\p mAj-\- 
 

 LITTLE FOXES. 
 
 Bf 
 
 CHRISTOPHER CROWFIELD, 
 
 AUTHOR OF "HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS." 
 
 EIGHTEENTH EDITION. 
 
 BOSTON : 
 
 HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY. 
 
 (pe Htoersfte Press, dDambrtfJjre. 
 
 1884. 
 
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1865, by 
 
 HARRIET BEECHER STOWF, 
 
 in the Clerk's Office of tne District Court of the District of Massachoaettt 
 
<\ 
 
 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 t 
 
 Page 
 
 I. Fault-Finding 7 
 
 II. Irritability 53 
 
 III. Repression 91 
 
 IV. Persistence 133 
 
 V. Intolerance 176 
 
 VI. Discourtesy 218 
 
 VII. EXACTINGNESS 249 
 
 M500H8 
 
LITTLE FOXES. 
 
 I. 
 
 FAULT-FINDING. 
 
 " T)APA, what are you going to give us 
 this winter for our evening readings?" 
 said Jennie. 
 
 " I am thinking, for one thing," I replied, 
 "of preaching a course of household sermons 
 from a very odd text prefixed to a discourse 
 which I found at the bottom of the pamphlet- 
 barrel in the garret." 
 
 "Don't say sermon, Papa, — it has such a 
 dreadful sound ; and on winter evenings one 
 wants something entertaining." 
 
 "Well, treatise, then," said I, "or discourse, 
 or essay, or prelection ; I 'm not particulai 
 as to words.* 
 
8 Little Foxes. 
 
 " But what is the queer text that you found 
 at the bottom of the pamphlet-barrel ? " 
 
 " It was one preached upon by your moth- 
 er's great-great-grandfather, the very savory 
 and much-respected Simeon Shuttleworth, 'on 
 the occasion of the melancholy defections and 
 divisions among the godly in the town of West 
 Dofield ' ; and it runs thus, — ' Take ns the 
 foxes, the little foxes, that spoil the vines : for 
 our vines have tender grapes! " 
 
 " It 's a curious text enough ; but I can't 
 imagine what you are going to make of it." 
 
 " Simply an essay on Little Foxes," said I , 
 " by which I mean those unsuspected, unwatched, 
 insignificant little causes, that nibble away do- 
 mestic happiness, and make home less than so 
 noble an institution should be. 
 
 " You may build beautiful, convenient, attrac- 
 tive houses, — you may hang the walls with 
 lovely pictures and stud them with gems of Art ; 
 and there may be living there together persons 
 bound by blood and affection m one common 
 
Fault-Finding. 9 
 
 interest, leading a life common to themselves 
 and apart from others ; and these persons may 
 each one of them be possessed of good and noble 
 traits ; there may be a common basis of affec- 
 tion, of generosity, of good principle, of religion ; 
 and yet, through the influence of some of these 
 perverse, nibbling, insignificant little foxes, half 
 the clusters of happiness on these so promising 
 vines may fail to come to maturity. A little 
 community of people, all of whom would be will- 
 ing to die for each other, may not be able to 
 live happily together ; that is, they may have 
 far less happiness than their circumstances, their 
 fine and excellent traits, entitle them to expect. 
 
 " The reason for this in general is that home 
 is a place not only of strong affections, but of 
 entire unreserves ; it is life's undress rehearsal, 
 its back-room, its dressing-room, from which we 
 go forth to more careful and guarded inter- 
 course, leaving behind us much debris of cast- 
 off and every-day clothing. Hence has arisen 
 the common proverb, ' No man is a hero to his 
 1* 
 
10 Little Foxes. 
 
 valet-de-chambre* ; and the common warning, 
 ' If you wish to keep your friend, don't go and 
 live with him.' " 
 
 " Which is only another way of saying," said 
 my wife, " that we are all human and imperfect ; 
 and the nearer you get to any human being, the 
 more defects you see. The characters that can 
 stand the test of daily intimacy are about as 
 numerous as four-leaved clovers in a meadow ; 
 in general, those who do not annoy you with 
 positive faults bore you with their insipidity. 
 The evenness and beauty of a strong, well-de- 
 fined nature, perfectly governed and balanced, 
 is about the last thing one is likely to meet with 
 in one's researches into life." 
 
 " But what I have to say," replied I, " is this, 
 — that, family-life being a state of unreserve, a 
 state in which there are few of those barriers 
 and veils that keep people in the world from 
 seeing each other's defects and mutually jarring 
 and grating upon each other, it is remarkable 
 that it is entered upon and maintained generally 
 
Fanlt-Fiiidino, \ \ 
 
 '£> 
 
 with less reflection, less care and forethought, 
 than pertain to most kinds of business which 
 men and women set their hands to. A mar 
 does not undertake to run an engine or manage 
 a piece of machinery without some careful ex- 
 amination of its parts and capabilities, and some 
 inquiry whether he have the necessary knowl- 
 eige, skill, and strength to make it do itself 
 and him justice. A man does not try to play on 
 the violin without seeing if his fingers are long 
 and flexible enough to bring out the harmonies 
 and raise his performance above the grade of 
 dismal scraping to that of divine music. What 
 should we think of a man who should set a 
 whole orchestra of instruments upon playing 
 together without the least provision or fore- 
 thought as to their chord, and then howl and 
 tear his hair at the result ? It is not the fault 
 of the instruments that they grate harsh thun- 
 ders together ; they may each be noble and of 
 celestial temper ; but united without regard to 
 their nature, dire confusion is the result. Still 
 
12 Little Foxes. 
 
 worse were it, if a man werr supposed so utupid 
 as to expect of each instrument a role opposed 
 to its nature, — if he asked of the octave-flute i 
 bass solo, and condemned the trombone because 
 it could not do the work of the many-voiced 
 violin. 
 
 " Yet just so carelessly is the work of forming 
 a family often performed. A man and womai 
 come together from some affinity, some partia\ 
 accord of their nature which has inspired mu- 
 tual affection. There is generally very little 
 careful consideration of who and what they are 
 — no thought of the reciprocal influence of mu- 
 tual traits, — no previous chording and testing 
 of the instruments which are to make lifelong 
 harmony or discord, — and after a short period 
 of engagement, in which all their mutual rela 
 tions are made as opposite as possible to those 
 which must follow marriage, these two furnish 
 meir house and begin life together. 
 
 "Then in many cases the domestic roof is 
 supposed at once to be the proper refuge for 
 
Fault- Finding. 1 3 
 
 dilations and friends on both sides, who also are. 
 introduced into the interior concert without any 
 special consideration of what is likely to be the 
 operation of character on character, the play of 
 instrument with instrument ; — then follow chil- 
 dren, each of whom is a separate entity, a sepa- 
 rate will, a separate force in the circle ; and 
 thus, with the lesser powers of servants and 
 dependants, a family is made up. And there- 
 is no wonder if all these chance-assorted instru- 
 ments, playing together, sometimes make quite 
 as much discord as harmony. For if the hus- 
 band and wife chord, the wife's sister or hus- 
 band's mother may introduce a discord ; and 
 then again, each child of marked character in- 
 troduces another possibility of confusion. 
 
 " The conservative forces of human nature 
 are so strong and so various, that with all these 
 drawbacks the family state is after all the best 
 and purest happiness that earth affords. But 
 then, with cultivation and care, it might be a 
 great deal happier. Very fair pears have beep 
 
[4 Little Foxes. 
 
 raised by dropping a seed into a good soil and 
 letting it alone foi years ; but finer and choicer 
 are raised by the watchings, tendings, primings 
 of the gardener. Wild grape-vines bore very 
 fine grapes, and an abundance of them, before 
 our friend Dr. Grant took up his abode at Iona, 
 and, studying the laws of Nature, conjured up 
 new species of rarer fruit and flavor out of the 
 old. And so, if all the little foxes that infest 
 our domestic vine and fig-tree were once hunted 
 out and killed, we might have fairer clusters 
 and fruit all winter." 
 
 "But, Papa," said Jennie, "to come to the 
 foxes ; let 's know what they are." 
 
 "Well, as the text says, little foxes, the pet 
 foxes of good people, unsuspected little ani- 
 mals, — on the whole, often thought to be really 
 creditable little beasts, that may do good, and 
 at all events cannot do much harm. And as I 
 have taken to the Puritanic order in my dis- 
 course, I shall set them in sevens, as Noah did 
 his clean beasts in the ark. Now my seven 
 
Fault-Finding. 1 1 
 
 little foxes are these : — Fault-Finding, Intoler- 
 ance, Reticence, Irritability, Exactingness, Dis- 
 courtesy, Self-Will. And here," turning to my 
 sermon, "is what I have to say about the first 
 of them." 
 
 FA ULT-FINDING,— 
 
 A most respectable little animal, that many 
 people let run freely among their domestic 
 vines, under the notion that he helps the 
 growth of the grapes, and is the principal 
 means of keeping them in order. 
 
 Now it may safely be set down as a maxim, 
 that nobody likes to be found fault with, but 
 everybody likes to find fault when things do 
 not suit him. 
 
 Let my courteous reader ask him or herself 
 if he or she does not experience a relief and 
 pleasure in finding fault with or about what- 
 ever troubles them. 
 
 This appears at first sight an anomaly in 
 the provisions of Nature. Generally we are 
 
1 6 Little Foxes. 
 
 so constituted that what it is a pleasure to us 
 to do it is a pleasure to our neighbor to hav* 
 us do. It is a pleasure to give, and a pleasure 
 to receive. It is a pleasure to love, and a plea* 
 ure to be loved ; a pleasure to admire, a pleas- 
 ure to be admired. It is a pleasure also tc 
 find fault, but not a pleasure to be found fauh 
 with. Furthermore, those people whose sensi- 
 tiveness of temperament leads them to find the 
 most fault are precisely those who can least 
 bear to be found fault with ; they bind heavy 
 burdens and grievous to be borne, and lay them 
 on other men's shoulders, but they themselves 
 cannot bear the weight of a finger. 
 
 Now the difficulty in the case is this : There 
 are things in life that need to be altered ; and 
 that things may be altered, they must be spoken 
 of to the people whose business it is to make 
 the change. This opens wide the door of 
 fault-finding to well-disposed people, and gives 
 them latitude of conscience to impose on their 
 fellows all the annoyances which they them- 
 
Fault-Finding. ij 
 
 selves feel. The father and mother of a family 
 are fault-finders, ex officio ; and to them flows 
 back the tide of every separate individual's com 
 plaints in the domestic circle, till often the 
 whole air of the house is chilled and darkened 
 by a drizzling Scotch mist of querulousness. 
 Very bad are these mists for grape-vines, and 
 produce mildew in many a fair cluster. 
 
 Enthusius falls in love with Hermione, be- 
 cause she looks like a moonbeam, — because 
 she is ethereal as a summer cloud, spirituelle. 
 He commences forthwith the perpetual adora- 
 tion system that precedes marriage. He as- 
 sures her that she is too good for this world, 
 too delicate and fair for any of the uses of poor 
 mortality, — that she ought to tread on roses, 
 sleep on the clouds, — that she ought never to 
 shed a tear, know a fatigue, or make an exer- 
 tion, but live apart in some bright, ethereal 
 sphere worthy of her charms. All which is 
 duly chanted in her ear in moonlight walks or 
 sails, and so often repeated that a sensible girl 
 
1 8 Little Foxes. 
 
 may be excused for believing that a little of it 
 may be true. 
 
 Now comes marriage, — and it turns out that 
 Enthusius is very particular as to his coffee, 
 that he is excessively disturbed if his meals 
 are at all irregular, and that he cannot be com- 
 fortable with any table arrangements which do 
 not resemble those of his notable mother, lately 
 deceased in the odor of sanctity ; he also wants 
 his house in perfect order at all hours. Still 
 he does not propose to provide a trained house- 
 keeper ; it is all to be effected by means of cer- 
 tain raw Irish girls, under the superintendence 
 of this angel who was to tread on roses, sleep 
 on clouds, and never know an earthly care. 
 Neither has Enthusius ever considered it a 
 part of a husband's duty to bear personal in- 
 conveniences in silence. He would freely shed 
 his blood for Hermione, — nay, has often franti- 
 cally proposed the same in the hours of court- 
 ship, when of course nobody wanted it done, 
 and it could answer no manner of use ; but 
 
Fault-Finding. ig 
 
 now to the idyllic dialogues of that period 
 succeed such as these : — 
 
 " My dear, this tea is smoked : can't you get 
 Jane into the way of making it better ? " 
 
 " My dear, I have tried ; but she will not 
 do as I tell her." 
 
 "Well, all I know is, other people can have 
 good tea, and I should think we might." 
 
 And again at dinner: — 
 
 " My dear, this mutton is overdone again ; 
 it is always overdone." 
 
 "Not always, dear, because you recollect on 
 Monday you said it was just right." 
 
 "Well, almost always." 
 
 "Well, my dear, the reason to-day was, I 
 had company in the parlor, and could not go 
 out to caution Bridget, as I generally do. It 's 
 very difficult to get things done with such a 
 girl." 
 
 "My mother's things were always well done, 
 no matter what her girl was." 
 
 Again : " Mv dear, you must speak to the 
 
2G Little Foxes. 
 
 servants about wasting the coal. I never saw 
 such a consumption of fuel in a family of our 
 size " ; or, " My dear, how can you let Maggie 
 tear the morning paper ? " or, " My dear, I shall 
 actually have to give up coming to dinner, if 
 my dinners cannot be regular"; or, "My dear, 
 I wish you would look at the way my shirts 
 are ironed, — it is perfectly scandalous"; or, 
 "My dear, you must not let Johnnie finger the 
 mirror in the parlor"; or, "My dear, you must 
 stop the children from playing in the garret " , 
 or, " My dear, you must see that Maggie does n't 
 leave the mat out on the railing when she 
 sweeps the front hall"; and so on. up stairs 
 and down stairs, in the lady's chamber, in attic, 
 garret, and cellar, "my dear" is to see that 
 nothing goes wrong, and she is found fault 
 with when anything does. 
 
 Yet Enthusius, when occasionally he finds 
 his sometime angel in tears, and she tells him 
 he does not love her as he once did, repudi- 
 ates the charge with all his heart, and declares 
 
Fault-Finding. 2 1 
 
 '£> 
 
 he loves her more than ever, — and perhaps 
 he does. The only difficulty is that she has 
 passed out of the plane of moonshine and po- 
 etry into that of actualities. While she was 
 considered an angel, a star, a bird, an evening 
 cloud, of course there was nothing to be found 
 fault with in her ; but now that the angel has 
 become chief business-partner in an earthly 
 working firm, relations are different. Enthu- 
 sius could say the same things over again under 
 the same circumstances, but unfortunately now 
 they never are in the same circumstances. En- 
 thusius is simply a man who is in the habit 
 of speaking from impulse, and saying a thing 
 merely and only because he feels it at the mo- 
 ment. Before marriage he worshipped and 
 adored his wife as an ideal being dwelling in 
 the land of dreams and poetries, and did his 
 very best to make her unpractical and unfitted 
 to enjoy the life to which he was to introduce 
 her after marriage. After marriage he still 
 yields unreflectingly to present impulses, which 
 
22 Little Foxes. 
 
 are no longer to praise, but to criticise and 
 condemn. The very sensibility to beauty and 
 love of elegance, which made him admire her 
 before marriage, now transferred to the arrange- 
 ment of the domestic menage, lead him daily 
 to perceive a hundred defects and find a hun- 
 dred annoyances. 
 
 Thus far we suppose an amiable, submissive 
 wife, who is only grieved, not provoked, — who 
 has no sense of injustice, and meekly strives to 
 make good the hard conditions of her lot. Such 
 poor, little, faded women have we seen, looking 
 for all the world like plants that have been 
 nursed and forced into bloom in the steam-heat 
 of the conservatory, and are now sickly and 
 yellow, dropping leaf by leaf, in the dry, dusty 
 parlor. 
 
 But there is another side of the picture, — 
 where the wife, provoked and indignant, takes 
 up the fault-finding trade in return, and with 
 the keen arrows of her woman's wit searches 
 tnd penetrates every joint of the husband's 
 
Fault-Finding. 23 
 
 armor, showing herself full as unjust and far 
 more capable in this sort of conflict 
 
 Saddest of all sad things is it to see two 
 once very dear friends employing all that pe- 
 culiar knowledge of each other which love 
 had given them only to harass and provoke, — 
 thrusting and piercing with a certainty of aim 
 that only past habits of confidence and affec- 
 tion could have put in their power, wounding 
 their own hearts with every deadly thrust they 
 make at one another, and all for such inexpres 
 sibly miserable trifles as usually form the open- 
 ings of fault-finding dramas. 
 
 For the contentions that loosen the very 
 foundations of love, that crumble away all its 
 fine traceries and carved work, about what mis- 
 erable, worthless things do they commonly be- 
 gin ! — a dinner underdone, too much oil con- 
 sumed, a newspaper torn, a waste of coal or 
 soap, a dish broken ! — and for this miserable 
 sort of trash, very good, very generous, very 
 religious people will sometimes waste and throw 
 
24 Little Foxes. 
 
 away by double-handfuls the very thing for 
 which houses are built and coal burned, and 
 all the paraphernalia of a home established, — 
 their happiness. Better cold coffee, smoky tea, 
 burnt meat, better any inconvenience, any loss, 
 than a loss of love ; and nothing so surely burns 
 away love as constant fault-finding. 
 
 For fault-finding once allowed as a habit be 
 tween two near and dear friends comes in time 
 to establish a chronic soreness, so that the 
 mildest, the most reasonable suggestion, the 
 gentlest implied reproof, occasions burning irri 
 tation : and when this morbid stage has once 
 set in, the restoration of love seems wellnigl 
 impossible. 
 
 For example : Enthusius, having risen this 
 morning in the best of humors, in the most 
 playful tones begs Hermione not to make the 
 tails of her g's quite so long ; and Hermione 
 fires up with — 
 
 " And, pray, what else would n't you wish 
 me to do ? Perhaps you would be s<" ^ood, 
 
Fault-Finding. 25 
 
 when vou have leisure, as to make out an 
 alphabetical list of the things in me that need 
 correcting." 
 
 " My dear, you are unreasonable." 
 w I don't think so. I should like to get to 
 the end of the requirements of my lord and 
 master sometimes." 
 
 " Now, my dear, you really are very silly." 
 " Please say something original, my dear. I 
 have heard that till it has lost the charm oi 
 novelty." 
 
 " Come now, He' mione, don't let 's quarrel." 
 " My dear sir, who thinks of quarrelling ? No* 
 I ; I 'm sure I was only asking to be directed. 
 I trust some time, if I live to be ninety, to suit 
 your fastidious taste. I trust the coffee is right 
 mis morning, and the tea, and the toast, and 
 the steak, and the servants, and the front-hall 
 mat, and the upper-story hall-door, and the base- 
 ment premises ; and now I suppose I am U: 
 be trained in respect to my general education. 
 I shall set about the tails of my g's at once, but 
 2 
 
26 Little Foxes. 
 
 trust you will prepare a list of any othei little 
 things that need emendation." 
 
 Enthusius pushes away his coffee, and diums 
 on the table. 
 
 " If I might be allowed one small criticism,, 
 my dear, I should observe that it is not good 
 manners to drum on the table," says his fair 
 opposite. 
 
 " Hermione, you are enough to drive a man 
 frantic ! " exclaims Enthusius, rushing out with 
 bitterness in his soul, and a determination to 
 take his dinner at Delmonico's. 
 
 Enthusius feels himself an abused man, and 
 thinks there never was such a sprite of a wo- 
 man, — the most utterly unreasonable, pro- 
 voking human being he ever met with. What 
 he does not think of is, that it is his own incon- 
 siderate, constant fault-finding that has made 
 every nerve so sensitive and sore, that the 
 mildest suggestion of advice or reproof on the 
 most indiffci f»:;i subject is impossible. He has 
 not, to be sure, been the guilty partner in tb' r 
 
Fault-Findmg. 27 
 
 morning's encounter ; he has said only what 
 is fair and proper, and she has been unreason- 
 able and cross ; but, after all, the fault is re- 
 motely his. 
 
 When Enthusius awoke, after marriage, to 
 find in his Hermione in very deed only a bird, 
 a star, a flowei, but no housekeeper, why did he 
 not face the matter like an honest man ? Why 
 did he not remember all the fine things about 
 dependence and uselessness with which he had 
 been filling her head for a year or two, and in 
 common honesty exact no more from her than 
 he had bargained for ? Can a bird make a 
 good business-manager ? Can a flower oversee 
 Biddy and Mike, and impart to theii 'mcircum- 
 cised ears the high crafts and mysteries of ele- 
 gant housekeeping ? 
 
 If his little wife has to learn her domestic 
 role of household duty, as most girls do, by a 
 thousand mortifications, a thousand perplexities, 
 a thousand failures, let him, in ordinary fair- 
 ness, make it as easy to her as possible. Let 
 
28 Little Foxes. 
 
 him remember with what admiring smiles, be- 
 fore marriage, he received her pretty professions 
 of utter helplessness and incapacity in domestic 
 matters, finding only poetry and grace in what, 
 after marriage, proved an annoyance. 
 
 And if a man finds that he has a wife ill 
 adapted to wifely duties, does it follow that the 
 best thing he can do is to blurt out, without 
 form or ceremony, all the criticisms and cor- 
 rections which may occur to him in the many 
 details of household life ? He would not dare 
 to speak with as little preface, apology, or cir- 
 cumlocution to his business manager, to his 
 butcher, or his baker. When Enthusius was a 
 bachelor, he never criticised the table at his 
 boarding-house without some reflection, and 
 studying to take unto himself acceptable words 
 whereby to soften the asperity of the criticism. 
 The laws of society require that a man should 
 qualify, soften, and wisely time his admonitions 
 to those he meets in the outer world, or they 
 will turn again and rend him. But to his own 
 
Fault-Finding. 29 
 
 wife, in his own house and home, he can find 
 fault without ceremony or softening. So he 
 can ; and he can awake, in the course of a 
 year or two, to find his wife a changed woman, 
 and his home unendurable. He may find, too, 
 that unceremonious fault-finding is a game that 
 two can play at, and that a woman can shoot 
 her arrows with far more precision and skill 
 than a man. 
 
 But the fault lies not always on the side of 
 the husband. Quite as often is a devoted, pa- 
 tient, good-tempered man harassed and hunted 
 and baited by the inconsiderate fault-finding of 
 a wife whose principal talent seems to lie in the 
 ability at first glance to discover and make 
 manifest the weak point in everything. 
 
 We have seen the most generous, the most 
 warm-hearted and obliging of mortals, under 
 this sort of training, made the most morose 
 and disobliging of husbands. Sure to be found 
 fault with, whatever they do, they have at last 
 ceased doing. The disappointment of not pl^ n 
 ing they have abated by not trying to pleast 
 
30 Little Foxes. 
 
 We once knew a man who married a spoiled 
 beauty, whose murmurs, exactions, and caprices 
 were infinite. He had at last, as a refuge to 
 his wearied nerves, settled down into a habit 
 of utter disregard and neglect ; he treated her 
 wishes and her complaints with equal indiffer- 
 ence, and went on with his life as nearly as 
 possible as if she did not exist. He silently 
 provided for her what he thought proper, with- 
 out troubling himself to notice her requests or 
 listen to h> r grievances. Sickness came, but 
 the heart of her husband was cold and gone ; 
 there was ro sympathy left to warm her. Death 
 came, and he breathed freely as a man re- 
 leased. He married again, — a woman with no 
 beauty, but much love and goodness, — a wo- 
 man who a^ked little, blamed seldom, and then 
 with all tL<, tact and address which the utmost 
 thoughtful tess could devise ; and the passive, 
 negligent husband became the attentive, devot- 
 ed slave A her will. He was in her hands 
 »* clay ? .n the hands of the potter • the 
 
 v 
 
Fault-Finding. 3 1 
 
 least breath or suggestion of criticism from her 
 lips, who criticised so little and so thoughtfully, 
 weighed more with him than many outspoken 
 words. So different is the same human being, 
 according to the touch of the hand which plays 
 upon him ! 
 
 I have spoken hitherto of fault-finding as 
 between husband and wife : its consequences 
 are even worse as respects children. The habit 
 once suffered to grow up between the two that 
 constitute the head of the family descends and 
 runs through all the branches. Children are 
 more hurt by indiscriminate, thoughtless fault- 
 finding than by any other one thing. Often a 
 child has all the sensitiveness and all the sus- 
 ceptibility of a grown person, added to the 
 faults of childhood. Nothing about him is 
 right as yet ; he is immature and faulty at all 
 points, and everybody feels at perfect liberty 
 to criticise him to right and left, above, below, 
 and around, till he takes refuge either in cal- 
 lous hardness or irritable moroseness. 
 
32 Little Foxes. 
 
 A bright, noisy boy rushes in from school, 
 eager to tell his mother something he has on 
 his heart, and Number One cries out, — "O, 
 you 've left the door open ! I do wish you 
 would n't always leave the door open ! And do 
 look at the mud on , your shoes ! How many 
 times must I tell you to wipe your feet?" 
 
 "Now there you've thrown your cap on the 
 sofa again. When will you learn to hang it 
 up?" 
 
 " Don't put your slate there ; that is n't the 
 place for it." 
 
 " How dirty your hands are ! what have you 
 been doing?" 
 
 "Don't sit in that chair; you break the 
 springs, jouncing." 
 
 " Child, how your hair looks ! Do go up 
 stairs and comb it." 
 
 "There, if you haven't torn the braid all 
 off your coat ! Dear me, what a boy ! " 
 
 " Don't speak so loud ; yo ar voice goes 
 through my head." 
 
Fault-Finding. 33 
 
 "I want to know, Jim, if it was you that 
 broke up that barrel that I have been saving 
 for brown flour." 
 
 "I believe it was you, Jim, that hacked the 
 edge of my razor." 
 
 " Jim 's been writing at my desk, and blotted 
 three sheets of the best paper." 
 
 Now the question is, if any of the grown 
 people of the family had to run the gantlet of 
 a string of criticisms on themselves equally 
 true as those that salute unlucky Jim, would 
 they be any better-natured about it than he is ? 
 
 No ; but they are grown-up people ; they 
 have rights that others are bound to respect. 
 Everybody cannot tell them exactly what he 
 thinks about everything they do. If every one 
 could and did, would there not be terrible re- 
 actions ? 
 
 Servants in general are only grown-up chil- 
 dren, and the same considerations apply to 
 them. A raw, untrained Irish girl introduced 
 into an elegan\ house has her head bewildered 
 2* © 
 
34 Little Foxes. 
 
 : n every direction. There are the gas-pipes, 
 the watei -pipes, the whole paraphernalia of ele- 
 gant and delicate conveniences, about which a 
 thousand little details are to be learned, the 
 neglect of any one of which may flood the 
 house, or poison it with foul air, or bring innu- 
 merable inconveniences. The setting of a gen- 
 teel table and the waiting upon it involve fifty 
 possibilities of mistake, each one of which will 
 grate on the nerves of a whole family. There 
 is no wonder, then, that the occasions of fault- 
 finding in families are so constant and harass- 
 ing ; and there is no wonder that mistress and 
 rnaid often meet each other on the terms of 
 the bear and the man who fell together fifty 
 feet down from the limb of a high tree, and 
 lay at the bottom of it, looking each other in 
 the face in helpless, growling despair. The ' 
 mistress is rasped, irritated, despairing, and with 
 good reason : the maid is the same, and with 
 equally good reason Yet let the mistress be 
 suddenly introduced into a printing-office, and 
 
Faidt-Finding. 35 
 
 required, with what little teaching could be 
 given her in a few rapid directions, to set up 
 the editorial of a morning paper, and it is prob- 
 able she would be as stupid and bewildered as 
 Biddy in her beautifully arranged house. 
 
 There are elegant houses which, from causes- 
 like these, are ever vexed like the troubled sea 
 that cannot rest. Literally, their table has be- 
 come a snare before them, and that which 
 should have been for their welfare a trap. 
 Their gas and their water and their fire and 
 their elegances and ornaments, all in unskilled, 
 blundering hands, seem only so many guns in 
 the hands of Satan, through which he fires at 
 their Christian graces day and night, — so that, 
 if their house is kept in order, their temper 
 and religion are not. 
 
 I am speaking now to the consciousness of 
 thousands of women who are in will and pur- 
 pose real saints. Their souls go up to heaven, 
 — its love, its purity, its rest, — with every 
 hymn and prayer and sacrament in church; 
 
36 Little Foxes. 
 
 and they come home to be mortified, disgraced, 
 and made to despise themselves, for the un- 
 lovely tempers, the hasty words, the cross looks, 
 the universal nervous irritability, that result 
 from this constant jarring of finely toned chords 
 under unskilled hands. 
 
 Talk of hair-cloth shirts, and scourgings, and 
 sleeping on ashes, as means of saintship ! there 
 is no need of them in our country. Let a 
 woman once look at her domestic trials as her 
 hair-cloth, her ashes, her scourges, — accept 
 them, — rejoice in them, — smile and be quiet, 
 silent, patient, and loving under them, — and 
 the convent can teach her no more ; she is a 
 victorious saint. 
 
 When the damper of the furnace is turned 
 the wrong way by Paddy, after the five hun- 
 dredth time of explanation, and the whole fam- 
 ily awakes coughing, sneezing, strangling, — . 
 when the gas is blown out in the nursery by 
 Biddy, who has been instructed every day for 
 weeks in the danger of such a proceeding, — 
 
Fault-Finding. 37 
 
 when the tumblers on the dinner-table are 
 found dim and streaked, after weeks of train- 
 ing in the simple business of washing and wip- 
 ing, — when the ivory-handled knives and forks 
 are left soaking in hot dish-water, after inces- 
 sant explanations of the consequences, — when 
 four or five half-civilized beings, above, below, 
 and all over the house, are constantly forget- 
 ting the most important things at the very 
 moment it is most necessary they should re- 
 member them, — there is no hope for the mis- 
 tress morally, unless she can in very deed and 
 truth accept her trials religiously, and conquer 
 by accepting. It is not apostles alone who 
 can take pleasure in necessities and distresses, 
 but mothers and housewives also, if they would 
 learn of the Apostle, might say, "When I am 
 weak, then am I strong." 
 
 The burden ceases to gall when we have 
 learned how to carry it. We can suffer pa- 
 tiently, if we see any good come of it, and 
 say, as an old black woman of our acquaint 
 
3 8 Little Foxes. 
 
 ance did of an event that crossed her purpose, 
 " Well, Lord, if it 's you, send it along." 
 
 But that this may be done, that home-life, 
 in our unsettled, changing state of society, may 
 become peaceful and restful, there is one Chris- 
 tian grace, much treated of by mystic writers, 
 that must return to its honor in the Christian 
 Church. I mean, — the grace of silence. 
 
 No words can express, no tongue can tell, 
 the value of not speaking. "Speech is sil- 
 ver^, but silence is golden," is an old and very 
 precious proverb. 
 
 "But," say many voices, "what is to become 
 of us, if we may not speak ? Must we not 
 correct our children and our servants and each 
 other ? Must we let people go on doing wrong 
 to the end of the chapter?" 
 
 No ; fault must be found ; faults must be 
 told, errors corrected. Reproof and admoni- 
 tion are duties of householders to their fami- 
 lies, and of all true friends to one another. 
 
 But, gentle reader, let us look over life, our 
 
Fault-Findi?ig. 39 
 
 own lives and the lives of others, and ask, How 
 much of the fault-finding which prevails has the 
 least tendency to do any good ? How much of 
 ft is well-timed, well-pointed, deliberate, and 
 just, so spoken as to be effective ? 
 
 "A wise reprover upon an obedient ear" is 
 one of the rare things spoken of by Solomon, 
 — the rarest, perhaps, to be met with. How 
 many really religious people put any of their 
 religion into their manner of performing this 
 most difficult office ? We find fault with a 
 stove or furnace which creates heat only to go 
 up chimney and not warm the house. We say 
 it is wasteful. Just so wasteful often seem 
 prayer-meetings, church-services, and sacra- 
 ments ; they create and excite lovely, gentle, 
 holy feelings, — but, if these do not pass out 
 into the atmosphere of daily life, and warm and 
 clear the air of our homes, there is a great 
 waste in our religion. 
 
 We have been on our knees, confessing hum- 
 bly that we are as awkward in Aeavenly things, 
 
40 Little Foxes. 
 
 as unfit for the Heavenly Jerusalem, as Biddy 
 and Mike, and the little beggar-girl on our 
 door-steps, are for our parlors. We have de- 
 plored our errors daily, hourly, and confessed 
 that " the remembrance of them is grievous 
 unto us, the burden of them is intolerable," and 
 then we draw near in the sacrament to that 
 Incarnate Divinity whose infinite love covers 
 all our imperfection* with the mantle of His 
 perfections. But when we return, do we take 
 our servants and children by the throat because 
 they are as untrained and awkward and care- 
 less in earthly things as we have been in heav- 
 enly ? Does no remembrance of Christ's infinite 
 patience temper our impatience, when we have 
 spoken seventy times seven, and our words have 
 been disregarded ? There is no mistake as to 
 the sincerity of the religion which the Church 
 excites. What we want is to have it used in 
 common life, instead of going up like hot air 
 in a fireplace to lose itself in the infinite abysses 
 above. 
 
Faidt-Finding. 41 
 
 In reproving and fault-finding, we have beau- 
 tiful examples in Holy Writ. When Saint Paul 
 has a reproof to administer to delinquent Chris- 
 tians, how does he temper it with gentleness 
 and praise ! how does he first make honorable 
 note of all the good there is to be spoken of! 
 how does he give assurance of his prayers and 
 love ! — and when at last the arrow flies, it 
 goes all the straighter to the mark for this 
 carefulness. 
 
 But there was a greater, a purer, a lovelier 
 than Paul, who made His home on earth with 
 twelve plain men, ignorant, prejudiced, slow to 
 learn, — and who to the very day of His death 
 were still contending on a point which He had 
 repeatedly explained, and troubling His last 
 earthly hours with the old contest, "Who should 
 be greatest." When all else failed, on His knees 
 before them as their servant, tenderly perform- 
 ing for love the office of a slave, he said, " If I, 
 your Lord and Master, have washed your feet, 
 ye also ought to wash one another's feet." 
 
42 Little Foxes. 
 
 When parents, employers, and masters learn 
 to reprove in this spirit, reproofs will be more 
 effective than they now are. It was by the 
 exercise of this spirit that Fenelon transformed 
 the proud, petulant, irritable, selfish Duke of 
 Burgundy, making him humble, gentle, tolerant 
 of others, and severe only to himself: it was 
 
 he who had for his motto, that " Perfection 
 alone can bear with imperfection." 
 
 But apart from the fault-finding which has a 
 definite aim, how much is there that does not 
 profess or intend or try to do anything more 
 than give vent to an irritated state of feeling ! 
 The nettle stings us, and we toss it with both 
 hands at our neighbor ; the fire burns us, and 
 we throw coals and hot ashes at all and sun- 
 dry of those about us. 
 
 There is fretfulness, a mizzling, drizzling rain 
 of discomforting remark ; there is grumblings 
 a northeast storm that never clears ; there is 
 scolding, the thunder-storm with lightning and 
 hail. All these are worse than useless ; they 
 
Fault-Finding. 43 
 
 are positive sins, by whomsoever indulged, — 
 sins as great and real as many that are shud- 
 dered at in polite society. 
 
 All these are for the most part but the vent- 
 ing on our fellow-beings of morbid feelings re- 
 sulting from dyspepsia, overtaxed nerves, or 
 general ill health. 
 
 A minister eats too much mince-pie, goes to 
 nis weekly lecture, and, seeing only half a dozen 
 people there, proceeds to grumble at those half- 
 dozen for the sins of such as stay away. " The 
 Church is cold, there is no interest in religion," 
 and so on : a simple outpouring of the blues. 
 
 You and I do in one week the work we 
 ought to do in six ; we overtax nerve and brain, 
 and then have weeks of darkness in which 
 everything at home seems running to destruc- 
 tion. The servants never were so careless, the 
 children never so noisy, the house never so 
 disorderly, the State never so ill-governed, the 
 Church evidently going over to Antichrist. 
 The on/y thing, after all, in wh'ch the existing 
 
44 Little Foxes. 
 
 condition of affairs differs from that of a week 
 ago is, that we have used up our nervous en- 
 ergy, and are looking at the world through 
 blue spectacles. We ought to resist the devil 
 of fault-firding at this point, and cultivate si- 
 lence as a grace till our nerves are rested. 
 There are times when no one should trust 
 himself to judge his neighbors, or reprove his 
 children and servants, or find fault with his 
 friends, — for he is so sharp-set that he cannot 
 strike a note without striking too hard. Then 
 is the time to try the grace of silence, and, 
 what is better than silence, the power of 
 prayer. 
 
 But it being premised that we are never to 
 fret, never to grumble, never to scold, and yet 
 it being our duty in some way to make known 
 and get rectified the faults of others, it remains 
 to ask how ; and on this head we will impro- 
 vise a parable of two women. 
 
 Mrs. Standfast is a woman of high tone, and 
 possessed of a power of moral principle that 
 
Fault-Finding. 45 
 
 impresses one even as sublime. All her per- 
 ceptions of right and wrong are clear, exact, 
 and minute ; she is charitable to the poor, kind 
 to the sick and suffering, and devoutly and 
 earnestly religious. In all the minutiae of wo- 
 man s life she manifests an inconceivable pre- 
 cision and perfection. Everything she does is 
 perfectly done. She is true to all her promises 
 to the very letter, and so punctual that rail- 
 road time might be kept by her instead of a 
 chronometer, 
 
 Yet, with all these excellent traits, Mrs. Stand- 
 fast has not the faculty of making a happy 
 home. She is that most hopeless of fault-find- 
 ers, — a fault-finder from principle. She has a 
 high, correct standard for everything in the 
 world, from the regulation of the thoughts 
 down to the spreading of a sheet or the hem- 
 ming of a towel ; and to this exact standard 
 she feels it her duty to bring every one in her 
 household. She does not often scold, she is 
 not actually fretful, but she exercises over her 
 
4.6 Little Foxes. 
 
 household a calm, inflexible severity, rebuking 
 every fault ; she overlooks nothing, she excuses 
 nothing, she will accept of nothing in any part 
 of her domain but absolute perfection ; and her 
 reproofs are aimed with a true and steady 
 point, and sent with a force that makes them 
 felt by the most obdurate. 
 
 Hence, though she is rarely seen out of tem- 
 per, and seldom or never scolds, yet she drives 
 every one around her to despair by the use of 
 the calmest and most elegant English. Her 
 servants fear, but do not love her. Her hus- 
 band, an impulsive, generous man, somewhat 
 inconsiderate and careless in his habits, is at 
 times perfectly desperate under the accumulat- 
 ed load of her disapprobation. Her children 
 regard her as inhabiting some high, distant, un- 
 approachable mountain-top of goodness, whence 
 she is always looking down with reproving eyes 
 on naughty boys and girls. They wonder how 
 it is that so excellent a mamma should have 
 children who, let them try to be good as hard 
 
Fault-Finding. 47 
 
 as they can, are always sure to do something 
 dreadful every day. 
 
 The trouble with Mrs. Standfast is, not that 
 she has a high standard, and not that she pur- 
 poses and means to bring every one up to it, 
 but that she does not take the right way. She 
 has set it down in her mind that to blame a 
 wrong-doer is the only way to cure wrong. 
 She has never learned that it is as much her 
 duty to praise as to blame, and that people are 
 drawn to do right by being praised when they 
 do it, rather than driven by being blamed when 
 they do not. 
 
 Right across the way from Mrs. Standfast 
 is Mrs. Easy, a pretty little creature, with not 
 a tithe of her moral worth, — a merry, pleas- 
 ure-loving woman, of no particular force of 
 principle, whose great object in life is to 
 avoid its disagreeables and to secure its pleas- 
 ures. 
 
 Little Mrs. Easy is adored by her husband, 
 her children, her servants, merely because it 
 
4-S Little Foxes. 
 
 is her nature to say pleasant things to every 
 one. It is a mere tact of pleasing, which she 
 uses without knowing it. While Mrs. Stand- 
 fast, surveying her well-set dining-table, runs 
 her keen eye over everything, and at last 
 brings up with, "Jane, look at that black spot 
 on the salt-spoon ! I am astonished at your 
 carelessness ! " — Mrs. Easy would say, " Why, 
 Jane, where did you learn to set a table so 
 nicely ? All looking sautifully, except, — ah ! 
 let's see, — just give a rub to this salt-spoon ; — 
 now all is quite perfect." Mrs. Standfast's ser- 
 vants and children hear only of their failures ; 
 these are always before them and her. Mrs. 
 Easy's servants hear of their successes. She 
 praises their good points ; tells them they are 
 doing well in this, that, and the other partic- 
 ular ; and finally exhorts them, on the strength 
 of having done so many things well, to im- 
 prove in what is yet lacking. Mrs. Easy's 
 husband feels that he is always a hero in her 
 eyes, and her children feel that they are dear 
 
Fault-Finding. 49 
 
 good children, notwithstanding Mrs. Easy some- 
 times has her little tiffs of displeasure, and 
 scolds roundly when something falls out as it 
 should not. 
 
 The two families show how much more may 
 be done by a very ordinary woman, through 
 the mere instinct of praising and pleasing, 
 than by the greatest worth, piety, and princi- 
 ple, seeking to lift human nature by a lever 
 that never was meant to lift it by. 
 
 The faults and mistakes of us poor human 
 beings are as often perpetuated by despair as 
 by any other one thing. Have we not all 
 been burdened by a consciousness of faults 
 that we were slow to correct because we felt 
 discouraged ? Have we not been sensible of 
 a real help sometimes from the presence of a 
 friend who thought well of us, believed in us, 
 set our virtues in the best light, and put our 
 faults in the background? 
 
 Let us depend upon it, that the flesh and 
 blood that are in us, — the needs, the wants, 
 
 3 D 
 
50 Little Foxes, 
 
 the despondencies, — are in each of our fellows, 
 in every awkward servant and careless child. 
 
 Finally, let us all resolve, — 
 
 First, tc attain to the grace of silence. 
 
 Second, to deem all fault-finding that does 
 no good a sin ; and to resolve, when we are 
 happy ourselves, not to poison the atmosphere 
 for our neighbors by calling on them to remark 
 every painful and disagreeable feature of their 
 daily life. 
 
 Third, to practise the grace and virtue of 
 praise. We have all been taught that it is 
 our duty to praise God, but few of us have 
 reflected on our duty to praise men ; and yet 
 for the same reason that we should praise the 
 divine goodness it is our duty to praise human 
 excellence. 
 
 We should praise our friends, — our near and 
 dear ones ; we should look on and think of 
 their virtues till their faults fade away ; and 
 when we love most, and see most to love, then 
 only is the wise time wisely to speak of what 
 should still be alterea. 
 
Fault-Finding. 5 1 
 
 Parents should look out for occasions to com 
 mend their children, as carefully as they seek 
 to reprove their faults ; and employers should 
 praise the good their servants do as strictly 
 as they blame the evil. 
 
 Whoever undertakes to use this weapon will 
 find that praise goes farther in many cases 
 than blame. Watch till a blundering servant 
 does something well, and then praise him for 
 it, and you will see a new fire lighted in the 
 eye, and often you will find that in that one 
 respect at least you have secured excellence 
 thenceforward. 
 
 When you blame, which should be seldom, 
 let it be alone with the person, quietly, con- 
 siderately, and with all the tact you are pos- 
 sessed of. The fashion of reproving children 
 and servants in the presence of others cannot 
 be too much deprecated. Pride, stubbornness, 
 and self-will are aroused by this, while a more 
 private reproof might be received with thank- 
 fulness. 
 
52 Little Foxes. 
 
 As a general rule, I would say, treat children 
 in these respects just as you would grown peo- 
 ple ; they are grown people in miniature, and 
 need as careful consideration of their feelings 
 as any of us. 
 
 Lastly, let us all make a bead-roll, a holy 
 rosary, of all that is good and agreeable in 
 our position, our surroundings, our daily lot, 
 of all that is good and agreeable in our friends, 
 our children, our servants, and charge ourselves 
 to repeat it daily, till the habit of our minds 
 be to praise and to commend ; and so doing, 
 we shall catch and kill one Little Fox who 
 hath destroyed many tender grapes. 
 
II. 
 
 IRRITABILITY. 
 
 f T was that Christmas-day that did it ; ± 'rn 
 quite convinced of that ; and the way it 
 was is, what I am going to tell you. 
 
 You see, among the various family customs 
 of us Crowfields, the observance of all sorts of 
 fetes and festivals has always been a matter 
 of prime regard ; and among all the festivals 
 of the round ripe year, none is so joyous and 
 honored among us as Christmas. 
 
 Let no one upon this prick up the ears of 
 Archaeology, and tell us that by the latest cal- 
 culations of chronologists our ivy-grown and 
 holly-mantled Christmas is all a hum, — that 
 it has been demonstrated, by all sorts of signs 
 and tables, that the august event it celebrates 
 did not take place on the 25th of December. 
 Supposing it be so, what have we to do '•■■'-" 
 
54 Little Foxes. 
 
 that? If so awful, so joyous an event eve? 
 took place on our earth, it is surely worth com- 
 memoration. It is the event we celebrate, not 
 the time. And if all Christians for eighteen 
 hundred years, while warring and wrangling 
 on a thousand other points, have agreed to 
 give this one 25th of December to peace and 
 good-will, who is he that shall gainsay them, 
 and for an historic scruple turn his back on 
 the friendly greetings of all Christendom ? 
 Such a man is capable of re-writing Milton's 
 Christmas Hymn in the style of Sternhold and 
 Hopkins. 
 
 In our house, however, Christmas has always 
 been a high day, a day whose expectation has 
 held waking all the little eyes in our bird's 
 nest, when as yet there were only little ones 
 there, each sleeping with one eye open, hoping 
 to be the happy first to wish the merry Christ- 
 mas and grasp the wonderful stocking. 
 
 This year our whole family train of married 
 girls and boys, with the various toddling tribes 
 
Irritability. 5 $ 
 
 thereto belonging, held high festival around a 
 wonderful Christmas-tree, the getting-up and 
 adorning of which had kept my wife and Jen- 
 nie and myself busy for a week beforehand. 
 If the little folks think these trees grow up in 
 a night, without labor, they know as little about 
 them as they do about most of the other bless- 
 ings which rain down on their dear little 
 thoughtless heads. Such scrambling and clam- 
 bering and fussing and tying and untying, such 
 alterations and rearrangements, such agilities 
 in getting up and down and everywhere to tie 
 on tapers and gold balls and glittering things 
 innumerable, to hang airy dolls in graceful posi- 
 tions, to make branches bear stiffly up under 
 loads of pretty things which threaten to make 
 the tapers turn bottom upward ! 
 
 Part and parcel of all this was I, Christo- 
 pher, most reckless of rheumatism, most care- 
 less of dignity, — the round, bald top of my 
 head to be seen emerging everywhere from 
 the thick boughs of the spruce, now devising 
 
56 Little Foxes. 
 
 an airy settlement for some gossamer-robed 
 doll, now adjusting far back on a stiff branch 
 Tom's new little skates, now balancing bags 
 of sugar-plums and candy, and now combating 
 desperately with some contumacious taper that 
 would turn slantwise or crosswise, or anywise 
 but upward, as a Christian taper should, — re- 
 gardless of Mrs. Crowfield's gentle admonitions 
 and suggestions, sitting up to most dissipated 
 hours, springing out of bed suddenly to change 
 some arrangement in the middle of the night, 
 and up long before the lazy sun at dawn to 
 execute still other arrangements. If that 
 Christmas-tree had been a fort to be taken, 
 or a campaign to be planned, I could not 
 have spent more time and strength on it. My 
 zeal so far outran even that of sprightly Miss 
 Jennie, that she could account for it only by 
 saucily suggesting that papa must be fast get- 
 ting into his second childhood. 
 
 But did n't we have a splendid lighting-up ? 
 Did n't I and my youngest grandson, little 
 
Irritability. 5 7 
 
 Tom, head the procession magnificent in paper 
 soldier-caps, blowing tin trumpets and beating 
 drums, as we marched round the twinkling glo- 
 ries of our Christmas-tree, all glittering with 
 red and blue and green tapers, and with a 
 splendid angel on top with great gold wings, 
 the cutting-out and adjusting of which had 
 held my eyes waking for nights before ? I had 
 had oceans of trouble with that angel, owing to 
 an unlucky sprain in his left wing, which had 
 1 equired constant surgical attention through the 
 week, and which I feared might fall loose again 
 at the important and blissful moment of exhi- 
 bition : but no, the Fates were in our favor ; 
 the angel behaved beautifully, and kept his 
 wings as crisp as possible, and the tapers all 
 burned splendidly, and the little folks were as 
 crazy with delight as my most ardent hopes 
 could have desired ; and then we romped and 
 played and frolicked as long as little eyes could 
 keep open, and long after ; and so passed away 
 our Christmas. 
 3* 
 
58 Little Foxes. 
 
 I had forgotten to speak of the Christmas- 
 dinner, that solid feast of fat things, on which 
 we also luxuriated. Mrs. Crowfield outdid all 
 household traditions in that feast : the turkey 
 and the chickens, the jellies and the sauces, 
 the pies and the pudding, behold, are they not 
 written in the tablets of Memory which remain 
 to this day? 
 
 The holidays passed away hilariously, and at 
 New- Year's I, according to time-honored cus- 
 tom, went forth to make my calls and see my 
 fair friends, while my wife and daughters stayed 
 at home to dispense the hospitalities of the day 
 to their gentlemen friends. All was merry, 
 cheerful, and it was agreed on all hands that a 
 more joyous holiday season had never flown 
 over us. 
 
 But, somehow, the week after, I began to be 
 sensible of a running-down in the wheels. I 
 had an article to write for the "Atlantic," out 
 felt mopish and could not write. My dinnei 
 had not its usual relish, and I had an in 
 
Irritability. 59 
 
 definite sense everywhere of something going 
 wrong My coal bill came in, and I felt sure 
 we were being extravagant, and that our John 
 Furnace wasted the coal. My grandsons and 
 granddaughters came to see us, and I discov- 
 ered that they had high-pitched voices, and 
 burst in without wiping their shoes, and it sud- 
 denly occurred powerfully to my mind that 
 they were not being well brought up, — evi- 
 dently, they were growing up rude and noisy. 
 I discovered several tumblers and plates with 
 the edges chipped, and made bitter reflections 
 on the carelessness of Irish servants ; — our 
 crockery was going to destruction, along with 
 the rest. Then, on opening one of my paper- 
 drawers, I found that Jennie's one drawer of 
 worsted had overflowed into two or three ; 
 Jennie was growing careless ; besides, worsted 
 is dear, and girls knit away small fortunes, 
 without knowing it, on little duds that do no- 
 body any good. Moreover, Maggie had three 
 times put my slippers into the hall-closet, in- 
 
60 Little Foxes. 
 
 stead of leaving them where I wanted, undei 
 my study-table. Mrs. Crowfield ought to look 
 after things more ; every servant, from end tc 
 end of the house, was getting out of the traces , 
 it was strange she did not see it. 
 
 All this I vented, from time to time, in short, 
 crusty sayings and doings, as freely as if I 
 had n't just written an article on " Little Foxes" 
 in the last " Atlantic," till at length my eyes 
 were opened on my own state and condition. 
 
 It was evening, and I had just laid up the 
 fire in the most approved style of architecture, 
 and, projecting my feet into my slippers, sat 
 spitefully cutting the leaves of a caustic review. 
 
 Mrs. Crowfield took the tongs and altered 
 the disposition of a stick. 
 
 " My dear," I said, " I do wish you d let the 
 fire alone, — you always put it out." 
 
 " I was merely admitting a little air between 
 the sticks," said my wife. 
 
 " You always make matters worse, when yon 
 touch the fire." 
 
Irritability. 6 1 
 
 As if in contradiction, a bright tongue of 
 dame darted up between the sticks, and the 
 fire began chattering and snapping defiance at 
 me. Now, if there 's anything which would 
 provoke a saint, it is to be jeered and snapped 
 at in that way by a man's own fire. It's an 
 unbearable impertinence. I threw out my leg 
 impatiently, and hit Rover, who yelped a yelp 
 that finished the upset of my nerves. I gave 
 him a hearty kick, that he might have some- 
 thing to yelp for, and in the movement upset 
 Jennie's embroidery-basket. 
 
 " Oh, papa ! " 
 
 " Confound your baskets and balls ! they are 
 everywhere, so that a man can't move ; useless, 
 wasteful things, too." 
 
 " Wasteful ? " said Jennie, coloring indig- 
 nantly ; for if there 's anything Jennie piques 
 herself upon, it 's economy. 
 
 " Yes, wasteful, — wasting time and money 
 both. Here are hundreds of shivering poor to 
 be clothed, and Christian females sit and do 
 
62 Little Foxes. 
 
 nothing but crochet worsted into useless knick- 
 nacks. If they would be working for the poor, 
 there would be some sense in it. But it 's all 
 just alike, no real Christianity in the world, 
 nothing but organized selfishness and self-indul- 
 gence." 
 
 " My dear," said Mrs. Crowfield, " you are not 
 well to-night. Things are not quite so despe- 
 rate as they appear. You have n't got over 
 Christmas-week." 
 
 " I am well. Never was better. But I can 
 see, I hope, what 's before my eyes ; and the 
 fact is, Mrs. Crowfield, things must not go on 
 as they are going. There must be more care, 
 more attention to details. There 's Maggie, — 
 that girl never does what she is told. You are 
 too slack with her, Ma'am. She will light the 
 fire with the last paper, and she won't put my 
 slippers in the right place ; and I can't have 
 my study made the general catch-all and mena- 
 gerie for Rover and Jennie, and her baskets and 
 balls, and for all the family litter." 
 
Irritability. 63 
 
 Just at this moment I overheard a sort of 
 aside from Jennie, who was swelling with re- 
 pressed indignation at my attack on her wors- 
 ted. * She sat with her back to me, knitting en- 
 ergetically, and said, in a low, but very decisive 
 tone, as she twitched her yarn, — 
 
 " Now if / should talk in that way, people 
 would call me cross, — and that 's the whole 
 of it" 
 
 I pretended to be looking into the fire in an 
 absent-minded state ; but Jennie's words had 
 started a new idea. Was that it ? Was that 
 the whole matter ? Was it, then, a fact, that 
 the house, the servants, Jennie and her wors- 
 teds, Rover and Mrs. Crowfield, were all going 
 on pretty much as usual, and that the only dif- 
 ficulty was that I was cross ? How many times 
 had I encouraged Rover to lie just where he 
 was lying when I kicked him ! How many 
 t'mes, in better moods, had I complimented 
 Jennie on her neat little fancy-works, and de- 
 clared that T liked the social companionship of 
 
04 Little Foxes. 
 
 ladies' work-baskets among my papers ! Yes, it 
 was clear. After all, things were much as they 
 had been ; only I was cross. 
 
 Cross. I put it to myself in that simple, old- 
 fashioned word, instead of saying that I was 
 out of spirits, or nervous, or using any of the 
 other smooth phrases with which we good 
 Christians cover up our little sins of temper. 
 " Here you are, Christopher," said I to myself, 
 "a literary man, with a somewhat delicate ner- 
 vous organization and a sensitive stomach, and 
 you have been eating like a sailor or a plough- 
 man ; you have been gallivanting and merry- 
 making and playing the boy for two weeks ; up 
 at all sorts of irregular hours, and into all sorts 
 of boyish performances ; and the consequence 
 is, that, like a thoughtless young scapegrace, 
 you have used up in ten days the capital of 
 nervous energy that was meant to last you ten 
 weeks. You can't eat your cake and have 
 it too, Christopher. When the nervous-fluid, 
 source of cheerfulness, giver of pleasant sensa- 
 
Irritability. 65 
 
 tions and pleasant views, is all spent, you can't 
 feel cheerful ; things cannot look as they did 
 when you were full of life and vigor. When 
 the tide is out, there is nothing but unsightly, 
 ill-smelling tide-mud, and you can't help it ; but 
 you cd7i keep your senses, — you can know 
 what is the matter with you, — you can keep 
 from visiting your overdose of Christmas mince- 
 pies and candies and jocularities on the heads 
 of Mrs. Crowfield, Rover, and Jennie, whether 
 in the form of virulent morality, pungent criti- 
 cisms, or a free kick, such as you just gave 
 the poor brute." 
 
 " Come here, Rover, poor dog ! " said I, ex- 
 tending my hand to Rover, who cowered at 
 the farther corner of the room, eying me wist- 
 fully, — "come here, you poor doggie, and make 
 up with your master. There, there ! Was his 
 master cross ? Well, he knows it. We must 
 forgive and forget, old boy, must n't we ? " And 
 Rover nearly broke his own back and tore me 
 to pieces with his tumultuous tail-waggings. 
 
66 Little Foxes. 
 
 H As for you, puss," I said to Jennie, " I am 
 much obliged to you for your free suggestion. 
 You must take my cynical moralities for what 
 they are worth, and put your little traps into 
 as many of my drawers as you like." 
 
 In short, I made it up handsomely all around, 
 — even apologizing to Mrs. Crowfield, who, by 
 the by, has summered and wintered me so 
 many years, and knows all my little seams and 
 crinkles so well, that she took my irritable, un- 
 reasonable spirit as tranquilly as if I had been 
 a baby cutting a new tooth. 
 
 " Of course, Chris, I knew what the matter 
 was ; don't disturb yourself," she said, as I be- 
 gan my apology ; " we understand each other. 
 But there is one thing I have to say ; and 
 that is, that your article ought to be ready." 
 
 " Ah, well, then," said I, " like other great 
 writers, I shall make capital of my own sins, 
 and treat of the second little family fox ; and 
 his name is — 
 
Irritability. 67 
 
 IRRITABILITY. 
 
 Irritability is, more than most unlovely 
 states, a sin of the flesh. It is not, like envy, 
 malice, spite, revenge, a vice which we may 
 suppose to belong equally to an embodied or 
 a disembodied spirit. In fact, it comes nearer 
 to being physical depravity than anything I 
 know of. There are some bodily states, some 
 conditions of the nerves, such that we could 
 not conceive of even an angelic spirit confined 
 in a body thus disordered as being able to do 
 any more than simply endure. It is a state 
 of nervous torture ; and the attacks which the 
 wretched victim makes on others are as much 
 a result of disease as the snapping and biting 
 of a patient convulsed with hydrophobia. 
 
 Then, again, there are other people who go 
 through life loving and beloved, desired in ev- 
 ery circle, held up in the Church as exam- 
 ples of the power of religion, who, after all, de- 
 serve no credit for these things. Their spirits 
 
68 Little Foxes. 
 
 are lodged in an animal nature so tranquil, 
 so cheerful, all the sensations which come to 
 them are so fresh and vigorous and pleasant, 
 that they cannot help viewing the world char- 
 itably and seeing everything through a glori- 
 fied medium. The ill-temper of others does 
 not provoke them ; perplexing business never 
 sets their nerves to vibrating ; and all their 
 lives long they walk in the serene sunshine of 
 perfect animal health. 
 
 Look at Rover there. He is never nervous, 
 never cross, never snaps or snarls, and is ready, 
 the moment after the grossest affront, to wag 
 the tail of forgiveness, — all because kind Na- 
 ture has put his dog's body together so that 
 it always works harmoniously. If every person 
 in the world were gifted with a stomach and 
 nerves like his, it would be a far better and 
 happier world, no doubt. The man said a 
 good thing who made the remark, that the 
 foundation of all intellectual and moral worth 
 must be laid in a good healthy animal. 
 
Irritability. 69 
 
 Now 1 think it is undeniable that the peace 
 and happiness of the home-circle are very gen- 
 erally much invaded by the recurrence in its 
 members of these states of bodily irritability. 
 Every person, if he thinks the matter over, will 
 see that his condition in life, the character of 
 his friends, his estimate of their virtues and 
 failings, his hopes and expectations, are all 
 very much modified by these things. Cannot 
 we all remember going to bed as very ill-used, 
 persecuted individuals, all whose friends were 
 unreasonable, whose life was full of trials and 
 crosses, and waking up on a bright bird-sing- 
 ing morning to find all these illusions gone 
 with the fogs of the night ? Our friends are 
 nice people, after all ; the little things that an- 
 noyed us look ridiculous by bright sunshine t 
 and we are fortunate individuals. 
 
 The philosophy of life, then, as far as this 
 matter is concerned, must consist of two things : 
 first, to keep ourselves out of irritable bodily 
 states ; and, second, to understand and con 
 
yo Little Foxes. 
 
 trol these states, when we cannot ward them 
 off. 
 
 Of course, the first of these is the most im- 
 portant ; and yet, of all things, it seems to be 
 least looked into and understood. We find 
 abundant rules for the government of the 
 tongue and temper ; it is a slough into which, 
 John Bunyan hath it, cart-loads of wholesome 
 instructions have been thrown ; but how to get 
 and keep that healthy state of brain, stomach, 
 and nerves which takes away the temptation 
 to ill-temper and anger is a subject which 
 moral and religious teachers seem scarcely to 
 touch upon. 
 
 Now, without running into technical, physi- 
 ological language, it is evident, as regards us 
 human beings, that there is a power by which 
 we live and move and have our being, — by 
 which the brain thinks and wills, the stomach 
 digests, the blood circulates, and all the differ- 
 ent provinces of the little man-kingdom do 
 their woik. This something — call it nervous 
 
Irritability. 71 
 
 fluid, nervous power, vital energy, "life-force, 01 
 anything else that you will — is a perfectly un- 
 derstood, if not a definable thing. It is plain 
 too, that people possess this force in very dif- 
 ferent degrees ; some generating it as a high 
 pressure engine does steam, and using it con 
 stantly, with an apparently inexhaustible flow . 
 and others who have little, and spend it quickly 
 We have a common saying, that this or tha 
 person is soon used up. Now most nervou: 
 irritable states of temper are the mere physic?' 
 result of a used-up condition. The person ha » 
 overspent his nervous energy, — like a man 
 who should eat up on Monday the whole foo-1 
 which was to keep him for a week, and go 
 growling and faint through the other days ; or 
 the quantity of nervous force which was wanted 
 to carry on the whole system in all its parte 
 is seized on by some one monopolizing portion 
 and used up to the loss and detriment of the 
 rest. Thus, with men of letters, an exorbitant 
 brain expends on its own workings what be* 
 
72 Little Foxes. 
 
 longs to the other offices of the body : the 
 stomach has nothing to carry on digestion ; the 
 secretions are badly made ; and the imperfectly 
 assimilated nourishment, that is conveyed to 
 every little nerve and tissue, carries with it an 
 acrid, irritating quality, producing general rest- 
 lessness and discomfort. So men and women 
 go struggling on through their threescore and 
 ten years, scarcely one in a thousand knowing 
 through life that perfect balance of parts, that 
 appropriate harmony of energies, that make a 
 healthy, kindly animal condition, predisposing 
 to cheerfulness and good-will. 
 
 We Americans are, in the first place, a ner- 
 vous, excitable people. Multitudes of children, 
 probably the great majority in the upper walks 
 of life, are born into the world with weaknesses 
 of the nervous organization, or of the brain or 
 stomach, which make them incapable of any 
 strong excitement or prolonged exertion with- 
 out some lesion or derangement ; so that they 
 are continually being checked, laid up, and 
 
In liability. 73 
 
 made invalids in the midst of their days. Life 
 here in America is so fervid, so fast, our cli- 
 mate is so stimulating, with its clear, bright 
 skies, its rapid and sudden changes of tempera- 
 ture, that the tendencies to nervous disease are 
 constantly aggravated. 
 
 Under these circumstances, unless men and 
 women make a conscience, a religion, of saving 
 and sparing something of themselves expressly 
 for home-life and home-consumption, it must 
 follow that home will often be merely a sort of 
 refuge for us to creep into when we are used 
 up and irritable. 
 
 Papa is up and off, after a hasty breakfast, 
 and drives all day in his business, putting into 
 it all there is in him, letting it drink up brain 
 and nerve and body and soul, and coming home 
 jaded and exhausted, so that he cannot bear 
 the cry of the baby, and the frolics and patter- 
 ing of the nursery seem horrid and needless 
 confusion. The little ones say, in their plain 
 vernacular, " Papa is cross." 
 4 
 
74 Little Foxes. 
 
 Mamma goes out to a party that keeps hei 
 up till one or two in the morning, breathes baa 
 air, eats indigestible food, and the next day is 
 so nervous that every straw and thread in her 
 domestic path is insufferable. 
 
 Papas that pursue business thus day after 
 day, and mammas that go into company, as it 
 is called, night after night, what is there left 
 in or of them to make an agreeable fireside 
 with, to brighten their home and inspire their 
 children ? 
 
 True, the man says he cannot help himself, 
 — business requires it. But what is the need 
 of rolling up money at the rate at which he is 
 seeking to do it ? Why not have less, and take 
 some time to enjoy his home, and cheer up his 
 wife, and form the minds of his children ? Why 
 spend himself down to the last drop on the 
 world, and give to the dearest friends he has 
 only the bitter dregs ? 
 
 Much of the preaching which the pulpit and 
 the Church have levelled at fashionable amuse- 
 
Irritability. 75 
 
 merits has failed of any effect at all, because 
 wrongly put. A cannonade has been opened 
 upon dancing, for example, and all for reasons 
 that will not, in the least, bear looking into. 
 It is vain to talk of dancing as a sin because 
 practised in a dying world where souls are 
 passing into eternity. If dancing is a sin for 
 this reason, so is playing marbles, or frolicking 
 with one's children, or enjoying a good dinner, 
 or doing fifty other things which nobody ever 
 dreamed of objecting to. 
 
 If the preacher were to say that anything is 
 a sin which uses up the strength we need for 
 daily duties, and leaves us fagged ouUand irrita- 
 ble at just those times and in just those places 
 when and where we need most to be healthy, 
 cheerful, and self-possessed, he would say a 
 thing that none of his hearers would dispute. 
 If he should add, that dancing-parties, begin- 
 ning at ten o'clock at night and ending at four 
 o'clock in the morning, do use up the strength, 
 weaken the nerves, and leave a person wholly 
 
j6 Little Foxes. 
 
 unfit for any home duty, he would als^ be say- 
 ing what very few people would deny ; and 
 then his case would be made out. If he shoula 
 say that it is wrong to breathe bad air and fill 
 the stomach with unwholesome dainties, so as 
 to make one restless, ill-natured, and irritable 
 for days, he would also say what few would 
 deny, and his preaching might have some hope 
 of success. 
 
 The true manner of judging of the worth of 
 amusements is to try them by their effects on 
 the nerves and spirits the day after. True 
 amusement ought to be, as the word indicates, 
 recreatioji^jr— something that refreshes, turns us 
 out anew, rests the mind and body by change, 
 and gives cheerfulness and alacrity to our re- 
 turn to duty. 
 
 The true objection to all stimulants, alcoholic 
 and narcotic, consists simply in this, — that 
 they are a form of overdraft on the nervous 
 energy, which helps us to use up in cue hour 
 the strength oi whole days. 
 
Irritability. Jf 
 
 A man uses up all the fair, legal interest of 
 neivour, power by too much business, too much 
 care, or too much amusement. He has now a 
 demand to meet. He has a complicate ac- 
 count to make up, an essay or a sermon to 
 write, and he primes himself by a cup of coffee, 
 a cigar, a glass of spirits. This is exactly the 
 procedure of a man who, having used the in- 
 terest of his money, begins to dip into the 
 principal. The strength a man gets in this 
 way is just so much taken out of his life- 
 blood ; it is borrowing of a merciless creditor, 
 who will exact, in time, the pound of flesh 
 nearest his heart. 
 
 Much of the irritability which spoils home 
 happiness is the letting-down from the over- 
 excitement of stimulus. Some will drink cof- 
 fee, when they own every day that it makes 
 them nervous ; some will drug themselves with 
 tobacco, and some with alcohol, and, for a few 
 hours of extra brightness, give themselves ari 
 their friends many hours when amiability ■•' 
 
78 Little Foxes. 
 
 agreeableness is quite out of the question. 
 There are peor*e calling themselves Chris- 
 tians who live la miserable thraldom, forever 
 m debt to Nature, forev«er overdrawing on their 
 just resources, and using up their patrimony, 
 because they have not the moral courage to 
 break away from a miserable appetite. 
 
 The same may be said of numberless indul- 
 gences of the palate, which tax the stomach 
 beyond its power, and bring on all the hor- 
 rors of indigestion. It is almost impossible for 
 a confirmed dyspeptic to act like a good Chris- 
 tian ; but a good Christian ought not to be- 
 come a confirmed dyspeptic. Reasonable self- 
 control, abstaining from all unseasonable indul- 
 gence, may prevent or put an end to dyspep- 
 sia, and many suffer and make their friends 
 suffer only because they will persist in eating 
 what they know is hurtful to them. 
 
 But it is not merely in worldly business, or 
 fashionable amusements, or the gratification of 
 appetite, that people are tempted to overdraw 
 
Irritability. 79 
 
 and use up in advance their life-force. It is 
 done in ways more insidious, because con- 
 nected with our moral and religious faculties. 
 There are religious exaltations beyond the reg- 
 ular pulse and beatings of ordinary nature, 
 that quite as surely gravitate downward into 
 the mire of irritability. The ascent to the 
 third heaven lets even the Apostle down to a 
 thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan to 
 buffet him. 
 
 It is the temptation of natures in which the 
 moral faculties predominate to overdo in the 
 outward expression and activities of religion 
 till they are used up and irritable, and have no 
 strength left to set a good example in domes- 
 tic life. 
 
 The Reverend Mr. X. in the pulpit to-day 
 appears with the face of an angel ; he soars 
 away into those regions of exalted devotion 
 where his people can but faintly gaze after 
 him ; he tells them of the victory that over- 
 cometh the world, of an unmoved faith that 
 
80 Little Foxes. 
 
 fears no evil, of a serenity of love that no out 
 ward event can ruffle ; and all look after him 
 and wonder, and wish they could so soar. 
 
 Alas ! the exaltation which inspires these 
 sublime conceptions, these celestial ecstasies, 
 is a double and treble draft on Nature, — and 
 poor Mrs. X. knows, when she hears him 
 preaching, that days of miserable reaction are 
 before her. He has been a fortnight driving 
 before a gale of strong excitement, doing all 
 the time twice or thrice as much as in his 
 ordinary state he could, and sustaining him- 
 self by the stimulus of strong coffee. He has 
 preached or exhorted every night, and con- 
 versed with religious inquirers every day, seem- 
 ing to himself to become stronger and stronger, 
 because every day more and more excitable 
 and excited. To his hearers, with his flushed 
 sunken cheek and his glittering eye, he looks 
 like some spiritual being just trembling on nis 
 flight for upper worlds ; but to poor Mrs. X. 
 whose husband he is, things wear a very dif- 
 
Irritability. 8 1 
 
 ferent aspect. Her woman and mother in- 
 stincts tell her that he is drawing on his life- 
 capital with both hands, and that the hours of 
 a terrible settlement must come, and the days 
 of darkness will be many. He who spoke so 
 beautifully of the peace of a soul made perfect 
 will not be able to bear the cry of his baby or 
 the pattering feet of any of the poor little X.s, 
 who must be sent 
 
 "Anywhere, anywhere, 
 Out of his sight " ; 
 
 he who discoursed so devoutly of perfect trust 
 in God will be nervous about the butcher's bill, 
 sure of going to ruin because both ends of the 
 salary don't meet ; and he who could so admir- 
 ingly tell of the silence of Jesus under provoca- 
 tion will but too often speak unadvisedly with 
 his lips. Poor Mr. X. will be morally insane 
 for days or weeks, and absolutely incapable of 
 preaching Christ in the way that is the most 
 effective, by setting Him forth in his own daily 
 example. 
 
82 Little Foxes. 
 
 What then ? must we not do the work of the 
 Lord ? 
 
 Yes, certainly ; but the first work of the 
 Lord, that for which provision is to be made 
 in the first place, is to set a good example as 
 a Christian man. Better labor for years stead- 
 ily, diligently, doing every day only what the 
 night's rest can repair, avoiding those cheating 
 stimulants that overtax Nature, and illustrating 
 the sayings of the pulpit by the daily life in 
 the family, than to pass life in exaltations and 
 depressions, resulting from overstrained labors, 
 supported by unnatural stimulus. 
 
 The same principles apply to hearers as to 
 preachers. Religious services must be judged 
 of like amusements, by their effect on the life. 
 If an • overdose of prayers, hymns, and sermons 
 leaves us tired, nervous, and cross, it is only 
 not quite as bad as an overdose of fashionable 
 folly. 
 
 It could be wished that in every neighbor- 
 hood the r e might be one or two calm, sweet, 
 
Irritability. 83 
 
 daily services which should morning and even- 
 ing: unite for a few solemn moments the hearts 
 of all 53 in one family, and feed with a constant, 
 unnoticed, daily supply the lamp of faith and 
 love. Such are some of the daily prayer-meet- 
 ings which for eight or ten years past have held 
 their even tenor in some of our New England 
 cities, and such the morning and evening ser- 
 vices which we are glad to see obtaining in the 
 Episcopal churches. Everything which brings 
 religion into habitual contact with life, and 
 makes it part of a healthy, cheerful average 
 living, we haihas a sign of a better day. Noth- 
 ing is so good for health as daily devotion. It 
 is the best soother of the nerves, the best an- 
 tidote to care ; and we trust erelong that all 
 Christian people will be of one mind in this, 
 and that neighborhoods will be families gather- 
 ing daily around one altar, praying not for 
 themselves merely, but for each other. 
 
 The conclusion of the whole matter is this * 
 Set apart some provision to make merry with 
 
84 Little Foxes. 
 
 at home, and guard that reserve as religiously 
 as the priests guarded the shew-bread in the 
 temple. However great you are, however good, 
 however wide the general interests that you 
 may control, you gain nothing by neglecting 
 home-duties. You must leave enough of your- 
 self to be able to bear and forbear, give and 
 forgive, and be a source of life and cheerfulness 
 around the hearthstone. The great sign given 
 by the Prophets of the coming of the Millen- 
 nium is, — what do you suppose ? — " He shall 
 turn the heart of the fathers to the children, 
 and the heart of the children to their fathers, 
 lest I come and smite the earth with a curse." 
 
 Thus much on avoiding unhealthy, irritable 
 states. 
 
 But it still remains that a large number of 
 people will be subject to them unavoidably for 
 these reasons. 
 
 First. The use of tobacco, alcohol, and other 
 kindred stimulants, for so many generations, 
 has vitiated the brain and nervous system of 
 
Irritability. 85 
 
 modern civilized races so that it is not what 
 it was in former times. Michelet treats of 
 this subject quite at large in some of his late 
 works ; and we have to face the fact of a gen- 
 eration born with an impaired nervous organiz- 
 ation, who will need constant care and wis- 
 dom to avoid unhealthy, morbid irritation. 
 
 There is a temperament called the hypo- 
 chondriac, to which many persons, some ot 
 them the brightest, the most interesting, the 
 most gifted, are born heirs, — a want of balance 
 of the nervous powers, which tends constantly 
 to periods of high excitement and of conse- 
 quent depression, — an unfortunate inheritance 
 for the possessor, though accompanied often 
 with the greatest talents. Sometimes, too, it 
 is the unfortunate lot of those who have not 
 talents, who bear its burdens and its anguish 
 without its rewards. 
 
 People of this temperament are subject to 
 fits of gloom and despondency, of nervous irri- 
 tability and suffering, which darken the aspecf 
 
86 Little Foxes. 
 
 of the whole world to them, which present 
 lying reports of their friends, of themselves, of 
 the circumstances of their life, and of all with 
 which they have to do. 
 
 Now the highest philosophy for persons thus 
 afflicted is to understand themselves and their 
 tendencies, to know that these fits of gloom 
 and depression are just as much a form of dis- 
 ease as a fever or a toothache, to know that it 
 is the peculiarity of the disease to fill the mind 
 with wretched illusions, to make them seem 
 miserable and unlovely to themselves, to make 
 their nearest friends seem unjust and unkind, 
 to make all events appear to be going wrong 
 and tending to destruction and ruin. 
 
 The evils and burdens of such a tempera- 
 ment are half removed when a man once knows 
 that he has it and recognizes it for a disease, 
 and when he does not trust himself to speak 
 and act in those bitter hours as if there were 
 any truth in what he thinks and feels and sees. 
 He who has not attained to this wisdom over 
 
Irritability. 87 
 
 •vhelms his friends and his family with the 
 waters of bitterness ; he stings with unjust ac- 
 cusations, and makes his fireside dreadful with 
 fancies which are real to him, but false as the 
 ravings of fever. 
 
 A sensible person, thus diseased, who has 
 found out what ails him, will shut his mouth 
 resolutely, not to give utterance to the dark 
 thoughts that infest his soul. 
 
 A lady of great brilliancy and wit, who was 
 subject to these periods, once said to me, "My 
 dear sir, there are times when I know I am 
 possessed of the Devil, and then I never let 
 myself speak." And so this wise woman carried 
 her burden about with her in a determined, 
 cheerful reticence, leaving always the impres- 
 sion of a cheery, kindly temper, when, if she 
 had spoken out a tithe of what she thought 
 and felt in her morbid hours, she would have 
 driven all her friends from her, and made others 
 as miserable as she was herself. She was a 
 sunbeam, a life-giving presence in every family, 
 
88 Little Foxes 
 
 by the power of self-knowledge and self-control 
 Such victories as this are the victories of real 
 saints. 
 
 But if the victim of these glooms is once 
 tempted to lift their heavy load by the use of 
 any stimulus whatever, he or she is a lost man 
 or woman. It is from this sad class more than 
 any other that the vast army of drunkards and 
 opium-eaters is recruited. Dr. Johnson, one of 
 the most brilliant examples of the hypochon- 
 driac temperament which literature affords, has 
 expressed a characteristic of the race, in what 
 he says of himself, that he could "practise absti- 
 nence but not temperance." Hypochondriacs 
 who begin to rely on stimulus, almost without 
 exception find this to be true. They cannot 
 they will not be moderate. Whatever stimu 
 lant they take for relief will create an uncon 
 trollable appetite, a burning passion. The tern 
 perament itself lies in the direction of insanity 
 It needs the most healthful, careful, even regi 
 men and management to keep it within the 
 
Irritability. 89 
 
 bounds of soundness ; but the introductiwi of 
 stimulants deepens its gloom with the shadows 
 of utter despair. 
 
 All parents, in the education of their chil- 
 dren, should look out for and understand the 
 signs of this temperament. It appears in earl) 
 childhood ; and a child inclined to fits of de 
 pression should be marked as a subject of the 
 most thoughtful, painstaking physical and moral 
 training. All over-excitement and stimulus 
 should be carefully avoided, whether in the 
 way of study, amusement, or diet. Judicious 
 education may do much to mitigate the una- 
 voidable pains and penalties of this most unde- 
 sirable inheritance. 
 
 The second class of persons who need wis- 
 dom in the control of their moods is that large 
 class whose unfortunate circumstances make it 
 impossible for them to avoid constantly over- 
 doing and overdrawing upon their nervous en- 
 ergies, and who therefore are always exhausted 
 and worn out. Poor souls, who *abor daily 
 
90 Little Foxes. 
 
 under a burden too heavy for them, and whose 
 fretfulness and impatience are looked upon with 
 sorrow, not anger, by pitying angels. Poor 
 mothers, with families of little children cling- 
 ing round them, and a baby that never lets 
 them sleep ; hard-working men, whose utmost 
 toil, day and night, scarcely keeps the wolf 
 from the door ; and all the hard-laboring, heavy- 
 laden, on whom the burdens of life press fai 
 beyond their strength. 
 
 There are but two things we know of for 
 these, — two only remedies for the irritation 
 that comes of these exhaustions ; the habit of 
 silence towards men, and of speech towards 
 God. The heart must utter itself or burst ; 
 but let it learn to commune constantly and 
 intimately with One always present and always 
 sympathizing. This is the great, the only safe- 
 guard against fretfulness and complaint. Thus 
 and thus only can peace spring out of confu- 
 sion, and the breaking chords of an overtaxed 
 rv?ture be strung anew to a celestial harmony 
 
Ill 
 
 REPRESSION. 
 
 AM going now to write on another cause 
 of family unhappiness, more subtile than 
 either of those before enumerated. 
 
 In the General Confession of the Church, we 
 poor mortals all unite in saying two things : 
 "We have left undone those things which we 
 ought to have done, and we have done those 
 things which we ought not to have done." 
 These two heads exhaust the subject of human 
 frailty. 
 
 It is the things left undone which we ought 
 to have done, the things left unsaid which we 
 ought to have said, that constitute the subject 
 I am now to treat of. 
 
 I remember my school-day speculations over 
 an old " Chemistry " I used to stud)' as a text- 
 book, which informed me that a substance 
 
q 2 Little Foxes. 
 
 called Caloric exists in all bodies. In some it 
 exists in a latent state : it is there, but it af- 
 fects neither the senses nor the thermometer. 
 Certain causes develop it, when it raises the 
 mercury and warms the hands. I remember 
 the awe and wonder with which, even then, I 
 reflected on the vast amount of blind, deaf, and 
 dumb comfort which Nature had thus stowed 
 away. How mysterious it seemed to me that 
 poor families every winter should be shivering, 
 freezing, and catching cold, when Nature had 
 all this latent caloric locked up in her store- 
 closet, — when it was all around them, in every- 
 thing they touched and handled ! 
 
 In the spiritual world there is an exact anal- 
 ogy to this. There is a great life-giving, warm- 
 ing power called Love, which exists in human 
 hearts dumb and unseen, but which has no 
 real life, no warming power, till set free by ex- 
 pression. 
 
 Did you ever, in a raw, chilly day, just be- 
 fore a snow-storm, sit at work in a room that 
 
Repression. 93 
 
 was judiciously warmed by an exact thermom- 
 eter ? You do not freeze, but you shiver ; your 
 fingers do not become numb with cold, but you 
 have all the while an uneasy craving for more 
 positive warmth. You look at the empty grate, 
 walk mechanically towards it, and, suddenly 
 •Awaking, shiver to see that there is nothing 
 there. You long for a shawl or cloak ; you 
 draw yourself within yourself; you consult the 
 thermometer, and are vexed to find that there 
 is nothing there to be complained of, — it is 
 standing most provokingly at the exact temper- 
 ature that all the good books and good doctors 
 pronounce to be the proper thing, — the golden 
 mean of health ; and yet perversely you shiver, 
 and feel as if the face of an open fire would be 
 to you as the smile of an angel. 
 
 Such a lifelong chill, such an habitual shiver, 
 is the lot of many natures, which are not warm, 
 when all ordinary rules tell them they ought to 
 be warm, — whose life is cold and barren and 
 meagre, — which never see the blaze of an open 
 fire. 
 
94 Little Foxes. 
 
 I will illustrate my meaning by a page out 
 of my own experience. 
 
 I was twenty-one when I stood as grooms- 
 man for my youngest and favorite sister Emily. 
 I remember her now as she stood at the altar, — 
 a pale, sweet, flowery face, in a half-shimmer 
 between smiles and tears, looking out of va- 
 pory clouds of gauze and curls and all the 
 vanishing mysteries of a bridal morning. 
 
 Everybody thought the marriage such a for- 
 tunate one ! — for her husband was handsome 
 and manly, a man of worth, of principle good 
 as gold and solid as adamant, — and Emmy 
 had always been such a flossy little kitten of 
 a pet, so full of all sorts of impulses, so sensi- 
 tive and nervous, we thought her kind, strong, 
 composed, stately husband made just on pur- 
 pose for her. " It was quite a Providence," 
 sighed all the elderly ladies, who sniffed ten- 
 derly, and wiped their eyes, according to ap- 
 proved custom, during the marriage ceremony. 
 
 I remember now the bustle of the day, — 
 
Repression. 95 
 
 the confused whirl of white gloves, kisses, bride- 
 maids, and bride-cakes, the losing of trunk- 
 keys and breaking of lacings, the tears of 
 mamma — God bless her! — and the jokes of 
 irreverent Christopher, who could, for the life 
 of him, see nothing so very dismal in the 
 whole phantasmagoria, and only wished he were 
 as well off himself. 
 
 And so Emmy was whirled away from us 
 on the bridal tour, when her letters came back 
 to us almost every day, just like herself, merry, 
 frisky little bits of scratches, — as full of little 
 nonsense-beads as a glass of Champagne, and 
 all ending with telling us how perfect he was, 
 and how good, and how well he took care of 
 her, and how happy, etc., etc. 
 
 Then came letters from her new home. His 
 house was not yet built ; but while it was 
 building, they were to live with his mother, who 
 was " such a good woman," and his sisters, who 
 were also "such nice women." 
 
 But somehow, after this, a change came over 
 
g6 Little Foxes. 
 
 Emmy's letters. They grew shorter ; they 
 seemed measured in their words ; and in place 
 of sparkling nonsense and bubbling outbursts 
 of glee, came anxiously worded praises of her 
 situation and surroundings, evidently written 
 for the sake of arguing herself into the belief 
 that she was extremely happy. 
 
 John*, of course, was not as much with her 
 now : he had his business to attend to, which 
 took him away all day, and at night he was 
 very tired. Still he was very good and thought- 
 ful of her, and how thankful she ought to be ! 
 And his mother was very good indeed, and did 
 all for her that she could reasonably expect, — 
 of course she could not be like her own mam- 
 ma ; and Mary and Jane were very kind, — 
 " in their way," she wrote, but scratched it out, 
 and wrote over it, " very kind indeed." They 
 were the best people in the world, — a great 
 deal better than she was ; and she should try 
 to learn a great deal from them. 
 
 " Poor little Em ! " I said to myself, " I am 
 
Repression. 97 
 
 afraid these very nice people are slowly freez- 
 ing and starving her." And so, as I was going 
 up into the mountains for a summei tour, I 
 thought I would accept some of John's many 
 invitations and stop a day or two with them on 
 my way, and see how matters stood. John had 
 been known among us in college as a taciturn 
 fellow, but good as gold. I had gained his 
 friendship by a regular siege, carrying parallel 
 after parallel, till, when I came into the fort at 
 last, I found the treasures worth taking. 
 
 I had little difficulty in finding Squire Evans's 
 house. It was the house of the village, — a 
 true, model, New England house, — a square, 
 roomy, old-fashioned mansion, which stood on a 
 hillside, under a group of great, breezy old 
 elms, whose wide, wind-swung arms arched over 
 it like a leafy firmament. Under this bower 
 the substantial white house, with all its window- 
 blinds closed, with its neat white fences all 
 tight and trim, stood in its faultless green turfy 
 yard, a perfect Pharisee among houses. It 
 
98 Little Foxes. 
 
 looked like a house, all finished, done, com- 
 pleted, labelled, and set on a shelf for preserva- 
 tion ; but, as is usual with this kind of edifice 
 in our dear New England, it had not the slight- 
 est appearance of being lived in, not a door or 
 window open, not a wink or blink of life ; the 
 only suspicion of human habitation was the thin, 
 pale-blue smoke from the kitchen-chimney. 
 
 And now for the people in the house. 
 
 In making a New England visit in winter, 
 was it ever your fortune to be put to sleep in 
 the glacial spare-chamber, that .had been kept 
 from time immemorial as a refrigerator for 
 guests, — that room which no ray of daily sun- 
 shine and daily living ever warms, whose blinds 
 are closed the whole year round, whose fire- 
 place knows only the complimentary blaze 
 which is kindled a few moments before bed- 
 time in an atmosphere where you can see your 
 breath ? Do you remember the process of get- 
 ting warm in a bed of most faultless material, 
 with linen sheets and pillow-cases, slippery and 
 
Repression. 99 
 
 cold as ice ? You did get warm at last, but you 
 warmed your bed by giving out all the heat of 
 your own body. 
 
 Such are some families where you visit 
 They are of the very best quality, like your 
 sheets, but so cold that it takes all the vitality 
 you have to get them warmed up to the talk- 
 ing-point. You think, the first hour aftei your 
 arrival, that they must have heard some report 
 to your disadvantage, or that you misunder- 
 stood your letter of invitation, or that you came 
 on the wrong day ; but no, you find in due 
 course that you were invited, you were ex- 
 pected, and they are doing for you the best 
 they know how, and treating you as they sup- 
 pose a guest ought to be treated. 
 
 If you are a warm-hearted, jovial fellow, and 
 go on feeling your way discreetly, you gradually 
 thaw quite a little place round yourself in the 
 domestic circle, till, by the time you are ready 
 to leave, you really begin to think it is agree- 
 able to .stay, and resolve that you will come 
 
ioo Little Foxes. 
 
 again. They are nice people ; they like jiou ; 
 at last you have got to feeling at home with 
 them 
 
 Three months after, you go to see them 
 again, when, lo ! there you are, back again just 
 where you were at first. The little spot which 
 you had thawed out is frozen over again, and 
 again you spend all your visit in thawing it 
 and getting your hosts limbered and in a state 
 for comfortable converse. 
 
 The first evening that I spent in the wide, 
 roomy front-parlor, with Judge Evans, his wife, 
 and daughters, fully accounted for the change 
 in Emmy's letters. Rooms, I verily believe, 
 get saturated with the aroma of their spiritual 
 atmosphere ; and there are some so stately, so 
 correct, that they would paralyze even the 
 friskiest kitten or the most impudent Scotch 
 terrier. At a glance, you perceive, on enter- 
 ing, that nothing but correct deportment, an 
 erect posture, and strictly didactic conversa* 
 tion is possible there. 
 
Repression. 101 
 
 The family, in fact, were all eminently didac- 
 tic, bent on improvement, laboriously useful. 
 Not a good work or charitable enterprise could 
 put forth its head in the neighborhood, of which 
 they were not the support and life. Judge 
 Evans was the stay and staff of the village 
 
 and township of ; he bore up the pillars 
 
 thereof. Mrs. Evans was known in the gates 
 for all the properties and deeds of the virtu- 
 ous woman, as set forth by Solomon ; the heart 
 of her husband did safely trust in her. But 
 when I saw them, that evening, sitting, in 
 erect propriety, in their respective corners each 
 side of the great, stately fireplace, with its tall, 
 glistening brass andirons, its mantel adorned 
 at either end with plated candlesticks, with 
 the snuffer-tray in the middle, — she so col- 
 lectedly measuring her words, talking in all 
 those well-worn grooves of correct conversa- 
 tion which are designed, as the phrase goes, 
 to "entertain strangers," and the Misses Ev- 
 ans, in the best of grammar and rhetoric;, s~ T 
 
T02 • Little Foxes. 
 
 in most proper time and way possible, show- 
 ing themselves for what they were, most high- 
 principled, well-informed, intelligent women, — 
 I set myself to speculate on the cause of the 
 extraordinary sensation of stiffness and restraint 
 which pervaded me, as if I had been dipped 
 in some petrifying spring and was beginning 
 to feel myself slightly crusting over on the 
 exterior. 
 
 This kind of conversation is such as admits 
 quite easily of one's carrying on another course 
 of thought within ; and so, as I found myself 
 like a machine, striking in now and then in 
 good time and tune, I looked at Judge Evans, 
 sitting there so serene, self-poised, and cold, 
 and began to wonder if he had ever been a 
 boy, a young man, — if Mrs. Evans ever was a 
 girl, — if he was ever in love with her, and 
 what he did when he was. 
 
 I thought of the lock of Emmy's hair which 
 I had observed in John's writing-desk in days 
 when ne was falling in love with her, — of sun 
 
Repression. 103 
 
 dry little movements in which at awkward mo- 
 ments I had detected my grave and serious 
 gentleman when I had stumbled accidentally 
 upon the pair in moonlight strolls or retired 
 corners, — and wondered whether the models 
 of propriety before me had ever been convicted 
 of any such human weaknesses. Now, to be 
 sure, I could as soon imagine the stately tongs 
 to walk up and kiss the shovel as conceive of 
 any such bygone effusion in those dignified in- 
 dividuals. But how did they get acquainted ? 
 how came they ever to be married ? 
 
 I looked at John, and thought I saw him 
 gradually stiffening and subsiding into the very 
 image of his father. As near as a young fel- 
 low of twenty-five can resemble an old one of 
 sixty-two, he was growing to be exactly like 
 him, with the same upright carriage, the same 
 silence and reserve. Then I looked at Emmy: 
 she, too, was changed, — she, the wild little 
 pet, all of whose pretty individualities were 
 dear to us, — that little unpunctuated scrap of 
 
104 Little Foxes. 
 
 life's poetry, full of little exceptions leferable 
 to no exact rule, only to be tolerated under 
 the wide score of poetic license. Now, as she 
 sat between the two Misses Evans, I thought 
 I could detect a bored, anxious expression on 
 her little mobile face, — an involuntary watch- 
 fulness and self-consciousness, as if she were 
 trying to be good on some quite new pattern. 
 She seemed nervous about some of my jokes, 
 and her eye went apprehensively to her mother- 
 in-law in the corner ; she tried hard to laugh 
 and make things go merrily for me ; she seemed 
 sometimes to look an apology for me to them, 
 and then again for them to me. For myself, 
 I felt that perverse inclination to shock people 
 which sometimes comes over one in such situ- 
 ations. I had a great mind to draw Emmy 
 on to my knee and commence a brotherly romp 
 with her, to give John a thump on his very 
 upright back, and to propose to one of the 
 Misses Evans to strike up a waltz, and get 
 the parlor into a general whirl, before the very 
 
Repression. 105 
 
 face and eyes of propriety in the corner: but 
 "the spirits" were too strong for me ; I could n't 
 
 do it. 
 
 I remembered the innocent, saucy freedom 
 with which Emmy used to treat her John in 
 the days of their engagement, — the little ways, 
 half loving, half mischievous, in which she 
 alternately petted and domineered over him. 
 Now she called him " Mr. Evans," with an anx- 
 ious affectation of matronly gravity. Had they 
 been lecturing her into these conjugal proprie- 
 ties ? Probably not. I felt sure, by what I 
 now experienced in myself, that, were I to live 
 in that family one week, all deviations from 
 the one accepted pattern of propriety would 
 fall off, like many-colored sumach-leaves after 
 the first hard frost. I began to feel myself 
 slowly stiffening, my courage getting gently 
 chilly. I tried to tell a story, but had to 
 mangle it greatly, because I felt in the air 
 around me that parts of it were too vernacu- 
 lar and emphatic ; and then, as a man who 
 5* 
 
106 Little Foxes. 
 
 is freezing makes desperate efforts to throw 
 off the spell, and finds his brain beginning to 
 turn, so I was beginning to be slightly insane, 
 and was haunted with a desire to say some 
 horribly improper or wicked thing which should 
 start them all out of their chairs. Though 
 never given to profane expressions, I perfectly 
 hankered to let out a certain round, unvar- 
 nished, wicked word, which I knew would cre- 
 ate a tremendous commotion on the surface of 
 this enchanted mill-pond, — in fact, I was so 
 afraid that I should make some such mad dem- 
 onstration, that I rose at an early hour and 
 begged leave to retire. Emmy sprang up with 
 apparent relief, and offered to get my candle 
 and marshal me to my room. 
 
 When she had ushered me into the chilly 
 hospitality of that stately apartment, she 
 seemed suddenly disenchanted. She set down 
 the candle, ran to me, fell on my neck, nestled 
 her little head under my coat, laughing and 
 crying, and calling me her dear old boy ; she 
 
Repression. 107 
 
 pulled my whiskers, pinched my ear, rum- 
 maged my pockets, danced round me in a 
 sort of wild joy, stunning me with a volley 
 of questions, without stopping to hear the an- 
 swer to one of them ; in short, the wild little 
 elf of old days seemed suddenly to come back 
 to me, as I sat down and drew her on to my 
 knee. 
 
 " It does look so like home to see you, Chris ! 
 — dear, dear home ! — and the dear old folks ! 
 There never, never was such a home ! — every- 
 body there did just what they wanted to, did n't 
 they, Chris ? — and we love each other, don't 
 we ? " 
 
 "Emmy," said I, suddenly, and very improp- 
 erly, "you are n't happy here." 
 
 " Not happy ? " she said, with a half-fright- 
 ened look, — " what makes you say so ? O, 
 you are mistaken. I have everything to make 
 me happy. I should be very unreasonable and 
 wicked, if I were not. I am very, very happy, 
 I assure you* Of course, you know, everybody 
 
io8 Little Foxes. 
 
 can't be like our folks at home. That I should 
 not expect, you know, — people's ways are dif- 
 ferent, — but then, when you know people are 
 so good, and all that, why, of course you must 
 be thankful, be happy. It's better for me to 
 learn to control my feelings, you know, and 
 not give way to impulses. They are all so 
 good here, they never give way to their feel- 
 ings, — they always do right. O, they are quite 
 wonderful ! " 
 
 " And agreeable ? " said I. 
 
 " O Chris, we must n't think so much of 
 that. They certainly are n't pleasant and easy, 
 as people at home are ; but they are never 
 cross, they never scold, they always are good. 
 And we ought n't to think so much of living 
 to be happy ; we ought to think more of doing 
 right, doing our duty, don't you think so ? " 
 
 " All undeniable truth, Emmy ; but, for all 
 that, John seems stiff as a ramrod, and their 
 front-parlor is like a tomb. You must n't let 
 them petrify him." 
 
Repression. 109 
 
 Her face clouded over a little. 
 
 "John is different here from what he was at 
 our house. He has been brought up differ- 
 ently, — O, entirely differently from what we 
 were ; and when he comes back into the old 
 house, the old business, and the old place be- 
 tween his father and mother and sisters, he 
 goes back into the old ways. He loves me all 
 the same, but he does not show it in the same 
 ways, and I must learn, you know, to take it 
 on trust. He is very busy, — works hard all 
 day, and all for me ; and mother says women 
 are unreasonable that ask any other proof of 
 love from their husbands than what they give 
 by working for them all the time. She never 
 lectures me, but I know she thought I was a 
 silly little petted child, and she told me one day 
 how she brought up John. She never petted 
 him ; she put him away alone to sleep, from 
 the time he was six months old ; she never fed 
 him out of his regular hours when he was a 
 baby, no matter how much he cried ; she never 
 
no Little Foxes. 
 
 let him talk baby-talk, or have any baby-talk 
 talked to him, but was very careful to make 
 him speak all his words plain from the very 
 first ; she never encouraged him to express his 
 love by kisses or caresses, but taught him that 
 the only proof of love was exact obedience. I 
 remember John's telling me of his running to 
 her once and hugging her round the neck, 
 when he had come in without wiping his shoes, 
 and she took off his arms and said : ' My son, 
 this is n't the best way to show love. ■ I should 
 be much better pleased to have you come in 
 quietly and wipe your shoes than to come and 
 kiss me when you forget to do what I say.'" 
 
 "Dreadful old jade!" said I, irreverently, be- 
 ing then only twenty-three. 
 
 " Now, Chris, I won't have anything to say 
 to you, if this is the way you are going to 
 talk," said Emily, pouting, though a mischievous 
 gleam darted into her eyes. " Really, however, 
 I think she carried things too far, though she is 
 so good. I only said it to excuse John, and 
 show how he was brought up. ' 
 
Repression. 1 1 1 
 
 " Poor fellow ! " said I. " I know now why 
 he is so hopelessly shut up, and walled up. 
 Never a warmer heart than he keeps stowed 
 away there inside of the fortress, with the 
 drawbridge down and moat all round." 
 
 " They are all warm-hearted inside," said 
 Emily. " Would you think she did n't love 
 him ? Once when he was sick, she watched 
 with him seventeen nights without taking off 
 her clothes ; she scarcely • would eat all the 
 time : Jane told me so. She loves him better 
 than she loves herself. It 's perfectly dreadful 
 sometimes to see how intense she is when any- 
 thing concerns him ; it 's her principle that 
 makes her so cold and quiet." 
 
 " And a devilish one it is ! " said I. 
 
 " Chris, you are really growing wicked ! " 
 
 " I use the word seriously, and in good faith," 
 said I. " Who but the Father of Evil ever 
 devised such plans for making goodness hate- 
 ful, and keeping the most heavenly part of our 
 nature so under lock and key that for the 
 
1 1 2 Little Foxes. 
 
 greater part of our lives we get no use of it ? 
 Of what benefit is a mine of love burning where 
 it warms nobody, does nothing but blister the 
 soul within with its imprisoned heat ? Love re- 
 pressed grows morbid, acts in a thousand per- 
 verse ways. These three women, I '11 venture 
 to say, are living in the family here like three 
 frozen islands, knowing as little of each other's 
 inner life as if parted by eternal barriers of 
 ice, — and all because a cursed principle in the 
 heart of the mother has made her bring them 
 up in violence to Nature." 
 
 "Well," said Emmy, "sometimes I do pity 
 Jane ; she is nearest my age, and, naturally, I 
 think she was something like me, or might 
 have been. The other day I remember hei 
 coming in looking so flushed and ill that ] 
 could n't help asking if she were unwell. The 
 tears came into her eyes ; but her mothei 
 looked up, ;n her cool, business-like way, and 
 said, in her dry voice, — 
 
 " ' Jane, what 's the matter ? ' 
 
Repression 113 
 
 " ' O, my head aches dreadfully, and I have 
 pains in all my limbs ! ' 
 
 "I wanted to jump and run to do something 
 tor her, — you know at our house we feel that 
 a sick person must be waited on, — but her 
 mother only said, in the same dry way, — 
 
 " ' Well, Jane, you 've probably got a cold ; 
 go into the kitchen and make yourself some 
 good boneset tea, soak your feet in hot water, 
 and go to bed at once ' ; and Jane meekly de- 
 parted. 
 
 " I wanted to spring and do these things for 
 her ; but it 's curious, in this house I never 
 dare offer to do anything ; and mother looked 
 at me, as she went out, with a significant 
 nod, — 
 
 " ' That 's always my way ; if any of the chil- 
 dren are sick, I never coddle them ; it 's best 
 to teach them to make as light of it as pos- 
 sible.' " 
 
 "Dreadful!" said I. 
 
 "Yes, it is dreadful," said Emmy, drawing 
 
 H 
 
U4 Little Foxes. 
 
 her breath, as if relieved that she might speak 
 her mind ; " it 's dreadful to see these people, 
 who I know love each other, living side by 
 side and never saying a loving, tender word, 
 never doing a little loving thing, — sick ones 
 crawling off alone like sick animals, persisting 
 in being alone, bearing everything alone. But 
 I won't let them ; I will insist on forcing my 
 way into the ,#r rooms. I would go and sit with 
 Jane, and pet her and hold her hand and 
 bathe her head, though I knew it made her 
 horridly uncomfortable at first ; but I thought 
 she ought to learn to be petted in a Christian 
 way, when she was sick. I will kiss her too, 
 sometimes, though she takes it just like a cat 
 that is n't used to being stroked, and calls me 
 a silly girl ; but I know she is getting to like 
 it. What is the use of people's loving each 
 other in this horridly cold, stingy, silent way ? 
 If one of them were dangerously ill now, or 
 met with any serious accident, I know there 
 would be no end to what the others would do 
 
Repression. 115 
 
 for her ; if one of them were to die, the others 
 would be perfectly crushed : but it would all 
 go inward, — drop silently down into that dark, 
 cold, frozen well ; they could n't speak to each 
 other ; they could n't comfort each other ; they 
 have lost the power of expression ; they abso- 
 lutely carit." 
 
 " Yes," said I, " they are like the fakirs who 
 have held up an arm till it has become stiffened, 
 — they cannot now change its position ; like 
 the poor mutes, who, being deaf, have become 
 dumb through disuse of the organs of speech. 
 Their education has been like those iron suits 
 of armor into which little boys were put in the 
 Middle Ages, solid, inflexible, put on in child- 
 hood, enlarged with every year's growth, till the 
 warm human frame fitted the mould as if it 
 had been melted and poured into it. A per- 
 son educated in this way is hopelessly crippled, 
 never will be what he might have been." 
 
 " O, don't say that, Chris ; think of John ; 
 think how good he is." 
 
Ii6 Little Foxes 
 
 " I do think how good he is," — with indig- 
 nation, — " and how few know it, too. I think, 
 that, with the tenderest, truest, gentlest heart, 
 the utmost appreciation of human friendship, 
 he has passed in the world for a cold, proud, 
 selfish man. If your frank, impulsive, incisive 
 nature had not unlocked gates and opened 
 doors, he would never have known the love of 
 woman : and now he is but half disenchanted ; 
 he every day tends to go back to stone." 
 
 " But I sha'n't let him ; O, indeed, I know 
 the danger ! I shall bring him out. I shall 
 work on them all. I know they are beginning 
 to love me a good deal : in the first place, be- 
 cause I belong to John, and everything be- 
 longing to him is perfect ; and in the second 
 place t— " 
 
 "In the second place, because they expect 
 to weave, day after day, the fine cobweb lines 
 of their cold system of repression around you, 
 which will harden and harden, and tighten and 
 tighten, till you are as stiff and shrouded as 
 
Repression. f 17 
 
 any of them. You remind me of our poor 
 little duck : don't you remember him ? " 
 
 " Yes, poor fellow ! how he would stay out, 
 and swim round and round, while the pond 
 kept freezing and freezing, and his swimming- 
 place grew smaller and smaller every day ; but 
 he was such a plucky little fellow that — " 
 
 "That at last we found him one morning 
 frozen tight in, and he has limped ever since 
 on his poor feet." 
 
 "O, but I won't freeze in," she said, laugh- 
 ing. 
 
 " Take care, Emmy ! You are sensitive, ap- 
 probative, delicately organized ; your whole na- 
 ture inclines you to give way and yield to the 
 nature of those around you. One little lone 
 duck such as you, however warm-blooded, light- 
 hearted, cannot keep a whole pond from freez- 
 ing. While you have any influence, you must 
 use it all to get John away from these sur- 
 roundings, where you can have him to your- 
 self." 
 
n8 Little Foxes. 
 
 " O, you know we are building our house ; 
 we shall go to housekeeping soon." 
 
 " Where ? Close by, under the very guns of 
 this fortress, where all your housekeeping, all 
 your little management, will be subject to daily 
 inspection." 
 
 "But mamma never interferes, never advis- 
 es, — unless I ask advice." 
 
 " No, but she influences ; she lives, she looks, 
 she is there ; and while she is there, and while 
 your home is within a stone's throw, the old 
 spell will be on your husband, on your chil- 
 dren, if you have any ; you will feel it in the 
 air ; it will constrain, it will sway you, it will 
 rule your house, it will bring up your children." 
 
 O no ! never ! never ! I never could ! I 
 never will ! If God should give me a dear 
 little child, I will not let it grow up in these 
 hateful ways ! " 
 
 "Then, Emmy, there will be a constant, still, 
 undefined, but real friction of your life-power 
 from the silent grating of your wishes and feel- 
 
Repression. . 119 
 
 tngs on the cold, positive millstone of their 
 opinion ; it will be a life-battle with a quiet, 
 invisible, pervading spirit, who will never show 
 himself in fair fight, but who will be around 
 you in the very air you breathe, at your pil- 
 low when you lie down and when you rise. 
 There is so much in these friends of yours 
 noble, wise, severely good, — their aims are so 
 high, their efficiency so great, their virtues so 
 many, — that they will act upon you with the 
 force of a conscience, subduing, drawing, insen- 
 sibly constraining you into their moulds. They 
 have stronger wills, stronger natures than 
 yours ; and between the two forces of your 
 own nature and theirs you will be always 
 oscillating, so that you will never show what 
 you can do, working either in your own way 
 or yet in theirs : your life will be a failure." 
 " O Chris, why do you discourage me ? " 
 " I am trying tonic treatment, Emily ; I am 
 showing you a real danger; I am rousing you 
 to flee from it. John is making money fast ; 
 
120 Little Foxes. 
 
 there is no reason why he should always re- 
 main buried in this town. Use your influence 
 as they do, — daily, hourly, constantly, — to 
 predispose him to take you to another sphere. 
 Do not always shrink and yield ; do not con- 
 ceal and assimilate and endeavor to persuade 
 him and yourself that you are happy ; do not 
 put the very best face to him on it all ; do not 
 tolerate his relapses daily and hourly into his 
 habitual, cold, inexpressive manner ; and don't 
 lay aside your own little impulsive, outspoken 
 ways. Respect your own nature, and assert 
 it ; woo him, argue with him ; use all a wo- 
 man's weapons to keep him from falling back 
 into the old Castle Doubting where he lived 
 till you let him out. Dispute your mother's 
 hateful dogma, that love is to be taken for 
 granted without daily proof between lovers ; 
 cry down latent caloric in the market ; insist 
 that the mere fact of being a wife is not 
 enough, — that the words spoken once, years 
 ago, are not enough, — that love needs new 
 
Repression. 121 
 
 leaves every summer of life, as much as youi 
 elm-trees, and 'new branches to grow broader 
 and wider, and new flowers at the root to 
 cover the ground." 
 
 " O, but I have heard that there is no surer 
 way to lose love than to be exacting, and that 
 it never comes for a woman's reproaches." 
 
 "All true as Gospel, Emmy. I am not 
 speaking of reproaches, or of unreasonable 
 self-assertion, or of ill-temper, — you could not 
 use any of these forces, if you would, you poor 
 little chick! I am speaking now of the high- 
 est duty we owe our friends, the noblest, the 
 most sacred, — that of keeping their own noble- 
 ness, goodness, pure and incorrupt. Thought- 
 less, instinctive, unreasoning love and self-sac- 
 rifice, such as many women long to bestow on 
 husband and children, soil and lower the very 
 objects of their love. You may grow saintly 
 by self-sacrifice ; but do your husband and chil- 
 dren grow saintly by accepting it without re- 
 turn ? I have seen a verse which says, — 
 
 6 
 
122 L ittle Foxes. 
 
 1 They who kneel at woman's shrine 
 "Breathe on it as they bow.' 
 
 Is not this true of all unreasoning love and 
 self-devotion ? If we let our friend become 
 cold and selfish and exacting without a remon- 
 strance, we are no true lover, no true friend. 
 Any good man soon learns to discriminate be- 
 tween the remonstrance that comes from a wo- 
 man's love to his soul, her concern for his 
 honor, her anxiety for his moral development, 
 and the pettish cry which comes from her own 
 personal wants. It will be your own fault, if, 
 for lack of anything you can do, your husband 
 relapses into these cold, undemonstrative hab- 
 its which have robbed his life of so much 
 beauty and enjoyment. These dead, barren 
 ways of living are as unchristian as they are 
 disagreeable ; and you, as a good little Chris 
 tian sworn to fight heroically under Christ's 
 banner, must make headway against this sort 
 of family Antichrist, though it comes with a 
 show of superior sanctity x and self-sacrifice , 
 
Repression. 123 
 
 Remember, dear, that the Master's family had 
 its outward tokens of love as well as its in- 
 ward life. The beloved leaned on His bosom ; 
 and the traitor could not have had a sign for 
 his treachery, had there not been a daily kiss 
 at meeting' and parting with His children." 
 
 " I am glad you have said all this," said Em- 
 ily, "because now I feel stronger for it. It 
 does not now seem so selfish for me to want 
 what it is better for John to give. Yes, I must 
 seek what will be best for him." 
 
 And so the little one, put on the track of 
 self-sacrifice, began to see her way clearer, as 
 many little women of her sort do. Make them 
 look on self-assertion as one form of martyr- 
 dom, and they will come into it. 
 
 But, for all my eloquence on this evening, 
 the house was built in the selfsame spot as 
 projected ; and the family life went on, under 
 the shadow of Judge Evans's elms, much as if 
 I had no" spoken. Emmy became mother of 
 two fine ovely boys, and waxed dimmer and 
 
124 Little Foxes. 
 
 fainter ; while with her physical decay came 
 increasing need of the rule in the household 
 of mamma and sisters, who took her up ener- 
 getically on eagles' wings, and kept her house, 
 and managed her children : for what can be 
 done when a woman hovers half her time be- 
 tween life and death ? 
 
 At last I spoke out to John, that the climate 
 and atmosphere were too severe for her who 
 had become so dear to him, — to them all ; and 
 then they consented that the change much 
 talked of and urged, but always opposed by 
 the parents, should be made. 
 
 John bought a pretty cottage in our neigh- 
 borhood, and brought his wife and boys ; and 
 the effect of change of moral atmosphere veri- 
 fied all my predictions. In a year we had oui 
 own blooming, joyous, impulsive little Emily 
 once more, — full of life, full of cheer, full of 
 energy, — looking to the ways of her house- 
 hold, — the merry companion of her growing 
 boys, — the blithe empress over her husband, 
 
Repression. 125 
 
 who took to her genial sway as in the old 
 happy days of courtship. The nightmare was 
 past, and John was as joyous as any of us in 
 his freedom. As Emmy said, he was turned 
 right side out for life ; and we all admired the 
 pattern. And that is the end of my story. 
 
 And now for the moral, — and that is, that 
 life consists of two parts, — Expression and Re- 
 pression, — each of which has its solemn du- 
 ties. To love, joy, hope, faith, pity, belongs 
 the duty of expression: to anger, envy, malice, 
 revenge, and all uncharitableness, belongs the 
 ' duty of repression. 
 
 Some very religious and moral people err 
 by applying repression to both classes alike. 
 They repress equally the expression of love 
 and of hatred, of pity and of anger. Such 
 forget one great law, as true in the moral 
 world as in the physical, — that repression les- 
 sens and deadens. Twice or thrice mowing 
 will kill off the sturdiest crop of weeds ; the 
 roots die for want of expression. A compr~~ • 
 
126 Little Foxes. 
 
 on a limb will stop its growing ; the surgeon 
 knows this, and puts a tight bandage around 
 a tumor ; but what if we put a tight bandage 
 about the heart and lungs, as some young 
 ladies of my acquaintance do, — or bandage 
 the feet, as they do in China ? And what if 
 we bandage a nobler inner faculty, and wrap 
 love in grave-clothes ? 
 
 But again there are others, and their num- 
 ber is legion, — perhaps you and I, reader, may 
 know something of it in ourselves, — who have 
 an instinctive habit of repression in regard to 
 all that is noblest and highest within them, 
 which they do not feel in their lower and 
 more unworthy nature. 
 
 It comes far easier to scold our friend in an 
 angry moment than to say how much we love, 
 honor, and esteem him in a kindly mood. 
 Wrath and bitterness speak themselves and go 
 with their own force ; love is shame-faced, looks 
 shyly out of the window, lingers long at the 
 tW>r-latch. 
 
Repression. 127 
 
 How much freer utterance among many good 
 Christians have anger, contempt, and censori- 
 ousness, than tenderness and love ! / hate is 
 Si d loud and with all our force. / love is said 
 wLh a hesitating voice and blushing cheek. 
 
 Iu an angry mood we do an injury to a 
 lovrn^ heart with good, strong, free emphasis ; 
 but w.» stammer and hang back when our 
 diviner nature tells us to confess and ask par- 
 don. £ven when our heart is broken with 
 repentance, we haggle and linger long before 
 we can 
 
 " Throw away the worser part of it" 
 
 How many live a stingy and niggardly life 
 in regard to their richest inward treasures ! 
 They livv with those they love dearly, whom 
 a few mo / words and deeds expressive of this 
 love would make so much happier, richer, and 
 better ; and v .hey cannot, will not, turn the key 
 and give it out. People who in their very 
 souls really d < love, esteem, reverence, almost 
 worship eacl »ther, live a barrm, chilly life 
 
128 Little Foxes. 
 
 side by side, busy, anxious, preoccupied, letting 
 their love go by as a matter of course, a last 
 year's growth, with no present buds and blos- 
 soms. 
 
 Are there not sons and daughters who have 
 parents living with them as angels unawares, — 
 husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, in 
 whom the material for a beautiful life lies 
 locked away in unfruitful silence, — who give 
 time to everything but the cultivation and ex- 
 pression of mutual love ? 
 
 The time is coming, they think, in some far 
 
 future, when they shall find leisure to enjoy 
 each other, to stop and rest side by side, to 
 
 discover to each other these hidden treasures 
 
 which lie idle and unused. 
 
 Alas ! time flies and death steals on, and 
 we reiterate the complaint of one in Scrip- 
 ture, — "It came to pass, while thy servant 
 was busy hither and thither, the man was 
 gone." 
 
 The bitterest tears shed over graves are for 
 
Repression. 1 29 
 
 words left unsaid and deeds left undone. " She 
 never knew how I loved her." " He never 
 knew what he was to me." "I always meant 
 to make more of our friendship." " I did not 
 know what he was to me till he was gone." 
 Such words are the poisoned arrows which 
 cruel Death shoots backward at us from the 
 door of the sepulchre. 
 
 How much more we might make of our fam- 
 ily life, of our friendships, if every secret 
 thought of love blossomed into a deed ! We 
 are not now speaking merely of personal ca- 
 resses. These may or may not be the best 
 language of affection. Many are endowed with 
 a delicacy, a fastidiousness of physical organi- 
 zation, which shrinks away from too much of 
 these, repelled and overpowered. But there 
 are words and looks and little observances, 
 thoughtfulnesses, watchful little attentions, which 
 speak of love, which make it manifest, and there 
 is scarce a family that might not be richer in 
 heart-wealth for more oi them. 
 
 6* 1 
 
130 L ittle Foxes. 
 
 It is a mistake to suppose that relations 
 must of course love each other because they 
 are relations. Love must be cultivated, and 
 can be increased by judicious culture, as wild 
 fruits may double their bearing under the hand 
 of a gardener ; and love can dwindle and die 
 out by neglect, as choice flower-seeds planted 
 in poor soil dwindle and grow single. 
 
 Two causes in our Anglo-Saxon nature pre- 
 vent this easy faculty and flow of expression 
 which strike one so pleasantly in the Italian 
 or the French life : the dread of flattery, and 
 a constitutional shyness. 
 
 "I perfectly longed to tell So-and-so how I 
 admired her,- the other day," says Miss X. 
 
 " And why in the world did n't you tell 
 her?" 
 
 "O, it would seem like flattery, you know." 
 
 Now what is flattery ? 
 
 Flattery is insincere praise given from inter- 
 ested motives, not the sincere utterance to a 
 friend of what we deem good and lovely in 
 him. 
 
Repression 1 3 1 
 
 And so, for lear of flattering, these dread- 
 fully sincere poople go on side by side with 
 those they love and admire, giving them all 
 the time the impression of utter indifference. 
 Parents are so afraid of exciting pride and 
 vanity in their children by the expression of 
 their love and approbation, that a child some- 
 times goes sad and discouraged by their side, 
 and learns with surprise, in some chance way, 
 that they are proud and fond of him. There 
 are times when the open expression of a fa- 
 ther's love would be worth more than church 
 or sermon to a boy ; and his father cannot 
 utter it, will not show it. 
 
 The other thing that represses the utterances 
 of love is the characteristic shyness of the An- 
 glo-Saxon blood. Oddly enough, a race born 
 of two demonstrative, out-spoken, nations — 
 the German and the French — has an habit- 
 ual reserve that is like neither. There is a 
 powerlessness of utterance in our blood that 
 we should fight against, and struggle outward 
 
132 ■ Little Foxes. 
 
 towards expression. We can educate ourselves 
 to it, if we know and feel the necessity ; we 
 can make it a Christian duty, not only to love, 
 but to be loving, — not only to be true friends, 
 but to show ourselves friendly. We can make 
 ourselves say the kind things that rise in our 
 hearts and tremble back on our lips, — do the 
 gentle and helpful deeds which we long to do 
 and shrink back from ; and, little by little, it 
 will grow easier, — the love spoken will bring 
 back the answer of love, — the kind deed will 
 bring back a kind deed in return, — till the 
 hearts in the family-circle, instead of being so 
 many frozen, icy islands, shall be full of warm 
 airs and echoing bird-voices answering back 
 and forth with a constant melody of love. 
 
IV. 
 
 PERSISTENCE. 
 
 TV /T Y little foxes are interesting little beasts; 
 and I only hope my reader will not get 
 tired of my charming menagerie before I have 
 done showing him their nice points. He must 
 recollect there are seven of them, and as yet 
 we have shown up only three ; so let him have 
 patience. 
 
 As before stated, little foxes are the little pet 
 sins of us educated good Christians, who hope 
 that we are above and far out of sight of steal- 
 ing, lying, and those other gross evils against 
 which we pray every Sunday, when the Ten 
 Commandments are read. They are not gen- 
 erally considered of dignity enough to be fired 
 at from the pulpit ; they seem to us too trifling 
 to be remembered in church ; they are like the 
 red spiders on plants, — too small for the per- 
 
134 L ittfe Foxes. 
 
 i 
 
 ception of the naked eye, and only to be known 
 
 by the shrivelling and dropping of leaf after 
 leaf that ought to be green and flourishing. 
 
 I have another little fox in my eye, who is 
 most active and most mischievous in despoil- 
 ing the vines of domestic happiness, — in fact, 
 #ho has been guilty of destroying more grapes 
 than anybody knows of. His name I find it 
 difficult to give with exactness. In my enume- 
 ration I called him Self -Will ; another name 
 for him — perhaps a better one — might be 
 Persistence. 
 
 Like many another, this fault is the over- 
 action of a most necessary and praiseworthy 
 quality. The power of firmness is given to 
 man as the very granite foundation of life. 
 Without it, there would be nothing accom- 
 plished ; aH human plans would be unstable as 
 water on an inclined plane. In every well- 
 constituted nature there must be a power of 
 tenacity, a gift of perseverance of will ; and 
 that man might not be without a foundation 
 
Persistence. 135 
 
 tor so needful a property, the Creator has laid 
 it in an animal faculty, which he possesses in 
 common with the brutes. 
 
 The animal power of firmness is a brute 
 force, a matter of brain and spinal cord, differ- 
 ing in different animals. The force by which 
 a bulldog holds on to an antagonist, the per- 
 sistence with which a mule will plant his four 
 feet and set himself against blows and menaces, 
 are good examples of the pure animal phase of 
 a property which exists in human beings, and 
 forms the foundation for that heroic endurance, 
 for that perseverance, which carries on all the 
 great and noble enterprises of life. 
 
 The domestic fault we speak of is the wild, 
 uncultured growth of this faculty, the instinctive 
 action of firmness uncontrolled by reason or 
 conscience, — in common parlance, the being 
 " set in ones way!' It is the animal instinct of 
 being " set in one's way " which we mean by 
 self-will or persistence ; and in domestic life it 
 does the more mischief from its working as an 
 
1 36 Little Foxes. 
 
 instinct unwatched by reason and unchallenged 
 by conscience. 
 
 In that pretty new cottage which you see 
 on yonder knoll are a pair of young people just 
 in the midst of that happy bustle which attends 
 the formation of a first home in prosperous cir- 
 cumstances, and with all the means of making 
 it charming and agreeable. Carpenters, uphol- 
 sterers, and artificers await their will ; and there 
 remains for them only the pleasant task of ar- 
 ranging and determining where all their pretty 
 and agreeable things shall be placed. Our 
 He'ro and Leander are decidedly nice people, 
 who have been through all the proper stages 
 of being in love with each other for the requi- 
 site and suitable time. They have written each 
 other a letter every day for two years, begin- 
 ning with "My dearest," and ending with 
 " Your own," etc. ; they have sent each other 
 flowers and rings and locks of hair ; they have 
 worn each other's pictures on their hearts ; 
 they have spent hours and hours talking over 
 
Persistence. 137 
 
 all subjects under the sun, and are convinced 
 that never was there such sympathy of souls, 
 such unanimity of opinion, such a just, reason- 
 able, perfect foundation for mutual esteem. 
 
 Now it is quite true that people may have 
 a perfect agreement and sympathy in their 
 higher intellectual nature, — may like the same 
 books, quote the same poetry, agree in the 
 same principles, be united in the same religion, 
 — and nevertheless, when they come together 
 in the simplest affair of every-day business, may 
 find themselves jarring and impinging upon 
 each other at every step, simply because there 
 are to each person, in respect of daily personal 
 habits and personal likes and dislikes, a thou- 
 sand little individualities with which reason has 
 nothing to do, which are not subjects for the 
 use of logic, and to which they never think of 
 applying the power of religion, — which can 
 only be set down as the positive ultimate facts 
 of existence with two people. 
 
 Suppose a blue-jay courts and wins and weds 
 
138 Little Foxes. 
 
 a Baltimore oriole. During courtship there may 
 have been delightful sympathetic conversation 
 on the charm of being free birds, the felicity 
 of soaring in the blue summer air. Mr. Jay 
 may have been all humility and all ecstasy in 
 comparing the discordant screech of his own 
 note with the warbling tenderness of Miss 
 Oriole. But, once united, the two commence 
 business relations. He is firmly convinced that 
 a nest built among the reeds of a marsh is the 
 only reasonable nest for a bird ; she is positive 
 that she should die there in a month of damp 
 and rheumatism. She never heard of going to 
 housekeeping in anything but a nice little pen- 
 dulous bag swinging down from under the 
 branches of a breezy elm ; he is sure he should 
 have water on the brain before summer was 
 over, from constant vertigo, in such swaying, 
 unsteady quarters, — he would be a sea-sick 
 blue-jay on land, and he cannot think of it. 
 She knows now he don't love her, or he never 
 would think of shutting her up in an old mouldy 
 
Persistence. 139 
 
 nest where she is sure she shall have the chills ; 
 and he knows she does n't love him, or she 
 never would want to make him uncomfortable 
 all his days by tilting and swinging him about 
 as no decent bird ought to be swung. Both 
 are dead-set in their own way and opinion ; and 
 how is either to be convinced that the way 
 which seemeth right unto the other is not best ? 
 Nature knows this, and therefore, in her feath- 
 ered tribes, blue-jays do not mate with orioles ; 
 and so bird-housekeeping goes on in peace. 
 
 But men and women as diverse in their 
 physical tastes and habits as blue-jays and ori- 
 oles are wooing and wedding every day, and 
 coming to the business of nest-building, alias 
 housekeeping, with predilections as violent, and 
 as incapable of any logical defence, as the ori- 
 ole's partiality for a swing-nest and the jay's 
 preference of a nest among the reeds. 
 
 Our Hero and Leander, there, who are ar- 
 ranging their cottage to-day, are examples just 
 in point They have both of them been only 
 
140 Little Foxes. 
 
 children, — both the idols of circles where they 
 have been universally deferred to. Each in his 
 or her own circle has been looked up to as a 
 model of good taste, and of course each has the 
 habit of exercising and indulging very distinct 
 personal tastes. They truly, deeply esteem, re- 
 spect, and love each >other, and for the very 
 best of reasons, — because there are sympathies 
 of the very highest kind between them. Both 
 are generous and affectionate, — both are highly 
 cultured in intellect and taste, — both are ear- 
 nestly religious ; and yet, with all this, let me 
 tell you that the first year of their married life 
 will be worthy to be recorded as a year of bat- 
 tles. Yes, these friends so true, these lovers so 
 ardent, these individuals in themselves so ad 
 mirable, cannot come into the intimate relations 
 of life without an effervescence as great as that 
 of an acid and alkali ; and if will be impossi- 
 ble to decide which is mosf 'In faalt, the acid 
 or the alkali, both being ir tkei' way of the 
 very best quality. 
 
Persistence. 141 
 
 The reason of it all is, that both are intensely 
 H set in' their way" and the ways of no two hu- 
 man beings are altogether coincident. Both of 
 them have the most sharply defined, exact 
 tastes and preferences. In the simplest matter 
 both have a way, — an exact way, — which 
 seems to be dear to them as life's blood. In 
 the simplest appetite or taste they know ex- 
 actly what they want, and cannot, by any argu- 
 ment, persuasion, or coaxing, be made to want 
 anything else. 
 
 For example, this morning dawns bright upon 
 them, as she, in her tidy morning wrapper and 
 trimly laced boots, comes stepping over the 
 bales and boxes which are discharged on the 
 verandah ; while he, for joy of his new acqui- 
 sition, can hardly let her walk on her own 
 pretty .feet, and is making every fond excuse 
 to lift her over obstacles and carry her into 
 her new dwelling in triumph. 
 
 Carpets are put down, the floors glow under 
 the hands of obedient workmen, and now the 
 furniture is being wheeled in. 
 
142 Little Foxes. 
 
 " Put the piano in the bow-window," says the 
 lady. 
 
 " No, not in the bow-window," says the gen- 
 tleman. 
 
 "Why, my dear, of course it must go in the 
 bow-window. How awkward it would look 
 anywhere else ! I have always seen pianos in 
 bow-windows." 
 
 " My love, certainly you would not think of 
 spoiling that beautiful prospect from the bow- 
 window by blocking it up with the piano. The 
 proper place is just here, in the corner of the 
 room. Now try it." 
 
 " My dear, I think it looks dreadfully there ; 
 it spoils the appearance of the room." 
 
 " Well, for my part, my love, I think the ap- 
 pearance of the room would be spoiled, if you 
 filled up the bow-window. Think what a love- 
 ly place that would be to sit in ! " 
 
 "Just as if we couldn't sit there behind the 
 piano, if we wanted to ! " says the lady. 
 
 " But then, how much more ample and airy 
 
Persistence. 143 
 
 tht room looks as you open the door, and see 
 through the bow-window down that little glen, 
 and that distant peep of the village-spire ! " 
 
 " But I never could be reconciled to the 
 piano standing in the corner in that way," says 
 the lady. " / insist upon it, it ought to stand 
 in the bow-window : it 's the way mamma's 
 stands, and Aunt Jane's, and Mrs. Wilcox's ; 
 everybody has their piano so." 
 
 " If it comes to insisting" says the gentle- 
 man, " it strikes me that is a game two can 
 play at." 
 
 " Why, my dear, you know a lady's parlor 
 is her own ground." 
 
 " Not a married lady's parlor, I imagine. I 
 believe it is at least equally her husband's, as 
 he expects to pass a good portion of his time 
 there." 
 
 " But I don't think you ought to insist on an 
 arrangement that really is disagreeable to me," 
 says the lady. 
 
 " And I don't think you ought to insist on 
 
144 Little Foxes. 
 
 an arrangement that is really disagreeable to 
 me," says the gentleman. 
 
 And now Hero's cheeks flush, and the spirit 
 burns within, as she says, — 
 
 "Well, if you insist upon it I suppose it 
 must be as you say ; but I shall never take 
 any pleasure in playing on it " ; and Hero 
 sweeps from the apartment, leaving the victor 
 very unhappy in his conquest. 
 
 He rushes after her, and finds her up-stairs 
 sitting disconsolate and weeping on a packing- 
 box. 
 
 " Now, Hero, how silly ! Do have it your 
 own way. I '11 give it up." 
 
 " No, — let it be as you say. I forgot that 
 it was a wife's duty to submit." 
 
 " Nonsense, Hero ! Do talk like a rational 
 woman. Don't let us quarrel like children." 
 
 " But it 's so evident that I was in the 
 right." 
 
 " My dear, I cannot concede that you were 
 in the right ; but I am willing it should be as 
 you say." 
 
Persistence. 145 
 
 * Now I perfectly wonder, Leander, that you 
 don't see how awkward your way is. It would 
 make me nervous every time I came into the 
 room, and it would be so dark in that corner 
 that I never could see the notes." 
 
 " And I wonder, Hero, that a woman of your 
 taste don't see how shutting up that bow-win- 
 dow spoils the parlor. It 's the very prettiest 
 feature of the room." 
 
 And so round and round they go, stating and 
 restating their arguments, both getting more 
 and more nervous and combative, both declar- 
 ing themselves perfectly ready to yield the 
 point as an oppressive exaction, but to do 
 battle for their own opinion as right and rea- 
 son, — the animal instinct of self-will meanwhile 
 rising and rising and growing stronger and 
 stronger on both sides. But meanwhile in the 
 heat of argument some side-issues and personal 
 reflections fly out like splinters in the shivering 
 of lances. He tells her, in his heat, that her 
 notions are formed from deference to models 
 7 J 
 
146 Little Foxes. 
 
 in fashionable life, and that she has no idea 
 of adaptation, — and she tells him that he is 
 domineering, and dictatorial, and wanting to 
 have everything his own way ; and in fine, this 
 battle is fought off and on through the day, 
 with occasional armistices of kisses and mak- 
 ings-up, — treacherous truces, which are all 
 broken up by the fatal words, " My dear, after 
 all, you must admit / was in the right," which 
 of course is the signal to fight the whole battle 
 over again. 
 
 One such prolonged struggle is the parent 
 of many lesser ones, — the aforenamed splinters 
 of injurious remark and accusation, which flew 
 out in the heat of argument, remaining and fes- 
 tering and giving rise to nervous soreness ; yet, 
 where there is at the foundation real, genuine 
 love, and a good deal of it, the pleasure of 
 making up so balances the pain of the contro- 
 versy that the two do not perceive exactly what 
 they are doing, nor suspect that so deep and 
 wide a love as theirs can be seriously affected 
 by causes so insignificant. 
 
Persistence. 147 
 
 But the cause of difficulty in both, the silent, 
 unwatched, intense power of self-will in trifles, 
 is all the while precipitating them into new 
 encounters. For example, in a bright hour be- 
 tween the showers, Hero arranges for her- Lean- 
 der a repast of peace and good-will, and com- 
 pounds for him a salad which is a chef d'ceuvre 
 among salads. Leander is also bright and pro- 
 pitious ; but after tasting the salad, he pushes 
 it silently away. 
 
 "My dear, you don't like your salad." 
 
 " No, my dear ; I never eat anything with 
 salad oil in it." 
 
 " Not eat salad oil ! How absurd ! I never 
 heard of a salad without oil." And the lady 
 looks disturbed. 
 
 " But, my dear, as I tell you, I never take 
 it. I prefer simple sugar and vinegar." 
 
 " Sugar and vinegar ! Why, Leander, I 'm 
 astonished ! How very bourgeois / You must 
 really try to like my salad " — (spoken in a 
 coaxing tone) 
 
148 Little Foxes. 
 
 "My dear, 1 never try to like anything new, 
 I am satisfied with my old tastes." 
 
 " Well, Leander, I must say that is very un 
 gracious and disobliging of you." 
 
 " Why any more than for you to annoy me 
 by forcing on me what I don't like ? " 
 
 " But you would like it, if you would only 
 try. People never like olives till they have 
 eaten three or four, and then they become pas* 
 sionately fond of them." 
 
 " Then I think they are very silly to go 
 through all that trouble, when there are enough 
 things that they do like." 
 
 " Now, Leander, I don't think that seems 
 amiable or pleasant at all. I think we ought 
 to try to accommodate ourselves to the tastes 
 of our friends." 
 
 " Then, my dear, suppose you try to like your 
 salad with sugar and vinegar." 
 
 " But it 's so gauche and unfashionable ! Did 
 you ever hear of a salad made with sugar and 
 vinegar on a table in good society ? " 
 
Persistence. 149 
 
 <l My mother's table, I believe, was good so- 
 ciety, and I learned to like it there. The truth 
 is, Hero, for a sensible woman, you are too 
 fond of mere fashionable and society notions." 
 
 " Yes, you told me that last week, and I 
 think it was very unjust, — very unjust, indeed" 
 — (uttered with emphasis). 
 
 " No more unjust than your telling me that 
 I was dictatorial and obstinate." 
 
 " Well, now, Leander, dear, you must confess 
 that you are rather obstinate." 
 
 "I don't see the proof." 
 
 "You insist on your own ways and opinions 
 so, heaven and earth won't turn you." 
 
 " Do I insist on mine more than you on 
 yours ? " 
 
 "Certainly, you do." 
 
 "1 don't think so." 
 
 Hero casts up her eyes and repeats with 
 expression, — 
 
 " O, wad some power the giftie gie us 
 To see oursels as others see us 1 " 
 
150 Little Foxes 
 
 " Precisely," says Leander. " I would that 
 prayer were answered in your case, my dear." 
 
 " I think you take pleasure in provoking 
 me," says the lady. 
 
 " My dear, how silly and childish all this is ! " 
 says the gentleman. "Why can't we let each 
 other alone ? " 
 
 "You began it." 
 
 " No, my dear, begging your pardon, I did 
 not." 
 
 " Certainly, Leander, you did." 
 
 Now a conversation of this kind may go on 
 hour after hour, as long as the respective par- 
 ties have breath and strength, botn oecoming 
 secretly more and more "set in their way." 
 On both sides is the consciousness that they 
 might end it at once by a very simple conces- 
 sion. 
 
 S^e might say, — "Well, dear, you shall al- 
 ways have your salad as you like " ; and he 
 might say, — " My dear, I will try to like your 
 salad, if you care much about it" ; and if either 
 
Persistence, 1 5 1 
 
 A them would utter one of these sentences, the 
 other would soon follow. Either would give 
 up, if the other would set the example ; but as 
 it is, they remind us of nothing so much as two 
 cows that we have seen standing with locked 
 horns in a meadow, who can neither advance 
 nor recede an inch. It is a mere deadlock of 
 the animal instinct of firmness ; reason, con- 
 science, religion, have nothing to do with it. 
 
 The questions debated in this style by our 
 young couple were surprisingly numerous ; as, 
 foi example, whether their favorite copy of 
 Turner should hang in the parlor or in the 
 library, — whether their pet little landscape 
 should hang against the wall, or be placed on 
 an easel, — whether the bust of the Venus de 
 Milos should stand on the marble table in the 
 hall, or on a bracket in the library ; all of 
 which points were debated with a breadth of 
 survey, a richness of imagery, a vigor of dis- 
 cussion, that would be perfectly astonishing to 
 any one who did not know how much two very 
 
152 Little Foxes. 
 
 self-willed argumentative people might find to 
 say on any point under heaven. Everything 
 in classical antiquity, — everything in Kugler's 
 " Hand-Book of Painting," — every opinion of 
 living artists, — besides questions social, moral, 
 and religious, — all mingled in the grand melee: 
 because there is nothing in creation that is not 
 somehow connected with everything else. 
 
 Dr. Johnson has said, — "There are a thou- 
 sand familiar disputes which reason never can 
 decide ; questions that elude investigation, and 
 make logic ridiculous ; cases where something 
 must be done, and where little can be said." 
 
 With all deference to the great moralist, we 
 must say that this statement argues a very 
 limited knowledge of the resources of talk pos- 
 sessed by two very cultivated and ^ery self- 
 willed persons fairly pitted against each other 
 in practical questions ; the logic may indeed 
 be ridiculous, but such people as our Hero 
 and Leander find no cases under the sun where 
 something is to be done, yet. where little can be 
 
Persistence. 153 
 
 .said. And these wretched wranglings, this in- 
 terminable labyrinth of petty disputes, waste 
 and crumble away that high ideal of truth and 
 tenderness, which the real, deep sympathies 
 and actual worth of their characters entitled 
 them to form. Their married life is not what 
 they expected ; at times they are startled by 
 the reflection that they have somehow grown 
 unlovely to each other ; and yet, if Leandei 
 goes away to pass a week, and thinks of hu 
 Hero in the distance, he can compare no othei 
 woman to her ; and the days seem long and 
 the house empty to Hero while he is gone , 
 both wonder at themselves when they look ovei 
 their petty bickerings, but neither knows ex- 
 actly how to catch the little fox that spoils 
 their vines. 
 
 It is astonishing how much we think about 
 ourselves, yet to how little purpose, — how very 
 clever people will talk and wonder about them- 
 selves and each other, and yet go on year after 
 year, not knowing how to use either themselves 
 
 7* 
 
154 Little Foxes. 
 
 or each other, — not having as much practical 
 philosophy in the matter of their own charac- 
 ters and that of their friends as they have in 
 respect of the screws of their gas-fixtures or 
 the management of their water-pipes. 
 
 "But / won't have any such scenes with my 
 wife," says Don Positivo. " I won't marry one 
 of your clever women ; they are always posi- 
 tive and disagreeable. / look for a wife of a 
 gentle and yielding nature, that shall take her 
 opinions from me, and accommodate her tastes 
 to mine." And so Don Positivo goes and mar- 
 ries a pretty little pink-and-white concern, so 
 lisping and soft and delicate that he is quite 
 sure she cannot have a will of her own. She 
 is the moon of his heavens, to shine only by 
 his reflected light. 
 
 We would advise our gentlemen friends who 
 wish to enjoy the felicity of having their own 
 way not to try the experiment with a pretty 
 fool ; for the obstinacy of cleverness and reason 
 is nothing to the obstinacy of folly and in- 
 anity. 
 

 Persistence. 155 
 
 Let our friend once get in the seat opposite 
 to him at table a pretty creature who cries for 
 the moon, and insists that he don't love her 
 because he does n't get it for her ; and in vain 
 may he display his superior knowledge of as- 
 tronomy, and prove to her that the moon is 
 not to be got. She listens with her head on 
 one side, and after he has talked himself quite 
 out of breath, repeats the very same sentence 
 she began the discussion with, without varia- 
 tion or addition. 
 
 If she wants darling Johnny taken away from 
 school, because cruel teachers will not give up 
 the rules of the institution for his pleasure, in 
 vain does Don Positivo, in the most select and 
 superior English, enlighten her on the neces- 
 sity of habits of self-control and order for a 
 boy, — the impossibility that a teacher should 
 make exceptions for their particular darling,— 
 the absolute, perishing need that the boy should 
 begin to do something. She hears him all 
 through, and then says, " I don't know anything 
 
156 Little Foxes. 
 
 about that. I know what I want ; I want 
 Johnny taken away." And so she weeps, sulks, 
 storms, entreats, lies awake nights, has long fits 
 of sick-headache, — in short, shows that a pretty 
 animal, without reason or cultivation, can be, 
 in her way, quite as formidable an antagonist 
 as the most clever of her sex. 
 
 Leander can sometimes vanquish his Hero 
 in fair fight by the weapons of good logic, 
 because she is a woman capable of appreciat- 
 ing reason, and able to feel the force of the 
 considerations he adduces ; and when he does 
 vanquish and carry her captive by his bow 
 and spear, he feels that he has gained «a vic- 
 tory over no ignoble antagonist, and he be- 
 comes a hero in his own eyes. Though a wo- 
 man of much will, still she is a woman of much 
 reason ; and if he has many vexations with her 
 pertinacity, he is never without hope in her 
 good sense ; but alas for him whose wife has 
 only the animal instinct of firmness, without 
 any development of the judgment or reasoning 
 
Persistence. 15* 
 
 fajulties ! The conflicts with a woman whoir 
 a man respects and admires are often extremel) 
 trying ; but the conflicts with one whom hf 
 cannot help despising, become in the end sim 
 ply disgusting. 
 
 But the inquiry now arises, What shall be 
 done with all the questions Dr. Johnson speaks 
 of, which reason cannot decide, which elude 
 investigation, and make logic ridiculous, — cases 
 where something must be done, and where little 
 can be said ? 
 
 Read Mrs. Ellis's "Wives of England," and 
 you have one solution of the problem. The 
 good women of England are there informed 
 that there is to be no discussion, that every- 
 thing in the menage is to follow the rule of the 
 lord, and that the wife has but one hope, 
 namely, that grace may be given him to know 
 exactly what his own will is. " Vetat, Jest 
 mot" is the lesson which every English hus- 
 band learns of Mrs. Ellis, and we should judge 
 from the pictures of English novels that this 
 
i 58 Little Foxes. 
 
 "awful right divine" is insisted on in detail in 
 domestic life. 
 
 Miss Edgeworth makes her magnificent Gen- 
 eral Clarendon talk about his "commands" to 
 his accomplished and elegant wife ; and he 
 rin^s the parlor-bell with such an air, calls up 
 and interrogates trembling servants with such 
 awful majesty, and lays about him generally 
 in so very military and tremendous a style, 
 that we are not surprised that poor little Cecilia 
 is frightened into lying, being half out of her 
 wits in terror of so very martial a husband. 
 
 During his hours of courtship he majestically 
 informs her mother that he never could con- 
 sent to receive as his wife any woman who 
 has had another attachment ; and so the poor 
 puss, like a naughty girl, conceals a little school- 
 girl flirtation of bygone days, and thus gives 
 rise to most agonizing and tragic scenes with 
 her terrible lord, who petrifies her one morn- 
 ing by suddenly drawing the bed-curtains and 
 flapping an old love-letter in her eyes, asking, 
 
Persistence. 159 
 
 ' in tones of suppressed thunder, " Cecilia, is 
 this youi writing ? " 
 
 The more modern female novelists of Eng- 
 land give us representations of their view of 
 the right divine no less stringent. In a very 
 popular story, called "Agatha's Husband," the 
 plot is as follows. A man marries a beautiful 
 girl with a large fortune. Before the marriage, 
 he discovers that his brother, who has been 
 guardian of the estate, has fraudulently squan- 
 dered the property, so that it can only be re- 
 trieved by the strictest economy. For the sake 
 of getting her heroine into a situation to illus- 
 trate her moral, the authoress now makes her 
 hero give a solemn promise not to divulge to 
 his wife or to any human being the fraud by 
 which she suffers. 
 
 The plot of the story then proceeds to show 
 how very badly the young wife behaves when 
 her husband takes her to mean lodgings, de- 
 prives her of wonted luxuries and comforts, 
 and obstinately refuses to give any kind of 
 
i6o Little Foxes. 
 
 sensible reason for his conduct. Instead of 
 looking up to him with blind faith and unques- 
 tioning obedience, following his directions with- 
 out inquiry, and believing not only without evi- 
 dence, but against apparent evidence, that he 
 is the soul of honor and wisdom, this perverse 
 Agatha murmurs, complains, thinks herself very 
 ill-used, and occasionally is even wicked enough, 
 in a very mild way, to say so, — whereat her 
 husband looks like a martyr and suffers in 
 silence ; and thus we are treated to a volume 
 of mutual distresses, which are at last ended 
 by the truth coming out, the abused husband 
 mounting the throne in glory, and the penitent 
 wife falling in the dust at his feet, and confess- 
 ing what a wretch she has been all along to 
 doubt him. 
 
 The authoress of " Jane Eyre " describes the 
 process of courtship in much the same terms 
 as one would describe the breaking of a horse. 
 Shirley is contumacious and self-willed, and 
 Moore, her lover and tutor, gives her "Le Cheval 
 
Persistence. 161 
 
 ilompte'" for a French lesson, as a gentle inti- 
 mation of the work he has in hand in paying 
 her his addresses ; and after long struggling 
 against his power, when at last she consents to 
 his love, he addresses her thus, under the figure 
 of a very fierce leopardess : — 
 
 " Tame or wild, fierce or subdued, you are 
 fnine!' 
 
 And she responds : — 
 
 " I am glad I know my keeper and am used 
 to him. Only his voice will I follow, only his 
 hand shall manage me, only at his feet will I 
 repose." 
 
 The accomplished authoress of " Nathalie " 
 represents the struggles of a young girl en- 
 gaged to a man far older than herself, extremely 
 dark and neroic, fond of behaving in a very 
 unaccountable manner, and declaring, neverthe- 
 less, in awful and mysterious tones, that he has 
 such a passion for being believed in, that, if 
 any one of his friends, under the most suspi- 
 cious circumstances, admits one doubt of his 
 
1 62 Little Foxes. 
 
 honor, all will be over between them for- 
 ever. 
 
 After establishing his power over Nathalie 
 fully, and amusing himself quietly for a time 
 with the contemplation of her perplexities and 
 anxieties, he at last unfolds to her the myste- 
 rious counsels of his will by declaring to an- 
 other of her lovers, in her presence, that he 
 "has the intention of asking this young lady 
 to become his wife." During the engagement, 
 however, he contrives to disturb her tranquillity 
 by insisting prematurely on the right divine 
 of husbands, and, as she proves fractious, an- 
 nounces to her, that, much as he loves her, he 
 sees no prospect of future happiness m their 
 union, and that they had better part. 
 
 The rest of the story describes the struggles 
 and anguish of the two, who pass through a 
 volume of distresses, he growing more cold, 
 proud, severe, and misanthropic than ever, all 
 of which is supposed to be the fault of naughty 
 Miss Nathalie, who might have made a saint 
 
Persistence. 163 
 
 of him, could she only have found her highest 
 pleasure in letting him have his own way. Her 
 conscience distresses her ; it is all her fault ; at 
 last, worn out in the strife, she resolves to be 
 a good girl, goes to his library, finds him alone, 
 and, in spite of an insulting reception, humbles 
 herself at his feet, gives up all her naughty 
 pride, begs to be allowed to wait on him as a 
 handmaid, and is rewarded by his graciously 
 announcing, that, since she will stay with him 
 at all events, she may stay as his wife ; and the 
 story leaves her in the last sentence sitting in 
 what we are informed is the only true place 
 of happiness for a woman, at her husband's 
 feet. 
 
 This is the solution which the most culti- 
 vated women of England give of the domestic 
 problem. 
 
 According to these fair interpreters of Eng- 
 lish ideas, the British lion on his own domestic 
 hearth, standing in awful majesty with his back 
 to the fire and his hands under his coat-tails, 
 
164 Little Foxes. 
 
 can >e supposed to have no such disreputable 
 discussions as we have described ; since his 
 partner, as Miss Bronte says, has learned to 
 know her keeper, and her place at his feet, and 
 can conceive no happiness so great as hanging 
 the picture and setting the piano exactly as he 
 likes. 
 
 Of course this will be met with a general 
 shriek of horror on the part of our fair repub- 
 lican friends, and an equally general disclaimer 
 on the part of our American gentlemen, who, 
 so far as we know, would be quite embarrassed 
 by the idea of assuming any such pronounced 
 position at the fireside. 
 
 The genius of American institutions is not 
 towards a display of authority. All needed au- 
 thority exists among us, but exists silently, with 
 as little external manifestation as possible. 
 
 Our President is but a fellow-citizen, person- 
 ally the equal of other citizens. We obey him 
 because we have chosen him, and because we 
 find it convenient, in regulating our affairs, 
 
Persistence. 165 
 
 to have one final appeal and one deciding 
 voice. 
 
 The position in which the Bible and the mar- 
 riage service place the husband in the family 
 amounts to no more. He is the head of the 
 family in all that relates to its material interests, 
 its legal relations, its honor and standing in 
 society ; and no true woman who respects her- 
 self would any more hesitate to promise to 
 yield to him this position and the deference 
 it implies than an officer of state to yield to 
 the President. But because Mr. Lincoln is of- 
 ficially above Mr. Seward, it does not follow 
 that there can be nothing between them but 
 absolute command on the one part and prostrate 
 submission on the other ; neither does it follow 
 that the superior claims in all respects to regu- 
 late the affairs and conduct of the inferior. 
 There are still wide spheres of individual free- 
 dom, as there are in the case of husband and 
 wife ; and no sensible man but would feel 
 himself ridiculous in entering another's proper 
 sphere with the voice of authority. 
 
1 66 Little Foxes. 
 
 The inspired declaration, that "the husband 
 is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the 
 head of the Church," is certainly to be quali- 
 fied by the evident points of difference in the 
 subjects spoken of. It certainly does not mean 
 that any man shall be invested with the rights 
 of omnipotence and omniscience, but simply 
 that in the family state he is the head and 
 protector, even as in the Church is the Sav- 
 iour. It is merely the announcement of a 
 great natural law of society which obtains 
 through all the tribes and races of men, — a 
 great and obvious fact of human existence. 
 
 The silly and senseless reaction against this 
 idea in some otherwise sensible women is, I 
 think, owing to the kind of extravagances and 
 overstatements to which we have alluded. It 
 is as absurd to cavil at the word obey in the 
 marriage ceremony as for a military officer to 
 set himself against the etiquette of the army, 
 or a man to refuse the freeman's oath. 
 
 Two young men every way on a footing of 
 
Persistence. 16/ 
 
 equality and friendship may be one of them a 
 battalion-commander and the other a staff-offi- 
 cer. It would be alike absurd for the one to 
 take airs about not obeying a man every way 
 Irs equal, and for the other to assume airs ot 
 lordly dictation out of the sphere of his military 
 duties. The mooting of the question of mar- 
 ital authority between two well-bred, well-edu- 
 cated Christian people of the nineteenth cen- 
 tvy is no less absurd. 
 
 While the husband has a certain power con- 
 fided to him for the support and maintenance 
 of the family, and for the preservation of those 
 relations which involve its good name and well- 
 being before the world, he has no claim to an 
 authoritative exertion of will in reference to the 
 little personal tastes and habits of the interior. 
 He has no divine right to require that every- 
 thing shall be arranged to please him, at the 
 expense of his wife's preferences and feelings, 
 any more than if he we*e not the head of the 
 household. In a thousand md-flfereni: matters 
 
1 68 Little Foxes. 
 
 which do not touch the credit and respecta 
 bility of the family, he is just as much bound 
 sometimes to give up his own will and way for 
 the comfort of his wife as she is in certain 
 other matters to submit to his decisions. In a 
 large number of cases the husband and wife 
 stand as equal human beings before God, and 
 the indulgence of unchecked and inconsiderate 
 self-will on either side is a sin. 
 
 It is my serious belief that writings such as 
 we have been considering do harm both to men 
 and women, by insensibly inspiring in the one 
 an idea of a licensed prerogative of selfishness 
 and self-will, and in the other an irrational and 
 indiscreet servility. 
 
 Is it any benefit to a man to find in the wife 
 of his bosom the flatterer of his egotism, the ac- 
 quiescent victim of his little selfish exactions, to 
 be nursed and petted and cajoled in all his faults 
 and fault-findings, and to see everybody falling 
 prostrate before his will in the domestic circle ? 
 Is this the true way to make him a manly and 
 
Persistence. 169 
 
 Christ-like man ? It is my belief that many so- 
 called good wives have been accessory to mak- 
 ing their husbands very bad Christians. 
 
 However, then, the little questions of differ- 
 ence in every-day life are to be disposed of be- 
 tween two individuals, it is in the worst possible 
 taste and policy to undertake to settle them by 
 mere authority. All romance, all poetry, all 
 beauty are over forever with a couple between 
 whom the struggle of mere authority has begun. 
 No, there is no way out of difficulties of this de- 
 scription but by the application, on both sides, 
 of good sense and religion to the little differ- 
 ences of life. 
 
 A little reflection will enable any person to 
 detect in himself that setness in trifles which is 
 the result of the unwatched instinct of self-will 
 and to establish over himself a jealous guardian- 
 ship. 
 
 Every* man and every woman, in their self- 
 training and self-culture, should study the art 
 of giving up in little things with a good grace. 
 8 
 
r/o Little Foxes. 
 
 The :naim of polite society is formed by that 
 sort of freedom and facility in all the members 
 of a circle which makes each one pliable to the 
 influences of the others, and sympathetic to 
 slide into the moods and tastes of others without 
 a jar. 
 
 In courteous and polished circles, there are no 
 stiff railroad-tracks, cutting straight through 
 everything, and grating harsh thunders all along 
 their course, but smooth, meandering streams, 
 tranquilly bending hither and thither to every 
 undulation of the flowery banks. What makes 
 the charm of polite society would make no less 
 the charm of domestic life ; but it can come only 
 by watchfulness and self-discipline in each indi- 
 vidual. 
 
 Some people have much more to struggle 
 with in this way than others. Nature has 
 made them precise and exact. They are punc- 
 tilious in their hours, rigid in their habits, 
 pained by any deviation from regular rule. 
 
 Now Nature is always perversely ordering 
 
Persistence. iyi 
 
 dhat men and women of just this disposition 
 should become desperately enamored of their 
 exact opposites. The man of rules and formu- 
 las and hours has his heart carried off by a 
 gay, careless little chit, who never knows the 
 day of the month, tears up the newspaper, lo- 
 ses the door-key, and makes curl-papers out of 
 the last bill ; or, per contra, our exact and pre- 
 cise little woman, whose belongings are like 
 the waxen cells of a bee, gives her heart to 
 some careless fellow, who enters her sanctum 
 in muddy boots, upsets all her little nice house- 
 hold divinities whenever he is going on a 
 hunting or fishing bout, and can see no man- 
 ner of sense in the discomposure she feels in 
 the case. 
 
 What can such couples do, if they do not 
 adopt the compromise of reason and sense, — 
 if each arms his or her own peculiarities with 
 the back force of persistent self-will, and runs 
 them over the territories of the other? 
 
 A sensible man and woman, finding them- 
 
172 Little Foxes. 
 
 selves thus placed, can govern themselves by 
 a just philosophy, and, instead of carrying on 
 a life-battle, can modify their own tastes and 
 requirements, turn their eyes from traits which 
 do not suit them to those which do, resolving, 
 at all events, however reasonable be the taste 
 or propensity which they sacrifice, to give up 
 all rather than have domestic strife. 
 
 There is one form which persistency takes 
 that is peculiarly trying : I mean that persis- 
 tency of opinion which deems it necessary to 
 stop and raise an argument in self-defence on 
 the slightest personal criticism. 
 
 John tells his wife that she is half an hour 
 late with her breakfast this morning, and she 
 indignantly denies it. 
 
 " But look at my watch ! " 
 
 "Your watch is n't right." 
 
 "I set it by railroad time." 
 
 " Well, that was a week ago ; that watch of 
 yours always gains." 
 
 "No, my dear, you 're mistaken." 
 
Persistence. 173 
 
 'Indeed I'm not. Did I not heai you tell- 
 ing Mr. B about it?" 
 
 "My dear, that was a year ago, — before I 
 had it cleaned." 
 
 " How can you say so, John ? It was only 
 a month ago." 
 
 "My dear, you are mistaken." 
 
 And so .the contest goes on, each striv- 
 ing for the last word. 
 
 This love of the last word has made more 
 bitterness in families and spoiled more Chris- 
 tians than it is worth. A thousand little dif- 
 ferences of this kind would drop to the ground, 
 if either party would let them drop. Suppose 
 John is mistaken in saying breakfast is late, 
 — suppose that fifty of the little criticisms which 
 we make on one another are well- or ill-found- 
 ed, are they worth a discussion ? Are they 
 worth ill-tempered words, such as are al- 
 most sure to grow out of a discussion ? Are 
 they worth throwing away peace and love 
 for? Are they worth the destruction of the 
 
174 Little Foxes. 
 
 only fair ideal left on earth, — a quiet, hap^ , 
 home? Better let the most unjust statements 
 pass in silence than risk one's temper in a dis- 
 cussion upon them. 
 
 Discussions, assuming the form of warm ar- 
 guments, are never pleasant ingredients of do- 
 mestic life, never safe recreations between 
 near friends. They are, generally speaking, 
 mere unsuspected vents for self-will, and the 
 cases are few where they do anything more 
 than to make both parties more positive in 
 their own way than they were before. 
 
 A calm comparison of opposing views, a fair 
 statement of reasons on either side, may be 
 valuable ; but when warmth and heat and 
 love of victory and pride of opinion come in, 
 good temper and good manners are too apt to 
 step out. 
 
 And now Christopher, having come to the 
 end of his subject, pauses for a sentence to 
 close with. There are a few lines of a poet 
 what sum up so beautifully all he has been 
 
Persistence. 175 
 
 saying that he may be pardoned for closing 
 with them. 
 
 " Alas ! how light a cause may move 
 Dissension between hearts that love ; 
 Hearts that the world has vainly tried, 
 And sorrow but more closely tied ; 
 That stood the storm when waves were rough? 
 Yet« in a sunny hour fall off, 
 Like ships that have gone down at sea 
 When heaven was all tranquillity ! 
 A something light as air, a look, 
 A word unkind, or wrongly taken, — 
 O, love that tempests never shook, 
 A breath, a touch like this hath shaken ! 
 For ruder words will soon rush in 
 To spread the breach that words begin, 
 And eyes forget the gentle ray 
 They wore in courtship's smiling day, 
 And voices lose the tone which shed 
 A tenderness round all they said, — 
 Till, fast declining, one by one, 
 The sweetnesses of love are gone, 
 And hearts so lately mingled seem 
 Like broken clouds, or like the stream, 
 That, smiling, left the mountain-brow 
 As though its waters ne'er could sever, 
 Yet, ere it reach the plain below, 
 Breaks into floods that part forever." 
 
V. 
 
 INTOLERANCE. 
 
 " A ND what are you going to preach about 
 ^** this month, Mr. Crowfield?" 
 
 " I am going to give a sermon on Intolerance, 
 Mrs. Crowfield." 
 
 " Religious intolerance ? " 
 
 " No, — domestic and family and educational 
 intolerance, — one of the seven deadly sins on 
 which I am preaching, — one of ' the foxes/ " 
 
 People are apt to talk as if all the intoler- 
 ance in life were got up and expended in the 
 religious world ; whereas religious intolerance 
 is only a small branch of the radical, strong, 
 all-pervading intolerance of human mature. 
 
 Physicians are quite as intolerant as theolo- 
 gians. They never have had the power of 
 burning at the stake for medical opinions, but 
 
Intolerance. 177 
 
 they certainly have shown the will. Politicians 
 are intolerant. Philosophers are intolerant, es- 
 pecially those who pique themselves on liberal 
 opinions. Painters and sculptors are intolerant. 
 And housekeepers are intolerant, virulently de- 
 nunciatory concerning any departures from 
 their particular domestic creed. 
 
 Mrs. Alexander Exact, seated at her domes 
 tic altar, gives homilies on the degeneracy of 
 modern housekeeping equal to the lamentations 
 of Dr. Holdfast as to the falling off from, the 
 good old faith. 
 
 " Don't tell me about pillow-cases made with- 
 out felling," says Mrs. Alexander ; " it 's slovenly 
 and shiftless. I would n't have such a pillow- 
 case in my house any more than I 'd have 
 vermin." , *^' 
 
 " But," says a trembling young housekeeper, 
 conscious of unfelled pillow-cases at home, 
 "don't you think, Mrs. Alexander, that some 
 of these old traditions might be dispensed with ? 
 It really is not necessary to do all the work 
 8* L 
 
178 Little Foxes. 
 
 that has been done so thoroughly and exactly* 
 — to double-stitch every wristband, fell every 
 seam, count all the threads of gathers, and 
 take a stitch to every gather. It makes beau- 
 tiful sewing, to be sure ; but when a woman 
 has a family of little children and a small in- 
 come, if all her sewing is to be kept up in 
 this perfect style, she wears her life out in 
 stitching. Had she not better slight a little, 
 and get air and exercise ? " 
 
 " Don't tell me about air and exercise ! What 
 did my grandmother do ? Why, she did all her 
 own work, and made grandfather's ruffled shirts 
 besides, with the finest stitching and gathers ; 
 and she found exercise enough, I warrant you 
 Women of this day are miserable, sickly, de- 
 generate creatures." 
 
 "But, my dear Madam, look at poor Mrs. 
 Evans, over the way, with her pale face and 
 her eight little ones." 
 
 "Miserable manager," said Mrs. Alexander 
 " If she 'd get up at five o'clock the year round, 
 
Intolerance. 1 79 
 
 as I do, she'd find time enough to do things 
 properly, and be the better for it." 
 
 "But, my dear Madam, Mrs. Evans is a very 
 delicately organized, nervous woman." 
 
 " Nervous ! Don't tell me ! Every woman 
 now-a-days is nervous. She can't get up in the 
 morning, because she 's nervous. She can't do 
 her sewing decently, because she 's nervous. 
 Why, I might have been as nervous as she is, 
 if I 'd have petted and coddled myself as she 
 does. But I get up early, take a walk in the 
 fresh air of a mile or so before breakfast, and 
 come home feeling the better for it. I do all 
 my own sewing, — never put out a stitch ; and 
 I flatter myself my things are made as they 
 ought to be. I always make my boys' shirts 
 and Mr. Exact's, and they are made as shirts 
 ought to be, — and yet I find plenty of time 
 for calling, shopping, business, and company. 
 It only requires management and resolution." 
 
 "It is perfectly wonderful, to be sure, Mrs. 
 Exact, to see all that you do ; but don't you 
 get very tired sometimes ? " 
 
f8o Little Foxes. 
 
 "No, not often. I remember, though, the 
 week before last Christmas, I made and baked 
 eighteen pies and ten loaves of cake in one 
 day, and I was really quite worn out ; but I 
 did n't give way to it. I told Mr. Exact I 
 thought it would rest me to take a drive into 
 New York and attend the Sanitary Fair ; and 
 so we did. I suppose Mrs. Evans would have 
 thought she must go to bed and coddle her- 
 self for a month." 
 
 " But, dear Mrs. Exact, when a woman is 
 kept awake nights by crying babies — " 
 
 " There 's no need of having crying babies ; 
 my babies never cried ; it 's just as you begin 
 with children. I might have had to be up and 
 down every hour of the night with mine, just 
 as Mrs. Evans does ; but I knew better. I used 
 to take 'em up about ten o'clock, and feed and 
 make 'em all comfortable ; and that was the 
 last of 'em, till I was ready to get up in the 
 morning. I never lost a night's sleep with any 
 of mine" 
 
Intolerance. 1 8 1 
 
 n Not when they were teething ? " 
 
 *' No. I knew how to manage that. I used 
 to lance their gums myself, and I never had 
 any trouble : it 's all in management. I weaned 
 'em all myself, too : there 's no use in having 
 any fuss in weaning children." 
 
 " Mrs. Exact, you are a wonderful manager ; 
 but it would be impossible to bring up all ba- 
 bies so." 
 
 " You '11 never make me believe that : peo- 
 ple only need to begin right. I 'm sure I 've 
 had a trial of eight." 
 
 " But there 's that one baby of Mrs. Evans's 
 makes more trouble than all your eight. It 
 cries every night so that somebody has to be 
 up walking with it ; it wears out all the nurses, 
 and keeps poor Mrs. Evans sick all the time." 
 
 " Not the least need of it ; nothing but shift- 
 less management. Suppose I had allowed my 
 children to be walked with ; I might have had 
 terrible times, too ; but I began right. I set 
 down my foot that they should lie still, arid 
 
1 82 Little Foxes. 
 
 they did ; and if they cried, I never lighted a 
 candle, or took 'em up, or took any kind of 
 notice of it ; and so, after a little, they went off 
 to sleep. Babies very soon find out where 
 they can take advantage, and where they can't. 
 It 's nothing but temper makes babies cry ; and 
 if I could n't hush 'em any other way, I should 
 give 'em a few good smart slaps, and they 
 would soon learn to behave themselves." 
 
 " But, dear Mrs. Exact, you were a strong, 
 healthy woman, and had strong, healthy chil- 
 dren." 
 
 " Well, is n't that baby of Mrs. Evans's heal- 
 thy, I want to know ? I 'm sure it is a great 
 creature, and thrives and grows fat as fast as 
 ever I saw a child. You need n't tell me any- 
 thing is the matter with that child but temper 
 and its mother's coddling management." 
 
 Now, in the neighborhood where she lives, 
 Mrs. Alexander Exact is the wonderful woman, 
 the Lady Bountiful, the pattern female. Her 
 cake never rises on one side, or has a heavy 
 
Intolerance. 183 
 
 streak in it. Her furs never get a moth in 
 them ; her carpets never fade ; her sweetmeats 
 never ferment ; her servants never neglect their 
 work ; her children never get things out of 
 order ; her babies never cry, never keep one 
 awake o' nights ; and her husband never in his 
 life said, " My dear, there 's a button off my 
 shirt." Flies never infest her kitchen, cock- 
 roaches and red ants never invade her prem- 
 ises, a spider never had time to spin a web 
 on one of her walls. Everything in her estab- 
 lishment is shining with neatness, crisp and 
 bristling with absolute perfection, — and it is 
 she, the ever-up-and-dressed, unsleeping, wide- 
 awake, omnipresent, never-tiring Mrs. Exact, 
 that does it all. 
 
 Besides keeping her household ways thus 
 immaculate, Mrs. Exact is on all sorts of char- 
 itable committees, does all sorts of fancy-work 
 for fairs ; and whatever she does is done per- 
 fectly. She is a most available, most helpful, 
 most benevolent woman, and general society 
 has reason to rejoice in her existence. 
 
184 Little Foxes. 
 
 But, for all this, Mrs. Exact is as intolerant 
 as Torquemada or a locomotive-engine. She 
 has her own track, straight and inevitable ; her 
 judgments and opinions cut through society 
 in right lines, with all the force of her exam- 
 ple and all the steam of her energy, turning 
 out neither for the old nor the young, the weak 
 nor the weary. She cannot, and she will not, 
 conceive the possibility that there may be other 
 sorts of natures than her own, and that other 
 kinds of natures must have other ways of liv- 
 ing and doing. 
 
 Good and useful as she is, she is terrible as 
 an army with banners to her poor, harassed, 
 delicate, struggling neighbor across the way 
 who, in addition to an aching, confused head, 
 an aching back, sleepless, harassed nights, and 
 weary, sinking days, is burdened everywhere 
 and every hour with the thought that Mrs. 
 Exact thinks all her troubles are nothing but 
 poor management, and that she might do just 
 like her, if she would. With very little self 
 
Intolerance. 185 
 
 confidence or self-assertion, she is withered and 
 paralyzed by this discouraging thought. Is it, 
 then, her fault that this never-sleeping baby 
 cries all night, and that all her children never 
 could and never would be brought up by those 
 exact rules which she hears of as so efficacious 
 in the household over the way ? The thought 
 of Mrs. Alexander Exact stands over her like 
 a constable ; the remembrance of her is griev- 
 ous ; the burden of her opinion is heavier than 
 all her other burdens. 
 
 Now the fact is, that Mrs. Exact comes of 
 a long-lived, strong-backed, strong-stomached 
 race, with " limbs of British oak and nerves of 
 wire." The shadow of a sensation of nervous 
 pain or uneasiness never has been known in 
 her family for generations, and her judgments 
 of poor little Mrs. Evans are about as intelli- 
 gent as those of a good stout Shanghai hen 
 on a humming-bird. Most useful and comfort- 
 able, these Shanghai hens, — and very orna- 
 mental, and in a small way useful, these hum- 
 
1 86 Little Foxes. 
 
 ming-birds ; but let them not regulate each 
 other's diet, or lay down schemes for each oth- 
 er's housekeeping. Has not one as much right 
 to its nature as the other ? 
 
 This intolerance of other people's natures is 
 one of the greatest causes of domestic unhap- 
 piness. The perfect householders are they who 
 make their household rule so flexible that all 
 sorts of differing natures may find room to 
 grow and expand and express themselves with- 
 out infringing upon others. 
 
 Some women are endowed with a tact for 
 understanding human nature and guiding it. 
 They give a sense of largeness and freedom ; 
 they find a place for every one, see at once 
 what every one is good for, and are inspired by 
 Nature with the happy wisdom of not wishing 
 or asking of any human being more than that 
 human being was made to give. They have 
 the portion in due season for all : a bone for 
 the dog ; catnip for the cat ; cuttle-fish and 
 hempseed for the bird ; a book or review for 
 
Intolerance. 187 
 
 their bashful literary visitor ; lively gossip 
 for thoughtless Miss Seventeen ; knitting fo/ 
 Grandmamma ; fishing-rods, boats, and gun- 
 powder, for Young Restless, whose beard is 
 just beginning to grow; — and they never fall 
 into pets, because the canary-bird won't relish 
 the dog's bone, or the dog eat canary-seed, or 
 young Miss Seventeen read old Mr. Sixty's 
 review, or young Master Restless take delight 
 in knitting-work, or old Grandmamma feel 
 complacency in guns and gunpowder. 
 
 Again, there are others who lay the founda- 
 tions of family life so narrow, straight, and 
 strict, that there is room in them only for 
 themselves and people exactly like themselves ; 
 and hence comes much misery. 
 
 A man and woman come together out of 
 different families and races, often united by 
 only one or two sympathies, with many differ- 
 ences. Their first wisdom would be to find 
 out each other's nature, and accommodate to 
 't as a fixed fact ; instead of which, how many 
 
f 88 Little Foxes. 
 
 spend tl\ eir lives in a blind fight with an oppo- 
 site nature, as good as their own in its way, 
 but not capable of meeting their requirements ! 
 A woman trained in an exact, thriving, busi- 
 ness family, where her father and brothers bore 
 everything along with true worldly skill and 
 energy, falls in love with a literary man, who 
 knows nothing of affairs, whose life is in his 
 library and his pen. Shall she vex and tor- 
 ment herself and him because he is not a busi- 
 ness man ? Shall she constantly hold up to 
 him the example of her father and brothers, 
 and how they would manage in this and that 
 case ? or shall she say cheerily and once for all 
 to herself, — " My husband has no talent for 
 business ; that is not his forte ; but then he 
 has talents far more interesting : I cannot have 
 everything ; let him go on undisturbed, and do 
 what he can do well, and let me try to make up 
 for what he cannot do ; and if there be disa- 
 bilities come on us in consequence of what we 
 neither of as can do, let us both take them 
 cheerfully " ? 
 
Intolerance. 1 89 
 
 In the same manner a man takes out of the 
 bosom of an adoring family one of those deli- 
 cate, petted singing-birds that seem to be cre- 
 ated simply to adorn life and make it charming. 
 Is it fair, after he has got her, to compare her 
 housekeeping, and her efficiency and capability 
 in the material part of life, with those of his 
 mother and sisters, who are strong-limbed, prac- 
 tical women, that have never thought about 
 anything but housekeeping from their cradle ? 
 Shall he all the while vex himself and her with 
 the remembrance of how his mother used to 
 get up at five o'clock and arrange all the busi- 
 ness of the day, — how she kept all the ac- 
 counts, — how she saw to everything and set- 
 tled everything, — how there never were break- 
 downs or irregularities in her system ? 
 
 This would be unfair. If a man wanted such 
 a housekeeper, why did he not get one ? There 
 were plenty of single women, who understood 
 washing, ironing, clear-starching, cooking, and 
 general housekeeping, better than the little ca 
 
190 Little Foxes. 
 
 nary-bird which he fell in love with, and wanted 
 for her plumage and her song, for her merry 
 tricks, for her bright eyes and pretty ways. 
 Now he has got his bird, let him keep it as 
 something fine and precious, to be cared for 
 and watched over, and treated according to the 
 laws of its frail and delicate nature ; and so 
 treating it, he may many years keep the charms 
 which first won his heart. He may find, too, 
 if he watches and is careful, that a humming- 
 bird can, in its own small, dainty way, build a 
 nest as efficiently as a turkey-gobbler, and 
 hatch her eggs and bring up her young in 
 humming-bird fashion ; but to do it, she must 
 be left unfrightened and undisturbed. 
 
 But the evils of domestic intolerance increase 
 with the birth of children. As parents come 
 together out - of different families with ill-as- 
 sorted peculiarities, so children are born to 
 them with natures differing from their own and 
 from each other. 
 
 The parents seize on their first new child a? 
 
Intolerance. 191 
 
 a piece of special property which they are 
 forthwith to turn to their own account The 
 poor little waif, just drifted on the shores of 
 Time, has perhaps folded up in it a character 
 as positive as that of either parent ; but, for all 
 that, its future course is marked out for it, all 
 arranged and predetermined. 
 
 John has a perfect mania for literary distinc- 
 tion. His own education was somewhat imper- 
 fect, but he is determined his children shall be 
 prodigies. His first-born turns out a girl, who 
 is to write like Madame de Stael, — to be an 
 able, accomplished woman. He bores her with 
 literature from her earliest years, reads extracts 
 from Milton to her when she is only eight 
 years old, and is secretly longing to be playing 
 with her doll's wardrobe. He multiplies gov- 
 ernesses, spares no expense, and when, after 
 all, his daughter turns out to be only a very 
 pretty, sensible, domestic girl, fond of cross- 
 stitching embroidery, and with a more decided 
 vocation for sponge-cake and pickles than for 
 
192 Little Foxes. 
 
 poetry and composition, he is disappointed and 
 treats her coldly ; and she is unhappy and 
 feels that she has vexed her parents, because 
 she cannot be what Nature never meant her to 
 be. If John had taken meekly the present 
 that Mother Nature gave him, and humbly set 
 himself to inquire what it was and what it was 
 good for, he might have had years of happiness 
 with a modest, amiable, and domestic daughter, 
 to whom had been given the instinct to study 
 household good. 
 
 But, again, a bustling, pickling, preserving, 
 stocking-knitting, universal-housekeeping wo- 
 man has a daughter who dreams over her knit- 
 ting-work and hides a book under her sampler, 
 — whose thoughts are straying in Greece, Rome, 
 Germany, — who is reading, studying, thinking, 
 writing, without knowing why ; and the mother 
 sets herself to fight this nature, and to make 
 the dreamy scholar into a driving, thorough- 
 going, exact woman-of-business. How many 
 tears are shed, how much temper wasted, how 
 much time lost, in such encounters I 
 
Intolerance. 1 93 
 
 Each of these natures, under judicious train- 
 ing, might be made to complete itself by cul- 
 tivation of that which it lacked. The born 
 housekeeper can never be made a genius, but 
 she may add to her household virtues some rea- 
 sonable share of literary culture and apprecia- 
 tion, — and the born scholar may learn to 
 come down out of her clouds, and see enough 
 of this earth to walk its practical ways without 
 stumbling ; but this must be done by tolerance 
 of their nature, — by giving it play and room, 
 — first recognizing its existence and its rights, 
 and then seeking to add to it the properties 
 it wants. 
 
 A clever Yankee housekeeper, fruitful of re- 
 sources, can work with any tools or with no 
 tools at all. If she absolutely cannot get a 
 tack-hammer with a claw on one end, she can 
 take up carpet-nails with an iron spoon, and 
 drive them down with a flat-iron ; and she has 
 sense enough not to scold, though she does her 
 work with them at considerable disadvantage, 
 
194 Little Foxes. 
 
 She knows that she is working with tools madt. 
 for another purpose, and never thinks of being 
 angry at their unhandiness. She might have 
 equal patience with a daughter unhandy in 
 physical things, but acute and skilful in mental 
 ones, if she once had the idea suggested to 
 her. 
 
 An ambitious man has a son whom he des- 
 tines to a learned profession. He is to be the 
 Daniel Webster of the family. The boy has 
 a robust, muscular frame, great physical vigor 
 and enterprise, a brain bright and active in all 
 that may be acquired through the bodily senses, 
 but which is dull and confused and wandering 
 when put to abstract book-knowledge. He 
 knows every ship at the wharf, her build, ton- 
 nage, and sailing qualities ; he knows every 
 railroad-engine, its power, speed, and hours of 
 coming and going ; he is always busy, sawing, 
 hammering, planing, digging, driving, making 
 bargains, with his head full of plans, all relat- 
 ing to something outward and physical. In al 1 
 
Intolerance, 195 
 
 tnese matters his mind works strongly, his 
 ideas are clear, his observation acute, his con- 
 versation sensible and worth listening to. But 
 as to the distinction between common nouns 
 and proper nouns, between the subject and the 
 predicate of a sentence, between the relative 
 pronoun and the demonstrative adjective pro- 
 noun, between the perfect and the preter-per- 
 fect tense, he is extremely dull and hazy. The 
 region of abstract ideas is to him a region oi 
 ghosts and shadows. Yet his youth is mainly 
 a dreary wilderness of uncomprehended, in- 
 comprehensible studies, of privations, tasks, 
 punishments, with a sense of continual failure, 
 disappointment, and disgrace, because his father 
 is trying to make * scholar and a literary man 
 out of a boy whom Nature made to till the 
 soil or manage the material forces of the world. 
 He might be a farmer, an engineer, a pioneer 
 rf a new settlement, a sailor, a soldier, a thriv- 
 ng man of business ; but he grows up feeling 
 har his nature is a crime, and that he is good 
 
ig6 Little Foxes. 
 
 for nothing, because he is not good for what 
 he had been blindly predestined f o before he 
 was born. 
 
 Anothei boy is a born mechanic ; he under- 
 stands machinery at a glance ; he is all the 
 while pondering and studying and experiment- 
 ing. But his wheels and his axles and his 
 pulleys are all swept away, as so much irrele- 
 vant lumber ; he is doomed to go into the Latin 
 School, and spend three or four years in try- 
 ing to learn what he never can learn well, — 
 disheartened by always being at the tail of 
 his class, and seeing many a boy inferior to 
 himself in general culture who is rising to bril- 
 liant distinction simply because he can remem- 
 ber those hopeless, bewildering Greek quanti- 
 ties and accents which he is constantly forget- 
 ting, — as, for example, how properispomena 
 become paroxytones when the ultimate becomes 
 long, and proparoxytones become paroxytones 
 when the ultimate becomes long, while paroxy- 
 tones with a short penult remain paroxytones, 
 
Intolerance. 197 
 
 Each of this class of rules, however, having 
 about sixteen exceptions, which hold good ex- 
 ?ept in three or four other exceptional cases 
 under them, the labyrinth becomes delightfully 
 wilder and wilder ; and the crowning beauty 
 of the whole is, that, when the bewildered boy 
 has swallowed the whole, — tail, scales, fins, 
 and bones, — he then is allowed to read the 
 classics in peace, without the slightest occa- 
 sion to refer to them again during his college 
 course. 
 
 The great trouble with the so-called classi- 
 cal course of education is, that it is made 
 strictly for but one class of minds, which it 
 drills in respects for which they have by na- 
 ture an aptitude, and to which it presents 
 scarcely enough of difficulty to make it a men- 
 tal discipline, while to another and equally valu- 
 able class of minds it presents difficulties so 
 great as actually to crush and discourage. 
 There are, we will venture to say, in every 
 ten boys in Boston, four, and those not the 
 
198 Little Foxes. 
 
 dullest or poorest in quality, who could never 
 go through the discipline of the Boston Latin 
 School without such a strain on the brain and 
 nervous system as would leave them no power 
 for anything else. 
 
 A bright, intelligent boy, whose talents lay 
 in the line of natural philosophy and mechan- 
 ics, passed with brilliant success through the 
 Boston English High School. He won the 
 first medals, and felt all . that pride and enthu- 
 siasm which belong to a successful student. 
 He entered the Latin Classical School as the 
 next step on his way to a collegiate education. 
 With a large philosophic and reasoning brain, 
 he had a very poor verbal and textual memory ; 
 and here he began to see himself distanced 
 by boys who had hitherto looked up to him. 
 They could rattle off catalogues of names ; 
 they could do so all the better from the habit 
 of not thinking of what they studied. They 
 could commit the Latin Grammar, coarse print 
 %nd fire, and run through the interminable 
 
Intolerance. 199 
 
 mazes of Greek accents and Greek inflections. 
 This boy of large mind and brain found him- 
 self always behindhand, and became, in time, 
 utterly discouraged ; no amount of study could 
 place him on an equality with his former infe- 
 riors. His health failed, and he dropped from 
 school. Many a fine fellow has been lost to 
 himself, and lost to an educated life, by just 
 such a failure. The collegiate system is like 
 a great coal-screen : every piece not of a cer- 
 tain size must fall through. This may do well 
 enough for screening coal ; but what if it were 
 used indiscriminately for a mixture of coal and 
 diamonds ? 
 
 " Poor boy ! " said Ole Bull, compassionately, 
 when one sought to push a schoolboy from 
 the steps of an omnibus, where he was getting 
 a surreptitious ride. " Poor boy ! let him stay. 
 Who knows his trials ? Perhaps he studies 
 Latin." 
 
 The witty Heinrich Heine says, in bitter 
 remembrance of his early sufferings, — "The 
 
200 Little Foxes. 
 
 Romans would never have conquered the world, 
 if they had had to learn their own language. 
 They had leisure, because they were born with 
 the knowledge of what nouns form their accu- 
 satives in im." 
 
 Now we are not among those who decry the 
 Greek and Latin classics. We think it a glo- 
 rious privilege to read both those grand old 
 tongues, and that an intelligent, cultivated 
 man who is shut out from the converse of the 
 splendid minds of those olden times loses a 
 part of his birthright ; and therefore it is that 
 we mourn that but one dry, hard, technical 
 path, one sharp, straight, narrow way, is al- 
 lowed into so goodly a land of knowledge. 
 We think there is no need that the study of 
 Greek and Latin should be made such a hor- 
 ror. There is many a man without a verbal 
 memory, who could neither recite in order the 
 paradigms of the Greek verbs, nor repeat the 
 lists of nouns that form their accusative in 
 one termination or another, who, nevertheless, 
 
Intolerance. 201 
 
 Dy the exercise of his faculties of comparison 
 and reasoning, could learn to read the Greek 
 and Latin classics so as to take their sense 
 and enjoy their spirit ; and that is all that ia 
 worth caring for. We have known one young 
 scholar, who could not by any possibility re- 
 peat the lists of exceptions to the rules in the 
 Latin Grammar, who yet delightedly filled his 
 private note-book with quotations from the 
 "^Eneid," and was making extracts of literary 
 gems from his Greek Reader, at the same time 
 that he was every day "screwed" by his tutoi 
 upon some technical point of the language. 
 
 Is there not many a master of English, many 
 a writer and orator, who could not repeat from 
 memory the list of nouns ending in y that 
 form their plural in ies, with the exceptions 
 under it ? How many of us could do this ? 
 Would it help a good writer and fluent speaker 
 to know the whole of Murray's Grammar by 
 heart, or does real knowledge of a language 
 ever come in this way ? 
 
202 Little Foxes. 
 
 At present the rich stores of ancient litera- 
 ture are kept like the savory stew which poor 
 Dominie Sampson heard simmering in the 
 witch's kettle. One may have much appetite, 
 but there is but one way of getting it. The 
 Meg Merrilies of our educational system, with 
 her harsh voice, and her " Gape, sinner, and 
 swallow," is the only introduction, — and so, 
 many a one turns and runs frightened from 
 the feast. 
 
 This intolerant mode of teaching the classi- 
 cal languages is peculiar to them alone. Mul- 
 titudes of girls and boys are learning to read 
 and to speak German, French, and Italian, and 
 to feel all the delights of expatiating in the lit- 
 erature of a new language, purely because of a 
 simpler, more natural, less pedantic mode of 
 teaching these languages. 
 
 Intolerance in the established system of edu- 
 cation works misery in families, because family 
 pride decrees that every boy of good status in 
 society, will he, nill he, shall go through col* 
 
Intolerance. 203 
 
 lege, or he almost forfeits his position as a 
 gentleman, 
 
 "Not go to Cambridge!" says Scholasticus 
 to his first-born. " Why, I went there, — and 
 my father, and his father, and his father before 
 him. Look at the Cambridge Catalogue and 
 you will see the names of our family ever since 
 the College was founded ! " 
 
 "But I can't learn Latin and Greek," says 
 young Scholasticus. " I can't remember all 
 those rules and exceptions. I Ve tried, and I 
 can't. If you could only know how my head 
 feels when I try ! And I won't be at the foot 
 of the class all the time, if I have to get my 
 living by digging." 
 
 Suppose, now, the boy is pushed on at the 
 point of the bayonet to a kind of knowledge 
 in which he has no interest, communicated in 
 a way that requires faculties which Nature has 
 not given him, — what occurs ? 
 
 He goes through his course, either shamming, 
 shirki?ig, ponyifig, all the while consciously dis« 
 
204 Little Foxes. 
 
 credited and dishonored, — or else, putting forth 
 an effort that is a draft on all his nervous 
 energy, he makes merely a decent scholar, 
 and loses his health for life. 
 
 Now, if the principle of toleration were once 
 admitted into classical education, — if it were 
 admitted that the great object is to read and 
 enjoy a language, and the stress of the teach- 
 ing were placed on the few things absolutely 
 essential to this result, — if the tortoise were 
 allowed time to creep, and the bird permitted 
 to fly, and the fish to swim, towards the en- 
 chanted and divine sources of Helicon, — all 
 might in their own way arrive there, and re- 
 joice in its flowers, its beauty, and its cool- 
 ness. 
 
 " But," say the advocates of the present sys- 
 tem, " it is good mental discipline." 
 
 I doubt it. It is mere waste of time. 
 
 When a boy has learned that in the genitive 
 plural of the first declension of Greek nouns the 
 final syllable is circumflexed, but to this there 
 
Intolerance. 205 
 
 are the following exceptions : 1. That feminine 
 adjectives and participles in -09, -rj y -ov are ac- 
 cented like the genitive masculine, but other 
 feminine adjectives and participles are peris- 
 pomena in the genitive plural ; 2. That the 
 substantives ckrestes, aphue, etesiai, and chlounes 
 in the genitive plural remain paroxytones, 
 (Kiihner's Elementary Greek Grammar, page 22,) 
 — I say, when a boy has learned this and 
 twenty other things just like it, his mind has 
 not been one whit more disciplined than if he 
 had learned the list of the old thirteen States, 
 the number and names of the newly adopted 
 ones, the times of their adoption, and the pop- 
 ulation, commerce, mineral and agricultural 
 wealth of each. These, too, are merely exer- 
 cises of memory, but they are exercises in what 
 is of some interest and some use. 
 
 The particulars above cited are of so little 
 use in understanding the Greek classics' that I 
 will venture to say that there are intelligent 
 English scholars, who have never read any^ 
 
206 Little Foxes. 
 
 thing but Bohn's translations, who have more 
 genuine knowledge of the spirit of the Greek 
 mind, and the peculiar idioms of the language, 
 and more enthusiasm for it, than many a poor 
 fellow who has stumbled blindly through the 
 originals with the bayonet of the tutor at his 
 heels, and his eyes and ears full of the Scotch 
 snuff of the Greek Grammar. 
 
 What then ? Shall we not learn these an- 
 cient tongues ? By all means. " So many 
 times as I learn a language, so many times I 
 become a man," said Charles V. ; and he said 
 rightly. Latin and Greek are foully belied by 
 the prejudices created by this technical, pedan- 
 tic mode of teaching them, which makes one 
 ragged, prickly bundle of all the dry facts of the 
 language, and insists upon it that the boy shall 
 not see one glimpse of its beauty, glory, or in- 
 terest, till he has swallowed and digested the 
 whole mass. Many die in this wilderness with 
 their shoes worn out before reaching the Prom- 
 ised Land of Plato and the Tragedians. 
 
Intolerance. 207 
 
 " But," say our college authorities, " look at 
 England. An English schoolboy learns three 
 times the Latin and Greek that our boys learn, 
 and has them well drubbed in." 
 
 And English boys have three times more 
 beef and pudding in their constitution than 
 American boys have, and three times less of 
 nerves. The difference of nature must be con- 
 sidered here ; and the constant influence flow- 
 ing from English schools and universities must 
 be tempered by considering who we are, what 
 sort of boys we have to deal with, what treat- 
 ment they can bear, and what are the needs of 
 our growing American society. 
 
 The demands of actual life, the living, visible 
 facts of practical science, in so large and new 
 a country as ours, require that the ideas of the 
 ancients should be given us in the shortest 
 and most economical way possible, and that 
 scholastic technicalities should be reserved to 
 those whom Nature made with especial refer- 
 ence to their preservation. 
 
 • 
 
208 Little Foxes. 
 
 On no subject is there more intolerant judg- 
 ment, and more suffering from such intoler- 
 ance, than on the much mooted one of the 
 education of children. 
 
 Treatises on education require altogether too 
 much of parents, and impose burdens of respon- 
 sibility on tender spirits which crush the life 
 and strength out of them. Parents have been 
 talked to as if each child came to them a soft, 
 pulpy mass, which they were to pinch and pull 
 and pat and stroke into shape quite at their 
 leisure, — and a good pattern being placed be- 
 fore them, they were to proceed immediately 
 to set up and construct a good human being 
 in conformity therewith. 
 
 It is strange that believers in the divine in- 
 spiration of the Bible should have entertained 
 this idea, overlooking the constant and affect- 
 ing declaration of the great Heavenly Father 
 that He has nourished and brought up children 
 and they have rebelled against Him, togethei 
 with His constant appeals, — " What could 
 
Intolerance. 209 
 
 have been done more to my vineyard that I 
 have not done in it ? Wherefore, when I 
 looked that it should bring forth grapes, 
 brought it forth wild grapes ? " If even God, 
 wiser, better, purer, more loving, admits Him- 
 self baffled in this great work, is it expedient 
 to say to human beings that the forming power, 
 the deciding force, of a child's character is in 
 their hands ? 
 
 Many a poor feeble woman's health has been 
 strained to breaking, and her life darkened, by 
 the laying ->n her shoulders of a burden of re- 
 sponsibility that never ought to have been 
 placed there ; and many a mother has been 
 hindered from using such powers as God has 
 given her, because some preconceived mode 
 of operation has been set up before her which 
 she could no more make effectual than David 
 could wear the armor of Saul. 
 
 A gentle, loving, fragile creature marries a 
 otrong-willed, energetic man, and by tHe laws 
 of natural descent has a boy given to her of 
 
210 Little Foxes. 
 
 twice her amount of will and energy. She is 
 just as helpless, in the mere struggle of will 
 and authority with such a child, as she would 
 be in a physical wrestle with a six-foot man. 
 
 What then ? Has Nature left her help- 
 less for her duties ? Not if she understands 
 her nature, and acts in the line of it. She has 
 no power of command, but she has power of 
 persuasion. She can neither bend nor break 
 the boy's iron will, but she can melt it. She 
 has tact to avoid the conflict in which she 
 would be worsted. She can charm, amuse, 
 please, and make willing ; and her fine and 
 subtile influences, weaving themselves about 
 him day after day, become more and more 
 powerful. Let her alone, and she will have 
 her boy yet. 
 
 But now some bustling mother-in-law or other 
 privileged expounder says to her, — 
 
 " My dear, it 's your solemn duty to break 
 that boy's will. I broke my boy's will short 
 off. Keep your whip in sight, meet him at 
 
Intolerance. 2 i I 
 
 every turn, fight him whenevei he crosses you, 
 never let him get one victory, and finally his 
 will will be wholly subdued." 
 
 Such advice is mischievous, because what it 
 proposes is as utter an impossibility to the wo- 
 man's nature as for a cow to scratch up worms 
 for her calf, or a hen to suckle her chickens. 
 
 There are men and women of strong, reso- 
 lute will who are gifted with the power of gov- 
 erning the wills of others. Such persons can 
 govern in this way, — and their government, 
 being in the line of their nature, acting 
 strongly, consistently, naturally, makes every- 
 thing move harmoniously. Let them be con- 
 tent with their own success, but let them not 
 set up as general education-doctors, or apply 
 their experience to all possible cases. 
 
 Again, there are others, and among them 
 some of the loveliest and purest natures, who 
 have no power of command. They have suffi- 
 cient tenacity of will as respects their own 
 course, but have no compulsory power o* r er the 
 
212 Little Foxes. 
 
 wills of others. Many such women have been 
 most successful mothers, when they followed 
 the line of their own natures, and did not un- 
 dertake what they never could do. 
 
 Infltience is a slower acting force than au- 
 thority. It seems weaker, but in the long run 
 it often effects more. It always does better 
 than mere force and authority without its gen- 
 tle modifying power. 
 
 She who obtains an absolute and perfect 
 government over a child, so that he obeys, cer- 
 tainly and almost mechanically produces effects 
 which are more appreciable in their immediate 
 action on family life ; her family will be more 
 orderly, her children in their childhood will do 
 her more credit. 
 
 But she who has consciously no power of 
 this kind, whose children are often turbulent 
 and unmanageable, need not despair if she 
 feel that through affection, reason, and con- 
 science, she still retains a strong influence over 
 them. If she cannot govern her boy, she can 
 
Intolerance. 213 
 
 do even a better thing if she can inspire him 
 with a purpose to govern himself ; for a boy 
 taught to govern himself is a better achieve- 
 ment than a boy merely governed. 
 
 If a mother, therefore, is high-principled, re- 
 ligious, affectionate, if she never uses craft or 
 deception, if she governs her temper and sets 
 a good example, let her hold on in good hope, 
 though she cannot produce the discipline of a 
 man-of-war in her noisy little flock, or make 
 all move as smoothly as some other women to 
 whom God has given another and different tal- 
 ent ; and let her not be discouraged, if she 
 seem often to accomplish but little in that 
 arduous work of forming human character 
 wherein the great Creator of the world has 
 declared Himself at times baffled. 
 
 Family tolerance must take great account of 
 the stages and periods of development and 
 growth in children. 
 
 The passage of a human being from one stage 
 of development to another, like the sun's pas- 
 
214 L ittl e Foxes. 
 
 sage across the equator, frequently has its 
 storms and tempests. The change to man- 
 hood and womanhood often involves brain, 
 nerves, body, and soul in confusion ; the child 
 sometimes seems lost to himself and his par- 
 ents, — his very nature changing. In this sen- 
 sitive state come restless desires, unreasonable 
 longings, unsettled purposes ; and the fatal 
 habit of indulgence in deadly stimulants, ruin- 
 ing all the life, often springs from the cravings 
 of this transition period. 
 
 Here must come in the patience of the saints. 
 The restlessness must be soothed, the family 
 hearth must be tolerant enough to keep there 
 the boy, whom Satan will receive and cherish, 
 if his mother does not. The male element 
 sometimes pours into a boy, like the tides in 
 the Bay of Fundy, with tumult and tossing. 
 He is noisy, vociferous, uproarious, and seems 
 bent only on disturbance ; he despises conven- 
 tionalities, he hates parlors, he longs for the 
 woods, the sea, the converse of rough men, 
 
Intolerance. 215 
 
 and kicks at constraint of all kinds. Have 
 patience now, let love have its perfect work, 
 and in a year or two, if no deadly physical 
 habits set in, a quiet, well-mannered gentle- 
 man will be evolved. Meanwhile, if he does 
 not wipe his shoes, and if he will fling his hat 
 upon the floor, and tear his clothes, and bang 
 and hammer and shout, and cause general con- 
 fusion in his belongings, do not despair ; for 
 if you only get your son, the hat and clothes 
 and shoes and noise and confusion do not mat- 
 ter. Any amount of toleration that keeps a 
 boy contented at home is treasure well ex- 
 pended at this time of life. 
 
 One thing not enough reflected on is, that 
 in this transition period between childhood and 
 maturity the heaviest draft and strain of school 
 education occurs. The boy is fitting for the 
 university, the girl going through the studies 
 of the college senior year, and the brain-power, 
 which is working almost to the breaking-point 
 to perfect the physical change, has the addi 
 
2 1 6 L it tie Foxes. 
 
 tional labor of all the drill and discipline of 
 school. 
 
 The girl is growing into a tall and shapely 
 woman, and the poor brain is put to it to find 
 enough phosphate of lime, carbon, and other 
 what not, to build her fair edifice. The bills 
 flow in upon her thick and fast ; she pays out 
 hand over hand : if she had only her woman 
 to build, she might get along, but now come in 
 demands for algebra, geometry, music, language, 
 and the poor brain-bank stops payment ; some 
 part of the work is shabbily done, and a crooked 
 spine or weakened lungs are the result. 
 
 Boarding-schools, both for boys and girls, 
 are for the most part composed of young peo- 
 ple in this most delicate, critical portion of 
 their physical, mental, and moral development, 
 whose teachers are expected to put them 
 through one straight, severe course of drill, 
 without the slightest allowance for the great 
 physical facts of their being. No wonder they 
 are difficult to manage, and that so many of 
 
Intolerance. 2 1 7 
 
 them drop, physically, mentally, and morally 
 halt and maimed. It is not the teacher's fault ; 
 he but fulfils the paieiit's requisition, which 
 dooms his child without appeal to a certain 
 course, simply because others have gone through 
 it. 
 
 Finally, as my sermon is too long already, 
 let me end with a single reflection. Every 
 human being has some handle by which he 
 may be lifted, some groove in which he was 
 meant to run ; and the great work of life, as 
 far as our relations with each other are con- 
 cerned, is to lift each one by his own proper 
 handle, and run each one in his own proper 
 groove. 
 
VI- 
 
 DISCOURTESY. 
 
 "XT OR my part," said my wife, "I think oni 
 of the greatest destroyers of domestic 
 peace is Discourtesy. People neglect, with 
 their nearest friends, those refinements and 
 civilities which they practise with strangers." 
 
 " My dear Madam, I am of another opinion," 
 said Bob Stephens. " The restraints of eti- 
 quette, the formalities of ceremony, are tedious 
 enough in out-door life ; but when a man 
 comes home, he wants leave to take off his 
 tight boots and gloves, wear the gown and 
 slippers, and speak his mind freely without 
 troubling his head where it hits. Home-life 
 should be the communion of people who have 
 learned to understand each other, who allow 
 each other a generous latitude and freedom. 
 One wants one place where he may feel at 
 
Discourtesy. 219 
 
 liberty to be tired or dull or disagreeable with- 
 out ruining his character. Home is the place 
 where we should expect to live somewhat on 
 the credit which a full knowledge of each oth- 
 er's goodness and worth inspires ; and it is 
 not necessary for intimate friends to go every 
 day through those civilities and attentions which 
 they practise with strangers, any more than it 
 is necessary, among literary people, to repeat 
 the alphabet over every day before one begins 
 to read." 
 
 " Yes," said Jennie, " when a young gentle- 
 man is paying his addresses, he helps a young 
 lady out of a carriage so tenderly, and holds 
 back her dress so adroitly, that not a particle 
 of mud gets on it from the wheels ; but when 
 the mutual understanding is complete, and the 
 affection perfect, and she is his wife, he sits 
 still and holds the horse and lets her climb 
 out alone. To be sure, when pretty Miss Tit- 
 mouse is visiting them, he still shows himself 
 gallant, flies from the carriage, and holds back 
 
220 Little Foxes. 
 
 her dress : that 's because he does n't love her 
 nor she him, and they are not on the ground 
 of mutual affection. When a gentleman is 
 only engaged, or a friend, if you hem him a 
 cravat or mend his gloves, he thanks you in 
 the blandest manner ; but when you are once 
 sure of his affection, he only says, ' Very well ; 
 now I wish you would look over my shirts, 
 and mend that rip in my coat, — and be sure 
 don't forget it, as you did yesterday.' For all 
 which reasons," said Miss Jennie, with a toss 
 of her pretty head, " I mean to put off marry- 
 ing as long as possible, because I think it far 
 more agreeable to have gentlemen friends with 
 whom I stand on the ground of ceremony and 
 politeness than to be restricted to one who is 
 living on the c r edit of his affection. I don't 
 want a man who gapes in my face, reads a 
 newspaper all breakfast -time while I want 
 somebody to talk to, smokes cigars all the 
 evening, or reads to himself when I would like 
 him to be entertaining, and considers his affeo- 
 
Discourtesy. 221 
 
 ticn for me as his right and title to make him- 
 self generally disagreeable. If he has a bright 
 face, and pleasant, entertaining, gallant ways. 
 I like to be among the ladies who may have 
 the benefit of them, and should take care how 
 I lost my title to it by coming with him on 
 to the ground of domestic affection." 
 
 " Well, Miss Jennie," said Bob, " it is n't 
 merely our sex who are guilty of making them- 
 selves less agreeable after marriage. Your 
 dapper little fairy creatures, who dazzle us so 
 with wondrous and fresh toilettes, who are so 
 trim and neat and sprightly and enchanting, 
 what becomes of them after marriage ? If he 
 reads the newspaper at the breakfast-table, per- 
 haps it 's because there is a sleepy, dowdy wo- 
 man opposite, in a faded gingham wrapper, put 
 on in the sacredness of domestic privacy, and 
 perhaps she has laid aside those crisp, spark- 
 ling, bright little sayings and doings that used 
 to make it impossible to look at or listen to 
 anybody else when she was about. Such things 
 
222 Little Foxes. 
 
 are, sometimes, among the goddesses, I believe. 
 Of course, Marianne and I know nothing of 
 these troubles ; we, being a model pair, sit 
 among the clouds and speculate on all these 
 matters as spectators merely." 
 
 " Well, you see what your principle leads 
 to, carried out," said Jennie. " If home is 
 merely the place where one may feel at lib- 
 erty to be tired or dull or disagreeable, with- 
 out losing one's character, I think the women 
 have far more right to avail themselves of the 
 liberty than the men ; for all the lonesome, 
 dull, disagreeable part of home-life comes into 
 their department. It is they who must keep 
 awake with the baby, if it frets ; and if they 
 do not feel spirits to make an attractive toilette 
 in the morning, or have not the airy, graceful 
 fancies that they had when they were girls, 
 it is not so very much against them. A house- 
 keeper and nursery-maid cannot be expected 
 to be quite as elegant in her toilette and as 
 entertaining in her ways as a girl without a 
 
Discourtesy. 223 
 
 care in hei father's house ; but I think that 
 this is no excuse for husbands neglecting the 
 little civilities and attentions which they used 
 to show before marriage. They are strong and 
 well and hearty ; go out into the world and 
 hear and see a great deal that keeps their 
 minds moving and awake ; and they ought to 
 entertain their wives after marriage just as their 
 wives entertained them before. That 's the 
 way my husband must do, or I will never have 
 one, — and it will be small loss, if I don't," said 
 Miss Jennie. 
 
 " Well," said Bob, " I must endeavor to ini- 
 tiate Charley Sedley in time." 
 
 " Charley Sedley, Bob ! " said Jennie, with 
 crimson indignation. " I wonder you will al- 
 ways bring up that old story, when I 've told 
 you a hundred times how disagreeable it is ! 
 Charley and I are good friends, but — " 
 
 " There, there," said Bob, " that will do ; you 
 don't need to proceed further." 
 
 " You only said that because you could n't 
 answer my argument," said Jennie. 
 
224 Little Foxes. 
 
 "Well, my dear," said Bob, "you know ev 
 erything has two sides to it, and I '11 admit 
 that you have brought up the opposite side to 
 mine quite handsomely ; but, for all that, I am 
 convinced, that, if what I said was not really 
 the truth, yet the truth lies somewhere in the 
 vicinity of it. As I said before, so I say again, 
 true love ought to beget a freedom which shall 
 do away with the necessity of ceremony, and 
 much may and ought to be tolerated among 
 near and dear friends that would be discour- 
 teous among strangers. I am just as sure of 
 this as of anything in the world." 
 
 " And yet," said my wife, " there is certainly 
 truth in the much quoted lines of Cowper, on 
 Friendship, where he says, — 
 
 " As similarity of mind, 
 Or something not to be defined, 
 
 First fixes our attention, 
 So manners decent and polite, 
 The same we pract'sed at first sight, 
 Will save it from declension." 
 
 " Well, now," said Bob, " I Ve seen enough 
 
Discourtesy. 225 
 
 of Fiench politeness between married people 
 When I was in Paris, I remember there was 
 in our boarding-house a Madame de Villiers, 
 whose husband had conferred upon her his 
 name and the de belonging to it, in considera- 
 tion of a snug little income which she brought 
 to him by the marriage. His conduct towards 
 her was a perfect model of all the graces of 
 civilized life. It was true that he lived on her 
 income, and spent it in promenading the Bou- 
 levards, and visiting theatres and operas with 
 divers fair friends of easy morals ; still all this 
 was so courteously, so politely, so diplomatically 
 arranged with Madame, that it was quite worth 
 while to be neglected and cheated for the sake 
 of having the thing done in so finished and 
 elegant a manner. According to his showing, 
 Monsieur had taken the neat little apartment 
 for her in our pension, because his circumstances 
 were embarrassed, and he would be in despair 
 to drag such a creature into hardships which 
 
 he described as terrific, and which he was re- 
 10* o 
 
226 Little Foxes, 
 
 solved heroically to endure alone. No, while 
 a sous remained to them, his adored Julie should 
 have her apartment and the comforts of life 
 secured to her, while the barest attic should 
 suffice for him. Never did he visit her without 
 kissing her hand with the homage due to a 
 princess, complimenting her on her good looks, 
 bringing bonbons, entertaining her with most 
 ravishing small-talk of all the interesting on-dits 
 in Paris ; and these visits were most particu- 
 larly frequent as the time for receiving her 
 quarterly instalments approached. And so Ma- 
 dame adored him and could refuse him noth- 
 ing, believed all his stories, and was well con- 
 tent to live on a fourth of her own income for 
 the sake of so engaging a husband." 
 
 " Well," said Jennie, " I don't know to what 
 purpose your anecdote is related, but to me it 
 means simply this : if a rascal, without heart, 
 without principle, without any good quality, can 
 win and keep a woman's heart merely by being 
 invariably polite and agreeable, while in hex 
 
Discourtesy. 227 
 
 presence, how much more might a man of 
 sense and principle and real affection do by 
 the same means ! I 'm sure, if a man who neg- 
 lects a woman, and robs her of her money, 
 nevertheless keeps her affections, merely be- 
 cause whenever he sees her he is courteous 
 and attentive, it certainly shows that courtesy 
 stands for a great deal in the matter of love." 
 
 " With foolish women," said Bob. 
 
 " Yes, and with sensible ones too," said my 
 wife. " Your Monsieur presents a specimen of 
 the French way of doing a bad thing ; but I 
 know a poor woman whose husband did the 
 same thing in English fashion, without kisses 
 or compliments. Instead of flattering, he swore 
 at her, and took her money away without the 
 ceremony of presenting bonbons ; and I assure 
 you, if the thing must be done at all, I would, 
 for my part, much rather have it done in the 
 French than the English manner. The courtesy, 
 as far as it goes, is a good, and far better than 
 nothing, — though, of course, one would rather 
 
228 Little Foxes. 
 
 have substantial good with it. If one must be 
 robbed, one would rather have one's money 
 wheedled away agreeably, with kisses and bon- 
 bons, than be knocked down and trampled 
 upon." 
 
 " The mistake that is made on this subject," 
 said I, "is in comparing, as people generally 
 do, a polished rascal with a boorish good man ; 
 but the polished rascal should be compared 
 with the polished good man, and the boorish 
 rascal with the boorish good man, and then we 
 get the true value of the article. 
 
 " It is true, as a general rule, that those 
 races of men that are most distinguished for 
 outward urbanity and courtesy are the least 
 distinguished for truth and sincerity ; and hence 
 the well-known alliterations, ' fair and false,' 
 ' smooth and slippery.' The fair and false 
 Greek, the polished and wily Italian, the cour- 
 teous and deceitful Frenchman, are associations 
 which, to the strong, downright, courageous 
 Anglo-Saxon, make up-and-down rudeness and 
 
Discourtesy. 229 
 
 blunt discourtesy a type of truth and hon- 
 esty. 
 
 " No one can read French literature without 
 feeling how the element of courtesy pervades 
 every department of life, — how carefully people 
 avoid being personally disagreeable in their in- 
 tercourse. A domestic quarrel, if we may trust 
 French plays, is carried on with all the refine- 
 ments of good breeding, and insults are given 
 with elegant civility. It seems impossible to 
 translate into French the direct and downright 
 brutalities which the English tongue allows. 
 The whole intercourse of life is arranged on 
 the understanding that all personal contacts 
 shall be smooth and civil, and such as to ob- 
 viate the necessity of personal jostle and jar. 
 
 " Does a Frenchman engage a clerk or other 
 employe, and afterwards hear a report to his 
 disadvantage, the last thing he would think of 
 would be to tell a downright unpleasant truth 
 to*the man. He writes him a civil note, and 
 tells him, that, in consequence of sn unex- 
 
230 Little Foxes. 
 
 pected change of business, he shall not need 
 an assistant in that department, and much re- 
 grets that this will deprive him of Monsieur's 
 agreeable society, etc. 
 
 "A more striking example cannot be found 
 of this sort of intercourse than the representa- 
 tion in the life of Madame George Sand of the 
 proceedings between her father and his mother. 
 There is all the romance of affection between 
 this mother and son. He writes her the most 
 devoted letters, he kisses her hand on every 
 page, he is the very image of a gallant, charm- 
 ing, lovable son, while at the same time he is 
 secretly making arrangements for a private mar- 
 riage with a woman of low rank and indiffer- 
 ent reputation, — a marriage which he knows 
 would be like death to his mother. He mar- 
 ries, lives with his wife, has one or two chil- 
 dren by her, before he will pain the heart of 
 his adored mother by telling her the truth. 
 The adored mother suspects her son, but no 
 trace of the suspicion appears in her letters to 
 
Discourtesy. 231 
 
 him. The questions which an English parent 
 would level at him point-blank she is entirely 
 too delicate to address to her dear Maurice ; 
 but she puts them to the Prefect of Police, and 
 ferrets out the marriage through legal docu- 
 ments, while yet no trace of this knowledge 
 dims the affectionateness of her letters, or the 
 serenity of her reception of her son when he 
 comes to bestow on her the time which he 
 can spare from his family cares. In an Eng- 
 lish or American family there would have been 
 a battle royal, an open rupture ; whereas this 
 courteous son and mother go on for years with 
 this polite drama, she pretending to be deceived 
 while she is not, and he supposing that he is 
 sparing her feelings by the deception. 
 
 " Now it is the reaction from such a style of 
 life on the truthful Anglo-Saxon nature that 
 leads to an undervaluing of courtesy, as if it 
 were of necessity opposed to sincerity. But it 
 does not follow, because all is not gold that 
 glitters, that nothing that glitters is gold, and 
 
232 Little Foxes. 
 
 because courtesy and delicacy of personal inter- 
 course are often perverted to deceit, that they 
 are not valuable allies of truth. No woman 
 would prefer a slippery, plausible rascal to a 
 rough, unceremonious honest man ; but of two 
 men equally truthful and affectionate, every wo- 
 man would prefer the courteous one." 
 
 "Well," said Bob, "there is a loathsome, 
 sickly stench of cowardice and distrust about 
 all this kind of French delicacy that is enough 
 to drive an honest fellow to the other extreme. 
 True love ought to be a robust, hardy plant, 
 that can stand a free out-door life of sun and 
 wind and rain. People who are too delicate 
 and courteous ever fully to speak their minds 
 to each other are apt to have stagnant residu- 
 ums of unpleasant feelings which breed all sorts 
 of gnats and mosquitos. My rule is, Say ev- 
 erything out as you go along ; have your little 
 tiffs, and get over them ; jar and jolt and rub 
 a little, and learn to take rubs and bear jolts 
 
 " If I take less thought and use less civility 
 
Discourtesy. 233 
 
 of expression, in announcing to Marianne that 
 her coffee is roasted too much, than I did to 
 old Mrs. Pollux when I boarded with her, it 's 
 because I take it Marianne is somewhat more 
 a part of myself than old Mrs. Pollux was, — 
 that there is an intimacy and confidence be- 
 tween us which will enable us to use the short- 
 hand of life, — that she will not fall into a pas- 
 sion or fly into hysterics, but will merely speak 
 tc cook in good time. If I don't thank her for 
 mending my glove in just the style that I did 
 when I was a lover, it is. because now she does 
 that sort of thing for me so often that it would 
 be a downright bore to her to have me always 
 on my knees about it. All that I could think 
 of to say about her graceful handiness and her 
 delicate needle-work has been said so often, 
 and is so well understood, that it has entirely 
 lost the zest of originality. Marianne and I 
 have had sundry little battles, in which the 
 victory came out on both sides, each of us 
 thinking the better of the other for the vigor 
 
234 Little Foxes. 
 
 and spirit with which we conducted matters , 
 and our habit of perfect plain-speaking and 
 truth-telling to each other is better than all 
 the delicacies that ever were hatched up in the 
 hot-bed of French sentiment." 
 
 " Perfectly true, perfectly right," said I. " Ev- 
 ery word good as gold. Truth before all things ; 
 sincerity before all things : pure, clear, diamond- 
 bright sincerity is of more value than the gold 
 of Ophir ; the foundation of all love must rest 
 here. How those people do who live in the 
 nearest and dearest intimacy with friends who 
 they believe will lie to them for any purpose, 
 even the most refined and delicate, is a mys- 
 tery to me. If I once know that my wife or 
 my friend will tell me only what they think 
 will be agreeable to me, then I am at once 
 lost, my way is a pathless quicksand. But all 
 this being premised, I still say that we Anglo- 
 Saxons might improve our domestic life, if we 
 would graft upon the strong stock of its homely 
 sincerity the courteous graces of the French 
 char?^ter. 
 
Discourtesy. 235 
 
 "If anybody wishes to know exactly what I 
 mean by this, let him read the Memoir of De 
 Tocque^iPe, whom I take to be the representa- 
 tive of the French ideal man ; and certainly 
 the Kind of family life which his domestic let- 
 ters disclose has a delicacy and a beauty which 
 adorn its solid worth. 
 
 "What I have to say on this matter is, that 
 it is very dangerous for any individual man 
 or any race of men continually to cry up the 
 virtues to which they are constitutionally in- 
 clined, and to be constantly dwelling with rep- 
 robation on faults to which they have no man- 
 ner of temptation. 
 
 " I think that we of the English race may 
 set it down as a general rule, that we are in 
 no danger of becoming hypocrites in domestic 
 life through an extra sense of politeness, and 
 in some danger of becoming boors from a 
 rough, uncultivated instinct of sincerity. But 
 to bring the matter to a practical point, I will 
 specify some particulars in which the courtesy 
 
236 Little Foxes. 
 
 we show to strangers might with advantage 
 be grafted into our home-life. 
 
 "In the first place, then, let us watch our 
 course when we are entertaining strangers 
 whose good opinion we wish to propitiate 
 We dress ourselves with care, we study whal 
 it will be agreeable to say, we do not sufifei 
 our natural laziness to prevent our being very 
 alert in paying small attentions, we start across 
 the room for an easier chair, we stoop to pick 
 up the fan, we search for the mislaid news- 
 paper, and all this for persons in whom we have 
 no particular interest beyond the passing hour ; 
 while with those friends whom we love and 
 respect we too often sit in our old faded habili- 
 ments, and let them get their own chair, and 
 look up their own newspaper, and fight their 
 own way daily, without any of this preventing 
 care. 
 
 " In the matter of personal adornment, espe- 
 cially, there are a great many people who are 
 cnargeable with the same fault that I have 
 
Discourtesy . 237 
 
 already spoken of in reference to household 
 arrangements. They have a splendid ward- 
 robe for company, and a shabby and sordid 
 one for domestic life. A woman puts all her 
 income into party-dresses, and thinks anything 
 will do to wear at home. All her old tumbled 
 finery, her frayed, dirty silks and soiled ribbons, 
 are made to do duty for her hours of inter- 
 course with her dearest friends. Some seem 
 to be really principled against wearing a hand- 
 some dress in every-day life ; they ' cannot 
 afford' to be well-dressed in private. Now 
 what I should recommend would be to take 
 the money necessary for one or two party- 
 dresses and spend it upon an appropriate and 
 tasteful home-toilette, and to make it an avowed 
 object to look prettily at home. 
 
 " We men are a sort of stupid, blind animals : 
 we know when we are pleased, but we don't 
 know what it is that pleases us ; we say we 
 don't care anything about flowers, but if there 
 is a flower-garden under our window, somehow 
 
238 Little Foxes. 
 
 or other we are dimly conscious of it, and feel 
 that there is something pleasant there ; and 
 so when our wives and daughters are prettily 
 and tastefully attired, we know it, and it glad- 
 dens our life far more than we are perhaps 
 aware of." 
 
 "Well, Papa," said Jennie, "I think the men 
 ought to take just as much pains to get them- 
 selves up nicely after marriage as the women. 
 I think there are such things as tumbled shirt- 
 collars and frowzy hair and muddy shoes 
 brought into the domestic sanctuary, as well 
 as frayed silks and dirty ribbons." 
 
 " Certainly," I said ; " but you know we are 
 the natural Hottentot, and you are the mission- 
 aries who are to keep us from degenerating ; 
 we are the clumsy, old, blind Vulcan, and you 
 the fair Cytherea, the bearers of the magic 
 cestus, and therefore it is to you that this head 
 more particularly belongs. 
 
 " Now I maintain that in family-life there 
 should be an effort not only to be neat and 
 
Discourtesy. 239 
 
 decent in the arrangement of our person, but 
 to be also what the French call coquette, — or 
 to put it in plain English, there should be an 
 endeavor to make ourselves look handsome in 
 the eyes of our dearest friends. 
 
 " Many worthy women, who would not for 
 the world be found wanting in the matter of 
 personal neatness, seem somehow to have the 
 notion that any study of the arts of personal 
 beauty in family-life is unmatronly ; they buy 
 their clothes with simple reference to econ- 
 omy, and have them made up without any 
 question of becomingness ; and hence marriage 
 sometimes transforms a charming, trim, tripping 
 young lady into a waddling matron whose 
 every-day toilette suggests only the idea of a 
 feather-bed tied round with a string. For my 
 part, I do not believe that the summary ban- 
 ishment of the Graces from the domestic cir- 
 cle as soon as the first baby makes its appear- 
 ance is at all conducive to domestic affection. 
 Nor do I think that there is any need of so 
 
240 Little Foxes. 
 
 doing. These good housewives are in dange 
 like other saints, of falling into the error ( 1 
 neglecting the body through too much thought- 
 fulness for others and too little for themselves. 
 If a woman ever had any attractiveness, let 
 her try and keep it, setting it down as one of 
 her domestic talents. As for my erring broth- 
 ers who violate the domestic sanctuary by 
 tousled hair, tumbled linen, and muddy shoes, 
 I deliver them over to Miss Jennie without 
 benefit of clergy. 
 
 "My second head is, that there should be 
 in family-life the same delicacy in the avoid- 
 ance of disagreeable topics that characterizes 
 the intercourse of refined society among stran- 
 gers. 
 
 "I do not think that it makes family-life 
 more sincere, or any more honest, to have the 
 members of a domestic circle feel a freedom 
 to blurt out in each other's faces, without 
 thought or care, all the disagreeable things 
 that may occur to them : as, for example 
 
Discourtesy 241 
 
 1 How horridly you look this morning ! What 's 
 the matter with you ? ' — 'Is there a pimple 
 coming on your nose ? or what is that spot ? ' 
 
 — ' What made you buy such a dreadfully un- 
 becoming dress ? It sets like a witch ! Who 
 cut it ? ' — ' What makes you wear that pair of 
 old shoes ? ' — ' Holloa, Bess ! is that your par- 
 ty-rig ? I should think you were going out 
 for a walking advertisement of a flower-store ! ' 
 
 — Observations of this kind between husbands 
 and wives, brothers and sisters, or intimate 
 friends, do not indicate sincerity, but obtuse- 
 ness ; and the person who remarks on the 
 pimple on your nose is in many cases just as 
 apt to deceive you as the most accomplished 
 Frenchwoman who avoids disagreeable topics 
 in your presence. 
 
 "&Iany families seem to think that it is a 
 proof of family union and good-nature that they 
 can pick each other to pieces, joke on each 
 other's feelings and infirmities, and treat each 
 other with a general tally-ho-ing rudeness with- 
 11 r 
 
242 Little Foxes. 
 
 out any offence or ill-feeling. If there is a 
 limping sister, there is a never-failing supply 
 of jokes on ' Dot-and-go-one ' ; and so with 
 other defects and peculiarities of mind or man- 
 ners. Now the perfect good-nature and mu- 
 tual confidence which allow all this liberty are 
 certainly admirable ; but the liberty itself is 
 far from making home-life interesting or agree- 
 able. ~) 
 
 "Jokes upon personal or mental infirmities, 
 and a general habit of saying things in jest 
 which would be the height of rudeness if said 
 in earnest, are all habits which take from the 
 delicacy of family affection. 
 
 "In all this rough playing with edge-tools 
 many are hit and hurt wno are ashamed or 
 afraid to complain. And after all, what pos- 
 sible good or benefit comes from it ? Courage 
 to say disagreeable things, when it is neces- 
 sary to say them for the highest good of the 
 person addressed, is a sublime quality ; but a 
 careless habit of saying them, in the mere 
 
Discourtesy. 24 3 
 
 lreedom of family intercourse, is certainly as 
 great a spoiler of the domestic vines as any 
 fox running 
 
 " There is one point under this head which 
 I enlarge upon for the benefit of my own sex : 
 I mean table-criticisms. The conduct of house- 
 keeping, in the present state of domestic ser- 
 vice, certainly requires great allowance ; and 
 the habit of unceremonious comment on the 
 cooking and appointments of the table, in 
 which some husbands habitually allow them- 
 selves, is the most unpardonable form of do- 
 mestic rudeness. If a wife has philosophy 
 enough not to mind it, so much the worse for 
 her husband, as it confirms him in an unseem- 
 ly habit, embarrassing to guests and a bad ex- 
 ample to children. If she has no feelings that 
 he is bound to respect, he should at least re- 
 spect decorum and good taste, and confine the 
 discussion of such matters to private inter- 
 course, and not initiate every guest and child 
 into the grating and greasing of the wheels 
 of the domestic machinery. 
 
244 Little Foxes. 
 
 "Another thing in which families might im- 
 itate the politeness of strangers is a wise reti- 
 cence with regard to the asking of questions 
 and the offering of advice. 
 
 " A large family includes many persons of 
 different tastes, habits, modes of thinking and 
 acting, and it would be wise and well to leave 
 to each one that measure of freedom in these 
 respects which the laws of general politeness 
 require. Brothers and sisters may love each 
 other very much, and yet not enough to make 
 joint-stock of all their ideas, plans, wishes, 
 schemes, friendships. There are in every fam- 
 ily-circle individuals whom a certain sensitive- 
 ness of nature inclines to quietness and re 
 serve ; and there are very well-meaning fam 
 ilies where no such quietness or reserve is pos- 
 sible. Nobody can be let alone, nobody may 
 have a secret, nobody can move in any direc- 
 tion, without a host of inquiries and comments 
 1 Who is your letter from ? Let 's see.' — ' My 
 letter is from So-and-So.' — ' He writing to you ? 
 
Discourtesy. 245 
 
 [ did n't know that. What 's he writing about ? ' 
 — ' Where did you go yesterday ? What did 
 you buy ? What did you give for it ? What 
 are you going to do with it ? - ' Seems to me 
 that 's an odd way to do. I should n't do so.' 
 — ' Look here, Mary ; Sarah 's going to have 
 a dress of silk tissue this spring. Now I think 
 they 're too dear, — don't you ? ' 
 
 "I recollect seeing in some author a descrip- 
 tion of a true gentleman, in which, among other 
 traits, he was characterized as the man that 
 asks the fewest questions. This trait of re- 
 fined society might be adopted into home-life 
 in a far greater degree than it is, and make it 
 far more agreeable. 
 
 "If there is perfect unreserve and mutual 
 confidence, let it show itself in free communi- 
 cations coming unsolicited. It may fairly be 
 presumed, that, if there is anything our inti- 
 mate friends wish us to know, they will tell us 
 of it, — and that when we are on close and con- 
 fidential terms with persons, and there are 
 
246 Little Foxes. 
 
 topics on which they do not speak to us, it is 
 because for some reason they prefer to keep 
 silence concerning them ; and the delicacy that 
 respects a friend's silence is one of the charms 
 of life. 
 
 "As with the asking of questions, so with 
 the offering of advice, there should be among 
 friends a wise reticence. . 
 
 "Some families are always calling each other 
 to account at every step of the day. 'What 
 did you put on that dress for ? Why did n't 
 you wear that ? ' — ' What did you do this for ? 
 Why did n't you do that ? ' — ' Now / should 
 advise you to do thus and so/ — And these 
 comments and criticisms and advices are ac- 
 companied with an energy of feeling that makes 
 it rather difficult to disregard them. 
 
 "Now it is no matter how dear and how 
 good our friends may be, if they abridge our 
 liberty and fetter the free exercise of our life, 
 it is inevitable that we shall come to enjoying 
 ourselves much better where they are not than 
 
Discourtesy. 247 
 
 where they are ; and one of the reasons why 
 brothers and sisters or children so often diverge 
 from the family-circle in the choice of confi- 
 dants is, that extraneous friends are bound by 
 certain laws of delicacy not to push inquiries, 
 criticisms, or advice too far. 
 
 "Parents would do well to remember in time 
 when their children have grown up into inde- 
 pendent human beings, and use with a wise 
 moderation those advisory and admonitory pow- 
 ers with which they guided their earlier days. 
 Let us give everybody a right to live his own 
 life, as far as possible, and avoid imposing our 
 own personalities on another. 
 
 "If I were to picture a perfect family, it 
 should be a union of people of individual and 
 marked character, who through love have come 
 to a perfect appreciation of each other, and 
 who so wisely understand themselves and one 
 another that each may move freely along his 
 or her own track without jar or jostle, — a 
 family where affection is always sympathetic 
 and receptive, but never inquisitive, — where 
 
248 Little Foxes. 
 
 all personal delicacies are respected, — and 
 where there is a sense of privacy and seclusion 
 in following one's own course, unchallenged 
 by the watchfulness of others, yet withal a 
 sense of society and support in a knowledge 
 of the kind dispositions and interpretations of 
 all around. 
 
 " In treating of family discourtesies, I have 
 avoided speaking of those which come from 
 ill-temper and brute selfishness, because these 
 are sins more than mistakes. An angry per- 
 son is generally impolite ; and where conten- 
 tion and ill-will are, there can be no courtesy. 
 What I have mentioned are rather the lackings 
 of good and often admirable people, who merely 
 need to consider in their family-life a little more 
 of whatsoever things are lovely. With such the 
 mere admission of anything to be pursued as 
 a duty secures the purpose ; only in theit 
 somewhat earnest pursuit of the substantiate 
 of life they drop and pass by the little things 
 that give it sweetness and perfume. To such 
 a word is enough, and that word is said." 
 
VII. 
 
 EXACTINGNESS. 
 
 A T length I am arrived at my seventh fox, 
 — the last of the domestic quadrupeds 
 against which I have vowed a crusade, — and 
 here opens the chase of him. I call him 
 
 EX A CTINGNESS. 
 
 And having done this, I drop the metaphor, for 
 fear of chasing it beyond the rules of graceful 
 rhetoric, and shall proceed to define the trait. 
 
 All the other domestic faults of which I have 
 treated have relation to the manner in which 
 the ends of life are pursued ; but this one is 
 an underlying, false, and diseased state of con- 
 ception as to the very ends and purposes of 
 life itself. 
 
 If a piano is tuned to exact concert pitch, 
 the majority of voices must fall below it ; for 
 ii * 
 
250 Little Foxes. 
 
 which reason, most people indulgently allow 
 their pianos to be tuned a little below this 
 point, in accommodation to the average power 
 of the human voice. Persons of only ordinary 
 powers of voice would be considered absolute 
 monomaniacs, who should insist on having their 
 pianos tuned to accord with any abstract no- 
 tion of propriety or perfection, — rendering 
 themselves wretched by persistently singing all 
 their pieces miserably out of tune in conse- 
 quence. 
 
 Yet there are persons who keep the require- 
 ments of life strained up always at concert 
 pitch, and are thus worn out and made misera- 
 ble all their days by the grating of a perpetual 
 discord. 
 
 There is a faculty of the human mind to 
 which phrenologists have given the name of 
 Ideality, which is at the foundation of this 
 exactingness. Ideality is the faculty oy which 
 we conceive of and long for perfection ; and at 
 a glance it will be seen, that, so far from being 
 
Exacting? t'ess. 2 5 1 
 
 d\\ evil ingredient of human nature, it is the 
 one element of progress that distinguishes 
 man's nature from that of the brute. While 
 animals go on from generation to generation, 
 learning nothing and forgetting nothing, prac- 
 tising their small circle of the arts of life no 
 better and no worse from year to year, man is 
 driven by ideality to constant invention and 
 alteration, whence come arts, sciences, and the 
 whole progress of society. Ideality induces 
 discontent with present attainments, posses- 
 sions, and performances, and hence come bet- 
 ter and better ones. So in morals, ideality 
 constantly incites to higher and nobler modes 
 of living and thinking, and is the faculty to 
 which the most effective teachings of the great 
 Master of Christianity are addressed. To be 
 dissatisfied with present attainments, with earth- 
 ly things and scenes, to aspire and press on to 
 something forever fair, yet forever receding be- 
 fore our steps, — this is the teaching of Chris- 
 tianity, and the work of the Christian. 
 
252 Little Foxes. 
 
 But every faculty has its own instinctive, wild 
 growth, which, like the spontaneous produce 
 of the earth, is crude and weedy. 
 
 Revenge, says Lord Bacon, is a sort of wild 
 justice, obstinacy is untutored firmness, — and 
 so exactingness is untrained ideality ; and a 
 vast deal of misery, social and domestic, comes, 
 not of the faculty, but of its untrained exercise. 
 
 The faculty which is ever conceiving and 
 desiring something better and more perfect 
 must be modified in its action by good sense, 
 patience, and conscience, or it induces a mor- 
 bid, discontented spirit, which courses through 
 the veins of individual and family life like a 
 subtle poison. 
 
 In a certain neighborhood are two families 
 whose social and domestic animus illustrates 
 the difference between ideality and the want 
 of it. 
 
 The Day tons are a large, easy-natured, joy 
 ous race, hospitable, kindly, and friendly. 
 
 Nothing about their establishment is mucb 
 
Exactingness. 253 
 
 above mediocrity. The grounds are tolerably 
 kept,, the table is tolerably fair, the servant? 
 moderately good, and the family character anc 
 attainments of the same average level. 
 
 Mrs. Dayton is a decent housekeeper, and 
 so her bread be not sour, her butter not frowy, 
 the food abundant, and the table-cloth ana 
 dishes clean, she troubles her head little with 
 the niceties and refinements of the menage. 
 
 She accepts her children as they come from 
 the hand of Nature, simply opening her eyes 
 to discern what they are, never raising the 
 query what she would have had them, — form 
 ing no very high expectations concerning them 
 and well content with whatever develops. 
 
 A visitor in the family can easily see a thou 
 sand defects in the conduct of affairs, in the 
 management of the children, and in this, that 
 and the other portion of the household ar 
 rangements ; but he can see and feel, also, a 
 perfect comfortableness in the domestic atmos- 
 phere that almost atones for any defects. Ho 
 
254 Little Foxes. 
 
 can see that in a thousand respects things 
 might be better done, if the family were not 
 perfectly content to have them as they are, 
 and that each individual member might make 
 higher attainments in various directions, were 
 there not such entire satisfaction with what 
 is already attained. 
 
 Trying each other by very moderate stand- 
 ards and measurements, there is great mutual 
 complacency. The oldest boy does not get an 
 appointment in college, — they never expected 
 he would ; but he was a respectable scholar, 
 and they receive him with acclamations such 
 as another family would bestow on a valedic- 
 torian. The daughters do not profess, as we 
 are told, to draw like artists, but some very 
 moderate performances in the line of the fine 
 arts are dwelt on with much innocent pleasure. 
 They thrum a few tunes on the piano, and the 
 whole family listen and approve. All unite in 
 singing in a somewhat uncultured manner a 
 few psalm-tunes or songs, and take more com- 
 
Exactingness. 255 
 
 fort in them than many amateurs do in their 
 well-drilled performances. 
 
 So goes the world with the Daytons ; and 
 when you visit them, if you often feel that you 
 could ask more and suggest much improvement, 
 yet you cannot help enjoying the quiet satisfac- 
 tion which breathes around you. 
 
 Now right across the way from the Daytons 
 live the Mores ; and the Mores are the very 
 opposites of the Daytons. 
 
 Everything about their establishment is 
 brought to the highest point of culture. The 
 carriage-drive never shows a weed, the lawn is 
 velvet, the flower-beds ever-blooming, the fruit- 
 trees and vines grow exactly like the patterns 
 in the best pomological treatises Within doors 
 the housekeeping is faultless, — all seems to be 
 moving in time and tune, — the table is more 
 than good, it is superlative, — every article is 
 in its way a model, — the children appear to 
 you to be growing up after the most patent- 
 right method, duly trained, snipped, and cul- 
 
256 Little Foxes. 
 
 tured, like the pear-trees and grape-vines 
 Nothing is left to accident, or done without 
 much laborious consideration of the best man- 
 ner of doing it ; and the consequences, in the 
 eyes of their simple, unsophisticated neighbors, 
 are very wonderful. 
 
 Nevertheless this is not a happy family. All 
 their perfections do not begin to afford them 
 one tithe of the satisfaction that the Daytons 
 derive from their ragged and scrambling per- 
 formances. 
 
 The two daughters, Jane and Maria, had nat- 
 urally very sweet voices, and when they were 
 little, trilled tunes in a very pleasant and bird- 
 like manner. But now, having been instructed 
 by the best masters, and heard the very first 
 artists, they never sing or play ; the piano is 
 shut, and their voices are dumb. If you re- 
 quest a song, they tell you that they never sing 
 now ; papa has such an exquisite taste, he takes 
 no interest in any common music ; in short, 
 having heard Jenny Lind, Grisi, Alboni, Mario, 
 
Exactiiigness. 257 
 
 and others of the tuneful shell, this family have 
 concluded to abide in silence. As to any mu- 
 sic that they could make, it is n't to be thought 
 o£ 
 
 For the same reason, the daughters, after 
 attending a quarter or two on the drawing-ex- 
 ercises of a celebrated teacher, threw up their 
 pencils in disgust, and tore up very pretty 
 and agreeable sketches which were the mar 
 vel of their good-natured admiring neighbors. 
 If they could draw like Signor Scratchalini, 
 if they could hope to become perfect artists, 
 they tell you, they would have persevered ; but 
 they have taken lessons enough to learn that 
 drawing is the labor of a lifetime, and, not 
 having a lifetime to give to it, they resolve to 
 do nothing at all. 
 
 They have also, for a similar reason, given 
 up letter-writing. If their chirography were 
 as elegant as Charlotte Cushman's, — if they 
 were perfect mistresses of polite English, — if 
 they were gifted with wit, humor, and fancy, 
 
 Q 
 
258 Little Foxes. 
 
 like the first masters of style, — they would 
 take pleasure in epistolary composition, and be 
 good correspondents ; but anything short of 
 that is so intolerable, that, except in cases of 
 life and death or urgent business, you cannot 
 get a line out of them. Yet they write very 
 fair, agreeable, womanly letters, and would 
 write much better ones, if they allowed them- 
 selves a little more practice. 
 
 Mrs. More is devoured by care. She sits 
 with a clouded brow in her elegant, well-regu- 
 lated house ; and when you talk with her, you 
 are surprised to learn that everything in it is 
 in the most dreadful disorder from one end to 
 the other. You ask for particulars, and find 
 that the disorder has relation to exquisite stand- 
 ards of the ways of doing things, derived from 
 observation of life in the most subdivided state 
 of European service, — to all of which she has 
 not as yet been able to raise her domestics. 
 You compliment her on her cook, and she re- 
 sponds, in plaintive accents, " She can do a 
 
Exactingness. 259 
 
 tew things decently, but she is nothing of a 
 cook." You refer with enthusiasm to her bread, 
 her coffee, her muffins and hot rolls, and she 
 listens and sighs. "Yes," she admits, "these 
 are eatable, — not bad ; but you should have 
 seen the rolls at a certain cafe in Paris, and 
 the bread at a certain nobleman's in England, 
 where they had a bakery in the castle, and a 
 French baker, who did nothing all the while 
 but to refine and perfect the idea of bread. 
 When she thinks of these things, everything 
 in comparison is so coarse and rough ! — but 
 then she has learned to be comfortable." Thus, 
 in every department of housekeeping, to this 
 too well-instructed person, 
 
 " Hills peep o'er hills, and Alps on Alps arise." 
 
 Not a thing in her wide and apparently beau- 
 tifully kept establishment is ever done well 
 enough to elicit from her more than a sigh of 
 toleration. "I suppose it must do," she faintly 
 breathes, when pooi human nature, having tried 
 and tried again, evidently has got to the boun- 
 
260 Little Foxes. 
 
 daries of its capabilities; "you may let it go, 
 Jane ; I never expect to be suited." 
 
 The poor woman, in the midst of posses- 
 sions and attainments which excite the envy of 
 her neighbors, is utterly restless and wretched, 
 and feels herself always baffled and unsuccess- 
 ful. Her exacting nature makes her dissatis- 
 fied with herself in everything that she under- 
 takes, and equally dissatisfied with others. In 
 the whole family there is little of that pleasure 
 which comes from the consciousness of mutual 
 admiration and esteem, because each one is 
 pitched to so exquisite a tone that each is 
 afraid to touch another for fear of making 
 discord. They are afraid of each other every- 
 where. They cannot sing to each other, play 
 to each other, write to each other ; they can- 
 not even converse together with any freedom, 
 because each knows that the others are so dis- 
 mally well informed and critically instructed. 
 
 Though all agree in a secret contempt for 
 their neighbors over the way, as living in a 
 
Exactingiiess. 261 
 
 most heathenish state of ignorant contentment, 
 yet it is a fact that the elegant brother John 
 will often, on the sly, slip into the Daytons' 
 to spend an evening, and join them in singing 
 glees and catches to their old rattling piano, 
 and have a jolly time of it, which he remem- 
 bers in contrast with the dull, silent hours at 
 home. Kate Dayton has an uncultivated voice, 
 which often falls from pitch ; but she has a 
 perfectly infectious gayety of good-nature, and 
 when she is once at the piano, and all join in 
 some merry troll, he begins to think that there 
 may be something better even than good sing- 
 ing ; and then they have dances and charades 
 and games, all in such contented, jolly, im- 
 promptu ignorance of the unities of time, place, 
 and circumstance, that he sometimes doubts, 
 where ignorance is such bliss, whether it is n't 
 in truth folly to be wise. 
 
 Jane and Maria laugh at John for his par- 
 tiality to the Daytons, and yet they themselves 
 feel the same attraction. At the Daytons' 
 
262 Little Foxes. 
 
 the} iomehow find themselves heroines ; their 
 drawings are so admired, their singing is so 
 . charming to these simple ears, that they are 
 often beguiled into giving pleasure with their 
 own despised acquirements ; and Jane, some- 
 how, is very tolerant of the devoted attention 
 of Will Dayton, a joyous, honest-hearted fellow, 
 whom, in her heart of hearts, she likes none the 
 worse for being unexacting and simple enough 
 to think her a wonder of taste and accomplish- 
 ments. Will, of course, is the farthest possible 
 from the Admirable Crichtons and exquisite 
 Sir Philip Sidneys whom Mrs. More and the 
 young ladies talk up at their leisure, and adorn 
 with feathers from every royal and celestial 
 bird, when they are discussing theoretic possi- 
 ble husbands. He is not in any way distin- 
 guished, except for a kind heart, strong native 
 good sense, and a manly energy that has car- 
 ried him straight into the very heart of many 
 a citadel of life, before which the superior and 
 more refined Mr. John had set himself down 
 
Exactingness. 263 
 
 to deliberate upon the best and most elegant 
 way of taking it. Will's plain, homely intelli- 
 gence has often in five minutes disentangled 
 some ethereal snarl in which these exquisite 
 Mores had spun themselves up, and brought 
 them to his own way of thinking by that sort 
 of disenchanting process which honest, practi- 
 cal sense sometimes exerts over ideality. 
 
 The fact is, however, that in each of these 
 families there is a natural defect which re- 
 quires something from the other for complete- 
 ness. Taking happiness as the standard, the 
 Daytons 'have it as against the Mores. Tak- 
 ing attainment as the standard, the Mores have 
 it as against the Daytons. A portion of the 
 discontented ideality of the Mores would stim- 
 ulate the Daytons to refine and perfect many 
 things which might easily be made better, did 
 they care enough to have them so ; and a 
 portion of the Daytons' self-satisfied content- 
 ment would make the attainments and refine- 
 ments of the Mores of- some practical use in 
 advancing their own happiness. 
 
264 Little Foxes. 
 
 But between these two classes of natures lies 
 another, to which has been given an equal 
 share of ideality, — in which the conception 
 and the desire of excellence are equally strong, 
 but in which a discriminating common-sense 
 acts like a balance-wheel in machinery. What 
 is the reason that the most exacting idealists 
 never make themselves unhappy about not be- 
 ing able to fly like a bird or swim like a fish ? 
 Because common-sense teaches them that these 
 accomplishments are so utterly out of the ques- 
 tion that they never arise to the mind as ob 
 jects of desire. In these well-balanced minds 
 we speak of, common-sense runs an instinctive 
 line all through life between the attainable 
 and the unattainable, and sets the key of de- 
 sire accordingly. 
 
 Common-sense teaches that there is no one 
 branch of human art or science in which per- 
 fection is not a point forever receding. A bot- 
 anist gravely assures us, that to become per- 
 fect in the knowledge of one branch of sea- 
 
Exactingness. 265 
 
 weeds would take all the time and strength of 
 a man for a lifetime. There is no limit to 
 music, to the fine arts. There is never a time 
 when the gardener can rest, saying that his 
 garden is perfect. Housekeeping, cooking, sew- 
 ing, knitting, may all, for aught we know, be 
 pushed on forever, without exhausting the capa- 
 bilities for better doing. 
 
 But while attainment in everything is end- 
 less, circumstances forbid the greater part of 
 human beings from attaining in any direction 
 the half of what they see would be desirable ; 
 and the difference between the miserable ideal- 
 ist and the contented realist often is, not that 
 both do not see what needs to be done for 
 perfection, but that, seeing it, one is satisfied 
 with the attainable, and the other forever frets 
 and wears himself out on the unattainable. 
 
 The principal of a large and complicated 
 public institution was complimented on main- 
 taining such uniformity of cheerfulness amid 
 
 such a diversity of cares. " I 've made up my 
 12 
 
266 Little Foxes. 
 
 mind to be satisfied, when things are done 
 half as well as I would have them," was his 
 answer ; and the same philosophy would apply 
 with cheering results to the domestic sphere. 
 
 There is a saying which one often hears 
 among common people, that such and such a 
 one are persons who never could be happy, 
 unless everything went "just so!' — that is, in 
 accordance with their highest conceptions. 
 
 When these persons are women, and under- 
 take the sway of a home empire, they are 
 sure to be miserable, and to make others so ; 
 for home is a place where by no kind of magic 
 possible to woman can everything be always 
 made to go "just so." 
 
 We may read treatises on education, - and 
 very excellent ones there are. We mav read 
 very nice stories illustrating home manage- 
 ment, in which book-children and book-ser- 
 vants all work into the author's plan with 
 obliging unanimity ; but every real child and 
 i<+*\ servant is an uncompromising fact, whose 
 
s 
 
 Exactingness. 263 
 
 working into our ideal of life cannot be pre- 
 dicted with any degree of certainty. A hus- 
 band is another absolute fact, of whose con- 
 formity to any ideal conceptions no positive 
 account can be given. So, when a person has 
 the most charming theories of education, the 
 most complete ideals of life, it is often his lot 
 to sit bound hand and foot and see them all 
 trampled under the heel of opposing circum- 
 stances. 
 
 Nothing is easier than to make an ideal gar- 
 den. We lay out our grounds, dig, plant, trans- 
 plant, manure. We read catalogues of roses 
 till we are bewildered with their lustrous glo- 
 ries. We set out plum, pear, and peach, we 
 luxuriate in advance on bushels of choicest 
 grapes, and our theoretic garden is Paradise 
 Regained. But in the actual garden there are 
 cut-worms for every cabbage, squash-bugs for 
 all the melons, slugs and rose-bugs for the 
 roses, curculios for the plums, fire-blight for 
 pears, yellows for peaches, mildew for grapes, 
 
268 Little Foxes. 
 
 and late and early frosts, droughts, winds, and 
 hail-storms here and there for all 
 
 The garden and the family are fair pictures 
 of each other. Both are capable of the most 
 ravishing representations on paper ; and the 
 rules and directions for creating beauty and 
 perfection in both can be made so apparently 
 plain that he who runneth may read, and it 
 would seem that a fool need not err therein ; 
 and yet the actual results are always halting 
 miles away behind expectation and desire. 
 
 It would be an incalculable gain to domes- 
 tic happiness, if people would begin the con- 
 cert of life with their instruments tuned to a 
 very low pitch : they who receive the most 
 happiness are generally they who demand and 
 expect the least. 
 
 Ideality often becomes an insidious mental 
 and moral disease, acting all the more subtly 
 from its alliances with what is highest and 
 noblest within us. Shall we not aspire to be 
 perfect ? Shall we be content with low meas- 
 
Exactingness. 269 
 
 ures and 1OW standards in anything ? To these 
 inquiries there seems of course to be but one 
 answer ; yet the individual driven forward in 
 blind, unreasoning aspiration becomes wea- 
 ried, bewildered, discontented, restless, fretful, 
 and miserable. 
 
 An unhappy person can never make others 
 happy. The creators and governors of a home, 
 who are themselves restless and inharmonious, 
 cannot make harmony and peace. This is the 
 secret reason why many a pure, good, consci- 
 entious person is only a source of uneasiness 
 in family life. They are exacting, discontented, 
 unhappy ; and spread the discontent and un- 
 happiness about them. They are, to begin 
 with, on poor terms with themselves ; they do 
 not like themselves ; they do not like their 
 own appearance, manners, education, accom- 
 plishments ; on all these points they try them- 
 selves by ideal standards, and find themselves 
 wanting. In morals, in religion, too, the same 
 introverted scrutiny detects only errors and 
 
270 Little Foxes. 
 
 evils, till all life seems to them a miserable, 
 hopeless failure, and they wish they had never 
 been born. They are angry and disgusted with 
 themselves ; there is no self-toleration or self- 
 endurance. And persons in a chronic quarrel 
 with themselves are very apt to quarrel with 
 others. That exacting nature which has no 
 patience with one's own inevitable frailties and 
 errors has none for those of others ; and thus 
 the great motive by which Christianity enforces 
 tolerance of the faults of others loses its hold. 
 There are people who make no allowances 
 either for themselves or anybody else, but are 
 equally angry and disgusted with both. 
 
 Now it is important that those finely strung 
 natures in which ideality largely predominates 
 should begin life by a religious care and re- 
 straint of this faculty. As the case often 
 stands, however, religion only intensifies the 
 difficulty, by adding stringency to exaction and 
 censoriousness, driving the subject up with an 
 unremitting strain till the very cords of rea- 
 
Exactingness. 271 
 
 son sometimes snap. Yet, properly understood 
 and used, religion is the only cure for the evil 
 of diseased ideality. The Christian religion is 
 the only one that ever proposed to give to 
 all human beings, however various the range 
 of their nature and desires, the great underly- 
 ing gift of rest. Its Author, with a strength 
 of assurance which only supreme Divinity can 
 justify, promises rest to all persons, under all 
 circumstances, with all sorts of natures, all 
 sorts of wants, and all sorts of defects. The 
 invitation is as wide as the human race : " Come 
 unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy-laden, 
 and I will give you rest." 
 
 Now this is the more remarkable, as this 
 gracious promise is accompanied by the pre- 
 sentation of a standard of perfection which is 
 more ideal and exacting than any other that 
 has ever been placed before mankind, — which, 
 in so many words, sets up absolute perfection 
 as the only true goal of aspiration. 
 
 The problem which Jesus proposes to human 
 
272 Little Foxes. 
 
 nature is endless aspiration steadied by end- 
 less peace, — a perfectly restful, yet unceasing 
 effort after a good which is never to be at- 
 tained till we attain a higher and more per 
 feet form of existence. It is because this prob 
 lem is insolvable by any human wisdom, that 
 He says that they who take His yoke upon 
 them must learn of Him, for He alone can 
 make the perfect yoke easy and its burden 
 light. 
 
 The first lesson in this benignant school must 
 lie like a strong, broad foundation under every 
 structure on which we wish to rear a happy life, 
 — and that is, that the full gratification of the 
 faculty of ideality is never to be expected in this 
 present stage of existence, but is to be trans- 
 ferred to a future life. Ideality, with its inces- 
 sant, restless longings and yearnings, is snubbed 
 and turned out of doors by human philosophy, 
 when philosophy becomes middle-aged and sul- 
 ky with repeated disappointments, — it is be- 
 rated as a cheat and a liar, — told to hold its 
 
Exactingness. 273 
 
 tongue and take itself elsewhere ; but Chris 
 tianity bids it be of good cheer, still to aspire 
 and hope and prophesy, and points to a future 
 where all its dreams shall be outdone by reality. 
 
 A full faith in such a perfect future — a per- 
 fect faith that God has planted in man no desire 
 which he cannot train to complete enjoyment in 
 that future — gives the mind rest and content- 
 ment to postpone for a while gratifications that 
 will certainly come at last. 
 
 Such a faith is better even than that native 
 philosophical good sense whijh restrains the 
 ideal calculations and hopes of some ; for it has 
 a wider scope and a deeper power. 
 
 We have seen in our time a woman gifted 
 with all those faculties which rejoice in the re- 
 finements of society, dispensing the elegant hos- 
 pitalities of a bountiful home, joyful and giving 
 joy. A sudden reverse has swept all this away, 
 the wealth on which it was based has melted like 
 a fog-bank in a warm morning, and we have seen 
 her with her little family beginning life again in 
 12* r 
 
274 » Little Foxes. 
 
 the log-cabin of a Western settlement. We have 
 seen her sitting in the door of the one room that 
 took the place of parlor, bed-room, nursery, and 
 cheerfully making her children's morning toilette 
 by the help of the one tin wash-bowl that takes 
 the place of her well-arranged bathing- and 
 dressing-rooms ; and yet, as she twined their 
 curls over her fingers, she had a laugh and a 
 jest and cheerful word for all. The few morn- 
 ing-glories that she was training over her rude 
 porch seemed as much a source of delight to 
 her as her former greenhouse and garden; and 
 the adjustment of the one or two shelves where- 
 on were the half-dozen books left of the library, 
 her husband's private papers, and her own and 
 her children's wardrobe, was entered into daily 
 with a zealous interest as if she had never known 
 a wider sphere. 
 
 Such facility of accommodation to life's re- 
 verses is sometimes supposed to be merely the 
 result of a hopeful and cheerful temperament ; 
 in this case it was purely the work of religion 
 
Exactingness. 275 
 
 In eany life, this same woman had been the 
 discontented slave of ideality, had sighed with 
 vain longings in the midst of real and sub- 
 stantial comfort, had felt even the creasing of 
 the rose-leaves of her pillow an intolerable an- 
 noyance. Now she has resigned herself to the 
 work and toil of life as the soldier does to the 
 duties of the camp, satisfied to do and to bear, 
 enjoying with a free heart the small daily 
 pleasures which spring up like wild-flowers 
 amid daily toils and annoyances, and looking 
 to the end of the campaign for rest and con- 
 genial scenes. 
 
 This woman has within her the powers and 
 gifts of an artist ; but her pencils and her col- 
 ors are resolutely laid away, and she sits hour 
 after hour darning her children's stockings and 
 turning and arranging a scanty wardrobe which 
 no ingenuity can make more than decent. She 
 was a beautiful musician ; but a musical in- 
 strument is now a thing of the past ; she only 
 lulls her baby to sleep with snatches of the 
 
276 Little Foxes. 
 
 songs which used to form the attraction oi 
 brilliant salons. She feels that a world of 
 tastes and talents are lying dormant in he:* 
 while she is doing the daily work of a nurse, 
 cook, and seamstress ; but she remembers Who 
 took upon Him the form of a servant before 
 her, and she has full faith that her beautiful 
 gifts, like bulbs sleeping under ground, shall 
 come up and blossom again in that fair future 
 which He has promised. Therefore it is that 
 she has no sighs for the present or the past, — 
 no quarrel with her life, or her lot in it ; she is 
 in harmony with herself and with all around 
 her ; her husband looks upon her as a fair 
 daily miracle, and her children rise up and call 
 her blessed. 
 
 But, having laid the broad foundation of faith 
 in a better life, as the basis on which to ground 
 our present happiness, we who are of the ideal 
 nature must proceed to build thereon wisely. 
 
 In the first place, we must cultivate the 
 duty of self-patience and self-toleration. Of ai» 
 
Exac Ungues s. 277 
 
 the religionists and moralists who ever taught, 
 Fenelon is the only one who has distinctly for- 
 mulated the duty which a self-educator owes 
 to himself. Have patience with yourself 
 is a direction often occurring in his writings, 
 and a most important one it is, — because pa- 
 tience with ourselves is essential, if we would 
 have patience with others. Let us look through 
 the world. Who are the people easiest to be 
 pleased, most sunny, most urbane, most toler- 
 ant ? Are they not persons from constitution 
 and temperament on good terms with them- 
 selves, — people who do not ask much of them- 
 selves or try themselves severely, and who 
 therefore are in a good humor for looking 
 upon others ? But how is a person who is con- 
 scious of a hundred daily faults and errors to 
 have patience with himself ? The question may 
 be answered by asking, What would you say 
 to a child who fretted, scolded, dashed down 
 his slate, and threw his book on the floor, be- 
 cause he made mistakes in his arithmetic ? 
 
278 Little Foxes. 
 
 You would say, of course, " You are but a 
 learner; it is not to be expected that you will 
 not make mistakes ; all children do. Have pa- 
 tience." Just as you would talk to that child, 
 talk to yourself. Be reconciled to a lot of in- 
 evitable imperfection ; be content to try con- 
 tinually, and often to fail. It is the inevitable 
 condition of human existence, and is to be 
 accepted as such. (K patient acceptance of 
 mortifications and of defeats of our life's labor 
 is often more efficacious for our moral advance- 
 ment than even our victories^ 
 
 In the next place, we must school ourselves 
 not to look with restless desire to degrees of ex- 
 cellence in any department of life which circum- 
 stances evidently forbid our attaining. For a 
 woman with plenty of money and plenty of 
 well-trained servants to be content to have fly- 
 specked windows, or littered rooms, or a sloven- 
 ly-ordered table, is a sin. But in a woman in 
 feeble health, incumbered with a flock of restless 
 little ones, and whose circumstances allow her to 
 
Exactingness. 279 
 
 keep but one servant, it may be a piece of moral 
 heroism to shut her eyes on many such things, 
 while securing mere essentials to life and health. 
 It may be a virtue in her not to push neatness 
 to such lengths as to wear herself out, or to 
 break down her only servant, and to be resigned 
 to have her tastes and preferences for order, 
 cleanliness, and beauty crossed, as she would 
 resign herself to any other affliction. No pur- 
 gatory can be more severe to people of a thor- 
 ough and exact nature than to be so situated 
 that they can only half do everything they un- 
 dertake ; yet such is the fiery trial to which many 
 a one is subjected. Life seems to drive them 
 along without giving them time for anything ; 
 everything is ragged, hasty performance, of 
 which the mind most keenly sees and feels the 
 raggedness and hastiness. Even one thing done 
 as it really ought to be done would be a rest and 
 refreshment to the soul ; but nowhere, in any 
 department of its undertakings, is there any 
 such thing to be perceived. 
 
2.8o Little Foxes. 
 
 But there are cases where a great deal of 
 wear and tear can be saved to the nerves by a 
 considerate making up of one's mind as to how 
 much in certain circumstances had better be 
 undertaken at all. Let the circumstances of 
 life be surveyed, the objects we are pursuing 
 arranged and counted, and see if there are not 
 things here and there that may be thrown out 
 of our plans entirely, that others may be better 
 done. 
 
 What if the whole care of expensive table 
 luxuries, like cake and preserves, be thrown 
 out of a housekeeper's budget, in order that 
 the essential articles of cookery may be better 
 prepared ? What if ruffling, embroidery, and 
 the entire department of kindred fine arts, be 
 thrown out of her calculations, in providing 
 for the clothing of a family ? Many a feeble 
 woman has died of too much ruffling, as she 
 patiently sat up night after night sewing the 
 thread of a precious, invaluable life into elab- 
 orate articles which her children were none 
 the healthier or more virtuous for wearing. 
 
Exactingness. 281 
 
 Ideality is constantly ramifying and extend- 
 ing the department of the toilette and the 
 needle into a world of work and worry, where- 
 in distracted women wander up and down, 
 seeing no end anywhere. The sewing-ma- 
 chine was announced as a relief to these toils ; 
 but has it proved so ? We trow not. It 
 only amounts to this, — that now there can 
 be seventy-two tucks on each little petticoat, 
 instead of fifteen, as before, and that twice as 
 many garments are made up and held to be 
 necessary as formerly. The women still sew 
 to the limit of human endurance ; and still 
 the old proverb holds good, that woman's 
 work is never done. 
 
 In the matter of dress, much wear and tear 
 of spirit and nerves may be saved by not be- 
 ginning to go in certain directions, well know- 
 ing that they will take us beyoud our resources 
 of time, strength, and money. 
 
 There is one word of fear in the vocabulary 
 of women of our time which must be pondered 
 
282 Little Foxes. 
 
 advisedly, — trimming. In old times a good 
 garment was enough ; now-a-days a garment 
 is nothing without trimming. Everything, 
 from the first article that the baby wears up 
 to the elaborate dress of the bride, must be 
 trimmed at a rate that makes the trimming 
 more than the original article. A dress can 
 be made in a day, but it cannot be trimmed 
 under two or three days. Let a faithful, con- 
 scientious woman make up her mind how much 
 of all this burden of life she will assume, re- 
 membering wisely that there is no end to 
 ideality in anything, and that the only way to 
 deal with many perplexing parts of life is to 
 leave them out altogether. 
 
 Mrs. Kirkland, in her very amusing account 
 of her log-cabin experiences, tells us of the 
 great disquiet and inconvenience she had in 
 attempting to arrange in her lowly abode a 
 most convenient clothes-press, which was man- 
 ifestly too large for the establishment. Having 
 labored with the cumbersome convenience for 
 
Exactingness. 283 
 
 a great length of time, and with much discom- 
 fort, she at last resigned the ordering of it to 
 a brawny-armed damsel of the forest, who be- 
 gan by pitching it out of doors, with the com- 
 prehensive remark, that, " where there was n't 
 room for a thing, there was n't." 
 
 The wisdom which inspired the remark of 
 this rustic maiden might have saved the lives 
 of many matrons who have worn themselves 
 out in vain attempts to make comforts and 
 conveniences out of things which they had 
 better have thrown out of doors altogether. 
 
 True, it requires some judgment to know 
 what, among objects commonly pursued in any 
 department, we really ought to reject ; and it 
 requires independence and steadiness to say, 
 " I will not begin to try to do certain things 
 that others are doing, and that, perhaps, they 
 expect of me " ; but there comes great leisure 
 and quietness of spirit from the gaps thus made. 
 When the unwieldy clothes-press was once cast 
 out, everything in the log-cabin could have 
 room, 
 
284 Little Foxes. 
 
 A mother, who is anxiously trying to recon- 
 cile the watchful care and training of her little 
 ones with the maintenance of fashionable calls 
 and parties, may lose her life in the effort to 
 do both, and do both in so imperfect a man- 
 ner as never to give her a moment's peace. 
 But on the morrow after she comes to the se- 
 rious and Christian resolve, " The training of 
 my children is all that I can do well, and 
 henceforth it shall be my sole object," there 
 falls into her tumultuous life a Sabbath pause 
 of peace and leisure. It is true that she is 
 still doing a work in which absolute perfection 
 ever recedes ; but she can make relative attain- 
 ments far nearer the standard than before. 
 
 /Lastly, under the head of ideality let us re- 
 solve to be satisfied with our own past doings, 
 when at the time of doing we used all the light 
 God gave us, and did all in our power. 
 
 The backward action of ideality is often full 
 as tormenting as its forward and prospective 
 movements. The moment a thing is done and 
 
Exactingness. 285 
 
 over, one would think that good sense would 
 lead us to drop it like a stone in the ocean; 
 but the morbid idealist cannot cut loose from 
 the past. 
 
 " Was that, after all, the best thing ? Would 
 it not have been better so or so ? " And the 
 self-tormented individual lies wakeful, during 
 weary night-hours, revolving a thousand possi- 
 bilities, and conjuring up a thousand vague 
 perhapses. " If I had only done so now, per- 
 haps this result would have followed, or that 
 would not " ; and as there is never any saying 
 but that so it might have turned out, the laby- 
 rinth and the discontent are alike endless. 
 
 Now there is grand good sense in the Apos- 
 tle's direction, "Forgetting the things that are 
 behind, press forward." The idealist should 
 charge himself, as with an oath of God, to let 
 the past alone as an accomplished fact, solely 
 concerning himself with the inquiry, " Did I 
 not do the best I then knew how ? " 
 
 The maxim of the Quietists is, that, when 
 
2$6 Little Foxes. 
 
 we have acted according to the best light we 
 have, we have expressed the will of God un- 
 der those circumstances, — since, had it been 
 otherwise, more and different light would have 
 been given us ; and with the will of God done 
 by ourselves as by Himself, it is our duty to 
 be content. 
 
 Having written thus far in my article, and 
 finding nothing more at hand to add to it, I 
 went into the parlor to read it to Jenny and 
 Mrs. Crowfield. I found the former engaged 
 in the task of binding sixty yards of quilling, 
 (so I think she called it,) which were absolutely 
 necessary for perfecting a dress ; and the latter 
 was braiding one of seven little petticoats, 
 stamped with elaborate patterns, which she 
 had taken from Marianne, because that virtu- 
 ous matron was ruining her eyes and health 
 in a blind push to get them done before Oc- 
 tober. 
 
 -3oth approved and admired my piece, and 
 
Exactingness* 287 
 
 1 thought of Saint Anthony's preaching to 
 the fishes : — 
 
 The sermon now ended, 
 
 Each turned and descended ; 
 
 The pikes went on stealing, 
 
 The eels went on eeling. 
 
 Much delighted were they, 
 But preferred the old way. 
 
 THE END. 
 
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