LIBRARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 
 OF" 
 
 Received 
 Accession 
 
TASKS BY TWILIGHT 
 
 BY 
 
 ABBOT KINNEY 
 
 AUTHOR OF " THE CONQUEST OF DEATH 
 
 G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 27 WEST TWENTY-THIRD STREET 
 
 LONDON 
 
 BEDFORD STREET, STRAND 
 
 ^niclurbocher 
 1893 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1893 
 BY 
 
 ABBOT KINNEY 
 
 Electrotyped, Printed, and Bound by 
 
 Ube Iknicfcerbocfcer ipress, flew l!?orft 
 G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 EDUCATION . i 
 
 PHYSIQUE ........ 19 
 
 BOYS ........ 2O 
 
 MANUAL LABOR ....... 28 
 
 PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT 33 
 
 OBSERVATION ..... 6 1 
 
 EDUCATION OF GIRLS . ** 64 
 
 THOUGHTS 101 
 
 DIET .154 
 
 iii 
 
TASKS BY TWILIGHT. 
 
 EDUCATION. 
 
 " The hard toiler is slow, patient, and conservative, while the stu- 
 dent is progressive, as thought will impatiently outrun the slow march 
 of stubborn reality. By joining study with labor, we combine the 
 spirit of progress, development, and adaptation with the spirit of con- 
 servatism, both so necessary for the historic development of a nation." 
 SAMUEL ROYCE. 
 
 EDUCATION is generally considered to be the 
 literary preparation given young persons by teach- 
 ers at home or in our schools and universities. This is 
 the commonly received interpretation of the word. It is an 
 interpretation narrow and incomplete to the last degree. 
 
 Education, in its complete sense, is the preparation for 
 living, and begins at birth. That portion of it obtained 
 from books and in the schools is the outward flourish, 
 the trimming and the ornamentation, as compared to 
 the solid requirements necessary for a successful life. 
 
 The absolute essentials for a useful and happy exist- 
 ence are three : First, animal strength to be a good 
 animal to have health, vitality, and physical power. 
 Without a due amount of this, no other requirements, no 
 knowledge or information, can be utilized. The physique 
 
2 TASKS BY TWILIGHT. 
 
 must be there to use knowledge. To the extent that 
 physical power or vitality is absent, a human being's 
 knowledge is less useful. As the physique diminishes in 
 power, so must the beneficial activity of the human being 
 be likewise diminished. 
 
 The second quality essential to a useful life is the 
 power of observation and adaptation. We must be able 
 to see things when we see them ; when we look at a thing 
 we must observe it, recognize its qualities and, remember 
 it. The circumstances in our lives are so varied, so com- 
 plicated, so changeful, that no rule can be laid down for 
 details in any person's life. Persons do and must depend, 
 in their lives, upon their own individual capacity of ob- 
 servation and adaptation, certainly while any progress 
 takes place in society. We must, if we are successful, act 
 in harmony with the inexorable laws of nature. These 
 laws, never changeable in themselves, are so varied by 
 the circumstances surrounding us, that the rules for suc- 
 cessful action in any given person's life must be inscribed 
 and treasured in their own consciousness. 
 
 The third quality, without which life must be a failure, 
 is character. By character is meant that combination of 
 qualities which enables us to use the knowledge derived 
 from observation, through our physique, so as to achieve 
 results. 
 
 The human animal is gregarious. All human lives are, 
 therefore, affected by the lives of others. 
 
 Success may be measured by the capacity an individual 
 has of combining the lives and activities of others, and 
 
EDUCATION'. 3 
 
 shaping these to his own ends. For these purposes, a 
 person must have the decision, the perseverance, and the 
 concentration to know what he wants, and to pursue 
 that desire to a conclusion. And above all things he 
 must have the power of securing the confidence and 
 aid of his fellow-men. Energy and honesty are, there- 
 fore, important elements in character. Even the chief of 
 a band of thieves must have a degree of honesty to secure 
 the confidence and obedience of his band. 
 
 With these three qualities in their perfection, any one 
 reaching maturity will certainly be successful. 
 
 The lack of the literary accomplishments and of the 
 useful information furnished by the schools can be and 
 is being every day overcome outside of the schools by 
 those successful without their aid. 
 
 The thoughtful will recognize at once that none of 
 these three essentials are customarily taught in schools. 
 On the contrary, the confined and sedentary life lived by 
 the scholastic student is always detrimental to the phy- 
 sique. Often the consequences result in serious and 
 permanent disability, and not infrequently end in prema- 
 ture death. 
 
 The second quality is, as schools are usually managed, 
 equally dwarfed and injured. The thoughts, the state- 
 ments, and the dogmas of others are taught and memo- 
 rized at the expense of the individual powers of observation 
 of the student himself. Instead, therefore, of looking at 
 the facts of nature for themselves, and seeing what those 
 facts are, a scholastic person is taught to receive with 
 
4 TASKS BY TWILIGHT. 
 
 little or no question the statements of others in regard 
 to them. Such influences, therefore, in their purity tend 
 to prevent a realization of truth and to prevent that per- 
 sonal investigation by which alone we can appreciate its 
 force. 
 
 As to the third requisite the schools are nearly neutral. 
 They inculcate some of the qualities of character as sort 
 of side issues. And to this extent they are beneficial. 
 On the other hand, the system of teaching the dogmas of 
 others as facts, even when these dogmas are correct, 
 must have a tendency to diminish the individuality and 
 self-reliance of the student. 
 
 The lack of physical culture, together with the exces- 
 sive strain on the nervous system, often upsets the balance 
 of the organism. The reproductive powers suffer espe- 
 cially. An investigation now going on shows, thus far, a 
 remarkable diminution in childbirth in the literary or 
 so-called educated classes as compared to the hard 
 workers. 
 
 Upon the whole it is my opinion that, excluding the 
 playground and taking only the school-room, the results 
 of an education derived from this source alone would be 
 of very doubtful advantage. 
 
 These words without explanation cast a dark shadow 
 upon our school system. Such is not my intention. 
 The value of the thought and experience of others, taught 
 in our schools, it is impossible to estimate. Our school 
 systems have been ever increasing in their usefulness and 
 improving in their methods. The development of late 
 
EDUCATION. 5 
 
 years has been very great. Owing largely, doubtless, to 
 the rapidity of its growth, it has not been well balanced. 
 
 The literary portion has gone unduly ahead of other 
 and more essential departments. Qualities developed at 
 home or on the playground have been neglected through 
 the increased time required for the literary exercises. 
 
 The school has taken more and more the energy of 
 the child, until now there is scarce any time and practi- 
 cally no energy left for the instruction and experience 
 derived by young persons from outside sources, and 
 especially at home. The schools have thus increased 
 enormously the literary education they originally gave 
 in small amount, while the absorption of the child's 
 energy prevents it from learning those things formerly 
 acquired in the fields, playground, farm, or home. 
 
 The school has taken so much of the child's time, that 
 it now monopolizes the child's educational capacity 
 without having done anything to give it the class of in- 
 formation it formerly acquired elsewhere. The school 
 has never taught anything but numbers and letters ; now 
 that it monopolizes the child, its one-sidedness is a 
 serious defect. Reforms happily are fast being intro- 
 duced. 
 
 I do not wish to underestimate the great value of the 
 thought, investigation, and experience of others. We 
 stand upon the shoulders (as a wise man has said) 
 of those who have gone before us. We thus have a 
 broader view, and the smallest of us can see and under- 
 stands things not appreciated by the giant intellects of the 
 
6 TASKS BY TWILIGHT. 
 
 past. To derive the greatest advantage from the past 
 work of mankind, it is essential to understand the qualities 
 with which nature has endowed us, and the limitations to 
 which we are subject. Parole or book learning is merely 
 the tool which enables us to acquire, with greater facility 
 and rapidity, the knowledge of which we are in search. 
 But it must be clearly understood that it is not the 
 knowledge itself. A man may be a good physician, as 
 far as books are concerned, but until he has worked out 
 and demonstrated the science for himself, until he has 
 had practice and experience, he is not in the true sense 
 a physician. And it is so in everything else. A man may 
 read and be told how to drive a horse, but he is not a 
 horseman until he has worked out the management of 
 the animal by his own experience. The results of the 
 work of others will aid him, and aid him more if he 
 understands that it is not the knowledge itself, but only a 
 tool for the more rapid and facile acquirements of true 
 knowledge. 
 
 Books are the guideposts showing the short cuts to 
 knowledge. 
 
 The development of individual qualities, individual 
 capacities, and individual character, should always be one 
 of the main aims in education. 
 
 Success in life must always depend upon the individual. 
 Self-reliance and the qualities leading to it should be 
 developed. The school, college, and university systems 
 now prevailing among us have no direct influence 
 favoring the real essentials of life, but, as has been 
 
EDUCATION. 7 
 
 pointed out, tend rather to weaken and destroy these 
 qualities. 
 
 It is for these reasons, doubtless, that the great 
 men of the Past as well as of the Present have been 
 generally what are called self-made men. It is exceed- 
 ingly rare that we find any one who has taken the first 
 honors in our schools taking the first place in the contest 
 of life. If this system of schooling were correct, if it 
 really led to a successful life, it must be evident that the 
 greatest success in the school would be followed by the 
 greatest success in life. This is so notoriously not the 
 case that an error must be suspected in our educational 
 system. 
 
 Those who graduate from colleges are, for the most 
 part, members of successful and prominent families. 
 They therefore inherit superior qualities and possess 
 superior influence, which with a proper education should 
 push them certainly to the front. 
 
 This point indicates their value, it giving to the young 
 the best class of associates. From our associates we 
 derive prejudices and opinions, manners and methods, 
 all of great importance in our life fight. 
 
 A system must be judged by its results, and it is gen- 
 erally known that the first-honor men of our colleges are, 
 for the most part, relegated to obscurity on their entry 
 into real life ; thus showing conclusively that success 
 in the school is no passport to success in life. 
 
 While our educational system is managed as it is, 
 it would not be well to devote to it the energy or time 
 
8 TASKS BY TWILIGHT. 
 
 of the child necessary for graduation with highest honors, 
 because this energy and time can be better used in other 
 directions. But the course now marked out in our 
 schools should not be entirely neglected ; first, because 
 the information there given of the progress of humanity 
 up to our own day is of great importance and advantage, 
 and, second, because it is always well to live under- 
 standing one's surroundings and in harmony with them. 
 
 Our social system now being so intimately connected 
 with the school, and its standard of what an educated 
 man should be being almost universally received, it 
 would militate against the social standing and happiness 
 of any one not passably familiar with its course. 
 
 Another point to consider is the time given to this so- 
 called education or preparation for life. We have now 
 kindergartens, schools, high schools, preparatory schools, 
 colleges, universities, and post-graduate courses. In 
 special avocations, such as law and medicine, it is con- 
 sidered best to pass through all these except the post- 
 graduate course before taking up the specialty. This 
 requires a great deal of time, often too much time. We 
 certainly ought to consider the length of human life in 
 connection with the length of our theoretical preparation 
 for it. To take all of life for this purpose would be mani- 
 festly absurd ; so, also, it would be unwise to take no 
 time for it. The balance to be struck is by that prepara- 
 tion which will enable us to achieve the greatest results. 
 
 Correct preparation for life, or, as we say, education, 
 should be a review of the experience of man in his recent 
 
EDUCATION. 9 
 
 evolution, just as the life of the individual from the egg 
 is a review of the evolutionary history of all life. 
 
 In this last case we pass through in a few years, days, 
 or hours, what it must have taken our evolutionary pro- 
 genitors ages to progress beyond. So it must be in educa- 
 tion, a general review for all, a special review for the 
 special, and a recognition of the fact that time is of the 
 essence of the contract. 
 
 That too much time is often given up to prepara- 
 tion cannot be doubted. Probably a man should com- 
 mence his life-work between twenty-one and twenty-five, 
 leaning more to the earlier period than to the later. His 
 study may continue till death, but his mere preparation 
 should not longer monopolize his time and activities. 
 
 It should be distinctly understood that there is no 
 correct information given in our schools not exceedingly 
 useful and valuable to you, my children. 
 
 The point that parents and young persons should con- 
 sider is that the time of giving this information and the 
 method of giving it, the undue importance given to some 
 lines and the neglect of others, should be avoided and 
 counteracted by you. 
 
 In relation to the time of giving information, our 
 schools are much in error. It is the custom now to take 
 very young children, absorbing most of their time and 
 energy upon a great variety of studies, most of which either 
 have no immediate connection with their surroundings, 
 lives, or future, or no such connection pointed out. The 
 information given is acquired parrot-like that is to say, 
 
10 TASKS BY TWILIGHT. 
 
 it is recited correctly as given in the books, but neither 
 understood in itself nor in its application. A very con- 
 siderable examination of children, by myself, enables 
 me to say that this statement, while not always, is 
 substantially correct. Reading and study require diges- 
 tion and assimilation, to be a good food for the mind. 
 Food for the body requires digestion and assimilation, 
 and it may not be considered as stretching matters too 
 far to draw some conclusions from the analogy. 
 
 Food is necessary for bodily life and activity. Noth- 
 ing can be more clear than that the quantity and quality 
 of food that will be useful to us has its characteristics 
 and usefulness qualified and limited by the time and 
 place, and by the activities of our lives. 
 
 Climates and occupations govern the quantity and 
 quality of the food that should be taken. Every ounce 
 of food used that is not required is a clog, and besides, 
 necessitates the subtraction of a certain amount of 
 energy from other things to get rid of it. 
 
 So, also, the time of life governs the quality and quan- 
 tity of food that should be eaten. For the infant an 
 exclusive diet of milk is the only appropriate food, for 
 in the infant many of the vital organs are rudimentary. 
 For the grown man stronger and more concentrated foods 
 are requisite. The strong food of the man would kill 
 the baby, the exclusive milk diet of the baby would 
 incapacitate the man. A hungry man requiring food, it 
 is certain, should take only what he needs ; if he were 
 placed in a coop and stuffed like the goose of Strasburg, 
 
EDUCATION. II 
 
 disease would inevitably ensue. As the liver of the goose 
 becomes by such treatment diseased, so would the liver, 
 and, secondarily, the other organs of the man. Let us 
 now draw the analogy. By the school system of educa- 
 tion now prevalent, very young children are cooped up, 
 and, to a great extent, deprived of the natural exercise 
 and experience necessary for the proper development of 
 their qualities of observation and of their physique. 
 
 On the other hand, the mental food which all children 
 require, is, in almost all cases, given them in improper 
 quantity and quality. They are literally stuffed like the 
 goose of Strasburg with mental food, not only excessive 
 in quantity, but of that strong and concentrated kind 
 only suited to a mature mind. 
 
 As the milk is suited to the baby and the concentrated 
 food to the man, so the simple forms of thought suited 
 to the development of the infant mind should be given 
 the child, and the concentrated form suitable to the man 
 should be given the adult. 
 
 The education given our children to-day is as condu- 
 cive to a mental indigestion as improper food, or exces- 
 sive quantities of good food, would be to the alimentary 
 digestion. 
 
 The same analogy would hold good in other things, as 
 locomotion. The child, first incapable of any locomo- 
 tion, learns to creep and then to walk. If you undertake 
 to make a baby walk before the natural period has come 
 for this progress, you will, in all likelihood, not only fail, 
 but spoil the youngster's legs into the bargain. So also 
 
12 TASKS BY TWILIGHT. 
 
 in sight and touch, the baby sees without seeing, and 
 touches without comprehension. An attempt to drive 
 nature in any of these matters is always dangerous, and 
 generally of doubtful result. 
 
 A large amount of the information given at our schools 
 is not understood by the children, and is therefore 
 impossible of application, and is consequently, for the 
 most part, entirely forgotten when they go out into life. 
 
 An excessive amount of the child's time is undoubtedly 
 now taken up by our schools. 
 
 In England, and especially in Manchester, it has been 
 found that the half-time scholars, who had also to work 
 for their living, surpassed in school attainments those 
 children whose entire time was devoted to study. 
 
 This is a clear illustration of the fault. No child 
 should go to school before the age of nine. Four hours 
 is the limit to set for the hours of book study before 
 twelve. No night study should be permitted until after 
 fifteen. 
 
 The infant mind before nine, it is true, is capable of 
 a wonderful amount of literary memorizing power, but 
 this apparent knowledge is largely of the same kind as 
 seen in the trick dog, talking parrot, trained horse, etc. 
 The mental powers of the reasoning man are not in the 
 child, consequently no true cultivation of them before 
 they exist is possible. 
 
 Children who commence their schooling late, within 
 certain reasonable limits, as a rule, rapidly pass children 
 that have been through previous premature training. It 
 
EDUCATION. 13 
 
 is then apparent that too early schooling not only does 
 no good, but is a positive disadvantage. 
 
 If the position of the evolutionist be true, that the 
 young of all animals originate from the egg and pass 
 through previous conditions of life, from the most primi- 
 tive forms to their present state of development, we can 
 easily perceive the uselessness and impolicy of teaching 
 letters to a suckling baby in a purely animal condition, or 
 philosophy to a child passing through the undeveloped 
 mental condition of the savage. 
 
 To the babe, eating, drinking, digestion, and sleep are 
 the lines of usefulness and success ; to the savage 
 largely and to the child entirely, physical develop- 
 ment and the observation of nature comprise these 
 conditions. It is only as the human being of the 
 higher development passes out of these steps in a past 
 life, that the supreme attainments of humanity can be 
 understood. 
 
 To undertake the teaching of things beyond the 
 stage of development in which the human being affected 
 is at the time is useless in itself, and abstracts force 
 from the evolution of that stage absolutely necessary to 
 be gone through with. 
 
 The methods of schooling have improved very greatly, 
 but they have not improved with the same rapidity that 
 the schools have absorbed the time and energy of the 
 children, and have taken these essential elements so that 
 the child's opportunity to obtain the information all 
 anirnals require by experience is taken away. 
 
14 TASKS BY TWILIGHT. 
 
 The greatest caution that a parent or guardian can 
 exercise, in giving a child an even and well-balanced de- 
 velopment, can never be excessive. Not that a parent 
 should take the position of interfering every instant with 
 the child's natural, mental, and physical development, 
 but, on the contrary, these should be given the widest 
 liberty. 
 
 What parents should be cautioned against is the un- 
 due interference with these natural processes, for the 
 sake of the acquirement of knowledge by the artificial 
 means which are a part of our present system. It must 
 not be overlooked that these artificial processes are of 
 great benefit and aid to the child ; but they should be 
 so carefully guarded as to secure the child against 
 injury of its physique, a thing not very difficult to watch 
 and guard if its importance be appreciated, but also 
 what is far more difficult to recognize, the healthy de- 
 velopment of the essential mental qualities of observa- 
 tion, self-reliance, and those other qualities which, taken 
 together, form the individuality and the character of a 
 human being essential to a useful existence. 
 
 The kindergarten system has had a great popularity 
 in recent years. Its advantages are great when properly 
 employed, its principles good, and its drawbacks con- 
 siderable. This is, indeed, an unsatisfactory ending for 
 a system that has been received with so much hope by 
 the lovers of mankind. It is now pretty clear that the 
 kindergarten is but a poor substitute for the home 
 nursery, and is most useful to the children of the poor, 
 
EDUCATION. 15 
 
 whose mothers work out or are dead, or otherwise in- 
 capable of caring for them. 
 
 The very young child is better and stronger, mentally 
 as well as physically, in the country, roaming and play- 
 ing wild and unkempt, than in the best kindergarten 
 ever established ; but older ones may be much benefited 
 by it. 
 
 It is probable that no school system can ever take the 
 .place of nature as a teacher. In the early years of life 
 little book information that is ever used is obtained. 
 Compared to the time devoted by children to schooling, 
 the information assimilated is almost nothing. The 
 healthy child, mentally and physically well balanced, 
 will learn more in one year at the age of fifteen of the 
 common-school education, and understand its applica- 
 tions better, than in the ten years before this time. While 
 this is generally known to be true of most children, the 
 question arises as to how much a previous course of 
 training may assist the acquisition of knowledge at the 
 really receptive period of the child for book information. 
 
 The close confinement of the school-room, the seden- 
 tary life, and the absorption of the energies from other 
 lines of development must be injurious. Children vary 
 greatly in the times and quality of their development, 
 and it is for the parent to watch this in each child care- 
 fully, and suit the class of information given to the un- 
 folding powers. Taking everything into consideration, 
 it would seem wiser to err on the side of sending the 
 child to school too late rather than too early. 
 
1 6 TASKS BY TWILIGHT. 
 
 The early and continuous school attendance of 
 children undermines and weakens the home influence 
 and the family tie. The parents rely more and more on 
 the school for complete instruction and education, and 
 more and more neglect home and family influence. The 
 schools are without religion, and there seems no way to 
 introduce it in any form. The absorption by them of 
 time and energy, and the reverence in which the system 
 is largely held, as a matter of fact exclude any living 
 religious force from the lives of the great majority of 
 school children. As a consequence we are drifting faster 
 than we know into a nation without a religion. 
 
 Habits of application and industry should by all 
 means be imparted to a child. The natural curiosity 
 and desire for knowledge is great in every child. Let 
 these qualities be improved and rewarded. 
 
 Nothing is perhaps so generally overlooked as the fact 
 that a child appreciates reward in return for its labor 
 as much as, if not more than, a grown person. Their 
 sense of injustice is keen, their appreciation of the 
 family relation and the labor of the parent to give them 
 a living, imperfect ; that is, they take for granted the 
 living that the parent gives them, and seldom feel per- 
 fectly satisfied in performing labor, whether mental or 
 physical, not directly rewarded in them as it is in others. 
 
 Parents who desire to see their children industrious, 
 mentally or physically, should not disguise from them- 
 selves this fact. A motive for work and labor should 
 always be given. 
 
EDUCATION. I/ 
 
 Habits of industry can almost always be imparted to 
 children if they receive a compensation which they can 
 understand. In imparting mental information, a clear 
 and proximate reason for its acquisition should be given, 
 utilizing as far as practicable the natural curiosity of the 
 child. Build from one thing to another, show relation- 
 ships and connections, bearing ever in mind the condition 
 and limitations of the child's brain. 
 
 Education in the broadest view commences at birth 
 and only ends with death. Consciously or uncon- 
 sciously we are always receiving impressions which are 
 information ; these may be applied or unapplied, they 
 may be used for good or for evil. The schooling or the 
 ordinary processes to which the word education is com- 
 monly applied is, as has been said, merely the tool for a 
 more facile appreciation of facts and their proper 
 application, as these come to us through our experience. 
 The truth must never be lost sight of that the only real 
 knowledge is obtained by experience the only applica- 
 tion of knowledge comes through practice. 
 
 Work and labor is the price we must pay for every- 
 thing we do well. Mere parrot-like repetition of the 
 experience of others is not knowledge. The school-boy 
 acquires proficiency in his games only by attention, 
 application, and labor. 
 
 A successful player of games is devoting as much time 
 and energy to the game in which he succeeds, as the 
 mechanic or book student to his line of work. Only by 
 thought and effort can success be accomplished. 
 
1 8 TASKS BY TWILIGHT. 
 
 Life is labor. From the gambler at his cards and the 
 young man at his tennis, to the successful farmer, mer- 
 chant, or statesman, all derive what proficiency they may 
 have by experience, attention, and hard work. 
 
 The thing to do with a young person is to direct the 
 energies into those channels which will produce good 
 and useful results, and to teach them that the hardest 
 work, and the most unremunerative devotion of energy, 
 is always given to a dissolute life and occupation inimi- 
 cal to the interests of themselves and of society, 
 inimical to their own interests because such occupa- 
 tions are invariably wearing upon the constitution and 
 vitality, dwarfing to the better qualities of the mind, 
 destructive to the physique, and condemned by one's 
 fellow-men. 
 
 A proper understanding by a young person of the true 
 object of life, of the reasonableness of the general rules 
 of society, the foundation of its prejudices in the accu- 
 mulated experiences of mankind, and the relation of 
 effort to result, ought, if properly inculcated, to prevent 
 any normally constituted child from devoting its energies 
 to useless or injurious effort. 
 
 Some of the points elucidating this position will be 
 presented in other chapters. In this will be given only 
 an outline of what seems to be the proper course to 
 pursue as to the three great essentials already named, 
 and to the book-learning beneficial as an aid in acquiring 
 them, and in giving the agreeable polish and finish to 
 the life of a thorough-bred. 
 
EDUCATION. IQ 
 
 PHYSIQUE. 
 
 A sound body gives a sound mind. The physique is 
 the first thing to be considered in a child after it is born, 
 and it is a thing absolutely necessary to maintain in a 
 good condition throughout life. 
 
 Irritable tempers, visionary ideas, immoral thoughts 
 and acts are largely the result of diseased or of imper- 
 fectly developed bodies. Those whose physical health 
 is sound are usually sound in their minds and morals. 
 
 A person to be healthy must have a well-developed 
 physique, each organ performing its proper function. 
 
 To secure this result the muscles must be exercised. 
 Without physical exercise, which is labor, the vital 
 organs will not properly perform their duties. Exercise 
 may be of two kinds. One is that which is devoted to 
 recreation, as in games, hunting, or athletic sports, etc. ; 
 the other, that which is devoted to directly remunerative 
 employments, such as agricultural work, or that in any 
 of the mechanical or useful occupations. Both of these 
 are beneficial as well to the body as to the mind. Those 
 who do not have sufficient bodily exercise in one of 
 these two ways, lose in the tone and quality not only of 
 their bodies but of their minds also. 
 
 Indigestion, the most prompt and easily recognized 
 result of lack of physical exercise, is always accompanied 
 by a greater or less degree of discomfort and unhappiness, 
 and acts unfavorably, as well on those who are its victims, 
 as upon those who come in contact with them. 
 
20 TASKS BY TWILIGHT. 
 
 Thus the great happiness naturally the outcome of 
 family life is diminished, and sometimes altogether un- 
 done. Good digestion, good health these are essentials 
 in happiness. 
 
 Look through your acquaintances and remark how 
 often the starting-point of quarrels, misunderstandings, 
 nagging, irritation, and unkind feelings arises from imper- 
 fect digestion, imperfect bodily development, or a bodily 
 disease coming from a lack of the proper use of the 
 physical powers. 
 
 The physique is the first thing to be considered. It is 
 the first thing that we can consider in the child when 
 born. When properly developed, it leads to a healthy 
 mental and moral condition, and enables its happy pos- 
 sessor to use with the greatest benefit any mental 
 acquirements. 
 
 Before the age of sixteen, at least one-half of the day 
 should be devoted to out-door exercises. The treatment 
 of boys and girls in regard to physical development must, 
 from the limitations placed by nature on the female sex, 
 be entirely different. 
 
 BOYS. 
 
 The exercise given by games is a thing boys should 
 never be deprived of. The amusement, interest, and 
 emulation produced by games lead to voluntary use of 
 the muscles. Games where only one or two are engaged 
 upon a side, or in which no combination is required, 
 
EDUCATION. 21 
 
 such as bowling, tennis, fencing, boxing, etc., are very 
 good. Tennis is perhaps of all games the one which 
 gives the most complete exercise to all the muscles, with 
 the least strain, of any that we have. But one of its 
 great advantages, that is, that it requires only two to play 
 the game, is also a great drawback to it as an educator. 
 Games requiring combination, discipline, and unity of 
 action demonstrate in a reasonable way to a child the 
 great value of these in life. 
 
 The discipline that is so often only produced in the 
 schoolroom, and, unfortunately, only too often in the 
 family by the fiat of the master or the parent, is secured 
 in such games as base-ball, foot-ball, cricket, etc., by its 
 evident utility for a successful issue. Thus, we often 
 see the boy who in the school-room is a revolutionist or 
 a rebel, the most prompt in obeying the orders of his 
 captain in a game, in carrying out his own duties in that 
 game, and maintaining discipline amongst the others 
 engaged in it. 
 
 It must be evident that the frequent difficulty school- 
 masters find in maintaining the discipline in their school- 
 rooms, as compared with the facility with which the 
 game captains maintain the discipline of their games, 
 with the same boys, is worthy of attention. 
 
 The discipline of a game offers a lesson most valuable 
 for the boy to learn. It requires him to develop his indi- 
 viduality in harmony with his surroundings, to govern 
 his temper, and to specialize his energies in common 
 with those of others to achieve a well-defined end. These 
 
22 TASK'S BY TWILIGHT. 
 
 qualities are exceedingly valuable in after life, far more 
 so than we commonly realize. 
 
 The development of character, of self-discipline, and 
 of organization given by well-ordered games, together with 
 the physical development, the health and the constitu- 
 tion, which they give or maintain, is more valuable than 
 all the other results produced in the school put together. 
 
 The playground is now one of the first things sacri- 
 ficed in our ever-increasing population and the con- 
 sequent increased value of land. There are probably 
 not a dozen schools of the thousands situated in our 
 cities and towns that have an adequate playground. The 
 denser the population and the less outside opportunity 
 for play and its organization, discipline, and exercise, 
 the more certain are we to find the playground too small 
 or absent. 
 
 Parents should give more than usual attention to se- 
 cure to their boys the benefits of these games, and thus 
 counteract the tendencies of the times. By all means 
 have your boys play games. I have observed in the 
 French schools, where games requiring combination are 
 seldom played, a distinct physical and moral deteriora- 
 tion in the boys. 
 
 The energy of the boy, which under the Anglo-Saxon 
 system of having these games goes so largely to promote 
 his physical welfare and to promote those other useful 
 qualities spoken of, goes in the French boy to an ab- 
 normal and precocious development of the sexual instinct. 
 
 These instincts, so grand, so magnificent, and so God- 
 
EDUCATION. 23 
 
 like in their proper use, making of us creators, giving 
 sound health and giving a happiness which can be in no 
 other way attained, in their abuse destroy the physique, 
 weaken the mind, undermine morality, and promote that 
 greatest curse that can befall a family sterility and 
 extinction. 
 
 Of the exercises requiring no combination of persons, 
 boxing is perhaps one of the best. In this the physi 
 powers are generally used, and in young persons with 
 small danger of strain, while at the same time the temper 
 is well disciplined (for in boxing a display of temper is a 
 weakness) and the animal courage must be developed. 
 One of its disadvantages is that its ethics demand that 
 only one kind of blows should be struck, whereas in 
 real physical contests, such as might occur in being at- 
 tacked by a footpad, all blows leading to conquest should 
 be used without any reference to whether they are fair 
 or foul. 
 
 With the trained boxer, boxing ethics will be an instinct 
 and he will be unable to strike any but the regulation 
 blows. 
 
 Many persons think boxing brutal ; in practice, how- 
 ever, it has proved a safe outlet for the passions and 
 rivalries common with all healthy boys. For the human 
 being, it must be remembered, commences in the infant 
 with the purely animal instincts of eating, digestion, and 
 sleep, and goes on from the purely animal through the 
 lower stages of human society as shown in the savage 
 and barbarian up to the fully developed civilized man. 
 
24 TASKS BY TWILIGHT. 
 
 The egg from which all life comes is the commence- 
 ment of the human being. All life commencing with this 
 goes through the stages of previous development. Many 
 of these stages in the human being are gone through in 
 the foetus : such as the rudimentary gills which the foetus 
 at one time has, then a condition similar to the lower 
 mammalia, then a hairy one similar to the monkey, and 
 so on to birth, and afterward till the age of 25 or 30, when 
 the highest qualities of civilized man are or ought to be 
 perfected. The savage stage is a clearly denned one in 
 every boy's life and should be recognized and provided for. 
 
 Boxing gives a safe outlet which, amongst the Latin 
 races and other peoples not having it or a safe substitute, 
 is taken by the knife, the pistol, or other deadly weapons. 
 The effects of the use of the hands instead of the use of 
 deadly weapons for satisfying the personal contests that 
 occur universally amongst boys, are shown in the after 
 history of these as men. 
 
 Boys and formed communities brought up in the 
 Anglo-Saxon method are seldom found carrying deadly 
 weapons, and still more seldom found using them ; where- 
 as amongst the Latin races, which have no such system, 
 the knife is commonly carried and very frequently used. 
 And besides, the practice of openly facing an enemy not 
 haying been inculcated, these people with no natural de- 
 fects of courage generally use their deadly weapons from 
 an ambush and stab in the back. Thus courage is culti- 
 vated in the Anglo-Saxon and dwarfed in the Latin race ; 
 the result being that, man for man, in all the numerous 
 
EDUCATION. 25 
 
 contests these races have had either between each other 
 or with nature, the Anglo-Saxon has proved the best 
 fighter and the best pioneer. It is a pity that our Ameri- 
 can boys in cities are so often brought up in the Latin 
 system. 
 
 Scarcely too much can be said to inculcate the value of 
 games, not alone from a physical point of view but espe- 
 cially as tending to the strengthening of the morals. No 
 games or physical exercises can be well carried on by 
 those who are the victims of vice. Over-eating, improper 
 diet, indulgence in narcotics or stimulants, abuse of the 
 reproductive organs, any and all, immediately show them- 
 selves in reduced physical capacity. The successful 
 athlete must be a virtuous man and lead a well-ordered 
 life. Thus the need of morality is seen as a means of 
 success. 
 
 The system of recording athletic performances, of 
 timing one's self in races, in measuring jumps, the put- 
 ting of the shot, the number of times the bull's-eye is hit 
 by rifle shooters, etc., all force upon the attention of the 
 practising contestant the injurious result of any excess, 
 of any abuse of the body, or of any mistake in living. 
 
 The prize-fighter who uses alcohol must, when he is 
 about to undertake a contest, reform and eschew it alto- 
 gether for a considerable time and go into what is called 
 training. The hours of sleep are plentiful, the exercise 
 continuous, the diet plain and easily assimilated. The 
 body is cared for, the nerves are cared for, and so is 
 morality cared for in more ways than one. 
 
26 TASA'S BY TWILIGHT. 
 
 It is very important to show children the value of 
 training in their sports. By training is meant practice, 
 hard work, and attention to all things that affect the 
 body, such as diet, sleep, cleanliness, health, and a virtu- 
 ous life. 
 
 When the boy sees the beneficial effect of these, in 
 beating his competitors in the sports in which he may be 
 interested, it will be well to point out with forcibleness 
 that the same attention to these matters, directed to his 
 pursuits in later life, will prove alike successful and 
 enable him to triumph over those naturally his superiors. 
 
 Galton, one of the best English investigators and 
 philosophers of our time, says that the population of the 
 Greek cities during their palmy days had a much higher 
 intellectual average than that of any civilized people now. 
 
 The artistic, architectural, and intellectual works that 
 this comparatively small population left show that they 
 must have had indeed a very high development. 
 
 When we examine their institutions, we find that their 
 education was all done out-of-doors. 
 
 The word academy, which we have taken from the 
 Greek to mean an educational institution, signifies a 
 grove, and has come to have its other meaning, because 
 the Greek philosophers taught in groves. Their educa- 
 tion, too, was little, if at all, in the line of parrot-like 
 memorizing ; for the old philosophers acted more as 
 guides in developing the intellects and reasoning powers 
 of their disciples. 
 
 We find, also, that the athletic sports had an immense 
 
EDUCATION. 27 
 
 development in Greece. The names of many of the 
 champions of the Olympian games are familiar to us to 
 this day. The importance attached to physical exercise 
 was great in Greece, and the young men exercised more 
 or less in the national games. Hand and hand with the 
 physical development went the intellectual. The Greek 
 statues that we have show the physical perfection to 
 which that race must have arrived when these were made. 
 
 The works of Homer, Plato, Socrates, Euclid, Aris- 
 totle, and many others indicate their intellectual develop- 
 ment. The history of the Greek people shows beyond 
 any controversy that physical development is no bar to 
 that of intellect. On the contrary, there is every reason 
 to think that the physical and vital power of the race, 
 created by athletic sports, was a prominent cause of its 
 intellectual achievements. The rock on which the Greek 
 people split was doubtless the weakening of the family tie 
 and the non-reproduction of the superior class, owing to 
 the accumulated wealth and the lack of impressing the 
 importance of reproduction on the young people. 
 
 It takes a very short time for a family or a race to 
 disappear from the world, when they do not reproduce 
 themselves. The Roman Conquest accentuated these 
 causes, and the old Greek intellectual race has disap- 
 peared from the face of the earth, and left no trace in a 
 living people behind it. 
 
 But this should not prevent us from taking advantage 
 of what was good in their civilization, while avoiding that 
 which was bad. The Greek civilization teaches us the 
 
28 TASKS BY TWILIGHT. 
 
 great benefit of bodily exercise in perfecting physical 
 and intellectual beauty. 
 
 Have your boys play games and take an interest in all 
 athletic sports. Another advantage which can be taught 
 them by this means is that of devoting their energies and 
 attention to one particular game or exercise. 
 
 The value of concentration is as great in these physi- 
 cal exercises as it is in anything in after life, and this 
 fact should be taught. No exercise should be encour- 
 aged, however, which does not develop the body evenly. 
 Such exercises therefore as bowling, bicycling, etc., 
 which develop only portions of the body, often at the 
 expense of others, are inferior. 
 
 The individual taste of a boy should, with these excep- 
 tions, be given full play. There is one exercise, however, 
 that all boys should be taught, and that is swimming. 
 There are so many occasions when a boy's life may be 
 saved by this art, that it should by no means be neglected. 
 
 Horseback exercise should also be taught whenever 
 the parents' means permit. For this exercise develops 
 courage, the faculties of command, and the necessity of 
 a good condition of the animal used. To develop this 
 latter point, the boy should take care of his own horse, 
 for at least a certain time, until he is thoroughly familiar 
 with what ought to be done to keep it in good condition. 
 
 MANUAL LABOR. 
 
 While games and athletic sports should never be 
 neglected and should even be encouraged into mature 
 
EDUCATION. 29 
 
 life, physical labor of a different kind is equally im- 
 portant. 
 
 At a very early age children should be given an oppor- 
 tunity of earning money by the labor of their hands. 
 Work about the garden, in the orchard, or on the farm, or 
 in any out-door pursuit that may be convenient, will prove 
 of the greatest advantage. 
 
 Without the reward it will be seldom found that a 
 young person will take much interest in manual labor. 
 On the contrary, some little remuneration will lead them 
 to acquire the useful habit of bending their efforts to 
 result. One of the best means of doing this is to set 
 aside for them a little garden patch and pay them for the 
 products ; or a few chickens, paying for the eggs or 
 poultry ; a pig or two, or, if there be sufficient cattle on the 
 farm, give them a cow or two and allow them to manage 
 the breeding as well as the general care of the animals. 
 
 For the girls, poultry, pigeons, or a plot of roses and 
 flowers, paying for the eggs, the roses, or flowers, is a 
 good method. 
 
 In some such way as this, the child will cultivate habits 
 of industry, thought, self-reliance, and independence, 
 and these should be handed down from father to son 
 and from generation to generation. 
 
 Recompense your children for their labor, as far as is 
 possible ; for the work they do and the result they achieve. 
 If you pay a boy by the day for killing rats or gophers, 
 for gardening, or for attention to the farm, or pay him for 
 the number of rats or gophers he kills, the milk he gets 
 
30 TASKS BY TWILIGHT. 
 
 from his cows, the eggs from his chickens, the fruit from 
 his orchard, or the vegetables from his garden, the differ- 
 ence in result will be great and astonishing. The differ- 
 ence in the material results achieved is but a faint 
 indication of the difference of results upon the character 
 of your child. Habits of industry and the practical 
 business view of life-effort which he acquires is incalcu- 
 lably greater than by any mere machine or routine 
 drudgery. 
 
 What is drudgery in one case is an occupation nay, 
 a pastime in the other. With all of this the out-door 
 work maintains and develops the physique, the vitality, 
 and the morality of the child. 
 
 Boys should be given at first, as far as possible, famili- 
 arity with an out-door occupation. The circumstances 
 and location of the family and the natural bent of the 
 child should be given due consideration in selecting the 
 occupation to be taught. 
 
 The child should in every case commence at the 
 bottom or alphabet of the occupation, with the distinct 
 object ever held in view of obtaining a scientific and 
 skilful grasp of the whole, and of attaining by capacity 
 and work its highest rewards. 
 
 There is no labor or effort in the world but what will 
 make a man reputed and even great when thoroughly, 
 skilfully, and well done. Even the slightest, most 
 menial, or most primitive work attached to any occupa- 
 tion may be so well done as to give honor both to the 
 work itself and to the worker. 
 
EDUCATION. 31 
 
 The occupation which more than any other seems to 
 have resulted in developing the individuality and great- 
 ness of a country is agriculture. The ultimate and con- 
 tinual contact with the grandest operations of nature, 
 given by agriculture, may be well understood as having 
 produced this result. 
 
 The agriculturist is a continual witness of the evolu- 
 tion of nature. He sees the most brilliant flowers 
 blossom from the fetid manure. From death springs 
 life. The great processes of germination, of birth of 
 plants and animals, are continually before him. The 
 value of proper seeds and proper breeds is continually a 
 guide to the proper employment of his own reproductive 
 powers. The laws of nature directly correct his errors 
 of judgment or practice. Ever with nature, he is ever 
 with truth, and from truth comes greatness. It is prob- 
 ably from these causes that not only the ranks of the 
 great but the whole population of the world are ever 
 recruited from the agricultural classes. 
 
 If the beauty and wonders of natural processes be 
 pointed out, as occurring on the farm, to the boy, and his 
 labor be fairly remunerated, and the work called for be 
 not excessive, there is no occupation, in my opinion, at 
 once so attractive and instructive, so beneficial alike to 
 the physique, the mind, and character, as that of agri- 
 culture. 
 
 It is essential that a child should not be allowed to 
 work excessive hours, much less forced to do so. An 
 excess of drudgery is injurious to both body and mind, 
 
32 TASKS BY TWILIGHT. 
 
 and kills originality. A due balance in this regard should 
 be carefully struck, and it should be remembered in 
 doing this that children's capacities and endurance vary 
 as much as their faces. 
 
 After farming, carpentering is perhaps the best occupa- 
 tion to teach. The uses of a carpenter's work are mani- 
 fold. It is a trade which can be taught or practised 
 almost anywhere. It is an occupation full of variety, full 
 of development, and therefore full of interest. A vast 
 amount of carpenter work can be done alone. Thus 
 originality and self-reliance are developed. The trade 
 also calls for combination in many of its lines of activity, 
 which gives the idea of the value of organization in effort. 
 
 Labor may be so formal and perfunctory as to counter 
 progress. Labor drudged off into a mechanical routine 
 tends to assimilate the faculties used to instinct. The 
 worker under such circumstances goes on not only with- 
 out thought or improvement, but may actually degenerate. 
 Thus some kinds of work are only good to understand or 
 to have practice in, but are not good for regular employ- 
 ment. All work full of regular repetition is eventually 
 dwarfing. 
 
 The dignity of labor the fact that human beings can- 
 not be healthy or happy without using their faculties 
 which means work, either unproductive as in games, or 
 productive in the ordinary sense of labor, should be 
 continuously impressed on children from their earliest 
 receptive period. 
 
 To secure an appreciation an.d liking for work, it is 
 
EDUCATION. 33 
 
 absolutely essential to give the person working a fair 
 proportion of the returns of his labor. 
 
 People can be made to work without this, but can 
 never be made to understand the dignity and the neces- 
 sity of labor without it. Health and happiness are inex- 
 tricably interwoven with and have their life in occupation. 
 The development of our physique and of our minds can 
 only come by using them. The non-use of our muscles 
 or our faculties will surely result in diminished power. 
 If a man break his arm, it is placed in a sling till the 
 bone knit again ; meantime the muscles remain unused ; 
 these commence and continue to atrophy and wither and 
 weaken while unused ; if the non-use be kept up too long 
 the original power will never return. It has not been 
 clearly demonstrated that a similar result comes from the 
 non-use of our intellectual qualities, but my own personal 
 experience has proved to me that a similar cause will 
 produce a similar effect as well in the brain as in the 
 body, and I have found in practice that the leaving in 
 idleness of any faculty is at once followed by rust and an 
 incapacity to its former full use. 
 
 PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT. 
 
 This position can be impressed on children by showing 
 them that in their every-day occupations practice leads 
 to the strengthening and better use of their faculties in 
 any given direction, makes the labor even in a game more 
 easy and automatic, and tends to perfection ; while lack 
 of practice and lack of use of the faculties increases the 
 
34 TASKS BY TWILIGHT. 
 
 elements of uncertainty and error, weakens the powers, 
 increases labor, and diminishes results. These matters 
 can be easily taught through the games and occupations 
 
 ^ 
 
 of childhood, and should be repeatealy applied again and 
 again to the independent and self-reliant life to which the 
 child is eventually destined. 
 
 Idleness breeds laziness. While this depletes the body 
 and mind force, it has only a too well recognized ten- 
 dency to cause an abnormal and premature development 
 of the sexual instincts. In those too young to satisfy 
 those grand aspirations legitimately, it is almost certain 
 to produce license, profligacy, crime, and eventually a 
 destruction of the healthy and proper enjoyment and 
 exercise of these grand and necessary functions. Out- 
 door exercise, out-door life, healthy labor, and contact 
 with nature are by all means the best safeguard and correc- 
 tive against this greatest misfortune which can befall an 
 individual, a family, or a race. 
 
 By the proper development of a physique, of habits of 
 industry and of observation, character will come of itself. 
 But it is well for the parent to continually cultivate in a 
 child an appreciation of the grandeur of truth, of which 
 faithfulness, honesty, and the performance of duty are 
 but offshoots. 
 
 Direct punishment of a child is scarcely ever a good 
 thing. But a child to learn must be punished for error. 
 That punishment should be made, as far as possible, to 
 come from themselves. When they hurt themselves by 
 falling, by injudicious acts, or by carelessness, point out 
 
EDUCATION. 35 
 
 to them that their hurt, mental or physical, comes from 
 their own act, comes from violating the inexorable laws 
 of nature. The consequences of such violation will be 
 visited on them more and more as they become older, 
 more independent, and necessarily more reliant on their 
 own efforts. 
 
 If these lessons be not understood or be injudiciously 
 avoided, they will surely come in later life accompanied 
 by more serious injuries than they are when learned 
 young, by bumps, scratches, wounded feelings, etc., for 
 minor offences against the laws of nature. 
 
 The laws of man written in reason or unwritten, and 
 founded in prejudice and instinct, are only good as long 
 as they are in harmony with nature. But all of these 
 should be obeyed and followed, unless, after careful 
 examination, conscientious thought, and study and due 
 deliberation, they are found to be not in harmony with 
 progressive nature. 
 
 It must be remembered that the history of mankind is 
 one of ups and downs, of liberty and restraint, swinging 
 now to one extreme and now to another, but always in 
 the main the efforts of man have been directed con- 
 sciously and more often unconsciously to harmonize his 
 race development with nature. Where he has missed 
 his aim he has erred, and if his regulations depart too far 
 from natural law the result is the destruction of that line 
 of progress, almost always followed by the destruction of 
 that part of the race that originated and practised such 
 error. So have disappeared Tyrians, Egyptians, Car- 
 
36 TASKS BY TWILIGHT. 
 
 thaginians, Greeks, Romans, and innumerable nations 
 and peoples. 
 
 A character founded on untruth or error is of necessity 
 inferior, and would be desired by no one. Therefore, 
 truth alone should be taught. Truth elevates the char- 
 acter. A devotion to it leads to an insight into nature, 
 which is true, and this leads to lasting success and to 
 greatness. Error must fail ; truth must triumph. The 
 result is inevitable ; it is written in the experience of 
 mankind. Men and even generations of men have at 
 times struggled painfully with error, only to fail and 
 disappear in the end. 
 
 Seek out truth, hold fast to it, teach it to your children. 
 Never allow some apparent advantage to tempt you from 
 the path and thus to take the first step in the downward 
 course to destruction. Truth and justice are eternal ; as 
 you wish to be eternal, to see your children and your 
 children's children eternal, be steadfast in truth. 
 
 He who lives by truth must be in the right. In the 
 whole experience of mankind there has never been any 
 other position permanently successful. It must be 
 remembered that temporary or even permanent success 
 for one's self is a comparatively small achievement with- 
 out success for one's children and descendants. Man in 
 himself lives but a span ; he lives but to die. In his 
 children, however, his vital spark, his qualities, his like- 
 ness, his life, go on from generation to generation, and 
 the presumption is reasonable that through a perfected 
 race he will reach eternity. To achieve this grand 
 
EDUCATION. 37 
 
 destiny, he must form his life and progress in harmony 
 with nature's laws. In no way can this be done by false- 
 hood. Truth alone is the guide to eternal life. There 
 is no weapon of offence in life's strength, no armor of 
 defence, that can compare to truth. Comprehend the 
 truth, follow it in all things, and be in the right. 
 
 He so armed and so defended is thrice armed, thrice 
 fortified. 
 
 Police executing the laws of society often take men 
 much their superior physically, to judgment. Sometimes 
 single-handed seize them from a crowd of sympathizers. 
 As laws are true and just, as they harmonize with the 
 verity of nature and the real interests of society, so does 
 this power of police increase. On the other hand, laws 
 departing from right, and to the extent that these so 
 depart from justice, their execution by the police is 
 weakened, and when reduced to physical force alone is 
 paralyzed. 
 
 The consciousness of right gives confidence. It gives 
 a nerve or moral force that enables to a fuller use of 
 physical or mental powers than any sophistry or error 
 can give. 
 
 Error is weakness. Its victim's force is always sapped. 
 Error takes from strength, never gives it. As the saying 
 goes : " Error walks abroad disguised ; were she to appear 
 unmasked, she would be mobbed in the streets." 
 
 Tear down the disguise from yourself and your chil- 
 dren. Temporary advantages, respite from judgment, an 
 immediate money gain, may sometimes appear to be 
 
38 TASKS BY TWILIGHT. 
 
 available through some lie, deception, or travesty of the 
 truth. Such cases are but for the moment. They are 
 gained, if gained at all, at a permanent sacrifice of 
 character, self-respect, and of actual force. 
 
 As self-respect is lost, so is lost the power of com- 
 manding the respect of others. Honesty is undoubtedly 
 the best policy for all life success. It develops and 
 strengthens our best powers. It attracts and maintains 
 the confidence of those around us. 
 
 A lie is hard to kill. It continually comes back to 
 -plague us. Nearly all deception leads to further decep- 
 tion. One lie breeds another. To get out of one 
 awkward situation by falsehood is to create many other 
 situations which in the end demand the truth. A lie 
 means uneasiness, much work, much trouble, and, as a 
 rule, the truth must be brought in to make things go 
 right in the end. Thus the labor and pain of lying are 
 naught. 
 
 The most important reason for avoiding untruth is the 
 inevitable weakening and injury to the character of him 
 who lies. It is not alone the respect and confidence of 
 those around you that is involved, but your own proper 
 respect and confidence in yourself. A liar throws away 
 the keystone of all success self-confidence. 
 
 Be most careful in this. Teach truth. Give your 
 children a devotion to it, a confidence in it, that will 
 never be shaken. For this purpose you will find no 
 school like nature. 
 
 Truth is like the polar star, ever steadfast, ever bright, 
 
EDUCATION. 39 
 
 ever faithful ; hidden sometimes by the gross vapors of 
 the earth, we need but a little patience and our guiding 
 star will again appear. We always know where to look 
 for it. 
 
 A man who is known to always work conscientiously, 
 to be right, whose word is as good as his bond, will, be- 
 yond any peradventure, obtain a hold upon his fellow- 
 men that nothing else will give. Intrigue and trading 
 may temporarily obscure him, as the clouds do the north 
 star ; turmoil and the pettiness of society may draw away 
 the attention of the people from such a man, but when 
 danger comes, when a crisis is at hand, his opponents 
 will disappear like mist before the sun, and his head will 
 rise above his fellows as surely as the sun rises in the 
 morning to dispel the mists of night. 
 
 Whether you be of ordinary or great ability, be hon- 
 est, be true, be in the right, and your achievements will 
 be grander and your fame more permanent than by any 
 shystering, intriguing, or pettiness that was or ever will 
 be invented. 
 
 You cannot be great in anything unless you act in har- 
 mony with its verities. Any departure from truth will 
 weaken your character and diminish your capacity to 
 perceive the truth in your chosen pursuit, and if the de- 
 parture be considerable, you will be damned to be an 
 incompetent trickster. 
 
 The truth has no connection with coarseness or bru- 
 tality. Some individuals, even some nations, confuse the 
 two, and thus lose the taste for truth. In the ordinary 
 
40 TASKS BY TWILIGHT. 
 
 affairs and social intercourse of life, tact and politeness 
 are of very great value. There is always something 
 pleasant to be done at very slight cost. There is always 
 something pleasant to be said that is true. The ameni- 
 ties of life add much to its attractiveness. A person 
 with tact will secure support and arrive at results that 
 one of superior ability without it could not attain. 
 
 Flattery is praise not founded on truth, or commenda- 
 tion not meant, and is a deception intended to obtain 
 results from the vanity of the flattered. It weakens both 
 giver and receiver, and should never be practised. Tact 
 and politeness come from the heart and are the mirror 
 of true sympathy and feeling. 
 
 The forms of politeness, such as good-day, good-night, 
 shaking hands, visiting, and the etiquette of social inter- 
 course, are the results of the experience of mankind as to 
 the best means of expressing kind feeling. Good man- 
 ners indicate the thoroughbred. Good manners are a 
 great aid to success ; they are essential, and should be 
 taught. In teaching them, never cease to impress upon 
 the young person the fact that good manners are founded 
 on good feeling. The hollow forms of etiquette may be 
 gone through with correctly and still leave the recipient 
 ill at ease or unhappy. This is not good manners. On 
 the other hand, one may have a heart full of sympathy 
 and kindness and still be so unable to express it, or so 
 ignorant of what to do or when to do it, that such a one 
 is looked upon as cold or rude. 
 
 Good feeling may exist without good manners. Good 
 
EDUCATION. 41 
 
 manners cannot exist without good feeling. There is in 
 every normal human being a fund of good feeling ; culti- 
 vate this in your children, and teach them what man's 
 experience has found to be the best means of giving it 
 expression and of thus pleasing those around us. In 
 social intercourse the truth is just as essential as it is 
 anywhere else. No little falsehoods should be practised 
 in human intercourse. You should not say you are out 
 when you are in. There are, however, a great many 
 truths that, if uttered, would not conduce to good feel- 
 ing. Silence in such matters should be the rule. Never 
 speak of an unpleasant matter unless you have a clearly 
 thought out object in view. In society speak of pleasant 
 truths ; leave unpleasant ones alone. 
 
 There is one rule in human intercourse which should 
 be impressed on young people from the commence- 
 ment, and that is always to accentuate and bring into 
 prominence things -upon which you and those around 
 you agree, and always keep those things upon which you 
 do not agree out of conversation, and only to be brought 
 to view in some short and extreme moment when action 
 is deciding whether a thing shall be as they wish it or as 
 you wish it. Stick close to your main points, but be 
 liberal in details and non-essentials. 
 
 When you oppose, cultivate silence and action. When 
 you agree, study combination, keep your attention to the 
 main point and object to be secured. Avoid controver- 
 sies on unimportant details, and avoid all controversies, as 
 far as possible, with those who act with you. 
 
42 TASKS BY TWILIGHT. 
 
 Take advantage of opportunities when they come, and 
 make them when they do not. 
 
 Young people will not be able to be perfect in anything 
 at once. Competency in all things comes slowly. The 
 child learns to walk only after effort and repeated failure. 
 Failure at first must be expected and taken for granted. 
 Do not blame a child for what is inevitable. Study con- 
 tinually how to guide them to avoid error. Show them 
 where they have gone wrong and the causes of their 
 failure. Do not even lead a child to think mistake and 
 failure a disgrace. On the contrary, tell them that this 
 is to be expected. Not to succeed eventually is disgrace, 
 but many mistakes are to be expected, nay, in humanity 
 are inevitable on the way. These mistakes which all per- 
 sons do and must make in life are useful as teachers or as 
 so many guideposts on bad roads or no thoroughfares to 
 warn us not to take them again. 
 
 Life has often been compared to a journey. It is a 
 journey through a country sometimes confusing us with 
 a maze of roads, some bad, some good, some going no- 
 where, some going backward, and others in advance, 
 some going round about, some going direct. In other 
 places we have a trackless country into which, if we ven- 
 ture, we must trust entirely to our bearings being correct 
 for a happy exit. 
 
 The foundation principles and great and immutable 
 truths, if understood and followed, will not perhaps pre- 
 vent all deviations from the most direct path to perma- 
 nent success and to immortality, but they will, beyond 
 
EDUCATION. 43 
 
 peradventure, prevent serious and fatal departures from 
 that path, and will furnish a sure guide to a speedy return 
 to it when we do miss our way. 
 
 Individuals and races have, when successful, followed 
 the direct road. Thus far in life no nation has gone 
 ahead of the world and remained ahead. History is a 
 chronicle of the rapid rise and rapid decay of peoples. 
 The reason of their advance was that they were right, 
 that they were on the true, direct road. The reason of 
 their decay has been that they left the true road, did 
 wrong, and wasted their strength and time in no thor- 
 oughfares. 
 
 
 
 Encourage children to persistence. Teach them to 
 conquer the impediments and overcome the obstacles 
 which do and always will exist in any life effort. Be 
 careful to show children that obstacles exist everywhere 
 and in every line of effort. The art of life is to have the 
 persistence to overcome them, or get around them when 
 they are too large or too difficult. 
 
 Of the two qualities persistence in attack upon ob- 
 stacles, and the strategy to circumvent them persistence 
 is by far the most valuable. Obstacles always appear in 
 every walk of life and in everything we attempt to ac- 
 complish. Things often appear difficult, even impossible 
 of accomplishment, that can be and are achieved by 
 perseverance. 
 
 At the same time, there is such a thing as wasting time 
 and energy on the extremely difficult or impossible. To 
 draw the line between these two must be a matter for the 
 
44 TASKS BY TWILIGHT. 
 
 judgment of the individual. The benefit of the doubt, 
 however, must always be given to perseverance. 
 
 If you can thoroughly impress upon children the idea 
 that they should go into nothing that they do not intend 
 to come out of victorious, that they must expect obstacles 
 and calculate on making mistakes before the great object 
 is achieved, and induce a habit of looking over the ground 
 of any result they wish to attain and taking account of 
 the difficulties that lie in the path of all things, from a 
 childhood game to the most serious work of life, you will 
 have done much to secure their future success. 
 
 It should always be an effort of a parent or a teacher 
 to secure the confidence of the child and to make com- 
 panions of them. The standard set should indeed be a 
 high one, but it is of the greatest importance to realize 
 that the standard can only be achieved through a pro- 
 gressive development ; that neither character nor suc- 
 cess can be picked up ready-made ; that these must be 
 worked out and developed in the individual, and that this 
 result can only come through the lessons given us by over- 
 coming obstacles. Failures and lack of success at first are 
 not a disgrace, but are to be expected and conquered. 
 
 The higher the standard set, the more necessary is it to 
 follow this rule. To set an exceedingly high standard, 
 and then to teach children that every failure in their at- 
 tempt to reach it is a disgrace, must result in discouraging 
 the child and driving it to despair. This point has been 
 somewhat enlarged on in the chapter on the Treatment 
 of the Child. 
 
EDUCATION. 45 
 
 Many life failures are owing entirely to this error. 
 This rule should apply not only to the direct and material 
 interests of life, but also to the moral qualities. We must 
 remember that a child's moral nature is quite as much a 
 matter of growth and development as the physical or 
 mental. The one may be maimed, distorted, weakened, 
 or diseased, as well as the other. 
 
 The body has no monopoly of sickness. The mental 
 health may be undermined as well as the physical. The 
 one depends very largely on the other, but the most dis- 
 astrous sickness is that of the mind. Strengthen the 
 body and you strengthen the mind and moral qualities. 
 Strengthen the mind and the moral qualities and you 
 strengthen the body. 
 
 The aim of the educator should, therefore, be to main- 
 tain a reasonable balance between the three. 
 
 The physical results achievable by the man are 
 impossible to the child ; still, the standard should be 
 that attainable by the man, recognizing, however, 
 that that standard can only be obtained after years of 
 growth and effort. Never call upon the child for the 
 impossible. 
 
 So also in what to many is far less evident, that is that 
 the moral and mental qualities also grow and develop. 
 The standard set should be the highest ; but that stand- 
 ard can never be attained by the child. A human being, 
 while a child, is going through a state of evolution. It is 
 growing and developing in its mental and moral qualities 
 just as much as it is in its physical. 
 
46 TASK'S BY TWILIGHT. 
 
 The teacher should never unduly blame a child for the 
 imperfect acts or thoughts, the evidence of a transition 
 state ; for such a course can only result in the discourage- 
 ment of the child. 
 
 A properly brought up child will feel, if it does not 
 perceive through the reason, that its^imperfect physical or 
 mental traits are a part of its nature. The non-recognition 
 of this fact, and the undue blame or punishment of out- 
 croppings of nature, can never strengthen the child or 
 lead it to cure these defects, but must, on the contrary, 
 produce an opposite result. The greatest departures from 
 true mental balance, as from moral conduct, is by those 
 of diseased bodies or by those living an unnatural life. 
 
 The limited receptive capacity of children for the high- 
 est thoughts and the highest education is a double reason 
 for never sacrificing the physique in the early periods of 
 life, to teach things which are really learned only by rote 
 and not understood. 
 
 Up to and safely beyond the age of puberty, the first 
 thought of the parent and of the educator should be the 
 physique. The best as well as the most impressive and 
 lasting education is that of object teaching and personal 
 experience. This can be and should be mainly taught 
 outdoors. Put the child's hand in that of Nature and the 
 progress made must be true. 
 
 Such a system of education for the mind and faculties, 
 it is almost impossible to conceive of as going on with- 
 out a corresponding education and development of the 
 physique. 
 
EDUCATION. 47 
 
 The difficulty of educating large numbers of children 
 in this way, and the probability, therefore, that such a sys- 
 tem will never be in general use by the community, should 
 not dull the parent's appreciation of its value, but should 
 lead him to redoubled effort to secure to his children the . 
 correct system which there must always be so great a 
 tendency to suppress. 
 
 The objection to such a system is, that it may be so 
 
 . 
 conducted as to neglect the mental training necessary to \x v^ 
 
 concentrate the faculties upon a definite purpose, and to 
 acquire technical information necessary for the highest 
 achievement. 
 
 In the medical schools it is said that those students, 
 who have previously graduated at some university, ac- 
 quire their medical education more easily and stand 
 higher in their classes than those students who have not 
 been university men. Whether the advantage continues 
 in the outside contest, I have not had an opportunity 
 of investigating. 
 
 This fact shows that mental training, as given in the 
 schools, has some advantages. Of course the question at 
 once arises as to the comparative value of the four year 
 university course and four years of medical college study, 
 or the eight years of medical work to the intending phy- 
 sician. It is contended that the liberal education, as it 
 is called, of the university, will help the medical student 
 more than the entire period devoted to medicine. It 
 seems, however, that seven or eight years' medical study 
 and hospital work, with some reasonable devotion to gen- 
 
48 TASKS BY TWILIGHT. 
 
 eral reading, would make a more accomplished physician 
 than four years of university work and three or four of 
 medicine. 
 
 With this possible weakness in view, a special attention 
 should be given to practise the mind of the young person 
 to acquire dry and perhaps tiresome details, so as to have 
 this power in later life. Such detail study should always 
 be so directed as to conduct the student to the compre- 
 hension of some familiar object. 
 
 Many men, placed in prominent positions by birth or 
 accident, have failed to properly manage their own or 
 other people's affairs, while remarkably skilled in details 
 connected with these. 
 
 A number of the failures amongst the Roman emper- 
 ors were phenomenally skilled in the details of military 
 exercise. Our own General McClellan was an instance 
 of this : acquainted with every detail of war and its 
 management, he accomplished nothing decisive with the 
 great army at his command. 
 
 Louis XVI. was a locksmith of merit, but no states- 
 man ; and so the instances might be multiplied. The 
 Chinese have written examinations to pass for political 
 position. To pass these a vast mass of detail must be 
 learned by rote. It is the ambition of the Chinese to 
 secure these positions. The system is probably one of 
 the causes which has led to the stagnant formalism into 
 which this people has fallen. 
 
 Too much detail is destruction ; too little detail is 
 defect. The one ends in a scholastic parrotism in which 
 
EDUCATION. 49 
 
 the mind is deprived of originality and breadth. The 
 other leaves us without any true understanding of any- 
 thing, and condemns to mediocrity. The wise preceptor 
 will steer between the two. 
 
 Some knowledge of nature, a great deal of patience, 
 and a faculty of putting one's self on the physical plane, 
 if the information to be given is physical, or on the 
 mental plane, if the information to be given is intellect- 
 ual, of the scholar, are requisities for a good teacher. A 
 union of these capacities is far from common. A really 
 competent teacher is well worthy of his hire. A thou- 
 sand difficulties will be avoided by children so officered. 
 No pains should be spared to give children this great 
 advantage. 
 
 It is rare that a child should be forced to study. A 
 child is naturally curious and ever on the quest for in- 
 formation. If the child revolts at receiving information, 
 it is a complete condemnation, either of the character 
 of information imparted, or of the methods employed. 
 A reform should be undertaken out of hand in such a 
 case. Information should always be shaped to the bent 
 and capacity of the child. If instruction be given on a 
 rational plan, with proper incentives, searching to give it 
 in the line of the child's interest, there will never be a 
 question of forcing the child, but rather of holding it 
 back. The need will not be the whip but the brake. 
 
 There may be children and there may be times when 
 study should be forced, but such occasions are so very 
 rare, that the rule should be to at once reform the 
 
$0 TASKS BY TWILIGHT. 
 
 methods which have brought about what must be con- 
 sidered an unnatural condition, 
 
 A disinclination of a child to acquire the information 
 offered to it may be nature's protest as well against the 
 matter as the method. Some children will not study, 
 without force, arithmetic, while history is to them a 
 pastime ; with others the reverse is the case ; they will 
 take to the arithmetic and hate history. One finds con- 
 tinual instances of this kind. In fact, it is rare that a 
 child has not affinities and facility in some things, and 
 aversions and difficulty in others. Children should be 
 pressed the least possible, and generally not at all, on 
 what they dislike, and turned freely into that course for 
 which they show a predilection. 
 
 From a child's natural tastes valuable hints may be 
 derived to show for what useful life they should be 
 fitted. 
 
 The old saying goes, " As the twig is bent the tree is 
 inclined," a very true and very important fact to bear in 
 mind. But it is also true that, with favorable natural 
 conditions, a tree will always grow straight, and always 
 grow to harmonize and take the best advantage of its 
 surroundings without any twig bending at all. In a 
 forest it will, protected by other trees, search with nearly 
 branchless stem for sun and air ; in the open it will be 
 shorter, thicker, and throw out low branches to protect 
 itself from undue amounts of sun and wind. 
 
 Nature, so safe a guide with trees, may well be more 
 trusted with human beings than it is. Where a parent's 
 
EDUCATION. 51 
 
 or teacher's care comes in best is in furnishing fertilizers 
 and cultivation. 
 
 To carry the simile of trees to those few children 
 who may need force and correction to lead useful lives, 
 let us take the fruit-trees. 
 
 Some, like the apricot, should be pruned. It is better 
 for the fruit that they should be pruned badly, nay, 
 massacred, than not pruned at all. Others, like the pear, 
 apple, quince, and most of the fruits, should only be 
 touched by the skilful, and then but lightly. It is far 
 better for these, the great majority of fruit-trees, not to 
 be pruned at all, than to be badly cut to pieces by the 
 ignorant. 
 
 Other trees, then, are like the walnut, that are only 
 pruned at the expense of fruit-bearing and general 
 vigor. In my experience these latter trees are much 
 better in every way when unpruned. They bear earlier, 
 give larger returns, and are stronger. But all these trees 
 give great returns to cultivation and judicious care. 
 The object of all our care to fruit-trees is to obtain 
 results. 
 
 So it may be said of human beings. Some few need 
 force and correction, typified by pruning, and are better 
 off, even though the correction be coarsely and roughly 
 applied, than they would be without it. 
 
 Others and many are improved by some judicious 
 direction in the way of suppressing worthless character- 
 istics or fruitless branches ; these are better untouched 
 than badly handled. Others, then, are such that you can 
 
52 TASKS BY TWILIGHT. 
 
 only cut into and force their bent at the expense of the 
 individual, and to their injury; these surely should be 
 let alone. 
 
 All, like the trees, respond to skilful and appropriate 
 cultivation. 
 
 Our aim, ever clearly to be kept in view, should be 
 results a future useful life. 
 
 All children should be given information and practice 
 in the usages of polite society. Not only should they 
 have good manners, which, as has been said, are based 
 on good feeling, but they should be taught how to 
 come into a room full of people and how to get out 
 of it, a thing not as easy to do well as it might seem. 
 They should also be given at least a fair familiarity 
 with what are called the accomplishments, such as 
 dancing, etc. 
 
 If a child be ignorant of the usages of society, espe- 
 cially those children of a sensitive disposition, they will 
 be so embarrassed and mortified on their contact with it, 
 as to give them a horror of polite society. 
 
 The energy of young people must have an outlet. If 
 their superfluous vitality have not vent in dancing and 
 any well-regulated custom of society, it is but natural to 
 suppose that this energy will take some other course. 
 Thus a young person may become morbid, unhappy, and 
 even take to vice and low companions, as Prince Henry 
 did to Falstaff. 
 
 It is therefore a matter of considerable moment to 
 young people after the age of puberty, and particularly 
 
EDUCATION. S3 
 
 about their mating-time, that they should be familiar 
 with the usages of good society, so as to feel at home 
 in it. 
 
 In this way the gregarious instinct which is then 
 strong will find a natural and easy satisfaction in asso- 
 ciation with the best humanity the world affords. Thus 
 your sons and daughters, at a critical period, will be 
 thrown without effort amongst those most eligible for 
 them as life partners. 
 
 There are fashions in education as there are in other 
 things. It will be well to conform in some degree to the 
 fashion of your time in education. Otherwise you will 
 be uncomfortable in your social relations. Never follow 
 a vicious fashion in education, no matter how general 
 it may be, or how uncomfortable its absence may 
 make you. 
 
 No special course is laid down. This might be done 
 for to-day, but it seems probable that for to-morrow a 
 plan of this kind, dealing with details, would be likely 
 to bring on a Chinese stagnation. Be fixed in principle 
 and flexible in all else. 
 
 There are, however, two studies that all children 
 should take irrespective of their selected careers. These 
 are medicine and law. 
 
 In taking a course in medicine, it is not meant that 
 you should go to a point fitting you to be a practising 
 physician, but that a course of physiology, anatomy, 
 including some practical dissections, etc., should be 
 taken, and visits to the hospitals be had. 
 
54 TASKS BY TWILIGHT. 
 
 Health is indeed important, but the healthy too often 
 think nothing of it, until, by the violation of some 
 sanitary law, they suffer perhaps beyond relief. 
 
 There is probably no way of impressing the import- 
 ance of health, and of the observation of sanitary laws, 
 as some familiarity with medicine, and the awful and in- 
 evitable results of the violation of these laws. Hospitals 
 show these matters under a thousand different forms, 
 but there is one ward into which all young men should 
 be taken, and that is the one where venereal diseases are 
 treated. 
 
 No more impressive lesson can be given to young men 
 of the value of marriage, as a mere conserver of health, 
 than a syphilis hospital ward. The horror and revolt of 
 nature against the prostituting of our reproductive 
 powers will be reflected in the eyes of the witness who sees 
 some of its results. Man alone in the Creation prosti- 
 tutes these powers. Man alone suffers the inexpressible 
 pain and suffering consequent upon prostitution. 
 
 In these hospital wards, also, will be seen what to me 
 is the awful penalty of inheritance. The continuation 
 of the punishment of nature to innocent children, and 
 again to their children in constitutional taints. No one 
 knows how long the expiation lasts. 
 
 I can think of no surer cure to the promiscuous pros- 
 titution of the reproductive powers, than a ward full of 
 human beings, dying, rotting, and stinking with syphilis 
 while they yet live. Sores breaking out, fingers, toes, noses 
 rotting off, and the intellect conscious of the situation. 
 
EDUCATION. 55 
 
 The plain truth in this case, as in all others, is the 
 strongest moral teacher you can -secure. 
 
 Physiology should be taught to all young people, 
 certainly by the time they reach the age of puberty. 
 The most important feature of this study should be the 
 action and grandeur of the reproductive organs. The 
 importance of care and attention in the development 
 and strengthening of these organs should not be lost 
 sight of. 
 
 Probably a good way to give this information is by 
 studying at first the reproductive organs and their 
 beauty in the plants, showing that the glory of the plant 
 is in its flower and fruit, that is, in its reproduction. 
 From the vegetable world pass to the insects and fish, 
 then to the animals, then to man. Slur nothing. Teach 
 the truth entire. 
 
 It may be thought by some that the delicacy, modesty, 
 and purity of the child, and especially of the girl, will be 
 injured by this course. 
 
 Do not let such an error deceive you. It is only nec- 
 essary to go back to your own childhood for a complete 
 destruction of this idea. If your father or mother im- 
 parted to you the grand mysteries of procreation, you 
 will appreciate without further argument the value of 
 the information. On the other hand, if responsible and 
 trusted persons told you nothing, as is commonly the 
 case, you nevertheless learned what the sexual relation 
 of mankind was. The reproductive instinct is the 
 strongest that man has. It is also the most important. 
 
56 TASKS BY TWILIGHT. 
 
 Our thoughts, as we develop, will in spite of everything 
 occupy themselves with this function. If our natural 
 teachers are silent, this instinct will fill us, and does fill 
 young people, with an overpowering curiosity. The 
 result is that we inform ourselves on this, the most im- 
 portant duty of our lives, behind water-closet doors, 
 through vile verses of doggerel, in shamefaced talks 
 with servants or vulgar playmates. 
 
 The information thus obtained is almost exclusively 
 of a low, obscene, degrading character. We do not have 
 the slightest glimpse of the grandeur of creation in re- 
 production. Its value, necessity, and godlike character- 
 istics are hidden and suppressed. 
 
 An instinct so strong when completely misunder- 
 stood by the young is a thousand times more liable 
 to be misdirected and abused than if it were under- 
 stood. 
 
 As has been said, while man by means of Love has 
 the highest view of reproduction, and by the use of the 
 reason has a capacity for a still higher appreciation of 
 this grand function, he has also in prostitution a lower 
 activity in this regard than any other animal. He can 
 and does sink to a depth of depravity unknown in any 
 other organized being. 
 
 What then is the object of this silence on so great a 
 topic, by those whose words could guide the youth from 
 so dangerous a fall and lead him amongst the flowers 
 and fruits of life, where our greatest pleasures lie ? It 
 js an ignorance impossible to secure. 
 
 
EDUCATION. 57 
 
 Can it be well for a child to hear of these things from 
 inferior or depraved human beings ? To have the door 
 half opened and to be shown the very lowest view of 
 sexual activity that can be given ? No ; the present 
 custom is folly dancing an invitation to fruitless crime. 
 
 Children will obtain some view of sex. Their curi- 
 osity comes from nature and can not be suppressed. 
 They must learn something of its activities. 
 
 If the irresponsible are to be teachers in this recruit- 
 ing of life, the pleasures will be, or rather are associ- 
 ated with, the abuse and misuse of the reproductive 
 powers, where these pleasures do not really exist, while 
 the responsibilities, dangers, and real joys are left 
 entirely out. 
 
 Do not commit an error of omission which partakes 
 of criminal negligence. Tell your children in plain, 
 dignified language the whole story. Explain the pleas- 
 ure and grandeur of a proper use of the reproductive 
 powers. Tell the dangers, disease, and death that come 
 from their neglect or abuse. Tell the truth, the whole 
 truth, and exaggerate nothing. 
 
 One of the things to teach in connection with Physi- 
 ology is the importance of marriage to true happiness, 
 and to the greatest success of life. 
 
 The miserable existence of an old man, a bachelor 
 dozing in his club, a supernumerary laughed at or 
 neglected by the young who have come to control. 
 The childless husband living without family life, in a 
 boarding-house or hotel, dropping out of his pleasures 
 
58 TASKS BY TWILIGHT. 
 
 as age creeps on ; his wife, if she amounts to anything 
 full of ideas of society, flirtation, or woman's rights 
 with nothing to attach her to home and no home 
 to be attached to. Extermination staring his hopeless 
 existence out of countenance. What pictures may be 
 made of masquerading misery from the lives of the 
 homeless. The childless man is either a fanatic, a 
 nonentity, or a roue. If he be wifeless, he usually preys 
 upon society in one way or another. Spends his nights 
 amongst forlorn, hopeless, and depraved women, drink- 
 ing to forget the death'shead that presides at every orgy, 
 or in some way tries to lose sight of the reality of his 
 fatal mistake. Or if he be wived and childless, he is still 
 single in fact with only a better regulated prostitution. 
 His life in this world can be healthier and longer, but 
 his end is as hopeless and forlorn. He will die the death 
 and realize himself forsaken if poor, or toadied to and 
 nattered by the venal if rich. What is worse company 
 than a venal toady for an inheritance. 
 
 It is not difficult to show the joy of a home full of 
 children, where pleasure reigns with an object for life 
 and a future to the parents growing old. Any judicious 
 man who keeps in mind and before his children the im- 
 mortality children can give, may have a happy and 
 joyous home, and this can be shown in any community 
 by calling your young people's attention to and showing 
 them the lives of people under your very nose. So also 
 the miserable emptiness of a childless old age can be 
 equally illustrated in any community. 
 
EDUCATION. 59 
 
 In such illustrations from life, many men will be found 
 with wives and children and every condition present for 
 a happy home, and still no home or no such home as 
 man ought to have, and no pleasure from his children. 
 
 This should be explained. It is always due to one or 
 two things, or may be partly to both. 
 
 First. To the fact that the man does not understand 
 the principles of marriage, and what the man's position 
 in that contract is : that is, that he is and must be head 
 and chief. Or, 
 
 Second, to the lack of appreciation either in the 
 heart or in the reason of children. 
 
 If one feels that the child of his loins is his worldly 
 immortality, his renewed life, and impresses this on his 
 child, he can never have a quarrelling family where hap- 
 piness, confidence, and mutual support do not exist. 
 
 So also children who know that they are the continued 
 life of their parents, and who have instilled into them 
 the necessity of themselves having children to carry on 
 immortality in its only tangible shape, can never lose a 
 regard for home. 
 
 The comprehension or knowledge of the principles of 
 law is of great value. The principles of law are the ac- 
 cumulated experience of mankind of the best way to 
 carry on society. Every man should be familiar with 
 them. Innumerable pitfalls and stumbling-blocks will 
 be avoided by such a knowledge. 
 
 This study will show how slowly and tentatively the 
 present laws governing society have grown up and crys- 
 
60 TASKS BY TWILIGHT. 
 
 tallized. The superior races have all gradually developed 
 systems of law that are at least similar in their principles. 
 
 * 
 
 The security in the results of individual effort, that is 
 property and the encouragement of reproduction by the 
 maintenance of the family, are the foundation of all law. 
 Be sure and found yourself in the principles before go- 
 ing much into detail. Law is perhaps the one subject 
 that demands this course. 
 
 Formalism is the besetting danger of organized so- 
 ciety. As soon as a people achieves greatness, power, and 
 extended influence, an extensive organization becomes 
 necessary and is developed. Organization is conserva- 
 tive and is never long friendly to progress. It diminishes 
 mobility and tends to stagnation. 
 
 Organization is so advantageous, and often so neces- 
 sary, that its drawbacks are always in the end lost sight 
 of. Its follower, formalism, must be guarded against 
 in the most careful way. Anything is better than 
 stagnation. Formalism in education has long since 
 been a prince. The great advances in thought have 
 been made outside of its regulation pale. Thus science 
 in the last seventy years has made wonderful advances, 
 and has revolutionized both our physical and intellectual 
 lives. But it has only been admitted to the schools 
 during the last few years. Its official recognition, so 
 far, has not added to its true laurels of achievement. 
 It may be that science owes much to the enmity and 
 opposition of the universities in keeping it out of their 
 ruts. 
 
EDUCATION. 6 1 
 
 In education we must insist at every risk on maintain- 
 ing individuality and originality, and our aim should be 
 the proper preparation of the pupil for the greatest work 
 
 Of life THE IMMORTALITY GIVEN BY REPRODUCTION IN 
 THE CHILD. 
 
 OBSERVATION. 
 
 This quality is natural in all children. Our present 
 system dwarfs the native capacity in this respect. Con- 
 tact and communion with nature is the first and best 
 means of maintaining and improving this quality. Na- 
 ture always tells the truth, and nature, therefore, is the 
 best guide. 
 
 Show a child the difference between, and characteris- 
 tics of plants, animals, earths, rocks, and of all natural 
 phenomena. Question them minutely and systematically 
 on details, and thus habituate them to a close observation 
 of everything they see. We should never cease main- 
 taining, by all means, an interest in the workings of 
 nature. As the child develops, the effect of natural 
 laws should be studied and derived from the details with 
 which the child will, at that time, be familiar. In this 
 way it will be easy to teach the child how to preserve 
 his own physical well-being. A valuable means of ob- 
 taining this result is the study of sanitary law and the 
 disastrous results of its violation. 
 
 Bad sewerage, bad water, unhealthy avocations, and 
 unhealthy locations their results in low vitality and high 
 death-rates should in all cases be taught. A child's ob- 
 
62 TASKS BY TWILIGHT. 
 
 serving qualities will thus be strengthened, and his atten- 
 tion directed to these matters of the greatest import to 
 himself and to his future family. By avoiding these 
 dangers, his own physical and mental activities will be 
 greater, and he will be able to avert many sad bereave- 
 ments in the sickness and loss of wife or children. 
 
 Give great importance to this matter. If a child 
 comes from your hands knowing a good horse from a 
 bad one how to tell a good cow, a good pig, a good 
 tree, good plant, good meat, good provisions, good cook- 
 ing, and can distinguish the good from the poor in those 
 things coming under his everyday observation, it will be 
 comparatively easy for him to .develop this quality to an 
 application to any business in life he may undertake. 
 The father in teaching these things will learn not a 
 little himself. 
 
 There has been one point that has been reserved till 
 the last, but it is the most important, and that is how to 
 tell a good man or a good woman from a poor one. 
 Physical and moral strength should be a twin standard 
 of excellence. 
 
 In this way a boy or girl will come to have innate percep- 
 tions of the true in humanity. He will avoid the unsuc- 
 cessful, and in that most important of all the acts of 
 life marriage he or she will be far less liable to err 
 than would otherwise be the case. 
 
 When you become a parent you should, by continual 
 repetition, point out the disastrous results of matrimonial 
 alliances with poorly-bred people. By poorly bred is 
 
EDUCATION. 63 
 
 meant those who have poor physiques, poor minds, or, 
 as so often happens, both. 
 
 This faculty in your children to recognize strong men 
 and women from weak ones should be so thoroughly 
 founded in reason, as to be above and independent of 
 prejudice. Each person who follows these doctrines 
 may hope that the minds and hearts of their children 
 will be so educated as that they will discard and never 
 think of making a scrub alliance in any business of life. 
 
 Matrimony is the most important of all these alliances. 
 If a breeder of horses, cattle, dogs, or poultry will be- 
 come enraged with a careless person, for even so much as 
 placing an opportunity in the way of his animals for de- 
 grading their breed, how much more should we, the 
 reasonable beings who attach so much importance to 
 good qualities in the lower animals, care for and con- 
 sider the welfare of our own stock. 
 
 The quality of observation is inherent in the human 
 being. Give it play, cultivate it, and strengthen the 
 reason by continuous application so that the relation of 
 the truths of nature to life can be applied. Thus will 
 the intellect be developed better than by any other 
 means that you can devise. 
 
 The duty of the parent is to lead the child to perceive 
 facts for himself and to reason on them. If you can 
 habituate a child to this, the battle is won. Your child's 
 education is founded on a rock. Nothing can stop it 
 except disease and death. The first of these you will 
 have done much to prevent and the second to postpone. 
 
EDUCATION OF GIRLS. 
 
 THERE is no more limit to what a woman should 
 know than there is to what a man should know. 
 Time, capacity, and the appropriateness of the thing 
 taught to make the life of the individual useful are the 
 considerations which should decide our policy in Educa- 
 tion. 
 
 The capacity of individuals differs greatly. One per- 
 son whose energy is devoted to acquiring the details of 
 the law would make a good lawyer, but were this energy 
 devoted to the details of medicine as well as of law, the 
 individual might be neither a good lawyer nor a good 
 physician. Another individual with greater capacity 
 might study both subjects and be proficient in each of 
 them, or make one subservient to the other. Thus the 
 study of both subjects in the one individual would be 
 detrimental, and in the other advantageous. 
 
 Owing to this infinite variety of capacity in human 
 beings it is impossible to lay down any hard and fast rule, 
 as to what any class of persons shall or shall not study. 
 The extraordinary physical energy of the insane is prob- 
 ably due to the liberation of energy devoted in the sane 
 to ratiocination and its application by the insane to mus- 
 
 64 
 
EDUCATION OF GIRLS. 6$ 
 
 cular movement. We thus see the disadvantage of an 
 ill-balanced development of capacity. The muscular 
 force of some insane is dangerous and not useful, be- 
 cause the energy that makes its manifestation possible 
 has left the mind without sufficient force to guide and 
 control it. Proper balance must be had. 
 
 While the sexes, as such, are quite different from each 
 other in tastes and capacities, they still in their individ- 
 uals frequently cross into each other's spheres. In fact, 
 it is difficult now to say what these spheres are according 
 to the method of a few years past. In general it is true 
 that the creative power of the mind is largely man's, and 
 the creative power of the body is largely woman's. Of 
 the two, I esteem the power of the woman most impor- 
 tant, for in it there is a promise of immortality for the 
 individual, tangible and direct. The difficulty of making 
 an educational limit for the individual is equally appar- 
 ent when an attempt is made to mark a limitation for 
 the sexes. 
 
 The nature of our lives as human beings makes it 
 necessary for us to have children. The person or the 
 race without these has before them a prompt extermina- 
 tion. The female, while enjoying the glory of mother- 
 hood, has also from necessity to abstain from doing 
 what she could do were she not engaged in this duty. 
 
 The great importance, nay, the absolute necessity of 
 performing the duties of motherhood has developed 
 woman for this function. Her character, sympathies, 
 
 physique, all prepare her for this duty. The energies 
 
 
66 TASKS BY TWILIGHT. 
 
 which naturally take this direction can but in few cases 
 be diverted to other things of importance, without causing 
 some diminution in the child-bearing capacity. The 
 question to decide in our education of girls is where to 
 draw this line, taking into consideration the capacity of 
 each particular individual with whom we have to deal. 
 
 The narrowing of the chest and pelvis in many Amer- 
 ican women, and the lack of power in about 50 per cent, 
 of those from New England, (Allan) to secrete sufficient 
 milk for such children as they bear, is an indication that 
 the alarming diminution in the native American birth- 
 rate is at least partially due to incapacity as well as to 
 artificial prevention. The lack of desire for children 
 now so frequently thrust into notice is perhaps only a 
 reflex of the lack of capacity. 
 
 Dr. Nathan Allan, who has examined this subject and 
 the vital statistics of New England and Ohio connected 
 with it, attributes these changes in the birth-rate and loss 
 of fertility in Americans to our system of life and educa- 
 tion. The education seems in his view much the most 
 fatal of the two. The opinion of the American-born 
 women against large families and often against any 
 children, and their growing incapacity in reproduction, 
 is shared by the American-born men. 
 
 Many side lights show the rapidity of our deteriora- 
 tion in reproduction. Some of these are the lower birth- 
 rate, small families, incapacity to suckle, late marriages, 
 increased divorce, etc. Hirst, the latest authority on ob- 
 stetrics, shows that malpresentations in labor are more 
 
EDUCATION OF GIRLS. 6/ 
 
 numerous amongst American women than amongst any 
 others. Next comes France, only a little better, then 
 England with only about half as many, and best of all, 
 Germany with less than one third as many as in Amer- 
 ica. 
 
 The general physique and appearance of American 
 women as a whole, is not promising as to reproduction. 
 They are, as a rule, slight, nervous, intelligent, superficial, 
 and fond of pleasure. They lack earnestness of charac- 
 ter, faith in anything, and physical force. 
 
 Some of the recent statistics show the changes taking 
 place in New England owing to weakness in reproduc- 
 tion. Here is a sample : 
 
 Of those engaged in agriculture, \ are of foreign birth. 
 
 " " fisheries, \ " 
 
 " "manufactories,! " " " 
 
 " " " " manual labor, f " " " " 
 
 The School Report of Manchester, N. H., of 1887, 
 shows 72 per cent, of the children of school age to be of 
 foreign parentage. In Lewiston, Me., of 6,781 minors, 
 only 1,859 were of American parentage. In Mt. Hoi- 
 yoke, Mass., of 6,297 minors but 843 were of American 
 parentage. A population of foreign extraction is taking 
 the place of the native New England stock and not very 
 slowly either. From an almost universal faith in some 
 forms of Protestantism, we find the dominant religion of 
 New England to have become Roman Catholic. The 
 conversions cut no perceptible figure in the results. It 
 has been produced by, immigration of Catholics, and by 
 
68 TASKS BY TWILIGHT. 
 
 the numerous children of their loins taking the place of 
 the native stock, whose reproductive powers fail to neu- 
 tralize immigration and death. 
 
 From a\ universal use of the English language we find 
 large and increasing numbers using only French. For 
 instance, there are of these French-speaking people whose 
 avowed object is to maintain their language and religion, 
 12,000 in Manchester, N. H., 5,500 in Nashua, 20,000 in 
 Fall River, and a total in New England of over half a 
 million persons. At the present rate of change the 
 French language will soon be dominant in New Eng- 
 land as their religion already is. 
 
 When we consider that all this supplanting of the na- 
 tive stock has taken place within a short period, and in 
 a naturally fertile race, that had complete and sole 
 possession, we must realize that there is something rad- 
 ically wrong. Eusebius, Themistocles, Polybius, and a 
 number of other ancient writers observed similar condi- 
 tions in antiquity, preceding the downfall of the races 
 where they occurred. 
 
 Polybius, speaking of the decline of the population in 
 Greece before the Roman conquest, says that it was not 
 due to war or plague or famine, but to an indisposition 
 toward marriage, and an avoidance of children when in 
 that relation. One of his sentences would apply very 
 perfectly to our own time. He says, " For when men 
 gave themselves to ease and comfort and indolence, and 
 would neither marry nor rear children born to them, or 
 at least only one or two, in order to leave these rich and 
 to bring them up in luxury, the evil soon spread imper- 
 
EDUCATION OF GIRLS. 69 
 
 ceptibly, but with rapid growth ; for when there was 
 only a child or two in a family for war or disease to 
 carry off, the inevitable consequence was that houses 
 were left desolate, and cities by degrees became like de- 
 serted hives. And there is no need to consult the gods 
 about the modes of deliverance from the evil, for any 
 man would tell us that the first thing we have to do is to 
 change our habits, or at all events to enact laws compell- 
 ing the married to rear children." 
 
 We may say in passing that Polybius' legal remedy is 
 not practical. Prof. Seelye shows that similar conditions 
 prevailed in Rome before its downfall. 
 
 The education of the female should harmonize with the 
 essentials of reproduction. The limitations due to these 
 essentials ought not to be lost sight of. We cannot for- 
 get that the majority of high type women must reproduce 
 to continue the superior humanity and to do this their 
 information and ambition must be for creation in the 
 child. 
 
 This limitation is the only one to consider from a 
 purely sexual point of view. 
 
 In the chapter on Sex it will be seen that man is totally 
 incapable of performing the most important functions of 
 woman, namely, child-bearing and child-suckling, and is 
 very inferior in many other matters generally performed 
 by women, such as the care of children, etc. 
 
 So woman is equally unfitted for the main duties of 
 man. While some women are capable of child-bearing, 
 maintaining a home, and other duties pertaining to per- 
 petuating the race, and are also capable of achieving dis- 
 
70 TASK'S BY TWILIGHT. 
 
 tinction in art, industry, or science, the great mass of 
 women are not thus capable. Women, sound on the re- 
 productive question, may improve the race by improving 
 their faculties in the outside fight to be transmitted to 
 their children. 
 
 There are, however, occupations which under no 
 circumstances should be followed by women, and 
 against which girls should be warned. All occupations 
 bringing a pressure upon virtue, in offering temptation 
 and opportunity for sexual prostitution, are of this class. 
 Such employments as those of restaurant or hotel wait- 
 resses and chamber-maids, bar-maids, and theatrical 
 performers are bad. The theatre, as an occupation for 
 women, has been condemned, directly or indirectly, by 
 nearly every moral system of antiquity. The Roman law, 
 until the time of Justinian, forbade a senator or a distin- 
 guished citizen from marrying a woman of the theatre, 
 and ranked them with common harlots. 
 
 The Chinese system of law looks on the theatre as so 
 demoralizing to women, that, in the interest of morality, 
 it forbids women the theatrical stage, and places actors 
 in the lowest of its social classes. Even to a late date 
 in England female parts were taken by boys, as they still 
 are in China. So general a condemnation by the thinkers 
 of the past must be presumed to rest on some foundation 
 of experience. 
 
 In educating girls these general facts should be borne 
 in mind. Girls should be educated first in such matters 
 as pertain to their principal activities in life, which from 
 
EDUCATION OF GIRLS. Jl 
 
 necessity are connected largely with the home. It is in 
 the home that the woman has the only full opportunity 
 of achieving her greatness and glory, the creation of 
 life. As the husband is necessary for the home, it be- 
 comes important first to obtain one and second to hold 
 him. 
 
 For the first object a general familiarity with the infor- 
 mation commonly given to girls is probably advanta- 
 geous, together with such accomplishments as dancing, 
 conversation, and music, which attract the man to the 
 girl in social gatherings. It must be said here, however, 
 that the long hours of practice on musical instruments 
 by girls not gifted in music is a clear loss of time and 
 energy without any compensation. No one cares to 
 hear often an indifferent performer strum on the piano. 
 Girls, as a rule, spend many hours in the house, to the 
 injury of their health, on this generally useless work, 
 only to neglect it entirely when married. 
 
 An important thing in this connection is for a girl to 
 know how to make the most of her looks, to keep her 
 person neat and clean, dress tastefully, and to be pos- 
 sessed of pleasing manners. Men are often attracted by 
 hoydenish, noisy, and immodest women, and follow them 
 for temporary amusement, but no good man that is good 
 for a husband to perpetuate life is ever attracted to such 
 a woman as a wife. Occasionally, however, they are 
 trapped into marriage by one of this type. Every young 
 woman therefore should be taught modesty and good 
 breeding, and be impressed with the fact that any success 
 
72 TASKS BY TWILIGHT. 
 
 of bad-mannered women, and especially of immodest or 
 unwomanly women, can only be either temporary with 
 men seeking amusement, or with men lacking character 
 or information, who will not make good husbands and 
 fathers. Good looks attract, but it is the charm of good 
 manners that holds. Beauty is the beacon that brings 
 the beau, but it is manners that hot from the heart 
 may singe the adventurer's wings so that he flies no 
 farther. 
 
 Do not misconstruethis suggestion into the advocacy of 
 a cold or prudish manner for girls. A girl gains greatly 
 by a happy help to some smitten swain, too diffident to 
 take the step to the immortality of marriage without it. 
 
 Observation indicates that as between two extremes, a 
 too forward, or a too cold manner, the forward girl will 
 marry where the cold prude hangs on the parent stem. 
 
 While the first too-flirty girl finishes at last with a 
 renewed life in a happy row of children re-creations of 
 her life, the over-proper lady closes her story in rooms 
 of a boarding-house, cheered by a wheezy pug, a parrot, 
 or a well-fed cat. 
 
 Do not think, on the other hand, that flirting or im- 
 proper risks of conduct are advised. 
 
 But between the frozen pole and the scorched equator 
 take the equator. At the pole life is dead, at the equator, 
 however disadvantageous or disagreeable it may be, life 
 does go on, and there is a future. 
 
 For opportunities in meeting men eligible as husbands, 
 girls are much at the mercy of parental care and their 
 
EDUCATION OF GIRLS. 73 
 
 social environment. This last they should make as much 
 as possible themselves. The friendships of youth are 
 formed when the heart is plastic, and, as a rule, are both 
 more quickly made and more enduring than those of 
 riper years. A girl should have girl friends, and these 
 should be in the class of highest mental power, or attract- 
 ing that power so that her associations as a young lady 
 will be naturally with it. For this purpose a year in a 
 fashionable school may be set aside and sacrificed. It 
 is worth it only in case such friendships are not other- 
 wise easily attainable. 
 
 As far as obtaining a knowledge of those things com- 
 monly supposed important is concerned, the fashionable 
 institute is inferior to the public school. The life, man- 
 ners, and language are more polished and polite in the 
 first, but far less strong and sound than in the second. 
 
 Perhaps no one thing attracts a good man so much, 
 especially if accompanied by social accomplishments, as 
 a taste for and knowledge of domestic duties and the 
 economy of the household. Men often avoid marriage 
 on account of their fear of its expense. 
 
 It is therefore a strong point in a marriageable young 
 woman to not only dress prettily, but to avoid all extrav- 
 agance. It may be said here that young unmarried 
 women almost invariably look best when simply attired, 
 if there be but a little taste displayed in their combina- 
 tion of colors and the cut of their clothing. To dress 
 expensively is often vulgar, always excites the envy of 
 the small, distracts the attention from the person to the 
 
74 TASKS BY TWILIGtiT. 
 
 clothes, and is seldom as attractive as a well-fitted, taste- 
 fully combined, and simple dress. 
 
 These matters are preliminary to the great object of 
 life, which in man is the same as in the tree, the plant, 
 and in the animal world. The main object is reproduc- 
 tion and continuation of the individual and of the species. 
 But these preliminaries leading to the getting of a good 
 husband are of importance, indeed, for by their means, 
 when judiciously employed, the girl is better enabled to 
 do her part in reproduction, and to enjoy the reward 
 which the proper performance of this, the greatest func- 
 tion of woman, can give. 
 
 In little girls the taste for motherhood should be built 
 up by dolls, by the care of other children, and by any 
 other proper means that may be thought of. The body 
 should be well cared for and developed by exercise. 
 The girl should have also occupations of a useful char- 
 acter, so as to promote a healthy, moral tone, for it is 
 idleness that breeds abnormal ideas, premature passion, 
 and thus leads to vice. 
 
 The useful occupations should be, at least to a con- 
 siderable extent, connected with household duties. A 
 proper understanding and a proper performance of do- 
 mestic duties will tend to make her future home better 
 regulated and happier than it otherwise would be, thus 
 preparing for the joy and contentment of the future hus- 
 band and children. She also will feel the goocl effects 
 in after years, because the habit of domestic work, and 
 the consequent interest in home matters, will be to 
 
EDUCATION OF GIRLS. 75 
 
 the wife a great protection against loneliness or discfon- 
 tent. 
 
 The second reason why the industries should largely 
 take this direction is that girls cannot be turned out with 
 any safety into the general industries of the world. As 
 has been explained in the chapter on Sex, the penalty 
 of an error is so great in the young girl, that no prudent 
 parent would voluntarily place a daughter in a position 
 where she would be exposed to the temptations which 
 we know are too strong for the great majority of those 
 who are subjected to them. The dangers arising also 
 to unprotected girls, in large cities, is a matter of daily 
 chronicle in our courts. These chronicles are, from all 
 indications, but a mere surface-showing of the extent 
 to which such practices are carried. The ruined lives of 
 a great number of the unfortunate street-walkers of our 
 cities are due to these latter causes. 
 
 No young girl should be left in ignorance of these 
 dangers. She should be instructed not only to resist se- 
 duction, but to protect herself against force. A woman 
 who will do all she can, by voice and act, to defend 
 herself, need suffer outrage only under combinations of 
 circumstances that rarely occur. 
 
 No one should fail to realize that the drift of our so- 
 ciety, and of our whole industrial system, is away from 
 family life. Home industries are replaced by general 
 production. The soap-making, spinning, making of 
 clothes, etc., of the old times are largely things of the 
 past in the family. Even fruit-preserving is going out 
 
76 TASKS V TWILIGHT. 
 
 of the home. Women's industries in the old-time homes 
 were large and comprehensive. Women in this industrial 
 change are often left in idleness, or forced into the outer 
 fight. Woman's increased proportionate contribution in 
 production is, however, not so great as many suppose. 
 Here is a difficulty that we should not disguise in the estab- 
 lishment of a sound family life. The causes of the family 
 decay at present so prevalent are deep seated and hard 
 to be sure of. We cannot put a finger on them with 
 certainty. The growth of one thing out of another, the 
 interdependence of all social conditions makes it as dif- 
 ficult to appreciate true cause, as it is to appreciate the 
 eventual results. Extinction and extermination are evi- 
 dently the results in store for many. How to stem this 
 dark, strong, and deep current toward family- and race- 
 death is what we must try for in the education of the 
 girl. 
 
 Nothing can conduce so much to any one's success, 
 as to be well prepared for the destiny that awaits them. 
 The destiny of woman being marriage, she should be 
 thoroughly prepared and educated for its duties, before 
 any serious invasion of her time or vitality should be 
 permitted for secondary matters. The girl should 
 be taught the facts in relation to her own body, and 
 especially informed as to the care required at coming 
 to the age of puberty, and during the periods of men- 
 struation. 
 
 During menstruation the rule for all girls should be 
 rest. No severe mental or physical efforts should be 
 
EDUCATION OF GIRLS. 77 
 
 continued at this time ; particular attention should be 
 given to seeing that the girl is attending to the regular 
 elimination of excrementory matter. About the age of 
 puberty, girls become sensitive, and are ashamed to 
 attend properly to these duties. Such a neglect will 
 almost certainly bring more or less suffering in its wake. 
 In his Diseases of Women, Dr. Alonzo Thomas gives 
 his experience as to the causes of women's diseases as 
 follows : 
 
 " Neglect of out-door exercise. 
 
 Excessive development of the nervous system. 
 
 Improprieties of dress. 
 
 Imprudence after parturition. 
 
 Prevention of conception and induction of abortion. 
 
 Marriage with existing uterine disease." 
 
 Dr. Thomas goes on to say, 
 
 " Want of air and exercise, in deteriorating the blood and enfeeb- 
 ling the muscular system, should be classed first among these predis- 
 posing causes. . . . 
 
 " Excessive Development of the Nervous System : The necessity 
 for a due proportion existing between the development and strength 
 of the nervous and muscular systems has always been recognized, and 
 has given use to the trite formula ' mens san^ in corpore sano ' as 
 essential to health." 
 
 Girls should be carefully watched to prevent undue 
 nervous development. By care, such a tendency can 
 be observed early in life. When it is seen, the girl 
 should be kept out-doors and physically busy as much as 
 possible, and mental effort should be kept at a minimum. 
 
 Dr. Thomas says, 
 
 "Unfortunately the restless, energetic, and ambitious spirit which 
 actuates the people of the United States, has prompted a plan of 
 
78 TASKS BY TWILIGHT. 
 
 education, which, by its seventy, creates a vast disproportion between 
 these two systems, nervous and muscular, and its effects are more 
 especially exerted upon the female sex, in which the tendency to 
 such loss of balance is much more marked than in the male. Girls 
 of a tender age are required to apply their minds too constantly to 
 master studies which are too difficult, and to tax their intellects by 
 efforts of thought and memory which are too prolonged and labo- 
 rious. The results are rapid development of brain and nervous sys- 
 tem, precocious talent, refined and cultivated taste, and a fascinating 
 vivacity on the one hand ; a morbid impressibility, great feebleness 
 of muscular system, and marked tendency to disease in the genera- 
 tive organs on the other. 
 
 ' ' Improprieties of Dress : The dress adopted by the women of 
 our times may be very graceful and becoming, it may possess the 
 great advantages of developing the beauties of the figure and con- 
 cealing its defects, but it certainly is conducive to the development 
 of uterine diseases, and proves not merely a predisposing but an 
 exciting cause of them." 
 
 Dr. Thomas goes on to say that excessive constriction 
 of the abdomen, or the hanging of heavy articles of 
 clothing on the pelvis, tend to displace the uterus and 
 produce disease. 
 
 Dr. A. Sargent has made some experiments in regard 
 to the effects of tight lacing with women. The follow- 
 ing is one with his comments : 
 
 "In order to ascertain the influence of tight clothing upon the 
 action of the heart during exercise, a dozen young women consented 
 this summer to run 540 yards, in their loose gymnasium garments, 
 and then to run the same distance with corsets on. The running 
 time was two minutes aud thirty seconds for each person at each 
 trial, and in order that there should be no cardiac excitement or de- 
 pression following the first test, the second trial was made the fol- 
 lowing day. Before beginning the running the average heart impulse 
 was 84 beats to the minute ; after running the above-named distance 
 the heart impulse was 152 beats to the minute ; the average natural 
 waist girth being 25 inches. The next day corsets were worn during 
 
ECUCATION OF GIRLS. 79 
 
 the exercise, and the average girth of waist was reduced to 24 inches. 
 The same distance was run in the same time by all, and immediately 
 afterward the average heart impulse was found to be 168 beats per 
 minute. When I state that I should feel myself justified in advising 
 an athlete not to enter a running or rowing race whose heart impulse 
 was 1 60 beats per minute, after a little exercise, even though there 
 were not the slightest evidence of disease, one can form some idea of 
 the wear and tear on this important organ, and the physiological loss 
 entailed upon the system in women, who force it to labor for over 
 half their lives under such a disadvantage as the tight corset imposes. " 
 
 Dr. Sargent's extraordinary success in getting these 
 young women to run a certain distance in exactly the 
 same time under varying conditions cannot escape our 
 comment. His evident enmity to the corset has made 
 his figures somewhat unreliable. 
 
 The lung capacity of the individual woman with 
 corsets, Sargent shows to be 134 cubic inches ; after 
 taking corsets off, 167 cubic inches ; gain with the cor- 
 sets off 33 cubic inches. The effect of the loss of so 
 much fresh air one would think must diminish the 
 physical capacity and vitality of the woman. 
 
 Imprudence during menstruation, Dr. Thomas says, 
 is a prolific source of disease. Exposure to low tempera- 
 ture or inclement weather during this period should be 
 avoided. Imprudence after parturition he specially 
 counsels against, and particularly mentions the per- 
 nicious habit of tight bandaging of the abdomen : a well- 
 fitting bandage only tight enough to give support he 
 employs himself, as a source of comfort to the woman. 
 He says these bandages have no effect in preventing 
 deterioration of the figure, 
 
80 TASKS BY TWILIGHT. 
 
 " Prevention of Conception, and Induction of Abortion : Means 
 established for the accomplishment of the first of these ends are often 
 productive of uterine disorders. This will not be wondered at when 
 the harshness of some of them is borne in mind. The workings of 
 nature in this, as in all physiological processes, are too perfect, too 
 accurately and delicately adjusted, not to be interfered with materi- 
 ally by the clumsy and inappropriate measures adopted to frustrate 
 them. 
 
 4< The practice is becoming exceedingly common, as every physician 
 is aware ; so common, indeed, that in the older portions of this 
 country (unfortunately it must be said in the more civilized and 
 educated ) it is by no means usual to meet with large families of 
 children. 
 
 " All physicians of ability and standing agree that prevention of 
 conception and abortion afterwards are a certain source of disease." 
 
 Dr. Goodell in Lessons on Gynecology, condemns 
 
 these practices very strongly, as injurious both to the 
 
 male and the female. He uses the following lan- 
 guage : 
 
 " Such then are my views upon these so-called ' misery checks ' 
 and ' common-sense measures ' ; and I feel that they cannot be gain- 
 said. I dare any political economist to show me one innocuous 
 expedient whereby conception can be avoided. I challenge him to 
 name a single preventive plan which will not do damage to good 
 health or to good morals. Even natural sterility is a curse : show me 
 a house without children, and, ten to one, you show me an abode 
 dreary in its loneliness, disturbed by jealously or by estrangement, 
 distasteful from wayward caprice or from unlovable eccentricity. 
 
 " Depend upon it, gentlemen, there are no thornless by-paths by 
 which man can skulk from his moral and physical obligations ; no 
 safe Strategems by which he can balk God's first blessing and first 
 command. Therefore, as hygienists, if not as moralists ; as phy- 
 sicians, if not as patriots ; as guardians of the public health, if not 
 as philanthropists ; I charge you to frown upon such practices and 
 take a bold stand against them. Else, see to it that in the end you 
 are not held to a strict account for the knowledge you have this day 
 gained," 
 
EDUCATION OF GIRLS. 8 1 
 
 The opinion of reputable physicians, as far as I have 
 been able to learn, is uniformly that measures to prevent 
 conception are fraught with dangers to health, and that 
 abortion is in the vast majority of cases followed by 
 long periods of suffering and ill-health. The concensus 
 of opinion is that these practices shorten life, make 
 what they leave of it unhappy and sickly, destroy a 
 complete home-life, undermine character and morality, 
 and are physically and financially more expensive than 
 childbearing. 
 
 One physician has called my attention to the loss of 
 beauty, both in body and expression, by married women 
 who prevent conception. He pointed out confidentially, 
 several instances of persons known to us both, in whom 
 I would recognize the deterioration. The greatest num- 
 ber of patients seeking relief from specialists in female 
 diseases owe their diseases of the generative organs to 
 means used for the prevention of childbirth. That these 
 cautions are not unnecessary is shown by the works of 
 all modern medical writers on female diseases. Accord- 
 ing to the researches of the Rev. S. W. Dike, secretary 
 of the National League for the Reform of the Divorce 
 Laws, fully fifty per cent, more children would be born 
 to American mothers in Massachusetts were it not for 
 these practices. 
 
 In that State the native American is being replaced by 
 foreign races, for the birth-rate amongst the Americans 
 is in many places less than the death-rate. 
 
 Dr. Nathan Allan has given a great deal of attention 
 
 6 
 
82 TASKS BY TWILIGHT. 
 
 to these subjects. In his pamphlet on Physical Degen- 
 eracy he makes the following remarks : 
 
 " Again, connected with this weak and relaxed state of the muscu- 
 lar tissue, and with the above-mentioned effects of fashion in dress, 
 has sprung up a class of very grave complaints which once were com- 
 paratively unknown in our country, and are somewhat peculiar to 
 American women. We refer particularly to weaknesses, displace- 
 ments, and diseases of organs located in the pelvis. Within twenty 
 or thirty years there have been not only marked changes in the type 
 and character of the diseases of females generally, but THIS CLASS 
 comparatively new, has increased wonderfully." 
 
 No one but a medical man, who has devoted special 
 attention to this subject, can realize fully the nature 
 and extent of this change, and understand its direful 
 effects. These complaints have frequently been pro- 
 duced, have certainly been aggravated, and sometimes 
 made incalculably worse, by the various means and 
 expedients which the parties have resorted to, in order 
 to interfere with or thwart the great laws of population. 
 It is not in their effects upon the general health, that 
 renders them so important, but the relations which they 
 sustain to the marriage institution, and the laws of 
 reproduction. 
 
 Prof. Thomas Addis Emmet, M.D., LL.D. etc., in his 
 Principles and Practice of Gynecology, condemns methods 
 of prevention of childbirth, and equally condemns the 
 destruction of child-life before birth. In discussing 
 the effects, pages 24 and 25, he says : 
 
 " Can any one, accustomed to treating the diseases of women, say in 
 truth the statement is exaggerated, that we see on any one day more 
 sorrow and misery resulting from the abuse of the marriage state, than 
 would be found in a month from uncomplicated child-bearing." 
 
EDUCATION OF GIRLS. 83 
 
 The effect of education and training both as to these 
 practices and their results is shown by the Jews and 
 Catholics. Amongst this class of the population pre- 
 vention, abortion, and uterine disease are alike very 
 rare. Amongst them also family life is happier, and 
 divorces fewer than in the general community. 
 
 Reason enters most into the education of the Jewish 
 women, and superstition most into that of the Catholics 
 on these questions. In either case the result is the same; 
 large families, happy homes, and a supplanting of the 
 population not sound on these questions. 
 
 It must be noted, however, that the Jews are not as 
 sound as they were, and that the Catholic religion does 
 not always lead to the results we see in America. This 
 can be observed by studying the vital statistics of Cath- 
 olic France. The method of perpetuation of their fami- 
 lies, and of education of their women practised in the 
 royal and noble families of Europe, are well worthy of 
 observation. The effect of the system of education of 
 the women in the royal families of Europe is shown by 
 the fact that so few of these have ever been unchaste, 
 and that they make good mothers. The royal families 
 of Europe have been able to resist the destructive ten- 
 dencies of wealth, better than the families of the rich 
 commoners in the same countries. Women of royal 
 birth who have created scandal by their conduct may be 
 counted on the fingers of one hand. The desire to per- 
 petuate their race, to furnish a scion to carry on the 
 name and power of their family, has been a sufficient 
 
84 TASKS BY TWILIGHT. 
 
 religion to make them good and true women. One ele- 
 ment in this system is the care given to parturient women. 
 
 Instinct in the animal world is more and more largely 
 replaced in man by the reason as a guide to action. We 
 find animals taking care of their young by instinct, 
 biting off the placenta, washing the new-born animal 
 with the tongue, providing food of proper kinds, or 
 suckling them, etc. All this without any previous indi- 
 vidual experience or knowledge, doing their duty by 
 instinct. In man this instinct has become weak as to 
 details, or has never developed with their new necessities 
 in civilization. Thus a midwife, a doctor, or a mother 
 must be taught what to do in order to make the birth 
 of the babe safe and its subsequent care proper. We 
 may say positively, that while the instincts leading to 
 creation and the love and devotion to the babe are strong 
 in every normally constituted woman, the instinctive 
 knowledge of what to do in detail, say as we see in the 
 cow, is practically absent. 
 
 Young mothers, in default of a sound education on these 
 points, often lose or injure their first children and also 
 injures themselves. The result is sometimes too little 
 attention for the babe, and perhaps, more of ten, too much 
 attention that is harmful. Thus exhausting labor is done, 
 not only useless but positively harmful to both mother 
 and child. 
 
 A girl should be taught the care of children by practice 
 and of herself during the period of gestation. It is not 
 the custom to teach girls these subjects, but the error of 
 
EDUCATION OF GIRLS. 85 
 
 this may be suspected when we consider the general fact 
 that girls, members of large families, make better wives 
 and mothers than girls w*ho have grown up without this 
 incidental instruction in child- and self-care which a large 
 family necessarily gives. There may be some objection to 
 giving such information on the ground of modesty. This 
 point is discussed in the chapter on Education. It is an 
 objection that, however well founded when religious dog- 
 mas commanded our obedience and when physiological 
 information was imperfect, has no good and reasonable 
 support now. 
 
 It cannot be slurred over in recommending this rather 
 radical frankness that civilized people, as a rule, leave their 
 young in ignorance as to the reproductive functions as 
 long as they can. We would not be wise to overthrow so 
 general a rule without sound reason. 
 
 Lately we have become acquainted with the demon- 
 strable physical injury done the individual by the abuse 
 of these functions. Those who favored ignorance on 
 these points, and who have made and upheld our custom of 
 silence in regard to them, had no such information. Con- 
 sequently silence in their case and the dark closet may be 
 presumed to have been advantageous. It is of course 
 true that so overmastering an instinct as that of reproduc- 
 tion would occasionally break out and rush into the light. 
 Then, dazzled and lost in the sudden illumination of a 
 banked-fire bursting into flame, would rush into an effron- 
 tery of excess or, shamefaced but curious, slink behind the 
 commode for some further knowledge of the mystery. 
 
86 TASKS BY TWILIGHT. 
 
 When, besides this new and morality-teaching informa- 
 tion we are able to offer to the young an improvement of 
 self in the child, an immortality of the physical self in 
 procreation, and to demonstrate the injury to the repro- 
 ductive power of abuse or excess or wrong of any kind, 
 nay, more, the prospect under such conduct of extermina- 
 tion and of a complete and everlasting death as far as any 
 demonstration goes, we certainly offer a motive for purity 
 such as has never existed. In the vista of our morality 
 lies perfection and eternity. 
 
 With these changed conditions silence instead of a sup- 
 port is a weakness. We need not fear light and knowl- 
 edge, when every ray of light and every bit of knowledge 
 is an additional information on the advantage of morality 
 for the greatest greatness, Immortality in the Child. 
 
 If a young woman comes to marriage and maternity 
 with no knowledge of her creative powers, and no practi- 
 cal knowledge of the care of babies and children', she 
 acquires this information by her own experience. At this 
 late date the knowledge thus acquired must be at the 
 expense of herself, the husband, and the child. Her 
 ignorance will endanger the unity of the marriage relation, 
 the happiness of herself and husband, her bodily health, 
 and the life of her first children. It is probably no exag- 
 geration to say that one half of the unhappy marriages 
 which pain so much every thoughtful person are due to the 
 ignorance of the wife, the husband, or both. Probably two 
 thirds of the deaths of children between birth and the 
 second year are due to the ignorance of the mother. 
 
EDUCATION OF GIRLS. 8/ 
 
 The treatment by young mothers of their first children 
 is often so absurd that it excites laughter in spite of one's 
 pity for the poor little ones. There must be also a very 
 large percentage of the ill-health, of young women and 
 mothers which is due to their ignorance of themselves, 
 and of the processes of nature to which they are subject. 
 
 The value and importance of motherhood, its necessity 
 for the perpetuation for her and her husband's life, its 
 value as a hold upon her husband, as filling the declining 
 years of life with happiness, and as a means of maintain- 
 ing and prolonging health and life in the mother herself, 
 should be the one thing constantly kept in sight in the 
 education of girls. 
 
 To have children is natural not to have children is 
 unnatural. To be natural that is, to follow what we call 
 the laws of nature is to follow the path of least resistance 
 in life, and therefore to accomplish the greatest results 
 with the least effort. To follow any unnatural course 
 must cause a great deal more friction than would other- 
 wise be the case. 
 
 From these considerations we can understand why it is 
 that married women have a better prospect of life than 
 unmarried ones, and that childbirth, instead of increasing 
 the death-rate amongst women, diminishes it. ' It is 
 
 1 The great insurance companies now making an active canvass for 
 women's life insurance have established rates on the best figures attain- 
 able. Their investigations on American and English figures give 
 women bearing children the best prospect of life. They explain it in 
 figures by charging the childless woman, single or married, five dollars 
 a thousand more than the mother. 
 
88 TASKS BY TWILIGHT. 
 
 unfortunate that there are no statistics as to effects of 
 childbirth in marriage itself. But there are some side 
 lights which give indications on this subject. Fifty years 
 ago such a thing as the prevention of childbirth in respect- 
 able families in this country was practically unknown. 
 Abortions were rare. At that period the general sanitary 
 conditions in which women lived were much inferior to 
 what they are now. The general death-rate, and conse- 
 quently the total amount of sickness under similar con- 
 ditions, was much greater then than now. At that time 
 such a thing as a gynecological chair in a doctor's office 
 in general practice was a curiosity. It is now the rule 
 rather than the exception. 
 
 The peculiar diseases and weaknesses to which women 
 are now so subject were very little known thirty years 
 ago. These things all point in one direction ; that is, 
 while the general health of the community has improved, 
 the health of married women has retrograded. This 
 retrogression, as far as I am informed, is largely confined 
 to the reproductive organs, or to secondary effects arising 
 from disorders in these functions. 
 
 We thus see not only specialists for the diseases of 
 women, but we also find the gynecological chair becom- 
 ing an article of furniture in the office of the general 
 practitioner. 
 
 With this diminution in the health of women, we also 
 find a diminution in the average number of children they 
 bear. This diminution of health and of children is pre- 
 sumably due to a common cause which is the artificial 
 
EDUCATION OF GIRLS. 89 
 
 prevention of childbearing. The object of these vile 
 practices is to avoid pain and trouble. Instead of accom- 
 plishing this purpose, it will thus be seen that a contrary 
 result has been brought about. Instead of less pain and 
 trouble, these practices cause more suffering. But this 
 fact in reference to the physical results of these practices 
 is only a small part of the truth. The absence of children 
 in a family, and especially their absence through artificial 
 causes means, as we have seen, increased sickness on the 
 part of the wife, and therefore a diminished inclination 
 and capacity for performing her other duties as wife. 
 The hold on the husband weakens, the pleasures and 
 glory of motherhood are past, and desertion or divorce is 
 too often the ending of all chances to happiness. 
 
 The beauty alike of complexion, expression, and youth 
 is longer maintained in the mother than in the fruitless. 
 Childless wives, or those who, having one or two chil- 
 dren, prevent or destroy further conceptions, as a rule 
 have a drawn, pallid, and tired look. Premature old age 
 stamps them for this error, and they lose at once the 
 glories of immortality in the child, and their beauties and 
 attractions as individuals in the to-day. 
 
 The life of no animal or plant is complete without the 
 flower, fruit, and seed. It is the reproductive moment in 
 life which is the glory of all living things. Man is no 
 exception to this rule, but, rather, being the highest pin- 
 nacle of the wonderful complexity of life in the world, is 
 also the most glorious in his reproductive moments. 
 Sterility in man takes from him all possibilities of a happy 
 
90 TASKS BY TWILIGHT. 
 
 or complete life, and leaves him to sink at last in a miser- 
 able, lonely, and abject death. From these reasons it 
 must be evident that the Bible statement of the reproach 
 to women, which sterility was, is pre-eminently true. It is, 
 from every consideration, a misfortune and a disgrace for 
 a married woman to be without children. For every true 
 man, it cannot but be a continual matter of regret to have 
 a childless wife. So the rule has been laid down for the 
 government of my family, that any woman coming into it 
 as a wife, who has no children within a reasonable period, 
 must be cast out. For all the intents and purposes of 
 life, for all the intents and purposes of marriage she is 
 no more a woman than a eunuch would be. She might 
 as well be a block of wood cut in the semblance of the 
 female. 
 
 No matter what advance women may make, and no 
 matter what turn evolution may take in regard to the 
 position of the sexes, as long as we have death together 
 with life we must have reproduction ; and as the impres- 
 sions of youth are the most permanent and lasting, the 
 best manner of securing the performance of the reproduc- 
 tive function should be taught boys and girls from the first. 
 
 The object of accentuating this subject so much in this 
 chapter is that the so-called higher and better education, 
 at this time prevailing, leaves these matters altogether out 
 of sight, and with girls tends to the creation of habits of 
 thought and ambitions inconsistent with maternity. The 
 highest education of the female to-day points her for the 
 grand prizes of life, to the outer struggle of the world ; 
 
EDUCATION OF GIRLS. 91 
 
 whereas the grand prize of life for either man or woman 
 is the Child the child better mentally and physically 
 than the parent. 
 
 From the peculiar necessities of the case, the woman 
 has by far the greatest influence of the two sexe$ upon 
 the child. She has also a greater amount of time and 
 energy to devote to producing and caring for it. Her 
 influence upon the child arises from the necessity of her 
 care for it. The time and life energy she devotes to the 
 child indelibly imprints her influence upon it. 
 
 No education of the girl can by any possibility be good 
 that neglects these most important of all subjects. To 
 educate a woman and make no allusion to reproduction, 
 to marriage, and childbirth, would be like a description of 
 the heavens without mentioning the sun. 
 
 There are two classes of men who see a great deal of 
 nude women artists and physicians. Artists see women 
 as models. As a rule art is not conducive to morality, 
 artists being notably rather loose on sexual matters. Phy- 
 sicians, on the other hand, make, as a general thing, ex- 
 ceptionally good husbands and fathers, and, with all their 
 opportunities with foolish women, seldom fall away in 
 morals, certainly not more often than the average man as 
 far as common opinion goes. This difference in these 
 two occupations goes to show that nature known to 
 the full, as it is by physicians, is not liable to mislead, 
 while nature seen on the outside, with the glamour of 
 secret meetings, is on the contrary a temptation to error. 
 Therefore the whole of nature should be taught. 
 
92 TASKS BY TWILIGHT. 
 
 There are two races of people only who have made, and 
 continue to make, the bearing of children a matter of 
 the first importance. Equally there are but two races of 
 people who have maintained their recognizable unity 
 through the ages of time since we first heard of them. 
 These two races are the Chinese and the Hebrews. 
 Consider well this fact of all the brilliant civilizations of 
 Assyria, Egypt, Tyre, Carthage, Greece, Rome, not one 
 has left a recognizable people to perpetuate its greatness. 
 But the Jewish people and the Chinese people maintain 
 their vitality and force to this day. 
 
 The main point in the religion of the Chinese is, that 
 the future happiness of man in another world depends on 
 having a son to maintain certain sacrifices to his spirit 
 after death. This principle having been maintained from 
 the early times to this day, the race has been able to hold 
 its individuality in spite of famine or plenty, defeat or 
 victory. While certain causes have arrested the develop- 
 ment of its civilization, the race is ready at any time 
 for an advance, whereas many civilized people without 
 this safeguard have disappeared forever, and been 
 replaced by barbarous clans who were sound on the 
 question of reproduction. 
 
 The Jewish domestic life is admirable. Few of their 
 women fall into the horrible impasse of a life of shame. 
 Married life with them is more generally happy than 
 among any of the peoples with whom they reside. 
 The cardinal point of marriage with Jews is children, 
 and the proper care and rearing of them. Rachael cried 
 
EDUCATION OF GIRLS. 93 
 
 "Give me children or I die." Thus though at fault 
 in some things, and scattered to the four winds of heaven, 
 the Jews by this intimate regard for reproduction have 
 perpetuated themselves from immemorial time, and have 
 seen one civilized people after another die and dis- 
 appear. 
 
 The lesson from these two races is that a people sound 
 on the question of reproduction may consider all errors 
 on other questions as venial, for they may be cured by 
 time. Without reproduction there is but one outcome, 
 permanent death to the race. 
 
 Reproduction is therefore the one and only thing to 
 which everything else should be sacrificed. 
 
 I refrain from laying down any details in the education 
 of girls. Such a course might lead to the obscuring of the 
 great principle of reproduction which I wish to leave 
 clear and comprehensible. There is, however, one cau- 
 tion to be considered in the method of education men- 
 tioned long ago. The translator of the wise Bishop 
 Lugnon says : " Do not allow your daughters to be 
 taught letters by a man though he be a St. Paul or a St. 
 Francis of Assissium the saints are in Heaven." 
 
 The caution is probably against the old method of 
 the well-to-do to educate their daughters separately 
 and privately. In this case they would necessarily be 
 much thrown with their instructor, often perhaps alone. 
 If this be a correct interpretation, the old Bishop was 
 wise and his advice should be followed. 
 
 Girls should be educated as highly in body and mind 
 
94 TASKS BY TWILIGHT. 
 
 as possible. They should be made as self-reliant and as 
 strong as possible. 
 
 All things, however, should be made and explained to 
 be secondary, and mere incidents of the great duty and 
 glory of woman which is reproduction, and not only 
 reproduction, but reproduction with improvement. 
 
 A wife without children can never be sure of her hus- 
 band, for the tie that holds them together in sterility is 
 purely artificial. The natural tie is the inseparable union 
 of the two lives in the offspring. The vows of marriage 
 are based on the necessity of giving to man a security in 
 the paternity of his children which would be impossible 
 without chastity on the part of his wife. But the marriage 
 license, the marriage ring, and the marriage vow do not 
 make the bond. The real union is the child. The cir- 
 cumstance and ceremony of marriage, which differ with 
 different peoples and religions, are but the devices of man 
 to make reliable and certain to the male and female, 
 through the security of paternity, the only true bond, 
 that is the child, in which both lives unite. 
 
 Girls should be trained to the truth that by labor alone 
 can they hope for health. Health of body, of mind, and 
 of morals comes by work. To have health in full the in- 
 dividual must use her faculties and muscles, and perform 
 the functions of nature, the principle of which is repro- 
 duction. 
 
 The work of the girl, from the necessity of her nature, 
 must in nearly all cases be limited somewhat as to the 
 kind and to the place where performed. 
 
EDUCATION OF GIRLS. 95 
 
 As to the kind, from the reasons set forth in the chap- 
 ter on Sex ; and as to place, on account of the necessity 
 of maintaining the girl's virginity before marriage, and of 
 securing the paternity of the offspring to the husband 
 afterward. 
 
 The same exposure to temptation and violence cannot, 
 as a rule, be risked with girls as with boys. We are there- 
 fore led to the conclusion that the energies and capacities 
 of the girl, at least before her character is matured, should 
 be developed in the home. 
 
 Without reflection it might be thought that this limita- 
 tion would preclude the full development of the girl's 
 brain by high scientific study. No such necessity, how- 
 ever, exists. Besides the possibility of bringing any 
 science into the home, the home duties themselves for 
 their perfect performance demand science and study, and 
 to-day give quite as much opportunity for original re- 
 search and discovery as any other occupation. 
 
 The sanitary arrangements, ventilation, and drainage 
 of the home, are of vital importance, and no mind is too 
 mighty to be occupied with these questions. For in- 
 stance, in the matter of ventilation, the Foundling Hos- 
 pital in London and the Monkey House in the Zoological 
 Gardens of the same city had some years ago a new 
 system of ventilation applied in them. The result was a 
 reduction of the mortality of the children and of the 
 monkeys about one half ; the reduction being specially 
 noticeable in lung diseases, consumption, etc. 
 
 Cooking is a science. Good cooking is the putting of 
 
g6 TASKS BY TWILIGHT. 
 
 food through at least a partial digestion, and the combina- 
 tion of one or more kinds of it into an agreeable and 
 advantageous dish. 
 
 Food while being cooked undergoes chemical changes. 
 These changes should facilitate digestion. Part of the 
 mechanical and chemical work necessary to the assimila- 
 tion of man's food is now done in the kitchen. 
 
 Owing to the ignorance of our housekeepers as to the 
 fundamental principles of cooking, its chemistry, etc., 
 our kitchen work is done at the best imperfectly, and 
 often the cooking instead of improving the digestibility 
 of the food impairs it. 
 
 The economy of the diet is likewise a science. Man 
 requires at frequent intervals food to replenish the waste 
 of his system, and in early life to provide for growth. 
 According to the use of muscle or brain, of force in 
 resisting cold or heat, and to many other things, man's 
 requirements for food vary. So what would be an eco- 
 nomical diet under one condition would be an exceedingly 
 expensive one under another. Not, perhaps, in money, 
 but economical or expensive in the expenditure of vital 
 force in securing the requisite nourishment for the body. 
 
 The appetite is the guide our instinct gives us. At the 
 Arctic Circle we crave fats and heat-producing foods, 
 while in the tropics, condiments to stimulate the sluggish 
 secretions, together with cooling fruits and farinaceous 
 diets, are what we generally desire. 
 
 But in most households the appetite is more servant to 
 the cook than the cook is servant to the appetite. Were 
 
EDUCATION OF GIRLS. 97 
 
 this not so it is still true that experience, on which the 
 instinct of appetite is built, was had by the race largely 
 before the cooking of food took its present development. 
 It seems therefore but reasonable to think that scientific 
 study, combining the facts found in experience, would 
 enable us at once to enjoy our food more, and by diminish- 
 ing the energy required at present to digest it, would 
 liberate so much more force to the improvement of the 
 race. 
 
 To arrange a well-combined meal, one at once agree- 
 able and containing the proper amount of phosphates, 
 nitrogens, carbons, etc. required by the activities, climatic 
 situations, etc., of any individual, and at the same time not 
 overload his stomach with useless work, is an art. 
 
 It is most probable that a meal has never been eaten 
 that was economically perfect, that is, that contained just 
 the requisite portion of nourishment of each variety 
 required without an excess of any. The feeding of chil- 
 dren is equally an important subject of study. 
 
 The decoration of the home offers a wide scope for 
 artistic taste, and other things such as music, etc. may be 
 highly developed. 
 
 The science of reproduction, the most important with 
 which mankind has to deal, as has been said, is eminently 
 an appropriate, nay, a necessary study in the home. The 
 whole of Anatomy and Medicine are not too much for this 
 one study. To properly bear children, to care for one- 
 self or others before and after childbirth, to preserve the 
 lives of the new-born, and to bring them through many 
 
98 TASK'S BY TWILIGHT. 
 
 dangers to be fathers and mothers again, these are things 
 of the greatest import. Every one should understand 
 them. 
 
 Give, when possible, a reward for work. In the first 
 place, this gives play to the desire to do something, gen- 
 erally found in the young, and connects efforts with results 
 gratifying to the individual by motives of self-interest. In 
 the second place, there is in this method an opportunity to 
 teach girls the relation of the circulating medium to their 
 own work, and to the purchase of that of others. The 
 value of money is often never understood by women. The 
 result of this is usually undue friction in the home, through 
 bad economy in some directions and wasteful extravagance 
 in others. A girl should therefore receive a reward for 
 labor, and should be taught to use such pay for the pur- 
 chase of those things she needs and desires ; and, further, 
 should be given commissions to purchase those things the 
 parents supply for her beyond her own means and also in 
 general matters. Due care must be taken not to drown 
 family affection with too cold a flood of business. The 
 error, however, is so universally in the other direction, that 
 the caution seems hardly necessary. 
 
 The mind of a child is immature ; while more amenable 
 to truth and reason than to anything else, it becomes 
 easily tired and discouraged. Ignorance seizes the imagi- 
 nation, and paints so gorgeously the unknown, as to leave 
 the present life dull and tame by contrast. Therefore, 
 you should enlist self-interest not only in the often unap- 
 preciated and distant future, but in the to-day. Give small 
 
EDUCATION OF GIRLS. 99 
 
 wages for cooking or other household work, or rewards of 
 some kind as spurs to effort. 
 
 It is wise also to show the girl the hollowness that lies 
 behind the gaudy tints of romance. Imagination generally 
 deals largely with wealth. It will not be difficult to show 
 the girl the emptiness of mere money. Take her behind 
 the scenes of the rich woman's existence so that she can 
 see the truth for herself. 
 
 While a young man I spent some time on the then wild 
 western plains, in a geological expedition. We lived in 
 tents, slept on the ground in blankets, lived on bacon and 
 hard-tack with beans and game as occasional luxuries, and 
 worked hard, often rising at three or four o'clock in the 
 morning to commence our journeys. I look back to no 
 period of my unmarried life with more pleasure, or as 
 having been happier. I have always remembered this as 
 a comment on the part wealth plays in happiness. In this 
 connection Colton's saying should be remembered. I 
 quote from memory : 
 
 " In estimating the value of money two things should 
 not be forgotten : ist, that there are some things that 
 money cannot buy and those the best ; 2d, that there are 
 some evils that money cannot avert and those the worst." 
 
 It may be even well to show her under safeguards the 
 misery and degradation of a prostitute's life. When one of 
 these at a certain age has come to drink, no more speak- 
 ing sermon for virtue could be made than the spectacle 
 of her, in her drunken and dirty disgrace. 
 
 The life of girls brought up at home has but one dis- 
 
100 TASKS BY TWILIGHT. 
 
 advantage, the lack of opportunity through experience 
 and contest to develop self-reliance and character. This 
 being the weak point, much energy should be devoted to 
 counteracting it, not, however, by endangering the value of 
 the home-life which creates the weakness, but by throw- 
 ing responsibilities on the girl at every good opportunity 
 and by such other means as may be thought of. Under 
 proper safeguards the young girl should be given large 
 Opportunity to become acquainted with and used to the 
 presence of young men. 
 
 The French system of strict surveillance and seclusion 
 of girls until marriage has not been satisfactory. French 
 wives are not prolific, nor are they noted for virtue. 
 Novels are usually somewhat of a criterion of the morals 
 of those who read them. Judging by this standard the 
 French are not particularly pure in wedlock. On the 
 other hand, the extreme New England system of license 
 to young people before marriage is equally devoid of 
 advantage in securing morality or progeny. A reasonable 
 medium is what is required. A girl brought up with a 
 knowledge of herself, imbued with the religion of child- 
 bearing, and acquainted with the necessity of purity in 
 securing the devotion of a husband, the father of her 
 future children, must acquire additional dignity of char- 
 acter. As she knows the tremendous importance of her 
 destiny as a mother, a perpetuator and improver of her- 
 self and of her race, so will she guard her virtue and repu- 
 tation so essential to make her destiny grand. 
 
THOUGHTS. 
 
 THE arch that bears up society in its progress has, as 
 all arches have, a foundation at each end. On one 
 side is matrimony, giving the security of the paternity to 
 children, and on the other side is the security of enjoying 
 the results of labor or the security of property. Both 
 of these foundations have been called on to support off- 
 shoots not in the line of the arch as a matter of beauty or 
 as a matter of strength. On the matrimonial side such 
 aberrations as the guarding and imprisonment of women 
 of the polygamous Turks. On the property side such 
 errors as the creation of monopolies and the inequitable 
 distribution of wealth. 
 
 The progress of man involves differentiation, the ca- 
 pacity to improve on what has gone before, and requires 
 necessarily that some individuals should surpass other 
 individuals around them. Nature provides for this by 
 making every living being different from every other. 
 Some therefore must be superior to others or inferior to 
 others, or more commonly, both superior to some and 
 inferior to some. 
 
 Mediocre qualitied mankind has ever an intense jeal- 
 ousy of this superiority, which is decreed by nature. 
 
 Mediocrity carps at greatness. It recognizes great- 
 101 
 
102 TALKS BY TWILIGHT. 
 
 ness only under compulsion. Everlastingly it repeats to 
 its littleness a denial and skepticism of superiority. When 
 it catches a great man slipping or falling, it always satis- 
 fies its repressed feeling by pushing him down or jump- 
 ing on his prostrate reputation. Mediocrity so much 
 hates greatness that it will even kick the dead. 
 
 Superiority and Inferiority fortunately, when they know 
 themselves, have none of this. In fact it is almost a form 
 of greatness when man recognizes that he does not 
 possess the qualities to make him great. The more marked 
 however the superiority is, the less jealousy is awakened. 
 A man first showing unusual mental power is at a disad- 
 vantage with his neighbors, who have looked upon him 
 as no better than themselves. Hence the saying that a 
 prophet is not without honor, save in his own country. 
 
 Humanity moves like the whirlwind in a circle, and, at 
 the same time, it moves slowly forward. Like the whirl- 
 wind, too, the only movement we can see at the time is 
 that of the circle ; to notice the progressive one we must 
 look back. 
 
 In the circle of human activity error continually 
 returns. One form of error that invariably drives human 
 progress back is the attempt to escape the division of 
 property according to individual effort. The first motive 
 that man has for work is that he shall be secured in the 
 enjoyment of the results of his labor. If he cannot have 
 the fruit of his work, the whole motive for doing any 
 work is in great measure destroyed. The first step of man's 
 progress must have been some form of the recognition 
 
THOUGHTS. 103 
 
 of property. As this security diminishes, so is the motive 
 that leads to progress weakened ; as it is increased, so is 
 the motive that leads to progress strengthened. 
 
 The complete recognition of individual property is the 
 highest form that this motive has taken. As the results 
 of labor are secure, other things being equal, so is prog- 
 ress slow or rapid. 
 
 The ever-recurring stumbling-block in man's prog- 
 ress has been, that, with complex organization, and the 
 power this gives to acquire wealth, has always come an 
 unjust distribution of this wealth, and one at variance with 
 the fair remuneration of labor, or by entails, trusts, etc., 
 removing the motive for labor. 
 
 Thus the foundation of every social arch bearing up a 
 past civilization has at certain stages of progress been 
 sapped. Civilization hitherto has always come to a point 
 where it had no strength to resist the barbarian, either at 
 its centre or on its frontiers. When this principle of 
 giving to the laborer his just due and returns for effort is 
 dead, and man has not a proper and fair security in the 
 enjoyment of the fruits of his labor, barbarism seems to 
 spring from the very loins of society itself. It is not nec- 
 essary that there should be barbarians on the outside, 
 These grow up of themselves, created by the condition of 
 society after it reaches a certain point of wealth. Society 
 in its progress develops tendencies that not only arrest 
 progress but so far have always brought temporary 
 retrogression. 
 
 Some speak of the great Roman civilization as having 
 
104 T ASICS BY TWILIGHT. 
 
 been destroyed by the outer barbarians. This is ridicu- 
 lous. The empire, like some old trees, was rotten at the 
 core, weak and ready to topple over at the least gust, 
 while still sending out new shoots at its extremities. 
 Rome died like all great civilizations before it, from 
 within and not from without. 
 
 With the decay of the one foundation there has always 
 gone on a decay of the other or matrimonial one. It is 
 not essential to go more at large into this support of the 
 arch, as the importance of the certainty of paternity is set 
 forth sufficiently in the chapter on Matrimony. 
 
 In the present civilization decay has started and death 
 has seemed imminent, but Liberty and legal Equality 
 came, as in the American and French Revolutions, and 
 saved society. 
 
 It must be remembered that while equality amongst 
 men never has, and while progress is possible never will 
 exist, still the equality before the law and the liberty of 
 every man to enjoy the returns of his efforts, at least to a 
 certain extent, are an essential not only to progress but 
 to the existence of the highest forms of society. 
 
 We have never enjoyed this ideal condition in its com- 
 pleteness. As our population in America grows dense, as 
 wealth increases, and the free public lands disappear, we 
 depart farther and farther from it. Every day it becomes 
 harder for man to escape from the circumstances of his 
 birth. Some are born rich, some are born poor, and as 
 they are born so more and more do they tend to remain 
 irrespective of labor. 
 
THOUGHTS. 105 
 
 Fortunately, there never has been a period in the his- 
 tory of man when work and judgment could not and have 
 not lifted him from the very lowest to the very highest 
 paths of life. No matter what condition society may fall 
 into, remember, my children, this fact To work and 
 judgment all things are possible. 
 
 As has been said, one of the greatest motives for prog- 
 ress ever given man is that he may enjoy the fruits of his 
 labor in his child, or renewed, immortalized self. 
 
 Thus inheritance cannot be overthrown. Yet it is in- 
 heritance more than anything that fixes men in classes. 
 We all know very well that the rich and the poor do not 
 receive the same justice, the same rewards, or the same 
 punishments for the same work or the same crimes. Con- 
 sequently the class divisions inheritance does so much to 
 perpetuate are a menace to society. In classes is injus- 
 tice. Time and time again societies have been built up 
 by the division of the people into classes. Theoretically 
 this system seems, from some points of view at least, capa- 
 ble of great strength. For instance, the ruling class will 
 limit its breeding within its own lines, and ought to pro- 
 duce superior rulers. The Hindoo system is the most 
 striking one of this kind now surviving. Practically, 
 however, class societies have only proved advantageous 
 at a stage of human progress now passed. 
 
 It is clear that the full power of the motive inheritance 
 gives demands children. The highest and only complete 
 earthly happiness man has is the family. One of the 
 essentials of the family is children. There is no family 
 
106 TASKS BY TWILIGHT. 
 
 without children. Creation and reproduction is the 
 crowning achievement of man, as it is that of the flowers, 
 fruits, and of all vegetables and animals. 
 
 Children we must have. Yet it is also clear that 
 natural increase amongst mankind, unrestricted by the 
 horrors of disease, famine, war, and crime, would very 
 soon fill this poor little world with people until not even 
 standing-room would remain. Amuse yourself for a 
 moment in calculating the possibilities of human increase, 
 and see where it will lead you. Remember at the same 
 time that such conditions never continue to exist, and 
 that in the top of society the tendency is ever to exter- 
 mination. 
 
 Another difficulty of inheritance is its effect in remov- 
 ing the necessity of labor. In this country most of our 
 prominent families that leave inheritance disappear in 
 about the fourth generation. This can be attributed to 
 the absence of motive for work, the consequent non-use 
 of the faculties and powers that brought the family into 
 prominence, and the inevitable atrophy and weakening of 
 those powers by non-use. This loss of power by non-use 
 has only to be mentioned to cause every reflecting person 
 to recognize its truth. Physically and mentally we deteri- 
 orate and lose power when we do not use our forces. 
 This danger, my children, I especially caution you to 
 avoid. 
 
 Goods and property are nothing in importance com- 
 pared to the conservation and transmission of the powers 
 that acquired them. Without the power, as history will 
 
THOUGHTS. lO/ 
 
 show you, the property, in spite of everything you can 
 do, will disappear, if not in your children, in theirs. 
 
 As an illustration of the effect of the use or non-use of 
 an organ, the experiment of W. Preyer (University of 
 Jena), on the embryo of the land salamander may be 
 cited. The land salamander is a small reptile with lungs 
 and legs. In the experiment the embryo was taken from 
 the egg before it was hatched, placed in tepid water so 
 that it could not get out and breathe the air, and was 
 properly fed. The lungs remained undeveloped, gills 
 appeared and took their place. The legs became atrophied, 
 and fins and a strong rudder-like tail were the organs 
 of locomotion. We here see the normal organs unused 
 atrophy or remain undeveloped, while, on the other 
 hand, changed conditions called forth organs formerly 
 possessed by evolutionary ancestors. The fish in the 
 Mammoth Cave have lost their eyes from non-use. In- 
 stance after instance can be given of this. The whole 
 history of evolution is full of them. 
 
 Teach then continuously that property while good can 
 be obtained by the able, but cannot be long held by the 
 incompetent. Teach that by use alone can the faculties 
 and powers be maintained. Wealth is a mere incident 
 of capacity. Think and study ever to maintain by use 
 capacity. If you succeed, the wealth will care for itself. 
 
 W T ell-intentioned people are ever perceiving the injus- 
 tice and suffering to which mankind is heir. So we have 
 prophets, theologians, founders of religions who have 
 endeavored earnestly to lead men so their ills would not 
 
108 TASKS BY TWILIGHT. 
 
 occur. It has been in vain. Man suffers still ; injustice 
 still usurps the judgment-seat. 
 
 In our own time we have all sorts of efforts going on in 
 the same direction. Each one proving something ; each 
 one, let us hope, doing some good, and doing work that 
 will lead on to the future perfect, immortal race. We 
 have those who say that the remedy is the eating of 
 nothing but vegetables, others that it lies in the drinking 
 of nothing but water, but the most complete and prompt 
 remedy for the ills. of man ever preached is undoubtedly 
 the proposed turning of women into men. This idea, if 
 ever accepted, would end the race and its ills with it in 
 one generation. 
 
 It is more than doubtful whether woman can equal man 
 in the outside struggle for life which man has thus far 
 carried on. It is certain that she cannot do it and bear 
 children. Childbearing is a handicap in the open fight of 
 life. Coming, as it must, in the most important age of 
 activity, it cannot but place the mother at once at a dis- 
 advantage in that fight. 
 
 Thus woman, to be equal to man and fill his place, can- 
 not be a mother, and if she successfully competes against 
 him, extermination is the curtain to end the play of 
 humanity. 
 
 At this moment Socialism cries out that it alone holds 
 the Key to cure all man's ills. Its first tenet is that all 
 property shall be the State's. The individual can own 
 nothing. The motive for individual effort and labor 
 seems swept away by this system completely. If a man 
 
THOUGHTS. 
 
 cannot enjoy the results of his labor he has certainly no 
 object in working. Under such circumstances it would 
 be the policy of every man to work as little as he could, 
 and to secure as much of the work of others as possible. 
 The work of the Social State must therefore be done 
 under compulsion. 
 
 An incident of the system is that all newspapers, books, 
 publications, etc., would be printed and controlled by the 
 State. Thus criticism of its policies, acts, or even of the 
 improper acts of its officers would have no existence. As 
 the socialist attacks the one foundation of our arch, that 
 is the certainty of man in the enjoyment of the fruits of 
 his labor, so he also attacks the other, the certainty of man 
 in the paternity of his children, and every advanced socialist 
 is an enemy of marriage and an advocate of free love. 
 
 Socialism would destroy every motive that has led to 
 progress. Its own picture of a government without critics, 
 without variety, without object or progress, is the most 
 dull, monotonous, and unpromising picture of life I have 
 ever had presented to me. No enjoyment of your own 
 labor, no houses, no children you could safely call yours, 
 free love and no more provision than any other system has 
 for preventing the inevitable pressure of population against 
 the means of subsistence. 
 
 Shirking, idleness, and lust governed by uncriticizable 
 tyranny. This is Socialism. 
 
 It is an illustration of how little power all our learning 
 and command of natural forces has when any considerable 
 class is ground down too hard and is the victim of injustice. 
 
IIO TASKS BY TWILIGHT. 
 
 The oppressed class will fly to any proposed remedy, no 
 matter how unreasonable, if it will but stir up a change. 
 So come police to maintain order that should maintain 
 itself. 
 
 While my views are opposed to Socialism in the various 
 forms now proposed, I cannot overlook the tendency of 
 society towards many of its tenets. In fact, this tendency 
 seems necessary for the welfare of society in many phases 
 of its development. What appears to us not in harmony 
 with the principles of human progress may, in better form 
 and with a better population, be a means to accomplish 
 better social results. 
 
 All these follies, quackeries, and fanaticisms have their 
 birth in injustice. Where you find fanatics and revolu- 
 tionists there exists WRONG. 
 
 Of the medicines offered to society, and at times forced 
 down its throat, some are good, some are bad, some are 
 prescribed from legitimate inquiry and investigation, 
 others are mere quackeries for the deception of mankind 
 to the benefit of a selfish inventor. Like the medicines 
 offered to the individual, some of the social nostrums do 
 good, others do harm, but not one has been found to avert 
 death. Individuals die at about the usual period in spite 
 of all our medicines. Societies die in spite of all pre- 
 scriptions. Let us hope that this will not always be so. 
 In the meantime, we must distrust our loud-mouthed doc- 
 tors and take their prescriptions, if at all, on the homoeo- 
 pathic plan. 
 
 Remember in your efforts at improvement that the way 
 
THOUGHTS. Ill 
 
 is more by building up the new from or upon the old than 
 in a total overthrow of this. The history of evolution 
 shows us what wonders have resulted from this building 
 process, and how the useless or detrimental may be peace- 
 fully and insensibly dropped in progress. The pages of 
 paleontology show us as clearly armies upon armies of 
 living creatures lost and exterminated while confronting 
 too rapid and too radical changes. The history of the 
 English race seems to indicate that a conservative prog- 
 ress is equally best suited to humanity. The evolution 
 of the self government of this race has always been along 
 conservative lines. At the same time, its system is to-day 
 far ahead of that of any other race, although some, like 
 the French, were at times upsetting everything in the 
 abuses of government and apparently leading the vanguard 
 of progress. 
 
 Natural conditions have been changed. They are ever 
 changing. Therefore a well-proved natural condition 
 need not of necessity require the endurance of a well- 
 recognized evil. The change of natural conditions, how- 
 ever, must always be along the lines of natural advance. 
 What cannot be resisted or destroyed should be utilized. 
 When societies decay and die, families need not. 
 
 Man to live a healthy and useful life must observe cer- 
 tain facts of nature, and live in harmony with them. He 
 must have sufficient exercise, plenty of fresh air, a nutri- 
 tious diet, sleep, rest, etc. As it is with the individual so 
 it is with society. Certain natural laws must be observed 
 if the society is to have a healthy and useful life, with 
 
112 TASKS BY TWILIGHT. 
 
 strength to reproduce itself improved. Amongst these 
 laws is that one which demands that man to work and 
 progress must have a distinct, individually tangible 
 motive. The two great motives, as we have seen, without 
 which the further development of man is impossible, are 
 the certainty of the paternity of the children, and the cer- 
 tainty of man in the enjoyment of the results of his 
 labor. 
 
 No civilization has existed without these. For progress, 
 the first must be complete with a modicum at least of the 
 second. The second never has been complete. When 
 it does so live, it may be that the key to permanent pros- 
 perity will be found. 
 
 In the knowledge of nature we progress. We study, 
 investigate, discover. We potter about the locked door 
 of nature, that is the immediate limit to our view of the 
 first cause, to find that the key has been laying under our 
 noses all the time. This door opened we have progressed, 
 but we are again in immediate presence of a door that 
 shuts out the view of the first cause as completely as 
 before. 
 
 Let us hope that the solution will soon come. In the 
 meantime we must work in harmony with the facts we 
 know and may discover. With patience and a conscien- 
 tious search for truth, truth will be found. 
 
 If the future glory of the race is to be enjoyed by us, 
 we must reproduce. We must have children, and thus 
 send our vital flame of life, our own identity, marching on 
 to future perfection. Never, under any circumstances, lose 
 
THOUGHTS. 113 
 
 sight of this fundamental necessity of human life and 
 human progress. 
 
 Human nature has been substantially the same during 
 at least the historic period of man's existence. The 
 motives actuating man to good or evil have not changed 
 in their natures. Periods of virtue have been succeeded 
 by periods of vice ; vice has been supplanted by vjirtue ; 
 prosperity has been followed by distress, distress by pros- 
 perity. Sometimes self-sacrifice, patriotism, and bravery 
 have been dominant, again selfishness, treachery, and 
 cowardice have been most prominent. Still human nature 
 in these changes has remained the same. The differing 
 conditions of society have been due to differing motives 
 actuating man. 
 
 Thus you will perceive, my children, the vital impor- 
 tance of always keeping before you the grand motives 
 leading to effort, courage, and progress. The motive 
 makes the man. 
 
 A French proverb says, Ceriestquele premier pas quico&te. 
 It is true that the first effort to do anything whatsoever is 
 the most difficult, and requires the most energy. Each 
 repetition makes the thing done more easy. The subor- 
 dinate machinery of nerves and muscles act at last with- 
 out conscious effort. This is most completely illustrated 
 perhaps in piano playing. The beginner has to observe 
 and think of the motion of the fingers and the position of 
 the keys while reading the music. The accomplished 
 player thinks of neither fingers nor keys. His fingers act 
 with wonderful rapidity and accuracy. What is true of 
 
114 TASKS BY TWILIGHT. 
 
 the nerves and muscles is doubtless true of the brain. 
 Whatever train of thought we set up or permit must make 
 its repetition easier. Such modes of thought or mental 
 action as we become habituated to at last become a part 
 of ourselves and may be presumed to influence ourselves 
 -renewed in our children. Consequently, the importance 
 is evident of cultivating in the mind's action as in the 
 bodies, the good, the useful, and the high, and of avoiding 
 the bad, the useless, and the low. 
 
 While it is true that man naturally possesses reproduc- 
 tive powers that would, if fully exercised, carry population 
 beyond any power of the earth to support it, it is also 
 true that these powers are never fully exercised for any 
 length of time. 
 
 The savage and barbarian overcomes the natural possi- 
 bilities of increase by female infanticide, which custom, 
 prevalent in China, exists in our own great cities as to 
 both male and female infants to an alarming degree. 
 
 But aside from this the development of society has thus 
 far been accompanied by a diminished power of repro- 
 duction. This result of progress has been further 
 increased by a diminished desire, especially on the part 
 of women, to have children ; and the consequent practice 
 of preventitive measures, to which late marriages add 
 additional force. 
 
 Marriages are growing later in all European countries by 
 statistical evidence and in this country by common obser- 
 vation. At the same time, in cities at least, there is a prema- 
 ture development of sexual feeling. Both are bad signs. 
 
THOUGHTS. 115 
 
 The attitude of society toward marriage and the sexual 
 relation is changing. Divorces and separations, recently 
 rare and fatal to social standing, are now more common 
 and are looked upon more leniently. Prostitution, once 
 only known in this country in the slums, now exists in all 
 parts of our cities, and is tolerated. Prostitutes buy in 
 the best stores, walk on the main avenues, and no longer 
 feel driven either to shrink from observation, or put on a 
 brazen assumption to cover their impossible position. 
 
 Prostitution, fatal and deadly as it is, has become in 
 our demoralized civilization almost a respectable business. 
 This degradation and ruin of the woman goes hand in 
 hand with another degradation and ruin of women ac- 
 complished by abortion. This is the killing of conceived 
 but unborn life, the killing of her own renewed self, the 
 killing of her hold on the future. It is usually followed 
 by disease of the reproductive organs. Thus outraged 
 Nature strikes back. 
 
 This strange suppression of the grandest function of 
 humanity, its power of self-perpetuation, is doubly strange, 
 occurring as it does for the most part among the women 
 and amongst the well-to-do. The race, to exist, must re- 
 produce. For this reproduction, women must be mothers. 
 When they are mothers they are practically out of the 
 world-fight, and must depend on men for that part of 
 life's struggle. The destiny of the majority of women 
 must be motherhood, and the necessities of mothers must 
 and will govern the destinies of the sex. It is therefore 
 clear that humanity must disappear, or women must de- 
 
Il6 TASKS BY TWILIGHT. 
 
 pend on men for the outside contest of life. There is no 
 way for a woman to permanently hold a man, except by 
 giving him children, and perpetuating the combined lives 
 of the two creators, father and mother. It certainly is not 
 the desire of the reasonable, nor should it be the policy 
 of the statesman, to encourage the reproduction of the 
 diseased or incapable laggards of society. These indeed 
 breed too much. In their weakness and thoughtless irre- 
 sponsibility they are in a measure protected against the 
 extermination that would benefit the world. They breed 
 because they do not think. The rich or capable think 
 in a little and incomplete way, and so refuse the trouble 
 and responsibilities of the greatness of reproduction. 
 
 It is the rich and the well educated who either can not 
 or will not have children. As societies become rich and in- 
 telligent, they tend to disappear through sterility. They 
 have fewer and fewer children, and at last the breed dies 
 out. 
 
 Idleness is born of prosperity. Prosperity exterminates. 
 Labor alone breeds. Remember this ; guard this point 
 more than any other. Breed you must ; to breed, you 
 must labor ; so labor you must. Idleness is death ; kill 
 it before it kills you. 
 
 Labor is ennobling. It has varying advantages ac- 
 cording to its character. Every one should commence 
 with common labor, but should aspire to the highest. 
 Inferior occupations should not take too much time. 
 They are useful only in youth, when the faculties are 
 undeveloped. A command of detail is one essential of 
 
THOUGHTS. 117 
 
 greatness. It should not be allowed to diminish the 
 other, that is, the command of generalization. Very often 
 men in high place have been lost from their incapacity in 
 detail, quite as often they have been lost from an inca- 
 pacity in generalization. Louis XVI was a good lock- 
 smith but a poor king. Many of the Roman emperors 
 who failed in a military epoch were personally skilful in 
 the use of arms. It may be said here that the command 
 of detail comes best by constant contact with the world, 
 while the power of generalization comes in solitude. Thus 
 a man to be great must mix with the world at times, and 
 at times be alone and free from it. 
 
 The tendencies of civilization are more and more to the 
 industrial type and away from the military. This does 
 not do away now with the necessity of military knowledge 
 for defence. It may be a long time before organized war 
 is done away with. Even when this happens there seems 
 little prospect that the contest of life will be less bitter 
 and destructive than it is. In fact, philosophers claim 
 with some color of reason that the life contest should be 
 cruel, so that the inferior may not survive to clog 
 progress. 
 
 Industrial, as contra-distinguished from a pastoral or 
 intellectual life, is the least likely to maintain a martial or 
 adventurous spirit. Consequently, industrial nations are 
 those at once the richest and the most often conquered. 
 Their riches tempt the spoliation which their cowardice 
 makes possible. On the other hand the industry civilizes 
 and advances,and the superiority of learning and invention 
 
Il8 TASK'S BY TWILIGHT. 
 
 has always been a characteristic of industrial societies. 
 These powers may counteract their weakness in military 
 feeling. 
 
 Civilization has so much increased man's power that 
 he has come to consider dangers from the exterior as 
 naught. It is probably true that our destruction must 
 commence internally, but such vast populations as those 
 of India and China, when once weakness comes to us, 
 may easily form the nucleus of destructive, emigrative 
 invasions similar to those of the past. We, like the ancient 
 peoples of Europe, or even like our own Indians, may be 
 swept away and the land of our birth know us no more. 
 
 Industrial nations, as well as individuals, should remem- 
 ber that it is easier to overcome the obstacles of poverty 
 than to resist the enticements of wealth. 
 
 In considering matters of military defence, it may be 
 useful to recall the tendency through history to a return 
 in warfare from book science, strategy, weapons injurious 
 at a distance, and diminished necessity of personal bravery 
 to courage, short weapons, and lack of science. 
 
 To maintain a spirit equal to an emergency of war is 
 indeed important. To do this the exercise for bodily 
 health should be of a character to develop courage, self- 
 reliance, initiation, and combination. A game like foot- 
 ball does this. Many small things may also prove useful 
 in building up decision, which is an essential in military 
 life. A little rule like this is good. When you go to a 
 barbershop, take the barber you want and not necessarily 
 the barber who wants you. In this, as in all other mat- 
 
THOUGHTS. 119 
 
 tefs, we should be constantly on the watch to improve 
 and become stronger. 
 
 We should never fear criticism from the outside ; we 
 should invite it. Criticism, a spirit of searching always 
 for defects, is so universal as to be presumably useful. 
 We look for the defect to do away with it and improve. 
 While one should be ever alert in this matter in things, 
 methods, children, and self, the spirit of criticism should, 
 be kept one of reform, and in small matters of social in- 
 tercourse should be suppressed. 
 
 When you speak of a person, casually speak of their 
 best qualities and forget their defects. Your hearers will 
 remember this treatment of the absent, and feel themselves 
 safe as to tongue-thrusts when they also are away. There 
 is plenty of spice in picking people to pieces in a gap- 
 eared circle. The listener laughs at the cuts and slashes, 
 but trembles to leave his own reputation in your hands. 
 The success of the slanderer makes no friends. It leads 
 to nothing. Leave this business to others. 
 
 While labor is essential, rest is also good. In cold 
 countries the climate more or less stops work in winter. 
 In such countries not too cold, where science has over- 
 come the more notable drawbacks, such as the continued 
 expenditure of vitality to resist the cold, the strongest 
 civilization now exists. The question may be asked 
 whether this is not due to the temporary cessation of 
 work in winter. Even if work be continued, it is usually 
 of a radically different kind at the different seasons. 
 
 The greatest fertility and vigor in the human race, orig- 
 
I2O TASKS BY TWILIGHT. 
 
 inally in the temperate to warm zone, has with the increase 
 of man's power over the elements moved to the temperate 
 to cold zone. The causes of this are obscure ; but the 
 reasonable rest offered the agricultural masses in a cold 
 winter may be some element in it, when connected with 
 the relief from the excessive cold architecture and science 
 have introduced. 
 
 It is well to recall the fact that science has done little 
 or nothing to alleviate the drain on human vitality hot 
 climates cause. Consequently less improvement has 
 taken place in these than in the colder climates, and less 
 advantageous change is to be anticipated. 
 
 In delicate health rest is good. Some repose and time 
 for reflection, so that one can grasp the generalizations 
 which everyday details drive from you, is very good ; but 
 do not let repose lead you into idleness. 
 
 To wear out is longer in bringing the end and better 
 every way than to rust out. Idle people are both misera- 
 ble and mischievous ; avoid them always from youth to 
 age. Never on any account be one yourself. 
 
 A political saying is that the enemies of to-day should 
 be treated as though they might be the friends of to-mor- 
 row, and the friends of to-day as though they might be 
 the enemies of to-morrow. This is a good maxim when 
 taken with limitations. Always be a true friend and be a 
 hot enemy while enmity must be. To the extent that you 
 are a true friend, friends will be true to you. Not each 
 one, but the average will make up for individual delin- 
 quencies. 
 
THOUGHTS. 121 
 
 Nearly the contrary can be said of enmity. A hot 
 enemy, other things being equal, will have fewest enemies, 
 and strangely enough it is the hard hitter and the full- 
 blooded fighter who re-establishes friendship or turns 
 enemies to friends quickest. 
 
 A fighter with diplomacy will never lack friends. 
 Avoid getting on the wrong side of questions. When in 
 business or a profession be careful to be right before 
 going into important matters. As a lawyer, for instance, 
 never take a case which you believe unjust, never under- 
 take to set up a doctrine you believe untrue. This 
 course will have its inconveniences, and will at times cut 
 off some paying business. It is quite certain that a man 
 is never at his best in contending for a cause in which he 
 does not believe. It is equally certain that a man who 
 defends only what he believes to be true and just will 
 add great force to his character. He will be a stronger 
 man than he otherwise could be. He will achieve 
 success where he otherwise would not. 
 
 Besides all this, such a course must command the 
 respect of every judge, public officer, and citizen, and 
 the confidence of every jury. The eventual outcome of 
 a man's career so ordered must be success. The trouble 
 and disadvantage will only be while he is making his 
 determination known, and by acts securing the belief of 
 the incredulous world in a very unusual rule of business. 
 
 ^Esops Fables are excellent for study. One of these 
 fables has for its subject a wager between the Sun and 
 the Wind, as to which of them could most easily take a 
 
122 TASKS BY TWILIGHT. 
 
 cloak from the body of a certain wayfarer, The Wind 
 tried first. It blew strong, then stronger and stronger, 
 The wayfarer only wrapped his cloak the closer. So the 
 gusty, noisy, violent Wind failed. The Sun, coming out 
 calmly, smiled with warmth upon the scene. The way- 
 farer, soon perspiring, loosed his cloak, and it was not 
 long before he took it off altogether. 
 
 Generally, in life, you will find firm good-nature similar 
 to the quiet heat of the sun, the best means by which to 
 accomplish your ends. It is always better than bluster. 
 The heat of the sun may be fierce and terrible as well as 
 smiling. It may be destructive as well as life-giving, yet 
 its forces, as we know them, are calm and regular. They 
 are the creative and life-giving power of nature. It is no 
 more trouble to saunter and smile in the sunshine than 
 to shiver and scowl in the shadow. 
 
 Be firm ; never be rude ; never do little disagreeable 
 things against even your worst enemy. Do not have 
 scolding or hair-pulling contests. It is, of course, often 
 necessary to strike. When such times occur, get your 
 plans in harmony with your objective point, and when 
 you strike, strike home. You will always find it easier to 
 re-establish good-feeling with one whom you have seri- 
 ously hurt or injured, rather than with him whose nose 
 you have pulled. 
 
 Therefore avoid all little, mean, nagging, disagreeable 
 things. Be a friend if possible ; neutral if this cannot 
 be, and an enemy only on necessity. Go into no fight 
 without the intention to win. Fight to win. When you 
 
THOUGHTS. 123 
 
 succeed take the spoils and legitimate fruits of your vic- 
 tory. It is not a very wise course to go beyond small 
 things in self-effacement. 
 
 No one can hope to achieve success who does not 
 force some from his path and take the right of way from 
 others. While success involves opposition and friction, 
 judicious management may reduce it to a minimum. 
 Thus a wheel upon its spindle, oiled or greased, will re- 
 volve with a friction so slight as to be imperceptible, 
 while the same spindle without the lubricant will increase 
 so much the friction as to eventually heat and stick the 
 wheel and spindle together, so that motion is arrested 
 and a permanent injury done to both. The oil of good- 
 humor is a lubricant that will aid the revolutions of the 
 wheel of fortune. So industry and judgment will not be 
 held back by unnecessary friction. 
 
 Fight as little as you can. You will find fighting a 
 small need if you mind your own business. To mind 
 your own business is a course that will keep you out of a 
 thousand difficulties. I very heartily commend it to you. 
 
 The motto " Faithful and true " should be your guide 
 in all things, and especially in friendship. Make a busi- 
 ness of acquiring friends. A little favor at a critical 
 moment may give you a devoted friend. Therefore look 
 for such occasions. You must not, however, sacrifice the 
 interests of your family to outside friendships. The blood 
 tie always comes first, the friend next. 
 
 Go on no man's bond without security. Endorse no 
 notes without equivalent. Make these your rules, and 
 
124 TASKS BY TWILIGHT. 
 
 you can refuse a friend upon the general principle. I 
 have an agreement with my brother to go on no man's 
 bond without his consent ; and he is equally bound to 
 me. This is a good idea, and saves one from temptation 
 to do a dangerous act. 
 
 Short accounts makes good friends. When you lend 
 money to a friend, count it as lost. Never lend in a 
 friendly way what you must have back. The getting of 
 it back will break the friendship more probably than a 
 first refusal. In selecting agents for the execution of 
 your plans take the young. A man over forty rarely im- 
 proves ; while a man of any mark at twenty-five almost 
 always does. In the first case you have an agent whose 
 capacities must he presumed to be stationary or retro- 
 gressive, and in whom initiative is every day decreasing. 
 In the second case the presumption is in favor of greater 
 capacity and power, and increased initiative and energy. 
 As for contented persons never employ them except for 
 routine work. The contented are of no earthly account 
 in progress. Discontent is our spur in life. So look for 
 the ambitious as agents. Ambition is the word for the 
 highest form of discontent. 
 
 In all your acts or schemes lay your plans carefully. 
 Spend time or money or both beforehand to know what 
 you are about, and use ever some special means to keep 
 your main object in view, lest in a long and exciting con- 
 test you lose sight of what you are working for. It is the 
 oblivion of their object that forces so many in the world 
 into failure. 
 
THOUGHTS. 12$ 
 
 Happiness, power, long life, and above all a family 
 for the future are the real objects. The world is full of 
 those who never get beyond the means of attaining an 
 object because they cannot see beyond these means. 
 
 Money is a means of attaining certain objects. In 
 itself gold coin is nothing ; it is good for wha 1 . it will get, 
 yet many think of nothing and work for nothing except 
 to pile up bank accounts, and are in fact never happy, 
 die early, and have no children ; or at best leave some 
 with the poor constitution born of too sordid indoor 
 work. So, having the means, never attain a real object 
 through not having a clear idea, or perhaps having no 
 idea of what they were really striving for. Do not loose 
 good chances by undue delay for preparation. This 
 fault has ruined many generals. 
 
 Do not give up your individuality, or your legitimate 
 objectives. These, however, can be best attained by an 
 examination and study of the conditions surrounding you, 
 and by working in harmony with these. "A wise man is 
 like water ; he can fit himself to the shape of any jug." 
 
 It would not be wise now to put on armor to go to 
 war, but it once was. It would not be wise to eat whales' 
 blubber in the tropics, though it would be wise to eat it 
 in an Arctic winter. So times and conditions vary ; ac- 
 cording to these you must choose your means, being ever 
 mindful that truth is essential in all your dealings to 
 preserve your own character and your own greatness. 
 
 Your own force is what you must depend on, if not to 
 achieve position, then to maintain it. Your force will 
 
126 TASKS BY TWILIGHT. 
 
 depend on your own self-respect and self-reliance. 
 Every departure from truth injures these, hence the 
 necessity of truth as a guiding star in your lives. 
 
 It is said of Henry IV., of France, that he adopted the 
 policy, in harmony with his character, of telling the truth 
 in his diplomacy and State affairs, and confounded his 
 opponents thereby. 
 
 There is one person with whom your are always this 
 one is yourself. If you have a scrub-liar and cheat 
 always at your elbow, in every confidence, whispering 
 weak evasion to every enterprise, what a handicap have 
 you fixed upon yourself ! If, on the other hand, your in- 
 separable companion is honest, true, and courageous, and 
 stands to frown upon all that is despicable, that circum- 
 stance may suggest, and to counsel high courses of life in 
 opportunity or emergency, what a guard and friend you 
 have ! Do not forget then, that a low act or even thought 
 must lose to yourself your own self-respect, while high 
 courses will give confidence and courage for the future, in 
 the good favor in which you will hold your own soul. 
 
 Some carry heroism to extreme. In a fire, for instance, 
 they will burn if some one else cannot be saved. In other 
 cases a person could swim ashore in an accident at sea, 
 but will remain to certain death because some one whom 
 they cannot save is unable to do so. A useless sacrifice 
 is folly. 
 
 Character and force can never exist without self- 
 reliance. Self-reliance cannot long exist, if it can exist 
 at all, without individual responsibility. Therefore, all 
 
THOUGHTS. 127 
 
 coddling, whether of friend, family, or government, 
 is bad. 
 
 This should not prevent aid being given to make indi- 
 vidual effort more effective, nor prevent opportunity being 
 made for the beginner. The policy should be to throw 
 responsibility on the one we would see advance, and 
 thereby give play to the faculties of our protege or to our 
 child. 
 
 A forceful man can recover from any blow of fortune, 
 except the loss of all his children, in his old age. Thus 
 force is the essential. Wealth, success, or position are 
 mere incidents. 
 
 Mental force, with a physical force to carry it, must 
 come to the front ; it cannot be more than temporarily 
 beaten down. Like a cork in water it will come to the 
 top. I speak of these two forces as different ; so the 
 world looks at them. It is, however, clear that there can 
 be no manifestation of intellect without the physical aid 
 of a brain, its nerves, its sensory ganglia, and a member 
 or members of the body, such as hand or tongue, to 
 register it. 
 
 A person with no brain can show no intellect ; a person 
 with no members is equally impotent. While only the 
 total absence of brain or members reduces a being to a 
 zero, it is nevertheless demonstrable that an injury to the 
 brain structure, or to the members, must, to the extent of 
 this physical injury, diminish the power of the intellect 
 as far as human life is concerned. 
 
 Thus, if the brain be too small in construction or sim- 
 
128 TASKS BY TWILIGHT. 
 
 pie in its convolutions, as in the brains of idiots, the 
 manifestations of intellect become less. If the quantity 
 of the brain be diminished by accident, as in the case of 
 the New England man who had a rock-drill driven 
 through his head by the unexpected explosion of a 
 supposed dead blast, and survived with diminished 
 brain-power, or injured as by alcohol, according to the 
 importance of the brain matter removed or injured, so 
 will the exhibition of intellect decrease. 
 
 Whether a deficiency of the brain be natural or arti- 
 ficial, it cannot but be accompanied by a deficiency of 
 intellect. The condition of the brain matter, its efficiency 
 and power for work, depend on the condition of the blood 
 it receives and on the general vitality. If a man be dead, 
 no matter what the size of his brain, no manifestation 
 of intellect can take place from him. Any disease or 
 physical inability which approaches a man to death must 
 according to its importance decrease his mental capacity. 
 So the health of the brain and its capacity of exercise 
 depends on the health of the liver, stomach, and of the 
 vital organs, as well as upon the normal activity of its 
 own structure. 
 
 Two things are deducible from these facts : 
 
 First. The necessity of bodily health and force for the 
 full and healthy use of the brain. 
 
 Second. The importance in marriage of breeding to a 
 mate with a brain capacity sufficient to insure good intel- 
 lectual manifestations. 
 
 The experiments in the New York Reformatory with 
 
THOUGHTS. 129 
 
 exercise, regular diet, and occupation, have had a more 
 beneficial effect on the morals of the inmates than any- 
 thing heretofore tried. The result of these experiments 
 show the intimate relation of bodily health, in which I 
 include the health of nerves and brain, with morality. 
 
 Exercise, occupation, and a regular life promote health 
 and consequently morality. The thoroughly healthy man 
 is a moral man. Ill-health endangers morality. Im- 
 morality certainly destroys health. The one reacts on 
 the other. 
 
 In this connection it may be well to call attention to 
 the inadvisability of selecting an unhealthy location or 
 vocation for your activities. It is rare that an increase 
 in pay ever compensates for the difference in risk between 
 healthy and unhealthy occupations or places. In un- 
 healthy locations, in fact, the compensation generally is, 
 or soon becomes less than it is for similar service in 
 healthy regions. The risk to health is the last one a 
 man should take. It not only effects him but him in 
 his children, and he is thus handicapped in the contest of 
 evolution. 
 
 A malarious region or one unhealthy from any cause 
 should be avoided. No pay that you will ever receive 
 can compensate you for the risks you run. 
 
 It is in such regions not a matter of risk, except as to 
 a positive break-down, but a matter of certainty that 
 your general vitality will be lowered and your force 
 diminished. Climates or conditions in the evolution of 
 man have made him Black, Yellow, Brown, Red, or White, 
 
 9 
 
130 TASKS BY TWILIGHT. 
 
 have given him resistance of malarial fevers in one place 
 and resistance to pneumonia or consumption in another. 
 Thus the White, going into the tropics, dies of malaria 
 and liver troubles and of fevers, such as yellow-fever, in 
 much larger proportion than the dark natives, long since 
 well weeded out of susceptible individuals. The Negro, 
 on the other hand, going to the north, dies more fre- 
 quently than the White from pneumonia and consump- 
 tion for the same reasons. 
 
 Climate is not everything in man's activity, as some 
 suppose, for we find not only the lazy in the tropics, like 
 the Tahitians, Hawaians, Negritos, Ashantees, etc., but 
 the industrious like the Fellahs, Indian Ryots, Mexican 
 peasants, etc. Vitality and activity seem largely due 
 however, to climate and situation. Thus swamps, towns, 
 tenements, etc. are bad, but, as to their effect on activity, 
 may be neutralized by some artificial condition furnish- 
 ing a motive for effort. Greece, in its present social and 
 political inaninity of decay, has a climate doubtless but 
 little changed from that prevalent during its period of 
 glory. 
 
 Human greatness is then clearly not a matter of climate 
 alone ; nevertheless, the great civilizations of man have 
 not arisen south of Egypt, nor north of the Arctic Circle. 
 Consequently, it is reasonable to say that great continued 
 heat or excessive cold is unfavorable to man's progress, 
 and such conditions should exclude a locality as a place 
 of residence. Everything else being equal, the climate 
 that causes the least strain on man's constitution and is 
 
THOUGHTS. 131 
 
 still sufficiently unfavorable to plant life to demand in- 
 dustry in agriculture is that in which the greatest progress, 
 may be expected to take place. The greatest progress 
 heretofore has taken place in such climates. The shores 
 of the Mediterranean have an equable climate, but one 
 too dry for agriculture without constant effort. England 
 has an equable climate, but too moist and cool to be pro- 
 ductive without effort. In tropical islands we have equa- 
 bility, but plant life, perhaps, is too luxuriant and 
 productive for the best interests of man in progress. 
 
 The line of best climate may be moving northward on 
 account of the power civilization has given man to neu- 
 tralize excessive cold. Cold climates seem to encourage 
 and even produce energy ; for the northern man in this 
 respect surpasses the southern in every country, and in 
 many cases this is true of the countries themselves. The 
 Piedmontese is more energetic than the Neapolitan ; the 
 Catalan than he of Malaga ; the Alsatian than the Pro- 
 vencal ; the North Irishman than the man from Kerry ; 
 the Scotchman than the Cornishman ; the Prussian than 
 the Bavarian, etc. It is a general rule with numerous 
 exceptions. The best climate for a permanent residence 
 would appear to be an equable one, leaning to cold. 
 
 A good rule for the situation for the residence is never 
 to place it in a narrow valley. My rule, while on a West- 
 ern camping expedition, was never to pitch a camp in a 
 swail or low place, no matter how convenient it might be. 
 This was on account of the naked watersheds in that 
 country, from which a diluvial rain descends with a sud- 
 
132 TASKS BY TWILIGHT. 
 
 den volume destructive to everything in its path. While 
 our watersheds elsewhere are still forested there is less 
 danger, but they are being rapidly stripped or burned off, 
 making them as little capable of absorbing or detaining 
 water as those of the arid west. In other places dams 
 may exist or be built at the headwaters of such valleys. 
 These frequently burst as did that in the Conemaugh 
 Valley. This accident destroyed millions of property and 
 three thousand five hundred lives, all situated or living in 
 this narrow valley. 
 
 Every year we hear of dreadful holocausts of this kind. 
 It is a simple matter to avoid this danger by not building 
 or living in a valley subject to inundation. 
 
 Unhealthy vocations should be avoided on the same 
 grounds. There is nothing that will compensate a man 
 for the loss of health in himself, as it undoubtedly will be 
 transmitted to his children. The importance of this may 
 be understood by an examination of the death-rates in 
 vocations. Samuel Royce says that the tailors of London 
 show a death-rate 57 per cent, higher than that of agri- 
 culturists, and the printers of the same city are said to 
 have the remarkable excess of death-rate of 117 per cent. 
 
 In an electrical workshop in Paris thirty-two of the 
 thirty-five workmen were found to have consumption. 
 Many of them contracted the disease in this shop, while 
 many of the others may be presumed to have contracted 
 it in the same line of work. 
 
 Exemptions of soldiers in French recruiting show also 
 great differences due to occupation. These vary from 
 
THOUGHTS. 133 
 
 an exemption rate of 46 in the hundred in agriculture to 
 83 per hundred in scholars. 
 
 The very bad sanitary effect of sedentary scholasticism 
 is here made apparent. The exemption of the scholar, by 
 the Misna, from any marital duty indicates weakness in a 
 still more important line. Sanitary conditions are there- 
 fore of the first importance. 
 
 First. The healthiness of the locations chosen should 
 be certain. 
 
 Second. The drainage, disposition of refuse, ventilation 
 of buildings, etc., should be looked too so that the health 
 of the place naturally may not be done away with by arti- 
 ficial means. 
 
 Third. The health of the body should be maintained 
 by exercise and occupation. 
 
 A sedentary life, which is idleness of the muscles, or a 
 lack of occupation, which is idleness of the brain, is ruin- 
 ous in either case to the part affected. Injury to one 
 must react upon the other. So a man cannot ruin and de- 
 grade his muscular system, without injuring not only his 
 general health, but his intellectual capacity with it, and 
 conversely, injury to the brain or its degradation by idle- 
 ness will destroy the co-ordination and effectiveness of 
 the muscles, and result either in early death or a weak 
 progeny or both ; the end being the extermination of the 
 family. 
 
 Therefore undue use of either the brain or the muscles 
 to the neglect of the other should be avoided. Our de- 
 velopment must be on the brain road ; the muscular 
 
134 TASKS BY TWILIGHT. 
 
 exercise is consequently mainly useful through the neces- 
 sity of a healthy body to carry the brain. 
 
 A look back at the recorded experience of mankind 
 shows that the great reforms from which progress took 
 new life have very seldom originated or been maintained 
 by the class in control at the time any reform originated. 
 The knowledge of the day has generally been able to 
 make a good case, showing that these innovations were 
 either bad or altogether impossible. 
 
 The knowledge of the day was wrong. The lesson to 
 be learned from this is that a controlling class is ever in 
 danger of becoming a slave to routine. The rich by in- 
 heritance become rut-bound. The comfort of their posi- 
 tion leads them to oppose change, and they take little 
 trouble to examine proposed reforms. Scholastic writers 
 in the hope of gain defend this conservatism, and ease the 
 conscience of the wealthy even upon the most absurd 
 propositions. 
 
 Change and new conditions, more than anything else, 
 lead to a development of the brain. So we find the 
 world's outbursts of intellectual light to have been accom- 
 paniments of great changes in the conditions of the soci- 
 eties in which they occurred. These changes have often 
 resulted in placing the top class at the bottom and the 
 bottom on top. The importance of watching for new 
 movements and new reforms must be clear. If you wish 
 to improve you must progress, and, therefore, more for 
 your children than for yourself, you must be ready for 
 change. 
 
THOUGHTS. 135 
 
 You should make it a policy to try change and to be 
 habitually reformers. Always seek out improvement, 
 never be satisfied with what is. The present condition of 
 mankind is a misery. Its only mitigation is that it is a 
 stepping-stone to something better which the progressive 
 may enjoy in their children. Families, tribes, and races 
 of men have disappeared and been exterminated, and 
 many of those now existing will be annihilated, and so 
 will you if you fall behind the wave of evolution. By 
 universe time it will not be long before the earth will be 
 uninhabitable to the present type of man. I cannot 
 bring myself to think that all this earth's evolution is to be 
 swept out of existence and go for nothing ; on the con- 
 trary, it seems to me more probable that evolution will 
 continue, and that the future man will be at last as far 
 ahead of the present man as he of to-day is above the 
 grubbing worm. 
 
 I therefore, my children, commend you to a radicalism 
 with reasonable conservatism keeping sound on the repro- 
 ductive question until the race rises beyond this necessity. 
 At this time, if it come, what I have written will be left 
 unread. But the reproductive capacity, as man is now 
 constituted, you must carefully guard. 
 
 In the improvement of fruit many good varieties have 
 been obtained by the care of man. Of these, not a few 
 are weak in reproductive power or quite sterile, such as 
 the seedless Navel orange. These depend for their con- 
 tinuence upon the artifices of man, such as grafting, etc. 
 Such fruits left to themselves would promptly disappear 
 
136 TASKS BY TWILIGHT. 
 
 through this radical fault. Another point is that when 
 the reproductive power ceases, improvement also ceases, 
 and no further advance is ever possible even though life 
 be maintained by artificial means. 
 
 In several places I have spoken of nature and warned 
 you not to violate her laws. This is very good advice, but 
 it needs some explanation. Persons often speak of na- 
 ture's laws as though they understood them very well. I 
 disclaim any such knowledge. Very little is known about 
 nature. The little information we have is but a smatter- 
 ing, a surface skimming from an infinitesimally small area. 
 What laws we have found may be modified, we know not 
 how, by other laws of which we do not yet dream. 
 
 My knowledge on these points, my children, is unfor- 
 tunately really nothing. You must not fall into the error 
 of receiving all I say as unchangeable fact, for you, then, 
 like so many seeming wise people, would be but the slaves 
 of authority. It has been my aim mainly to call your at- 
 tention to the possibility of an earthly immortality through 
 your children and descendants, and of a probability of a 
 continuation of evolution to a perfected and self-sustain- 
 ing race. Your only means of partaking of such future 
 life is by reproduction. 
 
 In being radicals, and studying and working ever for 
 improvement, do it as far as your capacity will allow in 
 harmony with the principles underlying all life. Nature 
 then must be your study. Never allow authority to be 
 your teacher, but place it where it belongs, as a finger-post 
 showing short-cuts to knowledge. The only teacher for 
 
THOUGHTS. 137 
 
 real knowledge is observation or experience. Nor 
 should you overlook the fact that the works of man are as 
 much a part of nature as is the mountain or forest. The 
 city is as much the result of natural laws, as is the burrow 
 of the squirrel or the populous hill of the industrious ant. 
 
 Everything on the earth is subject to natural law, and 
 is the result of natural action. All progress must be ac- 
 cording to natural laws, and nothing can be accomplished 
 beyond the limitations set by our environment. "The 
 action of environment is the primordial factor of organic 
 evolution." 
 
 Nevertheless, our own constitutions and powers may 
 change, nay, must change; and the impossible of to-day 
 will become the commonplace of to-morrow. 
 
 It is by a careful study of nature that we can best 
 guide ourselves to progress. For by such knowledge we 
 will not be so inconsequent in throwing ourselves into a 
 contest for which we are in no way prepared, but for 
 which, by care, we may be ready in our descendants in 
 the future. 
 
 A regular recurring day of relief from routine, either by 
 rest or recreation, has been a feature in the plan of every 
 religious legislator. In this Moses was preceded and has 
 been followed. Let no inducement lead you to abandon 
 a day of rest. It is at such times that the mind and 
 nervous powers, freed from the drain of routine work, may 
 be directed in reflection to improvement. 
 
 The races with a day of rest have without an exception 
 a superior position in every way to those with none. In 
 
138 TASKS BY TWILIGHT. 
 
 nothing is this more noticeable than in industrial life, 
 where one would think the loss of a day's work in seven 
 would be felt. Industrially, the rest-day keepers almost 
 in proportion to the strictness of their rest surpass non- 
 resting or partial-resting competitors. For the product 
 and advance of society, and above all for the individual 
 human being, it will be of advantage to adhere to a day 
 of rest. 
 
 It will not be wise to cast aside too lightly the customs 
 of society. In dress, for instance, there is a revolt among 
 reasonable persons against the fashions of women's cloth- 
 ing, which renders them incapable of the same physical 
 activity as men. I sympathize with the proposed reform. 
 In thinking over this subject, however, it occurs to me 
 that there may be some philosophy in their fashions. In 
 the least civilized, speaking generally, there is the least 
 drawback in dress to women's activity, and in the most 
 civilized the greatest. High-heeled shoes, corsets, long 
 skirts, unmanageable hats, veils, etc., are from an artistic 
 point of view rarely beautifiers. The pinched feet of 
 high society Chinese women are certainly not pretty. 
 These inventions are those of civilized or semi-civilized 
 man, not of savages. 
 
 From some points of view these dress fashions are not 
 favorable to childbearing, but from others they are dis- 
 tinctly so. All these limiting fashions tend to keep women 
 out of the contest of industrial life, and consequently con- 
 fine them to home or at least to social life. 
 
 Home life is conducive to childbearing, while indus- 
 
THOUGHTS. 139 
 
 trial life outside of the home is to women a discourager 
 to childbearing. 
 
 The improvement in the condition of women, brought 
 by civilization, has had a constant effect to diminish child- 
 bearing, tending to the extermination of the most civi- 
 lized. Whether the fashions of dress, etc., have any 
 philosophical basis in counteracting this influence is a 
 matter worthy of thought and study. Fashions in dress 
 come and go. Some of them are said to have had a dis- 
 tinct object in their origin. Large hoops, for instance, it 
 is claimed were devised to secure the virtue of the court 
 ladies of France. It is, however, also said that a certain 
 duchess devised them to conceal a conception not legiti- 
 mately come by. 
 
 While reforms in the line of woman's health, such as 
 abolition of tight lacing, high-heeled shoes, etc., are to be 
 commended, radical and sudden changes should not 
 be lightly undertaken. Before women can be completely 
 emancipated from the limitations under which they now 
 live, with safety to the reproduction of the best, they must 
 consider reproduction the highest and grandest point to 
 which they can attain, and be ready to sacrifice every- 
 thing to achieve this glory. This is not now the case. 
 
 In the ordinary social life certain things are done that 
 are directly disadvantageous, to gain advantage in another 
 direction that will more than counterbalance the first loss. 
 As an illustration of this point we may mention the uni- 
 form of soldiers. These are rarely without more or less 
 tinsel. Cumbersome hats like those of the grenadiers of 
 
140 TASKS BY TWILIGHT. 
 
 the guard, uncomfortable coats, epaulettes, ornaments, 
 and unstable colors, cuirasses, helmets, etc. ; all these 
 are detriments to the soldier in his soldier's work of 
 campaigning and killing. But the disadvantage of these 
 is much more than counterbalanced by the interest and 
 pride of the soldier in the pomp and glory of his uniform. 
 Thus men are more easily induced to follow the life of 
 a soldier. 
 
 There is, by the way, no occupation so likely to leave 
 one's faculties unused, and therefore to injure what facul- 
 ties we have and to prevent progress, as the life of a sol- 
 dier in peace. Avoid it ; but while doing so do not go too 
 far. It will be some time yet before the individual or 
 family can hope to hold what he or it is incapable of de- 
 fending. So also will it be with nations. Some prepara- 
 tion and training for defence is very essential. In this 
 connection a good maxim may guide you : " The best 
 defence is attack." That is, when it becomes evident 
 that you must fight, make the fighting yourself and make 
 it hot. 
 
 Wise courage is the prudent guide by the best road to 
 safety. Wise fear is the same. True cowardice is the 
 avoidance of present evils to encounter more grievous 
 ones later. Prudence will often demand from the far- 
 seeing what to the to-day-man will seem rash risking. 
 Audacity is often the highest prudence. As a general 
 rule what the world calls cowardice is the most imprudent 
 course to follow. 
 
 In a charge, for instance, it is usually safer to go clear 
 
THOUGHTS. 141 
 
 through into the enemies' works than to go half way and 
 then turn back. It is harder to hit an armed man rush- 
 ing toward you than to shoot him when running away. 
 If a soldier shirks his duty altogether he is likely to be 
 shot for desertion ; consequently courage as a rule ex- 
 poses the individual soldier to the least risks. Society's 
 standard for courage is, of course, derived from its own 
 interest and not that of the individual. It is, therefore, 
 not a complete guide for the safest conduct. Society's 
 necessities, however, oblige it to punish self safe-seeking 
 to the injury of the body politic. Where the natural 
 punishment of society's standard of cowardice is not suf- 
 ficient, society sets up an artificial punishment to protect 
 itself, and to harmonize individual self-interest with the 
 interest of society. 
 
 Life itself is a contest. It is the contest that forces the 
 use and improvement of our faculties. 
 
 One of the things to remember is to work and keep 
 your own counsel. Talk if you will, but tell nothing. 
 What is better is to do and let others talk. In trouble 
 remember the French maxim, " When the criminal speaks 
 the prosecution is instructed," or another, u He who ex- 
 cuses himself accuses himself." 
 
 Man is yet dazzled by show, but he is attracted and 
 awed by mystery. Therefore the silent, about whose 
 plans no one is informed, command attention and re- 
 spect when a full confession of their schemes would only 
 have let loose criticism and excited resistance. In an- 
 other old maxim, speech is compared to silver, but silence 
 
142 TASKS BY TWILIGHT. 
 
 to gold. When talking, one's powers are used in enunci- 
 ation and one's attention is largely fixed on maintaining 
 one's own argument connected. Therefore a talker can 
 observe less of what is taking place about him than the 
 silent. The silent man can be on the watch for charac- 
 ters, tendencies, sympathies, prejudices, etc. in others, 
 which he can use to his own ends. His silence gives 
 power. Talk in quantity is sometimes good, but as a rule 
 it excites argument and resistance. When we would con- 
 vince or convert others, the true policy is to suggest the 
 idea for them to follow, rather than to attempt to carry 
 their conversion in our own minds and by our own trains 
 of thought. In other words, let them convert themselves 
 or at least think that they convert themselves. For this 
 policy few words are necessary. A fact to-day, a hint to- 
 morrow, and often before you know it you will have a 
 disciple to out-Herod Herod. 
 
 You must always remember that self-interest is the 
 great mover of mankind. When men serve you their in- 
 terest must be served. A great politician under our cor- 
 rupt system needs workers. The successful in this line 
 secure their agents by making it plainly to their interest 
 to do the political work. This means corruption. While 
 politics are corrupt you should never make a business of 
 them. Many large views are obtained in and through pub- 
 lic office. Responsibility and largeness of duty ought to 
 improve the mental faculties ; but, on the other hand, the 
 deterioration that ever attends dishonesty must more than 
 counterbalance any gain of this kind. It is almost irn- 
 
THOUGHTS. 143 
 
 possible to-day to do anything in politics without corrup- 
 tion. If a man is not personally dishonest in politics he 
 must derive advantage from the dishonesty of others. 
 
 The progressive degradation of politics in America 
 doubtless explains the progressive weakening of our pub- 
 lic men. In a crisis like the Civil War, those who went 
 to the front were able to secure political preferment by 
 merit in public affairs, and not as much as now by com- 
 binations, caucuses, and corruptions ; consequently their 
 characters were not completely contaminated. A total 
 abstinence from public affairs is not wise nor advanta- 
 geous. The sensible course is not to make politics, as now 
 constituted, one's business and means of livelihood, nor 
 ever to go into the dirty work so common in its activities. 
 
 In any effort at reform, such as doing away with 
 political bosses, remember that it is not oversetting the 
 man so much as the method that reform will give results 
 through. 
 
 The more recent advance of mankind has probably 
 been confined to the north temperate and semi-tropic 
 zones. From our own knowledge of savages and barbari- 
 ans, from history and from ancient monuments and tradi- 
 tion in these climates, we may affirm with some show of 
 accuracy that man in the temperate zone was first a hunter 
 or savage, then a herdsman or barbarian, and last an 
 agriculturist making possible extensive manufacture and 
 commerce. The government best suited to these condi- 
 tions varies. The qualities necessary to achieve success 
 as a savage are not those essential to do this in a civilized 
 
144 TASKS BY TWILIGHT. 
 
 man. The savage orator and audacious fighter holds his 
 tribe as their political chief, while the same result is best 
 achieved by us through plots and caucuses, money and 
 workers, and by lying and cheating. 
 
 Self-restraint is a very valuable thing. To hold back 
 from present gratification of pleasure or passion, to avert 
 future ills or to gain a future benefit is a quality of great- 
 ness. A present sacrifice of pleasure, if practised with 
 judgment, should bring a great future store of enjoyment 
 or avert a great future store of pain. The application of 
 time to labor, rather than to what is called pleasure, is of 
 this class. Man thus obtains capital and position with 
 which to maintain and rear his family. Restraint from 
 illicit sexual intercourse is of great good. Dignity and 
 purity are maintained, and the forces held for the joy of love 
 and reproduction. The question often is, Will you take 10 
 per cent, from your pleasure of to-day for 90 per cent, of 
 your pleasure in the future ? Or not doing so, cause 
 natural effects to take 90 per cent, from your future 
 pleasure to allow yourself 10 per cent, to-day. 
 
 Self-restraint is one of the essentials, but it may be 
 carried to excess, as we see in misers. 
 
 What is called pleasure as a pursuit has a monotony 
 and an absence of sound object that defeats itself. Thus 
 we find that the most unhappy and miserable people are 
 those blase by a continuous pursuit of pleasure. Blase 
 people are never found amongst the industrious. While 
 all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, so all play 
 and no work makes John a worthless man. All play and 
 
THOUGHTS. 145 
 
 no work has but one end as regards pleasure, and that is 
 its destruction. 
 
 One of the so-called pursuits of pleasure practised by 
 perverse persons is illicit sexual intercourse. Even if 
 disease does not come, this defeats itself. This inter- 
 course without love is a very inferior exhibition of lust. 
 It is true that the mere act of reproduction has by nature 
 a pleasure for man, but this act practised with prostitutes 
 is followed by a disgust that to a great degree neutralizes 
 the animal pleasure of the act. If a man descends at all to 
 illicit intercourse, it must be largely, at least, confined to 
 prostitutes. It is a curious medical fact that more vene- 
 real disease is contracted from disgraced women, not 
 regularly so known, than from professional prostitutes. 
 
 Association with a kept woman or mistress is a particu- 
 larly perilous form for illicit intercourse to take. If she 
 be taken a virgin and acquire your love and respect to the 
 point of inducing marriage, she would as a wife bear a 
 cloud on her reputation that society would not forgive ; 
 and she, you, and the children born would all feel it. A 
 mistress may take a hold on the affections which will 
 discourage marriage or cause it to come late, if at all. A 
 mistress may come to love her master, which is an ex- 
 ceedingly unpleasant situation. Such a woman is capable 
 of ruining a man's life. 
 
 Alphonse Daudet wrote a book, Sappho, dedicated to 
 his son, to warn him from this very danger. It is much 
 greater than one might at first sight think. I know of 
 several instances where mistresses, discarded for wives, 
 
146 TASKS BY TWILIGHT. 
 
 have wrecked families. There are cases on record where 
 the mistress has even shot down and killed the man. 
 
 Life with a mistress is a revolt against one of the foun- 
 dations of society " marriage," and cannot be tolerated 
 by society in a sound condition. Therefore the liaison 
 must be kept secret. 
 
 In the heat of passion the Devil may not seem such a 
 bad fellow as he is painted. But to live with him in cold 
 storage, at your elbow, cheek by jowl, during your sober 
 moments, is a folly. 
 
 " The Devil in sport 's a gay partie ; 
 The Devil in thought 's a cactus-tree." 
 
 The Devil is at home in heat. It is a good man's pas- 
 sion that makes him friendly with the fiend, and the fiend 
 is lively in his passion's fires ; but the passion gone, cold 
 thought comes in. The Devil cannot be gay in such 
 chilly company, and the Devil either leaves or makes a 
 very uncomfortable and disagreeable third party very 
 much de trop. 
 
 To be loved by a mistress is to have the fate of Prome- 
 theus. To love a mistress is to wear the ears of an ass 
 if not the horns of the French. The chapter on Family 
 Government contains some further points on this subject. 
 
 Love is the spiritualized instinct of reproduction. As 
 I have already said, its God amongst the Greeks was Cu- 
 pid, the child. The object of love, as implanted in us by 
 nature, is the child. This is its fruit. It cannot long 
 exist without the child. The world continually applies 
 
THOUGHTS. 147 
 
 the word love to states of feelings that are really lust, 
 friendship, affection, esteem, or something else, but not 
 love. 
 
 Love is something mysterious and beautiful. In its 
 perfection it is beyond compare. The animal passions 
 which form its basis should by no means be allowed to 
 drag love's beauties, mysteries, and grandeurs into the 
 mire of mere lust. 
 
 How easy restraint in these matters can be made, may 
 be seen by the fact that our education, excluding married 
 women and men from love by the still single, prevents 
 their being sexually loved by the single. 
 
 In a healthy society such unholy love is very rarely 
 seen. The education prevents the aberration. Without 
 the education certainly there is no way to explain why 
 the single should not be as likely to love the married as 
 to love other single persons. 
 
 Love flies with the heart at first from maid to maid and 
 at last in the fire of passion fuses another heart to yours. 
 With some there is at first an uncertainty of choice ; 
 therefore, a little maxim is commended to keep you out 
 of trouble " Talk love, never write it." 
 
 Men should marry and women should marry. It is in 
 the child, the natural bond, that their instincts and pas- 
 sions achieve glory. But the first intuitive excursions of 
 love may well be diplomatically left non-committal. 
 
 Woman is like the sapphire, beautiful indeed, but to be 
 fully appreciated she must have the man as the sapphire 
 needs the diamond, that hard and brilliant gem, to show 
 
 
148 TASKS BY TWILIGHT. 
 
 its attractions. These two gems, generally so excellent 
 together, do not always constitute a good combination. 
 Their sizes, colors, and adaptabilities must be harmonious 
 to make a successful and beautiful jewel. So it is with 
 men and women. Each individual may be admirable, but 
 still not capable of making a happy union with an admir- 
 able individual of the opposite sex. The casual throwing 
 together of men and women in matrimony is no evidence 
 of a correct combination lor the creation of the child. 
 
 It is a kindly rule to attribute to mankind the best 
 motives by which they might have been actuated in their 
 doings. The reverse, however, is the common and un- 
 comfortable practice. All men have some imperfections ; 
 there is consequently a fellow-feeling amongst us for 
 errors. One, therefore, who looks for others' defects and 
 pulls them into the light, though applauded by our jeal- 
 ousies, can never be popular. 
 
 The weakness of mankind, however, makes caution in 
 all human dealings a necessity. Every man has some 
 angel and some devil in him. Look for the angel but 
 guard against the devil. 
 
 In common business intercourse there are many little 
 things of value to an observer as indications of character. 
 The man with the diamond-pin will usually be of a spec- 
 ulative disposition. He who is exact and punctual in all 
 engagements is usually conservative and honest. The 
 liar in small things, and he who steals others' time in lack 
 of punctuality, is rarely reliable. The observation of 
 such every-day traits of character may be made a useful 
 
THOUGHTS. 149 
 
 measure for larger things. It is indeed curious how much 
 of a person's qualities may be discovered by his face, 
 dress, or habits. Thus far our judgment of individuals 
 from such sources has been more a matter of instinct 
 than of reason. Likes and dislikes at first sight are felt 
 even by very young children. These instinctive attrac- 
 tions or repulsions extend to the intercourse of man 
 with animals and of animals with man. 
 
 Such impulses derived from the inherited experience 
 of the race should never be neglected. On the other 
 hand, it should be remembered that a natural repulsion, 
 reliable as against the probability of pleasant personal 
 intercourse, or an attraction guiding us accurately to a 
 sympathetic nature, may, in neither case, be "an index to 
 the useful or undesirable qualities favorable or unfavor- 
 able in a servant or an agent. An old saw says, " The 
 man whom the town dogs follow is naught." This may 
 be remembered in figuring up the value of social qualities 
 in business affairs. 
 
 It is a good rule to follow first impressions in dealing 
 with mankind. But a clear and catholic view of our 
 means and aims should guide this remarkable instinct. 
 Unconscious cerebration is a certain element in brain- 
 activity. We lose a name and cannot recall it by the 
 will, but by and by, when we are thinking of something 
 else, it comes back to us. The intuitions are something 
 of this nature. As we say, we feel things are thus and 
 so ; we take a prejudice for or against a person, but we 
 cannot formulate a reason. 
 
150 TASKS BY TWILIGHT. 
 
 It seems strange that though man in phrenology, palm- 
 istry, etc., has so often tried to formulate these feelings, 
 so well recognized, into a reliable science, he has thus far 
 failed in securing the approval of the judicious. 
 
 The changed condition under which men live, com- 
 pared to those of a few thousand years ago, should be 
 deemed a sufficient cause to make us question carefully 
 a first prejudice for or against a person. Qualities, good 
 or bad, for a former condition, the opinion of which we 
 inherit in an instinct, may be of different social effect at 
 this time. 
 
 It has been frequently said that genius is kin to insan- 
 ity. It is a saying altogether untrue. A man who sees 
 too far ahead of his contemporaries to be understood is 
 generally accused by their stupidity with craziness, but 
 his genius in so perceiving the truer and higher relation 
 of things is not the result of a defect of mind, but of a 
 superiority of mind. So, also in other manifestations of 
 genius. 
 
 The over-use of the highest intellectual qualities, like 
 their insufficient use, may disease or destroy the brain 
 medium of their manifestations as in Swift, Pascal, and 
 in other remembered men. Genius, in itself, however, 
 can have no possible kinship with insanity. 
 
 Insanity is a paralysis of the highest brain functions, 
 and is indicated not by any high mental manifestations, 
 but by the uncontrollable or ill co-ordinated activities of 
 lower brain centres. Insanity is a disease of the highest 
 brain tissue and debilitates if it does not destroy its 
 
THOUGHTS. 151 
 
 powers. It is of exactly the same character of paralysis 
 that we see in the motor centres situated in the lower 
 spinal column when locomotor ataxia appears. In this 
 disease, this nervous centre is attacked and its progressive 
 paralysis is shown in the progressive loss of motion and 
 control of motion in the legs, not by a superiority of mo- 
 tion anywhere. 
 
 If one desires to be a stranger to imagination in others, 
 there is no place so certain to realize this desire as an in- 
 sane asylum. The poverty of thought in the hospitals of 
 the unfortunate, whose higher qualities have gone leaving 
 the lower ones without a head, is striking to one expect- 
 ing to find in them some confirmation of the popular 
 saying. 
 
 Genius should be sought. Insanity should be avoided. 
 The searcher may rest assured that, while he may find 
 geniuses who have become insane, he will never find 
 genius in the insane. 
 
 One of our customs that is most often decried is the 
 indulgence of gossip. It is generally spoken of as wholly 
 bad. The truth is, however, that it is of great value. 
 The decrease of gossip in this country is really a cause of 
 alarm. Gossip is the executioner of the unwritten, social 
 law. Many a man and women is kept in the traces by the 
 fear of what people will say. Other reasons hold them, 
 but this is the most potent to keep them good. This, of 
 course, is only true when the standard of society is 
 correct. 
 
 Social rules have been evolved from man's experience 
 
152 TASKS BY TWILIGHT. 
 
 and are for the benefit of humanity. They change ac- 
 cording to his needs. To openly violate a social tenet 
 will make the individual uncomfortable, at least. Conse- 
 quently such rules should be observed. The fashion 
 now is to denounce large families. Such a fatal aberra- 
 tion of course must not be bowed to. This fashion be- 
 came prevalent in the Sandwich Islands. Under it the 
 native population has decreased from 400,000 to less than 
 20,000 in seventy or eighty years. It is true that the 
 vices and diseases of the civilized are exceedingly fatal 
 to most savages. Smallpox, for instance, in 1853, the 
 first year of its introduction to Honolulu, destroyed one 
 half the native population ; but, besides this, savages in 
 contact with the civilized seem incapable or unwilling to 
 breed. 
 
 As an Indian Commissioner I have observed the fact 
 that those Indians near the white settlements lose their 
 reproductive power as compared to those farther removed 
 from this influence. 
 
 For instance, in two Indian villages of Southern Cali-. 
 fornia, Sequan and Los Coyotes, there is in each nearly 
 the same population, between eighty and ninety. The 
 first is near the city of San Diego, and subject to the in- 
 fluences of civilization. There were in this place in my 
 last visit only eight children and no babies. Los Coyotes 
 is on the desert side of the Sierra, far from any "white set- 
 tlement or route of travel. There were at the same time 
 thirty-four children at this settlement. Whether fashion 
 pr disease is the main cause of these diminished popula- 
 
THOUGHTS. 153 
 
 tions, the extermination that has overtaken the Tasmanian 
 and so many of the American tribes awaits them. So also 
 it awaits us if this fashion prevail. We must avoid this 
 rock. 
 
 The destruction of these isolated and sometimes Ar- 
 cadian populations on their contact with our cruel civiliza- 
 tion shows us something else. It is that it will not do to 
 attempt an escape from plain present evils by going out 
 of the movement of the world. If whole populations have 
 been swept away in a few years, owing to their not being 
 inured to the hardships and dangers of civilization, we 
 must anticipate a similar fate in the future for populations 
 similarily situated. Consequently, distant islands or 
 secluded valleys are contra-indicated for homes. 
 
 No thought is better, no effort more useful than that 
 which seeks to find how to perpetuate and improve life 
 in reproduction. 
 
 The motive for good deeds furnished by the religious 
 legislators of the past was a part and interest in eternity. 
 
 No motive can be greater. The things of this world 
 must indeed seem paltry in contrast to such an 
 expectation. 
 
 Let us then seize upon this motive. Let us prove 
 its reality and possibility, and let our aims be to keep 
 forever lighted the sacred fires of life that burn in our 
 existence. This we can do in our children. 
 
 A part in eternity is made possible by procreation. 
 The Child then is our Future. It should be our 
 Religion. 
 
DIET. 
 
 LIFE in man involves a continuous waste and wear 
 in the vital machinery, and requires for its 
 manifestation a supply of fuel or alime'nt. The restricted 
 capacity of the human being as to aliment-storage requires, 
 as an absolute essential to life, a frequent renewal of 
 supply. In practice we find it best to make this renewal 
 from twice to three times in the twenty-four hours. 
 
 The word diet as used in this chapter is understood to 
 mean all things taken by man to provide energy, and to 
 replace, retard, or accelerate waste, and the manner of 
 taking these. 
 
 Diet in its completeness comprises what we eat in foods, 
 what we drink in fluids, what we breathe in the air, and 
 what we use in narcotics, stimulants, or drugs. 
 
 The best diet varies with age, idiosyncrasy, occupation, 
 health, and with climate. Thus in age : The food of the 
 babe is properly confined to milk. For the strong man 
 this food is too dilute and bulky to be a complete diet. 
 So the food of the adult with teeth and a completed 
 digestive apparatus is altogether unsuited to the babe 
 without teeth, and with a small stomach and simple 
 organs of assimilation. With old age and the loss of 
 
 154 
 
DIET. 155 
 
 teeth a^id digestive vigor and lessened capacity for labor, 
 the foods of the child may again become appropriate. 
 
 Thus in idiosyncrasy : In general, fish form a good 
 element in diet ; still with some they produce indigestion 
 or marked constitutional disturbance. Strawberries, 
 usually agreeable and easy of disposition by the internal 
 economy, with some produce a rash. Milk, generally 
 acceptable at all ages, and in its constituents a perfect 
 food, with some produces indigestion so marked as to 
 make it unavailable as an article of diet. Apples, an 
 excellent fruit for most, produce in some disorders which 
 I have even known to go to the extent of causing tem- 
 porary diabetes whenever this food was eaten. 
 
 Eggs are almost universally friendly to the system, and 
 are a perfect food as to all the necessary constituents ; 
 still they cause serious trouble to some persons when 
 eaten, even convulsions occasionally resulting from their 
 ingestion. I have a case of this kind in one of my chil- 
 dren. He can eat no eggs nor anything containing them 
 without distress, and has had this peculiarity from the 
 first time he took them. 
 
 On the other hand, foods and combinations of food 
 generally disadvantageous, such as lobsters and milk or 
 cherries and milk, etc., seem to have no bad effects on 
 some people. 
 
 Thus, in occupations, a full diet of coarse food will be 
 not only appropriate, but as to its fulness, essential to 
 the health and activity of a physical worker in the open 
 air. To the same person in a sedentary pursuit such a 
 
156 TASKS BY TWILIGHT. 
 
 diet would cause inconvenience, doubtless to be followed 
 by ill health. The brain worker needs as liberal a support 
 as does the muscle worker, but it is of a different kind. 
 The economy of cookery, that is, the partial digestion of 
 food by the chemistry of cooking, outside of the body, is 
 particularly advantageous to the brain worker. 
 
 Thus in health a diet may be good or bad, according 
 to one's condition. A person in perfect health has, as a 
 rule, a pretty wide dietary margin ; still an invalid's diet 
 of soft and simple foods frequently given, is quite in- 
 appropriate for the whilom invalid when well. So also 
 the mixed strong diet of the healthy is bad for the 
 invalid. The well man requires concentrated food in 
 sufficient quantity to obviate the necessity of a feeding so 
 frequent as to interfere with labor. The well man's diet 
 probably should also be of a character to require a certain 
 energy in the digestive organs. 
 
 The invalid, on the other hand, requires less food, for 
 if properly treated he will be in repose. His energies 
 also should be given the fullest play to repair the ravages 
 of his illness and to drive off disease, and should there- 
 fore be spared from all unnecessary digestive work. 
 Drugs enter the diet of invalids for special purposes, 
 often to kill or to deaden specific germs. Their effects 
 on the normal man are frequently bad. 
 
 Thus a diet containing considerable arsenic may be 
 advantageous to one suffering with eczema, while to a 
 well person such a diet would probably produce some 
 form of skin trouble, or at least digestive disturbance. 
 
DIET. 157 
 
 In Styria this drug is more customarily consumed than in 
 other portions of the world. Many general conditions of 
 the population of that district would indicate that its 
 effects are physically bad. The mothers, for instance, 
 are noticeably lacking in lactation. 
 
 A diet with mercury or iodide of potassium is thought 
 essential for one suffering with that dreadful disease, 
 " syphilis." Certainly the destructive effects of these 
 drugs on the healthy would make them ill advised as a 
 general addition to the diet. Iodide of potassium pro- 
 duces serious irruptions when used in excess, and the 
 effects of mercury are too well known to require mention. 
 
 Hospital records indicate, and certain physicians, friends 
 of mine, estimate the proportion of the population in 
 American cities more or less tainted with syphilis to be 
 very considerable. It is thus seen that mercury and 
 iodide of potassium are or ought to be quite important 
 articles of diet. As an indication of what this taint may 
 be, we may take the figures of the English army which 
 show a proportion of one in three treated annually for 
 venereal disease, or, to be exact, 329 cases in the 1,000. 
 These were of course due to all the different sorts of 
 venereal diseases. 
 
 Quinine makes a good addition to the diet of a 
 malarian, but the effects of this drug on the digestion 
 and nervous system contraindicate it for the healthy. 
 
 Cod-liver oil has been the best addition ever made to 
 the diet of consumptives, and of those suffering from 
 some other similar wasting diseases. It is also good in 
 
158 TASKS BY TWILIGHT. 
 
 many bad constitutional conditions, for instance, eczema. 
 But in large quantities, such as would be suitable to 
 tolerance in this class of invalids, this food would be dis- 
 advantageous to the healthy, as encouraging too much 
 the formation of useless adipose. 
 
 Thus in climate, the fruits of the tropics, with such 
 grain additions as rice or sago, would be fatal in the 
 arctic zone as a diet, for it would provide insufficient 
 calorific to resist the cold. On the other hand, the blub- 
 ber food of the Esquimaux would be equally inappro- 
 priate at the equator. A long-continued use of the 
 foods of the tropics, or the diet of the Icy Circle, renders 
 man incapable of modifying his digestive apparatus to the 
 use of the dietary extreme opposite his own. Thus an 
 Esquimaux cannot live long at the equator, nor can 
 an African native live long near the poles. 
 
 In a less degree the most appropriate diets for varying 
 climatic conditions differ everywhere. The importance 
 of a careful study of foods and of conditions will be more 
 readily perceived, perhaps, when we remember the diseases 
 due entirely to vicious and improper diet. 
 
 The pellegra is a disease general amongst the poor 
 people of the valley of the river Po in Italy. The misery 
 and distress this disease causes in the population is great. 
 It has its origin in the diet of the country, which is largely 
 composed of maize or corn. This is eaten generally in 
 a condition somewhat fermented or spoiled. 
 
 The scurvy, a malady most frequent formerly at sea, 
 but now happily but little known, committed at one time 
 
DIET. 159 
 
 fearful ravages. Whole ships' crews were disabled by it ; 
 whole ships' crews occasionally died of it. Scarcely ever 
 was a voyage of any duration made without a consider- 
 able visitation of scurvy to the crew. Armies like that of 
 St. Louis in Egypt perished of it. Scurvy is a dietary 
 disease due largely to the continued absence of vegetables 
 or fruit acids from the foods used. This discovery of 
 the fact did away with its dangers. 
 
 Recent voyages in the arctic show some curious things 
 in relation to scurvy. Lemon juice, for instance, it has 
 been found, is not so good a preventative as a moderate 
 amount of alcohol. In two ships in the same expedition, 
 one using lemon juice and the other beer, scurvy ap- 
 peared in the first ship and could not be eradicated, 
 while it did not occur at all in the beer-using crew. 
 
 It is now certain that beer, wine, and spirits are a better 
 preventative in the arctic against scurvy than lime juice, 
 which was the agent heretofore used for this purpose. 
 
 Ergotism is a disease prevalent in parts of Germany. It 
 is due to a parasite of the rye. This grain is there the 
 one most used. 
 
 Leprosy is another dreadful disease partly perhaps 
 attributable to diet. It has been suffered and misunder- 
 stood in all climates and in all quarters of the world. Its 
 original cause is said to be the use of stale or spoiled fish, 
 continuously and in considerable quantity, as food. 
 
 Many other diseases more or less due to diet might be 
 cited, but it is as well to rest with these certainties. 
 With this information further looked into no family can 
 
l6o TASKS BY TWILIGHT. 
 
 be careless about its diet. The cases of poisoning from 
 canned goods, from ice-cream, from spoiled or adulterated 
 foods are the underlinings only to keep one's attention 
 on this important question. 
 
 The marked effect of foods upon birds and animals 
 is indicated by their flavor. The sage-hen of Utah is 
 exceedingly sweet and delicate to the taste, in the spring ; 
 in the fall, on the contrary, it has a rank flavor of sage, 
 due to its feeding at this time principally on this food. 
 The canvas-back ducks that visit the Chesapeake Bay are 
 deemed by epicures to be the best for the table. Their 
 flavor is attributed to the wild celery upon which they 
 there feed. These flavors in the flesh seem always in- 
 fluenced by diet. The same influences may be seen in 
 the secretions of animals. The milk of cows changes 
 perceptibly in color, specific gravity, flavor, and composi- 
 tion with changes of diet. Hay alone will make the 
 milk specially white and poor in cream ; alfalfa will make 
 it watery, with a peculiar and not over-pleasant flavor. 
 Carrots in quantity will give a rich color and more cream, 
 etc., etc. 
 
 Whether effects are produced by foods on the brain 
 similar to those on the muscles, endurance, and flavor of 
 flesh has not been demonstrated. The popular belief in 
 favor of this opinion should be presumed to have some 
 foundation until the contrary is proved, for the analogy 
 is too strong to be passed by. Even vegetables and 
 fruits of identical varieties vary in flavor in a marked 
 manner in different climates and soils, that is, with differ- 
 
DIET. l6l 
 
 ent plant foods and conditions. Apples in the North are 
 good, in the South poor ; peaches on heavy, wet soils are 
 indifferent, while on warm, light ones they reach excel- 
 lence ; while for the pear the conditions are reversed. 
 The effect of very slight differences are notorious in 
 grapes, through the flavor of the wine made from them. 
 
 Fanatics and empirical reformers every now and then 
 establish some dietary regulation as a part of their creeds 
 or forms. Sometimes their rules are based on very sen- 
 sible observations. The code of Moses and of the Talmud 
 is particularly worthy of study. Some animals, as the 
 pig and rabbit, are especially subject to parasites which, 
 as in the case of trichinae, when introduced into man are 
 dangerous. The meat of such animals should be well 
 cooked, with a view to destroying its dangers, and I 
 believe also should be as a rule avoided. In some 
 countries, as a few years ago in Cyprus, all animals seemed 
 to be more or less infected with parasites, and several of 
 my friends contracted parasites in that island as they 
 thought from eating ill-cooked meat, the meat coming 
 from the cattle of the country. 
 
 The prohibition of certain animals for eating by the 
 early religious legislators sometimes grew out of the custom 
 of having certain animals sacred to the tribe. Conse- 
 quently we cannot give too much attention to old 
 dietaries, for these were often made not upon scientific 
 reason, but upon reasons totally disconnected with dietary 
 advantages. 
 
 The ideas and codes of religious sects in regard to food 
 
1 62 TASKS BY TWILIGHT. 
 
 and feeding should not be despised. The observance of 
 feasts and fasts has sound reason for it. To astonish 
 one's stomach occasionally with a large meal of a different 
 make-up from the ordinary is usually beneficial ; so also 
 is a reasonable and occasional fast or abstinence, especi- 
 ally in the spring of the year. Pregnant women, how- 
 ever, are excepted. A regular life and a regular diet is 
 good, but it should be tempered by a little judicious 
 irregularity to be best. 
 
 Of course all such schemes as the exclusion of meat or 
 animal food, or the exclusion of the science of cooking 
 from the preparation of food, etc., are not to be thought 
 of. Such ideas are the follies of the extremist. The 
 impossible Hindoo will eat nothing that has been deprived 
 of life. He tells you this while he crushes between his 
 teeth the life germ of the rice seed, and while he mun- 
 ches a vegetable torn from the ground and dead. Man 
 is a predatory, omnivorous animal. His life is accom- 
 panied always by the destruction of other life, amount- 
 ing daily to a great figure. Hindoo ideas are consequently 
 not now practical. 
 
 I once visited a colony whose rules were founded on a 
 so-called spiritual revelation. In these rules all animal 
 or cooked food was excluded from the diet. Milk, butter, 
 cheese, eggs, and all meats or products of animals were 
 forbidden. So also were all vegetables, such as potatoes, 
 which cannot be eaten raw. I took dinner with them. 
 The meal consisted of walnuts, dried apples, raw peanuts, 
 and raisins. One member of the colony, its chief, seemed 
 
DIET. 163 
 
 to thrive, but the rest were weak and ethereal in appear- 
 ance, and incapable of prolonged energetic work. 
 
 The progress of man is not likely to make it advan- 
 tageous to give more time and energy to digestion than 
 now. This would be the case were an exclusive vege- 
 table diet adopted. The size of the stomach, jaw, teeth, 
 etc., is diminishing in the civilized man. It is therefore 
 plain on this account alone that the food of the civilized 
 must be more concentrated and more regularly taken than 
 is essential with the savage. A caution seems appropriate 
 in this connection. In our progressive change toward 
 more concentrated food, we should expect the nerves 
 giving notice that a sufficient quantity of food has been 
 taken, to be often deceived by the difference in bulk 
 and quick consumption of civilized diet, and should 
 consequently avoid the danger of overeating. 
 
 The tendency in diet has been toward concentrated 
 food, easily and promptly digested. This food judiciously 
 chosen is the best, for it gives liberty to the greatest 
 amount of energy for other achievement besides digestion. 
 The cow eating bulky aliment, which to be digested, 
 requires to be chewed, and chewed again in the cud, passes 
 its waking hours on its food supply and assimilation. 
 Such an animal is incapable of greatness. The digestive 
 organs of the horse require a certain amount of bulk to 
 work well. In the domestication of this animal the 
 efforts of man have been to concentrate the food used as 
 much as is consistent with its organs of assimilation, and 
 thus to apply the energies of the horse to work rather 
 
164 T ASA'S BY TWILIGHT. 
 
 than to digestion. A horse put out to grass without work 
 will gain in size, especially the stomach, and fall off in 
 energy : with work on a grass diet, he will fall off both 
 in weight and energy. 
 
 In all diets the machinery and mechanism of the diges- 
 tion, as well as the capacity of the organs themselves, must 
 be considered ; consequently a grass diet can never be 
 good for man, because his stomach and vital organs are 
 unsuited to such food. So equally a meat diet would not 
 do for a cow. 
 
 As the egg is the common source of life in all mam- 
 mals, so milk is the common food of the young of all, and 
 the milk of one is available for any. Still the milk varies, 
 human milk having most sugar. 
 
 As the lines of development diverge, so the food 
 changes ; thus we may presume that further evolution of 
 man will involve further change of food. In fact, a care- 
 ful examination indicates a tendency to perform digestive 
 and masticating work outside the body, also an equally 
 clear tendency toward concentrated forms of nourish- 
 ment, leading often to pure stimulation by such high con- 
 centrations as we find in alcohol. The increase of butter 
 and sugar consumption is in the same line. All the 
 CHO compounds are stimulating. Inasmuch as the evo- 
 lution of the digestive organs to meet necessary require- 
 ments for a higher life-organization would be arrested if 
 diet remained unchanged, we must perceive that persis- 
 tance in the statu quo of diet involves stagnation in other 
 lines. Thus, while such a diet would avoid the loss of 
 
DIET. 165 
 
 many individuals and of more or less discomfort and 
 danger in nearly all, it would also eliminate such indi- 
 viduals in their descendants from the race progress, and 
 eventuate in extermination. 
 
 Radical conservatism in diet is neither scientific nor 
 safe. 
 
 If we are to have further progress in the human race, 
 it is to be presumed that the diet will be much modified, 
 and consequently the digestive organs modified also to 
 meet new requirements. We have something of this kind 
 in the loss of function of the appendix vermiformis. 
 
 All this would doubtless be in the line of economy 
 in time and energy in supplying the system with food. 
 
 Consequently a race or family not progressing in this 
 way, would soon be fatally handicapped in the life struggle 
 and progress of humanity. A diet thoroughly in har- 
 mony with our present digestive organs is not from that 
 fact a good one. It may be good for the individual. 
 
 From present indications we can judge little of the 
 future. It may be that we will come to a point where the 
 alimentary substances will be taken from the ground by 
 chemical process, without the intervention of plants and 
 animals. We may also come to a point where the entire 
 preparatory work will be done outside of the body, in 
 which case we may take a hypodermic injection for a 
 dinner, and become independent of mouth, teeth, stomach, 
 and intestines. 
 
 We may consider this possibility exceedingly remote, 
 but we should never lose sight of the modifications that 
 
1 66 TASKS BY TWILIGHT. 
 
 have occurred in our diet and in our digestive tract, nor 
 of the probable continuation of these modifications toward 
 a more economical method of supplying our vital needs. 
 
 As far as our digestive organs at their present stage of 
 evolution are concerned, it has been ascertained with 
 sufficient accuracy for all intents and purposes, what 
 character and quantity of food is required for men in the 
 temperate zone. We have prison diets, soldiers' diets, 
 sailors' diets, etc., now arranged on a scientific basis in 
 place of the old empirical one. 
 
 Yeo's table for the adult is : 
 
 Albuminous foods 100 grammes. 
 
 Fats 90 
 
 Starch 300 " 
 
 Salts 30 " 
 
 Water 2,800 " 
 
 Foster and Voit's table is : 
 
 Albuminoids 118 grammes. 
 
 Carbohydrates 39 2 3 " 
 
 Fats 88.4 
 
 In these foods there is of nitrogen 18.3 grammes ; car- 
 bon, 328 grammes. 
 
 De Chaumont's table for an adult of 150 Ibs. weight and 
 doing an average amount of work is : 
 
 Albuminoids 4. 5 oz. 
 
 Fats 3-75 " 
 
 Carbohydrates 18.00 " 
 
 Salts.. . 1. 12 " 
 
DIET. 167 
 
 The British soldier's ration is : 
 
 Albuminoids 3.86 oz. 
 
 Fats 1.30 " 
 
 Carbohydrates 17-43 " 
 
 Salts 81 " 
 
 This ration is deficient in fats, and the high mortality 
 of British soldiers in garrison may be attributed in part 
 to this error. A considerable part of this excessive 
 mortality is in diseases for which fats are generally 
 prescribed. 
 
 The following tables are taken from the Best Rations 
 for the Soldier, by Col. Jos. R. Smith, M.D. 
 
 By general experience and individual experiment, we 
 have discovered a certain amount of food which will 
 sustain an average individual in good health ; and, also, 
 that much less than this will not suffice, though we do 
 not know that a little less would not suffice. We have 
 discovered, too, that certain combinations and propor- 
 tions of different foods are best in the larger number 
 of cases. 
 
 As large numbers of men are involved in these ex- 
 periments, the application of " averages " comes to our 
 aid, viz. : That property of the " average," in virtue of 
 which, from a large number of specific cases, every one 
 inaccurate in different directions, an idea may be 
 deduced which is very near, indeed, to accuracy. 
 
 I proceed to give the amounts of food necessary to 
 sustain in health and strength an adult male for twenty- 
 four hours, as determined theoretically and (by experi- 
 ence) practically by different parties. 
 
i68 
 
 TASKS BY TWILIGHT. 
 
 TABLE I. 
 
 Amount of Food Required per Man, per Day, as Determined in 
 Acttial Trial. 
 
 
 
 AVERAGE. 
 
 TOTAL 
 SOLID 
 FOOD. 
 
 
 
 By Prof 
 
 Fresh meat 16 ozs. 
 
 
 For a " man 
 in full health, 
 
 T 
 
 T. C. 
 
 Bread . . 19 " 
 
 
 and taking 
 
 
 Dalton. 
 
 Butter or fat 3.5 " 
 
 38.5 
 
 free exercise 
 
 
 
 
 ozs. 
 
 in the open 
 air." 
 
 
 
 Meat ... .16 ozs 
 
 
 
 
 
 Bread 20 " 
 
 
 
 
 
 Or biscuit 16 " 
 
 
 
 
 
 Vegetables (fresh) 8 ' ' 
 
 
 
 
 Typical 
 
 Or vegetables (preserved) ) 
 or rice or peas C 
 
 
 discretion of 
 
 
 Ration 
 
 Sugar 2 " 
 
 
 
 ? 
 
 of 
 
 Tea " 
 
 
 man ding on 
 
 
 English 
 
 Coffee | ' ' 
 
 
 
 
 Army. 
 
 Salt . i " 
 
 
 
 
 
 Pepper . . -<Ar ' ' 
 
 
 the Medical 
 
 
 
 ( when fresh ) 
 Lime-juice < vegetables > i " 
 ( are not issued ) 
 
 Max. 
 46 ozs. 
 to min. 
 36 ozs. 
 
 Officer. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 In Nos. 3 and 
 4, wine, 25 
 centiliters ; 
 
 
 
 Meat fresh 5 291 " 
 
 
 coffee, 15 
 
 
 Italian 
 
 Bacon . . .529 " 
 
 
 grammes(over 
 
 3- 
 
 Army. 
 Type B. 
 
 Pastry (macaroni, etc.) 7.054 
 Vegetables i.73 
 
 
 oz.), and 
 sugar, 22 
 
 
 
 Salt and pepper 7054 ' 
 
 47-015 
 ozs. 
 
 grammes(over 
 f oz.), should 
 be added, 
 being allowed 
 
DIET. 
 
 169 
 
 
 
 AVERAGE. 
 
 TOTAL 
 SOLID 
 FOOD. 
 
 
 4- 
 
 5- 
 
 6. 
 
 Army. 
 Type E. 
 
 Cor 
 Me 
 Bac 
 Veg 
 Che 
 Sal 
 
 n-meal 24 689 ozs 
 
 34.318 
 ozs. 
 
 
 
 on 520 ' 
 
 r etables 2 64*; ' 
 
 ' f 
 
 and pepper, . i 411 ' 
 
 
 Ration 
 of the 
 Army of 
 the 
 United 
 States of 
 North 
 America 
 
 Por 
 Or 
 Or 
 Sof 
 Or 
 Or 
 Bea 
 Or 
 Cof 
 Or 
 
 Or g 
 
 vn g 
 
 Sail 
 Pe F 
 
 k or bacon ..... 12 ozs 
 
 Max. 
 48.6 
 ozs. to 
 min. 
 32 ozs. 
 
 fresh beef or mutton. 20 ' ' 
 salt beef 22 " 
 
 t bread or flour 18 " 
 
 lard bread 16 " 
 
 corn-meal . . ... 20 " 
 
 ns or peas ... ... 2.4 " 
 
 rice or hominy 1.6 " 
 
 ee green I 6 " 
 
 coffee, roasted and ) 
 round \ *?** 
 
 tea 32 ' ' 
 
 ar 24. " 
 
 egar 32 gills 
 
 64 ozs. 
 
 
 
 Rations 
 of the 
 
 Navy of 
 
 United 
 States of 
 North 
 America 
 
 1 
 N 
 
 r Salt pork 18 ozs 
 
 
 Beans or peas 7 5 
 
 Biscuit 14 
 
 Tea | 
 
 Sugar. . 
 
 Pickles i 14 
 
 Molasses . . ...... 157 
 
 Vinegar -| pint 
 
 Salt beef 16 ozs. 
 
 
 Dried fruit . . 2 
 
 Biscuit, tea, sugar, 
 pickles, molasses, 
 and vinegar, the 
 same as in Ra- 
 tion i. 
 
TASKS BY TWILIGHT. 
 
 
 
 AVERAGE. 
 
 TOTAL 
 SOLID 
 FOOD 
 
 
 
 
 
 Preserved meat. . . .12 ozs 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Rice 8 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Butter. . 2 " 
 
 
 
 
 
 en 
 
 " 
 7 
 
 Dessicated mixed \ 
 vegetables .... \ 
 Biscuit, tea, sugar, 
 pickles, molasses, 
 
 Max. 
 
 48 ozs. 
 tomin. 
 38 ozs. 
 
 
 
 
 
 and vinegar, as 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 in Ration i. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Preserved meat. . . .12 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Butter 2 " 
 
 
 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 Dessicated tomatoes 6 
 
 
 
 
 
 o " 
 
 Biscuit, tea, sugar. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 pickles, molasses, 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 and vinegar, as 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 in Ration i. 
 
 
 
 
 
 n the above rations, fresh meat, 
 
 
 
 
 
 20 ozs., or preserved meat, 12 
 
 
 
 
 
 ozs., may be substituted for the 
 
 
 
 
 
 ration of salt pork or beef. 
 
 
 
 
 
 Soft bread or flour, 16 ozs., may 
 
 
 
 
 
 be substituted for biscuit. 
 
 
 
 
 
 Coffee, 2 ozs., or cocoa, 2 ozs., 
 
 
 
 
 
 may be substituted for tea ; rice, 
 
 
 
 
 
 or beans, 8 ozs., may be sub- 
 
 
 
 
 
 stituted for each other. Vege- 
 
 
 
 
 
 tables of equal value may be 
 
 
 
 
 
 substituted for beans or peas in 
 
 
 
 
 
 No. i, and for flour and dried 
 
 
 
 
 
 fruits in No. 2. 
 
 
 
 
 
 Canned vegetables, 6 ozs., may be 
 
 
 
 
 
 substituted for dessicated vege- 
 
 
 
 
 
 tables in No. 3. 
 
 
 
 
 
 Danned tomatoes, 6 ozs., may be 
 
 
 
 
 
 substituted for dessicated in 
 
 
 
 
 
 No. 4. 
 
 
 
 The foregoing amounts of food are in avoirdupois 
 ounces, and have undergone the test of experience. 
 
DIET. i;i 
 
 Concerning the first, Dalton, in his work on physiology 
 says: " From experiments performed while living on an 
 exclusive diet of bread, fresh meat, and butter, with coffee 
 and water for drink, we have found that the entire quantity 
 of food required during twenty-four hours, by a man in 
 full health and taking free exercise in open air, is as 
 follows: Meat, 16 ozs.; bread, 19 ozs. ; butter or fat, 
 3! ozs.; water, 52 fluid ozs." 
 
 The second, third, and fourth rations are those of the 
 British and Italian armies. I have given these, because 
 my knowledge concerning them is precise and definite. 
 The amounts of food are authoritative, the figures having 
 been furnished by the authorities in Rome and London 
 to the United States ministers resident in those cities, 
 and by them transmitted to the State Department in 
 Washington. 
 
 Accompanying Number 2, came the following: " On 
 active service abroad, in the field, the ration is fixed 
 according to the exigencies in each case, but the follow- 
 ing scale is laid down as a guide." 
 
 The Italian authorities write, concerning 3 and 4 : "It 
 is established that for the maximum nutrition of soldiers 
 from eighteen to twenty grammes of nitrogen (azote), 
 and from three hundred and ten to three hundred and 
 fifty of carbon are necessary." Six types of rations 
 used were also sent, of which I have presented type B 
 as of the greatest weight, and type E of the least weight. 
 
 It must be remembered that all these rations, perhaps 
 appropriate for the climate and places where formulated, 
 
1/2 TASKS BY TWILIGHT. 
 
 can not be so for all climates and places, nor for all 
 digestions. The fact that scurvy, a preventable disease 
 due to diet, is prevalent in nearly all armies and 
 navies, even in peace, shows that these rations are far 
 from perfect, or else that the soldiers do not have the 
 ration the government provides. In the years between 
 1869 and 1873 it has figured as a disease to the extent of 
 from 6 to 12 f in the Austrian army. It has occurred in 
 our own army. The law permits in this country the 
 company officers to sell a portion of the soldier's ration, 
 and to buy for him whatever they choose. It is a prac- 
 tice to thus sell a certain part of the ration and to apply 
 the money, not to foods, but to what is called a post 
 fund. This fund supports bands, libraries, etc. Such a 
 system must be wrong in principle, and subject to great 
 abuses. In some places the money obtained from the 
 ration is applied to still other purposes, but not for food. 
 At one place this curtailment of the ration resulted in 
 the soldiers receiving 18 ozs. of bread instead of 18 ozs. 
 of flour, equalling a loss of N. 37 grs., and C. 894 grs. 
 Abuses arising from this practice may be the real cause 
 of scurvy in the armies and navies of different coun- 
 tries rather than a really defective ration. (Col. J. B. 
 Smith, M. D.) 
 
 Fifty-two fluid ounces of water is by Dalton deemed 
 sufficient for an adult in the temperate zone. This 
 quantity can not be constant, for the amount of water 
 necessary or best for man must vary with the temperature 
 and occupation. 
 
DIET. 173 
 
 In the above tables the foods spoken of are: 
 
 Albuminoids; these are the components of meats, 
 beans, cheese, etc. 
 
 Fats; these are fats, butter, oil, etc. 
 
 Hydro-carbons; these are sugar and starch, as found 
 in grains, potatoes, etc. 
 
 Salts; these are minerals, such as chloride of sodium, 
 common table salt, etc. All of the essentials are 
 found in milk. 
 
 The value of different foods in diets depends very 
 much on their preparation. Some foods are most easily 
 assimilated when raw or uncooked, as lettuce, butter, 
 milk, ripe fruits, etc. But the great majority of the 
 articles of food used by man can be partially prepared 
 for assimilation by cooking. Such germs or parasites as 
 they may contain are also destroyed. The energies of 
 man are by this means saved to a considerable extent 
 from the time and work of digestion necessary in other 
 animals without this aid, and the body from some of the 
 dangers of disease. 
 
 Cooking, however, is often so badly done that the 
 digestibility of the food treated is impaired, and not im- 
 proved. It is not possible to enter here upon a treatise 
 on cooking, but we may properly call attention to the 
 fact that the nerves conveying to our nerve centres the 
 sensations of taste are governed largely by the hereditary 
 results of experiment as to the good or bad in foods, and 
 only secondarily and much less reliably by education. 
 Foods, correct in composition but without the flavors 
 
174 TASKS BY TWILIGHT. 
 
 associated with good foods by our nerves of taste, are 
 not only disagreeable, but fail to secure by reflex stimu- 
 lation the secretion of saliva, gastric juices, etc., essential 
 to their proper digestion. Consequently, flavors play an 
 important part in artificially prepared foods. Foods in 
 their natural condition confess correctly their appropri- 
 ateness in diet. Stale lettuce, bad butter, diseased or 
 spoilt milk, decayed meat, and unripe fruit all tell their 
 tale at once. Cooked foods that taste badly, if not ac- 
 tually inappropriate for the body in quality, composition, 
 or chemical condition, are so from their deception of the 
 nerves of taste, and should be avoided. We may, in- 
 deed, educate our tastes, but, unfortunately, their educa- 
 tion is as often bad as it is good. Frequently, too, 
 certain condiments, good in moderation and under 
 certain conditions, as pepper, spices, curries, etc., are 
 taken to excess or made to cover defects in cooking that 
 would otherwise be very apparent. 1 
 
 The chemical changes in foods, under the influence of 
 heat, time, etc., are great, and should be studied by 
 every family founder. Butter, for instance, may be 
 cooked so that it makes the article which it is intended 
 
 1 A study of the introduction and use amongst us of the various 
 condiments is both interesting and instructive. The present almost 
 universal use of these agents has for its presumable utility the stimu- 
 lation and hastening of digestion. From this we can perceive the 
 advantage to man of any saving in time or energy in digestion, for to 
 the extent of such saving the energies are liberated for other things. 
 Abuse in the use of condiments is easy to come to under our high 
 pressure of life, and should be guarded against. 
 
DIET. 175 
 
 to improve difficult, if not impossible, of digestion ; and 
 so of a number of articles of diet. The preparation of 
 food for the sick or convalescent demands special atten- 
 tion. The rule in this matter is to seek natural foods, 
 such as milk, and to study simplicity in their preparation. 
 
 Water is an article which in some form is an absolute 
 essential to man. As a rule the purer it is the better it 
 is. It may be mixed with alcohol, tea, coffee, fruit 
 juices, and more or less adulterated in many ways. 
 Water may ~be charged naturally with mineral constitu- 
 ents. When the amount of minerals contained is large, 
 especially of some kinds, water becomes unsuited to 
 man's use and may become of no value to him in diet, 
 as is the case with sea water. 
 
 Men have fasted for considerable periods. Dr. 
 Tanner and others have been carefully watched in ex- 
 periments of this kind, and it is now considered estab- 
 lished that it is possible for a human being to go for 
 many days without food in the ordinary acceptance of 
 the term. Forty-eight days is probably the longest 
 period during which man has abstained from food and 
 lived, although considerably longer periods have been 
 mentioned. But in no case has man been recorded as 
 going for a lengthened period without some form of 
 water. This fluid is, therefore, the first essential of man 
 after air. Animals, it must be said, however, do seem 
 to go for extraordinary periods without water. In the 
 deserts of California, lizards, rabbits, and other small 
 animals, and in places where no water seems accessible, 
 
i;6 TASKS BY TWILIGHT. 
 
 ground squirrels, owls, etc., live five or six months and 
 even longer with no apparent supply of this fluid. 
 Whether such animals have some means of obtaining 
 water unknown to us, say from certain plants, or whether 
 they actually live for long periods without any, I am un- 
 able to say. The life of these animals is interesting as 
 indicating that water is at least not so continuous a nec- 
 essity to animal life as has been thought. 1 Doubtless 
 for man to reach such a stage would require many ages 
 of adaptation. Men vary greatly in respect to their use 
 of water. I recollect the Bedouin Arabs on the deserts 
 of Upper Egypt to have been exceedingly abstemious in 
 their use of water on the march. Apart from the Nile 
 the water throughout Egypt and the adjacent countries 
 is scant, and as a rule bad from excess of mineral con- 
 stituents. The Bedouins are doubtless wise in using this 
 desert water as little as possible. 
 
 The character of the mineral carried in water has a 
 marked influence on those using it. Some minerals 
 induce anaemia with its surface-showing of pallor in the 
 white race, others, as water containing lime, seem to 
 produce vigor, large frames, and a rosy complexion. 
 Distilled and rain water are free from any appreciable 
 mineral, and may therefore be boiled for considerable 
 periods without danger of increasing the proportion of 
 mineral through partial evaporation of the water. Good 
 
 1 The sheep in California are not taken to water during the rainy 
 season, when the food is green. They obtain all the moisture they 
 rieed from the grass, 
 
DIET. 177 
 
 spring, or hard water, is often rendered unfit for use in 
 this way. While an excess of mineral is bad, it is a 
 matter of doubt whether a reasonable amount of mineral 
 in drinking water is not better for man than none at all. 
 The inhabitants of lime stone districts would indicate 
 that this is sometimes the case. The presumption in 
 general should be in favor of the pure water. 
 
 Pure rain water, it should be remembered, is especially 
 liable to take up certain minerals, such as lead. Rain 
 water also accumulates, while falling, the germs of certain 
 innocent animalculi, and may accumulate the germs of 
 dangerous ones. The innocent ones are those which 
 have been studied. These multiply with extraordinary 
 rapidity, but apparently exhaust the food in the water, 
 and in about three weeks die off and nearly disappear. 
 Properly protected rain water will then contain less life 
 than spring water. In some places where rain water is 
 much used for drinking, this process is called " curing," 
 and rain water is not considered fit to drink until it is 
 " cured." Owing to the bacterial life, or perhaps bac- 
 terial death, rain water smells unpleasantly from a day 
 or two after its fall, until this curing is complete. Boil- 
 ing does away with the smell and the life or death that 
 makes it. The water of a district is an important matter 
 of investigation from the point of view of its mineral 
 contents. It is still more so in regard to the life it may 
 contain. Water permits the life of a large number of 
 bacteria inimical to man, such as those of malaria, 
 typhoid fever, etc. Malarial districts invariably have 
 
178 TASKS BY TWILIGHT. 
 
 their waters charged with malarial bacteria. Boiling the 
 water destroys all bacterial life although not always the 
 germs. Freezing does not produce this result, for a 
 great variety of living bacteria and germs have been 
 found in ice. 
 
 The temperature at which water is used is an element 
 in its effects upon the constitution. Hot water in the 
 stomach has a contracting effect, and if persisted in 
 probably weakens the digestion. It is, for its contract- 
 ing effect, good in catarrh of the stomach, and in some 
 other troubles. Very cold water, as ice-water, is bad, 
 for energy must be expended to overcome its tempera- 
 ture before any digestion can go on. If one will hold, 
 for five minutes, a glass of ice-water closely in the hand, 
 they will better understand what the energy required for 
 this is. The feeling in the hand will be disagreeable, 
 indicating a protest of nature against the cold. The 
 stomach cannot make this protest with any approach to 
 the force of the hand, because it lacks the nerves of 
 sensation to do it with. Besides this, an excessive 
 amount of icy cold material of any kind introduced 
 into the stomach gives a shock, proportioned to its 
 quantity, to the solar plexus. 
 
 This is a nerve centre governing the work of the 
 stomach. Its injury cannot but be felt by the whole 
 system. 
 
 Well water is always liable to contamination from 
 cess-pools, the seepage of stable yards, or from surface 
 drainage. So also is river water, the water-shed of 
 
DIET. 179 
 
 which contains households or settlements. Such water 
 should be boiled before use, especially where typhoid 
 fever, .malarial maladies, or other diseases, the germs of 
 bacteria of which may be carried in water, are prevalent. 
 
 Air is a constant necessity to man. A few cases are 
 on record of persons surviving after being deprived of 
 air for more than five minutes. The testimony is, how- 
 ever, open to question. Five minutes is a pretty certain 
 limit for the maintenance of human life without air. To 
 the extent that air is changed from its normal composi- 
 tion by germs, dust, or gases it becomes less serviceable 
 to man. The importance of pure air is too apparent to 
 need demonstration. 
 
 Air is a fluid composed of 20.81 parts of oxygen to 
 79.19 of nitrogen. The oxygen, as far as we know, is 
 the only part used by man. 
 
 It envelopes the earth to the height of about six miles 
 from the sea level. The oxygen diminishes in each 
 cubic foot of air as we ascend above the sea, till at last 
 there is insufficient to sustain life. In places below the 
 sea, such as some mines, the foundation excavations of 
 the Brooklyn Bridge, etc., the increased concentration 
 of the air and its pressure causes many inconveniences, 
 and sometimes disease. 
 
 As human beings are now constituted, there must be 
 some standard as to the amount of oxygen contained in 
 a cubic foot of air which is best for the life interests of 
 man. It is certain that man can live and prosper at the 
 sea level, and to a considerable height above it, There 
 
180 TASKS BY TWILIGHT. 
 
 is not only a limit to life, however, owing to the paucity 
 of oxygen due to great elevations, but also a limit at a 
 much less elevation to the possibility of the greatest 
 human development in any line. 
 
 As the oxygen to the cubic foot is diminished, the 
 heart and lungs are obliged to increase their work to 
 properly relieve and revivify the blood with the oxygen 
 of the air. 
 
 So, we find, the number of respirations and heart beats 
 in animals increase with the elevation at which they are 
 above the sea. 
 
 At high elevations a great deal of energy must be 
 diverted from other things to the heart and lungs to 
 produce a proper diet of air. 
 
 This cannot be permanently advantageous to man. 
 It may very well be that a man descended from active 
 ancestors, but himself leading a sedentary life, would 
 be better several thousand feet above the sea than at its 
 level. Because at the sea level his lungs, accustomed to 
 activity in his ancestors, would receive too little exercise 
 to maintain their health in his own sedentary body, 
 whereas at the high elevation they might exercise 
 as much as those of an athlete at a lower level. The 
 preference that disease has for unused as for overused 
 organs makes it seem probable, that the rapid propor- 
 tionate increase in civilization of those leading seden- 
 tary lives, but descended from more active ancestors, is 
 an element in the increase of lung troubles. If this be 
 true we can understand why high elevations may be 
 
DIET. l8l 
 
 beneficial for such subjects. Though the rule be to 
 let a diseased member or organ rest, it would in such 
 case be the rest or lack of exercise that caused the dis- 
 ease and the cause must be removed before the disease 
 can be cured. 
 
 Air over the ocean, a few miles from the land, and also 
 at high altitudes, is comparatively free from germs and 
 dust. Air thus pure is better than when impure, espe- 
 cially for diseased lungs. This quality may overcome to 
 a certain extent the drawbacks of lack of oxygen at 
 high altitudes. The exemptions in the French conscrip- 
 tion due to deficiencies of body or mind, are found to 
 increase in a rising ratio with each thousand feet of ele- 
 vation after two thousand feet above the sea. This is a 
 clear indication that high elevations are not aids to the 
 highest development of man. 
 
 A number of examinations of mountain populations, 
 and of those upon elevated plateaus, leads me to advise 
 strongly against any permanent residence over two 
 thousand feet above the sea. 
 
 Air is much vitiated by swamps. These should not be 
 selected as residences, nor should places near them. 
 The efficiency and force of the individual is lowered by 
 such air, and the rearing of a family becomes doubtful. 
 The vitality of air is diminished by human use. Conse- 
 quently the air, in cities where large numbers of human 
 beings are congregated together, is less good than that of 
 the country. 
 
 While a young man in business in Baltimore I was in 
 
1 82 TASKS BY TWILIGHT. 
 
 the habit of spending my Sunday afternoons in the 
 country. I can recollect very well the dull, heavy 
 feeling of the air of the city when returning in the 
 evening. The fresh and strong feeling of the country 
 air, when going out of the city into it, is also a vivid 
 recollection in my mind. Closed rooms, ill-ventilated 
 buildings, or places where many people congregate in one 
 room as in tenement houses, theatres, etc., are all disad- 
 vantageous to the highest evolution of human energy. 
 Frequent or long exposures to such conditions should be 
 avoided. In certain trades and occupations a great deal 
 of dust gets into the air breathed by the operatives. 
 Such trades or occupations are all unhealthy, especially 
 tending to consumption. The prudent will not engage 
 in such occupations. 
 
 An extended series of observations by Dr. W. B. Wood 
 has warranted him in estimating that four sevenths of the 
 entire population are affected by lung complaints. The 
 dissections at the Salpetriere, the great French hospital 
 for the insane, show a still larger proportion to be or to 
 have been affected by tubercular lesions in the lungs. 
 Consumption is a disease of civilization. The disease, 
 as far as I know, was never observed in any savage peo- 
 ple when first visited by Europeans. It is still very little 
 known amongst such peoples. Our pioneer life has had 
 a curative effect upon consumption. Thus we see the 
 consumptive early settlers in our Western States benefited 
 or cured of the malady, whereas to-day in the high civil- 
 ization that has followed the old primitive life we find the 
 
DIET. 183 
 
 population of the same districts where cures were formerly 
 the rule now rank producers of consumption. A larger 
 proportion of the population is consumptive in New 
 England and the coast provinces of Canada than any- 
 where else in the world. The standard of life in these 
 places is high, the time and energy demanded for educa- 
 tion great, and the strain upon the nervous system heavy. 
 Consumption in its prevalence generally corresponds 
 with nervous strain. A recently published sanitary 
 atlas will show this relation. The exceptions occur 
 where the lungs are much irritated by dust, foul air, 
 etc. These things indicate that the opinion that phthisis 
 is a disease due to nervous debility or nervous overstrain 
 has some reason in it. At the same time we must admit 
 that this disease has other causes. The bacillus tuber- 
 culosis is found in those diseased with it, and the disease 
 may be created, in animals at least, by inoculations of 
 this bacillus. It is also a generally received opinion that 
 those with consumption may infect persons living with 
 them. The disinfecting methods for the sputa, etc., 
 lately adopted in hospitals for consumptives, as at 
 Brompton, show a great benefit in reduced intensity 
 of the disease, prolonged average of life, and increased 
 proportions of cures. It is evident, then, that the bacil- 
 lus plays an important part in the causation, intensity, 
 or continuance of consumption. At the same time we 
 must remember that the injection into the blood of cer- 
 tain ptomaines found in dead bodies will cause death, 
 so also will the various bacteria that produce them. We 
 
184 TASKS BY TWILIGHT. 
 
 cannot on this account attribute death in general to 
 these bacteria. 
 
 But we say that death is due to a lack of force suffi- 
 cient to maintain the necessary functions of one or more 
 of the vital organs. After death we admit that certain 
 bacteria are found normally in the cadaver, but we do 
 not admit that these were the cause of death, although 
 they may be made to again produce it. A paper was 
 recently communicated to the Academy of Sciences at 
 Paris, by Dr. Curmont, Preparator of the School of Medi- 
 cine at Lyons, on a new bacillary tuberculosis of bovine 
 origin. He claims that he has found a new bacillus 
 capable of producing tuberculosis. His proof lies in the 
 fact that he has caused tuberculosis in rabbits by inocu- 
 lation of the new bacillus. In Guinea pigs it does not 
 produce tuberculosis, but it causes a general infection 
 which is fatal. May it not be the consumption, the dis- 
 eased state, which makes the condition favorable to the 
 life and multiplication of the bacillus tuberculosis, 
 whether of the old kind or of the claimed new sort ? 
 Consumption is certainly not a climatic disease, for it 
 is found present or absent in all sorts of climates. It is 
 common in the south of Scotland and almost unknown 
 in the north of Scotland. It is common throughout Eng- 
 land although very rare in the southwest. Common in 
 Denmark, it is practically absent in the phenomenally 
 bad climate of Iceland. A scourge in New England and 
 Nova Scotia, it is a curiosity in the old Hudson Bay 
 country. Common in Central Europe it is confined to 
 
DIET. 185 
 
 the political prisoners in Eastern Siberia. Whatever may 
 be its cause it is never general except when the nervous 
 system is under a heavy strain. Under these conditions 
 it is always prevalent. As our progress is upon nervous 
 lines, it is apparent that consumption is a disease especi- 
 ally to be guarded against. 
 
 Those occupations or situations where it is to be most 
 expected from irritation to the lungs, confinement, etc., 
 and in which no nervous progress or development is 
 especially at stake, should be religiously relegated to 
 those without an expectation of immortality in the child. 
 
 The temperature of the air is an influential factor in 
 the human activity. In the far north a great amount of 
 energy is required to assimilate the fats necessary to 
 maintain the heat of the body and generally to resist the 
 extreme cold. Very cold climates do not permit intel- 
 lectual activity, on account of their absorption of energy 
 to resist their low temperatures. The extensions toward 
 the north of the line of the highest civilization, it is to 
 be presumed, is due to the devices of man in counteract- 
 ing the cold. The most prominent of these is in the 
 application of artificial heat and in the housing of the 
 people, by both of which the energies are saved. 
 
 In the tropics the paucity of intellectual activity is still 
 more noticeable. For the population in the tropics is 
 much greater from which such manifestations could come 
 and of greatly longer residence. Manifestly the arctic 
 regions have only been inhabited by reason of popula- 
 tion pressure from more fortunate regions. Consequently 
 
1 86 TASKS BY TWILIGHT. 
 
 they must have been settled last of all the corners of 
 the earth. 
 
 Any activity of the body or brain is accompanied by 
 heat which must be gotten rid of when it is in excess 
 of the bodily needs. No considerable exertion can be 
 undertaken in a hot climate without such excess of heat- 
 production. The energies required for such heat elimi- 
 nation in an active person so situated are very great. 
 Where warm climates are also humid, the difficulty of 
 getting rid of surplus body heat is increased. Such 
 elimination of heat in man is produced by perspiration 
 and evaporation. The greater the humidity of the air, 
 the temperature being equal, the slower must be the 
 evaporation and consequent cooling of the body. From 
 these matters we may perceive a reasonable explanation 
 of the body and mind indolence of the world's tropical 
 population. 
 
 Every activity under the equator requires much energy 
 to get rid of the heat it produces, while in the cooler 
 zones activity for the production of heat is more and 
 more a necessity to preserve life. Cold, therefore, must 
 be beneficial to progress, until it reaches a point where 
 the energies are all or nearly all absorbed to counteract 
 it. From these considerations it will be plain that every 
 one, desiring for himself and his descendants the highest 
 estate of man, will select the temperate or cool zone for 
 his residence. Dry heat, being more favorable to evapo- 
 ration and cooling, is less obnoxious to the evolution of 
 human energy. We have no historical record of a high 
 
DIET. IS/ 
 
 civilization in a moist, hot climate, nor does such a civ- 
 ilization exist, neither is it to be expected. The Mexi- 
 can and Peruvian civilizations were of an inferior charac- 
 ter, and also in high, comparatively cool altitudes, and dry 
 districts where tropical conditions were much modified. 
 A few ruins here and there in the tropics are found, as in 
 Central America, Ceylon, Siam, etc. They are all of a 
 primitive type, and as the record is a blank regarding their 
 history, we may presume that even these are due to some 
 emigrants not long maintaining their imported energy. 
 
 Alexander Hamilton, like a few other distinguished 
 persons, was born in the tropics, but of parents from 
 more favorable climes, and his activities were in the 
 temperate zone. 
 
 Hamilton was born in the West Indies ; D'Espremenil 
 in Madras, and Fournier in Martinique. The Vasa 
 family is about the only distinguished one from the far 
 north. No distinguished person in the world's history 
 comes from within the arctic circle, nor four degrees 
 from the equator. This rather smooth theory has one 
 bad stumbling-block to contend on the heat side. It is 
 that the greatest athletic performances of men or ani- 
 mals have been on warm or hot days, and not on cold 
 ones. My own experience in athletic games is that I 
 work better on a warm or hot day, and feel my skill 
 markedly diminished on a cold or even chilly one. Con- 
 sequently, the efforts of nature to overcome the heat 
 produced by bodily action must not be overesti- 
 mated, and may not be the source of human in- 
 
1 88 TASKS BY TWILIGHT. 
 
 dolence in the tropics. The worthlessness of tropical 
 population, no matter from where recruited, makes the 
 tropics forbidden ground for the family founder. 
 
 A universal accompaniment of the advance of man 
 has been the discovery and use of some form of stimu- 
 lant or narcotic. All of them, if we except the mild 
 cocoa, have a disagreeable first taste that must be over- 
 come by habit or disguised by flavoring. 
 
 Children do not like the natural taste of any of these 
 agents. The effect of the first use of some of them, as 
 tobacco, are unpleasant. We class them as stimulants or 
 narcotics. As a matter of fact, however, they are all 
 narcotic when taken in sufficient quantity. On the 
 other hand, pronounced narcotics, even such as ether, 
 have a preliminary stimulating or exciting effect. 
 
 It is beyond the scope of this work to treat exhaus- 
 tively of all agents of this kind, therefore, a sketch will 
 be given only of those in most common use. 
 
 These are of so-called stimulants, tea, coffee, and al- 
 cohol, and of narcotics, tobacco and opium. In South 
 America mate, whose active principle is thein, and 
 coca are largely used, while in Africa it is the kola nut, 
 with thein or coffeine as its principle ; in India Indian 
 hemp, etc., but as these drugs are not much tised 
 amongst us, we need not discuss them except to say that 
 the habitual use of coca has great dangers, and Indian 
 hemp still greater. The latter should never be used, for 
 the same reasons that will subsequently be given for the 
 total abstinence from opium. 
 
DIET. 189 
 
 TEA. Tea is produced from the leaves of a plant 
 grown principally in China and India. It owes its 
 stimulating properties to an alkaloid known as thein, dis- 
 covered by Oudry in 1827. It is properly prepared by 
 pouring boiling-hot water on the leaves. In proportion 
 to the time that this water is poured from the leaves the 
 character of the beverage is influenced. The quicker it 
 is done the more of the delicate aroma of the leaves will 
 be had, and the less of the thein and astringent proper- 
 ties of the leaves. Perfect tea cannot be allowed to 
 stand long on the leaves, and should be drunk immedi- 
 ately after preparation. As thus used it is a delightful 
 drink with no known deleterious effects. This sort of 
 tea is not often made outside of China. As usually pre- 
 pared it is stronger, slightly stimulating, and little sub- 
 ject to abuse. When used in large quantities, however, 
 it is apt to have an unfavorable effect upon the diges- 
 tion, perhaps as much through the excess of tannin from 
 the usually stewed leaves as from the excess of thein. 
 Excess in the use of tea also produces a condition called 
 nervousness, characterized by tremor in the muscles, 
 sleeplessness, and incapacity for full body or mind 
 .work. 
 
 In the Wigan district in England the female opera- 
 tives used a considerable amount of very strong tea. To 
 such an extent was this practice carried that the health 
 of these operatives was often ruined, and they were 
 found to be tea drunkards. A medical inquiry into the 
 condition of the Wigan operatives, attributed to the tea 
 
1 90 TASKS BY TWILIGHT. 
 
 habit the nervous break-down of the women, their hys- 
 teria, and the general ruin of their health. It is only in 
 large doses that such results are produced, but like all 
 the stimulants or narcotics it is subject to obtain an em- 
 pire over its users, to their injury or ruin. Like all the 
 agents containing thein, the known effects of tea are 
 upon the spinal cord and upon the cerebrum, and doubt- 
 less, secondarily, more or less upon all the nervous 
 centres. 
 
 In moderation it probably aids mental work. At least 
 this is the seeming effect. 
 
 COFFEE. Coffee is made from the berry of a bush 
 growing in Arabia, Ceylon, Java, Brazil, Mexico, Cen- 
 tral America, and a few other places. 
 
 It is prepared by roasting the berry, grinding it, and 
 pouring boiling water upon it. Coffee is like tea, in con- 
 taining thein or caffeine which was discovered in it by 
 Runge in 1820, and identified with thein by Mulder and 
 Jobst in 1838. It differs from tea in containing less 
 astringent and in having an empyreumatic oil which 
 alone has marked stimulating properties. Coffee, to be 
 at its best, should be made strong. It may then be adul- 
 terated with hot milk and cream without loss of flavor. 
 Weak tea may be excellent, but weak coffee is an abom- 
 ination. Coffee, perhaps for this reason, is drunk 
 stronger than tea, and has a marked stimulating effect 
 upon the nervous system. Used to excess it will produce 
 the same results as tea, and also others, such as neu- 
 ralgia and headache. It is said to be an aphrodesiac. 
 
DIET. 19! 
 
 Coffee also affects the kidneys and bladder, causing a 
 free secretion of urine and frequent micturition, but a 
 diminished amount of urea. In fact this latter result is 
 common to all these agents. With some persons who 
 take tea without difficulty, coffee produces digestive 
 trouble, apparently due to derangement of the functions 
 of the liver. With the great majority of persons, coffee 
 is more a help than a hindrance to assimilation. It 
 probably causes much less indigestion than tea. A per- 
 fect cup of coffee is the most delicious beverage in the 
 world. I cannot refrain from saying something that 
 may make trouble in the kitchen. It is that a perfect 
 cup of coffee requires that the berry should have been 
 roasted and ground immediately before it was made. 
 The medical officers of the French army use it as a pre- 
 ventative of malaria instead of quinine, and claim good 
 results from it. Coffee reduces the heart beats while 
 increasing the heart force. On this account it has been 
 found useful in weak heart, and in dropsy due to heart 
 disease. Coffee has less cumulative action than digitalis, 
 a drug used for the same diseases, and is on this account 
 better. 
 
 ALCOHOL. Alcohol is a colorless volatile fluid formed 
 out of sugar by fermentation. It is always taken diluted 
 very much with water, and the more the better. Whiskey 
 and brandy, amongst the strongest forms in which it is 
 used, are generally expected to contain from 48 to 56 
 per cent, of alcohol. Beer and wine are the other 
 common forms of alcohol in use in this country,, both of 
 
TASKS BY TWILIGHT. 
 
 which vary in strength, but are very much weaker than 
 those first named. While its vehicle has some influence 
 on its results, the general effect of alcohol is always the 
 same. The researches of Dujardin-Beaumetz show that 
 some kinds of alcohol are more poisonous than others. 
 His table of the poisonous dose per kilo (2 Ibs.) of body 
 weight sufficient to kill in 24 to 36 hours of the different 
 alcohols is as follows : 
 
 Ethyl alcohol 89 grammes concentrated. 
 
 Propylic alcohol 2.90 " " 
 
 3-75 " dilute. 
 
 Butylic " 2.00 " concentrated. 
 
 1.85 " dilute. 
 
 Amylic " 1.70 " concentrated. 
 
 " 1.50 " dilute. 
 
 The alcohol in general use is more poisonous the more 
 concentrated it is. The reason that the two last are 
 more poisonous when dilute is because they are more 
 soluble when dilute, and, therefore, more subject to 
 assimilation. 
 
 It has been said that alcohol is not a food, because it 
 is recognized unchanged in the breath, perspiration, 
 urine, etc. But this does not seem established, because 
 no experimenter as yet has been able to find more than 
 16 per cent, of the alcohol administered in the excreta, 
 and it is therefore surmised that the balance must be 
 lost or used in the system. Alcohol diminishes cell 
 activity, upon which bodily heat depends, and therefore 
 lowers the temperature. It does this in another way, also, 
 by dilation of the capillaries and determination of blood 
 
DIET. 193 
 
 to the surface. This increases the action of the sweat 
 glands and evaporation. The blood near the air and 
 evaporation are both cooling. It is not surprising, there- 
 fore, to know that in large amounts, alcohol sometimes 
 reduces the body temperature below normal from two to 
 four degrees F. 
 
 In its more concentrated forms in general use, as 
 brandy, whiskey, gin, and rum, alcohol when taken 
 habitually injures the liver, causing cirrhosis. It also 
 injures the heart and kidneys. In countries where wine 
 and beer are the forms of alcohol mostly used liver 
 lesions due to alcohol are not common. Its excessive 
 use predisposes to all lung diseases. The unfavorable 
 results of excesses in liquor are particularly pronounced 
 in pneumonia. In this disease the alcohol habit pro- 
 duces more directly recognized fatal results than in any 
 other. All muscular power is reduced by alcohol in its 
 direct effects, consequently athletes avoid it when pre- 
 paring for any feat or contest. I have observed that 
 even a pint of claret, taken at dinner, diminished my 
 power while in training to walk a measured three miles 
 by several seconds. We have no means of ascertaining 
 what its effects are on mental effort, but it is to be pre- 
 sumed that they are similar and disadvantageous. On 
 the other hand, we have the opinion of many physicians 
 that alcohol will increase the vital forces, and enable the 
 individual to bridge over some disaster to the body 
 which without it would cause death. Dr. W. P. Lom- 
 bard has recently conducted some experiments which 
 13 
 
194 TASKS BY TWILIGHT. 
 
 seem to have been carefully checked. By careful meas- 
 urement he claims that at least temporarily muscular 
 power increases under alcohol and diminishes under 
 tobacco. His theory is that muscular fatigue is not so 
 much due to muscular as to nerve exhaustion of the 
 centres, the immediate source of the muscular stimulus. 
 He derived this idea from the fact that the application 
 of electricity to an apparently exhausted muscle imme- 
 diately causes the contraction to appear in full force. 
 Alcohol certainly has a preliminary effect on the terminal 
 nerves, and the first physical record of its abuse is rec- 
 ognizable in these. It is exceedingly subject to abuse. 
 The intoxication produced by alcohol relieves man tem- 
 porarily from the strain, competition, and responsibilities 
 of life. He escapes from society at least temporarily, or 
 he escapes from himself. The weaker he is the more he 
 is fascinated and lured on. A certain amount of indul- 
 gence still further weakens him ; his will power is lost, 
 his body is injured, his spirit is enslaved, and he is in 
 the hands of a demon from whom few escape. A man 
 under its influence is capable of ruining himself, his 
 friends, his wife, his children. Alcohol is the original 
 Arab name of this spirit. It means the demon. In its 
 abuse no name could be more appropriate. The effect 
 of alcohol on the nervous system in toxic doses is a pro- 
 gressive paralysis, commencing with the highest, or rea- 
 soning powers, and involving one centre after another, 
 each one lower till at last death occurs by paralysis of 
 the nerves producing respiration. So the first evidence 
 
DIET. 195 
 
 of drunkenness is the loss of reason and self control. 
 Continual degradation in drunkenness tends more and 
 more to make this first paralysis permanent. 
 
 The amount of crime and misery due to drunkenness 
 is very great. No one denies it. Some individuals of 
 bright careers have gone to the dogs through alcohol, 
 but have recovered themselves and subsequently lived 
 useful and respectable lives. We may say from these in- 
 stances that alcohol alone is the ruin of many, as it was 
 temporarily the ruin of those who have reformed. 
 
 The effects of alcohol in moderation upon the resist- 
 ant powers of the body to cold, heat, and disease are 
 still unsettled. In excess it is always injurious. As to 
 heat, as in tropical climates, the weight of testimony 
 seems against it, which is strange when we consider that 
 it lowers the bodily temperature. The extra work 
 thrown on the liver in such climates, and the tendency of 
 alcohol to diminish the efficiency of this organ, may be 
 the cause of its bad effects. 
 
 In the Ashantee war the English officers report that 
 the use of liquor was injurious, and they, therefore, 
 abolished the ration of alcohol. As to disease, its mod- 
 erate use may be slightly unfavorable. In reports on 
 yellow fever, especially in one on the epidemic at Pan- 
 ama during the building of the French fiasco, strong 
 ground is taken against it, but upon what appears to be 
 partial and insufficient evidence. 
 
 A number of hospital reports show that drinkers have 
 less prospects of recovery than the temperate. In 
 
196 TASKS BY TWILIGHT. 
 
 excess we have already seen how bad the effects of alco- 
 hol are. On the other hand, the Collective Investiga- 
 tion Committee of the British Medical Association, 
 made of total abstainers and temperate drinkers has 
 published a report which shows the average length of 
 life in the same class to be for the 
 
 Temperate ...... 62 years. 
 
 Total abstainer . . . . . 51 years. 
 
 Inebriates . . . . . . 52 years. 
 
 This extraordinary and almost incredible report may be 
 explained upon the ground that a majority of the total 
 abstainers are such from the necessity of a physical 
 weakness that has never permitted them to contract the 
 drinking habit. 
 
 There are people who are so disastrously affected by 
 any quantity of alcohol that it may be presumed to be 
 impossible for them to continue to take alcohol in excess. 
 Others of the total abstainers have been hard drinkers, 
 and may be presumed to have undermined their consti- 
 tutions before their reform. A convocation of total 
 abstainers is generally, to a large extent, made up of lank 
 and sickly looking persons. A view only of a total 
 abstinence meeting without one's ears would certainly 
 discourage conversions. As to cold we have on the one 
 hand the instance of the loggers of a Canadian camp 
 imprisoned by snow and subjected to great privations 
 and cold amongst whom were hard drinkers, moderate 
 drinkers, and total abstainers. The total abstainers 
 alone escaped. The facts of this case, however, were 
 
DIET. 197 
 
 not in my opinion sufficiently well checked to be conclu- 
 sive. On the other hand, we have the testimony of 
 Nares, Markham, Sir L. McClintock, Alex. Gray, Dr. 
 Envall, Nordenskiold, and others, that in the arctic circle 
 total abstainers have no advantage over moderate drink- 
 ers, but rather the reverse. The result, however, may be 
 due to the anti-scorbutic influence of alcohol. We may 
 recognize this effect most clearly in the Nares expedi- 
 tion. On the Alert they had scurvy although giving out 
 a regular ration of lime-juice, while on the Alliance they 
 had no scurvy. In the first ship they did not serve a 
 regular ration of alcohol, while on the latter they brewed 
 their own beer and drank it. So also in the sixty-six 
 days' sledging journey of Nordenskiold and Palander 
 from Spitzbergen, while a diet productive of scurvy was 
 taken without lime-juice, they used spirits and did not 
 have the disease. We must repeat again that any favor- 
 able effects that may seem due to alcohol are so exclu- 
 sively in those who use it moderately. 
 
 The abuse of alcohol is a frequent cause of mental 
 alienation and of suicide. Dujardin-Beaumetz shows 
 that the limit of safety in the habitual consumption of 
 alcohol is about seven and a half grains per pound of 
 body weight per day. 
 
 The doubtful advantage, or at least undemonstrated 
 benefit of alcohol in moderation, the undoubted and 
 demonstrated injury to the body and mind caused by its 
 abuse, and the misery and crime which so often springs 
 from its use, have built up a political party in America 
 
198 TASKS BY TWILIGHT. 
 
 and England demanding the total prohibition of the 
 alcohol traffic. Like all parties with an intense belief, 
 this party is intolerant, and has run into an extreme, 
 both in its arguments, and in its remedies. Its advocates 
 attribute so much of the poverty, misery, and crime to 
 alcohol, that were they correct, the absence of alcohol 
 would result in the elimination of practically all our dis- 
 tresses. They substantiate their position by statistics. 
 They would show that a large number of convictions in 
 every place where liquor is used, are due to drunkenness 
 or crime resulting from it. Very true this is, but they 
 omit to state that these numbers are principally due to 
 repetitions of offences of a minor order by habitual 
 offenders, and consequently do not represent a condition 
 of the population. Another demonstration which they 
 offer is, that a great majority of all criminals in prison 
 have been more or less users of alcohol, and therefore 
 alcohol is the cause of from 80 to 90 per cent, of all 
 crime. They forget to state what the proportion of 
 alcohol takers in the whole population is to the abstain- 
 ers, and therefore fail to show which element furnishes 
 the larger proportion of crime. 
 
 I once undertook an investigation of this subject. I 
 was, however, obliged to give it up, as my means did not 
 permit the accurate ascertainment of the proportion of 
 abstainers to drinkers in the whole population investi- 
 gated. As far as the matter went, however, the balance 
 was heavily against liquor users in offences tried by city 
 justices, while in offences coming up before the Superior 
 
DIET. 199 
 
 Judges the balance was slightly against the total abstain- 
 ers. That is the large majority of the population involved 
 in using liquor furnished more than their quota in the 
 small offences, while the small minority of abstainers fur- 
 nish more than their quota (2 per cent.) of the large 
 offences. It may be said, that a successful criminal of 
 all persons must be at least temperate, for drunkenness of 
 all things is the betrayer of secrets. The criminal must 
 be silent or he is lost. The Massachusetts labor statistics 
 for 1881 show this still more clearly. In Suffolk County 
 72 per cent, of all the sentences were for drunkenness, 
 liquor selling, and rum offences, most of them being of a 
 minor character. Of the graver offences, 25 per cent, 
 were committed by total abstainers. For the various 
 licentious offences the total abstainers committed from 
 37 to 42 per cent. 
 
 For larceny, 29 per cent.; for breaking and entering, 
 37 per cent.; for forgery, 70 per cent.; for gambling, 69 
 per cent.; for violation of Sunday law, 58 per cent, were 
 total abstainers. We are under the same difficulty 
 already mentioned to ascertain the proportion which the 
 total abstainers bear to the whole population, but it is 
 probable that they bear more than their quota in these 
 crimes. If we followed the logic of the prohibitionists 
 who figure the number of those in prison who have used 
 alcohol, and then say that the crimes of these were 
 caused by alcohol, we should be obliged to admit also 
 that the 25 per cent, of sentences for grave crimes in 
 Suffolk County, committed by total abstainers, were due 
 
2OO TASKS BY TWILIGHT. 
 
 to total abstinence. We must admit that many crimes, 
 and many serious ones, too, such as manslaughter and 
 murder, are due to drink, and that there is no just 
 reason for thinking that total abstinence encourages any 
 crimes. An indication that the prohibitionists are extreme 
 in their arguments is the fact that, in the interior of 
 Turkey and Arabia, the religion of the people not only 
 prohibits all alcohol, but the people live up to their 
 doctrine. I have travelled extensively in these countries 
 and can bear witness that poverty, misery, injustice, and 
 crime are not lacking. Poverty is the rule, insecurity 
 of property or person general, robbery and assassina- 
 tion frequent. Look again at China and India. Where 
 can one find so large a proportion of misery and weak- 
 ness, going down even to child murder ? In these 
 countries alcohol is, or was, very little used. When or 
 in what annals can be seen such deliberate, cold blooded, 
 and horrible wholesale assassination as amongst the total 
 abstaining thugs of India ? (See early reports of English 
 rule in India.) Where has been exceeded in cold cruelty 
 the deeds of the Arab abstainers who control the African 
 slave trade ? 
 
 With these things we cannot as reasonable men attri- 
 bute all poverty, misery, or crime, nor even the majority 
 of it to alcohol. The truth is that the criminal is a 
 defective man. Examinations of the skulls of criminals 
 and of their brains, almost always shows congenital 
 defect. The same thing holds true to an extent of those 
 who fail in life's struggle, It is these who seek in alco- 
 
DIET. 2O I 
 
 hoi, at first perhaps a spur to keep them even in the race, 
 and afterwards a Lethe in which to drown their respon- 
 sibilities and 'their weakness. It is more the criminal 
 and the unsuccessful who makes the drunkard, than the 
 drunkard who makes the criminal or unsuccessful, al- 
 though they dovetail together. That weakness some- 
 where is the cause of drunkenness we may surmise, when 
 we find in medicine the fact that inebriety often follows 
 strokes of paralysis, overwork, anxiety, sun-stroke, or 
 other weakening influences. 
 
 The use of alcohol, as of all these agents, is therefore 
 dangerous in disease, because the weakened condition 
 caused by the disease is the door-opener and tempter 
 to abuse. 
 
 A better policy is a rest or relief from the probable 
 producer of one's troubles, and a temperance even stricter 
 than that practised in health. Another indication that 
 weakness, or the inability to meet the requirements of 
 one's situation or surroundings, to maintain the standard 
 of life set up in one's condition, or to hold up under the 
 nerve strain of the society which the individual is part 
 is the main cause of alcohol abuse, is shown in the 
 results of the use of stimulants and narcotics upon 
 savages. 
 
 While they remain isolated and only subject to the 
 strain of their own dull condition, no general or ruinous 
 abuse or excess has been observed. As soon, however, 
 as they come in contact with a more developed con- 
 dition, with a higher standard more difficult to reach 
 
2O2 TASKS BY TWILIGHT. 
 
 and to maintain, we do find immediately a riot of ruinous 
 excess. In the American Indians we find those least in 
 contact with civilization are those least injured by alcohol, 
 while those on the borders and cheek-by-jowl with the 
 pioneer are the most injured. It will not do to say that 
 the white man is the introducer of the knowledge of 
 alcohol, and that it is this that has caused the excesses 
 of the Indians, and not the pressure of the white 
 civilization. 
 
 Mescal, one of the fiercest forms of spirit, has been 
 known for an indefinite period to the Indians of the 
 southwest, and without causing injurious abuse as long 
 as no pressure was put on the Indians from our civiliza- 
 tion. 
 
 While women are weaker than men, and consequently 
 might be expected to use more stimulants or narcotics 
 than men, under this theory, it must be remembered that 
 they are not so much engaged in the outside fight as men. 
 Neither are they so much the authors of change in con- 
 dition. It appears to be the responsible ones, the inven- 
 tors, creators of ideas, and the practicers of new methods 
 who most demand extraneous aid or relief. 
 
 In the great moment of women's lives, childbirth, the 
 use of narcotics in the shape of chloroform or ether has 
 become almost universal amongst the highly civilized. 
 
 Under similar conditions we cannot say what the 
 result would be as to the comparative consumption of 
 these agents by the two sexes. We can, however, affirm 
 that with the increased outside activity of women, has 
 

 DIET. 203 
 
 also gone an increased consumption of stimulants and 
 narcotics. 
 
 In any investigation of this subject, we must always 
 remember the enormously greater danger to women than 
 to men of any abuse of drugs causing unconsciousness. 
 Consequently, everything else being equal, women 
 would be less likely to use them. One very serious 
 effect of the abuse of alcohol is the injury of the body 
 or mind, or both, of the children of inebriates. A num- 
 ber of studies of this question show it to be a serious 
 matter. Weak constitution, weak mind, or weak 
 morals, one or more of these, is almost always the un- 
 happy inheritance of such children. Drunkenness 
 habitually is a preliminary to extermination. In the in- 
 dividual it leads to impotence and sterility directly, and 
 thus is doubly opened the black pit of eternal death. I 
 deem it unnecessary, and therefore unwise, to go into 
 details on this subject. It is probably sufficient to say 
 that the proof of these statements is easy of access in 
 the works of several physicians and alienists. Dr. 
 Howe, Mandsley, and Morel are among the latter. To 
 show the character of their testimony in one line, I may 
 cite Dr. Howe's statement that out of 300 idiots 145 were 
 the offspring of intemperate parents. 
 
 TOBACCO. Tobacco is prepared from the leaves of a 
 plant native to America, but now grown nearly all over 
 the world. It is variously used in snuff, taken through 
 the nose, chewing in the mouth, smoking in pipes, cigars, 
 and cigarettes. Its effects are produced by an alkaloid 
 
2O4 TASKS BY T 'W '1 'LIGHT. 
 
 called nicotine. No lesions have thus far been found 
 in the body that could be attributed to tobacco. The 
 first use of tobacco generally produces nausea and col- 
 lapse, but the body and nerves in the great majority of 
 cases soon learn to tolerate its presence. In modera- 
 tion it does not generally do harm, but it tends readily 
 to excess. When abused it causes nervousness, sleep- 
 lessness, incapacity for prolonged attention or work, and 
 derangement of the digestion. The effects of excess of 
 tobacco may so weaken the system as to lead to the 
 abuse of alcohol as a relief. Several educators state that 
 they can determine the time when a young student com- 
 mences the use of tobacco. It may, they say, be recog- 
 nized by a record of his recitations. The tobacco users' 
 capacity diminishes. 
 
 Professor Oliver, of Annapolis, says that a tobacco 
 using boy is incapable of drawing a straight line. To- 
 bacco is unfavorable to the full use of the muscles, and 
 is in consequence forbidden, at least in quantity, by 
 trainers of athletes to those under their charge. Full 
 power of muscle and steadiness of nerve are both 
 diminished by tobacco. A number of literary and 
 military men have stated that they derived help and 
 force from tobacco. A number of prominent men, 
 from Carneades, who took hellebore when studying, to 
 Byron, have had this idea in reference to stimulants or 
 narcotics, but it is probable that they were deceived as 
 to any direct benefit, and that such advantage as they 
 derived from these agents was by the rest the paralysis 
 
DIET. 20$ 
 
 or partial paralysis of the mind these agents give, or by 
 the slowing of the brain activities; sometimes, perhaps, 
 too rapid and exhausting in geniuses. Tobacco does 
 not lead to action, but in its best and most desired 
 effects produces calm and repose. I commenced the 
 habitual use of tobacco at about the age of thirty, and 
 during a prolonged period of nervousness and insomnia. 
 It appeared to benefit me greatly, especially after any 
 necessary mental work that aggravated my troubles. 
 Since my recovery, however, I have frequently fallen 
 into an excess in tobacco, and have my old troubles return 
 until the excessive tobacco is cut off. As far as mind 
 work is concerned, tobacco diminishes my mind power, 
 but is a great luxury in taking off the strain of the work. 
 It is a difficult drug to do without when the habit in its 
 use is once fixed. Tobacco is a food to some animals, 
 or at least produces no apparent ill effects when eaten. 
 While in Egypt, a goat came every afternoon to the 
 street in front of Shepherd's Hotel and greedily ate the 
 cigar stumps which were thrown there in considerable 
 numbers. 
 
 OPIUM. Opium is the product of the flower of 
 the poppy. It is the inspissated juice of the unripe 
 capsules of the plant. Opium is used by taking inter- 
 nally, by hypodermic injections, and more generally 
 by smoking. It does not lead to action, but deadens the 
 nervous system to a calm which is usually pushed to un- 
 consciousness. Sometimes opium produces delirium, 
 and sometimes convulsions. The habitual use of opium 
 
2O6 TASKS BY TWILIGHT. 
 
 usually causes emaciation and a greenish, deadly pallor. 
 Body and mind ruin is the result of its habitual use, 
 which seems to be almost always in excess. Ovulation 
 is diminished in the female, and finally arrested, and im- 
 potence produced by it in the man. It is a dangerous 
 and damnable drug for use as a customary narcotic. 
 
 I have no hesitation in following the Chinese legis- 
 lators so familiar with its effects, and in condemning all 
 its uses as a habit. The effects of opium are produced 
 by a number of alkaloids, the principal of which is 
 morphia, though narcotina is a close second. The pro- 
 portions of these two in opium are about as ten to six. 
 
 Opium and one of its alkaloids, morphia, are use- 
 ful in medicine for various purposes, but in their em- 
 ployment the danger of forming the opium or morphine 
 habit should never be lost sight of. Pigeons, ducks, and 
 chickens are little susceptible to opium. In pigeons it 
 is almost impossible to cause death with opium by the 
 mouth (Mitchell). A hypodermic of morphia, however, 
 finishes them easily. 
 
 The accurately known effects of stimulants or narcotics, 
 used habitually in moderation, are more against them 
 than in their favor. Used in excess, there is but the 
 unfavorable side to present. This danger, to which 
 every user of these agents is subject, from the accurately 
 known point of view, completely counterindicates their use. 
 
 On the other hand there are general considerations 
 which must make the conservative and thoughtful refrain 
 from a prohibitory rule in regard to all such agents. 
 
DIET. 2O7 
 
 In a view of the world we find some one of these 
 agents everywhere. Humanity has everywhere found 
 some stimulant or narcotic, and used it in spite of a first 
 bad taste. 
 
 In a general way we find a proportion between the 
 activity and progressiveness of a people, and its total per 
 capita consumption of these agents. As the activity is 
 large, so is the consumption of stimulants or narcotics 
 large, not in the individual, but in the whole population. 
 As the population is stationary and non-progressive, so is 
 the consumption reduced. That is to say, the general 
 proportion will hold good of the sum of these agents, 
 although in some special one it may not. Thus in the 
 active States of our Union we find a total per capita 
 consumption of tea, coffee, tobacco, opium, alcohol, 
 cocoa, coca, chloroform, ether, etc., aggregating greater 
 than irt any other portion of the world, so also in these 
 States the daily change and progress is greater than it is 
 any where else. At the same time there may be a 
 greater consumption per capita in some countries of 
 coffee, in others of tea, in others of opium, or hashheesh, 
 or coca, or what not, but the general consumption of 
 the agents producing stimulant and narcotic effects is 
 greater with us than elsewhere. Opium and Indian 
 hemp are the drugs least connected with progress. A 
 general characteristic of enslaved or non-progressive 
 countries is, or was, a total abstinence from stimulants 
 or great temperance. In countries we have Turkey, 
 Venezuela and Colombia as illustrations of this, while in 
 
208 TASKS BY TWILIGHT. 
 
 races we have the fellah of Egypt, the peon of Mexico, 
 the slaves in our old South, and the ryot of India. 
 There seems, therefore, to be something in narcotics and 
 stimulants that helps man in progress more than it 
 hinders. 
 
 We may presume that it is a relief from the change and 
 strain of progress, or that it so acts as to break the ruts 
 of custom, and make progress more possible or prompt. 
 We may presume any reason, but we know nothing. 
 
 The fact, however, of the general correspondence of 
 progress and the highest estate of man, with a large use 
 of these agents is not to be denied. As the present con- 
 dition of man and his diet and life must be expected to 
 change in progress ; as we all desire progress and hope 
 for improvement and better things ; as no man knows 
 what lines progress will follow ; as the past and present 
 are the best guides to the future ; and as stimulants and 
 narcotics appear to be and to have been a concomitant 
 of progress, so we would be unwise to prohibit totally 
 their use. In so doing we might handicap the people 
 we intended to benefit, and with our prohibition of 
 stimulants or narcotics, prohibit progress and ruin the 
 chances of our own people in the great race of life. 
 
 These reasons make it seem wise to counsel against 
 abuse and excess, rather than against any use whatever 
 of these agents. 
 
 All of them are unfavorable to growth in the young. 
 Stunting and injury seem to be the uniform effects of 
 the stronger kinds upon the immature. 
 
DIET. 209 
 
 It is therefore judicious to advise against the use of 
 any stimulant or narcotic before the age of puberty is 
 well passed ; against alcohol or tobacco until the growth 
 is complete, say till the twenty-fifth year ; and always 
 against any enslavement to these agents or to any 
 excess. 
 
 The Universe is the Will to live. So says Schopen- 
 hauer. The Force, the manifestation in movement, the 
 Soul pervading all things, the " Will to live," this is the 
 Universe. The Will to live better is a necessary result 
 of the Will to live. When we leave the protozoa and 
 single-cell life, we find all higher life types of cell colony 
 organisms, incapable of long holding to a complex com- 
 bination of cells in the individual. Cell combination is 
 accompanied by death. Increasing complexities of life, 
 and higher improvement in the individual require the 
 inherited cell habit of organization. No evolution is 
 conceivable without this. This cell habit, or cell ex- 
 perience, and the death of individual cell colonies 
 require for holding the good and getting the better 
 reproduction. Reproduction continues all life above 
 the single cell, and alone makes improvement possible. 
 Love is the manifestation of the Will to live in human- 
 ity. All kinds of love are from this force whether 
 altruistic for humanity, for a race, a family, a child, or 
 sexual to produce the child, and conquer Death. Love 
 is the soul of life. The necessities make it dominant. 
 In its reproductive form it is an absolute essential to 
 
210 TASKS BY TWILIGHT. 
 
 both life and improvement. So indeed we find repro- 
 ductive Love the crown and glory of every living thing. 
 It is from its power that stem and leaf transform in 
 color and odor to make the flower. It is from its power 
 that the highest characteristics of self-sacrifice, courage, 
 and sympathy appear in the animal. This Love caps the 
 climax of life. It is the beautiful, fragrant rose of 
 existence that induces a toleration of the thorny bush 
 on which it grows, indeed induces cultivation, fertiliza- 
 tion, and hard work to obtain it. There are stink-weeds 
 in nature and stink-weeds in the heart. To have one's 
 heart flower out in such a way may fairly be attributed 
 to neglect, but by no means does it justify one so 
 cursed in telling others that there is nothing but stink- 
 weed in all nature. So Schopenhauer and many more 
 unhappy ones seeing much, still, overgrown with weeds, 
 see nothing. 
 
 These philosophers lead us into no thoroughfares, and 
 end at last at a dead wall. Nothing, bis-nothing, three- 
 fold nothing ; the nothingness of nothing nothingfied, 
 this is where they dump our life and hope. 
 
 The pessimist leads us into a land of desolation. He 
 makes for the sight blossoms of ugliness, for the smell 
 repellant odors, for the taste bitterness and gall, for 
 the hearing harsh discord, and death for the touch that 
 is the only relief from a desert whose scrawny life lives 
 but to distress us. 
 
 All this is no thoroughfare, all dead wall, all aimless 
 all hopeless, all desert, desolation, and death, 
 
DIET. 211 
 
 The preceding pages are notes growing from the 
 endeavor to find the harmonies and necessities of 
 nature, from the search for the rose though the thorn 
 tear us, though the weed must be killed to secure the 
 beauty of bloom, and from the belief in a glorious evo- 
 lution to a better human life. 
 
 THE END. 
 
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