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Title:
The Young Lady's Guide
Author:
Author
unknown
Publisher:
American Tract
Society
Date:
1870?
View page [frontispiece]
Letters to a
Daughter
[Illustration : A realistic illustration of a woman
sitting at a table by a window, reading a paper. A guitar
leans against a nearby
chair.]
View page [title page]
THE YOUNG LADY'S
GUIDE.
[Illustration : An
illustration of two women. One is leaning against the
other's shoulder and appears to be crying; the other is
trying to comfort
her.]
PUBLISHED
BY THE
AMERICAN TRACT
SOCIETY,
150
NASSAU-STREET,
NEW
YORK.
View page [copyright statement]
E
NTERED
, according to Act of
Congress, in the year 1870, by the A
MERICAN
T
RACT
S
OCIETY
, in the Office of the
Librarian of Congress at
Washington.
View page [contents]
CONTENTS.
PAPERS
FOR THOUGHTFUL GIRLS, B
Y
S
ARAH
T
YTLER
.
1.
Youth....
PAGE
9
2. Pleasure...
13
3.
Friendship...
24
4. Love...
32
5.
Godliness...
42
6.
Kindliness...
53
7. Fashion...
59
8.
A Life of Pride and Levity...
68
9. Perseverance in
Well-Doing...
74
A
WOMAN'S THOUGHTS ABOUT WOMEN, B
Y
T
HE
A
UTHOR OF
"J
OHN
H
ALIFAX
, G
ENTLEMAN
," &c.
1.
Something to Do...
81
2.
Self-Dependence...
93
3. Gossip...
105
4. Happy and Unhappy Women...
117
FASHION,
F
ROM
M
RS.
S
YDNEY
C
OX'S
"F
RIENDLY
C
OUNSEL FOR
G
IRLS"
...
137
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NOVEL-READING, F
ROM THE
G
REYSON
L
ETTERS
, B
Y
H
ENRY
R
OGERS.
Letter I.
...
157
Letter II.
...
165
Letter III.
...
170
Letter IV.
...
175
FROM
"DAUGHTERS" AND "WOMEN" OF ENGLAND, B
Y
M
RS
. S
ARAH
S
TICKNEY
E
LLIS
.
1. Love and
Courtship...
185
2. Dedication of
Youth...
206
3. Domestics and
Guests...
220
4. Before and
after Marriage...
240
5. Public
Opinion...
259
FROM MRS. HANNAH MORE.
1. Thoughts
on Conversation...
277
2. Female
Knowledge-View of the Sexes...
288
3. Public
Amusements...
304
FROM
"THE YOUNG LADIES' MENTOR," B
Y
A
L
ADY
Amusements...
327
THE
SOCIAL POSITION AND CULTURE DUE TO
WOMAN,
B
Y
R
EV
. D
R
. W
ILLIAM
R. W
ILLIAMS
...
353
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EDUCATION OF THE HEART,
WOMAN'S BEST WORK, B
Y
M
RS
. S
ARAH
S
TICKNEY
E
LLIS
.
1. Female
Education...
375
2. Preparation
for Life...
382
3. Good
Principle...
402
4. The
Mother...
420
FROM
"THE YOUNG WOMAN'S FRIEND," B
Y
R
EV
. J
OHN
A
NGELL
J
AMES
.
The Influence of
Christianity on the Condition of Woman
441
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PAPERS FOR THOUGHTFUL GIRLS, BY
SARAH TYTLER.
View page [9]
[Illustration : A decorative
arch made of branches and leaves, with a dove at either
side.]
I.
YOUTH.
[Illustration : A decorative capital
"T".]
T
HERE is
no greater mistake than to suppose that youth is
necessarily the choice period, the green spot of life. To
some it has not even the buoyancy and light-heartedness
which are its ordinary portion. To not a few, cares and
trials come while the frame is yet in its fresh vigor, and
the eyes are sparkling with their first bold, blithe
lookout on the world. To almost all, youth is a power which
hurries them to its goal; the young heart is "hot and
restless;" it will not take time to appreciate its
treasures; it will not be satisfied with its goodly
possession; it is full of uncertain desires, and wayward
inclinations, and passionate impulses; it is grasping and
straining and striving after a vague, uncomprehended good,
an airy or ornate, ill-proportioned ideal; it is troubled
with its ignorance of its own destiny, its unresolved will,
its undeveloped circumstances. Youth is not often the cycle
of peace. Do not fear then, young girls, to leave behind
you the gayly-jested-over or mincingly-mentioned epoch of
your teens.
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Do not dread
growing graver or even stouter. With ripe womanhood, and
the still, mellow decline of life, are won, and very often
only then won, rest, power, wisdom, content. There may be a
great garner in store for your future, there will be an
abundant harvest if you will but sow in grace. It is a half
pagan, and wholly untrue notion, to associate all
blessedness of existence with rash, heady, crude youth.
Fight the fight, and run the race, and the older you grow
the more royally you will prove the conqueror, and the
grander will prove your prize.
But the important
question now is, how to employ this youth so as to make of
its notes some of the sweetest and gladdest of the melody
which began softly in the cradle, and which, if not drowned
in the clang and discord of idol music, should swell until
it joins the chorus of the skies. The writer supposes
herself speaking to those who are very weak, very unstable,
very erring, very imperfect, as she is; but who are in
earnest, as even girls can be in earnest about Christianity
and their duty; who would con their lesson and practise
their calling humbly, modestly, perseveringly to the end.
She is aware from experience that not a tithe of girls of a
contrary spirit would listen to her, even from curiosity;
and they do not consequently come within the scope of her
argument. Only to them she would say, once and for all,
solemnly, wistfully, and affectionately, it is a piteous
sentence which they are preparing to pass on themselves--to
refuse to come to the Father for life, the Elder Brother
for love, the
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Holy Spirit for
light. Idleness, disobedience, and rebellion, unless great
mercy interpose, must sow the wind to reap the
whirlwind.
"I do not know what I shall do with myself
after I leave school," says many a good girl, doubtfully
and regretfully. She need not be ashamed of the difficulty;
her position is a problem of the present day. How to train
the faculties of women, to gather up and employ their
energies; how to provide for them a quiet and noble sphere,
consistent at once with their dependence and their dignity;
how to furnish with suitable objects the disengaged
capacities and activities of mature single women, are
considerations engaging a host of the great and
good--enough with a blessing to bring women's affairs to a
happy issue. The solution is not found, but it may not be
distant. The difficulties run in this direction: Shall the
girl return to the pickling and preserving, the
herb-gathering and doctoring, the primitive housewifery and
seamstresship of her great-grandmother? Shall the
Protestant girl borrow a lesson from Catholic humanity,
and, while she abjures asceticism, enthusiasm, and
unnatural vows, become a deaconess instead of a sister of
charity, have her
rôle
regularly laid down, of teaching the ignorant, nursing the
sick, feeding the hungry, and clothing the naked? Or, shall
she discover her bent like a boy, pursue her profession
fearlessly and innocently, achieve independence, and from
her own lawful earnings endow and cheer her own dear home,
and let the rays from that centre of love and charity
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stream forth on every poor,
stinted, burdened, desolate home on earth? Probably the
solution lies in a union of the whole three: in
domesticity, alms-deeds, and independence, woven into a
Christian crown.
The secret of happiness here and
hereafter, the gold thread of youth, lies in loving God and
loving our neighbor, loving them early if it be yet
possible, loving them well; losing one's own life in
theirs, becoming guileless and docile, meek and reverent in
our intercourse with them, loving them long, yea, for
ever.
These Papers are written with a diffident but
yearning wish to aid young girls in their aim at so lofty
and beautiful a purpose. They are intended to steady their
views, to comfort and confirm them, to help them in trying
to contemplate by the broad light of God and the gospel,
some of the things which are before them. These things
consist of those gifts and faculties (in which youth is
included) which necessarily and inevitably occupy much of
their notice; those pursuits which form part of the nurture
and growth of the soul; those stumbling-blocks which beset
their road: those encouragements which will enable them to
lift holy hands, without wrath or doubting, which will
preserve them our own bright, trusting, eager, joyous young
people, till God shall please to lay upon them the
responsibilities and the labors of more advanced
years.
View page [13]
[Illustration : A
decorative arch made of a thin wooden frame supporting some
flowering vines. The frame forms a small upward loop at the
center, through which a shepherd's crook and a cross (with
a crown of thorns hanging from it) are extended crosswise.
A glowing crown hovers above the loop at the
center.]
II.
PLEASURE.
[Illustration : A decorative
capital "I".]
I
SUPPOSE no one denies that we all desire pleasure,
notwithstanding our difficulty in attaining it. However,
there is this curious contradiction, that there is nothing
more necessary than to urge young girls to cultivate purely
pleasant habits, purely pleasant tastes which shall not
pall, which they may reasonably hope will increase and
brighten with years, and be made perfect in a better and an
enduring world. There is nothing more puzzling, and yet
more patent in the present day, than the neglect and
destruction, as far as it is possible, of a multitude of
delicate instincts which, quite as much as great faculties,
fill us with pleasure. The eye is untrained, or only
artificially trained; the natural ear is neglected in the
midst of its elaborate tutoring, or only accustomed to
discord; the quick feelings are allowed to run riot, or
condemned to be blunted; the bright humor to sleep; the
buoyant elasticity to sink flat and dead. How full our life
is; how much we might enjoy it, and thank God for it! But
we overlook our treasures,
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and forsake them for the cold glitter of fairy gold, or the
dead heaviness of substantial but unlacked, unsuitable
bullion, till we find our error too late. And well it is if
it only end in a long; wistful sigh of regret; if, in spite
of all our follies and imputations, we have still built on
the rock of our Master and our duty.
One of the very
first lessons to be learned is, that true pleasure is a
simple, lowly, homely, hearty thing, open, in a great
degree, to most of us. Alas, alas! that ever there should
be such hard circumstances as to crush it out of existence.
But to many, to multitudes, to the mass of those addressed,
pleasure is an easy thing; is nigh you, is ready to burst
out into blossom over your head and under your feet. Only
condescend to lift up your eyes and look for it, and stoop
and pluck it; for, like every thing else worth having, it
is coy, and will not force itself on your reluctant or
careless grasp.
It is scarcely necessary to say to a
good girl that true pleasure cannot consist in what belongs
to mere rivalry and gratified vanity. Such pleasure is, to
treat it most gently, very empty and unsatisfactory; and
unless it is mixed with some genuine emotion, some honest
assertion of honest claims, honest satisfaction in honest
gifts, honest gratification in the honest pride of friends,
it is about as noisy, hollow, and short-lived as that
crackling of thorns beneath the pot, which the wise man
banned.
But it is incumbent to publish, that
pleasure, like duty, does not consist in any thing like
intellect
View page [15]
and great mental
attainment. To some, of course, it lies there, as even to
the soldier it may lurk in the smoke of artillery and the
flash of steel; and to another soldier of the same master,
it may actually abide in the dark and noisome den in which
he blesses God that he hails the dawn of a better day. But
to all it is plainly in what affords them innocent
gratification. It is a giant with a hundred hands; a
rainbow with a thousand dyes. It changes, Proteus-fashion;
it varies with a million temperaments. It may be something
very different to you from what it is to me. But it
perfectly agrees in this respect--it is a harmless, nay, a
softening, sweetening enjoyment, though we may not and need
not go far out of our way to seek it, and must not
sacrifice for it our cross of duty. We are bound to cherish
it as one of the instalments of the future, one of the
alleviations of the present, a bright drop of dew, a brave
beam of sunshine sent to refresh and gladden us by our
gracious Father. And the more childlike our hearts are, the
more submissive and loving, the more readily we admit, the
more freely we entertain the heavenly visitant. We cannot
be true Protestants, but must be clinging very
pertinaciously to the doctrines and practices of
will-worship, asceticism, supererogatory mortification, if
we do not recognize the obligation and privilege of drawing
forth all the pleasures within our nature and locality, and
carrying them heavenwards.
But if pleasures are
countless as the leaves on the tree, and, like the leaves,
not two alike, they fall
View page [16]
also
pretty generally into classes, and offer themselves in
their divisions to particular classes of the community. To
young girls, allowing for many exceptions, there exists a
peculiar range of delights, capable of expanding and
maturing with the growth of the woman, until, in full
dropping ripeness, balmy and mellow they salute the last,
lingering, earthly sensations of widowed wives, aged
mothers, frail spinsters hovering on the border-land. This
range belongs largely to primitive nature, to flower
gardens, kitchen gardens, fields, woods, moors, mountains;
to animals, wild and domestic, useful and ornamental, cows
and poultry, birds and bees. That a love for nature is
latent in the great body of men and women, is clear from
its appearance under the most unfavorable circumstances,
and after the longest intervals. The successful merchant
withdraws to his villa, and dedicates his hard-won leisure
to mangel-wurzel and pineapples, while his wife expatiates
and luxuriates among her Alderneys and Cochin-Chinas. Of
the retired tradesmen and their partners, whose ease and
cash do not drag upon them, ninety-nine out of the hundred
are amateur farmers or gardeners, or holders of some
description of live stock. That so many only take to the
teeming world--animate and inanimate around them--late in
life, demonstrates that the original bent was choked and
overlaid, and wanted excavation. Those who soonest
disentangle it into breezy air and hardy life, develop also
the most wholesome bodies and souls, the sweetest and
sunniest tempers. Questionless,
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there are instances of crabbed gardeners
and gruff farmers, but what would those rugged specimens of
humanity have been without the lilies and the wheat? And
are not their roughnesses mere outer excrescences? See them
with the favorite child on the knee, the chosen friend at
the elbow: why, they are tender philanthropists and kindly
humorists in disguise.
Now, with regard to this wide
arena of health and happiness, in the green fields and the
singing birds, it is a mistake to consider the girls of the
present day before their great-grandmothers. It is not only
that heedless youth, in its own headstrong, self-engrossed
fashion, rushes along and misses the very sedative of which
it stands in need; but the habits of our present
generation, the very accomplishments, the excessive pushing
and straining after social importance, are all against
simple, natural tastes. You will find the mother watching
the young lambs coming into the fold with the careful ewes,
while the daughter is off in a fit of the gapes; the aunt,
contrasting the crimson-tipped oak leaves with the
blue-green of the juniper and the olive-green of the wild
rasp, while the niece is in fretful horror lest the sprays
from the bushes tear her cumbrous crinoline. You will even
discover the tottering old grandmother pulling up the gay
celandine or the feathery meadow-sweet from the waterside;
while the granddaughter has borrowed her brother's rod, and
is fishing the pool, for "a lark," as she says in her
brother's slang, but in reality to attract the
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attention of all the
half-scornful, half-scared fishers up and down the
stream.
It is not that the present race of young
people are more frivolous than the last, but they are more
removed from unconscious, close, constant study of nature.
Yes, they are, in spite of science and art, perhaps, in
some instances, because of superficial, undigested science
and art; in spite of far greater accommodation-immensely
increased facilities of travelling, greenhouses made easy,
aviaries, aquariums--they are very generally more removed
from our old homely, humble, blessed mother-earth and her
subordinate creatures. This is the case, just as much
reading is apt to end in little thinking, as popular
lectures have often resulted in popular ignorance,
self-satisfied, defiant, all but incurable ignorance, for
the reason that it wore a shallow disguise of
knowledge.
All the appliances of modern training
include a danger of leaving our girls vain, arrogant,
pretentious, and insincere. They have studied botany, but
they don't care for their specimens one-hundredth part that
their mother cared for her hydrangea in the green-and-white
striped stoneware pot, which was such a cold, hard
substitute for the soft-stained, oozy brick. They don't
mind their ferns and mosses as she prized the upper slice
of carrot, which she cut and floated on a wineglass full of
water, and saw rear its shafts of feathers when the snow
was lying thick in the valley; or the cress-seed which she
sowed on the moistened flannel over the cup, to
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astound and delight poor sick
little Hughie. Ah, you girls want the easy admiration, the
frank, loving wiles of your mothers!
Our
great-grandmothers, in the dearth of many other resources,
thought much more of the fragrance of the mint and thyme in
their herb-gardens, the sweetness of the fruit of their
cherry-trees, the gayety of their larks' songs, the stature
of their calves, the fatness of their chickens, the
familiarity of their pet-lambs, even the smartness of their
parrots and tame starlings and sparrows, than many of their
descendants dream of doing of any plant or animal at home
or abroad.
The sciences are noble in their own way;
open-air sketching is a valuable power; picnics are
occasionally pleasant social reunions; but Charlotte
Bronté has told how little the agreeableness of a
picnic has to do with burying one's face and heart in green
leaves. We have all known picnic visits to ruins which were
never looked at, to views which were never seen, to
waterfalls which were missed. Picnics, in the old days,
were named whims or follies: my lady's whim, or my lady's
folly, to eat a syllabub or a bun under a tree, or on
clover. As far as regards learning to know God's world,
picnics (unless strictly family gatherings) will be whims
and follies to the young always.
No, take nature
quietly; make a secret contract with her, or at most, a
threefold friendship between you two and a home-brother or
sister. Don't mix her up too much with books. Look at her
in her
View page [20]
own simple, lovely
light. Learn the shades and shapes of the trees from the
belt in your own shrubbery; grow intimate with the moon,
looking at her silver bow or her mellow autumn radiance,
from your own parlor or drawing-room window, with your old
father taking his nap at your elbow; or with your
baby-nephew stretching out his arms to that shield in the
sky, and drumming with his feet against your knees from his
station in your lap. You may visit a botanical or
zoological garden occasionally with pleasure and profit,
but you will never cull from the foreign plants and beasts
and birds, not even from the Victoria Regia and the
hippopotami, a tithe of the benefit to be won, with little
trouble, from your beds of anemones and sweet-william; or
your canaries, with their quilted-flannel nest in the
corner of their family cage; or your brood of young
turkeys, spotted brown, black, and creamy-white, like Paul
Potter's cattle, and hectored and protected by the bullying
turkey-cock; or your downy yellow ducklings, so soon
waddling to the willow-fringed pond; or the litter of
puppies which your brother Harry is so glad that the
covetousness of his friends enables him to permit Juno,
poor lass! to please her soft heart by bringing up, though
they are only to weary and harass her. Get acquainted with
every leaf in your garden, every stone in the mossy wall.
You have great precedents. A French philosopher made a walk
round his garden fill two wonderful volumes. An English
painter caused a brick wall to occupy
View page [21]
his canvas for three entire months. But
do not fail to regard them in a humble, human
spirit.
Have pets, as your great-grandaunt and
great-grandmothers owned them in store. They may be
profitable pets, as cows, goats, hens, pigeons; or
unprofitable, as love-birds, Java sparrows, Italian
greyhounds, Russian cats. It was very refreshing to find an
accomplished professional man writing the other day a
delightful chapter on domestic dogs and their merits. Don't
fear the waste of food--unless, indeed, you are conscious
of starving some human being. What! would you presume to
stint the lavish stores of the great Creator? Remember, He
created all these creatures you are so ready to call
useless; and if human beings were condemned by that same
criterion of apparent uselessness, woe is me; how many of
us would be left? No massacre in history would be equal to
that great immolation of women and children, and men thrown
into the bargain. Don't listen to that bitter or foolish
saying, that they will die one day and grieve you.
According to that selfish, morbid argument, you would not
love your brother, for, alas, alas! he will die one day,
and your heart will be wrung, though the parting be but for
a season. Believe, it is something very near the
truth--
"He prayeth well, who loveth
well
Both man and bird and
beast."
The writer remembers well a poor woman
telling how her daughter was won back from the sullenness
of madness, by watching every morning, from
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the back windows of the
lunatic asylum, the fond gambols and caresses passing
between a goat and her kid.
Harriet Martineau has a
sensible, lively hint to girls in the country on the
impossibility of their wanting objects of interest and
amusement, if they are only intelligent and active. Happily
much of the ridiculous affectation of being ignorant of
common rural objects is on the wane in the broad light of
our day; and we are more likely to meet with an extreme,
exaggerated enthusiasm for colts and heifers, donkeys and
goslings, than to be troubled with a high-flown scorn of
their very existence. All that is untrue is bad, but, at
least, we may receive the assumption of superior knowledge
as the evidence of a more ample and genial standard of
worth and beauty.
One word, in addition, to those
young persons who may be disheartened by having grown up
with only a vague general sense of enjoyment in the world
of nature; a pleasant notion of blue skies and green
fields, and pretty weeds in the hedges, but no intimate
acquaintance or close communion with any of them. Do not be
discouraged. This is a taste which it is possible to begin
to cultivate sedulously and successfully at any period of
life, even to old age. The writer speaks from experience.
Brought up in a treeless district of the country, the
commonest distinctions between the crisp, shining leaves of
the beech and the leaves of the elm "rough as a cow's
tongue," were long
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unknown to
her by sight. She was as full of her lush growth of fancies
and feelings as any one. She was as blind and deaf as most
girls to any but the dimmest perception of nature's holy
influences. The opening of her mind to these influences was
not the least of the debt which she owed to the dear, wise,
patient friend who taught her a cottage child's
acquirements leaf by leaf; who stretched her own knowledge
to make her pupil distinguish the hues and lines on the
bird's burnished wings and breast; who went on with her
listening to the roll of the waves, periodically peeping
into a hedge-sparrow's nest, lifting reverent eyes to the
flaming comet, hearkening to the blackbird's melodious song
over the primroses and polyanthuses in the cold spring
twilight, and the robin's cheerful note among the
scarlet-streaked apples and dark-green mottled pears of the
russet fall, until something of the richness of earth's
colors, and the deep but gentle symphony of her tones was
forced upon the heedless, inattentive heart and
brain.
Nature is God's book, in which we are to read
our Father as in his written word; and she who neglects and
turns her back on the study, will be ill-furnished in some
respects for that consummation to which we are all devoutly
looking.
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[Illustration : A decorative
arch formed from a thin wooden frame entwined with vines
and flowers. A large flower is drawn in the center of the
frame, and the vines droop down to a point beneath
it.]
III.
FRIENDSHIP.
[Illustration : A decorative
capital "I".]
I
N one of Miss Edgeworth's tales there is an
instance of a lady deciding her selection from her suitors,
by the happy man's being able to prove that he possessed a
faithful friend; and the test was by no means without its
merits. In a former paper I alluded to the fact that long
before Miss Edgeworth's day, novels, biography, and essays
laid much stress on evidences of friendship as indications
of excellence. A heroine, like Harriet Byron, had a host of
friends, and although she may tempt us to think of "the
hare and many friends," and we may feel that she must have
been in some sort a victim to her popularity, still it
would do no harm to a heroine of the present day, to ask
herself whether she could call forward a grandmamma to
bless her, an Uncle and Aunt Sedley to approve cordially of
each stage of her career, or even a set of cousins to sing
her praises, after the faintest copy of the kindred of the
incomparable Harriet; and if not, what is the reason of the
failure. Granting, indeed, that the man or woman with a
multitude of friends is a paragon, a
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phœnix, and has his or
her own peculiar danger from the chivalry and devotion of
the individual's court, the man or woman without a friend
is surely singularly unfortunate, or singularly
reprehensible.
It has been said that women are
incapable of true friendship; but, like many other glib
speeches, this is an assertion not only without foundation,
but made in the face of a mass of proof to the contrary.
There may be difficulties in the way of a calm, clear,
steady, unexacting friendship between man and woman, from
the nature of the relation between them, though such
friendships have existed by thousands; but friendships
between woman and woman, with which we deal here, have
flourished by tens of thousands. Those who believe the
contrary, are no better than Turks in their estimate of
women.
Possibly, one reason for the charge of women's
being incapable of friendship, is that their friendships
are more domestic, hidden, and retiring than those of men.
Of course, we do not speak of the pathos of school-girl
ecstacies, but of the strong, satisfying regard between
modest, earnest, often-tried women. Men go out into the
world, and frequently form their friendships far beyond the
family circle, and quite independent of the ties of blood.
Of the best women, it may be said that their friendships
are those of their own households; with them, friendship
but adds its evergreen crown to a blood relationship.
Sisters and cousins--at the farthest, old schoolfellows and
neighbors--are
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generally the
Davids and Jonathans, the Damons and Pythiases. But within
these limits, examples of as enduring, long-suffering,
tender, noble friendship as ever knit together hearts,
offer their manifold records. Madame Sévigné
and her daughter, Fanny Burney and her sister Susanna, Anne
Grant of Laggan and her former youthful companions, the
Ewings and Harriet Reid, have left vivid, indelible traces
in black and white of the great volume of their affections,
and its faithful flow to death.
Suffer young girls to
make friends, and keep them as their best human stay. They
need not fear that they will prove false, if their own love
be without dissimulation; if they can cleave to their
chosen companions in their adversity, and not love them one
whit better because of their prosperity; if they will
choose them like that hackneyed wedding-gown of Mrs.
Primrose, because of qualities which will wear well. They
need not fear, if they themselves will try to be humble,
reasonable, and forbearing, will resolve not to expect too
much of their friends, will not be very angry with them
because of errors, will not refuse to forgive them even
when they commit faults, will always strive to bear in mind
that "the true friend is a brother," and that the end of
true friendship is to go on hand in hand--each raising the
other, each supporting the other--ever upwards and onwards
to the brightness and the peace of the better home in the
many mansions of the Father's house.
Honest friends,
fond friends, constant friends
View page [27]
they must be, my girls; and after that proviso, care little
whether they are fashionable friends, or distinguished in
any way; even be willing to lend them a portion of your own
superior wisdom and goodness, if they are deficient, but
well disposed and sincere in their esteem for you. Much
progress in worth has been accomplished under the shelter
and countenance of a friend; here, "freely you have
received, freely give." Be willing, in a secondary sense,
to "spend and be spent" for your friends; don't meanly
grudge your love and pains, and cautiously weigh every
grain of the return. Bestow thorough respect and sympathy;
lively, considerate, affectionate attention in health;
devoted care and self-abnegation in sickness; and without
doubt or denial, be you wedded wife or solitary spinster,
you will not fail in any circumstance to have and hold a
tender and true friend.
In the world there are two
opposite corruptions of friendship, which are glaringly
conspicuous. The one is the selection of high friends, who
may pull us up, not in morals, but in power, or place, or
fashion; the other the taste for low company, where we may
reign queen, be flattered instead of flattering, command
rather than obey, indulge in all our ugly habits without
censure. But human nature is the same; these two abuses of
friendship have their origin in the same source--vanity and
pride; and sometimes the poles meet curiously in one
person. As human nature is the same, young girls will, at
least, coast these shoals; but I surely need
View page [28]
not say to good girls, to avoid them as
contamination; don't let them, if they can help it, pollute
the name of friendship, if they would not lose their
reverence for all that deserves reverence.
My own
opinion is, that a perfectly developed friendship can
scarcely exist, or at least attain its full free
expression, between those of widely different ages and
stations, in spite of Wordsworth's lad, and his "Matthew
seventy-two." It may be a very beautiful, beneficial,
independent looking up and bending down, and in that light
it ought to greet us continually; but it is another
connection altogether from close friendship. When a young
girl makes a friend of one above her station, she is hardly
likely, altogether to escape at once experiencing and
inflicting pain, which would not occur among her equals.
Her grand friend will unavoidably appear to overlook her
sometimes, or will mortify her, or haply provoke her to
envy by narrations of "springs" of adventure and interest,
travel, pictures, music, books, cultivated society, which
may be entirely beyond the so-called inferior's reach; and
at the same time, the better born, or more richly endowed
of the companions will feel hurt by her friend's coyness,
stiffness, pride, when she herself only meant to be kind
and social. Again, with the humble friend the girl in the
middle class will run the very same risks, only changing
the checkers; and with greatly increased peril of effecting
something seriously detrimental to the permanent wellbeing
of the other, because a simple,
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scantily-educated girl is not
by many degrees so well armed against an injury to her
native dignity, self-respect, contentment, and her just
balance of social advantages, as a well-taught, well-read,
thoughtful girl in a station above her.
Therefore
judicious parents and guardians are chary of unsuitable
intimacies for their children, unless under their own eye
and within certain bounds. Yet these intimacies are safe
enough, even for the thoughtless and weak, if the heart be
but wholesomely set on duty and salted with
grace.
The writer, after having stated her general
objection to these friendships, would like to record her
conviction, that occasions are constantly occurring which
defy our ordinary standards, when such half-proscribed
bonds become strong and tight, and bind soul to soul in
danger and trial with true love-knots, which death only
will unloose for a higher life to tie again firmly for
ever. Without question, such accidental alliances (as these
are apt to be considered) have often proved providential
unions, calculated to confer mighty blessings, and to
survive the artificial obligations which forbade
them.
People say truly, it is a respectable thing to
see an elderly couple surrounded by old-fashioned,
well-kept furniture, according much better with the tear
and wear of years than bran new upholstery of a higher
cast, and more elegant material and manufacture. Our
mothers' gray hairs, and stout or lean persons, become
their matronly though sober and rather quaint caps and
shawls a thousand times
View page [30]
better
than they become an elaborate travestied edition of their
youngest daughter's wreath of flowers and lace mantilla. In
the same way, family friends are respectable, albeit
sometimes troublesome institutions. A long-established
house, with only recent guests, varying with each varying
phase of the household, is a very sorry sight. "Your own
friend, and your father's friend, forget not," is a very
gracious proverb of the wise man.
We would have our
girls put up with some inconvenience, be capable of some
self-sacrifice, to maintain their own friends, and their
fathers' friends, intact. Be sure the one true friend, the
invaluable counsellor, the joyous confidante, the loving
consoler, is mostly to be cut out of such tried and trusty
stuff: not out of the slight, dignified acquaintance of
yesterday, the facile superior, won by base flattery or
material gain to be the reluctant abettor of follies, the
yawning spectator of vanities, and the sneering satirist of
absurdities. Your mother's contemporary may be
narrow-minded and dogmatic, but she will tie on her bonnet
with trembling fingers to run to your sickbed; she will be
all the same to you, or rather far more cordial and
warmer-hearted because your father has lost money in an
unlucky speculation, or even been compelled, with bowed
head and aching heart, to read his name in the bankrupt
list. She may find fault with you to your face; but she
will sternly rebut cruel, cowardly scandal, which attacks
you like an assassin behind your back. Will you not bear,
then, with a few
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truisms, and
certain tiresome or aggravating peculiarities, were it only
for the sake of her last kiss, and her "God bless you!
you've been mindful of old friends, my dear; I trust we'll
meet again"?
To have lightened a solitary hour, to
have brightened a homely lot, to have cheered for one
afternoon an invalid's depression, is worth a good deal of
self-gratification. Reflect that you yourselves, in the
march of the future, with its innumerable chances and
changes, may be destined to misfortune and adversity.
Certainly, even though you continue in reasonable affluence
of health and wealth, you will at some time or other grow
prosaic if not peevish, old-fashioned if not obsolete.
Then, even if for no more exalted motive than doing as you
would be done by, show yourself generous to those who have
lost your advantages, if they ever possessed
them.
Deserve friends among your equals, and cherish
them, for better, for worse, as God's gift, among the very
first of gifts after His own presence; be conscientious
towards friends of another degree; and be gentle, very
gentle to your own friends, and your father's friends, of
other days.
View page [32]
[Illustration : A decorative
arch formed from a thin wooden frame, around which vines
are entwined.]
IV.
LOVE.
[Illustration : A decorative capital
"A".]
A
THOUGHTFUL, kindly writer has spoken of the three great
facts of life as birth, love, and death; and again, of the
common instinct by which everybody listens to a love story
of any kind. If young girls would treat love as one of
three serious facts, and all false representations of it as
lies, and like all lies, base and degrading, their best
friends would be saved a great deal of fruitless
trouble.
It is hard to deal with young girls when,
according to their different dispositions quite as much as
their different bringing up, they begin, under the classes
of fanciful, forward, foolish children, or matter-of-fact,
prudent, bashful, blithe young women, to ponder "love's
young dream."
My thought is that love, more than
marriage, is made in heaven; that it is an inspiration
which descends upon us without our knowledge, and often
without our consent. Therefore, I would never presume to
dictate the when, how, and whom of love. I would only
presuppose that no good girl will consciously indulge and
consummate by matrimony, a love for one who, she is forced
to see, is
View page [33]
an utterly unworthy
man. Granting this great barrier, true love will be its own
best defender and avenger. I believe there is not half the
danger incurred by its presence, that is risked by its
absence. I believe that if the multitude of warnings
against love in general were addressed solely against false
love, it would be more for the moral benefit of society;
that is, if society would listen to the advice and lay it
to heart. It is against spurious love that I would warn
girls. I would disabuse love of all but its individual
mystery, delicate, hidden, and sacred as the religion of
the soul.
With regard to the universal existence of a
consecrated passion, human yet partaking of the divine, and
which reaches forward ever into eternity, why not openly
acknowledge it; talk with reverence of it; accept it as a
matter of faith, and often of example? Why make a forbidden
topic of that which caused Jacob to serve fourteen years
for Rachel, and count them but as so many days, for the
great love which he bore her; Isaac, to be comforted for
the loss of his mother, when Rebekah rode forth to meet him
in the glow of the eastern twilight; faithful Elkanah to
say to weeping Hannah, "Am I not better to thee than ten
sons?" proud Michal to place the image in her bed, and
speed young David's flying footsteps? Rather gather and
cultivate all its noble heroism, its patience, its
fortitude, its tender mercy, and nurture yourselves in
them. If you have been accustomed to regard the holy fire,
you will be the less tempted to fill the censers of
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your heart with unholy fire,
Greek fire, scattering destruction all around.
There
is nothing we have more need of in our luxurious,
bargaining, scoffing days, than the preservation of the
belief in all Christian heroism; and let us humbly thank
God that we have lived to see abundant testimony borne to
it in the horror of "the blood and flames and vapor of
smoke" of the Crimean and the Indian wars. Once believe, in
your deepest natures, that true love is an embodiment of
this heroism, and you will revolt at its idle mockery in
the shape of trifling, interested, vain flirtations. You
will shrink from exposing it, rendering it hard, coarse,
petty, and mean, through the incessant, bold, unblushing
chatter of pert, irreverent, sordid, shallow, brainless,
heartless, unhappy young people. You will loathe coquetry;
you will reject with contempt all the low models of queens
of routs and promenades, all the wretched praise of
haughty, insolent, unfeeling, untrue women, with which the
bad side of our literature furnishes you: you will turn
eagerly and gladly to Milton's Eve, and Shakespeare's
Desdemona and Cordelia, and Sir Walter's Alice Lee and
Catherine Glover, or even to his frolicsome, warm-hearted
Catherine Setoun, his defiant, candid Die Vernon; to Mrs.
Gaskell's noble Margaret Helstone, and her erring,
repentant Mary Barton; to Miss Mulock's Dora Johnstone; and
Miss Manning's Princess Leonara, and her still more
queenly, modest, pitiful Mrs. Clarinda Single-heart. You
will have your own lawful, chivalrous,
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Christian romance, and will shake off as
the very dust from your feet, worldly society and false
gods, and shameful heroes and heroines.
Do not fear,
too, to have the comical side of love and love-making
touched upon. True humor no more destroys soundness,
dignity, sweetness, and pathos, than it soils our precious
old ballads, our more precious old human life. There are
very few grave and lofty elements in our manhood or
womanhood, which, as they are worked out in flesh and
blood, have not their ludicrous balance. It is recorded
with honor to us, and on sufficient testimony, that the
more entire our trust in our fellows, and the fonder our
appreciation of their fine qualities, the more readily we
begin to play with what strikes us as whimsical and
grotesque in their composition. Thus friends bandy jests;
thus there is nothing pleasanter than to see loving
children merrily stroking against the grain certain odd
hairs in the coats of indulgent parents, who submit to the
process (which they know they can end by a glance or a
word) with the exceeding satisfaction of well-conditioned
tabby-cats, whose kittens will sport with their whiskers;
or of benevolent ewes, whose wayward lambkins will lie down
beneath their mother's chins.
Then let old and young
fire off their brisk battery of harmless time-out-of-mind
jokes on courtship and matrimony; their sly observations,
their provoking sagacity, their diverting cross purposes.
Only don't think that the whole affair is a joke, else
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you may awake one black morning to find
it very sad and earnest, and be compelled, in sorrow and
despair, to turn affrighted faces to the bitter
contrast:
"There was singing in the
parlor,
And daffing in the ha';
But they canna dicht the
tears now,
So fast they
down fa'
."
A whipped syllabub all froth
would be a very light dish indeed. Nothing but trifle would
make a most unsatisfactory, unrefreshing meal. Take, then,
both the shade and the sunshine; the deep, cool strength
and purpose which lie in the belt of shade, and the joy
which glints in the beam of sunshine.
If our girls
are busy performing their duties, cultivating their
talents, thankfully and gratefully indulging in a thousand
fresh, healthful pleasures, they will scarcely be betrayed
into the pure folly, the spurious sentiment, the jaded love
of excitement, the noxious excesses which every now and
then sprout out into the notice of the world, and shock and
distress pure minds that have the fear and the love of God
before their eyes. It is, in almost every case, our
disengaged girls, the gadders on our streets, the flaunters
before society, the showy, frivolous, arrogant, reckless
gamblers for matrimonial stakes, who thus fall under just
condemnation. We need not dread over much this miserable
end for those who have grown up and continue to dwell in
safe, pure, religious homes;
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and we can pray for them, that they may be delivered from
the sudden, overwhelming rush of temptation and violent
passion, which we grant, with sad awe, it is just possible
may overcome and engulf the wisest and best of our corrupt
humanity.
An evil bulking far more largely in our
ordinary circles, and among the girls who compose them, is
the unreasonable and exaggerated view which is taken of the
promotion obtained by marriage; and the temptation thus
presented to a girl of being fairly dazzled by the first
opportunity of occupying this eminence among her sex, and
investing herself with this matron's crown. The peril is
greatly increased by the stolid silence which is preserved
in many families on the highest of human affections, or the
derision with which the lightest allusions to the most
prevailing of human influences is received. A young girl
grows up in ignorance of what is likely to be the mightiest
motive power of her destiny; excepting, indeed, what she
learns by instinct, or rather from her giddy schoolfellows.
Perhaps novels in general have been forbidden to her, and
she has lost not a little of thoughtful instruction from
those good novels, which paint the actual drama of life
under many different hues and draperies, and illumine the
workings of the heart: those touches of nature which make
the whole world kin, and lend us an insight into our own
troubled, tender, immortal souls. She has merely read a few
indifferent or bad novels, which she has not been enabled
by a better standard to reject.
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In this state of inexperience and
immaturity of character, some man of her acquaintance,
lately introduced to her, or long known to her in a
superficial way, pays her the compliment of selecting her
from the girlish circle in which she has been comparatively
obscure, distinguishing her by his attentions, and
soliciting her to stand to him in the nearest and dearest
relation of life. Girls are mostly sensitive; they are
impressed by an honor; they are clinging, and fond, too;
and they instinctively turn to a guide and ruler. And, as
if all this were not quite enough to overbalance this
girl's judgment, she is immediately hailed with a perfect
chorus of acclamation, not only from her companions, but
from her whole little world. Her mother, with all her
relations at a greater distance, if the match appears
unexceptionable, is filled with pride and gladness. The
centre of this excitement--call her volunteer or victim,
but call her not conqueror--is petted, praised, caressed,
envied on every hand, until she must be a good and wise
girl indeed if she be not raised on the noisy turbulent
wave of popularity, and floated quite off her feet. Poor
little woman! many a struggle and scramble and wound she is
fated to encounter, ere she be disabused of her foolish
self-importance, and recover the lost humility and
contentment of what ought to have been the heyday of her
life.
Now all this is wrong and cruel. It is no joke;
it causes thousands of women to shed salt tears; it is at
the bottom of thousands of miserable homes.
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To be a good man's choice for his wife,
is a crowning honor to any woman, but there the matter
ends; there is no further exaltation. Until we recognize
other prizes for women than the prize of matrimony; until
we openly and broadly teach and preach, as the greatest
satirist of the age has represented it to our girls, that
the temple of matrimony without a shrine is no better than
a sepulchre; until we teach our girls that a
self-interested marriage, a marriage of pride and vanity, a
marriage of convenience, or even a marriage of flighty
inclination, is of all shams the greatest sham to a woman,
we shall have pining faces, weary spirits, failing health
and happiness on all sides of us. We shall have those loud,
conflicting complaints of incompatibility of temper. Why do
the couples not examine into that probability before-hand?
take into consideration the three hundred and sixty-five
breakfasts a year, to be eaten in company with one and the
same individual, when both body and mind are apt to be in
dishabille? May we be mercifully preserved from those
ghastly violations of solemn ties, those ghastly falls into
vice and crime, those triumphs of the evil lusts of the
flesh which have sometimes prevailed in the higher class of
our countrywomen.
There is yet another view of this
old question of love and lovers, which the writer would
wish to take up before dismissing the subject. There are
those who have loved, there are those who will love,
fruitlessly. Very tenderly would a friend
View page [40]
approach them; very reverently, very
hopefully. All gentleness and honor to those who bear the
scars of battle. They have evidenced that they have hearts,
and heads too, possibly; they have felt, and thought, and
fought their hard contest; and so that they have done it
modestly and bravely, uprightly, and stanchly to the end,
it will not mar them--never. Better, a thousand times, to
have loved in vain, to have been jilted, pitied, derided
even, than to have made a comfortable, worldly marriage.
Let our girls neither scorn nor shrink from such results.
Let them be sure that their Maker did not give them their
fervent spirits, their kindly affections, to be blasted by
the breath of one disappointment; to be in the power of any
man, however selfish, guileful, or unfortunate, to crush
and annihilate. They will bloom again, these old fields,
and the herbs of grace on them will but shed more fragrance
for being bruised. Noble ranks, in the sight of the noble,
are those armies of single women who have made no covenant
with man, but whose oath of allegiance is sworn directly to
the Lord. We are, in general, losing something of our
strong, outward, artificial tendency; and it is only the
very coarse, now-a-days, who "roast old women," tease the
weak, and despise old maids. Rest assured, everything may
be borne, with God's help, by the good and true.
Mortification and anguish, that wistful yearning which,
like hope deferred, maketh the heart sick, have but their
day. Endure them, lift them up, and carry them as a daily
burden,
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permitted by the
Master, though, perhaps, consummated by the fellow-servant;
have faith in heaven and earth; forget yourself in others;
pray, work, enjoy--it is wonderful how many enjoyments are
left to the smitten--and the new dawn will rise sooner or
later, the calmer, broader dawn, which will only set on the
cloudless morning of eternity.
Is any one lovesick?
Don't deny it, or stifle it, or trample upon it, to your
own conscience. Keep it a dead secret from all others, if
you will. That "the heart knoweth its own bitterness," that
"a stranger intermeddleth not with its sorrows," are
sacred, wholesome sentiments; but don't stretch the
concealment to yourself, and grow sour and hard under the
perpetual silence. Look the truth steadily in the face, and
then say to yourself, Thus and thus must love be purified
of its passion, and robbed of its sting. Be up and doing in
this world; be in the spirit, remembering another world.
For a plain, practical prescription, be busy from morning
till night. Inasmuch as is possible, lay your own
individuality down, and take up the claims and wants of
others; identify yourself with them, look at life through
their thousand gleaming eyes, and their thousand craving
hearts. Never fear; peace will come; joy will come; peace
which cannot pass away, joy whose fruition is
bliss.
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[Illustration : An
illustrative arch, formed from a wooden frame with
grapevines twining around it. The frame is shaped to form
four peaks along the top edge of the
arch.]
V.
GODLINESS.
[Illustration : A decorative
capital "A".]
A
MONG gifts I reckon a long list: some of
these may be ours for a time; some may be, in a great
measure, from first to last denied to us; all may be taken
from us. We may have them, or we may want them, and,
terrible as the blank appears, we may certainly, in the
light of another world, do without them.
Of studies I
reckon only two. These we must run after, if we are
faithful, to our dying day; these, without reservation, are
our actual possessions, ours to foster, develop, mature
here; ours to practise and enjoy hereafter.
The first
is godliness. Without godliness, there can be no sure
virtue, no firm principle. All excellence, not built on the
foundation of the conception of God, the fear of God, the
love of God, is the foolish man's house on the sand--the
wind blew, and the storm rose, and great was the fall of
it. Even irreligious men and women have a dim, restless, in
consistent perception of this fact. A woman without God in
the world, is an awfully sad and strange
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spectacle. By woman came sin and death
into the world; the Seed of the woman bruised the serpent's
head; the Lord was born of a woman; women followed his
footsteps; women ministered unto him, women were last at
the cross and first at the sepulchre. And of the Master's
exceeding tenderness for women, we have a proof in his
generous, mindful, touching speech, even, on the Dolorous
way, fainting under his own mighty sorrows and
humiliations, "Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me, but
rather weep for yourselves." A woman's heart, unsoftened by
that divine love, unmelted by that incomparable
sacrifice--we repeat it, an unbelieving, reckless, crafty,
vain, light woman is an awfully sad and strange
spectacle.
But just because the livelier feelings and
softer temper of women render them usually more open to
impressions, there is the more need that these impressions
should not prove flighty, fickle, spurious, or morbid. To
women particularly applies that verse of the parable of the
sower which represents the seed sown and germinated, and
sprung fresh and fair; too quick and ready of promise, as
it were, without depth of earth; and so when the sun
shines, when persecution or tribulation comes, it withers
away. Women are liable to be made up of impulses; they
require ballast; even those of them who have comparatively
strong, deep natures require discipline, constant
discipline, to break and train the rebellious womanly
nature.
Now, do not mistake me. Godliness is a
divine
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grace. No man can come
unto God, except the Spirit of God draw him; it is a
spiritual effort; they who worship God "must worship him in
spirit and in truth;" but for all that, godliness is a
study carried on by human perseverance and action, and the
use of material means. Though it is our hearts which we
lift to God in prayer, yet we also do him the homage of the
body; and while we are in the body, with this mysterious
double nature of ours, if we deliberately and wilfully lay
aside the outward homage, I would dread the non-continuance
of the inward reverence. We speak to our Father in heaven
in articulate sounds, because these are now the expression
of our living souls. So our godliness must have not only a
creed and a worship, but a regular acknowledgment in our
day. Far be it from me to wish to fetter any free spirit,
to dictate a channel of grace, to constrain to a course of
duty; but writing to young girls, I would ask them
affectionately to keep in mind the good, lowly, wise
truth:
"Little things on little
wings
Bear little souls to
heaven."
The act of eating and drinking
seems to us a very small, irrelevant, commonplace,
contemptible business, and we are often guilty of
presumptuously slighting the process; but it is a serious
one, nevertheless, for it is this which preserves, or
rather restores, the flesh and blood and bones of this
mortal framework, in which it has pleased our Creator to
place for a season our immortal soul, and which it
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is certainly not his will that we
should destroy before its time. So our godliness must be
fed at stated intervals; it must be refreshed and replaced
by fresh aliment; and although we do not see here the
connection of cause and effect--though the first may often,
to our grief, be distasteful to us, as our natural food in
ailing states of the body--we must humbly and perseveringly
con our day's lessons, and strive to win from them their
germ of pure vitality. I love the word "lesson," which the
Episcopal church gives to the morning and evening readings
of its people.
I have read the advices of good men on
many kinds of daily spiritual diet, and have been honestly
struck, again and again, sometimes with their
impracticability, sometimes with their austerity, sometimes
with their spasmodic vehemence, but I have never doubted
that they contained their own indestructible seeds of
excellence; indeed, that no excellence could well exist
without them. On the other hand, I have heard good people,
in private life and in public, coldly despise, or
pitilessly attack the simpler practices as the merest
hypocrisy or superstition. I am not speaking of worldly
people, who would have rather denounced them as
pharisaical. I am thinking of good people, who have grown
stern or savage over an active young man still feeling it
somehow a comfort to read a psalm before he flung off his
coat to prepare for rest, or a lively young girl
experiencing a sedate gladness in reading and pondering her
chapter before she tripped down
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stairs, to show the first and the
brightest face at the breakfast-table. I have heard a
preacher speak of the sense of contentment and security
which a man or woman experiences after he or she has
said
his or her prayers, as if
it were about the most worldly, hardened, and hopeless
state of mind. What would they have? Are we not to say our
prayers? Are we not to search the Scriptures? And can there
be a more becoming, reasonable, reverent period for these
exercises than in our mornings and evenings? And does not
our reconciled Father himself, who knows the exigencies of
our constitutions and has bestowed their instincts, allow
us this sense of happiness in a void supplied, an
obligation fulfilled? Will he thus despise his children
when they "feel after him," gropingly, still loyal in their
darkness and dulness? And will he not rather bless them,
and give them more and more light? We must know that the
letter killeth, while it is the spirit which maketh alive;
and that without repentance, faith, holiness, and charity,
our prayers and readings are but as so many dead ceremonies
condemning us like our other abused privileges. But in the
name of simplicity and modesty, how are we to advance in
repentance, faith, holiness, and charity, otherwise than by
a manlike, womanlike, childlike adherence to rules and
orders: like Arnold, not being ashamed to say our prayers;
like our wisest, mightiest philosophers, never doubting our
gain when we regularly read our Bibles.
"Be good, my
dear, and read your Bible," said Sir
View page [47]
Walter to Lockhart; and the great genius
had the tenderest human heart, as well as the most
sagacious mind. Read your Bibles, if not absolutely
impossible, every morning and evening, in verses or
chapters, according to your discretion; use your reading
and do not abuse it. That is, think of it as a blessing, a
consolation, a direction, and a support; be unassuming and
unexacting; look for teaching from the Spirit of all
wisdom; take up your own private interpretation in a lowly,
liberal temper; beware of judging your neighbor whom you
fancy careless in her devotions; be not browbeaten by your
other neighbor who, independent, mystical, or bigoted,
censures you as at once childish and bold in your safeguard
and in your freedom. Trust grace, sure in its promise, no
less sure in its performance, and read your Bible, wishing
and striving to do its behests. Look upon it as your
storehouse and your armory, and when times of "refreshing,"
or of trial, of life and work, or of decay and death,
arrive, do not question but it will supply you with
spiritual food and weapons. Try the practice sincerely,
unassumingly, and lovingly, and you may perhaps marvel at
its power.
Prayer is so lofty a subject, so private
and intensely personal an interest, that a writer, who is
not a commissioned servant of the Lord, may well shrink
from obtruding an opinion on her fellows in a matter which
is between them and their Maker. And yet who can dwell on
godliness, and from delicate scruples omit the mention of
prayer? After
View page [48]
the Divine model
of prayer, see that you pray your own prayer, and no other
man or woman's; and consider the two invaluable suggestions
you have received--that your prayers are to be still and
secluded communion, and that you are not to be heard for
your much speaking. Let them be very real prayers, cries
for help, grateful thanks, adoring praise. Our Father in
heaven, your Father and mine, as well as the Almighty God
of the universe, will not be impatient of our little
fretting troubles, our trifling attainments, our feeble,
faltering worship. He who cares for the sparrows and the
ravens will heed the aching or the bounding heart. He will
have our own words and not another's; our own pleadings,
wrestlings, and rejoicings, rather than the experience of
even a David or a Moses second-hand. Blessed be his name!
He does care for our struggles and our victories, our weal
and our woe; and our Elder Brother cannot, either on earth
or in heaven, lose his fellow-feeling, his entire and
exquisite sympathy with his race.
After the reading
of the Bible and prayer, and keeping that day in seven,
which is given us to float as far as we can from
worldliness, selfishness, and malice, and as near as we can
to adoration, peace, and love, I believe that any other aim
to this end of godliness is minor and relative. I take it
for granted that no honest, good girl will wilfully and
deliberately commit a known sin, however often, alas, she
may stumble and fall unawares in her career. What is not in
itself sinful, is so far lawful. No
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doubt all that is lawful is not
expedient. An apostle has said so, and we are bound to try
to be enlightened on this expediency with regard to our own
welfare, and, above all, for our neighbor's sake, because
the question of expediency seems to refer principally to
our influence over our neighbor. But I think, generally,
whatever is lawful is not only allowable, but under due
limits and proportions beneficial. I do not agree with
those who would introduce a system of monachism into our
social life, who regard God's world as the wicked world,
God's kingdom of art as the devil's kingdom, and the deep,
tender affections which our great Father has implanted in
our bosoms as so many cords of idolatry.
I would be a
ransomed woman; and then, while performing the work which
has been given to me to do, I would not fear to relish all
the comforts, pleasures, and joys which he has set in my
path; believing that God is well pleased with our
contentment and gladness, that he asks and accepts the
praise and thanks of our merry hearts, as well as the
confessions and petitions of our mourning spirits. The
church in my heart should have its festivals as well as its
fasts.
Thus, as minor and relative, would I regard
all other religious reading after the study of the Bible.
At the same time, I think a girl in earnest about godliness
will have her eye on its promotion in some part of her
general reading. I would recommend her in this search, as
an advice which cannot be repeated
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too often, (so much are we tempted to
adopt a parrot-like imitation of each other,) to read what
she feels applies to herself and profits herself. Not to
insist on drugging herself with another person's medicine,
too strong, or it may be too weak, or otherwise totally
unsuited to her constitution and ailment.
While
frankly taking what God in his providence sends, and
joining in the toil and the recreation of the work-a-day
and holiday world, many good people are distressed by a
sense of disruption between their spiritual and their
natural life. Probably nothing but experience, growth in
Christianity weaned from
selfishnesss
[sic]
, and a higher,
closer, and clearer comprehension of and communion with the
divine life will overcome this discord. John Wesley
recommended short ejaculatory prayers, if no more than "The
Lord direct me!" "The Lord help me!" and this corresponds
literally with the apostle's "pray without ceasing," "be
instant in prayer." Others have chosen a verse in the
morning, to be as it were blended and intertwined with
their day's occupations and enjoyments, so as to leaven
them throughout. Certainly, when prone to covetousness, the
admonition, "Let your treasure be in heaven," ought to be
an aid to us: when driven to unrest, so should the
meditation on the peace which was his bequest; and when
entangled in ambitious effort and its accompanying strife,
so should also the recommendation not to desire vain
glory.
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Another habit,
whose acquisition is frequently pressed upon us, is to
review at night our day's transactions, and humbly
acknowledge their success while we lament their failures,
in order to have our conscience always clear and in working
order. To this has been added the glancing over, in the
morning, a rough plan of what the day's duties, trials,
temptations, pleasures, pains may be, with the intent of a
consequent preparation for them; guarding, at the same
time, lest this should interfere with taking no heed for
the morrow, and casting our cares on one who careth for
us.
But let me reiterate, these are minor and
relative obligations, and must always depend very much on
the temperament, condition, and surroundings of the
individual concerned. They may be easily erected into
eleventh commandments, and twisted into will-worship and
bodily exercise. If held tenaciously, doggedly, in a spirit
of self-conceit, fussiness, or intolerance, they may not
only be very injurious to the girl and woman relying on
them; but to all those with whom she comes in contact,
causing false inferences, unjust judgments, and inflicting
grave wounds in the broad humanity of the gospel.
I
cannot find, that in the wide or concentrated laws of the
Bible, there are any express injunctions to formal acts in
the promotion of godliness beyond "search the Scriptures;"
"be instant in prayer;" "forsake not the assembling of
yourselves together;" "do good and communicate." The mantle
is a wide
View page [52]
one; preserve its
simple integrity, and its folds will fit the shape of youth
and age, rich and poor, those whom the north gives up, and
those whom the south keeps not back. Do not confine and cut
it for mankind, according to your own poor taste and
figure, at your peril.
View page [53]
[Illustration : An
illustrative arch formed from a simple wooden
frame.]
VI.
KINDLINESS.
[Illustration : A decorative
capital "G".]
G
ODLINESS without kindliness I believe to be
a delusion, and, like all delusions affecting religion,
baneful both to those who are blinded and to those who are
revolted by it. "He who loveth not his brother whom he hath
seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?" is a
question which admits of no exception. As there is no
sound, enduring kindliness without godliness, there is no
godliness without kindliness. Kindliness is an integral
part of godliness: "pure religion and undefiled is to visit
the widow and the fatherless in their affliction, and to
keep one's self unspotted from the world."
In one
sense kindliness must also be a work of God's grace; but
like godliness itself, it is to be nourished, strengthened,
ripened by human energy and constancy exerted on means.
Kindliness must be a study to a good girl. But, in case of
misconception, understand kindliness as standing for
good-will, benevolence, mindfulness, and mercy; which may
exist in company with plainness, stiffness, starchedness,
seriousness, and even an exterior of
View page [54]
sternness; and which is quite
irrespective of a soft temper and a caressing address. It
is curious, and a little vexatious to find how matter and
manner are confounded; how so many honeyed words from a
plausible, crafty woman, and so many sharp ones from a true
and tender one, are carelessly allowed to reverse the
world's estimation of their character, and are received
even by those who ought to know better, as correct indices
of the individuals.
Sweetness of manner is so
notorious a varnish, as to become the butt of the corroding
acids and scraping-knives of many of our writers of
fiction. Nowhere is it more extensively displayed than in
the inordinate love of children and children's society
affected by some of the women of our day; and in the
exaggerated estimation of childish worth displayed largely
in some departments of the world of letters. Because our
Master taught us to reverence little children by reminding
us that their helplessness and ignorance of fraud and
violence, rendered them, and all who are like them,
especially the charge of his Father's angels, one-half of
the world professes to regard these little people as angels
out-right. This extravagance has even been pushed, in the
face of a thousand examples of childish meanness and
tyranny, to the daring extent of a denial of original sin.
It strikes me that this foolish notion of which men and
women are so proud is but a rag of spurious humility; for
you see it is actually easier for your arrogance and
headiness, your sloth and obstinacy, your desperate
covetousness and turbulence
View page [55]
to
bow, half skeptically, half laughingly, to a child's
sceptre of rushes, than to pay a modest and womanly homage
to a man's authority.
Kindliness, then, never
consisted or even lay to any extent in "becks and bows, and
wreathed smiles," though real pleasantness is a great
element in winning the favor of our fellows. Neither is it
by any means engrossed or fully expressed by alms-deeds,
though without question, if we do feel tenderly to our
neighbor at all, we feel with peculiar tenderness to our
neighbor in any suffering and wretchedness which we can
comprehend. "Though I give all my goods to feed the poor,
and have not charity, I am nothing." This kindliness is
charity, liberality and generosity of spirit, fairness and
impartiality of judgment, mildness and meekness of heart
rather than of tone, kindly affectionateness in all ties
and relations--tenderest in the nearest, mellow and
sympathetic in the most removed. It is of the very essence
of Christianity; and the neglect of it has inflicted more
injury on the cause of Him who is love divine, has wounded
him more sorely in the house of his friends than the
absence of any other quality or faculty whatever. I would
urge it the more imperatively that it is (but certainly by
no means to the same extent as formerly) overlooked, or
understated, or in some respect slurred over in many
lessons for young people. Kindliness is only second to
godliness. On one occasion an apostle accorded it the
precedence: If we do not love the brother whom we have
seen, how can we love him
View page [56]
in
whose glorious image that brother was originally created,
the God whom we have not seen?
On woman, by natural
constitution, and time-out-of-mind institutions, kindliness
is so imperative, that the want of it brings down express
scandal on godly women, or rather on women professing
godliness. I need not allude to the satires, deserved and
undeserved, by some of the strangely neutral, some of the
still more strangely and sadly antagonistic, and some of
the merely smart and pungent writers of the day. This
defect is generally seen where our very instincts should
have pointed out to us the flagrant outrage, by our own
hearths and in our own homes. Domestic duties, always holy
and dear, are often monotonous--have often their wearing
irritations and carking cares; they are unseasoned by
excitement; they claim no renown. The self-sacrifice they
involve, although it is often very complete, is so subtle,
that it becomes no cause of pride; in fact it is made
almost inadvertently and insensibly. Therefore stragglers
and adventurers are won from these still, shady, simple
paths by vanity, by the restlessness of craving, unemployed
energies, and also (to do them justice) by a mistaken sense
of duty. To enter upon public services, they desert their
private posts, and they are thus guilty of a double
infidelity; they have forsaken their first love, and by
taking upon them engagements for which they were not free,
they have also done despite to and brought shame upon what
was in itself fair and honorable, pure and lovely, and of
good
View page [57]
report. This evil is so
very grave, that it needs the strongest protest against its
existence and recurrence. But, on the other hand, to those
who are disposed to insist on "busy-bodies," "showy
professors," "ill-ordered, ill-balanced enthusiasts," we
would state respectfully and good-humoredly that it is the
scum and froth of the pot which rises to the surface; that
the sound hearts and true, the deep hearts and tender, the
sensible practical women, the cheery patient women, the
constant, untiring, unassuming asserters and maintainers of
righteousness and love, work everywhere unseen, unheard of,
until the day shall declare it. And our generation has
proved sufficiently that great deeds of mercy can be done
by women, whose household names have never been spoken
without a blessing.
Kindliness is thoroughly opposed
to meanness, to malice, to mischief of every description.
It bids us have faith in one another; it bids us bear long
with one another; it tells us to be obedient, respectful,
and tender to our elders; firm yet indulgent to our
juniors; reasonable and gracious to our equals; just,
thoughtful feeling, and helpful to our inferiors. It
negatives mere human ambition and selfish rivalry; it
altogether forbids slander, talebearing, and backbiting; it
even cries oh, fie, fie! against ridicule, when ridicule
verges on levity and cynicism.
Our Bible has at least
this superiority over the Hebrew Talmud, that we have the
one in a moderate compass, so that we can all read it from
end to end, without any stretch of application, every
year
View page [58]
of our lives, if we
choose; while the other consists of such a mass of writing,
and host of saws, that a youth's entire education is spent
in becoming "ready at the law." Here are only two studies
for you girls, Godliness and Kindliness; master them, and
you may be what you will, intelligent or stupid, learned or
ignorant, a belle or a dowdy, it will signify wondrous
little either here or hereafter.
How we toil and
scheme and strive for our young ones, and see how simply
they may be furnished with all that is
alsolutely
[sic]
necessary for the
battle of life! We would give our beloved--what would we
not give our beloved of rich and rare, of exultation and
ecstasy? But God gives his beloved sleep; rest in his
tabernacle from the strife of tongues; the rest which
remaineth in the green pastures and by the still
waters.
[Illustration : A small decorative
illustration of leaves and flowers entwined in a
pattern.]
View page [59]
[Illustration : A decorative
arch formed from an extremely thin wooden frame, around
which delicate vines and flowers are
entwined.]
VII.
FASHION.
[Illustration : A decorative
capital "T".]
T
HE customs of society in Christian
countries, if not altogether just and good, are generally
moderately commendable. Communities, even in heathen times,
seem to have been endowed with the faculty of deciding,
candidly and creditably enough for the masses, if they
could only have adhered to their decisions. Therefore, to
act in violent contradiction to established laws and
precedents, to set at defiance the fashion alike of time
and place, is not, unless in a case of strict necessity, a
wise, far less a modest proceeding. It is particularly
senseless and aggravating in women, whose power, like that
of the old Roman tribunes, is that of quiet, steady vetos.
But the sinners in this respect are comparatively few and
far between; and they are those to whom arguments on
moderation, the relative importance and non-importance of
great things and small, the advantage of open-hearted
concessions and good-tempered submissions, would mostly
savor of luke-warmness. On the contrary, the stumblers from
the offence of fashion are legion.
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The amount of activity misdirected,
time and means wasted and tempers spoiled, and sources of
usefulness lost by fashion, is so enormous, that it would
be ludicrous, if it were not lamentable. Remember, I do not
refer to women of high rank, whose responsibilities are on
an exaggerated scale, but to women of the middle class, who
are bond-slaves to this shifting, intangible, potent system
and power. So wedded are they to the bondage, that there is
not a point on which the writer has approached the reader
with such a hopelessness akin to despair--only Christians
have no warrant to despair.
To name the degree of
absurdity and error to which fashion carries the women who
are not steeled against it in every light, would fill not a
paper but a volume. And, with regard to women of the middle
rank, there is one light in which fashion seizes them with
an engrossing supremacy which it does not affect in the
case of women of wealth and station. It robs my lady
flagrantly of her money, and incidentally of her health and
peace; but, from my plain though pretentious mistress it
pilfers in addition, without scruple, both her time and her
talents. The hours she spends in contriving; the cleverness
she unfolds in bringing to bear; the fortitude she evinces
in enduring counter-checks; the self-denial, the toil she
undertakes for such a wearing out, fickle, ungrateful idol,
would be incredible, were it not proved by a multitude of
cases every day. The labor of a working man, a slave, a
pack-horse, is not
View page [61]
greater, by
comparison, than the groaning efforts, the address, the
stoicism of a poor woman running after fashion, keeping up
appearances, or rather deluding herself and her neighbors
into believing herself a fine lady, and her family a
dashing, luxurious household. Luxurious household indeed!
they are as far from attaining to this as they are from
possessing the dignity, repose, honest hospitality, and
loyal brotherly-kindness which were originally within their
reach.
I am anxious to state, that in these remarks I
do not at all refer to the womanly desire to have all
things at home, furniture and apparel, nice and pleasant;
to the sense of the beautiful and the graceful, which
cultivation supplies; to the tender pains, the genial,
joint efforts by which family-life is unspeakably gladdened
and brightened; to the trouble and energy by which a frugal
mother has her children respectable, neat, smart. No, no;
these are the sweet blossomings over truth, affection,
self-respect, and faithful regard for kindred. What I
inveigh against is the senseless waste, the tasteless, vain
show, the pinching behind backs and the profusion before
faces, which has no husband's comfort, no child's
happiness, no brother's or sister's enjoyment as its
object--whose beginning and end are in pride and vanity,
and whose fruit is unneighborly strife in the race of
extravagance and ruin. Even when there is a little sense to
hold back in time from this common conclusion, such lives
are fertile in falsehood, deceit, unlovely calculations
View page [62]
and speculations, and barren in
all nobleness, gentleness, and generosity.
In the
case of girls, the stumbling-block of fashion scarcely
extends yet to having houses like the squire's, or to
dispensing dinners like the lord mayor's feast. What
principally concerns girls is fashion in dress, and in
spending their time, especially the early portion of their
day, which is peculiarly their own.
Dress might have
a long homily, and yet a few sentences may sum it up. Much
must be left to individual circumstances and tastes. Dress
within your means, handsomely if you will, becomingly if
you can. Dress affectionately (I cannot think of a
recommendation which can render dress more productive of
real, permanent pleasure), to gratify papa and mamma--with
a lingering adhesion to some rather wornout, rather
exploded article of attire, because it was Mary's or
Willie's thoughtful gift! Ah, yes, there is much more
sentiment in many a faded shawl or old-fashioned gown than
in the newest, glossiest, most elegant, most graceful, and
captivating acquisition to the toilette, fresh from the
showroom of Madame Duval herself.
Dress as you
choose, if you will but attend to the following
restrictions. Do not give to dress more than a modest
portion of your hours and ideas. Do not bestow upon it all,
or all save a fraction, of any allowance of pocket-money
which you may obtain, so that you have next to nothing for
works of affection, benevolence, and charity,
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and are ashamed to give such
a veritable widow's mite out of what was originally much
more than the widow's store. I would ask you, some quiet
Sunday evening, some day when you are recovering from
sickness, some still hour succeeding the palpitation of
great joy or great sorrow, if these are not habits of
self-indulgence unbecoming a Christian girl--if, while you
were by no means dressed like a fright or a nun, you might
not at the same time have been simple and economical.
Do not be feverishly anxious to be more "stylish" than
your companions, and feverishly elated when you attain your
end. "Stylish" has replaced our old word "genteel," and I
doubt if it is much to our advantage. I have heard
"stylish" used by pure, sweet, sensible lips, when it did
not sound amiss; but if it ordinarily means to be out of
your rank in costume, or so conspicuous and singular in the
shape and trimming of your wearing apparel, as to cause
people to gape and stare when they encounter you in the
streets or in society, then stylishness is simply very bad
taste. Whatever is unsuitable to your station offends the
judgment, and the judgment guides every eye but the eye of
a fool. To be notorious for the cut and color of your
garments, has been in every age the temporary ebullition of
eccentricity, or the sign of a weak, low, or giddy
mind.
If, again, stylishness in its better sense
merely indicates a craving after personal distinction, you
are surely old enough to observe that this peculiarity,
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like beauty, is a gift, a grand
attractive gift; but no more to be won by you in its
details, (the bend of the head, the inclination of the
shoulders, the freedom and elasticity of motion, which
lends such a fascination to the bonnet, such a charm to the
folds of the mantle, such a something unsurpassable even to
the sweep of the skirts,) than are the pearly skin, the
rose-leaf bloom, or the Grecian, Roman, or clear composite
Saxon features which have not been granted to you. If you
do possess them, they need little embellishment; if you do
not possess them, why hanker after them in your silliness,
now that you have given up the paint-pot with which your
ancestresses, in the reigns of Anne and the first Georges,
daubed their sallow cheeks "a fine red"? Renounce also the
peacock's feathers, which will not transform you, my poor
jay! which will only render you ridiculous, and exhaust
your capacity for a thousand other enjoyments. Rise up in
your native dignity, equal and some times superior to my
lady swimming or tripping along. Love to contemplate my
lady in nature with an honest, unenvious admiration, and
love to regard her also in art from the brush of Sir
Joshua, Gainsborough, or Sir Henry Lawrence. But whether
you are a dumpy or a scarecrow, be so without a sigh; there
is something as good if not better for you; yield my lady
her sphere and assume your own--be sure it exists for you
somewhere, if you will only have the patience to hunt about
for it, or quietly await it. This attempt to be
View page [65]
all equally elegant and
graceful, and not what many of us must be content to
remain, merely unobtrusive, unassuming persons, is a
monomania among women.
With regard to the fashionable
waste of time, perhaps the abuse exists most notoriously in
towns and great towns. There, no one can pass along the
streets on business or pleasure without being struck with
the crowds of young girls who are promenading neither for
the one purpose nor the other. No one can enter a public
exhibition without being harassed, well-nigh persecuted by
the multitude of idle women, who are there openly and
ostensibly to see and be seen; to meet their acquaintances;
to lounge, lunch, gossip, and to do any thing but look at
the pictures, or suffer others to look at them. One might
be driven to desire that societies should make a little
sacrifice, and inscribe over their doors, "Only for the
lovers of art and science; no loud greetings, no standing
about, or planting of bodies for hours on convenient
benches; no continuous chatter allowed."
This is only
the public side of the nuisance. How many daily inflictions
there are in the shape of dawdling visits, where there is
nothing to say, nothing to hear, and where the outward
presence is a mere pernicious habit, we dare not attempt to
register.
Now, there is no cause for this idle
expenditure of time, for really, in consequence of it, days
and weeks slip from you in the most unprofitable manner
imaginable, you know not how; and if you are
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not vivacious, you get into
such an indolent habit of sailing with the stream, that you
lose all independence and originality of character. If you
have performed the duties, developed the talents,
cultivated the cheap, blithe pleasures we were describing,
you have no such superabundant leisure to throw away.
Remember, though your bountiful Father allows you a million
of innocent enjoyments and delights, to wanton trifling you
are not free. It is demoralizing, and it is destructive; it
saps your earnestness, and it spends your strength for
naught. For "every idle word," you will have to give
account; that is very solemn. Do not let it frighten you
from your innocent joyousness; but do let it check you from
a deliberate waste of many hours every day in unmeaning
gadding, and loitering here and there and everywhere but at
home. Of course, if you follow such pursuits with other
motives and purposes, at the request of parents, for the
benefit of friends, the case is altogether different. It
must be very worthless company, indeed, which a good intent
does not justify and ennoble. But, speaking of the practice
in its purely primitive aspect, I would warn you against
it. It is no reason why you should gad, that it is the
fashion; it is very little excuse for your frivolity, that
other girls are not sensible and serious at proper times.
Set the example, and act like the little boy at Rugby, who
said his morning prayers, though the other boys slyly threw
boots at his head. Who can tell whether your companions
will not be drawn by
View page [67]
your
courage and wisdom, until gadding and trifling and dropping
in upon each other at all hours, without sound friendship,
without strong sympathy, without anything but vacuity of
heart and brain, will be the exception instead of the
rule?
No doubt, there may be great idleness at home
and in retirement; great pecking, like a bird, at a
thousand occupations, but an applying of ourselves to none
of them. We all know the process--trying over this piece of
music, putting a stitch into that bit of work, interfering
for a moment with the cook or the housemaid without
affording either any available assistance--plenty of this,
but nothing like business or steady work during the whole
morning, and that for morning after morning. Still there
can be little question that the temptation to dissipation
is far less at home than abroad; and I have wished to
offer, to any who will use them, suggestions, which may
help them to avoid this shallow, superficial course, and to
adopt another walk--that of being earnest in all their
ways.
[Illustration : A small decorative
illustration.]
View page [68]
[Illustration : A decorative
arch, with its upper border formed from a thin wooden
frame, and its lower border formed from a vine. The space
between the wooden frame and the vine is filled in with
leaves, vines, and two small flowers in the
middle.]
VIII.
A LIFE OF PRIDE
AND LEVITY.
[Illustration : A decorative
capital "T".]
T
HERE has been always a tendency in the
world to withdraw pride from its place among the deadly
sins, and that in spite of direct denunciations against it.
"Pride cometh before destruction." "God hateth a high
look." This favor seems to arise from two causes. Pride
itself is a hard, selfish, and actually mean temper in its
narrowness and arrogance; but no other disposition has such
a faculty of clothing itself like an angel of light,
putting on the garb and showing the features of dignity,
nobleness, magnanimity. For a second stronger reason, other
qualities are habitually mistaken for pride. Shyness, for
instance, which is often found in company with its
opposite, humility; self-respect, which is an honest man's
inheritance; independence, which is a brave man's portion;
bluntness, which we cannot, for the life of us, dissever
from truth.
Call pride insolence, whether superb or
vulgar, and you will make no mistake. The impatience of
interference with your plans, the loud or dogged assertion
of your will, the slighting or sweeping
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condemnation of all beneath
your sovereign notice; these are very unlovely and
unloveable. But this tone, like that of mock ignorance of
household work and rural economy, is, we are glad to say,
much exploded. Few girls hector in a shop, or storm over a
servant, before their associates, because they are very
well aware that in so doing many eyes will be fixed on them
in censure. They have learned at last that it is not like
gentlewomen to be imperious and tyrannical. Where they can
undoubtedly command, and where they feel a strong call to
be insolent, they are merely languid, supercilious, and
sneering. But it is in that "debatable land" which a good,
earnest writer has classed as "the missing link" in the
social chain, that insolence remains rampant. Among
acquaintances a shade removed in rank and refinement,
inferiors by an inappreciable degree which no mortal would
take the trouble to reckon--it is towards the commonplace,
the tiresome, the shabby, that insolence still flourishes
in full bloom. It is by what are called "Cuts," by shades
of cordiality, varying far more suddenly and violently than
our weather-gauges, that simple, sincere folks are
tried.
"Really the way that girl bowed to me in the
Crescent was insufferable. I can bear a good deal of
nonsense from girls, having had girls of my own; but for a
child like that to think it a fit thing to recognise a
staid old woman like me, by simply lowering her eyelids!"
complains the respectable mother of a family; "and it was
only in spring she sent
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her
love, and could I give her some bramble-jam for her cold;
nothing did her good like my bramble-jam, and I am sure I
did not grudge it. I was delighted that she should have
recourse to me; but I must say I expected a little livelier
sense of my existence."
"They are all the same,
mother," answers a little bitterly the somewhat worn eldest
daughter, at the same time much more indignant at the
slight put upon her mother than at any neglect to herself.
"If you had seen how reluctant Agnes Jones was to see me
to-day, because she was walking with the Stephensons. I
shall be blind enough the next time I meet her, though it
should be before her admirer, Mr. Forester, who was so much
obliged to my brother George."
No, no, Agnes, you
will forgive and forget; you will warm your sometimes weary
heart by the consciousness that you have not done any thing
to spoil Agnes Jones' fine prospects, little as she thanks
you for it; and long after this small vexation is past and
gone, you, who are so candid and loving, will understand to
the full that verse of the psalm, "Thou hast put gladness
in my heart more than in the time that their corn and their
wine increased."
But in our day the life of pride, of
strong domineering self-importance, has generally accepted
also the cue of the life of levity--the life which finds a
joke in every thing, which laughs at all reverence,
earnestness, and romance. It is one of the hardest and most
hostile aspects of the human mind which
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you can encounter. Talk to a
young lady who aspires to be "fast"--who quotes the
broadest slang, and must have "larks," if not
"sprees"--talk of self-sacrifice, of high, pure thoughts,
of lives happy in their holiness, and she will vote you
"slow," shrug her shoulders, remark upon your neck-ribbon
or your bootlace, be witty at your expense, and have
nothing more to do with you. She may have too much passive
principle to denominate your conversation humbug, but she
will think you old-fashioned, prudish, sentimental,
superannuated, officious, intrusive. She will jeer at you
unmercifully, or be seriously incensed if you provoke her
further. All the while she may pay respect to the outward
forms of religion, to churches, prayer-meetings,
Sabbath-schools, benevolent societies, private devotions,
and far be it from me to say she is insincere; but there is
surely the oddest incongruity in her conduct.
Now a
good laugh is an excellent thing, and the most of us firmly
credit it is enjoyed in its perfection by the best men and
women in the world. We can set our seals to the description
of such sick-rooms as George Wilson's, where the good and
patient not only lie in an attitude of meekness and
resignation, but spread around them a clear, sunny
atmosphere of humor and fun. Who should be happy but those
who are at peace with God and man? But this incapacity for
viewing any thing under a serious aspect, this incredulity
of all high duty, sustained effort, generous
self-abnegation, and growing unworldliness is, we should
venture to say,
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very far from
what our worthiest humorist contemplates.
If I
recollect aright, a son of Legh Richmond spoke severely on
his death-bed against the former merry cast of his
conversation with a young sister; but the young will gambol
in mind as well as body. Their Maker gave them this early
buoyancy, and we may well shrink from taking it from them.
I would never object to its use, only to its abuse. I am
aware there are some kindly spirits who retain this blessed
buoyancy to old age. I know there are constitutions whose
deep feelings almost always speak half jestingly, with a
touch of the comic for ever relieving the tragic side of
their natures. There are those who would be sombre without
this tendency, and whose sense of pathos is so quick and
keen that they are glad to weld it with laughter, to take
off, as it were, the piquant edge of its pitifulness, and
they generally preserve the characteristic to the last. I
am not sure whether it is not a healthful counterbalance to
save them from moping melancholy or desperate despair. But
this is quite another thing from that cold levity which
regards all life as a joke, and whose desire after sport is
as keen as any hunter's or fisher's. The zest with which
such girls follow amusement, in the shape of practical
jokes, and making butts of weak acquaintances, has been
before now exposed. But a good girl will hold back from
such a course; "her delicate sense of honor" will prevent
her from being a party to any modified version of the
frolics which form a
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distinguishing feature in some circles. Her fuller, richer
nature will reject with aversion the emptiness of laughter
which has no strong background of thought and feeling. She
will not live a life of rushing here and there, and
giggling violently. Her quiet perception of propriety will
revolt at the personal notoriety which captivates other
girls. For you will find that the great desire of the poor
girl, born and bred to the life of pride and levity, is to
make you stare, to confound your sober senses, to strut
before you, to push you out of your place, to tread on your
skirts, and finally to eclipse your view with her high,
vain head, and to raise a noisy clamor which shall
effectually drown all grave discussion, considerate
forethought, and tender memories and
anticipations.
[Illustration : A small
decorative illustration, depicting a cherub's head
surrounded by a halo of
stars.]
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[Illustration : A decorative
arch, formed from a shepherd's crook at either side
supporting a thin branch which extends aross the top. Vines
are entwined around the entire
structure.]
IX.
PERSEVERANCE
IN WELL-DOING.
[Illustration : A decorative
capital "I".]
I
S youth disheartened or discouraged by
these papers of advice and warning? Come, then, we will
walk in a shady wood on soft turf, under the pale sweet
flowers of the woodlands, more delicate and more graceful
than the bright hardy blossoms of the downs.
What
should a young girl ask for more within her grasp and
capacity, more essential, desirable, and delightful, that
the fulfilment of the injunction to perseverance in
well-doing and patience of hope? You will observe that it
is not to violent effort or extravagant ecstasy, strange to
her constitution or faculties, that she is invited. No, in
quietness shall be her strength. She is called a steady,
sober adherence to her faith; a meek, wistful clinging and
following of the star in the east--the star of
Bethlehem--which she is humbly conscious, with God's help,
she may attain. Often when we are addressed on some
admirable performance, our hearts sink in despair. We
cannot do it; we feel it
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is
not in us. But our God knows our frames, that they are
dust. He does not set us a task which we cannot with his
blessing and guidance accomplish. He leaves us a wide
margin. Perseverance in well-doing--our own particular
power and mode of well-doing; patience of hope--whether
glad assurance, lowly trust, or tremulous submission; all
are according to our natures. We are not summoned to the
sudden achievement of a miracle, we are not asked to
dissever ourselves from our individual tempers, tastes, and
habits. Over our imperfections is flung the mantle of his
perfections till we awake after his likeness. He knows us
in the relations in which we stand, in all their
perplexities and complications, and he is merciful to our
poor womanly shrinkings and yearnings. Who was such a
friend to women as He whom Mary called not Rabbi, like her
brethren, but Rabboni?
Day by day, by little and
little, in spite of short-comings and downfalls, by
watchfulness, by earnestness, by constancy, we are to mould
our pursuits, to train our inclinations, to grow in grace,
and reach that love which casteth out fear--that service
which is perfect freedom. Could we seek an easier yoke, a
lighter burden, one more fit for us to bear, or which
promises us a richer reward?
"But what is my
vocation? In what particular way am I to be useful and
happy?" That is just what no one can tell you. You must
find that out for yourself, and probably you will not
arrive at a
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certainly about
it for years and years to come. Do not be troubled on that
account; you have only to persevere in well-doing. The kind
of well-doing may be shifted; it is often shifted for you
sadly against the grain; still it does not matter.
"Poor wanderers of a stormy day,
From wave to wave we're driven;
And
fancy's flash and reason's ray
Serve but to light our
troubled way:
There's nothing bright
but Heaven."
And in no quarter upon earth can
I read the character and title-deeds of happiness more
legibly written than in the words "love, joy, peace." What
else can we desire? What else do we pursue? In a million
elements, varying as our million characters; in youth and
age; in health and sickness; in nature and art; in
literature; in domestic duties; in philanthropy, in the
many-friended house, in the house of few earthly friends;
where dispositions are simple and homely, where they are
lofty and refined; in poverty, and riches--everywhere,
everywhere love, joy, and peace may be met and
hailed.
This "love, joy, and peace" which is at once
our crown and our shield, is within our reach. It is not
like beauty, accomplishments, eminence, power--a doubtful,
deceitful chance. It is, although the fruit of the Spirit,
our own; for the great, good Holy Spirit, the earnest and
consummation of all blessings, is to be had by our
prayers.
Although you have your plagues, your doubts,
and your distractions, are you to be distressed
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when "love, joy, and peace" may be
yours? In your day-dreams and castle-buildings, tell me did
you ever imagine anything more perfect? "Love, joy, and
peace" are the better, brighter, and surer that they are
not dependent upon a finite hand or a fallible will. I
leave you to think of them, confident that whatever
obstruction of your material schemes may await you,
whatever confusion or transformation of your spiritual
ideas may befall you, they are yours both here and
hereafter.
Some may declare that these arguments are
very good for health and happiness; but in sorrow and
sickness, in sore and peculiar affliction, when the
providence of God is all dark to us, when we are stricken,
smitten, and afflicted, when we do not feel as if we could
grasp anything, when we lie stretched on our death-beds,
then even this "love, joy, and peace," which surely
requires a healthy frame of mind to receive it, is not
enough for us. We want something for the swelling waters,
the howling winds, the awful loneliness, the still more
awful call to meet our God in judgment. And there is
something to meet this extremity, for "man's extremity is
God's opportunity," and this is the extremity of human ill.
There is a rod and staff reserved for the most perilous
expedition, for the last journey of all. "Behold, I am with
you always, until the end of the world." "I will come again
and take you to myself, that where I am there ye may be
also."
Can you hear that and attend to it? The
Saviour
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is near, at your side;
the everlasting arms are underneath you.
"My eyes are watching by thy bed,
My
blessing is around thee shed,
My arm is underneath
thy head;
'T is I, be not
afraid."
The same Saviour who had a human
mother, who taught the Samaritan woman, who answered the
Canaanitish woman for her devil-possessed daughter, who
gave back to Martha and Mary their dead brother, who
pardoned Mary Magdalene, who spoke on the Dolorous way and
hanging on the cross itself, in reply to the sorrows and
necessities of women, and who appeared on his resurrection
first (first of all--think of that!) to one of his
Marys--the wisest, kindest, and best friend whom women ever
possessed, left them this assurance. Do not regard him as a
doctrine, but as a person. Do not fear him in that sense of
fear which repels and crushes love, but cling to him, hold
him by the feet. He will say to you as he proclaimed the
good news to the women of old, and made them his
messengers, "I go to my Father and your Father; to my God
and your God." He will add, in the pitiful tenderness which
brought him down from the high heaven to take upon him our
pains and penalties, "and where I am, there shall also my
servant be."
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A WOMAN'S THOUGHTS
ABOUT WOMEN. BY THE AUTHOR OF "JOHN HALIFAX, GENTLEMAN,"
&c.
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[Illustration : A
decorative arch, made of lines drawn in intricate
patterns.]
I.
SOMETHING TO
DO.
[Illustration : A decorative capital
"I".]
I
PREMISE
that these thoughts do not concern married women, for whom
there are always plenty to think, and who have generally
quite enough to think of for themselves and those belonging
to them. They have cast their lot for good or ill, have
realized in greater or less degree the natural destiny of
our sex. They must find out its comforts, cares, and
responsibilities, and make the best of all. It is the
single women, belonging to those supernumerary ranks which
political economists tell us are yearly increasing, who
most need thinking about.
First, in their early
estate, when they have so much in their possession--youth,
bloom, and health giving them that temporary influence over
the other sex which may result, and is meant to result, in
a permanent one. Secondly, when these advantages are
passing away, the chance of marriage lessening, or wholly
ended, or voluntarily set aside, and the individual making
up her mind to that which respect
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for Grandfather Adam and Grandmother Eve
must compel us to admit, is an unnatural condition of
being.
Why this undue proportion of single women
should almost always result from over-civilization; and
whether, since society's advance is usually indicated by
the advance, morally and intellectually, of its women, this
progress, by raising women's ideal standard of the "holy
estate," will not necessarily cause a decline in the very
un
holy estate which it is most
frequently made--are questions too wide to be entered upon
here. We have only to deal with facts--with a certain
acknowledged state of things, perhaps incapable of remedy,
but by no means incapable of amelioration.
But,
granted these facts, and leaving to wiser heads the
explanation of them if indeed there be any, it seems
advisable, or at least allowable, that any woman who has
thought a good deal about the matter, should not fear to
express in word--or deed, which is better--any conclusions,
which out of her own observation and experience she may
have arrived at. And looking around upon the middle
classes, which form the staple stock of the community, it
appears to me that the chief canker at the root of women's
lives is the want of
SOMETHING TO
DO.
Herein I refer, as this chapter must be
understood especially to refer, not to those whom ill or
good fortune--
query
, is it not
often the latter?--has forced to earn their bread; but "to
young ladies,"
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who have never
been brought up to do anything. Tom, Dick, and Harry, their
brothers, has each had it knocked into him from schooldays
that he is to do something, to be somebody. Counting-house,
shop, or college affords him a clear future on which to
concentrate all his energies and aims. He has got the grand
pabulum
of the human
soul--occupation. If any inherent want in his character,
any unlucky combination of circumstances, nullifies this,
what a poor creature the man becomes! what a moping,
sitting-over-the-fire, thumb-twiddling, lazy, ill-tempered
animal! And why? "Oh, poor fellow! 'tis because he has
because he has nothing to do!"
Yet this is precisely
the condition of many women for a third, a half, often the
whole of their existence.
That Providence ordained it
so--made men to work, and women to be idle--is a doctrine
that few will be bold enough to assert openly. Tacitly they
do, when they preach up lovely uselessness, fascinating
frivolity, delicious helplessness--all those polite
impertinences and poetical degradations to which the
foolish, lazy, or selfish of our sex are prone to incline
an ear; but which any woman of common sense must repudiate
as insulting, not only her womanhood, but her
Creator.
That both sexes were meant to labor, one "by
the sweat of his brow," the other "in sorrow to bring
forth" and bring up "children," cannot, I fancy, be
questioned. Nor, when the gradual changes of the civilized
world, or some special destiny, chosen
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or compelled, have prevented that first,
highest and in earlier times almost universal lot, does
this accidental fate in any way abrogate the necessity,
moral, physical, and mental, for a woman to have occupation
in other forms.
But how few parents ever consider
this! Tom, Dick, and Harry, aforesaid, leave school and
plunge into life; "the girls" likewise finish their
education, come home, and stay at home. That is enough.
Nobody thinks it needful to waste a care upon them. Bless
them, pretty dears, how sweet they are! papa's nosegay of
beauty to adorn his drawing-room. He delights to give them
all they can desire--clothes, amusements, society; he and
mamma together take every domestic care off their hands;
they have abundance of time and nothing to occupy it;
plenty of money, and little use for it; pleasure without
end, but not one definite object of interest or employment;
flattery and flummery enough, but no solid food whatever to
satisfy mind or heart--if they happen to possess either--at
the very emptiest and most craving season of both. They
have literally nothing whatever to do, except to fall in
love; which they accordingly do, the most of them, as fast
as ever they can.
"Many think they are in love, when
in fact they are only idle"--is one of the truest sayings
of that great wise bore, Imlac, in
Rasselas
,and it has been proved by
many a shipwrecked life, of girls especially. This "falling
in love" being usually a mere delusion of the fancy, and
not the real thing at all,
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the
object is generally unattainable or unworthy. Papa is
displeased, mamma somewhat shocked and scandalized; it is a
"foolish affair," and no matrimonial results ensue. There
only ensues--what?
A long, dreary season, of pain,
real or imaginary, yet not the less real because it is
imaginary; of anger and mortification, of impotent
struggle--against unjust parents, the girl believes, or, if
romantically inclined, against cruel destiny. Gradually
this mood wears out; she learns to regard "love" as folly,
and turns her whole hope and aim to matrimony! Matrimony in
the abstract; not
the
man, but
any man--any person who will snatch her out of the dulness
of her life, and give her something to live for, something
to fill up the hopeless blank of idleness into which her
days are gradually sinking.
Well, the man may come,
or he may not. If the latter melancholy result occurs, the
poor girl passes into her third stage of young-ladyhood,
fritters or mopes away her existence, sullenly bears it, or
dashes herself blindfold against its restrictions; is
unhappy, and makes her family unhappy; perhaps herself
cruelly conscious of all this, yet unable to find the true
root of bitterness in her heart: not knowing exactly what
she wants, yet aware of a morbid, perpetual want of
something. What is it?
Alas! the boys only have had
the benefit of that well-known juvenile apophthegm, that
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"Satan finds
some mischief still
For idle hands to
do:"
it has never crossed the parents' minds
that the rhyme could apply to the daughters.
And so
their whole energies are devoted to the massacre of old
Time
. They prick him to death
with crotchet and embroidery needles; thrum him deaf with
piano and harp playing--
not
music; cut him up with morning visitors, or leave his
carcass in ten-minute parcels at every "friend's" house
they can think of. Finally, they dance him defunct at all
sort of unnatural hours; and then, rejoicing in the
excellent excuse, smother him in sleep for a third of the
following day. Thus he dies, a slow, inoffensive, perfectly
natural death; and they will never recognize his murder
till, on the confines of this world, or from the unknown
shores of the next, the question meets them: "What have you
done with Time?"--Time, the only mortal gift bestowed
equally on every living soul, and excepting the soul, the
only mortal loss which is totally irretrievable.
Yet
this great sin, this irredeemable loss in many women arises
from pure ignorance. Men are taught as a matter of business
to recognize the value of time, to apportion and employ it:
women rarely or never. The most of them have no definite
appreciation of the article as a tangible divisible
commodity at all. They would laugh at a mantuamaker who cut
up a dress-length into trimmings, and then expected to make
out of two yards of silk a full skirt.
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Yet that the same laws of proportion
should apply to time and its measurements--that you cannot
dawdle away a whole forenoon, and then attempt to cram into
the afternoon the entire business of the day--that every
minute's unpunctuality constitutes a debt or a theft
(lucky, indeed, if you yourself are the only party robbed
or made creditor thereof): these slight facts rarely seem
to cross the feminine imagination.
It is not their
fault; they have never been "accustomed to business." They
hear that with men "time is money;" but it never strikes
them that the same commodity, equally theirs, is to them
not money, perhaps, but
life
--life in its highest form and
noblest uses--life bestowed upon every human being,
distinctly and individually, without reference to any other
being, and for which every one of us, married or unmarried,
woman as well as man, will assuredly be held accountable
before God.
My young lady friends, of from seventeen
upwards, your time and the use of it is as essential to you
as to any father or brother of you all. You are accountable
for it just as much as he is. If you waste it, you waste
not only your substance, but your very souls--
uot
[sic]
that which is your own, but your
Maker's.
Ay, there the core of the matter lies. From
the hour that honest Adam and Eve were put into the garden,
not--as I once heard some sensible preacher observe--"not
to be idle in it, but to dress it and to keep it," the
Father of all has never put one man
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or one woman into this world without
giving each something to do there, in it and for it: some
visible, tangible work, to be left behind them when they
die.
Young ladies, 't is worth a grave thought what,
if called away at eighteen, twenty, or thirty, the most of
you would leave behind you when you die. Much embroidery,
doubtless; various pleasant, kindly, illegible letters; a
moderate store of good deeds; and a cart-load of good
intentions. Nothing else--save your name on a tombstone, or
lingering for a few more years in family or friendly
memory. "Poor dear ---! what a nice lively girl she was!"
For any benefit accruing through you to your generation,
you might as well never have lived at all.
But "what
am I to do with my life?" as once asked me one girl out of
the numbers who begin to feel aware that, whether marrying
or not, each possesses an individual life, to spend, to
use, or to lose. And herein lies the momentous
question.
The difference between man's vocation and
woman's seems naturally to be this--one is abroad, the
other at home; one external, the other internal; one
active, the other passive. He has to go and seek out his
path; hers usually lies close under her feet. Yet each is
as distinct, as honorable, as difficult; and whatever
custom may urge to the contrary--if the life is meant to be
a worthy or a happy one--each must resolutely and
unshrinkingly be trod. But--
how
?
A definite answer to this
question is simply impossible.
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So diverse are characters, tastes, capabilities, and
circumstances, that to lay down a distinct line of
occupation for any six women of one's own acquaintance,
would be the merest absurdity.
"Herein the patient must
minister to herself."
To few is the choice so easy, the
field of duty so wide, that she need puzzle very long over
what she ought to do. Generally--and this is the best and
safest guide--she will find her work lying very near at
hand: some desultory tastes to condense into regular
studies, some faulty household quietly to remodel, some
child to teach, or parent to watch over. All these being
needless or unattainable, she may extend her service out of
the home into the world, which perhaps never at any time so
much needed the help of us women. And how many of its
charities and duties can be best done only by a wise and
tender woman's hand.
Here occurs another of those
plain rules which are the only guidance possible in the
matter--a Bible rule, too: "
Whatsoever
thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might
."
Question it not, philosophize not over it! do it! only
do it!
thoroughly and
completely, never satisfied with less than perfectness. Be
it ever so great or so small, from the founding of a
village-school to the making of a collar--do it "with thy
might;" and never lay it aside till it is done.
Each
day's account ought to leave this balance--of something
done. Something beyond mere pleasure, one's own or
another's--though both are good
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and sweet in their way. Let the
superstructure of life be enjoyment, but let its foundation
be in solid work--daily, regular, conscientious work: in
its essence and results as distinct as any "business" of
men. What they expend for wealth and ambition, shall not we
offer for duty and love--the love of our fellow creatures,
or, far higher, the love of God? "Labor is worship," says
the proverb: also-ay, necessarily so--labor is happiness.
Only let us turn from the dreary, colorless lives of the
women, old and young, who have nothing to do, to those of
their sisters who are always busy doing something: who,
believing and accepting the universal law, that pleasure is
the mere accident of our being, and work its natural and
most holy necessity, have set themselves steadily to seek
out and fulfil theirs.
These are they who are little
spoken of in the world at large. I do not include among
them those whose labor should spring from an irresistible
impulse, and become an absolute vocation, or it is not
worth following at all--namely, the professional women,
writers, painters, musicians, and the like. I mean those
women who lead active, intelligent, industrious lives:
lives complete in themselves, and therefore not giving half
the trouble to their friends that the idle and foolish
virgins do--no, not even in love affairs. If love comes to
them accidentally (or rather providentially,) and happily,
so much the better! they will not make the worse wives for
having been busy maidens. But "the tender passion" is not
to them the one grand necessity that it is to
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aimless lives; they are in no
haste to wed: their time is duly filled up; and if never
married, still the habitual faculty of usefulness gives
them in themselves and with others that obvious value, that
fixed standing in society, which will for ever prevent
their being drifted away, like most old maids, down the
current of the new generation, even as dead May-flies down
a stream.
They have made for themselves a place in
the world: the harsh, practical, yet not ill-meaning world,
where all find their level soon or late, and where a
frivolous young maid sunk into a helpless old one, can no
more expect to keep her pristine position than a last
year's leaf to flutter upon a spring bough. But an old maid
who deserves well of this same world, by her ceaseless work
therein, having won her position, keeps it to the
end.
Not an ill position either; often higher and
more honorable than that of many a mother of ten sons. In
households, where "Auntie" is the universal referee, nurse,
playmate, comforter, and counsellor: in society, where
"that nice Miss So-and-so," though neither handsome, nor
young, is yet such a person as can neither be omitted nor
overlooked: in charitable works, where she is "such a
practical body--always knows exactly what to do, and how to
do it;" or perhaps, in her own house, solitary indeed, as
every single woman's home must be, yet neither dull nor
unhappy in itself, and the nucleus of cheerfulness and
happiness to many another home besides.
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She has not married. Under Heaven, her
home, her life, her lot, are all of her own making. Bitter
or sweet they may have been--it is not ours to meddle with
them, but we can any day see their results. Wide or narrow
as her circle of influence appears, she has exercised her
power to the uttermost, and for good. Whether great or
small her talents, she has not let one of them rust for
want of use. Whatever the current of her existence may have
been, and in whatever circumstances it has placed her, she
has voluntarily wasted no portion of it--not a year, not a
month, not a day.
Published or unpublished, this
woman's life is a goodly chronicle, the titlepage of which
you may read in her quiet countenance; her manner, settled,
cheerful, and at ease; her unfailing interest in all things
and all people. You will rarely find she thinks much about
herself; she has never had time for it. And this her
life-chronicle, which, out of its very fulness, has taught
her that the more one does, the more one finds to do--she
will never flourish in your face, or the face of heaven, as
something uncommonly virtuous and extraordinary. She knows
that, after all, she has simply done what it was her duty
to do.
But--and when her place is vacant on earth,
this will be said of her assuredly, both here and
otherwhere--
"She hath done what she
could."
View page [93]
[Illustration : A decorative
arch formed from a thin wooden frame entwined with
flowering vines. The frame forms an upward loop at the
center of the arch.]
II.
SELF-DEPENDENCE.
[Illustration : A
decorative capital "I".]
I
F you want a thing done, go yourself; if
not, send."
This pithy axiom, of which most men know
the full value, is by no means so well appreciated by
women. One of the very last things we learn, often through
a course of miserable helplessness, heart-burnings,
difficulties, contumelies, and pain, is the lesson, taught
to boys from their school-days, of
self-dependence.
Its opposite, either plainly or
impliedly, has been preached to us all our lives. "An
independent young lady"--"a woman who can take care of
herself"--and such-like phrases, have become tacitly
suggestive of coarseness, strong-mindedness, down to the
lowest depth of bloomerism, cigarette smoking, and talking
slang.
And there are many good reasons, ingrained in
the very tenderest core of woman's nature, why this should
be. We are "the weaker vessel"--whether acknowledging it or
not, most of us feel this: it becomes man's duty and
delight to show us honor
View page [94]
accordingly. And this honor, dear as it may be to him to
give, is still dearer to us to receive.
Dependence is
in itself an easy and pleasant thing: dependence upon one
we love being perhaps the very sweetest thing in the world.
To resign one's self totally and contentedly into the hands
of another; to have no longer any need of asserting one's
rights or one's personality, knowing that both are as
precious to that other as they ever were to ourselves; to
cease taking thought about one's self at all, and rest
safe, at ease, assured that in great things and small we
shall be guided and cherished, guarded and helped--in fact,
thoroughly "taken care of"--how delicious is all this! so
delicious that it seems granted to very few of us, and to
fewer still as a permanent condition of being.
Were
it our ordinary lot, were every woman living to have either
father, brother or husband, to watch over and protect her,
then, indeed, the harsh but salutary doctrine of
self-dependence need never be heard of. But it is not so.
In spite of the pretty ideals of poets, the easy
taken-for-granted truths of old-fashioned educators of
female youth, this fact remains patent to any person of
common sense and experience, that in the present day,
whether voluntary or not, one-half of our women are
obliged
to take care of
themselves--obliged to look solely to themselves for
maintenance, position, occupation, amusement, reputation,
life.
Of course I refer to the large class for which
these Thoughts are meant--the single women; who,
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while most needing the exercise of
self-dependence, are usually the very last in whom it is
inculcated, or even permitted. From babyhood they are given
to understand that helplessness is feminine and beautiful:
helpfulness--except in certain received forms of
manifestation--unwomanly and ugly. The boys may do a
thousand things which are "not proper for little
girls."
And herein, I think, lies the great mistake
at the root of most women's education, that the law of
their existence is held to be, not Right, but Propriety: a
certain received notion of womanhood, which has descended
from certain excellent great-grand-mothers, admirably
suited for some sorts of their descendants; but totally
ignoring the fact that each sex is composed of individuals,
differing in character almost as much from one another as
from the opposite sex. For do we not continually find
womanish men, and masculine women? and some of the finest
types of character we have known among both sexes, are they
not often those who combine the qualities of both?
Therefore, there must be somewhere a standard of abstract
right, including manhood and womanhood, and yet superior to
either. One of the first of its common laws, or common
duties, is this of self-dependence.
We women are, no
less than men, each of us a distinct existence. In two out
of the three great facts of our life we are certainly
independent agents, and all our life long we are
accountable only, in the highest sense, to our own souls,
and the Maker of
View page [96]
them. Is it
natural, is it right even, that we should be expected and
be ready enough too, for it is much the easiest way--to
hang our consciences, duties, actions, opinions, upon some
one else--some individual, or some aggregate of individuals
yclept Society? Is this society to draw up a code of
regulations as to what is proper for us to do, and what
not? which latter is supposed to be done for us; and if not
done, or there happens to be no one to do it, is it to be
left undone? Alack, most frequently, whether or not it
ought to be, it is left undone!
Every one's
experience may furnish dozens of cases of poor women
suddenly thrown adrift--widows with families, orphan girls,
reduced gentle-women--clinging helplessly to every male
relative or friend they have, year after year sinking
deeper in poverty or debt, eating the bitter bread of
charity, or compelled to bow an honest pride to the
cruelest humiliations, every one of which might have been
spared them by the early practice of
self-dependence.
I once heard a lady say--a
tenderly-reared and tender-hearted woman--that if her
riches made themselves wings, as in these times riches
will, she did not know anything in the world that she could
turn her hand to, to keep herself from starving. A more
pitiable, and, in some sense, humbling confession, could
hardly have been made; yet it is that not of hundreds, but
of thousands.
Sometimes exceptions arise, here is
one:
Two young women, well educated and refined,
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were left orphans, their father dying
just when his business promised to realize a handsome
provision for his family. It was essentially a man's
business-from many points of view, decidedly an unpleasant
one. Of course friends thought "the girls" must give it up,
go out as governesses, depend on relatives, or live in what
genteel poverty the sale of the good-will might allow. But
"the girls" were wiser. They argued: "If we had been boys,
it would have been all right; we should have carried on the
business, and provided for our mother and the whole family.
Being women, we'll try it still. It is nothing wrong; it is
simply disagreeable. It needs common sense, activity,
diligence, and self-dependence. We have all these; and what
we have not, we will learn." So these sensible and
well-educated young women laid aside their pretty
uselessness and pleasant idleness, and set to work.
Happily, the trade was one that required no personal
publicity; but they had to keep the books, manage the
stock, choose and superintend fit agents--to do things
difficult, not to say distasteful, to most women; and
resign enjoyments that, to women of their refinement; must
have cost daily self-denial. Yet they did it; they filled
their father's place, sustained their delicate mother,
never once compromising their womanhood by their work, but
rather ennobling the work by their doing of
it.
Another case--different, and yet alike. A young
girl, an elder sister, had to receive for step-mother a
woman who ought never to have been any honest
View page [98]
man's wife. Not waiting to be turned out
of her father's house, she did a most daring and "improper"
thing--she left it, taking with her the brothers and
sisters, whom by this means only she believed she could
save from harm. She settled them in a London lodging, and
worked for them as a daily governess. "Heaven helps those
who help themselves." From that day this girl never was
dependent upon any human being; while during a long life
she has helped and protected more than I could
count--pupils and pupils' children, friends and their
children, besides brothers and sisters-in-law, nephews and
nieces, down to the slenderest tie of blood, or even mere
strangers. And yet she has never been anything but a poor
governess, always independent, always able to assist
others--because she never was and never will be indebted to
any one, except for love while she lives and for a grave
when she dies. May she long possess the one, and want the
other!
And herein is answered the
"cui bono?"
of self-dependence,
that its advantages end not with the original possessor. In
this much-suffering world, a woman who can take care of
herself can always take care of other people. She not only
ceases to be an unprotected female, a nuisance and a drag
upon society, but her working-value therein is doubled and
trebled, and society respects her accordingly. Even her
kindly male friends, no longer afraid that when the charm
to their vanity of "being of use to a lady" has died out,
they shall
View page [99]
be saddled with a
perpetual claimant for all manner of advice and
assistance--the first not always followed, and the second
often accepted without gratitude--even they yield an
involuntary consideration to a lady who gives them no
trouble that she can avoid, and is always capable of
thinking and acting for herself, so far as the natural
restrictions and decorum of her sex allow. True, these have
their limits, which it would be folly, if not worse, for
her to attempt to pass; but a certain fine instinct, which,
we flatter ourselves, is native to us women, will generally
indicate the division between brave self-reliance and bold
assumption.
Perhaps the line is most easily drawn, as
in most difficulties, at that point where duty ends and
pleasure begins. Thus, we should respect one who, on a
mission of mercy or necessity, went through the lowest
portions of St. Giles' or the Gallowgate: we should be
rather disgusted if she did it for mere amusement or
bravado. All honor to the poor seamstress or governess who
traverses London streets alone, at all hours of day or
night, unguarded except by her own modesty; but the
strong-minded female who would venture on a solitary
expedition to investigate the humors of Cremorne Gardens or
Greenwich Fair, though perfectly "respectable," would be an
exceedingly condemnable sort of personage. There are many
things at which, as mere pleasures, a woman has a right to
hesitate; there is no single duty, whether or not it lies
in the ordinary line of her sex, from
View page [100]
which she ought to shrink,
if it be plainly set before her.
Those who are the
strongest advocates for the passive character of our sex,
its claims, proprieties, and restrictions, are, I have
often noticed, if the most sensitive, not always the
justest or most generous. I have seen ladies, no longer
either young or pretty, shocked at the idea of traversing a
street's length at night, yet never hesitate at being
"fetched" by some female servant, who was both young and
pretty, and to whom the danger of the expedition, or of the
late return alone, was by far the greater of the two. I
have known anxious mothers, who would not for worlds be
guilty of the indecorum of sending their daughters
unchaperoned to the theatre or a ball--and very right,
too--yet send out some other woman's young daughter, at
eleven
P. M.
, to the stand
for a cab, or to the public-house for a supply of beer. It
never strikes them that the doctrine of female dependence
extends beyond themselves, whom it suits so easily, and to
whom it saves so much trouble; that either every woman, be
she servant or mistress, seamstress or fine lady, should
receive the "protection" suitable to her degree; or that
each ought to be educated into equal self-dependence. Let
us, at least, hold the balance of justice even, nor allow
an over-consideration for the delicacy of one woman to
trench on the rights, conveniences, and honest feelings of
another.
We must help ourselves. In this curious
phase
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of social history, when
marriage is apparently ceasing to become the common lot,
and a happy marriage is the most uncommon lot of all, we
must educate our maidens into what is far better than any
blind clamor for ill-defined "rights"--into what ought
always to be the foundation of rights--duties. And there is
one, the silent practice of which will secure to them
almost every right they can fairly need--the duty of
self-dependence. Not after any Amazonian fashion; no
mutilating of fair womanhood in order to assume the
unnatural armor of men; but simply by the full exercise of
every faculty, physical, moral, and intellectual, with
which Heaven has endowed us all, severally and
collectively, in different degrees; allowing no one to rust
or to lie idle, merely because its owner is a woman. And
above all, let us lay the foundation of all real
womanliness by teaching our girls from their cradle that
the priceless pearl of decorous beauty, chastity of mind as
well as body, exists in themselves alone; that a
single-hearted and pure-minded woman may go through the
world, like Spenser's Una, suffering indeed, but never
defenceless; foot-sore and smirched, but never tainted;
exposed, doubtless, to many trials, yet never either
degraded or humiliated, unless by her own acts she
humiliates herself.
For heaven's sake--for the sake
of womanhood, the most heavenly thing next angelhood (as
men tell us when they are courting us, and which it depends
upon ourselves to make them believe in
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all their lives)--young girls, trust
yourselves; rely on yourselves! Be assured that no outward
circumstances will harm you while you keep the jewel of
purity in your bosom, and are ever ready with the
steadfast, clean right hand, of which, till you use it, you
never know the strength, though it be only a woman's
hand.
Fear not the world: it is often juster to us
than we are to ourselves. If in its harsh jostlings "the
weaker goes to the wall"--as so many allege is sure to
happen to a woman--you will almost always find that this is
not merely because of her sex, but from some inherent
qualities in herself, which, existing either in woman or
man, would produce just the same results, pitiful and
blamable, but usually more pitiful than blamable. The world
is hard enough, for two-thirds of it are struggling for the
dear life; but it has a rough sense of moral justice after
all. And whosoever denies that, spite of all hinderances
from individual wickedness, the right shall ultimately
prevail, impugns, not alone human justice, but the justice
of God.
The age of chivalry, with all its benefits
and harmfulness, is gone by for us women. We cannot now
have men for our knights-errant, expending blood and life
for our sake, while we have nothing to do but sit idle on
balconies, and drop flowers on half-dead victors at tilt
and tourney. Nor, on the other hand, are we dressed-up
dolls, pretty play-things, to be fought and scrambled
for--petted, caressed, or flung out of window, as our
several lords
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and masters may
please. Life is much more equally divided between us and
them. We are neither goddesses nor slaves; they are neither
heroes nor semi-demons: we just plod on together, men and
women alike, on the same road, where daily experience
illustrates Hudibras' keen truth, that
"The value of a thing
Is just as much
as it will bring."
And our value is--exactly
what we choose to make it.
Perhaps at no age since
Eve's were women rated so exclusively at their own personal
worth, apart from poetic flattery or tyrannical
depreciation; at no time in the world's history judged so
entirely by their individual merits, and respected
according to the respect which they earn for themselves.
And shall we value ourselves so meanly as to consider this
unjust? Shall we not rather accept our position, difficult
indeed, and requiring from us more than the world ever
required before, but from its very difficulty rendered the
more honorable?
Let us not be afraid of men; for
that, I suppose, lies at the root of all these amiable
hesitations: "Gentlemen don't like such and such things."
"Gentlemen fancy so and so unfeminine." My dear little
foolish cowards, do you think a man--a
good
man, in any relation of life,
ever loves a woman the more for reverencing her the less?
or likes her better for transferring all her burdens to his
shoulders, and pinning her conscience to his sleeve? Or,
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even supposing he did like it,
is a woman's divinity to be man--or God?
And here,
piercing to the foundation of all truth, I think we may
find the truth concerning self-dependence, which is only
real and only valuable when its root is not in self at all;
when its strength is drawn not from man, but from that
higher and diviner Source whence every individual soul
proceeds, and to which alone it is accountable. As soon as
any woman, old or young, once feels
that
, not as a vague sentimental
belief, but as a tangible, practical law of life, all
weakness ends, all doubt departs: she recognizes the glory,
honor, and beauty of her existence; she is no longer afraid
of its pains; she desires not to shift one atom of its
responsibilities to another. She is content to take it just
as it is, from the hands of the All-Father; her only care
being so to fulfil it, that while the world at large may
recognize and profit by her self-dependence, she herself,
knowing that the utmost strength lies in the deepest
humility, recognizes, solely and above all, her dependence
upon God.
[Illustration : A small decorative
illustration of leaves and small
flowers.]
View page [105]
[Illustration : A decorative
arch formed from vines, with two small flowers at the top
of the arch.]
III.
GOSSIP.
[Illustration : A decorative capital
"O".]
O
NE of
the wisest and best among our English ethical writers, the
author of "Companions of my Solitude," says, apropos of
gossip, that one half of the evil-speaking of the world
arises, not from
malice
prepense,
but from mere want of amusement. And I
think we may even grant that in the other half, constituted
small of mind or selfish in disposition, it is seldom worse
than the natural falling back from large abstract interests
which they cannot understand, upon those which they
can--alas! only the narrow, commonplace, and
personal.
Yet they mean no harm; are often under the
delusion that they both mean and do a great deal of good,
take a benevolent watch over their fellow-creatures, and so
forth. They would not say an untrue word, nor do an unkind
action--not they! The most barefaced slanderer always tells
her story with a good motive, or thinks she does; begins
with a harmless "bit of gossip," just to pass the time
away--the time which hangs so heavy! and ends by becoming
the most arrant and mischievous talebearer under the
sun.
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Let me put on
record the decline and fall, voluntarily confessed, of two
friends of mine, certainly the last persons likely to take
to tittle-tattle; being neither young nor elderly; on the
whole, perhaps rather "bright" than stupid; having plenty
to do and to think of--too much, indeed, since they came on
an enforced holiday out of that vortex in which London
whirls her professional classes round and round, year by
year, till at last often nothing but a handful of dry bones
is cast on shore. They came to lodge at the village of
X---, let me call it, as being an "unknown quantity," which
the reader will vainly attempt to find out, since it is
just like some hundred other villages--has its church and
rector, great house and squire, doctor and lawyer; also its
small select society, where everybody knows everybody--that
is, their affairs: for themselves, one half the parish
resolutely declines "knowing" the other half--sometimes
pretermittently, sometimes permanently. Of course, not a
single soul would have ventured to know Bod and Maria--as I
shall call the strangers--had they not brought an
introduction to one family, under the shelter of whose
respectability they meekly placed their own. A very worthy
family it was, which showed them all hospitality, asked
them to tea continually, and there, in the shadow of the
pleasant drawing-room which overlooked the street,
indoctrinated them into all the mysteries of X---,
something in this wise:
"Dear me! there's Mrs. Smith;
she has on that identical yellow bonnet which has been so
long in
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Miss Miffin's
shop-window. Got it cheap, no doubt Mr. Smith does keep the
poor thing
so
close!
"Annabella, child, make haste; just tell me
whether that isn't the same young man who called on the
Joneses three times last week! Red whiskers and mustaches!
One of those horrid officers, no doubt. My dear Miss Maria,
I never do like to say a word against my neighbors; but
before I would let my Annabella go about like the Jones
girls.
"Bless, my life! there's that cab at the
corner house again--and her husband out! Well, if I ever
could have believed it, even of silly, flirty Mrs. Green,
whom people do say old Mr. Green married out of a hosier's,
where he went in to buy a pair of gloves. But I beg your
pardon, my dear." And so on, and so on.
This,
slightly varied, was the stock conversation, which seemed
amply sufficient to fill the minds and hours of many
families at X---.
Men, whose habits of thought and
action are at once more selfish and less personal than
ours, are seldom given to gossiping. They will take a vast
interest in the misgovernment of India, or the ill-cooking
of their own dinners; but any topic betwixt these two--such
as mismanagement of their neighbor's house, or the
extravagance of their partner's wife--is a matter of minor
importance. They are not often vexed with trifles that
don't immediately concern themselves. It is women who poke
about with undefended farthing candles in the
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choke-damp passages of this
dangerous world; who put their feeble ignorant hands to the
Archimedean lever that, slight as it seems, can shake
society to its lowest foundations. For, though it irks me
to wound with strong language the delicate sensibilities of
my silver-tongued sisters, I would just remind them of what
they may hear, certainly one Sunday in the year, concerning
that same dainty little member, which is said to be "a
fire, a world of iniquity, and is set on fire of
hell."
But it is not "the gift of the gab," the habit
of using a dozen words where one would answer the
purpose--which may arise from want of education,
nervousness, or surplus but honest energy and earnest
feeling--it is not that which does the harm; it is the
lamentable fact that, whether from a super-abundance of the
imaginative faculty, carelessness of phrase, or a readiness
to jump at conclusions and represent facts not as they are
but as they appear to the representers, few women are
absolutely and invariably veracious. They love truth in
their hearts, and yet they often give to things a slight
coloring cast by their own individuality; twisting facts a
little, a very little, according as their tastes,
affections, or convenience indicate.
And this is the
fatal danger of gossip. If all people spoke the absolute
truth about their neighbors, or held their tongues, which
is always a possible alternative, it would not so much
matter. At the worst, there would be a few periodical
social thunder-storms, and then the air would be clear
View page [109]
But too many heedlessly speak what they
see, or think, or believe, or wish. Few observant
characters can have lived long in the world without
learning to receive every fact communicated second-hand
with reservations
--reservations
that do not necessarily stamp the communicator as a liar;
but merely make allowance for certain inevitable
variations, like the variations of the compass, which every
circumnavigator must calculate upon as a natural
necessity.
Thus, Miss A---, in the weary small-talk
of a morning call, not quite knowing what she says, or glad
to say any thing for the sake of talking, lets drop to Mrs.
B--- that she heard Mrs. C--- say "she would take care to
keep her boys out of the way of the little B---s" --a very
harmless remark, since, when it was uttered, the little
B---s were just recovering from the measles. But Miss A---,
an absent sort of woman, repeats it three months
afterwards, forgetting all about the measles; indeed, she
has persuaded herself that it referred to the rudeness of
the B--- lads, who are her own private terror, and she
thinks it may probably do some good to give their
over-indulgent mamma a hint on the subject. Mrs. B---, too
well-bred to reply more than "Indeed!" is yet mortally
offended; declines the next dinner party at the C---s', and
confides her private reason for doing so to Miss D---, a
good-natured chatterbox, who, with the laudable intention
of getting to the bottom of the matter, and reconciling the
belligerents, immediately communicates
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the same. "What have I done?" exclaims
the hapless Mrs. C---. "I never said any such thing!" "Oh,
but Miss A--- protests she
heard
you say it." Again Mrs. C--- warmly denies; which denial
goes back directly to Miss A--- and Mrs. B---, imparting to
both them and Miss D--- a very unpleasant feeling as to the
lady's veracity. A few days after, thinking it over, she
suddenly recollects that she really did say the identical
words, with reference solely to the measles; bursts into a
hearty fit of laughter, and congratulates herself that it
is all right. But not so; the mountain cannot so quickly
shrink into its original mole-hill. Mrs. B---, whose weak
point is her children, receives the explanation with
considerable dignity and reserve; is "sorry that Mrs. C---
should have troubled herself about such a trifle;' shakes
hands, and professes herself quite satisfied. Nevertheless,
in her own inmost mind she thinks--and her countenance
shows it--"I believe you said it, for all that." A slight
coolness ensues, which everybody notices, discusses, and
gives a separate version of; all which versions, somehow or
other, come to the ears of the parties concerned, who,
without clearly knowing why, feel vexed and aggrieved each
at the other. The end of it all is a total
estrangement.
Is not a little episode like this at
the root of nearly all the family feuds, lost friendships,
"cut" acquaintanceships, so pitifully rife in the world?
Rarely any great matter, a point of principle or a
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violated pledge, an act of
justice or dishonesty: it is almost always some petty
action misinterpreted, some idle word repeated--or a
succession of both these, gathering and gathering like the
shingle on a seabeach, something fresh being left behind by
every day's tide.
The next grand source of gossip is
love, and with or without that preliminary, matrimony. What
on earth should we do if we had no matches to make, or mar;
no "unfortunate attachments" to shake our heads over; no
flirtations to speculate about and comment upon with
knowing smiles; no engagements "on" or "off" to speak our
minds about, nosing out every little circumstance, and
ferreting out our game to their very hole, as if all their
affairs, their hopes, trials, faults, or wrongs, were being
transacted for our own private and peculiar entertainment!
Of all forms of gossip, this tittle-tattle about
love-affairs is the most general, the most odious, and the
most dangerous.
Every one of us must have known
within our own experience many an instance of dawning loves
checked, unhappy loves made cruelly public, happy loves
embittered, warm, honest love turned cold, by this horrible
system of gossiping about young or unmarried people. Many
women, otherwise kindly and generous, have in this matter
no more consideration towards their own sex or the other,
no more sense of the sanctity and silence due to the
relation between them, than if the divinely instituted bond
of marriage were no higher or purer than the natural
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instincts of the beasts that
perish. It is most sad to see the way in which, from the
age of fourteen upwards, a young woman, on this one subject
of her possible or probable matrimonial arrangements, is
quizzed, talked over, commented upon, advised, condoled
with, lectured, interrogated--until, if she has happily
never had cause to blush for herself, not a week passes
that she does not blush for her sex, out of utter contempt,
disgust, and indignation.
Surely all right-minded
women ought to set their faces resolutely against this
desecration of feelings, to maintain the sanctity of which
is the only preservative of our influence. Not that love
should be exorcised out of young women's lives and
conversations; but let it be treated delicately, earnestly,
rationally, as a matter which, if they have any business
with it at all, is undoubtedly the most serious business of
their lives. There can be, there ought to be, no medium
course; a love-affair is either sober earnest, or
contemptible folly, if not wickedness: to gossip about it
is, in the first instance, intrusive, unkind, or dangerous;
in the second, simply silly. Practical people may choose
between the two alternatives.
Gossip, public,
private, social--to fight against it either by word or pen
seems, after all, like fighting with shadows. Everybody
laughs at it, protests against it, blames and despises it;
yet everybody does it, or at least encourages others in it:
quite innocently, unconsciously, in such a small,
harmless
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fashion--yet, we do
it. We must talk about something, and it is not all of us
who can find a rational topic of conversation, or discuss
it when found. Many, too, who in their hearts hate the very
thought of tattle and tale-bearing, are shy of lifting up
their voices against it, lest they should be thought to set
themselves up as more virtuous than their
neighbors.
If I, or any one, were to unfold on this
subject only our own experience and observation, not a
tittle more, what a volume would it make! Families set by
the ears, parents against children, brothers against
brothers, not to mention brothers and sisters-in-law, who
seem generally to assume, with the legal title, the legal
right of interminably squabbling. Friendships sundered,
betrothals broken, marriages annulled, in the spirit at
least. Acquaintances that would otherwise have maintained a
safe and not unkindly indifference, forced into absolute
dislike--originating how they know not; but there it is.
Old companions, that would have borne each other's little
foibles, have forgiven and forgotten little annoyances, and
kept up an honest affection till death, driven at last into
open rupture, or frozen into a coldness more hopeless
still, which no after-warmth will ever have power to
thaw.
Truly, from the smallest neighborhood that
carries on, year by year, its bloodless wars, its harmless
scandals, its daily chronicle of interminable nothings, to
the great metropolitan world, fashionable, intellectual,
noble, or royal, the blight and curse of civilized life is
gossip
.
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How is it to be removed? How are
scores of well-meaning women, who in their hearts really
like and respect one another--who, did trouble come to any
one of them, would be ready with countless mutual
kindnesses, small and great, and among whom the sudden
advent of death would subdue every idle tongue to honest
praise, and silence at once and for ever every bitter word
against the neighbor departed--how are they to be taught to
be every day as generous, considerate, liberal-minded--in
short, womanly, as they would assuredly be in any
exceptional day of adversity? How are they to be made to
feel the littleness, the ineffably pitiful littleness, of
raking up and criticising every slight peculiarity of
manner, habits, temper, character, word, action, motive,
household, children, servants, living, furniture, and
dress, thus constituting themselves the amateur
rag-pickers,
chiffonnières
, of all the blind
alleys and foul byways of society; while the whole world
lies free and open before them, to do their work and choose
their innocent pleasure therein--this busy, bright,
beautiful world?
Such a revolution is, I doubt, quite
hopeless on this side Paradise. But every woman has it in
her power personally to withstand the spread of this great
plague of tongues, since it lies within her own volition
what she will do with her own.
First, let every one
of us cultivate, in every word that issues from our mouth,
absolute truth. I say cultivate, because to very few
people--as may be noticed of most young children--does
truth, this
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rigid, literal
veracity, come by nature. To many, even who love it and
prize it dearly in others, it comes only after the
self-control, watchfulness, and bitter experience of years.
Let no one conscious of needing this care be afraid to
begin it from the very beginning; or in her daily life and
conversation fear to confess: "Stay, I said a little more
than I meant"--"I think I was not quite correct about such
a thing"--"Thus it was; at least thus it seemed to me
personally," etc., etc. Even in the simplest, most everyday
statements, we cannot be too guarded or too exact. The
"hundred cats" that the little lad saw "fighting on our
back-wall," and which afterwards dwindled down to "our cat
and another," is a case in point, not near so foolish as it
seems.
"Believe only half of what you see, and
nothing that you hear," is a cynical saying, and yet less
bitter than at first appears. It does not argue that human
nature is false, but simply that it is human nature. How
can any fallible human being with two eyes, two ears, one
judgment, and one brain--all more or less limited in their
apprehensions of things external, and biased by a thousand
internal impressions, purely individual--how can we
possibly decide on even the plainest actions of another, to
say nothing of the words which may have gone through
half-a-dozen different translations and modifications, or
the motives which can only be known to the Omniscient
himself?
In His name, therefore, let us "judge not,
that
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we be not judged." Let
us be "quick to hear, slow to speak;" slowest of all to
speak any evil, or to listen to it, about anybody. The good
we need be less careful over; we are not likely ever to
hear too much of that.
"But," say some--very
excellent people too--"are we never to open our mouths?
never to mention the ill things we see or hear; never to
stand up for the right, by proclaiming, or by warning and
testifying against the wrong?"
Against wrong in the
abstract, yes; but against individuals--doubtful. All the
gossip in the world, or the dread of it, will never turn
one domestic tyrant into a decent husband or father; one
light woman into a matron true and wise. Do your neighbor
good by all means in your power, moral as well as
physical--by kindness, by patience, by unflinching
resistance against every outward evil--by the silent
preaching of your own contrary life. But if the only good
you can do him is by talking at him, or about him--nay,
even
to
him, if it be in a
self-satisfied, super-virtuous style--such as I earnestly
hope the present writer is not doing--you had much better
leave him alone. If he be foolish, soon or late he will
reap the fruit of his folly; if wicked, be sure his sin
will find him out. If he has wronged you, you will neither
lessen the wrong nor increase his repentance by parading
it. And if you have wronged him, surely you will not right
him or yourself by abusing him. At least let him
alone.
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[Illustration : A
decorative arch formed by a wide wooden frame, with bunches
of flowers gathered at the center.]
IV.
HAPPY AND UNHAPPY
WOMEN.
[Illustration : A decorative capital
"I".]
I
GIVE
fair warning that this is likely to be a "sentimental"
chapter. Those who object to the same, and complain that
these "Thoughts" are "not practical," had better pass it
over at once; since it treats of things essentially
unpractical, impossible to be weighed and measured, handled
and analyzed, yet as real in themselves as the air we
breathe and the sunshine we delight in--things wholly
intangible, yet the very essence and necessity of our
lives.
Happiness! Can any human being undertake to
define it for another? Various last century poets have
indulged in "Odes" to it, and good Mrs. Barbauld wrote a
"Search" after it--a most correct, elegantly phrased, and
genteel little drama, which, the
dramatis personæ
being all
females, and not a bit of love in the whole, is, I believe,
still acted in old-fashioned boarding-schools, with great
éclat
. The plot, if I
remember right, consists of an elderly lady's leading four
or five younger ones on the immemorial
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search, through a good many very long
speeches; but whether they ever found happiness, or what it
was like when found, I really have not the least
recollection.
Let us hope that excellent Mrs.
Barbauld is one of the very few who dare to venture upon
even the primary question, What is Happiness? Perhaps, poor
dear woman! she is better able to answer it now.
I
fear the inevitable conclusion we must all come to is, that
in this world happiness is quite indefinable. We can no
more grasp it than we can grasp the sun in the sky or the
moon in the water. We can feel it interpenetrating our
whole being with warmth and strength; we can see it in a
pale reflection shining elsewhere; or in its total absence,
we, walking in darkness, learn to appreciate what it is by
what it is not. But I doubt whether any woman ever craved
for it, philosophized over it, commenced the systematic
search after it, and ever attained her end. For happiness
is not an end--it is only a means, an adjunct, a
consequence. The Omnipotent himself could never be supposed
by any, save those who out of their own human selfishness
construct the attributes of divinity, to be absorbed
throughout eternity in the contemplation of his own
ineffable bliss, were it not identical with his ineffable
goodness and love.
Therefore, whosoever starts with
"to be happy" as the highest good of existence, will
assuredly find out she has made as great a mistake as when
in her
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babyhood she cried as
most of us do, for the moon, which we cannot get for all
our crying. And yet it is a very good moon,
notwithstanding; a real moon too, which will help us to
many a poetical dream, light us in many a lovers' walk,
till she shine over the grass of our graves upon a new
generation ready to follow upon the quest which is only
possible to pure hearts, although the very purest can never
fully attain it except through the gates of the holy city,
the New Jerusalem.
"Happy and unhappy women"--the
adjectives being applied less with reference to
circumstances than character, which is the only mode of
judgment possible--to judge them and discourse of them is a
very difficult matter at best. Yet I am afraid it cannot be
doubted that there is a large average of unhappiness
existent among women: not merely unhappiness of
circumstances, but unhappiness of soul--a state of being
often as unaccountable as it is irrational, finding vent in
those innumerable faults of temper and disposition which
arise from no inherent vice, but merely because the
individual is not happy.
Possibly, women more than
men are liable to this dreary mental eclipse--neither
daylight nor darkness. A man will go poetically wretched or
morbidly misanthropic, or any great misfortune will
overthrow him entirely, drive him to insanity, lure him to
slip out of life through the terrible byroad of suicide;
but he rarely drags on existence from year to year, with
"nerves," "low spirits," and the
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various maladies of mind and temper,
that make many women a torment to themselves and a burden
to all connected with them.
Why is this? and is it
inevitable? Any one who could in the smallest degree answer
this question, would be doing something to the lessening of
a great evil--greater than many other evils which, being
social and practical, show more largely on the aggregate
census of female woe.
Most assuredly, however
unpoetical may be such a view of the matter, the origin of
a great deal of unhappiness is physical disease; or rather,
the loss of that healthy condition of body, which in the
present state of civilization, so far removed from a state
of nature, can only be kept up in any individual by the
knowledge and practice of the ordinary laws of
hygiene--generally the very last knowledge that women seem
to have. The daily necessities of water, fresh air, proper
clothing, food, and sleep, with the due regulation of each
of these, without which no human being can expect to live
healthily or happily, are matters in which the only excuse
for lamentable neglect is still more lamentable
ignorance.
An ignorance the worse, because it is
generally quite unacknowledged. If you tell a young girl
that water is essential to every pore of her delicate skin
every morning; that moderate outdoor exercise, and
regularity in eating, sleeping, employment, and amusement,
are to her a daily necessity; that she should make it a
part of her education to acquire a
View page [121]
certain amount of current
information on sanitary science, and especially on the laws
of her own being, physical and mental; tell her this, and
the chances are she will stare at you uncomprehendingly, or
be shocked, as if you were saying to her something
"improper," or answer flippantly, "Oh, yes; I know all
that."
But of what use is the knowledge?--when she
lies in bed till ten o'clock, and sits up till any hour the
next morning; eats all manner of food at all manner of
irregular intervals; is horrified at leaving her bedroom
window two inches open, or at being caught in a slight
shower; yet will cower all day over the fire in a high
woollen dress, and put on a low muslin in the evening. When
she wears all winter thin boots, gossamer stockings, a gown
open at the chest and arms, and a loose mantle that every
wind blows under, yet wonders that she always has a cold!
Truly any sensible old-fashioned body, who knows how much
the health, happiness, and general well-being of this
generation--and, alas, not this generation alone--depend on
these charming, loveable, fascinating young fools, cannot
fail to be "aggravated" by them every day.
However
humiliating the fact may be to those poetical theorists
who, in spite of all the laws of nature, wish to make the
soul entirely independent of the body--forgetting, that if
so, its temporary probation in the body at all would have
been quite unnecessary--I repeat, there can be no really
sound state of mind without a similar condition of
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body; and that one of the first
requisites of happiness is
good
health
. But as this is not meant to be an essay on
domestic hygiene, I had better here leave the
subject.
Its corresponding phase opens a gate of
misery so wide that one almost shrinks from entering it.
Infinite, past human counting or judging, are the causes of
mental unhappiness. Many of them spring from a real
foundation, of sorrows varied beyond all measuring or
reasoning upon; of these, I do not attempt to speak, for
words would be idle and presumptuous. I only speak of that
frame of mind--sometimes left behind by a great trouble,
sometimes arising from troubles purely imaginary--which is
called "an unhappy disposition."
Its root of pain is
manifold; but with women, undoubtedly can be oftenest
traced to something connected with the affections: not
merely the passion called
par
excellence
love, but the entire range of personal
sympathies and attachments, out of which we draw the
sweetness and bitterness of the best part of our lives. If
otherwise--if, as the phrase goes, an individual happens to
have "more head than heart," she may be a very agreeable
personage, but she is not properly a woman--not the
creature who, with all her imperfections, is nearer to
heaven than man, in one particular--she "loves much." And
loving is so frequently, nay, inevitably identical with
suffering, either with or for or from the object beloved,
that we need not go farther to find the cause of the many
anxious, soured
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faces, and
irritable tempers, that we meet with among
women.
Charity cannot too deeply or too frequently
call to mind how very difficult it is to be good, or
amiable, or even commonly agreeable, when one is inwardly
miserable. This fact is not enough recognized by those very
worthy people who take such a world of pains to make other
people virtuous, and so very little to make them happy.
They sow good seed, are everlastingly weeding and watering,
give it every care and advantage under the sun--except
sunshine--and then they wonder that it does not
flower!
One may see many a young woman who has,
outwardly speaking, "everything she can possibly want,"
absolutely withering in the atmosphere of a loveless home,
exposed to those small ill-humors by which people mean no
harm--only do it; chilled by reserve, wounded by neglect,
or worried by anxiety over some thoughtless one, who might
so easily have spared her it all; safe from either
misfortune or ill-treatment, yet harassed daily by petty
pains and unconscious cruelties, which a stranger might
laugh at; and she laughs herself when she counts them up,
they are so very small--yet they are there.
"I can
bear anything," said to me a woman, no longer very young or
very fascinating, who had gone through seas of sorrow, yet
whose blue eyes still kept the dewiness and cheerfulness of
their youth; "I can bear anything, except
unkindness."
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She was
right. There are numberless cases where gentle creatures,
who would have endured bravely any amount of real trouble,
have their lives frozen up by those small unkindnesses
which copy-books avouch to be "a great offence;" where an
avalanche of worldly benefits, an act of undoubted
generosity, or the most conscientious administering of a
friendly rebuke, has had its good effects wholly
neutralized by the manner in which it was done. It is vain
to preach to people unless you also love them--Christianly
love them; it is not of the smallest use to try to make
people good, unless you try at the same time--and they feel
that you are trying--to make them happy. And you rarely can
make another happy, unless you are happy
yourself.
Naming the affections as the chief source
of unhappiness among our sex, it would be wrong to pass
over one phase of them, which must nevertheless be touched
tenderly and delicately, as one that women instinctively
hide out of sight and comment. I mean what is usually
termed "a disappointment." Alas! as if there were no
disappointments but those of love; and yet, until men and
women are made differently from what God made them, it must
always be, from its very secretness and inwardness, the
sharpest of all pangs, save that of conscience.
A
lost love. Deny it who will, ridicule it, treat it as mere
imagination and sentiment, the thing is and will be; and
women do suffer therefrom, in all its infinite varieties:
loss by death, by faithlessness
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or unworthiness, and by mistaken or
unrequited affection. Of these, the second is beyond all
question the worst. There is in death a consecration which
lulls the sharpest personal anguish into comparative calm;
and in time there comes, to all pure and religious natures,
that sense of total possession of the objects beloved,
which death alone gives--that faith, which is content to
see them safe landed out of the troubles of this changeful
life, into the life everlasting. And an attachment which
has always been on one side only, has a certain
incompleteness which prevents its ever knowing the full
agony of having and losing, while at the same time it
preserves to the last a dreamy sanctity which sweetens half
its pain. But to have loved and lost, either by that total
disenchantment which leaves compassion as the sole
substitute for love which can exist no more, or by the slow
torture which is obliged to let go day by day all that
constitutes the diviner part of love--namely, reverence,
belief, and trust, yet clings desperately to the only thing
left it, a long-suffering apologetic tenderness--this lot
is probably the hardest any woman can have to
bear.
There is no sorrow under heaven which is, or
ought to be endless. To believe or to make it so, is an
insult to heaven itself. Each of us must have known more
than one instance where a saintly or heroic life has been
developed from what at first seemed a stroke like death
itself; a life full of the calmest and truest
happiness--because it has bent itself to the divine will,
and learned the best of all
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lessons, to endure. But how that lesson is learned, through
what bitter teaching, hard to be understood or obeyed, till
the hand of the Great Teacher is recognized clearly through
it all, is a subject too sacred to be entered upon
here.
It is a curious truth--and yet a truth forced
upon us by daily observation--that it is not the women who
have suffered most who are the unhappy women. A state of
permanent unhappiness--not the morbid, half-cherished
melancholy of youth which generally wears off with wiser
years, but that settled, incurable discontent and
dissatisfaction with all things and all people, which we
see in some women, is, with very rare exceptions, at once
the index and the exponent of a thoroughly selfish
character. Nor can it be too early impressed upon every
girl that this condition of mind, whatever be its origin,
is neither a poetical nor a beautiful thing, but a mere
disease, and as such ought to be combated and medicined
with all remedies in her power, practical, corporeal, and
spiritual. For though it is folly to suppose that happiness
is a matter of volition, and that we can make ourselves
content and cheerful whenever we choose--a theory that many
poor hypochondriacs are taunted with till they are nigh
driven mad--yet, on the other hand, no sane mind is ever
left without the power of self-discipline and self-control
in a measure, which measure increases in proportion as it
is exercised.
Let any sufferer be once convinced that
she has this power--that it is possible by careful watch,
or
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better, by substitution of
subjects and occupations, to abstract her mind from
dwelling on some predominant idea, which otherwise runs in
and out of the chambers of the brain, at last growing into
the monomania which, philosophy says, every human being is
affected with, on some one particular point, only, happily,
he does not know it; only let her try if she has not, with
regard to her mental constitution, the same faculty which
would prevent her from dancing with a sprained ankle, or
imagining that there was an earthquake because her own head
is spinning with fever, and she will have at least taken
the first steps towards cure. As many a man sits wearying
his soul out by trying to remedy some grand flaw in the
plan of society, or the problem of the universe, when
perhaps the chief thing wrong in his own liver or
overtasked brain; so many a woman will pine away to the
brink of the grave with an imaginary broken heart, or
become sour to the very essence of vinegar on account of
everybody's supposed ill-usage of her, when it is her own
restless, dissatisfied, selfish heart which makes her at
war with everybody.
Would that women--and men too,
but that their busier and more active lives save most of
them from it--could be taught from their child-hood to
recognize as an evil spirit this spirit of causeless
melancholy--this demon which dwells among the tombs, and
yet, which first shows itself in such a charming and
picturesque form, that we hug it to our innocent breasts,
and never suspect
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that it may
enter in and dwell there till we are actually "possessed,"
cease almost to be accountable beings, and are fitter for a
lunatic asylum than for the home-circle, which, be it ever
so bright and happy, has always, from the inevitable
misfortunes of life, only too much need of sunshine, rather
than shadow or permanent gloom.
Oh, if such women did
but know what comfort there is in a cheerful spirit! how
the heart leaps up to meet a sunshiny face, a merry tongue,
an even temper, and a heart which either naturally, or what
is better, from conscientious principle, has learned to
look at all things on their bright side, believing that the
Giver of life being all-perfect love, the best offering we
can make to him is to enjoy to the full what he sends of
good, and bear what he allows of evil--like a child who,
when once it thoroughly believes in its father, believes in
all his dealings with it, whether it understands them or
not.
And here, if the subject were not too solemn to
be no more than touched upon--yet no one dare avoid it who
believes that there are no such distinctions as "secular"
and "religious," but that the whole earth with all therein,
is not only on Sundays but all days continually "the L
ORD'S
"--I will put it to most
people's experience, which is better than a hundred
homilies, whether, though they may have known sincere
Christians who, from various causes, were not altogether
happy, they ever knew one
happy
person, man or woman, who, whatever his or her form of
creed might be, was not in heart, and
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speech, and daily life, emphatically a
follower of Christ--a Christian?
Among the many
secondary influences which can be employed either by or
upon a naturally anxious or morbid temperament, there is
none so ready to hand, or so wholesome, as that one
incessantly referred to in the course of these pages,
constant employment. A very large number of women,
particularly young women, are by nature constituted with
minds so exceedingly restless, or with such a strong
physical tendency to nervous depression, that they can by
no possibility keep themselves in a state of even tolerable
cheerfulness, except by being continually occupied. At
what, matters little; even apparently useless work is far
better for them than no work at all. To such I cannot too
strongly recommend the case of
Honest
John Tomkins, the hedger and ditcher,
Who, though he
was poor, didn't want to be richer,"
but
always managed to keep in a state of sublime content and
superabundant gayety; and how?
"He
always had something or other to do,
If not for
himself, for his neighbor."
And that work
for our neighbor is perhaps the most useful and
satisfactory of the two, because it takes us out of
ourselves; which, to a person who has not a happy self to
rest in, is one good thing achieved.
The sufferer, on
waking in the morning--that cruel moment when any incurable
pain wakes up
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too, sharply,
so sharply! and the burden of a monotonous life falls down
upon us, or rises like a dead blank wall before us, making
us turn round on the pillow longing for another night,
instead of an insupportable day--should rouse herself with
the thought: "Now, what have I got to do to-day?" (Mark,
not to enjoy or to suffer, only
to
do
.) She should never lie down at night without
counting up, with a resolute, uncompromising, unexcusing
veracity, "How much have I done to-day?" "I can't be
happy," she may ponder wearily; "'tis useless trying--so
we'll not think about it; but how much have I done this
day? how much can I do tomorrow?" And if she has strength
steadily to fulfil this manner of life, it will be strange
if, some day, the faint, involuntary thrill that we call
"feeling happy" does not come and startle into vague,
mysterious hope, the poor wondering heart.
Another
element of happiness, incalculable in its influence over
those of sensitive and delicate physical organization, is
order. Any one who has just quitted a disorderly household,
where the rooms are untidy, where meals take place at any
hour and in any fashion, where there is a general
atmosphere of noise, confusion and irregularity--doing
things at all times and seasons, or not doing any thing in
particular all day long--who, emerging from this, drops
into a quiet, busy, regular family, where each has an
appointed task, and does it; where the day moves on
smoothly, subdivided by proper seasons of labor, leisure,
food, and sleep--oh, what a Paradise
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it seems! How the restless or anxious
spirit nestles down in it, and, almost without volition,
falls into its cheerful round, recovering tone and calm and
strength.
"Order is Heaven's first law,"
and a mind
without order can by no possibility be either a healthy or
a happy mind. Therefore, beyond all sentimental sympathy,
or contemptuous blame, should be impressed upon all women
inclined to melancholy, or weighed down with any
irremediable grief, this simple advice: to make their daily
round of life as harmoniously methodical as they possibly
can; leaving no odd hours, scarcely an odd ten minutes, to
be idle and dreary in; and by means of orderly arranged,
light, airy rooms, neat dress, and every pleasant external
influence that is attainable, to leave untried none of
these secondary means which are in the power of every one
of us, for our own benefit or that of others, and the
importance of which we never know until we have proved
them.
There is another maxim, easy to give, and hard
to practise: Accustom yourself always to look at the bright
side of things, and never make a fuss about trifles. It is
pitiful to see what mere nothings some women will worry and
fret over--lamenting as much over an ill-made gown as
others do over a lost fortune; how some people we can
always depend upon for making the best, instead of the
worst, of whatever happens, thus greatly lessening our
anxieties for themselves in their troubles; and, oh! how
infinitely comforting when we bring to them any of our
View page [132]
own. For we all of us have--wretched,
indeed, if we have not!--some friends or friend to whom we
instinctively carry every one of our griefs or vexations,
assured that, if any one can help us, they can and will;
while with others we as instinctively "keep ourselves to
ourselves," whether sorrowing or rejoicing; and many more
there are whom we should never dream of burdening with our
cares at all, any more than we would think of putting a
butterfly in harness.
The disposition which can bear
trouble; which, while passing over the lesser annoyances of
life as unworthy to be measured in life's whole sum, can
yet meet real affliction steadily, struggle with it while
resistance is possible; conquered, sit down patiently, to
let the storms sweep over; and on their passing, if they
pass, rise up, and go on its way, looking up to that region
of blue calm which is never long invisible to the pure of
heart--this is the blessedest possession that any woman can
have. Better than a house full of silver and gold, better
than beauty, or high fortune, or prosperous and satisfied
love.
While, on the other hand, of all characters not
radically bad, there is none more useless to herself and
everybody else, who inflicts more pain, anxiety, and gloom
on those around her, than the one who is often
deprecatingly or apologetically described as being "of an
unhappy temperament." You may know her at once by her dull
or vinegar aspect, her fidgety ways, her proneness to take
the hard or ill-natured
View page [133]
view
of things and people. Possibly she is unmarried, and her
mocking acquaintance insult womanhood by setting down that
as the cause of her disagreeableness. Most wicked libel!
There never yet was an unhappy old maid, who would not have
been equally unhappy as a wife--and more guilty, for she
would have made two people miserable instead of one. It
needs only to count up all the unhappy women one
knows--women whom one would not change lots with for the
riches of the queen of Sheba, to see that most of them are
those whom fate has apparently loaded with benefits, love,
home, ease, luxury, leisure; and denied only the vague fine
something, as indescribable as it is unattainable--the
capacity to enjoy them all.
Unfortunate ones! You see
by their countenances that they never know what it is to
enjoy. That thrill of thankful gladness, oftenest caused by
little things--a lovely bit of nature, a holiday after long
toil, a sudden piece of good news, an unexpected face, or a
letter that warms one's inmost heart--to them is altogether
incomprehensible. To hear one of them in her rampant
phrase, you would suppose the whole machinery of the
universe, down even to the weather, was in league against
her small individuality; that every thing everybody did, or
said, or thought, was with one sole purpose--her personal
injury. And when she sinks to the melancholy mood, though
your heart may bleed for her, aware how horribly real are
her self-created sufferings, still your tenderness sits
uneasily, more as a
View page [134]
duty
than a pleasure; and you often feel, and are shocked at
feeling, that her presence acts upon you like the
proverbial wet blanket, and her absence gives you an
involuntary sense of relief.
For, though we may pity
the unhappy ever so lovingly and sincerely, and strive with
all our power to lift them out of their grief--when they
hug it, and refuse to be lifted out of it, patience
sometimes fails. Human life is so full of pain, that once
past the youthful delusion that a sad countenance is
interesting, and an incurable woe the most delightful thing
possible, the mind instinctively turns where it can get
rest and cheer and sunshine. And the friend who can bring
to it the largest portion of these is, of a natural
necessity, the most useful, the most welcome, and the most
dear.
The "happy woman"--in this our world, which is
apparently meant to be the road to perfection, never its
goal, you will find too few specimens to be ever likely to
mistake her--you will recognize her presence the moment she
crosses your path. Not by her extreme liveliness--lively
people are rarely either happy or able to diffuse
happiness; but by a sense of brightness and cheerfulness
that enters with her, as an evening sunbeam across your
parlor wall. Like the fairy Order in the nursery tale, she
takes up the tangled threads of your mind, and reduces them
to regularity, till you distinguish a clear pattern through
the ugly maze. She may be neither handsome nor
entertaining, yet somehow she makes you feel "comfortable,"
because she is
View page [135]
so comfortable
herself. She shames you out of your complainings, for she
makes none. Yet, mayhap, since it is the divine law that we
should all, like our Master, be "made perfect through
suffering," you are fully aware that she has had far more
sorrow than ever you had; that her daily path, had you to
tread it, would be to you as gloomy and full of pitfalls as
to her it is safe and bright. She may have even less than
the medium lot of earthly blessings, yet all she has she
enjoys to the full; and it is so pleasant to see any one
enjoy! For her sorrows, she neither hypocritically denies,
nor proudly smothers them--she simply bears them; therefore
they come to her, as sorrows were meant to come, naturally
and wholesomely, and passing over leave her full of
compassion for all who may have to endure the
same.
Thus, whatever her fate may be, married or
single, rich or poor, in health or sickness--though a
cheerful spirit has twice as much chance of health as a
melancholy one--she will be all her days a living
justification of the ways of Providence, who makes the
light as well as the darkness, nay, makes the light out of
the darkness. For not only in the creation of a world, but
in that which is equally marvellous, the birth and
development of every human soul, there is a divine verity
symbolized by the one line--
"And God said, Let there
be light; and
there was
light!"
View page [137]
FASHION. FROM
MRS. SYDNEY COX'S FRIENDLY COUNSEL FOR GIRLS.
View page [139]
[Illustration : A decorative
arch, made of lines drawn in intricate
patterns.]
FASHION.
"Shall the
world's selfish actions my reason control?
Shall I
yield up the freedom and life of the soul?
Shall I
cease in the arm of Jehovah to trust?
Shall I bow
down and worship frail creatures of dust?
Shall I
give up the hope I received at my birth,
The promise
of heaven, for the trifles of
earth?"
[Illustration : A
decorative capital "A".]
A
N extremely fashionable girl!" "A very
worldly girl!" "A thorough ballroom young lady!" Why is it
that the above exclamations are so frequently heard in
reference to the
débutantes
of the present day?
So general are they that I doubt not even the youngest of
my readers has heard them applied to some one of her
relations or acquaintances. That they are terms of reproach
more than of commendation there can be little doubt. That
they imply censure rather than approval no one will deny.
Let us pause, then, a moment, to consider what is their
true meaning, and why it is that they convey a sense of
coldness, heartlessness, and selfishness greater than their
literal
signification would
suggest. If the being an extremely
View page [140]
fashionable girl meant only one who
likes
fine clothes and fine
houses, fine carriages and fine parties, there would surely
be no great cause to think the term opprobrious. Such
things are ever pleasing to the young, and youth is the
season for their enjoyment. But if you substitute
love
for
like
, and take that to be the true
interpretation of the expression, you will be at no loss to
perceive wherein the opprobrium lies. If fashion be kept
within due bounds, and at a respectful distance, she is a
very harmless dame. It is only when she demands a sacrifice
of duty or of health, of too much time or too much money,
that she is to be shunned and avoided. A graceful
compliance with the fashion of the day, so far as may be
compatible with your position in life, whether in manner or
in dress, is claimed by the habits of good society. But
once go beyond this, once yield either or all of the
sacrifices I have named, and fashion becomes a heathen
goddess, a false idol before which you bow.
The next
expression which we have to consider is a "worldly girl."
Now, if this implied nothing more than one whose lot in
life it was to mix a good deal in the world, we need give
no further thought to the matter; for it is the destiny of
some to be much in the world, and of some to be much
isolated from it. But it has a deeper meaning. Worldly
girls are those who do not take the world at its
true value
, who allow it to have
undue weight and undue influence, unmindful how fleeting
are its triumphs and its pleasures, and unmindful of
that
View page [141]
high authority which
tells us to be "in the world but not of it." Think well of
those words, my young friends. None that I might use could
so forcibly teach you to avoid worldliness and its manifold
evils; none that I might select could so vividly describe a
high aim of life, a standard of excellence which we should
do well to keep steadily in view.
The third
expression which we have to examine and dissect is that of
being
a thorough ballroom young
lady
. Many of the foregoing remarks are equally
applicable in this case; but there is yet one other view of
its meaning to which I would call your attention. I take it
to imply that the thorough ballroom girl is not very
thorough in anything else; that the ballroom is the
only
place for which she is
fitted, and the
only
sphere in
which she shines. Does her happiness
consist
in these things, and is she
peevish and dispirited when out of the way of partaking of
them? These are the true tests of what a thorough ballroom
young lady is. No one would wish her to be otherwise than
happy and merry--to look her best and do her best--while
partaking of any harmless pleasure; but is she equally
agreeable in her own home circle? Will she be merry the
next morning, playing with her younger brothers and
sisters? and happy in the evening, reading to her invalided
father or mother? The liveliness and grace, the joyousness
and amiability, which win a ballroom triumph, are of little
value unless they spring from higher qualities, and are
View page [142]
equally ready to shine forth in
daily life and in home duties.
There is an old saying
that "society should be treated as a child, and never
permitted to dictate;" and assuredly, so far as fashionable
society is concerned, it is a wise maxim, for her dictates
are often strangely opposed both to good taste and to
common sense. I cannot resist a few words to point out to
you the absurdity of conforming to fashions that do not
suit your personal appearance or position in life. Perhaps
no more striking instance of this could I name than the
mode of wearing the hair which was lately so prevalent. The
empress of the French chose to comb and strain her hair
entirely off her face; and immediately about half the young
ladies in the fashionable world arranged their hair
à l'Impératrice
likewise. It suited well the delicate features and pensive
expression of the queen of fashion, but, with rare
exceptions, it was frightfully unbecoming to English girls.
I merely allude to this as one of the many instances in
which fashions have been adopted in a singularly foolish
and thoughtless manner. Strange indeed it is how much
people will sacrifice--ay, young and old alike--to this
self-invented goddess! Happy may they count themselves,
who, looking back over the sunny plains of youth from the
colder heights of maturer years, have not to mourn for
time, wealth, duty, comfort, peace, or health, laid down
and sacrificed at the same unhallowed shrine.
View page [143]
C
OULIN'S
F
AVORITE
P
UPIL.
Picture to yourself
a fashionably furnished home in a fashionable street in
London, during the height of what is called
the season
in that modern
Babylon. Further, summon to your mental gaze a lady in the
prime of life, dressed in and surrounded by whatever
fashion just then most arbitrarily dictated to her
worshippers; and you have the truest portrait I can give
you of the home and the mother of my heroine. The former is
No. 250 Park-street, Grosvenor-square; the latter is Mrs.
Marmaduke Browne. Be particular in noticing the Marmaduke,
please, gentle reader, and also the
e
at the end of the surname, for the
lady in question was herself very particular about these
matters, and was frequently heard to declare that they were
the only redeeming point, the one accompanying mercy
bestowed upon her in having to bear so terribly plebeian an
appellation. Her husband, a good-natured man, with what is
vulgarly termed more money than wits, had formerly been
major in a crack regiment; and having now no professional
occupation, he divided his time pretty equally between
lounging at his club, escorting his wife hither and
thither, and lavishing every species of luxury and
indulgence upon their only child, a daughter just entering
on her fourteenth year.
Ella Browne was a
slightly-formed and rather elegant girl; a little too pale
and delicate looking for decided prettiness, and her beauty
also somewhat
View page [144]
marred by an
expression of peevishness; but pretty nevertheless, or, as
her mother often said, "decidedly aristocratic and
attractive."
"Would you like to accompany your papa
and me to the Twickenham
fête
on Tuesday, Ella?" asked
Mrs. Browne, as she swept majestically to her seat at the
luncheon-table; "Lady Grant has written a most kind
invitation for you, and says it will be partly a juvenile
party."
"Oh, how delightful!" exclaimed Ella,
clapping her hands. "What a dear thing Lady Grant is to
have thought of me. It is a
matinée dansante
, isn't it,
mamma?"
"Don't call people
things
, Ella," replied her mother,
without deigning to notice the latter part of the
exclamation. "That is one disadvantage in your governesses
being French and German, they allow you to speak such
inelegant English; however, one cannot have
quite
every thing in this
world," added the lady with a sigh.
"It
is
a
matinée dansante
, mamma, isn't
it?" repeated Ella; "and I may wear my lovely blue dress
that I had the other day for cousin Sophy's wedding; the
blue satin boots to match will just do for dancing; and I
am learning such an exquisite
pas
seul
for
l'été
. It is very like
one that we saw at the opera, mamma, only altered a little
for private dancing, only look." And Ella jumped up from
the luncheon-table, and performed a most wonderful step for
her mother's admiration.
Dancing was Ella's favorite
accomplishment,
View page [145]
I must tell
you. She was very graceful; and when I add that she was
Coulin's favorite pupil of that year, you will form some
idea of her proficiency.
At length the morning of
Lady Grant's
fête
arrived, and Ella was in the wildest spirits. She practised
all her favorite
chassées
and
glissades
before the
drawing-room mirrors, and then admired her toilet to her
heart's content.
The weather was all that could be
desired by the partakers of an outdoor entertainment; a
soft west wind, a brilliant sun, and no dust to lesson the
enjoyment of the drive, for there had been a violent
thunder-storm the previous afternoon, such a deluge indeed,
as at one time threatened to destroy half Lady Grant's
floral arrangements, and carry away the marquees that had
been erected for dancing and refreshments. Her gardeners
and workmen had been active, however, in setting matters to
rights; and now the only mischief was, that the lawns and
grounds were everywhere soaked and saturated.
"I hope
you have good thick boots on, Ella," said the major, as he
joined his wife and daughter, who were already waiting for
the carriage. "My dear child," he continued, catching a
glimpse of the blue satin
chaussure
, "you cannot possibly go in
those things; the soles are no thicker than paper, and
you've no idea how wet you will find the grounds at
Twickenham."
Ella pouted and protested vehemently.
"She must wear boots to match her dress, it was all the
View page [146]
fashion; she could not dance
in thicker boots, she would rather stay away from the
fête
altogether, than
change them."
Her mother also took her part, saying
"she did not think the ground would be so wet as the major
imagined;" so he was obliged at length reluctantly to
yield, though still declaring that "it was the most foolish
thing he ever knew, and Ella would certainly catch her
death."
The
fête
was quite a success, every one said, and the arrangements
perfect. But, alas for Ella's boots! the juveniles were to
dance on the lawn. The marquee was to be reserved entirely
for the elder portion of the guests. Not to dance was out
of the question for Ella, and to place herself among the
grown-up
young ladies would
never do. So Ella danced on the damp lawn, little heeding
her wet feet; and then she sat down to rest, and eat ices,
and then danced again, so getting alternately heated and
chilled, until the end of the entertainment.
Driving
back to London, Mrs. Browne was so engrossed with the
pleasures of the day that she scarcely noticed her young
daughter; but the major perceived that Ella's usually pale
face was very flushed, and her hand strangely
feverish.
"Are you too warm, Ella?" he asked, as the
carriage drew up at their door.
"No, papa, I am very
cold; quite shivering with cold," said Ella, suiting the
action to the word.
"Ah, you've caught cold," said
the major; "it
View page [147]
Nellie O. Knight
is those thin
boots. Do make haste, my dear, and change them."
The
young lady did not make any reply, but marched off to the
housekeeper's room in quest of tea.
"O Miss Ella! why
whatever has come to you?" exclaimed the old servant. "Your
face is as red as
anything
, and
your hands
is
as hot as
may be
."
"Don't bother!"
replied Ella crossly; "but just give me a cup of tea--I'm
so thirsty--and take off these boots for me. Papa says
they're damp.
"Damp! Miss Ella; well, to be sure, if
they ain't as wet as wet can be!" said the housekeeper,
obeying her young mistress' instructions, and then
endeavoring to pull into shape the little blue satin boots,
so damp and soiled as to be scarcely
recognizable.
Ella drank cup after cup of tea with
feverish eagerness, and then, hastily changing her dress,
she joined her father and mother at dinner. It was usually
a great object of ambition with her to be allowed to
partake of this late meal; but, on the present occasion,
Ella's appetite had quite forsaken her, and dainty after
dainty was sent away untouched.
"You are eating no
dinner, Ella," said the major, looking earnestly at his
only child.
"I've been having tea in Mrs. Jones'
room," replied Ella, concealing the fact that she had eaten
nothing; "and I am dreadfully tired."
View page [148]
So the major was obliged to be
satisfied with these excuses; and directly, when dinner was
over, Ella went to bed, feeling very ill, but little
dreaming that for five long weary weeks that bed was to be
one of continued suffering and sickness for her.
The
illness commenced with sore-throat and fever; then
inflammation of the lungs and delirium made their
appearance; and, in an agony of alarm, Ella's parents
summoned two of the most skilful physicians in London to
the young patient. At first they were sadly silent as to
her prospect of recovery; but at length youth gained the
victory, and she was pronounced to be slowly mending. A
slow mending indeed it was, leaving her a mere shadowy
resemblance of her former self; and leaving also, it was
feared, the seeds of consumption, or, at all events, such
delicacy of chest and lungs as would be likely to develop
itself in consumption, unless extreme care and caution were
used.
Need I tell you that Ella was watched and
tended in every way that parental love could suggest? The
London home was given up for one at Torquay. Winters were
forgotten under Italian skies, and the cold winds of
English springtime were exchanged for balmy gales in the
sunny south.
Four years passed thus, and Ella grew
into a lovely girl; somewhat wilful, perhaps, as children
and invalids are wont to be, but apparently growing daily
stronger, and warranting the major's oft-repeated
gratulation that they had cheated consumption of its
prey.
View page [149]
The fifth winter
after my heroine's illness was to have been spent, like its
predecessors, at Nice; but, just when the usual
preparations for flight were progressing, Ella became
engaged to a young officer, whose regiment was quartered in
Exeter. Very naturally the young people did not relish the
prospect of being so soon separated, and for so many
months, but of course Captain Elliot's accompanying his
fair
fiancée
and her
parents to Nice was quite out of the question. It was then
the last week in September, and in another ten days they
ought to be making their way southward.
"I think it
is great nonsense taking me abroad at all this winter,"
said Ella, one morning at breakfast; "and so Alfred
thinks."
Alfred, be it known, was Captain
Elliot.
"What can be the use of it?" she continued,
rather pettishly. "I am quite strong and well now; and it
is very certain when I am married I cannot always spend the
winters on the Continent."
"Better spend them there
as long as you can, though, my dear," said the major,
looking up from the columns of the "Times," in which he had
been absorbed. "Dr. Codliver assures me that every year we
succeed in keeping you free from coughs we lessen the
chance of their recurrence."
"Dr. Codliver is a
regular old fogy!" exclaimed Ella. "I haven't had any cough
worth mentioning the last two years."
Later in the
day the subject was again under discussion, and this time
Captain Elliot was present.
View page [150]
"Would you have any objection to
consult the doctor about it?" he asked, addressing himself
more especially to Ella's father. "Of course I would not
for worlds that Ella incurred the slightest risk; but if
Dr. Codliver thought she might safely spend this one winter
in Devon, it would be the greatest possible happiness to us
both."
Major Browne hesitated for a few moments; but
Ella looked so thoroughly well and blooming, and, moreover,
she put her little hand so coaxingly in her father's just
at that moment, that it did seem difficult to refuse. I
suspect, too, that the major was himself getting weary of
these annual migrations, and regretted not a little the
loss of his English comforts and circle of friends for so
great a portion of every year. At all events he gave a
rather reluctant consent to Dr. Codliver's being consulted,
and the very same afternoon he accompanied his wife and
daughter in due form to ascertain the much-dreaded opinion.
Dr. Codliver was the most eminent physician in Torquay at
the time of which I am writing. He was an elderly man, and
had the character of being equally skilful and
kind-hearted. He listened attentively to all the details of
the case; smiled kindly at Ella when her engagement was
spoken of; made some courteous little joke about the misery
of lovers' separations; and then proceeding to business, as
he called it, made his usual professional examination of
his patient's throat and lungs.
"Very satisfactory,
very satisfactory, indeed,"
View page [151]
said the doctor, putting down his stethoscope. "Yes,
indeed, Miss Ella, I think you may safely pass this winter
in England, provided--oh, wait a moment, don't be in such a
hurry!" he added, observing Ella's beaming face of
delight--"
provided you adhere rigidly
to the stipulations I am about to name
."
Ella
pouted a little, and looked longingly at the stethoscope,
as if she would have liked to throw it at the
doctor.
"You must avoid hot rooms and night air, Miss
Ella, as you would a pestilence," continued the physician;
"and you must consent to wear always a bodice of
wash-leather high up to your throat, under your outer
dress. If these matters are strictly attended to, I think I
may safely sanction your spending the winter
here.
Ella gave another longing look at the
stethoscope, for she did not at all relish the
stipulations. However, any thing was better than being
carried away to Nice next week, and leaving dear Alfred to
mope and pine, or, horror of horrors! to flirt with some
one else in the absence of his bride-elect.
That
evening Captain Elliot dined with the Brownes, and was
informed of Dr. Codliver's verdict.
"What, not waltz
all the winter? not go to any parties?" exclaimed Ella's
intended husband; "what a horrid bore!"
And when the
young lady proceeded to tell him about the leather bodice,
he could scarcely have
View page [152]
looked
more distressed had a strait-waistcoat been prescribed for
her. However, Ella's father was peremptory in having these
orders obeyed, and for some weeks all went well. But,
unluckily, early in December Major Browne was obliged to go
to London to superintend some law business, and the morning
after his departure, the post brought a note from Captain
Elliot's mother and sisters, containing a pressing
invitation for Ella to spend a few days with them. Their
place was only ten miles from Torquay; the weather was
still mild, and almost spring-like; and, crowning
temptation of all! there was to be a dance there the
following week in honor of the coming of age of one of the
family, at which, of course, Captain Elliot was to be
present.
"I really think you had better not go,
Ella," said her mother; "you know you must not dance any
thing but quadrilles, and you will look very odd and dowdy
in a high dress among those stylish-looking Elliot
girls."
"I suppose I look quite old-maidish in them,
mamma, do I not?" replied Ella; "high bodices are not in
the least the fashion this winter, not even for
demi-toilette
. What shall I
do?"
"Well, my dear, I don't know about looking
old-maidish," replied the elder lady; "but you look very
unfashionable; and it is a greater pity because you have
such a fair skin and such pretty shoulders."
This
speech went far in rousing poor Ella's half-slumbering
vanity. She declared "the high dresses
View page [153]
were all her father and the doctor's
fidgety nonsense, and she should wear a low body and short
sleeves, like other girls. There would be no night air for
her to encounter, as the ballroom was at the Elliots' own
house; and as to papa," added the young lady, "he need know
nothing about it, for he will be still in
London."
Mrs. Browne laughed, and said Ella was a
naughty darling
; and so the
discussion ended.
A lovely ball-dress of white tulle
and scarlet blossoms was ordered for my heroine that
afternoon; and when on the much anticipated evening,
Captain Elliot saw her arrayed in it, he said, and truly,
that she was "passing fair."
It was a very brilliant
assembly, and Ella soon became aware of the admiration she
excited, and which an occasional glance in some mirror
fully confirmed. The fashionable dress had indeed won her a
ballroom triumph. And one transgression having so far
succeeded, of course the next thing was to join in every
dance, and forget all the doctor's injunctions in the
delights of waltz and polka.
My tale is nearly ended.
Ella caught a severe cold, which immediately settled upon
her lungs, and ten days after the Elliots' ball, Dr.
Codliver pronounced his young patient's case to be
hopeless. There was the mourning, lamentation, and woe
usual when such decrees go forth; and then there was a
hurried flight to a warmer climate. But Ella's days were
numbered.
View page [154]
A magnificent
monument of white marble, surmounted by a broken column,
often attracts the admiration of visitors to the English
burying-ground at Pau. They sigh and say, "How sad!" when
they read the mournful tablet; little dreaming that it
covers only one of fashion's slaves, and records a life
wilfully sacrificed to the same exacting
goddess.
[Illustration : A large decorative
illustration.]
View page [155]
N
OVEL
R
EADING.
FROM "THE GREYSON
LETTERS," BY HENRY ROGERS.
View page [157]
[Illustration : A decorative
arch made of a thin wooden frame supporting some flowering
vines. The frame forms a small upward loop at the center,
through which a shepherd's crook and a cross (with a crown
of thorns hanging from it) are extended crosswise. A
glowing crown hovers above the loop at the
center.]
THE GREYSON LETTERS.
LETTER I.
My DEAR NIECE:
[Illustration : A
decorative capital "I".]
I
AM going to write you a long letter; but I
scarcely think it will be pleasant to you to read it, for
it is to chide you. Yet, as you know I should not chide you
except for your good, or what I
believed
your good, I hope you will
read these lines attentively, for your loving uncle's
sake.
I saw, my dear, with regret, during my recent
visit, that you are too fond, far too fond, of novel
reading. There; I see your imploring look, and hear the
expostulation, "O uncle, do you really think so?" Of course
I think so, Mary, or I should not say so, for I never say
what I do not think.
But I certainly do not expect to
hear from you, my love--for you are a girl of sense (be
pleased to recollect again that I do not say what I do not
think--will not that propitiate you?)--the answer I once
received from a young lady to whom I addressed a similar
expostulation. "I suppose, then,"
View page [158]
said she, "you would disapprove of
all
novel reading." That,
thought I, is an answer perfectly worthy of one whose logic
has been fed on novels. "If," said I to her, "I were to
blame a lad for eating too much, or too voraciously, or
filling his stomach with tarts and sugar-plums, would you
infer that
therefore
I meant
that he was not to eat at all, or that pastry and
sweetmeats were absolutely forbidden him?"
No, I am
far from thinking that novels may not be innocently read;
so far from that, I think they may be
beneficially
read. But all depends, as
in the case of the tarts and sugar-plums, on the quality
and quantity.
The
imagination
is a faculty given us by
God, as much as any other, and if it be not developed, our
minds are maimed. Now, works of fiction--of a high order, I
mean, such as the best of Walter Scott's or Miss
Edgeworth's--healthfully stimulate this faculty; and in
measure, therefore, they should be read.
Taste
should be cultivated; and
fictitious works, inspired by real genius, have a
beneficial tendency that way.
Novels may, and often
do, inculcate important lessons of life and conduct, in a
more pleasing form than the simply didactic style admits
of.
When based on knowledge of human nature, and
developed with dramatic skill, a novel may teach many an
important truth of moral philosophy more effectively than
an abstruse treatise on it.
View page [159]
When the
style
of novels is what it ought to
be--and what it will be, if they are worth reading--they
tend (always an important part of education) to add to our
knowledge of language, and our command over
it.
Lastly, as we must all have
some
mental relaxation, (and if the
greater part of our hours be diligently given to duty, we
are both entitled to it and in need of it,) such relaxation
is easily and legitimately found in the occasional perusal
of a judicious work of fiction.
You see how liberal I
am, and that it is no old, musty, strait-laced critic that
speaks to you; therefore "perpend my words."
Every
thing, you observe, depends on
quality
and
quantity
. These must determine whether
the novels you read be mental aliment or mental poison.
Now, as to the
first
, I have no
hesitation in saying that the immense majority of novels
have no tendency to fulfil any of the ends I have pointed
out; they are mere rubbish; and, forgive me, several of
those I recently saw in your hands from your circulating
library deserve no other character. For my part, I should
not care if some Caliph Omar treated all novels--except
some three thousand volumes or so--as the original caliph
treated the Alexandrian Library, and made a huge bonfire of
them. "Three thousand volumes!" you will say; "why, that is
at the rate of a three-volume novel a week for twenty
years! You are liberal, indeed."
"Very true; but I
did not say you would do well
View page [160]
to read them all, though as many may be worth reading. And
let me tell you that you may infer something else from my
admission. With so many more
good
novels at command than you can
possibly read, will you not be utterly inexcusable if you
indulge in any of the trumpery of which I have been just
speaking? Rely upon it, my dear, that the reading of the
second and third and fourth-rate class of novels not only
does not secure any of the ends of which I have spoken
above, but has a directly contrary tendency. These books
enfeeble the intellect, impoverish the imagination,
vulgarize taste and style, give false or distorted views of
life and human nature, and what is perhaps worst of all,
waste that precious time which might be given to solid
mental improvement. I assure you, I have often been
astonished and grieved at the manner in which young minds,
originally capable of better things, have been injured by
continual dawdling over the slip-slop of inferior novels.
They sink insensibly to the level of such books; and how
can it be otherwise? for this pernicious appetite, "which
grows by what it feeds on," prevents the mind's coming in
contact with any thing better, and these wretched
compositions become the standard. Observe that these minds
are enfeebled not only in tone--for
that
would result from reading too
much of
any
novels, even the
best, just as the stomach would get disordered from eating
too much pastry, though the queen's daintiest cooks might
make it; but I mean enfeebled, degraded in taste--in the
perception of the true and the
View page [161]
beautiful in works of high
intellectual art. Such impoverished minds talk with rapture
of the interesting "characters" in these volumes of
miserable fatuities; of some "charming young Montague," or
some "sweet Emma Montfort," (both more insipid than the
"white of an egg,") who talk reams of soft nonsense, and
get involved in absurd adventures which set all probability
at defiance. You young ladies often melt into tears at
maudlin scenes, which to a just perception or a masculine
taste could only produce laughter; condescend to weigh the
merits of slip-slop sentiment or descriptive platitudes
beneath all criticism; and sagely compare the
power
of the three volumes of
the inane "Julia Montresor, or the Broken Heart," with the
equally inane three volumes of "Pizarro, or the Bandit's
Cave;" when the only question with any reader of sense (if
any such reader could wade through the pages of either) is
as to which of the two works is most utterly bankrupt in
knowledge, taste, character, style, and, in fact, every
element that can redeem a work of fiction from being
utterly contemptible and intolerable!
And this
depravity of taste, believe me, may go on to any extent;
for, as the appetite for reading such works becomes more
and more voracious and indiscriminate, it leaves neither
power nor inclination to appreciate better books. The mind
at last becomes so vitiated that it craves and is satisfied
with any thing in the shape of a
story
--a series of fictitious
adventures, no matter how put together; no matter whether
the events be probably conceived,
View page [162]
the characters justly drawn, the
descriptions true to nature, the dialogue spirited, or the
contrary. So preposterous is the interest that may be taken
in a mere train of fictitious incident, quite apart from
the genius which has conceived or adorned it, that many a
young lady will go through nearly the same story a thousand
times in a thousand different novels, the names alone being
altered. I assure you it is an inscrutable mystery to me,
my dear, how they can still endure that charming Miss ---,
whom, under a hundred aliases they have already married to
that sweet young gentleman with an equal number of names,
in spite of the opposition of parents on both sides,
dangerous rivals, and the most impossible hairbreadth
escapes by flood and field.
You will perhaps say
(what is very true) that it is possible to get so entangled
in a mesh of fictitious incidents, that though you know, or
soon suspect, the novel to be unworthy of perusal, you do
not like to lay it down till the
denouement
. Do you ask how you may
break the spell and escape? Then I will tell you, provided
you will promise to act on my advice. Read any such novel,
my dear, Hebrew fashion, that is, backwards; go at once to
the end of the third volume, and marry off the hero and
heroine, or drown them, or hang the one and break the heart
of the other, as may be most meet to you and the writer.
If, after having thus secured your catastrophe, you cannot
find heart to "plod your weary way" through the intervening
desert of words, depend upon it you will lose nothing by
throwing
View page [163]
the book aside at
once. And, further, you may take this also for a rule: if
you do not feel, as you read on, that what you read is
worth reading for
its own
sake
--that you could read it over again with
pleasure; if you do not feel that the incidents are
naturally conceived, the scenes vividly described, the
dialogue dramatic and piquant, the characters sharply
drawn, be sure the book is not worth sixpence. No fiction
is,
intellectually
, worth
anybody's reading, that has not considerable merit as a
work of art; and such works are ever felt to be worth
reading again, often with increased interest. It is indeed
the truest test of all the highest efforts of this kind;
new beauties steal out upon us on each perusal. Dip
anywhere into the "Macbeth" of Shakespeare, or the
"Antiquary" of Walter Scott, and you still find that,
though you know the whole from beginning to end, the force
of painting, the truth yet originality of the sentiments,
the spirit of the dialogue, the beauties of imagery and
expression, still lure you to read on, wherever you chance
to open, with ever renewed delight.
Now let me add
that if, for a little while, you never read any fiction but
such as will bear to be often read, you will need no
caution against any of an inferior kind. Your taste will
soon become pure and elevated, and you will nauseate a bad
novel as you would a dose of tartar emetic.
I shall
ever feel grateful to the memory of Walter Scott. I
happened to fall in with his best novels when quite a boy;
and I never could endure afterwards
View page [164]
the ordinary run of this class of
literature. When Laidlaw was acting as amanuensis to Scott
in the composition of "Ivanhoe," he could not help
congratulating the author on the happy effects which his
beautiful fictions would have, by sweeping clean the
circulating libraries of infinite rubbish. "Sir Walter
Scott's eyes," he tells us, "filled with tears." And no
doubt his fictions had considerable effect in elevating the
taste of that novel-reading generation; but a "new
generation, which know not" Walter, are being introduced to
tons of the ephemeral current nonsense before they have the
means of instituting a comparison. Be not you one of
them....
By the way, I may tell you that I fell in
with "Ivanhoe" at thirteen, on a bright July morning in my
midsummer holidays. I had been sent to the house of a
relative, about a mile off, with some message, I forgot
what. I found the family out; but I found "Ivanhoe" at
home. It was lying conveniently at hand; I looked into it,
became absorbed, and spent the whole day in the garden
reading it, utterly forgetful of dinner, tea, and supper,
and never stopped till I had finished it. There are among
Scott's fictions several I admire much more now, but none
ever did me such service.
Ever your
loving uncle,
R. E.
H. G.
View page [165]
[Illustration : A decorative
arch.]
LETTER II.
TO THE
SAME.
[Illustration : A decorative capital
"A".]
A
ND now,
my dear Mary, I come to the second "head" of my discourse;
so imagine yourself in church, and that your good clergyman
is sending (as I doubt not he often does) an admonitory
glance towards your pew, as he arrives at the same critical
stage in his sermon. My second "head," then, is to show
that you may read too many even of the very best novels.
"True," you will say, "if I read
nothing
else." Aye, and very far
within that limit may you read too many; let me add, that
any
excess has a tendency to
make you relish reading nothing else.
I have said
that, in moderation, they are useful to develop and
stimulate the imagination; but the imagination may be too
much stimulated and too much developed--"developed" till it
at length stunts all the other faculties, and "stimulated"
till it is not exhilarated merely, but tipsy. The severer
faculties demand a proportionate culture, and a more
sedulous one; for to cultivate the imagination, in whatever
degree it is susceptible of it at all, is the easiest thing
in nature; the difficulty is to train it justly. Some hardy
flowers will bloom in any
View page [166]
soil, and with little or no culture; and so will those of
fancy.
The greater part of your time should be given
to solid studies or practical duties; this should be your
rule. As relaxation, to be of any value, should be
moderate, so novels must not claim much of your time. They
should be the condiments and spices, the confectionary of
your ordinary diet; not the substantial joints, not the
pièce de resistance
. You
might as well attempt to live on creams and
syllabubs.
But you will say, perhaps, "Is it possible
to read a novel by chapter? Is it in human nature to leave
off in the very middle of that critical adventure in which
the hero saves the life of the heroine, or close the book
just in the middle of his declaration, and without
listening to the delicious lovers' nonsense which passes on
that occasion, or finding out how it all ends?" To
me
, my dear, it would be very
easy; or rather I should find a difficulty perhaps, in
general, in
not
skipping--pray
don't look so cross--all that same delicious nonsense. But
I admit that it is difficult for many young ladies to do
so, or for
any
novel reader,
when the fiction has real merit: to most young novel
readers the task would be impossible.
And so, that
you may not say I counsel you to perform "impossibilities,"
my dear, take my advice. Do not tie yourself to any such
restriction as a chapter at a time. "Oh, delightful!" you
will say. Stay a minute.
I would have you read novels
only so moderately
View page [167]
that there
shall be no occasion for restricting yourself when you
do
read them. Let them be read
now and then as a reward of strenuous exertion, or for
having mastered some difficult book; or let them be
reserved for visits and holidays. Do not--if I may use a
metaphor of that vulgar kind I have already so frequently
employed--do not have a novel
always in
cut
. Keep it for an hour of well-earned leisure, or
as a relief after arduous duty, and then read it without
stint. This occasional full meal will then do you no harm;
and, depend on it, the fare will be doubly delicious, from
the keenness of the appetite, the previous fast, and the
rarity of the indulgence. But you will say, "What shall I
do for my daily hour or so of rightful mental relaxation,
to which you admit I am entitled?" Well, if you will take
my advice, you will ordinarily choose--and oh, the infinite
treasures, which neither you nor I can fully exhaust,
literature spreads before us!--some-thing which, while it
fully answers the purpose of healthful and innocent mental
amusement, will not hold attention too long enthralled, or
lead you to turn to other less exciting compositions with a
sigh. Take, for example, some beautiful poem; or a paper of
one of our British essayists; or an interesting book of
travels; or an article of Macaulay, who, of almost all
writers, combines, in greatest perfection, instruction and
delight. The names of Milton, Gray, Cowper, Addison,
Johnson, Crabbe, and a thousand more, show what a boundless
field of selection lies before you.
View page [168]
And now do you want a practical rule
as to when you have been reading novels, however good, too
much or too long? Here, then, is an infallible one: When
ordinary books of a sober and instructive character are
read with disrelish; when, for example, a work of
well-written history seems to you, as compared with the
piquant and vivid details of fiction, as if you were
looking on the wrong side of a piece of tapestry; when you
cannot endure dull, sober reality; when you return to
practical duties with reluctance, and the work-a-day world
looks sombre and sad-colored to you, rest assured that you
have been lingering too long in fairy-land, and indulging
too much in day-dreams. And, further, remember this: that
as long as you are
liable
to any
such unlucky consciousness, you have not carried the
culture of your intellectual powers or your practical
habits to the right point; for the moment
that
is done, such a result
becomes impossible. A mind thus equipped for life and duty
can
indulge in fiction only
within certain moderate limits--for purposes of innocent
unbending, of legitimate amusement. Beyond that point
fiction cloys; and the healthy mind, so far from repining
that it cannot live longer in the fool's paradise, or if
you like not that harsh term, among Elysian shadows, is
conscious of as strong a desire to come back to the regions
of daylight and reality, as the inveterate novel reader
feels to dream on in cloud-land. It sighs for a return to
the substantial and the real; and can no more live in
fiction than it can bear to
View page [169]
be always dancing polkas, or playing for ever at
backgammon. Persevere for a certain time-for the next two
or three years--I think you are now eighteen (you need not
blush to acknowledge your age yet)--in disciplining your
mind; and you are safe, I will answer for it, from the too
dominant sway of any, even the greatest, enchanters of
fiction. But my strongest reasons of all for the advice I
am giving you, are yet behind, and I must reserve them for
another letter.
Ever yours,
R. E. H.
G.
[Illustration : A small decorative
illustration of leaves and flowers drawn in a
pattern.]
View page [170]
[Illustration : A decorative
arch, formed from a shepherd's crook at either side
supporting a thin branch which extends aross the top. Vines
are entwined around the entire
structure.]
LETTER III.
TO THE
SAME.
MY DEAR MARY:
[Illustration : A
decorative capital "I".]
I
NOW proceed to those "stronger" reasons to
which I alluded in my last. I have reserved them for the
close of my "sermon," because they are the most
important.
All inordinate indulgence in works of
fiction, then, tends to pervert our views of life instead
of enlarging them, which, if judiciously chosen and read in
moderation, they will do; and to quench benevolence, which,
under similar restrictions, they will tend to
cherish.
The excessive indulgence perverts our views
of life. The young mind is but too prone of itself to live
in a world of fancy; indeed, in one sense, it is necessary
that the imagination should thus be ever creating the
future for us, or we should not act at all; but then its
influence must be well regulated by a due regard to the
laws of the
probable
, or we
shall lose the present and the future too: the present, in
dreaming of an irrational future; and the future, because
we have not prepared ourselves for any
View page [171]
possible
future by the proper
employment of the present. If a young gentleman's or young
lady's mind, of any intelligence, could be laid bare, and
all the fantastical illusions it has ever indulged exposed
to the world, I am afraid it would fairly expire in an
agony of shame at the disclosure; it would be often found,
quite apart from novel reading, to have indulged largely in
the veriest chimeras of hope and fancy. But then this
tendency, difficult to control at the best, is apt to be
fatally strengthened by undue indulgence in fictitious
literature. If a too-early love affair and a circulating
library should both concur to exasperate the malady, you
may look for stark "mid-summer madness." I fear that
anticipations of unlooked-for windfalls of fortune, of
success achieved without toil, of fame got for the longing
after it, of brides a few degrees above angels, and
husbands in whom Apollo and Adonis are happily combined,
are a not uncommon result of dwelling too long in congenial
fiction. Nor do I at all doubt that a thousand instances of
failure in professional life, of sudden and imprudent
engagements, of ridiculous or ill-assorted matches, may be
ascribed to the same cause. At all events, this pernicious
practice prolongs and intensifies the natural tendency to
day-dreaming. Had it not been for this, the spell would
have been broken--the imaginative sleep-walker awakened by
the rude shocks and jogs of practical life. But the dream
and the walk are often continued too long, and the unhappy
somnambulist vanishes--over a precipice!
View page [172]
But still more pernicious is the
effect of this bad habit on
benevolence
. This may seem strange,
but it is very true nevertheless. I grant that sympathy and
sensibility depend in a very high degree on the activity of
the imagination--on our power of vividly picturing to
ourselves the joys and sorrows of others; but do not
hastily conclude that excess in reading fiction, provided
that fiction be a just picture of life, (which I now
assume,) can, whatever harm it may do in other directions,
do none in this. It may quicken sympathy and strengthen
sensibility--nay, in one sense it will do so--and yet, I
stick to my paradox notwithstanding; namely, that it tends
to weaken practical benevolence, and may end in quenching
it altogether.
However, I must make the preliminary
remark, that, even if the habit did not render benevolence
less active, sensibility is of no value except as it is
under the direction of judgment and reason; which
presupposes, therefore, the harmonious culture of all the
faculties and susceptibilities of our nature. Apart from a
well-balanced mind, neither prompt sympathy nor acute
sensibility are of much value, and they often only inspire
visionary, whimsical, perhaps very sublime, but also very
impracticable projects.
But I would not have you
ignorant, my dear, that the indulgence in question is
liable to be attended with a much more serious evil than
this. To be truly benevolent in heart, and strive to show
it, even though the
mode
were so
absurd as to prove that
View page [173]
the
heart had robbed the head of all its brains, would be
something; to be laughed at as an
idiotic angel
would still have some
consolation. But the mischief is, that a morbid indulgence
of sympathy and sensibility is but too likely to end in
extinguishing benevolence. I imagine I hear you say,
"Sensibility to distress, and sympathy with it, quench
benevolence! this is, indeed, a hard lesson; who can hear
it?" It is true, notwithstanding; and as sympathy with
distress--
fictitious
distress
you understand--and sensibility to it, increases, active
benevolence may be in precisely the inverse ratio.
If
you ask
how
this can be, I
answer, that it depends on a curious law of our mental
mechanism, which was pointed out by Bishop Butler, with
whose writings, by-the-by, I hope you will be better
acquainted some time within the next two years, and which
will do you a world more good than a whole Bodleian library
of novels. Among many other curious facts in man's moral
anatomy, which the great philosopher lays bare, are these
two, which, by the way, show distinctly for what God
designed us, and what course we ought to take in our own
culture: "That,
from our very faculty
of habits, passive impressions by being repeated grow
weaker
, and that practical habits are formed and
strengthened by repeated
acts
."
But I find my sermon has
been so long that, like other preachers, I must, if I
continue, huddle up the last, though most important part,
in haste; therefore, as they sometimes do, I will reserve
what I
View page [174]
have to say for
another discourse, begging you, my fair hearer, to ponder
the words I have just transcribed for you--if so be you may
spell out their meaning, and profit
thereby.
Yours
affectionately,
R.
E. H. G.
[Illustration : A circular
decorative illustration, with knotlike designs filling in
the interior of the
circle.]
View page [175]
[Illustration : A decorative
arch formed from an extremely thin wooden frame, around
which delicate vines and flowers are
entwined.]
LETTER IV.
TO THE
SAME.
MY DEAR MARY:
[Illustration : A
decorative capital "I".]
I
RESUME the "thread" of my last discourse
by expounding the seeming paradox with which it closed.
"Who can be more tender-hearted," perhaps you will say,
"than heroes and heroines in novels, or more ready to
cry
than an inveterate
novel-reader?" Nevertheless, be pleased to remember, that
however prompt the fancy may be to depict distress, or the
eye to attest the genuineness of the emotion that distress
has awakened, they indicate what may be merely passive
states of mind; and no benevolence is worth a farthing that
does not proceed to action. Now, the frequent repetition of
that species of emotion which fiction stimulates tends to
prevent benevolence, because it is out of proportion to
corresponding action; it is like that frequent "going over
the theory of virtue in our own thoughts," which, as Butler
says, so far from being auxiliary to it, may be obstructive
of it.
As long as the balance is maintained between
the stimulus given to
imagination
with the consequent
View page [176]
emotions
on the one hand, and our
practical habits
which those
emotions are chiefly designed to form and strengthen on the
other, so long, I say, the stimulus of the imagination will
not
stand in the way of
benevolence, but aid it; and therefore, my dear, if you
will
read a novel
extra
now and then, impose upon
yourself the corrective of an extra visit or two to the
poor, the distressed, and afflicted! Keep a sort of debtor
and creditor account of sentimental indulgence and
practical benevolence. I do not care if your pocket-book
contains some such memoranda as these: "For the sweet tears
I shed over the romantic sorrows of Charlotte Devereux,
sent three basins of gruel and a flannel petticoat to poor
old Molly Brown." "For sitting up three hours beyond the
time over the 'Bandit's Bride,' gave half a crown to Betty
Smith." "My sentimental agonies over the pages of the
'Broken Heart' cost me three visits to the Orphan Asylum
and two extra hours of Dorcas Society work." "Two quarts of
caudle to poor Johnson's wife and some gaberdines for his
ragged children, on account of a good cry over the pathetic
story of the 'Forsaken One.'"
But if the luxury--and
it is a luxury, and in itself nothing more--of sympathy and
mere benevolent feeling be separated from
action
, then Butler's paradox
becomes a terrible truth, and "the heart is not made
better," but worse, by it.
And the following causes
are peculiarly apt to render the
species
of emotion which fiction
excites, not merely disproportionate to the habits of
benevolence,
View page [177]
but unfriendly
to their formation. First, in order to make the
representations of fictitious distress
pleasant
--and this is the object of
any fiction which depicts it, for it is a work of
art--there must be a careful exclusion of those repulsive
features of distress which shock genuine sensibility and
sympathy in real life. Poverty and misfortune and sickness
are to be "interesting," captivating; the dirt, the filth,
the vulgarity, the ingratitude which real benevolence
encounters in the attempt to relieve them, must be removed,
not merely from the senses, but as far as possible from the
imagination of the reader; no offensive
aura
must steal from the sick chamber
where the faithful heroine suffers or watches, or from the
chamber of death itself; none which even the fancy can
detect; chloride of lime, and
eau de
Cologne
, double-distilled of fancy, must cleanse
from the sweet pages every ill odor, lest the delicate
reader that lies languidly on the sofa, rapt in the luxury
of woe, (perhaps with streaming eyes and frequent
application of the fine cambric,) should feel too acutely;
lest the refined
pleasure
thus
cunningly extracted out of the sorrows of the world should
turn to pain! Now the more this feeling is indulged, the
more fastidious it becomes; till at last, if the
practice
of benevolence has not
been in full proportion, the obstacles encountered by
benevolence, when it attempts its proper task, become
insurmountable, and its efforts are quenched at once.
Accordingly, many a young lady has found, on her first
attempt to visit the cabins of the poor, and
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relieve the wants of the
sick, that, as a great general declared, "nothing was so
unlike a battle as a review," so nothing is so unlike real
benevolence as the luxurious semblance of it excited by a
novel, and acted "with great applause" on the theatre of
the imagination. So squeamish may this feeling become, that
even novels may depict scenes of sorrow all too
real
. Even the
reflected
light of real life may
be too strong for it. The fair reader, in danger of dying
of "aromatic pain," cannot tolerate the vividness of this
pre-Raphaelite style of literary painting! Perhaps as
art
, it ought not to be
tolerated; for art ought to be confined within the limits
which secure an over-balance of pleasure. But whether this
be a correct canon of art or not, the moral effect of too
much novel reading, (let the novels be ever so excellent as
works of art,) is just what I say. It is apt to produce a
fastidiousness which cannot bear the
real
; no, nor even the faithful
delineation
of the real. Many a
dear novel-reader, one would imagine, supposes that the
"
final
cause" (but one) of all
the misery in the world, is to furnish the elements of the
picturesque and the "interesting," the raw
material
for the fictitious
painter--and the "final cause" itself, the delicious luxury
of that sentimental sympathy with which he inspires the
elegant and fastidious reader!
Pleasurable sympathy
with
fictitious
distress, and
benevolent desire to relieve
real
, differ infinitely. How
picturesque some loathsome, squalid cabin, or a gipsy's
tent, often looks in a picture! "How prettily,"
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we all say, "that little piece of
humanity is introduced there!" yet how few would relish the
thought of entering the reality! With what reluctance would
they do it, even though benevolence bade! See there an
illustration of the difference between sentimental emotion
and benevolent principle.
The
luxury
of mere sympathy and
sensibility, (now do not look so shocked,) of the "fine
feelings" excited by fiction is, when disjoined from
practical benevolence, so great, that it may actually form
a notable element in a person's daily felicity, and yet he
may be one of the most selfish creatures in the
world!
How delightful it is to sit still, and play,
not only with no trouble, but with the liveliest pleasure,
the part of great philanthropists! What ignorance and
sorrow have been relieved, in fancy, by soft enthusiasts!
What sums expended, without costing a farthing! What
content and felicity diffused everywhere, and the
ungrateful world none the better or the wiser for it all!
Sentimental philanthropists, who thus revel in secret
well-doing, transcend the gospel maxim of not letting their
left hand know what their right hand doeth, for they let
neither their right nor their left hand know any thing of
the matter! Out upon them!
Now, this selfish luxury
not only blinds those who surrender themselves to it by the
mask of seeming worth it wears, but by daily craving, like
any other pleasant emotion, a more unrestrained
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indulgence, it makes real benevolence,
and its hardy tasks, more and more impossible. And thus, as
Bishop Butler justly says, the heart may be growing all the
more selfish for all the
heroic
sacrifices of an imaginary virtue.
Pray observe
too--and it is well to remember it in the present
tendencies of popular literature--that similar effects, in
the absence of a genuine practical benevolence, may be
produced by an opposite class of delineations from those
which exhibit fictitious distress: I mean those which
exhibit almost exclusively the follies and weaknesses of
mankind. When such descriptions are too often read, no
matter how kindly the vein of the humorist, the man who has
not trained his heart to pity by actual benevolence is soon
apt to fall into a cynical contempt of human infirmity, and
to think that all the world's absurdities are game for
laughter, when at least as often they call for
compassion.
You may perhaps be still puzzled a little
to reconcile the paradox of the
hardening
effects of excessive
sensibility
. You will find all
difficulty removed if you sufficiently meditate on the fact
so beautifully pointed out by the great moralist I quoted
in my last. So little, as he shows, is emotion, even the
best and most refined, in itself any index of virtue, that
emotion may be weakened, and indeed
is
so, by every practical advance in
virtue. It is, as he says, a great law of our nature, (and
nothing can be more beautifully adapted to our condition as
creatures who are designed for real practical virtue,)
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that while our passive emotions decay in
vividness by repetition, (though it is true we
crave
them more and more
strongly,) our practical habits
strengthen
by exercise; so that, as
this writer observes, a man may be advancing in moral
excellence by that very course which deadens his emotions.
He whose sensibility gloats over fictitious scenes of
sorrow as the exciting cause of agreeable
passive
sensations, is in the
opposite position: he craves them more and more, though he
feels them less vividly, just as is the case with the
drunkard and his dram; he hankers for it more and enjoys it
less. Practical habits, on the other hand, render emotion
less vivid, but become more and more easy and pleasant;
nay, like all habits, crave their wonted gratification. So
true is it, however, that practical habit generally deadens
passive impressions, that you may lay it down as a rule,
that he who feels poignantly--I do not say
deeply
, but poignantly--the
distress he relieves, is a novice in benevolence; and hence
novel-reading young ladies and gentlemen often entirely
mistake the matter, when they call a man hard-hearted only
because he does not display all the sensations and
clamorous sentiments of their own impotent benevolence, but
just quietly
does
all that they
talk of, and perhaps
blubber
about. We know that a benevolent medical man may take off a
limb as calmly as he would eat his dinner, and yet feel ten
times as much real sympathy for the sufferer as a fine lady
who would run away, hide her face in her hands, and throw
herself on a sofa in the most approved
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attitude for fainting or hysterics at
the sight of even a drop of blood.
My dear Mary, take
it as a caution through life, quite apart from the subject
I have been preaching about: suspect--I do not say condemn
and hang--but suspect all who indulge in superfluous
expression of sentiment, all excessive
symbols
of sensibility. Those who
indulge in these are always neophytes in virtue at the
best; and, what is worse, they are very often among the
most heartless of mankind. Sterne and Rousseau were types
of this class--perfect incarnations of sensibility without
benevolence--having, and having in perfection, the "form"
of virtue, but "denying the power
thereof."
Your loving
uncle,
R.E.H.G.
[Illustration : A
small illustration of a table, upon which rest a vase of
flowers, an open book, and a paperweight in the shape of a
tiny
person.]
View page [183]
FROM "DAUGHTERS" AND "WOMEN" OF
ENGLAND BY MRS. SARAH STICKNEY ELLIS.
View page [185]
[Illustration : A decorative
arch, with its upper border formed from a thin wooden
frame, and its lower border formed from a vine. The space
between the wooden frame and the vine is filled in with
leaves, vines, and two small flowers in the
middle.]
I.
LOVE AND
COURTSHIP.
[Illustration : A decorative
capital "L".]
L
OVE is a subject which has ever been open
to discussion, among persons of all classes, and of every
variety of mind and character; yet, after all, there are
few subjects which present greater difficulties, especially
to a female writer. How to compress a subject which has
filled so many volumes, into the space of one chapter, is
also another difficulty; but I will begin by dismissing a
large portion of what is commonly called by that name, as
wholly unworthy of my attention; I mean that which
originates in mere fancy, without reference to the moral
excellence of the object; and if my young readers imagine,
that out of the remaining part they shall be able to elicit
much amusement, I fear they will be disappointed; for I am
one of those who think that the most serious act of a
woman's whole life is to love.
What, then, I would
ask, is love, that it should be the cause of some of the
deepest realities in our experience, and of so much of our
merriment and folly?
The reason why so many persons
act foolishly,
View page [186]
and
consequently lay themselves open to ridicule, under the
influence of love, I believe to originate in the grand
popular mistake of dismissing this subject from our serious
reading and conversation, and leaving it to the
unceremonious treatment of light novels and low jests; by
which unnatural system of philosophy, that which is in
reality the essence of woman's being, and the highest and
holiest among her capabilities, bestowed for the purpose of
teaching us of how much our nature is capable for the good
of others, has become a thing of sly purpose, and frivolous
calculation.
The very expression--"falling in love,"
has done an incalculable amount of mischief, by conveying
an idea that it is a thing which cannot be resisted, and
which must be given way to, either with or without reason.
Persons are said to have fallen in love, precisely as they
would be said to have fallen into a fever or an ague-fit;
and the worst of this mode of expression is, that among
young people, it has led to a general yielding up of the
heart to the first impression, as if it possessed of itself
no power of resistance.
It is from general notions
such as these, that the idea and the name of love have
become vulgarized and degraded: and in connection with this
degradation, a flood of evil has poured in upon that Eden
of woman's life, where the virtues of her domestic
character are exercised.
What, then, I would ask
again, is love in its highest, holiest character? It is
woman's all--her
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wealth, her
power, her very being. Man, let him love as he may, has
ever an existence distinct from that of his affections. He
has his worldly interests, his public character, his
ambition, his competition with other men--but woman centres
all in that one feeling, and
"In that she lives, or
else she has no life."
In woman's love is mingled the
trusting dependence of a child, for she ever looks up to
man as her protector and her guide; the frankness, the
social feeling, and the tenderness of a sister, for would
she not suffer to preserve him from harm? Such is love in a
noble mind, and especially in its first commencement, when
it is almost invariably elevated, and pure, trusting, and
disinterested. Indeed, the woman who could mingle low views
and selfish calculations with her first attachment, would
scarcely be worthy of the name.
So far from this
being the case with women in general, I believe, if we
could look into the heart of a young girl when she first
begins to love, we should find the nearest resemblance to
what poetry has described as the state of our first parents
when in Paradise, which this life ever presents. All is
then colored with an atmosphere of beauty and light; or if
a passing cloud sails across the azure sky, reflecting a
transitory shadow on the scene below, it is but to be swept
away by the next balmy gale which leaves the picture more
lovely for this momentary interruption of its stillness and
repose.
But that which constitutes the essential
charm
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of a first attachment,
is its perfect disinterestedness. She who entertains this
sentiment in its profoundest character, lives no longer for
herself. In all her aspirations, her hopes, her energies,
in all her noble daring, her confidence, her enthusiasm,
her fortitude, her own existence is absorbed by the
interests of another. For herself, and in her own character
alone, she is at the same time retiring, meek, and humble,
content to be neglected by the whole world--despised,
forgotten, or contemned; so that to one being only she may
still be all in all.
And is this a love to be lightly
spoken of, or harshly dealt with? Oh, no; but it has many a
rough blast to encounter yet, and many an insidious enemy
to cope with, before it can be stamped with the seal of
faithfulness; and until then, who can distinguish the ideal
from the true?
I am inclined to think it is from the
very purity and disinterestedness of her own motives, that
woman, in cases of strong attachment, is sometimes tempted
to transgress the laws of etiquette, by which her conduct,
even in affairs of the heart, is so wisely restricted. But
let not the young enthusiast believe herself justified in
doing this, whatever may be the nature of her own
sentiments. The restrictions of society may probably appear
to her both harsh and uncalled for; but, I must repeat:
society has good reasons for the rules it lays down for the
regulation of female conduct, and she ought never to forget
that points of etiquette ought scrupulously to be observed
by those who have principle, for the
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sake of those who have not.
Besides which, men, who know the world so much better than
women, are close observers on these points, and nothing can
lessen their confidence in you more effectually, than to
find you unscrupulous, or lax, even in your behavior to
them individually. If, therefore, your lover perceives that
you are regardless of the injunctions of your parents or
guardians even for his sake, though possibly he may feel
gratified at the moment, yet his opinion of your principles
will eventually be lowered, while his trust in your
faithfulness will be lessened in the same degree.
In
speaking of the entireness, the depth, and the
disinterestedness of woman's love, I would not for a moment
be supposed to class under the same head that precocious
tendency to fall in love, which some young ladies encourage
under the idea of its being an amiable weakness. Never is
the character of woman more despicable, than when she
stoops to plead her weakness as a merit. Yet some complain
that they are naturally so grateful, it is impossible for
them to resist the influence of kindness; and thus they
fall in love, perhaps with a worthless man--perhaps with
two men at once; simply because they have been kindly
treated, and their hearts are not capable of resisting
kindness. Would that such puerile suppliants for the
charity they ill deserve, could be made to understand how
many a correct and prudent woman would have gone
inconceivably farther than they, in gratitude and generous
feeling, had not right principle been made the
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stay of her conduct and the arbiter of
all her actions. Love which arises out of mere weakness is
as easily fixed upon one object as another, and
consequently is at all times transferable: that which is
governed by principle, how much has it to suffer yet how
nobly does it survive all trial!
I have said, that
woman's love, at least all which deserves that name, is
almost universally exalted and noble in its commencement;
but that still it wants its highest attribute, until its
faithfulness has been established by temptation and trial.
Let no woman, therefore, boast of her constancy until she
has been put to the test. In speaking of faithfulness, I am
far from supposing it to denote merely tenacity in adhering
to an engagement. It is easy to be true to an engagement,
while false to the individual with whom it is contracted.
My meaning refers to faithfulness of heart, and this has
many trials in the common intercourse of society, in the
flattery and attentions of men, and in the fickleness of
female fancy.
To have loved faithfully, then, is to
have loved with singleness of heart and sameness of
purpose, through all the temptations which society
presents, and under all the assaults of vanity, both from
within and without. It is so pleasant to be admired, and so
soothing to be loved, that the grand proof of female
constancy is, not to add one more conquest to her triumphs,
where it is evidently in her power to do so; and therefore,
her only protection is to restrain the first wandering
thought which might
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even lead
her fancy astray. The ideas which commonly float through
the mind of woman are so rapid, and so indistinctly
defined, that when the door is opened to such thoughts,
they pour in like a torrent. Then first will arise some new
perception of deficiency in the object of her love, or some
additional impression of his unkindness or neglect, with
comparisons between him and other men, and regret that he
has not some quality which they possess, sadness under a
conviction of her future destiny, pining for sympathy under
that sadness, and, lastly, the commencement of some other
intimacy, which at first she has no idea of converting into
love.
Such is the manner in which, in thousands of
instances, the faithfulness of woman's love has been
destroyed, and destroyed far more effectually than if
assailed by an open, and, apparently, more formidable foe.
And what a wreck has followed! for when woman loses her
integrity and her self-respect, she is indeed pitiable and
degraded. While her faithfulness remains unshaken it is
true she may, and probably will, have much to suffer; but
let her portion in this life be what it may, she will walk
through the world with a firm and upright step; for even
when solitary, she is not degraded. It may be called a cold
philosophy to speak to such consolation being available
under the suffering which arises from unkindness and
desertion, but who would not rather be the one to bear
injury, than the one to inflict it; and the very act of
bearing it meekly and reverently, as from the hand of God,
has a purifying and
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solemnizing effect upon the soul, which the faithless and
the fickle never can experience.
As friendship is the
basis of all true love, it is equally, nay, more important
that the latter should be submitted to the same test in
relation to its ultimate aim, which ought supremely to be
the moral and spiritual good of its object. Indeed, without
this principle at heart, no love is worthy of the name;
because, as its influence upon human nature is decidedly
the most powerful of any, its responsibilities are in the
same proportion serious and imperative. What, then, shall
we think of the woman who evinces a nervous timidity about
the personal safety of her lover, without any corresponding
anxiety about the safety of his soul?
But there is
another delusion equally fatal, and still more frequently
prevailing among well-meaning young women; I mean, that of
listening to the addresses of a gay man, and making it the
condition of her marrying him that he shall become
religious. Some even undertake to convert men of this
description, without professing any personal interest in
the result; and surely, of all the mockeries by which
religion is insulted in this world, these are among the
greatest. They are such, however, as invariably bring their
own punishment; and therefore, a little observation upon
the working of this fallacious system upon others will
probably be of more service to the young than any
observations I can offer. I cannot, however, refrain from
the remark, that religion being a matter of personal
interest, if a man
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will not
submit himself to its influence for his own sake, it is not
likely he will do so for the sake of another; and the
probability is, that, while endeavoring to convert him, the
woman, being the weaker party, will be drawn over to his
views and principles; or if hers should be too firm for
this, that he will act the hypocrite in order to deceive
her, and thus add a new crime to the sum of guilt already
contracted.
With a gay man, therefore, a serious
woman can have nothing to do, but to contemplate his
character as she would that of some being of a different
order or species from her own. Even after such a man has
undergone a moral and spiritual change there will remain
something in his tone of mind and feeling, from which a
delicate and sensitive woman will naturally and unavoidably
shrink. He will feel this himself; and while the humility
and self-abasement which this conviction occasions will
constitute a strong claim upon her sympathy and tenderness,
they will both be deeply sensible that, in his heart of
hearts, there is a remembrance, a shadow, a stain, which a
pure-minded woman must ever feel and sorrow for.
"But
how are we to know a man's real character?" is the common
question of young women. Alas, there is much willing
deception on this point. Yet, I must confess, that men are
seldom thoroughly known, except under their own roof, or
among their own companions. With respect to their moral
conduct, however, if they have a low standard of
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excellence with regard to
the female sex in general, it is an almost infallible sign
that their education, or their habits, have been such as to
render them undesirable companions in the most intimate and
indissoluble of all connections. Good men are accustomed to
regard women as equal or superior to themselves in their
moral and religious character, and therefore they seldom
speak of them with disrespect; but bad men, having no such
scale of calculation, use a very different kind of
phraseology, when women, as a class, are the subject of
conversation.
Again, the world is apt to speak of men
as being good, because they are merely moral. But it would
be a safe rule for all Christian women to reflect, that
such are the temptations to man in his intercourse with the
world, that nothing less than the safe-guard of religion
can render his conduct uniformly moral.
With regard
to the social and domestic qualities of a lover, these must
also be tried at home. If disrespectful to his mother, and
inconsiderate or ungentle in his manners to his sisters, or
even if accustomed to speak of them in a coarse, unfeeling,
or indifferent manner, whatever may be his intellectual
recommendations, as a husband he ought not to be trusted.
On the other hand, it may be set down as an almost certain
rule, that the man who is respectful and affectionate to
his mother and his sisters, will be so to his
wife.
Having thus described in general terms the
manner
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in which women ought
to love, the next inquiry is, under what circumstances this
feeling may be properly indulged. The first restriction to
a woman of delicacy, of course, will be never to entertain
this sentiment towards one by whom it has not been sought
and solicited. Unfortunately, however, there are but too
many instances in which attentions, so pointed as not to be
capable of being misunderstood, have wantonly been made the
means of awakening something more than a preference; while
he who had thus obtained this meanest of all triumphs,
could smile at the consequences, and exult in his own
freedom from any direct committal.
How the peace of
mind of the young and the trusting is to be secured against
such treatment, it is difficult to say; unless they would
adopt the advice of the more experienced, and think less of
the attentions of men in general, and more of their own
immediate and practical duties, which, after all, are the
best preservatives, not only against indolence, melancholy,
and romance, but against the almost invariable
accompaniment of these evils--a tendency to sentimental
attachments. I am aware that I incur the risk of being
considered by young ladies as too homely in my notions,
even for an admonitress, when I so often recommend good
old-fashioned household duties; yet, I believe them
nevertheless to be an efficacious medicine both to body and
mind, and in no case more useful than in those of
sentimentality.
In the bestowment of the affections,
few women
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are tempted to make
choice of men of weak capacity. Still there is sometimes a
plausible manner, a gentlemanly address, or a handsome
exterior, which serves for a while to bewilder the
judgment, so as to conceal from detection the emptiness
within. It is the constitutional want of woman's nature to
have some superior being to look up to; and how shall a man
of weak capacity supply this want? He may possibly please
for an hour, or a day, but it is a fearful thought to have
to dwell with such a one for life.
The most important
inquiry, however, to be made in the commencement of an
attachment, (for it may be too late to make it afterwards,)
is, whether the object of it inspires with a greater love
of all that is truly excellent--in short, whether his
society and conversation have a direct tendency to make
religion appear more lovely and more desirable. If not, he
can be no safe companion for the intimacy of married life;
for you must have already discovered that your own position
as a Christian requires support rather than opposition. It
is the more important, therefore, that this inquiry should
be most satisfactorily answered in an early stage of the
attachment; because it is the peculiar nature of love to
invest with ideal excellence the object of its choice, so
that after it has once obtained possession of the heart,
there ceases too generally to be a correct perception of
good and evil, where the interests of love are
concerned.
In addition to this tendency, it is deeply
to be
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regretted, that so few
opportunities are given to women in the present state of
society, of becoming acquainted with the natural
dispositions and general habits of those to whom they
intrust their happiness, until the position of both is
fixed, and fixed for life. The short acquaintance which
takes place under ordinary circumstances, between two
individuals about to be thus united, for better for worse
until death do them part, is any thing but a mutual
development of real character. The very name of
courtship
is a repulsive one;
because it implies merely a solicitude to obtain favor, but
has no reference to deserving it. When a man is said to be
paying his court to an individual of higher rank or
authority, he is universally understood to be using
flattery and attention, if not artifice, to purchase what
his merits alone would not be sufficient to command. I do
not say that a similar line of conduct is designedly
pursued by the lover, because I believe that in many cases
he would be glad to have his character more clearly
understood than it is. Yet here we see, most especially,
the evil consequences resulting from that system of
intercourse which prevails between the two sexes is general
society. By the time a young woman is old enough to enter
into a serious engagement, she has generally become so
accustomed to receive the flattery and the homage of men,
that she would feel it an insult to be treated with perfect
honesty and candor; while, on the other hand, her lover
redoubles his assiduity to convince her, that if not
actually
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a goddess, she is at
least the most charming of her sex. Need we be surprised if
there should often be a fearful awaking from this state of
delusion?
I must, however, in justice repeat, that
the delusion is not all intentional on either part, for a
successful suit naturally places a man in so agreeable a
position, that his temper and disposition, at such times,
appear to the best possible advantage; while on the other
hand it would be strange indeed, if a woman so courted, and
apparently admired, could not maintain her sweetest
deportment, and wear her blandest smiles, through that
short period which some unjustly call the happiest of life,
simply because it is the one in which she is the most
flattered and the most deceived.
It is a very
erroneous notion, entertained by some young persons, that
to make early pretensions to womanhood, is an embellishment
to their character, or a means of increasing their
happiness. Nothing in reality can be more entirely a
mistake. One of the greatest charms which a girl can
possess, is that of being contented to be a girl and
nothing more. Her natural ease of manner, her simplicity of
heart, her frankness, her guileless and confiding truth,
are all opposed to the premature assumption of womanhood.
Even her joyous playfulness, so admirably adapted to
promote the health both of mind and body, oh! why does she
hasten to lay all this aside for the mock dignity of an
artificial and would-be woman? Believe me, the latter loses
much of the innocent enjoyment of her early years, while
she
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gains in nothing, except
a greater necessity for care and caution.
Were it
possible to induce young women to view this subject in its
true light, and to endeavor to prolong rather than curtail
the season of their simplicity and buoyancy of heart; how
much would be avoided of that absurd miscalculation about
the desirableness of contracting matrimonial alliances,
which plunges hundreds and thousands into the responsible
situation of wives and mothers, before they have well
learned to be rational women.
A cheerful, active,
healthy, and sound-minded girl, is ever the first to glow
with the genuine impulse of what is noble and generous in
feeling, thought, and action; and at the same time she is
the last to be imposed upon by what is artificial, false,
or merely superficial; for there seems to be a power in
unsophisticated nature, to repel as if by instinct the mean
strategems of art. The vain, the sentimental, would-be
woman, sickly for want of natural exercise, and
disappointed in her precocious attempts at dignity and
distinction, is the last to yield herself to any genuine
impulse; because she must inquire whether it is lady-like
and becoming; but, alas for her peace of mind! she is the
first to listen to the voice of flattery, and to sink into
all the absurdities of an early, a misplaced, or an
imaginary attachment.
It is not indeed in the nature
of things, that a young girl should know how to bestow her
affections aright. She has not had experience enough in the
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ways of the world, or
penetrated sufficiently through the smiling surface of
society, to know that some who are the most attractive in
their address and manners are the least calculated for
fireside companions. They know, if they would but believe
what their more experienced relatives tell them, that the
happiness of marriage must depend upon suitability of
character; yet even of this they are incompetent to judge,
and consequently they are betrayed into mistakes sometimes
the most fatal to their true interests both here and
hereafter.
How much wiser then is the part of her,
who puts off these considerations altogether until a period
of greater maturity of judgment, when much that once looked
dazzling and attractive shall have lost its false splendor;
and when many qualifications of heart and mind, to which
she once attached but little value, shall have obtained
their due share of importance in her calculations. Her
heart will then be less subject to the dictates of
capricious fancy; and looking at human life, and society,
and mankind as they really are; looking at herself too with
a clearer vision, and a more decided estimate of truth, she
will be able to form a correct opinion on that point of
paramount importance--suitability of character and
habits.
Influenced by a just regard to this
consideration, a sensible woman will easily see that the
man of her choice must be as much as possible in her own
sphere of life. Deficient in education, he would be a rude
and coarse companion for a refined woman;
View page [201]
and with much higher
attainments than her own, he would be liable to regard her
with disrespect, if not with contempt.
By a fatal
misapprehension of what constitutes real happiness, it is
often spoken of as a good and great thing, when a woman
raises herself to a higher sphere in society by marriage.
Could such individuals tell the story of their after lives,
it would often be a history of humiliation and sorrow, for
which no external advantages had been able to compensate.
There are, however, admirable instances of women, thus
exalted, who have maintained their own dignity, and the
respect of all their connections; so much more important is
moral worth than intellectual cultivation, to a woman. In
these cases, however, the chief merit of the wife has been,
that she never
sought
her
elevation.
Having chosen your lover for his
suitability, it is of the utmost consequence, that you
should guard against that natural propensity of the
youthful mind, to invest him with every ideal excellence.
Endeavor to be satisfied with him as he is, rather than
imagine him what he never can be. It will save you a world
of disappointment in after life. Nor, indeed, does this
extravagant investiture of the fancy belong, as is
sometimes supposed, to that meek, and true, and abiding
attachment which it is woman's highest virtue and noblest
distinction to feel. I strongly suspect it is vanity, and
not affection, which leads a young woman to believe her
lover perfect because it enhances her triumph to
View page [202]
be the choice of such a man.
The part of a true-hearted woman, is to be satisfied with
her lover, such as he is, and consider him with all his
faults as sufficiently exalted and sufficiently perfect for
her. No after-development of character can shake the faith
of such a woman, no ridicule or exposure can weaken her
tenderness for a single moment; while, on the other hand,
she who has blindly believed her lover to be without a
fault, must ever be in danger of awaking to the conviction
that her love exists no longer.
Though truth should
be engraven upon every thought, and word, and act, which
occurs in your intercourse with the man of your choice,
there is implanted in the nature of woman, a shrinking
delicacy, which ought ever to prompt her to keep back some
of her affection for the time when she becomes a wife. No
woman ever gained, but many, very many have been losers, by
displaying all at first. Let enough of your love be
manifested, to prevent suspicion or distrust; and the
self-complacency of man will be sure to supply the rest.
Suffer it not, then, to be unfolded to its full extent. In
the trials of married life, you will have ample need for an
additional supply. You will want it for sickness, for
sorrow, for all the different exigencies of real
experience; but above all you will want it to reawaken the
tenderness of your husband, when worldly cares and
pecuniary disappointments have too much absorbed his better
feelings; and what surprise so agreeable to him, as to
discover, in his farther
View page [203]
progress through the wilderness of life, so sweet, so deep
a fountain, as woman's perfect-love?
It is a fact too
little taken into account by young women, that until
actually married, their relative and home-duties are the
same after an engagement has been contracted, as before.
When a daughter begins to neglect a father or a brother,
for the sake of her lover, it is a bad omen for his
happiness. Her attentions in this case are dictated by
impulse, not duty; and the same misapprehension of what is
just and right, will in future be equally likely to divert
them again from their proper object. It is good even to let
your lover see that such is your estimate of duty, that you
can afford even to lose his society for a few minutes,
rather than neglect the claims of your family.
I have
now imagined a young woman brought into the most serious
position she has yet occupied; and if her mind is rightly
influenced, she will feel it to be one of deep and solemn
consideration. If, during the lapse of her previous
existence, she has lived for herself alone, now is the time
when her regrets are about to begin; if, as I have so
earnestly recommended, she has studiously cultivated habits
of duty, and thoughts of affectionate and grateful regard
towards her home connections, now is the time when she will
fully enter upon the advantages of having regulated her
conduct by the law of love. Already she will have begun to
contemplate the character of man in a new light. Admitted
to his confidence, she will find him at the same time
more
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admirable, and more
requiring as regards herself, than she found him in
society; and while her esteem increases with the
development of his real merits, she will feel her affection
equal to every demand, for she will be rich in that
abundance which the heart alone can supply, whose warmest
emotions have been called forth and cherished in the genial
and healthy atmosphere of domestic life.
One word
before this chapter closes, to those who have arrived at
years of womanhood without having known what it was to
engage the attentions of a lover; and of such I must
observe, that by some unaccountable law of nature they
often appear to be the most admirable of their sex. Indeed,
while a sparkling countenance, an easy manner, and--to say
the least of it--a
willingness
to be admired, attract a crowd of lovers; it not
unfrequently happens, that retiring merit and
unostentatious talent scarcely secure the homage of one.
And yet, on looking around upon society, one sees so many
of the vain, the illiterate, and the utterly useless chosen
and solicited as wives, that we are almost tempted to
consider those who are not thus favored as in reality the
most honorably distinguished among their sex.
Still I
imagine there are few, if any, who never have had a
suitable or unsuitable offer, at some time in their lives;
and wise indeed by comparison, are those, who rather than
accept the latter, are content to enjoy the pleasures, and
endure the sorrows of life alone. Compare their lot for an
instant
View page [205]
with that of women
who have married from unworthy motives. How incomparably
more dignified, more happy, and more desirable in every
way, does it appear! It is true there are times in their
experience when they will have to bear what woman bears so
hardly--the consciousness of being alone; but they escape
an evil far more insupportable--that of being a slighted or
an unloved wife.
If my remarks have appeared to refer
directly to a moral training for the married state, it has
not been from any want of interest in those who never enter
upon this condition, but simply because I believe the moral
training which prepares a woman for one sphere of duty, is
equally productive of benefit if she fills another; and I
rest this belief upon my conviction, that all the loveliest
and most estimable propensities of woman's nature were
bestowed upon her for early and continued exercise in a
strictly relative capacity; and that, whether married or
single, she will equally find the law of Christian love the
only certain rule by which to regulate her conduct, so as
to render her either happy herself, or the promoter of
happiness in others.
[Illustration : A small
decorative
illustration.]
View page [206]
[Illustration : A decorative
arch formed from a thin wooden frame entwined with
flowering vines. The frame forms an upward loop at the
center of the arch.]
II.
DEDICATION OF YOUTH.
[Illustration : A
decorative capital "T".]
T
HE great question, whether the principles
of Christian faith, or, in other words, whether the
religion of the Bible, shall be adopted as the rule of
conduct by the young, remains yet to be considered, not in
relation to the nature of that faith, but as regards the
desirableness of embracing it at an early period of life,
willingly and entirely, with earnestness as well as
love.
I am writing thus, on the supposition, that,
with all who read these pages, convictions of the necessity
and excellence of personal religion have at one time or
other been experienced. The opinion is general, and I
believe correct, that the instances are extremely rare in
which the Holy Spirit does not awaken the human soul to a
sense of its real situation as an accountable being passing
through a state of probation, before entering upon an
existence of endless duration. Nor among young persons born
of Christian parents, and educated in a Christian country,
where the means of religious instruction are accessible to
all, is it easy to conceive that such convictions have not,
at times, been strong and deep;
View page [207]
though, possibly, they may have been so
neglected as to render their recurrence less frequent, and
less powerful in their influence upon the mind.
Still
it is good to recall the time when the voice of warning,
and of invitation, was first heard; to revisit the scene of
a father's faithful instruction, and of the prayers of a
lost mother; to hear again the Sabbath-evening sermon, to
visit the cottage of the dying Christian; or even to look
back once more into the chamber of infancy, where our first
tears of real penitence were shed. It is good to remember
how it was with us in those bygone days when we welcomed
the chastisements of love, and kissed the rod that was
stretched forth by a Father's hand. How blest did we then
feel, in the belief that we were not neglected, not
forgotten, not over-looked! Has any thing which the world
we have too much loved since offered us, afforded a
happiness to be compared with this belief? Oh, no. Then why
not hearken, when the same voice is still inviting you to
come? and why not comply when the same hand is still
pointing out the way to peace? What is the hinderance which
stands in your way? What is the difficulty which prevents
the dedication of your youth to God? Let this question be
seriously asked, and fully answered; for it is of immense
importance that you should know on what grounds the
invitations of the Holy Spirit have been rejected; and why
you are adopting another rule of conduct than that
prescribed in the gospel of Christ.
I repeat, it is
of immense importance, because
View page [208]
this is a subject which admits of no
trifling. If it is of importance in every branch of mental
improvement, that we should be active, willing, earnest,
and faithful, it is still more important here. When we do
not persevere in learning, it does not follow of necessity
that we grow more ignorant, because we may remain where we
are, while the rest of the world goes on. But in religion
there is no standing still, because opportunities
neglected, and convictions resisted, are involved in the
great question of responsibility; so that no one can open
her Bible, or attend the means of religious instruction, or
spend a Sabbath, or even enter into solemn communion with
her own heart as in the sight of God, but she must be so
much the worse for such opportunities of improvement, if
neglected or despised.
The very groundwork of the
Christian faith is love; and love can accomplish more in
the way of conformity in life and practice, than could ever
be effected by the most rigid adherence to what is believed
to be right, without assistance from the life-giving
principle of love.
Still the state of the Christian
in this world is always described as one of warfare, and
not of repose; and how, without earnestness, are
temptations to be resisted, convictions acted upon, or good
intentions carried out? As time passes on, too,
faithfulness is tried. What has been adopted, or embraced,
must be adhered to; and in this, with many young persons,
consists the greatest of their trials; for there is often a
reaction on first learning
View page [209]
to
understand something of the realities of life, which throws
them back from the high state of expectation and excitement
under which they first embraced religious truth.
But
let us examine the objections which most frequently operate
to prevent the young surrendering themselves to their
convictions of the importance and necessity of personal
religion. "If I begin, I must go on." Your mind then is not
made up. You have not counted the cost of coming out from
the world, nor honestly weighed the advantages of securing
the guidance, support, and protection of personal religion,
against every other pursuit, object, or idol of your lives.
Perhaps it is society, amusement, or fashion, which stands
in your way. Be assured there is society of the highest
order, where religion is supreme; and if not exactly what
is popularly called amusement, there is a heartfelt
interest in all which relates, however remotely, to the
extension of the kingdom of Christ--an interest unknown to
those who have no bond of union founded upon the basis of
Christian love.
Is it possible, then, that fashion
can deter you--fashion, a tyrant at once both frivolous and
cruel--fashion, who never yet was rich enough to repay one
of her followers for the sacrifice of a single happy
hour--fashion, whose realm is folly, and who is perpetually
giving place to sickness, sorrow, and the grave? Compare
for one instant her empire with that of religion. I admit
that her power is extensive, well-nigh all-pervading; but
what has her
View page [210]
sovereign sway
done for the destinies of man? She has adjusted ornaments,
and selected colors; she has clothed and unclothed
thousands, and arrayed multitudes in her own livery--but
never has fashion bestowed dignity or peace of mind upon
one single individual of the whole family of man.
It
would be an insult to the nature and the power of religion
to proceed farther with the comparison. Can that which
relates merely to the body, which is fleeting as a breath,
and unstable as the shadow of a cloud, deter from what is
pure, immortal, and divine?
Still I am aware it is
easy, in the solitude of the chamber, or in the privacy of
domestic life, to think and speak in this exalted strain;
and yet to go into the society of the fashionable, the
correct, and the worldly-minded, who have never felt the
necessity of being religious, and to be suddenly brought,
by the chilling influence of their reasoning or their
satire, to conclude that the convenient season for you to
admit the claims of religion upon your heart and life has
not yet arrived.
I believe the most dangerous
influence which society exercises upon young women, is
derived from worldly-minded persons of strong common sense,
who are fashionable in their appearance, generally correct
in their conduct, and amiable and attractive in their
manners and conversation. Young women guardedly and
respectably brought up see little of vice, and know little
of
"The thousand paths which slope the way to
sin."
View page [211]
They are
consequently but little acquainted with the beginnings of
evil, and still less so with those dark passages of life to
which such beginnings are calculated to lead. It follows,
therefore, that, except when under the influence of strong
convictions, they may be said to be ignorant of the real
necessity of religion. It is but natural then, that those
correct and well-bred persons who pass on from the cradle
to the brink of the grave treating religion with respect as
a good thing for the poor and the disconsolate, but
altogether unnecessary for
themselves
, should appear, on the
slight examination of the subject, to be living in a much
more enviable state than those who believe themselves
called upon to renounce the world and its vanities, and
devote their time and their talents, their energies and
their affections to a cause which the worldly-minded regard
at best as visionary and wild.
I have spoken of such
persons as passing on to the
brink
of the grave, and I have used
this expression because I believe the grave has terrors,
even to them; that when one earthly hold after another
gives way, and health declines, and fashionable friends
fall off, and death sits beckoning on the tombstones of
their newly-buried associates and relatives; I believe
there is often then a fearful questioning about the
realities of eternal things, and chiefly about the religion
which in idea they had set apart for the poor, the aged,
and the disconsolate, but wished none of it
themselves.
Yes, I believe, if the young could
witness the
View page [212]
solitude of such
persons, could visit their chambers of sickness, and gain
admittance to the secret counsels of their souls, they
would find there an aching void, a want, a destitution,
which the wealth and the fashion, the pomp and the glory of
the whole habitable world would be insufficient to
supply.
It is often secretly objected by young
people, that by making a profession of religion they should
be brought into fellowship and association with vulgar
persons. In answer to this objection it would be easy to
show that nothing can be more vulgar than vice, to say
nothing of worldly-mindedness. It is, however, more to the
purpose to endeavor to convince them, that true religion is
so purifying in its own nature, as to be capable of
elevating and refining minds which have never been either
softened or enlightened by any other influence.
All
who have been much engaged in the practical exercise of
Christian benevolence, and who, in promoting the good of
their fellow-creatures, have been admitted to scenes of
domestic privacy among the illiterate and the poor, will
bear their testimony to the fact, that religion is capable
of rendering the society of some of the humblest and
simplest of human beings truly refined, and far more
affecting in its pathos and interest than that of the most
intelligent circles in the higher walks of life. I do not,
of course, pretend to call it as refined in manners, and
phraseology; but in the ideas and the feelings which its
conversation is intended to convey. That is not refined
society where polished
View page [213]
language is used as the medium for low ideas; but that in
which the ideas are raised above vulgar and worldly things,
and assimilated with thoughts and themes on which the holy
and the wise, the saint and the philosopher, alike delight
to dwell.
It is no exaggeration then to say, that the
conversation of the humble Christian on her death-bed--her
lowly bed of suffering, surrounded by poverty and
destitution--is sometimes so fraught with the intelligence
of that celestial world on which her hopes are fixed, that
to have spent an hour in her presence, is like having had
the glories of heaven and the wonders of immortality
revealed. And is this a vulgar or degrading employment for
a refined and intellectual being? to dwell upon the noblest
theme which human intellect has ever grasped? to look
onward from the perishable things of time to the full
development of the eternal principles of truth and love? to
forget the sufferings of frail humanity, and to live by
faith among the ransomed spirits of the blest, in the
presence of angels, and before the Saviour, ascribing
honor and glory, dominion and power, to
Him that sitteth on the throne, and to the Lamb for ever
and ever?
In turning back to the world, from
the contemplation of such a state of mind, we feel that
vulgarity consists neither in religion itself, nor in its
requirements; but in attaching undue importance to the
things of time, and in making them our chief or only
good.
If young people are often deterred from
becoming
View page [214]
religious by seeing
a great number of genteel, correct, and agreeable persons,
who, for any thing they can discover to the contrary, are
doing very well without it, they are still more forcibly
deterred by feeling no want of it within
themselves.
Perhaps you are so protected by parents,
and so hemmed in by domestic regulations, that you feel it
more difficult to do what is positively wrong, than what is
generally approved as right. But do not be so blind and
presumptuous as to mistake this apparently inoffensive
state, for being religious: and remember, if it is
difficult to do wrong now, it is the last stage of your
experience in which you will find it so. Obliged to quit
the parental roof, deprived by death of your natural
protectors, required as years advance to take a more active
part in the duties of life, or to incur a greater share of
culpability by their neglect; thrown among strangers, or
friends who are no longer watchful or solicitous for your
temporal and spiritual good; involved in new connections,
and exposed to temptations both from within and from
without, how will your mind, lately so careless and secure,
awake to a conscious feeling of your own weakness and a
secret terror of impending harm. For woman from her very
feebleness is fearful; while from her sensitiveness she is
peculiarly exposed to pain. Without religion, then, she is
the most pitiable, the most abject, the most utterly
destitute of all created beings. The world--society--nay,
even domestic life has nothing to offer on which her heart
in its unregenerated state
View page [215]
can rest in safety. Each day is a period of peril, if not
of absolute agony; for all she has to give--her affections,
which constitute her wealth--are involved in speculations
which can yield back into her bosom nothing but ashes and
mourning.
It is not so with the woman who has made
religion her stronghold--her defence--her stay. Unchecked
in the happiest and most congenial impulse of her nature,
she can still love, because the Lord her God has commanded
that she should love him with all her heart, and with all
her strength, and that she should love her neighbor as
herself. Thus, though disappointment or death may blight
her earthly hopes; or though a cloud may rest upon the
bestowment of her affections in this vale of tears, the
principle of love which fills her soul remains the same,
and she is most happy when its sphere of exercise is
unbounded and eternal.
And it is possible that any of
the rational beings whom I am addressing would dare to rush
upon the dangers and temptations of this short and
precarious life, without the protection and support of
religion? Oh! no, they tell me they are all believers in
religion--all professors of the Christian faith. But are
you all religious? Deceive not yourselves. There is no
other way of being Christians, except by being personally
religious. If not personally religious now, are you then
ready to begin to be so? Delay not; you have arrived at
years of discretion, and are capable of judging on many
important points. You profess to believe in a religion
which expressly
View page [216]
teaches you
that it is itself the one thing needful. What then stands
in the way? If, after mature and candid deliberation, you
decidedly prefer the world, injure not the cause of Christ
by an empty profession, nor act the cowardly part of
wearing the outward badge of a faith which holds not
possession of your heart and affections. It is neither
honorable nor just to allow any one to doubt on whose side
you are. If, therefore, your decision be in favor of
religion, it is still more important that you should not
blush to own a Saviour, who left the glory of the heavenly
kingdom, inhabited a mortal and suffering frame, and
finally died an ignominious death for you.
Nor let
the plea of youth retard the offering of your heart to Him
who gave you its capacity for exquisite and intense
enjoyment. If you are young, you are happy in having more
to offer. Though it constitutes the greatest privilege of
the Christian dispensation, that we are not required to
bring any thing by which to purchase the blessings of
pardon and salvation; it surely must afford some additional
satisfaction to a generous mind, to feel that there is more
of health and strength, of elasticity and vigor, to bring
into the field of action, than if the decision upon whose
side to engage were deferred until a later period.
It
should always be remembered, for the consolation and
encouragement of youth, that in making a decision in favor
of religion in early life, there is comparatively little to
undo; while if this most important
View page [217]
duty is left until a later period, there
will be the force of the long-established habit of sinning
to contend with, meshes of evil to unravel, and all that
mingled texture of light and darkness, which originates in
a polluted heart and a partially enlightened understanding,
to separate thread from thread. And, oh! what associations,
what memories are there! what gleaming forth again of the
false fire, even after the true has been kindled! what
yawning of the wide sepulchre in which the past is buried,
but cannot rest! what struggling with the returning demons
of the imagination, before they are cast out for ever! what
bleeding of the heart, which, like a chastened child, would
kiss the rod, yet dare not think how many stripes are
justly demanded by its delinquency! O happy youth! it is
thy privilege, that this may never be thy
portion!
Yes, happy youth! for thou art ever happy in
the contemplation of age; and yet thou hast thy tears. Thou
hast thy trials too; and perhaps their acuteness renders
them less bearable than the dull burden of accumulated
sorrow which hangs upon maturer years. Thou hast thy
sorrows: and when the mother's eye is closed, that used to
watch thy infant steps so fondly; and the father's hand is
cold, that used to rest upon thy head with gentle and
impressive admonition; whom hast thou, whom wilt thou ever
have to supply thy parents' place on earth? Whom hast thou?
The world is poor to thee; for none will ever love thee
with a love like theirs. Thou hast thy golden and exuberant
youth,
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thy joyous step, thy
rosy smile, and we call thee happy. But thou hast also thy
hours of loneliness, thy disappointments, thy chills, thy
blights: when the wings of hope on which thy young spirit
has soared begin for the first time to droop; when the love
in which thou hast so fondly trusted begins to cool; when
the flowers thou hast cherished begin to fade; when the
bird thou hast fed through the winter, in the summer flies
away; when the lamb thou hast nursed in thy bosom, prefers
the stranger to thee. Thou hast thy tears; but the
bitterest of thy sorrows, how soon are they assuaged? It is
this then which constitutes thy happiness, for we all have
griefs; but long before old age, they have worn themselves
channels which cannot be effaced. It is therefore that we
look back to youth with envy; because the tablet of the
heart is then fresh and unimpressed, and we long to begin
again with that fair surface, and to write upon it no
characters but those of truth.
And will not youth
accept the invitation of experience, and come before it is
too late? come with all its health, and its bloom, and its
first-fruits untainted, and lay them upon the altar; an
offering which age cannot make? Let us count the different
items in the riches which belong to youth, and ask, if it
is not a holy and a glorious privilege to dedicate them to
the service of the Most High?
There is the freshness
of unwearied nature, for which so many millions pine in
vain; the glow of health, that life-spring of all the
energies of thought
View page [219]
and
action; the confidence of unbroken trust--the power to
believe, as well as hope--a power which the might of human
intellect could never yet restore; the purity of undivided
affection; the earnestness of zeal unchilled by
disappointment; the first awakening of joy, that has never
been depressed; high aspirations that have never stooped to
earth; the clear perception of a mind unbiased in its
search of truth; with the fervor of an untroubled
soul.
All these, and more than pen could write or
tongue could utter, has youth the power to dedicate to the
noblest cause which ever yet engaged the attention of an
intellectual and immortal being. What, then, I would ask
again, is it which hinders the surrender of your heart to
God, your conduct to the requirements of the religion of
Christ?
With this solemn inquiry, I would leave the
young reader to pursue the train of her own reflections.
All that I have proposed to her consideration as desirable
in character and habit--in heart and conduct--will be
without consistency, and without foundation, unless based
upon Christian principle, and supported by Christian faith.
All that I have proposed to her as most lovely, and most
admirable, may be rendered more, infinitely more so, by the
refinement of feeling, the elevation of sentiment, and the
purity of purpose, which those principles and that faith
are calculated to impart.
View page [220]
[Illustration : A decorative
arch formed from vines, with two small flowers at the top
of the arch.]
III.
DOMESTICS
AND GUESTS.
[Illustration : A decorative
capital "T".]
T
HE considerateness I shall attempt to
define is one of the highest recommendations the female
character can possess; because it combines an habitual
examination of our own situation and responsibilities, with
a quick discernment of the character and feelings of those
around us, and a benevolent desire to afford them as much
pleasure, and spare them as much pain, as we can. A
considerate woman, therefore, whether surrounded by all
appliances and means of personal enjoyment, or depending
upon the use of her own hands for the daily comforts of
life, will look around her, and consider what is due to
those whom Providence has placed within the sphere of her
influence.
The man who voluntarily undertakes a
difficult and responsible business, first inquires
how
it is to be conducted so as
best to insure success: so the serious and thoughtful
woman, on entering upon the duties of domestic life,
ascertains, by reflection and observation, in what manner
they may be performed so as to render them most conducive
to the great end she has in view, the promotion of the
happiness of others; and as the man engaged in business
does
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not run hither and
thither simply to make a show of alacrity, neither does the
woman engaged in a higher and more important work allow
herself to be satisfied with her own willingness to do her
duty, without a diligent and persevering investigation of
what are the most effectual means by which it can be
done.
Women are almost universally admonished of
their duties in
general
terms,
and hence they labor under great disadvantages. They are
told to be virtuous; and in order to be so, they are
advised to be kind and modest, orderly and discreet. But
few teachers, and fewer writers, condescend to take up the
minutiæ of every-day existence, so far as to explain
in what distinct and individual actions such kindness,
modesty, order, and discretion consist. Indeed, the cases
themselves, upon which these principles of right conduct
are generally brought to bear, are so minute, and so
apparently insignificant, that the writer who takes up this
subject must not only be content to sacrifice all the
dignity of authorship, but must submit occasionally to a
smile of contempt for having filled a book with
trifles.
In order, however, to ascertain the real
importance of any point of merit, we should take into
consideration its direct opposite. We never know the value
of true kindness so much as when contrasted with
unkindness; and lest any one should think lightly of the
virtue of consideration as a moral faculty, let us turn our
attention to the character and habits of a woman who is
without it. Such are not
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difficult to find, and we find them often in the lovely and
the seemingly amiable creatures of impulse, who rush about,
with the impetus of the moment operating as their plea,
uncontrollable affection their excuse, and selfishness,
unknown to them, the moving spring at the bottom of their
hearts. These individuals believe themselves to be so
entirely governed by amiable feelings, that they not
unfrequently boast of being kind--nay, too kind-hearted;
but upon whom does their kindness tell except upon
themselves? It is true, they feel the impulse to be kind,
and this impulse they gratify by allowing it to operate in
any way that circumstances or their own caprice may point
out. Yet, after all, how often is their kindness, for want
of consideration, rendered wholly unavailable towards the
promotion of any laudable or useful purpose.
Nor is
this all. Want of consideration is often the occasion of
absolute pain; and those who, because they deem it a
recommendation to act from the impulse of the moment, will
not take the trouble to reflect, are always, in a greater
or less degree, liable to inflict misery upon
others.
I remember walking home on a beautiful
summer's evening with one of these lovely and impetuous
creatures, who was then just entering upon all the rights
and privileges of a belle, and, to my great surprise,
observing that she trod indiscriminately upon all the
creeping things which the damp and the dew had tempted
forth into our path. I remonstrated with her, of course;
but she turned to me
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with
her own bewitching air of naiveté, and said, "And
pray, why may I
not
tread upon
the snails?" Farther remonstrance was unnecessary, for the
mind which had attained maturity without feeling enough to
prevent this reckless and disgusting waste of life, must of
necessity have been impervious to reason.
And thus it
is with considerateness in general. If the season of youth
glides over before habits of consideration are acquired,
they will come tardily and with little grace in after life.
Want of consideration for those of our fellow-creatures
whose love is of importance to us, is not, however, a
subject upon which we have so much cause for complaint. It
is towards those to whom we are connected by social ties,
without affection; and under this head, the situation of
our servants and domestics claims our care.
Servants
are generally looked upon, by thoughtless young ladies, as
a sort of household machinery; and when that machinery is
of sufficient extent to operate upon every branch of the
establishment, there can be no reason why it should not be
brought into exercise, and kept in motion to any extent
that may not be injurious. This machinery, however, is
composed of individuals possessing hearts as susceptible of
certain kinds of feeling, as those of the more privileged
beings to whose comfort and convenience it is their daily
business to minister. They know and feel that their lot in
this world is comparatively hard; and if they are happily
free from all presumptuous questionings of the wisdom and
justice
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of Providence in
placing them where they are, they are alive to the
conviction that the burden of each day is sufficient, and
often more than sufficient, for their strength.
In
speaking of the obligation we are under to our domestics
for their faithful services, it is no uncommon thing to be
answered by this unmeaning remark: "They are well paid for
what they do;" as if the bare fact of receiving food and
clothing for their daily labor placed them on the same
footing, with regard to comfort, as those who receive their
food and clothing for doing nothing.
There is also
another point of view in which this class of our
fellow-creatures is very unfairly judged. Servants are
required to have no faults. It is by no means uncommon to
find the mistress of a family, who has enjoyed all the
advantages of moral and even religious education, allowing
herself to exhibit the most unqualified excess of
indignation at the petty faults of a servant, who has never
enjoyed either; and to hear her speak as if she was
injured, imposed upon, insulted before her family, because
the servant, who was engaged to work for her, had been
betrayed into impertinence by a system of reproof as much
at variance with Christian meekness as the retort it was so
well calculated to provoke. Women of such habits would
perhaps be a little surprised if told that, when a lady
descends from her own proper station to speak in an
irritating or injurious manner to a servant, she is herself
guilty of impertinence, and that no domestic of honest
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and upright spirit will feel
that such treatment is right.
On the other hand,
there is a degree of kindness blended with dignity, which
servants who are not absolutely depraved are able to
appreciate; and the slight effort required to obtain their
confidence is almost invariably repaid by a double share of
affectionate and faithful service.
The situation of
living unloved by their domestics is one which I should
hope there are few women capable of enduring with
indifference. The cold attentions rendered without
affection and curtailed by every allowable means, the short
unqualified reply to every question, the averted look, the
privilege stolen rather than solicited, the secret murmur
that is able to make itself understood without the use of
words--all these are parts of a system of behavior that
chills the very soul, and forces upon the mind the
unwelcome conviction, that a stranger who partakes not in
our common lot is within our domestic circle; or that an
alien who enters not into the sphere of our home
associations attends upon our social board; nay, so
forcible is the impression as almost to extend to a feeling
is the impression as almost to extend to a feeling that an
enemy is among the members of our own household.
How
different is the impression produced by a manner calculated
both to win their confidence and inspire their respect. The
kind welcome after absence, the watchful eye, the
anticipation of every wish, the thousand little attentions
and acts of service beyond what are noted in the bond--who
can
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resist the influence of
these upon the heart, and not desire to pay them back, not
exactly in their own kind and measure, but in the only way
they can be returned consistently with the relative duties
of both parties--in kindness and consideration?
It is
not, however, in seasons of health and prosperity that this
bond between the different members of a family can be felt
in its full force. There is no woman so happily
circumstanced but that she finds some link broken in the
charm which binds her to this world--some shadow cast upon
her earthly pictures. The best beloved are not always those
who love the best; and expectation will exceed reality even
in the most favored lot. There are hours of sadness that
will steal in even upon the sunny prime of life; and they
are not felt the less because it is sometimes impossible to
communicate the reason for such sadness to those who are
themselves the cause. In such cases, and while the heart is
in some degree estranged from natural and familiar
fellowship, we are thrown more especially upon the kindness
and affection of our domestics for the consolation we feel
it impossible to live without. They may be, and perhaps
ought to be, unacquainted with the cause of our
disquietude; but a faithfully attached servant, without
presuming beyond her proper sphere, is quick to discern the
tearful eye, the gloomy brow, the countenance depressed;
and it is at such times that their kindness, solicitude,
and delicate attentions, might often put to shame the
higher pretensions of superior refinement.
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In cases of illness or death, it is
perhaps more especially their merit to prove, by their
indefatigable and unrequited assiduities, how much they
make the interest of the family their own, and how great is
their anxiety to remove all lighter causes of annoyance
from interference with the greater affliction in which
those around them are involved. There is scarcely a more
pitiable object in creation than a helpless invalid left
entirely to the care of domestics whose affection never has
been sought or won. But, on the other hand, the readiness
with which they will sometimes sacrifice their needful
rest, and that, night after night, to watch the feverish
slumbers of a fretful invalid, is one of those redeeming
features in the aspect of human nature which it is
impossible to regard without admiration and
gratitude.
There are many young ladies, and some old
ones, with whom the patronage of pets appears to be an
essential part of happiness; and these pets, as various as
the tastes they gratify, are all alike in one
particular--they are all troublesome. If a lady engages her
servants with an understanding that they are to wait upon
her domestic animals, no one can accuse her of injustice.
But if, with barely a sufficient number of domestics to
perform the necessary labor of her household, she
establishes a menagerie, and expects the hard-working
servants to undertake the additional duty of waiting upon
her pets--perhaps the most repulsive creatures in existence
to them--such additional service ought at least to be
solicited as a favor; and she will have no right to
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feel indignant, should the favor
be sometimes granted in a manner neither gracious nor
conciliating.
When a servant who has been all day
laboring hard to give an aspect of comfort and cleanliness
to the particular department committed to her care, sees
the young ladies of the family come home from their daily
walk, and never dreaming of her or her hard labor, trample
over the hall and stairs without stopping to rid themselves
of that incumbrance of clay which a fanciful writer has
classed among the "miseries of human life," is it to be
expected that the servant who sees this should be so far
uninfluenced by the passions of humanity as not to feel the
stirrings of rage and resentment in her bosom? And when
this particular act is repeated every day, and followed up
by others of the same description, the frequently recurring
sensations of rage and resentment, so naturally excited,
will strengthen into those of habitual dislike, and produce
that cold and grudging service which has already been
described.
There are thousands of little acts of this
description, such as ordering the tired servants at an
unseasonable hour to prepare an early breakfast, and then
not being ready yourself before the usual time--being
habitually too late for dinner, without any sufficient
reason, and having a second dinner served up--ringing the
bell for the servant to leave her washing, cooking, or
cleaning, and come up to you to receive orders to fetch
your thimble or scissors from the highest apartment in the
house--all which need no comment; and surely those
servants
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must be more than
human who can experience the effects of such a system of
behavior, carried on for days, months, and years, and not
feel, and feel bitterly, that they are themselves regarded
as mere machines, while their comfort and convenience is as
much left out of calculation as if they were nothing
more.
It is an easy thing, on entering a family, to
ascertain whether the female members of it are, or are not,
considerate. Where they are not, there exists, as a
necessary consequence, a constant series of murmurings,
pleadings, remonstrances, and attempted justifications,
which sadly mar the happiness of the household. On the
other hand, where the female members of the family are
considerate, there is a secret spring of sympathy linking
all hearts together, as if they were moved by a
simultaneous impulse of kindness on one side and gratitude
on the other. Few words have need to be spoken, few
professions to be made, for each is hourly discovering that
they have been the subject of affectionate solicitude, and
they are consequently on the watch for every opportunity to
make an adequate return. If the brother comes home sad and
weary, the sister to whom he has pledged himself to some
exertion, detects the languor of his eye, and refrains from
pressing upon him a fulfilment of his promise; if the
sister is laboring under depression, the brother feels
himself especially called upon to stand forward as her
friend; and if one of the family be suffering even slightly
from indisposition, there are watchful eyes around,
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and the excursion is cheerfully
given up by one, the party by another, and a quiet social
evening is unanimously agreed upon to be spent at home, and
agreed upon in such a way as that the invalid shall never
suspect that it has been done at the cost of any
pleasure.
There is no proof of affection more kindly
prompted and more gratefully received, than that of easily
detecting uncomplained-of indisposition. We might almost
single out this faculty as the surest test of love--for who
observes the incipient wrinkle on a stranger's brow, or
marks the gradually increasing paleness of an unloved
cheek? Or what can convince us more effectually that we are
in a world of strangers, to whom our interests are as
nothing, than to be pressed on every hand to do what our
bodily strength is unequal to.
There are points of
consideration in which we often practise great
self-deception. "Don't you think it would do you good, my
dear?" asks the young lady of her sickly sister, when the
day of promised pleasure is at hand, and she begins to fear
her sister's cough will render it impossible to go from
home. "The pain in your foot, my love, is considerably
better," says the wife to her husband, when she thinks the
fashionables are about leaving Bath. "You are looking
extremely well," says the niece to her aged uncle, who has
promised to take her to Paris; "I think I never saw you
look so well." But all this is not love. It does not feel
like love to the parties addressed; for nature is true
to
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herself, and she will
betray the secrets of art. How different are the workings
of that deep and earnest affection that sees with one
glance how unreasonable it would be to drag forth the
invalid to any participation in the enjoyments of health;
and how welcome is the gentle whisper which assures us that
one watchful eye perceives our suffering, one sympathizing
ear participates in our weakness and distress; for it
is
distress to be compelled to
complain that we are unequal to do what the happiness of
others depends our doing; and never is the voice of
friendship employed in a more kindly office than when
pleading the cause of our infirmity.
It has a
startling and by no means an agreeable effect upon the
mind, when a woman who is not habitually accustomed to any
sort of practical kindness, so far deviates from her usual
line of conduct as to perform any personal service solely
for ourselves. We feel that she has been troubled, and
suspect that she has been annoyed. But women accustomed to
practical duties are able to turn the whole tide of their
affectionate solicitude into channels so wholesome and
salutary, that our pride is not wounded by the obligation
under which we are placed, nor is our sense of gratitude
impaired by the pain of being singled out as the object of
unwonted and elaborate attentions. In order to illustrate
the subject by a familiar instance, let us imagine one of
those events experienced by all who have lived to years of
maturity, and experienced in such a way as to have thrown
them in a peculiar
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manner
upon the domestic comforts of the circle to which they were
introduced--the arrival, after long travel, on a visit to
an early and highly valued friend.
It is not
necessary to this picture, that park gates should be thrown
open, and footmen stationed on the steps of the hall; it
will better serve our purpose that the mistress of the
house should herself be the first to meet her guest, with
that genuine welcome in her looks and manner that leaves
nothing to be expressed by words. We will suppose that with
her own hand she displaces all the encumbrance of extra
wrappings, rendered necessary by the winter's journey, and
having quietly dismissed the expectant chaise-driver or
porter, she leads her friend into the neatly furnished
parlor, where another and a more familiar welcome seems at
once to throw open her heart and her house for the
reception. A fire that has been designedly built up, is
then most energetically stirred, until a bright and genial
blaze diffuses its light around the room, and the guest
begins to glow with the two-fold warmth of a welcome and a
winter's fire.
In the mean time, the servant, well
taught in the mysteries of hospitality, conveys the luggage
up stairs unseen, and the guest is led to the chamber
appointed for her nightly rest. There most especially is
both seen and felt the kind feeling that has taken into
account her peculiar tastes, and anticipated all her
well-remembered wishes. The east or the west apartment has
been chosen, according to the preference she has been known
to express in
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days long
since gone by, when she and her friend were girls together;
and thus the chain of fond and cherished recollections is
made to appear again unbroken after the lapse of years, and
a conviction is silently impressed upon the mind of the
traveller--perhaps the most welcome of all earthly sources
of assurances--that we have been remembered not merely in
the abstract, but that through long, long years of change
and separation, time has not obliterated from the mind of a
dear friend the slightest trace of our
individuality.
Perhaps none can tell until they have
arrived at middle age, what is in reality the essential
sweetness of this conviction. In our association with the
world, we may have obtained for our industry, our
usefulness, or it may be for our talents, a measure of
approval at least commensurate with our deserts; but give
back to the worn and the weary in this world's warfare the
friends of their early youth--the friends who loved them,
faults and all--the friends who could note down their very
follies without contempt, and who attached a degree of
interest and importance to the trifling peculiarities of
their temper and feelings, which rendered them indelible
memorials of an attachment such as never can be formed in
after life.
We have traced the traveller to the
chamber of her rest, and it is not in the choice of this
room alone, but in its furniture and general aspect, that
she reads the cheering truth of a superintending care
having been exercised over all it contains, in strict
reference to herself, not merely as an honored
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guest, but as a lover of this or that
small article of comfort or convenience, which in the world
of comparative strangers among whom she has been living,
she has seldom thought it worth her while to stipulate for,
and still less frequently has had referred to her
choice.
Now it is evident that the mistress of the
house herself must have been here. With her own hand she
must have placed upon the table the favorite toilet
cushion, worked by a friend who was alike dear to herself
and her guest. With her own hand she must have selected the
snow-white linen, and laid out, not in conspicuous
obtrusiveness, a few volumes calculated for the hours of
silent meditation, when her friend shall be alone.
It
is impossible that the services of the most faithful
domestic should be able to convey half the heartfelt
meaning indicated by these few familiar acts, so richly
worth their cost. It is not from the circumstance of having
all our wants supplied, that the most lively satisfaction
is derived; it is from the cheering fact that we ourselves,
in our individual capacity, have been the object of so much
faithful recollection and untiring love.
Instead,
therefore, of regarding it as a subject for murmuring and
complaint, that her means of personal indulgence do not
supply her with a greater number of domestics, the true
woman ought rather to esteem it a privilege that her
station in life is such as to place her in the way of
imparting this rational and refined enjoyment.
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We cannot imagine the first
day of hospitable welcome complete without our visitor
being introduced to that concentration of comforts--an
early tea. On descending from her chamber, then, she finds
all things in readiness for this grateful and refreshing
meal. Her attention is not distracted by apologies for what
is not there, but what on such occasions frequently might
have been, at the cost of half the effort required for an
elaborate excuse. As if the fairy Order had been at work,
the table is spread with all things most agreeable after
weary travel; and the guest, instead of being pressed to
eat with such assiduity that she begins to think her visit
has no other object, is only interrupted by kind inquiries
relating to home associations, and is beguiled into a
prolongation of her meal, by being drawn out into a detail
of the events of her journey.
As the evening passes
on, their conversation becomes more intimate, and while it
deepens in interest, that full expansion of the soul takes
place, under which, whatever Englishwomen may be in the
superficial intercourse of polished life, I have no scruple
in saying that, as fireside companions, they are the most
delightful upon earth. There are such vivid imaginings,
such touches of native humor, such deep well-springs of
feeling beyond their placid exterior, that when they
dare
to come forth and throw
themselves upon the charity or affection of their hearers,
one is beguiled into a fascination the more intense,
because it combines originality of thought with gentle
manners, and in a peculiar and
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forcible way invests the
cherished recollections of the past with the fresh warm
coloring of the present hour.
It is not amid
congregated masses of society that the true Englishwoman
can exhibit her native powers of conversation. It is when
two are met together, with perhaps a husband or a brother
for a third, and the midnight hour steals on, and yet they
take no note of time, for they are opening out their
separate store of treasures from the deep of memory,
sharing them with each other, and blending all with such
bright anticipations of the future, as none but a woman's
imagination can enjoy with faith in their reality. Or
perhaps they are consulting upon some difficult point of
duty, or sympathizing with each other in affliction; and
then where shall we look but to the Englishwoman for the
patient listener, the faithful counsellor, the stanch
supporter of each virtuous purpose, the keen discerner in
points of doubtful merit, and the untiring comforter in
every hour of need.
With regard to the particular
instance already described, the case may perhaps be more
clearly illustrated by adding a picture of an opposite
description, in order to ascertain in what particular
points the two cases differ.
For this purpose we will
imagine a woman distinguished by no extreme of character,
receiving her guest under precisely the same circumstances
as the one already described. In this case the visitor is
permitted to see that her hostess has reluctantly laid down
her book at the latest possible period of
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time which politeness would
allow; or, after her guest has remained twenty minutes in a
vacant and by no means inviting parlor, she comes toiling
up from the kitchen with a countenance that makes it
dreadful to be adding to her daily fatigues by placing
oneself at her table; and she answers the usual inquiries
of her friend as to her state of health, with a minute
detail of the various phenomena of a head-ache with which
she has that morning been attacked. The
one
domestic is then called up--and
woe betide that family whose daily services,
unpractised by its individual members
towards each other
, all emanate from
one
domestic.
The one
domestic is then ordered, in the hearing of the guest, to
take all the luggage up stairs, to bring hot water, towels,
and soap, to turn the carpets, run for the best
looking-glass, and see that tea is ready by the time the
friend comes down. The guest then ascends, accompanied by
the pouting servant, into a room upon which no kind care
has been bestowed. It may possibly be neat--so neat that
the guest supposes it never has been, and is not yet
intended to be used. Yes, every thing is in its place; but
a general blank pervades the whole, and it is not the least
of the disappointments experienced by our guest, that she
finds no water to refresh her aching temples. The mistress
of the house is angry at this neglect, and rings the bell.
The servant ascends from the kitchen to the highest room,
to learn that she must go down again and return, before
half the catalogue of her faults has been told.
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On such errands as this she is
employed until the guest descends to the parlor, where the
bell is again rung more imperatively, and the tea is
ordered to be brought instanter. In the mean time, the fire
has dwindled to the lowest bar. The mistress looks for
coals, but the usual receptacle is empty. She feels as if
there were a conspiracy against her. There is--there
can
be no one to blame but the
servant and thus her chagrin is alleviated by complaints
against servants in general, and her own in particular.
With these complaints, and often-repeated apologies, the
time is occupied until the appearance of the long-expected
meal, when the guest is pressed to partake of a repast not
sweetened by the comments of her hostess, or the harassed
and forlorn appearance of an over-worked domestic.
The mistress of this house may all the while be glad to
see her guest, and may really regard her as an intimate and
valued friend; but never having made it an object to
practise the domestic virtue of making others happy, she
knows not how to convey any better idea of a welcome than
by words. She therefore sets deliberately to work to
describe how happy she esteems herself in receiving so dear
a friend--wishes some third party were at home--hopes to be
able to amuse her--tells of the parties she has engaged for
each successive evening--brings out a pile of
engravings--fears her guest is weary--and lastly, at a very
early hour, rings for the chamber candlesticks, presuming
that her visitor would like to retire.
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It is needless to observe, that the
generality of visitors do retire upon this hint; and it is
equally needless to add, that the individual here described
fails to exhibit the character of the
true Englishwoman
, whose peculiar
charm is that of diffusing happiness, without appearing
conspicuously as the agent in its diffusion. It is from the
unseen but active principle of disinterested love ever
working at her heart, that
she
enters, with a perception as delicate as might be supposed
to belong to a ministering angel, into the peculiar
feelings and tones of character influencing those around
her; applying the magical key of sympathy to all they
suffer or enjoy, to all they fear or hope, until she
becomes identified as it were with their very being, blends
her own existence with theirs, and makes her society
essential to their highest earthly enjoyment.
If a
heightened degree of earthly enjoyment were all we could
expect to obtain by this line of conduct, I should still be
disposed to think the effect produced would be richly worth
our pains. But I must again repeat, that the great aim of a
Christian woman will always be, so to make others happy,
that their feelings shall be attuned to the reception of
better thoughts than those which relate to mere personal
enjoyment--so to make others happy, as to win them over to
a full perception of the loveliness of those Christian
virtues which her own life and conduct consistently show
forth.
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[Illustration : A
decorative arch, formed from a shepherd's crook at either
side supporting a thin branch which extends aross the top.
Vines are entwined around the entire
structure.]
IV.
BEFORE AND
AFTER MARRIAGE.
[Illustration : A decorative
capital "T".]
T
HAT branch of the subject upon which I am
now entering being one of so much importance in the sum of
human happiness as scarcely to admit of comparison with any
other, it might be expected that I should especially direct
the attention of the reader to the duties of consideration
and kindness in the married state, by entering into the
minutiæ of its especial requirements, and
recommending them with all the earnestness of emphatic
detail to serious attention. Happy indeed should I be to do
this, did I not feel that, at the same time, I should be
touching upon a theme too delicate for the handling of an
ordinary pen, and venturing beyond that veil which the
sacredness of such a connection is calculated to draw over
all that is extreme in the happiness or misery of human
life.
I shall therefore glance only upon those points
which are most obvious to the eye of a third party; and in
doing this, it will be found that many of the remarks I
have made upon the behavior of daughters to their fathers,
are equally applicable to that of wives towards their
husbands. There is, however,
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this great difference--the connection existing between
married people is almost invariably a matter of choice. A
daughter may sometimes imagine herself excused, by
supposing that her father is too uncongenial in mind and
character for her to owe him much in the way of
companionship. She may think his manners vulgar, and
believe that if she had a father who was a gentleman, she
would be more attentive and considerate to him; but her
husband cannot have married her without her own consent,
and therefore the engagement she has voluntarily entered
into must be to fulfil the duties of a wife to him
as he is
, not as she could have
wished or imagined him to be.
These considerations
lead me to a view of the subject which I have often been
compelled to take with deep regret, but which I fear no
human pen, and still less mine, will be able to change: it
is the false system of behavior kept up between those who
are about to enter into the relation of marriage; so that
when they settle down upon the true basis of their own
character, and appear to each other what they actually are,
the difference is sometimes so great as almost to justify
the inquiry whether the individual can really be the
same.
I presume not to expatiate upon that process
denominated courtship, as it is frequently carried on by
men. I venture not to accuse them of injustice in
cherishing, in their early intercourse with the object of
their choice, the very faults which they afterwards
complain of in the wife. My chief solicitude
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is for my own sex, that they should not
only be faithful after marriage, but upright and sincere
before; and that they should scorn to engage a lover by
little acts of consideration and kindness, which they are
not prepared to practise even more willingly towards the
husband.
I have known cases in which a kind-hearted
woman would have esteemed herself robbed of a privilege, if
her lover had asked any other person than herself so much
as to mend his glove. Yet is it not possible for the same
woman, two years after marriage, to say, "My sister, or my
cousin, will do that for you. I am too busy now."
Nor
is it the act alone, but the manner in which the act is
done, that conveys a false impression of what will be the
manner of that woman after marriage. I charge no one with
intentional
deception. The very
expression of the countenance is that of real and intense
enjoyment while the act of kindness is performed. All I
regret is that the same expressions of countenance should
not always accompany the same performance in the wife. All
women of acute sensibility must feel the loss of personal
attractions, when time begins to tell upon their youthful
charms. But oh, that they would learn by the warning of
others, rather than by their own experience, that it is
most frequently the want of this expression of cheerful,
genuine, disinterested kindness, than the want of youthful
beauty, that alienates their husbands' love, and makes them
objects of indifference, or worse.
View page [243]
The cultivation of acquaintance before
marriage, with a view to that connection taking place, for
the most part goes but a very little way towards the
knowledge of real character. The parties usually meet in
the heydey of inexperienced youth; and while they exult in
the unclouded sunshine of life, their mutual endeavors to
please are rewarded by an equal willingness to be pleased.
The woman especially is placed in a situation highly
calculated to excite the greatest possible degree of
complacency. She is treated by a being upon whom she
depends, and he most probably her superior, as if she was
incapable of error and guiltless of a single fault. Perhaps
she warns him of his mistake, speaks of her own defects,
and assures him that she is not the angelic creature he
supposes her to be; but she does all this with so sweet a
grace, and looks all the while so pleased to be
contradicted, that her information goes for nothing; and we
are by no means assured that she is not better satisfied it
should be so.
If, for instance, she really wishes
him to know that her temper is naturally bad, why is she
invariably so mild and bland and conciliating in his
presence? If she wishes him to believe that she has a mind
not capable of entering fully into the interest of his
favorite books, and the subjects of his favorite discourse,
why does she
appear
to listen so
attentively when he reads, and ask so many questions
calculated to draw him out into conversation? If she wishes
him to suppose that she is not
always
a lively and agreeable
companion, why does she not
View page [244]
occasionally assume the tone and manner so familiar to her
family at home--answer him shortly, hang down her head, and
mope away the evening when he is near her? If she really
wishes him to believe her, when she tells him that she is
but ill-informed and wanting in judgment, why, when he
talks with her, does she take so much pains to express
opinions generally believed to be correct, and especially
such as coincide with his own? If she occasionally acts
from caprice, and really wishes him to know that she does
so, to the injury of the comfort of those around her; why,
whenever she practises in this way upon him, does she win
him back again, and soothe his feelings with redoubled
kindness and additional solicitude to please?
Perhaps she will tell me she acts in this manner because
it would be unamiable and ungenerous to do otherwise. To
which I answer, If it be unamiable and ungenerous to the
lover, how much more so must it be to the husband? I find
no fault with the sweetness, the irresistible charm of her
behavior before marriage. It is no more than we
ought
to practise towards those
whose happiness is bound up with ours. The falling off
afterwards is what I regard as so much to be deplored in
the character of woman; for wherever this is observed, it
seems to indicate that her mind has been low enough to be
influenced by a desire of establishing herself in an
eligible home, and escaping the stigma foolishly attached
to the situation of an old maid.
When a young lady
dresses with a view to general
View page [245]
approbation, she is studiously
solicitous to observe what she believes to be the rules of
good taste; and more especially if a gentleman, whose
favorable opinion she values, evinces any decided symptoms
of becoming her admirer. She then meets him with her hair
arranged in the most becoming style; with the neat shoe and
pure-white gloves which she has heard him commend in
others; with the pale scarf, the quiet-colored robe, and
with the general aspect of her costume accommodated to his
taste. He cannot but observe this regard to his wishes, and
he notes it down as a proof of amiable temperament, as well
as sympathy of habitual feeling. Auguring well for his
future happiness with a woman who even in matters of such
trifling moment is willing to make his wish her law, he
prevails upon her at last to crown that happiness by the
bestowment of her hand.
In the course of three years
we look in upon this couple in the home they are sharing
together. We suppose the lady to be the same, yet cannot
feel quite sure, her whole appearance is so changed. The
hair that used to be so carefully braided or so gracefully
curled, is now allowed to wander in dishevelled tresses, or
swept away from a brow whose defects it was wont to cover.
There is a forlornness in her whole appearance, as if she
had not, as formerly, any worthy object for which to study
these secondary points of beauty; and we inwardly exclaim,
How the taste of her husband must have changed, to allow
him to be pleased with what is so
View page [246]
entirely the opposite of his original
choice! On a second observation, however, we ask whether he
actually
is
pleased, for there
is nothing like satisfaction in the look with which he
turns away from the unbecoming cap, the soiled kerchief,
and the neglected aspect of the partner of his life.
If married women, who allow themselves to fall into that
state of moral degradation which such an appearance
indicates, feel pained at symptoms of estrangement in their
husbands' affections, they must at least be satisfied to
endure the consequences of their own want of consideration,
without sympathy or commiseration. They may, perhaps, feel
disposed to say their punishment is too severe for such a
fault. They love their husbands as faithfully as ever, and
expected from them a love that would have been more
faithful in return, than to be shaken by any change in mere
personal appearance. But let me tell them that the change
which owes its existence to our own fault, has a totally
different effect upon the feelings of a friend from that
which is the consequence of our misfortune; and one of the
most bitter and repulsive thoughts that can be made to
rankle in a husband's bosom is, that his wife should only
have deemed it necessary to charm his eye until she had
obtained his hand; and that through the whole of his after
life he must look in vain for the exercise of that kind
consideration in consulting his tastes and wishes, that
used to lend so sweet a charm to the season of youthful
intercourse.
It is a subject well calculated to
inspire the most
View page [247]
serious
regret, that men should practise throughout the season of
courtship that system of indiscriminate flattery which
lulls the better judgment of woman into a belief that she
must of necessity be delightful to him--delightful, faults
and all--nay, what is infinitely worse than this, into a
secret suspicion that the faults which her female friends
have been accustomed to point out, have no existence in
reality, and that to one who knows and loves her better,
she must appear in her naturally amiable and attractive
character.
Could she be persuaded, on that important
day when she is led home from the altar, adorned, attended
upon, and almost worshipped--could she be persuaded to cast
one impartial glance into her own heart, she would see that
the treasure she was bestowing had many drawbacks from its
value, and that all the happiness it was in her power to
confer, must necessarily, from the nature of that heart, be
accompanied with some alloy.
"Alas!" she would say,
after this examination, "he knows me not. Time will reveal
to him my secretly cherished faults." And when this
conviction was confirmed through the days and years of her
after life, she would esteem it but a small sacrifice of
time and patience to endeavor to render herself personally
attractive to him. Nay, so grateful would she feel for his
charitable forgiveness, that when the evil dispositions
inherent in her nature were thrown into more glaring light,
she would esteem it a privilege to be able by the
simplest
View page [248]
means to convince
him that, with all her faults, she was not so guilty of a
disregard to his wishes as to refuse in these minor points
to conform her habits to his taste.
Many of the
remarks into which I have been led by a consideration of
the subject of dress, are equally applicable to that of
manner, as relates to its connection with social and
domestic happiness before and after marriage. We are all
aware that neither beauty, nor personal adornment, nor the
most brilliant conversation, can be rendered altogether
charming to any individual, without the accompaniment of a
peculiar kind of manner, by which that individual is made
to feel that he partakes in the pleasant thoughts and kind
feelings of the party whose object it is to please.
Women who possess the tact to know exactly
how
to give pleasure, are
peculiarly skilled in those earnest looks, and cheerful
smiles, and animated responses, which constitute more than
half the charm of society. We sometimes see, in social
evening circles, the countenance of an intelligent young
lady lighted up with such a look of deep and glowing
interest, as to render her perfectly beautiful during the
time she is addressed by a distinguished friend or even an
attractive stranger.
I will not say that the same
expression is not always worn by the same individual at the
domestic hearth, when she listens to the conversation of
her husband. I will not so far libel my countrywomen,
because I know that there are noble and admirable
View page [249]
instances of women who are too
diffident and too simple-hearted to study how to shine in
public, who yet, from the intensity of their own feelings,
the brilliance of their own powers of perception, and the
deep delight of listening to the gentle tones of a beloved
voice when it speaks at once to their understanding and
their hearts--I know that such women do wear an aspect of
almost spiritual beauty, and speak and act with an almost
superhuman grace, when no eye beholds them but that which
is most familiar, and which is destined to look upon the
same path of life with theirs.
After acknowledging
these instances, I must suppose a case; and for the sake of
argument imagine what would be the feelings of a husband
who, in mixed society, should see his wife the centre of an
animated group, pleased herself, and giving pleasure to all
around her--the expression of intense interest depicted on
her countenance, and mingled with an apprehension so lively
and vivid, as almost to amount to presentiment of every
probable turn in the discourse; her eyes lighted up with
animation, and her cheeks dimpled over with the play of
sunny smiles--what would be the feelings of a husband who
should have marked all this, and when at his own fireside
he felt the want of pleasant converse to beguile the
winter's evening of its length, should be answered by that
peculiar tone of voice, that depression of countenance, and
that forbidding manner, which are more powerful in imposing
silence than the most imperative command?
View page [250]
In fact, there is a manner
all-powerful in its influence upon domestic happiness, in
which there seems to be embodied a spirit of evil too
subtile for detection, and too indefinite to be described
by any name. It is not precisely a sullen manner, nor, in
its strictest sense, a repulsive manner, for the individual
who adopts it may be perfectly civil all the while. It does
not consist in pointed insult, or indeed in any thing
pointed. It conveys no reproach, nor suffers the party upon
whom it operates to suppose that redress is the thing
desired. It invites no explanation, and makes no complaint.
Its only visible characteristic is, that the eye is never
raised to gaze upon its object, but invariably directed
past it, as if that object had no existence, and was not
required to have any.
This is the manner I should
describe as most expressive of natural antipathy without
the energy of active dislike; and yet this manner, as
before stated, is so potent in its influence, that it seems
to lay, as it were, an unseen axe at the root of all
domestic confidence; and difficult as it must
necessaribly
[sic]
be for a woman
to maintain this manner, there have been instances in which
it has destroyed a husband's peace, without affording him
even the satisfaction of any definite cause of complaint.
There are degrees of the same manner practised every day in
all classes of society, but never without a baneful effect,
in poisoning our kindly feelings and decreasing the sum of
human happiness.
We are all too much disposed to put
on what I
View page [251]
would describe as
company manners. Not only are our best dresses reserved for
our visitors, but our best behavior too. I have often been
struck with the bland smiles that have been put on in
welcoming guests, and the appearance of extreme interest
with which such guests have been listened to; when, five
minutes after their departure, the same subject having been
taken up by some unfortunate member of the family, no
interest whatever has been elicited, no smile awakened, and
scarcely so much as a patient and respectful answer drawn
forth. I have observed also with what forbearance the
absurdities of a stranger have been endured; the twice-told
tale, when begun again in company, has apparently been as
fresh and entertaining as the first time it was heard. The
folly of ignorance has then had no power to disgust, nor
the impertinence of curiosity to offend.
When I have
marked all this, I have thought, If we could but carry away
our company smiles to the home fireside, speak always in
the gentle and persuasive tones made use of in the evening
party, and move along the domestic walk with that suavity
of manner which characterizes our intercourse with what is
called society, how pleasant would those homes become to
the friends who look for their hours of refreshment and
relaxation there; and how seldom should we have to complain
of our companionship being neglected for that of more
brilliant circles and more interesting scenes!
In
writing on the subject of consideration and
View page [252]
kindness before and after
marriage, I have purposely confined my remarks to a very
slight and superficial view of the subject. The world that
lies beyond I cannot regard as within the province of my
pen--I might almost say within the province of any pen; for
such is the difference in human character, and in the
circumstances by which character is developed, that it
would scarcely be possible to speak definitely of a line of
conduct by which the lives of any two married women could
properly be regulated; because such conduct must bear
strict reference to the habits and temperament of the
husband, whose peculiarities of character would have to be
taken into account.
I must therefore be satisfied to
recommend this wide and important field of contemplation to
the serious attention and earnest solicitude of my
countrywomen; reminding them only, before we leave this
subject, that if, in the first instance, they are induced
by selfish feeling to consult their immediate interest or
convenience, they are, in a secondary manner, undermining
their own happiness by failing to consult that of the being
whose destiny is linked with theirs.
What pen can
describe the wretchedness of that woman who finds herself
doomed to live unloved; and to whom can she look for
confidence and affection, if shut out from the natural
sources of enjoyment at home? There is no loneliness--there
can be none, in all the waste or peopled deserts of this
world, bearing the slightest comparison with that
View page [253]
of an unloved wife? She stands
amid her family like a living statue among the marble
memorials of the dead--instinct with life, yet paralyzed
with death--the burning tide of natural feeling circling
round her heart--the thousand channels frozen through which
that feeling ought to flow.
So pitiable, so utterly
destitute of consolation is this state, to which many women
have reduced themselves by mere carelessness of the common
and familiar means of giving pleasure, that I must be
pardoned for writing on this subject with more earnestness
than the minuteness of its detail would seem to warrant. We
may set off in life with high notions of loving and of
being loved, in exact proportion to meritorious desert as
exemplified in great and noble deeds. But on a closer and
more experimental view of human life, we find that
affection is more dependent upon the minutiæ of
every-day existence, and that there is a greater sum of
affection really lost by filtering away, through the
failure of seeming trifles, than by the shock of great
events.
We are apt also to deceive ourselves with
regard to the revival of affection after its decay. Much
may be done to restore equanimity of mind, to obtain
forgiveness, and to be reinstated in esteem; but I am
inclined to think, that when once the bloom of love is
gone--when it has been brushed away by too rude or too
careless a hand, it would be as vain to attempt to restore
it, as to raise again the blighted flower, or give wings to
the butterfly which the storm had beaten down.
View page [254]
How important is it, then,
that women should guard with the most scrupulous attention
this treasure of their hearts, this blessing of their
homes; and since we are so constituted that trifles make
the sum of human happiness, that they should lose no
opportunity of turning these trifles to the best
account.
Besides these considerations, there is one
awful and alarming fact connected with this subject, which
ought to be indelibly impressed upon our minds; it is that
we have but a short time, it may be but a very short time,
allowed us for promoting the comfort or the happiness of
our fellow-creatures. Even if we ourselves are spared to
reach the widest range of human existence, how few of those
we love will number half that length of years! Even the
hand that is clasped in ours, the eyes that reflect the
intelligence of our souls, and the heart that beats an echo
to every pulse we feel, may be cold and motionless before
to-morrow's sun has set!
Were the secrets of every
human bosom laid open, I believe we should behold no darker
passage in the page of experience, than that which has
noted down our want of kindness and consideration to those
who are gone before us to another world.
When we
realize the agonizing sensation of bending over the feeble
frame of a beloved friend, when the mortal conflict is
approaching, and the fluttering spirit is about to leave
its earthly tenement; and looking back upon a long, dark
past, all blotted over with instances of our unkindness or
neglect, and
View page [255]
forward unto
that little span of life into which we would fain
concentrate the deep affection that, in spite of
inconsistencies in our past conduct, has all the while been
cherished in our hearts--with what impassioned earnestness
would we arrest the pale messenger in his career, and stay
the wings of time, and call upon the impatient spirit to
return, to see and feel and understand our love!
Perhaps we have been negligent in former seasons of
bodily affliction, have not listened patiently to the
outpouring of natural feeling, and have held ourselves
excused from attendance in the sick-chamber; and there has
gone forth that awful sentence, "It is the last time!" the
last time we can offer the cordial draught, or smooth the
restless pillow, or bathe the feverish brow! And now,
though we would search all the treasures of the earth for
healing medicine, and rob ourselves of sleep and rest and
sustenance, to purchase for the sufferer one hour of quiet
slumber, and pour our tears upon that aching brow, until
its burning heat is quenched--it is in vain, for the eye is
glazed, the lips are paralyzed, the head begins to droop,
and expiring nature tells us it is all
too late!
Perhaps we have not
been sympathizing, kind, or tender, in those bygone years
of familiar confidence, when we were called upon to share
the burdens of a weary bosom, whose inner feelings were
revealed to us, and us alone. Yes, we can remember, in the
sunny days of youth, and through the trials of maturer
life, when the appeals of affection
View page [256]
were answered with fretfulness or
captious spleen, when estrangement followed, and we could
not, if we had desired it, then draw back the love we had
repulsed. And now we hear again the awful sentence, "It is
the last time!" the last time we can ever weep upon that
bosom, or lay our hand upon that head, or press a fond,
fond kiss upon those closing lips. Fain would we then throw
open the floodgates of our hidden feeling, and pour forth
words of more than tenderness. Alas! the once wished-for
tide would flow, like the rising surf around a shattered
wreck--
too late
.
Perhaps
we have been guilty of a deeper sin against our heavenly
Father, and the human family whose happiness he has in some
measure committed to our trust. Let the young ask
diligently of the more experienced, how they can escape the
aching consciousness that may pursue them to the grave, and
only then commence the reality of its eternal torment--the
consciousness of having wasted all our influence, and
neglected all our means of assisting those who were
associated with us by the closest ties, in preparing for
another and a better world.
Perhaps they once sought
our society for the benefit of spiritual communion. Perhaps
they would have consulted us in cases of moral difficulty,
had we been more gracious and conciliating. Perhaps we have
treated lightly the serious scruples they have laid before
us, or what is still more probable, perhaps the whole tenor
of our inconsistent lives has been the means of drawing
them away from the
View page [257]
altar on
which they saw such unholy incense burning. And now "it is
the last time"--the last time we can ever speak to them of
eternity, of the state of their trembling souls before the
eye of a just and holy God, or raise their fainting hopes
to the mercy still offered to their acceptance, through Him
who is able to save to the uttermost. Oh! for the trumpet
of an archangel, to awake them from the increasing torpor
of bodily and spiritual death. Oh! for a voice that would
embody, in one deep, awful, and tremendous word, all--all
for which our wasted life was insufficient! It is in vain
that we would call upon the attributes of nature and of
Deity to aid us. They are gone! It was the final struggle;
and never more will that pale marble form be roused to life
by words of hope or consolation. They are gone. The portals
of eternity are closed--
it is too
late!
Let it be a subject of grateful
acknowledgment with the young, that to them this fearful
sentence has not yet gone forth--that opportunity may still
be offered them to redeem the time. They know not, however,
how much of this time remains at their disposal; and it
might occasionally be some assistance to them in their
duties, would they cultivate the habit of thinking, not
only of their own death, but of the death of their
companions.
There are few subjects more calculated
for solemn and affecting thought, than the fact that we can
scarcely meet a blooming circle around a cheerful hearth,
but one individual at least in that circle
View page [258]
will be cherishing in her bosom the
seeds of some fatal malady.
It is recorded of the
Egyptians, that among their ancient customs they endeavored
to preserve the salutary remembrance that they were liable
to death, by placing at their festal boards a human
skeleton; so that while they feasted and enjoyed the
luxuries of this life, they should find it impossible to
beguile themselves into a belief in its perpetual
duration.
It is not necessary that we should resort
to means so unnatural and repulsive, though the end is
still more desirable for us, who are trusting in a better
hope, to keep in view. Neither is it necessary that the
idea should be invested with melancholy and associated with
depression. It is but looking at the truth. And let us
deceive ourselves as we may, the green churchyard with its
freshly covered graves, the passing bell, the slowly moving
hearse, the shutters closed upon the apartment where the
sound of merriment was lately heard, the visitations of
disease within our homes, even the
hectie
[sic]
flush of beauty--all remind us
that the portion of time allotted for the exercise of
kindly feeling toward our fellow-creatures is fleeting fast
away; and that today, if ever, we must prove to the Great
Shepherd of the Christian fold that we are not regardless
of that memorable injunction, "By this shall all men know
that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to
another."
View page [259]
[Illustration : A decorative
arch formed from a thin wooden frame entwined with vines
and flowers. A large flower is drawn in the center of the
frame, and the vines droop down to a point beneath
it.]
V.
PUBLIC
OPINION.
[Illustration : A decorative
capital "T".]
T
O use a popular Germanism, it is but a
one-sided
view of the subject
that we take, when we suppose that the hope of being
admired is the strongest stimulus to the female character
in all cases where her conduct is referred to public
opinion. The dread of being censured or condemned,
exercises, I am inclined to think, a far more extensive
influence over her habits and her feeling. Any deviation
from the fashionable mode of dress, or from the established
usages of polished life, present, an appalling difficulty
to a woman of ordinary mind brought up under the tutelage
of what is called the world. She cannot--positively
cannot--dare not--will not do any thing that the world has
pronounced unladylike. Nor, while she lives in the world,
and mixes in polished society, is it at all desirable that
she should deviate from such universally acknowledged
rules, except where absolute duty leads her into a
different line of conduct. I should be the last person to
advise a woman to risk the consequences of such deviations,
simply for the sake of being singular; because I regard
the
View page [260]
assumption of singularity
for its own sake, as one of the most absurd of all the
varied specimens of affectation which human life
affords.
To
choose
to be
singular without a sufficient reason, and to
dare
to be so in a noble cause,
are so widely different, that I desire to be clearly
understood in the remarks I am about to make, as referring
strictly to those cases in which duty renders it necessary
for women to deviate from the fashions and established
customs of the time or place in which they live.
While the tide of prosperity bears us smoothly on, and
our means are ample, and our luxuries abundant, we suffer
little inconvenience from the tyranny of the world in these
respects. Indeed, it is rather an agreeable amusement to
many ladies to consult the fashions of the day, and to be
among the first to change their mode of dress, to order
costly furniture, and to receive company in the most
approved and ladylike style. But as I have before observed
of the class of persons to which this work chiefly relates,
the tide of prosperity is apt to ebb as well as to flow;
and as it recedes from us the whole aspect of the world is
not only changed to us, but the aspect of our conduct is
changed to the world; so that what it approved in us
before, and honored with its countenance, is now the
subject of its extreme and bitter condemnation.
It is
then that we discover we have been serving a hard master;
but unfortunately for thousands of human beings, the
discovery brings with it no freedom
View page [261]
from that service. We loathe the cruel
bondage; but habit is too strong for conviction, and we
continue to wear the galling chain. It is, then, in cases
of adverse fortune, that we see the incalculable benefit of
having made the moral duties of social and domestic life
the rule of our conduct, and of having regarded all outward
embellishments as things of very subordinate
importance.
It is a case of by no means rare
occurrence, that the young women of England return home
from school more learned in the modes of dress and habits
of conduct prevailing among the fashionable and the
wealthy, than in any of those systems of intellectual
culture in which they have been instructed. Or, if their
knowledge has not extended to what is done in fashionable
life, they have at least learned to despise what is done
among the vulgar and the poor, to look upon certain kinds
of dress as impossible to be worn, and to regard with
supreme contempt every indication of the absence of
fashionable matters. So far as their means of information
could be made to extend, they have laid down, for the
guidance of their future lives, the exact rules by which
the outward conduct of a
lady
ought to be regulated, and by these rules they determine to
abide.
If this determination was applied exclusively
to what is delicate, refined, and lovely in the female
character, they would unquestionably be preparing
themselves for being both esteemed and beloved; but
unfortunately for them, their attention is too
View page [262]
often directed to the mode of dress worn
by persons much higher than themselves in worldly
prosperity, and to all the minutiæ of look and
manner which they regard as indications of easy
circumstances and exemption from vulgar
occupation.
Nor is the school itself, or the mode of
treatment there, to be regarded as the source of these
ideas and conclusions. The customs of modern society and
the taste of modern times are solely in fault. And wherever
young ladies are congregated together with the same means
of communication as at school, the same results must
follow, until the public taste undergoes a material change,
or until the women of our country have become learned in a
higher school of wisdom.
With the preparation here
alluded to, our young women enter upon social life; and as
years roll on, the habits thus acquired of making custom
and fashion the rule of their lives, strengthen with the
establishment of their character, and become as parts of
their very being. What then is the consequence of such
habits in the day of their adversity, when the diminution
of their pecuniary means leaves them no longer the power of
conforming to the world they have so loved? The consequence
is, that along with many real privations, their ideal
sufferings are increased a hundredfold by the fact that
they must dress and live in a manner different from what
they have been accustomed to; in short, that they must lose
caste
.
How little has the
mere circumstance of relinquishing
View page [263]
our luxuries to do with the distress
attendant upon the loss of worldly substance. We find every
day that persons travelling expressly for enjoyment,
joining in social excursions, and even seeking the
invigoration of their health and the refreshment of their
spirits, from the sea-breezes, or in places of customary
resort for the summer months, voluntarily resign more than
half their habitual indulgences, and subject themselves
without a murmur to the occupation of apartments which they
would scarcely think possible to be endured for a single
day in their native town; and all the while they are
perhaps more happy and more cheerful than in their elegant
drawing-rooms at home.
It is evident, then, that it
cannot be their individual share in the gratification of
artificial wants, which they find it so heart-breaking to
resign. It must be that a certain number of polite and
refined individuals having combined to attach a high degree
of importance to the
means of
procuring
the luxuries of life, all who belong to
this class, when compelled to exhibit in public manifest
destitution of such means, regard themselves, and expect to
be regarded by others, as having become degraded in the
sight of their fellow-creatures, and no longer entitled to
their favor or regard.
It is of no use asserting that
we all know better than to come to this conclusion--that
mankind are not so weak or so unjust--that we appreciate
the moral worth of an individual beyond the luxuries of his
table or the costliness of his dress. It is easy
View page [264]
to
say
this,
but it is not so easy to believe it, because the practical
proof of experience is against it. If, for instance, we
cared for none of these things, why should the aspect of
human life present such a waste of time, and health, and
patience, and mental power, and domestic peace, in the
pursuit of wealth, when that wealth is expended as soon as
gained, in maintaining an appearance of elegance and luxury
before the world?
I am not prepared to argue about
the benefits resulting from the encouragement of artificial
wants and the increase of luxuries, on the broad scale of
national prosperity. There are pens more able and more fit
for such a purpose. My narrower views are confined to the
individual evils resulting from an over-strained ambition
to keep pace with our wealthier associates in our general
habits; and I would write with earnestness on this subject,
because I believe that at the present time these evils are
of rapidly increasing extent.
It may seem
unimportant to those who have no experience in these
affairs, to speak of the private and domestic disputes
arising out of artificial wants on one side, and inability
to provide the demanded supply for them on the other. Yet
what family in moderate circumstances has not some record
of scenes, alike humiliating to human nature and
destructive to human happiness, in which the ill-judged
request or the harsh denial, the importunate appeal or the
agonizing reply, the fretful remonstrance or the bitter
retort, have not at seasons cast a shade
View page [265]
over the domestic hearth, and destroyed
the peace of the circle gathered around the social
board.
It may appear still more like trifling to
speak of the sensations with which a member of a fallen
family regards her dilapidated wardrobe, and looks, and
looks in vain, for a garment sufficiently respectable to
make her appearance in before a rich relation. Perhaps she
has but one--a call has to be made upon a person of
distinction, and as she proceeds on her way, eying with
watchful anxiety every speck and spray that would be likely
to reduce her garment below the average of respectability,
a storm overtakes her. There are carriages for all who can
afford to pay for them, but none for her; and the agony of
losing her last claim to gentility takes possession of her
soul.
The reader may possibly smile at the absurdity
of this case. A half-clad savage from some barbarous island
would probably smile, could he be made to understand it.
But nothing can be farther from exciting a smile than the
real
sensations it occasions.
Nothing can be farther from a smile than the look with
which a failing tradesman regards the forlorn condition of
his hat, when he dares not brush it lest he should render
its destitution more apparent. Nothing can be farther from
a smile than the glance he casts upon his threadbare coat,
when he knows of no possible resource in art or nature that
can supply him with a new one. And nothing can be farther
from a smile than the cold welcome we give to a guest who
presents himself unexpectedly, and
View page [266]
must perforce look in upon the
scantiness of our half-furnished table.
It is easy to
class these sources of disquietude under the head of
absurdities, and to call them unworthy of rational beings;
but I do believe there is more real misery existing in the
world at the present time from causes like these, than from
all those publicly acknowledged calamities which are
attributed to the dispensations of Providence.
I do
not mean that these miseries arise directly from, or are by
any means confined to, our personal appearance or the
furniture of our houses; but when we contemplate the
failure of pecuniary means as it is regarded by the world,
and attempt to calculate the immense variety of channels
through which the suffering it produces is made to flow in
consequence of the customs and habits of society, I believe
they will be found to extend through every variety of human
life to the utmost range of human feeling. Is it not to
escape this suffering that the man of unsound principles
too frequently applies himself to dishonorable means, that
the suicide prepares the deadly draught, and that the
emigrant sometimes forsakes his native land, and consigns
himself to the solitude of unpeopled wilds? In short, what
more remains within the range of human capability, which
man has not done, with the hope of flying from the horrors
attendant upon the falling away of his pecuniary
means.
When the
reality
of
this suffering is acknowledged, as it must be by all who
look upon society as
View page [267]
it
exists at the present moment, the next subject of
importance is, to consider how the suffering can be
obviated, and its fatal effects upon the peace and
happiness of society prevented.
The most immediate
means that could be made to operate upon woman would
unquestionably be by implanting in her mind a deeper and
more rational foundation of thought and feeling--to put a
stop to that endless variety of ill-natured gossip which
relates to the want of elegance or fashionable air in
certain persons' dress and manner of living; so that there
should be no more questioning, "What will be thought of my
wearing this dress again?" "What will Miss P--- or Mrs.
W--- say if they see our old curtains?" "What can the
Johnsons mean by travelling outside?" "What will the people
at church or chapel say when they see your shabby veil?" "I
positively don't believe the Wilsons can afford a new
carpet, or they would surely have one; and they have
discontinued their subscription to our book
society."
It is neither grateful nor profitable to
pursue these remarks any farther than as they serve for
specimens of that most contemptible of small talk which yet
exercises a powerful influence over the female mind; so
much so, that I have known the whole fabric of a woman's
philosophy entirely over-thrown, and her peace of mind for
the moment destroyed, by the simple question, whether she
had no other dress than the one she was so often seen to
wear.
View page [268]
There is another
instance that occurs to me as illustrating in a striking
manner the subject immediately under consideration: it is
that of wearing mourning for a deceased relative. This
custom is so generally acknowledged as desirable, that it
needs no recommendation from my pen. One would suppose,
however, on a superficial view of it, that the wearing of
black, as a general costume indicative of the absence of
festivity or merriment from the bereaved family, was all
that had been originally intended by this custom, and that
it should thus become an outward testimony of respect and
sorrow for the dead.
The fashion of the world,
however, has imposed upon this custom, as applies to
females, certain restrictions, and additions so expensive
in their nature as to render it rather an article of luxury
to wear genteel mourning, or that which is indicative of
the deepest grief. It interferes but little with the sorrow
and seclusion of a recent bereavement, for the mistress of
ample means to
give orders
for
an external exemplification of precisely the degree of
sorrow supposed to attend upon the loss of a parent or a
distant relative. But when the means of pecuniary
expenditure are extremely small, and the materials for
appearing properly in public have to be made up at home,
and prepared for use within a very limited time, it is
evident that greater regard to the sacredness of sorrow
would suggest the desirableness of a less elaborate style
of dress, or perhaps a dress not absolutely new for the
occasion.
View page [269]
Ladies, however,
and those who have been accustomed to make gentility the
primary rule of their conduct, must
mourn genteelly
; and consequently,
there are often scenes of bustling preparation, of
invention, and studious arrangement--scenes upon which if a
stranger should look in, he would see an appearance of
activity and interest almost amounting to
amusement
, in the very house
where the shutters are still closed; and which are wholly
at variance with the silence and the sanctity of a deep and
solemn grief.
Nor is this all. So extremely becoming
and ladylike is the fashionable style of mourning, that,
under the plea of paying greater respect to the memory of
the dead, it has become an object of ambition to wear it in
its greatest excellence; and equally an object of dread and
source of humiliation to be compelled to wear it in an
inferior style. Thus, when the loss of a father is attended
with the failure of his pecuniary resources, it adds no
little to the grief into which his daughters are plunged,
to be under the necessity of appearing, so soon after their
twofold loss, under such an outward sign of poverty as is
generally understood by the world to be betrayed by cheap
and humble mourning.
I mention the instance of
mourning, not because it differs materially from many
others, but because it appears to me to illustrate clearly
and strikingly the degree of shame and trouble and
perplexity in which women are involved by the habit of
attaching too much importance to the usages of society.
I
View page [270]
know that it is beneficial
to the character and morals of women, that their good name
should be guarded from every breath of reproach; and that
the wholesome restrictions of society are absolutely
necessary to prevent them from sometimes venturing too far
under the influence of generous and disinterested feeling.
But my remarks apply exclusively to cases where their moral
worth would be established, not endangered; and I would
earnestly request my countrywomen to bear in mind the
immense difference between deviating from the rules of
fashion and breaking through the wholesome restrictions of
prudence.
I have spoken in strong terms of the
sufferings and inconveniences incident to women from their
slavery to the opinion of the world; but were this
consideration all that had to be taken into account, they
would unquestionably have a right to adjust the balance,
and act according to their own choice.
There is,
however, a far more important question connected with this
subject, and that is the question of
integrity
.
If there be one moral
quality for which England as a nation is distinguished, I
should say it was her integrity--integrity in her
intercourse with other nations--integrity in the
administration of her government and laws--integrity in the
sound hearts and honorable feelings of her patriotic
sons.
And shall her daughters be less solicitous to
uphold this high standard of moral worth? They answer,
"No!" But they are perhaps not all aware
View page [271]
of the encroaching and insidious nature
of artificial wants and tastes and habits, founded upon the
fashion of the times rather than upon any lasting principle
of right.
I do not say that to each one of the
immense variety of daily and familiar actions which might
be classed under this head, there attaches the highest
degree of actual culpability. They are rather instances of
encroachment than of absolute injustice and wrong. But I do
say that the
habit
of
encroaching, just so far as decency will permit and as
occasion seems to warrant, upon all that is noble and
generous, upright and kind in human conduct, has a fatal
tendency to corrupt the heart, while it produces at the
same time a deadening effect upon the highest and holiest
aspirations of the soul.
What answer can be made by
such a soul to the secret questionings of its internal
monitor? Or how shall we appeal to the gracious and
merciful Creator of the universe, who has given us all this
glorious world for our enjoyment and all the elements of
nature for our use; who has looked upon us in our
degradation and pitied our infirmities, and opened the
gates of heaven that his mercy might descend to us in a
palpable and human form, and that we might receive the
conditions of his offered pardon, be healed, and live?--how
shall we appeal to him in our private prayers, or stand
before him in the public sanctuary, with this confession on
our lips--that just so far as man could approve or condemn
our actions, we have deemed it expedient to be just; but
View page [272]
that to him and to the Saviour
of our souls we have grudged the incense of a willing mind;
and therefore we have enhanced our pleasures, and gratified
our pride, and fed our selfishness by all those trifling
yet forbidden means which he has pronounced to be offensive
in his sight?
Besides these considerations, there is
one of immeasurable importance connected with our conduct
in the sight of God. No human mind can set a bound or
prescribe a measure to its voluntary deviations from the
line of duty. We have been supposing a case in which these
deviations are extremely minute, and yet so numerous as to
form as it were a circle round the heart--a circle of evil.
Imagine, then, this circle widening and widening year after
year, through the seasons of youth and maturity and the
dreary winter of old age. What an awful and melancholy
spectacle does the state of that heart present, enclosed as
it were in a deleterious atmosphere, and growing
perpetually colder and more callous by exclusion from the
blessed light of heaven!
Oh, let us not
begin
to breathe this deadly
atmosphere! And you who are yet inexperienced in the ways
of human life, whose habits are not formed, whose paths not
chosen, whose line of conduct not decided, what a blessing
would it be to you, both in this world and in the world to
come, were you to choose that
better
part
, that would enable you to look with a single
eye to what is most acceptable in the Divine sight, and
most in accordance with the will
View page [273]
of God; leaving the
embellishments of person, the luxuries of taste, and the
appropriation of worldly esteem to be enjoyed or
relinquished with a grateful and contented mind, just as
your heavenly Father may permit; and bearing always about
you, as a talisman against the encroachments of evil, even
in the most simple or most specious form, the remembrance
that none of these things are worthy of a single wish, if
they must necessarily be obtained by the violation of his
laws, or accompanied by the tokens of his
displeasure.
[Illustration : A small decorative
illustration.]
View page [275]
FROM M
RS.
H
ANNAH
M
ORE.
View page [277]
[Illustration : An
illustrative arch, formed from a wooden frame with
grapevines twining around it. The frame is shaped to form
four peaks along the top edge of the
arch.]
I.
THOUGHTS ON
CONVERSATION.
[Illustration : A decorative
capital "I".]
I
T has been advised, and by very respectable
authorities too, that in conversation women should
carefully conceal any knowledge or learning they may happen
to possess. I own, with submission, that I do not see
either the necessity or propriety of this advice. For if a
young lady has that discretion and modesty, without which
all knowledge is little worth, she will never make an
ostentatious parade of it, because she will rather be
intent on acquiring more, than on displaying what she
has.
I am at a loss to know why a young female is
instructed to exhibit, in the most advantageous point of
view, her skill in music, her singing, dancing, taste in
dress, and her acquaintance with the most fashionable games
and amusements; while her piety is to be anxiously
concealed, and her knowledge affectedly disavowed, lest the
former should draw on her the appellation of an enthusiast,
or the latter that of a pedant.
In regard to
knowledge, why should she for ever affect to be on her
guard lest she should be found
View page [278]
guilty of a small portion of it? She
need be the less solicitous about it, as it seldom proves
to be so very considerable as to excite astonishment or
admiration; for after all the acquisitions which her
talents and her studies have enabled her to make, she will
generally speaking, be found to have less of what is called
learning than a common schoolboy.
It would be to the
last degree presumptuous and absurd, for a young woman to
pretend to give the
ton
to the
company; to interrupt the pleasure of others, and her own
opportunity of improvement, by talking when she ought to
listen; or to introduce subjects out of the common road, in
order to show her own wit, or expose the want of it in
others: but were the sex to be totally silent when any
topic of literature happens to be discussed in their
presence, conversation would lose much of its vivacity, and
society would be robbed of one of its most interesting
charms.
How easily and effectually may a well-bred
woman promote the most useful and elegant conversation,
almost without speaking a word! for the modes of speech are
scarcely more variable than the modes of silence. The
silence of listless ignorance, and the silence of sparkling
intelligence, are perhaps as separately marked, and as
distinctly expressed, as the same feelings could have been
by the most unequivocal language. A woman in a company
where she has the least influence, may promote any subject
by a profound and invariable attention, which shows that
she is pleased with it,
View page [279]
and
by an illuminated countenance, which proves she understands
it. This obliging attention is the most flattering
encouragement in the world to men of sense and letters, to
continue any topic of instruction or entertainment they
happen to be engaged in: it owed its introduction perhaps
to accident--the best introduction in the world for a
subject of ingenuity--which, though it could not have been
formally proposed without pedantry, may be continued with
ease and good humor; but which will be frequently and
effectually stopped by the listlessness, inattention, or
whispering of silly girls, whose weariness betrays their
ignorance, and whose impatience exposes their ill-breeding.
A polite man, however deeply interested in the subject on
which he is conversing, catches at the slightest hint to
have done: a look is a sufficient intimation; and if a
pretty simpleton who sits near him seems
distraite
,
*
he puts an end to his remarks, to the
great regret of the reasonable part of the company, who,
perhaps, might have gained more improvement by the
continuance of such a conversation, than a week's reading
would have yielded them; for it is such company as this,
that give an edge to each other's wit, "as iron sharpeneth
iron."
That silence is one of the great arts of
conversation is allowed by Cicero himself, who says, there
is not only an art, but even an eloquence in it. And this
opinion is confirmed by a great modern,
†
in the following little
anecdote from one of the ancients.
*Inattentive.
†Lord
Bacon.
View page [280]
When many
Grecian philosophers had a solemn meeting before the
ambassador of a foreign prince, each endeavored to show his
parts by the brilliancy of his conversation, that the
ambassador might have something to relate of the Grecian
wisdom. One of them, offended no doubt at the loquacity of
his companions, observed a profound silence; when the
ambassador, turning to him, asked, "But what have you to
say, that I may report it?" He made this laconic, but very
pointed reply: "Tell your king, that you have found one
among the Greeks who knew how to be silent."
There is
a quality infinitely more intoxicating to the female mind
than knowledge--this is, wit, the most captivating, but the
most dreaded of all talents; the most dangerous to those
who have it, and the most feared by those who have it not.
Though it is against all the rules, yet I cannot find in my
heart to abuse this charming quality. He who has grown rich
without it, in safe and sober dulness, shuns it as a
disease, and looks upon poverty as its invariable
concomitant. The moralist declaims against it, as the
source of irregularity; and the frugal citizen dreads it
more than bankruptcy itself, for he considers it as the
parent of extravagance and beggary. The cynic will ask of
what use it is. Of very little, perhaps: no more is a
flower-garden, and yet it is allowed as an object of
innocent amusement and delightful recreation. A woman who
possesses this quality has received a most dangerous
present, perhaps not less so than beauty itself;
View page [281]
especially if it be not sheathed in a
temper peculiarly inoffensive, chastised by a most correct
judgment, and restrained by more prudence than falls to the
common lot.
This talent is more likely to make a
woman vain than knowledge; for as wit is the immediate
property of its possessor, and learning is only an
acquaintance with the knowledge of other people, there is
much more danger that we should be vain of what is our own,
than of what we borrow.
But wit, like learning, is
not near so common a thing as is imagined. Let not,
therefore, a young lady be alarmed at the acuteness of her
own wit, any more than at the abundance of her own
knowledge. The great danger is, lest she should mistake
pertness, flippancy, or imprudence, for this brilliant
quality, or imagine she is witty, only because she is
indiscreet. This is very frequently the case; and this
makes the name of wit so cheap, while its real existence is
so rare.
Lest the flattery of her acquaintance, or an
overweening opinion of her own qualifications, should lead
some vain and petulant girl into a false notion that she
has a great deal of wit, when she has only a redundancy of
animal spirits, she may not find it useless to attend to
the definition of this quality, by one who had as large a
portion of it as most individuals could ever
boast:
"'T is not a tale, 't is
not a jest,
Admired with laughter at a
feast,
Nor florid talk, which can that title
gain;
The proofs of wit for ever must
remain.
View page [282]
"Neither can that have any
place,
At which a virgin hides her
face;
Such dross the fire must purge away; 'tis
just
The author blush there, where the reader
must."
COWLEY.
But those
who actually possess this rare talent, cannot be too
abstinent in the use of it. It often makes admirers, but it
never makes friends, I mean where it is the predominant
feature; and the unprotected and defenceless state of
womanhood calls for friendship more than for admiration.
She who does not desire friends has a sordid and insensible
soul; but she who is ambitious of making every man her
admirer, has an invincible vanity and a cold
heart.
But to dwell only on the side of policy, a
prudent woman, who has established the reputation of some
genius, will sufficiently maintain it, without keeping her
faculties always on the stretch to say
good things
. Nay, if reputation alone
be her object, she will gain a more solid one by her
forbearance, as the wiser part of her acquaintance will
ascribe it to the right motive, which is, not that she has
less wit, but that she has more judgment.
The fatal
fondness for indulging a spirit of ridicule, and the
injurious and irreparable consequences which sometimes
attend the
too prompt reply
, can
never be too seriously or too severely condemned. Not to
offend is the first step towards pleasing. To give pain is
as much an offence against humanity as against good
breeding; and surely it is as well to abstain from an
action because it is sinful, as because it is unpolite. In
company, young ladies
View page [283]
would
do well, before they speak, to reflect if what they are
going to say may not distress some worthy persons present,
by wounding them in their persons, families, connections,
or religious opinions. If they find it will touch them in
either of these, I should advise them to suspect that what
they were going to say is not so
very
good a thing as they at first
imagined. Nay, if even it was one of those bright ideas,
which "Venus has imbued with a fifth part of her nectar,"
so much greater will be their merit in suppressing it, if
there was a probability it might offend. Indeed, if they
have the temper and prudence to make such a previous
reflection, they will be more richly rewarded by their own
inward triumph at having suppressed a lively but severe
remark, than they could have been with the dissembled
applauses of the whole company, who, with that complaisant
deceit which good breeding too much authorizes, affect
openly to admire what they secretly resolve never to
forgive.
I have always been delighted with the story
of the little girl's eloquence, in one of the Children's
Tales, who received from a friendly fairy the gift, that at
every word she uttered, pinks, roses, diamonds, and pearls
should drop from her mouth. The hidden moral appears to be
this, that it was the sweetness of her temper which
produced this pretty fanciful effect; for when her
malicious sister desired the same gift from the
good-natured, tiny intelligence, the venom of her own heart
converted it into poisonous and loathsome reptiles.
View page [284]
A man of sense and breeding
will sometimes join in the laugh which has been raised at
his expense by an ill-natured repartee; but if it was very
cutting, and one of those shocking sort of truths, which,
as they can scarcely be pardoned even in private, ought
never to be uttered in public, he does not laugh because he
is pleased, but because he wishes to conceal how much he is
hurt. As the sarcasm was uttered by a lady, so far from
seeming to resent it, he will be the first to commend it;
but notwithstanding that, he will remember it as a trait of
malice when the whole company shall have forgotten it as a
stroke of wit. Women are so far from being privileged by
their sex to say unhandsome or cruel things, that it is
this very circumstance which renders them more intolerable.
When the arrow is lodged in the heart, it is no relief to
him who is wounded to reflect that the hand which shot it
was a fair one.
Many women, when they have a favorite
point to gain, or an earnest wish to bring any one over to
their opinion, often use a very disingenuous method: they
will state a case ambiguously, and then avail themselves of
it in whatever manner shall best answer their purpose;
leaving your mind in a state of indecision as to their real
meaning, while they triumph in the perplexity they have
given you by the unfair conclusions they draw. They will
also frequently argue from exceptions instead of rules, and
are astonished when you are not willing to be contented
with a prejudice, instead of a reason.
View page [285]
In a sensible company of both sexes,
where women are not restrained by any other reserve than
what their natural modesty imposes, and where the intimacy
of all parties authorizes the utmost freedom of
communication, should any one inquire what were the general
sentiments on some particular subject, it will, I believe,
commonly happen, that the ladies, whose imaginations have
kept pace with the narration, have anticipated its end, and
are ready to deliver their sentiments on it as soon as it
is finished; while some of the male hearers, whose minds
were busied in settling the propriety, comparing the
circumstances, and examining the consistencies of what was
said, are obliged to pause and discriminate, before they
think of answering. Nothing is so embarrassing as a variety
of matter; and the conversation of women is often more
perspicuous, because it is less labored.
A man of
deep reflection, if he does not keep up an intimate
commerce with the world, will be sometimes so entangled in
the intricacies of intense thought, that he will have the
appearance of a confused and perplexed expression; while a
sprightly woman will extricate herself with that lively and
"rash dexterity," which will almost always please, though
it is very far from being always right. It is easier to
confound than to convince an opponent; the former may be
effected by a turn that has more happiness than truth in
it. Many an excellent reasoner, well skilled in the theory
of the schools, has felt himself discomfited by a reply,
which,
View page [286]
though as wide of the
mark and as foreign to the question as can be conceived,
has disconcerted him more than the most startling
proposition, or the most accurate chain of reasoning, could
have done; and he has borne the laugh of his fair
antagonist, as well as of the whole company, though he
could not but feel that his own argument was attended with
the fullest demonstration: so true is it, that it is not
always necessary to be right, in order to be
applauded.
But let not a young lady's vanity be too
much elated with this false applause, which is given, not
to her merit, but to her sex; she has not perhaps gained a
victory, though she may be allowed a triumph; and it should
humble her to reflect that the tribute is paid, not to her
strength, but her weakness. It is worth while to
discriminate between that applause which is given from the
complaisance of others, and that which is paid to our own
merit.
Where great sprightliness is the natural bent
of the temper, girls should endeavor to habituate
themselves to a custom of observing, thinking, and
reasoning. I do not mean, that they should devote
themselves to abstruse speculation, or the study of logic;
but she who is accustomed to give a due arrangement to her
thoughts, to reason justly and pertinently on common
affairs, and judiciously to deduce effects from their
causes, will be a better logician than some of those who
claim the name, because they have studied the art: this is
being "learned without the rules;" the best definition,
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perhaps, of that sort of
literature which is properest for the sex.
That
species of knowledge, which appears to be the result of
reflection rather than of science, sits peculiarly well on
women. It is not uncommon to find a lady, who, though she
does not know a rule of syntax, scarcely ever violates one;
and who constructs every sentence she utters, with more
propriety than many a learned dunce, who has every rule of
Aristotle by heart, and who can lace his own threadbare
discourse with the golden shreds of Cicero and
Virgil.
But of all the qualifications for
conversation, humility, if not the most brilliant, is the
safest, the most amiable, and the most feminine. The
affectation of introducing subjects with which others are
unacquainted, and of displaying talents superior to the
rest of the company, is as dangerous as it is
foolish.
There are many, who never can forgive
another for being more agreeable and more accomplished than
themselves, and who can pardon any offence rather than an
eclipsing merit. Had the nightingale in the fable conquered
his vanity, and resisted the temptation of showing a fine
voice, he might have escaped the talons of the hawk. The
melody of his singing was the cause of his destruction; his
merit brought him into danger, and his vanity cost him his
life.
View page [288]
[Illustration : A
decorative arch made of a thin wooden frame supporting some
flowering vines. The frame forms a small upward loop at the
center, through which a shepherd's crook and a cross (with
a crown of thorns hanging from it) are extended crosswise.
A glowing crown hovers above the loop at the
center.]
II.
FEMALE
KNOWLEDGE--VIEW OF THE
SEXES.
[Illustration : A decorative capital
"T".]
T
HE chief
end to be proposed in cultivating the understandings of
women, is to qualify them for the practical purposes of
life. Their knowledge is not often, like the learning of
men, to be reproduced in some literary composition, nor
ever in any learned profession; but it is to come out in
conduct. It is to be exhibited in life and manners. A lady
studies, not that she may qualify herself to become an
orator or a pleader; not that she may learn to debate, but
to act. She is to read the best books, not so much to
enable her to talk of them, as to bring the improvement
which they furnish to the rectification of her principles
and the formation of her habits. The great uses of study to
a woman are to enable her to regulate her own mind, and to
be instrumental to the good of others.
To woman,
therefore, whatever be her rank, I would recommend a
predominance of those more sober studies, which, not having
display for their
View page [289]
object, may
make her wise without vanity, happy without witnesses, and
content without panegyrists; the exercise of which will not
bring celebrity, but improve usefulness. She should pursue
every kind of study which will teach her to elicit truth;
which will lead her to be intent upon realities; will give
precision to her ideas; will make an exact mind. She should
cultivate every study, which, instead of stimulating her
sensibility, will chastise it; which will create neither an
excessive nor a false refinement; which will give her
definite notions; will bring the imagination under
dominion; will lead her to think, to compare, to combine,
to methodize; which will confer such a power of
discrimination, that her judgment shall learn to reject
what is dazzling, if it be not solid; and to prefer, not
what is striking, or bright, or new, but what is just. That
kind of knowledge which is rather fitted for home
consumption than foreign exportation, is peculiarly adapted
to women.
*
It is because the
superficial nature of their education furnishes them with a
false and low standard of intellectual excellence, that
women have too often become ridiculous by the unfounded
pretensions of literary vanity; for it is not the really
learned, but the smatterers, who have generally brought
their sex into discredit by an absurd affectation
which
*May I be allowed to strengthen my own
opinion with the authority of Dr. Johnson, that
a woman cannot have too much
arithmetic?
It is a solid, practical acquirement, in
which there is much use and little display; it is a quiet,
sober kind of knowledge, which she acquires for herself and
her family, and not for the world.
View page [290]
has set them on despising the duties of
ordinary life. A woman of real sense will never forget,
that while the greater part of her proper duties are such
as the most moderately gifted may fulfil with credit,
(since Providence never makes that to be very difficult
which is generally necessary,) yet that the most highly
endowed are equally bound to fulfil them; and let her
remember that the humblest of these offices, performed on
Christian principles, are wholesome for the minds even of
the most enlightened, as they tend to the casting down of
those "high imaginations" which women of genius are too
much tempted to indulge.
The truth is, women who are
so puffed up with the conceit of talents as to neglect the
plain duties of life, will rarely be found to be women of
the best abilities. And here may the author be allowed the
gratification of observing, that those women of real genius
and extensive knowledge, whose friendship has conferred
honor and happiness on her own life, have been, in general,
eminent for economy, and the practice of domestic virtues;
and have risen superior to the poor affectation of
neglecting the duties and despising the knowledge of common
life, with which literary women have been frequently, and
not always unjustly accused.
They little understand
the true interests of woman who would lift her from the
important duties of her allotted station, to fill with
fantastic dignity a loftier but less appropriate niche. Nor
do they understand her true happiness, who seek to
annihilate
View page [291]
distinctions from
which she derives advantages, and to attempt innovations
which would depreciate her real value. Each sex has its
proper excellences. Why should we do away distinctions
which increase the mutual benefits, and enhance the
satisfactions of life? Whence, but by carefully preserving
the original marks of difference stamped by the hand of the
Creator, would be derived the superior advantage of mixed
society? Is either sex so abounding in perfection as to be
independent of the other for improvement? Have men no need
to have their rough angles filed off, and their harshnesses
and asperities smoothed and polished by assimilating with
beings of more softness and refinement? Are the ideas of
women naturally so
very
judicious, are their principles so
invincibly
firm, are their views so
perfectly
correct, are their
judgments so
completely
exact,
that there is occasion for no additional weight, no
superadded strength, no increased clearness, none of that
enlargement of mind, none of that additional invigoration
which may be derived from the aids of the stronger sex?
What identity could advantageously supersede such an
enlivening opposition, such an interesting variety of
character? Is it not, then, more wise, as well as more
honorable, to move contentedly in the plain path which
Providence has obviously marked out to the sex, and in
which custom has for the most part rationally confirmed
them, rather than to stray awkwardly, unbecomingly, and
unsuccessively in a forbidden road? Is it not desirable to
be the lawful possessors of a
View page [292]
lesser domestic territory, rather than
the turbulent, usurpers of a wider foreign empire? to be
good originals, rather than bad imitators? to be the best
thing of one's own kind, rather than an inferior thing,
even if it were of a higher kind? to be excellent women,
rather than indifferent men?
Is the author, then,
undervaluing her own sex? No. It is her zeal for their true
interests
, which leads her to
oppose their imaginary
rights
.
It is her regard for their happiness, which makes her
endeavor to cure them of a feverish thirst for a fame as
unattainable as inappropriate; to guard them against an
ambition as little becoming the delicacy of their female
character as the meekness of their religious profession. A
little Christian humility and sober-mindedness are worth
all the empty renown which was ever obtained by the
misapplied energies of the sex; it is worth all the wild
metaphysical discussion which has ever been obtruded under
the name of reason and philosophy; which has unsettled the
peace of vain women, and forfeited the respect of
reasonable men. And the most elaborate definition of ideal
rights, and the most hardy measures for attaining them, are
of less value in the eyes of a truly amiable woman, than
"that meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God
of great price."
Natural propensities best mark the
designations of Providence as to their application. The fin
was not more clearly bestowed on the fish that he should
swim, nor the wing given to the bird that he should fly,
than superior strength of body, and a firmer
View page [293]
texture of mind, was given to man, that
he might preside in the deep and daring scenes of action
and of council; in the complicated arts of government, in
the contention of arms, in the intricacies and depths of
science, in the bustle of commerce, and in those
professions which demand a higher reach, and a wider range
of powers. The true value of woman is not diminished by the
imputation of inferiority in those talents which do not
belong to her, of those qualities in which her claim to
excellence does not consist. She has other requisites,
better adapted to answer the end and purposes of her being,
from "Him who doeth all things well;" who suits the agent
to the action, who accommodates the instrument to the
work.
Let not then aspiring, because ill-judging
woman view with pining
envy
the
keen satirist, hunting vice through all the doublings and
windings of the heart; the sagacious politician, leading
senates, and directing the fate of empires; the acute
lawyer, detecting the obliquities of fraud; and the skilful
dramatist, exposing the pretensions of folly; but let her
ambition be consoled by reflecting, that those who thus
excel, to all that nature bestows and books can teach, must
add besides that consummate knowledge of the world, to
which a delicate woman has no fair avenues, and which, even
if she could attain, she would never be supposed to have
come honestly by.
In almost all that comes under the
description of polite letters, in all that captivates by
imagery, or
View page [294]
warms by just
and affecting sentiment, women are excellent. They possess
in a high degree that delicacy and quickness of perception,
and that nice discernment between the beautiful and
defective, which comes under the denomination of taste.
Both in composition and action they excel in details; but
they do not so much generalize their ideas as men, nor do
their minds seize a great subject with so large a grasp.
They are acute observers, and accurate judges of life and
manners, as far as their own sphere of observation extends;
but they describe a smaller circle. A woman sees the world,
as it were, from a little elevation in her own garden,
whence she makes an exact survey of home scenes, but takes
not in that wider range of distant prospects which he who
stands on a loftier eminence commands. Women have a certain
tact
which often enables them to
feel what is just more instantaneously than they can define
it. They have an intuitive penetration into character,
bestowed on them by Providence, like the sensitive and
tender organs of some timid animals, as a kind of natural
guard, to warn of the approach of danger beings who are
often called to act defensively.
In summing up the
evidence, if I may so speak, of the different capacities of
the sexes, one may venture, perhaps, to assert, that women
have equal
parts
, but are
inferior in
wholeness
of mind,
in the integral understanding; that though a superior woman
may possess single faculties in equal perfection, yet there
is commonly a juster proportion in
View page [295]
the mind of a superior man;
that if women have in an equal degree the faculty of fancy
which creates images, and the faculty of memory which
collects and stores ideas, they seem not to possess, in
equal measure, the faculty of comparing, combining,
analyzing, and separating these ideas, that deep and
patient thinking which goes to the bottom of a subject, nor
that power of arrangement which knows how to link a
thousand connected ideas in one dependent train, without
losing sight of the original idea out of which the rest
grow, and on which they all hang. The female, too, wanting
steadiness in her intellectual pursuits, is perpetually
turned aside by her characteristic tastes and feelings.
Woman, in the career of genius, is the Atalanta, who will
risk losing the race by running out of her road to pick up
the golden apple; while her male competitor, without
perhaps possessing greater natural strength or swiftness,
will more certainly attain his object by direct pursuit, by
being less exposed to the seductions of extraneous beauty,
and will win the race, not by excelling in speed, but by
despising the bait.
Here it may be justly enough
retorted, that, as it is allowed the education of women is
so defective, the alleged inferiority of their minds may be
accounted for on that ground more justly than by ascribing
it to their natural make. And, indeed, there is so much
truth in the remark, that, till women shall be more
reasonably educated, and till the native growth of their
mind shall cease to be stinted and cramped, we have no
juster ground for pronouncing
View page [296]
that their understanding has already reached its highest
attainable point, than the Chinese would have for affirming
that their women have attained to the greatest possible
perfection in walking, while the first care is, during
their infancy to cripple their feet. At least, till the
female sex are more carefully instructed, this question
will always remain as undecided as to the
degree
of difference between the
masculine and feminine understanding, as the question
between the understandings of blacks and whites; for, until
men and women, and until Africans and Europeans, are put
more nearly on a par in the cultivation of their minds, the
shades of distinction, whatever they be, between their
native abilities, can never be fairly
ascertained.
But, whatever characteristical
distinctions may exist--whatever inferiority may be
attached to woman from the slighter frame of her body, or
the more circumscribed powers of her mind, from a less
systematic education, and from the subordinate station she
is called to fill in life--there is one great and leading
circumstance which raises her importance, and even
establishes her equality.
Christianity
has exalted women to true
and undisputed dignity: in Christ Jesus, as there is
neither "rich nor poor," "bond nor free," so there is
neither "male nor female." In the view of that immortality
which is brought to light by the gospel, she has no
superior. "Women" (to borrow the idea of an excellent
prelate) "make up one half of the human race, equally with
men redeemed by the blood of
View page [297]
Christ." In this their true dignity consists; here their
best pretensions rest; here their highest claims are
allowed.
All disputes then for preëminence
between the sexes have only for their object the poor
precedence for a few short years, the attention of which
would be better devoted to the duties of life and the
interests of eternity.
And, as the final hope of the
female sex is equal, so are their present means perhaps
more favorable, and their opportunities often less
obstructed, than those of the other sex. In their Christian
course, women have every superior advantage, whether we
consider the natural make of their minds, their leisure for
acquisition in youth, or their subsequently less exposed
mode of life. Their hearts are naturally soft and flexible,
open to impressions of love and gratitude; their feelings
tender and lively: all these are favorable to the
cultivation of a devotional spirit. Yet, while we remind
them of these native benefits, they will do well to be on
their guard lest this very softness and ductility lay them
more open to the seductions of temptation and
error.
They have in the native constitution of their
minds, as well as from the relative situations they are
called to fill, a certain sense of attachment and
dependence, which is peculiarly favorable to religion. They
feel, perhaps, more intimately the want of a strength which
is not their own. Christianity brings that superinduced
strength; it comes in aid of their
View page [298]
conscious weakness, and offers the only
true counterpoise to it.
Women also bring to the
study of Christianity fewer of those prejudices which
persons of the other sex too often early contract. Men,
from their classical education, acquire a strong partiality
for the manners of pagan antiquity, and the documents of
pagan philosophy: this, together with the impure taint
caught from the loose descriptions of their poets, and the
licentious language even of their historians, (in whom we
usually look for more gravity,) often weakens the good
impressions of young men, and at least confuses their ideas
of piety, by mixing them with so much heterogeneous matter.
Their very spirits are imbued all the week with the impure
follies of a depraved mythology; and it is well if even on
Sundays, they can hear of the "true God, and Jesus Christ
whom he has sent." While women, though struggling with the
same natural corruptions, have commonly less knowledge to
unknow, and fewer schemes to unlearn, they have not to
shake off the pride of system, and to disencumber their
minds from the shackles of favorite theories: they do not
bring from the porch or the academy any "oppositions of
science" to obstruct their reception of those pure
doctrines taught on the mount; doctrines which ought to
find a readier entrance into minds uninfected with the
pride of the school of Zeno, or the libertinism of that of
Epicurus.
And as women are naturally more
affectionate than fastidious, they are likely both to read
and to
View page [299]
hear with a less
critical spirit than men: they will not be on the watch to
detect errors, so much as to gather improvement; they have
seldom that hardness which is acquired by dealing deeply in
books of controversy, but are more inclined to the perusal
of works which quicken the devotional feelings, than to
such as awaken a spirit of doubt and skepticism. They are
less disposed to consider the compositions they read as
materials on which to ground objections and answers, than
as helps to faith, and rules of life. With these
advantages, however, they should also bear in mind that
their more easily received impressions being often less
abiding, and their reason less open to conviction by means
of the strong evidences which exist in favor of the truth
of Christianity, they ought, therefore, to give the more
earnest heed to the things which they have heard, lest at
any time they should let them slip. Women are also, from
their domestic habits, in possession of more leisure and
tranquillity for religious pursuits, as well as secured
from those difficulties and strong temptations to which men
are exposed in the tumult of a bustling world. Their lives
are more regular and uniform, less agitated by the
passions, the businesses, the contentions, the shock of
opinions, and the opposition of interests, which divide
society and convulse the world.
If we have denied
them the possession of talents which might lead them to
excel as lawyers, they are preserved from the peril of
having their principles warped by that too indiscriminate
defence of right
View page [300]
and wrong,
to which the professors of the law are exposed. If we
should question their title to eminence as mathematicians,
they are happily exempt from the danger to which men
devoted to that science are said to be liable: namely, that
of looking for demonstration on subjects which by their
very nature are incapable of affording it. If they are less
conversant in the powers of nature, the structure of the
human frame, and the knowledge of the heavenly bodies, than
philosophers, physicians, and astronomers, they are,
however, delivered from the error into which many of each
of these have sometimes fallen: I mean, from the fatal
habit of resting in second causes, instead of referring all
to the first; instead of making "the heavens declare the
glory of God," and proclaim his handiwork; instead of
concluding, when they observe how fearfully and wonderfully
we are made, "Marvellous are thy works, O Lord, and that my
soul knoweth right well."
And let the weaker sex take
comfort, that in their very exemption from privileges,
which they are sometimes foolishly disposed to envy,
consists not only their security, but their happiness. If
they enjoy not the distinctions of public life and high
offices, do they not escape the responsibility attached to
them, and the mortification of being dismissed from them?
If they have no voice in deliberative assemblies , do they
not avoid the load of duty inseparably connected with such
privileges? Preposterous pains have been taken to excite in
women
View page [301]
an uneasy jealousy,
that their talents are neither rewarded with public honors
or emoluments in life, nor with inscriptions, statues, and
mausoleums after death. It has been absurdly represented to
them as a hardship, that, while they are expected to
perform duties, they must yet be contented to relinquish
honors; and must unjustly be compelled to renounce fame,
while they must sedulously labor to deserve it.
But
for Christian women to act on the low views suggested to
them by their ill-judging panegyrists; for Christian women
to look up with a giddy head and a throbbing heart to
honors and remunerations so little suited to the wants and
capacities of an immortal spirit, would be no less
ridiculous than if Christian heroes should look back with
envy on the old pagan rewards of ovations, oak garlands,
parsley crowns, and laurel wreaths. The Christian hope more
than reconciles Christian women to these petty privations,
by substituting a nobler prize for their ambition, "the
prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus;" by
substituting for that popular and fluctuating voice which
may cry "Hosanna" and "Crucify" in a breath, that favor of
God which is "eternal life."
If women should lament
it as a disadvantage attached to their sex, that their
character is of so delicate a texture as to be sullied by
the slightest breath of calumny, and that the stain once
received is indelible; yet are they not led by that very
circumstance, as if instinctively, to shrink from all those
irregularities to which the loss of character is so
View page [302]
certainly expected to be
attached; and to shun with keener circumspection the most
distant approach towards the confines of danger? Let them
not lament it as a hardship, but account it to be a
privilege, that the delicacy of their sex impels them more
scrupulously to avoid the very "appearance of evil:" let
them not regret that the consciousness of their danger
serves to secure their purity, by placing them at a greater
distance, and in a more deep entrenchment, from the evil
itself.
Though it be one main object of this little
work, rather to lower than to raise any desire of celebrity
in the female heart, yet I would awaken it to a just
sensibility to honest fame: I would call on women to
reflect that our religion has not only made them heirs to a
blessed immortality hereafter, but has greatly raised them
in the scale of being here, by lifting them in the scale of
being here, by lifting them to an importance in society
unknown to the most polished ages of antiquity. The
religion of Christ has even bestowed a degree of renown on
the sex, beyond what any other religion ever did. Perhaps
there are hardly so many virtuous women (for I reject the
long catalogue whom their vices have transferred from
oblivion to infamy) named in all the pages of Greek or
Roman history, as are handed down to eternal fame in a few
of those short chapters with which the great apostle to the
Gentiles has concluded his epistles to his converts. Of
"devout and honorable women," the sacred Scriptures record
"not a few." Some of the most affecting scenes, the most
interesting transactions, and the most touching
View page [303]
conversations which are
recorded of the Saviour of the world, passed with women.
Their
examples have supplied
some of the most eminent instances of faith and love.
They
are the first remarked as
having "ministered to him of their substance."
Theirs
was the praise of not
abandoning their despised Redeemer when he was led to
execution, and under all the hopeless circumstances of his
ignominious death:
they
appear
to have been the last attending at his tomb, and the first
on the morning when he arose from it.
Theirs
was the privilege of receiving
the earliest consolation from their risen Lord:
theirs
was the honor of being
first commissioned to announce his glorious resurrection.
And even to have furnished heroic confessors, devoted
saints, and unshrinking martyrs to the church of Christ,
has not been the exclusive honor of the bolder
sex.
[Illustration : A small decorative
illustration.]
View page [304]
[Illustration : A decorative
arch, made of lines drawn in intricate
patterns.]
III.
PUBLIC
AMUSEMENTS.
[Illustration : A decorative
capital "I".]
I
T is not proposed to enter the
long-contested field of controversy as to the individual
amusements which may be considered as safe and lawful for
those women of the higher class who make a strict
profession of Christianity. The judgment they will be
likely to form for themselves on the subject, and the plan
they will consequently adopt, will depend much on the
clearness or obscurity of their religious views, and on the
greater or less progress they have made in their Christian
course. It is in their choice of amusements that you are
able, in some measure, to get acquainted with the real
dispositions of mankind. In their business, in the leading
employments of life, their path is, in a good degree,
chalked out for them: there is, in this respect, a sort of
general character, wherein the greater part, more or less,
must coincide. But in their pleasures the choice is
voluntary, the taste is self-directed, the propensity is
independent; and, of course, the habitual state, the
genuine bent and bias of the temper, are most likely to be
seen
View page [305]
in those pursuits which
every person is at liberty to choose for
himself.
When a truly religious principle shall have
acquired such a degree of force as to produce that
conscientious and habitual improvement of time before
recommended, it will discover itself by an increasing
indifference, and even deadness, to those pleasures which
are interesting to the world at large. A woman under the
predominating influence of such a principle, will begin to
discover that the same thing which in itself is innocent
may yet be comparatively wrong. She will begin to feel that
there are many amusements and employments which, though
they have nothing censurable in themselves, yet, if they be
allowed to intrench on hours which ought to be dedicated to
still better purposes; or if they are protracted to an
undue length; or, above all, if, by softening and relaxing
her mind and dissipating her spirits, they so indispose her
for better pursuits as to render subsequent duties a
burden--they become, in that case, clearly wrong for her,
whatever they may be for others.
The fine arts, for
instance, polite literature, elegant society--these are
among the lawful and liberal and becoming recreations of
higher life; yet if even these be cultivated to the neglect
or exclusion of severer duties; if they interfere with
serious studies, or disqualify the mind for religious
exercises, it is an intimation that they have been too much
indulged; and, under such circumstances, it might be the
part of Christian circumspection to
View page [306]
inquire if the time devoted
to them ought not to be abridged. Above all, a tender
conscience will never lose sight of one safe rule of
determining in all doubtful cases: if the point be so nice,
that though we hope upon the whole there
may
be no harm in engaging in
it, we may, at least, be always quite sure that there
can
be no harm in letting it
alone. The adoption of this simple rule would put a period
to much unprofitable casuistry.
The principle of
being responsible for the use of time, once fixed in the
mind, the conscientious Christian will be making a
continual progress in the great art of turning time to
account. In the first stages of her religion, she will have
abstained from pleasures which began a
little
to wound the conscience, or
which assumed a questionable shape; but she will probably
have abstained with regret, and with a secret wish that
conscience
could
have permitted
her to keep well with pleasure and religion too. But you
may discern in her subsequent course that she has reached a
more advanced stage, by her beginning to neglect even such
pleasures or employments as have no moral turpitude in
them, but are merely what are called innocent. This
relinquishment arises, not so much from her feeling still
more the restraints of religion, as from the improvement in
her religious taste. Pleasures cannot now attach her merely
from their being innocent, unless they are likewise
interesting; and to be interesting, they must be consonant
to her superinduced views. She is not contented to spend a
large portion of her time
View page [307]
harmlessly; it must be spent profitably also. Nay, if she
be indeed earnestly "pressing towards the mark," it will
not be even enough for her that her present pursuit be
good, if she be convinced that it might be still better.
Her contempt of ordinary enjoyments will increase in a
direct proportion to her increased relish for those
pleasures which religion enjoins and bestows. So that at
length, if it were possible to suppose that an angel could
come down to take off, as it were, the interdict, and to
invite her to resume all the pleasures she had renounced,
and to resume them with complete impunity, she would reject
the invitation, because, from an improvement in her
spiritual taste, she would despise those delights from
which she had at first abstained through fear. Till her
will and affections come heartily to be engaged in the
service of God, the progress will not be comfortable; but
when once they are so engaged, the attachment to this
service will be cordial, and her heart will not desire to
go back and toil again in the drudgery of the world. For
her religion has not so much given her a new creed, as a
new heart and a new life.
As her views are become
new, so her dispositions, tastes, actions, pursuits, choice
of company, choice of amusements, are new also: her
employment of time is changed; her turn of conversation is
altered; "old things are passed away, all things are become
new." In dissipated and worldly society, she will seldom
fail to feel a sort of uneasiness, which will produce one
of these two effects: she will either, as proper
View page [308]
seasons present themselves, struggle
hard to introduce such subjects as may be useful to others;
or supposing that she finds herself unable to effect this,
she will, as far as she prudently can, absent herself from
all unprofitable kind of society. Indeed her manner of
conducting herself under these circumstances may serve to
furnish her with a test of her own sincerity. For while
people are contending for a little more of this amusement,
and pleading for a little extension of that gratification,
and fighting in order that they may hedge in a little more
territory to their pleasure-ground, they are exhibiting a
kind of evidence against themselves, that they are not yet
"renewed in the spirit of their mind."
It has been
warmly urged, as an objection to certain religious books,
and particularly against a recent work of high worth and
celebrity by a distinguished layman,
*
that they have set the standard of
self-denial higher than reason or even than Christianity
requires. These works do indeed elevate the general tone of
religion to a higher pitch than is quite convenient to
those who are at infinite pains to construct a comfortable
and comprehensive plan, which shall unite the questionable
pleasures of this world with the promised happiness of the
next. I say it has been sometimes objected, even by those
readers who, on the whole, greatly admire the particular
work alluded to, that it is unreasonably strict in the
preceptive and prohibitory parts; and especially, that it
individually and specifically forbids certain
*Practical View, etc., by Mr.
Wilberforce.
View page [309]
fashionable amusements, with a severity not to be found in
the Scriptures, and is scrupulously rigid in condemning
diversions against which nothing is said in the New
Testament. Each objector, however, is so far reasonable, as
only to beg quarter for her own favorite diversion, and
generously abandons the defence of those in which she
herself has no particular pleasure.
But these
objectors do not seem to understand the true genius of
Christianity. They do not consider that it is the character
of the gospel to exhibit a scheme of principles, of which
it is the tendency to infuse such a spirit of holiness as
must be utterly incompatible, not only with customs
decidedly vicious, but with the very spirit of worldly
pleasure. They do not consider that Christianity is neither
a table of ethics, nor a system of opinions, nor a bundle
of rods to punish, nor an exhibition of rewards to allure,
nor a scheme of restraints to terrify, nor merely a code of
laws to restrict; but it is a new principle infused into
the heart by the word and the Spirit of God; out of which
principle will inevitably grow right opinions, renewed
affections, correct morals, pure desires, heavenly tempers,
and holy habits, with an invariable desire of pleasing God,
and a constant fear of offending him. A real Christian,
whose heart is once thoroughly imbued with this principle,
can no more return to the amusements of the world, than a
philosopher can be refreshed with the diversions of the
vulgar, or a man be amused with the recreations of a child.
The New Testament
View page [310]
is not a
mere statute-book: it is not a table where every offence is
detailed, and its corresponding penalty annexed: it is not
so much a
compilation
, as a
spirit
of laws, it does not so
much prohibit every individual wrong practice, as suggest a
temper, and implant a general principle, with which every
wrong practice is incompatible. It did not, for instance,
so much attack the then reigning and corrupt fashions,
which were probably, like the fashions of other countries,
temporary and local, as it struck at that worldliness,
which is the root and stock from which all corrupt fashions
proceed.
The prophet Isaiah, who addressed himself
more particularly to the Israelitish women, inveighed not
only against vanity, luxury, and immodesty, in general, but
with great propriety censured even those precise instances
of each, to which the women of rank in the particular
country he was addressing were especially addicted; nay, he
enters into the minute detail (Isaiah, chap. 3) of their
very personal decorations, and brings specific charges
against several instances of their levity and extravagance
of apparel; meaning, however, chiefly to censure the turn
of character which these indicated. But the gospel of
Christ, which was to be addressed to all ages, stations,
and countries, seldom contains any such detailed
animadversions; for though many of the censurable modes
which the prophet so severely reprobated, continued
probably to be still prevalent in Jerusalem in the days of
our Saviour, yet how little would it have suited the
universality of his
View page [311]
mission,
to have confined his preaching to such local, limited, and
fluctuating customs! not but that there are many texts
which actually do define the Christian conduct as well as
temper, with sufficient particularity to serve as a
condemnation of many practices which are pleaded for, and
often to point pretty directly at them.
It would be
well for those modish Christians who vindicate excessive
vanity in dress, expense, and decoration, on the principle
of their being mere matters of indifference, and nowhere
prohibited in the gospel, to consider that such practices
strongly mark the temper and spirit with which they are
connected, and in that view are so little creditable to the
Christian profession, as to furnish a just subject of
suspicion against the piety of those who indulge in
them.
Had Peter, on that memorable day when he added
three thousand converts to the church by a single sermon,
narrowed his subject to a remonstrance against this
diversion, or that public place, or the other vain
amusement, it might indeed have suited the case of some of
the female Jewish converts who were present; but such
restrictions as might have been appropriate to them would
probably not have applied to the Parthians and Medes, of
which his audience was partly composed; or such as might
have belonged to them would have been totally inapplicable
to the Cretes and Arabians; or again, those which suited
these would not have applied to the Elamites and
Mesopotamians. By such partial
View page [312]
and circumscribed addresses, his
multifarious audience, composed of all nations and
countries, would not have been, as we are told they were,
"pricked to the heart." But when he preached on the broad
ground of general "repentance and remission of sins in the
name of Jesus Christ," it was no wonder that they all cried
out, "What shall we do?" These collected foreigners, at
their return home, must have found very different usages to
be corrected in their different countries; of course, a
detailed restriction of the popular abuses at Jerusalem
would have been of little use to strangers returning to
their respective nations. The ardent apostle, therefore,
acted more consistently in communicating to them the large
and comprehensive spirit of the gospel, which should at
once involve all their scattered and separate duties, as
well as reprove all their scattered and separate
corruptions; for the whole always includes a part, and the
greater involves the less. Christ and his disciples,
instead of limiting their condemnation to the peculiar
vanities reprehended by Isaiah, embraced the very soul and
principle of all in such exhortations as the following: "Be
ye not conformed to the world"--"If any man love the world,
the love of the Father is not in him"--"The fashion of this
world passeth away." Our Lord and his apostles, whose
future unselected audience was to be made up out of the
various inhabitants of the whole world, attacked the evil
heart, out of which all those incidental, local, peculiar,
and popular corruptions proceeded.
View page [313]
In the time of Christ and his
immediate followers, the luxury and intemperance of the
Romans had arisen to a pitch before unknown in the world;
but as the same gospel which its divine Author and his
disciples were then preaching to the hungry and
necessitous, was afterwards to be preached to high and low,
not excepting the Roman emperors themselves, the large
precept, "Whether ye eat or drink, or whatever ye do, do
all to the glory of God," was likely to be of more general
use than any separate exhortation to temperance, to
thankfulness, to moderation as to quantity or expense;
which last, indeed, must always be left in some degree to
the judgment and circumstances of the
individual.
When the apostle of the Gentiles visited
the "saints of Cæsar's household," he could hardly
fail to have heard, nor could he have heard without
abhorrence, of some of the fashionable amusements in the
court of Nero. He must have reflected with peculiar
indignation on many things which were practised in the
Circensian games: yet, instead of pruning this corrupt tree
and singling out even the inhuman gladiatorial sports for
the object of his condemnation, he laid his axe to the root
of all corruption, by preaching to them that gospel of
Christ of which "he was not ashamed;" and showing to them
that believed, that "it was the power of God and the wisdom
of God." Of this gospel the great object was to attack not
one popular evil, but the whole body of sin. Now the
doctrine of Christ crucified was the most appropriate means
for
View page [314]
destroying this; for by
what other means could the fervid imagination of the
apostle have so powerfully enforced the heinousness of sin,
as by insisting on the costliness of the sacrifice which
was offered for its expiation? It is somewhat remarkable,
that about the very time of his preaching to the Romans,
the public taste had sunk to such an excess of depravity,
that the very women engaged in those shocking encounters
with the gladiators.
But, in the first place, it was
better that the right practice of his hearers should grow
out of the right principle; and next, his specifically
reprobating these diversions might have had this ill
effect, that succeeding ages, seeing that they in their
amusements came somewhat short of those dreadful excesses
of the polished Romans, would only have plumed themselves
on their own comparative superiority; and on this
principle, even the bull-fights of Madrid might in time
have had their panegyrists. The truth is, the apostle knew
that such abominable corruptions could never subsist
together with Christianity; and, in fact, the honor of
abolishing these barbarous diversions was reserved for
Constantine, the first Christian emperor.
Besides,
the apostles, by inveighing against some
particular
diversions might have
seemed to sanction all which they did not actually censure;
and as, in the lapse of time and the revolution of
governments, customs change and manners fluctuate, had a
minute reprehension of the fashions of the then existing
age been embodied in the New Testament, that portion
View page [315]
of Scripture must have become
obsolete, even in that very same country, when the fashions
themselves should have changed. Paul and his brother
apostles knew that their epistles would be the oracles of
the Christian world, when these temporary diversions would
be forgotten. In consequence of this knowledge, by the
universal precept to avoid "the lust of the flesh, the lust
of the eye, and the pride of life," they have prepared a
lasting antidote against the
principle
of all corrupt pleasures,
which will ever remain equally applicable to the loose
fashions of all ages and of every country, to the end of
the world.
Therefore, to vindicate diversions which
are in themselves unchristian, on the pretended ground that
they are not specifically condemned in the gospel, would be
little less absurd than if the heroes of Newmarket should
bring it as a proof that their periodical races are not
condemned in Scripture, because St. Paul, when writing to
the Corinthians, did not speak against these diversions;
and that in availing himself of the Isthmian games, as a
happy illustration of the Christian race, he did not drop
any censure on the practice itself; a practice which was,
indeed, as much more pure than the races of Christian
Britain, as the moderation of being contented with the
triumph of a crown of leaves is superior to that criminal
spirit of gambling which iniquitously enriches the victor
by beggaring his competitor.
Local abuses, as we have
said, were not the
View page [316]
object of
a book whose instructions were to be of universal and
lasting application. As a proof of this, little is said in
the gospel of the then prevailing corruption of polygamy;
nothing against the savage custom of exposing children, or
even against slavery; nothing expressly against suicide or
duelling; the last Gothic custom, indeed, did not exist
among the crimes of paganism. But is there not an implied
prohibition against polygamy in the general denunciation
against adultery? Is not exposing of children condemned in
that charge against the Romans, that they were "without
natural affection"? Is there not a strong censure against
slavery conveyed in the command, "As ye would that men
should do unto you, do ye even so unto them"? and against
suicide and duelling, in the general prohibition against
murder, which is strongly enforced and affectingly
amplified by the solemn manner in which murder is traced
back to its first seed of anger, in the Sermon on the
Mount?
Thus it is clear, that when Christ sent the
gospel to all nations, he meant that that gospel should
proclaim those prime truths, general laws, and fundamental
doctrines, which must necessarily involve the prohibition
of all individual, local, and inferior errors; errors which
could not have been specifically guarded against, without
having a distinct gospel for every country, or without
swelling the divine volume into such inconvenient length as
would have defeated one great end of its promulgation.
*
And
*"To the
poor
the gospel is preached."
Luke 7:12.
View page [317]
while its
leading principles are of universal application, it must
always, in some measure, be left to the discretion of the
preacher, and to the conscience of the hearer, to examine
whether the life and habits of those who profess it are
comformable to its main spirit and design.
The same
divine Spirit which indited the holy Scriptures, is
promised, to purify the hearts and renew the natures of
repenting and believing Christians; and the compositions it
inspired are in some degree analogous to the workmanship it
effects. It prohibited the vicious practices of the
apostolical days, by prohibiting the passions and
principles which rendered them gratifying; and still
working in like manner on the hearts of real Christians, it
corrects the taste which was accustomed to find its proper
gratification in the resorts of vanity; and thus
effectually provides for the reformation of the habits, and
infuses a relish for rational and domestic enjoyments, and
for whatever can administer pleasure to that spirit of
peace, and love, and hope, and joy, which animates and
rules the renewed heart of the true Christian.
But
there is a portion of Scripture which, though to a
superficial reader it may seem but very remotely connected
with the present subject, yet, to readers of another cast,
seems to settle the matter beyond controversy. In the
parable of the great supper, this important truth is held
out to us, that even things
good in
themselves
may be the means of our eternal ruin, by
drawing our hearts from God,
View page [318]
and causing us to make light of the offers of the gospel.
One invited guest had bought an estate; another had made a
purchase, equally blameless, of oxen; a third had married a
wife, an act not illaudable in itself. They had all
different reasons, none of which appeared to have any moral
turpitude; but they all agreed in this,
to decline the invitation to the
supper
. The worldly possessions of one, the worldly
business of another, and, what should be particularly
attended to, the love to his dearest relative of a third,
(a love, by the way, not only allowed, but commanded in
Scripture,) were brought forward as excuses for not
attending to the important business of religion. The
consequence, however, was the same to all. "None of those
which were bidden shall taste of my supper." If, then,
things
innocent
, things
necessary
, things
laudable
, things
commanded
, become sinful, when
by unseasonable or excessive indulgence they detain the
heart and affections from God, how vain will all those
arguments necessarily be rendered, which are urged by the
advocates for certain amusements, on the ground of their
harmfulness;
if those amusements
serve (not to mention any positive evil which may belong to
them) in like manner to draw away the thoughts and
affections from spiritual objects!
To conclude: when
this topic happens to become the subject of conversation,
instead of addressing severe and pointed attacks to young
ladies on the sin of attending places of diversion, would
it not be better first to endeavor to excite in them that
principle
View page [319]
of Christianity,
with which such diversions seem not quite compatible: as
the physician, who visits a patient in an eruptive fever,
pays little attention to those spots which to the ignorant
appear to be the disease, except, indeed, so far as they
serve as indications to let him into its nature, but goes
straight to the root of the malady? He attacks the fever,
he lowers the pulse, he changes the system, he corrects the
general habit; well knowing, that if he can but restore the
vital principle of health, the spots, which were nothing
but symptoms, will die away of themselves.
In
instructing others, we should imitate our Lord and his
apostles, and not always aim our blow at each particular
corruption; but making it our business to convince our
pupil that what brings forth the evil fruit she exhibits,
cannot be a branch of the true vine; we should thus avail
ourselves of individual corruptions, for impressing her
with a sense of the necessity of purifying the common
source from which they flow--a corrupt nature. Thus making
it our grand business to rectify the heart, we pursue the
true, the compendious, the only method of producing
universal holiness.
I would, however, take leave of
those amiable and not ill-disposed young persons, who
complain of the rigor of human prohibitions, and declare,
"they meet with no such strictness in the gospel," by
asking them, with the most affectionate earnestness, if
they can conscientiously reconcile their nightly attendance
at every public place which they
View page [320]
frequent, with such precepts as the
following: "Redeeming the time"--"Watch and pray"--"Watch,
for ye know not at what time your Lord cometh"--"Abstain
from all
appearance
of
evil"--"Set your affection on things above"--"Be ye
spiritually minded"--"Crucify the flesh with its affections
and lusts." And I would venture to offer one criterion, by
which the persons in question may be enabled to decide on
the positive innocence and safety of such diversions; I
mean, provided they are sincere in their scrutiny and
honest in their avowal. If, on their return at night from
those places, they find they can retire and "commune with
their own hearts;" if they find the love of God operating
with undiminished force on their minds; if they can "bring
every thought into subjection," and concentrate every
wandering imagination; if they can soberly examine into
their own state of mind; I do not say if they can do all
this perfectly and without distraction (for who almost can
do this at any time?), but if they can do it with the same
degree
of fervor, and renounce
the world in as great a
measure
as at other times; and if they can lie down with a peaceful
consciousness of having avoided in the evening "that
temptation" which they had prayed not to be "led into" in
the morning, they may then most reasonably hope that all is
well, and that they are not speaking false peace to their
hearts. Again, if we cannot beg the blessing of our Maker
on whatever we are going to do or to enjoy, is it not an
unequivocal
View page [321]
proof that the
thing ought not to be done or enjoyed? On all the rational
enjoyments of society, on all healthful and temperate
exercise, on the delights of friendship, arts, and polished
letters, on the exquisite pleasures resulting from the
enjoyment of rural scenery and the beauties of nature; on
the innocent participation of these we may ask the divine
favor--for the sober enjoyment of these we may thank the
divine beneficence: but do we feel equally disposed to
invoke blessings or return praises for gratifications found
(to say no worse) in levity, in vanity, and waste of time?
If these tests were fairly used; if these experiments were
honestly tried; if these examinations were conscientiously
made, may we not, without offence, presume to ask--
Could
our numerous places of public
resort,
could
our
ever-multiplying scenes of more select, but not less
dangerous diversion, nightly overflow with an excess
hitherto unparalleled in the annals of pleasure?
"To
everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose
under heaven," said the wise man; but he said it before the
invention of
BABY-BALLS
; an
invention which has formed a kind of era, and a most
inauspicious one, in the annals of polished education. This
modern device is a sort of triple conspiracy against the
innocence, the health, and the happiness of children. Thus,
by factitious amusements, to rob them of a relish for the
simple joys, the unbought delights, which naturally belong
to their blooming season, is like blotting out spring from
the year. To sacrifice the true and proper
View page [322]
enjoyments of sprightly and happy
children, is to make them pay a dear and disproportionate
price for their artificial pleasures. They step at once
from the nursery to the ballroom; and, by a change of
habits as new as it is preposterous, are thinking of
dressing themselves, at an age when they used to be
dressing their dolls. Instead of bounding with the
unrestrained freedom of little wood-nymphs over hill and
dale, their cheeks flushed with health, and their hearts
overflowing with happiness, these
gay
little creatures are shut up all
the morning, demurely practising the
pas grave
, and transacting the serious
business of acquiring a new step for the evening, with more
cost of time and pains than it would have taken them to
acquire twenty new ideas.
Thus they lose the
amusements which properly belong to their smiling period,
and unnaturally anticipate those pleasures (such as they
are) which would come in, too much of course, on their
introduction into fashionable life. The true pleasures of
childhood are cheap and natural; for every object teems
with delight to eyes and hearts new to the enjoyment of
life; nay, the hearts of healthy children abound with a
general disposition to mirth and joyfulness, even without a
specific object to excite it; like our first parent, in the
world's first spring, when all was new, fresh, and gay
about him,
"They live,
and move,
And feel that they are happier than they
know."
Only furnish them with a few simple and
harmless materials, and a little, but not too much,
leisure,
View page [323]
and they will
manufacture their own pleasures with more skill and success
and satisfaction, than they will receive from all that your
money can purchase. Their bodily recreations should be such
as will promote their health, quicken their activity,
enliven their spirits, whet their ingenuity, and qualify
them for their mental work. But if you begin thus early to
create wants, to invent gratifications, to multiply
desires, to waken dormant sensibilities, to stir up hidden
fires, you are studiously laying up for your children a
store of premature caprice and irritability, of impatience
and discontent.
While childhood preserves its native
simplicity, every little change is interesting, every
gratification is a luxury. A ride or a walk, a garland of
flowers of her own forming, a plant of her own cultivating,
will be a delightful amusement to a child in her natural
state; but these harmless and interesting recreations will
be dull and tasteless to a sophisticated little creature,
nursed in such forced, and costly, and vapid pleasures.
Alas! that we should throw away this first, grand
opportunity of working into a practical habit the moral of
this important truth, that the chief source of human
discontent is to be looked for, not in our real, but in our
factitious wants; not in the demands of nature, but in the
insatiable cravings of artificial desire.
When we see
the growing zeal to crowd the midnight ball with these
pretty fairies, we should be almost tempted to fancy it was
a kind of pious emulation
View page [324]
among the mothers, to cure their infants of a fondness for
vain and foolish pleasures, by tiring them out in this
premature familiarity with them. And we should be so
desirous to invent an excuse for a practice so inexcusable,
that we should be ready to hope that they were actuated by
something of the same principle which led the Spartans to
introduce their sons to scenes of riot, that they might
conceive an early disgust at vice! or, possibly, that they
imitated those Scythian mothers who used to plunge their
newborn infants into the flood, thinking none to be worth
saving who could not stand this early struggle for their
lives: the greater part indeed as it might have been
expected, perished; but the parents took comfort, that if
many were lost, the few who escaped would be the stronger
for having been thus exposed!
To behold lilliputian
coquettes projecting dresses, studying colors, assorting
ribands, mixing flowers, and choosing feathers; their
little hearts beating with hopes about partners, and fears
about rivals; to see their fresh cheeks pale after the
midnight supper, their aching heads and unbraced nerves
disqualifying the little, languid beings for the next day's
task; and to hear the grave apology, that "it is owing to
the wine, the crowd, the heated room of the last night's
ball:" all this, I say, would really be as ludicrous, if
the mischief of the thing did not take off from the
merriment of it, as any of the ridiculous and preposterous
disproportions in the diverting travels of Captain Lemuel
Gulliver!
View page [325]
FROM T
HE
Y
OUNG
L
ADY'S
M
ENTOR,
BY A LADY
View page [327]
[Illustration : A decorative
arch, formed from a shepherd's crook at either side
supporting a thin branch which extends aross the top. Vines
are entwined around the entire
structure.]
AMUSEMENTS.
[Illustration : A decorative
capital "I".]
I
N addressing the following observations to
you, I keep in mind the peculiarity of your position--a
position which has made you, while scarcely more than a
child, independent of external control, and forced you into
the responsibilities of deciding thus early on a course of
conduct that may seriously affect your temporal and eternal
interests. More happy are those placed under the authority
of strict parents, who have already chosen and marked out
for themselves a path to which they expect their children
strictly to adhere. The difficulties that may still perplex
the children of such parents are comparatively few. Even if
the strictness of the authority over them be inexpedient
and overstrained, it affords them a safeguard and a support
for which they cannot be too grateful; it preserves them
from the responsibility of acting for themselves at a time
when their age and inexperience alike unfit them for a
decision on any important practical point; it keeps them
disengaged, as it were, from being pledged to any peculiar
course of conduct until they have formed and matured their
opinion as to the habits of social intercourse most
View page [328]
expedient for them to adopt.
Thus, when the time for independent action comes, they are
quite free to pursue any new course of life without being
shackled by former professions, or exposing themselves to
the reproach (and consequent probable loss of influence) of
having altered their former opinions and
views.
Those, then, who are early guarded from any
intercourse with the world ought, instead of murmuring at
the unnecessary strictness of their seclusion, to reflect
with gratitude on the advantages it affords them. Faith
ought, even now, to teach them the lesson which experience
is sure to impress on every thoughtful mind, that it is a
special mercy to be preserved from the duties of riper
years until we are, comparatively speaking, fitted to enter
upon them.
This is not, however, the case with you.
Ignorant and inexperienced as you are, you must now select
from among all the modes of life placed within your reach,
those which you consider the best suited to secure your
welfare for time and for eternity. Your decision now, even
in very trifling particulars, must have some effect upon
your state in both existences. The most unimportant event
of this life carries forward a pulsation into eternity, and
acquires a solemn importance from the reaction. Every
feeling which we indulge or act upon becomes a part of
ourselves, and is a preparation, by our own hand, of a
scourge or a blessing for us throughout countless
ages.
It may seem a matter of comparative
unimportance--
View page [329]
of trifling
influence over your future life--whether you attend Lady
A---'s ball to-night, or Lady H---'s to-morrow. You may
argue to yourself that even those who now think balls
entirely sinful have attended hundreds of them in their
time, and have nevertheless become afterwards more
religious and more useful than others who have never
entered a ballroom. You might add, that there could be more
positive sin in passing two or three hours with two or
three people in Lady A---'s house in the morning, than in
passing the same number of hours with two or three hundred
people in the same house in the evening. This is indeed
true; but are you not deceiving yourself by referring to
the mere overt act? That is, as you imply, past and over
when the evening is past; but it is not so with the
feelings which
may
make the ball
either delightful or disagreeable to you--feelings which
may be then for the first time excited, never to be stilled
again; feelings which, when they once exist, will remain
with you throughout eternity; for even if, by the grace of
God, they are finally subdued, they will still remain with
you in the memory of the painful conflicts, the severe
discipline of inward and outward trials, required for their
subjugation. Do not, however, suppose that I mean to
attribute exclusively or universally injurious effects to
the atmosphere of the ballroom. In the innocent smiles and
unclouded brow of many a fair girl, the experienced eye
truly reads their freedom from any taint of envy, malice,
or coquetry; while, on the other hand, unmistakable and
View page [330]
unconcealed exhibitions of all
these evil feelings may often be witnessed at a so-called
"religious party."
This remark, however, is only made
to obviate any pretence for mistaking my meaning, and for
supposing that I attribute positive sin to that which I
only object to as the possible, or rather the probable
occasion of sin. I always think this latter distinction a
very important one in discussing, from a more general point
of view, the subject of amusements of every kind; it is
enough merely to notice it here, while we pass on to the
question which I urge upon you to apply personally to
yourself--namely, whether the ballroom is not more likely
to excite and lead into many feminine, failings than the
quieter and more confined scenes of other social
intercourse.
It is chiefly by tracing the effect
produced on our own mind that we can form a safe estimate
of the expediency of doubtful occupations. This is the
primary point of view from which to consider the subject,
though by no means the only one; for every Christian ought
to exhibit a readiness, in his own small sphere, to emulate
the unselfishness of the great apostle: "If meat make my
brother to offend, I will eat no flesh while the world
standeth, lest I make my brother to offend." 1 Cor. 8:13.
The fear of the awful threatenings against those who
"offend"--that is, lead into sin any of God's "little
ones," (Matt. 18:6, 7,) should combine with love of those
for whom the Saviour died, to induce us freely to sacrifice
things which would be personally
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harmless, on the ground of their being
injurious to others.
Let us return to the more
personal part of the subject, namely, the effect produced
on your own mind. I have spoken of feminine "failings." I
should, however, be inclined to apply a stronger term to
the first that I am about to notice--the love of
admiration, considering how closely it must ever be
connected with the fatal vice of envy. She who earnestly
craves general admiration for herself is exposed to a
strong temptation to regret the bestowal of any admiration
on another. She is instinctively exact in her account of
receipt and expenditure; she calculates, almost
unconsciously, that the time and attention and interest
excited by the attractive powers of others, is so much
homage subtracted from her own. That beautiful aphorism,
"The human heart is like heaven--the more angels the more
room for them," is to such persons as unintelligible in its
loving spirit as in its wonderful philosophic truth. Their
craving is insatiable when once it has become habitual, and
their appetite is increased and stimulated, instead of
being appeased, by the anxiously-sought-for
nourishment.
These observations strictly apply to the
fatal desire for general admiration. As long as the
approbation of none but the wise and good is our object,
there are fewer opportunities of exciting the feeling of
envy at this approbation being granted to others; there is,
further, an instinctive feeling of its incompatibility with
the very object we are aiming
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at. The case is altogether different when we seek to
attract those whose admiration may be won by qualities
quite unconnected with moral excellence. There is here no
restraint on our evil feelings; and, when we cannot equal
the accomplishments, the beauty, and the graces of another,
we may possibly be tempted to envy and, still further, to
depreciate those of the hated rival; perhaps, worse than
all, may be tempted to seek to attract attention by means
less simple and less obvious. If the receiving of
admiration be injurious to the mind, what must the seeking
for it be! "The flirt of many seasons" loses all mental
perception of refinement by long practice in hardihood, as
the hackneyed practitioner unconsciously deepens the rouge
upon her cheek, until, unperceived by her blunted visual
organs, it loses all appearance of truth and beauty. Some
instances of the kind I allude to have come before even
your inexperienced eyes; and from the shrinking surprise
with which you now contemplate them, I have no doubt that
you would wish to shun even the first step in the same
career. Indeed it is probable that you, under any
circumstances, would never go so far in coquetry as those
to whom your memory readily recurs. Your innate delicacy,
your feminine high-mindedness, may, at any future time, as
well as at present, preserve you from the bad taste of
challenging those attentions which your very vanity would
reject as worthless if they were not voluntarily
offered.
Nevertheless, even in you, habits of
dissipation
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may produce an
effect which, to your inmost being, may be almost equally
injurious. You may possess an antidote to prevent any
repulsive manifestations of the poisonous effects of an
indulged craving for excitement; but general admiration,
however spontaneously offered and modestly received, has
nevertheless a tendency to create a necessity for mental
stimulants. This, among other ill effects, will, worst of
all, incapacitate you for the appreciative enjoyment of
healthy food.
"The heart, that
with its luscious cates
The world has
fed so long,
Could never taste the simple
food
That gives fresh virtue to the good,
Fresh vigor to the
strong."
The pure and innocent pleasures
which the hand of Providence diffuses plentifully around us
will, too probably, become tasteless and insipid to one
whose habits of excitement have destroyed the fresh and
simple tastes of her mind. Stronger doses, as in the case
of the opium-eater, will each day be required to produce an
exhilarating effect, without which there is now no
enjoyment, without which, in course of time, there will not
be even freedom from suffering.
There is an analogy
throughout between mental and physical intoxication; and it
continues most strikingly, even when we consider both in
their most favorable points of view, by supposing the
victim to self-indulgence at last willing to retrace her
steps. This fearful advantage is granted to our
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spiritual enemy by wilful indulgence in
sin, that it is only when trying to adopt or resume a life
of sobriety and self-denial that we become exposed to the
severest temporal punishments of self-indulgence. As long
as a course of self-indulgence is continued, if external
things should prosper with us, comparative peace and
happiness may be enjoyed, (if indeed, the loftier pleasures
of devotion to God, self-control, and active usefulness can
be forgotten--supposing them to have been once
experienced.) It is only when the grace of repentance is
granted, that the returning child of God becomes at the
same time alive to the sinfulness of those pleasures which
she has cultivated the habit of enjoying, and to the
mournful fact of having lost all taste for those simple
pleasures which are the only safe ones, because they alone
leave the mind free for the exercise of devotion, and the
affections warm and fresh for the contemplation of "the
things that belong to our peace."
Sad and dreary is
the path the penitent worldling has to traverse; often,
despairing at the difficulties her former habits have
brought upon her, she looks back, longingly and
lingeringly, upon the broad and easy path she has lately
left. Alas! how many of those thus tempted to "look back"
have turned away entirely, and never more set their faces
Zionward.
From the dangers and sorrows just described
you have still the power of preserving yourself. You have
as yet acquired no factitious tastes, you
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still retain the power of enjoying the
simple pleasures of innocent childhood. It now depends upon
your manner of spending the intervening years, whether, in
the trying period of middle-age, simple and natural
pleasures will still awaken in your heart emotions of
joyousness and thankfulness.
I have spoken of
thankfulness, for one of the best tests of the innocence
and safety of our pleasures is the being able to thank God
for them. While we thus look upon them as coming to us from
his hand, we may safely bask in the sunshine of even
earthly pleasures:
"The coloring
may be of this earth,
The lustre comes of heavenly
birth."
Can you feel this with respect to
the emotions of pleasurable excitement with which you left
Lady M---'s ball? I am no fanatic nor ascetic; and I can
imagine it possible (though not probable) that among the
visitors there, some simple-minded and simple-hearted
people, amused with the crowds, the dresses, the music, and
the flowers, may have felt, even in this scene of feverish
and dangerous excitement, something of "a child's pure
delight in little things." Without profaneness, and in all
sincerity, they might have thanked God for the, to them,
harmless recreation.
This I suppose possible in the
case of some, but for you it is not so. The keen
susceptibilities of your excitable nature will prevent your
resting contented without sharing in the more exciting
pleasures of the ballroom; and your powers of adaptation
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will easily tempt you forward to
make use of at least some of those means of attracting
general admiration which seem to succeed so well with
others.
"Wherever there is life there is danger," and
the danger is probably in proportion to the degree of life.
The more energy, the more feeling, the more genius
possessed by an individual, the greater are the temptations
to which that individual is exposed. The path which is safe
and harmless for the dull and inexcitable--the mere animals
of the human race--is beset with dangers for the ardent,
the enthusiastic, the intellectual. These must pay a heavy
penalty for their superiority; but is it therefore a
superiority they would resign? Besides, the very trials and
temptations to which their superior vitality subjects them
are not only its necessary means for forming a superior
character into eminent excellence. Self-will, love of
pleasure, quick excitability, and consequent irritability,
are marked ingredients in every strong character; and its
strength must be employed against itself to produce any
high moral superiority.
There is an analogy between
the metaphysical truths above spoken of and the fact in the
physical history of the world, that coal-mines are
generally placed in the neighborhood of iron-mines. This is
a provision involved in the nature of the thing itself; and
we know that, without the furnaces thus placed within
reach, the natural capabilities of the
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useful ore would never be developed. In
the same way, we know that an accompanying furnace of
affliction and temptation is necessarily involved in that
very strength of characters which we admire; and also that,
without this fiery furnace, their vast capabilities, both
moral and mental, could never be fully developed.
Suffering, sorrow, and temptation are the invariable
conditions of a life of progress; and suffering, sorrow,
and temptation are all of them in proportion to the
energies and capabilities of the character.
There is
another analogy in animated nature, illustrative of the
case of those who, without injury to themselves, (the
injury to our neighbor is, as I said before, a different
part of the subject,) may attend the ballroom, the theatre,
and the race-course. Those animals lowest in the scale of
creation-- those which scarcely manifest one of the signs
of vitality--are also those which are the least susceptible
of suffering from external causes. The medusæ are
supposed to feel no pain even in being devoured; and the
human zoophyte is, in like manner, comparatively out of the
reach of every suffering but death. Have you not seen some
beings endowed with humanity nearly as destitute of a
nervous system as the medusæ, nearly as
insusceptible of any sensation from the accidents of life?
Some of these, too, may possess virtue and piety as well as
those qualities of patience and sweetness of temper, which
are the mere results of their physical organization. No
degree of effort or discipline,
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however, (indeed, they bear within
themselves no capabilities for either,) could enable such
persons to become eminently useful, eminently respected, or
eminently loved. They have doubtless some work appointed
them to do, and that a necessary work in God's earthly
kingdom; but theirs are inferior duties, very different
from those which you, and such as you, are called to
fulfil.
Have I in any degree succeeded in reconciling
you to what is necessary to qualify the glad consciousness
of possessing a warm heart and a strong mind? Your high
position will indeed afford you far less happiness than
that which may belong to the lower ranks in the scale of
humanity; but the noble mind will soon be disciplined into
dispensing with happiness--it will find, instead,
blessedness. If yours be a more difficult path than that of
others, it is also a more honorable one. In proportion to
the temptations endured will be the brightness of that
"crown of life which the Lord hath promised to them that
love him." James 1:12.
But there is, perhaps, less
necessity for trying to impress upon your mind a sense of
your superiority, than for urging upon you its accompanying
responsibility, and the severe circumspection it calls upon
you to exercise. You cannot evade the question I am now
pressing upon you; bringing forward the example of many
excellent women who have passed through the ordeal of
dissipation untainted, and, still themselves possessing
loving hearts and simple minds, are fearlessly preparing
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their daughters for the same
dangerous course. Remember, however, that those who are at
best very imperfect cannot be safely taken as examples for
your own course of life. Your concern is to ascertain the
effect produced upon your own mind by different kinds of
society, and to examine whether you yourself have the same
healthy taste for simple pleasures and unexciting pursuits
as before you engaged, even as slightly as you have already
done, in fashionable dissipation.
I once heard a
young lady exclaim, when asked to accompany her family on a
boating excursion, "Can any thing be more tiresome than a
family party?" Young as she was, she had already lost all
taste for the simple pleasures of domestic life. As she was
intellectual and accomplished, she could still enjoy
solitude; but her only ideas of pleasure as connected with
a party, were those of admiration and excitement. We may
trace the same feelings in the complaints perpetually heard
of the stupidity of parties; complaints generally
proceeding from those who are too much accustomed to
attention and admiration to be contented with the
unexciting pleasures of rational conversation, the exercise
of kindly feelings, and the indulgence of social habits,
all in their way productive of contentment to those who
have preserved their minds in a state of freshness and
simplicity. Any greater excitement than that produced by
the above means cannot surely be profitable to those who
only seek in society for so much pleasure as will afford
them
relaxation
; those
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who engage in an arduous
conflict with ever-watchful enemies, both within and
without, ought carefully to avoid having their weapons of
defence
unstrung
. I know that at
present you would shrink from the idea of making pleasure
your professed pursuit, from the idea of engaging in it for
any other purpose but the one above stated--that of
necessary
relaxation;
I should
not otherwise have addressed you as I do now. Your only
danger at present is that you may, I should hope indeed
unconsciously, form the habit of requiring excitement
during your hours of relaxation.
In opposition to all
that I have said, you will probably be often told that
excitement, instead of being prejudicial, is favorable to
the health of both mind and body; and this, in some
respects, is true. The whole mental and physical
constitution benefit by and acquire new energy from, nay,
they seem to develop hidden forces on occasions of natural
excitement; but natural it ought to be, coming in the
providential course of the events of life, and neither
considered as an essential part of daily food, nor
inspiring distaste for simple, ordinary nourishment. I fear
much, on the other hand, any excitement that we choose for
ourselves: that only is quite safe which is dispensed to us
by the hand of the Great Physician of souls; he alone knows
the exact state of our moral constitution, and the exact
species of discipline it requires from hour to
hour.
Let us now return to a further examination
of
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the nature of the dangers
to which you may be exposed by a life of gayety--an
examination that must be carried on in your own mind with
careful and anxious inquiry. I have before spoken of the
duty of ascertaining what effects different kinds of
society produce upon you: it is only by thus qualifying
yourself to pass your
own
judgment on this important subject, that you can avoid
being dangerously influenced by those assertions that you
hear made by others. You will probably, for instance, be
told that a love of admiration often manifests itself as
glaringly in the quiet drawing-room as in the crowded
ballroom; and I readily admit that the feelings cherished
into existence, or at least into vigor, by the exciting
atmosphere of the latter, cannot be readily laid aside with
the ball-dress. There will, indeed, be less opportunity for
their display, less temptation to the often accompanying
feelings of envy and discontent; but the mental process
will probably still be carried on of distilling, from even
the most innocent pleasures, but one species of dangerous
excitement. I cannot, however, admit that to the
unsophisticated mind there will be any danger of the same
nature in the one case as in the other. Society, when
entered into with a simple, prayerful spirit, may be
considered one of the most improving, as well as one of the
most innocent pleasures allotted to us. Still further, I
believe that the exercise of patience, benevolence, and
self-denial which it involves, is a most important part of
the disciplining process by which we are being
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brought into a state of preparation for
the society of glorified spirits--of "just men made
perfect."
I advise you earnestly, therefore, against
any system of conduct, or indulgence of feeling, that would
involve your seclusion from society, not only on the ground
of such seclusion obliging you to unnecessary self-denial,
but on the still stronger ground of the loss to our moral
being which would result from the absence of the peculiar
species of discipline that social intercourse affords. My
object in addressing you is to point out the dangers to you
of peculiar kinds of society, not by any means to seek to
persuade you to avoid it altogether.
Let us, then,
consider carefully the respective tendencies of different
kinds of society to cherish or create "envy, hatred, and
malice, and all uncharitableness," by exciting a craving
for general admiration, and a desire to secure the largest
portion for yourself.
You have already been a few
weeks out in the world; you have been at small social
parties, and at crowded balls; they must have given you
sufficient experience to understand the remarks I
make.
Have you not, then, felt at the quiet parties
of which I have spoken (as contrasted with the dissipated
ones) that it was pleasure enough for you to spend your
whole evening talking with persons of your own sex and age
over the simple occupations of your daily life, or the
studies which engage the interest of your already
cultivated
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mind? Lady L---
may have collected a circle of admirers around her, and
Miss M---'s music may have been extolled as worthy of an
artist; but upon all this you looked merely as a spectator,
without either wish or idea of sharing in their publicity
or their renown--you probably did not form a thought,
certainly not a wish, of the kind. In the ballroom,
however, the case is altogether different. Here the most
simple-minded woman cannot escape from feelings of pain or
regret at being neglected or unobserved. She goes for the
professed purpose of dancing; and when few or no
opportunities are afforded her of sharing in that which is
the amusement of the rest of the room, should she feel
neither mortification at her own position, nor envy,
however disguised and modified, at the different position
of others, she can possess none of that sensitiveness which
is your distinctive quality. It is true, indeed, that the
experienced chaperon is well aware that the girl who
commands the greatest number of partners is not the one
most likely to have the greatest number of proposals at the
end of the season, nor the one who will finally make the
most successful match. This reconciles the prudent
looker-on to the occasional and partial appearance of
neglect. Not so the young and inexperienced aspirant to
admiration;
her
worldliness is
now in an earlier phase, and she thinks that her fame rises
or falls among her companions according as she can compete
with them in the number of her partners, or their exclusive
devotion
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to her, which, after
a season or two, is discovered to be a still safer test of
successful coquetry.
Thus may the young innocent
heart be gradually led on to depend for its enjoyment on
the factitious passing admiration of a light and
thoughtless hour; and still worse, if possessed of keen
susceptibilities and powers of quick adaptation, the lesson
is often too easily learned of practising the arts likely
to attract notice, thus losing for ever the simplicity and
modest freshness of a woman's nature. That may be a fatal
evening to you on which you will first attract sufficient
notice to have it said of you that you were more admired
than Lucy D--- or Ellen M---; this may be a moment for a
poisonous plant to spring up in your heart, which will
spread around its baleful influence until your dying day.
It is a disputed point among ethical metaphysicians,
whether the seeds of every vice are equally planted in each
human bosom, and only prevented from germinating by
opposing circumstances, and by the grace of God assisting
self-control. If this be true, how carefully ought we to
avoid every circumstance that may favor the beginnings of
sins and temptations. The grain that has concealed its
vitality for a score of centuries is wakened into
unceasing, because continually renewed existence, by the
fostering influences of light and air and a suitable soil.
Evil tendencies may be slumbering in your bosom, as wheat
in the foldings of the mummy's winding-sheet. Be careful
lest, by going into the way of temptation, you may
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involuntarily foster them into
the power which they would otherwise never
possess.
When once the craving for excitement has
become a part of our nature, there is, of course, no safety
in the quietest or, under other circumstances, most
innocent kind of society. The same amusements will be
sought for in it as those which have been enjoyed in the
ballroom, and every company will be considered insufferably
wearisome which does not furnish the now necessary
stimulant of exclusive attention and general
admiration.
I write the more strongly to you on the
subject of worldly amusements, because I see with regret a
tendency in the writings and conversation of the religious
world, as it is called, to extol almost every other species
of self-denial, but to observe a studied silence respecting
this one.
A reaction seems to have taken place in the
public mind. We see some, of whose piety and excellence no
doubt can be entertained, mingling unhesitatingly in the
most worldly amusements of those who are, by profession as
well as practice, "lovers of pleasure more than lovers of
God." How cruelly are the minds of the simple and the timid
perplexed by the persons who thus act, as well as by those
popular writings which countenance in professedly religious
persons these worldly and self-indulgent habits of life.
The hearts and the consciences of the "weak brethren"
reëcho the warnings given them by the average
opinions of the wise and good in all ages of the world,
namely,
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that with respect to
worldly amusements, they must "come out and be separate."
How else can they be sons and daughters of Him to whom they
vowed, as the necessary condition of entering into that
high relationship, that they would "renounce the pomps and
vanities of this wicked world"? If the question of pomps
should be perplexing to some by the different requirements
of different stations in life, there is surely less
difficulty of the same kind in relation to its vanities.
But while the "weak in faith" are hesitating and trembling
at the thought of all the opposition and sacrifices a
self-denying course of conduct must, under any
circumstances, involve, they are still further discouraged
by finding that some whom they are accustomed to respect
and admire have in appearance gone over to the enemy's
camp.
It is only, indeed, in their hours of
relaxation that they select as their favorite companions
those who are professedly engaged in a different service
from their own--those whom they know to be devoted, heart
and soul, to the love and service of that "world which
lieth in wickedness." 1 John 5:19. Are not, however, their
hours of relaxation also their hours of danger; those in
which they are more likely to be surprised and overcome by
temptation than in hours of study or of business? All this
is surely very perplexing to the young and inexperienced,
however personally safe and prudent it may be for those
from whom a better example might have been justly expected.
It is deeply to
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be regretted
that there is not, in this matter, more unity of action and
opinion among those who "love the Lord Jesus Christ in
sincerity."
I am inclined to apply terms of stronger
and more general condemnation than any I have hitherto used
to those amusements which are more especially termed
"public."
You should carefully examine, with prayer
to be guided aright, whether a voluntary attendance at the
opera, the theatre, or the race-course is not exposed to
the solemn denunciation uttered by the Saviour against
those who cause others to offend. Matt. 18:6, 7. Can that
relaxation be a part of the education to fit us for our
eternal home, which is regardless of danger to the
spiritual interests of others, and acts upon the spirit of
the haughty remonstrance of Cain, "Am I my brother's
keeper?" Gen. 4:9. For all the details of this argument, I
refer you to Wilberforce's "Practical View of
Christianity." Many other writers have treated this subject
ably and convincingly; but none other so satisfactorily to
my mind. I think it will be so to yours.
I am aware
that much may be said in defence of the expediency of the
amusements to which I refer; but this does not serve as an
excuse for those who, having their mind and judgment
enlightened to see the dangers to others, and the
temptations to themselves, of attending such amusements,
should still disfigure lives, it may be, in other respects,
of excellence and usefulness, by giving
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their time, their money, and their
example to countenance and support them. Woe to those who
venture to lay their sinful human hands upon the
complicated machinery of God's providence, by countenancing
the slightest shade of moral evil, because there may be
some accompanying good! We cannot look forward to a certain
result from any action; the most virtuous one may produce
effects different from those which we had anticipated, and
we can then only fearlessly leave the consequences in the
hands of God, when we are sure that we have acted in strict
accordance with his will. Does it become the servant of God
voluntarily to expose herself to hear contempt and
blasphemy attached to the Holy Name and the holy things
that she loves; to see on the stage an awful mockery of
prayer itself, on the race-course the despair of the ruined
gambler and the debasement of the drunkard? The choice of
the scenes you frequent now, of the company you keep now,
is of an importance involved in the very nature of things,
and not dependent alone on the expressed will of God. It is
only the pure in heart who can see God. Matt. 5:8. It is
only those who have here acquired a meetness for the
inheritance of the saints in light (Col. 1:12) who can
enjoy its possession.
It is almost entirely from this
point of view that I have urged upon you the close
consideration of the permanent influences of every present
action. At your age, and with your inexperience, I know
that there is an especial aptness to deceive one's
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self by considering the case of
some who, after leading a gay life for many years, have
afterwards become the most zealous and devoted servants of
God. That such cases are to be met with is to the glory of
the free grace of God; but what reason have you to hope
that you should be among this small number? Having once
wilfully chosen the pleasures of this life as your portion,
on what promise do you depend ever again to be awakened to
a sense of the awful alternative of fulfilling your
Christian vows, by renouncing the pomps and vanities of the
world, or to prevent you from becoming a withered branch of
the vine into which you were once grafted--a branch to be
cast into the fire and burned?
Without urging further
upon you this hackneyed, though still awful warning, let me
return once more to the peculiar point of view from which I
have all along considered the subject, namely, that each
present act and feeling is an inevitable preparation for
eternity, by becoming a part of our never-dying moral
nature. You must deeply feel how much this consideration
adds to the improbability of your having any desires
whatever to become the servant of God some years hence, and
how much it must increase in future every difficulty and
every unwillingness which you at present
experience.
Let us, however, suppose that God will
still be merciful to you at the last; that, after having
devoted to the world, during the years of your youth,
that
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love, those energies,
and those powers of mind which had been previously vowed to
his holier and happier service, he will still in future
years send you the grace of repentance; that he will effect
such a change in your heart and mind, that the world shall
not only become unsatisfactory to you--which is a vary
small way towards real religion--but that to love and serve
God shall become to you the one thing desirable above all
others. Alas! it is even then, in the very hour of
redeeming mercy, of renewing grace, that your severest
trials will begin. Then first will you thoroughly
experience how truly it is "an evil thing and bitter, to
forsake the Lord your God." Jer. 2:19. Then you will find
that every late effort at self-denial, simplicity of mind
and purpose, abstinence from worldly excitements, etc., is
met, not only by the evil instincts which belong to our
nature, but by the superinduced difficulty of opposing
confirmed habits. Smoothly and tranquilly flows on the
stream of habit, and we are unaware of its growing strength
until we try to erect an obstacle in its course, and see
this obstacle swept away by the long-accumulating power of
the current.
In truth, all those who have wilfully
added the power of evil habits to the evil tendencies of
their fallen nature, must expect "to go mourning all the
days of their life." It is only to those who have served
the Lord from their youth that "wisdom's ways are ways of
pleasantness, and all her paths peace." To others, though
by the grace of God
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they may
be finally saved, there is but a dreary prospect until the
end come. They must thenceforth consult their safety by
denying themselves many pleasant things which the
well-regulated mind of the habitually pious may find not
only safe but profitable. At the same time they sorrowfully
discover that they have lost all taste for those entirely
simple pleasures with which the path of God's obedient
children is abundantly strewn. Their path, on the contrary,
is rugged, and their flowers are few: their sun seldom
shines, for they themselves have formed clouds out of the
vapors of earth, to intercept its warming and invigorating
radiance. What wonder, then, if some among them should turn
back into the bright and sunny land of self-indulgence, now
looking brighter and more alluring than ever from its
contrast with the surrounding gloom!
Let not this
dangerous risk be yours. While yet young--young in habits,
in energies, in affections--devote all to the service of
the best of masters. "The work of righteousness," even now,
in spite of difficulties, self-denials, and anxieties, will
be "peace, and the effect thereof quietness and assurance
for ever." Isa. 32:19.
View page [353]
THE S
OCIAL
P
OSITION AND
C
ULTURE
DUE TO WOMAN. BY REV. DR.
WILLIAM R. WILLIAMS.
View page [355]
[Illustration : A decorative
arched formed from a thin branch with flowering vines
dangling from it. The vines hang down on either end,
forming the sides of the arch, and one large flower dips
down a bit in the
center.]
T
HAT OUR
D
AUGHTERS MAY BE AS
C
ORNERSTONES, POLISHED AFTER THE SIMILITUDE
OF A
P
ALACE.
P
SALM
144:12.
[Illustration : A
decorative capital "I".]
I
T was not only of his own household, the
inmates of a palace, habituated to its lofty aspirations
and its luxurious indulgences, that the inspired Psalmist
thought; the desire thus breathed was for all the maidens
of Israel, the inmates of its lowly hamlets, and its
secluded cottages, as well as for the members of his own
regal household. In the close of the psalm his language
makes it evident that it was of the collective nation, the
larger family of their king, that he thought, quite as much
as of the lesser band of his own children, for he exclaims:
"Happy is that
people
that is in
such a case." He was of too large, too generous a heart,
had not his own lowly origin bound him to the people by
indissoluble sympathies, ever to desire that the kingly
house should engross all blessings and prosperity. He was
too wise to expect that the mere circumstance of birth in a
palace could secure either virtue or happiness to the child
thus reared and trained. He had seen the son of Rizpah,
Armoni or the
Palace-born
, (as
the mother in her fond pride, and vaulting hopes,
View page [356]
had named her child,) hung up
before the Lord, an expiatory victim for the crimes of his
royal father, when that father, the sceptre now departed
from his line, was sleeping in his dishonored grave.
Perhaps he had seen, ere writing this psalm--if not, he was
yet to see before death should close his saddened and
wearied eyes, his own gentle and goodly Tamar, the daughter
of a king, the dweller of a palace, and the scholar of a
prophet, falling, a blighted flower, like a violet crushed
into the mire beneath the hoof of the wild boar out of the
forest. The guilt and the fate of Amnon, the ingratitude
and signal punishment of his Absalom had already wrung, or
were yet to wring that father's heart; and all were to show
that those wearing soft raiment, and living in kings'
houses, were not necessarily the best or the most blest of
mankind. It was not for the inmates of a palace, then, that
this prayer was exclusively, or even mainly, framed. For
all the youthful daughters of the land, however lowly their
lot, for those in rural life, on the sides of Carmel and
amid the pastures of Bashan, as well as those reared in the
more splendid homes of Jerusalem, it is that David prays.
The imagery that clothes his request is derived, however,
from the walls and goodly carvings of a palace.
The
prayer suggests two subjects of thought: woman's position
in society, "That our daughters may be as cornerstones;"
and her proper culture, "polished after the similitude of a
palace."
As the artificer prepares the beam and the
pillar,
View page [357]
with reference to the
place they are to occupy in the edifice he rears, so the
station assigned to the sex by their Creator, in the great
fabric of human society, determines the peculiar spirit and
character of the training they should receive.
I. In
rearing her daughters, then, for usefulness and happiness,
the Christian mother is to recollect the place which the
Lord and maker of the race has selected for her sex, in the
system and framework of human society and government. The
Psalmist prayed that the maidens of his people might be
like cornerstones.
Woman, we suppose this to
intimate, is to be a
bond of
union
between families. As the stone, standing at
the head of the corner, belongs alike to the two walls on
which it faces, and as it serves to unite those walls into
one symmetrical and firm building; so is it the place of
woman as the wife and the mother, to blend together, in
interest and in feeling, the family whence she sprung, and
the family into which marriage has transplanted her. She
is, then, to be especially a lover and a maker of peace,
rather than of discord. And they sin, not only against
their own happiness and that of their connections, but
against the very mission of their sex, who, by
heedlessness, or in deliberate malice, become slanderers
and make-bates, sundering chief friends and sowing bitter
enmities. In the community, and in the nation, woman is to
be the friend and advocate, not of strife and war, but of
harmony, and order, and affection. She is, therefore,
View page [358]
eminently the gentler sex. The
instruments of clangor and harsh dissonance befit not her
hands or her lips; nor does it become her to wield the
weapons that are to shed blood, save when some crying and
signal necessity summons her, like Deborah or Jael, to
scenes which should not be her habitual resort.
But
it may be asked, are then all women to be educated for
wedded life? Both man and woman, we would reply, are to be
educated, first for eternity and for God, rather than for
the world and time, for the Creator rather than for their
fellow-creatures. This is their first duty. After that, we
answer, that the education of woman should fit her for the
family and the home, rather than for public life. Some
object that the sex are thus taught habits of dependence
and helplessness; and they accuse the customs of society in
this matter, as if woman were not sufficiently trained for
independence and self-reliance. None, of either sex, should
be trained for mere indolence. But the error on the
opposite side we should suppose far more dangerous to the
welfare of society, and to the happiness of woman herself.
A disposition to regard woman rather as the
rival
than as the
companion
of man, while it would
strip her of much of her winning sweetness and softness,
and her womanly delicacy, would also expose her to scenes
of discord, and subject her to tasks of wearisome and
crushing toil, from which she is now, and of right ought to
be exempt. Who does not protest against
View page [359]
the female miners of England, as
wronging themselves, their families and their sex, and the
entire community? Who would wish woman compelled, in an
equal partnership of all toils and perils with the other
sex, to incur the privations, and hardships and dangers of
the mariner--to climb the ice-clad rigging, and heave the
anchor, and tenant the narrow prison of the forecastle?
Educate the tendril to become a sapling, and bid your vines
to leave their pendant foliage and their rich clusters, and
to become stout and stubborn oaks, would the forests be
made more beautiful by the change, and the trees gain in
strength as much as they lost in gracefulness and variety
and usefulness? Woman was formed for man, by the
irreversible laws of the Creator and the inevitable
necessities of society; not as his slave, or as his toy,
but as his friend and companion and solace. No philosophy
has either the ingenuity or the force requisite to set
aside this law of creation, and foster woman into an
independent and rival power, man's jealous competitor. Yet,
while this fact of creation and this law of heaven are to
be regarded as controlling principles in every just and
safe system of female education, woman needs not to be
trained in the notion that marriage is in all cases
necessary to her happiness, and her respectability and
influence in the community. Many, who have never filled the
station of the wife and the mother, have been the light and
the ornament of their circles. Families have been made glad
by their quiet diligence. Orphans
View page [360]
have found in them those, who, bound by
no tie of nature, but only by that of pity and piety, have
voluntarily assumed towards these bereaved ones, and nobly
redeemed, all a mother's varied obligations. Literature has
been enriched with their contributions. The Sabbath-school
and the academy have been the walks where they labored for
God, and won souls for Christ. The church of God has been
edified and increased by their labors, while, like the
beloved Persis, they "labored much in the Lord." Strong in
meek self-possession, and elevated by a high and principled
consecration to duty, truth, and God, they have passed on
their bright way, unharmed if not all unmoved by the scorn
of the shallow and the heartless, who may have sneered at
their unprotected loneliness. Desolate they may have
seemed, but desolate they need not be, if like Enoch they
walk with God. It is not necessary, or even honorable for
woman to deem what is called an establishment in marriage
indispensible either to her peace or her glory. For
parents, and for children as well, there may be a
profitable lesson in the saying of an eminent Puritan:
Philip Henry, the father of the distinguished commentator,
himself probably of higher genius and a riper scholar than
was his excellent son, trained up, with the aid of his
devout and exemplary wife, a family of several daughters,
all women of piety and usefulness. It was the saying of the
good man, that other parents were anxious as to the
marrying of their daughters; but it was his
View page [361]
care, rather that his daughters should
be worth marrying. It was not so much with him, cause for
solicitude to find for them good husbands, as to qualify
them to become good wives.
But the cornerstone is not
only a bond of union, but its position is also peculiar as
one of comparative
seclusion
. It
is in some degree hidden. The stone which forms the topmost
pinnacle is, on the contrary, ever in view. But while it
may seem to rejoice in its lofty distinction, and is first
to greet the beams of morning, and on it linger the last
rays of evening, yet, although thus often glittering in the
sunbeam, it also rocks in the storm. Its publicity and
eminence endanger its security. It is not always the glory,
much less the safety of woman to be the Corinthian capital,
displaying its rich tracery before every eye, and courting
general admiration. A life of show and publicity is not
that in which woman's graces best develope themselves. The
scenes of private life, "the cool sequestered vale," would
seem more congenial to her better feelings, and more
favorable to the cultivation of the higher traits of her
character. No gazette may herald her victories, nor price
current show her gains; but in the secluded walks of life,
her worth may seem to those who most constantly see and who
best know her, beyond the price of rubies; and her meek
trophies, won over sorrow and fretting care, may show to
the discerning eye, more noble than the laurels that drop
gore, won by conquerors on the battle-field, and worn amid
the applauses of
View page [362]
a nation.
An authority, here at least not to be questioned, has said:
"He that ruleth his spirit is better than he that taketh a
city." The seclusion of the scenes in which her lot has
been cast, may seem as a prison to the vaulting and
ambitious spirit; but they are scenes favorable to
innocence and peace, to religious meditation and to
prayerful consistency. Hence a larger portion of that sex
than of the other, are generally found among the members of
the Christian church. The affection of our Lord for his
mother, honored and blessed as she was among women,
bestowed upon her no large share in the honors and toils of
his public ministry. When she would have interfered in the
beginning of his miracles at Galilee, he discouraged the
intrusion. Cared for by his tenderness as he hung on the
cross, he yet bequeathed to her no primacy among his
disciples. She, whom the superstition of later times has
lifted to the station of the popular mediator between
heaven and earth, was not even associated in the councils
of the apostles by the piety of the primitive Christians.
Beloved, as a mother should be loved by the only sinless
son in the history of the race, the filial tenderness of
the Saviour provided no public station in the church for
his human parent.
The cornerstone is again the
foundation and basis
of the
edifice, and woman is in some respects the moral support of
society. The least seen, here as elsewhere, may be the most
needed and the most useful. Christ was, as the writer in
the Christian
View page [363]
church, less
seen than his servant Paul; but Christ, and not that
apostle, and not any other apostle, is the chief
cornerstone of the churches. So woman, without writing
treatises on morals, without invading the schools of
philosophy, or the exchange or the senate-chamber, modifies
by her teachings, and by her example, the philosophy and
the legislation and the morals of the age. The character of
the women of the nation is a criterion, just and unfailing,
of its true civilization, of its purity in morals, and of
its political well-being. The education, even of the
nursery, is, in the providence of God, like a sunken
cornerstone; overlooked by the heedless and scorned by the
ambitious, but yet in truth sustaining the social order and
well-being of a people, the long-drawn walls, and the
air-hung pinnacles, that first catch the stranger's eye,
and that engross the admiration of the ignorant and
superficial. "B
E, NOT SEEM
,"
the motto of the stern old Roman, the patriot Cato, was
sublime in his lips. Is it less sublime when quietly made,
as by the true woman it is in her unostentatious and unseen
sphere, the principle of her unwitnessed toils, and the
trials and sacrifices, as the mother, the sister, and the
daughter, in the dim laboratory of home, guarding and
purifying the principles that are to save the community and
the race from corruption? Well may she afford to renounce
the "
seeming
" influential, and
content herself with "
being
"
influential, and being so early, and eminently, and
evermore.
It may to some seem far-fetched, yet it
seems to
View page [364]
us warranted, to
remark, lastly, that in order to inherit the blessing of
the Psalmist's prayer, woman needs
fixedness
--fixedness both in character
and in place. It is the ordinary reproach of the sex that
they are uncertain and variable. With greater fickleness
certainly in lesser matters than belongs to man, yet we
incline to regard woman as being, in matters of high moment
and value, not only equal, but often superior to man in
firmness and constancy. They have furnished more than their
share of martyrs to affection and religion. And in
religious and moral questions, this fixedness is a trait
above all others valuable. But even in lesser matters, in
an age so given to migration, and among a nation so
addicted as our own to the love of travel, we might be
forgiven for wishing that it should be more the ambition of
American women to become, what the apostle enjoins it upon
Christian females to be, "
keepers at
home
." The headstone of the corner is not to be
either a millstone, ceaselessly whirling in the drudgery of
servile toil to the neglect of the order and moral
stability of the household, or a quoit to be flung, by
pitiless and frequent removals, hither and thither, from
Dan even to Beersheba, "with no certain dwelling-place."
Excursions for health and relaxation, and the friendly
interchange of hospitalities, are not forbidden her; but
home, the settled home, is after all, her sphere of duty,
of glory, and of happiness.
II. From the position of
the female sex in society,
View page [365]
and her consequent duties, as a bond of union, as one
dwelling in comparative seclusion, as furnishing to society
its moral basis, and as bound to cherish habits of
fixedness and permanence, the words of inspiration lead us
next to dwell on
the culture
becoming woman, and desired by the Psalmist for the
daughters of his land. He would have the cornerstones
"polished after the similitude of a palace." In this
portion of the edifice solidity is by far the first and
chiefest requisite, but then ornament is not excluded. And
so in training woman for her duties to society and to God,
the principles that give moral solidity and firmness are to
be cherished before, but not to the necessary exclusion of,
the refinements that give elegance and attractiveness.
Principles are of more importance than accomplishments; and
it is of the first moment that the conscience should be
formed, next that the intellect should be stored, and then
let taste be consulted and cultivated, each in its order of
dignity and importance. The showy stucco or even the
graceful basso-relievo are not of themselves sufficient to
constitute a stone of crumbling and yielding nature into a
safe foundation of the edifice. Mothers, and especially
Christian mothers, may never put accomplishments before
principles. But where there is, first, firm and fixed
principles, then the smoothness and radiance, and the
graceful and elaborate carvings of a king's dwelling are
here presented as the emblems of the gracefulness and true
refinement that woman may superinduce on
View page [366]
the solid massive basis of true
religion. Not that vain-glorious parade, or costly finery,
or a love of dress, or a taste for splendor in furniture
and equipage are here commended. It is the mark of a
frivolous, and often a vicious mind, to attach to all these
the paramount value which many do. So the ornaments that
are intended to display personal beauty, or to excite a
vain and often a guilty admiration, are neither truly
modest nor truly innocent, and are by no means in unison
with Christian sobriety. But on the other hand,
tastelessness and inelegance are not piety. All regard to
gracefulness is not forbidden the sex. With a juster taste,
at least on details, than belongs to the sterner sex, with
more of beauty, and more nice appreciation of the beautiful
in nature and art around them, and more of gracefulness in
their form and movements, than marks man, God has not left
woman without the endowments, or without the warrant, to
cherish taste, and to seek within reasonable limits what is
most becoming and most lovely. The God who created the
flowers of dyes so various and forms so graceful, and
scattered them so lavishly over his world, who paints so
richly the morning and the evening sky, and in the hues of
the bird, the insect, and the fish even, has scattered so
much of gorgeous splendor around his works, would not
surely have man, his creature, regardless of all that rich
beauty he has so studied in the arrangements of his wide
creation. The lips that uttered the beatitudes thought it
not scorn to praise the splendid
View page [367]
hues of the lily. The imagery employed
to describe the heavenly world indicates similar lessons.
The foundations of the New Jerusalem are flashing gems, and
its gates of entire pearls. The blessed wear
crowns
of gold. Now the crown is
neither a shelter from the weather nor armor of defence in
war. Its use is but for ornament and beauty. All regard for
appearance is not then unholy. But, on the other hand, let
it never be forgotten, that few snares are more ruinous to
the young of your sex, than is an extravagant fondness for
dress. Let Christian women for themselves, and for their
daughters, ponder often and prayerfully the command of God
by the apostle Peter: "Whose adorning let it not be that
outward adorning of plaiting the hair, and of wearing of
gold, or of putting on of apparel. But let it be the hidden
man of the heart, in that which is not corruptible, even
the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which is in the
sight of God of great price. For after this manner, in the
old time, the holy women also, who trusted in God, adorned
themselves." 1 Peter 3:3-5.
True refinement then, to
the eye of piety, has its seat in the soul. There may be
much of it in the spirit of gentleness and winning
forbearance, of delicate purity, and of unfeigned courtesy,
where there is little of the varnish of worldly pretence,
and under the coarse ill-cut garb, and in the homely
cottage. There may, on the contrary, be much of what is
fastidiously called "good breeding" in its outer and
heartless forms, and much of splendor in
View page [368]
the habitation, and of imposing
pretension in the manners, where the true courtesy of the
heart and intrinsic refinement of soul are utterly wanting;
and the contrast, to a discerning eye, between the large
assumption and the real meanness, has much the effect of an
edging of gold lace on a garment of dowlas or sackcloth, or
the gaudy stripe on the Indian's coarse and filthy
blanket.
In addition to a spirit and temper of true
refinement, those graceful and womanly accomplishments are
not forbidden but are allowed and desirable, which tend to
make home happier. Let not the education of your daughters
be one of mere accomplishments--brilliant as the colors
that play on the air-bubble, and as durable, and as
useful:
"The foam upon the waters not so light."
But
let the Christian mother remind herself and prayerfully and
continually remind her children that they have souls formed
for immortality; and that death, each hour impending, is to
them the gate of heaven or hell. Seek first the kingdom of
God and his righteousness, a new heart and faith in Christ
and the great atonement, and the witness of the renewing
Spirit. Life before show. Heaven before earth. Next, upon
the substratum of that sound knowledge necessary to either
sex, the youthful female may well be encouraged to erect
the superstructure of all those elegant and pleasing
attainments, that tend really to make home more attractive,
and to throw around its inmates new bonds of attachment,
and to add to its precincts
View page [369]
real comfort and embellishment. Music, among the most
popular, may easily become and unawares, the most sensuous
of accomplishments. It may, on the other hand, be the
minister of domestic concord and the handmaid of devotion.
But as that palace would be really despicable and miserable
as a habitation, that in winter had no fire on its hearth
and no food on its tables, but merely mirrors for its
walls, and pictures for its galleries, and flowers for its
conservatories, and draperies for its windows; so the
education that begins and ends with costly and external
accomplishments is wretched in its first principles, for it
is but an education of pretence; and wretched in its
effects, alike on the happiness of the daughters it
educates, and on the comfort of the homes where they are
one day to preside as wives and as mothers. Such was not
the refinement for which the Psalmist prayed; a refinement
of lacquer and gold leaf, a tinselled tawdriness, which the
storms of life are likely soon to beat into the most
forlorn and uncouth desolation.
True piety to God,
producing true courtesy and gentleness towards man, and in
strict connection with the renewal and divine refinement of
the heart, the addition of all substantial and useful
knowledge, and the human refinements of those lighter
graces that go to render home more home-like--these we
suppose to include the polish after the similitude of a
palace, which the Psalmist invoked on the daughters of
Israel. Such a culture will make the lowliest roof truly
royal, not like the
View page [370]
palace
indeed, amid whose unavailing splendors Ahab pined for the
poor vineyard of his neighbor Naboth; not like the gorgeous
pile where the daughter of Herodias, in her princely
loveliness, danced for the hire of a prophet's gory head,
sanguinary and ruthless in her young beauty; not a home
where dwell splendid guilt and showy misery, and whose gay
trappings veil the shambles of a butcherly despotism and
the haunts of corroding remorse; but like the royal home of
righteous David, or like the peaceful cottage where David's
greater Son and Lord spent his stainless youth, a scene
kings might envy for an elegance that does not corrupt and
a gayety that does not intoxicate; the home of true
dignity, courtesy, and peace--a true palace, for its
occupant is "a king and a priest unto God," where if melody
is heard it breathes of heaven, and whose chosen and most
prized beauty is the beauty of holiness.
As Christian
mothers, you will anxiously and continually remember that
you are training souls for eternity; and that the scenes
and the relations, the unions and the honors of earth are
soon to know the intrusion of the destroyer Death. Bring up
your children for God, and your recompense is in eternity
and in this world as well. Train them for this world only,
and verily then also you have your reward. But it is a
reward to fill the memory with desolation, and the
conscience with despair. Perchance your gay and indulged,
your admired and idolized child finds herself on the
death-bed
View page [371]
destitute of
Christ, without holiness and without hope. Can you hope to
catch from her pallid lips, that death has already touched,
a grateful blessing for your wise and faithful training?
Can you encounter the gaze of those eyes, over which the
films of death are already gathering, but cannot hide the
despair that lies deep and dark in their reproachful
glances? And as you stand with sons and daughters, at the
judgment-seat; and when, amid an assembled and expectant
universe, the palace of the Holy One and the prison-house
of Satan await the parting troops of mankind, will it
content you to remember how wistfully and watchfully you
trained your offspring, at the behest of fashion, in the
ways in which they should not go; and left them to become
the poor dupes in this life, and the victims in the next,
of the great deceiver? Will you then pride and bless
yourselves on the fidelity with which you discharged your
parental duties, in the thrift that preferred earth to
heaven, the wisdom that rejected Christ for Satan, and the
resolute perseverance that stifled conscience, grieved the
Spirit, nullified the Scriptures, and earned perdition? Who
dare face these bare results? But how many parents,
nominally Christian, are in careless unconsciousness
pursuing that path of contented worldliness, which must
thus end.
Gather, my sisters, to the Saviour's feet.
See him taking the little children into his arms. Become
yourselves scholars in his school, prayerful and watchful,
that you may become the successful
View page [372]
and exulting teachers of your children;
that over your nurseries and your homes may fall the great
calming shadow of the cross; that odors of heaven may be
wafted over those scenes of vexation and trial and
bereavement, through which the mother's earthly path must
lead her; and that finding God your own refuge, and
commending him to your children as their shelter and
portion, you may, in the moment of death, and the day of
judgment, have children and children's children rising up
to call you blessed.
[Illustration : A
decorative illustration of an anchor entwined with
ivy.]
View page [373]
THE E
DUCATION OF THE
H
EART,
WOMAN'S BEST WORK. BY MRS.
SARAH STICKNEY ELLIS
View page [375]
[Illustration : A decorative
arch formed from a thin branch extending lengthwise across
the page, with flowering vines twining around it. The
branch is obscured in the center by a diamond-shaped frame
and several large flowers.]
I.
FEMALE EDUCATION.
[Illustration : A
decorative capital "I".]
I
N considering the subject of female
education, it is necessary to take into account its
far-reaching tendency as influencing the welfare of a
future generation. Regarding education in general, in its
highest sense, as a preparation for life, it is necessary
to go back to the education of women; because if men are
the after teachers and trainers of children, mothers, or
women filling the place of mothers, will have been
before-hand with them in the task, and will have even
taught and trained the teachers themselves. This condition
of human life is absolute--that women have the care of
childhood, and that, during the period of childhood,
impressions are made, whether intentionally or not, which
often give to character a peculiar bias, such as may
influence the whole course of after life. Hence the
importance attaching to this subject, and the necessity for
its being thoroughly understood in its relation to the
well-being of society in general.
Having had my own
mind directed in an especial manner to the subject of
female education, and so
View page [376]
having had to look the difficulties involved in the whole
subject fairly in the face, both in their relations to man
and to society, there were other views of the true position
of women and their duties in social life, which presented
themselves as so strictly belonging to them simply as
women, that I have never yet been able to see how they can
fill their own place in life, and fill it well,
without a large amount of training
bestowed upon that part of their education which belongs to
the heart
. And after all, for what are women
intended, and for what ought they to be prepared? Men have
their appropriate place in creation, and women have theirs.
It is absurd to compare them as being superior or inferior
on either side; or to say that in one there is more mental
capability required than in the other. But it must still be
of a different order, and directed to different purposes,
otherwise the whole structure, the harmonious working, the
happiness and the beauty of our social constitution would
be destroyed.
If we look at woman herself, and
consider for what she is preparing, we see that the
requirements peculiar to her position are so
preëminently those which in their strength and
virtue emanate from her heart--from her sentiments and
affections as influenced by the principles which are rooted
in her heart--that it is difficult to understand how,
without the right cultivation of these, she can ever use to
any good purpose those masculine attainments which are now
considered so desirable for
View page [377]
her. It is more integrity of principle that is required in
many cases, rather than more learning; more bravery of
soul, more earnestness of purpose, more self-government,
and a higher estimate generally of what is great and just
and good, rather than more teaching in any branch of mere
intellectual attainment, however thoroughly such lessons
may be taught.
If a woman, by any process of
education, can be made to feel that all honest work is
noble just so far as it is pursued faithfully and with
worthy motives; that work need not necessarily and in
itself be vulgar or mean; that idleness is infinitely more
vulgar and meaner than such work can be; that integrity and
principle, as it constitutes the basis of right action and
true speech, is beyond all comparison more to be desired
than any thing which pleases only for a moment: if a woman
can be so educated as to be sent out into the world
thoroughly imbued with these and other sentiments of a
similar nature, she will fall in with the claims of duty
without any of those hesitations and discontents, which are
now attributed to her want of thoroughness in the different
branches of learning in which she is inferior to
men.
And besides increasing her own happiness, as
well as her own value in the world; besides rendering
available and welcome to her acceptance innumerable
opportunities for self-maintenance by the implanting of
these principles in her heart, we have to consider the
position of women in their
View page [378]
natural and inevitable relation to generations yet to come,
who in their turn will influence other generations to the
end of the world.
In looking thoughtfully around upon
a school of young ladies, it is almost impossible not to be
moved by some of those feelings which stirred in the mind
of Mrs. Hemans when she wrote her beautiful lines on a
"Girls' School at Prayer." Her own lot as a woman had not
been the happiest, and looking in idea far into their
future lives, she points, in her own peculiar manner, to
their probable experience as women.
"Her lot is on
you!--silent tears to weep
And patient
smiles to wear through suffering's hour,
And sunless
riches from affections deep
To pour on
broken reeds; a wasted shower.
* * * * * * *
*
"Her lot is on you!--to be found
untired
Watching the stars out by the
bed of pain,
With a pale cheek, and yet a brow
inspired
With a true heart of hope,
though hope be vain."
In the young
ladies' school we find every variety of active life, every
shade of incipient character, the delicate and fragile
form, and the robust and healthy. We find the girl whose
countenance is shadowed by mournful sentiment, but more
frequently the flashing eye, the glowing cheek, the eager
tread of buoyant feet; we find also the quick perception,
the sensitive touch, the ready speech, and the facile
adaptation of mind and manner to the excitement of the
moment. These and a thousand other phases of girlish life
present themselves,
View page [379]
and all
appear as if fluttering together without any definite
purpose. There may be good and noble purpose on the part of
those who have to direct, and those who have to teach; but
the end! When we consider
that
,
a strange transition of scene takes place, and we behold
one of these girls, perhaps the gayest, watching by the bed
of sickness or death. Another has orphan brothers and
sisters looking to her for guidance and support. Another
has her own nursery filled with rapidly advancing life and
strength. Another has the social claims of a large
household to meet with promptness and discretion. One has a
difficult temper to soothe; another a wild spirit to
restrain. All have their work, and none live for themselves
alone.
Out of the various destinations appointed by
God for these light, airy creatures, whom we have seen at
school, will flow a large portion of the happiness or the
misery, the good or the evil, of many lives besides their
own. From the early training of one will spring the
statesman, wise in council; or the philosopher, exact in
his conclusions; or the adventurer, far-reaching in his
objects of pursuit; or the minister of religion, eloquent
to persuade. And whether, in the achievements to which
these devote themselves, their work shall be established on
right principles or wrong, on truth or falsehood, will
depend very much upon the early basis given to their
characters by that young girl whose fingers we saw gliding
swiftly
View page [380]
over the strings of
her harp, by her who sat in the garden shade wreathing
herself with flowers, by her who sang the fairy song, or by
her who, wearied with the dance, fell asleep in a cloud of
her own dishevelled hair.
Also, to take a darker view
of the picture: the man of pleasure, once no worse than a
selfish boy; the gambler, once only the child who was fond
of any playful risk; the defrauder, once only weak in
resisting temptation, but subsequently the shame of his
country and the ruin of his home: these will all have
passed under the training hand, the watchful eye, and the
tender nurture, of some among those gay young girls whom we
saw so carelessly floating along the stream of life. Or, if
the training and the nurture have been wanting, the case is
no better. Neglect can do its work as well, or rather as
ill, as mistaken effort. If the care-taker of childhood
forgets to do her part, nature asserts her claim, and
passion and self-will seize the victim for their
own.
Besides these, there are the daughters of such
families to be considered, the sisters of such brothers,
the mothers of such sons, in a future generation. But no,
we will not believe it. Rather let us look forward to the
dawn of a happier day, when the education of the heart
shall keep pace with that of the head; and when women shall
faithfully maintain their legitimate place in the training
of youth, so as that one generation after another shall be
marked by greater dignity and
View page [381]
worth of character, and each, with God's
blessing, be more noble, happier, and better than the
last.
I would give the sum of my meaning in this
simple form: That women, from their natural tendencies of
thought and feeling, especially from those qualities which
we commonly describe as belonging to the
heart
, are admirably qualified
for conducting the education of the heart; that they are
fitted also by circumstances for carrying on this work,
because Providence has placed them, and only them, in that
close association with infancy and youth which is necessary
to the work being effectually done; and that they have,
within themselves, as women, a motive power which impels
them to some kind of heart work, and which makes them seek
and find their happiness in doing
it.
[Illustration : A decorative
illustration.]
View page [382]
[Illustration : A decorative
arch formed from a thin wooden frame entwined with
daisy-like flowers.]
II.
PREPARATION FOR LIFE.
[Illustration : A
decorative capital "E".]
E
DUCATION, when regarded as a true
preparation for life, is the noblest work to which human
effort can be devoted. It embraces so much, both in
relation to the present life and that which is to come,
that no human mind has ever been able to grasp its
far-reaching requirements, so as to convey to other minds
an adequate sense of what they really are.
Considered
as a matter of theory, it would be difficult to say what
there is of good or wise which education does not already
profess to teach. Considered practically, we find a fearful
want in what it does in the way of preparing for life, for
being and doing, as well as knowing; for this it is which
gives the true character to life--what people do, and what
they are in themselves, even more than what they understand
or know. As for example, a man may know very well what it
is right to do, but the choosing to do it is quite a
different matter. He may not like to do it. He may have no
motive power within himself sufficiently forcible to compel
or induce him to do it, and thus he may go on
View page [383]
to the end of a long life doing
wrong, and acting all the time against his knowledge of
what it is right to do.
Wrong doing is the
consequence of wrong being, of the heart being filled with
strong inclinations to do evil, while the inclination to do
right is feeble and defective. Perhaps it as frequently
arises from eagerness to seize a present pleasure, without
any consideration of right and wrong whatever, or any
thought of what the consequences may be. This is the pure
animal instinct by which thousands and tens of thousands of
human beings are actuated, until roused by some strong
impression or conviction to see their true position as
responsible beings.
We all know enough of society
under its worst aspects to be aware that this condition is
not incompatible with a considerable amount of knowledge,
that persons leading this kind of life can many of them
read and write, and are frequently not unacquainted with
the higher branches of learning. It is not, in reality, the
acquirement of any amount of knowledge which of itself
constitutes a true preparation for life.
But before
pursuing this subject farther, let us ask, What is the
nature of that life which has to be prepared for? What the
child must
be
in order to enter
upon this life prepared to meet its requirements, and what
he must be prepared to
do
in
order to maintain a worthy place among his fellow-men, are
questions which will naturally follow.
View page [384]
In regarding education as a
preparation for life, it is necessary to look into life as
it is--our social life as it is in the present day, and as
the child will find it. This life is no Arcadian scene of
quiet and repose, no state of pastoral simplicity, varied
only by the bleating of lambs and the song of birds. It is
no garden of Eden, without the serpent. The life which has
to be prepared for is full of the busy strife of men, the
interests of contending parties, the seeming good, the
lurking evil, the specious pretence, and the wrong so
countenanced that it ceases to be called wrong. Preparation
has to be made for the struggling together of thousands and
millions of human beings intent upon their own worldly
advancement, and careless about trampling down whatever
might impede their progress or hinder their success. We
have the love of money, or of that which money can procure,
ruling paramount over multitudes who throng the streets of
our towns and cities; and with this we have a frightful
recklessness in the choice of means, and a daring in
action, which too often mark the path of enterprise with
ruin and shame. This is one aspect of that life for which
education has to prepare in the present day.
But life
has other and widely different aspects. Happily for us and
the times in which we live, we have enterprise which is
generous and noble; we have our benevolent institutions,
our wise men, and noble women not a few, our useful
inventions, our wise arrangements, our works of charity,
and a vast
View page [385]
agency employed in
voluntary service for the good of their fellow-beings. We
have ever and anon the public and spirit-stirring advocacy
of what is right and just and true; and we have the quiet
working out in lower walks of usefulness of that high
estimate of duty which spares neither time nor means for
personal indulgence. We have a high sense of honor as the
support of our national dignity, and we have the faithful
upholding of God's holy word as the rule of life, with the
Christian ministration of his devoted servants for our
instruction and guidance. For this also education has to
prepare; and for both it has to prepare in such manner as
that the good shall be recognized and justly estimated,
while the evil shall be seen to be evil, and resolutely
rejected.
Were these two phases or elements of social
life distinctly separated the one from the other, so that a
child might see the difference, and know exactly where the
evil of one was bounded by the good of the other, the
difficulty of educating for such a condition would be
comparatively small. But unfortunately the real state of
the case is far otherwise; for there is not only a wide
border space where these two conditions meet and mix, but
in their separate departments one is apt to wear the
outward aspect of the other. Party feeling establishes its
own test of merit, conventional epithets are used instead
of truth, and thus the whole structure of society is thrown
into confusion, so as to present to the eye of a child very
little that is clearly
View page [386]
either
right or wrong. And yet education has to prepare the easily
impressed nature of youth for entering into life on these
conditions, for maintaining an upright walk in the midst of
this apparent confusion.
Not only so, but education
has so to prepare for life that the future shall be better
than the past. It is not enough that our youth should go on
in the beaten track which has hitherto been trod. We are
not satisfied with this in other departments of effort--in
our arts, our manufactures, or in any of those branches of
civilization which obtain for a nation and a people the
character of being prosperous or otherwise. We are not
altogether satisfied with this in the methods of teaching
what is already taught in our schools. As a nation, England
stands proudly forth as the advocate of improvement, of
progress, of all that tends to advancement, so that the
present may be better than the past, and the future better
still. Inspired by this laudable ambition, we ask for more
knowledge, and the demand is unquestionably wise and right.
But if we want more knowledge, we want more principle to
use it well. If we want higher teaching, we want better men
and women. We want firmer foundation for right conduct,
purer aims, and more undeviating rectitude of character
generally; and we want this not
negatively
, just in the way of
avoiding evil, but
positively
,
in the way of loving and attaining good.
Either we
are some of us much mistaken as to
View page [387]
what the requirements of life, such as
we find it, really are, or there is a large portion of
necessary preparation left out of our ordinary methods of
educating youth. Or if not entirely left out, in what way
are these requirements provided for with any thing like the
earnestness, directness, and perseverance which are applied
to the teaching of a language, a rule in arithmetic, or a
fact in history?
Let us consider, for a moment, what
some of these requirements are. We are told continually,
that life is a warfare, consequently we want firmness and
bravery to meet the conflict. We are told that life has
golden opportunities, which, if neglected, may never occur
again; consequently we want the habit of doing right
consistently and on principle, in order that we may be
ready at any moment to seize these opportunities, and turn
them to the best account. We are told that we must expect
disappointment and trouble to attend on every stage of our
earthly career, and for these we want patience and
fortitude. On the other hand, we know that in life we shall
also find much to enjoy, consequently we want
self-government and moderation; we know that a seeming
happiness will often present itself as real, or a real
happiness which is not for us, and for this, as indeed for
all things, we want the power of self-denial, with a
well-disciplined resoluteness of will; we know that life
has duties to be discharged requiring kindness,
forbearance, and brotherly love, requiring also strong
View page [388]
faith, earnestness of purpose, and
devotedness of soul; we know that the highest and noblest
attainments of life are far-reaching in their influence,
and that to live, in the true sense of living, is to
diffuse life, to impart vitality and strength to the lives
of others.
To prepare for life at its best, even as
regards the present state of existence, is indeed a great
and noble undertaking; but when we stretch our view beyond,
we see that all this vanishes into insignificance and
uncertainty in comparison with the profounder interest and
loftier purpose of preparing for a life of never-ending
duration. Limited by the concerns of the present only, the
spectacle of human existence presents a scene of
incomprehensible confusion, and of mystery beyond our
finite powers to solve; but regarded in its relation to
eternity, we behold a completeness and harmony, in
preparing for which the education of the heart must form an
essential part, not to be left out without infinite
loss.
But in order to prepare for life generally, and
on an expansive scale, it is not in isolated instances only
that this great work can be done. All good, if really good,
is diffusive, widely extended; and when so cultivated and
encouraged as to pervade society through its various
branches, its modes of operation will be multiplied, and
its value increased, in a ratio beyond all power of
calculation. Here then we want the preparation for
serviceable action of all those greater, nobler, and purer
attributes of
View page [389]
being which
lift a people or a nation up to a loftier sphere of
intelligence, and a nobler range of action, than can ever
be attained without these sentiments or emotions being not
only alive, but vigorous, strong, and healthy within the
heart.
We think it much when the execution of work is
cultivated to perfection in the case of any single
individual, or amongst any class. But when, for one man who
works well, there are thousands who can appreciate good
work at its best, and who will not tolerate bad work, then
society as a whole is really benefited in a greater degree
than by the one skilful artificer, however excellent his
work may be. We think it much to have painting and music
and literature cultivated among us, so that we may boast of
our works of art, our scientific inventions and
discoveries, our poems, novels, essays, and histories; but
the taste to estimate and the feeling to value such works,
the imagination to conceive, the emotions of soul fully to
enjoy, the enlightened understanding to follow out the
moral as well as the physical results of this high order of
intelligence--these, when diffused amongst the people, are
really the influences by which a nation is refined and
exalted.
Considerations of this kind might be
extended to our religious observances, showing how the
technicalities of church and chapel, the popular estimate
of a favorite preacher, and other religious fashions of our
day, tend to magnify the details of that which is external
and palpable, to the neglect
View page [390]
of the spiritual, or of that which exists within the heart,
influencing its affections and emotions. But as my simple
object is to speak of education, and of woman's part in it
especially, I would rather leave these subjects to those
who are better able to treat them worthily. My direct
purpose is to show that, in order to education being made
what it ought to be--a preparation for life--we have not
only to cultivate the understanding and store it with
knowledge, as we do now; but so to improve the whole range
of human feeling, motive, and conception, in fact so to
raise the entire character, as that life itself shall be
exalted and made purer and happier.
So far from the
utmost cultivation of these powers and faculties tending in
any way to self-exaltation, or even to too much confidence
in human instrumentality, it seems to me that the tendency
must be rather towards that humility of soul which befits
the creature in the presence of the Creator--humility as
the possessor only, and for a short period of time, of a
sacred trust, for which an account has to be rendered to
the Divine Giver. Education has to prepare the highest
portion of human nature for reaching up to its true height,
for maintaining its just position, and all for best
following out the purposes for which they were intended,
amidst the contending influences of the life by which we
are surrounded, and in the midst of which we have to
live.
An awful, but at the same time an
encouraging
View page [391]
and exalted
thought must be ever present to the mind of the Christian
educator: that none of the best pains bestowed upon a child
need be lost; that the higher the range of faculties
brought under cultivation in this life, the closer is their
assimilation to those which we believe to exist in a state
of perfect blessedness beyond the grave; that it is in fact
for eternity the child is being prepared, and that to make
the best of both worlds is really to carry out the Divine
purpose in placing us where we are.
But who is
sufficient for these things? Surely there never was a time
demanding more urgently than ours, that the parents of
families should ponder thoughtfully what is their part in
the preparation of their children for life, their part in
the establishment of a firmer basis of character, so that
it may be founded on principle as on a rock which none of
the vicissitudes of time can shake. And what enterprise can
be more noble or more spirit-stirring than this? We hear
much of the supply of our commerce, of competition in the
market, and of the best manufactured articles. Would to God
that we could hear as much of demand for the noblest and
the best in human character! Then there would be hope that
education would assume its legitimate place in the general
improvement of mankind.
In the meantime, there is
heavy responsibility resting on parents. It can, however,
scarcely be expected of the father that his line of
activity or
View page [392]
enterprise
should take this direction. The claims of business, the
customs of life as it is, require his utmost attention
elsewhere, at the counter, the desk, the committee-room, or
perhaps at the port of some distant country. He has no time
to prepare his children for life, no energy of thought or
action to bestow upon their education. How should
he?
How should he? Why, here is a new plan for the
prevention of crime submitted to his consideration, and he
has to consult about that. Or here is a newly-invented
lock, which no burglar can break, brought for him to
examine. Or here is a case of fraud which he has to pass
judgment upon. Or here is a whole family of debtor's
children, and he has to contrive how they can be
maintained. Here is something wrong in his own
counting-house, and he has his clerks to watch; or
something still worse with his agent abroad, and he has to
institute inquiries. Worse than all, here is the bad
conduct of his own son to consider--letters of complaint
from his employer! It is clear that the man is too busy
dealing with the results of those moral diseases which
afflict society, to have either time or attention to bestow
upon the means of their prevention. And so, it seems to me,
the whole force of social effort and social power is given
to the
end
instead of the
beginning
, until that frequent
expression, "the prevention of crime," has come to be
considered by us as a system of locks and bars, of
watching, detecting, and punishing
View page [393]
with the utmost rigor of the law; until
even the poor suicidal maniac has to be blocked out from
drowning by securing the banks of the river! Does it never
occur to an enlightened public, whose agents employed in
the detection of crime are almost driven to distraction,
that all these things come from within, and are only to be
effectually prevented by causes which operate within; which
operate especially upon motive and desire, upon passion and
inclination, and in short upon those impulses producing
action which originate in the heart?
We are told that
an enlightened public does know this perfectly well, and
that, in consequence of such knowledge, one portion of it,
understood to be the most enlightened, is demanding
earnestly that education should be more liberally granted
to the people, and more extensively diffused; that
especially among the working classes there should be more
reading and writing, arithmetic and what not. So far so
good; but what have any of these attainments to do with the
case in point? How do they reach or affect those
inclinations, desires, and passions which belong to the
heart, and which are immediately stimulated by such
temptations as the conditions of life, under its worst
aspects, supply only too liberally?
It is clear that
the motive power which impels to action is that which
especially requires to be operated upon, so as to prepare
for life. Whence, in fact, do the actions of a person come?
Do they spring out of his knowledge? His knowledge may
View page [394]
help his to act--it may even supply the
means--but the origin of his act, the way he
chooses
to go through life, and
especially the purposes to which he gives himself by
inclination, will have their root and strength and vital
power in his heart. This, then, is that portion of human
nature which requires especially to be brought under the
discipline of education, in order to constitute a true
preparation for life.
I say
especially;
for the education of the
heart has been so long neglected, and so little thought of,
as not in any way to have kept pace with that sharpening of
the intellect, that multiplying of resources, and that
general increase of the occasions for temptation which are
supplied by a highly civilized condition of
society.
To those who have been accustomed to study
human character from the earliest development of its
tendencies, it is astonishing that this branch of education
should have received so little attention as has
unfortunately been the case. Indeed, it is almost
impossible to believe that any serious-minded person should
trifle with it, should treat it with disrespect, or pass it
over as only a thing by the way. Rather, one could suppose
that the wisest and the best of human beings would unite to
devise some plan by which education generally might be
brought to bear with more weight, and with better
influence, upon that portion of life and character out of
which spring motives and desires, and consequently
action.
View page [395]
It is true the
subject has difficulties, but ours is an age for overcoming
difficulty--an age in which so much is actually
accomplished which seemed a short time ago impossible, that
there can be no ground for discouragement in any case where
the cause is a good one, and the agency efficient and
available. We cannot doubt that a large number of
intelligent women are available for good and noble work,
nor can we doubt that among these many are efficient, or if
not so at first, that nothing is required on their part to
make them so but a little attention to the subject, given
in an unprejudiced and liberal spirit. The true adaptation
to the work to be done must come from the woman's own
heart, from her warm sympathies and kindly affections, and
from her clear perceptions and earnest love of what is
right.
There are many women endowed by nature--I
would rather say, by the peculiar gift of God--with
perceptions of this kind so quick and sure that they see,
in a manner which is surprising to others, at once where a
thing is wrong and must not be done, or on the other hand,
where a thing is right and
must be done
at any cost
. These are the women who obtain an
unconscious influence over their families and households,
such as to give them important positions in society far
beyond what their talents would have obtained for them
intellectually. We are apt to attribute this influence to
good sense, or good judgment, and in part it may be so; but
I believe that such women more frequently feel
View page [396]
strongly before they judge rightly, and
that the high, clear tone of their far-reaching moral sense
enables them to judge rightly at once.
I am not
speaking of an altogether undisciplined moral sense, nor as
if unaided nature could thus direct with certainty to what
is right; but of those instances in which the natural tone
of mind and feeling is such as to have been readily, though
it may have been secretly, reached by the higher influences
of that Spirit whose office it is to show us what is right
and true. The world, with its conflicting claims upon the
attention, does much to darken and confuse these
perceptions. We have already observed how men, especially
when they set themselves to improve the world, are chiefly
employed in restraining and preventing the outward
manifestations of criminal desire; and it is scarcely less
hopeless to see enlightened people, both men and women,
advocating that remedy which has so long been applied,
namely, education of the intellect. Another class of
persons speak only of conversion as having any power over
the heart. And perhaps, with regard to these, I ought to
explain my meaning more clearly in the outset, lest my
remarks should be cast aside as religiously unsound and
untrue.
Let me explain, then, thus early, that by a
right preparation for life I understand a preparation for
meeting the requirements of our social condition with
uprightness, sincerity, and general good-will. And as it
seems to me that society in the present
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day, especially in connection with money
and business matters, is greatly in want of more integrity,
uprightness, and truth in its general transactions: I would
speak of these as good in themselves, irrespective of
religion under any form; good, as they enable mankind to
believe in one another, to intrust their property and
commit their interests to the faithful keeping of one
another, and in all the ordinary concerns of life to mix
closely with their fellow-beings, without suspicion on the
one hand or fraud on the other. I am here speaking of the
cultivation of this high tone of feeling as being more or
less under the power of the educator, and as being at least
as well worthy of close and earnest attention, so as to
train the feelings aright, as any of the intellectual
powers are of being trained.
Preparing for life
religiously, or with single reference to eternity is a
different matter, only that where the educator is imbued
with the true sense of its importance, and has her own
heart brought under the influence of religion, she will see
no good issue, and find no delight in any kind of education
which is not religiously conducted; and in the sphere of
duty which I am proposing, she will have the satisfaction
of feeling that the very qualities of heart which she
undertakes to cultivate are those which, under the
influence of God's own Spirit, ripen into Christian graces,
such as love, pity, gratitude, patience in suffering,
bravery in maintaining a good cause, and many others yet to
be specified.
View page [398]
These I am not
about to speak of as saving the soul, but as adorning the
Christian character, and as being necessary to the peace,
comfort, and general good of society.
It may be said
that already these
are
attended
to in our educational establishments, as well as at home.
No doubt they are, but not
especially
as bearing any direct
relation to the life which has to be prepared for, nor as
filling any very important place in its requirements. In
short, they are not treated with any thing like the same
care and attention in their culture as Latin is treated, or
Greek, or any other of those branches of attainment usually
regarded as making up a good education.
Many persons
also satisfy themselves with the idea that the true
preparation for life takes place at school. But looking at
the matter in the light in which I have endeavored to place
it, we see that very little can be done in this way at
school and by strangers, in comparison with what can be
done at home. The routine of school teaching, applied as it
is almost exclusively to the acquirement of knowledge,
leaves very little time or opportunity for the cultivation
of the heart. Besides which, all those processes which
materially affect the desires and affections must
necessarily be slow, if they are to be sure and lasting in
result. And again, who asks for these, except casually and
by the way? Children at school are also necessarily treated
in the mass, or divided into classes, each
View page [399]
class being marked by intellectual
distinction, and by no other. But parents have
opportunities of becoming acquainted with the individual
character of each particular child. They know that to
endeavor to force one to be like another, even in the same
family and household, would be waste of effort, and
absolute folly. One, it may be, is self-sustained, bold,
free, and careless of praise and blame. Another is
sensitive, timid, liable to suffer severely under
condemnation, and unreasonably excited by praise. One is
revengeful, another forgiving. One delights in enterprise,
another likes to sit still and feel safe. In a thousand
ways the children of one family may differ from each other,
and yet all have to be prepared for life as it
is.
Nor is this study of character, in order to the
adaptation of appropriate means of preparation to each, by
any means the least important portion of the educator's
task. Frederika Bremer, whose life-long study was that of
human character, has this remark in one of her letters: "It
is not a new but a true thought, that everybody ought to
endeavor thoroughly to know the intrinsic worth of his own
character, and like a skilful sculptor, to form, work, and
polish it, until the rough cast made by nature stands out
in harmonious beauty." And if this be true of self-culture,
it is equally true when the work of preparation for life
has to be done in its early stages by another. If at the
same time the child can be taught to know itself, it will
become instructed in one of the most important branches
View page [400]
of knowledge which can ever come
under its consideration.
In the pursuit of this
knowledge discovery will sometimes be made of talents and
capabilities worthy of the highest order of training, as
being calculated for eminent usefulness to mankind. But
there need be no fear under the care of a judicious mother
that, where this discovery is made, a too exalted estimate
of self should be the consequence. There is much more cause
to fear the effect upon the character of a child when
placed under a system of continual depression. Nothing can
be worse for a child--nothing, perhaps, can be worse for a
human being, either young or old, than to feel
degraded--debased. It is not our original nature that we
have to blush for, but the neglect, the perversion, the
wrong use of the faculties which God has given us. To feel
within ourselves that we are worth improving and capable of
being made better, is a great help in our efforts to attain
what is high and good. In this, the true secret of moral
progress, no human theory, however exalted, has been able
to reach the springs of human feeling as they have been
reached by the divine plan of salvation, showing how man
was regarded by his Creator as being worth saving, and at
what a cost!
In pursuing this subject we see how
necessary it is that individual character should be clearly
understood in order to a true preparation for life; and we
see also that no human being has opportunity and power to
understand a child in an equal
View page [401]
degree with the mother. We see that life
has to be prepared for, not by a system of acquiring
knowledge alone, but by the discipline, culture, and
training of the desires and affections of the heart; and
here also the mother has advantages, natural and derived
from circumstances, such as no one else can
enjoy.
[Illustration : A triangle-shaped
decorative
illustration.]
View page [402]
[Illustration : A decorative
arch formed from a thin wooden frame entwined with vines
and oddly-shaped leaves.]
III.
GOOD PRINCIPLE.
[Illustration : A decorative
capital "T".]
T
HERE are two opposite ways of looking at
human life: from the beginning, and from the end of the
journey. The mother is apt to look perhaps a little too
exclusively at the former, and from that onwards. A
stranger, by looking back, may sometimes see more clearly
what have been the causes of stumbling in the outset, or of
shortcoming toward the end. The mother sees only what is
lovely and hopeful in her child. In its innocence she
delights her soul; and even as character begins to be
developed there is so little real harm in anything a child
can do, that its very naughtiness excites laughter more
than fear. For a long time this pleasant state of things is
apt to continue, and it seems unkind to wish it otherwise.
But the stranger who knows nothing of the childhood of
certain individuals, only their after career, and looking
back from the end, is often painfully convinced that there
has been a want somewhere, perhaps very early in life, a
want of something in the training of the child, which we
call
principle
.
But what
is principle? For there may be bad
View page [403]
principles, as well as good. Principle,
in its relation to human character, is generally understood
to mean a certain motive, or class of motives, so deeply
rooted in the heart, and so habitually acted upon, that
they become as it were the basis of that character,
governing its actions in general, and giving to it the
essential peculiarities by which it is known and
understood. Such principles may not always show themselves
in outward conduct. The principle of selfishness, for
example, may conceal itself under an outward robe of
generosity; or the principle of benevolence may demand an
outward appearance of self-denial which looks like the
stinginess of a miser. A close and lengthened acquaintance
is generally required for the right understanding of a
person's principles. But they show themselves very clearly
in the long run, and stamp the character with marks of good
or evil so definite that no one can be mistaken as to the
principles by which a life, or even any considerable
portion of a life, has been governed.
Indeed,
principle requires time to mature it into anything worthy
of the name. A little child cannot be said to have
principle of any kind. Neither is mere habit principle. Nor
has caprice or sudden impulse anything to do with
principle. There is no principle in acting from generosity
one day, and from selfishness the next. There is no
principle even in doing right when the motive is mere
time-serving or expediency.
In the cultivation or
establishment of principle
View page [404]
as
a basis of conduct, the mistake is often made of accepting
habit for principle. Good habits are without doubt the
result or outgrowth of good principle; but there may
sometimes be good habits without any principle whatever, or
only a very faint and vague principle in the persons who
adopt and fall in with such habits. We ought not however
for this reason, or under any circumstances, to undervalue
the importance of good habits as such. Many respectable
persons have been kept so through life by the influence of
good habits. Many a youth has been preserved from ruin by
the good habits of his home. The good habits of society are
like a wall of safety protecting the young and old. The
good habits of a community are essential to its
prosperity.
Still habit is not principle, although,
as already said, wherever there is good principle there
will be good habits to a greater or less extent, and
vice versa
. Principle is
something which lies deeper than habit. It is something
which remains solid and unshaken when the routine of habit
has been disturbed, or even swept away. A long course of
habit may sometimes be accidentally interrupted, and then,
where there has been no principle for its foundation, its
hold upon the character is altogether lost. A broken habit
will sometimes leave us to float away, as the strands of a
shattered cable separate and leave the vessel they were
meant to hold to dash itself upon the rocks.
But
principle when once established remains
View page [405]
after habit has failed, and holds good
under all circumstances. The boy who goes forth into the
world well grounded in principle may commit many errors in
conduct, but he will see that they are errors. He may for
awhile even cast himself into the ways of sin as well as
folly, but he will know that he is sinning, and will hate
and loathe the act while committing it; and if his
principles have the higher tone and reach of religion to
give them vitality and depth, he will know no peace of mind
until he comes back a repentant prodigal to his father's
heart, his father's home, and to the principles which
should have kept him kept him there.
In our endeavors
to establish right principle as the basis of character, we
are misled by many obvious facts which, for want of proper
consideration, sometimes baffle our efforts, and so defeat
our aims; we find, for example, that even in the youngest
child there are motives so strong and so consistently
persevered in that, unless counteracted or over-borne by
other motives, they will inevitably grow into principle.
Self-love is one of these. The Author of our being has
implanted this in the very nature of the child for purposes
of self-preservation, self-providing, and so far it is
good. No other motive is either so strong or so
consistently acted upon as this; and there are others not
very dissimilar, all perfectly right and legitimate in the
child, but which, if allowed to grow with its growth and
strengthen with its strength, will become alike odious in
its own character and injurious to society. These
View page [406]
motives, passions, or
tendencies being natural and inherent in the child, nay, at
one time absolutely right, cannot be exorcised when they
become dangerous, like the evil spirits of old. Indeed, it
is more than probable that, on mature reflection, we shall
find them capable of being turned to good account under
wise government, or in other words, made useful as
servants, when as masters they would produce only ruin and
disaster. Such is a strong will, generally treated as
obstinacy, treated as a thing to be utterly rooted out and
destroyed, instead of being led gently by a careful hand,
and so brought under other influences as to be trained into
useful perseverance or noble resolution.
In the
apostolic injunction to "overcome evil with good" we find a
true and simple statement of what has to be done in the
education of the heart, and in nothing is this more
emphatically true than in the establishment of good
principles for the government of life. The character of a
child is however so plastic, and its convictions for some
time so vague, that the word
establish
seems scarcely to apply to
the matter under consideration. Some mode of instilling
good principles however must be adopted, before they can
become the basis of character. This mode can only be such
as will make the child both
admire
and
love
that which is commended to its
adoption. There must not only be something to avoid set
before it, but something on the other hand, to embrace, to
love, to hold by, as for life. It must not only hate a lie,
but must absolutely
love
View page [407]
the truth; and thus it must be
through the whole range of those motives for action which
emanate from good principle. By teaching a child only to
avoid
we teach negatively, and
that is doing only half our work, or rather it is doing
less than half. It is simply endeavoring to put down the
evil, whereas our work, and a glorious work it is to be
engaged in, should be to overcome evil with good.
And
yet there is perhaps no great work to which human effort
has been more blindly directed than to this. Many suppose
that advice, reproof, and punishment are all that is
required for the establishment of good principles. While
freely acknowledging the necessity of judicious advice, I
think we are many of us prepared to admit that advice
may be
so administered as to
render it odious and repulsive. Reproof, too,
may
be so conveyed as to sound
very much like the expression of ill temper; while
punishment has an effect upon children very much more like
hate than love; and we know that repulsion tends to
avoidance, that ill temper calls up ill temper, and that
passion excites passion. What then are we doing? It may be,
I do not say it
is
, that we are
awakening feelings of hatred and anger, sometimes, perhaps,
even a determination to rebel and to be avenged, when that
which we really wanted to effect was to make the child
love
to do right.
In cases
of obstinacy the treatment is usually such as to make the
child more obstinate. Resistence sets itself in opposition
to mastery; force rises
View page [408]
against force, and thus the strength of a naturally strong
will is increased by opposition. Hence many of those
distracting conflicts which so disturb the peace of the
nursery, when the frantic exclamation, "You wicked boy!" or
"You naughty girl!" announces but too plainly that victory
is on the side of the child.
And yet the parent
must
have and hold the real
mastery, or worse than confusion will ensue. It must,
however, be a very different kind of mastery from that
which is obtained by fighting. It must be a mastery which
is felt and recognized on both sides; felt cheerfully, and
recognized with willing obedience by the child; maintained
by the parent as a sacred and inalienable right. Here then
we find called into exercise the principle of obedience to
lawful authority and rule. This may be said to be the first
good principle of which the child is capable, and it is one
of great importance in relation to after life.
In
this case, as in too many others, the whole matter is
thrown into confusion by the readiness of parents and
teachers to accept low motives instead of high, false
principles instead of true. The love of pleasing is a very
amiable motive, and the maintenance of peace is a good
object to pursue; but neither of these is safe as a
principle of conduct, because the child in after life may
be led to please by doing what is wrong, and to maintain
peace where there should be no peace. In these, and many
other cases, where the end and not the means
View page [409]
is all that is considered, there is no
good principle, nothing to build a sterling character upon,
so that its foundation will not be shaken by changing
circumstances. The right action for the moment may possibly
be produced by those means; but the motive being mean or
false, and as such being often repeated, it will strengthen
into wrong principle; and thus, in after life and under
different circumstances, will be likely to produce conduct
the very opposite to that which the shortsighted teacher or
trainer rejoiced over in the child.
But besides what
is false or mean, we find occasionally inducements which
are absolutely
bad
presented to
the child as motives for
good
conduct, and this quite unconsciously, sometimes by
well-meaning mothers. In order to show the operation of
this mode of treatment, it is necessary to adduce instances
apparently so trivial that possibly they may fail to excite
attention; and yet it is in the frequent repetition of such
apparent trifles that the real mischief lies; while, on the
other hand, it is to the frequent application of an
opposite mode of treatment in the common affairs of daily
life that we must look for the establishment of good
principles, so as to make them influential in the
government of life.
As a very simple illustration,
let us imagine a mother whose son has just begun to compete
with other boys at school. He is an idle boy, and does not
like the trouble of learning his lessons well. The
consequence is, he finds his place low down in
View page [410]
the class, and day by day comes home
with mortified vanity and irritated temper, especially
against one particular boy, who, although ranking beneath
him out of school, keeps always above him in the class. The
mother, whose moral sense is low, and who consequently
thinks little about principle, endeavors to stimulate her
boy to greater industry by working upon his envy or his
hate. She tells him, with scorn, that, were she in his
place, she would never be beaten by
that
boy, a lowborn fellow! whose
father was once a workman, and whose mother a village
schoolmistress, and whose sole endeavor is to put him, her
darling, down, to ride over him, and disgrace him before
the other boys. The mother in all this only wants to spur
on her child so that he may conquer his indolence, and take
an honorable place among his companions. The end she aims
at is right and laudable, but the means she employs are
mean and bad; in fact, the opposite of such as promote good
principle.
A mother of a higher order of moral
character, if placed under the same circumstances, will
understand that while it is wrong to be idle, and may be
ruinous to the prospects of her son to fill a low place in
the school and to be backward in his learning altogether,
yet it is equally bad, nay, worse, that he should grow up
envious and spiteful; and therefore in her treatment of the
case she has recourse to stimulus of a different kind. Such
a mother would freely acknowledge to the mortified and
irritated boy, coming home with vengeance on his lips
View page [411]
against his rival, that there
was deep humiliation in his case. She would probably say to
him, "It
is
mortifying and
vexatious to be so beaten; but I dare say that boy studies
hard at home. No doubt his parents take care that he shall
have time and opportunity for learning his lessons well
before he goes to school; but the great thing must be that
he is himself industrious and persevering. Now try what you
also can do for yourself. We will do what we can for you,
and I wish I could do more; but you know the resolution,
the effort, and the labor must all be your own, if you
really wish to succeed. It is of very little consequence to
you what other boys may do, but it is of immense
consequence what you do yourself."
By the constant
recurrence in familiar matters of this kind to motives
which are high or low, noble or mean, good or bad,
character is formed upon a corresponding scale. Only there
is always this fact to be kept in mind, that any
impressions which we desire to make, or bias which we
desire to give in favor of what is good and right, must be
associated in the mind and the memory of the child with
what is agreeable, so far, at least, as to be encouraging
and kind.
In the religious teaching of youth that is
best remembered, and most valued, which is associated with
agreeable impressions made upon the mind at the time of
instruction, impressions of love and tenderness,
impressions of a happy home, and of general cheerfulness
and contentment; so it is of
View page [412]
the utmost importance that good principles should be
introduced and impressed under the same favorable
circumstances. The application of epithets of anger and
blame, of threats, or other deterrents, employed against
wrong doing, will never, as already observed, make a child
desire to do right. It may in this manner be made to desire
to avoid the blame and escape the punishment of doing
wrong; but that is a very different matter from receiving
into its heart, and holding it there, that strong sound
principle which will make it, under all circumstances,
"abhor that which is evil, and cleave to that which is
good."
In the great work of instilling and implanting
principle there is perhaps no influence so powerful as
consistent example. In vain would a mother, in whom her
child had detected a falsehood, endeavor to impress upon
its mind the importance and value of truth. In vain would
the mother, who should exhibit before her children an
unforgiving or revengeful spirit, endeavor to inspire in
them a true admiration for Christian charity. But on the
contrary, where truth is reverenced at home, where charity
is the prevailing spirit shown in the simple affairs of
every day, and especially when it forms a prominent and
lovely feature in the mother's own character, her children,
habitually living in and breathing an atmosphere of truth
and charity, will grow up with characters formed upon this
basis, and to them it will become principle.
This
teaching of principle is necessarily a work
View page [413]
of time, and it requires to be
consistently carried on. The same class of principles must
be referred to as motives for conduct day by day and hour
by hour, not one kind under especial circumstances, and
their opposites when the case is different. It is this
inconsistency in ourselves which I think, for the most
part, defeats the object of those who really value good
principle, and desire that it should be established in the
character of the young.
In the present day we have
another, and an almost insuperable difficulty in the way of
bringing about any improved mode of education likely to
operate upon the heart so as to promote the growth of good
principle. By the public in general there is very little
attention now given to any mode of social improvement which
does not and cannot make an open demonstration of itself in
some way or other. In order to catch the attention of the
public, or in other words, to obtain help from public
feeling or opinion, we must have large organizations,
institutions, meetings, presidents, committees, and other
agencies of a similar kind. The thing must be done as it
were by a stroke of popular impulse and power. Public
opinion seems to be entirely on the side of such movements
in the present day, and there is no power so influential
upon human conduct as public opinion. Public opinion can so
exalt any given subject or topic before society at large
that the feeblest speech ever spoken, or the meanest book
devoted to that subject, shall not be without applause;
while the noblest utterance,
View page [414]
either spoken or written, on a subject which public opinion
has not taken up, is simply ignored. It is the case in
point, much more than any argument or expression which in
the first instance attracts attention, and where this has
no hold upon the public the speech is not listened to, and
the book is never opened.
If however, any amount of
popularity, ever so large or liberal, could be awakened in
favor of the education of the heart, the work itself would
still have to be done in secret, slowly, carefully, and
with progress advancing only step by step, so as to be
almost imperceptible to the mere observer. It is impossible
that so great a work should be done in a day, or by any
master-stroke. Nothing either great or good was ever done
by sleight of hand.
Time and patience and careful
study of human nature are necessary for the accomplishment
of this task. And, do what we may, we have still to wait
even here for the slow operations of nature; for it must
never be forgotten that in education we can only work
effectually with nature for our willing handmaid.
We
have to keep always before us what are called natural laws,
as much in dealing with the elements of mind and heart, as
in dealing with those of matter. In all our attainments of
excellence in material things we have to wait for the slow
processes of nature. Our manufactures, dashed off as they
are eventually with fire and steam, the whirl of busy
wheels, and the clatter of human as well as other
View page [415]
agency, have had to wait for the
growth of a simple plant far away in distant lands, or the
birth of a helpless lamb upon the hills, or the minute and
delicate preparation of an almost invisible thread by a
small and silent worm.
The manner, also, in which all
that man works in and with so rapidly, has been provided
for his use, is not only slow, as all operations of nature
reaching up to perfection are; but it has been secret,
silent, subject to influences scarcely perceptible, though
operating again and again so as to produce consistency of
effort. The oak with which man builds his boasted
structures requires a hundred years of time to mature. It
has required also the summers and the winters of all those
years, the dew by night, the light by day, the rain from
the clouds, and the nourishment from the earth--all these,
with thousands of other agencies combining to one end, have
been at work to produce the perfect tree. And thus it is
throughout the whole realm of nature. Its convulsions are
sudden and destructive, but its growth towards maturity and
perfection is always slow, and most surely so where the end
is one requiring stability, firmness, and
strength.
If we can wait patiently for the products
of nature in our material operations, surely we may wait
and have patience when cultivating good principles in the
heart. The mother has infinite patience with the tender
body of her newborn child. She does not require of the
little rosy feet that they shall walk steadily at once, nor
of the hands that they shall
View page [416]
work. Through days, and months, and years, she watches the
progress to maturity of this exquisite and beautiful piece
of living machinery which has been committed to her charge.
Throughout all animal nature the maternal instinct seems to
dictate this patient waiting, with something like a leaning
to excess on the side of tenderness; as if Providence had
so ordered it in mercy to the weakness of youth, that the
mother at least should not require too much, nor any thing
too soon.
The mother, in training and cherishing the
body of her child, endeavors to concentrate all favorable
influences upon the one object of its healthy growth and
general welfare. For this purpose she adapts its sustenance
to the requirements of every day; its clothing, its sleep,
its attendants, and general circumstances are so studied
and arranged as to make them conducive to this object. The
means are various, but the end is the same. And when the
mind begins to dawn upon the mother's quick perceptions, it
only renders her interest the more intense. But still she
waits, and is content to wait; perhaps knowing better than
any other teacher or trainer can know, how little the
infant mind is capable of receiving at once. And here also
the judicious mother follows out the slow process of nature
by bringing in a variety of influences calculated to
invigorate as well as to excite the thinking powers of her
child, rather than urging them forward in any definite or
persistent course.
In the next stage of training and
instruction we
View page [417]
see, perhaps
even more clearly, the exercise of patience in the choice
of means and in the waiting for results. The wise teacher
is willing to wait. But while he does so, he brings in a
multitude of combining influences tending to the
completeness of education so far as it relates to the
intellect. Interesting lessons are given in which history
and geography are combined, sciences are taught in their
relation to other sciences, and the whole range of
instruction for the head, when of the highest order and
conducted in a liberal and enlightened spirit, is made to
consist of knowledge derived from an endless variety of
sources, yet all adapted, as by the slow processes of
nature, to promote the health, strength, and general
capability of the mind, so as to render its impressions
lasting, its convictions sure, and its powers efficient for
usefulness in future.
Thus in all our intellectual
attainments, and in all those operations carried on in
youth, which combine to make up the sum of what we
understand by general intelligence, we see that time and
patience and careful study are required; we see also that
the bringing in of mental food from innumerable sources,
all contributing to the nourishment and health of the mind,
is perhaps the most essential part of education in its
application to the intellect. In the range of science,
every part, however trifling in itself, which tends to the
establishment of some important truth, or to make manifest
some law of nature, is laid hold of with eagerness and
brought to serve this purpose. Nothing, in fact, is too
small, from
View page [418]
the particles of
dust thrown up by a volcano, to the structure of a
sea-shell, a flower, or a butterfly's wing. The whole realm
of nature is explored and examined for this end. With the
mere philosopher it is enough that the search is for simple
truth; while the philosopher, who is also a Christian, goes
beyond and reaches up to higher truths, which he regards as
being elucidated and confirmed by these.
If then the
highest order of intelligence, that of the Christian
philosopher, admits of these aids, searches for them
diligently, waits patiently for their manifestation, and
accepts them gratefully, wherever they are found--if he can
endure the lapse of time for the development of truth, and
derive encouragement from every fresh discovery in nature,
every new invention in art, and every adaptation of means
to ends in the great march of civilization--surely we ought
to be equally earnest to pursue, equally patient to wait
for, and equally industrious to carry forward to perfection
that work which has the social improvement and the general
welfare of society for its direct object.
I am the
more anxious to point out the relation between the laws of
nature, as operating by slow processes upon matter, and
those which operate in the formation of character, because,
before entering upon the mere practical details of my
subject, I have honestly to confess that they will
necessarily appear very small in comparison with the
results anticipated, and small especially when placed
singly beside any of those great exhibitions of the
mastery
View page [419]
of mind over matter
which we are accustomed to speak of as the glory of our
age. In the midst of the great stir and activity of human
life, as its affairs are now carried on, it appears almost
puerile to enter minutely into the elements of character as
it commences and takes its definite course in the
experience of a little child. My apology must be a strong
conviction that something must be done, and indeed will be
done before long, more effectually than has yet been the
case, towards the establishment of good principle as a
basis of character.
In looking at the subject very
earnestly, and for a great length of time, I have been
forcibly struck with the fact, that in order to effect any
material change in human conduct in this respect we must
begin as soon as possible at the beginning, and hence we
must begin with small things, such as can only be treated
successfully by the mother herself, such as
can
be treated successfully by
her, because she has the requisite essential to
success--skill and tenderness in the working, with desires
beyond what any other heart can feel, that her efforts may
not be in vain.
View page [420]
[Illustration : A decorative
arch formed from a thin wooden frame entwined with
grapevines.]
IV.
THE
MOTHER.
[Illustration : A decorative capital
"I".]
I
N
venturing so far into the mother's department of work, I am
not unconscious of being upon delicate ground, nor
insensible to the liability which I incur of being charged
with presumption, as if those who are practically engaged
among their children do not know better than any one else
can teach them, what ought to be done, and what can be
done. Others who are closely pressed with the business of
each recurring day, may ask, not unreasonably, how
sufficient leisure is to be found for all this education of
the heart?
Let such mothers, and indeed all mothers,
bear with me while I assure them that all I am pleading for
is this: that effort should be given to
the education of the heart
, to the
training of the affections, desires, and motives of the
young, equal to that which is given to the training of
their intellectual powers. I would also include equal
attention to the physical nature of the child, seeing that
these three are included in human character--the physical,
the moral, and the intellectual, and that no one of the
three can be neglected, or allowed to sink out of
proportion, without serious injury to the whole.
View page [421]
Hitherto I have said little
about the body, because it is the custom, I might almost
say the fashion, of the present day to give to the
maintenance of health a prominent place in public lectures
and studies, to say nothing of those more general measures
for the promotion of social progress, which include a high
estimate of the value of wholesome air and food, as well as
a knowledge of various other means of improving the
physical condition of mankind. Much as these means have
been neglected and undervalued, especially among the poor,
a due regard for the laws of health is now so often and so
strenuously enforced by the more enlightened portions of
the community, and especially by scientific men, that the
subject can demand no notice from me. I only speak of what
is neglected, of what is left out of due proportion in our
systems of education as generally conducted.
No one
can deny, or wish to deny, that the nursery is the mother's
department, over which her rule ought to be absolute. But
in order to rule there, it is not necessary to be entirely
occupied with the details even of such a department. Since
the mother cannot be present in all places at once, nor
with all her children at once, the question arises, which
department of maternal interest can she most safely commit
to inferior agency?
Instinct would keep the human
mother in the nursery, just as the mother bird would sit
brooding over her unfledged young. But the human mother has
a range of duty extending far beyond that of
View page [422]
the bird, and in considering the whole
character of her child, as an immortal as well as human
being, she has to bring into exercise on its behalf those
higher powers and faculties of her own which are capable of
this expansion--which are capable, indeed, of all the
heights and of all the depths of which it is possible for
us to form any conception.
Among such conflicting and
yet urgent claims, the mother has to ask one of the most
important questions which can be presented to any human
being actually engaged in the practical duties of life.
Yes, and she has to answer this question too, "What am I to
do, and what am I to leave undone? I cannot do all that I
would, not even all that wears the aspect of duty; which is
it absolutely necessary that I should do?" In settling this
point rightly for herself, the mother is acting out a very
essential part of true greatness; and in rightly
instructing her children in these matters--how they may,
all through life, ask themselves this question, and how
they may habitually answer it in the best way, she will be
preparing them in a most effectual manner for working out
the highest purposes of a useful and noble life.
On
points of this kind, it is not enough to be well meaning,
or even devoted. The devoted mother, without any clear idea
of the relative claims of duty, may become a slave where
she ought to be a queen; and slavery shown in the conduct
of those who have to do with them, is never good for
children. It makes them selfish and tyrannical. The
mother's
View page [423]
legitimate place in
her family is high, and nothing should degrade it in the
eyes of her children. What is lost by servile drudgery,
without intellectual and moral dignity, can never be
regained with them. Even moral dignity, without any great
amount of intellectual attainment, goes far with children,
and is of inestimable value in the mother's treatment, and
in her influence over them. We often see this where the
maternal government is in the hands of a woman of high
principle, not otherwise remarkable; and we find it in the
after conduct of her family--it may be in the character of
a strong brave man who sets his face like a flint against
dishonesty and meanness of every kind, because his mother
taught him to love truth and justice, and to hate a
lie.
But if the mother, in order to fill a place of
true dignity in her family, does not require any high
scholarly attainment, she does require a nice
discrimination, in order that her sense of duty may be
rightly regulated. She requires also a clear insight into
character, and above all, a supreme value for that which is
highest and most noble. Much indeed has to be taken into
account by us all in selecting, among the claims which
press upon us, that which we absolutely must do ourselves,
and that which may with safety be committed to others, or
that which we absolutely must do now, and that which may be
left to a future day. All this has so often to be seen and
acted upon in a moment, that there is the more need for
making such calculations
View page [424]
and
such conclusions habitual. The mother who has done this
before her marriage will find the full benefit of the habit
in her own home, where claims, apparently conflicting,
press upon her from every side, and that
continually.
It is a sad mistake for the mother, in
devoting herself too much to the nursery, to forget that
she is a wife. The society of a tired nurse is apt to
become a little wearisome even to the best of husbands; and
that is a dark day for any home when a man first discovers
that the companionship of his wife is not interesting to
him, and that he must look for refreshment to his mind
elsewhere. To the young wife, spoiled by a flattering
foolish courtship, it may seem a little hard that, when she
is worn and dispirited by toiling all day among her
children, she should not herself be the one to be amused
and refreshed; and perhaps, happily for her, such may be
her reward sometimes. But the social life of a large
portion of the community does not appear to be conducted
upon this plan; and certainly it is wisest and best for the
mother to do her part faithfully by keeping herself ever in
readiness to minister to the refreshment, and even to the
amusement of those around her. Children as well as men
require both; and many have been kept at home, and even
influenced for good unconsciously to themselves, by that
which a woman can diffuse around her own fireside, by her
cheerful and racy conversation, and by the zest which she
can thus impart to the common and otherwise insignificant
affairs of life.
View page [425]
The
struggling after high themes, and the dragging in of
especial and important topics to be discussed on all
occasions, is not at all what I mean: rather, as already
said, that racy kind of conversation which, leaning often
to the humorous, can yet give to what is talked about
touches of tenderer feeling and deeper interest, as
occasion may offer; such, for example, as characteristic
incidents described with graphic detail, but always
described kindly, or circumstances of local interest which
may have occurred during the day. Indeed, whatever there
may be in passing life, and life is always rich and full to
a quick-feeling and appreciating woman, whatever there may
be of droll or serious, of strange or new, may form
material for that abundance which flows naturally from the
heart of a woman who is happy in her home, in her husband
and her children, and who, perhaps unconsciously, is the
source and centre of that happiness herself.
All
this, however, which I would call only the by-play of
social intercourse, will by a wise and quick-feeling woman
be readily made secondary, and so give place to any higher
or graver style of conversation which others may wish to
introduce. It is only the cheerful and pleasant filling up
of the spare moments, or the tired moments, of social life
which I have here attempted to describe; yet happy is that
life whose spare moments are well filled up by a cheerful,
sensible, and right-minded woman.
And then when the
deeper and more important
View page [426]
topics of conversation are introduced, and the mother takes
no mean part in the discussion, but rather evinces an
intelligent interest in what is going on, with a knowledge
at least sufficient to enable her to ask sensible
questions, and make rational remarks; or if, beyond this,
she can go deeper, and contribute her share of useful
information on the case in point, and her share of earnest
thought and wise conclusion, what a triumph for her
children, and especially her boys, to listen and find that
the mother--the kind loving mother to whom they went with
all their little wants and wishes, the mother who sang the
pretty nursery songs, and made the merry laugh go round
when they gathered around the winter fire--that this mother
is equal to the best in society, that she knows as much as
the men, and can talk as wisely and as truly to the
purpose!
Of the many kinds of pride which we have, by
common consent, agreed to call legitimate, I know of none
so much so as this--the pride of children in their parents,
and especially the pride of a son in his mother. There is
something in this feeling so sustaining to all noble
purpose and all worthy action, that the wonder is how any
woman should allow the feeling to die out through indolence
or carelessness, and so lose the strongest hold she will
ever have upon her boys as they grow up to manhood. The
greatest earthly glory, as it appears to me, is that of
parents surrounded by their children, who not only love,
but who admire
View page [427]
and honor
them. Much of Christian duty also hangs upon this; for how
can children honor those parents who do dishonor to
themselves, and so reduce to a pretence or a mockery this
sacred injunction?
It may be that the mother has been
entirely swallowed up in her nursery; or on the other hand,
it may be that her time has been so absorbed by the claims
of society--
external
society,
not the society of home--that her children, as they grow up
out of the nursery, scarcely know what their mother is as a
companion. In their walks they are attended by nurses,
often the most ignorant of human beings. In their play they
are gladly got rid of, and escaped from. During the chief
portion of the day they are consigned perhaps to a
governess, whose heart is naturally in her own home, her
interests centred in her own brothers and sisters, who
considers herself engaged--in fact, is engaged--for a
certain amount of work, and who, if she works hard, and
teaches all the lessons stipulated for faithfully, does her
part well; and thus the children in many families do not
really know their mother, nor does the mother really know
them.
There was a time when the coming of the little
stranger into the world awakened the liveliest interest in
the mother's heart, when to know that every limb was
rightly set, and every function healthy, was more to her
than any other consideration just then; when, if a
suspicion had flashed across her mind that the spine was
ever so little twisted, or the
View page [428]
head strangely shaped, or the feet not
likely to stand well, a horror would have seized upon the
mother, and doctors would have been sent for, and
authorities called in, and every means which human
intelligence could suggest would have been brought into
use, so as if possible to remedy the defect.
Such,
without doubt, would be the right course for the mother to
pursue. Only why should a fault in the heart, or a wrong
bias of the disposition, not be as thoughtfully examined,
as carefully attended to, and as strenuously overcome? Why
should such manifestations of health or disease in this
department of maternal care be left so much more to the
watchfulness and the solicitude of those who can not feel
half the interest which a mother feels in the entire
character, and in the whole life of her child?
It is
an interesting fact, a provision designed no doubt for the
preservation of helpless infancy, that all women seem to
have by nature more or less of the maternal instinct ready
to be called forth by the babyhood of children not their
own. Thus the hired nurse does often really feel much of
what a mother feels in her association with the nursery.
But it is not so later in life, except in rare instances.
The maternal instinct being no longer needed for purposes
of actual preservation of life, there is nothing left for
those who have the charge of children as they grow up, and
who are not their own, but duty--a high sense of duty, with
such affection as may
View page [429]
grow
out of the intercourse between the children and their
governess or tutor, or between them and their care-takers,
whoever they may be. Affection on such terms is not to be
bought with money. It is not even "nominated in the bond;"
nor would there be any use in its being so. With the
parents alone remains this inalienable property of
affection, and if they are unable to use it in working out
the ends for which it was given them by God, they can only
choose deputies who, working without the natural affection
of parents, deserve more praise than generally falls to
their share if they work faithfully, not always according
to their own views of that which is wisest and best, but
according to the restrictions laid upon them, and also
according to the requirements of society.
No single
individual can educate independently, except a parent. No
other can follow out the dictates of their own hearts in
this true heart-work. The most enlightened plans, unless
approved by society, will either have to give place to the
old routine, or will fail utterly for want of public
approval; and parents themselves are often the greatest
hindrances in the way of improved methods of education.
Those who undertake the actual labor of education, either
under the parental roof or in the wider range of school
instruction, are consequently obliged to work under many
disadvantages, not the least important of which is found in
the partial and even false estimates sometimes formed by
parents with regard to their own children.
View page [430]
I have often wondered whether it ever
enters into the heart of men or women to conceive what the
labor of training and educating their children really is,
without affection, the affection of nature--in short, the
parental affection. "Children are so engaging," we hear
people say. No doubt they are, and if the educator could
select about one in ten, and send the others away, the work
in hand might be very interesting. Alas! for the remainder.
Alas! indeed, for the one or two or perhaps more in every
ten, strange, wayward, unattractive, and uninteresting
children sent forth to share the common lot among strangers
without one throb of parental or even natural affection to
cheer their lot, to screen their faults, to soothe their
distresses, or to encourage and help them on their obscure
and difficult way. All we can think of in the way of
consolation in such cases is that God is very good, and
that he has enriched the hearts of his faithful servants
with such floods of tenderness and sympathy that they are
able to embrace and care for and protect the otherwise
neglected stranger from a distant or unknown
home.
The high sense of justice, the faithfulness,
nay even the personal tenderness with which the
unattractive child is sometimes cherished by strangers can
never be fully appreciated by the parents, because, happily
for them and their child, theirs is the affection of nature
which makes all equal in a united family; neither can the
obligation which parents are under for such treatment of
their children ever
View page [431]
be fully
understood, or adequately rewarded by them. The danger is
lest there should be cases of failure in this conscientious
treatment; and there is always danger in high pressure
schools, when the greatest amount of attainment in learning
is esteemed the greatest good; there is always danger lest
the dull, the inert, or the inferior child should not
receive the necessary amount of encouraging and patient
attention.
All this the mother has to ponder in her
heart; and seeing that she holds a right over her child
which none but a parent can hold--the right to educate it
exactly in accordance with her own idea of what is best;
seeing that she has a love for that child altogether
independent of its own personal claims or merits, which
none but a parent can have in the same degree; seeing that
God has given her that child as her very own bound by a
relation which it bears to no other being in the world, has
committed it to her care bodily and spiritually, for time
and eternity, the result of such pondering in her own heart
must surely be, that she has a charge laid upon her in the
education of the heart of her child, of greater importance
to it and to her than any thing else in this world can be
to either.
There may have been but little in the
education of the mother herself to prepare her for this
work; but instead of looking back to the wasted moments of
her own life, and the mistakes of her own education, let
her look forward and take courage, determining that, with
God's help, she will make her own
View page [432]
daughters more fit to be the mothers of
another generation than she felt herself to be when first
the great responsibility came upon her. Even to feel this
responsibility was something. To suffer from a want
ourselves is often a stimulus spurring us on to supply that
want to others. And although the work before her may look
very arduous, very complicated, and even impossible to be
done so well as she desires to do it, there is no getting
rid of the great fact that it is
her
work, appointed by Him who is not
a hard task-master, but in her day of toil will give her
moments of refreshment, buds of promise in her little
garden, flowers of beauty, and fruits to be treasured in
his own garner when her careful hand and anxious heart
shall be at rest for ever.
A few more words of
encouragement to the mother, for I believe that women
perplex themselves and hinder their good work, by thinking
too much about their own ignorance on some of the great and
important topics which engage the attention of men. They
are sadly hindered too, and sometimes fatally as regards
their influence, by the habit encouraged among young women
until they marry, a habit encouraged by men and by society
in general, of thinking that they require nothing else than
a few accomplishments, with good manners, good dress, and
an agreeable face and person. And for a succession of
evening parties, perhaps this would be enough.
But
human life, regarded as a whole, is something
View page [433]
very different from an
evening party, and that every woman discovers when she
finds herself a wife and a mother. Yet still I would say,
Let her not be discouraged. It is true there will be no
time then to go back and begin her own education afresh
upon a different basis, no time to take up deeper studies
and more solid attainments, no time to acquire even the
elementary portions of that knowledge which she will sadly
feel the want of as her children grow up; but there is
still left her both time and opportunity for taking up many
useful things, many right views of human life, and many
means of improvement to herself and instruction to her
children.
Among these we might include just views of
human life in general, of the relation of different members
or classes of society to each other, of the mutual
dependence and obligation of rich and poor, workers and
non-workers, of the employment and economy of time, of
individual responsibility, of self-government, and above
all, of the relation of the human soul to God, of the
observance of his holy laws, and the acceptance of his
blessed gospel of salvation by Jesus Christ. To these might
be added innumerable other matters: questions of apparently
minor consideration, yet all bearing upon human life in its
relation to eternity, in which, if the mother can teach her
children aright, she will be doing them greater service
than by instructing them in all, or any of those branches
of learning which are made most prominent in
schools.
View page [434]
There is a
science of life which women are quite able to understand
without being great scholars. This science presents itself
under many aspects. One embraces that true and just
relation of human beings to one another which we call
social duty. Another takes in the law of kindness, with its
natural reciprocities of good-will, without which we can
not as social beings live happily, nor even prosper in our
worldly affairs. Another comprehends that true estimate of
the worth of things visible and invisible which leads us to
consider one great and another little, one honorable and
another base, one to be desired and another abhorred, and
this according to their essential nature and value, through
all the gradations which separate these two
extremes.
To keep always before the mind of a child
this truth, that certain things are great and others
little; but beyond and above all other teaching, that
certain things are good and others bad, and not so in the
estimate of human beings only, but good in the sight of God
and approved by him, and bad as by him utterly condemned;
good for ever and bad for ever, according to his own
immutable law of right and wrong; and so to train a child
that it shall love the one and hate the other, is, I think,
to teach it the true science of life.
And this the
mother can teach to her children as no one else can, having
first learned it truly herself. But it requires to be
taught earnestly, perseveringly, prayerfully. It requires
to be taught at home, and to be commenced with very early,
because there is
View page [435]
in the world
towards which the child is tending so much that is
calculated to throw the whole matter into confusion. There
is evil which is called good, and good which is called
evil, greatness which is looked down upon, and meanness
which is exalted. How is a child, not rightly prepared, to
understand this? Nay, there is reason to fear that doubts
will ultimately press upon the mind of the child as to
whether there are such things as true greatness and real
goodness at all, whether these are only names applied to
certain conditions of worldly prosperity or success,
without any essential value in the things
themselves.
It may be said by those who read human
life in words and names, and not in essential realities,
that doubts of this kind do not enter the mind of youth;
that youth is more apt to believe and trust. Let us thank
God that it is so, that the educator of the heart of youth
has elements of truth and sincerity and honest belief to
deal with, and not the querulous uncertainty of worldly
calculation, and consequent unbelief. That such is the
nature of youth, we have indeed cause to be thankful, for
there can be no greater help, no more sustaining hope, than
that the Giver of every good and perfect gift has placed in
our hands material so capable of receiving right
impressions from what is sound, and just, and true. But
that youth does lose this natural bloom of its existence,
sometimes too soon, and does become worldly and
disbelieving in spirit, though it may not be so in
profession, I think no one can doubt who
View page [436]
holds much intercourse with society in
the present day. And assuredly there is no heavier
calamity, either to youth or age, than that general
indifference to high and holy truth which not unfrequently
exists where a perfect horror would be expressed at the
idea of unbelief.
We meet with this among the young,
chiefly under the form of irreverence, indifference, or
disrespect; or worse than this, it may be in symptoms of a
mocking spirit, a spirit which is colder than ice, and
harder than steel, against all those genial influences
which are calculated to make the ways of life paths of
perpetual verdure and refreshment, even to the weary feet
of the long-experienced traveller.
In the course of
these remarks I have said but little on the subject of
direct religious teaching, partly because a mother whose
own heart is deeply impressed with the supreme importance
of a religious life, will, in all things, teach
religiously; and partly because our libraries abound with
books, written much better than I could write, on this
particular subject. Besides which, the more I see of human
life, the more I feel convinced that the religious
atmosphere of home is that which ultimately proves of the
highest value and most enduring influence, in forming the
religious character of youth.
This atmosphere, like
the air we breathe, I have considered as comprehending
different elements, as deriving its wholesome and
health-sustaining properties from various sources, and as
being subject to deterioration from various sources, and as
being subject to deterioration from causes equally varied.
Over this
View page [437]
department I have
regarded the mother as ruling by her own right; and as she
would, without doubt, be considered responsible, as regards
watching over and caring for the healthy condition of her
household; so, in a higher degree, because the subject
itself is higher as involving interests of a more exalted
range, so is the mother responsible for the right training
of her children, under such religious influences as it is
possible for her to bring around them. It is true that she
can not, even in her own department, do always as she
would, that she cannot do even what duty seems to demand,
where circumstances combine against her, or where opposing
influences arise such as are stronger than hers, or more
attractive to youth. But she can still do much, and if a
faithful earnest Christian herself, we know that she will
not be left to bear the burden of responsibility
unsupported, but that help sufficient for her day will be
administered in all her times of need.
Were any other
stimulus required for the best efforts of the Christian
mother, I think it might be found in this--that never
again, throughout the whole of her children's after lives,
will the same opportunity be afforded as that which their
infancy and youth have opened to her instrumentality. Many
a troubled time, and many a happy time, there may be in
their future, when her children will come back to her as
their warmest sympathizer and their truest friend; but the
morning dew will not be upon them as it was in their early
youth; the flower will not be fresh and fragrant and
spotless as it was then; other
View page [438]
hands will have touched it less gently
than hers, and other breezes will have blown upon it very
different from the breath of home. It is before the child
has left the parental roof that such close union of heart
and mind, such entire understanding of each other, can
alone exist between the mother and her children, and
especially between the mother and her boys; and where the
soul of the mother is deeply stirred with a sense of the
importance of educating for eternity as well as time, she
will feel that her work must be begun early, in the morning
of youth, and begun upon principles that will hold good to
the latest hour of a well-spent
life.
[Illustration : A small decorative
illustration of a
flower.]
View page [439]
FROM T
HE
Y
OUNG
W
OMAN'S
F
RIEND,
BY REV. JOHN ANGELL
JAMES.
View page [441]
[Illustration : An
illustrative arch, formed from a wooden frame with
grapevines twining around it. The frame is shaped to form
four peaks along the top edge of the
arch.]
THE INFLUENCE OF
CHRISTIANITY ON THE CONDITION OF
WOMAN.
'T
HERE IS NEITHER
J
EW NOR
G
REEK; THERE IS NEITHER
B
OND NOR
F
REE; THERE IS NEITHER
M
ALE NOR
F
EMALE: FOR YE ARE ALL ONE IN
C
HRIST
J
ESUS."
G
ALATIANS
3:28
[Illustration : A
decorative capital "W".]
W
OMAN was the finishing grace of the
creation. Woman was the completeness of man's bliss in
Paradise. Woman was the cause of sin and death to our
world. Woman was the means of our redemption. Woman is the
mother of the human race; our companion, counsellor, and
comforter in the pilgrimage of life, or our tempter, our
scourge, and our destroyer. Our sweetest cup of earthly
happiness, or our bitterest draught of sorrow, is mixed and
administered by her hand. She not only renders smooth or
rough our path to the grave, but helps or hinders our
progress to immortality. In heaven we shall bless God for
her aid in assisting us to reach that
View page [442]
blissful state, or amid the torments of
unutterable woe in another region we shall deplore the
fatality of her influence.
It would seem, from the
words of the original denouncement upon Eve for her
transgression in eating the forbidden fruit, as if, while
yet the first pair were innocent, there was a more entire
equality of condition and rights than after the fall. "Thy
desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over
thee." This sounds like something penal, though perhaps
some would regard it as merely predictive, and intended to
describe the cruel and brutalizing tendency of sin, in
turning man, who ought to be the loving companion of his
wife, into a tyrant. How fearfully,
if
predictive, this sentence has been
fulfilled, the degradation of woman--her wrongs, her
sorrows, and her vices, in many cases, most painfully
attest.
History, which will ever be found to accredit
revelation, proves the fact that in most pagan and
Mohammedan nations, whether ancient or modern, woman has
been cruelly and wickedly sunk below her proper level in
social and domestic life. "Hated and despised from her
birth, and her birth itself esteemed a calamity; in some
countries not even allowed the rank of a moral and
responsible agent; so tenderly alive to her own degradation
that she acquiesces in the murder of her female offspring;
immured from infancy; without education; married without
her consent: in a multitude of instances sold by her
parents; refused the confidence of her
View page [443]
husband, and banished from his table; on
his death doomed to the funeral pile, or to contempt that
renders life a burden. In such a condition she has been the
household drudge or the mere object of passion. She has
ministered to the gratification of man's indolence or
appetites, but has not been his companion, or his
counsellor, or his comforter. In barbarous countries she
has been a public slave; in civilized ones, very generally
a kind of private mistress. Her mind has been left
untaught, as if incapable or unworthy of instruction. She
has been not only imprisoned by jealousy in seclusion, but
degraded and rendered vicious and miserable by
polygamy--sometimes worshipped as a goddess, then fondled
as a toy, then punished as a victim. She could never attain
to dignity; and even with all her brightest charms, could
rarely appear but with the beauty of a
doll.
Exceptions to this, of some extent, may be made
in favor of the polished Greeks and proud Romans; but only
to some extent; for, did time permit and necessity require,
it could be shown that even Athenian refinement and Roman
virtue rarely gave to woman her just rank by the side of
her husband, or her proper place in his affection, esteem,
and confidence. The laws of Rome, it is true, gave to woman
greater liberty and consideration than she had before
received; still she was so treated even there as to sink
into degradation disgraceful to her purity and destructive
of her happiness. "No happy influence did she exert on the
public or private
View page [444]
welfare of
the state. Politicians intrigued with her; ambition
combined with passion to corrupt her; and her liberty
degenerated into licentiousness. Through her influence, the
streets of the capital were sometimes deluged with its best
blood; and to such an extent was her profligacy carried,
that among the decrees which passed the senate during the
reign of Tiberius against the licentiousness of female
manners, it was ordained, 'that no woman whose grandfather,
father, or husband was a Roman knight, should be allowed to
make her person venal.' The laws of a nation are an
instructive and faithful history of its manners. If such
was the condition of a Roman baroness, what must have been
that of the subordinate classes?" Neither paganism nor
Mohammedism ever yet understood the female character, or
conceded woman's just claims. In many nations the
degradation has been excessive. You remember, probably, the
reply of a pagan mother, who, having been expostulated with
for the murder of her female child, contended that she had
performed an act of mercy in sparing the babe the miseries
of a woman's life. All travellers and all missionaries
attest the fact of woman's humiliation beyond the
boundaries of Christendom.
*
If we
go to the Bible, we shall learn that it is
*The reader is referred for detailed statements of
the condition of women in pagan and Mohammedan countries,
to a very able and interesting work by my friend Dr. Cox,
of Hackney, entitled, "Female Scripture Biography, with an
Essay on what Christianity has done for Woman."
View page [445]
to Christianity, as distinct
even from Judaism, that woman owes her true elevation.
Polygamy is, and ever must be, fatal to female dignity and
happiness. This, or at least concubinage, was practised, no
doubt from mistaken views, by the patriarchs: not that it
was ever positively sanctioned by God, for from the
beginning he made one woman for one man, and by the
providential and extraordinary general equality of the
sexes as to numbers, he still proclaims, in unmistakable
language, the law of monogamy. If we examine the Levitical
code, we shall find that even this, though a Divine
dispensation, contained some regulations which evinced that
the time of woman's full emancipation from a state of
inferiority had not yet arrived; and that it was reserved
for that glorious and gracious economy under which we are
placed to raise the female sex into their just position and
influence in society. Christianity, as in other things, so
in this, is an enlargement of privilege; and among other
blessings which it confers, is its elevation of woman to
her proper place and influence in the family and in
society.
I now go on to consider
what there is in Christianity that tends to
elevate and improve the condition of woman
.
To
the oppressive and cruel customs of Mohammedism and
paganism in their treatment of the female sex, Christianity
presents a beautiful and lovely contrast; while to the
partial restoration of women's rights in Judaism, it adds a
complete
View page [446]
admission of their
claims. It is the glory of our holy religion, and shows it
to be an emanation from the Divine beneficence, and the
friend of humanity at large, that it is the enemy of
oppression in every form and every condition, and gives to
every one his due. It tramples on no rights; it resents and
resists all wrong: but not one of all the children of men
is more indebted to its merciful and equitable reign than
woman. From Christianity woman has derived her moral and
social influence: yea, almost her very existence as a
social
being. The mind of woman,
which many of the philosophers, legislators, and sages of
antiquity had doomed to inferiority and imbecility,
Christianity has developed. The gospel of Christ, in the
person of its Divine founder, has descended into this
neglected mine, which even wise men had regarded as not
worth the working, and brought up a priceless gem, flashing
with the light of intelligence, and glowing with the lovely
hues of Christian graces. Christianity has been the
restorer of woman's plundered rights, and has furnished the
brightest jewels in her present crown of honor. Her
previous degradation accounts, in part at least, for the
instability of early civilization. It is impossible for
society to be permanently elevated where woman is debased
and servile. Wherever females are regarded as inferior
beings, society contains within itself, not indeed the
elements of dissolution, yet the obstructions of all solid
improvement. It is impossible that institutions and usages
which trample upon all the very
View page [447]
instincts of our nature, and violate the
revealed law of God, should be crowned with ultimate
success. Society may change in its external aspect, may
exhibit the glitter of wealth, the refinements of taste,
the embellishments of art, or the more valuable attainments
of science and literature; but if the mind of woman remains
undeveloped, her taste uncultivated, and her person
enslaved, the social foundations are insecure, and the
cement of society is feeble. Wherever Christianity is
understood and felt, woman is free. The gospel, like a kind
angel, opens her prison doors, and bids her walk abroad and
enjoy the sunlight of reason, and breathe the invigorating
air of intellectual freedom
.
And in proportion
as a pure Christianity prevails, this will be ever found to
be the case.
But all this is general assertion. We
now descend to the proof:
1.
Christianity elevates the condition of woman
by its very genius as a system of universal equity and
benevolence
. When it descended from heaven to earth,
it was heralded into our world by the angels' song, "Glory
to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward
men." The offspring of Infinite Love, it partakes entirely
of the spirit, and reflects the character of its Divine
Parent. It is essentially and unalterably the enemy of all
injustice, cruelty and oppression; and the friend of all
that is just, kind, and courteous. The rough, the brutal,
and the ferocious are alien from its spirit; while the
tender, the gentle, and the courteous are
View page [448]
entirely homogeneous with its nature.
Tyranny, whether in the palace or the parlor, it frowns
upon with indignant countenance, while it is the friend of
liberty, and the patron of all rights. The man who
understands its genius, and lives under its inspiration,
whether he be a monarch, a master, a husband, or a father,
must be a man of equity and love. Christianity inspires the
purest chivalry--a chivalry shorn of vanity, purified from
passion, elevated above frivolity--a chivalry of which the
animating principle is love to God; and the scene of its
operation the domestic circle, rather than the tournament.
He who is unjust or unkind to any one, especially to the
weaker sex, betrays a total ignorance of, or a manifest
repugnance to, the practical influence of the gospel of
Christ. It is a mistake to suppose that the faith of Jesus
is intended only to throw its dim religious light over the
gloom of the cloister, or to form the character of the
devotee: on the contrary, it is preëminently a
social thing, and is designed as well as adapted to form a
character which shall go out into the world in a spirit of
universal benevolence; and to such a character the
oppressor or degrader of woman can make no
pretensions.
2. The
incarnation
of Christ
tended to exalt the dignity of the female
sex. His assuming humanity has given a dignity to our
nature which it had never received before, and could not
have received in any other way. Christ is "the Pattern
Man
" of our race, in whom all
the lines of humanity converge
View page [449]
and unite, so far as the existence of
our race goes. "When he took man's nature, he vouch-safed
to ally himself to all the members of this extended series,
by the actual adoption of that transmitted being which
related him to the rest. He not only became like men and
dwelt among them, but he became man himself--an actual
descendant from their first progenitor."
He was made man
. This is why the
existence of human nature is a thing so precious. By the
very manner of his birth he seemed to associate himself
with our nature. The apostle, in his quotation of the
eighth psalm in the Epistle to the Hebrews, shows the
dignity conferred upon humanity by its being assumed by so
glorious a person as our Lord Jesus Christ in his divine
nature. If then manhood is honored by Christ's assuming it,
how much more is woman exalted, who, in addition to this,
gave birth to the humanity of Christ!
It is
emphatically said by the apostle, "When the fulness of the
time was come, God sent forth his Son,
MADE OF A WOMAN,
made under
the law." Gal. 4:4. In the person of the Virgin Mary, and
by her giving birth to that holy Being that was born of
her, the sex was elevated. True, it was a personal
distinction, that she should be the mother of our Lord's
humanity; and though she has been by the apostate church of
Rome wickedly exalted into an object of idolatrous homage,
all generations justly call her blessed. Yet the honor is
not limited to herself, but passes over to the sex which
she
View page [450]
represented; and it is
this to which the apostle alludes. He does not even mention
the honored individual, says nothing of the Virgin Mary,
but dwells upon the abstract, general term, "made of
a woman
." Every female on earth,
from that day to this, has had a relative elevation by and
in that wonderful transaction. Woman is not the mother of
God, as papists absurdly and as I think almost
blasphemously say; but the mother of that humanity only
which was mysteriously united with Divinity. Does not this
great fact say, "Let the sex which alone was concerned in
giving birth to the Son of God and the Saviour of the world
be ever held in high estimation."
3.
The personal conduct of our Lord during
his sojourn upon earth
tended to exalt the female
sex to a consideration before unknown. Follow Him through
the whole of his earthly career, and mark the attention he
most condescendingly paid to, and as condescendingly
received from the female sex. He admitted them to his
presence, conversed familiarly with them, and accepted the
tokens of their gratitude, affection, and devotedness. See
him accompanying his mother to the marriage-feast at Cana
in Galilee. See him conversing with the woman of Samaria,
"instructing her ignorance, enduring her petulance,
correcting her mistakes, awakening her conscience,
converting her soul, and afterwards employing her as a
messenger of mercy and salvation to her neighbors. See him
rebuking his disciples for discouraging the
View page [451]
approach of mothers and their infants.
See him compassionating the widow of Nain, and restoring
her son to life. See him in the little family of Bethany,
blending his tears with those of the bereaved sisters; and
on another occasion entering into familiar conversation
with this same Martha and Mary, faithfully rebuking one,
and kindly commending the other. See him receiving the
offerings of those women who ministered to him of their
substance
.
Witness the attendance of pious
women upon him in the last scenes of his life. It was to
Mary Magdalene that the honor of the first manifestation of
the risen Saviour was made; and thus a woman was preferred
to apostles, and made the messenger of the blissful news to
them
. "The frequent mention,"
says Doddridge, "which is made by the evangelists of the
generous courage and zeal of some pious women in the
service of Christ, and especially of the faithful and
resolute constancy with which they attended him in those
last scenes of his suffering, might be very possibly
intended to obviate that haughty and senseless contempt
which the pride of men, often irritated by those vexations
to which their own irregular passions have exposed them,
has in all ages affected to throw on that sex which
probably, in the sight of God, constitute by far the better
half of mankind, and to whose care and tenderness the
wisest and best of men generally owe and ascribe much of
the daily comfort and enjoyment of their
lives."
Compare this behavior toward that sex--the
View page [452]
chaste, holy, dignified conduct
of our Lord--with the polygamy, licentiousness, and
impurities of Mohammed; not merely as evidence of their
claims, but as regards their influence upon the condition
of woman. While the one does every thing by example and by
precept to corrupt, to degrade, and to curse, the other
does every thing to purify, to elevate, and to bless. The
conduct of the Arabian enthusiast and impostor, and not
less the boast of his followers and admirers, are too
revolting for description--almost for allusion. But, on the
contrary, what one syllable of the Saviour's utterance, or
what one scene of his life, was there which tainted the
immaculate purity of his language, or left the slightest
stain upon the more than snow-like sanctity of his
character? What part of his conduct might not be unveiled
and described before a company of the most modest, and most
delicate and even the most prudish-minded females in
existence? His treatment of woman raised her from her
degradation without exalting her above her level. He
rescued her from oppression without exciting her vanity,
and invested her with dignity without giving her occasion
for pride. He allowed her not only to come into his
presence, but to minister to his comfort, and inspired her
with awe while he conciliated her grateful and reverent
affection, and thus taught man how to behave to woman, and
what return woman was to make to man. The conduct of Jesus
Christ toward the female sex, was one of the most
attractive excellences of his beautiful character,
View page [453]
though perhaps one of the
least noticed; and to him they must ever point, as not only
the Saviour of their souls, but as the Advocate of their
rights and the Guardian of their peace.
4.
The virtual abolition of
polygamy
by Christianity is a vast improvement in
the condition of woman. Wherever this prevails, and as long
as it prevails, the female sex must ever be in a state of
degradation and misery. "Experience has abundantly and
painfully proved that polygamy debases and brutalizes both
the body and the soul, and renders society incapable of
those generous and refined affections which, if duly
cultivated, would be found to be the inheritance even of
our fallen nature. Where is an instance in which polygamy
has not been the source of many and bitter calamities in
the domestic circle and the state? Where has it reared a
virtuous and heaven-taught progeny? Where has it been
distinguished for any of the moral virtues; or rather,
where has it not been distinguished for the most fearful
degeneracy of manners?" By this practice, which has
prevailed so extensively through nearly all countries and
all ages where Christianity was not known, marriage loses
all its tenderness, its sanctity, and its reciprocal
confidence; the cup of connubial felicity is exchanged for
that of mere animal pleasure; woman panders to the appetite
of man, instead of ministering to his comfort; and the home
assumes much of the character of a brothel. There may be
several mistresses, but there can be only one wife; and
View page [454]
though there may be mothers,
they are without a mother's affection; presenting a scene
of endless envy and jealousy, before which domestic comfort
must ever retire, to make way for mere sensual
gratification. No stimulus to improvement--to fidelity--can
be felt, where the individual may be supplanted the next
month by a new favorite; and thus there is no room and
little occasion for the display of those virtues which
constitute female honor. Here, then, is the glorious
excellence of Christianity; inasmuch as it revives and
reëstablishes the original institute of
marriage--restores to woman her fortune, her person, her
rank, and her happiness, and has thus raised the condition
of the female sex to the elevation to which they were
destined by their wise and beneficent Creator. True it is
that Christianity has not by direct, explicit, and positive
precept effected this great change, so beneficial not only
to woman but to society: yet it has done so by an
implication so clear as not to be mistaken. All its
provisions, its precepts, and its promises go on the
supposition of each man who is a husband being the husband
but of one wife.
And we would here take occasion to
remark with emphasis upon the adaptation of Christianity to
promote the well-being of the community at large, by
advocating and protecting the rights of
all;
by opposing
all
those evil practices which
insinuate mischief and misery into the great human family;
and by upholding those institutions which in their turn
uphold the interests of nations. The
View page [455]
springs of national prosperity rise from
beneath the family hearth; the domestic constitution is the
mould where national character is cast; and that mould must
of necessity take its form from the unity, the sanctity,
and inviolability of marriage.
5.
The jealousy with which Christianity guards
the sanctity of the marriage tie
must ever be
regarded as having a favorable influence upon the condition
of woman. Let this be relaxed or impaired, and that moment
woman sinks in dignity, in purity, and in happiness. There
have been nations in which the facility of divorce took the
place of polygamy, and of course was accompanied with some
of its vices, and many of its miseries too. This was
eminently the case with ancient Rome. It is true this
applied rather to Rome in the time of the empire than
during the continuance of the republic. Examples of this
will be found in its history, and allusions to it in the
pages of its poets. Let the nuptial tie be weakened, and
the wife lives in perpetual fear. Her union is placed in
jeopardy by a law of which her husband may take advantage.
At the instigation of passion or caprice he may dissolve
the bond, and without either penalty, remorse, or shame,
dismiss her from her home; and so there is an end to her
peace, and perhaps to her purity. For it is to be
recollected that it is
she
who
has most to dread from the license of divorce.
She
is likely to be the victim
of such a liberty. With what devout and reverential
gratitude should she turn then to that Divine Teacher, who
has interposed
View page [456]
with his own
personal authority to strengthen the marriage bond, and to
guard it from being severed at the demand of illicit
passion or the dictates of humor or caprice. How should she
rejoice to hear
him
say,
"Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for
fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery;
and whoso marrieth her which is put away, doth commit
adultery." Matt. 19:9. The indulgence granted to the Jews,
of greater latitude and liberty in this matter, was thus
suspended; a greater security provided for woman's honor
and felicity; and a broader basis laid for domestic harmony
and happiness. If it were only for this, Christianity
deserves the gratitude of mankind. It is only half its
glory that it has abolished the custom of having
many
wives; another of its
achievements is that it has protected the rights, the
dignity, and the comfort of the
one
wife. It has shut out intruders
from her home, and guaranteed the safe and permanent
possession of it to herself.
6. I may surely mention
the equal participation of religious
blessings
to which women are admitted by the
Christian religion. How explicitly and how firmly has the
apostle claimed for woman all the blessings obtained by
Christ for the human race, where he says, "There is neither
Jew nor Greek; there is neither bond nor free; there is
neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ
Jesus." Gal. 3:28. There is woman's charter of all the
blessings of salvation; there is woman's proof of equal
consideration
View page [457]
in the sight of
God; there is woman's claim to equal rank in the institutes
of man. Every blessing necessary to eternal life do they
receive in the same measure and in the same manner as the
other sex. There is a tradition among the Mohammedans,
which is prevalent among them to this day, that women are
not permitted to enter paradise. What a degradation is
there in such an idea: this is Mohammedism, and it
harmonizes with its own genius, which regards woman more as
the slave of man's passions than as the companion of his
life. Christianity places the wife by the side of the
husband, the daughter by the side of the father, the sister
by the side of the brother, and the maid by the side of the
mistress, at the altar of the family, in the meeting of the
church, at the table of the Lord, and in the congregation
of the sanctuary. Male and female meet together at the
cross, and will meet in the realms of glory. Can any thing
more effectually tend to raise and sustain the condition of
woman than this? God in all his conduct, Christ in his
glorious undertaking, and the Holy Spirit in his gracious
work, give her her proper place in the world, by giving her
a proper place in the church. It is for
her
to say with peculiar emphasis,
"God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he
loved us, hath raised us up together, and made us sit
together in heavenly places." Eph. 2:4-6.
Well have
women understood their privileges; for look into our
congregations and churches, and
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see how largely they are composed of
females. How many more of their sex than of the other avail
themselves of the offer of gospel mercy, and come under the
influence of religion. It is in the female bosom, however
we may account for the fact, that piety finds a home on
earth. The door of woman's heart is often thrown wide open
to receive this divine guest, when man refuses it an
entrance. And it is by thus yielding to the power of
godliness, and reflecting upon others the beauties of
holiness, that she maintains her standing and her influence
in society. Under the sanctifying power of religion she
ascends to the glory not only of an intelligent, but of a
spiritual existence--not only gladdens by her presence the
solitary hours of man's existence, and beguiles by her
converse and sympathy the rough and tedious paths of life,
but in some instances converts him by making him feel how
excellent goodness is.
7. But Christianity crowns all
by inviting and employing the energies
and influence of women in promoting the spread of religion
in the world;
and thus carrying out, through them
also, the great purposes of God in the redemption of the
world by the mission of his Son. To them, in common with
others, the apostle says, "That ye also may have fellowship
with us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father and
with his Son Jesus Christ." 1 John 1:3. The honor so
liberally bestowed upon the pious women of antiquity, of
ministering to the personal wants of the Saviour, and of
being so constantly about his
View page [459]
person, was the least of the distinctions designed for them
by our holy religion. They bore an exalted part in the
first setting up of Christ's kingdom in the world. How
instructive and impressive is it to hear an apostle say,
"Help those women which labored with me in the gospel."
Phil. 4:3. What a register of names and offices of
illustrious females do we find in Romans 16. Priscilla,
Paul's helper; "Mary, who bestowed much labor on us;"
"Tryphena and Tryphosa, who labor in the Lord." "Phebe, the
servant of the church at Cenchrea," who was sent to the
church at Rome, and intrusted with so momentous a
commission as to bear to that community of Christians the
epistle to the Romans, which, if we may lawfully compare
one portion of Scripture with another, is the most precious
portion of divine revelation. In addition to all this,
there can be but little doubt that in the primitive church,
not only were women occasionally endowed by the Spirit with
the miraculous gift of prophesying, but were also employed
in the office of deaconess. The primitive age of
Christianity was in advance of ours in the respect thus
paid to the female sex, by officially employing them in the
services of the church, and in the wisdom which made use of
such available and valuable resources. It has been said
that the usages of society have somewhat changed since that
time, so as to render the services of women less necessary
now than they were then. The friendly and social
intercourse of the sexes was more restricted, and females
were kept in greater seclusion.
View page [460]
Some truth, no doubt, there is in these
assertions; but perhaps not so much as is by some imagined.
Both general and sacred history present them to us mingling
in the society and sharing the occupations of the other
sex.
We now remark that not only does Christianity
thus
tend
, by its own nature and
provisions, to exalt the female character, but it
has accomplished this
wherever
it has prevailed. If we consult the pages of history,
whether ancient or modern, whether eastern or western, we
shall find that wherever the religion of our Lord Jesus
Christ has been successful, there has it achieved the
emancipation of woman from her thraldom, and rescued her
from degradation. I refer to modern Europe in proof of
this, and to America. And may I not affirm that this
emancipation and elevation are in proportion to the purity
of that Christianity which has thus been diffused? Is it
not a triumph and a trophy of Christianity to be able to
point to the most polished nations of the globe as being,
at any rate,
professedly
Christian; and at the same time to say, "Look at the
improved condition of the female sex?" What a contrast in
this respect is presented in those countries to all Pagan
and Mohammedan nations.
If we refer to the records of
modern missions, we shall find abundant proof of what the
gospel does for the elevation of the female character. It
has abolished the suttee in India, and the widow is no
longer immolated on the same pile which consumes her
departed husband. It has stopped the
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suicidal prostration before
the idol's car--the drudgery of the wives of all savage
tribes--the polygamy, the infanticide, and the concubinage
of all countries whither it has gone. It has brought woman
from under the disastrous influence of the pale crescent of
the impostor of Mecca, and placed her in all the
irradiating and enlivening splendor of the Sun of
Righteousness. It has rescued her from what I must consider
the baleful power of the crucifix, and thrown over her the
elevating attractions of the cross.
But there is
another and more familiar way, and one nearer home, in
which we may see how Christianity, even in this Christian
and Protestant nation, has benefited and raised the
condition of thousands of once wretched and degraded women;
made such, not by their own misconduct, but by the vices
and cruelties of their husbands. How many wives have been
reduced to a kind of domestic slavery by the drunkenness,
the infidelity, and tyranny of those who had pledged
themselves to love and cherish them. Christianity, in its
power, has, in many instances, laid hold of the hearts of
these men, and changed them from vice to holiness; and now,
the
husband
is as much changed
as the
man
, and among other
evidences of the reality of the change, and the
manifestations of its excellence, is his altered conduct at
home, where woman becomes his wife, instead of being his
drudge, his slave, and his victim. Christianity has thus
carried out its genius and its precepts into the actual
elevation of the female character
View page [462]
wherever it has gone. The chivalry of
the dark and middle ages, whimsical as the institution
seemed, which combined religion, valor, and gallantry, no
doubt did something to accomplish this end. I do not
dispute the truth of the remarks made by a French writer,
quoted in a popular work entitled, "Woman's Mission," where
he says, that women, shut up in their castellated towers,
civilized the warriors who despised their weakness, and
rendered less barbarous the passions and the prejudices
which they themselves shared. It was they who directed the
savage passions and brute force to an unselfish aim--the
defence of the weak, and added to courage the only virtue
then recognized--humanity. But even chivalry derived its
existence, in some measure, from religion. And, after all,
how inferior in its nature, and in its influence, was this
system of romance, to the dignified principles and holy
influences of Christianity! It did very well to figure at
the joust and the tournament, in the hall of the baron, and
in the circle of the fair; but its influence in the
domestic scene was still slight as compared with that of
the institutions of the New Testament. It was rather the
romance of female rights and privileges, than a concession
of them made by intelligence, a sense of justice, and an
obedience to the Divine authority; and it may be questioned
whether many an illustrious knight did not, when the hour
of imagination had passed away, and the ardor of passion
had cooled, in the absence of Christian principles, crush
and break the heart
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which he
had been so anxious to win. It is the glory of Christianity
that it supplies principles which are rooted in the soul,
and sway the conscience, instead of appeals to the
imagination, the senses, and the passions; and that instead
of leading its possessor to expend his admiration of woman
amid the exciting scenes of public amusement, it teaches
and influences him first of all to contemplate her where
her charms are less meretriciously adorned--in the
retirement of social intercourse, and there to enjoy them,
within the hallowed circle of domestic life. It allows of
no senseless adoration like that which chivalry promoted,
and which, from its very excess is likely to be followed
with recoil or collapse. What Christianity does for woman
is, to fit her, neither to be the goddess nor the slave,
but the friend and companion of man, and to teach man to
consider her in this honorable and amiable aspect.
It
is now time to consider the practical inferences to be
deduced from this subject. And,
1. Do we not see in
it a
beautiful exhibition of the
transcendent excellence of our holy religion?
In
every view we can take of Christianity, whether we
contemplate it in its relations to another world or to
this, to God or to society, in its sublime doctrines or its
pure morality, we see a form of inimitable beauty,
sufficient to captivate every heart but that which is
petrified by false philosophy, avowed infidelity, or gross
immorality. But never does it appear more lovely than in
its relation to woman. What
equity
in holding the balances so
impartially
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between the
sexes! What
kindness
in throwing
its shield over the weaker vessel! What
wisdom
in sustaining the rank and
claims of those whose influence is so important to society,
and yet so limiting those claims that they shall not be
carried to such a length as to defeat their own end! What
nice discrimination
in fixing
her place where her power can be most advantageously
employed for the cultivation of her own virtues, and the
benefit of society! "Behold Christianity, then, walking
forth in her purity and greatness to bless the earth,
diffusing her light in every direction, distributing her
charities on either hand, quenching the flames of lust and
the fires of ambition, silencing discord, spreading peace,
and creating all things new. Angels watch her progress,
celebrate her influence, and anticipate her final triumphs!
The moral creation brightens beneath her smiles, and owns
her renovating power. At her approach man loses his
fierceness and woman her chains; each becomes blessed in
the other, and God is glorified in both."
*
2. May we not affirm that the
treatment of woman by Christianity is
one of the proofs of its divine
origin?
In this view of it, we include Judaism, with
which it must ever be associated as containing a full
development of the great truths contained in the symbols of
that ceremonial dispensation; though, as we have already
shown, even this is behind the higher excellence of the
Christian economy. We have already seen how both
Mohammedism and Paganism
*Dr. Cox's
Essay.
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degrade the
female character and sex. It would seem that man, left to
himself, would never have set up a religion which dealt
equitably and kindly with women. And what
has
infidelity, without
religion, done for them? What
would
it do for them? Degrade them by
demoralizing them. The patrons of impurity and
licentiousness--infidels at heart--have put on the cloak of
the philosopher, and maxims the most licentious have found
their way into works of pretended morality, and have been
inculcated with the airs of a moral sage. Atheism, the most
undisguised, has made its appearance, and alas, alas! that
it should boast of a well-known priestess to conduct its
homage at the shrine and upon the altar of chance! Before
skepticism had reached this depth of error, and arrived at
these gloomy regions of a godless void--while yet it
lingered on the shores of deism, it manifested its
demoralizing tendency Hume taught that adultery, when
known, was a slight offence; and when unknown, no offence
at all. Bolingbroke openly and violently attacked every
important truth, and every serious duty. Particularly he
licensed lewdness, and cut up chastity and decency by the
roots. Lord Herbert, of Cherbury, the most serious of the
early English deists, declared that the indulgence of lust
is no more to be blamed than the thirst of a fever or the
drowsiness of lethargy. Nor have modern infidels been
behind their predecessors. Godwin and Owen have attacked
the marriage tie. And let the annals of the first French
revolution, that terrible eruption from the
View page [466]
volcano of atheism, tell by the biography
of Mirabeau, its type both as regards politics and morals,
what infidelity would do to corrupt and degrade the female
sex. Woman's virtue, dignity, honor, and happiness, are
nowhere safe but under the protection of the word of God.
The Bible is the ægis of the female sex. Beneath
this protection she is secure in her rights, her dignity,
and her peace. Christianity is her vine and fig-tree, under
which, in calm repose, she may enjoy the shade of the one
and relish the fruit of the other, none daring to make her
afraid. It protects her purity from taint, and her peace
from disturbance. Let woman know her friend, and her enemy
too. An infidel of either sex is the foe of our species,
either individually or collectively viewed; but a female
infidel is the most dangerous and destructive of the
furies; from whom, in the prosecution of her suicidal
career, the virtuous of her sex recoil with horror, and
whom the vicious regard as the abettor of their crimes.
Woman! regard thy Saviour for the next world as thine
emancipator for this; love the Bible as the charter of thy
liberty and guardian of thy bliss; and consider the church
of Christ as thine asylum from the wrongs of oppression and
the arts of seduction.
3. Let woman seek to
discharge her obligations to
Christianity.
Grateful she ought to be; for immense
are the favors which have been conferred upon her. It is
enough to demand her thankfulness, that in common with man,
she is the object of divine love, redeeming mercy, and the
subject of immortal hope;
View page [467]
but
in addition to this, she is rescued from oppression and
exalted to honor in the present world. In regard to this,
your obligations to Christianity are immense. You owe
infinitely more to it than you will ever be able to cancel.
Often as you look round upon your condition in society, and
especially as often as you contrast your situation with
that of women in Pagan countries, let a glow of gratitude
warm your heart and add intensity to the fervor with which
you exclaim, "Precious Bible!" Yes, doubly precious to
you
, as your friend for both
worlds. How shall woman discharge her obligations? In two
ways. First, in yielding up her heart and life to the
influence and service of her Benefactor--in the way of
faith, holiness, and divine love. Female
piety
is the best, the only
sincere expression of female gratitude to God. An
irreligious woman is also an ungrateful one. She that loves
not Christ, whomsoever else she may love, and however
chaste and pure that love may be, is living immeasurably
below her obligations, and has a stain of guilt upon her
heart and her conscience which no other virtue can efface
or conceal.
Her obligations should also be discharged
by seeking to extend to others that benign system which has
exerted so beneficial an influence upon herself. Of all the
supporters of our missionary schemes, whether they are
formed to evangelize the heathen abroad, or reform the
sinful at home, women should be, as indeed they generally
are, the most zealous, the most liberal, and the most
prayerful
View page [468]
supporters.
Wherever she turns her eye over the distant regions of our
earth, at least wherever Paganism or Mohammedism throws its
baleful shadow--and alas! how large a portion of the earth
that is--there she beholds her sex degraded and oppressed.
From China's vast domain--from India's sunny plains--from
Persia's flowery gardens--from the snows of Arctic
regions--from the sterile deserts of Arabia--and from the
burning line of Africa--woman lifteth up her voice from the
midst of her wrongs, her woes, and her miseries, piteously
imploring, "C
OME OVER AND HELP
US
." The whole creation groaneth and travaileth in
pain together until now, but her groans are deeper, her
cries louder than those of any other. Floated upon the
wings of every breeze, and borne on the bosom of every wave
that touches our shore, from those regions of sin and
sorrow comes the petition to Christian females in this
country for the blessings of Christianity. Cold, thankless,
and unfeeling must be that heart which is unaffected by
such an appeal, and makes no effort to respond to it--which
prompts to no interest in our missionary schemes, and leads
to no liberality in their support. The Millennium will be
especially woman's jubilee; and as no groan is deeper than
hers during the reign of sin and sorrow, so no joy will be
louder than hers under the reign of Christ. It belongs
therefore to her to be most fervent in the cry of the
church, "Come, Lord Jesus, come
quickly."
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