w n^ Los Angeles, Lai, A New Atmosphere, BY y GAIL HAMILTON. BOSTON: ESTES AND LAURIAT, 1877. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1884, by TICKNOR AND FIELDS, a the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachoaettii University Press: Whi.ch, Bigklow, and Compact, Camdbidgb. HQ ID L>'^-- A New Atmosphere. I. a^ VJTIATEp atmosphere is fatal to healthy development. One may be ever so wise, learned, rich, and beautiful, but if the air he breathes is saturated with fever, pestilence, or any noxious vapor, nothing will avail him. The subtile malaria creeps into his inmost frame, looks out from his languid eye, ^ tributed to the world's wealth, and his hapDV children will rise up and call him blessed. ^ut if they do not incline to such a life, he shall -not force them, however strongly he may be per- suaded of its propriety, wisdom, and dignity. Be- cause they are obliged to grow under the whole superincumbent weight of society, he must not be severe if they attain but a partial growth. With boys the preponderance of influence is overwhelm- ingly on the side of an active, positive life. With girls, it is against it. If a boy does not do some- thing in the world, he must show cause for it ; a girl must show cause if she does. Therefore, if the father is not able, by precept and persuasion, to induce his daughters to embrace an active life, he must lay it to society, and do the next best thing by protecting them as far as possible from the resultant evils of their situation ; not quite all to society either, for, as a general thing, if his own precept and example have been right, his children will be right ; the influence of father and mother, by its nearness, intensity, and continuity, very often more than balances the superior bulk ot society's influence. Parents say things wliich they ought to mean, and Avliich they wish to be considered to mean, and wliich they suppose they do mean, but which they are really the farthest in the world from meaning, and then marvel that their children should disregard their instructions A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 27 pnd go wrong ; but such instructions are but as the dust in the balance. The ideal which they actually, though perhaps unconsciously, hold up to their children, is the model upon which the chil- dren form themselves. What they are, not what they say, is the paramount influence. So if a father heartily believes in womanly work, his daughters will hardly fail to be woman-workers. If a father is not able to support his daughters in a manner compatible with comfort and refine- ment, he should see to it that they have some way opened in which they can do it, or help do it, for themselves, in a manner consistent with their dig- nity and self-respect. It is very rarely that a human being is born without possible power in some one direction. The field which is traversable to women is much more circumscribed than that which is traversed by men, yet I have somewhere read a statement that the number of employments in which women of the United States are actually ensased is, I think, o-reater than five hundred. If this is so, or anything nearly so, men surely have no need to "marry off" their daughters as ari economical measure. Out of five hundred occupations, a woman can certainly choose one which, though not perhaps that which enlists her enthusiasm, is yet better than the debasement of herself which an indifferent marriage necessitates. It is better to be not wholly well-placed than to be wholly ill-placed. Indeed, there are many 28 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. chances in favor of the assumption that she may find even a suitable employment. Literature and art are open to her on equal terms with men. Teaching is free to her, with the disadvantage of being miserably, shamefully, wickedly underpaid, both as regards the relative and intrinsic value of her work ; but this is an arrangement which does not degrade her, only the men who employ her. Many mechanical employments she is at perfect liberty to acquire, and the greater delicacy of her organization gives her a solid advantage over her masculine competitors. In factories, in printing- offices, and in all manner of haberdashers' shops, she is quite at home ; and this branch of trade she ought to monopolize, for surely a man is as much out of his sj)here in holding up a piece of muslin at arm's length, and expatiating on its merits to a bevy of women, as a woman is in the pulpit or before the mast. Especially do private houses invite her over all the country. The whole land groans under inefficient domestic assistance ; and if healthy, intelligent, well-behaved American gii'ls would be willing to work in kitchens which they do not own one half as hard as most women work in kitchens which they do own, thousands of doors would fly open to them. There is a foolish pride and prejudice which rises up against " going out to service." But everybody in this world, who is- not a cumberer of the ground, is out at service. If it is true service and well performed, one thing A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 29 IS as honorable as another. The highest plaudit mortal can hope to receive is, " Well done, good and faitht'ul servant." It is the absence of moral dignity and character, not, as is often supposed, its 4 presence, which causes this reluctance, A nobl_e^ ^ man ennobles his work. A king among basket- makers is none the less a kinc;. Plow women can be so enamored of the needle as to choose to make a pair of cotton drilling drawers, with buckles, button-holes, straps, and strings, for four and one sixth cents, or line white cotton shirts with fine linen "bosoms" for sixteen cents apiece, rather v than go into a handsome house in the next street S to make the beds, and scour the knives, and iron the '^ clothes for a dollar and a half a week,* besides board and rent, I do not understand. That so many are ^"X ready to brave the din of machinery, and the smells -.^ of a factory for ten hours a day, with only a givat, ^ dreary, unhomelike boarding-house to go to at night, while there are so very few, if any, who are willing to preside over a comfortable and plentiful- kitchen, with at least a possibility of home com- forts, pleasant association, and true appreciation, is equally inexplicable. // But enough has been said to show, that, if women have a desire, or are under the necessity, of get- ting an honest living, ways and means may be found ; not so stimulating, not so lucrative, not so * This was written before the advent of high prices. At pres> ent such service would command perhaps twice that sum. 30 ' A NEW ATMOSPHERE. varied as might be desired, but honest and honor- able. Girls, however, make the mistake of rush- ing pell-mell into school-houses, as if that were the only respectable path to independence. I heard a man the other day speaking about the High School of his native city. It was a good school, — he had nothino; to say against its con- duct, — it gave girls a good education ; and yet he sometimes thought it did more harm than good. Every year a class was graduated, and they were all ladies and did not want to work, but must all teach, and there were no schools for so many ; "what could be done with them ? It was an evil tliat seemed to be growing worse every year. The implied grievance was, that educated women were a drug in the market; and the implied rem- edy, that girls should be left more uncuhivated that they might be turned to commoner uses. I pass over that accurate knowledge of things shown in the unconscious contrast between working and teaching, — over the gross utilitarianism implied in both grievance and redress, — simply remarking, that, if the excess of supply over demand would jus- tify the breaking up of High Schools, the domestic education of this generation should be largely dis- continued for the same reason, and that in fact there seems to be no real and adequate resource, except to manage with girl babies as you do with kittens, save the fifth and drown the rest, — to say that girls do vei*y wrong in regarding teaching aa A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 3t the solti or the chief honorable employment. That ly^ occupation is the one foi* them to which a natural taste calls them, no matter what may be its rank in society. In fact, let it not be forgotten that society looks with a degree of disfavor on any remunerative employment for women. To be entirely beyond the reach of cavil, they must be consumers, and not producers ; and since, to tuni into producers will forfeit somewhat their caste, let them make capital out of the rural and remote adage, that one may as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb, and while they are about it, follow the y^ thing that good is to them. If girls of wealth and standing, who also possess character and de- cision, would act upon their principles when they have them, and follow the lead of their tastes when their taste leads them into a milliner's shop, or a watch factory, or a tailor's room, they would do much more than satisfy their own consciences. They would do a service to their sex, and through their sex to the other, and so to the whole world, which would outweigh whatever small sacrifice it might cost them. For the world is so constituted that to him that hath shall be given. If he have power, he shall have still more. Those who are independent of the world's sufferance are toler- ably sure to get it. Let a poor girl go to w^ork, and it is nothing at all. She is obliged to do it, and society does not so much as turn a look upon her ; but let a girl go out from her browij-stono 32 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. five-story house, from the care and attendance of servants, to work for three or five hours a day, because she honestly beheves that the accident of wealth does not relieve her from moral responsi- bility, and because, of all forms of labor practicable to her, that seems the one to which she is best adapted, and immediately there is a commotion. The brown-stone friends are shocked and scandal- ized, which is probably the best thing that could happen to them. Desperate cases can only be electrified back into life. But it is the first girl alone that will cause a shock. The second will make but a faint sensation. The third will be quite commoirplace, and when things come to that pass, that if a woman wishes to do a thing she can do it, and that is the end of it, there is little more to be desired in that line. I know a young lady, the onlv daughter of a 'listinguished family, with abundant means at her command, with parents whose great happiness it is ^o promote hers, — a young lady who has only to fancy what a nice thing it must be to live in a bird's-nest on a tree-top, and immediately the car- penters come and build her a bower in the tallest tree that overlooks the sea. This young lady has a strong inclination to surgery, a most perverted and unwomanly taste, of course ; but so long as it is a womanly weakness to break one's arms, per- haps it is as well that some woman should be un- womanly enough to set them. At any rate, there A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 33 was tlie taste ; nobody put it there, and something must he done about it. Being; the sensible daugh- ter of sensible parents, who looked upon tastes as hints of powers, instead of disregarding this hint and devotiug her life to her garden, making calls, and a forced and feeble piano-worship, — all very nice things, but not quite exhaustive of im- mortal capacities, — she set herself down to the study of surgery and medicine. It was no super- ficial and sensational whim. Year after year, month after month, week after week, showed no abatement of enthusiasm. On the contrary, her interest grew with her jrrowino; knowlediie. She left without regret, without any weak regrets, her luxurious home for the secluded and severe stu- dent's life, and by patient and laborious a))])lication made herself master of the science. I look upon her almost as an apostle, though she is very far from taking on apostolic airs. She quietly pursues the even tenor of her way as if it were the beaten track. But in doing this she docs ten thousand times more. She opens the path for a host of feet less strono; than hers. But one great obstacle in the way of woman's attaining strength is her lack of perseverance. Of the many pursuits possible to women, few are em- braced to any great extent, because girls are said to be, and probably ai'e, unwilling to bestow upon n trade or a profession the study and thought which are necessary to insure skill. But this is a result 2* c 34 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. as well as a cause, and must be removed by the removal of the cause. Promotion and political preferment shine before a man as a reward for whatever eminence of character or intelligence he may attain. His business is a separate depart- ment, and dispenses its separate reward. The first of these is entirely, and the second partially, want- ing to women. A female assistant in a high school, a woman of education, refinement, accom- plishments, tact, and sense, receives six hundred dollarSji and if she stays six hundred years she will receive no more. A male assistant, fresh from a college or a normal school, thoroughly unsea- soned, without elegance of manners, or dignity of presence, or experience, teaching only tempora- rily, with a view to the pulpit, or the bar, or a professorship, receives a thousand dollars. His thousand is because he is a man. Her six hun- dred is because she is a woman. Her little finger may be worth more to the school than his whole body, but that goes for nothing. In a certain "college" I wot of, the " Professors" have a larger salary than the " Preceptresses," who perform dou- ble the amount of labor, and without any hope of promotion. Female assistants in a grammar school receive three or four hundred dollars where the male princi])al has ten or twelve hundred, and where the difference of salary bears no propor- tion to the difference of care and labor. No nuittor how assiduously they may devote them- A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 35 jelves to their duties, nor how successful thej may be in resuhs, they have attained the maximum. Worse than this : since the increase of prices con- sequent upon the war, teachers' salaries have been increased; but where two hundred dollars have been added to the salary of the male principal, only twenty-five have been added to those of the female assistants : so that the man's salary is six- teen per cent higher, while the woman's is only six per cent higher. This is done in Massachusetts. One excuse is, that it does not cost a woman so much to live as it costs a man. It costs a woman just as much to live as it does a man. If men would be willing to practise the small economies that wo- men practise, they could live at no greater expense. There are some things in which women have the advantage ; there are others in which it lies with the man. A woman's calico gown does not cost so much as a man's broadcloth coat, but her dress, the wardrobe through, costs just as much as his. He can be decent on just as small a sum as she. Another excuse is, that men have a family to sup- ])ort. I supi)ose, then, that women never have families to support. No female teacher ever has a widowed mother or an invalid father to assist, or brothers and sisters to educate. No widow ever had recourse to the school-room to provide bread for her fatherless children. Or if such things ever hap{)en, the authurities make adequate provision for it. The school committee, of course, before it 36 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. assigns the salary inquires into these background facts, and acts accordingly. The rich girl has in- deed but a small income from her teaching, but the poor girl is paid according to the number of people dependent upon her, and the unmarried man is confined to narrower fortunes. You know that such a thing is never done. The men always receive the high salaries and the wo- men always receive the low salaries ; no one ever asks who does the'work or wlio su})ports the fami- lies. It is only a feeble excuse to hide men's self- ish greed. They are the lions, and they take the lion's share. They can give themselves plentyand women a pittance, and they do it, and they mean to do it, and they will do it. It matters not that the ten or twelve or fourteen hundred dollars di vided among the man's family of himself, his wife, and his one or two or no children, giA^es to each, even to the little baby playing on the floor, as much money for su|)port as the female teacher re- ceives who devotes her whole time and strength to the school. It mutters not that his children are growing up to be the staff of his declining years, while the unmarried female assistant has only her own self for reliance. Man is a thief and holds the bag, and if women do not like to teach for what they can get, so much the better. They will be all the more willing to become household drudges. Again, read the following paragraph from a ])i'oin- inent newspaper printed in Massachusetts. A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 37 " The custom of employing ladies as clerks in the public departments at Washington is meeting with increased favor. It is said that, generally speaking, they write more correctly than the men, and as they receive much smaller salaries, the gain to the government is considerable." Could six lines better express the wickedness of the relations which exist between man and woman under the " best government in the world " ? The shabby chivalry of "ladies"; the matter-of-fact manner in which not only a wrong, but an absurd- ity, is mentioned, as if it were as evident as a syl- logism, and had no more to do with morality than the multiplication-table ; and then the neat little patriotico-economical chuckle at the end ! Women do the work better than men, and receive much smaller salaries. A logical sequence, and an ex- cellent example of the reasoning which is brought to bear on w^omen. Especially dignified and com- manding is the attitude assumed for our govern- ment. The Great Republic, stretching its arms across a continent, vexing every land for its treas- ures, 9.nd whitening every sea with its sails, yet stoops over a poor woman's pocket to take toll of -the few pennies which her labor has fairly earned. *' The wise save it call." But there is a lower deep than this. The very same paper that so naively blazoned forth its own shame, made another brilliant essay at ab(jut the same time. I quote the paragraph from memory, but it is substantially correct. 38 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. " Miss Anna Dickinson demanded three [or six, or whatever it was] hundred dollars for two lec- tures delivered for the benefit of the Sanitary Fair in Chicago. Miss Charlotte Cushman gave eight thousand dollars, the entire proceeds of her theatri- cal tour, to the Sanitary Commission. Comment is unnecessary." For all that, we will have a little comment. Here is one woman in a million rising by the sheer force of her God-given genius above the miserable ne- cessities of women. She needs not to endure or to beer. She is sovereicm in her own right and can dictate her own terms. Men cannot grind her face, for she is stronger than they. What do they do ? They hold her up to odium because they cannot extort from her the money which they cannot pre- vent her from earning. Most women they can pre- vent from earning it. Most working-women they can keep down to what prices they choose to pay. But here is one to whom they cannot dole out pennies: "with one white arm-sweep" she gathers in a golden harvest. But they will at least force her Pactolian stream into a channel of their own choosing. Not at all. " If she will, she will, you may depend on 't ; If she won't, she won't, and there 's an end on 't." Nothing, therefore, is left to these high-minded gentry, but to stand at a distance and " mako tkces " I Somebody assumed to excuse Miss Dickinson, A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 39 hy saying that she gave up other and far more lu- crative engagements for this ; but it was entirely a work of supererogation. Miss Dickinson needed no excuse. One might, indeed, think within him- self that Miss Cushnian has nearly closed her pub- lic career, and is already possessed of an indepen- dent fortune, while Miss Dickinson's life lies before her, and her fortune is still to be made. But all this is irrelevant. The whole paragraph is an im- pertinence. Why is any person to be mulcted at another's instance in any sum for any charity or any purpose whatever? What right has any newspaper to decide the direction or the amount of a citizen's benevolence ? Had it concerned a man, it would have been impertinence ; concern- ing a woman, it is something worse, — not because of her womanhood, but because of the injustice which is wrought upon her sex wherever there is the ability to be unjust. These are very small things, but they are signs of great ones. It may be inferred, therefore, that woman's in- difference to excellence in work does not necessa- rily impugn either her character or calibre. Ex- cellence is indeed good in itself, and desirable, without reference to the money it brings ; yet money and promotion are a spur, and therefore they must be taken into the account when we are dealing with facts and not merely with theoiies. Now, then, let women, disregarding senseless 40 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. and wicked customs, make a point of making a point of something, and then let them lay aside every weight which social injustice or indifference hangs upon them, and the consequent sin of super- ficiality which so easily besets them, and make that point perfect. No matter that they are ill-paid and held down, let them assert themselves ; let them work so well that their work shall assert itself, and pay and promotion will come — to woman, if not to themselves — as the inevitable result. I do not mean that every woman should study medicine, or apprentice herself to a trade. In- deed, I consider it to be a wrong state of society in wlu'ch there is any other necessity for her doing so than that which arises from her own inward promptings. It is very likely that she can find »n her father's house abundant scope for the exer- cise of every faculty. She may have a leaning to home life, and to no other. Because a girl remains at home, it by no means follows that she is accom- plishing nothing. What I do mean is, that she shall not dawdle away her time simply because sho is a girl ; and that if, moved by her own instincts, which are from God, or impelled by circumstances, which are generally the fonlt of men, she enters the arena where men strive, she shall have no other disabilities than those which Nature lays upon her. Do not fail to note the distinction be- tween choice and necessity in her adoption of a cancer. When a woman, of her own free will and A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 41 delight, pursues a study or an occupation beyond the common female range, it is one thing. When she is obliged to earn her own living, and for that purpose goes out into the paths where men walk, it is another thing. In both cases she should work on equal terms with men ; in the tirst, because the very strength of her purpose, overcoming the natu- ral disinclinations of her sex, shows it to be of celestial origin, and therefore worthy of respect ; in the second, because, if man fails to give to woman the support which is her due, the smallest step to- wards reparation is to allow her every advantage in the attempt to support herself. It is always a sorrowful, I think it is always an injurious thing, for a woman to be obliged to compete with men, that is, to earn money. She can do it only at the constant torture, or the constant sacrifice — per- haps both — of something higher than can be brought into the strife. But so much the more should she be freed from every unnecessary pain and hinderance. Moreover, evil as is the imperative assumption by woman of man*s work, it combats a greater evil, and therefore also should her hands be upheld. The most persistent and kindly en- couragement can never change, in the womanly heart, love of home into love of conquest and re- nown ; but it can do much to sofUn the harshness of an uncongenial lot, and take somewhat from the bitterness of a cup that never can be sweet. The mere fact of a daughter's services being / 42 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. needed at home is no reason why they shall be claimed after she has become of age, either throu2;h years, or maturity of character, when such service is distasteful to her, and other service is tasteful and possible. If, for instance, a girl has a strong desire to be a milliner, or a mantua-maker, or an artist, she should not be prevented because her mother wants her at home to help take care of the children and do the work. I suppose to many this will seem unnatural and undutiful. It is nei- ther the one nor the other. There are remarka- ble notions afloat concerning nature and duty. If one may judge from popular ethics, the duty seems to lie chiefly on one side. Lions, we are told, would appear to the world in a very different light if lions wrote history ; so filial and parental rela- tions, discussed as they always are by the parental part of the community, have a different bearing from what they would if looked at from the chil- dren's point of view. In our eagerness to enforce the claims which parents have on children, we seem sometimes ready to forget the equally strin- gent claims which children have on parents. Much is said about the gratitude which parental care im- poses upon the child ; very little about the respon- sibility which his involuntary birth imposed upon himself. Here is a daughter, an immortal being, account- able to God. Surely, when she has become a woman, she has a right to direct her life in the A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 43 manner best adapted to bring out its abilities. No human being has a right to appropriate another human being's Hfe, — even if they be mother and daughter. You say that she owes hfe itself to her parents. True, but in such a way that it confers an additional obligation on them to give her every opportunity to make the most of life, and not in such a way as to justify them in monopolizing it, nor in such a way as to render her accountable to them alone for its use. The person who gives life IS under much stronger bonds than the person who receives life. Life is a momentous thing. It may be an eternal curse. It is almost certain to in- volve deep sorrow. Sin, disease, pain, are almost sui'e to follow in its wake. It is a Pandora's box whose best treasure is only a compensation. The happiest thing we know of it is, that it will one day come to an end : Psyche will rend off her dis- guises, and soar in her proper form. The uncer- tainty of the future is our solace against the cer- tainty of the present. Surely, then, of all people in the world, those who impose this fearful burden are the very last who should add even a feather's weight to it, and the very first and foremost who should at any sacrifice of less important matters lighten it as far as possible. Filial unfaithfulness is a sin, but parental unfaithfulness is a chief of sins. The first violates relations which it finds. The second violates those which it makes. Almost invariably the second is the direct cause of the first. 44 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. There may be extraordinary malformations : a child may be born with some organic incapacity for love, or gratitude, or virtue, as children are born blind or deaf. But, as a rule, parental love and wisdom result in filial love and duty growing stronger and stronger every day, and removing the possibility of sacrifice by making all service a pleasure. Be- cause, where I knew the circumstances, I never saw an instance of filial misbehavior that could not be traced directly to parental mismanagement or neg- lect, I believe it is so where I do not know the circumstances. I am persuaded that Solomon had the spirit of truth when he declared, " Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it." A son administers arsenic to his parents, and the world starts back in horror. I would not diminish its horror ; but be- fore you lavish all your execration on the son, find out whether the parents have not been administer- ing poison, or suffered poison to be administered, to his mind and heart from his earliest infancy. Be shocked at that. I never saw or heard of a son born of virtuous parents, and wisely trained in the ways of virtue, who turned about and poisoned his parents after he had grown up. The eider-duck plucks the down from her own breast to warm the nest for her young, and I do not suppose an un- grateful or rebellious eider-duckling was ever heard of; but if the eider-duck plucks the down from the breasts of her young to line the nest for herself — what then ? A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 45 If a daughter, out of love or a " sense of duty," thooses to sacrifice her inclinations, — by inclina- tions I do not mean the mere promptings of selt- indulgence, but the voice of her soul calling her to a work in life, — I say not that she does not well. I only say that her mother has no right to demand such a sacrifice. It is an unjust exaction. It is a selfish building up of comfort on the ruins of another's happiness, possibly of character, since few things are so apt to warp the tone of mind and temper as a forced performance of unsuitable work. Before children are old enough to choose for them- selves, their parents must choose for them, — even then with a warv care lest they mistake a prompt- ing of nature for a whim, but every restraint that is put upon a child for any other purpose than his own benefit is a sin against a soul. What duty his love does not prompt, you shall not by the sheer brute force of your position require. His life is in his own hands, put there by you, and he must make it into a vessel of honor or dishonor. You shall not hold back his hand from working its own beautiful designs, that it may putty up the cracks in your time-worn vessel. You make great ac- count of the care which you took of his helpless infancy ; but he owes no especial gratitude for that. As may be inferred from what I have be- fore said, it was a debt you owed him. Having endowed him with life, the least you could do was to help him make the best of it. It would have 46 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. been cruel not to do it. You have only made things even in doing it, — and hardly that. Be- sides, such considerations are logically useless. You may fill a child's book, paper, and ears with his mother's anxiety and care for him. You may tell him how she has watched over him and toiled foi him during his helpless infancy, and conjure him on that account to love and obey her. It will be a waste of breath. You might just as well conju- gate a Latin verb to him. He will no more form an intelligent conception of a mother's love and care from your most forcible description, than he would from amo, amas, amat. He is not capable of such a conception. A child's love is an in- stinct. It gradually develops into a sentiment which permeates his whole being. The mother's love is also an instinct. She nurses her child just as instinctively as a hen gathers her chickens un- der her wings. Tliere generally is something more than instinct, but there is instinct. But at no stage of a child's life is love a matter of reasoning. If it is within him, it cannot be argued out; if it is not, it cannot be argued in. Never a person loved because he was convinced he oujiht to love. He loves because he loves, and that is all that can be said about it. I hope I shall not be considered as attempting to weaken the cords between parents and children. On the contrary, I wish to strengthen them. But I wish to strengthen them by making them of that A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 47 unseen, spiritual substance which alone is worthy of the relation, — proof against every external force, and drawing more and more closely with every opening year, — not of that gross and palpable out- ward material which chafes and irritates, and which will snap asunder the moment that young vigor spreads its wings. IV. ?-J^NOTHER truth, which seems to have been forgotten, and which needs to be newly revealed to this generation, is, that though manhood and womanhood are two distinct things, the Jiumanity which under- lies them is one and indivisible. We are told that God made man male and female, but we are first told that God made man in his own image. There is no distinction. Woman is made in God's image just as much as man ; and it is just as wicked to deface that image in her as in him. It is defaced when her powers are crippled, and her organs en- feebled, whether it be by turning her toes under till they touch the heels, and then bandaging them so, or whether that process be enacted on her mind. If a boy should stand god-like erect, in na- tive honor clad, so sliould a girl. She may not be as tall, but she may be as straight. The palhi can- not turn into an oak, and has not the smallest de- sire to turn into an oak ; but there is no reason why it should not be the best kind of a palm, — and A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 49 m the deserts of this world a fruitful palm cheereth the heart of both God and m-cM. Read, in the light of these facts, a " sonnet" and its accompanying comments, which I chanced to find while looking over a twelve-jear-old number of a magazine which stands among the first in America. " The learned ' science-women ' of the day, the * deep, deep-blue stockings ' of the time, are fairly hit off in the ensuing satirical sonnet : — ' I idolize the Ladies ! Th( y are fairies. That spiritualize this world of ours ; • From he avenly hot-beds most delightful flowers, Or choice cream-chcescs from celestial dairies. But learniiifr, in its barbarous seminaries, ■ c ■> Gives the dear creatures many wretclrcd hours, ^ ■ And on their gossamer intellect sternly showers Science, with all its horrid accessaries. Now, seriously, the only things, I think, In which young ladies should instructed be, Are — stocking-mending, love, and cookery! — Accomplishments that very soon .will sink, Since Fluxions now, and Sanscrit conversation. Always form part of female education ! ' ' 'Something good in the way of inculcatioi; may I e educed from this rather biting sonnet. If wctnan so far forgets her ' mission,' as it is com- mon to term it now-a-days^ as to choose those accomplishments whose only recommendation is that they are * the vogue,' in preference to ac- quisitions which will fit her to be a better wifo 50 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. and mother, she becomes a fair subject for the shafts of the satirical censor." Leavinir " ffossamer intellects " to educe what- ever of good in the way of inculcation may be found in this biting sonnet, and in the equally mordacious remarks of the mulierivorous com- mentator, let me refer to another paragraph in which popular opinion is crystallized. It is found in a book printed and pubUshed in London, and comins: to me through several hands from the library of an English nobleman, but a book so atrocious in its sentiments, and so feeble in its expression, that I will not give the small impulse to its circulation which the mention of its name might impart : " In woman, weakness itself is the true charter of power ; it is an absolute attrac- tion, and by no means a defect ; it is tlie mys- terious tie between the sexes, a tie as irresistible as it is captivating, and begetting an influence pe- culiar to itself." This is the fancy sketch. One of our best writers has drawn the true portrait of such a woman : a woman " to be the idol of her school-boy son, to be remembered in his gray old ao"e with a reverential tenderness as a glorifled saint, but a woman also to drive that same son to desperation in actual life by her absorption in trifles, by her weak credulity, .... by her in- ability to sympathize with his ambition, to enter into his difiiculties, or to share in the faintest de- gree his aspirations." A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 51 *" In short," proceeds the advocate of the oak- and-vine humanity, " all iiidependmire&~is.junjxmi- nine; the more dependent that sex becomes, the more will it be cherished." Independence is unfeminine: what a pity that starvation and insanity are not unfeminine also ! Independence is unfeminine, but what provision is made for dependence ? Look about the world. "TEIow many men are there, dependence on whom would be agreeable to a sensitive woman ? and what shall the women do who have nobody to be dependent on, — the women without husbands or fathers, and the Avomen with drunken, thriftless, extravagant, miserly, feeble or incapable husbands or fathers? When every woman in the coun- try is placed above the possibility of want, it will be time enough to talk about the sweets of de- pendence ; but so long as women are liable, and are actually reduced to want, to shame, to igno- miny, to starvation, and degradation and death, through the meanness, the misconduct, o»* the in- ability of their natural protectors, it will be well at least to connive at their efforts to help them- selves. An independent woman may be a nui- sance, but I think rather less so than an immoral woman, or an insane woman, or a dead woman in the bottom of a canal in Lowell, or a I've woman makino; shirts for Milk Street merchants in Bos- ton, at five cents apiece. O men, you who shut vour eyes to the stern and awful facts of life, and 52 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. rhapsodize over your fine-spun theories, what will you say when the Lord maketh inquisition for blood ? In that great and terrible day that shall open the books of judgment, that shall wrest from the earth and the sea the secrets which are in them, when the dead women come forth from their suicidal graves, when they swarm up from mider the river-bridges, when they pour out from the gateways of hell, will it seem to you then a wise and righteous thing that you branded inde- pendence as unfeminine ? Apart from the bearings of this doctrine, one word as to its facts. There are two kinds of de- pendence, — the one of love, the other of neces- sity. Each may comprise the other, and all is well. But each may exist without the other, and then half is ill. The first is a delight. The sec- ond is a dread. The first is a delight, — but no more to woman than to man, for though the mat- ters in which they are dependent differ, the de- pendence itself is mutual, and mutually dear and precious. Nobody need enforce it by argument. It commends itself by its own inherent sweetness. But the second is an evil, and only an evil under the sun, — a state which no man and no woman of any spirit will for a moment willingly endure Dependence is a joy only where it is a boon ; other wise it is a burning torture if there is any soul to feel. But masculine deprecation of feminine inde- A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 53 pendence is not entirely owing to a tender regard for the preservation unimpaired of feminine loveli- ness. Men think if women strike out in a career of their own, the matter of securing and disposing of a wife may not be quite the easy thing it is at present. They now have things their own way. The world is all before them where to choose. They have only to walk leisurely on, and it is O whistle and I '11 come to you, my lad. You think I put it too strongly : that is because you are looking into the bucket. I am speaking of the atmosphere. You have only to listen to the usual talk of usual people in villages and cities, and to the floating literature. You are not to take the intellectual in the one, nor the immortal in the other, for their rills spring from deeper sources, and represent the individual. It is the flitting, the ephemeral, the stories that Maggie Marigold and Kittie Katnip print in the county papers ; it is the talk that Mrs. Smith and Mrs. Jones have about Nancy Briggs ; it is the women in the novels who are not the heroines, — these give the best photograph of actual popular opinion, and these give you six women intriguing for one man. It is not surjiris- ing that at first sight men should think it a fine thing to have a vvliole bazaar of beauty to choose from, with the market so glutted that the goods will be sold at prices to suit the purchasers. It is not necessary to be very good or very great, to 54 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. win the prize. There is no prize to be won. It IS only pick and choose. But have men no mis- givings ? Is necessity the surest warrant of adap- tation ? Are men conscious that their assumption is, that they are so unattractive, and the marriage yoke so heavy, that women will not endure either unless they are left without any other resource ? Is it pleasant to reflect that they cannot trust them- selves to woo, but that girls must be reduced to the alternative of marriage or nothing ? What pleas- ure can there be in a victory so easily gained? I know a man who says the reason why he mar- lied his wife was, because she was the only girl in the town whom he was not sure of beforehand. With nothing to do, women are as beggars by the wayside, holding up their feeble hands to the passer, and entreating, "We will eat our own bread and wear our own apparel : only let us be called by thy name to take away our reproach." Is this pleasant to think of? Does it flatter a man's self-love ? Would it not be more agreeable for a husband to suppose that he is his wife's choice and not — Hobson's? Let boarding-school anniversary orators ant Mother's Magazine editors trust more in nature, and make themselves easy. Providence is never at a loss. There is not the slightest danger that marriage will fall into disuse tli rough the absorp- tion of female interests in other directions. If every girl in the world were independent, full mistress of A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 55 herself, she would not be any more disinclined to marriapre than she is now. She would not hang upon its skirts, dragging them into the mud, with such a helpless, desperate death-clutch as now. She would not be at the mercy of every schemer, every speculator, every unprincipled, unscrupulous manikin, who knows no better use for angels than to wash the dishes. She would not be sucli an article of traffic, such a beast of burden, such a tarae, spiritless, long-suft'ering, sly little sycophant, as she too often is now. There is not one woman in a million who would not be married, if — I bor- row a phrase from the popular, pestilent patois, but I transfigure it with its highest meaning — if slie could get a chance. How do I know ? Just as I know that the stars are now shining in the sky, though it is high noon. I never saw a star at midday, but I know it is the nature of stars to Bhine in the sky, and of the sky to hold its stars. Genius or fool, rich or poor, beauty or the beast, if marriage were what it should be, what God meant it to be, what even with the world's present ])ossibilities it might be, it would be the Elysium, the sole complete Elysium, of woman, yes, and of man. Greatness, glory, usefulness, happiness, await her otherwhere ; but here alone all her powers, all her being, can find full play. No condition, no chai'acter even, can quite hide the gleam of the sacred fire ; but on the household hearth it joins the warmth of earth to the hues of heaven. Bril- 56 A yKW ATMOSPHERE. liant, d:i/zliiirj, vivid, a beacon and a blessinf;, her li^^lit may be, but only a baj)j)y lionie blends the prismatic rays into a soft serene whiteness, that fltxxls the world with (Hvine ilhuniiiation. With- out wifely and motherly love, a part of her nature must remain unclosed, — a spring shut up, a foun- tain sealed ; but a thousand times better that it should remain unclosed than that it should Ik; rtidely rent open, or openetl only to Ixj defiled. A thousand times better that the vestal fire should burn forever on the inner shrine than that it should be brouf^iit out to boil the pot. But the pot must boil, you say, and so it must ; but with oak-wood and shavin*^, not with iM-aten olive-oil. This it is that I di-nourue, — not the use, but the abuse, of sacred thin^^s. I want ;^irls to be saved iVom sacrile^je. I do not want them to lay open their lives to spoliation. I want every woman to fill her heart with hopes and plans and pur[)oses ; and if a man will marry her, let him Ixi so stronfj as to break down all barriers, check the whole flood- tJde of her life, and sweep it around himself. If a woman is worth havin*;, she is worth winning. Jacob served seven years for Rachel and seven more, and they seemed unto him but a few days for the love he had to her. Shiver and scatter the wan, weak attachments that dare to call theu)- selves love. Scorn for this frothy, green whey that stands for the wine of life ! Better that irirls should be pirated away as the rough-handed Ko- A NEW ATMOSPHEUn. 57 mans won their Sabine wives, tlian tliat a man should have but to touch the tree with his cane as he walks through the orchard, and down comes the ready-ripe fruit. In Von Fink's fiery wooing of Lenore, I hear the right trumpet-ring : " With rifle and bullet I have bought your stormy heart." I would have a woman marry, not because it is the only thing that oticrs, but because a magnificence sweeps by, in whose glorious sun her pale stars i'aint and fade. Her soul shall be filled and fired with the heavenly radiance. All her dross shall be consumed, and all her gold refined. She shall go to her marriage-feast as Zenobia went to Rome, crowned with flowers, but bound with golden chains, a conquered cajttive, and the banner over luT shall be love. I would have her go obedient, not to the re(juirements of a false and fatal mate- rialism, naming itself with the names of morality and womanhood, but to the unerring instincts of her own nature. She shall not flv to the only rrfuge from the vacuum and desj»air of her life ; but her great heart and her strcjng hands shall be wrenched from their bent by the mysterious force of an irresistible magnetism. When you have a character that can so command, a love that can so control, you have set up on earth the jnllari of Heaven, and redemption draweth nigh. s* >^ V. 1 UT if the pursuit of a separate and in- dependent career should not disincline girls to marriage, you think it would %:^^^ unfit them for its duties ; that an edu- cation, an occupation, and an interest in any other than a domestic direction would produce an indif- ferent housewife. Is this necessary ? Is it even probable ? Is there any sufficient reason why a woman who has trained her judgment in a medi- cal school, shall not go into life, not only with no disadvantage, but with positive advantage from such training? If her mind have acquired power of observation, and her fingers skill in execution, will she not be so much the better prepared for the duties of her situation, whatever they may be ? The ordering of a family is not like a trade, — a thing to be learned. It is multifarious and dis- tracting. The mistress of a household is like the sovereign of a free empire. She does not need, and cannot serve, an apprenticeship. The only way to prepare her for its duties is to enlarge her A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 59 capacity to discharge them. She needs a thorough education. Everything tliat helps to build up mind and body, — everything that makes her healthful, hopeful, cheerful, spirited, self-reliant, energetic, strong, helps her to administer her affairs success- fully. A woman who can do one thing can do another thing, and she can do it all the better for having done the other one first ; so that the pur- suit of a profession, instead of incapacitating her for a domestic life, makes her better fitted for it. If for a year, or two or three, she has been study- ing the human system, or the stars, or the flowers, or the mysteries of cloak, or bonnet, or counter, or mint, she can turn aside at the beck of the master just as well as if she had been all the while fritter- ing herself away, and she will also be a great deal better worth beckoning to. The entrance upon a " career " does not, as many seem to think and fear, prescribe perpetual adherence to it. A girl may have a certain end in view, and design most clearly to follow it, and she does fol- low it — God bless her! But Nature also has her ends, and when her unerring finger points in an- other quarter, " This is the way, walk ye in it," be sure the girl will go. Activity will never keep lier from happiness, but it will keep her from by- ways and stumbling-blocks, from the traps which Nature never set, but which a sentimentaiism, born of selfishness, has put in her path. And be doubly 8uie of this; if one or two or a dozen years of in- 60 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. dustry and resolution unfit a girl to be a wife, she would never have been a prize. Any intelligent girl can learn household science in six months, and every girl ought to have, and generally does have, at least six months' warning. Experience will do the rest for her, and do it well, if she is a girl of sense ; and if not, nothing would have helped the matter. One of the best cooks I know started in life with only a cabbage for capital ; and with sense and spirit, out of that solitary cabbage, with whose proper management she chanced to be acquainted, sprang pies, puddings, preserves, such as it is not well even to think of in war-times. So much for that portion of the objection which is put forward and has a just foundation. But the main part of it is under ground. In my opinion, the real danger lies in quite tiie opposite quarter from the one that is sought to be defended. The trouble is not that women do not think enough about household affairs. It is that they think too much. But if one might judge from the tenor of public and private talk, one would suppose that cooking was the chief end of woman and the chief (iolace of man. I distinguish cooking above all the «)ther items of the domestic establishment, because [ find it so distinguished before me. Four hun- dred volumes of papyrus, recovered from Hercu- laneum, related chiefly to music, rhetoric, and cookery. The god of whom Paul told the Philip- plans, even weeping, is worshipped to-day. Isaac A NEW ATMOSPHERE. r,l acted after his kind when he loved Esau because he did eat of his venison ! To know how to cook, to keep the husband in good humor with tempt- ing viands, to prevent his being annoyed with burnt meat, soured with heavy bread, or vexed by late dinners, is the burden of a thousand ditties besides that of our sarcastic sonneteer. Printed " Advice to Marriageable Youno; Ladies " infonns thenr~tliat " a man is better pleased when he has a good dinner upon his table, than when his wife talks good French." I sliould like to be absolute monarch of America long enough to en- act a decree that every man who opens his mouth to tell girls to learn to make bread, shall live a week on putty and water. What I are girls then to neglect to learn to make bread ? By no means. Nor to roast beef, nor to boil potatoes. But suj)- pose General Hooker should lead out his whole army against a detachment of the Rebels, and, neglecting Lee and Jackson with their myrmi- dons, should expend all his ammunition and skill on a handful of the foe, would you not adjudge him worthy of court-martial ? But the detachment ought to be captured. Perhaps it ought. Send out a detachment and capture it. But do not waste your whole strength on an awkward squad, and leave the main body of the enemy to ravage at will. Defeat the latter, and the former will lisappear of themselves. Now when you bring out your drums and beat 62 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. your dismal tattoo about learning to cook, you are doing just this ; you are devoting all your strength to the destruction of an outwork whose fall will but very remotely affect the citadel. The remedy for an ignorance of cookery is not necessarily a knowledge of cookery. What is the reason that a man has cause to complain that his wife does not know how to cook ? Is it that she devoted too much of her maiden time to teaching, preaching, doctoring, and dressmaking ? Ten thousand to one, no. It is because she is ignorant or because she is silly. Treat girls sensibly. Educate their observation, their perception, their judgment. Give them a knowledge of human nature : and then be yourself so noble as to command their respect, and so amiable as to secure their affection, and you will have no trouble with heavy bread. If you insist on making women ignorant and silly, be sure their ignorance and silliness will crop out. Thrust them down in one place, and they will im- mediately rise in another. Sooner or later, you will prove the truth of Lord Burleigh's assurance to his son, and " find to your regret that there is nothing more fulsome than a she- fool." But the general direction of your counsel is wrong, even supposing the immediate object at which it is aimed to be right. Its tendency is to induce women to give more attention to cookery than tliey now do ; and they already devote to it a great deal more than they ought. They do not A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 63 r )ok too well, but too much. A few mixtures mould be better arranged than now, but a great many should be left alone. Cooking is the chief concern of a very large number of New England wives and mothers. They spend the larger part of their ingenuity in devising, and the larger ^jart of their strength and skill and time in pre- liviniT. VII. ^^^^^T is not simply that women are chained !| to a body of death. Men are equally victims. The Avorld is kept back from its goal. One member cannot suffer without involving all the members in its suffering. Marriage, in its truest type, is love spiritual- izing life ; the union of the mightiest and subtlest forces working the noblest results. Marriacje in its commonest manifestations is a clumsy mechanical contrivance. Marriage is too often mirage, — tar ofl^ in books, in dreams, loyely and divine ; ap- proached, it resolves itself into washing and iron- ino; and cookino; and nursino; and house-cleaning and making and mending and long-suffering from New Year to Christmas and from Christmas on to New Year, to the great majority of all the women I know anything about. 1 do not mean smiply the dull, uninteresting women, of whom there are really not many, but the bright and intellectual, capable of adorning any station, of whom there are more than you think, because, buried under 94 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. liousehold mins, yon scarcely catch a glimpse of what they long to be and what they might be. And they do not like it. Volumes may be written and spoken, extolling the tidy kitchens, the trim wives, the snowy table-cloths, and telling us how beautiful a woman is when doing her house-work ; and a few foolish women will be found to ac- cept it all and work the harder. Hundreds of years ago, when a person I know was inconceiva- bly young, and found great delight in hanging about the kitchen during the seed-time and har- vest of pies and preserves, to glean up the rem- nants of mince-meat and various mixtures left in the pans, a tiny relative much more acute than he used to practise upon his approbativeness by so- liloquizing to himself while both their spoons were clattering around the sides of the tin pan witn frantic rapidity, " Now Peggoty is n't going away, and let me have the rest. Peggoty is going to stay and eat it all up." The result was that Peg- goty used immediately to walk off and leave his cormorant kinsman to the undivided booty. Just about as astute as the kinsman, and just about as silly as Peggoty, are the men who prepare and the women who suck the thin pap of our milk- and-water novels and newspapers. But the lat- ter are growing fewer and fewer every day. Some women have a natural taste for cooking. Some women are specially skilled in sewing. Some wo- men are born with a broom in their hands, and A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 93 some fii;J the sick-room their pecuhar paradise: but I never saw or heard of any woman who had a natural fondness for being worked and worried from morning till night, hurrying from pillar to post, and conscious all the time that things were left in an unfinished state, from sheer want of time to complete them properly. Within a week, a woman, a model housekeeper, devoted to her family ,^^~a •woman who never wrote a word for print, nor ever addressed so much as a female meet- ing of any kind, a woman whose husband looks upon strong-mindedness as a species of leprosy, to be lamented rather than denounced, but at any cost kept from spreading, — has told me that, if it were not for the talk it would make, she would shut up her house, take her whole family, and go to a hotel to board from June to October, so worn and wearied is she with her household duties. Yet * her family consists of only three members, and her husband is full of loving-kindness and considera- tion. Another woman, equally accomplished in all domestic arts and graces, and equally happy in her conjugal relations, once told me that she has seen from her window a carriage of friends coming up the road to her house, and has been forced to wipe away the tears before she could go to the door to greet them ; so utterly disheartened was she at the pros- pect of still further weight upon her already over* burdened shoulders. Yet she was no misanthrope, no nun. She loved society, and was fitted to shine 96 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. in it ; but the inexorable, unremitting labor of her household was such, that it was impossible for her to receive from society the solace which it ought to give and which it has to give. So hea\ily pressed the yoke, that a party of friends was no | leasure to look forward to, but only more cake to be made, more meat to be roasted, more sheets to be washed. Women are accounted the weaker sex ; but there is no comparison to be made between the labor of the weaker and the stronger. Of fathers of families and mothers of families, the real wear and tear of life comes on the latter. If there is anxiety as to a sufficiency of support, the mother shares it equally with the father, and feels it none the less for not being able to contribute directly to the supply of the deficiency; forced, passive en- durance of an evil is quite as difficult a virtue as unsuccessful struggle against it. If there is no anxiety in that direction, the occupations of men can scarcely give them any hint of the peculiar perplexing, depressing, irritating nature of a wo- man's ordinary household duties. Pamphleteers exhort women to hush up the discords, drive away the clouds, and have only smiles and sunshine for the husband coming home wearied with his day's labor. They would be employing themselves to much better advantage, if they would enjoin him to brino- home smiles and sunsliine for his wife. She is the one that pre-eminently n<;eds strength and soothins and consolation. She needs a warm A NEW ATMOSPHERE. • 97 heart to lean on, a strong arm, and a steady hand to lift her out of the sloughs in which she is ready to sink, and set her on the high places where birds sins and flowers bloom and breezes blow. The husband's work may be absorbing and exhaustive, but a fundamental difference lies in the simple fact, that a man has constant and certain change of scene, and a woman has not. A man goes out to his work and comes in to his meals. Two or three times a day, sometimes all the evening, always at night and on Sunday, he is away from his business and his place of business. The day may be long \) <^ or short, but there is an end to it. A woman is on the spot all the time, and her cares never cease. She eats and drinks, she goes out and comes in, she lies down and rises up, tethered to one stone. It does not seem to amount to much, that a man closes his shop and goes home ; that he unyokes his oxen, ties up his cows, and sits down on the •loor-step : but let the merchant, year after year, eat and sleep in his counting-room, the schoolmaster in his school-room, the shoemaker over hi lapstone, the blacksmith by his anvil, the ministoi in his study, thQ lawyer in his chambers, with only as frequent variations as a housekeeper's visiting and tea-drinkings give her, and I think he would pres- ently learn that he needs not to possess powers acute enough to divide a hair 'twixt north and northwest side, in order to distinguish the differ- ence. A distance of half a mile, or even a quartei 5 O 98 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. of a mile, breaks off all the little cords that have been compressing a man's veins, and lets the blood rush through them with force and freedom. It is change of scene, change of persons, change of at- mosphere, and a consequent change of a man's own self. He is made over new. But his wife moils on in the same place. Dark care sits behind her at breakfast and dinner and supper. The walls are festooned with her cares. The floors are covered with them as thick as the dust in the Interpreter's house. He shakes off the dust from his feet and goes home : her home is in the dust. What wonder that it strangles and suf- focates her ? Moreover, a man's occupation has uniformity, or rather unity. His path lies in one line ; sometimes he has only to walk mechanically along it. Rather stupid, but not wearing work ; for generally if he had been a man upon whom it would have worn he would have done something else : always he has power to bnng everything to bear on his business. If it is IT iital labor, he has the opportunity of soli- tude, -■. only such association as assists. His help- ers, and all with whom he is concerned, are ma- ture, intelligent, trained, and often ambitious and self-respectful and courteous. He can set his ful- crum close to the weight, and all he has to do is to bear down on the lever. The wafe's assistants, if she has any, are unspeak- ably in the rough, and little children make all her A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 99 schemes '* gang a-gley." The incautious slam of a door will shatter the best-laid plans, and the stub- bing of a chubby toe sinks her morning deep into the midday. Children are to a man amusement, delight, juvenescence, a truthful rendering of the old myth, that wicked kings were wont to derive a ghoul-like strength by transfusion of the blood of infanto. The father has them for a little while. He fiolics with them. He rejoices over them. They are beautiful and charming. He is new to them, and they are new to him, and by the time the novelty is over it is the hour for them to go to bed. He feels rested and refreshed for his contact with them. They present strong contrasts to the world he deals with all day. Their transparency shines sweetly against its opacity. Even their little wants and vanities and bickerings ai'e to him only interesting developments of human nature. His power is pleased with their dependence ; his pride flatters itself witli their future ; his tenderness softens to their clinging ; his earthliness cleaves away before their innocence, and he tliinks his quiver can never be too full of them. This is the poetry, and he reads it with great delight ; bnt there is a prose department, and that comes to the mother. She has had the cherubs all day, and she knows that the trail of the serpent is over them all. She sees the angel in their souls as well as he, often better ; but she sees too the mark rf the beast on their forehead, — which he seldom 100 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. discovers. His playthings are her stumbling-bloclis. The constancy of her presence forbids novelty, and throws her upon her inventive powers for resources. All their weariness and fretfulness and tumbles and aches are poured into her lap. She has no divis- ion of labor, no concentration of forces ; no five or ten hours devoted to housework, and two or three to her children, taking them into her heart to do good like a medicine. They patter through every hour to stay her from doing with her might any of the many things which her hands find to do. Nothing keeps limits ; everything laps over. God has given her a love so inexhaustible, that, notwithstanding the washings and watchings, the sewing and dressing which children necessitate, notwithstanding the care, the check, the pull-back, the weariness, the heartsickness, which they oc- casion, the " little hindering things " are — my pen is not wont to be timid, but it shrinks from attempting to say what little ones are to a mother. But divine arrangement does not prevent human drawback ; and looking not at inward solace, but outward business, it remains true that the business of providing for the wants of a family is not of that smooth, uncreaking nature to the mother that it is to the father. Let a man take two or three little children — two or three ? Let him take one ! — of one, two, three, or four years of age, to his shop, or stall, or office, and take care of him til the time for a week, and he will see what I mean. A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 101 1 do not say that a man's work may not be harder for an hour, or five or ten hours, more exhaustive of mental and vital power, more exclusive of all diversions than his wife's for the same time. It may or may not be ; quite as often the latter as the former : but I do say that severe prearranged, intermittent labor wears less upon the temper, the nerves, and the spirits, that is, upon body and soul, than lighter, confused, unintermitting labor. Work that enlists the energies and the enthusiasm will weary, but the weariness itself is welcome, and brings with it a satisfliction, — the pleasant sense of something accomplished. The multiplicity of a woman's labors distracts as well as wearies, and each one is so petty that she has scai'cely anything to look back on. Not one of them is great enough to brace and stimulate, and all together they form a multitudinous heap, and not a mountain. It is a round of endless detail ; little, insignificant, provoking items that she gets no credit for doing, but fatal discredit for leaving undone. Nobody notices that things are as they should be ; but if things are not as they shoul' be, it were better for her that a millstone were hanged about her neck, &c. ! In a community, you find the husbands devoted to different pursuits. Baker, miller, farmer, advo- cate, ( lerk, — each one has a peculiar calling for which he is supposed to have a special taste, fit- ness, or motive, perhaps all ; but their wives have 102 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. no room for choice. Whether they have a gift of it or not, they have the same routine of baking and brewing and house-cleaning. Suppose the woman does not like it ? The supposition is not an impos- sible, not even an unnatural one. Woman's-sphere writers confound distinctions ; they seem to think that woman was not created in the garden in native honor clad like man, but rather, like the turtle, with her house on her back, and that a modem American house and its belongings ; so that if she dislikes any of the conclusions which such a house premises, it is as unnatural and unwomanly as if she should be coarse or cruel. Womanliness, in their vocabulary, implies fondness of and pleasure in domestic drudgery. Their ideal woman is en- amored of wash-tubs and broom-handles and fry- ing-pans. But modern housekeeping is no more woman's sphere than farming is man's sphere, nor so much. If you go back far enougli, you will find that man was directly and divinely ordained to that very pursuit. The Lord God lx>ok the man, and put him into the garden of Eden, to dress it and to keep it. His sphere was expressly marked out. He was to be a gardener, a farmer, a tiller of the soil. What of the woman ? " Tlie Lord God said. It is not good that the man should be alone : I will make him an help meet for him." What kind of help was meant is here implied, but is more clearly discovered further on by Adam's •<«vn interpretation: "The woman whom thou A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 103 gavest to he with we." She was made foi society, to be company for him ; to talk and laugh and cheer and keep him from being lonesome. Not a word about housekeeping. Adam is concerned to put the very best face on the matter, and he does not say, " the woman whom thou gavest to train up the vines, to pare the apples, to stone the raisins, to gather the currants, to press the grapes, to preserve the peaches," or for any other pur- poses of an Eden household. It is simply " thou gavest to be with me." Whatever may have come in afterwards to modify the original arrangement, came for " the hardness of your hearts." But here, before the fall, is seen, in all its beauty and simplicity, the original plan. You have the whole " woman question " in a nutshell. Yet people who are fond of quoting the Bible manage to skip this. They go back to the curse, " thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee," and there they stop. Their nature is nature accursed, and even that is silent on the point of menial service : they do not go back to nature in- nocent, where it is excluded by implication. But if the Bible is proof on one side, it is proof on the other. If the husband is made to be the head of the woman, he is also made to be her serving- man. Nay, even the silence of the curse is more golden than the speech of man, for the same allot- ment of penalty which lays upon her the sorrow of conception lays upon him the sorrow of toil : 104 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 80 that every man whose wife is obliged to eat bread in the sweat of her brow is out of his sphere, and has failed of his "mission." He lays upon the shoulders of a weak woman his own burden as well as hers. And every man who is not a farmer IS out of his sphere, and should put himself into it before he casts a single stone at any woman ; and de is as much more guilty as his sphere is more accurately defined. So much for the revelation of the word ; now for the revelation of nature. Naturally, I suppose women's tastes are not any more likely to be imiform than men's tastes. The narrow range of their lives has undoubtedly tended to keep them down towards one standard, but every new-born child is a new protest of natui'e, — a new outburst of individuality against monotony, so that the work is really never done, and never comes anywhere near being so far done as that all women, or the majority of women, should choose the life of a housekeeper. As far as my observation goes, the best women, the brightest women, the noblest women, are the very ones to whom it is most ii'k- some. I do not mean housekeeping with well- trained servants, for that is general enough to admit a " brother near the throne " ; but that, alas ! is almost unknown in the world wherein / have lived ; and a woman who is satisfied with the small cares, the small economies, the small interests, the constant contemplation of sma]I A NEW ATMOSPHERE 105 tilings which many a household demands, is a very small sort of woman. I make the assertion both as an inference and an observation. A noble discontent — not a peevish complaining, but an inward and spiritual protest — is a woman's safe- guard against the deterioratJon which such a life threatens, and her proof of capacity and her note of preparation for a higher. Such a woman does not do her work less well, but she rises ever supe- rior to her work. I know such women. You talk about the mother-instinct. The moth- er-instinct makes a mother love her children, but it does not make her love to destroy herself with unremitting toil for them. It makes her do it, but it does not make her love to do it. And be- cause, in her great love, she will do it when the necessity is laid upon her, — a wicked perversion of God's good gift often lays the necessity upon her when God does not. The mother-instinct in woman corresponds to the father-instinct in man ; and the wifely love to the hiisbandly love. Each is strong enough to bear joyfully all that God lays upon it, and patiently much that he does not lay and never intended to be laid. But he who counts upon that strength, for the purpose of abusing it, is guilty of a high crime against humanity. Each sex has the same uniformity in its loves, and would undoubtedly have the same variety in its tastes if it were not hindered. Men do not themselves believe so much as they profess in this menial 5* 106 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. pravitation. If they did, tlioy would never lecture women so much about it. The very frenzy and fre- quency of their exhortations are suspicious. They join together what God has not joined. They claim identity where he has established diversity. Women are continually and publicly admonished of their household obligations, but who ever heard an assembly of men admonished of theirs ? Yet men are as often derelict in furnishing provision for their families as women are lax in its admin- istration. And while the husband may do his part m the way which seems good in his own eyes, the wife must do hers in only one way, whether it seem good or bad. The wise woman must tread " the old dull round of things" as well as the foolish woman, and then she is so footsore that she can- not enter upon that higher path wliich is open only to her, and shut to the foolish woman. The low necessities usurp the throne of the lofty possibil- ities. Oh I for this what tender consideration should she not receive ! Confined to the unin- teresting routine of domestic drudgery, while her tastes incline and her powers fit her for other things, no admiration is too deep, no sympathy too warm. The gentlest and most thoughtful attention is her smallest due. Let men fancy for a moment that at marriage they must give up the law, the pulpit, the machine-shop, the farm, in which they excel, and which is adequate to purse and pleasure, and turn hod-carrier or road-mender, A NETT ATMOSPHERE. 107 and they may have a glimpse of the sacrifice which many a gifted woman has made. If she made it unwittingly, marrying before she knew her powers, or the life which marriage involves, a generous pity and love will smooth her path as much as may be, and press back the unexpected thorns. If she made it wittingly, choosing, in her strong love, to lay upon the altar her pleasant things, so much the more will a generous man consti-ain her to forget, in the fervor and efficacy of his love, the fruit which once her soul longed for. If he cannot prevent the sacrifice, he can cause that it shall not have been made in vain. Again, a man receives immediate and definite results from his work. He has salary or wages, — so much a day, a year, a job. He is Lord High Chancellor of the Exchequer and irresponsible. His wife gets no money for her work. She has no funds under her own control, no resources of which she is mistress. She must draw supplies from her husband, and often with much outlay of ingenuity. Some men dole out money to their wives as if it were a gift, a charity, something to which the lat- ter have no right, but which they must receive as a favor, and for which they must be thankful. They act as if their wives were trying to plunder them. Now a man has no more right to his earnings than his wife has. They belong to her just as much as to him. There is a mischievous popular opinion that the husband is the producer and the wife the 108 A XEW ATMOSPHERE. consumer. In point of fact, tlio wife is just as much a producer as the liusLaiul. Her part in the con- cern is just as imj)ortant as liis. She earns it as truly, and has just as strung a claim and just as much a right to it as lie ; if })ossible she has more, for she ought to receive some compensation for the gap that yawns between wofk and wngi-s. It is much more satisfactory to receive the latter as a direct result of the former, than as a kind of alms. Many a woman does as much to build up her husband's prosperity as lie does himself. Many a woman saves hiin from failure and dis- grace. And, as a general rule, the fate and for- tunes of the family lie in her hands as much as in his. What absurdity to 2'<^^ li'i'i lii-^ wages and to give her money to go sh<)pj)ing with ! A woman who went around to make a collection for a small local charity, told me that she could not help noticing the difference between the married and the unmarried women. The latter took out their ])urses on the spot and gave their mite or mint without hesitation. The former parleyed and would see about it, gave rather uncertainly, and must speak to Edward before they could decide. Now it may well be that a woman who has only her own self to provide for can give more liberally than one upon whose purse come the innumerable requisitions of a family. The mother may be forced to make many sacrifices, and yet be so blessed in the makinrr that there shall be no sacrifice. The 4 NEW ATMOSPHERE. 109 pleasure shall overbalance the pain. But there is no reason why a married woman should hesi- tate, or be embarrassed, or consult Edward as to tiie expenditure of a dime or a doUar, any more than an unmarried one. There may be more calls on the purse, but she ou;j;iit to be mistress of it. She ought to know her husband's circumstances well enouo;h to know what she can afford to irive away, and she ought to be as free to use her judg- ment as he is to use his. In any unusual emer- gency, each will wish to consult ti)e other; but he does not think of asking her as to the disposal of every chance quarter of a dollar, neither should she think of asking him. If circumstances make it necessary to sail close to the wind, sail close to the wind ; but let both be in the same boat. All this miserable and humiliating halting arises from the miserable and humiliating notion that tiie husband is the power and the wife the weight. It comes out, more convenient in substance, but just as objectionable in shape, in the wife's "■ allowance." The husband allows her so much a year for her ex- penses. If it means simply that so much is set aside for that purpose, very well ; only it would sound rather strange to say that ahe allows him sc much to carry on his business. A woman does not wish to be conversant with the details of her husband's shop any more than he wishes to under- stand the details of her kitchen : but he desires to krow enough of that to be sure of prompt, suffi- no A NEW ATMOSPHERE. cient, and arrrecable meals, and a tidy house, at a cost within his means. So she should know with sufficient accuracy the extent and sources of their income to he able to arran;j;e her ordinary disburse- ments witliout constant reciu'rence to him. He does not take liis dinner as a boon from her. He feels under no obligations for it. He does not con- sider himself on his {Tood behavior out of o-ratitude. It is a regular institution, a blessing entirely com- mon to both, and excites no emotion. So should her money be, — as regularly and mechanically supplied as the dinner, exciting no more commt'iit and needing no more ar<:ument. Whether it is kept in her pocket or his may be of small moment ; but as she does not lock up the dinner in the cii|>- board, and then stand at the door and dole it out to him by the plateful, but sets it on the table for him to hel]) himself: so it is l)etter, more pacific, that he should deposit the money in an equally neutral and accessible locality. I portray to myself the flutter which such a proposition would raise in many marital bosoms ; would that they might be soothed. It is well known among farmers that hens will not eat so much if you set a measure of corn where they can pick whenever they choose, as they will if you only fling down a handful now and then, and keep them continually half starved. At the same time they will be in better condition. So, looking at the matter from the very lowest stand-point, a woman A NEW ATMOSPHERE. Ill who has free access to the money will not be half BO likely to lavish it as the woman who is put off with scanty and infrequent sums. She who knows how much there is to spend will almost invariably keep within the limits. If she does not know, her imagination will be very likely to magnify the fountain, and if but meagre supplies are forthcom- ing, she will attribute it to niggardliness, and will consider everything that can be got from her hus- band as legal plunder; and with under-ground pipes and above-ground trenches it shall go hard but she will drain him tolerably dry. Then he will inveigh against her extravagance, and so not only lose his money, but his temper, his calmness, and his complacency, all the while blaming her when the fault is chiefly his own. If he had but frankly acquainted her with the main facts ; if ho had but permitted her to look in and see what was the capacity of the reservoir, instead of leav- ing her to sit under the walls, knowing nothing of its resources but what she could learn from the occasional spouting of a single small pipe, he would have avoided all the trouble. It is so rarely that a wife will recklessly transcend her reasona- ble income, that I do not think it worth while to suggest any provision against the evil. It is an abnormal and sporadic case, to be treated physio- logically rather than philosophically. The man has unfortunately allied himself to a mad woman, or he has found to his regret that there is nothing more fulsome than a she-fool. 112 A XEW ATMOSPHERE. It irks me to say these tliinjj^. It is almost a profanation to connect such coI«l-hl»>oiK'd business matters with a relation which is suj)|)Osecl to involve, and winch should involve, the Ijij;liest, the purest, tlie fairest traits of human life. In true niarria<;e there is indeed no need uf these consiileratiuns. A comjjlete and perfect marriarre breaks down all barriers, and fuses eacli separate interest into one. In such there is no mine and thine, hut unity and identity. For perfect m:irria;i;es I do not write ; but for the imperfect, and the inarriae better off without, in sending j)a(kages and higgage by express, rather than have the trouble of taking them themselves, in numlK'rless small items of which they make no account, but of which ihe bills make great account. If one might judge from the news|>apers, extravagance is a jjecuiiarity of women. So far as my (jbservaticm g;ht and trouhle, and be put to inconvenience, for the sake of saving money. The greater animalism of man also conu-s out here in full force. If sacrifice must he, a woman will sacrifice her comforts before her taste. The man will let liis tastes go, and keep liis comforts, and call it good sense. A woman's extravagance is to some purpose. A man's to none. She buys many (hvsses, but she gives her old ones away, or cuts them over for the children, and works dextrously. A man buys and tlestroys. Look at the njanni'r in which men manage the national housekeej.ing, and see whether it is men or women who are I'X- travagant. Look at the clerkships in the depart- nients, look at members of Congress browsing auu)ng government supplies, look at army and navy ; walk through a eamji : see the barrels of gtunl fboil thrown awav, see the wood wasted, sec the tools wantoidy tlestn>ved. 1 think the wives of the soldiers could support themselves comfort- ably on the tVa>:nients o\l the soldiers' feasts. No- 118 A XE]V ATMOSl'IIERE. body complains. A great nation must not look too closely after the pennies. A great army al- ways makes great waste, say the newspapers that exhort women against extravagance, as if it were as inucli a law of nature as gravitation. Why not say housekeeping is always wasteful, and fall back on that as a primal law of nature also ? Because housekee{)ing is not always wasteful, you say. Precisely. Housekeeping is nearly always econ- omically conducted, and your aiiiuiadvcrsions amount just to this: because women are generally prudent, they are to be chided for all short- comings. But men are always wasteful, there- fore they must be let alone. Only be univer- sally bad, and you shall be as unmolested as if you Were good. You say that it is easier to bo economical in a family than in an army. Perhaj)s so ; but if the soldiers, instead of being men, were women, do you for a moment imagine that there would be any such waste ? Let all other circum- stances be unchanged, jct all the cost come upon the government just as it does. Let all provisions be furnished in the same abundance as now, and I do not believe there would be much more waste than there is in average families. I do not believe you could force women at the point of the bayonet to such reckless prodigality as men indulge in. It is against their nature. It hurts them. It violates God's law, written in their hearts. They Would also be too conscientious to do it. Thej A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 119 would not consider the fact that " Uncle Sam foots the bills " a reason why a saw should be tossed aside on the first symptom of duhiess, and a new one bought. They would not throw awaj a half loaf because there were plenty of whole ones, but keep it and steam it. And not only would there be a great deal less waste, but thero would be a great deal better su[)ply. If women had charge of the commissariat, I do not believe there would have been one half so much friction as there has been. Hungry regiments would not get to the end of a long march and find nothing to eat. Sick soldiers would not be expected to recover health from salt pork and muddy coffee. Experi- ence or no experience, red tape or no taj)e, women would have managed to bring hungry mouths and hot soups together, and to furnish delicate food for delicate health. They would not otily have sup- plied the soldiers at less cost to government, but the less cost would have produced a laiger bill of fare. How did the English army fare till Florence Nightingale came by and knocked their granary doors open? That my remarks are not mere theory, or rather that my theory is founded on truth, is abundantly proved by a statement printed in the North American Review for January, 1864, long after my words were written. It is from an article on lie Sanitary Commission. " At this moment, the only region in the loyal Slates that is definitely out of the circle is Mis- 120 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. soiiri. Tlio rest of our loyal territory is all em- braced witiiin one ring of method and federality, This is chiefly ilue to the wonderful spirit of nationality that beats in the breasts of American women. They, even more than the men of the country, from tlieir utter withdrawal from partisan strifes and local politics, have felt the assault ii|)()n the life of the nation in its true national im- port. They are infinitely less /State-itih, and more national in their j)riile and in their sympathies. They sec the war in its broad, imj)ersonal out- lines ; and while their particular and special affec- tions are keener than men's, their general humanity and tender sensibility for unseen and distant suff'er- ini^s is stronger and more constant. " The women of the country, who are the actual creators, by the labor of their fingers, of the chief supplies and comforts needed by the soldiers, have been the first to understand, appreciate, and co- operate with the Sanitary Commission. It is due to the sagacity and zeal with which they have entered into the work, that the system of sup- plies, organized by the extraordinary genius of Mr. Olrastead, has become so broadly and nation- ally extended, and that, with Milwaukee, Chicago, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Louisville, Pittsburg, Phila- delphia, New York, Brooklyn, New Haven, Hart- ford, Providence, Boston, Portland, and Concord for centres, there should be at least fifteen thou- sand Soldiers' Aid Societies, all under the co"Vol A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 121 of women, combined and united in a common ^.ork,--of supplying, thn)Uvv twain should be one flesh. 6* VIII. j^OMAN'S rank in life depends entirely on what life is. Her importance is decided when it is decided what ser- vice is important. If money is the one thing needful, and its acquisition the chief end of man, the wife's position is very inferior to her husband's. The greater part of the money is earned in his, and often spent in her department. He does the work that is paid for, and he belongs to the sex that is paid. She does the work that is not paid for, and she belongs to the sex that is pillaged. Men go out and gain money : wives stay at home and spend it. The case is against them — if that is the whole case. But if money is only means to an end ; if happiness, intelligence, integ- rity, are more worth than gold ; if a life ruled by the law of God, if the development of the divine in the human, if the education of every faculty, and the enjoyment of every power, be more love- ly and m.Tei desirable than bank stock, then the woman walks not one whit behind the man, but A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 131 Bide by side, with no unequal steps. He furnishes and she fashions the material from which grace and strength are wrought. Her work is in point of fact incomparably fairer, finer, more difficult, more important than his. It is not money-getting alone, or chiefly, but money-spending, that influ- ences and indicates character. A man may work up to his knees in swamp-meadows, or breathe all day the foul air of a court-room ; but if, wlien re- leased, he turns naturally to sunshine and apple- orchards and womanly grace, swamp-mud and vile air have not polluted him. He is a clean-souled man through it all. But if a man find rest from his work in mere eating and drinking, if the money which he has earned goes to gross amusements and coarse companions, he shows at once the low- ness of his character, however high may be his occupation. Those hands which have the ordering of house and home, have a large share in the ordering of character. The man who provides the house does an important part, but she who refines it into a home is the true artist. To whom is the palm awarded, to the painter who, from ochre and lead, lays on the rough canvas the lovely landscape, touched with a beauty borrowed from his own soul, or the huckster who sells him ochre, lead, and canva?, or even the successful shoddy-contractor who pays five thousand of his Judas Iscariot dol- lars, that he may hang it in a bad light in his din- 132 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. ing-room till such day as he shall have the grace to go and hang himselt"? It has been said that in the highest departments women have never produced a masterpiece. Painting has its old masters, but no old mistresses. Jenny Lind may entrance the world from her " heaven-kissing hill," but on the mountain-tops Mendelssohn and Beethoven stand uncompanioned. Sappho plumed her wings, but j>lunged quickly from the Leucadian cliff, and Mil- ton soars steadfastly to the sun alone. We shall see about this one day, but meanwhile life itself is higher than any of the arts of" life, and in living no man has risen to loftier heights than a woman, and the mass of men are infinitely lower than the mass of women, and would be lower still if it were not for female assistance. With all the help which they receive from women, they are perpetually lapsing into brutality, and whenever they go off into a community by themselves, they go headlong downwards, following their natural gravitation. It is w^omen that make men fit to live. They often confess it themselves without meaning any- thing by it. I take advantage of the confession ; as the malignant Minister in Titan " retained the habit, when an open-hearted soul showed him its breaches, of marching in upon it through those breaches, as if he himself had made them." In toasts and festive speeches none can be more bland than they. With sweet and smiling, arch and gracious humility, they dwell upon the refining A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 133 and elevating influence of " lovely woman," as if it were a pretty thing to be growling and snappish and stroked into quiescence and acquiescence by a soft hand, — as if a midsummer-nicrht's dream were a midwinter-day's truth, and man were content to be Bottom the weaver, with liis ass's head stuck fiill with musk-roses by fair)' Titanias. But I say it not as a man gallantly towards women, nor as a woman angrily towards men, but as a simple state- ment of fact by an unconcerned spectator, and far more in sorrow than in anger. What is proffered as compliment I accept and reproduce as tiiitli, and if men will not stand convicted of false dealing, let them show their faith by their works, and yield themselves, plastic and unresisting, to the hands that will mould them to taii'est shapes. Over against this mistaken notion stands its opponent notion, equally mistaken, more exten- sive, circulated by men, adopted by women, and doing its mischievous work silently and surely. Public opinion, floating about in novels and peri- odicals, lays upon the shoulders of women burdens which they are not able to bear, which they were never intended to bear, and which ought never to be laid upon them. Before marriage, society agrees to make men grasp the laboring oar. They must choose and woo and win ; while the woman's strength is to sit still. But after marriage tiie scene suddenly shifts. The wife must take tlie wooing and winning into her hands. She must 134 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. make home pleasant. She must rear the childien. She must manage society. She must incur the responsibility of the welfare and happiness of the family. The husband is on the one side a wild animal who must be managed but not controlled ; on the other, a piece of rare china, which must be carefully handled and kept from all rough con- tact. " It is the wife who makes the home, and the home makes the man," says tiie country news- paper, in its domestic column. " If a wife would make the husband delighted with home, slie must first make home delightful. Siie must first woo him there by all the arts of affection, — by cheerfulness, tidiness, oide^-liness without excess : by a clean-swept hearth, a bright fire, flowers upon the mantel, a well-set tablp and well-cooked food. She must be careful of in">pos- ing restraints upon his tastes, inclinations, move- ments, and render him free of every suspicion of domestic imprisonment. If his ma^scuUne taftes, as they will, draw him from home at times, to *he club, to the lodge, or the political meeting or elsewhere, let her second them with that ready cheerfulness which will prove one of the strong cords to draw him back to home as the centre ^f his earthly joys," says its virtuous neighbor. " I have heard women speak of" their rights. If Jiey had made the men of the world what God mtended they should make of them, there world A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 135 have been no need of this complaining," says the orthodox heroine in the orthodox novel. " What makes a man feel at home in the house ? Is it to leave him absolute master of his rightful position, the large liberty to go and come, trusting for her part religiously in the virtue and the sovereign power of her love, — knowing, as if she had read it out of Holy Writ, for her own heart has told her " (^her being the heroine aforemen- tioned, now become the hero's wife) " that, if she shall ever cease to hold the love and trust which she has won, the fault, as the loss, is hers ? " " She " (^she being the aforesaid orthodox heroine and orthodox submissive wife, now become the orthodox devoted mother), — "She had the con- sciousness that it was hers to make of this child what she would ! " I have spoken before of the comparative work of the husband and wife, considered merely as labor. I refer now to the comparative moral weight belonging to their respective positions. All masculine and all orthodox feminine trac- tates on female education, all male lectures on female duties, all anniversary orators to female schools, ring the changes on the importance of educating girls to be good wives and mothers, with the persistency of the old song which shut- tled back and forth some twenty times or more to tell us that " John Brown had a little Indian." But were the graduating class of a college evef 136 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. exhorted to be good husbands and fathers ? Are fatliers ever admonished to teach their sons do- mestic virtues, to make them fond and faithful and good providers for the wives they may one day possess? But I should like to know if girls have any stronger tendency to become wives and mothers, than the boys have to become husbands and fathers ? Are they any more likely to be bud wives and mothers, than boys are to be bad hus- bands and fathers ? Is the number of incompetent wives obviously greater than the number of incom- petent husbands ? Is the number of injudicious mothers obviously greater than the number of injudicious fathers ? And where the wife and motlier is incompetent and injudicious, does it generally seem to be owing to too great strength of mind and culture of intellect, and too little do- mestic education, or is it owing to weakness of character ? It is not a remote, but it seems to be an entirely unobserved truth, that for every wife there is a husband, and for every mother there is a father; and so far as my observation extends, domestic mismanagement and unhappiness, in an overwhelming majority of cases, are owing to the shortcomings of the husband, and not of the wife, or to the wife in an inferior and resultant measure. " There is blame on both sides," say the observers, oracularl}'', and this most superficial of all super- ficial generalizations is supposed to be an impartial and exhaustive summary. It is just as much a A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 137 Rummary as the statement that two and two make four. Two and two do make four, but it is n othing to the purpose here. To say that there is blame on both sides, is simply saying that neither a man nor a woman is perfect, which nobody ever main- tained. So long as humanity is humanity, it is not probable that one person will be entirely sin- less and another entirely sinful ; but there are, and will continue to be, many cases in which the blame on one side is much more heavy and con- demnino; than the blame on the other. The man's blame is most often one of aggression, of the first provocation, of unprincipled and heartless behav- ior, of cruel disappointing and thwarting, of a giant's strength used giantly. The woman's is a blame of imprudence, of weakness, of disappoint- ment, unwisely met and impatiently or otherwise ill-borne ; of an inability to manage with saga- city, and so to master by superior moral power the wild beast that has clutched her, — a blame that is negative rather than positive, passive rather than active, and not to be compared with the other in point of heinousness. Why, then, do you bear down so hard on the woman's duty and loave the man to go his way unadmonished ? If you do not enforce on college-boys the duty of providing for their future families, why do you enforce on seminary-girls the duty of directing their fixture families? If you do not educate young men to make good husbands, wl.y should 138 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. you educate young women to make good wives f If you do not exhort young men so to live and learn as to make their wives happy and train their children aright, why should you exhort young women to study to make their husbands happy and train their children aright ? Because, you say, in the words already quoted, " It is the wife that makes the home, and the home makes the man." It is nothing of the sort. It is the wife and the husband together that make the home, and the man was already made. The most that wife and home in conjunction can do is to mod- ify the man. If a husband be intemperate, or given over to money-getting, or money-saving, or money-spending, — if he be ill-tempered, indel- icate, ignorant, obstinate, arrogant, — no wife, be she ever so prudent, wise, affectionate, can make the home what it ought to be. At best she can only mend it. Her energies are wasted. The ingenuity, the love, the care, that should be ex- pended in making it happy are sacrificed in the attempt to make it as little unhappy as possible. With the best of husbands and the best of wives there are always evils enough lying in wait. Danger, disease, sin, are ever ready to spring upon the happy home, even when both the keepers stand guard at the portals ; how, then, can you expect the wife to ward off even her own part of these, when you lay upon her the husband's part, and he himself is the greatest evil of all ? A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 139 And what right have men to depend upon homo Rnd wife to " make " them ? What is a man do- ing all the twenty or thirty years before he is mar- ried, that he has not made himself? And on what grounds does he come to her for completion ? How came she to be any more finished than he? or any more capable of putting the finishing touches to another ? Are wives generally mature and experienced, while husbands are young and in- experienced ? Have wives generally more knowl- edge of the world, and more opportunities to be- come self-possessed and firmly and evenly balanced than husbands ? Or is the masculine material naturally and permanently more plastic than tlie feminine ? Let us know the pretext upon which a full-grown man charges a delicate woman, who has had little if anything to do with him until he became a full-grown man, with the cure of his soul ? If there is anything to be done in the way of edu- cation and refornnition, one would naturally sup- pose that it is the stronger sex which should edu- cate and reform the weaker. It would seem as if the sex that is looked up to and sets itself up as sovereign should mould the sex which looks up and recognizes it as sovereign. Where, in the Bible, does a man find any warrant for laying him- self to the account of his wife ? When God calls every man to judgment, will he be able to pass over his shortcomings to his wife ? The first man tried it, but with very small success. " The woman 140 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. whom thou gavest to be with me," -whimpered Adam ; but it was a sorry refuge of hes, and did not avail to stay the curse from descending heavily upon his head. The plea that did not avail the first man is not likely to avail the last, nor any man between. "If thou art wise, thou art wise for thyself, but if thou scornest, thou alone shalt bear it." As a matter of fact, neither the wife makes the husband nor the husband the wife, but they both influence each other. She softens him and he strengthens her; or if, as not unfrequently happens, her nature is the stronger, she commu- licates to him of its strength. In a true mar- liage, delicacy is imparted on the one side and vigor on the other, to whichever side they origi- nally belonged. Where the union is founded apon truth, there is always a tendency to equi- I.brium, woman supplying the spiritual, man the material element. She raises a mortal to the skies ; he draws an angel down. And no more than it belongs to the wife to make the home and the husband, does it belong to the mother to train up the children in the way they should go. The family is a joint-stock con- cern, so established both by nature and revelation. Where, in the Bible, do we find that the mother jan make of her child what she will, or tliat God gave the making of the men of the world into her hand ? In Holy Writ, the father's duties loom up as largely as the mother's, and if there is any dif- A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 141 ference it is not one tlmt discriminates in his favor or in favor of his release from duty. Fathers and mothers in the Bible receive equal honor and equal deference, but the instruction and guidance of the children are much more definitely and re- peatedly attributed to and inculcated upon and im- plied as belonging to the father than the mother. He is recognized as the head. At his door lies the responsibility. Ahaziah walked in the waj^s of his mother, but of his father also when he did evil in the sight of the Lord. It is the sins of the fathers, not of the mothers, that are visited upon the chil- dren. It was the fathers, not the mothers, who were to make known to the children the truth of Jehovuh. It was the instruction of his father that Solomon commanded his son to hear, and the law of his mother which he commanded him not to forsake, — an arrangement which modern opinions seem inclined to reverse. It is the fathers who are pronounced to be the glory of children, not the mothers ; and glory implies action. A father may die, and his dying prayer and iiis conscientious life, both commending his family to God, may descend upon them in ever-renewing blessing. Such is the promise of the Lord. A father may neglect his children, and the mother's care and love be so blessed of Heaven that they shall be burning and shining lights in the temple of the Most High. But this is God's uncovenanted mercy, and the father has no right to expect it. Yet one not sel 142 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. dom liears or sees anecdotes which imply that such neglect of children is not a crime, — a crime against children, against mothers, against society, against God. In times of financial disaster I have more than once heard of men's consoling themselves for the ruin of their business by playfully declaring that they should now go home and get acquainted with their children. But the non-acquaintance with children, of which many fathers are guilty, is not a theme to be lightly spoken of. Is it a small thing to give life to a soul that can never die ; that, through unending ages, in happiness or in mis- ery, clothed with glory or with shame, beautiful, strong, upright, or disfigured and deformed, must hve on and on and on, forever and forever ? Is it a small thing to give life to a sentient being, that must know even the experience of this world ? That may be bowed down with guilt, remorse, wretchedness, brinmng other souls with it to the dust, or may be upborne through a pure, happy, and beneficent career, bearing other souls with it to the skies ? How dare a man look upon these helpless, hapless souls, and know that to him they owe their being, with all its dread possibilities ; that upon him may fall the ciu'se of their ruined lives, and — neglect them ? How dare he leave them to another ? To no other do they belong. His duty he cannot delegate. After country, which includes all things, his first duty is to hia family. He is a father, and at no price can he seB his fatherhood. A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 143 I see notices of Female Prayer-Meetings. The mothers of a regiment assemble to pray for their sons who have gone to the war. There are Moth- ers' Guides and Mothers' Assistants and Mothers' Hymn-Books. But where are the Fathers' Hymn- Books ? Where are the Paternal Prayer-Meet- ings ? When do the Fathers of Regiments as- semble to pray for their soldier-sons ? If boys need their mothers' prayers, they need also their fathers' prayers. Does the fervent, effectual prayer of righteous women avail so much that righteous men can feel they have nothing to do but give themselves up to their farms and their merchan- dise, to buy and to sell and to get gain ? Can men wait upon the Lord by proxy ? Shall we bring political economy into religion, and arrange a wise division of labor by which the wife shall serve God, and the husband shall serve Mammon, — the wife do the praying and the husband see to the marketing, — he make sure of this world and she look out for the next ? It is a nice little arrange- ment, but — He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh ; the Lord shall have it in derision. But fathers must attend to their business. They must earn money to support the family. They must provide wherewith to keep the pot boiling. Certainly they must ; but it requires no more time, or attention, or ingenuity, or vitality, or strength, or spirits, or endurance, no more ex- penditure of any of the forces of life, to go out and 144 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. earn something to put into the pot, than it does to stay at home and boil it. If the mother, with her harassing cares, the never-ending details of her never-ending work, can find time for studying her maternal relations and responsibihties, and com- paring her experience with that of others for pur- poses of improvement and the highest efficiency, and for joining in social prayer for the blessing of God on her efforts, the father can find time for sim- ilar study, effort, and prayer. If she can leave her baby, he can leave his books. If she can leave her kitchen, he can leave his counting-room. His bench, his desk, his fields, his office, are no more exacting than her nursery, her laundry, her work- basket. Women will go to the mothers' meeting who have to sit up till one o'clock in the morn- ing to darn the little frock, and patch the old coat that must be worn that day; and sometimes they do it from stern necessity, without having the con- solation of any mothers' meeting to go to. Let men but be as earnest in their purpose, as sincere in their belief, let them feel that the souls of their children are in their hands as keenly as mothers feel their responsibility, and business would straight- way relax its claims and withdraw into the back- ground, where it belongs. If a great general is come to town, if a famous regiment is to have a reception, if a long-looked-for statue has safely crossed the sea and is to be set up, if a foreign fleet lies in the harbor and is to send its officers A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 145 OR Aliore, if a young Prince is to pass through the city on his way home, men rusli togetlier in masses so dense as to endanger limb and life. Business is the last thing that interposes any obstacle to seeing and hearing that which a man determines to see and hear. Business ? What is man's business ? Is it to take care of that which is temporary or that which is permanent ; that which belongs to mat- ter, or that which belongs to mind ; that which he shares in common with the beasts, or that which allies him to the angels, — nay, more, which con- stitutes in him the image and likeness of God? A man's business is to support his family. Cer- tainly. He that provideth not for his own house- hold hath denied the faith, and is worse than an inudel. I agree to that with all my heart. But what is he to provide ? Food, raiment, shelter ? These first, for without these is nothing ; but these not last, for he who stops here and turns his pow- ers into another channel is guilty of high crime. If his children were calves, lambs, chickens, he WHiuld do so much for them ; because they are human beings, he must do somewhat more. But how many of the fathers who make business their plea for not watching over their children, who are away from home from seven in the morn- ing till seven at night, who from year's end to year's end, except on Sunday and perhaps two or three festive days, see their children only at 7 t 146 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. hurried meals, and snatch a kiss, perhaps, after they are in bed and ash;ep, who know no more about the inward and hourly life of their own than of their neighbor's children, — how many of these fathers are spendmg their time and talents in the sole business of getting food, clothes, and shelter, or even books and educational opportunities for their famili(;s ? How many of these men earn just that and no more ? It is not the siipport of families, it is not business, it is not necessity alone, on which they lavish themselves. It is their own pride or luxury or inclination. They wish to extend their business, to acquire wealth, or a competence, to be known as enterprising, public-spirited men, to be chosen on committees and sent to the legisla- ture, all right, if rightly come by, but terribly wrong, worthless, perishable with the using, and of no important use, if children are to be given in barter for them. " This is all very well to talk about," you say ; " but a man cannot do anything in this world with- out money, and he cannot make money unless he sticks to his business." Ah, my friend ! so far as the best things of this world are concerned, you cannot do anything with money, and you cannot make good men and women unless you stick to your children. Will money give you back the little baby-soul whose tender unfolding had such sweet- ness and healing for you, but which you lost be- 3ause you would not stop long enough to look at A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 147 it in your mad world-ways ? Will money give you the saving influence over your boy which might have kept him from vicious companions and vicious habits, — an influence which your constant interest, intercourse, and example in his boyish days might have established, but which seemed to you too trivial a thing to win you from your darling pursuit of gains ? WiU money make you the friend and confidant of your daughter, the joy of her heart, and the standard of her judgment, so that her ripening youth shall give you intimacy, inter- change of thought and sentiment, and you shall give to her a measure to estimate the men around her, and a steady light tliat shall keep her from being beguiled by the hghts that only lead astray ? Will it give you back the children who have rushed out wildly or strayed indifferently from the house which you have never taken pains to make a home, but have been content to turn into a hotel, with only less of liberty ? Will money make you the heart as well as the head of your family, •—honored, revered, beloved? If your firm transacts business on a capital of a hundred thousand instead of half a million dollars, what is it but a little less paper, fewer clerks, and narrower rooms ? Though your farm have but fifty instead of two hundred acres, there is just as much land on the earth. Suppose you argue before a jury only two cases to-day instead of three, there are a dozen young advocates who will 148 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. be glad of the crumbs that fall from your table, and Fate will mete out her sure, rough-handed justice. With half the business you are doing now, could not you and your family be comforti\ bly and decently fed, clothed, and sheltered ? House, drftss, and furniture might not be so fine, but something of more worth than they would be finer. A family's support does not necessarily' involve sumptuous fare, purple and fine linen, damask and rosewood. If the choice lies between Turkey carpets, or even three-ply, under a child's feet, and a father's hand clasping his to guide his steps, what man who believes — I will not say in immortality, but in virtue, — what father who is not utterly unworthy to bear the sacred name, can for one moment waver? Every man, and especially every father, should aim to have a character that shall alone have weight both with his fellow-citizens and his chil- dren. His integrity should be so unimpeachable that his motives shall be unquestioned. So far as his reputation is truthful, it should be firmly grounded on moral virt'^es and moral graces, so that his word shall have a force quite independent of his surroundings*. He should be strong enough to be able to live in a plain house, and wear plain clothes, and deny himself, not only luxuries, but comforts and beauties, for the sake of his children's society and improvement, without forfeiting the respect and esteem of his neighbors or inflicting A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 149 uny pain of mortification upon his children. You cannot do anything in this world without money, if money is your sole or your chief claim to considera- tion ; but, in the face of ten thousand denials, I would still maintain that it is possible to attain a character and a standing that shall set money at defiance. He who refuses to believe this, and acts apon a contrary belief, shows not only a want of real inward dignity, but of a knowledge of history and of life. A picture of Rapliael, fitly framed and hung, is a treasure to be prized beyond words ; but with no frame at all, and hung in the dreary parlor of a village inn, it is worth more, and would be more widely sought and more highly prized than a palaceful of commonplace paintings. Let all the accessories be as beautiful as you can com- mand ; but at all events make sure of the picture. He is not a wise man who expends all his energies on the frame, and trusts to luck for the painting. Nor is it any excuse to say that you must lay up provision against the future. No one has any right to sacrifice the present to the future. You do not know that you will have any future. " The j)resent, the present, is all thou hast for thy suie j)ossessing." You may forego present luxuries for future needs or for future luxuries, but you may not forego present needs for future possi- bilities. If besides performing the duty of to- day you can also lay up money for to-morrow, it is well ; but to slight a cerf\in to-day for an 150 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. uncertain to-morrow, Is all ill. Provide, if yoa can, means to send your boy to college, to edu- cate your daughter, to shelter your old age ; yet, remember, before those means can be used, the boy, the girl, the man, may lie each in his silent grave ; but though there may never be a college student, a ripening maiden, a gray-haired man, there is now a little boy, a little girl, who stand in need of their father ; and a father is of more worth to his son than a college, of more worth to hia daughter than many tutors. Train them in the way they should go, going yourself before them with a steady step, and trust God for that future against which you are unable to provide. And this remember : the very best provision asivinst the future is investments in heart and mus- cle and brain. Money without them is worth- less. They without money are still inestimable riches. If your son at twenty-one is alienated fi'om his father, dissij)ated, heailstrong, weak, a source of anxiety and trouble to his family, he will pierce your heart through with many sorrows, though you have hundreds of thousands of dollars laid up for him in the bank. If your daughter is a frivolous, woman, the silks with which your wealth enables you to adorn her, the society with which it may perhaps enable you to sunound her, will only set her folly in a stronger light. But if your children stand on the threshold of their manhood and their wcjmanhood, strong, self A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 151 poiseii, mailed for defence and armed for warfare, glad and grateful for the love that has forged each weapon and taught its skilful handling, no king on his throne is so blessed as you. They have all that they need to conquer the world. Your money may be a snare to your child, your wisdom never. If you lose your money, it is gone forever. The child whom your love is enriching with youthful health and promise may go before you suddenly out of the world, but your labor and your love are not lost. Somewhere, under a warmer sun than this, his earthly promise bursts into the full blossom and the mellow fruit of performance more beautiful than eye can see or heart conceive. The adequate care and guidance of the famaly which he has founded is a man's business in life. Farming, preaching, and shopkeeping are second- ary matters, to be regulated according to tlie needs of the family. The family is not to be regulated by their requirements. And a family's needs a»'e not gay clothing and rich food, but a husband and father. It is the great duty of his life to be ac- quainted with his children, to know their charac- ter, their tastes, their tendencies, to know who are their associates, and what are their associations, what books they read, and what books they like to read, to gratify their innocent desires, to lop off their excrescences and bring out their excellences, to know them as a good farmer knows his soil, V)2 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. draining the bogs into fertile meadows and turning the watercourses into cliannels of beauty and Hfe. He may furnish his children opportunities without number, but the one thing beyond all others which he owes them is himself. He may provide tutors and schools ; but to no tutor and no school can he pass over his relationship and its responsibilities. If he is a stranger to his children, if they are strangers to him, he shall be found wantino; when he is weighed in the balance. Niebuhr, we are told by his biographer, " con- sidered the training of his children, especially of his son, as the most imperative duty of his life, to which all other considerations, except that of very evident and important service to his country, ought to be subordinated. In ordinary times he placed private duties above public ones." Before the child was born his fatherly fondness was ])lan- ning schemes for the future. " In case it should be a boy, I am already preparing myself to edu- cate him. I should try to familiarize him A^ery early with the ancient languages, by making him repeat sentences after me, and relating stories to him in them, in order that he miglit not have too m">.ch to learn afterwards, nor yet read too much at too early an age ; but receive his education after the fashion of the ancients. I think I should know how to educate a boy, but not a girl ; 1 should be in danger of making her too learned. . . . . T would relate innumerable stories to the A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 153 boy, as my father did to me ; but by degrees mix up more and more of Greek and Latin in them, BO that he would be forced to learn those lan- guages in order to understand the stories." By and by, when the child is eight months old, we find him curtailing his literary investigations be- cause he is " moreover, just now, too much occu- j)ied with Marcuccio." When " Marcuccio " is five years old his father writes : " We have daily proofs of Marcus's noble nature ; still I am well aware that this affords us no guaranty, unless it be guided with the most watchful care I succeed with teachino; as well as I could have ventured to hope I am reading with him Hygin's Mythologicum, — a book which, perhaps^ it is not easy to use for this purpose, and which, yet, is more suited to it than any other, from the absence of formal periods, and the interest of the narrative. For German, I write fragments of the Greek mythology for him I give every- thing in a very free and picturesque style, so that it is as exciting as poetry to him ; and, in fact, ho reads it with such delight that we are often inter- rupted by his cries of joy. The child is quite de- voted to me ; but this educating costs me a great deal of time. However, I have had my share of life, and I shall consider it as a reward for my la- bors if this young life be as fully and richly de- veloped as lies within my power." If Niebuhr, one of the most learned men of his 7* 154 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. time, ambassador of Prussia to Rome, whh all tlio business to transact, not only of Prussia, but of all the petty German powers that had no minister of their own, engaged in minute and abstruse histori- cal investigation bearing upon a work with which he was occupied and which may be said to have revolutionized Roman history, — if his time was not too valuable to bestow uj)on the anuisenient, the affection, and the education of a baby, where shall we find, in America, a man whose valuable time shall be a sufficient reason for the neglect of his children? It may not be necessary or desirable to copy Niebuhr's course with exactness. His residence in Rome devolved upon him a laiger part of the mental education of the boy than would have been necessary at home. I am also inclined to think that he was too careful and troubled, and did not have faith enough in Nature and God. But the point which I wish to show is, that, in the midst of his numerous and important duties, he found time for his child ; and if he could do so much, surely those who have not one tenth part of his duties and responsibilities, either in num- ber or weight, can find time to do the far less service which devolves upon them. If they can- not, there is but one resource. If a man is not able to be both statesman and father, both mer- chant and father, or lawyer and father, or farmer and father, he ought to elect which he will be, and confine himself to his choice. If he is too much A NEW ATMOSPHERE. lo/i «b.)V>rl)ed in scientific pursuits, or if lie is not a Bufficiently dextrous workman to be al)le to se- cure from his bench time enough to attend to otl)er interests, he ought not to create other interests. No man has any right to assume the charge of two positions when lie has the ability to perform the duties of but one. If he alone bore the evil consequences of his shortcomings, he would be less blameworthy, but the chief burtlen falls upon his children and uj)on the state. Reckless of moral obligation, mindful only of his own self- ish im])ulses, the fruits of his recklessness and selfishness are, — not houses that tumble down upon their builders, machinery that cannot bear its own strain, garments that perish with the first using, — these are bad enough, but these are harmlessness itself compared with the evils which he causes. The harvest of his headlong wicked- ness is living beings who must bear their life for- ever. He bids into the world, tender little inno- cent souls, knowing that he cannot or will not stand guard over them to ward off the fierce, wild devils that lie in wait to rend them. Plastic to his touch, they may be moulded to vessels of honor or vessels of dishonor, for the promise of God is absolute, yea, and amen. Yet he turns aside to fritter away his time over newspapers, to talk politics, to buy and sell and get unnecessary gain, and leaves them to other hands, to chance comers, to all manner of warping and hardening 156 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. influences, so that their after-lives must be one long and bitter struggle against early acquired deformity, or a fatal jnelding and a fatal torpor whose end is deadly dismay. But in popular opinion and by common usage all is thrown upon the mother. By all tradition she is the centre, the heart, the mainspring, of the household. From what newspaper, what book, what lecture, would you learn that fathers have anything to do at home but to go into their slip- pers and dressing-gowns, and be luxuriously fed and softly soothed into repose ? The care and management of the children fall upon the mother. Who does all the fine things in the pretty nurs- ery rhymes? "My mother." It is her sphere, divinely circled. All the fitnesses of her life point in that one direction. All men's hands are so many finger-posts saying, " This is the way, walk ye in it." It is the mother's sphere to take motherly care of her children. It is the father's sjjhere to take fatherly care. Neither can leave his duties to the other without danger. The family system is j» combination of the solar and the binary systems. All the little bodies whirl around a common cen- tre, but that centre is no solitary orb. It is two suns, self-luminous, revolving around each other, and neither able to throw upon its mate the bur- den of its shining. Many fathers seem to think that they h«ve A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 157 nothing to do with their children except to caress them and froUc with them an hour or two in the evening, until they are old enough to be assistants in work. But just as soon as there is the fatherly relation, there is the fatherly duty. A baby in a house is a well-spring of pleasure ; but it is also a well-spring of care and anxiety immeasurable, of whose waters there is no reason why the father should not drink as deeply as the mother. Tlie glory, the honor, the immortality, will shed a full light upon him, and he also " With lieart of thankfulness should bear Of the great common burden his full share." I have seen a great deal of pleasantry played off against the doctrines of woman's rights in news- papers, pictorial and otherwise ; the wife is repre- sented as being immersed in public employments, while the meek, sad husband stays at home and minds the baby. I do not know that any impor- tant ends would be answered by an indiscriminate female-haranguing in the market-place ; but I do know that it would be a great deal better for all concerned if fathers would pay more attention to the little ones. Womanly gentleness and tender- ness, and long-suffering to-baby-ward reads sweetly in books, rounds graceful periods from melodious lips, and is the loveliest of all modes of levying black mail. But when you come down to matters of fact, a fractious child is just as likely to bo quieted by its father's lullaby as by its mother's, 158 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. if you pm the father down to lullabies. Men who are mclined to take care of their children never find any hinderance in their manhood. Male nurses for children are no less efficient than female nurses. It is not his sex, but his selfishness, that makes man's unfitness. He will not endure the tedium of soothino; and tending his child. He knows the mother will, and he lets her do it. Her fitness is a crood excuse for his self-indulgence. But if he is disposed to take the trouble, he can do it often as well as she ; often better, for the mother's weaker and wearier nerves and greater sensitiveness act on the little one and increase its irritability, while the father's strength and calm- ness are a sort of soporific. Somebody says that a mother's arm is the strongest thing in the world. It upbears the child as she walks back and forth through the long night-hours soothing its restless- ness and pain, and never tires. Vastly well spoken. Suppose, O smooth-tongued Seignior, you take a turn with the baby yourself, and see whether your arm tires. If it does, do not for one moment indulge in the pleasing illusion that hers does not. It is made of flesh and blood and bones just like yours, and like causes produce like ef- fects. But what is true is, that her unselfish mother-love is so strong that she keeps on, not- withstanding the ache. Go and do thou likewise. I do not say that fathers will not. Many do, ana what man has done man may do. Lea^ e female A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 159 endurance to poetry, and remember that in actuai life the laws of bone and muscle are as fixed as any other laws of natural philosophy, and that action is surely followed by fatigne. Walk you the floor with the baby in your arms, if he must be carried, at least two hours to her one, because your arras were stronger to begin with, and be- cause hers have an added weakness from the ad- vent of this little round-limbed Prince. Do not, above all things, betake yourself to a remote and silent part of the house and dream your pleasant dreams, while the mother loses her sleep and her rest by the ailing and fretful baby. But a man's rest must not be broken. Why not as well as a woman's ? He must have a clear head and a firm hand to transact the next day's business. But what is she going to do? The cases are so in- numerous as to form a very insignificant propor- tion wherein the American mother is not also cook, laundress, seamstress, housekeeper, and chamber- maid, with sometimes one awkward, ignorant, inefficient Irish servant, rarely two, and not rarely none at all. As a matter of moral economy the care of a baby is enough to occupy any woman's time, and is all the care she ought to have. As I have before said, even under the curse, this is the arrancrement that was made for her. Her mother- hood frees her from toil ; but man's care is heavier than God's curse, and she too often bears on her own head both her punishment and his. If he makes 160 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. such provision for her that she has absolutely no other than her maternal duties, she can affoi'd, perhaps, to lose her rest at night, since she can make it up in the daytime ; and unquestionably nature has fitted babies to mothers more closely than to fathers ; but to lay upon her, besides the care of her children, all manner of other cares, and then leave her with aching nerves and weak- ened frame and failing heart to worry it out as she may, is a culpable cruelty for which no amount of pretty sentiment is the smallest atonement.* There are so many ways where there is a will ! There are so many opportunities for usefulness, if a man would only improve them. How many times does the merchant, the lawyer, the busy business man, stop at the street-corners, or in his own haunts, to chat with friends? How many hours there are in the twenty-four when a man might run down from his study, come in earlier from his shop, take a recess from his fields, and rest himself and his wife by giving the little one a * I like sometimes to take my views out on an airing, before making a final disposition of them, just to see how they are received. On one such occasion, an excellent man, in comfort- able circumstances, expressed his very hearty dissent from my opinions about woman's work. He thought women had a pretty easy time of it, and appealed to his wife, just then enter- ing the room, to say what had been her own experience. I wish type could convey the clear, ringing decisiveness and ip- '^isivencss of the tone with which she instantaneously respondeii "* nU.BASSED TO DEATH ! " A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 161 rid . in the basket-wagon, or the elegant carriage, or amusing it on the carpet, while tired mamma lies down for a much-needed nap, or turns off a greater amount of belated mending or cooking than she could do in four hours with baby. And what benefit would not the man himself re- ceive, what gradual diminution of his selfishness in thus waiting upon the helplessness of this little creature. Under what bonds for the future and for virtue does it not lay him ? Let him look down upon his baby with earnest eyes, and inwardly resolve to be himself a man pure and honorable as he wishes this boy to be ; let him remember to bear himself toward all women as he would have all men bear themselves to the tiny woman in his arms. There are men who assume and act on the as- sumption that their days must be kept free from childish interlopers. They are aggrieved, theii personal rights are infringed upon, they have a most heavy and undeserved yoke to bear if the children are not hustled out of their way, — as if children were a kind of luxury and plaything of women in which they may be indulged, if they will be careful to confine them to their own department, nor ever let them encroach on the peculiar domains of the lord of the manor. There are women weak enough to give in to this assump- tion, and make it a rule that the children are not to disturb their father. Before he comes into the house the crying baby must be hushed at 162 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. any cost, or remov^ed beyond his hearing. The little ones are not allowed to enter his study, they must not play in the hall near it, nor in tlie garden under his window, because the noise dis- turbs him. When the mood takes him, he takes them. He goes into the nursery and has a merry romp with them, and when he is tired of it or they begin to take too many Hberties, he goes out again and thinks his children are very charming. Or possibly he never goes into the nursery at all, — a lack of interest which would be very unwom- anly in a woman, but is not the the least unmanly nor absolutely unknown in a man. It is a great affliction to the mother, if, in consequence of a temporary neglect of picket-duty, he puts his head into the kitchen or sewing-room, to say with heroic self-control, " Carrie, the cliildren are so in and out that it is impossible for me to do anything." An impatient upward look from his newspaper causes her a shiver of dread. Small table-skir- mishes are put to an untimely end by mamma's hurrying the unlucky belligerents out of sight and sound of their outraged sire, and the one Medo- Porsic law of the family is at all risks to rescue the father from every inconvenience and annoy- ance from the children. The kind, devoted woman shuts them carefully up within her own precincts. They may overrun her without stint. They may climb her chair, pull her work about, upset her basket, scratch the bureau, cut the sofa, run to her A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 1G3 for healing in every little lieart-aclie ; but no mat- ter. They are kept from disturbing papa. I am amazed at the folly of women ! Kept from dis- turbing papa ? Rather hound them on, if there must be any intervention ! Put the crying baby in his arms the moment he enters the house, and be sure to run away at once beyond his reach, or with true masculine ingenuity he will be sure at the end of five minutes to find some pretext for delivering the young orator back into your care. So far from carefully withholding the children from the paternal vicinage, at the first symptoms of ex- clusiveness, put a paper of candy and a set of drums at his door to toll the children thither. But this only in extreme cases. If he is ordinarily reason- able, the right course is to do neither, but let things take their own way. Except in case of ill- ness or some unusual and pressing emergency, the little ones ought not to be kept from either of their lawful owners. The serenity of one is no more sacred than the serenity of the other. The father must simply take the natural consequences of his children. If they drift into his current, he must bear them on. He ought to experience their ob- viousness, their inconvenience, their distraction. It is no worse for a chubby hand to upset the ink- stand on his papers, than for it to upset the molas- ses-pitcher upon the table-cloth. It is no worse for his experiments, his study, his reading, to be interrupted, than it is for his wife's sewing. He 164 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. can write his letters, or stand behind the counter, or make shoes, with a baby in his amis, just as well as she can make bread and set the table with a baby in lier arms. Let him come into actual close contact with his children and see what they are and what they do, and he will have far more just ideas of the whole subject than if he stands far off and, f^om old theories on the one side and ten minutes of clean apron and bright faces on the other, pronoimces his euphonious generaliza- tions. His children will elicit as much love and admiration and interest as now, together with a great deal more knowledge and a great deal less silly, mannish sentimentalism. IX. UT whatever may be the opportunities and capabilities of infantine gymnastics, there is always one way in which fathers may indirectly, but very powerfully, influence their children, and that is through the mother. When her little children are around her, she needs above all earthly things the strength, support, society, and sympathy of her husband. It is wellnigh impossible to conceive the demand which a little child makes upon its mother's vital- ity. In Nature's plan, I believe, the supply is al- ways equal to the demand. The new, fresh life gives back through a thousand channels all the life it draws. But if the mother is left alone, in such a solitude as is never found outside of marriage, but often and often within it ; if she is left to seek in her baby her chief solace, unhappy is her fate. The little one exhausts her physical strength, and rhe inattentive and abstracted — alas ! that one may. not seldom say, the unkind and overbearing husband fails to supi)ly her with moral strength. 166 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. and her weary feet go on with ever-dhiiinishing joy. All this is unnecessary. All this is contrary to the Divine economy. Every child ought to be a new spring of life, an El Dorado, fountain of immortal youth. Whether it shall be or not lies, if you look at it from one point, wholly with the husband, or if you look at it from another, wholly with the wife. On the one hand, each is all- powerful. On the other, each is powerless. But the husband has always the advantage of strength, out-door activities, and continual commerce with the world, and consequent variety. The wife, surrounded by her children, is in danger of giv- ing herself up to them entirely. She wil! inces- santly dispense her life without being careful to furnish herself for such demands by opening her soul to new accessions. Here is where her huS" band should stand by her continually to encourage and stimulate. If slie is not strong enough to go out into the world, let him bring the world home to her. He should by all means see to it that her heart and soul do not contract. Every child, every added experience, should have the effect of ex- panding her hoi'izon, deepening and enlarging her sympathies, and enabling her to gather the whole earth into her motherly love. Her little world ought to be a type of the great world. The wis- dom which she gathers in the one, she ought to turn to the good of the other, — a good that will surely come back again in other shapes to her fam A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 167 ily world. So, every family should be both a mis- sionary centre and the medium through which, in never-endincr flow, all iiood and gracious influ- cnces shall pour. Every family should rise and fall with the pulse of humanity, and not be a mere knob of organic matter, without dependencies or connections. But the father should see to this. He should gently lure the mother out of her nursery into such broad fresh air as she needs for healthy growth. What that shall be is a ques- tion of character and culture. A lyceum lec- ture, a sewing-society, an evenincr party, a con- cert, a county fair, may be elevation, amusement, improvement to her. Or he may do he^ most good by helping her to be interested in read- ing-, either in the current or in classic literature. Or, best of all, he may charm her with his own companionship, beguile her with pleasant drives, or walks and talks, keeping her heart open on the husband sid*^., and so continually alive, while main- taining also the oneness which marriage in theory creates. It is this respect in which husbands are perhaps most generally deficient. They do not talk with their wives. If a neighbor is married, they tell of it. If a battle is fought, or a village burnt down, they communicate the fact ; but for any interchange of thought or sentiment or emo- tion, for any conversation that is invigorating, in- spinng, that causes a thrill or leaves a glow, how often does such a thino; occur between husband and 168 A NEW ATMOSPHERE wife ? What intellectual meeting is tliere, — what shock of electricities ? When a definite do- mestic question is to be decided, the wife's judg- ment may be sought, and that is better than a soli- tary stumbling on, regardless of her views or feel- ings ; but this soi't of bread-and-butter disciission of ways and means is not the gentle, animated play of conversation, not that pleasant sparkle which enlivens the hours, that trustful confidence which lightens the heart, that wielding of weapons vvhicli strengthens tlie arm, that sweet, instinctive half unveiling which increases respect and deepens love and fills the heart with inexpressible tendt^r- ness. Yet there is nobody in the world with whom it is so important for a man to be intimately ac- quainted as his own wife, while such intimate ac- quaintance is the exception rather than the rule. Ever one sees them goincp on each in his own path, each with his own inner world of o])inions and hopes and memories, one in name, miserably two in all else. Men often have too much confidence in their measuring-lines. They fancy they have fathomed a soul's depths when they have but sounded its shallows. They think they have circumnavigated the globe when they have only paddled in a cove. They trim their sails for other seas, leaving the priceless gems of their own undiscovered. To many a man no voyage of exploration would bring Bucli rich returns as a persevering and affectionate A yEW ATMOSPHERE. 169 uearcli into tlie resources of the heart which he calls his own. Many and many a man would be amazed at learnino; that in the tame household drudge, in the meek, timid, apologetic recipient of his caprices, in the worn ai d fretful invalid, in the commonplace, insipid domestic weakling he scorns an angel unawares. Many a wife is wearied and neglected into moral shabbiness, who, rightly entreated, would have walked sister and wife of the gods, jduman nature in certain directions is as infinite as the Divine nature, and when a man turns away from his wife, under the impression that he has exhausted her capabilities, and must seek elsewhere the sympathy and companionship he craves oi* go without it altogether, let him re- flect that the chances are at least even that he has but exhausted himself, and that the soil which seems to him fallow might in other hands or with a wiser culture yield most plenteous harvests. There is another point which should be kept \n solemn consideration. The deportment of chil- dren to their parents is very largely influenced by the deportment of parents to each other. It is of small service that a child be taught to repeat the formula, " Honor thy father and thy mother," if, by his beaming, the father continually dishonors the mother. The Monday courtesy has more effect than the Sunday commandment. Every conjugal impoliteness is a lesson in filial disrespect. If a son sees that his father is rogard- 8 170 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. less of his mother's taste, does not respect her opinions, or heed her sensitiveness or care for her happiness ; or if, on the other hand, he sees that she is hekl in ever-watchful love, he will be very likely to follow in the same path. There are of course exceptions. A gross and brutal abuse may work an opposite effect by the law of contrarieties, but in ordinary cases this is the ordinary course of events. In common Christian families a boy will appraise his mother at his father's valuation. If the husband takes the liberty of speaking to her sharply, the son wdien irritated will not think it worth while to repress his inclination to do the same. If the husband is not careful to pay her outward respect, let it not be supposed that his son will set him the example. But if the hus- band cherishes her with delight, if his behavior always assumes that the best is to be reserved for her, the best will be her incense from the whole family, and no son will any more allow himself to indulge any evil propensity in her pres- ence tlnin ho would pluck out his right eye. And in the delicacy, the refinement, the gentleness and warmth and consecration of her presence all this courtesy and consideration will come back to them a hundred-fold in constant dews of blessino;. As with habits so with principles. The moth- er's influence is strong, but the stories told of its strength are often hurtful in their tendency. It is not the strength of the mother's, but of the father's A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 171 influence, that needs to be lielcl up to prominence. By Divine sufFerance, mothers can do much to abrogate the evil consequences of paternal mis- doing, — but paternal misdoing is not for that any the less evil. If the husband laughs at his wife's temperance notions, and thinks wine-sipping to be elegant and harmless, his boy will sip wine ele- gantly and fancy his mother old-fashioned ; and with his father's appetite, but without his father's strength, and with more than his father's tempta- tions, — in the great city, homeless, bewildered, and dazzled, — he will rush on to a bitter end. If the husband thinks religion a thinfj beautiful and be- coming to woman, but unnecessary to manly char- acter, his son will not long go to church and to Sunday school when he feels in his veins the thrill of approaching manhood. I know a community where not a man can be found to superintend the Sabbath school, and a woman, noble and whole- souled, takes its charge upon herself. The fa- thers do not disbelieve in Sunday schools, or they would not suffer their wives and children to go. They do not believe in them, or they would go themselves. They are simply indifferent, — and indifferent in a matter so important, that indif- ference is guilt. Will the young men of that community be likely to fear God and keep his commandments ? Will they be likely to acknowl- edije the claims of a relio;ion which their fathers c^espise? If they grow up hardened, selfish, head- 172 A NEW ATMOSPHERE strong, unfortified against assault, will it be the fault of the mothers who are strufrglino- against wind and tide, or of the fathers who are lazily lounging at oar and rudder ? People in general are not half married. Half? Tf one would mathematically approximate the truth, he must multiply his denominator fiir be- yond reach of the digits ; and, what is still worse the fraction that is married is, in a vast majority of cases, not only the least, but the lowest. It is not the intellect, the spirit, the immortality, that is married, but that alone which is of the earth, earthy. Xenophon, in his 3Iemorahilia Socratis, presents to us Ischomacus, an Athenian of great riches and reputation, repairing to Socrates for help in ex- tricating him from domestic entanolements. In laying the case before the philosopher, Ischomacus informs him that he told his wife that his main object in marrying her was to have a person in whose discretion he could confide, who would take proper care of his servants, and expend his money with economy, — which was certainly very frank. But that was twenty-three hundred years ago, and people have grown less material and more spiritual since then. No man now would hold out to a woman such inducement to marriage. Cer- tainly not. Men now wait till the Rubicon is passed, and then lay down their pleasant httle programmes ui the ncwspnpers, — general pria- A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 173 ciplcs for private consumption. The popular voice, speaking" in your everywhere circulating newspa- per, says : " A man gets a wife to look after his affairs, and to assist him in his journey through life ; to educate and prepare their children for a proper station in life, and not to dissipate his prop- erty. The husband's interest should he the wife's care, and her greatest ambition to carry her no farther than his welfare or happiness, together Avitli that of her children. This should be her sole aim, and tlie theatre of her ex})loits in the bosom of her family, where slie may do as much toward making a fortune as he can in the count- ing-room or the workshop." Is this very much more commanding than the attitude of Iscliomacus ? Does Anno Domini loom witli immeasurable grandeur above Anno Mundi ? Iscliomacus wanted his wife to manage his fortune. Young America wants his to help make one. Is it a very great stride in advance, considering we have been twenty-three centuries about it ? This extract I take from a religious newspaper, and it is pagan to the heart's core ; yes, and in these mat- ters the Church is as pagan as the World. Be- cause a man is folded in the Church, one has no more expectation of finding in him spiritual views concerning marriage than if he belonged to the World. Unmitigated sclfishncss,worldliness, greed, and evil-seeking are the roots and fruits of such a "religious" paragraph. Cluirch and World arc 174 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. both gone aside and altogether become filthy. The holy sacrament is profaned alike by chui'ch- man and worldling. It is tossed on the spear-point of levity, it is clutched under the muck-rake of materialism, it is degraded and defiled till its pris- tine purity is wellnigh lost, and only a marred and defaced imaiie rears its foul features from the mire. That it does not always cause disgust, is because the goddess is so chiefly hidden that women do not recognize the lineaments of the demon which has usurped her place. Miasma has polluted the atmosphere so long that people do not know the feeling of untainted air. O, it is good to speak your mind, be it only once in a lifetime ! Now I wish I had walked softly all my days, that, with all the force of a rare indignation, I might just this, once crush down that hateful, that debasing, that vile and leprous thing which flaunts the name of mar- riage, but does not even })ut on the white garments of its sanctity to hide its own shame. Leer and laugh, coarse jest, advice, insinuation, interpreta- tion, and conjecture beslime the surface of our social life and work abomination. Nature and un- consciousness become impossible, and one is swal- lowed up in stagnant depths, or borne above them only with an inward, raging tempest of irrepressi- ble loathing. A blessing rest upon this pen-point that stamps black and heavy into receptive paper the wrath which it is not lawful otherwise to ex- press. Sentiments the most repulsive, the most A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 175 insulting to womanhood and to a woman, may bo coolly, carelessly, unconsciously tossed at you by and in society, and you must smile and parry with equal nonchalance. Thank Heaven for Guten- berg and Dr. Faustus, that whatsoever has been spoken in darkness may be heard to its shame in *he light, and that which has been spoken in the ear may be proclaimed upon the house-tops with the detestation it deserves' ^»a^ Q ^ i"-^g^ X. ^TAY for a moment the pressure with wliich — though, perhaps, all unknown jl to themselves — you force women un- der tJie yoke of mai'riage, and let us look without passion at a few palpable, common- place facts. Women must marry because they need a protector. They are weak, and cannot safely go down life's pathway M-ithout a stronp; ann to lean on. What kind of protection do wives actually find ? I once looked into an old- fashioned house and I saw a Avoman, the mother of seven sons, heating her oven with the boughs of trees, which she could manaire only by restins the branching ends on the backs of chairs while the trunk ends were burning in the oven, and as they broke into coals the boughs were pushed in, till the whole was consumed. When her dinner was preparing, she would also take her pails and go through the hot summer morning a quarter of a mile to the spring for water. Was this " pro- tection, freedom, tender-liking, ease." This was A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 177 not in a brutal and quarrelsome, but In a united and Christian family ; father and mother mem- bers of an Orthodox church in sood and regular Standing, owners of broad lands and plenty of money, the sons rather famous for their filial love and duty. It was not an unnatural thing, and excited no comment. The seven sons, all their lives, held their mother in affectionate remem- brance, but it never occurred to them to leave the hay-fields in order to cut wood or fetch water. This was sixty or seventy years ago, before E^ny of you, my young readers, were born. Once a rich man built a barn, and of course he had " a raisino-." To the raisino- came the men and women from all the country-side, as was their wont. For the men was a supper provided with lavisli abundance. Before they came in, thirty women sat down to supper. Of course, when came the men's turn to be served, these women gave assistance at the tables, but all the previous cooking and arrangement li;ul been done by the women of the family, without outside help. Be- sides the hot meat supper, the men wei'e furnished with unlimited drink ; cider, rum, and brandy were carried out to them by the pailful. An ex- perienced carpenter from an adjoining village de- clared that he would take the timber in the v/oods, hew it and frame it, and raise it for what the mere festivities of raising cost. To perform one little piece of work, the men laid upon the shoulders of &* L 178 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. women a burden ten times heavier tliun tlieir own and incurred an expense wliicli, if put upon tlieii large, square, bare dwelling-liuuse, would liavc given it beauties and conveniences, wliose ab- sence was a continual and severe drawback to the women's comfort. They turned the woman's work into hard labor, that they might turn their own into a frolic. Were those women protected ? That was only one instance, but that was tho common machinery used in raising barns. That, too, was long ago. Once there existed a villafje containing four schools, which were in sessicju three months in tho siunmer and three months in the winter. At tho beginninjj and end of the terms, the "commit- tee," of whom there were two in each "district," used to visit the schools attended by the greater part of the adult male poj)ulation of the district. At tlie conclusion of this visit, one of the district connnittee at the beginning of the te-rm, and one at tlie end, was always I'xpected to invite the othe» seven committee-men and all the visiting neighbors to his house to dinner. The hard-working farm- er's wife, or the butcher's, or the shoemaker's wife, with her four, five, seven, little children around her, and no servant, prepared her three roast turkeys, her three j)lum-puddings, and all the attendant dishes ; and the ten, twenty, thirty stalwart farmers, butchers, shoemakers, booted and burly, filed into her best room, swal- A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 179 lowed lier roast turkeys and her ])Ium-puddings, w'itli no assistance from her except the most valued service of flitting around tlie talkie to keep tlieir phites supplied, and tla-n filed away to visit an- other school and swarm into another best room, leaving her to the bones, and the dishes, and tlie six little children. And this is man's protection. But this was the old times, you say. Yes, and you look back upon it with a sigh, and call it the '■'' good old times." Well, the times have changed. They are no lv)nger old, but new. Have we changed with them ? In a town I wot of, the doctors have a periodical meeting. They assemble in the evening by them- selves in a parlor, discussing no one knows what, among themselves, till ten or eleven o'clock, when they emerge into the dining-room and have a grand set-to ujion lobster salads, stuwed oysters, ices, and all manfier of iVothy fanfaronade. A minister is coiiij; to be ordained in a count rv vil- lage, and the village families round about heap U|> their tables aiul bid in all comers to feasts of fat things. A conference of churches is held in tin.- meeting-house, and the same newspaper paragraph that notes the logical sermon and the gratifying reports of revivals, notes also the good things which the hospitable citizens provided, and the in-gency with which strangers were pressed to partake. One wo'ild sup[)ose that the reasoning of the fas- tidious old Jews was suspected to have descended 180 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. to our own day and race, and that tlie sons of men must always come eating and drinking, or people will say they have a devil. Every advance in science or skill seems to be attended by a corresponding advance in the claims of the cooking-range. The palate keeps pace with the brain. The one presents a claim for every victory of the other. Tlie left hand reaches out to clutch what the right hand is stretched out to offer to humanity. Now you all think this is very strange, — a most i^emarkable way of looking at things, a most inhos- pitable and cold-blooded view to take of society. What ! begrudge a little pains to give one's friends a pleasant reception ! and that only once a year, or a month ! It is such a thing as was never heard of. You have always looked upon the affair as one of pleasure. The houses which you liave en- .'cred opened wide to you their doors. You met Mi all sides smiles, welcome, and good cheer. You »;.ovx^r for a moment dreamed or heard of such a -iiing as that you were considered a trouble, a visitation. Perhaps you were not. Very likely you were held in honor; but these customs are ourdensome for all that. You must remember that by far the greater part of American house- wives are already overborne by their ordinary do- mestic cares. This makes the whole thing wear B very different aspect from what it otherwise would. If a cup is half full, you can pour in a A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 181 great deal more, and only increase the cup's worth, for to such end was it created ; but if it is ah'eady brimmed, you cannot add even a teaspoonful with- out mischief, and if you suddenly dash in another cupful, you will make a sad mess of it. Now when these various convocations occur, the note of preparation is sounded long beforehand, and tlie wail of weariness echoes long afterwards. This is simply a statement of fact. I am not responsible for the fact. I did not create it, and I wish it were otherwise ; but so long as it is a fact, it is much better that it should be known. The woman who welcomed you so warmly, entreated you so tenderly, entertained you so agreeably, had no sooner shut the door behind you, wdien you had started for the church, than the sunshine which ra- diated from your presence went suddenly behind a cloud of odorous steam that rose up fi'om stew- pan and gridiron. While you were listening to the eloquent address, she was flying about to have the dishes washed and the next meal ready. When, after your hour's pleasant talk in the even- ing over the day's doings, you were sleeping soundly in her airy chambers, she, as noiselessly as possible, till eleven and twelve o'clock at night, was sweeping her carpets and dusting her furniture in the only time which she could rescue from the duties of hospitality for that purpose. I maintain that, however agreeable are these social conven- tions, they are bought too dearly at such a price. 182 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. A great many women who suffer from sucli causes never think of compUxiuing. They are hospi- table from the bottom of their hearts ; but how- ever sincere their welcome, pies do not bake them- selves. Never a cow went in at one end of an oven to come out at the other a nicely-browiu'd sirloin of beef. Never a barrel of flour and a bowl of yeast rushed spontaneously together and evoked a batch of bread, nor did the hen-fever at its hottest height ever produce bantam or Sliang- hai that could lay eggs which would leap lightly ceiling-ward to come down an omelet. All these things require time and pains, and generally the time and pains of ])eople who, by reason of the stern necessities of their position, have none of either to spare. It is not just to say that these emergencies come only once in a great while, and are therefore too insignificant to be reckoned. The same inju- diciousness which crops out in a conference of churches this week will reaj>])ear in a town-meeting next week, and in a mass-meeting tiie week after, and a teachers'-meeting the week after that. The same marital ignorance and inconsi(k'ratt'iu'ss that brinirs on one thino; will brinjT on another thinir, and, except in the few cases wliere money and other ample resources enable one to secure ade- quate service, the wrong side, the prose side, the hard side of these pleasant " occasions " comes on the wife ; who, whether slie meet it gladly, or only acquiescently, or reluctantly, is surely worn awaj A NEW ATMOSrilERE. 183 by the attrition. However welcome society may be to her, she cannot encounter these odds with impunity, and in a majority of cases the odds are so heavy that she has neither time nor spirits to enjoy the society. All this wear and tear is un- necessarv. The doctors would be better off to go home without their hot suppers. There is sel- dom, in cities, any necessity for feeding masses of people, because professional feeding-houses are al- ways at hand, and people seldom congregate in the country except in sunnner, when each man nnght, with the smallest trouble, carry his own sandwich, and eat it on the grass, surrounded by his kinsfolk and acquaintance, with just as much hilarity as if he were sitting in a hard-cushioned high chair in a country-house parlor. Enjoyment would not be curtailed on the one side, and would be greatly promoted on the other. The Essex Institute has its Field-meetings, — its pleasant bi-weekly summer visits into the coun- try, and is everywhere welcome. During the morn- ing it roams over the fields, laying its inquisitive hands on every green and blossoming and creep- ing thing. The insects in the air, the fishes in the brook, the spiders in their webs, the butterfly on its stalk, feel instinctively that their hour is come, and converge spontaneously into their little tin sar- cophagi. At noonday hosts of heavy baskets un- lade their toothsome freight, and a merry feast is Beasoned with Attic salt. In the afternoon, the 184 A NEW ATMOSPHERE. farm-wagons come driving uj), and the farm-norsoj lash their contented sides under the friendly trees, while city and country join in the grave or spark- ling or instructive talk which fixes the wisdom caut^ht in the morniiijj; rambles. At nijiht, vounj; men and maidrns, old men and children, go their several ways homewaril, just as ha])j)y as if they had left behind them u dozen i'amily-mothers wearied into fretfulness and illness by much serving. They dej)end upon no one for entertainment and owe no tiresome formalities. Go, all maimer of convo- cations, and do likewise. Note, if you please, that it is not feasting which is objectionaljle. Truly or falsely, eating has al- ways been held to be the j)romoter and attemlant of conviviality, the mouth opening the way at the same time to the jjalate and the brain. If men can provide feasts without laying burdens ui)on their wives, let them do it and welcome ; but if the ma- terial part of the feast cannot be accom])lished without so serious an increase of a wife's labor as to destroy or diminish her ca])acity lor enjoying the mental part, it ought not to l»e attempted. You may say that women are as much to blame in this thing as men ; that the great profusion, variety, and elaborateness of their meals are as much of their own motion as of men's ; that they are indeed proud of and delight in showing their culinary resources ; that they gather sewing- cir- cles of their own sex without any hint, help, oi A NEW ATMOSPHERE. 185 wish from the other, and make just as great table- displays on such occasions as on any others that I have mentioned, — all of which may be very true. So the Doctor Southsides for many years main- tained that slavery must be a good thing, because the slaves were content in it. So the Austrian despots point to peasants dancing on the green- sward as the justification of their paternal govern- ment, their absolute tyranny ; as if degradation is any less disastrous when its victims are sunk so low as to be unconscious of their situation, — as if, indeed, that were not the lowest pit of all. How came women, made as truly as man in the image and likeness of God, to be reduced to the level of sacrificing time, ease, intellectual and social good, to the low pride of sensual disj)lay ? Is it not the fault of those whose walk and conversation have made the care of eatino; and drinkin