Topical Guide 340
Mark Dorset
Personality Characteristics and Emotional Stability, Assessing Those of Others
Except for Lorna’s work in the cellar, Mrs. Stolz found that Lorna behaved as if she were as normal as anyone else. Mrs. Stolz considered this a miracle. Every night since her return, she had fallen to her knees beside her bed and prayed for Lorna’s sanity, and it seemed to her that her prayers had been answered — at least there were no screaming fits or mad scenes. …
Lorna began to think that Mrs. Stolz was lapsing into senility. She seemed to go at the most tedious household task with the unblinking good humor of the feeble-minded. … Lorna thanked goodness that she’d had the intuition to recognize that Mrs. Stolz needed her home, that she needed a home, and Lorna was enormously grateful to Herb for going along with her and providing it.Herb ’n’ Lorna, Chapter 13
Personality Characteristics and Emotional Stability, Self-Assessment
Mrs. Stolz tried not to give herself credit for Lorna’s relative sanity, but she had to admit to herself that it was, most likely, her calming presence, her maturity, her regular habits and set ways, that kept Lorna on an even keel. …
As more time passed, Mrs. Stolz began to think of herself as a saint, a small and insignificant saint, perhaps, but a saintly woman just the same. She acquired a serenity from the conviction that she was filling each day, each passing year, with good works ….Herb ’n’ Lorna, Chapter 13
From Wikipedia:
“To A Louse, On Seeing One on a Lady’s Bonnet at Church” is a 1786 Scots language poem by Robert Burns in his favourite meter, standard Habbie.
In this poem the narrator notices a lady in church, with a louse that is roving, unnoticed by her, around in her bonnet. The poet chastises the louse for not realising how important his host is, and then reflects that, to a louse, humans are all equal prey, and that they would be disabused of their pretensions if they were to see themselves through each other's eyes. An alternative interpretation is that the poet is musing to himself how horrified and humbled the pious woman would be if she were aware she was harbouring a common parasite in her hair.
The poem’s theme is contained in the final verse:
[Scots language original]
O wad some Pow’r the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!
It wad frae mony a blunder free us,
An’ foolish notion:
What airs in dress an’ gait wad lea’e us,
An’ ev’n devotion![Standard English translation]
Oh, would some Power give us the gift
To see ourselves as others see us!
It would from many a blunder free us,
And foolish notion:
What airs in dress and gait would leave us,
And even devotion!
Here’s a reading in the Scots dialect, by Robert Carlyle, with the complete text in Scots and English:
See also: Personality Characteristics and Emotional Stability, Assessing TG 119; Egoism TG 47; Ego, Egoism, Egotism TG 75
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