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diff --git a/42691.txt b/42691.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 20bba4c..0000000 --- a/42691.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,6120 +0,0 @@ -Project Gutenberg's The Joys of Being a Woman, by Winifred Kirkland - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with -almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org - - -Title: The Joys of Being a Woman - and other papers - -Author: Winifred Kirkland - -Release Date: May 11, 2013 [EBook #42691] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ASCII - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE JOYS OF BEING A WOMAN *** - - - - -Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was -produced from scanned images of public domain material -from the Google Print project.) - - - - - - - - By Winifred Kirkland - - THE JOYS OF BEING A WOMAN. - THE OLD DILLER PLACE. Illustrated. - THE BOY-EDITOR. Illustrated. - THE HOME-COMERS. Illustrated. - - HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY - - BOSTON AND NEW YORK - - - - - _The Joys of Being a Woman_ - - - - - _The - Joys of Being a Woman_ - - AND OTHER PAPERS - - BY - WINIFRED KIRKLAND - - [Illustration: colophon] - - BOSTON & NEW YORK - HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY - - The Riverside Press Cambridge - - 1918 - - COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY WINIFRED KIRKLAND - - ALL RIGHTS RESERVED - - _Published August 1918_ - - - - -FOREWORD - -_The Ego in the Essay_ - - -We are each launched in life with an elfin shipmate--set jogging upon -earth beside a fairy comrade. When our ears are clear, he pipes magic -music; when our feet are free he pleads with us to follow him on -witching paths. We cannot often hear, we cannot often follow, but when -we do, we know him for what he is; when we sail or run or fly with him, -we know him for the gladdest fellow with whom life ever paired us, a -companion rarely glimpsed, but glorious, for he is our own true Self. -Poets and dreamers have sometimes snared him in a sonnet, but for the -most part, for his waggishness and his wanderings, he demands, not the -strait-jacketing of poetry, but the flexible garment of prose. It is the -shifting subtleties of the essay that have ever best expressed him. - -One man there was in that peopled past, where friendship's best doors -fly open at our knock, who knew how to catch his elusive Ego and keep -it glad even on ways that led through sordid counting-house and sadder -madhouse; and who knew also, better than any one since has ever known, -how to envisage and investure that exquisite Self of his, sweet, quaint -sprite that it was, in an essay. Ever since that time those of us who -love essays say, of one possessing special grace, it is like Elia's, -meaning not that it imitates Lamb's style, the inimitable, but that it -reveals, as only the essay can do, personality. - -Of all literary forms the personal essay appears the most artless, -a little boat that sails us into pleasant havens, without any sound -of machinery and without any chart or compass. To read is as if we -overheard some one chatting with that little merry-heart, his own -particular Ego. We do not stop to think what childlike simplicities -any grown-up must attain before he can hear that fairy divinity, his -own Self, speak at all, for the only true tongue in which the Self -speaks is joy. Only childlike feet can follow the feet of fairies. The -self-annalist whose essays warm our hearts with friendship, must be -one who sips the wine of mirth when all alone with his own Self. Not -many such are born, and fewer of them write essays. The essay is no -easy thing. The true mood and the true manner of it are rare. It is -as difficult to write an essay on purpose as it is to be a person on -purpose, a teasing game and unsatisfactory. - -Yet the difficulties of essay-writing are offset by the delights: for -there is nothing so compelling to expression as chuckle, and that is -what the true essay is, sheer chuckle; it is what we felt and saw that -time the elfin Ego floated in on a sun-mote, and showed us, laughing, -how all our life is gilded with fun. Then off we fly to write it, with -the spell still upon us! The poising of a word on the tip of our pen -until the very most genial sunbeam of all shall touch it, the weaving -the thread of a golden thought in and out through all the quips and -nonsense, the wrapping a whole life experience in the hollow shaft of -some light-barbed phrase! The best quality of the humorous essay is that -the reader shall smile, not laugh, and, moreover, that he shall remember -no one passage at which he smiles: it is far better that he should -feel that he has touched a personality tipped with mirth. Ariel never -laughed. The fun that makes the soul expand must have in it the lift of -wings and the glimpsing fantasy of flight. - -More than any other of the shapes prose takes, the essay should give the -reader a sense of good-fellowship. Probably the writer who as an actual -man is shyest, gives this comradeship best. The shy man sheds forth his -personality most opulently in print, and preferably, as certain wise -editors have perceived, in anonymous print. One is sensitive to having -an everyday friend see one's soul in public, because the everyday friend -knows too well the everyday self, to which the elusive essay-self is too -often a stranger. - -That skittish elfin Ego, so alien to the humdrum man or woman who bears -our mortal name, if he only came to visit us oftener, stayed with us -longer, what essays we might write! A snatch of song, a tinkle of -laughter, a flutter of wings, if he would only linger until I could -clearly see what he is, this Ego of mine, who tells such happy secrets! -Poor babykin, poor fairykin--that Ego sent forth with us to make blithe -the voyage, we cannot go a-dancing with him out to fairy fields, because -our feet are heavy with Other People's clogs and fetters, we cannot hear -when he would whisper at our ear gentle philosophies--our own Self's and -no one's else, because of the grave grubby Book-people who thunder at -us from our shelves. Sometimes I catch him casting a waggish twinkle at -me over the very shoulder of my blackest worry, rainbow wings and head -that is devil-may-care trying to get at me from behind her sable-stoled -form. Even in the thought of death I catch his cherub chuckle, "Could a -grave hold me?" For is not death also a bugbear of Other People, not at -all of my own Self's making? - -Gay little voyager! He seems, when he visits me, to be the prince of the -kingdom of fun. He does not stay long, but long enough sometimes for me -to write an essay. But whence he comes, or whither he goes, or what he -is, whether demonic or divine, I only know that he is mine. - - - - -CONTENTS - - -FOREWORD: THE EGO IN THE ESSAY v - -I. THE JOYS OF BEING A WOMAN 1 - -II. A MAN IN THE HOUSE 23 - -III. OLD-CLOTHES SENSATIONS 29 - -IV. LUGGAGE AND THE LADY 35 - -V. DETACHED THOUGHTS ON BOARDING 49 - -VI. THE LADY ALONE AT NIGHT 62 - -VII. IN SICKNESS AND IN HEALTH 68 - -VIII. AN EDUCATIONAL FANTASY 75 - -IX. MY CLOTHES 87 - -X. THE TENDENCY TO TESTIFY 107 - -XI. LETTERS AND LETTER-WRITERS 113 - -XII. THE TYRANNY OF TALENT 124 - -XIII. THE WOMAN WHO WRITES 129 - -XIV. PICNIC PICTURES 154 - -XV. THE FARM FEMININE 171 - -XVI. A LITTLE GIRL AND HER GRANDMOTHER 183 - -XVII. THE WAYFARING WOMAN 194 - -XVIII. THE ROAD THAT TALKED 205 - -XIX. MY MOTHER'S GARDENERS 214 - -XX. MY LITTLE TOWN 227 - -XXI. GENUS CLERICUM 244 - -XXII. SOME DIFFICULTIES IN DOING WITHOUT ETERNITY 264 - - NOTE.--_Several of these essays have appeared in_ - THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY, THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW, - THE UNPOPULAR REVIEW, and THE CHURCHMAN, _and are - here reprinted with the kind permission of the editors of those - magazines_. - - - - -_The Joys of Being a Woman_ - - - - -I - -_The Joys of Being a Woman_ - - -Some years ago there appeared in the "Atlantic" an essay entitled "The -Joys of Being a Negro." With a purpose analogous to that of the author, -I am moved to declare the real delights of the apparently down-trodden, -and in the face of a bulky literature expressive of pathos and protest, -to confess frankly the joys of being a woman. It is a feminist argument -accepted as axiomatic that every woman would be a man if she could be, -while no man would be a woman if he could help it. Every woman knows -this is not fact but falsehood, yet knows also that it is one of those -falsehoods on which depends the stability of the universe. The idea -that every woman is desirous of becoming a man is as comforting to -every male as its larger corollary is alarming, namely, that women as -a mass have resolved to become men. The former notion expresses man's -view of femininity, and is flattering; the latter expresses his view -of feminism, and is fearsome. Man's panic, indeed, before the hosts -he thinks he sees advancing, has lately become so acute that there -is danger of his paralysis. Now his paralysis would defeat not only -the purposes of feminism, but also the sole purpose of woman's conduct -toward man from Eve's time to ours, a course of which feminism is only a -modern and consistent example. - -It is for man's reassurance that I shall endeavor gradually to unfold -this age-old purpose, showing that while the privileges which through -slow evolution we have amassed are so enjoyable as to preclude our -envying any man his dusty difficulties, still our attitude toward -these our toys is that of a friend of mine, a woman, aged four. Left -unprotected in her hands for entertainment, a male coeval was heard to -burst into cries of rage. Her parents, rushing to his rescue, found -their daughter surrounded by all the playthings, which she loftily -withheld from her visitor's hand. Rebuke produced the virtuous response, -"I am only trying to teach Bobby to be unselfish." - -The austere moral intention of my little friend was her direct heritage -from her mother Eve, whose much maligning would be regrettable if this -very maligning were not the primary purpose of the artful allegory: -Adam and all his sons had to believe that they amounted to more than -Eve, as the primary condition of their amounting to anything. Eve, in -her campaign for Adam's education, was the first woman to perceive his -need for complacency, and so, from Eden to eternity, she undertook to -immolate her reputation for his sake. Eve, I repeat, was the first woman -to perceive Adam's fundamental need, but she was not the last. - -The romance of Adam and Eve was written by so subtle a psychologist -that I feel sure the novelist must have been a woman. Her deathless -allegory of Eden contains the whole situation of the sexes: it shows -the superiority of woman, while seeming, for his own good, to show -the superiority of man. As it must have required a woman to write the -parable, so perhaps it requires a woman to expound it. - -I pass over the initial fact that the representation of Eve as the last -in an ascending order of creation, plainly signifies that she is to be -considered the most nearly, if not the absolutely, perfect, of created -things. The first thing of real importance in the narrative is the -purpose of Eve's creation, to fill a need, Adam's. "It was not good that -the man should be alone." The whole universe was not enough for Adam -without Eve. It neither satisfied nor stimulated him. He was mopish, -dumpish, unconscionably lazy. If he had been merely lonely, why would it -not have been enough to create another Adam? Because the object was not -simple addition, whereby another Adam would merely have meant two Adams, -both mopish, dumpish, unconscionably lazy; the object was multiplication -by stimulation, whereby, by combining Eve with Adam, Adam, as all -subsequent history shows, was raised to the _n_th power. - -Intimately analyzed, the details of the temptation redound entirely to -Eve's credit. Woman rather than man is selected as the one more open to -argument, more capable of initiative, the one bolder to act, as well -as braver to accept the consequences of action. The sixth verse of the -third chapter cuts away forever all claim for masculine originality, -and ascribes initiative in the three departments of human endeavor to -woman. For no one knows how long, Adam had been bumping into that tree -without once seeing that it was: (_a_) "good for food"; this symbolizes -the awakening of the practical instincts, the availing one's self of -one's physical surroundings, the germ, clearly, of all commercial -activity, in which sphere man has always been judged the more active; -(_b_) "the tree was pleasant to look upon"; here it is Eve, not Adam, -who perceives the aesthetic aspect; if man has been adjudged the more -eminent in art, plainly he did not even see that a thing was beautiful -until woman told him so; (_c_) "a tree to be desired to make one wise"; -Adam had no desire to be wise until Eve stimulated it, whereas her own -desire for knowledge was so passionate that she was ready to die to -attain it. We all know how Eve's motives have been impugned, for when a -man is ready to die for knowledge, he is called scientific, but when a -woman is ready to die for knowledge, she is called inquisitive. The Eden -narrative concludes with the penalty, "He shall rule over thee," that -is, the price Eve must pay for Adam's seeming superiority is her own -seeming inferiority. The risk and the responsibility and the recompense -for man's growing pains, woman has always taken in inscrutable silence, -wise to see that she would defeat her own ends if she explained. - - "And what was my reward when they had won-- - Freedom that I had bought with torturing bonds? - --They stormed through centuries brandishing their deeds, - Boasting their gross and transient mastery - To girls, who listened with indulgent ears! - And laughing hearts--Lord, they were ever blind-- - Women have they known, but never Woman." - -The methods and the motives of Eve toward Adam have been the methods and -the motives of woman with man ever since. Eve's purposes, summarized, -are fourfold: first, she must educate Adam; second, she must conceal his -education from him, as the only practical way of developing in man the -self-esteem necessary to keep him in his sex; third, Eve must never bore -Adam, to keep him going she must always keep him guessing; and fourth, -Eve must not bore herself; this last view of the temptation is perhaps -the truest, namely, that Eve herself was so bored by the inertness of -Adam and the ennui of Eden that she had to give him the apple to see -what he and she would do afterwards. - - * * * * * - -The imperishable philosophy of the third chapter of Genesis clearly -establishes the primary joy of being a woman, the joy of conscious -superiority. That it is the most profound joy known to human nature will -be readily attested by any man who has felt his own sense of superiority -shaking in its shoes as he has viewed the recent much-advertised -achievements of women. How could any man help envying a woman a -self-approval so absolute that it can afford to let man seem superior at -her expense? - -Woman's conviction of advantage supports her in using her prerogatives -first as if they were deficiencies, and then in employing them to offset -man's deficiencies. Man is a timorous, self-distrustful creature, who -would never have discovered his powers if not stimulated by woman's -weakness. Probably prehistoric woman voluntarily gave up her own muscle -in order that man might develop his by serving her. It is only recently -that we have dared to be as athletic as we might, and the effort is -still tentative enough to be relinquished if we notice any resulting -deterioration, muscular or moral, in men. Women, conscious how they -hold men's welfare in their hands, simply do not dare to discover how -strong they might be if they tried, because they have so far used their -physical weakness not only as a means of arousing men's good activities, -but also as a means of turning to nobler directions their bad ones. -Men are naturally acquisitive, impelled to work for gain and gold, -gain and more gain, gold and more gold. Unable to deter them from this -impulse, we turn it to an unselfish end, that is, we let men support -us, preserving for their sakes the fiction that we are too frail to -support ourselves. If they had neither child nor wife, men would still -be rolling up wealth, but it is very much better for their characters -that they should suppose they are working for their families rather than -for themselves. We might be Amazons, but for men's own sakes we refrain -from what would be for ourselves a selfish indulgence in vigor. Man is -not only naturally acquisitive but is naturally ostentatious of his -acquisitions. Having bled for his baubles, he wishes to put them on and -strut in them. Again we step in and redirect his impulse; we put on his -baubles and strut for him. We let him think that our delicate physique -is better fitted for jewels and silk than his sturdier frame, and that -our complex service to the Society which must be established to show off -his jewels and silk, is really a lighter task than his simple slavery -to an office desk. How reluctantly men have delegated to women dress -and all its concomitant luxury may readily be proved by an examination -of historic portraits--behold Raleigh in all his ruffles!--and by the -tendency to top-hat and tin-can decoration exhibited by the male savage. -The passionate attention given by our own household males to those few -articles of apparel in which we have thought it safe to allow them -individual choice, unregulated by requirements of uniform, articles such -as socks or cravats, must prove even to men themselves how much safer it -is that their clothes-craze should be vicariously expressed, that women -should do their dressing for them. - - * * * * * - -Not only for the moral advantages gained by men in supporting us do -women preserve the fallacy of physical feebleness, but also for the -spiritual exaltation men may enjoy by protecting us and rescuing us from -perils. For this purpose it is quite unnecessary that the man should -think the peril real, but it is absolutely necessary that he should -think the woman thinks it real. It does a man more good to save a woman -from a mouse than from a tiger, as contributing more to the sense of -superiority so necessary to him. The truth is that women are not really -afraid of anything, but they perceive how much splendid incentive would -be lost to the world if they did not pretend to be. For example, if -women were actually afraid of serpents, would the Tempter have chosen -that form just when he wished to be most ingratiating? But think how -many heroes would be unmade if women should let men know that they are -perfectly capable of killing their own snakes. The universality of the -mouse fear proves its prehistoric origin, showing how consistently and -successfully women have been educating men in heroism; in earliest times -it probably required a whole dinotherium ramping at the cave-mouth to -induce primitive man to draw weapon in his mate's defense, but now to -evoke the quintessence of chivalry, all a woman has to do is to hop on a -chair at sight of a mouse. - - * * * * * - -Woman's motive for suppressing her intellectual powers is exactly the -same as her motive for not developing her physical powers. She is ready -to enjoy and to employ her own genius in secret for the sake of the -free and open growth of man's. She has wrought so conscientiously to -this end that it is probable that the average man's belief in woman's -mental inferiority is even stronger than his belief in her physical -inferiority, for well woman has perceived the peril to man of his ever -discovering the truth of her intellectual endowment. Man's energy cannot -survive the strain of thinking his brain inferior, or even equal, to -a woman's. This fact is the reason why women so long renounced all -educational advantages; that at last their minds were too much for them, -and that they were driven by pure ebullience of suppressed genius to -invade the university, will more and more be seen by women to have been -a regrettable mistake. There is much current newspaper discussion of the -failure of the men's colleges to-day to educate the young male, his -utter obduracy before stimulus is despairingly compared with the effect -of college upon the youth of past generations. I fear that the reason is -simple to seek: men's colleges have deteriorated exactly in the ratio -that women's colleges have improved. The course for women and women's -colleges is therefore clear. - -Our history shows that we have, with only occasional lapses into genius, -nobly sustained the requirements of our unselfishness. On rare occasions -our ability has been so irresistible, and our honesty so irrepressible, -that in an unguarded moment we have tossed off a Queen Elizabeth, a Rosa -Bonheur, a Madame Curie, a Joan of Arc, a Hetty Green; but for the most -part we have preserved a glorious mediocrity that allows man to believe -himself dominant in administration, art, science, war, and finance. The -women who have so far forgotten themselves as almost to betray woman's -genius to the world, are fortunately for the moral purpose of the sex, -exceptional, and the average woman makes a very creditable concealment -of intellect. I am hopeful that as women grow in wisdom, their outbreaks -of ability will be more and more controlled and sporadic, and man's -paralysis before them be correspondingly infrequent, so that at -some future day, we may see woman again relinquish all educational -privileges, and become wisely illiterate for man's sake. - -Our own intellectual advantages are as much greater than man's as -they are more secret. No woman would put up with the clumsiness and -crudity of a man's brain, knowing so well the superexcellence of her -own, in the delicacy of its machinery, the subtle science required in -its employment, the absorbing interest of the material on which it is -employed, and the noble purpose to which it is solely devoted. - -As to our mental mechanism, it is so much finer than man's that, out -of pure pity for his clogging equipment, we let him think logic and -reason better means of traveling from premise to conclusion than the air -flights we encourage him to scorn as woman's intuition. Nothing is more -painful to a woman than an argument with a man, because he journeys from -given fact to deduced truth by pack-mule, and she by aeroplane. When he -finds her at the destination, he is so irritated by the swiftness of her -passage that he accuses her of not having followed the right direction, -and demands as proof that she describe the weeds by the roadside, which -he has amply studied,--he calls this study his reasoning process. Of -course no woman stops to botanize when the object is to get there. No -man ever wants to be a woman? No man ever longs to exchange his ass for -our airship? No man ever envies us the nimbleness by which we can elude -logic and get at truth? - -Our mental operations are keyed to the very sublimation of delicacy -and rapidity, and they need to be, considering the subtleties of the -skill with which we must employ them. Eve left it to us to educate -Adam without his knowing it, and to keep him endlessly entertained. To -educate, to amuse, and forever, calls for such exquisite manipulation of -our own minds, calls for such individual initiative, such originality, -as to provide woman with an aspiration that makes man's creative concern -with such gross matters as art or letters, science or government, seem -puerile and pitiable. What skill do the tasks of man, so stupidly -tangible and public, evoke? How stimulating to be a woman! How dull to -amble along like a man, with only logic to carry you, and only success -to attain! - - * * * * * - -Poor man is to be pitied not only for the crudity of his mental -machinery and the creaking clumsiness of its movement, but for the -dullness of the material in which he must work. The truth is that -there would be no sex to do the unskilled labor of the world, if women -ever once let men be tempted by their superior employments. The surest -way of keeping man to his hod-carrying is to let him think that woman -spends all her secret hours sobbing for bricks and mortar. As a child -must respect his toys if he is to be happy, so a man must respect the -material he works in, and thus women foster his pride in making books, -pictures, machines, states, philosophies, while women--make _him_! The -subject to which we devote all our heads is man himself. - - "Mine to protect, to nurture, to impel; - My lord and lover, yes, but first my child. - Man remains Man, but Woman is the Mother, - There is no mystery she dare not read; - No fearful fruit can grow, but she must taste; - No secret knowledge can be held from her; - For she must learn all things that she may teach." - -Our material, human, living, plastic, is immeasurably more marvelous -than man's cold stone, cold laws, cold print. Unlike man's, therefore, -our work can never be finished, can not be qualified and made finite by -any standard of perfection. It is more fun to make a Plato than to make -his philosophy, and at the same time to be skillful enough to conceal -our creatorship, knowing that the condition of producing another and -greater Plato is to let him have the inflation of supposing he produced -himself. Now unless woman's efforts through all the ages to instill -into man the self-satisfaction necessary to his success have gone for -naught--which I cannot from observation believe--man could hardly help -envying woman the splendor and the scope of the subject to which her -intelligence is directed, to wit, himself. - - * * * * * - -The ultimate purpose of woman's education of man transcends the grosser -aims to which man's intellect is devoted. Woman wants man to be good, so -that he may be happy. He was not happy in Eden, and so she drove him out -of it. Woman's education of man she has for the most part succeeded in -hiding from him, but the object of that education, man's happiness, has -been so permeating that even man himself has perceived it. Man thinks -he can manufacture his own career, his own money, his own clothes, and -his own food, but no man thinks he can make his own happiness. Every man -thinks either that some actual woman makes or unmakes his joy, or that -some potential woman could make it. For a woman, love's young dream is -of making some man happy; for a man, love's young dream is of letting -some woman make him happy. These views plainly argue that in relation -to the supply of gladness, woman is the almoner, man the beggar. Since -every one would rather be a giver than a getter, it seems impossible -that no man ever wants to be a woman, in order to experience the most -indisputable of her joys, the joy of dispensing joy. - - * * * * * - -Reasons, however, why men should want to be women are more numerous -and more cogent than it would be safe to let men know, so I am cannily -concealing many. Among the few it may not be impolitic to divulge, is -one that of course any man who reads has seen for himself. While we -shall continue conscientiously devoted to our pedagogical duties, we -have pretty well determined Adam's limitations, and need only apply to -him a pretty well established curriculum, whereas we ourselves remain an -undeveloped mystery that more and more attracts our imagination. Looking -far into the future one may see man finished and fossilized, when woman -is still at the stage of eohippus as - - "On five toes he scampered - Over Tertiary rocks." - -Even now women, looking far out to space, sometimes echo the glee of -little eohippus:-- - - "I am going to be a horse! - And on my middle finger nails - To run my earthly course! - I'm going to have a flowing tail! - I'm going to have a mane! - I'm going to stand fourteen hands high - On the psychozoic plain!" - -Now if any man, clearly perceiving his own possibilities, must envy -woman the joy of having him for an experiment, how could the same man, -if he should as clearly perceive woman's greater possibilities, help -envying woman the joy of having herself for experiment? - - * * * * * - -With this paragraph I have plumply arrived at feminism, and at the -object of all my revelations, namely, to reassure men by stating that -women do not intend to take themselves up as a serious experiment for -ten thousand years or so; we shall not feel free to do so until we have -taught Bobby to be unselfish enough to let us; he is not yet strong -enough to try his own wings, much less strong enough to let us try ours. -To allay man's fears, it may be well to elucidate some aspects of our -actions. - -While there may be a little of eohippus exaltation in feminism, it is -so little as to be negligible; our main purpose is still our age-old -business of teaching by indirection. There are recurrent occasions when -Adam grows sluggish in his Eden, and women have to contrive new spurs -both for his action and his appreciation. As whips to make a lethargic -Adam move where he should move, Eve is brandishing two threats, one her -economic independence, the other, her use of the ballot. Adam thinks she -really means to have both. Now our threatening to march from The Home -and invade business, and by that action to let business invade The Home, -is very simply explained. Once again our purpose is unselfish: it gives -Adam false notions of economic justice to form a habit of not paying -for services rendered, so Eve conquers her shyness and pretends that -she will leave The Home if he does not pay her some scanty shillings to -stay in it. Even the dullest man has now become convinced that women can -earn money, so that we hope that in time even the most penurious husband -will perceive the wisdom of giving his wife an allowance, and that's all -we've been after; and yet we have to make all this fuss to get it. If -Adam were only a little easier to move, he would save us and himself a -great deal of pushing. - -Our suffrage agitation is as simple as our economic one. We mean only to -wake you to the use of the ballot in your hands, when we ask you to give -it to our hands. Already we have aroused you to two facts: if politics -is too soiled a spot for your women to enter, then it is too soiled -a spot for our men to enter, and therefore it is high time you did a -little scrubbing; and also that if you refuse to enlarge the suffrage to -admit desirable women, it is high time to consent to restrict it so as -not to admit undesirable men. Again this is all we have been after, but -again we have had to make a great deal of noise in order to wake you up. - -But feminism to the male mind suggests not only commercial and -professional and political careers for women, but something less -tangible and more terrible, the advent of a bugaboo called the New -Woman, who shall devastate The Home and happiness. It is a strong -argument for our superiority that there is nothing that frightens a -man so much as a woman's threatening to become like him. Yet the time -has come for frightening him, and we are doing it conscientiously, -for, to confess truth, there is nothing that frightens a woman so much -as becoming like a man. However, for his soul's sake, she can manage -to assume the externals of man's conduct, but not even for his soul's -sake, much less her own, would she ever adopt his mental or spiritual -equipment. Adam has such a tendency to ennui that the only way to keep -him really comfortable is every now and then to make him a little -uncomfortable. He was so well off in Eden, and consequently so dour and -dumpish, that Eve had no choice whatever but to remove him from The Home -entirely in order to save his character. We are hoping that we women -of the present shall not be driven to such an extremity; for we know -what her exile meant for Eve! We are busily fostering man's fear of -losing The Home, as the best way of making him appreciate it, and so of -preserving it for him, and for ourselves. - -As with The Home, so with the woman called New. She never was, she -never will be, but to present her to man's future seems the only way of -making man satisfied with the woman of the past. We have had to stir -men to appreciate us as women, by showing them how easily we could -be men if we would. The creator granted to Adam's loneliness an Eve, -not another Adam, and should we at this late day fail the purpose of -our making, and cease to be women? We have changed our manners and -conversation a little, for the better success of our scare, but the -woman who sits chuckling while she tends man's hearth and him, is still -as old-fashioned as Eve, and as new. - - * * * * * - -Men, who always take themselves as seriously as children, have been easy -enough to frighten by means of a feminism that seems to take itself -seriously. A really penetrating man might guess that when women seem -to be so much in earnest, they must be up to something quite different -from their seeming, and he might safely divine that, however novel -woman's purposes may appear to be, they will always be explicable in the -light of her oldest purpose--man's improvement. Now man's improvement -is a heavy task, and when nature entrusted it to woman, she gave her -a compensating advantage. To become a genuine feminist, a woman would -have to forego her most enviable possession--her sense of humor. Man can -laugh, of course, noisily enough; but what man possesses the gift and -the grace of seeing himself as a joke? Men who must do the work of the -world are better off without humor, because they can thus more easily -keep their eyes on the road, just as a horse needs blinders; but woman, -who directs the work of man, needs to have her eyes everywhere at once. -By another figure, such rudimentary humor as man does have is merely an -external armor against circumstance; but woman's humor is permeating, -her armor is all through her system, as if her sinews were wrought of -steel and sunbeams. A man never wishes to be a woman? Is it not an -argument for the joys of being a woman, that no man seems to have had -such fun in being a man that it has occurred to him to write an essay on -the subject? - - - - -II - -_A Man in the House_ - - -There persists much of the harem in every well-regulated home. In every -house arranged to make a real man really happy, that man remains always -a visitor, welcomed, honored, but perpetually a guest. He steps in -from the great outside for rest and refreshment, but he never belongs. -For him the click and hum of the harem machinery stops, giving way to -love and laughter, but there is always feminine relief when the master -departs and the household hum goes on again. The anomaly lies in the -fact that in theory all the machinery exists but for the master's -comfort; but in practice, it is much easier to arrange for his comfort -when he is not there. A house without a man is savorless, yet a man in a -house is incarnate interruption. No matter how closely he incarcerates -himself, or how silently, a woman always feels him there. He may hide -beyond five doors and two flights of stairs, but his presence somehow -leaks through, and unconsciously dominates every domestic detail. He -does not mean to, the woman does not mean him to; it is merely the -nature of him. Keep a man at home during the working hours of the day, -and there is a blight on that house, not obvious, but subtle, touching -the mood and the manner of maidservant and manservant, cat, dog, and -mistress, and affecting even the behavior of inanimate objects, so -that there is a constraint about the sewing-machine, a palsy on the -vacuum-cleaner, and a _gaucherie_ in the stove-lids. Over the whole -household spreads a feeling of the unnatural, and a resulting sense of -ineffectuality. Let the man go out, and with the closing of the front -door, the wheels grow brisk again, and smooth. To enjoy a home worth -enjoying, a man should be in it as briefly as possible. - -By nature man belongs to the hunt in the open, and woman to the fire -indoors, and just here lies one of the best reasons for being a woman -rather than a man, because a woman can get along without a man's -out-of-doors much better than a man can get along without a woman's -indoors, which proves woman of the two the better bachelor, as being -more self-contained and self-contented. Every real man when abroad on -the hunt is always dreaming of a hearth and a hob and a wife, whereas -no real woman, if she has the hearth and the hob, is longing for man's -hunting spear or quarry. If she is indeed a real woman she is very -likely longing to give a man the comfort of the fire, provided he will -not stay too long at a stretch, but get out long enough to give her time -to brush up his hearth and rinse his teapot satisfactorily to herself. - -A man's home-coming is not an end in itself, its objective is the woman; -but a woman's home-making exists both for the man and for itself. A -woman needs to be alone with her house because she talks to it, and -in a tongue really more natural than her talk with her husband, which -is always better for having a little the company flavor, as in the -seraglio. The most devoted wives are often those frankest in their -abhorrence of a man in the house. It is because they do not like to keep -their hearts working at high pressure too long at a time; they prefer -the healthy relief of a glorious day of sorting or shopping between the -master's breakfast and his dinner. - -It is a rare _menage_ that is not incommoded by having its males lunch -at home. It is much better when a woman may watch their dear coat-tails -round the corner for the day, with an equal exaltation in their freedom -for the fray and her own. A woman whose males have their places of -business neither on the great waters nor in the great streets, but in -their own house, is of all women the most perpetually pitied by other -women, and the most pathetically patient. She never looks quite like -other women, this doctor's, minister's, professor's, writer's wife. Her -eyes have a harassed patience, and her lips a protesting sweetness, for -she does not belong to her house, and so she does not belong to herself. -When a man's business-making and a woman's home-making live under the -same roof, they never go along in parallel independence: always the -man's overlaps, invades. Kitchen and nursery are hushed before the needs -of office and study, and the professional telephone call postpones -the orders to the butcher. The home suffers, but the husband suffers -more, for he is no longer a guest in his own house, with all a guest's -prerogatives; he now belongs there, and must take the consequences. - -Fortunately the professional men-about-the-house are in small minority, -and so are their housekeepers, but all women have sometimes to -experience the upheaval incident on a man's vacation at home; whether -father's, or husband's, or college brother's, or son's, the effect is -always the same: the house stands on its head, and for two days it kicks -up its heels and enjoys it, but after two weeks, two months, that is, -on the removal of the exciting stimulus, it sinks to coma for the rest -of the season. The different professions differ in their treatment of -a holiday, except that all men at home on a vacation act like fish on -land or cats in water, and expect their womenfolk either to help them -pant, or help them swim. They seem to go out a great deal,--at least -they are always clamoring to have their garments prepared for sorties, -social or piscatorial,--and yet they always seem to be under heel. Some -men on a home holiday tinker all day long, others bring with them a -great many books which they never read, and the result in both cases -is that house-keeping becomes a prolonged picking up. All men at home -on a vacation eat a great deal more than other men, or than at other -times; but with the sole exception of the anomalous academic, who is -always concerned for his gastronomy, they will eat anything and enjoy -it,--and say so. A man at home for his holidays is always vociferously -appreciative. His happiness is almost enough to repay a woman for the -noise he makes, and the mess; yet statistics would show that during -any man's home vacation the women of the house lose just about as many -pounds as the man gains. But what are women for, or homes? - -After all, you can have a house without a man in it if you are quite -sure you want to, but you cannot have a home without one. You cannot -make a home out of women alone, or men alone; you have to mix them. -Still every woman must admit, and every man with as much sense as a -woman, that it's very hard to make a home for any man if he is always -in it. Every honest front door must confess that it is glad to see its -master go forth in the morning; but this is only because it is so much -gladder to see him come back at night. - - - - -III - -_Old-Clothes Sensations_ - - -People whom penury has never compelled in infancy or adolescence to -wear other people's clothes have missed a valuable lesson in social -sympathy. In our journey from the period when we first strutted -thoughtlessly in our Cousin Charles's cast-off coat on to the time when -we resented its misfit, and thence to that latest and best day when we -could bestow our own discarded jacket on poor little Cousin Billy, we -have successively experienced all the gradations of soul between pauper -and philanthropist. Most of us are fortunate enough to put away other -people's clothes when we put away the rest of childhood's indignities; -but our early experiences should make us thoughtful of those who have -no such luck, who seem ordained from birth to be all the world's poor -relations. In gift-clothes there is something peculiarly heart-searching -both for giver and recipient. - -This delicacy inherent in the present of cast-off suit or frock is due -perhaps to the subtle clinging of the giver's self to the serge or -silk. It is a strong man who feels that he is himself in another man's -old coat. If an individuality is fine enough to be worth retaining, it -is likely to be fine enough to disappear utterly beneath the weight of -another man's shoulders upon one's own. Most of us would rather have -our creeds chosen for us than our clothes. Most of us would rather -select our own tatters than have another's cast-off splendors thrust -upon us. It is no light achievement, the living up to and into other -people's clothes. Clothes acquire so much personality from their first -wearer,--adjust themselves to the swell of the chest, the quirk of the -elbow, the hitch in the hip-joint,--that the first wearer always wears -them, no matter how many times they may be given away. He is always felt -to be inside, so that the second wearer's ego is constantly bruised by -the pressure resulting from two gentlemen occupying the same waistcoat. - -Middle children are to be pitied for being condemned to be constantly -made over out of the luckier eldest's outgrown raiment. How can Tommy be -sure he is Tommy, when he is always walking around in Johnny's shoes? Or -Polly, grown to girlhood, ever find her own heart, when all her life it -has beaten under Anna's pinafore? - -The evil is still worse when the garments come from outside the family, -for one may readily accept from blood-kin bounty which, bestowed by -a stranger, would arouse a corroding resentment. This is because one -can always revenge one's self on one's relatives for an abasement of -gratitude by means of self-respecting kicks and pinches. A growing soul -may safely wear his big brother's ulster, but no one else's; for there -are germs in other people's clothes,--the big bad yellow bacilli of -covetousness. People give you their old clothes because they have new -ones, and this fact is hard to forgive. - -There may, of course, exist mitigating circumstances that often serve to -solace or remove this basic resentment. To receive gown or hat or boots -direct from the donor is degrading, but in proportion as they come to us -through a lengthening chain of transferring hands the indignity fades -out, the previous wearer's personality becomes less insistent; until, -when identification is an impossibility, we may even take pleasure in -conjecturing who may have previously occupied our pockets, may even feel -the pull of real friendliness toward the unknown heart that beat beneath -the warm woolen bosom presented to us. - -Further, the potential bitterness of the recipient is dependent on the -stage of his racial development and the color of his skin. The Ethiopian -prefers old clothes to new. The black cook would rather have her -mistress's cast-off frock than a new one, and the cook is therein canny. -She trusts the correctness of the costume that her lady has chosen for -herself, but distrusts the selection the lady might make for her maid. -On assuming the white woman's clothes, the black woman feels that she -succeeds also to the white woman's dignity. The duskier race stands at -the same point of evolution with the child who falls upon the box of -cast-off finery and who straightway struts about therein without thought -of his own discarded independence. - -I may be perceived to write from the point of view of one clothed in -childhood out of the missionary box. Those first old clothes received -were donned with gloating and glory; but later, in my teens,--that -period so strangely composed for all of us out of spiritual shabbiness -and spiritual splendor,--sensations toward the cast-off became uneasy, -uncomfortable, at last unbearable. The sprouting personality resisted -the impact of that other personality who had first worn my garments. I -wanted raiment all my own, dully at first, then fiercely. - -No one who has passed from a previous condition of servitude to -the dignity of his own earnings will ever forget the pride of his -first self-bought clothes. At last one is one's self and belongs not -to another man's coat, or another woman's gown. It is a period of -expansion, of pride: when one's clothes are altogether one's own, one's -pauper days are done. But it is best for sympathy not to forget them, -not only for the sake of the pauper, but for the sake of the plutocrat -we are on the verge of becoming; for our sensations in regard to old -clothes are about to enter a new phase; we are about to undergo the -ordeal of being ourselves the donors of our own old clothes. - -It was not alone for the new coat's intrinsic sake that we desired it; -we coveted still more the experience of giving it away when we were -done with it. There is no more soul-warming sensation than that of -giving away something that you no longer want. The pain of a recipient's -feelings on receiving a thing which you can afford to give away, but -which he himself cannot afford to buy, is exactly balanced by your pride -in presenting him with something that you can't use. - -The best way to get rid of the pauper spirit is to pauperize some one -else. This is cynical philanthropy, but veracious psychology. It -follows that the best way to restore a pauper's self-respect is to -present him with some old clothes to give to some one still poorer; -for clothes are, above all gifts, a supreme test of character. It -was the custom of epics to represent the king as bestowing upon his -guest-friends gifts of clothes, but they were never old clothes. If -you could picture some Homeric monarch in the act of giving away his -worn-out raiment, in that moment you would see his kingliness dwindle. - -The man who can receive another man's old clothes without thereby losing -his self-respect is fit to be a prince among paupers, but the man -who can give another man his old clothes without wounding that man's -self-respect is fit to be the king of all philanthropists. - - - - -IV - -_Luggage and the Lady_ - - -I write as one pursued through life by the malevolence of inanimate -objects. My singular subjection to things was never brought so painfully -home to me as during four months in Europe. Of course, my soul had been -to Europe a great many times, but my body never, and now I was taking -it, as well as certain scrip and scrippage for its journey. I chained -up my soul and held it under lock and key while I took counsel with -certain seductive guidebooks. These paternal manuals left no detail -untouched, until there was no fear left for me of cabs or custom-houses, -of money-tables or time-tables. It was all as simple as bread and milk. -One thing all my guides inveighed against, a superfluity of baggage; -with them I utterly agreed. A trunk was an expensive luxury on foreign -railways: there stood ready always an army of porters to escort one's -handbags. A lady could travel gayly with a single change of raiment; -after a day's dust and soil, merely the transformation of a blouse, and -behold a toilet fit for any table d'hote. Moreover, so remarkable were -foreign laundry facilities that on tumbling to bed all you had to do -was to summon an obliging maid, deliver, sleep, and on the morrow morn, -behold yourself all crisply washed and ironed. As to the expense of a -trunk and the battalions of porters, the guidebooks were correct; as to -the rest, they lied. The single blouse theory is all very well if you -don't wear out or tear out by the way; and as to the laundry fallacy, do -I not still see myself roaming the streets of Antwerp searching vainly -for one single _blanchisserie_? My conclusion is that one needs clothes -and a right mind about as much on one side of the Atlantic as on the -other. - -But I had not reached this conclusion when I bought my baggage, -therefore I limited myself to two hand-pieces. For the first of these -I had not far to search. It was that frail, slim, dapper thing, a -straw suitcase. It was very light, just how light I was afterwards to -discover, but before embarkation I regarded it with joy; it seemed to -me suitable and genteel, with its sober gray sides and trim leather -corners. With it I was satisfied, whereas from the first I felt -misgiving about my second article of impedimenta. There was nothing -genteel or ladylike about this, that was certain, but perhaps I am -not the first traveler who has yielded to the mendacious promises -of a telescope. It looks as if it would so obligingly yield to the -need either of condensation or expansion. You may inflate or contract -at will, and it's all the same to the telescope. My telescope was -peculiarly unbeautiful. Its material was a shiny substance looking like -linoleum, called wood fiber, and having a bright burnt-orange color. Its -corners were strengthened with sheet iron, lacquered black. You have -seen the same in use by rural drummers, but rarely in a female hand. -I don't know why I bought it. It is part of my quarrel with inanimate -objects that they always exert an hypnotic influence upon me in the -shop, and always excite loathing so soon as they arrive at my home. In -this instance it was both the saleswoman and the purchase that excited -the hypnotism. She was of that florid, expansive, pompadoured type -that always reduces my mind to feebleness. Moreover, she jumped up and -down on my prospective telescope, bouncing before my eyes in all her -bigness. Now, in my sober senses I do know that one's primary motive -in purchasing a handbag is not that one may dance upon it; but at that -moment, as I watched her pirouetting as if on a springboard, I felt -that no piece of luggage was anything worth unless you could jump upon -it. I bought. - -Almost at once that tawny bedemoned box began its career of naughtiness. -The first thing it did on shipboard was to disappear. It stopped just -long enough to be entered in the agent's book, and then it leaped down -into the hold and hid. I searched; the purser searched; so did six -several stewards and stewardesses. The stewards searched the staterooms; -I searched the passages; together we searched the hold, penetrating -even the steerage to see if the missing article were congregating with -the motley collection down there. We were four days out when, in a -passage repeatedly searched, on a ledge near a porthole, behold my tawny -telescope leering at me! My steward was genuinely superstitious over it. -So was I. - -It was during my first travels on land that I discovered that a capacity -for being jumped upon, far from being a recommendation in a piece of -luggage, is distinctly a detraction. I did a great deal of jumping -during three weeks in Scotland. I am sure I shall have sympathizers -when I declare my difficulties in packing a telescope. In the first -place, it is very hard, when both ends are lying on the floor, supine -and gaping, to distinguish which is top and which is bottom. It is only -after sad repacking that you discover that while top will sometimes go -over bottom, bottom will never go over top. Having ascertained which is -bottom, you begin to pack. You soon are even with the edge; but in a -telescope this is nothing. You continue to pack, up, up into the air, a -tremulous mountain of garments upon which at length you gingerly place -top. Firmly seating yourself at one end, you grasp the straps that -girdle the other, and bravely you seek to buckle them. Result, while -that end of the telescope on which you are sitting undoubtedly settles -under your weight, from the gaping mouth which you are attempting to -muzzle there is belched forth an array of petticoats, blouses, collars, -postcards. You dismount, reopen, replace scattered articles, and reseat -yourself on the opposite end. Result, the end which sank under you -before now pops wide, and spouts forth a stream of Baedekers red as -collops. Again you repack all, replace top. Starting from across the -room, with a running high jump, you aim to land on the very middle of -the thing. Result, the top goes down, it is true, but from all edges -there dips a fringe of garments. In the privacy of your room, with -the assistance of Heaven and the chambermaid and the Boots, you may -sometimes contrive to shut a telescope; but I once had to open and -restrap mine, sole and unaided, in the waiting room of a station. It -happened that I had placed my ticket to London in the toe of one shoe, -placed the shoe in the bottom of the straw suitcase, locked this, placed -the key in the toe of the other shoe, and placed that in the bottom -of my telescope. Why did I do this? Simply because I had just visited -Melrose Abbey. I frequently suffer from a tendency of my costume to -disruption in moments of stress. At times of great muscular exertion and -mental excitement my hat tends to take an inebriate lunge, each several -hairpin stands on end, my collar rises rowdyish from its moorings, -impeccable glove fingers gape wantonly. All these circumstances attended -the closing of my telescope on that occasion. It was immediately after -that I decided upon the necessity of a third piece of baggage. - -I bought it in Edinburgh, on Princes Street, the wonderful street where -you vainly seek to apply yourself to mundane shopping with Edinburgh -Castle ever filling your vision, standing over there on its craggy -hill, all misty with legend, while a hundred memories of Mary Queen -of Scots come whispering at your ear as you soberly endeavor to buy -gloves. If my previous impedimenta had been outrageously American, my -third handbag was Scotch, every inch of him. He was gentlemanly and -distinguished, frank and accommodating. I have never seen anything like -him over here,--shiny black sides of oil-cloth, bound by leather strips, -plentifully studded with tacks, but otherwise strictly unornamented. But -his chief charm was the way he opened, the whole top flapping easily -apart at will, and afterwards the two sides closing over all as easily -as if his only desire were to please. In capacity he was unlimited; you -could pour into him, on and on, and always he closed upon his contents -smilingly, without protest. - -For a brief space, as I trickled down through England from cathedral to -cathedral, my Scotch companion was my chiefest comfort, the mere sight -of his black, rising-sunshiny face cheering me as it looked down upon me -from the luggage rack of a third-class carriage. More and more I came to -impose upon the generosity of his interior, until one day my confidence -in his Scotch integrity was rudely shattered; for I discovered that the -reason he could hold so much was that he had quietly kicked out his -bottom! He continued to accompany me, it is true, but thrust from his -high gentlemanly estate, resembling now rather those bleary, dilapidated -Glasgow porters that greet one's arriving vessel, his frail form, like -theirs, begirt and bandaged in order to support the few light belongings -I now dared to entrust to his feebleness. - -Meanwhile, the strength of my yellow telescope continued unabated, -but so did also its averseness to accommodating my possessions, which -daily, all unwittingly and unwillingly, increased. My dapper suitcase -had suffered by the way, its neat sides were bruised and staved in, one -leather corner was missing, another stood up like an attentive ear. It -still smiled, "brave in ragged luck," but its own America would not have -known it. It now appeared that England, and as it happened, rural Devon, -must contribute another article to my retinue. - -Now, ever since I had touched Great Britain, my unaccustomed eye had -been fascinated by a piece of luggage quite new to me. I mean that most -British thing, the tin trunk. We have nothing like it in luggage, but we -have copied it exactly in cake boxes; the only difference is that the -English original has a bulge top and a lock and key. In character my -British baggage was much better natured than my American telescope, but -in color it was much the same, orange tawny; it had grown very easy for -me to spot my belongings in the miscellany of the luggage van. - -These representatives of the American, Scotch, and English nations -followed in my wake from Southampton to St. Malo, and perhaps their -company need never have been increased on the continent if in Brittany I -had not bought a pair of sabots, life size. Nothing so unaccommodating -as sabots! Seemingly each was big enough to sleep in, but if I attempted -to pack the inside of one, behold, it would hold nothing at all; it was -built to hold a foot, and if it couldn't have a foot, it would have -nothing. In true peasant insolence, each sabot demanded a whole handbag -to itself, and, once in, refused to accommodate its substantial bulk to -the needs of any of my other possessions. In much difficulty I managed -to get across France, but once in Paris, especially in view of certain -aristocratic purchases that absolutely refused to consort with wooden -shoes, the need of still a fifth hand-piece was evident. - -Paris luggage, like a Paris lady, is built to show a pleasing exterior. -Diversion rather than utility is its motive. My Paris handbag still -preserves its suggestion of perpetual picnic. It looks as if it were -always just off for a Sunday in the Bois. It is a woven wicker thing, -exactly like an American lunch-basket, vastly magnified. The handle must -be grasped from the top, and is not the handy side appendage of all -American grips. I never look at it without seeing within dozens upon -dozens of boiled eggs and sandwiches. As a matter of fact, it has never -held anything of the sort; rather it carried my new Parisian costume -safely from Paris to New York. - -By dint of fast and furious touring through Belgium I managed not to -acquire anything more to pack or to be packed, but in Holland once again -I fell. I was within a few days of sailing when I visited Alkmaar. There -a tall polyglot young Dutchman showed me through a most delicious cheese -factory. Innocent and round, ruby or orange, smiled those cheeses down -at me from their long shelves. My guide gave me to eat. Thus it was that -the last thing I bought on the other side was--cheeses! Oh, he assured -me, they were perfectly well behaved; even had they so desired they -could not get out of their strong cases; no more innocent gift to be -taken home to appreciative friends. That Dutchman understood American -credulity better than he did the American language. Those cheeses did -not stay in their cases. They came out and performed in all ways after -the manner of cheeses. Now throughout my trip, whatever inconveniences -I might suffer by reason of possessions acquired, I could never make up -my mind to abandon any. Having bought them, I did not desert my cheeses, -but it became increasingly apparent that they would have to travel in -a home of their own, together with such of my goods as would not be -corrupted by evil communications. I purchased my last bit of luggage in -Rotterdam. It was a gray canvas bag, in shape like a dachshund without -the appendages. It was capable of as much lateral expansion as a Marken -fisherman. It received and held the cheeses, but frankly, so that their -contour was clear to the eye. To all appearances I was taking home a -bushel of turnips out of brave little Holland. - -I embarked at Rotterdam, and for ten days sank into that state of coma -to which ocean travel stimulates me. It was not till we had touched the -Hoboken dock that I became once more acutely alert. I had donned my -Paris traveling dress, had walked through the great shed until I found -my letter X, and then turned about to wait with the rest for the arrival -of my luggage. Then for the first time realization overwhelmed me. I -was waiting for my bags, _my_ bags; those six disreputable traveling -companions would here and now seek me out and claim my society, right -here in America, with V and W to right of me, Y and Z to left, my -haughty steamer acquaintance, looking on! Over on the other side one is -not known by one's baggage, but here one is! I had faced many a white -continental porter with nonchalance, but with which one of my motley -collection in my hand could I face the black Pullman porter of my own -country? I cowered with shame, so slowly they arrived, each several one -of the six, tediously threading its way to X, never losing itself, never -losing me, always hunting me down! The joy of home-coming was turned to -gall. I saw V and W, Y and Z, turn away their faces. To my eyes each -several hand-piece looked more bizarre than the last. Which one should I -select to accompany me on an American railroad? Which of the motley crew -would least endanger the respectability of a lady traveling alone in an -American car? Through the crowd my Parisian lunch-basket came mincing up -to me, still ready for perpetual picnic. Silly chit! I wouldn't travel -with her. My Rotterdam purchase, bulging and redolent with cheeses, -came waddling up, respectable perhaps, but with it I should have been -as conspicuous as with one of the Marken imps in copious trousers -that it so much resembled. My former pride of Scotch travel was now -so fallen away that he looked as if he were in the last stages of his -native whiskey, and as if his physique would hardly have supported the -weight of a hairpin. No help to be had in him! My American suitcase, -in May so trig and debonair, had been punched and pounded out of all -semblance to anything belonging either to America or a suitcase. My -British cake-box had suffered likewise, and in its decrepitude supported -the loss of a lock, and appeared to my horrified eyes carefully roped -with clothesline by a friendly steward. Even though I promptly sat -down upon it, spreading my Paris skirt wide, I could not conceal that -yellow cake-box from the fashionable steamer folk that swarmed about me. -Suitcase and tin trunk both had lost all distinction of nation; they -both belonged now to the international species, tramp. There remained -to me only my evil genius, the orange-tawny telescope. Foreign labels -had but scantily subdued the natural aggressiveness of his demeanor. He -was possible--perhaps. Then I considered how he had flouted me, scorned -me, spilled out at me, jeered at me in my helplessness. I pictured -opening and shutting him in the berth of a sleeping car; then quietly, -inconspicuously, and virulently, I kicked him. - -I fastened the last strap the customs officers had loosened. Just one -moment I hesitated, regarding my rakish European retinue, then I fell -upon the waiting baggage-agent. "Check them all," I cried, "all!" Free -as a bird, as a gypsy, as an American, I traveled from New York to -Chicago, a lady luggage-less. - - - - -V - -_Detached Thoughts on Boarding_ - - -Boarding is a puzzling and provocative subject for any student of human -nature. Some clue to its psychology is revealed by the fact that even -Adam and Eve got tired of it. Eden itself could not keep them from -wanting their own _menage_. One can conjecture the course of their -growing _ennui_ and irritation as the suspicion dawned upon them that in -Paradise they were not getting all the comforts of home. Having nothing -to do _but_ board, they probably conversed a great deal about their -food, when the celestial ministrants were out of earshot, and eventually -decided that they could have run the table a great deal better -themselves. Then, too, they had no privacy, they were absolutely at the -mercy of any archangel who might choose to drop in on them. Possibly, -also, Eve felt that Eden was no sort of place for bringing up children. -They might be spoiled by the attentions of other boarders, elephant or -ape, fish or fowl, any one of a perfectly indiscriminate menagerie, -while she herself, as a mother, might be subjected to constant advice -from angels who did not know one thing more about human babies than she -did herself. After Eve had thought over these matters for some time, and -whispered them all to Adam, she did what many another boarder has done -since; she up and precipitated a crisis. - -The case of Adam and Eve is sufficiently typical to afford some light -upon the puzzling effects of boarding, but not quite enough illumination -to satisfy the psychologist. He is teased by the conviction that there -is more in this matter than he can get at. Without an ultimate analysis -of causes it may still be of interest to examine some results to the -human spirit of both the selling and the buying of house-room, and to -offer some tentative explanation of the curious phenomena that for many -of us are too familiar for attention. - -We all recognize as a distinct human type the woman who keeps boarders. -One writes woman rather than man, not that in strict accuracy one could -say that men never keep boarders; when men do engage in the business, -however, they do so by wholesale, never by retail, while it is precisely -the increased personal intimacy of the retail relation that occasions -the peculiar blight incurred by the proprietor of a boarding-house, -but escaped by the proprietor of a hotel. There is an expression -familiar to our tongues, distressing in its figurative suggestion, -which is frequently descriptive of the class under discussion, "decayed -gentlewoman." No one knows whether a gentlewoman takes boarders because -she has decayed or whether she decays because she takes them. Of -course, not all women who take boarders are decrepit either in soul -or body,--some of them are very buxom indeed; and, equally, not all -are refined,--some of them are refreshingly vulgar; still, as a whole, -the attributes inherent in the term "decayed gentlewoman" so generally -characterize the profession that in whatever country one travels one is -received by ladies so consciously redolent of better days as to shame a -boarder for not having had better days himself. However adroitly they -conceal their emotions, women who entertain paying guests generally -have toward their occupation a feeling of perpetual apology or of -perpetual resentment. Sometimes the apology element predominates, and -then a blundering boarder had better be mindful of the sensitive toes -of his hostess; sometimes the resentment is uppermost, and then the -boarder had better be mindful for his own toes. There is no reason why -these facts should characterize so worthy a business, and there are -conspicuous exceptions in which both the woman and the domicile remain -invincibly warm-hearted and welcoming, but the rule still holds that -only the rarest of women can invite the public into her home and not -herself suffer from the exposure, only the rarest of women can as the -mistress of a boarding-house still be perfectly herself. - -Having boarders, however, is not so demoralizing as being a boarder. The -chronic boarder is an easily recognizable type, fat, fussy, futile, and -usually feminine. This caustic characterization does not apply to women -who go out by the day to any form of scrubbing, as doctors, lawyers, -or whatnot, professional women too busy for carping; it is the woman -who has no profession except boarding that suffers its utmost injury. -To give primary attention to the manner in which one is fed and lodged -has the same effect as any other reversion to an animal attitude. The -faces of women who do nothing but keep house are always harassed; the -faces of women who do nothing but board are always vacuous. Men-boarders -in a house are generally preferred to women; a he-boarder is more to -be desired than a she-boarder because there is less of him underfoot. -On the other hand, since a man can always beat a woman on her own -ground whenever he thinks it worth while, a man who gives his undivided -attention to his boarding can in fume and fuss out-boarder any woman. - -The insidious influence of boarding upon the spirit is most evident when -we watch it operate upon a child. We all know the type of youngster -that even the very best of boarding-houses is prone to produce. He is -noisy, aggressive, self-conscious, and yet to sympathetic penetration -profoundly pathetic. He knows that all his little life is overheard, -that every room knows when he is scolded or spanked or entreated. -A grown-up learns how to conceal his soul from even boarding-house -scrutiny, but a child has no refuge except in slamming doors and -thundering on the stairs and jumping into the secrets of those who have -trespassed upon his own. - -The effect of boarding upon our own soul may best be seen by contrasting -our reactions to our geography, according as we wake in the morning to -find ourselves at home, in a friend's home, or in a boarding-house. -At home our attitude toward the ensuing day is one of absolute -sincerity,--we expect to be our best self or our worst, for frankness is -the chief comfort of kinship; if, on the other hand, we open our eyes -in somebody's guest chamber, we marshal our forces to insure our good -behavior, we owe it to our host to put out best foot foremost; but if -we wake in a boarding-house? There our morning resolve reduces itself -to the single sordid intention to get our money's worth. This latent -hostility is ignominious and unworthy, but it is true. Yet we all know -that any hostelry is richer in Samaritan opportunities than the road to -Jericho. - -The detriment due to boarding does not confine itself to animate beings, -but extends to the inanimate. In a boarding-house even the chairs -look protesting and sat upon. The curtains seem exhausted by enforced -welcome. The overworked kitchen has not enough pride left to keep its -savors to itself. The piano has clattered until it has forgotten it was -ever meant for music. The doom of dejection falls upon a boarding-house -both without and within, so that one always regrets its entrance into -a street cozy with homes. Its windows stare forth so blankly that -the homes grow uncomfortable and move away. There is a blur over the -face-walls of a boarding-place obliterating the individuality to which -every house has a right. - -This very absence of personality gives the boarding-house a certain -personality of its own. The effort to analyze this character has made -the boarding-house a favorite background with story-writers. Balzac, -in "Pere Goriot," caught and reproduced its very soul as well as the -soul of the homeless home-lover that it harbored. The frequency of the -hall bedroom and the long table in magazine stories to-day suggests the -wistful familiarity with both of writer and reader. The juxtaposition of -types in a group bound together by no more congenial tie than the brute -need of food and shelter has always opened a fascinating field to the -romancer from Chaucer's day to ours. - -The mere mention of Chaucer's name is eloquent with contrast, for surely -the Tabard was no bleak spot, but warm and tingling with hospitality. -Yet even Chaucer's blithe company had a sharp eye and a gossipy tongue -ready for each other's foibles, and if they had remained together too -long, it would have taken more than mine host to keep them in order, but -fortunately they had their picnic and parted. Another week or two and -even the Canterbury pilgrims might have degenerated into boarders, and -dear knows what metamorphosis mine host the merry, might have undergone. - -To place Balzac's boarding-house and Chaucer's Tabard side by side is to -produce a pregnant contrast. Yet if the primary purpose of both is akin, -why the world of difference connoted by the word "boarding-house" and -the word "inn"? Inn suggests comfort, coziness, congenial conversation, -but, alas, it also suggests a dear departed day. The only inns left are -survivors from dead decades, and they themselves have no descendants. -"Mine ease in mine inn" is a phrase from the past. - -It is interesting to examine the difference in meaning of the three -types of hostelry--hotel, boarding-house, and inn. The hotel does not -try to be something it is not. It neither offers nor expects anything -personal. Its purpose is to make money out of the visitor, as his -purpose is to get comfort out of it. A hotel is not a home, and it -does not pretend to be. Now a boarding-house is pathetic because it is -always trying to be a home when it is not. It is we, the boarders, who -are responsible for its being the wistful anomaly that it is, for at -one moment we demand of it the indifference of a hotel and the next the -coziness of a home, and at all moments we ask of it that which money -cannot buy--hospitality. - -The little word inn stands apart from those other two, hotel and -boarding-house, and its charm lies as much in its literary aroma as its -actuality. We visit inns oftener in books than in life, but in both they -have the same characteristics. The tiniest inn is always big enough for -personality. The innkeeper is a person, the guest is a person, the cook, -the boots, the hostler, they are all real persons. There is time for -flavoring food with conversation. The chairs are friendly and inviting. -The hearth leaps warm with welcome. But note well, one sometimes lives -at a hotel, one often lives at a boarding-house, but one never lives at -an inn, one merely stops. The reason why the welcome and the speeding -of an inn can be so warm and genuine is that host and guest never have -too much of each other. Both can present their best foot for three days -when a stretch of three weeks would strain its tendons. In an inn food -never seems skimped, the financial aspect never seems prominent, because -the guest never stays long enough to discover sordid secrets, nor long -enough to have his own private affairs invaded. Company manners, the -outward and visible sign of hospitality's inward and spiritual grace, -can prevail in an inn, for the simple reason that no matter how often -one returns, exactly as often one departs. - -It is clearly easier to enumerate the effects of boarding upon human -nature than to ascertain the psychological causes underlying them. -One ventures to hazard a few random reasons, all interrelated and all -growing out of the fact that we are still cave-dwellers at heart. The -cave household feared and hated the stranger; and with good cause. -They eyed him askance, exactly as the other boarders in a house eye -the recent comer. The newest boarder never coalesces with the group -until the advent of another still newer, when he is tentatively -admitted to ranks needing union against the latest intruder. This -survival of prehistoric manners may be observed and experienced in any -boarding-house. - -The hostility of older occupants toward the stranger is exactly matched -by his suspicion of them, hostile suspicion always, no matter how -obsequiously concealed. When a cave-dweller penetrated the seclusion of -another cave, he was wary, on the defensive, and this attitude made him -critical of the inmates, of course, and therefore, for them, a person -to fear. We are still afraid of the stranger, of his eye that may see, -and his tongue that may tell, our secrets. Boarding hurts us because we -suffer continual abrasion of our reserve. In a boarding-house, family -life has to go on in whispers; strangers are in our midst looking and -listening, and even if they are friendly their attention is irksome: Eve -got tired of having even the angels around all the time. - -The human soul demands retirement, but is often unwilling to pay the -price. Home-making is to be had only by house-keeping. In order to live -by ourselves we have to take care of ourselves, and the effort to evade -this issue drives us to the boarding-house. The home-keeping instinct -is, however, as active in us as in our cave-dwelling ancestors, only -they knew better than to try to suppress it. They knew they wanted -seclusion, and so they rolled a rock to the cave-mouth, and possessed -their souls in privacy. It is our doom to inherit from them a desire for -our own front door, in order that we may not have to sue for entrance -at some one else's door, and also that we may never have to open ours -except when we do so in free and voluntary welcome. Boarding is often -necessary, but it goes contrary to impulses as ineradicable in us as -nest-making in a bird. Even the feminists, when they inveigh against -family life, will be found not free from prehistoric impulses toward -privacy. They do not advocate caravansary existence, but rather the -group system, in all its cave-dweller isolation; only the group must be -based on congeniality, not on mere arbitrary and accidental kinship. - -The joy of slamming our own front door upon the world is only equaled -by the joy of flinging that door wide to the world when we wish to. Of -all commodities hospitality should be free from money-taint. The trouble -with boarding is that it attempts to buy and sell a welcome. Everything -is cheapened the moment we can pay a price for it. The instant we lay -our dollars on the counter, we have the right to criticize our purchase. -A buyer does not have to say thank you with his lips nor yet with his -heart, and this is why a certain uncouthness is to be incurred in any -purely commercial relation. Hospitality is essentially not sordid, but -spiritual: a host is gracious with the generosity that offers what money -cannot buy, a guest is gracious with the gratitude that accepts what -money cannot pay for. Boarding is an anomalous and enforced relation -between people who offer and accept house-room, and only those can -escape its blight who have the power always to elevate the commercial to -the plane of the human and the friendly. Luckily, among this small but -noble company are many persons that board and many that take boarders. -The existence of this minority does not alter the fact that for most -of us boarding is a demoralizing occupation. The reason lies deep: -hospitality, given or received, is too sacred for barter. - - - - -VI - -_The Lady Alone at Night_ - - -I am a lady, and a coward. The two facts have no relation to each -other, but both are necessary to a comprehension of my sentiments -about to be delivered. Soberly revolving the universe in my mind, -I find only one thing of which I am sure I am not afraid, and that -is--dying. I mean merest dying, for I am as fearsome as any of being -tossed in air, _disjecta membra_, by an automobile; of furnishing -lingering sweetness to an epicurean tiger; of being played with, and -pawed and tweaked by disease, cat-and-mouse-like; it is only the -actual slipping by the portal of which I am not afraid. With this sole -exception, I am afraid of everything: firecrackers, reptiles, drunken -cooks, dogs, tunnels, trolleys, and caterpillars. About ghosts I am a -little uncertain; experience leads me to conjecture that ghosts are -usually your own fault: that is, they are a little like rattlesnakes; -if you don't intrude, neither will they. But that circumstance which -is to me the very quintessence of terror is Night and A Man. I speak -hypothetically--it has never happened. - -Strange what a difference mere plurality of a noun and mere presence or -absence of an article make to my mind. Now Men, Man, and A Man stand for -most diverse conceptions. _Man_,--I think of Mr. Alexander Pope, and -of a creature of watery intellect, whose vitality is something between -that of a frog and a jumping-jack, and who is diddled puppet-wise by an -equally anaemic deity. Man is humanity dehumanized, but Men are about -the most human thing there is. Men are the big people, clean-scrubbed -spiritually and physically, who come to see you and take you about, and -look after the universe, and keep it in a good humor; who, when you are -making a fool of yourself, laugh at you in a genial, masculine fashion. -In a thin, tentative, feminine way, you try to imitate, and the effort, -however quavering, somehow makes you feel better. _Men_, of your own -family or out of it, sometimes put you on trains, and take care of -you--sometimes. Thus Men. - -But _A Man_--ugh! I saw him first in a nightmare when I was six. He wore -a black Prince Albert, and on his head three high hats jammed down one -on top of the other. He stood on the cone of a hill, black as a coal -against the red light of fires in the rear. From under his three hats -he grinned at me, and on that black hill, against that lurid sky, he -danced and danced and danced. He frightens me still. It is since then -that Night and A Man have been my crown of terrors. A Man lurks in -every darkened doorway, stretches an arm from every tree trunk, pursues -me,--pat, pat, pat,--and fades into the common light of lamp and fire -only when I am safely under my own roof-tree. Even in the daytime, A Man -never deserts me: he haunts the solitary country lanes, lush and lovely -with spring; he pops out upon me from mountain woods; on the stretches -of beach he lurks just around the point. He is always there; at least, I -suppose he is, for I never am--alone. - -By day, A Man is a leering horror, but at night he becomes, like -that figure in my dream, pure devil. I am a suburbanite, and as I -said before, a lady, a laboring lady. This is why I find myself not -infrequently alone at night. The alarm set a-quiver when I descend from -the social, bright-lit, suburban car and plunge forth into the dark is -something that custom cannot stale. Yet sometimes the spell of the night -is as a buckler against fear, making me wonder if solitude is really -terror, genuine solitude, solitude belonging to me, and not to A Man. I -remember one early winter evening, white with a recent snowfall; there -had been an ice storm, and our trees were all incased, each tiniest -twig, and the full moon rode low: I forgot A Man, in every nerve I was -glad to be alone, but hark, a step in the distance, and earth again! - -It is worth some study, the sensation of that approaching step, that -emerging shadow,--bifurcated or petticoated, two feet or four? I am -never afraid of two men: neither actually nor grammatically can A Man be -two. Joseph and the Babes in the Wood for precedent, dissension steps -in between violence and its victim so soon as the aggressive party is -multiplied by even two. And as for a group of men, whatever their caste -or condition, however socially uncouth, by mere virtue of numbers they -become a protection rather than a peril; by mere aggregate of protective -instinct, _A Man_ sufficiently multiplied equals _Men_ (_supra_). - -In addition to these distinctions in regard to the number of your -potential aggressor, there are also distinctions geographic and -geometric. I appeal to any lady of my sex and condition, whether there -is not the greatest possible difference in amount of peril to be -inferred between the man who is walking in front of you on a lonely -street, and the man who is walking behind. If a man paces on soberly and -regularly some few discreet rods ahead, straightway he is enhaloed with -succor and salvation,--you are safe, you need only to call him in your -need, and he will save. But should he go more slowly, fall behind, then -in the very instant of passing you this same protecting saint becomes -decanonized, and worse. There is nothing so suspicious as this dropping -behind. True, you preserve a bold back, walk no faster,--note, sir, my -valiancy, my unconcern,--but still your knee crooks for flight, and your -vocal cords contract for that scream you wonder if you could ever really -utter. A corresponding transformation in moral intention, blackguard and -chevalier, is possible for the man in your rear. On a recent evening -I was hurrying home along the solitary street--steps behind! Flying, -pursuing steps! Nearer, nearer! Upon me, and my heart sickened and -stopped beating! But past me, fleeting on and on, disappearing, oh, too -swiftly! For as he left me so quickly again to solitude, I could hardly -resist an impulse to gather up my skirts and scamper after, after my -retreating protector. I think he made his train. - -I have been at some pains to prove the second of my introductory -assertions. The reason I have not tried to prove the first is explained -by the difference between the essay and polite society. In polite -society, one is under the obligation of confessing one's virtues, not -blatantly, but none the less persistently, wearily,--one's dogging old -virtues, as if it were not enough of a bore to live with them in private -without having to be seen with them in public. In the essay one may have -the exquisite pleasure of confessing one's vices. In society I must be a -lady; in the essay I may be, as here and now, a coward. - - - - -VII - -_In Sickness and in Health_ - - -I have been sick, but not utterly,--a tooth. I am in the convalescent's -mood of confidence and confession; therefore, I write in haste, for in -health I am buoyant and amiable, and not fluently penitent; indeed, -there is little then to be penitent about. For a week I have been -very unpleasant, and the circumstance leads to remarks on the moral -disintegration attendant upon indisposition. I speak of petty disorders, -for illnesses of dramatic magnitude, a run of typhoid for instance, -sometimes tend to spiritual upbuilding,--at least, it is so demonstrated -in fiction. Doubtless the pawing of the white horse in the dooryard has -a soothing effect upon the patient's nerves, but illnesses in which one -has not the comfort of composing one's epitaph are not composing to the -soul. The lesser ailments make appalling holes in our integrity: myself -last week threw a teaspoon at my most immediate forbear. Ferocious, but -it was the elemental ferocity of suffering. It is a fact, belonging -rather to the science of psychology than of medicine, that small -sicknesses hurt more than big ones. I appeal to all connoisseurs in -invalidism whether a tooth, an ear, an ankle, are not more direct in -their methods of torture than pneumonia, smallpox, or appendicitis. -Believing this, I have always had much sympathy for the vilified hero of -a certain novelette of my acquaintance; in this romance, the husband has -a tooth; the wife, a heart,--a literal heart, mechanical, physiological. -Everybody knows which suffered more, and yet because the gentleman got -a little crusty over a most outrageous molar, how joyously the author -trounced him through page after page! I am hot with indignation. There -ought to be a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Creations. -Manufacturers of heroes and heroines should not be allowed to flay and -burn and quarter so wantonly as they do; a humane reading public should -take from them the prerogative of so unnatural a parenthood. - -This one man should have been forgiven; he had a toothache, and -non-fatal illnesses may make monsters of the meekest of us; but -fortunately, the illness being temporary, so is the monster. Only the -recollection is humiliating; I am recovered, but I shudder at the legion -so recently cast out of me. Sickness sets free all the processes of -atavism, and whirls us back into savagery at a breathless rate. The -first bit of baggage we leave behind us on this rapid return journey is -family affection. Last week my kin stood about my couch day and night -with poultices and sympathy in their hands. I took the poultices and -tossed back evil words out of my mouth. I looked upon my relatives with -frankest loathing. Why? Their insulting forbearance, their aggressive -meekness, their poor-sufferer-here-is-my-other-cheek attitude stirred -the foundations of my bile. Their serene patience provoked my utmost -effort to destroy it, and I was impotent; their invulnerability was an -affront to my powers of invention. My own possibilities of vituperation -were only less surprising to me than the endurance of the abused. And -all the time that I listened to my own reviling tongue, my self-respect -was ebbing from me most uncomfortably,--and it was all their fault. - -A concomitant loss in this dissolving of our civilization is that of -the sense of humor. Being so recently returned from barbarism and its -beyond, I can confidently assert that the ape and the savage, while -they may be laughable, do not laugh. In the sickroom of the not very -sick, the brightest witticisms seem only studied banalities. There -is no comedy in the incidents of ministration; it is all unrelieved -tragedy. Yet it is not the humorous, but the humor that is lacking, for -frequently the situations are appreciated at recovery, and furnish us -amusement at intervals for a lifetime. I doubt whether this suspension -of the processes of humor could be established in the case of serious -illness, admitting of disastrous outcome. There are soldiers a-plenty -who have jested at their wounds, and instances enough on record where -a timely jest or a merry incident has saved the day. I cite one such -situation. A husband lay at death's door, and the door was ajar. It -was midnight, and the wife watched. Suddenly the patient seemed to -be sinking, slipping from her. She put the hartshorn bottle to his -nostrils, but he could smell nothing. Both were terrified as they -realized the import of this. Then the wife glancing down discovered that -the bottle contained witch-hazel. The man laughed--and lived. - -In serious illness there is perhaps sometimes a positive stimulus to -the comic sensibilities; there is such a thing as dying game, or the -fight for life may be worth some bravado. But imagine feeling gamy -with tonsillitis or a felon on your finger; there is absolutely no -histrionic appeal. If your sickness has no spice of fatality, you might -just as well give up; you won't see the light of humor again until you -recover. - -No love in our heart, no humor in our head, there is another evil -of savagery thrust upon us by illness. It is the sudden acquisition -of personality by inanimate objects. What possibilities of abusive -conduct lurk within the four walls of a room yesterday, in health, -perfectly inoffensive! What malevolence in the wall-paper! Such a -sneaking, underhand, leering pattern for curtains with any pretensions -to respectability! How tipsy the books look, crowding and pushing -themselves askew for very perversity! No amount of chastisement will -make the pillows conduct themselves comfortably. There is something -about the billows of that malicious counterpane that makes me think of -the oozy, oily, shiny unpleasantness of the ocean when the sailboat is -becalmed. I am as much at the mercy of my furniture as any Fiji before -his fetish. - -Thus sickness reduces us to cave-dwellers or gorillas rampant, by -perhaps just a day of pain no greater in compass than one's little -finger-nail,--soulful, strenuous, high-stepping beings though we -are! Sad enough to think about; yet on the other hand, of all -insupportables, the people whom sickness makes saints are the most -contemptible. I know men and ladies, in health normal, human, unworthy, -likable,--but give them so much as a cold in the head, and at once -their smile smacks of Heaven, and their eyes are uplift with the watery -mysticism of those about to be canonized. When a small boy I know -voluntarily allows his younger sister a canter on his rocking-horse, -his nurse immediately applies red flannel and turpentine; generosity -with him is a sure presage of sore throat. I have seen great strapping -lads, full of sin, reduced to sudden and spurious saint-hood by a black -eye. There is no more unfeeling conduct than patient suffering,--there -is nothing more alarming to an anxious family than a course of virtuous -endurance obstinately persisted in. So long as you rage and are -unseemly your kinsfolk will never pipe their eye, but docility under -the minor physical afflictions makes a stubbed toe as much a matter of -apprehension as angina pectoris. This being good when sick is a bid -for unmerited martyrdom. These gentle sufferers are likely to employ -the emaciated voice of those who ail, knowing well that the bellow of -rebellion is much too reassuring. I am glad I am not as one of these; -sick, I throw things. - -Thus all mankind and all woman and child kind, too, are divided, though -unevenly, into those who are better in sickness and those who are worse. -The marriage service on examination will be found to be a very canny -document, and its compilers nowhere showed greater shrewdness than in -just that little phrase which insures conjugal devotion in sickness -and in health. For of some, sickness makes Mr. Hydes, and of others, -Dr. Jekylls, and in the matter of spouses, how in the world can the -contracting parties foresee, demon or angel, which will develop, or, -having developed, which will be better company? - - - - -VIII - -_An Educational Fantasy_ - - -When I look back upon a half-century of wasted life, I find that there -are no years that accuse me of neglected opportunity more poignantly -than those between five and twelve. If only I had had the foresight -then to apply myself with earnestness to the tasks set before me! If -only now I possessed those priceless stores of knowledge that I feel -sure must then have been pumped into me! That I must have received -abundant elementary instruction I feel confident, although I do not in -the least remember receiving it. My purely academic activities at this -period remain wrapped in obscurity, while other memories are lively -enough. I distinctly recall the scientific invention displayed in our -efforts to produce new shades and colors in the soapy water with which -we cleaned our slates. It was I who discovered that the yolk of an -egg well beaten made a more satisfactory admixture than butter, even -though both are equally yellow to begin with. I remember how one may -by judicious spooning out with a pin, extract the inner riches of a -chocolate drop without visible disturbance of the outer crust. Despite -my scholastic indifference, I can have been no sluggard, without spirit, -for of my fifty coevals there was not one who could tag me in the open -except Percy Dent alone, and that only (but in my wisdom I never let him -discover the fact) when I would let him; well do I recollect with what -_eclat_, with what flutter of petticoats and pinafore, I could execute a -_pas seul_ at hop-scotch. These attainments, the thrill of which still -warms me, prove me not without ambition;-- - - "Not for such hopes and fears, - Annulling youth's brief years, - Do I remonstrate," - -but for - - "Those obstinate questionings - Of sense and outward things,"-- - -such as the multiplication table, and the capital of Arizona, and -the difference between an adjective and an adverb,--questionings so -obstinate that I am convinced that not even at ten years old did I know -the answers; _hinc illae lacrimae_. - -To some extent it is possible to go back and piece out the stitches -dropped in the course of an education; only, one is not allowed to go -back so far as I desire. Roughly speaking, I should say that life does -not allow one to relearn what one has failed to learn before sixteen, -whereas it is the knowledge belonging to eight years, and ten and -twelve, after which I hunger and thirst. I wish some one would open a -school for able-minded but ignorant grown-ups. Believe me, enough of -us could be found to attend, enough of us glad to jump down from our -college chairs, to leave our laboratories with their clutter of advanced -research, our counting-houses with their problems, and gladly go to -school, gladly learn once and forever how much nine times thirteen is, -and build Vesuvius past and present out of clay, and follow out of doors -some charming young lady who would tell us exactly what the birds and -the wild waves are saying. - -But I stipulate at the outset that I will have no offensive superiority -in my instructors. If I am to learn as a child I will be treated as a -child. I will have no one caviling at me, for instance, because I do -not know when Washington was born. I never did know when Washington was -born, but I desire now to amend this my iniquity of ignorance, and I am -even minded, if only my teachers will be patient, to plod on from the -Revolution to the Civil War, and to learn the succession of battles -thereof, and which side won them. I wish my instructors to understand -that my humility of spirit needs no augmenting on their part. I wish -them to be as sweetly patient and cheerily maternal as they would be to -my daughter's daughter. I wish my teachers to administer boundary lines -but mildly, and to give me their minimum doses of mental arithmetic; -for in mathematics and geography my mind is willing but weak. I think -I could promise that patience in my instructors would have a reward in -a proficiency of pupil such as they could never hope to win from the -iniquitous immature, on whose preoccupied minds and thankless hearts -they squander such devotion. - -What a joyous picture it is, as I conjure it up, this going to school -again! What happiness to slip out of our grown-up households, and go -forth into the morning, with book-strap and luncheon in hand, to meet -by the way our harried and over-busy acquaintance, men and women, some -whiteheaded in ignorance, perhaps, all skipping and dancing along to the -same glad place. Gleeful, we enter a sunny room with geraniums on the -window-sill, bright maps on the wall, and a beautiful young lady at the -desk. We are no longer hard and hardened children: our hearts as well -as our intellects are softened by the debility of age, and we appreciate -the graciousness of our instructor with the rose in her belt, the milk -of human kindness in her eye, and the carefully preserved smile upon her -lips. It is with responsive smiles of gratitude that we feel arithmetic -and history and geography trickling into our craniums from the cranium -of our teacher. Then, when she feels that, still willing, we are perhaps -grown weary with well-doing, she gives a signal, and with one accord we -raise our cracked voices in ecstatic, yet instructive song, in which -perhaps we are poetically informed of some new fact about the firefly, -or the green grass, or perhaps our own gastronomy, or in glittering -phrase we unweave the rainbow into the colors of the spectrum. Or, -to forestall the _ennui_ resulting from our too earnest effort, our -instructor bids us stretch our cramped, rheumatic limbs, and with -graceful contortions of her lithe young body, directs us as we prance -stiffly through a calisthenic exercise. - -But it is not on these diversions that my fancy lingers most fondly, but -on those more solid parts of our education. How happy I should be, for -example, if I could only add, both in my head and on paper! How many -bewildered and distrustful moments would thus be eliminated from my -existence! And if to a proficiency in addition I superadded an adeptness -in subtraction, then perhaps on some proud day might my opinion of -the bulk of my bank account approximate more nearly the opinion of -the cashier. And if my rudimentary bump of mathematics were carefully -manipulated according to the newest system of educational massage, -I might even progress as far as percentage. I might learn how to be -richer if I could once understand the allurements of compound interest. -So much depends on the attitude of mind that I wonder whether, if I -approached fractions in a spirit of friendliness rather than of enmity -to the knife, they would reward me by allowing me an entrance into their -intricacies, so that I could with impunity buy things on the bias, or -estimate the reduction by the dozen of merchandise that tags a half-cent -to its price when purchased singly. There are, besides, other valuable -facts to be gleaned from the study of arithmetic, the possession of -which would be matter for gloating. How proudly I should proclaim to -some ignorant companion of a country stroll the number of feet in a -mile! I should be happy to know under all circumstances the number of -ounces in a pound, grocer's or apothecary's: how exalted I should be if -I knew the exact amount of a scruple, that being a fact of which I am -sure most of my friends are ignorant. An exhaustive knowledge of weights -and measures would not only entitle one to distinction among one's -acquaintance, but would open up many new avenues of interest in one's -daily life. - -History is another of the subjects for which I hanker; not history -as it is administered to me now, spiced for the mature palate, with -philosophy and evolution, the ebb and flow of tendencies, but history -for the infant mind, the bread and milk of history, as it were. I have -sometimes thought that historic research would be easier for me if -sometimes I knew what men did before I was forced to understand why -they did it; and a simple statement of what the actual fact is under -consideration would clarify for me much of the historian's discussion -of cause and effect. I have a distinct conception of the development of -the great and glorious English people, but even such knowledge would -be materially strengthened if I were able instantly to sort out all -the Henrys and Edwards and stow them away in their proper cubby-holes -among the embarrassment of decades. As to my own respected fatherland, I -have discussed intelligently the growth of the spoils system, skipping -from presidential term to presidential term with all a grown-up's airy -superiority; but ask me by whom and when and why North Carolina was -colonized, or just what Captain John Smith was about when Pocahontas -intercepted the executioner, and you have me. I want to study history -at last fairly and squarely, out of a dapper little textbook that I can -stow away handily in my brain, with fine fair outlines at beginning -and end of it, and all important events made salient by heavy type, -and a brisk brushing together of one's information by a _resume_ after -each chapter. Such a primer would greatly assist me in my study of the -metaphysics of history. - -Yet perhaps I do but hanker after impossibilities; perhaps this school -I so happily image forth would refuse to teach me what I want to know. -Possibly such information belongs only to the period of my negligent -infancy. Perhaps my charming young teacher, exuding the wit and wisdom -of the newest normal school, would refuse to stand and deliver the -knowledge I long for. If I desired the facts of the French and Indian -War, I might merely be set to building wigwams and drawing braves in -war-paint with colored crayons on the blackboard. Perhaps after all -there is nobody left who knows how to teach the things I have forgotten. -For example, do they now acknowledge in the primary curriculum that -fair, old-fashioned study called penmanship? I yearn to be put once more -into a copybook. I long to set forth once more wise saws in round _v_'s -and unquestioned _e_'s and _i_'s. My fingers long since became callous -and conscienceless to distinguish _t_ from _l_, _b_ from _p_, and I -wish somebody would reform the rascally old digits. It would be a great -relief to my friends and myself if I could only become legible in my old -age. - -One branch of knowledge little emphasized in my youth, however, I -could be sure of receiving at the hands of my fair instructress of -to-day,--I refer to that varied information known as "nature-study." I -am greatly deficient in nature-study. I own to an unanalytical habit -of mind as regards out-of-doors. So long as the wild flowers make a -glory at my feet, I have never cared much to shred them into pistil and -corolla and stamen. So long as the small fowls make me melody, I have -never cared to know the color of their pinfeathers. But I would fain -amend all this and die knowing something. I picture our band of eager -grown-ups pouring over the countryside in the wake of our animated and -instructive conductor,--peering into the grass to lay bare the soul -in the sod, blinking our old eyes to discover the bird in his coverts, -cocking our dull ears to classify the notes of his song. I see us -disporting ourselves over the landscape, busily seeking some curious -knowledge, and then scampering back to our teacher with treasure trove -of leaf or flower or pebble or captured insect. Sweetly she commends -our application, and explains the exact nature of our find. We swell -with knowledge momentarily, and return to more prosaic tasks elate, -having hung its proper label on blade and bush, bird and bough. What a -satisfaction it would be, after having lived with nature for a lifetime -in awesome ignorance, to feel that one had at last assailed her and -ascertained her secrets! - -As a young child, I must have been singularly limited in mental scope; -I cannot otherwise explain my well-remembered aversion to geography. -Those parti-colored maps streaked with inky rivers, and bordered by -the wiggling lines of the Gulf Stream, filled me with loathing. The -revolving globe, and that oft-repeated image which likens the earth to -an orange flattened at the poles, seemed to me almost sickening. How -bitterly do I repent my obstinacy! Besides, there is not one trace left -now of my former aversion. In fact, geography appeals to me to-day as -if it were a brand-new branch of study, so well did I succeed in not -learning it as a child. I have tried ever since reaching maturity to -make up my geographical deficiencies, but with small success. Often do -I find myself relegated to the dunce-seat in the minds of the company -present. Despite my constant effort, there are certain countries that -always elude my grasp, notably Burma and New Zealand, and there is -always for me an airy insubstantiality about the entire continent of -South America. Within my own beloved country, certain rivers have a way -of turning up in unexpected States when I supposed that they had long -comfortably emptied themselves into the ocean; and there are some cities -which always flit with agility to and fro across the map. - -I wonder if my early antagonism to geography might perhaps have been -due to a shrewd sense of its uselessness to me at that stage of my -existence. Stay-at-home as I was, why trouble myself with strange lands -until necessary? Yet I was lacking in foresight, and should be grateful -now if only I had packed away some information against the day I should -need it, whereas nowadays I find traveling without any knowledge of -geography stimulating but inconvenient. This observation leads me to -a broader one on the topsy-turvy nature of our present educational -sequence: those studies most astute and useless we put in the college -curriculum, and those most immediate and practical to the college -graduate about to grapple with life, we relegate to the elementary -school, where the children neither desire nor need to master them. -I would suggest a turning about. Let the college youth and maid who -will suffer from a lack of practical arithmetic learn to add a column -accurately; let the irresponsible infant sport with trigonometry and -conic sections. These subjects unlearned or forgotten, one could still -go through life unfretted by the loss. So with other subjects forever -lost to us because entrusted to the intelligence of careless infancy. I -would teach geography and handwriting in the senior year at college, and -put philosophy in the primary school. So would the young collegian go -forth upon life well equipped, and not come to fifty years burdened with -regrets for knowledge lost forever,--as I. I have kept afloat in higher -mathematics, I have delved into the mines of science, I have trod air -with many a prancing philosopher,--therefore who so well fitted as I to -appreciate at last the peace of having a foundation! - - - - -IX - -_My Clothes_ - - -In the dear, naughty memoirs of Madame de Brillaye, not inaptly named -by the author the "Journal of a Wicked Old Woman," you remember that -scene in the pleasaunce at Chateau Vernot, where the turf was like -fairy velvet and the trees were tortured into all manner of shapes -unarboreal,--she liked to have her trees dressed, she said,--"There is -something indecent in great naked branches sprawling the good God knows -where." The little old lady is sitting with her great, old-ivory cane -across her knees; she rolls it back and forth with her little old-ivory -hands, while she scolds Aimee--as always. Aimee has just come through -that brisk little encounter of hers with de Brontignac, and seems -to have allowed her raiment to look a little battle-worn. "Go dress -yourself, baby," cries Madame Great-Aunt. "Will you let your very laces -whimper? Into your rose velvet brocade, and your chin will be jerked -up as if by a string. Gowns have healed more hearts than they've ever -broken: the second, men's; the first, women's. Now you think you have a -soul; when you are my age, you will know that women are not souls, but -dresses. I look back; my history is the history of my gowns; undressed, -I do not exist; my clothes are myself." (A few lines above I used the -word "remember," but merely for the sake of an effective start-off. -Madame and her memoirs do not exist outside of this paragraph. I am not -the first to perpetrate a spurious quotation; I am merely the first to -confess it. To proceed.) It is not the first time that the little old -de Brillaye has set me thinking. Is she true in this passage, or merely -epigrammatic? If my history is the history of my clothes, let me so -study it out, formulate, as it were, the meditations of the pupa upon -its successive integumenta. Yet the figure is infelicitous. In fact, the -chrysalis image is not over-pretty as regards this side of eternity: -pupa suggests the pulpy tenantry of the chestnut; this worminess may be -liturgical, but it is unpleasant, is opposed to that sociability with -one's self which makes life entertaining; there is nothing chat-worthy -in a worm. Be it granted me to regard these accidental rags of lawn -or wool or silk I find adherent, these hardly less transitory hands -and feet, this hardly more durable incasing occipital, not as a worm -incarcerate, but with the detachment and uplift of the incipient -butterfly. - -Why not _my_ philosophy of _my_ clothes,--the pronoun italicized, -meaning not Teufelsdroeckh's, but my own, both the clothes and the -philosophy? Let me here and now make some effort toward system and -definition, toward order out of chaos, in that long chapter in a woman's -story, my lady's wardrobe. How far have these successive wrappings -around and prankings out of diverse colors and tissues that are to my -fellow passengers labels of my lone pilgrim soul, stating of what age, -sex, nation, education, and caste I may be,--how far have these clothes -of mine served for triumph or undoing in my spiritual history, the -life-history of this "celestial amphibian," myself? - -The clothes of babyhood first. It is a strong-minded adult who does not -grow sentimental in regarding the garments of his infancy,--those caps -and bibs and socks reminding us of the wabbling heads, the aching gums, -the simian feet, of the days when we, for all our present arrogance of -maturity, were the sport of colic and nutritive experiment. - -How explain the repugnance of the newly born to clothing, the birth-wail -that pleads for the sincerity of the nude, protests against the -cloakings of convention? Strange paradox that the first emotion of -the baby soul should be bitterness against all those contrivances of -decency, those hemstitched linens and embroidered flannels, through -which the mother heart eased its brooding love. The little pink, -squirming creature, fresh out of eternity, cannot be too quickly -incased in the wrappings of finite human care. That is why we are so -long in seeing ourselves as we really are; all the clothes and the -conventions were ready for us; before we had a glimpse at ourselves we -were popped into them; it is a merciful long while before we are old -enough to undress sufficiently to discover, away inside, the little shy -soul-thing, the naked ego, with its eerie eyes. - -Thus it is that when I first find myself in those early, misty recesses -I see myself all dressed, dressed for company inspection; I am a little -girl wearing a crispness of brown curl and a crispness of white muslin; -I wear white stockings and Burt's shoes.--I recognize, also, quite in -the same way, as enveloping facts, without which I may not present -myself unclothed to my fellows, that I have a peppery, passionate -temper, and an imagination,--that is what seeing people in void air and -talking to them is called. Thus clad and ticketed, I go pattering along -the pilgrimage. - -How little clothes mattered then! All spun about with fairy films and -the witchery of talking trees and singing winds, I did not remember my -clothes. But at times clothes broke in abruptly on my unconsciousness. I -well remember a certain mitten. It was a brown mitten on my left hand. -My mother and I were walking down a flight of stone steps. I slipped; -my mother caught my hand, retained, not it, but the mitten, and I -bumped unimpeded to the bottom. My baby resentment against that mitten -endured long. It was a surprise, a disappointment, this treachery of -the accepted; so my clothes were not to be trusted; it was well to keep -half an eye on them. The mitten episode marks a step in my spiritual -adjustment; my clothes might at any moment go back on me. It is a lesson -I have not yet found it safe to unlearn. - -In those days there was a pleasant interest attached to the Burt's -shoes,--not when new and shiny, but later, when they had become well -worn. Some unexpected morning I would espy a peering bit of white -stocking looking out from the blackness of the leather toe. The hole -being not yet so large or so alarming as the cobbler's charges, a piece -of black silk was adjusted over the stocking, the foot deftly slipped -into the shoe, a dash of blacking applied to the whole, and behold only -mother and I knew the difference. - -Penury as such was not yet known to me. The consciousness of shabbiness -had not yet frayed the elbows of my soul. The device was merely -interesting, beguiling the tedium of the sanctuary, and affording -meditation on the ingenuity of mothers. - -Here succeeded several years of tranquillity in my relations to my -garments, until, at the age of six, I found myself--infelix!--removed -to a town possessing a bleak climate and many woolen manufactories. It -was the custom of the house mothers to buy flannel by the piece direct -from the factory, red flannel, hot, thick, felled like a Laplander, -and the invention of Lucifer. Out of this flannel was cut a garment, -a continuous, all-embracing garment, of neuter gender, in which every -child in that town might have been observed flaming Mephistophelian-like -after the morning bath. A pattern was given to our mother. - -The hair shirt--I laugh when I read! By definition the hair shirt must -have possessed geographical limits of attack, but my flannels left no -pore untickled, untortured; they heated the flesh until scarlet fever -paled into a mere pleasantry; and they soured the milk of amiability -within me forever. The rotation of the seasons reduced itself to terms -of red flannel. In the autumn, when the happy fowls and foliage alike -moulted, shed the superfluous, when bracing October set the body in -a glow, I alone of living things must be done up in flannel! And -more,--did you ever try to draw on your stocking smoothly over a red -flannel tumor at the ankle, and then attempt to button over the whole -the shoe that fitted snugly enough over nothing at all? Did you ever -tear off shoe and stocking, and, dancing red-legged and barefooted, cry -out in frenzy that you would eschew breakfast and school, aliment and -enlightenment, but never, never, never again would you wear footgear? -Thus autumn. And spring, that season of vernal bourgeoning, was the -time when I, too, like any other seedkin, slipped free of all stuffy -incasings, and could sprout and spring in air and sun, clad in blessed, -blessed muslin. I shall never forget the corroding bitterness induced -by flannels. At times they absolutely reduced me to fisticuffs with my -religion, so that filial piety, the ordaining of the seasons, and the -very catechism itself, hung in the balance of the conflict. I believe I -can hardly over-estimate the spiritual detriment done me by my flannels. - -One incident of this, my first decade, I recall with mingled respect and -envy:-- - - "It is not now as it hath been of yore." - -"Choose," commanded my mother, "will you have a new dress this winter or -'St. Nicholas' for next year?" I was stung at the implication that for -such as me there could have been a doubt of the choice. "St. Nicholas," -of course! A magazine doth not wax old as doth a garment, and besides, -is not reading more than raiment? Alas for the high intellectuality of -eight years old! If the choice lay now between the dress and the book, -would I hug the volume and walk among my fellows gladly shabby? I would -not. - -About at this same period we were visited by a family of strange -little girls. There were three of them; they stayed three days, they -changed their dresses three times a day, and they never wore the same -dress twice. We regarded them as we might have regarded the fauna of -Mars,--they were an utterly new thing. It was wonder at first, then -pity, then wonder again, for we found that they liked it! Being little -human animals even as we, they would rather be tricked out in fresh -frocks than play tag! What were we going to wear that evening, they -asked. Why, how in the world should we know? Something clean, of course. -Our visitor's bits of frocks were embroidered, beribboned, bevelveted -in a manner simply incomprehensible. What in the world happened when -they got dirty? That visit filled me with prophetic misgivings; some -day I should have to wear stuff goods. In a vision I saw the great gulf -that separates the grown-up who cannot be put through the wash-tub -from the child who can. Horror of the unwashable! "Shades of the -prison-house,"--Oh, no! - -Just here the retrospect reaches the place where the road turned; I do -not say, forked, for it was not a question of alternatives; I was a -woman-child, and I had to keep on in the only way. Hitherto my clothes -had been as much or as little myself as the down of the chick, or the -fur of the rabbit. Providence and my parents had provided my apparel -without the faintest solicitude on my part, leaving me free to attend to -my body and soul. This could not long endure. It is the era of Mother -Hubbards that bridges together the old time and the new. The Mother -Hubbard was so noteworthy, so startling, in fact, after the trimness to -which we were accustomed, this - - "Robe ungirt from clasp to hem." - -It swayed with a truly Hellenic undulation like the pictures in the -mythology. I first admired, then coveted, then teased my mother into -making me one. It was finished just after dinner, and though it was -yet early for dressing, I put it on, and turned out upon the street, -which, to my disappointment, was empty of children. There I strutted, -and swelled, and waited for the others to come and see, and was exalted, -not recognizing the first shackles of my slavery. Now, first, I become -acquainted with Fashion; now, first, I regard other people's clothes -as the most important factor in the production of my own. Too truly it -is the close of the first chapter, the end of innocence, the end of -joy, the end of sexlessness. I am irrevocably a woman: imitation and -emulation are henceforth the distinguishing motives of my costume. Now, -first, I look in the glass to see my frock, and then I look a little -higher to see that face and that mop of curls I wear, and I wonder what -colors best suit them. I look at the eyes, too, and at the secrets -they tell me, and I wonder what external clothes and conduct are most -becoming to those eyes and to that inner meshed personality they reveal. -What is becoming! The word is epitome of all that the grown-up is and -the child is not. - -The period of my teens was the period when my wardrobe was continually -in abeyance upon the higher claims of my education. It was not possible -simultaneously to beautify my brain and my body. I acquiesced in the -circumstance, for the most part, with occasional fits of passionate -revolt, and more or less constant misanthropy. I blush to recall that -at one time the light which was in me turned to darkness for a year or -more, and all on account of my clothes. I found myself at a great city -school, I a shy little country waif, most curiously clad. I looked at -the clothes of my compeers, and I locked my lips and my heart against -all converse with my fellows, and I walked to the top of my classes in a -desolation of spirit that was tragic. I would have exchanged my monthly -reports with those of my most addle-pated classmate if I could have had -her clothes. Never since have I approached the intellectual achievement -of fourteen; but the shabbiness of my motives was greater than that of -my costume. The effect was not wholly evil, but I here confess that I -never should have learned Latin rules if I had been prettily dressed. -I wanted to show those stylish misses that there was no backwoods -brain under my backwoods hat--that was all! I attributed to others a -snobbishness wholly my own, and for that once clothes came perilously -near costing me all human joy in human friendship. If my wardrobe had -never bettered, I might now be a female Diogenes,--and incidentally -have furnished meteoric display for a dozen universities. My clothes -improved; I am not friendless, but dull and illiterate, and all through -the shaping destiny of dress. - -This paragraph in my history yields me this much of philosophy as -regards the influence of clothes on the social relations. My dress, so -long as it be not conspicuous for disorder, disruption, or display, has -much less effect on others than on myself. But as for myself, since I am -a woman, and it is ordained of fate that I be forever subdued to what -I wear, I shall never, except when I believe myself suitably dressed, -be able to look my fellow creature in the eye with the level gaze of -conscious equality which alone gains friendship. No woman was ever so -proud as not to cringe in an ugly hat. No woman is ever so happy as not -to be made unhappy by her clothes. Let the dress reformers prattle to -the breezes,--there is no exaltation like that of knowing one's costume -stylish, becoming, and, if possible, expensive. Only by recognizing our -limitations may we women successfully cope with them; one's own respect -is surest guarantee of other people's; for women self-respect is soonest -secured by clothes: therefore, O women, dress! - -I have digressed from the contemplation of my girlhood, but I have not -exhausted that time, for I have not touched upon second-hand clothes or -long dresses. As a girl I was perpetually made over. I came to regard -fresh material as something almost sacrilegious. Of all gift-horses, -clothes are the most difficult not to criticize, and especially old -clothes. My prosperous cousins did not possess my complexion, my tastes, -or my figure, and yet I inevitably succeeded to their clothes, so that I -came to watch their expenditures with morbid interest, and if they asked -for my advice, the strings of my sincerity were severely strained by "a -lively sense of favors yet to come." In such circumstances it is well -to have in the family one who is mother, dressmaker, and genius, all in -one, for only such a combination of inspiration and devotion could have -kept my head up in those days when I was always second-hand. - -To be honest, am I anything else now? What else is it to be fashionable? -With brain or scissors every woman is snipping and clipping and cutting -over other people's clothes to fit her figure; real clothes or clothes -existent only in the fashion papers or her dressmaker's brain, but -what is the difference? Every woman wears what somebody else has worn. -What woman would wear a dress she had not first seen on another woman? -Old clothes, making over, copying, copying, copying,--dear me, how -second-hand we women are! - -The years from sixteen to twenty are those years in a woman's life -when dress becomes an ecstasy--as never afterwards. We always look in -the glass when we put on our hats, but at sixteen we look at the face, -not the hat. It is not such a bad face to look at, at sixteen, with -its eyes and lips of wonder. For some few years Heaven lets dress be a -sheer delight, not the mere sordid comfort and decency of childhood, or -the studied concealment of imperfections of maturity, but a revelation -of the new self of which we are neither unconscious nor ashamed. It is -but the working of natural laws; in the spring do not the very trees -prank themselves out in a vain glory of blossoms, do they not prink -and preen in the mirroring water, arranging their leafy tresses, and -bedecking themselves for the masculine regard of sunbeams and breezes? -So girls, and many a one quite as unconsciously. The sap stirs and the -leaf sprouts, and the stirring of the sap is a thrilling of new joy, and -the leaf is a new and beautiful thing. What is it, what am I becoming? -Look in the glass and see. That is womanhood burning in my eyes, on my -cheeks,--Oh, yes, sir, you may look, too, if you wish. When my skirts -have grown all the way down, and my braids all the way up, then there -will be coronation robes ready, and a kingdom, and a king. Now I am -only a schoolgirl, but it is all coming, coming, coming! Do you wonder -that she counts each inch on her skirt in an agony of impatience, that -she arranges her hair high on her head at night before her mirror? -Schoolgirl nonsense, and something else. Then one day it is the hour at -last,--it is the first long dress, cut to show the regal throat, trained -like a queen's. The hair is piled up diadem-wise. The princess is ready. -The color comes and goes, the slipper taps the floor--"I am all dressed -for you. I am waiting. Come, Prince, hurry, hurry!" - -But, O little Princess, it is not at all like what you think, really; -so soon your long skirts will have ceased to tickle your toes with -delight, and your coroneted tresses will seem to have grown that way. -The Prince will have come, and you will have got used to him, or he will -not have come, and you will have forgotten that you ever expected him; -the clothes of womanhood will no longer be a rapture, but an obligation -and a habit. You will find yourself wearing a personality restricted -by that thing you have somehow acquired, called a style of your own, -and restricted also by the style of all the other women in the world, -so that you will find yourself wearing those dresses only, and saying -those words only, that both yourself and others expect of you; it will -not seem a very wonderful thing to be a woman, after all. But remember, -Miss or Madam Princess, that you must still go on dressing, dressing, -dressing to the end. - -What mockery to prate of the equality of the sexes when one sex -possesses the freedom of uniform, and the other is the slave of -ever-varying costume! Think of the great portion of a lifetime we -women are condemned to spend merely on keeping our sleeves in style! -Talk of our playing with scholarship or politics when we are all our -days panting disheveled after scampering Dame Fashion, who, all our -broken-winded lives, is just a little ahead! Yet dress-reform is the -first article in our creed of antipathies, and I, for one, am last of -ladies to declare myself a heretic. I am not ungrateful for the gift of -sex and species. Suppose I were a fowl of the air,--what condemnation of -hodden gray, and soul unexpressed either by vocal throat or personality -of plumage! Among things furred or feathered it is the male who dresses -and the lady who wears uniform; that it is otherwise with human beings -is due, I suppose, to some freakish bit of chivalry on the part of -the autocrat Evolution, the ring-master who puts the entire menagerie -through their tricks. No, I would not be a fowl; let me not repine; let -me at this business of dressing, pluckily. - -Women are nobler than men; it is because we are purified in the fires -of more severe temptation. Man does not encounter the demoralizing -influence of the dressmaker, that creature with mouth of pins and suave -words. To what degrading subterfuge are we not reduced to get our own -way with the dressmaker, seeing with what delight and dexterity she -lifts her spurning foot against our desires! Do we presume to know -what we want to wear?--alternately she sporteth and scorneth--and yet -we lift not against her her proper scissors. She practices dark arts; -she runs an hypnotic finger along the seam, and the wrinkle is no more -seen--until the dress comes home. Lies are about her head. Her promises -are vanity, and her bills elastic as a fluted flounce. Counter-mendacity -alone can move her; the gown must be sent home, for we attend a wedding -in twenty minutes; even now the caterer "hath paced into the hall"; or -we leave for California in an hour, and even now our sleeper paws the -track. By the ways of unrighteousness alone may we be clothed, and yet -so signal is female virtue that after centuries of dressmakers we are -still unscathed in our integrity, and are still the church-goers of the -species. - -There is something stirring to contemplate in woman's devotion to -dress,--to see how we lay down health and comfort, and clamber up and -frizzle for a lifetime on the altar of the aesthetic. That is what our -dressing is to us,--an art and an aspiration. If our sex doffed its -radiance, and did on "blacks," what loss to popular culture! What of the -universal hunger for color and form if so many curiosities of craft, so -many animated works of art no longer whisked about the streets of the -world? - -For another reason, also, we are preoccupied of our costume,--our -invincible frankness; for we would have our clothes the expression of -our souls. With what fondness we cling to the frock that suits us! Such -a bundle of subtleties is woman that words are too gross--a black coat -and trousers an insincerity--for the hundred shades of shifting color -and form that we are inside. Though it take half our life, let us be -true to our clothes, our clothes to us; let the dress be the lady, and -the lady a symphony of soul and silk. - -Verily, "my soul on its lone way" has traveled far from the days of -babyhood, kicking against all wrappings, to the days of womanhood, when -personality exists not, separate from frocks and hats and gloves and -shoes, and both the inner layer of individuality and the outer layer of -costume have become cosy and comfortable, so that by no means do I wish -to lay them aside. - -What next? Some day I shall be given into the hands of those who - - "fashion the birth-robes for them - Who are just born, being dead." - -Shall I be again enfolded in garments all ready for me, of skyey tissues -and opalescent tints? Shall I squirm and struggle again, and again be -slowly subdued to the clothing and conventions of another world? - -Or when I pop up the lid of this upholstered bone-box, my body, shall my -soul be then and there set free,--escaped, volatile, elemental, as wind -or moonshine, having cast from it--one by one as a garment--age, sex, -race, creed, and culture? But what if in this off-shedding I strip from -me my personality, myself? This involuted wrapping in which I am duly -done up and ticketed and passed about among my acquaintance,--what if to -rend this were to leave me in the shivering nakedness of the impersonal? - - - - -X - -_The Tendency to Testify_ - - -People and periods sometimes think strange things about themselves. I am -constantly astounded by the contrast between my view of my friend and -his view of himself. Tact is the bridge that spans the chasm between a -man's opinion of himself and his neighbor's opinion of him. In truth -each opinion suffers from the lie of the label. There is nothing so -volatile as human personality, yet it has a passion for ranging itself -in bottles on a shelf, each with its little gummy ticket. If the peril -of the pigeon-hole is great for the individual, it is even greater for a -whole period, which is but the aggregate of personalities, each of them -only a breath, a vapor, the shaping of a cloud. - -One of the largest, loudest labels with which we placard the present age -is its irreligion. Because we don't build cathedrals? But let any one of -us look about into the hearts of say twenty of his immediate friends: -are there no churches building there? As for me, I am quite dinned -by their hammers, and often, when I want to steal into some one's -soul, for a little quiet communion, I am incommoded by the obtrusive -scaffolding. No religion? Never so many religions, and from that very -fact, never so genuine. Obviously, if you make a religion yourself, it's -your business to believe it. There is an analogy between clothes and -creeds: you wear with a different air those your father has bought for -you and those you have earned for yourself. - -I do not find people indifferent to religion, I find them profoundly -responsible for it; my friends stand each at the door of a temple -exacting tribute, although there is not one who would not be horrified -by the blatancy of the metaphor. They do not call themselves religious, -but they do call to me to come in. The trouble perhaps is with my -listening ear. I was born with it, and without my will, or knowledge, -it has become an inconveniently obvious appendage. It takes a great -deal of time to have a listening ear. It has heard so many creeds of -late that I must perforce counter-label this irreligious age devout. I -am not inventing the list, and I do not believe the variety among my -acquaintance exceptional,--Neo-Hellenic, Neo-Hebrew, Catholic, Christian -Scientist, Episcopal, high, hot, and holy, Episcopal, low, hot, and -holy, Swedenborgian, Baptist, Presbyterian, and, latest, a sect that -scorns a name, but that I would call Destinarian. Miss Sinclair is of -this communion, for, in "The Three Brontes," does she not call upon -Destiny to account for every mystery of those three strange lives? The -religion of the Destinarian consists in not having one, yet not one of -my friends pronounces so reverently the name of deity as my friend of -this no-faith murmurs the word, Destiny. "It is ordained," she says of -some circumstance, and says it with awe, the humility before omniscience -with which the Hebrew prophets spoke his name Jah. - -There they stand, my twenty men and women, beckoning me to the doors -of their temples; and yes, of course, I go in; it saves argument. I go -into each and each friend is so busy pointing out the architecture that -no one ever notices when I slip out, out into the open. When one stops -to think of it, it is curiously old-fashioned and orthodox, the open, -whether it is sea or sun. The planets are conspicuously conservative, -but the morning stars still sing together. - -Now, not one of my friends here listed is that good old-fashioned work -of God, a shouting Methodist, and yet, in effect, there is not one of -them who is not exactly this. As a child, I attended camp-meetings, -I heard people testify. The tendency to testify is older than -camp-meetings, and it will outlast them. Today, though long grown-up, I -find my friends still shouting their experiences, I find myself still -the shy and wondering congregation. As in the word "camp-meeting" there -is military reminiscence, so the "professor" is lineal descendant of -_miles gloriosus_, his survivor in the church militant. A puzzling -number of people still like to exhibit their scars; a larger number -like to exhibit the particular philosophic armor by which they--by -implication--win in the battle of life still ever merrily waging. But he -who shows a scar deserves another, and no sword ever equally fitted two -hands. - -It is the implication that I resent in all testifying,--super-sensitive -doubtless. I do not want to be converted. I grow shy and secret when I -suspect my friend of wanting to remodel me to the pattern of his creed. -The most perilous thing in friendship is to let a friend know that we -want to reform him. The very essence of friendship is in the lines,-- - - "Take me as you find me, quick, - If you find me good!" - -and in a recent dedication to one who was "Guide, philosopher, _but_ -friend." In all testifying, there is an implied "Copy me," which our -own skittish _ego_ resents. We all incorporate in ourselves our friends' -virtues, but only those of which they are most unconscious; whereas -people are always conscious of their battles; they always want to talk -about them; and yet how many different ways there are of winning the -same battle. If I admire your bravery, I may copy the creed that created -it, but you need not hold up that creed for my inspection, for it is you -yourself who are under my inspection. You are your sole argument, you -need no testifying. - -I have been much talked to of late, and much talked at. I have seen the -fanatic spark in eyes that would have been aghast to know its presence -there. Once upon a time there was only one church, and excommunication -from that was a simple and straightforward matter; it can hardly be an -irreligious age when one can feel, in listening to the testimony from -the score of temples one's friends have built, that one is in danger of -being excommunicated from all twenty. But better excommunication than -that, entering and accepting, I, too, might feel called upon to testify. - -I, too, _could_ testify,--I, a mere sunworshiper. I could point out -the vaulted sky of my private chapel, most ancient and most orthodox. -I could repeat for you the liturgies the wind has made, much the same -that it chanted for Moses on Sinai; for are any of your creeds so new, -my friends? I could point out to you altar-lights genial and tolerant, -the taper-flames of stars. There was once One long ago who went to -the mountain for prayer, for there is nothing new about the temple of -out-of-doors; but if I, its worshiper, do not carry forth some peace -from its great silence, some joy from its godly mirth, then would -not even my infinite temple shrink to the size of words, if I should -testify? - - - - -XI - -_Letters and Letter-Writers_ - - -It is a popular fallacy that letter-writing is a bygone art. Arguments -for this opinion point to the array of picture-cards expressing every -sentiment known to experience, and saving, by the neatness and dispatch -of their machine-made couplets, all the fumbling effort we used to -expend in saying thank you to a hostess, _bon voyage_ to a friend, or -even in offering sympathy to one bereaved. The night-message also seems -to indicate a sorry substitution for the formality of the post. The -truth is that the picture-card, by doing the work of the duty letter, -clears the way for the real letter, so spontaneous that it can't help -being written; while the night-message contributes to epistolary art a -terseness and vigor that should not be undervalued. While we continue -to look back at the voluminous eighteenth century and to regret the -decay of letter-writing, we are every one of us every week receiving -from a dozen different correspondents letters vibrant with personality, -vivid, readable, inviting preservation. Far from not writing letters, -people never wrote more letters than they do to-day, nor better ones; if -ours are not so long as the letters of the past, they are far livelier. -Both in theory and in fact the present time is peculiarly fitted to be -epistolary. - -If each one of us will examine that packet of letters we are loath to -destroy because they have made us see pictures or think thoughts or -chuckle with appreciation, we shall pause to ponder how diverse in -character are the authors. One missive, guiltless of grammar, is racy -with backwoods wisdom; another shows the rapier wit and apt allusiveness -of the Hellenist; another is as crisp and keen as the typewriter that -clicked it forth; still another peals with freshman skylarking. It is -not at first easy to perceive underlying all the variety the essential -characteristics which belong alike to all these correspondents and which -differentiate that happily constituted being, the born letter-writer; -man or woman, young or old, educated or illiterate, certain qualities he -must inalienably possess. - -The letter-writer is always an observant person. He has the pictorial -eye and the pictorial pen. The view framed by his window sash must never -grow stale for him, across it the clouds must always roll as if across -a painter's canvas, and its commonplace roof-line must keep always -its quaintness and its quirks. Of the groups of people that crowd his -day, he must see each as if staged for a play, he must perceive the -color of hair and the cut of clothes and the connotation of attitudes -as vividly as if he were always seated before a rising curtain. This -freshness of vision varies in different people. It is always found in -every good letter, but of the writers, some require the stimulus of an -unusual scene; while they have not the power to see or to paint the -pictures of Dulltown Center, they can portray Tokio or Archangel till it -glows on the wall before the reader's eye; others, more really gifted, -see drama everywhere, even if they have never been twenty miles from -their own farm and forest. Whether our correspondent is stay-at-home -or traveler, he must so combine his gift of observation with his gift -of representation that his angle of vision is unique. We have all of -us received narratives of travel that were colorless as guide-books -and narratives of a village sewing society that were palpitant with -portraiture. The true letter-writer makes us feel not only that we have -been present at a scene but that we have been present with him. - -The genuine epistolary endowment shows qualities in pleasant poise. A -letter should be personal, but not over-personal. A self-analyst may -cover many pages of notepaper, but we read him only under protest, and -drop him promptly into the waste-basket. We enjoy the record of personal -observation just so long as it is balanced by detachment. We like to see -our friend moving across the scene he describes, but we don't want to -see him bulking large in his own landscape. In a well-penned letter the -people written about stand forth as vividly as does the author. It is -this power of amused detachment that makes all true letter-writers true -humorists as well. - -To write letters it is not enough to be observant, objective, humorous: -one must have the impulse to express the observation and the fun. This -impulse is, of course, the literary will to write, but there is a sharp -distinction between the litterateur and the letter-writer. The latter -does not merely wish to write, he wishes to write to somebody. He is -not lyric, for it is not enough for him to burst into song unheard; -he is not a diarist, for it is not enough for him to talk to himself; -he is not a genius, for it is not enough for him to talk to a vast, -formless creature called the Public. A letter-writer is one who finds -life so entertaining that he must talk about it to a friend. Never a -self-sufficient person, he is as genial as he is shy; it would therefore -no more occur to him to pour himself out upon paper that nobody was to -read than to pour himself into print that everybody was to read. He has -the literary impulse without the literary ambition. He must be sure of -his auditor before his pen will move, and yet when it once begins to -gambol, it carries him off and away, after the manner of all pens, until -the friendly listener becomes idealized from homely reality into very -quintessence of sympathy. - -The individual auditor is not only the first requisite for the -letter-writer, but the determining influence that gives to letters -themselves the qualities which distinguish them from other forms -of literature. Letters stand halfway between the formlessness of -conversation and the formality of essay or fiction. A letter to a -friend has this advantage over a chat with him, that you can choose -the impression you wish to make and make it without interference from -the interlocutor's telepathy, or interruption through his rejoinders. -Conversation gives and takes, but a letter only gives, and gives exactly -what it wishes, no more. In a letter one employs words, weaving them -happily to one's will, but it is a mistake to suppose that conversation -is much concerned with words. It is a far more shifting and subtle -thing than that, for mere speech is constantly supplemented or corrected -or contradicted by the twinkle in our eyes, the tautness or tremor in -our voice, the twisting of our lips. The attention of the listener is -diverted by watching all these manifestations. While it has all the -camaraderie of chat, the letter, in the clarity and singleness of its -impression, is distinctly different from talk. - -The epistolary form differs as much from the memoir as it does from -conversation. The diarist is a self-important person, talking to himself -and to the future, and conscious of his effect upon both. If he is -great enough, that effect is worth making, and we read his account of -himself and his times with the reverence we accord to history. We do not -read, however, with the pleasant personal warmth with which we peruse a -letter, for we know the diarist is not speaking as comrade to comrade. -We know and he knows that he is speaking to posterity. - -The letter has the advantage of not belonging at all to conscious or -commercialized literature. It is not written to be seen of men, nor -yet to be sold to them. It is literature intimate, unintentional, -overheard. In so much as it is personal expression, plus detachment -but minus self-importance, and also in so much as it endeavors to adapt -itself sympathetically to another person's interest and point of view, -the letter strikes through the merely individual and touches deep and -universal feeling, thus in all its humbleness fulfilling the ancient -dictum for art. The letter-writer, scribbling himself forth merely -to please himself and his friend, is not constrained by servility to -the public taste; his medium allows him ease, fluidity, and a happy -inconsequence, vital artistic qualities impossible to literature written -to meet the market. - -Its spontaneity gives the letter scope for its particular achievements. -Being written by friend to friend, it is free from both shyness and -stiffness: it may laugh or cry, be sagacious or absurd, in full -confidence of being understood. It rings true in its directness and -intimacy, and yet never descends to the morbidness that sometimes stains -the revelations of the journal. The letter is intimate, but at bottom -decorous. In a letter one wears one's old clothes in comfort, but one -does not undress as in a diary. The presence of a friend to whom one may -open one's heart is both invitation and wholesome restraint. - -The letter as literature is particularly adapted to description made -piquant by personal perception of lights and shades. The letter is -especially fitted for quick portraiture, for flashing forth a face in -an adjective, for touching off a character in the quirk of a phrase. -Incidents also stand out by their very compression. Brevity is the -soul of a letter, which is not saying that a letter may not be long. A -letter can afford to be long, it can never afford to be diffuse. In the -nature of things a good letter never flags because it is written by one -possessing intensified vision and a vibrant pen. Such a person knows -enough to stop before he is tired. The description, incident, comment of -a letter are forced to a concentration that gives them an advantage over -more formal and expansive writing. People who are interesting enough -to wish to write letters, people who are interested enough to wish to -read them, must by necessity of character have much else to occupy their -time beside their correspondence. The value of epistolary writing lies -in the fact that it is not a grave concern, but an inviting side issue. -Letters, like friendship, lose their charm when one makes a business of -them. - -It is the greatest mistake to think that our hurried age is alien to -the composition of letters. Haste is the best thing that can happen to -a letter; it enforces compression. Actually our own time is peculiarly -adapted to produce letters. Its very hurry is inimical to sustained -writing. Thinking people may put themselves into letters when they -have no time to put themselves into books. Not only the rapidity of -the present but its intensity stimulates letter-writing. Even the most -commonplace people are quickened to observation and to thought at a -time when tragedies are being unrolled before the dullest of us, and -when every day is fateful with pity and fear for even the most obscure. -Personal reaction to the portents of the present is not to be escaped, -for never in history was there so much to see and to feel. - -As never before was there so much to see, so never before was there such -an impulse to say something about it; but the immensity of our time -prevents our speaking in any finished and final form. Our day is too -vast for comment. All that we can record is our daily impressions; and -how much more readily these fall into letter shape than into treatise or -play or novel or poem! These four forms necessitate structure, analysis, -synthesis; they presuppose penetration into the significance back of -events. The letter is free from all these requirements, and therefore -is better fitted to express our times than, for example, the poem, -which to-day, false to its old high calling, deliberately avoids all -divination, all guesses at the ultimate and the infinite. - -The letter, always humble, informal, inconsequent, need not strain to -recount any but an individual reaction and interpretation. It aspires to -no universal wisdom, and by its very modesty and sincerity may perhaps -for the future furnish the truest historical record obtainable of a -period too terrible to understand itself. - -One would naturally expect letters to be produced in an age which, -bewildered as it is, is singularly articulate in regard to all its -puzzles and its pain. Ease of expression was never so general as now. -More people are able to say what they have to say than ever before, -and more people are able to say it, too, with facility and with force. -The newspapers are crowded by letters tingling with penetration, often -memorable in phrasing, written by men and women in every class and -place. The level of intelligence and of expression was never so high. -People are writing not only to the press but to each other better -letters than ever before. Impressions are so intense that they compel -utterance. One proof of the prevalence and popularity of letter-writing -to-day is in the many books and articles that are the chance discoveries -of the mail box. For such revelations, such unintentional literature, -every editor is on the alert. The history of our time is being -everywhere written to-day in the best letters that were ever penned; but -for one such collection discovered, how many are fated to be fugitive -always and unpreserved? - - - - -XII - -_The Tyranny of Talent_ - - -We come into life handicapped by many a tyranny, but by none heavier -than the insolence of that particular ability packed into our still -imperfect cranium. Although one may observe in rare individuals the -exhibition of a fine independence that from infancy to age consistently -refuses to develop the dominance of some obvious talent, for the most -part we yield to the conventional views that defy such despotism, and -to our own delight in that little toy, success, which the autocrat -dangles before our eyes. The only people never disillusioned are the -unsuccessful. Every time we succeed we take a tuck in a dream. Of all -domains, the most desirable is the kingdom of dreams, and the only -people who never lose it, who, rather, reinherit it from day to day, are -the people who consistently and conscientiously fail. - -There are, however, only an enviable few of us who are not able to -do some one thing well. It does not need, of course, to be anything -notable. We need not be the fools of fame, in order to taste all the -depths of success. We may merely be able to tie up parcels with neatness -and dispatch,--rest assured we shall be enforced to tie up everybody's -parcels until we totter into our graves. Most households can boast a -member with an ability to find things; the demands upon the time and the -resourcefulness of such a professional finder prevent her ever finding -peace (a finder is, of course, always feminine). One could multiply -indefinitely examples from immediate experience that prove the argument -for inefficiency. - -The tyranny of talent has beset our path with many little proverbs -that bark at our lagging heels. "Nothing succeeds like success" has -hounded many a man to a desolate eminence. "Whatever is worth doing is -worth doing well" is a maxim that we allow to control our activities as -thoroughly as we refuse to allow it to convince our intelligence: for -obviously whatever is worth doing is not worth doing well; on the one -hand the statement may authorize a wasteful and indiscriminate energy; -and, far worse, it is manifestly false, because everything that gives -you joy is worth doing, and ten to one the thing that gives you most joy -in the doing, is the thing that you do very ill indeed. - -Superficially considered, success appears to be a consequence of -self-expression necessarily gratifying; intimately experienced, success -is found to be a consequence of self-repression most painful. The -trouble is that one never knows in time. Often one goes gambolling into -success unwittingly as a young animal, only to have one's first joyous -neigh, or bray, of achievement cut short by feeling sudden hands bind -one to a treadmill--the treadmill that impels one to grind out similar -achievements, tramp-tramp-tramp, all the rest of one's life. The worst -is that no one ever suspects the excellently efficient middle-aged nag -of still sniffing a larking canter through the mad spring meadows of the -unattempted. Our best friends suppose the treadmill contents us. Yet we -are always cherishing our own little dreams of a medium of expression -better suited to our individuality than that skill with which nature has -endowed us. Browning acknowledges the phenomenon in "One Word More," in -noting the dissatisfaction of the artist with his proper medium:-- - - "Does he paint? He fain would write a poem,-- - Does he write? He fain would paint a picture, - Put to proof art alien to the artist's, - Once and only once, and for one only, - So to be the man and leave the artist, - Gain the man's joy, miss the artist's sorrow." - -The psychological experience described is more fundamental than its -application in the poem merely to love and a lady. - -The harshness of a controlling talent is severe in restricting us not -alone to what we can do well, but to what we can do best. If we paint, -we must not only not write a poem, but we must not attempt a picture -different from our best; if we write, we must continue to write in the -type and the tone of our first successful experiment. The chef may long -to be an astronomer, but not only must he stick to his flesh-pots, but -if, in the gusto of some early egg-beating, he has stumbled upon the -omelet superlative, he must continue to furnish the world with omelets, -no matter if eggs become for him an utter banality, and no matter how -his fancy be seething with voluptuous dishes of air-drawn cabbage, or -super-sheep. - -The world is too much against us if we try to lay down the burdens -the task-master Talent has imposed. The successful man belongs to the -public: he no longer belongs to himself. Talent, tried and proved and -acclaimed, is too strong for us; we continue its savorless round, -against all our inward protest. We are its slaves, and through the -amiability ineradicable in most bosoms, the slaves also of our admiring -kinsfolk and friends and public; most of all, perhaps, the slaves of -our own self-doubt, for possibly after all they are right, possibly -we are justly the chattels of Talent, and not of that whispered self -of the air, taunting, teasing us, "What you have done is sordid, is -savorless! Come with me to attempt the unexplored!" This desire denied -is both acknowledgment that all our lordly labeled triumphs may have had -a false acclaim, and is also a protest against all mundane and mortal -valuations. Our unshackled ego, scorning things done that took the eye -and had the price, seems to have the truer voice. Is not art itself the -assurance that we are no petty slaves of efficiency, but heirs of a -serene domain where the unaccomplished is forever the only thing worth -accomplishing? - - - - -XIII - -_The Woman Who Writes_ - - -I often wonder how other women write. Workers in art material are chary -of revealing processes that might save other workers wasted effort and -vain experiment, or, better yet, provoke challenge still more conducive -to success. I venture to believe that any woman's literary product is a -matter of constant, and often desperate, compromise between writing and -living; and some examination into the wherefore of this fact may throw -light on the nature of writing processes, if not also on the nature of -woman processes. Since there are scant data for analyzing the methods of -other women writers, I give only my own, the experiment and experience -of a woman who has chosen to earn a living as a literary free lance. - -Such conclusions must necessarily be personal and practical, pretending -to no theories except those made by immediate need. Driven to earn -to-day's bread and butter, I really have no time to study the -superiority of prehistoric woman in the struggle for existence. Nor can -I give undivided attention to the achievements of my sex as promised by -the feminist millennium, when my 9 A.M. problem is to write -a story that shall please some editor, presumably male. I do not know -whether or not woman's intellect is the equal of man's; I know only that -mine is not. - -While observation teaches me that every woman worker may gain by -adopting to a certain degree the methods of men, the feminist promise -of an eventual equal productiveness is to me a promise barren, if true. -So far as I can see, individual men and women have, alike, just so much -vitality. If women devote this vitality to doing what men do, they will -have just so much less to devote to being what women are. As a writer I -aspire to write a book; as a woman I shall forever prefer to be a person -rather than a book. - -In an examination into the psychology and methods of the woman writer, -two things should be clearly kept in mind. The first is that of all -professions open to both sexes, writing should furnish the most reliable -conclusions in regard to the relative accomplishment of men and women; -for from Sappho's day to ours a woman has been as free to write as a -man. Life is the only university in which a writer can be trained, and -that university has always been strictly coeducational. Neither have -there ever been any restrictions, commercial or social, to bar a woman's -way to the literary career. It follows that any restrictions that exist -must be imposed, not from without, but from within, must be due to the -nature of the creature, physical, mental, and spiritual. - -The second fact not to be forgotten is that of all the professions -practiced by women writing is the one most intimately affected by -a woman's personal life and philosophy. It is far easier to detach -yourself from your own dailyness for the purposes of music, painting, -or science, than to separate yourself from the book you are writing, -which is necessarily self-expressive. Consequently a woman's literary -productiveness is far more precariously dependent upon her peace of mind -than any other form of professional activity. There are too many mute -Miltons, too easily silenced, among my sex; but on the other hand--a -fact equally due to the feminine fusion of living and writing--history -has shown, perhaps will always show, that woman's most valid -intellectual achievement is in literature. - -As a writer-worker, I have found no way of getting even with my -limitations except by frankly shouldering them. The body my soul bears -upon its back is a heavier burden to carry than a man's, and I find I -cannot accomplish the pilgrimage if I give up my own little jog-trot for -a man's stride. All that happens is that I lose my breath, and break my -back, and have to lie down by the roadside to be mended. But when I do -keep my own small pace, I have time and strength to pick a few fence-row -flowers, too fine and frail and joyous for any striding man to notice. - -I turn sharply from my own figures of speech to Mr. W. L. George's -airier fancies, to the most vital facts of feminine existence brushed -so lightly by the masculine intelligence that it can say, "_in -passing_, that we do not attach undue importance to woman's physical -disabilities.... I suspect that this is largely remediable, for I am -not convinced that it is woman's peculiar physical conditions that -occasionally warp her intellect: it is equally possible that a warped -intellect produces unsatisfactory physical conditions. Therefore if, -as I firmly believe that we can, we develop this intellect, profound -changes may with time appear in these physical conditions." - -My own warped intellect, belonging to a woman who must write stories -for a living, points out that, if it has taken aeons of differentiation -under the guidance of Dame Nature to accomplish my own personal physical -disabilities, I can hardly afford to wait for aeons of differentiation -under the guidance of Mr. George to accomplish my own personal physical -freedom. - -Looking at things as they are, I find my body constantly pushing upon -my work; but it is possible to treat a body with a certain humorous -detachment. It is possible to say to yourself, this is a headache that -you have, don't do it the honor of letting it become a heartache, your -own or--far more fateful peril--your heroine's. It is quite practicable -for a woman to live apart from her body even when it hurts, quite -practicable to give it sane and necessary attention, while keeping -the soul separate from it, exactly as if she were ministering to some -tired baby; this course is one of the only two solutions I have ever -discovered of the problem of preserving a worker's spirit in a woman's -body. The other solution lies in the frank concession to certain -physical incapacities as the price one pays for certain psychological -capacities. - -A woman's talent both for being a woman and for being a writer -is measured by the force and the accuracy of her intuitions. My -intuitions in regard to the people about me, when duly transformed into -story-stuff, have a definite market value. If I did not possess them, I -could not conceive, make, or sell a single manuscript. Supersensitive -impressions necessitate the supersensitive channels by which a woman's -outer world connects with her inner one. If I will have woman's -intuitions, I must have my woman's nervous system. So long as I think -telepathy the best of sport, I must consent to give house-room to -its delicate machinery, even to the extent of keeping cool when that -machinery gets out of order and buzzes with neuritis or neuralgia or -insomnia. The additional fact is only superficially paradoxical, that -when the woman worker takes the disorder of her nervous machinery thus -philosophically, it is much less likely to have any disorder. - -The fallibility of a woman's body seems beyond disputing. If a man -does dispute it, it is because he never had one; if a woman disputes -it, well, personally, if I can't be as strong as a man I should like -to be as honest as one! The fallibility of a woman's intellect is a -little more open to argument, but only a little. I keep to my primary -assumption that I am not trying to see further than my nose, or to voice -any observations but my own. Among the men and women of history and -among those of my vicinity, I cannot see that woman's brain is the equal -of man's in originality, in concentration, or in power of sustained -effort. As a worker, I find that I can write for only a few hours and -no more: beyond that limit stands disaster for the woman, and, far -more perilous, disaster for the writing. In regard to my brain as in -regard to my body, the primary condition of doing my work at all lies in -recognizing the truth that I can't do so much work, or do it so well, as -a man. - -In all matters that can be weighed or measured, a man's endowment is -superior to a woman's; but, on the other hand, a woman's endowment -consists in the quality and the quantity of an imponderable something -that cannot be weighed or measured. The chief difficulty about analyzing -a woman's brain is that it is so hard to separate her brain from the -rest of the woman, whereas men are put together in plainly discernible -pieces--body, mind, and soul. - -The perfection of a woman's intellect depends upon the perfection of -its fusion with her personality. A woman amounts to most intellectually -when she amounts to still more personally. She cannot move in pieces -like a man, or like an earthworm. It needs the whole woman, acting -harmoniously, to write. A man can retire into his brain and make a book, -and a good one, leaving all the rest of his personality in confusion; -but a woman must put her whole house in order before she can go off -upstairs into her intellect and write. It follows that a woman's -artistic achievement is for her a harder job than a man's achievement is -for him, which would make the other fact--namely, that the woman's book -when written is never so great as the man's--seem additionally cruel, if -we could not discern that the best of women writers have, in attaining -that best, reached not one result but two: impelled to clean all her -spirit's house before she can feel happy to write in it, a woman writer -achieves both a home that people like to visit and a book that people -like to read. Is it not true of all the greatest women authors that we -think of them as women before we think of them as authors? - -Of fiction-makers in our own tongue the greatest man is Shakespeare -and the greatest woman is Jane Austen. In personal revelation both -were signally reserved, the woman the more so, seeing that she did not -even burst into the hieroglyphics of a sonnet sequence; but of the two -our first thought of the woman is "dear Jane," and of the man, "dear -Rosalind"--or Beatrice or Mercutio. A man, possessing a separable -intellect and an imagination so original that it can sometimes create -what he personally is little capable of experiencing, may sometimes -write one thing and be another; but not so a woman. On the other hand, -has any woman ever attained such greatness that, at the mention of her -name, we think of the books she wrote before we think of the woman she -was? - -It is true that professional women who direct their toil on the -conviction that a woman's brain is of the same quality as a man's -sometimes produce work that approximates a man's in quantity. But sober -observation of such women does not make me want to be one. I see them -too often paying the penalty of being lopped and warped. Again I cannot -see that, while such women attain their Ph.D.'s and M.D.'s and LL.D.'s, -they ever attain the highest rank in literature. Imaginative writing -seems to demand inexorably that a woman writer be inexorably a woman. -On the other hand, I have reached as a brain-worker the conclusion -that, while my head is different in substance from a man's, I get most -work out of it when I copy a man's mental methods. My brain is a vague -and volatile mass, shot through with fancies, whimseys, with flashes -of intuitive and illuminative wisdom, and it is a task surpassingly -difficult to hold all this volatility, this versatility, to the rigors -of artistic expression, to the stern architectonics of fiction. To the -degree that a woman shall succeed in imposing upon the matter of her -intellect the method of a man's intellect, to that degree shall her work -show the sanity and serenity of universal, and sexless, art. - -To impose upon a woman's intellect a man's discipline and detachment is -excellent in theory; it is staggering in practice. Convention and his -own will make a man's time his own. A woman's genius is for personality, -or achievement within herself; a man's is for work, or achievement -outside of himself. Now it takes time to be a person, and it takes other -people. A real woman's life is meshed in other people's from dawn to -dark. These strands of other lives are to her so vital and precious that -for no book's sake will she ever break them, yet for any book's sake she -must disentangle them. A woman writer's life is a constant compromise, -due to the fact that if she does not live with her fellows, she will not -have anything to write, and that if she does not withdraw from them, she -will not have time to write anything. I do not know how other writing -women manage their time. I know that to attain four hours a day at my -desk means that I must be revoltingly stern with myself, my family, and -my friends. One pays a price for retirement, but one need not pay too -heavily. A solution lies in retaining those relations that mean real -humanity, while cutting off those that mean only society: I do not play -bridge, but I do play with children. - -Of course, it always seems plausible to solve the problem of time -to one's self by running off to some strange place, but this never -works very well. The reason is that such isolation is sure to prove -evanescent, so that you have to keep packing your trunk and moving on -to new exile, because human tendrils are so strong and stealthy that -they push their way through the thickest walls you can build, and twine -themselves, wherever you hide, about the fingers that want to write. In -order to write a love-story of your own invention, you run away from -some friend's too insistent love-story at home, and the first thing you -know you are deep in the love-affairs of your poor little chambermaid. -You escape home worries only to have some stranger's troubles batter -down your hotel door. You might as well stay at home and put up with -the truth, that if you care enough about people to wish to write of -them, you will care enough for people to wish to live with them, abroad -no less than at home. Besides, boarding is bleak and blighting. If I -were a boarding woman, presently I should feel too chilly to wish to -write; my fancies and my fingers would be too numb for expression. I -need a home with its big warm peace and its little warm frictions before -I can feel cozy enough to want to chat with a pen. - -There is a somewhat different alternative to home existence; I have -heard of communities duly arranged for the requirements of writers, -where they enjoy a kind of clublike privacy and security from -interruption. But are not such communities confined to the near-great? -Are real writers any more than real persons attracted by such an -abnormal existence? Writers who shun life and people are exactly the -sort that life and people shun. Personally, I run away from an author -whenever I hear one coming. Of the really great ones, I am desperately -afraid, and of the not-so-great ones, far more so. - - * * * * * - -Writer communities imply too much of the placard. I wish I might never -have to dangle my profession on a label. I am always embarrassed when -I am forced blatantly to expose it--for example, to the frank questions -of the doctor's secretary, or of a customs official. "Profession?" -they ask, and I cringe before the admission, "I am a writer." I don't -feel ladylike when I say the words. On such occasions I would give my -entire remuneration for an "Atlantic" essay to be able to say, "I am a -laundress." - -Personally, I am only too glad to forget that I am a Grub-Streeter, if -only other people would forget. No matter how obscurely one has ever -appeared in print, one pays the penalty of the pinnacle ever after. -Surely one is no more responsible for the tendency of one's talents than -for the color of one's hair. I write because I have found it my best way -of making a living,--and also because I can't help it; therefore why -cannot people accept me as simply as if I were a dressmaker? I should -be embittered by the curious attitude of people toward the literary -calling, if it were not as funny as it is puzzling. Once, at a tea, -an imposing matron hurtled from the front door to my corner, crying -out, "Can you talk as you write? If so, please do!" I was dumb with -discomfort for the rest of the afternoon. - -The subject of attitude toward the writer is worthy of digression and -topical analysis, for there is a difference among friends, family, and -general acquaintance. Now, it is not often that I wish to talk as I -write, but the occasions when I do, while rare, are painful and urgent. -It is precisely on these occasions that my friends fail me. Essays -are a long while in being born, and while they are in process I would -give much for some one with whom to talk them over. It is not after a -thing is published that a writer needs appreciation: it is before, and -especially before it is written. For twenty friends who will loyally -enjoy anything I write, I cannot count three who will listen when I -talk. Yet the ideas are exactly the same whether uttered by pen or -tongue. No friend is so valuable as one ready to attend and sympathize -during the incubation and parturition of an idea. And yet the majority, -knowing too well the author's temperamental uncertainties, are perhaps -to be forgiven their preference to wait until the editorial christening. -So much bigger to most minds is print than person. A writer's best -friends are prone to treat her with the affectionate inattention they -would give to a Blind Tom. Yet I would rather my friends never listened -to me, than that they always did; it is much cozier to be considered an -idiot than an oracle. - -If friends are prone to take the writing more seriously than they take -the writer, her family, on the contrary, share her throes too intimately -to take their poor sufferer lightly. Few authors experience the popular -fallacy of a doting family audience. A shuddering apprehension of -the potential effect upon editor and reader makes kinfolk intensely -critical. The agonies to which any sympathetic household is subjected -when one member of it is writing a book are such as to make them -question whether any book is worth the price of its creation. A writer's -family also lives in the constant, but usually groundless, fear of being -written up. There is both humor and pathos when dear Granny retires into -a corner with some foible she knows you admired in infancy. Relatives -are always a trifle uneasy in the presence of the chiel amang us takin' -notes. I doubt if any success quite compensates for the discomfort of -being blood-kin to a writer. True, a family can sometimes be discovered -passing the book or magazine around among the neighbors, but they don't -wish you to catch them with it in their own hands. Friends and family -are alike in their complexity of attitude, being insistent that other -people shall admire you, but afraid of making you conceited if they -admire you themselves. The danger of conceit can be safely entrusted to -editors and reviewers, not to mention the disillusion that sickens any -author on comparing the finished book with the fancied one. - -But if a writer is comfortably without honor among her intimates, she -is more than honored by the attention accorded by chance acquaintance. -The attitude of the average person toward print as print is enigmatic. -Not all people place the pen on a pedestal, but all regard the penman -as somehow different. I once essayed retirement at a little village -hotel. I was promptly established in a room made sacred by the previous -occupancy of another lady author. Her name I had never before heard, -although I heard it daily during my sojourn. Her sole producible work -was a railroad advertisement of some remote garden-spot in California, -but it had been enough to confer a halo, as well as to win more -substantial reward, for I afterwards found out that, solely for the -literary aroma she diffused, the lady had been allowed to remain two -years without paying a cent of board. Unfortunately I did not discover -the fact until I had paid my own board for two months. The incident -disproves the charge that the United States has no popular respect for -the fine arts. - -Print is prone to induce curious revelations from strangers. You write, -perhaps, a story that tries to be true to simple human emotions, and -the next thing you know, somebody in Idaho is writing you all about his -wife or baby. It is touching, but quaint. I have come to be a little -suspicious of letters from strangers that purport to be simple letters -of appreciation. I used to be very much flattered by them until my brief -notes of thanks drew forth such unexpected replies. It appeared that -the writers of the letters were writers of other works as well; they -were sending these to me forthwith; would I kindly read and comment? My -experience is, I gather, not unique. A writer-friend, whose published -poetry is marked by peculiar sanity, has received from more than one -unknown source effusions so bizarre that they can emanate from nothing -but a madhouse. - -It is easy to silence by silence these unseen acquaintance, but others -nearer by demand tact. Among these are people who tell me stories they -want me to tell. They never can understand why I don't use the material. -As a matter of fact, raw romance striking enough to impress the lay -mind is much too striking for a writer's employment. Truth that is -stranger than fiction is what every story-teller must avoid if he is to -write stories true enough to be read. - -What I more and more discover is that nine tenths of the people one -meets want to write, that seven tenths of them have at some time -tried, and that not more than one tenth of them perceive why they have -failed. Since they think the impulse to write more distinctive than -its accomplishment, and since they feel that they have the impulse in -all its glory, they regard with a half-contemptuous envy the person -who actually does write. They regard creation as purely inspirational, -and look askance at a worker who goes to her desk every morning like -a machine. For all I know, they are right. A good many people think -that the only reason they are not writers is that they never tried to -be. Others think they would have written if they had only been taught -how, if they had had the opportunity of certain courses in college. -Still others think there must be some charmed approach to an editor's -attention. Who introduced me, they frankly ask. When people talk like -this it requires some self-control to repress my conviction that any -person who could have written would have written, and my knowledge -that the only introduction I ever had to any editor was made by my own -manuscripts. - -Friends, family, and general acquaintance have, I find, one impulse -in common, the desire always to hound down the autobiographic. They -read, beam brightly, look up at me, and say, "Oh, here is Aunt Sarah's -chicken-pen!" Actually it is an old well I once saw in Brittany. "Oh, -here is the story of old Mr. Gresham at his grandnephew's funeral. -Don't you remember I showed you Elsie's letter about it?" I never saw -the letter, never heard of old Mr. Gresham, and the chapter in question -describes the antics of a four-year-old at his father's wedding. - -"Here is Saidie Lippincott to the life!" - -I gasp, "Who is Saidie Lippincott?" - -"Don't you remember you met her at Rose Earle's tea when you visited me -four years ago?" - -There is no possession people are so unwilling to let one have as an -imagination. In private, friends will tear a book to shreds to discover -some portrait they can recognize; and in the case of authors famous -enough to be dead, critics rake the ground wherever they have trod in an -effort to prove that the folk of their fancy were drawn from the earth -rather than the air. There seems no means of convincing a reader that -in a writer's head are constantly a thousand faces he has never seen or -heard of, all subtle with story, all begging for a book, and all so real -that they often make his daily waking seem a dream. - - * * * * * - -There is no denying that there is autobiography in all fiction, but the -relation of the two is not so superficial as the mere introduction of -facts and of characters from one's daily life. The actual relation of -experience and its expression is deep and intricate, and, especially -for the woman writer, pervasive. As one must adjust one's work to a -feminine body, to a feminine brain, and to distinctly feminine social -relations, so one must take into account as still more determinative a -woman's spiritual characteristics. However potent the impulse to write, -the impulse to live is deeper. I have dwelt on the negative side of -this problem, the uselessness of fleeing to strange places to escape -other people's burdens; but it is impossible to over-emphasize the -positive side, the difficulties of staying at home with the burdens -that Providence has provided. However intense the joys and sorrows of -the people the woman creates, the joys and sorrows of the people she -loves will be still more intense. It needs both poise and vitality to be -equal to the demands both of fancy and of fact. The mere external tangle -of hours and seasons that any human relations necessitate is nothing -compared with the spiritual tangle of one's sympathies. The instinct to -soothe and succor and the instinct to think and write meet in a daily, -an hourly, variance. Heart and head are equally insistent in their -demands, and equally vengeful if unsatisfied. Books cry to be written, -and people cry to be loved, and to whichever one I turn a deaf ear, I -am presently paying the penalty of a great unrest and discontent. To -preserve the balance of attention between the needs of her head and the -needs of her heart is the biggest problem any woman writer faces. I have -discovered no ultimate solution; it is rather a matter of small daily -solutions, in which at one time we sacrifice the friend to the book, and -at another the book to the friend. - -Yet in any crucial choice a real woman chooses living rather than -literature. My brain itself approves this yielding of intellect to -emotions for the very simple reason that, if I don't thus yield, the -emotions denied will avenge themselves on the brain, and the book I -write will be unnatural because I myself am unnatural. - -Once I thought it impossible to write when people about me were in -distress: I proposed to myself to wait until things should settle down. -I perceived that things never do settle down; that for women who have -human affections, there will always be somebody somewhere to worry -about. It is rather inspiring to be a woman, because it is so difficult. -With the winds blowing from every direction at once, one must somehow -steer a course that will reveal alike to the reader who knows one's book -and to the friend who knows one's heart, a halcyon serenity. - -A relative detachment from her own living is as necessary for a woman -writer as an absolute detachment is stultifying. Since for a woman -expression is fused with experience, clean hands and a pure heart are -for her the fundamental demands of art, and this fact means that she -must be constantly scouring off her sense of humor with spiritual -sapolio before she can effectively handle a pen. Be sure her philosophy -will find her out in her book far more clearly than in a man's. - -The natural fusion of a woman's brain with her emotions, resisted, leads -to intellectual weakness; accepted, leads to intellectual strength. In -the history of literature George Sand is the great example of a woman -who won success by the masculine solution of detachment from experience, -and Jane Austen, the great example of a woman who won success by the -feminine solution of identification with her own dailyness. - -I am inclined to think the latter by far the greater artist, just as I -am inclined to think that in literature rather than in any other form -of mental activity will always be found woman's highest intellectual -achievement, for the simple reason that woman's genius consists in -personality, and for the expression of personality words are the only -adequate medium. Jane Austen's example is the great encouragement for -the woman who wishes to write without ceasing to be a simple everyday -woman. Jane Austen was capable of a detachment that enabled her to -write books that give no hint of the thunder of the Napoleonic wars -even when she had two brothers on fighting ships. She was capable of an -identification with her surroundings that enabled her to write novels -of universal humanity and eternal artistry and to keep right on being -everybody's aunt at the same time. She was sane and humorous in her -novels because she was sane and humorous out of them. She achieved fame -because she had first achieved personality. Still, her fame is only a -thin frail fire set beside the effulgence of a dozen men of her time. - -Yet I would rather have been Jane Austen than Shelley or Wordsworth -or Keats. It is perfectly just that men's books should be greater -than women's, because men are willing to pay the price. Not to write -"Macbeth" would I willingly give up an afternoon's romp with a baby. As -a woman I reckon my spirit's capital, not in terms of accomplishment, -but in terms of my own joy, and a baby brings me more joy than a book. - -Men ought to write better than women because they care more; in a -way women who write have the more impersonal outside-of-themselves -impulsion, because inside of themselves they don't care. I acknowledge -the urge of writing and I am willing up to a certain point to pay by -means of a vigorous mental discipline and a certain self-saving from -useless self-spending, but I don't pretend that writing satisfies me. -Something descends upon me and says, "Write," and shakes me like a -helpless kitten until I do write; but it's a relief when the shaking is -over, and I am left to the merrier business of merely being myself. In -other words, I am a writer because I can't help it, but I am a woman -because I choose to be. - - - - -XIV - -_Picnic Pictures_ - - -Her white house is the same, with a difference. It was always a house -fitted to the person like a garment, a friendly house with peace in -the corners, a house warm with sun or firelight; yet I think we always -used the house merely as a starting-place for picnics, for running away -into the out-of-doors with a well-stocked basket. We are at best only -reformed dryads, my friend and I, and I am not even reformed. I think -perhaps that it was in like manner that we used our two selves, merely -as a starting-point for picnics, for the leap into the infinite, the -challenging of space and time, the tossing of stars like play-balls -from one to the other, always with the joy of the word shaping on the -tongue to the gleam in a friend's eye. We are lovers of words, I and -she. True we also had talk in the library, dusked with books, dead -men's spirits packed shoulder to shoulder on the shelves. There was -brave firelight in the library, and quiet candles, and there was also -Xerxes. The great gray Persian curled on one corner of the big desk. -Even asleep he dominated the home in his sole masculinity. Yet to me he -was sexless and sphinxlike except when he forsook his Oriental calm for -strange gambols in the white moonlight, a bounding gray shape of a tiger -grace. Sometimes Xerxes rose and stretched as if our conversation bored -him, sometimes his great purring drowned out the Occidental flippancy -of our chat. He was more king than cat, and he always made me a little -uncomfortable, that Xerxes. To-day he is not dead but deposed. His place -on the desk is usurped by a sturdy box of cigars. - -However happily we might talk in the library we always knew we were -better without a roof, for in the blood of the born picnicker there is -something that must always be running, dancing, flying. Out-of-doors, -there were the little brooks to chuckle at us if talk delved too -deep, and the pine-tops to fill all pauses with quiet music. We were -the better picnickers because we lived for the most part in life's -schoolroom. We counted our picnic days and sorted them into due order of -excellence, some better, some not quite so merry, yet all very good. But -lately I had begun to wonder about the picnics, for the difference in -the white, hill-girdled house is a husband. When our friends marry we -always wonder about the picnics, for sorrow is always a third comrade to -hold two friends' hands the tighter, and to keep their feet more closely -in step; it is happiness that may sever and un-self people. - -This, our first married picnic, dawned as brisk and bright as any. The -master is not with us. He departs each morning for a mysterious place -called "The Works." That is something I have always noticed in husbands, -that tendency to go forth to "The Works." Somehow no matter how hard -women may toil for their daily bread, they never seem to belong to "The -Works" of the world. The white house bustles with picnic preparations. -It has to bustle when Jennie is in it. Jennie? Well, Jennie might be -called the steam-engine at the middle of the merry-go-round. Some day I -think the world will grow wise enough to stop talking about the servant -question, and begin to study the philosophy that is still often to be -found going about wrapped in a maid's cap and apron. Jennie, a little -person quick of foot, bounces up and down like a merry ball, and cries -to the blue May morning while she butters sandwiches, "Picnic time has -come again! Picnic time has come again!" Yet I never heard of Jennie's -going on a picnic; do people ever know, I wonder, how much of other -people's unselfishness must go to the making of anybody's Eden? - -The hall rocks to the bouncings and barkings of Mac, for he, too, feels -picnic in the air. Mac is a newcomer, so is Peggy, the mare, ready tied -beneath a tree to carry us over the hills and far away. When Adam came -to this Eden, he brought his animals with him, a method much better than -the Scriptural one, for it must have been a strain on any honeymoon, -that influx of indiscriminate elephant and dinosaur, cormorant and -anteater, and what not. The animals here were carefully chosen, Mac, the -shaggy, clumsy, warm-hearted Airedale, and Peggy, high-bred as a lady of -the old South, having all such a lady's charm and grace and fundamental -loyalty touched with just the dash of deviltry considered meet to spice -the masculine palate. It is with the clatter of Mac's ecstatic barking -as he plunges before Peggy's light hoofs that we go driving forth toward -the blue, hill-swept horizon. - -There is a tentative venturesomeness about my friend's driving, for -horsemanship with her is a recent accomplishment, and a proud one, -to the zest of which Peggy contributes with a pricking of ears and a -graceful dip to the side of the road before every motor-car. Mac trots -briskly in front or behind, or to the side. His path through life is one -of friendly detours. He will never accomplish any great deeds in dogdom. -He is one of the simple souls unconscious of their magnetism. There -is not an animal by the roadside that doesn't come ambling up to his -genial little nose. Even a herd of Jersey cows lopes clumsily across the -pasture to chat with him at the bars, and no dog, big or little, fails -to wish Mac good-morning. - -It is the kind of morning for good wishes both for dogs and men. Knotted -old farmers, seeing our picnic faces and picnic basket, grin and -twinkle, sharing the May sunshine. The hills are a dim blue against a -sky still softer. Boulder-strewn pastures, more brown than green, are -starred with bluets. Far off there, below a shaggy stretch of pines, -is a field so golden with dandelions that it quivers as if held by -midsummer heat. - -We don't know where we are going; that is always the charm of our -picnics, to follow the will of the road. It carries us past a sawmill -in the wood. Its stridency and the tang of fresh sawdust strike sharp -across the air fragrant with fern. Then the road is off again across the -open, cleaving farms with their broad greening fields. The meadowlarks -ring out their calls to us. The bobolinks dart and dive and sing. I -turn to my companion in sudden question: "Now that you are married to a -woodsman, do you know anything more about birds?" - -"Oh, no," she answers easily, "we know only the nice birds"; thus -reassuring me that in her company I need fear, no more than of old, to -meet any but the best bird society, robins and blackbirds and orioles -and the other long-established families, and reassuring me also as to my -fear that the one left behind at "The Works" might prove to be one of -these bugaboo birdmen, of all beings the most subtly superior. In fact, -it is very difficult to extract good conversation from any kind of human -encyclopedia, ornithological or other. - -Everywhere the cherry trees and pear are snowed over with white, but -the apple blossoms are unopened, turning to a deep rose amid the -pale-green leaves. The orchards are nearly human in their individuality, -whether they form a little battalion of old men, sturdy and gnarled and -steadfast, or a band of little budding baby trees toddling up a hill. -There are no great waters in this countryside, but many little glinting -brooks, pattering downhill beside our wheels, then meandering through -meadows beneath their bushy willows. We are minded to follow a brook and -let it lead us to perfect picnic. It leads us, of course, up a hill and -up, away from all farms, all valleys, into a deep woods road, hushed -and strange, and at last beckons us aside from the road itself, with a -twinkle of white birch stems, and the swirl of wild water, white and -amber. - -It takes a long time to tie and blanket Peggy while I sit dreaming -in the dappled shade beside the musical rush of water, haunted by my -friend's own song that once set all this woodland madness to elfin -rhythms. But my mood is interrupted by the thumping down of the stout -picnic basket. She is smilingly tolerant of my dryad whimseys, but for -herself, nowadays, she wishes to unpack that basket and get settled. It -is for me also, perhaps, to be smilingly tolerant of the other dryad -turned domestic; for me, brook water still has power to turn me dizzy -and to make my heart stop beating. - -It is the same basket we used to carry, but, like the house, it has a -difference. There is a great object concealed in ebony leather, and it -is called the "wap-eradicator." The term is profoundly masculine, for a -"wap" is some evil-eyed foreigner who might disturb our picnic privacy, -and his eradicator is a pistol. There is also a marvelous jackknife -which I pause in unpacking to examine. It again is no lady's toy, -seeing that it has not only all the blades a lady might require, but in -addition a screwdriver and a corkscrew, a tack-puller and a can-opener. -There is stout enamel ware in the basket, too, whereas we always used -to carry china, feminine and fragile. Food, much of that,--but then -we always did take food, for I have noticed that poets need a deal of -victualing. In fact, roast beef is about the best thing you can do for -anybody's imagination. One packet I myself put in for old sake's sake, -despite her laughter, a yellow envelope packed with her typed poetry. -"We'll never look at it," she said, and she generally knows. She pulls -forth now some scribbled tablets, skeleton stories of my own, "Your -little deedles," she designates them in genial contempt, and plants the -cream jar upon them. - -Presently she is off to gather fagots for the fire, admonishing my -absent-mindedness, "Don't let Mac eat the food before we do." I note how -much handier she has grown in all wood-lore. To-day the fire needs no -coaxing, also it's a much smaller fire than we used to build. We used -to have a scorching splutter for a wee bit of coffee. This fire goes -briskly and to the point, showering us now and then with cinders, yet -on the whole well-behaved. In other days we toasted our bacon on forked -sticks, but there's a fine frying-pan now, with rings to thrust a rod -into, tightening it with twigs. Bacon and eggs sizzle merrily, and the -coffee-kettle boils its cover off. We sit smut-cheeked and zestful, and -exhibit a great capacity for sandwiches. There is much complacency in -our manners. Her coffee, she remarks, "has seven kinds of sticks in it, -but is perfectly potable." The fire, that low, leaping ruddiness against -a gray boulder, is the best fire she "ever personally conducted." As for -me, there is plenty of chuckle in me, too, but I am thinking, when shall -we begin to talk, for was that not what we always went to the woods -for? Somehow, what with building fires, and brewing and frying, with -eating and drinking, and giving Mac and Peggy to eat and drink, there -has not been time for talking. That will come later, when we have packed -away the sandwiches we could not eat, and given Mac his drink from our -emptied coffee-pail, and Peggy her two lumps of sugar. Then surely at -last we shall talk, about poems and stories, and all things writable, -and all things livable. Sometimes I think she guesses what I am waiting -for and regards me with a twinkle, while she moves about light-footed, -setting away our clutter. - -But afterwards she is sleepy, lying stretched in flickering shadow on -the brown pine needles; and I, the picnic place has caught me again -into its spell. Nowhere does spring come stepping so delicately as in -New England. In other places there is more riot and revelry in the -carnival of bursting blossoms and leaf. In New England spring has the -face of a girl nun. There are white violets in our woods and white -birch stems. The very light has a quality soft and rare. The sky is the -Quaker ladies' own color. Across the swirling water that leaps down the -rock path, the face of a hill rises high into the sky. It is all gray -boulder and brown, with a film of pale green over all, touched here and -there by the dreamy white of the shadbush. Nearer by, great boulders at -the waterside below us are moss-covered, and across them the dappled -shade of little leaves goes flickering. The beautiful tree shapes are -unhidden, gray stems twining with brown. There is a satin sheen in -the rod of light that lines each trunk-shaft turned to the sun. Just -now, sailing from nowhere, across the green-veiled gray of the hill -opposite, there fluttered a white butterfly. - -After a long time I touch the envelope packed with poetry, and move -it tentatively toward my friend's hand. She shoves it quietly aside. -Drowsy though she is, she has an eye open to watch Peggy's glossy brown -head tossing down there in an amber-lit wood space, and to see that Mac -does not wake from his nap, where he lies only half visible against the -russet leaves he has chosen to match his coat. Nowadays any soaring talk -may be interrupted by a hearty "Whoa, Peggy!" or a "Down, Mac!" It is -no poor punctuation, no unworthy anchorage, for people whose feet have -often ached from treading the tree-tops. - -She has tossed aside her poetry, but will listen to my stories. I am -eager to tell her about all the new people in my brain. She brushes the -cobwebs from their heads and from mine with all her old acumen, knowing, -in all the spacious sanities of the married woman, that I need to write, -while I, I know, too, that she need not. If we did not, each of us, -understand, could there be any more picnics? But the pauses grow longer, -filled with the voices of the water and the wood. The air is warm and -drowsy, and at last she is fast asleep, held close to the brown earth, -and I, the other one, sit straight, my back to a stout pine, while my -thoughts go wandering, gazing in at Eden, at all Edens. Everybody's path -skirts so many Edens, of the women friends married, and the men friends -married. Passing pilgrim-wise, one garners a walletful of reflections. -Looking at my friend lying there asleep on brown pine needles, I know, -as every woman must know, that she will never again need me in the old -way, and, as every woman must be, I am far too glad to be sorry. The -question for each of us, man or woman, outside the fence, is, Will he, -will she, still come out sometimes into life's great open and picnic -with me? That all depends, does it not? on the newcomer. If he, if she, -is a petty person, there are no more picnics. If a man, moving in to -possess all sky, all sea, every crack and cranny of the universe, still -holds most sacred there that path of a woman's past which she walked, -alone, to come to him, he will leave untouched all the little sunny -picnic places, for any man big enough to deserve all a woman's past -would be far too big to desire it; is not just that the secret of how to -have picnics though married? - -And still my thoughts go wandering, passing now from the -"wap-eradicator" to all that lies back of it, of our need for it. How -fundamentally different the way in which we must both regard that great -black pistol lying between us! To her it is a new toy, something she -has recently learned to shoot, and deeper, truer, it is the symbol of a -husband's protection, while I see beyond it that great fevered army of -the unemployed, those who work and want, whose presence makes a weapon -necessary. In some way I cannot analyze, I know that I am vaguely glad -that I am on their side of the fence; in both my work and play too far -away from them, perhaps, and too forgetful, still on their side of the -ramparts of Eden, in that strange great world where no one ever is -satisfied. - -That packet of poetry tossed to earth, to which no new poem has been -added for many a month,--will she ever write again, and shall I be glad -or sorry, I who know myself how a woman's writing is made? Yet hers -is vital poetry, earth-warm and limpid as the song of the meadowlark. -Curious how it is men who have best put women into words, men who have -made the best bedtime lullabies for children; women have been much too -happy to talk about it. Yet a happy woman with the gift of song, if she -remembered,--if she could set to music the purring of her kettle on the -hob, the lilt of her sewing-machine,--how the sunny words might twinkle -on harder, stranger paths! But if happy people remembered, could they -then be happy? Oh, dear me, why must I be always asking questions? The -wind is blowing, and against that big frowning boulder a buttercup is -bobbing in the sun: how many times a day one is glad one does not have -to be God, but only has to know Him there, behind this sun-and-shadow -curtain we name Life! - -But my friend is awake, measuring the time of the master's home-going -and ours. She is up, and running down to the waterside. I see her there, -slender and tall, light-poised on a stone. Beyond her the opposite -hillside looms high, green and gray. Above her ruddy head a shadbush -bends itself, russet and white like her own woods-dress. As I look she -tosses the water from her cup, and it falls in a great arc of sun-spray -against the dusk of the woods. - -The home-going is as glad as the going forth, but quieter, with long -shadows across the grass. We pass pools where tall trees stand with -their feet in the water in the gold light of late afternoon, and all the -motionless brown water is bordered bright with marsh-marigolds. We stop -at a watering-trough, and I must get out to undo Peggy's check-rein, -and to keep a hand on Mac's collar so that he will not tumble head -foremost over the high rail. I hand up a cup to the driver seated, and -we drink thirstily, all four of us. - -One farm has been happy with a spring paint-brush since our morning -passing. Every flower-pot, box, tripod, and that curiously frequent -flower-receptacle, the iron boiler, cut in lengthwise section, has been -coated with dashing vermilion. Spring had got into their bones on that -farm. - -Mac lags from time to time, and we have to stop to lug and heave him -into the wagon, where he lies across our feet, a panting, restless -lap-robe of warm Airedale. Now a curious social phenomenon occurs. The -very dogs, which in the morning had nosed Mac in friendliest fashion, -come forth and bark and howl at him in his present eminence. It is the -old, old story of the proletariat protesting against the plutocrat. - -The green spring country is seamed by old stone walls. I do not know -why an old stone wall has power to touch my pulses strangely, to set -stirring dreams long prisoned. It is some forgotten child association, -I suppose, the feeling that an old stone wall gives me, exactly akin, -by the way, to that of an old covered bridge, with its magic of -mystery-shod hoofs at midnight. - -Peggy's hoofs are swift, going home, and the road, although the same, -seems twice as short as before. At one point we vary it, cutting across -country through a wood of pines. Beneath the pines the earth is all -brown unflecked by any sun, and the light is clear amber, except that -at the far edge of the grove there are bright gold gleams through the -distant tree stems. Above our heads the color is not brown; it is -that strange deep gray-blue that makes mysterious the heart of a pine -tree where the branches meet the trunk. We have not talked very much -to-day, she and I, but here no one could speak any words. These seem -the stillest woods in all the world. We draw rein. Suddenly from out -uttermost silence there rings the chime of a thrush. - -But Peggy stamps and chafes, and Mac is panting. Were the animals urgent -just like this, I wonder, when Adam and Eve longed to listen to some -archangel's voice? - -It is Peggy's will that we get home. The master is there before us, -and at the barn. That is another thing I have noticed about husbands, -when they are not at "The Works," they are likely to be at the barn, if -there is one. Jennie is flying about, singing to her feet to keep them -lively while she makes us a dinner. Even when that meal comes I find I -am still dreaming, for I was not ready to come home. Afterward in the -clear May twilight we move forth to doorstep and lawn. It is Peggy's -hour for evening cropping. The master leads her about. Every turn of her -head, every lift of her foot, is a movement of grace. In the gathering -twilight, soft and misty, Peggy seems some beautiful horse stepping -delicately out of elfland. Mac is tugging at the other end of her tether -rope, and the master is somehow strung between them. - -The level meadows flow away before us. The deepening blue of the sky -softly puts out the sunset. Suddenly, as at some signal, the frogs begin -to pipe from the meadow pool. My friend crosses the dusky lawn to join -those others. She moves at Peggy's head in her dim white dress. One star -comes out. - -Across their heads I see, hardly discernible, the spires of the city, -and its red earth-lights, and somehow, although I know all its fever, -all its pain, I hear the far crying of its spirit to my spirit, cry of -innermost comradeship, the call of Home. I rise now from my seat on the -doorstep, signal of good-night. She comes flying to my side; of all the -words she might say, she chooses that best one, "It was our very nicest -picnic." - - - - -XV - -_The Farm Feminine_ - - -There are in my summer neighborhood three gentlemen farmers who are -women. There is an implied distinction in the implied definition. The -three I have under observation are quite different from those women -farmers who have shouldered their husbands' acres when forced to do so -by widowhood or other marital disability. This difference, among others -that readily occur, is primarily the same as that between all actual and -amateur farming, the difference between those who grow up out of the -soil and know its tricks, and those who come to the soil from another -plane, and don't suspect it of having any tricks. At any rate, the lady -farmers of our neighborhood farm because they want to, not because they -have to; otherwise, perhaps, they would not be in our neighborhood at -all, although it is one of the loveliest in all the land. - -Somewhere between the lush luxuriance of the South and the beautiful -austerity of New England lies Pennsylvania. This countryside is rich -in mellow old farms, far retired from railways. There are low, rolling -hills and woodsy back roads. Houses are set far up grassy lanes, lined -with trees. Doorways back and front are deep in shade. Barns are big -and white, and spread broad wings over plentiful harvesting. Houses are -white, too, of stucco or of stone, old, kindly, solidly built. To these -shady bricked porches, where the roses clamber against gray-white walls, -Washington's colonials might have come clattering up. Small wonder that -women desiring farms should desire just this deep-verdured beauty, and -no less wonder that the farms, many good miles from market, should be so -abundantly for sale that any lady, eager to surround herself with fields -and fowls, may readily choose her own particular frame and setting. - -The three have chosen, each according to her heart's requirements. -Lady One is the lady of the flowers, and she is the youngest. Her -throat is round and white, nor beneath the droop of her great garden -hat is it too much exposed to the sun. She wears gloves, white ones -and unique among garden gloves because they fit. Her shoes, her -kerchief, are always freshly white, and her muslin dress of soft shade, -lavender or blue, or sprigged and flounced. She might have stepped -forth from fancy's gallery where we all keep pictures hanging of -gardens and of grandmothers. She herself may be dreaming of just such -a portrait-picture. But don't think that she is a drone because she -is perhaps a dreamer. There are no such flowers in thirty miles, and -flowers mean tireless toil; they take more good soil-sweat than a whole -field of potatoes. - -She chose her farm to fit her, it had run sadly seedy, but she retouched -all its fading picturesqueness. The house is pillared, frame, low, -and white. Small grilled windows wink with garret mysteries above the -high porch roof, and all is deep in shade and set far back beyond low -terraces with mossy flower urns and steps of cracked flags. There are -trim green globes of box trees before the front door, and to the left is -her garden of flowers set within a labyrinthine box hedge. Everywhere -are roses, roses,--starry little yellow blossoms, red, pink, white, -roses whose very names are fragrant: Flower of Fairfield, Perle de -Jardin, Baltimore Belle, Soleil d'Or, Crimson Globe, Killarney. - -This lady's eyes are brown and too deep to fathom because she is still -too young to be fearless. Her voice, her words, are sweet and friendly, -but her eyes do not see you, they see only roses, and in roses, -perhaps, those deeper mysteries all women see in all growing things; her -gloved hand can touch a rose as if it were a little live face. - -Quite different, Lady Two and her farm. Here all is bustle and clack. -Chickens, pigs, turkeys, kittens, ducks, puppies, calves occur so -frequently that every day is a birthday. You could not associate Lady -One with the farmyard; you could not associate Lady Two with anything -else. True, her house has a front doorway every whit as picturesque -as Lady One's,--a square porch where the lilies-of-the-valley push -up through ancient bricks, and a great pine bears fruit of stars -every evening,--but Lady Two is not there to see, for she is putting -her chickens to bed. It is out on the great back porch with its pump -and its grapevine lattice, on this porch and on the slope to the big -barns below, that things happen. There is no rose garden. Lady Two has -flowers, it is true, in hearty democratic confusion and profusion; she -loves them, too, but without subtlety, watering them and her tomato -plants alike with the same splashing hand. Her vegetable-garden is the -garden of her heart. She is a woman radiant with a hoe. - -Lady Two is tall and spare, tanned and cheery. Somewhere she has a -family, comfortable and conventional, but somehow she has managed to -slip off to a farm, away from them and all social claims, and thus at -forty she remains a hearty, rosy boy, with quick hands, quick feet, -and brown eyes full of zest. The farm keeps her a little breathless; -she is on the jump all day, from the first imperative call of hungry -chicks to the small-hour barkings of Gyp. It is nothing to hurry forth -from slumber with lantern and comforting words to still her dog. If she -should find that Gyp had been barking at some prowling evil-doer, she -would not think first of her own nerves, but of Gyp's. - -Lady Two cares not for costume, choosing merely the nearest and the -handiest before she hurries forth to her farm. Her hands are marked by -sun and serviceability; could you succor a sick horse in gloves! In -mud-streaked denim, hatted and booted like a man, she stalks the boggy -pasture to recapture the black turkey-hen, an errant lady, who, in -some atavistic dream, prefers to brood on an empty nest in the swamp, -exhibiting a truly feminine propensity to combine a pleasing wildness -with a perilous wetness. - -To Lady Two her farm means primarily fowls. Down the slope below the -kitchen porch they are housed with all modern improvements, in brooders -and colony house, and all manner of coops. Ducks waddle, geese strut, -guinea fowl go trip-trip on feet too tiny. At feeding-time Lady Two is -the center of a feathered mass, cackling, peeping, gobbling, quacking, -creaking like rusty hinges as guinea fowl do. She might be a mother with -a great group of happy, boisterous youngsters. Sometimes she stoops to -pick up and inspect some tiny hurt chick. She croons to it with brooding -tenderness. Babies, she calls the tiny things, and babies they are to -her, all the little newly-borns of her farm, whether a pinky piglet, a -calf that gambols awkwardly, a little turkey that must not get its feet -wet, a colt unsteady on stilt-legs, a beady-eyed yellow duckling, a -plunging puppy lost among its own four legs,--babies all. - -Not for roses, not for chicks, that grow, both, beneath a fostering -hand, did Lady Three choose her farm. Roses and chicks she has both in -plenty, and tends them with her own hands, adequately and happily, but -without absorption. She has outlived the need for absorption, so that -the twinkle in her gray eyes is imperishable. She has also outlived -the need for varied costume. Hers has the detachment and independence -of uniform, always straight-cut, gray serge with a straight-cut linen -collar, and small crimson tie. Her dress has all a man's superiority to -his exterior, but her choice of a farm reveals nothing masculine in her -spirit. Her great farmhouse is built of brown stones set irregularly -in clear-seamed white. There are big twin chimneys at right and left. -There is a white tablet beneath the eaves bearing a date of Penn's -time, but only the shell of the house is old, within all is remade to -a mistress's liking. If in all women the root of all impulse is to be -always making something that shall tangibly shape to the impress of -each woman's separate self, then Lady Three chose neither flowers nor -fowls, she chose to create for herself a home. Much-traveled herself, -she found her farm far from beaten paths, lost down a grassy lane -where a brown brook clatters and chuckles from out a hushed woodland. -A business woman, so-called, executive, successful, as any man, she -chose, ten years ago, at fifty, her far-off farm. Her lawns are clear -of litter as was her desk in her counting-room. Her house is heated, -watered, furnished in neatest and completest comfort. Many electrical -devices, and her own ruddy health make her quite independent of kitchen -itinerants not like the mistress inured to loneliness. Having read -much, seen much, done much, known much, in her fifty years, she chose -to spend the rest with herself, in her home, a home where every chair, -book, rug, picture speaks individuality, some quick quaint taste, -some humorous little philosophy. It is a house warm with welcome, but -genially self-sufficient. Of the three, this lady, wise and gray, is the -only one who really sees you, and listens; the other two see only farm. -Lady Three is not afraid to live alone with the stars out-of-doors, or -alone indoors with her hearth fire. You can't be afraid of the lonely -wind when you have long ago ceased to be afraid of yourself. - -Thus my three lady farmers; and now that question, Does their farming -pay? All lady farming depends entirely on the quality of its male -assistance. You cannot farm without a man; it has been tried. Help is an -ever-present trouble, but the Lady of the Roses has not found this out, -because she is still too young and too pretty. Whenever she steps far -from her roses, it is to look at her sky rather than her soil. Unwitting -she has power to turn that brute species, Hired Man, into a very knight -of chivalry, jealous to guard every blade of wheat that springs for -her. Busily binding, cutting, watering her roses, she never even sees -her servitors; but they see her, in all those frail fripperies of hers, -while in the summer evening they linger, blue-overalled and bounden, -just beyond her low hedge, to hear the sound of her voice in its sweet, -absent responses. Her men know she does not see them, but perhaps they -think some day she will perceive what tall corn she has, what sleek -cattle. Does her farming, therefore, pay? Yes, a little, which is as -much as can be said for most farming. - -Quite different is the case with Lady Two. She has her hired men and -her hired boys, big and little, and they all keep very busy, watching -her, and they keep still busier demanding that she watch them. She is a -cheery, desirable comrade for any toil, their "Miss Katie," diminutive, -both affectionate and superior, showing small awe for their tall boy -mistress, in whose brisk capability they have, however, pride. They -constantly call her to see them do it, whatever it is she desires. "Miss -Katie," "Miss Katie," resounds from garden and furrow and hencoop. They -cannot detach a setting hen, or churn the butter without her oversight, -loudly bellowed for. They are children demanding that their mother shall -watch their prowess at play. She wonders why her farm does not pay; it -is because of that expensive little name of hers, because of her "Miss -Katie." - -Lady Three,--does her farm give her dollar for dollar? Precisely that, -and that is all she asks of it. Her oversight is brief, adequate. Men -have always worked well for her, they always will. She has the quiet -mistress-mastery that every man recognizes; moreover, she has a bank -account that every man respects. - -No, on the whole, lady farming does not pay, if you reckon success -not by desires, but by dollars. From that point of view, only those -women farm successfully who have at least once or twice in their lives -possessed a husband and assimilated his manner of dealing with crops and -with animals. Farming _qua_ farming, that is essentially man's work, -but farming _qua_ joy, that's a woman's discovery. A man farmer is -never fused with his farm, because a man is not built to share earth's -parturition. In some way or other a woman must be always creating, -always bringing forth. If she is not a house-mother, then she must be -slipping, sliding, something of herself into her roses, her baby chicks, -her home. To be joyous, she must be putting forth shoots, blossoms, -must be pushing down her roots. To be glad, she must feel herself part -of this great springing, growing universe. That woman who has chosen -herself a farm has done so that she may feel her head warmed by the -life-giving sun and her feet firm in the fertile earth. - -If success lies in having what you want, then my three farmer friends -have attained it. But sometimes I look at them and wonder, Is it what -once they wanted? The Lady of the Roses, I am sure she has a story; I -am not sure she will not some day have another; surely there are things -her hands might touch fairer even than roses. Lady Two has no story, -and is too hearty and happy to note the fact, but when I see her lift -in a strong brown grasp a yellow duckling, I remember there are heads -even more golden and downy. Lady Three, cozily ensconced in her snug -old farmhouse, looks back into her homeless past, forward into her -unhoused future, fearless in the knowledge that whithersoever she goes -she carries with her a serene personality that will always be shaping -its whereabouts to fit it, but her eyes are bright with philosophies -that might have sent forth sons and daughters to splendid living. Like -my three friends who have found quiet in the morning call of the sun, in -the coming of the rain on a thirsting flower-bed, on all the big little -concerns of a farmyard, I must lean back on the good green peace of the -universe--a universe which must have some stout principle of growth -spiritual beneath its seeming waste of mortal energies, in order that I -may not question why it is that the farm feminine is not, as it might -have been, the farm masculine, the farm infantine. - - - - -XVI - -_A Little Girl and Her Grandmother_ - - -I am always sorry for children who have never known what it is to have -a grandmother and a grandfather and an old mountain farm to visit, -far away from everywhere. A little girl I once knew had all three. -Her grandmother was the dearest grandmother I have ever seen. She was -tall and stout, with a broad, comfortable lap, and her hands, as they -stroked the little girl's head on her shoulder, were smooth and soft. -The grandmother's eyes were blue and full of mischief and fun and love. -When she laughed she shook all over so that nobody looking at her could -help laughing too; even the little girl, who was naturally serious. The -grandmother's cheeks were a soft pink, and her hair was black, faintly -silvered. She wore it parted plain on week-days, but on Sundays it was -crimped. On Sundays, too, she wore her black grenadine, but on other -days her dress was blue gingham with a long white apron. - -The grandmother lived on a farm so steep that it seemed always to -be sliding down the mountain into the valley below. At the back of -the house were a few acres of cleared space, and then beyond this the -stretches of mountain woods. From these woods you could hear the call -of the whip-poor-wills in the evenings, and there were wildcats and -bears there, too, perhaps, and rattlesnakes surely. The farm had been -a wild sort of place until the grandmother took hold of it and tamed -it. She had them build a line of white fence palings between the house -and the grass-grown mountain road. She would have the porch trimmed -with clematis, and they had to build her a grape arbor, too, and swing -a hammock under it. Above the whitewashed fence a row of sunflowers -nodded, and within was a line of sweet-peas. In front of the house were -two long flower-beds, bordered with mignonette. In one was heliotrope, -in the other flowering red geraniums. There were other flower-beds, too, -wherever the grandmother could find a place for them, and in one was -a tall plant of lemon verbena. The grandmother was always plucking a -leaf of this and crushing it, and then clapping her fragrant hand over -the little girl's nose. Such fun they had with the flowers, snipping -and weeding and watering, their two gossipy sunbonnets close together! -Whatever the grandmother was doing, the little girl was always at her -heels, except when she was tagging after her grandfather. - -All through her childhood the little girl used to make long visits at -the farm. She was a queer little girl, not at all happy. Her grandmother -said she was "high-strung," but her mother and the little girl herself -called it just plain "naughty." At any rate, she was always losing her -temper, and then crying for hours over the sin of it. She worried over -everything that happened by day, and she was afraid of everything that -might happen by night, and was always flying from her bed in terror of -the dark. At last, when the little girl's cheeks would grow so thin, and -her eyes so big and anxious that her mother was at her wits' end what to -do with her, she would say to the father: "We must send Margie down to -mother." - -Now the little girl's father, who was a minister, had very little money, -and the grandmother had less, but somehow they would do without things -and do without things until they got the little girl safely off to the -old farm, where she grew so brown and fat and jolly that her mother -hardly knew her. - -The first of these visits was when Margie was so little that she -would have been a baby if there hadn't been another baby at home. She -remembers only one happening of that visit--riding high on the hay -wagon, she and her grandmother, while her grandfather drove the mules. -Margie thinks now that perhaps her grandmother did not enjoy that ride, -for hay is hot and prickly, but whatever the little girl wanted to do, -that the grandmother did. Another incident of that first visit her -grandmother used to tell the little girl afterwards. The little girl -always wanted to help her grandfather in all his work, and often she -was much in the way. Sometimes when there was hoeing that must be done, -the grandfather would try to slip away unnoticed; then that tease of a -grandmother would point out to the little girl how the grandfather's -overalls were just disappearing around the corner of the house, and -the little girl would snatch up her sunbonnet and her fire shovel, and -run after, crying: "Wait for me, grandpa!" Then she would stand in the -furrow right in front of him and pound away with her shovel, so hot and -earnest that the grandfather had nothing to do but stand and laugh at -her, and down in the doorway the grandmother, watching them, laughed, -too, because she was teasing the grandfather and pleasing the little -girl. - -Another visit came the summer when Margie was seven. Her father was -going to Convocation, and so could take her with him and drop her off at -the grandmother's station. Margie wore a big sailor hat and a brand-new -sailor suit. She was so excited all the way that she did not talk at -all, and would not touch her lunch. At last, peering out of the window, -she saw the old spring wagon and her grandfather holding the reins and -her grandmother waiting on the platform. Her grandmother lifted her up -in her arms, doll and satchel and lunch-box and all, and carried her -over to the wagon: at home Margie was much too old to be lifted and -carried. Seated between her grandparents, while her grandmother held -her hat and the mountain wind blew through her curls and her trunk -bumped along at the back, all Margie's worries fell away from her--she -forgot she was a sinful child, she ceased to think that the babies were -doomed to drown in the river, that her mother would be stricken by dread -disease and die, that her father would be run over in crossing the -railroad track; and as for springing from her bed in fear, that night -and all the rest she slept so soundly that she never woke at all. - -Arrived at the farmhouse, the grandmother would open Margie's trunk and -take out all the little garments and think them the prettiest ever seen, -because the little girl's mother had made them every stitch. From the -little dresses the grandmother would select the very oldest, and then -lock all the others away again. Down at the village store she would buy -some coarse brown and white stockings, costing ten cents a pair. From -a corner behind the sewing-machine she would bring out the sunbonnet -she had stitched for Margie in the winter. It was blue check and had -pasteboard slats that came out when it was washed. Thus equipped, the -little girl might run free of the farm. She helped to feed the calves -and the chickens and the pigs; she wiped the dishes for Minnie, the -little Dutch maid, in order that Minnie might be sooner ready to play -in the haymow with her in the long sultry afternoons through which the -locusts shrilled; she went huckleberrying with her grandfather, pushing -far into the mountain woods, always treading warily because of the -rattlers, and coming home with a face smirched with purple under the -sunbonnet; she took long drives with her grandfather along strange, -still mountain roads. With him, too, she tried milking: the cow-bells -tinkled through the dusk of the long shed, and the air was fragrant -with the hay and the steaming milk-pails, and the little girl tried -with all her might, but usually she only succeeded in sending a fine -stream into her grandfather's eye. On indoor days Margie would draw -her little red rocker up beside her grandmother's knee and listen to -stories. The stories were all about mysterious and unknown relatives, -Cousin Letty This and Uncle Josiah That and Aunt Tirzah Something Else. -Much of it the little girl did not understand at all, yet somehow she -liked listening to stories, snuggled against her grandmother's knee, -better than anything else in the long, blithe days, and the little girl -felt sleepy very early here on the farm--she that was such a sleepless -midget at home. - -After supper, while the light was still clear, her grandmother would -undress her and put on her nightgown: then, when her hair was combed and -her teeth brushed and her prayers said, she would wrap the little girl -in the gray blanket shawl, and carry her out to the big rocking-chair on -the front porch. There the grandmother would croon old songs while the -little girl's head drowsed against her shoulder, and the summer twilight -stole upon them. Sometimes the call of a whip-poor-will would sound out -from the woods, or the roosting turkeys in the apple trees across the -road would rustle and flap their wings, and sometimes the white moon -would come gliding up the sky, seen dreamily through the clematis bloom. - -As the little girl grew older she could not go to the farm so often, -partly because she took a full-fare ticket now, and partly because her -mother needed her at home; but always, when she did go, she and her -grandmother had the same old good times together, and Margie was still -happier there on the old mountain farm than anywhere else in the world. -She seemed to love her grandmother better now that she was old enough -to think about her more. The grandmother had some funny ways. For one -thing she would never sit in a straight chair at table, but always in -a rocker. She would eat a little, and then sit back and rock a little, -and sometimes, since meals at the farm were leisurely and chatty, she -would fall asleep while she rocked, but she would never admit that she -had napped a minute, not she. Try as you might, you could never get the -grandmother a present that she would keep. She loved dainty things, but -the prettier the gift, the more she would fall to thinking how much it -would please some one else, and so presently away it went. If the giver -chanced to find her out, she would hang her head and look much ashamed -of herself, but all the time her eyes would be roguish. All the family -teased her and she teased them. She would have walked miles for the sake -of a good joke on any one of them, but her fun was always tender. One -dearly loved joke she played every year. In October, when the mountains -were wonderful in the blue autumn weather and the tang of burning leaves -was in the air, a little family of Margie's cousins used to come out -from their town house to the old farm for chestnuts. For days before -they came the grandmother and Minnie would gather every chestnut and put -away the treasure in a big bag. On the morning of the children's coming, -the grandmother was always to be found scattering the hoarded chestnuts -in great handfuls everywhere. Later in the day, when the children were -shouting over the windfall, she would shake a threatening finger at the -grandfather and Minnie if they dared to chuckle. - -After a while the little girl was quite grown up and had gone to -college, where she had acquired a bad habit of studying herself sick. -Once again her mother in desperation sent her to her grandmother. At the -station the grandparents had the spring wagon waiting with a cot bed; -they laid the little girl on it and walked alongside up the mountain. -That morning the grandmother and Minnie had been over all that mile -of mountain road and had picked off every stone, so that the little -girl might feel no jarring. Margie thought that the back of her head -would never stop aching, but her grandmother nursed her and fed her and -rubbed her, and wrapped her up warm and put her out in the sunshine; she -told her that she must forget what the doctors had said, and that the -mountain air would cure her, and so after a while it did. - -But there came a last visit. They found that for two years the -grandmother had been ill with a terrible disease, but she had kept it -a secret as long as she could. They sent her little girl to her for -the last time. The grandmother would always stop moaning when Margie -came near, and sometimes she would rouse herself enough to sit up and -tell her stories. She liked to lie in the hammock and have Margie swing -her gently, and she would often send her down to the ferny spring for -a fresh drink of water. She liked to take it from the old cocoanut -drinking-cup, and almost always as she handed this back to Margie she -would say, "Have you ever tasted such good water as this?" and always -she was pleased when Margie answered, "No." - -One day Margie had to go away to her teaching. Her grandmother got up -from her couch and walked to the front door to bid her good-bye. They -said very little, and they did not cry at all, only as Margie looked -back from the turn of the road at the little farmhouse and the valley -and the circling mountains, at all the place she loved best in all the -world, she knew that she should never wish to see it again. - -So the little girl's visits to her grandmother came to an end, like a -beautiful book read through. But though it is never the same as the -first time, one may read a book over again. The little girl has been -grown up for a long time, but sometimes when she is tired and worried -and frightened she turns back the pages of her memory. She is sitting -on her grandmother's lap on the porch in the summer twilight. Her -grandmother is singing to her, and the great moon is rising behind the -clematis. - - - - -XVII - -_The Wayfaring Woman_ - - -Just when, for the first time, I was fearing lest some day the -wizard-light might fade from my hilltops, because I had climbed them so -often; lest some day people's eyelids might cease to be doors flashing -upon mystery, because I had seen so many secrets; and lest, sadder -still, I might wake up some morning and find that my comrade-soul had -forgotten to pipe me on to the new adventure of the new morning,--just -when I was fearing these things, I bought a pair of rubber boots! - -They are real boots, real as all masculine things are real. They have -straps, a new thing to me in footgear. They are deep and cavernous, -so that I sink to the knee, and in them I am armored like a man, but -yet a woman. Whimsical symbol, perhaps, my new-bought rubber boots, -of adjustment to a man's free-hearted adventuring. If I am to tramp -alone, let me be valiantly shod like a man, though a woman at heart, -for is not all the world mine for the walking it? Who knows what new -fun may be abroad for me now, in my rubber boots? I was made for -life's out-of-doors. I am a woman who wishes to walk this earth in all -weathers, and indeed I have walked it in many, plucking by my homely -hillpaths thoughts that are wayside flowers along a subtler way. - -I have gazed at my circling hills in many changing lights. I have seen -them on a moon-flooded summer evening lie shoulder to shoulder asleep -about the broad valley pastures, while the tree-shadows wavered black -against white farmhouses, asleep, too; and nothing made any noise except -the brook beneath my wayside bridge, and that, a merry brown human brook -by day, went singing in the moon an elfin chant it had forgotten that it -knew. I have seen my hills deepest blue at the skyline, and below all -ablaze, beneath the racing white clouds of October, when more than at -any other time the winding roads bewitch my feet, and every blackberry -thicket and slope and fence-row is flaunting its banners in my eyes; -yet I cannot stop to gaze, for the air is of so keen a blueness; I must -walk, run, fly, because of the urgency of October in my toes. - -But in the spring one's step slackens, and one stops to loiter and look -at the green willows that twist with the wavering course of the swift -muddy river; at the rosy mist on the maple-boughs, at sunny blue wings -that flash against bare branches. In the spring the most insistent -walker must pause by an arbutus bank. Last year's leaves upon it are -still rimmed with frost and snow, and one's fingers grow red, poking -beneath for treasure. But what largess of arbutus our humblest wayside -banks hereabouts can yield, arbutus great-petaled, deep-pink, setting -free what prisoned fragrance! - -I have tramped my climbing roads in winter-time, too, on those days -of winter when the mercury sinks to the zero point, when the snow -crunches loud beneath my heels, and the sun hangs high and cold, and -the spangle glistens on crusted fields. But heretofore there have been -days of winter when I have felt myself held within doors, days of slush -and ooze, when the sky broods low, and the air is blind with great wet -flakes; yet these were the very days when the gypsy wind came rattling -the window-sash and piping of new wonders of grayness and of whiteness -out there upon the hills. - -I who have packed my wanderer's wallet with the gentle secrets of summer -nights, of springtime hillsides, and wintry sunshine, I who have always -tramped to the call of a lonely road, should I turn craven stay-at-home -when life's wild weather draws my feet hillward through grim slush and -sleet? Are there not new secrets waiting on the stormy hills? I am not -afraid! I have put on rubber boots. - -In all this countryside I am the only woman who walks. Highroads and -by-paths and woodways are mine alone, for here solitude is safe and -cheery for the woman who goes uncompanioned. I pass by unmolested, -but not unhailed. Happily, I have reached the age when men greet me -with level comrade eyes, and pass me merrily the time of day; at least -the genial old codgers of our region do. The men of my home hamlet of -Littleville are a bit proud of my pedestrian prowess, and if they meet -me wandering far will draw rein to twinkle down and rally me: "Guess -you're lost this time sure, ain't you?" - -The strangers I meet rarely pass me in churlish silence. I have had a -man, never before seen, bend down from his high seat, his face all one -pucker of concern, while he shouted to me in a high windy voice, "Hi, -there, you're losing a hat-pin!" His over-spread relief as I adjusted it -was but one instance of the intimacy ruling within the sweeping circle -of hills that rim Littleville like a cup. We are no strangers here, we -comrades of the road. - -Yet in my walking I must often pay the penalty of being unique, of being -an anomaly in country conventions. They are kind, our rural men-folk, -but I think the kindest, passing me, make a swift comparison between -me and their kitchen-keeping women. In this inarticulate comparison -there is a boyish flash of sympathy that I should find the out-of-doors -the same jolly thing men do; but more, there is distrust of one who -obviously enjoys the zest of her own feet as much as their wives enjoy -jogging through life beside a comfortable husband behind a comfortable -horse. Possibly the thoughts of rural men-folk are not so different from -the thoughts of all other men-folk when they pass the woman who walks. - -Whatever the mental comment attached to the gaze, the eyes that meet -mine are quite as often astounded as amused. If this is evident even -when I trudge in flooding sunshine, astonishment becomes irrepressible -when I am seen abroad in snow and sleet. "By gosh! pretty hard walking -you got, ain't you?" - -Foot-fast in slush, I pipe back, "But I like it. I have on rubber boots!" - -Such the accost from vehicles not facing in my direction; but when a -horse that goes my way is drawn up, and I decline the proffered seat; -knee-deep in slush, refuse to get in! then the driver's face expresses -such commiseration as I never expected to feel applied to my inoffensive -person. Plainly I see that it is not my drabbled skirts he is sorry for, -it is my addled wits. Walking country roads in ill weather has taught -me exactly how a lunatic must feel. It is said that the crazy have a -certain look in the eye; of experience I can affirm that so also have -those who gaze upon the crazy. - -For the passing instant, as I meet that profound pity in mild, masculine -orbs, I do doubt my own sanity, and wonder if perhaps this glorious -freedom of the wild, wet weather is quite the sensible thing it seemed -when I set out; for it is the look in other people's eyes that gives us -our own spiritual orientation. Lunacy is a purely relative term. There -are places where women may walk and hardly be glanced at for so doing, -just as, perhaps, within his own cage-walls, the Bedlamite may seem to -himself a normal human being. Also, perhaps, the lunatics, like me, have -their silent chuckle; knowing, like me, that they have their inward fun, -although the numskull sane can't see it. I hope so, for I would fain -think some sunny thought of the poor brainsick folk. - -It is not given to my friends of the highway, sensible men creatures -on wheels, any more than to their wives, snug at home in dry domestic -shoes, to know the joy of my walk through the swift, wet snowflakes. On -and up I go, never meaning to go home by the same way I have come. What -lover of the road ever does that? - -The clinging snow has enfolded all things. Every tree stands with white, -shrouded branches. The berry thickets are softly furred with white. -The dusky gray aisles of the roadside woods die to blackness in the -near distance. The little brooks go tinkling beneath a thatch of snow -bristling with high grass blades. There is almost no color. Even the -bronze of oak leaves is veiled by white mist. The world is all white and -gray, and in the distance faintly blue. The fast-falling snow blurs all -familiar outlines strangely, so that I hardly believe those dreamy roofs -down there belong to humdrum Littleville. - -There is strange, muffled silence. I am half afraid of the woods; they -have grown unearthly, so that I start at the eerie thud of the snow -that drops from the branches. Gray-white, silent mystery,--and I should -never have known or seen it, had I not laughed at life's wild weather, -and trudged forth to it in rubber boots, all alone. - -Yet, whatever the shy comradeship of wayside groves, of busy secret -streams and homely fields, always the human aspect of the road engages -the woman who tramps with joy at the heart. In summer and winter, as I -go, I pass the brown milk-wagons, plodding, monotonous, starting forth -from all the circling farms and converging to the milk station. The -drivers have always dull or far-away faces, for it is always the same -road, the same rattling cans at their backs, the same shaggy, jogging -flanks before them. - -Almost always, somewhere on my journey, I meet the rural mail-man. The -bobbing yellow dome of his narrow wagon is always easily descried in -the distance. The mailman knows my tramp-habits well, and the smile -from his little blinking pane never fails me. Another familiar vehicle -is the school carryall, which nowadays picks up all the human contents -of one of our district schools and carries them down to Littleville for -instruction. The school wagon is driven by a jovial grandsire, and it is -always crowded to overflowing with small, merry people who hail me. I -rarely meet any folk on foot, although occasionally a leggined huntsman -slips noiselessly across the road from one grove to another, while a -hound sniffs to right and left of his path. - -The farm-homes for the walker by the way have each the spell of some new -story. There beside that wind-rocked cupola is some curious mechanism. -For what purpose? To lift water to a roof-tank? To catch the lightning? -To send afloat an airship? Crude, clumsy, aspirant, a farm-boy's dream! - -I pass by a porch that abuts close upon the road. A door flings open and -a man and a woman come out, too temper-tossed to heed me. The woman's -face is set in impotent hate, the man's mouth is wried with cursing; -and the faces are not young, nor the graven bitterness a mere passing -blight. Man and wife! Yet they loved once, I suppose, and went driving -gayly back from the parson's, his arm about her ribboned waist, and -posies flaunting in her hat and in her cheeks--once! - -It is given to us who trudge by in the road beyond the doors to pity -often, but to envy rarely. It is in the nature of things that we cannot -envy, for those things we might covet are precisely those that come -spilling out of door and window to bless us, so that presently we are -bowing our heads and saying our bit of a grace for them, as being also -ours. Gentle old world, so constituted that a home can lock its door, -if it will, upon its sorrow, but can never hide its joy! I pass another -ragged farmhouse, and here the children in their homemade little duds -are trooping in from school. Again an open doorway, and in it a mother -wiping red hands upon her apron. The closing door shuts off sharply the -shrill voices that tell of the day's events; but I have seen and heard, -and therefore I, too, possess. - -At still another window-pane there is a bobbing baby-face. Such a -crowing, chuckling joy as is a year-old baby! What home could ever hide -him under a bushel? Strange mystery, that gives, withholds, inscrutably, -the heart's desire of all of us, and yet ordains for us who trudge a -snow-cold path, that there shall be, even until we grow gray of soul and -feeble-footed, forever along our way, until the end, always behind the -panes we pass, the bobbing baby-faces! Other women's babies? Does it -make so much difference whose they are, so long as they are sweet? - -Another happiness it is ordained no woman shall keep unto herself. The -peace of a woman's mouth when a good man loves her, that is another of -the things nothing can conceal, for sorrow may be leaden and secret -at the heart, but joy will always out and abroad. That is one of the -things we know, we wayfaring women. - -Walks end with the dipping of the day. The winter dusk steals very -early over all the snowy whiteness. I have to peer to see Littleville's -clustered roofs down there in the river-valley. Before I turn to wade -back down the drifted hill-road to the ruddy little home that lends me -harborage for the night, I stand still to look about me, through the -whirling flakes. See all around me hills I have not yet climbed! Think -of the untried roads that lead to them! What secret wizardry of new -woods, what elfin tinkle of new brooks, what new farmdoors, glimpsing -upon human mystery! Hills and the road for me, on and on! Just around -the turn what wonders wait, shall ever wait, for my rubber boots and me! - - - - -XVIII - -_The Road That Talked_ - - -I had walked that way a score of times and never seen that road, yet it -must have seen me and singled me out, or else it would never have peeped -about from its ambush of berry thicket and swamp and said, "Come." I -was sturdily plodding the broad state road, for there is a state road -everywhere, white and useful, belonging to everybody,--to the lumbering -brown milk-wagons, to the bouncing muddy buckboards, to the motor-cycles -with their vibrant chugging, to the skimming automobiles. The state road -talks business all the time, incessant talk to blur the hearing; for all -good talk is half silence, and the only people who have anything to say -are the people who have listened. I was lonely for some one to talk to -when the little road beckoned. - -The state road always chooses the riverway, always bustles along on the -level; how could one ever be friends with a road that never climbed a -hill? My feet were trudging the macadam, though growing more gypsyish -each moment, when the flash of a red leaf on a dusty bush, the rustle -of an unseen bird, and I saw the little road hailing me, and turned. It -was waiting for me, half revealed, half hidden, like a shy, would-be -friend, and at first, except for certain gypsy gleams along its -fence-rows, it was commonplace enough, it might have been anybody's road. - -At first, too, it went along discreetly, it turned and walked parallel -with the state thoroughfare, a little apart, it is true, but steadily -patterning on the manners of the highway, so that if a traveler had -chanced on it, he would have seen nothing unconventional. The little -road went along like that, and waited for its friends, but I had faith -to believe it would soon begin to climb, that climbing was what it -wanted of me. Imperceptibly at first it swerved from the parallel, -imperceptibly it mounted a little, so that presently, near as we still -were, we could look down at the village. - -Then the little road began to talk, politely, pleasantly, but in no wise -pregnantly. Its language was meaningless at first, but with a lure, as -comrade eyes light to yours above lip-chat that does not need to mean -anything. We could go slowly, having all the morning to get acquainted. -Together the road and I looked down at the town through a screen of late -September leaves. - -The place lay in mist, partly of the late-lingering fog, partly of the -fires that belong to these days when all the village rakes and burns, -and the youngsters tumble and romp and shriek in piles of leaves. All -outlines are blurred by a pearly haze, against which eddies the deeper -blue of chimney-smoke. Beyond the town the hills are dull gray against -the luminous gray of the sky, and between town and hill the river runs, -a shining silver sheet, with broken, deep-toned reflections near the -bank. Looking eastward through the flickering leaves, I watch the sun -steadily shining through, shredding the mist with fires of opal, in -gleams of blue and orange and amethyst. Down at the village they see -none of this, they know only that the fog lifts, while stubble-gardens, -and lawns, and house-fronts all turn brown and bare and commonplace -beneath the relentless sun. It is for me to see the opal fires lick up -the mist; such cheery little wonders of the road are all for me. - -The road keeps silence, letting me listen to the village sounds, -musically fused at this brief distance; the shunting of a freight train -and its raucous whistle, the ringing of hammers on new scaffolding, the -shrilling of the saw-mill, the barking of dogs. All to herself, like -the shy one that she is, the little road murmurs her replies, in the -twittering of sparrows in fence-thickets, in the rustle of wind in bared -branches, in the scratch and scud of dry leaves that race, the soft -thudding of a chestnut burr. - -The sun is high, and the wind is blowing, and the comrade road is -waiting, genially postponing its sure self-revelation, but a-tiptoe -to be off now to the woods, where we may share our fun unmolested, -unsuspected. The little road is climbing now beyond mistaking. She is -stepping through the woods so familiarly that you might miss her trail -if you didn't follow close, for she knows there is no fun in the woods -if you can't get lost, can't drop the pack of personality from your -shoulder, and grow one with brushwood shadow, or arched branch. When -the road said this to me, I began to listen to her for every word that -she might say. But stealing ever deeper into the woodland, my path is -not talking now, she is singing rather, she is dancing. Suddenly in -the deeps of the wood she opens up a long green alley of fairy turf, -and waits to see if I will share it with her and go scudding it like a -squirrel. The white state-way never dreamed that I could fly, but the -little friend-road knew. The road plays with me. Near the rut made by a -lumber team, she tosses a handful of wintergreen berries like flecks of -coral for me to garner, and lifts a sudden torch of scarlet oak against -some wood-recess black and deep as a cave. Every time she hears the -sound of wood-chopping she whisks away into still deeper shadow to be -alone with me. Looking to right and left you cannot see the open; the -only open is above, in the blue. - -In the heart of the woods there is elfland. Trusting me, the little road -dared to turn mad, she who had been so circumspect down below in the -valley. Of the trees, some were still summer green and some were russet -gold and some were claret crimson, so that the sifted light was strange, -the light of faery. "There is no state road anywhere," said my mad -little path to me, "there is nothing in all the world but wood and sky. -You are a tree, a cloud, a leaf,--there is no you! Dance!" In and out -through the trees she eddied and whirled, my road, glad as a scudding -cloud and mad as the wind, in and out, in and out. Free winds that piped -in the tree-tops, white clouds that raced the blue above us, laced -branches that swayed to a dance eternal, exhaustless,--round and round -we eddied, panting, the road and I, all by ourselves, alone, unguessed, -in the heart of the woods. They, too, were drunk with the madness of -out-of-doors, Bacchus's maenads. - -Then, "Whisk!" cried the little road, "we can't long keep up this sort -of thing, friend-woman!" She turned sober in an instant, wild laughter -dying to bubbling chuckles at itself. The tall trees broke away abruptly -on stump-pocked fields, flaunting sumach by their stone walls. We had -come upon a bustling little farm. My road, the wild and lonely-hearted, -was transformed into a chatty neighbor, and turned in cheerily to pass -the time of day at the back door. A brisk and friendly farm it was. -The orchard jounced us a red apple as we passed, a white-nosed horse -thrust head from the barn window and whinnied a welcome. Two shepherd -dogs, one a stiffened grandsire, the other a rollicking puppy, barked -a dutiful protest, then sniffed and licked genially. There was a baby -carriage on the porch, a swing beneath the shaggy dooryard pine, there -were geraniums at the window, and gleaming milk-pans on the back porch. -Beyond the big house was a whole village of miniature houses, kennels -and chicken sheds and corn-cribs, set down cozily anywhere to be handy. -The big red barns were chatty with clucking hens. A sunny, sociable, -commonplace farm that drew us to gossip on the back steps, to pause and -rest there, the road and I. As we chatted, lingering and happy, of -buttermilk and buckwheat and the cut of kitchen aprons, would any one -have guessed that this little cozy domestic road, back there beyond the -turn, had reeled in bacchic dance for very ecstasy of solitude? - -When we were alone again, the road explained, questioning with searching -friend-eyes to see if I understood, "Many selves belong to every road -that must be always climbing a hill, all alone. Don't you know," -laughed the little road, "that there was never a dryad but longed -sometimes to bind a big apron over her flickering leaf-films and slip -into some crofter's cot in Tempe and slap the wheat-cakes on the warm -hearth-stones? - -"And I have other moods as I climb," whispered the little road, as we -took hands and trudged along, shuffling the leaves and playing with -them, with no one to watch, sharing with each other the eternal child -that chuckles inside lonely folk; the undying child within us is not -startled to hear itself laugh out loud in the friendly solitude of -little roads like this. - -Yet, laughing, we were thoughtful, too. Maples like great torches of -flame studded the wayside, and beyond them in broad fields marched the -corn-shocks, a ragged brown battalion. The sky was ever burning bluer -above the hill-crest. Then we left the farm fields for a wild stretch -of boulder-grown pasture, and suddenly the little road said: "Look, a -wayside shrine! Let us stop." - -Pine trees such as survive now in only a few scattered groves formed a -vaulted chapel. Beneath the trees some one had built a rude stone pile, -a picnic fireplace, now for us become an altar, for to a little wildwood -road all things are natural. We stood silent on that pavement of brown -pine-needles beneath the arching green, supported on its blue-brown -pillars of high pine trunks. Through the far tops there went singing -an eternal chant. No one ever listened long to that music, all alone, -who did not know that it is a hymn older than any creed, and outliving -all doubt. In the amber-lit shrine, swept by clean wind and haunted by -eternal music, there was beauty to empty the heart of all desire, so -that, troubled, I asked, "But it was to pray that we stopped?" - -"Oh," answered the pagan road, "I never pray, for what is the use of -learning how to lisp?--I only praise!" - -We were a long time silent beneath the pines, but we were deeper friends -when we went on, for there is no bond in friendship closer than the -sharing of a faith. Our feet were springing along as up we went. There -were no more farms now, only at last above us the hilltop and the sky, -clouds that raced across it, the sweep of great clean winds, and the -call of high-winging crows. - -The little road, so shy at starting, now dared to say to me this -intimacy, "Do you not know my gospel,--that gladness is God? That is why -I am always climbing hills. That is why I called you this morning, so -that for a little while I and you might step into the sky." - - - - -XIX - -_My Mother's Gardeners_ - - -Of gardens "so much has been said and on the whole so well said," that I -might perhaps restrain my pen from turning up that overworked soil. But -yet the gardens of which I write have not been like the gardens of the -published page. They have not brought forth generously either prose of -lusty vegetable or poetry of spicy blossom. Although the gardens have -been many, they might almost be described, so alike have they been, as -if they were one, an itinerant garden that has accompanied us from one -little hill village to another; for I write of the stony, arid, sterile -garden-plot of a country parish. - -Now, however forbidding the garden that has stretched rearward of each -new domicile, my mother has always fallen upon it with a valiance of -hope that neither years nor disappointment can destroy. She always -thinks that things are going to grow in her gardens, and things do grow -in them, too; but they are not always the things my mother has led me -to expect. For her, I hope she will find the garden of her dreams in -Paradise; for me, this earth will do, even this small, hill-circled -scrap of it; for I am no gardener in my heart, only an observer of -gardens. I own to an unregenerate enjoyment in watching my mother's -vegetables misbehave, just as, surreptitiously, I can't help loving the -whimsical goats of my father's rustic flock. - -As I glance back over the unwritten journal of my childhood, I find -the words Choir, Vestry, Garden always printed in capital letters. -The Gardener was a figure as momentous in my infant horizon as was -the Senior Warden. In respect to gardens my mother has never had -any confidence in the assistance of her own family. There have been -occasions when some son or daughter, temporarily in favor, has been -allowed to hoe softly, under supervision; but as to her husband, -banishment is the sole decree. In fact, my father, genuine old English, -imported direct from Trollope, does not show to best advantage in a -garden. In general I have observed that our country clericals are -likely to be at quarrel with the soil, that arid independent old soil -which will grow things in its own way, in utter despite of parsons. My -father's original sin was due to the usual pastoral reluctance to let -the tares and the wheat grow together unto the harvest, and it was when -he mistook our infant carrots for Heaven-knows-what seed of the Enemy -that the decree of banishment against him as a marauder occurred. Rather -than initiate one of her own home-circle into her garden mysteries, my -mother has chosen the unlikeliest outsider, and solicited advice from -the most unprecedented sources, or by any methods of cajolery; she has -been no stickler in regard to any man's creed or practice when it has -been a question of so vital a matter as cucumbers. - -My retrospect shows our gardeners stretching back to the bounds of my -memory, a lean, gnarled, hoary procession. One of the earliest of them -is Father Time himself, with hoe instead of scythe, and with white locks -rippling down his back. Father Time's frank admission when engaged might -have daunted some, but did not daunt my mother, for he confided to her -at once that he could hoe but could not walk. He proved useful when -carefully hauled from spot to spot, but our garden was cultivated that -season in circles, of which the hoe was the radius and Father Time the -center. - -Another of our ancient hoe-bearers was a veteran. I do not know whether -he had lost his eye on the battlefield or elsewhere, but certainly he -had not exchanged it for wisdom. That is why he is the favorite of my -mother's recollections. She likes her gardeners a little imbecile. They -are more manageable that way. The burden of their intelligence is the -more usual trouble. A simple faith united to an instant obedience is -the desideratum in gardeners; usually a gardener is as obstinate as he -is conservative, and this is not at all to my mother's mind. She loves -to glean garden-lore from every source, but better still she loves to -invent garden-lore of her own. She likes to be allowed to set out on an -entirely new tack with some poor erring cabbage, and it is all she can -do to hold on to her ministerial temper when she finds that her gardener -has ruined the work of regeneration by some old-fashioned disciplinary -notions of his own. Our ancient warrior, however, had no notions of his -own, disciplinary or other, and that is why he possesses a shrine apart -in our memories. He was as meek in my mother's hands as his own hoe, and -he never did anything she did not wish him to do except when he died! - -On a bad eminence of contrast my memory declares another figure. I do -not remember whether it was an invincible audacity, or an utter despair -of securing likelier assistance, that led us that year to employ our own -sexton. It is an axiom known to every ministerial household that it -is unwise ever to put any member of your own flock to domestic use. A -brawny Romanist, if such can be obtained, for laundry purposes, a Holy -Roller for the furnace, and a Seventh-Day Baptist for the garden--these -are samples of our principle of selection. I do not know just why those -of our own fold are undesirable,--it is wiser perhaps that the silly -sheep should not see the antic gamboling of the sober shepherd behind -his own locked door, or guess what internal levities spice the discreet -external conduct of his family. I do not know how it was that we fell so -utterly from the grace of common sense as to employ our own sexton that -summer. Apart from sectarian issues, a sexton is the most mettlesome man -that grows, and not at all to be subdued to the ignoble uses of a hoe. -This sexton was an agony to my father in the sanctuary, and an anguish -to my mother in the garden. He went about with a chip in his mouth, and -he always held it in one corner of his lips and chewed it aggressively -and bitterly, and with the other corner he talked, just as bitterly. -Within his own house he must have exchanged the chip for a pipe, for -although I never saw him smoke, the fragrant tobacco fumes of him were -spread through the house after every back-door colloquy. He talked -more willingly than he worked, and that summer was a lean and sorrowful -season, when the garden languished and my mother was browbeaten, unable, -all because he was the sexton, to bring the man to order with the sharp -nip of her words across his naughty pate. - -We were more cautious next time and availed ourselves of one no less -meek than a certain village ancient prominently known to be an Anarchist -and a Methodist. The combination is unusual, I admit, but you may look -for almost anything in a gardener. As an infant, I used to scan his -person for a glimpse of the red shirt, and his lips for a spark of the -incendiary eloquence, but no symptom of either ever showed. He was old -and underfed and taciturn, and he gardened exactly as he wished to, -without paying the tribute even of a comment to my mother's suggestions. -He had such original methods of his own that, for very amazement, she -gave up her own initiative for the pleasure of watching his. Once when -he was seen solemnly planting stones in one earthy mound after another, -he did break his icy reserve to answer her irrepressible inquiry; he -believed that potatoes grew better that way, since the roots did not -have to pierce the earth for themselves but could wriggle through the -friendly interstices of the stones. That summer was one of cheerful -surprises. This singular spirit had, I believe, a genuine sympathy for -the poor toiling vegetables; I remember that he spent one afternoon in -tying up his tomatoes in copies of a certain sectarian sheet he brought -with him for the purpose. A sportive wind arose in the night, to die -before the Sabbath morning, on which we beheld not only our rectory -lawn, but the utterly Episcopal precincts of the church, bestrewn with -"Glad Tidings of Zion." He was a lonely soul and dwelt apart, chiefly -in a wheelbarrow. The vehicle was one of his idiosyncracies. He never -appeared without it. Up and down our leafy streets would he trundle it; -but yet I never saw anything in the wheelbarrow except the gardener. -He appeared to push it ever before him for the sole purpose of having -something to sit on when he wished, from the philosophic heights of -his theological and sociological principles, to ruminate upon the evil -behavior of "cabbages and kings." - -As I look back over a long succession of gardeners, I see it, punctuated -as it may be here and there by some salient personality, for the -most part stretching a weary line of the aged and infirm of mind and -body, and I wonder by what survival of the unfittest society devotes -to gardening purposes only those already devoted to decrepitude. As a -matter of fact, the more one becomes acquainted with the vagaries of -growing things, the more one is convinced that it requires nimble wits -and supple muscles to subjugate the army of iniquitous vegetables the -humblest garden can produce. The more you know of the deception and -ingratitude to be experienced in the vegetable world, the sadder you -become. In addition to sharpened brain and taut sinews, the worker -in gardens needs a heart packed with optimism. This last my mother -possesses, and though garden after garden may have gone back on -her, nothing can prevent her running with overtures of salvation to -meet the next little grubby potato-patch life offers her. With hope -indomitable my parents survey each new glebe, while I, the incredulous, -secretly meditate upon the kinship in conduct of all parochial gardens, -expecting only that the sheep and the potatoes will find some new way -of going astray; and may Heaven forgive me that I should be diverted -by their versatility of naughtiness! For example, you can never tell -what you may expect from a tomato, for your tomato is a vegetable of -temperament. Poetically sensitive to atmospheric environment, it fades -to earth under the mildest sun, wilts at a frost imperceptible to its -more prosaic neighbors. Capricious ever, it will sometimes, in mock -of its own cherished nervous system, exhibit a sturdiness out of pure -perversity. One chill June morning we found our young tomato plants flat -to earth, a black and hopeless ruin. We bought new ones and set them -out in their stead, whereupon the old plants popped up and sprouted to -wantonness,--nothing but the elemental energy of jealousy. The tomato is -like to be as barren of production as the human sentimentalist, either -bringing forth a green bower of leafage, or drooping to earth with the -weight of crimson globes that, lifted, show a corroding hole of black -rot. - -In homely contrast consider the bean. The bean is the kindliest -vegetable there is. From the seed up, it is well-intentioned, for the -bean may be eaten through and through by worms, and yet, planted, will -sprout and spring, and bring forth fruit out of the very stones. - -The beet is another simple-minded, dependable member of the -congregation, and even more generous in contribution to the minister's -support than is the bean, for the beet yields top and bottom, root and -branch. In summer the beet-top furnishes the first succulent taste of -green, and afterwards the round red root of him is a defense against the -lean and hungry winter months. - -But for the most part vegetables are an ill-behaving lot. The cabbage -inflates itself with an appearance of pompous righteousness, the longer -to deceive our hopes and the more largely to conceal its heart of rot. -The radish sends up generous leaves as if it meant to fulfill all the -mendacious promises of the seed-catalogue, and when uprooted exhibits -the pink tenuity of an angle-worm. The cucumber is at first, for all -our ministrations, hesitant and coy of leaf within its box, and then -suddenly bursts into a riot of leafiness whereby it does its best to -conceal from our inquiring eye its swelling green cylinders. Corn, -deceptive like the radish, is prone to put forth a hopeful fountain of -springing green, only to ear out prematurely, and reward us with kernels -blackened and corroded. - -In the parochial garden the pea is one to tease us always with its -might-be and might-have-been. If peas are to grow beyond "the kid's lip, -the stag's antler," they require the moral support of brush, and brush -is something a minister's family, aided only by a decrepit gardener, -cannot always supply. Unsupported by brush, our fair peas lie along the -ground, an ever-present disappointment. - -Two vegetables have always haunted my mother's aspirations, in vain. I -hope they grow in heaven, for it is in the nature of things that celery -and asparagus should be denied to a nomadic earthly clergy, requiring, -as the one does, richness of soil, and as the other, permanence. -Illusory asparagus, it takes three years to grow him! Of course if some -disinterested predecessor had planted him, we might in our turn eat -him. But our too itinerant clergy do not give overmuch thought to their -successors. Barren parochial gardens hint just a shade of jealousy about -letting Apollos water. - -But it is not the vegetables alone that strain my mother's sturdy -optimism. All gardens are subject to invasion by marauding animals, -differing in size and soul and species, all the way from the microscopic -tomato-lice, past woodchuck and rabbit and playful puppy, up to the cow, -ruminating our young corn-shoots beneath the white summer moon, on to -my father himself, planting aberrant feet where his holden ministerial -eyes behold no springing seedlings in the blackness of the soil. But our -worst enemies are hens, and as it happens at present, dissenting hens, -sallying forth from the barnyard fastnesses of the Baptist parsonage -upon our helpless Anglican garden, plucking our young peas up out of the -soil, and then later and more brazenly prying them out of the very pod! -Forthwith they fall upon our lettuce-beds, scratching away with fanatic -fervor, as if for all the world they meant to uproot Infant Baptism from -out the land. All this is too much for my mother. On the vantage-ground -of the back doorsill she stands and hurls coal out of the kitchen -scuttle at the sectarian fowls,--coal and anathema, low-voiced and -virulent. Hers is no mere vulgar many-mouthed abuse. There is nothing of -so delicate pungency as the vituperation of a minister's wife, really -challenged to try the subtleties of English and yet offend no convention -of seemliness. Add to the fact of the challenge, another fact, that she -is of Irish blood, and that her gallery gods are just inside the door, -and it is a pity her audience should be merely the hens and I. - -Thus do I ever hover at hand, softly applausive of my mother's defense -of her garden, secretly appreciative of the devious ways of vegetables, -witnessing--to forgive--the wanderings of my father's flock. For if -all the flock were abstemious and orthodox instead of being, as some -are, frankly given over to alcoholism and agnosticism and what not; and -if the gardens grew, as gardens should grow, into honest, God-fearing -cabbages and potatoes; if the righteous corn parted green lips from -kernels firm and white as a dentist's placard, how then should the -parish gardens that dot our hill-strewn countryside bring forth that -fruit of laughter which consoles the dwellers in these our tiny -strongholds of lonely effort? - - - - -XX - -_My Little Town_ - - -Vividly at times my memory restores to me the sensation of the eternal -Sabbath. Beyond the stained-glass windows, the sunshine is sifted over -daisied graves. Perhaps, for all one knows, the grown-up angels are -letting the little ones sport over those graves at this very minute, -even though it is Sunday, for there are no parishes in heaven to say no -to naughtiness. My mother is held home from the sanctuary that morning. -The three of us sit a-row in the front pew. Above us our father thunders -forth his sermon, to which we give but scant attention, that roar in -his voice being part of the programme of this one day in seven. Against -my own shoulder drowses my little sister's head. On my other side, my -little brother conceals his yawns by receiving them into a little brown -paw, and then, as it were, softly sliding them into his pocket, as if -his hand had other business there. But I, I sit erect and unwinking, for -I am the minister's eldest, and the Parish is at my back. - -While the younger ones nodded, while the infant angels played -hide-and-seek out in the graveyard sunshine, of what was I thinking? -This: of the minister's daughter who had lived in that Parish before me. -A great girl of five she had been when she used, having waited until her -father was engrossed in his sermon, to slip from that very front pew in -which I sat, to steal up into the chancel, and there, all silently but -with impish grimace and antics, would she hold the horrified gaze of the -Parish so fascinated that her father would at length be diverted from -his eloquence, and forthwith, swooping from the pulpit all in a swirl of -wrathful surplice, would bear his small daughter into the vestry room -and lock her there before resuming his sermon. She was very naughty, -but oh, what larks, what larks! So I thought then, and still to-day I -am querying whether that little girl--inevitably though she must, under -steady parochial pressure, have been subdued to a womanhood of decency -and decorum--does not to-day in middle life rejoice that once upon a -time, at five, she had her little fling in her father's chancel! - -But we were children of no such independent pattern; and so on every -Sabbath we presented to the Parish's criticism unwriggling infant -backs, little ramrods of religion, while our thoughts went flying -off on impish business of their own; and, as the years flowed by, on -and up to man's estate we tramped, always thrusting forward in sight -of the Parish, fashionable, urban, critical, our shabby best foot, -skittish though that foot might be. Holding well together, on we went, -running the gantlet of many parishes, until at last we trudged us into -Littleville. We supposed my little town would be a parish too, but it is -not. - -Cozily remote and forgotten among its blue hills, Littleville has -preserved a primitive hospitality, so that, battered nomads of much -clerical adventuring, we sank gratefully into its little rectory. There -was perhaps a reason for our sincerity of welcome, for if we had had -our parishes, so, too, had Littleville had its parsons. It belongs -to that class of far-away, wee congregations whither they send old -ministers outwearied, to be alone with old age and memories beside the -empty, echoing churches reminiscent of the days when farmers attended -service. And if among these venerable shepherds there have fallen -to Littleville's lot some whose scholarly old wits had gone a bit -doddering, so that they believed and preached whimsical doctrine, or -could no longer trace without assistance the labyrinth of the liturgy, -or others, younger, who had proved ministerial shipwrecks because they -were burdened by some fatal handicap in child or wife,--if such have -come to Littleville, Littleville has been very kindly. My little town -has accepted its hay-crop as the rain has willed, and its ministers as -the bishop has sent them. Its views on both visitations are produced in -a spirit of comment rather than criticism; its conduct toward both is -that of adaptation rather than argument. - -For instance, there was that bachelor-rector who preferred the society -of beasts to that of his parishioners in the rectory, and to that of his -fellow saints in the new Jerusalem. During his incumbency a setting-hen -occupied the fireplace in the spare room, and a dog sat on a chair at -his celibate table, and crouched before the pulpit during service. -Littleville did not protest; rather, of a week-day, the female members -from time to time descended upon the unhappy man in his retirement, -and with broom and mop-pail cleaned him up most thoroughly; and of a -Sunday the whole body of the congregation listened unwinking while their -rector's brandished fist demanded from their stolid faces eternal -salvation for his Rover,--listened with those inscrutable eyes I have -come to respect: for I know that while Littleville never argued with -their parson the point of kennels in the skies, they will turn this -theological morsel under their tongues down at the hardware store unto -the third and fourth generation. - -Then there was the vicar whose poor boy was scarred in a way that -Littleville, sympathetic but always delightedly circumstantial, has -painted upon my imagination. When, during this rectorate, rival -sectarians would point to the goodly ruddiness of some Baptist or -Methodist scion, the Littleville Anglicans would loyally argue that Seth -Lawson over at Hyde's Crossing had a little girl who had four thumbs, -and Seth was just a plain man, and no minister. - -Tradition tells also of a parson who trod the mazes of the ritual so -uncertainly that he was just as likely to jump backwards as forwards in -the psalter. With inimitable delicacy Littleville would stand holding -its prayer-books at attention, ready to jump with him, whichever way he -went. However, certain women have confided to me how fearful they were, -on their wedding-day, lest this retrograde movement might occur during -the solemnization of matrimony. - -Thus it came about, I fancy, that Littleville received us with relief -as well as warmth, for our theology was so simple and sound that hardly -could the agnostic barber find fault with it; a family studiously -normal, we showed - - "Never mole, harelip, nor scar, - Nor mark prodigious;"-- - -and we proved able to conduct service with sonorous equilibrium. - -Here we have been accepted and courteously entreated. Here we have not -had to live up to any parochial pretensions, for my little town does -not play bridge or give dinner-parties. Here in my little town we need -not rise betimes to perform miracles of domestic service on the sly in -order to be free to attend on the lordly city parishioner possessed of -maidservants and manservants. Rather we may wear our gingham pinafores -on the front porch, and pop our peas under the very nose of the senior -warden, and very probably with his assistance, if he perchance slouch -down beside us, blue-overalled and genial. - -Littleville, always leisurely, took its time about getting acquainted -with us. It hurtled us through no round of teas, it did not put us -through the paces of a parish reception. Rather it came and hammered -together our broken furniture, decayed by much moving, it stole in at -the back door to help us when we were sick, it let us know it missed -us when we went worldward, visiting. Of such as it had, it made us -gifts,--a yellow pumpkin vaulting our back fence, potatoes rattling into -our cellar-bins unannounced while we were still abed, golden maple syrup -flowing for us at the time when tin pails gleam all up and down the -street, and the sap-vats bubble and steam pungently; or perhaps the gift -is the reward of the gunning season, as when a vestryman-huntsman, as we -stand about the social door after church, darts aside into the coalbin -and thence presents a newspaper package streaked with pink; peeped at to -please his beaming eye, it exhibits a brace of skinned squirrels, which -we bear oozily homeward from divine service. - -There is in the mere aspect of Littleville a latent friendliness -perceptible to all eyes that give more than a touring-car glance. Over -our hilly streets slumbers eternal leisure. Whatever it is, Littleville -always has time to talk about it. When anything happens we all go -running out of our front doors to discuss it, but otherwise our streets -are very still: rows of farmhouses planted side by side for sociability, -while behind each stretch its acres of stony pasture and half-shorn -woodland. At night, silence and darkness settle upon us early. By nine -even the hotel has gone to bed, so that it would with difficulty be -summoned forth in protesting pajamas if a late traveler should clamor -at the door. Of a starless night you may look forth at eight and see -no glimmer of light or life all up and down the street. When we come -to church of a winter evening, we carry lanterns as we plod a drifted -path in high-girt skirts and generous goloshes. One's sleep is sometimes -startled by a flare of light that streams from wall to wall and passes, -as some mysterious late lantern-bearer goes by, leaving the night again -all blackness, pierced sometimes by the crazy laughter of an owl, or -beaten upon by the insistent clamor of frogs. - -Those who live by Littleville's quiet streets have had time to -have their little ways. For example, they still have "comp'ny" in -Littleville. In other places they no longer have comp'ny, no longer -sacrifice for unprotesting hours and days and weeks all domestic -peace and privacy to the exigencies of an intrusive guest. Comp'ny, -imminent, instant, or past, is discussed in bated whispers at back -doors. Assistance and sympathy are proffered as in a run of fever. As -for the comp'ny itself, it knows its privileges and never resigns its -prerogatives. However efficient at home, when a-visiting, it can sit -on the barnyard bars in its best store suit and without an emotion of -conscience watch its host milk twenty cows, or within doors it can fold -its house-wifely hands upon its waistline, regard without compunction a -lap for once apronless, and rock and chatter hour after hour while its -hostess pants and perspires to feed it. But Littleville has one revenge: -one day, it, too, can put on its best and drive off, and itself be -somebody's comp'ny. - -Comp'ny by definition comes from abroad, invading our peaceful citadel -from some hillside farm or neighboring village; within our own bulwarks -we are all too neighborly for any such alien stiffness. Our streets are -cheery with greeting. Among the younger fry, "Hello" is the universal -term of accost. "Hello!" some youngster yodels to me from across the -street, "hello," supplemented by the frank employment of my baptismal -name, sign and seal of my adoption. We are careless of the little -formalities of Miss and Mr. here, just as our gentlemen are careless of -their hat-raising. Why should Littleville man endanger head and health -from false deference to his hearty, workaday comrade, woman? From the -older men, surely, twinkle and grin are greeting enough without any -up-quirking of rheumatic elbows; and as for the younger men, I have -a fondness for their method of raising the right index finger to the -hat-brim, with a smile that points in the same direction. - -Although we are without formality, certain conventions always belong -to a call. The popular hours are two and six, with the tacit exemption -of Saturday evening, for then we might inconsiderately intercept the -gentleman of the house en route from his steaming wash-tub in the -kitchen to his ice-bound bedroom. We have our set forms of greeting and -departure. A hostess must always meet a caller with a hearty, "Well, -you're quite a stranger." A caller must always remain a cordial two -hours, and rising to leave must invariably say, "Well, I'm making a -visit, not a call"; to which the hostess responds, "Why, what's your -hurry?" Conversation must hold itself subject to interruption, must be -prepared to arrest itself in the midst of the most lurid recital in -order that all may fly to the window if man or beast or both pass by. - -As to that conversation itself, we really do not care for feverish -animation. We allow ourselves long pauses while we creak our rockers, -pleasantly torpid. Should our emptiness become too acute, there is -always one subject that can fill it. We always have the sick. We report -to each other anxiously that So-and-So is having "a poor spell," a -condition that, if obstinate, will result in the poor man or woman's -"doctoring," a perilous substitute for home treatment. We have our -hereditary nostrums of combinations quainter than Shakespeare's -cauldron, and home-made brews of herbs that sound almost Chaucerian. -There is suggestion still more remote in "hemlock tea." I am not certain -of its ingredients, but its effect is to produce a state of affairs -known as a "hemlock sweat." A "hemlock sweat" is the last resort before -sending for the doctor, and it generally brings him. - -If our interest in our diseases should ever flag, we have, of course, -always, our neighbors. In Littleville, gossip has become an art, in so -far as it possesses the perfection of pungency without taint of malice, -like the chat of an inquisitive Good Samaritan. When Littleville talks -about its neighbors, I listen in reverence before a penetration I have -never seen anywhere else. Littleville has not gone abroad to study -human nature; it has stayed at home, and watched every flicker of its -neighbor's eyelash, has marked each step taken from toddling infancy -to toddling old age, has listened to every word uttered from babyhood -to senility. Oh, Littleville knows its own; and knowing its own, knows -other folk too. New-comer though I am, I should venture no pretense in -the face of that slumbering twinkle in Littleville's eyes,--Littleville, -sharp of tongue and genial in deeds. - -This grace of Littleville charity, charity, keen-eyed yet tender, can -be, I suppose, the possession of stationary people only; of people who -have been babies together, have wedded and worked, been born and been -buried together, whose parents and grandparents also are unforgotten, -whose dead lie on white-dotted hillsides in every one's knowledge. The -thought of this bond of permanence, of memories, has its wistfulness for -us others. You can never be very hard on the woman, however fallen, who -was once the little Sallie to share her cooky with you at recess; and, -however his poor grizzled head be addled now with drink and failure, a -man is still the little Joey whose bare feet trod with yours the stubble -of forbidden midnight orchards. - -All the world looks askance at a gypsy, and we are gypsies, we -clericals; yet never gypsies more involuntary, more home-loving at -heart. We are pilgrims, never dropping, as we sojourn in parish after -parish, the pilgrim cloak of an affable reserve. Back to the edges of -my memory, we ourselves have been always the Ministry. Sundays in that -straight front pew, week-days in that well-watched rectory, always the -Ministry, never ourselves. But here at last in my little town, is that -straight cloak of ministerial decorum slipping from us? May we set down -our scrip and staff? At last do we dare to be ourselves, neighbors with -neighbors? Do we dare to be part of a place? Perhaps. - -Already in brief years I have acquired a little of that admitted -intimacy with a community that comes only through knowing some bit of -its history for one's self and not on hearsay; for I have observed the -course of several of our thrifty Littleville courtships whereby our -youngsters in their later teens set themselves sturdily beneath the yoke -of matrimony, promptly bringing forth a procession of babes, as promptly -led to baptism. Also I have stood with the rest in our little graveyard -when some old neighbor has been laid to rest. I share with the rest the -memory of kind old hands grown motionless, and chirrupy old voices now -stilled; so that some of these graves, turning slowly from raw soil to -kindlier green, are mine, the stranger's. - -Because those newer graves are mine, I may linger in more assured -friendliness among the older ones, for to me these brief white-portaled -streets of this other Littleville are kindly too; so that I like to go -a-calling here also, letting my fancy knock at these low green mounds -beneath the mat of periwinkle, above which sometimes flash the blue -wings of birds or of sailing butterfly, while just beyond the fence the -bobolinks go singing above the clover-fields. Country graveyards are -pleasant places; at least ours has no gloom of tangled undergrowth and -dank cypress shadow, for we are a house-wifely company, and we like all -things well swept and shipshape, even cemeteries. - -Even the tragedies the marbles tell are softened now. There are many -little gravestones in our cemetery, recording little lives long ago -cut short. Many of them belong to that winter I have heard about, a -winter long before antitoxin or even disinfectants, when one Sunday in -Littleville twenty children lay dead. It was sad then, but to-day to the -tune of soaring bobolinks I must be thinking how gayly the little ones -put on their winglets all together, and, a white flock, went trooping -off, shepherded by angels. In a village graveyard where the dead lie so -cozily close to home, in a graveyard so blue above and green below, one -has to remember how many things are sadder than death. - -I come back from reverie as the 'bus bell goes tinkling by, beyond the -white-arched gate, and I rise to gaze to see who has come to us from the -world, for the 'bus comes from the train, and the train comes from far -away, where the world runs its whirligig, far from Littleville. - -The 'bus connects us with life. When one arrives at home, usually at -nightfall, there always is the old 'bus man at the train step, peering -up and stretching out both welcoming arms to receive our packages and -bags. When he has stowed all away, in he climbs rheumatically, and off -we trundle, rattling and wheezing along, for driver and horses and 'bus -are all in the last stages of decrepitude. The lantern hung between the -shafts plays out its straight jet of light, but within it is so dark -that I cannot guess our whereabouts until we draw up at the hotel. The -hotelkeeper comes out in his shirt-sleeves to receive the fat agents -we have brought him, and, peering hospitably into the dark recesses, -gives me welcome too. Off and on we rumble, and as we draw rein at the -post-office, the post-master, shouldering the mail-bag, spies me and -extends his hearty handshake; from the newspaper office near by, where -the editor is working, comes a hazarded greeting, to which I respond -cheerily from my dark hole, and become forthwith one of to-morrow's -items. - -On and up the hill. I can just discern the white belfry against the -blue-black sky. Beyond the church is the rectory, and there a lantern -on the step and a ruddy door flung wide. I have drawn up, returning, -to rectory doors before, but somehow in Littleville it is different; -to-morrow, on Sunday, Littleville will be glad I have come back, and -will say so, at church, for in Littleville Sunday is different, too. - -Here there is never the Sabbath stiffness of my childhood. Here the -front pew does not straighten my spine intolerably. Rather I turn half -about, run a careless arm along the pewrail, and chat huskily with -my rear neighbor until church begins, and even in service I may nod -encouragement to the choir if they happen to be brought to confusion in -the Te Deum, or in the very sermon I may peep under some little flowered -straw hat and get a delighted grin in response. When service is over I -shall be a long time getting to the door, having so many hands I want to -shake, for we do not call my little town, Parish; we call it home. - - - - -XXI - -_Genus Clericum_ - - -I was a ministerial child rather by birth than by conviction. To one -born on the march there may come to be in the end a mystic home-sense in -the loneliness of tents, but in the beginning the army child may perhaps -have his own opinion of the rigors of camp life and prefer his morning -snooze to the summons of the bivouac. Analogously, the children of the -clerical class may come into existence with a leaning toward the world, -the flesh, and the devil, and may long conceal, beneath an outward -conformity and a due filial reticence, an infant resentment against the -preoccupation of their parents with the salvation of souls. - -I think I speak for many ministerial children when I say that the -attitude of my infancy toward its environment was mainly one of protest, -broken by passionate upheavals of partisanship. Sometimes I sympathized -with little neighbors who limped shamelessly through the catechism or -went out of church before the sermon, but as often I longed to shake -them and thrust them, well-prodded, upon their duties. - -The mere external discipline of the church militant came easily to me -because I was so early inured to it. It is back of my memory, but I -have ascertained that it was at the age of two and under that I learned -rigidity of muscle in the sanctuary, where I sat holding immobile on the -pew cushion legs too short to crook, while my fingers, in white cotton -gloves, were extended in stiff separation each from each. The hat upon -my head was in itself an early example of ministerial adjustment to -parochial issues. Two ladies who were rivals in missionary zeal had each -been moved to present me with a hat. That neither hat suited either my -face or my mother's taste was, of course, mere incident. The claims both -of courtesy and of equity necessitated my wearing the hats in impartial -regularity, on alternate Sundays. Thus before the beginnings of memory, -and through the medium of a baby's hat, did I become acquainted with the -potency, in our domestic concerns, of that great public called Parish. - -It must have been at about this period that I experienced one of my -intermittent attacks of partisanship, desiring with my clear infant -voice to rebuke the lukewarm responses of the congregation, and -remodeling the unintelligible stretches of the Litany by the stentorian -variation, "Lord have mercy upon us, miserable scissors!" The words -of liturgy and hymn did not, however, long confound me. I had the -concentration of many a sanctuary hour to devote to their meaning, so -that by six years old even the Trinity had become a term of crystalline -comprehension. By this time, also, other ministerial babykins had come -toddling into the march in my rear, to share with me the soberness and -separation of our calling. It was, on the whole, well disciplined, our -little army corps, although we recognized the latent twinkle in the -eyes of the mother who generaled us with a clever balancing of motive -between our well-being and that of the Parish. Both she and we were -occasionally flabbergasted, sometimes by our public performance of -private virtues, sometimes by our private performance of public ones. -For example, at the home table we were always exhorted to conscientious -chewing; it did not, therefore, occur to us to accelerate the process -at a Sunday-School picnic. The sylvan board had long been deserted by -others, but we, the Rector's children, a faithful little line, longing -to be on the merry-go-round, in the swings, on the boats, still sat and -dutifully chewed and chewed and chewed. I vividly recall the bewildering -onslaught of our mother leading a bevy of church ladies in search of the -missing. Ignominiously were we whirled off to join the sports of less -seeming-famished companions. - -On the other hand, in public, in the Sunday School, were we early -made to understand that all the law and the prophets hung upon the -catechism; a pink-paper catechism, frank in its woodcuts and facile in -its explanation of the mysteries of the sacraments. Since this pink -catechism was a lamp unto our feet, we suggested, during a thrilling -burglar epidemic, that copies be left on the thresholds of rectory -bedchambers. The burglar would pause to read, and there would ensue his -immediate conversion and our resultant security. The parental laughter -at our expense shook the foundations of our faith. - -Such a severe consistency of behavior in regard to the lessons taught -in the rectory and those taught in the sanctuary is a state of mind -early outgrown by any intelligent ministerial child. Such crudity of -conduct was a stage in the march that we had all passed by the age -of ten. By that time we had an unerring sense of what was due to the -Parish and what was due to ourselves, with the result that our outward -conformity was about balanced by our inward misanthropy at having to -conform. We attended, muttering imprecations up to the very door, the -infant missionary society that filched our Saturday afternoons, we tore -up futile scraps of calico to jab them together again with accursed -"over-and-over" stitches, we gazed at pictures in which splendid -blanketed braves, or splendid unclothed Samoans, were seen to exchange -romance for religion in the shape of conversion and white cottas. Our -souls loathed patchwork and missions, but, on the other hand, how we -thrilled to the righteousness of reward when the visiting missionary, -male or female, became our own particular guest! The ecstasy as one -flirted one's Sunday flounces before the eyes of less favored neighbors -because one was walking to church, holding the hand of a genuine -Arctic archdeacon! And then the Bishop's visits, when we were whisked -into cubbyhole and closet out of our crowded nursery that it might be -converted into a prophet's chamber! Which one of my schoolmates had ever -passed the right reverend plate at supper? And the honor of the Bishop's -petting afterwards! The episcopal lap, the high general's knee, is the -prerogative of the captain's children only, the same that never miss -church and know all their collects. - -Slowly we grew accustomed to the pressure of the knapsack upon our -shoulders, that weight of clerical example which did not burden our -irresponsible playmates. We knew that the Minister's children were -different. We did not want it to be so, but we began to see why it -was so. True, we protested when our father would not pause to tell us -stories or our mother stay at home from calls to play with dolls, yet in -the silent thinking-places of our little hearts we began to divine the -beauty of the midnight sick-watches, of the valiancy of Sunday-School -labors, of the brave weariness of sewing societies, of the heaven-born -patience with Parish bores. As we watched the sleeker parents of our -schoolmates, there dawned in us realization of what our parents had -given up, and silent shame for our jealousy of their devotion. Few -children are hurt by being shoved aside a little because of an ideal. -The hours when our parents played with us are still passing precious, -but it is because of the other hours that there was born in us a -shamefaced sense of the meaning of the banner under which we trudged. - -Isolation is the chief inconvenience of having an ideal in the family. -We were apart from other youngsters, partly because we knew it incumbent -upon us to set them an example, since, early enough and sadly enough, -we had acquired self-consciousness from the frank criticism of all our -conduct made by any parishioner so minded, and partly were we cut off by -the vow of poverty taken by our parents. Other families may look forward -to easier times; no ministerial household has any such illusions. The -tiniest child of the ministry knows that after forty the father will -not receive a call; the veriest baby of us knows what happens to old -ministers, because so many pitiful, decrepit old soldiers have from time -to time found shelter in our tent. - -Yet the ministry is the best place in the world to learn that poverty -is a nut that yields good meat if you crack it boldly. Well I remember -an icy rectory which had but one register in the Arctic regions of the -second story. At bedtime we would gather about this register to warm -our toes. Each blanketed to the ears like a little Indian, we would -discourse as serenely and acutely as any schoolmen, of the nature of -angels, for was not the whole realm of heaven and earth ours for the -mere talking? Pinched and patched we might be, but bold to meet penury -with a consciousness of princely possessions. I did not so much think -well of myself for this superiority to worldly comforts as I thought -scorn of those who did not have it. Very early I had a contempt for a -child who could not evolve a game from a clothespin or set a pageant -moving forth from a box of buttons. I had a veritable snobbishness of -disdain for a youngster who had to be amused. - -Necessarily one requires respect for inward resources when the only -things one has ever had enough of are bread and butter and books. Every -ministerial child breathes book-madness and burns for an education. When -at the age of five you have known your father to go without boots for a -book, and then to caper like a weanling lamb on the volume's arrival, -you have acquired something more potent than a mere conscientious -respect for literature; rather you have learned to regard the book-world -as a place of bacchanal liberty and delight forever open to you. I do -not know whether it tended toward my humanizing or against it that the -dominant beings of my young imagination were Books, while those of my -girl friends were Boys. - -There is nothing more effective than clerical penury to teach one -the cheapness of dreams. The door of fantasy stands always open for -the rectory household to enter, singly or together. I think every -ministerial family cherishes that one dear dream of all unwilling -gypsies. They always hope somehow, somewhere, sometime, to find a house -that shall be a home. Do what you may, a rectory is always house, not -home. It may always belong to some one else next month. If only it were -worth while to plant perennials in our flower-beds! If only it were -worth while to plant friendships to bear fruit in after years! Yet this -last we can never help doing as we pass from parish to parish, being -at heart most human of wanderers. It must be very beautiful to belong -somewhere, to have, for instance, cousinships in the neighborhood. There -are never any family parties in the ministry. There are never any gentle -grandsires to come forth from their kindly crypts and give guarantee of -our characters to the community. On each new camping-ground we stand, -a huddled family group, completely dependent on our own efforts for -introduction. - -These new-parish sensations tempt to generalizations, for they are so -alike, in town after town. The zest of a new call wears away even in -one's infancy. Perhaps the captain still expects to find his tents -pitched in Arcady, but not so his family; we meet the Parish's reception -acutely on our good behavior, exquisitely affable to all, but our inner -motto is, "Watch out!" It is usually those parishioners who give us most -effusive welcome who will be readiest to desire our godspeed. It is -those who stand back and look us over who will be our firmest friends. -We cannot resent their attitude because it is exactly our own. We, too, -are looking them over. - -When we go into a new parish the first person we meet is some one who -isn't there, namely, our predecessor, that thorn in the flesh of the -most righteous saint and soldier. There is always a predecessor, and -however dead or distant, he is always there, in the hearts of the -Parish, and quite frequently he is in their homes as well. However -callous, however courteous one may endeavor to be, one cannot escape a -slight sensation of stiffening when parishioners want The Other One to -marry or bury them. Think of the well-bred wrangle that sometimes occurs -in settling the clerical rights to a corpse! In all my ministerial -experience I never knew a predecessor and a successor who loved each -other. Yet I speak without bitterness, for one of the proudest and -pleasantest sensations of our ministry has been that of being a -predecessor ourself. - -To an unwilling nomad there is nothing so monotonous as change, yet the -very constancy of our march engenders an amazing ease of adjustment to -each new environment. In our relations to people, we clericals learn an -adaptability almost pathetically perfect. We succeed in being all things -to all men by never being all ourselves to any man. Our affability is -the armor that protects the inner sensitive personality. Perhaps we -are naturally expansive, but we early learn the perils of frankness, -so that it comes about that along our pilgrimage we are friendly, but -have few friends, those few, however, the tenderest, trustiest friends -in the world, those few, rare spirits of a keenness and a kindness to -penetrate the steel-strong armor of ministerial reserve. Very young, we -clerical sons and daughters learn to pass from millionaire to laundress -with no change of manner. The reason is not far to seek; we own senior -warden and washerwoman as our parishioners, equally, because warden and -washerwoman, equally, feel that they own us. With equal freedom the two -censure or serve, love or hate, us. Recognizing the proprietory rights -of each, we realize that each may be equally our bane or our blessing. -Yet our democracy goes deeper than all this. Half-hearted soldiers we -may often be, but we never doubt the sincerity of our flag. We had the -luck to be born into the household of the consecrated, whether we wanted -to be or not; we are genuinely democratic for the same reason that the -apostles were. - -Perhaps there is another reason, and a wickeder one, why all men stand -in our sight naked of all accidental social trappings; and that is that -we know them all so well! I cannot determine how clearly the world may -see into rectory windows, but certainly one sees pretty clearly from -rectory windows. It is a heart-searching and heart-revealing relation, -that of a parish to its parson. The completely voluntary nature of -all church effort and church organization affords an exhibition of -idiosyncrasies not to be found in any other association. When I think -of the crimes and the crankiness sometimes committed in the name of -religion, I thank Heaven that the effect of these in a ministerial -household is more often amusement than cynicism. I was grown up before I -realized that the ostensible purpose of a choir is to praise the Lord: -in my youth I always thought of a choir solely as a means of perfecting -a rector in patience. - -But always there exists the other side in the parochial relation, the -side not of badness, but of beauty. Personally I perceive no stronger -argument against the charge of present-day irreligion than the tribute -of trust paid to any sincere minister. From my childhood on I have seen -it everywhere, the respect for consecration. Everywhere I have heard it, -the belief in the man who believes, ring confident as the cry of the -roadside beggar upon the Nazarene. - -Few people think it worth while to put on pretense with a clergyman; -they rarely try to make him think them better than they are; yet he -generally does think so. It is frequently the alertness to protect the -captain against his own unworldliness that teaches his family their -sanity and sureness of insight. This very insight may, however, make -them poorer-spirited than their superior officer, craven and fain -to capitulate. In a parish skirmish they are likely to be divided -between hot loyalty to his cause and a vain hope that he won't think it -necessary to fight. I can picture the probable domestic anxiety in the -house of Calchas when in pursuit of his calling he found it necessary to -stand up to the king of men, Agamemnon! - -Long campaigning is likely to make ministerial offspring lovers of -peace, yet I believe I am not really unwilling to fight the Devil. The -trouble is that we of the ministry so often fight him when he isn't -there. I wish our young theologues could be taught the sound and shape -of Satan. Frankly I arraign the theological seminary as a very poor -military school. It sends forth a soldier who does not know so much as -how to set up a tent, whose idea of the Enemy is a mediaeval bugaboo in -a book. I would establish two new chairs in our seminaries, a chair -of agriculture, rudimentary, perhaps, but sufficient to teach the -difference between tares and wheat, which Nature, uninstructed in any -isms, still ordains shall grow together unto the harvest; and a second -chair, in common sense, to dispense instruction in human nature. The -average theologue is deep-read in Hebrew Scripture, but ignorant of the -A B C of the tongue in which is written the Bible of man's soul. Doctors -may dispute the divine inspiration of the former, but who of us is -infidel enough to dispute the divine inspiration of the latter? Perhaps -the more reprehensible fault of the seminary is not so much deficiency -in the matter of its teaching as deficiency in its maturity. No thinking -person wishes to receive his spiritual guidance from an unthinking boy. -I am constantly puzzled by the ill-logic of our ministerial preparation -when I reflect that the foundation of its teaching is the fact that God -Himself thought it necessary to be thirty years a man with men before He -was ready to teach or to preach. - -Considering his inadequate equipment, so inferior in the relation of -means to end to that of the social worker, the average minister of -to-day does better than his preparation deserves. If he has devotion, -devotion will, in the long run, counteract his blunders. People will put -up with almost anything from a man so long as he's a man. There never -was a time when respect for a clerical coat, as a coat, was less; there -never was a time when reverence for the man within the coat, as a man, -was greater. Because of this fact, we of the ministry who best know the -seamy side of an ideal know also best its beauty. - -I was born beneath a banner I did not choose, but like many another -ministerial child, I have grown from a mere external allegiance to a -real one. I think the angels of birth were a little distraught when -they dropped me in the tents of the righteous, but on the whole I am -reconciled. I have traveled to and fro and far, but only the rectory -tent is home, there alone exists the nomad's intense family friendship -which is a home's sole enduring furniture. I have wandered so far -among other men and other manners and morals that sometimes our little -band has seemed but a faint dot on the spaces of a universe undreamed -of within the limitations of rectory walls. Wandering thus, I have -questioned many things unquestioned in my childhood. Only ministerial -children themselves can estimate how open they are to doubt's attacks. -The very intensity of partisanship and narrowness of creed and practice -in which they have been brought up are sources of danger, while, having -always been nourished on the glory of the mind, they will always in -their traveling gravitate to the places of intellect, only to find their -little faith regarded there as one more soap-bubble to be tossed about. -Accustomed at home to the old-fashioned unquestioning distinctions, the -minister's son or daughter will discover that there no longer exists -the old sharp fight between orthodoxy and heterodoxy, because each side -recognizes far too well a kinship in weakness and wistfulness. There was -a time when to take a man's faith from him was a fair game, for it was -his own affair to guard a castle aggressively inviting attack. Now even -infidels are too pitiful to steal another man's God. - -It is not so simple an adjustment as perhaps it externally appears, the -return to the tiny clerical camp whence once we issued forth to our -education. Perhaps I have thrilled to the trumpets of larger armies, -perhaps our little troop of skirmishers seems to me a sorry one now, -and perhaps, darker treachery still, the hosts of Midian do not loom so -big and black to me as of old, perhaps I have even made some charming -friends among the Hittites and the Jebusites, but it is astonishing how, -when I am back in the old conditions, the enemy's ranks resume their old -color and proportion. - -When I am abroad I am no stickler for church attendance, yielding -myself sometimes to the call of a "heaven-kissing hill" or to the spell -of woods sacredly serene; but at home I am accustomed by contagion to -look darkly askance at Sunday picknickers or lazy stay-at-homes. They -should come and hear my father preach! Yet I myself feel God nearer on -a hilltop than at the altar, and I own, as closest comrades and most -inspiring, men and women whose souls never bow in worship anywhere. -They belong to another army, that army of social betterment which is so -curiously blind to its own pillar of fire. My creed is to their minds a -child's lisping, they ask neither a God nor an immortality, they ask -only that they may lift the burdened man upright. If we cannot worship, -let us work, people say to-day, and do not dream that never before -in history was there enough religion in the world to make theirs a -plausible deduction. - -These my friends belong to the army of non-church-goers arraigned in -the little village church where I kneel to say my prayers. It is very -strange, they say to me,--these soldiers of an army grown far larger -now than our thinning ranks,--very strange to me that you should need -a religion; and I answer it is very strange to me that you cannot hear -above the blackness of your hosting, your own prophet voices choiring a -midnight mass to Heaven. - -There are divers ways of worship and I acknowledge that my own way, -minister's daughter though I am, exemplary in externals, is not always -that which would appear best in accord with my bowed head and practiced -knees. There is much in your full-sized Anglican that is bigger than -his Prayer Book, although I loyally hold that an inspired document of -Christian common sense. Many a windy, rolling thought comes to me when -I am kneeling in secret rebellion at the abasement of the Litany, -irreverent, meseemeth, to the souls cast in God's image, but who am I -that I should think scorn of any words by which people climb to Heaven? -Suppose I should compose prayers for my father's congregation, think -how bewildered the good people in our pews would become if they should -find, writ out for their repeating, the calls of birds and the voices of -winds, which I know would sing themselves into any prayer of my making. - -No, in its prayers and in its practice, I find myself ever turning -quietly back to the faith of my fathers, that banner of my clan. -Perhaps I may think its gold tarnished with mediaevalism, its silk worn -very thin, but are not all banners merely the work of men's hands? And -what matter of the ensign so long as it holds skyward? I, within the -ministry, may sometimes question our methods of warfare, thinking them -valiant against obsolete bugaboos and oblivious of a more subtle Satan, -but, doubtful how better to direct the age-old campaign, uncertain what -newer weapons to endue, I would rather still be on the side of a blind -and passionate ideal, for energies may sometimes be wasted, but ideals -are never wasted. - -Perhaps I have sometimes thought to join that other army, of man's -social progress, a noble army the thunder of whose modern warfare rolls -ever louder and louder through the land. But I a deserter from the -thin, faint brigade that belongs to an older fashion? A deserter now, -when, in our little rectory corps, I see the hands that grasp the sword -growing weaker, and the hands that uphold the sword-bearer's growing -frailer, and when, in eyes keen to pierce the Enemy's darkness, I read -the growing peace prophetic of the battle over? Back to my place in -the ranks, back beneath our tattered pennon! What better service have -I craved? What braver banner? For on the ensigns of many creeds I have -searched, after all, only for that one sure device which shines upon my -fathers' faith. That device is a Face, even the face of the leader of -all the host, and as on and on I follow the march of our ministry,-- - - "That one Face, far from vanish, rather grows, - Or decomposes, but to recompose, - Become my universe that feels and knows!" - - - - -XXII - -_Some Difficulties in Doing without Eternity_ - - -Have any of us noticed what a fairyland we lost when we stopped -believing in eternity? There was a glamour and a glitter about that past -playground of religion which makes our present creed of science barren -and chilly. If to-day we write the word Eternity in white chalk on a -blackboard, and gazing at it try to recall what it used to signify, we -shall find this exercise of the spirit most joyous. The word reminds us -how we used to slip away from hurry to bathe in a sea of timelessness, -refreshing to every taut nerve. How we exulted and expanded in the -belief that eternity would give us all that we could not get in the -present, for that was what eternity was for! We should never again be -sick or sad or bad. In eternity we should be no longer the puny spawn -of monkeys, but beings good and great and glorious as angels. Eternity -was full of shining light and serried ranks of singing hosts. Majestic -figures from the past walked its wondrous streets and we ourselves -walked with them. There was the gleaming of a golden and immortal city, -our home at last. There was even in our vision of eternity the presence -of God. - -Such was the fairyland of faith where once we walked confidently. It is -banned now even from our fancy as irrevocably as the elf-kingdom of the -nursery. No one now believes we live after we die; it is even deemed -reprehensible to want to. Yet for those of us who formerly possessed -eternity it is hard all at once to get used to doing without it. We -agree with science that eternity should be abolished in the interests -of an efficient spiritual life, and yet, without eternity, we sometimes -ache with our abrupt adjustment to being merely mortal. Creeds and other -comforts have a way of slipping away from us without our seeing. Time -and again we can be found blindly struggling to adapt ourselves to some -deficiency in our supply of beliefs without any clear conception of the -nature of the hole or of our resources for either filling it or enduring -it. The present age suffers all the awkwardness of being transitional. -In a few decades babies will be born immune to any faith or fear in -regard to the future, but meanwhile it is well to examine closely our -present difficulties in passing from immortality to annihilation, and -perhaps to discover a little help for hobbledehoys. A transitional -period should be a little patient with itself, for it suffers both -the growing-pains of stretching to the demands of the future and the -rheumatic twinges of belonging to a decaying past. - -The first difficulty of our adjustment has the nature of a growing-pain, -being due to our still imperfect response to the commands of science, -which bewilder our dullness by apparent contradiction. When science is -all the time bidding us to batter down doors, it is confusing to the -mind to have science herself declare that death is the only door that -opens nowhere. In every other department of research we are encouraged -to the wildest flights of imagination and hypothesis. It is, therefore, -increasingly difficult, as we become increasingly inured to scientific -adventure, to stop short before the most provocative of all phenomena, -the human spirit in its eventful cycle. Eternity seems the only -thoroughly scientific explanation of soul. At a mere superficial reading -each human life appears like a chapter from a serial rather than a -complete volume or a fugitive page tossed on the wind. The chance-blown -paragraphs reveal so much that suggests a vigorously conceived plot, -powerful characterization, dramatic incident, intense emotion, rich -background, that it is almost impossible not to formulate a synopsis -of preceding chapters, and to conjecture the denouement following the -catastrophe of death. - -It is even at times hard to withstand the conviction that there must -be an author. One could almost suspect him of breaking off at a crisis -on purpose to make us eager for the next installment. The figure of -speech may perhaps make clear to us the primary trouble of our being -transitional, namely, the difficulty of being both scientific and -unscientific at the same time, for our instinct to understand and -explain tends to destroy our pleasure even in the torn chapter we -hold in hand; it is hard to work up a proper reading enthusiasm in -the face of the positive assertion by science that there will be no -"continued-in-our-next." - -The most cursory study of our bygone belief reveals at once other -troubles for the present generation in trying too suddenly to get along -without a future. We suffer from the working within us of old instincts -and superstitions not to be violently uprooted--rheumatic heritage of -souls in process of transformation. While our reason admits that there -is no valid excuse for being immortal and that our perverse hankering -after such a condition argues us self-centered and self-important, all -the same there is peril in too abruptly removing the props to personal -prestige promised by the mythical joys of our lost fairyland. Our -anticipated survival gave us a sense of superiority to the insects, -prevented our being sensitive to the silent scoffings of the roadside -stones that so long outlast us. Evanescence tends also to undermine -our personal affections. It hardly seems worth while to be overfond of -relative or friend whom a breath of wind may snuff out like a flame. -Why should beings more brittle than beetles go about loving each other -as if they were gods? Morally, human frailty was often subconsciously -controlled by keeping ourselves fit for the society we expected -ultimately to enter, that of saints and sages and perhaps of God Himself. - -The first effect of destroying all these expectations is disastrous -for people who were far more dependent on them than they dreamed, for, -to tell the truth, eternity in the old days had so little apparent -relation to our daily conduct that the complete rejection of the -concept is like that of some bodily organ whose functioning is deemed -negligible until it ceases. Our suffering is no less keen because we -recognize it as purely evolutional and temporary. In a few generations -people will find as much inspiration in being finite as we used to -find in being infinite. Meanwhile, for us who have the luck to be -transitional there is perhaps a compromise. - -Apart from our personal pangs, the loss of eternity has had effects, -social and political, that intensify our private discomfort. Perhaps if -our difficulties are clarified we may recognize how burdened we actually -are, and be more willing to allow ourselves a makeshift leniency. Chief -among the public phenomena directly traceable to the absence of eternity -is the war. On a basis of strict mortality, war for aggrandizement -becomes the only legitimate activity for person or nation. Reason shows -that, since death ends all, material things are the only things worth -getting, and even more clearly shows that, since human beings are as -finite as mosquitoes, they are no more worthy of preservation. Germany -is the most laudably logical nation in the world, but her logic has -been a little uncomfortable for the nations who are more sluggish -in evolution, and who still cling to their retrogressive respect for -spiritual valuations and to their obsolete reverence for the human soul. -Of course, if Germany had not purified herself of all taint of faith in -eternity, she might conceivably have waited for permeation in peace, -instead of being in such a devil of a hurry to chop a way through for -her culture. Doubtless, in the course of time other nations will attain -Germany's serene heights of pure reason, but at present it is necessary -frankly to admit that aggression, while our brains pronounce it a most -rational pastime, is still for our imaginations and sympathies one of -the chief temporary discomforts of doing without eternity. - -Next to the war in importance of effect stands the high cost of living. -Of course we all know that there is enough food for everybody to eat and -enough money to pay for it, provided that nobody wants more food than he -ought to eat, nor more money than he ought to spend. However, now that -we know with absolute certainty that we die when we die, any man would -be a fool if he did not try to eat as much and to spend as much as he -possibly could. Food and money are the only fun the finite can have, -and naturally the effort to get as much as possible of both sends prices -soaring. Without penetrating too far into economic intricacies, one can -connect the decline in value of the Apocalypse with the advance in value -of eggs. The high cost of living is directly due to the high cost of -dying; when dying costs annihilation, people have to work pretty hard to -get a life's worth out of seventy years. - -Of causes of distress taken in order of popular complaint, next to war -and the high cost of living stands the new poetry. The relation between -imagism and immortality is so obvious as to be invisible. Granted that -the aim of literature is to mirror life, the imagist insistence on -aspect _versus_ interpretation is inevitable, for plainly literature -should not deal with meanings when life, being mortal, cannot have a -meaning. Sensation alone is sufficiently ephemeral to be true to life, -whereas a poem that attempts to express some significance beneath -phenomena has a tendency to outlast its generation, and runs the risk of -endurance, and of becoming, in some notable instances, even immortal, -whereas such a reversion toward stability either in a poem or in a -person shows each alike false to our faith in flux. - -Those of us, however, who cannot all at once throw off the thrall of -the poor old poets of our infancy must be content to go a bit slowly, -trusting that our descendants will attain complete responsiveness to -the poetry of the evanescent. We perceive humbly enough how reactionary -we are, but our obstreperous instinct for explanation corrupts even -our literary tenets so that with senile obstinacy we sometimes wonder -whether, even from its own purely aesthetic point of view, the new -poetry does not miss something the older poetry possessed. Meaning, -adroitly introduced into a poem, sometimes produced a pretty little -art of its own, a blending of outer and inner attributes that had in -itself a kind of grace. It is even more heterodox to question, in -looking back, whether a poet's effort to explain was not stimulating to -his imagination, making him actually see things more vividly in their -external aspects by his very concentration on their inner qualities. -Certainly no imagist poet, for all his preoccupation with picture, has -ever produced as vivid descriptions as did Browning, a poet above all -others avid for meanings. - -We of to-day may as well acknowledge first as last that our feet, set in -infancy to the pace of eternity, will never step lively enough for the -present age. While deprecating the breathlessness of keeping up with the -contemporary, the most old-fashioned of us must admire its valiancy. We -are not nearly so lazy as when we used to leave some of our development -to be accomplished after the temporary set-back of death. Our own -muscles are a bit stiff, however, and as we conscientiously whip them to -the requirements of high-speed pressure, we must comfort ourselves with -the thought that our posterity will be able to fly without experiencing -any of our awkwardness. - -The spiritual leisure and lethargy resulting from a reliance on eternity -to finish up what we could not get done on earth, obviously clogged the -wheels of progress, which now can be everywhere seen whizzing along -without any brakes. We open the advertising pages of any periodical, to -find that speed is the dominant advantage offered with every commodity. -Get-healthy-quick, get-learned-quick, get-rich-quick, are the headings -under which most of our advertisements might be grouped. We are all -familiar with the photographed faces of the people who will show us how -to reach a maximum of attainment in a minimum of time. The gentleman -with the arresting index finger leaps out at our laziness to teach us -how to be successful in ten lessons. Success is a word that could not -even be defined before the abolishment of eternity, with the resultant -denial of all criteria but the immediate. - -While haste is necessarily painful for our still imperfectly adjusted -mentality in every department of life, we must allow for our being -peculiarly sensitive to the changes it necessitates in the training of -youth. In the old days when death graduated us into eternity, we had -much more time to devote to education. There was in our early years -an agreeable luxury in the pursuit of learning. We did not have to -practice the rigid economy of the correspondence school or of languages -by phonograph. As we look back, it seems as if minds were richer when -they did not have to be so niggardly in the luggage they took for their -journey. This is but the sentimental vaporing of the senile, for in our -sane moments we perceive as clearly as does the most modern pedagogue -that Greek and Latin are impedimenta to retard the boy of to-day in -the race set before him, and we agree with the publisher-purveyors to -youth that the compendia of useful knowledge furnished by them offer the -handiest possible canned nutriment for a period that has time only for -acquisition, not for digestion. - -As regards the study of the classics, we did not at first perceive that -to annul the future involved annulling the past, and yet, practically, -giving up eternity has undermined our interest in history. Conviction -of mortality enjoins the conscience to concentrate on the contemporary -so intensely that past events become obscure. Unless we have eternity -before us we really have no time to look behind. Yet some of us have a -yearning for history that used to find satisfaction in fancying that our -little age fitted into a sequence of ages. It contributed to a false but -agreeable complacency to gaze back into an endless past as it did to -gaze forward into an endless future. Of course, abolishing eternity does -not necessarily obliterate the past or explicitly forbid our going back -there to visit; it merely makes to-day so important that we have no time -whatever for yesterday. - -In this matter of educational adjustment, as in others, a transitional -period suffers enough to permit itself a little humoring of its -prejudices; we should not attach too much guilt to a surreptitious -enjoyment of the ancients so long as we do not corrupt the youth of our -acquaintance by teaching them any of our respect for antique art. So -long as we are doing our conscientious best to free our boys and girls -from the cumbersomeness of a classic education, we may feel that we have -done our duty, and may indulge a secret delight in the dusty shelves -that reveal to us the grace that was Greece and the glory that was Rome. -It is all right so long as we don't let the children know, for that -bygone beauty is strangely seductive and glamorous, and contact with -it might sap their energy in pursuing fortune and fame and food, which -should be the sole preoccupation of people appointed to die. - -Indisputably speed must be the desideratum of all activity, educational -or other. Now the chief distress we older ones experience from speed -is not that it leads to success, but that so often it leads nowhere. -The old-fashioned custom of having a purpose in a pursuit makes it -difficult for us to enjoy pure giddiness as heartily as do our younger -contemporaries. Haste, first introduced as a method of extracting -from the temporary what eternity used to supply, has become an end in -itself, so that a great many people ask nothing else of life but to feel -themselves whizzing. Since nothing is permanent except impermanence, -the one thing to do is to go spinning along, cautious only to avoid -bumping into a destination. As a consequence of trying to catch up in -one lifetime with all the activity of eternity, we have acquired such -exhilaration, such momentum of energy, that there is nothing we are so -afraid of as the impact of arriving somewhere. The profession of flux as -a creed necessitates the practice of flying as a habit. Yet with this -very profession of faith I find I have arrived at a heresy. - -Now this heresy consists of the argument plainly approved by pure logic -that if the purpose of speed is to get the most out of this life because -there is no other, then no movement at all is exactly as rational as -too much, and we have a perfect right to select any spot of our mental -landscape that suits us and sit down on it, convinced that it is just -as sensible to get our money's worth out of life's little day by being -stationary as by being giddy. On the principle that ephemeral beings -have a right to any fun they can find is founded the advice to our age -toward which this entire discussion has been directed. Baldly stated, -the proposal is this: the best way of doing without eternity is to -pretend we don't have to! The suggestion is frankly so absurd that -any reader is permitted to smile at it as freely as does the writer. -We have lost eternity and we can't bring it back by pretending it is -still there. The point is that we don't want to bring it back, but we -do want to discover some way of being comfortable without it. Believing -that there is no eternity, but living as if there were, is not a -process possible to all persons, and is therefore urged only upon those -capable of so separating their reason and their imagination that the -two can function independently of each other. Many people are happily -thus constituted, and still more can become so if they try. There is, -moreover, no real sin in the course, because we are rather true to our -imaginations than false to our convictions, and, besides, we do no -proselyting; we merely allow our own fancy the refreshment of revisiting -our lost fairyland. - -The chief obstacle to the compromise is that its absurdity is exactly -balanced by its efficacy; in other words, you can't tell how good -it will feel until you try it, and if you are an over-rational and -over-conscientious person you will think it beneath your dignity to -try it. Yet actually there is nothing that contributes so much toward -a sense of well-being as pretending, for a few minutes every day,--say -just before getting up in the morning and just before going to sleep at -night,--that you are going to live after you die. - -After a few weeks of this exercise, that embarrassment we experience -in the presence of nature becomes less painful, whereas, when we are -too acutely conscious of mortality, we are shamed by an insensate -oak, by a rock we could pound to powder for its silent sneer at our -evanescence. If we make believe we are as good as they are, we can hold -up our heads to the sky and the stars, and even venture to penetrate the -social exclusiveness of the sky and the mountains. A man who pretends -he is immortal is not so deafened by the cannon of the contemporary -that he cannot hear the still, sweet voices of the little flowers. An -association with the ancient aristocracy of sea and forest is good for -a person, but it is almost impossible to feel at ease in this society -unless we temporarily assume an equality with it in permanence. - -This secret leniency toward our abandoned faith tends to enhance our -joy in human comradeship as well as in that of nature. In actuality -human affection is so menaced by fate as to resemble the surreptitious -whispering in the schoolroom while the teacher's back is turned. When -the loftiest spiritual converse may at any time be broken off by the -malevolence of a molecule called a germ, some of us would rather never -love anybody as the only means of getting even with being ephemeral. On -the other hand, if we can manage to simulate a sense of survival, and -can picture death as a mere voyage, we can enjoy comradeship up to the -very last minute, and shout confident au revoirs even while the boat is -pulling out to sea. - -A faith in a future secretly indulged is stimulating to mentality. If we -assume for a few minutes even in jest that perhaps our life's chapter -has a meaning, instantly our ingenuity is off to invent other chapters -past and future. Before we know it our minds are glowing as we discover -some passage of grand and sustained style, or are tingling with the -glorious guesswork of an entire synopsis. If we are gifted with any -dramatic instinct, we are as likely as not, while we turn the pages, -to find ourselves appropriating the hero's part, and bearing ourselves -a bit more nobly, with a dim notion of being destined to still greater -actions in the next installment. Pretending that perhaps after all our -life has a meaning makes us acquit ourselves rather better than we -otherwise should in the tragic episodes, and makes us enjoy the comic -scenes with a twinkle kindled at imperishable fires. Even hazarded -surmises about the creatorship of our life's romance sometimes give a -sense of rest and relief not as yet afforded by the prevalent doctrine -of pure flux. - -A little self-indulgence in eternity will not only enfranchise our -conversation with our contemporaries and quicken our brains to decipher -the book of humanity, but will tend to keep our minds, manners, and -morals in trim for association with the great and good of all ages. We -used to believe the halls of the dead were thronged with noble spirits -toward whose wisdom and beauty our pilgrim feet would surely sometime -find the way. This hope helped us to keep ourselves in order, much as -the exiled Englishman restrains himself from slumping by donning his -dress-suit in the jungle solitude. Of course, when evolution from the -eternal to the ephemeral is fully accomplished, nobody will need any -fillip to personal prestige, but for us poor intermediates, painfully -hobbledehoy, it is a secret education in noble manners to pretend to -ourselves that some day we shall be called upon to meet Socrates or -Buddha or Christ. - -Why not have a little patience with ourselves, we poor devils who have -to bear all the brunt of the transition from eternity to evanescence? -If we promise not to corrupt advancing youth, if we promise not even to -corrupt our own reason by any genuine faith, can't we safely play that -our life's chapter is going to be continued? - -For, after all, what if there should be an Author? - - THE END - - The Riverside Press - - CAMBRIDGE. MASSACHUSETTS - - U. S. A - - * * * * * - - Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber: - - freqnently=> frequently {pg 51} - - the world "inn"=> the world "inn" {pg 56} - - idiosyncracies=> idiosyncrasies {pg 220} - - - - - - -End of Project Gutenberg's The Joys of Being a Woman, by Winifred Kirkland - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE JOYS OF BEING A WOMAN *** - -***** This file should be named 42691.txt or 42691.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/4/2/6/9/42691/ - -Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was -produced from scanned images of public domain material -from the Google Print project.) - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions -will be renamed. - -Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no -one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation -(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without -permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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