Music at Midnight

 

George Herbert, the great English poet was on his way to a concert, when he found a huskster whose horse had fallen down apparently, beneath the burden of a heavy weight. Geroge Herbert helped the huskster in unloading the horse, in lifting it up and in reloading it. In the process, his clothes were spoilt, soiled, with mud. When he arrived at the concert, some of his friends were shocked to see the condition of his clothes. When he explained to them what had happened, they said to him: "How could you condescend to do such a thing?"

George Herbert answered: "What I did will be to me as music at midnight, but if I had not done so, there would have been a discordant note, sounding within me all the time!"

—J.P. Vaswani