"It's my dreadful temper! I try to cure it. I think I have, and then it breaks out worse than ever. O Mother, what shall I do?" cried poor Jo.
"Watch and pray, dear, never get tired of trying, and never think it is impossible to conquer your fault," said Mrs. March, drawing the blowzy head to her shoulder and kissing the wet cheek so tenderly that Jo cried harder than ever.
"You don't know, you can't guess how bad it is! It seems as if I could do anything when I'm in a passion. I get so savage I could hurt anyone and enjoy it. I'm afraid I shall do something dreadful some day, and spoil my life, and make everybody hate me. O Mother, help me, do help me!"
"I will, my child, I will. Don't cry so bitterly, but remember this day, and resolve with all your soul that you will never know another like it. Jo dear, we all have our temptations, some far greater than yours, and it often takes us all our lives to conquer them. You think your temper is the worst in the world, but mine used to be just like it."
"Yours, Mother? Why, you are never angry!" And for the moment Jo forgot remorse in surprise.
"I've been trying to cure it for forty years, and have only just succeeded in controlling it. I am angry nearly every day of my life, Jo; but I have learned not to show it, and I still hope to learn not to feel it, though it may take me another forty years to do so."
The patience and humility of the face she loved so well was a better lesson to Jo than the wisest lecture, the sharpest reproof. The knowledge that her mother had a fault like hers, and tried to mend it, made her own easier to bear and strengthened her resolution to cure it-- though forty years seemed rather a long time to watch and pray, to a girl of fifteen. (Little Women, Louisa May Alcott, pp.65-66)
The kids and I have been reading Little Women together this month. It is my first time reading the story, and I so wish I had read it when I was a child or teen. One of the things I love best about educating my children at home is that I am able to fill in the holes of my own education. The loving exchange in this passage is one that would have helped me so much when I was a young person. In my experience, in this day and age, pure, simple wisdom can be hard to come by. For the children's sake, may books like this continue to be read and written, always!
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