The Corner Cupboard

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Title:     The Corner Cupboard
Author: Frank Boreham [More Titles by Boreham]

Is there a case on record of a really unsuccessful search? I doubt it. I believe it to be positively and literally true that he that seeketh, findeth. I do not mean that a man will always find what he seeks. I do not know that the promise implies that. I fancy it covers a far wider range, and embraces a much ampler truth. Yes, I doubt if any man ever yet sought without finding. When I was a boy I lost my peg-top. It was a somewhat expensive one, owing partly to the fact that it would really spin. I noticed this peculiarity about it whilst it was still the property of its previous possessor. I had several tops; indeed, my pockets bulged out with my ample store, but none of them would spin. After pointing out to the owner of the coveted top the frightful unsightliness of his treasure, and in other ways seeking to lower the price likely to be demanded as soon as negotiations opened, I at length secured the top in return for six marbles, a redoubtable horse chestnut, and a knife with a broken blade. My subsequent alarm, on missing so costly a possession, can be readily imagined. I could not be expected to endure so serious a deprivation without making a desperate effort to retrieve my fallen fortunes. I therefore proclaimed to all and sundry my inflexible determination to ransack the house from the top brick of the chimney to the darkest recesses of the cellar in quest of my vanished treasure. I began with a queer old triangular cupboard that occupied one corner of the kitchen. And in the deepest and dustiest corner of the top shelf of that cavernous old cupboard, what should I find but the cricket ball that I had lost the previous summer? My excitement was so great that I almost fell off the table on which I was standing. As soon as the flicker of my candle fell on the ball I distinctly remembered putting it there. I argued that it was the only place in the house that I could reach, and that my brother couldn't, and consequently the only place in the house that was really safe. The fact that the ball had remained there, untouched, all through the cricket season abundantly demonstrated the justice of my conclusion. My jubilation was so exuberant that it drove all thought of the peg-top out of my mind. There is such a thing as the expulsive power of an old affection as well as the expulsive power of a new affection. My delight over my new-found cricket ball entirely dispelled my grief over my missing peg-top. Indeed, I am not sure to this day whether I ever saw that peg-top again. I may have inadvertently deposited it on a shelf that my brother could reach; but after the lapse of so many years I will endeavour to harbour no dark suspicions. In any case, it does not matter. What is a paltry peg-top compared with a half-guinea cricket ball? I had sought, and I had found. I had not found what I had sought, nor had I sought what I had found. Perhaps if I had continued my search for the peg-top with the enthusiasm and assiduity with which I had lugged the kitchen table up to the corner cupboard, I should have found it. Perhaps if I had searched for the cricket ball with the same zest that marked my quest of the peg-top, I should have found it. But that is not my point. My point is the point with which I set out. I do not believe that a case of a really unsuccessful search has ever been recorded. He that seeketh, findeth, depend upon it.

The days of the peg-top and the cricket ball seem a long way behind me now, and I am glad that the fate of the queer old corner cupboard has been mercifully hidden from my eyes. But, by sea and land, the principle that I first discovered when I stood on tiptoe on the kitchen table has followed me all down the years. The secret that I learned that day has acted like a talisman, and has turned every spot that I have visited into an enchanted ground. Even my study table is not immune from its magic spell. A more prosaic spectacle never met the eye. The desk, the pigeon-holes, the drawers, and the piles of papers might have to do with a foundry or a fish-market, so very unromantic do they appear. And yet, what times I have whenever I manage to lose something! It is almost worth while losing something just for the fun of looking for it! If a catalogue or a circular will only go astray, all the excitements of a chase lie open before me. And the things that I shall find! I shall come on letters that will make me laugh and letters that will make me cry. Hullo, what's this? Dear me, I must write to so-and-so, or he will think I have forgotten him! And just look here! I must run round and see what's-his-name this afternoon, and fix this matter up. And so I go on. The probability is that I shall no more find the catalogue that set me searching than I found the peg-top in the days of auld lang syne; but what has that to do with it? Look at the things I have found, the memories I have revived, the tasks that have been suggested! Life has been incalculably enriched by the fruits of this search through the papers on my study table. If I do not find the peg-top-papers for which I sought, I have found cricket-ball-papers immensely more valuable, and the rapture of my sensational discoveries renders the fate of my poor peg-top-papers a matter of comparative indifference. The series of thrills produced by such a search is reminiscent of the emotions with which I enjoyed my first magic-lantern entertainment. On they came, one after another, those wonderful, wonderful pictures in the darkness. On they came, one after another, these startling surprises from out these musty-fusty piles of papers. A search is really a marvellous experience. The imagination flies with lightning rapidity from one world of things to another and another as the papers rustle between the fingers. John Ploughman used to say that, even if the fowls got nothing by it, it did them good to scratch. I am not a poultry expert, as I am frequently reminded, but I dare say that there is a wealth of wisdom in the observation. At any rate, I know that, in my own case, the success or failure of my search expeditions stand in no way related to the original object of my quest. I never remember having set out to look for a thing, and afterwards regretted having done so.

I was wondering the other day if the same principle applied to other people, and I cruelly determined on a little experiment. My girls collect orchids, and much of their time in the city is spent in recounting the foraging expeditions that they have conducted in happy days gone by, and in anticipating similar adventures in the golden times before them. Some of the pleasantest holidays that we have enjoyed together have been spent away in the heart of the bush where Nature runs riot and revels in undisturbed profusion. It is delightful to see them come traipsing along the track through the bush, their faces flushed with the excitement of their foray, and their arms filled with the booty they have gathered. They are tired, evidently, but not too tired to run when they catch sight of us. 'Look at this!' cries one; and 'Isn't that a pretty colour?' asks the other. 'Did you ever see one that shape before?' 'Fancy finding one of these!' And so on. And then the evening is spent in pressing and classifying the treasures they have gathered.

One day they came back, earlier than usual, and showed us their discoveries.

'But, oh, father, it was an awful shame! You know that kind that Ella Simpson showed us once, and told us they were very rare? Well, we found one of those, a real beauty, away over in that valley beyond the sandhills; and on the way home we lost it. Wasn't it a pity?'

'Do you mean the little pale blue one, with the orange fringe?' I inquired.

'Yes, and it was just in full flower, and ready for picking.'

'It was a pity,' I confessed, 'for, do you know I specially want one of those. Do you think you could go back and try hard to find one?'

They agreed. I advised them to search with the greatest care, and to poke into places that they had not disturbed before. They returned an hour later with no further specimen of the blue and orange variety, although on a subsequent date they succeeded in unearthing one, but they were rejoicing over a number of very rare specimens that are now considered among the most valuable in their collection.

In It is Never Too Late to Mend, Charles Reade has a story that is right into our hands just here. 'Once upon a time,' he makes one of his characters say, 'once upon a time there was an old chap who had heard about treasure being found in odd places, a pot full of guineas or something; and it took root in his heart. One morning he comes down and says to his wife, "It is all right, old woman; I've found the treasure!" "No, have you, though?" says she. "Yes," says he; "leastways, it is as good as found; it is only waiting till I've had my breakfast, and then I'll go out and fetch it in!" "La, John, but how did you find it!" "It was revealed to me in a dream," says John, as grave as a judge; "it is under a tree in the orchard." After breakfast they went to the plantation, but John could not again recognize the tree. "Drat your stupid old head," cried his wife, "why didn't you put a nick on the right one at the time?" But John was not to be beaten. He resolved to dig under every tree. How the neighbours laughed! But springtime came. Out burst the trees. "Wife," says he, "our bloom is richer than I have known it this many a year; it is richer than our neighbours'!" Bloom dies, and then out come about a million little green things quite hard. In the autumn the old trees were staggering, and the branches down to the ground with the crop; and so the next year, and the next; sometimes more, sometimes less, according to the year. The trees were old, and wanted a change. His letting in the air to them, and turning the subsoil up to the frost and sun, had renewed their youth.' And so poor John found his treasure. It was not exactly the pot of guineas that he sought; but it was just as valuable, and probably afforded him a deeper gratification. He did not find what he sought, but who shall say that his search was unsuccessful? He that seeketh, findeth. There is no case on record of a really fruitless search.

Mr. Gilbert West and Lord Lyttelton once undertook to organize a campaign to expose the fictitious character of the biblical narrative. In order to make their attack the more damaging and the more effective they agreed to specialize. Mr. West promised to study thoroughly the story of the Resurrection of Jesus. Lord Lyttelton selected as the point of his assault the record of the conversion of Paul. They separated; and each began a careful and exhaustive search for inaccuracies, incongruities, and contradictions in the documents. They were engaged in exposing error, they said, and in searching after truth. Yes, they were searching after truth, and they sought with earnestness and sincerity. They were searching after truth, and they found it. For when, at the appointed time, they met to arrange the details of their projected campaign, each had to confess to the other that he had become convinced of the authenticity of the records and had yielded to the claims of Christ! Here was a search! Here was a find! They sought what they never found, and they found what they never sought. Was the search unsuccessful? Seekers after truth, they called themselves; and did they not find the Truth? Like the Magi, they followed a star in the firmament with which they were familiar. But, to their amazement, the star led them to the Saviour, and neither of them ever regretted participating in so astonishing a quest.

'And thus,' as Oliver Cromwell finely says, 'to be a seeker is to be of the best sect next to a finder, and such an one shall every faithful humble seeker be at the end.' It always seems to me that the old Puritan's lovely letter to his daughter, the letter from which I have just quoted, is the gem of Carlyle's great volume. Bridget was twenty-two at the time. 'Your sister,' her father tells her, 'is exercised with some perplexed thoughts. She sees her own vanity and carnal mind, and, bewailing it, she seeks after what will satisfy. And thus to be a seeker is to be of the best sect next to a finder, and such an one shall every faithful humble seeker be at the end. Happy seeker; happy finder! Dear heart, press on! Let not husband, let not anything, cool thy affections after Christ!'

With which strong, tender, fatherly words from an old soldier to his young daughter we may very well take leave of the subject. 'Happy seeker; happy finder! Dear heart, press on!' Oliver Cromwell knew that there is no such thing as a fruitless search. If we do not come upon our shining treasure in the exact form that our ignorance had fancied, we discover it after a similitude that a much higher wisdom has ordained. But the point is that we do find it. That was the lesson that I learned as I peered into the abysmal darkness of the mysterious old cupboard in my childhood, and the longer I live the more certain I become of its truth.

[The end]
Frank Boreham's essay: Corner Cupboard

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