'J^Ac COUNSELS 
 2F A WORLDLY 
 GODMOTHER-5) 
 
 }i/^ Persis Mivther
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 THE COUNSELS OF 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER
 
 THE COUNSELS OF 
 A WOELDLY GODMOTHER 
 
 BY 
 PEESIS MATHEE 
 
 BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
 
 HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 
 
 1905
 
 COPYRIGHT 1905 BY HOUGHTON MIFFLIN & CO. 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 
 
 Published September iqoj
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAFTKB FAQE 
 
 I. A Counsel from Years .... 1 
 
 II. A Counsel of Grace .... 7 
 
 III. On Learning to Talk .... 14 
 
 IV. A Vulgar Success 25 
 
 V. On Charity gone Wrong ... 38 
 
 VI. The Daily Round 49 
 
 VII. Counsel concerning Orders . . 59 
 
 VIII. A Counsel of Cunning .... 67 
 
 IX. An Unpleasant Truth .... 77 
 
 X. The Price of Popularity ... 86 
 
 XI. The Grace of Womanliness . . 94 
 
 XII. To SPEAK with Tongues . . . .105 
 
 XIII. The Morals of Social Duty . . 115 
 
 XIV. The Courtesy of Books .... 124 
 XV. The Fine Art of Dining . . . 134 
 
 XVI. The Folly of the Moment . . . 141 
 
 XVII. Vulgarity Rampant . . . . 151 
 
 XVIII. "And would my Lady be Desired " .158 
 
 XIX. "Most Rare is Most Desired" . . 167 
 
 XX. Playing the Social Game . . .175 
 
 1S652S1
 
 vi CONTENTS 
 
 XXI. Leiters of Introduction . . . 185 
 
 XXII. The Husbandry of Family Trees . . 195 
 
 XXIII. A Discourse on Snobbery . . . 207 
 
 XXIV. The Misfortune of Foreign IMatches . 215 
 XXV. The Effect of Explanations . . 225 
 
 XXVI. The Object of Life . . . .232 
 XXVII. The Touchstone of Truth . . 239 
 XXVIII. The Slime of the Divorce-Court . 244 
 XXIX. "When Love shook Hands with Pov- 
 erty" 258 
 
 XXX. A Personal Disclaimer .... 263 
 
 XXXI. " When Poverty has kissed with Love " 265 
 
 XXXII. "Joy is for those who Dare" . . 273 
 
 XXXIII. A Counsel anent Husbands . . 277 
 
 XXXIV. "To Marriage all the Stories flow" 284 
 XXXV. "A Counsel OF Perfection" . . 293
 
 THE COUNSELS OF 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER
 
 THE COUNSELS OF 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 
 
 I 
 
 a counsel from years 
 
 My dear Goddaughter : — 
 
 I went to a ball last night, and as I sat 
 watching the dancing with one of the friends 
 of my far-off bud-days, she began to speak of 
 the time when we had just come out, and 
 of the balls of that first year. Among other 
 things she spoke of how different things are 
 now, and wondered what had become of the 
 row of dowagers we used to see sitting along 
 the walls. "Is n't it strange," she concluded, 
 "that they should have disappeared so en- 
 tirely.'^" Then her husband, who happened 
 to be with us, laughed in the most unfeelingly 
 masculine manner. "You evidently don't 
 realize," he returned, "that you are the dow- 
 agers sitting along the walls." And we were,
 
 2 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 my dear ! It was hardly polite of him to remind 
 us of it in so brusque a fashion, but that did 
 not alter the truth of it. We, under fifty as we 
 both are, no doubt looked to the buds waltzing 
 before us — and to my thinking waltzing for 
 the most part with astonishingly little grace, I 
 must say in reyenge for their undoubted opin- 
 ion of us ! — as old and as completely super- 
 annuated as in those past days the chaperons 
 appeared to us. It came over me with a force 
 I had never felt before. I had known it; but in 
 a moment, all in a flash, I saw myself as the 
 buds saw me, and as you would have seen me 
 had you been there. 
 
 I thought of you, partly because you have 
 been in my mind a good deal of late from one 
 cause or another, partly because the sugges- 
 tion of my youth made me think of your dear 
 mother, and partly because a queer feeling of 
 self-reproach came over me that, although I 
 am your godmother, I have done nothing in 
 particular to fit you for that advent into the 
 social world which you have just made. For 
 the rest of the evening I meditated about you, 
 and about your impressions of the world just
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 3 
 
 opening to you; and then and there I deter- 
 mined that I would begin at once to offer you 
 the results of my observations of life. I do not 
 in the least suppose you will pay much atten- 
 tion to the wisdom I have to give, for youth 
 never does shape conduct by the sage maxims 
 of its elders. Your generation, moreover, 
 seems to me the least tractable that ever drew 
 the breath of life. Only the fact that my 
 grandmother used to say much the same thing 
 of mine makes me feel that in this I may pos- 
 sibly be mistaken ; but I am certainly right in 
 fearing that the chances are small that you will 
 profit by the fruits of my experience. I shall, 
 however, clear my conscience by doing the 
 best I can for you, and if you don't benefit by 
 it, that is your lookout. 
 
 All the members of your mother's family 
 — to me over-devout, although most estima- 
 ble persons — have concurred in calling me 
 worldly. They objected on that score to my 
 being your godmother in the first place; 
 and your aunt Abby, when I was provoked 
 to plain-speaking perhaps not entirely justi- 
 fiable, and told her she was a prig, once
 
 4 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 informed me that she had always thanked 
 Heaven that you were after the death of your 
 mother so completely removed from my influ- 
 ence. I fear some grain of truth was mixed 
 with their prejudice, and that to assume to 
 offer you moral or spiritual advice on the 
 score that I was one of your sponsors in bap- 
 tism would be a little presuming. Persons of 
 your age, moreover, are apt to be uncon- 
 sciously on their guard against the counsel of 
 a godmother if it is of the conventional sort. 
 I have determined, therefore, to be as simply 
 and frankly worldly as possible. I speak as 
 one who has seen a good deal of life, who has 
 enjoyed it most thoroughly, and who wishes 
 to help you to get on in the world as well as 
 I have got on myself. 
 
 I, of course, hope that you will be moved to 
 confide in me, and to ask me questions. I shall 
 probably not be able to answer many of them, 
 but I shall be pleased that you trust me enough 
 to let me know what you are thinking about, 
 and you will have the advantage of having 
 tried to put your bothers down in plain words. 
 That in itself is no small thing, for simply to
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 5 
 
 get a doubt into speech often disposes of it. 
 One of the chief advantages of a husband is 
 to have him to ask questions of when you 
 never for a moment expect an inteUigent 
 answer or care whether you get one. It soothes 
 the nerves to force the thing out of your head 
 into the air. Ask me anything you Hke, and 
 I will at least be nice about it. I will not make 
 fun, and I will give you the best reply I can 
 invent, even if I know it is true and you ought 
 not to be told. 
 
 That sounds rather wicked, I'm afraid; 
 but if I am worldly, I am New England to the 
 core and your godmother, so you need not be 
 seriously afraid. All I can ask of you is that 
 you read my letters ; and if you do not at the 
 time mind them much, they may some time 
 help you to understand yourself and your own 
 experiences. 
 
 Good-night, my dear. I write this to pre- 
 pare you, and I stop because I have n't the 
 least idea what I am going to tell you now I 
 have made up my mind to be your Lady 
 Chesterfield. But I shall think! Always 
 lovingly, etc.
 
 6 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 
 
 P. S. I wish you would tell me about 
 anybody that is of especial interest, — any 
 man, I mean, of course. I shall be so glad 
 to hear.
 
 II 
 
 A COUNSEL OF GRACE 
 
 The text of my first sermon, my dear, was 
 flaunting itself in my face at the very moment 
 I determined to begin these letters. There in 
 the ballroom the young girls were walking 
 with an uncouthness which would have dis- 
 graced wenches born and bred on a cow-farm. 
 The stride of the modern young woman is 
 about the most hideous motion womankind 
 ever evolved. The only caprice of fashion, so 
 far as my knowledge of the matter goes, that 
 could be called worse was a vulgar distortion 
 which had a brief reign, chiefly among the 
 socially doubtful, when your mother and I 
 were girls at school. You may have heard of 
 the " Grecian bend," but if you have ever seen 
 it, you probably think it to have been a mere 
 caricature. The shop-girls thought it the most 
 elegant and distinguished style conceivable. 
 I recall how your dear mother and I, hardly in
 
 8 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 our teens, if I remember rightly, practiced it 
 one afternoon when we were supposed to be 
 shut up in the improving society of irregular 
 French verbs. A nun came in unheard and 
 had the benefit of our performances, and al- 
 though I do not remember exactly what hap- 
 pened, I have vaguely disagreeable remem- 
 brances which lead me to believe that we did 
 some sort of tough gymnastics for a fortnight, 
 to "restore us," I think was the phrase, "to 
 the figure the good God had given us." I shud- 
 der to think what would have been the punish- 
 ment if we had walked in the present fashion. 
 The modern girl has learned — or affects 
 to have learned — on the golf-links a stride 
 which is too long for her anatomy, and which 
 shows painfully how foolish she is to try to 
 imitate the motions of the men. She goes 
 across the drawing-room as if her walk were 
 produced by mechanical means, and were be- 
 yond her control. I have seen puppets a hun- 
 dred times more graceful. I have no manner 
 of doubt you are like the rest of them, and go 
 galumphing along as if you were trying to see 
 how heavily it is possible for you to step. The
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 9 
 
 girls I know put their feet down as if they were 
 trying to repeat the miracle by which some 
 of the old saints left the imprint of their foot- 
 steps in the solid rock. It is simply hideous, 
 and I can only give thanks to Heaven that I 
 never had a daughter. If I had had a daugh- 
 ter who walked like this, I know I should 
 have murdered her, and her ghost would have 
 stumped in my ears until the gallows took me. 
 The modern boy walks badly enough, with an 
 ugly carriage of his arms he gets from running, 
 or imitates from those who run, but he is 
 grace itself compared to the modern girl. 
 
 Now, my dear, I know you will resent this, 
 and I know it is likely to produce small im- 
 pression, except to make you think me old- 
 fashioned and conventional: but consider a 
 little. Even your generation, undoubtedly the 
 cleverest the sun ever shone upon, — every 
 generation is that up to twenty-five ! — cannot 
 escape growing older. The price you must pay 
 for living, if you go on indulging in that expen- 
 sive luxury, is to become first middle-aged, 
 and then — I am in sight of the fact, and I 
 know! — old. You are able at your years to
 
 10 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 carry off a certain amount of awkwardness 
 simply by your freshness and briskness. A 
 good-natured friend of mine said the other 
 day, when the gait of the girls was discussed : 
 " Of course it is ugly, but it looks so young 
 and quaint." It is well to remember that 
 what is the quaintness of ugliness at twenty is 
 the ugliness of quaintness at forty! 
 
 It is no use to talk to you of how^ you look 
 now, I 'm afraid ; but you must remember that 
 the girl who strides so aw^kwardly is preparing 
 for a middle age without grace and an old age 
 of antique uncouthness. It is simply impos- 
 sible to go on stramming about as do the buds 
 I see at balls, and to hope to grow into a grace- 
 ful woman, with an air of refinement and 
 breeding. When a woman has lost the fresh- 
 ness of youth, there are at most but three things 
 which can make her socially tolerable : grace, 
 cleverness, and kindliness; and the last — 
 such is the world in which we live — only 
 wins for her social tolerance. Goodness does 
 not secure forgiveness for social clumsiness. 
 To be able to move well, to walk well, to enter 
 or to leave a room gracefully, counts for much
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 11 
 
 more than the keeping of all the command- 
 ments. It is the whole stock in trade of women 
 I could name, and it is astonishing how well 
 they get on. It is a pleasure to see them move; 
 they have the air of supreme breeding; they 
 appear always at home and at their ease in 
 society, — and nobody would for a moment be 
 able to think of questioning their right to be ad- 
 mitted anywhere. The approval of the social 
 world is generally based on very slight founda- 
 tions ; but since it is equally true that its disap- 
 proval may rest on grounds quite as trivial, it 
 is wise to take care about the little things. 
 
 Middle age seems to you so far off that you 
 probably wonder why you should be expected 
 to bother about it now; but really it is n't! It 
 is only an hour or two ago that your mother 
 and I thought it would never come! — But I 
 know by experience that it is of no use to urge 
 this; you will never believe. Only I warn you 
 that if when you are young you walk like a 
 camel, you will never win admiration for your 
 carriage when you are older. 
 
 You think, I have n't a doubt, that the men 
 like you best if you are modern. I 've no doubt
 
 12 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 that if you could get them to express an opin- 
 ion, they would tell you so. But men never 
 know what they really like in women; they 
 never did, and they never, never will! In fact, 
 if they could know, the spell would be broken. 
 The moment that a man truly understands 
 what makes him in love with a girl, the knell of 
 her power is sounded. Men say they like this 
 and they dislike that in girls, and they are 
 entirely in earnest, poor dears. They think 
 they know ; and the fact that they like or dis- 
 like exactly opposite things in different girls 
 does n't in the least enlighten them. If they 
 comprehend anything about the matter, it is 
 not what they are moved by, but what takes 
 us. They can often tell what will fetch a girl; 
 they often have an instinct to help them, I be- 
 lieve, for they continually do things to please 
 us that they are by no means clever enough to 
 do intentionally. They know or can guess at 
 what will please a woman; but they will not 
 to the end of the world understand what it is 
 that subdues them. 
 
 If all the young men that I know made sol- 
 emn aflSdavits that they like to see girls stram,
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 13 
 
 I should still know better. When you see a 
 girl that you have despised for being sloppy, 
 and limp, and gliding, carry off the most eli- 
 gible man of the season, you remember what 
 I tell you, my dear; and draw the moral! 
 
 Not to talk of the men of your generation, 
 however, — though I do know a good many 
 of them, and they talk to me so trustingly 
 that I would n't for the world betray confi- 
 dences I have sworn to keep, unless breaking 
 my word could do them some good, — I can 
 at least speak with knowledge of my own 
 contemporaries. No man of years of discre- 
 tion wants his wife to enter a ballroom like a 
 giraffe, and even if the boys of your age are 
 not wise enough to see that this is the normal 
 future for some of the buds of to-day, they will 
 find it out as you all grow older. The men that 
 I grew up with say something of the sort with a 
 good deal of frankness. You no doubt think 
 they are fiattering us because we do not stride 
 and try to put our feet through the planks of 
 the floor at every step; I can see now your 
 superior smile. I will not say another word, 
 and the loss is yours!
 
 Ill 
 
 ON LEARNING TO TALK 
 
 I AM sorry about my last letter; not for what I 
 said, but for the way I said it. The things I 
 said were true, and I don't in the least take 
 them back; but I got excited, and descended 
 to slang, and that hurts my conscience. I am 
 afraid I 'm not fitted to be a godmother, when 
 I can write in a way so uncontrolled to my 
 goddaughter; but when I get to thinking of 
 the modern girl's uncouthness, I lose my tem- 
 per. It 's especially unfortunate that I fell into 
 slang just then, moreover, for I must say 
 something about your conversation, and it 
 seems a little incongruous. Let it all go, my 
 dear; and pretend I didn't say anything 
 Miss Deborah Jenkins — you don't know 
 who she was, of course — would n't approve. 
 We will start over again ; only what I said 
 was all true, however I said it. 
 
 It is worth your while to work in order to be
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 15 
 
 clever in talk. No doubt you have a vague 
 notion that conversation comes by the grace of 
 Heaven, but nothing is farther from the truth. 
 You may as well say dancing comes by nature. 
 In a few favored individuals it does, but even 
 they have to work to develop their gifts, and 
 to learn to use them according to the laws of 
 the world. No human being, no matter how 
 good a dancer by nature, could dance a two- 
 step without learning it. Most mortals, more- 
 over, need all the aid they can get from the 
 dancing-master. Some people do talk glibly, 
 and even attractively, by instinct, but even 
 they do not get far without study of one sort or 
 another, without practice, and without taking 
 pains; while most of us are in the same posi- 
 tion in regard to talking as to dancing, if we 
 but knew it. 
 
 The circle in which a girl moves has a good 
 deal to do with what is required of her. In 
 New York, so far as I could ever see, a woman 
 is not asked to know anything beyond gossip 
 and money and horses. She is expected to be 
 proficient in all the scandal that is within the 
 limits of decency, and is called clever if she
 
 16 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 has the art to make excursions well outside the 
 limit with an air of innocence. A scandal must 
 above all things lose nothing in her telling of it, 
 especially if it concerns people with a great 
 deal of money; and it must be admitted that 
 the New York multi-millionaires, as the news- 
 papers call them, have been most generous in 
 providing the debutante of recent years with 
 abundant material upon which to exercise her 
 growing talents. New York buds and belles 
 seem not to be required to have any ideas or 
 interests beyond this sort of talk and making 
 a rich marriage; or if they have, they are ex- 
 pected to conceal the fact. Of course they 
 know about dress, and they dress infinitely 
 better than the girls in Boston ; but the talk 
 among the women while the men are smoking 
 after dinner! — If Boston is " a state of mind," 
 New York is absence of mind. 
 
 My dear, I don't know if you know Mrs. 
 Trainor, for of late years she has been a good 
 deal abroad. She was a Baltimore girl long 
 ago, and married one of the Harte Trainors 
 when I was a slip of a bud. She went to New 
 York to live, and she hated it as much as she
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 17 
 
 loved her husband. She told me once that she 
 had trained herself to sleep whenever she went 
 back to the drawing-room after dinner. She 
 did it deliberately, and declared that she would 
 not be disturbed. "When I was a bride," she 
 said, "I took to it as a means of self-preser- 
 vation because the vapidity of the talk drove 
 me frantic; and of course they all thought I 
 had some sort of a horrid disease. Then they 
 said it was a trick I had to keep myself look- 
 ing young. I did n't mind what they said, so 
 long as I did n't have to talk about horses 
 and money." I have seen times, my dear, even 
 in Boston, when I should have been glad to 
 follow her example ; while as to a drawing- 
 room in London when we are waiting for the 
 men, — Dante might have added it to his 
 "Inferno" as a circle beyond anything he had 
 imagined ! 
 
 You may have heard the often repeated say- 
 ing that no woman can talk well until she is 
 over thirty, but you do not realize that no wo- 
 man of any age can talk well, if she has not 
 been for a good many years working hard to 
 gain the accomplishment. "This is all very
 
 18 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 well," I hear you say, " but how does one learn 
 to talk, except, of course, by talking ?" I can 
 tell you some of the ways, if you will take the 
 trouble to try them. A girl will take lessons 
 in golf, and work indefatigably simply to 
 make herself a miserable player of an unlady- 
 like game, just because that is the fad of the 
 moment, and with a full knowledge that when 
 the rage has gone by, after a few seasons, what- 
 ever skill she may have will not keep her at it. 
 She will retain then only the ugly golf stride. 
 To force her to take a tenth part as much 
 trouble about the game of conversation, al- 
 though that can never go out of fashion and 
 will be of importance as long as she has a 
 tongue and can wag it, is all but an impossi- 
 bility. 
 
 Of course the most obvious way to improve 
 in conversation is to talk, — provided one 
 talks as well as one is able. To go into good 
 society and conscientiously to talk as well as 
 possible to all sorts of people, to adapt your- 
 self to moods and character, and to persons of 
 different ages, is the most valuable practice. 
 Make it your business to say what you try to
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 19 
 
 say so that you shall be easily and quickly 
 understood by any person you address, 
 whether that person is wise or foolish. You 
 cannot, in ordinary society talk, put things too 
 clearly, and hardly too simply. This does n't 
 mean that you are to be a prig or a pedant, 
 that you are to talk like a good little girl in a 
 moral story; but it does mean that you are to 
 do what you attempt as well as you possibly 
 can. When you are put beside a log of wood at 
 dinner, as will sometimes happen in the best 
 regulated of dinner-parties, pride yourself on 
 finding out what he can talk about, and on 
 being able to meet him on his ow^n ground. 
 Any man can talk about something, if he is 
 only a fool who can simply tell you about him- 
 self. Nothing will give you a better standing 
 with the boobies than to make them talk, and 
 although this is not much in itself, it is a make- 
 weight to the substantial gain of getting good 
 practice. It is also a way of being entertained 
 when you have a dull partner. If he cannot 
 please you, you may at least please yourself 
 by seeing how you can manage him;- — the 
 art may serve you well in serious straits, my
 
 20 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 dainty mistress, before you are through with 
 the game of life. 
 
 I suppose it is of small use to say anything 
 about reading, for your generation seems to be 
 incapable of reading much beyond skimming 
 novels for plots ; but you really may get much 
 valuable help out of Dickens and Thackeray, 
 if you will read them thoroughly. I don't 
 mean in the way of quoting them, for unless 
 you are talking to an elderly man, or a very 
 exceptional young one, to quote would be to 
 be enigmatic, and would simply make you 
 seem pedantic; and as the masculine vanity 
 flies to arms the moment a girl shows any- 
 thing having the color of mental superiority, 
 that is to be guarded against most carefully. 
 
 The reading which would be most to the 
 point, I suppose you will not touch, but I re- 
 lieve my mind by mentioning it. You should, 
 if you were my real daughter, read, and read, 
 and reread, and re-reread the best drama- 
 tists. That is the best school for conversation, 
 and it is one which every girl who would make 
 the most of herself should be trained in. I 
 remember that when I was at school we all
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 21 
 
 thought Madelaine Drayton tlie most stupid 
 thing imaginable, and we attributed it largely 
 to the fact that she had to read aloud to her 
 invalid father the old English dramas. She 
 used to complain, although she really, as she 
 has confessed since, got to be fond of a good 
 many of the plays; but after her father was 
 dead and she came into the world, there 
 was n't one of us who could talk so well. 
 The result might not always be so marked, 
 but if a girl amounts to anything, I believe it 
 would always be good. 
 
 One thing in regard to reading, however, I 
 must urge, and that is that you learn how to 
 manage your ignorance. If you cannot cover 
 it, make a virtue of necessity, and bring it to 
 light frankly. Years before you were born, in 
 the days when everybody who even pretended 
 to intellectual decency was supposed to know 
 Dickens, Tom Foster said to Kittie Crane, 
 one night at a ball, that a certain skinny old 
 dowager looked like Mrs. Skewton. "Like 
 whom.^" said Kittie. She was always a sim- 
 pleton, and knew as little about " Dombey and 
 Son" as you probably know at this moment.
 
 22 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 " Why, Mrs. Skewton," answered Tom, " Cleo- 
 patra, you know." "Oh," chirruped Mistress 
 Kittie, bound to seem monstrous wise, " Cleo- 
 patra, of course. But I had forgotten," she 
 was silly enough to add, — perhaps her curi- 
 osity got the better of whatever sense she had, 
 — "that Skewton was Cleopatra's family 
 name. I thought she was just Cleopatra." 
 You may imagine how the story was told at 
 all the dinners that winter and laughed over 
 at the clubs. Kittie was dubbed Cleopatra, 
 and from that day to this the old set recognize 
 the name. She married a man from St. Louis; 
 no sort of a match, either; but of course no 
 man in her set would have wanted to be con- 
 gratulated on being engaged to Mrs. Cleopa- 
 tra Skewton. The men don't much mind their 
 wives' being fools ; it's often convenient for 
 the carrying out of their own plans ; but they do 
 object to having the fact laughed over. To 
 start in with a girl advertised as stupid takes 
 greater inducements in the way of fascina- 
 tions and money than poor Kittie had to 
 offer. 
 
 For talking yourself you need to know
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 23 
 
 things moderately well; for listening so that 
 the man will think you know a lot, a very 
 slight smattering will do if it is used with skill. 
 Again and again I have given half an hour to 
 the book of some literary lion I was to meet at 
 dinner, and have, I know, come off with honor. 
 Once I did n't, but then I got the book of 
 another man of the same family name. It 
 was a book on mathematics, and the man I 
 met was an essayist. When I found out my 
 pickle, I told him frankly what I had done, and 
 as I could say with vigor that I could n't make 
 head or tail out of what I had looked at in the 
 book, and as the mathematical author was 
 obnoxious to him, we got on in the end more 
 delightfully than ever. Frankness is a great 
 virtue, — when one is forced to it ! 
 
 This is an enormously long letter, and I 
 have n't said any of the obvious things, such 
 as that all knowledge helps you, that it is well 
 to keep up with the times, that you must read 
 notices of the popular books so as to talk about 
 them, and all that sort of thing. You must 
 already know something, so those tricks you 
 are acquainted with. If you know anything,
 
 24 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 
 
 moreover, you know it is time for this epistle 
 to end. 
 
 P. S. The men you write about do not seem 
 to have made much impression upon you. 
 Is n't there anybody more interesting than 
 these sons of rich fathers, who seem to be 
 either colorless or vulgar.?
 
 IV 
 
 A VULGAR SUCCESS 
 
 I HAVE n't any right to be surprised at your 
 letter, and I suppose I have no more right to 
 be disappointed; but the truth is that I am 
 both. I am afraid I expect from you some- 
 thing that can come to anybody only at years 
 you are not yet in sight of, — and perhaps 
 only to those who grew up in an atmosphere 
 rather more severe than anything that exists 
 to-day. You can't be your own grandmother, 
 my dear, or even your ancient and prosy god- 
 mamma ; and your remarks were innocent 
 enough, and I am a prim, stiff old thing, and 
 that is the whole of it. 
 
 Yes, then, Mrs. Morrelle did have His 
 Grace the Archbishop of Carabas and His 
 Highness the Duke of Jaggert to decorate 
 her dinners; and if the King of Caff re Land 
 should come, dressed only in a piece of tw^ine, 
 she would have him, — if he were sufficiently
 
 26 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 advertised in the newspapers to make it worth 
 her wdiile. She does at least a third of the 
 things with which the journals credit her, and 
 she has started the reports of at least half the 
 rest, — and in these days of amazing journal- 
 ism that is saying a good deal. You wonder 
 how she gets hold of all the celebrities ; well, I 
 can tell you something about that : but in the 
 meanwhile I do not like the faint suggestion of 
 envy which I find, or fancy I find, in the way 
 you speak of her. You almost seem to envy 
 Mrs. Morrelle her newspaper notoriety. Do 
 you really.^ 
 
 Any social success has to be paid for, and a 
 still higher price is needed to buy social no- 
 toriety. As for Mrs. Morrelle, — yes, you do 
 hear of her being everywhere, and entertain- 
 ing everybody with a big name. She is always 
 to the front; her name is in every newspaper; 
 she is advertised almost as well as a patent 
 medicine; she is the typical example of the 
 woman who finds a deep satisfaction in figur- 
 ing in the "fashionable intelligence" columns 
 of the Sunday newspapers for your cook and 
 your maid to gossip over. Of all the means of
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 27 
 
 gratifying a contemptible vanity, this appeals 
 to me least; and it does seem to me to be 
 about as vulgar as anything that mankind 
 ever devised. 
 
 New York has accepted Mrs. Morrelle so 
 long, it has so talked about her, rushed to her 
 house, condemned her ways, and been quiver- 
 ingly anxious not to lose any chance of being 
 amused by her, that I am of course in the 
 minority in feeling that her social success is a 
 pretty severe reflection on society itself; but 
 let me answer your question how she does it, 
 and then you may judge for yourself. 
 
 You know London well enough to know 
 the streets off Piccadilly, and how Americans 
 take lodgings there. Years ago, before Mrs. 
 Morrelle had "arrived," I had an apartment 
 in the same house with her in Clarges Street. 
 I could not help seeing a good deal, and Kath- 
 erine Ellis was staying just across the way. 
 Katherine told me a good deal that I could n't 
 help listening to, even if I had wished to shut 
 my ears, — which I didn't! Mrs. Morrelle 
 hired a poor old decrepit Lady Flanbourough 
 to take her about, to present her, and all the
 
 28 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 rest of it. She did not get on very well at first, 
 even though she spent a lot of money, and 
 before the season was far advanced she made 
 a move to more gorgeous quarters, and de- 
 pended on herself rather than on weak-kneed 
 Lady Flanbourough. London was at once 
 scandalized and bewildered by her sublime 
 impudence, and ended by admiring her com- 
 plete intrepidity. She was said to go abso- 
 lutely without any invitation to big crushes. 
 Once she presented herself at a ball given by 
 the Duchess of Kent. The Duchess had heard 
 of the pushing American, and had declared 
 that she would snub her, if she ever intruded 
 on her domain; but the Duchess had a pet 
 charity, — the lace-makers of Ireland, or 
 something of the sort, — and on the morning 
 of the day of the ball, Mrs. Morrelle sent her 
 a check for £100 for this charity. The check 
 was sent by a special messenger, with a per- 
 sonal note; and when Mrs. Morrelle came 
 sailing up to the hostess that night, absolutely 
 self-possessed, and utterly ignoring the fact 
 that every woman there knew she had not been 
 invited, that she had tried to get a card and
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 29 
 
 had failed, and that the Duchess had vowed 
 to snub her, — well, the Duchess, who prided 
 herself on being equal to any emergency, sim- 
 ply succumbed. She said afterward to a friend 
 of mine that to snub the American would 
 mean to return that £100, and her conscience 
 would n't allow her to do that. If such an 
 excuse comforted her, she was wise to take 
 advantage of it; but the fact remained that 
 both the " Morning Chronicle" and the " Court 
 Journal" had the name and the gown of 
 Mrs. Morrelle in the account of the Duchess' 
 ball. 
 
 The whole social career of Mrs. Morrelle 
 has been along the same lines. The story is 
 that to Emerson, when he visited Egypt, the 
 Great Sphinx said: "You're another!" To 
 Mrs. Morrelle she might truthfully remark: 
 "You excel me in cheek!" Sturdivant Van 
 Wyck once so far departed from his patrician 
 calm as to declare that she "had more sand 
 than Sahara and more brass than a pair of 
 cymbals;" — which shows that the best of us 
 may get slangy and horrid when we discuss 
 this sort of a woman. It is n't even possible to
 
 30 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 talk of her without falhng into a tone that is 
 rather low. 
 
 The harm that women like Mrs. Morrelle 
 do in lowering the social tone is simply incal- 
 culable. Why, you, my goddaughter, with all 
 your social traditions, — you write to me as if 
 you were not without a secret envy of her suc- 
 cess! Think, then, what is likely to be the 
 effect on girls that are struggling to get on in 
 society, — the many girls that have never 
 been granddaughters, and are bending every 
 nerve to the desperate attempt to achieve a 
 position which will make it possible for them 
 to be grandmothers. So much depends upon 
 the influences they come under; and Ameri- 
 can society is so completely without acknow- 
 ledged leaders that when they see Mrs. Mor- 
 relle succeeding, when her name is the most 
 prominent in all society notes, of course the 
 result is demoralizing. They have no real 
 standards to try her by, and they regard her 
 career as most brilliant; — and so the evil 
 goes on. 
 
 For you it will be sufficient, I am sure, for 
 me to tell you a few of the tales about Mrs.
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 31 
 
 Morrelle that I know to be true. It is a good 
 deal like gossip, but the occasion warrants it. 
 If the methods of the woman do not sicken 
 you, you may advertise in the yellow journals 
 for a new godmother! You will see what I 
 mean by the price she pays, and I am sure 
 you'll not think the game worth the candle. 
 Mrs. Van Vecten is one of the few conserva- 
 tives in New York who have always refused to 
 know Mrs. Morrelle. Mrs. Morrelle has left 
 whole packs of cards on the old lady, and 
 never received the slightest acknowledgment; 
 but she has still taken pains to mention when 
 she has been to call on "dear old Madame 
 Van Vecten," as if she were the closest friend 
 of the family. When the granddaughter, 
 Emily Nixon, was to come out, all New York 
 was talking of the ball her grandmother was 
 to give her. The Nixons were to come on 
 from Baltimore, where they live, and Emily 
 was to be presented first to the friends of her 
 mother's family. Mrs. Morrelle of course 
 hastened to leave cards as usual, and with the 
 usual result. This was the one ball in New 
 York that winter that really meant something
 
 32 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 socially besides money, and when the invita- 
 tions went out and Mrs. Morrelle had none, 
 she set her wits to work to achieve one. Emily 
 was to be in New York only a week, and Mrs. 
 Morrelle, who hardly knew Mrs. Nixon by 
 sight, telegraphed to know what evening she 
 could give a dinner for her daughter. The 
 reply was that Miss Nixon had no free even- 
 ing. Again Mrs. Morrelle telegraphed to 
 know what day she might give a luncheon for 
 "dear Emily." Same result. Still she per- 
 severed, and telegraphed for an afternoon on 
 which to have a tea in honor of the debutante. 
 When she got a refusal to this, she could 
 probably think of nothing more. She sat 
 down, and waited for her reward in the shape 
 of an invitation. Mrs. Van Vecten, however, 
 is a firm old body, and no invitation came. 
 Mrs. Morrelle showed Mrs. Nixon's tele- 
 grams, so that her friends knew of her offers 
 of hospitality ; and then in some way — how. 
 Heaven only knows! — she managed to meet 
 Mrs. Nixon in the station on her arrival in 
 New York, quite as if by accident. In the 
 course of their hurried exchange of courtesies
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 33 
 
 Mrs. Nixon, who assumed that after her ac- 
 count of the telegrams her mother must have 
 sent an invitation, said that she supposed 
 that she should see Mrs. Morrelle at the ball. 
 That was sufficient. She did see Mrs. Morrelle 
 at the ball, and a most careful description of 
 the gown and the jewels worn by Mrs. Mor- 
 relle on that occasion was in every paper in 
 New York. That is the way she does it. 
 
 When the Russian Princess Kachtzoff- 
 Morowovitch came over, heralded, of course, 
 by abundant notices in the journals, she found 
 at her hotel a most magnificent basket of 
 roses, — bushels of them, you understand, — 
 with the card of Mrs. Victor Morrelle. She 
 asked of the clerk who Mrs. Victor Morrelle 
 might be. He probably reckons social great- 
 ness by newspaper reports, and represented 
 the lady as the very top and pinnacle of Ameri- 
 can fashion. So the Princess had her secretary 
 send a formal card of thanks. That was 
 enough. Mrs. Morrelle called. The Princess 
 was out. Mrs. Morrelle sent at once an invita- 
 tion to a dinner, on the ground that some of 
 the most distinguished men and women in the
 
 34 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 city wished the honor of meeting the Princess ; 
 and then she invited the distinguished people, 
 on the ground that the Princess desired to 
 meet them. Some of them accepted and some 
 decKned; but the Princess was there, the 
 names of all the guests were in the papers, — 
 and thus more glory and social acclaim for 
 the enterprising Mrs. Morrelle. 
 
 She does not always succeed. I have known 
 her to have some of the most appalling snubs 
 that have ever fallen to the lot of social pirates ; 
 but that is part of the risk, and I will say she 
 takes it pluckily. Some of the men say she 
 has the hide of a rhinoceros, and perhaps 
 she has ; but she secures in one way or another 
 pretty much everything and everybody she 
 wants. If she does n't, she gets credit for it. 
 It is said — but this may or may not be true — 
 that she gives out to the papers the lists of the 
 persons she invites. If they do not come after 
 that, it is their loss, and not any diminution of 
 her great glory! 
 
 Now, my dear, I could give you other in- 
 stances of the way in which a woman of this 
 type keeps herself in evidence and produces
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 35 
 
 the appearance of having the world at her feet. 
 The question is, whether you think such a suc- 
 cess is worth the price. It is manifestly foolish 
 and unjust to envy Mrs. Morrelle or any other 
 woman for a triumph you would scorn. You 
 keep your self-respect, and she has her name 
 constantly in the papers. Perhaps I am too 
 old-fashioned to appreciate the bliss of figur- 
 ing in the society columns, for I was brought 
 up to consider publicity rather vulgar. In the 
 last days of my dear old father's life, when 
 society reporting was just coming in, a woman 
 reporter came to the house to ask about some 
 party or other of which word had got to her 
 somehow. Mother was flustered, and de- 
 clared that she would not see the creature, as 
 she put it, and father offered to go down in her 
 place. He began the conversation without 
 giving the reporter much chance, and asked 
 where he had had the honor of meeting her. 
 She was confused, and explained at once that 
 she had never had that pleasure, but that she 
 had been sent by the paper she represented, 
 that it was merely part of her day's work. 
 Father — you never knew father, and can't
 
 36 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 imagine what a courtly, old-school gentleman 
 he was — wondered if there were not some 
 mistake, since he had not asked the paper to 
 send any one to his house, and he was sure no 
 editor would take it upon himself to do any- 
 thing of the sort unasked. "Will you please 
 thank the editor most kindly," he went on, 
 "for having taken all this trouble; but I have 
 nothing whatever to communicate, and if you 
 will allow me, I will have a carriage called to 
 take you back to the office." She protested, 
 and of course attempted to urge her errand; 
 but he affected to suppose she was only reluc- 
 tant to receive a favor, and assured her that 
 since she had taken the trouble to come to ren- 
 der him a service, he should be most unhappy 
 if he were not allowed to do at least this. A 
 carriage was called, father put the bewildered 
 reporter into it with as much courtesy as if 
 she had been a duchess, and away she went, 
 exactly as wise as she had come. To-diay a 
 reporter would very likely have described what 
 she had seen of the house, and made up an 
 account of the dinner, or whatever it was; 
 but at that time enterprise had not gone
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 37 
 
 so far, and we had our entertainment unre- 
 ported. 
 
 Of course you can see that I am not up to 
 date, and hardly know how a girl feels who 
 really wants her frock and her attractions 
 catalogued by the press; but at least I have 
 shown you how you can lead, if you care to pay 
 the price. If you want to be a second Mrs. 
 Morrelle, you have only to marry a millionaire 
 and lay aside all foolish delicacy. Force your 
 way in where you cannot get in on other terms, 
 and send the reporters accounts of your 
 gow^ns, your goings and comings, your guests, 
 and whatever else is none of the business of 
 the public. Then, as you are much younger, 
 a great deal better born, and a hundred times 
 as pretty as Mrs. Morrelle, you will have her 
 consumed with a real envy, beside which that 
 your letter shows will be the palest of all pale 
 shadows! — Only, if you do, you had better 
 get another godmother!
 
 V 
 
 ON CHARITY GONE WHONG 
 
 I AM glad, my dear goddaughter, that you 
 take my letters so good-naturedly, although it 
 is evident between the lines of your answers 
 that you cannot help regarding me as all but 
 antediluvian in my ideas. You have been 
 kindly willing to let me exploit my absurd 
 theories, and not felt that any possible blame 
 could attach to you. Now that you have asked 
 me a question, and so given me a text, how- 
 ever, you are in a manner responsible for what 
 may follow in reply; but I am so willing to 
 take all the burden on my own shoulders, 
 indeed, I am so conscious of the virtuous wis- 
 dom of what I have written, that I would n't 
 share the honor with anybody in the world! 
 I am more pleased than I can tell you that 
 you care to ask my advice about going into 
 charitable work, for even if you do not follow 
 it, tlie question at least shows that you have in
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 39 
 
 your secret heart some sensible if faint doubt. 
 I am only afraid lest I should become more 
 extravagant in my answer than I was about 
 the hulking gait of the modern girl. My ideas 
 on this subject will seem to you not only more 
 aged and more antiquated than would a 
 mouldy biscuit left over from Noah's ark, but 
 I fear lest you think also that I am as stony- 
 hearted as the Great Sphinx with her bosom of 
 granite, or whatever sort of stone she is made 
 of. Most of all will you regard me as worldly, 
 for the innumerable idiocies which are to-day 
 committed in the name of Philanthropy are 
 generally given a sort of varnish of piety. It is 
 customary to stick on modern charity work a 
 label of religion, just as a union label is put on 
 modern goods. 
 
 For mercy's sake, don't think I am flippant, 
 or that I fail to appreciate the nobility of real 
 charity. You cannot have too high a reverence 
 for noble and self-denying work for humanity, 
 and you can hardly make too great sacrifices 
 to aid it; only do have also reverence enough 
 to keep your foolish little inexperienced fingers 
 out of it. For the sake of the good that needs
 
 40 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 to be done, and, on a lower plane, for your own 
 good, keep out of slumming, and charity- 
 visiting, and the rest of those immoral dissipa- 
 tions wherewith the modern girl diversifies her 
 life. 
 
 At a dinner last week which I matronized, 
 the dearest, sweetest, prettiest, most honest 
 girl I know, the debutante that I like best, 
 told me of an experience she had recently. 
 She has charge, or part charge, — her people 
 mean well, but they spoil her, — of a club of 
 working-girls in some unholy purlieu of the 
 town, and the night before she had been over- 
 seeing a dancing-class. She was driving home 
 after it was over, — it was about ten o'clock, 
 I believe, — when she saw a couple of her 
 pupils, who had started to walk home, talking 
 on the corner of the street to a man. The place 
 was one where no decent girl of her class had 
 any business to be, certainly a part of the city 
 where no daughter of mine should be at that 
 time of night, but my dear little girl stopped 
 her carriage, took the two girls away from the 
 man, lambkins saved from a wolf, and drove 
 them home. She said she could n't have them
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 41 
 
 talking to men on the street corners, and that 
 she felt personally responsible for their getting 
 home safe from her dancing-class. 
 
 I actually groaned, my dear, at the hope- 
 lessness of the situation. I told her that she 
 had been impertinent, and that she had no 
 more right to interfere with the chat of those 
 girls than they had to send her home if they 
 saw her speak to a man on the street; that I 
 was thoroughly ashamed of her for thinking 
 evil of those girls because they were following 
 a custom of their social world; that she did 
 not in the least know good from bad. The 
 result was that she asked me, with the air of 
 an unsophisticated seraph, if I did n't think 
 it was dreadful for girls to be exposed to 
 such temptations. *'I think it is dreadful they 
 should be exposed to you!" I said. "Because 
 I stopped and took them home.?" asked 
 she. I said that was only a piece of childish 
 silliness, but what troubled me was that she 
 should have thought harm of their speaking 
 to a man. She looked first puzzled and then 
 offended. "I'm not a baby!" she told me. She 
 looked so pretty and so dear that I could have
 
 42 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 kissed her, and I instantly reflected that the 
 modern girl prides herself upon being as the 
 gods and knowing good from evil, and in 
 the second place that she does not in the least 
 know anything — really know — about the 
 sins she feels knowingly bound to be shocked 
 about. If the young girls knew as much about 
 the wickedness of the world as they think they 
 do, they would be moral monsters. They play 
 with ideas of sin as a small boy plays with 
 fire, not in the least conscious of the danger 
 that lies in the sparks he whirls to make 
 bright lines in the air. 
 
 I knew that it was of no use to reason with 
 my dear, self-willed, innocent friend, but I did 
 have a pretty serious talk with her mother 
 over the matter; and Mistress Sylvia at least 
 gives no more dancing- lessons in disreputable 
 corners of the city. 
 
 You must by this time begin to suspect that 
 I do not enthusiastically approve of much 
 that in these days is called charity work. It 
 has been invented by self-conscious mortals 
 who are overweighted with a sense of their 
 importance in.the management of the universe.
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 43 
 
 and has been taken up as a fad by fashionable 
 women who Hke to pose as mightily pious and 
 self-denying when in truth they are only amus- 
 ing themselves. It is of no use to any live mor- 
 tal ; it does harm to the young ladies who with 
 pathetic sincerity or with fatuous vanity sup- 
 pose themselves to be doing amazing things 
 for the regeneration of society; and, what is 
 of far more consequence, it does a lot of harm 
 to the unfortunate girls of the lower classes 
 who ought to be helped or let alone. 
 
 The more kindliness and humanity a girl 
 has, the nobler woman she will make; but 
 the more common sense is mixed with it, the 
 less danger there is that she will make her 
 very humanity a power for harm instead of 
 good. Besides that, I do think you young folk 
 should cultivate some show of humility, if 
 you have n't any of the genuine article. The 
 problem of philanthropic work is an extremely 
 difficult one. No woman who is not clear- 
 headed, sensible, kind, and of deep experience, 
 is to be trusted with philanthropic work among 
 the working-girls. I know of Girls' Friendly 
 Societies that are doing a wonderful amount
 
 44 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 of good, — there is a fine one in Washington, 
 — but it is where young society girls are not 
 allowed to come muddling and fussing. The 
 way in which you children have no hesitation 
 in messing with the souls of poor creatures, 
 just as you made mud pies in your childhood, 
 simply makes me shiver. 
 
 The unconscious insolence of much modern 
 charity work is enough to make angels weep! 
 You assume that, in virtue of your birth in a 
 certain social sphere, your money, and your 
 education, — which is on the whole likely to be 
 of not more than a tenth the value of that the 
 girl you patronize has got from a common 
 school and the hardships of life, — you are at 
 liberty to intrude upon the private existence 
 of a stranger. You assume, moreover, that 
 she should be grateful for your intolerable 
 impertinence. My dear goddaughter, what do 
 you know about the life of a working-girl, of 
 her thoughts, her feelings, her aspirations, her 
 ambitions, and all that makes up her world ? 
 You have no common language, except in 
 tragic situations, and hardly then. If you 
 found her weeping over the dead body of
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 45 
 
 mother or sister, you would as a human crea- 
 ture be able to some extent to understand her 
 grief. Even then, how could you appreciate 
 her matter-of-fact acceptance that the death 
 of one dear to her could not be allowed to in- 
 terfere with her earning her day's wage ! You 
 would either wonder at her callousness, or you 
 would have an exaggerated horror of the situa- 
 tion, and in either case you would inevitably 
 be measuring by your own standards, not by 
 hers. What would seem to her the common- 
 places of her lot in life would be to you the ele- 
 ments of tragedy, and you could hardly fail to 
 show her that you felt this. The result, so far 
 as there was any, would simply be to increase 
 her pain for no good ; to give her a sensitive- 
 ness by which she could gain nothing but 
 fresh capacity to be hurt. You belong to one 
 world, she to another. The talk about equal- 
 ity is beautiful, and I have heard it so affect- 
 ingly put that I have — I was younger! — 
 wept great salt tears not only into fresh hand- 
 kerchiefs with point lace . borders, but on to 
 fresh ribbons that spotted with every drop. 
 Now that I have attained to years of discretion
 
 46 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 I stick to my prayer-book, and pray that I and 
 all mankind may be bappy and useful in that 
 station of life to which it has pleased God to 
 call us. 
 
 It is your business to fill the station in life 
 to which you have been called. You will find 
 abundant exercise for your charity at present 
 in being patient with your maid, in showing 
 consideration for the members of your family, 
 above all in winning the confidence of that 
 brother of yours, in going without superfluous 
 luxuries so as to have something to give to 
 those who know how to spend it wisely for the 
 benefit of the poor. For the love of heaven, 
 keep out of the slums, and if you have any- 
 thing to do with clubs and so on for working- 
 girls, put yourself with humility under the 
 absolute direction of some wise elderly wo- 
 man. You have no business to be interfering 
 with the life of those in another station until 
 you have had experience so wide as to make 
 you able to judge in a way sympathetic and 
 imaginative, and above all, mature. Do not 
 attempt through vanity or through sentimen- 
 tality oflSces for which you are not fitted, or
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 47 
 
 justify your ineflScicncy by profaning the 
 name of charity. 
 
 I wish every young girl who unadvisedly 
 plunges into philanthropic work might be met 
 by an angel with a flaming sword with " Char- 
 ity begins at Home" inscribed on it. This is 
 a frightfully solemn discourse, but I feel tre- 
 mendously on the whole subject. I know how 
 antiquated and narrow a modern girl con- 
 siders the idea of confining her efforts to home 
 work; and you doubtless are thinking that 
 many girls have nothing to do at home. To 
 which I answer with all the emphasis I can 
 put into it, — see, I '11 even resort to under- 
 scoring, that abominable trick of hysterical 
 school-girls! — The girl who can find no 
 
 CHARITY WORK AT HOME IS UTTERLY, ABSO- 
 LUTELY, HOPELESSLY UNFIT TO ATTEMPT IT 
 
 ANYWHERE ELSE ! Youug socicty girls have no 
 more business doing charity work in the slums 
 than they have serving tea on a battlefield, 
 and the sooner they find this out, the better 
 both for them and for the slums. 
 
 I have probably said twice too much, yet I 
 feel as if I had not said half enough. I can
 
 48 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 
 
 only close with an emphatic Amen, or Selah, 
 or whatever word will best serve to show that 
 I am entirely in earnest, and that it will be 
 better for you if you follow the advice of your 
 sensible, however worldly, old godmother.
 
 VI 
 
 THE DAILY ROUND 
 
 Ha, my lady, have I caught you ? You ask 
 how you are to occupy your time if you do not 
 go into charity work. You dear, fooHsh goose, 
 don't you see how that betrays your whole 
 attitude toward your amateur philanthropy? 
 Naturally, I knew well enough that when you 
 girls take up that sort of thing it is really for 
 the fun of it, — 'pour passer le temps ; but I 
 did not expect to lead you so easily to a prac- 
 tical acknowledgment of the fact. I spare you 
 a pretty severe homily that might be preached 
 on the impertinence of regarding the poor as 
 the playthings of your leisure hours ; for while 
 perhaps you have no right to forget to con- 
 sider them, I understand how completely it is 
 through thoughtlessness you sin. I let all that 
 go, in order to tell you what I think you might 
 do with your time. 
 
 You seem to think I am trying to make you
 
 50 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 stay primly and dully at home, and, as you 
 say, " wear a backboard and work samplers, 
 as our grandmothers did." I refuse to allow 
 that even so drastic measures might not pro- 
 duce good results; they did in the case of our 
 grandmothers, and the material to-day cannot 
 be so very much worse. I am not foolish 
 enough to suppose, however, that even if I 
 wished for such a life for you, — which I do 
 not, — the wish would be realized. The con- 
 ditions to-day are entirely different, and one 
 has always to reckon with environment as 
 much as with individuals. You are not to be 
 taken simply as a human being, but as part 
 of your generation and of your social world. 
 Any advice which leaves this out of account 
 is sure to be useless and idle. 
 
 I should like to see you in a backboard 
 working a sampler ! I am not sure that the two 
 are possible together, but they may be, and it 
 would be good for you to have all the Spartan 
 training that could be put on you at once. 
 Only, no girl to-day would for a minute sub- 
 mit to the conditions under which our grand- 
 mothers lived. Whether she would be happier
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 51 
 
 if she did is one of those points about which it 
 is easy to argue forever without getting any- 
 where. The fact remains. Your generation 
 has been brought up in an atmosphere of ex- 
 citement. You personally have probably seen 
 in one way or another more variety and stimu- 
 lating tilings than came into the whole lives of 
 those dear, prim women who smile at you so se- 
 renely from the family portraits. The gravity 
 that Copley and Stuart painted is something 
 which would be utterly impossible in your day. 
 You have to order your life in a world that 
 stirs, and froths, and foams, and all the rest of 
 the things that are restless and disquieting; 
 and you complain that I try to induce you to 
 avoid that so-called philanthropy which your 
 companions find a convenient resource. 
 
 The subject is not a simple one. In the old, 
 old days when the mistress of the house was 
 expected to work in the still-room, and distill 
 perfumes, and flavors, and cordials ; when she 
 was responsible for the giving out of supplies ; 
 when she was half physician and half a lot of 
 things besides, time cannot have been heavy 
 on her hands. I sometimes wonder if we
 
 52 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 women, at least, however it may be with the 
 men, would n't be happier if we were back in 
 the old times. We are not, however; and to- 
 day much that formerly devolved on the mis- 
 tress is entirely taken care of by the servants. 
 More than one of my friends have complained 
 to me that it was practically impossible to find 
 any regular domestic task which could ap- 
 propriately and effectually be given over to a 
 daughter of the house. A Philadelphia friend, 
 of good old Quaker stock and large wealth, 
 determined that her only daughter should 
 have some household work to do. She meant 
 to make it regular, not too light, and of real 
 importance; so she set Edith to take care of 
 the lamps. She was forced to give it up be- 
 cause Edith, good girl as she really is, belongs 
 to a generation too independent and too clever 
 not to find a way to escape from an uncom- 
 fortable service. The story the mother told of 
 her struggles to enforce discipline was most 
 amusing, although it had, too, its pathetic 
 side. A modern girl with cleverness, money to 
 bribe the servants, and the determination to 
 have her own way, sure of the sympathy of her
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 53 
 
 own kind to sustain her in any crisis, is alto- 
 gether a different creature from her grand- 
 mothers, and is not easily to be coerced. 
 
 Not all domestic service, fortunately, is so 
 disagreeable as taking care of the lamps, and I 
 believe every girl should have some one thing 
 which is intimately connected with the family 
 life and household comfort, for which she 
 makes herself personally responsible. It need 
 not be burdensome, but it should be regular 
 and constant. Dust the drawing-room, or be 
 responsible for the flowers, if you will under- 
 take nothing more weighty; only have some- 
 thing that is to be attended to every day, and 
 let it be something real, practical, and homely. 
 Personally, I have a fancy for having such a 
 service connected either with the table or with 
 the open fire; but whatever it is, remember to 
 take the responsibility for it yourself. I am 
 not advising you to do the thing now and then, 
 always sure that a servant will see to it if you 
 forget. Do it yourself, or have it left undone to 
 reproach you in the eyes of the household, and 
 thus give you a vigorous call back to duty. 
 
 You are not, I hope, stupid enough to give
 
 54 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 up study because you have left school; and 
 you should have some class to prepare for and 
 to attend. I never made out to do much study- 
 ing by myself, and I do not greatly believe in it. 
 You cannot do too much to keep up your lan- 
 guages; and besides that, you cannot be my 
 goddaughter unless you really read, and take 
 time to read things that are worth while. 
 
 You must or should go to gymnasium. Per- 
 haps you cannot in the rush of the first winter 
 you are out; but go back to it, and give real 
 attention to walking and riding. A good horse- 
 woman never looks better than in the saddle, 
 as has been said over and over; and it is the 
 duty of every woman to do those things in the 
 doing of which she looks her best. The moral 
 good of the world, you know, depends largely 
 on the presentation to the eyes of men of 
 beauty under all possible circumstances; and, 
 by the same token, it is the moral duty of 
 every woman to preserve her figure — for the 
 aesthetic uplifting of the world. 
 
 When to the things I have mentioned are 
 added the social duties which belong to mod- 
 ern life, — I begin to feel like a tract, and
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 55 
 
 shall for days be haunted by the fear of being 
 distributed by some dreadful woman in cotton 
 gloves and an unspeakable bonnet ! — time 
 should not hang heavy on your hands. You 
 have calls to make, dressmakers to confer 
 with, a calling-list to keep in order, and all the 
 rest of it. The modern dressmaker alone, 
 with her way of fitting, will take up about all 
 the time you can spare, for this winter at least. 
 If all these things are done well, you will not 
 supply any great temptation to the enemy of 
 mankind whose business it is to find mischief 
 for idle hands to do. 
 
 By this time I have no doubt you have on 
 your lips the puckering smile of self-conscious 
 righteousness. You say to yourself that I am 
 indeed the most worldly of women; and that 
 in your charity work you professed to do 
 something for others, while I have laid out a 
 programme given up entirely to self. Not so 
 fast, my bonny mistress! In the first place, 
 much that I have advised affects the comfort 
 and well-being of others ; in the second place, 
 I am not yet at the end of my list. I have still 
 to speak of your charity work. You must have
 
 56 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 something directly unselfish in your life, or 
 your existence will be as savorless — even in 
 time as unsavory — as food without salt. To 
 do something for others is after all to do the 
 best for ourselves. No amount of tiresome 
 reiteration of that fact by those who make 
 virtue unattractive has been able to render it 
 untrue. To be self-absorbed is to be unhappy. 
 
 What are you to do, then ? Not poke your 
 pretty, little, impertinent nose into the private 
 affairs of families born poor and socially in- 
 ferior; and not undertake to arrange the pro- 
 gress of social evolution according to the views 
 of a committee of fussy women. You are to 
 call upon the sick and the dull in your own 
 circle; you are to do the unpleasant social 
 drudgery of your own world. If you really 
 wish to sacrifice your own pleasure for the 
 good of others, here is your way. There are 
 enough unpleasant things which need to be 
 done in this line to afford ample scope for all 
 the philanthropic zeal you are likely to muster. 
 
 I told you in the first line of this epistle how 
 much faith I have in any philanthropy behind 
 your desire for slumming. I have become so
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 57 
 
 moral in the course of this sermon that I am 
 almost ashamed to make a practical applica- 
 tion ; and yet I must. If you wish to prove the 
 sincerity of your desire to be charitable, go 
 and see old Mrs. Meagre, bedridden, bitter, 
 censorious, but pathetically eager for news of 
 the social world which was the only thing she 
 ever really cared for. Her mother and your 
 grandmother were bosom friends, and that is 
 excuse enough for you. The wretched old 
 creature will be disagreeable to you, and very 
 likely hint that she suspects you of having 
 an eye to being remembered in her will; she 
 is sure to attack anybody she suspects you 
 of caring for : but you will give a miserable 
 invalid a little relief from the frightful monot- 
 ony of weary days. You come away from a 
 tenement house brightened by the interest of 
 a gratified curiosity and glowing with self- 
 deceiving approval. You leave behind, in most 
 cases, envy and discontent. You will depart 
 from Mrs. Meagre's so low in your mind as 
 to be all but ready to take chilled aconite ; but 
 the reaction will be wholesome, and at any 
 rate you will leave a raddled old woman less
 
 58 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 
 
 wretched for your visit, and apprehending, 
 under all her snarling, your kindness. She 
 will never let you see it, but she will really be, 
 grateful; and if she w^ere not, you will have 
 done your best. 
 
 You can easily fill out the list of those to 
 whom you can sacrifice yourself if you will, and 
 may make your days brim with blessed use- 
 fulness and kindness. — My dear goddaugh- 
 ter, I am so affected and edified at and by my 
 own seriousness that I shall proceed at once 
 to array myself and go to call on Miss Pen- 
 nington, who is housed with a cold, and into 
 whom, when she is under the weather, enter 
 as many evil spirits as went out of the woman 
 in the Bible, — seven legions, or ten, or what- 
 ever it was. I merely add in closing that any 
 stray minutes that are left over by my pro- 
 gramme, and seem to be good for nothing else, 
 may be bestowed on the men. I have reason, 
 however, to feel that this statement is hardly 
 necessary, as I am informed that you were 
 walking in the park Sunday with a very hand- 
 some man, described by my correspondent as 
 looking "like a genuine thoroughbred."
 
 VII 
 
 COUNSEL CONCERNING ORDERS 
 
 Oh, yes; what you say about clubs is true 
 enough as far as it goes. They are pretty much 
 all alike, and they are not entertaining when 
 one has a chance at real things. You had bet- 
 ter join the Grenville, so as to make a con- 
 venience of the clubhouse; but after all, the 
 real reason for joining any of the women's 
 clubs is, to my mind, so as not to seem too odd 
 and stand-offish. I keep up my membership 
 at the Pocahontas because I like to have a 
 place to go to in town if I have to come up 
 in summer when the house is n't open ; but I 
 think I should pay the fees anyway, just to do 
 as other women do. It is not wise to be too 
 independent; and after all, one wants to help 
 support a thing the women of one's set have 
 started. It never would do to stand by and see 
 it fail for want of support. 
 
 A woman's club is of course a bore. I never
 
 60 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 could make out just why it should be, for the 
 men are fond of their clubs, and we never 
 really are, no matter how we pretend. I insist 
 with my husband that it is because men are so 
 self-satisfied that they are always pleased with 
 themselves ; but I suspect the truth is that the 
 women never have a really good time unless 
 there are men in it. Curry Swift says the dif- 
 ference comes from the men's smoking at their 
 clubs, but of course that is sheer nonsense. 
 At any rate, smoke would never satisfy us. 
 
 When the Pocahontas was formed, I asked 
 Sherman if I should join, and he advised that 
 I should. He said it would be stupid if I looked 
 at it as a recreation, but would be useful as 
 a convenience. He said with a good deal of 
 frankness that the women could n't have a 
 club of the sort men had, and when I tried to 
 make him say why not, all I could get out of 
 him was that the club was a masculine insti- 
 tution, and that women could n't have a club 
 in the masculine sense any more than men 
 could have a sewing-circle. Of course he was 
 right; he generally is. I tell him that infalli- 
 bility is his worst fault, and that if I were not
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 61 
 
 very much in love with him, I should hate him 
 for it. — This flatters him, you see; and it is 
 as necessary to flatter husbands now and then 
 as it is to give sheep salt or cats catnip. Be- 
 sides, I mean it, for it is a good deal of a trial 
 to have a husband that has such a dreadful 
 habit of being right! Only Sherman never 
 boasts of it afterward. If he did, fond as I am 
 of him, I should long ago have murdered him 
 in the chillest of cold blood! 
 
 I have found the Pocahontas a great con- 
 venience sometimes, but I should as soon 
 think of reading the dictionary for excitement 
 as of going to the club for amusement: — al- 
 though, now I think of it, I have been a good 
 deal amused by things that happen there in the 
 way of women's making fools of themselves. 
 
 As for the orders, or societies, or whatever 
 they are, — well, I do think they are rather 
 silly. They seem to me like an imitation of the 
 societies men have, and I always considered 
 those foolish. Mrs. Candace Scott tried for 
 two years to get me to join the Colonial Dames, 
 and was furious because I would n't. She 
 said I evidently did n't think they were good
 
 62 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 enough for me; and then she took the other 
 tack, and said in company that I must regret 
 not having any ancestors who would make me 
 eHsrible. Was n't she a fool ? I smiled at her 
 with all the sweetness of a honey-pot, and an- 
 swered that as I knew she had had my pedi- 
 gree looked up, there seemed to be nothing for 
 me to say. The point of it w as that she kept a 
 professional genealogist at work for a year, 
 trying to graft her mother's family on to our 
 tree somehow, because there was some simi- 
 larity of names, and he could not make it 
 work. She knew that I knew all about it, be- 
 cause he had come to me for information ; and 
 she turned so red that I was afraid of apo- 
 plexy. These women are so silly ! They get up 
 a society to advertise that they are by birth 
 superior to all the rest of the world; and then, 
 after all, they are so doubtful about it that 
 if anybody of decent family does n't care to 
 join, they feel all their pretensions discredited ! 
 I did not mean to reflect on the families of any 
 of them, but I am not interested in the society, 
 and I don't feel the need of advertising the 
 fact that I had ancestors. Sherman says my
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 63 
 
 family was good enough for me to feel per- 
 fectly at ease in being democratic, and that is 
 about the truth of it. 
 
 There are so many orders, too : the daugh- 
 ters of this, and the granddaughters of that, 
 the descendants of the other, and the dames 
 of something else. A woman must be a fool or 
 a foundling not to be able to establish a claim 
 to some of them. I suppose they are no harm, 
 .but they certainly do not appeal to me. I have 
 so many other ways of amusing myself that 
 please me more, that I perhaps hardly do jus- 
 tice to the w^omen who find them entertaining, 
 — or try to think they do, poor things! Sher- 
 man says the abundance of societies is the 
 result of the fact that the home has gone out 
 of fashion ; I ask him if he has n't a home, and 
 he says I do not belong to any of the orders. 
 Certainly women are constantly flocking to- 
 gether nowadays, in a sort of forlorn fashion, 
 like birds whose nests have been torn down. 
 
 I have n't the feeling that my husband has 
 about the snobbishness of the orders. He de- 
 clares that he is tempted to found an order of 
 Sons of the Farmers of the Revolution, just to
 
 64 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 show that somebody is not ashamed of having 
 come from the stock that furnished the energy 
 for this country. I tell him that is a noble sen- 
 timent for one whose great-great-grandfather 
 on one side was on General Washington's 
 staff, and on the other a noted Oxford man. 
 He says the princi})le is the same. That 
 does n't mean anything to me; but when my 
 husband says a thing I cannot understand, I 
 assume that it makes for domestic peace if I 
 instantly allow that he is right. 
 
 I should not, if I were you, bother with any 
 of the orders or societies, or that sort of thing. 
 You have no time, no need, no interest, I am 
 sure, in it all, and I hope you have no sym- 
 pathy with advertising your pretensions to 
 good blood. There is no great harm in it, as 
 I said; but why should you .^ 
 
 One order seems to me a trifle more snob- 
 bish than all the rest put together, and that is 
 the Descendants of Royal Families. I think 
 it more than likely that I have no claim to 
 belong to it, and that may seem to be the root 
 of my feeling, though I have never had the 
 matter looked up. Of course the royal blood
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 65 
 
 in the veins of a good many of the members is 
 purely imaginary, and in other cases has to be 
 traced through all sorts of muddy channels. 
 Whether this is so or not, however, such an 
 order in a republic seems to me nothing more 
 nor less than pure caddishness. I was brought 
 up in the old-fashioned way, and although 
 I can scold about this country as well as 
 anybody, and although when I am coming 
 through the custom-house on my way home 
 from abroad I could pull the foundations out 
 from under the whole government with the 
 keenest joy, I am really a loyal American. 
 If there is royal or aristocratic blood in my 
 veins, I should be a fool if I had n't a sense 
 of satisfaction. It may not be the highest sort 
 of position to take, but I should be glad of it. 
 As an American, however, I am not going to 
 forget that my forbears fought for a demo- 
 cratic form of government; and I am not one 
 of those to flaunt the dregs of some old royal 
 family in the face of my countrymen by way 
 of making them discontented with having 
 been born without such remote claims to con- 
 sideration. Of course the only real fun of
 
 66 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 
 
 advertising one's lineage is to make other folk 
 discontented; and it does not seem to me in 
 good taste to do that in this country by glory- 
 ing in the lees of royal blood. 
 
 This is even more of a sermon than I have 
 inflicted upon you before! I am sorry. I will 
 not promise not to do it again, but I will try to 
 restrain my too didactic and dictatorial pen! 
 
 I still have hope that the time will come 
 when you will write to me frankly. I am inter- 
 ested in what you say, but what you do is what 
 I really care about. When you write about 
 charity and ask my opinion about joining a 
 club, I am glad to answer you, but I know 
 that these are only surface questions. You 
 need not be afraid of me ; but I suppose I shall 
 have to leave you to find that out for yourself. 
 I cannot force you to a confidence that, to 
 be healthy, must be of slow growth. So write 
 in your own way, my dear, and be sure I 
 am really and deeply fond of you, whatever 
 you do. 
 
 Only I am a woman, and I should so like to 
 know — !
 
 VIII 
 
 A COUNSEL OF CUNNING 
 
 Of course, my dear, there are girls who make 
 you jealous. I am sorry we are made that way, 
 for the more we are fretted, the better chance 
 we give to the hateful thing to tease us and 
 to put us at a disadvantage. It is maddening 
 how some girls will go on, taking what does n't 
 belong to them. A girl who has any sense of 
 honor will not try to attract a man away from 
 another unless he is a real prize, and then she 
 would be more than human if she did n't try 
 her power. A man with millions is outside all 
 rules, I suppose, and considerations of honor 
 do not seem to count. 
 
 All this, however, you know well enough 
 already; the question is what you are to do 
 when you are bothered by the fact that he 
 shows an inclination to allow himself to be 
 chained to the chariot-wheels of another. In 
 the first place, and in the second place, and in
 
 68 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 all the number of places that you can count, I 
 beseech you not to show that you care! The 
 very most stupid thing in relation to a man 
 that any woman can possibly do under any 
 circumstances is to let him know that she is 
 piqued or hurt by his neglect or by his slights. 
 Just as long as he thinks her indifferent, she 
 has a hold on him. He is caught by a hook in 
 his vanity, and as that is the toughest part of 
 masculine humanity, it holds longest and most 
 surely. If he slight you, neglect you, jilt you 
 even, smile if it kills you. Make him think it 
 is to you a matter of no consequence, and he 
 will come back if he can get back. If he cannot, 
 you have at least avenged yourself. All his 
 days he will feel that leaving you and losing 
 you was the greatest and most lamentable 
 mistake of his life. 
 
 I am not much of a psychologist, but I do 
 know something about men. I have observed 
 that men — men of decency, I mean — gen- 
 erally go through an absurd process of justify- 
 ing themselves for leaving a girl. They always 
 assume that the girl is completely bowled 
 over; that her wounded affections are bleed-
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 69 
 
 ing great streams of red heart's blood; and 
 they get into a corner with a fat cigar and 
 repent. Tliey have no end of enjoyment in 
 repenting. It gives them satisfaction to reflect 
 how killingly irresistible they are; they take 
 the utmost credit for tender-heartedness in 
 the contrition they suppose themselves to feel; 
 and altogether they find it almost worth break- 
 ing off with a girl to win this beautiful experi- 
 ence of repentant vanity. If, however, the girl 
 refuses to be or to appear in the least troubled, 
 this whole pretty programme is spoiled. They 
 feel how foolish it is to pity a girl who flaunts 
 her indifi^erence to all the world. It begets 
 in the masculine mind all sorts of doubts, — 
 doubts whether he is after all irresistible, 
 whether he does not perhaps care more for 
 this girl than for the new one, doubts whether 
 he does not look ridiculous as having been 
 himself thrown over: he has to go back to 
 assure himself what is the truth of these things, 
 and to make an impression which shall heal 
 his wounded vanity. Then you have him at 
 your mercy! 
 
 A wise old lady I once knew used to main-
 
 70 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 tain that any girl could have her pick of all the 
 men of her acquaintance if she only knew how 
 to hold back and to do it shrewdly. Men — as 
 has been said millions of times without mak- 
 ing much difference — have the instinct of the 
 hunter, and they want the glory of bringing 
 down difficult game. It is no honor for a man 
 to show as the spoil of his bow^ and spear the 
 girl who 's so complacent that anybody could 
 have had her for the asking. It is true that 
 some of the dearest and sweetest men in the 
 world are- so humble that even masculine 
 vanity cannot bring them to the point of think- 
 ing they are good enough for the "rose that 
 all are praising/' but she can always reassure 
 them if she wishes. What the majority of men 
 of the world desire in choosing a wife is to be 
 able to strut up and down to be admired as 
 being of the irresistibles who have subdued the 
 most particular and difficult of all the belles. 
 It is necessary to impress upon them the idea 
 that by some strange freak of nature you are a 
 girl who holds herself not only as good as they, 
 but better than they can ever hope to be. It 
 will confuse them a little, but it will impress
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 71 
 
 them, and that is, after all, the important 
 matter. 
 
 You must know from your earliest days at 
 dancing-school that the girls that get taken 
 out most are not those who follow the boys 
 with imploring glances, but those who frankly 
 and saucily snub them. It is the difficulty of 
 getting a favor that makes it valuable, and if 
 you girls could only learn this, it would be 
 better for you. A Southern girl has been 
 visiting here this winter. She is rather pretty, 
 nothing more, and she has pitifully plain 
 clothes. She is n't witty, or especially clever; 
 but she has had everything her own w ay sim- 
 ply from a certain pretty imperiousness. She 
 gives a dance as a boon, instead of accepting 
 it as one. She allows a man to pick up her 
 fan, or to hold her bouquet, or to take her in 
 to supper, as if she intended a kindness. She 
 is n't condescending; she is simply of the race 
 of women who do not kotow to men, but 
 expect men to bow down to them. The North 
 never had the social art as it was known in 
 the South before the war, and a good deal 
 of the old grace and knowledge still lingers
 
 72 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 among the descendants of the Southern f am- 
 ihes. 
 
 To come back, however, to the girl that 
 bothers you, be careful of one thing. If there 
 is a girl you are afraid of, praise her. Be 
 especially particular to praise her to the man; 
 not grossly and stupidly, of course, but gen- 
 erously and frankly. For you must under- 
 stand that in the first place the man will look 
 on you as having a wonderfully sweet and 
 lovely disposition if you can compliment the 
 other girl; in the second place, he is sure to 
 feel that you have not the reason to be afraid 
 of her power that he supposed, or you would 
 not dare to bring her good points into notice. 
 Unless he is too far gone for it to make any 
 real difference what you do, he will be put 
 instinctively a little on his guard against her 
 fascinations, critically wondering whether he 
 has not overestimated them. You cannot in 
 any case do yourself any harm. The girl will 
 make him aware of her attractions, and you 
 only make them common by praising them. 
 You take away from him the secret satisfac- 
 tion of supposing himself to have discovered
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 73 
 
 them, and prevent his thinking of her with 
 pleasure as the source of his cleverness. He is 
 more likely to feel that she has tricked him 
 into thinking she has revealed herself — that 
 true self which a lover fondly dreams of as 
 perceived only by the subtle sympathy of his 
 vision, yet which is evident to the whole 
 world ! — to him in some special manner. 
 
 It is worth remembering, moreover, that if 
 you make good-natured remarks, they are very 
 quickly forgotten. What you say does not 
 outlive the occasion, and all that remains is 
 the impression you have created of being 
 kindly. If you indulge in bitterness, particu- 
 larly if it has a foundation in fact, what you 
 say is remembered, quoted, exaggerated, dis- 
 torted, and in the end does you a hundred 
 times as much harm as it does the other girl. 
 If the man really cares for your rival, he will be 
 indignant with you, and set down what may 
 be the plainest truth to pique. You may be 
 playing into the hands of the other girl by 
 enlisting his sympathies on her side. In any 
 case, the balance is greatly in favor of being 
 kind in your words.
 
 74 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 Only be honestly kind. You must know 
 girls who affect to be good-natured, but who, 
 under seeming compliment, veil the most 
 damaging thrusts. They are so foolish as to 
 think they cover their tracks; but you know 
 how completely the reverse is true. Of course 
 the girls see through them, but even men can 
 appreciate the real meaning of this sort of 
 thing. They say among themselves that such 
 a girl is catty ; that she tries to hide her claws, 
 but that anybody can see how she loves to 
 scratch. She gets a reputation for ill nature 
 and sharpness ten times as bad as that of the 
 girl who is outspoken to a fault. 
 
 The summing up of the whole matter is 
 that you cannot do worse than to say ill of 
 others, especially of those you have any reason 
 to fear. In the event that worst comes to 
 worst, and your rival carries off the prize, con- 
 sider how much better is your position if you 
 have always spoken in her favor. You have 
 nothing to retract ; you have never belittled 
 yourself by affecting to underestimate your 
 enemy; you can still be apparently frank and 
 above-board, and cover any chagrin you may
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 75 
 
 feel, In a way tliat is utterly impossible if you 
 have beforehand shown your jealousy. "Of 
 course," you say, "I have always expected it. 
 Have n't I always said what a charming girl 
 she is ? 1 've told him so a hundred times. I 
 claim that I had as much to do with making 
 the match as anybody." The girls will know, 
 my dear, if there is a single regret in your 
 heart. That is not to be helped, because na- 
 ture gave us that infernal penetration into the 
 real feelings of each other where the men are 
 concerned; but even among themselves they 
 can say very little, for your words are all on 
 your side, and they will respect your art and 
 your pluck. As for the men, — and of course 
 what the men think is what counts, — the men 
 will be fooled completely. That is the im- 
 portant point. You cannot afford to let it get 
 into the heads of the men that you have 
 been passed by, that you have lost a chance 
 you would have taken. They want the girl 
 that others want; and to have the reputation, 
 rightly or wrongly, of having failed in an effort 
 to secure one eligible man has many a time 
 ruined a girl's chances with half a dozen others.
 
 76 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 
 
 I have poured out in this letter a perfect 
 spring freshet of wisdom! Indeed, I almost 
 feel that I am becoming a Lord Chesterfield 
 in petticoats, and to pride myself accord- 
 ingly. Do, I beg of you, turn out a more sat- 
 isfactory pupil than did that uncouth cub he 
 wrote to!
 
 IX 
 
 AN UNPLEASANT TRUTH 
 
 So you are sure that, if I do not approve 
 of your slumming, I must be glad if you 
 help a good cause by dancing on the stage 
 of a public theatre in sight of anybody who 
 chooses to buy a ticket! Oh, my dear, my 
 dear, has n't your generation any natural sense 
 of propriety or any acquired modesty ? I 'd 
 rather a hundred times you missionaried in 
 the slummiest place known to the pryingest 
 philanthropist than that you should exhibit 
 yourself to the public at so much a head! 
 What difference does it make that you are to 
 do it in the name of charity ? Do let us pre- 
 serve some decency, even where philanthropy 
 is concerned. As for delicacy, it seems to 
 have gone completely out of fashion ; but have 
 you reflected upon the advisability of avoiding 
 the awkwardness of forcing a comparison of 
 the bodily charms you may possess with the
 
 78 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 well-developed and shamelessly exploited at- 
 tractions of the ballet girls ? 
 
 Why is it that you cannot see how vulgar it 
 all is ? What has come over the modern girl 
 that she thinks modesty and delicacy simply 
 old-fashioned ? The truth of the matter is 
 that vanity prompts girls of any generation 
 to do unladylike acts, to put themselves on 
 exhibition, to do bold things to attract atten- 
 tion; but now this foolish impulse is not bal- 
 anced as it used to be by the better sense of 
 good breeding, and the very flimsiest excuse 
 of serving a charity is a good enough pretext 
 for going into any extravagance. As for char- 
 ity, they care — you care — as much as for 
 the length of Pharaoh's beard. What a girl 
 wants who does this sort of thing is to exhibit 
 herself, to win applause, to gratify her vanity. 
 Girls will spend on the dress for a charity 
 entertainment twenty times the money they 
 would subscribe for the cause. To show their 
 figures in an unconventional dress to a gaping 
 public, to move men of coarse taste to noisy 
 admiration, to get the cheap praise of acquaint- 
 ances who mean about one word in a thou-
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 79 
 
 sand of what they say, is what the girls covet. 
 They of course Hke the fun of the excitement, 
 the sense of being J' in it," the jolHty of re- 
 hearsals, and they are able by the name of 
 charity to add the pleasure of hypocritically 
 persuading themselves that they are making 
 sacrifices for the good of others. It is utterly 
 disgusting! 
 
 I am not an old maid, and I agree with 
 what I know you think, that a girl might as 
 well be a nun as to be shut out of the fun and 
 to have no excitement. It is all a question 
 where you draw the line. Amateur theatricals 
 are great sport — for those wdio are in them ; 
 and in some w^ays they are not a bad social 
 training. I like you to play, if it is with good 
 company and under proper conditions. It 
 is the publicity of these philanthropic shows 
 that I am scolding against. You will on the 
 whole, and in the long run, have a better time 
 in life, I believe, if you discriminate against 
 social distractions which are of doubtful 
 propriety. 
 
 It is hard to say just what I feel and just 
 what I mean about this matter without seem-
 
 80 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 ing to be either base-minded or a dreadful 
 prude. I am sure I am neither. I have been a 
 married woman a good many years, my dear; 
 I have been so happily married that between 
 my husband and me is a fine frankness of 
 comradeship; and I have been the mother- 
 confessor of a whole troop of college boys. I 
 certainly should know something about the 
 way life presents itself to the masculine mind, 
 especially as I have frankly admitted to my- 
 self ever since I was able to reason that 
 whether Pope is right about the proper study 
 of mankind or not, the proper study of wo- 
 mankind is certainly man. I know the male 
 animal, his characteristics, his virtues, and 
 his limitations ; and I know how he is affected 
 by the sort of thing I am advising you against. 
 It is not necessarily vulgar or unwholesome 
 for a man to be pleased by a girl's figure, by 
 her physical good points in limb and shape and 
 feature. A girl is not immodest because she 
 likes to see a fine manly fellow, and she is a 
 prudish humbug if she pretends she is indif- 
 ferent to make and muscles. It is only natural 
 human nature on either side. As long as a
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 81 
 
 girl keeps within properly recognized limits 
 of displaying her beauties, there is nothing in 
 the attitude of a gentleman toward her which 
 is not legitimate and wholesome. It is amaz- 
 ing, though, how small a departure from the 
 proprieties will set the masculine mind into a 
 different attitude. A girl has only to overstep 
 the bounds of conventional modesty a very, 
 very little to set the men to thinking of her in 
 a way no decent girl could endure if she real- 
 ized. When she puts herself in the position of 
 the public actress, the notorious ballet dancer, 
 when she appears on the public boards, no 
 matter how she came there, that very fact 
 provokes a license of thought in the unclean 
 man, and deprives her of the conventional 
 barriers which defend her even in the eyes of 
 the real gentleman. 
 
 I hate myself for writing all this, and I 
 could shake you for making it necessary. Now 
 I am in, however, I see nothing for it but to go 
 on to the bitter end. All I shall effect as far as 
 you are concerned is to damage my own repu- 
 tation, I dare say, and to make you think that 
 I must have known very strange men. I have
 
 82 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 known the finest men of my circle, and, for that 
 matter, of my time; but they were men. Of 
 course it would be absurd to imply for a mo- 
 ment that any decent man takes occasion to 
 think unpleasantly of a girl because she has 
 part in a public performance. The difference 
 is something like that between having your 
 kitten play with a ball of white worsted in 
 your lap and on the floor. If she knock it 
 about on your lap, she does it no harm, but the 
 slightest rolling of it on the floor smuts it. 
 
 I cannot help feeling that any girl who 
 dances on a public stage is sure in some degree 
 to lower herself in the eyes of the men whose 
 opinions are best worth considering ; and I 
 am not sure that ushering in a public theatre 
 is not worse. The fast men, the men whose 
 names are likely sooner or later to figure in the 
 divorce court, are generally pleased to have 
 girls they know, even to have their wives, if 
 they are married, brought forward in any sort 
 of publicity. It is in keeping with their vulgar 
 ideas of life and their general scheme of living. 
 The decent men, as I know them, do not like it. 
 I know of fathers who allow their daughters
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 83 
 
 to go into it through sheer inability to help 
 themselves; but I have seldom found a gen- 
 tleman who would not cringe a little at the 
 idea. I have noticed, too, that the more sensi- 
 tive boys, who thought it great fun for other 
 girls to do things of this sort, were not at all 
 reconciled that their sisters — or their sweet- 
 hearts — should be the victims of charity 
 entertainments. 
 
 I acknowledge that I am antique enough 
 to be troubled about points that do not in the 
 least seem to trouble the present generation. 
 You no doubt wonder how it happens that I 
 am not an old maid. I certainly would not let 
 a daughter of mine play in amateur theatri- 
 cals, still less dance, before a promiscuous 
 audience admitted by fee. The matter is dif- 
 ferent when the character of the hostess or of 
 the managers is sufficient guarantee that the 
 audience will be properly selected. You may 
 smile, and think that after a most agonized 
 straining at a gnat I am very smoothly gulping 
 down a camel with the biggest possible hump. 
 I know that in any company men will be likely 
 to be admitted who are not what they should
 
 84 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 be. If they are there, however, they are con- 
 scious when the company is supposed to be 
 selected; they have no excuse for saying to 
 themselves that the girls who play are indif- 
 ferent as to the character of the audience. 
 The girl who acts in a private house has at 
 least not put herself in the position of being 
 on sight to any man who cares to buy a ticket. 
 In any case, there are almost no stage 
 dances that are more than ordinary ballroom 
 performances that a girl has any business to 
 give before men. Certainly they must be 
 dreadfully stupid if there are. She cheapens 
 herself if she gives any dance with fire and 
 verve enough to make it worth seeing. I sat 
 the other evening where I heard a couple of 
 men talking about the dance that Cora 
 Printise gave at the Camelion Theatre for the 
 benefit of the Indian Mission, and I should 
 go wild to hear anybody talk about you in that 
 way. The shape of her body, her posturing, 
 her physical attractions, were discussed so 
 that I had to get up and take myself out of 
 hearing. It made me sick! And they were not 
 cheap men. They were just ordinary, not
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 85 
 
 over-refined men-about-town, talking about a 
 performance at a public theatre that they had 
 paid to see, in the terms in which they were 
 accustomed to discuss any such performance. 
 I do not believe they would ever have dreamed 
 of talking so freely of any girl they had seen 
 at a private play. Cora is a good girl ; but 
 her love of dancing and her vanity — and 
 for that matter the fashions of the time — 
 carry her away. 
 
 But I hate to write about this sort of thing. 
 It should all go without saying. If you dance 
 in public, I'll disown you, and that is the con- 
 clusion of the whole matter! 
 
 P. S. Who is the man you don't name, who 
 was so agreeable at the hunt-breakfast ? Is it 
 anybody I know about ? Is he really so much 
 older, or is it just your childish way of looking 
 at him ? Of course any man that has come 
 to years of discretion seems to you a grand- 
 father.
 
 X 
 
 THE PRICE OF POPULARITY 
 
 So you think my last letter was horrid. It 
 was, rather, but the facts of the case made 
 it so, not I. To-day, however, I will try not 
 to be anything but light and airy, — but no, 
 that is impossible. I am over forty, and more 
 substantial than I used to be. With me, as 
 with the rest of womankind, life runs to waist. 
 It's a poor pun, but a grewsome fact! 
 
 An old woman I knew before you w ere born 
 used to say: " If you want to be popular, why 
 don't you take the trouble to be ?" I remem- 
 bered the saying — my vanity makes me 
 explain that it was not said to me! — because 
 it annoyed the girl she said it to, and because 
 I could n't understand what in the world she 
 meant. It seemed to me, as it probably seems 
 to you, that one is born to be liked or disliked, 
 and that there is nothing to do but to accept 
 the decree of fate and bear it as well as pos-
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 87 
 
 sible if it works the wrong way. I have modi- 
 fied my opinion a good deal since, and espe- 
 cially since I began to think about Abby 
 Tilitson. 
 
 Abby went to school with us, and if ever 
 there was a girl who was regarded as a mis- 
 take, it was Abby. She was plain to a degree 
 that was almost a reflection on the benevo- 
 lence of Providence; she had a positive genius 
 for dressing outrageously; her gowns would 
 have been so many crimes, if they had n't been 
 so pathetic in the evidence that they were well 
 intended ; she had no more conversation than 
 a toad in a hole ; and the only thing that could 
 ever be said in her favor when she was at 
 school was that she was clever and good-na- 
 tured. How she got started on the right track, 
 I never knew ; and I could n't have believed 
 that any live girl would have had the perse- 
 verance to stick to it and work out her salva- 
 tion the way she did. I never think of what 
 she did under her disadvantages without being 
 ashamed to remember what the rest of us 
 accomplished with all our advantages. 
 
 You want to know, of course, what she did
 
 88 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 and how she did it. I can't begin to tell you 
 anything more than the marked things, when 
 of course trifles really counted most. She 
 made a regular study of dress. She read about 
 it, and she studied pictures; she took lessons 
 in drawing and water-colors for no other 
 earthly thing than just to learn how to dress 
 herself. She learned to give up the idea that 
 what she wanted w as what she ought to wear. 
 It's a great thing when a woman comes to 
 realize that she really does n't know anything 
 about clothing herself, but must go to work to 
 learn! Abby was always good-natured, and 
 of course that counted for a lot. She was 
 forced, poor thing, — only I ought to say 
 lucky thing ! — to think of others because she 
 knew she had her way to win. By thinking of 
 what others liked or wanted she came to be 
 wonderfully sympathetic. The men used to 
 confide everything to her, and we poor fools 
 decided among ourselves that Abby was to be 
 a nice old maid, hearing the love affairs of suc- 
 cessive generations, but having none of her 
 own. We knew she was in a position to have a 
 lot of influence with the men, for of course she
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 89 
 
 could affect what they thought of us, and we 
 all made a point of being nice to her. Indeed, 
 we all found ourselves being fond of her with- 
 out knowing how we came to be so. She was 
 clever, I said before. She worked like a galley 
 slave at French and Italian and her music. If 
 a foreigner came, Abby was naturally invited 
 to talk with him, and she kept herself up in 
 all that was going on. She took foreign papers 
 and read foreign books, and, but oh my, how 
 that girl did work! 
 
 Abby had n't money enough to entertain 
 much, but she invented all sorts of little 
 things for the dinners and the dances of her 
 friends, and of course a good many times she 
 got the credit of it. She went to a gymnasium, 
 and she took lessons from a music teacher to 
 learn to laugh well. She was simply a wonder. 
 It all went on so quietly, too, that we thought 
 nothing of it. We only said now and then how 
 much she had improved. We thought what a 
 pleasant old maid she was going to make, — 
 when one fine day her engagement was an- 
 nounced to George Whittington, the richest, 
 handsomest, most desirable, the most alto-
 
 90 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 gether lovely catch of half a dozen years. We 
 were simply as flat as a dandelion that the 
 lawn-roller's gone over!— Only you know 
 girls have a sense of justice, if they'll own up, 
 and all of us who 'd been throwing ourselves at 
 George Whittington's head had to own that 
 she really deserved him. 
 
 My dear, that taught me a lesson. Fortu- 
 nately, I did n't care about George Whitting- 
 ton in any other way than for the fun of beat- 
 ing the rest of the girls, and even then I had 
 a sneaking affection down deep inside of me 
 that would n't have let me marry anybody but 
 the man I did; — only I should have liked the 
 fun of carrying George off! But I realized 
 then as I never had before how much lies in the 
 power of a girl who has the grit to make the 
 most of herself. I knew what my old friend 
 meant about taking the trouble to be popular. 
 
 Of course I have n't given you a fair idea of 
 the way Abby improved herself. The most 
 important thing I haven't even mentioned; 
 that is, that she set herself to earn everything 
 she had. Every one of us is more or less in the 
 habit of taking what we can get in the way of
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 91 
 
 attention and so on, without bothering to con- 
 sider whether it is our due or not. Abby made 
 it a point to deserve every Httlest thing. If you 
 think of it, you will see how constantly you 
 presume on your good looks, your position, 
 your money, and all the rest of it, to bring you 
 things you would never expect if you were not 
 a social success. To a certain extent this is 
 inevitable, and you are lucky to be in a posi- 
 tion where you have so much to presume on. 
 To a certain extent, too, it is proper. A girl 
 who does n't let it be understood that she 
 realizes her social rights will end by having 
 very little to realize. 
 
 I wonder people are so seldom frank about 
 this sort of thing. We all have a feeling that 
 the ideal nobility is that which has no need to 
 be assertive, and it grates on our republicanly 
 aristocratic nerves to read or to hear of the 
 struggles of royalty over questions of prece- 
 dence. That is all very well, if social standing 
 did n't have two sides to it. The aristocracy 
 has to be recognized, or it is n't aristocracy. 
 Eternal vigilance is the price of social pre- 
 eminence. It sounds vulgar when it is put
 
 92 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 baldly, but the fine old grande dame of the 
 romance that embodies our democratic ideal 
 would never for a moment forget what was 
 due to her, or allow the least infringement on 
 the privileges of her rank. In daily life you 
 may decide that the game is not worth the can- 
 dle, but unless you retire from the world and 
 live where you 've no social equals, you must to 
 a greater or less degree struggle to hold your 
 own. The prince, or the private person, who 
 consents to be thrust into the background by 
 vulgar pushers very soon finds himself in that 
 undesirable position. I think myself that if we 
 are to pray to be given grace to be contented 
 in that station in life to which it has pleased 
 God to call us, we owe it to ourselves and to 
 society not to fall below it. You have to insist 
 on the respect of servants if you wish to pre- 
 serve it ; and in the same way you have to let 
 it be known that you expect and demand cer- 
 tain social rights and recognition, certain just 
 consideration, as a matter of deference to your 
 standing in society. 
 
 The point is, of course, the way this is done. 
 The stamp of breeding is to do it delicately.
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 93 
 
 The ideal is that this insistence is never want- 
 ing, but never evident. The vulgar person is 
 one who claims what he has no right to, and 
 who, moreover, lets his insistence be seen. — I 
 have got pretty far away from Abby, some- 
 how, and I must stop writing; but she was a 
 wonderful instance of a person who earned 
 the right to social consideration, and then got 
 it and took it. There's a beautiful moral in 
 this, if I had n't tangled it all up! Good-by.
 
 XI 
 
 THE GRACE OF WOMANLINESS 
 
 I AM not trying to persuade you to be different 
 from all your friends. Of course a girl must 
 on the whole do pretty much what her mates 
 do, or she will be set down as odd and all the 
 rest of it, and treated accordingly. I under- 
 stand exactly what you mean, and I sympa- 
 thize with you. Your mates make up your 
 world, and what you or I or any other human 
 being really cares about is the opinion of his 
 own world, no matter what that world may be. 
 An old diplomat took me in to dinner last 
 night, and I was amused to see how completely 
 he put all the rest of mankind aside, and 
 cared only what was thought of him in diplo- 
 matic circles. I told him that he evidently had 
 no especial regard for the opinion of the 
 people, either of our country or his own. 
 
 "Why should I have.?" he asked, with the 
 greatest frankness. "What does anybody but
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 95 
 
 a diplomat know about diplomacy? You are 
 a clever woman, but what can you understand 
 of the finesse of diplomatic negotiations?" 
 
 "Only what you are good enough to tell 
 me," I admitted. 
 
 "Just so. That's exactly it. You know 
 what I or some other man in the diplomatic 
 circle chooses to explain. That is the way with 
 the public; and of course we should explain 
 far less to the public than to you. Why should 
 I care what the public, or even so clever a wo- 
 man as you, happens to think about the man- 
 agement of delicate negotiations ? Of course 
 we all wish to be thought well of, and I always 
 put things so as to stand as high in your esti- 
 mation as possible: that's part of diplomacy; 
 but why should I care for an estimate which 
 must depend not upon what we do, but on the 
 way we represent what we have done to per- 
 sons who do not really — if you will pardon 
 me — understand ? " 
 
 The more you think of this, the more evi- 
 dent it is, and the more general is the appli- 
 cation. We regard the opinion of our own 
 world, because our own world is the only one
 
 9G THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 that can really understand. We cannot make 
 ourselves care very seriously for anything out- 
 side. You like me to think well of you, and 
 you have, I dare say, a very flattering esti- 
 mate of my judgment; but if you thought me 
 a Solomon in petticoats and a Queen of Sheba 
 rolled into one with him, you'd inevitably 
 come back in your mind to what the girls of 
 your set think. It is their view you wish to 
 know ; their approbation is the only thing 
 that can satisfy you. You can't help it, and I 
 am not in the least sure that you would be any 
 better ofi^ if you could and did. You stand or 
 fall by their opinion because you are of them 
 and of their world. 
 
 Well, then, you ask how you are to be so 
 different from them and yet keep in with them, 
 have their respect, — or their admiration, for 
 which at your age you very likely care a good 
 deal more. You seem to feel that I am advis- 
 ing you to come out from them, and to be so 
 different that they will regard you as half alien. 
 Nothing could be farther from what I mean. 
 It is true that certain things which are com- 
 mon I most earnestly advise you to avoid ; but
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 97 
 
 I have carefully said that it would be wise to 
 do some of them in moderation, and others I 
 am sure would be condemned by the under- 
 lying feeling of every girl at all well-bred, so 
 that after all you would be respected for keep- 
 ing clear of them. You would even be secretly 
 if not openly approved by the very girls who 
 protest most against the stiffness and narrow- 
 ness of anybody who ventures to speak out 
 against the unmaidenly tricks which disfigure 
 too many of our modern young ladies. 
 
 You very likely heard rumors a few years 
 ago of the wave of vulgarity which swept over 
 Boston society in the form of the outrageously 
 underbred performances of the buds of the 
 year. The girls who came out that winter 
 were for the most part born and bred in fami- 
 lies where courtesy is one of the cardinal vir- 
 tues, and yet the town — and, for that matter, 
 other towns — rang with their hoidenish and 
 vulgar antics. Of course the things most 
 talked about are always the work of very few. 
 If a girl should dance the can-can in the mid- 
 dle of a ballroom, or fling a hymn-book at a 
 friend in church, the chatter about such per-
 
 98 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 formances would be enough to convince one 
 ignorant of the truth that all society was going 
 at once to the bad. Very likely it would be 
 true that society must be in a pretty bad case 
 before a girl would come to the point of doing 
 anything so outrageous; for, after all, we wo- 
 men have an instinctive sense of what the cir- 
 cle in which we move will put up with, and the 
 worst hoiden that ever lived had consciously 
 or unconsciously one eye out for the effect she 
 was producing. The girls who do the things 
 that have what might be called a succes de 
 scandale are not really the most important or 
 the most successful of a season, but merely 
 those who have sacrificed their good name 
 to notoriety. They have their little hour of 
 intoxication, — on very poor tipple, too, I 
 should say! — and if they are of any genuine 
 character, they must soon come to be ashamed 
 of acts which would hardly be possible among 
 shop-girls. 
 
 Now the question is, how far girls who do 
 ill-bred pranks are approved by their own 
 mates. You certainly would not think of join- 
 ing the ranks of those who get talked about for
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 99 
 
 this sort of thing ; and these girls are really 
 condemned by their peers, if not so openly or 
 so emphatically as by their elders, yet none the 
 less surely. The question comes, don't you 
 see, as to where the line is to be drawn be- 
 tween the acts your contemporaries approve 
 and those they only tolerate. I am not advis- 
 ing you to be singular, except in ways that will 
 of themselves so command admiration or re- 
 spect that you can afford to persist in them, 
 no matter if you are the only girl who has the 
 sense to see that they are proper. The extrava- 
 gant, the bizarre, the vulgar, are always most 
 in evidence; but I am far from being willing 
 to allow that they therefore are most charac- 
 teristic, or most likely to be indorsed. I believe 
 you can depend on the ultimate good sense 
 and good breeding of any set to which there is 
 any possibility of your belonging. 
 
 You are sure, moreover, to have a private 
 standard. You will inevitably select among 
 the girls you know certain ones for whose 
 opinions you really care, even though you see 
 them to be in a minority against the -mass of 
 your associates. All that I have ever urged is
 
 100 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 that you carry yourself so as to deserve the 
 respect of those of your peers whose opinion 
 is best worth while. Of course you must be 
 like the girls of your generation, — but like 
 which girls, the best or the worst ? 
 
 In the long run, too, the opinion even of you 
 girls is that of your elders. You damsels sup- 
 pose, with the feeling of superiority of youth 
 that is one of its most enviable qualities and 
 its most adorable errors, that you make your 
 own judgments, and hold to them entirely 
 uninfluenced by the views of those older and 
 more experienced. You will very likely not 
 believe me when I say that this is an utter 
 delusion. You will tell yourself that of course 
 I think so because I am one of the elders afore- 
 said ; but that old people — we are all old to 
 you ! — cannot understand the girls of your 
 generation. You are sure you are different, 
 very different, amazingly different, from any 
 generation of girls that ever went before you. 
 Bless your dear hearts! We thought so, and 
 your daughters will think so ; and to the end of 
 time youth will always suppose that it is so 
 new and so wise that age cannot begin to enter
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 101 
 
 into its subtilties. Yet in spite of this you are 
 shaped and moulded by the opinions and the 
 standards of the very generation you suppose 
 to be having no influence on you at all. 
 
 This being so, it follows that in the end you 
 are likely to look back and regret those things 
 by which you have outraged the proprieties as 
 set forth by your elders; and it is wiser, in a 
 world where a good deal of regret is inevitable, 
 no matter how hard we try to avoid it, to save 
 yourself from regrets that are useless, and 
 which have been purchased with so little real 
 enjoyment. 
 
 This I do not dwell upon, because you can- 
 not fully enter into my feeling on the subject; 
 but at the risk of moralizing, I must say that, 
 after all, even judgment by your peers gives 
 place to judgment by yourself. Self-respect is 
 a possession too precious to be parted with at 
 any price that I have ever seen offered. Don't 
 set me down as an old goose when I say that, 
 with your lineage and training, you will find 
 that the things I have urged you to steer clear 
 of are only those that you could not do with- 
 out being ashamed of having fallen below the
 
 102 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 standard that it is in your blood to demand of 
 yourself. 
 
 There is one thing more. — I had in my 
 youth a great-aunt, a terrible great-aunt, who 
 did her duty by me with a firmness worthy of 
 an old Puritan. She snubbed me so that I am 
 convinced I am mentally inches shorter than 
 I should have been if great-aunt Tabitha had 
 not so persistently trampled on my youthful 
 inclinations. She told me once, looking over 
 her spectacles with her hard gray eyes, — a 
 sort of pale whitish-green-gray, you know, 
 like the flat moss on a rail-fence in the coun- 
 try: how I did hate great-aunt Tabitha and 
 her gray eyes ! — she told me that I had been 
 born with " a sinful propensity to the iniquity 
 of superfluous speech." Over-meekness I cer- 
 tainly had not been born with, and I retorted 
 that I could bear that better than the iniquity 
 of superfluous great-aunts. She was a stifl'- 
 necked old goose, but I am sometimes afraid 
 that she was right about the superfluous speech. 
 All the same, I must go on with my preachment 
 just a little further. 
 
 The feeling wc have about doing as our own
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 103 
 
 kind do and of being judged by them is per- 
 fectly natural, and, indeed, inevitable; but it 
 has its dangers. I spare you the obvious talk 
 about how easy it is to fall into cowardly moral 
 weakness from the fear of being thought sin- 
 gular. If the idea is n't in your nerves already, 
 I cannot beat it into your bones, and I know 
 enough not to try.- I only wish to say that we 
 are pushing acceptance of the notions of our 
 friends too far, if we let it obscure our individ- 
 uality. To conform to the customs and habits 
 and manners of the crowd is a common im- 
 pulse with most of us. The woman who has 
 a natural tendency to decide for herself what 
 she will accept and what she will refuse in the 
 matter of social tradition and social fashions 
 is born — for good or for bad — with individ- 
 uality. The woman who is not born with this 
 habit of mind had better cultivate it. That 
 is the only way to protect herself against the 
 danger of being so like everybody else as not 
 to count as a real person at all. She is only 
 one of a crowd, and you can, I am sure, name 
 off-hand plenty of examples among your own 
 acquaintances. Do at least think for yourself
 
 104 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 
 
 in opposition to your set sufficiently to have 
 your personality marked and distinct. 
 
 You will do well to remember, too, that the 
 girl who establishes her character for inde- 
 pendence is allowed to be independent, while 
 she who is a slave to the opinions of others is 
 in the end not expected to say that her soul is 
 her own. The attitude of independence, more- 
 over, is admired and envied; so that if you 
 should carry out every wise suggestion I make 
 to you, — which Heaven knows you are not 
 in the least likely to ! — you would in the end 
 find yourself not condemned by the opinion of 
 your circle, not regarded with scorn by your 
 so-much-dreaded peers, but looked up to by 
 them as a real person, determined to be a law 
 unto herself, and for that very reason to be 
 respected and envied.
 
 XII 
 
 TO SPEAK WITH TONGUES 
 
 Your Count is really delightful, and I am 
 obliged to you for sending him to me. An 
 accomplished Frenchman with the right flavor 
 is a charming beverage, and Count de Guarie 
 has exactly the proper bouquet. — Does n't 
 that sound well ? My husband furnished that 
 simile, but I am using it in conversation with 
 excellent effect ! — I made a dinner for the 
 Count, and it went off very well after I got my 
 guests. I had a lot of bother to find people 
 that I wanted who would go well together, 
 and who could speak French good enough for 
 me to be willing to exhibit it to an educated 
 Frenchman. The Count has so pitifully little 
 English, it would have been a gross violation 
 of hospitality to exact any of it, and I was 
 anxious that he should enjoy himself without 
 feeling as if he were having a language lesson. 
 He knows less English than most of the for-
 
 106 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 eigners who come over. When he called first, 
 he had great difficulty in making the maid 
 understand what he wanted. She is rather 
 stupid, and she declares that he asked if 
 "de madame shave .^" He probably said 
 ''chez elle,"" and I think she suspected him of 
 some design of selling razors. I determined, as 
 soon as I found he was so agreeable, that he 
 should have at least one dinner in his own 
 tongue in America, and from the profusion 
 of his gratitude I conclude that such a lux- 
 ury has not often come in his way since he 
 landed. 
 
 I am constantly surprised and irritated that 
 the men and women of good social position 
 in this country are so generally content to 
 go through life ignorant of foreign tongues. 
 There is hardly another country in the civ- 
 ilized world where persons who expect to be 
 regarded as well-bred are so poorly equipped 
 in this respect. The English generally affect 
 a supreme contempt for all languages except 
 their own; and are really worse than we are. 
 The French do not, of course, know English, 
 with rare exceptions, but if they are educated
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 107 
 
 people, they are familiar with the speech of the 
 chief Continental nations. We seem to follow 
 the fashion of our British ancestors in this 
 regard ; — and an enormous pity it is, too. _ 
 
 If I had a daughter to bring up, I would see 
 that she could read and write, knew enough 
 arithmetic to keep her check-book straight, 
 and then I would have her put practically all 
 the rest of her energies on languages. She 
 would get general information enough by 
 reading, I would risk that; and if she lacked 
 the smattering — a great deal better word 
 would be "spattering" — of science and the 
 "ologies" that girls are trained in nowadays, 
 I should be rather pleased than otherwise. If 
 she could speak French and Italian really well, 
 I should be comfortable in my mind about 
 her; and if, in addition, she knew German, I 
 should thank Heaven for giving me a daugh- 
 ter admirably educated! ) 
 
 Of course you think this is extravagant ; but 
 it is only sensible. No girl could learn to speak 
 a couple of foreign languages well without 
 acquiring a great many ideas. More than that, 
 she would be sure to have her mind broadened
 
 108 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 and her views of life enlarged. With a know- 
 ledge of languages, and her reading, I would 
 trust her against any misguided girl that ever 
 made melancholy barrenness of her mind in a 
 woman's college! 
 
 It is very stupid to travel without at least 
 one or two foreign languages. Any girl now- 
 adays is likely to travel, and all girls who have 
 money enough to spend much on education 
 are apt to go about the world a good deal. 
 One gets so little out of a country that keeps 
 her at arm's length because she is ignorant of 
 the speech of the people that I am tempted to 
 say one might almost as well stay at home. Of 
 course I don't mean anything so extreme as 
 that, but it is wonderful w hat a difference even 
 a limited knowledge of the language of a for- 
 eign country makes in traveling there. 
 
 To say anything about the advantages of 
 being able to read literature in the original is 
 rather stupid, but I hold so firmly to reading 
 as a means of intellectual salvation that I have 
 to insist upon the importance of meeting an 
 author on his own ground. Reading transla- 
 tions is a good deal like hearing the voice of a
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 109 
 
 great singer squeakingly distorted by a gra- 
 phophone. You should keep in mind, god- 
 daughter of a most old-fashioned marrame, 
 that reading is — or should be, according to 
 my theory — a woman's university. Your 
 mental development will depend on what and 
 how you read rather than upon what you 
 study. Modern education seems to me a good 
 deal off the track because it ignores this, and 
 it is the very first thing to be considered in 
 educating girls. 
 
 Now and then a woman appears who can 
 really study, and does study ; who takes to 
 some extent the intellectual initiative, and who 
 makes real additions to the knowledge of the 
 world. How rare this is, anybody may appre- 
 ciate who takes the trouble to count up the 
 number of such women who have thus far ap- 
 peared. When one does arise, all we women 
 are called upon to wonder at such a prodigy, 
 and to applaud her as a glory to her sex. I 
 must confess that, while I am ready enough to 
 admire, and while I do admire, my admiration 
 goes to the individual and not to the woman. 
 More than that, I find it impossible not to feel
 
 110 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 that this sort of an intellectual triumph is won 
 by being so much less feminine. 
 
 Sherman insists that I have a theory that 
 woman is possessed of intuition as a rew^ard 
 for having through the ages ignored the lower 
 habit of reasoning; and that I constantly fear 
 that if women become too intellectual, they will 
 sink back into being simply rational, instead 
 of intuitive. Of course this is only his teasing, 
 and as a man he cannot see that there is real 
 truth in it. A man reasons, and a woman just 
 knows; but in the end the woman's intuition 
 is generally proved to be right, and for my part 
 I am not able to see how it would be better to 
 be in a slough of logic, uncertain whether one 
 would get out on the right side after all, than 
 to sail serenely through the air to the goal at 
 once! There is really a lot of truth in what 
 Sherman says, I believe, although of course as 
 a man puts it, and from a man's point of view, 
 it sounds ridiculous. (This is what, in the 
 novels of my youth, or my mother's youth, 
 which I read in mine, was called a digression. 
 Now it is called "another story.") 
 
 Oh ! I meant to say in that digression that
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 111 
 
 I hope you are not silly enough to think I am 
 belittling my sex. We women are a hundred 
 times cleverer than men in our way, — than 
 most men, that is; not than all men. But 
 to study, to deduce, to philosophize, even to 
 originate, is n't our part. I tell Sherman that 
 men are the miners who dig ideas as ore out 
 of the ground, do the heavy work of getting 
 them into usable shape, and then we women 
 give to the gold its finish and polish. At any 
 rate, after all the innumerable, unending, in- 
 conclusive arguments over the comparative 
 mental force and standing of the masculine 
 and the feminine mind are tossed out on the 
 dust-heap where they belong, I take my stand 
 on experience and observation, and declare 
 boldly that the best results in culture are 
 attained by the man who studies and the 
 woman who reads, — and reads, of course, in 
 as many languages as possible. 
 
 The social side, however, is the one on 
 which just now the importance of knowing 
 languages is likely to appeal to you. You 
 need, as every girl in good society needs, the 
 training of the best company of other conn-
 
 112 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 tries. You should be able to hold your own in 
 the best circles of Paris or Rome; and, what is 
 of more importance, be able to appreciate the 
 finesse, the nuances, of foreign talk. Italian 
 and French conversation in the best circles 
 may or may not, on the whole, be better than 
 the best talk in America, but it is certainly 
 more subtle, more finished, more surely and 
 completely a work of art. 
 
 To be able, moreover, to converse with for- 
 eigners in their own tongue gives an especial 
 social power. No accomplishment confers a 
 more marked distinction ; and as modern 
 travel increases, the opportunities for using 
 the accomplishment become more numerous. 
 Think how many foreigners of considerable 
 distinction come to America now; and I con- 
 fess I feel that every woman is bound to have 
 patriotism enough to do her part toward send- 
 ing these visitors home with respect, or, if 
 possible, with admiration, for our country. 
 
 The dangers of using foreign speech are 
 evident enough, and they have furnished jokes 
 for the comic papers from the time there were 
 any comic papers, I suppose; and will to the
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 113 
 
 end of time, or till all mankind speaks the 
 same tongue. While Count de Guarie was 
 here, Estelle Trainor undertook to talk art to 
 him, — Heaven only knows why! She asked 
 him if he admired Botticelli, and went on to 
 say that the picture she loved most in the 
 world was Botticelli's "Venus mal de mer'\f 
 Of course that is unbelievably absurd; but 
 she said it. We could either of us tell a string 
 of stories of this sort; but I have confidence 
 enough in you to be sure that you would at 
 least know what you were saying, if you ven- 
 tured to address a foreigner in his own tongue. 
 The end of the whole business is that I beg 
 of you to cultivate foreign speech, — learn, I 
 mean, to speak languages, as well as to read 
 them. Never mind if a lot of other things have 
 to be left undone ; we can none of us do every- 
 thing in this world, or a thousandth part of 
 the thousandth part of what we would like to 
 do. Life consists chiefly in deciding what not 
 to attempt, and wisdom is only another name 
 for judicious elimination. — There, I cannot 
 come nearer to a modern epigram than that 
 if I write for a month !
 
 114 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 
 
 Oh, what a wise choice you made in a god- 
 mother! The selection was so wonderful in 
 one so young as you were at the time that it 
 proves my claim that women are born with 
 intuition! Good-night.
 
 XIII 
 
 THE MORALS OF SOCIAL DUTY 
 
 So you wonder at my being surprised that 
 more people do not learn languages, do you, 
 when so many persons are indifferent to edu- 
 cation generally ? This is true enough, though 
 you have no business, my dear, to be making 
 such uncharitable generalizations! I shall 
 begin to fear I am training you by my letters 
 to be altogether too sophisticated and worldly 
 wise, if you take to bringing out accusations 
 against your whole generation. 
 
 To speak seriously, however, this is all part, 
 I suppose, of the general fact that we have 
 here in America some social instincts, but few 
 social traditions. Sherman says the traditions 
 which came over with us from England sur- 
 vived the Revolution, but vanished in the Civil 
 War. Perhaps ; but I think the trouble is that 
 the struggle necessary to make this continent 
 habitable has so absorbed the best energies of
 
 116 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 Americans that we have in general come to be 
 too crude to feel the necessity of studying and 
 working to fill a place in society. Once or twice 
 in my life I have been so placed as to be able 
 to see how children of royal families abroad 
 have to train for their position. There is not 
 an American child alive who would go through 
 such a probation to earn the crown of half 
 Europe ! I came to the conclusion that a good 
 deal of the sympathy we have for child-labor 
 in factories and mines might well be expended 
 on the poor little fagged wretches that are 
 being made into monarchs. 
 
 Even of the children of the nobility, — of 
 the old nobility, I mean, — much the same 
 thing is true. The children of the Duchess of 
 Zibelstein have to toil tremendously. Once, 
 when I was staying with her, I had a good 
 deal of talk about how children should be 
 brought up, and I came home feeling that in 
 this country we had not begun to understand 
 what it means for children to work at their 
 studies. The Duchess insisted that modern 
 fashions of education sacrifice the whole 
 future of a child to its pleasure in the first
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 117 
 
 dozen years of its life; and I can see why she 
 should think so. I am sure her conscience 
 must be clear on that score, for she did keep 
 the little "ducklings," as Sherman says the 
 offspring of a duke should be called, tre- 
 mendously hard at work. They are reaping 
 the reward now by having the social world at 
 their feet. In this country we certainly do not 
 understand that sort of thing at all. 
 
 Some time when society in America be- 
 comes more organic, I suppose those who 
 have any real claim to lead will be forced to 
 make their claim good in some way besides 
 proving the length of their bank accounts. 
 Good society can no more exist without 
 wealth than a man without air; but no more 
 can it exist on money solely than a man can 
 flourish who has no food but his breath. We 
 shall arrive at last, I am confident, at a civil- 
 ized recognition of the fact that it is the duty 
 of a certain class to nourish social tradition, 
 just as it is the function of another class to dig 
 ditches. I am democratic enough in one way, 
 but I cannot be such a fool as not to recognize 
 that division into classes is natural and inev-
 
 118 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 itable. Fortunately, it is, it seems to me, also 
 wholesome and beneficent. 
 
 Nowadays, however, those who ought to do 
 their part in the body politic by keeping up 
 society seem to suppose they have no duty 
 except to amuse themselves in the most flashy 
 and vulgar fashion. They are too indolent, too 
 selfish, or too shallow even to fit themselves for 
 any enjoyments except those which really and 
 properly belong to the bourgeoisie. They can- 
 not for a moment get it into their heads that 
 they owe anything to society. Given the differ- 
 ence of the times, the " smart " set of to-day — 
 is n't it a vulgar word, and does n't it exactly 
 express a certain class ? — is more objection- 
 able than the French nobility of the days 
 which preceded and brought about the Revo- 
 lution. The French nobles of the seventeenth 
 and eighteenth centuries were corrupt enough 
 and cruel enough, and they treated the lower 
 classes as if there could be no Day of Judg- 
 ment; but of the "smart" set to-day all this 
 is equally true, except for the limitations im- 
 posed by different social and political condi- 
 tions ; they are as cruel, as overbearing, as
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 119 
 
 they dare, and as corrupt, in too many cases, 
 as they have imagination enough to be. The 
 old nobiUty had at least a certain sort of self- 
 respect, a sense of responsibility to their order, 
 some kind of realization of the spirit they 
 embodied in that most magnificent phrase. 
 Noblesse oblige. 
 
 It is a great pity that social distinctions are 
 not more clearly recognized in America, or at 
 least that they are not recognized more ration- 
 ally. They of course exist in some sort, as they 
 must and will exist everywhere, and the result 
 of having no legitimate class gradations is 
 here, as it is sure to be anywhere, that mere 
 money pushes itself to the front. It is melan- 
 choly to think how far this has gone in Amer- 
 ican society. In the old times when the social 
 traditions that had come over from England 
 were still in force, things were in a much bet- 
 ter condition than they are now; but these 
 have been outgrown, and nothing but money 
 has taken their place. Anything seems to do 
 for gilding, and an aristocracy of money is 
 about the most vulgar thing on earth. The 
 general tone of society cannot be kept up with-
 
 120 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 out a standard, and I believe in having a class 
 refined, exclusive, rigorously select, as an ele- 
 ment necessary to the good of the whole. 
 
 In a republic we resent the principle of 
 exclusion; but nothing that is at all desirable 
 can be kept admirable without the exclu- 
 sion of the unworthy. If I admit that socially 
 every person is as good as every other, I have 
 done away with the only theory on which any 
 society worth the name can rest. We need 
 a class which recognizes that certain quali- 
 fications are essential to the best and most 
 refined social intercourse, and which rigorously 
 excludes any person who lacks these. We 
 have the chance here in America to establish 
 requirements higher and better than have 
 ever been known in the world ; but instead of 
 doing anything of the kind, we seem to be 
 getting farther and farther from it every day. 
 
 Unless such a class is thoroughly well estab- 
 lished, its members will never feel any real 
 responsibility about keeping up its traditions. 
 Indeed, until it is well established it can have 
 no traditions. People must be impressed with 
 the necessity of living up to a high standard of
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 121 
 
 cultivation. They must feel the demands of 
 their order as an incentive to work; and if this 
 work by the nature of things be chiefly in the 
 lines of the artistic rather than of the material, 
 if instead of with morals they seem to be con- 
 cerned largely with manners, they are still 
 playing a part in the advancement of civiliza- 
 tion that is by no means unimportant. In 
 these days, indeed, when the three graces have 
 in popular favor been replaced by the butcher, 
 the baker, and the candlestick-maker, and 
 when if Apollo revisited earth the chief inter- 
 est would be in his bank account, to keep alive 
 in the community some notion of the refine- 
 ments of life, to cherish the artistic and even 
 the becoming, would seem to me one of the 
 most timely and valuable of offices. 
 
 As far as morals goes, too, I believe the 
 influence of an established and recognized 
 class of social leaders would be better than the 
 present condition of things. An established 
 order has as a necessity some sort of a code, 
 and any code is better than none. The fast, 
 over-rich set have no sort of standard, and the 
 result is most lamentable.
 
 122 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 I am getting run away with by a hobby, 
 perhaps; and I do not expect that even if 
 we agree, you and I can estabHsh a social 
 standard. I do beheve, though, that we can 
 preserve our self-respect by refusing to put 
 ourselves on a level with the vulgar money- 
 bags, the immoral devotees of the divorce- 
 habit, and the people of that sort that are 
 ruining American society. 
 
 All this may not seem to you to have much 
 to do with the study of languages, but it really 
 is part of the whole subject of how unfair it 
 is for so many persons to thrust themselves 
 into society without being willing to take 
 the trouble to fit themselves to do their part. 
 Sherman sums the whole matter up by saying 
 they do not know the rules of the game ; but 
 I tell him the diflSculty is that nobody is pre- 
 pared to make it clear what the rules of the 
 social game are, or even to insist that there 
 are any. 
 
 And now, miss, if you (k) not set yourself 
 to learn instantly and thoroughly all the 
 languages of Europe, Asia, and Africa, you 
 will prove yourself to be either hopelessly
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 123 
 
 hard of heart, or stubbornly dull of compre- 
 hension ! 
 
 I have read this over, and I see I have 
 quoted Sherman until you will think me a fool ; 
 but yesterday was the anniversary of our 
 wedding-day, and he gave me the loveliest 
 sapphire !
 
 XIV 
 
 THE COURTESY OF BOOKS 
 
 What shall you read ? Do you expect me to 
 send you one of those idiotic things called "A 
 List of the One Hundred Best Books," or 
 "The World's Masterpieces of Literature"? 
 You say it is all very well for me to declare 
 that your cultivation depends on your read- 
 ing, and then to leave you without telling you 
 anything more. Very well, my dear; I will go 
 a step farther, and tell you that your cultiva- 
 tion depends on what you have the sense to 
 choose to read. 
 
 What shall you read, you precious goose ? 
 Read what you like. You want somebody 
 else to take a responsibility that you can't for 
 the life of you put off of your own shoulders. 
 You have to select, and to do it out of the con- 
 stantly multiplying, already infinite number 
 of books that adorn or encumber the world. I 
 cannot tell you what to read. Only if you find
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 125 
 
 you like trash in the way of reading, you may 
 as well recognize the fact that you are by 
 nature or self-indulgence worthy to be nothing 
 better than a hewer of wood or a drawer of 
 water, — and are not even likely to bring 
 much credit to those eminently useful and 
 respectable if not socially exalted classes. 
 
 I can and will give you a few of the conclu- 
 sions to which experience has brought me in 
 regard to this business; and you may accept 
 them or not, as you choose. 
 
 If you read at all, you must read for the fun 
 of it, or you will get no real good. 1 have in 
 my time conscientiously dragged my slow and 
 painful way through a lot of most admirable 
 and improving works without getting the 
 smallest particle of benefit. I was not inter- 
 ested, and so nothing stuck. I don't know 
 how it is with a man, — Sherman seems to be 
 able to make himself interested in books just 
 by determining to be; but that seems so un- 
 natural I cannot believe it to be true of the 
 majority even of men, unless, indeed, it is part 
 of the difference which makes them study in 
 a way we never can ; — I am sure a woman
 
 12G THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 must be interested in a book, or it all slips 
 through her mind as water runs through a 
 sieve. 
 
 You are to read what you enjoy; but you 
 must have some sort of a conscience, and if 
 you have, you will feel it coming into this 
 affair as into anything else. The New England 
 conscience is becoming somewhat modified in 
 the course of our rapid moral evolution; but 
 it is still a pretty effective agent. You will find, 
 I am sure, that you cannot have much fun 
 reading unworthy things, because your irri- 
 table little conscience w ill keep twinging like a 
 neuralgic spot when you have been sitting in a 
 draught. — That is a very good simile, but it 
 occurs to me to hope you are too young to 
 appreciate it! — The line that your particular 
 scruples draw between books good and books 
 bad, I cannot pretend to say; but from what 
 I know of you, I suppose it to be respectably 
 high in the scale. 
 
 In reading, moreover, you will find it not 
 amiss to use at least as much common sense as 
 you would employ in ordering a dinner. You 
 have been told a thousand times not to make
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 127 
 
 your mental diet all sweets or all solids ; and I 
 see no reason why I should dilate on this and 
 other equally obvious things. They are the 
 stock in trade of the professional moralist, and 
 they figure in every lecture on literature. They 
 never fail, these improving maxims, because, 
 as no reader ever pays much if any attention 
 to them, they are always in order. 
 
 If I were one of those didactic writers, I 
 would call your attention to the fact that you 
 get a great deal more pleasure out of your 
 reading if you vary it. To keep on eating one 
 kind of food uninterruptedly is soon most 
 stupid and cloying, and kills the appetite alto- 
 gether. You know enough to select books 
 worth reading ; just mix the light with the 
 grave, and go ahead. Don't bother about a 
 "course." You are not studying to fit yourself 
 for professional work or an examination, — 
 that process of cramming your head with 
 facts that do not interest you for the sake of 
 pouring them out in turn to somebody not in 
 the least interested in them either. You are 
 just a young woman reading primarily for the 
 purpose of gaining a broad culture, and doing
 
 128 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 it along the lines of your personal preference 
 and pleasure. It is well enough now and then 
 to begin a course, if your conscience has a mor- 
 bid turn that way. Get one of those lists of 
 improving books which are begun with moral 
 enthusiasm, and finished, if at all, with mortal 
 ennui. You will not, I am inclined to think, 
 be obstinate enough ever to force your way to 
 the end of such a list. The process always 
 seemed to me a good deal like resolutely eating 
 one's way stolidly through every item on a 
 menu, regardless of appetite or digestion. 
 
 I hope you are incapable of reading simply 
 for the sake of being able to give an opinion of 
 a book. Now and then you may have occasion 
 to go through something just to see what it is 
 worth; but that is not real reading. You get 
 most from a book when you let yourself go, 
 and revel in it for pure joy. Mrs. Browning 
 has borrowed this idea from me, and says 
 something of the sort, — that we get anything 
 worth while only when we plunge headfore- 
 most "into a book's profound," with no reck- 
 oning how much we are to get from it. Keep- 
 ing an accurate account with literature is
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 129 
 
 hardly more sensible than trying to draw up a 
 balance-sheet with love. 
 
 You will have opinions, as a matter of fact, 
 and will judge books by them; but if your 
 reading is done in the best way, your judg- 
 ment should generally be wrong when you 
 finish reading anything that is worth while, 
 anything with genuine life-blood in it. When 
 you have had time to digest it, to let your 
 mind almost unconsciously consider and 
 weigh, you may and should have an intelligent 
 estimate of its defects and its merits; but 
 when you have just put the book down, you 
 should still be too much under the spell of the 
 enthusiasm in which you read to be able to 
 criticise acutely or judiciously. 
 
 I have no patience with those people who 
 think it necessary to have a cut-and-dried 
 opinion of everything they read, as if they were 
 responsible for the intellectual condition of the 
 world. After all, a sense of moral responsi- 
 bility is very easily developed into mere mor- 
 bid vanity ; and some of our Puritan ancestors 
 seem to me to have gone a good way in this 
 direction. They so exaggerated the impor-
 
 130 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 tance of distinguishing between right and 
 wrong, down to the finest possible shades, 
 that they came to feel almost as if the differ- 
 ence were not one of fact, but depended upon 
 their individual opinion. I am happy to say 
 that I do not feel that my making a mistake 
 upsets the moral balance of the universe. 
 
 Of course we should try and do try to look 
 at things fairly, but we are all likely to over- 
 estimate the importance of our decisions. We 
 make a great moral question of our opinion 
 of books, and feel almost as if an erroneous 
 decision might unconsciously commit us to 
 the mysterious unpardonable sin, that bug- 
 bear which tormented the souls of our dear 
 dead and gone forefathers, — and yet, after 
 all, it really matters so very little! 
 
 Great-aunt Tabby, terror of my childhood, 
 once looked over her glasses at me with her 
 cold eyes and demanded: "When you retire 
 for the night, do you consider the moral bear- 
 ing of each act you have done during the 
 day?" 
 
 "Goodness!" I said. "Of course I don't! 
 Do you.?"
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 131 
 
 "Always," she replied, with preternatural 
 gravity, and a folding of her thin lips that used 
 to drive me wild. "And whatever I do dur- 
 ing the day, I do with an eye to that solemn 
 retrospect." 
 
 "Well, aunt Tabby," I said, as sweetly as 
 possible, "I am lucky enough not to be so 
 given to wickedness as to have to watch my- 
 self like that. When I go to bed, I go to sleep." 
 
 She stiffened up her lean neck, — such is my 
 hardness of heart that even now, when she has 
 been in her grave thirty years, I cannot even 
 write kindly of poor old great-aunt Tabby ! — 
 and set her mouth more severely than ever. 
 
 " I should be sorry to die in my sleep with- 
 out having had a realizing sense of what my 
 day had been," she retorted, with the crushing 
 solemnity of seventeen Cotton Mathers boiled 
 down into one. 
 
 I was too young and too flippant to neglect 
 the chance for the last word, so I said, fool- 
 ishly enough, that I had never died in my 
 sleep, so I could n't tell how it would seem; 
 and then I whisked away before her horror at 
 my levity had allowed her to catch her breath.
 
 132 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 Some superior women read in the way aunt 
 Tabby lived, — always with an eye to after- 
 consideration of the book. They cannot bear 
 the idea that they might die in their sleep 
 without a "realizing sense" of what they 
 ought to think of every page they go over. I 
 do not care, and I do not bother. 
 
 An opinion is of some value when you have 
 to talk about books, although if you have any 
 cleverness, it is not at all necessary; but if you 
 have read them freely and whole-heartedly, 
 you will find an opinion ready when you need 
 one. It will be a great deal fresher, too, for 
 being put into words for the first time on the 
 spot and at the minute. The most intelligent 
 opinion is by no means necessarily the one 
 most carefully prepared beforehand; and the 
 most spontaneous and most telling one is 
 never the one you cut out and basted yester- 
 day, — at least, I do not see how it can be. 
 
 Here is a hint you are too young to be likely 
 to care for now, but if the fashion of discussing 
 literature has not disappeared utterly from 
 the face of the earth Jby the time you come to 
 my years, you may find the point of value. If
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 133 
 
 you wish to talk about books and be novel and 
 seem knowing, have the best English books 
 sent over to you as soon as they are out. A 
 little trouble does it all. I have a very clever 
 and well-educated English friend, a semi-in- 
 valid, who for her own pleasure keeps track 
 of all the new publications. Whenever a book 
 appears that seems to her worth while, she 
 sends the name to a London bookseller with 
 whom I have an account, and he forwards 
 the volume to me. I read it for the enjoyment 
 I get out of it; and then I talk of it judi- 
 ciously for the sake of doing my duty to 
 society; always, my dearest goddaughter, al- 
 ways, from a sense of my duty in uphold- 
 ing the intellectual tone of society! If I do 
 get credit for being particularly acute and 
 wonderfully well informed, can I help that.^ 
 There is some danger that I grow vain, but 
 I preserve my modesty by reflecting what an 
 admirable ideal I am furnishing for all the 
 young people about me!
 
 XV 
 
 THE FINE AllT OF DINING 
 
 You say you wish you were a good diner-out; 
 well, my child, to urge upon you once more 
 what my old lady said about being popular, 
 why not take the trouble to make yourself 
 one ? You can hardly at your age expect to be 
 past mistress of all social arts, but you might 
 well be on the road toward perfection. 
 
 It is really amazing how little appreciation 
 there is of the fact that to be a good diner-out 
 requires thought and care. It is generally 
 assumed that if a woman can dress herself 
 properly, and knows enough to talk in turn 
 with the man on either side of her, there is 
 nothing more in the matter. Dining out, how- 
 ever, is an art, and like any other art, it must 
 be studied. 
 
 Some things are so patent that the most 
 stupid should know them, and yet it is con- 
 stantly evident how few persons take the
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 135 
 
 trouble to think about them. The diner-out 
 should know relationships, pedigrees, and 
 family traditions, so that, at least in the society 
 where she generally goes, she is aware who is 
 who, and understands how far and in what 
 tone it is proper to discuss the absent. It has 
 been said that one of the distinctive features 
 of good society is that most of the talk is about 
 persons; and it follows that nobody can get 
 on who is not fairly well informed about the 
 members of her set. This is especially true 
 of dining. Personal anecdotes are constantly 
 told and expected at dinners, and nothing so 
 surely casts a gloom over a party as the intro- 
 duction of a story at the expense of somebody 
 about whom one of the guests will be sensi- 
 tive. My dear, the agonies I have suffered at 
 dinner-tables where stupid persons did n't 
 realize whom they were telling their stories 
 before could be expressed only in terms of fire 
 and brimstone! 
 
 What do you think of a man who insists on 
 talking about kleptomaniacs with a woman 
 whose sister is always getting the family into 
 trouble by purloining things from shops; or
 
 136 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 telling a delicioiisly funny tale of the million- 
 aire who married his cook, to a woman whose 
 father had just done the same abominable 
 thing? One really does not achieve social 
 success by relating all the particulars of the 
 elopement of a lady w itli her coachman, when 
 the sister of his right-hand neighbor has been 
 guilty of an escapade of the same sort. All 
 these things I have heard, and I have always 
 been struck with the fatuous insensibility of 
 the fool who is making such a faux pas to the 
 efforts of the entire company to stop him. 
 Nothing short of absolutely cramming a nap- 
 kin into the mouth of a man once started on 
 an ill-timed story of this kind will divert him 
 from it. 
 
 Of course mistakes of this sort are to be 
 avoided only by care, or by a pretty thorough 
 knowledge of the company in which one is. 
 Life is too short to allow of one's learning all 
 about everybody in society, and even then, if 
 one is away from home, it is impossible to 
 know the company; but it is not difficult to 
 keep clear of dangerous su])jects. There are 
 plenty of things to talk about to the son of a
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 137 
 
 forger besides the condition and occupation of 
 cultivated men who find themselves in prison. 
 I heard this done by a stupid woman one 
 night until I had to speak to her across the 
 table, and ask her a personal question so im- 
 pertinent that she was forced to attend. She 
 had resisted everything else, and of course I 
 apologized afterward, but I could with better 
 grace have shaken her. 
 
 The woman who wishes to be at home at 
 the dinner-table must of course be familiar 
 with the floating gossip of the day, and she 
 should have at least enough knowledge of the 
 talked-of book, the popular play, and the 
 latest operatic success to be able to listen well, 
 with assent or comment at the right point. 
 Her knowledge may be superficial, but it must 
 be ready; and she must be able to comprehend 
 and seize any hint that shows when a fresh 
 topic is coming into the conversation. The 
 really clever dining-out woman goes further, 
 and masters the difficult art of knowing from 
 the way in which the first mention of a topic 
 is received how the different persons involved 
 in the conversation are affected toward it. I
 
 138 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 know women who are so acute in this that 
 they can almost divine what will be most 
 agreeable to any hearer, and who can shape 
 their talk accordingly. 
 
 No woman can shine at a dinner or in any 
 sort of talk in America to-day who cannot tell 
 a story effectively. I wish I had you in hand. 
 I 'd make you tell stories an hour a day, and go 
 over each one again and again till you could 
 tell it well. Abby Tilitson, of whom I wrote 
 you, would take any story she heard and tell it 
 to a cross old aunt she had, and be satisfied 
 with herself only on the rare occasions when 
 she succeeded in making the old cross-patch 
 smile. I know one man in Boston — he is the 
 only man I ever knew on this side of the water 
 who took real pains to be a social success — 
 who told stories into a phonograph until he 
 was satisfied with the way the phonograph 
 gave them back to him. I confess that seems 
 to me going a good deal farther than may be 
 called absolutely necessary, and I have jeered 
 at him, but after all, what is worth tloing is 
 said to be worth doing well! 
 
 One thing that counts for a good deal in
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 139 
 
 social popularity is the art of knowing what 
 to praise at a dinner. Some things are so 
 obvious that everybody is sure to notice them ; 
 but almost always there is something that 
 the hostess will be especially pleased to have 
 noticed. Sometimes it is a new dish, some- 
 times it is the new set of glass just imported, 
 sometimes it is an experiment about which 
 she is a little doubtful. Make it a point to con- 
 sider what it is wisest to praise, and when and 
 how it is well to speak. 
 
 You see that it is no small thing to be an 
 ideal diner-out, but it is really worth while, if 
 one does it well. The art calls for tact, polish, 
 social skill; but as you go on in life, you will 
 find that it is the social game best worth 
 playing. 
 
 In all social success the great thing is to con- 
 sider what is agreeable to others, and so far 
 as is possible, to give it to them. Perfect self- 
 ishness and complete altruism, my child, are 
 amazingly near together in the circle of human 
 conduct. — There! If you can do anything 
 better than that in the way of an epigram, air 
 it at your next dinner!
 
 140 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 
 
 P. S. If it were not that it would sound 
 vain, I would add that I can hold my own at a 
 dinner reasonably well. 
 
 P. P. S. But it has cost me a lot of work.
 
 XVI 
 
 THE FOLLY OF THE MOMENT 
 
 So you wish to know if I think you should 
 play bridge. By all means, my dear; and, my 
 dear, by no means. Before you asked me, I 
 had thought once or twice about giving you 
 the benefit of my opinions on that subject, but 
 I was afraid that I should preach too much. 
 I have so little patience with the people who 
 are making a perfect pest of one of the most 
 delightful things civilization has invented, the 
 blessed art of card-playing, that I hardly 
 know where to begin, and am still less likely 
 to know where to stop. A good series of 
 Lenten lectures might be written on the sub- 
 ject. I am sure it would be a great deal more 
 to the purpose than the course we had last 
 year on "Parallelism in the Prophets." Of 
 course I heard those, but I never knew wherein 
 the prophets were parallel, unless it was in 
 their legs ; but anybody could understand
 
 142 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 a lecture on the demoralization of playing 
 bridge day after day, morning, noon, and 
 night. 
 
 In a social world one must do as her neigh- 
 bors do ; but there are limits to this. I am not 
 bound to be divorced just because I some- 
 times spend a summer at Newport. I've held 
 my own there pretty well without ever seeing 
 the inside of a divorce-court, though at times 
 I have wondered if I was not in danger of 
 being pointed out on the street for my singu- 
 larity in that respect. You should know how 
 to play bridge because your world plays it; 
 but you need not on that account become a 
 professional gambler, as are a lot of women 
 I could name. 
 
 The way I look at it is this. You should 
 learn to play well enough to take a hand when 
 it is necessary, and to be able to get along 
 without making your partner uncomfortable. 
 Of course you play whist, so this would n't be 
 difficult. You should play when you cannot 
 well avoid it; but if you are wise, you will not 
 go much further. There is much in having 
 your position defined. If you take a stand and
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 143 
 
 stick to it, people will accept it in a very little 
 while. I don't myself think that it is good 
 form to play tennis on Sunday, but I was 
 entirely in sympathy with George Kirkwood 
 when he inherited the old place at Marmoset. 
 He turned his whole family out to play tennis 
 on Sunday morning the first week he was there, 
 not because he meant to play on that day, but 
 because he did mean to have it understood 
 that he felt that he had a perfect right to do 
 it. The country folk were tremendously scan- 
 dalized for a fortnight, and after that they 
 accepted anything the Kirkwoods did as a 
 matter of course. They had had their lesson, 
 and understood that he had his own standards 
 and would n't conform to theirs. Just define 
 your position in society, and you may do 
 pretty well what you choose. Let it be known 
 that you can play, but that you do not choose 
 to be considered a devotee of the game. Then 
 you will be allowed to go your own way. You 
 will not be regarded as an obstruction, and 
 you will escape slavery. 
 
 You are doubtless reflecting that you won't 
 be invited to bridge-parties. For that you
 
 144 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 should give thanks. To get into the bridge-set 
 is to put yourself into a social treadmill. You 
 will have time to do something else, and if you 
 cannot get along without that especial form 
 of feverish dissipation, I'm done with you. 
 Every girl ought to learn cards as part of a 
 rational education, and as a resource for her 
 age; but to make cards the chief business of 
 life is at one fell swoop to sweep away all 
 chance of rational development. 
 
 It is to me humiliating, and I am ashamed 
 for my sex, my dear, that so many women who 
 have been intelligent and who have been inter- 
 esting should have been brought to be idiotic 
 bores by this pestilent vice. They talk of no- 
 thing else, apparently they think of nothing 
 else, except bridge — bridge — bridge. They 
 tell you — if you will listen, which I for one 
 will not ! — of the hand they held two wrecks 
 ago last Thursday, and the luck they had last 
 Friday, and how strange it is that they should 
 have had such good hands in the morning 
 yesterday when in the afternoon and the even- 
 ing they could n't do anything; and so on and 
 so on, till the chattering of monkeys would be
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 145 
 
 quite as intelligent, and far more agreeable! 
 Mental vacuity could go very little farther 
 without bringing the whole crew to a mad- 
 house, and I dare say I shall live to see asy- 
 lums founded for unfortunate women who 
 have frittered away their wits over the bridge- 
 table. 
 
 There is another thing. Almost everybody, 
 of course, plays bridge for money, and people 
 who think poker too vulgar and wicked for 
 words gamble at bridge with no compunction 
 whatever. I obstinately refuse. No living 
 mortal can make me feel that gambling is 
 well-bred, and if one returned from the dead 
 to tell me the contrary, I should still hold that 
 it is beneath the dignity of anybody who calls 
 herself a lady. It is bad enough for the men. 
 How do you think any right-minded mother 
 must feel about her son's contracting the 
 gambling habit .^ It's a hundred times worse 
 for women. In the first place, men seem to be 
 able to gamble and be honest about it, — at 
 least, they say they do. My husband says that 
 to be caught cheating at cards would turn any 
 man out of a gentlemen's club. My dear, 1
 
 146 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 am ashamed, to hear cards mentioned, when I 
 think of the women who are accused of cheat- 
 ing at bridge! 
 
 It's like smugghng. I can't for the life of 
 me see why it is any harm to smuggle, except 
 that it would be so horrid to be caught; and 
 Sherman says that's the way women feel about 
 cards. Last w^eek I drove to a bridge-party 
 
 with Mrs. , no matter who. I had been 
 
 dragged in at the last moment to fill a place 
 because somebody was ill, and of course all 
 the regular players had their engagements 
 made. They would hate to play with me be- 
 cause I won't gamble; but as I am very apt to 
 win, — such is luck! — that takes away the 
 
 sting. Mrs. talked to me all the way most 
 
 feelingly on the needs of the church and the 
 necessity of a good spiritual example, — I am 
 really not exaggerating! — so that I was 
 moved almost to tears ; and then — twice in 
 the afternoon I saw her deliberately alter the 
 score. Once she put back a card she had actu- 
 ally led from dummy, and said with all the 
 coolness in the world, "I adjust." I was so 
 disgusted that when I got home I declared
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 147 
 
 that I never saw such an old hypocrite; but 
 Sherman made me think differently. He says 
 she is perfectly sincere, but that she can't see 
 that there is anything morally wrong in cheat- 
 ing at cards. I broke out at him, but he had in 
 five minutes brought me so near to saying that 
 I did n't see anything very bad in fixing over a 
 bridge-score that I stopped with a gasp, and 
 agreed with anything he said. If you ever 
 have a husband that can tangle you up in your 
 own words as mine can me, you will under- 
 stand that the discussion was not renewed. 
 You think it hateful of him, don't you ? It 
 is, my dear; but it is awfully fascinating, the 
 way he does it! 
 
 It is stupid to be out of the current, and one 
 hates to be a prig by seeming to pose as a mor- 
 alist. I generally say simply that I don't know 
 that there's anything wrong in playing for 
 money if anybody chooses, but that I don't 
 wish to do it. Sometimes I say with a little 
 malice that I can't afford to play for money 
 because I cannot afford to lose, but that is 
 when I know those I 'm talking to really can- 
 not afford it. The moral hocus-pocus of some
 
 148 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 women over the business of taking money is 
 enough to make one dizzy. Why, Mrs. Stan- 
 ton has made her house into a regular gam- 
 bHng saloon, and a lot of young men who have 
 small salaries have played there in a way that 
 is the scandal of the town ; and she is so con- 
 scientious that although she allows all this, 
 and lets her stepdaughters take all the stakes 
 they can win from guests that have n't a tenth 
 — or a hundredth, for that matter — of their 
 money, she forbids them to take money from 
 each other ! The whole thing is horrid, and as 
 vulgar as it can be! 
 
 Not long ago I was in Washington, and I 
 went to a reception at Mrs. Stuart Camp- 
 bell's. I went to a dinner first, and we arrived 
 about half past eleven. I had been told that all 
 Washington would be there, and I was sur- 
 prised to find the hostess and twenty people or 
 so, mostly foreign legation folk, sitting starkly 
 in the drawing-room. I did n't in the least 
 understand it, but after a while Mrs. Camp- 
 bell wanted to show her ballroom to one of 
 the guests, and so she asked those who chose 
 to come along. The room was magnificent;
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 149 
 
 and after we had seen it, the guest who was 
 being shown about said something about the 
 rest of the house. So we were led on, and 
 presently we came upon a whole suite of card- 
 rooms, and here, Heaven save the mark ! was 
 Washington society playing bridge like mad. 
 They looked as though even the intrusion of 
 the hostess was an impertinence, and we did 
 not linger. We were led down a winding stair 
 with an onyx rail, and here was more card- 
 playing, and we were offered whiskey and 
 soda and cigarettes ! It made me sick ! I am, 
 I suppose, frightfully conservative, and I own 
 to generations and generations of Puritan 
 ancestors that I 'm proud of, so perhaps I 've 
 no right to say how the whole thing struck me. 
 But at least I thanked Heaven I had no son in 
 that company, and I resented the report the 
 members of the legations might give abroad of 
 Washington receptions. 
 
 Now, my dear, this is a sermon and no 
 mistake; but do find something more respec- 
 table to do than to help along the bridge- 
 madness. You will get amusement enough 
 without it; and if you can't, I think you had
 
 150 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 
 
 better try to make shift with self-respect 
 instead ! 
 
 P. S. You've never answered my question 
 about the man at the hunt-breakfast. Is he 
 the same one you met in the park?
 
 XVII 
 
 VULGARITY RAIVIPANT 
 
 Oh, my dear goddaughter, I have just come 
 from Barport, and I am simply sick with dis- 
 gust! I am ashamed to be an American, to be 
 a woman, to be anything that has any relation 
 to the society leaders who have been running 
 after Lord Colcester. The shamelessness of 
 it, and the vulgarity, made me feel that no- 
 thing on earth would induce me ever again to 
 speak to any man with a title. It was worse 
 than any tuft-hunting even in England, and 
 I have seen some tall specimens of the sport 
 there. 
 
 Lord Colcester's mother and mine were 
 dear friends in their girlhood ages ago, and of 
 course it was natural that he should be civil 
 to me, and that I should like him to be. 
 He is agreeable and polished, too; and I 
 should n't have been human if I had not felt 
 some satisfaction, when all Barport society
 
 152 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 was squabbling over him as if he were the 
 prize at a cake-walk, that he should take me 
 out driving. I should n't have been a woman 
 if I had n't put on my very best frock and hat, 
 and been set up; but if you'd seen the way 
 people bowed to me, and smiled at me, and 
 simpered at me, just because I was on the seat 
 of Lord Colcester's trap, you 'd have turned 
 cynic on the spot. People I did n't know and 
 would n't know, and for that matter people 
 with so much money that on most occasions 
 they would n't take the trouble to know me, 
 were so super-ecstatically polite that I could 
 have killed them ! And killed myself, too, for 
 having to bow, and smile, and simper back! 
 
 We met old Mrs. Fitzdagon with jewels all 
 over her carriage-dress, — as I live she had 
 diamonds on her bonnet and all spattered over 
 her; lace-pins as big as nutmegs, and that sort 
 of thing. She was driving in state with her 
 footmen — and handmen, for aught I know ; 
 at least she had every kind of an attendant 
 she could think of, and would have added 
 outriders, I've no doubt, if she'd ever heard 
 of them. I've refused to know that woman,
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 153 
 
 though here and abroad I 've met her a dozen 
 times. I could stomach the fact that her father 
 was a barkeeper and her mother a cook, if 
 she were decent; but as it is, I draw the Hue 
 at Mrs. Fitzdagon, no matter how many mil- 
 lions she has, or what her parties cost. She is 
 not only a vulgar woman, but she is a bad one. 
 I 've cut her so brutally I 've been ashamed to 
 look in the glass for days, even to see my back- 
 hair, for fear I should meet my own eye ! 
 
 Well, we met her on the avenue. She put 
 up her lorgnette, — gold, of course, with dia- 
 monds stuck on at all possible places ! — and 
 when she saw his lordship, she broke into a 
 smile so broad that it stuck out over each side 
 of her landeau. She looked like an enormous 
 Cheshire cat set in diamonds. She did n't 
 know Lord Colcester except by sight, but she 
 bowed to him with as much effusion as if he 
 were her long-lost youth, — to him, mind you, 
 for she looked directly at him, — but she 
 threw a kiss at me ! I positively dodged ! I felt 
 as if, if that kiss struck me, 1 should catch 
 some dreadful malady! I was so angry that 
 I could have killed the raddled old thing. I
 
 154 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 looked her straight in the face, and cut her 
 absolutely. Now should n't you think that 
 was enough to settle things for any woman, for 
 that day at least ? It nearly settled me. I hate 
 to cut anybody. It reminds me of what an old 
 coachman of ours said once about drowning 
 kittens. "If the cat '11 have 'em, I've got to 
 drown 'em; but if the old beast knew how I 
 hates the job, she'd stop havin' 'em." It must 
 be a great deal worse to cut a human being 
 than to drown a poor little blind kitten, bad as 
 that must be ; and I do think that when I 've 
 been through the ghastly business, at least the 
 woman might stay cut. But Mrs. Fitzdagon, 
 not she ! Half an hour later we met her again, 
 and if you'll believe it, she stopped us! 
 Stopped us, right there in the middle of the 
 avenue! I really felt myself grow so cold I 
 thought I might faint on the spot; but I held 
 up my head, and looked at her as if I had 
 never seen her before. I did wish I had a 
 lorgnette ! 
 
 "You don't remember me, I'm afraid," 
 was what she said. 
 
 "Really," I said, "I must confess I do not."
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 155 
 
 It was perfectly brutal, but how could I help 
 it ? I could n't have been decent to her, if I 
 had known I was to be shot for not giving in. 
 
 "I am Mrs. Reginald Fitzdagon," she re- 
 marked. 
 
 *'Yes.^" I said, as if the name conveyed 
 nothing on earth to me. 
 
 That stab got through all her diamonds, — 
 and her brass too, for that matter, — and I 
 could see the veins begin to stand out on her 
 forehead. I had not the nerve to keep on, so I 
 said, just as she called me by name, too: "I 
 see you must have mistaken me for somebody 
 else. We will drive on, if you please, Lord 
 Colcester." 
 
 What he thought, I have n't an idea. I try to 
 believe he must have sense enough to have 
 taken in the situation; but he may have sup- 
 posed I was so elated by being seen with him 
 that I would n't acknowledge my best friends. 
 But if he thinks me capable of that, or of hav- 
 ing a woman like Mrs. Fitzdagon for a friend, 
 he is welcome to think anything else about me 
 that he chooses. Besides, even if he is a man, 
 and a foreigner who is not supposed to know
 
 156 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 American ways, he cannot be so stupid as not 
 to have seen that she was tlirusting herself on 
 us just to get an introduction. It was horrid, 
 though. It does seem to me that a thing hke 
 that — having to be nasty just for decency's 
 sake, and because one owes it to society — is 
 about the worst social experience one has to go 
 through with. I was so used up by meeting 
 Mrs. Fitzdagon and having to snub her in 
 that way that I had a frightful headache all 
 the rest of the day; and I don't care any 
 more for the old horror than I do for a toad. I 
 really don't! And that is the way we women 
 are made! 
 
 And after all, Mrs. Fitzdagon was not much 
 worse than no end of women at Barport who 
 are supposed to be at the head of American 
 society. People who had simply met Lord 
 Colcester at a party, and had not exchanged 
 five words with him, sent him invitations to 
 dinner next day, and overwhelmed him with 
 attentions. Half the time they absolutely 
 ignored the Daltons, with whom he was stay- 
 ing, because the Daltons are not in the smart- 
 est of the "smart" set! They haven't a
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 157 
 
 divorcee in the family ! He must have been dis- 
 gusted. A foreigner may feel that he is of a 
 good deal of importance, and yet have only 
 contempt for the people who toady to him too 
 openly. Mrs. Dalton told me that Lord Col- 
 cester only said that he had never known 
 "hospitality so pressing"! 
 
 Heavens ! What a letter I have written ; and 
 I only meant to say that I have given Lord 
 Colcester a letter to your people, and that I do 
 hope you will show him that an American girl 
 can be a lady, and not go stick, stark, whirling 
 mad at the sight of a minor member of the 
 British aristocracy. I have written to your 
 father about him, and he will give you par- 
 ticulars. 
 
 You may flirt with Lord Colcester all you 
 like, but do snub him a little. It will be good 
 for him, and it will be a change after the way 
 the girls at Barport have fawned on him. I am 
 sure you have too good sense to take an affair 
 of the kind seriously; but snubbing is really 
 the way to impress him!
 
 XVIII 
 
 "AND WOULD MY LADY BE DESIRED?" 
 
 You ask me a question, my ingenuous god- 
 child, which goes straight to the heart of the 
 life of every woman that ever was, now is, or 
 ever shall be. I hardly know whether to laugh 
 or to cry at the cool way in which you ask me 
 how a girl attracts a man ! Why, you bunch of 
 innocence, — if you 're not a mouse of slyness ! 
 — the woman who knows that secret may rule 
 the world. I doubt if even she, however, could 
 tell you how she did it. Cleopatra might give 
 you a course of intimate lectures on the subject, 
 and explain to you the whole bag of tricks, — 
 that's slang, my dear; never under any cir- 
 cumstances use slang, it is so unladylike for a 
 goddaughter! — but when the old Serpent of 
 the Nile had told you exactly how she beguiled 
 Antony, she would n't have touched the heart 
 of the matter. You or I or anybody else who 
 tried the same methods simply would n't arrive.
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 159 
 
 The secret certainly is too elusive to be put 
 into words, and I have the strongest doubts 
 whether it is to be mastered by study. It is 
 like genius, it is born in a woman or she goes 
 without it; for that matter, it is genius, if 
 there is such a thing in this incomprehensible 
 world. Nature makes some women with a 
 quality that attracts men as catnip attracts 
 cats. The most absolutely woodeny men alive 
 used to prick up their ears and sniff with 
 their nostrils the moment Adelaide Trent came 
 in sight, and she was as homely as a calico 
 doll. Other women are better and sweeter and 
 nobler, are more beautiful, more witty, and 
 every creature of their own sex knows they 
 are worth dozens of the fascinators ; but they 
 no more have the power of getting hold of 
 masculine heartstrings than heliotrope or 
 mignonette of enchanting the senses of the 
 tabbies and tommies of the back alleys. How 
 do they do it ? My dear, the hope of finding 
 out is one of the few things that reconciles me 
 to the Day of Judgment. 
 
 Though neither I nor any other live mortal 
 can tell you the secret, however, every woman
 
 160 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 has her theories, and some things bearing on 
 the subject are worthy of your consideration. 
 My friend Mrs. Toinbee used to say that she 
 would make any girl a success with the men, 
 who would follow her directions. She de- 
 clared that she did n't care if the girl was poor 
 and ugly and dull; she was sure she could 
 manage, if only her rules were followed. I 
 told her once that she was pretending to no- 
 thing less than omnipotence; and she flashed 
 back: "Oh, no: I'm only pretending to un- 
 derstand something about the simplest ani- 
 mals in creation, the men." She was not so 
 far from right about the men. They are simple 
 because you can, if you are clever enough, 
 reason out what a man will do; but nobody 
 could tell about a woman. 
 
 Of course I don't for a minute believe Mrs. 
 Toinbee was entirely right, but although she 
 was extravagant, there was a lot of sense in 
 her ideas. She believed that the chief thing is 
 to pique a man into thinking that he is of no 
 consequence to a girl, and so work on his van- 
 ity. She was always saying that the girls make 
 themselves too cheap, and that any one of
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 161 
 
 them who held herself dear was sure to be 
 sought after. The truth is, that the modern 
 young man is so spoiled that nothing can be 
 predicted of him with any certainty except 
 that he will assume that he is adorable, and 
 that he will expect adoration accordingly. 
 The way in which boys are pampered nowa- 
 days, and the way they have of seeming to 
 bestow an honor on a girl if they look at her, 
 makes my blood boil ! It is the girls' fault, too. 
 They have very largely made themselves, with 
 their mannish ways, their slang, their strenu- 
 ousness, their golf, and all the rest of it, a sort 
 of pale and poor imitation of their brothers. 
 Any w^holesome boy finds it better fun to asso- 
 ciate with a real fellow than with a bad imita- 
 tion in petticoats, and so at balls you see whole 
 tables full of young men, while the host is 
 scurrying about trying to get supper-partners 
 for stray young women; you see the matrons 
 of the dancing-classes having constantly to 
 send into the dressing-rooms to rout out the 
 boys, who had rather get together and smoke 
 and talk than to chat and dance with the 
 girls. They are entirely right. I am sure that
 
 162 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 if I were a boy, I'd much rather go with my 
 kind than with the mascuhne girls of the day. 
 
 If I get off upon a discussion of the modern 
 girl, however, there is no knowing where I 
 may bring up ; and it is perhaps better to come 
 back to Mrs. Toinbee and her theory that the 
 way to gain the attention of a young gentle- 
 man is to snub him judiciously. I said some- 
 thing of the sort to you in a letter a little while 
 ago, and I don't wish to repeat myself; but 
 her words are worth quoting. "If a girl will 
 only be difficult," she used to say, "the men 
 will run after her fast enough. They'll take 
 without a ' thank you ' all the favors of a bud 
 that is fool enough to let them see she is flat- 
 tered by their notice; and they will be con- 
 vinced that the obligation is all on her side. 
 A man never really cares for a woman who 
 shows that she is grateful to him for noticing 
 her; and as for the woman who all but asks 
 him to attend to her, he is sure in the end to 
 despise her. That's the way the world is 
 made." 
 
 No generality is without its exceptions ; and 
 you are too young to see the full force of Mrs.
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 163 
 
 Toinbee's wisdom. I do hope, however, that 
 you will get it into your head that it is your 
 business to impress on every man who comes 
 in your way that you honor him by accepting 
 his homage. I wrote you of the Southern girl 
 who has been here this winter. She was a liv- 
 ing proof of the fact that if you will conde- 
 scend to the men, they will inevitably believe 
 you are above them, and thereby desirable. 
 Men and women never met on an equal foot- 
 ing yet, except when they were still in love 
 after years of married life, — and perhaps not 
 even then! One or the other will inevitably 
 take the attitude of bestowing, and if you 
 want to hold a man, you must insist upon being 
 the one who graciously gives. That is my 
 interpretation of "She Stoops to Conquer." 
 If you accept a flower or bestow a dance, let 
 the man feel that the chances were strongly 
 against your doing either, and that he may 
 bless his liicky stars for your being willing to 
 favor him. 
 
 I was so exasperated not long ago, when I 
 had to chaperon Alice Carthuen at the Tre- 
 fethern ball, that I could have fallen upon her
 
 164 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 and sliaken her. She is as pretty as a rose, and 
 her frock was perfectly wonderful, the loveli- 
 est shade of pale blue, with the tiniest silver 
 spangles in it as thick as they could be, and 
 the most enchanting curly ruffles round the 
 bottom of the skirt coming up in the most 
 deliciously unexpected sort of curves; her 
 mother had her dresses made in Paris, and 
 Lily Carthuen — she was Lily Kent; we used 
 to make mud pies together in the Public 
 Garden — always did have w^onderful taste 
 in dress. But Alice — I have lost my place 
 somehow; but what I w^anted to say was that 
 Alice, though of one of the best families, with 
 no end of money, and all the rest of it, was so 
 humble that it was pitiful. If a man asked her 
 to dance, she had the air of being as grateful 
 as if he'd given her his last crust to save her 
 from starvation! It was perfectly maddening 
 to sit there and see her! 
 
 Then in the cotillion that girl was a sight to 
 make angels weep. What boys do you think 
 she took out ? Why, simply those that every- 
 body else was after. She had n't an idea in her 
 head except to follow the others, and to help
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 165 
 
 pamper the conceited fools who thought they 
 were so irresistible that of course every girl 
 was after them. If she had only had the wit to 
 slight them entirely, they'd have noticed; she 
 might have trusted their vanity for that. As it 
 was, she was only one of a crowd. She had n't 
 a partner who had n't a lordly air of expecting 
 attention, and of conferring honor by accept- 
 ing the favor she handed him. I think I really 
 might have shaken her, if it had n't been that 
 I knew she'd come out of her frock. I was 
 just behind her, and I tried to make her take 
 out some of the really nice boys that don't 
 happen to be the fashion in her set; but she 
 only looked surprised, and said: "Why, any- 
 body could get him." The stupidity of it 
 was beyond anything. Instead of making her 
 favors tell by giving them to boys who were 
 really capital fellows and who would have 
 been grateful, she wasted her whole evening, 
 and went home without having made a real 
 impression upon any human being except 
 myself, — and my impression came from my 
 indignation. 
 
 You will easily believe that I read Alice a
 
 166 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 
 
 lesson over that dance, but I probably had 
 no effect upon her. She cannot understand 
 that of course a man, and especially the mod- 
 ern young man, thinks he is conferring a 
 favor if he asks a girl to dance. What he needs 
 is to have his vanity snubbed and his conceit 
 taken down a peg. He will remember the girl 
 who does it, and he will be very likely to set 
 himself to work to prove that he is really irre- 
 sistible by bringing her to his feet. Then she 
 has her opportunity. 
 
 But I have not time for a single word more 
 to-night. I must go and dress. 
 
 P. S. You need n't ignore my questions 
 about that mysterious man. It only makes me 
 suspicious. I may remind you that I have 
 other correspondents beside yourself.
 
 XIX 
 
 "MOST RARE IS MOST DESIRED" 
 
 This letter should be headed like the chapters 
 in the old-fashioned stories: "The same sub- 
 ject continued." I was just in the middle of 
 what I had to say: at least, I had n't said half 
 I intended. I was so full of what I had been 
 writing that I brought the subject up that 
 night at a dinner, and after we left the men, 
 we women talked about it. The thing they 
 insisted upon was that it was all very well 
 for a girl who had a lot of attention to take 
 on airs, but that if she was neglected, she 
 could n't begin. I said this was all non- 
 sense. 
 
 Then Mrs. Tavish said that of course every 
 girl had some partners, and that I was right. 
 The thing was for her not to act as if she was 
 surprised to be asked. 
 
 "Don't you know," she went on, "the de- 
 testable, grateful way some girls have of
 
 168 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 receiving the smallest attention ? Of course 
 the men hate it. I should, if I were a man." 
 
 "I'm not sure that the men feel that way 
 about it," Mrs. Manners observed, — she has 
 a cool, deliberate way of speaking that always 
 gives a peculiar flavor to whatever she says, 
 — "I think the men are flattered by that 
 sort of thing. The point is, that they get so 
 much of that sort of flattery, they cease to 
 care for it. They really like a sauce piquante 
 better." 
 
 Of course it is very easy — and very de- 
 testable — to go to the other extreme. There 
 is nothing more hateful than the modern type 
 of girl, who is coarsely buoyant and mannish, 
 and who tries to treat the men, poor idiot, as 
 if she were one of themselves. She fools no- 
 body but herself. The men are not taken in, 
 and all her airs of accepting favors as a matter 
 of course between comrades are too evidently 
 nonsense to deceive anybody, — least of all 
 the men. Between men and women in society 
 nothing of this sort is possible, except in the 
 exceedingly rare cases where especial circum- 
 stances and unusual temperaments make a
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 169 
 
 platonic comradeship; — and even then I 
 don't beheve it is real. No woman thinks a 
 platonic friendship possible except for herself. 
 She knows that between a man and any other 
 woman it is a sham, and as I always frankly 
 went in for a flirtation or nothing, I have no 
 illusions in the line of a man and a woman's 
 being good fellows together. Men know what 
 such pretences are worth, and either think the 
 woman who believes in them is a fool, or that 
 she is trying to fool them. It is better, even in 
 these strong-minded days, to be limp and 
 clinging than mannish — when it comes to 
 getting a husband. The limp girl at least ap- 
 peals to a man's chivalry and to his vanity, 
 and if she is like wet paper, she is much more 
 apt to stick. The mannish girl gets married, 
 of course ; but she generally takes up with the 
 dull, horsey man, and she is rather apt to stop 
 at the divorce-court as one of the stations of 
 her way through life. 
 
 The thing I am advising is not haughtiness ; 
 still less is it snubbing. It is a simple, sweet, 
 but absolutely unfailing recognition of the 
 superiority of your sex. Be as agreeable as you
 
 170 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 know how to be, my dear ; be as flexible as 
 good breeding will let you be; never be snob- 
 bish, and never snub anybody unless you are 
 absolutely forced to it, — but never for one 
 moment, asleep or awake, fail to keep in mind 
 that you are bound — until you marry! — to 
 insist upon the absolute superiority of your 
 sex. Never say it; just live it. Make it a sort 
 of atmosphere about you. Naturally, if you 
 play your part so poorly as to make this seem 
 like personal pride, you will be misunderstood, 
 and perhaps to a certain extent disliked; but 
 even in that case, your smiles will be of double 
 worth where you do give them. I should hate 
 to have you proud, and a hundred times worse 
 should I hate to have you seem proud in any 
 snobbish way; but you are bound to uphold 
 the pride of your sex. You have a moral duty 
 to perform in impressing on a generation of 
 puffed-up and willful young men the fact of 
 their inferiority. Keep this in mind, — gently 
 and sweetly, but firmly. 
 
 If you can carry this out successfully, you 
 will know the supreme satisfaction of having 
 achieved a great ethical triumph, which is n't
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 171 
 
 a great deal to a girl in itself ; and also — 
 what is of the greatest possible consequence, 
 — of having, by means of achieving it, been 
 a tremendous social success. 
 
 You come back in your own mind, I dare 
 say, to the thing Mrs. Caldwell kept getting 
 back to in that talk the other night. 
 
 "Yes; but how do you begin.?" she kept 
 asking. "A girl can't condescend to a man 
 when he does n't look at her, or come her way. 
 He would n't know it if she did." 
 
 This is more of an objection in theory than 
 it really is in practice. Every girl of decent 
 position must have some attention. If she has 
 any friends, they must give her dinners, and 
 at balls she must at any rate be taken out now 
 and then by the men that know her people, 
 that have had her for a dinner-partner, and so 
 on. The point is, that she should, if she has 
 to sit alone, cultivate the art of seeming to be 
 perfectly contented ; that she should give the 
 one only dance she has a chance to give in an 
 evening, poor thing, as if she half wondered 
 whether she should be so good-natured as to 
 do it. If she sits openly beseeching with her
 
 172 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 eyes every man that goes past her to come 
 and take her out, and if when one stops she 
 greets him with the grateful fervor of Andro- 
 meda welcoming What 's-his-name when he 
 appeared just in time to save her from being 
 crunched into lamb chops by the dragon, then 
 the whole situation is lost. The man goes 
 away with the feeling of having been a mag- 
 nificent benefactor, and the conviction that he 
 has done his w hole duty for a good long time. 
 He is n't running after that girl very soon, you 
 may be sure. 
 
 The modern fashion of dividing dances I 
 suppose it is of no use for me to say anything 
 about. It is thoroughly vulgar; it has no pos- 
 sible excuse, except that it gives the popular 
 girls a chance to show off; and it cannot last 
 very long. If I were a man, I would have a 
 whole dance, or I would let a girl alone; but 
 the fact that men will fight for a little scrap 
 illustrates what I've been saying. The only 
 reason men will go in for it is for the sake of 
 ])eing able to swagger as one of the half dozen 
 among whom a waltz was divided, just as 
 the girl finds her pleasure in being able to say
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 173 
 
 she had n't a dance that was n't all chopped 
 up, she was so sought after. You must do as 
 the "lave" do, I suppose; for you probably 
 have n't the moral courage to declare that you 
 won't divide your dances. 
 
 You said in your last that the trouble with 
 my advice is that it would take a girl just like 
 me to follow it. Perhaps; but at least you 
 can't say — I thank Heaven I 've a clear record 
 to prove it! — that I'm preaching things that 
 I have not proved are compatible with pretty 
 shining social success ! It is n't vanity any 
 more for me to say this, for I 've owned that 
 I'm a dowager. 
 
 My husband has undertaken to criticise my 
 letters. He saw me writing one, and noticed 
 how long it was, and began to make re- 
 marks. I gave it to him to read, to keep him 
 still. He followed the usual irritating mas- 
 culine fashion of saying nothing for a while. 
 Men try to make us think they are consid- 
 ering whether we could understand their 
 comments, when really they are trying hard 
 to think of something to say. To-day, when he
 
 174 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 
 
 saw me writing again, he said: "I thought 
 you were a cleverer woman." He got his rise, 
 of course, for I asked what he meant. "I 
 thought you knew that no woman ever 
 wanted to have advice thrust on her," he 
 said. I looked at him in a way that might 
 mean anything, because of course it really did 
 mean nothing. " I thought you were a cleverer 
 man," I said at last. "As how.^" he asked, 
 rising beautifully in his turn. "I thought you 
 knew," I answered, "that at least every wo- 
 man likes to give advice. I am giving it." I 
 shan't let him see any more of the letters. 
 You need n't be afraid. I know you would n't 
 feel like following what I said, if you thought 
 a man had read it.
 
 XX 
 
 PLAYING THE SOCIAL GAME 
 
 I HOPE that in my last I did not give you the 
 impression that social success depends upon 
 the men. That is nonsense. It is all very well 
 for a woman to be popular with the men, and 
 that is what we all hope for; but if women 
 don't make a girl a success, the rest counts 
 for little. Women are bound to take up a girl 
 that men admire, and she has to be invited 
 about ; but after all, the women arbitrate. 
 The men do not even, I believe, decide what 
 girls they will admire most. Once in a while 
 a woman has a power of making every man 
 run after her, and she 'd rather have that than 
 social success ; but social success it is not, nor 
 does it lead to it. Women make society, keep 
 it going, and it would be hard indeed if they 
 could not have the final voice in regard to who 
 shall succeed. 
 
 Keep on the right side of the women, my
 
 176 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 dear goddaughter, and especially of the wo- 
 men of my age. It is well, and it is above all 
 graceful, to be nice to the old women; but it 
 is n't their opinion that counts most. The 
 opinion of the middle-aged woman is the 
 voice of society, — and indeed it is the voice 
 of the world. The mothers of the buds are the 
 ones for you to consider. If you win them, 
 your position is established; and what you 
 cannot realize is the fact that they will do you 
 more good with the men than any other thing. 
 What you want is that the mother of every bud 
 shall regard you as the debutante of the sea- 
 son who is second only to her own daughter. 
 You can't expect anything more. Indeed, if a 
 woman thinks you outdo her own, she will 
 instinctively be against you. The most hum- 
 ble-bee-dumble-dee woman — as we used to 
 say — will not set you above her daughter, 
 but you should try to have her put you next. 
 There is some sort of a story or other about 
 somebody who achieved something tremen- 
 dous simply because he was the second choice 
 of everybody. Lay the moral of that instruc- 
 tive fable to heart.
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 177 
 
 It is the mothers of the buds who have 
 decided whether you should be admitted to 
 the dancing-classes before you were out; and 
 they have discussed you so thoroughly, my 
 dear, that if political candidates could be half 
 as well analyzed, government would be revo- 
 lutionized. They settle who shall be the guests 
 at dinners, — the real dinners that count; 
 they decide all sorts of social questions. They 
 even do most of the selecting when the men 
 give theatre-parties or coaching-parties; and 
 so on through the whole chapter. Do you sup- 
 pose a man gives parties for girls that the 
 ladies of authority choose to be a little diffi- 
 cult about chaperoning.^ 
 
 To propitiate the mothers is n't so difficult, 
 if you will only keep it in mind that it is worth 
 your while to be nice. It is somewhat harder 
 than it sounds, but it is simple. It takes 
 thought and care to improve the little oppor- 
 tunities of making a good impression. On the 
 surface it is part of your business to see when 
 the fan or the handkerchief drops, and if there 
 is no man to do it, to pick it up. You are to see 
 — quietly and not aggressively, for we women
 
 178 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 do hate to be fussed over; it calls attention 
 to the fact that we are beginning to be old 
 enough for such things to be of importance'to 
 us ! — about seats and draughts and cushions 
 and shawls. It comes down in the ultimate 
 analysis to being thoughtful about what the 
 mothers will like. The world of middle-aged 
 women, my dear, is the touchstone of your 
 power of acting unselfishly; and in this case 
 unselfishly means wisely. 
 
 You will not, no matter how well you carry 
 out all the advice I could give you, be likely to 
 reap a reward so substantial as that which fell 
 to Kate Stanford. Old Mrs. Pepperell, who 
 was n't a relative at all, and who knew Kate 
 only as a girl visiting at the house, left her 
 $10,000, because, she said in her will, Kate 
 was the only one of the young girls who came 
 there who had always been courteous to her. 
 Of course she was an old lady, and Kate was 
 the friend of her granddaughter, so the case 
 is n't exactly the same; but the rewards you 
 may win are not the less valuable because they 
 are less tangible. 
 
 But think, my dear, of all that was implied
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 179 
 
 in this bequest. The girls that old Mrs. Pep- 
 perell saw were of good families; they were not 
 ill-natured, they were just thoughtless. They 
 would have been utterly amazed at the idea 
 of being considered in the slightest degree ill- 
 bred ; and yet they seemed to a lady of the old 
 school lacking in courtesy. It is all very well 
 to say that Mrs. Pepperell was an old fogy; 
 that nowadays nobody expects any of the anti- 
 quated, elaborate consideration for age. The 
 fact remains that the old-fashioned ways pro- 
 duce the effect of sweetness, of race, of polish, 
 in a way that nothing else can. You may get 
 along without it; but you can win much by 
 giving this effect. 
 
 Young people are continually, generation 
 after generation, I suppose, holding that if 
 their own set approve of their ways, nothing 
 else matters. It is the question of judgment by 
 peers of which I wrote awhile ago ; but it fails 
 because the younger set never really rules the 
 social world. At a ball in Baltimore I once 
 saw a young girl do something so rude that an 
 old gentleman, a friend of her father and her 
 grandfather, took her to task for it. She de-
 
 180 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 clared that she had acted as would any girl of 
 her set under the given circumstances; and 
 in the end told him that all she wanted was to 
 be approved by those of her own kind. " Very 
 good," rejoined the old gentleman. "I once 
 tried to make a young pickpocket see how his 
 theft looked to me, and he told me that, any- 
 way, his pals said he had done a first-class 
 job. I am sorry you prefer the verdict of your 
 pals to that of their betters." He was right, 
 too; there is a court of appeal — socially, I 
 mean ; I am not moralizing ! — higher than 
 your "pals." 
 
 What will count most with the mothers, 
 more than what you do for them, is the way 
 you treat their daughters. We are selfish and 
 worldly old things, no doubt; but we do think 
 more of what happens to our children — un- 
 less we are abandoned divorce-court females, 
 who ought not to count as women at all ! — 
 than we do of what happens to ourselves. The 
 most worldly mother has some maternal soft- 
 ness in her heart; or if she is too hardened for 
 that, at least she has in her selfish old bosom 
 maternal pride. If she does not really care for
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 181 
 
 her daughter, she will at least watch her as a 
 gambler watches his stake on the green table, 
 and she keenly appreciates every turn of the 
 wheel. Be kind to your sister buds from gen- 
 erosity, if you can, — I am, after all, your 
 godmother, and am bound now and then to 
 put in something moral ! — but if you cannot, 
 at least be kind to them as a matter of policy. 
 Don't patronize, don't be greedy, don't take a 
 man away from a girl unless you are really 
 forced to it, — and then never, never attempt 
 it unless you are sure, and three times sure, of 
 succeeding! If you are nice to the daughters, 
 you will find little difficulty in winning the 
 mothers. 
 
 You see that it becomes a sort of point of 
 honor with any decent woman to help the girl 
 that is good to her daughter. Women have n't 
 as a rule much common honesty, perhaps; 
 but they pretty generally have an unwritten 
 code in things of a certain sort. It's a feminine 
 code, as my husband is altogether too fond of 
 reminding me; but I tell him that that is just 
 what makes it hold so fast when it does hold. 
 If a woman wants a man herself, she'll take
 
 182 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 him if she can get him; for surely that's right 
 enough, as anybody but a man could see. 
 Outside of this, however, women with any 
 antecedents — and for that matter, I rather 
 fancy women without antecedents, too — are 
 instinctively punctilious about paying favors 
 in kind. A woman's sense of honor naturally 
 has n't, as a rule, much to do with anything 
 but the morals of love; there's no reason that 
 it should have ; but where it applies, it may be 
 counted on about as safely as any other earthly 
 thing. 
 
 I'm speaking chiefly of women with tra- 
 ditions. There are plenty of piggesses in the 
 world, just as there are plenty of pigs. We are 
 the daughters of men, and therefore cannot 
 reasonably be expected to be perfect. The 
 vulgar woman is a hundred times worse in so- 
 ciety than the vulgar man, because it is espe- 
 cially the function of women to keep society 
 going. A social caddess has more chance to 
 be obnoxious than a cad has. 
 
 You see my chief point is that the great 
 thing to remember is tliat real social success 
 de})ends upon the middle-aged women. You
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 183 
 
 may not believe it, and naturally the young 
 matrons, who are just beginning to feel their 
 responsibilities because they are coming to 
 have some little voice in managing the dan- 
 cing-classes, would tell you I am all wrong. 
 They think they are ruling, just because they 
 are being allowed to begin to learn their social 
 duties. I am trying to make you wise by let- 
 ting you into the real secret. These young 
 matrons, headstrong as they sometimes are, 
 self-complacent as they are almost sure to be, 
 take their leads from their elders. They can't 
 get on without direction. The middle-aged 
 are really managing. 
 
 That lace I sent you Christmas is fifteenth 
 century Venetian. If you abuse it, I'll never 
 speak to you again. No girl of your age knows 
 how to take care of lace, and you 'd better put 
 it away for ten years. 
 
 P. S. I am not trying to pry into your 
 affairs, as you hint, although you are too polite 
 to say so. I have never asked a soul about you. 
 Some people have told me things without my
 
 184 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 
 
 asking. When you have lived longer in the 
 world, you will know that you cannot think 
 without its being known to somebody. Indeed, 
 very often people know what a girl does n't 
 know about her own thoughts, because she 
 won't confess them to herself.
 
 XXI 
 
 LETTERS OF INTRODUCTION 
 
 I AM very sorry to deny a request of yours, but 
 about letters of introduction I have a fixed 
 rule, which I never under any circumstances 
 break over. I cannot give you the letter for 
 Mrs. Elton to Lady Graylawn because I do 
 not personally know your friend ; and I never, 
 never, never give a letter to any human being 
 unless the bearer is really an acquaintance, 
 and a tried one at that. I hope you have n't 
 told Mrs. Elton you would ask me, for I should 
 hate to make it uncomfortable for you, but I 
 cannot go against my principles. You may 
 think I bristle with principles as a porcupine 
 bristles with quills, but I am too old to change 
 now; especially as I think I am right. 
 
 I know all you will say, or rather all you will 
 think, for you are too courteous to say it, even 
 to a crotchety old godmother. You will feel as 
 if I had insulted you by doubting your judg-
 
 186 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 ment or your honesty; you will be angry or 
 hurt, as your mood happens to be, and wonder 
 that I could n't do so small a thing as this for 
 you. But, my dear child, is it a small thing? 
 Is the principle which pricks your fingers like 
 the quill of an ill-natured old hedgehog really 
 of so little consequence ? Have a little patience 
 with an old-fashioned but well-meaning wo- 
 man, and hear me in my own defense. 
 
 A letter of introduction is a demand upon 
 •the friendship of the person to whom it is sent. 
 It calls on that person to extend to a stranger 
 certain consideration in the name of her 
 friendship for you; it is really asking a favor 
 on the ground of her regard. You ask in the 
 name of friendship, and I hold that in the 
 spirit of friendship you are on your honor 
 bound not to abuse the privilege. You are 
 even on your honor bound to be especially 
 careful not to run any possible risk of mistake. 
 I go so far that I do not personally feel it right 
 to give a letter unless I am convinced it will 
 result in pleasure to the receiver as well as to 
 the bearer. Heaven forbid that I should ever 
 have to suspect myself of making a conven-
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 187 
 
 ience of my friends; and that is what letters 
 of introduction too often mean. Certainly it is 
 not too much to say that it is my plain duty to 
 be thoroughly assured that the acquaintance- 
 ship I am the means of bringing about will not 
 result in the inconvenience or in the discom- 
 fort of one I call my friend. 
 
 An introduction that comes to me from any 
 one who has a right to send it, I regard as a 
 claim which it is impossible to ignore or to 
 slight. To refuse to honor it would be to deny 
 friendship for the sender. Indeed, it would 
 be worse than that: it would be a deliberate 
 insult, because it would be equivalent to 
 declaring that the one who has given the note 
 has acted dishonestly, and has been guilty of 
 trying to get social consideration on false pre- 
 tenses. There are cases enough where this is 
 true; but if the letter is written by anybody 
 whose claim I recognize, I should feel that I 
 was doing a mean and despicable thing if I 
 shirked its demand. I am more bound to do 
 what I can for the bearer than I should be 
 for my friend in person, for I am put on my 
 honor.
 
 188 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 Because I look at the matter in this way, 
 I naturally assume that other people have a 
 right to take the same ground; and I never 
 give a letter except in cases where I feel en- 
 tirely justified in demanding all that is implied 
 by the strictest construction of my own inter- 
 pretation of the obligation. In the first place, 
 the person to whom I give a letter must be a 
 personal friend; in the second, it must seem 
 to me, as I just said, that the acquaintance I 
 propose is likely to be agreeable to both sides ; 
 and in the third, I must be confident that my 
 own friendship and standing with the person 
 addressed fully justify my taking what in any 
 one not a real friend would be an unwarrant- 
 able liberty. I look on an introduction as a 
 debt of honor ; I should feel that I had no 
 choice but to drop the acquaintance of any 
 person who refused freely and fully to respond 
 to a letter which I had given, and I never mean 
 to put myself in the false position of not being 
 justified in taking this view. 
 
 I am not, of course, speaking of such intro- 
 ductions as have to do with business of any 
 kind. They carry their own explanation, and
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 189 
 
 are no more matters of social import than any 
 other business transaction. Men, I suppose, 
 have to give and receive a good many of this 
 sort, and now that women are so mixed up 
 with public affairs, the same is more or less 
 true of them. It is naturally not in my way to 
 have much to do with such epistles, but if by 
 any chance I am called upon to give one, I try 
 to be just as careful, as far as I am responsible. 
 The carelessness and the recklessness with 
 which many people give letters of introduction 
 seems to me shocking. Often, I suppose, 
 sheer cowardice is at the bottom of the whole 
 matter. An impudent woman or a young man 
 with little sensitiveness demands an introduc- 
 tion to some desirable person in another city or 
 abroad, and the woman who is asked seldom 
 has courage to refuse, no matter how much 
 she wishes to get out of it. Mrs. Percivale 
 complained to me bitterly the other day that 
 Mrs. Morrelle had got from her letters to two 
 or three of her best friends in London; and 
 when I asked why she gave them, she could 
 only say with tears in her eyes: "Oh, I don't 
 know! I just didn't have the backbone to
 
 190 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 refuse; and the people Mrs. Morrelle insisted 
 most on having letters to are the very ones I 
 hated most to send her to. Lady Nairne will 
 never forgive me. Oh, I do wish I had your 
 independence of character!" I told her it 
 was n't a question of independence of charac- 
 ter at all with me, but of moral principle. You 
 can see easily enough that the persons who, 
 like Mrs. Morrelle, are least deserving of such 
 favors are sure to be the ones most brazen in 
 demanding them; and I think it is a moral 
 duty to stand out against them. Somebody 
 has got to protect society; at least it is a duty 
 to protect one's friends. 
 
 More than once I have had confidential 
 notes telling me not to bother about people 
 who were coming to me with letters ; and say- 
 ing that the introductions had been given 
 under compulsion, but really meant nothing. 
 Think how unworthy and degrading that sort 
 of thing is ! One may stop payment of a stolen 
 check, but to give a check and then secretly 
 to make it worthless seems to me one of the 
 meanest forms of dishonesty. I am hap|)y to 
 say that nobody has ever taken back a letter in
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 191 
 
 this way who was really on terms of friendship 
 with me that justified the making of the claim 
 on me in the first place. I should be sorry to 
 have a friend who had not the courage to be 
 more honest than that. 
 
 One naturally sends a private letter when 
 one gives an introduction, but that is to ex- 
 plain, and to make things easier for both 
 bearer and receiver by telling who and what 
 the stranger is. To get an introduction with 
 no clue to the identity of the person presenting 
 it is so perplexing that I always wish to spare 
 my friends such an annoyance ; but openly to 
 give a card and then secretly to discredit it 
 seems to me absolutely impossible to a lady. 
 
 The English are rather worse, I believe, in 
 the matter of giving introductions than we are, 
 though I fancy they are less free with their 
 own countrymen than they are with us. They 
 do give letters to Americans with an amazing 
 freedom. I once received a letter introducing 
 a lady and her daughter, — both of whom, 
 moreover, kindly offered to come into the coun- 
 try and stay with me for a month without 
 being asked, — and the writer was a London
 
 192 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 woman, who had to remind me that she had 
 seen me at a dinner, and to add : "Though as I 
 was so unfortunate as not to speak with you, 
 I fear you may not remember me clearly." 
 This was an extreme case, but Mrs. Page Bur- 
 ton declared with every appearance of seri- 
 ousness that a man once presented himself at 
 her house with a warm note from an English 
 lady who "felt she knew her" because her 
 "trusted maid" had once lived with Mrs. 
 Burton, and spoke of her so highly. Mrs. 
 Burton said she was so flattered to be well 
 spoken of by a "trusted maid" that she imme- 
 diately asked the bearer of the note to dine. 
 The tale does not sound entirely probable, but 
 sometimes I think so many extraordinary 
 things are true in social life that I shall have 
 to adopt as my motto the old profession of 
 faith, and to say of every incredible story: "I 
 believe because it is impossible." 
 
 What to do in case a letter of introduction 
 is written by one who has no right to give it 
 is one of the hardest of social problems. In 
 theory, the proper thing is to treat it like a 
 forged check, and to refuse to honor it. Prac-
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 193 
 
 tically, the matter is n't so simple. The note 
 may be presented by a person entirely igno- 
 rant of the fraudulent nature of the document, 
 and wholly innocent of any wrong intention. 
 Plenty of social boasters offer letters to im- 
 portant people they have met by chance, and 
 hope by this means to pass as friends of the 
 notables addressed. For the receiver to snub 
 the unwary who take such introductions is of 
 course sometimes necessary, but it is pretty 
 hard on the innocent, if foolish, victims of the 
 self -advertisers. We ordinary mortals are sel- 
 dom called upon to be very harsh ; and in fact 
 I have n't the strength of mind to be. Once 
 or twice in my life I have had to say plainly 
 that I did not know the writers of letters, but 
 generally the worst that comes to us may be 
 got over by a little tact. A little evasion — 
 not pleasant, perhaps, but humane — is suffi- 
 cient. When I get one of these fraudulent in- 
 troductions, I try at once to find out something 
 about the bearer, and to receive her or drop 
 her on her own merits. You can generally tell 
 in a single interview. If it is possible to hear 
 from the person's home, the matter is much
 
 194 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 
 
 more simple ; but I refuse to stand sponsor 
 for any person about whom I am not well 
 assured. It is not fair to the people who have 
 faith in me, and might be dragged into un- 
 pleasant complications through my ignorance. 
 This is all in the nature of an apology for 
 refusing what you asked of me; and if it does 
 not make you feel that I am right, I am sure 
 that its very length and awful solemnity will 
 prevent you from doing the like again. Only 
 don't bear malice, my dear, whatever you do.
 
 XXII 
 
 THE HUSBANDRY OF FA^^IILY TREES 
 
 Certainly I know whom your cousin Horace 
 married; she was a Miss Julia Wainwright, 
 of Wilmington. Her mother was a Sprague; 
 one of the Fisher Spragues. A sister of Julia 
 married Thatcher Blake, of Boston. They 
 lived for a long time on Beacon Street oppo- 
 site the Common, and then went to Florence. 
 I never saw Horace's wife, but she was a 
 beauty, and had a great fortune. They had 
 three children, and the oldest daughter is the 
 one that is engaged to Count de Practique. 
 
 There! I could tell you a lot more of the 
 same sort, but this is all you will have patience 
 to read, and I dare say it is more than you will 
 take the trouble to remember. You say I am 
 a walking genealogical gazetteer, and mean it 
 as a half-humorous fling. It is really a com- 
 pliment, if you only knew it; and when you 
 go on to add that nobody in your generation
 
 196 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 pays any attention to genealogy, you are cast- 
 ing a reproach on your contemporaries. 
 
 Nothing could be more stupid than a per- 
 son who knows nothing but genealogies. Old 
 Peter Marengy, for instance, drives me to dis- 
 traction by the way in which he starts out at 
 the mention of anybody's name, and fairly 
 drowns you in a flood of information about the 
 person's connections, relatives, grandmothers, 
 cousins, and all the rest of it. He interrupts 
 any story to tell who the grandmother of the 
 hero was, or whom the great-aunt of the hero- 
 ine married ; and is more tedious than tongue 
 can tell. On the other hand, nobody can be 
 said to be up to the requirements of good so- 
 ciety who does not know about the relation- 
 ships of the people in her own set, and still 
 more the connections of her own family. Not 
 to know about one's relatives always had for 
 me a little flavor of the not entirely reputable! 
 
 Just now there is a good deal of a fashion of 
 having the family line looked up by profes- 
 sional genealogists, often from the desire of 
 people of antecedents not socially of the best 
 to establish a family tree up which they may
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 197 
 
 climb into some one of the orders of the day, 
 — Dames, or Daughters, or Granddaughters, 
 or that sort of thing, of which I have already 
 given you my opinion. This is well enough, 
 although it has given the whole business a 
 rather cheap air; but in any case, this is not 
 what I should mean when I say a society 
 woman must know about genealogies. These 
 people seldom know anything about their 
 ancestors after they have been provided with 
 the record. They keep it as a book, and treat 
 it somewhat in the spirit of the man who had 
 a prayer printed, and every night on going to 
 bed waved his arm toward it, and remarked: 
 "Those are my sentiments. Lord." They 
 refer to the printed account as establishing, 
 by the very fact that it is printed, their claim 
 to be considered of proper lineage. In many 
 cases there is nothing in particular to be said 
 for their forbears except that they were decent 
 and commonplace mortals; but as only the 
 shallowest vanity is generally concerned in 
 getting up the genealogy at all, a mere list of 
 names does as well as anything else. 
 
 I like to have a person interested in ances-
 
 198 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 tors because they were hers or his; because 
 what our hfe is, is so tied up with what they 
 were. If one is not interested, I have no quar- 
 rel with her; only such an interest appeals to 
 me. The thing that concerns us socially, how- 
 ever, is another matter altogether. A family 
 genealogy is a personal interest, and at best a 
 thing of personal pride. I think that in the 
 give and take of social life we should make 
 some effort to know about other people. On 
 the face of it, this spares us no end of danger- 
 ous slips. Sometimes it seems to me that a 
 telepathic influence moves us to say to people 
 precisely those things which should be left 
 rigorously unsaid, and if we know of no defi- 
 nite reason for keeping quiet, out they come. 
 John Colburt took Mrs. Amy Houghton in to 
 dinner once, and just because he did not know 
 that she was the granddaughter of Professor 
 Canton, who murdered Dr. Winchester, began 
 out of a clear sky to talk to her about "the 
 famous Canton-Winchester murder." An- 
 other time at dinner I overheard a man ask a 
 lady if she had ever seen so and so, the great 
 embezzler who shot himself, and heard her
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 199 
 
 answer: "He was my father, sir." I told you 
 a lot of these stories in one of my letters^^ and I 
 could add others. Any man or woman who 
 goes into decent society is as inexcusable for 
 making such cruel blunders as he would be 
 for wiping his boots on a lady's frock. Women 
 are not so often caught in such a trap as men ; 
 though when they do make a blunder, it is 
 sure to be quite as bad. A general knowledge 
 of family relations is needed at every dinner or 
 other function. The well-bred person natu- 
 rally avoids doubtful topics unless completely 
 sure of the ground; but when a stupid mem- 
 ber of the company blunders into a mess, one 
 should know how to help to make matters 
 right, or at least to keep out of the awkward- 
 ness one's self. 
 
 There are a thousand ways in which it is 
 convenient to know what are the antecedents 
 and relations of the persons one associates 
 with. In Boston to-day it is safe to assume 
 that everybody is related to everybody else, 
 just as in New York it is fairly near to the 
 truth to take it for granted that in any com- 
 pany will be prominent people who are inter-
 
 200 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 ested in their genealogy only to the extent of 
 wishino; to conceal it. In either case the as- 
 sumption does fairly well, and either proposi- 
 tion, taken as a general truth, tells you what 
 to avoid. Sooner or later, however, an occasion 
 is sure to arise when no general proposition, 
 but only specific knowledge, will avail; and 
 to be prepared for that chance I make it my 
 business to have a fair knowledge of family 
 relations. 
 
 In regard to one's own family, if your ances- 
 tors have been respectable folk, it is certainly 
 well to know it. Silly and shoddy people 
 make, and always will make, absurd preten- 
 sions, and fictitious pedigrees will be manu- 
 factured to the end of time; but I believe in a 
 wholesome pride of race. Do you suppose it 
 has done me anything but good to know that 
 my grandfather was called on the bench 
 "Incorruptible Tom," or that my great-uncle 
 — he was the elder brother of great-aunt 
 Tabitha, peace to her ashes! — stood up like 
 a man and was shot in cold blood, rather than 
 betray a trust ? I am even sure that I am none 
 the worse for being aware that my mother
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 201 
 
 opened a ball with the Grand Duke Axel, and 
 that Talleyrand pronounced my great-grand- 
 mother the most beautiful and accomplished 
 woman he met in America. To know that one 
 is descended from right-minded, honorable 
 people is surely a strong incentive to be as 
 decent as one is capable of being; and I con- 
 fess that, personally, I find the reputation of 
 my mother and my grandmothers for breed- 
 ing and womanliness and accomplishments a 
 vigorous tonic whenever I am tempted to give 
 up effort to keep as nearly as possible to their 
 standard. 
 
 There is a good deal more to the matter, 
 too, if I were only clever enough to express it. 
 I have a deal of faith in the moral effect of 
 proper family pride and respect for blood on 
 the community as well as on individuals. It 
 is easy enough to find degenerates who come 
 of good people and who disgrace every tie; 
 but on the whole, I am sure a sense of dig- 
 nity helps a person to behave well. To be re- 
 sponsible to anything is a moral restraint, and 
 a sense of coming of fine or even of merely 
 highly placed ancestors must help one to keep
 
 202 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 out of the worst sorts of evil ways. Professor 
 Wodteling told me once that the most moral 
 races are those who practice ancestor- worship; 
 and while I don't know whether he was right 
 or not, I can see why he might be. If he is, it 
 seems to me that to pay a proper attention and 
 respect to genealogy is indirectly a help to pub- 
 lic morals. It is supporting the traditions which 
 on the whole make for general morality. 
 
 It should not be necessary for me to explain 
 that I do not mean the sort of ancestor-glorifi- 
 cation which consists in flaunting a pedigree 
 in the face of the world just out of vanity. 
 The person who claims consideration on the 
 strength of being well-descended is really set- 
 ting up a claim to superiority which he or she 
 should be forced to make good; is really ask- 
 ing to be judged by a standard higher than 
 that applied to common mortals. If he has 
 nothing in himself to entitle him to especial 
 respect, he is thereby proved to be not above, 
 but below, his neighbors. Family tradition 
 that ministers only to pride and vainglory is 
 about the most contemptible sort of caddish- 
 ness I know.
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 203 
 
 This is tremendously didactic, and solemn 
 enough to have been written by great-aunt 
 Tabitha herself. I am really serious, however, 
 in spite of the fact that I seem to be trying 
 to make a Lenten sermon. My forbears are 
 very real and human to me, and I have always 
 had a most friendly interest in them. 
 
 It is a pity our knowledge of our ancestors 
 cannot include more particulars of their little 
 peculiarities and human weaknesses. Our 
 sense of humor would then be called to subdue 
 our vanity, and help to keep us in a rational 
 frame of mind. We know of the good deeds of 
 those old men and women, — that is, if we 
 know anything in particular. If one has been 
 too notorious a rascal, we may hear of that; 
 but in general, the ancestors are shadowy 
 abstractions. What I wish we knew is the sort 
 of story that in our family used to be told of a 
 cousin who died before I was born. He was 
 a bachelor, and father once remarked that 
 Hollis could never marry because he could 
 never think a woman good enough to be 
 honored with his preference. He was very 
 vain, and sported an enormous pair of those
 
 204 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 horrid long side-whiskers, "weepers," that are 
 absohitely the most detestable form in which 
 a man is able to disfigure his face with hair. 
 Great aunt Tabby, who dealt fairly with all 
 the family by making herself disagreeable to 
 everybody, never lost a chance to tell cousin 
 Hollis that his whiskers were hideous; and 
 she always wound up her unflattering remarks 
 by saying: "Think how those whiskers will 
 look in your coffin, when they're all slumped 
 down!" She repeated this so often, and ap- 
 parently with such grewsome unction, that 
 persecuted and inordinately vain cousin Hollis 
 was driven to despair by the image of his 
 dead face which her words conjured up. He 
 went to the length of putting in his will explicit 
 directions that nobody should be permitted 
 to see him in his coffin; and I suppose died 
 with a mind relieved of the horrid fear aunt 
 Tabby had held over him. The irony of it, 
 or the joke of it, was, — if it is ])ro])er to speak 
 of anything connected with such a subject as 
 a joke, — that his will wasn't even read until 
 after the funeral, and all the relatives had 
 viewed the remains, according to the cheerful
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 205 
 
 fashion of those days. And it is recorded that 
 aunt Tabby, when she looked down upon the 
 dead, set her hps together, and nodded her 
 head, as much as to say: "Yes; just as I said." 
 
 I should like to know all sorts of human 
 anecdotes about my forbears, of the same in- 
 timate kind, so that I could make them seem 
 as human and as flesh-and-bloodsy as possi- 
 ble. Then, when I thought of their nobility 
 of mind and purpose, I could not but feel as 
 if what they did I might do. They would be 
 closer to me than any person can be who has 
 gone so far down the "corridor of time" that 
 all we can see is the shape of a figure, with per- 
 haps a gleam of a halo by way of distinction. 
 
 It is sometimes of a good deal of value, in 
 coming to a conclusion about the character of 
 a man, to know about his people. Before you 
 are too entirely carried off your feet about any 
 man to reason clearly, you will do well to find 
 out, if you can, what his family is like. A 
 family must have its characteristics. There 
 are always traits that are practically sure to 
 come out in every member of a clan, faintly in 
 some, and well marked in others, but sure to
 
 206 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 
 
 be there. Every family has its character as 
 truly as every individual; and while it would 
 be foolish to judge a person entirely by his 
 people, or indeed chiefly by them, it is more 
 foolish to attempt to estimate him fully and 
 fairly without taking his race into account. If 
 you should ever think of marrying a man, do 
 try to hold yourself in hand until you have 
 made him talk about his family, and until you 
 have heard others, who really know, discuss 
 it too. This last is not always possible; but 
 the first is, and should never be neglected. If 
 you are even considering the possibility of 
 merging yourself in a clan, you should know 
 what that clan is; and you cannot in any 
 other way judge of a certain side of the man 
 himself. 
 
 I hope it will not shock you if I add that 
 every woman is morally bound to consider 
 what sort of an ancestry she is providing for 
 her possible children.
 
 XXIII 
 
 A DISCOURSE ON SNOBBERY 
 
 What is a snob ? It is a domestic animal, my 
 dear, in the same sense that a cockroach is ; and 
 it is one that equally well deserves extermina- 
 tion. A snob is a pest to society, and should 
 be regarded as a natural enemy by everybody 
 who has the good of mankind at heart. 
 
 This does n't define, I know, and very likely 
 you think it is n't over elegant; but I do hate 
 snobbishness so much that I have to relieve 
 my mind a little before I can begin to speak 
 seriously. Snobbery takes so many forms 
 that to try to express it exactly is like the at- 
 tempt to define a snake. A little friend of mine 
 described a snake as a "long wriggle that is 
 always horrid;" and when she was further 
 pressed, added that you could *' know it by it's 
 always being snaky." A snob is always de- 
 testable; but above all else, a snob is always 
 snobbish.
 
 208 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 When no less a man than Thackeray took a 
 whole book to set down the snobs, you will not 
 expect me to get them all into a single letter; but 
 then, before he got through, he had included 
 about all the men that walk the earth. David 
 said in his haste that all men were liars, and 
 Thackeray at his leisure proved that all men 
 are snobs; so that the poor creatures haven't 
 a shred of character left, and I am glad I am 
 not a man! I have some compassion on the 
 poor things, however, and think they might be 
 let off a little more easily. Some of the things 
 Thackeray sets down as snobbish, it seems to 
 me, might be called by a name less harsh. 
 
 It may not be manly for a man to be 
 ashamed that his father was a coal-heaver 
 and his mother a washwoman; but I can 
 sympathize with him enough to feel that if he 
 makes no pretenses that are false, and only 
 keeps his own counsel, he is not to be blamed. 
 If he is not kind to them, if he deserts and 
 denies them, there is no possibility of excuse; 
 but while that is selfish and vain, it is not what 
 I call downright snobbery. A man who is un- 
 kind to his people I call a cad. He is likely
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 209 
 
 to be a snob too, but this especial form of 
 meanness is caddishness. 
 
 Snobbishness as I understand it, and as I 
 most hate it, is a desire to shine at the expense 
 of somebody else. I can overlook, with a good 
 nature that has, I confess, some contempt in 
 it, the person who is ashamed of the truth 
 about his origin, or anything else not as he 
 would have it, which is yet beyond his control ; 
 what I cannot tolerate is the attempt to make 
 others discontented and envious. To parade 
 one's wealth or one's family is vulgar and self- 
 ish enough; but it is made really vicious by 
 the desire to humiliate those who are less for- 
 tunate. The woman who wears diamonds in 
 the street-car — and there are such in Amer- 
 ica — is sufficiently vulgar; but she may be 
 simply silly from vanity and ignorance of the 
 fitness of things. She may be entirely free 
 from the idea of making anybody unhappy. 
 To the pleasure of the genuine snob it is essen- 
 tial that somebody be hurt and humiliated. 
 Vanity that makes a ridiculous exhibition of 
 itself is simply underbred; but snobbery is 
 necessarily cruel.
 
 210 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 A Mr. Tripper instructed you at a dinner, 
 you tell me, that anybody who takes pride in 
 ancestry is a snob. Obviously he is not })roud 
 of his, poor man; but he is foolish to show it 
 by railing at those who did have grandfathers. 
 Why is it more snobbish to be pleased that 
 I came of decent and refined people than it is 
 to rejoice that my grandfather's father knew 
 enough at the time of the French Revolution 
 to take advantage of the breaking up of gal- 
 leries, and to buy good pictures ? I am grate- 
 ful that I inherit the pictures, and equally I 
 am glad that I inherit good traditions and an 
 honored name. As I said the other day, pride 
 in family seems to me admirable, as long as it 
 is a private incentive to living up to tradition, 
 though it is bad the moment it is used to make 
 other people uncomfortable. 
 
 The pith of the whole business is that 
 unkindness of snobbishness. I think it is 
 not unfair to define a real snob as a person 
 wdio through vanity tries to humiliate another. 
 Whether this is done through the parading of 
 real or of imaginary claims to consideration 
 does n't seem to me to make much difl^erence.
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 211 
 
 The degrees are infinite, and perhaps Thack- 
 eray was right in assuming that most of us 
 have some incHnation in this direction. The 
 degree of individual blame is not for me to 
 settle. 
 
 Self-assertion is often spoken of as if it were 
 necessarily snobbish; but I have noticed that 
 the self-assertion of persons sufficiently high 
 does not get that name. Nobody thinks of 
 calling it snobbish for a queen to insist that 
 those around her stand while she sits; for a 
 duchess to insist upon the proper precedence 
 at dinner; or for a military officer to demand 
 the formal salutes. These things are all a 
 legitimate part of the system. They must be 
 attended to, or the whole form of royal and 
 military life collapses. I hold that the same is 
 true of social life, and that we all of us have to 
 do our part to keep up form and outward ob- 
 servances. No lady would invite to her house 
 a second time a man who walked through a 
 door ahead of her when he should have let 
 her pass, and in dropping him from her lists 
 she is asserting, and righteously asserting, her 
 prerogatives.
 
 212 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 The question how far one is to go in this 
 self-assertion is one of the hardest of all social 
 questions. Mrs. Fifield Amory said to me the 
 other day: *'I feel so like a cad! I've been 
 arranging to get Katherine into the right dan- 
 cing-class, and it was so like pulling wires that 
 it was perfectly detestable ! " I told her I knew 
 how uncomfortable that sort of work is, and 
 that I thought things should be so the right 
 girls would go into a class as a matter of 
 course; but that the push of people made this 
 impossible. People who do not belong there 
 are so straining every nerve to get in that 
 those who have the right have at least to assert 
 themselves. "Well," she said, "I'd never do 
 it for myself, but Katherine ought to go with 
 her friends, and with her own cousins. I hope 
 I'm not a snob, but I do feel like one." 
 
 She is a perfectly ladylike woman, and not 
 in the least pushing. She naturally wishes her 
 daughter to be with her social equals; and 
 the only reason why she had to do anything 
 is that so many mothers push their daughters 
 for the best classes that the matrons are over- 
 whelmed, and the mother who does n't look
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 213 
 
 after her own chick finds the girl left out. 
 This does not seem to me to be in the least 
 snobbery. It is one of the unpleasant neces- 
 sities which result from the fact that we have 
 no recognized grades in society. It certainly 
 is n't snobbish for me to expect my cook to 
 stand while I give her orders. Social distinc- 
 tions are as absolute and as tangible as the 
 rising of the sun ; and to ignore them is about 
 as silly. Sometimes there is more snobbery 
 in ostentatious ignoring of social distinctions 
 than in the most rigid observance of them. 
 When Mrs. Granite, who poses as a reformer 
 and a philanthropist, insists upon introducing 
 guests to her parlor-maid, and tells them to 
 shake hands, she is doing the "holier-than- 
 thou" to perfection; and she certainly suc- 
 ceeds in making both guest and maid suffi- 
 ciently uncomfortable. 
 
 No, my dear child, let Mr. Tripper, whom 
 you say you hope never to see again, hold 
 whatever views he pleases about ancestors, 
 and Jet anybody you like tell you that it is 
 caddish to insist upon social privileges; but 
 do you continue to regard and respect your
 
 214 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 
 
 forbears, keep your place in society, and, when 
 the unpleasant duty comes to you, insist upon 
 your social rights. Do your duty in that station 
 to which it has pleased God to call you. Until 
 the day when you find yourself vaunting your 
 superiority for the sake of triumphing over 
 somebody else, you need not be troubled lest 
 you are becoming snobbish! The moment, 
 however, that you find yourself taking plea- 
 sure in the jealousy you awaken in another by 
 parading your advantages; the moment you 
 detect yourself vaunting or flaunting for the 
 sake of making others uncomfortable ; the 
 moment you see yourself pressing forward so 
 that others may feel humiliated by being left 
 behind ; that moment get to your closet as 
 fast as your legs will carry you : go down hard 
 on your marrowbones, and pray God to be 
 merciful to you — a Snob !
 
 XXIV 
 
 THE MISFORTUNE OF FOREIGN MATCHES 
 
 So the Earl of Cruffud — did he learn to spell 
 his name in Wales, I wonder ? — danced the 
 cotillion with you at the great and glorious 
 Biltastor ball ! Can he dance ? If so, he is a 
 miracle among Englishmen. I hope at least he 
 knew enough to keep off your feet and your 
 frock. I saw Minnie Clapham, not long ago, 
 with an English partner so completely wound 
 up in her train that I did n't see how the pair 
 were to be separated unless they were cut 
 apart. As to reversing, I was staying at 
 Glamore Castle once when the girls took an 
 hour every morning, while the men were out 
 shooting, and practiced whirling around so as 
 to be able to waltz without getting giddy. The 
 men — or the girls, for that matter — can't 
 reverse, and they had to learn the whirling 
 dervish trick or come to grief. 
 
 It is funny foreigners are so little able to take
 
 216 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 up a thing like that, a thing that to an Ameri- 
 can comes as easy as breathing. In Paris I 
 went to a ball once at an exclusive house, where 
 the entrance was supj^osed to be in itself a 
 sort of a patent to nobility, and there I was told 
 that the dancing was to be a VAmericaine. 
 That meant that they reversed. The way the 
 men snapped one about was something awful ! 
 First you were for three steps jerked to the 
 right, and then for three steps you were jerked 
 to the left ; but as for reversing, that was a 
 thing beyond their wildest imagining! If you 
 carry out your threat, and marry a foreigner, 
 you will give up dancing. That I am sure of. 
 You will find, moreover, that the parties are 
 dull beyond words. At the French ball, all 
 the supper we had was trays of glasses full 
 of colored things to drink. I have no idea 
 what they were; some sort of fruit syrups, I 
 suppose, but all utterly detestable. 
 
 You want to know how the idea of your 
 marrying a title strikes me, do you ? I should 
 say it would be more agreeable to marry a 
 man; but every one to her taste. You say 
 Lord Colcester is so delightful, but I lia})pen
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 217 
 
 to know that you know he is engaged to his 
 cousin. As to the Earl of Bareboard, you can- 
 not frighten me with him ; you have n't money 
 enough to buy that specimen of the British 
 aristocracy. All means of catering to the vices 
 come high, and foreign titles that are worth 
 anything are among the most expensive of 
 vicious luxuries. The Earl of Bareboard will 
 sell his name and title to the daughter of some 
 pork-packer or patent-medicine vender, on 
 whom the diamonds are as thick as the drops 
 of sweat on the face of her father. She is wel- 
 come to him, and he to her. America has lost 
 a few charming women to foreign noblemen, 
 but on the whole, we have reason to be thank- 
 ful to the nobility for taking away the women 
 they have selected. In general terms, any 
 country is better off without a girl who will 
 sell herself for rank, and if we are to preserve 
 any decent remnants of democracy, this is 
 especially true of us. I have known at least 
 half the American girls who in the last twenty 
 years have made grand marriages abroad, 
 and I certainly feel that society here is well 
 able to bear the loss of most of them.
 
 218 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 As for Waldron Leigh, that is another mat- 
 ter, and puts foreign marriage on a different 
 basis. He came over to marry money, and 
 he might take you, if he could not find a real 
 heiress. He would suppose you were going 
 to inherit a great deal more money than you 
 will ever see, and he knows he cannot get an 
 heiress in England. He is the seventeenth son 
 or so of a family that is respectable enough; 
 the sort of people that in America you might 
 have a bowing acquaintance with, and per- 
 haps leave cards on once a year. He is hand- 
 some in that way which is two thirds brute 
 force, and that appeals to a woman simply as 
 a matter of animal strength; he is convinced 
 that he is irresistible, and that always has 
 an effect with us women; and I dare say you 
 might marry him, if you really try. I did n't 
 mean to say anything against him, for I don't 
 wish to spur you up to take his part; but I am 
 confident, from the tone of voice in which he 
 mentioned you when he was on here, that he 
 is convinced he can have you if he conde- 
 scends to say tlie word. Oh, my dear, just to 
 please me, lead him on to })ro})ose, and then
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 219 
 
 give him the snubbing of his Hf e ! You 've been 
 told a hundred times that no nice girl lets a 
 man propose unless she means to accept him; 
 but in the first place that is nonsense, and in 
 the second, if it were true, it does n't apply to 
 a colossally conceited Englishman! 
 
 I went in to dinner with Waldron Leigh at 
 Naliant last summer, and he was so sure he 
 had made a conquest of me that I could have 
 killed him on the spot! I had to snub him, but 
 I am very much afraid he did n't know it. He 
 thinks he is Adonis and Apollo rolled into 
 one; and he is duller than death! 
 
 Seriously, to come to the question in the 
 abstract, you know that I am firm set against 
 foreign marriages. They may be, and they 
 have been, successful. I have seen those that 
 were said to be satisfactory, although I con- 
 fess I have seldom been able to see that they 
 were much to boast of. I had the audacity 
 to say to Mrs. Frennle, when she was boast- 
 ing of the happiness of Kate's married life, — 
 Kate married a Thurnwell of somewhere down 
 in Devonshire; the family goes back to the 
 Flood, or the Garden of Eden, or something, as
 
 220 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 Mrs. Frennle is continually telling her friends, 
 — I said what was the truth, that the things 
 she dwelt on as evidences of the success of the 
 match were matters that would have been 
 taken for granted in an American marriage. 
 I told her she would have been anything but 
 satisfied if anybody had congratulated her on 
 Lucy's match — Lucy married in Philadel- 
 phia — on the ground that her husband had 
 so many horses, did n't drink, and was fairly 
 good-tempered. 
 
 International marriages, however, may turn 
 out well, just as any other unlikely thing may 
 happen in this surprising world. They gener- 
 ally succeed best when the girl is content to be 
 a mere zero. Foreign women are bred up to be 
 thoroughly subordinate to their husbands, and 
 they accept it much as they do the fact that 
 they will starve if they do not eat. It is dif- 
 ferent with us. We are willing — if we are old- 
 fashioned enough to be in love with our hus- 
 bands — to give up to the wishes and to the 
 will of the man we marry, but he must accept 
 it as a gift, and not as a right. The foreign 
 husband seldom has any conception of a wife.
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 221 
 
 — of any wife, — except as an inferior and 
 silent partner in the matrimonial firm; and as 
 a rule she is frankly, and indeed unconsciously, 
 treated as such. Plenty of American husbands 
 perhaps hold much the same view as far as the 
 main idea is concerned; but they do not, as 
 the Englishman does, expect the wife to share 
 it. The prejudices of American society force 
 any man who is not an out-and-out black- 
 guard to conceal any feeling that his wife is a 
 mere chattel. 
 
 If worst does come to worst here, the wife 
 has at least the support of knowing that she 
 has the sympathy of her social world against a 
 man who has assumed to own her as he does a 
 horse or a dog. It may be a poor and intangi- 
 ble comfort; but I am convinced that many 
 a miserable woman, who would die in slow 
 tortures rather than appeal to the pity of her 
 acquaintances, has yet been sustained by the 
 consciousness that she has it. 
 
 The difference is really great abroad. An 
 American tied to an autocratic husband there 
 finds herself in an atmosphere frightfully cold 
 and uncongenial. I had a dreadful half hour
 
 222 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 in Florence once, when a New York girl who 
 had married an Englishman broke down one 
 night in the parlor of the hotel, and forced 
 her confidence on me, though 1 was almost a 
 stranger. She did know my people, and I sup- 
 pose the poor thing was worn out. She said 
 her husband meant to be kind; that he was 
 kind in his way; that her English friends 
 thought him a model; but she wailingly said 
 she felt as if she didn't exist; she wasn't 
 allowed to have any personality. Her husband 
 wanted to do things to please her, but his only 
 idea was to do things he thought she ought to 
 like, never things that she did care for. "He 
 can't understand," she summed up; "and 
 nothing could make him understand. I sup- 
 pose you'd have to begin a dozen genera- 
 tions back to get it into his head that I 'm a 
 human being with tastes and feelings of my 
 own." Of course she was a bit hysterical, and 
 as she avoided me afterward, I suppose she 
 was ashamed of her confidence; but she had 
 really told me the secret of her married life. 
 She had endured it unspoken as long as it was 
 possible, and she had to pour it out.
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 223 
 
 Yoii know, don't you, who Kenyon Murray 
 is ? He has Hved in this country about as much 
 as he has in England, and he has an American 
 wife. He did not come to America, however, 
 until after he left Oxford, and all his people 
 are in England. He certainly knows both 
 sides of the question as well as any English- 
 man ever could know it. He said to me once 
 that not one Englishman in a thousand is ever 
 able to take the woman's point of view; and 
 that of those who could, not one in a hundred 
 ever tried to take it. Now that is literally the 
 opinion of an educated Englishman, and one, 
 too, who is very proud of being English. I 
 said frankly that that seemed to me a suffi- 
 cient reason for opposing international mar- 
 riages. He looked at his wife, of whom he is 
 tremendously fond, and with whom he lives 
 most happily, and laughed. "You are entirely 
 right," he said, "in every case except my 
 own." 
 
 Whenever one generalizes, exceptions have 
 to be made, and the Kenyon Murrays are cer- 
 tainly an exception; but I insist that my gen- 
 eral proposition is right. The whole attitude
 
 224 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 
 
 of the foreign man, the attitude which is sanc- 
 tioned by tradition and ingrained by environ- 
 ment in foreigners, is one which makes the 
 possible happiness of an American girl who 
 marries him so doubtful that international 
 marriage always makes me afraid. If you are 
 content to live on gratified vanity instead of 
 affection, by all means buy a duke, if you have 
 money enough. If you expect to find happi- 
 ness in sympathetic married love, marry an 
 American. The chances of disappointment 
 are large enough and serious enough in any 
 marriage, and no girl can afford to increase 
 them tenfold by going outside of her own 
 country. 
 
 I could dwell on this with a great many 
 more excellent reasons, but, thank Heaven, 
 you are not rich enough to tempt the fortune- 
 hunting titled paupers, and you have, after all, 
 a good deal of common sense. 
 
 Besides, there is the man who was at the 
 hunt-breakfast. 
 
 P. S. Oh, do get Waldron Leigh to propose, 
 and then snub him!
 
 XXV 
 
 THE EFFECT OF EXPLANATIONS 
 
 You are delicioiisly young, my dear ! You ask 
 me how you had better explain to a man that 
 you really don't care for him! Now if that 
 means that you actually do care, why, have all 
 the explanations you please, and what kind 
 they are can't make much difference. If you 
 have a secret weakness for the fellow, by all 
 means explain and re-explain that you are 
 utterly and entirely indifferent to him. I fancy 
 that is the truth of the matter, and that you 
 are only trying to make my advice an excuse 
 by which you can cheat yourself into thinking 
 your wishes have nothing to do with the mat- 
 ter. I 've done things of that sort myself, and I 
 sympathize with your desire, but I won't be a 
 cat's-paw, if I am a godmother. 
 
 If, on the other hand, — as is remotely pos- 
 sible, — you are in earnest and do not care for 
 him, in the name of Heaven don't muddle
 
 22G THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 things up with exphanations. Emotional ex- 
 planations between a man and a woman never 
 cleared anything up yet, except to make evi- 
 dent affection that had been hidden. Beyond 
 that they only make complications. 
 
 Just turn the cold light of common sense on 
 the question for a little, my dear; bring it out 
 of the dusky corners of a sentimental girlish 
 twilight into the day. You must see that you 
 can't have personal discussions with a man 
 about love — especially with a man who is, or 
 thinks he is, in love with you — without mak- 
 ing things worse. It is like stirring a fire to put 
 it out. If he really cares for you, he will only 
 care for you more if you tell him you are so 
 sorry for him, that you never meant anything, 
 that you shall never forgive yourself if he is 
 unhappy, that you hope to be his friend, and 
 all that sort of rubbish. You know yourself 
 how you 'd cast down your eyes, and how be- 
 coming that would be; how you'd put on a 
 soft tone, and be so sweet, and dear, and sym- 
 pathetic ! 
 
 Out upon you ! I believe you know perfectly 
 well that the effect of talking and "oxj)lain-
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 227 
 
 ing" — Heaven save the mark! — would be 
 to make your lover more in earnest. You'd 
 be salving your conscience, I dare say, by pre- 
 tending to yourself you were trying to warn 
 him and to save him pain, and all the rest of 
 that moral twaddle; when the sneaking truth 
 is that you 'd be just feeding your own vanity 
 by seeing how much he dotes on you. Any 
 girl, or at least almost any girl, when it comes 
 to her admirers, enjoys teasing the victim on 
 the hook, just for the fun of seeing how he 
 wriggles and squirms. You know you like 
 the luxury of pitying any poor wretch that 's 
 miserable because he can't have you ! You are 
 my goddaughter; but even that has n't made 
 an angel of you. You are a woman still. 
 
 I'm a worldly old thing, I dare say, and 
 may not be able to judge fairly; but I doubt 
 if any woman ever lived that really wanted a 
 man to stop loving her. If a wretch bothers 
 too much, a girl may suppose she wishes him 
 to get over his fondness; but what she really 
 would like would be for him to stop bothering 
 and go on loving. A lot of women have too 
 much pride to show that they care, and some
 
 228 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 too much to own to themselves that they care, 
 — which is not at all the same thing ! — for 
 the admiration of men greatly below them. 
 I have my doubts about this; and I remem- 
 ber the Frenchwoman, — Madame Recamier, 
 was it ? You are only just out of school, and 
 ought to remember, — who set such store by 
 the fact that the common passers on the street 
 turned to look at her. At any rate, given a 
 man about whom a woman might possibly 
 care at all, and she never willingly gives up his 
 devotion. She may be really sorry that he 
 should suffer from hopeless affection, but this 
 only gives a sort of delicious, faintly sub-acid 
 flavor to her pleasure. Her inmost conviction 
 of course is that his passion is the most natu- 
 ral thing in the world, and quite inevitable. 
 A great many women are modest enough not 
 to think a priori — that in your language, my 
 dear, means off their own bat — that they are 
 irresistible; but when it comes to the testi- 
 mony of the faithful attachment of a man, no 
 she-creature ever created could fail to believe 
 such proof of her fascinations. Every one of us 
 knows when a man is making a fool of himself
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 229 
 
 by falling in love with somebody else; but no- 
 thing in the universe can convince a woman 
 in her heart of hearts that a man is n't justified 
 for bein": in love with her. That is one reason 
 why it is so hard for us to discourage any man 
 who 's in love with us. We feel so deeply the 
 justice of his devotion that it almost seems 
 morally wrong to try to end it. 
 
 Of course the exception is when a woman is 
 herself genuinely in love with the man. Then 
 she is apt to have so exalted an idea of his mer- 
 its as to be overwhelmed at his condescension 
 in thinking of her for a moment; and even if 
 he is unworthy of her, she will idealize him 
 into a creature to provoke the highest admi- 
 ration. I smile at myself, my dear, when I 
 think of my own husband. Fortunately he 
 is a trump, but if he were n't, I know I should 
 contrive to imagine he was something extraor- 
 dinary, — if I did n't stop being fond of him. 
 That's too deep water for me to swim in, 
 however; and besides, it's too personal to be 
 discussed. 
 
 I have often thought of the matter in gen- 
 eral terms. The way in which good women.
 
 230 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 fine women, will keep in their minds an image 
 of their husbands which is fantastically and 
 pitifully unreal is one of the wonders of life. 
 
 There is Mrs. , never mind who. She is one 
 
 of the most straightforward of human beings; 
 and her husband has n't an honest fibre in him 
 anywhere. The Day of Judgment will not 
 make him see the truth, for he's morally color- 
 blind, and he'd have to be so changed to be 
 able to look at a fact squarely that he'd lose 
 his identity and be somebody else. Yet all the 
 same she adores him. She who's truthfulness 
 itself in every other earthly way, who has n't a 
 thought that is n't like white light from heaven, 
 has set up for herself a stupendous lie in the 
 shape of a glorified image of her husband, and 
 adores this false god as the visible emblem 
 of all truth. It is sublime! Only somehow I 
 always feel like crying when I think of it. 
 
 It is all very well to laugh at the White 
 Queen in "Alice," who believed I don't remem- 
 ber how many impossible things every day 
 before breakfast, but anybody who is unable 
 to believe impossible things is not a woman. 
 
 I have almost forgotten where I started, and
 
 A WORLDLY GODxMOTIIER 231 
 
 what I am writing about, and I cannot read 
 over half a dozen pages of crooked scrawls to 
 find out. I always did hate my own handwrit- 
 ing, and I have been ready to murder Sherman 
 because he insists that it's characteristic. I 
 am glad you write a better hand. Be careful 
 always to have your notes look well, especially 
 to the men. Letters are not so important, for 
 they are generally sent to somebody who is not 
 likely to be so particular. — I have a dim 
 notion that I started to scout your absurd 
 notion that..you 'd better explain to some man 
 that you never could, etc., etc. I hope I've 
 convinced you that whatever else you actually 
 mean and think in the matter, it is not in the 
 least likely to be what you think you think, 
 or what you suppose you mean; and that it 
 is absolute nonsense to explain, unless there is 
 no need of an explanation. 
 
 As that is really the whole matter, I think it 
 best to stop before I get involved in another 
 snarl of digressions. 
 
 P. S. I wonder if the hunt-breakfast man 
 would show up well in an explanation ?
 
 XXVI 
 
 THE OBJECT OF LIFE 
 
 My dear, what has he done — whichever he 
 it is — that you ask so pathetically what is the 
 object of life! As your godmother, I can only 
 refer you to the prayer-book or the catechism, 
 and I am sorry to say that, without looking it 
 up, I am a little uncertain just what answer 
 you will find in either. Of course I might 
 reply in phrases carelessly or conventionally 
 repeated from the Bible; but I am old-fash- 
 ioned, and have nerves over the modern habit 
 of quoting from the Bible in an irreverently 
 casual way. If, instead of answering as a 
 godmother, I write as an ordinary mortal, a 
 worldly old woman such as I am, I should say 
 that the object of life is to love my husband, 
 to preserve my figure, and to enjoy life as well 
 as I may. 
 
 The trouble is that this will not appeal to 
 you in the least, and that it really only puts
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 233 
 
 things in a different way without solving the 
 question. You generally do have a good time, 
 as far as I can make out; you are too young to 
 have to consider your figure; and you have n't 
 any husband. You either have not found your 
 ideal man, or something is wrong in regard to 
 him, so that you are in no mood to be told that 
 it is the chief of your duties to love him, or to 
 believe that thereon hang all the law and the 
 prophets. — See ! Here am I quoting Scrip- 
 ture in the way I object to! — Still, your case 
 is not unlike some that have come under my 
 observation; and probably the most satisfac- 
 tory, because the most truthful, thing I can 
 answer to your doleful query is that the object 
 of your life just now is and should be to be 
 sure you have found your Darby, and that 
 you are his Joan. 
 
 When I was a girl, it seemed to me the very 
 most unjust thing in the whole management 
 of the world that a man can go about looking 
 for a mate, while a woman has to wait for one 
 to find her. I have learned by the teaching 
 of innumerable years that this is the greatest 
 blessing Providence has bestowed upon us.
 
 234 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 The unfortunate men exhaust all their percep- 
 tions hunting, hunting, hunting; and they are 
 completely blinded by the theory that they do 
 the choosing. They are so sure of this as to be 
 in constant danger of being captured without 
 the slightest idea what is happening to them. 
 We have only to sit quiet, — to lie low like 
 Brer Fox, — observe them as they parade 
 before us, and when we wish, take the man 
 that pleases us. At least, that is what I did. I 
 do have a faint remembrance that some other 
 girls wanted the same man, and did n't get 
 him ; but of course they don't count. The men 
 are really all the time on trial before us women, 
 and we have the actual decision. 
 
 There are complications when two girls fix 
 on the same man. Any woman might have 
 any man in the world, if other women did n't 
 interfere. No man ever lived that could defend 
 himself from matrimony if women really 
 wanted him. If he could, he was a monster! 
 When women get to scrambling over a man, 
 — which is a contemptible thing, for they 
 know he fairly belongs to the one that discov- 
 ered him, — accident and circumstances have
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 235 
 
 a good deal to do with the result ; but I hope I 
 know you well enough to be sure you are not 
 unhappy from any complication of that sort. 
 If you wished for a particular man, I should 
 be confident you could get him. 
 
 I 've always been sorry for the girls that are 
 so foolish or so unfortunate as to want a man 
 that belongs to somebody else; and, for that 
 matter, I pity those who do not know how to 
 secure the right one. Not to get switched off 
 into that, however, I want to stick to my text, 
 and insist that just now the object of life with 
 you should be to select and secure the proper 
 husband. 
 
 I can see you shy at that word "secure," 
 and swell out your nostril, as if I had proposed 
 something unmaidenly or beneath your dig- 
 nity. My dear, I utterly disclaim any ill-bred 
 or vulgar meaning. I only wish to say frankly 
 that at your age the question of being properly 
 married is of an importance paramount to any- 
 thing else. You know this, and if you pretend 
 to think otherwise, it is either idiocy or af- 
 fectation. Unhappily there are foolish girls 
 to-day who have had their heads turned by
 
 236 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 the pestiferous babble of that most monstrous 
 of unsexed hybrids, the so-called "modern 
 woman," and who regard themselves as very 
 clever when they talk or think about a " higher 
 destiny than mere domestic servitude," as one 
 of them said in my hearing not long ago. 
 Heaven forbid that you should be such a fool ! 
 Any normal, wholesome life is some sort of a 
 servitude, and domestic servitude, if by that 
 one means being a good wife and mother, an 
 inspiration to husband and children, a maker 
 of that most rare and most beautiful of earthly 
 inventions, a home, seems to me preferable to 
 servitude to some silly fad, some barren, illogi- 
 cal theory, or, worse yet, to mere notoriety! 
 
 I think that a very pretty paragraph, my 
 dear! But I did n't write it just for the sound. 
 I mean every word of it. I accept the state- 
 ment of the Bible, "male and female created 
 he them," and as I do not think it probable 
 that all the protests "advanced women" may 
 or can make are likely to persuade Providence 
 that the provisions of creation were a mistake, 
 it seems to me better to accept things as they 
 are, and to shape life accordingly.
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 237 
 
 I remember that once in my girlhood I got 
 into a petty fit over my limitations, and told 
 my father it seemed to me very unjust that 
 women should be made with so much less 
 chance in life than men. " Have you ever been 
 a man, my child ? " he said. " If you have, you 
 know the limitations of our sex, and of course 
 can judge." I confess that I was not wholly 
 convinced, but I did get it into my head that 
 there were at least two sides to that question. 
 At any rate, I had the sense in the long run to 
 see that if I had been born to a circumscribed 
 lot, I should be a fool to spend my strength 
 fretting about it. 
 
 I am getting dreadfully far away from the 
 "object of life" question, I dare say you 
 think ; but really I am talking about that and 
 nothing else. We are women, my dear child, 
 and it is the lot of women to be wives and 
 mothers. Many women are happy and useful 
 who are neither ; but they are in a way abnor- 
 mal. It is the object of your life to be properly 
 and happily mated with a noble man. Every 
 woman knows that marriage is the normal 
 and legitimate condition to which she should
 
 238 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 
 
 aspire; and when you come across one of the 
 females to-day, rather numerous, who deny 
 this, you may be sure that personal bitterness, 
 personal vanity, or sheer silliness inspires her. 
 She has been warped by some painful experi- 
 ence, she is desirous of posing as the cham- 
 pion of her sex, or she has not the power of 
 judging life broadly and logically. 
 
 This very likely seems to you harsh; but go 
 over the champions of celibacy, the women 
 who directly and indirectly advocate a life that 
 is founded on the idea that our sex is to be 
 independent of the other, and you will find 
 that I am not wrong. Truth is apt to be harsh ; 
 and the truth that we cannot get on without 
 husbands is almost as great as the fact that 
 men without wives would be the most help- 
 less, hopeless, unfulfilled creatures imaginable. 
 
 And the truth of this has been hidden in the 
 innermost corner of the mind of every sane 
 woman since there began to be sane women 
 on this little round globe!
 
 XXVII 
 
 THE TOUCHSTONE OF TRUTH 
 
 I HAD to stop yesterday without saying any- 
 thing I started to say. I knew that when you 
 asked me what is the object of life, you only 
 wanted sympathy. Of course I have n't any 
 idea what the trouble is, and the very fact that 
 you asked the question showed well enough 
 that in trying to do your duty and get happily 
 married, you had found something that went 
 wrong and hurt. I am sorry. I can only say 
 in general terms that I know how horrid it is 
 when HE does n't understand, or seems to have 
 fallen into the clutches of some other girl, or 
 has been unresponsive, or any one of the in- 
 numerable things that may happen. 
 
 I am obliged to guess a good deal about you, 
 and to judge of your aifairs on general princi- 
 ples, for you write chiefly in parables and co- 
 nundrums ; girls are rather apt to do that when 
 they are in earnest. I can only treat you as if
 
 240 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 you were a sort of algebraic symbol of the sex; 
 and the process is as trying to me as it is likely 
 to be unsatisfactory to you. If you would only 
 tell me, — but if you could, you would n't be 
 you; so there is the end of that. 
 
 In the way of advice I have only two things 
 to say. One is to be as hopeful and as patient 
 as you can; and the other is never to let any 
 false pride or any want of frankness stand 
 between you and a man you care for. The 
 first does n't need any dwelling on ; although 
 I might say a good deal about how completely 
 the world may seem to have gone all wrong 
 one minute, only to appear brighter the next 
 from the very contrast. Things are seldom as 
 bad as they look, — although when they are. 
 Heaven help us, for then they are apt to be a 
 great deal worse than they look! In general 
 terms, however, it is always well to regard 
 troubles and bothers as pin-pricks, of which 
 the smart will be over directly. This is so 
 obviously true that it probably sounds to you 
 untrue; and in any case, there is no use in my 
 dwelling on it. 
 
 The other point, however, needs to be in-
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 241 
 
 sistcd on, and said over again and again, until 
 a girl can get the idea transformed into a prin- 
 ciple. We all begin by feeling that if a man 
 really cares for us, he will understand how we 
 regard him, how we think, and all the little 
 shades of sentiment that no human being ever 
 did or ever can understand in another. "He 
 should have known how I felt" has been the 
 epitaph of many a girl's happiness, and of 
 the happiness of many a man, too, I suppose ; 
 although men get over such a hurt more 
 quickly. If a man evidently or apparently has 
 not understood, don't fall into this error of 
 assuming that he is supernaturally gifted with 
 the power to read your thoughts, or the more 
 stupid error of regarding his power of percep- 
 tion as an index of his affection. If the matter 
 is trivial, forget it; if it is important, be per- 
 fectly frank, and speak to him. 
 
 I am not sufficiently clever as an analyzer 
 of human motives to be able to say what femi- 
 nine qualities make it so hard for us to be frank 
 with a man when we care for him. I should 
 need to be Henry James, and Henry James 
 with double his usual number of parentheses,
 
 242 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 so that no human being could even guess at 
 my meaning when 1 had got it into words. I 
 do know that we take refuge in all sorts of 
 excuses to avoid saying honestly that we have 
 been misunderstood. We begin by telling our- 
 selves that as the obtuseness of the man is 
 proof positive that he does n't care for us, it is 
 of course of no use to explain anything. We 
 go on with the assumption that if we speak he 
 will think us unmaidenly, and we are apt to 
 dwell on that idea until rational speech be- 
 comes impossible. 
 
 To set little misunderstandings right frankly 
 and clearly, without an air that gives the mat- 
 ter an undue importance, is the secret of pre- 
 serving friendship, and it is the secret no less 
 of preserving love. Beware of treating small 
 matters as if they were great ones, and you will 
 then be able to handle anything you wish to 
 explain with a light touch which will make it 
 easy for you to say and for him to receive. 
 
 If it comes to a misunderstanding really 
 important, however, ask yourself whether the 
 man is so little to you that you are ready to 
 let him go out of your life rather than to make
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 243 
 
 the sacrifice of speaking fully. I am not coun- 
 seling you to be undignified, unmaidenly, 
 unwomanly ; I am only saying that it is better 
 to be honest at a hard moment than to regret 
 it through life. 
 
 I write in what may seem cold generalities; 
 but I can do no better, since I know nothing 
 of the circumstances. Very likely by this time 
 the whole trouble has been set right, and has 
 been forgotten. In that case, treat this letter 
 as an old woman I knew in the country treated 
 her medicine. Some prescription for the tooth- 
 ache was late in reaching her, so that the tooth 
 had been taken out before the medicine ar- 
 rived. She remarked that it was just as well, 
 for now she would have a remedy in the house 
 to take in case she had one of her frequent 
 attacks of rheumatism. You may not need my 
 advice by the time it gets to you, and I hope 
 you won't; but it is of universal application, 
 and you may keep it on hand to apply when 
 some other trouble arises. The advice will still 
 be good, even if the difficulty is entirely dif- 
 ferent.
 
 XXVIII 
 
 THE SLIME OF THE DIVORCE-COURT 
 
 Your protest that my view of marriage is 
 antiquated and outgrown does not, it seems to 
 me, ring entirely true. At any rate, I stand by 
 my guns, and insist that marriage is the nor- 
 mal aim of any sane young woman. I know 
 all the modern talk, and am fully aware how 
 many latch-key girls are persuading them- 
 selves to the contrary ; but this does not move 
 me in the least. I have heard all the babble 
 about the slavery of marriage, — which is too 
 often true. Heaven knows ! — I have heard 
 philanthropists declaim, and unlovely women 
 gabble; I have even read Ibsen: — I am will- 
 ing, too, to acknowledge that the half has not 
 been told; for I have looked into some wo- 
 men's lives, and I know that nobody has yet 
 succeeded in expressing what a hell marriage 
 may be. All that I cannot help; and neither 
 can I help knowing that it is often as bad for
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 245 
 
 men as for women. It is bad enough for any 
 woman to live with some men, but God help 
 any man that has to live with some women! 
 
 Fire will burn, and water will drown; but I 
 do not on that account recommend that you 
 try to live without either. No more do I hold 
 that a woman should avoid marriage because 
 marriage may make her miserable. In nine 
 cases out of ten, when marriage is a failure, 
 I think the fault is with the woman; or, to 
 speak more exactly, I believe the wife has 
 more power to prevent disaster than the hus- 
 band, and more often fails to do so. But good 
 or bad, with the fault on either side or on both 
 sides, marriage is what we were made for. 
 
 To you as woman to woman I may say 
 frankly what, as a matter of principle and of 
 loyalty to my sex, I would never confess to 
 a man, that marriage must be pretty bad or 
 old-maidhood is a great deal worse. We are 
 made so, my dear. Male and female created, as 
 I quoted from the Bible the other day, and 
 paired off to the end of time. Men get on 
 somehow without wives, and I know, as I have 
 said over and over, some delightful old maids,
 
 246 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 — women to love and respect ; but no man 
 lives single without becoming narrow and in 
 most cases selfish, and no woman reaches her 
 best if she lives a single life. What wives and 
 mothers those delightful old maids would have 
 made! No mortal woman can help becoming 
 narrow if she remain unmarried. A fine tem- 
 perament and a sense of humor may help her, 
 and her surroundings may develop her; but 
 in any case she has missed the best of life. 
 Not to have known what it is to be a wife and 
 a mother, not to have had the pain of it even, 
 
 — I am a worldly old thing, my dear, but the 
 bare idea of not having been Sherman's mate 
 and the mother of his son brings tears into my 
 wicked old eyes ! I have had my share of hard 
 times, and marriage may mean a good deal of 
 suffering in one way and another, — but not 
 to have had it! That is too dreadful to think 
 of. Never mind who tells you to the con- 
 trary, and never mind what it costs, if you 
 can be the loved and respected wife of a man 
 who fills your heart. That pays for every- 
 thing. 
 
 I did n't mean to write in this impassioned
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 247 
 
 style; and I take breath to remember that 
 the difficulty is, that you may fear being a wife 
 not loved and respected. Any wife may be 
 respected if she chooses to be, so I do not pro- 
 pose to go into that. For the love; — well, my 
 child, it is a hard saying for a girl to accept, 
 but to have loved — simply to have loved 
 really and truly — seems to me to be worth 
 anything it can cost. Unless a girl marries a 
 monster, moreover, she may almost always be 
 loved, provided she start out in marriage with 
 a man she cares for and whom she can respect. 
 If he finds her worthy, love is almost sure to 
 come. There are men who are brutes, and 
 brutes they would remain if they married the 
 best women in the world ; but they are luckily 
 rare, and a girl may generally recognize them 
 before marriage. Girls are so made that they 
 are pathetically exposed to the danger of per- 
 suading themselves that they can reform men, 
 and remake men, and all the rest of it. I can 
 only pity them; and I am sure you are not 
 likely to fall into that appalling error. 
 
 The arguments for and against marriage 
 I spare you farther. They are generally
 
 248 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 unpleasant. It is such a pity to rob the whole 
 relation of its romance, as the generality of 
 modern writers insist upon doing. I am will- 
 ing to acknowledge the wisdom, or indeed the 
 necessity, of matrimony, and beyond that I 
 should like to be spared as far as possible 
 from the reasons physiological, psychological, 
 political, and ethical. So «iuch of life is un- 
 avoidably hard and dry matter of fact that I 
 insist upon preserving about love and mar- 
 riage all the illusions possible. Since the cen- 
 tral fact is capable of standing the test of all 
 sorts of logical, statistical, philosophical, and 
 all the rest of it reasons, why may we women 
 not wrap it about with rosy veils and charming 
 delusions ? That is what I say to the men; to 
 you, my dear, since you are a woman and can 
 understand, I may whisper that our illusions 
 are in reality the highest truth. Science argues 
 the whole thing out as one might weigh a 
 flower. Is the perfume of a blossom any less 
 true or less real than the tangible petals be- 
 cause it is not to be gauged by the swaying of 
 the scales ? 
 
 What I mean to say in this letter, however,
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 249 
 
 has to do with the darker side of married hfe. 
 I am Hke one of the old prophets, who were 
 extremely uncomfortable themselves under 
 the burden of a message until they had made 
 everybody else uncomfortable by delivering it, 
 when it is to be hoped that they felt better. I 
 must say something of divorce, for you cannot 
 live a day without hearing it talked about, and 
 you should have some sort of definite and 
 rational opinions about it. 
 
 The modern way of looking at divorce is the 
 natural and inevitable result of the attitude 
 of the present generation toward marriage. I 
 am obliged to confess, moreover, that this is 
 more largely the result of the changed senti- 
 ment of women than that of men. Men, from 
 pure selfishness if from nothing else, have 
 recognized that society, in all its phases, is for 
 amusement in a secondary sense only, and 
 that primarily it is for the arrangement of 
 matrimony. A certain type of modern woman 
 has revolted, naturally enough, from the self- 
 ishness and the cruelty of which man at his 
 worst is capable ; and they have not been wise 
 enough to see that not on that account can the
 
 250 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 laws of nature or of society be altered. They 
 have clamored — oh, how I do hate the 
 clamoring of a public woman ! — to have 
 human life and social conditions rearranged 
 according to their ideas. They have effected 
 — the crowding of the divorce-courts. 
 
 I was at a luncheon in New York not long 
 ago when it seemed to me that the entire con- 
 versation turned on the question whether this 
 woman would get a divorce so as to marry a 
 specified man, whether now that another man 
 had got his divorce he would marry a specified 
 woman, and so on. I felt, when I came away, 
 that if there were anything in the nature of a 
 moral Russian bath in New York, I would go 
 and try to get rid of a sensation of moral un- 
 cleanliness. It made me feel that American 
 society has come to be horribly plebeian. This 
 is largely, of course, because the vulgar New 
 York plutocracy is so much in evidence. An 
 aristocracy of money must always be common 
 and unclean; and the New York "smart set" 
 is, I suppose, the most horribly vulgar social 
 phenomenon the world ever produced. At 
 least, I hope so! Even tlie ]K)rk-nourished
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 251 
 
 coteries of the West are refined by contrast. 
 The divorce-court records of New York and 
 Newport — and Boston is rapidly coming on 
 in the scale too — are the most humiliating 
 indictment that could exist on the conditions 
 of social life in this country. 
 
 To me it is horrible to see the callousness of 
 the modern "smart " woman on this subject. 
 A year ago a divorce-suit was in progress 
 which involved the besliming of some of the 
 families best known in Boston. Of course the 
 newspapers printed every incriminating letter 
 that was introduced, and the most shocking 
 epistles to and from the woman whose hus- 
 band was divorcing her were in the hands of 
 anybody who had not self-respect enough to 
 keep from reading them. On one occasion 
 the sister of this woman was at the Sylvan 
 Club with a party of friends, and on the tennis 
 court, amid shrieks of laughter from the com- 
 pany, she read aloud from the morning paper 
 letters which utterly destroyed her sister's 
 reputation. A charwoman in the slums would 
 have had more refinement! I can understand 
 how these cheap people have no moral feeling;
 
 252 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 but I cannot see how they can be wilHng to 
 display so openly their lack of all taste. 
 
 There is only one decent way in which a 
 woman can look at marriage, — and that is as 
 a thing that is final. If it is possible for her to 
 regard the union as stopping short of death, 
 she is considering herself in the light of a pos- 
 sible loose woman! I beg your pardon, but 
 there's no other way of putting it. Of course 
 there are circumstances where a woman has 
 to leave a man, but for her deliberately to 
 look forward to such a possibility before she 
 marries, or when she marries, is to confess to 
 herself that she is willing to be disreputa- 
 ble ! Whether she likes it or does not, the fact 
 will remain that she gives herself to a man 
 as a wife or as a mistress, and a wife cannot 
 conceive of any end to union short of death 
 itself. 
 
 This sounds extravagant in this day of talk 
 that I call vile and of views which seem to me 
 degrading; but however she protests, every 
 modest woman feels it in her heart to be ut- 
 terly true. She may sink through selfishness 
 to a lower plane of action, and if she does, she
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 253 
 
 will generally persuade herself that she is con- 
 verted to a broader view of life ; but even the 
 vilest woman has in her heart somewhere a 
 spot in which lodges, so that it can never be 
 got out, the conviction of the sanctity of mar- 
 riage, because it is the consecration of soul 
 and body for life and death. 
 
 If you think of marriage at all, think of it as 
 final. Regard it as a union which only death 
 will end, whether you like it, or whether you 
 like it not at all. A young woman of excellent 
 family, of unexceptional social position, and 
 personally of a disposition more refined and 
 more serious than that of most of the girls of 
 her age and set, astonished me not long ago by 
 declaring that all her friends who were mar- 
 ried had accepted wedlock with a perfect un- 
 derstanding that the divorce-court afforded a 
 way of escape if things became too uncom- 
 fortable. I refuse to believe her. I refuse to 
 think that we have fallen so low that among 
 people of cultivation honest love is so much a 
 thing of the past that a girl — a good girl, I 
 mean — can marry a man with such a thought 
 hidden like a reptile in her mind. My answer
 
 254 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 to her remark was : " My dear, I did not know 
 you had ever hved in Chicago." She indig- 
 nantly denied having ever been in Chicago, 
 but she knew that I knew how much of her 
 summers she has of late years spent at New- 
 port. She has never married, however, and 
 can speak only from the outside. 
 
 If you decide to have no morals, my dear 
 goddaughter, do cling still to something in the 
 shape of manners. If you have no respect for 
 the sanctity of marriage as it used to be be- 
 lieved in, — and as even a worldly old thing 
 like me may still hold on to it, thanks to hav- 
 ing been lucky enough to get a husband a hun- 
 dred times too good for me, — at least do have 
 some regard for your family, for yourself, and 
 for your children, if you ever have any. A wo- 
 man who has been through the divorce-court 
 hardly comes out unsmirched even when she 
 is conspicuously blameless, poor thing; and 
 she who has been shown to be in the wrong, 
 who has even owed her divorce to the benefit 
 of a doubt, is in the thought of every living 
 man that hears her name, no matter how pure- 
 minded he may be, a woman who has been
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 255 
 
 smirched. The divorce-court is the depart- 
 ment of society where goods are stamped as 
 damaged. 
 
 The modern women who have protested 
 against the tyranny of marriage have first 
 made every discontented wife eager to break 
 her chains. The next step was the inevitable 
 and easy one of looking upon marriage as 
 a state which might be taken on trial, and 
 escaped from if the result was not pleasing. 
 Easy divorce inevitably makes easy marriage; 
 far less care and deliberation are needed in a 
 case where any blunder can be remedied by 
 recourse to law. 
 
 Two things, moreover, have greatly helped 
 this modern attitude toward marriage: the 
 growth of religious disbelief and the idea of 
 democracy. The decline of faith in religion, 
 and particularly a decline of faith in the 
 church, naturally leaves room for the growth 
 of a spirit of self-indulgence. People frankly 
 vent their selfishness by indulging the im- 
 pulses of the moment. They are not restrained 
 by the fear of consequences in another life, 
 and they are prepared to run the risk of any-
 
 25G THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 thing that may happen in this one. They say 
 boldly that they ])ropose to get all the pleasure 
 out of life they can, and they utterly refuse to 
 be hampered by any sense of responsibility. 
 Society, family, even children, are ignored, as 
 far as recognition goes of any claim that calls 
 for self-sacrifice. These people live in openly 
 selfish disregard of anything but impulse. To 
 my thinking, they prove how impossible it is 
 to have a society without religion ; and at any 
 rate, they show what we come to if we give up 
 the idea of responsibility to others. 
 
 Then democracy, with its nonsense about 
 equality, comes in to break down all responsi- 
 bility to one's position. The rising generation 
 are always ready enough to take advantage of 
 the standing that has been won for their family 
 by ancestors who made sacrifices to duty, who 
 put their pleasure second to the claims of 
 society and of the family; but they decline to 
 do anything to keep up the standard. They 
 would hate their ancestors for having dis- 
 graced the name, but they do not trouble to 
 consider the welfare of their descendants as 
 being any reason why they should not put into
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 257 
 
 the family history a page smutted by the record 
 of a divorce-scandal. 
 
 In cases in which women and men must be 
 divorced, the only thing to be said is that this 
 is a fearful misfortune, and that the sufferer is 
 to be pitied. When divorce is the fault of a 
 man or of a woman, when it is a means of self- 
 indulgence, I claim that no decent woman 
 ought to recognize the divorced person as even 
 tolerable in self-respecting society. I have 
 never broken this rule myself, and I am happy 
 to say that no woman who has been connected 
 with a divorce-case, in any way but as a misfor- 
 tune for which she was not responsible, has 
 ever been invited into my house. 
 
 It all makes me very sad, dear girlie. There 
 is very little good in writing about it, I sup- 
 pose. I am not sure where the remedy lies; 
 but I do pray Heaven — and that with the 
 whole strength there is in me — that I may 
 never live to see the name of anybody I care 
 for dragged through the slime of the divorce- 
 court !
 
 XXIX 
 
 " WHEN LOVE SHOOK HANDS WITH TOVERTY " 
 
 Had you better marry a poor man ? By all 
 means! Your whole training, your entire life, 
 have bred you for just that thing. You have 
 had everything that money could buy, and so 
 you are naturally fitted to go without. You 
 must have proved the worthlessness of riches, 
 and you are admirably fitted now — picked 
 out, predestined, as it were — to be the wife 
 of the poorest man you can find. 
 
 It may be a little hard on the poor man. 
 If he is so unlucky as to care for you, he will 
 very likely be unhappy to see you go with- 
 out things; and he may fret at not being able 
 to give you what you 've been accustomed to 
 have. But he will of course be used to being 
 fretted, so that is no matter. I don't know how 
 well you will manage to hide your discomfort; 
 and it is probable he will have a pretty fair 
 idea of how you miss luxury, — an idea more
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 259 
 
 clear and keen in proportion to his refinement 
 and his unselfishness. 1 hope he'll be thick- 
 skinned, because that would make it easier for 
 him ; but if he is n't, he has nobody to thank 
 but himself. He should have known better 
 than to fall in love with you. His discomfort 
 will be part of the price he will pay for the 
 happiness of calling you his wife. 
 
 It will be an amusing lark for you to keep 
 house in an apartment, — a nice little flat in 
 some cheap hotel. You have a suite of rooms 
 now that is probably larger than the whole 
 domicile in which you, and your husband, and 
 your one servant will be stowed. It will be 
 great fun ; quite like playing doll's housekeep- 
 ing. When guests arrive and the tea-tray is 
 under the sofa in the drawing-room, — I hope 
 you have read "Cranford" and remember 
 Mrs. Forrester, — it will seem to you most 
 amusing to have the maid come in and fish it 
 out. When you are half dead for want of sleep 
 and your cook-parlor-maid-second-girl has a 
 cough on the other side of a partition as thin 
 as gauze, when you wish to dress in a hurry 
 for a dinner and dear Harry has to be shaving
 
 260 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 at the one glass at the same time — No; I will 
 not go into details so minute and intimate. I 
 will content myself with saying that each day 
 will bring its own new and exquisite amuse- 
 ment. It will be tremendous fun — for a 
 while. 
 
 I am not sure how long it will be great fun. 
 You see I have not the happiness of knowing 
 Harry or Tom or Dick, or whatever his inef- 
 fably charming and dear name is. I am igno- 
 rant, too, how fond you are of him.^ I cannot 
 tell how he is suited to fit into the doll's house. 
 The humor of the situation wull depend so 
 much upon what he is like and how well you 
 suit each other, that I shall have to be sure 
 dear Reginald or Algernon or Christopher will 
 bear his part of the game with a tolerable 
 grace, and with considerable persistence, to be 
 convinced that the second month will be. as 
 droll as the first, and the third as attractive 
 as either. 
 
 My dear child, you have some sense of 
 humor, and your father's set of the poems of 
 Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, if my memory is 
 not at fault, is very splendidly bound in crim-
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 261 
 
 son morocco. Some rainy day when your 
 frock is so becoming as to have put you in a 
 pleasant frame of mind, when your digestion 
 is in order, and the frock aforesaid is of a color 
 to harmonize with the crimson binding, get 
 out the book and sit down with it before the 
 library fire, — I should say on the side where 
 the light is best on the Diaz over the mantel. 
 When a picture has cost $12,000, it is only 
 showing it proper respect to look at it from a 
 favorable point; and if you are to marry a poor 
 man, you will have fewer opportunities for this 
 sort of thing than you have had. Then open 
 the volume and find a poem called " Content- 
 ment." 
 
 It begins : — 
 
 Little I ask; my wants are few; 
 
 I only wish a hut of stone, 
 (A very 'plain brown stone will do,) 
 
 That I may call my own ; — 
 And close at hand is such a one. 
 In yonder street that fronts the sun. 
 
 The doctor lived in Beacon Street, you remem- 
 ber, and knew the sunny side of Common- 
 wealth Avenue well.
 
 262 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 
 
 Read the whole, my dearest goddaughter. 
 
 I always thought cold victual nice ; — 
 My choice would be vanilla-ice. 
 
 I own perhaps I might desire 
 
 Some shawls of true Cashmere, — 
 Some marrowy crapes of China silk, 
 Like wrinkled skins on scalded milk. 
 
 The poem represents, I fancy, a good deal 
 more truly than you realize, the genuine atti- 
 tude of your mind toward poverty. 
 
 Marry your poor man, marry him, by all 
 means. I will send you a refrigerator as a 
 wedding gift. You can let me know about 
 the size when the flat is selected. 
 
 P. S. If you had told me who he is, I might 
 have been more explicit. 
 
 I suppose the men at the hunt-breakfast 
 were all rich, — or did I hear that some were 
 there who don't keep horses or hunt at all.? 
 It is n't of any consequence. Don't bother to 
 answer, or I shall think you regard me as a 
 regular gossip.
 
 XXX 
 
 A PERSONAL DISCLAIMER 
 
 Why, of course I understand that you had n't 
 any particular man in mind. You need n't 
 have taken a special-deHvery stamp to tell me 
 that. Certainly you had not; by no means; 
 never in the world ; jamais, jamais, jamais ! I 
 only meant that if you had had, and that if you 
 had then chosen to mention his name, or if you 
 had taken some man you know but do not in 
 the least care for, — not the very least, I mean ; 
 never could care for, or would care for, you 
 know ; — taken him just as a sort of hypothe- 
 sis, an example, as it were, it would have been 
 easier for me to give an exact opinion. Now I 
 apologize. I hope that is sufficient. K it is n't, 
 you may imagine me on my old marrow- 
 bones, with outstretched hands and stream- 
 ing eyes. I trust this will soothe you, although 
 you do seem to feel rather strongly about the 
 matter. Of course I never made a stupider
 
 264 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 
 
 blunder than when I hinted that there might 
 be a particuhir man within a thousand miles of 
 your thought. Of course you could n't have 
 had an actual man in mind! Oh, surely not, 
 by all the gods! 
 
 P. S. Who is he ?
 
 XXXI 
 
 "WHEN POVERTY HAS KISSED WITH LOVE" 
 
 My dear child, I would n't have hurt you for 
 the world. I am sorry that you could n't take 
 in jest what I meant so. I am afraid the situ- 
 ation is more serious than I thought. At any 
 rate, I will be serious with the solemnity of a 
 whole row of sphinxes now. I was in earnest 
 under my quizzing before, for I wanted to let 
 you have a glimpse of the grave side of the 
 question; but now, without any joking, you 
 shall hear just what I think about your mar- 
 rying a poor man. 
 
 We will assume that the poor man is well- 
 educated, well-bred, straightforward, and has 
 a salary of $1800 a year. — If I am to be seri- 
 ous, I may as well say that I know all about 
 Harry Ashmore, my dear, but you will please 
 observe that I pretend I don't, and that I care- 
 fully write of an entirely hypothetical person! 
 — We will assume that this imaginary poor
 
 ^66 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 man has refined tastes, no little cleverness, and 
 that it is believed by his friends that he viill 
 rise; but at twenty-eight he has advanced 
 only to the moderate salary named. This cer- 
 tainly may mean that he is never likely to 
 become a millionaire, — and indeed it means 
 that you will do wisely to contemplate the 
 possibility that he may remain a poor man all 
 his days. 
 
 Very well, my dear, let us consider. 
 
 You have had very little to do with expenses 
 of any sort, except in the matter of dress, be- 
 cause everything else has been provided for 
 you. With an economy on which you pride 
 yourself, and with the aid of numerous gifts of 
 gowns and gems, — please notice the allitera- 
 tion : I don't do that often ! — you have man- 
 aged to dress on $2000 a year. A very little 
 mental arithmetic will show you that when out 
 of $1800 has come house-rent, wages of ser- 
 vants, traveling expenses, living expenses, and 
 the price of at least clothing enough to allow 
 your husband to appear among his fellow 
 men, there will not be $2000 left for your rai- 
 ment, or, indeed, any very large fragment of
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 267 
 
 that sum. You may take this as typical of the 
 whole problem. The question in plain Eng- 
 lish is, do you care enough for this imaginary 
 poor man to remodel your whole manner of 
 living, to give up the luxuries which have been 
 the ordinary commonplaces of every-day life, 
 - — to do all this, and to like it. The ques- 
 tion is whether you can think the love and 
 companionship of the poor man a sufficient 
 recompense for all you must forego ; — a re- 
 compense, too, that will be permanently sat- 
 isfactory. You have to consider, not whether 
 poverty would be a lark for a week or a year, 
 but whether you are willing deliberately to take 
 it up for the rest of your mortal life. If you 
 cannot find it in your power to do this gladly, 
 if you cannot at the bottom of your heart feel 
 that for the sake of being the wife of this poor 
 man you are glad to face the necessity of being 
 as impecunious as a church mouse in Lent all 
 your days, then you have no right to think of 
 such a marriage for a single minute. 
 
 I can fancy how he, poor fellow, has turned 
 the thing over and over in his mind, very likely 
 through long, sleepless nights, inventing wildly
 
 268 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 impossible schemes for making a fortune, re- 
 proaching himself for ever having thought of 
 tempting you to give up so much, and en- 
 deavoring to make up his mind never to think 
 of you again. A rich girl may give a poor man 
 a great deal of misery without knowing it. If 
 you ever should care for a man without a for- 
 tune, my child, part of the price you must pay 
 Fortune for the good she has bestowed upon 
 you must be the sorrow of knowing you pain 
 him every time he thinks of. the differences 
 between you in the way of money. If he is a 
 manly fellow, he cannot help reflecting how 
 your life must be altered if you marry him. 
 He cannot help feeling as if he were a selfish 
 brute ever to have thought of the possibility 
 of your loving him and stepping down from 
 your golden elevation. If he is sensitive, he is 
 likely, moreover, to feel the humiliation of not 
 being able to take the man's part of shaping 
 destiny; of not being in a position to bestow 
 rather than to deprive. 
 
 If he is worth anything, some such thoughts 
 and feelings will surely be in his mind, and 
 you have no right to be anything less than
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 269 
 
 utterly honest with him. If you answer his 
 doubts by consenting to marry him, you are 
 doing him one of the bitterest wrongs a wo- 
 man can do a man if you are not prepared to 
 bear poverty, and to bear it, moreover, with 
 such a gladness of love that he shall never be 
 able in your after life to find regret in your 
 heart for what you have done. No woman, 
 alas, can tell what the future may bring her, 
 and no two human beings can be sure that love 
 does not blind their eyes ; but no true woman 
 has a right, or, indeed, has a will, to involve the 
 man she cares for in any evil she can foresee. 
 You are bound to consider this matter as 
 steadily and as cold-bloodedly as you are able, 
 and to look at the future as calmly as you 
 possibly can, with a view of discovering its 
 very darkest possibilities. 
 
 In your case, you know that your father 
 would see that you never really suffered; but 
 you know equally well that his fortune has to 
 })rovide for the rest of a rather large family. 
 You ought to know, too, that the poor man 
 is not of the sort — the imaginary poor man, 
 of course — to wish to be dependent on your
 
 270 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 father. You would n't respect him, if he were. 
 Do not, I beg of you, shirk the issue by sup- 
 posing all sorts of pleasant things that might 
 happen, — legacies from imaginary aunts and 
 impossible uncles, and fortunes that might 
 descend from the clouds. Face the situation 
 squarely. Do you care enough for him to be 
 willing to be poor, really poor, really to go 
 without things you have had as a matter of 
 course all your life, willing to hear your ac- 
 quaintances talk of the opera and not be able 
 to afford to go, willing to cramp and worry 
 and save, willing to make over old gowns until 
 you hate the sight of them, and after all to be 
 a little out of style, willing to do all these 
 things, and to smile at them, for the sake of 
 doing it for him and with him ? 
 
 That is the question, my child, and the 
 frankness with which you look at it is the 
 measure of your honesty as a woman. If you 
 are not willing to face it, God protect any 
 good man from ever falling in love with you ! 
 It is probably the most momentous question 
 you will be called upon to answer in your 
 entire life. You must give him your whole
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 271 
 
 heart, including the cheerful sacrifice of your 
 enjoyment in pleasant, costly things, or you 
 must let him go his way. You may regret los- 
 ing him, but you are a fool to wreck your life 
 through a want of courage to look at what is 
 plainly in your sight. You had far better than 
 to be half-hearted in this business be like the 
 sensible if cold-hearted damsel in "Mother 
 oose : — 
 
 The little maid replied, 
 (Some say a little sighed) : 
 " But what shall we have for to eat, eat, eat ? 
 
 Will the love that you 're so rich in 
 
 Make a fire in the kitchen. 
 Or the little God of Love turn the spit, spit, spit? " 
 
 Leave the poor man, and make your heart as 
 cold as a dog's nose, if you cannot take him 
 with a love so absolute that poverty is nothing. 
 It is no use, my dear. That blotch is a silly 
 tear. I tried to carry it off by being funny, but 
 that wrinkled spot spoils everything. The 
 matter is too solemn for me. If you only love 
 him a little and yourself more, at least be kind 
 to him and to yourself by sending him away. 
 It would only bring misery to marry him. You
 
 272 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 
 
 would have a more or less delightful honey- 
 moon, and a miserable existence all the rest 
 of your days. You don't marry for the first 
 month, but for all the long years that come 
 after; for the years when you are past your 
 first passion, past the power of finding fun in 
 inconveniences that amuse youthful happi- 
 ness, but which are gravel in the shoes of age; 
 you marry for the times of sickness and anx- 
 iety, the years of the bringing up of children, 
 and you marry for the autumn of life. Think 
 of this, and be honest with yourself. If you 
 have a doubt, tell him to go — for his own 
 sake.
 
 XXXII 
 
 "JOY IS FOR THOSE WHO DARE" 
 
 I HAD faith in you! I knew you would! My 
 dear godchild, I wish I could hug you ! I am 
 sure you would n't be engaged to him unless 
 you really meant it, and meant it in a way per- 
 fectly serious. I am so glad you are capable of 
 loving a man so that you can make sacrifices 
 for his sake. 
 
 And I am glad for your own sake. You will 
 find that this is the only thing that really pays. 
 You will get a thousand times more out of 
 married life than is possible where people are 
 swamped in money. You two will plan things 
 together, do things together, go without things 
 together. You cannot help being drawn into a 
 companionship that must be so close as to be 
 one of the most delightful things in the world. 
 It is when husband and wife go separate and 
 independent ways that they tire of each other. 
 The friendliness of contriving together how to
 
 274 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 make a narrow income cover wide needs is 
 not only deliglitfid in itself, but it is the most 
 effective preservative of affection that has ever 
 been found. I know there are rich people that 
 love each other devotedly ; but I am afraid 
 there are not too many of them, and I am 
 equally sure that even they miss a great deal 
 of pleasure in what I may call the intimacies 
 of poverty. 
 
 I can hardly help smiling to find myself 
 writing in this enthusiastic fashion in praise 
 of poverty, for I know how beastly annoying 
 it is. All the earlier years of my married life 
 Sherman and I were poorer than a squirrel in 
 the spring. We had to take every individual 
 penny, and turn it over, and examine it under 
 a microscope, and keep it over night for the 
 support it gave our courage, and then get it 
 changed into mills so we coidd spend it a little 
 at a time. I literally used to go about with 
 folded paper in my purse when I had shop- 
 ping to do, so that it would n't look so dis- 
 gracefully thin ! But, my child, the fun we had 
 in those days contriving how to squeeze out 
 money enough to go to the theatre or to have
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 275 
 
 some innocent little dissipation makes me 
 sigh in envy of the poor! Now, we order the 
 carriage and go to the opera, if we think we 
 shan't be too much bored, and I am sure we 
 both had a hundred and a thousand times 
 more fun when we debated whether we should 
 walk there, and brave all our fashionable 
 friends and rich relatives in the lobby on our 
 way to the second balcony. Charles Lamb 
 has said all this a thousand tinies better than 
 I can; but oh, my dear, I wish I were young, 
 and married to a poor young man with no 
 especial prospects, that I was over head and 
 ears in love with, and who was named Sher- 
 man! 
 
 It is time for me to stop writing, for I am 
 merging toward extravagancies, and of course 
 I ought to tell you you made a frightful mis- 
 take in not taking that old millionaire with 
 the bad temper who has been at your feet all 
 winter. At least I ought to point out that there 
 were plenty of desirable fellows you might 
 have had who have quantities of money : but 
 somehow I can only be glad you have chosen 
 as you have. I do so dearly hope you will be
 
 276 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 
 
 happy, and I believe to the bottom of my heart 
 that you deserve to be. 
 
 When I send you that refrigerator for your 
 flat, it will be full of blessings, — and not cold 
 ones, either.
 
 XXXIII 
 
 A COUNSEL ANENT HUSBANDS 
 
 You do not ask me how you shall treat your 
 husband after you get him, but I shall feel my 
 duty to be incomplete if I don't offer you some 
 good advice on that subject. I am sure how to 
 treat a husband is far more important than 
 golf or bridge, but not half so much instruc- 
 tion is given on the subject. 
 
 The first year of your married life will be 
 a hard one. It would be an impossible one if 
 love did n't come in as a lubricator. That first 
 year has wrecked many a promising marriage 
 that might have gone on smoothly if the first 
 twelve months could have been got over pro- 
 perly. It is the time when you and he are try- 
 ing to learn how to run in unison. With all the 
 good-will in the world, adjustment is not easy. 
 It will be easier for you than for him in some 
 ways, for in the first place you are nine years 
 younger, and in the second place he is a man.
 
 278 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 Always remember that it is more easy for 
 a man to give way in big things than in httle 
 ones. He may be argued with about an impor- 
 tant decision, and when he is convinced, he is 
 of course — if he is a gentleman — ready to 
 make the sacrifice or the concession. In the 
 little things he would never remember, and 
 even if he would, it is not possible to argue 
 them out. A woman sees the point in trifles; 
 she knows how important they are, and be- 
 sides, she remembers. She understands, as a 
 man never seems to be able to understand, 
 how like a grain of sand in the bearing of a 
 watch may be some little thing that a man 
 never would feel and never would see. Just 
 make up your mind to ignore his carelessness 
 in little matters, to endure his forgetting, and 
 not to lay it to heart when he does over and 
 over some trifling trick that he has known is 
 not pleasant to you, and that you think he 
 ought to remember. Julia Calumet really 
 wrecked her whole life because her husband 
 would put his cigarette ashes on the rugs. He 
 had always done it, and he could n't in the 
 least see why he should n't. He could n't or
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 270 
 
 would n't appreciate how it teased her, — she 
 was a creature of habit and nerves anyway, — 
 and she fretted, and fussed, and made herself 
 ill over what was really of no importance. She 
 said that if he cared for her comfort, he would 
 appreciate how she felt about it, — he might 
 have, if he had been a woman. Their whole 
 married life went to pieces because she was a 
 fool about that silly thing. Never be such a 
 dunce as to think that your husband's forget- 
 fulness means that he does n't care for you. 
 He must to the end of his life be simply a man, 
 and he will never be able to comprehend that 
 you mind or why you mind. In nine cases out 
 of ten he will be utterly oblivious that you have 
 ever shown that you cared, — and he will be 
 devoted to you all the time! 
 
 In little things men are certainly more self- 
 ish than women, or at least they seem so. 
 Perhaps it is that they never are conscious that 
 the comfort of life depends on little things. 
 They are bred to have somebody managing 
 and looking out for their ease in the hundred 
 trifles of domestic life, and very likely the sense 
 of proper perception has through generations
 
 280 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 become atrophied and obsolete. Trifles are 
 what chiefly make up the happiness of a 
 woman, and by some inscrutable law of Pro- 
 vidence, not one man is born in a thousand 
 that has any perception of such a thing. Your 
 future comfort will depend greatly on your 
 hardening your heart so as not to care, or at 
 least on your refusing ever to see anything in 
 the neglect of your taste in little things except 
 inevitable masculine perversity bestowed on 
 man by Heaven for the discipline of woman. 
 Break your husband of little ways that annoy 
 you, if you can pleasantly and peaceably; but 
 for the love of all that is good, bear no malice 
 if you cannot! 
 
 Another thing which is of great importance 
 is that you should keep him up in little cour- 
 tesies. A man respects a \voman who is pro- 
 perly exacting, although he may grumble a 
 little. I tell Sherman that I have too much 
 regard for him ever to allow his wife to be 
 treated with any slighting of courtesy, even by 
 her husband. If you put yourself into the atti- 
 tude of a slave or an inferior being, there is 
 not a man alive that will not accept it, — or
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 281 
 
 if there is, I have never seen him. I have 
 encountered some meek men, but never one 
 who would not allow his wife, if she would, to 
 assume the position of a mere cipher to him as 
 the significant figure. Be a little exacting, my 
 dear, even at the cost of a bit of self-sacrifice, 
 for in no other way can you keep the esteem 
 of your husband from insensibly lessening by 
 fine shades and degrees. 
 
 I may seem to be writing as if I pretended 
 to be a philosopher, but I am writing what I 
 know. Some men are brutes, and nothing can 
 be done with them anyway ; but with a decent 
 fellow, a very pleasant permanent fashion of 
 living may be established simply by keeping 
 quietly before his mind the fact that he 
 has married a woman worthy of considera- 
 tion. The truth is that we women all have an 
 instinct, or an inherited tendency, or some in- 
 fernal quality, in virtue of which we have the 
 impulse when once we are married either to 
 rebel entirely from all control, — which natu- 
 rally is not the case if we love our husbands, — 
 or to become abject slaves. In these enlightened 
 and emancipated days this tendency is greatly
 
 282 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 modified, but it does show itself in most 
 marriages by the wife's letting her husband 
 treat her as if she were a mere comrade. If a 
 woman allows her husband to bear himself 
 toward her with a careless indifference to cour- 
 tesy, he is sure to come to feel toward her 
 a careless indifference of regard. — That is 
 sound wisdom ! If you care for your husband, 
 make him treat you with respect, so that he 
 may not come to value less what is or should 
 be his most precious possession, the wife of his 
 bosom. 
 
 Perhaps the greatest sacrifice you will be 
 called upon to make to domestic peace will be 
 to forego the pleasure of speaking when events 
 show that your advice, slighted beforehand, 
 was really the wisest of counsel. If you ever 
 find yourself saying triumphantly to your hus- 
 band, "What did I say.? Did n't I tell you 
 so .'^" go at once and have your tongue ampu- 
 tated! Don't run the risk of being unable to 
 resist the temptation of saying it again; for a 
 repetition of that doom-dealing speech is mare 
 than the most ardent masculine affection can 
 survive. If you will only be quiet, the fair-
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 283 
 
 mindedness of the man will generally prompt 
 him to say it himself, and then you have all 
 the glory without having robbed him of the 
 sense of magnanimity which makes him able 
 to bear the humiliation of being convicted in 
 error. If he does not speak, you at least have 
 avoided the nothing-less-than-f atal mistake of 
 taunting him with having been wrong in his 
 opinion and having failed to recognize your 
 cleverness. 
 
 "I told you so" is absolutely the death- 
 knell of marital happiness!
 
 XXXIV 
 
 "TO MARRIAGE ALL THE STORIES FLOW" 
 
 It is odd how things come to you the moment 
 you are interested in a particular subject. 
 Just after I sent off my last epistle I came on 
 this quotation from Dean Swift : — 
 
 "The reason why so many marriages are 
 unhappy is because young ladies spend their 
 time in making nets, not in making cages." 
 
 The whole philosophy of marriage is here 
 in a nutshell, and you will do well to get the 
 quotation by heart, and lay it up for future 
 meditation and use. 
 
 I have never been able to make up my mind 
 why it is so hard — I might say so impossible, 
 without being far wrong — to make girls real- 
 ize that a man has to be won over and over 
 again. I don't mean that an attractive woman 
 may not without much bother keep a husband 
 in an attitude reasonably satisfactory. Most 
 marriages that do not come to grief are likely
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 285 
 
 to be of the neutral sort: arrangements ac- 
 cepted in a sort of cool, business-like reason- 
 ableness on both sides; endured as necessary 
 evils at worst, and at the best acquiesced in as 
 a practical and common-sense modus vivendi. 
 Wives are not often, I suppose, really content 
 with an indifferent husband, but they seem 
 without much difficulty to assume that a man 
 who has once been in love with them is in duty 
 bound to remain in love perpetually. As a 
 matter of fact, a man does not, and he will not. 
 If a man is in love with his wife at any time 
 after the first six months of married life, it is 
 because she has made him fall in love with her 
 over and over again. She has at least used, 
 consciously or unconsciously, especial art to 
 retain his affection. 
 
 When you have a husband, keep two things 
 in mind, and school yourself not to fret over 
 them, but to accept them as part of the inflex- 
 ible law of nature: First, that any man, even 
 a lover, is still human; second, that it is the 
 normal nature of a man's love to burn out 
 rather quickly. The moment a woman falls in 
 love, she is sure to feel that her hero is above
 
 280 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 all the weaknesses that belong to the rest of 
 humanity, and that his fidelity to her will 
 remain unshaken and undiminished to the end 
 of time. Absolute nonsense, my dear! He 
 thinks the same about you, for the time being; 
 but you know it is n't true, however much you 
 wish that for his sake it might be. He will only 
 have to see you at breakfast a sufficient num- 
 ber of times, perhaps with a headache and a 
 doubtful temper, to discover that you are not * 
 entirely an angel yet. He may, and I hope he 
 will, find you something much better adapted 
 to daily life; but you must be prepared for the 
 day of mutual disenchantment. You must be 
 ready when it comes to do your part toward 
 the reestablishing of relations on a new basis, 
 which may be more enduring than anything 
 you could expect to find while you mooned 
 about in that heavenly idiocy of regarding 
 each other as superhuman. The delusions of 
 the honeymoon are enchanting, but, like other 
 enchantments, they are fugitive. They are like 
 other flames, — to change the figure, — and 
 cannot burn without consuming something. 
 If you wish the fire to keep up, you must j)ro-
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 287 
 
 vide fresh fuel. The pity of it is that when they 
 begin to fail, we are so apt to give ourselves up 
 to wailing and weeping, or to protesting that 
 the man we trusted has promised to see to it 
 that the bonfire never grew less. Don't waste 
 any time or strength in that sort of foolishness, 
 when the fire of love seems to pale a little, but 
 scrabble around, and see what you can find 
 that will burn ! 
 
 Since even a husband, then, is human, it is 
 well to reckon with him as a man. The two 
 strongest characteristics of the male animal — 
 human, at least — are evidently vanity and 
 the love of comfort. Sherman is rather an ex- 
 ceptional creature, or at least I think so, but 
 even Sherman is not perfect when he is hun- 
 gry. Men in general are pretty much alike, 
 and no woman can reasonably hope to hold 
 permanently the love of a husband unless she 
 contrive in some way to feed him well and to 
 flatter his vanity. I know you will think of the 
 women who hold men by snubbing them, but 
 the truth is that vanity is the chief motive 
 there. Men find themselves piqued by diffi- 
 culty, and their vanity incites them on. There
 
 288 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 are some rag-doll little men who kiss humbly 
 the hand that smites them, and "adore the 
 wife that rules ; " but they are not to be counted 
 as real men. The husband who is treated with 
 contempt, and who allows himself to be hen- 
 pecked, must always be the weak sort of thing 
 that he deserves to be. Any woman despises a 
 husband that has n't character enough to be 
 her master, — unless she takes the maternal 
 attitude, and pities him; but when the wife 
 loves her husband as a mother, the husband 
 seldom loves the wife at all. He lets her take 
 care of him, and he loves himself. One of a 
 married couple must be the head of tlie house, 
 and any woman of any spirit will take that 
 place if she can get it ; — but she has nothing 
 but contempt for the husband that allows her 
 such a victory. 
 
 A woman may manage her husband, and 
 every good wife will manage him when the 
 proper occasion arises, but to manage a man 
 does not necessarily lessen respect for him. 
 It is part of the natural order of life that 
 feminine finesse should in delicate situations 
 prove more effective than masculine force;
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 289 
 
 and every woman understands this; but woe 
 and the abomination of desolation to the hus- 
 band that once allows his wife to bully him. 
 Love goes out of the window, or up the chim- 
 ney, or through the keyhole, or whatever way 
 of escaping is most speedy, and never returns. 
 A man's vanity is the legitimate care of any 
 worthy and loving wife. She will appeal to it 
 when wisdom demands ; she will take care not 
 to foster it inordinately ; she will recognize 
 that nature beneficently endowed man with 
 this weakness, that woman should have a 
 means of leading him for his own good. She 
 will, if she is all that a wife should be, gently 
 snub him whenever she sees signs that his 
 self-esteem is developing in lines which would 
 tend to make him independent of her or too 
 susceptible to the influence of others. A per- 
 fect wife will understand, in short, that Heaven 
 has made her the guardian of her husband's 
 welfare, and that the lever by which she is to 
 control his character and his acts is his vanity. 
 She will recognize the gravity of the trust, and 
 she will treat the lever with delicacy and dis- 
 cretion accordingly.
 
 290 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 . All this wisdom you will resent just now, I 
 suppose; in your present phase of affection 
 you will rage at the idea that you could flatter 
 the perfect man who has fallen to your lot 
 through the especial grace of Heaven. So be it, 
 my dear. Consider what I have said as apply- 
 ing only to every other wife on earth except 
 yourself. It will help you to appreciate the 
 position of your sisters, and if the time should 
 ever come when you have to advise with any 
 wife — having no need, of course, to resort to 
 such measures yourself — how to turn aside 
 a husband bent with masculine, well-meaning 
 wrong-headedness upon going in a direction 
 that means harm to him, you may find a hint 
 in what I have been saying. You may tell her 
 that for his own good she may wisely praise 
 his good points, she may show him what a 
 profound admiration she has for his good 
 sense, and how sure she is he will make the 
 wisest choice, and so forth and so on, until she 
 is able to lead him in the right direction by 
 suggestion and praise. 
 
 As for yourself, my dear child, after the 
 first golden glow of the honeymoon has begun
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 291 
 
 to dazzle your eyes a little less than at first, 
 so that you perceive dimly that there are 
 things in your husband that you would pos- 
 sibly have otherwise, give the whole force of 
 your mind to thinking up the things you can 
 and should praise. I do not know by what 
 good fortune it was that my mother gave me 
 the advice she did when I was married; but 
 she insisted most on this point: "Whenever 
 you think of something to find fault with, 
 don't rest until you have thought of something 
 you admire in your husband just as strongly, 
 and have told him so." Sherman is such a 
 trump — But you'll hate Sherman, if I say a 
 word more about him. 
 
 O you dear thing! You will never know 
 what fun it is to give advice like this. You 
 won't take much of it, but I know it is good, 
 and some little bits of it will stick to you, and 
 very likely will be of use some time; but the 
 chief fun is to work out in my own mind how 
 it is that I have made so great a success of 
 married life. That sounds conceited, and I 
 am not trying to take too much credit, or to 
 lose sight of the fact that Providence has been
 
 292 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 
 
 so good to me; but I have made a success of 
 married life; I know I have; and it gives me a 
 glow to feel that what I have done has been 
 good. So be as patient with my dissertations 
 on matrimony as you can be, and get as much 
 good out of them as possible. 
 
 One thing I want to add in conclusion. It 
 would be foolish to show my letters to your 
 fiance. He is only a man, and he would pooh- 
 pooh them, and prove that they are wrong, 
 and foolish, and cold-blooded, and you would 
 at least wish to believe him ; but they really are 
 right, and sensible, and oh, so wise! Besides 
 which, they are fairly maudlin with soft- 
 heartedness !
 
 XXXV 
 
 "A COUNSEL OF PERFECTION" 
 
 This is the last, my dear; positively the last. 
 I will even promise when I see you next w^eek 
 to go through all the wedding as if I were the 
 most frivolous creature alive. I won't bore you 
 with the very least bit of advice. Somehow in 
 my last letter, however, I got off the track, and 
 of course I have to finish what I started to say. 
 I meant to say something of the way in which 
 a wife is to make what Dean Swift — crabbed 
 old cynic ! — would call a cage ; in other 
 words, a home. 
 
 Some time, I think, I shall have to write 
 a book on husband-breaking and husband- 
 keeping, and when I do, I shall divide the 
 means of managing a husband into three 
 principal divisions : Making a Man Comfort- 
 able; Being Honest; Amusing a Man. Other 
 heads might easily be thought of, but these 
 seem to me to cover the ground with sufficient
 
 294 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 completeness. If these three are properly ob- 
 served, the marriage is sure to be happy. 
 
 For the sake of seeming thorough and sys- 
 tematic in my manual, I shall divide into 
 sub-heads. I shall put under comfort, for in- 
 stance, Food; Peace; and Little Ways. Then 
 I shall discourse wisely, persuasively, inspir- 
 ingly, under each topic. I spare you most of 
 the book, but as it may never be written, I 
 cannot let you off entirely. My conscience 
 would reproach me too much for having de- 
 prived you of so much esoteric knowledge on 
 matrimony. 
 
 Girls never realize the importance to the 
 masculine animal of feeding. Many a girl 
 have I known to lose excellent chances be- 
 cause at parties she foolishly made the man 
 feed her instead of collecting provender for 
 himself. One of the most useful social lessons 
 I ever had was from an old lady who told me, 
 when I was a young girl, to learn to go hungry 
 rather than to have my partner remain un- 
 gorged. I learned after very little experience 
 that the surest way to be popular was to say 
 to my escort at any party where supper had to
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 295 
 
 be skirmished for by the men: "Oh, I'm not 
 hungry. Get me a sandwich, or anything, and 
 then look after something for yourself." I 
 have gone hungry many a time, and more than 
 once my inward cravings have been made 
 worse by a distant view of my partner solacing 
 his soul on all the delicacies of the season, 
 while I scantily nourished myself on a dry and 
 meagre sandwich; but it paid. I never lacked 
 for a supper partner, no matter how scarce 
 men were. The boys told each other that I 
 gave a fellow a chance to get things to eat, so 
 there was some fun taking me out to supper. 
 Such is masculine frailty, my dear; and wise 
 is the woman who knows it, and takes account 
 of it. 
 
 The importance of feeding a husband well 
 has been dwelt upon by many an inspired 
 writer, and the fresh and profound remarks 
 with which I shall in my book on husband- 
 taming illuminate the well-worn theme, I 
 shall not set down here. It is enough for me 
 to urge you to remember that the old saying 
 about the way to a man's heart being through 
 his stomach is practically true, — except in
 
 296 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 the numerous cases where a man's heart is in 
 his stomach, so that the road ends there. All 
 other virtues, moreover, will in a man endure 
 fasting better than love. In the masculine 
 calendar of affection is no provision for a 
 Lent! 
 
 Under the sub-head of Peace I shall dis- 
 course upon the restiveness of men under any 
 form of feminine persistence, and the entire 
 revolt of any husband under pressure of fem- 
 inine nagging. A nagging wife is the most in- 
 genious torment ever invented by the Fiend, 
 and I have many a time wondered at the 
 patience with which men endure wives that 
 nag away at them like gad-flies. The women 
 who read my book will not belong to that 
 detestable class, but they may need to have 
 their attention called to the fact that often a 
 wife should hold her tongue when she has a 
 perfectly logical right to s})eak. She is to recog- 
 nize that her speaking may simply irritate her 
 spouse, and in that case can do no possible 
 good. Men are constantly saying that women 
 are not logical, but no logic can make a man 
 see that a reminder to him of having loft a duty
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 297 
 
 undone is justifiable. A conscientious wife is 
 apt to be so possessed with the idea of duty 
 as constantly to be in danger of lessening her 
 influence and alienating her husband by in- 
 sisting upon giving good advice unseasonably. 
 Never urge any course on your husband unless 
 you have a fair reason to suppose you can 
 effect some good. To remonstrate with a man 
 for the sake of freeing yourself from a sense of 
 responsibility, or, what is far more common 
 and far worse, to relieve your exasperation at 
 his shortcomings, is at once the height of self- 
 ishness and of stupidity. 
 
 Wives are, as a body, wonderfully generous 
 in sparing their husbands worry over the 
 details of domestic life. I have known hosts 
 of women, teased and perplexed over difficul- 
 ties in home affairs, who have shown their 
 husbands only a smiling face, and hidden all 
 annoyance. It is hardly just, perhaps, that 
 women should have to bear so many of their 
 burdens alone; but it is to be remembered 
 that the men have their own bothers that we 
 could n't understand enough to be any help 
 in. The inevitable feminine desire to talk
 
 298 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 about our troubles, and to be pitied — to 
 make somebody else uncomfortable because 
 we are perplexed and tired — is pure selfish- 
 ness and petty weakness. I've done it, I am 
 ashamed to confess; but I've been so humili- 
 ated afterward that I decided that it did not 
 pay. 
 
 The importance of the Little Ways of men 
 has never been properly appreciated as an 
 element in matrimonial comfort. Sherman 
 has a whim — he could n't tell you why — to 
 have the articles on his dressing-table stand 
 in certain positions. No servant that ever lived 
 can be trusted to see to a detail like that. 
 Every morning of my life, after the maid has 
 done his room, I go in and set things as he 
 likes them. Men have as many freaks and 
 whims as women, only they do not fuss about 
 them so much. They are apt, too, to be more 
 tenacious in their tastes than we are; and if a 
 wife once knows her husband's little ways, she 
 seldom has to learn an entirely new set, as 
 sometimes happens on the other side of the 
 house. Men are as pleased and soothed by 
 having their little tastes gratified as a cat is
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 299 
 
 by being stroked. Often the men are so fun- 
 nily dull that they hardly know they have 
 any preference, and still less do they notice 
 that trouble has been taken to gratify it; but 
 they unconsciously get to be comfortable and 
 pleased, and in the end nothing ministers more 
 to their good-nature, or more tends to make 
 them feel that somehow their home is about 
 the best place there is. 
 
 I must warn you, as emphatically as I can, 
 that it is entirely idle for a wife to expect a hus- 
 band to appreciate her trouble, or her thought, 
 or her skill, in looking after all the trifling 
 details of his existence. She must be content 
 with results, and if she look for definite 
 gratitude, she spoils all. You stroke a cat, and 
 the beast purrs; you stroke a man, and he 
 simply becomes amiable and easy to live with. 
 It would never occur to him to make any 
 expression of gratitude so definite as a purr. 
 
 It should be one of the first concerns of a 
 bride carefully to study what her husband 
 likes. She is not to ask him, for in the first 
 place he would disclaim having any particular 
 little fancies, and in the second he is very sel-
 
 300 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 dom able to tell if he would. Men are n't 
 clever about themselves, and the woman must 
 use her wut to find out things for herself. This 
 need of studying a husband is constantly 
 preached; but is generally meant to apply 
 to matters of obvious weight. The real and 
 important application is to the minute and 
 apparently trivial details of daily life. 
 
 The second great division of my subject — 
 I 've got it written out on a piece of paper, so 
 that I can be systematic — was. Being Honest. 
 No woman who is not a fool tells her husband 
 everything. The old fol-de-rol talk about 
 there being no secrets between those who love 
 is idiocy and nonsense. What I mean by hon- 
 esty is not your forcing your husband to know 
 every trumpery thing you have in mind. I 
 have squarely refused to tell Sherman things 
 that he wanted to know: but I have always 
 made him feel that I had reasons for keeping 
 silent that were to be respected. Honesty be- 
 tween husband and wife is that entire integrity 
 which enforces respect. The husband must 
 believe that his wife could die in slow tortures, 
 but could n't lie to him. He must have abso-
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 301 
 
 lute faith in her deahng with him without the 
 shadow of trickery or deception. To dwell on 
 this would make my letter so heavy that a con- 
 sideration of extra postage forces me to stop; 
 but the husband and wife who do not believe 
 in the honesty of each other to each other must 
 be a wretched pair. They must at best supply 
 the place of love with a poor makeshift. 
 
 Men — to come to the last item of my 
 sermon — must be amused. They must be 
 amused sometimes against their will ; and yet 
 it is idle to suppose a man can be trained to 
 like that against which his natural tastes rebel. 
 If your husband does not really like going to 
 the theatre, or going to dinners, or any other 
 form of diversion, do not suppose you can 
 make him like it by keeping him at it. You 
 may have to drag him about somewhat for 
 the sake of preventing his falling into a rut, or 
 for the sake of keeping yourself sufficiently in 
 touch with the world to be entertaining; but 
 put it down to his credit as self-denial, and 
 don't make the mistake of thinking he is really 
 pleased when he is n't. The woman who is 
 fond of social life when her husband is not
 
 302 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 should devote herself to exaggerating every 
 social sacrifice he makes for her. She may be 
 able to bring him to the point when the idea 
 of self-denial, of being a martyr, of having 
 made so great concessions to his wife's happi- 
 ness, will appeal to him so strongly as to make 
 him rejoice in a social function as an occasion 
 on which he may add one more star to his 
 crown of marital sainthood! Sometimes, in 
 this roundabout way, men may be amused 
 even by the things they do not like! 
 
 Be amusing at home, my child, whatever 
 you are elsewhere. Tell your husband the 
 funny story you heard at luncheon, the news 
 you picked up in the course of your calls, the 
 good thing you read. The worst possible mis- 
 take you can make in regard to any man you 
 marry is to suppose — this is what I said 
 pages back, I don't remember just where, and 
 at any rate I must repeat it to enforce it on 
 your mind — that his love will last. It will 
 not; it has to be recreated, and the triumph 
 of womanhood is to recreate it as often as it 
 dies, just as the sun again and again makes a 
 new day.
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 303 
 
 I consider that rather a poetic flourish, and 
 I should stop with it, only I am afraid you will 
 rebel against my saying love has to be recre- 
 ated; so I will put it another way, and say 
 that in the natural course of earthly events love 
 would die, and it is the part of the wife to 
 nourish it until with it grows up a friendship, 
 a comradeship, a mutual necessity of husband 
 and wife for each other, which lasts as long as 
 life. Put it any way you please, so long as you 
 realize and in your conduct of life recognize 
 that the love of your husband is a thing to be 
 looked after with at least as much and as con- 
 stant care as the style of your gowns, and that 
 it must be watered and tended like a choice 
 plant if it is to be kept alive. 
 
 Heavens! How flowery I am getting, and 
 how my metaphors mix themselves in spite of 
 me ! The theme is too big for me ; I shall never 
 write my great book on husbands. But bring 
 Mr. Ashmore on a visit as soon after you are 
 married as possible, and let me look him over. 
 I can then tell you more in an hour than I 
 could write in a week. Men are all alike, my 
 dear, — of course after their individual kinds;
 
 304 THE COUNSELS OF 
 
 and women are all different. That gives us 
 an enormous advantage, and if we were only 
 clever enough to use this, we might easily and 
 absolutely rule the world. However, we do 
 come fairly near to doing that, as it is. We can 
 classify men, and know how they are likely to 
 act, while they are always in the dark until 
 they have taken each distinct woman and 
 studied her by herself; and by the time they 
 know anything about her, very likely she has 
 completely changed, or it is too late for the 
 knowledge to be of much use anyway. And 
 the beauty of it is that we can't spoil things 
 by telling the men all about ourselves. We 
 should be fools enough to do it when we are 
 in love, but fortunately we can't, for we don't 
 know ! 
 
 A matrimonial world is like England, 
 always best under the feminine rule ; and you 
 shall have a fair chance to rule your world, 
 my child, if you will come, and act on my 
 advice. I do not in the least mind boasting, 
 or seeming conceited, because I know I can 
 make my promises good. Come early, before 
 your matrimonial habits are settled, for I am
 
 A WORLDLY GODMOTHER 305 
 
 anxious you should begin well. If you will be 
 guided, though I say it who should leave it to 
 others to say, you will have reason all your life 
 long to bless the Fates that, whatever else they 
 did or did not do for you, they blessed your lot 
 with a worldly godmother!
 
 ^be Ritaetisilie prcsiS 
 
 EUctrotyped and printed by H. O. Houghton <2r» Co 
 Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A.
 
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