The other day, as I was walking on one of the oldest and most picturesque streets of the old and picturesque town of Newport, R.I., I saw a little girl standing before the window of a milliner's shop.
It was a very rainy day. The pavement of the side-walks on this street is so sunken and irregular that in wet weather, unless one walks with very great care, he steps continually into small wells of water. Up to her ankles in one of these wells stood the little girl, apparently as unconscious as if she were high and dry before a fire. It was a very cold day too. I was hurrying along, wrapped in furs, and not quite warm enough even so. The child was but thinly clothed. She wore an old plaid shawl and a ragged knit hood of scarlet worsted. One little red ear stood out unprotected by the hood, and drops of water trickled down over it from her hair. She seemed to be pointing with her finger at articles in the window, and talking to some one inside. I watched her for several moments, and then crossed the street to see what it all meant. I stole noiselessly up behind her, and she did not hear me. The window was full of artificial flowers, of the cheapest sort, but of very gay colors. Here and there a knot of ribbon or a bit of lace had been tastefully added, and the whole effect was really remarkably gay and pretty. Tap, tap, tap, went the small hand against the window-pane; and with every tap the unconscious little creature murmured, in a half-whispering, half-singing voice, "I choose _that_ color." "I choose _that_ color." "I choose _that_ color."
I stood motionless. I could not see her face; but there was in her whole attitude and tone the heartiest content and delight. I moved a little to the right, hoping to see her face, without her seeing me; but the slight movement caught her ear, and in a second she had sprung aside and turned toward me. The spell was broken. She was no longer the queen of an air-castle, decking herself in all the rainbow hues which pleased her eye. She was a poor beggar child, out in the rain, and a little frightened at the approach of a stranger. She did not move away, however; but stood eying me irresolutely, with that pathetic mixture of interrogation and defiance in her face which is so often seen in the prematurely developed faces of poverty-stricken children.
"Aren't the colors pretty?" I said. She brightened instantly.
"Yes'm. I'd like a goon av thit blue."
"But you will take cold standing in the wet," said I. "Won't you come under my umbrella?"
She looked down at her wet dress suddenly, as if it had not occurred to her before that it was raining. Then she drew first one little foot and then the other out of the muddy puddle in which she had been standing, and, moving a little closer to the window, said, "I'm not jist goin' home, mem. I'd like to stop here a bit."
So I left her. But, after I had gone a few blocks, the impulse seized me to return by a cross street, and see if she were still there. Tears sprang to my eyes as I first caught sight of the upright little figure, standing in the same spot, still pointing with the rhythmic finger to the blues and reds and yellows, and half chanting under her breath, as before, "I choose _that_ color." "I choose _that_ color." "I choose _that_ color."
I went quietly on my way, without disturbing her again. But I said in my heart, "Little Messenger, Interpreter, Teacher! I will remember you all my life."
Why should days ever be dark, life ever be colorless? There is always sun; there are always blue and scarlet and yellow and purple. We cannot reach them, perhaps, but we can see them, if it is only "through a glass," and "darkly,"--still we can see them. We can "choose" our colors. It rains, perhaps; and we are standing in the cold. Never mind. If we look earnestly enough at the brightness which is on the other side of the glass, we shall forget the wet and not feel the cold. And now and then a passer-by, who has rolled himself up in furs to keep out the cold, but shivers nevertheless,--who has money in his purse to buy many colors, if he likes, but, nevertheless, goes grumbling because some colors are too dear for him,--such a passer-by, chancing to hear our voice, and see the atmosphere of our content, may learn a wondrous secret,--that pennilessness is not poverty, and ownership is not possession; that to be without is not always to lack, and to reach is not to attain; that sunlight is for all eyes that look up, and color for those who "choose."
[The end]
Helen Hunt Jackson's essay: Choice Of Colors