| The Beauty of Self Control |
Chapter 9 |
Page 4 |
Usually, bad temper is accompanied by a sharp tongue. A brother and sister are said often to have passed months without speaking to each other, though eating at the same table and sleeping under the same roof. There recently died a man who, for twelve years, it was currently said, had never spoken to his wife, nor had she to him, although three times every day they sat at the same table. She would serve him with his coffee and he would serve her with the meat, but their glumness never relaxed into a word of courtesy. Bad temper sometimes runs to unyielding silence. Such silence is not of the kind the proverb calls golden. Usually, however, a bad tempered person finds a tongue and speaks out the hateful feelings of his heart. There is no limit to the pain and the harm which their words produce in gentle hearts.
“These clumsy feet, still in the mire,
Go crushing blossoms without end;
These hard, well meaning hands we thrust
Among the heartstrings of a friend.
The ill timed truth we might have kept–
Who knows how sharp it pierced and stung?
The word we had not sense to say–
Who knows how grandly it had rung?”
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