Waiting-1

By Margaret S. Gatty

"It is good that a man should both hope and quietly wait..."Lam 3:26





It was, doubtless, a very sorry life the House Cricket led, before houses were built and fires were kindled. There was no comfortable kitchen-hearth, then, in the warm nooks and corners of which he might sit and sing his cheerful songs, coming out every now and then to bask himself in the glow of heat, had no place to shelter in but holes in hollow trees, or crevices in rocks and stones, or some equally dull and damp abode. Besides which, he had to bear the incessant taunts and ridicule of creatures who were perfectly comfortable themselves, and so had no fellow-feeling for his want of cheerfulness.

“why don’t you go and spring about, and sing in the fields with your cousin, the Grasshopper?” was the ill-natured question of the Spider, as she twisted her web in one of the refuge-holes the Cricket had crept into; “I am sure your legs are long enough, if you would only take the trouble to undouble them. It’s nothing but a sulky discontented feeling that keeps you and all your family moping in these out-of-the-way corners, when you ought to be using your limbs in jumping about and enjoying yourself. And I dare say, too, that you could sing a great deal louder if you chose.”

The Cricket thought perhaps he could- but he must feel very differently to what he did then, before it would be possible to try. Something was so very very wrong with him, but what that something was he did not know. All the other beasts and birds and insects seemed easy and happy enough. The Spider, for instance, was quite at home and gay in the hole he found so dismal.

And it was not the Spider only who was contented: the Flies- the Bees-the Ants-the very Mole, who sometimes came up from borrowing, and told wonderful stories of his underground delights- the birds with their merry songs-the huge beasts, who walked about like giants in the fields-all-all-were satisfied with their condition, and happy in themselves. Every one had the home he liked, and no one envied the other.