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 HOUSE HEAD 
 
 NORMAN BRIDGE
 
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 U^'-i ^^EKcM'i'Y 
 
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 L03 ANGELES 
 LIBRARY
 
 House Health
 
 House Health 
 
 AND OTHER PAPERS 
 
 BY 
 
 NORMAN BRIDGE, M.D. 
 
 Author of "The Penalties of Taste," 
 "The Rewards of Taste," etc. 
 
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 NEW YORK 
 
 DUFFIELD ^ COMPANY 
 
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 COPYRIGHT, 1907, BY 
 DUFFIELD & COMPANY 
 
 Published, August, 1907 
 
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 THE TROW PRESS, NEW YORK
 
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 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 House Health i 
 
 ^-^ Human Talk 21 
 
 ■X The Blind Side of the Average Parent . 55 
 
 jj Some Commencement Ideals . . . -93 
 
 A Domestic Clearing House .... 121 
 
 The True Gospel of Sleep .... 143 
 
 V Some Unconceded Rights of Parents and 
 
 ^ Children 163 
 
 The Trained Nurse and the Larger Life . 187
 
 House Health
 
 House Health 
 
 Despite all effort to the contrary people 
 will occasionally fall sick. There are two ca- 
 lamities that we seem powerless wholly to 
 prevent ; namely, the occasional burning of 
 our houses and the frequent sicknesses of our 
 mortal bodies. Many of us try at great care 
 and expense and with varying wisdom and 
 ignorance to stand off these evils, and with 
 differing success. 
 
 Disease is most prevalent among the poor, 
 especially the very poor. This is largely due 
 to their unhygienic lives ; and much of this 
 latter is represented by their unsanitary dwell- 
 ings, by their extreme and often needless ex- 
 posure to certain causes of disease, by lack of 
 proper food, and by the debilitating personal 
 habits of some of them. The personal habits 
 of the average rich, however, are nearly as 
 potent in producing disease. 
 
 3
 
 HOUSE HEALTH 
 
 The influences that cause these conditions 
 are presumably not numerous, and they are 
 easily catalogued. First is bad ventilation of 
 houses, especially in cold weather. Most of 
 even the rich, who do not need to be terrified 
 by their coal bills, live with insufficient ventila- 
 tion of their dwellings. More than i,ooo cubic 
 feet of fresh air per hour for each person 
 should enter the house for even fair ventila- 
 tion. Not one house in a thousand in cold 
 weather fulfills this condition, or a quarter 
 of it ; and hardly a single house among the 
 poor, unless it is unavoidable by reason of 
 cracks and other openings that cannot be 
 stopped. The rule is to batten up every crack 
 and stop every opening. Weather strips are 
 wrongly supposed to be a necessity in every 
 house in cold climates. If not weather strips, 
 then rags, paper, or old clothes are used — any- 
 thing to keep out every current of fresh air. 
 
 The bad air causes disease in various ways, 
 chiefly by first producing debility and lessened 
 power of resistance to the various microbic en- 
 emies that are always waiting to stab the body 
 at its most vulnerable point. Thus easily fol- 
 low colds, poor digestion, and all its attendant 
 ills, while several infectious diseases develop 
 most easily. The power for work is also im- 
 paired, and so come lessened wages with a 
 
 4 
 
 J
 
 HOUSE HEALTH 
 
 reduction of food and other comforts. The 
 contagious diseases are always more prevalent 
 as well as more fatal in cold weather, because 
 the living poison that causes them is concen- 
 trated in unventilated rooms, and the victims 
 take in large doses thereof. It is safe to say 
 that the breathing of bad air produces, di- 
 rectly and indirectly, more disease, especially 
 among the poor, than all other influences com- 
 bined. 
 
 Perhaps second in importance is the danger 
 from disease germs entering the body in wa- 
 ter, milk, and other foods, most of which 
 germs have been expelled from the bodies of 
 the sick. Of these the tuberculous and the ty- 
 phoid germs are the most important. Nu- 
 merous epidemics of typhoid fever have been 
 definitely traced to food and water, and they 
 were, we now know, substantially all of them 
 avoidable. 
 
 The dust that rises from carpets, rugs, and 
 hangings in houses is a prolific source of dis- 
 ease, especially of tuberculosis. Bacilli of tu- 
 berculosis in the sputum of the sick, and dis- 
 ease germs of other kinds and from other 
 sources, lodge on such objects, chiefly the car- 
 pets and rugs, and, as dust, are thrown into 
 the air by every footfall or movement of these 
 things. Where the ventilation is abundant, 
 
 5
 
 HOUSE HEALTH 
 
 as in the open houses of summer, the danger 
 is least, but in the dwellings of the poor in 
 cold weather there is little or no ventilation, 
 and this cause of disease has there its most 
 sweeping and fatal effects. Tuberculosis is 
 enormously prevalent. Numerous cases may 
 originate from a single house where a bad 
 case has been harbored. One after another 
 the susceptible occupants of the house take the 
 disease, each having inhaled the bacilli left by 
 his predecessor, and each in turn leaving his 
 own contribution toward the destruction of 
 those who come after him. And all this des- 
 olation results from the ignorance or apathy 
 of the people, mostly the ignorance and the 
 apathy. 
 
 Flies and mosquitoes often bring disease to 
 people. Flies carry typhoid germs on their be- 
 smeared feet from infected body excretions to 
 our food supply ; they also distribute tubercu- 
 losis in similar ways, while malaria and yellow 
 fever among the diseases are, in the light of 
 our present-day knowledge, solely distributed 
 by certain varieties of mosquitoes. 
 
 A fourth cause of disease is poor food, often 
 poorly, even foolishly prepared, and too much 
 stimulation. People mostly cook and other- 
 wise prepare their foods for the pleasure of 
 their taste, which in itself is proper, for it 
 
 6
 
 HOUSE HEALTH 
 
 helps digestion, but they pay little attention 
 to the need of cooking for the digestibility of 
 foods and the getting of the greatest amount 
 of nourishment out of them and into the tis- 
 sues of the body. So appetite is conserved, if 
 not worshiped, while indigestion is brought 
 on and physical depreciation as a conse- 
 quence. Hence, much sickness comes and 
 lowering of the standard of vigor of the race. 
 Vast quantities of stimulants (tea, coffee, to- 
 bacco, and alcoholics) are taken for the same 
 reason — because the people like the immediate 
 effect of pleasure they produce, not for any 
 lasting benefit, for there is none. Similarly 
 they indulge in various other physical excesses 
 for the immediate pleasure of them, and often 
 to their permanent harm. 
 
 Great benefit in more comforts and less 
 sickness would come to people by better 
 housing and hygiene. The needed reforms 
 are few in number and they are not expen- 
 sive, but some of them are so radical in char- 
 acter as to appear to conservative minds revo- 
 lutionary. 
 
 The first reform to be thought of is not 
 better houses, but better ventilation of houses, 
 such as they are, and especially of sleeping 
 rooms. It matters, perhaps, little which of 
 several methods of ventilation is resorted to, 
 
 7
 
 HOUSE HEALTH 
 
 but a natural method for the poor is of cheap 
 construction of houses with the main floor 
 well above the ground, and with numerous 
 cracks and crannies for the admission of air. 
 Plastering is not essential ; board walls will 
 do, even rather loose board walls. Weather 
 strips are, as usually employed, an enemy of 
 the race ; the poverty that sometimes deprives 
 us of them is life giving. No attempt should 
 be made to keep the house heat above 60° or 
 65° F, People, young and old, can endure this 
 easily when they are accustomed to it, and 
 they should, as they easily can, learn to enjoy 
 it. Vicious, indeed, is the habit of keeping 
 room temperature in cold weather at 80° 
 or above. The usual amount of fuel may well 
 be used in winter, the lower temperature rep- 
 resenting better ventilation. And the better 
 air to breathe will enable the inmates of a 
 house to endure the lower temperature with- 
 out discomfort. The only other provision 
 necessary is, in the case of the weakly ones, 
 more clothing of the person, especially of the 
 feet and legs. 
 
 The sleeping rooms should never be closed 
 against the admission of fresh air. To say the 
 night is cold is never a reason for shutting 
 out all ventilation through the windows. Ar- 
 tificial heat is not needed in the sleeping rooms 
 
 8
 
 HOUSE HEALTH 
 
 of well people, but is usually a harm. It is 
 perfectly possible to fix any well person in 
 bed so that he can sleep in comfort in a cold 
 room, even with zero temperature. If the bed- 
 clothes are scanty a few newspapers laid be- 
 tween the blankets will take the place of quilts 
 and keep the sleeper warm. 
 
 I know it will be said by some critics that 
 such a program as this is cruel and imprac- 
 ticable, but the success of the modern treat- 
 ment of tuberculosis by the outdoor, pure air 
 management has shown that it is easy for del- 
 icate patients to endure such measures, not 
 merely with comfort but with great pleasure 
 as well as benefit. And if a consumptive can 
 do it, certainly it ought to be easy for other 
 invalids and for the well people to thrive 
 upon it. 
 
 The bedroom air should be so pure always 
 that, to the nostrils of a person coming in 
 from out of doors, it will never seem stuffy ; 
 and over the faces of the sleepers the air 
 should never be still — still air means breath- 
 ing many times over the pollution of one's 
 own respiration — in other words one should 
 always be in a draught, never out of it ; there 
 is no other safe rule. A draught of air does 
 not produce colds ; it prevents them. Colds 
 come of lowered vitality, fatigue, indigestion, 
 
 9
 
 HOUSE HEALTH 
 
 and disease-producing germs that abound in 
 confined house air. 
 
 Consumptives even sleep out of doors and 
 in tents with the flaps open, in zero weather, 
 and with the greatest satisfaction. This lat- 
 ter has been done during several recent win- 
 ters in some colonies of tuberculous patients 
 in northern States, and not one of them suf- 
 fered injury from the experience. The only 
 artificial heat the tents had was that of ker- 
 osene stoves or small wood stoves, with fire 
 only while the occupants were undressing for 
 bed at night, and while they were dressing in 
 the morning. The patients in some of these 
 resorts have had the option of sleeping in 
 houses during the coldest weather, but elected 
 to stay in their tents. 
 
 In order to conserve health to the greatest 
 degree possible, houses should be free from 
 carpets, rugs, cloth hangings, and upholstered 
 furniture. Only so radical a rule as this can 
 minimize to the utmost the distribution of dust 
 poisons to the inmates. If the floors are cov- 
 ered at all, it had best be with linoleum or 
 some other material with a flat surface, free 
 from meshes, and thus incapable of hiding 
 dust. The best covering of all is good paint, 
 renewed if possible every year. Nor does such 
 absence of the customary so-called comforts 
 
 zo
 
 HOUSE HEALTH 
 
 in the house need to lessen seriously the real 
 physical enjoyment of living within it ; its chief 
 disadvantage is in the violation of custom, the 
 outrage upon fashion, the refuge from which 
 is courage and independence. But there is 
 growing now a fashion to do without these 
 disease-spreading luxuries, as the cult of bet- 
 ter ventilation and outdoor life, and sleeping 
 out of doors, is increasing rapidly among the 
 most thoughtful. So rapidly is this fashion 
 spreading that it is likely, by its benefits to 
 the physical lives of our people, to increase 
 their average longevity to a degree that will, 
 within two decades, actually show in the cen- 
 sus figures. 
 
 One luxury the poor man should have is 
 screens for his windows and doors, in summer 
 time, against the flies and mosquitoes. The 
 screens are more than paid for by the lessened 
 annoyance, to say nothing of the protection 
 against disease, which is a positive benefit. 
 The prevention, in the day time, of the inocu- 
 lation of his food with disease germs by the 
 flies of summer, returns many fold the cost 
 of the few inexpensive screens of wire or 
 cotton netting that cover the door and win- 
 dow openings ; and fencing out the mosquitoes 
 for the comfort of the night increases the 
 sleep of the house occupants, to the great 
 
 II
 
 HOUSE HEALTH 
 
 benefit of their health, temper, and working 
 capacity. 
 
 That these insect pests distribute among the 
 people at least four infectious diseases has 
 been demonstrated beyond question ; and there 
 is strong reason to suspect that further investi- 
 gation will show that still other diseases, which 
 have long puzzled the pathologists, are dis- 
 seminated in this way. 
 
 The average layman is almost wholly un- 
 informed of the importance of fencing these 
 insects out of his house. There needs to be 
 a concerted missionar\' movement of educa- 
 tion in this direction, by those who know, in 
 the interest of those who do not know. The 
 relatively trifling cost of this protection keeps 
 thousands of families from enjoying benefits 
 that cannot be counted in money; and nearly 
 all of them spend every summer, in needless 
 if not foolish indulgences, ten times as much 
 as their mosquito netting would cost. Pro- 
 tection against flies and mosquitoes ought to 
 be encouraged by law, and preached as a doc- 
 trine of sanitary morals, and as a part of per- 
 sonal religion. 
 
 The protection of milk and drinking water 
 from typhoid and other poisons is less a part 
 of house sanitation than of general sanitary 
 interest to the community, but it is of the 
 
 12
 
 HOUSE HEALTH 
 
 greatest possible importance. The purity of 
 the water supply of lakes, rivers, and wells, 
 and the protection of milk cans from wash- 
 ings with contaminated water, have made a 
 large chapter in all recent discussions of per- 
 sonal and public hygiene. Their importance 
 can hardly be overestimated, but in general 
 the poor rarely have the means of protecting 
 themselves from these dangers, except by boil- 
 ing their water and their milk before drinking 
 them. An immense gain would be made if 
 all the people could know that these dangers 
 often exist, and that they can be avoided by 
 so simple a means — only the milk should not 
 be boiled, but heated to 170° F., for the boil- 
 ing point changes its taste and lessens its di- 
 gestibility. Lately it has been discovered that 
 a little metallic copper immersed in drinking 
 water for a few hours destroys all the typhoid 
 germs it may contain, without injury to the 
 potability of the water. So here is a possible 
 easy means of protection from typhoid poison. 
 But it has its drawbacks, one of which is that, 
 as it is so easy a remedy, it is likely to be for- 
 gotten at the very time it is most needed. An- 
 other objection to it is that dependence upon 
 it is likely to lead to a relaxation in the gen- 
 eral watchfulness over the water supply itself. 
 Typhoid- fever germs are believed to be oc- 
 
 13
 
 HOUSE HEALTH 
 
 casionally brought into the house on lettuce 
 leaves, strawberries, and other vegetables that 
 have grown on or in the ground. These 
 things are usually eaten uncooked, and so may 
 be dangerous. Sewer water used to fertilize 
 the plants is almost the sole source of these 
 germs. Perfect protection against them can 
 be secured by washing the edibles with a five- 
 per-cent solution of tartaric acid — a harmless 
 substance that enters into our common cook- 
 ery. The solution is made by adding a heap- 
 ing teaspoonful of the acid to a pint of water. 
 After thorough washing of the foods in the 
 solution, or their immersion in it for five min- 
 utes, it is easily rinsed off completely with 
 pure water, leaving not a particle of its sour 
 taste, nor changing the taste of the foods. 
 Even a little of the sour taste is not objection- 
 able; tartaric acid is quite as harmless to the 
 system as vinegar. 
 
 The health of the people would be vastly 
 improved by certain reforms in eating and 
 drinking, but such reforms, like all reforms 
 in our daily habits, are difficult of accomplish- 
 ment. 
 
 Much of our food is poorly prepared by 
 cooking and otherwise, whereby we get too 
 little nutriment out of it, and with such effort 
 on the part of the digestive organs as to im- 
 
 14
 
 HOUSE HEALTH 
 
 pair their powers, as well as the powers of 
 life. Meat should be cooked with two definite 
 objects in view : to kill parasites in its sub- 
 stance (as of trichina and tapeworm), and 
 to render it easy to comminute by chewing; 
 seasoning will always render it palatable. But 
 we often overcook our meats, even burn them, 
 and render them tough and indigestible. The 
 most nutritious meat is often the toughest 
 and cheapest, like round steak. Such ought 
 to form a large part of the meat diet of the 
 poor, but it should be minced artificially. One 
 of the most profitable implements in any house 
 is a grinding machine for meat. It costs 
 little, and its saving to the family, in a house- 
 hold where it is used to the best advantage, 
 is every year many hundred per centum of 
 its cost. It obviates the need of much chew- 
 ing of meat ; it prevents indigestion, and gives 
 to the body the largest amount of the meat 
 pabulum that is possible. It is substantially 
 true that meat for all children should be finely 
 ground for them, for children as a rule chew 
 their meat very little more than the carniv- 
 orous animals do; they swallow it in chunks 
 which are poorly digested, and this is un- 
 profitable as well as unhealthful. 
 
 Many families waste their soup bones, and 
 deprive themselves thus of one of the most 
 
 15
 
 HOUSE HEALTH 
 
 nutritious and digestible foods and one that 
 is easily prepared. They fry ham and make 
 it indigestible, when it could be made both 
 palatable and digestible by boiling. They fry 
 or boil their eggs hard, when they can be 
 curdled more easily and made perfectly di- 
 gestible. They eat fresh bread and hot bis- 
 cuits to the harm of their stomachs and the 
 waste of their substance, when stale bread 
 has a better taste and is a perfect food. They 
 laudably try to get good milk and then take 
 pains to prevent it from souring, with the idea 
 that souring spoils it for use as human food 
 — they even feed it to the pigs because it is 
 sour. But the best people of our own South 
 have long since demonstrated that sour milk, 
 otherwise clabber, is one of the best of foods, 
 as well as one of the most palatable of them 
 all. This conclusion has been confirmed by 
 modern medical science. 
 
 The betterment of the food and a reduction 
 in the use of stimulants by the people is a 
 perennial subject for argument and exhorta- 
 tion. Progress is slow, if, indeed, there is 
 progress, which there probably is; and plain 
 and rational living, which means scientific liv- 
 ing, must be advocated in season and out of 
 season for the better health and greater hap- 
 piness of the race. This advocacy is good 
 
 i6
 
 HOUSE HEALTH 
 
 for the people who make it, and of some help 
 to those for whom it is made. But the de- 
 mand for these reforms is insignificant by 
 comparison with the need of more fresh air 
 in the houses, especially the little houses with 
 cramped rooms and mean quarters. 
 
 Other improvements that are greatly 
 needed in the dwellings of the poor are : high- 
 er ceilings and more cubic feet of space for 
 each occupant ; more sunlight through more 
 and better windows ; improvements in chim- 
 neys, fireplaces, and stoves, so that there will 
 be less carbonic oxide and other products of 
 combustion for the inmates to breathe ; fewer 
 candles, lamps, and gas jets for light, and 
 more incandescent electric lamps, to lessen the 
 contamination of the house air; and finally 
 more cheerful interiors and exteriors of dwell- 
 ings. These considerations are important ; 
 but they lose nine-tenths of their urgency in 
 the presence of good ventilation, and good 
 ventilation is many times more vital and health- 
 giving than all of them together. Fresh air 
 is so universally absent in every house where 
 it can, by any prejudice or fear, be shut out, 
 that it stands to-day as the one paramount 
 want in dwellings and places of assembly. 
 With it, the stoves will draw better, the rooms 
 will be found large enough and the ceilings 
 
 17
 
 HOUSE HEALTH 
 
 will be high enough, and the homes will have 
 the best ornamentation of all : namely, better 
 health and more vigor, fewer colds and more 
 cheerfulness on the part of the occupants. It 
 will be of less consequence whether the floor 
 is above the earth or whether it is the earth. 
 
 There is a widespread intense fear among 
 our people, rich and poor alike, of some pos- 
 sible baneful effect of fresh air, of good ven- 
 tilation and draughts, and especially of the 
 cleanest and purest air of all; namely, the 
 night air. With many of them this fear is 
 more absorbing and abiding than their dread 
 of sin and death, or of the great hereafter. 
 This fear has been handed down from gen- 
 eration to generation like a truth that is sacred 
 — ^but it is not a truth and it is not sacred ; it 
 is a very vile and death-breeding prejudice 
 that can be swept away only by constant argu- 
 ments, example, and insistence. 
 
 Of the other needs I have named, sunlight 
 is the only one that ventilation cannot wholly 
 substitute. Sunlight is health-giving and 
 ought to enter every dwelling, but its chief 
 value is in its power to destroy pathogenic 
 microbes, and if the microbes are absent by 
 exclusion of insects, the suppression of dust, 
 the absence of sickness, and by good ventila- 
 tion, then the sunlight is not vital, save for 
 
 i8
 
 HOUSE HEALTH 
 
 its effect on those who rarely or never go out 
 of doors ; and even to them it is incomparably 
 less important than fresh air. Where there 
 are coughing tuberculous patients, of course 
 sunlight is in the highest degree desirable, 
 for it has power to destroy the germs of the 
 disease ; and this is one of its greatest values 
 in inclosures of all sorts ; that is, to guard 
 against tuberculosis in the house. But the av- 
 erage room in good houses can have sunshine 
 only a short time any day ; hardly long enough 
 to kill accumulating tubercle bacilli ; the great- 
 est benefits of daylight and sunlight are and 
 must always be experienced out of doors. 
 
 Thus the gospel of the best health and the 
 least sickness is outdoor air and the daylight 
 and sunlight of out of doors. In proportion 
 as our houses bring these blessings within 
 them are we well and wholesomely housed ; 
 in so far as they are shut out are we poorly 
 housed. Our theory is wrong which holds 
 that man is fortunate in proportion as he is 
 able to cover himself with a tightly built house. 
 The truth is that almost in proportion as he 
 gets back to nature in the open, or, if you 
 please, back somewhat toward barbarism, does 
 he have the best health and the longest life. 
 
 When a rich man leaves his mansion and 
 builds himself a shack in the wilderness that 
 
 19
 
 HOUSE HEALTH 
 
 he may have for a brief period the greatest 
 of earth's benefits, it is called luxury ; but 
 when a poor man must live in a shack because 
 he can have no other or supposedly better 
 house, it is called hardship ; and we are flooded 
 with pathetic laments against the fate that 
 compels innocent people, even children, to live 
 in houses through whose cracks the winds of 
 winter whistle and sprinkle snow on the beds 
 of the sleepers. 
 
 As long as such heresies last the reforming 
 philanthropist has work ahead of him. He 
 may well devote his energy to a campaign of 
 education against this sort of foolishness. 
 And he may remember for his soul's comfort 
 that few greater services are ever done for 
 any man than to show him that some of the 
 things which he regards as his misfortunes are 
 really his blessings. 
 
 20
 
 Human Talk
 
 Human Talk 
 
 Man is the animal that talks, and a large 
 part of such education as he has is devoted 
 to the cultivation of his speech and the uses 
 of it. Sometimes the whole of his education 
 is of this sort. The literature of the talk of 
 man is varied and enormous, and is the ac- 
 cumulation of ages. It would seem as if every 
 side of the subject must have been studied 
 and threshed over to the last analysis. But 
 this is not the case and cannot be. Evolution 
 of the language goes on with that of the race ; 
 and evolution will not stop even though we try 
 to make it. There always is, therefore, and 
 probably always will be, a new word to be 
 uttered upon this absorbing subject. 
 
 Much attention has been given to the art 
 of conversation and to the graces of elegant 
 speech, as well as to the value of a large vo- 
 cabulary. Races, peoples, and individuals us- 
 
 23
 
 HUMAN TALK 
 
 ing the largest number of words and the most 
 varied forms of speech have had, other things 
 being equal, most power in the world. This 
 is rational, for words are among our working 
 tools, and those who have most words, other- 
 wise the largest capacity for communication 
 of ideas, are likely to be best equipped in the 
 struggles of life. Great power to phrase ideas 
 helps to the creation of them, and leads to 
 thought, and so gives the inside track in the 
 world race. But this fact is only incidental 
 to the art called conversation, and for this 
 latter a large vocabulary is not necessary; 
 with the bare knowledge of a hundred words 
 some people can converse beautifully; nor 
 does the size of the vocabulary account for the 
 revelations that a man unconsciously makes 
 about himself when he talks. And many of 
 these revelations are worth studying, for they 
 are marvelous. 
 
 There is, among people in general, a vast 
 amount of ignorance about their speech in 
 many of its phases. For example, we know 
 very little about the physical production of 
 speech ; most of us are ignorant of the way 
 sounds are produced and syllables made by 
 the human voice, how the different organs of 
 speech, the lips, teeth, tongue, palate, and vo- 
 cal cords operate, and how their actions are 
 
 24
 
 HUMAN TALK 
 
 coordinated. Few among even thoughtful 
 people ever think of this side of the subject, 
 not to say study it. In childhood we learn 
 to talk mimetically, we never know how or 
 why; and on reaching years of maturity we 
 mostly continue in the same ignorance. 
 Asked oflfhand to state the difference in the 
 vocal creation — the mechanism of production 
 — of the sounds of the letters m and n, or of p, 
 d, or b, or of the syllables ko and go, and not 
 one educated man in twenty, if indeed one 
 in a hundred, could tell readily and correctly. 
 The coordination of many phonetic sounds 
 into some thousands of combinations required 
 for correct speech in any language constitutes 
 a maze of physical and nervous mechanism 
 that is altogether beyond the grasp of most of 
 us. Few students ever attempt to grasp it; 
 and to some of them the fact that the vocal 
 tones are all made by the vibration of two thin 
 strings in the larynx comes as a piece of sur- 
 prising information. 
 
 Nothing better illustrates our abounding 
 ignorance of this side of the subject than our 
 toleration of certain impediments of speech. 
 Perhaps the commonest one, and surely the 
 most discreditable one, is lisping. This dis- 
 figures the talk of many people through life, 
 and is usually, and mistakenly, thought to be 
 
 25
 
 HUMAN TALK 
 
 due to some defect in the vocal organs. Ask 
 a hundred educated men and women as you 
 meet them, how to correct Hsping, and not 
 two will tell you — while most of them will 
 declare that it cannot be done. Some phy- 
 sicians and voice teachers there are who do 
 not know any better ; a few of these are them- 
 selves lifelong lispers. But the worst lisper 
 can learn in a few minutes to speak correctly 
 if he will observe even casually how he makes 
 his own sibilant sounds with the tongue and 
 upper teeth, and how normal speakers use the 
 two sets of front teeth without the tongue. 
 Lisping is a hissing outrage upon the lan- 
 guage, a despicably unnecessary blemish of 
 speech; and most of the other so-called im- 
 pediments are just as needless to normal 
 mouths, if not quite so easily correctible. 
 
 Ignorant as we are of the way we vocally 
 form our words, we as poorly comprehend the 
 methods and motives underlying the subject- 
 matter of much of the talk of mankind. This 
 latter is the psychologic side and is gen- 
 erally supposed to be simple and easily under- 
 stood, but it is complicated beyond expression. 
 Talk is said to reveal the man ; it does, but 
 often as much by what it omits as by what 
 it utters, and even by the very contraries of 
 the latter. 
 
 26
 
 HUMAN TALK 
 
 Many of the mental aspects of man as a 
 talking animal have been dealt with in fiction 
 — indeed, large novels by some of the masters 
 have been almost wholly devoted to the talk 
 of the people of their plots, with plentiful dis- 
 cussion of the psychologic phases, and these 
 have helped us to a somewhat better under- 
 standing of the motives that influence many 
 of us in the commoner walks of life. But 
 the novelists have created little ; they have 
 transcribed much, and varied a little what they 
 have heard people say. As men are incapable 
 of creations of fancy that are not somehow 
 constructed out of the materials of experience, 
 the fiction writers must mostly fill their stories 
 with people and situations and plots out of 
 the experiences of life, rearranged, of course, 
 by the skill of the writer, as children re- 
 arrange their blocks or picture cards to 
 make new structures and effects. Often the 
 result is grotesque as well as fanciful, as it 
 is meant to be to stir or shock the popular 
 fancy, or as it must be when it is the product 
 of an abnormal brain ; and many of the fiction 
 writers have abnormal minds. Sometimes the 
 writers seem moved by a larger purpose, to 
 give the deeper springs of speech and action 
 — really to educate — but usually, as most nov- 
 eUsts themselves confess, they write to amuse 
 
 27
 
 HUMAN TALK 
 
 their readers and to sell their books. These 
 writings, moreover, are nearly all woven about 
 the paramount sentiment between the sexes, 
 and so, while for this reason they are usually 
 interesting and frequently fascinating, they 
 have a narrow range when the whole of hu- 
 man life is considered. 
 
 Much of the most revealing talk of people 
 could never be written in a story — some of it 
 would be thought improper and might exclude 
 the books from the mails, or, for the most 
 needy of its readers it would be uninteresting. 
 Although the novelist is frequently gifted to a 
 high degree with insight, he often fails to 
 catch all the meaning of the talk he hears, all 
 its impelling motives ; and I am sure thousands 
 of people never themselves know or would be 
 able to define the deeper promptings of much 
 of their own talk. Few people have a power 
 of introspection that is sufficiently searching 
 to do this ; as few are calm enough, and hon- 
 est enough with themselves, to do it. When 
 one attempts to interpret the ultimate motives 
 of his own talk he is apt to be swayed by one 
 of two emotions : either his egoism, which 
 gives a wrong tilt to his judgment ; or his self- 
 abasement, due to essential modesty or a sense 
 of his shortcomings or his sins. It is a doc- 
 trine both venerable and true, that nobody can 
 
 28
 
 HUMAN TALK 
 
 if he would tell the complete story of his life, 
 and that nobody would do it if he could. 
 
 Very much of the interesting conversation 
 among people fails to reveal either to the cas- 
 ual observer or to the thoughtful student the 
 whole picture of the motives that lie back of 
 it. In the twilight yonder, for example, there 
 is the hum of low-pitched, intense conversa- 
 tion between a young man and a young wom- 
 an. They are trying, or appear to be trying, 
 to have a heart-to-heart talk, which means a 
 completely frank talk with each other; but 
 they seem to find obstacles, the sledding is 
 hard, the runners grate upon the gravel. They 
 are wholly un frank, and they talk in riddles, 
 hints, and inferences, and with gentle shafts 
 of satire, irony, and appealings. What is all 
 this fencing about? The common verdict 
 would be that two youngsters are trying to 
 make love to each other, and really are afraid 
 to do it, but such a verdict would be wrong. 
 Possibly, even probably, the man is too bashful 
 to come to the point readily and say just what 
 he would like to say. Most likely he is cov- 
 ertly trying to learn how the woman would 
 treat a serious proposal if he should make one 
 to her ; the deep motive — undefined and dimly 
 perceived — is to avoid the possible humiliation 
 of a refusal. At the same time he appears not 
 
 29
 
 HUMAN TALK 
 
 to know that she is trying to shun a cognate 
 calamity. He thinks she is uncandid or cruel, 
 and she judges him similarly. Both judg- 
 ments are wrong as to the cruelty, for each 
 is embarrassed by difficulties that are uncon- 
 sidered by the other. To be absolutely un- 
 reserved she would have to say to him : " I 
 suspect that you would like to know how I 
 would answer if you were to propose marriage 
 to me. This in justice to myself I cannot tell 
 you, and if I were to do so my attraction for 
 you would cease." For her to be thus candid 
 would stamp her as simple-minded. So she 
 must angle to bring him to the point of mak- 
 ing a proposal — if he is so inclined — without 
 having consciously given him beforehand any 
 very plain hint of how she would treat it. She 
 would not for a small world give him, or her 
 jealous friends and enemies, the chance to say 
 that she had given her answer to a momentous 
 question that had never been asked — and he 
 dreads above all things to be refused by a 
 woman. His cowardice is far less commend- 
 able than hers, for his sentimental fate is less 
 dependent upon the issue. 
 
 Such are some of the emotions that are 
 quite as moving in the confab as the tenderer 
 sentiments, and almost as unavoidable, and 
 they are at bottom a sort of conceit, an egoism, 
 
 30
 
 HUMAN TALK 
 
 a selfishness that shrinks in an imcourageous 
 way from the chance of a humiliation. It is 
 an emotion that is apt to make one uncandid 
 and unfrank, and appear to be less noble, with- 
 out really being so. But this guidepost of the 
 conversation rarely or never comes out in a 
 story, although the story may be enchanting, 
 and may give much of the iridescence of the 
 talk correctly. 
 
 The thing that appears to the unintentional 
 observer of the case referred to, is two young 
 people who are making love in what seems to 
 be a very bungling way, and whom their 
 friends would like to help along, or stop, or 
 smother. Not only do we usually fail to see 
 the egoistic quality of the talk in this kind of 
 a conference, but the two parties themselves 
 are equally oblivious to the fact that it has 
 such a quality. People in general do not know 
 when they themselves talk or act conceitedly. 
 They dislike to reveal an excess of egotism, 
 or any egotism at all, and usually do not know 
 that they show it, or even that they have it. 
 But when this weakness possesses them it in- 
 variably crops out in their talk sooner or later, 
 and if they discover it they try to reform, al- 
 though the effort may be weak and halting. 
 
 So in a thousand ways, by their conversa- 
 tion, people disclose motives that they are not 
 
 31
 
 HUMAN TALK 
 
 even aware of having; sometimes the fact is 
 perfectly obvious, sometimes very obscure. At 
 times they show plainly certain motives they 
 know of and think they hide, at other times 
 they do nearly hide them. If we study people 
 thus as from a height, impersonally, and try 
 to see how their talk is related to their inner 
 selves we shall make some surprising discov- 
 eries. 
 
 People by their accents, modes of expres- 
 sion, pronunciations, and idioms, reveal their 
 degree of education, their associations, their 
 habits, and the land of their birth. And they 
 are rarely able to hide these things from good 
 observers. A Scotch friend of mine had lived 
 in America for thirty years and had never 
 been able to get rid of all of his brogue. He 
 divulged his origin in nearly every sentence 
 he uttered. Lately he made a visit to his old 
 home and tried by all his arts, by broadening 
 his brogue and the local character of his 
 clothes, to pass himself off as a Scotchman, 
 but he failed utterly. He was everywhere 
 branded as an American. The idioms and ac- 
 cents he had not been quite able to get rid of 
 had stamped him here as a foreigner, while 
 the talk methods he had acquired here, and 
 thought he knew of and could hide while 
 there, betrayed him unerringly. 
 
 32
 
 HUMAN TALK 
 
 If we could hear all the talk of any set of 
 people, a discriminating study might discover 
 a large part of the personality of a given mem- 
 ber of it. He might reveal nine tenths of him- 
 self, directly or indirectly. The final tenth he 
 probably could not reveal if he would, and he 
 most certainly would not if he could. But we 
 should need to hear every word in order to 
 learn the nine tenths. And of very few peo- 
 ple would it be possible to do this, while as to 
 these few we should probably be so biased as 
 to spoil the best judgment. 
 
 The obvious motives or emotions that most 
 enter into the talk of mankind are three or 
 four in number ; there are a myriad of minor 
 ones, like the wavelets of the sea, but these 
 few stand out as the most cardinal of all. One 
 is a desire to please — that is, to make a good 
 impression; another is self -entertainment. 
 Another is to accomplish the business or mis- 
 sion in hand without special regard to the 
 impression made upon others, that is, to get 
 information and to do things. A third is a 
 certain, usually unconscious, sentiment of 
 protest, an irritability that prompts some ob- 
 jection to every proposition. In this all shades 
 are shown from gentle disapproval to snarling 
 opposition. The mental and moral porcupine 
 quills are turned forward, and every approach- 
 
 33
 
 HUMAN TALK 
 
 ing object plunges against them with more or 
 less force and surprise. 
 
 The same individual will often show each 
 of three or four emotions to be uppermost at 
 different times within an hour, sometimes 
 within the space of a minute. These few emo- 
 tions, with other and minor ones, are com- 
 mingled in such variations at different times 
 in the lives of people as to make the picture 
 of a moral kaleidoscope ; no two are ever 
 quite alike. These pictures reveal themselves 
 in the talk as well as the actions of people, and, 
 I believe, always best and most accurately to 
 the thoughtful outside observer, rarely as well 
 to the men and women in the picture. 
 
 The emotion of a desire to please and the 
 emotion of protest run in opposing directions. 
 Both are more or less selfish, but this end is 
 attained in different ways: by the former we 
 gratify ourselves through our consideration 
 for others, and it is always acceptable to 
 others ; by the latter we draw ourselves into 
 our selfish shells, and please ourselves while 
 we antagonize others. 
 
 The logical purposes of speech are useful- 
 ness and pleasure. It is to enable us to ex- 
 press our feelings, desires, and intentions ac- 
 curately ; yet it so often, even among the most 
 refined, fails of this and tells something dif- 
 
 34
 
 HUMAN TALK 
 
 ferent that one is sometimes tempted to doubt 
 its usefulness. Take a sensitive, refined wom- 
 an with strong imagination and, if her ego- 
 ism is also strong, it will be impossible to talk 
 to her and be understood at just what you 
 say. Ask her the simplest question and she 
 will immediately guess that there is some pur- 
 pose back of it that does not appear in the 
 terms in which it is expressed, and she will 
 direct her answer to that something, not to 
 the question. Ask her how many hours she 
 sleeps in the twenty-four, and she will say 
 she goes to bed at nine o'clock. Ask her what 
 time she gets up in the morning and she will 
 not answer you directly, but, if she is young, 
 she may tell you that she does have her les- 
 sons ready in time ; if she is a matron, she 
 may declare that she does not neglect her 
 morning duties to her children. Not seldom 
 do these undirected, automatic mental changes 
 hit the mark and divine the meaning that may 
 be back of the questions, but most often they 
 are far wide of the mark — ridiculously far 
 from it ; and, right or wrong, they are made 
 with the speed of lightning. 
 
 I once listened with great interest to a 
 woman's account of the way she managed her 
 children, asking, in the course of the conver- 
 sation, a few commonplace questions about it, 
 
 35
 
 HUMAN TALK 
 
 and I was on the point of paying a high 
 compliment to her good sense in the matter, 
 when she broke out with : " Oh, I know you 
 think I am densely ignorant and don't know 
 how to bring up my children, and perhaps I 
 don't ! " What was the matter with the wom- 
 an? She merely yearned for approval and 
 required it in every word and even look of 
 her listener ; without this she was sad and 
 thought herself disapproved of. A meditative 
 look from her listener would not do ; she must 
 have constant manifest approval. 
 
 Among such people conversation is often 
 not so much a means of giving out one's 
 thoughts frankly, as of each trying to divine 
 what the other thinks and does not say ; and 
 each hiding somewhat of his own thoughts — 
 a sort of psychologic game or gamble. And 
 six times out of ten their judgments of each 
 other are faulty as to the meanings that are 
 hidden. People in gambling for money are 
 said to try to cover their own emotions and 
 divine those of their opponents — that is a 
 psychologic game too. And in that game, as 
 in the games of talk among sensitive souls, the 
 mistakes in divination are at least as numer- 
 ous as the successes. Invite a refined and po- 
 lite friend to go to lunch with you, and ask 
 what you shall order for him to eat. Will 
 
 36
 
 HUMAN TALK 
 
 he tell you truthfully? Once in ten times per- 
 haps, the other nine times he will name the 
 thing he divines that you like, or he will have 
 scruples as to the cost of his choice. He may 
 retort with a question as to what you like, and 
 if you say tripe he is almost sure to think you 
 have named that delicacy because you think 
 he prefers it. So he says beefsteak, which he 
 guesses you really prefer. But he is himself 
 fond of tripe, and so are you ; and in this blun- 
 dering of politeness neither of you gets his 
 first choice ; both are defrauded. 
 
 A man will, almost in the lapse of a minute, 
 order his employees in a matter-of-fact sort of 
 way as to some piece of work, will scold his 
 wife or child for some act or word that hap- 
 pens to run counter to his raw sensibilities, and 
 will then turn to some approaching neighbor 
 or stranger and address him in the most polite 
 and genial terms — making the best possible 
 impression. Could you truly judge of that 
 man by hearing a single one of these speeches 
 without the others — and others still? Each 
 shows him as quite a different being from 
 either of the others. If he ever falls into an 
 unselfish mood of introspection in a quiet mo- 
 ment, the man himself knows he is a different 
 being at each of these respective moments. 
 When he stops to think — as he rarely does — 
 
 37 

 
 HUMAN TALK 
 
 just what his moral impulses are in each of 
 his moods, he knows. If you were to ask him 
 why he was so polite to his neighbor, he could 
 perhaps give you the correct answer, but it is 
 doubtful that he would. And he might in his 
 own soul, when mellowed by remorse, cor- 
 rectly call himself a snappish brute for scold- 
 ing his wife. 
 
 But the girl who comes to call on you and 
 talks for a full hour in a steady gale about her 
 " things," and her notions, and what she and 
 her mother and father said, and what the other 
 girls said, and a hundred other things, and all 
 without giving you a chance to wedge in a 
 word — she could not tell why she does it, even 
 if she prayed in sackcloth for the wisdom to 
 do so. Should she be told that she had done 
 all the talking she would be surprised ; and 
 should you tell her that the reason she did it 
 was a mixture of bashfulness and conceit, with 
 a disposition to be polite, she would be even 
 more surprised. Yet you would be telling her 
 a very exact piece of truth. 
 
 The girl who talks in an interminable mono- 
 logue does not always do it because she wishes 
 to, but because, if she stops, she blushes with 
 dififidence and is covered with chagrin. The 
 talk is a trick to cover her bashfulness. Like 
 many a young man making a speech, she 
 
 38
 
 HUMAN TALK 
 
 has difficulty to find a good place to stop. 
 There is a vast difference between that girl 
 and the one who just enjoys talking, and runs 
 on, pleased with her own chatter. Her motive 
 power is the purest egoism to be found in the 
 list of human emotions. She will not get nerv- 
 ous prostration from entertaining her guests. 
 She will do nine tenths of the talking, and 
 afterwards comment on the remarkable en- 
 tertaining power of the guests. Visitors to 
 her are a real boon, for they enable her to 
 work off some of her pent-up potentiality of 
 talk ; and this exercise is a constant joy. The 
 woman who breaks down under such a strain 
 is she to whom it is a duty, and a hard one, 
 to entertain, or to keep up conversation. She 
 racks her brain to think of things to say — the 
 other one has so much to say that she has to 
 restrain herself constantly. And when she 
 does stop, it is with vast reservoirs of talk 
 force still waiting to be tapped. 
 
 The mental sense of a necessity to talk is an 
 awful burden to some men and women. The 
 presence of people whom it seems necessary to 
 entertain becomes distracting. One feels that 
 he must for their benefit keep up a running 
 polite conversation, and the incubus of that 
 feeling to a sensitive person is unutterable. If 
 some other person will lead, or will carry 
 
 39
 
 HUMAN TALK 
 
 along the conversation, it is all right, as 
 when you are the guest and the other the 
 host. But you become the host and he the 
 guest, and see the load grow heavy. Many a 
 woman of society has gone down to helpless 
 invalidism, to insanity, and to death under it. 
 It is so awful to many nervous patients that 
 they are forbidden to receive calls from others, 
 especially from those toward whom they feel 
 the necessity of being agreeable. One call will 
 make such an one sick for a week. 
 
 Few things can be more terrible than to be 
 shut up with one whom you must entertain, 
 or feel that you must, by conversation that 
 shall not flag. For a calm, tranquil nature it 
 is worse than solitary confinement ; and for 
 some of the nervous and sensitive ones it is 
 moral and mental annihilation. 
 
 In my presence once a girl was trying to 
 satisfy her parents that she was justified in re- 
 fusing to marry the man whom they had 
 chosen for her. I did not think her arguments 
 were very good, until she said that whenever 
 he called upon her she grew tired trying to 
 find talk to entertain him. Then I knew she 
 had more than a reason — although it did not 
 satisfy her father and mother. She had never 
 learned the golden power of silence, and she 
 was much in need of that lesson. Silence is 
 
 40
 
 HUMAN TALK 
 
 often the best conversation ; and it is the 
 greatest test and sign of the adaptation of 
 friends to each other. Friends are never in 
 the depths of each other's intimacy till they can 
 be silent together and find that restful. Till 
 then they are never divinely acquainted. 
 
 Another person whose talk is often unfor- 
 tunate is he who is prone to fear that he has 
 said the wrong thing. He is likely to be a 
 very literalist in his absurd casuistry. He will 
 upbraid himself for something he has said or 
 thinks he has, then go back and apologize for 
 it, often to the surprise of the one he has 
 talked to, who has seen nothing wrong in what 
 he said, or possibly has seen a wholly dif- 
 ferent wrong from the one the sensitive soul 
 has worried about. The fellow who really 
 speaks recklessly or improperly is usually the 
 one who never discovers it, and even denies it ; 
 and he is the last to apologize for it. 
 
 The moods of conversation are a perfect 
 aurora borealis of changes and curiosities. 
 People seem at times to be dominated by a 
 particular spirit or emotion that tinges every- 
 thing they say. At times a whole company 
 will seem to be in the grasp of this sort of an 
 influence. It may be one of complaint, or of 
 anger, of severity or hilarity, of religiousness, 
 or of mirth. 
 
 41
 
 HUMAN TALK 
 
 One of the most interesting is the joking 
 mood ; you may often see a company of people 
 swayed for an hour by this spirit. Everyone 
 seems bound to contribute to the roystering. 
 A serious word or suggestion is frowned 
 upon ; nothing but jokes, gags, jibes, and take- 
 offs are tolerated. Not even refined humor 
 or wit will do ; it must be loud or coarse ; 
 finally it becomes a sort of spiritual debauch, 
 from which later there is a recoil in the semi- 
 disgust of satiety, such as follows alcoholic 
 intoxication or an outburst of mob violence. 
 
 This spirit sometimes takes the form of 
 practical jokes, even indignities, as in the haz- 
 ing and initiations of students, and the chari- 
 vari and kindred humiliations visited upon 
 wedding couples. These things are often done 
 by real if rather coarse-grained friends of the 
 victims ; they are unable to resist the force 
 of the class conscience in the matter; one 
 starts the ball of fun and hilarity, and the 
 others must help it along. Each is moved to 
 try to outdo all the others in devising the most 
 striking and extreme infliction. So it is with 
 talk of this sort — one tells a joke, another 
 tries to match it, and feels annoyed or dis- 
 appointed if he fails, and especially if he fails 
 to evoke a roar of laughter. Conversation 
 is stilted, the company speaks in riddles and 
 
 42
 
 HUMAN TALK 
 
 hyperbole. After the thing is over the par- 
 ticipants often feel a sense of disappointment, 
 and have a bad taste in their mouths. 
 
 Another and quite opposite mood is one of 
 such seriousness as to shut out all sense of 
 humor. A joke causes surprise, not laughter, 
 and a touch of really delicate humor goes un- 
 noticed. In such a company, if you happen to 
 indulge in a gentle bit of raillery, you are made 
 to feel at once as if you had acted indecorously 
 at a funeral. 
 
 An interesting phase is what may be called 
 the bored mood — shown in some specimens 
 of the American sophomore, and in an occa- 
 sional young person who has traveled and seen 
 much of the world. The color of the talk is of 
 disapproval and fatigue ; as much as to say, 
 " Why will you tire me with such common- 
 ness ? " Or the attitude may be one of con- 
 descension, as if to say, " You poor thing — 
 you don't know any better." 
 
 Another mood is that exhibited by the 
 American college boy in the use of slang. His 
 swagger, awkward way of walking, with his 
 hands in his trousers pockets, lifting up his 
 sack coat, and his pipe in his mouth, are a part 
 of the same fashion. But the talk that goes 
 with it all is perhaps most interesting, for 
 some of it is not found in the dictionary. It 
 
 43
 
 HUMAN TALK 
 
 is decorated with peculiar slang, as, when the 
 young man wishes to indicate that he must 
 go to his supper he doesn't say that. He re- 
 marks merely, " I've got to go and feed my 
 face." And he has dozens of such slang 
 phrases at his command, which he uses freely 
 to cover a sort of bash fulness, or to show that 
 he is a real fellow. 
 
 An interesting fact is that each generation 
 of boys has a different set of slang words and 
 shibboleths from every other — not a set that 
 is completely different, but one differing 
 enough to show the evolution of the catalogue 
 of slang, which to some degree means the evo- 
 lution of the language, for many of our classi- 
 cal words began life as slang. Nor are these 
 peculiarities confined to the boys, for the girls 
 of the period, especially among clubs and 
 sororities of girls, develop slang that is quite 
 as picturesque as that of the boys, if a little 
 less harsh and grating. 
 
 Changes of fashion in words and phrases 
 are sought and followed as eagerly as we fol- 
 low the fashion in hats and gowns. The old 
 schoolmasters seek to keep the language as it 
 was, but that is impossible ; you might as well 
 try to stop the tides of the sea; and the new 
 fashions in words and phrases are often the 
 creation of the youngest generation, who are 
 
 44
 
 HUMAN TALK 
 
 in the age of easy experiment, and their in- 
 ventions are at first all slang; later they are 
 accorded, usually reluctantly, admittance to 
 the dictionary. 
 
 The bashful mood is the commonest one of 
 all. The poor victim hunts for the right word 
 and nearly always gets the wrong one, and 
 blushes in humiliation whichever one he 
 chooses. He cannot, in the presence of people 
 he is not intimate with, divest his mind of 
 thought about himself, and of whether he is 
 saying or doing the proper thing. If he tries 
 to converse with you he is constantly thinking 
 of himself, in a sort of gentle egoism tinged 
 with a sadness that his dull mind interprets to 
 him as self-abnegation. He is one of the 
 most pathetic victims of unperceived conceit 
 in all the world. 
 
 For some of these faults of talk there must 
 be a remedy. Until that Utopian and improb- 
 able day when men shall see themselves and 
 each other as they really are, we cannot ex- 
 pect that all such defects can be discovered 
 and understood. But diffident people ought 
 not to be forced almost to perish because of 
 their hardships of speech; nor is it necessary 
 that those with greater gifts should sink under 
 the burdens of the conventional demands of 
 
 45
 
 HUMAN TALK 
 
 talk. The woes of both these classes are 
 largely imaginary or self-imposed and there- 
 fore in some degree correctible. 
 
 The common sympathy goes out naturally 
 to those who cannot talk, or who can talk 
 little; but I feel sure that the other class, 
 those who have great powers, but great bur- 
 dens of conversation, are entitled to our more 
 helpful sympathy. These are the victims of 
 that unwelcome complex of symptoms badly 
 named nervous prostration. They are always 
 worse by having to entertain others much, to 
 be polite to them, to find conversation and 
 make talk. Some of them get faint, have 
 headache and hysteria, sometimes even tem- 
 porary blindness from these burdens. They 
 fear the ordeal of meeting people ; they shun 
 them, and will cross to the opposite side of the 
 street to avoid the necessity of greeting them ; 
 they worry and suffer in the strain of their 
 nerves from the visits and interviews they 
 have had, and live in trembling dread of others 
 yet to come. They grow irascible ; they flare 
 up or melt into tears at the merest trifles, and 
 then grieve at their weaknesses, and are cha- 
 grined at their faults. 
 
 These people are among the more refined 
 and highly civilized of the race, and this fact 
 of itself should entitle them to sympathv. A 
 
 46
 
 HUMAN TALK 
 
 large proportion of them are women. Their 
 high refinement is a misfortune. They really 
 need to get back toward primal nature for 
 their comfort and ease of living ; but since that 
 is impossible, they must bear their ills with 
 what help they can get. A great deal of their 
 trouble is wholly needless, and a sensible 
 woman may, by thought and self-control, 
 avoid nine tenths of it. But the thought and 
 self-control — that is the difficulty ; not one 
 woman in ten is equal to it, even if she knows 
 the need. She can attain this end only by first 
 knowing what her defect is, and then by com- 
 pelling herself to do certain definite things to 
 overcome it. This requires a large stock of 
 courage and self-command in a person who 
 is usually short of the average measure of 
 these gifts. The real first trouble is her own in- 
 tense sense of mental pressure ; of a duty to 
 entertain ; a fear that she will be socially criti- 
 cised for being inattentive or for saying the 
 wrong or inapt thing, or for being ungracious. 
 The reason of all this is largely her own lack 
 of tranquillity, courage, and poise ; for these 
 qualities are indispensable to success. If she 
 had, or could create for herself, a quiet spirit 
 of imperturbability, all her troubles would 
 vanish at once. If she had ever learned the 
 charm and power of silence she would not 
 
 47
 
 HUMAN TALK 
 
 have this or any other sort of nervous exhaus- 
 tion; it would be impossible. That her fears 
 about herself in these particulars are at bottom 
 rather cowardly than otherwise does not help 
 matters — only when she knows that cowardice 
 is an essential part of the disease, that moment 
 she has some, if a small, increment of strength 
 to overcome it. 
 
 The thing for her to try to do is to let the 
 other woman — for example, the caller — do 
 most of the talking ; to have a quiet chat with 
 her, not on stilts or from a pedestal, but down 
 on the plain earth, and about common, proper, 
 simple things ; and then to end the conversa- 
 tion with pleasure that the friend has called, 
 and herself be free from the usual undercur- 
 rent of mental discomfort and symptoms of 
 collapse. 
 
 In order to do this she needs to make for 
 herself a few rules of conduct that she must 
 obey to the death. If she is a very nervous 
 person she should make an oath to herself that 
 she will follow these rules, if it is the last act 
 of her life. If she needs the rules she must 
 herself make them, and then stick to them. 
 Such a code she might roughly formulate as 
 follows : First, I will be natural and simple, 
 not stilted and false, and pretending to knowl- 
 edge or arts that are beyond me. Second, I 
 
 48
 
 HUMAN TALK 
 
 will not hurry in my talk ; I will pause and be 
 tranquil, and not keep my mental fists doubled 
 up in doing it. I will learn to be silent and 
 not let this make me unhappy. Third, I will 
 deliberately use my art of hinting and quizzing 
 to set my guest to talking, while I listen. 
 Fourth, I will be amused and entertained at 
 my own efforts in thus managing my caller 
 and myself ; and I will steel my soul against 
 any after-suggestion that I have failed or been 
 maladroit, as I do against the temptations of 
 the devil. 
 
 Anybody who goes to work on these lines 
 with enough courage will surely find his re- 
 ward. He can succeed by his own efiforts and 
 alone if he will. But in all difficult tasks we 
 are helped by union in effort, as we are always 
 helped toward any goal (and especially if the 
 goal has a social or esthetic quality) by the 
 fact that others are traveling in the same di- 
 rection. What is needed, therefore, is a move- 
 ment in numbers, a fashion, a cult, toward the 
 end sought. A society or club having this for 
 its object would help greatly, if its numbers 
 could be large enough to create a fashion. 
 And if the needy ones only knew what they 
 could gain by it they would hasten to band 
 themselves together for this purpose. The 
 name of the organization might be " The 
 
 49
 
 HUMAN TALK 
 
 Silence Club," or " A society for the develop- 
 ment of the art of entertaining with a mini- 
 mum of talk," or, better still, " The Abo- 
 rigines Club," because it would cultivate a 
 stoicism in silence like that of the American 
 aborigines. The American Indian not only 
 entertains others — if he does entertain them — 
 in almost complete silence, but he seems not 
 to be embarrassed by the fact that he is silent. 
 He ridicules white people for talking so much, 
 as he does for using so many words in their 
 songs. The Indian songs consist of a few usu- 
 ally plaintive monosyllables — nothing more; 
 and for essential musicalness, they have, for 
 this reason, a distinct advantage over our poly- 
 verbal efforts. How profitably some of us 
 might covet a little of this gift of the Indians ! 
 When you come to think of it, the talking 
 bouts of many of our social gatherings are, 
 from numerous points of view, absurd. If you 
 do not think so, then some day hide yourself 
 where you can be a silent witness to one of 
 them. Listen for an hour, and see if you do 
 not think that, with half the words and more 
 time for thought, even an occasional moment 
 of total silence, there would have been a gain. 
 Yet the capacity to take part and help create 
 such a talking bee is an ambition of a large 
 number of people. It is a pity only when it is 
 
 50
 
 HUMAN TALK 
 
 done at great friction of soul and wear and 
 tear of nerves. Another misfortune is that it 
 tends to fix the habit that is already too preva- 
 lent, of talking first and thinking afterward. 
 
 The recovery from this particular talk dis- 
 ease, as already indicated, depends much on 
 the ability of the victim to evoke conversation 
 by others, while he has pleasure in holding his 
 tongue and keeping his own powers in re- 
 serve. And that ability is nothing but the art 
 of making conversation easy. This art is a 
 natural gift to many people, and is the envy 
 of almost every bashful, diffident and self- 
 conscious person in or out of enlightened so- 
 ciety. To acquire it, to become adept at it, 
 may well be the ambition of all the victims of 
 this unfortunate malady. 
 
 Nor is the art difficult or hard to learn. 
 Anybody can have it if he has sufficient 
 fortitude and self-control, and will persist in 
 patience. But he must first be born again 
 to a few cardinal truths that are always 
 wholesome. To encourage conversation is to 
 bring out and enlarge the powers of the 
 other person, and these cardinal truths con- 
 cern his interest and fate most intimately. 
 When we consider the good of the other per- 
 son, we, by so much, sink our own selfishness 
 and conceit — and that, besides being good in 
 
 51
 
 HUMAN TALK 
 
 itself, is the true key to the art of conversation. 
 To think of the other person and his needs is 
 an act of genuine altruism, and leads us not 
 merely away from our own selfishness, but 
 away from our bashfulness (which is a phase 
 of selfishness), so that our powers of rational 
 talk increase. This kind of an effort is thus 
 a means of grace ; and it brings us surprising 
 rewards. It is a missionary movement whose 
 value nobody will ever question. It helps 
 those who receive, and it transfigures those 
 who give. 
 
 When one sets out in this sort of self-im- 
 provement there are a few things he will do, 
 and certain things he will very positively not 
 do — and wherein he will be differentiated 
 from the average man. In developing a better 
 art of conversation he will not air his own 
 things, his people, his gifts, or himself, save in 
 the most tentative way, and to bring out the 
 other person. He will hold in abeyance the 
 subjects he knows most of, or speak of them 
 with apologetic hesitation, and seek the ones 
 the other person is most familiar with. He 
 will ask gentle questions in a spirit of con- 
 fidential deference so as not to frighten his 
 friend, for questions asked in a conceited or 
 pushing way are sure to scare the other one 
 dumb. If he enters into real controversy the 
 
 52
 
 HUMAN TALK 
 
 conversation may stop suddenly ; but the gen- 
 tle raillery of sham controversy may help it 
 on. Too intense an interest in the subject of 
 the talk may frighten the other person, as it 
 will make him hesitate to change the topic 
 when he is tempted to do so. Quizzing, jok- 
 ing, or ridiculing another often stops his con- 
 versation like water on a flame. 
 
 Our artist in talk will maintain a demure 
 mood of interested, rather ignorant inquiry, 
 not critical or protesting, but sympathetic and 
 indulgent. He will not in this go to the op- 
 posite extreme of trying to make the other per- 
 son do all the talking, or allow him to feel 
 that his talk is taken critically, for that would 
 soon shut him up like a clam. He will change 
 the subject of conversation as needed, so as to 
 prevent mental fatigue, and save the talk from 
 running dry. He will not decorate his part of 
 the conversation with silly giggles. He will 
 learn just how much to keep silent, how much 
 to inquire, how much to tell of what he knows, 
 how much to defer, in order to put the other 
 one completely at his ease and let him find his 
 tongue. He will be able to rise to large things 
 and to descend to small and simple ones with 
 equal ease and facility, as the knowledge, ig- 
 norance, and temper of the other person seem 
 to require. Thus he will become a skilled per- 
 
 53
 
 HUMAN TALK 
 
 former in an art that is greater than any of 
 the so-called fine arts, because it helps in a 
 larger way the two classes of people who are 
 most in need of its benefits, those who can talk 
 and ought to listen, and those who would lis- 
 ten and ought to talk. 
 
 While he does these things he is submerg- 
 ing his own conceits and egoism, forgetting 
 his own bashfulness, and coming to be himself 
 at ease. Thereby he makes a distinct growth 
 in versatility for himself ; he broadens his own 
 horizon and makes his attainments worthy of 
 his own pride. Better than all else, he ac- 
 quires a mood of mind and a serenity of spirit 
 that will contribute powerfully to his own per- 
 manent comfort and force. At the same time 
 the other person learns to talk almost with- 
 out knowing it, and warms with joy at his own 
 expanding powers. Soon, too, he discovers 
 that even his rude grasp of this new art gives 
 him fresh vantage for higher attainments. He 
 has found the key to other arts beyond. 
 
 54
 
 The Blind Side of the Average 
 Parent
 
 The Blind Side of the Average 
 Parent 
 
 Parents naturally think they best under- 
 stand their own young children, but usually 
 they do not. Most of them would probably re- 
 gard such a doubt as a great deal worse than 
 absurd. The contention that they who are the 
 daily companions of their children do not and 
 cannot read them truly, that childless people 
 understand them better, would probably strike 
 the mind of the average parent as a piece of 
 harmless sophistry. Yet this blindness is so 
 real that the demonstration stares every care- 
 ful observer full in the face. Even a cursory 
 study of the daily Hves of a lot of small children 
 shows that some of the strongest emotions 
 which influence conduct are wholly unper- 
 ceived by their parents, although the emotions 
 are perfectly apparent and easily seen by 
 the most casual observation. And the chil- 
 
 57
 
 THE BLIND SIDE 
 
 dren and the parents reveal the situation about 
 equally, and quite unconsciously. These emo- 
 tions not only govern the actions for the hour 
 and the day, but, persisting and growing for a 
 long time, as they are apt to do, they order 
 and govern the whole course of the lives of 
 such children, sometimes probably to their 
 benefit, but often to their harm. 
 
 The peculiar conduct of the children re- 
 ferred to is neither hidden nor mysterious; 
 everybody about them knows of it. But it is 
 usually ascribed to mental impulses wholly 
 different from the true ones ; the real basis of 
 it is as foreign to the minds of ninety-nine per 
 cent of the children's care-takers and parents 
 as are the problems of calculus. Yet the com- 
 plete proof is as plain as the earth we walk 
 upon, and could not be hidden by any amount 
 of effort, and never is hidden ; only the parent, 
 and usually the nurse, refuses or fails to see it. 
 
 Parents know a great many things about 
 their children, and know these things inti- 
 mately and often in minute detail. They 
 know, for example, that a child likes certain 
 amusements and particular things to eat and 
 drink; also that he neither likes to go to bed 
 nor to get up early. A mother can usually tell 
 you why her small child asks for a drink of 
 water — it is thirsty. She knows that if it asks 
 
 58
 
 OF THE AVERAGE PARENT 
 
 for a piece of bread and butter it is probably 
 hungry ; and she may feel equally certain of 
 this if it is pie the child asks for, although per- 
 haps the motive is, in this case, nine tenths a 
 desire for a sweet taste and one tenth hunger. 
 Her knowledge of motives is fairly accurate 
 when her boy asks to go and play with other 
 boys, and she knows that she knows why. 
 
 But when the boy has spent an hour with 
 her in friendship and mutual entertainment, 
 in even loving comradery as the pleasantest 
 and most tractable of children, and then some 
 visitors appear and the boy becomes a changed 
 being, and begins to hammer her fine furni- 
 ture, and interrupt the conversation to ask her 
 a dozen questions which she had answered ten 
 minutes before, then she is either uncertain 
 that she knows why, or she attributes the 
 change to some wayward tendency which she 
 is glad to have the comfort of thinking be- 
 longs to all boys. She never guesses the true 
 motive, which is an egoistic greed for atten- 
 tion to himself, a conceited jealousy of atten- 
 tion to others. When she is talking interest- 
 edly to a caller and the boy pulls at her gown 
 to ask her to do some needless thing for him, 
 and when he throws his blocks and papers on 
 the floor, and then declines to pick them up 
 at her request or command (after having 
 
 59
 
 THE BLIND SIDE 
 
 promptly and repeatedly picked them up with- 
 out a protest while alone with her), then she 
 thinks it is original sin, or that it is a punish- 
 ment visited upon her for some unconscious 
 sin or omission of her own. Not once in a 
 thousand cases does such a mother divine the 
 real cause of the mischief, and apply any ade- 
 quate remedy for it — and the real cause is 
 plain beyond question ; it is clear to the sim- 
 plest observation, and proven by the memory 
 of every man who reflects candidly upon his 
 own childhood. 
 
 It is a doctrine of a modern cult in the care 
 of children that curiosity and a thirst for 
 knowledge on their part are laudable impulses, 
 and to be encouraged. It is a good doctrine. 
 A man looks back to his boyhood and recalls 
 that then he was often rebuffed by his elders 
 when he asked questions from a desire to 
 learn ; so he makes the generous resolve that 
 his child shall never be treated thus, and he 
 develops the habit of answering, as well as his 
 knowledge permits, every question his young- 
 sters ask. He sees them grow in knowl- 
 edge of people and things, and he is happy; 
 moreover he is a little proud of having helped 
 his children in this way. But he has become 
 such a slave to his own habit, that it has ac- 
 quired the quality of obedience; and so his 
 
 60
 
 OF THE AVERAGE PARENT 
 
 boy, not very far beyond babyhood, learns 
 readily that, although his requests of his father 
 for general indulgences are often refused, if 
 his desires are put in the form of questions 
 apparently asked for the sake of knowledge, 
 he is promptly obeyed. Yes, obeyed is the 
 word. The same questions will be answered 
 for the fortieth time within an hour, as though 
 the child had suddenly become mentally dull 
 and had forgotten the other thirty-nine times ; 
 then the father, from sheer fatigue at the 
 monotony, is ready to obey the child in other 
 things — ^to get him toys, and do things to 
 amuse him, to tell stories or sing songs or do 
 any sort of an absurd thing that will satisfy 
 his offspring. 
 
 It is only a short step from this experience 
 of the child to the discovery that his parents 
 dread to make a scene by efforts at his dis- 
 cipline in the sight and hearing of strangers 
 and persons outside of the family. So he plans 
 to gain some point in the presence of company 
 and usually succeeds. He feels a sense of su- 
 periority in his knowledge of this cowardice 
 of his elders, and he works it to the utmost. 
 Thus he becomes an autocrat. His parents 
 are under a degree of slavery to him that is as 
 perfectly marked out and defined as any other 
 fact in nature. They may be severe with him 
 
 6i
 
 THE BLIND SIDE 
 
 in certain things ; for example, his moral con- 
 duct, as they measure it, and especially certain 
 phases of his social deportment ; but in this 
 particular field he is their complete master, and 
 he knows it. They may chide him severely for 
 his unkempt hair and dirty finger nails, and 
 for not saying " please," but he has his way 
 and his revenge upon them when strangers are 
 near. And he maintains this mastery till he 
 passes out of young childhood and often be- 
 yond. 
 
 A Philadelphia boy of perhaps eight years 
 fell and suffered a cut in his forehead. He 
 was taken by his father to the family doctor 
 to have the wound dressed. The doctor told 
 him that it would be necessary to suture the 
 cut. The boy instantly began to cry vocifer- 
 ously. His father commanded him to stop 
 crying, and told him he was disturbing the 
 neighborhood. The boy cried the louder ; his 
 sire scolded the more insistently. Then the 
 boy looked up and said : " What is there in it 
 for me? " The father replied : " Fifty cents " ; 
 the boy said : " Make it a dollar " ; the father 
 replied : " All right, a dollar. Now stop your 
 noise." The boy then became quiet, and he 
 endured the surgery without a murmur. He 
 was so brave about it that he was allowed to 
 go alone to the doctor the next day to have the 
 
 62
 
 OF THE AVERAGE PARENT 
 
 wound redressed. Then the doctor gently ral- 
 lied him on having got his father down to a 
 commercial basis, when the boy said in re- 
 sponse : " It was so easy that I'm sorry I didn't 
 strike him for two dollars instead of one." 
 This is a good illustrative example of the effi- 
 cient discipline under which a boy may, even 
 in his eighth year, bring his parent, when he 
 has the right sort of skill, and enough of the 
 thing familiarly called nerve. 
 
 Now, the main impelling motive of the child 
 in all this (and the type is a common one) is 
 the love of attention and of being thought su- 
 perior, smart, handsome, or wonderful ; and 
 there is of course, as a secondary motive, the 
 desire to carry his personal point, whatever it 
 is ; this means the love of power or the desire 
 to outdo others — which is the main basis of 
 the propensity for cruelty which most children 
 have in some degree. The chief motive is to 
 show off, to strut ; and it makes him do a hun- 
 dred things in the presence of strangers that 
 he would never think of when alone or with 
 those intimate with him. Sometimes it leads 
 him to queer, unusual, and even uncanny per- 
 formances to attract attention ; and these tac- 
 tics he often carries on for years, and occa- 
 sionally toward or quite into adult life. 
 
 Once there was a little boy who was pale 
 
 63
 
 THE BLIND SIDE 
 
 and thin, and had a poor appetite. His con- 
 dition aroused the interest and the soHcitude 
 of all his family and of some of his neighbors ; 
 the boy was an object of wonder because he 
 ate so little. How could he live on so little 
 food ! A bird would eat as much as he ! This 
 made the boy feel important; he liked the at- 
 tention; being the object of such interest 
 tickled his conceit. So he continued his semi- 
 starvation for many months. He did occa- 
 sionally take food from the larder surrepti- 
 tiously, but he was thin, shy, and a little queer, 
 with few of the normal child activities, till his 
 maturity put new life and vigor into him, and 
 he evolved out of this particular foolishness. 
 Later he confessed his part in the deception. 
 In a moment of humiliation he told one of his 
 confidants how he had kept up the deception 
 till his wholesome hunger became more to him 
 than his morbid pleasure. 
 
 Such a case as this is not wonderful; it is 
 not even uncommon in human experience. 
 Only most people have supposed that such 
 mental pathology is confined to hysterical 
 women. The latter do sometimes practice this 
 kind of deception for sympathy and attention, 
 and for years continuously. But the egoistic 
 emotionalism of children of both sexes also 
 tends to this peculiar morbidness. In many 
 
 64
 
 OF THE AVERAGE PARENT 
 
 cerebrally unstable children the tendency is so 
 strong, the avidity for attention is so intense, 
 that the sHghtest indulgence leads to a rapid 
 growth of the moral deformity, unless — what 
 is most unusual — it is counteracted by some 
 friendly help in the opposite direction. 
 
 I once knew of a young girl who for some 
 years lived in three distinct and different moral 
 existences. These phases appeared in various 
 relations to each other, and she often showed 
 two, and sometimes all three of them, in a 
 single day. One of these personalities was the 
 natural, sweet child, free from affectation, and 
 normal in behavior, that she was capable of 
 being. Another phase showed her as a preco- 
 cious child with a religious bent, writing simple 
 little essays which expressed deep contrition 
 for her sins, but did not specify them. These 
 writings were the wonder of her friends, who 
 were also greatly troubled about her sins. The 
 latter were very real, and she committed them 
 in the third phase of her life. They consisted 
 of a succession of petty thievings, mostly of 
 candies and other sweetmeats. 
 
 She always had with her in her exploits one 
 or more of her younger playmates, with whom 
 she divided the plunder, and they all enjoyed 
 it together. This participation closed the 
 mouths of her mates against telling, while they 
 
 65
 
 THE BLIND SIDE 
 
 wondered at her nerve, and regarded her 
 abandon as evidence of a superior being. She 
 gloried in their wonder, while they ate her 
 stolen goods. Her parents and friends were 
 proud of her precocity, and were touched by 
 her contrition. So her vanity and love of at- 
 tention were gratified, while she looked for 
 fresh petting, and fresh trust after each esca- 
 pade and repentance. When she was severely 
 punished, as she was once or twice, the little 
 manuscripts grew more religious and more 
 self-lashing, which led to more melting on the 
 part of her parents and friends. This latter 
 fact pleased her and was fresh evidence of her 
 power and of her dubious triumphs. 
 
 This was an extreme case of egoistic mor- 
 bidness, of love of personal enlargement, of 
 self-importance, and of the most abandoned 
 selfishness; really it was in the borderland of 
 degeneracy. But not a friend or parent of the 
 child had the slightest grasp of the real emo- 
 tions that were behind all this erratic conduct. 
 Each one had some visionary theory by which 
 he tried to explain it ; his theory perhaps satis- 
 fied him, but it was no explanation, and only 
 served to show his own credulity, and perhaps 
 his forgetfulness of the experiences of his own 
 childhood. 
 
 Such parental credulity is, as a psychologic 
 
 66
 
 OF THE AVERAGE PARENT 
 
 fact, as interesting as the egoistic perform- 
 ances of the children ; and it harms the parents 
 and children aUke. It wrongs the parents be- 
 cause it leads them to acts of omission and 
 commission that are grossly unfair to the chil- 
 dren. Every parent would like to do the best 
 for his child, and so to act as to insure to it 
 the largest career of usefulness and joy. But 
 his blindness leads him to foster and cultivate 
 in the child a lot of the most harmful morbid 
 impulses. Thereby he, the parent, misses one 
 of the finest opportunities for doing good that 
 ever comes to a human being. 
 
 To the child these tendencies are demoral- 
 izing in the extreme. His mental concentra- 
 tion upon his own person and pleasures, and 
 the growth of his egoistic life beget a state 
 of emotional exaltation and nervous erethism 
 that is fatal to any high degree of stability of 
 his brain. The sanest and most satisfying 
 happiness in life is forever denied him. 
 
 Every such child is handicapped ; his career 
 is blighted to a foregone certainty ; he is never 
 as efficient or useful as otherwise he would be, 
 or as he deserves to be; and he falls behind 
 his fellows in all the best ambitions. 
 
 From your lodging window you may per- 
 chance look down on the back yard of a poor 
 family, th€ chief playground of some children. 
 
 67
 
 THE BLIND SIDE 
 
 There you shall see a little boy playing with 
 a few sticks and utensils that serve as toys. 
 He " rides " a broomstick, and for the moment 
 he is in fancy a horseman, maybe a mounted 
 soldier. He has no store toys that cost money. 
 His only companion, for the time, is his 
 mother, working in the kitchen and speaking 
 to him occasionally from the open door. Pres- 
 ently he is thirsty and hungry, and he goes in 
 and gets himself a drink of water, and his 
 mother gives him a piece of bread blackened 
 with molasses. Soon he goes out again and 
 begins to play, but before long a feeling of 
 drowsiness creeps over him, and he lays aside 
 his playthings, lays himself down, and is 
 soon fast in the arms of a quiet slumber. 
 His mother puts a folded garment under his 
 head for a pillow. In an hour he wakens 
 refreshed and cheerful, and is ready for play 
 again. 
 
 Maybe your other window looks out upon 
 the well-furnished back yard of a rich family. 
 There too is a little boy at play. He has many 
 toys, some expensive ones, and he is playing 
 with them. There is a young woman with 
 him. She is not his mother, but a child's nurse, 
 whose ostensible business is to see that his 
 needs are all provided for ; that he is clothed 
 and guarded from harm ; but chieflv she sees, 
 
 68
 
 OF THE AVERAGE PARENT 
 
 and is instructed to see, that he is entertained. 
 She is his servant, although she thinks she is 
 his mother's servant. She obeys him im- 
 pHcitly, save in a few cardinal things which 
 his mother has forbidden. But his mother 
 never forbids his being constantly amused by 
 others at his command — the thing that tends 
 to nervous destruction. The boy plays quietly 
 for a while; then he is hungry and is fed. 
 Next he begins some new game or play, and 
 soon tires of it. Then he tells the girl to help 
 him about another, and she obeys. Soon he 
 tires of that; then he turns to another, then 
 another and still another, and he tires of them 
 all successively, and grows irritable with his 
 fatigue. With each change he is more intense 
 and nervous, and each successive change di- 
 verts him for a shorter time. Finally, dissatis- 
 fied with the plays which she has devised, he 
 commands her to invent others, and she tries 
 to, but none of her devices will do; then he 
 demands a dozen impossible things, like horses 
 and cars. She cannot provide them, and if she 
 could he would not enjoy them for more than 
 a moment, for he has reached the end of his 
 resources of nervous energy. He is in a 
 frenzy of superstimulation and hysteria, and 
 cries with a mixture of grief and anger. Then 
 the nurse takes him in her arms and walks 
 
 69
 
 THE BLIND SIDE 
 
 with him, tells him a story or hums a tune, 
 till finally he stops crying, ceases to complain, 
 and falls asleep. He is carried to a soft 
 couch, but he talks in his sleep from bad 
 dreams, and after a while wakens in a nervous 
 and unhappy mood, with a bad memory of his 
 latest pre-slumber experience. He wakens to 
 go through the same damaging program 
 again ; and this is oft repeated, with some vari- 
 ations, through most of the years of the apron- 
 string time of his life. 
 
 And the mother seldom discovers that this 
 constant entertainment by others, this ever- 
 lasting stimulation at his demand, this contin- 
 uous vaudeville, is harmful to the child. It 
 has never entered her head that the perpetual 
 pandering to a child's love of amusement may 
 mean a weak manhood or chronic invalidism. 
 I have known a mother to discharge a good, 
 quiet, and responsible nurse girl, because she 
 was unable to invent enough kinds of amuse- 
 ment for her boy. The boy did not like her 
 for that reason, and that was enough for the 
 mother. She would have a nurse that the boy 
 liked, if money could hire her, and of course 
 he liked the one who would give him the larg- 
 est measure of the play that pleased him ; and 
 this play was the most thrilling and exciting 
 that was possible. 
 
 70
 
 OF THE AVERAGE PARENT 
 
 The one fortunate thing for that boy was 
 the fact that in a few years he would grow 
 and develop out of the nurse-girl period and 
 into the saving association of other boys, even 
 if it meant many violent adventures and many 
 cuts and bruises. Better a thousand times 
 that, better rough games with their dangers 
 of deathj than a continuance in this intoxicat- 
 ing life. 
 
 Pleasure in some sort is the supreme yearn- 
 ing of human nature. As a present experi- 
 ence it is a hint of heaven; in anticipation it 
 lightens the burdens of the day; and it may 
 be a continuous if a lessening joy to look back 
 upon. But pursued as a business it eventually 
 disturbs brain stability and emotional balance. 
 It makes for weakness in the severe function, 
 unavoidable to most of us, called the struggle 
 for existence. A child is full of imagination, 
 and self-indulgence is his first law ; we should 
 never shut our eyes to this fact. When left 
 to himself he will, quite enough for his good, 
 make pleasure to be his chief concern; it is 
 when to his native impulses in this direction 
 is superimposed by the connivance of others 
 a systematic and long-continued stimulation 
 of his fun-loving faculty, that his other powers 
 are likely to shrivel. Then his joy becomes 
 pathologic and unwholesome, his emotional 
 
 71
 
 THE BLIND SIDE 
 
 equilibrium is broken, and he is preparing for 
 nervous collapse later in life. 
 
 In all history there is hardly an example of 
 a man great in the affairs of men, who grew 
 up as an only child in his family. What can 
 be the explanation of this fact? Certainly it 
 is not poor hereditary influences or lack of 
 the usual educational advantages in childhood 
 or youth ; the only child usually has many in- 
 dulgences denied to one of a numerous family. 
 But often, if not usually, he has the blight of 
 a child's overdeveloped emotionalism, and he 
 lacks something of the strength-giving influ- 
 ence that comes of a family life with other 
 children. He is more apt than other children 
 to live on the love and service he demands ; 
 he never grows by that which he gives ; and 
 he becomes progressively worse till a new 
 birth of maturity opens his eyes. But by that 
 time his nervous exaltation may have become 
 a fixed cerebral state that in some degree lasts 
 through life, and is a perpetual mortgage upon 
 the promise of his success. It is a certain 
 neglect, as well as the obligation to share, that 
 saves ; and the children of a more numerous 
 family often have perforce something of both 
 these wholesome influences, and so a blessed 
 salvation from ills that come to the less for- 
 tunate. 
 
 72
 
 OF THE AVERAGE PARENT 
 
 The only child is usually overemphasized 
 in every way that blind and solicitous parents 
 can devise. They provide for all the real 
 wants that they think of, they protect him 
 from danger, they guard him as far as they 
 can against every obstacle, and make him as 
 nearly useless as possible. They deprive him 
 to some degree of the greatest mint of pleas- 
 ure he can have, which is the equal compan- 
 ionship of other children. Worse than this, 
 they rob him of the benefits that always come 
 from equal contests and struggles and inven- 
 tions with others. Life with other children 
 amounts to a manual training course. The 
 child who can have this has a long lead of 
 other children ; lacking it, the only child in the 
 family suffers. His environment prevents him 
 from knowing the real world till late in his 
 childhood, because he fails to mix freely on 
 equal terms with his normal real world, which 
 is a world of childhood ; he is outdistanced by 
 his fellows; he never quite catches up. He 
 rarely or never enters early into the vigor- 
 making tussle of the world, to bear privations 
 and learn to do things with few tools ; to bear 
 and forbear, to share and to serve. 
 
 His life tends to egoism and conceit, as he 
 learns to manage and deceive his parents. 
 Really inferior to the similar child of a nu- 
 
 73
 
 THE BLIND SIDE 
 
 merous family, he fancies himself superior be- 
 cause he has more attention and indulgences, 
 and is made more useless, and so he fails to 
 improve as he might, and he grows more un- 
 commendable. Usually able to command the 
 attention of his elders and get their favors, it 
 would be a miracle if he did not grow in con- 
 ceit and self-emphasis. As a rule, when a child 
 comes to live on equal terms with other chil- 
 dren, he soon finds that there are no special 
 favors for him; he must be truly democratic, 
 and the notion that he is an aristocrat is 
 promptly taken out of him, not seldom with 
 a shock that he never forgets. His conceit is 
 trampled on in cruel fashion, but always to his 
 final and lasting benefit. Verily, the only child 
 of a family is usually entitled to more pity and 
 genuine charity than most of the gamins of the 
 street. A few parents in a thousand are wise 
 enough, thoughtful and courageous enough, 
 with their " only child " to spare him the usual 
 effects of such a calamity ; and such parents 
 are among the really great people of the 
 world. 
 
 The ministry of patience is divine. Happi- 
 ness comes to us very much in proportion to 
 the simplicity of our desires and the fewness 
 of our wants. Growth and strength are the 
 offspring of a certain degree of privation. It 
 
 74
 
 OF THE AVERAGE PARENT 
 
 is demoralizing to a child to know that he can 
 have most things that he desires; for so his 
 desires expand and multiply, and become ex- 
 acting and petty. Then he becomes an auto- 
 crat without knowing it, and thereby makes 
 himself step by step unfit to bear the pitiless 
 shocks that are inevitable in the rivalries of 
 life and the struggles for personal success. 
 
 In proportion as a child becomes an auto- 
 crat is his future harmed and the totality of 
 his joy through life lessened. There is no ex- 
 ception to this rule. In almost the exact pro- 
 portion that he learns to serve and wait does 
 he become strong for manhood and fitted for 
 power and enjoyment. This truth is as con- 
 stant as the stars. And most forceful children 
 will early become autocrats if allowed to. 
 They are powerless, by their own initiative, 
 to prevent it. Nothing can save them but help 
 from without, or the accidents of life, among 
 which are poverty and the need of dividing 
 their favors with other children. 
 
 The marks of the autocrat in a child are un- 
 mistakable. Note the positiveness with which 
 he demands things when he is really aroused ; 
 and note the surprise when he finds he cannot 
 have them. It is not the surprise of a self- 
 restrained child with the saving power of 
 bashfulness just coming on to annoy and pro- 
 
 75
 
 THE BLIND SIDE 
 
 tect him ; it is the surprise of a caged and en- 
 raged animal. 
 
 A Httle girl once got herself wedged in be- 
 tween two chairs and was for the moment un- 
 able to extricate herself. She called out to her 
 mother to come. The mother, seeing that the 
 child was unharmed, came slowly. Then the 
 youngster yelled viciously and in intense an- 
 ger for her mother to hurry. It was a yell that 
 would be impossible to any child not accus- 
 tomed to be obeyed. It was not a cry of fear 
 or despair or a piteous cry for help, but a spite- 
 ful screech that told plainly how that child 
 was wont to be obeyed by her mother. She 
 would have shown more patience with a 
 stranger or another child whom she might 
 have asked to help her. 
 
 Anyone who will take the trouble to study 
 a hundred small children as to their crying 
 spells will make some interesting discoveries. 
 The spells may be classified as to their causa- 
 tion. They are due to physical discomfort ; or 
 to fright, to grief at deprivation, or disap- 
 pointment of a sentimental and not physical 
 sort; or to a sense of injured dignity. Chil- 
 dren differ in their crying as in everything 
 else ; some cry little, others much. Those who 
 cry much have emotional natures that are 
 more intense and unstable. Those who cry 
 
 76
 
 OF THE AVERAGE PARENT 
 
 little are fortunate in good nerves or freedom 
 from friction with their environment ; or they 
 are stoics. The child who cries much is either 
 a great sufferer or has a temperament that is 
 too emotional; and he who cries often from 
 ruffled dignity has an unhealthy egoism with 
 cowardice, and a poor promise for future sta- 
 bility. This last frequently means, in this 
 country at least, a very much indulged child. 
 The little girl who fell between the chairs was 
 furious, and cried from injured dignity, not 
 from pain. In the absence of caste in this 
 country little children are rarely taught a 
 sense of dignity that they feel impelled to de- 
 fend. But they acquire it by finding that they 
 are obeyed. The love of power is as precious 
 to a child as to a man ; it makes one jealous of 
 its safety, and it grows by what it feeds upon, 
 among rich and poor alike. 
 
 A small boy was forbidden to go into a 
 neighboring high-fenced yard and shut the 
 gate. The gate was self-locking, and if it 
 closed behind him, some one had to come from 
 the house and let him out. It was a child's 
 adventure for him to go into the yard and have 
 his mother come after him ; and he tested his 
 power by experimenting with her. He soon 
 found that each time he called to her from be- 
 hind the closed gate, she would loyally come 
 
 77
 
 THE BLIND SIDE 
 
 and liberate him — each time telling him that 
 he must never do so again. One day when he 
 called her she could not come, but sent her 
 cook. Then he flared up, stamped his feet and 
 screamed in fury because his mother had not 
 come to him. His dignity was affronted, his 
 demands had been neglected. 
 
 No child would make such a scene on a first 
 experience of this sort. The explosion came 
 of a mental habit born of many hundreds of 
 similar tests that proved to him that he could 
 depend on his elders to jump to his call. His 
 autocratic tendency and so his dignity — ready 
 to be hurt — was a growth of many months. 
 
 A precocious and much petted little girl 
 lived for a time in the house of her uncle and 
 aunt. She was fond of her aunt, who took 
 care of her, and who always came to her in the 
 night when she usually wakened and asked 
 for a drink of water. So each night witnessed 
 a little visit with her aunt and some petting. 
 One night the aunt was sick and the uncle 
 brought her the drink, but she refused to take 
 it. " Auntie is sick," he said, " and cannot 
 come, let me help you." " No, I won't. I 
 want my auntie," she snapped out. And no 
 amount of coaxing could induce her to relent 
 and take the drink from his hand. The strug- 
 gle continued long, and was finally compro- 
 
 78
 
 OF THE AVERAGE PARENT 
 
 mised by her taking the drink from an older 
 cousin, who had been called out of bed to serve 
 her. 
 
 This child was not thirsty, in the physio- 
 logic sense, and did not need a drink ; had she 
 really needed one she would probably have 
 taken it when offered. She wakened and was 
 lonesome and liked attention and service. The 
 drink was incidental. Her temper was aroused 
 by any variation from the attention she had 
 expected. And here was a mature man at 
 her bedside — in his nightgown — helplessly 
 pleading with her, five years old, to let him 
 serve her ; and she, vain of her power, and in 
 heartless disregard of her aunt's sickness, dog- 
 gedly holding him to her ultimatum. What 
 a picture ! Yet this case is not at all uncom- 
 mon ; in some form or degree it is represented 
 in the observations of every adult person who 
 has taken even casual notice of the so-called 
 fortunate children of our time. Is it any won- 
 der that such tendencies in children lead to the 
 nerve wrecking of after life ? 
 
 A curiosity of this subject is the ease with 
 which a mother forgets the affront her child 
 puts upon her. She tells him to stop doing a 
 certain forbidden thing. He says in a tone of 
 protest, " no, I want to." The mother says, 
 " I'll punish you if you do," and repeats it sev- 
 
 79
 
 THE BLIND SIDE 
 
 eral times over. He stops, waits a few min- 
 utes, watching her to see if a real storm is 
 brewing or if it is only an idle threat ; then, 
 when her back is turned, he cautiously re- 
 sumes the forbidden mischief. The mother 
 on discovering this may be chagrined and un- 
 happy, but she forgets to punish him as she 
 had promised, and she recovers her serenity 
 and joy in about one minute after the child 
 resumes an attitude of obedience and amity 
 toward her. She would not and could not so 
 easily condone an offense in her husband or 
 a tradesman or a neighbor. It is not that she 
 forgives mischief on the part of her child — 
 that is easy and natural as well as laudable 
 — ^but she forgets being foiled and degraded. 
 It is unfair to the children to charge all 
 their overconceit and bad behavior to their 
 own morbid emotionalism. Their parents 
 often unwittingly help them, for they are 
 proud of the children's achievements, and ac- 
 centuate the unwholesome conceits of the lat- 
 ter. They help the children to show off, and 
 seem to be proud of them for it. A child 
 tends to strut and act pompously, as though he 
 were better than his fellows and above com- 
 mon clay; his parents enjoy it and frequently 
 encourage it ; it shadows distinction for their 
 offspring, and so seems to exalt them. This 
 
 80
 
 OF THE AVERAGE PARENT 
 
 is seldom clone in a family of many children, 
 but often in a family of one child, or where a 
 child is far removed in age from its brothers 
 and sisters ; otherwise the wings of his conceit 
 would be mercilessly clipped by the other chil- 
 dren. 
 
 The ideals of a mother are often fated to 
 cultivate a certain degree of effeminacy in her 
 son by keeping his hair in long curls far into 
 his boyhood, and by refusing to suffer them 
 to be trimmed, even when the child in his 
 shame begs for it. If the boy likes to be thus 
 unfavorably conspicuous among his fellows, 
 it is proof to a demonstration that he has be- 
 gun to take on the girl quality of mind, or that 
 he has acquired a most unwholesome order of 
 conceit — from neither of which calamities will 
 he ever wholly recover. Occasionally a boy 
 with the masculine instinct stalwart within 
 him rebels against his mother who would thus 
 sacrifice his future on the altar of her lesser 
 womanishness. There is small wonder that 
 he rebels as a boy, and his fight is admirable. 
 It is pathetic that it should in after life, as it 
 occasionally does, lessen the respect he has for 
 his mother. It is a psychologic curiosity, and 
 a sad one, that a mother, in her desire to keep 
 her son a baby, should insist that he be, as 
 nearly as she can make him, a girl baby, and 
 
 8i
 
 THE BLIND SIDE 
 
 so do the thing that in her soul she could 
 never wish to do, namely, to humiliate him 
 with his fellows, with whom he must train and 
 struggle and contend, and to give every one 
 of his fellows an advantage over him in his 
 man's career. It is more strange than the 
 childless woman's devotion to a pet animal. 
 The strongest manhood and the greatest ca- 
 reer never come of a boy taking an effeminate 
 character of either sex for his hero ; a boy's 
 only safe model is a strong man of his own 
 knowledge and observation, or one out of the 
 history of the past. The hero of history is 
 good ; but the live hero is the better and more 
 inspiring. 
 
 Some of the autocratic children are saved by 
 being sent away from home to school with 
 other children. There the yearning for atten- 
 tion, the tendency to overconceit and selfish- 
 ness, are taken out of them by their fellows, 
 and they pass into a more normal mental 
 mood. Many times these children are sent 
 away by reason of the nervous necessities of 
 their parents — the parents cannot endure them 
 any longer. The nervous breakdown of a 
 mother is often induced by a few years of in- 
 cessant slavery to the wishes and unreal neces- 
 sities of a child (as often a single child as 
 a number of children), but, thanks to this bal- 
 
 82
 
 OF THE AVERAGE PARENT 
 
 ance wheel of nature, when the mother goes 
 to the wall the child is spared. As long as the 
 child is at home its autocratic demands wear 
 upon the mother, and with their mutual nerv- 
 ousness both grow worse. The wise separa- 
 tion of them (from a calamity to the mother, 
 if it must be) leads to the improvement of 
 both, rarely if ever to their complete resto- 
 ration. 
 
 The frequent quarreling among children in 
 a family is vastly less harmful than the com- 
 mon indulgence of an only child or a pam- 
 pered one. For, while quarreling is bad, it 
 tends to counteract some child emotions that 
 are worse. And it cannot be denied that it 
 makes for strength of a certain sort, if it does 
 not encourage all the graces of human in- 
 tercourse. 
 
 What is the explanation of all this parental 
 apathy? Several circumstances doubtless 
 contribute to it. One of the most potent is 
 parental love, what might be called the animal 
 love, the intense blind attachment of a mother 
 animal for her young, and the reluctance to 
 believe in any ungenuineness on the part of 
 the child. The absolute singleness and hon- 
 esty with which some parents deal with their 
 children blinds them to the doubleness of the 
 
 83
 
 THE BLIND SIDE 
 
 latter. They, being open as the sunHght, are 
 unable to imagine a child taking advantage 
 of them. Alas, that they should so forget 
 their own childhood ! Thev can understand 
 the occasional naughtiness of a child and the 
 carelessness in behavior and untidiness and 
 lack of order of most children ; these short- 
 comings are plain ; they show on the surface 
 and worry the parents. It is the outward 
 seeming of ladies and gentlemen that all par- 
 ents would like their children to have, and so 
 they are deaf and blind to those less obvious 
 tendencies that may harm a child's future. 
 No career of man or woman was ever seri- 
 ously hurt by bad table manners in childhood, 
 or by the fiction building expressed in the 
 white lies told at this time of life ; while count- 
 less thousands of child promises of noble ca- 
 reers have been dashed by exaltation of the 
 egoistic emotions in the earlier years. Worse 
 than this, some of those thousands have suf- 
 fered through life with weak nervous systems 
 — to be the constant pity and the frequent de- 
 spair of their friends and the desperation of 
 their physicians. 
 
 Most parents like to hug the gentle conceit 
 that their children are imbued with constant 
 love for them. They desire above all other 
 things to have everything pleasant in the fam- 
 
 84
 
 OF THE AVERAGE PARENT 
 
 ily ; they dread severe scenes and situations. 
 They would rather see the children smile than 
 see them benefited. In their minds it is a 
 misfortune for a child to cry or be sorry ; but 
 a few occasional moments of regret, of grief 
 and crying, may add to the child's strength 
 and future happiness more than a year of 
 smiles. 
 
 Parents usually theorize and wrongly theo- 
 rize that lack of order, the use of slang and 
 vulgarity on the part of their children — even 
 the smoking of cigarettes — are likely to con- 
 tinue through life to their infinite harm. But 
 all such peccadillos put together are not a 
 tenth part as harmful to a child's future as the 
 cultivation of the selfish emotions which most 
 parents unwittingly permit, if they do not 
 foster. 
 
 Some parents are habitually dishonest in 
 dealing with their children, and seem to ex- 
 pect that the children will be honest and can- 
 did with them. They must know they are not 
 candid with the children, and they ought to 
 know that this course would naturally breed 
 similar conduct on their children's part — if 
 inheritance did not make it inevitable. And 
 a man who is willing to be dishonest with his 
 child is not entitled to much sympathy if his 
 child returns him in kind. 
 
 85
 
 THE BLIND SIDE 
 
 It seems almost impossible for most well- 
 meaning parents to correct their children 
 severely unless they are angry. When not 
 angry, they indulge, condone, and wink at 
 conduct which they have forbidden and prom- 
 ised not to tolerate. But such conduct annoys 
 them constantly and humiliates them often, 
 and so it is difficult for them to recognize or 
 think much about the tendencies that obtrude 
 less — like those I have tried to picture. The 
 tendencies here sketched show themselves less 
 obviously, in most cases, and appear less to de- 
 mand immediate attention ; so they are wholly 
 neglected, or their correction is postponed and 
 dreaded. When the tendencies are finally dis- 
 covered and their importance appreciated, it 
 is usually seen that their correction will re- 
 quire for a long time almost constant attention 
 on the part of parents, nurses, or teachers ; 
 that daily struggles with the child will be nec- 
 essary for a long time, and a degree of candor 
 and frankness that is most unusual between 
 parents and children, if not between caretak- 
 ers and children. It is small wonder that the 
 vast majority shrink from such a missionary 
 effort. 
 
 Most parents are cowardly with their chil- 
 dren in some things ; they shrink from telling 
 them certain wholesome facts in their phvsi- 
 
 86
 
 OF THE AVERAGE PARENT 
 
 cal lives. It is just about as hard to tell 
 them certain things in their mental and moral 
 lives, and parents who really see the necessity 
 for the latter often hesitate and put off the 
 doing of it till they come to pretend to them- 
 selves that it is not necessary. The children 
 do not know of these tendencies in themselves, 
 and they must be insistently told of them if 
 they are to know. Primarily, they are as ig- 
 norant of them as they are of their developing 
 physical lives, and the annunciation does not 
 come to them by their later experiences or 
 from other children, or from undesirable 
 acquaintances as is so commonly the case 
 with the, knowledge of physical development. 
 When they do learn of the emotional in- 
 jury done to them in childhood it is usually 
 in the reflective years of maturity, and long 
 after the mischief to their nerves is beyond 
 repair. 
 
 The greatest obstacle of all to any better- 
 ment of the conditions here set forth is the 
 inability of parents to understand the psychol- 
 ogy of their children ; which is very much like 
 saying that the chief reason why the average 
 parent cannot see is that he is blind. The par- 
 ent, like people in general, rarely sees as a 
 motive for an act or a line of conduct in an- 
 other, an emotion which he cannot easilv im- 
 
 87
 
 THE BLIND SIDE 
 
 agine himself as possessing for the moment, 
 or under like conditions. He cannot picture 
 himself as moved by egoistic exaltation in the 
 circumstances in which his child is placed. He 
 cannot remember that he himself perhaps 
 thirty years before was moved by such emo- 
 tions in his daily doings. He was so moved 
 then, as his child is now, but he did not know 
 it then or afterward, and his child is ignorant 
 of it now. What is more, he does not as a 
 man know definitely when or how he shows 
 the same sort of emotion at the present time ; 
 somebody else may tell him — drive it into his 
 head, if such a thing is possible, but he sub- 
 stantially never discovers it himself. 
 
 A hysterical woman disfigured beyond ex- 
 pression by such emotions never knows at the 
 time the nature of her affliction. If she some- 
 time discovers it, by a degree of introspection 
 that is both rare and noble, she usually sets 
 herself about correcting it. It is the observ- 
 ing and discriminating friend who most surely 
 discovers this overpowering twist in the men- 
 tal and moral nature of children. Adults oc- 
 casionally see it in the children when it is 
 pointed out to them, and then they readily 
 look back on their own childhood and confess 
 to themselves that they were dominated by 
 such emotions then. This, then, is an affliction 
 
 88
 
 OF THE AVERAGE PARENT 
 
 that the individual, whether child or man, 
 rarely discovers himself, but must be helped 
 out of, if help ever comes. The helper nat- 
 urally at hand for the child is his parent, yet 
 there is hardly a person in the world so little 
 likely to help him in this particular as his 
 father or mother. 
 
 This affliction is like sin, into which people 
 fall easily, unconsciously and insidiously ; the 
 sinner needs to be brought to a sense of his 
 condition by another. Usually it is a shock 
 to him to discover his iniquity ; so it is here, 
 the blighted one is covered with shame. 
 Would a parent cover his own child with 
 shame ? Yes, and he often does for some tem- 
 porary and perhaps trifling breach of deport- 
 ment ; but rarely for an emotion that stealthily 
 guides his conduct wrong, least of all for one 
 that is so hidden that not one parent in a hun- 
 dred ever sees it — that most parents refuse 
 to see. 
 
 Some of the most glaring exhibitions by 
 children of the emotions referred to — the strut, 
 the showing off, the pomposity, the smartness, 
 the impudence, even, are often regarded by 
 their elders as cunning, as evidence of precoc- 
 ity and the promise of a coming great man. 
 Hence the parent, as well as the child, is proud 
 of the conduct. Is it likely that a father will 
 
 89
 
 THE BLIND SIDE 
 
 chide his son for a thing he himself admires? 
 Is he Hkely to deliberately blast a budding 
 possible great inventor, or business magnate, 
 or college professor, or president of the 
 United States ? 
 
 Yet, it is cruel to say that a child may not 
 be saved from the harm of egoistic emotions 
 run wild. In order to be saved, if he is to be 
 saved truly, he must be made to know his ten- 
 dency early. The only way he can know it 
 is for some one to tell him positively, kindly, 
 and confidentially, and by acts as well as 
 words, and by insistence long continued if 
 need be. This is a very difficult task, and it 
 takes courage. It is a rare woman who 
 will say to her child, and say it firmly and 
 without anger : " This thing you are doing is 
 the result of your foolish conceit ; you do it 
 to show yourself off, to get attention to your- 
 self, and for no other reason. You are per- 
 haps unconscious of this fact, but you must try 
 to understand it. You must stop thinking so 
 much of yourself ; and, to help you, I will 
 cease helping you and let you help yourself. 
 You must serve others more and you shall be 
 served less." The average woman would find 
 the telling of this to be a large tax on her 
 courage ; and to do it repeatedly and not to 
 relax her rule as to the indulgence of the child 
 
 90
 
 OF THE AVERAGE PARENT 
 
 would take more strength of purpose than 
 most parents have. 
 
 Through the babyhood of her child the 
 average mother has constantly petted and 
 amused it, and has been herself comforted by 
 this service. To her the child's crying was a 
 thing to be stopped by any gratification what- 
 ever ; she responded instantly with sympathetic 
 attention to its grief and petulance ; she nightly 
 walked the floor with it in her arms to put it 
 to sleep; and she provided, as by instinct, 
 everything possible for its entertainment. This 
 habit, therefore, became fixed and firm, and 
 she had as much joy in it as her child had, and 
 possibly more. To expect that now, out of 
 her wisdom and philosophy, she will com- 
 pletely change her ways, make her child go to 
 sleep alone in a darkened room (crying if it 
 will) ; that she will stop buying expensive toys, 
 and compel the child to amuse itself or go 
 unamused ; and that she will refuse absolutely 
 to respond to its autocratic demands, is to ex- 
 pect what is next to impossible. To hope that 
 she will forego the surpassing mother- joy of 
 amusing her child, and try to find comfort in 
 seeing it amuse itself, and in the better hope 
 and prospect for its future as a man or 
 woman — to expect all this, is to look for a de- 
 gree of sense and courage and wholly unselfish 
 
 91
 
 THE AVERAGE PARENT 
 
 love that is wonderful, heroic, and extremely 
 rare. 
 
 That so few people have this courage and 
 see the need of using it in these ways, permits 
 our homes and our infirmaries to be filled with 
 adult nervous wrecks. And there seems to be 
 proof enough that the number of victims of 
 such invalidism is not growing less, but is 
 actually increasing in this country to-day. 
 
 92
 
 Some Commencement Ideals
 
 Some Commencement Ideals 
 
 A Baccalaureate Address 
 
 To receive a diploma that stands for four 
 years of work and study is an epoch in the hfe 
 of any man — it is a milestone in his journey. 
 A man's career is marked off by several mile- 
 stones of differing significance. Next after 
 infancy comes that one that is shown by the 
 beginning of memory ; then later that of se- 
 lecting his school or college and mapping out 
 his plan for youth — for his man's career is 
 rarely outlined with any certainty till after his 
 graduation from school. Much more impor- 
 tant to his future, to his sentimental after-life, 
 is the milestone of his graduation from col- 
 lege, if he is fortunate enough to be so gradu- 
 ated. Around that event cluster the most 
 precious memories, and through it and be- 
 cause of it, often come many of the best 
 and most helpful associations. Alas for those 
 
 95
 
 SOME COMMENCEMENT IDEALS 
 
 who have been deprived of such memories 
 and associations ; who, whatever their achieve- 
 ments, are doomed to the pathetic, hfe-long 
 regret (or delusion) that they are " unedu- 
 cated." 
 
 The diploma of a professional school (espe- 
 cially if from a university) is in some respects 
 the most important milestone of all, for it 
 opens the door to a practical career in a life 
 work; it is the threshold to the great world's 
 tussle, to its toil and sweat probably, and may- 
 be to its rewards — rewards that are always 
 sweetest if they come, and come only, with 
 the toil. 
 
 Now that you have your diplomas, having 
 earned them in honor, one of the first and most 
 natural questions is, what you are going to do 
 with them. 
 
 Probably no two of you have the same no- 
 tion of the worth of the diploma or its mean- 
 ing; and you will doubtless dispose of this 
 more or less precious document in differing 
 ways. One may frame it in heavy ornate 
 molding, and hang it in his office in a good 
 light, and contemplate its beauties ; he may 
 expand with pride as he looks upon it and 
 as he sees others admire it. Another be- 
 lieving that it is somehow needful to expose 
 the diploma to public view, will frame it mod- 
 
 96
 
 SOME COMMENCEMENT IDEALS 
 
 estly and hang it in some shadow, perhaps 
 behind the door, where the inquisitive or those 
 who doubt his professional character may in- 
 spect it. Still another will put the roll away 
 in a drawer or on an upper shelf, to be shown 
 only to the officers of the law when necessary 
 for registration or proof. 
 
 The diploma, the graduation, are a high wall 
 that men scale with some difficulty, to enter a 
 larger field which has some rewards for them 
 if they work, with, unavoidably, some penal- 
 ties and many tribulations. This first achieve- 
 ment is to some men so remarkable that they 
 linger about the wall, wonder at it and at 
 themselves for having scaled it — and have 
 widening joy and admiration in their wonder. 
 To others the wall is forgotten or altogether 
 ignored, after they have planted their heels 
 solidly into its farther footstones, and plunged 
 forward into the new work ahead of them. 
 
 As differing and varied are the estimates of 
 the meaning of this hour by those who are 
 here to do honor to your decoration. To 
 some who are sentimentally near to you, it 
 is an hour of moist-eyed gladness for your re- 
 ward, and for this evidence of your growth 
 and achievement ; to others it is merely a cere- 
 mony, a display, and, to all of them, you, the 
 recipients of these diplomas, possess various 
 
 97
 
 SOME COMMENCEMENT IDEALS 
 
 shades of physical bearing, beauty, and plain- 
 ness, and are respectively endowed with spe- 
 cific virtues or vices which the interested ob- 
 server has no doubt in the world he can 
 divine from the shape and expression of 
 your faces and the carriage of your bodies. 
 
 Others look with more certain, and with 
 solemn if unmournful eyes, through the doings 
 and sayings of this occasion to the life and 
 labor that are to come ; and they mentally spec- 
 ulate as to the way, the spirit, and the outcome 
 of it all. 
 
 Of this latter class are the thoughtful veter- 
 ans who have traveled some of the way them- 
 selves. How you can avoid the snags over 
 which they have stumbled ; what new obstacles 
 are likely to arise in this later day, and what 
 new word of courage and caution you need 
 now ; what new talisman can be given for the 
 future ; these are questions that rush in upon 
 the older men, who have acquired the perspec- 
 tive that comes only with the marching years 
 of the journey. 
 
 The career of every man is made by several 
 elements : among these are his opportunities, 
 his powers, his equipment for his particular 
 work, his continuity of purpose, the character 
 of his personal industry, and the accidental 
 occurrences of his life. It is determined quite 
 
 98
 
 SOME COMMENCEMENT IDEALS 
 
 as much by the plans and conception of his 
 work and of himself with which he starts out ; 
 and these plans and notions are his ideals. 
 Probably the ideals of no two men are ever 
 exactly alike, but everyone has his ideals of 
 some sort and in some measure ; they are back 
 of all the ambitions and aspirations of young 
 life, and they grow fixed with age. They con- 
 stitute a large part of the motive power of 
 most men who achieve anything of worth. 
 
 That a man's ideals are his making or his 
 destruction is a very old truth, but it refers 
 mostly to the cardinal virtues. The standards 
 of honesty, truthfulness, uprightness, and per- 
 sonal cleanness are the highest teaching of 
 all time, and they are substantially the same 
 throughout the ages. They are the indispen- 
 sable ideals. To enlarge on them now would 
 be to preach a sermon, and that is not the 
 present purpose. 
 
 I would rather discuss a few of the usually 
 forgotten or unthought-of ideals, the recon- 
 dite standards of work and life and conduct. 
 For there are many such ideals, and they gov- 
 ern the lives and order the careers of men in 
 unexpected ways. They are varied in force, 
 in character, and in degree, and they nearly 
 always possess a man without his knowing it ; 
 often without his friends' knowing it. Every 
 
 99
 
 SOME COMMENCEMENT IDEALS 
 
 man is in the grasp of one or more of them 
 most of the time. They are automatic and 
 never stop ; and they often control a man hke 
 a fetish. They are hidden leaks that lose his 
 power and initiative, or some undiscovered 
 supply that increases them. A man may for- 
 get for an hour his good resolves or his re- 
 ligion, but these stealthy, idealistic guides will 
 stick to him like his habit of breathing; they 
 work with the certainty of the subconscious 
 mind; they never sleep. 
 
 These ideals create habits that control us 
 inevitably ; and we often go on for many 
 years or through life completely ignorant both 
 of the ideals and the habits they have created. 
 They have fixed themselves upon us and made 
 or marred our work, and we are blind to 
 everything but the end results — and at these 
 last we wonder ; and usually account for them 
 in the wrong way. 
 
 What are ideals for? To make a righteous 
 life? Yes; but to make a successful one as 
 well ; to increase our power to do for ourselves 
 and for others; to increase our capacity for 
 the larger joys. Within the realm of sanity 
 one does not have ideals whose purpose is mis- 
 ery for himself, damage to his aims, or harm 
 to his friends. But the ideal of enmity to the 
 wicked and to the enemy still exists and is very 
 
 lOO
 
 SOME COMMENCEMENT IDEALS 
 
 old; it will probably never wholly die out of 
 the human heart. 
 
 The greatest success in life, on the average, 
 comes to those with symmetrical powers and 
 character; not to those who are warped and 
 one-sided. So that ideal is of most worth 
 which makes a man stronger in his weaker 
 powers ; that is most worthless that increases 
 his unbalance and accentuates his warping. 
 Wherefore, there are fit and unfit ideals. 
 
 But the apparent paradox is that, apart 
 from the greater virtues, the ideals a man usu- 
 ally acquires, those which dominate him — 
 what we may call his secular ideals — are unfit ; 
 that is, they are such motives as increase his 
 asymmetry rather than lessen it. 
 
 The reason for this is not strange ; our 
 ideals in this sort come to us along lines of 
 least resistance ; we grow into those we have, 
 rather than others, because it is easy to do so. 
 The reverse ought to be the case ; we need 
 ideals that will help us over our defects, not 
 to increase them. We are as far wrong many 
 times in our educational methods. A boy se- 
 lects as the thing to study that which he learns 
 easiest and knows most about; and he neg- 
 lects the tasks that for him happen to be 
 harder. Such a course tends to enlarge the 
 greater talent and to shrivel the lesser one. 
 
 lOI
 
 SOME COMMENCEMENT IDEALS 
 
 This large talent is often the sole substance 
 of genius ; in the greatest degree it amounts 
 to degeneracy, and the world is not in such 
 need of geniuses as to make an approach to 
 degeneracy, or to the borderland of it, profit- 
 able. Society could better do without the 
 geniuses, now and always — it does not need 
 them. 
 
 The sometime gospel of pedagogy holds 
 that the child, from the beginning, may select 
 his course of study — learn what he likes and 
 omit what he pleases. Of course he likes 
 those things in which he is apt and strong, and 
 hates those hard ones in which he is weak ; 
 and so he grows more uneven. Happily, all 
 educators do not agree to this tenet ; some be- 
 lieve that a child's course of study should tend 
 to make a symmetrical man, and not favor 
 one-sidedness. This is the part of wisdom. 
 
 Thus of a man's ideals. They ought to con- 
 tribute to his power and increase his happiness. 
 But unfit ideals — both positive and negative — 
 are the source of a great amount of grief and 
 failure. That man who knows (from his ex- 
 amination papers or otherwise) that his use 
 of English is crude and blundering, should 
 have the perfection of the language for one 
 of his ideals ; he should try to acquire a crit- 
 ical sense of it. But this is the very thing he 
 
 102
 
 SOME COMMENCEMENT IDEALS 
 
 is least likely to do, because his consciousness 
 of his fault is dull, and the ideal is hard. The 
 lack of such an ideal has kept many a man 
 below his deserts, and sometimes has even 
 blasted a career. I know of several notable 
 examples of this kind. One was a man of 
 great superiority in his profession, who failed 
 of appointment to a professorship which he 
 had coveted for years, and for no other reason 
 than the lack of such an ideal. 
 
 If a man could know that in his demeanor 
 he is liable to be rude, brusque, and impolite 
 (as his neighbors know it) he might erect an 
 ideal of gentleness and courtesy with great 
 profit to his spirit, and, if he practices a pro- 
 fession, profit to his purse also. Probably he 
 has already fully developed powers in other 
 directions, most likely in force and eiifective- 
 ness. Can he discover the need of a new ideal 
 and create it ? Probably not ; for nothing but 
 a new birth in introspective psychology can 
 enable him to do it. And if he thus acquires 
 an ambition for a new ideal, he must watch 
 himself for long before he can create a new 
 habit. 
 
 On the other hand, the man who is naturally 
 courteous and thoughtful of the feelings of 
 others in little things, and especially in their 
 entertainment, is in danger of overworking a 
 
 103
 
 SOME COMMENCEMENT IDEALS 
 
 good ideal. For it can be carried so far — and 
 often is — as to entail a great burden in the 
 duties which it seems to impose. It is a bur- 
 den by the fear, even terror, it often produces 
 in its possessor lest it has been or may be vio- 
 lated. And when it is in excess it has no com- 
 pensating advantages, except some very du- 
 bious ones. The standard requires the person 
 to be polite and to entertain others in conver- 
 sation ; so a sick man wears himself out enter- 
 taining thus a lot of people he is under no ob- 
 ligations to. A distinguished friend of mine, 
 when on his deathbed, and too weak to talk to 
 anybody, actually felt called upon to apologize 
 for not talking. The impression grows to be 
 a sort of craze — not only to talk, but to believe 
 it to be a duty to talk whenever within earshot 
 of others. Then follows a species of deception 
 and finesse — for we get tired of people, even 
 our friends, and tired of talking to them ; we 
 shun them, keep out of their way, avoid them, 
 give a lot of fictitious excuses for not com- 
 ing, and for being out when they come to us. 
 For we know perfectly that once in their 
 presence nothing but syncope or death can 
 stop the wagging of our tongues. That we 
 have enough of plain personal courage to stop 
 it is, in our civilization, unthinkable. 
 
 Some ideals as to our dress, adornment, and 
 
 104
 
 SOME COMMENCEMENT IDEALS 
 
 personal demeanor are peculiar if not un- 
 canny, and lead to many bypaths that take us 
 into unexpected regions. Sometimes the effect 
 is in itself grotesque, and very often it is po- 
 tent in its influence on character and success 
 in life. The sum total of these results is usu- 
 ally unfortunate if not bad, the sole advantage 
 being the happiness which the individual him- 
 self seems to get out of his indulgences. It 
 is a cheap sort of happiness, always discolored 
 by a degree of vanity ; but many of us seem 
 to find substantial joy in such things. Once 
 in the East there was a judge, who, for a quar- 
 ter of a century, appeared daily with his hair 
 in large long curls about his neck. It was 
 inevitable that this should influence his char- 
 acter and his relations with other people. The 
 curls amounted to little in themselves, but they 
 singled him out from among the rest of the 
 community, and they were a large factor in his 
 life through the self-complacency and egoism 
 which they ministered to in the man. He 
 could no more avoid thinking about his curls 
 and their effect on others than he could stop 
 winking. 
 
 If it were the custom for men to wear rings 
 in their noses, it would mean little that a par- 
 ticular person did it, except a thraldom to a 
 mere fashion — a thing we are all constantly 
 
 105
 
 SOME COMMENCEMENT IDEALS 
 
 victims of to some degree. Fashion allies us 
 to a race, a guild or a set of people. But for 
 one man in a hundred thousand to wear a ring 
 in his nose takes him out of the fashion and 
 into the realm of eccentricity and overconceit. 
 There is virtue in the defiance of that kind 
 of a fashion whose only real purpose is dis- 
 play; but the judge failed of this. Such a re- 
 volt would have required a fine sort of courage 
 and independence. If that kind of fortitude 
 had been required in order to wear the curls, 
 he never would have had them. It needed only 
 a species of vanity, a desire to do something 
 others did not or could not do, something that 
 would distinguish this man from all his fel- 
 lows ; or an abounding desire to please his per- 
 sonal fancy. Nor did he curl his hair from 
 an idealistic desire merely to distinguish him- 
 self from others. That could have been done 
 through creditable work, art, achievement, 
 daring, risk, or courage — which countless 
 thousands of men and women are laudably 
 doing every day. What the judge did took 
 no courage worthy of the name, no work — 
 save a few minutes each morning with his 
 curling facilities and the help of some mem- 
 ber of his family — no attainment or study or 
 skill. He paraded his curls like the color of 
 his skin, or the shape of his features, or the 
 
 1 06
 
 SOME COMMENCEMENT IDEALS 
 
 gait of his walk, and without a particle of 
 credit to himself. 
 
 Now, the curls were a trifle, like an inch- 
 long finger nail, or a beard as long as the 
 body of the wearer. These are little things in 
 themselves and amount to nothing in the 
 world's greater arithmetic. But they are 
 meaningful if they signify a mental quality, an 
 emotion, which colors the life and segregates 
 in some way an individual from his fellows — 
 and they always mean a weaker rather than a 
 stronger character. They are more vital still 
 if they beget, as they tend to, an emotional 
 bent that lessens the power of the individual in 
 the work at his hand. Such a waste of per- 
 sonal force and influence is a sin of large pro- 
 portions. And it is no adequate answer to 
 this criticism to say that such habits, so acting, 
 are happifying to the individual, for joy can 
 come as truly from noble emotions as from 
 weak ones, and no man has a right to pleasures 
 that dwarf him. 
 
 To make oneself odd by defying a useless 
 or injurious fashion, when it takes courage to 
 do it, is commendable. That is to defy the 
 class conscience and take a stand for the sake 
 of personal conscience. The fashion in trifles, 
 like neckties and ribbons, is sometimes the 
 refuge for souls that lack courage. To refuse 
 
 107
 
 SOME COMMENCEMENT IDEALS 
 
 to use tobacco or liquor, or wear high collars 
 or tight corsets when they are in style, some- 
 times takes the manner of courage that pushes 
 a man into battle, or makes him face an epi- 
 demic of deadly disease and refuse to run 
 away from it. No case can be made out 
 against such courage — it cannot even be 
 laughed down. It is the attribute of the real 
 and not the sham hero. 
 
 There are some ideals which a professional 
 man cannot afford to do without, as there are 
 those which he ought to shun with all his 
 might. 
 
 One of the latter which is very common to us 
 is that of our own sense of certainty and suf- 
 ficiency. We fall into it unavoidably. We 
 possess, we come to believe, the very founda- 
 tions of all wisdom^ and we are strong for re- 
 forming the world, if not making it over, in 
 the first decade of our professional lives. So 
 there grows up within us a great amount of 
 dignity and personal importance that are sure 
 to be jarred by sundry experiences of life 
 which are inevitable. But we feel bound to 
 protect and defend them nevertheless. When 
 a man seeks our professional advice and then 
 fails to follow it, we sometimes feel affronted 
 and are grieved over it, and so waste a store of 
 good energy that we might put to a better use. 
 
 108
 
 SOME COMMENCEMENT IDEALS 
 
 It is a slow lesson for us to learn, that peo- 
 ple have notions of their own — foolish ones 
 often — which they have been following more 
 or less for centuries, and that they have some 
 rights to follow them even if they are foolish ; 
 also, that they frequently will follow them in 
 spite of any and all of our efiforts to dissuade 
 them. And we cumulate unhappiness for our- 
 selves when we let our sense of professional 
 dignity and personal importance run hard 
 against them. It is a long step forward when 
 the doctor, young or old, can say to his mis- 
 behaving patient, and say it gently : " Of 
 course you do not have to follow my advice. 
 It is given to you on the theory of doing you 
 good, but you can ignore it if you wish — only, 
 remember, that if you do neglect it, not I but 
 you take the responsibility. I am willing, 
 even glad, to be freed from responsibility if 
 you wish me to be." This sort of tactics not 
 only shows that the doctor has learned to con- 
 trol himself; but it also is the most potent in- 
 fluence to clear the moral atmosphere between 
 himself and his client. 
 
 Have an ideal that you will do your work 
 honestly, faithfully, and as precisely as possi- 
 ble, not lazily or carelessly, and that then you 
 will take the consequences without whining. 
 This is of the very essence of the best courage ; 
 
 109
 
 SOME COMMENCEMENT IDEALS 
 
 it was the ideal of the greatest soldier of re- 
 cent times — and it saved his cause and him- 
 self. Moreover, after you have planted your 
 seed as best you may, not perhaps as well as 
 another might, but as well as you can, then 
 watch for its sprouting, but don't dig up the 
 ground to see if it is beginning to sprout or 
 is growing downward. 
 
 Shun the vicious ideal of speculating in your 
 mind as to what in general others think of you. 
 Don't walk down the street mentally asking 
 people whether they recognize in you the sort 
 of fellow you think you are. They will never 
 so recognize you anyway ; and for you to do 
 this distracts the mental attention and pre- 
 vents serious work; it leads to worry, fear, 
 suspicion, jealousy, and heartburnings. It 
 never pays. And when with exalted emotions 
 you begin to guess — for many will, and usu- 
 ally guess wrong — as to how others think and 
 feel about you, then you are walking along the 
 rim of the grand canyon of gentle lunacy. 
 You may never do it — pray God that you 
 never will — but you can then very easily 
 plunge over into the abyss. 
 
 I once had a friend, eminent in his profes- 
 sion, who, when called in an emergency to see 
 a patient of another physician, always pre- 
 scribed with ingenuous loyalty both to the pa- 
 
 IIO
 
 SOME COMMENCEMENT IDEALS 
 
 tient and his doctor. But he was sure to go 
 round the next day and make an unexpected 
 call on the patient. When asked why he did 
 it, he said, after some hesitation : " I do it to 
 see how I stand with the family." He was a 
 good man in most things, but he was wrong 
 in this, and this foolish ideal tinged with dis- 
 credit his whole career. He had no call to 
 constitute himself a detective to find out 
 whether the people thought well or ill of him ; 
 and it was little advantage if he did know, for 
 if it was well his vanity grew, which was 
 needless ; and if it was ill he increased his 
 bitterness, which was harmful as well as un- 
 necessary. His duty ended when he had 
 served the patient honestly and scientifically, 
 and he ought to have had the courage to rest 
 his case there. His duty was, like the duty 
 of all men, to know himself that his conduct 
 was intentionally correct and tallied with the 
 golden rule. Then he needed manliness 
 enough to walk erect and let others think what 
 they might. 
 
 One of the best ideals of all is that we will 
 not and cannot afford to be petty and trifling. 
 This is a hard one to hold to, so naturally do 
 we fill our minds with the trivialities of life. 
 We talk about trifles, hear about them by the 
 hour, and read them in the columns of gossip 
 
 III
 
 SOME COMMENCEMENT IDEALS 
 
 about folks, in the daily papers. If you care 
 for a curious study in the anatomy of your 
 own daily life, just make a list every night for 
 a week, of all the trifles that have concerned 
 your mind during the respective days — and 
 lay the record aside for a year. Then read 
 it over carefully and say whether you think 
 it was a profitable week. 
 
 One of the hardest things of all to do — and 
 one of the most important to be done — is to 
 make sure that we do not regard to-day that- 
 thing to be momentous which to-morrow we 
 shall know was a trifle. The struggle after 
 real consistency is a hard one ; and a fine sense 
 of proportion is a rare gift. 
 
 One of the greatest achievements of a 
 young doctor is to be able to be dismissed by 
 a patient and be serene about it. It is a ques- 
 tion of point of view and the relation he thinks 
 he holds to his patients. If he has the only 
 right view, namely, that he is a servant of the 
 public, and that his relations with his patients 
 must be of absolute mutualness, and that he 
 most of all desires that the relations shall 
 cease the moment the mutualness is broken ; 
 if he can measure up to this platform he has 
 smooth sailing; otherwise, he is sure to en- 
 counter repeated seas of water both hot and 
 cold, that will rob him of many of the joys of 
 
 112
 
 SOME COMMENCEMENT IDEALS 
 
 life that he is entitled to and very much 
 needs. 
 
 Numerous professional men go through life 
 with such false notions about their fees as 
 to create for themselves a lot of trouble. 
 Their difficulties are chiefly of two kinds. 
 One is an unreasoning idea, and wholly 
 groundless, that all clients must be averse to 
 paying for professional services, and resent 
 being asked to pay. One who has this idea 
 is likely to feel that sending a bill, and particu- 
 larly the dunning of a debtor, has some of the 
 qualities of a challenge to combat ; and at best 
 he finds it a very unpleasant task. This is all 
 wrong ; the average client expects to pay a fair 
 fee for faithful services ; and to take the con- 
 trary view discredits both the doctor and the 
 public. Of course there are a few men and 
 women who have no appreciation of their just 
 obligations to anybody or anything, and al- 
 ways try to shirk them — but they are the ex- 
 ception, and we ought to be willing to teach 
 them some lessons by wholesome insistence, 
 and to do it without anger and without look- 
 ing or acting as if we had been stealing. 
 
 The opposite ideal with which a few start 
 out is that of coveting the enormous fees that 
 a few men have received. This attitude is un- 
 fair to the public, who should only in the rarest 
 
 113
 
 SOME COMMENCEMENT IDEALS 
 
 instances be expected to pay such sums — and 
 can only in a few cases afford to pay them — 
 and it does the doctor discredit, begets a spirit 
 of sordidness, and works against the best serv- 
 ice of the profession to the pubhc, which is one 
 of the most sacred of all duties. 
 
 Let us first be scientific and faithful to our 
 patients ; let us acquire friends and a large 
 clientele if we can; then let us raise our fees 
 to keep down a flood of work that happens to 
 flow our way. When, if it ever comes, some- 
 thing leads the public and the profession to 
 make a large enough market for such talents 
 as we have, then let our fee-bills to those able 
 to pay recognize the fact ; but let us never, 
 as we hope for future happiness, be grasping 
 with the poor people, who give the world its 
 best lessons in frugality and honesty ; and let 
 us, as we hate meanness, never forget our own 
 beginning days of small things. 
 
 Let us be honest to science and to ourselves. 
 If we have to shade the fact to the patient for 
 his good, and even to give him placebos to the 
 same end, we must never deceive either sci- 
 ence or ourselves. There is only one right 
 way to study and practice medicine, and that is 
 in a spirit of humility to the truth, and espe- 
 cially to a new truth — but a truth proven. For 
 the new truths come and will continue to come, 
 
 114
 
 SOME COMMENCEMENT IDEALS 
 
 and with a conservative skepticism we must 
 keep our minds open to receive them. 
 
 Probably the most effective mental quality 
 that most young practitioners lack — that few 
 men have at the beginning — is a sufficient 
 gift of imperturbability. No other quality so 
 makes a man, especially a doctor, superior to 
 accidents, emergencies, and trouble as this 
 one ; as no other is so profitable in making 
 him a power in the profession and in the 
 world. 
 
 If a patient dies on the operating table, or 
 goes out in a minute from pulmonary hem- 
 orrhage, or if you discover you have blun- 
 dered, you must not shake ; and you must not 
 throw up your hands while life lasts. How- 
 ever appalling the emergency may be, you must 
 not be discouraged, and you must make your 
 best fight when the tide sets against you. In 
 athletic games that man is worth little who can 
 only play his best when victory and the shouts 
 of his friends are in the air. So in this pro- 
 fessional life, and in all life's struggles, that 
 man who is strong only when no calamity 
 threatens counts for little ; he is nearly worth- 
 less, and may be worse than that. In this ci- 
 vilian career the best qualities of a good sol- 
 dier are needed, namely, dependableness in 
 trouble. 
 
 115
 
 SOME COMMENCEMENT IDEALS 
 
 Finally, there are a few ideals that are so 
 vital for an all-round success that they have 
 the quality of sacredness. One is that this 
 business of life is too important for us to waste 
 time and energy in personal contentions. If 
 we contend it must be for some principle or 
 for a benefit to the public whose servants we 
 are. There is one sovereign remedy for all 
 personal quarrels that anybody may try to get 
 you into — that is to ignore them and go on 
 with your work. If you will only have pleas- 
 ure in this and let it fill your days, you will 
 have no time to contend, and your neighbors 
 will soon discover this and be made better 
 by it. 
 
 Another ideal, and the most sacred of them 
 all, is one of wholesome discontent — a discon- 
 tent that must only end with your latest breath 
 of mentally competent life. You must be dis- 
 satisfied with the many unsolved questions in 
 science, problems of the greatest interest, prob- 
 lems that concern the lives of the people. It 
 is an unending work of love and interest to 
 solve them ; and the long night of our past ig- 
 norance about them must not discourage you. 
 So much new science has come by the labors 
 of our profession within the memory of men 
 still young, that nobody should be discouraged 
 as to the future. Every man must have an 
 
 ii6
 
 SOME COMMENCEMENT IDEALS 
 
 interest in discovery. If you may not become 
 an investigator you can help hold up the 
 arms of another who is, and so have some part 
 in the cumulative glory. Stirred by this dis- 
 content your eyes must look steadily forward 
 for new light — ^beware of the false light — for 
 the true one will appear and you shall not be 
 surprised, because you have been looking for 
 it all the years. 
 
 So shall you grow and learn to your latest 
 day, and you shall escape the calamity of 
 mental fossilization. This deplorable fate of 
 so many men comes of a fixed notion that 
 most of the knowable is known, and that sci- 
 ence will remain as it was. But whoso pos- 
 tulates that many things are yet to be discov- 
 ered, and that some of his most precious 
 theories may one day have to be given up or 
 recast, and that it is a disgrace to stand still — 
 that man will keep his heart warm and his in- 
 terest close to the moving column. He can 
 never become a mental fossil ; and though liv- 
 ing into age, he shall die young. 
 
 The medical profession must progress and 
 grow in knowledge, and the new knowledge 
 must make for higher usefulness. But we are 
 in danger — and the more volatile of us are in 
 most danger — from this very need. We are 
 liable, if not likely, to be sidetracked in a pur- 
 
 117
 
 SOME COMMENCEMENT IDEALS 
 
 suit of one idea, and to be governed by it, 
 and so lose our sense of proportion ; to become 
 seized with a fad and try to square the world 
 to it. The rapid progress of our science and 
 art during the past few years has increased 
 this danger, and we have had plentiful exam- 
 ples of men being dominated by a single 
 thought, and losing all judicial judgment. 
 Some of the more enthusiastic of thera have 
 had a new fad each decade for forty years. 
 Hardly one of them has attained to great suc- 
 cess in any way, unless the occasional riding 
 into pecuniary fortune, possibly in the saddle 
 of their fads, may be called success. 
 
 No professional man has great success 
 merely because he makes money — true suc- 
 cess requires also usefulness to his public, loy- 
 alty to the truth, the approval of the great 
 body of his associates, and a clear conscience 
 of his own. Thorough sanity and moderation 
 in all our judgments is, therefore, the only 
 safe ideal. There is more need now than ever 
 before for this standard in the medical pro- 
 fession. To " prove all things and hold fast 
 to that which is true " has not ceased to be 
 wisdom. We can be progressive and at the 
 same time be sensible. 
 
 We can be moderate and judicial, refuse to 
 be stampeded either for or against a new doc- 
 
 ii8
 
 SOME COMMENCEMENT IDEALS 
 
 trine, and yet put every new truth to its best 
 use. We have no warrant, simply because we 
 have discovered a new fact, to throw our hats 
 into the air and forget that this fact has a 
 vital nexus with a hundred old truths that can- 
 not be abandoned, and we will show our wis- 
 dom by searching for that relation. If salva- 
 tion ever comes to us it must be through all the 
 truth, not a mere fragment of it. And a due 
 sense of proportion — otherwise common sense 
 — as an unswerving and insistent ideal is, in a 
 workaday life, the best guide for a safe 
 journey. 
 
 119
 
 A Domestic Clearing House
 
 A Domestic Clearing House 
 
 There is a good side to the habit of mind — 
 one of the most common of all habits — which 
 holds those things to be best that have had 
 the sanction of centuries of usage. We do not 
 lightly change our ways of life in the more 
 vital things, although we do change, and 
 sometimes change annually in the unvital 
 things, and perhaps we progress. The human 
 mind is not averse to looking at things in new 
 ways, as we know by abundant examples in 
 the past. But we are in danger of trying to 
 make progress in defiance of the laws of na- 
 ture; and, when we do that, we knock our 
 heads against various obstacles. We some- 
 times try to walk on the air or on the water, 
 and deny that there is such a thing as matter ; 
 but then we encounter practical difficulties 
 that are troublesome. 
 
 All our real progress has been made along 
 
 123
 
 A DOMESTIC CLEARING HOUSE 
 
 the lines of demonstrated facts. Every effort 
 which has discredited that standard has, sooner 
 or later, come to grief. The history of the 
 human race is littered with the wreckage of 
 theories and cults that have gone to ruin 
 through forgetfulness of this truth. 
 
 When men emerged from barbarism and 
 built houses, they thought themselves fortu- 
 nate to be thus able to protect their bodies 
 from storm and cold and heat. But it is a 
 discovery of this later day that to vast num- 
 bers of people house life is often a grievous 
 misfortune. Countless thousands get sick be- 
 cause they stay in houses too much ; and the 
 sick in large numbers recover by practically 
 living out of doors. 
 
 Who by any old-fashioned reasoning about 
 things would ever have thought of killing 
 mosquitoes to avoid ague and yellow fever? 
 Or of looking through a human body from a 
 dark box to see a nail in the stomach, or a 
 bullet in the muscles? That such things are 
 both possible and true gives us warrant to 
 seek still other improvements in the conveni- 
 ences of our lives, and other advantages over 
 the adverse influences of nature in general and 
 the enemies of the human race in particular. 
 
 The search for happiness is as old as man 
 and as constant as the sun ; albeit the quest is 
 
 124
 
 A DOMESTIC CLEARING HOUSE 
 
 often poorly planned for success. To add to 
 our comforts and to minimize our cares is the 
 ambition of everybody. Efforts to enlarge our 
 joys without harm are always commendable. 
 And that a change in the ways of living ap- 
 pears to violate custom and fixed notions is 
 nothing against it, provided it offers a better 
 average of happiness. All reforms have met 
 with more or less opposition on the part of the 
 people, except the reduction of the rate of post- 
 age. But reforms should not be attempted 
 carelessly. There are certain conditions that 
 ought to be insisted upon as crucial for each 
 one that is proposed. It must promise to lessen 
 or abolish some evil, some cause of human 
 grief ; or it must add to some comfort already 
 possessed; or it must create a new pleasure 
 that is not unwholesome; and withal, it must 
 not do any countervailing injury. 
 
 No innovation can be more laudable than 
 one that shall give to our handicapped children 
 a better start in life and more chances for a 
 successful career. A love of childhood be- 
 longs to most normal minds. Some people are 
 interested solely in their own children; some 
 are anxious to possess children of their own; 
 they love them because they are their own — 
 and work and fight for them for this reason. 
 Others like children in general by a common 
 
 125
 
 A DOMESTIC CLEARING HOUSE 
 
 fondness that is inexplicable, hence instinctive. 
 Others still are fond of them as the men and 
 women of to-morrow — the potentiality of full- 
 fledged citizens of the future. There are 
 others who have no interest whatever in chil- 
 dren or childhood ; and a few of these are fond 
 of the lower animals. 
 
 People who have no liking for children, 
 or who dislike them, are usually more selfish 
 than other people ; and the devotion of par- 
 ents to their children is often tainted with a 
 selfish calculation that the children will re- 
 turn to them the love and care later on. 
 The failure of the children to do this is one 
 of the most biting griefs of some parents 
 in their old age. The parental love is not 
 meant to be selfish, but it is selfish all the same. 
 The child's carelessness of his own highest 
 obligations as he grows up, and as his parents 
 grow old, is likewise not intentional, but it is 
 none the less wicked. 
 
 It is an open question whether with a large 
 minority of people the joys of parenthood, in 
 the long run, outweigh its griefs and disap- 
 pointments. The devotion of most children 
 to their parents is one of the most exquisite 
 pictures of human life. Their loyalty and 
 tenderness are alone enough to make us be- 
 lieve in heaven. But the selfish neglect and 
 
 126
 
 A DOMESTIC CLEARING HOUSE 
 
 disrespect shown by some people toward par- 
 ents who have slaved away their lives, and 
 have foregone many comforts for their chil- 
 dren, is one of the saddest chapters of human 
 story — and it is a chapter that has abundant 
 illustrations all about us. 
 
 So it happens that the relations of children 
 with parents are attended with a mixture of 
 joy and grief. There ought to be much more 
 joy than grief ; and any scheme that offers to 
 increase the joys and reduce the griefs is a 
 positive gain. Not only is there unhappiness 
 between parents and children, but this often 
 grows worse rather than better from year to 
 year, and tends to warp the natures of both 
 the parties. A more notable fact is that be- 
 cause the parties are parents and children, the 
 warping of the natures of both, especially of 
 the children, is more rapid and more pro- 
 nounced. This asymmetry is liable to occur 
 even in cases where there is no special nervous 
 friction between them. Take for illustration 
 two nervous and irascible parents. Their chil- 
 dren are hereditarily nervous. The irritable 
 natures of the parents accentuate the nervous- 
 ness of the children, and vice versa. Both par- 
 ents are slightly abnormal, and in the same di- 
 rection — the children are from birth usually 
 more abnormal, and in the same way. And the 
 
 127
 
 A DOMESTIC CLEARING HOUSE 
 
 parents and children usually rasp each other, 
 consciously or unconsciously, and get each 
 other out of patience often and often. This 
 makes matters worse for both. They are irri- 
 tated by the presence of each other, by the 
 words and acts, and even by the looks of each 
 other — they are oikiomaniacs, especially the 
 children, who show it more violently than the 
 parents do. 
 
 Nature and the canons of society have tried 
 to prevent all this by making it unlikely that 
 couples closely alike by consanguinity, or 
 otherwise, will marry. The effect of this in 
 the children should be to counteract the ec- 
 centricity of one parent by an opposite one of 
 the other ; but all these efforts frequently fail, 
 and a couple are doomed to see their own 
 identical traits enlarged in their children. 
 These traits are exaggerated in the children, 
 and they grow worse by the daily impact of 
 like traits of their parents. 
 
 Why cannot some of this warping and un- 
 happiness be lessened by wise and voluntary 
 changes in the relations of parents and chil- 
 dren? Must the misfits of these factors in 
 society continue through years to do harm, 
 simply because it is the fashion and tradition 
 that people must raise their own children, and 
 that most people think it unnatural and wrong 
 
 128
 
 A DOMESTIC CLEARING HOUSE 
 
 not to? Parents have no ownership in their 
 children. The children are free and respon- 
 sible souls, with various moral and legal rights, 
 soon after they are born. Parents usually for- 
 get these facts, and assume that, since the chil- 
 dren begin life as the most helpless of all be- 
 ings, they must somehow be the property of 
 their parents till they are of age, or longer. 
 
 Misfit parents are sometimes divorced from 
 each other by the courts as an act of pathetic 
 justice. Ought not the children to have in 
 some degree a similar privilege as to parents? 
 Now and then a child is divorced from his 
 family by going to the reform school; but 
 usually this occurs only when his misdemean- 
 ors run against the interests of the public out- 
 side of his own household. The reasons for 
 his separation from his home, which arise out 
 of the conditions within the family, are often 
 quite as real and melancholy, if less notorious 
 than those which carry him to the reforma- 
 tory ; and in these instances the parents and 
 children are as a rule equally at fault, whether 
 they know it or not. But are they equally re- 
 sponsible? Are not the parents more respon- 
 sible ? 
 
 If all the parties could agree to strive un- 
 selfishly to improve the race, as well as them- 
 selves, the frequent separation of parents and 
 
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 A DOMESTIC CLEARING HOUSE 
 
 children might increase their happiness and 
 be a great advantage in many directions. Nu- 
 merous examples in the observation of every 
 thoughtful person should make this postulate 
 clear, and I think ought to carry conviction to 
 any reasonable mind. 
 
 Here, for instance, are two nervous and 
 very irascible parents. They are fastidious, 
 captious, pragmatical, hypercritical; they flare 
 up at trifles, and are always in more or less 
 trouble. They have certain sensibilities to 
 annoyance ; perhaps it is dirt, perhaps some no- 
 tion peculiar to themselves. But they are peo- 
 ple who are potent in moving the world. 
 Their children are likely to have the same bent 
 increased; they are more hyperesthetic and 
 less calm and stable than their parents are, or 
 were at their ages. If a door slams near by 
 they jump as if they were shot; and there are 
 certain ways and words of others that always 
 serve as sparks at which they explode in emo- 
 tion or temper. 
 
 Can anyone doubt that both the parents 
 and children so constituted are made worse by 
 every day's association together? The par- 
 ents are always nervous and grow more so; 
 and the children sometimes are so nervous 
 as to seem to approach the borderland of ac- 
 tual lunacy. To the abnormal and unwhole- 
 
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 A DOMESTIC CLEARING HOUSE 
 
 some traits which they have transmitted to 
 their children, parents add the exasperating 
 effect of increasing them by their own perpet- 
 ual display of like qualities. 
 
 In another part of the town is a pair of 
 tranquil people who have some tranquil chil- 
 dren. They all move along in a comfortable 
 sort of way and trouble themselves little about 
 the trifles of the world or the motion of the 
 waters. They don't appear to love each other 
 overmuch or with a show ; and they don't nag 
 each other. A little excitement thrown into 
 their lives might be useful to them — it would 
 open their eyes. 
 
 What a blessing if the children from that 
 other and nervous household could be dropped 
 down (and to stay) into this one! How they 
 would grow and develop in a better way ! And 
 their irritability would, like any other flame, 
 grow less by lack of fuel to feed it. They 
 would increase in tranquillity day by day. To 
 have them in the family would be positive 
 spice of life for these slow and undemonstra- 
 tive parents, and they would be proud of the 
 acuteness and the activity of these new chil- 
 dren. They would themselves actually prick 
 up their ears in consequence and grow some- 
 what. 
 
 On the other hand, if the slow and dull chil- 
 
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 A DOMESTIC CLEARING HOUSE 
 
 dren could come into the nervous household, 
 they would be entertained and awakened ; they 
 would be spurred to activity and new occupa- 
 tions that they would doubtless find at times 
 amusing. The nervous adults of the house 
 would perhaps take a more tranquil pace, and 
 might at least be glad that they had children 
 under their roof whose nerves were not grown 
 on the surface of their bodies, and, like super- 
 sensitive traps, ready to be snapped by a 
 breath of air. In the end, all these people 
 would be helped. 
 
 It is perfectly manifest that the children of 
 the two families which I have described ought 
 to be swapped. Of course the same end would 
 be accomplished if the parents could be 
 swapped ; but, on economic grounds, that 
 would be less convenient than to swap the chil- 
 dren. This arrangement would work great 
 benefit to four sets of persons — ^two sets of 
 parents and two groups of children. The nerv- 
 ous parents would be soothed by the tranquil 
 children, who would in turn be spurred to 
 greater activity and usefulness. The quiet and 
 slow-going parents, on the other hand, would, 
 be stimulated by the nervous children, who in 
 turn would have their hyperesthesia calmed — 
 they would learn better the great truth that 
 tranquillity and imperturbability are the men- 
 
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 A DOMESTIC CLEARING HOUSE 
 
 tal qualities that, in our strenuous civilization, 
 are most of all to be coveted. 
 
 Some parents love their children too demon- 
 stratively. They not only carry this emotion 
 on the surface of their lives like a flower on 
 their clothes, but they insist on dissecting it, 
 tearing asunder its petals and stamens, not to 
 discover its construction — which they could 
 never understand — but to see if it is growing. 
 They are troubled if their children fail to act 
 similarly ; and the children learn to do this 
 usually, or in disgust go to the opposite ex- 
 treme. This makes for some happiness, but it 
 incurs also a load of sorrow, for with these 
 people happiness comes to depend so much on 
 the finer surface amenities, that it is sure to be 
 jarred more or less by the accidents of daily 
 life. There can be no question as to the won- 
 derful beauty of these amenities. Their ab- 
 sence would be a distinct loss to life and so- 
 ciety, but many families carry them too far, 
 and if stolid children could be adopted by 
 them, it would be a gain to the children ; and 
 the loving and effervescent children taken into 
 calmer families would bring there a kind of 
 sunshine that their new parents had never 
 dreamed of. Clearly, some swapping here 
 would make for a sum total of more happi- 
 ness; at the same time the tendency to the 
 
 133
 
 A DOMESTIC CLEARING HOUSE 
 
 growth of warped child natures would be les- 
 sened. 
 
 There are some foibles and sins that are 
 transmitted from parents to their own children 
 that adopted children are less likely to take. 
 Some parents fib to their children, usually un- 
 wittingly and carelessly, but the children see 
 through the gauze and learn to manage their 
 parents, usually or often by a counterplay of 
 deception. Parents warn of punishments to 
 come for possible transgressions; then forget 
 or fear or hesitate to inflict the penalty. The 
 children see this sham and grow deceitful; 
 besides, it is more easy for them to learn de- 
 ceit by reason of their inheritance from their 
 parents — like parent, like child. These par- 
 ents not only are dishonest with their children, 
 but they are dishonest with their neighbors ; 
 and the children are quick to adopt such meth- 
 ods themselves ; these eccentricities of parents 
 are liable to be increased in the adult lives of 
 the children, to the harm and loss of society. 
 
 Such children would be much profited if 
 they could be adopted into families where the 
 promise of a punishment to come is as impos- 
 sible as any other sin of the days of barbarism, 
 and where disingenuousness to a neighbor is 
 unknown. Finding the new household to be 
 managed in general on the basis of truth, 
 
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 A DOMESTIC CLEARING HOUSE 
 
 candor, and good fellowship, the deceitful chil- 
 dren would soon learn how cheap their meth- 
 ods are, and grow better. Then if the deceit- 
 ful and barbaric parents could adopt some 
 children out of these better families, the chil- 
 dren might work for them a like reformation. 
 The exchange would be rather hard on the 
 candid parents and their own honest children, 
 who would be expected to reform the parents 
 and children of the other families ; but a mis- 
 sionary spirit is honorable, especially when it 
 finds its object near at home ; and good folks 
 should be ready and willing to sacrifice their 
 own comfort to some degree for the better- 
 ment of others. What is our existence for if 
 not to better others as well as ourselves? 
 
 I have heard of parents who are averse to 
 having children, and there can be little doubt 
 that some of these would be glad enough to 
 be rid of their children after they have them, 
 provided that were possible without public 
 censure, and with ease to a mental state they 
 call conscience. But the clearing house pro- 
 posed would insure that such children should 
 be adopted into childless families of kindly 
 people who would take good care of them. 
 There would be kept a standing list of such 
 families who are eager to give their lives and 
 their love for children of their adoption — to 
 
 135
 
 A DOMESTIC CLEARING HOUSE 
 
 the great benefit of themselves, of the children, 
 and of society at large. 
 
 What objection can there be to an arrange- 
 ment that would make these three groups of 
 people happier — the children, and the two sets 
 of parents? Why not try in this way to cor- 
 rect some of the multifarious misfits of chil- 
 dren and parents? The few instances I have 
 cited are only typical examples ; and they show 
 the need of some new and drastic remedy for 
 a very common evil. 
 
 I know the stock argument that one can 
 never consent to " give up " or into the hands 
 of another the children of his own flesh and 
 blood ; that it is unnatural ; that nobody can 
 be so good to a child as its own mother — and 
 so on. But people do give up their children, 
 more or less, when they marry them ofif. They 
 very much give up their daughters then, and 
 often find they have given up their sons ; and 
 they frequently do this without the slightest 
 difficulty, sometimes even with gladness, es- 
 pecially if their own financial burdens are less- 
 ened by the transaction. 
 
 The wealthy people nearly always give up 
 their children three quarters of the time, and 
 four fifths in substance, to nurses and at- 
 tendants (the latter often selected with less 
 discretion than they choose their clothesmak- 
 
 136
 
 A DOMESTIC CLEARING HOUSE 
 
 ers) ; and they give them up to their own de- 
 vices with their playmates, sometimes to their 
 good, but often to their harm, a part of nearly 
 every day. Not a few mothers are glad 
 enough to trust their children to nurses, at- 
 tendants, teachers, and playmates for as many 
 hours a day as possible. 
 
 Many times a mother finds herself so nerv- 
 ous from the influence of her children and 
 from the demands of society that she must go 
 away from both of them and rest for days and 
 weeks ; then she certainly leaves her children 
 to the care of others. This argument about 
 not giving up children to other hands evi- 
 dently needs to be shorn of some sophistry and 
 a good deal of the rhapsody of egoism. 
 
 The notion that no woman but the mother 
 of a child can be as good to it as she is is a 
 fallacy ; it even has some of the earmarks of 
 nonsense. The discreet nurse is often better 
 to and better for the child than its own 
 mother ; and the child-loving foster mother is 
 usually a safer guide for the best interests of 
 the child. The mother usually does more 
 things at the selfish behest of the child — things 
 that are harmful to it — than the foster mother 
 does. Besides, the mother is more likely to do 
 foolish things for her child, when moved by 
 the sentimental heresies of motherhood. Thus, 
 
 137
 
 A DOMESTIC CLEARING HOUSE 
 
 when the child is sick, she refuses to have a 
 nurse, but insists on sitting up and watching 
 with it for many nights in succession ; and 
 then, so overcome by fatigue and drowsiness 
 that she is worse than useless, she perhaps 
 blunders and gives a poison instead of a dose 
 of good medicine. A foster mother is not half 
 so likely to be foolish and spoil in herself the 
 good nurse the child needs ; she is more apt to 
 be guided by sense, less likely to be swayed 
 by the frenzy of an unstable conscience. Like 
 the stepmother — and rather less unfairly 
 treated than she — the foster mother never has 
 had a fair judgment at the hands of her critics. 
 There is not a more devoted person in the 
 world. She not only worships her adopted 
 child, but she sometimes worships real moth- 
 erhood, and the idea of it in the child's mind, 
 as benighted people cling to a fetish. Think 
 of her avidity for a baby to cherish, leading 
 her to actual theft to get one ! Then of her 
 guarding for years the secret that she is not 
 the real mother — when invariably the child 
 will love her more if it knows the truth ! For 
 the child, as it grows up, must appreciate the 
 truth that tender care and support which is 
 unprompted by consanguinity is a finer thing 
 by reason of this fact. 
 
 The foster mother is usually a mother from 
 
 138
 
 A DOMESTIC CLEARING HOUSE 
 
 deliberate design, not from accident ; and chil- 
 dren once in her possession are, as a rule, 
 cared for cheerfully. She is less disposed to 
 give them over to the care and instruction of 
 servants than natural parents are — that is, she 
 is a little more likely to be normal in the 
 bringing up of her children than are natural 
 mothers. Moreover, under her care the chil- 
 dren have relatively more chance for spon- 
 taneous development ; she is a trifle more apt 
 to appreciate the fact that after a child is born 
 it usually, through the influences of its imme- 
 diate environment, evolves itself as to its in- 
 tellectual and moral life, much more than it 
 is ever " raised " by the set rules for its daily 
 conduct. 
 
 Almost the sole foolishness of the foster 
 mother is to forget that her spiritual privilege 
 is so much greater than that of the real mother 
 that she ought to be very proud of it — instead 
 of trying the usually impossible task of keep- 
 ing her child all his life in ignorance of who 
 she is and who he is. When the child finally 
 discovers the truth — as he almost always does, 
 and from alien if not unfriendly lips — his re- 
 spect for the foster mother invariably falls 
 a little. People cannot actually waste foolish- 
 ness without stepping down from some of 
 the pedestals on which their admirers have 
 
 139
 
 A DOMESTIC CLEARING HOUSE 
 
 placed them. Forgiveness is blessed, but the 
 need of it tends to lessen the love that is left. 
 And this blindness of the foster mother not 
 only does her injury in the end, when the truth 
 comes out, but it robs the child of the great 
 moral benefits that ought to come of the 
 knowledge that his care and nurture have been 
 due to the disinterested love of people not 
 bound by law to keep him. 
 
 It may be asked whether children growing 
 up under the care of foster parents can have 
 in after life a feeling toward them as tender 
 and wholesome as they would toward blood 
 parents. Does fosterage lessen the best qual- 
 ity of filiality? I think not. Fosterage may 
 change it a trifle, but the best essence of it 
 comes to a child through a memory of the 
 useful and permanently happifying things that 
 have been done for him. The man recalls best 
 and with most fervor of thankfulness those 
 child benefits that gave him the inside track 
 in his worthy ambitions. He easily forgets the 
 candy and the caresses of his childhood ; but 
 those hints and favors that helped him to be a 
 man among men and women, and to lead in 
 his struggle for success, have made him an 
 everlasting debtor to those who have helped 
 him, and he rarely forgets this obligation. 
 His gratitude goes out to the parent, the foster 
 
 140
 
 A DOMESTIC CLEARING HOUSE 
 
 parent, or the friend of his youth, about 
 equally for equal help. The parent may easily 
 lose this homage, and the foster parent or 
 friend may gain it, but can anybody say that 
 it is uncommendable or not of the best essence 
 of filiality ? 
 
 141
 
 The True Gospel of Sleep
 
 The True Gospel of Sleep 
 
 In the popular mind there must be some 
 mistakes about sleep, so variant and dissimi- 
 lar are the current notions of our need of it, 
 of the effects of it, and of the lack of it. All 
 the theories about sleep cannot be correct ; 
 some of them must be wide of the mark. 
 
 One man is sure that for health and strength 
 he needs only four or five hours of sleep out 
 of each day of twenty-four hours ; he has 
 demonstrated this thesis experimentally, for 
 himself, over and over again ; it is his gospel 
 of sleep ; and he quote numerous people above 
 childhood who have like views and experi- 
 ences. Another thinks he must have eight or 
 nine hours and cannot do with less, and, as all 
 men tend to measure others by the yardstick 
 that fits themselves, he is sure to believe that 
 no one should have less than one third of his 
 existence spent in sleep. 
 
 145
 
 THE TRUE GOSPEL OF SLEEP 
 
 Many physicians freely teach this latter 
 view, and insist that children especially must 
 have an abundance of sleep or be in peril of 
 nervous and mental bankruptcy. We are told, 
 and have long taught, that infants should sleep 
 a large part of the time, especially during their 
 first year, in order to be safe from calamity 
 to their brains. A large measure of sleep is 
 surely useful, as well as convenient, for all 
 babies ; yet there are instances of infants and 
 small children who have for many months to- 
 gether slept less than four hours in the twenty- 
 four, and come out of the experience with 
 vigorous minds and bodies. 
 
 Great numbers of adults in our modem life 
 of high nervous tension are victims of insom- 
 nia, more now than ever before, and the num- 
 ber is apparently increasing rather rapidly in 
 certain communities. Drugs to produce sleep 
 were never in such demand as now ; were never 
 used so freely, both as a temporary expedient 
 and as a daily habit ; they are sold in vast 
 quantities all over the nervous world, and are 
 used according to the whim of the sleepless, 
 more often without than with the advice of 
 their physicians. Insomnia is therefore a fa- 
 vorite harvest field of the exploiter of " pat- 
 ent " nostrums, for he well knows that, when 
 driven to desperation by sleeplessness, its vic- 
 
 146
 
 THE TRUE GOSPEL OF SLEEP 
 
 tim is ready to do anything or take anything 
 that promises reUef ; and if sleep comes as an 
 effect of a drug he is ready to forgive other 
 and perhaps resulting ills, some of which may 
 in the end be worse than the insomnia. And 
 the other ills that come of the habitual use of 
 soporifics are many and grave, and range all 
 the way from trifling inconvenience to severe 
 sickness and death. 
 
 Possibly some of the sleeping potions may 
 do good by helping to sleep without inflicting 
 any incidental harm to the system ; but the evi- 
 dence is strong and accumulating that most, if 
 not all, of the soporific drugs do harm in some 
 way, especially the coal-tar products, and 
 all those that produce their effects by obtund- 
 ing the sensibility of the nervous system. 
 While their use may be justified by an oc- 
 casional exigency, they are in the main mis- 
 chievous, because, if for no other reason, 
 they undertake a function and do a thing 
 for the body that good hygiene and a better 
 course of living should as a rule make un- 
 necessary. 
 
 The testimony of the sufferers with insom- 
 nia certainly seems, on the face of it, to con- 
 firm their theory of the seriousness of this 
 affliction, for they find that a night without 
 sleep, even if they are in bed, with their bodies 
 
 147
 
 THE TRUE GOSPEL OF SLEEP 
 
 resting, more or less unfits them for the duties 
 of the coming day, and that after a good night 
 they are fresh and strong and satisfied. And 
 these data are correct ; after a wakeful night 
 these people are unnerved for the day, and af- 
 ter a night of good sleep they are fit and cheer- 
 ful. Whether their theory is correct, that lack 
 of sleep alone does the mischief, is another 
 question, and there is reason to doubt the the- 
 ory, and to suspect, if not to know, that the 
 insomnia is only one of the several factors in 
 the problem, one of several co-results of a 
 common and another cause, and not itself the 
 sole cause of all the harm. 
 
 It is evident that the victims believe implic- 
 itly in the current theory. They easily come 
 to dread a sleepless night ; being awake in bed 
 in the dark becomes to them hades, veritably ; 
 they look forward to such a possibility with 
 nervous apprehension if not horror, which 
 makes them less likely to sleep ; indeed, it often 
 prevents sleep completely. In the throes of 
 wakefulness, when they have gone to bed for 
 the purpose of sleeping, they become so an- 
 noyed and agitated as to make sleep hard, or 
 impossible, to court ; they count up and down 
 long columns of numbers, they say the alpha- 
 bet, and repeat the multiplication table or 
 their prayers in their efforts to entice slumber, 
 
 148
 
 THE TRUE GOSPEL OF SLEEP 
 
 but unavailingly. So they He awake tossing 
 in restlessness and chagrin till morning; and 
 afterwards they look back on the experience 
 with a sense of gloom. No nightmare could 
 be so terrible. 
 
 It is not unnatural that they should attribute 
 their bad symptoms to the lack of sleep, for 
 that is the easiest conclusion, but it is only 
 half true if true at all. It is vastly important 
 in this study to keep the horse in front of the 
 cart, for the tendency is strong to reverse 
 them. The true story is that the horrors of in- 
 somnia are slightly or only moderately due to 
 want of sleep — very much more due to insom- 
 niphobia, with which, in some degree, nearly 
 every such patient permits himself unneces- 
 sarily and foolishly to become afflicted. His 
 experience is analogous to that of the victim of 
 consumption who has night sweats. This lat- 
 ter believes, till he is taught otherwise and bet- 
 ter, that his bad day is due to the night sweat 
 preceding it. This is a most unscientific infer- 
 ence. Really, the bad day and the sweats are 
 co-results of another and a different influence ; 
 they are not cause and effect. When the pa- 
 tient learns this truth, and that the sweat is 
 not harmful in itself, but a possible benefit by 
 the expulsion of poison from his body, he dis- 
 covers that it is only a trifling inconvenience, 
 
 149
 
 THE TRUE GOSPEL OF SLEEP 
 
 not a calamity, and he bears it with equanim- 
 ity if not with actual pleasure. 
 
 The victim of insomnia is equally wrong 
 and equally unfortunate in his reasoning 
 about his case. He honestly believes that loss 
 of the sleep which he thinks is his due is 
 fraught with the certainty of great injury ; he 
 laments his infirmity and often fears he will 
 become insane, and he may invite insanity by 
 his worry, when, if he could stop his fretting, 
 he would find himself hurt very little, if at all, 
 by it. The very attitude of his mind when he 
 goes to bed tends to keep him awake, for he is 
 in a state of mental expectancy of insomnia, 
 and the longer his slumber is delayed the more 
 demoralized he becomes, the more exalted is 
 his irritation, and the less likely is he to fall 
 asleep. What is worse, he is very unhappy 
 about it, he fumes and profanates his priv- 
 ileges ; and this mood tends still more strongly 
 against slumber. 
 
 If he can go to bed and sincerely resolve 
 that he does not wish to sleep, but would 
 rather keep awake all night, and perhaps read 
 an unexciting book err otherwise try to drive 
 oflf slumber ; if he can bring his mind genuinely 
 and ingenuously to this mood, which is one of 
 pleasure at being awake — then he will prob- 
 ably soon fall asleep, and so remain the night 
 
 150
 
 THE TRUE GOSPEL OF SLEEP 
 
 through. The chief thing is the mood of 
 pleasure, or, lacking that, stoical indifference 
 as to whether sleep comes or not; these emo- 
 tions make the terror impossible, and bring 
 sufficient sleep in nearly every case — not eight 
 hours it may be, but enough ; certainly enough 
 to prove that this measure is far safer and 
 wiser than the common resort to soporific 
 drugs. 
 
 There is another truth that is even more 
 fundamental than the one just referred to, a 
 truth that is substantially never mentioned by 
 students of this subject. This is that our the- 
 ory is wrong that we should go to bed and stay 
 there eight or ten hours a day for the chief 
 purpose of sleeping. Sleep, go to sleep ; get 
 asleep ; sleep is the great restorer ; blessed 
 sleep — these are the cries that always ring in 
 our ears, and that have probably in some form 
 rung in the ears of all the recent generations 
 as a guide in life, and as indicating the drift 
 of thought about sleep. But it is a narrow and 
 one-sided view. Of course sleep rests the 
 tired brain, and lets its thinking cortical cells 
 recuperate from the strain of labor that has 
 lowered them; but what of the weal of the 
 tired body whose tissues have been lowered 
 by the work of the day ? This need has been 
 almost wholly neglected in our scheme of rea- 
 
 151
 
 THE TRUE GOSPEL OF SLEEP 
 
 soning, and the poor body has had to get what 
 benefit it may as an incident of the sleep. On 
 the contrary, we should go to bed to rest the 
 tired body and let sleep come as an incident ; 
 rest of the body should be the chief aim ; if we 
 will go to bed with that purpose the sleep will 
 mostly take care of itself. Man can by his 
 own volition send his body to bed as readily 
 as he can chop his wood, and so his body rests ; 
 but sleep comes as a consequence of the con- 
 ditions of his body and brain; and some of 
 these conditions are fatigue, horizontal pos- 
 ture, quietness, silence, and darkness to shut 
 out disturbing mental impressions and to in- 
 cline the brain against thinking. Sleep does 
 not come and never can come by an act of the 
 will, as one rises and walks. The brain puts 
 itself to sleep as its physical conditions entice, 
 and quite regardless of the will. 
 
 With an active physical life, the body should 
 probably rest horizontal about one third of the 
 time; and it is not necessary that the brain 
 should be unconscious in sleep all this while. 
 Perhaps no one sleeps too much ; sleep can 
 hardly injure the brain ; but we have had an 
 extreme estimate of the amount of sleep which 
 it is indispensable that a rested body should 
 have. This is a most practical truth; and 
 every insomniac who gets himself down to or 
 
 152
 
 THE TRUE GOSPEL OF SLEEP 
 
 up to this mental basis begins at once to bene- 
 fit from it, and he finds that lying awake an 
 hour or two of a night, or before rising in the 
 morning, is not only not harmful, but is not 
 specially unpleasant ; darkness ceases to be ter- 
 rible to him, and he finds he can have good 
 thoughts as well as bad ones, when he is alone 
 with himself in the silence of the night. Then 
 he is surprised to find his terror gone; he 
 ceases to be an insomniphobiac, and becomes 
 a happy philosopher. 
 
 But this mental basis is one of the hardest 
 things in all the experiences of life for the 
 distraught poor sleepers to reach. It is hard 
 for them to change their philosophy of sleep 
 and their habits about it. They unconsciously 
 and unwittingly come to regard the act of ly- 
 ing in bed awake in the night as a punishment, 
 if not a sin. They are chagrined if they do 
 not drop off to sleep promptly on going to bed ; 
 and if they awaken before daylight they fret 
 till rising time, or they get up before their rest 
 is over because they are awake. Is man so 
 weak and mean an animal that he cannot en- 
 dure in bed at night the waking presence of 
 himself alone, but must have the constant wak- 
 ing company of his kind or of the light — or 
 perhaps of his dog! 
 
 This fuming tendency of the mind is a most 
 
 153
 
 THE TRUE GOSPEL OF SLEEP 
 
 interesting trait, but a most unfortunate ex- 
 perience. It is quite as likely to reveal itself 
 about a trifle as for the momentous things of 
 life. A man will be extremely annoyed and 
 impatient because you keep him taking a pill 
 three times a day for weeks, although the pill 
 is sugar-coated, is swallowed easily, and pro- 
 duces not a symptom of which he is conscious. 
 If it were a sugar-coated bread pill, and he did 
 not know this, he would grieve about it as 
 freely. And we are all witnesses of countless 
 lamentations of people because of trifling dis- 
 charges from their throats and noses, of harm- 
 less mucus each day. We know and they 
 know that no pain or discomfort comes of it, 
 yet they are in daily terror of the awful con- 
 sequences they suppose to attend this trifling 
 thing labeled catarrh that harms no one. So 
 we suffer ourselves to be terrified by an hour 
 more of conscious life each day than we guess 
 to be normal — an hour more of ourselves. 
 How foolish we are ! 
 
 It is hard to unlearn the lessons of a life- 
 time, especially when they are reinforced by 
 beliefs that are hereditary from a thousand 
 generations of usage, and to see as agreeable 
 some things that have always been held to be 
 disagreeable. The sleep problem illustrates 
 this truth most vividly. 
 
 154
 
 THE TRUE GOSPEL OF SLEEP 
 
 One of the hardest sides of the problem is 
 the contention that much less than the classical 
 eight hours of daily sleep will do. But there are 
 many facts to prove this thesis. People who 
 lie abed long hours reading, sleep correspond- 
 ingly little, and they live as long and keep as 
 well as the average. It is notorious that many 
 eminent men of history have slept little, and 
 I think hardly one who can be called an in- 
 tellectual giant has been accustomed to a large 
 amount of sleep. Nor is it necessary that chil- 
 dren, even infants, should have as much sleep 
 as we have supposed. Many years ago my 
 eyes were opened by an experience with a 
 wakeful baby. He slept only about three or 
 four hours a day on an average for a year, as 
 shown by the most accurate records. This 
 wakefulness was due, apparently, to some 
 nervous predisposition. Quieting drugs were 
 tried, but it was soon found that dangerously 
 large doses would be required to increase his 
 sleep materially ; and so, fearing the drugs 
 more than the insomnia, his management was 
 confined to good nursing and good nutrition. 
 I fully expected that the child's brain would 
 be permanently harmed by this experience, but 
 nothing of the sort occurred. At the end of a 
 year and a half he was sleeping better, and by 
 the end of his second year he was getting as 
 
 155
 
 THE TRUE GOSPEL OF SLEEP 
 
 much sleep as the average child of his age, 
 and he was well and vigorous and had a good 
 mind. Then a strange thing happened ; he be- 
 gan to sleep more than other children, and by 
 his sixth year, when he entered school, he was 
 sleeping about fourteen hours daily. By his 
 tenth year he apparently had paid back to 
 Nature what had been lost, and was sleeping 
 like other children of his age. He was per- 
 fectly well in mind and body, active and mis- 
 chievous, and was well abreast of his school- 
 mates in his studies. One such case is enough 
 to demolish the theory that a child must, that 
 all children must, sleep a great deal or be 
 ruined. 
 
 It is a common experience for a man to put 
 ofif his bedtime until a late hour because he 
 thinks he cannot sleep till then ; or to walk or 
 work so as to tire his body profoundly before 
 going to bed, in order that he shall be sure to 
 sleep ; or to get up at an absurdly early hour 
 in the morning, because he has awakened and 
 cannot sleep any longer. In all these ways he 
 is wrong, for in them all he follows the bad 
 principle that we should go to bed chiefly for 
 sleep. We are foolishly unhappy by lying in 
 bed awake, in the dark, and with nothing to do. 
 We are worse than children afraid of ghosts. 
 It is an unreasonable and unreasoning fear, 
 
 156
 
 THE TRUE GOSPEL OF SLEEP 
 
 and one that any sensible person should have 
 no difficulty in putting aside. 
 
 The body ought to be well rested every day, 
 and in the horizontal posture. The erect po- 
 sition that is maintained through nearly all 
 our waking hours makes this indispensable. 
 We are physically handicapped as compared 
 with the fourfooted beasts ; we need more 
 rest of body than they, and rest horizontal ; 
 and if we get enough rest of body we usually 
 get enough sleep, if we only let ourselves sleep, 
 and do not prevent it by worrying. But we 
 should, as far as possible, seek those physical 
 conditions that encourage sleep while we are 
 resting. That rest of body is more necessary 
 than much sleep, and that insomnia is clearly 
 provoked by an easily prevented mental mood, 
 are not reasons for us to neglect any of the 
 obvious aids to easy slumber. These ought to 
 be studied carefully and used resolutely. 
 
 Light keeps some people awake ; usually 
 more than need be, because they worry about 
 it and magnify it as an impediment. Most 
 people can have their bed hours in the dark ; 
 they can either go to bed early enough to have 
 eight dark hours, or they can darken their 
 rooms. Many are kept awake by noises ; often 
 needlessly kept awake by trifling sounds that 
 would be wholly negligible save for their pro- 
 
 157
 
 THE TRUE GOSPEL OF SLEEP 
 
 pensit}' to be nagged by them. The irritation 
 grows by indulgence ; every time they hear the 
 sounds and regard them as annoying, the hor- 
 ror grows. If the noises are produced by peo- 
 ple or by animals, and therefore may be pre- 
 ventable, the hatefulness is usually greater; 
 the sounds of the wind and waves and rain, 
 or even gentle thunder, are less sleep-killing 
 than the coughing or snoring of an innocent 
 neighbor or the distant barking of a dog. 
 Most persons can overcome much of any 
 morbid sensitiveness to sound that they may 
 have, if they understand these truths and will 
 be sensible. But few will try hard enough and 
 be wise enough for this consummation ; and 
 so some remedy for the noises of creation is 
 proper for such people, if a remedy that is 
 not hurtful can be found. The measure re- 
 sorted to for this purpose must be mostly sub- 
 jective; the noises themselves can be con- 
 trolled but little ; they must be kept out ; the 
 sound waves must be prevented from entering 
 the ears. Cotton stuffed into the ear channels 
 does a little good, but some waves pass 
 through it unless it is packed in so firmly as 
 to cause discomfort, which of course renders 
 the device nugatory. A cloth or other dress- 
 ing tied over the ears may keep out many 
 noises, but here again the apparatus, in order 
 
 158
 
 THE TRUE GOSPEL OF SLEEP 
 
 to be efficient, must press so tightly as to do 
 more harm than good. The thing needed is an 
 air-tight, non-vibrating stopper for the ears; 
 one that will not itself make a disagreeable 
 sensation by pressure or otherwise ; one that is 
 easily applied by the patient himself; and one 
 that is harmless. 
 
 Common paraffin seems to fill these condi- 
 tions; it is easily used, is harmless and won- 
 derfully efficient. A small mass of the sub- 
 stance is warmed in the mouth, chewed perhaps 
 to soften it the more rapidly, and is then 
 pressed firmly but gently into the ear. It 
 adjusts itself instantly to the ear tube, hardens 
 as it cools, and remains an almost complete 
 bar to the passage of sound waves, without 
 producing a disagreeable sensation, indeed, 
 with so little sensation of any sort that its 
 presence is soon forgotten. It is applied at 
 bedtime and removed by a finger in the morn- 
 ing; or it may be worn during the day, if it 
 comforts the patient, but not all the day, for 
 fear of interfering with the normal drying of 
 the external ear. It may be used in this way 
 for a long time with no harm of any sort, and 
 with the great advantage that it makes the 
 patient nearly, or quite, independent of the un- 
 avoidable noises of his environment. This 
 device may render it unnecessary to go to the 
 
 159
 
 THE TRUE GOSPEL OF SLEEP 
 
 country to sleep in order to escape from the 
 city noises ; it may make it less necessary to 
 keep the children still to avoid waking their 
 elders, and it may help the sensitive children 
 to finish their day naps in spite of the noises 
 about them. 
 
 Many people sleep poorly for want of suf- 
 ficient clothing in bed ; coldness of the feet is 
 especially apt to keep them awake. A good 
 bed is needful, for it rests the body most, and 
 so helps toward sleep. The remedies for these 
 defects are obvious, but often bevond reach. 
 A spread-out newspaper placed between the 
 blankets has the heat-keeping power of an- 
 other blanket — and old newspapers are cheap. 
 Overfeeding often produces insomnia, if it 
 does not make the drowsiness of indigestion, 
 causing heavy sleep in the early evening and 
 miserable wakefulness afterwards ; hunger 
 sometimes prevents sleep at night — corrected 
 by a cup of bread and milk at bedtime; and 
 overstimulation, especially with cofl^ee and tea, 
 is often fatal to good sleep. These troubles 
 are always correctable. Onlv a little common 
 sense and a trifle of courage are needful. A 
 loaded large intestine often keeps a sensitive 
 person awake for half the night, when a 
 prompt evacuation would relieve the insomnia 
 for the time completely. 
 
 1 60
 
 THE TRUE GOSPEL OF SLEEP 
 
 Foul air to breathe is a frequent cause of 
 wakefulness ; for this, the remedy is fresh air 
 in great abundance ; and people do not take 
 cold on account of well-ventilated bedrooms, 
 even draughty ones. I know the current 
 thought of the world is against this statement, 
 but the " world " is wrong — and its error is 
 killing thousands of good people each year, 
 some of whom ought to be kept alive, for they 
 might be a benefit to society. 
 
 When people are up and about they rarely 
 become sleepy because their brains are tired. 
 They often are sleepy when up and about, but 
 this is mainly due to fatigue of the body, or 
 to some fault of the digestive organs. Sleep 
 comes normally with a normal and unabused 
 body that has been fatigued a little and then 
 put to rest ; and it is helped by cessation of 
 active thinking, by darkness, by stillness, by 
 mental tranquillity and a happy spirit. These 
 things are first to be secured if possible ; then 
 the sleep comes as a natural consequence and, 
 with hardly an exception, in sufficient amount. 
 The sleep is secondary, not primary ; these 
 other things are primary and of surpassing 
 importance. 
 
 Nor must we count the hours of our slum- 
 ber for fear it is not enough ; that would break 
 the charm of the influence and spoil the game. 
 
 I6i
 
 THE TRUE GOSPEL OF SLEEP 
 
 We may keep a record if we like, and it may 
 be useful for our amusement, and to help de- 
 termine the exact amount of sleep that, in 
 our social zone, is physiologic for the man, 
 woman, and child of the present century, with 
 their varying orders of enlightenment and 
 manifold grades of work and play. Now no 
 man can tell just what that amount of sleep 
 is ; and this question can never be settled by 
 one poor slave of insomnia, or by a thousand 
 of them, and the question can wait. It will 
 profit each of these unfortunates to neg- 
 lect the race interests for his own, and to put 
 his mind, in the calmest sincerity, to the task 
 of saving himself from his thraldom — and the 
 task need not be hard nor its benefits un- 
 certain. 
 
 162 
 
 _.
 
 Some Unconceded Rights of 
 Parents and Children
 
 Some Unconceded Rights of 
 Parents and Children 
 
 It would appear to be a truism that parents 
 and their own children are of all people best 
 fitted to live together and be comforting- and 
 helpful to each other. And probably this is 
 the rule; but there are exceptions to it. The 
 rule means the average folk or those near 
 the average, who have no traits or habits that 
 mark them as peculiar or abnormal, and whose 
 bodies are symmetrical and undeformed, for 
 certain deformities of the body go with men- 
 tal eccentricities almost to a certainty. The 
 exceptions to the rule are the persons who have 
 some mental or bodily deformity; and in the 
 aggregate they are a numerous company. A 
 large proportion of them are among the in- 
 tellectual, refined, and forceful people, some of 
 whom are a moving influence in human af- 
 fairs. 
 
 165
 
 SOME UNCONCEDED RIGHTS 
 
 All the geniuses of every sort belong to this 
 latter class^ and some of them are strong and 
 capable, but many have little force for use- 
 ful things. While their peculiarities are, in 
 a few cases, endowments for power in some 
 direction, these folks are all more or less 
 handicapped in the struggles of life, for they 
 lack mental steadiness and equilibrium. They 
 easily tire, often have unstable purposes and 
 judgment. They are a class whose families 
 are usually running out, and giving place to 
 the more strong, tranquil, and evenly balanced 
 people that are constantly coming up from the 
 so-called lower orders of society. Their ranks 
 are perpetually replenished by this better 
 stock ; and this, touched in its turn by the 
 blight of our tensive civilization, finally goes 
 to the wall in the same way. Thus, what we 
 wrongly call the lower strata of society be- 
 come the race-saving ones — they are the better 
 ones. They constantly tend to rise and crowd 
 the others out of existence; so there is a con- 
 tinuous mutation going on among the orders 
 of society, like the geologic compounds of the 
 earth's crust. There is no problem about the 
 plain, tranquil people ; they take care of them- 
 selves — or the fates of their so-called betters 
 are providing for them. The great puzzle is 
 to know what to do for the exceptional ones, 
 
 i66
 
 OF PARENTS AND CHILDREN 
 
 the erratic specimens who have noble qual- 
 ities and acute misfortunes. 
 
 These erratic people often irritate each 
 other, even parents and children, and unwit- 
 tingly accentuate each other's morbidness; 
 without bad motives they often cause a flood 
 of mutual unhappiness. They are all lame 
 in some direction, and for that reason, if for 
 no other, they are entitled to the largest con- 
 sideration and all the helps that are possible. 
 
 Nearly all the aberrations I have indicated 
 are inborn ; they could hardly come into exist- 
 ence after birth, yet in many cases they in- 
 crease during the life of the individual. This 
 increase is produced by the influences of en- 
 vironment, and these are often some unappre- 
 ciated force or set of forces that continue a 
 harmful pressure for many years. Such forces 
 are often searched for and seldom found ; in 
 our blundering we look in the wrong direc- 
 tions for them, and then refuse to recognize 
 them when they are found ; many of the most 
 potent of them are unconceded, and so little or 
 nothing is done in a logical way to counteract 
 them. 
 
 Some of the defects of these people are phys- 
 ical, and are plainly manifest to others. They 
 show in stature, color, complexion, shape of 
 body, and features, in deformities that may be 
 
 167
 
 SOME UNCONCEDED RIGHTS 
 
 annoying to the eye, like unsymmetrical ears 
 or eyes, in misshapen faces and heads, or in 
 a general lack of bodily vigor. The victims 
 are only too well aware of these peculiarities, 
 and would be free of them if they could ; 
 everybody would be symmetrical and beautiful 
 of body if it were in his power to be. But 
 only the lack of general vigor or some slight 
 weakness of a special organ can be helped 
 much by any exercise or education. All the 
 rest of these faults are fixed and will last till 
 death. These we must bear, with such phi- 
 losophy as we have. 
 
 The most important defects after that of lack 
 of vigor are of the mind and nervous system ; 
 they are eccentricities of mind, unusual likes 
 and dislikes, egoistic tangents and emotional 
 impulses. These tell in disposition and con- 
 duct. They are temperamental, and fix the 
 place of the individual in society ; they order 
 his happiness or misery, and measure the peace 
 of those about him ; they determine his career 
 in life, his success in business, his reputation 
 among people — even the manner and time of 
 his death. 
 
 The most hopeful fact about this class of de- 
 fects is that, since they are founded in the 
 relative degrees of development, and the rela- 
 tion of the functions of the cerebral cells, they 
 
 i68
 
 OF PARENTS AND CHILDREN 
 
 are to some slight degree at least, correctible 
 by the effect of education, and the regulation 
 of mental and moral influences, especially 
 when these influences are continued through 
 years of time. A long nose cannot be short- 
 ened by any amount of cultivation ; but an in- 
 tense trait of mind may be lessened a little by 
 long enforced disuse, as one that is too weak 
 may grow somewhat by systematic exercise 
 long continued. 
 
 It is to the unspeakable interest of these 
 afflicted ones that their faults of mind be 
 first correctly diagnosed ; that their causes be 
 found out ; and then that the right correctives 
 be put to work and be continued as long as 
 they can be useful. These are two very diffi- 
 cult, often impossible, things to accomplish. 
 Moreover, the task is apt to be a most thank- 
 less one; the victim to be helped is likely to 
 object, and to disbelieve in the value of the 
 corrective, and early to grow tired of it, and 
 then to refuse to believe in its good effect 
 when it comes. For this reason, as well as on 
 account of its inherent difficulties, the prob- 
 lem is one that strongly appeals to every spirit 
 of true philanthropy. 
 
 The mental traits referred to are numerous 
 and peculiar. They stamp a man as lacking 
 much or little in general mental or nervous 
 
 169
 
 SOME UNCONCEDED RIGHTS 
 
 balance. He is perhaps too nervous or too 
 lethargic, too smart or too dull. His tastes 
 are too acute and critical, or he has little or 
 no critical sense. He has too much or too lit- 
 tle candor and frankness. His egoism is large 
 in the direction of covetousness and avarice 
 or of jealousy or envy; or he is so easy-going 
 and careless of himself that he is a nearly use- 
 less member of society. If he is too grasping 
 he may become a cheat, a kleptomaniac, or a 
 common thief; if too little so he will lack in- 
 dustry, be lazy and easily imposed upon ; will 
 be unable to accumulate property, but will 
 foolishly give it away ; he will have an unvig- 
 orous nature and may end in the poorhouse. 
 
 If his tastes are extremely esthetic he will 
 have intense joy in artistic things and habits, 
 and in people who are artistic according to his 
 standards. But, unless he is a philosopher, 
 he is born to a heritage of lifelong carking 
 at the blemishes and wrongs that are all 
 around him ; the dirt and squalor, and the un- 
 fitness of things. If his tastes are too dull he 
 will tend to revert toward barbarism ; he may 
 not get far in that direction, but his life will 
 be a heedless and lazy one. 
 
 All such warpings work for social demoral- 
 ization, and for weakness of the race as a 
 whole; never for the general balance and the 
 
 170
 
 OF PARENTS AND CHILDREN 
 
 common strength. They make for the grief 
 of their victims, and still more for the fatigue 
 of their friends. They are the moral casual- 
 ties of the march of human progress, and the 
 gloom of their affliction can be lifted only a 
 little by any of our efforts to discover and cor- 
 rect them. 
 
 Nature seems always to be trying to prevent 
 such defects, and to keep the human race sym- 
 metrical and up to a high standard of power. 
 But the efforts often miscarry, and so the 
 harm comes, and after the children are born 
 with the blight upon them we usually, in our 
 blind faith in the infallibility of nature, refuse 
 or fail to lift a finger to correct them. We 
 hide from our consciousness the very exist- 
 ence of their failings, or, if we discover them, 
 we take them for evidence of the inscrutable 
 workings of the Almighty, and as something 
 that cannot be helped. Some believe it is 
 wicked even to try to correct them. 
 
 The abnormalities that I have described 
 usually come to the children by reason of too 
 great likeness in mental traits of the parents 
 or grandparents. And nature tries to prevent 
 this by encouraging marriage between persons 
 of positive if not extreme mental and physical 
 unlikeness. The brunette naturally seeks the 
 blond ; the nervous person fancies the calm ; 
 
 171
 
 SOME UNCONCEDED RIGHTS 
 
 the big loves the petite ; the rude seeks the 
 gentle; strength is tender toward the weak 
 and dependent ; and the weak lean upon the 
 strong; while the prejudice against marriages 
 of consanguinity is almost universal. But 
 nature blunders ; she is often foiled by propin- 
 quity or the lack of it, by diffidence and hesi- 
 tation on the part of young people, by the 
 often benighted bias of friends and others, and 
 especially by the blindness of the impulsive 
 bundle of emotions called love. Probably not 
 more than one marriage in four is made ac- 
 cording to the natural ideal in every particular. 
 The other three are more or less of a com- 
 promise which one or both the parties is im- 
 pelled by various circumstances to make. 
 
 The marriage of couples having like traits 
 in excess of the common (and the word trait 
 always implies a mental quality a little beyond 
 the average) tends to greater excess of similar 
 traits in their children, and so down the years 
 interminably. Thus, through a succession of 
 natal faults, to which mav be added numerous 
 after influences, we have the neurotic, the in- 
 tense, the eccentric and the dull — all becom- 
 ing, or liable to become, worse rather than 
 better through succeeding generations. 
 
 These unstable tendencies are deplorable ; in 
 the main they are misfortunes pure and sim- 
 
 172
 
 OF PARENTS AND CHILDREN 
 
 pie. Only a few of them, and far between, 
 come to be useful in the world ; these belong 
 to the few geniuses whose unusual powers in 
 practical ways are of value to mankind; but 
 their contributions are mostly in the direction 
 of amusement, rarely in the realm of work. 
 The valuable discoveries of the geniuses are 
 usually in fields where numerous students have 
 been hunting along the same lines, and search- 
 ing for results that have been foreseen by 
 many minds. We are apt to call great that 
 man out of many who first happens to find 
 the sought-for thing. But his superiority to 
 the other workers in his field is usually the ac- 
 cident of getting into print a day earlier than 
 the rest. 
 
 For the weal of the individual as well as of 
 society, mental balance is to be sought; poise 
 is above all else to be prayed for ; a sane sense 
 of proportion is the goal. The child who is 
 born with an aberrant tendency has a natural 
 right to every influence that can help him cor- 
 rect it. Beyond his right to the four prime 
 necessities of physical existence (food, shel- 
 ter, clothes, and warmth), he has no greater 
 claim on the world than this. He demands, 
 all enlightened people demand, a fifth favor 
 in life made up of education, entertainment, 
 and pleasure ; and his right is to have this fifth 
 
 173
 
 SOME UNCONCEDED RIGHTS 
 
 boon so ordered that it shall increase his weak 
 powers and repress his excessive and abnor- 
 mal ones. It is the duty of everyone respon- 
 sible for him, as it is his own duty, to aid in 
 this consummation. 
 
 It is a safe postulate that the mentally 
 warped child (not the mental defect as we 
 understand imbecility, w^hich is not inherited, 
 but the result of a physical accident) has one 
 or two similarly warped parents or grand- 
 parents, or those who showed similar tenden- 
 cies at his age. That is the reason of his 
 warping; his and their aberrations are of the 
 same general character. 
 
 It is equally axiomatic that the peculiarity 
 that has descended to the child is usually in- 
 creased by living with people having the same 
 peculiarity, whether they be parents or other 
 persons. This is especially true of nervous, 
 erratic, and highly sensitive children and par- 
 ents. The quality already too highly wrought 
 grows worse by association with people of its 
 kind. It is logical to suppose that, living with 
 people of opposite tendencies, the excessive 
 traits would decrease to some degree ; cer- 
 tainly they would be less likely to grow, and 
 this is the way it works in actual practice, A 
 phlegmatic child may be helped to a normal 
 basis by alert and nervous associates, but a 
 
 1/4
 
 OF PARENTS AND CHILDREN 
 
 nervous child never. An egoistic and fiction- 
 building child will be helped by playmates 
 who are simple in their ways and literal in 
 the truth telling — seldom by one of his own 
 kind. 
 
 Parents with like traits are made worse and 
 often tired out by the nervous and wearing 
 ways of their children. The same excessive 
 qualities grow more acute and rasping in each, 
 the longer they live together. Of the two, the 
 nervous and emotional parents are hurt most, 
 for they have their normal solicitude for the 
 children added to the nagging they endure 
 from them. The children, because of their in- 
 herited emotionalism, often take advantage of 
 the parents, and become selfish and unapprecia- 
 tive, and demand all manner of attention and 
 favors, which they often get, and in the get- 
 ting become more abnormal. 
 
 By an apparent paradox it happens that 
 when the parent does much for the child the 
 latter grows dependent and selfish, and comes 
 to demand more and more; whereas, if the 
 parent is selfish and demands much of the 
 child, the latter often learns to give much, and 
 grows unselfish, loving, and thoughtful — the 
 divinest nature of all the race. This is a 
 strange comment on our ideals of domestic 
 life; and it is no paradox, but just what we 
 
 175
 
 SOME UNCONCEDED RIGHTS 
 
 might expect to occur in a large proportion of 
 cases. 
 
 Erratic parents and children are usually 
 mental and moral misfits. They are poorly 
 prepared to help each other, and amazingly 
 endowed to do each other harm. The harm 
 to the children is almost endless, for it may 
 go down to other generations ; the injury to 
 the parents — ^beyond the harm it works on 
 their own children — may end with their own 
 lives. Such children and parents ought not 
 to be together much, they ought to live apart, 
 at least during the developing time of the chil- 
 dren's lives, and any power that can bring this 
 about, whether it be an ordered purpose or 
 any of the accidents of fate, is a boon to both 
 parties. Even death itself may come to save 
 from ruin the surviving party ; for a life 
 dragged out as a nervous wreck, or lived as a 
 discredit to itself, is worse than death. 
 
 The erratic children who have erratic par- 
 ents ought to be put into families free from 
 influences that can increase their bad habits; 
 the nervous children into tranquil families, and 
 vice versa, so that the parents as well as the 
 children may be helped. By this plan the 
 errors of inheritance would be in part cor- 
 rected ; the overgrown disagreeable qualities 
 would be repressed, or, from disuse, would 
 
 176
 
 OF PARENTS AND CHILDREN 
 
 escape excessive growth ; and the dormant, 
 the dwarfed, and undeveloped ones might 
 grow and be useful in the world's business. 
 The small children usually do better in fam- 
 ilies, but the older ones are well enough off 
 in any good boarding school. A long visit 
 away from home and among friends or rela- 
 tives who will not be foolishly indulgent often 
 starts a good tendency of mind and soul that 
 lasts through life. 
 
 Tired-out parents with prostrate nervous 
 powers often find it needful to send their boys 
 and girls away to boarding schools to get rid 
 of the care and worry of them. It is the sal- 
 vation of many parents, who otherwise might 
 be nervously ruined. It helps many mothers 
 to recover from neurasthenia, and it is usually 
 a benefit to the children ; for such a mother has 
 ceased to be valuable to her child, and daily 
 grows worse by trying to care for it. It is a 
 nervous child's moral right, as it ought to be 
 his legal right, to live among tranquil, sanely 
 tranquil, people. The nervous and over- 
 wrought children are benefited by going away 
 from their overwrought parents. Living to- 
 gether they nag and irritate each other and 
 both grow worse. The personal influences 
 which the children find in the new environ- 
 ment rub against them in a fresh and usually 
 
 177
 
 SOME UNCONCEDED RIGHTS 
 
 an agreeable fashion and so soothe their irrita- 
 tion. It benefits them also to be among 
 strangers, where they often rise to the best 
 aspirations and conduct that they are capable 
 of; they start there a new life guided by mo- 
 tives that to many may be wholly novel ; they 
 become more tranquil and self-controlled, less 
 cantankerous, more considerate of the feel- 
 ings and interests of others, less selfish. The 
 new life is an inspiration to them ; new ideals 
 spring up, and better emotions come to be the 
 guiding force within them. 
 
 Nervous and erratic people of all ages, 
 when living together, tend toward oikiomania. 
 They are irritated by the presence of their 
 own people, and annoyed by each other's ways 
 and habits and talk — that is what oikiomania 
 means. This tendency is greater if the family 
 is small and the members must pay much at- 
 tention to each other; that is, if the personal 
 factors in the family are few. Strangers and 
 people outside their own households have a 
 personal eflfect to counteract this tendency, 
 and living with them may cure it entirely. 
 This is a well-known truth, and it explains 
 much of the benefit that comes to these handi- 
 capped children when they go away from 
 home to school or to live in other families. It 
 is an argument in favor of a cosmopolitan life 
 
 178
 
 OF PARENTS AND CHILDREN 
 
 begun early in the child's career. The unfor- 
 tunate child has a moral right to be placed in 
 an environment that will put at rest, as far as 
 is possible, his vicious tendency and his pecul- 
 iar irritability, as well as in one that will stim- 
 ulate those needful qualities of mind that are 
 sluggish and poorly developed. And this is 
 always, to some extent at least, a new environ- 
 ment ; but it is not one that means consent to 
 laziness or shirking of duties or the humor- 
 ing of unworthy ambitions or whims. 
 
 While children have the natural right to 
 grow up under conditions that will contribute 
 to their most symmetrical development, even 
 if it is away from their natural protectors, so 
 parents have certain natural rights as to their 
 children, and one of these is the right not to 
 be crazed by them. If they feed, clothe, warm, 
 shelter, protect, and educate their children, 
 that is enough, unless more can be done with 
 mutual benefit. To give also their own peace 
 of mind and even sanity is too large a gift, 
 and it is not required. It is especially not 
 called for, since, when the parent is distracted 
 by the child, the latter is sure to be tempera- 
 mentally poisoned and more likely ruined by 
 the parent's condition. What protects the par- 
 ent benefits the child even more. 
 
 A parent has no right to show his low ideals, 
 
 179
 
 SOME UNCONCEDED RIGHTS 
 
 if he has such, to his child. And children 
 usually find out what sort of purposes their 
 parents have, even if they try to hide them. 
 It is a rare man who can always hide his 
 base purposes from his child; he is sure to 
 forget some day and blunder into a revela- 
 tion that the child will see through in an in- 
 stant. I once saw a man step up to the box 
 office of a show with his son and ask what a 
 ticket would cost for a nine-year-old boy. 
 " Ten years, papa," said the boy in a low tone. 
 And when his father did not correct it he 
 shouted with evident conscience : " Ten years, 
 papa ! " The father was trying to get a 
 cheaper ticket by means of a cheap decep- 
 tion, and evidently had not posted the boy. 
 The latter thought his father had made a mis- 
 take — later he must have divined, to his own 
 degradation of soul, that it was a very small 
 cheat. Few child memories can be more pre- 
 cious to a man than those of the high ideals 
 and frank honesty of his parents. 
 
 The contentions of this paper would be 
 sure, some of them, to meet with doubt and 
 denial from most of the inmates of tranquil 
 and unperturbed households; for most good 
 people believe laudably in the home life for 
 children, as I do ; and they usually think it im- 
 possible (as I do not) that such a life, ani- 
 
 i8o
 
 OF PARENTS AND CHILDREN 
 
 mated by the good intentions of all concerned, 
 can ever work badly for children or parents. 
 They are ready to demand that children of 
 susceptible ages shall be taken away from in- 
 temperate, cruel, and immoral parents. Some 
 would even take them away from irreligious 
 ones. But that well-meaning children may be 
 taken away from parents of the highest order 
 of good morals and the most superb parental 
 devotion — and with benefit to both — seems so 
 absurd to them that they find it difficult to treat 
 the proposition seriously. Yet, if they will 
 look about them with their eyes wide open, 
 and if they will study the personal history of 
 their own times a little, they will find hun- 
 dreds of cases where, on one pretext or an- 
 other, this very thing has been done. The rea- 
 son given in a particular case may be the 
 invalidism of the mother, or some theory of 
 the father, or the irritation from contact with 
 other children ; or the boy or girl has begged 
 to go away to school or to go off on a visit, 
 and has been gratified; or the boy has run 
 away from home and after roaming awhile 
 has come back, and then been sent away from 
 home or to work — or, what is often the case, 
 the nervous skeleton in the family has been 
 kept hidden from all but intimates of the 
 household, and some other and factitious ex- 
 
 i8i
 
 SOME UNCONCEDED RIGHTS 
 
 cuse has been given for the child's going away 
 into new influences. 
 
 Every such instance is an argument in favor 
 of the claims here made, as it is a plea for a 
 frank study of this whole subject without 
 blinking the facts. The trouble with the ob- 
 jectors is that they unconsciously feel bound 
 to make the facts harmonize with their the- 
 ories, which is wrong. Theories, to be good, 
 must grow out of the facts, and there can be 
 no more impropriety in studying this subject 
 scientifically than there is in thus dealing with 
 indigestion or headache. The wrong comes 
 if our study is disloyal to the best interests of 
 child or parent or the community as a whole ; 
 and loyalty to child and parent can never be 
 disloyalty to society. 
 
 Enlightened communities have had to come 
 to several new notions in the care of the 
 mentally unfortunate ; they will come to the 
 ground here contended for, or something akin 
 to it, after they get over the shock of its ap- 
 parent absurdity. (They now often act upon 
 it, but refuse to confess that they do.) The 
 change will probably come slowly — ^but it will 
 come, as sure as fate, or we shall outgrow the 
 necessity for it. And the necessity for it lies 
 in our highly wrought and extremely artificial 
 lives. For a full century in this country our 
 
 182
 
 OF PARENTS AND CHILDREN 
 
 lives have been growing more artificial and in- 
 volved rather than less so, with only occasional 
 evidences of a tendency to return to more nor- 
 mal and simple ways. 
 
 Among the most hopeful recent symptoms 
 in this direction are the fashion of athletics 
 among the youth of the land during the last 
 two decades, and the later and growing cult 
 for outdoor life and more house ventilation. 
 These influences tend toward physical vigor 
 and the worship of it, and so are helpful in a 
 high degree. 
 
 There was a time when it was thought to be 
 a cruelty to the insane to take them away from 
 their homes and friends. Now every in- 
 formed person knows the absurdity of that 
 idea. The insane of every degree are always 
 benefited by life among strangers. There is 
 substantially no exception to this rule. In 
 former times the families of these unfor- 
 tunates, usually with the best intentions, treat- 
 ed them in the way that harmed them most. 
 There probably is not in all the history of 
 mankind a more pathetic example than this, 
 of personal devotion doing injury to the ob- 
 ject of its care. A near approach to it, how- 
 ever, is our mistreatment of some of the most 
 deserving of our children. 
 
 Mentally aberrant children and parents, 
 
 183
 
 SOME UNCONCEDED RIGHTS 
 
 leagues this side of true insanity as it is un- 
 derstood, but peculiar, erratic, and often in- 
 tense and nervously prostrate, are subject to 
 the same laws of cause and cure as the really 
 insane are. And they stand as much in need 
 of an enlightened love that will do the best 
 things for them, even if at first blush they 
 seem to be unnatural things. 
 
 The claim of parents that they cannot spare 
 their children, that it is the parent's place to 
 take care of his children and keep them, is 
 good enough for the normal, wholesome peo- 
 ple who are unharmed by too much civiliza- 
 tion, or by generations of intense competition. 
 It is a very bad claim for the warped, abnor- 
 mal people who are victims of our artificial 
 and intense ways of living and working. 
 
 For a parent to say that he cannot spare 
 his child out of his sight, even for the child's 
 good, is to plead guilty to a love that is almost 
 purely selfish ; and that is a terrible confes- 
 sion to make. Some of the very people who 
 make this plaint see their children but a small 
 portion of the time; most of their waking 
 hours the children spend in school, with other 
 children, and in the care of nurses and tutors, 
 often to their considerable benefit; rarely to 
 their harm. A father or mother with a strong 
 tendency to parental indulgence, or with 
 
 184
 
 OF PARENTS AND CHILDREN 
 
 marked irritability, is less safe as a child's 
 care-taker than the good teacher or nurse. 
 The teacher and the nurse are more likely to be 
 discreetly kind and helpful. And it is the nat- 
 ural right of every child to have from its care- 
 takers that order of kindness that is discreet 
 and truly helpful; for that is the sort that 
 works for its lifelong, possibly its eternity- 
 long, benefit, even if it violates some selfish 
 theories and causes some evanescent heart- 
 aches. The best friend of the child is that one 
 who will most help him to a normal and fine 
 development of himself, and to a wholesome 
 and symmetrical career in life. And that 
 friend most deserves his thanks, whether it 
 be his father, his mother, or his neighbor. 
 
 185
 
 The Trained Nurse and the 
 Larger Life
 
 The Trained Nurse and the 
 Larger Life 
 
 A Graduation Address 
 
 In making a formal address on an occasion 
 like this, there is something of a temptation 
 to indulge in the common platitudes; to glo- 
 rify the nurse's calling ; to enlarge on the fact 
 that this is a great epoch in the lives of the 
 graduates ; to romance a little on the very 
 proper theory that they are destined, in the 
 practice of their profession, to bring joy into 
 the lives of unnumbered sick folks and 
 through them into numberless other lives ; that 
 they have a true missionary work before them, 
 and that they are, by their character and de- 
 meanor, sure to uphold the standard of their 
 guild and to bring honor to their alma mater. 
 The list of beautiful and sweet things of this 
 kind that might be said, and said with the 
 utmost propriety, could be much prolonged. 
 
 189
 
 THE TRAINED NURSE 
 
 They are pleasant things to say and to hear, 
 and they might be said to-night ungrudgingly 
 and with perfect truth. 
 
 But these are the superficial and more ob- 
 vious things to say ; they voice the first im- 
 pressions of a graduation-day ceremonial, and 
 they are always proper and in good form. 
 Moreover, they are easy things to say. A 
 deeper and more philosophic view, however, 
 prompts a lot of questions, and sees other and 
 maybe larger meanings. 
 
 Notwithstanding recent history, this kind 
 of an occasion is relatively novel ; twenty-five 
 years ago it would have been almost unique; 
 fifty years ago it would have been impossible. 
 It marks the development of a new order of 
 things for women and men, as well as society 
 in general ; a step in a real social emancipation 
 of our kind. Such an event as this would 
 have startled our grandmothers. They were 
 debarred from all schools of higher education ; 
 and there were no schools of any professional 
 equipment for them ; they were well fettered 
 to tradition. The idea that in the stress 
 of sickness and accident people should be 
 nursed as well as operated upon and prescribed 
 for by trained experts, was in their day only 
 just beginning to be discussed. Now it seems 
 the most natural thing in the world, and we 
 
 190
 
 AND THE LARGER LIFE 
 
 wonder it was not discovered before. It has 
 lowered the death rate of cities, and it is one 
 of the few epoch-making improvements in the 
 struggle against death and suffering that were 
 initiated in the nineteenth century. The pub- 
 lic has come slowly to realize the value of 
 trained nurses, and now insists on having 
 them. Such innovations develop in a quarter 
 of a century that we are apt to forget what 
 things are wholly modern and what old. 
 
 And the nurses improve. As a profession 
 they have taken on dignity. They are, to be- 
 gin with, a selected company. From the day 
 a girl first inclines to be a trained nurse she 
 becomes the subject of a process of pruning 
 and elimination. She has less than fifty per 
 cent of certainty to be admitted to a first-class 
 school ; and once admitted she has a large per- 
 centage of certainty to drop out before her 
 graduation. If she is graduated she may fail 
 in the most delicate art extant — one that no 
 training school can teach her completely — 
 the art of adapting herself to the public and 
 to the units of society, for her and their good. 
 Truly, the graduate trained nurse has reason 
 to be proud, especially if her degree comes 
 from a school of exacting requirements. 
 
 Who would have thought twenty years ago 
 that a school for the education of women to 
 
 191
 
 THE TRAINED NURSE 
 
 nurse the sick could ever become a department 
 of a university? Yet this wonder is fore- 
 shadowed by developing events now going on, 
 and is likely some day to be realized. 
 
 Some training schools now require a high- 
 school certificate for admission to their classes, 
 and they put a premium on previous college 
 work. It has befallen that at least some of the 
 sick need, in their nurses, culture as well as 
 neatness and refinement ; and that elevating 
 companionship and power to instruct and en- 
 tertain in a fine way, are often a potent force 
 for recovery, when brought to the bedside by 
 a fine woman not of the patient's own family. 
 Then it is elevating to a patient to have a 
 nurse who is his mental and moral superior, 
 without assuming to be. He cannot belittle 
 her, and she may and often does elevate him. 
 
 These high-standard training schools have 
 made another discovery, namely, that a good 
 preliminary education creates for a girl a poise 
 and woman's self-control (and therefore 
 safety as a pupil in training) at least three 
 years earlier in life than these qualities could 
 be sure to come solely by the march of time. 
 It is usually absurd to keep an academic grad- 
 uate in moral quarantine for a score of moons, 
 meditating on her well-earned diploma, till her 
 twenty-three years have caught up with her 
 
 192
 
 AND THE LARGER LIFE 
 
 attainments, before she can enter a training 
 school of the right sort. The age condition 
 of entrance to the older schools is probably 
 justifiable, considering the grade of pupils 
 which their low educational conditions are lia- 
 ble to bring them, for at all costs there must 
 be some maturity of viewpoint and personal 
 reliability in every pupil, and twenty-three 
 will usually bring these. But real education 
 hastens them, crowds them into the earlier 
 years, and develops maturity. It helps to wis- 
 dom, if it does not create it. 
 
 There is another phase of this subject 
 that is of surpassing interest. The training 
 schools are both a cause and an evidence of 
 certain great changes in the estimate of all 
 classes of people, as to the place of the true 
 woman in society, and as to what the true 
 woman really is. These shiftings affect 
 women more than men, but only a little more, 
 for the new masculine estimate of women con- 
 stitutes nearly, if not quite, half of the move- 
 ment. And the movement has been a steady, 
 slow, pervading increase in the opportunities 
 to women to do things, and in the belief of the 
 world in their larger rights and powers to do 
 things. 
 
 The trained nurses are an evidence of the 
 change, for without some amelioration of the 
 
 193
 
 THE TRAINED NURSE 
 
 former severe popular standards the nurses 
 never could have entered to the degree they 
 have into the good opinion and the service of 
 the public. And no one who has watched 
 their successful work and the maintenance of 
 their position — sometimes in the face of grave 
 obstacles — can doubt that they have also 
 helped to produce the change. 
 
 Time was, in this country, and not so very 
 long ago, when woman was vastly more re- 
 stricted in her social and legal rights and in 
 her activities than she is now. This is fa- 
 miliar, almost contemporaneous, history. Then 
 she was under the constant protection of the 
 male members of her family. She was chape- 
 roned, hidden, metaphorically veiled, and pro- 
 tected — she was unable to protect herself. Her 
 fields of activity were few, and in these she 
 was expected to be active, especially if they 
 were in the sphere of hard work. But some- 
 times, then as now, her sphere was to be idle 
 and ornamental, and she was relatively igno- 
 rant of the essential facts of the commoner 
 knowledge of the world. Any attempt to en- 
 large her scope was a suggestion of some 
 defection in her character. Even to try to be- 
 come greatly educated was mannish — fla- 
 grantly so, if she would fill her head with the 
 facts of the world, like animal physiology and 
 
 194
 
 AND THE LARGER LIFE 
 
 pathology. By the previous standards women 
 must be ignorant, like the slaves of old, with 
 the difference that the women must be chap- 
 eroned. A woman was held not to need much 
 education, and much education was thought 
 to lessen her charms. And what education 
 soever she had must be as ethereal and orna- 
 mental as possible. Less than twenty years 
 ago a course in domestic science was intro- 
 duced into the curriculum of an academy for 
 girls in New England, and was condemned as 
 a sacrilege by numerous critics, not a few of 
 whom were educators themselves. They said 
 it would degrade and belittle the noble thing 
 called woman's education. 
 
 Some of these old prejudices still linger 
 even with us, and promise to linger long. In 
 our marriage ceremonies, for example, the 
 bride is often " given away," a relic of the 
 time when she was given away indeed, with or 
 without her consent, as is still the case in the 
 Orient. 
 
 Innocency was of old the highest attribute 
 of excellence of woman, especially of a young 
 woman — as it must continue to be forever. 
 But the old doctrine made it synonymous with 
 ignorance, and to that this latter-day awaken- 
 ing demurs, and says that to be innocent of 
 wrong is not necessarily to be kept in ignor- 
 
 195
 
 THE TRAINED NURSE 
 
 ance of any truth of nature — ^but that the 
 truths of the universe help rather than hin- 
 der in that kind of rectitude that constitutes 
 a real virtue and a character worth having. 
 
 Even now, after we have conceded more re- 
 sponsibility as well as liberty to woman, we 
 often pretend to ourselves that she is still ig- 
 norant, as though that might in some way 
 make us more sure of her immaculateness. 
 Many of our customs still testify to this de- 
 ception, and we cling to certain of them with 
 great tenacity, and in utter disregard of their 
 relative usefulness. If it is proposed that a 
 social restriction or custom of women shall 
 be made less severe, the more timid of our 
 monitors of ethics are liable to hold up their 
 hands in horror and declare that the foun- 
 dations of social order are in peril. 
 
 An absurd incident in point occurred in 
 rural New England during the early decades 
 of the last century. It was given me by my 
 mother, of sacred memory, and occurred in 
 her own girlhood observation. A woman in 
 her town adopted a new fashion, then just 
 being heard of as coming into vogue in the 
 cities, and was at once pounced upon by most 
 of the neighboring women for having done 
 something which they thought was out of 
 character. She was scorned as much as one 
 
 196
 
 AND THE LARGER LIFE 
 
 of these trained nurses would be should she 
 walk a public street in daylight smoking a 
 cigar. It was my grandmother who, in her 
 independent sense of justice, and to show her 
 contempt for the ungenerous criticism, pro- 
 ceeded straightway to adopt the fashion her- 
 self. 
 
 What was the fashion? It was proper by 
 every criterion save that of its novelty, and 
 it was in the highest sense hygienic and com- 
 fortable. We can smile at the mixture of con- 
 servatism and prudery with which the neigh- 
 bors felt outraged, and declare that such 
 foolish judgments shall never enter into our 
 estimate of the conduct of others ; but it was 
 unavoidable to them, and we are not wholly 
 free from danger of similar blunders. The 
 fashion that shocked those prim dames was 
 the wearing of drawers by women. This gar- 
 ment, it seems, had never been worn before 
 by any woman of that section of the country, 
 and the innovation was a shock. In a year 
 or two the fashion had very properly spread 
 to nearly every household in the community. 
 The women came to their senses. 
 
 This episode shows in a grotesque way how 
 foolish the human genus can be ; how it may 
 act without really thinking. This first inno- 
 vating woman was taunted with not only wear- 
 
 197
 
 THE TRAINED NURSE 
 
 ing the garments of men, but with having de- 
 signs on the vocations and prerogatives of 
 men as well, and with being immodest. And 
 I should like to be sure that no person in this 
 audience is this moment censuring me for bad 
 taste in having related this incident. I wish 
 I knew that all of us had put away most of our 
 prudery. 
 
 The trained nurse, like the college woman 
 graduate, has helped to a public avowal that 
 women may acquire any and all knowledge, 
 and indulge in numerous physical and social 
 activities, and not be coarsened by them. 
 There is a wholesome and a growing class of 
 the better people who refuse to see in waspish 
 waists, untanned faces, mental insipidity, and 
 general uselessness, the marks of the admi- 
 rable in womanhood. They see the admirable 
 rather in outdoor color, good muscles, capac- 
 ity to do things, knowledge and courage to 
 inquire, a sane independence, self-respect and 
 good fellowship. These are coming to be 
 reckoned among the marks of character and 
 worth ; and the career of the trained nurse has 
 helped to cultivate the better public opinion. 
 With her, to be sensible has come to be fash- 
 ionable ; the people have learned to regard her 
 as incapable of the commoner forms of femi- 
 nine nonsense. Fancy, if you can, a graduate 
 
 198
 
 AND THE LARGER LIFE 
 
 of a first-class training school or of a univer- 
 sity wearing a tight corset or foolish shoes 
 or gloves, or powdering away the rich tan 
 color of her face ; or simpering. 
 
 I think this very reputation for wholesome- 
 ness is one of the incentives that cause many 
 young women to enter training schools. Who, 
 in selecting a course of education, would not 
 be glad to find that one which would take him 
 for life into a company respected for its voca- 
 tion, and honored in the community? We 
 join secret orders and strive to get into coveted 
 social sets for similar reasons. 
 
 No student of sociology can doubt that the 
 changes here referred to have benefited the 
 community as a whole. They are especially 
 of value to men by enhancing the man's es- 
 timate of the true woman, and enlarging his 
 belief in her capacity and powers ; and these 
 changes have come about in no small degree 
 because men have been cared for by trained 
 nurses. The man as a patient may have 
 been rather startled at first at the idea of 
 a young nurse taking charge of him and 
 administering to his every want for restora- 
 tion to health. But the experience has usually 
 ended by his having a higher opinion of the 
 worth of the real woman. This influence has 
 been a useful leaven that has worked power- 
 
 199
 
 THE TRAINED NURSE 
 
 fully; and no one can know of the value of 
 this force so well as a physician who is for- 
 tunate enough to have seen the old regime 
 changed to the new, and to have practiced 
 under both. Having had that experience, such 
 an one knows the facts, for the facts are 
 patent to all the seniors in the profession with 
 a general metropolitan practice. 
 
 Another influence for the betterment of the 
 standing of the graduate nurse, and through 
 her of womankind everywhere, is the admi- 
 rable character which, with hardly an excep- 
 tion, these nurses have maintained. I venture 
 to say that the graduates of no college for 
 women have a record for probity, efficiency, 
 kindliness, and general woman's character su- 
 perior to that of the graduates of the high- 
 class training schools for nurses in this coun- 
 try. These graduates have demonstrated, 
 what even women critics themselves do not 
 doubt, that a young woman may be trusted to 
 her own chaperonage without a breath of sus- 
 picion from anybody. And that is an achieve- 
 ment that marks an epoch. 
 
 To what is this consummation probably due ? 
 Undoubtedly in large measure to the rigid se- 
 lection of the personnel of the student body of 
 the training schools. If superior women are 
 selected for training, superior graduates may 
 
 200
 
 AND THE LARGER LIFE 
 
 be expected ; but you cannot, in any three or 
 four years of training, make a refined lady 
 out of a girl who is devoid of some essential 
 refinement in her nature. These are axioms, 
 but wholesome to be repeated now and then. 
 It is, however, positive that a large part of 
 the peculiar superiority of the graduates is due 
 to the very nature of their drill and work. 
 Think of what the work is, and of its spiritual 
 influence. From the beginning to the end of 
 her course the pupil must have the weal, for 
 comfort and health and even life, of others 
 as her constant care and duty. Her service 
 is essentially one of unselfishness, and she has 
 little time or encouragement for trifling aims. 
 She knows that the eyes of the public, the 
 doctors, her teachers, her fellows, and the pa- 
 tients are upon her. The strain upon her is 
 so severe that at first it is often extremely try- 
 ing to the health of the pupil, more so than has 
 been witnessed in any other sort of school for 
 women in the history of the world — sometimes 
 it destroys her health completely ; but if she 
 does not break, she rises high in power and 
 efficiency as her training goes on. The pa- 
 tients may look to her for strength and com- 
 fort — they sometimes lean on her in sorrow, 
 and this is an influence that usually makes 
 even crude human nature grow in grace. 
 
 201
 
 THE TRAINED NURSE 
 
 Then, the nurse in the absence of the doctor 
 is solely responsible for the patient, and in 
 some measure she shares his responsibility 
 also, and sometimes her part of it is appalling. 
 She shares with the physician the duty to hold 
 the interests and secrets of the patients as in- 
 violable. A mistake at her hands is not a sim- 
 ple classroom blunder — it may cause a death. 
 If she can bear all this responsibility, the thing 
 happens that comes in the experience of most 
 human beings under similar strain : she stands 
 erect and grows in poise and moral stature ; 
 temptations to littleness and meanness grow 
 fewer, and her vision of the real worth of hu- 
 man character grows broader and more accu- 
 rate. She learns what is the dross of human 
 nature, to be rejected and forgotten as soon as 
 possible, and what the virtues to tie to and 
 be encouraged by. And her appreciation of 
 childhood and flowers and music and all clean- 
 ness enlarges rather than lessens; her judg- 
 ments grow more temperate and sane — and 
 so she makes a career worth living for and 
 worth dying for. And she often finally dies 
 in the belief that she has been a poor forgotten 
 cog in a great wheel, whose parts are easily 
 replaced, instead of what she truly is, a potent 
 influence toward the betterment of women 
 and men the world over. 
 
 202
 
 AND THE LARGER LIFE 
 
 The graduates here present are about to 
 enter a new profession, that has been born out 
 of a new and better dispensation, and has 
 grown to honor within the memory of most 
 of them. It is no small achievement to have 
 done this. If the event is not sufficiently novel 
 to be surprising, it is ground for congratula- 
 tion that they stand where they do to-day as a 
 result of work and trial and struggle and per- 
 haps grief — and after severe natural and fac- 
 titious selection. If anyone thinks that the 
 struggle was not hard enough and the selec- 
 tion not sufficiently severe, let him understand 
 that probably their successors will find these 
 progressively more terrible. This is the first 
 harvest of these graduates — ^the second will 
 be their professional success, if that shall ever 
 come to pass. 
 
 The greater fact is that they to-day enter a 
 company of women who have been educated 
 in a new kind of knowledge, and a new art, 
 which is of the greatest usefulness for any 
 woman in any work or walk of life. It will 
 be enormously valuable to every one of them, 
 even should she never do a day's work of 
 nursing outside of her own home. Besides, 
 it gives them the ability to look down, little 
 or much, on most of other womankind. Van- 
 ity and conceit over this fact would be unbe- 
 
 203
 
 THE TRAINED NURSE 
 
 coming anyway, and such an ignoble emotion 
 will be smothered when they reflect, as they 
 must, that, whether they pursue the profession 
 or not, they have a large responsibility which 
 they can never evade so long as they live, to 
 maintain that reputation of their guild which 
 their predecessors have already placed high, 
 to the end that woman may have larger lib- 
 erties and opportunities, and may earn more 
 honor, with no harm but always benefit to the 
 social life of the race. 
 
 Nor are good nursing and good conduct 
 enough for this duty that is upon them. They 
 are a living proclamation that women, espe- 
 cially this stamp of women, shall also know 
 somewhat. And knowledge accumulates and 
 changes with time. They cannot and must not 
 stop in their intellectual growth. They must 
 read, observe, and think, and increase in wis- 
 dom as knowledge advances. 
 
 204
 
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