The singing on the other side of the room meant no more than the chirping of a grasshopper upon a mullein-stalk.  I did not delude myself with the notion of providential use of the tongue that tripped at the consonants and lingered in liquid dalliance with favorite vowels.  Yet, after ten motionless minutes of severe thinking, the letter was deliberately torn into strips and these into dice, and all of these went into the waste-paper basket at my elbow.  I had concluded to “abide a wee.”  If the sun went down that once upon my anger, he arose upon cold brands and gray ashes.  I had not changed my intellectual belief as to my correspondent’s behavior, but the impropriety of complicating an awkward business by placing myself in the wrong to the extent of losing my temper was so obvious that I blushed in recalling the bombastic periods of the torn composition.

Since that lesson, I have never sent off an angry or splenetic letter, although the temptation to “have it out” upon paper has sometimes got the better of my more sensible self.  If the excitement is particularly great, and the epistle more than usually eloquent of the fact that, as the old-time exhorters used to say, I had “great liberty of speech,” I have always left it to cool over night.  The “sunset dews” our mothers sang of took the starch out of the bristling pages, and the “cool, soft evening-hours,” and nightly utterance of—­“As we forgive them that trespass against us,”—­drew out the fire.

“You’d better bide a wee!”

I have sometimes thought of writing it down, as poor Jo of “Bleak House” begged to have his last message to Esther Summerson transcribed—­“werry large,”—­and pasting it upon the mirror that, day by day, reflects a soberer face than I like to see in its sincere depths—­as one hot and hasty soul placarded upon her looking-glass the single word “PATIENCE.”  To people whose tempers are quick and whose actions too often match their tempers, one of the most difficult of daily duties is to reserve judgment upon that which appears ambiguous in the conduct of their associates.  The dreary list of slain friendships that makes retrospect painful to those of mature years; the disappointments that to the young have the bitterness of death; the tale of trusts betrayed and promises broken—­how would the story be shortened and brightened if conscientious and impartial trial of the accused preceded sentence and punishment!—­if, in short, we would only “bide a wee” before assuming that our friend is false, or our love unworthily given.

In a court of justice previous character counts for much.  The number and respectability of the witnesses to a prisoner’s excellent reputation and good behavior have almost as much weight with the jury as direct testimony in support of the claim that he did not commit the crime.  To prove that he could not, without change of disposition and habit, violate the laws of his country, is the next best thing to an established alibi.  I should be almost ashamed