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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 17

Ripples on the River

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Ripples on the River.

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Straws will mark the strength, fleetness, and direction of the current. A little thing may be the index of important forces. The engine driver looks at a bubble rising or sinking in a tube, to ascertain whether or no there is any danger of the boiler bursting. The clerk of the weather office inspects a little barometer to determine whether he shall hoist the storm-drums all round the coast, and put the seamen on their guard. The young lady looks at her ringlets in the glass, and according as they are limp or crisp, she makes up her mind whether or no she will accept or decline her invitations for the day. A schoolboy who wants to coax a sovereign out of his father, if he be a wise and calculating boy, will go down to the cook and enquire what the old gentleman has had for dinner for the three days previous, and will suggest the omission of pastry from the menu, and the substitution of farinaceous compounds for a short time before urging his petition. In the choosing of friendship or partnership, a little observation of the straws upon the surface is wise and prudent If a mistress does not want to have a lot of sauce from her housemaid, she will fight shy of a page 4 pert snub nose turned up at the end. If a young man does not wish to be for ever quarrelling with his wife, he will beware of thin white lips and a shrill voice. If a young woman objects to be beaten with the poker, or to have the household effects transferred to avuncular custody, or, in other words, taken to the pawnshop, she will not give any encouragement to the suit of a man with a red nose. If you have any dislike to enduring the weight of a man's foot upon your, neck, and being turned into a slave, be distantly polite to people who are always blandly smiling. The doctor feels the pulse, and looks at the tongue; and by these signs he discerns health or disease. And so may you feel the moral pulse, and look at the tongue of character, and draw your conclusions accordingly. A man who does not look straight at you, but who looks down at your feet, or at the crown of your hat, or fixes his eye on the middle button of your waistcoat when he speaks to you, gives signs which should put you on your guard. Too much bowing and scraping is a suspicious ripple on the surface. There are one or two words which are apt to float on the stream of a man's conversation, which "are like straws by which you may discern the drift of the tide of character. If profane words are very apparent, swearing, and using the name of God in vain, you should look upon such, words as pieces of wreck strewed upon the surface, to indicate that the good ship, Reverence, has struck upon the rock of recklessness, and has foundered. If lewd and coarse expressions are always floating upwards, that, too, is a sign that the craft of a good conscience has met with dirty weather, and has been drifted upon the wind of foul breath to jeopardy. Words are ripples on the river. Honest words are the signs of a fair tide. Profane, loose, impure, flattering words, are the sign of a chopping sea. There is danger in them. page 5 Character and principle are indicated by words; and the tide of a man's "walk" may be judged by the tide of his "conversation." There are two other little words which are also very significant. One is a word of only one letter, which many of us find it only too easy to use; the other is a word of only two letters, which we find it equally difficult to use at the right time. The first word is the word "I." When preachers preach, when speakers speak, when candidates canvass, when companions talk, there is one ever-recurring I, I, I, in the discourse of many which would make one think they were like the Cyclops, with one hugh eye in their forehead, or like Argus, nothing but eyes from head to foot. If it could only be said concerning such, as we used to cry after each other at school, "There you go with your I out," it would be an immense improvement. But if we find it only too easy to interlard our converse with this word "I," we find it far too difficult to make prompt and proper use of the monosyllable "No." The distinct, prompt, and outspoken pronunciation of this one little word is a ripple on the river, which indicates moral courage. It is a short word, but it may be mispronounced. It may be pronounced broadly, "Noa," as a ploughman would speak it, or through the nose, as a Yankee would speak it, or in a velvet whisper, as a prude would speak it; but these are not the mispronunciations that we mean. If it is the harsh and churlish refusal of an appeal to true compassion, if it declines a favour which might be rightly granted, if it is spoken so as coldly to chill and freeze a rising hope, then it is not a gentle and hearty ripple on the surface of the stream of a deep true character, but the harsh brawling of a shallow brook over the jagged bed of a hard and stony heart. Hardness of heart and shallowness of mind generally go together; and when a man is a churl, he is page 6 generally at the same time pretty nearly a fool. But it is the right toning and using of this word "No" which is so difficult. We often have the amiable weakness to say "Yes" when we mean "No;" and having spoken in haste we repent at leisure. For my own part I speak feelingly on this matter, for I feel it is my besetting sin. But I must not begin by putting the "I" too much into my discourse, so we will look for other awful examples of this dread of saying "No." Within the circle of a mile round this place there are doubtless hundreds of women who would give the world, if they had it, to recal one word they spoke years ago, and put a "No" in the place of a fatal "Yes." That "Yes" has been the signal for a savage and barbarian onslaught upon their peace, their safety, and their pleasure. It has been the key which has unlocked the door of poverty, privation, violence, and shame, and let them in a; sweeping flood upon the home and heart It has been the licence for blows, for bruises, for spoliation, for outrage, for contempt It hats been the striking of a match by which hope, and home, and love, and happiness, have been burned upon a common pyre in a common holocaust. The one word "Yes," has made a hell of home, a pandemonium of life. "No" would have spared it all. The fatal "Yes" was spoken when you gave your coy assent to the falsehood of some drunken perjurer who called himself a man, and promised to protect you. If graves could speak, or depute their messengers to tell a tale, the cemeteries of London would send forth their phantoms by the tens of thousands, till the air was thick with the ghosts of brokenhearted wives, who died in wretchedness and Wight, because they had not learned in time how and when to answer "No." And their appeal to the young girls and women of to-day would thrill with an unearthly pathos as they adjured them to ally page 7 themselves only with honest, thrifty, striving, sober men. If such a spectre could speak to you young women at the moment that some intriguing sot is waiting your reply, it would implore you by all that fear can shrink from or that hope can wish, to speak out bravely "No." But you need not wait for spectres from the grave, you can see ghosts enough at our back street cottage doors, you can see them lolling from garret windows, crawling out of dark alleys for a breath of air, or peering from cellars at the stinted light; you can see them hiding from husbands whom they dread more than death, while they long for some kind pestilence or fever to carry them away; and in the squalor of these living ghosts, in their wan faces, in their hollow eyes, in their smothered misery, in every bruise upon their outraged forms, you may read an appeal more passionate than if it had been shrieked by maniacs, "Say 'No.' Unclasp that miscreant's arm from round your waist; don't listen to another honied word. When he says he will protect, he means that he will slowly murder you. He is a, drunkard, and you had better marry death in some other form, than make a bigamous alliance with both death and hell at once." O that young, women knew when to say "No," when Hymen's torch is flamed before their eyes; When Cupid comes dressed as a link-boy to drive you to an unholy altar, drive him off, and say that darkness is better than the light of hell-fire, and that you want no such blotchy guide to lead you on. To say "No" at the right time is a thing we all need to learn.

"Would ye learn the bravest thing that man can ever do?
Would ye be an uncrowned king, absolute and true?
Would ye seek to emulate all we learn in story
Of the mortal, just, and great, rich in real glory?
Would ye lose much bitter care in your lot below?
Bravely speak out when and where 'tis right to utter 'No!'

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Learn to speak this little word, in its proper place;
Let no timid doubt be heard, clothed with sceptic grace;
Let thy lips, without disguise, boldly pour it out,
Though a thousand dulcet lies keep hovering about.
For, be sure your hearts would lose future years of woe,
If your courage could refuse the present hour with 'No!'

When temptation's form would lead to some pleasant wrong,
When she tunes her hollow reed to the Syren's song,
When she offers bribe and smile, and our conscience feels,
There is nought but shining guile in the gift she deals;
Then, oh then, let courage rise to its strongest flow;
Show that you are brave as wise, and firmly answer,'No!'

Hearts that are too often given like street merchandise—
Hearts that like bought slaves are driven in fair freedom's guise.
Ye that poison soul and mind with Perjury's foul stains;
Ye who let the cold world bind in joyless marriage chains;
Be true unto yourselves and God; let rank and fortune go—
If love light not the altar spot, let feeling answer,'No!

Men with goodly spirits blest, willing to do right,
Yet who stand with wavering breast beneath Persuasion's might?
When companions try to taunt, judgment into sin;
When the loud laugh fain would daunt your better voice within—
Oh! be sure you'll never meet more insidious foe;
But strike the coward to your feet by Reason's watch word—'No!'

Ah! how many thorns we wreathe to twine our brows around,
By not knowing when to breathe the magic of this sound!
Many a heart has rued the day when it reckoned less
On fruits upon the moral, 'Nay,' than flowers upon the 'Yes
Many a sad repentant thought turns to 'long ago,'
When a luckless, fate was wrought by want of saying,'No!'

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Few have learned to speak this word when it should be spoken;
Resolution is deferred, vows to virtue broken.
More of courage is required, this one word to say,
Than to stand where shots are fired, in the battle fray.
Use it fitly, and you'll see many a lot below,
May be school'd and nobly ruled, by power to utter, 'No!'"

There is a river of human life ever flowing through the gorged channels of this great London, with many a ripple on its surface which bears a thought and a lesson to the heart and mind as it purls along; If you were to stand for an hour on yonder bridge, and look at the myriad faces as they pass, you would read more change and variety in the river that flows over, than in that which flows under the bridge. There goes the burly labourer whistling to his team and cracking his long whip with that strong barrier of health to keep out care; and rubbing shoulders with him is the tottering cripple, with every muscle on the stretch to urge the crutches forward. The merchant bustles to his business, the seamstress hurries to her killing work of sewing her own shroud and my lady's ball dress in one operation; the savan picks his dainty way among the beggars and the Arabs; and little children jostle old men and women as the stream rolls on. And on each separate face there are marks rippling the surface, which mean something, could we but unriddle it. The creases in the baby's face which is wheeled by in the perambulator, are earnests of the deeper furrows which time shall set there by-and-bye; the crow's feet in the eyelids of the anxious-looking men who struggle past are the lines of life's rough ploughshare, and show how tough the battle is for some of us between the cradle and the grave. There is crime, and courage, beauty, virtue, violence, love, wantonness, selfishness, weakness, power, page 10 all rolling past in wavelets of human life. The zigzag track of the drunkard winds through the straighter course of sober men like some eccentric eddy on the stream; and the tide lashes and lapses to and fro, as if all the four winds were struggling which should bear it on. But, like the Thames which flows below them, the ripples of this human tide, so ebbing and so changeful, are flowing onward towards the sea. Away among the wolds of Gloucestershire, where the marshes are sedgy and sodden, there bubbles up a little spring, which trickles through the grass until it burrows out a little brooklet track, and schoolboys leap across it on their holidays, and girls twine posies for their hair from the flags, forget-me-nots, and hair bells that grow near its brink, and thirsty haymakers in summer time stoop down to drink its waters: a few miles lower down and it is broader, and patient anglers stand upon the banks and deftly cast the fly to lure the silvery trout which dart along the current. Still broadening as it rolls along, the stream runs glancing past small hamlets, and mingles its babble with the tinkle of the village bells. And now it proudly lays siege to a city, venerable with seats of learning, and stalwart oarsmen stir up its waves as they feather the dark blue blades, and drive the slender craft along. Still flowing onward, the liquid bosom grows more ample, and lawns and gardens slope down to its shore, and pleasant villas are reflected in the mirror. And then it frets against the piers of bridges, and bubbles up against black wharfs and quays, with heavy ring bolts holding barges fast; then dashing paddle wheels whip the water into effervescence, and rolls of smoke from the thick funnel are mirrored on the water, while the music of a band on board keeps up the merriment: then sluggish dredgers scoop up the mud from the thick river bed, while all along the banks the trees are rooted page 11 up to make way For the buildings of a mighty city, and men cast the offal of a thousand trades into the stream, which still flows on through all the smoke, and noise, and strife, till it bears navies of merchandise upon its breast, and at length slowly detaches itself once more from city scenes, and broadens out between two marshy shores, till beacons kindle upon the headlands, and buoys rock over shallows, and the bosom of old Father Thames is touching the wider bosom of the mighty sea. So flows the river, and as it flows it ripples forth a language to the other river that flows over it upon the bridge. Deep calleth unto deep. And what does it say? Does it say to the river of life above it, "Ah, your flow is not so perpetual as mine, yours will soon be over, you only bubble on to your near graves, but I flow on for ever?" No, it does not say that. If it speaks truly it says rather this, "My flow is bounded by yon sea a few miles off, but yours has no boundary. The time is coming when my waters will be spent and dried up in the final fires; but yours is a tide which even fire cannot exhaust. Your river will flow on; it will break its waves against the gravestones, but it will only wreck the frail craft of the body against that rock, and then flow on in broader, stronger current, floating the soul upon the tide of immortality." Yes, men and women, it is our life which cannot die, the river of our life which must flow on for ever. This life on earth is but the beginning of the everlasting flow. But there is a good deal in these lives of ours which bears a close analogy to the course of a great river. How tainted do they grow as they flow on! Rising in infant purity, with love's smiles purling and dimpling on the surface, as a mother's eyes watch over it, our life quickly rolls out of the restraints of care, and wantons towards the city, where the impurity of a hundred lusts and passions, makes its page 12 waters turbid and unchanged, so it flows on into the great broad eternal sea. To carry those impurities out into that sea, is to carry them for ever, to be tainted with their reek for ever, to be freighted with their load for ever. But you may be freed from them if you will. For there is another river which can be made to flow into the river of your life, and which shall carry all its foulness and impurity away. It flows from beneath the throne of God and of the Lamb. Our fathers have walked beside it; they have culled the flowers that bedeck its banks, have drunk deep draughts of its crystal waters, have laved away the fever of their care, and the stain of sin alike, in its cool life-giving rill, and they have launched their bark upon it, and have been wafted to salvation's port And that river flows still. It flows for you. Let it but join the current of your life, and it shall bear away the drift of sin, the wreck of care, the spars of sorrow, and all that marks the havoc and the wrong of human life unpiloted by religion; and with your life hid with the life that is in Christ, it shall merge into the eternal and pacific sea which storms shall never ruffle, nor shoals make false and dangerous, which breaks its waves over the shores of heaven, and the music of whose tide is ever swelling to the burden, "Glory to God in the highest,"and "Worthy is the Lamb that was slain."

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Passmore and Alabaster, Steam Printers, 31, Little Britain.