she is forced to live in will always have its advantages; the people she must live among will never have too many faults, or be too dull, or too gay, or too prejudiced. She will always be better off than most people and never have any enemies. Even the weather will never be really against her. She will at least give it credit for the beat intentions—" doing good to the country" or being "wanted." All her misfortunes will be qualified, and the qualification will be as important as tke positive part of them.
The good excuser is very often a yielding person, but be is by no means craven. He looks down upon the world with a smile—but he looks down upon it. There is no one whose attitude to life is so persistently de haul en bar. The High- lander whose ancestor had the supreme privilege of hanging within his clan has no prouder position than he or she to whom Providence has given the privilege of excusing the world. Yet the good excuser does not make always a good ruler—perhaps he never makes one. Providence does not give all privilege even to Nature's governing class. For one thing, an exceedingly charitable man finds it difficult to excuse himself. If a man's attitude towards hie neighbours is one of excuse, he must often accuse himself; and a ruler should not be prone to self-accusation. He needs self-confidence. As well as that he needs precision, and the excuser's tempta- tion is to slackness. He cannot bear to make a fuss about something which does not much matter. In spite of this, his underlings do not always like him; indeed, he may get a reputation for being "uncertain." If he is conscientious, be will force himself to take notice of offences which his natural disposition would lead him to condone. He will occa- sionally make penal something which he has already shown himself to regard as venal, and his subordinates may come to look on Lim as a hard man because he acts wholly on principle and without the touoh of nature which heartfelt condemnation of a wrong act often gives to a benevolent tyrant. A man who brings a railing accusation to support his ideas of discipline is better liked by the victims of discipline than the man who has nothing but the rule itself to plead against its breach. Again, a good excuser is often ineffectual in a position of authority because he has no great sense of perfection. He is not always com- pletely clear in his own mind what ought to be. He sees all
the difficulties of attainment ; he cannot always see beyond them to the goal. No; the good excuser is a born subordinate. To be able to excuse authority is one of the most beautiful and rare attitudes of mind. It is the very essence of loyalty, a quality which, while it ensures discipline, utterly prevents servility.
It is an open question whether it is easier to excuse the faults one shares, or those into which one never falls oneself. Most men know their own faults, but also they know their temptations. Another man's temptations only a good excuser can adequately allow for. Where temper is concerned men are very often hard on each other. It is only the good- tempered, we think, who readily excuse the bad-tempered. Two fiery people never get on together. On the other hand, the apprehensive and over-anxious like one another, and often feel extreme optimism to be a sort of offence—a proof of hardness and want of delicacy of feeling. There is no doubt that people who have suffered a great deal of pain feel in some measure divided from those who have not; and this is so even when the pain is not such as can lend dignity, or is such as even the victim himself suspects to be self-inflicted. It is a sad fact, but some people do not know how to excuse happiness, just as others do not know how to excuse misery. One must be a very good excuser if in moments of real dis- tress one can exonerate the man who forces a merry, prosperous, and ebullient personality upon one. There are those who can be glad that any one is untouched by care, but they are very good people and exceptionally detached. We think impatience with assertive happiness does not become blameworthy unless it becomes habitual. Then it is in such a terrible degree its own punishment that it is not impossible to forgive the kill- joy. After all, he is mostly a better person than the man who finds depression inexcusable, and he is far less common. People who will stand by a friend when he is poor or when he is in the wrong, who will forgive him hard words and self- interested actions, who have an excuse ready for almost every- thing that he can do, will not excuse him for losing his resilience. It is amazing bow much those who cannot bide sadness aro left to themselves. In the minds of many conventional people grief has rights, but they must be claimed within very strict limits. To " dwell upon it" is always spoken of as " wrong "; and if the " wrongdoing " is persisted in, something akin to dislike arises in the mind of the people who cannot excuse depression. Loss of youth and physical attractions does not even to a woman entail the defection of friends, which loss of spirits will almost inevitably bring to a person of either sex. The world values its equanimity very highly; it will risk almost anything first. Only very good excusers will take their chance of con- tracting what is, after all, a contagious complaint. To excuse themselves men call depression a vice, drawing aside, if not with a sense of virtue, at least with a comfortable sensation of Laving been just if severe.
But to go back to the question of excusing one's own faults in others. There is, we think, only one serious defect of character the victims of which have invariably charity towards their fellow-sinners. Mean people never condemn meanness. It is about the only good thing that can be said for them. They like to see other people pinching and sparing, and they do not in the least admire generosity. It fidgets them like a bad habit. They do not like to be obliged to watch an open- handed person. They would sooner see him put his knife into his mouth than his hand into his pocket! Inaccurate speakers (we do not mean liars) forgive the weakness in their friends, and even like them for it; but an idle man does not forgive idleness unless he wants a playfellow. Indeed, we think it is not too much to say that unoccupied persons make more fuss about the wickedness of wasting time than they do about any other sin whatever. Many industrious men are often very good excusers, and one never hears them make a wholesale accusation of laziness. It may sound cynical to say so, but an industrious man is in the best position to know that industry is more a matter of expediency than virtue ; and, to do him justice, he does know it, and takes singularly little credit to himself.
Good excusers are commoner, wo believe, among women than men. We are inclined to think that a Woman cannot be supremely attractive in character -unless she is a good excuser. This is not true of men. The man who always hesitates to condemn is almost sure to be an agreeable man, and may be a delightful one; but there are many delightful men of whom such a thing could never be said. Must a good excuser be something of a sentimentalist P We do not think so; but he must be something of an artist. He must see things as they are, but yet—with a difference. Ho must not bo altogether a realist. He must have a passion for goodness, and he must see it everywhere—sometimes where very little of it exists. He must alter proportions a little to produce the effect he is seeking ; and he must ruthlessly subordinate such small facts as he has no use for in his picture. This is easier to a woman than a man, though, except where the art of life is concerned, women are seldom artists.
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