The Ready-To-Halts

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Title:     The Ready-To-Halts
Author: Helen Hunt Jackson [More Titles by Jackson]

Mr. Ready-to-Halt must have been the most exasperating pilgrim that Great Heart ever dragged over the road to the Celestial City. Mr. Feeble Mind was bad enough; but genuine weakness and organic incapacity appeal all the while to charity and sympathy. If people really cannot walk, they must be carried. Everybody sees that; and all strong people are, or ought to be, ready to lift babies and cripples. There are plenty of such in every parish. The Feeble Minds are unfortunately predisposed to intermarry; and our schools are overrun with the little Masters and Misses Feeble Mind. But, heavy as they are (and they are apt to be fat), they are precious and pleasant friends and neighbors in comparison with the Ready-to-Halts.

The Ready-to-Halts are never ready for any thing else. They can walk as well as anybody else, if they only would; but they are never quite sure on which road they would better go. Great Hearts have to go back, and go back, to look them up. They are found standing still, helpless and bewildered, on all sorts of absurd side-paths, which lead nowhere; and they never will confess, either, that they need help. They always think they are doing what they call "making up their mind." But, whichever way they make it, they wish they had made it the other; so they unmake it directly. And by this time the crisis of the first hour which they lost has become complicated with that of the second hour, for which they are in no wise ready; and so the hours stumble on, one after another, and the day is only a tangle of ineffective cross purposes. Hundreds of such days drift on, with their sad burden of wasted time. Year after year their lives fail of growth, of delight, of blessing to others. Opportunity's great golden doors, which never stay long open for any man, have always just closed when they reach the threshold of a deed; and it is hard, very hard, to see why it would not have been better for them if they had never been born.

After all, it is not right to be impatient with them; for, in nine cases out of ten, they are no more responsible for their mental limp than the poor Chinese woman is for her feeble feet. From their infancy up to what in our comic caricature of words we call "maturity," they have been bandaged. How should their muscles be good for any thing? From the day when we give, and take, and arrange the baby's playthings for him, hour by hour, without ever setting before him to choose one of two and give up the other, to the day when we take it upon ourselves to decide whether he shall be an engineer or a lawyer, we persist in doing for him the work which he should do for himself. This is because we love him more than we love our own lives. Oh! if love could but have its eyes opened and see! If we were not blind, we should know that whenever a child decides for himself deliberately, and without bias from others, any question, however small, he has had just so many minutes of mental gymnastics,--just so much strengthening of the one faculty on whose health and firmness his success in life will depend more than upon any other thing.

So many people do not know the difference between obstinacy and clear-headed firmness of will, that it is hardly safe to say much in praise or blame of either without expressly stating that you do not mean the other. They are as unlike as digestion and indigestion, and one would suppose could not be much more easily confounded; but it is constantly done. It has not yet ceased to be said among fathers and mothers that it is necessary to "break the will" of children; and it has not yet ceased to be seen in the land that men by virtue of simple obstinacy are called men of strong character. The truth is that the stronger, better-trained will a man has, the less obstinate he will be. Will is of reason; obstinacy, of temper. What have they in common?

For want of strong will kingdoms and souls have been lost. Without it there is no kingdom for any man,--no, not even in his own soul. It is the one attribute of all we possess which is most God-like. By it, we say, under his laws, as he says, enacting those laws, "So far and no further." It is not enough that we do not "break" this grand power. It should be strengthened, developed, trained. And, as the good teacher of gymnastics gives his beginners light weights to lift and swing, so should we bring to the children small points to decide; to the very little children, very little points. "Will you have the apple, or the orange? You cannot have both. Choose; but after you have chosen you cannot change." "Will you have the horseback ride to-day, or the opera to-morrow night? You can have but one."

Every day, many times a day, a child should decide for himself points involving pros and cons,--substantial ones too. Let him even decide unwisely, and take the consequences; that too is good for him. No amount of Blackstone can give such an idea of law as a month of prison. Tell him as much as you please of what you know on both sides; but compel him to decide, and also compel him not to be too long about it. "Choose ye this day whom ye will serve" is a text good for every morning.

If men and women had in their childhood such training of their wills as this, we should not see so many putting their hands to the plough and looking back, and "not fit for the kingdom of heaven." Nor for any kingdom of earth, either, unless it be for the wicked little kingdom of the Prince of Monaco, where there are but two things to be done,--gamble, or drown yourself.

[The end]
Helen Hunt Jackson's essay: Ready-To-Halts

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