Have You an Educated Heart?

Part 1

HAVE YOU AN EDUCATED HEART?

By GELETT BURGESS

Author of “Are You a Bromide?” “The Maxims of Methuselah,” “The Romance of the Commonplace,” &c.

BONI AND LIVERIGHT Publishers :: New York City

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Copyright, 1923, By the Crowell Publishing Co. ---------- Copyright, 1923, By Gelett Burgess

---------------------------------------------------------------------- Here the heart May give a useful lesson to the head, And Learning wiser grow without his books. Cowper: The Task. ----------------------------------------------------------------------

THE EDUCATED HEART

NOW, Sadie, I knew, was temperamental. Sadie was sensitive. But surely there wasn’t quite enough in that dull musical comedy, that afternoon, to make anyone weep. But, as I had noticed Sadie dabbing at her eyes with her handkerchief, off and on through the first act, when the curtain went down, I demanded the reason.

Somewhat reluctantly Sadie handed me a letter. “Did you ever see anything as heartless as that?” she asked. “It’s about a package I sent to Eldora, last week.”

I read it. Then, uncertainly: “Why, I don’t know,” I replied; “seems all right enough to me. ‘Ever so much obliged for the birthday package.’ What’s the matter with that?”

“Why, she might just as well have said, ‘Yours of the 16th at hand and contents noted’!” And as Sadie snatched back the letter she was already emptying the vials of her resentment.

A while ago, it appeared, when she was visiting Sadie in New York, Eldora had raved over some fawn-colored gloves she had seen, with those awfully wide black stitchings down the back. Though fairly weak after a bad attack of the flu, poor Sadie had tramped through shop after shop, from 34th Street to 56th Street last week, to find those particular gloves; actually fighting for them, at the last, with a mob of wild women at a bargain sale. Well, Sadie had gone and bought a fancy box. Sadie had wrapped that package with neatness and with fondest care. Sadie had walked twenty-one blocks (so she said) to a Post Office. Sadie had stood there in line for half an hour, more or less, to have it weighed and insured.

“And I just loved it all--I loved doing it for Eldora,” wailed Sadie. “And now all she says is that she is ‘ever so much obliged’!”

“Oh, well,” said I loftily, “we oughtn’t to give things just for the thanks, you know.”

“Never mind the thanks!” snapped Sadie, “but did she like those gloves? Good gracious, you want to know whether you’ve pleased a person or not, don’t you? Were they the right shade? Did they match her gown? Were they the size? Did they fit her? Has she worn them? Why, she might have said something about them!”

“Well, at any rate,” I offered in appeasement, “she answered you promptly. That’s something. Why, loads of people don’t even acknowledge gifts at all, nowadays.”

“Yes, and that’s just the point,” declared Sadie. “I’ve no doubt she thinks she’s really quite polite and kind. Oh, she ‘means well,’ I suppose--they all do. But the trouble with Eldora is simply that she hasn’t got the Educated Heart.”

“The Educated Heart?” I queried, amused, “what d’you mean, the Educated Heart?”

THE lady was growing a little calmer now. “Why, I’ve called it that to myself so long that it seems as if anyone ought to understand. Well, it’s this way. You know you can usually tell an educated man, can’t you? There’s something about him that’s--oh, I don’t know--extra. Finish, it is, perhaps. Distinction, or something. He knows how to--”

“But the Educated Heart!” I insisted, “prithee, the Educated Heart!”

“Why, it’s just the same with hearts as it is with heads,” quoth my Mentor. “Some hearts seem to be self-made, you know--rough-dry--unvarnished--amateurish. And then some hearts are just as if they’d been to college, and been graduated in Kindness. They’ve got their B.K., or D.K., even, sometimes. Yes, I know at least one Doctor of Kindness. Why, I mean, oh, they have that extra touch of consideration--thoughtfulness, you know--imagination--and--oh, dear, why do we like to have flowers on the dinner table? They’re not necessary, of course; but doesn’t that extra touch always make the soup taste perfectly wonderful? It’s all the difference between just eating and dining. Ever see a woman without style jam on a beautiful hat and make it look like a waste-basket? Well, some people are like that, when they try to be kind. Style--that’s what it is! It’s just style in kindness that most people lack. Oh, it’s the rarest thing in the world--the Educated Heart!”

THE Educated Heart! Late that night, alone, I pondered it . . . midnight, and still it haunted me . . . the Educated Heart. . . . Superkindness, she might have called it. She might have called it Tact. Vainly, I tried to coin a new word for it. But at the end, Sadie’s simple term stayed with me--the Educated Heart. And so, using that test, I found myself at length classifying my friends.

And first of all came Crystabel. Last October, you see, I sent Crystabel a book. She acknowledged it, and promptly. But, two months afterward, hadn’t she--yes, she actually had--written me another letter, telling me what she thought of that book; and she proved, moreover, that she had read it--actually read it! Now, reader, I ask you: Isn’t that a strange and beautiful experience in this careless world? Yes, Crystabel had the Educated Heart.

Indeed, receiving, simply receiving, is one of the greatest tests of the Educated Heart. To such as possess it, thanks are something like mortgages, to be paid in installments. Why, after five years, Crystabel often refers to a gift that has pleased her. Yes, and lies about it, too, sometimes! Mind you, I didn’t say that Crystabel was always really sincere. I said that she was really kind. She may dislike that gift exceedingly; she may stick it up in the garret, or give it to her laundress. But Crystabel, having the Educated Heart, appreciates kindness in others. It is the motive for that gift she cares for, not its value; and hence her tactful, iterated gratefulness. But the others--oh, the thousand negligent others!

YOU give your friend a bottle of perfume. She thanks you, and pop it goes immediately into a bureau drawer, and she begins to talk about Harry’s wife. You give her a lovely veil, and, right before your incredulous eyes, she wads it into a bunch, jams it into her bag and takes another chocolate. That bunch of jonquils you brought the invalid--haven’t you seen it carried off into some far corner, as if it were deadly mandragora, or hustled into a miscellaneous mass of wholesale offerings and the subject hurriedly changed?

Last month I visited my young cousin Frizia. “Why, what a pretty jet necklace!” they all cried, at dinner. In pleased, self-conscious expectancy I waited for Frizia to say, “Oh yes, my cousin brought it to me.” Did she? No. Not a word except, “Oh, d’you like it?” I should have been grateful, I suppose, that my little cousin even wore that necklace.

Haven’t you, too, often moaned:

Part 2

I shot a present into the air; It fell to earth, I know not where!

WHY, there are innumerable ways of insulting the giver of a present. Listen, for instance, to this acknowledgment, from Zeroine: “All my life,” she wrote, “I have given away pink azaleas to my friends; and this is the first time I ever received one.” How’s that for egoism? Compared to her noble, extravagant and advertised generosity didn’t my one gift loom pretty small?

Rather clever she is, that Zeroine, a positive genius, sometimes--you know them--at making one wish one hadn’t tried to be nice to her. As the bride of one of my confreres I met her first in Paris. To celebrate her marriage I racked my brains for something charming enough with which to greet a new friend. Something not costly, you know, yet perfect and unique. Well, the loveliest things of that sort I had found, were the marvelous ribbon roses made by the Comtesse de Laumont for the benefit of the widows of officers. Every one is a work of art--a beautiful and faithful portrait of some particular rose from her own garden on the Marne.

To her house on the Avenue Malakoff I went (her only son, last of his line, had just been killed at the front, but her work must go on), and three exquisite William Allen Richardsons I picked out from all the rest. Late that night, too impatient to wait, through the narrow, shuttered, unlighted Paris streets I walked--no taxicabs in those war days--over the river to deliver my initiatory tribute at Zeroine’s hotel. And with it I left a letter telling her the roses’ pathetic story.

This is what Zeroine replied:

“Yes, I know the De Laumont roses. They’re lovely. I saw the wife of the Ambassador wearing one last week, and got the address. I have been intending to buy some of them; but you have kindly saved me the trouble.”

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