THE COMMON WAY 
 
 BY 
 MARGARET DELANO 
 
 AUTHOR OF " DR. LAVENDAR S PEOPLE " 
 "OLD CHHSTER TALES" ETC. 
 
 NEW YORK AND LONDON 
 HARPER 6- BROTHERS PUBLISHERS 
 
Copyright, 1904, by HARPER & BROTHERS. 
 
 Alt rigkts reserved. 
 
 Published October, 1904. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 ON THE SHELF 3 
 
 AUNTS 3 
 
 THE PASSING OF DORA 51 
 
 "LovE MY DOG" . 7 2 
 
 THE TYRANNY OF THINGS 92 
 
 CONCERNING CHURCH-GOING 112 
 
 ACQUAINTANCE WITH GRIEF 133 
 
 CONCERNING GLASS HOUSES . . . . 152 
 
 CONCERNING CHRISTMAS GIVING . . . 168 
 
 To THE GIRL WHO WRITES 186 
 
 225941 
 
THE COMMON WAY 
 
ON THE SHELF 
 
 THHERE are very few men and wom- 
 1 en who, between the ages of sixty 
 and seventy years, escape a certain humil 
 iating experience, which is known as being 
 "laid on the shelf." If their children s 
 affectionate hands lift them to this dusty 
 eminence, the experience may come a 
 little before sixty. If they climb up to it 
 themselves (with some slight assistance 
 from nephews and nieces), the unpleas 
 ant moment is generally postponed, be 
 cause, not recognizing that in virtue of 
 years the shelf is where they really be 
 long, they refuse to take their place upon 
 it. However, sooner or later, all of us 
 3 
 
THE COMMON WAY 
 
 (unless we are of the elect) find ourselves 
 upon the shelf a narrow, uncomfortable 
 platform, generally dark and dingy, with 
 the single advantage of height, which 
 enables us to look down upon the next 
 generation with bitterness or pity, or 
 both. 
 
 One very curious thing about people 
 who are thus packed away just as un 
 appreciated wedding-presents are packed 
 away because there is a certain senti 
 ment about them; or inartistic portraits 
 of plain ancestors, that human decency 
 will not destroy; or shabby Bibles, which 
 superstition preserves behind rows of 
 smart, new books the human creatures 
 who are shelved, because sentiment or 
 decency or superstition will not permit 
 their destruction, these useless persons do 
 not always know that they are on the 
 shelf. They still presume we still pre 
 sume (let us suppose that we have reach 
 ed at least the beginning of the shelf age!) 
 4 
 
ON THE SHELF 
 
 to dictate, and arrange, and lay down 
 the law, in both morals and manners, for 
 the younger folk. Indeed, the first symp 
 tom of the shelf period is a dogmatism as 
 to what is right; the second is a deep 
 melancholy in regard to things as they 
 are; society, the church, the world are 
 going rapidly to the dogs. It was not so 
 when we were young! 
 
 There is, of course, a certain pleasure 
 in this second symptom of the shelf, be 
 cause it gives the shelved an opportunity 
 to thank God that they are not as other 
 men are. But, on the whole, the pain is 
 greater than the pleasure. When we ex 
 press our appreciation of the past, and 
 some silly young person giggles, we feel a 
 helpless irritation which is very uncom 
 fortable. Indeed, it is this indifference 
 of the young person to our opinions and 
 ideals which first opens our eyes to the 
 shelf; and once we know where we are, 
 the pain begins. 
 
 5 
 
THE COMMON WAY 
 
 It is only our pain, however; these 
 young folk whom we reproach and scold 
 are not unhappy. If it amuses us to crit 
 icise them, to say, "It was not so when 
 we were your age," to prophesy dark 
 things for the girls because they ride 
 horseback astride, or for the boys be 
 cause of their outrageous slang; if we 
 enjoy mourning over them, our kindly 
 young folk do not begrudge us what lit 
 tle fun we can get out of our forebod 
 ings. No, the pain is not for them; it 
 is for us. For us, turning and stretch 
 ing about on our shelves, peering down 
 from our dusty heights, ignored, smiled 
 at (do not let us say laughed at 
 though such a thing has been known), 
 tutored even instructed, if you please! 
 in methods or manners or morals by 
 these infants! these babes that we 
 have brought up and cherished, and 
 and spanked! (And some of us would 
 like to repeat part of the programme 
 6 
 
ON THE SHELF 
 
 now, if the opportunity were afforded 
 us.) 
 
 This is the time of the real growing- 
 pains of life ; but they come, not to those 
 who grow, but to those who are outgrown. 
 Probably they are at their worst when we 
 have just reached the shelf, but do not 
 know it. It is a period of helpless strug 
 gle; we are bewildered and very much 
 hurt because some fine day the young fry 
 smile good-naturedly at each other over 
 one of our wise remarks, and then go 
 their own gait. It is their way of saying, 
 "You are on the shelf, dears; now don t 
 bother us!" The blank and angry as 
 tonishment of the shelved at this frank 
 information breaks out in vehement de 
 nial of the fact. Like the borrower of the 
 kettle who declared that it was cracked 
 when he got it, whole when he sent it 
 back, and that he never borrowed the old 
 kettle, so the shelved cry out that the 
 shelf is the wisest place in the world, 
 7 
 
THE COMMON WAY 
 
 that they are not on it, and that there 
 is no shelf, anyway! 
 
 Of course, such denial is perfectly use 
 less; yet it seems to be one of the ways 
 in which we human creatures meet this 
 dreadful moment of realization that we 
 have been shelved. There are only three 
 ways to meet it, and we must choose one 
 or the other of them. 
 
 The first is this of denial of the shelf 
 a course often taken by fathers and moth 
 ers even while they are reaching out and 
 pulling up some reluctant child to sit be 
 side them in the dust and gloom. This 
 way makes daily life just about as miser 
 able as it can be apart from absolute sin, 
 which is, of course, entirely another mat 
 ter. 
 
 The second way is to sit down quietly 
 and contemplate the shelf; weighing its 
 pain as against its comforts for it has 
 comforts. It escapes modern responsibil 
 ities because it does not believe in them; 
 8 
 
ON THE SHELF 
 
 it gives self-satisfaction, which is always 
 pleasant, though incompatible with prog 
 ress ; and it is agreeably tolerant because 
 it is indifferent. If such comfort seems 
 good to us, let us frankly choose the shelf, 
 climbing up to it with dignity and sweet 
 ness, keeping it dusted and letting the 
 sunshine rest on it, but never, never in 
 viting any one to sit beside us ! 
 
 This candid and good-natured accept 
 ance of the situation which permits the 
 younger generation to have its own views, 
 is at least harmless, and it robs the shelf 
 of much of its misery. But, of course, it 
 is the end of usefulness and of the pain 
 and joy of human sympathies. 
 
 There is still the third way of meeting 
 the shelf; it begins with honest acknowl 
 edgment that the shelf is where we really 
 belong. The reason that we belong there 
 is that our ideals are not in harmony with 
 the methods and manners and morals of 
 the day. Life as it is is too complicated 
 9 
 
THE COMMON WAY 
 
 and too puzzling for our simpler views 
 and theories; the formulae with which 
 we solved our problems even twenty-five 
 years ago do not work now. Take, as a 
 single example of the change in methods, 
 domestic service as it presents itself to 
 the housekeeper of to - day : the patri 
 archal relation between employer and 
 employed which our mothers and grand 
 mothers knew is gone ; we may not like to 
 admit it, but facts declare it. Further 
 more, it is useless to try to revive this old 
 relationship, to insist upon our personal 
 responsibility for, let us say, the morals 
 or even the health of the women in our 
 kitchens. If we do so insist, we are 
 wounded by a new ideal which practically 
 and sometimes actually bids us mind our 
 own business. The "girl," as we call her, 
 though she may be fifty, feels quite com 
 petent to look after her own morals. Our 
 advice as to health, say when she has 
 a bad cold on her day out, or persistent 
 10 
 
ON THE SHELF 
 
 indigestion from tea -drinking, is too apt to 
 be understood as prying interference in 
 her pleasures or a housekeeper s mean 
 ness about food. The name of the Ideal 
 which expresses itself in this unpleasant 
 way is personal freedom, and the change 
 which it has brought about in domestic 
 methods is probably obvious to every 
 employer of labor who has reached the 
 age of fifty. 
 
 The change in manners comes home 
 to every father and mother whose boys 
 are in college and whose girls are out of 
 short skirts. Don t we know it, we moth 
 ers or aunts, nodding at each other from 
 our shelves, sighing and shaking our 
 heads, gossiping over our teacups about 
 A. s girl s bold looks, or B. s girl s hoy- 
 denish ways, or C. s girl s scandalous be 
 havior with young men? As for the 
 young men, from the beginning the ad 
 justment of the relation between the fa 
 ther and his grown son has been difficult 
 ii 
 
THE COMMON WAY 
 
 and sometimes painful; but when it is 
 complicated by the boy s bad manners 
 it is infinitely more difficult. The boy is 
 a conceited jackass, so his father says, 
 his own manners for the moment in abey 
 ance. Why, bless my heart! the cub act 
 ually declines to vote the ticket that his 
 father approves; and he has ideas of his 
 own as to the office or the shop, and he 
 expresses them with a clumsy obstinacy 
 that makes the older man say hard things 
 that he regrets half an hour afterwards. 
 "If I had spoken to my father as you 
 speak to me," he says, with futile energy, 
 "something would have happened, sir!" 
 And the boy replies with great good 
 nature, "Granddad must have been an 
 awful pill!" which does not tend to re 
 store the equilibrium of reverence and 
 love between these two. Manners play 
 no part in the lad s ideal, which, crudely 
 expressed, is simply honesty; the speak 
 ing exactly what he thinks. 
 12 
 
ON THE SHELF 
 
 There is still another change which 
 forces upon us the recognition of the 
 shelf: the indifference of the younger 
 generation to our ideals in what might 
 be called the minor morals. 
 
 The youngsters begin by frankly an 
 nouncing that they do not believe what 
 we believe ; then they hew out for them 
 selves strange theological and ethical 
 heresies. The boys of C. T. U. mothers 
 order cases of beer sent to their rooms. 
 The girls take Sunday mornings for their 
 mending, and play golf with their broth 
 ers in the afternoon ; to the remonstrance 
 of the shelf they reply, calmly, "What 
 is the harm?" They can see the harm 
 of a lie or a meanness ; but fresh air, 
 exercise, etc., etc. ? Rot! says the 
 boy (or, horrible to relate, even the 
 
 girl). 
 
 Perhaps we might sum up these changes 
 by saying that in methods the new ideal 
 is personal freedom, in manners it is per- 
 
THE COMMON WAY 
 
 sonal honesty, and in the lesser morals it 
 is personal conviction. 
 
 Very few men and women who have 
 passed middle age can candidly rehearse 
 such changes and not recognize that they 
 have been left behind by the procession; 
 and following the recognition comes the 
 cruel moment of climbing up to the shelf ! 
 Yet before we settle down upon it, turn 
 ing our backs upon all growth, might it 
 not be well to try to get the point of view 
 of these hurrying, careless younger folk ? 
 It is not always easy to do this, but it is 
 possible, because, having been young, we 
 can understand them; whereas, as they 
 have not been old, it is impossible for 
 them to understand us. Hence the effort 
 must be all on our side. . . . 
 
 Nothing will help us more in this effort 
 than the memory of certain days thirty- 
 five or forty years ago. . . . Looking back 
 upon those days, we shall discover that 
 the children s indifference to our opinions 
 14 
 
ON THE SHELF 
 
 is but the echo of our indifference to the 
 opinions of the preceding generation. We, 
 to be sure, generally held our tongues, 
 whereas our young people express their 
 indifference with brutal distinctness. And 
 when we wince under it, or get angry 
 and red in the face, or tearful and re 
 proachful, as our temperaments may de 
 termine, we know just how they felt, 
 those fathers and mothers whose theo 
 ries we thought so hopelessly behind the 
 times! How our emancipated youth 
 must have tried them; how our (now) 
 old - fashioned views must have pained 
 them! Perhaps we never quite appre 
 ciate the dear dead people who upon their 
 shelves loved us in our raw youth, as we 
 do when we wince under the careless sin 
 cerities of our children. With apprecia 
 tion comes, of course, regret for duties 
 left undone and privileges overlooked. 
 Any life which has evolved a high ideal 
 must know this sting of remorse; many 
 
 I 5 
 
THE COMMON WAY 
 
 an elderly man or woman groans over the 
 stabs he or she gave in youth. There is 
 no use in enlarging on such pain; none 
 of the elderly folk sitting restless and un 
 happy on their shelves but know it too 
 well; regret regret! Yet miserable as 
 it is, regret will be of enormous value if 
 it makes us realize that the generation 
 which wounds us to-day is just as kind 
 and just as honest as was our generation, 
 when with good-natured complacency we 
 lifted our old fogies on to their shelves. 
 
 If we once get this thought clearly in 
 our minds, we shall at least be able to be 
 lieve in the good intentions of our young 
 people, in spite of their extraordinary 
 methods, manners, and minor morals. 
 
 This third way of accepting the shelf, 
 with the spur of imagination rowelling 
 our sore hearts, is far from comfortable, 
 but it is our salvation. 
 
 To begin with, it will not let us pull 
 the young person up to us for company; 
 16 
 
ON THE SHELF 
 
 neither will it allow us to be indifferent 
 to what we must deplore. We cannot 
 help being anxious, perhaps even being 
 unhappy, over what we see going on 
 about us. New methods will not seem 
 easy, new manners will not seem admi 
 rable, new moralities will not seem right. 
 Nevertheless, we shall be hopeful. . . . 
 
 Take this matter of the change in do 
 mestic methods: if we look hard enough 
 we shall see a certain value in the self- 
 respect which is springing out of the new 
 conditions of restlessness and discontent. 
 It is not comfortable for employers to 
 have employe s demanding greater free 
 dom ; but the open mind will admit that 
 it may be comfortable for the employes. 
 It will even admit that such demands 
 may result in better social conditions, 
 and, after a while, in better citizenship, 
 for the ideal of freedom hidden in the dis 
 comfort and transition is very noble. 
 
 In the manners of our young people 
 
THE COMMON WAY 
 
 the ideal is not always so obvious; yet, 
 again, if we take the trouble to look, we 
 generally find ground for hopefulness. 
 
 We will never admit that A. s girl s be 
 havior is beautiful; but we shall discern 
 in it a certain rebound from the enforced 
 and almost inevitably insincere demure- 
 ness of our girlhood. B . s daughter, bare 
 headed, bare-armed, swaggering across the 
 golf -links, brown, muscular, vigorous, is 
 not a pretty or dainty vision; the bloom 
 and softness of girlhood, as we used to 
 think of it, are gone; to speak frankly, she 
 is not nearly so pretty as we were at her 
 age. And her language ! her slang ! When 
 B. s girl (and B. s are nice people, as 
 everybody knows) cries out, on making 
 a bad stroke, "Holy smoke! what a bum 
 swat!" we, up on our shelves, shudder and 
 feel that the world, as we knew it, is cer 
 tainly coming to an end. No, B. s daugh 
 ter is not our ideal. 
 
 But the spurred imagination must sug- 
 18 
 
ON THE SHELF 
 
 gest to us that though slang is not lovely, 
 neither is it sinful, and that years will 
 probably bring grammar as well as a sense 
 of fitness. And, most of all, imagination 
 will suggest that B. s girl is not going 
 to be the nervous invalid that her tire 
 some, complaining mother is ; it may even 
 picture to us her hearty, healthy children 
 though that is looking pretty far ahead, 
 for B. s girl is an unromantic little soul, 
 the more s the pity! 
 
 As for C. s daughters "out, if you 
 please, until one o clock at night in a 
 canoe with the D. boys. What is their 
 mother thinking of? except, of course, 
 poor woman, she probably can t manage 
 them ; girls do anything they please now 
 adays! Imagine our mothers allowing 
 such performances!" Well, well! our 
 mothers come in for a little praise, it 
 seems, by contrast. But when we were 
 as old as C. s girls we did not praise their 
 old-fashioned ways. Only, unlike C. s 
 19 
 
THE COMMON WAY 
 
 girls, and B. s and A. s, we were silent 
 except to one another. These new girls 
 speak out ! And who shall say that their 
 candor is not better than our timidity? 
 Oh yes, scandalous, of course, that canoe 
 business, yet see the other side. Look at 
 the simple, wholesome, candid relations 
 between our boys and girls; no squashy 
 sentimentality, no silly flirtatious ro 
 mancing, almost no sex consciousness. 
 This lack of the romantic instinct is not 
 beautiful; it is, perhaps, not entirely nor 
 mal the pendulum has swung too far 
 the other way; but can one look at the 
 young man and the young woman of to 
 day, straightforward, clean - though ted 
 young people, and not be filled with a 
 certain admiration and hopefulness? 
 
 As for the boy and his father, when 
 one gets one s breath after hearing a 
 grandfather called a "pill," it is general 
 ly to cry out indignantly at the lack of 
 reverence. When a lad, discussing this 
 20 
 
ON THE SHELF 
 
 or that with his father, remarks, earnest 
 ly, "You don t know what you re talking 
 about, governor!" it does seem as though 
 the bottom had dropped out of everything. 
 "He speaks as though to an equal," the 
 pained and angry listener declares. So he 
 does; and it is a shock. Yet let the fa 
 ther and mother beware how they lightly 
 refuse such equality. Below, in the boy s 
 honest mind, is no shadow of disrespect; 
 only an uncouth friendliness, which may 
 easily be shocked into resentment if or 
 dered to shape itself into the conventional 
 and certainly more aesthetically pleasing 
 manner with which we used to address 
 our fathers. We wish, however, to be 
 treated as superiors and not as equals. 
 And why? In all honesty, are most 
 fathers and mothers superior to these 
 frank and wholesome young people in 
 anything except their obvious years and 
 the burden of sad or mean experiences? 
 If age is our only claim to superiority, if 
 
 21 
 
THE COMMON WAY 
 
 we can demand reverence merely on the 
 ground of having lived longer, we had 
 best lie low, like Brer Rabbit, and hope 
 the boys will not find us out. Age, per se, 
 may claim tenderness and pity, but not 
 respect; that only comes when the years 
 have brought humanity and wisdom and 
 the experience that worketh hope. With 
 reverence it is not ask and receive but be 
 worthy and receive! 
 
 And even if we are worthy, it will still 
 be necessary to remember that reverence 
 is not a matter of terms, but an attitude of 
 the heart. Its presence may be concealed 
 by slang, just as its absence was some 
 times concealed by the stilted and respect 
 ful phraseology of previous generations. 
 
 Once feeling this deeply, the equality 
 of friendship, claimed by our boys 
 clumsy tongues, will have in it a precious 
 meaning that we shall be careful not to 
 injure. Though we shall not cease to 
 labor to teach them better manners! 
 
 22 
 
ON THE SHELF 
 
 So, slowly, we admit the hopefulness 
 of the new ideals in methods and man 
 ners. In morals imagination has a harder 
 task, but again memory helps us out. 
 
 There are certain fundamentals of right 
 and wrong which the generations cannot 
 alter, but in the minor moralities, how we 
 ourselves differ from our forebears ! Some 
 of us remember that we were not allowed 
 to play cards ; dancing and the playhouse 
 were not for well-brought-up folk such as 
 we. Unreasonable and even ridiculous as 
 such ideas seem to us now, there can be 
 no question that the previous generation 
 suffered very much when we declared our 
 independence. But can we believe that 
 our elders would have been justified in in 
 sisting that we should do only what they 
 considered right? Some did so insist, 
 and some of us remember the catastro 
 phes that followed. May memory save 
 us from like mistakes! 
 
 But in this matter of morals it will not 
 23 
 
THE COMMON WAY 
 
 be enough merely to avoid the mistake 
 of insisting upon our ideals ; we must be 
 able to see the value and the hope in 
 ideals radically different from our own. 
 We, perhaps, hold to certain modifica 
 tions of the old principles ; we smile at the 
 assertion that cards are sinful, but we 
 cannot see our young people (or people 
 old enough to know better) playing 
 Bridge for money without a shudder. 
 Nor will all the imagination in the world 
 convince some of us that such playing 
 is anything but downright wrong-doin. 
 No, we shall not change our positive con 
 victions ; but we shall be willing to let the 
 younger people reach their convictions 
 in their own way. They may have to 
 burn their fingers at Bridge before they 
 learn the lesson that we could teach them 
 comfortably in a few words. 
 
 But probably their way of learning is 
 by burned fingers. Consequences are 
 often painful, but they are very in- 
 24 
 
ON THE SHELF 
 
 stmctive! We never profited by the 
 experiences of our elders; why should 
 these children profit by our experiences ? 
 Yet it takes a good deal of imagination to 
 be patient and hopeful, and, after a cer 
 tain fair presentation of our views, con 
 tent not to interfere. 
 
 Perhaps the change in beliefs, which 
 goes with the ethical change, is even 
 harder to meet; yet it, too, has its noble 
 side. It may be humiliating to discover 
 that our dictum concerning eternal truth 
 is not enough ; but unless we are very nar 
 row and very mean we will admit that 
 the young soul has a right to search out 
 truth for itself. And if the search is ear 
 nest, and not flippant, it is something to 
 rejoice in; even though our children 
 write "not proved" over all our dearest 
 beliefs. 
 
 But even with our best endeavors it is 
 useless to deny that this is a bad moment 
 for us, sitting up on our shelves and look- 
 3 25 
 
THE COMMON WAY 
 
 ing on. It is a moment when, perhaps, 
 most of all it is well to look back and re 
 member how our fathers and mothers felt 
 when we declined to believe that the 
 world was made in six days of twenty- 
 four hours each. To be sure, we know 
 that, by-and-by, after denying this and 
 questioning that, we opened our eyes 
 upon a wider horizon of eternal things. 
 Yet those dear old people who fastened 
 their beliefs into a creed that seems to us 
 pathetically cramped, but who lived by 
 it lives that put ours to shame, grieved 
 over us, just as we grieve over these 
 creedless children. 
 
 Take the matter of church -going, which 
 is the symbol of belief. It begins to be a 
 burning issue in many families where the 
 boy is old enough to go into business and 
 the girl is just home from college. Sun 
 day morning comes, and the youngsters 
 begin to growl; they go to church, per 
 haps, if it is insisted upon, but at what 
 26 
 
ON THE SHELF 
 
 cost of temper all around! "When a 
 man works for six days," the boy will 
 announce, "he needs recreation, hang it!" 
 And the girl says something equally posi 
 tive and ungracious. 
 
 Yes, it is certainly a painful moment. 
 But if we see no hope in it, it is plain 
 that our years have taught us neither pa 
 tience nor trust. Our heavenly vision 
 comes to us inside the four walls of a 
 church ; yet dare we affirm that it cannot 
 come outside those four walls? What 
 right have we to say that the children, 
 lifting up their eyes unto the hills on 
 some of their churchless Sundays, may 
 not have glimpses of divine things that 
 will make life deep and rich? We dis 
 trust the heavenly vision if we do so af 
 firm! 
 
 As, sitting upon our shelves, we think 
 soberly of this whole situation, we begin 
 to see, if honest with ourselves and our 
 27 
 
THE COMMON WAY 
 
 young people, that the changes about 
 which we worry ourselves are superfi 
 cial; the real and fundamental things, the 
 things that mean character, are eternal. 
 It is only their expression which has al 
 tered. What does it matter how our girls 
 wear their hair though they look like 
 owls in an ivy-bush; what does it really 
 matter, the stumbling, stupid slang our 
 boys talk, if honor and truth and love re 
 main? Admit! we differ upon a hun 
 dred points but they are all minor 
 points; in essentials, in love and truth 
 and honor, we can meet the children if 
 we will take the trouble to do so. 
 
 To meet them does not mean that we 
 shall give up our churches or decline to 
 read our Bibles; nor shall we stay out in 
 canoes ourselves until midnight, or wear 
 our skirts up to our knees on the golf- 
 links, or acquire the manners of A. s 
 girls, or speak the strange tongue of D. s 
 boys. If we try to do these things, we 
 28 
 
ON THE SHELF 
 
 shall not only fail, but we shall be ridic 
 ulous, which is the cruelest kind of fail 
 ure. No, we shall not acquire the meth 
 ods or the manners or the minor morals 
 of our young people ; but we shall under 
 stand the young people. We shall be gen 
 tle with their new ideals indeed, we 
 shall be more than this; we shall be re 
 spectful of them. 
 
 And when we have reached this point, 
 behold an astonishing thing: we are not 
 on the shelf any longer! We are of the 
 elect. 
 
 For the sign of the elect is the pos 
 sibility of growth in ideals! 
 
AUNTS 
 
 /CONSIDERING mothers, the wonder 
 V^rf is that children turn out as well as 
 they do. And considering children, the 
 wonder is that mothers survive. 
 
 Such, at least, is the opinion of a cloud 
 of witnesses composed of those who have 
 ceased to be children, and have not be 
 come mothers. "What," declares the 
 spinster or the childless mistress of a 
 household "what will happen to those 
 awful Jones children? How will they 
 turn out? Mrs. Jones gives them abso 
 lutely no training!" And then she looks 
 at Mrs. Jones, and her wonder grows; for 
 the demands of the growing Joneses upon 
 30 
 
AUNTS 
 
 their mother their noise, their mumps, 
 their clothes, their squabbles are enough, 
 she thinks, to send Mrs. Jones into her 
 grave, if only for refuge. 
 
 Yet the fact is Mrs. Jones survives. 
 And the chances are that the children will 
 turn out fairly well. The observer ad 
 mits that she even turned out fairly well 
 herself though she was once a child; 
 and her own mother, bless her heart! sur 
 vived to be many times a grandmother. 
 
 Now, as one reflects upon the anomaly 
 of children who ought to be ruined, but 
 are not, and mothers who ought to be 
 dead, but are not, it is plain that there 
 must be an explanation, and some people 
 believe that the explanation is found in 
 one word: Aunts. 
 
 This paper is an appreciation of the 
 aunt, the unmarried sister or sister-in- 
 law. It is an effort to show that she is the 
 Buffer of civilization. She does not often 
 recognize her important function, nor do 
 
THE COMMON WAY 
 
 other people; and so, naturally, she is not 
 always valued as she should be. Cer 
 tainly she has not received much atten 
 tion either sociologically or imaginative 
 ly. Science has concerned itself deeply 
 enough with other human relationships; 
 and the supremest art has devoted it 
 self to their expression there is a whole 
 literature of paternity, and the great 
 pictures of the world are of motherhood 
 and brotherhood. But science ignores 
 aunts; and when it comes to the arts, 
 who can recall a work of art which seri 
 ously and nobly sets itself to reveal the 
 genius of aunthood ? Not one! We have 
 Maggie Tulliver s aunts, to be sure, and 
 Pierre Loti has drawn very exquisitely 
 the tenderness of an adult for the mem 
 ories of his own childhood in connec 
 tion with a gentle old creature, la tante 
 Claire. One can recall a dozen such in 
 stances, perhaps, but they are all spo 
 radic ; there is no aunt literature, as there 
 
AUNTS 
 
 is a maternal, or filial, or amical liter 
 ature. 
 
 And yet in the social and moral world 
 the aunt has a unique importance ; an im 
 portance which becomes apparent as soon 
 as we recognize her as a Buffer; for the 
 moment we do we are obliged to take her 
 seriously. She, meantime, you can de 
 pend upon it, is taking us seriously! She 
 looks on at, let us say, Mrs. Jones s do 
 mestic situation and wonders ; she has her 
 own thoughts, this observing aunt! Mrs. 
 Jones, however, or any mother of children, 
 returns the aunt s puzzled look with equal 
 wonder, but with pity, too; because a 
 human creature who suffers the empti 
 ness of a childless life is an object of pity. 
 
 "I think old maids are the saddest 
 things!" the mother says, toiling up stairs 
 with sleepy Johnny heavy in her arms 
 and small Mary tugging at her skirts, and 
 perhaps the two older children howling 
 in the sitting-room because the biggest 
 33 
 
THE COMMON WAY 
 
 brother has snatched their picture-book 
 away from them. " I think they are to be 
 pitied. Nothing to do ; nothing to love 
 except other people s children. My hus 
 band s sister adores my children, of 
 course, and I must say she is an immense 
 help to me. But still, it isn t as if they 
 were her own, poor thing!" 
 
 And then she proceeds to put her little 
 people to bed to wash their faces, and 
 hear their prayers, and tuck them up for 
 the night; then she goes to her own bed 
 worn out and happy. She has no com 
 prehension of any other point of view. 
 The shrill voices down - stairs did not 
 trouble her; the destruction of things (as 
 destruction, apart from expense) did not 
 worry her ; her own fatigue is almost deli 
 cious to her. Perhaps she falls asleep pity 
 ing Aunty ; and hidden underneath the 
 pity there is just a little contempt, too. 
 
 This every good woman and mother 
 will instantly deny. 
 
 34 
 
AUNTS 
 
 Contempt for Aunty ? Of course not ! 
 but I m sorry for her, poor thing!" 
 
 All the same, it is contempt, and it is 
 unavoidable. It is probably a cosmic 
 emotion, far deeper than Christian ethics 
 which forbid contempt for any other hu 
 man creature. It is the race recognition 
 that something is wrong. The complete 
 man or woman must know the complete 
 gamut of the elemental human experi 
 ences, and the childless being cannot know 
 it. No imagination will supply to such a 
 being an understanding of the "passion 
 of the dam"; no sympathy can reveal to 
 her soul the sense of immortality, felt 
 (unconsciously) by the individual who is 
 continued and continued in her race. 
 Both these things may be accepted by 
 the brain of the childless adult ; but they 
 cannot be known by the heart. Of course 
 the mother does not go through any such 
 philosophical explanation of her pity and 
 her unconscious contempt. She sits plac- 
 35 
 
THE COMMON WAY 
 
 idly darning the children s stockings (the 
 holes in the knees are appalling!) and 
 says, "It s too bad about Aunty." 
 
 It is. But not entirely in the way the 
 mother means. It is too bad that Aunty 
 is incomplete; it is too bad that she has 
 not known, or may never know, the great 
 elemental emotions of humanity the 
 love of man and woman, the passion of 
 maternity, the human birthright of anx 
 iety, of care, of grief, of supreme joy in 
 the deepest human relationships; these 
 things are indeed too bad. But it is also 
 too bad that the mother does not suffi 
 ciently appreciate the fact that Aunty s 
 stultification has resulted in the creation 
 of a buffer. 
 
 Of course there are mothers here and 
 there who do appreciate it; just as there 
 are aunts whose love and whose joy in 
 service leave no consciousness of fatigue 
 or ennui. There are aunts who honestly 
 prefer to hang over Johnny s crib when 
 
 36 
 
AUNTS 
 
 he is taking his noon nap, instead of go 
 ing out to luncheon; aunts who find it 
 better fun to play with children not their 
 own than to seek an amusement personal 
 to themselves. These aunts are gener 
 ally very young; or else this disposition 
 on their part is shown to Johnny because 
 he is the eldest, rather than to the half- 
 dozen who follow Johnny like a descend 
 ing flight of steps ; or perhaps they are so 
 potentially maternal that human young 
 (plus family feeling) are irresistibly at 
 tractive to them. Such aunts, with sweet 
 and happy unconsciousness of the fact, 
 are probably rehearsing their own part 
 of motherhood, to be played (if Heaven 
 is kind) with divine joy later on. But 
 these aunts are the exception ; just as the 
 mothers who appreciate their Buffers are 
 the exception. The ordinary aunt the 
 good, conscientious, kindly, affectionate 
 woman, who is tired, or bored, or critical, 
 the aunt to whom mother and children 
 37 
 
THE COMMON WAY 
 
 cling with serene selfishness is the aunt 
 of whom this "Appreciation" is written. 
 And the mother to whom it is espe 
 cially dedicated is the ordinary mother 
 good, too, and conscientious, on her own 
 lines; a little dulled by maternity, and 
 full of the dreadful selfishness of human 
 love a selfishness which can be as in 
 tense as the selfishness of hate. This 
 mother knows that her husband s sister 
 is devoted to the little Joneses; and she 
 is glad of it, and grateful for it (because 
 she really is a nice woman) ; but she is 
 almost always unaware that her sister-in- 
 law is standing between her and the on 
 slaught of her offspring; standing also 
 between her offspring and her own ami 
 able slackness, which relations - in - law 
 call by the hard name of spoiling. For 
 Aunty has her own opinions about these 
 dear children (they really are dear to 
 her) ; and sometimes it takes all her good 
 sense to refrain from sharing her opinion 
 
 38 
 
AUNTS 
 
 with Mrs. Jones. Aunty could point out 
 to her sister-in-law that Johnny sits with 
 his mouth open; "gapes at you!" Aunty 
 says to herself. That May holds her 
 spoon awkwardly; "I wouldn t let a 
 child of mine have such table manners!" 
 That the two older children have very 
 disagreeable voices and shuffle dreadfully 
 with their feet. Aunty, being wise, keeps 
 this information to herself; but she acts 
 upon it when she is alone with the little 
 Joneses! 
 
 When Aunty, in the character of Buf 
 fer, steps in, and says to Tom s wife: 
 "Now, dear, you go and lie down. I ll 
 take care of the children this afternoon," 
 she does so not merely because it is a 
 joy and privilege to spend several hours 
 in the society of the little Joneses. She 
 does so because she believes it to be her 
 duty to help Mrs. Jones; if there is a sec 
 ond reason, it may be for the fun of be 
 ing with the children. But that second 
 39 
 
THE COMMON WAY 
 
 reason does not always exist; the first 
 carries Aunty to the battle-ground of the 
 nursery, and gives the mother her nap 
 the nap that helps her to finally survive 
 those little Joneses. 
 
 So all the long afternoon the aunt is on 
 hand to amuse the little people; but also 
 to inculcate, not too mildly, rules of un 
 selfishness and orderliness. It is at such 
 times that she takes the opportunity to 
 tell Johnny to close his lips; when May 
 has her bread and milk at five, Aunty 
 puts the little fingers under instead of 
 over the spoon ; she shows the two shuf 
 fling children how to walk. Thus, silent 
 ly, patiently, disgustedly very often, does 
 the Buffer fulfil her functions; looking on 
 and watching the children while they 
 play locomotive cars with chairs that 
 screech over the floor; keeping the peace 
 when the boys scrap for the same picture- 
 book and the girls take Solomon s plan 
 for sharing a doll ; doing her part in fetch- 
 40 
 
AUNTS 
 
 ing and carrying; pulling mittens over 
 pudgy and apparently boneless little 
 hands; buttoning gaiters; finding mis 
 laid hats; afterwards putting all these 
 garments away, and washing dirty faces 
 and squirming ears ; and when at last her 
 brother s wife wakes up, refreshed and 
 ready for the evening fray, retiring from 
 the scene, tired out; glad that she has 
 done her duty to mother and children; 
 truly fond of her little nieces and nephews, 
 but feeling, perhaps (inarticulately, of 
 course), that there is something to be 
 said for Herod. 
 
 Mrs. Jones, when she wakes up and 
 comes down - stairs to tea, is sincerely 
 grateful (because she is a nice woman ;) 
 but there are nine chances in ten that she 
 thinks if she thinks at all that the after 
 noon has meant to Aunty just what it 
 would have meant to her. If she could 
 only look into Aunty s mind and see the 
 hot thoughts of reform for the little Jones- 
 4 41 
 
THE COMMON WAY 
 
 es, how astonished she would be! In 
 stead, the very next day, she will watch 
 her sister-in-law plait pigtails, or pin on 
 bibs, or cut the mutton at dinner into 
 small cubes, or get down on her knees 
 and pull on tight rubbers; she will see 
 her hunt up old paint-boxes, and pro 
 duce old gift-books or new magazines to 
 be daubed during a rainy afternoon; and 
 she will look on as if it were all a matter 
 of course. She never knows that Aunty 
 is controlling an impulse to express a 
 strong opinion. She does not know it, 
 because she herself would not mind the 
 squabbling, or the noise of the chairs; she 
 would not feel annoyed at the mislaid 
 hats, or the loose button - holes of the 
 gaiters, or the touch of May s sticky fin 
 gers on her fresh waist. 
 
 In fact, unless enlightened by Heaven 
 or a candid and unprejudiced friend, 
 Mrs. Jones is constitutionally unable to 
 understand the feelings of her Buffer. 
 42 
 
AUNTS 
 
 And this is a real pity about Aunty. 
 
 If Mrs. Jones could understand, her re 
 sulting appreciation would do much to 
 tide Aunty over many bad moments. 
 The Buffer, going home alone in the twi 
 light, falls to wondering at her sister-in- 
 law s ability to bear successive after 
 noons such as this she has just passed; 
 forgetting, poor girl (for she, also, does 
 not quite understand the situation) for 
 getting that she is incomplete, that she 
 is without that prop of maternal instinct 
 which makes it possible to endure and 
 even to enjoy the little Joneses. And 
 makes it possible, too, to be blind to 
 their defects those defects so obvious 
 to the clear-eyed, tired aunt, walking 
 home at dusk, and thinking what she 
 might have done for her own amusement 
 or edification had she had her afternoon 
 to herself. 
 
 Occasionally (and this is another thing 
 that is a pity) Aunty does not have any 
 43 
 
THE COMMON WAY 
 
 home to which to walk she lives with 
 the Joneses. This is unfortunate, but, 
 of course, sometimes it cannot be helped. 
 Yet how infinitely better it would b for 
 her if she could have a foot on the earth, 
 quite of her own, somewhere outside 
 Mrs. Jones s hospitable little roof even 
 if it were a single room under somebody 
 else s roof, to which she could retire after 
 a day on the field, so to speak. 
 
 "What!" cries Mrs. Jones "Aunty 
 happier not to live with Tom and me! 
 Why, I never heard of anything so hor 
 rid. She s a great deal better off here 
 than she could be anywhere else. I m 
 sure I give up my second spare room to 
 her, and I do everything I can; but still," 
 Mrs. Jones says, beginning to be hurt, 
 "perhaps we don t give her enough." 
 
 Well, come now: what do Mr. and Mrs. 
 
 Jones give Aunty? To begin with, her 
 
 board and lodging; the privilege of being 
 
 with the little Joneses every minute of 
 
 44 
 
AUNTS 
 
 the day (and sometimes night, too, if the 
 house is small). The joy of listening 
 to her brother and sister-in-law s talk 
 about their own affairs or cares, about 
 their happiness or anxieties, or (occasion 
 ally) it is her privilege to listen to their 
 differences and squabbles. When Mrs. 
 Jones has a little party she offers Aunty 
 the chance to arrange the parlor and the 
 flowers; to give up her own bedroom as 
 a dressing-room to the guests; to run out 
 a dozen times into the kitchen to see that 
 things are going smoothly, and to make 
 sure that the ice-cream is taken out of 
 the moulds at the proper moment. Mrs. 
 Jones also gives Aunty the opportunity 
 to help with the weekly mending. " But 
 I m sure," Mrs. Jones flames out at this, 
 " I help her with her clothes !" Of course 
 she does, when she has time (for Mrs. 
 Jones is a nice woman) ; but it stands to 
 reason, as every mother knows, that she 
 hasn t very much time to help with 
 45 
 
THE COMMON WAY 
 
 Aunty s dress-making, with all those chil 
 dren on her hands. 
 
 The amount of it is, Aunty receives in 
 her brother s house such scraps of life as 
 may be left over. 
 
 This is not because the Joneses are un 
 kind or ungenerous. It is because they 
 are human that is all. 
 
 The family life is and must and ought 
 to be the first thing. Aunty is forever 
 on the outside of it by a law of nature, 
 for which no one is to blame. Wait un 
 til she gets a family of her own, then 
 she will know how it is herself ! With the 
 best intentions in the world, Mrs. Jones 
 cannot make an outsider an insider. 
 Therefore Aunty receives in the good, 
 kind, conscientious Jones household only 
 what it is able to give namely, second 
 hand joys and interests and duties. And 
 that is why, if she can add even a very, 
 very small income to her excellent com 
 mon-sense, she will go away and find a 
 46 
 
AUNTS 
 
 little home of her very, very own, even 
 if it is only one room. This would not 
 lessen her love for her nephews and nieces 
 indeed, it might increase it nor would 
 it make her any less anxious for their well- 
 being, or less ready to act as their Buffer. 
 Well, well; poor little Mrs. Jones! It is 
 easy enough to criticise ; but with a limited 
 income, and a small house, and four or 
 five children how can she do as much 
 for her husband s sister as she would like 
 to, and how can she give those five 
 youngsters the training and discipline 
 that Aunty, by the very fact and grace 
 of being an outsider, can give so well? 
 Nobody means to blame Mrs. Jones for 
 not telling Johnny, over and over, twenty 
 times a day, to close his lips; or not 
 changing May s spoon at breakfast, din 
 ner, and supper; or for not calling the 
 two others back two or three times an 
 hour to walk properly; she can t do 
 everything ! 
 
 47 
 
THE COMMON WAY 
 
 But in regard to Aunty there is one 
 thing she can do: she can set herself de 
 liberately to see how all these things look 
 to her sister-in-law. She can imagine 
 but there! that is the secret of achieve 
 ment in life: imagination. And perhaps 
 Mrs. Jones was not born with imagina 
 tion, or, if born with it, she has permitted 
 it to become atrophied for want of use. 
 Imagination is the one thing that most 
 Mrs. Joneses need. It is not that they 
 are unkind to Aunty, or more than ordi 
 narily selfish, or even that they are mere 
 ly indifferent to her personal happiness 
 or enjoyment. It is that they do not ap 
 ply imagination to Iter concerns. They 
 have no keen realization of what it would 
 mean to them to spend their lives going 
 up and down other people s stairs! 
 
 Let the mother, some tired afternoon, 
 when Aunty has sent her off for a much- 
 needed nap, look, open-eyed, at Aunty s 
 lot; let her ask herself even one question: 
 48 
 
AUNTS 
 
 1 How would I like to take care of the 
 Robinson children, for instance, for a 
 whole afternoon?" "But those Robin 
 sons are not nearly so nice as my chil 
 dren!" she thinks, instantly resentful at 
 such a comparison. 
 
 Perhaps they are to Mrs. Robinson. 
 Let the mother work out, with her rusty, 
 unused imagination, several parallels of 
 this kind, and she will begin to be uncom 
 fortable about Aunty; she will not take 
 her nap on that particular afternoon. 
 Perhaps she will even be slightly unhappy 
 for a day or two ; but that won t hurt her, 
 and it may be most beneficial for Aunty. 
 For out of her discomfort (may it be very 
 keen !) will grow certain resolutions : 
 
 First Not to take it for granted that 
 Aunty likes just what she likes at least 
 in the same degree. 
 
 Second Not to take it for granted that 
 Aunty is interested in her interests at 
 least in the same degree. 
 49 
 
THE COMMON WAY 
 
 Third Not to take it for granted that 
 Aunty is particularly favored in being 
 privileged to live under the Joneses roof 
 or to frequent it every day for the sake 
 of the little Joneses. 
 
 Fourth Never to forget that Aunty 
 is a Buffer! 
 
THE PASSING OF DORA 
 
 THERE has arisen a generation that 
 knows not Dora. And more than 
 this, taste has so changed that even if 
 Dickens were to-day the household word 
 that he was forty years ago, so that a ref 
 erence to Dora would be understood, her 
 name would only arouse the comment of 
 Mr. F. s aunt: "7 hate a fool" , for Dora s 
 prettiness and silliness and feebleness are 
 beyond the imagination of 1904; her 
 charm is unintelligible. 
 
 But Dickens, as well as his Dora, is, 
 
 for the most part, unknown. Very few 
 
 young people nowadays read these old 
 
 novels but how well we older folk know 
 
 Si 
 
THE COMMON WAY 
 
 them! The tall, narrow books, bound 
 in black and gold, with execrable type 
 and rough wood-cuts, are dear to our 
 souls; and what friends they hold! how 
 well we know David Copperfield, and 
 Paul Dombey, and Little Nell, and Mr. 
 Wemmick, and Pip one does not know 
 where to stop when one begins to name 
 these old friends with whom we are as well, 
 and sometimes better, acquainted than 
 with our next-door neighbor. It is a 
 little startling to us to find in these days 
 an allusion to the "Boofer Lady" re 
 ceived with a puzzled stare; or the dec 
 laration that one "will never desert Mr. 
 Micawber," passed over without a twin 
 kle of recognition. The fact is there are 
 so many books of to-day that the books 
 of yesterday cannot be re-read; and as 
 for the books of day before yesterday, 
 they are sold for waste paper! The nov 
 els of the great caricaturist do not suffer 
 this last fate, as convention demands their 
 52 
 
THE PASSING OF DORA 
 
 presence in every library; but the dust 
 gathers on their tops and their leaves 
 are yellowing inside. 
 
 To the elderly folk, whom these old 
 books enlightened and enlivened a gen 
 eration ago, the name Dora tells a story, 
 foolish, it must be admitted, absolutely 
 unreal in the electric light of to-day, but 
 tender and touching, and with a peculiar 
 charm of its own. 
 
 Dora this for the benefit of younger 
 people was a very pretty, very foolish 
 young lady, with whom Mr. David Cop- 
 perfield fell distractingly in love. A con 
 versation between them, on the occasion 
 of David s confiding to his beloved the un 
 promising state of his finances, reveals not 
 only his love, but Dora s mental caliber: 
 
 "Dora, my own dearest! I am a beg 
 gar!" 
 
 "How can you be such a silly thing," 
 replied Dora, "as to sit there telling such 
 stories? I ll make Jip bite you!" 
 53 
 
THE COMMON WAY 
 
 In spite of this threat, David persists in 
 telling her of his ruin ; he is burning with 
 ardor, and full of joy in the prospect of 
 working for her. "A crust well earned," 
 cries David; at which Dora bursts out 
 that she does not want to hear about 
 crusts; "Jip must have a mutton chop 
 every day at twelve or he will die!" 
 David s enthusiasm is dampened, but he 
 promises the chop, and then warms again 
 to the need of bravery and his intention 
 to crush obstacles. At this Dora turns 
 faint, cries, moans; she is so overcome 
 that it is some time before she is suf 
 ficiently calm to "make Jip stand on his 
 hind legs for toast." 
 
 It was at this juncture that Dora s 
 father, with obvious common-sense, for 
 bade an engagement between these two 
 children; but a kind fate, removing him 
 to another world, gave Dora and her 
 dog Jip into the care of two amiable and 
 sentimental aunts, who, by-and-by, in 
 54 
 
THE PASSING OF DORA 
 
 spite of a sense of the impropriety of 
 love-making, consented to an engagement, 
 and after a while the babes were married 
 and departed (with Jip) to make a home 
 of their own. 
 
 Is there any wonder that the present 
 generation of girls does not know Dora 
 or care to make her acquaintance? Ap 
 parently there is nothing in common be 
 tween this silly, pretty, useless little creat 
 ure and our strenuous and startlingly 
 practical young woman, whom the fash 
 ion of the day calls Jane or Sarah or some 
 equally uncompromising name. Jane and 
 Sarah might be differentiated yet a lit 
 tle further Jane being, for the sake of 
 illustration, the girl who is (as a boy 
 called her) "shouting athletic"; and 
 Sarah, a college graduate, who has a 
 healthy instinct for out-of-door life, but 
 who has also domestic inclinations and 
 great common-sense. Sarah is nearer to 
 Dora than is Jane, yet even between 
 55 
 
THE COMMON WAY 
 
 Sarah and Dora there is a marked dif 
 ference in ideals and standards; this 
 difference shows itself early in Sarah s 
 engagement. . . . 
 
 The proposal is probably as palpitating 
 as was David s own; it is blundering, and 
 perhaps curt, and very likely slangy; but 
 the two hearts beat very hard, and Sarah 
 looks down, and ties her handkerchief in 
 knots, or breaks her fan to pieces. But 
 when Reginald (as the girls names grow 
 austere, the boys names are becoming 
 flowery) when Reginald stammers some 
 thing to the effect that he never saw a 
 girl he he thought so so corking jolly, 
 don t you know; and he doesn t suppose 
 she thinks anything of him, but but 
 won t she just say "yes," don t you 
 know ? When Reginald gets these words 
 out of his tight throat, Sarah manages to 
 say, very low, " I I don t mind, Reggie." 
 Then Reginald measures her finger for the 
 ring, and kisses it during the operation; 
 
 $6 
 
THE PASSING OF DORA 
 
 and Sarah, in the supreme feminine mo 
 ment of happy exultation, lets him spoon 
 to his heart s content but not indef 
 initely. Even while he is still holding 
 that pretty left hand she begins to be a 
 little silent, a little sober; she is thinking 
 that she must get ready for the respon 
 sibilities that that ring will imply. She 
 must learn how to do this, she must ask 
 her mother how to manage that; she 
 must calculate how many potatoes and 
 theatre tickets can be bought on Regi 
 nald s salary. She is full of interest, and 
 very much in earnest. 
 
 As the engagement proceeds she and 
 Reginald take long walks in the moon 
 light, discussing whether it will be more 
 economical for him to take luncheons 
 at a restaurant or to come up to the 
 flat every day at noon. "I ll see you 
 if I do that," says Reginald, ardent 
 ly; "it s worth the car -fare to see 
 you!" And Sarah says, sternly, blushing 
 s 57 
 
THE COMMON WAY 
 
 happily in the moonlight, " Don t be 
 silly!" 
 
 It was not thus that Dora took her en 
 gagement. The silliness that Sarah rep 
 robates in Reginald is wisdom compared 
 with Dora s silliness. Of course an an- 
 gaged girl is expected to be more or less 
 foolish; that is youth and human nature 
 all the world over. But Dora s foolish 
 ness! . . . 
 
 David, just before his marriage, pre 
 sents his adored with a cook-book, a set 
 of tablets, and some pencils, so that she 
 might practise housekeeping. Result : 
 "The cookery book made Dora s head 
 ache, and the figures made her cry. They 
 wouldn t add up, she said. So she rubbed 
 them out, and drew little nosegays and 
 likenesses of me and Jip all over the 
 tablets. Then," says poor David, " I 
 playfully tried verbal instruction in do 
 mestic matters. . . . Sometimes, . . . when 
 we passed a butcher s shop, I would say, 
 S3 
 
THE PASSING OF DORA 
 
 Now suppose, my pet, that we were 
 married, and you were going to buy a 
 shoulder of mutton for dinner, would you 
 know how to buy it? My pretty little 
 Dora s face would fall, and she would 
 make her mouth into a bud again, as if 
 she would very much prefer to shut mine 
 with a kiss; . . . then she would think a 
 little, and reply, perhaps, with great 
 triumph, Why, the butcher would know 
 how to sell it, and what need / know? " 
 No wonder that Sarah, going faithfully 
 to cooking-school, taking lessons in house 
 keeping, hunting up the cheap shops on 
 the side streets so that Reginald s money 
 shall not be wasted in the fine stores on 
 the avenue no wonder that she sniffs at 
 the mention of Dora, and declines to read 
 about her. "I ve got to read up on the 
 chemistry of food," says Sarah. "I find 
 that cheese is only fourteen cents a pound, 
 and porterhouse steak is thirty cents; 
 but cheese supplies all the nitrogen that 
 59 
 
THE COMMON WAY 
 
 the human body needs, so I m going to 
 buy a chafing-dish (if I don t get a silver 
 one for a wedding-present), and give 
 Reggie Welsh rabbits every night." 
 
 Poor David received no such chemical 
 consideration! Dora s housekeeping was 
 unimaginable. 
 
 "My dearest life," David said one day, 
 "do you think Mary Anne has any idea 
 of time?" 
 
 "Why, Doady?" inquired Dora. 
 
 "My love, because it s five, and we 
 were to have dinner at four." Then the 
 poor hungry husband adds that perhaps 
 his little wife might remonstrate with 
 Mary Anne. 
 
 "Oh no, please! I couldn t, Doady!" 
 
 "Why not, my love?" 
 
 "Oh, because I am such a little goose," 
 said Dora, "and she knows I am!" (Here, 
 at least, is a tribute to the common-sense 
 of Mary Anne.) 
 
 But David still urges, mildly. 
 60 
 
THE PASSING OF DORA 
 
 "No, no! please!" cried Dora, with a 
 kiss; "don t be a naughty Blue Beard! 
 Don t be serious!" 
 
 " . . . my love, it is not exactly comfort 
 able to have to go without one s dinner." 
 
 "N-ri-no!" replied Dora, faintly. 
 
 " My love, how you tremble!" 
 
 "Because I know you are going to 
 scold me," exclaimed Dora, in despair. 
 "I didn t marry to be reasoned with." 
 
 Poor David! This is not silliness; it is 
 idiocy. At least so it would be called 
 nowadays, when Sarah, instead of weep 
 ing over recipes, would have gone out into 
 the kitchen long before the hour of wait 
 ing had passed, put on an apron, tucked 
 up her sleeves, and cooked a delightful 
 dinner for her hungry husband. 
 
 But just here some old-fashioned per 
 son asks a question: Would David have 
 been quite so fond of such a capable, 
 rational, practical Dora? Fonder! if he 
 had any sense, cries our cooking-school 
 61 
 
THE COMMON WAY 
 
 Sarah, with quick contempt for both the 
 silly wife and the fatuous husband. She 
 has no sympathy with either of the pair; 
 furthermore, she cannot even understand 
 the situation. They are both fools; that 
 would be her only comment. It is evi 
 dent that the feminine ideal of which 
 Dora was the embodiment has gone out 
 of fashion as completely as her hoop- 
 skirt or her shawl or her queer little 
 poke-bonnet ! 
 
 As for Jane, she finds Dora s mental 
 and physical qualities even more un 
 thinkable than Sarah does, for Sarah s 
 domestic instinct supplies a certain half- 
 maternal pity for what is weak and help 
 less, even if it is accompanied by idiocy. 
 Jane would treat Dora as a roaring joke 
 if one may quote Jane s own words. Her 
 vocabulary is limited, and it might be a 
 "howling joke," or, if she is a very highly 
 developed Jane, "a rotten joke." The 
 mere picture of Dora would send Jane into 
 62 
 
THE PASSING OF DORA 
 
 "yells of laughter" (still, for the sake of 
 exactness, to quote Jane herself). Yet, 
 though Jane can hardly believe it, her 
 father or certainly her grandfather 
 finds Dora s picture hidden somewhere in 
 his heart and he thinks it far more 
 charming than the latest snap - shot of 
 Jane herself, standing, hatless, bare-arm 
 ed, feet well apart, raising her brassey for 
 a whizzing stroke. In this old picture, 
 Dora is clinging to the arm of her proud 
 and tender David; her little bonnet is 
 very far back on her head ; her curls are 
 brought forward over her pretty, blush 
 ing cheeks and shadow her clear and 
 very gentle eyes eyes that fill with 
 tears at a hard word or a sharp look ; she 
 wears an enormous crinoline, and her 
 frock is ruffled up to her waist; her little 
 feet are thrust into slippers that fasten 
 with a crossed elastic around her ankles, 
 and sometimes a scarf hangs across her 
 shoulders or a fan dangles from her wrist ; 
 
 63 
 
THE COMMON WAY 
 
 and she holds a smelling-bottle for Dora 
 grows faint very often, and even swoons 
 occasionally. 
 
 "Hang it!" says Jane, irritated to be 
 obliged to contemplate this ridiculous 
 picture, "she s a perfect idiot!" (Jane s 
 language would not lead one to infer that 
 she ever had a grandfather! Yet the 
 fact is, she is, generally speaking, a well 
 born girl, her father and mother being 
 persons of refinement and cultivation, 
 who shiver at her slang and make futile 
 attempts to check it). 
 
 If Jane herself may be considered a pat 
 tern of what a girl ought to be, her com 
 ment upon Dora is not unreasonable, 
 though it may be inelegant; but Jane 
 cannot bother about elegance any more 
 than about femininity. Jane, with a 
 whimpering mother in the background, 
 has done her best to eliminate femininity. 
 She dresses as much like the boys as she 
 dares; she uses their slang; she plays their 
 64 
 
THE PASSING OF DORA 
 
 games; she imitates their hare-brained 
 pluck, their apparently stolid indifference 
 to prettiness and daintiness; she dreads 
 being ladylike quite as much as they do. 
 She is a first-rate companion when a man 
 is roughing it ; she can pick up her end of 
 the canoe on a long carry as well as the 
 next fellow ; she can play her eighteen holes 
 without a pause; she doesn t fuss about 
 clothes; she is rough-haired, brown -arm 
 ed, loud-voiced. Reginald would have 
 an armful if, like David, he should at 
 tempt to lift her over a brook that she 
 might not wet her little feet; but, for that 
 matter, Jane s feet are not little, and her 
 heavy, hob-nailed walking-boots spare 
 him any such weighty necessity. Besides, 
 she could carry Reginald almost as easily 
 as he could carry her! In fact, she ap 
 parently differs from him only in the 
 bitter fact that convention insists that 
 she shall wear petticoats. 
 
 And what is the result? Except to 
 
 65 
 
THE COMMON WAY 
 
 her humiliated mother and shocked fe 
 male relations she is a "good fellow." 
 There is no possible doubt of that. Does 
 Reginald like her?" inquires again the 
 old-fashioned and doubtful voice. In 
 deed he does! He finds her very com 
 fortable to get along with; he does not 
 have to take any trouble when he is with 
 her; he feels no restraint in manners or 
 conversation. He reclines on the canoe 
 cushions puffing cigarette smoke into her 
 face while she does the paddling. "Yes," 
 he was heard to say recently on the porch 
 of a summer hotel "yes, the girls are 
 first-rate, don t you know; they re cork 
 ing jolly to go off with; but," he rumi 
 nated, scowling out from under a shock 
 of yellow hair as rough and sunburned as 
 Jane s own, "they ain t the kind that s 
 makin a fellow feel romantic, don t you 
 know?" 
 
 Ah, Reggie, how right you are! " They 
 ain t makin you feel romantic!" And 
 66 
 
THE PASSING OF DORA 
 
 you want to feel romantic; the "other 
 fellow" is well enough; "corking jolly to 
 go off with"; but life is not made up of 
 "going off," and you do want something 
 else. 
 
 It is here that David s grandson is 
 really more honest and wholesome than 
 Dora s granddaughter he is true to the 
 everlasting masculine, and makes no pre 
 tence to anything else. He respects Jane 
 just as he would a man on his own team ; 
 and he takes about as much trouble to 
 make himself agreeable to her as he would 
 to the man. He is far more courteous 
 to Sarah ; and as for his behavior to some 
 pretty creature who shrinks at the sight 
 of a caterpillar, and is afraid of thunder, 
 and could not lift the bow end of a canoe 
 to save her life he is David over again ! 
 There is apt to be a brief period when 
 Reginald prefers the pretty goose even to 
 Sarah ; and for a time he talks about her 
 to Jane, who sympathizes with him, and 
 
 67 
 
THE COMMON WAY 
 
 gives him good advice. And in this con 
 nection behold a fact as old and as un 
 reasonable as human nature: a man 
 does not marry a woman because she is 
 able to give good advice. This shows, no 
 doubt, the foolishness of men; but it is 
 the truth, and has to be taken into ac 
 count when one wonders why it is that 
 Jane does not, as a rule, marry as early 
 as Sarph, or even as some prehistoric and 
 exasperatingly feminine goose. 
 
 There is one thing to be said, however, 
 for Jane: although she gives good advice, 
 and talks, man to man, about the goose, 
 and sympathizes in her rough way with 
 the sighing lover, she does it sometimes 
 with a strange burning in her own heart. 
 And it is in this little stinging, unac 
 knowledged, despised pain that Jane s fut 
 ure salvation lies. It may not save her 
 until her hard and angular youth has faded 
 into middle-aged singleness; but then it 
 will probably become so keen that it will 
 68 
 
THE PASSING OF DORA 
 
 turn her into a positive Lydia Languish! 
 She must take lessons from Dora in time if 
 she would spare us that horror. Not in 
 Dora s imbecility, but in certain qualities 
 fundamental to life, which made the pure 
 gold of Dora s character. 
 
 But very likely that is too much to ex 
 pect; Jane is so supremely satisfied with 
 herself that she will only realize she is an 
 artificial being when artificiality has be 
 come natural, and the loud, horsy girl has 
 stiffened into a loud, horsy spinster 
 most unlovely and, too often, unlovable. 
 
 The fact is, we must build our hopes 
 for the future upon our boys unchanged, 
 wholesome, honest masculinity a mas 
 culinity which rejects the unsexed wom 
 an, and creates for women a standard of 
 gracious and intelligent goodness; just as 
 the normal woman s demand for truth 
 and courage and tenderness creates a 
 standard for men. Sarah recognizes this 
 standard of moral and intellectual sweet- 
 
THE COMMON WAY 
 
 ness, though she embodies it in a some 
 what rudimentary form; but Jane will 
 Jane ever see that good health does not 
 necessarily imply rough, sunburned arms; 
 that good-fellowship does not involve 
 loud voices, or "loud mouths," as the 
 boys call the girls slang; that good sense 
 does not demand all lack of reserve in 
 conversation? Will she ever acquire 
 charm ? the word that sums up all those 
 qualities of heart and head and brings 
 into the world of toil and sport and busi 
 ness something which we call loveliness? 
 
 Nobody wants Dora s silliness or use- 
 lessness ; but her fundamental femininity 
 that the world does want, and indeed will 
 have, for nature can probably be trusted 
 to make Jane extinct. 
 
 Sarah has long since perceived what 
 poor little Dora never could have perceived, 
 that the heart alone is idiotic; she knows, 
 though she may not talk about it, that 
 the head alone is unlovely and unlovable. 
 70 
 
THE PASSING OF DORA 
 
 With these two things in her sensible 
 brain Sarah will draw a swift conclusion: 
 graciousness and love and honor, the de 
 light of sweet reasonableness, make the 
 ideal woman; they are the combination 
 of heart and head which is the perfect 
 human life. 
 
 May Jane s eyes open to the same fact! 
 
"LOVE MY DOG 
 
 THERE are some people in this world 
 who do not believe that Love and 
 Quarrelling are ever united. Such lucky 
 folk grow joyously dogmatic upon the 
 subject: To put Love and Quarrelling 
 together, they declare, is to set down a 
 contradiction in terms! 
 
 It is generally a woman who ventures 
 upon such blithe optimism, and if pressed 
 for proof she says, cheerfully: "Why, if 
 you love people, you can t quarrel with 
 them. I never in my life quarrelled with 
 anybody I loved!" Which reveals to the 
 envious listener that there are some tem 
 peraments (generally feminine) which 
 72 
 
LOVE MY DOG" 
 
 must needs make personal experience the 
 basis of opinion. There is a bit of gossip 
 concerning a husband and wife that il 
 lustrates this feminine inclination: Said 
 the husband (a little sharply), "Women 
 make everything personal ! Replied the 
 wife (a little pathetically), "/ don t." 
 
 Yet the happy folk who believe that 
 Love may not know bitterness and anger 
 and revenge must have heard the apho 
 risms and proverbs that confess the ex 
 perience of The Race: "There is no quar 
 rel so bitter as a family quarrel"; 
 "Cain and Abel"; "Lovers quarrels," 
 etc., etc. When the Optimist hears 
 these sayings she is quick to retort that 
 when husbands and wives, and fathers and 
 sons, and brothers and sisters quarrel, 
 it merely means they do not love each 
 other. When this statement is made, 
 it is just as well to bring the conversa 
 tion to a close, for the Optimist has re 
 vealed her absolute ignorance of life. 
 
 6 73 
 
THE COMMON WAY 
 
 And, anyhow, it is far better to let such 
 happy, unbelieving folk alone than try 
 to teach them bitter truths. If Heaven 
 has spared them this particular knowl 
 edge of our poor, squalid, divine, human 
 nature, with its strange contradictions 
 of good and bad if hard experience or 
 pitiful sympathy has not revealed to 
 them that Love may sometimes walk, 
 unworthily, hand in hand with anger 
 and spite, they may be ignorant, but they 
 are certainly comfortable. And it is 
 pleasant to know that somebody is com 
 fortable! even though the big world 
 outside is lying travailing in sorrow and 
 pain. 
 
 And yet comfort is not the best thing 
 in life, after all. It is not the highest 
 thing. Wisdom is better than ease. And 
 in this strange paradox of Love and 
 Quarrelling that thoughtful and sorry 
 people see or experience, wisdom is our 
 only refuge. Wisdom does not deny the 
 74 
 
"LOVE MY DOG" 
 
 miserable fact of quarrelsome Love; it 
 faces it and admits it and explains it. 
 Wisdom tracks down the quarrelsome 
 instinct, and finds it rooted in egotism; it 
 tracks down human passion, and finds 
 it rooted in self; it tracks down the ten- 
 derest devotion, and finds it, obscurely, 
 but still surely, rooted in this same or 
 ganic base of human living. And as soon 
 as sore and angry and loving people can 
 realize that one human quality can be 
 responsible for two such cruelly different 
 emotions as love and anger, they can 
 with a reasonable amount of hope go to 
 work to make things better. 
 
 One admits at once that egotism is not 
 a pretty word. The Optimist frantically 
 repudiates it, at least for Love. And for 
 Quarrelling, too: "If I quarrel," she says, 
 "it is only because I know I am right; it 
 isn t egotism, it is principle, with me! 
 It is never for any merely selfish end. 
 And that just proves that I couldn t 
 75 
 
THE COMMON WAY 
 
 quarrel with any one I loved, because I 
 always give in at once. That is my 
 pleasure," she adds, piously. 
 
 Happy Optimist to have an ego that 
 prefers to give in ! Yet, after all, the pref 
 erence for giving in, although a more 
 pleasing form of egotism than is common 
 ly prevalent, is still egotism personal in 
 clination is responsible for this agreeable 
 trait. However, the Optimist will never 
 admit this ; and it is as provoking a state 
 ment as that "unselfishness is a form of 
 selfishness," or any other philosophical 
 abstraction which leads so easily to a 
 moral reductio ad absurdum. It is enough 
 to say that when Love quarrels with its 
 beloved, it is generally from an instinct 
 to thrust upon the beloved its own ideals 
 or hopes or purposes; it is a demand for 
 unity. Now, the "demand for unity" 
 is the very heart and soul of Love. 
 But it is also all there is to Quarrel 
 ling. 
 
"LOVE MY DOG 1 
 
 There is a certain little foolish saying 
 that sums it all up 
 
 " Love me, love my dog." 
 
 "You love me! you are mine! then 
 you will think my thoughts, love my 
 loves, desire my desires you will be one 
 with me. No? You can t? You don t 
 agree with me in religion ? in politics ? 
 You don t agree with me about our grand 
 father s will ? about impressionist pict 
 ures? about the best method of making 
 bread ? the state of the weather ? the way 
 I wear my hair ? Good heavens ! do you 
 call that love? You must agree with 
 me; you shall!" Clash! clamor! struggle! 
 Misery, bitterness court -rooms, even. 
 And underneath, Love. 
 
 This is egotism the primal human 
 passion which created Love, and at the 
 same time hammered into every language 
 phrases about Love and Quarrelling ; ego 
 tism, which means individuality, and 
 without which we would be but poor, 
 77 
 
THE COMMON WAY 
 
 soft things of elemental jelly but which 
 is responsible for the cruelest pain poor 
 Love can suffer. 
 
 Just see how it is all about us ex 
 cept in the household of that blessed 
 Optimist. . . . One need not think of the 
 dreadful illustrations, the awful things 
 that must needs take the court-room as 
 a stage, but the hundreds of home hap 
 penings, the bickerings and fault-find 
 ings and small quarrels that we see or 
 hear about us. The Optimist has no 
 personal experience with them, and for 
 that let her thank God ; but she must be 
 aware that in her brother-in-law s fam 
 ily the girls are always squabbling; and 
 that her next-door neighbor doesn t get 
 on with his eldest son ; and that poor Mr. 
 Smith has a lot to bear from Mrs. Smith s 
 tongue. The Optimist knows these 
 things perfectly well ; and she also knows 
 that her brother-in-law s girls do really 
 love each other. Just look at the way 
 
 78 
 
"LOVE MY DOG" 
 
 the eldest girl took care of the youngest 
 one when she broke her ankle; why, she 
 was perfectly devoted! As for that 
 father next door, of course he loves his 
 boy; he fairly starved himself to death 
 to put the fellow through college; he 
 would do anything for him! Mrs. Smith 
 yes, even Mrs. Smith, with her sharp 
 tongue to that poor, long-suffering man 
 Mrs. Smith loves her husband; why, 
 she would lie down and let him walk over 
 her. She, too, "would do anything" 
 for him; except, it appears, let the un 
 fortunate man alone. 
 
 In every one of these cases, as the honest 
 Optimist admits, there is real Love; but 
 when she looks deeply enough she will 
 find, in every case, that Love, with pro 
 found egotism, is insisting upon unity. 
 
 There are households founded in Love 
 
 where Love sometimes commits actual 
 
 suicide by this wicked insistence. Each 
 
 separate, loving, tumultuous, angry heart 
 
 79 
 
THE COMMON WAY 
 
 is saying, "You must love my dog! You 
 must think as I do, you must believe 
 as I do, you must hate, even, as I do!" 
 It is not uninstructive to run little quar 
 rels down, once in a while, and find their 
 root in this passionate demand of true 
 and tender Love for unity. . . . 
 
 Take, for instance, that family of girls 
 with their everlasting bickering. It is 
 so much a matter of course with them 
 that very often they are hardly conscious 
 of it. But the Optimist once tried visit 
 ing in that house, and the memory of 
 those few days or weeks is a nightmare! 
 If only the girls could know the embar 
 rassment and mortification that a visitor 
 feels who listens to their quarrels! She 
 would like to escape to her room, but if 
 flight is impossible she assumes a sickly 
 smile and tries to look as though it were 
 all a joke; but she knows it is not a joke, 
 and she vows silently that she will never 
 visit these people again. Quarrels in this 
 80 
 
"LOVE MY DOG" 
 
 household begin almost always in that 
 most pernicious habit of domestic criti 
 cism which is so frequent even in families 
 of the better class. "You are a perfect 
 fright in that dress," Ethel tells Margaret, 
 candidly; and Margaret retorts, "Well, 
 you re not a beauty yourself in that ridic 
 ulous new hat of yours." If the Opti 
 mist had not heard remarks of this kind 
 in a household of educated, cultivated, 
 charming women (Christian women, 
 too, they call themselves) she would not 
 have believed that these comments were 
 made by ladies. But they were, and 
 others like them; and after a few more 
 such stupid vulgarities there springs out a 
 bitter flame of anger, a loud and silly quar 
 rel that makes the poor visitor crimson 
 with shame at the mean and miserable 
 scene. And yet Ethel did nurse Margaret 
 with a tenderness that was perfectly 
 beautiful! They love each other, these 
 two flushed and foolish girls; their love 
 81 
 
THE COMMON WAY 
 
 has been proved by cheerful self-sacrifice 
 dozens of times; "but why on earth do 
 they quarrel so?" the visitor thinks, 
 shivering. 
 
 The explanation is obvious enough; 
 Ethel loves Margaret; she wants her to 
 look, and be, her very best. Ethel s idea 
 of Margaret s looks involves a certain 
 sort of gown ; she says so, forcibly. Mar 
 garet, however, has her own idea; she 
 protects it, and turns the attack upon 
 Ethel s hat, which does not do Ethel jus 
 tice. 
 
 The fact is, underneath the squalid 
 Actual of egotism the Ideal is noble: " Be 
 one with me!" Love is crying, "Think 
 as I do; feel as I do. You shall!" If 
 the beloved s egotism is equally strong, 
 Love s demand results in fireworks of 
 temper. 
 
 The quarrelling between the father and 
 son is even more clearly Love s cry for 
 unity. "I don t understand it," the de- 
 82 
 
"LOVE MY DOG" 
 
 spairing father says about his boy; "I m 
 sure I only want Bob s own good. Why, 
 bless my soul! I ve given up my life to 
 that boy. No man ever did more for 
 his son than I ve done for mine. Of 
 course, I m not a rich man, but there 
 are mighty few rich men s sons that have 
 had any more advantages than my Bob 
 has had. I ve worked myself to death 
 to give them to him! And now here he 
 is, setting up his own Ebenezer, and say 
 ing he wants to go into some tomfool 
 speculation, instead of settling down here 
 in the business I built up for him. Well, 
 he can do it. Let him try earning his own 
 bread-and-butter. I m blest if I give him 
 a cent if he chooses to turn up his nose 
 at my business." 
 
 How well we all know this poor house 
 hold! How well we know the mother s 
 efforts to " smooth things over," the di 
 vided sympathy of the sisters, the com 
 placent condolences of relatives who 
 83 
 
THE COMMON WAY 
 
 always knew that Bob wouldn t turn out 
 well, his father spoiled him so. But how 
 clearly it all comes from Love s demand 
 for unity. " Be one with me," the father s 
 heart says; "it will be best for you; it 
 will be happier for me." Poor, pathetic 
 father s heart, with its pleading, deter 
 mined egotism ! what can the outcome be, 
 when his demand for unity hurls itself 
 against youth s inexperienced but equal 
 ly determined egotism ? Bob s sulky in 
 sistence upon a foolish course, and his 
 father s foolish wisdom in forcing him 
 into what is good for him, result too often 
 in permanently hurt feelings; often in a 
 loud and bitter quarrel that sometimes 
 sometimes is never forgiven. This last 
 is especially apt to be the case when the 
 father, by force majeurc, finally gets his 
 own way, and the lad, without the salu 
 tary lesson of an unpleasant experience 
 of his own, buckles down to what he does 
 not want to do. 
 
 84 
 
"LOVE MY DOG" 
 
 And then take those Smiths. There 
 is no situation where Love so persistently 
 and foolishly even madly demands 
 unity as in married life. Mrs. Smith 
 loves Mr. Smith so much that she lives 
 only to prove to him that his welfare 
 depends on loving her dog. She lives 
 only to make him good or comfortable 
 or healthy in her way. Sometimes, in 
 her case, Love s demand is for unity in 
 religion (or, rather, in theology) ; and Mr. 
 Smith s disinclination to go to church 
 causes the sincere, narrow w T ife a deep 
 and frightened pain; she argues and en 
 treats; she even (not being very well 
 bred) she even scolds. Sometimes it is 
 a demand for unity of judgment as to 
 health; she nags Mr. Smith about exer 
 cise or health - food until the poor man 
 would rather be in his grave and be done 
 with it! Sometimes it is only a wish to 
 be united on the idea of comfort ; and he 
 is bidden to take a certain chair, or wear 
 
 85 
 
THE COMMON WAY 
 
 flannel or cotton or sackcloth! so that 
 he shall be as well as Mrs. Smith prays 
 that he may be. The quarrels that 
 spring from these well - meant demands 
 are heart-breaking. Just plain, every 
 day wickedness may result from the 
 woman s religious egotism; nervously 
 ruined health is a frequent outcome of 
 well-meant hygienic advice; and as for 
 discomfort is there any discomfort com 
 parable to other people s ideas of com 
 fort? Yet all the while Love stands 
 clamoring for unity to the incessant and 
 miserable accompaniment of quarrels. . . . 
 Every man and woman of us who has 
 lived long enough to gain wisdom by ex 
 perience will be obliged to admit this 
 strange, sad union of Love and Quarrel 
 ling; but every one of us who has lived 
 deeply enough will know that experience 
 worketh hope, and will admit that when 
 Love quarrels with its beloved it is only 
 because this noble ideal of unity has run 
 86 
 
"LOVE MY DOG" 
 
 off the track, so to speak; a virtue has 
 gone to seed; a divine quality has de 
 veloped a defect. The outlook for quar 
 relsome Love is not so hopeless when we 
 can understand this. See how it would 
 work if those two squabbling sisters would 
 either of them stop to remember that it 
 is only Love, foolish, exasperating, un 
 balanced Love, that is responsible for the 
 ill-bred domestic criticism that spoils the 
 home life. If Margaret once honestly be 
 lieved that Ethel s love made her so un 
 pleasant, she would stop aghast; amused, 
 no doubt, but very likely touched, and al 
 most certainly silenced. And that would 
 be the end of the quarrel. 
 
 It is just the same thing with the boy 
 and his father; but in this case the un 
 derstanding and forbearance must come 
 mostly from the father, for youth, in the 
 nature of things, has developed only a 
 most rudimentary Love out of egotism. 
 Yet just suppose the father had the cour- 
 87 
 
THE COMMON WAY 
 
 age and the patience to say, "Well, go 
 ahead, my dear fellow, on your own lines, 
 if you must." And then wait for the dis 
 illusioned home-coming, with its hearty, 
 fatted - calf appetite, and its enduring 
 friendship between father and son. 
 
 In the case of the husband and wife, 
 Mr. Smith s realization that Mrs. Smith s 
 most trying ways spring from this poor, 
 crazy Love of hers would certainly help 
 him to be patient. But, after all, the 
 woman has the cure in her own hands. 
 Not in a lesser, but a greater, Love. Not 
 in contentment with a lack of unity, but 
 in an ideal of unity so large that it holds 
 the man s ego intact, unhurt, full of the 
 dignity of his own personality. "Let us 
 be one," Love will demand. But it will 
 not define which one. For, indeed, a per 
 fect union is never either one it is both. 
 Suppose Mrs. Smith could say, thought 
 fully (not pathetically or resignedly for 
 pathos and resignation are enough to 
 88 
 
"LOVE MY DOG" 
 
 send Mr. Smith to the ends of the earth 
 to escape her!): "Well, dear, I rather 
 think you are mistaken; but, of course, 
 do as you think best"; and let him stay 
 at home and read his paper on Sunday; 
 or even serve him with hot mince -pie 
 every night at twelve, if his foolish ego 
 shall so desire! In the latter instance, 
 when the inevitable result follows, if she 
 can refrain (of course, to do this she 
 must be a friend as well as a poor earthly 
 wife) if she can refrain from saying, "I 
 told you so!" there will be no quarrel, but 
 a unity that does not fear diversity. 
 For when Smith recovers, though he may 
 or may not continue the pie diet, he will 
 not hate Mrs. Smith, as he would have 
 done had she forced him into reluctant 
 health. This course on her part allows 
 the poor man to preserve his individual 
 ity ; it does not force him to be good with 
 her goodness, or wise with her wisdom. 
 It allows him to love Mrs. Smith, and not 
 7 89 
 
THE COMMON WAY 
 
 her dog. Yet what unity such a course 
 may develop between two people who 
 love each other! Their thoughts may be 
 quite diverse; their ideals, though of 
 equal height, may be very far apart; 
 their theories radically opposed ; yet each 
 so respects the other s personality that 
 they differ with a delightful good-humor 
 which really adds much to the interest 
 of their lives. Such lovers may never 
 agree on certain points, but they will 
 never quarrel. 
 
 To bring about this sane friendship be 
 tween people who love each other, re 
 spect for individuality is of course neces 
 sary. But such respect is, after all, an 
 abstract thing, and cannot be cultivated 
 in a moment. While waiting for it to 
 struggle through our stony egotism, there 
 is one thing we can do : we can vow that 
 unless duty seriously and lovingly de 
 mands it, there shall be no unasked criti 
 cism between people who love each other. 
 90 
 
"LOVE MY DOG" 
 
 Think how it would make for peace 
 if domestic criticism were forbidden at 
 every breakfast-table. Think of our own 
 happiness if our brothers and sisters would 
 stop telling us unpleasant truths! think 
 of their happiness if we could refrain from 
 enlightening them as to their dress or 
 manners or beliefs. 
 
 Indeed, if Love will stop its suicidal 
 habit of criticism, it will quarrel so seldom 
 that it will be as hopeful on this subject 
 as the Optimist herself, and it will declare, 
 of Love and Quarrelling, that, like Mrs. 
 Arris, there ain t no such thing! 
 
, 
 
 THE TYRANNY OF THINGS 
 
 THE story of Rosamond and her 
 purple jar which fed the minds of 
 youth in the early part of the last cen 
 tury had a very immoral moral attached 
 to it namely, that the useful was more 
 needful than the beautiful. Rosamond, 
 it will be remembered, deeply desired a 
 certain purple jar; she also needed a new 
 pair of shoes. Her mother, who was an 
 insufferably wise and prudent person, 
 laid before her little seven-year-old girl 
 the whole situation: something fine to 
 look at versus something comfortable to 
 wear; something to gratify the eye or 
 something to meet the needs of the body; 
 92 
 
THE TYRANNY OF THINGS 
 
 the useful or the beautiful. "Oh, moth 
 er, oh ! " Rosamond had cried out ! Look ! 
 look! Blue, green, red, yellow, and pur 
 ple! Oh, mother, what beautiful things! 
 Won t you buy some of these?" And 
 the mother replied with cold reasonable 
 ness, "Of what use would they be to me, 
 Rosamond?" 
 
 Poor little Rosamond, hunting for a 
 use, suggests that flowers might be put 
 into these beautiful red and yellow things ; 
 and then the passion of art speaks with 
 pathetic simplicity: "They would look so 
 pretty on the chimney-piece." It is then 
 that the mother calmly presents the sit 
 uation. . . . Rosamond, with a spiritual in 
 stinct which was soon to be extinguished, 
 quickly chose the purple jar, joyously in 
 different to tattered shoes. The remarks 
 of her mother, the great discomfort of 
 pebbles in her little shoes, combined with 
 the mean advantage taken by the author 
 in making the jar a fraud in the fleeting 
 93 
 
THE COMMON WAY 
 
 nature of the gorgeous purple dye, soon 
 brought poor Rosamond down to the 
 materialistic level of this most utilitarian 
 of Miss Edgeworth s households. Of 
 course, the moral shines forth distinctly: 
 The necessities of life are not spiritual, 
 but material. 
 
 That this is immoral, everybody will 
 agree. The statement that the body 
 shall be nourished at the expense of the 
 soul, at the cost of emotional experi 
 ences, at the price of that love of beauty 
 and sense of fitness which express them 
 selves in art, this statement is, of course, 
 wicked. Such nourishment starves the 
 spirit, though the body may wax fat 
 upon it, and the individual prosper in 
 every material way. Nor is he necessa 
 rily any the worse ethically, for character, 
 squeezed by pure reason into hard-and- 
 fast rules of conduct, becomes a reliable 
 and useful commodity in social life; a 
 staple that never fluctuates in gusts of 
 94 
 
THE TYRANNY OF THINGS 
 
 emotion, but can always be depended 
 upon. Yet where there has been any 
 love of beauty the artistic sense suffers 
 its own agonies of starvation until its 
 death ends its pain. By -and -by Rosa 
 mond got over crying out with joy at 
 the sight of color, just because it was 
 beautiful; she was able to choose a 
 needle-book, instead of a painted stone 
 plum, and even to congratulate herself 
 upon her own good sense: 
 
 I am glad I chose the red leather 
 needle-book that has been so useful to 
 me, instead of the stone plum that would 
 have been no use to me." 
 
 The enormity of a stone painted to look 
 like a plum did not, of course, weigh with 
 Miss Edgeworth; she merely presented 
 use versus what she called beauty; and 
 Rosamond learned the lesson. But the 
 little girl did not reach such utilitarian 
 heights without pain. Those of us who 
 know her woes by heart read into the 
 95 
 
THE COMMON WAY 
 
 small, ugly countenance of the wood-cuts 
 a certain pathos ; the pathos of the round 
 peg in the square hole. Miss Edge worth s 
 moral pen quickly whittled the poor peg 
 into shape; and when at the end of the 
 book we left her, Rosamond s desire for 
 beauty was thoroughly eradicated, her 
 aesthetic sense quite atrophied, her ap 
 preciation of utility grown to monstrous 
 proportions. As a result, her little, im 
 pulsive soul, full of the divine irrationality 
 of feeling which had needed only the bal 
 ance of life s necessities, had become 
 priggish and sterile, all its imaginative 
 promptings stultified by pure reason and 
 an entirely intellectual, unemotional sense 
 of duty. 
 
 Of course, this was all very bad; we 
 know it so well that no one takes the 
 trouble to say so. Yet somehow or 
 other the pendulum does seem to have 
 swung very far the other way! That 
 hard ugliness had in it a certain fibre 
 
THE TYRANNY OF THINGS 
 
 that we, in our lovelier living, come peril 
 ously near missing. It almost seems as 
 if nowadays the feeling for beauty had 
 brought about a sensuality of the mind 
 that has softened and crumbled the fun 
 damental granite of human experience 
 (which is only another word for utilitari 
 anism) , until we have merely a mush of 
 emotions which we call the artistic sense. 
 The demand of the American people is, 
 just now, for decoration ; but, as Beauty 
 has no ultimate and absolute standard, 
 decoration is, of course, a matter of per 
 sonal judgment. And what personal 
 judgment can do, we all know too well! 
 Purple jars (of insincerest dyes!) abound; 
 we are swamped with them. With imita 
 tion plums, with rolling-pins covered with 
 plush and studded with brass hooks, 
 with painted snow - shovels. We have 
 "picture throws," too monstrosities so 
 far removed from the ordinary walks of 
 life that they should perhaps be de- 
 97 
 
THE COMMON WAY 
 
 scribed in detail: eggs, blown, then gild 
 ed, and, separated by a blue or red glass 
 bead, strung upon a cord of chenille; 
 when twenty or twenty-five eggs have 
 been "treated" in this way, the whole 
 appalling collection is "thrown" over 
 the upper corner of a picture, and hangs 
 there to collect dust and debauch the 
 aesthetic sense of the family. 
 
 Of course, these are extreme and hor 
 rible illustrations of the untrained artis 
 tic sense. Yet even in refined households 
 it would seem that the rebound from 
 the utilitarianism of Rosamond s unpleas 
 ant mother, to the demand for some 
 thing to please the eye, has gone too far, 
 and that we need some slight return to 
 austerer standards. 
 
 Quite apart from the principle involved 
 in Miss Edgeworth s complacent worship 
 of the useful, the emptiness of the house 
 in which Rosamond lived is as delightful 
 as a fresh wind and silence at least when. 
 
THE TYRANNY OF THINGS 
 
 we approach it from the clutter and over- 
 adornment of our own dwellings; from 
 our "purple jars," our tottering tables 
 of useless and too often meaningless sil 
 ver, our crowded, billowing cushions, our 
 floating hangings, our preposterous ome 
 lette of Japanese rooms, Dutch corners, 
 and Mooresque nooks! 
 
 Rosamond s house, as it is pictured in 
 that little fat volume of our youth, is 
 plain to the point of bareness. In the 
 drawing-room we behold a mantel -shelf , a 
 single picture (hanging very near the ceil 
 ing), a table, a chair, a footstool; and a 
 female, Rosamond s mother, as wooden as 
 the rest of the furnishings! This room 
 is bare, but it is not hideous. In its way, 
 it has the refinement of a Japanese dwell 
 ing, clean, restful, simple. Contrasted 
 with certain drawing-rooms which one en 
 counters in one s way about the world, it 
 seems a haven of rest. It is useful, mere 
 ly; but how refreshing would mere use- 
 99 
 
THE COMMON WAY 
 
 fulness be in rooms filled to overflowing 
 with bric-a-brac, which too often tries 
 to combine use with beauty, to the abso 
 lute extinction of both. When people 
 of some degree of intelligence choose to 
 use as a match - case a gilded wooden 
 shoe, adorned with pink satin bows, it 
 is time to turn to Rosamond s mother: 
 "Why tie ribbons," she would say, "to 
 a receptacle for lamp-lighters ? Why gild 
 an article made to be worn in the mud ? 
 Why place a shoe, whose place is in the 
 closet or on the foot, on the mantel 
 shelf? What," this reasonable female 
 would demand, "is the use of such a 
 thing?" 
 
 What, indeed! The matches catch in 
 the ribbons, the gilt flecks off at a touch, 
 and the labor of the household is made 
 just so much more complicated by the 
 necessary dusting of this senseless thing. 
 
 The fact is, the gilded shoe is but a sym 
 bol of that tyranny of Things which the 
 100 
 
THE TYRANNY OF THINGS 
 
 over-elaboration of living, so characteris 
 tic of our day and generation, has brought 
 about. We have all of us felt it in one 
 way or another; perhaps most obviously 
 in aesthetics. But thoughtful persons rec 
 ognize their own (or their neighbor s) 
 slavery to Things, in social life, in edu 
 cation, and even in emotion. 
 
 In social life, the gilded shoes are mean 
 ingless details details which, for want 
 of a better term, are called " duties." 
 Now there are certain conventions of liv 
 ing, certain sweet refinements and noble 
 courtesies, which create elegance and 
 distinction, and do unquestionably make 
 for the truest civilization. No one can 
 question the value of such conventions, 
 because at bottom they are grounded on 
 spiritual necessities, on deep human ap 
 preciations. They are not Things, be 
 cause they have souls; but when such 
 decent and dignified conventions are 
 overloaded with pink ribbons and cheap 
 101 
 
THE COMMON WAY 
 
 gilding to return to the metaphor of 
 the shoe the spirit goes out of them. 
 When the human instinct of courteous 
 fellowship degenerates into the enforced 
 and hated round of calls, full of tired 
 chatter or else sighs of relief in finding 
 people "not at home," the pink rib 
 bons are beginning! When hospitali 
 ty, which may entertain angels unawares, 
 drops into a mathematical give and take, 
 the chains of slavery can be heard rat 
 tling under the table. 
 
 In intellectual life it is just the same. 
 The sound thoroughness of real scholar 
 ship is embroidered over and over with 
 futile accomplishments ; a little of a great 
 many things is too often the educational 
 standard; decoration where it does not 
 belong, elaboration of the useless, so that 
 the sternness of true study is hidden and 
 stifled and by-and-by extinguished. 
 
 The great emotional experiences of 
 life are belittled by the same insistence 
 102 
 
THE TYRANNY OF THINGS 
 
 upon the trivial : Life and Love look into 
 each other s eyes; a man and woman 
 elect each other from all the world. But 
 the joyful solemnity of marriage is ruf 
 fled by the details of the wedding, per 
 haps by family squabbles over flowers 
 and gowns and invitations! Or Great 
 Death comes in at the door, and the lit 
 tle human soul, overwhelmed with grief, 
 appalled by the sudden opening of Eter 
 nity before its eyes yet fusses (there is 
 no other word for it) over "mourning," 
 over the width of the hem on the veil or 
 the question of crepe buttons or dull jet! 
 This may be shocking or mournful or 
 ludicrous, as one happens to look at it; 
 but it is certainly uncivilized. 
 
 Perhaps even our religious life is not 
 free from this tyranny; crowds of super 
 ficial emotions riot hysterically in some 
 forms of worship, so that the bed-rock of 
 conduct on which emotion ought to rest 
 crumbles little by little away; plain 
 103 
 
THE COMMON WAY 
 
 duties go by the board, and gilding and 
 pink ribbons take their place. 
 
 There are a few people who long for 
 freedom from the unnecessary in society 
 and education and religion ; but there are 
 many more who are awakening to our 
 more obvious slavery in aesthetics. One 
 says "our" because the slavery does 
 not belong only in the class which is dig 
 ging its way out of barbarism with a 
 painted snow-shovel. The slavery begins, 
 to be sure, at this lowest point of artistic 
 development, but it runs up to the level 
 of the most cultivated appreciation of 
 what is beautiful. At this level it shows 
 itself in accumulation; and how well we 
 know the results! More Things: more 
 servants, more expense, more anxieties; 
 less time, less silence, less space! 
 
 In the Shovel and Picture Throw Class, 
 Things do not involve extra service, be 
 cause this class has, generally, a limited 
 income, hence the work caused by let 
 104 
 
THE TYRANNY OF THINGS 
 
 us say the shovel, does not imply ad 
 ditional household labor which must be 
 paid for; the owner does her own dust 
 ing. But time is stolen and space is 
 used and thought is squandered. There 
 is, furthermore, the initial expenditure 
 for the shovel itself. 
 
 This comes home to us all with dis 
 couraging force when we see the crowd 
 of women at Christmas -time who make 
 the day of Christ s birth a date for the 
 exchange and accumulation of trash. 
 The women who battle their way through 
 the department stores, while hard-earned 
 and hard-saved money trickles out of 
 thin, tightly grasped purses, for name 
 less things ! Celluloid and plush and gilt ; 
 cheap, flimsy, without dignity and with 
 out significance; neither useful to the 
 body nor nourishing to the soul. Put 
 such things beside a single rose, exquisite 
 for its little moment, gone when its work 
 of cheer and fragrance is done! and the 
 s 105 
 
THE COMMON WAY 
 
 poor slave to Things groans under the 
 consciousness of money spent for that 
 which is not bread, and labor given for 
 that which satisfieth not. 
 
 The vice of Accumulation, however, 
 does not reach its fullest expression 
 among the uncultivated poor the Shovel 
 Class; and for reasons that are obvious. 
 It shows its rank and poisonous growth 
 in households where a refined taste re 
 pudiates the celluloid whisk-broom case 
 and the plush picture - frame. To be 
 personal: Can we not all of us recall 
 articles packed away on the upper shelves 
 of our spare-room closets ? vases, casts, 
 plaques, lamps; packed away, not be 
 cause they are ugly, but because we 
 have so many new things that we must 
 dispose of old things to make room for 
 them. What would Rosamond s mother 
 say to two purple jars ? Yet some of us 
 exhausted housekeepers could easily (and 
 gladly) bestow twenty upon her! 
 1 06 
 
THE TYRANNY OF THINGS 
 
 Of course, accumulation, per se, is silly 
 but it is more than that ; it is a burden 
 and an anxiety. In the class that has 
 outgrown the Shovel it complicates do 
 mestic affairs, it raises the question of 
 household labor with its harrowing diffi 
 culties between employer and employed. 
 "Oh, for the days when I had one girl, 
 and dusted my own parlor!" cried a wom 
 an whose great establishment took her 
 time and nerves and morals. Desire 
 for the one-girl period was probably an 
 exaggeration, but her principle was sound 
 and civilized. Indeed, a limited civili 
 zation betrays itself in this overfeeding 
 of the artistic instinct, just as limited 
 breeding betrays itself in overfeeding of 
 the body. And when we once fully real 
 ize this, we shall no doubt rise up and 
 fight for freedom. But we shall not se 
 cure it without pain. The slave must 
 break his chains, and he cannot do so 
 without effort. 
 
 107 
 
THE COMMON WAY 
 
 Yet it has been done. 
 
 The first impulse of those who would 
 become civilized is to rid themselves of 
 Things ; and they hasten the hour of free 
 dom by presenting their unholy posses 
 sions to less enlightened households: a 
 cheap vase to a sewing- woman ; a gilded 
 broiler, tied with blue ribbons and used 
 as paper-rack, to some innocent depend 
 ant. But this is profoundly selfish and 
 irresponsible. It does, indeed, purge the 
 original owner of the horror, but it only 
 passes it along to afflict humanity. There 
 is but one sure road to freedom destruc 
 tion of Things. 
 
 A fire in the back-yard, fed with wood 
 en shoes, can be relied upon. Purple 
 jars, not being combustible, might be 
 drowned in the depths of the sea; brass 
 dragons with curly tails, called candle 
 sticks, awkward to hold, with no human 
 touch of imagination or handicraft about 
 them, neither useful nor beautiful, might 
 108 
 
THE TYRANNY OF THINGS 
 
 be disposed of to the junk-man; plush 
 things without a name demand the ash- 
 barrel, for they do not burn well; the 
 vital purity of fire repudiates them! 
 Tidies are prehistoric; but if any sur 
 vive, the ash -barrel is also their true 
 home. 
 
 On the whole, fire is our most efficient 
 helper. A "holy fire," some one called it 
 once a fire of sacrifice and aspiration and 
 worship! Rosamond s austere and un 
 lovely mother would no doubt ultimately 
 banish the unnecessary, the futile, and 
 the useless by forbidding their purchase; 
 but immediately afterwards it would be 
 necessary to banish Rosamond s mother. 
 Fire, however, vanishes with its purify 
 ing work and leaves Beauty, bare and 
 clear and entirely true, to take its majes 
 tic place in human life. . . . With what a 
 sense of freedom we would all breathe if 
 we were saved as by fire! 
 
 Think of our cluttered houses, swept 
 109 
 
THE COMMON WAY 
 
 clean of a thousand Things things beau 
 tiful, perhaps, in themselves (we are not 
 considering the snow -shovel), but so nu 
 merous that they cannot present a single 
 clear impression; think of our floors, bare 
 of multitudinous rugs; of our sideboards, 
 freed from innumerable pieces of unused 
 silver, upon which our servants spend 
 their grudging labor; of our walls, stripped 
 of dozens of pictures to leave space for 
 the two or three with which we want to 
 live. Think of days empty of trivialities 
 days free from long-drawn committee 
 meetings where nothing is accomplished, 
 from tiresome lectures, from weary call 
 ing, from the frippery of ceremony 
 days spacious and silent, open to nature 
 and art and humanness! Think of the 
 great, simple, divine human experiences, 
 of Love and Death, unspotted by triviali 
 ties; think even of worship stripped of 
 little, foolish, unmanly, and unwomanly 
 trimmings and details, and left to its own 
 no 
 
THE TYRANNY OF THINGS 
 
 unspeakable dignity, stirrred through and 
 through by the great pulse of Conduct ! 
 
 This ideal of freedom from the tyranny 
 of Things may be very far from realiza 
 tion, but there is reason to hope that down 
 underneath the dreary weight of our 
 foolish possessions it is slowly evolving. 
 
 And every one of us poor slaves who 
 lights a match to burn household trash 
 lights a torch to illumine the path on 
 which Truth and Beauty and Freedom 
 shall come into their kingdom! 
 
CONCERNING CHURCH-GOING 
 
 IT is not so very long ago that church- 
 going and character were synony 
 mous; not that everybody who went to 
 church was good, but everybody who 
 was good went to church. Only the scoff 
 er and the very black sheep stayed away. 
 To say of a man that he was not a church 
 goer was equivalent to saying that he 
 was to be looked upon with suspicion, 
 or, at any rate, with grave disapproval. 
 Christian people, in those days, had clear 
 and simple judgment in such matters. 
 Salvation, they said, depended upon the 
 knowledge of God, and knowledge of 
 God depended upon the Church. The 
 
 112 
 
CONCERNING CHURCH-GOING 
 
 logical deduction from the premise was 
 that everybody ought to go to church. 
 
 One looks back upon the simple and 
 uncomplicated frame of mind which could 
 make such a statement almost with envy. 
 It belonged to a period of definite ethical 
 outlines and plain, elemental laws; to a 
 time when people said "this is right"; 
 "that is wrong " ; when, for instance, with 
 clean - cut certainty they declared that 
 cards were the devil s prayer book; and 
 added that if one used the devil s litany 
 one was in a fair way to go to the devil, 
 for ever and ever. But how differently 
 we put such things to ourselves, we com 
 plex sinners of 1904 ! We hesitate to pro 
 nounce anything entirely good or entire 
 ly bad. We, for example, know the rela 
 tion of recreation to character, and be 
 lieve in the card -table accordingly; yet 
 we have an uneasy consciousness of the 
 devil in relation to Bridge. Our fathers, 
 or certainly our grandfathers, had no 
 
THE COMMON WAY 
 
 such uneasiness in any question of ethics. 
 They saw things simply right or wrong, 
 black or white. We, unsimple folk, are 
 bewildered by a multitude of shades of 
 gray. 
 
 And there are so many of these gray 
 questions! Dingy white some of them 
 are, or plaid, or check; there are appar 
 ently very few unmistakably black ones, 
 on which we can come out with a whole- 
 souled reference to the devil and all his 
 works ! And this question of the duty of 
 going to church is one of the gray ones. 
 
 There are, of course, a multitude of fool 
 ish and conceited things said by people 
 who do not go to church. "The Church 
 has done its work," these people say, care 
 lessly; "its day is over; it is obsolete; it 
 is a remnant of the dark ages and the 
 childhood of the race." Such statements 
 are so obviously absurd that they do not 
 give us much concern ; but they do make 
 clear to us that the time has passed when 
 114 
 
CONCERNING CHURCH-GOING 
 
 church-going was the highest expression 
 of the moral life of the community, and 
 hence a matter of course with respect 
 able people. 
 
 Going to church has ceased to be a mat 
 ter of course. 
 
 It has become a matter of effort, on 
 the part of the pastor, to "get people to 
 come," as the phrase is; a matter of re 
 luctant duty on the part of some of the 
 people who do come; and no matter 
 at all to the people who stay away ! 
 
 Yet, in spite of the effort in the pulpit, 
 in spite of the sense of duty in the pews, 
 a comparison of church attendance to 
 day with that of thirty or forty years 
 ago presents an astonishing difference. 
 The scattered congregation seems to be 
 made up of two classes: old, anxious, 
 conservative souls, who scold the empty 
 pews; young, rebellious, careless souls, 
 who come because parental authority re 
 quires it, but who promise themselves 
 
THE COMMON WAY 
 
 freedom at the earliest possible moment. 
 And between these two classes, which 
 sprinkle themselves over the half-empty 
 church, there is a great gulf fixed a 
 gulf of misunderstanding and lack of 
 sympathy. The older people are bitter 
 and hark back to some elemental law of 
 their youth as to the "duty" of going to 
 church. The younger people are con 
 temptuous and declare that they are a 
 law unto themselves. . . . But where are 
 the people who are missed? (We are 
 not just now asking about the people who 
 do not go to church anyhow or anywhere 
 the reckless, selfish, dissolute people; 
 such persons from the beginning have 
 been non- church -goers, and so do not 
 come into the present puzzle.) But where 
 are the people who, a generation ago, 
 would have been as regular in their at 
 tendance at church as their pastor him 
 self ? The people who are neither young 
 nor old, bitter nor contemptuous, con- 
 116 
 
CONCERNING CHURCH-GOING 
 
 servative nor impatient? Where are 
 they, these people of intelligence and 
 conscientiousness, of upright life, of re 
 sponsibility, or even of mere harmless, 
 pleasant living ? 
 
 They can be found easily enough. 
 They are reading their papers on Sunday 
 morning, or writing letters, or playing 
 golf, or perhaps lying in their beds half 
 asleep over a novel; they are studying, 
 they are deep in some professional work, 
 they are doing anything and everything 
 except going to church. In the 
 churches on Sunday morning the preach 
 ers upbraid them ; the old - fashioned 
 folk reprobate them for their bad ex 
 ample ; and the young people envy 
 them. 
 
 What does it all mean, this golf -play 
 ing, novel - reading, letter - writing state 
 of things ? How may it be met ? Where 
 is the law that can be applied to it, which 
 will define our duty a primitive, simple 
 117 
 
THE COMMON WAY 
 
 law, obedience to which will set every 
 thing right? 
 
 In regard to the young people, some 
 of us think that the law is obvious 
 enough. Church-going, we say, may have 
 become a matter of personal opinion and 
 choice among adults. But no opinion 
 can be of much value which is not based 
 upon experience; hence, before the chil 
 dren begin to make experiences for them 
 selves, before they can possibly be able 
 to have an opinion and make a choice 
 about church-going, they ought to be 
 educated in ways which human expe 
 rience in all the generations has proved to 
 be helpful to the spiritual life. 
 
 So, those of us who find the bread of 
 life in the church must certainly take the 
 children there. This is the elemental and 
 simple law in regard to youth, just as ele 
 mental and simple as that which justifies 
 the father and mother in providing food 
 for the baby s body which their own expe- 
 118 
 
CONCERNING CHURCH-GOING 
 
 rience declares is sound and nourishing. 
 The baby s preferences are not asked! 
 
 But in regard to grown people, a law as 
 to any especial food for body or soul is 
 hard to discover. 
 
 If we found, for instance, that deca 
 dence in church-going meant decadence 
 in character, we might feel that, at least, 
 we were on the way to such a law. But 
 it does not mean a decadence in character. 
 Some of these people who do not go to 
 church are not bad people. On the con 
 trary, we admit (if we are candid) that 
 among those that stay away to play golf 
 or write letters, or even to read novels, 
 are some of the noblest and best men and 
 women that we know. We have to ac 
 knowledge that the man who has made 
 the most superb fight for civic righteous 
 ness is a non-church-goer. We have to 
 grant that the woman whose purse and 
 heart are at the service of poor, bad, 
 broken humanity spends her Sunday 
 119 
 
THE COMMON WAY 
 
 morning in her garden. Yes, they are 
 good; it is their goodness that makes 
 them so perplexing. In fact, our young 
 people, longing for "tennis on Sunday 
 mornings, do not hesitate to point out 
 to us, with the candor peculiar to their 
 engaging generation, that some of these 
 non-church-goers are of very much more 
 value to the community than are certain 
 folk whom (possibly) respect forbids them 
 to name. We have to admit that some 
 of these non-church-goers practise Chris 
 tian virtues in a way that puts the Chris 
 tian church-goer to shame; they force 
 upon us the conclusion that attendance 
 at church is not a necessity, but an ad 
 junct to character. When this comes 
 home to us we find no elemental and 
 primitive repartee about the devil to fall 
 back upon. We have to face the com 
 plexity of the situation by asking our 
 selves certain questions : 
 
 First Why do we go to church ? 
 120 
 
CONCERNING CHURCH-GOING 
 
 Secondly What do we mean by 
 "church"? 
 
 As for why we go, there may be many 
 different reasons ; but there are two which 
 are common to us all: we go for instruc 
 tion, and we go for worship. 
 
 In the matter of receiving instruction, 
 there is a marked difference between the 
 older and the younger generation. In 
 these days doctrinal instruction is not 
 desired by the large mass of people who 
 might be church-goers. Indeed, indiffer 
 ence to such teaching is part of that 
 strange change of standards which just 
 now is so perplexing, and, indeed, so so 
 bering, Yet, if we will look deeply enough 
 into this antipathy to instruction in mat 
 ters of personal belief, we will find that 
 it is not all discouraging, because it has 
 its root in the ideal of personal liberty. 
 See what this ideal means in the matter of 
 instruction in relation to church-going: 
 
 We are willing to have our ministers 
 
 9 121 
 
THE COMMON WAY 
 
 say to us, "Do your duty," but we are 
 not willing to have them tell us what our 
 duty is; that we will decide for ourselves! 
 In other words, the ideal of personal lib 
 erty demands that each individual receive 
 his God for himself ; each individual evolve 
 his own ideal of righteousness. Never 
 any more may authority stand for truth ! 
 Never any more can the human creature 
 take his spiritual law second or third 
 hand. The Soul and God are standing 
 face to face. 
 
 That is what it all means, this clash 
 and clamor, this outbreak of individual 
 ism, with its foolishness and obstinacy 
 and conceit; these, we dare to believe, 
 are the unlovely and terrifying accom 
 paniments of a divine process of evolu 
 tion, which has for its end a personal 
 relation with God. The human Soul is 
 breaking out of the mould of custom that 
 mould so necessary in all beginnings ; to 
 face its Maker. "Son of Man," cries the 
 122 
 
CONCERNING CHURCH-GOING 
 
 awful Voice, stand upon thy feet!" 
 And the little, naked soul, stripped of the 
 swaddling-bands of custom and author 
 ity, stands up, whimpering and stum 
 bling and blundering ( oh, such blun 
 dering!) in the overwhelming light; yet 
 claiming, somehow, a new and solemn 
 and entirely personal relationship with 
 God. 
 
 But part of this process of evolution 
 seems to be the rejection of instruction 
 from the Church, as an institution. The 
 moment we realize the spirit of the age 
 in this demand for an entirely individual 
 revelation of spiritual law to the soul, a 
 demand that is not made with flippancy 
 or conceit, but with sober sincerity, we 
 find one reason for a definite statement 
 that "everybody ought to go to church" 
 withdrawn. We can no longer say it 
 is a duty to go "because we shall be 
 taught what to believe ; because we 
 know that we shall believe not what we 
 123 
 
THE COMMON WAY 
 
 ought, but what we must; or else lose 
 our intellectual integrity. 
 
 There remains, then, the other reason 
 for going to church worship. And that 
 brings one at once to the other question 
 "What is meant by church?" 
 
 Do we mean the four walls wherein hu 
 man creatures gather to worship the Eter 
 nal those four sacred and venerable 
 walls which for generations have been 
 to other human creatures the House of 
 God, the very Gate of Heaven? Cer 
 tainly we cannot feel that worship is de 
 pendent upon these four walls. No rev 
 erent or sensitive mind can contemplate 
 the august temples, even of the pagan 
 past, without spiritual emotion; but, 
 equally, no reverent mind can deny 
 the worship of the Eternal far outside 
 the walls of any church. Does not 
 McAndrew worship in the engine - 
 room of his steamer? "I cannot," he 
 says 
 
 124 
 
CONCERNING CHURCH-GOING 
 
 "I cannot get my sleep to-night; old bones are 
 
 hard to please; 
 I ll stand the middle watch up here alone 
 
 wi God, an these 
 My engines, after ninety days o race an rack 
 
 an strain 
 Through all the seas of all Thy world, slam- 
 
 bangin home again." 
 
 Alone with God and his engines! Here 
 is worship which does not need the four 
 walls, although when he is ashore, no 
 doubt, Me Andrew combines the worship 
 and the walls. 
 
 Yes, although human experience has 
 proved to us that the assembling of our 
 selves together, to unite in some outward 
 and visible sign of inward and spiritual as 
 piration, is helpful to many souls, and con 
 tributes to that growth in grace which is 
 man s chief end, and which we may be 
 lieve does indeed glorify God, yet we 
 know that the blessed company of all 
 faithful people has never limited itself to 
 four walls. For encouragement and joy, 
 I2 5 
 
THE COMMON WAY 
 
 and help in living, we may meet together 
 in what we call a church, and unite in 
 what we call worship; but such meeting 
 together is only a means, not an end . The 
 end is the fullest, deepest, richest rela 
 tion of the individual soul to its God. 
 And as soon as we realize this we must 
 admit that though we go to church to 
 worship, some may worship without going 
 to church. 
 
 "The sun, the moon, the stars, the seas, the 
 
 hills, the plains, 
 Are not these, O Soul, the Vision of Him 
 
 who reigns ? 
 Speak to Him, then, for He hears, and Spirit 
 
 with Spirit can meet; 
 Closer is He than breathing, nearer than 
 
 hands or feet." 
 
 Such speech is worship. But when 
 we grant that, another reason for de 
 claring that "everybody ought to go to 
 church" is withdrawn. 
 
 So the matter of going to church comes 
 126 
 
CONCERNING CHURCH-GOING 
 
 down to a personal choice as to what is 
 best for each soul, and the question 
 " Ought I to go to church?" changes its 
 form: "Shall I who may hope, humbly 
 and reverently, that I belong to that 
 blessed company of all faithful people, 
 that company which is made up of every 
 man and woman belonging to any church 
 or to no church, every human creature 
 who tries to do justly, to love mercy, and 
 walk humbly before the Lord his God 
 shall I, belonging to this company, get 
 help and courage and consecration for 
 daily life, shall I lift up my heart unto the 
 Lord best, by going to church every Sun 
 day? If so, I go! Or shall I, perhaps, 
 get such courage for living, best, by 
 looking in silence up into the sky from 
 under some leafy shelter on a Sunday 
 morning? Can I lift up my heart with 
 greater fervor among my fellows in a 
 church, or do I worship more deeply in 
 the solitude of books, or in the service 
 127 
 
THE COMMON WAY 
 
 of humanity, or, possibly, in mere luxu 
 rious, well-earned physical rest? 
 
 Does all this put church-going down 
 on the basis of individual expediency: 
 What is best for my soul ? 
 
 But is there any other basis of con 
 duct? Is not expediency, in its noblest 
 sense, that elemental law of life, both 
 material and spiritual, of which we feel 
 the need in all these gray questions which 
 confront us? Expediency was the basis 
 of that primitive expression of the dif 
 ference between right and wrong "Be 
 good or be damned." It is the highest 
 suggestion of spirituality in, "This is 
 eternal life that ye shall know the 
 Father." One saying seems to us ig 
 noble, and the other divine, yet both 
 grow out of this despised word expedi 
 ency the recognition of what is best. 
 When the soul recognizes its own best, 
 the "ought" can be answered easily 
 enough; it cannot lay down a rule for 
 128 
 
CONCERNING CHURCH-GOING 
 
 other people, but it reaches an ele 
 mental law for itself. 
 
 How complicated, beside this law, are 
 the arguments that are urged upon peo 
 ple as to the "duty" of going to church! 
 One is, that people ought to go to church 
 to set a good example. 
 
 Here we come upon a strange survival 
 of fetishism the suggestion that church- 
 going, per se, is of moral significance; 
 such fetishism must lead to a very sub 
 tle spiritual hypocrisy, because it ad 
 vocates the letter, whether the spirit be 
 there or no. And certainly it is a ques 
 tion whether insincerity is ever a good 
 example. 
 
 Again: People should go to church be 
 cause it encourages the minister. 
 
 But would the minister be encouraged 
 by the presence of a congregation gath 
 ered to encourage him? Such " encour 
 agement" is false spiritual economics, 
 and the true priest is the first to tell us 
 129 
 
THE COMMON WAY 
 
 so. For there is one thing we must face, 
 that the only excuse for supply is de 
 mand. 
 
 And, again: We ought to go to church 
 to make church-going the habit of our 
 lives. For, it is added, artlessly, a course 
 of conduct which becomes a habit cannot 
 be easily broken. 
 
 True; but those of us who have seen 
 emotion divine, delicate, the breath 
 ing of the Eternal within us those who 
 have seen such emotion harden into a 
 meaningless formula will not dare to ad 
 vocate the habit of the expression of 
 emotion. 
 
 And still another reason: We ought 
 to go to church to keep holy the Sabbath 
 day. 
 
 Here we trespass at once upon person 
 ality. For each soul of us must decide 
 what is holiness to us ; and no man can 
 decide what is holiness for any other man. 
 
 But one need not rehearse the multi- 
 130 
 
CONCERNING CHURCH-GOING 
 
 tude of reasons why people "ought" to 
 go to church; instead is it not easier 
 and simpler and truer to fall back upon 
 the old divine and human law of expe 
 diency ? A law that seems to hold all the 
 little reasons in its own great reasonable 
 ness ; a law which makes for the preserva 
 tion of the Church for, by individual 
 obedience to it, the Church must survive 
 as long as human beings need it! ... 
 If we obey this law, we will trust a little 
 more. We shall trust the purpose of the 
 Eternal ; we shall trust the individual soul ; 
 we shall so trust in the divine principle 
 which has created the Church that we 
 shall be able to believe in the continuance 
 of the principle without the Church; 
 in other words, we shall believe in the 
 permanence of the soul s relation to God! 
 In trusting the principle of the Church, 
 even to the point of contemplating the 
 ending of the Church as an institution, 
 we only trust the sunrise to fade into high 
 
THE COMMON WAY 
 
 and splendid noon. And trusting, we 
 wait ; without dogmatism, only with hope. 
 We look at the solemn verdict of human 
 experience that the Church is necessary; 
 and we look also at the demand of the 
 individual for personal experience and 
 judgment ; and we wait 
 
 "my faith is large in Time, 
 And that which shapes it to some perfect end." 
 
ACQUAINTANCE WITH GRIEF 
 
 QOMETIMES the price seems very 
 O high. . . . Probably most of us who 
 have reached middle age have had mo 
 ments when we have said to ourselves 
 that the price was very high. We admit 
 that we have danced, and the dancing 
 was all that our hearts could wish; and 
 yet when the dance was over, and we 
 stood, flushed and panting, the blood still 
 leaping to the music, we have drawn 
 back at the sight of the Piper demanding 
 his pay, and said, "Oh, it is very high, 
 the price!" 
 
 Yes, it is high; but the dancers, from 
 whom for a period or for all time Middle 
 133 
 
THE COMMON WAY 
 
 Age may have withdrawn itself, the dan 
 cers see this same poor Middle Age fum 
 bling about for some coin to offer to the 
 inexorable Piper, and go on dancing, 
 making no provision for the moment 
 when they, too, will be asked to pay the 
 price of the dance, for Youth does not 
 understand this matter of payment. It 
 has been told that there is a price for 
 everything, and that when one dances 
 one pays the Piper; and perhaps it be 
 lieves the statement, as it believes many 
 other statements which stupid and ex 
 perienced Age is forever dinning into its 
 ears. But it is hard for Youth to realize 
 what payment means; to realize the ac 
 count that will be presented the long 
 account of silent years, of fierce regret, 
 of eating remorse, and of bleak living, 
 empty of music. 
 
 So Youth goes on dancing; while some 
 of those who have paid the price stand 
 by, watching the pleasant whirl and try- 
 134 
 
ACQUAINTANCE WITH GRIEF 
 
 ing to make themselves heard: "Do be 
 more prudent," these poor folk say; "do 
 lay up treasure against the inevitable day 
 of payment, so that you may not stand 
 outside the glow, shivering, as we shiver 
 now, in poverty." But their voices are 
 hardly heard in the cheerful din! It is 
 when they stand thus, shivering, trying 
 to caution their fellows, that some of 
 them say to themselves, "The price was 
 very high!" If they have really entered 
 into the passion of the music, if they 
 have really lived, they are able to add, 
 "but it was not too high! It is better 
 to have had Love and happiness, and 
 then pain, than no pain and no Love. 
 If only I did not have to remember the 
 waste of the days when I was rich!" 
 
 It is against this waste that one would 
 caution the dancers, the happy people, 
 if they will but stop to hear ! not against 
 the music and the glory, not against the 
 fulness of living, but just against waste. 
 
THE COMMON WAY 
 
 For it is waste which afterwards makes 
 the price seem so high. 
 
 There are two kinds of waste of happi 
 ness: one is the waste which comes from 
 unconsciousness of the possession of happi 
 ness ; the other, the waste which comes 
 from indifference to opportunity. 
 
 The waste of unconsciousness is the 
 most frequent; and it makes the dancers 
 just a little less happy than they ought 
 to be while they are dancing. The waste 
 from indifference to opportunity makes 
 them infinitely more unhappy after the 
 dancing is over. 
 
 As for unconsciousness of happiness, 
 just look at the happy people who are 
 unaware of their own wealth! It is a 
 matter of course to be happy; and with 
 astounding prodigality they squander 
 the essentials of life; the three things 
 which make up their entire capital, the 
 three things upon which human living 
 rests : 
 
 136 
 
ACQUAINTANCE WITH GRIEF 
 
 The consciousness of human love. 
 
 The consciousness of human character. 
 
 The consciousness of human courage. 
 
 These three things are absolutely neces 
 sary to life, and most people possess them ; 
 yet very few trouble themselves to count 
 their wealth. We are all too busy with 
 trivialities. We get up in the morning, 
 we rich people, and our first thought is 
 not of the love that surrounds us, not of 
 the goodness of the world, not of the 
 bravery of humanity, but of some ridic 
 ulous worry, some petty annoyance. It 
 is as if one held up one s hand before 
 one s eyes so that one could not see the 
 sun. Of course, the sun is there; but the 
 hand hides it. We wake up with a sigh 
 of remembrance that the front door needs 
 painting, and with never a thought of 
 the dear feet that will cross its threshold 
 just as joyfully whether it is painted or 
 not. We accept Love with the same 
 complacent unconsciousness that we ac- 
 
THE COMMON WAY 
 
 cept air; but without it we should die. 
 Human character, too, the goodness of 
 our dear people, we take as a matter of 
 course, but without belief in it we would 
 wish to die. The courage of the world, 
 the serene ability to endure, is an abso 
 lute commonplace to us ; but without the 
 knowledge of it we should not dare to live 
 or die. 
 
 The waste which there is in happy 
 folks unconsciousness of these three es 
 sentials seems very astonishing to those 
 who no longer possess them. "She has 
 her husband and children; and they are 
 well, and they are good, and they are 
 contented; and yet she was actually un 
 happy because her dressmaker disap 
 pointed her!" says some poor soul who 
 has paid the price a woman whose 
 house is left unto her desolate. To such 
 a one the whimpering and scolding com 
 plaint about the unimportant seems an 
 incredible folly, and she is moved to say 
 138 
 
ACQUAINTANCE WITH GRIEF 
 
 to her complaining rich friend, "Do stop 
 and remember that you are rich ; remem 
 ber all you possess!" But instead of re 
 membering her wealth, the foolish wom 
 an is bewailing her poverty; she is con 
 sumed with worry over unimportant 
 things. The dressmaker brings tears 
 to her eyes; the domestic problem keeps 
 her awake at night; an invitation which 
 does not come turns the world black be 
 fore her. 
 
 Shame! says the poor creature whose 
 sense of proportion has been born in some 
 bitter hour of fear or bereavement or 
 wrong-doing. 
 
 And it is a shame a shame for people 
 who have in their lives the consciousness 
 of Love and Character and Courage, to 
 fall into the wasteful folly of unhappi- 
 ness about the unimportant. It would be 
 bad enough if this shameful kind of un- 
 happiness could be confined to the per 
 son who experiences it; but, unfortu- 
 139 
 
THE COMMON WAY 
 
 nately, its black edge spreads over on 
 to other lives. No woman who comes 
 down to her breakfast-table with what 
 her son frankly calls a "grouch on" is 
 grouchy to herself alone. Her husband 
 feels it; that same candid son feels it; 
 her servants feel it; and so the day falls 
 a little more darkly than it need on this 
 dear, troubled, beautiful world. 
 
 It is certainly very curious how rarely 
 we stop to reflect upon the duty of being 
 conscious of our happiness, of being pleas 
 ant, in fact, for the sake of other people s 
 happiness. And it is so simple a duty, 
 too, always at our hand! It does not 
 need that we shall go out and look for it, 
 as we might look for a high deed to do 
 a dragon to slay, a movement to reform 
 the world, a vocation, a martyrdom. 
 Sometimes we have to hunt for such 
 things; while right at hand is this great 
 and simple and serious opportunity: the 
 opportunity of being pleasant. 
 140 
 
ACQUAINTANCE WITH GRIEF 
 
 Perhaps just pleasantness has not a 
 very heroic sound; but the human heart, 
 that, knowing its own bitterness, can yet 
 carry itself cheerfully, is not without 
 heroism. Indeed, if that human heart 
 does no more than hold its tongue about 
 its own aches and pains, it has a certain 
 moral value that the world cannot afford 
 to lose. "Pleasantness" does not sound 
 as well as self - sacrifice or wisdom or 
 spirituality; but it may include all these 
 great words. And certainly just to start 
 one s husband out to his work cheerily; 
 to make the hobbledehoy of a son feel a 
 gentler and sweeter sentiment towards 
 women because of his own mother s sound, 
 sweet gayety and strength; to help one s 
 servants to put good-humor and friend 
 liness into their service these things 
 make for righteousness in the world. And 
 a sense of proportion as to what is worth 
 worrying about in other words, a con 
 sciousness of one s own wealth will bring 
 141 
 
THE COMMON WAY 
 
 these things about to a wonderful de 
 gree. But to get this sense of propor 
 tion, one must deliberately take account 
 of stock. 
 
 Just how rich am I ? 
 
 It is astonishing what a good, healthy 
 shame is developed by such an inventory! 
 Take some sleepless night, when all the 
 annoyances of the day buzz over and over 
 in the tired brain the stair - carpet that 
 is beginning to show signs of wear; the 
 cook s evident dissatisfaction; the criti 
 cism that one s husband s mother made 
 on the children s manners, and well, 
 yes; the children s manners, which cer 
 tainly are bad! when over and over 
 these miserable things prick the tired 
 mind, make out the inventory. 
 
 Count your blessings. 
 
 The idea brings instantly a shock of 
 interest to the complaining soul. Where 
 shall one begin? What is the most im 
 portant blessing? Probably most of us 
 142 
 
ACQUAINTANCE WITH GRIEF 
 
 would put love first; but, once started, 
 the blessings press for recognition and the 
 pleasant list lengthens. The buzz of front- 
 stair carpets, and cooks, and even one s 
 mother - in - law s truthful remarks, dies 
 down, sinks quite out of sight in the quiet, 
 sleepless dark. The blessing of human 
 love for they do love her, the busy, 
 undemonstrative husband, the noisy chil 
 dren, and even the critical and conscien 
 tious mother-in-law. The blessing of 
 human character for they are good : the 
 husband, absorbed and perhaps harassed 
 by business, is good, bless his heart! 
 dear, hard-working, honest fellow! and 
 the children have no real naughtiness 
 in them, so the manners can be mended. 
 The blessing of human courage who 
 cares if the carpet has holes in it? 
 who, in this brave world of life and 
 death and joy and sorrow, cares for a 
 thing like a hole in the carpet? Would 
 one think of it if that hard-working hus- 
 143 
 
THE COMMON WAY 
 
 band were sick ? Would one see it if the 
 eldest boy were a bad fellow, instead of 
 a bad-mannered fellow? Of course not! 
 Love, character, courage. The great bless 
 ings. ... As for the little ones the garden, 
 and a pretty house to live in, and a good 
 complexion (be honest and count even the 
 pleasant, harmless vanities); but one 
 can t count them all! One goes to sleep 
 long before the list is ended. Well-being, 
 alone, does not make happiness; there 
 must be the consciousness of well-being; 
 and this deliberate valuation of daily 
 life awakes the consciousness of well- 
 being until it glows like a torch in a dark 
 place. The people who have this con 
 sciousness are not wasteful. They let 
 no golden moment slip unrecognized into 
 Eternity, no moment on which, in the 
 lean years, they will look back with amaze 
 ment at their own extravagance of un 
 consciousness. They know how rich they 
 are, and they are grateful. . . . 
 144 
 
ACQUAINTANCE WITH GRIEF 
 
 The other kind of waste that comes 
 home to us when Love pays the price of 
 Loving is the waste of opportunity. 
 
 The consciousness of this waste is so 
 cruel a pain that those who have felt it 
 wince at the very thought of it. The 
 Piper, pressing for payment, says, "Give 
 me your blessed memories of kind deeds 
 done for Love s sake; of tender words 
 spoken; of joyous sacrifice of self." And 
 lo, the poor spendthrift, whose oppor 
 tunities of tenderness and sacrifice and 
 service slipped unheeded through his fin 
 gers in the happy days of possession, 
 stands bankrupt, and says, "But, oh, I 
 have so few such memories ! Why was I 
 not kinder when I had a chance?" 
 
 The human heart that knows this black 
 poverty longs to caution the dancers 
 against their waste of opportunity. "Re 
 member," it says to the happy folk, rich 
 yet in unspent opportunities, "oh, do re 
 member to be kind; because, some day, 
 145 
 
THE COMMON WAY 
 
 you will be sorry if you have to remem 
 ber that you were unkind or even to 
 remember that you missed a chance to 
 be kind." That last is, perhaps, the most 
 frequent experience. Most of us are not 
 guilty of any overt act; we do not (let 
 us say) do positively unkind things; we 
 are not cruel or brutal, we are simply 
 negative. We are not cruel but nei 
 ther are we tender ; we are not brutal 
 but neither are we instant with service 
 and sympathy; we do not say unkind 
 things but how niggardly we are with 
 praise ! 
 
 The looking back on such wasted op 
 portunities may become an almost unen 
 durable pain. . . . 
 
 " How doth Death speak of our Beloved ? 
 It sweeps their failings out of sight; 
 It shows our faults like fires at night." 
 
 And how those fires of memory con 
 sumed our happiness! What about the 
 146 
 
ACQUAINTANCE WITH GRIEF 
 
 old people, to whose concerns and inter 
 ests we were so cheerfully indifferent? 
 What would not some of us give now to 
 be able to give them some pleasure? 
 to tell them of our admiration and love 
 (which, of course, we felt when they were 
 here, but which, curiously enough, we so 
 rarely thought of mentioning to them). 
 Yet old people like appreciation quite 
 as much as young people; in fact, a lit 
 tle more, for whereas Youth is supremely 
 contented with itself, Age has its own 
 sad self-knowledge of small desert; and 
 praise or appreciation may be a balm to 
 old wounds of regret and shame. We 
 might have been more generous in praise ; 
 we might have been more appreciative; 
 we might have been more patient; we 
 might, even, in our whirl of busy living, 
 have been a little more interested in their 
 interests; we might have given them, in 
 some pause in our happy affairs, more 
 opportunity to talk about their affairs. 
 U7 
 
THE COMMON WAY 
 
 We might, oh, we might have gone to 
 see them oftener. . . . 
 
 Oh, Piper, when you demand of us 
 memories of such duties done, of oppor 
 tunities taken, we stand bankrupt and 
 shivering before you! 
 
 This, then, is the other caution that 
 one would whisper in the dancers ears: 
 Take every chance you can possibly get to 
 be kind; because, some day, there may be 
 no more chances. 
 
 But just kindness seems such a small 
 and unimportant thing! If we were bid 
 den to die for the people we love, how 
 gladly we would offer up our lives it 
 would be part of the dance. But we are 
 not asked to die for them, only to live 
 for them ; only to do the hundred small 
 things that every day offers us; only to 
 be ready with truth and courage and ten 
 derness and service. 
 
 There can be no doubt any one who 
 has stood by an open grave will say so 
 148 
 
ACQUAINTANCE WITH GRIEF 
 
 there can be no possible doubt, that only 
 memories of opportunities embraced, of 
 duties done, or, rather, of privileges ac 
 cepted, only such memories will comfort 
 us when the price is paid. To have to 
 look back upon quarrelling or selfishness, 
 or even upon the more negative pain 
 of mere leaving undone that which we 
 might have done, is enough to poison 
 life. No wonder that those who are ac 
 quainted with Grief cry out to us, "Oh, 
 be kind, be kind, be kind!" 
 
 Not that kindness is going to save us 
 from pain the measure of Love must 
 forever be regret. Those that love most 
 regret most, for the ideal must always be 
 unattainable. If Love were ever quite 
 satisfied, it would mean that its ideal 
 was but a poor, stunted thing. No ; even 
 the Love that has been most eager to 
 avail itself of its opportunities will regret, 
 and must regret, but not with the poison 
 ous consciousness of waste! And such 
 149 
 
THE COMMON WAY 
 
 Love will at least have so many blessed 
 memories that it will not be left bank 
 rupt when the day of payment comes. 
 
 But what of those of us who are bank 
 rupt now ? Is there any comfort for us ? 
 Yes, there remains to us, while we live, 
 the chance to profit by our acquaintance 
 with Grief: Did we waste such and such 
 opportunities? Did we lose the chance 
 to be what we might have been to one 
 beloved? There yet remain others ! The 
 consciousness of the lost opportunity may 
 be a spur, harrying us, to be sure, tear 
 ing us, it may be, yet driving us into 
 the blessed consciousness of our wealth. 
 Then we shall stop wasting it, and be 
 gin to spend it nobly on the opportuni 
 ties that are standing so close about us 
 the opportunity to be kind, to be just, to 
 be patient, and, again, to be kind. 
 
 If it does so stir us this regret and 
 remorse that breaks our hearts, at night, 
 alone, in the dark if it does so stim- 
 
ACQUAINTANCE WITH GRIEF 
 
 ulate us, our Dead have not died in 
 vain! 
 
 Let us take, then, from their sacred 
 hands the pain of regret of an unreach- 
 ed ideal; and with that pain a new and 
 deep impulse to live and love and serve; 
 and let us call this impulse, thankfully, 
 another gift from the beloved, the last, 
 and perhaps the best gift that they have 
 given us our dear Dead! the gift of a 
 serious consciousness of the richness and 
 the purpose of life. 
 
CONCERNING GLASS HOUSES 
 
 IT is only the people who live in glass 
 houses who are forbidden to throw 
 stones. 
 
 All the rest of us can practise this fa 
 vorite pastime of humanity with absolute 
 freedom. And it is wonderful how pro 
 ficient we become especially we women. 
 In early life it is said that boys can throw 
 stones better than girls; but when both 
 reach maturity, it is quite different. 
 
 "The nasty things you women say 
 about one another!" a man declares, with 
 a gasp of admiring astonishment. "Men 
 are not in it with you!" 
 
 And his humility is justified by the 
 
CONCERNING GLASS HOUSES 
 
 facts; we are far more skilful than he is. 
 When a man gossips he generally (not 
 always) picks up a good, big cobble 
 stone, and sends it, vigorously and openly, 
 spinning through the air to its goal of 
 crashing destruction. A woman, on the 
 contrary, is apt to use small, smooth, flat 
 pebbles that "skip," which, after the glass 
 has been broken, are not so easily found 
 and brought back to her with the glazier s 
 bill; and therein, in slyness and irrespon 
 sibility, she shows herself the superior of 
 the male creature. 
 
 It is the purpose of this paper to main 
 tain that this interesting exercise of 
 throwing stones, either cobblestones or 
 pebbles, is perfectly justifiable when in 
 dulged in by persons, male or female, 
 who do not themselves live in glass 
 houses. Once assure ourselves that we 
 have no glass in our windows, and then 
 let us sally forth to shatter, with a well- 
 directed missile, a neighbor s poor pre- 
 153 
 
THE COMMON WAY 
 
 tence of prosperity, a friend s pitiful 
 pride in her oldest boy (who is behaving 
 like the very deuce at college); let us 
 (being sure we have no such substance 
 in our houses) send a skipping pebble 
 to call attention to A. s horrible vulgar 
 ity in quarrelling with her servants; to 
 B. s disagreeably loud voice; to C. s un- 
 cleaned brass door-knob. 
 
 "For my part, I don t think a woman 
 has any business to pretend to be a house 
 keeper and not keep her brasses clean! 
 If she is too poor to have proper service, 
 why, then, let her be honest and put on a 
 knob which doesn t need cleaning; but 
 Mrs. C. always tries to put her best foot 
 forward," the clever thrower of stones 
 says, sending her pebble skipping out 
 over public opinion; and if she listens, 
 she will hear the faint tinkle of broken 
 glass. This lady has usually several 
 small pebbles of this nature. She says, 
 smiling good-naturedly, that the Rev. 
 
CONCERNING GLASS HOUSES 
 
 Mr. Smith s interest in foreign missions 
 is really beautiful, but but it does not 
 put any strain on his own pocket-book! 
 She comments carelessly on Mrs. Jones s 
 complexion; it is charming, she says, so 
 girlish; but don t go too near it. She 
 declares, warmly, that Mr. Robinson is 
 such a dear, good man, and he deserves 
 so much credit, "because, you know, 
 his father " And some one says, ea 
 gerly, "Why, what about his father?" 
 "What! don t you know? my dear, he " 
 And then the buried father s buried sin is 
 dug up and paraded before gaping eyes. 
 Poor, good Mr. Robinson! how hard he 
 has tried to forget that decently interred 
 Past, for which he was in no sense re 
 sponsible; but this skilful stone-thrower, 
 taking a gravestone for a target, is sure 
 to hit the mark. And yet, how simple 
 was her remark indeed, how friendly; 
 "such a good man!" what can you say 
 better than that about anybody? She 
 
THE COMMON WAY 
 
 threw no cruel, bruising cobblestone. Ap 
 parently all her pebbles are harmless; 
 sometimes they are marked by a pretty 
 wit; frequently they shine with a faint 
 phosphorescence of truth. She uses 
 them when she goes out to luncheon, or 
 at a tea, or as she is coming away from 
 church. In fact, one can use such peb 
 bles anywhere, they are so small and con 
 venient and ready to hand. And, hav 
 ing used them, she goes home, and her 
 husband makes the admiring remark 
 that, when it comes to saying mean 
 things, women do certainly beat men 
 every time! And the woman, protest 
 ing that she was only stating facts, fails 
 to hear the tinkle of broken glass from 
 her own skylight for people are talking 
 about her ! 
 
 "My dear, did you ever see such hats? 
 And she s fifty, if she s a day. Why 
 don t people know how to grow old more 
 gracefully!" 
 
 156 
 
CONCERNING GLASS HOUSES 
 
 "She is terribly mean to her servants; 
 I hear that she only takes two quarts 
 of milk, and uses every bit of it up-stairs. 
 She gives her girls condensed milk ! And 
 she snoops round after they ve gone to 
 bed, and looks into the refrigerator to 
 count the cold potatoes." 
 
 "My dear, for all she makes such a 
 splurge with that sealskin coat of hers, 
 I saw, with my own eyes, a great 
 hole in the side of her shoe ! I do 
 despise finery that just covers up pov 
 erty." 
 
 Well, well this is very squalid; but 
 we know it is true, this sort of contemp 
 tible gossip ; we know it so well that we 
 need not illustrate it further: 
 
 I talk, 
 
 Thou talkest, 
 He talks. 
 
 We talk, 
 You talk, 
 They talk. 
 
 157 
 
THE COMMON WAY 
 
 And all the while glass comes crashing 
 about our ears for the honest truth is 
 that everybody lives in a glass house. . . . 
 " He that is without sin among you, let 
 him first cast a stone"; and the eager 
 crowd of respectable accusers, burning 
 with shocked and smirking curiosity, 
 their hands full of stones, their fingers 
 tingling to throw them, fell suddenly 
 silent. One by one they slunk away, and 
 the poor creature, crouching on the 
 ground, her hot, miserable face hid- 
 den in her bent arm, was alone with 
 the ohly One who might have stoned 
 her. ft 
 
 Of course, the old proverb about not 
 throwing stones lest our own glass houses 
 suffer i4 a simple appeal to expediency 
 it is material common-sense, based upon 
 the deduction that if you refrain from 
 hitting B., B. will refrain from hitting 
 you. As,, a motive for abstaining from 
 gossip, it is, of course, better than noth- 
 
 158 
 
CONCERNING GLASS HOUSES 
 
 ing. But, to tell the truth, it is not very 
 good. In the first place, the deduction is 
 not quite sound. You, from a keen sense 
 of expediency, may refrain from hitting 
 B.; but experience proves that you can 
 not be certain that B., in consequence, 
 will refrain from hitting you. You may 
 close your lips with a snap over a witty 
 remark in regard to A. s inability to 
 grow old gracefully, but you have no 
 certainty that A. is equally reserved 
 upon the subject of your amusing efforts 
 to reduce your double chin. No; it is 
 well to refrain from throwing stones on 
 the ground of your own window-panes, 
 but it is better to give the practice up 
 because a quick imagination reveals the 
 feelings of the people whose window- 
 panes you have been so gayly and so 
 ruthlessly shattering. Just here, how 
 ever, a disquieting question arises: 
 
 "What! no conversation about people? 
 Is the world to fall silent?" 
 159 
 
THE COMMON WAY 
 
 For, indeed, if we leave out human 
 nature, there is comparatively little else 
 to talk about; all the large and funda 
 mental things of Time are rooted somehow 
 in human souls. We cannot talk of sin or 
 righteousness or judgment without hu 
 man reference and illustration; we can 
 hardly talk of even the trivial and unim 
 portant without personal allusion. "My 
 garden is not doing as well this year as 
 last; but you should see Mrs. Smith s 
 pansies! they are even more discourag 
 ing than mine." That is the human ref 
 erence. Furthermore, facts are facts; it 
 is a pity that A. does not know how to 
 grow old gracefully, and it is sad enough 
 that D. s boy is behaving so badly at 
 college. If we are to refrain entirely 
 from facts in relation to human nature, 
 we might as well be dumb. Of course, 
 it is obvious that mere refraining is as 
 stultifying in one way as throwing stones 
 is stultifying in another way. No; 
 160 
 
CONCERNING GLASS HOUSES 
 
 I shall talk, 
 Thou wilt talk, 
 He will talk. 
 
 We shall talk, 
 You will talk, 
 They will talk, 
 
 because talking is a human necessity. 
 But if, when we talk, Imagination, just, 
 true, and kind, stands guard at our lips, 
 we shall not break any windows. 
 
 Imagination, in regard to the feelings 
 of our neighbors, is the beginning of re 
 form. 
 
 For there are very few of us who, sally 
 ing forth with our little bags of pebbles, 
 would throw a single one of them if, by 
 some magical process, we could know 
 how the broken glass would hurt; if we 
 could see the blood flow, and hear the 
 cry of pain. That is proved by the fact 
 that we so rarely throw our stones when 
 the householder happens to be about; of 
 course, fear has something to do with our 
 161 
 
THE COMMON WAY 
 
 reticence in her presence ; it takes a good 
 deal of courage to say right out to Mrs. 
 Smith s face that we understand that 
 her husband is making a fool of himself 
 with a chorus girl? We might get into 
 trouble with Mr. Smith if we were caught 
 throwing stones at his glass house; but 
 really, apart from fear, most of us could 
 not bear to witness poor Mrs. Smith s 
 pain. When she is not present, it is a 
 different matter; we are not hampered 
 by anything so disagreeable as the sight 
 of her suffering. So it is quite obvious 
 that what we need to break up the habit 
 of stone-throwing is to cultivate a ham 
 pering consciousness of the pain it causes. 
 We need to know just how the house 
 holder feels when she looks at her cracked 
 window-panes or stands under some shat 
 tered skylight of hope and love. 
 
 We must have imagination. 
 
 But, unfortunately, we are not all born 
 with this heavenly vision; in fact, we are, 
 162 
 
CONCERNING GLASS HOUSES 
 
 most of us, born without it, as witness 
 the innate cruelty of children. A child 
 pulls off a fly s legs, slowly, one by one, 
 with keen interest and placid uncon 
 sciousness of any discomfort on the fly s 
 part. A little later he ties a tin pan to 
 a dog s tail, or sticks pins in a toad. Yet 
 he is not by any means a bad boy he 
 is only without imagination. Little by 
 little, however, imagination usually de 
 velops, for most of us adult human 
 creatures do not enjoy pulling off a fly s 
 leg. We are too conscious of the fly s 
 objections. This consciousness, which in 
 terferes with the pleasures of childhood, 
 is caused by the comparative ease with 
 which, as we grow older and experience 
 bodily pain ourselves, we can imagine 
 unpleasant physical sensations. We do 
 not so easily imagine unpleasant mental 
 or spiritual sensations. So we talk, throw 
 ing our stones at our neighbors souls as 
 carelessly as the boy pulls off the fly s leg. 
 163 
 
THE COMMON WAY 
 
 Now, taking it for granted that we are 
 not any more malicious than the boy, 
 taking it for granted that we are only 
 spiritually unimaginative, and that we 
 would really like to cultivate a faculty 
 which, permitting conversation in the 
 world, would spare other people s glass 
 houses, it is helpful to start with a cer 
 tain thesis and work from that namely, 
 That we all mean well. 
 
 This assertion is the outgrowth of self- 
 knowledge; for each of us, down deep 
 under our poor, unsatisfactory living, 
 each one of us knows that we do mean 
 well, and experience has taught us that 
 human nature is pretty much the same; 
 we are all, under the skin of circumstance, 
 a good deal alike. So we admit that it 
 is an honest working hypothesis to say 
 " we all mean well." 
 
 Of course, it is a poor, little, cheap 
 phrase, but what a pathetic truth it tells 
 of all of us! the truth of effort and of 
 164 
 
CONCERNING GLASS HOUSES 
 
 failure ; and that is the summing - up of 
 human nature, for without effort we should 
 be animals, and without failure we should 
 be gods. Effort means an ideal; and 
 failure means achievement to a degree. 
 Yes; we mean well. . . . The woman who 
 does riot keep her brasses clean would un 
 doubtedly like to see them shining, if 
 only she could afford to employ a parlor 
 maid. The silly person who wears a fine 
 coat and ragged shoes has a keener feel 
 ing for what is pretty than what is neces 
 sary. Oh , of course, she is a great fool ; but 
 if you stop to think of it, it is very pathet 
 ic to be a fool? If, by imagination, the 
 pathos of foolishness once strikes us, we 
 shall not want to throw the witty pebble 
 that is all ready between our fingers. An 
 uneasy consciousness will grow in our 
 minds that we ourselves are not always 
 overwise. How it would cut and hurt 
 to have somebody (as clever as ourselfjes) 
 show up our silliness with an aphorism, 
 
 165 
 
THE COMMON WAY 
 
 or our folly in a neatly turned phrase! 
 And it could be done. We could do it 
 ourselves, if the folly was not our own. 
 Just think of the things we have done and 
 said "which make the midnight pillow 
 burn with shame " ! Just silly things, not 
 bad. Think of the blunders in our house 
 keeping, which we really wanted to im 
 prove; of our well-meant, clumsy truth- 
 telling to a friend; think of our gushing 
 confidences (which our husbands call 
 "slopping over"), that seemed at the 
 moment just real friendship, but that we 
 so deeply regret the next day; think of 
 our petty efforts at economy, prompted 
 by some painful anxiety that nobody 
 knows anything about. How hard we 
 tried! We did mean well. It was not 
 stinginess that made us go and look into 
 the refrigerator to see that that cold po 
 tato had not been thrown away, it was 
 just a worried sense of responsibility; no 
 doubt our way of doing it, "snooping 
 166 
 
CONCERNING GLASS HOUSES 
 
 about after the servants had gone to bed " 
 (that was the way the stone-throwers ex 
 pressed it) no doubt our method was 
 rather foolish; but we did want to do 
 what was right. . . . Yes, Heaven send 
 that no friend with a pocketful of peb 
 bles be tempted by the shine and glim 
 mer of our glass houses for, indeed, we 
 meant well ! 
 
 Here it is the knowledge in which 
 imagination must take root if stone- 
 throwing is ever to go out of fashion and 
 the world become a pleasant place to 
 live in namely, that most everybody else 
 means well, too. 
 
 The creed of the imaginative and kind 
 ly heart is brief: 
 
 "There is so much good in the worst of us, 
 There is so much bad in the best of us, 
 That it ill becomes any one of us 
 To throw stones at the rest of us." 
 
CONCERNING CHRISTMAS 
 GIVING 
 
 I LL attend to it after the holidays." 
 "Just as soon as Christmas is over, 
 I ll take the matter up." 
 
 "Oh, I can t go to any committee 
 meetings in December! I m so busy." 
 
 "Calls? No, indeed! I don t make 
 calls at this time of year. I have too 
 much to do." 
 
 And what is she doing, this busy wom 
 an? She is making out long lists of 
 names, and writing against each name a 
 "present" of one kind or another; she is 
 lying awake at night, jaded with a day s 
 shopping, and thinking who has been over- 
 168 
 
CONCERNING CHRISTMAS GIVING 
 
 looked. Heavens! she forgot Mary Rob 
 inson ! Mary sent a sachet-bag last Christ 
 mas, and, of course, something must be 
 sent her this Christmas; and then the 
 Giver-of-gifts groans and turns on her 
 sleepless pillow, and wishes Mary and her 
 sachet-bag in ballyhack! Is this an ex 
 aggeration? Alas! no; it may even go 
 further; this sleepless lady, revolving her 
 Christmas debts in her tired mind, will 
 suddenly, with a pang of relief, bethink 
 her of a certain little spool-box of gray 
 linen, painted with snow-drops and tied 
 with pink ribbon; just the thing for Mary 
 Robinson. To be sure, last Christmas 
 this spool-box was sent to her. It came 
 with bravery of white paper and holly 
 sprig and gay ribbons ; there was a " Merry 
 Christmas" card tucked into one corner, 
 which announced that the box brought 
 "Jane Smith s love and best wishes." 
 The Giver-of-gifts read that card, opened 
 the gay little package, looked at the spool - 
 " 169 
 
THE COMMON WAY 
 
 box; said, "Oh, how kind! so pretty." 
 Then, after displaying it for a moment 
 to her family (who showed indifferent 
 interest), she had put it on her show 
 counter a small table, where she stacked 
 the loot of the Day. Christmas night she 
 had sat down at her desk with another 
 list "things to be acknowledged." 
 
 "Oh, now, look here, dear," growled a 
 friendly voice at the fireside, "do drop 
 that nonsense, and go to bed. You are 
 tired out." 
 
 "I can t, dear," she had sighed; "I ve 
 got to get my thanks off." 
 
 "Thanks!" the kindly growl went on. 
 "Oh, you. women! you call it thanks, 
 do you? It s execrations; curses, not 
 loud, but deep." 
 
 "Oh, Tom dear, not before the children ! 
 I ll get through in a quarter of an hour." 
 
 " Hang Christmas!" the Bear said, anx 
 iouslyfor, indeed, the Giver-of -gifts did 
 look worn out. But she wrote a very 
 170 
 
CONCERNING CHRISTMAS GIVING 
 
 pretty note to Jane Smith; she said the 
 spool-box was perfectly sweet, and Jane 
 was perfectly dear to send it; licked a 
 stamp onto the envelope and with a 
 tired sigh told her Bear that she had 
 got most of those dreadful notes written, 
 thank Heaven! The next day the spool- 
 box, carefully wrapped up to keep it clean, 
 was put away (with A. s pin-cushion, and 
 B. s silver pen -holder, and C. s cut-glass 
 mucilage bottle, etc.) on the top shelf of 
 the spare-room closet. This was not as 
 ungracious as it looked; the Giver-of -gifts, 
 as it happens, never uses spool-boxes; 
 she has already two pin-cushions for 
 every bedroom in the house, and her little 
 boy gave her a silver pen-holder on her 
 last birthday. So why should not the 
 accumulation of the unnecessary be put on 
 the top shelf of the spare-room closet? 
 
 This shelf is one of the things the tired 
 woman thinks of as she lies awake, har 
 assed by her "debts." She must give 
 171 
 
THE COMMON WAY 
 
 something to A., because A. gave some 
 thing to her; to B. and to C., for the same 
 timid and foolish reason. Oh, if she could 
 only give back that pin-cushion, what a 
 relief to mind and purse! It is then that 
 the insidious thought of C. s mucilage 
 bottle comes to her, just as, a little while 
 ago, she thought of the spool -box which 
 it was so perfectly dear in Jane Smith to 
 give. But there is a haunting fear at the 
 back of the tired mind : suppose she should 
 make a mistake ? Suppose, by some hor 
 rid freak of memory, she should send C. s 
 bottle to C. ? But no; the very day after 
 Christmas, last year, she had written the 
 donor s names on those things on the 
 top shelf. Perhaps this very contingency 
 was latent in her mind at the time. Of 
 course, there remains the ghastly chance 
 that Jane Smith showed Mary Robinson 
 that spool-box before she sent it ? But, 
 no! that is too dreadful a thought. It 
 shall go, neatly wrapped up in white pa- 
 172 
 
CONCERNING CHRISTMAS GIVING 
 
 per, tied with ribbons (a little wider than 
 last year), with a Christmas-card (slightly 
 more expensive than the one Jane used), 
 and Mary will receive it, and say, "Oh, 
 how kind! so pretty!" And write her 
 note of thanks Christmas evening, de 
 claring that the box is perfectly sweet, and 
 the tired Giver perfectly dear to have 
 thought of her. 
 
 " Thought of her!" how much thought, 
 my mistresses, has been here? How 
 much sentiment, how much love, how 
 much sense of fitness, how much honor 
 for and commemoration of the Supreme 
 Gift to the world ? Travesty, deceit, dis 
 honor! She is not only "tired" because 
 of her folly, this silly woman; she is worse 
 than tired; she is belittled in her own 
 eyes, she is coarsened in her instincts, she 
 is blunted in her spiritual perceptions. 
 Whereas this year she may wince in doing 
 up that spool -box, next year she will 
 make a joke of it. 
 
 173 
 
THE COMMON WAY 
 
 No one can do dishonor to the Ideal 
 and remain unspotted. 
 
 Can we, any of us, who have secretly 
 used Jane s spool-box to pay our debts to 
 Mary, deny this? Unless the Giver-of- 
 gifts is willing that Jane should know how 
 her gift has been used, and that Mary 
 should be aware of the history of the 
 pretty box that comes to her bearing 
 "love and best wishes," unless the Christ 
 mas debtor is willing to have everything 
 open and above-board, she must admit 
 her shame, and realize that her fatigued 
 deceit has left a spot upon her soul. Of 
 course, if she is able to say to Mary Robin 
 son, "This spool-box was given to me; 
 but I don t care to use it myself, so I am 
 sending it to you, with Christmas greet 
 ings," or something to that effect, all is 
 well. Mary may not be particularly flat 
 tered, but the Ideal of Christmas giving 
 is not degraded, and the Christmas at 
 mosphere is just so much clearer and 
 174 
 
CONCERNING CHRISTMAS GIVING 
 
 purer, just so much more worthy of the 
 Divine Gift which the poor, dishonored 
 Day is meant to mark. But how many 
 of us would be willing to say this ? How 
 secret we are about that spare -room 
 closet! 
 
 And secrecy is confession. 
 
 When we look seriously at the flippant 
 degradation of Christmas, which has sud 
 denly become so marked, and at the spir 
 itual decadence which accompanies it, we 
 shall probably, most of us, say that it is 
 time to call a halt. This miserable and 
 foolish business of giving because we have 
 received, encouraged as it is by shop 
 keepers, fed by our own mean ambition 
 and vanity, nourished by a paltry un 
 willingness to " be under obligations," and 
 by the mere fashion of the period which 
 decrees Christmas excesses this silly 
 and fatiguing custom has got to stop 
 and women are the folk to stop it ! Here 
 is a reform fresh to our hands. Here is 
 
THE COMMON WAY 
 
 a work waiting for us. It needs common- 
 sense, not legislation; it needs reverent 
 souls, not political power. And the time 
 is ripe for it now. 
 
 " What! no Christmas ?" some one says, 
 shocked and disapproving. On the con 
 trary, the very fullest and most beautiful 
 Christmas. 
 
 " But no presents ?" 
 
 Presents ? Of course there must be pres 
 ents. The world cannot lose the deep 
 excitement of childhood during all the 
 busy, happy weeks before the 2 5th of 
 December; it cannot lose the delight of 
 surprised love, the pleasant warmth of 
 the heart to find that friendship remem 
 bers. We cannot give these things up. 
 They are dear and sacred in themselves; 
 dearer and more sacred when they are 
 gathered up in reverent hearts, and held, 
 as one holds a jewel in the sunshine, to 
 catch the light that streams from a Baby 
 cradled "between two beasties," in a 
 
CONCERNING CHRISTMAS GIVING 
 
 thatched stable near the Inn. No; they 
 were Wise Men, it will be remembered, who 
 bore gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh : 
 
 " Three caskets they bore on their saddle-bows, 
 Three caskets of gold, with golden keys; 
 Their robes were of crimson silk, with rows 
 Of bells and pomegranates and furbelows, 
 Their turbans like blossoming almond- 
 trees." 
 
 Thus, out of the East, that first Christ 
 mas, bearing gifts, rode the Wise Men. 
 Let us, too, bear gifts, but let us be wise! 
 Let us array ourselves against the cheap 
 and tawdry desecration of the Day but 
 not against the crimson robes, and the 
 rows of bells and pomegranates and fur 
 belows, the caskets and the perfumes, 
 and all the signs and symbols of peace and 
 good-will. 
 
 Perhaps the first step towards wisdom 
 
 will be to fill ourselves with the spirit of 
 
 Christmas, the deep purpose of service 
 
 and good-will and peace. This is, how- 
 
 177 
 
THE COMMON WAY 
 
 ever, the intimate affair of each soul, and 
 does not admit of rule or precept; it is 
 the subjective side of Christmas. It is 
 the objective side that calls so loudly for 
 reform calls more loudly each year, for 
 certainly things are getting rapidly worse. 
 Twenty-five years ago, Christmas was not 
 the burden that it is now; there was less 
 haggling and weighing, less quid pro quo, 
 less fatigue of body, less weariness of 
 soul; and, most of all, there was less 
 loading up with trash. The statement of 
 a certain shopkeeper in this connection 
 may be taken as typical of the whole sit 
 uation. 
 
 "Why," inquired a customer, "do you 
 have these dreadful things for sale?" 
 
 The shopkeeper laughed. "Yes, they 
 are dreadful," he admitted. And, indeed, 
 they were gift -books bound in plush, 
 with " hand-painted " landscapes enclosed 
 in gilt filigree, fastened, somehow, to the 
 covers. They were, in every detail, a tri- 
 178 
 
CONCERNING CHRISTMAS GIVING 
 
 umph of bad taste. And they were all 
 ticketed $10. "Of course they are dread 
 ful," this intelligent man said, but what 
 can I do ? People want something that 
 shows money . You don t know how 
 many people come in at Christmas-time 
 and say : I want to buy a present for ten 
 dollars I don t care what. Then the 
 clerk shows this gift -book, and they pay 
 their ten dollars and walk out. Half of 
 em don t even look inside; it s the ten 
 dollars worth of cover they want." 
 
 Now could there be anything more 
 melancholy than such Christmas giving? 
 unless, indeed, it is the melancholy of 
 the bargain-counters of department stores 
 just before Christmas, or the melancholy 
 of the out-of-town cars, crowded with 
 weary women lugging home presents that 
 they feel obliged to give to persons who 
 do not wish to receive them. And each 
 year more such presents are being given, 
 more "debts" are being incurred, more 
 179 
 
THE COMMON WAY 
 
 spare-room closets are used as clearing 
 houses. We want to realize this in all 
 its force before we draw up our declara 
 tion of Reform, the first paragraph of 
 which is that we pledge ourselves to the 
 honor and glory of Christmas! 
 
 The next may be the assertion of our 
 purpose to^express the spirit of Christmas 
 by gifts which shall signify one of three 
 things (or, perhaps, all of them): 
 
 Love; 
 
 Friendship; 
 Human kindness. 
 
 Such gifts do not imply money; they do 
 not necessitate fatigue; they have noth 
 ing to do with debtors and creditors ; and 
 they never know the secrecy which is 
 shame. 
 
 The moment we put our Christmas giv 
 ing on this basis, we draw the first breath 
 of freedom; for we shall not give a single 
 present we don t want to give. Think of 
 180 
 
CONCERNING CHRISTMAS GIVING 
 
 that giving only what our hearts 
 prompt us to give! Why, it cuts that 
 long list in half, right away. There 
 is no lying awake at night to think how 
 on earth we are going to repay Mary Rob 
 inson ; for if she loved us when she sent 
 that spool-box, we are not her debtors. 
 We owe nothing but love to one another. 
 And if she did not love us, so much the 
 worse for Mary ! and it is the merest kind 
 ness to refrain from "paying back," so 
 that another Christmas she may be free, 
 too. 
 
 Of course, this plan of action will not 
 abolish spool -boxes; it will only make 
 them appropriate; it will bestow them 
 where they belong for some there be who 
 like spool-boxes. And it will not abolish 
 the thought and planning only it will be 
 pleasant thought, not anxious and har 
 assed and perhaps (such things have been 
 known!) bad-tempered thought. In our 
 Reform we will have to think, and think 
 181 
 
THE COMMON WAY 
 
 hard. The giving of gifts, even in the 
 right spirit, is a difficult business, for who 
 can tell what other people want? How 
 many sighs are breathed on Christmas 
 morning : 
 
 " Oh, dear, I did want a ring, but I hate 
 opals!" 
 
 "Well, there, I m sure it was very kind 
 in William but I should so much rather 
 have had a really handsome card-case 
 than this purse. Not but that it s very 
 nice, only " and then a sigh. 
 
 "Yes, I did want books. But well, 
 I hate poetry. Still, this is very interest 
 ing, of course " and so on. 
 
 Smothered or audible sighs, as the 
 breeding of the recipient may suggest; 
 but sighs, all the same. 
 
 Let us say that in giving the opals and 
 the purse there was, on the part of the 
 giver, no violation of the spirit of Christ 
 mas. It was only the chance of war, so 
 to speak you may hit or you may miss ; 
 182 
 
CONCERNING CHRISTMAS GIVING 
 
 but the results were none the less un 
 satisfactory all round, for we all want to 
 hit. So, of course, the thinking and plan 
 ning must go on, even when we have re 
 formed ; but we will swear to ourselves that 
 it shall be done with peace, or not done 
 at all. "/ am making a linen centrepiece 
 for you wrote one who was in the 
 spirit on the Lord s Day, "but it will not 
 be finished by the 2$th, because 1 have 
 been so much occupied that I could not 
 get time for embroidery and I would 
 not put in a single stitch that was hurried 
 or worried. 1 want it to carry to you 
 nothing but pleasantness and peace." 
 
 No; we reformers will think and plan, 
 joyfully, and endeavor not to give poetry 
 to the prosaic, nor opals to the supersti 
 tious. But as it is so hard, even for di 
 vining love, to be sure on these matters, 
 we might take one further step in our 
 Reform: where any uncertainty exists, let 
 us give as a token of love, or friendship, or 
 183 
 
THE COMMON WAY 
 
 human kindness, something that, while 
 expressing these things, will, at least, be 
 harmless. Let it be something that does 
 not last; that brings the meaning and 
 vanishes! Something that never will 
 know the indignity of the top shelf of a 
 spare-room closet. 
 
 A knock at a friend s door on Christ 
 mas morning, and the clasp of a hand, 
 brings the meaning of the day. A grow 
 ing plant bears it. Yes, the loaf of 
 bread, the jug of wine, but, most of all, 
 thou beside me, singing in the wilderness! 
 the personal revelation carries this 
 sacred meaning. 
 
 Suppose a note came on Christmas Day, 
 saying, not, "I send my love and best 
 wishes with this spool -box," but, "7 want 
 you to know that your patience, or courage, 
 or tenderness, during this last year, will help 
 me to live more bravely and courageously 
 and lovingly this year." What a Christ 
 mas present the receipt of such a letter 
 184 
 
CONCERNING CHRISTMAS GIVING 
 
 would be to any one of us! what a gift 
 for any one of us to send to the human 
 heart that has given us courage for the 
 burden and heat of the day! Compare it 
 with the contents of the spare-room closet. 
 
 To be sure, such a message of the soul 
 cannot often be sent, for the people whose 
 courage helps us to live are not too plenty. 
 But there are many plain folk, folk like 
 ourselves, who certainly mean well, even 
 if they are not inspiring; folk to whom 
 we want to say "Merry Christmas!" 
 and to put into their hands some sign of 
 our words. To these people, if we do not 
 know clearly what they want, let us give 
 the evanescent and vanishing symbol of 
 the meaning of Christmas and of the 
 peace and good-will that we wish them. 
 
 Thus shall Christmas be lifted from the 
 dust of trivialities into which we have 
 flung it. 
 
 And thus shall we be lifted to the level 
 of Christmas! 
 
 13 185 
 
TO THE GIRL WHO WRITES 
 
 THIS girl is rather more frequent than 
 she used to be. At least, she is more 
 obvious, because, whereas she used to 
 write her poems or essays or stories only 
 for her own eyes, or for those of her 
 dearest friend, she writes them now with 
 the not unreasonable expectation that 
 they shall be for everybody s eyes. Such 
 expectation is so encouraging that the 
 number of Girls who Write has greatly 
 increased. 
 
 The hope of publication has brought 
 
 a new element into such writing, which is 
 
 both helpful and dangerous. Helpful, 
 
 because it makes the Girl who Writes 
 
 186 
 
TO THE GIRL WHO WRITES 
 
 more careful in her work; she gives more 
 thought to the mere mechanical detail 
 of it; she writes clearly with a type 
 writer, if possible and on only one side 
 of the paper. She leaves broad margins. 
 She does not roll her MS., but sends it 
 flat, in a large envelope. All these things, 
 she has been told, propitiate the tiger- 
 hearted editor. But possible publicity 
 does more than this : it suggests great care 
 in the use of English. The Girl who 
 Writes realizes that grammar is impor 
 tant; that she must not end a sentence 
 with a preposition ; that certain inelegan- 
 cies are to be avoided. She will not say 
 "in our midst"; she rejects "and which"; 
 she even struggles bravely with personal 
 pronouns, and is careful not to follow 
 "one" by "they" or "their." If she is 
 a Pennsylvanian she even tries to dis 
 criminate between "shall" and "will" 
 (but in this she is rarely successful) . 
 These things have been taught by the 
 187 
 
THE COMMON WAY 
 
 hope of publication, and that they are 
 good things to know there can be no 
 possible doubt. Yet they are but the 
 outward and visible signs of the inward 
 and spiritual grace which is called litera 
 ture; and, compared with the dangers ac 
 companying them, they are small matters. 
 
 The first danger of the hope of publi 
 cation is the comparative ease with which, 
 nowadays, everything which has been 
 written can be printed. 
 
 In the last fifteen years thousands of 
 periodicals and papers have sprung up, 
 which means hundreds of open doors to 
 any one who, with a moderate amount 
 of cleverness, chooses to put pen to pa 
 per. The ease with which any of us may 
 appear in print has been fatal to more 
 than one good, honest talent which, with 
 some wholesome discouragement, might 
 have done valuable work in the world. 
 Of course, getting one s stories printed 
 does not of necessity imply anything so 
 188 
 
TO THE GIRL WHO WRITES 
 
 mercenary as a check. At first its ab 
 sence may not strike the contributor of 
 a story which has been accepted, let 
 us say, by the Humming Bird, or the 
 Purple Cat, or even the village news 
 paper. At the moment when one tears 
 off the wrapper and sees one s own 
 thoughts set down in cold type on a 
 page that is going to be read by thou 
 sands of eyes what difference does a 
 check make ? Probably any one who has 
 done any literary work will agree that 
 there is no moment of creative joy so 
 passionate as the moment when one sees 
 one s self first in print. 
 
 No wonder the Girl who Writes thrills 
 with the hope or the recollection of it, 
 and is content to let such things as checks 
 bide their time. In her appreciation of 
 this intense moment she has been known 
 to offer to pay for the printing of her 
 sketch in a periodical, or for its publica 
 tion in book form. The latter she can 
 189 
 
THE COMMON WAY 
 
 do easily enough; there are plenty of 
 publishers who are willing to take her 
 money and print her book, exactly as 
 they would print the report of an insane 
 asylum or a hotel prospectus. When the 
 Girl who Writes has had her MS. declined 
 with thanks by a dozen of the great pub 
 lishing-houses, she has been known to 
 say that there was a clique in literature 
 which would not let the new-comer in. 
 It is at this hurt and angry moment, per 
 haps, that she goes to a publisher, and, 
 turning her purse inside out, thrusts upon 
 the world her little, pathetic, white-hot, 
 undesired book. It is here that the fatal 
 ease of publication gets in its deadly 
 work : it makes the Girl who Writes blind 
 to a certain hard, economic fact: that 
 what the world wants in literature, the world 
 will pay for. And what it will not pay 
 for is not only not wanted, but (frequent 
 ly) not worth having. 
 
 If, with a sinking heart, the Girl who 
 190 
 
TO THE GIRL WHO WRITES 
 
 Writes takes back from the postman, 
 again and again and again, her poor, 
 battered, mail -worn MS., let her make 
 up her mind to this plain and sobering 
 truth it is not desired. And let her, 
 with a delicacy which, under like cir 
 cumstances, she would show for herself, 
 refrain from sending her book where 
 it is not wanted. 
 
 In other words, if one business house 
 after another sees no demand for her 
 book, let her conclude that there is no 
 demand; and never, never, never make 
 the mistake of publishing it herself! 
 (This does not, of course, apply to scien 
 tific or philosophical books; these must 
 often be practically given to the world; 
 and then publication by the authors 
 merits only gratitude and honor.) 
 
 The ease with which one s thoughts 
 
 may be sent out into the world creates 
 
 another danger haste in writing. This 
 
 danger is not peculiar to the new-comer 
 
 191 
 
THE COMMON WAY 
 
 in literature ; it attacks the old - stager 
 just as virulently perhaps even more 
 so, for the check is sometimes a bitter 
 consideration, and the demoralizing and 
 corrupting pot-boiler is the result. The 
 Girl who Writes generally does not have 
 this temptation; what her work may 
 bring is, in nine case out of ten, secondary 
 to the work itself. 
 
 It is only when easy publication has 
 brought, after a while, a very little bit of 
 money, that money as an end becomes 
 a possible consideration. But the temp 
 tation to haste is another matter. To 
 write, to appear in print, to be famous! 
 All this is happiness enough; so on she 
 goes! What hot and flashing sentences 
 tear across her illegible pages! what 
 splendid adjectives, what fine language, 
 what burning suggestions! Then, "Fi 
 nis" written with a beautiful flourish, the 
 wet sheets are thrust into an envelope, 
 and out runs the Girl who Writes to 
 192 
 
TO THE GIRL WHO WRITES 
 
 drop the package into the mail-box! 
 Then come palpitating days and wake 
 ful nights of expectation. Then comes 
 but, as the picture in Bab Ballads de 
 clares, "the rest is too awful! 
 
 The return of that package need not 
 be rehearsed. The Girl knows it. It is 
 to be hoped that she knows also the re 
 vulsion of feeling that comes in reading 
 over again, in cold blood, those words 
 that seemed so full of genius when the 
 MS., hot from the pen, started out into 
 the world. The only really hopeless con 
 dition in literature is where the writer 
 cannot see the weakness, or cheapness, 
 or bad grammar, or inadequacy of work 
 which in the moment of creation seemed 
 good and strong. If the Girl who Writes 
 cannot see the faults in her work, there 
 is no hope for her. Every publisher has 
 met real talent which, hampered by this 
 fatal and pathetic blindness, never "ar 
 rives," as the saying is. Over and over 
 193 
 
THE COMMON WAY 
 
 again the honest and earnest effort is 
 made; over and over again one friendly 
 critic or another essays the ungracious 
 task of pointing out what it is in the 
 work which makes it just fail of success; 
 but the writer cannot see. 
 
 Blindness like this is tragic, and is 
 probably congenital and hopeless; but 
 there is a blindness that comes only from 
 haste in writing, which, when there is an 
 open mind and real artistic perception, 
 can be cured or, at any rate, alleviated. 
 There can be little doubt that if, when 
 "Finis" is written, the paper or poem or 
 story were consigned, not to the mail 
 box, but to a pigeon-hole for a month or 
 six weeks, then taken out and read care 
 fully, coldly, if possible, certainly criti 
 cally, many a change for the better would 
 be made. Of course, this sort of drudg 
 ery seems very stupid after the fine fury 
 of composition. " Let genius burn, and 
 hang grammar," says the poet (the young 
 194 
 
TO THE GIRL WHO WRITES 
 
 poet). " Genius is aspiration," such an 
 one declared once; but a listener, full of 
 years and honors, said, dryly, " Genius is 
 perspiration." 
 
 There is one other thing that the Girl 
 who Writes ought to consider, and that 
 is this: has life been real enough, rich 
 enough, deep enough, for her, in her fif 
 teen or sixteen or even twenty years, to 
 have found in it something to give the 
 world? Experience, after all, is what 
 counts. And, generally speaking, if the 
 Girl who Writes has lived the safe and 
 guarded and normal life which she ought 
 to have lived, she has had no experiences; 
 she has not gone down very deep into 
 life. Her hopes and fears and joys 
 have been all on the surface where they 
 should be. 
 
 There is still another danger about early 
 expression the stream gives out. Why 
 this should be may be explained in one 
 way or another, but the fact is perfectly 
 
 195 
 
THE COMMON WAY 
 
 certain. Any editor can tell dreary tales 
 of precocious talent, even of genius 
 (which is a different thing altogether), 
 which has burned like a comet across 
 his murky editorial horizon flashed, and 
 burned, and dropped into darkness. 
 This poor editor finds a story written by 
 a girl, say, of eighteen delicate, dis 
 criminating, with real distinction of style, 
 with positive human interest; a story 
 that makes the battered reader thrill 
 with hope that he has found a valuable 
 contributor; it is published, and further 
 contributions are solicited. But, oh, 
 what weakness and insipidity those 
 "further contributions" reveal! The 
 torch has been blown out, the fountain 
 has failed. Why? Who can say! But 
 it would seem as though there had not 
 been oil enough in the lamp, water 
 enough in the cistern. Life had not yet 
 given love and hope and death; the 
 writer had not yet really begun to live. 
 196 
 
TO THE GIRL WHO WRITES 
 
 Of course, this is a generalization. It 
 is not always so; but it happens often 
 enough to at least suggest reflection 
 which might be summarized as follows : 
 
 Be sure you have something to give 
 before you offer your thoughts to the 
 world. 
 
 The critical friend of the Girl who 
 Writes will feel a certain uneasiness at 
 any publication before the writer is 
 twenty -two or twenty -three. The Girl 
 who Writes will think one might well 
 suggest Methuselah as an age qualifica 
 tion if twenty - five or twenty - six years 
 were suggested ; so the critical friend had 
 best forbear but he will have his opin 
 ion! 
 
 For, after all, while one muses the fire 
 burns! Judgment and deep understand 
 ing of life, love, and patience, reverence 
 and hope, come with years, and we want 
 these things in the books we read, be 
 cause the knowledge of them helps us to 
 197 
 
THE COMMON WAY 
 
 live. And if our girl, while she is waiting 
 for such knowledge, takes the time of 
 growth to feed upon the classics, she will 
 cultivate taste and style and the sense 
 of proportion, so that when she does 
 get to work she will make us all her 
 debtors. 
 
 The sum of all these discouraging and 
 disagreeable things said to a girl that 
 everybody is really very fond of (never 
 end a sentence with a preposition, girls!) 
 is: wait; and again, wait; and yet once 
 more, wait. 
 
 Wait until you can publish what you 
 have to say under dignified auspices. 
 
 Wait until the glamour of creation set 
 tles and clears and you can judge of the 
 quality of your work. 
 
 Wait until living has taught you what 
 life means; until, through study, you have 
 begun to comprehend art and nature, and, 
 through experience, you have begun to 
 apprehend God and man. 
 198 
 
TO THE GIRL WHO WRITES 
 
 Then write! and may the world be 
 better and richer and happier because 
 God gives you the high and noble power 
 of expression. 
 
 THE END 
 
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