PS 
 3152 
 
 A8 
 
 
 
 
 
 7 = 
 
 = en 
 
 n! 
 
 5 = 
 
 Sh 
 
 
 1 m 
 
 
 8 = 
 
 33 ! 
 
 Stei' 
 
 Si 
 
 
 s 
 
 1 5 
 
 
 r%-. 
 
 J^ >^^^
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 UHlVSRSlTt OF 
 CAUFORNIA 
 SAN DIEGO
 
 PS
 
 Ci^. ^^- o^
 
 AS WE GO 
 
 BY 
 
 CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER 
 
 ILLUSTRATED 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 HARPER AND BROTHERS 
 
 MDCCCXCIV
 
 Copyright, 1893, by Harper & Brothers. 
 
 All rights rescrz'ed.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 OUR PRESIDENT • . 3 
 
 THE NEWSPAPER-MADE MAN lo 
 
 INTERESTING GIRLS i6 
 
 GIVE THE MEN A CHANCE 22 
 
 THE ADV'ENT OF CANDOR 28 
 
 THE AMERICAN MAN 36 
 
 THE ELECTRIC WAY 41 
 
 CAN A HUSBAND OPEN HIS WIFE'S LETTERS? . 49 
 
 A LEISURE CLASS 54 
 
 WEALTH AND CHARACTER 62 
 
 BORN WITH AN " EGO " 67 
 
 JUVENTUS MUNDI 73 
 
 A BEAUTIFUL OLD AGE 79 
 
 THE ATTRACTION OF THE REPULSIVE .... 85 
 
 GIVING AS A LUXURY 92 
 
 CLIMATE AND HAPPINESS 99 
 
 THE NEW FEMININE RESERVE 109 
 
 REPOSE IN ACTIVITY 117 
 
 WOMEN-IDEAL AND REAI 126 
 
 THE ART OF IDLENESS 132 
 
 IS THERE ANY CONVERSATION? 140 
 
 THE TALL GIRL 146 
 
 THE DEADLY DIARY 154 
 
 THE WHISTLING GIRL 160 
 
 BORN OLD AND RICH 168 
 
 THE "OLD SOLDIER" 177 
 
 THE ISLAND OF BIMINl 184 
 
 JUNE 193
 
 I 
 
 i
 
 BY THE WAY
 
 ^i^fe) 
 
 OUR 
 
 PRESIDENT 
 
 E are so much accustomed to kings and 
 queens and other privileged persons of 
 that sort in this world that it is only on 
 reflection that we wonder how they be- 
 came so. The mystery is not their con- 
 tinuance, but how did they get a start? 
 We take little help from studying the 
 bees — originally no one could have been 
 born a queen. There must have been 
 not only a selection, but an election, not 
 by ballot, but by consent some way ex- 
 pressed, and the privileged persons got 
 their positions because they were the 
 strongest, or the wisest, or the most cun- 
 ning. But the descendants of these privi- 
 leged persons hold the same positions 
 when they are neither strong, nor wise.
 
 nor very cunning. This also is a mystery. 
 The persistence of privilege is an un- 
 explained thing in human affairs, and the 
 consent of mankind to be led in govern- 
 ment and in fashion by those to whom 
 none of the original conditions of leader- 
 ship attach is a philosophical anomaly. 
 How many of the living occupants of 
 thrones, dukedoms, earldoms, and such 
 high places are in position on their own 
 merits, or would be put there by com- 
 mon consent.'' Referring their origin to 
 some sort of an election, their contin- 
 uance seems to rest simply on forbear- 
 ance. Here in America we are trying a 
 new experiment ; we have adopted the 
 principle of election, but we have supple- 
 mented it with the equally authoritative 
 right of deposition. And it is interest- 
 ing to see how it has worked for a hun- 
 dred years, for it is human nature to like 
 to be set up, but not to like to be set 
 down. If in our elections we do not 
 always get the best — perhaps few elec- 
 tions ever did — we at least do not per- 
 petuate forever in privilege our mistakes 
 or our good hits.
 
 The celebration in New York, in 1889, 
 of the inauguration of Washington was an 
 instructive spectacle. How much of privi- 
 lege had been gathered and perpetu- 
 ated in a century ? Was it not an occa- 
 sion that emphasized our republican de- 
 mocracy ? Two things were conspicuous. 
 One was that we did not honor a family, 
 or a dynasty, or a title, but a character; 
 and the other was that we did not exalt 
 any living man, but simply the office of 
 President. It was a demonstration of 
 the power of the people to create their 
 own royalty, and then to put it aside when 
 they have done with it. It was difficult 
 to see how greater honors could have 
 been paid to any man than were given to 
 the President when he embarked at Eliza- 
 bethport and advanced, through a harbor 
 crowded with decorated vessels, to the 
 great city, the wharves and roofs of which 
 were black with human beings — a holi- 
 day city which shook with the tumult of 
 the popular welcome. Wherever he went 
 he drew the swarms in the streets as the 
 moon draws the tide. Republican sim- 
 plicity need not fear comparison with
 
 any royal pageant when the President 
 was received at the Metropolitan, and, in 
 a scene of beauty and opulence that 
 might be the flowering of a thousand 
 years instead of a century, stood upon the 
 steps of the " dais " to greet the devoted 
 Centennial Quadrille, which passed before 
 him with the courageous Ave, Imperator, 
 moritiiri tc saluiamus. We had done 
 it — we, the people ; that was our royalty. 
 Nobody had imposed it on us. It was 
 not even selected out of four hun- 
 dred. We had taken one of the common 
 people and set him up there, creating 
 for the moment also a sort of royal fami- 
 ly and a court for a background, in a 
 splendor just as imposing for the passing 
 hour as an imperial spectacle. We like 
 to show that we can do it, and we like to 
 show also that we can undo it. For at 
 the banquet, where the Elected ate his 
 dinner, not only in the presence of, but 
 with, representatives of all the people of 
 all the States, looked down on by the ac- 
 knowledged higher power in American 
 life, there sat also with him two men 
 who had lately been in his great position,
 
 the centre only a little while ago, as he 
 was at the moment, of every eye in the 
 republic, now only common citizens with- 
 out a title, without any insignia of rank, 
 able to transmit to posterity no family 
 privilege. If our hearts swelled with 
 pride that we could create something 
 iust as good as ro5ralty, that the republic 
 had as many men of distinguished ap- 
 pearance, as much beauty, and as much 
 brilliance of display as any traditional 
 government, we also felicitated ourselves 
 that we could sweep it all away by a vote 
 and reproduce it with new actors next 
 day. 
 
 It must be confessed that it was a peo- 
 ple's affair. If at any time there was any 
 idea that it could be controlled only by 
 those who represented names honored 
 for a hundred years, or conspicuous by 
 any social privilege, the idea was swamped 
 in popular feeling. The names that had 
 been elected a hundred j^ears ago did not 
 stay elected unless the present owners 
 were able to distinguish themseh^es. 
 There is nothing so to be coveted in a 
 country as the perpetuity of honorable
 
 names, and the "centennial" showed 
 that we are rich in those that have been 
 honorably borne, but it also showed that 
 the century has gathered no privilege 
 that can count upon permanence. 
 
 But there is another aspect of the 
 situation that is quite as serious and 
 satisfactory. Now that the ladies of the 
 present are coming to dress as ladies 
 dressed a hundred years ago, we can 
 make an adequate comparison of beauty. 
 Heaven forbid that we should disparage 
 the women of the Revolutionary period ! 
 They looked as well as they could under 
 all the circumstances of a new country 
 and the hardships of an early settlement. 
 Some of them looked exceedingly well — 
 there were beauties in those days as there 
 were giants in Old Testament times. 
 The portraits that have come down to us 
 of some of them excite our admiration, 
 and indeed we have a sort of tradition of 
 the loveliness of the women of that re- 
 mote period. The gallant men of the 
 time exalted them. Yet it must be ad- 
 mitted by any one who witnessed the 
 public and private gatherings of April
 
 1889, in New York, contributed to as they 
 were by women from every State, and 
 who is unprejudiced by family associa- 
 tions, that the women of America seem 
 vastly improved in personal appearance 
 since the days when George Washington 
 was a lover : that is to say, the number of 
 beautiful women is greater in proportion 
 to the population, and their beauty and 
 charm are not inferior to those which 
 have been so much extolled in the Revo- 
 lutionary time. There is no doubt that 
 if George Washington could have been 
 at the Metropolitan ball he would have 
 acknowledged this, and that while he 
 might have had misgivings about some 
 of our political methods, he would have 
 been more proud than ever to be still ac- 
 knowledged the Father of his Country.
 
 
 'V ^'^ 
 
 THE 
 NEWSPAPER-MADE MAN 
 
 FAIR correspondent — has 
 jg:;tf the phrase an old-time sound ? 
 — thinks we should pay more 
 attention to men. In a revolu- 
 tionary time, when great ques- 
 tions are in issue.minor matters, which may 
 nevertheless be very important, are apt to 
 escape the consideration they deserve. We 
 share our correspondent's interest in men, 
 but must plead the pressure of circum- 
 stances. When there are so many Wom- 
 an's Journals devoted to the wants and 
 aspirations of women alone, it is perhaps 
 time to think of having a Man's Journal, 
 which should try to keep his head above- 
 water in the struggle for social supremacy. 
 When almost every number of the leading 
 periodicals has a paper about Woman — 
 written probably by a woman — Woman 
 To-day, Woman Yesterday, Woman To- 
 morrow ; when the mquiry is daily made
 
 in the press as to what is expected of 
 woman, and the new requirements laid 
 upon her by reason of her opportunities, 
 her entrance into various occupations, her 
 education— the impartial observer is Hkely 
 to be confused, if he is not swept away by 
 the rising tide of femininity in modern life. 
 
 But this very superiority of interest in 
 the future of women is a warning to man 
 to look about him, and see where in this 
 tide he is going to land, if he will float or 
 go ashore, and what will be his character 
 and his position in the new social order. 
 It will not do for him to sit on the stump 
 of one of his prerogatives that woman has 
 felled, and say with Brahma, "They reck- 
 on ill who leave me out," for in the day 
 of the Subjection of Man it may be little 
 consolation that he is left in. 
 
 It must be confessed that man has had 
 a long inning. Perhaps it is true that he 
 owed this to his physical strength, and 
 that he will only keep it hereafter by in- 
 tellectual superiority, by the dominance 
 of mind. And how in this generation is 
 he equipping himself for the future ? He 
 is a money-making animal. That is be-
 
 yond dispute. Never before were there 
 such business men as this generation can 
 show — Napoleons of finance, Alexanders 
 of adventure, Shakespeares of specula- 
 tion, Porsons of accumulation. He is 
 great in his field, but is he leaving the 
 intellectual province to woman ? Does 
 he read as much as she does ? Is he 
 becoming anything but a newspaper- 
 made person ? Is his mind getting to 
 be like the newspaper ? Speaking gener- 
 ally of the mass of business men — and 
 the mass are business men in this country 
 — have they any habit of reading books.'' 
 They have clubs, to be sure, but of what 
 sort ? With the exception of a conversa- 
 tion club here and there, and a literary 
 club, more or less perfunctor3^ are they 
 not mostly social clubs for comfort and 
 idle lounging, many of them known, as oth- 
 er workmen are, by their " chips ?" What 
 sort of a book would a member make 
 out of " Chips from my Workshop }" 
 Do the young men, to any extent, join 
 in Browning clubs and Shakespeare clubs 
 and Dante clubs ? Do they meet for 
 the study of history, of authors, of lit-
 
 '3 
 
 erary periods, for reading, and discussing 
 what they read ? Do they in concert 
 dig in the encyclopaedias, and write pa- 
 pers about the correlation of forces, and 
 about Savonarola, and about the Three 
 Kings ? In fact, what sort of a hand 
 would the Three Kings suggest to them ? 
 In the large cities the women's clubs, pur- 
 suing literature, art, languages, botany, 
 history, geography, geology, mythology, 
 are innumerable. And there is hardly a 
 village in the land that has not from one 
 to six clubs of young girls who meet once 
 a week for some intellectual purpose. 
 What are the young men of the villages 
 and the cities doing meantime } How 
 are they preparing to meet socially these 
 young ladies who are cultivating their 
 minds ? Are they adapting themselves 
 to the new conditions } Or are they 
 counting, as they always hav^e done, on 
 the adaptability of women, on the facil- 
 ity with which the members of the bright 
 sex can interest themselves in base-ball 
 and the speed of horses and the chances 
 of the "street.''" Is it comfortable for 
 the young man, when the talk is about the
 
 '4 
 
 last notable book, or the philosophy of the 
 popular poet or novelist, to feel that laugh- 
 ing eyes are sounding his ignorance ? 
 
 Man is a noble creation, and he has fine 
 and sturdy qualities which command the 
 admiration of the other sex , but how will 
 it be when that sex, by reason of superior 
 acquirements, is able to look down on him 
 intellectually ? It used to be said that 
 women are what men wish to have them, 
 that they endeavored to be the kind of 
 women who would win masculine admi- 
 ration. How will it be if women have 
 determined to make themselves what it 
 pleases them to be, and to cultivate their 
 powers in the expectation of pleasing men, 
 if they indulge any such expectation, by 
 their higher qualities only? This is not 
 a fanciful possibility. It is one that young 
 men will do well to ponder. It is easy to 
 ridicule the literary and economic and his- 
 torical societies, and the naive courage 
 with which young women in them attack 
 the gravest problems, and to say that they 
 are only a passing fashion, like decorative 
 art and a mode of dress. But a fashion 
 is not to be underestimated ; and when a
 
 fashion continues and spreads like this 
 one, it IS significant of a great change 
 going on in society. And it is to be no- 
 ticed that this fashion is accompanied by- 
 other phenomena as interesting. There is 
 scarcely an occupation, once confined al- 
 most exclusively to men, in which women 
 are not now conspicuous. Never before 
 were there so many women who are su- 
 perior musicians, performers themselves 
 and organizers of musical societies; nev- 
 er before so many women who can draw 
 well ; never so many who are successful 
 in literature, who write stories, translate, 
 compile, and are acceptable workers in 
 magazines and in publishing houses; and 
 never before were so many women read- 
 ing good books, and thinking about them, 
 and talking about them, and trying to ap- 
 ply the lessons in them to the problems of 
 their own lives, which are seen not to end 
 with marriage. A great deal of this activ- 
 ity, crude much of it, is on the intellectual 
 side, and must tell strongly by-and-by in 
 the position of women. And the young 
 men will take notice that it is the intel- 
 lectual force that must dominate in life.
 
 INTERESTING GIRLS 
 
 1*!^^'^=^ 'pT seems hardly worth 
 
 while to say that this 
 would be a more inter- 
 esting country if there 
 were more interesting 
 people in it. But the 
 remark is worth con- 
 sideration in a land 
 where things are so much estimated by 
 what they cost. It is a very expensive 
 country, especially so in the matter of edu- 
 cation, and one cannot but reflect whether 
 the result is in proportion to the outlay. 
 It costs a great many thousands of dollars 
 and over four years of time to produce a 
 really good base-ball player, and the 
 time and money invested in the produc- 
 tion of a society young woman are not 
 less. No complaint is made of the cost of 
 these schools of the higher education ; the 
 point is whether they produce interesting
 
 people. Of course all women are inter- 
 esting. It has got pretty well noised 
 about the world that American women 
 are, on the whole, more interesting than 
 any others. This statement is not made 
 boastfully, but simply as a market quota- 
 tion, as one might say. They are sought 
 for ; they rule high. They have a " way ;" 
 they know how to be fascinating, to be 
 agreeable ; they unite freedom of man- 
 ner with modesty of behavior ; they are 
 apt to have beauty, and if they have not, 
 they know how to make others think 
 they have. Probably the Greek girls in 
 their highest development under Pheidi- 
 as were never so attractive as the Ameri- 
 can girls of this period ; and if we had a 
 Pheidias who could put their charms in 
 marble, all the antique galleries would 
 close up and go out of business. 
 
 But it must be understood that in 
 regard to them, as to the dictionaries, it 
 is necessary to " get the best." Not all 
 women are equally interesting, and some 
 of those on whom most educational 
 money is lavished are the least so. It 
 can be said broadly that everybody is
 
 interesting up to a certain point. There 
 is no human being from whom the in- 
 quiring mind cannot learn something. 
 It is so with women. Some are interest- 
 ing for five minutes, some for ten, some 
 for an hour; some are not exhausted in 
 a whole day ; and some (and this shows 
 the signal leniency of Providence) are 
 perennially entertaining, even in the 
 presence of masculine stupidity. Of 
 course the radical trouble of this world 
 is that there are not more people who 
 are interesting comrades, day in and day 
 out, for a lifetime. It is greatly to the 
 credit of American women that so many 
 of them have this quality, and have 
 developed it, unprotected, in free com- 
 petition with all countries which have 
 been pouring in women without the least 
 duty laid upon their grace or beauty. 
 We have a tariff upon knowledge — we 
 try to shut out all of that by a duty on 
 books ; we have a tariff on piety and in- 
 telligence in a duty on clergymen ; we 
 try to exclude art by a levy on it ; but we 
 have never excluded the raw material of 
 beauty, and the result is that we can sue-
 
 cessfully compete in the markets of the 
 world. 
 
 This, however, is a digression. The 
 reader wants to know what this quality 
 of being interesting, has to do with girls' 
 schools. It is admitted that if one goes 
 into a new place he estimates the agree- 
 ableness of it according to the number 
 of people it contains with whom it is a 
 pleasure to converse, who have either the 
 ability to talk well or the intelligence to 
 listen appreciatingly even if deceivingly, 
 whose society has the beguiling charm that 
 makes even natural scenery satisfactory. 
 It is admitted also that in our day the 
 burden of this end of life, making it agree- 
 able, is mainly thrown upon women. 
 Men make their business an excuse for 
 not being entertaining, or the few who 
 cultivate the mind (aside from the politi- 
 cians, who always try to be winning) 
 scarcely think it worth while to contrib- 
 ute anything to make society bright and 
 engaging. Now if the girls' schools and 
 colleges, technical and other, merely add 
 to the number of people who have prac- 
 tical training and knowledge without
 
 personal charm, what becomes of social 
 life? We are impressed with the excel- 
 lence of the schools and colleges for 
 women — impressed also with the co-ed- 
 ucating institutions. There is no sight 
 more inspiring than an assemblage of 
 four or fiv^e hundred young women at- 
 tacking literature, science, and all the 
 arts. The grace and courage of the attack 
 alone are worth all it costs. All the arts 
 and science and literature are benefited, 
 but one of the chief purposes that should 
 be in view is unattained if the young 
 women are not made more interesting, 
 both to themselves and to others. Ability 
 to earn an independent living may be 
 conceded to be important, health is indis- 
 pensable, and beauty of face and form 
 are desirable ; knowledge is priceless, 
 and unselfish amiability is above the 
 price of rubies ; but how shall we set a 
 value, so far as the pleasure of living is 
 concerned, upon the power to be inter- 
 esting } We hear a good deal about the 
 highly educated young woman with 
 reverence, about the emancipated young 
 woman with fear and trembling, but
 
 what can take the place of the interest- 
 ing woman? Anxiety is this moment 
 agitating the minds of tens of thousands 
 of mothers about the education of their 
 daughters. Suppose their education 
 should be directed to the purpose of 
 making them interesting women, what a 
 fascinating country this would be about 
 the year 1 900 !
 
 ^^EISTA^ChttJ^^Ci 
 
 : V 
 
 IVE the rnen a chance. Upon the 
 young women of America lies a great re- 
 sponsibility. The next generation will 
 be pretty much what they choose to 
 make it ; and what are they doing for the 
 elevation of young men ? It is true that 
 there are the colleges for men, which still 
 perform a good work — though some of 
 them run a good deal more to a top-dress- 
 ing of accomplishments than to a sub- 
 soiling of discipline — but these colleges 
 reach comparatively few. There remain 
 the great mass who are devoted to busi- 
 ness and pleasure, and only get such intel- 
 lectual cultivation as society gives them 
 or they chance to pick up in current 
 publications. The young women are the 
 leisure class, consequently — so we hear 
 — the cultivated class. Taking a cer- 
 tain large proportion of our societ3^ the 
 women in it toil not, neither do they
 
 23 
 
 spin ; they do little or no domestic work ; 
 they engage in no productive occupation. 
 They are set apart for a high and enno- 
 bling service — the cultivation of the mind 
 and the rescue of society from material- 
 ism. They arc the influence that keeps 
 life elevated and sweet — are they not ? 
 For what other purpose are they set 
 apart in elegant leisure ? And nobly do 
 they climb up to the duties of their posi- 
 tion. They associate together in es- 
 oteric, intellectual societies. Every one 
 is a part of many clubs, the object of 
 which is knowledge and the broaden- 
 ing of the intellectual horizon. Science, 
 languages, literature, are their daily food. 
 They can speak in tongues ; they can 
 talk about the solar spectrum ; they can 
 interpret Chaucer, criticise Shakespeare, 
 understand Browning. There is no liter- 
 ature, ancient or modern, that they do 
 not dig up by the roots and turn over, 
 no history that they do not drag before the 
 club for final judgment. In every little 
 village there is this intellectual stir and 
 excitement ; why, even in New York, 
 readings interfere with the german ; and
 
 24 
 
 Boston ! Boston is no longer divided 
 into wards, but into Browning " sec- 
 tions." 
 
 All this is mainly the work of wom- 
 en. The men are sometimes admitted, 
 are even hired to perform and be encour- 
 aged and criticised ; that is, men who are 
 already highly cultivated, or who are in 
 sympathy with the noble feminization 
 of the age. It is a glorious movement. 
 Its professed object is to give an intel- 
 lectual lift to society. And no doubt, 
 unless all reports are exaggerated, it is 
 making our great leisure class of women 
 highly intellectual beings. But, encour- 
 aging as this prospect is, it gives us 
 pause. Who are these young women to 
 associate with ? — with whom are they to 
 hold high converse? For life is a two- 
 fold afifair. And meantime what is being 
 done for the young men who are ex- 
 pected to share in the high society of the 
 future? Will not the young women by- 
 and-by find themselves in a lonesome 
 place, cultivated away beyond their 
 natural comrades? Where will they 
 spend their evenings ? This sobering
 
 25 
 
 thought suggests a duty that the young 
 women are neglecting. We refer to the 
 education of the young men. It is all very 
 well for them to form clubs for their own 
 advancement, and they ought not to in- 
 cur the charge of selfishness in so doing ; 
 but how much better would they fulfil 
 their mission if they would form special 
 societies for the cultivation of young 
 men ! — sort of intellectual mission bands. 
 Bring them into the literary circle. Make 
 it attractive for them. Women with 
 their attractions, not to speak of their 
 wiles, can do anything they set out to do. 
 They can elevate the entire present gen- 
 eration of young men, if they give their 
 minds to it, to care for the intellectual 
 pursuits they care for. Give the men a 
 chance, and — 
 
 Musing along in this way we are sud- 
 denly pulled up by the reflection that it 
 is impossible to make an unqualified 
 statement that is wholly true about any- 
 thing. What chance have I, anyway ? in- 
 quires the young man who thinks .some- 
 times and occasionally wants to read. 
 What sort of leading-strings are these
 
 26 
 
 that I am getting into ? Look at the 
 drift of things. Is the feminization of 
 the world a desirable thing for a vigor- 
 ous future ? Are the women, or are they 
 not, taking all the virility out of litera- 
 ture ? Answer me that. All the novels 
 are written by, for, or about women — 
 brought to their standard. Even Henry 
 James, who studies the sex untiringly, 
 speaks about the " feminization of litera- 
 ture." They write most of the news- 
 paper correspondence — and write it for 
 women. They are even trying to femin- 
 ize the colleges. Granted that woman is 
 the superior being ; all the more, what 
 chance is there for man if this sort of 
 thing goes on ? Are you going to make 
 a race of men on feminine fodder ? And 
 here is the still more perplexing part of 
 it. Unless all analysis of the female 
 heart is a delusion, and all history false, 
 what women like most of all things in 
 this world is a Man, virile, forceful, com- 
 pelling, a solid rock of dependence, a 
 substantial unfeminine being, whom it 
 is some satisfaction and glory and inter- 
 est to govern and rule in the right way,
 
 27 
 
 and twist round the feminine finger. If 
 women should succeed in reducing or 
 raising — of course raising — men to the 
 feminine standard, by feminizing soci- 
 ety, Hterature, the colleges, and all that, 
 would they not turn on their creations — 
 for even the Bible intimates that wom- 
 en are uncertain — and go in search 
 of a Man ? It is this sort of blind in- 
 stinct of the young man for preserving 
 himself in the world that makes him so 
 inaccessible to the good he might get 
 from the prevailing culture of the lei- 
 sure class.
 
 THE ADVENT OF CANDOR 
 
 Those who are anxious about the fate 
 of Christmas, whether it is not becoming 
 too worldly and too expensive a holiday 
 to be indulged in except by the very poor, 
 mark with pleasure any indications that 
 the true spirit of the day — brotherhood 
 and self-abnegation and charity— is infus- 
 ing itself into modern society. The sen- 
 timental Christmas of thirty years ago 
 could not last ; in time the manufactured 
 jollity got to be more tedious and a 
 greater strain on the feelings than any 
 misfortune happening to one's neighbor. 
 Even for a day it was very difficult to 
 buzz about in the cheery manner pre- 
 scribed, and the reaction put human 
 nature in a bad light. Nor was it much 
 better when gradually the day became 
 one of Great Expectations, and the sweet 
 spirit of it was quenched in worry or 
 soured in disappointment. It began to
 
 ■■'■is'
 
 31 
 
 take on the aspect of a great lottery, in 
 which one class expected to draw in 
 reverse proportion to what it put in, and 
 another class knew that it would only 
 reap as it had sowed. The day, blessed 
 in its origin, and meaningless if there is a 
 grain of selfishness in it, was thus likely 
 to become a sort of Clearing-house of all 
 obligations, and assume a commercial as- 
 pect that took the heart out of it — like 
 the enormous receptions for paying social 
 debts which take the place of the old- 
 fashioned hospitality. Everybody knew, 
 meantime, that the spirit of good-will, the 
 grace of universal sympathy, was really 
 growing in the world, and that it was 
 only our awkwardness that, by striving 
 to cram it all for a year into twenty-four 
 hours, made it seem a little farcical. And 
 everybody knows that when goodness be- 
 comes fashionable, goodness is likely to 
 suffer a little. A virtue overdone falls on 
 t'other side. And a holiday that takes on 
 such proportions that the Express com- 
 panies and the Post-office cannot handle 
 it is in danger of a collapse. In consider- 
 ation of these things, and because, as has
 
 32 
 
 been pointed out j-ear after year, Christ- 
 mas is becoming a burden, tlie load of 
 which is looked forward to with appre- 
 hension — and back on with nervous pros- 
 tration — fear has been expressed that the 
 dearest of all holidays in Christian lands 
 would have to go again under a sort of 
 Puritan protest, or into a retreat for rest 
 and purification. 
 
 We are enabled to announce for the 
 encouragement of the single-minded in 
 this best of all days, at the close of a 
 year which it is best not to characterize, 
 that those who stand upon the social 
 watch-towers in Europe and America 
 begin to see a light — or, it would be bet- 
 ter to say, to perceive a spirit — in society 
 which is likely to change many things, 
 and, among others, to work a return of 
 Christian simplicity. As might be ex- 
 pected in these days, the spirit is ex- 
 hibited in the sex which is first at the 
 wedding and last in the hospital ward. 
 And as might have been expected, also, 
 this spirit is shown by the young woman 
 of the period, in whose hands are the 
 issues of the future. If she preserve her
 
 33 
 
 present mind long enough, Christmas 
 will become a day that will satisfy every 
 human being, for the purpose of the young 
 woman will pervade it. The tendency of 
 the young woman generally to simplicity, 
 of the American young woman to a cer- 
 tain restraint (at least when abroad), to a 
 deference to her elders, and to tradition, 
 has been noted. The present phenomenon 
 is quite bej'ond this, and more radical. It 
 is, one may venture to say, an attempt to 
 conform the inner being to the outward 
 simplicity. If one could suspect the 
 young woman of taking up any line not 
 original, it might be guessed that the 
 present fashion (which is bewildering the 
 most worldly men with a new and irre- 
 sistible fascination) was set by the self- 
 revelations of Marie BashkirtsefT. Very 
 likely, however, it was a new spirit in the 
 world, of which Marie was the first pub- 
 lishing example. Its note is self-analysis, 
 searching, unsparing, leaving no room for 
 the deception of self or of the world. Its 
 leading feature is extreme candor. It is 
 not enough to tell the truth (that has 
 been told before) ; but one must act and 
 
 3
 
 34 
 
 tell the whole truth. One does not put 
 on the shirt front and the standing collar 
 and the knotted cravat of the other sex 
 as a mere form ; it is an act of consecra- 
 tion, of rigid, simple come-out-ness into 
 the light of truth. This noble candor 
 will suffer no concealments. She would 
 not have her lover even, still more the 
 general world of men, think she is better, 
 or rather other, than she is. Not that 
 she would like to appear a man among 
 men, far from that ; but she wishes to 
 talk with candor and be talked to can- 
 didly, without taking advantage of that 
 false shelter of sex behind which women 
 have been accused of dodging. If she is 
 nothing else, she is sincere, one might say 
 wantonly sincere. And this lucid, candid 
 inner life is reflected in her dress. This 
 is not only simple in its form, in its lines; 
 it is severe. To go into the shop of a 
 European modiste is almost to put one's 
 self into a truthful and candid frame of 
 mind. Those leave frivolous ideas behind 
 who enter here. The modiste will tell 
 the philosopher that it is now the fashion 
 to be severe ; it a word, it isfesch. Noth-
 
 35 
 
 ing can go beyond that. And it symbol- 
 izes the whole life, its self-examination, 
 earnestness, utmost candor in speech and 
 conduct. 
 
 The statesman who is busy about his 
 tarifland his reciprocity, and his endeavor 
 to raise money like potatoes, may little 
 heed and much undervalue this advent of 
 candor into the world as a social force. 
 But the philosopher will make no such 
 mistake. He knows that they who build 
 without woman build in vain, and that 
 she is the great regenerator, as she is the 
 great destroyer. He knows too much to 
 disregard the gravity of any fashionable 
 movement. He knows that there is no 
 power on earth that can prevent the re- 
 turn of the long skirt. And that if the 
 young woman has decided to be severe 
 and candid and frank with herself and in 
 her intercourse with others, we must sub- 
 mit and thank God. 
 
 And what a gift to the world is this for 
 the Christmas season ! The clear-eyed 
 young woman of the future, always dear 
 and often an anxiety, w'ill this year be an 
 object of enthusiasm.
 
 HE American man only develops him- 
 self and spreads himself and grows "for 
 all he is worth " in the Great West. He 
 is more free and limber there, and un- 
 folds those generous peculiarities and 
 largenesses of humanity which never 
 blossomed before. The "environment" 
 has much to do with it. The great spaces 
 over which he roams contribute to the 
 enlargement of his mental horizon. There 
 have been races before who roamed the 
 illimitable desert, but they travelled on 
 foot or on camel-back, and were limited 
 in their range. There was nothing con- 
 tinental about them, as there is about 
 our railway desert travellers, who swing 
 along through thousands of miles of 
 sand and sage-bush with a growing con- 
 tempt for time and space. But expan- 
 sive and great as these people have be- 
 come under the new conditions, we have
 
 37 
 
 a fancy that the development of the race 
 has only just begun, and that the future 
 will show us in perfection a kind of man 
 new to the world. Out somewhere on 
 the Sante Fe route, where the desert of 
 one day was like the desert of the day 
 before, and the Pullman car rolls and 
 swings over the wide waste beneath the 
 blue sky day after day, under its black flag 
 of smoke, in the early gray of morning, 
 when the men were waiting their turns at 
 the ablution bowls, a slip of a boy, perhaps 
 aged seven, stood balancing himself on 
 his little legs, clad in knickerbockers, 
 biding his time, with all the nonchalance 
 of an old campaigner. " How did you 
 sleep, cap ?" asked a well-meaning elderly 
 gentleman. " Well, thank you," was the 
 dignified response ; " as / always do on a 
 slccping-car." Always does ? Great hor- 
 rors ! Hardly out of his swaddling- 
 clothes, and yet he always sleeps well in a 
 sleeper ! Was he born on the wheels .'' was 
 he cradled in a Pullman ? He has always 
 been in motion, probably ; he was started 
 at thirty miles an hour, no doubt, this 
 marv'ellous boy of our new era. He was
 
 38 
 
 not born in a house at rest, but the loco- 
 motive snatched him along with a shriek 
 and a roar before his eyes were fairh' 
 open, and he was rocked in a " section," 
 and his first sensation of life was that of 
 moving rapidly over vast arid spaces, 
 through cattle ranges and along can- 
 ons. The effect of quick and easy 
 locomotion on character may have been 
 noted before, but it seems that here is 
 the production of a new sort of man, the 
 direct product of our railway era. It is 
 not simply that this boy is mature, but 
 he must be a different and a nobler sort 
 of boy than one born, say, at home or on 
 a canal-boat ; for, whether he was born on 
 the rail or not, he belongs to the railway 
 system of civilization. Before he gets into 
 trousers he is old in experience, and he 
 has discounted many of the novelties 
 that usually break gradually on the pil- 
 grim in this world. He belongs to the 
 new expansive race that must live in 
 motion, whose proper home is the Pull- 
 man (which will probaby be improved in 
 time into a dustless, sweet-smelling, well- 
 aired bedroom), and whose domestic life
 
 39 
 
 will be on the wing, so to speak. The 
 Intcr-State Commerce Bill will pass him 
 along- without friction from end to end of 
 the Union, and perhaps a uniform divorce 
 law will enable him to change his mari- 
 tal relations at any place where he hap- 
 pens to dine. This promising lad is only a 
 faint itimation of what we are all coming 
 to when we fully acquire the freedom of 
 the continent, and come into that expan- 
 siveness of feeling and of language which 
 characterizes the Great West. It is a 
 burst of joyous exuberance that comes 
 from the sense of an illimitable horizon. 
 It shows itself in the tender words of a 
 local newspaper at Bowie, Arizona, on 
 the death of a beloved citizen : " ' Death 
 loves a shining mark,' and she hit a 
 dandy when she turned loose on Jim." 
 And also in the closing words of a New 
 Mexico obituary, which the Kansas Mag- 
 azine (\\ioX.es: "Her tired spirit was re- 
 leased from the pain-racking body and 
 soared aloft to eternal glory at 4.30 Den- 
 ver time." We die, as it were, in motion, 
 as we sleep, and there is nowhere any 
 boundary to our expansion. Perhaps we
 
 40 
 
 shall never again know any rest as we 
 now understand the term — rest being 
 only change of motion — and we shall 
 not be able to sleep except on the cars, and 
 whether we die by Denver time or by 
 the 90th meridian, we shall only change 
 our time. Blessed be this slip of a boy 
 who is a man before he is an infant, and 
 teaches us what rapid transit can do for 
 our race ! The only thing that can pos- 
 sibly hinder us in our progress will be 
 second childhood ; we have abolished 
 first.
 
 THE ELECTRIC WAY 
 
 We are quite in the electric way. We 
 boast that we have made electricity our 
 slave, but the slave whom we do not un- 
 derstand is our master. And before we 
 know him we shall be transformed. Mr. 
 Edison proposes to send us over the 
 country at the rate of one hundred miles 
 an hour. This pleases us, because we 
 fancy we shall save time, and because we 
 are taught that the chief object in life is 
 to "get there " quickly. We really have 
 an idea that it is a gain to annihilate dis- 
 tance, forgetting that as a matter of per- 
 sonal experience we are already too near 
 most people. But this speed by rail will 
 enable us to live in Philadelphia and do 
 business in New York. It will make the 
 city of Chicago two hundred miles square. 
 And the bigger Chicago is, the more im- 
 portant this world becomes. This pleas- 
 ing anticipation — that of travelling by
 
 42 
 
 lightning, and all being huddled together 
 — is nothing to the promised universal il- 
 lumination by a diffused light that shall 
 make midnight as bright as noonday. We 
 shall then save all the time there is, 
 and at the age of thirty-five have lived 
 the allotted seventy years, and long, if not 
 for Gotteydcimmcrung, at least for some 
 world where, by touching a button, we 
 can discharge our limbs of electricity and 
 take a little repose. The most restless 
 and ambitious of us can hardly conceive 
 of Chicago as a desirable future state of 
 existence. 
 
 This, however, is only the external or 
 superficial view of the subject; at the 
 best it is only symbolical. Mr. Edison is 
 wasting his time in objective experiments, 
 while we are in the deepest ignorance as 
 to our electric personality or our personal 
 electricity. We begin to apprehend that 
 we are electric beings, that these outward 
 manifestations of a subtle form are only 
 hints of our internal state. Mr. Edison 
 should turn his attention from physics to 
 humanity electrically considered in its so- 
 cial condition. We have heard a great
 
 45 
 
 deal about affinities. We arc told that 
 one person is positiv^c and another nega- 
 tive, and that representing socially oppo- 
 site poles they should come together and 
 make an electric harmony, that two pos- 
 itives or two negatives repel each other, 
 and if conventionally united end in di- 
 vorce, and so on. We read that such a 
 man is magnetic, meaning that he can 
 poll a great many votes ; or that such a 
 woman thrilled her audience, meaning 
 probably that they were in an electric 
 condition to be shocked by her. Now 
 this is what we want to find out — to 
 know if persons are really magnetic or 
 sympathetic, and how to tell whether a 
 person is positive or negative. In politics 
 we are quite at sea. What is the good of 
 sending a man to Washington at the rate 
 of a hundred miles an hour if we are un- 
 certain of his electric state.'' The ideal 
 House of Representatives ought to be 
 pretty nearly balanced — half positive, half 
 negative. Some Congresses seem to be 
 made up pretty much of negatives. The 
 time for the electrician to test the candi- 
 date is before he is put in nomination,
 
 46 
 
 not dump him into Congress as we do 
 now, utterly ignorant of whether his cur- 
 rents run from his heels to his head or 
 from his head to his heels, uncertain, in- 
 deed, as to whether he has magnetism to 
 run in at all. Nothing could be more un- 
 scientific than the process and the result. 
 In social life it is infinitely worse. You, 
 an electric unmarried man, enter a room 
 full of attractive women. How are you 
 to know who is positive and who is nega- 
 tive, or who is a maiden lady in equilib- 
 rium, if it be true, as scientists afTirm, that 
 the genus old maid is one in whom the 
 positive currents neutralize the negative 
 currents ? Your affinity is perhaps the 
 plainest woman in the room. But beauty 
 is a juggling sprite, entirely uncontrolled 
 by electricity, and you are quite likely to 
 make a mistake. It is absurd the way we 
 blunder on in a scientific age. We touch 
 a button, and are married. The judge 
 touches another button, and we are di- 
 vorced. If when we touched the first but- 
 ton it revealed us both negatives, we 
 should start back in horror, for it is only 
 before engagement that two negatives
 
 47 
 
 make an affirmative. That is the reason 
 that some clergymen refuse to marry a 
 divorced woman ; they see that she has 
 made one electric mistake, and fear she 
 will make another. It is all very well for 
 the officiating clergyman to ask the two 
 intending to commit matrimony if they 
 have a license from the town clerk, if 
 they are of age or have the consent of 
 parents, and have a million ; but the vital 
 point is omitted. Are they electric affin- 
 ities .'' It should be the duty of the town 
 clerk, by a battery, or by some means to 
 be discovered by electricians, to find out 
 the galvanic habit of the parties, their 
 prevailing electric condition. Tempora- 
 rily they may seem to be in harmony, and 
 may deceive themselves into the belief 
 that they are at opposite poles equidis- 
 tant from the equator, and certain to meet 
 on that imaginary line in matrimonial 
 bliss. Dreadful will be the awakening to 
 an insipid life, if they find they both have 
 the same sort of currents. It is said that 
 women change their minds and their dis- 
 positions, that men are fickle, and that 
 both give way after marriage to natural
 
 48 
 
 inclinations that were suppressed while 
 they were on the good behavior that the 
 supposed necessity of getting married im- 
 poses. This is so notoriously true that it 
 ought to create a public panic. But there 
 is hope in the new light. If we under- 
 stand it, persons are born in a certain 
 electrical condition, and substantially 
 continue in it, however much they may 
 apparently wobble about under the in- 
 fluence of infirm minds and acquired 
 wickedness. There are, of course, varia- 
 tions of the compass to be reckoned with, 
 and the magnet may occasionally be be- 
 witched by near and powerful attracting 
 objects. But, on the whole, the magnet 
 remains the same, and it is probable that 
 a person's normal electric condition is 
 the thing in him least liable to dangerous 
 variation. If this be true, the best basis 
 for matrimony is the electric, and our so- 
 cial life would have fewer disappoint- 
 ments if men and women went about la- 
 belled with their scientifically ascertained 
 electric qualities.
 
 .ESI 
 
 c 
 
 Can a huftmnd 
 ^^ef letter) 
 
 AN a husband open his wife's letters? 
 That would depend, many would say, 
 upon what kind of a husband he is. But 
 it cannot be put aside in that flippant 
 manner, for it is a legal right that is in 
 question, and it has recently been de- 
 cided in a Paris tribunal that the hus- 
 band has the right to open the letters 
 addressed to his wife. Of course in 
 America an appeal would instantly be 
 taken from this decision, and perhaps by 
 husbands themselves ; for in this world 
 rights are becoming so impartially dis- 
 tributed that this privilege granted to 
 the husband might at once be extended 
 to the wife, and she would read all his 
 business correspondence, and his busi- 
 ness is sometimes various and compli- 
 cated. The Paris decision must be based 
 upon the familiar formula that man and
 
 5° 
 
 wife are one, and that that one is the hus- 
 band.* If a man has the right to read all the 
 letters written to his wife, being his prop- 
 erty by reason of his ownership of her, 
 why may he not have a legal right to 
 know all that is said to her ? The ques- 
 tion is not whether a wife ought to re- 
 ceive letters that her husband may not 
 read, or listen to talk that he may not 
 hear, but whether he has a sort of lord- 
 ship that gives him privileges which she 
 does not enjoy. In our modern notion 
 of marriage, which is getting itself ex- 
 pressed in statute law, marriage is sup- 
 posed to rest on mutual trust and mutual 
 rights. In theory the husband and wife 
 are still one, and there can nothing come 
 into the life of one that is not shared by 
 the other; in fact, if the marriage is perfect 
 and the trust absolute, the personality of 
 each is respected by the other, and each 
 is freely the judge of what shall be con- 
 tributed to the common confidence ; and 
 if there are any concealments, it is well 
 believed that they are for the mutual 
 good. If every one were as perfect in 
 the marriage relation as those who are
 
 5' 
 
 reading these lines, the question of the 
 wife's letters would never arise. The 
 man, trusting his wife, would not care to 
 pry into any little secrets his wife might 
 have, or bother himself about her cor- 
 respondence ; he would know, indeed, 
 that if he had lost her real afifection, a 
 surveillance of her letters could not 
 restore it. 
 
 Perhaps it is a modern notion that 
 marriage is a union of trust and not of 
 suspicion, of expectation of faithfulness 
 the more there is freedom. At any rate, 
 the tendency, notwithstanding the French 
 decision, is away from the common-law 
 suspicion and tyranny towards a higher 
 trust in an enlarged freedom. And it is 
 certain that the rights cannot all be on one 
 side and the duties on the other. If the 
 husband legally may compel his, wife to 
 show him her letters, the courts will before 
 long grant the same privilege to the wife. 
 But, without pressing this point, we hold 
 strongly to the s^credness of correspon- 
 dence. The letters one receives are in 
 one sense not his own. They contain the 
 confessions of another soul, the confi-
 
 52 
 
 dences of another mind, that would be 
 rudely treated if given any sort of pub- 
 licity. And while husband and wife are 
 one to each other, they are two in the eyes 
 of other people, and it may well happen 
 that a friend will desire to impart some- 
 thing to a discreet woman which she 
 would not intrust to the babbling hus- 
 band of that woman. Every life must 
 have its own privacy and its own place of 
 retirement. The letter is of all things 
 the most personal and intimate thing. 
 Its bloom is gone when another eye sees 
 it before the one for which it was intended. 
 Its aroma all escapes when it is first 
 opened by another person. One might 
 as well wear second-hand clothing as get 
 a second-hand letter. Here, then, is a 
 sacred right that ought to be respected, 
 and can be respected without any injury 
 to domestic life. The habit in some 
 families for the members of it to show 
 each other's letters is a most disenchant- 
 ing one. It is just in the family, between 
 persons most intimate, that these delica- 
 cies of consideration for the privacy of 
 each ought to be most respected. No
 
 S3 
 
 one can estimate probably how much of 
 the refinement, of the dehcacy of feeling, 
 has been lost to the world by the intro- 
 duction of the postal-card. Anything 
 written on a postal-card has no personal- 
 ity ; it is banal, and has as little power of 
 charming any one who receives it as an 
 adv^ertisement in the newspaper. It is 
 not simply the cheapness of the com- 
 munication that is vulgar, but the pub- 
 licity of it. One may have perhaps only a 
 cent's worth of affection to send, but it 
 seems worth much more when enclosed 
 in an envelope. We have no doubt, 
 then, that on general principles the French 
 decision is a mistake, and that it tends 
 rather to vulgarize than to retain the 
 purity and delicacy of the marriage re- 
 lation. And the judges, so long even as 
 men only occupy the bench, will no 
 doubt reverse it when the logical march 
 of events forces upon them the question 
 whether the wife may open her husband's 
 letters.
 
 A LEISURE CLASS 
 
 Foreign critics have apologized for 
 real or imagined social and literary short- 
 comings in this country on the ground 
 that the American people have little lei- 
 sure. It is supposed that when we have 
 a leisure class we shall not only make a 
 better showing in these respects, but we 
 shall be as agreeable — having time to 
 devote to the art of being agreeable — as 
 the English are. But we already have a 
 considerable and increasing number of 
 people who can command their own time 
 if we have not a leisure class, and the so- 
 ciologist might begin to study the effect 
 of this leisureliness upon society. Are 
 the people who, by reason of a compe- 
 tence or other accidents of good-fortune, 
 have most leisure, becoming more agree- 
 able ? and are they devoting themselves 
 to the elevation of the social tone, or to 
 the improvement of our literature .'* How-
 
 55 
 
 ever this question is answered, a strong 
 appeal might be made to the people of 
 leisure to do not only what is expected 
 of them by foreign observers, but to take 
 advantage of their immense opportuni- 
 ties. In a republic there is no room for 
 a leisure class that is not useful. Those 
 who use their time merely to kill it, in 
 imitation of those born to idleness and 
 to no necessity of making an exertion, 
 may be ornamental, but having no root 
 in any established privilege to sustain 
 them, they will soon wither away in this 
 atmosphere, as a flower would which 
 should set up to be an orchid when it 
 does not belong to the orchid family. It 
 is required here that those who are eman- 
 cipated from the daily grind should vin- 
 dicate their right to their position not 
 only by setting an example of self-cult- 
 ure, but by contributing something to 
 the general welfare. It is thought by 
 many that if society here were established 
 and settled as it is elsewhere, the rich 
 would be less dominated by their money 
 and less conscious of it, and having lei- 
 sure, could devote themselves even more
 
 56 
 
 than they do now to intellectual and spir- 
 itual pursuits. 
 
 Whether these anticipations will ever 
 be realized, and whether increased leisure 
 will make us all happy, is a subject of im- 
 portance ; but it is secondary, and in a 
 manner incidental, to another and deep- 
 er matter, which may be defined as the 
 responsibility of attractiveness. And this 
 responsibility takes two forms — the duty 
 of every one to be attractive, and the dan- 
 ger of being too attractive. To be win- 
 ning and agreeable is sometimes reck- 
 oned a gift, but it is a disposition that 
 can be cultivated ; and, in a world so 
 given to grippe and misapprehension as 
 this is, personal attractiveness becomes a 
 duty, if it is not an art, that might be 
 taught in the public schools. It used to 
 be charged against New Englanders that 
 they regarded this gift as of little value, 
 and were inclined to hide it under a 
 bushel, and it was said of some of their 
 neighbors in the Union that they exag- 
 gerated its importance, and neglected the 
 weightier things of the law. Indeed, dis- 
 putes have arisen as to what attractive-
 
 59 
 
 ness consisted in — some holding that 
 beauty or charm of manner (which is al- 
 most as good) and sweetness and gayety 
 were sufficient, while others held that a 
 little intelligence sprinkled in was essen- 
 tial. But one thing is clear, that while 
 women were held to strict responsibility 
 in this matter, not stress enough was laid 
 upon the equal duty of men to be attract- 
 ive in order to make the world agree- 
 able. Hence it is, probably, that while 
 no question has been raised as to the ef- 
 fect of the higher education upon the at- 
 tractiveness of men, the colleges for girls 
 have been jealously watched as to the ef- 
 fect they were likely to have upon the at- 
 tractiveness of women. Whether the col- 
 lege years of a young man, during which 
 he knows more than he will ever know 
 again, are his most attractive period is 
 not considered, for he is expected to de- 
 velop what is in him later on ; but it is 
 gravely questioned whether girls who 
 give their minds to the highest studies 
 are not dropping those graces of person- 
 al attractiveness which they will find it 
 difficult to pick up again. Of course
 
 6o 
 
 such a question as this could never arise 
 except in just such a world as this is. 
 For in an ideal world it could be shown 
 that the highest intelligence and the 
 highest personal charm are twins. If, 
 therefore, it should turn out, which seems 
 absurd, that college - educated girls are 
 not as attractive as other women with 
 less advantages, it will have to be admit- 
 ted that something is the matter with 
 the young ladies, which is preposterous, 
 or that the system is still defective. For 
 the postulate that everybody ought to be 
 attractive cannot be abandoned for the 
 sake of any system. Decision on this sys- 
 tem cannot be reached without long ex- 
 perience, for it is always to be remem- 
 bered that the man's point of view of 
 attractiveness may shift, and he may 
 come to regard the intellectual graces 
 as supremely attractive ; while, on the 
 other hand, the woman student maj^ find 
 that a winning smile is just as efTective 
 in bringing a man to her feet, where he 
 belongs, as a logarithm. 
 
 The danger of being too attractive, 
 though it has historic illustration, is
 
 6i 
 
 thought by many to be more apparent 
 than real. Merely being too attractive 
 has often been confounded with a love 
 of flirtation and conquest, unbecoming 
 always in a man, and excused in a woman 
 on the ground of her helplessness. It 
 could easily be shown that to use per- 
 sonal attractiveness recklessly to the ex- 
 tent of hopeless beguilement is cruel, and 
 it may be admitted that woman ought to 
 be held to strict responsibility for her at- 
 tractiveness. The lines are indeed hard 
 for her. The duty is upon her in this 
 poor world of being as attractive as she 
 can, and yet she is held responsible for 
 all the mischief her attractiveness pro- 
 duces. As if the blazing sun should be 
 called to account by people with weak 
 eyes!
 
 
 
 J HE month of February in all latitudes 
 in the United States is uncertain. The 
 birth of George Washington in it has not 
 raised it in public esteem. In the North, 
 it is a month to flee from ; in the South, 
 at best it is a waiting month — a month 
 of rain and fickle skies. A good deal has 
 been done for it. It is the month of St. 
 Valentine, it is distinguished by the leap- 
 year addition of a day, and ought to be a 
 favorite of the gentle sex ; but it re- 
 mains a sort of ofif period in the year. 
 Its brevity recommends it, but no one 
 would take any notice of it were it 
 not for its effect upon character. A 
 month of rigid weather is supposed to 
 brace up the moral nature, and a month 
 of gentleness is supposed to soften the 
 asperities of the disposition, but Febru- 
 ary contributes to neither of these ends. 
 It is neither a tonic nor a soother ; that
 
 63 
 
 is, in most parts of our inexplicable land. 
 We make no complaint of this. It is 
 probably well to have a period in the 
 year that tests character to the utmost, 
 and the person who can enter spring 
 through the gate of February a better 
 man or woman is likely to adorn society 
 the rest of the year. 
 
 February, however, is merely an illus- 
 tration of the efifect of weather upon the 
 disposition. Persons differ in regard to 
 their sensitiveness to cloudy, rainy, and 
 gloomy days. We recognize this in a 
 general way, but the relation of temper 
 and disposition to the weather has nev- 
 er been scientifically studied. Our ob- 
 servation of the influence of climate is 
 mostly with regard to physical infirm- 
 ities. We know the effect of damp 
 weather upon rheumatics, and of the 
 east wind upon gouty subjects, but too 
 little allowance is made for the influence 
 of weather upon the spirits and the con- 
 duct of men. We know that a long pe- 
 riod of gloomy weather leads to suicides, 
 and we observe that long -continued 
 clouds and rain beget "crossness" and
 
 64 
 
 ill-temper, and we are all familiar with 
 the universal exhilaration of sunshine 
 and clear air upon any company of men 
 and women. But the point we wish to 
 make is that neither society nor the law 
 makes any allowance for the aberrations 
 of human nature caused by dull and 
 unpleasant weather. And this is very 
 singular in this humanitarian age, when 
 excuse is found for nearly every moral 
 delinquency in heredity or environment, 
 that the greatest factor of discontent and 
 crookedness, the weather, should be left 
 out of consideration altogether. The re- 
 lation of crime to the temperature and 
 the humidity of the atmosphere is not 
 taken into account. Yet crime and 
 eccentricity of conduct are very much 
 the result of atmospheric conditions, 
 since they depend upon the temper and 
 the spirit of the community. Many peo- 
 ple are habitually blue and down-hearted 
 in sour weather ; a long spell of cloudy, 
 damp, cold weather depresses everybody, 
 lowers hope, tends to melancholy ; and 
 people when they are not cheerful are 
 more apt to fail into evil ways, as a rule,
 
 6s 
 
 than when they are in a normal state of 
 good-humor. And aside from crimes, 
 the vcxatior, the friction, the domestic 
 discontent in life, are provoked by bad 
 weather. We should like to have some 
 statistics as to incompatibility between 
 married couples produced by damp and 
 raw days, and to know whether divorces 
 are more numerous in the States that 
 suffer from a fickle climate than in those 
 where the climate is more equable. It is 
 true that in the Sandwich Islands and in 
 Egypt there is greater mental serenity, 
 less perturbation of spirit, less worry, 
 than in the changeable United States. 
 Something of this placidity and resigna- 
 tion to the ills inevitable in human life is 
 due to an even climate, to the constant 
 sun and the dry air. We cannot hope to 
 prevent crime and suffering by statistics, 
 any more than we have been able to im- 
 prove our climate (which is rather worse 
 now than before the scientists took it in 
 charge) by observations and telegraphic 
 reports ; but we can, by careful tabulation 
 of the effects of bad weather upon the 
 spirits of a community, learn what places 
 5
 
 66 
 
 in the Union are favorable to the pro- 
 duction of cheerfulness and an equal 
 mind. And we should lift a load of rep- 
 robation from some places which now 
 have a reputation for surliness and un- 
 amiability. We find the people of one 
 place hospitable, light-hearted, and agree- 
 able ; the people of another place cold, 
 and morose, and unpleasant. It would be 
 a satisfaction to know that the weather 
 is responsible for the difTerence. Obser- 
 vation of this sort would also teach us 
 doubtless what places are most condu- 
 cive to literary production, what to hap- 
 py homes and agreeing wives and hus- 
 bands. All our territory is mapped out 
 as to its sanitary conditions; why not 
 have it colored as to its effect upon the 
 spirits and the enjoyment of life .'* The 
 suggestion opens a vast field of investi- 
 gation.
 
 m^^^^ 
 
 I 1 1 1 I J I 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 HERE used to be a notion goinj^ round 
 that it would be a good thing for peo- 
 ple if they were more "self-centred." 
 Perhaps there was talk of adding a 
 course to the college curriculum, in addi- 
 tion to that for training the all-compe- 
 tent "journalist," for the self-centring of 
 the young. To apply the term to a 
 man or woman was considered highly 
 complimentary. The advisers of this 
 state of mind probably meant to suggest 
 a desirable equilibrium and mental bal- 
 ance ; but the actual effect of the self- 
 centred training is illustrated by a story 
 told of Thomas H. Benton, who had been 
 described as an egotist by some of the 
 newspapers. Meeting Colonel Frank 
 Blair one day, he said : " Colonel Blair, 
 I see that the newspapers call me an 
 egotist. I wish you would tell me frank- 
 ly, as a friend, if you think the charge is
 
 68 
 
 true." " It is a very direct question, Mr. 
 Benton," replied Colonel Blair, "but if 
 you want my honest opinion, I am com- 
 pelled to say that I think there is some 
 foundation for the charge." " Well, sir," 
 said Mr. Benton, throwing his head back 
 and his chest forward, " the difference 
 between me and these little fellows is 
 that I have an Ego !" Mr. Benton was 
 an interesting man, and it is a fair con- 
 sideration if a certain amount of egotism 
 does not add to the interest of any char- 
 acter, but at the same time the self- 
 centred conditions shut a person off from 
 one of the chief enjoyments to be got 
 out of this world, namely, a recognition 
 of what is admirable in others in a toler- 
 ation of peculiarities. It is odd, almost 
 amusing, to note how in this country peo- 
 ple of one section apply their local stand- 
 ards to the judgment of people in other 
 sections, very much as an Englishman 
 uses his insular yardstick to measure all 
 the rest of the world. It never seems to 
 occur to people in one locality that the 
 manners and speech of those of another 
 may be just as admirable as their own, and
 
 69 
 
 they get a "ood deal of discomfort out of 
 their intercourse with strangers by reason 
 of their inability to adapt themselves to 
 any ways not their own. It helps greatly 
 to make this country interesting that 
 nearly every State has its peculiarities, 
 and that the inhabitants of different sec- 
 tions differ in manner and speech. But 
 next to an interesting person, in social 
 value, is an agreeable one, and it would add 
 vastly to the agreeableness of life if our 
 widely spread provinces were not so self- 
 centred in their notion that their own way 
 is the best, to the degree that they criticise 
 any deviation from it as an eccentricity. 
 It would be a very nice world in these 
 United States if we could all devote our- 
 selves to finding out in communities what 
 is likable rather than what is opposed to 
 our experience; that is, in trying to adapt 
 ourselves to others rather than insisting 
 that our own standard should measure 
 our opinion and our enjoyment of them. 
 When the Kentuckian describes a man 
 as a " high-toned gentleman " he means 
 exactly the same that a Bostonian means 
 when he says that a man is a " very good
 
 70 
 
 fellow," only the men described have a 
 different culture, a different personal fla- 
 vor ; and it is fortunate that the Kentuck- 
 ian is not like the Bostonian, for each has 
 a quality that makes intercourse with him 
 pleasant. In the South many people 
 think they have said a severe thing when 
 they say that a person or manner is thor- 
 oughly Yankee ; and many New England- 
 ers intend to express a considerable lack 
 in what is essential when they say of men 
 and women that they are very Southern. 
 When the Yankee is produced he may 
 turn out a cosmopolitan person of the 
 most interesting and agreeable sort ; and 
 the Southerner may have traits and pe- 
 culiarities, growing out of climate and so- 
 cial life unlike the New England, which 
 are altogether charming. We talked once 
 with a Western man of considerable age 
 and experience who had the placid mind 
 that is sometimes, and may more and 
 more become, the characteristic of those 
 who live in flat countries of illimitable 
 horizons, who said that New Yorkers, 
 State and city, all had an assertive sort 
 of smartness that was very disagreeable
 
 71 
 
 to him. And a lady of New York (a city 
 whose dialect the novelists are beginning 
 to satirize) was much disturbed by the 
 flatness of speech prevailing in Chicago, 
 and thought something should be done in 
 the public schools to correct the pronunci- 
 ation of English. There doubtless should 
 be a common standard of distinct, round- 
 ed, melodious pronunciation, as there is 
 of good breeding, and it is quite as im- 
 portant to cultivate the voice in speaking 
 as in singing, but the people of the United 
 States let themselves be immensely irri- 
 tated by local differences and want of tol- 
 eration of sectional peculiarities. The 
 truth is that the agreeable people are 
 pretty evenly distributed over the country, 
 and one's enjoyment of them is height- 
 ened not only by their difTerences of man- 
 ner, but by the dillerent ways in which 
 they look at life, unless he insists upon 
 applying everywhere the yardstick of his 
 own locality. If the Boston woman sets 
 her eye-glasses at a critical angle towards 
 the laisstr fairc f^ow of social amenity in 
 New Orleans, and the New Orleans wom- 
 an seeks out only the prim and conven-
 
 73-, 
 
 tional in Boston, each may miss the op- 
 portunity to supplement her Hfe by some- 
 thing wanting and desirable in it, to be 
 gained by the exercise of more openness of 
 mind and toleration. To some people Yan- 
 kee thrift is disagreeable ; to others, South- 
 ern shiftlessness is intolerable. To some 
 travellers the negro of the South, with his 
 tropical nature.his capacity for picturesque 
 attitudes.hisabundant trust in Providence, 
 is an element of restfulness ; and if the 
 chief object of life is happiness, the trav- 
 eller may take a useful hint from the race 
 whose utmost desire, in a fit climate, 
 would be fully satisfied by a shirt and a 
 banana-tree. But to another traveller the 
 dusky, careless race is a continual affront. 
 If a person is born with an " Ego," and 
 gets the most enjoyment out of the world 
 by trying to make it revolve about himself, 
 and cannot make allowances for differ- 
 ences, we have nothing to say except to 
 express pity for such a self-centred condi- 
 tion, which shuts him out of the never- 
 failing pleasure there is in entering into 
 and understanding with sympathy the al- 
 most infinite variety in American life.
 
 JUVENTUS MUNDI 
 
 OMETIMES the world seems 
 very old. It appeared so to Ber- 
 nard of Cluny in the twelfth century, when 
 he wrote : 
 
 " The world is very evil, 
 The times are waxing late." 
 
 There was a general impression among 
 the Christians of the first century of our 
 era that the end was near. The world 
 must have seemed very ancient to the 
 Egyptians fifteen hundred years before 
 Christ, when the Pyramid of Cheops was 
 a relic of antiquity, when almost the 
 whole circle of arts, sciences, and litera- 
 ture had been run through, when every 
 nation within reach had been conquered, 
 when woman had been developed into 
 one of the most fascinating of beings, and
 
 74 
 
 even rei«;ned more absolutely than Eliza- 
 beth or Victoria has reigned since : it 
 was a pretty tired old world at that time. 
 One might almost say that the further we 
 go back the older and more " played out " 
 tlie world appears, notwithstanding that 
 the poets, who were generally pessimists 
 of the present, kept harping about the 
 youth of the world and the joyous spon- 
 taneity of human life in some golden age 
 before their time. In fact, the world z's 
 old in spots — in Memphis and Boston and 
 Damascus and Salem and Ephesus. Some 
 of these places are venerable in traditions, 
 and some of them are actually worn out 
 and taking a rest from too much civiliza- 
 tion—lying fallow, as the saying is. But 
 age is so entirely relative that to many 
 persons the landing of the Mayflower 
 seems more remote than the voyage of 
 Jason, and a Mayflower chest a more an- 
 tique piece of furniture than the timbers 
 of the Ark, which some believe can still 
 be seen on top of Mount Ararat, 
 
 But, speaking generally, the world is 
 still young and growing, and a consider- 
 able portion of it unfinished. The oldest
 
 75 
 
 part, indeed, the Laurentian Hills, \vhii:h 
 were first out of water, is still only sparsely 
 settled ; and no one pretends that Florida 
 is anything like finished, or that the delta 
 of the Mississippi is in anything more 
 than the process of formation. Men are 
 so young and lively in these days that 
 they cannot wait for the slow processes 
 of nature, but they fill up and bank up 
 places, like Holland, where they can live; 
 and they keep on exploring and discov- 
 ering incongruous regions, like Alaska, 
 where they can go and exercise their ju- 
 venile exuberance. 
 
 In many respects the world has been 
 growing younger ever since the Christian 
 era. A new spirit came into it then which 
 makes youth perpetual, a spirit of living 
 in others, which got the name of univer- 
 sal brotherhood, a spirit that has had a 
 good many discouragements and set- 
 backs, but which, on the whole, gains 
 ground, and generally works in harmony 
 with the scientific spirit, breaking down 
 the exclusiv^e character of the conquests 
 of nature. What used to be the mystery 
 and occultism of the few is now general
 
 76 
 
 knowledge, so that all the playing at oc- 
 cultism by conceited people now seems 
 jeiune and foolish. A little machine called 
 the instantaneous photograph takes pict- 
 ures as quickly and accurately as the hu- 
 man eye does, and besides makes them 
 permanent. Instead of fooling credulous 
 multitudes with responses from Delphi, 
 we have a Congress which can enact 
 tariff regulations susceptible of interpre- 
 tations enough to satisfy the love of mys- 
 tery of the entire nation. Instead of loaf- 
 ing round Memnon at sunrise to catch 
 some supernatural tones, we talk words 
 into a little contrivance which will repeat 
 our words and tones to the remotest gen- 
 eration of those who shall be curious to 
 know whether we said those words in jest 
 or earnest. All these mysteries made 
 common and diffused certainly increase 
 the feeling of the equality of opportunity 
 in the world. And day by day such won- 
 derful things are discovered and scattered 
 aboad that we are warranted in believing 
 that we are only on the threshold of turn- 
 ing to account the hidden forces of nat- 
 ure. There would be great danger of
 
 77 
 
 human presumption and conceit in this 
 progress if the conceit were not so wide- 
 ly diffused, and where we are all con- 
 ceited there is no one to whom it will ap- 
 pear unpleasant. If there was only one 
 person who knew about the telephone he 
 would be unbearable. Probably the Eiffel 
 Tower would be stricken down as a mon- 
 umental presumption, like that of Babel, 
 if it had not been raised with the full 
 knowledge and consent of all the world. 
 
 This new spirit, with its multiform man- 
 ifestations, which came into the world 
 nearly nineteen hundred years ago, is 
 sometimes called the spirit of Christmas. 
 And good reasons can be given for sup- 
 posing that it is. At any rate, those na- 
 tions that have the most of it are the most 
 prosperous, and those people who have 
 the most of it are the most agreeable to 
 associate with. Know all men by these 
 Presents, is an old legal form which has 
 come to have a new meaning in this dis- 
 pensation. It is by the spirit of brother- 
 hood exhibited in giving presents that we 
 know the Christmas proper, only we are 
 apt to take it in too narrow a way. The
 
 78 
 
 real spirit of Christmas is the general dif- 
 fusion of helpfulness and good-will. If 
 somebody were to discov^er an elixir whirii 
 would make every one truthful, he would 
 not, in this age of the world, patent it. 
 Indeed, the Patent Office would not let 
 him make a corner on virtue as he does 
 in wheat; and it is not respectable any 
 more among the real children of Christ- 
 mas to make a corner in wheat. The 
 world, to be sure, tolerates still a great 
 many things that it does not approve of, 
 and, on the whole, Christmas, as an amel- 
 iorating and good-fellowship institution, 
 gains a little year by year. There is still 
 one hitch about it, and a bad one just now, 
 namely, that many people think they can 
 buy its spirit by jerks of liberality, by cost- 
 ly gifts. Whereas the fact is that a great 
 many of the costliest gifts in this season 
 do not count at all. Crumbs from the rich 
 man's table don't avail any more to open 
 the pearly gates even of popular esteem in 
 this world. Let us say, in fine, that a lov- 
 ing, sympathetic heart is better than a 
 nickel-plated service in this world, which 
 is surely growing young and sympathetic.
 
 A BEAVTIFVL 
 
 «»0LDACE4^# 
 
 N Autumn the thouijhts lightly turn 
 to Age. If the writer has seemed to 
 be interested, sometimes to the neglect 
 of other topics in the American young 
 woman, it was not because she is inter- 
 ested in herself, but because she is on 
 the way to be one of the most agreeable 
 objects in this lovely world. She may 
 struggle against it; she may resist it by 
 all the legitimate arts of the coquette and 
 the chemist ; she may be convinced that 
 youth and beauty are inseparable allies ; 
 but she would have more patience if she 
 reflected that tlie sunset is often finer 
 than the sunrise, commonly finer than 
 noon, especially after a stormy day. The 
 secret of a beautiful old age is as well 
 worth seeking as that of a charming 
 young maidenhood. For it is one of the 
 compensations for the rest of us, in the 
 decay of this mortal life, that women,
 
 8o 
 
 whose mission it is to allure in youth 
 and to tinge the beginning of the world 
 with romance, also make the end of the 
 world more serenely satisfactory and 
 beautiful than the outset. And this has 
 been done without any amendment to 
 the Constitution of the United States ; 
 in fact, it is possible that the Sixteenth 
 Amendment would rather hinder than 
 help this gracious process. We are not 
 speaking now of what is called growing 
 old gracefully and regretfully, as some- 
 thing to be endured, but as a season to 
 be desired for itself, at least by those 
 whose privilege it is to be ennobled and 
 cheered by it. And we are not speaking 
 of wicked old women. There is a unique 
 fascination — all the novelists recognize 
 it — in a wicked old woman; not very 
 wicked, but a woman of abundant exper- 
 ience, who is perfectly frank and a little 
 cynical, and delights in probing human 
 nature and flashing her wit on its weak- 
 nesses, and who knows as much about life 
 as a club man is credited with knowing. 
 She may not be a good comrade for the 
 young, but she is immensely more fas-
 
 8i 
 
 cinating than a semi-wicked old man. 
 Why, we do not know ; that is one of the 
 unfathomable mysteries of womanhood. 
 No ; we have in mind quite another sort 
 of woman, of which America has so many 
 that they are a very noticeable element 
 in all cultivated society. And the world 
 has nothing more lovely. For there is a 
 loveliness or fascination sometimes in 
 women between the ages of sixty and 
 eighty that is unlike any other— a charm 
 that wooes us to regard autumn as beau- 
 tiful as spring. 
 
 Perhaps these women were great beau- 
 ties in their day, but scarcely so serenely 
 beautiful as now when age has refined 
 all that was most attractive. Perhaps 
 they were plain ; but it does not matter, 
 for the subtle influence of spiritualized 
 intelligence has the power of transform- 
 ing plainness into the beauty of old age. 
 Physical beauty is doubtless a great ad- 
 vantage, and it is never lost if mind 
 shines through it (there is nothing so un- 
 lovely as a frivolous old woman fighting 
 to keep the skin-deep beauty of her 
 youth) ; the eyes, if the life has not
 
 82 
 
 been one of physical suffering, usually 
 retain their power of moving appeal ; 
 the lines of the face, if changed, may be 
 refined by a certain spirituality ; the 
 gray hair gives dignity and softness and 
 the charm of contrast ; the low sweet 
 voice vibrates to the same note of fem- 
 ininity, and the graceful and gracious are 
 graceful and gracious still. Even into 
 the face and bearing of the plain woman 
 whose mind has grown, whose thoughts 
 have been pure, whose heart has been 
 expanded by good deeds or by constant 
 affection, comes a beauty winning and 
 satisfactory in the highest degree. 
 
 It is not that the charm of the women 
 of whom we speak is mainly this physical 
 beauty ; that is only incidental, as it 
 were. The delight in their society has a 
 variety of sources. Their interest in 
 life is broader than it once was, more 
 sympathetically unselfish ; they have a 
 certain philosophical serenity that is not 
 inconsistent with great liveliness of mind ; 
 they have got rid of so much nonsense J 
 they can afford to be truthful — and 
 how much there is to be learned from
 
 83 
 
 a woman who is truthful ! they have 
 a most delicious courage of opinion, 
 about men, say, and in politics, and social 
 topics, and creeds even. They have very 
 little any longer to conceal , that is, in 
 regard to things that should be thought 
 about and talked about at all. They are 
 not afraid to be gay, and to have enthu- 
 siasms. At sixty and eighty a refined 
 and well-bred woman is emancipated in 
 the best way, and in the enjoyment of 
 the full play of the richest qualities of her 
 womanhood. She is as far from prudery as 
 from the least note of vulgarity. Passion, 
 perhaps, is replaced by a great capacity 
 for friendliness, and she was never more a 
 real woman than in these mellow and re- 
 flective days. And how interesting she is 
 — adding so much knowledge of life to 
 the complex interest that inheres in her 
 sex! Knowledge of life, yes, and of af- 
 fairs ; for it must be said of these ladies 
 we have in mind that they keep up with 
 the current thought, that they are readers 
 of books, even of newspapers — for even 
 the newspaper can be helpful and not 
 harmful in the alembic of their minds.
 
 «4 
 
 Let not the purpose of this paper be 
 misunderstood. It is not to urge young 
 women to become old or to act like old 
 women. The independence and frank- 
 ness of age might not be becoming to 
 them. They must stumble along as best 
 they can, alternately attracting and repel- 
 ling, until by right of years they join that 
 serene company which is altogether beau- 
 tiful. There is a natural unfolding and 
 maturing to the beauty of old age. The 
 mission of woman, about which we are 
 pretty weary of hearing, is not accom- 
 plished by any means in her years of ver- 
 nal bloom and loveliness ; she has equal 
 power to bless and sweeten life in the 
 autumn of her pilgrimage. But here is 
 an apologue : The peach, from blossom 
 to maturity, is the most attractive of 
 fruits. Yet the demands of the market, 
 competition, and fashion often cause it 
 to be plucked and shipped while green. 
 It never matures, though it may take a 
 deceptive richness of color ; it decays 
 without ripening. And the last end of 
 that peach is worse than the first.
 
 Mm 
 
 m 
 
 HY/fl*:^ THE ATTRACTION OF 
 
 jf/v THE REPULSIVE 
 
 
 N one of the most charming of 
 the many wonderfully picturesque little 
 beaches on the Pacific coast, near Mon- 
 terey, is the idlest if not the most disagree- 
 able social group in the world. Just off 
 the shore, farther than a stone's-throw, lies 
 a mass of broken rocks. The surf comes 
 leaping and laughing in, sending up, above 
 the curving green breakers and crests of 
 foam, jets and spirals of water which 
 flash like silver fountains in the sunlight. 
 These islets of rock are the homes of the 
 sea-lion. This loafer of the coast congre- 
 gates here by the thousand. Sometimes 
 the rocks are quite covered, the smooth 
 rounded surface of the larger one present- 
 ing the appearance at a distance of a 
 knoll dotted with dirty sheep. There is 
 generally a select knot of a dozen floating 
 about in the still water under the lee of
 
 86 
 
 the rock, bobbing up their tails and flip- 
 pers very much as black drift-wood might 
 heave about in the tide. During certain 
 parts of the day members of this commu- 
 nity are ofT fishing in deep water ; but 
 what they like best to do is to crawl up 
 on the rocks and grunt and bellow, or go 
 to sleep in the sun. Some of them lie 
 half in water, their tails floating and their 
 ungainly heads wagging. These uneasy 
 ones are always wriggling out or plunging 
 in. Some crawl to the tops of the rocks 
 and lie like gunny bags stufifed with meal, 
 or they repose on the broken surfaces like 
 masses of jelly. When they are all at 
 home the rocks have not room for them, 
 and they crawl on and over each other, 
 and lie like piles of undressed pork. In 
 the water they are black, but when they 
 are dry in the sun the skin becomes a dirty 
 light brown. Many of them are huge fel- 
 lows, with a body as big as an ox. In the 
 water they are repulsively graceful ; on 
 the rocks they are as ungainly as boneless 
 cows, or hogs that have lost their shape 
 in prosperity. Summer and winter (and 
 it is almost always summer on this coast)
 
 8? 
 
 these beasts, which are well fitted neither 
 for land nor water, spend their time in 
 absolute indolence, except when they are 
 compelled to cruise around in the deep 
 water for food. They are of no use to 
 anybody, either for their skin or their 
 flesh. Nothinjf could be more thoroughly 
 disgusting and uncanny than they are, 
 and yet nothing more fascinating. One 
 can watch them — the irresponsible, form- 
 less lumps of intelligent flesh— for hours 
 without tiring. I scarcely know what the 
 fascination is. A small seal playing by 
 himself near the shore, floating on and 
 diving under the breakers, is not so very 
 disagreeable, especially if he comes so 
 near that you can see his pathetic eyes ; 
 but these brutes in this perpetual summer 
 resort are disgustingly attractive. Nearly 
 everything about them, including their 
 voice, is repulsive. Perhaps it is the ab- 
 solute idleness of the community that 
 makes it so interesting. To fish, to swim, 
 to snooze on the rocks, that is all, for ever 
 and ever. No past, no future. A society 
 that lives for the laziest sort of pleasure. 
 If they were rich, what more could they
 
 88 
 
 have ? Is not this the ideal of a watering- 
 place life? 
 
 The spectacleof this happy community 
 ought to teach us humility and charity in 
 judgment. Perhaps the philosophy of its 
 attractiveness lies deeper than its dolce 
 far niente existence. We may never have 
 considered the attraction for us of the 
 disagreeable, the positive fascination of 
 the uncommonly ugly. The repulsive fas- 
 cination of the loathly serpent or dragon 
 for women can hardly be explained on 
 theological grounds. Some cranks have 
 maintained that the theory of gravitation 
 alone does not explain the universe, that 
 repulsion is as necessary as attraction in 
 our economy. This may apply to society. 
 We are all charmed with the luxuriance 
 of a semi-tropical landscape, so violently 
 charmed that we become in time tired of 
 its overpowering bloom and color. But 
 what is the charm of the wide, treeless 
 desert, the leagues of sand and burnt-up 
 chaparral, the distant savage, fantastic 
 mountains, the dry desolation as of a 
 world burnt out ? It is not contrast alto- 
 gether. For this illimitable waste has its
 
 8q 
 
 own charm; and atj^ain and again, when 
 we come to a world of vegetation, where 
 the vision is shut in by beauty, we shall 
 have an irrepressible longing for these 
 wind-swept plains as wide as the sea, with 
 the ashy and pink horizons. We shall 
 long to be weary of it all again — its vast 
 nakedness, its shimmering heat, its cold, 
 star-studded nights. It seems paradoxi- 
 cal, but it is probably true, that a society 
 composed altogether of agreeable people 
 would become a terrible bore. We are a 
 " kittle " lot, and hard to please for long. 
 We know how it is in the matter of cli- 
 mate. Why is it that the masses of the 
 human race live in the most disagreeable 
 climates to be found on the globe, subject 
 to extremes of heat and cold, sudden and 
 unprovoked changes, frosts, fogs, mala- 
 rias ? In such regions they congregate, 
 and seem to like the vicissitudes, to like 
 the excitement of the struggle with the 
 weather and the patent medicines to keep 
 alive. They hate the agreeable monotony 
 of one genial day following another the 
 year through. They praise this monot- 
 ony, all literature is full of it ; people al-
 
 OO 
 
 ways say they are in search of the equable 
 climate ; but they continue to live, never- 
 theless, or try to live, in the least equable ; 
 and if they can find one spot more dis- 
 agreeable than another there they build a 
 big city. If man could make his ideal 
 climate he would probably be dissatisfied 
 with it in a month. The effect of climate 
 upon disposition and upon manners needs 
 to be considered some day ; but we are 
 now only trying to understand the attract- 
 iveness of the disagreeable. There must 
 be some reason for it ; and that would ex- 
 plain a social phenomenon, why there are 
 so many unattractive people, and why the 
 attractive readers of these essays could 
 not get on without them. 
 
 The writer of this once travelled for 
 days with an intelligent curmudgeon, who 
 made himself at all points as prickly as 
 the porcupine. There was no getting on 
 with him. And yet when he dropped out 
 of the party he was sorely missed. He 
 was more attractively repulsive than the 
 sea-lion. It was such a luxury to hate 
 him. He was such a counter-irritant, such 
 a stimulant ; such a flavor he gave to life.
 
 9> 
 
 We are always on the lookout for the odd. 
 the eccentric, the whimsical. We pretend 
 that we like the orderly, the beautiful, the 
 pleasant. We can find them anywhere— 
 the little bits of scenery that please the 
 eye, the pleasant households, the group 
 of delightful people. Why travel, then ? 
 We want the abnormal, the strong, the 
 ugly, the unusual at least. We wish to 
 be startled and stirred up and repelled. 
 And we ought to be more thankful than 
 we are that there are so many desolate 
 and wearisome and fantastic places, and 
 so many tiresome and unattractive peo- 
 ple in this lovely world.
 
 GIVING AS A LUXURY 
 
 There must be something very good 
 in human nature, or people would not 
 experience so much pleasure in giving; 
 there must be something very bad in 
 human nature, or more people would try 
 the experiment of giving. Those who do 
 try it become enamored of it, and get their 
 chief pleasure in life out of it ; and so 
 evident is this that there is some basis for 
 the idea that it is ignorance rather than 
 badness which keeps so many people from 
 being generous. Of course it may be- 
 come a sort of dissipation, or more than
 
 93 
 
 that, a devastation, as many men who 
 have what are called "good wives " have 
 reason to know, in the gradual disappear- 
 ance of their wardrobe if they chance to 
 lay aside any of it temporarily. The 
 amount that a good woman can give 
 away is only measured by her oppor- 
 tunity. Her mind becomes so trained 
 in the mystery of this pleasure that she 
 experiences no thrill of delight in giving 
 away only the things her husband does 
 not want. Her office in life is to teach 
 him the joy of self-sacrifice. She and all 
 other habitual and irreclaimable givers 
 soon find out that there is next to no 
 pleasure in a gift unless it involves some 
 self-denial. 
 
 Let one consider seriously whether he 
 ever gets as much satisfaction out of a 
 gift received as out of one given. It 
 pleases him for the moment, and if it is 
 useful, for a long time; he turns it over, 
 and admires it ; he may value it as a 
 token of affection, and it flatters his self- 
 esteem that he is the object of it. But it 
 is a transient feeling compared with that 
 he has when he has made a gift. That
 
 94 
 
 substantially ministers to his self-esteem. 
 He follows the gift ; he dwells upon the 
 delight of the receiver; his imagination 
 plays about it ; it will never wear out or 
 become stale ; having parted with it, it is 
 for him a lasting possession. It is an 
 investment as lasting as that in the debt 
 of England. Like a good deed, it grows, 
 and is continually satisfactory. It is 
 something to think of when he first 
 wakes in the morning— a time when most 
 people are badly put to it for want of 
 something pleasant to think of. This 
 fact about giving is so incontestably true 
 that it is a wonder that enlightened peo- 
 ple do not more freely indulge in giving 
 for their own comfort. It is, above all 
 else, amazing that so many imagine they 
 are going to get any satisfaction out of 
 what they leave by will. They may be 
 in a state where they will enjoy it, if the 
 will is not fought over; but it is shocking 
 how little gratitude there is accorded to 
 a departed giver compared to a living 
 giver. He couldn't take the property 
 with him, it is said ; he was obliged to 
 leave it to somebody. By this thought
 
 95 
 
 his generosity is always reduced to a 
 minimum. He may build a monument 
 to himself in some institution, but we do 
 not know enough of the world to which 
 he has gone to know whether a tiny 
 monument on this earth is any satisfac- 
 tion to a person who is free of the uni- 
 verse. Whereas every giving or deed of 
 real humanity done while he was living 
 would have entered into his character, 
 and would be of lasting service to him — 
 that is, in any future which we can con- 
 ceive. 
 
 Of course we are not confining our re- 
 marks to what are called Christmas gifts 
 ■ — commercially so called — nor would we 
 undertake to estimate the pleasure there 
 is in either receiving or giving these. The 
 shrewd manufacturers of the world have 
 taken notice of the periodic generosity 
 of the race, and ingeniously produce ar- 
 ticles to serve it, that is, to anticipate the 
 taste and to thwart all individuality or 
 spontaneity in it. There is, in short, 
 what is called a "line of holiday goods," 
 fitting, it may be supposed, the periodic 
 line of charity. When a person receives
 
 96 
 
 some of these things in the blessed sea- 
 son of such, he is apt to be puzzled. He 
 wants to know what they are for, what he 
 is to do with them. If there are no 
 "directions" on the articles, his gratitude 
 is somewhat tempered. He has seen 
 these nondescripts of ingenuity and ex- 
 pense in the shop windows, but he never 
 expected to come into personal relations 
 to them. He is puzzled, and he cannot 
 escape the unpleasant feeling that com- 
 merce has put its profit-making fingers 
 into Christmas. Such a lot of things 
 seem to be manufactured on purpose that 
 people may perform a duty that is ex- 
 pected of them in the holidays. The 
 house is full of these impossible things; 
 they occupy the mantel-pieces, they stand 
 about on the tottering little tables, they 
 are ingenious, they are made for wants 
 yet undiscovered, they tarnish, they break, 
 they will not " work," and pretty soon 
 they look "second-hand." Yet there 
 must be more satisfaction in giving these 
 articles than in receiving them, and may- 
 be a spice of malice — not that of course, 
 for in the holidays nearly every gift ex-
 
 97 
 
 presses at least kindly remembrance — but 
 if you give them you do not have to live 
 with them. But consider how full the 
 world is of holiday goods — costly goods 
 too — that are of no earthly use, and are 
 not even artistic, and how short life is, and 
 how many people actually need books and 
 other indispensable articles, and how- 
 starved are many fine drawing-rooms, 
 not for holiday goods, but for objects of 
 beauty. 
 
 Christmas stands for much, and for 
 more and more in a world that is break- 
 ing down its barriers of race and religious 
 intolerance, and one of its chief offices 
 has been supposed to be the teaching of 
 men the pleasure there is in getting rid 
 of some of their possessions for the bene- 
 fit of others. But this frittering away a 
 good instinct and tendency in conven- 
 tional giving of manufactures made to 
 suit an artificial condition is hardly in 
 the line of developing the spirit that 
 shares the last crust or gives to the thirsty 
 companion in the desert the first pull at 
 the canteen. Of course Christmas feeling 
 is the life of trade and all that, and we will 
 
 7
 
 98 
 
 be the last to discourage any sort of giv- 
 ing, for one can scarcely disencumber 
 himself of anything in his passage through 
 this world and not be benefited ; but the 
 hint may not be thrown away that one 
 will personally get more satisfaction out 
 of his periodic or continual benevolence 
 if he gives during his life the things which 
 he wants and other people need, and 
 reserves for a fine show in his will a col- 
 lected but not selected mass of holiday 
 goods.
 
 CLIMATE AND HAPPINESS 
 
 The idea of the relation of climate to 
 happiness is modern. It is probably born 
 of the telegraph and of the possibility of 
 rapid travel, and it is more disturbing to 
 serenity of mind than any other. Provi- 
 dence had so ordered it that if we sat 
 still in almost any region of the globe 
 except the tropics, we would have, in 
 course of the year, almost all the kinds 
 of climate that exist. The ancient soci- 
 eties did not trouble themselves about
 
 the matter ; they froze or thawed, were 
 hot or cold, as it pleased the gods. They 
 did not think of fleeing from winter any 
 more than from the summer solstice, and 
 consequently they enjoyed a certain con- 
 tentment of mind that is absent from 
 modern life. We are more intelligent, 
 and therefore more discontented and un- 
 happy. We are always trying to escape 
 winter when we are not trying to escape 
 summer. We are half the time in transitu, 
 flying hither and thither, craving that 
 exact adaptation of the weather to our 
 whimsical bodies promised only to the 
 saints who seek a "better country." There 
 are places, to be sure, where nature is in 
 a sort of equilibrium, but usually those 
 are places where we can neither make 
 money nor spend it to our satisfaction. 
 They lack either any stimulus to ambition 
 or a historic association, and we soon find 
 that the mind insists upon being cared 
 for quite as much as the body. 
 
 How many wanderers in the past winter 
 left comfortable homes in the United 
 States to seek a mild climate ! Did they 
 find it in the sleet and bone-piercing cold
 
 I03 
 
 of Paris, or anywhere in France, where 
 the wolves were forced to come into the 
 villages in the hope of picking up a ten- 
 der child ? If they travelled farther, were 
 the railway carriages anything but re- 
 frigerators tempered by cans of cooling 
 water? Was there a place in Europe, 
 from Spain to Greece, where the Amer- 
 ican could once be warm — really warm 
 without effort — in or out of doors ? Was 
 it any better in divine Florence than on 
 the chill Riviera ? Northern Italy was 
 blanketed with snow, the Apennines were 
 white, and through the clean streets of the 
 beautiful town a raw wind searched every 
 nook and corner, penetrating through the 
 thickest of English wraps, and harder to 
 endure than ingratitude, while a frosty 
 mist enveloped all. The traveller forgot 
 to bring with him the contented mind of 
 the Italian. Could he go about in a long 
 cloak and a slouch hat, curl up in door- 
 ways out of the blast, and be content in a 
 feeling of his own picturesqueness ? Could 
 he sit all day on the stone pavement and 
 hold out his chilblained hand for soldi.' 
 Could he even deceive himself, in a pala-
 
 •04 
 
 tial apartment with a frescoed ceiling, by 
 an appearance of warmth in two sticks 
 ignited by a pine cone set in an aperture 
 in one end of the vast room, and giving 
 out scarcely heat enough to drive the 
 swallows from the chimney ? One must 
 be born to this sort of thing in order to 
 enjoy it. He needs the poetic tempera- 
 ment which can feel in January the breath 
 of June. The pampered American is not 
 adapted to this kind of pleasure. He is 
 very crude, not to say barbarous, yet in 
 many of his tastes, but he has reached 
 one of the desirable things in civilization, 
 and that is a thorough appreciation of 
 physical comfort. He has had the ingenu- 
 ity to protect himself in his own climate, 
 but when he travels he is at the mercy of 
 customs and traditions in which the idea 
 of physical comfort is still rudimentary. 
 He cannot warm himself before a group 
 of statuary, or extract heat from a canvas 
 by Raphael, nor keep his teeth from chat- 
 tering by the exquisite view from the 
 Boboli Gardens. The cold American is 
 insensible to art, and shivers in the pres- 
 ence of the warmest historical associa-
 
 '05 
 
 tions. It is doubtful if there is a spot in 
 Europe where he can be ordinarily warm 
 in winter. The world, indeed, does not 
 care whether he is warm or not, but it is 
 a matter of great importance to him. As 
 he wanders from palace to palace — and he 
 cannot escape the impression that nothing 
 is good enough for him except a palace — 
 he cannot think of any cottage in any ham- 
 let in America that is not more comfort- 
 able in winter than any palace he can find. 
 And so he is driven on in cold and weary 
 stretches of travel to dwell among the 
 French in Algeria, or with the Jews in 
 Tunis, or the Moslems in Cairo. He 
 longs for warmth as the Crusader longed 
 for Jerusalem, but not short of Africa 
 shall he find it. The glacial period is 
 coming back on Europe. 
 
 The citizens of the great republic have 
 a reputation for inordinate self-apprecia- 
 tion, but we are thinking that they under- 
 value many of the advantages their in- 
 genuity has won. It is admitted that 
 they are restless, and must always be 
 seeking something that they have not at 
 home. But aside from their ability to be
 
 io6 
 
 warm in any part of their own country at 
 any time of the year, where else can they 
 travel three thousand miles on a stretch 
 in a well-heated — too much heated — car, 
 without change of car, without revision 
 of tickets, without encounteringacustom- 
 house, without the necessity of stepping 
 out-doors either for food or drink, for a 
 library, for a bath— for any item, in short, 
 that goes to the comfort of a civilized 
 being ? And yet we are always prating 
 of the superior civilization of Europe. 
 Nay, more, the traveller steps into a car 
 — which is as comfortable as a house — in 
 Boston, and alights from it only in the 
 City of Mexico. In what other part of 
 the world can that achievement in com- 
 fort and convenience be approached .'' 
 
 But this is not all as to climate and 
 comfort. We have climates of all sorts 
 within easy reach, and in quantity, both 
 good and bad, enough to export — more 
 in fact, than we need of all sorts. If heat 
 is all we want, there are only three or 
 four days between the zero of Maine 
 and the 80° of Florida. If New England 
 is inhospitable and New York freezing, it
 
 lo; 
 
 is only a matter of four days to the sun 
 and the exhilarating air of New Mexico 
 and Arizona, and only five to the oranges 
 and roses of that semi-tropical kingdom 
 by the sea, Southern California. And if 
 this does not content us, a day or two 
 more lands us, without sea- sickness, in 
 the land of the Aztecs, where we can live 
 in the temperate or the tropic zone, eat 
 strange fruits, and be reminded of Egypt 
 and Spain and Italy, and see all the colors 
 that the ingenuity of man has been able 
 to give his skin. Fruits and flowers and 
 sun in the winter-time, a climate to lounge 
 and be happy in — all this is within easy 
 reach, with the minimum of disturbance 
 to our daily habits. We started out, when 
 we turned our backs on the Old World, 
 with the declaration that all men are free, 
 and entitled to life, liberty, and the pur- 
 suit of an agreeable climate. We have 
 yet to learn, it seems, that we can indulge 
 in that pursuit best on our own continent. 
 There is no winter climate elsewhere to 
 compare with that found in our extreme 
 Southwest or in Mexico, and the sooner 
 we put this fact into poetry and litera-
 
 io8 
 
 ture, and begin to make a tradition of it, 
 the better will it be for our peace of mind 
 and for our children. And if the con- 
 tinent does not satisfy us, there lie the 
 West Indies within a few hours' sail, with 
 all the luxuriance and geniality of the 
 tropics. We are only half emancipated 
 yet. We are still apt to see the world 
 through the imagination of England, 
 whose literature we adopted, or of Ger- 
 many. To these bleak lands Italy was a 
 paradise, and was so sung by poets who 
 had no conception of a winter without 
 frost. We have a winter climate of an- 
 other sort from any in Europe ; we have 
 easy and comfortable access to it. The 
 only thing we need to do now is to cor- 
 rect our imagination, which has been led 
 astray. Our poets can at least do this 
 for us by the help of a quasi-international 
 copyright.
 
 THE NEW FEMININE RESERVE 
 
 In times past there have been expressed 
 desire and fear that there should be an 
 American aristocracy, and the materials 
 for its formation have been a good deal 
 canvassed. In a political point of view- 
 it is of course impossible, but it has been 
 hoped by many, and feared by more, that 
 a social state might be created conform- 
 ing somewhat to the social order in Eu- 
 ropean countries. The problem has been 
 exceedingly difficult. An aristocracy of 
 derived rank and inherited privilege be- 
 ing out of the question, and an aris- 
 tocracy of talent never having succeeded 
 anywhere, because enlightenment of mind 
 tends to liberalism and democracy, there 
 was only left the experiment of an aris- 
 tocracy of wealth. This does very well 
 for a time, but it tends always to disin- 
 tegration, and it is impossible to keep it 
 exclusive. It was found, to use the slang
 
 of the dry-goods shops, that it would not 
 wash, for there were Hable to crowd into 
 it at any moment those who had in fact 
 washed for a living. An aristocracy has 
 a slim tenure that cannot protect itself 
 from this sort of intrusion. We have to 
 contrive, therefore, another basis for a 
 class (to use an un-American expression), 
 in a sort of culture or training, which can 
 be perpetual, and which cannot be or- 
 dered for money, like a ball costume or a 
 livery. 
 
 Perhaps the " American Girl " may be 
 the agency to bring this about. This 
 charming product of the Western world 
 has come into great prominence of late 
 years in literature and in foreign life, and 
 has attained a notoriety flattering or 
 otherwise to the national pride. No in- 
 stitution has been better known or more 
 marked on the Continent and in Eng- 
 land, not excepting the tramway and the 
 Pullman cars. Her enterprise, her daring, 
 her freedom from conventionality, have 
 been the theme of the novelists and the 
 horror of the dowagers having marriage- 
 able daughters. Considered as "stock,"
 
 ■' ■ ■ -'im 
 
 
 : 1 -iv.''«ipw«v- 
 
 ;(| 
 
 PI
 
 "3 
 
 the American Girl has been quoted high, 
 and the alliances that she has formed with 
 families impecunious but noble have given 
 her eclat as belonging to a new and con- 
 quering race in the world. But the Amer- 
 ican Girl has not simply a slender figure 
 and a fine eye and a ready tongue, she is 
 not simply an engaging and companion- 
 able person, she has excellent common- 
 sense, tact, and adaptability. She has at 
 length seen in her varied European ex- 
 perience that it is more profitable to have 
 social good form according to local stand- 
 ards than a reputation for dash and brill- 
 iancy. Consequently the American Girl 
 of a decade ago has effaced herself. She 
 is no longer the dazzling courageous fig- 
 ure. In England, in France, in Germany, 
 in Italy, she takes, as one may say, the 
 color of the land. She has retired behind 
 her mother. She who formerly marched 
 in the van of the family procession, lead- 
 ing them — including the panting mother 
 — a whimsical dance, is now the timid 
 and retiring girl, needing the protection 
 of a chaperon on every occasion. The 
 
 satirist will find no more abroad the Amer- 
 s
 
 114 
 
 ican Girl of the old type whom he con- 
 tinues to describe. The knowing and 
 fascinating creature has changed her 
 tactics altogether. And the change has 
 reacted on American society. The mother 
 has come once more to the front, and even 
 if she is obliged to own to forty-five years 
 to the census-taker, she has again the 
 position and the privileges of the bloom- 
 ing woman of thirty. Her daughters 
 walk meekly and with downcast (if still 
 expectant) eyes, and wait for a sign. 
 
 That this change is the deliberate work 
 of the American Girl, no one who knows 
 her grace and talent will deny. In foreign 
 travel and residence she has been quick 
 to learn her lesson. Dazzled at first by 
 her own capacity and the opportunities 
 of the foreign field, she took the situation 
 by storm. But she found too often that 
 she had a barren conquest, and that the 
 social traditions survived her success and 
 became a life-long annoyance ; that is to 
 say, it was possible to subdue foreign 
 men, but the foreign women were impreg- 
 nable in their social order. The Amer- 
 ican Girl abroad is now, therefore, with
 
 "5 
 
 rare exceptions, as carefully chaperoned 
 and secluded as her foreign sisters. 
 
 It is not necessary to lay too much 
 stress upon this phase of American life 
 abroad, but the careful observ^er must 
 notice its refiex action at home. The 
 American freedom and unconventionality 
 in the intercourse of the young of both 
 sexes, which has been so much com- 
 mented on as characteristic of American 
 life, may not disappear, but that small 
 section which calls itself " society " may 
 attain a sort of aristocratic distinction by 
 the adoption of this foreign convention- 
 ality. It is sufficient now to note this 
 tendency, and to claim the credit of it for 
 the wise and intelligent American Girl. 
 It would be a pity if it were to become 
 nationally universal, for then it would 
 not be the aristocratic distinction of a 
 few, and the American woman who longs 
 for some sort of caste would be driven to 
 some other device. 
 
 It is impossible to tell yet what form 
 this feminine reserve and retirement will 
 take. It is not at all likely to go so far 
 as the Oriental seclusion of women. The
 
 ii6 
 
 American Girl would never even seem- 
 ingly give up her right of initiative. If 
 she is to stay in the background and pre- 
 tend to surrender her choice to her par- 
 ents, and with it all the delights of a 
 matrimonial campaign, she will still main- 
 tain a position of observation. If she 
 seems to be influenced at present by the 
 French and Italian examples, we may be 
 sure that she is too intelligent and too 
 fond of freedom to long tolerate any 
 system of chaperonage that she cannot 
 control. She will find a way to modify 
 the traditional conventionalities so as not 
 to fetter her own free spirit. It may be 
 her misson to show the world a social 
 order free from the forward independence 
 and smartness of which she has been ac- 
 cused, and yet relieved of the dull stiff- 
 ness of the older forms. It is enough 
 now to notice that a change is going on, 
 due to the effect of foreign society upon 
 American women, and to express the 
 patriotic belief that whatever forms of 
 etiquette she may bow to, the American 
 Girl will still be on earth the last and 
 best gift of God to man.
 
 REPOSE IN ACTIVITY 
 
 What we want is repose. We take in- 
 finite trouble and go to the ends of the 
 world to get it. That is what makes us 
 all so restless. If we could only find a 
 spot where we could sit down, content to 
 let the world go by, away from the Sun- 
 day newspapers and the chronicles of an 
 uneasy society, we think we should be 
 happy. Perhaps such a place is Corona- 
 do Beach — that semitropical flower-gar- 
 den by the sea. Perhaps another is the 
 Timeo Terrace at Taormina. There, with- 
 out moving, one has the most exquisite 
 sea and shore far below him, so far that 
 he has the feeling of domination without 
 effort ; the most picturesque crags and 
 castle peaks; he has all classic legend un- 
 der his eye without the trouble of reading, 
 and mediaeval romance as well; ruins 
 from the time of Theocritus to Freeman, 
 with no responsibility of describing them ;
 
 and one of the loveliest and most majes- 
 tic of snow mountains, never twice the 
 same in light and shade, entirely revealed 
 and satisfactory from base to summit, 
 with no self or otherwise imposed duly 
 of climbing it. Here are most of the ele- 
 ments of peace and calm spirit. And the 
 town itself is quite dead, utterly ex- 
 hausted after a turbulent struggle of 
 twenty -five hundred years, its poor in- 
 habitants living along only from habit. 
 The only new things in it — the two cara- 
 vansaries of the traveller — are a hotel and 
 a cemetery. One might end his days 
 here in serene retrospection, and more 
 cheaply than in other places of fewer at- 
 tractions, for it is all Past and no Future. 
 Probably, therefore, it would not suit the 
 American, whose imagination does not 
 work so easily backward as forward, and 
 who prefers to build his own nest rather 
 than settle in anybody else's rookery. 
 
 Perhaps the American deceives himself 
 when he says he wants repose ; what he 
 wants is perpetual activity and change; 
 his peace of mind is postponed until he 
 can get it in his own way. It is in feeling
 
 that he is a part of growth and not of de- 
 cay. Foreigners are fond of writing essays 
 upon American traits and characteristics. 
 They touch mostly on surface indica- 
 tions. What really distinguishes the 
 American from all others— for all peoples 
 like more or less to roam, and the English 
 of all others are globe-trotters — is not so 
 much his restlessness as his entire accord 
 with the spirit of "go-ahead," the result 
 of his absolute breaking with the Past. 
 He can repose only in the midst of in- 
 tense activity. He can sit down quietly 
 in a town that is growing rapidly; but if 
 it stands still, he is impelled to move his 
 rocking-chair to one more lively. He 
 wants the world to move, and to move 
 unencumbered ; and Europe seems to him 
 to carry too much baggage. The Amer- 
 ican is simply the most modern of men, 
 one who has thrown away the impedi- 
 menta of tradition. The world never saw 
 such a spectacle before, so vast a territory 
 informed with one uniform spirit of en- 
 ergy and progress, and people tumbling 
 into it from all the world, eager for the 
 fair field and free opportunity. The Amer-
 
 ican delights in it ; in Europe he misses 
 the swing and "go " of the new hfe. 
 
 This large explanation may not account 
 for the summer restlessness that over- 
 takes nearly everybody. We are the an- 
 nual victims of the delusion that there 
 exists somewhere the ideal spot where 
 manners are simple, and milk is pure, and 
 lodging is cheap, where we shall fall at 
 once into content. We never do. For 
 content consists not in having all we 
 want, nor in not wanting everything, nor 
 in being unable to get what we want, but 
 in not wanting that we can get. In our 
 summer fiittings we carry our wants with 
 us to places where they cannot be grati- 
 fied. A few people have discovered that 
 repose can be had at home, but this dis- 
 covery is too unfashionable to find favor; 
 we have no rest except in moving about. 
 
 Looked at superficially, it seems curi- 
 ous that the American is, as a rule, the 
 only person who does not emigrate. The 
 fact is that he can go nowhere else where 
 life is so uneasy, and where, consequently, 
 he would have so little of his sort of re- 
 pose, To put him in another country
 
 12J 
 
 would be like puttin<jj a nineteenth-cen- 
 tury man back into the eighteenth ccn- 
 tur}'. The American wants to be at the 
 head of the procession (as he fancies he 
 is), where he can hear the band play, and 
 be the first to see the fireworks of the 
 new era. He thinks that he occupies an 
 advanced station of observation, from 
 which his telescope can sweep the hori- 
 zon for anything new. And with some 
 reason he thinks so ; for not seldom he 
 takes up a foreign idea and tires of it be- 
 fore it is current elsewhere. More than 
 one great writer of England had his first 
 popular recognition in America. Even 
 this season the Saturday Review is strug- 
 gling with Ibsen, while Boston, having 
 had that disease, has probably gone on to 
 some other fad. 
 
 Far be it from us to praise the Ameri- 
 can for his lack of repos'e ; it is enough 
 to attempt to account for it. But from 
 the social, or rather society, point of view, 
 the subject has a disquieting aspect. If 
 the American young man and young 
 woman get it into their heads that repose, 
 especially of manner, is the correct thing.
 
 124 
 
 they w,ill go in for it in a way to astonish 
 the world. The late cultivation of idiocy 
 by the American dude was unique. He 
 carried it to an extreme impossible to the 
 youth of any nation less "gifted." And 
 if the American girl goes in seriously for 
 " repose," she will be able to give odds to 
 any modern languidity or to any ancient 
 marble. If what is wanted in society is 
 cold hauteur and languid superciliousness 
 or lofty immobility, we are confident that 
 with a little practice she can sit stiller, 
 and look more impassive, and move with 
 less motion, than any other created wom- 
 an. We have that confidence in her abil- 
 ity and adaptability. It is a question 
 whether it is worth while to do this ; to 
 sacrifice the vivacity and charm native to 
 her, and the natural impulsiveness and 
 generous gift of herself which belong to 
 a new race in a' new land, which is walk- 
 ing always towards the sunrise. 
 
 In fine, although so much is said of the 
 American lack of repose, is it not best for 
 the American to be content to be himself, 
 and let the critics adapt themselves or 
 not, as they choose, to a new phenom-
 
 125 
 
 enon ? Let us stick a philosophic name 
 to it, and call it repose in activity. 
 
 The American might take the candid 
 advice given by one friend to another, 
 who complained that it was so difficult to 
 get into the right frame of mind. " The 
 best thing you can do," he said, "is to 
 frame your mind and hang it up." 
 
 
 ^"^ 

 
 WOiMEN— IDEAL AND REAL 
 
 We have not by any means got to the 
 bottom of Realism. It matters very little 
 what the novelists and critics say about 
 it — what it is and what it is not ; the atti- 
 tude of society towards it is the important 
 thing. Even if the critic could prove 
 that nature and art are the same thing, 
 and that the fiction which is Real is only 
 a copy of nature, or if another should 
 prove that Reality is only to be found in 
 the Ideal, little would be gained. Liter- 
 ature is well enough in its place, art is an 
 agreeable pastime, and it is right that 
 society should take up either in seasons 
 when lawn-tennis and polo are impracti- 
 cable and afternoon teas become flavor- 
 less ; but the question that society is or 
 should be interested in is whether the 
 young woman of the future — upon whose 
 formation all our social hopes depend — 
 is going to shape herself by a Realistic
 
 or an Ideal 
 standard. It 
 should be 
 said in paren- 
 thesis that 
 the young 
 womanofthe 
 passing peri- 
 od has inclined towards Realism in man- 
 ner and speech, if not in dress, affecting 
 a sort of frank return to the easy- 
 going ways of nature itself, even to the 
 adoption of the language of the stock 
 exchange, the race-course, and the clubs 
 — an offering of herself on the altar of 
 good-fellowship, with the view, no doubt, 
 of making life more agreeable to the
 
 128 
 
 opposite sex, forgetting the fact that men 
 fall in love always, or used to in the da3's 
 when they could afford that luxury, with 
 an ideal woman, or if not with an ideal 
 woman, with one whom they idealize. 
 And at this same time the world is full of 
 doubts and questionings as to whether 
 marriage is a failure. Have these ques- 
 tionings anything to do with the increas- 
 ing Realism of women, and a consequent 
 loss of ideals ? 
 
 Of course the reader sees that the 
 difficulty in considering this subject is 
 whether woman is to be estimated as a 
 work of nature or of art. And here 
 comes in the everlasting question of what 
 is the highest beauty, and what is most to 
 be desired. The Greek artists, it seems to 
 be well established, never used a model, 
 as our artists almost invariably do, in 
 their plastic and pictorial creations. The 
 antique Greek statues, or their copies, 
 which give us the highest conceptions of 
 feminine charm and manly beauty, were 
 made after no woman, or man born of 
 woman, but were creations of the ideal 
 raised to the highest conception by the
 
 129 
 
 passionate lov'C and long study of nature, 
 but never by faithful cop,ying of it. The 
 Romans copied the Greek art. The 
 Greek in his best days created the ideal 
 figure, which we love to accept as nature. 
 Generation after generation the Greek 
 learned to draw and learned to observe, 
 until he was able to transmute his knowl- 
 edge into the forms of grace and beauty 
 which satisfy us as nature at her best ; 
 just as the novelist trains all his powers 
 by the observation of life until he is able 
 to transmute all the raw material into a 
 creation of fiction which satisfies us. We 
 may be sure that if the Greek artist had 
 employed the service of models in his 
 studio, his art would have been merely a 
 passing phase in human history. But as 
 it is, the world has ever since been in love 
 with his ideal woman, and still believes in 
 her possibility. 
 
 Now the young woman of to-day should 
 not be deceived into the notion of a pref- 
 erable Realistic development because the 
 novelist of to-day gets her to sit to him 
 as his model. This may be no certain in- 
 dication that she is either good art or 
 
 9
 
 •30 
 
 good nature. Indeed she may be quite 
 drifting away from the ideal that a woman 
 ought to aim at if we are to have a society 
 that is not always tending into a realistic 
 vulgarity and commonplace. It is per- 
 fectly true that a woman is her own ex- 
 cuse for being, and in a way she is doing 
 enough for the world by simply being a 
 woman. It is difficult to rouse her to 
 any sense of her duty as a standard of 
 aspiration. And it is difficult to explain 
 exactly what it is that she is to do. If 
 she asks if she is expected to be a model 
 woman, the reply must be that the world 
 does not much hanker after what is called 
 the " model woman." It seems to be 
 more a matter of tendency than anything 
 else. Is she sagging towards Realism or 
 rising towards Idealism ? Is she content 
 to be the woman that some of the nov- 
 elists, and some of the painters also, say 
 she is, or would she prefer to approach 
 that ideal which all the world loves.'' It 
 is a question of standards. 
 
 It is natural that in these days, when 
 the approved gospel is that it is better to 
 be dead than not to be Real, society
 
 131 
 
 should try to approach nature by the 
 way of the materialistically ignoble, and 
 even go such a pace of Realism as liter- 
 ature finds it difficult to keep up with; 
 but it is doubtful if the young woman 
 will get around to any desirable state of 
 nature by this route. We may not be 
 able to explain why servile imitation of 
 nature degrades art and degrades woman, 
 but both deteriorate without an ideal so 
 high that there is no earthly model for it. 
 
 Would you like to marry, perhaps, a 
 Greek statue ? says the justly contempt- 
 uous critic. 
 
 Not at all, at least not a Roman copy 
 of one. But it would be better to marry 
 a woman who would rather be like a 
 Greek statue than like some of these 
 figures, without even an idea for clothing, 
 which are lying about on green banks in 
 our spring exhibitions.
 
 THE ART OF IDLENESS 
 
 Idleness seems to be the last accom- 
 plishment of civilization. To be idle grace- 
 fully and contentedly and picturesquely is 
 an art. It is one in which the Americans, 
 who do so many things well, do not excel. 
 They have made the excuse that they have 
 not time, or, if they have leisure, that their 
 temperament and nervous organization do 
 not permit it. This excuse will pass for a 
 while, for we are a new people, and prob- 
 ably we are more highly and sensitively 
 organized than any other nation— at least 
 the physiologists say so ; but the excuse 
 seems more and more inadequate as we 
 accumulate wealth, and consequently have 
 leisure. We shall not criticise the Amer- 
 ican colonies in Paris and Rome and Flor- 
 ence, and in other Continental places where 
 they congregate. They know whether 
 they are restless or contented, and what 
 examples they set to the peoples who get
 
 »35 
 
 their ideas of republican simplicity and 
 virtue from the Americans who sojourn 
 among them. They know whether with 
 all their leisure they get placidity of mind 
 and the real rest which the older nations 
 have learned to enjoy. It may not be the 
 most desirable thing for a human being 
 to be idle, but if he will be, he should be 
 so in a creditable manner, and with some 
 enjoyment to himself. It is no slander to 
 say that we in America have not yet found 
 out the secret of this. Perhaps we shall 
 not until our energies are spent and we 
 are in a state of decay. At present we 
 put as much energy into our pleasure as 
 into our work, for it is inbred in us that 
 laziness is a sin. This is the Puritan 
 idea, and it must be said for it that in our 
 experience virtue and idleness are not 
 commonly companions. But this does 
 not go to the bottom of the matter. 
 
 The Italians are industrious; they are 
 compelled to be in order to pay their taxes 
 for the army and navy and get macaroni 
 enough to live on. But see what a long 
 civilization has done for them. They 
 have the manner of laziness, they have
 
 >36 
 
 the air of leisure, they have worn off the 
 angular corners of existence, and uncon- 
 sciously their life is picturesque and en- 
 joyable. Those among them who have 
 money take their pleasure simply and 
 with the least expense of physical energy. 
 Those who have not money do the same 
 thing. This basis of existence is calm 
 and unexaggerated ; life is reckoned by 
 centimes, not by dollars. What an ideal 
 place is Venice ! It is not only the most 
 picturesque city in the world, rich in all 
 that art can invent to please the eye, but 
 how calm it is ! The vivacity which en- 
 tertains the traveller is all on the surface. 
 The nobleman in his palace — if there be 
 any palace that is not turned into a 
 hotel, or a magazine of curiosities, or a 
 municipal office — can live on a diet that 
 would make an American workman strike, 
 simply because he has learned to float 
 through life ; and the laborer is equally 
 happy on little because he has learned to 
 wait without much labor. The gliding, 
 easy motion of the gondola expresses the 
 whole situation ; and the gondolier who 
 with consummate skill urges his dreamy
 
 '37 
 
 bark amid the throng and in the tortuous 
 canals for an hour or two, and then sleeps 
 in the sun, is a type of that rest in labor 
 which we do not attain. What happiness 
 there is in a dish of polenta, or of a few 
 fried fish, in a cup of coffee, and in one 
 of those apologies for cigars which the 
 government furnishes, dear at a cent — 
 the cigar with a straw in it, as if it were a 
 julep, which it needs five minutes to 
 ignite, and then will furnish occupation 
 for a whole evening ! Is it a hard lot, 
 that of the fishermen and the mariners of 
 the Adriatic ? The lights are burning all 
 night long in a cafe on the Riva del Schia- 
 voni, and the sailors and idlers of the 
 shore sit there jabbering and singing and 
 trying their voices in lusty hallooing till 
 the morning light begins to make the 
 lagoon opalescent. The traveller who 
 lodges near cannot sleep, but no more 
 can the sailors, who steal away in the 
 dawn, wafted by painted sails. In the 
 heat of the day, when the fish will not 
 bite, comes the siesta. Why should the 
 royal night be wasted in slumber? The 
 shore of the Riva, the Grand Canal, the
 
 138 
 
 islands, gleam with twinkling lamps ; the 
 dark boats glide along with a star in the 
 prow, bearing youth and beauty and sin and 
 ugliness, all alike softened by the shadows; 
 the electric lights from the shores and the 
 huge steamers shoot gleams on towers 
 and fa(;ades ; the moon wades among the 
 fleecy clouds ; here and there a barge 
 with colored globes of light carries a 
 band of singing men and women and 
 players on the mandolin and the fiddle, 
 and from every side the songs of Italy, 
 pathetic in their worn gayety, float to the 
 entranced ears of those who lean from 
 balconies, or lounge in gondolas and listen 
 with hearts made a little heavy and wist- 
 ful with so much beauty. 
 
 Can any one float in such scenes and 
 be so contentedly idle anywhere in our 
 happy land ? Have we learned yet the 
 simple art of easy enjoyment? Can we 
 buy it with money quickly, or is it a grace 
 that comes only with long civilization ? 
 Italy, for instance, is full of accumulated 
 wealth, of art, even of ostentation and 
 display, ajid the new generation probably 
 have lost the power to conceive, if not
 
 139 
 
 the skill to execute, the great works which 
 excite our admiration. Nothing can be 
 much more meretricious than its modern 
 art, when anything is produced that is 
 not an exact copy of something created 
 when there was genius there. But m 
 one respect the Italians have entered into 
 the fruits of the ages of trial and of fail- 
 ure, and that is the capacity of being idle 
 with much money or with none, and get- 
 ting day by day their pay for the bother 
 of living in this world. It seems a diffi- 
 cult lesson for us to learn in country or 
 city. Alas ! when we have learned it shall 
 we not want to emigrate, as so many of the 
 Italians do ? Some philosophers say that 
 men were not created to be happy. Per- 
 haps they were not intended to be idle.
 
 S there any such thing as conversa- 
 tion? It is a delicate subject to touch, 
 because many people understand conver- 
 sation to be talk ; not the exchange of 
 ideas, but of words ; and we would not 
 like to say anything to increase the 
 flow of the latter. We read of times 
 and salons in which real conversation 
 existed, held by men and women. Are 
 they altogether in the past.? We believe 
 that men do sometimes converse. Do 
 women ever.? Perhaps so. In those 
 hours sacred to the relaxation of undress 
 and the back hair, in the upper pene- 
 tralia of the household, where two or 
 three or six are gathered together on 
 and about the cushioned frame in- 
 tended for repose, do they converse, 
 or indulge in that sort of chat from 
 which not one idea is carried away ? 
 No one reports, fortunately, and we
 
 141 
 
 do not know. But do all the wom- 
 en like this method of spending hour 
 after hour, day after day — indeed, a life- 
 time ? Is it invigorating, even restful ? 
 Think of the talk this past summer, the 
 rivers and oceans of it, on piazzas and 
 galleries in the warm evenings or the 
 fresher mornings, in private houses, on 
 hotel verandas, in the shade of thou- 
 sands of cottages by the sea and in the 
 hills ! As you recall it, what was it all 
 about? Was the mind in a vapid con- 
 dition after an evening of it ? And there 
 is so much to read, and so much to think 
 about, and the world is so interesting, if 
 you do think about it, and nearly every 
 person has some peculiarity of mind that 
 would be worth study if you could only 
 get at it ! It is really, we repeat, such an 
 interesting world, and most people get 
 so little out of it. Now there is the con- 
 versation of hens, when the hens are busy 
 and not self-conscious ; there is some- 
 thing fascinating about it, because the 
 imagination may invest it with a recon- 
 dite and spicy meaning; but the com- 
 mon talk of people ! We infer sometimes
 
 142 
 
 that the hens are not saying anything, 
 because they do not read, and conse- 
 quently their minds are empty. And 
 perhaps we are right. As to conversa- 
 tion, there is no use in sending the 
 bucket into the well when the well is 
 dry — it only makes a rattling of windlass 
 and chain. 
 
 We do not wish to be understood to be 
 an enemy of the light traffic of human 
 speech. Deliver us from the didactic 
 and the everlastingly improving style 
 of thing ! Conversation, in order to 
 be good, and intellectually inspiring, 
 and spiritually restful, need not al- 
 ways be serious. It must be alert and 
 intelligent, and mean more by its sug- 
 gestions and allusions than is said. 
 There is the light touch-and-go play 
 about topics more or less profound that 
 is as agreeable as heat-lightning in a sul- 
 try evening. Why may not a person ex- 
 press the whims and v^agaries of a lambent 
 mind (if he can get a lambent mind) 
 without being hauled up short for it, and 
 plunged into a heated dispute ? In the 
 freedom of real conversation the mind
 
 '43 
 
 throws out half-thoughts, paradoxes, for 
 which a man is not to be held strictly 
 responsible to the very roots of his being, 
 and which need to be caught up and 
 played with in the same tentative spirit. 
 The dispute and the hot argument are 
 usually the bane of conversation and the 
 death of originality. We like to express 
 a notion, a fancy, without being called 
 upon to defend it, then and there, in all 
 its possible consequences, as if it were to 
 be an article in a creed or a plank in a 
 platform. Must we be always either 
 vapid or serious } 
 
 We have been obliged to take notice 
 of the extraordinary tendency of Amer- 
 ican women to cultivation, to the im- 
 provement of the mind, by means of 
 reading, clubs, and other intellectual ex- 
 ercises, and to acknowledge that they are 
 leaving the men behind ; that is, the men 
 not in the so-called professions. Is this 
 intellectualization beginning to show in 
 the conversation of women when they 
 are together, say in the hours of relax- 
 ation in the penetralia spoken of, or 
 in general society } Is there less talk
 
 144 
 
 about the fashion of dress, and the dear- 
 ness or cheapness of materials, and about 
 servants, and the ways of the inchoate 
 citizen called the baby, and the infinitely 
 little details of the private life of other 
 people ? Is it true that if a group of men 
 are talking, say about politics, or ro- 
 bust business, or literature, and they 
 are joined by women (whose company 
 is always welcome), the conversation is 
 pretty sure to take a lower mental plane, 
 to become more personal, more frivolous, 
 accommodating itself to quite a different 
 range? Do the well-read, thoughtful 
 women, however beautiful and brilliant 
 and capable of the gayest persiflage, prefer 
 to talk with men, to listen to the conver- 
 sation of men, rather than to converse 
 with or listen to their own sex ? If this 
 is true, why is it ? Women, as a rule, in 
 " society " at any rate, have more leisure 
 than men. In the facilities and felicities 
 of speech they commonly excel men, and 
 usually they have more of that viv^acious 
 dramatic power which is called "setting 
 out a thing to the life." With all these 
 advantages, and all the wOrld open to
 
 '45 
 
 them in newspapers and in books, they 
 ouoht to be the leaders and stimulators 
 of the best conversation. With them it 
 should never drop down to the too-com- 
 mon flatness and banality. Women have 
 made this world one of the most beau- 
 tiful places of residence to be conceived. 
 They might make it one of the most 
 interesting.
 
 THE TALL GIRL 
 
 It is the fashion for girls to be tall. 
 This is much more than saying that tall 
 girls are the fashion. It means not only 
 that the tall girl has come in, but that 
 girls are tall, and are becoming tall, be- 
 cause it is the fashion, and because there 
 is a demand for that sort of girl. There 
 is no hint of stoutness, indeed the willowy 
 pattern is preferred, but neither is lean- 
 ness suggested ; the women of the period 
 have got hold of the poet's idea, " tall 
 and most divinely fair," and are living up 
 to it. Perhaps this change in fashion is 
 more noticeable in England and on the 
 Continent than in America, but that may 
 be because there is less room for change 
 in America, our girls being always of an 
 aspiring turn. Very marked the phenom- 
 enon is in England , on the street, at any 
 concert or reception, the number of tall 
 girls is so large as to occasion remark,
 
 149 
 
 especially among the young girls just 
 coming into the conspicuousness of wom- 
 anhood. The tendency of the new gen- 
 eration is towards unusual height and 
 gracious slimness. The situation would 
 be embarrassing to thousands of men who 
 have been toobusy to think about growing 
 upward, were it not for the fact that the 
 tall girl, who must be looked up to, is al- 
 most invariably benignant, and bears her 
 height with a sweet timidity that disarms 
 fear. Besides, the tall girl has now come 
 on in such force that confidence is infused 
 into the growing army, and there is a sense 
 of support in this survival of the tallest 
 that is very encouraging to the young. 
 
 Many theories have been put forward 
 to account for this phenomenon. It is 
 known that delicate plants in dark places 
 struggle up towards the light in a frail 
 slenderness, and it is said that in England, 
 which seems to have increasing cloud- 
 iness, and in the capital more and more 
 months of deeper darkness and blackness, 
 it is natural that the British girl should 
 grow towards the light. But this is a 
 fanciful view of the case, for it cannot be
 
 ISO 
 
 proved that English men have propor- 
 tionally increased their stature. The Eng- 
 lish man has always seemed big to the 
 Continental peoples, partly because ob- 
 jects generally take on gigantic dimen- 
 sions when seen through a fog. Another 
 theory, which has much more to com- 
 mend it, is that the increased height of 
 women is due to the aesthetic movement, 
 which has now spent its force, but has 
 left certain results, especially in the change 
 of the taste in colors. The woman of the 
 aesthetic artist was nearly always tall, usu- 
 ally willowy, not to say undulating and 
 serpentine. These forms of feminine love- 
 liness and commanding height have been 
 for many years before the eyes of the 
 women of England in paintings and draw- 
 ings, and it is unavoidable that this pat- 
 tern should not have its effect upon the 
 new and plastic generation. Never has 
 there been another generation so open to 
 new ideas ; and if the ideal of woman- 
 hood held up was that of length and 
 gracious slenderness, it would be very 
 odd if women should not aspire to it. 
 We know very well the influence that the
 
 'S' 
 
 heroines of the novelists have had from 
 time to time upon the women of a given 
 period. The heroine of Scott was, no 
 doubt, once common in society— the del- 
 icate creature who promptly fainted on 
 the reminiscence of the scent of a rose, 
 but could stand any amount of dragging 
 by the hair through underground pas- 
 sages, and midnight rides on lonely moors 
 behind mailed and black-mantled knights, 
 and a run or two of hair-removing typhoid 
 fever, and come out at the end of the story 
 as fresh as a daisy. She could not be found 
 now, so changed are the requirements of 
 fiction. We may assume, too, that the full- 
 blown aesthetic girl of that recent period 
 — the girl all soul and faded harmonies — 
 would be hard to find, but the fascination 
 of the height and slenderness of that girl 
 remains something more than a tradition, 
 and is, no doubt, to some extent copied by 
 the maiden just coming into her kingdom. 
 Those who would belittle this matter 
 may say that the appearance of which we 
 speak is due largely to the fashion of dress 
 — the long unbroken lines which add to 
 the height and encourage the appearance
 
 152 
 
 of slenderness. But this argument gives 
 away the case. Why do women wear the 
 present fascinating gowns, in which the 
 lithe figure is suggested in all its womanly 
 dignity? In order that they may appear 
 to be tall. That is to say, because it is 
 the fashion to be tall; women born in the 
 mode rtr^tall,and those caught in a heredi- 
 tary shortness endeavor to conform to the 
 stature of the come and coming woman. 
 
 There is another theory, that must be 
 put forward with some hesitation, for the 
 so-called emancipation of woman is a del- 
 icate subject to deal with, for while all 
 the sex doubtless feel the impulse of the 
 new time, there are still many who indig- 
 nantly reject the implication in the strug- 
 gle for the rights of women. To say, 
 therefore, that women are becoming tall 
 as a part of their outfit for taking the 
 place of men in this world would be to 
 many an affront, so that this theory can 
 only be suggested. Yet probably physi- 
 ology would bear us out in saying that 
 the truly emancipated woman, taking at 
 last the place in afifairs which men have 
 flown in the face of Providence by deny-
 
 ■53 
 
 ing her, would be likely to expand phys- 
 ically as well as mentally, and that as she 
 is beginning to look down upon man in- 
 tellectually, she is likely to have a corre- 
 sponding physical standard. 
 
 Seriously, however, none of these the- 
 ories are altogether satisfactory, and we 
 are inclined to seek, as is best in all cases, 
 the simplest explanation. Women are 
 tall and becoming tall simply because it 
 is the fashion, and that statement never 
 needs nor is capable of any explanation. 
 A while ago it was the fashion to he. petite 
 and arch ; it is now the fashion to be tall 
 and gracious, and nothing more can be 
 said about it. Of course the reader, who 
 is usually inclined to find the facetious 
 side of any grave topic, has already 
 thought of the application of the self- 
 denying hymn, that man wants but little 
 here below, and wants that little long ; 
 but this maybe only a passing sigh of the 
 period. We are far from expressing any 
 preference for tall women ov^er short wom- 
 en. There are creative moods of the 
 fancy when each seems the better. We 
 can only chronicle, but never create.
 
 THE 
 
 QEADLY 
 
 IxiARY 
 
 ANY people regard the keeping of 
 a diary as a meritorious occupation. The 
 young are urged to take up this cross ; it 
 is supposed to benefit girls especially. 
 Whether women should do it is to some 
 minds not an open question, although 
 there is on record the case of the French- 
 man who tried to shoot himself when he 
 heard that his wife was keeping a diary. 
 This intention of suicide may have arisen 
 from the fear that his wife was keeping a 
 record of his own peccadilloes rather than 
 of her own thoughts and emotions. Or 
 it may have been from the fear that she 
 was putting down those little conjugal 
 remarks which the husband always dis- 
 likes to have thrown up to him, and which 
 a woman can usually quote accurately, 
 it may be for years, it may be forever, 
 without the help of a diary. So we can 
 appreciate without approving the terror
 
 '55 
 
 of the Frenchman at living on and on in 
 the same house with a growing diary. 
 For it is not simply that this little book 
 of judgment is there in black and white, 
 but that the maker of it is increasing her 
 power of minute observation and analyt- 
 ic expression. In discussing the ques- 
 tion whether a woman should keep a 
 diary it is understood that it is not a 
 mere memorandum of events and en- 
 gagements, such as both men and women 
 of business and affairs necessarily keep, 
 but the daily record which sets down 
 feelings, emotions, and impressions, and 
 criticises people and records opinions. 
 But this is a question that applies to 
 men as well as to women. 
 
 It has been assumed that the diar)^ 
 serves two good purposes : it is a disci- 
 plinary exercise for the keeper of it, and 
 perhaps a moral guide ; and it has great 
 historical value. As to the first, it may 
 be helpful to order, method, discipline, 
 and it may be an indulgence of spleen, 
 whims, and unwholesome criticism and 
 conceit. The habit of saying right out 
 what you think of everybody is not a
 
 IS6 
 
 good one, and the record of such opin- 
 ions and impressions, while it is not so 
 mischievous to the public as talking may 
 be, is harmful to the recorder. And 
 when we come to the historical value of 
 the diary, we confess to a growing sus- 
 picion of it. It is such a deadly weapon 
 when it comes to light after the passage 
 of years. It has an authority which the 
 spoken words of its keeper never had. It 
 is e.v parte, and it cannot be cross-exam- 
 ined. The supposition is that being con- 
 temporaneous with the events spoken of, 
 it must be true, and that it is an honest 
 record. Now, as a matter of fact, we 
 doubt if people are any more honest as to 
 themselves or others in a diary than out 
 of it ; and rumors, reported facts, and 
 impressions set down daily in the heat 
 and haste of the prejudicial hour are 
 about as likely to be wrong as right. 
 Two diaries of the same events rarely 
 agree. And in turning over an old diary 
 we never know what to allow for the 
 personal equation. The diary is greatly 
 relied on by the writers of history, but it 
 is doubtful if there is any such liar in
 
 '57 
 
 the world, even when the keeper of it is 
 honest. It is certain to be partisan, and 
 more liable to be misinformed than a 
 newspaper, which exercises some care in 
 view of immediate publicity. The writer 
 happens to know of two diaries which 
 record, on the testimony of eye-witnesses, 
 the circumstances of the last hours of 
 Garfield, and they differ utterly in es- 
 sential particulars. One of these may 
 turn up fifty years from now, and 
 be accepted as true. An infinite amount 
 of gossip goes into diaries about men 
 and women that would not stand the 
 test of a moment's contemporary pub- 
 lication. But by-and-by it may all be 
 used to smirch or brighten unjustly 
 some one's character. Suppose a man 
 in the Army of the Potomac had re- 
 corded daily all his opinions of men 
 and events. Reading it over now, with 
 more light and a juster knowledge of 
 character and of measures, is it not prob- 
 able that he would find it a tissue of 
 misconceptions.'' Few things are act- 
 ually what they seem to-day ; they are 
 colored both by misapprehensions and by
 
 .58 
 
 moods. If a man writes a letter or makes 
 report of an occurrence for immediate 
 publication, subject to universal criticism, 
 there is some restraint on him. In his 
 private letter, or diary especially, he is 
 apt to set down what comes into his 
 head at the moment, often without much 
 effort at verification. 
 
 We have been led to this disquisition 
 into the fundamental nature of this pri- 
 vate record by the question put to us, 
 whether it is a good plan for a woman to 
 keep a diary. Speaking generally, the 
 diary has become a sort of fetich, the au- 
 thority of which ought to be overthrown. 
 It is fearful to think how our characters 
 are probably being lied away by innumer- 
 able pen scratches in secret repositories, 
 which may some day come to light as 
 unimpeachable witnesses. The reader 
 knows that he is not the sort of man 
 which the diarist jotted him down to be 
 in a single interview. The diary may be 
 a good thing for self -education, if the 
 keeper could insure its destruction. The 
 mental habit of diarizing may have some 
 value, even when it sets undue impor-
 
 '59 
 
 tance upon trifles. We confess that, never 
 having seen a woman's private diary (ex- 
 cept those that have been pubHslied), we 
 do not share the popular impression as to 
 their tenuity implied in the question put 
 to us. Taking it for granted that they 
 are full of noble thoughts and beautiful 
 imaginings, we doubt whether the time 
 spent on them could not be better em- 
 ployed in acquiring knowledge or taking 
 exercise. For the diary forgotten and 
 left to the next generation may be as 
 dangerous as dynamite.
 
 THE WHISTLING GIRL 
 
 The wisdom of our ancestors packed 
 away in proverbial sayings may always be 
 a little suspected. We have a vague re- 
 spect for a popular proverb, as embodying 
 folk-experience, and expressing not the 
 wit of one, but the common thought of a 
 race. We accept the saying unquestion- 
 ing, as a sort of inspiration out of the air, 
 true because nobody has challenged it for 
 ages, and probably for the same reason 
 that we try to see the new moon over 
 our left shoulder. Very likely the musty 
 saying was the product of the average 
 ignorance of an unenlightened time, and 
 ought not to have the respect of a scien- 
 tific and travelled people. In fact it will 
 be found that a large proportion of the 
 proverbial sayings which we glibly use are 
 fallacies based on a very limited expe- 
 rience of the world, and probably were 
 set afloat by the idiocy or prejudice of
 
 >.c-0^.....
 
 •63 
 
 one person. To examine one of them 
 is enough for our present purpose. 
 
 " Whistling girls and crowing hens 
 Always come to some bad ends." 
 
 It would be interesting to know the 
 origin of this proverb, because it is still 
 much relied on as evincing a deep knowl- 
 edge of human nature, and as an argument 
 against change, that is to say, in this case, 
 against progress. It would seem to have 
 been made by a man, conservative, per- 
 haps malevolent, who had no apprecia- 
 tion of a hen, and a conservatively poor 
 opinion of woman. His idea was to keep 
 woman in her place— a good idea when 
 not carried too far — but he did not know 
 what her place is, and he wanted to put a 
 sort of restraint upon her emancipation 
 by coupling her with an emancipated hen. 
 He therefore launched this shaft of ridi- 
 cule, and got it to pass as an arrow of wis- 
 dom shot out of a popular experience in 
 remote ages. 
 
 In the first place, it is not true, and prob- 
 ably never was true even when hens were 
 at their lowest. We doubt its Sanscrit
 
 164 
 
 antiquity. It is perhaps of Puritan origin, 
 and rhymed in New England. It is false 
 as to the hen. A crowing hen was always 
 an object of interest and distinction ; she 
 was pointed out to visitors ; the owner 
 was proud of her accomplishment, and 
 he was naturally likely to preserve her 
 life, especially if she could lay. A hen 
 that can lay and crow is a rara avis. 
 And it should be parenthetically said here 
 that the hen who can crow and cannot 
 lay is not a good example for woman. 
 The crowing hen was of more value than 
 the silent hen, provided she crowed with 
 discretion; and she was likely to be a 
 favorite, and not at all to come to some 
 bad end. Except, indeed, where the prov- 
 erb tended to work its own fulfilment. 
 And this is the regrettable side of most 
 proverbs of an ill - nature, that they do 
 help to work the evil they predict. Some 
 foolish boy, who had heard this proverb, 
 and was sent out to the hen-coop in the 
 evening to slay for the Thank.sgiving 
 feast, thought he was a justifiable little 
 providence in wringing the neck of the 
 crowing hen, because it was proper (ac-
 
 i65 
 
 cording to the saying) that she should 
 come to some bad end. And as years 
 went on, and that kind of boy increased 
 and got to be a man, it became a fixed 
 idea to kill the amusing, interesting, 
 spirited, emancipated hen, and naturally 
 the barn-yard became tamer and tamer, 
 the production of crowing hens was dis- 
 couraged (the wise old hens laid no eggs 
 with a crow in them, according to the 
 well-known principle of heredity), and the 
 man who had in his youth exterminated 
 the hen of progress actually went about 
 quoting that false couplet as an argument 
 asainst the higher education of woman. 
 
 As a matter of fact, also, the couplet is 
 not true about woman ; whether it ought 
 to be true is an ethical question that will 
 not be considered here. The whistling 
 eirl does not commonly come to a bad 
 end. Quite as often as any other girl 
 she learns to whistle a cradle song, low 
 and sweet and charming, to the young 
 voter in the cradle. She is a girl of 
 spirit, of independence of character, of 
 dash and flavor ; and as to lips, why, you 
 must have some sort of presentable lips to
 
 i66 
 
 whistle; thin ones will not. The whistling 
 •^nrl does not come to a bad end at all (if 
 marriage is still considered a good occu- 
 pation), except a cloud may be thrown 
 upon her exuberant young life by this 
 rascally proverb. Even if she walks the 
 lonely road of life, she has this advantage, 
 that she can whistle to keep her courage 
 up. But in a larger sense, one that this 
 practical age can understand, it is not 
 true that the whistling girl comes to a 
 bad end. Whistling paj^s. It has brought 
 her money ; it has blown her name about 
 the listening world. Scarcely has a non- 
 whistling woman been more famous. She 
 has set aside the adage. She has done so 
 much towards the emancipation of her 
 sex from the prejudice created by an ill- 
 natured proverb which never had root in 
 fact. 
 
 But has the whistling woman come to 
 stay? Is it well for woman to whistle? 
 Are the majority of women likely to be 
 whistlers ? These are serious questions, 
 not to be taken up in a light manner at 
 the end of a grave paper. Will woman 
 ever learn to throw a stone ? There it is.
 
 i67 
 
 The future is inscrutable. We only know 
 that whereas they did not whistle with 
 approval, now they do; the prejudice of 
 generations gradually melts away. And 
 woman's destiny is not linked with that 
 of the hen, nor to be controlled by a 
 proverb— perhaps not by anything.
 
 BORN OLD AND RICH 
 
 We have been remiss in not proposing 
 a remedy for our present social and eco- 
 nomic condition. Looking backward, we 
 see this. The scheme may not be prac- 
 tical, any more than the Utopian plans 
 that have been put forward, but it is rad- 
 ical and interesting, and requires, as the 
 other schemes do, a total change in hu- 
 man nature (which may be a good thing 
 to bring about), and a general recasting 
 of the conditions of life. This is and 
 should be no objection to a socialistic 
 scheme. Surface measures will not avail. 
 The suggestion for a minor alleviation of 
 inequality, which seems to have been 
 acted on, namely, that women should pro- 
 pose, has not had the desired effect if it 
 is true, as reported, that the eligible young 
 men are taking to the woods. The work- 
 ings of such a measure are as impossible 
 to predict in advance as the operation of

 
 171 
 
 the McKinley tariff. It might be well to 
 legislate that people should be born equal 
 (including equal privileges of the sexes), 
 but the practical difficulty is to keep them 
 equal. Life is wrong somehow. Some 
 are born rich and some are born poor, 
 and this inequality makes misery; and 
 then some lose their possessions, which 
 others get hold of, and that makes more 
 misery. We can put our fingers on the 
 two great evils of life as it now is : the 
 first is poverty ; and the second is infirm- 
 ity, which is the accompaniment of in- 
 creasing years. Poverty, which is only 
 the unequal distribution of things desired, 
 makes strife, and is the opportunity of 
 lawyers ; and infirmity is the excuse for 
 doctors. Think what the world would be 
 without lawyers and doctors ! 
 
 We are all born young, and most of us 
 are born poor. Youth is delightful, but 
 we are always getting away from it. How 
 different it would be if we were always 
 going towards it ! Poverty is unpleasant, 
 and the great struggle of life is to get rid 
 of it ; but it is the common fortune that 
 in proportion as wealth is attained the
 
 172 
 
 capacity of enjoying it departs. It seems, 
 therefore, that our life is wrong end first. 
 The remedy suggested is that men should 
 be born rich and old. Instead of the ne- 
 cessity of making a fortune, which is of 
 less and less value as death approaches, 
 we should have only the privilege of 
 spending it, and it would have its natural 
 end in the cradle, in which we should be 
 rocked into eternal sleep. Born old, one 
 would, of course, inherit experience, so 
 that wealth could be made to contribute 
 to happiness, and each day, instead of 
 lessening the natural powers and increas- 
 ing infirmities, would bring new vigor 
 and capacity of enjoyment. It would be 
 going from winter to autumn, from au- 
 tumn to summer, from summer to spring. 
 The joy of a life without care as to ways 
 and means, and every morning refitted 
 with the pulsations of increasing youth, 
 it is almost impossible to imagine. 
 
 Of course this scheme has difficulties 
 on the face of it. The allotting of the 
 measure of wealth would not be difficult 
 to the socialists, because they would in- 
 sist that every person should be born
 
 173 
 
 with an equal amount of property. Wliat 
 this should be would depend upon the 
 length of life; and how should this be ar- 
 rived at? The insurance companies might 
 agree, but no one else would admit that 
 he belongs in the average. Naturally the 
 Biblical limit of threescore and ten sug- 
 gests itself; but human nature is very 
 queer. With the plain fact before them 
 that the average life of man is less than 
 thirty-four years, few would be willing, if 
 the choice were offered, to compromise 
 on seventy. Everybody has a hope of 
 going beyond that, so that if seventy were 
 proposed as the year at birth, there would 
 no doubt be as much dissatisfaction as 
 there is at the present loose arrange- 
 ment. Science would step in, and de- 
 monstrate that there is no reason why, 
 with proper care of the system, it should 
 not run a hundred years. It is improb- 
 able, then, that the majority could be in- 
 duced to vote for the limit of seventy 
 3'ears, or to exchange the exciting uncer- 
 tainty of adding a little to the period 
 which must be accompanied by the 
 weight of the grasshopper, for the cer-
 
 174 
 
 tainty of only seventy years in this much- 
 abused world. 
 
 But suppose a limit to be agreed on, 
 and the rich old man and the rich old 
 woman (never now too old to marry) to 
 start on their career towards youth and 
 poverty. The imagination kindles at the 
 idea. The money would hold out just as 
 long as life lasted, and though it would 
 all be going downhill, as it were, what a 
 charming descent, without struggle, and 
 with only the lessening infirmities that 
 belong to decreasing age! There would 
 be no second childhood, only the inno- 
 cence and elasticity of the first. It all 
 seems very fair, but we must not forget 
 that this is a mortal world, and that it is 
 liable to various accidents. Who, for in- 
 stance, could be sure that he would grow 
 young gracefully ? There would be the 
 constant need of fighting the hot tempers 
 and impulses of youth, growing more and 
 more instead of less and less unreason- 
 able. And then, how many would reach 
 youth ? More than half, of course, would 
 be cut off in their prime, and be more 
 and more liable to go as they fell back
 
 175 
 
 into the pitfalls and errors of childhood. 
 Would people grow young together even 
 as harmoniously as they grow old togeth- 
 er? It would be a pretty sight, that of 
 the few who descended into the cradle 
 together, but this inversion of life would 
 not escape the woes of mortality. And 
 there are other considerations, unless it 
 should turn out that a universal tax on 
 land should absolutely change human 
 nature. There are some who would be 
 as idle and spendthrift going towards 
 youth as they now are going away from 
 it, and perhaps more, so that half the 
 race on coming to immaturity would be 
 in child asylums. And then others who 
 would be stingy and greedy and avari- 
 cious, and not properly spend their al- 
 lotted fortune. And we should have the 
 anomaly, which is so distasteful to the re- 
 former now, of rich babies. A few babies 
 inordinately rich, and the rest in asylums. 
 Still, the plan has more to recommend 
 it than most others for removing proverty 
 and equalizing conditions. We should 
 all start rich, and the dying ofif of those 
 who would never attain youth would am-
 
 176 
 
 ply provide fortunes for those born old. 
 Crime would be less also ; for while there 
 would, doubtless, be some old sinners, the 
 criminal class, which is very largely under 
 thirty, would be much smaller than it is 
 now. Juvenile depravity would propor- 
 tionally disappear, as not more people 
 would reach nonage than now reach over- 
 age. And thp great advantage of the 
 scheme, one that would indeed transform 
 the world, is that women would always 
 be growing younger.
 
 THE "OLD SOLDIER" 
 
 The "old soldier" is beginning to out- 
 line himself upon the public mind as a 
 distant character in American life. Lit- 
 erature has not yet got hold of him, and 
 perhaps his evolution is not far enough 
 advanced to make him as serviceable as 
 the soldier of the Republic and the Em- 
 pire, the relic of the Old Guard, was to 
 Hugo and Balzac, the trooper of Italy and 
 Egypt, the maimed hero of Borodino and 
 Waterloo, who expected again the com- 
 ing of the Little Corporal. It takes time 
 to develop a character, and to throw the 
 glamour of romance over what may be 
 essentially commonplace. A quarter of a 
 century has not sufficed to separate the 
 great body of the surviving volunteers in 
 the war for the Union from the body of 
 American citizens, notwithstanding the 
 organization of the Grand Army of the 
 Republic, the encampments, the annual
 
 .78 
 
 reunions, and the distinction of pensions, 
 and the segregation in Soldiers' Homes. 
 The "old soldier" slowly eliminates him- 
 self from the mass, and begins to take, 
 and to make us take, a romantic view of 
 his career. There was one event in his 
 life, and his personality in it looms larger 
 and larger as he recedes from it. The 
 heroic sacrifice of it does not diminish, as 
 it should not, in our estimation, and he 
 helps us to keep glowing a lively sense of 
 it. The past centres about him and his 
 great achievement, and the whole of life 
 is seen in the light of it. In his retreat 
 in the Home, and in his wandering from 
 one Home to another, he ruminates on 
 it, he talks of it; he separates himself 
 from the rest of mankind by a broad dis- 
 tinction, and his point of view of life be- 
 comes as original as it is interesting. In 
 the Homes the battered veterans speak 
 mainly of one thing; and in the monot- 
 ony of their spent lives develop whim- 
 seys and rights and wrongs, patriotic ar- 
 dors and criticisms on their singular fate, 
 which are original in their character in 
 our society. It is in human nature to
 
 179 
 
 like rest but not restriction, bounty but 
 not charity, and the tired heroes of the 
 war grow restless, though every physical 
 want is supplied. They have a fancy that 
 they would like to see again the homes of 
 their youth, the farm-house in the hills, 
 the cottage in the river valley, the lone- 
 some house on the wide prairie, the street 
 that ran down to the wharf where the 
 fishing-smacks lay, to see again the friends 
 whom they left there, and perhaps to take 
 up the occupations that were laid down 
 when they seized the musket in 1861. 
 Alas I it is not their home any more ; the 
 friends are no longer there ; and what 
 chance is there of occupation for a man 
 who is now feeble in body and who has 
 the habit of campaigning? This genera- 
 tion has passed on to other things. It 
 looks upon the hero as an illustration in 
 the story of the war, which it reads like 
 history. The veteran starts out from the 
 shelter of the Home. One evening, to- 
 wards sunset, the comfortable citizen, 
 taking the mild air on his piazza, sees an 
 interesting figure approach. Its dress is 
 half military, half that of the wanderer
 
 i8o 
 
 whose attention to his personal appear- 
 ance is only spasmodic. The veteran 
 gives the military salute, he holds him- 
 self erect, almost too erect, and his speech 
 is voluble and florid. It is a delightful 
 evening; it seems to be a good growing- 
 time ; the country looks prosperous. He 
 is sorry to be any trouble or interruption, 
 but the fact is — yes, he is on his way to 
 his old home in Vermont ; it seems like 
 he would like to taste some home cook- 
 ing again, and sit in the old orchard, and 
 perhaps lay his bones, what is left of 
 them, in the burying-ground on the hill. 
 He pulls out his well-worn papers as he 
 talks ; there is the honorable discharge, 
 the permit of the Home, and the pension. 
 Yes, Uncle Sam is generous ; it is the 
 most generous government God ever 
 made, and he would willingly fight for it 
 again. Thirty dollars a month, that is 
 what he has; he is not a beggar; he 
 wants for nothing. But the pension is 
 not payable till the end of the month. 
 It is entirely his own obligation, his own 
 fault; he can fight, but he cannot lie, and 
 nobody is to blame but himself ; but last
 
 iSi 
 
 night lie fell in with some old comrades 
 
 at Southdown, and, well, you know how 
 
 it is. He had plenty of money when he 
 
 left the Home, and he is not asking for 
 
 anything now, but if he had a few dollars 
 
 for his railroad fare to 
 
 the next city, he could 
 
 walk the rest of the way. 
 
 Wounded? Well, if I 
 
 stood out here against 
 
 the light you could just 
 
 see through me, that's 
 
 all. Bullets? It's no 
 
 use to try to get 'em 
 
 out. But, sir, I'm not 
 
 complaining. It had to 
 
 be done; the country 
 
 had to be saved ; and 
 
 I'd do it again if it were 
 
 necessary. Had any hot 
 
 fights? Sir, I was at Get- '' 
 
 tysburg ! The veteran straightens up, 
 
 and his eyes flash as if he saw again that 
 
 sanguinary field. Oflf goes the citizen's 
 
 hat. Children, come out here ; here is 
 
 one of the soldiers of Gettysburg ! Yes, 
 
 sir; and this knee — you see I can't bend
 
 1 82 
 
 it much— got stiffened at Chickamauga; 
 and this scratch here in the neck was 
 from a bullet at Gaines Mill; and this 
 here, sir — thumping his chest— you notice 
 I don't dare to cough much — after the 
 explosion of a shell at Petersburg I found 
 myself lying on my back, and the only 
 one of my squad who was not killed out- 
 right. Was it the imagination of the 
 citizen or of the soldier that gave the 
 impression that the hero had been in the 
 forefront of every important action of 
 the war ? Well, it doesn't matter much. 
 The citizen was sitting there under his 
 own vine, the comfortable citizen of a 
 free republic, because of the wounds in 
 this cheerful and imaginative old wan- 
 derer. There, that is enough, sir, quite 
 enough. I am no beggar. I thought per- 
 haps you had heard of the Ninth Ver- 
 mont. Woods is my name — Sergeant 
 Woods. I trust sometime, sir, I shall be 
 in a position to return the compliment. 
 Good-evening, sir; God bless your honor! 
 and accept the blessing of an old soldier. 
 And the dear old hero goes down the 
 darkening avenue, not so steady of bear-
 
 i83 
 
 ing as when he withstood the charge of 
 Pickett on Cemetery Hill, and with the 
 independence of the American citizen who 
 deserves well of his country, makes his 
 way to the nearest hospitable tavern.
 
 THE ISLAND OF BIMINI 
 
 |0 the northward of 
 Hispaniola hes the 
 island of Bimini. 
 It may not be one 
 of the spice is- 
 lands, but it grows 
 the best ginger to 
 be found in the 
 world. In it is a 
 fair city, and be- 
 side the city a lofty 
 mountain, at the 
 foot of which is a noble spring called the 
 Foils Jitventiitis. This fountain has a 
 sweet savor, as of all manner of spicery, 
 and every hour of the day the water 
 changes its savor and its smell. Who- 
 ever drinks of this w'ell will be healed of 
 whatever malady he has, and will seem 
 always j^oung. It is not reported that 
 women and men who drink of this fount-
 
 i85 
 
 ain will be always young, but that they 
 will seem so, and probably to themselves, 
 which simply means, in our modern ac- 
 curacy of language, that they will feel 
 young. This island has never been found. 
 Many voyages have been made in search 
 of it in ships and in the imagination, and 
 Liars have said they have landed on it 
 and drunk of the water, but they never 
 could guide any one else thither. In the 
 credulous centuries when these voyages 
 were made, other islands were discovered, 
 and a continent much more important 
 than Bimini; but these discoveries were 
 a disappointment, because they were not 
 what the adventurers wanted. They did 
 not understand that they had found a 
 new land in which the world should renew 
 its youth and begin a new career. In 
 time the quest was given up, and men re- 
 o-arded it as one of the delusions which 
 came to an end in the sixteenth century. 
 In our day no one has tried to reach 
 Bimini except Heine. Our scientific pe- 
 riod has a proper contempt for all such 
 superstitions. We now know that the 
 Fons Juveniuiis is in every man, and that
 
 1 86 
 
 if actual jiu'enility cannot be renewed, 
 the advance of age can be arrested and 
 the waste of tissues be prevented, and an 
 uncalculated length of earthly existence 
 be secured, by the injection of some sort 
 of fluid into the system. The right fluid 
 has not yet been discovered by science, 
 but millions of people thought that it had 
 the other day, and now confidently ex- 
 
 *<-^/.J. 
 
 pect it. This credulity has a scientific 
 basis, and has no relation to the old absurd 
 belief in Bimini. We thank goodness 
 that we do not live in a credulous age. 
 
 The world would be in a poor case in- 
 deed if it had not always before it some 
 ideal or millennial condition, some pana- 
 cea, some transmutation of base metals
 
 .87 
 
 into gold, some philosopher's stone, some 
 fountain of youth, some process of turn- 
 ing charcoal into diamonds, some scheme 
 for eliminating evil. But it is worth men- 
 tioning that in the historical evolution we 
 have always got better things than we 
 sought or imagined, developments on a 
 much grander scale. History is strewn 
 with the wreck of popular delusions, but 
 always in place of them have come reali- 
 zations more astonishing than the wildest 
 fancies of the dreamers. Florida was a 
 disappointment as a Bimini, so were the 
 land of the Ohio, the land of the Missis- 
 sippi, the Dorado of the Pacific coast. 
 But as the illusions, pushed always west- 
 ward, vanished in the light of common 
 day, lo ! a continent gradually emerged, 
 with millions of people animated by con- 
 quering ambition of progress in freedom; 
 an industrial continent, covered with a 
 net-work of steel, heated by steam, and 
 lighted by electricity. What a spectacle 
 of youth on a grand scale is this ! Chris- 
 topher Columbus had not the slightest 
 conception of what he was doing when 
 he touched the button. But we are not
 
 iS8 
 
 satisfied. Quite as far from being so as 
 ever. Tlie popular imagination runs a 
 hard race with any possible natural de- 
 velopment. Being in possession of so 
 much, we now expect to travel in the air, 
 to read news in the sending mind before 
 it is sent, to create force without cost, to 
 be transported without time, and to make 
 everybody equal in fortune and happiness 
 to everybody else by act of Congress. 
 Such confidence have we in the power of 
 a " resolution " of the people and by the 
 people that it seems feasible to make wom- 
 en into men, oblivious of the more im- 
 portant and imperative task that will then 
 arise of making men into women. Some 
 of these expectations are only Biminis of 
 the present, but when they have vanished 
 there will be a social and industrial world 
 quite beyond our present conceptions, no 
 doubt. In the article of woman, for in- 
 stance, she may not become the being 
 that the convention expects, but there 
 may appear a Woman of whom all the 
 Aspasias and Helens were only the faintest 
 t3^pes. And although no progress will 
 take the conceit out of men, there may
 
 i.?0 
 
 appear a Man so amenable to ordinary 
 reason that he will give up the notion 
 that he can lift himself up by his boot- 
 straps, or make 
 
 one grain of 
 wheat two by 
 calling it two. 
 
 One of the 
 Bi minis that 
 have always 
 been looked for 
 is an A m e r i - 
 can Literature. 
 There was an 
 impression that 
 there must be 
 such a thing 
 somewhere on 
 a continent that 
 has everything 
 else. We gave 
 the world to- 
 bacco and the 
 
 potato, perhaps the most important con- 
 tributions to the content and the fatness 
 of the world made by any new country, 
 and it was a noble ambition to give it new
 
 iqo 
 
 Styles of art and literature also. There 
 seems to have been an impression that a 
 literature was something indigenous or 
 ready-made, like any other purely native 
 product, not needing any special period of 
 cultivation or development, and that a 
 nation would be in a mortifying position 
 without one, even before it staked out its 
 cities or built any roads. Captain John 
 Smith, if he had ever settled here and 
 spread himself over the continent, as he 
 was capable of doing, might have taken 
 the contract to furnish one, and we may 
 be sure that he would have left us noth- 
 ing to desire in that direction. But the 
 vein of romance he opened was not fol- 
 lowed up. Other prospectings were made. 
 Holes, so to speak, were dug in New 
 England, and in the middle South, and 
 along the frontier, and such leads were 
 found that again and again the certainty 
 arose that at last the real American ore 
 had been discovered. Meantime a cer- 
 tain process called civilization went on, 
 and certain ideas of breadth entered into 
 our conceptions, and ideas also of the 
 historical development of the expression
 
 of thought in the world, and with these a 
 comprehension of what American really 
 is, and the difficulty of putting the con- 
 tents of a bushel measure into a pint cup. 
 So, while we have been expecting the 
 American Literature to come out from 
 
 some locality, neat and clean, like a nug- 
 get, or, to change the figure, to bloom 
 any day like a century-plant, in one strik- 
 ing, fragrant expression of American life. 
 behold something else has been preparing 
 and maturing, larger and more promising 
 than our early anticiptaions. In history,
 
 192 
 
 in biography, in science, in the essay, in 
 the novel and story, there are coming 
 forth a hundred expressions of the hun- 
 dred aspects of American life; and they 
 are also sung by the poets in notes as 
 varied as the migrating birds. The birds 
 perhaps have the best of it thus far, but 
 the bird is limited to a small range of 
 performances while he shifts his singing- 
 boughs through the climates of the con- 
 tinent, whereas the poet, though a little 
 inclined to mistake aspiration for inspira- 
 tion, and vagueness of longing for subtlety, 
 is experimenting in a most hopeful man- 
 ner. And all these writers, while perhaps 
 not consciously American or consciously 
 seeking to do more than their best in 
 their several ways, are animated by the 
 free spirit of inquiry and expression that 
 belongs to an independent nation, and so 
 our literature is coming to have a stamp 
 of its own that is unlike any other na- 
 tional stamp. And it will have this stamp 
 more authentically and be clearer and 
 stronger as we drop the self-conscious- 
 ness of the necessity of being American,
 
 x; 
 
 
 :SA 
 
 Ml 
 
 
 
 ERE is June again ! It never was 
 more welcome in these Northern latitudes. 
 It seems a pity that such a month cannot 
 be twice as long. It has been the pet of 
 the poets, but it is not spoiled, and is just 
 as full of enchantment as ever. The se- 
 cret of this is that it is the month of both 
 hope and fruition. It is the girl of eigh- 
 teen, standing with all her charms on the 
 eve of womanhood, in the dress and tem- 
 perament of spring. And the beauty of 
 it is that almost every woman is young, 
 if ever she were young, in June. For her 
 the roses bloom, and the red clover. It 
 is a pity the month is so short. It is as 
 full of vigor as of beauty. The energy of 
 the year is not yet spent ; indeed, the 
 world is opening on all sides ; the school- 
 girl is about to graduate into liberty ; and 
 the young man is panting to kick or row 
 
 his way into female adoration and general 
 13
 
 194 
 
 notoriety. The young men have made 
 no mistake about the kind of education 
 that is popular with women. The U'omen 
 like prowess and the manly virtues of 
 pluck and endurance. The world has 
 not changed in this respect. It was so 
 with the Greeks ; it was so when youth 
 rode in tournaments and unhorsed each 
 other for the love of a lady. June is the 
 knightly month. On many a field of 
 gold and green the heroes will kick their 
 way into fame ; and bands of young wom- 
 en, in white, with their diplomas in 
 their hands, star-eyed mathematicians and 
 linguists, will come out to smile upon the 
 victors in that exhibition of strength that 
 women most admire. No, the world is 
 not decaying or losing its juvenility. The 
 motto still is, " Love, and may the best 
 man win !" How jocund and immortal 
 is woman ! Now, in a hundred schools 
 and colleges, will stand up the solemn, 
 well-intentioned man before a row of 
 pretty girls, and tell them about Woman- 
 hood and its Duties, and they will listen 
 just as shyly as if they were getting news, 
 and needed to be instructed by a man on
 
 iy5 
 
 a subject which has engaged their entire 
 attention since they were five years old. 
 In the Hght of science and experience the 
 conceit of men is something curious. 
 And in June ! the most blossoming, riant, 
 feminine time of the year. The month 
 itself is a liberal education to him who is 
 not insensible to beauty and the strong 
 sweet promise of life. The streams run 
 clear then, as they do not in April ; the 
 sky is high and transparent ; the world 
 seems so large and fresh and inviting. 
 Our houses, which six months in the 
 year in these latitudes are fortifications 
 of defence, are open now, and the breath 
 of life flows through them. Even ov^er 
 the city the sky is benign, and all the 
 country is a heavenly exhibition. May 
 was sweet and capricious. This is the 
 maidenhood deliciousness of the year. 
 If you were to bisect the heart of a true 
 poet, you would find written therein 
 June.
 
 iReGIOMMU 
 
 PRARY FACILITY 
 
 Jf^ 000 251840 5