| The Every Day of Life |
Chapter 20 |
Page 2 |
Thus it is that companionship always leaves it impress. Eye cannot even look into eye, in one deep, earnest gaze, but a touch has been left on the soul. An artist of distinguished rank would not permit himself to look at any but good pictures. He said the mere seeing of inferior pictures hurt the tone of his own conceptions. If this were true, how we should guard our hearts and minds against the receiving of any impression that is not refining and elevating. The reading of a book that is unworthy, the indulgence in thoughts or imaginations that are unwholesome, the admitting into the life even for a little time of a companionship that is not what it should be, cannot but lower the tone of the life.
A man well past middle life said, that in sensitive youth another young man drew him aside and furtively showed him a vile picture. He looked at it just for one moment and then turned away. But a spot had been burned upon his soul. The memory of that glance he had never been able to wash out. It had come back to him along all the forty years he had lived since, even breaking in upon him in his most sacred moments, and staining his most hallowed thoughts.
We do not know what we are taking into our life when we admit into companionship, even for one hour, one who is not good, nor pure, nor true. Then, who can estimate the debasing influence of such companionship when continued until it becomes intimacy, friendship; when confidences are exchanged, when soul touches soul, when life flows into and blends with life?
When one awakes to the consciousness of the fact that he has formed or is forming a companionship with another whose influence cannot but hurt him and may perhaps destroy him, there is only one true thing to do, – it must instantly be given up. A rabbit’s foot was caught in the hunter’s steel trap. The little creature seemed to know that unless it could get free, its life must soon be lost. O with a bravery, which we cannot but admire, it gnawed off its leg with its own teeth, thus setting itself free, though leaving its foot in the trap. But who will say that it was not wiser thus to escape death, even with the loss of its foot, than it would have been to keep the foot and die?
Page 2