UN VERS T OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO 3 1822023042211 f TOWN LIBRARY. .LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALI SAN Wo. ~- Aui n I.K I. The Library will be open for the delivery and return of books every Saturday. from 3 to 4 o'clock in the afternoon, and from 7 to '.) o'clock, in the evening. AKT. 2. All residents of Topsfield, above the age of 12 years shall have the right to take hooks from the Library. AIM. '!. No person shall lie allowed moiv than one volume, and no family more than three volumes at any one time : and no book shall be kept out of the Library more than fourteen days, while the tim m.a>/ be limited to seven days when the book is in great demand. AIM. 1. Any person retaining a book longer than the specified time, shall incur a fine of fi ve cents for every vveek it is so retained. AUT. ;">. All injuries to books, and all losses, shall be made good by the person responsible for the book. AKT. 6. All books >hall be returned to the Library for examination ten days before the annual Town Meeting, under penalty of a fine of fifty cents. AIM. 7. No person owing a fine or forfeiture shall receive books from the Library until the sana- is paid. W. A. (in-viiMi'iKh K Co., Print. UN VERS T OF CALIFORNIA SAN DIEGO 3 1822023042211 '. ,-;ut the essential combination on the farm is of child life and animal life; and whether this takes place in old Normandy or young America, it is equally attractive. XL. WHO SHALL FIX THE VALUE? IN looking over various letters from women who seek employment, and especially literary employ- ment, I find most of them to be tinged with this delusion, that those who produce anything for the market have the right to require somebody to take it, and at a price to be fixed by the maker. It would, no doubt, be very convenient to many of us if this were true if somebody were provided whose clear duty it was to take the potatoes we raise, or the poems we write, at whatever price we set upon them. We could soon become rich by this process, like a certain tradesman of whom the story us'ed to be told that he would go into his shop and make ten thousand dollars before breakfast by simply marking up the prices of all his goods. The ques- tion still remained whether this would increase their value when it came to the actual sale ; and so it is plain that young people may go on thinking better and better of their own literary talents, and yet it will not help them one step towards success unless the public takes a similar view. What good does AVHO SHALL FIX THE VALUE? 203 it do, although your poetry seems to you better than Longfellow's and your prose than Ilolmcs's, so long as the community or the editor, who is merely the purveyor or steward for the community cannot be led to the same opinion ? You can cherish your genius in silence as much as you please ; yon can be content with the applause of your cousins and your pastor; you can publish your works at your own expense, and wait for posterity to applaud. Any of these things you can do, as many have done before you ; but if you wish for a success more stimulating or more lucrative than this, you must comply with the conditions of success : you must find out what the public wants, and then supply it ; you must let others, and not yourself, determine the value of your goods. In the days when the blind Homer recited his lays, or in the mediaeval times when bards sang from door to door, literature could hardly be said to be on a business foundation ; but now, for good or for evil, it is established on that basis, and so far as publication is concerned the laws of business must be accepted. A shoemaker does not make a pair of shoes and bring them to your door, and claim that it is your duty to buy them at his own price, whether you like them or not. It is true that book -peddlers and travelling basket - women come pretty near to taking this attitude, bat we all feel 204 WOMEN AND MEN. justified in resisting it. The young person who writes stories or wishes to write fashionable corre- spondence constantly maintains this position. These applicants can always furnish unanswerable reasons why it is desirable that their wares should be pur- chased : they can often say with truth that they are poor , that they live in a remote village, and would like to see more of the world ; that they have a younger brother or sister to educate ; and that they cannot see that what they write is not just as good as a great deal which is published and praised. They agree in laying the whole blame upon the edi- tor or the publisher. He is narrow, he is selfish, ho is governed by the smallest of small cliques. How can he have any honorable or justifiable motive for declining compositions of which sister Jane and our excellent neighbor have thought so well ? "I always suspected," said to me once the husband of a lady whose book had just been refused publication by a well-known house "I always suspected that Mr. was a snob, but now I am sure of it." The present writer has seen a good deal of the literary trade in all its aspects ; and so far as he has seen, there is no business more free from favoritism. The mere fact that it is business and not pleasure puts it on a real basis in this respect. Every pub- lisher, as such, would rather print a successful book by his worst enemy than an unsuccessful one by his WIIO SHALL FIX THE VALUE ? 205 dearest friend. It is the same with the editor of magazine or newspaper. The one question for him to determine is whether the book or article really promises to be profitable, and as to this he must rely on his own judgment, for he has nothing else to rely upon. This judgment is very imperfect, and he knows the fact too well ; but if he cannot trust himself, he can still less trust the author or the author's friends. Grant that these warm advo- cates know best the intrinsic worth of the article offered ; they do not know the demands of the pub- lic, which is what he has to consider. There is not an editor in the world who accepts contributions with reference to his private taste only. " If I were to edit this periodical merely to suit you and me," said a former editor of the Atlantic Monthly to a friend, " it would be bankrupt in three months." Even a cook must season her food to suit the taste of the family, not her own ; they do not necessarily like garlic because she does. Every good periodi- cal ends by influencing the public taste ; but it must begin by conforming to it, at least sufficiently to get readers. Formerly, when literature was less widely spread than now, young authors were apt to err on the side of excessive humility ; it was hard for them to convince themselves that anything they wrote was worthy the dignity of print. No doubt there are 200 WOMEN AND MEN. still man) 7 such instances, but the more common at- titude of mind among aspirants seems to me to be the assumption that what they write is already good enough, and that the world owes them a publisher. Of course the blunders often made on the editorial side will play into their hands and help to strengthen this delusion. "Do I not write as well as that? Can anything of mine be worse than this?' 1 ' 1 They forget that while an editor cannot be infallible, he must behave as if he were so; and must be practi- cally omnipotent, at any rate, within his domain. Rightly or wrongly, he must make the decision, not you or I ; he must set the valuation. Our wares are worth only what he can afford to give for them he or his competitors. If he has no need for them, we must find some way to make them what he will need. Or if that fails, we must establish what was once suggested by Edward Everett Hale a periodical to be called " The Unfortunates' Maga- zine," to contain all rejected contributions, all unap- preciated courses of lectures, and in general all pro- ductions which need a public more than that public apparently needs them. XLI. A WOMAN'S ENTERPRISE. I HAD a call the other day from a lady below middle-age who wished to consult me about some business arrangements that had become necessary for her. Instead of having become entangled in financial difficulties which is, I am sorry to say, the condition of most of those of her sex who come to me for such consultations she was embarrassed by too much success. She was, it appeared, a mar- vied woman from some interior town in New Eng- land, who had inherited from her father several pieces of property, a small woollen mill being among them. The property included another mill of a dif- ferent kind, and of this her husband took charge; and they were at first inclined to sell the woollen mill. It proved, however, to be an unfavorable time for this; and while the matter was pending, she took the entire charge of the mill and carried it on. Becoming interested in it, she made improvements and tried experiments, the result of which was that she had now made blankets of such a quality that she had been offered contracts which would keep 208 WOMEN AND MEN. the mill running day and night for a year. But for this there would be absolutely required certain ex- penditures in the way of machinery, buildings, etc., and her object was to ask advice as to the best way of raising the necessary money for this purpose. She had been advised to form a joint-stock company, and yet felt a natural dislike to having the enter- prise pass into other hands, after carrying it thus far herself. She ended by showing me a sample of the blankets, which I could only regard with inex- perienced amazement, having never seen anything of the kind so thick, soft, and luxurious. I could hardly wonder that they were worth, as she claimed, fifty dollars a pair. Having neither money to invest nor practical knowledge of the woollen manufacture, I could only give her letters of introduction to three men of high standing in different branches of that business. From two of these I have since heard; and they were apparently even more surprised than I was, because they were better acquainted with the sub- ject. One of them writes thus : " Mrs. called on me to-day, and I am very glad you introduced her. She is not only a bright woman but an exceptional manufacturer, and I shall try to help her. She brought a specimen of her blankets, and I showed them to the wool-buyer of the Mills, who happened to be in my office at A WOMAN'S ENTERPRISE. 209 the time. He thought they must have been made by the Mission Mills of California, which make the best blankets in the country. It is those blankets she set herself to beat, if possible. He was genu- inely surprised." My other correspondent sent me word that nei- ther of his mills he being treasurer of several had attained to producing such a quality of blankets as these, or to obtaining a price so high as these might fairly command. He also said that it had become known in the trade that there was one mill in New England which produced goods of this high grade, all sold by one house, and not generally acces- sible, and that these were apparently the very ones. He gave the lady a letter to a capitalist, and was quite confident that she would obtain the funds need- ed to enlarge her establishment and fulfil her proposed contracts. I quote the opinions of these gentlemen because they are experts, and not easily to be misled as to the quality of goods, or to be carried away by sympathy. Their verdict may be taken as establish- ing the fact that a woman has succeeded in taking the lead of all others in the Eastern States in a most difficult branch of manufacture, and this by her own energies. It is easy to say that a woman thus successful must be a very exceptional woman. No doubt ; just as all great inventors, such as Bell or Edison, 14 210 WOMEN AND MEN. arc very exceptional men. It is quite probable that she may have inherited from her father, who pre- ceded her in the mill, some special talent for ma- chinery. It is often so with men, since talent is often hereditary and even cumulative, what is mere taste in a father sometimes becoming a distinct gift in the son, and being called genius in the grand- son. But talent or even genius alone makes a mere amateur ; she had also the courage to plan and the will to carry out, and with such results as we have seen. She expressly told me that it had cost her a good deal of labor, and that she habitually went to the mill at 6 A.M., and knew all that was going on there every day. Her husband, as has been said, was occupied with his own share of business, and left hers undisturbed. Her success shows not mere- ly the ability of a woman to plan and execute, but the readiness of practical men to co-operate with such a woman after she has once proved her cre- dentials. She said that she had found no trouble in this respect, and that the banks in her region had been as willing to accommodate her as if she were a man. Such an example does not prove that it is the duty of all women to undertake business enter- prises, any more than it is the duty of all men to paint pictures or open retail shops. There must be a proper consideration of special talents. In A WOMAN'S ENTERPRISE. 211 this case, it appears, my visitor had tested herself very carefully as she went along, had taken up the undertaking as a temporary matter only, and had been carried on by the interest with which it in- spired her, and by her own evident adaptation to the work. The use of her example is not in its being followed implicitly or foolishly, but in the help it gives to all women who dare. When Mar- garet Fuller, in answer to a question from one who wished to set limits to the sphere of women, an- swered, "Let them be sea-captains, if you will," she did not foresee that Captain Betsey Miller, of the bark Cleotus, would erelong be doing the very thing which she had selected at random as an extreme in- stance. One of the very functions which have been oftenest named as beyond the natural gift of wom- an has been the superintendence of a large manu- facturing establishment, involving as it docs three separate faculties a knowledge of machinery, a business aptitude, and the capacity to control men. Yet here these three qualities have been combined, and have been tested by success. The result should surely encourage every other woman who hesitates before some similar opportunity. One such victory does not prove that every other success is certain, but shows that it need not be set aside as impossi- ble merely because it is unusual. XLII. CITY AND COUNTRY LIVING. THE newspapers are circulating a curious state- ment by Mr. Grant Allen who is understood to be a Canadian by birth and an Englishman by resi- dence to the effect that Americans do not like country life, and that those who are able to do so flee from the rural regions as if there were a pesti- lence there. This is a curious caricature of the real facts almost as curious as when the same writer finds something melancholy in the dandelions and violets, the asters and golden-rod, along our road- sides, and condemns them all as " weeds." He evi- dently has not tried, with Lowell, to "win the se- cret of a weed's plain heart," and to him probably the gorsc and heather of Scotland or the stately English foxglove would be " nothing but weeds." The mistake he makes is in regarding this ten- o o dency to cities as in any way an American monop- oly. It is, in truth, a feature of modern civilization. Owen Pike, in his remarkable work, " The History of Crime in England," has shown that this very ten- dency has been in operation among our English CITY AND COUNT11Y LIVING. 213 kinsfolk ever since the reign of Edward II. (1307- 1327), that is, for more than five centuries. In Ed- ward's time the rural population of England was about eleven-twelfths, or more than ninety-one per cent., of the whole. In the year 1861 it had fallen to forty per cent., and in 1871 to thirty-eight per cent. Pike attributes this change mainly to the great inventors of the last and the present centu- ries, who have created new and remunerative occu- pations. " In the great bulk of the nation," he says, " they have substituted town life for country life." * This is a far stronger statement than could be made of the most thickly settled parts of the United States; and with our nation as a whole "the great bulk" is still enormously in the ranks of rural life. It would be easy to show that this change goes far beyond the English-speaking nations. The con- centration of French life in Paris has long been seen and lamented, and it has extended so far that the provinces are hardly credited with independent opin- ions. "To ask what the provinces think," said a celebrated Frenchman, " is like asking what a man's legs think." The practice of subdividing small rural properties everywhere had tended, it was supposed, to anchor the French peasantry to the soil, and yet the latest observers point out that this tie is wholly * " The History of Crime in England," vol. ii., p. 409. 214 WOMEN AND MEN. ineffectual. In the first number of the Quarterly Journal of Economics its enlightened Paris corre- spondent, Arthur Mangin, says that in France " the development of industrial labor and the great works undertaken by the State and by cities have brought about a steady emigration of peasants to the cities, and a rise in agricultural wages, which in some re- gions is from 200 to 300 per cent." * Even in Rus- sia, the newspapers tell us, anxiety is felt at the ten- dency of the former serfs to abandon their lands, and congregate around larger employers of labor or else in cities. But the true solution of the matter appears to lie in a direction where Mr. Allen, perhaps from having made too rapid a trip through " the States," has failed to find it. In the older parts of the Ameri- can Union, side by side with the abandonment of the rural regions as the sole or permanent residence, has come np an enormous increase of those who are, so to speak, double residents of city and coun- try the one in the winter, the other in the summer. In the mild winters of England, where there is not a month in the year in which some flower does not bloom out-of-doors, and hardly one in which some bird does not build its nest, this distinction is less sharp; and Americans are always surprised to find * Quarterly Journal of Economics, p. 98. CITY AND COUNTRY LIVING. 215 their English cousins staying in the countiy till Christmas, and then in London till July. But in our Northern States the distinction of seasons is so very marked as to be destined to mould the perma- nent habit of our people, and a marked change has begun within forty years. Before that time almost every one lived either in city or country, and few had a home in each. Now, with the more well-to- do classes, the alternation is becoming universal ; the sea -side, from Campobello to Chesapeake Bay, is becoming one long line of summer cottages or ho- tels ; and in the wildest mountain regions the travel- ler ccmes suddenly upon vast lighted corridors with city luxuries and prices, billiards and lawn-tennis. The summer vacation itself is in its present form a recent evolution ; schools that formerly gave but three or four weeks now give eight, and Harvard University, which in 1846 had but six weeks of such interval, has now fourteen. All this extraordinary change is a tribute to sum- mer, and to the summer habits of the people. We flee from the country in October or November, but only to return to it in May or June. In other words, we arc adapting our social life to the charac- teristics of the American climate. That the final arrangement has been reached it is impossible to say, and the present fancy in our Northern Atlantic States for tobogganing and other Canadian winter 216 WOMEN AND MEN. sports may point to some further modification. But at present it may certainly be claimed that in the most thickly settled parts of the nation there is a distinct acceptance of the old English maxim, "All summer in the field, all winter in the study." Those who have the right of choice will not forego, if they can help it, the winter pleasures of the city or the town, its lighted streets, its gay passers-by, its social inter- course, its concerts, theatres, libraries. But neither will they forego the rural or sea-side cnjoynients of the summer. AVhen the season of migration comes, you can no more hold them back than you could keep back the bluebirds and the orioles. XLIII. THE HUMOR OF CHILDREN. THAT is a surprising remark lately made by one .who is usually a very acute observer, Mr. C. D. Warner, to the effect that children under twelve have commonly no sense of humor. No doubt these young things vary, like their elders, in temperament. Some of them are, from the cradle, as devoid of all capacity for fun as a travelling Englishman ; but if there is one quality which I should attribute, in nor- mal cases, to very young children, it is the sense of humor. You presuppose it inevitably in your very first elementary game with your baby, when you al- ternately hide your face and show it, with the cry " Peep-bo !" The child knows perfectly well that you are not in two places at once ; the sense of sur- prise is what tickles ; and very soon it catches the trick itself, and enjoys the humor of pretending to be in one place and presently bobbing up in another. One of the most familiar expressions in the eye of a child, I should say, is the twinkle of humor; and every parent knows that one of the best ways of overcoming a fit of anger or distress is to appeal 218 WOMEN AND MEN. to this instinct. Fancy Abraham Lincoln or Mark Twain postponing the development of humor until twelve years old ! Their mothers from whom they perhaps inherited the gift knew better. Of course many of the droll sayings we quote from children are not droll to those who said them ; but there are more which are so, and we can distinguish them by watching for the twinkle. The little girl who rebelled against the bathing-tub, and said, in- dignantly, to her mother, " Don't wash me ; wash 'at baby," pointing to the naked child in Knaus's Ma- donna on the wall, evidently enjoyed the flavor of her own remark. She knew that the proposed scape- goat of her punishment was but a flat surface, for she had often examined it with eye and finger, but the humor of the defiance pleased her very soul. Again, where the mistakes and whims of very young children are not humorous to themselves at the time, they usually become so very soon after. Any child of five will be entertained by your narrative of what it said and did at two or three years, nor will it miss a single good point in the retrospect. In a family of children, all under twelve, each will commonly appreciate the unconscious drolleries of the next younger ; Susy quotes what Prudy has said, and Prudy again cites with delight the unexpected re- marks of Dotty Dimple. How does this happen unless children have humor in themselves? If there THE HUMOR OF CHILDREN. 219 is any faculty not transferable at second-hand it is this. No maternal assurances that a thing is amus- ing will ever make it such to a child, unless the child has a sense of humor. The games of young children, and, above all, their play with dolls, are a scene of genuine humor from the beginning. The doll is not merely loved and kissed, but is rebuked, scolded, put on probation, punished ; a child will do this alone, or two or three will do it together, and with a zest which certainly comes by nature, not by instruction. You might as well say that there is no instinct in the way a kitten plays with its first mouse as to deny the instinct of humor to the child when she first "makes believe" that her doll Arabella is naughty. No matter how red Arabella's cheeks are, how flossy her hair, how blue her winking eyes, she is liable at any moment to be dethroned from power and put in the darkest of dark closets for a purely imaginary sin ; while plain Jane, armless, legless, and featureless, is en- throned in her stead. The doll really appeals to the child's whole nature, not merely to the affec- tional part of it; and a doll's house with no sense of humor brought to bear on it would be a blighted home. It was in the full appreciation of what she said that a little girl remarked to me, many years ago, holding up a doll of her own sex whose legs had wholly vanished, " See ! he's broke both his 220 WOMEN AND MEN. legs short off; he has to walk on his drawers." There was no denying the extent of the catastro- phe ; it was on a par with that of the historic "With- crington in one version of the old ballad of " Chevy Chase :" "Of Witherington I needs must speak, As one in doleful dumps ; For when his legs were smitten off lie fought upon his stumps." But the peculiarity was that the child herself, per- haps five years old, evidently felt all the grotesque- ness of her own conception. Again, if children have no sense of humor, whence comes their admitted dramatic aptitude? So far as I have seen, this gift is far more universally distrib- uted among children than among their elders, as any one can test by alternately getting up little dramat- ic performances in the younger and older circles of a large family connection. Perhaps the greater un- consciousness of children may have something to do with it, yet it really seems as if, apart from this, the imitative power were more flexible in early youth than later, as is well known to be the case with the organs of language. Nothing is more marvellous to me than the manner in which these young creatures will create for themselves, or with the very slightest aid from others, the proper tone or expression be- longing to an emotion they never have experienced. THE HUMOR OF CHILDREN. 221 The favorite play of the most petted children is often that of a family with a scolding mother ; and how admirably do they in turn enact a character which they have never even seen ! I remember to have officiated in the humble capacity of stage-mana- ger, long since, when two little girls of six repre- sented the successive tableaux of a pretty German book, describing the day's- friendship of two chil- dren. One picture represented a quarrel, the play- mates pulling at a doll which each desires. The little performers got into a great frolic just before the curtain went up; there was not a moment to tutor them ; but in the very instant, as the curtain rose, both faces passed into a look of childish an- ger that was absolutely startling. They were pecul- iarly amiable children, and had never had anything but happiness with one another; yet they brought instantaneously into their looks, without a hint from any one, an expression which Janauschek or Ellen Terry might have envied. Such a feat would be impossible to those who had no natural sense of humor. XLIV. PAROCHIALISM. WE arc gradually clearing ourselves, in America, from the lingering spirit of colonialism. The change is fortunate, but even the civil war has not yet rid us of what rnay be called parochialism, or what would be called in Germany particularism the im- pression tli at we are citizens of this or that common- wealth, or region, or city, instead of claiming alle- giance to the Great Republic. The habit proceeds largely, no doubt, from the vast size of our land, which even railroads and migratory habits cannot easily compass. It is also strengthened, perhaps, by the absence of any satisfactory name for this great nation. Had it been called Columbia or Washington the word would have been uncouth enough, but it would have carried with it a sense of unquestionable unity, which the collective phrase "United States" has seemed rather to deprecate. If something of this disadvantage has been felt all over the nation, it was still worse in those parts of it where the pa- rochialism was thought to be an advantage, and was christened " State Rights." No doubt one reason PAROCHIALISM. 223 for the paucity of Southern literature before the civil war was the fact that the most gifted writer in that region was apt to feel that he had nothing larger than a State behind him ; and it is a curious fact that the poet Hayne, in speaking of the Confed- eracy after its formation, still described its members only as "sister nations," as if disclaiming all thought of national unity, even there. In general, however, the war may be said to have put an end to this feel- ing, in a political sense, and to have substituted the nation for the individual State as the unit of loyal- ty. Hayne and Lanier, Simms and Kennedy, are now included, even against their will, in the litera- ture of a nation. This being the case, we should live up to it in all ways. We are Americans, not merely residents of Meddibemps at one extremity or Seattle at the other. We have to hold our own, in the way of self - respect, against the other populations of the earth's surface, and we certainly must make common cause, and not fritter away our strength in the petty jealousies of a thousand little parishes. When we see Americans in Europe we are proud of them, if they deserve our pride, or ashamed of them, if they cause us shame, and this without the slightest refer- ence to the part of our country from which they came. Why should it be otherwise when we are at home again ? But in fact the mutual criticism of Eastern 224 WOMEN AND MEN. and Western, Northern and Southern, is often very much like that between Englishmen and Americans ; it is not fraternal, but critical, almost satirical " a little more than kin and less than kind." In Eng- land the very compliments given to an American are apt to sting. If he does not speak through his nose or talk like Bret Ilarte's heroes, he is regarded as exceptional. "You an American! I give you my word of honor I never should have suspected it." These words, which he is equally liable to hear from his host, his tailor, and the waiting-maid at his inn, are more annoying than any personal cen- sure, and make him long for a moment to tilt his chair, to put his feet on the table, to do anything that shall free him from being thus complimented at the expense of his race. And yet this class of remarks may be constantly heard in our own cities as regards strangers from some other city. When a lady visiting Boston from Chicago is kindly assured that no one would suppose her to be Western, or one visiting Chicago from Boston is gently vindicated from the charge of being Eastern, it is as insulting as the unconscious inso- lence of these English remarks. We are all Ameri- cans; the honors of one are the honors of all; the discredit of one is the discredit of everybody. If in various parts of the country we have a variety of gestures, intonations, phrases, manners, it is that we PAROCHIALISM. 225 may compare these different methods candidly, gen- erously, and with mutual respect, and thus gradu- ally eliminate what is undesirable, and select the best. What we desire, or should desire, is to have the American type the best type that the world has ever seen. Nothing short of this is an aim worthy the effort. If this is true of society and manners, it is still truer of literature. What can be less profitable than all this talk about a literary centre, this foolish strug- gle between rival cities? What we want is a litera- ture; given that, and the centre will take care of it- self. It is not even important that there should be a centre ; a hundred nodal points, each sending forth its germinating and vital influence, will do just as well, and will be more befitting for a nation that includes the breadth of a continent, and may yet in- clude its length also. What we need is to produce good books ; this once done, it makes no more dif- ference in what part of the country they are pro- duced than in what part of a man's farm the north- east or south-west corner he raises those fine apples. Where there is a good author, there is the beginning of a literary centre ; where MacGrcgor sits, there is the head of the table. W T e arc all enriched when Miss Murfrcc suddenly reveals to us a new literary centre in Tennessee, or Miss Edith Thomas in Ohio, or Hubert Bancroft in San Francisco. The concen- 15 226 WOMEN AND MEN. tration of literature into a new London or Paris is not to be expected among us, perhaps not to be de- sired. That implies a small and highly centralized civilization, whose outskirts shall be as little given to literature as the English colonies or the French provinces; whereas what we need is the develop- ment of a high literary life through a number of different fountain-heads. The nation should pro- duce its fair share of the recognized masterpieces of the world's literature or, if you please, of the works which are still masterpieces, though unrecog- nized or else, at least, of the writings that influence their time, and then become a part of the "choir invisible." There is promise of all this, but it can only be fulfilled by dismissing all the petty paro- chialism of local rivalries. The Arabs, before Mo- hammed's time, used to hold high festival over two things the advent of a new poet and the birth of a colt of eminent breed. The former festival at least we Americans should celebrate, even if the advent of the bard should occur on the utmost border of the Aleutian Islands. XLV. OX VISITING THE SICK. IT is a curious fact, and one not quite creditable to the good-sense of the human race, that the one duty which is sure to devolve on everybody first or last is so often ill done. Everybody, from the rough- est frontiersman to the most luxurious city -bred woman, is pretty sure, in the course of years, to be called on to visit some person who is ill. Having been brought, through circumstances, somewhat in contact with invalids, I have never ceased to be as- tonished to see how poorly, on the whole, we dis- charge this inevitable and most important duty. The first error is in regard to quantity, the second in regard to quality. We cannot, perhaps, visit the sick too much, if we have time for it ; but we can easily visit them a great deal too much at any one time. Many a sick-room would be helped and glad- dened by a glimpse of a friendly face every few days, for three minutes at a time. But wait for a month, and consolidate these scattered minutes into three-quarters of an hour, and how different the re- sult ! The new face soon becomes a burden, the 228 WOMEN AND MEN. new sensation an old one ; the news is told, the excitement is gone by. The patient's face, at first bright and eager, becomes tired and jaded and long, and still the visitor sits. At last she too in case it be a woman notices the change in her friend's look, and she springs to her feet and says, with sin- cere but tardy contrition, "I am afraid I have tired you." "Oh no," says the patient ;" not at all." It is her last gasp for that morning; she can scarce- ly muster strength to say it ; but let us be polite or die. Brevity is the soul of visiting, as of wit, and in both cases the soul is hard to grasp. As some preach- er used to follow a sound maxim for his sermons, "No soul saved after the first twenty minutes," so you cannot aid in saving the sick body after the first five. Harriet Martineau, in her " Life in the Sick- room," says that invalids are fortunate if there is not some intrusive person who needs to be studiously kept at a distance. But the peril of which I speak comes not from the intrusive, but from the affec- tionate and the conscientious those who bring into the room every conceivable qualification for kind service except observation and tact. The invalid's foes are they of his or her own household, or, at any rate, are near friends or kind neighbors. The kinder they are the worse, unless they are able to show this high quality in the right way. If they ON VISITING THE SICK. 229 could only learn to plan their visits on the basis of Sam Weller's love-letter, which was criticised by his father as rather short ! " She'll wish there was more of it," said Sam ; "and that's the whole art o' letter-writing." For want of this art the helpless invalid is linrt instead of helped ; she cannot, like other people, assist the departure of the guest by pleading an engagement, or even by rising from the chair; she must wait until the inconsiderate visitor is gone. Under such circumstances she really needs to be saved from her friends. I remember a certain colonel in the army who was sometimes suspected of shamming, and of whom his sub-officers would say, sarcastically, some morning, "He is very ill too ill to see his surgeon." There are really many invalids who are too ill to see their friends and sym- pathizers and cousins, except with the aid of a three- minute glass, like that by which eggs arc boiled. But there is an error in respect to such visiting that is more serious than that of quantity. What is there in the outer world from which it is the hard lot of invalids to be excluded ? Sunshine, fresh air, and the healthy life of mankind. These, then, are what the visitor should bring, figuratively at least, into the sick-room. Instead of these, how many bring the very opposite clouds and shadows, and that which is unwholesome and unhealthy. They keep the invalid talking about the very things which 230 WOMEN AND HEX. need most to be forgotten symptoms and medi- cines. They discuss the varieties of medicine as topers debate the merit of different wines; and is dear Amelia quite sure that it would not be best to change her physician ? Worst of all, they tell the distressing symptoms of others ; the mournful cases, the bereavements, the approaching funerals. Strange to say, professional nurses themselves are very much given to this sort of talk, and would be much more beneficial companions were they dumb. Perhaps the visitor chimes in, and joins with the nurse in a melancholy duet. It is, I take it, almost impossible for any one in health to appreciate the hold that these things take upon an invalid. The visitor goes away into the outer air, and the very breeze soon carries away all memory of the misplaced conversa- tion ; but the invalid remains anchored to one spot, and broods, and broods, and broods. She is fortu- nate if her sleep is not broken that night by the odious phantoms for which her dear friend has, with studious care, furnished the materials. There are other ways in which a visitor may hurt while intending only to help. There are the cross- questioners, 'who make the invalid do all the talk- ing; the fingerers, who displace her cushions, drop her orange, and leave her glass of water just beyond her reach ; the gazers, who fix their eyes scrutiniz- ingly on her, and never take them off. But enough ON VISITING TIIE SICK. 231 has been said to show that there is a way to do ev- erything well or ill, and that the art of visiting the sick is not one of the things which are so absolutely easy as to require no thought or apprenticeship. It is one of the finest of the fine arts; it must have disinterested kindness at the foundation ; and then implies, like all other forms of good -manners, the most delicate observation, and that prompt and clear judgment which can neither be dispensed with nor described. XLVI. THE FEAR OF ITS BEING WASTED. IT is a curious whim this, which returns every now and then, that the higher education of women should be discouraged because " in case of. marriage it will all be wasted." It is one of the bugbears which Mary Wollstonecraft thought she had demol- ished, and Margaret Fuller after her; but it bears a great deal of killing. Those who still bring it up show how little importance they really attach to those functions of marriage and parentage about which they are continually talking. If they really rated these duties so high, they would see that no amount of intellectual development could be wasted in preparing for them. The statistics of about seven hundred collegiate alumna?, as tabulated by the Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics, showed that about a quarter of the num- ber were already married ; and as their average age was then but twenty-eight, it could be well assumed that the percentage of wedlock would yet be largely increased. There is nothing in the reports to show that any of these wives felt that their education had THE FEAR OF ITS BEING WASTED. 233 been wasted ; and if any of them were really so foolish, they have perhaps grown wiser already. It is not at all uncommon for young men to feel in that same way, for a year or two after leaving college, when the door of success or employment seems as if it were locked on the wrong side. A few years will, however, teach them that a well-trained brain is a good preparation for any conceivable pursuit, and that a well-stored mind is one of the very great- est blessings, whether a man is suffering under the chagrin of failure or the ennui of success. So, many a woman, it may be, has for a moment distrusted the value of her own training, when she found herself, in Emerson's words, " Servant to a wooden cradle, Living in a baby's life ;" or in days when all her mathematics must be brought down to the arithmetic of teething, and all her mu- sic must be laid aside to attend to the musical in- strument of sweeter tone that says, " Mother." No doubt the function of motherhood takes a dozen absorbing years out of many a young woman's life. All the better for her, then, if she has gained the material for intellectual activity before that day comes. If an army is about to cross a desert where there is no food, this only affords more reason for filling up the haversacks and canteens. 234 AVOMEN AND MEN. It is easy to point out a few of the unanswerable reasons why a woman needs the best possible edu- cation, even if she is to be married the day after she takes her last diploma. To begin on the lowest plane, there is often the material need of self-sup- port, and of that which is much more than self-sup- port, since it may involve the sustaining of children and even of a husband. In a late report of one of our highest institutions for women, the estimate was made by the directors that about half the students apparently came there to prepare for earning a liv- ing, and the other half from a simple desire for self- improvement. In our changing society it would not be strange if these two halves were to shift places if the half who expected to support themselves were destined, after all, to be cared for by others, and the half who felt sure of a support were to be thrown on themselves. Who can foretell ? As to external fortunes, at least, the happiest marriage is but a lottery. In our homely rural phrase, "It takes but about three generations from shirt-sleeves to shirt- sleeves." We meet every day women bred to com- petence, and perhaps married into luxury, who now need all that the trained brain can do for them, as, to mere material provision. At the first Normal School exhibition I ever attended, thirty years ago, I remember the calm brow, the clear eyes, the rose- bud cheeks, of the class poet; she seemed one of THE FEAR OF ITS BEING WASTED. 235 those fair creatures for whom all' life must be smoothed, as it always had been ; and when, ere- long, she was happily married, she appeared one of those who retire forever from the public gaze, and whose education is called wasted. By no means : the best of husbands may fail in business or in health, and then we sec of what material the wife is made. This woman has for many years been the main support of her own large household, and has in so doing developed a literary talent, and an espe- cial genius for teaching, that have made her books the inspiration and the guidance of a thousand homes. She is but a type of a myriad women, all over this country, whose education has paid for it- self over and over again, in the mere material aspect. And even Avhere this material use of education has not been actually necessary, how much stronger and freer a woman is when she knows that she has this intellectual capital, and can at any time put it to use ! Then comes, too, the higher use to be made of it, not for material objects alone, but for the good of all. The great changes of the last thirty years, placing upon women so much of the practical or- ganization of philanthropies and the guidance, of so- ciety, have gone hand-in-hand with the higher edu- cation. The Sanitary Commission and the Women's Christian Temperance Union are striking instances of this organized development. The Society of Col- 236 WOMEN AND MEN. Icgiatc Alumnse promises a vast deal further in the same direction. The whole course of later Ameri- can history has been perceptibly affected by the fact that Harriet Beechcr Stowe wrote " Uncle Tom's Cabin;" the whole relation between the white race on this continent and the aborigines is being influ- enced by the fact that Helen Jackson wrote "A Cen- tury of Dishonor" and "Rarnona," We cannot, if we would, keep woman's hand off the helm, since even the Greek orator Demosthenes confessed that measures which the statesman had meditated for a year might be overturned in a day by a woman. But it is for us to decide whether this power shall be exercised by an enlightened mind or an unen- lightened one by Madame Roland or Theroigne dc Mericourr. Finally, let us meet the objection on its most fa- miliar ground, and assume that all the main work of the world is to be done by men. Who are to bear or rear those men ? Women. In every land that missionaries visit it is found, first or last, to be quite useless to educate only the men. Take men of any race at the time when they pass out of the care of women, and you take them too late. Their characters are already formed, and have been formed mainly by the other sex. Hence everywhere we sec missiona- ries establishing schools for women in order to teach men. The South Sea Islanders have a proverb THE FEAR OP ITS BEING WASTED. 237 " If strong is the frame of the mother, The sou will give laws to the people." If for " frame" we read " brain," it is the same tiling. He who receives from his mother a good frame, a good brain, and a good disposition, is equipped to serve the world. But how can we secure these things for him unless they exist in her? XLVII. THE NERVOUSNESS OF MEN". THE physiologists tell us that nervousness is the peculiar attribute of women. May not this be be- cause it is usually men who write the books of phys- iology ; so that women might say, like the lions in ^Esop's fable, that if the other party had been the painters the case would be different? It would be worth while to consult the wife of some musical en- thusiast, for instance, who has carried his art to such a point that it causes him and everybody else more pain than pleasure the man who must have every door in the house deadened, every carpet doubled, every visitor seen by some one else before admit- tance, and the children banished to regions inac- cessible and inaudible. Paganini, the greatest of violinists, is reported to have found existence an absolute burden because it held so many intolerable sounds ; and many a woman has found her husband, even where unprofessional, claiming the privilege of Paganlni's sensitiveness without his genius. Again, consider the extremely nervous condition exhibited by some perfectly healthy men when called upon THE NERVOUSNESS OF MEN. 239 to appear before the public to "make a few re- marks," or even introduce a speaker. It is often amusing, at a public dinner, to notice the difference between the man who has made his little speech and the man who has not the jubilant faces of those who have the thing off their minds, the depths of preoccupied care or downright misery on the countenances of those who have still the torture in prospect. Now that women are having so much practice as public speakers, they are rapidly ceasing to exhibit any more nervousness about it than is constantly shown by men. The terrors of nervous prostration that calam- ity which seems a new foe, but is really only a new name for an old one haunt men almost equally with women. If men hold out longer against its approaches, which is doubtful, they succumb almost more hopelessly, and need as long time for a cure. I know young men of fine physique who, having for a year or two undertaken to combine too many dif- ferent anxieties for instance, a bread-earning occu- pation and the study of a profession have taken to their bed in utter helplessness and frequent tears, and remained there for months. " More pangs and fears than wars or women have" were their penalty for an over-taxation of the nervous system. The fact that, as the life-insurance companies tell us, women on the whole outlive men, seems to indicate that 240 WOMEN AND MEX. their nerves, if more sensitive than those of men, are more elastic, and offer a better resistance to the wear and tear of events. We must remember too that it is not the great things of life which prove exhausting, but the small ones, because these call out less in the way of resources to meet them ; just as people take cold more readily after a warm bath than after a cold one, for want of reaction. " You cannot seriously maintain," said a clever woman once to me, " that any cares of political or business life can be so wearing, on the whole, as the task of cooking a dinner." Then she proceeded to explain how the cook, before every dinner, had to deal with a dozen different articles of food, no two of which Avere to be prepared in the same manner, or manip- ulated with the same touch, or exposed to the same degree and kind of heat, or cooked for the same length of time ; that the cook had constantly to be going from one to the other, and keeping all in mind ; and that, to bring them all out in readiness at the appointed time, neither underdone nor overdone, neither slack baked nor burnt, neither too cold nor too hot that this was an achievement worthy of demi-gods and heroes. And I was quite inclined, at length, to be convinced : certainly it was much easier for me to own myself convinced than it would have been to prepare the meal. But there exists in every household a short and THE NERVOUSNESS OF MEN. 241 easy method of testing the comparative nervousness of the sexes. Take the very sweetest and most do- mestic of men, the most hornc-loving and equable, and see if he can have patience with the children, day in and day out, as can a wife much less gifted by nature with these fine qualities. The children may be the sweetest ever born, and yet each will be pretty sure to pass through stages in its develop- ment when its cross -questionings, its needless re- sistings, its chronic deafnesses, its endless "What?" and " Why " and " Whom did you say ?" will fur- nish grounds of practice for saintship. Not that all mothers arc equal to this task far from it; but when it comes to nerves, the average mother takes all this trial and pressure in a way that puts the average father to shame. I knew a shrewd woman who, whenever her husband had given her a lecture on nervousness, used to contrive to have him dress one or two of the children for school on a winter's morning, after a breakfast slightly belated. The good man would fall meekly into the trap, not clear- ly remembering the vastness of the labor the ad- justings and the tyings and the buttonings ; the leggings and the overdrawers and the arctic shoes ; the jacket, scarf, coat, gloves, mittens, wristers; the hat, or cap, or hood to be pulled and pushed and tied in proper position ; the way in which all these things, besides being put on, have to be mutually 16 242 WOMEN AND MEN. made fast by strings and buttons and safety-pins, so that the child thus dressed is a model of compressed stowage, and could, like a well - packed barrel of china, be sent round the world without injury. Calm must be'the spirit, high the purpose, of the father who reaches the end of this complex task without a word of impatience ; while the wife whom he calls nervous has long since taken off his hands the other child assigned to him, and having with deft hands dressed her, has given one patient, final, all-compre- hending twitch, and the thing is done. If you doubt whether men are on the whole, and in their own way, as nervous as women, test them with getting the children ready for school ; and remember that their mother does it every morning of her life. XLVIII. THE GERMAN STANDARD. AT a private discussion lately held among persons interested in collegiate and other education it seem- ed to me that there was too general a deference to German standards. It was assumed, in particular, that schools for young children must necessarily be far better if taught by university-bred men, as in Germany, than if taught by young women, as in this country. To all this I should demur. No man in America ever studied the German systems of common-school instruction more faithfully than Hor- ace Mann ; and it was chiefly to him that we owe, as a result, the general substitution of women for men as teachers. The greater economy of employ- ing women has no doubt assisted the change ; it would have been simply impossible, in fact, with the greater expensiveness of living in this country, to obtain the services of a sufficient number of men to give to our public-school system anything like the vast spread it has now obtained. Yet Horace Mann urged the change, not on the ground of economy alone, but because he regarded women as. the natural 244 WOMEN AND MEN. teachers of all children. His views have prevailed. When he began his career, just half a century ago, two-fifths of the teachers in his own State were men, whereas we are told in the Fiftieth Report of the Massachusetts Board of Education, just issued, that there are now 8610 women to 1060 men more than eight to one. The objections usually made against these young women lie, first, as to their sex, which is, however, if Horace Mann's theory be correct, rather an advan- tage 1>han a disadvantage. Then it is objected that they only teach temporarily, on their way to some- thing else, while men would teach for life. This claim has been refuted over and over again by sta- tistics taken in particular towns, and showing that women teachers are apt to remain actually longer than men who teach in the same grade of school ; because men are more often won away by some more lucrative pursuit than are women by matrimony. Of course, if you give all the higher positions and all the higher salaries, as is still done, to men, you give to those holding these more advantageous posts greater inducements to remain permanently ; but as between teachers of the same grade, which is the only fair comparison, these statistics hold. As a rule, women find no vocation more profitable than teaching ; while men are more fortunate, and have many better openings. Women are therefore kept THE GERMAN STANDARD. 245 in the profession unless they quit it for matrimony, while men are easily withdrawn from it. Most of the able public-school teachers whom I have known in years past, of the male sex, are now clergymen or lawyers, while many of the ablest women are still teaching. There remains the assumption that women, as women, are ordinarily less well trained for teaching than men would be certainly than German men. This disadvantage as to training did undoubtedly exist in times past, and it is still found in small country hamlets, where the teachers are often young women trained only in the schools of the village. But the disproportion of educational facilities is di- minishing every day. With the Normal Schools on the one side, and the colleges admitting women on the other, there is a rapid equalization going on. In many of our Normal Schools there is now a four years' course ; the books, apparatus, and teaching are all of the best : if Germany is the standard, the teachers have often been trained in Germany ; and with the women's colleges it is much the same. The grade is steadily rising as to the higher education of women. In Massachusetts about one-fourth of the public-school teachers are graduates of Normal Schools, and nearly one -third have attended such schools while of the number who are college gradu- ates no statistics are given. Should men again re- 246 WOMEN AND MEN. place women in these schools there is no reason to suppose that they would surpass the present teachers in respect to education. It is certain that the aver- age male teacher of forty years ago was inferior in this respect to the average woman teacher of to-day. Tried, therefore, even by the German standard, there is no reason to suppose that the present ar- rangements as to teaching force in our schools could be materially bettered, with the materials now at command. But I am not afraid to go one step fur- ther 5ind raise the question whether the German standard is absolute and final. I travelled once on the Rhine with a highly educated German, long res- ident in England, who used to say, when we saw the groups of demure little boys and girls going to school at eight in the morning, with their knapsacks of books on their shoulders, " That is what is stupe- fying the German nation ; they arc being drilled to death ; they have no games, no lively sports, no vi- vacity; one wide-awake English school-boy is worth the whole of them." He had never been in Ameri- ca; but we, who find the English children dull and slow to mature, compared with Americans, can make the needful addition to his statement. No one can deny the sure tendency of the German training to produce thorough investigators and admirable ana- lysts ; but, after all, our system, with all its faults, produces mental alertness, and theirs does not. THE GERMAN STANDARD. 247 Compare an American boy at eighteen with a Ger- man or even an English boy of the same age ; which is it that has originality, impulse, initiative ? That quality which makes us develop early and assume leadership while others arc under tutelage seems in- grain in the transplanted race. In writing on the history of the old Salem (Mas- sachusetts) sea-captains the other day, I was amazed to discover the youthfulness of the men whose dar- ing adventure created that vast East India trade which for a few years astonished the world. These men penetrated into unknown and ch artless seas, opened new channels of commerce, defied treach- erous natives and ruthless pirates, baffled England and France during the wars of Napoleon ; yet they were almost always under twenty-five, often under twenty-one. Captain Richard J. Cleveland sailed on a dangerous voyage when neither he nor his first nor second mate was of voting age. An American sys- tem of education has to adapt itself to this precocity of type. Moreover, it has to train to action as well as to learning; and, for something midway between learning and action, it has to train to the power of expression. Here is where the German system stops short ; the German scholar obtains vast knowledge, but he ordinarily does it as a hewer of wood and drawer of water, until the cultivated French or Eng- lish or American mind has applied to it the art of 248 WOMEN AND MEN. expression. For the philological study of the Greek and Latin classics, for instance, one must go to Ger- many ; but you may explore a whole alcove of Ger- man editions and not gain so much of the peculiar aroma of Greek literature as you can obtain from Ampere's " Grecc, Rome, et Dante," or from Matthew Arnold's" Essay on Translating Homer," or from our own Professor Palmer's extraordinary version of the " Odyssey " in rhythmic prose. For one, I do not ask for a mere reproduction of German methods until Germany itself is broadened and revivified. XLIX. THE MISSING MUSICAL WOMAN. THERE is just now a revival of the anxious in- quiry after an eminent composer of music among women. Mr. Upton, in a book upon the subject, and Mr. Upton's numerous critics, are all discussing the matter with eager interest, and give a great many ingenious reasons for what is, to careful students of the intellectual history of woman, a very simple af- fair. Such students are usually brought to the con- viction that the difference between the sexes in point of intellect is not a question of comparative quanti- ty or quality, but simply of time. It is a matter of acceleration and retardation. In all arts, for certain reasons not hard to discover, the eminence of women is a later historical development than that of men. It is one of those " precious things discovered late," of which Tennyson writes; and this tardiness would certainly be provoking had it not come to pass, un- der the doctrine of evolution, that the latest things are apt to be recognized as the most precious through- out all nature. Up to the time of George Sand or George Eliot it had not seemed possible that a worn- 250 WOMEN AND MEX. an could be a great novelist, or up to the time of Elizabeth Barrett Browning that she could be a great poet, or up to the time of Rosa Bonheur a great painter, or up to the days of Mrs. Siddons and Rachel a great actor, or until Mrs. Somerville's day a great scientific writer. Even to the present time, for some reason, the corresponding figure among musical composers has not appeared, and any specu- lations on this point may have a certain value. Of course some particular sphere must come last in women's successive advances, and it is interesting to inquire why that sphere should be music. But the inquiry should always proceed in connection with such facts as those already stated facts indicating that it is not at all a ease of proved incapacity, but only of admitted delay. The general cause of the delay, in all these cases, is essentially the same: it lies partly in specific dis- advantages and partly in general repression. Wom- en have never yet been trained on any large scale, as men are trained, in the science of music. They have been and still arc trained as amateurs only ; and I can distinctly remember when the study of har- mony or counterpoint was considered as clearly un- womanly as that of Greek. Where, in spite of this, a woman came of a musical stock, and showed posi- tive marks of genius, she was still held to a sub- ordinate and almost suppressed position as in the THE MISSING MUSICAL WOMAN. 251 striking case of Fanny Mendelssohn, who was only encouraged by her family to compose so long as her beautiful compositions passed under her brother's name and helped to swell his fame. When she pro- posed to publish for herself, she was regarded by her family as unscxing herself. Is that the way genius is developed among men ? Genius in men is watched for, helped, trained, supported, furnished with prizes and incentives. The fact that we give it all these aids is proof that genius needs them; withdraw the aids, and it suffers, or if it excels it will be still at a great disadvantage, and fall short of its full success. High English scientific authority has said that we never shall know how much science lost by the al- most total early neglect of the rare powers of Mary Somcrvillc. We know as little what the musical world lost by the domestic repression of Fanny Men- delssohn. We do not even know, as the latest biog- rapher of the family admits, which of her brother's published "Songs without Words " she composed. It may have been the very finest, and her genius may have been intrinsically greater than his. Mr. Upton gives us a list of four women compos- ers in the seventeenth century, twenty-seven in the eighteenth, and seventeen in the nineteenth. It is an obvious and significant fact that most of these are German ; and here we have a further suggestion as to the backwardness of women in music. The 252 WOMEN AND MEN. great musical nation of the world is also the civil- ized nation where the relative intellectual position of woman is lowest, and where she shares least in the current educational advantages of all kinds. Among the eminent women above enumerated as pioneers in other intellectual spheres not one was German ; we do not know that George Sand, or George Eliot, or Mrs. Browning, or Rosa Bonhcur, or Rachel, or Mrs. Somerville, would ever have raised her head above the surrounding obstacles had she had the ill- luck to be born near the Rhine. Even in France there is no Salique Law in intellect; compare, for instance, the five ample volumes of " Ilistoire Litte- raire des Femmcs Franchises," published by a Societe do Gens do Lettrcs as early as 1769, with any simi- lar work in German. Had England or France been a great musical nation, the opportunities of women in this respect would have been far greater than they are to-day. It is a comfort to know that, even in Germany, if women have not composed great music in their own names, they have at least, so to speak, composed the composers through their influence on them and thus fulfilled what Cotton Mather thought the high function of the president of a university .to train those who were to train others non lapides dolarc, sed archttectos. Thus Beethoven, who never married, but was twice rejected, dedicated thirty- THE MISSING MUSICAL WOMAX. 253 nine compositions to thirty-six different women, and Schumann almost as many ; while most of the great composers were also ardent lovers, and sometimes only too versatile in their love affairs. It is interest- ing to learn also from Mr. Upton that while women have been inferior to men as instrumental perform- ers, they have quite surpassed them as singers the list of women renowned as vocalists being both lono-er and weightier than that of men. THE BRUTALITY OF " PUNCH AND JUDY." WHENEVER the season of picnics and children's excursions draws near, I feel disposed to renew my protest against a performance which has only crossed the Atlantic within some twenty years, and which has in some inexplicable way crept into decent society. I mean " Punch and Judy." It is an exhibition only fitted to be shown, as it. seems to me, before the children of prize-fighters or cock -fighters. It is something that could only have originated, in its present form, among a race of very coarse fibre, which the English stock unquestionably is ; and now that a more refined race is being developed from this parent stem, it is a shame to transplant its very coarsest amusements. No sane parent would paper a child's bedroom with representations of mur- ders and executions from the Police Gazette ; and yet the exhibition of "Punch and Judy " offers this and nothing more, and docs it in the more per- nicious form of action instead of picture. From beginning to end the performance has not one re- deeming: trait. All the fun lies in the fact that THE BRUTALITY OF " PUNCH AND JUDY." 255 Punch successively knocks on the head or other- wise slaughters his baby, his wife, the doctor, the policeman, the servant, and such others as the vary- ing ingenuity of the operator may introduce; that he counts the corpses over,~Tiustles them about, and stuffs them into coffins with every form of irrev- erence ; that for these offences lie is haunted by ghosts, executed by hangmen, and dragged down by demons. It is not strange that there should be city precincts so degraded that this sort of thing should just meet the public taste. In the old-time Seven Dials of London, or Five Points of New York, it might seem at home, and perhaps be regarded as a moral exhibition. The strange thing is that it should be selected by refined and high-minded parents for the delectation of innocent children amid the roses and perfumes of summer gardens. How far it directly harms these children it is im- possible to say. We all know that such young peo- ple can see a great deal of evil pass before their eyes without being really reached by it. The story of the little boy who throttled his baby brother by trying to apply the noose like Punch's hangman may or may not be correct. It has never been proved that the children of butchers were more bru- tal than those of other people; but no thoughtful person would wish to bring up his family at the next door to an abattoir. And surely Punch should 256 WOMEN AND MEN. be avoided on the same principle. It seems impos- sible that such a show should not insensibly vul- garize a child's pure mind. The last time I took a child to see it its detestable features having grown dim in my mind I found by comparison that all the parents present felt very much as I did, and only consoled themselves with the thought that the little things "did not understand." But they did understand. A child under five narrated the whole thing with animation after reaching home the only things she did not comprehend, from never having seen or heard of them before, being the ghost, the hangman, and the demon. Should she go again which she will not if I can help it she will soon be coarsely introduced to those also, and begin to dream about them, perhaps, in the slumbers that follow. I do not wish to put all the blame of " Punch and Judy" on our English ancestors, for it is much older than they. The very figure of this hero was famil- iar on the Roman stage, and an ancient statuette has been found which represents him essentially as now. The play is not much coarser than some of the old mystery plays of the Middle Ages ; and the very name is by some supposed to have come from Pon- tius cum Judceis Pontius Pilate with the Jews. The drama itself is Italian, and belongs to the sev- enteenth century, where it had a highly spiritual THE BRUTALITY OF " PUNCH AND JUDY." 257 conclusion and a moral bearing. The English ver- sion strikes off all these redeeming traits, and the American is worse than the English. For instance, the English performance has usually a little dog (Toby) added, the only live member of the dramatis personce, and the only decent one, his worst offence being to leap up and snap at everybody's nose. The noses being only those of puppets, this can hardly be counted as a moral offence ; and the shouts of laughter it excites are at least innocent. But our ordinary performances of "Punch and Judy" ex- hibit nobody so alive and so harmless as a real pup- py ; it is one dreary scries of quarrels and fights, and proceedings that would be very bloodthirsty ex- cept that there is no blood. It is a wonder that some more artistic Punch docs not provide this too. As our children go through the world they must necessarily make acquaintance with brutality and sin and wrong ; but this should never be done in the way of joke, any more than we should wish them to laugh at the spectacle of a drunken man. Up to a certain point ignorance is the best shield ; and beyond that point there should be serious disap- proval, not uproarious laughter. The Spartans used to make their Ilelots intoxicated, not for the amuse- ment of their children, but for their abhorrence ; that the latter should become disgusted with excess, and so avoid it. It was a questionable process, but 17 258 WOMEN AND MEN. a serious one. It may have coarsened the young observers, but it did not pervert them. Our ten- dency is rather to take evil too lightly when shown to the young ; and this, whether it be licentiousness, as on the French stage, or brutality, as in " Punch and Judy," involves a deeper danger that such things may not only grow familiar as a spectacle, but as a joke. LT. WHY WOMEN AUTHORS \VRITE UNDER THE NAMES OF MEN. THE dapper clerk, Mr. Chuckster, in the "Old Ca- riosity Shop," is quite dissatisfied when Kit Nubbles is proved innocent of theft ; and remarks that al- though the boy did not happen to take that partic- ular five-pound note, he is no doubt always up to something or other of that kind. It is in this way that critics of a certain type contrive to console themselves, when a woman lias done a good thing in literature, by pointing out the number of good things she has not yet done. To be sure, Miss Mary N. Murf ree, when she was universally supposed to bear the name of Charles Egbert Craddock, was thought to have achieved creditable work; but this discov- ery only gives these critics opportunity to point out that had she tried various other things she might have failed in them. Can anybody positively say, for instance, that she would have written a good essay on Quaternions, or developed any especially searching views on the Wages Fund ? If not, her success does no more credit to woman, in the opin- 260 WOMEN AND MEN. ion of these critics, than Kit's not happening to take that particular five-pound note did to his honesty. "Just wait a while," they say, "and you will sec some woman fail in something, never fear." One critic goes so far as to say that all " high creative work" still remains out of the reach of woman. "Itomola" does not seem to such a critic to he high creative work, probably ; that phrase should be re- served for men for little Twiggs, perhaps, with his fine realistic stud}', "The Trippings of Tom Popin- jay." What a flood of light all this throws on the rea- sons why such very able women write under mascu- line names ! George Sand, Currer Bell, George El- iot, are but the type of many others. They wrote in that way not because they wished to be men, but because they wished for an unbiassed judgment as artists; and in each case they got it. When it came, and in the form of triumphant success, all women were benefited by it, and were so much near- er to a time when no such experiment of disguise would be needed. The mere fact that women take men's names in writing, while no man takes a wom- an's, shows that an advantage is gained by the proc- ess. Meantime, each particular success is called ex- ceptional, and instead of rejoicing in it in a manly way, the critic of the other sex is very apt to ex- ult in what it does not prove rather than in what WHY WOMEN WRITE UNDER MEN'S NAMES. 261 it proves. It is as if we were watching a Chinese woman trying to walk in spite of her bandaged feet. "True, she has just walked into the north-east cor- ner of the room ; but, mind yon, she will never get into the south-east corner she cannot do it; and even if she does, there is all the rest of the room !" The more rational inference would seem to be that if one point of the compass was not too much for her, it would only be a question of time when she would reach all the rest. When Mrs. Somervillc wrote her " Mechanism of the Heavens," critics of this description admitted that she had proved, indeed, that women could master astronomy after a fashion, but probably chemis- try would be beyond them. When Rosa Bonheur painted cattle it was remarked that probably she could not have painted men as well if she had tried. Then came Elizabeth Thompson in England, and painted men fighting actual battle-pieces and the critics turned round and wondered if she could de- lineate men at rest. No matter what a clever wom- an does, the stupidest man has always discernment enough to think of something that she has not done; and if, step by step, women held their own in every conceivable department except in writing treatises on whist or backgammon, then it would suddenly be discovered that whist and backgammon were the inaccessible climax of human intellect, and 262 WOMEN AND MEX. that in that sacred region no woman need apply. After all, with due respect to the great masculine in- tellect, does not all this seem a little silly ? Why not simply reason about woman's intellect as we should about every other case of gradual de- velopment? For some reason or other, mere phys- ical size had priority on this planet first the reptile one hundred feet long, then the man six feet long. This great change made, it seems credible that even the woman, who is only five feet long, may not be wholly crushed by her smallness, but may have her place in the universe. As, by the modern theory, man is gradually developed out of utter ignorance, so is she, but, for some reason or other, more slowly. It is but yesterday that her brain was regarded with contempt; but yesterday that it was held worth educating. How should she develop confidence in it all at once? We know nothing of the laws that occasionally bring out genius in men that create a Shakespeare, for instance and in her case we know still less. We only know that slowly, at long in- tervals, and in spite of all the obvious disadvantages of physical weakness, social discouragement, and in- sufficient education, she is beginning to do, here and there, what may fairly be regarded as first-class in- tellectual work. Until within a century but one single instance of this success was recorded that of Sappho, in lyric WHY WOMEN WRITE UNDER MEN\S NAMES. 263 poetry. Within the last century other instances have followed Rachel in dramatic art, Rosa Bon- henr in animal painting-, George Sand and George Eliot in prose fiction. These cases are unquestion- able. Other women have at least reached a second- ary place in other spheres as Mrs. Somerville in science, Harriet Martineau in political economy, Elizabeth Barrett Browning in poetry. The infer- ence would seem natural that it is simply a case of slower development a thing not at all discouraging in a world where evolution reigns, and the last comer generally wins. Meanwhile, as there is no profes- sion not even the stage in which a woman is not still a little handicapped, it is natural that she should disguise her work as man's work; and that Miss Murfrce should find complete shelter under the very misleading name of Charles Egbert Craddock. LII. THE DISCIPLINE OF DOLLS. IT is a very instructive fact that two of the best mothers I know and mothers, it must be added, on the largest scale have had their preliminary training solely through the charge of dolls. I vis- ited lately the nursery of one of these mothers, arranged as the collective play-room of six children under ten there being also three older offspring who have graduated from this play-room, and are in a manner launched into the world outside. In this room everything is provided by wholesale whole freight-trains of toy-wagons, wooden horses enough for all to ride at once, and four hundred blocks for purposes of architecture. Here the six play perpetually together while they are in-doors; and when peace is interrupted by discord, and there is a momentary tendency among the younger mem- bers to pull each other's hair hair, it must be said, so curly that it seems almost a waste of the bless- ings of Providence not to pull it occasionally the tranquil mother, wisely remembering that most of the ill-temper of children cornes from the stomach, THE DISCIPLINE OF DOLLS. 205 sends the little things down - stairs for a glass of Mellin's Food, and they come back beaming and reconciled. Yet this pattern mother, conducting without a nurse this large world of little beings, tells me that she grew up not only without younger brothers and sisters, but without knowledge of young children. Up to the time of her marriage, at twenty-two, she has no recollection of ever hav- ing taken any care of a child. What, then, pre- pared her for this vast sphere of duty, this rearing of nine young immortals upon no severer pains and penalties than Mellin's Food ? It was, she as- sures me, the discipline of dolls. Up to the age of thirteen her experience with dolls was on the very largest scale. She had seldom less than twenty, each with its own wardrobe, orna- ments, and possessions; Every night of her life the twenty dolls were undressed and put to bed before their mistress went ; and all their clothes were neat- ly folded and put away separately. During the day, doubtless, each doll had its own career and position ; was fed at table, fitted with new clothes, elevated into grandeur or repressed into humbleness. When their young mistress grew up they were doubtless laid aside, or transferred to other children, or ban- ished to that dusty purgatory of the garret from which no doll is ever translated to paradise. I for- get whether Hans Andersen has ever duly chronicled 266 WOMEN AND MEN. the tragedy that lies at the end of every doll's life; it is worse than that of any other pet. An old horse is often tended, an aged dog is at least shot, but an old doll is left to lie forever on its back in the garret, gazing with one remaining eye on the slowly gathering cobwebs above it. At any rate, the lady I describe was, after an interval of some ten years, reassigned to the duty that had absorbed her in girlhood only this time the dolls were alive. On the other hand, there were fewer of them only nine and they were, and are, even more interest- ing, as I can testify, than the dolls. Her experience reminded me of that of another mother whose eight children are now practically grown up, and whose early training was much the same. She too had little to do with children in her youth ; but her only sister once said to me, " I always knew that would be a good mother. When we had paper dolls, she always knew just where each one was, and what clothes it needed. She manages her children just as she did her paper dolls." How curious is this world of dolls ! uncouth and savage in Alaska, quaint in Japan, strong and solidly built in Germany, graceful in Paris. You can tell German dolls from French, it is said, by the greater clumsiness of the extremities ; no matter how pretty the face, the feet and ankles are those of a peasant. In both countries, I believe, artificers visit the rural THE DISCIPLINE OF DOLLS. 267 villages to study new faces for their dolls, as in an- cient Greece the sculptors travelled about the coun- try looking for beautiful forms. Everywhere the doll is to the child the symbol of humanity the first object of responsibility, the type of what is lovable, the model on which the dawning parental instinct practises itself. The little girl does not know the faults and virtues of her own temperament until this ideal creature brings them out, being now tended with the sweetest care, now flung vehemently into an undeserved corner. It is all imaginary, no doubt, but much of our sensibility lies in the imagination ; the woes we relieve are those we vividly picture to ourselves. Children will sometimes cry when the doll is pricked in sewing on a dress, or is forgotten Avhen she should be placed at the window to see the procession go by. The sorrow is fantastic, but the thoughtful sympathy is real. Whoever listens in the nursery will hear all the problems of ethics re- hearsed upon this mimic stage of the doll's house. In the travelling diary of a child of eight, written literally from her own dictation for her absent fa- ther, the important events of the pilgrimage were always shared by the doll. " When we got to Nice, I was sick. The next morning the doctor came, and he said I had something that was very much like scarlet-fever. Then I had Annie [a sister] take care of baby [the doll], and keep her away, for I was 268 WOMEN AND MEN. afraid she would get the fever. She used to cry to come to me, but I knew it wouldn't be good for her." To a child thus imaginative and thus faithful this was an absolute rehearsal of motherhood. When Christmas came, it appears from the diary that " baby " hung up her stocking with the rest. She had a slate with a real pencil, a travelling shawl with a strap, and a cap with ruffles. " I found baby with the cap on early in the morning, and she was so pleased that she almost jumped out of my arms." At the Colosseum, at St, Peter's, baby was of the party. " I used to take her to hear the band, in the carriage, and she went everywhere I did." This tenderest of parents was, of course, a girl ; yet boys take their share of it, in a more robust and in- termittent way, and will sometimes carry the doll to bed or to breakfast as eagerly as girls. The love of dolls with both sexes is a variable thing, perhaps de- layed unaccountably or interrupted by long intervals of indifference. At any rate, it is the rehearsing of the most momentous part of human life that which carries on from one generation to another the sacred fire of human affection. Where the doll ends the child begins; or, as an author has said, " In a nursery the youngest child is something more than a doll, and the doll is a little less than a child." LIII. SANTA CLAUS AGENCIES. No one seems as yet to recognize that if Santa Glaus is to continue in the field, he absolutely needs agents and auxiliaries. With the increasing wealth of the community and the growing complications of shopping, the mere ordinary preparation of Christ- mas presents is becoming a very arduous matter. For many well-to-do households, especially in the suburbs of large cities, it absorbs an alarming amount of time and strength, even endangering, in many cases, health itself. The Christmas trade, which formerly kept the retail shops crowded for a week, now fills and overfills them for nearly six weeks, and during December the simplest purchase involves such confusion and difficulty as to take hours instead of minutes, and to drive even experienced shoppers to despair. Many a family seriously contemplates each year the alternative of foregoing all Christmas pres- ents, rather than grapple with the formidable task involved. There are the children's stockings to be filled, something really pretty and appropriate to be got for Uncle John, and just the right thing to be 270 WOJUEX AND MEX. selected for that unsatisfactory corner in Cousin Mary's drawing-room. Day after day passes ; nobody can find time to go to the city, or, if some one goes, it is dark before she has got half-way down her list of errands. At the end, Cousin Mary's awkward corner remains unfilled, the children's stockings are stuffed bap-hazard, and Uncle John gets only a third smoking-cap, though he took pains to explain last year that the doctor had ordered him to quit smok- ing. I am surprised that some enterprising woman does not see how clearly all this makes a provi- dential opening for Santa Clans agencies. In many other departments we do not now go to purchase articles needed ; they are brought to us. Instead of our going to market the market-man rings daily at the back door, and orders arc taken and filled for chickens and celery, canned tomatoes or Ilubbard squashes. If we wish new window -curtains, the upholsterer comes with plans, patterns, and prices. Why does not some agent for Santa Claus come in the same way with samples, circulars, and above all, suggestions ? What a boon to many a strug- gling family would be the sudden arrival at the door of some competent and clear-headed woman, replete with information, running over with meas- urements and prices, and carrying specimens of a hundred unthouo-ht-of treasures in a little hand- SANTA CLAUS AGENCIES. 271 bag ! She must have all the resources of all the shops in her memory; must be learned in lace, competent in china, and an encyclopaedia as to rugs. She must be an embodied Lilliputian Bazaar in re- gard to children's clothes and toys. She must be as comprehensive in her aptitudes as Lord Beacons- field's imaginary Israelite, who was prepared to trade for a pennyworth or for a million pounds sterling. All with her is to be a business trans- action ; the laborer is worth his hire, but a part of her stock in trade the only inexhaustible part is a genial good-nature. She simply undertakes to fit out the family with Christmas presents, as the up- holsterer fits it out with window-curtains and por- tieres, on any scale that is desired. You sketch out for her what you want, naming your general stand- ard as to plan and price ; she tells you what can be done upon that scale, and, if you wish, she makes the actual purchases. Very likely she can make them at a price lower than you could ; but that is a secondary matter. We are not now planning to save money so much as time, strength, and the nervous system. It is, of course, possible that all this agency might be filled by a man, but it is altogether better that it should be undertaken by a woman. The purchasers will usually be women, even though a 272 WOMEN AND MEN. man pays the bills ; and it is to be remembered, moreover, that the whole position is a confidential .one, and involves sacred secrets in every family. Much of it would be done, very likely, with closed doors, conspiring with Bessie to surprise mamma, and again with mamma to astonish Bessie. The Santa Glaus agent should therefore be a woman, and, if possible, one well known in other ways to the household, in order to win entire confidence, and to keep above all suspicion of being unduly under the influence of some particular dealer. If she does her work well, she will soon have influence for herself with all dealers, going straight to head- quarters with that assured precedence possessed by the stewardess on a steamboat, who quietly walks into the clerk's office and sweeps off the very last state-room before the enraged eyes of a whole line of men, who are vainly cooling their boot-heels on the windy deck outside. She will be a sort of em- bodied power a veritable Parnell of the Christmas trade, knowing that both dealers and customers must conciliate her at last. Indeed, the only danger is lest she become too powerful, and be a despot; in which case she too must be dethroned, and some new substitute inaugurated. Meanwhile, who would not welcome the Santa Glaus agent? She will be sent for, let us suppose, SANTA CLAUS AGENCIES. 2 "73 by a family with whom she has dealt already, and whose peculiar tastes she knows. They will unfold to her their needs and exigencies so many uncles and aunts, so many deserving relatives at a distance, so many children of different ages. Something will readily occur to her for each : have tire household seen those lovely new things, so cheap, in Fayal goods? those pretty boxes of colored crayons for little girls? One of her great functions will lie in the simple answering of questions ; the information that would otherwise involve the ascending and de- scending of a dozen elevators in warehouses is hero obtained by simple cross-examination in five min- utes. Supposing that you take absolutely nothing that she brings or recommends, the mere sugges- tions she offers are worth the fee you pay. Simply to hear from her what you can not find this year, or what project will be utterly impracticable this will be a great deal. " To know what she had not to trust to Was worth all the ashes and dust too." I cannot doubt that, some time or other, the proper agents for Santa Clans will be found; and if their sphere ultimately extends also to weddings and birthdays, no matter. It is idle to say that their services will destroy all individuality in prcs- 18 274 WOMEN AND MEN. cnts ; there is no real individuality except in pre- paring every present with your own hands ; and when you once buy your gifts, it makes no differ- ence, as to the sentiment of the thing, whether you go to the shop or the shop comes to you. By all means let us have Santa Clans agencies. LIV. KEREN II APPUCH. NEARLY fifty young women received their de- gree of A.B. a few weeks since at Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts. The Boston Daily Advertiser, in mentioning this fact, makes a proper criticism on the trivial names often borne by the young ladies who appear on the list. Unfortunate- ly it goes too far in its form of statement, and with that hastiness which sometimes marks even mascu- line journalists, launches a boomerang that recoils upon the favored youth of its own pet institution, Harvard University. With just disdain it thus speaks of the young ladies : " No doubt each had proper- ly qualified herself for this distinction. But when one finds among the names of these graduates Nel- lies and Carries and Jennies, and even a Virgie and an Annie, it does not seem as if the grave letters A.B. will well become their owners. One does not see Georgies and Freddies in the list of those grad- uated at Harvard College." (The italics are my own.) 276 WOMEN AND MEN. Does not one see them, indeed, or their equiva- lents ? Then it is because one has not looked, or because one has read the list only in the safe ob- scurity of a learned language, where all endearments disappear although Cicero, to be sure, might have wished to sec his beloved daughter appear on a college list as Tulliola instead of Tullia. But if any critic of women's nicknames will turn to his Harvard College catalogue in English, he will find there, in the official list of the sterner sex, precisely the same tendency towards the more familiar names as at women's colleges. In the Senior Class, just graduated, he will find Harry occurring five times and Henry seven ; Frank once and Francis four times; and his eyes will be regaled also with Fred and Bertie. In the Junior Class, to graduate next year, he will find only one Harry to nineteen who bear the name of Henry ; but, on the other hand, he will find the brief name of Frank carrying all before it ten Franks, while Francis occurs but four times. In the Sophomore Class it is almost pre- cisely the same Frank is to Francis as eight to three; while Henry occurs ten times, Harry three times, and Harrie once ; there are also two Freds. In the Freshman Class Francis gets the npperhand of Frank at last, and is as seven to three ; Henry occurs ten times, Harry three times, Fred once, and Dan once the latter being probably the old Script- KERENHAPPUCH. 277 ural name, but possibly a colloquial abbreviation of Daniel. Among the special students Francis and Frank balance each other, one of each, while Henry is found twice and Harry once. To sum up : in the whole undergraduate department Henry is to Harry as forty-eight to thirteen, while Frank is to Francis as twenty-three to nineteen ; and there are four Freds, besides Harrie and Bertie. There are thus in these official Harvard lists nearly forty of these familiar nicknames, which are thought so pre- posterous at a woman's college. Of course they are not the same nicknames, because they belong to a different sex ; but can it be maintained that Harrie and Bertie are essentially noble, heroic, masculine, while Georgic and Freddie are hopeless- ly feminine, and therefore weak? Whether the numerical proportion of pet names is greater at women's colleges is not to the purpose ; very likely it may be, but forty of them at Harvard are quite enough to destroy all feminine monopoly. The whole discussion is therefore reduced to the question whether there is such a difference between the terminations y and ie as to make it a fine thing to be called Harry and a thing of degradation to be called Jennie. Now with every disposition to be conservative in this matter of terminations to stand with the y's, if I may say so without suspicion of a pun I must declare this to be simply a mat- 278 WOMEN AND MEN. ter of usage. To old-fashioned people Tom Moore's song, " Fly, fly from the world, Bessy, with mo," would lose half its charm if addrcsed to Bessie. In the same way, " Kitty, a fair but frozen maid," would melt into insignificance if put into the new mould of Kittle ; and what should we do with Dib- din's chorus if Dibdin's it was " Anna, Anne, Nan, Nance, and Nancy," if we have to stretch the line far enough to bring in Annie and Nancie also ? Yet, after all, what we call old-fashioned spelling in these cases is not real- ly the oldest. In old English books we find the words now ending in y to end usually in ie a form which we still preserve in their plurals and may note in successive editions the gradual substitu- tion, for instance, of philanthropy for philanthrop- ie. Chaucer has flie for fly, and folie for folly. Y superseded ie by an unconscious tendency some two centuries ago ; and now, in case of the familiar names of both sexes, this tendency is being uncon- sciously and very gradually reversed. It is only a few years since Sallic began to be substituted for KEKEMllAPI'UCH. 279 Sally ; Mollic has hardly yet achieved its position ; and Nancy still holds out, though sure to yield to Nancie. Among men's names the influence is as inevitable, though more slowly exerted, Willie and Charlie being well established in place of Willy and Charley ; and Harrie is already beginning to offer itself as a substitute for Harry, it seems, even on the Harvard College catalogue. However we may regret the change, it looks as if Harry would yet follow the analogy of the other names, and termi- nate in ie at last. It is thus plain that, botli in the use of the fa- miliar name and in the form of its ending, women have simply yielded earlier than men to a current that reaches both sexes. Both these tendencies I deprecate, being, as was said, an old-fashioned per- son as to these matters. Yet I must admit that I have heard of one case where the official use of the pet name was quite justified. I was told by the president's secretary at Vassar College that a stu- dent just arrived was once called upon by the lady principal to give her name to be recorded in the books. She gave it promptly as " Kittie." "Do you not think, iny dear young friend," said the dig- nified official, " that it is a pity to employ so trivial a name in a serious matter? Nothing can justify it unless there is something very uncouth or difficult 280 WOMEN AND MEN. in your real name. If your name were Kercnhap- pucli, for instance " "It is, ina'arn," interrupted the young girl. This is probably the most unex- pected and conclusive reply ever given by an under- graduate to a teacher. LV. AMERICAN LOVE OF HOME. IT is common to say that love of homo does not exist in America that it is not a supposable quality in a nation founded on immigration, and only kept contented by constant migration. Nothing is easier than to misunderstand people, even whole races at a time. We insist on saying that Frenchmen, for in- stance, have no love of their home because they call it chez moi, forgetting that this moi identifies the abode with its proprietor far more unequivocally than the English word. You may speak of some one else as also having a home, but chez moi can be- long to the speaker alone. So in regard to the se- lection of a place where to fix one's abode ; we all assume that every Frenchman wishes to live in Paris, when in truth almost every Frenchman, if born in the country, dreams always of retiring to a little es- tate of his own, where for the rest of his life he may patrol the woods in long gaiters, and occasionally shoot at a cock-sparrow. We all observe this home- loving spirit in the French Canadians, who are per- 282 WOMEN AND MEN. haps more thoroughly French than anybody left in France. Now this dream which exists in the transatlantic mind is to be found also in the migrating Ameri- cans. The country boy who has come to the city and made his fortune ends in buying back the pa- ternal farm he once hated, and in turning it into a country-seat. Many villages of the Atlantic States are already surrounded with showy houses that are, to all intents and purposes, ancestral estates, repre- senting the old settlers several degrees removed. There are, no doubt, some variations in the style of living, but the whirligig of fashion has in many ways brought round the later generation to the hab- its of the earlier. The first settlers had uncarpeted floors, so have their descendants ; the founders drove about in two-wheeled carts, so do their pos- terity ; the earlier residents slept on hard mattresses, so do the later ones. The very houses must be co- lonial with a difference and their occupants wan- der about the country to buy eight-day clocks and spinning-wheels. Every such household vindicates the American love of home. We all like to live for at least a portion of the year at onr birthplace, and we like to emulate the style in which our ancestors lived with a few improvements. The town libra- ries, for example, which are springing up in every village of the Eastern States, arc specimens of these AMERICAN LOVE OP HOME. 283 improvements ; and they are built, half the time, at the expense of some native of the town who may not have set eyes upon it for many years. Nay, the instinct lasts into the next generation ; and Mrs. Leighton tells us that children born on the Pacific coast often spcalc of the unseen Atlantic region as " home." It is to be observed that in these cases of revert- ing to the early haunts the old house is not always piously preserved, as is so frequently the case in Eu- rope. No American can help being charmed with the ancestral homes of England ; there are so few instances in this country of the permanence of a homestead through many generations. Some such there are : in the rural parts of Essex County, Mas- sachusetts, there are farms that have stood for two hundred years under the same family name ; and I lived at Newport, Rhode Island, opposite an estate which had never passed by a deed, but was still held by the old Indian title, and was occupied by the fifth or sixth generation of the original stock. But when one thinks of the tremendous price that is paid in England for this permanence of the unjust and of- ten cruel working of that practice of primogeniture by which it is secured, and of that sea of houseless poverty that is seething all around it to say noth- ing of the incidental result attributed to primo- geniture by Dr. Johnson, that it made but one fool 284 WOMEN AND MEN. in a family one may well be glad that \ve do not have the possession secured here in the same way. And much of the attraction that draws Ameri- cans to England is this same love of home, bidding them explore a still older home. For this they en- dure temporary exile from their real abode, and bear as patiently as possible that rather childish social structure which still dominates the English world. Sometimes, indeed, by long residence, Americans come to enjoy this structure, as dwellers in Switz- erland come actually to like those high -flavored cheeses that are at first so repulsive. Many a man, too, as Wendell Phillips used to say, is a democrat only because he was not born a nobleman ; and it is observed that when one speaks of the delights of living in Europe, he never imagines himself to be living there in the same way as here; the life must be a perpetual holiday with large outlay and no duties to anybody ; without that, one might as well be in New York. So the young American girl, how- ever moderate her claims at home, stipulates for noth- ing less than a ducal palace in England ; let her mar- ry an English business man, and she will soon find whether she likes it better than life in America. At least I knew a young girl who tried it, and she soon found herself undergoing so many real or fancied slights because her husband was " only in trade " AMERICAN LOVE OF HOME. 285 that she was soon glad to bring him back to this side of the Atlantic. Again, it is to be remembered that we cannot get back to our old home by merely crossing the ocean for it ; it has changed, even as our old homes in this country have changed, and perhaps more than they. The London of to-day is not even that of Dickens and Thackeray, much less that of Milton and Defoe ; nor is the Paris of to-day that of Pe- trarch, which he described (in 1333) as the most dirty and ill-smelling town he had ever visited, Avignon alone excepted. Already we have to search labori- ously for old things and old ways, as the traveller in Switzerland searches for the vanished costumes, such as the Ssviss dolls wear. Already we have to go farther East for the old and the poetic ; and find even Japan sending us back our own patterns a little Orientalized. The only unchanged past is in litera- ture and in our fancy. It is in the books that most set us thinking Emerson's " Nature " and Thoreau's u Walden," for instance that we really come back to our birthplace and re-enter the atmosphere of home. LVI. MORE THOROUGH WORK VISIBLE. IT is beginning to be plain that with the great advance in the education of women, during the last thirty years, there is already a marked advance in the grade of their intellectual work. At a late meeting of the American Association for the Ad- vancement of Science, in Buffalo, New York, nearly every section offered among its scientific papers some contribution from a woman. In the section of An- thropology, the paper that excited most interest was that of Mrs. Nuttall Pinart on Mexican inscriptions, which is described as " completely revolutionizing" the method by which these important historical memorials have hitherto been interpreted. Dr. Brin- ton, who is on the whole the highest authority on this class of subjects, said that this paper was " of epoch-making importance," and that its conclusions would probably be sustained. In the section of Chemistry, a paper was read by Miss Helen C. De S. Abbott on the composition of a bark from Hon- duras that presents new and curious ingredients, of peculiar value to dyers. She also read a paper on the MORE THOROUGH WORK VISIBLE. 287 relation of the chemical constituents of plants to their forms and evolution, advancing the view that chem- ical considerations may yet have weight as a basis for botanical classification. In the section of Economic Science, Mrs. John Lucas, of New Jersey, entered a paper upon Silk Culture, but was not apparently present to read it. In the section of Mathematics and Astronomy, Miss Anna Winlock, of the Harvard Ob- servatory, was associated by name with Prof. Rogers, of that institution, in presenting a paper on " The limitations in the use of Taylor's theorem for the computation of the precessions of close polar stars." All this is very unlike anything that could have been reported twenty-five years ago ; and though it is possible that no one of these ladies may have been a student at a woman's college, yet they stand nev- ertheless for that advance all along the line which the women's colleges represent. It must be re- membered also that the new American Historical Association has many women as members, and has issued among its first publications an elaborate pa- per by one of these Miss Lucy M. Salmon, of Michi- gan L T niversity on the history of the appointing power in our government. In the reports of the Peabody Museum of American Archaeology, at Cam- bridge, Massachusetts, an important place is always assigned to the researches of Miss Alice C. Fletcher and Miss Cornelia Studlev. At the late triennial 288 WOMEN AND MEN. meeting of the intercollegiate society of Phi Beta Kappa the only such society based on scholarship in America, all others existing merely for social purposes it came out incidentally that at least three out of the twenty chapters now composing the fraternity had already admitted women as members, Cornell having a dozen. All these signs indicate a steady progress in the admission of women to the ranks, not of thought and action alone, but of study and scholarship. When we turn from science to literature, the ad- vance is not quite so marked. It is considerable and substantial ; yet in view of the completeness with which literary work is now thrown open to women, and their equality as to pay, there is room for some surprise that it is not greater. Women have engaged largely in journalism, and with much success ; but it must be remembered that journalism is not litera- ture, though it belongs to the same genus, and may be quite as important. Journalism is to literature to use a culinary comparison as are the breakfast griddle-cakes to the loaf of bread. The former are to be eaten hot or not at all, while the bread only improves by a day or two's keeping. The same cook may happen to excel in both, but this is a com- bination of two different gifts, and cannot safely be counted on. The department in which one may next hope for an advance among the graduates of our women's colleges is in what may be called the MOKE TH0110UGII WOEK VISIBLE. 289 art of intellectual bread-making the production of permanent literature. It must be readily admitted that the contributions of American women to the poetry and fiction of the day are abundant and creditable. But it must be remembered that journalism itself is hardly more ephemeral than all poetry or fiction short of the highest ; and our rapid American life has already created and forgotten several generations of such short-lived celebrities. In Griswold's laborious " Fe- male Poets of America," published some forty years ago, there is hardly a name that is now remem- bered ; and Poe and Willis in those days used to place a crown of the most perishable materials on the head of every woman who flattered them or whom they wished to flatter. Apart from their tributes, a place on Parnassus was supposed to be securely held by the Davidson sisters, for instance, two half-developed girls, who earned by their pa- thetic early deaths what really passed for fame. It is doubtful whether a place more permanent can be assigned to the good-natured Gary sisters. A great- er loss to memory is the fame of Miss Sedgwiclc, whose graphic and sensible fiction realistic in tho best sense seems absolutely unknown to the gen- eration now growing up. Is it so certain that the women now popular as poets and novelists are se- curer in their position than their predecessors ? 19 290 WOMEN AND MEN. There are really but two grounds of permanence in literature that won by positive genius and that won by labor. Where both are united, a book may stand by itself, like Gibbon's "Roman Empire," and prove solid and indestructible as the Pyramids nay, earthquake - proof, which they are not. But, even short of this, it is possible for an author who takes a good subject and does his work well to se- cure a tolerably permanent place, even without great genius. When will our women's colleges turn out a race of graduates who will devote themselves to literature even as faithful!)' as many men now do, making it an object for life to do thoughtful and serious work? I am told by editors that you may almost count on the fingers of one hand the women in America to whom you can assign a subject for a magazine paper, requiring scholarly effort and labor, and have the work well done. This is the gap that .needs to be filled by literary women at present. The supply of second-grade fiction and by this is meant all fiction inferior in grade to George Eliot's is now tolerably well secured. But the demand for general literary work of a solid and thoughtful nature, demanding both scholarship and a trained power of expression this is never very well sup- plied among men, and is, with few exceptions, nn- supplied among American women. To meet this demand we may fairly look to our colleges. LVII. CHRISTMAS ALL THE TIME. " PAPA," said a certain little girl of my acquaint- ance, on the 26th of last December, " why can't it be Kismas all the time?" It seemed to revive a similar meditation that arose in her mind on the morning after her birthday, when she asked where her birthday was gone. On the day succeeding Christmas this melancholy inquiry certainly seemed a very natural reflection. That day of delight the early waking, the matutinal stocking, the decorated house, the gathering of kindred, the successive pres- ents, the universal petting why could not these re- main and become human nature's daily food ? A child's desire of felicity is and ought to be boundless. It is only time that teaches us the limitations of hap- piness, and we often accept these restrictions a great deal too soon. "Care is taken," Goethe says, "that the trees shall not grow up into the sky ;" but the stronger the impulse the greater the growth. " To let the new life in, we know Desire must ope the portal ; Perhaps the longing to be so Helps make the soul immortal." 292 WOMEN AND MEN. I know, at any rate, that the little girl's longing set me wishing that her life could be made, so far as possible, a continuous Christinas. Do not, gentle reader, come in at once with dis- creeter severity, and point out that the very essence of a holiday lies in its being a holiday that is, some- thing exceptional and that the wish to have it last all the time is as reasonable as the wish which chil- dren sometimes form, and indeed sometimes act upon, to have their breakfast or dinner last all day. But what made the joy of Christmas, after all ? Behind all the visible presents and special amusements there lay the general atmosphere of a time of joy, of free- dom, of Jove and attention and companionship ; a cheerful and smiling household, in short, instead of one preoccupied and careworn ; a day of " Come here, darling!" instead of "Run away, dear!" and tins is surely a large part of what Christmas means to a child. So far as these things go, it is worth a little effort to keep up the spirit of Christmas even when that happy season lias gone by. Think again of the value of that atmosphere of sunshine ! The Grossest person is less apt to be cross to a child on Christmas morning; the most exacting is a little less rigid. The child is then a prime object, something to be especially considered, not put aside. On ordinary days how often the child, for whom the parent would perhaps die if CHRISTMAS ALL THE TIME. 293 it came to that is yet made the scapegoat of that parent's moods, or occupations, or nerves ! The ten- der mother could not hear without tears, in a police report, the tale of a child whom some brutal father had kicked because he himself was surly or disap- pointed; and yet she herself that morning has per- haps vented some temporary vexation, half uncon- sciously, on her child, and then has thought the little thing unreasonable because it cried. How much of what we call moodincss in children is in reality fatigue or dyspepsia in the parent! I re- member well that when I taught a school in a sub- urb of Boston, just after leaving college, there were days when everything went wrong, and the best boys in the school seemed filled with a spirit of restless- ness and irritation. At first it seemed to me that it must be the weather ; and at last, on serious reflec- tion, I made the discovery that these exceptional days of discord were invariably the days after I had myself been out unusually late the night before. The nervous irritation of the pupils simply reflected that of the teacher ; he was the sinner, they only the scapegoats. Could one simply be reasonable with children, it would go a great way towards mak- ing them reasonable with us. Could we always be to them what we are on Christmas -day, it would certainly help them towards having a Christmas all the year round. 294 WOMEN AND MEN. But the presents ! Christmas consists m the pres- ents, \vc say, and we cannot be giving gifts all the time. It might possibly be better if we could do this than to concentrate on one day such a super- abundance of enjoyment. But granting that it is desirable, even at the risk of excess, to have that one glorious hour of crowded life once a year, there is nothing essentially unreasonable in the thought of a gift every day. For what does a gift mean to a child? Few children, luckily, are so precocious as to care what a thing costs. A present is a novelty, that is all something fresh and unexpected, great or small ; and what it really costs, in this sense, is not money, but sympathy and ingenuity. By far the most enjoyable Christmas gift received by the afore- said little three-year-old girl was a small and cheap basket containing a thimble, a needle, two spools of thread, and some scraps of silk and ribbon, perhaps costing altogether the sum of thirty cents. The su- perb doll, the cynosure of neighboring eyes, was soon neglected, but the basket was and is a daily joy. Of all necessary elements in making a child happy, it seems to me that money, beyond a very little, is the least important. The real Lord and Lady Bountiful arc not those whose least gift implies a fortune, but they are Caleb Garth, in "Middlemarch," who never forgets to cut the large red seal from his letters for the expectant children ; they are the wise CHRISTMAS ALL THE TIME. 295 mother or aunt who teaches the little ones to bring home a daily treasure in every empty birdVnest, or pine cone, or clump of moss, or in the brown cocoon on the twig, the winter cradle that holds the gorgeous beauty of the emperor moth. For what purpose did Nature create horse-chestnut trees except to show that the most valueless things may become the chief possessions in the enchanted land of childhood ? Could we provide each front door with a horse-chest- nut tree that would never stop bearing, and could we provide some sympathetic soul inside the door to praise these treasures and count them, and. point out the very large and the very small ones, and oc- casionally carve them into baskets, it would really go a great way towards providing for the child a Christmas all the time. LVJII. THE VICTORY OF THE WEAK. . THE late Sidney Lanier, poet, critic, and musician, was a man of so high a tone in respect to refinement and purity that he might fitly be called the Sir Gal- ahad of American literature. The man who, while already stricken with pulmonary disease, could serve for many months in the peculiarly arduous life of a Confederate cavalryman had some right to an opin- ion as to what constitutes true manhood, and his criticism on certain recent theories in this direction are peculiarly entitled to weight. In Lanier's lect- ures before the Johns Hopkins University at Balti- more upon " The English Novel and its Develop- ment " he has much to say upon what I may call the anti-kid-glove literature, which is really no bet- ter than the kid-glove literature, at which it affects to protest. Lanier quotes the lines of a poet, "Fear grace, fear elegance, civilization, delicatesse" and again where this poet rejoices in America because "here are the roughs, beards, . . . cornbativcness, and the like;" and shows how far were the founders of the republic Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, THE VICTORY OF THE WEAK. 297 Adams from this theory that there can be no man- hood in decent clothes or well-bred manners. lie justly complains that this rougher school has really as much dandyism about it as the other " the dan- dyism of the roustabout," he calls it ; that it poses and attitudinizes and " is the extreme of sophistica- tion in writing." " If we must have dandyism in our art," he adds, " surely the softer sort, which at least leans towards decorum and gentility, is prefera- ble." Then, going beyond literature to the founda- tion of government, he quotes the ancient Epictetus against this modern school, and asserts that true manhood has no necessary connection with physical health or strength, and that the true athlete is he who is ruler over himself. Lanier complains of this new type of democracy the merely brawny and sinewy " that it has no provision for sick, or small, or puny, or plain-featured, or hump-backed, or any deformed people," and that it is really " the worst kind of aristocracy, being an aristocracy of nature's favorites in the matter of muscle." Then he describes some weak-eyed young man in a counting-room toiling to support his moth- er, or send his brother to school, and contrasts him with this physical ideal. "His chest is not huge, his legs are inclined to be pipe-stems, and his dress is like that of any other book - keeper. Yet the weak-eyed, pi pc-stcm-lcgged young man impresses 298 WOMEN AND MEN. me as more of a man, more of a democratic man, than the tallest of 's roughs ; to the eye of the spirit there is more strength in this man's daily en- durance of petty care and small weariness for love, more of the sort which makes a real democracy and a sound republic, than in an army of 's unshav- en loafers." This came, be it remembered, from a man who had fought through the seven days of fighting before Richmond ; who had " given his proofs," as people used to say in the old days of duelling a thing which the writer criticised had not done. And then, more consistently than many men, Lanicr goes on to illustrate the same principle from the life of a woman. He describes a woman of a type such as many of us have known, who has for twenty years spent her life in bed with spinal disease. "Day by day she lies helpless at the mercy of all those tyrannical small needs which become so large under such cir- cumstances ; every meal must be brought to her, a drink of water must be handed ; and she is not rich to command service." Yet she is a person of un- failing spirits, of inexhaustible energies, and the cen- tre of a loving circle of bright people. Her room is habitually known as " Sunnyside ;" when strong men are tired they go to her for rest; when the healthy are weary they seek her for refreshment. This wom- an has not so much rude muscle in her whole body THE VICTORY OP THE WEAK. 299 as the favorite hero of the muscular school would have in a finger ; she is so fragile that she has been christened "The White Flower." It costs her as much effort to press a friend's hand as it would cost a woodman to fell a tree. " Regarded from the point of view of bone and sinew, she is simply ab- surd ; yet to the eye of my spirit there is more man- fulness in one moment of her loving and self-sacrific- ing existence than in an ajon of muscle-growth and sinew-breeding; and hers is the manfulness which is the only solution of a true democrat hers is the manfulness of which only a republic can be built. A republic is the government of the spirit ; a republic depends upon the self-control of each member. You cannot make a republic out of muscles and prairies and Rocky Mountains ; republics are made of the spirit."* All this is true, and we must remember that the whole tendency of civilization is in the direction of this thought. While civilization improves men's and women's bodies on the whole although it was once thought to impair them it gives the brain a swifter development and makes that the source of power. It is now a rare thing for soldiers to fight hand to hand, even in the cavalry, to which Lanier belonged. The race is not to the swift nor the bat- * " English Novel," p. 65. 300 WOMEN AND MEN. tie to the strong. The weakest hand may touch off the cannon whose ball shall overtake the swiftest run- ner, miles away. It is the virtue of gunpowder, as Carlyle has said, that it "makes all men alike tall." There still remain among some of our troops those caps of imitation bear-skin which were once worn to intimidate a foe. The fierce head-dress of the drum - major is the reductio ad absurdum, or ex- treme instance, of this childish method, which still survives among the Chinese, and may be seen in Japanese pictures. In an old military text-book the Portuguese soldiers were ordered to attack their op- ponents "with ferocious countenances/' But civil- ization has set aside all this merely physical imprcs- sivencss and substituted invention. A monk, not a soldier, invented gunpowder. Savage strength is powerless against the needle-gun and the unseen tor- pedo. This does not annihilate the value of physi- cal health and vigor, but it rcadapts their use. The young man even in a military school has his bodily health trained, not that he may grasp his opponent in his mighty arms and throw him to the earth, as formerly, but that he may have his head clear, his nerves in equilibrium, his action prompt. It is al- together fitting that an age whose promise is in this direction should be an age affording new train- ing and new opportunities to women. LIX. A RETURN TO THE HILLS. THOREAU always maintained that summer passed into autumn at a certain definite and appreciable in- stant, as by the turning of a leaf. In like manner those who direct their course in early summer tow- ards the hilly regions of New England are common- ly made aware at some precise and definite moment that they have come within the atmosphere of the hills. It is usually after they have left the main railway track, and are switched off upon some little branch road, with stops so frequent that if, at any moment during a pause, you were to see conductor and brakemcn in full chase after a woodchuck in a cow pasture, nobody would be astonished. But pres- ently, as you glide slowly along, rejoicing in the more rural look of things, after the heat and hurry of the larger railway-stations, there comes one whiff of fresher air through the open window, and the change is made. You have returned to the hills. Or rather the hills have met you half-way; their great benignant breath has reached you, and already something of the dust of travel is shaken off. Over 302 WOMEN AND MEN. miles of bare, pure mountain-top, of pastures scent- ed with sweet-fern, of lanes hedged with raspberry bushes and arched with wild grape, of moist sphag- num meadows where the shy arethtisa rears itself, that breath has come. Before, all was city and sub- urb ; it is country now. The next turn in the road shows you Wachusctt, or Mouadnock, or Ascutney, and you are among the hills. The reprobate French poet Baudelaire, in one of his best poems, sighs to have been the lover of some youthful giantess ; and describes her superb propor- tions as cast carelessly along the horizon and pro- tecting her lover by their vast shade. Browning, more powerfully, describes the hills as gathering round his Childe Roland to watch the hour of dan- ger beneath the Dark Tower : " The dying sunset kindled through a cleft ; The hills, like giants at a hunting, lay, Chin upon hand, to see the game at bay ' Now stab and end the creature to the heft !' " And even the gentle Charles Lamb, reluctantly torn from London streets to visit Wordsworth and Cole- ridge at the English Lakes, could not escape this same circle of gigantic figures, and found them pro- tecting and kindly as he looked from his window at night : " Glorious creatures, fine old fellows, Skid- daw, etc." There is so much that is personal in the A KETUKN TO THE HILLS. 303 presence of even the smallest isolated mountain that it is impossible not to endow it with almost human attributes. The Indians carried this so far as to imagine a deity as presiding over each mysterious peak, and punishing those rash mortals who climbed too far. The Hebrews, with grander feeling, found the source of aid and strength in these solemn heights. " I will look to the hills, from whence cometh my help." Remembering this, old Ethan Allen, the fearless, when summoned to surrender his Green Mountain settlements to the aggressions of the New York authorities, sent back to them the haughty message, " Our Gods are gods of the hills ; therefore we are stronger than you." It was a nat- ural feeling. We are stronger, at any rate, for seeking hill gods in the early summer-time. Many old friends are there before us, constant to the season. The woods are still thronged with mountain-laurel, but it is really past and faded and dropping from the stem, except one vast bush that stands amid the darkness of a pine grove, and is still blooming and luxuriant as if it were some semitropical magnolia or rhododen- dron. The bright red lily is brilliant in the woods, and it loves to grow on the very tops of low mountains like Wachusett, concentrating its cups of crimson as earth's last defiance to the blue sky above. The yel- low flowers are just beginning in the first weeks of 304 WOMEN AND MEN. July the St. Jolm's-wort takes possession and by the middle of that month the first feathery golden-rod opens, preparing for its long reign over the pastures. Soon will follow the asters, the gorgeous cardinal- flower, the lovely fringed gentian ; the season will run its course before we know it, and then the autumn leaves and the weird witch-hazel will be here. As to more vocal companions, it is the misfortune of summer visitors to the hills that they rarely ar- rive until the first burst of bird-song is gone by, so that the woods are growing silent until the loqua- cious summer insects shall replace the early birds. The ever-domestic song-sparrow is actively tending her second or third set of eggs in her nest upon the ground ; but she sings little, and seerns overburdened with responsibilities, while the robin is jubilant as ever, from dawn till eve, as he feeds his young in the cherry-trees. The brown thrush and the bluebird are more visible than audible; so is the cat-bird, while the veery is not heard at all. The wood-thrush sings daily in the neighboring pine wood, and more sweetly as night draws on, and the little field-spar- row is voluble with his " sweet, shy, accelerating lay." Every night we find ourselves listening for the whip- poorwill. Every night it begins at a distance, draws nearer with darkness, and seems for it remains un- seen to alight among the garden bushes and almost A RETURN TO THE HILLS. 305 upon the house itself. An animated dream, it keeps on incessantly for a time ; then stops at dead of night, when sleep becomes too deep for dreaming, and then recommences before dawn, when dreams are resumed, but go, as tradition says, by contraries. It represents the remote and mystic side of our nat- ure, brought into unwonted development among the hills. 20 LX. THE SHY GRACES. THE question is sometimes asked, and even re- formers occasionally ask it of themselves, What is to become, in the years when women arc educated at college and emancipated from control, of the shy graces that adorned the savage woman ? There is a certain delicate charm that seems historically insep- arable from an humble and subordinate condition. We find it in the uncivilized woman everywhere, among the rudest Cossacks or Hottentots. Who that has seen a tribe of Indians untouched by con- tact with the white man can fail to recall the modest bearing, the downcast eves, the low and musical O 7 ml I voices, of the younger girls? In higher grades of civilization the same type is often visible in girls bred in convents or beneath some kindred religious rule. The whole aim of chaperonage in society is to prolong or counterfeit this tradition ; the very name of "bud" implies something modest, half- closed, untouched. Will not the very tradition of that charming sweetness disappear when the young woman goes to a public school, is educated at a col- THE SHY GRACES. 307 Icgc, and fills some subsequent post of duty, as it may happen, before the public eye? The answer is best to be found, perhaps, in the personal observation of each one. Spenser says of the three Graces of ancient mythology, "These three on men all gracious gifts bestow Which deck the body or adorn the mind To make them lovely or well-favored show," and every one finds these Graces in his own circle of friends or kindred or early acquaintances, as the painter Pal ma Vccchio drew them from his own daughters in his picture at Dresden. No one would be willing to acknowledge that the women he has known and loved the best are inferior to those of other lands or times, or that they need repression or seclusion to make them more satisfactory. Again, the charm of the savage or the repressed type is something that is apt to be temporary ; the maiden child in the wild tribe becomes in later years the drudge, the crone, or the virago ; the demure and subdued girl of French or Italian society may be- come the artful wife or the intriguing old woman. If we are to love the shy graces of character, they must be something that is ingrain and permanent, that adorns the young, yet deserts not the old ; they must be essential graces of womanhood, not of child- hood or girlhood alone. If we substitute a charm 308 WOMEN AND MEN. that is perishable at any rate, it matters little how it goes ; it may better go, indeed, for some good pur- pose, if at all. Tried by these tests, we soon discover that all shy graces which go deeply into the nature are confined to no age, and indeed to neither sex taken separate- ly. They lie in refinement of feeling, in true mod- esty, in sweetness of nature, in gentleness of spirit. These are those "angelic manners and celestial charms" of which Petrarch writes, and of which he says that the very memory saddens while it delights, since it makes all other possessions appear trivial. These graces arc not dependent on a repressed or subordinate position, since they are very often as- sociated in our minds with the noblest and most eminent persons we have known. AVith most of the very distinguished men, of Anglo-Saxon race at least, whom I have chanced to meet, there was as- sociated in some combination the element of per- sonal modesty. It was exceedingly conspicuous in the two thinkers who have between them influenced more American minds than any others in our own ao'e I mean Darwin and Emerson. It has been O noticeable in contemporary poets "Whitticr and Longfellow among ourselves, Tennyson and Brown- ing in England. It may be said that these are instances drawn from persons of studious tastes and retired habits, THE SHY GRACES. 309 by whom the shy graces of character are more easily retained than by those who mingle with the world. Yet it would be as easy to cite illustrations from those whose dealing with men was largest. Grant found it easier to command a vast army, and Lincoln to rule a whole nation, than to overcome a certain innate modesty and even shyness of nature, from which the one took refuge in a silence that seemed stolid, and the other in a habit of story-telling that hid his own emotions beneath a veil. Of the three kings of the American lecture platform in our own day, two at least Phillips and Gough admitted that they never appeared before an audience with- out a certain shrinking and self-distrust. It must be owned that this quality is not everywhere con- nected with conspicuous leadership, especially out- side of the Anglo-Saxon or Anglo-American race. It is difficult to associate it, for instance, with Vic- tor Hugo, with Bismarck, with Garibaldi although Mazzini must have had it, and it was most visible and lovable in Tourguenicff, as I can personally tes- tify. But enough has been said to show that the more delicate graces of character, so far as they arc founded upon modesty and a spirit of self -with- drawal, are consistent with the most eminent and acknowledged greatness before the world. If this is the case even with men, why not with women, in whom the source and spring of humility lies deeper? 310 WOMEN AND MEN. If this be true, there is no reason to fear that the more public station of woman the physician's of- fice, the preacher's pulpit, the service on school com- mittees or in professorships, and all the rest is destined to mar her nature or destroy her charm. An instinct no more pervasive than this, a charm that goes no deeper, can hardly be worth preserving. Admit that in the intervening period, while she still has to fight for free development, there may some- times be traces of the combat there is yet every reason to believe that, when this period is past, a woman may take whatever sphere she can win, and may yet retain all the sweetest and most subtle at- tributes that constitute her a woman. INDEX. (Titles of chapters are given in capital letters.) A. Abbott, H. C. De S., 286. Academy, French, originated with women, 86. ACCOMPLISHMENTS, MARKETABLE, 60. Adam, 7. Adams, Abigail, 114. Adams, John, 114. ^Eschylns, 44. Agassiz, Louis, 96. Alcinons, 9, 11. "Alice in Wonderland" quoted, 132; "In the Looking- glass," 192. Allen, Ethan, quoted, 303. Allen, Grant, quoted, 212. Almnmc, Society of Collegiate, 232, 235. AMKUICAX LOVE OF HOME, 281. Ampere, J. J., 248. Anderseu, H. C., 265. Andrew, J. A., 38. Anglomania, 22. Aphrodite, 2. Apollo, Phoebus, 44, 47. Appleton, T. G., 22. Arab festivals, 226. Arnold, Matthew, quoted, 130. Also 133, 140, 248. 312 INDEX. Artemis, 2. Aryan race, traditions of the, 46. Astell, Mary, quoted, 89. Athena, 45. Audrey, 102. Aucrbach, Berthold, quoted, 14. AUNTS, MAIDEN, 33. Austen, Jane, quoted, 113. Also 156, 157, 160, 194. Authorship, difficulties of, 151, 202. B. Babies, exacting demands of, 41. Badeau, General Adam, quoted, 108, 128. Bancroft, H. H., 225. Barnum, P. T., 108. Barton, Clara, 20. Baudelaire, Charles, 302. Baxter, Richard, 34. Beach, S. N., quoted, 143. Beaconsiield, Lord, quoted, 271. Beethoven, L. von, 252. Bell, A. G., 99, 209. Bell, Currcr. See Bronte, Charlotte. Bickerdyke, Mother, 20. Birds at midsummer, 304. BIRTHDAY, SECRET OP THE, 176. Bismarck, Prince, 309. Black sergeant, prayer of, 79. Black, William, quoted, 168. Blake, William, 180. Blanc, Louis, 129. Blood, Lydia, 102. Bonaparte, Napoleon, 247. Bonheur, Rosa, 250, 252, 261, 263. Bossuet, J. B., 87. Bourbons, decline of, 107. BREAKING AND BENDING, 121. Bremer, Fredrika, quoted, 14. INDEX. 313 Brinton, Dr. D. G., quoted, 286. Bronte, Charlotte, 260. Brooks, Mrs. Sidney, 76. Browning, E. B., 250, 252, 263. Browning, Robert, quoted, 273, 302. Also 303. BRUTALITY OF " PUNCH AND JUDY," TIIK, 254. Burns, Robert, 19. " BUT STRONG OF WILL," 54. Butler, Fanny Kcinble, 154. Byron, Lord, 19, 160. C. Canadian judge, ruling of, 92. Carlyle, Thomas, quoted, 300. Also 149. Carnegie, Andrew, quoted, 168, 169. Carr, Lucien, 179. Cato, M. P., 97. " CHANCES," 65. Channing, W. E., quoted, 127. Chateaubriand, F. R., 76. Chaucer, Geoffrey, 278. " Chevy Chace," quoted, 220. Child, L. M., 13, 179. Children, dressing of, for school, 241. CHILDREN ON A FARM, 197. CHILDREN, THE HUMOR OF, 217. Choate, Rufus, 18. CHRISTMAS ALL THE TIME, 291. Cicero, M. T., 276. Cincinnati, art schools in, 164. CITY AND COUNTRY LIVING, 212. Clement of Alexandria, 2, 3, 4. Cleveland, Captain R. J., 247. Clytemnestra, 44. Coffin, Lucretia, 47. Cogau, Henry, 159. Cogswell, J. G., quoted, 110. Coleridge, S. T., 195, 302. 314 INDEX. College towns, life in, 48. Con way, M. D., 129. Cookery-books, 13. Co-operation in business, 148. Copley, J. S., 50. Corneille, Pierre, 87. Cornell University, 288. Coulanges, F. de, 45. " Counterparts," 68. Country weeks and city weeks, 34. Cowper, William, 19. Cnulclock, C. E. See Murfree, M. N. CHEATOII OF THE HOME, THE, 28. Cross, M. A. (George Eliot), quoted, 78. Also 88, 158, 249, 252, 260, 263, 290. Crowne, Johnny, 5. D. Dabuey, Charles, 170. Dauton, G. J., 6. D'Arblay, Madame, 157. Darwin, Charles, quoted, 99. Also 23, 308. Darwin, Dr. Erasmus, 114. DAUGHTERS ov TOIL, THE, 70. Davidson sisters, the, 289. De Quincey, Thomas, quoted, 110. Defoe, Daniel, 285. Dibdin, Charles, quoted, 278. Dickens, Charles, quoted, 94, 195. Also 109, 285. Diderot, Denis, 178. Dinner, difficulties of the, 240. Dix, Dorothea, 20. DOLLS, THE DISCIPLINE OF, 264. Domestic service, 172. Douglas, Catherine, 56. Douglas, Ellen, 55. Dudevant, A. L. A. (George Saud), 88, 249, 252, 260, 263. INDEX. 315 E. Edgeworth, Maria, quoted, 78. Also 157, 180. Edison, T. A., 209. Edmunds, George F., 137. Edward II., 213. Egypt, preservation of royalty in, 109. Emerson, M. J., quoted, 143. Emerson, Mrs., quoted, 143. Emerson, 11. W., quoted, 159, 233. Also 1, 97, 99, 285, 308. EMPIRE OF MANNERS, THE, 75. English tourists in America, 36, 9u. Epictetus, 297. "Eumenides" of vEschylus, tho plot of, 44. Eve, 7. EXALTED STATIONS, 126. Family, the, among Australians, 45 ; in ancient Rome, 45. FAKM, CHILDREN ON A, 197. FEAR OF ITS BEING WASTED, THK. 232. "Felix Holt," 78. Fielding, Henry, 11. Fields, J. T., 40. FINER FORCES, 131. Fletcher, Alice C., 287. FLOOD-TIDE OF YOUTH, THE, 48. Florae, Madame de, 180. Fonteuelle, 13. le B. de, quoted, 85. Fraucomania, 26. Franklin, Benjamin, 296. Freeman, Alice, 21. French standards vs. English, 23, 98. Frenchmen, domesticity of, 281. " Friends," marriages among, 47. Fuller, Margaret. See Ossoli. Furies, the, 44. 316 IXDEX. G. Galahad, Sir, 296. Galleuga, A., 98. Garibaldi, Giuseppe, 309. Garrison, W. L., 18, 177. Garth, Caleb, 294. Gellius, Aulus, quoted, 97. Genlis, Madame de, 57, 179. German schools, drawbacks of, 246. GKRMAX STANDARD, THE, 243. Germany, influence of, 23, 134. Gibbon/Edward, 290. Gisborne, Thomas, 4. Gladstone, W. E., 136. Godwin, M. W., 232. Godwin, William, 178. Goethe, J. W. von, quoted, 36, 179, 291. Gosse, E. H., quoted, 193. Gough, J. B., 309. Gower, Lord Ronald, 138. GRACES, THE SHY, 306. Grant and Ward, 191. Grant, General U. S., 20, 127, 301). Griswold, R. W., 289. Gymnastics, elevation of, 64. H. Hair, the uses of, 2. Hale, E. E., 208. Hale, H. E., his theory of language. 181. Hale, Lucretia, 40. HAREM, SHADOW OF THE, 12. Harland, Marion, 13. Harte, Bret, 132, 153, 224. Harvard University, 88, 275, 287. Hawthorne, Nathaniel, quoted, 105. Hayley, William, 113. INDEX. 317 Hayne, P. H., quoted, 223. Ilcmans, F. D., 18, 19. HILLS, A RETURN TO THE, 301. " Histoire Littdraire (les Femines Francaises," 252. Holmes, Dr. O. W., quoted, 51. Also 98, 153, 203. HOME, AMERICAN LOVE OF, 281. HOME, THE CREATOR OF THE, 28. Homer, 8, 203. Homes, occasional permanence of, in America, 283. Hood, Thomas, 19. Horse-cliestntits, the value of, 295. HOUSE OF CARDS, A, 138. House of Lords, English, decline of, 136. Household decoration, stages of, 161. HOUSEHOLD DECORATORS, WOMEN AS, 161. House-keeping in America, 72, 116; in England, 73. Ho wells, W. D., quoted, 40, 52, 64, 194. Also 102, 141, 157, 158, 180. Ho witt, A. W., 45. Hugo, Victor, 309. Humboldt, Wilhelm von, 182. HUMILITY IN AMERICANS, ON A CERTAIN, 95. Humility, the spring of," 309. HUMOR OF CHILDREN, THE, 217. Hun, Dr. E. E., 183, 184. Huxley, T. H., 99. I. INDEPENDENT PURSE, THE, 115. Industry, female, changes in, 7. INFLUENCE, THE WOMAN OF, 17. lugelow, Jean, cited, 133. Invalids, visits to, 227. Italian manners, 25. J. Jackson, Helen ("H. H."), 158, 236. James, Henry, 157, 158. 318 INDEX. Jameson, Anna M., 103, 180. Janauschek, Madame, 221. Jefferson, Thomas, 298. Johns Hopkins University, the, 296. Johnson, Dr. Samuel, 283. Joubert, Joseph, quoted, 155. Journalism and literature, 288. Jupiter, 45. K. Kant, Immamiel, 90. Kapiolani, Queen, 107. Keats, John, 19. Kennedy, W. P., 223. Kent, Miss, 40. KERENHAFPUCH, 275. L. Ladd, Professor G. T., 90. Lamb, Charles, quoted, 83, 302. Lander, Jean M., 20. LANGUAGE, THE NEW THEORY OF, 181. Languages, variety of, 182. Lanier, Sidney, quoted, 296. Leclerc, M., 87. Lecturers, English, 96. Leighton, Caroline C., quoted, 283. Leopold, Prince, 100. Lcroi, Madame, 87. Leslie, Eliza, 13. LETTERS, WOMEN'S, 110. Libraries, public, 282. Lincoln, Abraham, 20, 218, 309. Lioness more formidable than lion, 59, 145. Literary centre unimportant, 225. LITERARY STYLE, WOMEN'S INFLUENCE ON, 85. Livermore, Mary A., 20. Lochinvur, the young, 55. INDEX. 319 Longfellow, H. W., 19, 203, 308. Lotze, Hermann, quoted, 90. Louis XIV., 179. Lowell, J. R., quoted, 171, 212, 291. Also 95, 97, 99. Lucas, Mrs. John, 287. Lyon, Mary, 21. Lytton, Lord, 193. M. MAIDEN AUNTS, 38. Maiden ladies, dignity of, 31. Maine, Sir Henry, cited, 10. Maitland, Major, 137. Mangin, Arthur, quoted, 214. Mann, Horace, quoted, 134. Also 243, 244. Manners, American, 101, 169, 224 ; English, 139 ; Italian and Spanish, 25. MANXEKS, THE EMPIRE OK, 75. Mariotti. See Gallenga. Marketable accomplishments, 60. Marriage, chances of, 65. Marshall, Emily, 177. Martincau, Harriet, quoted, 7, 228. Also 13, 263. MARTYRDOM, MICE AND, 141. Match! n, Maud, 103, 104. Mather, Cotton, quoted, 252. Matthews, Brander, 171. Mazare, Prince, 160. Maz/ini, Giuseppe, 129, 309. Mellin's Food, 205. MEN, THE NERVOUSNESS OF, 238. MEN'S NOVELS AXD WOMEN'S NOVELS, 156. Mendelssohn, 13. F., 15. Mendelssohn, Fanny, musical compositions of, 15, 251. "Meretricious," origin of the word, 10. Mericourt, T he~roiguc do, 236. MICE AND MARTYRDOM, 141. Michigan University, 287. 320 IXDEX. Miller, Captain Betsey, 211. Millet, J. F., 194. Milton, John, 19, 285. Minerva, 45. Miranda, 102, 103. Missionaries, 236. Moliere, J. 13., 87. Moore, Thomas, quoted, 19, 278. Mopsa, 102. "Moral equivalence of sexes," 91. MORE THOROUGH WORK VISIBLE, 286. Morse, S.F. 13., 99. MOTHER, ON ONE'S RELATIONSHIP TO ONE'S, 43. Mott, Lncretia, 47, 179. Miiller, Max, 26. Miirfree, M. K, 225, 259, 263. MUSICAL WOMAN, THE MISSING, 249. N. Napoleon. Sec Bonaparte. Napoleon, Louis, 101. Napoleons, dynasty of the, 98. Nausikaa, 8, 11. NERVOUSNESS OF MEN, THE, 238. NEW THEORY OF LANGUAGE, THE, 181. Newcome, Ethel, 55. Newell, W. W., 13. Newport, R. I., life at, 71, 98, Nicknames in college, 275. Nightingale, Florence, 19. Nithisdale, Conntess of, 56. Normandy, a scene in, 201. Northcote, Sir Stafford, 136. Norton, Andrews, 18. Norton, C. E., 18. NOVELS : MEN'S AND WOMEN'S, 156. Nursery, a model, 264. INDEX. 321 O. Odyssey, Palmer's, 248. Opie, Amelia, 157. Orestes, 44. ORGANIZING MIND, THE, 146. Ossoli, Margaret Fuller, quoted, 211, 232. Outside of the shelter, 7. P. Paganini, Nicolo, 238. Palina, Jacopo (Veccbio), 307. Palmer, Professor G. H., 248. Parnell, C. S., 272. Parochialism, 222. " Patience " quoted, 51. Peabody Museum of American Archaeology, 287. Perdita, 102, 103. Petrarch, Francisco, quoted, 75, 285. Pbelps, E. J., 137. Phi Beta Kappa Society, the, 288. Philanthropist, improvidence of a, 188. Phillips, Wendell, 284, 309. Pike, Owen, quoted, 212, 213. Piuart, Mrs. Nuttall, 286. Pisani, Catherine de, 86. Plato cited, 178. PLEA FOR THE UN COMMONPLACE, A, 192. Poe, E. A., 289. "Pontius cum Judaeis," 256. Porter. Jane, 157. Pre"cieu3es, the, 87. Presidency in United States, 128. Prince Hal, 49. PUBLISHER, THE SEARCH AFTER A, 151. PUNCH AND JUDY, THE BRUTALITY OF, 254. PURSE, THE INDEPENDENT, 115. 21 322 INDEX. Q. " Quite Enstic," 100. R. Rachel, 250, 252, 263. Raclcliffe, Aun, 160. Rambouillet, Marquis do, 86. "Ramon a," influence of, 236. Rank in England, 126. Re"cfimier, Madame, 76,. 77. RELATIONSHIP TO ONE'S MOTHER, ON ONE'S, 43. RETURN TO THE HILLS, A, 301. Richardson, Samuel, 11. Richelieu, Cardinal, 87. Robespierre, F. J. M. I., 6. Rochejaquelein, Baroness do la, 56. Rochester, Lord, 5. Rogers, Professor \V. B., 98, 287. Roland, Madame, 236. " Romola," 260. Rontledge, George, 18, 19. Royalty, childishness of, 21, 105. ROYALTY, THE TOY OF, 105. " Rudder Grange " quoted, 42. Ruskin, John, quoted, ICO. S. St. Leonards, Lord, 138. SAINTS, VACATIONS FOK, 33. Salem sea-captains, youthfuluess of, 247. " Sales-ladies," 172. Salisbury, Lord, 136. Salmon, L. M., 287. Sand, George. See Dudevant, A. L. A. Sanitary Commission, the, 235. SANTA CLAUS AGENCIES, 269. Sappho, 262. INDEX. 323 Sapsea, Thomas, 94. Scblemihl, Peter, 12. Scott, Sir Walter, quoted 55. Also 19, 157, 194. Scndery, Charles de, 15. Scude'ry, Magdalen de, quoted, 15, 87, 159. SEARCH AFTER A PUBLISHER, THE, 151. SECRET OF THE BIRTHDAY, 176. Sedgwick, C. M., 289. So ward, Anna, 113, 114. SHADOW OF THE HAREM, THE, 12. Shakespeare, William, quoted, 56, 91, 177, 178, 239. Also 19, 32, 49, 55, 102, 103, 108, 262. Shelley, P. 13., 19. SHY GRACES, THE, 306. SICK, ox VISITING THE, 227. Siddons, Sarah, 250. Simins, W. G., 223. SINGLE WILL, THE, 90. Sisters of Charity, 69. Size, physical, gradual diminution of, 262. Smith College, 275. SOCIAL PENDULUM, THE SWING OF THE, 22. SOCIAL SUPERIORS, 171. Society, origin of its usages, 77. Socrates, 81. Somerville, Mary, 250, 251, 252, 261. Sophocles, E. A., 30. South Sea Island proverb, 236. Spanish manners, 25. Spenser, Edmund, quoted, 307. Spinning, in Homer, 8; in ancient Rome, 13. Spinsters, insufficient supply of, 39. Stael, Madame de, 57. Stone, Fanny, 56, 58. Stone, General C. P., 56. Stowe, H. B., 236. Studley, Cornelia, 287. Sugden, Sir Edward, 138. 324 INDEX. Swedenborg, Einanuel, 159. SWING OF THE SOCIAL PENDULUM, THE, 22. T. Taylor, Bayard, quoted, 6. Taylor's theorem, 287. Tennyson, Alfred. Lord, quoted, 76, 123, 249. Also 77, 136, 308. Terry, Ellen, 221. Thackeray, W. M., 55, 138, 173, 180, 285. " The Bread-Winners " cited, 104. Thomas, E. M., 225. Thompson, Elizabeth, 261. Thoreau, H. D., 285. Tobogganing, 215. TOIL, THE DAUGHTERS OF, 70. Tonrgufinieff, J. S., 50, 309. TOY OF ROYALTY, THE, 105. Tracy, Senator, quoted, 98. Trench, Archdeacon, quoted, 14. Trollope, Anthony, 157. TRUST FUNDS, 187. Tullia or Tnlliola, 276. Twain, Mark, 37, 153, 218. U. UNCOMMONPLACE, A PLEA FOR THE. 192. UNREASONABLE UNSELFISHNESS, 80. Upton, G. P., 249, 251, 253. V. Vacation, the summer, 215. VACATIONS FOR SAINTS, 33. VALUE, WHO SHALL Fix THE, 202. Vassar College, 279. Victoria, Queen, 21, 175. VICTORY OF THE WEAK, THE, 296. Virtue of man and woman the same, 3. INDEX. 325 VISITING THE SlCK, OX, 227. VOICES, 166. Voices, American and English, 167. Voltaire, F. M. A., 87. W. Wales, Prince of, 23. Ward, Artemus, described, 43. Warner, C. D., quoted, 217. Washington, George, 296. WASTED, THE FEAR OF ITS BEING, 232. Watson, E. H., 183. Watson, George, 183. WEAK, VICTORY OF THE, 296. Wellesley College, 100. Wellington, the Duke of, quoted, 198. White, E.G., 24. W T hittier, J. G., quoted, 54, 117. Also 98, 108, 153, 308. WHO SHALL FIX THE VALUE ? 202. "Whole duty of man, the," 4. WHY WOMEN AUTHORS WRITE UNDER THE NAMES OF MEN, 259. Wife, position of, in Rome, 45. Will, breaking of, in. children, 121. Willis, N. P., 289. Winlock, Anna, 287. Wolcott, Mrs. Oliver, 98. Wollstonecraft, Mary. See Godwin. WOMAN OF INFLUENCE, THE, 17. WOMAN'S ENTERPRISE, A, 207. Women, -ad vantages of, 29 ; as household decorators, 161 ; as organizers, 20, 149 ; as public speakers, 239 ; au- thors, 18 ; courage of, 142 ; disadvantages of, 12, 92 ; earnings of, 119 ; education of, 88 ; employments of, 60, 161,269; plurality of, 38; teachers, 20, 100, 131, 244; their need of strength, 59; -working among men, 10; writing under men's names, 259. WOMEN AS HOUSEHOLD DECORATORS, 161. 326 INDEX. Women's Christian Temperance Union, the, 235. WOMEN'S INFLUENCE ON LITERARY STYLE, 85. WOMEN'S LETTERS, 110. Wordsworth, William, 302. Worth, M., 17. Wright, C. D., 38. Wright, Thomas, quoted, 148. X. Xantippe, 81. Y. Yale University, 99. YOUTH, THE FLOOD-TIDE OF, 48. Z. Zens, 45. THE END. THE BAZAR BOOKS, THE BAZAR BOOK OF DECORUM. The. Care of the Person, Manners, Etiquette, and Ceremonials, pp.282. 16mo, Cloth, $1 00. 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