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 EVERY-DAY TOPICS
 
 DR. J. G. HOLLAND'S WRITINGS. 
 
 Complete Works, i6 Volumes. Small i2mo. 
 Sold separately. 
 
 KITTER-SWEET, $I-2S 
 
 Kathrina 1. 25 
 
 The Mistress of the Manse, 1.25 
 
 Puritan's Guest and other Poems, .... 1.25 
 
 Titcomb's Letters to Young People, , . . 1.25 
 
 Gold-Foil, 1.25 
 
 Lessons in Life 1.25 
 
 Plain Talks os Familiar Subjects 1.25 
 
 Concerning the Jones Family, .... 1.25 
 
 EvKRV-DAY Topics. First Series, .... 1.25 
 
 " " Second Series, . . . 1.25 
 
 Sevenoaks, ...... 1.25 
 
 The Bay Path, . . 1.25 
 
 Arthur Bonnicasti.e, 1.25 
 
 Miss Gilbert's Career, . . . . . . 1.25 
 
 Nicholas Minturn, 1.23 
 
 Complete Sets, 16 vols,, in a box; half calf, $44.00; half 
 morocco, gilt top, $46.00 ; and cloth, 20.00. 
 
 Illustrtited Eilition, 14 vol.-)., urao, cloth. New style. 
 Sold only in sets, 20.00. 
 
 COMPLETE POETICAL WRITINGS. 
 With illustrations by Reinhart, Griswold, and Mary Hallock 
 Foote, and a portrait by Wyatt Eaton. 8vo, $3.50. 
 
 Holiday Edition 0/ the same. 
 In extra cloth, full gilt sides and edges, . . . $5.00
 
 EVERY- DAY TOPICS 
 
 BOOK OF BRIEFS 
 
 BY 
 J. G. HOLLAND 
 
 SECoxD s/-:r/es 
 
 NKW YORK 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
 
 Copyright nv 
 CHARLES SCRIHNER'S SONS 
 
 Tbow's 
 
 PkINTINC; and I'.OOKBINlUNr, CoMTANY 
 
 201-213 Kuit Twelfth Street 
 
 Ni;\V VOKH
 
 6r 
 
 157/ 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 T)OOKS of sketches, or of brief discussions 
 -L^ of popular subjects, which can be taken 
 up and read separately and completely during 
 brief periods of leisure, have always foinid buyers 
 and readers, and I suppose that the volume of 
 " Every-Day Topics," made up from the editorials 
 in Scribners Monthly, which was issued a few 
 years ago, owed much of its popularity to the 
 fact that it was what its title-page called it, " A 
 Book of Briefs," in which the reader could com- 
 pass a single article at a short sitting. Its suc- 
 cess has emboldened me to cull from the editorials 
 of the last five years another volume, prepared 
 upon the same plan, which I trust will be equally 
 acceptable to the public. 
 
 THE AUTHOR. 
 
 BoNNii': Casti.i-:, A\igiist i, 1881.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 RELIGION AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 Religion in thesi: Days, . 
 A Lay Sermon for Easter, 
 Checks and Balances, 
 A New Departure, 
 Revivals and Evangelists, 
 The Changes in Preaching, 
 Cclture and Christianity, 
 Church Music, 
 Some Thin Virtues, 
 Is Life Worth Living? 
 
 The Sermon 
 
 Mr. Huxley's Visit, 
 Falling from High Places, 
 The Bondage of the Pulpit, 
 Sunday Bummers, . 
 "The Machine" in New Engi 
 The Talk about Retriuution 
 
 PAGE 
 I 
 
 s 
 
 9 
 
 13 
 16 
 
 19 
 23 
 26 
 
 30 
 34 
 
 37 
 41 
 
 45 
 48 
 52 
 55 
 59
 
 vni 
 
 Contents. 
 
 ART. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 American Art, 63 
 
 Art Criticism 67 
 
 Greatness in Art, 70 
 
 Pettiness in Art, 74 
 
 Art as a Steady Diet, 77 
 
 LITERATURE. 
 
 The Legitimate Novel 81 
 
 Dandyism 84 
 
 The Prices of Books, 88 
 
 The Literary Class 91 
 
 The Interest of Fiction, 94 
 
 Books and Reading 98 
 
 Literary Virility loi 
 
 Fiction, 105 
 
 Goodness as Literary Material 109 
 
 A Word about Newspapers 113 
 
 Vulgarity in Fiction and on the Stage, . . . 116 
 
 Literary Materials and Tools, 120 
 
 Our Garnered Names, 123 
 
 Is it Poetry? 126 
 
 CERTAIN VIRTUES AND VIRTUOUS HABITS. 
 
 Character, and what Comes of It, 
 
 Pr.KsoNAL Economies, . 
 
 Amehician Honesty, 
 
 Kr.Ki'iNG AT It, 
 
 susi'i'.ctlij dctiks, 
 
 Thk Pkuhlntial Ia.emknt 
 
 OF It, 
 
 
 T--y:> 
 
 
 
 . I3S 
 
 . 
 
 
 . 142 
 
 . 
 
 
 145 
 
 
 
 . 148 
 
 
 
 . 152
 
 Contents. 
 
 IX 
 
 EDUCATION AND INDUSTRY. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Ornamental Branches 156 
 
 Fitting for College 160 
 
 College Instruction 163 
 
 Teachers anu Task-Masters, t,6-j 
 
 College Trustees and Professors, . . .170 
 
 An Aspect of the Labor Question 174 
 
 Great Shopkeepers 178 
 
 Industrial Education, 182 
 
 Industrial Education Again 186 
 
 TOWN AND COUNTRY. 
 
 Life in Large and Small Towns, 150 
 
 Village Improvement Societies 193 
 
 Village Reform 196 
 
 Thin Living and Thick Dying 198 
 
 From Country to City, 202 
 
 ABOUT WOMAN. 
 
 Woman and Her Work 207 
 
 Men and Women, 211 
 
 Woman's Winter Amusements 215 
 
 THE CURSE OF PAUPERISM. 
 
 The Pauper Poison, 
 The Disease of Mendicancy, 
 The Public Charities, 
 On'ck More the Tkamp, 
 Pauperizing the Clergy, . 
 The Dbad-Bbat Nuisance, 
 
 2ig 
 222 
 
 226 
 230 
 233 
 
 237
 
 X Contents. 
 
 TEMPERANCE. 
 
 PACF 
 
 Tempeuance Education, ....... 241 
 
 Social Drinking 245 
 
 The Way we Waste 247 
 
 DOMESTIC ECONOMY. 
 
 Regulated Production, . 
 The Chinese in California, 
 
 252 
 255 
 
 SOCIAL FACTS, FORCES, AND REFORMS. 
 
 Acting under Excitement 261 
 
 The Cure for Gossip 265 
 
 The Philosophy of Reform 2(38 
 
 The Reconstruction of National Morality, . . 271 
 
 Double Crimes and One-Sided Laws 274 
 
 The Better Times 278 
 
 Indications of Progress 281 
 
 An Epidemic of Dishonesty, 285 
 
 Familiarity, 288 
 
 Social Needs and Social Leading, .... 292 
 
 Marriage as a Test 295 
 
 Popular Despotism 299 
 
 The Social Evii 303 
 
 The Popular Wisdom, 307 
 
 A Word on Politics, 311 
 
 A Hopeful Lesson, 315 
 
 The Shadow of tiik Negro 320 
 
 The Political Machine 324 
 
 Political Training, 326 
 
 A Reform in the Civil Service, 330
 
 Contents. xi 
 
 MATTERS OF DOMESTIC CONCERN. 
 
 PAon 
 
 Houses and Thfngs, 335 
 
 (Joou Talking, 339 
 
 The Amusements of the Rich 342 
 
 MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 Scientific Foolishness, 346 
 
 The Tax for Barbarism 349 
 
 The Drama, 353 
 
 The Nihilists, 35^ 
 
 Cheap Opinions, 360 
 
 Too Much of It . . . 364 
 
 European Travel o ... 3^7
 
 EVERY-DAY TOPICS. 
 
 RELIGION AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 Religion in these Days. 
 
 MAN'S place in nature has never been so sharply and 
 profoundly questioned as it has been during the 
 past ten years. The answer which science presumes 
 to give, when it presumes to give any, is not one which 
 pleases or in any way satisfies itself. "Dust thou art, 
 and unto dust shalt thou return." Matter and force 
 have manifested themselves in man, in form and phe- 
 nomena, and the matter and force which have made 
 man shall at last all be refunded into the common stock, 
 to be used over and over and over again, in other forms 
 and phenomena. There is a body, but there is no such 
 thing as mind independent of body. The dualism of 
 constitution in which we have believed, and which lies 
 at the basis of all our religion and philosophy, is a dchi- 
 sion. Out of all the enormous expenditure of ingenuity, 
 or of what appears to be or seems like ingenuity, notic- 
 ing is saved. The great field of star-mist out of which 
 our solar system was made has been hardened into 
 planets, set in motion and filled with life, to go on for 
 I
 
 2 Every -Day Topics. 
 
 untold ages, and then to come to an end possibly to 
 become a field of star-mist again ; and nothing is to be 
 saved out of the common fund of matter and force that 
 can go on in an independent, immortal life. Man is 
 simply a higher form of animal. God as a personality 
 does not exist. Immortality is a dream, and the Chris- 
 tian religion, of course, is a delusion. 
 
 These conclusions seem to be the best that science 
 can give us. Science believes nothing that it cannot 
 prove. There may be a personal God, who takes cog- 
 nizance of the personal affairs of men, but science can- 
 not prove it ; therefore, a belief in a personal God is 
 " unscientific." There may be such a thing as the hu- 
 man soul a spirit that has a life, or the possibilities of 
 a life, independent of the body ; but it cannot be proved. 
 Indeed, it seems to be proved that all the phenomena 
 of what we call mind are attributable to changes that 
 take place among the molecules of the brain. There- 
 fore, a belief in the human soul is unscientific. Of 
 course, if there is no human soul, there is nothing to 
 save ; and if there be nothing to save, Christ was, con- 
 sciously or unconsciously, an impostor, and the hopes 
 and expectations of all Christendom are vain. And this 
 is the highest conclusion to which science seems to be 
 able to lead us. Can anything be imagined to be more 
 lame and impotent ? We should think that every labora- 
 tory and every scientific school, and every library and 
 study of a man of science, would seem like a tomb ! 
 
 That this attitude of prominent men of science toward 
 the great questions that relate to God, immortality, the 
 nature of the human soul and the Christian religion, has 
 sadly shaken the faith of a great multitude, there is no 
 doubt. Society is honeycombed with infidelity. Men 
 stagger in their pulpits with their burden of difficulties 
 and doubts. The theological seminaries have become
 
 Religion and the Church. 3 
 
 shaky places, and faith has taken its flight from an un- 
 counted number of souls, leaving them in a darkness 
 and sadness that no words can describe. All this is 
 true. It is so true that tears may well mingle in one's 
 ink as he writes it ; but, after all, we have everything 
 left that we have ever possessed. Nothing is proved 
 against our faith. Science has never proved that there is 
 no personal God, no soul, no immortality, no Christ, and 
 these are matters that we have always taken on faith. Not 
 only this, but there are matters which science is utterly 
 incompetent to handle. They are outside of the domain 
 of science. Science can no more touch them than it can 
 touch anything that it confesses to be " unknowable." 
 
 Now, there are several important things that are to 
 be got out of the way before thoughtful Christendom 
 can be induced to give up its faith in a personal God. 
 First, there is the moral nature of man, which infallibly 
 recognizes a personal God. A sensitive moral nature 
 and a quickened conscience, whose outcome is a sense 
 of moral responsibility, would be lost in the marvel 
 of their own existence without the certainty of the per- 
 sonal God to whom they owe allegiance. They would 
 have no meaning, no authority, no object, without this 
 certainty. There is also the religious nature of man. 
 Reverence for God, love to God, devotion to God all 
 these, actually or potentially, exist in man's nature. 
 They underlie character ; they are potent among mo- 
 tives ; and if there be no personal God who exists as 
 their legitimate object, what, in the economy of nature, 
 do they mean ? There is a question for science to 
 answer that is quite worth its while. Why ! a man can- 
 not admit the evidence of design in creation without ad- 
 mitting the existence of a personal God, and when men 
 get so far bankrupt in common sense as to deny the ex- 
 istence of design, are they worth minding?
 
 4 Every -Day Topics. 
 
 When we admit the existence of a personal God, the 
 rest all comes. This doctrine lies at the basis of all 
 faith. If there is a great, conscious, spiritual person- 
 ality in existence, ther<" are likely to be smaller spirit- 
 ual personalities. If there is a personal God who has 
 begotten a family of children capable of recognizing and 
 loving him, is it probable that he has destined them to 
 annihilation ? Is he to get nothing out of this great ex- 
 periment to carry nothing over into a higher life ? 
 What are the probabilities ? And why has he planted 
 this desire for immortality in all nations and races of 
 men not only the desire, but the expectation ? The 
 truth IS that every unsophisticated man, looking into 
 himself, knows, with the highest degree of moral cer- 
 tainty, that he is a living soul, and that the mind acts 
 upon the brain as often and as powerfully as the brain 
 upon the mind. How often has the brain been para- 
 lyzed and the body been killed by a purely mental im- 
 pression ! Common sense, that recognizes all the facts 
 of being and consciousness, is a great deal better than 
 science, that only recognizes what it can prove. 
 
 Admitting the existence of a personal God, and the 
 relations of man to him as they are shown in his moral 
 and religious nature, a revelation in some form becomes 
 probable. Man naturally yearns for this recognition and 
 this light, and is supremely happy when he believes he 
 possesses it. A great number of people, through a great 
 many centuries, have believed in this revelation. They 
 have hugged it to their hearts through days of toil and 
 sorrow, and rested their heads upon it through nights of 
 weariness and pain. The revelation of God in Christ 
 has done too much for the world to be put aside at the 
 behest of science. If science is right, then Christianity 
 is a falsehood ; but did ever falsehood do such work as 
 true Christianity has done ? Can a lie transform a base
 
 Religion and the Church. 5 
 
 and cruel life into one that is pure and brotherly ? Can 
 a lie inspire the heroisms and the sacrifices of self which 
 have illustrated the path and progress of Christianity 
 from the earliest times ? Can a lie sweeten sorrow, 
 strengthen weakness, make soft the pillow of death, and 
 irradiate the spirit shutting its eyes upon this world with 
 a joy too great for utterance ? This is what Christianity 
 has done in millions and millions of instances. It is 
 busy in its beneficent work of transforming character all 
 over the world to-day, Man of science, what have you 
 to put in its place ? The doctrine of a world without a 
 personal God, and a man without a soul ! God pity the 
 man of science who believes in nothing but what he can 
 prove by scientific methods ! We cannot imagine a 
 sadder or more unfortunate man in the world. God 
 pity him, we say, for if ever a human being needed di- 
 vine pity, he does. An intelligent man, standing in the 
 presence of the Everlasting Father, studying and en- 
 deavoring to interpret his works, and refusing to see him 
 because he cannot bring him into the field of his tele- 
 scope or into the range of a " scientific method," is cer- 
 tainly an object to be pitied of angels and of men. The 
 marvel is that in his darkness and his sadness men turn 
 to him for light turn to a man for light who denies not 
 only God, but the existence of the human soul ! Alas, 
 that there should be fools more eminent in their foolish- 
 ness than he ! 
 
 A Lay Sermon for Easter. 
 In a Christian nation no " topic " could be more ap- 
 propriate to the Easter "time" than the resurrection 
 from the dead of the founder of Christianity, and there 
 is a single aspect of this event which it seems proper for 
 us to present. It is particularly appropriate for a secu- 
 lar press to do this, because the secular press has had
 
 6 Every-Day Topics. 
 
 so much to do with the upsetting of the faith of the world 
 in this most significant event an event on which the 
 authorities of Christianity make the reUgion of Christ to 
 depend. If Christ be not raised, these authorities de- 
 clare that the faith in him is vain and his followers are 
 yet in their sins. It is a curious and most noteworthy 
 thing, after all the dogmas that have been reared upon 
 the death and sacrifice of Christ, that the one only essen- 
 tial fact of his history essential to the establishment of 
 his religion, without which everything else would be of 
 no account is declared to be his resurrection. It was 
 not enough that he died ; it was not enough that he suf- 
 fered all this was of no account whatever, as compared 
 with his rising again. His death did not wipe out the 
 sins of his people ; if he did not rise, they were still un- 
 forgiven. 
 
 There probably never existed a more fearfully demor- 
 alized set of men than the disciples and followers of 
 Jesus Christ on the night of his betrayal and arrest. 
 One betrayed him, another denied him, and all forsook 
 him and fled. They had been with him during his won- 
 der-working ; they had heard him talk of his kingdom ; 
 some of them had been with him on the Mount of Trans- 
 figuration ; they had seen unclean spirits subject to him ; 
 they had seen life restored at his touch and disease 
 banished by his word ; he had grown before them into 
 a great, divine personage, armed with all power and 
 clothed with all grace. They had forsaken homes and 
 friends and pursuits to follow him, with great, indefinite 
 hopes and anticipations that it was he who should re- 
 deem Israel, but without any intelligent estimate of his 
 mission ; and when they saw him in the hands of his 
 enemies, and apparently helpless, a great panic seized 
 them, and they literally give him up, uitli all the 
 schemes engendered by their mtercoiubc with him.
 
 Religion and the Church. "J 
 
 This, however, was but the beginning of the tragedy. 
 Calvary with its cross stood directly before them, and 
 the infamy and cruelty of his death were consummated 
 there amid such convulsions of nature as might well sig- 
 nalize one of the most shameful events in the history of 
 human injustice and crime. The great religious teacher 
 and inspirer had died the death of a malefactor, hanging 
 between two thieves. He had manifested none of the 
 power which he claimed, though taunted by the mob and 
 called upon to save himself if he indeed were the per- 
 son he claimed to be. After he was found to be dead, 
 Joseph of Arimathea took down his lifeless body and 
 buried it. A stone was rolled to the door of the sepul- 
 chre and sealed, and the disciples were in hiding. They 
 were undoubtedly in deep sorrow, for they had loved the 
 Master and had built great hopes upon him. But, during 
 those three days after his burial, the Christian religion 
 was as dead as the person who had undertaken to found 
 it. Every hope of his followers were buried in that 
 sepulchre, and not one of all their hopes would ever have 
 revived had he not come out of it. And this is the 
 thought that we wish to present to-day, viz. : that the 
 fact that Christianity, as a living and aggressive religion, 
 exists at this moment, is proof positive that Christ rose 
 from the dead. It never would have started, it never 
 could have started, except in the fact of Christ's resur- 
 rection. The story of his disappearance from the tomb 
 and his reappearance among his disciples is familiar to 
 all. These events have formed the themes of painter 
 and poet through eighteen hundred years of art and 
 song. The story was as incredible to the disciples as 
 it is to the scepticism of to-day ; but they saw him, they 
 heard him talk, he came and went among them, ap- 
 peared and disappeared at will, gave thcin his message 
 antl their mission, and was at last received up out of
 
 8 Every -Day Topics. 
 
 sight, having promised to be with them even unto the 
 end of the world. Paul, in writing to the Corinthians, 
 says he was seen by Cephas, then by the twelve, after 
 that by above five hundred brethren at once, most of 
 whom were living at the time he was writing his letter. 
 After that he was seen by James, then by all the apos- 
 tles again, and at last by Paul himself. It was because 
 it was supported by all this throng of witnesses, whose 
 word could not be gainsaid, that the Christian religion 
 established itself. Not only was Christ indorsed as a 
 divine and authoritative personage, but the immortality 
 of the soul was demonstrated. What wonder is it that 
 these men were ready to die in their devotion to the 
 Master, whom they had seen conquering death, and 
 whom they had known as an immortal leader ? 
 
 So we say that there is no better evidence that 
 Christ rose from the dead than the present existence of 
 his church in the world. It never could have been 
 founded with Christ in the tomb. It never could have 
 been founded on imperfect testimony. These men knew 
 what they had seen, what their hands had handled, and 
 what they were talking about. It really was not a mat- 
 ter of faith with them at all ; it was a matter of fact, 
 lying indestructibly in their memories, and vitalizing 
 all their lives. In the tremendous enthusiasm born of 
 this burning memory, Christianity had its birth. In 
 the faith of this great initial and essential fact, Chris- 
 tianity has been propagated. It is the only open demon- 
 stration of the problem of immortality ever vouchsafed 
 to the human race, and it is part and parcel of the 
 Gospel which Christ commanded should be preached to 
 every creature, with lips already clothed with the author- 
 ity and with voice already attuned to the harmonies of the 
 immortal life. The facts of the resurrection of Christ 
 and the immortality of the soul find their highest nay,
 
 Religion and the Church. 9 
 
 their overwhelmingly convincing testimony, in the birth 
 and continued existence of the Christian religion. There 
 is no man living who can form a rational theory of the 
 genesis and development of Christianity who does not 
 embrace the resurrection as an initial and essential fac- 
 tor. A living religion never could have been founded on 
 a dead Christ, and it is safe to say that the religion that 
 rests upon a living Christ can never be superseded or 
 destroyed. 
 
 Checks and Balances. 
 In a certain Roman Catholic church near us there is 
 now in progress, while we write, a " mission," carried 
 on by a body of men called " The Passionist Fathers.'' 
 They are at work at unheard-of hours in the morning, as 
 well as during the day and evening, and the attendance 
 and attention are something phenomenal. The excite- 
 ment is the natural result of a long period of formal 
 worship. The church had to be waked up, and that is 
 done in a week which ojght to have been spread over a 
 year which, if it had been spread over a year, would 
 have made the excitement not only unnecessary, but im- 
 possible. Such an event shows that very necessary work 
 has been neglected. The same thing, calling for the 
 same remedies, exists in the Protestant Church. The 
 revival is only rendered necessary and possible by a pe- 
 riod of spiritual declension and death. When a great 
 revival comes to a church, it comes as a natural conse- 
 quence of a great falling away of religious interest and 
 a long period of spiritual inactivity. When a church 
 docs every day, and all the time, what it ought to do, a 
 revival is impossible. Human nature demands a balance 
 in everything, and the revival comes to fill the comple- 
 ment of activity necessary to preserve the aggressive life 
 of a church. 
 I*
 
 10 Every-Day Topics. 
 
 Just now we are having in New York a great temper* 
 ance revival. Under the lead of Mr. Murphy, the pledge 
 of total abstinence is signed by thousands. There is a 
 legal war, too, upon the rum-sellers. All this excited 
 and radical action comes just as naturally from a bad 
 state of things, political, moral, and social, as the fall of 
 rain from an overcharged cloud. If none had sold 
 liquor save those who had a legal right to sell, and none 
 had become so intemperate in the use of alcoholic drinks 
 that the practice had grown to be the great overshadow- 
 ing curse of the city, breeding pauperism, misery, and 
 crime, Mr. Murphy would have nothing to do, and the 
 Society for the Prevention of Crime would never have 
 been formed. One extreme breeds another. The 
 drunkard calls into existence the rigid adherent of 
 " teetotalism." The unlicensed rum-seller produces 
 the society that puts him on his defence. It is the gross 
 abuse of liquor that produces the extremist in temper- 
 ance practices and temperance legislation. If there 
 were universal temperance there would be no total ab- 
 stinence. Extreme temperance men are produced only 
 by extreme intemperance in others. It is for the safety 
 of society that this law exists, for by it the balance of 
 forces is preserved and society restrained from hopeless 
 degradation. 
 
 The inauguration of our late civil war illustrated the 
 operation of this law in a very notable way. When the 
 South became "solid" in its attempt to destroy the 
 Union, the North became " solid " in its defence. The 
 first gun fired upon the national flag was the signal for 
 Northern consolidation. It could not have been other- 
 wise, in the nature of things. If a sectional reason had 
 arisen for the destruction of the Government, a sectional 
 reason would instantly have sprung into being for its pre- 
 servation, which would wipe out, or hold in abeyance,
 
 Religion and tJie CJinrcJi. i i 
 
 all party afifiliations. The solid South produced the solid 
 North, and what it did then it will always do. There is 
 not the slightest use in quarrelling with the fact, for men 
 are not responsible for it. It simply cannot be helped ; 
 and if the South ever hopes to be the power in national 
 politics that she was in the old days, every man within 
 her borders must be free, and the attempt to force her 
 constituents into solidity must be abandoned as most 
 unwise, and, sectionally, suicidal. It will always be 
 enough that the South is solid under political pressure, 
 to make it impossible for its friends to assist it in its 
 policy, whatever it may be. 
 
 The whole Christian world has become incrusted with 
 dogma and formalism. Great importance is attached to 
 beliefs and creeds, and the essentials of Christianity, 
 including its vital centre, are almost forgotten. The 
 church is overloaded with superstition and nonsensical 
 beliefs and sacred falsehoods. What is the cure for all 
 this? The law of checks and balances has its office 
 here, and it has begun its operation through the scepti- 
 cism of the scientists. The criticism of science was 
 sure to come, as the necessary agent in purifying the 
 church of superstition and falsehood. Popery produced 
 Luther, and the peculiar form in which Christianity has 
 presented itself to this latter age has produced the form 
 of infidelity now propagated by the scientists. When 
 science shall do its perfect work, and Christianity shall 
 be shorn of that which docs not belong to it, and of that 
 which has brought it into contempt with a world of 
 bright men and women, then we shall have such a 
 triumph for our religion as the world has never known. 
 And here we call the Church to witness that science has 
 thus far taught it nothing, in the uprooting an old belief, 
 that has not enlarged its ideas of God and humanity. 
 
 Men are very apt to despair of the world, especiall)
 
 12 Every- Day Topics. 
 
 those who have labored long for its good. Our excellent 
 friends who met last autumn at Dr. Tyng's church, to 
 talk about the coming of Christ, were, many of them, 
 those who were discouraged with their work, and who 
 had come to a realization of the fact that the methods of 
 saving men to which they had been bred were inade- 
 quate to the undertaking. Did it ever occur to them 
 that their methods may be wrong, and that in the devel- 
 opment of the future they are to be set right ? Let 
 them not be found fighting their Master in the persons 
 of those who have been sent to show them the nature of 
 the stuff they are believing and preaching. Christianity, 
 purified of its dross, will be a very different thing from 
 Christianity loaded down with sanctified absurdities. 
 
 The truth is that this law of checks and balances 
 makes the world safe. All wrong tendencies and influ- 
 ences bring into existence right tendencies and influ- 
 ences, and God is always on the side of the latter. If 
 an institution is worth saving, and has genuine vitality, 
 no influence can be brought against it that will not 
 arouse a counteracting power. The attacks of the sci- 
 entists upon the Church have aroused such a spirit of 
 devotion and inquiry that great good has already resulted 
 from them to the church itself, and, as men must have 
 religion, those who are outside of the Church are trying to 
 get at the essential truth for themselves. Just as soon 
 as the Christian world gets over the flurry of the onset, 
 and discovers that the office of science and scientific 
 criticism is to set it right as to such facts, and such 
 only, as come within its range, and that its only lasting 
 effect will be to rectify and purify its beliefs, it will 
 make a marvellous advance ; and that time we believe to 
 be not far off. The cause of Christianity, of humanity, 
 of temperance, of progress toward high social ideals, is 
 safe in the operation of this beneficent law. There is
 
 Religion and the Chiireh. 13 
 
 nothing that tells against that which is good in the world 
 which has not in it the seeds and the soil of a counter- 
 acting and controlling power. 
 
 A New Departure. 
 
 One of the great problems, apparently insoluble, that 
 has vexed the pastors and churches of the great cities, 
 more particularly during the last ten years, relates to the 
 means by which they shall get hold of the great outlying 
 world of the poor. So difficult has this question become, 
 that pastors and churches alike have been in despair 
 over it. The poor have not come into the churches of 
 the rich, and few of them, comparatively, have had the 
 Gospel preached to them. The results of mission- 
 schools and missions have been unsatisfactory. The 
 efforts made have not built up self-supporting institu- 
 tions ; those who were benefited have been quite content 
 to remain beneficiaries, and the most strenuous efiorts 
 have been constantly necessary to keep schools and 
 congregations together. In the meantime, the work- 
 ing churches have been comparatively small, and at- 
 tended only by the higher classes. All has gone wrong. 
 The high and the humljle, who, if anywhere in the world, 
 should come together in the churches, have kept them- 
 selves separate, and the work of Christianization has 
 been carried on slowly, and at a tremendous and most 
 discouraging disadvantage. 
 
 One of the leading reasons for the unanimous feeling 
 of friendly interest in the late efforts of Messrs. IMoudy 
 and Sankey on the part of the ministers of all denomina- 
 tions rested in this difficulty. These men drew the poor 
 to them in great numbers, and not only attracted, but 
 helped them and held them. To learn how it was done, 
 ministers fi'om all quarters assembled in con\eniiun, 
 and the professional teachers became eager learners at
 
 14 Every -Day Topics. 
 
 ihc feet of the two successful laymen. The first result of 
 this convention will undoubtedly be a modification of pul- 
 pit-work a modification so marked that it will amount 
 to a revolution. The old-fashioned, highly intellectual and 
 largely theological sermon will go out, and the simple 
 preaching of Jesus Christ as the Saviour of the world, 
 and the hortatory appeal, will come in. The ministers, 
 however, have all been tending toward this for some 
 years. The results of public discussion have been in 
 this direction, so that the modification in preaching will 
 not be a violent one, save in special instances. Still, the 
 change may legitimately be noted as a new departure, 
 and one on which the highest hopes may be built. 
 
 But the most important part of the problem is un- 
 doubtedly to be solved in another way. For some years 
 it has been seen that the great non-church-going public 
 has been quite ready to hear preaching, provided they 
 could hear it in some other building than the church. 
 Wherever the theatre, the opera-house, or the hall has 
 been opened, it has been uniformly filled, and often to 
 overflowing. In Boston, Philadelphia, Brooklyn, Chi- 
 cago, and New York, the poor have pressed into the 
 theatres and public halls whenever there was preach- 
 ing to be heard that promised to be worth the hearing. 
 We are not going to stop to discuss the reason of this. 
 Vve simply allude to it as a most significant fact in con- 
 nection with the policy of the future. The distance be- 
 tween the poor, uneducated men, and the rich and cul- 
 tured church, is proved to be too great to be spanned by 
 a single leap. 
 
 The non-professional teacher and the public hall are 
 to furnish the stepping-stones by which the poor are to 
 reach the Church. When a man from the poorer walks 
 of life from the ranks of the laborer stands in a public 
 hall where all can come together on common ground,
 
 Religion and the Church. 1 5 
 
 and talks to llic people in his simple, straightforward 
 way, upon subjects connected with their highest inter- 
 ests, he furnishes all the means, and is surrounded by all 
 the conditions, necessary to success in his endeavors, 
 lie can do what no professional man can do in any build- 
 ing devoted to religious purposes. We make this state- 
 ment, not as a matter of theory, but as a matter of well- 
 established fact. The preachers know it ; the people 
 know it. It is a thing that has been marvellously demon- 
 strated, and if the Christian world is not ready to accept 
 this demonstration, with all its practical indications, it 
 will show itself to be criminally blind. 
 
 Any new departure in the methods of Christian work 
 will, therefore, be very incomplete nugatory, in fact 
 which does not recognize lay preaching in public halls as 
 an important part of its policy. We have seen just how 
 the poor are to be reached and lifted into the churches, 
 because we have seen just how they have been reached 
 and lifted into the churches. During the efforts of Mr. 
 Moody in London, Brooklyn, Philadelphia, and New 
 York, thousands whom no pulpit could ever influence 
 have found their way through his audience-rooms into 
 the Church. He has officiated as a mediator between 
 the world and the church, and has been a thousand times 
 wiser than he knew, or the Church suspected. He has 
 solved the one grand problem that has puzzled the 
 Church and its ministry for years, and they will be 
 short-sighted and stingy, indeed, if they fail to make his 
 work the basis of a permanent policy. 
 
 In every considerable city of the United States all 
 Christian sects should unite in the establishment of halls 
 for the work of evangelists of men who have a special 
 gift for preaching the simple Gospel. The example of 
 such a man as Mr. Moody cannot but be fruitful in call- 
 ing out from the ranks of Christian laymen a little army
 
 1 6 Every- Day Topics. 
 
 of talented and devoted workers, who will enter into his 
 methods and swell the results of his work. All evangel- 
 ists whose work is worth the having should labor in this 
 field. No man should be in it who cares more for build- 
 ing up one church than another, for one of the prime 
 conditions of his success is, that he shall not be regarded 
 as the mouthpiece of any Christian sect or party. The 
 essential thing is, that he shall be a Christian, moved 
 by the love of God and man, and desirous only of bring- 
 ing men to God. If the Church does not see a new light 
 upon its path, poured upon it by the events to which we 
 have alluded, it must be blind indeed. But it does see 
 the new light, and we believe that its leaders and teach- 
 ers are ready to walk in it. 
 
 Revivals and Evangelists. 
 
 Revivals seem to have become a part of the estab- 
 lished policy of nearly the whole Christian Church. The 
 Catholics have their " Missions," the Episcopalians have 
 their regular special seasons of religious devotion and 
 effort, while the other forms of Prostestantism look to 
 revivals, occasionally appearing, as the times of general 
 awakening and general in-gathering. Regular church 
 life, family culture, Sunday schools and even regular 
 Mission work seem quite insufficient for aggressive pur- 
 poses upon the world. We do not propose to question 
 this policy, though the time will doubtless come, in the 
 progress of Christianity, when it will be forgotten. We 
 have only to say a word in regard to the association of 
 evangelists with revivals, and the two principal modes 
 of their operation. With one we have very little sympa- 
 thy, with the other a great deal. 
 
 There is a class of evangelists who go from church to 
 church, of whom most clergymen are afraid ; and their 
 fears arc thoroughly well grounded. There arises, we
 
 Religion and the Church. 17 
 
 will say, a strong religious interest in a church. Every- 
 thing seems favorable to what is called " a revival." 
 Some well-meaning member thinks that if Mr. Bedlow 
 could only come and help the fatigued pastor, wonder- 
 ful results would follow. The pastor does not wish to 
 stand in the way is suspicious that he has unworthy 
 prejudices against Mr. Bedlow tries to overcome them, 
 and Mr. Bedlow appears. But Mr. Bedlow utterly ig- 
 nores the condition of the church, and, instead of sensi- 
 tively apprehending it and adapting himself to the line 
 of influences already in progress, arrests everything by 
 an attempt to start anew, and carry on operations by his 
 own patent method. The first movement is to get the 
 pastor and the pastor's wife and all the prominent mem- 
 bers upon their knees, in a confession that they have 
 been all wrong miserably unfaithful to their duties and 
 their trust. This is the first step, and of course, it es- 
 tablishes Mr. Bedlow in the supreme position, which is 
 precisely what he deems essential. The methods and 
 controlling influences of the church are uprooted, and, 
 for the time, Mr. Bedlow has everything his own way. 
 Some are disgusted, some are disheartened, a great 
 many are excited, and the good results, whatever they 
 may seem to be, are ephemeral. There inevitably fol- 
 lows a reaction, and in a year the church acknowledges 
 to itself that it is left in a worse condition than that in 
 which Mr. Bedlow found it. The minister has been 
 shaken from his poise, the church is dead, and whatever 
 happens, Mr. Bedlow, still going through his process 
 elsewhere, will not be invited there again. 
 
 We will deny nothing to the motives of these itiner- 
 ants. They seem to thrive personally and financially. 
 They undoubtedly do good under peculiar circum- 
 stances, but, that they are dangerous men we do not 
 question. If neighboring clergymen, in a brotherly
 
 1 8 Evcry-Day Topics. 
 
 way, were to come to the help of one seriously over- 
 worked, and enter into his spirit and his method of 
 labor, it would be a great deal better than to bring in a 
 foreign power that will work by its own methods or not 
 work at all, that will rule or do nothing. If this maga- 
 zine, or the writer of this article, has seemed to be 
 against revivals, it and he have only been against re- 
 vivals of this sort, got up and carried on by these men. 
 We question very sincerely whether they have not done 
 more harm to the Church than they have done good. 
 That they have injured many churches very seriously 
 there can be no question. The mere idea that the com- 
 ing of Mr. Bedlow into a church will bring a revival 
 which would be denied to a conscientious, devoted pas- 
 tor and people, is enough, of itself, to shake the popu- 
 lar faith in Christianity and its divine and gracious 
 founder. Even if it fails to do this, it may well shake 
 the popular faith in the character of the revival and its 
 results. 
 
 There is another class of evangelists who work in a 
 very different way. It is very small at present, but it is 
 destined to grow larger. It works, not inside of churches, 
 but outside of them. It has a mission, not to the 
 churches, but to the people who are outside of them. 
 It works in public halls with no sectarian ideas to push, 
 no party to build up, no special church to benefit. It 
 aims at a popular awakening, and, when it gains a man, 
 it sends him to the church of his choice, to be educated 
 in Christian living. To this class belong Messrs. Moody 
 and Sankey, whose efforts we have approved from the 
 first, because they have done their work in this way. 
 That it is a better work than the other class of evangel- 
 ists have ever done, we have the evidence on every hand. 
 The churches are all quickened by it to go on with their 
 own work in their own way. There is no usurpation of
 
 Religion and the Chtire/i. 19 
 
 pastoral authority and influence. There is no interfer- 
 ence with methods that have had a natural growth and 
 development out of the individualities of the member- 
 ship, and out of the individual circumstances of each 
 church. 
 
 There is another good result which grows naturally 
 out of the labors of this class of men. It brings all the 
 churches together upon common ground. The Presby- 
 terian, the Baptist, the Methodist, the Episcopalian, sit on 
 the same platform, and, together, learn that, after all, the 
 beginning and the essence of a Christian life and char- 
 acter are the same in every church. They learn toleration 
 for one another. More than this : they learn friendliness 
 and love for one another. They light their torches at a 
 common fire, and kindle the flame upon their own separ- 
 ate altars in a common sympathy. They all feel that 
 the evangelist has to do mainly with the beginnings of 
 Christian life, and that it is their work to gather in and 
 perfect those results which have only been initiated. 
 Hence, all have an interest in that work and help it on 
 with united heart and voice. The more of this kind of 
 evangelism we have, the better. 
 
 The Changes in Preaching. 
 That an important change is now in progress in the 
 American pulpit, is evident to even a careless observer. 
 The preachers now coming upon the stage are studying 
 methods and arts as they have never done within our 
 memory. A most important fact begin, fifteen or 
 twenty years ago, to manifest itself alike to teachers and 
 disciples, viz., the fact that the great masses \vere slip- 
 ping more and more out of the reach of the church, anrl 
 tiiat the preacher was losing his power, even over liis 
 own flock. It was hard for men trainrd in the old ways 
 to understand tlic cau:)cs of this misfortune ; but it Ll
 
 20 Evcry-Day Topics. 
 
 came apparent at last to one, here and there, that a 
 theological skeleton, unclothed with flesh and blood, 
 and without a warm heart behind its ribs, was not an 
 inspiring object. It became apparent that the world 
 was sick of theology, and, if it could not have the gos- 
 pel, would not have anything. There are still many 
 among the preachers who suppose that theology is the 
 gospel, but they are rapidly passing away. 
 
 A very successful preacher, in a recent conversation, 
 said that his theology wa3 a sort of dry codfish which he 
 hung up in his study by the tail, and whenever he 
 wanted any of it he cut out a chunk. Another, of al- 
 most equal eminence, said, that while it seemed to him 
 very important that a preacher should be well grounded 
 in Christian doctrine, and have definite and well-settled 
 opinions on theology, he should never think of taking 
 theology into the pulpit ! Both these men are earnest 
 men, and remarkable preachers, but they have made the 
 clean jump into the new order of things. Can New 
 England ever comprehend this that a preacher can be 
 in dead earnest, and yet, without any reservation, say 
 that theology is a thing for the study and not for the pul- 
 pit? Of course it is nothing less than a revolution, but 
 toward this is the drift of the day. 
 
 It is a significant commentary on the condition of the 
 Christian mind of the country that this revolution needs 
 explaining. There are great multitudes who have so 
 identified theology with religion that they cannot con- 
 ceive what a preacher who says nothing of theology can 
 have to say, and what can be the object of his preaching 
 at all. Indeed, we have heard a prominent preacher of 
 the old sort confidently declare that no preacher can sus- 
 tain himself, or find enough to talk about, who does not 
 preach theology. He was honest in his declaration, and 
 he will never be revolutionized, and never be very use-
 
 Religion and the Church. 21 
 
 ful ; but his successor will understand it, and his peo- 
 ple will win the profit of his intelligence. To explain, 
 then, what is involved in this revolution : the man who 
 preaches theology exclusively, preaches exclusively to 
 the head ; and every man preaches to the head in just 
 the measure that he preaches theology. The man who 
 preaches the gospel preaches a person, preaches a life 
 and death and resurrection, proclaims the good tidings 
 of a divine message and a divine mission to men, ad- 
 dresses and works upon the higher sentiments, labors 
 for the uprooting of selfishness in the heart and life, and 
 the implanting in them of love as the dominant motive, 
 and labors for a transformation of character. The great 
 aim of the man who preaches the gospel is to make bad 
 men good, and good men better, to improve the quality 
 of character and life, to bring man into that harmony 
 with God and the divine moralities which will be secured 
 through the following of the Master. The old sort of 
 preaching is not unlike the work of articulating a skele- 
 ton ; the new sort is not unlike that of gathering and 
 weaving a garland of flowers. There may be a certain 
 amount of mental discipline in theology, but, on the 
 whole, mathematics must be preferable ; and, really, if 
 a man feels that he must go for the heads of his congre- 
 gation every time, let him drop his pen, and with a piece 
 of chalk and a blackboard, talk about something that he 
 understands, and something that will be of practical 
 value to his people. 
 
 Revivals have become necessary to the advance of 
 Christianity, simply because of the incompetency of the 
 ordinary preaching ; and the moment the revivals come, 
 the preaching changes, or it changes before they come. 
 . In the nature of things, there ought not to be much for a 
 revival to do in any church which has had the simple 
 good news preached to it, and in which the heart and
 
 22 Every- Day Topics. 
 
 life and better motives have been affectionately and per 
 sistently addressed. Revivals are nothing but- a make- 
 shift. It is not a very high idea of the Father of us all 
 that supposes him any more willing to convert men at 
 one time than another. Preachers full of the learning 
 of the schools go on from year to year with their dry dis- 
 courses, and wonder that nothing comes of them. Then 
 a Christian ignoramus comes along, with burning love 
 and zeal in his heart, and no theology to speak of in 
 his head, and bad grammar on his tongue, and the long 
 winter breaks up, and the waters flow once more, and 
 the meadows blossom again. And this is done over and 
 over, with some good results and many bad ones. 
 
 With the passing away of the theological essay, will 
 pass away much of the necessity of written discourses ; 
 and it will be noticed that very nearly in the proportion 
 in which the character of preaching has changed, has 
 the oral supplanted the written discourse. We think it 
 is seen now, with great distinctness, that, in addressing 
 motives, direct speech from heart to heart is almost in- 
 finitely superior to the reading of pages conceived and 
 framed in the study. If instruction were needed upon 
 this point, the history of Methodism in this country 
 would furnish it in abundance. With a ministry con- 
 fessedly inferior in scholarship, at least in its begin- 
 nings, but with direct address from every pulpit to the 
 heart and life, the success of this denomination has been 
 enormous. With high culture on the part of its teachers 
 its progress would possibly have been wider, but they 
 have at least proved that the direct, spoken discourse is a 
 power which every pulpit should assume and use as soon 
 as it can. The question whether a young man who cannot 
 acquire the ability to speak well without reading has a call 
 to preach is, to say the least, an open one. At any rate, 
 this ability is what all divinity students are striving for.
 
 Religion and I he Church. 23 
 
 Culture and Christianity. 
 
 It hardly needs to be said that the tendency of modern 
 culture is away from Christianity. It diverges from it 
 not only in its faith, or lack of faith, but in its spirit and 
 in its effect upon character. With a multitude of minds, 
 more or less intelligent, culture stands in the place of 
 any sort of cult. To these, the perfection of the human 
 being, through the development of its native powers and 
 the harmonization of those powers by discipline and 
 happy use and control, seems a dream quite possible to 
 be realized. Turning their backs to faith, they give one 
 hand to science and the other to art, to be led upward 
 and onward in " the path of progress." They hold 
 meetings ; they " preach ; " they address the " Infinite 
 Mystery" in "aspiration;" they go through various 
 imitative motions which show that Christian ideas haunt 
 them, while they pretend to ignore every fact out of 
 which those ideas have grown. It is always well, when 
 one gets a little muddled over a new system of ideas, 
 and particularly over the talk about it, to take one of 
 them, follow it out, and see where it lands a man. 
 
 One large portion of the domain of culture ultimatcs 
 in art. It is in art that it comes to its flower, and it is 
 in the reactions of art upon the artist, and in the motives 
 engendered and nourished by art, that wc learn just what 
 this kind of culture does for a man. A tree is known by 
 its fruits. Much of the talk of culture is very fog;4y. 
 Many of its assertions and propositions arc as hard to 
 disprove as to prove. It is full of glittering generalities ; 
 it utters ingenious sophisms ; it puts on superior airs ; 
 and many a simple-hearted believer wlio knows that he 
 iiolcis in his faith something tiiat is infinitely fruitful and 
 valuable stands before it with a silent tongue. But when 
 it begins to act, it begins to show the stuff that it is made
 
 24 Every- Day Topics. 
 
 of. It talks divinely of progress, but when it starts to 
 walk it goes lame. 
 
 If we may judge by facts that are painfully patent, 
 there is no occupation in the world that so belittles and 
 degrades men and women as that which is based upon, 
 or which engages, the different fine arts. In literature, 
 in sculpture and picture, in the theatre, in music, in 
 every branch of art that enlists the higher and finer 
 powers of men and women, we have the most lament- 
 able evidence that culture has not one purifying, or en- 
 nobling quality when unaccompanied by religion. In 
 literature, men and women are broken up into cliques 
 and parties, and the criticism of the time is honeycombed 
 with jealousies and spites. Selfishness dominates here 
 as in other domains of art. It is charged with the spirit 
 of detraction. This is no new state of things. One has 
 but to turn over the pages of the old reviews, or listen 
 to the echoes of Byron's angry protest, to learn that the 
 present time is a legitimate successor of the past, and 
 that brutality of the grossest type may characterize the 
 followers of the sublimest art the world knows. The 
 highest powers, cultivated to their highest point, speak- 
 ing in the sweetest voice of literary art, save no man 
 from being a sot, a debauchee, an adulterer, a disgusting 
 boaster, a selfish glutton of praise, and a vindictive 
 enemy of all who dispute with him the high places of 
 the public admiration. 
 
 If all this can be said of literary art, and of those who 
 are engaged in it, what shall we say of artists of other 
 professions and names ? Why is it that so bad a flavor 
 lingers around the opera-house and the theatre ? Why 
 is it that the church protests against them ? It is not 
 that these institutions are necessarily bad. It is not 
 that there are no good men and women among actors 
 and actresses. It is because that from the dawn of the
 
 Religion and the Church. 25 
 
 drama until the present time, the stage has been asso- 
 ciated with unworthy lives, impure connections, the 
 most degrading jealousies, the bitterest rivalries, and the 
 most disgusting selfishness. Nobody knows this any 
 better, or feels it more keenly when they stop to think at 
 all, than the actors and' musicians themselves. It is all 
 shamefully and notoriously true. Docs not music purify 
 those who devote their lives to it ? Not at all. Not in 
 the slightest degree. There is no more reformatory or 
 saving power in music than in the lowest of menial pur- 
 suits. The farmer, who lives half the time among his 
 brutes, is likely to be a better man than he who, suc- 
 cessfully interpreting some great master, bows nightly 
 before the storms of popular applause. 
 
 Bear us witness, ye poets and actors, ye painters and 
 sculptors, ye singers and players upon instruments, that 
 your arts have not saved the most of you from becoming 
 petty and selfish men and women. You are jealous of 
 one another. You are greedy of praise and of the gold 
 it brings. You know that there is nothing in your heart 
 that enlarges and liberalizes you, that restrains you from 
 drunkenness and vices that shall not be named, that 
 gives you sobriety and solidity of character, that en- 
 larges your social sympathies, that naturally leads you 
 into organizations for helping others outside of your own 
 circle. Bear us witness, that you are not the men and 
 women who arc relied on for performing the duties of so- 
 ciety. If ail were like you, if all were controlled by the 
 ideas that dominate you, if all shirked the duties 
 of social and civil life like you, if all were as much un- 
 fitted by their ideas and their employments as you are 
 for carrying the great burdens of society, what do you 
 suppose would become of the country, and what would 
 become of the world ? 
 
 Now, if there is anything in art that can take the placu 
 2
 
 26 Every -Day Topics. 
 
 of religion, we should like to see it. If there is anything 
 in culture that can take the place of religion, it has not 
 yet revealed itself. Culture is centred in self. Self is 
 the god and self is the model of all culture. Why should 
 it not ultimate in selfishness ? Culture assunr.es that 
 what is present in a man needs only to be developed and 
 harmonized to lift character to its highest point, and life 
 to its highest issues. It carries no idea of self surrender, 
 which is the first fact in practical religion of any valuable 
 sort, and the first fact in all good development. Greece 
 and Rome had plenty of culture, and are still our 
 teachers in art, but the beauty that looked upon them 
 from every hill and gate and temple could not save them 
 from their vices. By and by, culture will learn how 
 powerless it is to make a man that shall be worth the 
 making, and what poor instruments science and art are 
 for uprooting the selfishness that rules the world. It is 
 slowly learning this, and men who have bowed low to 
 her have been touched with that divine discontent which 
 nothing but religion can allay. 
 
 Church I^Iusic. 
 There are great varieties and contrarieties of opin- 
 ion on church music, as well among pastors as congre- 
 gations. It begins with the hymns. There are those 
 who believe that theology should be taught by hymns, 
 that appeals to heart and conscience should be made in 
 hymns, that all phases of religious experience and feel- 
 ing may legitimately be addressed through hymns. 
 There are others who reject this theory, and would con- 
 fine hymns to the expression of penitence or praise to 
 God. They feel that a hymn, publicly sung, should be 
 an address of the human heart to the great father heart, 
 and not an address of man to man, and that chiefly this 
 expression should be confined to praise and thanksgiv-
 
 Religion and the Church. 2J 
 
 ing. When Mr. Sankey was here, he was inquired of 
 concerning tliis point, and his answer, very definitely 
 given, was that he regarded singing as possessing two 
 different offices in the pubUc services of the church 
 one of address to God, and another to man. Mr. Sankey 
 would not stand very high as an authority on such a 
 matter, but his idea is practically adopted in every hymn- 
 book with which we are acquainted. 
 
 Now, to us, there is something almost ridiculous in 
 the hymns which undertake the offices of teaching, preach- 
 ing, and exhortation. Think of a congregation wailing 
 out, to the old tunc " China," the words: 
 
 ' Why do yc mourn departing friends 
 Or shake at death's alarms ? '' 
 
 Or to some other tune : 
 
 " Think gently of the erring one, 
 And let us not forget 
 However darkly btained by sin, 
 He is our brother yet." 
 
 Or this, to old " Amsterdam : " 
 
 " Time is winging us away 
 To our eternal home ; 
 Life is but a winter's day 
 A journey to the tomb." 
 
 Or this: 
 
 " Behold the day is come, 
 
 The righteous Judge is near ; 
 And sinners trembling at their doom, 
 Shall soon their sentence hear. " 
 
 Or this exhortation: 
 
 " Why will yc waste on trifling cares 
 That life which God's compassion s[)arcs? "
 
 28 Evcry-Day Topics. 
 
 Or this statement and inquiry: 
 
 '' What various hindrances we meet 
 In coming to a mercy-seat ! 
 Yet who that knows the worth of prayer 
 But wishes to be often there?'' 
 
 I We take all the above extracts from the very best 
 hymn-book with which we are acquainted, and we sub- 
 mit that to stand up and sing them is an absurd perform- 
 ance, especially when it takes place in public. Some of 
 them are utterly unsingable when regarded with relation 
 to any natural impulse, or any gracious impulse, for that 
 matter. We laugh at the absurdities of the opera, at a 
 man who straddles around the stage, yelling his love or 
 his defiance to a tune, and our laugh is perfectly justifia- 
 ble. Bat for the reverence with which we regard every- 
 thing that has been even remotely associated with the 
 house and worship of God, we should say that the sing- 
 ing of such songs as these would be equally laughable. 
 Still, Mr. Sankey and those who agree with him will keep 
 on singing these songs, we suppose. It gives us great 
 pleasure, however, to notice that they are growing fewer 
 and fewer from year to year and from generation to gen- 
 eration, in new collections, and that the hymns that are 
 sung are addressed more and more to God, while to the 
 voice in the pulpit are left the various ol^ces to which 
 song has hitherto been, as we think, illegitimately sub- 
 jected. 
 
 Leaving the hymns, we come to the question of music. 
 What office has music in the public services of the 
 church ? Let us say right here that we have not ob- 
 jected to the hymns belonging to the class from which we 
 have quoted, because we do not think that man's sensi- 
 bilities should not be appealed to through music. We 
 have objected to them mainly because they are unnatu- 
 rally wedded to music. We do not naturally sing about
 
 Religion and the Church. 29 
 
 the judgment day, or about death, or about our erring 
 brother, or about the rapid passage of time. The wed- 
 ding of things like these to music is an absurdity. So 
 we recur to the question " What office has music in 
 the pubhc services of the church ? " It has two. The 
 first and foremost is to give a natural expression of the 
 feelings of the soul toward the object of its worship. 
 The second is to elevate the spirit and bring it into the 
 mood of worship and the contemplation of high and holy 
 things. It has an office quite independent of any words 
 with which it maybe associated. Music itself is a lan- 
 guage which many religious hearts understand, and by 
 which they are led into and through a multitude of re- 
 ligious thoughts and emotional exercises. The voluntary 
 upon the organ, played by a reverent man, is perfectly 
 legitimate sacred music, to be executed and listened 
 to at leisure. 
 
 Nobody, we presume, will question what we say about 
 this, yet in practice there is the widest difference among 
 pastors and churches. One pastor or church demands 
 the highest grade of music to be performed by a thorough- 
 ly drilled quartette or choir ; another subordinates the 
 choir, or discards it altogether, and will have nothing but 
 congregational singing. The former make very much of 
 the musical element, and do a great deal to act upon the 
 sensibilities of the worshippers through it. The latter 
 make little or nothing of the musical element, and think 
 that nothing is genuine public praise but that which is 
 engaged in by a whole congregation. Now, it is quite 
 easy to overdo the music of a church. That has been 
 done in this city, in many notable instances, but we very 
 much prefer a mistake in that direction to one in the 
 other. There are some ministers who forget that a choir 
 may just as legitimately lead the praise of a congrega- 
 tion, as any one of them may lead its prayer, and that a
 
 30 Every-Day Topics. 
 
 choir has a sacred office and function in the church quite 
 independent of themselves. If a preacher may be fol- 
 lowed in his petition by his congregation, certainly a 
 choir may be followed in its expression of thanksgiving. 
 
 For ourselves, we are very much afraid of the move- 
 ment toward congregational music. The tendency thus 
 far has been to depreciate not only the cjuality of music, 
 in the churches, but the importance of it, and to make 
 public worship very much less attractive to the great 
 world which it is the church's duty and policy to attract 
 and to influence. The churches are full, as a rule, where 
 the music is excellent. This fact may not be very flat- 
 tering to preachers, but it is a fact, and it is quite a legiti- 
 mate question whether a church has a right to surrender 
 any attraction that will give it a hold upon the attention 
 of the world, especially if that attraction is an elevating 
 one, and in the direct line of Christian influence. Con- 
 gregational singing is well enough in its place and pro- 
 portions, but very little of the inspiration of music comes 
 through it. It is, indeed, more of a torture than a pleas- 
 ure to many musical and devout people. The ideal 
 arrangement, as it seems to us, is a iirst class quartette, 
 made up of soloists, who take a prominent part in the 
 public service, with a single choral in each service given 
 to the congregation to sing. In this way, the two offices 
 of music in public religious assemblies seem to be se- 
 cured more surely and satisfactorily than in any other. 
 
 Some Thin Virtues. 
 As a working rule, in the conduct of life, we suppose 
 there is no better than that which has been denominated 
 " The Golden Rule," but its author could hardly h:i\ e 
 regarded it as the highest and best. There seems to be 
 no motive bound up in it but a selfish one, and no stand- 
 ard of morality but the actor's own desires. The Golden
 
 Religion and the ChnrcJi. 31 
 
 Rule, as wc call it, seems to be hardly more than com- 
 mon decency formulated. Nothing, obviously, can be 
 d jccnt in our treatment of others that we do not recog- 
 nize as proper and desirable in their treatment of our- 
 selves. It is a rule that seems to be made for supreme 
 selfishness. Refrain from putting your foot into another 
 pig's trough, unless you are willing to have another pig 
 put his foot into your trough. One of the great mistakes 
 of the world, and especially of the Christian world, is in 
 the conviction that this is a high rule of action, and that 
 the virtue based upon it is of superior value. It is the 
 thinnest kind of a virtue, and if there be not the love of 
 God and man behind it, to give it vitality and meaning, 
 it can never minister much to good character. What a 
 man does, actuated by the motive of love, he does nobly, 
 and the same thing may not be done nobly at all when 
 done in accordance with the rule to do to others what one 
 would like to have others do to himself. 
 
 There are other virtues that are very much over-esti- 
 mated, eminent among which is that of toleration. Wc 
 know of none so thin as this, yet this is one over which 
 an enormous amount of bragging is done. We talk 
 about the religious toleration practised by our govern- 
 ment, as if it were something quite unnatural for a gov- 
 ernment to protect its own people in the exercise of their 
 most precious opinions and privileges. The man who 
 personally tolerates all men, and all societies of men, in 
 the exercise of their opinions upon religion and politics, 
 is not without his boast of it, and a feeling that he h;is 
 outgrown most of the people around him. The sad thing 
 al)out it all is, of course, that a country or a community 
 can be so blind and stupid that toleration can appear to 
 l)e a virtue at all, or so bigoted and wilful that it can 
 even appear to be a \ice. 
 
 We thank no man for tolerating our opinions on any
 
 32 Every- Day Topics. 
 
 thing, nor do we give him any praise for it, any more 
 than we thank him for the liberty of breathing with him 
 a common air. Toleration is the name that we give to 
 the common decencies of intellectual and moral life. It 
 is the Golden Rule applied to the things of opinion and 
 expression. It is by no means a high affair. It is sim- 
 ply permitting others to do, in all matters of politics and 
 religion, freely, in our presence and society, what wc 
 claim the privilege of doing in their presence and society. 
 People who are intolerant and we are informed that 
 there are such in this country are simply indecent. 
 They are devoid of intellectual courtesy. They are 
 boors who are out of place among a free people, and, no 
 matter whom they may be, they ought to be persistently 
 snubbed until they learn polite intellectual manners. 
 The spirit of intolerance is a spirit of discourtesy and in- 
 sult, and there is no more praise due a man, or a sect, 
 for being tolerant, than there is due a man for being a 
 gentleman ; and we never saw a gentleman yet who 
 would not take praise for being a gentleman as involv- 
 ing an insult. It is at least the thinnest of all virtues to 
 brag about. 
 
 There is a virtue lying in this region, though, alas \ 
 but little known, which needs development. Toleration, 
 as we have said, is a very thin affair. Men tolerate each 
 other and each other's sentiments and opinions, and are 
 much too apt to be content with that. They altogether 
 overestimate the value of it, but beyond this there is in 
 some quarters, and ought to be in all quarters, a sense 
 of brotherhood among all honestly and earnestly inquir- 
 ing souls. There is no reason why Dean Stanley and 
 Mr. Darwin should not be the most affectionate friends. 
 There is no good reason why Cardinal Manning and Mr 
 Mattliew Arnold should not be on the most delightful 
 terms of intimacy. There is no good reason why Mr
 
 Religion and tire Church. 33 
 
 Frothingham and Dr. Hall, Dr. Draper and Dr. Taylor 
 should not be bound up in a loving brotherhood. They 
 undoubtedly tolerate one another now. It would be sim- 
 ply indecent for them to do anything less, but we fear 
 that we have not quite reached the period when these 
 men, with a profound respect for one another's man- 
 hood, truthfulness, and earnestness, recognize each other 
 as seekers for truth, and love and delight in each other 
 as such. We are all interested in the same things, but 
 wc happen to be regarding them from different angles. 
 
 Some of the sincerest men in the world are the doubt- 
 ers. 
 
 " There is more faith in honest doubt, 
 Believe me, than in half the creeds." 
 
 These men get very little of the sympathy that by right 
 belongs to them. They have as great a love for truth 
 as anybody, and are looking for it, but by the constitu- 
 tion of their minds, or by the power of an unfortunate 
 education, or the influence of an untoward personal ex- 
 perience, they find themselves thrown off into a region 
 of skepticism, where they have no congenial companion- 
 ship. They do not get even toleration, from those par- 
 ticularly who inherit their creeds, and to whom faith is 
 as natural as breathing. These men ought all and al- 
 ways to be brought affectionately into the great brother- 
 hood of truth-lovers and truth-seekers, and a Christian 
 of any name who cannot throw his warmest sympathies 
 around these, and regard them with a peculiarly affec- 
 tionate interest, must necessarily be a very poor sort of 
 creature. All honest truth-seekers are always trutli- 
 liaders, and all have something in possession that will be 
 of advantage to the others. Tlic ilitVcrcnccs between 
 tlicm are sources of wealth to the whole. 
 
 Tliis is true of all trulh-seekers, and it is particularly 
 true of the different sects of Christencloni. Let not the
 
 34 Every-Day Topics. 
 
 Catholic think for a moment that he has nothing to learn 
 of the Protestant, and let not the Protestant think that 
 he holds all truth to the exclusion of his Catholic brother. 
 The fact that all these sects exist and find vitality enough 
 in their ideas to keep them prosperously together, shows 
 that there is something to be learned, everywhere, and 
 among them all, and that the policy is poor which shuts 
 them away from one another's society. It is better to 
 remember that truth is one, and that those who are 
 earnestly after it, whether they deny Christianity or pro- 
 fess it, whether they are called by one name or another, 
 belong together, in one great sympathetic brotherhood of 
 affection and pursuit. 
 
 "Is Life Worth Living?" 
 Mr. Curtis once asked Mr. Greeley, in response to 
 a similar question put to him by the great editor, 
 " How do you know, Mr. Greeley, when you have suc- 
 ceeded in a public address ? " Mr. Greeley, not averse 
 to the perpetration of a joke at his own expense, replied : 
 " When more stay in than go out." Mr. Mallock's fa- 
 mous question, answered by himself in a weak way, and 
 repeated by Professor Mivart, and answered in a 
 stronger way, is practically voted on every day, by the 
 entire human race, and decided in the affirmative. 
 " More stay in than go out," for reasons very much less 
 important than those considered by Mr. Mallock and 
 Professor Mivart. There arc great multitudes of men 
 who possess neither the Roman Catholic faith nor right- 
 ness of life nor love, who yet live out their lives in the 
 firm conviction that it pays them to live men who are 
 open to no high considerations, such as would have 
 weight with the Mallocks and Mivarts. 
 
 There is a great pleasure in conscious being. So uni- 
 .vcrsal 13 this, that when a man occasionally takes hi^
 
 Religion and the Chnrch. 35 
 
 life, it is considered by those whom he leaves behind 
 him as presumptive proof that he is insane. 
 
 We say of a man who designedly ends his life that he 
 is not in his right mind. One of the most pathetic things 
 about death is the bidding good-bye to a body that has 
 been the nursery and home of the spirit which it has 
 charmed through the ministry of so many senses. 
 
 " For who, to dumb forgetfulncss a prey, 
 
 This pleasing anxious being e'er resigned, 
 Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day, 
 Nor cast one longing, ling'ring look behind ? " 
 
 Men find their pay for living in various ways. Hope 
 may lie to them, but they always believe her, neverthe- 
 less. The better things to come, of which she tells all 
 men, become, indeed, the substance of the things de- 
 sired ; that is, expectation is a constant joy and inspira- 
 tion. The pay for this day's trouble and toil is in the 
 reward which is expected to-morrow. That reward may 
 never come, but the hope remains ; and so long as that 
 lives, it pays to live. It pays some men to live, that 
 they may make money, and command the power that 
 money brings. To what enormous toils and sacrifices 
 the love and pursuit of money urge a great multitude of 
 men ! The judgment of these men as to whether life is 
 worth living is not to be taken at life's close, when they 
 sum up their possessions and what they have cost, but 
 while they are living and acting. A man whose life is 
 exhausted may well conclude that what he has won is 
 vanity ; but it was not vanity to him while he was win- 
 ning it, and, in the full possession of his powers, he l)e- 
 lieved that life was worth living. 
 
 Who shall estimate the inestimal:)le ? Who shall 
 weigh the value of the loves of life ? There are very fe\y 
 who do not sec a time in life when all their trials would
 
 36 Every -Day Topics. 
 
 be considered a cheap price to pay for the love they ex- 
 ercise and possess. The lover who wins and possesses 
 his mistress, and the mother who carries a man-child 
 upon her bosom, drink of a cup so full and so delicious 
 that, whatever may be the ills of life, they sink into in- 
 significance by its side. A single year of a great satisfy- 
 ing love spreads its charm over all the period that fol- 
 lows, and often sweetens a whole life. We have said that 
 there is great pleasure in conscious being, and the state- 
 ment covers more ground than at first view appears, for 
 all pleasures are simply augmentations of the conscious- 
 ness of being. The pleasure that comes of wine is of 
 this character it raises and intensifies the consciousness 
 of being, and makes the treasure of life itself for the 
 moment more abundant. It is so not only with all sen- 
 sual delights,but with all mental and spiritual pleasures. 
 They stimulate and enlarge the sense of life, the con- 
 sciousness of living existence, conferring upon it only 
 new forms and flavors. 
 
 The pursuit of money is only one of the pursuits of 
 Jifc. Fame, power, literary achievement, art in a hun- 
 dred forms, social eminence all these and more are 
 objects of pursuit, so absorbing and delightful that men 
 rind abundant reward in them. Life is quite worth liv- 
 ing to all those who find engaging objects of pursuit, and 
 especially to those who win success in their pursuits. 
 We repeat, therefore, that, by almost a unanimous vote, 
 the human race practically decides every day that life is 
 worth living. Mr. Mallock thinks it is worth living pro- 
 vided a man has faith in a great church ; and Professor 
 Mivart a Catholic himself thinks life's highest values 
 arc in the doing of duty and in love. We should be the 
 last to claim that happiness is the highest aim of life, 
 and that, unless that is secured, life is a failure, and not 
 worth living. To do right, to sacrifice one's self for love
 
 Religion and the Church. 37 
 
 these are better things than pleasure. To love and 
 to be loved these are things that pay. To be conscious 
 of nobility of character and unselfishness of life ; to be 
 conscious that our lives are brought into affectionate re- 
 lations with other and harmonious life what are these 
 but life's highest values ? What are these but the high- 
 est satisfactions of conscious being ? 
 
 If this be true, that character and duty and love are 
 better than pleasure and better than any success without 
 them, then there is no human being who needs to say 
 that life is not worth living. But the people who do not 
 succeed, who are unloved, who live lives of pain and 
 want and weakness what is there for these ? A chance 
 for conscious nobility of character and life ; and if this 
 be not enough, as it rarely is, a faith, not in a great 
 church, but in a good God, and an immortality that will 
 right the wrongs and heal the evils of the present life, 
 and round into completeness and symmetry its imper- 
 fections and deformities. Is it not foolish, after all, to 
 raise the question of success or failure in treating a life 
 that is only germinal or fractional ? 
 
 The Sermon. 
 We hear, in the different pulpits, a good many sorts 
 of sermons in these days, and from the pews we hear a 
 good many theories and ideas about sermons. In the 
 ministry of the Christian religion, the sermon seems to be 
 of growing importance, among all sects. The forms of 
 worship vary very little. Each sect has its prescribed, 
 or voluntary and yet habitual, formula of prayer and 
 praise, to which it adheres generation after generation. 
 It makes more or less of singing at different times, and 
 has its liturgical spasms ; but, on the whole, each sect 
 adheres to its form of worsliip with groat tenacity and 
 steadiness. The sermon, however, is subject to great
 
 38 Every -Day Topics. 
 
 changes, and is the result partly of the general culture 
 of its time, and partly of theories of preaching enter- 
 tained by the church. 
 
 The Episcopal Church in this country, like its mother 
 in England, is inclined more than any other denomina' 
 tion, except the Catholic, to make much of the service 
 and little of the sermon. The average sermon that one 
 hears in the established church in England, as in the 
 English continental chapels, is only a brief and unim- 
 pressive homily, written with great propriety, and deliv- 
 ered not only without passion, but without the slightest 
 attempt at oratory. To a man thirsting for religious 
 impression, or for intellectual stimulus, nothing drearier, 
 or more unrewarding, can be im^agined than this kind of 
 performance. Much more is made of the sermon in 
 this country than in England, however, and the Episco- 
 pal Church could not hold its own, and grow in impor- 
 tance and influence as it does among the American people 
 without a better sermon than prevails in the English 
 Church. The Brookses and Tyngs are among the most 
 hnpressive preachers we have, and the Episcopal sermon 
 is now generally like the sermons of the other sects 
 full of intellect, vitality and eloquence. Still the lean- 
 ing is toward the service, as the thing of paramount im- 
 portance. 
 
 In all the other denominations, however, the sermon 
 is the supreme thing. The prayers and the music are 
 simply preliminaries and supplementaries to the sermon. 
 The point of first interest is the topic, in its announce- 
 ment ; and the question as to whether the attendance at 
 church has paid is determined, almost entirely, by the 
 character of the discourse which follows. Whether this 
 partiality to the sermon is right or not, wc do not care 
 to judge. We take the fact as it stands, for the ])uri)nse 
 of saying a \vt)rd on the kind of scrmun demanded in
 
 Religion and the Church. 39 
 
 these days. Among preachers who arc not "sensa- 
 tional," as the word goes, we hear a good deal now aboi:t 
 and against " sensational preaching." We confess that 
 we like sensational preaching, if by the phrase is indi- 
 cated that which produces a sensation. If by this phrase, 
 however, it is intended to indicate the kind which is ac- 
 companied by theatrical tricks, and startling phrase- 
 ology, and rough pulpit manners, we dislike it as much 
 as any one can. A clown is never more out of place 
 than when he is in a pulpit ; and we may add that the 
 true orator is never more in his proper place than there. 
 A man who has the power to wake up his audience intel- 
 lectually, to rouse their sympathies, to address them by 
 motives so powerful as to exalt them to determination or 
 to action, is the true sensational preacher. This is the 
 man who attracts a crowd ; and the man who can be 
 relied upon to do this every Sunday, is the man who 
 holds the crowd. 
 
 A great deal of fault is found with " intellectual 
 preaching," but it is pretty well understood now that 
 nothing else will be attractive. The world knows its 
 duty well enough now. The sermon that is simply good, 
 that is charged only with the commonplaces of religion 
 and morality, and never rises into eloquence or a high 
 range of thought or feeling, might almost as well go un- 
 preached. It accomplishes little beyond disgusting its 
 hearers with going to church. The obvious, common 
 things that may be said about any given text of Scrip- 
 ture, arc exactly the things that ought never to be said in 
 the pulpit, for in these things the pulpit is no wiser than 
 the pew. One of the great reasons for the lack of pop- 
 ular attraction to the pulpit lies in the fact that brains 
 cnougli arc not put into the sermons. The thinking in 
 a sermon must be superior to the average thinking of an 
 audience, to produce any elfecl upon it, aiul if, in thcio
 
 40 Evcry-Day Topics. 
 
 days, any man no matter how gifted he may be imag- 
 ines that he may halt in his enterprise of earnest and 
 profound preparation for his preaching, without damage 
 to himself or his work, he is sadly mistaken. His slip- 
 shod stuff will be detected every time, and pass to his 
 discredit. 
 
 We know of no profession or calling so exacting in its 
 demands as that of the pulpit ; we know of none that is 
 capable of winning greater rewards of influence and 
 affection, but in these days the pulpit is a bad place for 
 a lazy man, or one who is inclined in any way to under- 
 rate the popular intelligence concerning both his profes- 
 sion and himself. Goodish homilies have gone out, and 
 high discourses have come in. The best thinking that 
 the best men can do, the best English they can com- 
 mand, and the most impressive delivery of which they 
 are the inasters, are called for, every time they appear 
 before those who have sufficiently loved and trusted 
 them to place them in their high office. The public are 
 not deceived. No facility of words can cover sterility of 
 thinking. A preacher who docs not do his best every 
 time is in constant danger of doing himself irretrievable 
 damage. 
 
 There arc certain economies of pulpit oratory that 
 demand more attention from our most successful preach- 
 ers of sermons. It is a great temptation to a powerful 
 man who finds a plastic congregation in his hands, to 
 continue his conquest of conviction and emotion beyond 
 the point of triumph. There is a charm in mastery 
 which leads to long sermons to talking after the sermon 
 is done. This breeds uneasiness, and always detracts 
 from the best result. It is always a mistake, and we 
 know of a dozen eminent men who are constantly mak- 
 ing it. 
 
 After all, the best and most important qualification^ for
 
 Religion and the CJncrcJi. 41 
 
 preaching a good sermon is an overmastering belief in 
 Christianity. There is so much preaching done that 
 leads to admiration of the preacher rather than to faith 
 in and love of Christ, that earnestness cannot be too 
 much insisted on, or too highly estimated. So it is an 
 excellent thing for a preacher to be a Christian, if he de- 
 sires to accomplish by his preaching anything beyond 
 his own elevation. 
 
 Mr. Huxley's Visit. 
 
 We are not among those Avho deprecated Mr. Huxley's 
 late visit to America, and certainly not among those 
 who regret that he came. There was an indefinable 
 dread of the man among many religious circles, as if he 
 were not only an enemy, but a very powerful enemy, 
 who was pretty sure to do mischief The result, we are 
 sure, not only disappointed them, but failed to give the 
 expected support to those who have been inclined to 
 favor the Darwinian hypothesis. The first lecture in- 
 troduced a trick quite unworthy a fearless man of science, 
 viz., that of making Milton bear the onus of the Mosaic 
 account of the Creation. To whip the Bible around the 
 shoulders of the great poet, and assume to fight a man, 
 when, in truth, he intended to fight what all believers 
 agree in regarding as a sacred book, and most of them 
 as an inspired and authoritative book, was not a pretty 
 or a manly thing to do. It was a cunning performance, 
 we admit, but it was the performance of a pettifogger, 
 and detracted very materially from the popular respect 
 which had been accorded to the man and his utterances. 
 
 It is to be presumed that Mr. Darwin's principal apos- 
 tle would present his facts and his arguments in the 
 niost convincing way possible to him. He took three 
 evenings for the task, and had the held all to liimself ; 
 but v.'C do not hesitate to s;iv lluU he lailed in the " de-
 
 42 Every-Day Topics. 
 
 monstrative evidence " offered in his closing lecture to 
 fulfil the promises made in the first two. Had he de- 
 monstrated the soundness of his theory, people would 
 have believed in it. That the most of them did not, 
 ought to be regarded by Mr. Huxley as evidence worthy, 
 at least, of his consideration that his " demonstrative 
 evidence " demonstrated nothing. For, let it be remem- 
 bered, the religious mind of the country is not as much 
 afraid of the theory of evolution as it was, and is not proof 
 against conviction, as it might once have been. It has ap- 
 prehended and accepted the fact that it takes as great a 
 power to originate an order of beings through evolution 
 as by a direct act of creation, and that to bind up all the 
 possibilities and potencies of life in protoplasmic masses, 
 or ascidian cells, is as marked an exhibition of Almighti- 
 ness and infinite ingenuity as it would be to speak into 
 existence the perfected creatures which we know, and 
 which we are. 
 
 We do not hesitate to say that the audiences which 
 assembled to listen to Mr. Huxley were tractable audi- 
 ences. They were not only tractable, but they were 
 capable. They were fully adequate to the understanding 
 of his theory, and the weighing of his evidences and 
 arguments ; and we have yet to learn that he largely, or 
 even appreciably, increased the number of his disci- 
 ples. Men went away feeling that, after all, the theory 
 of evolution was nothing but a theory, that it is still so 
 much an hypothesis that it can lay no valid claim to 
 a place in science. Certainly, Mr. Huxley shook no 
 soundly reasoning man's belief in God as the author 
 of all life. " In the beginning, God created the heaven 
 and the earth." When that beginning was, how many 
 ages that beginning covered, nobody pretends at this 
 day to know. Everybody knows, however, that a stream 
 can rise no higher than its fountain. If the conduits and
 
 Religion and the Chureh. -^3 
 
 receptacles into wliich that stream has been poured arc 
 capable of retaining it, and incapable of conducting it 
 further, it may not rise so high. It seems to us repug- 
 nant to human reason that a low form of life, uninformed 
 by a higher life, has the power to evolve a form of 
 life higher than itself. There is not an analogy of 
 nature which does not niilitate against such a conclu- 
 sion. There are none of the lessons of science which 
 do not lead directly away from it. God may work 
 toward creative ends through processes of evolution, or 
 he may not. A horse may have been derived from a 
 three-toed animal, one of whose toe-nails spread into a 
 hoof, with its wonderful tarsus and metatarsus, or he 
 may not. A man may have descended, or ascended, 
 from a monkey, or he may have been created by a di- 
 vine fiat. It matters very little, so long as God is recog- 
 nized as the author of life, and the designer of its multi- 
 tudinous forms. 
 
 And here is where all the trouble and fear originate. 
 The Christian theist shrinks from losing his God. He 
 finds that as philosophers go mousing among second 
 causes, they lose the disposition to look up. When Mr. 
 Tyndall asserts that he finds in matter the promise and 
 the potency of all forms and qualities of life, the Chris- 
 tian sees that God is left out of the question altogether, 
 that the creation is left without a creator, that life is left 
 without an author, that his hope is vain, and that his 
 faith is also vain. He is accounted but an animal of the 
 highest class, that propagates other animals, and he and 
 they are to die, and conic to an end. He can contem- 
 plate such a conclusion only with horror. His life loses 
 all its meaning in the j^rescnce of it. If this is all ; if we 
 are only animals ; if we have no res])C)nsibility ; if our 
 destiny does not take hold of eternity, he will say, " let 
 us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die."
 
 44 Evcry-Day Topics. 
 
 It seems to us to be about time for Christian men and 
 women, and especially for Christian teachers, to stop 
 shaking in the presence of science and scientific men, in 
 the fear that God is to be counted out of the universe, 
 for such a conclusion is simply impossible. The re- 
 ligious element in man, in all ages and among all peo- 
 ples, is, perhaps, the highest proof we have that a Being 
 exists who is to be worshipped, loved, adored, obeyed. 
 Beyond this lies the impossibility of conceiving the " be- 
 ginning " of anything without a supreme first cause. 
 To suppose that a nebulous mass appeared in one of the 
 interstellar spaces, of itself ; that, after a time, motion 
 began in it, of itself, and went on until the whole mass 
 revolved and commenced condensation ; that one after 
 another it threw off rings which cracked and curled up 
 into burning worlds, always condensing and cooling, 
 and revolving around the great mass in the centre ; that 
 in one of these worlds, incandescent at first, there went 
 on for ages and eons the processes that were to fit it for 
 the residence of life, and that then life appeared upon 
 it, of itself, in such myriad forms and adaptations that 
 the most industrious and ingenious human inquirer is 
 left utterly at a loss to comprehend so much as the hum- 
 blest plant at his feet, or the tiniest insect, to say noth- 
 ing of his own body and his own mind, we say that to 
 suppose that all this took place without an infinite ex- 
 ercise of power and ingenuity, without intelligent 
 adaptation of means to ends, is to suppose an absurdity 
 which no healthy reason, healthily working, can possibly 
 accept. 
 
 It is not only time for Christian men to stop shaking 
 before science and scientific men, but it is time to re- 
 ceive them as discoverers of God's works and ways of 
 working. We have learned a great deal from them, and 
 we are to learn a great deal more. We arc not con-
 
 Religion and the Church. 45 
 
 cerned in their conclusions. We may pity them for their 
 bUndncss and egotism, but we must respect them for 
 their earnest work and their honesty. It will all come 
 out right in the end. Their work is only begun, and, in 
 the meantime, God will not be left without witnesses. 
 Side by side with the advancement of science, the reign 
 of religion advances in the world. Many of our old be- 
 liefs will be cast aside ; many of our old dogmas will be 
 shown to be baseless ; but the belief in God and the 
 confidence of his paternal interest in man will not only 
 never die out, but they will increase with every onward 
 step that science achieves. 
 
 Falling from High Places. 
 High Christian society, both in New York and Brook- 
 lyn, has been shocked again and again during the past 
 few years, by the fall from rectitude of its eminent 
 members. These cities have not been singular in their 
 experiences. Philadelphia, Boston, and Chicago, have 
 all furnished their instances of fall from high Christian 
 and social positions into infamy. Men who have been 
 trusted have betrayed their trusts. ]\Icn who have 
 " made a good profession" have shamefully or shame- 
 lessly belied their profession. Whole families have gone 
 down into financial ruin and social disgrace with these 
 men. Some of the delinquents are serving out their 
 terms in the State prison, and some of their innocent 
 victims and family friends are in lunatic asylums. The 
 whole matter has been horrible too horrible to dwell 
 upon, or talk about. It has even been too solemn and 
 suggestive to gossip over. Under the revelations of 
 these great iniquities, carried on for years in secret, men 
 h:ne trembled for tlicmselves and their friends. It has 
 been feared that these were but the out-croppings of an 
 underlying mass of infidelity to truth and honor. Wc
 
 46 Every-Day Topics. 
 
 have almost dreaded to look into the morning papers, 
 lest some more shocking fall than all should be re- 
 vealed. 
 
 Of course there has been a good deal of comment upon 
 the subject wise and otherwise. The scoffer at reli- 
 gion has had his fling. The conscious scamp has had 
 his little crow over his long-bruited conclusion that men 
 are all alike, and that all are scamps as far as they dare 
 to be. But the good men and women, in the church and 
 out of it, have taken the whole matter very sadly to 
 heart ; and they wonder what it means. Why is it, at 
 this particular time, that there should fall upon the 
 Christian church such disgrace in the fall of its mem- 
 bers ? Has Christianity no hold upon men ? Does ic 
 give them no strength under temptation ? Does it in no 
 way put them beyond temptation ? How is it that men 
 can go on punctiliously in the performance of their out- 
 ward Christian duties, while consciously guilty of offences 
 against the law which, if proved, would consign their 
 persons to prison and their names to public execration ? 
 
 There is a good deal that might be said upon the 
 matter, but there are only two things which we care to 
 notice. The first is that we have passed and are passing 
 through an exceptional period in political, social, and 
 financial history. Smooth times would have spared us 
 most of the disasters which we so sadly lament. The 
 civil war furnished great opportunities for making money 
 rapidly, and the men who made it rapidly raised their 
 style of living to a luxurious grade. So many made 
 money swiftly that they had the power to revolutionize 
 the general style of living. In this way, life became 
 more expensive to everybody, and the most extraordi- 
 nary exertions were made by all men to win a share in 
 the general prosperity, and to display a share in their 
 dresses, equipages, and homes. We did not hear very
 
 Religion and tJie CJtnrch. 47 
 
 much about betrayals of trust while the prosperity was 
 in progress ; but when the times began to pinch, and 
 men were trying to bridge over little gaps in their in- 
 come, without showing to their families or their friends 
 that they were in trouble, the mischief began. The 
 first steps were undoubtedly very small, and were in- 
 tended to be immediately retraced ; but the pinch in 
 the times did not relax, and the false steps never were 
 retraced and never could be retraced. The following 
 ones were the steps that a man makes when dragged at 
 the tail of a hangman's cart irresistible. 
 
 Now wc arc simply harvesting the crop. The mis- 
 chief began long since, under the pressure of special 
 and exceptional temptations. But ought not Christianity 
 to have been equal to such an emergency as this ? This 
 is the question the church is asking of itself This is the 
 question the world is asking of the church, and this is 
 the second point that we have thought worth considering 
 in this article. 
 
 Now why does the world ask of the church such a 
 question as this ? Who taught the world its morality ? 
 Where did it acquire its nice notions of personal honor 
 and honesty? Whose influence has planted in the 
 public mind the sense of integrity and purity the sense 
 of the heinousness of infidelity to private and public 
 trusts ? Christianity has been the world's teacher, and 
 it only asks the question which the church has taught it 
 to ask. Why does the church feel througli all its mem- 
 bership the deep disgrace of these untoward revelations, 
 save for the reason that it is truly Christian, and is per- 
 meated and moved by the spirit which these crimes ha\e 
 violated. If the church were trying to co\er up these 
 crimes and to sliicld these criminals ; if she were not 
 shocked and grieved to licr centre ; if she were not sadly 
 questioning herself as to the causes of these terrible
 
 48 Evcry-Day Topics. 
 
 backslidings, she might be flouted with them. As it is, 
 no decent man will fail to give her his sympathy. 
 
 Feeling just this, and saying so much as this, we be- 
 lieve that we have the liberty to say a little more. We 
 feel at least the liberty to ask a question or two. Is it 
 not possible that in the pulpit teaching of the present day 
 we make a little too much of salvation, and not quite 
 enough of righteousness ? a little too much of the tree, 
 and not quite enough of the fruit ? a little too much 
 about a " saving faith," and not quite enough of good 
 works ? a little too much of believing, and not quite 
 enough of living? a little too much of dogma, and not 
 quite enough of character ? Certainly the pulpit has 
 erred in this matter, and erred not a little. It is the 
 weak place, not only in modern preaching, but in modern 
 orthodox theology of all names ; and if the church wishes 
 to learn the lesson of her failures, she will find it here. 
 A man whose principal motive is to get himself saved by 
 compliance with certain hard conditions of repentance 
 and service, is a pretty poor staff to lean upon in the 
 emergency of a temptation which attacks his selfishness 
 from another direction. Our revival preaching, unless 
 supplemented by a long course of instruction in morality, 
 is pretty poor stuff. It serves its temporary purpose 
 well enough, perhaps ; but if conversion is anything less 
 than the beginning of a drill and training in righteous- 
 ness, it amounts to very little. 
 
 The Bondagk of the Pulpit. 
 The phrase which furnishes the title of this article is 
 not original. We borrow it of a distinguished orthodox 
 theological professor in Rochester, who, having omitted 
 the articles which he wrote upon it from liis " Free Lance " 
 book, has got through with it, we supjiose, and has thus 
 left it for the use of those who are not likely to become
 
 Religion and the Church. 49 
 
 theological professors. We choose it now to introduce 
 a few words with relation to the criticism of certain 
 papers upon recent articles of ours on the proscription 
 of certain ministers for opinion's sake. 
 
 First, if we have seemed to blame the ecclesiastical 
 bodies that deposed Dr. Blauvelt and Mr. Miller from 
 the ministerial office, let us place ourselves right. We 
 have not intended to blame them. We do not see how, 
 regarding the work of these men as they did, and under 
 the obligations of constitution and rule which were upon 
 them, they could have done otherwise. They were not 
 at liberty to do otherwise. However much personal 
 liking for, or sympathy with these writers, the ecclesias- 
 tical bodies may have felt, they had no choice in deal- 
 ing with them. Dr. Blauvelt and Mr. Miller had thought 
 and come to conclusions outside of the machine, and the 
 machine was obliged to cut off their heads. The trouble 
 is with the machine, and the machine and the machine- 
 makers and defenders are what we have our quarrel with. 
 
 It will be noticed that although the men in question 
 have been cast out of the ministry, they have not been 
 cast out of the church. That is entirely another thing. 
 They may still be as all believe them to be good 
 Christians, but they are not good sectarians ; and tliat 
 is all that this deposition ;iicans. They have modified 
 their creed without in any way degrading their Christian 
 character or Christian life. Indeed, the latter may have 
 been very much improved and elevated. At any rate, 
 their behavior shows very well by the side of that of the 
 bodies which deposed them. Now what we want to 
 show is simply this : th.it men Christian men have 
 been cut off from useful positions, not because they have 
 not Christian characters, li\cs. purposes, influence, but 
 because, following the li;;ht wliicli Cod lias given them 
 in their reason, and loy.-l to the \oice ol conscience, they
 
 50 Every- Day Topics. 
 
 have declared that some of their views of Christian truth 
 are changed. This is what we find fault with, viz., that 
 the church the sectarian church, and we hardly have 
 any other is not large enough to think in ; that it vir- 
 tually puts a limitation to progress in the development 
 of Christian opinion. We have no quarrel with men ; 
 we have no quarrel with newspapers. We would like to 
 do what we can to make a larger place for Christian 
 teachers. Do they object to it ? Can they not be 
 trusted in a larger place ? Would they be likely to 
 abuse their liberty if their creeds were shorter and more 
 elastic ? Then we must reverse all our American ideas 
 of the influence of liberty upon the intelligent human 
 mind. 
 
 The Christian at Work undertakes to expose to us 
 the absurdity of our fault-finding with the degradation 
 from office of Messrs. Blauvelt and Miller in these words : 
 
 " But let us put to the accomplished editor of Scribncr's one 
 question : Suppose he accepted an article from an author, to be 
 written on a certain subject, for the editorial department of Scrib- 
 iicr's ; suppose the article contained an urgent plea for Commun- 
 ism and Socialism, honestly advocating them as essential to the 
 welfare of society and in accordance with the spirit of our age ; 
 would the editor print that article ; and if not would there be 
 ' anything like free thought or free speech within the ' limits of the 
 Scribncr covers ? would there be a magazine writer who would 
 not realize that 'his brain is imprisoned and his hands tied?' 
 Does not the editor oi Scribner see how absurd his position is ? " 
 
 Is it as bad as this ? Can the relation which exists 
 between the constituting power and the minister in of- 
 fice be compared to that which exists between an edi- 
 tor and his subordinates ? Is he but a mouthpiece of 
 embodied ecclesiastical opinion? Has he absolutely ivo 
 liberty at all? Are reason, conscience, heavenly tc:';;i- 
 ing and inspiration for which the minister pray;;, only i > 
 h.ivj pLiy within ccrlain bouiu'.i, imposed Ijy oulbulj
 
 Religion and tJic Church. 51 
 
 human authority ? Then the teacher is indeed a slave, 
 and is degraded by the act which installs him in office. 
 
 But the comparison is not entirely fair to us or to the 
 writer's own side of the question. The conditions are 
 not quite so bad as he represents them. He has seen fit 
 to confine his illustration to editorial articles to the 
 editor's individual opinions. He would be more just if 
 he would apply it to the whole magazine, and there we 
 should meet him with the statement that while the drift 
 and purpose of the Monthly are strongly along the lines 
 of religion and morality of liberty and purity and tem- 
 perance and Christian culture so strongly that no fool 
 can mistake them, and no fool does mistake them we 
 are all the time publishing opinions which we do not be- 
 lieve in. Wc should not be disposed to suppress a plea 
 for socialism or communism, if it were well written, by a 
 true and honest man, though we hold the doctrines which 
 these words popularly represent in lively detestation. Wc 
 have always been trying to give the world of thinkers a fair 
 chance, and to let the people know what honest thinkers 
 are thinking, and what they arc thinking about. Orthodox 
 and heterodox alike have been welcomed in these pages, 
 and the liberty of the latter has always seemed to make 
 them more interesting writers. The orthodox are always 
 running their machine, whether as politicians or secta- 
 rians, and never dare to get outside of it. We never fail 
 to know what they are going to say. We have been 
 hearing it for nearly sixty years, and, while it did very 
 well for the first thirty, tlie reiteration becomes tiresome. 
 
 We heard defined, a few Sundays since, from a pulpit 
 as generous as it is able, the distinction between a pro- 
 fession and a vocation. Tliere are men w!io choose to 
 be preacliers. Having carefully weighed all other pro- 
 fosMons in the balance, they adopt tlu' minisLcrial pio- 
 fesjiou ; yet a great niulliluJe of iheiu liave no vocaliua.
 
 52 Every -Day Topics. 
 
 They are not called to preach. It is not a '"woe" to 
 them if they do not preach. They do not preach be- 
 cause they must preach. We can imagine a set of sim- 
 ple professional men, who will be willing to take their 
 creed and stay with it, and stand by it, and persecute 
 their betters who, with the vocation to preach, take their 
 license from the highest source, and the liberty that al- 
 ways goes with it. When such men as Swing and Eg- 
 gleston and Murray, with their crowded churches, find 
 themselves happier outside of the great sectarian organ- 
 izations than within them more attractive, more use- 
 ful, more influential the people ought to learn some- 
 thing of the vivifying effect of Christian liberty, and the 
 necessity of either casting aside, or, if that be not prac- 
 ticable, of greatly modifying, the old machines. A min- 
 ister who apprehends enough of essential Christian truth to 
 be a thorough Christian himself, in character and in life, is 
 good enough to teach, if he has a divine vocation to teach, 
 and the inachine that cuts off his head is a wretched 
 machine, which, in our opinion, ought to be smashed. 
 
 But what a lot of " religious newspapers" would be 
 smashed under it ! Ah ! We had not thought of that ! 
 How we should dislike to lose The New York Observer 
 and TJie Congrcgationalist ! (Handkerchief.) 
 
 Sunday Bummers. 
 The poor we have always with us, and whenever we 
 will we may do them good. And the will to do them 
 good, in a spiritual and religious sense, at least, is very 
 genuine and very abounding. The churches, as a rule, 
 cherish no desire more sincere than that of preacliing 
 the gospel to the poor, without money and without price. 
 We do not stop to inquire how much of the proselyting 
 spirit may be connected with this desire, or what worth- 
 less motives may sophisticate it. Their wish to do good
 
 Religioji and the Church. 53 
 
 to the poor is genuine enough, and to do it at their own 
 expense. If the poor could know how heartily they 
 would be welcomed in houses of worship frequented 
 mainly by the rich and the well-to-do, they would cer- 
 tainly lose their shyness, and learn a kindlier feeling for 
 those more fortunate than themselves. It is undoubtedly 
 the business of the rich to provide religious privileges 
 for the poor, and the duty of the poor to accept them. 
 They may do this without loss of self-respect, and with- 
 out the cultivation of the pauper spirit. 
 
 There is, however, a real difference between " God's 
 poor" and man's poor. There are great multitudes 
 who, do what they will and what they can, must always 
 be poor. Few and inefficient hands to labor, and many 
 mouths to feed, sickness, misfortune all the causes of 
 adversity produce poverty which seems to be remedi- 
 less ; and those who are afflicted with such poverty may 
 legitimately be called " God's poor." These are the 
 involuntary poor, enveloped and embarrassed by cir- 
 cumstances which render it impossible for them to rise 
 out of poverty. For these, the Christian man will do 
 what he can without pauperizing them, and he knows 
 tliat there is no form of bcncticcncc so little likely to do 
 them harm as that of providing for their religious instruc- 
 tion and inspiration. lie knows also that the rectifica- 
 tion and elevation of habits which arc the natural out- 
 come of religious and spiritual influences, are ministers 
 always to the poor man's temporal prosperity. 
 
 In contradistinction from these, there are those whom 
 we may properly call " man's poor." They are people 
 who spend upon themselves, out of an income not gener- 
 ous, perhaps, but competent, so much that they have 
 nothing left with which to bear their portion of the bur- 
 dens of society. They live well, they dress well, they 
 maintain what they consider a respectable position in
 
 54 Every -Day Topics. 
 
 society, they go to the theatre whenever it may seem desi- 
 rable ; they spend upon themselves and their luxuries 
 their entire income, and habitually steal their preaching. 
 Many of these people are quite regular in their attend- 
 ance upon the Sunday services of the church, but they 
 never unite with it, or assume a single responsibility 
 connected with it. There are churches in New York, as 
 we presume there may be in most cities, which are the 
 favorite resorts of the bummers churches which, by the 
 numbers in attendance on Sundays, seem to be prosper- 
 ous, but which, from the fact that they are so largely 
 made up of bummers, cannot support themselves or 
 their pastors. These worshippers make a very well- 
 dressed congregation, but they offer a very poor field for 
 preaching and pastoral work. They do not even intro- 
 duce themselves to the pastors to whose preaching they 
 listen. When they become a little ashamed of this Sun- 
 day bumming at one church, they go to another. The 
 sexton knows them at last, and understands exactly what 
 they are and what they are doing. A little self-denial 
 would give all these people the right to a pew, and save 
 them from the meanness of appropriating that which 
 honest people are obliged to pay for. 
 
 Now, there is nothing in the world better calculated to 
 bring dry-rot into character than this Sunday bumming. 
 To go week after week to church, assuming no responsi- 
 bility, paying for no privilege, and taking no part what- 
 ever except that of a thief or sponge, can have no influ- 
 ence better than that of unfitting a man for society. He 
 who is not one of God's poor has no right to privileges 
 that he does not pay for, in or out of the church, and 
 the man who becomes willing to avail himself of the 
 generosity of others, in order that he may spend more 
 upon his artificial wants, becomes a pauper at heart and 
 a thief in fact.
 
 Religion and the Church, 55 
 
 The great majority of Sunday bummers ought to be 
 ashamed of themselves, for even their church-going very 
 often grows out of their love of rcspectabihty and of the 
 usages of respectable society. But the young, and par- 
 ticularly young men, should be warned against the prac- 
 tice. The Sunday bummer is nearly always the occu- 
 pant of a boarding-house, a fact which at least partly 
 accounts for his demoralization. We do not think it 
 often happens that the occupant of a genuine home 
 steals his preaching. All sorts of moral obliquities and 
 social loosenesses are generated in boarding-houses 
 and Sunday bumming among the rest. A man without a 
 home is a pretty poor member of society, as a rule. It 
 is not apt to occur to him that he has any stake or any 
 duty in society, so he takes what society gives him, and 
 avails himself of the privilege of squatting upon the rest. 
 Young men coming to the city to live for it must be 
 remembered that the Sunday bummer is peculiarly the 
 product of the city should by all means avoid a habit 
 which will always tell against them. The first thing a 
 young man starting out into independent life should do 
 is to take squarely upon his shoulders the social burdens 
 that belong to him. The policy breeds manliness and 
 self-respect and will remove him from all liability to be- 
 come the poor creature known as the Sunday bummer. 
 
 "The Machine" in New England. 
 There is a thrifty manufacturing village, about five 
 miles from Springfield, in Massachusetts, called Indian 
 Orchard, and there is a Congregational church there, 
 which, some years since, called to be its pastor the Rev. 
 James F. Merriam, the son of an excellent orthodox 
 deacon in Doctor Buckingham's church in Springfield. 
 The church had known the young man from his youth 
 up known his history, his opinions, his infiuence. He
 
 56 Every-Day Topics. 
 
 had already had one settlement in the town of Farming- 
 ton, Connecticut, where he had been much beloved, 
 Mr. Merriam accepted the call of the Indian Orchard 
 church, and a council of Congregational ministers was 
 called together to go through the formalities of installa- 
 tion. It so happened, however, that the young man was 
 an independent thinker, and could not state his ortho- 
 doxy exactly in terms satisfactory to the council, and 
 that he was " shaky " on the dogma of everlasting pun- 
 ishment. So far as we are able to learn, the only other 
 point of doubtful orthodoxy related to the atonement, 
 and the following are Mr. Merriam's own words as to 
 this : " While we may differ as to philosophical state- 
 ments of it, I believe I am at one with our accepted in- 
 terpretation as to the bottom truth, viz.: that God in 
 Christ's death, suffered in his own divine nature for us, 
 and that it signified God's free forgiveness to the repent- 
 ant of their sins." 
 
 Well, the council voted eight to six, not to install the 
 candidate mainly, we understand, because he was not 
 sound on the subject of everlasting punishment. Six f 
 the fourteen indicated by their votes either that, in their 
 opinion, he was sound, or that his opinions concerning 
 that dogma were not such as would interfere with his 
 usefulness as a pastor and religious teacher. The coun- 
 cil dissolved, having done what it could to shut the can- 
 didate's mouth and deprive the people of Indian Orchard 
 of the pastor of their choice. Then the people, spurn- 
 ing the action of the council, engaged Mr. Merriam to 
 supply their pulpit, and to become in all respects their 
 pastor and teacher ; and he, like a sensible man, ac- 
 cepted their invitation, protesting that there should be 
 neither ill-feeling nor ill-speaking against the council 
 which, he did not doubt, had performed its work most 
 conscientiously. And it is noteworthy just here that the
 
 Religion and the Chnrcli. 57 
 
 pastor and delegate from Farmington, the seat of Mr. 
 Merriam's former pastorate, voted for his settlement. 
 The result of the action of the council has been the 
 welding of all hearts in Indian Orchard into one for the 
 support of Mr. Merriam, the increase of his influence, and 
 the production of a local excitement and discussion, the 
 results of which will not be reckoned up in many years. 
 
 We have noticed this case simply because it is an in- 
 structive indication of the drift of the times. It indi- 
 cates : 
 
 First. That " the machine " is no longer identical 
 with the church. The machine docs its work in the 
 regular way, and the church repudiates it, tramples on 
 it, tears up its decisions and throws them away. 
 
 Second. That the machine itself is undergoing a pro- 
 cess of disorganization. The vote in the council needed 
 but one change to make it a tie, and but two changes to 
 reverse the decision. Out of fourteen persons, six either 
 harmonized with Mr. Merriam's views, or did not con- 
 sider them of importance as hinderances to his useful- 
 ness. This is a tremendous change from the orthodoxy 
 of the fathers, and shows very plainly that the orthodox 
 creeds are in the future to have a more liberal interpre- 
 tation, or that there will soon come, as a necessity, a re- 
 statement in a briefer or a materially modified form of 
 the doctrines that make up the common opinion of the 
 orthodox churches of the country. Our own judgment is 
 that the votes given for Mr. Merriam were little else than 
 demands for greater personal liberty in the interpretation 
 of a creed. There must be this liberty if men are going 
 to think at all, or else there must be self-stultification. 
 
 Third. That the action of the church at Indian Or- 
 chard, and the astonishingly wide and earnest sympathy 
 with it manifested by the churches in the vicinity, are 
 proofs that dogmatic theology is losing its old hold upon
 
 58 Every- Day Topics. 
 
 the popular mind. The people are in. advance of the 
 clergy in perceiving that the spirit of the Master, the 
 heart filled with love and good-will and the life with un- 
 selfishness and purity, are of very much more impor- 
 tance than opinions and speculations upon the doctrine 
 of everlasting punishment. To turn such a man as Mr. 
 Merriam is universally conceded to be away from a field 
 of usefulness, where his Christian spirit and sunny temper 
 and helpful counsels and ardent love of men might be 
 of the greatest use in helping souls to heaven, because 
 he did not believe in the same sort of a hell that the 
 council believed in, is not recognized by the churches as 
 a wise we had almost said a decent thing to do. 
 
 We have seen nothing more hopeful in these later 
 times than the result of this Indian Orchard business. 
 It is not only a triumph of Christian liberty for to-day, 
 but it amounts to a declaration that there is to be more 
 liberty in the future. It amounts, too, to a declaration 
 that the religion of the head is losing its prominence in 
 the religion of the churches. We are lamenting almost 
 every week the fall of some man from a high position in 
 the church, and we are beginning to find out what it 
 means. We are beginning to learn that any form of or- 
 ganized Christianity which makes much of faith and little 
 of works especially when that faith is made to cover 
 long strings of dogmatic statements which insists rig- 
 idly on the possession of sound opinions and takes small 
 note of an unsound heart, which discards ministers for 
 heresy and hastens to cover up ministerial failures in 
 morality and charity, which plants itself in the way of a 
 true man because he cannot as a true man pronounce its 
 shibboleth we say that we are beginning to learn tluit 
 any form of organized Christianity which does all this, 
 just as naturally produces untrustworthy Christians as 
 the earth produces weeds. Why should it not ?
 
 Religion and the Church. 59 
 
 Let the concluding paragraph of Mr. Merriam's ex- 
 position of liis faith, made before the Indian Orchard 
 council be ours. He says : 
 
 " In conclusion, I would add that I believe Christianity has as 
 yet made but a beginning of the great work it is to do. I antici- 
 pate a speedy and wonderful development ; because as the race 
 grows intellectually and morally, so do its conceptions of Christ 
 and the priceless import of his teaching become more adequate. 
 I not only believe in, but most urgently advocate, a constant re- 
 currence to him in all our work as churches to learn what our 
 God is, and what our life here should be and may be. When 
 the church fully apprehends the tremendous power of the truths 
 concerning Christ it upholds when it is great enough, good 
 enough, to wield its own weapon I believe the progress of its 
 redeeming work will be accelerated a hundred-fold." 
 
 The Talk about Retribution. 
 
 We have just passed through, or we are now passing 
 through, one of the most disgusting episodes in relig- 
 ious discussion that this country has ever witnessed. Its 
 distinguishing characteristics have been irreverence and 
 vulgarity. A modest pastor in Massachusetts was de- 
 nied the pulpit to which he had been elected, on account 
 of his failure to indorse the old orthodox dogma, con- 
 cerning everlasting punishment. The council that took 
 the responsibility of this proscription will live long 
 enough, we hope, to see that it did a bad thing for itself, 
 for the public, and for Christianity. The legitimate dis- 
 cussion that grew out of this event, we have no fault to 
 find witli. It was needed, and it will not fail to have a 
 good result. It was a matter that specially concerned 
 the Christian world, and one that ought to have been 
 discussed with the modesty and dignity wliich should dis- 
 tinguisli all treatment of the solemn questions that touch 
 man's immortality. 
 
 How was it treated ? Precisely as if it were a question
 
 6o Every-Day Topics, 
 
 of politics and partisanship, it was put to vote ! In the 
 same spirit with which a train of passengers is canvassed 
 on the eve of a great election, the newspaper press in- 
 terviewed the neighboring ministers to see how they 
 stood on the question of " hell," and to learn how they 
 should have voted had they been members of the coun- 
 cil whose action had started the discussion. We can 
 imagine reporters doing just this, for " 'tis their nature 
 to" do just this. We do not know of any inquiry at 
 which they would hesitate, if its answer would add 
 piquancy to their contributions ; but, while we have no 
 sympathy with this sort of enterprise, we spare our con- 
 demnation of it in the presence of the fact that ministers 
 in large numbers responded to their inquiries, with just 
 as much apparent readiness as if the question had re- 
 lated only to the Bland silver bill, or any other political 
 measure or matter. If irreverence and vulgarity can go 
 further than this, we have no idea in what direction they 
 would travel. For ministers to consent to form an out- 
 side council, and have their votes recorded by the public 
 press on any special question that one of their own regu- 
 larly constituted councils had decided, would have been 
 a grave discourtesy, to say the least. To "stand and be 
 counted" by a newspaper reporter, while they voted on 
 the subject of everlasting punishment, was a surrender 
 of their self-respect, a degradation of their office and 
 position, and a fatal vulgarizing of the whole question, of 
 which every man among them ought to be profoundly 
 ashamed. 
 
 When a question gets down as low as this, it is of 
 course the privilege of every blackguard to besmirch it 
 with his own style of handling. Colonel Ingersoll, an 
 open unbeliever, especially about the mouth, has had 
 his tilt at it. His words were diligently reported, and 
 so loudly and persistently hawked about the streets by
 
 Religion and the Church. 6i 
 
 newsboys, that " Colonel IngersoU " and " hell" will for- 
 ever be associated in the public mind. 
 
 The result of vulgarizing this question, in this way, is 
 about as bad as it can be. No one, we suppose, will 
 deny that it is to reduce it to one of very little moment. 
 A question on which men divide as partisans a ques- 
 tion which is decided by votes and not by arguments a 
 question which ostensibly rests in men's opinions, and 
 is kicked about by the lowest orators and the lowest pro- 
 cesses is one that soon becomes deprived of its impor- 
 tance ; and men who trembled in the prospect of endless 
 suffering as the consequence of sin, cease, at last, to be- 
 lieve in retribution altogether. No greater misfortune 
 could happen to the world than this, for, if there is one 
 thing in which revelation, science, and experience 
 thoroughly agree, it is in the doctrine that suffering is, 
 and must forever be, the consequence of sin. A man 
 must trample on his own common-sense before he can 
 believe that if he falls asleep in this world an impure, 
 vicious, malignant man, he will wake up in the next a 
 saint in heaven. To lose the idea of retribution is to 
 lose the idea that holds the moral world in equipoise. 
 To make God so tender and loving that without repent- 
 ance and reformation He will " clear the guilty," is to 
 degrade Him beneath human contempt. It blots out 
 the sense of justice ; it transforms crime into a mistake ; 
 it makes nothing of that which has filled this world 
 with misery, and that which will fill any world with 
 misery, so long as it may be persisted in. As long as 
 consequence follows cause, just so long will rctriliution 
 follow sin, whether in this world or the next ; and to 
 blot out the belief in retribution in any man's mind is to 
 demoralize and debauch him. 
 
 Of the more dignified discussions of the question of 
 everlasting punishment, it is proper to say a word.
 
 62 Every-Day Topics. 
 
 That there is a considerable number of orthodox minis^ 
 tors who have given up, or are giving up their behef in 
 this dogma, there is no question. The loosening hold 
 upon it has been evident for many years. Endless tor- 
 ment has been talked very little about in American and 
 English pulpits for the last decade, and is rarely, except 
 in a general way, presented as a motive to a religious 
 life. The Indian Orchard minister has a multitude of 
 sympathizers among his professional brethren, and the 
 number is growing larger rather than smaller. The 
 change comes partly of a change of views of the charac- 
 ter of God, partly of a change of ideas concerning the 
 office of punishment, and partly of new and better in- 
 terpretations of Scripture. Such men as Canon Farrar 
 and Rev. Dr. Whiton eminent alike as orthodox Chris- 
 tians and scholars have had a great deal of influence 
 on the professional mind of the day, in determining that 
 phase of the question which scholarship can alone de- 
 termine, viz., that which depends upon the exact inter- 
 pretation of all that the sacred writings have to say upon 
 it. Dr. Whiton's little book has made, and is making, 
 a profound impression ; and so important is it deemed 
 by some of those who have read it, that money has been 
 freely put into his hand for its distribution. 
 
 If there is to be a future life and this is the faith of 
 Christendom and heathendom it goes without saying 
 that there is to be retribution in it ; but, as we have 
 read Dr. Whiton's book, there is no declaration in 
 Scripture that the punishment is to be endless and no 
 declaration that it is not to be. The book is quite 
 worthy of any man's reading, and \vc commend it par- 
 ticularly to those whose votes have been canvassed by 
 the reporters. If they have not already perused it, they 
 will learn that they voted before they had all the light 
 there was to be had upon the subject.
 
 ART. 
 
 American Art. 
 
 ONE of the most notable facts connected with the 
 Centennial Exhibition at Philadelphia was the uni- 
 versal devotion to the art galleries. Every day testified 
 of it, and every writer spoke of it. Whatever portion 
 of the superb show was neglected, or only thinly at- 
 tended, the art galleries were always full. However 
 rapidly other departments may have been skimmed 
 over, here the crowd lingered. It is the universal testi- 
 mony, also, that this part of the exhibition was not in 
 any way what could be desired. No country but Eng- 
 land made an attempt to show its best things. Every- 
 where, outside of the English pictures, respectable 
 mediocrity was the rule, and commanding excellence 
 the exception. Still, it was there, among the pictures 
 and the statuary, that the great masses of visitors found 
 their highest satisfactions, and the return for their fees 
 of admission. 
 
 To those who have spent many days in the London 
 National Gallery, in the galleries of the Louvre, in tlie 
 halls of Dresden, in the palaces of Florence, and among 
 the exhauslless art-treasures of Rome, tlie exliil^ition at 
 Philadelphia could have only a subordinate intercsL, 
 The poverty and the contrast seemed great, and, to an 
 extent, painful ; but to the majority of visitors, the ex-
 
 64 Every-Day Topics. 
 
 hibition was the first of any magnitude they had ever 
 seen. It was to them a superlative dehght a revelation 
 of achievements, the possibility of which they had never 
 conceived. The wonders of the Main Building, of Ma- 
 chinery Hall, and of the minor collections, were all sub- 
 ordinate to those of the finer arts. ,The pictures formed 
 the central, dominant point of attraction every day, 
 from the beginning" to the end. 
 
 Now, these facts mean a great deal with relation to 
 the future of art in this country. They mean that there 
 is an innate love of art of the beautiful in picture and 
 sculpture in the average American, from which it only 
 needs time and opportunity to reap grand harvests of 
 achievement and appreciation. We can now perfectly 
 understand Mr. Archer's statement, to which we have 
 previously alluded in these columns, with regard to the 
 effect upon English art and the English mind of the Lon- 
 don Exhibition of 185 1. It will be remembered that he 
 attributed the great progress of art in that country dur- 
 ing the last twenty-five years to that exhibition. The 
 people went to studying art at once, so that art schools 
 were multiplied throughout the realm almost a hundred- 
 fold. It is owing to that exhibition that England has 
 been able to show us so much that is satisfactory at 
 Philadelphia. Like causes, under like conditions, pro- 
 duce like results ; and we look forward upon the next 
 quarter of a century to the only general movement in 
 art that our young country has ever known. We are 
 ready for it, and stimulus and direction have come just 
 when we need it. Hitherto, our art has been desultory, 
 patchy, and partial. The absence of life-schools has 
 driven our artists all to landscape, or sent them abroad 
 and kept them there. Figure-painting by artists who 
 have always lived in America is almost unknown. For 
 the growth of illustrated literature in this country, it has
 
 Art. 65 
 
 been next to impossible to find competent figure artists 
 to draw upon the block. So this is one of the good re- 
 sults for which we confidently look a general develop- 
 ment of art throughout the country, and the establish- 
 ment of art schools of real excellence in all the American 
 cities. 
 
 There must infallibly come, with the universal culti- 
 vation of art and the nourishment of the art feeling, a 
 change in our industries, or, rather, a very broad en- 
 largement of them. We are now manufacturers of hats, 
 shoes, cotton cloth, iron, woollens, and a limited 
 amount of silks for service of sewings more partic- 
 ularly. We can build ships, too, with sufficient motive, 
 and machinery of all sorts, from a Waltham watch to 
 the largest steam-engine ; but of beautiful things we 
 make very few, and these mainly in imitation of those 
 which we import. Now, there is nothing in our national 
 economy so desirable as the diversification of our indus- 
 try. We sec what other nations have done in the exhi- 
 bition of the Main Building, and by trying hard we could 
 probably imitate the products which so arouse our ad- 
 miration. That, precisely, is what we do not want to 
 do. That would never help us, except temporarily and 
 in a mean way. It is curious to see how the people 
 themselves, by a sort of blind instinct, have plunged to 
 the bottom of the secret. There must be a cultivation 
 of art from the beginning there must lie education in 
 the perception and delineation of forms and the combi- 
 nation of colors, before we can hope to do any original 
 work in the way of making our own beautiful things. 
 Our foreign cousins would send us new forms while we 
 were imitating their old ones new forms conceived in 
 a fundamental knowledge of art to which we could lay 
 no claim. 
 
 So, at the very basis of all the beautiful industries that
 
 66 Every-Day Topics. 
 
 are so desirable to us as a nation, there must be laid a 
 popular knowledge of art. We must have drawing com- 
 petently taught in our common schools, everywhere. 
 We must have art schools for those who in the common 
 schools have shown special gifts and adaptations for art. 
 Thus, by beginning at the bottom, all those industries 
 which involve the fine art element will naturally grow 
 up among us, based upon our own designs. In truth, 
 there is no other ground upon which these very desir- 
 able industries can be established ; and we beg the 
 American people to recognize the fact that the cultiva- 
 tion of art is to result in something far beyond the pic- 
 ture that hangs on the wall, and the statue that fills the 
 niche it is to result in the profitable employment of 
 hundreds of thousands of men and women in producing 
 articles of ornament which we now import. Universal 
 art cultivation is the soil from which will naturally and 
 inevitably spring a thousand interests and industries 
 that will minister to American prosperity, comfort, lux- 
 ury, and refinement. 
 
 If any of our readers should ask us what we mean by 
 this what industries would be developed by the general 
 cultivation of art we have simply to refer him to the 
 dinner-service from w^hich he takes his food, after read- 
 ing this article. There are ninety-nine chances in a 
 hundred that it came from China or Europe ; and we 
 have simply to say that in cither case there is no gen- 
 eral knowledge of art in this country sufficient to pro- 
 duce the decorations upon it. If it is French, and ex- 
 pensive, American art has no more power to produce it 
 than it has to produce the Chinese. We do not know 
 enough to make these decorations, and if we could suc- 
 ceed in a clumsy imitation of them, we could design 
 nothing new. This is an illustration simply. Our tables, 
 our rooms, our wardrobes, abound in articles which we
 
 Art. 67 
 
 ought to make ourselves, but which we never can make 
 until, by thorough instruction and patient practice, a 
 great multitude of American men and women have be- 
 come artists. It is this which gives the highest practi- 
 cal significance to the art exhibition at Philadelphia, 
 and makes the public interest in it an era in the national 
 life and development. To us it is the most hopeful and 
 promising of all the possible results of the Great Exhibi- 
 tion. 
 
 Art Criticism. 
 
 Art criticism, in this country, has reached about as 
 low a level as it can find, without becoming execrable. 
 It is so at war with itself, that it has ceased to have any 
 authority ; and so capricious, and so apparently under 
 the influence of unworthy motives, that it has become 
 contemptible. We may instance the late exhibition of 
 water-colors in this city, and the kind and variety of crit- 
 icism it called forth, as an illustration of what we mean. 
 It has been absolutely impossible for the public to get 
 any adequate idea of this exhibition through the revela- 
 tions and discussions of the public press. What one 
 man has praised without stint, another has condemned 
 without mercy. All sorts of theories and comments and 
 considerations have been offered, and if the public mind 
 is not in a muddle over the whole matter, it is not the 
 fault of the men who have written about it. 
 
 Now there are just two objects that furnish an apology 
 for a man to publish his opinions on an art exhibition, 
 viz., the information of the public, and the in-iprovcmcnt 
 of the artists. Of course, it is an impertinence for any 
 man to assume the rcMe of the art critic who does not 
 understand what he is talking about, and who is not free 
 enough from partisanships and hobbies to write with 
 candor. The great end of criticism is popular and pro-
 
 68 Every-Day Topics. 
 
 fessional improvement, and in order that this double end 
 may be secured, there must be popular and professional 
 confidence in the sources of the criticism. We believe 
 it to be notorious that, among the painters of New York, 
 there is not a particle of confidence in the critics who 
 write upon art. They do not, in any instance, expect to 
 be fairly and ably treated. They have no faith in the 
 competency of the newspaper writers on art to teach 
 them. They have no faith in their candor. When they 
 put up a picture for exhibition, they regard the whole 
 matter of newspaper notice as a chance in a lottery. 
 They are thankful if somebody praises it, and if nobody 
 abuses it, because that will help to sell it, but beyond 
 that they have no interest. They do not in the slightest 
 degree acknowledge the competency of these writers to 
 teach them, and they have the utmost contempt for their 
 general theories and their special judgments. Under 
 these circumstances, one of the principal offices of crit- 
 icism is rendered useless. 
 
 The public has come to pretty much the same con- 
 clusion as the painters. They have learned that these 
 writers have no guiding principles, that they agree in 
 nothing, and that each man writes from the stand-point 
 of his own private tastes, or his own private prejudices 
 and partisanships. They find the pictures of a certain 
 man condemned as utter and irredeemable failures, and 
 they go to see the failures, finding them the best pictures 
 in the exhibition. They find the pictures of another man 
 praised as profoundly worthy, and they go to see them, 
 and find them unconscionable daubs that would disgrace 
 the walls of any parlor in New York really, for any 
 pleasure-giving power that they possess, not worth the 
 white paper they have spoiled. Moreover, what one 
 critic praises another one condemns, and ince versa. 
 Indeed, there are some men among these writers whose
 
 Art. 69 
 
 judgments have been so capricious, and whimsical, and 
 unfair, and so notoriously fallacious, that their praise of 
 a picture arouses suspicions against it and really damages 
 its market value. 
 
 Now criticism, to be valuable, must be based in prin- 
 ciple. If there arc any such things as sound principles 
 of art, gentlemen, show them to us, and show us your 
 judgments based upon them. Agree among yourselves. 
 We, the people, don't care for your private tastes and 
 notions. We care a great deal more about our own. 
 We arc not at all interested in yours. What we want 
 of you is instruction in sound principles of art, which 
 will enable us to form judgments and to understand the 
 basis of yours. Your prejudices, and piques, and whims 
 are not of the slightest value to anybody, and your pub- 
 lication of them is a presumptuous and impertinent per- 
 formance, growing more and more presumptuous and 
 impertinent every year, while the people are growing 
 rapidly more competent to judge of these matters for 
 themselves. 
 
 In the present jumble of art criticism in this country, 
 consisting of great contrariety of sentiment and opinion, 
 much injustice is necessarily done to artists and schools 
 of artists ; and injustice, meted out in the unsparing 
 doses that are often indulged in, is a poison that greatly 
 injures all who receive it. It takes immense pluck and 
 strong individuality to stand up against it. There are 
 some painters who possess these qualities, but not many, 
 so that the consciousness of unjust treatment at the 
 hands of public criticism is a positive damage to theni 
 and their art. There have been cruellies and discour- 
 tesies indulged in which only a raw-hide could properly 
 punish, and for which there was no valid excuse and 
 whose only influence was 1)ad. 
 
 We are i^rowinsr in this countrv in all that relates to
 
 /O Every-Day Topics. 
 
 art, except in this matter of art criticism. People are 
 becoming educated in art, and a new spirit seems to 
 have taken possession of the American people. Let us 
 hope that those who undertake to guide the public judg- 
 ment may meet the new requirements of the day by a 
 most decided improvement among themselves, so that 
 we may have something more valuable from them than 
 the airing of pet notions and a public show of their sym- 
 pathies and antipathies. 
 
 Greatness in Art. 
 It is interesting to notice what passes for greatness in 
 art with the average man, not to say the average critic. 
 If we were to ask him to name the half dozen greatest 
 actors this country possesses, he would not omit from 
 his enumeration certain names that by no just rule of 
 judgment can lay claim to greatness. We allude to 
 those actors who have become notorious, or famous, or 
 exceedingly admired, for their power to represent a sin- 
 gle character. Now, this power to represent a single 
 character, and only a single character, superlatively well, 
 is a mark of littleness and not of greatness. The man 
 who can only make his mark in a single part, shows that 
 he is not an actor shows that the part is purposely or 
 accidentally shaped to him, and that it is a harmonious 
 outcome of his individuality. He has simply to act him- 
 self to act his part well, and that is not acting at all. 
 As a rule, the men who make the niost money in the his- 
 trionic art, and pass for the greatest actors with the peo- 
 ple, are in no true sense of the word actors at all. The 
 great actor is the man who can play every part, and any 
 part who can successfully go out of himself into the 
 impersonation of a wide range of characters. Nature, 
 of course, places limitations upon every man, so that 
 no man can be equally great in all parts ; but he cer-
 
 Art. 71 
 
 tainly is the greatest actor who can be great in the largest 
 number of parts. There are several men and women 
 upon the contemporary stage, enjoying its highest honors 
 and emoluments, who have hardly a valid claim to the 
 name of actors. The " starring system " naturally pro- 
 duces just such artists as these, and we suppose it always 
 will. 
 
 Twenty years ago the American passing through Flor- 
 ence did not consider a visit to that city complete, un- 
 less he had had an interview with " the great American 
 sculptor," Hiram Powers ; but it seems that Mr. Powers' 
 immortality is to be a very mild and modest one. He 
 has passed away, leaving a delightful personal memory ; 
 but it somehow happens that what he has left behind 
 him in imperishable stone does not, in the light of these 
 later days, confirm the early opinions of his greatness. 
 He has never made a group. He spent his life on ideal 
 heads, single ideal forms, and portrait busts. His pupil, 
 Conolly, was making groups within five years of the be- 
 ginning of his study could not be restrained from 
 making groups. Powers could not have failed to see 
 that his pupil was greater than himself more dramatic, 
 more inventive, more constructive every way broader 
 in his power. The elements of true greatness were in 
 the younger man, and were not in the older man. 
 
 What we say of these two men will serve to illustrate 
 the truths we would like to present concerning greatness 
 in all plastic and pictorial art. ^lany of our painters 
 who have great reputations are petty men. They know 
 something of a specialty, can do something creditable 
 in it. and can do absolutely nothing out of it. They 
 have no universality of knowledge or of skill. They can 
 do just one thing, and they continue to do that one thing 
 so long that they take on a mannerism of subject and oi 
 treatment, so well learned by the public, at last, that
 
 72 Every -Day Topics. 
 
 their pictures are their autographs. Unless AmerlL-n 
 can get out of this rut in some way, she cannot make 
 great progress. Our "great painters" are our Httlc 
 painters are the men who plod along in a narrow path, 
 seeing nothing and attempting nothing in the wide field 
 that opens on all sides of them. They learn to do one 
 thing well, and they emphasize that one thing so firmly, 
 and dogmatize upon it so loudly, that they win credit 
 to themselves for greatness, when their work is the cer- 
 tificate of their littleness and narrowness. 
 
 It is in painting and sculpture as it is in all other fields 
 of life and effort the wider the knowledge and the 
 wider the practice, the better the skill in all the special- 
 ties which the knowledge and practice embrace. Titian 
 was one of the greatest portrait painters that ever lived, 
 and he was a much better portrait painter than he would 
 otherwise have been for painting such works as " The 
 Assumption of the Virgin." The great embraces the 
 little. The universal covers all details. Our painters 
 stop in the details, and seem to be content with what 
 they get or suggest, without attempting invention and 
 composition. We wish it could be understood that 
 there is no such thing as greatness in art without inven- 
 tion and composition. There are three great names 
 that come down to us, accompanied each by a mighty 
 charm the names of Michael Angelo, Raphael, and 
 Leonardo da Vinci and while that of Raphael is the 
 best beloved, the first and the last named of the trio 
 constantly assert themselves as the greatest. They were 
 simply inventors and composers of higher merit and a 
 wider range of powers than Raphael. 
 
 We know that we live in a day not particularly favor- 
 able to the development of great art. Men must paint 
 to sell, and, in order to sell, men must paint for their 
 market. Still, we believe that there is a market for all
 
 Art. 73 
 
 that our artists can produce, that is truly great. This 
 magazine is buying invention and good composition con- 
 stantly, and wc do not hesitate to say that the two vol- 
 umes which contain in any year the issues of Scribner^s 
 Monthly, can show more of both than any single exhi- 
 bition of our National Academy has been able to show 
 since the magazine began its existence. The pettiness 
 of our art is its curse, and we emphasize this pettiness 
 and call it greatness. What we want is more invention 
 bringing together into dramatic relation wider ranges 
 and more varied masses of material. We may get 
 cleverness this side of invention and composition, but 
 greatness, never. 
 
 This principle runs through all art. Why is it tiiat 
 American poetry has asserted so small a place in the 
 great world of literature ? It is simply because it is 
 irredeemably petty. The cutting of cameos may be 
 done by men who are capable of great work, but it is not 
 great work in itself, and no man can establish a claim 
 to greatness upon it. The writing little poems ^jobs of 
 an evening, or happy half hours of leisure can make 
 no man a great poet. Unless a man use this kind of 
 work as study for great inventions and compositions, and 
 actually go on and compass these supreme efforts of the 
 poetic art, he is but a small experimenter. He may enjoy 
 a little notoriety, but he can win no permanent place 
 in art. Shakspere, and Milton, and Dante, and Goethe 
 the kings of song were creators. They wrote brief 
 poems of great beauty, but their reputation for great- 
 ness rests entirely on their broad poetic inventions, 
 which embraced a great variety of elenicnls. Tenny- 
 son, Browning, and Swinburne, of the lOnglishmen now 
 writing, stand above the great mass of English verse- 
 writers, or \crse-writers in the English language, be- 
 cause they are more than clever writers of brief poems. 
 ' 4
 
 74 Every-Day Topics. 
 
 They are inventors, composers, creators. They have 
 called into being and endowed with vitality great poetic 
 organisms. We have just looked over a new volume of 
 American verses, which presents hardly a poem to the 
 page. There is not the first sign of invention in it from 
 beginning to end, yet the American press is discussing 
 the place which its author occupies and is to occupy 
 m American letters, as if it really were an important 
 matter ! 
 
 One of our Japanese visitors at the Centennial, whom 
 we regarded as a sort of interesting heathen, remarked 
 patronizingly that " we must all remember that America 
 is very young." He was right. 
 
 Pettiness in Art. 
 In an article published some months since in this de- 
 partment, entitled " Greatness in Art," we gave utter- 
 ance to some thoughts which we would like to emphasize 
 here. A man travelling in Europe discovers at once a 
 different style of art from that produced here a larger 
 and more dignified style. The pictures which he sees 
 there, in public galleries and in the multitudinous Cath- 
 olic churches, are such as are never produced here. 
 There is no outlet here for the largest thoughts and 
 highest inspirations of the artist's mind and hand. 
 Men must paint for a market. If there are no pub- 
 lic galleries to paint for, and no churches demand 
 their work, then they must paint for the walls of the 
 homes of the land. This necessarily restricts their 
 paintings in the matter of dimensions ; so everybody 
 paints small pictures. A small picture is a restriction 
 in the matter of subjects. A dignified historical picture 
 must have large figures to be impressive ; and however 
 serious and ambitious a painter may be, he is loth to 
 place a work that, by its nature, demands a large can-
 
 Art. 75 
 
 vas and broad handling, on a small canvas that compels 
 pettiness of detail and cftects. 
 
 The barrel that an American artist may have in his 
 brain cannot be sold to anybody. The largest thing 
 that anybody buys is a gallon, and the really marketable 
 things are quarts and pints. An artist may hold in his 
 imagination a palace for kings and queens and the nobil- 
 ity of the earth, but he can only sell a play-house for 
 children, and he is obliged to sell to get food and shelter 
 for himself and his dependents. So American art is 
 made up of the quarts and pints of the artistic capacity 
 of its producers and the toy-houses which should be pal- 
 aces and broad domains. The tendency of these facts 
 is degrading and depressing to the last degree. They 
 have already dwarfed American art and circumscribed 
 its development. When it gets to this that every artist 
 who undertakes a great thing is looked upon as a profli- 
 gate or a fool, because there is no market for a great 
 thing matters can hardly be worse. The necessarily 
 constant consideration of marketableness in pictures is 
 very degrading, and tends inevitably to unfit the artist 
 for the best work. Crowded into the smallest spaces, 
 cut off from all great ambitions, men cease to think 
 largely, grow petty in their subjects, reach out into strik- 
 ing mannerisms for the sake of effects that cannot be 
 produced in a natural way, and lavish on technique the 
 power and pains that should go into great designs and a 
 free and full individual expression. 
 
 The recent exhibition of water-colors in this city 
 showed how far into pettiness the artists in that line of 
 work have gone. There was much that was bright and 
 pretty and attractive, but how irrcdeemal)ly petty it all 
 was! It maybe said that nothing can be expected of 
 water-colors beyond the representation of jjctty things, 
 l)ut we remember three lar<re water-color exhibitions in
 
 ^6 Every-Day Topics. 
 
 London, all open at the same time, where there were 
 pictures so large and important and fine, that thousands 
 of dollars were demanded for them and commanded by 
 them. The painters attempted and accomplished great 
 things. They showed, at least, that the desire and the 
 motive to do great things were not absolutely extin- 
 guished within them. There were up-reachings toward 
 high ideals. Here, we seem to be on a dead level of 
 conception and aim, and the man cleverest with his liand 
 leads. The catalogue will rehearse the topics too triv- 
 ial to engage any poet's attention, too petty to inspire 
 any man's respect. The worst of this is that this collec- 
 tion of pettiness was sold almost to the last picture. 
 We are glad to see the purses of the artists filled ; but 
 the success of this unprecedented sale must be to en- 
 courage them in a path of degeneration and demoraliza- 
 tion. 
 
 It pays to be petty. It is a thousand pities that there 
 is no outlet in America for the best and highest that her 
 artists can do. Wandering through the beautiful miles of 
 pictures in Rome, in Florence, in Munich, in Paris, in 
 Versailles, in London gazing upon the walls of splendid 
 churches scattered all over Europe we can see where 
 the inspirations have come from that have made that art 
 supreme. The market for great work was open, and the 
 best and greatest that the best and greatest artist could do 
 v.'as sure of a place and a price. When America estab- 
 lishes galleries of pictures, and holds the funds to pay for 
 all that is great and worthy, the great and worthy pictures 
 will undoubtedly be painted. Meantime, the artists of the 
 country must fight the influences which depress and de- 
 moralize them as best they can. They can do more and 
 better than they are doing we are sure. We sincerely hope 
 that next year we shall have, in all our exhibitions, an ad- 
 vance in the subjects treated, so that pettiness in size of
 
 Art. 77 
 
 pictures may be somewhat atoned for by dignity and 
 interest of topic, and a larger and more natural style of 
 treatment. The nation is not only becoming prosper- 
 ous, but is constantly progressing in the knowledge of 
 art, so that we believe all good artists will find it for 
 their pecuniary advantage to go higher in their work 
 higher in excellence and higher in price. If they cannot 
 sell large pictures, they can surely sell those of graver 
 import and more elaborate execution. 
 
 Art as a Steady Diet. 
 
 The spread of art and art ideas in this country has 
 been accepted as a sort of new gospel. A new and ad- 
 vanced religion could hardly be welcomed more cor- 
 dially or hopefully. A fresh significance has been given 
 to life, and in everything in architecture, in painting, 
 in sculpture, in pottery, in home decoration, in em- 
 broidery, and in all the multitudinous ways in which the 
 aesthetic in men and women (especially in women) ex- 
 presses itself there has been a great revival, or an 
 absolutely new birth. Partly, this is the result of the 
 Centennial Exhibition, and partly it is the result of a 
 contagion that seems to swim in the universal air. The 
 whole world is growing artistic. The nations are stim- 
 ulating one another, and exchanging ideas. Our own 
 country, though it has been the last to awaken out of 
 sleep, bids fair to run its new enthusiasm into a craze. 
 
 We were about to write that this new enthusiasm had 
 spared neither age nor sex. It has spared no age among 
 women ; Init where men have felt the new impetus in a 
 consideral)le degree, women have felt it in a supreme 
 degree. Distinct from the great mass, there are two 
 classes of women who have seized upon the new ideas 
 and new influences to help them out of trouble, viz., 
 those who have nothing to do because they have no
 
 78 Every -Day Topics. 
 
 physical wants to provide for, and those who, since the 
 war and the hard times, have been obhged in some way 
 to provide for themselves. The multitudes who are now 
 "decorating" porcelain, learning "the Kensington 
 stitch " in embroidery, painting on satin, illuminating 
 panels, designing and putting together curtains, making 
 lace, drawing from the antique, sketching, daubing, etc., 
 etc., are surprising. Some will undoubtedly find agree- 
 able employment in this, and kill their superfluous time 
 in a graceful way. Some who need it will find remu- 
 nerative employment in it, and all will get a kind of 
 culture by it that America has sadly needed. In the 
 future, American homes will be better individualized 
 than they have been. The work of decoration every- 
 where will be modified. We shall have better public 
 and domestic architecture. The public stock of art 
 ideas will be so greatly enlarged that the country will be 
 comparatively safe from the outrages upon good taste 
 that confront the eye in both city and country. People 
 will at least know enough to see their own ignorance, 
 and to be careful about expressing it. 
 
 Now, while we rejoice in this development, and in all 
 the pleasure and comfort and culture it brings, we warn 
 all against expecting too much from it. Art is a very 
 thin diet for any human soul. There is no new gospel 
 in it. There is no religion in it, and there is nothing in 
 it to take the place of religion. It has to do with but few 
 of the great verities and vitalities that most concern 
 mankind. Form, configuration, color, construction, all 
 the dainty secrets and devices of presentment, inven- 
 tions of phrase and tint to excite the imagination, organic 
 proportion, internal harmony and external beauty^ 
 these constitute art, as a vehicle. Art is simply a 
 carrier of divine things. It is only the servant of su- 
 preme values. Art is no leader and no king ; and the
 
 Art. 7(-j 
 
 soul that undertakes to live by being the servant of this 
 servant, will certainly win inadequate wages and die of 
 starvation. For art, it should be remembered, adds 
 nothing to morality, nothing to religion, nothing to 
 science, nothing to knowledge except a knowledge ol 
 itself, nothing to social or political wisdom, theoreti- 
 cally or practically. It may have a vehicular office 
 with regard to all these ; but the vital values are in 
 them, and not at all in it. 
 
 It is not at all necessary to go to the old and familiar 
 fields of Roman and Grecian civilization for illustrations 
 of the powcrlessness of art to conserve and to develop a 
 national life. Rome and Athens went to sleep with all 
 the marvels of their art around them, and the eye of To- 
 day, prepared for vision by the survey of other fields 
 than those of art, greets those marvels with the first ap- 
 preciation they have had through long centuries. We 
 have only to turn to the living China and Japan to see 
 how little art can do toward civilization, and how insig- 
 nificant an element it is in civilization. Japan, in many 
 matters of art, can teach the world, and the same may 
 be said of China. We will take the familiar matter of 
 decorating porcelain. There is no decoration of por- 
 celain in Europe that can compare for a moment with 
 the best of that executed in China and Japan. English 
 decoration is crude and coarse, and French is feeble and 
 conventional, compared with that. Sevres porcelain 
 has been shamed into poverty and commonplaccness by 
 the rich and altogether original combinations of color 
 that illustrate the best Oriental art. Tlic Japanese, es- 
 pecially, seem to have learned c\erything there is to be 
 known about color, so fir as it relates to the familiar 
 varieties of decoration, and the I-'nglish attempts to imi- 
 tate their work are equally sad and laughable. Wc 
 mean simply to assert that, in every department of arl
 
 8o Every -Day Topics. 
 
 to which they have specially turned their attention, they 
 have surpassed the civilized world. 
 
 And what does all this prove ? What but that art 
 may be born of a people very imperfectly civilized ? 
 What but that art is a very thin and innutritions diet 
 for any person or any people to live upon ? China and 
 Japan arc trying to learn everything else of us. They 
 knew little or nothing of science ; they had no ma- 
 chinery ; their literature was childish ; they were bound 
 up in their own self-conceit and their own exclusive 
 policy, and the word progress was an unknown word in 
 both those vast realms, until daylight shone in upon 
 them from Europe and America. Now they are send- 
 ing their boys to us to learn what they find will be vastly 
 for their advantage to know. 
 
 We trust that our people, in the new interest that has 
 been awakened in all matters relating to art, will be very 
 moderate in their expectations of results. Art is an ex- 
 cellent servant, and a very poor master. When a man 
 is supremely absorbed in it when he has no thought 
 for anything else he is degraded by it. It is simply 
 not the supreme thing, and cannot be treated as such 
 without damage. It is most likely that, as China and 
 Japan get more knowledge and abetter hold of the prac- 
 tically productive arts, and of new social and political 
 ideas, the arts that now distinguish them will decay. 
 The new interest in art here is all right, and very much 
 to be encouraged ; only it does not come anywhere near 
 being the principal thing, and cannot be treated as such, 
 for any length of time, by any man or woman, without 
 incurring mental and spiritual poverty.
 
 LITERATURE. 
 
 The Legitimate Novel. 
 
 IT is a curious fact that while the novel, as a form of 
 literary art, is becoming every year more universal, it 
 is hardening into a conventional form. What is a novel 
 in its broadest definition ? It is an invented history of 
 human lives, brought into relations with each other, 
 whose first office is to amuse. Some of these inventions 
 have no end nor aim but amusement, and those which 
 have other aims rely upon amusement for effecting 
 them. The novelist who has a lesson to teach, or a re- 
 form to forward, or a truth or principle to illustrate, does 
 not hope to do it through his work, unless he can secure 
 its reading through its power to amuse, Mr. Dallas, in 
 his " Gay Science," says that the first business of all art 
 is to please, which, after all, is only our doctrine in other 
 words. Any work of literary art, whether novel or poem, 
 has no apology for existence, if it do not have the power 
 to convey pleasure of some kind. 
 
 Now, the fact that the novel has been seized upon the 
 world over, for a great number of offices, shows how 
 naturally it is adapted to a wide range of aims and ends 
 in its construction. Political, moral, social, and reli- 
 gious topics can be treated through the medium of in- 
 vented stories, and they have been treated in this way 
 with the most gratifying success. We have the politi- 
 cal, the moral, and the religious novel, and we have also 
 4*
 
 82 Every -Day Topics. 
 
 the society novel, and it is only at a comparatively re- 
 cent date that a set of critics have appeared who are in- 
 clined to rule out of the category of legitimacy every- 
 thing but the society novel. P^ven this must be a certain 
 kind of society novel in order to meet their approval. 
 It must always deal with the passion of love as its ruling 
 motive, and consist of the interplay of the relations be- 
 tween men and women. It must have absolutely no 
 mission but that of amusement. In performing this 
 mission it must be true to certain ideas of art that re- 
 late to the delineation of character, the development of 
 plot, and the arrangement of dramatic situations and cli- 
 maxes. If the rules are all complied with if the love is 
 properly made, and the characters are properly handled, 
 and the novel is interesting the book is legitimate. 
 If, however, the book is made to carry a burden if it 
 illustrates no matter how powerfully an important 
 truth or principle in politics, economy, morals, or reli- 
 gion, its legitimacy is vitiated, or positively forfeited. 
 
 Now, it is to protest against this ruling that we write 
 this article. The dilettanti assuming authority in this 
 matter should have no weight among earnest men and 
 women, because they are not earnest themselves. They 
 have no moral, religious, social, or political purpose, and 
 they are offended when they meet it in the writings of 
 others. It is beyond their comprehension that a man 
 should have any purpose in writing beyond the glorifica- 
 tion of himself through his power to interest and amuse 
 others. If he undertakes anything beyond this, then 
 they pronounce him no true artist, and place his book 
 outside of all consideration as a work of art. In the 
 overwhelming popularity of such works as " Uncle Tom's 
 Cabin" and "Nicholas Nickleby," written with a hu- 
 mane or Christian purpose, these fellows cannot make 
 their voices heard, but Airs. Stowe has only to retire and
 
 Literature. 83 
 
 Dickens to die, to bring them out of their holes in pro- 
 test against all that does not accord with their petty 
 notions of novel-writing. 
 
 We claim for the novel the very broadest field. It 
 may illustrate history, like the novels of Walter Scott, 
 or philosophy, like those of George Eliot, or religion, 
 like those of George MacDonald, or domestic and poli- 
 tical economy, like those of the late Mrs. Sedgwick, or 
 it may represent the weak or the ludicrous side of human 
 nature and human society, like many of those of Dickens 
 and Thackeray, or it may present the lighter social 
 topics and types, like those of James and Howells, or it 
 may revel in the ingenuities of intricate plots, like those 
 of Collins and Reade every novel and every sort of 
 novel is legitimate if it be well written. It may rely upon 
 plot for its interest, or upon the delineation of character, 
 or upon its wit or its philosophy, or upon its dramatic 
 situations, and it may carry any burden which its writer 
 may choose to place upon its shoulders, and it shall 
 never forfeit its claim to legitimacy with us. 
 
 The man who denies to art any kind of service to 
 humanity which it can perform is either a fool or a 
 trifler. Things have come to a sad pass when any form 
 of art is to be set aside because a board of self-consti- 
 tuted arbiters cannot produce it, or do not sympathize 
 with its purpose. There is more freshness and interest 
 in ' The Grandissimes " of Air. Cable, with its rcproduc- 
 cion of the old Creole life of New Orleans, and its revival 
 of early Louisiana history, than in all the novels these 
 dilettanti have written in the last ten years. It is unmis- 
 takable that the tendency of modern criticism upon 
 novels has been to make them petty and trifling to a 
 nauseating degree. It is a lamentable consideration 
 that the swing of a petticoat, or the turn of an ankle, or 
 the vapid utterance of a dandy, or even the delineation
 
 84 Every-Day Topics. 
 
 of a harlot and a harlot's disgusting life, shall be counted 
 quite legitimate material for a novel, when the great 
 questions which concern the life and prosperity of the 
 soul and the state are held in dishonor, and forbidden 
 to the novelist as material of art. 
 
 It is all a part and parcel of the heresy that art is a 
 master and not a minister an end and not a means. 
 The men who maintain it have a personal interest in 
 maintaining it. Any art or form of art, that does not 
 end in itself or in themselves is one of which they are 
 consciously incapable, or one with which they cannot 
 sympathize. So they comfort themselves by calling it 
 illegitimate ; and as they are either in a majority or in 
 high or fashionable places, the public are misled by 
 them, so far as the public think at all on the subject. It 
 is a doctrine of literary pretenders and practical tritlers, 
 and the public may properly be warned to give it no heed 
 whatever. 
 
 Dandyism. 
 
 Carlyle says that " a dandy is a clothes-wearing man 
 a man whose trade, office, and existence consists in the 
 wearing of clothes." Then he adds, in his grim irony : 
 " Nay, if you grant what seems to be admissible, that 
 the dandy had a thinking principle in him, and some 
 notion of time and space, is there not in the life-devoted- 
 ness to cloth, in this so willing sacrifice of the immortal 
 to the perishable, something (though in reverse order) 
 of that blending and identification of eternity with time, 
 which .... constitutes the prophetic character." 
 
 After Carlyle has handled the dandy, there is not, of 
 course, much left for other people to do. Still, we can 
 reflect a little more particularly on the style of mind 
 which produces or accompanies dandyism, and get our 
 lesson out of the process. Why supreme devotion to
 
 Literature. 85 
 
 dress, on the part of a man, should be so contemptible, 
 and, on the part of a woman, so comparatively venial, we 
 have never been able to determine, but there is no doubt 
 that we are quite ready to forgive in woman a weakness 
 which we despise in man. To see a man so absorbed in 
 the decoration of his own person, and in the develop- 
 ment of his own graces that all other objects in life are 
 held subordinate to this one small and selfish passion or 
 pursuit, is no less disgusting than surprising. To am- 
 plify Carlyle's definition of a dandy a little, we may say 
 that he is a man whose soul is supremely devoted to the 
 outside of things, particularly the outside of himself, 
 and who prides himself not at all on what he is, but on 
 what he seems, and not at all on seeming sensible or 
 learned, but on seeming beautiful, in a way that he re- 
 gards as stylish. A male human being who cares 
 supremely about the quality of the woollen, silk, linen, 
 felt and leather that encase his body and the place where 
 his brains should be, forgetting the soul within him and 
 the great world without him, with the mysterious future 
 that lies before him, would seem to deserve the mockery 
 of all mankind, as well as of Carlyle. 
 
 Still, the dandy in dress is not a very important topic 
 to engage the attention of a man who is sensible enough 
 to read a magazine, and we should not have said a word 
 about him if we did not detect his disposition in other 
 things besides dress. We have what may legitimately 
 be denominated dandyism in literature. Literature is 
 often presented as the outcome of as true dandyism as 
 is ever observed in dress. There are many writers, 
 we fear, who care more about their manner of saying 
 a thing than about the thing they have to say. All these 
 devotees to style, all those coiners of fine phrases who 
 tax their ingenuity to make their mode of saying a 
 thing more remarkable than the thing said men who
 
 86 Every-Day Topics. 
 
 play with words for the sake of the words, and who seek 
 admiration for their cleverness in handling the medium 
 of thought itself, and men also who perform literary 
 gymnastics in order to attract attention all these are 
 literary dandies. The great verities and vitalities of 
 thought and life are never supreme with these men. 
 They would a thousand times rather fail in a thought 
 than trip in the rounding of a sentence and the fall of a 
 period. Of course, all this petting of their own style, and 
 this supreme study of ways with words, is in itself so self- 
 ish a matter that their work is vitiated, and even the 
 semblance of earnestness is lost. Dandies in literature 
 never accomplish anything for anybody except them- 
 selves. Verily they have their reward, for they have 
 their admirers, though they are among those, no more 
 in earnest than themselves. 
 
 We have had in America one eminent literary dandy. 
 He lived at a time when it was very easy for a man of 
 literary gifts to make a reputation easy to attract the 
 attention of the people ; and the temptation to toy with 
 the popular heart was too great for him to resist, and so 
 he who could have taught and inspired his countrymen 
 was content to play with his pen, and seek for their ap- 
 plause. He had his reward. He was as notorious as he 
 sought to be. People read his clever verses and clapped 
 their hands, but those verses did not voice any man's or 
 woman's aspirations, or soothe any man's or woman's 
 sorrows. They helped nobody. They were not the 
 earnest outpourings of a nature consecrated either to 
 God or song, and the response that they met in the pub- 
 lic heart was not one of grateful appropriation, though 
 that heart was not slow to offer the incense of its admira- 
 tion to the clever and graceful, even if supremely selfish, 
 artist. It is hardly necessary to add that this superb 
 literary dandy has found no one who cared enough
 
 Literature. 87 
 
 for him to write his life ; and it takes a pretty poor sort 
 of literary man nowadays to escape a biography. We 
 would not speak of this man were we not conscious that 
 we have now living and writing others who are like 
 him in spirit and in aim men who are supremely anx- 
 ious to get great credit for their way of doing things, and 
 who are interested mainly in the externals of literature 
 men who, moved by personal vanity, are seeking rather 
 to attract attention to themselves than to impress their 
 thoughts, as elevating and purifying forces, upon their 
 generation. 
 
 Dandyism does not stop either with dress or literature, 
 but invades all art. Never, perhaps, in the history of 
 painting, has there been so much dandyism in art as at 
 the present day. Never, it seems to us, were painters 
 so much devoted to painting the outside of things as 
 they are now. We are dazzled everywhere with tricks of 
 color, fantastic dress, subjects chosen only with refer- 
 ence to their adaptation to the revelation of the special 
 clevernesses of those who treat them. It seems as if 
 every painter who had managed to achieve some remark- 
 able trick of handling, were making it the business of his 
 life to play that trick, and to have nothing to do with any 
 topic which will not furnish him the occasion for its use. 
 Our young men, in a great number of instances, are run- 
 ning after these trick-masters, learning nothing of art in 
 its deeper meanings, but supremely busy with the out- 
 side of things, and very trivial things at that. In this 
 devotion to the tricks of art, all earnestness and worthi- 
 ness of purpose die, and art becomes simply a large and 
 useless field of dandyism. 
 
 We have plenty of dandyism in the pulpit. We do 
 not allude to the dandyism of clerical regalia, although 
 there is a disgusting amount of that ; but the devotion to 
 externals as they relate to manner of writing, and man-
 
 88 Every-Day Topics. 
 
 ner of speech, and manner of social intercourse. The 
 preacher who is in dead earnest, and has nothing to ex- 
 hibit but the truth he preaches, is not a man of formah- 
 ties. The clerical dandy impresses one with himself and 
 not with his Master. He shows off himself. He studies 
 his poses and his intonations as if he were in very deed 
 an actor. We have stylists in the pulpit, we have actors 
 in the pulpit, who challenge attention and intend to 
 challenge attention by their manner, and it is not at all 
 a manner of humble earnestness. Preachers are human, 
 and they, like the rest of us, should pray to be de- 
 livered from the sin of dandyism. 
 
 The Prices of Books. 
 One of the greatest anomalies of commerce is pre- 
 sented by the considerations which govern the prices 
 of books. If we step into a retail book store, and in- 
 quire the price of a book of, say, five hundred pages duo- 
 decimo, we shall learn that it is about two dollars. On 
 looking into it, we shall learn that it is a crude novel the 
 product of a young girl's brains, and of very little con- 
 cern to any but girls of the age of the writer. The next 
 book we take up shall be one of the same size, by the 
 best novelist of his language, and the price is also two 
 dollars. We pass along a little further, and pick up 
 another book, of the same cost in paper and mechanical 
 production, but this time it is a philosophical work. The 
 author is eminent, and this is the latest declaration of a 
 most fertile mind the grand result of all his thinking 
 the best summary of all his wisdom. The price of it is 
 two dollars. The next is a poem. It took the author 
 years to write it. His art is at its best, and he does not 
 expect to surpass it. He gives to the world, in this 
 poem, the highest it is in him to conceive. His very 
 heart's blood has been coined into its phrases and its
 
 Literature. 89 
 
 fancies price two dollars. The next book examined is 
 a collection of the flabby jokes of some literary mounte- 
 bank, and, on inquiring the price, we find that it costs 
 about the same to print it that it did to print the others, 
 and can be had for two dollars. 
 
 Our natural conclusion is, that the cjuality of the ma- 
 terial put into a book has nothing whatever to do with 
 the price of it. The work of a poor brain sells for just 
 as much, if it sells at all, as the work of a good brain. 
 Even when we find an extra price put upon a book that 
 appeals to a limited class, we learn that the fact has no 
 reference to the quality of the work, or to its cost lo the 
 man who wrote it. The extra price is put on simply to 
 save the publisher from loss. The printer and paper- 
 maker must be paid. The author is not taken into ac- 
 count. 
 
 As the quality of a painter's work grows finer and 
 better, his pictures command increasing prices. The 
 master in sculpture coriimands the market. He gets 
 such prices as he will. Quality is an element of price 
 in everything salable that we know of, except books. 
 The prices of these are raised or depreciated only by the 
 printer, the paper-maker, and the binder. Quality of the 
 mechanical parts of the product is considered only by the 
 publisher. The quality of the brain that invented and 
 elaborated the book, the quality of the life that has gone 
 into it, the quality of the art which has given it form 
 this sort of quality is not taken into consideration at all. 
 
 Authorship, though more prosperous and independent 
 than it was formerly, has not yet received its proper posi- 
 tion in the world. It was a pauper for centuries, and still, 
 among a large number of book publishers and book 
 buyers, the author is regarded as a man whose property 
 in a book is an intangible and very unimportant matter. 
 The author has nothing whatever to say about the price
 
 90 Every-Day Topics. 
 
 of his book. He takes what the pubUsher, who is in 
 direct competition with pirates, is willing or able to give 
 him. 
 
 Now printing, paper, and binding involve processes 
 of manufacture, the prices of which vary but little from 
 year to year. They are easily calculable, and a pub- 
 lisher knows within three or four cents a copy just how 
 much a book will cost him delivered at his counter. He 
 receives his books like so many bales of cotton goods, 
 or cases of shoes. Of the life, the education, the genius, 
 the culture, the exhausting toil, the precious time, the 
 hope, that went to the production of the manuscript from 
 which the books were printed, he takes little account. A 
 certain percentage upon the retail sales goes to the au- 
 thor, and the author takes just what the publisher says 
 he can afford to give him. 
 
 Well, the golden age of authorship is coming, some 
 time, and when it comes, the amount of an author's 
 royalty will be printed on the title-page of his book. He 
 can ask the public to pay him for royalty what he will, 
 and if the public will not pay him his price, then the 
 book being produced and sold by the publisher at regu- 
 lar rates the author, and not the publisher, will be com- 
 pelled to reduce the price, by reducing the royalty. 
 Printing and selling books form a very simple business, 
 that men may pursue under the same rules that govern 
 every other business ; but in no way can an author get 
 justice until he has a voice in determining the price of 
 his books, and the public know exactly what they are 
 paying him. At present he has no direct relation with 
 the public. No discriminations are made, either for or 
 against him. He stands behind the publisher, and the 
 public do not see him at all. We see no reason why 
 there should not appear on the title-page of every book 
 the price and the amount of the author's royalty show-
 
 Literature. 9 1 
 
 ing exactly who is responsible for the price of the book, 
 particularly if it be large. We do not think the plan 
 would result in the increase of the cost of books to the 
 public, except in instances where it ought to be in- 
 creased. This, or something equivalent to this, will 
 come when we get the international copyright. It may 
 take the form that it does in England, where a pub- 
 lisher buys a manuscript outright, and sells his volumes 
 at a price based mainly on the cost of it. In some way 
 the quality of literary work must be recognized in the 
 price of a book ; in some way a literary man's well- 
 earned reputation must be taken into account in the 
 sale of his productions, or authorship must suffer a con- 
 stant and most discouraging wrong. We shall have the 
 matter all adjusted, by and by. 
 
 The Literary Class. 
 In the great world of common and uncommon men 
 and women who are outside of the pale of literary cul- 
 ture, there exist certain prejudices against the literary 
 class, which are little recognized and little talked about, 
 but which are positive and pernicious. There is a feel- 
 ing that this class is conceited, supercilious, selfish, and, 
 to a very great extent, useless. There is a feeling that 
 it is exclusive ; that it arrogates to itself the possession 
 of tastes and powers above the rest of the world, upon 
 which it looks down with contemptuous superiority. 
 There is, undoubtedly, connected with this prejudice a 
 dim conviction that the literary class is really superior 
 to the rest of the world in its requirements, its tastes, 
 and its sources of pleasure ; that culture is better than 
 stocks and bonds ; that literary life occupies a higher 
 plane than commercial, manufacturing, and agricul- 
 tural life, and that it holds a wealth which money cannot 
 buy, and which ordinary values can in no way measure.
 
 92 Every -Day Topics. 
 
 Much of the unspoken protest that rises against the as- 
 sumptions of the literary class, and against the arro- 
 gance which it is supposed to possess, undoubtedly 
 comes from a feeling of inferiority and impotence of 
 conscious inability to rise into its atmosphere, and to 
 appropriate its wealth and its satisfactions. 
 
 Having said this, it may also be said that the literary 
 class is very largely to blame for this state of things. It 
 has almost uniformly failed to recognize its relations and 
 its duties to the world at large. It has been bound up 
 in itself. It has read for itself, thought for itself, written 
 for itself. It has had respect mainly to its own critical 
 judgments. It has been a kind of close corporation a 
 mutual admiration society. It has looked for its inspira- 
 tions mainly within its own circle. It has, in ten thou- 
 sand ways, nourished the idea that it is not interested 
 in the outside world ; that it does not care for the out- 
 side world and its opinions ; that it owes no duty to it, 
 and has no message for it. Its criticisms and judgments, 
 in their motive and method, are often of the most frivo- 
 lous character. An author is not judged according to 
 what he has done for the world, but for v/hat he 
 has done for himself, and for what they are pleased 
 to denominate " literature." To certain, or most un- 
 certain, men of art, or canons of art, or notions of art, 
 it holds itself in allegiance, ignoring the uses of art 
 altogether. It has its end in itself. It is a cat that 
 plays with and swallows its own tail. 
 
 Now, it seems to us that if the literary class has an/ 
 apology for existence, it must come from its uses to the 
 world. It entertains a certain contempt for the world, 
 which does not appreciate and will not take its wares 
 forgetting that it has not endeavored, in any way, to serve 
 the world, by the adaptation of its wares to the world's 
 use. Endeavoring to be true to itself, bowing in devo-
 
 Literature. 93 
 
 tion and loyalty to its own opinions and notions, it utters 
 its word, and then, because the great outside world will 
 not hear it, complains, and finds its revenge in holding 
 the popular judgment in contempt. It gives the world 
 what it cannot appreciate, what it cannot appropriate ; 
 what, in its condition, it does not need ; what it turns 
 its back upon, and finds its consolation in inside praise, 
 and a reputation for good work among those who do not 
 need it. 
 
 In the best book we have, there are certain rules of 
 life laid down, that are just as good for the literary as for 
 the moral and religious world. The Son of Man came 
 not to be ministered unto, but to minister. He that 
 would be great must be a servant. If any man has 
 special gifts, and achieves special culture of those gifts, 
 his greatness is brought, by irreversible law and the 
 divine policy, into immediate relation with the want of 
 the world. He is to be a servant, and thus to prove his 
 title to lordship. His true glory is only to be found in 
 ministering. If he do not minister, he has no right to 
 honor. If he will not minister, he holds his gift un- 
 worthily, and has no more reason to expect the honor 
 of the world for what he does, than he would if he did 
 nothing. The military and administrative gifts of 
 Washington were, undoubtedly, well known and honored 
 among the military and political classes, but their sig- 
 nificance and glory were only brought out in service. 
 He is honored and revered, not because he served his 
 class, but Ijccause he served his country. Those emi- 
 nent i;ifts of his had no meaning save as they were re- 
 lated to the wants of his time ; and tlieir glory is th;'.t 
 they served those wants. The glory of Watt, and 
 Fulton, and Stevenson, and Morse, and Howe, is, not 
 that they were ingenious men, but that they placed their 
 ingenuity in the service of the world. The honor we
 
 94 Every-Day Topics. 
 
 give to Howard and Florence Nightingale is not given 
 to their sympathetic hearts, but to their helpful hands. 
 
 Why should the literary class, of all the gifted men 
 and women of the world, alone hold its gifts in service 
 of itself? Why should it refuse to come down into the 
 service of life ? There is an audience waiting for every 
 literary man and woman who will speak to it. Why 
 should the world be blamed for not overhearing what 
 literary men and women say to each other ? The talk 
 is not meant for them. It has nothing in it for them; 
 and there is a feeling among them not thoroughly well- 
 defined, perhaps, but real that they are defrauded. 
 All this feeling of contempt for the non-literary world 
 on one side, and this jealousy of the literary class on the 
 other, will not exist for a moment after the relations be- 
 tween them are practically recognized. When the 
 world is served, it will regard its servant as its bene- 
 factor, and the great interest of literature will be pros- 
 perous. Book after book falls dead from the press, be- 
 cause, and only because, it is not the medium of service. 
 The world finds nothing in it that it needs. Why should 
 the world buy it ? The golden age of American litera- 
 ture can never dawn until the world has learned to look 
 upon the literary class as its helper, its inspirer, its 
 leader in culture and thought ; and it can never learn to 
 look thus upon that class until it has been ministered to 
 in all its wants by direct purpose, in simple things as 
 well as in sublime. 
 
 The Interest of Fiction. 
 "Daniel Deronda" has been perused by divines, 
 lawyers, merchants, women and girls. Wherever it has 
 been read, it has excited an interest equalled by few 
 histories that have ever appeared. This is an age of 
 science of " popular science," the age of revelations
 
 Literature. 95 
 
 in knowledge and fevolutions in thought but no other 
 form of expression to which the age has given birth has 
 so enchained the attention of so large and intelligent an 
 audience as this has done. It was anticipated with lively 
 pleasure ; it has been read with profound attention ; it 
 has been discussed as earnestly as if every statement and 
 incident and revealed relation were as real as our every- 
 day life, and as if the outcome were as genuine a fact as 
 history records, or science determines. 
 
 What is the reason of all this ? The most obvious 
 answer that which lies nearest the surface is that there 
 is nothing so interesting to men and women as men and 
 women. The never-dying interest that interplays be- 
 tween the sexes, the display of new combinations of 
 traits in the formation of character, the revelation of new 
 phases of old forms of character, the depiction of na- 
 tional peculiarities and types, the unravelling of what 
 seem to be threads of destiny running between and unit- 
 ing various lives, the dramatic developments when these 
 lives come into close relations, coalescing or colliding, 
 the grand progressions, the happenings, the incidents, 
 the accidents, the happinesses, the miseries, the 
 triumphs, the defeats, the wide sweep onward to a con- 
 summation all these enlist a deep sympathy ; and if 
 the art of the writer be good, they are history, having all 
 the charm of the most charming history. We know a 
 little of what life is to ourselves : it is natural for us to 
 wish to know what it is to others. We like to get inside 
 of other life to watch its motives, its internal and ex- 
 ternal controlling forces, its actions and reactions, its 
 purposes and plans, its powers and passions, and to 
 witness the final outcome. In truth, the study of others, 
 thrown into varied relations, is a study of ourselves and 
 our friends ; and ourselves and our friends interest us 
 more than science, or politics, or metaphysics.
 
 9'J Every- Day Topics. 
 
 There is a universal recognition, too, that the love of 
 the sexes for each other is the master passion of human- 
 ity. It is lively in the young, and its memories, at least, 
 linger among the old, as the sweetest they possess. The 
 roses and violets may not be fresh with the latter, but 
 their odor still lingers about the vases in which they were 
 laid away to wither and to fade. So love is always in- 
 teresting to all, and the novel that does not contain it, 
 in some form, always disappoints. Love, indeed, may 
 be called the staple passion of the novel. Without it, 
 novels would hardly be written ; and it is found only in 
 the novel and the poem. It is either above or below the 
 dignity of history ; science never undertakes its analy- 
 sis, and philosophy severely lets it alone, or only treats 
 it in the dry. objective way that it would discuss anger 
 or pride. So the novel is specially interesting in its 
 treatment of the love of the sexes, and so it appeals to 
 the dominant passion of the race. 
 
 Characterization has become a prominent trait of the 
 modern novel. The old novels dwelt mainly among the 
 events and incidents of life ; but tlie men and women 
 were much alike. In the modern novel, we have closely 
 defined characters, so that the men and women we find 
 in it impress themselves upon us by force of individual- 
 ity. We love them, admire them, despise them, as if 
 they were real. They come to us as interesting, indi- 
 vidualized studies as new acquaintances, consistent 
 evermore with themselves, and building up for themselves 
 separate memories in our minds. These fresh individ- 
 ualities are even more interesting to us than if we had met 
 them in actual life ; for the novelist helps us to study 
 and weigh them justly. This matter of characterization 
 has done, perhaps, more than love to make the modern 
 novel a universal companion. The study of types, and 
 especially types of character, is a philosophical study,
 
 Literature. 97 
 
 and many a great mind that does not care for love, or 
 for the dramatic element in life and literature, studies a 
 character with supreme interest. 
 
 Again, all men are interested in a strife of good and 
 evil forces ; and these enter into every acceptable novel. 
 A novel that is wholly bad is disgusting ; and a novel 
 that is wholly good is hardly less so. There is very little 
 in any novel so intensely interesting as the strife be- 
 tween its good and evil elements ; and the novelist who 
 does not sympathize with the good element, and make 
 it triumphant in the grand outcome of his story, can only 
 hold his audience by marvellous exhibitions of power 
 in description and characterization. Whatever dogmas 
 we may hold concerning the total depravity of human 
 nature, it is not to be denied that men and women uni- 
 versally sympathize with the innocent and the good, in 
 their strife with the intriguing and plotting of the bad, 
 and that they rejoice only in the triumph of the former. 
 This strife between good and evil, between justice and 
 injustice, between frank innocence and jealous malice, is 
 a strife with which all are familiar a strife that enters 
 into every life and every society ; and that is where the 
 novel touches the moral element in men and women. 
 So there are multitudes caring little for love, perhaps, 
 and less for typical character, who find their interest in 
 a novel mainly in its exhibition of antagonistic moral 
 forces, that find a resolution in a triumph of the right. 
 
 All this means something more than instruction : it 
 means amusement. Anything that pleasantly interests 
 and absorbs the mind is recreation, when it comes out- 
 side of the demands of work. There is a small number, 
 enlarging, perhaps, from year to year, who read novels 
 from an artist's stand-point, who are critics, who find 
 their satisfaction in the artistic development of character 
 and plot, who delight in style, and weigh a dramatic 
 5
 
 98 Every -Day Topics. 
 
 climax in scales, who study a novel as a novel ; but the 
 multitude read a novel simply for the pleasant occupa- 
 tion of their minds. Life is humdrum, or fatiguing, and 
 they come to the novel only for forgetfulness, or the 
 pleasant excitement that a contemplation of new scenes 
 and new characters affords. To such as these, a good 
 novel is a benediction, for it relieves them of their 
 burdens, clothes the commonplace with romance, and 
 gives new meaning to human action and human life. 
 
 To suppose that fiction could permanently appeal to 
 so many classes of mind if it were only fiction, is to sup- 
 pose an absurdity. Fiction is most powerful when it 
 contains most truth ; and there is but little truth that 
 we get so true as that which we find in fiction. So long 
 as history is written by partisans, and science by theo- 
 rists, and philosophy by hobby-riders, the faithful 
 studies of human life, as we find them in the best novels, 
 are the truest things we have ; and they cannot fail to 
 continue to be the source of our favorite knowledge, our 
 best amusements, and our finest inspirations. 
 
 Books and Reading. 
 Rev. Dr. William M. Taylor has recently delivered in 
 this city a very valuable and interesting lecture, on the 
 subject which we have written as the title of this article. 
 One of the most suggestive passages of the lecture was 
 that relating to personal character as the basis of suc- 
 cessful reading. We do not remember any special 
 reference to the means through which this character is 
 lost, by reading itself, although it was suggested ; and 
 to these it should be profitable to call attention. After 
 all, the character necessary to profitable reading is, 
 when we come to measure and analyze it, hardly more, 
 and little else, than the power of study the power to fix 
 and hold the attention, to master principles and details,
 
 Literature. 9;) 
 
 to seize the dominant motive of a book, and to appropri- 
 ate and assimilate what there is in it for the reader, of 
 food for personal culture. 
 
 At some period of the life of every man and woman 
 of fairly good education, the power of study has been in 
 possession. Any man or woman who has once studied 
 successfully has possessed the qualifications for profit- 
 able reading ; and we believe that there are compara- 
 tively few who do not become conscious of the loss of 
 this power, in a greater or less degree. Disuse of the 
 power will account for this loss in many instances in- 
 deed, in most instances. The cares of business or the 
 household, the diversions of society, sometimes the lack 
 of opportunity to get good books, leave the power of 
 study to dissipation. Beyond these, and more mischiev- 
 ous than these, is a cause of this loss of power in the 
 kind of reading indulged in. The pursuit of one class 
 of reading to excess, in accordance with a pronounced 
 individual taste, disqualifies for another class. A man 
 with a taste for poetry, so strong that his power for study 
 is not called into use at all, may lose his power for study- 
 ing history or philosophy, and vice versa. A woman 
 with a decided love of novel-reading may indulge in her 
 taste or passion to such an extent that it is an absolute 
 pain to her to undertake to read anything else. A per- 
 son with antiquarian tastes may become so devoted to 
 their gratification that he can fix his attention upon noth- 
 ing that relates to the current interests of society or 
 the state. Newspaper-reading is one of the most fruitful 
 causes of the loss of the power to study. To a newspa- 
 per-reader, an antiquarian book is more dry than dust, 
 and history no more significant than a last year's al- 
 manac. 
 
 In these days, all men and women read something, 
 but the trouble is that by reading in a single vein, which
 
 lOO Every Day Topics. 
 
 so strongly appeals to their individual tastes and per- 
 sonal idiosyncrasies that it is not study at all, they lose 
 their power to study anything else. The rule for suc- 
 cessful and profitable reading would, in the light of these 
 facts, seem to be to read only what one does not like to 
 read. That reading which costs no effort and necessarily 
 dissipates the power of study, is that which we should 
 indulge in only for recreation, while that which we know 
 to be important in itself, and in its bearings upon bioad 
 knowledge and culture, should most engage our time 
 and attention. The trouble is, not that we do not read 
 enough, but that we read so much of that which simply 
 pleases us as to destroy our power to read that which 
 will edify and enlarge us. There are many aspects in 
 which newspaper reading is preferable to much that is 
 considered essential to high culture. It is undoubtedly 
 dissipating to the power of study, but so is any other 
 reading which is pursued as a passion. It has this ad- 
 vantage : that it never detaches the mind from a supreme 
 interest in the affairs of to-day. There are studies which 
 separate a man from his time which shut off his sym- 
 pathies from the men and the movements around him. 
 There is a kind of dilettanteism which rejoices in mous- 
 ing in dark corners for the curiosities of history or art, 
 which is wise about great nothings wise about bric-a- 
 brac, w^ise about antique gems, wise about coins, wise 
 about classical antiquities, wise about old books of whose 
 contents it knows little, wise about dead and useless 
 things, and foolish enough to plume itself upon its wis- 
 dom. Now, any reading that does not make us better 
 citizens more capable of meeting and mastering the 
 needs of the time and generation in which our life is 
 cast, is reading which we cannot afford to engage in. 
 
 Young men of ambitious aims are fond of asking advice 
 as to a " course of reading." The safest advice that can
 
 Literature. loi 
 
 be given them is to read least the books they like best, 
 if they would retain their power to study, or to read 
 profitably at all. A special, strong liking for one kind 
 of literature betrays a one-sided nature, or a one-sided 
 development, which demands complementary culture 
 in other directions. The neglected books of the world 
 are histories and works upon moral and intellectual phi- 
 losophy. The present is the day of novels, and, what is 
 about as nearly their antipodes as possible, scientific 
 knowledge and culture. That history in whose instruc- 
 tive light we should weave the history of our own time 
 that history through which we make the acquaintance of 
 our kind, as they have lived and acted under various in- 
 stitutions and circumstances, and that philosophy by 
 which we become acquainted with ourselves, and our 
 higher powers and relations, are comparatively little 
 read. It is in these works, mainly, that the power of 
 study is missed, and in these mainly that it is to be re- 
 gained. We say this very decidedly, and yet we know 
 that there are men whose whole life is here, and who 
 stand in great need of the influences of poetry and fiction 
 as food for starved imaginations. No man liveth by 
 bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of 
 the mouth of God. We need food from every side, of 
 every kind, and the man who finds that he has lost that 
 power of study which alone can seize and appropriate it, 
 should win it back by patient exercise. 
 
 Literary Virility. 
 One of the most notable characteristics of such writers 
 as Shakespeare, Scott, Thackeray, and Dickens, is what 
 .may be called, for lack of a better word, vijility. They 
 write like men. There is no dandyism or dilettanteism 
 about them. If they deal with the passion of love, they 
 deal with it heartily ; but it is not the only passion which
 
 102 Every -Day Topics. 
 
 enters into their work. Hate, revenge, avarice, ambi- 
 tion, all play their part. Love is not the only passion 
 that inspires them. It is not regarded as the begin-all, 
 and the end-all of life. They deal with great questions 
 and large affairs. They find themselves in a world where 
 there is something to be done besides dawdling around 
 petticoats and watching the light that dances in a curl. 
 They do not exhaust themselves on flirtations or in- 
 trigues. They enter into sympathy with all the motives 
 that stir society, all the interests that absorb or con- 
 cern it, and by this sympathy they touch the universal 
 human heart. Their poems and novels are pictures of 
 life in all its phases ; and the homely joys of a cot- 
 tager's fire-side, the humble cares and ambitions of the 
 simple hind, the disgusting "tricks and manners" of 
 socials shams, as well as the greedy ambitions of the 
 miser or the politician, are depicted with the same 
 fidelity to fact as the loves and relations of the sexes. 
 
 We expect, of course, that a man will write of that 
 which fills him. Out of the abundance of the heart 
 the mouth speaketh. A young man will naturally write 
 of love, because that is the master passion with him. 
 Life has only gone to that extent with him. It would be 
 unnatural for him to write of much else, because noth- 
 ing so powerful as love has thus far entered into his life. 
 It is the most virile thing that he can do. But youth 
 passes away, and, with it, the absorbing character of 
 the passion of love, so far as it concerns him. Then 
 come to him the great affairs, the great questions, the 
 great pursuits of life. For him to revert to, and try to 
 live in, this first period to heat over the old broth, to 
 thrash over the old straw, to simulate transports he no 
 longer feels, and to pretend to be absorbed by the petty 
 details of boyish courtship and girlish ways and fancies 
 is to compromise, or sacrifice his manhood. He de-
 
 Literature. 103 
 
 scends in this to the work of a school-girl, who strives 
 to anticipate what he tries to remember. He turns his 
 back upon the acting, suffering world in which he lives, 
 with all its hopes and despairs, its trials and triumphs, 
 its desires and disappointments, its questions of life and 
 death, its aspirations and temptations, its social, polit- 
 ical and religious tendencies and movements, and tries 
 to amuse himself and the world by puerilities of which 
 he ought to be ashamed, and labors strenuously to con- 
 vict himself of the lack of literary virility. 
 
 He is something less than a man who can live in such 
 a world as this, and in this age, and find nothing better 
 to engage his pen than descriptions of ribbons, pouting 
 lips, and divine eyes ; who dwells upon the manner in 
 which a woman disposes of her skirts, or complements 
 the color upon her cheek by some deft way of wearing 
 her scarf, and makes up his entire work of the stuff that 
 is to be found among the dreams and dalliances of the 
 sexes. There is quite as much of effeminacy in the choice 
 of literary material as there is in the mode of treating 
 it when chosen. Of course, the man who chooses small 
 topics and small material is the very man to treat them 
 in a small way. He will pet a phrase as he will the 
 memory of a pretty hand. He will toy with words as if 
 they were tresses. In short, he will be a literary dandy, 
 which is quite a different thing from being a literary 
 man. 
 
 It is the theory of the literary dandy that love is the 
 only available material for the novel and the poem ; but 
 if he will go back to the works of those who are named 
 at the beginning of this article, he will recognize the 
 fact that the characters of most importance, and the 
 incidents of most significance and interest in them, are 
 those with which the passion of love has very little to do. 
 If it existed at all, it was incidental to something greater
 
 134 Every -Day Topics. 
 
 and more important. Indeed, we should say that th 
 least interesting material in any of the novels of Scott, 
 Thackeray, and Dickens, is that which relates specially 
 to the sexual relations. Mr. Pickwick and Captain 
 Cuttle are worth all the women Dickens ever painted ; 
 and the women of Scott are more interesting in them- 
 selves than in any of their tender relations. It was the 
 literary virility of these men their solid, sincere, and 
 consistent manhood that made them great, and made 
 them universally popular. Where would they be to-day 
 if they had ignored the various life with which they held 
 immediate relations, and confined their pens to the de- 
 piction of creations and relations which, in experience, 
 they had forever left behind ? 
 
 If any reader will compare the scenes of the Last 
 Judgment, as conceived and represented by Michael 
 Angelo on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, or the mag- 
 nificent pictures of Titian in Venice, or the masterly, 
 but coarse, and often offensive, productions of Rubens 
 everywhere, with the petty prettinesscs and dainty per- 
 fection of Meissonnier, he will understand what we mean 
 by literary virility. The latter painter is, in art, exactly 
 what the dandy is in literature. Even if the things he 
 does are well done, the question whether they are worth 
 doing remains to be answered. Virility in art is more 
 easily to be detected more easily demonstrable than 
 in literature, because a grand result can be brought at 
 once under the eye in a picture, but the element is as 
 truly essential and masterful in one as the other. The 
 difference between undertaking to paint the Godhead 
 and the minute delineation of a chasseur to the very 
 sparkle of his spur is the difference between the work 
 of a man and that of a dandy.
 
 Literature. 105 
 
 Fiction. 
 
 In the multiplied discussions of the nature and the offices 
 of fiction, it is singular that reference is rarely made 
 almost never made to the fictitious portions of the 
 Bible. Every year or two the critics get at loggerheads 
 over what is legitimate and illegitimate in fiction, over 
 what is good art and bad art, over the question whether 
 art in fiction may ever properly be charged with the 
 burden of a moral or a lesson. There are some who go 
 further than this, who go so far as to question whether 
 religion and morality are legitimate material of art. 
 These men may have a personal interest in the decision 
 of the question, and we are inclined to believe they have 
 such an interest. It is quite possible that people who 
 have neither religion nor morality should object to the 
 legitimacy of material which they would be obliged to 
 borrow. 
 
 Aside from the Sermon on the Mount, a large portion, 
 and, we believe, the most important portion, of the truth 
 proclaimed by the great Master, the founder alike of 
 our religion and our civilization, was delivered in the 
 form of fiction. The " certain man " whom he used so 
 much for carrying the burden of his truth was always a 
 fictitious man. A more symmetrically designed, and a 
 more exquisitely constructed piece of fiction than the 
 story of the Prodigal Son does not exist in any language. 
 We call it a parable because in one field of life it repre- 
 sents truth in another field of life. It conveys the 
 truth which he desired to convey in the concrete. The 
 gospel histories are begemmed by what may be called, 
 without impropriety or irreverence, novelettes, and they 
 are never constructed for the sake of their art, or for 
 beauty's sake, but always as vehicles for conveying im- 
 portant moral and religious truth to men. Their art is 
 5*
 
 io6 Every -Day Topics. 
 
 perfect, simple as it is, but they assume to have no 
 reason for being except the supreme reason of use. 
 
 The oldest novel in existence is probably the Book of 
 Job. We presume there may be some men left who 
 still read the Book of Job as a veritable history, but 
 those who are capable of judging will simply place it at 
 the head of the realm of fiction. That it is divinely in- 
 spired we do not dispute. Indeed, the establishment 
 of its divine inspiration as a fact, rather than the accept- 
 ance of it as a matter of faith, would only strengthen 
 the position we have always held, viz., that the highest 
 fiction is that which the most competently carries the 
 most valuable burden of truth. The writer of the Book 
 of Job was a man who, in the dawn, as it were, of hu- 
 man history, revolved in a catholic, cultured and rev- 
 erent mind the unequal dealings of God with men. 
 Why did the good man have trouble ? Job was an 
 excellent man, " perfect and upright," stripped of every 
 good, and the art by which the writer presents him 
 as, one after another, his possessions are taken from 
 him, and his friends discuss with him the great problem 
 that vexes him, with all the machinery of dialogues be- 
 tween the Almighty and Satan, and the Almighty and 
 Job himself, surpasses all the art of later times. Such 
 imaginations and such descriptions, such conversations 
 and arguments, such marvellous characterizations as are 
 to be found in this great book can be found nowhere 
 else in the whole range of literature. It is a book that 
 has commanded the admiration as well as the profound 
 reverence of the greatest men who have ever lived, and 
 it is a novel in all its essential features, even though we 
 all it a poem. 
 
 The Book of Revelation is a novel, so far as it is an 
 attempt to convey truth through typical forms and scenes 
 and events. It is no record of facts, but a panoramic
 
 Literature. 107 
 
 representation of conceptions born in, and addressed to, 
 the imagination. In short, it is a creation of art what- 
 ever may be its origin, whether divine or human by 
 which certain great, shadowy thoughts and ideas are at- 
 tempted to be represented to the mental apprehensions 
 or the faith of men. There are many devout believers 
 in the inspiration of the ancient Scriptures who regard 
 the story of the creation and the fall of Adam rehearsed 
 in the Book of Genesis as anything but a literal repre- 
 sentation of historic facts. The essential truth is in the 
 narrative, but it is represented in such a way that the 
 simplest mind can apprehend and make use of it. The 
 Song of Solomon is a very exquisite essay in the art of 
 fiction. If the Books of Esther and Ruth are historical, 
 they are certainly nothing to us but stories with morals, 
 and very strong and beautiful stories they arc. The 
 names of Ahasuerus and Mordccai, and Haman and 
 Esther, are nothing but names to the present reading 
 world, which mean no more than those of Daniel De- 
 ronda and Ralph Nickleby and Clarissa Harlowe. Boaz 
 and Ruth might be Abelard and Hcloise, or any other 
 lo\ crs. The two stories are to us simply stories, having 
 no significance particularly as history, and no use, save 
 as in an exquisite form of art they convey to us the 
 moral lessons with which they are charged. 
 
 Now, it is quite possible that the majority of literary 
 critics would not take the Bible as authority for anything ; 
 but we submit that a book which lies at the basis of the 
 best civilization the world has ever known, that has held 
 the profound reverence of the noblest minds that have 
 ever existed, that has inspired the highest art of eighteen 
 centuries, that has gathered to itself the tender affec- 
 tions of countless generations of men, that has been the 
 fountain of eloquence from which a million pulpits have 
 drawn their supplies, that is so high and characteristic
 
 io8 Every- Day Topics. 
 
 in its art that no attempt to imitate it ever has risen 
 above the seeming of burlesque, is well worthy of the 
 respect of literary men as a literary authority. 
 
 It is fair to conclude that when fiction is used in the 
 sacred books it is used not only legitimately, but used in 
 the best way it can be used. The truth is, that all this 
 talk about writing stories for the sake of the stories, 
 about fiction for the sake of art, about the impropriety 
 of burdening a work of fiction with a lesson or a moral 
 is bosh and drivel. We do not dispute at all that a story 
 may be written for the simple purpose of amusing the 
 mind. We do not dispute that a story may legitimately 
 be written in the interest of art alone. What we main- 
 tain is, that all this is petty business when compared 
 with the supreme uses of fiction, viz., the organization 
 into attractive, artistic forms of the most valuable truths 
 as they relate to the characters and lives and histories 
 of men. A rose is beautiful and fragrant, and in its 
 beauty and fragrance holds the justification of its being. 
 But a field of roses would make a poor show, even in the 
 matter of beauty, by the side of a wheat-field, every 
 stalk of which is bending with its burden of substantial 
 ministry to the wants of men. We simply maintain that 
 the wheat-field is a better production than the rose-field. 
 Let men raise roses if they can do no better. Let them 
 raise pansies, marigolds, hollyhocks, anything they 
 choose, and let people delight in these who may, but 
 don't let them presume to deny the legitimacy of wheat- 
 growing, or assert the illegitimacy of all productions except 
 flowers. With the facts relating to the prevalent bad art 
 of stories with morals we have nothing to do. No good 
 moral lesson excuses bad art, and no man has any right to 
 burden such a lesson with bad art. If a irian's art is not 
 a royal vehicle for the progress of the moral he desires to 
 honor and convey, then he has no call to be a novelist.
 
 Literature. 109 
 
 Goodness as Literary Material. 
 
 We can hardly imagine anything more curious as a 
 subject of inquiry than the difficulty experienced by 
 every writer of fiction in the attempt to paint a very good 
 man or woman. It seems to be very easy to depict 
 wicked people. The villains of the play and the novel 
 appear in great variety, with no lack of types of the finest 
 interest. Wickedness seems to be perennially fresh, as 
 it is proverbially engaging. For instance : it would 
 have been quite impossible for John Hay to write an ac- 
 ceptable or an impressive poem about a sweet Christian 
 fellow who had sacrificed his life to save a boat-load of 
 passengers ; but he could paint Jim Bludso a bad man 
 with a few touches that can never be forgotten. If he 
 had undertaken to describe a good young man, who did 
 not " chew," or drink, or swear, who taught a class in 
 the Sunday school, and who lived virtuously with his one 
 wife, and rose at last into an act of heroism, he would 
 not have found ten readers ; but the rough, coarse, pro- 
 fane wretch, who had one wife at Natchez- under-the-hill, 
 and another one up in Pike, becomes at once a memora- 
 ble hero in his hands. With all that may legitimately 
 be said against Bret Harte's heroes and heroines, there 
 is no question that many of them are made marvellously 
 interesting by the forms of wickedness they represent. 
 This much is true at least, that, as literary material, the 
 rough, low types of life and character to be found in 
 California and on the border, are much superior to the 
 best types to be found there. 
 
 Perhaps the inquiry into the reason of this should go 
 deeper, or start further back. It might be well to ask 
 why it is that some of the most interesting people we 
 ever met were scamps. It might be well to inquire why 
 some of the best men we know are the least interestintr.
 
 1 10 Every -Day Topics. 
 
 It might be instructive to learn why it is that a company 
 of virtuous girls will be attracted by a man whose virtue 
 they have reason to doubt, in the presence of those who 
 are known to be men of purity and honor. These in- 
 quiries might show us that goodness is not only less 
 interesting to men as literary material than wicked- 
 ness, but is less interesting in itself. It is undoubtedly 
 true that we should rarely go among our best men and 
 women for our most interesting characters. Certainly 
 we should not go among the membership of our churches. 
 There are churches the dead level of whose tasteless and 
 flavorless Christianity is not only uninteresting but re- 
 pulsive. Dr. Eggleston, in some of his Western Metho- 
 dist types, gives us people who are interesting, but their 
 flavor does not come from their Methodism, or their 
 goodness, but from nature and character, formed under 
 unusual circumstances. 
 
 There are, undoubtedly, sufficient reasons for the un- 
 lovely character, or the unattractive character, of many 
 types of Christian goodness. There are brawling types, 
 abject types, fashionable types, childish types, that of 
 course are disgusting to all healthy minds. Then there 
 is the type of goodness that is framed upon the moral 
 law built up upon the " Thou shalt not" a goodness 
 that is based upon repression of the bad rather than the 
 development of the good. There are many types of 
 Christian goodness which betray themselves as unnatural 
 or superficial, as having their basis, not in a living prin- 
 ciple, but in a mechanical plan or a scheme of policy. 
 Of course all these are as far from being interesting as 
 they can be. It is undoubtedly true that a character 
 can only have the power to interest us when it is alive, 
 positive, aggressive. Any life that is interesting must 
 have a centre not extraneous but in itself. No life 
 inspired and conducted by outside rules can possibly be
 
 Literature. 1 1 1 
 
 interesting to any other life. What this or that man, 
 whether good or bad, will do of his own motion, in the 
 circumstances that occasions bring around him, is what 
 we are interested in. If we know that he is guided by a 
 set of rules, that he is the subject of some compact or 
 organization, and that certain penalties hang over him 
 if he fail in any respect, we have no interest in him. 
 The eagle caged is a most uninteresting bird ; but the 
 eagle in a cloud, or on a crag, will hold the eye like a 
 star. It is the free man who attracts us, and we are not 
 sure that a good deal of the unattractiveness of goodness 
 is not attributable to the impression that it is con- 
 strained. 
 
 Every wicked man has his own private principle of 
 wickedness. He is endowed with certain appetites and 
 passions he entertains, privately, certain purposes, de- 
 sires, ambitions and we feel sure the moment we come 
 into contact with him, that he will be sincere and con- 
 sistent with himself. What he will do how he will work 
 out, on the plane of his individual nature, the evil that 
 is in him is what interests us. What the good man 
 will do we already know. We understand the rule by 
 which he conducts his life. If he is simply a moral 
 man we understand his law. If he is a religious man, 
 we not only understand his law, but we understand all 
 the persuasives and dissuasives which lie around him in 
 the institutions and creeds to which he has subjected his 
 will, so that he only becomes particularly interesting to 
 us when he breaks away from his laws and defies the in- 
 stitutions to whose yoke he had bent himself. We can 
 never be particularly interested in the man whom we 
 can calculate upon. 
 
 It is quite likely that some will say that wc are inter- 
 ested in wicked people because we are wicked that the 
 wicked engage our sygipathy in a perfectly natural way,
 
 112 Every Day Topics. 
 
 but the facts will not sustain the theory. Whenever 
 goodness becomes apprehended as a vital, independent 
 force in a man, working its way naturally out in all rela- 
 tions and all conduct, when it becomes aggressive and 
 ingenious in its beneficence, and is incalculable in its 
 sacrifices and heroisms, it will become good literary ma- 
 terial, and not before. Whenever goodness crops out 
 in a bad character, as it often does in one of Harte's 
 heroes when it appears as a spontaneous human growth 
 that could not at all have been calculated upon how 
 marvellously engaging it is ! But when it is made to 
 order ; when a novelist sets out to make a good man or 
 a faultless woman, how sure he is to fail! What sorry 
 muffs are all the particularly good men and women whom 
 the novelists have presented to us ! They cannot possi- 
 bly be made in the ordinary way. All art demands a fol- 
 lowing of nature. Uncle Tom can be interesting as a Chris- 
 tian because he has taken his Christianity like a child, or 
 as a child takes its mother's milk. He has imbibed it. 
 He knows little or nothing of dogma, but the heart and 
 life of Christ arc in him, working sweetly out through 
 natural channels into acts and effects that are picturesque 
 and engaging. Raphael painted some of the sweetest of 
 his Madonnas from peasant mothers, and he at feast 
 understood that wherever he found the best human type 
 of mother and child, it best represented the divine. 
 
 One thing is at least sure : goodness in the hands of a 
 literary man must not be of the type that is formed by 
 creeds and institutions, if he would make it interesting. 
 Whether there can be any true goodness outside of these 
 we leave the dogmatist and casuist to decide. With that 
 matter we have nothing to do in this article. We sim- 
 ply say that art can never be effective in engaging the 
 interest of those who study its works, if it strays from 
 the natural fountains of feeling and life. The goodness
 
 Litcrattire. 1 1 3 
 
 it would depict must be innate and spontaneous, work- 
 ing incalculably and through natural channels, a law 
 unto itself, or it can never be made to appear attractive 
 and picturesque. So long as it is in any way identified 
 with well-known laws and creeds and institutions, it is 
 not good literary material. We do not mean by this 
 that beautiful Christian characters cannot be painted so 
 that Christian people shall be sympathetically interested 
 in them ; but we mean that the art instinct rejects them, 
 and that they cannot be so painted that they will secure 
 the interest of the universal literary mind. 
 
 A Word about Newspapers. 
 In all the discussion inspired by Mr. Whitelaw Reid's 
 recent suggestive address on the newspaper, wc have 
 seen no mention made of a topic of the greatest interest 
 to the reading public and of the greatest importance to 
 the newspaper itself, viz., the practical confusion of 
 moral and social values in the present conduct of the 
 public press. If any simple, unsophisticated person 
 were, for the first time, to take up a newspaper and to 
 endeavor to judge what things in the moral and social 
 world were considered of the greatest importance, what 
 would he conclude, judging by the space and attention 
 devoted to them in its pages? In a large majority of 
 instances, he would find a stingy column devoted to the 
 discussions of a social science convention, and half a 
 page to a murder or a boat race. He would find a 
 column devoted to police reports, in which the disgust- 
 ing records of vice and its awards would be recorded in 
 detail, while the sermons of a Sunday, from the best 
 minds in the country, would get no greater space. In 
 the editorial discussions, party and personal politics 
 would be found to predominate over everything in rela- 
 tion to religion, morals, education, temperance, science,
 
 114 Every -Day Topics. 
 
 and the whole range of social questions. The things of 
 great moment are treated as if they were of the small- 
 est importance, and the things of small importance are 
 treated as if they were of the greatest moment. 
 
 In all this there is a tremendous confusion of values 
 that not only exhibits the worthlessness of the newspaper 
 as a standard, but vitiates the public judgment. The 
 standard is unsound and the influence is bad. The re- 
 ply to this, of course, will be that the newspaper en- 
 deavors to talk about that which the public likes to read 
 about. If great space is given to a murder, or a boat 
 race, it is because people in the mass like to read about 
 these things. If little space is devoted to a great ser- 
 mon, or a discussion of a social question, it is simply 
 because nobody cares to read about them. Has it ever 
 occurred to the editor who would put this in plea that he 
 has had something to do in ministering to this depraved 
 liking for things that are valueless ? to this confusion 
 of values in the public mind ? We certainly know of 
 nothing more naturally stimulative of the love of low ex- 
 citements than the way in which crime and vice are 
 treated by the public press. The way in which a nasty 
 scandal is treated, for instance, by the average news- 
 paper is not only a foul disgrace to the press, but a most 
 demoralizing power upon the public mind. It is a put- 
 ting forward, by all the power of startling head-lines, and 
 a sturdy array of exclamation points, and double-leaded 
 details, of a thing of shame which modest people do not 
 like to have mentioned in their homes or their hearing. 
 It is giving the first place, for the consideration of men, 
 women, and children, to a thing that ought to have the 
 last place. The familiarity with vice and crime and 
 social shame that has been acquired in this country dur- 
 ing the last few years through the newspapers, has had 
 the effect of a moral scourge.
 
 Literature. 1 1 5 
 
 But we did not intend to insist on the moralities par- 
 ticularly. That which comes under the notice of the 
 newspaper press is of various value, considered from a 
 thousand points beside the moral, ^nd our point is, 
 simply, that values are altogether confused in their 
 practical treatment. Those matters are put forward 
 which are of inferior value, and those are subordinated 
 which are of superior value, until the newspaper alto- 
 gether ceases to be, in any worthy sense, a leader of the 
 public mind. 
 
 If the newspaper of the future, which, according to 
 Mr. Reid, is to have Greens and Froudes to do its re- 
 porting, shall ever be reached, it will be a very different 
 newspaper from that of to-day, which gives up its re- 
 porting to men who are neither Greens nor Froudes. 
 Men who love virtue and hate vice, and men who have 
 some just sense of moral and social values, will devote 
 their reporting mainly to that which will educate and 
 improve rather than confuse and degrade their readers. 
 If the world is improving if we are making any reli- 
 gious, moral, and social progress then the business of 
 the newspaper is not only to make a fair record of that 
 progress, but to note all the steps and exhibit all the in- 
 fluences by which it is reached. In faithfully attending 
 to this business, it will have neither time nor space for 
 the record of the frivolities and vices which now exclude 
 so much that is of superior value and significance. 
 
 The great tempter of the newspaper press is what ia 
 known as " Enterprise." If anything happens that peo- 
 ple arc curious about, even if it should be of small im- 
 portance, " enterprise " dictates that it should be looked 
 up and written down to its uttermost. It is in " enter- 
 prise " that all the reporting newspapers try to outdo 
 one another, and it is in this attempt to outdo one an- 
 other that they do so much to confuse values in journal-
 
 2i6 Every- Day Topics. 
 
 ism. One newspaper must do what another does in the 
 fear of suffering in its character for "enterprise." 
 Newspapers do not try, apparefitly. to reahze their own 
 ideal, but to outdo each other in " enterprise." We do 
 not know of a better man than Mr. Reid to undertake a 
 reahzation of his own ideal, which, we fancy, does not 
 vary very materially from our own, and to spare his 
 " enterprise " for great things, so that the world may 
 have one paper that, with a thoroughly catholic spirit, 
 carries with its records a careful balance of values, and 
 so that the public mind shall not be constantly misled, 
 and that all that ministers to progress may have a fair 
 chance. 
 
 Vulgarity in Fiction and on the Stage. 
 
 The average playwright has a fixed opinion that certain 
 definite appeals must be made to the groundlings, in order 
 to produce a successful play. There must be coarseness 
 or profanity, or the half-disguised obscenity that can be 
 put forth in a double entente, or else the great multitude 
 will not be satisfied. As a consequence of this, many 
 ladies do not dare to go to the theatre, or to take their 
 children there. There is no question that these objec- 
 tionable elements in plays have kept many more people 
 out of the theatre than they ever attracted thither. Peo- 
 ple even vulgar people are not pleased with vulgarity, 
 and it is quite worth while to call attention to the things 
 that the people are pleased with, both in the fictions of 
 the book and of the stage. 
 
 We have had a lyrical comedy running in all the thea- 
 tres of the country during the last season " Her Ma- 
 jesty's Ship Pinafore " which will illustrate a part of 
 what we mean. Since we began to observe theatres at 
 all, nothing has had such a run of popularity as this. 
 Young and old, rich and poor, have been amused by it.
 
 Literature. 1 1 7 
 
 and there is not a word in it, from beginning to end, 
 that can wound any sensibility. It is a piece of dcHcious 
 absurdity all through, and a man can enjoy two hours of 
 jollity in witnessing it, which will not leave a stain upon 
 him anywhere. It is simply delightful pure fun and 
 the most popular thing that has appeared on the stage 
 for the last ten years. We call attention to it specially 
 to show that fun, when it is pure, is more popular a 
 thousand times than when it is not. Nothing can be 
 more evident to any man of common sense than that 
 any admixture of unworthy elements in this play would 
 damage its popularity. What is true of this play is true 
 of any and every play. There is no apology whatever 
 for making the stage impure. Even vulgar people do 
 not seek the stage for impurity. They seek it for 
 pleasure, and they find the purest plays the most sat- 
 isfactory, provided only that the pleasure -giving ele- 
 ment is in them. A playwright who is obliged to resort 
 to coarse means to win the applause of coarse men, 
 convicts himself of a lack of capacity for writing a good 
 play. 
 
 If a man wishes to hear high moral sentiments ap- 
 plauded as they are applauded nowhere else, let him go 
 to a low theatre. When the villain of the play gets his 
 just retribution, and the hero, standing with his foot 
 upon his neck, above his prostrate form, makes an ap- 
 propriate apostrophe to virtue, then the house comes 
 down. Indeed, it loses no opportunity to applaud that 
 with which its daily life has very little to do, as if it were 
 trying to make up by its votes and acclamations for the 
 sins and tlic remissnesses of its practical life. It takes a 
 pretty pure playwright to satisfy an audience made up 
 largely of thieves and prostitutes. 
 
 In these days, tragedy is at a discount. In the old 
 times, when the world moved slowly, and life was not
 
 ii8 Every- Day Topics. 
 
 overworked or torn in pieces by high contending pas- 
 sions, men and women Uked to have their sensibilities 
 wrought upon. There was, at any rate, a desire for a 
 different play from that which modern times call for. 
 There are people who think that the theatre audience is 
 degraded from its old quality. We doubt it. We have 
 no doubt, indeed, that the modern audience is better 
 than the ancient one, and is made up of men and women 
 of a highly improved culture. The times have changed, 
 and life has become so active and overburdened and so 
 full that men go to the theatre to laugh. The one thing 
 that they need most is forgetfulness of care, in innocent 
 pleasure. To the modern man and woman, life is a tra- 
 gedy. The newspapers are full of tragedies. We swal- 
 low them every morning with our coffee. What we ab- 
 solutely need is fun, jollity, mirth, forgetfulness ; and 
 the stage must adapt itself to this want or go to the 
 wall. The writer of " H. M. S. Pinafore " is a public 
 benefactor, worthy of any reward we can make him ; 
 and Mr. Sullivan may snap his fingers at the stupid 
 critics who accuse him of having stooped from his 
 dignity to float this little play upon his excellent music, 
 for he has won the gratitude of the English-speaking 
 world. 
 
 It is with novels as with the stage, vulgar people do 
 not like to contemplate vulgar people. In the novel, 
 vulgar people delight to meet with gentlemen and ladies. 
 They have enough of the other sort at home, and among 
 their friends. They would like to get into better society. 
 They wish to see those who are different from them- 
 selves, and in different circumstances. 
 
 " Mi-lord," said a soft-voiced page, dressed in blue and gold, 
 entering : " the Ambassador waits." 
 
 Sir Edward turned from his ivory escritoire, with a frown, anJi 
 responded, " Bid him enter."
 
 Literature. 119 
 
 At this moment, the Lady Geraldine rose from her embroidery, 
 and with a fair blush mantling her classic features, swept from the 
 apartment. 
 
 " Hold ! " said Sir Edward. 
 
 The lady turned, and gave him a single glance of scorn, as she 
 closed the door and sought her boudoir. 
 
 It is the vulgar people who read this sort of stuff, and 
 they read it because it represents a kind of life quite 
 absurdly antipodal to their own. The third or fourth- 
 rate novelist who produces it lives nearer to the people 
 than his superiors, and knows what they like. It is true, 
 too, that the best novelist must not deal with vulgar ma- 
 terials too exclusively. No matter how clever he may 
 be, it will not do for him to forget that good people get 
 tired in novels of the same people of whom they would 
 get tired in their drawing-rooms, and particularly of 
 those whom they would never receive in their drawing- 
 rooms. They get tired of any novelist who never gives 
 them a gentleman or a lady. 
 
 It comes to this, then, in the novel and on the stage : 
 we want good company and we want mirth. We want 
 fun and we want it pure. The theatre thinks that the 
 Church is hard upon it. There was a time when the 
 novel-writer thought the Church was hard upon him ; 
 but the Church now not only reads novels, but uses 
 them in the propagation of religious ideas and religious 
 living. The theatre, for many years, has had itself to 
 blame for the attitude of the Church toward it. People 
 arc visiting the good ship Pinafore now who never en- 
 tered a theatre before, and this simply because it minis- 
 ters to their need of amusement without offending their 
 sensibilities by coarseness, or their eyes by exhibitions 
 that arc only at home in a vulgar dance-house.
 
 I20 Every -Day Topics. 
 
 Literary Materials and Tools. 
 
 When Bulwer was in the enjoyment of his young pop- 
 ularity as a novel-writer, before Dickens had been 
 heard of on this side of the Atlantic, he issued his 
 " Ernest Maltravers." The memory of that book has 
 lingered with us during these forty years as a glaring in- 
 stance of an appeal, by a powerful popular author, to the 
 coarser and more destructive passions of men and women. 
 He pictured his lovers, brought them into association, 
 and so gave direction to the reader's imagination that it- 
 self, without his words, pictured the fact and scene of 
 a seduction. It was the theme of excited common talk 
 among the young men of the time, to whom it became 
 a delicious and powerful poison. We do not know 
 whether he ever repented of his terrible sin, but we 
 know that he did incalculable harm by it. We do not 
 know whether it stands in his latter editions just as it 
 appeared in the first ; but there are many elderly men 
 into whose memory a certain page of that book, with 
 convenient rows of asterisks, is fairly burned. 
 
 The question naturally arises whether sins against so- 
 cial purity are legitimate literary material. A critic of 
 " Roxy," in one of the newspapers, objects to the book 
 on account of the relations between Mark Bonamy and 
 Nance Kirtley. The condemnation is quite sweeping, 
 and the only inference we can make is, that sins of 
 impurity are not legitimate literary material in the 
 critic's opinion. Why? we ask. What is there in hu- 
 man life that is not legitimate material ? Why should 
 the novelist have the free handling of murder, of suicide, 
 of theft and robbery, of slander, and a thousand cruel- 
 ties that need not be named, and be forbidden to touch 
 the abuse that is associated with the strongest and holiest 
 affections and passions of human nature ? If love has
 
 Literature. 1 2 1 
 
 dangers, is it wrong to point them out ? Is virtue very 
 much nourished nowadays in an atmosphere of igno- 
 rance ? Is there any such thing as an atmosphere of 
 ignorance in these days ? 
 
 We can get at a fair conclusion upon this matter by 
 comparing the effect of these two books upon the mind. 
 We have noted the effect of Bulwer's book. It was the 
 intention of the writer, without question, to excite the 
 prurient imaginations of his readers, and not to place 
 the deed in its proper relations to the peace and well- 
 being of the parties and of society. If any one can 
 rise from the perusal of " Roxy" without realizing that 
 Mark Bonamy went through a terrific degradation, and 
 that a coarse pleasure was purchased by him at a price 
 too terrible to invite imitation, he must be very singu- 
 larly constituted. One book leaves, or is calculated to 
 leave, the reader in love with vice ; the other leaves or 
 is calculated to leave him horrified by it, and disgusted 
 with it. 
 
 We might quote the freedom with which the Bible 
 a book intended for universal use employs material of 
 this sort ; but as we do not intend to appeal to the 
 Bible moralities to make good our position, we simply 
 allude to the matter and drop it. We maintain that all 
 which illustrates human nature and human history is 
 legitimate literary material, the writer being simply 
 bound not as a moralist, but as a literary man to 
 represent everything in its proper relation to the scheme 
 of things which he finds cstal^lished, as it concerns the 
 happiness and well-being oi the individual and society. 
 When a novelist represents vice as a thing that in any 
 way " pays," he lies, and is therefore untrue to his art. 
 When he so represents the sin of social impurity that it 
 shall appear more attractive than repulsive, more de- 
 lightful than blameworthy -when he represents it shorn
 
 122 Every -Day Topics. 
 
 of its natural consequences half harmless to the guilty 
 ones, and quite venial in the eye of society, he betrays 
 his untruth to literary art, and reduces and vulgarizes 
 the standard of his own work. This may be said, or 
 pleaded in the way of an argumcntum ad hominem: that 
 it does not become an editor who spreads before families 
 of readers the details of a hundred adulteries and seduc- 
 tions and other crimes against social purity every year, 
 accompanied with the usual amount of reportorial and 
 judicial jesting, to take to task a conscientious novelist 
 who treats the crime he depicts as God and nature dic- 
 tate. 
 
 There is another point about which there are contra- 
 rieties of opinion. It makes no difference whether a 
 novel-writer be clerical or lay, Christian or un-Chris- 
 tian, he feels deprived of the use of his legitimate tools 
 in the prohibition placed upon profanity. Some writers 
 will not accept the law, because only by the use of what 
 is called profanity can they properly represent the char- 
 acters and situations in hand. We are not alluding to 
 the disgusting " blanks " of Colonel Starbottle, or to 
 any of the writers whose low tastes lead them to prefer 
 profanity to decency, and who sympathize with it to the 
 very tips of their tongues. We venture to suggest that 
 Mrs. Stowe and Dr. Egglcston and George MacDonald 
 feel the denial of the use of profane language in their 
 novels as a real harm to their art. Men must speak their 
 vernacular or they cannot speak naturally, and to put 
 " dang it" into a man's mouth when he said something 
 else, or "the deuce" when he said "the devil," is to 
 dodge and palter for the purpose of not giving offence. 
 
 Still we think a man is quite at liberty to choose here. 
 There is nothing vital about this matter of tools. The 
 vitalities attach to materials. It is doubtless better that 
 the novelist bow as far as he can to the popular preju-
 
 Literature. 123 
 
 dice against the use of profane language in literary art. 
 In New England there is great popular reverence for the 
 devil, which we do not at all share ; so it is probably best 
 to present him always in a disembowelled form, preserv- 
 ing only the initial and final consonants. We are to re- 
 member that there is a considerable portion of every 
 community which believes that all besides themselves are 
 children, and are to be treated as such by all sorts of 
 publications except the daily newspapers. These seem 
 to be quite at liberty to choose whatever material comes 
 to their hands the worse the better. 
 
 Our Garnered Names. 
 Great genius is of no age or nation. We have made 
 stupendous advances in all possible directions within the 
 last three hundred years, yet Bacon still stands as the 
 proudest name among English philosophers, and Shak- 
 spere is unequalled among English poets. It would be 
 hard to name a living poet after these centuries of cul- 
 ture who equals Spenser, yet all the names we have 
 mentioned are laid among the very foundations of 
 English literature. The works associated with them are 
 among the first products of thought and art in the per- 
 fected English tongue. There was, of course, a great 
 amount of rubbish produced, which, having suffered the 
 fate of all rubbish, has passed out of existence. But the 
 great books remain, with the great fact that neither 
 science nor art, neither learning nor culture, neither po- 
 litical nor social progress, can do anything to reproduce 
 genius. Nay, it looks aa if none of them have the power 
 to assist genius in its development, and in the pro- 
 ducts of its art. Whenever a Shakspcre appears, he 
 works with such tools as he finds ready for his hand, and 
 produces that which is immortal. It matters nothing 
 into what period of a nation's literary history he is born,
 
 124 Every- Day Topics. 
 
 for he does not appear as the ripe product of a great age, 
 but as a special creation of the Almighty. 
 
 The death of Mr. Bryant naturally calls the attention 
 of thoughtful Americans to the foundations of our own 
 literature, and leads to speculations as to its future. 
 Certainly the first years of our national life were not 
 very fruitful in a literary way. Very little work pro- 
 duced in the seventeenth century is worth preserving, 
 and we can say hardly more of the product of the eigh- 
 teenth. We lay the foundations of our houses with rub- 
 ble up to the level of the earth, and the first products of 
 American literature can hardly be called anything but 
 rubble. They lie in the catalogues an undistinguishable 
 mass. We are simply aware that they are poor and im- 
 perfect stuff; but during this unexpired nineteenth cen- 
 tury, something worthy and enduring has been done. It 
 looks like a growth. It looks as if the great strides we 
 have taken were the result of long climbing to a high 
 vantage ground. It seems, at first view, as if we may 
 reasonably expect that the twentieth century will as far 
 surpass the present as the present surpasses the past in 
 literary production. We doubt, however, whether we 
 may legitimately come to any such conclusion. The 
 first songs of any nation are usually the freshest. They 
 work up the local material. They have the first oppor- 
 tunity of response to the native influences. There is 
 something in the sturdy freedom of the formative pro- 
 cesses of society peculiarly favorable to the develop- 
 ment of genius. A great nation, developing itself as it 
 were out of the ground, is a good deal nearer the original 
 fountains of inspiration than it becomes after ages of 
 conventionality and artificial life. 
 
 All this is true, and it is quite possible that we have 
 unconsciously and unappreciatingly been living during 
 the most memorable age of American literature. Cer-
 
 Literature. 125 
 
 tainly that age cannot be contemptible which has pro- 
 duced Cooper and Irving, Prescott and Motley and 
 Bancroft, Bryant and Longfellow and Whittier, Holmes 
 and Lowell, Taylor and Stedman and Stoddard, Haw- 
 thorne and Ticknor and Emerson, not to mention many 
 eminent names in other departments of letters. The ac- 
 count is made up with half of these. We can expect buf 
 little more from some of those who survive, but we have 
 enough in the works of these men to form a body of 
 literature which may legitimately be designated as 
 American, and one which may be regarded by Amer- 
 icans with complacency. It is, at least, pure. Almost 
 all the early literatures of other nations possess a 
 gross, fleshly element, which is entirely lacking, and 
 which would not be tolerated, in ours. It is true that 
 our literature is the product of a branch of English cul- 
 ture. We have not come out from savagery into civili- 
 zation, with a stock of legends and myths on which to 
 build a characteristic literature, but what Hawthorne 
 and Whittier have done and others have attempted, 
 shows that we possess a mine of quaint, strange history 
 which will be worked thoroughly hereafter. We have 
 lacked a mellow, hazy past a background for our pic- 
 tures and in the necessity of painting our surroundings 
 and drawing our inspiration from the present, we have 
 unconsciously been forming a background for those who 
 are to succeed us. We do not l)elicvc the time will ever 
 come when Hawthorne's interpretations of colonial his- 
 tory will cease to be interesting, when Whittier's lyrics 
 will cease to inspire, when Bryant's sweet and solemn 
 voicing of nature's meanings and life's mysteries will 
 fail in their music to the cars of men, when Longfellow's 
 psalms of life will not meet with a response in the souls 
 of the people. The poets who are so new to us, though 
 so much beloved, are to be the old poets by and by, and
 
 126 Every- Day Topics. 
 
 we suspect that the future critic will come back to thes? 
 days, revel in their literary glories, and contrast his own 
 degenerate contemporaries with the hearty and homely 
 singers of this blessed early time. 
 
 Of one thing we maybe reasonably sure, viz., that 
 when the genuine geniuses of this period shall be appre- 
 ciated at their full value, and the names we have re- 
 hearsed shall have become classic, their countrymen will 
 have ceased discussing Poe and Thoreau and Walt 
 Whitman. Why an age which can produce such a poet 
 as Bryant, who is as healthy and health-giving in every 
 line as the winds that soar over his native hills, can be 
 interested in the crazy products of a crazy mind, so far 
 as to suppose that they have any poetry in them, or any 
 value whatever, except as studies in mental pathology, 
 we cannot imagine. How an age that possesses a Long- 
 fellow and an appreciative ear for his melody can tol- 
 erate in the slightest degree the abominable dissonances 
 of which Walt Whitman is the author, is one of the un- 
 solved mysteries. There is a morbid love of the ec- 
 centric abroad in the country which, let us hope, will 
 die out as the love of nastiness has died out. At present 
 we say but little about our immortals, and give ourselves 
 over to the discussion of claims of which our posterity 
 will never hear, or of which they will only hear to wonder 
 over, or to laugh at. 
 
 Is IT Poetry? 
 Mr. Walt Whitman advertises, through his friends, 
 that the magazines send back his poetry. Why do they 
 do it? Is it because they are prejudiced against the 
 writer ? Is it because they have no respect for liis 
 genius, no admiration for his acquirements ? No ; on 
 the whole, they like him. They believe him to be 
 manly, bright, and erudite, but they have a firm con-
 
 Literature. 1 27 
 
 viction that his form of expression is illegitimate that 
 it has no right to be called poetry ; that it is too involved 
 and spasmodic and strained to be respectable prose, 
 and that there is no place for it, either in the heaven 
 above, or in the earth beneath, or in the waters under 
 the earth. If we could, by any sort of chemistry, mix 
 the rhapsodical passages of Carlyle's and Emerson's 
 prose together, we should have a pretty near approach 
 to Walt Whitman's verse. It is simply rhapsodical 
 prose, with a capital letter to head the lines. There is 
 no attempt at rhythm, no attempt at rhyme, which would 
 bring it within the domain of " numbers," and no even 
 strength and flow that would make good its claim to be 
 elegant prose. What is it ? Is it prose-poetry or poetic 
 prose ? Is it something outside of both a new thing, 
 as yet unnamed, the outgrowth of a new genius, and the 
 inauguration of a new era of expression ? 
 
 Let us try a little experiment. We have before us 
 two of Mr. Emerson's books his latest, and his " Con- 
 duct of Life." From these most excellent productions 
 let us cull a few passages in Walt Whitman's style : 
 
 " Our Copernicnn globe is a great factory or shop of power ; 
 
 " With its rotating constellations, times, and tides. 
 
 " The machine is of colossal size ; the diameter of the water- 
 wheel, the arms of the levers, and the volley of the battery, 
 
 " Out of all mechanic measure ; and it takes long to understand 
 its parts and workings. 
 
 " This pump never sucks ; these screws are never loose ; this 
 machine is never out of gear. 
 
 " The vat, the piston, the wheels and tires never wear out, but 
 are self-repairing. 
 
 " Is there any load which water cannot lift ? 
 
 " If there be, try steam ; or, if not that, try electricity. 
 
 " Is there any exhausting of these means ? 
 
 " Measure by barrels the spending of the brook that runs 
 through your field.
 
 128 Every -Day Topics. 
 
 " Nothing is great but the inexhaustible wealth of nature. 
 " She shows us only surfaces, but she is million fathoms deep. 
 " What spaces ! what durations! dealing with races as merelj 
 preparations of somewhat to follow." 
 
 And again, Emerson ; 
 
 " A strenuous soul hates cheap successes. 
 
 " It is the ardor of the assailant that makes the vigor of the 
 defender. 
 
 " The great are not tender at being obscure, despised, in- 
 sulted. 
 
 " Such only feel themselves in adverse fortune. 
 
 " Strong men greet war, tempest, hard times, which search till 
 they find resistance and bottom. 
 
 " Periodicity, reaction, are laws of mind as well as of matter. 
 
 " Bad kings arc generous helpers, if only they are bad 
 enough." 
 
 And again : 
 
 " To this material essence answers truth in the intellectual 
 world ; 
 
 " Truth, whose centre is everywhere and its circumference no- 
 where ; whose existence we cannot disimagine 
 
 " Tlie soundness and health of things, against which no blow 
 can be struck, but it recoils on the striker. 
 
 " Truth, on whose side we always heartily are." 
 
 Even Walt Whitman's propensity for catalogues can 
 be matched in Mr. Emerson's prose, as witness : 
 
 " In Boston, the question of life is the names of eight or ten 
 men. 
 
 " Have you seen Mr. Allston, Dr. Channing, Mr. .\dams, Mr. 
 Webster, Mr. Greenough ? 
 
 " Have you heard Everett, Garrison, Father Taylor, Theodore 
 Parker ? 
 
 "Have you talked with Messieurs Turbinewheel, Summit 
 level, and Locofrupees ? 
 
 " Then you may as well die."
 
 Literature. 1 29 
 
 And again the catalogue : 
 
 " You shall not read newspapers, nor politics, nor novels ; 
 
 " Nor Montaigne, nor the newest French book. 
 
 " You may read Plutarch, Plato, Plotinus, Hindoo mythology, 
 and ethics. 
 
 " You may read Chaucer, Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Milton 
 and Milton's prose as his verse. 
 
 " Read Collins and Gray, read Hafiz and the Trouvers, 
 
 "Nay, Welsh and British mythology of Arthur, and (in your 
 ear) Ossian. " 
 
 We have said that if we could, by some sort of chem- 
 istry, mix Carlyle's and Emerson's rhapsodical prose, we 
 could come very near to an imitation of Walt Whitman's 
 poetry, for the man has a strong individuality, and is 
 more robust than Emerson. He is not so fine of consti- 
 tutional fibre, not so fine of culture. He has a rough 
 vigor, and a disposition to involutions of language quite 
 characteristic of Carlyle and never witnessed in Emer- 
 son ; yet, as we quote Walt Whitman hereafter, we 
 think the reader will be surprised with the resemblance 
 which his work bears to the passages we have quoted 
 from Emerson's prose passages which mount toward 
 poetry, and which, as they burst out from the even fiow 
 of his graceful pen, remind one of the occasional blow- 
 ing of a whale on a sunny sea, while the great fish keeps 
 steadily on in his element. If he were to lie still and 
 blow all his life-time, and say to the nations, " lo ! this 
 is poetry ! " the nations would pretty unanimously de- 
 clare that there was something the matter with the fish. 
 Particularly would this be the case if he had already put 
 into form some of the most beautiful poems in the lan- 
 guage, and thus declared what he considered true poetry 
 to be. 
 
 Before Walt Whitman, let us try a little of Carlyle, in 
 6*
 
 1 30 Every-Day Topics. 
 
 order to justify our statement, once repeated, concern 
 ing the analogies existing between the works of the two 
 men. This from " Sartor Resartus" : 
 
 " Who am I ? What is this me ? 
 
 " A voice, a motion, an appearance ; 
 
 " Some embodied, visualized idea in the Eternal Mind? 
 
 " Cogito^ ergo sum. Alas! poor cogitator, this takes us but a 
 little way. 
 
 "Sure enough, I am, and lately was not; but whence, how, 
 whereto ? 
 
 " The answer lies around, written in all colors and motions, 
 uttered in all tones of jubilee and wail. 
 
 " In thousand-fingered, thousand-voiced, harmonious nature. 
 
 " But where is the cunning eye and ear to whom that God- 
 written Apocalypse will yield articulate meaning ? 
 
 " We sit in a boundless phantasmagoria and dream-grotto. 
 
 " Boundless, for the faintest star, the remotest country, lies not 
 even nearer the verge thereof," etc. 
 
 And again, Carlyle : 
 
 " Thus, like some wild-flaming, wild-thundering train of Heav- 
 en's artillery, 
 
 "Does this mysterious mankind thunder and flame, in long- 
 drawn, quick-succeeding grandeur through the unknown deep! 
 
 ' Thus, like a God-created, fire-breathing spirit-host, we emerge 
 from the Inane ; 
 
 " Haste stormfully across the astonished earth, then plunge 
 again into the Inane. 
 
 " Earth's mountains are levelled, and her seas filled up in our 
 passage. 
 
 " Can the earth, which is but dead and a vision, resist spirits 
 which have reality and are alive ? 
 
 " On the hardest adamant, some footprint of us is stamped in. 
 
 ' ' The last rear of the host will read traces of the earliest van. 
 
 " But N\hence ! Oh, Heaven ! whither ? " 
 
 And now, having given a taste of Emerson's and Car- 
 lyle's poorest prose for this is what it really is a prose
 
 Literature. 1 3 1 
 
 which should never be chosen by any young man for a 
 model, let us dip into the pages of Walt Whitman, and 
 see if it be any better or greatly different. We think it 
 will be found that what Whitman calls in his own verse 
 '' songs," is very like these passages in form, and possi- 
 bly inferior to them in quality. We quote Whitman : 
 
 '' How beggarly appear arguments before a defiant deed ! 
 
 '' How the floridness of the materials of cities shrivels before a 
 man's or woman's look ! 
 
 "All waits or goes by default till a strong being appears ; 
 
 " A strong being is the proof of the race, and of the ability of 
 the universe ; 
 
 " When he or she appears, materials are overawed. 
 
 " The dispute on the soul stops ; 
 
 "And old customs and phrases are confronted, turned back, 
 or laid away." 
 
 Again Whitman, in a complete poem, which he 
 entitles " Thoughts : " 
 
 " Of ownership ; as if one fit to own things could not at pleasure 
 enter upon all, and incorporate them into himself or herself. 
 
 " Of water, forests, hills ; 
 
 "Of the earth at large, whispering through medium of mo ; 
 
 " Of vista. Suppose some sight in arriere, through the forma- 
 tive chaos, preserving the growth, fulness, life, now attained on 
 the journey. 
 
 " (But I sec the road continued, and the journey ever 
 continued ;) 
 
 "Of what was once lacking on earth, and in due time has 
 become supplied, and of what will yet be supi)lied. 
 
 " Because all I see and know I believe to have purport in 
 what will yet be supplied." 
 
 And now, for a purpose, we quote one of Whitman's 
 latest " songs : "
 
 132 Every- Day Topics. 
 
 " TO A LOCOMOTIVE IN WINTKR. 
 
 " Thee for my recitative! 
 
 " Thee in the driving storm, even as now the snow the 
 winter day declining ; 
 
 "Thee in thy panoply, thy measured dual throbbing, and 
 thy beat convulsive ; 
 
 " Thy black cylindric body, golden brass and silvery steel ; 
 
 " Thy ponderous side-bars, parallel and connecting rods 
 gyrating, shuttling at thy sides ; 
 
 "Thy metrical, now swelling pant and roar now tapering in 
 the distance : 
 
 " Thy great protruding head-light fix'd in front ; 
 
 " Thy long, pale, floating vapor-pennants, tinged with delicate 
 purple ; 
 
 " The dense and murky clouds out-belching from thy smoke- 
 stack ; 
 
 " Thy knitted frame thy springs and valves the tremulous 
 twinkle of thy wheels ; 
 
 "The train of cars behind, obedient, merrily following, 
 
 " Through gale or calm, now swift, now slack, yet steadily 
 careering : 
 
 " Type of the modern ! emblem of motion and power ! pulse 
 of the continent ! 
 
 " For once, come serve the Muse, and merge in verse, even 
 as here I see thee, 
 
 "With storm, and buffeting gusts of wind, and falling snow ; 
 
 " By day, thy warning, ringing bell to sound its notes, 
 
 " By night, thy silent signal lamps to swing. 
 
 " Fierce-throated beauty ! 
 
 " Roll through my chant, with all thy lawless music, thy swing- 
 ing lamps at night ; 
 
 "Thy piercing, madly-whistled laughter, thy echoes rousing 
 a'll ; 
 
 " Law of thyself complete, thine own track firmly holding ; 
 
 " (Xo sweetness debonair of tearful harp or glib piano thine), 
 
 " Thy trills of shrieks by rocks and hills return'd, 
 
 " Launch'd o'er the prairies wide across the lakes, 
 
 "To the free skies, unpent, and glad, and strong."
 
 Literature. 133 
 
 The reader will notice how much more rhythmical 
 this is than the quotations that preceded it how much 
 better it is, in every respect, in consequence, and how 
 fine and strong the last three lines are, which are good, 
 honest, decasyllabic verse. The man is capable of 
 poetry, and always ought to have written it. The best 
 that he has done has been to set down, in the roughest 
 condition, the raw material. Other men have done the 
 same thing better, and never dreamed that they were 
 writing " songs." Even a " chant " has to be rhythmi- 
 cally sung, or it cannot be sung at all. The materials 
 in a butcher's stall and a green-grocer's shop contain the 
 ])ossibilities and potencies of a dinner, but we do not 
 see any poetry in them until they are cooked and served 
 to handsomely dressed men and women, and come and go 
 upon the table in rhythmical courses, yielding finest nutri- 
 ment and goodliest flavors. There is no melody without 
 rhythm, and a song must be melodious. Emerson says 
 that " metre begins with tlie pulse-beat," and quotes 
 Victor Hugo as saying : " An idea steeped in verse be- 
 comes suddenly more incisive and more brilliant ; the 
 iron becomes steel." Here is a distinction, certainly, 
 between prose and verse. He quotes, too, one who says 
 that Lord Bacon "loved not to see poesy go on other 
 feet than poetical dactyls and spondees ; " while Ben 
 Jonson said " that Donne, for not keeping of accent, 
 deserved hanging." If he had only quoted these sayings 
 to Walt Whitman in that early letter, should we not all 
 have been richer by the sum of a poet ? 
 
 We are, perhaps giving too much space to this article, 
 but the idea is sought to be conveyed by Walt Whit- 
 man's friends that he is badly used that a great genius 
 is sadly misunderstood or neglected. We have written 
 this because no one else has written it. We have re- 
 frained from citing, or even alluding to, those portions
 
 1 34 Every -Day Topics. 
 
 of his early book which are most open to criticism, and 
 especially those portions of which, in the subsidence oi 
 his grosser self, he must now be ashamed. We have 
 desired to represent him at his purest and best, and 
 with none but the kindliest feelings toward him, and the 
 heartiest wishes for his good fame. We believe that in 
 his theories and performances he is radically wrong 
 that he is doing nothing but advertising himself as a lit- 
 erary eccentric, and that he ought to have, and will 
 have, no following.
 
 CERTAIN VIRTUES AND VIRTUOUS 
 HABITS. 
 
 Character, and what Comes of It. 
 
 ABOVE all other things in the world, character has 
 supreme value. A man can never be more than 
 what his character intellectual, moral, spiritual makes 
 him. A man can never do more, or better, than deliver, 
 or embody, that which is characteristic of himself. All 
 masquerading and make-believe produce little impres- 
 sion, and, in their products and results, die early. Noth- 
 ing valuable can come out of a man that is not in him, 
 embodied in his character. Nothing can be more un- 
 philosophical than the idea that a man who stands upon 
 a low moral and spiritual plane can produce, in litera- 
 ture or art, anything valuable. He may do that which 
 dazzles or excites wonder or admiration, but he can pro- 
 duce nothing that has genuine value, for, after all, value 
 must be measured by the power to enrich, exalt, and 
 purify life. If art were an end, in itself if there 
 were any meaning in the phrase " Art for art's sake" 
 then what we say about character would not, or need 
 not, be true ; but art is not an end in itself any more 
 than milk, or flannel, or tilth, or harvest. The further 
 art is removed from ministry, the more it is divorced 
 from it, the more illegitimate does it become. Pyro- 
 tcchny attracts many eyes, and may excite a great deal 
 of wonder and admiration, but when we talk about the
 
 136 Every -Day Topics. 
 
 value of fire, we only think of its service in the furnace 
 and on the hearth. 
 
 It is claimed by a certain class of critics that we have 
 nothing to do with the character of an artist or a writer. 
 They forget that a knowledge of a man's character is a 
 short cut to a correct judgment of his work. It is only 
 necessary to know of Edgar A. Poe that he was a man 
 of weak will, without the mastery of himself a dissi- 
 pated man a man of morbid feeling a self-loving man, 
 without the wish or purpose to serve his fellows to 
 know that he could never write a poem that would help 
 anybody, or write a poem that possessed any intrinsic 
 value whatever. His character was without value, and, 
 for that reason, he was without the power of ministry. 
 His character was without value, and nothing of value 
 could come out of it. His poems are one continued, 
 selfish wail over lost life and lost love. The form of his 
 art was striking, but the material was wretchedly poor in 
 everything of value to human life. No human soul ever 
 quotes his words for comfort or for inspiration. Byron 
 is a more conspicuous example of the effect of poor or 
 bad character upon art than Poe. He was immensely 
 greater than Poe in genius, stronger in fibre, broader in 
 culture, and bolder in his vices. He embodies his char- 
 acter in his verse, with great subtlety and great in- 
 genuity. Fifty years ago, he was read more than any 
 other poet. Young men drank the poison of his Don Juan 
 with feverish lips, but, the draught over, the book never 
 was taken up again. He wrote wonderful verses, and 
 some of them, written under certain pure and high in- 
 spirations, assert his claim to greatness ; but, as a whole, 
 the works of Byron have gone out, and are hardly read at 
 all in these days. 
 
 Our own Bryant, and Longfellow, and Whittier, and 
 Holmes, and Lowell are all men of character, and the
 
 Certain Virtues and Virtuous Habits. 137 
 
 outcome of their art is as hearty and healthy as a moun- 
 tain wind. Knowing any one of these men is to know 
 that their work is good. There is more of the element 
 of ministry in Longfellow's " Psalm of Life" than in all 
 that Byron and Poc ever wrote. Value in character 
 makes value in verse. Value in character makes value 
 in pictures, in sculptures, in all embodiments of art. It 
 is vain to talk about equalling what we call " The Old 
 Masters " in art, until we can equal the old masters in 
 character. When we have a race of artists who are as 
 religious, as self-devoted, as high-minded, and as fully 
 surrendered to the divinest inspirations as the old masters 
 were, we shall have young masters who will be quite their 
 equals. Petty painting is the offspring of petty char- 
 acter. Artists cannot lift their work without first lifting 
 themselves. It is impossible that a thoroughly bad man 
 should be a good artist of any sort, for let it be remem- 
 bered, we repeat, that the values of art all rest, and al- 
 ways rest, upon its pov^er of ministry. Art is simply a 
 vehicle for conveying the values of character to the lives 
 of men, and when there are no values of character, there 
 is nothing to be conveyed, no matter how beautiful or 
 noteworthy the vehicle may be. Great moral harm is 
 often done by studied and systematic dissociation of an 
 author or an artist with his work. We are told that we 
 have nothing whatever to do with the writer or the 
 painter ; we have only to do with what he produces. 
 This may be true and right to a certain extent, but what 
 if a writer or painter be notoriously immoral and disso- 
 lute ? Suppose an actress, with exceptional powers upon 
 the stage, but with a reputation st, lined all over v.ith 
 scandal, whose sins against social purity are patent, no- 
 torious, undisputed presents herself for our suffrage 
 and patronage what sluiU we do willi her? Shall wc 
 scud our sons to contemplate her charms, and review
 
 138 Every- Day Topics. 
 
 her base career ? Shall we visit her with our wives 
 and daughters, and honor her with our dollars and our 
 courtesies ? Shall we do what we can to obliterate in 
 her mind, as well as our own, all sense of moral distinc- 
 tions ? We are told we that have nothing to do with 
 the woman. We have only to do with the actress. So 
 we have nothing to do with a preacher, we suppose- 
 only with the sermon. People generally think they have 
 a great deal to do with the preacher, and that the ser- 
 mon is of very little consequence when it is not the sin- 
 cere product of a good character. 
 
 Character must stand behind and back up everything 
 the sermon, the poem, the picture, the play. None 
 of them is worth a straw without it. Thirty years ago 
 Jenny Lind was with us, and with her marvellous gift of 
 song, she brought to us an unsullied character. It was an 
 honor to touch her hand, and she went about the land as a 
 missionary of womanly purity. All men and all women 
 honored her with a higher admiration than her marvellous 
 art could inspire. The noble womanhood which stood 
 behind her voice was an uplifting influence, wherever that 
 voice was heard ; and the prostituted womanhood that 
 stands behind other voices that we know, taints every ear 
 that hears, and degrades every heart and life that con- 
 sents to tolerate it so far as to sit in its presence. 
 
 Personal Economies. 
 In this country, we naturally go to New England, and, 
 alas ! to an earlier time, for examples of personal econ- 
 omy and thrift. Almost any New Englander can recall 
 a country minister who, on his little yearly salary of 
 three or four hundred dollars, managed, by the help of 
 his wife, to live respectably and comfortably, educate a 
 l.iige family for self-support and social usefulness, and 
 lay up something every year against a rainy day which
 
 Certain Virtues and Virtuous Habits. 139 
 
 comes in all men's lives. We have wondered how it was 
 done, but we know it was done, and that he died at last 
 the possessor of a nice little property. New England 
 has been noted for its hard soil and its hard conditions 
 generally, yet there is no other spot on the face of the 
 earth that contains so much human comfort to the 
 square mile. Every man born on New England soil 
 tries and expects to better his condition during his life, 
 and he goes to work at the beginning with this end defi- 
 nitely in view. The rich men of New England are men 
 who began their prosperity with humble savings. What- 
 ever their income was, they did not use it all. Twenty- 
 five or fifty dollars a year was considered quite worth 
 saving and laying by. These small sums, placed at 
 interest, accumulated slowly but surely, until the day 
 came at last when it was capital, to be invested in busi- 
 ness with larger profits. A fortune acquired in this way 
 was cohesive, strong and permanent. 
 
 We are quite aware that something of grace and lov- 
 ableness was lost in the habit of these small economies. 
 Men grew small quite too often, and pinched and stingy, 
 by the influence of the habit of penny savings. This has 
 been brought against New England as a reproach, but 
 New England has replied, with truthfulness and pride, 
 that no people of the country or of the world have been 
 more benevolent than her own economical children. 
 She points to the vast sums she has expended on Chris- 
 tian missions, and to the great public charities whose 
 monuments crown her hill-tops, and shows that at the 
 call of Christianity and humanity her purse, filled with 
 such painstaking and self-denial, tlies open and empties 
 itself to fill the measure of the public need. At any rate, 
 we know that there is not a State in all the West that 
 has not gone to New England for the money to build her 
 towns and her railroads, and that if she has ever been
 
 1 40 Every -Day Topics. 
 
 laggard in her hospitalities, such as she has practised 
 have been at her own expense, and not at that of her 
 creditors. New England is rich and this, after all, is 
 what we are trying to say notwithstanding a hard soil 
 and an inhospitable climate. Circumstances were against 
 her from the beginning, and economy was what enabled 
 her to conquer circumstances, and to lift herself to the 
 commanding position of wealth and influence which she 
 holds to-day. The men who had an income of $300 a 
 year, at the beginning lived on $200. The men who 
 had an income of $500 lived on $300. Those whose in- 
 come reached $1,000 lived on half of that sum, and so 
 on. They practised self-denial. They had no great 
 opportunities for making money, and knew that wealth 
 could only come to them through saving money. The 
 old farmer who, when asked what the secret of his wealth 
 was, replied : " When I got a cent I kep' it," told the 
 whole story of New England thrift and comfort. Now, 
 if we look around us here in the city of New York, we 
 shall, in the light of this New England example, learn 
 why it is that so many men and women drop into pauper- 
 ism with such fearful rapidity on the first stoppage of 
 income. We know very few men of fixed incomes who 
 do not live up to the limit of these incomes, whatever it 
 may happen to be. A man who this year has a salary 
 of $2,000 uses it all, and when it goes up to $3,000 or 
 $4,000 he uses it all in the same way. It seems to make 
 no difference how much he receives the style and cost 
 of living expand immediately so as to absorb all that 
 comes. Those who have no fixed income, and are en- 
 gaged in trade, adopt the style of the prosperous men 
 around them, and strain every effort to bring up their 
 income to meet the requirements of that style. Every 
 family, instead of endeavoring to see how small they 
 can make their expenses, endeavor to see how large they
 
 Certain Virtues and Virtuous Habits. 141 
 
 can make them, or how large their income will permit 
 them to be. The fixed purpose to save something out 
 of every year's income, and so to graduate expenses that 
 something shall be saved the policy of rigid self-denial 
 for the purpose of accumulating property, even though 
 it be slowly, does not apparently exist in this commu- 
 nity. So, when the bread-winner is disabled, or dies, 
 his family drops into abject and utterly helpless poverty 
 in a day, and all life is embittered thenceforward, sim- 
 ply because no self-denial had been practised while the 
 worker lived, or was able to work. The man of small 
 or modest income looks around him and sees many who 
 are rich and who are not obliged to think of every penny 
 they spend. He regards himself as their social equal, 
 and wonders why it should be necessary for him to be 
 so pinched in his spendings and so plain in his surround- 
 ings. He does not consider how much, and exactly 
 what, the wealth which moves his envy has cost. He 
 may be sure that somewhere, at the foundation of all the 
 wealth he sees, there was once a man who practised 
 rigid self-denial, and studiously lived within his income, 
 and saved money although his income was small. All 
 fortunes have their foundations laid in economy. The 
 man who holds the money to-day may have inherited it 
 through the accident of birth, but it cost his father or his 
 grandfather years perhaps a life-time of economy and 
 self-denial. There is no royal road to wealth any more 
 than there is to learning. It costs hard work, and the 
 relinquishment of many pleasures, and most men may 
 have it who will pay its price. If they are not willing 
 to do this, why, they must not complain of their lot when 
 their day of adversity comes ; and they ought to have 
 the grace to make themselves just as little of a nuisance 
 as possible to those who have secured a competence and 
 paid the honest price for it.
 
 142 Every-Day Topics. 
 
 American Honesty. 
 
 Any man who has travelled in Europe knows what the 
 temptation is to buy and bring home articles that can be 
 procured more cheaply there than in America, under the 
 expectation that the customs officiers will let them in 
 free of duty ; and every observer knows that millions of 
 dollars' worth of goods are imported annually in this 
 way that pay no revenue to the Government. It is no- 
 torious, too, that many of our citizens go to Canada to 
 buy clothing, and wear it home for the purpose of cheat- 
 ing the Government. Men of wealth and luxuriously 
 living women, who would scorn to deal dishonorably 
 with their neighbors, rejoice in the privilege of cheating 
 their own Government, and boast of their success in 
 doing so. They do not even suspect that they are doing 
 wrong in this thing. They have no idea that they are 
 acting meanly or dishonestly. They look upon this 
 genteel kind of smuggling as a smart and harmless trick, 
 and display to their friends the results of their shrewd- 
 ness with pride and self-gratulation. We may find 
 among these smugglers thousands who look upon the 
 corruptions of politicians with indignation, yet not one 
 of them could succeed in his smuggling enterprises save 
 through the unfaithfulness of public officers, whom they 
 reward for their treachery with a gift. 
 
 Would it not be well for us to remember, before we 
 condemn the dishonesty which is so prevalent in the 
 public service, that the politicians and office-holders arc, 
 on the whole, as honest as the people are ? All that 
 either of them seem to need is a temptation to dishonesty 
 to make them dishonest. The office-holder takes ad- 
 vantage of his position to cheat his Government, and 
 every genteel smuggler who lands from a European 
 vessel, or crosses the Canada line, does the same thing
 
 Certain Virtues and Virtuous Habits. 143 
 
 from the same motive. The radical trouble, with people 
 and politicians alike, is the entertainment of the idea 
 that stealing from the Government is not stealing at all 
 that a man has a right to get out of his Government all 
 that he can without detection. They have not only- 
 brought their consciences into harmony with this idea, 
 but they wilfully break the law of the land. In short, 
 for the sake of a trifling advantage in the purchase of 
 goods, they are willing to deceive, to tempt public 
 officers to forswear themselves, to break the laws of 
 their country, and to deprive the Government that pro- 
 tects them of a portion of the means by which it sustains 
 itself in that service. 
 
 It is a startling fact that there is never a train wrecked 
 without pickpockets on board, who immediately proceed 
 to plunder the helpless passengers. These may not be 
 professionals. They may never have picked a pocket in 
 their lives before, but the temptation develops the thief. 
 There is never a battle fought in any place where there 
 are not men ready to plunder the slain. The devil, or 
 the wild beast, has been there all the time, only waiting 
 for an invitation to come out. Men look on and see a 
 great city badly managed see mayors and aldermen 
 and politicians engaged in stealing and growing rich on 
 corruption ; but these men find thousands ready on all 
 sides to engage in corrupt contracts, to render false 
 bills of service, and to aid them in all rascally ways to 
 fill their pockets with spoil. The men whom we send 
 to our Legislatures to represent us seem quite willing to 
 become ihe tools of corrupt men, and it is marvellous to 
 sec with what joy the residents of any locality receive 
 the patronage of the Government, whether needed or 
 not. That member of Congress who secures to his dis- 
 trict the expenditure of Govcrnnn'nt money for the build- 
 ing of any " improvement," no matter how absurdly un-
 
 144 Every -Day Topics. 
 
 necessary, does much to secure his re-election. There 
 is no denying the fact that the people are just as fond of 
 spoil as the politicians are. 
 
 We find fault with the management of corporations, 
 but all our corporations have virtuous stock-holders. 
 Did anybody ever hear of these stock-holders relinquish- 
 ing any advantage derived from dishonest management ? 
 Do they protest against receiving dividends of scrip 
 coming from watered stock ? Do they not shut their 
 eyes to *' irregularities," so long as they are profitable, 
 and do not compromise their interests before the law? 
 There is not a corporation of any importance in America 
 which is not regarded as a fair subject for plunder by a 
 large portion of the community. If a piece of land is 
 wanted by a corporation, it is placed at once at the 
 highest price. Any price that can be got out of a cor- 
 poration for anything is considered a fair price. Cor- 
 porations are the subjects of the pettiest and absurdest 
 claims from all sorts of men. Men hang upon some of 
 them like leeches, sucking their very life blood out of 
 them. 
 
 And now, what do all these facts lead to? Simply to 
 the conclusion that dishonesty in our Government and 
 dishonesty in all our corporate concerns is based on the 
 loose ideas of honesty entertained by our people. We 
 have somehow learned to make a difference between 
 those obligations which we owe to one another as men, 
 and those which we owe to the Government and to cor- 
 porations. These ideas are not a whit more prevalent 
 among office-holders and directors than they are among 
 voters and stock-holders. Men are not materially 
 changed by being clothed with office and power. The 
 radically honest man is just as honest in office as he is 
 out of it. Corrupt men are the offspring of a corrupt so- 
 ciety. We all need straightening up. The lines of our
 
 Certain Virtues and Virtuous Habits. 145 
 
 morality all need to be drawn tighter. There is not 
 a man who is willing to smuggle, and to see customs 
 officers betray their trust while he does it willing to 
 receive the results of the sharp practice of directors of 
 corporations in which he has an interest ; willing to re- 
 ceive the patronage of the Government in the execution 
 of schemes not based on absolute necessity ; willing to 
 take an exorbitant price for a piece of property sold to 
 the Government or to a corporation who is fit to be 
 trusted with office. When we have said this, we have 
 given the explanation of all our public and corporate 
 corruption, and shown why it is so difficult to get any 
 great trust managed honestly. All this official corrup- 
 tion is based on popular corruption loose ideas of hon- 
 esty as they are held by the popular mind ; and \vc can 
 hope for no reform until we are better based as a 
 people in the everlasting principles of equity and right- 
 doing. If we would have the stream clear, we must 
 cleanse the fountain. 
 
 Keeping at It. 
 Every man has his own definition of happiness ; but 
 when men have risen above the mere sensualities of life 
 above eating and drinking, and sleeping, and hearing, 
 and seeing they can come to something like an agree- 
 ment upon a definition which, when formulated, would 
 read something like this : " Happiness consists in the 
 harmonious, healthy, successful action of a man's 
 powers." The higher these powers may be, and the 
 higher the sphere in which they move, the higher the 
 happiness. The genuine " fool's paradise " is case. 
 There are millions of men, hard at work, who are look- 
 ing for their reward to immunity from work. They 
 would be quite content to purchase twenty- five years of 
 leisure with twenty- five years of the most slavish drudg-
 
 146 Every- Day Topics. 
 
 ery. Toward these years of leisure they constantly 
 look with hope and expectation. Not unfrequently the 
 leisure is won and entered upon ; but it is always a dis- 
 appointment. It never brings the happiness which was 
 expected, and it often brings such a change of habits as 
 to prove fatal, either to health or to life. 
 
 A man who inherits wealth may begin and worry 
 through three -score years and ten without any very de- 
 finite object. In driving, in foreign travel, in hunting 
 and fishing, in club-houses and society, he may manage 
 to pass away his time ; but he will hardly be happy. It 
 seems to be necessary to health that the powers of a 
 man be trained upon some object, and steadily held 
 there day after day, year after year, while vitality lasts. 
 There may come a time in old age when the fund of 
 vitality will have sunk so low that he can follow no con- 
 secutive labor without such a draft upon his forces that 
 sleep cannot restore them. Then, and not before, he 
 should stop work. But, so long as a man has vitality to 
 spare upon work, it must be used, or it will become a 
 source of grievous, harassing discontent. The man will 
 not know what to do with himself; and when he has 
 reached such a point as that, he is unconsciously digging 
 a grave for himself, and fashioning his own coffin. Life 
 needs a steady channel to run in regular habits of work 
 and of sleep. It needs a steady, stimulating aim a trend 
 toward something. An aimless life can never be happy, 
 or, for a long period, healthy. Said a rich widow to a 
 gentleman, still laboring beyond his needs : " Don't 
 stop ; keep at it." The words that were in her heart 
 were : " If my husband had not stopped, he would be 
 alive to-day." And what she thought was doubtless 
 true. A greater shock can hardly befall a man who has 
 ])cen active than that which he experiences when, having 
 relinquished his pursuits, he finds unused time and un-
 
 Certain Virtues and Virtuous Habits. 147 
 
 used vitality hanging upon his idle hands and mind. The 
 current of his life is thus thrown into eddies, or settled 
 into a sluggish pool, and he begins to die. 
 
 We have, and have had, in our own city some notable 
 examples of business continued through a long life with 
 unbroken health and capacities to the last. Mr. Astor, 
 who has just passed away, undoubtedly prolonged his 
 life by his steady adherence to business. There is no 
 doubt that he lived longer and was happier for his con- 
 tinued work. If he had settled back upon the conscious- 
 ness of assured wealth, and taken the ease that was so 
 thoroughly warranted by his large possessions, he would 
 undoubtedly have died years ago. Commodore Van- 
 dcrbilt, also among the recently deceased, was a nota- 
 ble instance of healthy powers, continued by use. Many 
 people wonder why such men continue to work when 
 they might retire upon their money and their laurels ; 
 l)ut they are working, not only for happiness, but for 
 life. 
 
 The great difficulty with us all is that we do not play 
 enough. The play toward which men in business look 
 for their reward should never be taken in a lump, but 
 should be scattered all along their career. It should be 
 enjoyed every day, every week. The man who looks 
 forward to it wants it now. Play, like wit in literature, 
 should never be a grand dish, but a spice ; and a man 
 who does not take his play with his work never has it. 
 Play ceases to be play to a man when it ceases to be re- 
 laxation from daily work. As the grand business of 
 life, play is the hardest work a man can do. 
 
 Besides the motives of continued life and happiness lo 
 which we have called attention in this article, there is 
 another of peculiar force in America, which binds us to 
 lal)()r while we live. If wc look across the water, we 
 shall find that nearlv all the notal^le men die in liar-
 
 148 Evcry-Day Topics. 
 
 ness. The old men are the great men in Parliament 
 and Cabinet. Yet it is true that a man does not so 
 wholly take himself out of life in Europe as in America 
 when he relinquishes business. A rich man in Europe can 
 quit active affairs, and still have the consideration due to 
 his talents, his wealth, and his social position. Here, 
 a man has only to " count himself out" of active pur- 
 suits, to count himself out of the world. A man out of 
 work is a dead man, even if he is the possessor of mil- 
 lions. The world walks straight over him and his mem- 
 ory. One reason why a rich and idle man is happier in 
 Europe than at home is that he has the countenance of a 
 class of respectable men and women living upon their 
 vested incomes. A man may be respectable in Europe 
 without work. After a certain fashion, he can be so 
 here ; but, after all, the fact that he has ceased to be 
 active in affairs of business and politics makes him of 
 no account. He loses his influence, and goes for noth- 
 ing, except a relic with a hat on, to be bowed to. So 
 there is no way for us but to "keep at it ; " get all the 
 play we need as we go on ; drive at something, so long 
 as the hand is strong and steady, and not to think of rest 
 this side of the narrow bed, where the sleep will be too 
 deep for dreams, and the waking will open into infinite 
 leisure. 
 
 Suspected Duties. 
 There is a large number of conscientious men and wom- 
 en in all society who suspect, with a considerable degree 
 of pain, that they are not performing the duties which 
 are incumbent upon them. They see duties to be done 
 that somebody ought to do. They do not understand the 
 reason why these duties do not belong to them, and yet 
 they do not discover any motives, or any fitness in them- 
 selves to engage in them ; and they blame themselves,
 
 Certain Virtues and Virtuous Habits. 149 
 
 in a weak way, for the fact. They see the duties dis- 
 tinctly ; they apprehend the necessities of society ; and 
 finding themselves competent to judge, and capable of a 
 great many things, it seems to them that these duties are 
 theirs. Rather, perhaps, they do not discover any rea- 
 sons why they are not theirs. The consequence is a 
 vague feeling of unrest and dissatisfaction with them- 
 selves. Somebody ought to lead in some political, or 
 social, or religious movement. Should they do it, or 
 should they leave it to somebody else ? Perhaps they 
 are called upon to lead, and they shrink from the work 
 with a dread of which they are ashamed, but which they 
 feel quite incompetent to overcome. They are called 
 upon to speak publicly, to pray publicly, to put them- 
 selves forward as leaders, to assume responsibility, yet 
 their whole nature rebels, and they are not only dis- 
 gusted with themselves but they become most unhappy 
 self-accusers. There are multitudes of men and women 
 upon whom the burdens of suspected duties are heavier 
 than the real ones, which they are only too glad to bear 
 at any cost. 
 
 Now we believe there has been a great deal of wrong 
 teaching upon this matter, especially in the churches. 
 Modest, retiring men, and more modest and retiring 
 women, have been forced to their feet or their knees, 
 and to public utterance, by the unjust assurance that 
 it was their duty to testify publicly to the faith that was 
 in them. Church-going people have all heard men pray 
 and speak who had no gift of utterance, who could 
 neither help themselves nor edify others, in the per- 
 formance of what they suspected, and what they were 
 assured was their duty. Their work was an unspeakable 
 pain to themselves, and a distress to others. The stere- 
 otyped phrases of prayer, and the common-places of 
 exhortation, uttered with embarrassment, and listened
 
 1 50 Every- Day Topics. 
 
 to with sympathetic pain, have made the conference 
 meeting, in numberless instances, a dismal gathering 
 unattractive, in every respect, and unrefreshing. The 
 man who suspects his duty, goes there with dread, and 
 sits through all with distressing apprehension. 
 
 Politics go wrong. The politics of a neighborhood or a 
 district are in bad hands. A true man, seeing this, begins 
 at once to question his own duty in the premises. He 
 feels that something ought to be done by somebody, but 
 he feels no impulse or ability to lead in the work of re- 
 form, and blames himself for what he unmistakably 
 regards as his own cowardice. A social evil arises, 
 which somebody ought to suppress, and the good citizen 
 feels himself incompetent or unmoved to grapple with it, 
 and condemns himself for his own apathy. He suspects 
 himself of shirking a duty, and is unhappy over it. He 
 cannot rise in a public gathering and denounce wrong. 
 He cannot meet and dispute with vicious or wrong- 
 headed men. He dreads a personal collision of convic- 
 tion and will as he would a street-fight. 
 
 Now, all these unhappy people, who live constantly in 
 the presence of suspected duties, deserve the profound- 
 est sympathy, no less than the wisest instruction. They 
 are usually people who, by the purity of their personal 
 character, and their sensitive conscientiousness, have a 
 right to a comfortable mind, and a peaceful life. Duty 
 goes hand-in-hand with ability. Men are to give in 
 charity each " according to his ability," in money not 
 only, but in all benevolent effort. The man who has one 
 talent is not required to return the interest on ten. The 
 eye is not the hand, and can never do the service of the 
 hand. The hand is not the eye, or the ear, or the foot, 
 and can only work in its own way. The eye may see a 
 stone to be lifted, or kicked out of the road, but it needs 
 to take no blame to itself because it feels no ability to
 
 Certain Virtues and Virtuous Habits. 151 
 
 remove the obstacle. Men are not like each other ; they 
 are most unlike. One delights in public speech, and 
 is moved by all the powers of his nature to engage in it. 
 One is at home only with his pen, but he goes into the 
 battles of society bravely with that. One is a peace- 
 maker, and finds his most grateful office in reconciling 
 differences in families and social organizations. One is 
 limited in power to his own family, or those bound to 
 him by the ties of nature ; yet, in thousands of instances, 
 these men are living with the painful suspicion that they 
 are neglecting duties that actually lie far outside of the 
 sphere of their abilities. 
 
 We suppose that when Mr. Moody was preaching in 
 the Hippodrome there were hundreds who suspected 
 that they ought to imitate his life and labor. Perhaps 
 some of them ought to do so ; and the chances are that 
 such of them as ought to do so will do so. They will be 
 moved to it irresistibly, because the powers in them, 
 corresponding to his, will clamor for their natural ex- 
 pression. But a man who is not moved to do this, is 
 not convicted of being a poorer Christian than Mr. 
 Moody by that fact. Mr. Moody has a gift for preach- 
 ing a gift for approaching men personally, and direct- 
 ing them wisely a gift that has been greatly improved 
 by use, of course, but still a gift, without which he could 
 never have begun his mission. Most men have no gift 
 for public speech, and therefore public speech is no part 
 of their duty. They need not suspect themselves on 
 this account, or blame themselves, or in any way make 
 themselves unhappy over it. 
 
 There are a great many kinds of work to be done in 
 the world, and just as many varieties of men who are 
 made to do it. No one man can do the work of another. 
 The business of each is to find exactly, or as nearly as 
 he can, the work he is best fitted to do, and to do it with
 
 153 Every- Day Topics. 
 
 all his might. This entire, overshadowing burden of sus- 
 pected duties ought to be lifted, and the great world of 
 dissatisfaction and self-condemnation that lies under it 
 opened to the sunlight of peace. Our social and our 
 religious teachers, especially the latter, have a duty in 
 this matter toward their disciples which they need not 
 suspect for a moment. They have no right to set a man 
 to doing that which he can never do with profit to him- 
 self or others, or instil the feeling among those who 
 listen to their instructions that their duty lies in lines 
 outside of their conscious or proved abilities. The man 
 who does his duty where he stands, with such implements 
 as God has given him, has a right to the enjoyment of 
 peace and satisfaction ; and to make him suspect that 
 he ought to do something more and something else, is to 
 do him a life -long injury and a great wrong. It is to 
 make a pitiful slave of one who has the right to be free. 
 
 The Prudential Element. 
 We have received a very candid and, in some re- 
 spects, a very impressive letter, criticising Professor 
 Sumner's recent article on " Socialism," published in 
 this Magazine. We make space for a paragraph. 
 
 ' He (Professor Sumner) is evidently more a student of politi- 
 cal economy than of moral economy ; for he seems to believe in 
 those economic laws which offer their rewards to the sharp, rather 
 than the moral man. The present economic laws are based upon 
 free competition. Here the intellectual, subtile man has greatly 
 the advantage. Right is determined by might in this as much as 
 in the savage state, only here it is intellectual rather than physical 
 might which controls." 
 
 The writer goes on to say that this kind of civilization 
 is " only a step out of the merely natural brutal in- 
 stincts," that men are mostly made and their lives di- 
 rected by circumstances, and then he gives the familiar
 
 Certain Virtues and Virtuous Habits. 153 
 
 proposition that " one-tenth of the population of England 
 die paupers in order that another tenth may live in lux- 
 ury and die millionaires." 
 
 No account is taken in what we have quoted, and no 
 account is taken in the letter, of the prudential element 
 in human life and human society. This is the more re- 
 markable because our correspondent assumes the role 
 of morality with which that element is indissolubly asso- 
 ciated. It is not true that the great victories of life are 
 to the sharp and immoral man, as a rule. Here and 
 there, by sharpness and cunning, men rise into wealth, 
 but that wealth is not of a kind that is apt to remain. // 
 takes a certain amount of virtue, of self-denial, of moral- 
 ity , to lay up and keep money. In the lives of nearly all 
 rich men there have been periods of heroic self-denial, 
 of patient industry, of Christian prudence. Circum- 
 stances did not make these men rich. The highest 
 moral prudence made them rich. While their compan- 
 ions were dancing away their youth, or drinking away 
 their middle age, these men were devoted to small econ- 
 omies putting self-indulgence entirely aside. 
 
 If our correspondent or our readers will recall their 
 companions, we think the first fact they will be im- 
 pressed with is the measure of equality with which they 
 started in the race for competence or wealth. The next 
 fact they will be impressed with is the irregularity of the 
 end. Then, if they make an inquisition into the causes 
 of the widely varying results, they will be profoundly 
 impressed with the insignificant part "circumstances" 
 have played in those results. Circumstances ? Why 
 the rich man's son v.ho had all the " circumstances" of 
 the town has become a beggar. The poor, quiet lad, 
 the only son of his mother and she a widow, who could 
 only earn money enough to procure for her boy the 
 commonest education is a man of wealth and has be
 
 1 54 Every-Day Topics. 
 
 come a patron of his native village. The man who pos- 
 sesses and practises virtue, makes his own circum- 
 stances. The self-denying, prudent man creates around 
 himself an atmosphere of safety where wealth naturally 
 takes refuge, provided, of course, that the man has the 
 power to earn it, either in production, or exchange, or 
 any kind of manual or intellectual service. 
 
 We are sorry that our correspondent, who seems intel- 
 ligent in some things, should betray the ignorance or lack 
 of reflection that appears in his proposition relating to 
 the English paupers and millionnaires. Nothing could be 
 more grossly and abominably untrue than the statement 
 that " one-tenth of the population of England die pau- 
 pers in order that another tenth may live in luxury and 
 die millionaires." There is not between the poverty of 
 one class and the wealth of the other the slightest rela- 
 tion of effect to cause. If the poor people of England had 
 taken for the last i^^fi centuries the gold that wealth has 
 paid to them for work in honest wages, and used it only 
 in legitimate expenses, if they had not debauched them- 
 selves with drink, spending not only their money but their 
 life and their power to work upon a consuming appetite, 
 the pauper class would be too insignificant to talk about. 
 It is not " circumstances" that reduces the British work- 
 man to pauperism ; it is beer, or gin. The waste that 
 goes on in England, through the consumption of alco- 
 holic drinks, is the cause of its pauperism. 
 
 The c'i.sQ., prima facie, is always against a pauper. 
 The accidents of life sometimes cast a man or a woman 
 high and dry upon the sands of a helpless poverty ; but 
 usually pauperism comes through a lack of the pruden- 
 tial virtues. It is not always that a pauper wastes his 
 revenues in drink, or other immoralities ; but somewhere 
 in his career, forty-nine times in fifty, it will be found 
 that he has been extravagant ; that he has not exercised
 
 Certain Virtues and Virtuous Habits. 155 
 
 self-denial under temptation ; that he has lived up to or 
 beyond his means, or has ventured upon risks that the 
 lowest grade of business prudence would condemn. 
 Now, \vho is to bear the penalty of these sins and mis- 
 takes ? How are they to be prevented in future, if those 
 who commit them, regardless of consequences, are to 
 be coddled and taken care of by those who have denied 
 themselves and laid up a little wealth ? 
 
 Good, rugged, grand old Thomas Carlylc ! It is re- 
 freshing to read amid the mawkish sentimentality of this 
 latter day such a healthy utterance as this from his 
 sturdy pen: " Let wastefulness, idleness, improvidence 
 take the fate which God has appointed them, that their 
 opposites may also have a chance for their fate," As it 
 is, our philanthropists try to make us believe that the 
 special business of a thrifty man is not in any way to 
 enjoy the fruit of his prudence and enterprise, but to 
 shield the shiftless people around him from the results 
 of their own imprudence and improvidence.
 
 EDUCATION AND INDUSTRY. 
 
 The Ornamental Branches. 
 
 MR. HERBERT SPENCER'S views of education, as 
 contained in his book on that subject, now for some 
 years before the pubhc, ought by this time to have made 
 some impression, and worked out some practical result. 
 We fear, however, that it has accomplished little beyond 
 giving to a wise man or woman, here or there, a shock- 
 ing glimpse into the hollowness of our time-honored 
 educational systems. It is equally amusing and humiliat- 
 ing to those of us who live in this boasted civilization 
 of the nineteenth century to sec this philosopher pick 
 our systems in pieces, and show how they are founded 
 on the instincts of savagery. Decoration of the body 
 precedes dress, and dress is developed out of the desire 
 to be admired. In all savage life the idea of ornament 
 predominates over that of use, and Mr. Spencer says 
 that we who are civilized think more of the fineness of a 
 fabric than its warmth, and more about the cut than the 
 convenience. 
 
 He then goes on to say that like relations hold with 
 the mind. Here also the ornamental comes before the 
 useful. That knowledge which conduces to personal 
 well-being has been postponed to that which brings ap- 
 plause, especially in the case of women. So far as wom- 
 en are concerned, all this goes without saying, but Mr. 
 Spencer goes farther than this, and asserts that in the
 
 Education and Industry. 157 
 
 education of men the rule holds in only a less remark- 
 able degree. Here we can do no better than to quote 
 his own words, which are enough to make the blood of a 
 college president run cold : 
 
 " We are guilty of something like a platitude when we say that 
 throughout his after career, a boy, nine cases out of ten, applies 
 his Latin and Greek to no practical purpose. The remark is trite 
 that in his shop or his office, or managing his estate or his family, 
 or playing his part as director of a bank or a railway, he is very 
 little aided by this knowledge he took so many years to acquire 
 so little that, generally, the greater part of it drops out of his mem- 
 ory ; and if he occasionally vents a Latin quotation, or alludes 
 to some Greek myth, it is less to throw light upon the topic in 
 hand than for the sake of effect. If we inquire what is the real 
 motive for giving boys a classical education, we find it to V^e simply 
 conformity to public opinion. Men dress theirchildren's minds as 
 they do their bodies, in the prevailing fashion. As the Orinoco 
 Indian puts on his paint before leaving his hut, not with a view to 
 any direct benefit, but because he would be ashamed to be seen 
 without it, so a boy's drilling in Latin and Greek is insisted on, 
 not because of their intrinsic value, but that he may not be dis- 
 graced by being found ignorant of them that he may have ' the 
 education of a gentleman ' the badge marking a certain social 
 position, and bringing a consequent respect." 
 
 Now, if a smaller man than Mr. Spencer had said 
 this, his words might be passed by as of no moment 
 whatever, but they are spoken deliberately by one of the 
 masters of the age. We arc told distinctly that the study 
 of Latin and Greek is almost purely for ornamental 
 purposes, that these languages are of no practical use in 
 any of the ordinary aff^iirs of life, and that \\hen they are 
 used it is chiefly for show. He has not a word to say of 
 their disciplinary effect upon the mind, of their usefulness 
 in exhibiting the sources of modern language, of their 
 l)cing the repositories and vehicles of ancient valuable 
 literatures. No ; it is all for ornament. Latin and C/reck
 
 158 Every -Day Topics. 
 
 are ornamental branches, and to these the best years ot 
 the Hfe of our youth are given. If the stock arguments 
 in favor of these studies were offered, it would be quite 
 in order for him, or any one, to answer that the discipli- 
 nary effect of the study of German and French not to 
 speak of the English which it is the fashion to neglect 
 altogether can hardly be less than that of Greek and 
 Latin ; and that the ancient literatures exist in transla- 
 tions easily read by all who find either knowledge or 
 nutriment in them. Is it true this which Mr. Spencer 
 so deliberately asserts ? Is it true that the precious 
 years of tens of thousands of young men are thus thrown 
 away ? for that is the amount of his assertion. Is it 
 true that fathers and guardians arc spending their money 
 for naught ? that widowed mothers are pinching them- 
 selves that their sons may acquire useless knowledge ? 
 that homes are left by thousands of young men when 
 homes would be of incalculable use to them for nothing 
 but the acquisition of knowledge without value ? Is all 
 this half true ? 
 
 We very strongly suspect that Mr. Spencer is right, 
 or at least half right, and that the whole civilized world, 
 among the highest forces of its civilization, is squander- 
 ing the best years of its young men sacrificing them to 
 a fashion. It ought not to be difficult at this day to es- 
 tablish a curriculum of liberal study which should em- 
 brace mainly useful knowledge. The realm of science 
 has been so greatly enlarged, and the relations of science 
 to life have been so widely discovered and recorded ; 
 the importance of a familiar knowledge of German and 
 French is so great now, that original scientific researches 
 are largely published in those languages, and the inter- 
 course of the most advanced nations is so constantly in- 
 creasing, that it would seem as if Latin and Greek must, 
 perforce, be pushed out by the common sense of the
 
 Education and Industry. 159 
 
 people and the conscious lack of time for the study of 
 them. 
 
 We have in these days a great deal of crowding of 
 young men. To fit for college now is to do almost what 
 many of our fathers did to get through college. The 
 greatest care of health has to be taken to keep from 
 breaking the boys down. They practise physical exer- 
 cise, and we study dietetics for them, and manage, in 
 all the wise ways we know, to keep the poor fellows up 
 to their work, and yet, with every sort of "ponying" 
 and cramming, it is all they can do to get through. And 
 when they get through, what have they on hand or mind 
 that compensates them for their tremendous expendi- 
 ture? As Mr. Spencer elsewhere says, in this same 
 book, most things that a boy learns which are of any 
 real use to him he learns after leaving college. The 
 truth is, that all this crowding to which the boys are 
 now subjected results from the attempt to add to the old 
 curriculum from the ever-growing repertory of " knowl- 
 edge." When, some years ago, the talk of " relieving 
 Broadway" was the fashion, the stage-drivers struck for 
 higher wages, and every line of omnibuses was stopped. 
 It was at once discovered that getting rid of the omni- 
 buses "relieved" Broadway, and that without them it 
 would be a very pleasant street. Indeed, if the relief 
 had been long enough continued, it is quite probable 
 there would have been a movement made to prevent 
 their return. Greek and Latin have only to be removed 
 from the principal street through which our educational 
 processes pass to relieve it, and make it one in which 
 our children can walk with freedom and delight. 
 
 This may be deemed somewhat sweeping doctrine, 
 but we are in good company, and arc quite content with 
 our backing. That something should be known of 
 Latin and Greek enoutrh to aid us in understanding the
 
 i6o Every -Day Topics. 
 
 form and meaning of scientific nomenclature is evident 
 enough ; but that every liberally educated man should 
 be made to know enough of those languages to teach 
 them is absurd and cruel. We rejoice in the scientific 
 schools, and the scientific " courses of study" connected 
 with academic institutions. They mark the beginning 
 of a better system of things, and, in the long run, they 
 will confer such superior advantages upon young men in 
 preparing for the practical work of life that they will 
 absorb most of the students, or compel classical studies 
 to take a lower and subordinate place in the average col- 
 lege curriculum. But it is not a pleasant thing to reflect 
 upon that, with boys as with girls, time and effort are 
 mainly spent upon " the ornamental branches" of edu- 
 cation. We are accustomed to having girls spend years 
 upon the acquirement of arts of music and drawing that 
 are never practised, and upon French that is never 
 spoken, and that could not be understood if it were ; but 
 when we are told by the highest authorities that the 
 Latin and Greek which our boys spend all their youth 
 upon arc of no use, it is rather discouraging, and we 
 begin to wish that our universities would take counsel 
 of common sense rather than of fashion and precedent, 
 so that we may spend money and life no more for that 
 which is not bread. 
 
 Fitting for College. 
 The difficulty that some young men have in the 
 endeavor to enter the colleges of their choice, makes 
 desirable a public discussion of the matter, that both 
 parents and young men may have a more intelligent 
 comprehension of just what they have to do. A boy, 
 we will say, attends a private school in New York. The 
 school is near the boy's home, the teacher is all that is 
 desirable in character and acquirements ; one of his
 
 Education and Industry. iCi 
 
 special functions is to fit young men for college, and so 
 the boy is kept there, much to the comfort of his pa- 
 rents, who like, as long as possible, to keep their chil- 
 dren near them. 
 
 Now, it should be understood that a boy, attempting to 
 fit for college in this way, works at an immense disad- 
 vantage. In the first place, where so many boys are 
 brought together in a miscellaneous way, they will be 
 found to have varying predilections for the different 
 colleges. One wishes to fit for Harvard, one for Yale, 
 one for Columbia, one for Princeton, one for Amherst, 
 and so on. Now, these colleges have widely differing 
 standards in a general way, and widely differing re- 
 quirements in particulars. There is necessity for classi- 
 fication in the economy of labor ; and so these boys, who 
 are fitting for various colleges, are put together. Now, 
 while one of them may be fitted for one college, he may 
 not be at all fitted for another, or not fitted in some 
 essential particulars. One of them enters the college of 
 his choice without difficulty, and all the rest, perhaps, 
 are conditioned, or fail entirely, and they, with their 
 parents, arc subjected to a great disappointment and a 
 great mortification from which they never entirely re- 
 cover. 
 
 Again, an ordinary private school in the city is attended 
 by a large number who do not intend to fit for college at 
 nil. They are the sons, perhaps, of business men, who 
 intend to make business men of them. Probably the 
 majority of the boys in the larger and smaller private 
 academies of the city have no view to a college training, 
 though some of them may be getting ready to go away to 
 some special preparatory school. At any rate, the 
 schools have no drift in the direction of the college. 
 There is no unity of aim, no class sjjirit, no emulation 
 amoni; a large bodv of bovs who are running along a
 
 1 62 Every- Day Topics. 
 
 common track toward a common goal. The schools are 
 lakes of educational and social eddies. They are not 
 streams that drive on toward a single debouchure into 
 the sea. Now, no man who understands the nature of a 
 boy can fail to see that in institutions like these, he 
 works at a very great disadvantage. Class life has a 
 wonderful influence on a boy. It is in this life that he 
 not only learns to measure himself, but he is immensely 
 stimulated by sympathy and society. The school that 
 has a common drift and aim, common plans, common 
 topics of conversation, common text-books, and knows 
 exactly what it is trying to do, and what it must do, is 
 that in which any boy will do best. 
 
 The disappointments which come in such numbers to 
 parents and boys every year, grow mainly out of the fact 
 that the boys have not had a fair chance. They have 
 been kept in schools where they have always studied at 
 a disadvantage. It may not be that they have lacked at 
 all in faithful study, but it has all been up-hill, with in- 
 fluences around them that have never helped, but always 
 hindered them. 
 
 We have now, scattered about in different parts of the 
 country, eminent preparatory schools, officered and ap- 
 pointed for their special work. They have some, per- 
 haps many, students in them who are not fitting for the 
 college, but the controlling influences all tend toward 
 the college. Nearly every one of these institutions has 
 a special affiliation with a college, and it is understood 
 that the most of those who attend any particular one of 
 them will go to a certain college. There are schools 
 that fit for Harvard. There are those that fit for Yale, 
 or Princeton, or Cornell, or Columbia. There was prob- 
 ably never a time when these schools were as good as 
 they are to-day. Some of them have the reputation 
 even of fitting too well, so that a student who enters
 
 Education and Industry. 163 
 
 college from them finds himself with so little to do 
 duririg the first year that he loses his industry, and is 
 surpassed in the long run by those who simply get in, 
 and are obliged to work hard during the first year to 
 keep in. 
 
 Any school of miscellaneous and multitudinous aims 
 is a bad school for special work, no matter what the 
 work may be. Any school whose social influences can- 
 not be harnessed in with the educational and guided 
 toward a common object, and that object the college, 
 cannot be the best in which to fit a boy for college. So 
 let the boys have a fair chance. If they cannot find the 
 preparatory school they need in the city, they must go 
 to the country go somewhere, at least, to a school 
 whose function it is to do the special work desired. If 
 this rule were strictly followed, the great army of the 
 mismanaged and the plucked, every year turned away 
 from our universities, would be very much reduced. 
 
 College Instruction, 
 One would suppose that, after the discussions of edu- 
 cational processes with which the platform and the press 
 have teemed during the last two decades, professional 
 educators would be thoroughly furnished with sound 
 ideas and excellent methods. At least, the college, 
 which assumes the highest place among educational in- 
 stitutions, should present a system of instruction above 
 reproach ; yet it seems to us that the college is particu- 
 larly lame in its methods, and unsatisfactory in its re- 
 sults. Nothing, for instance, can l)e more mechanical 
 and unsatisfactory than the system of marking, as it is 
 pursued, say, during the first year of college life. In 
 the first place, the class is put almost entirely in the 
 hands of young and comparatively inexperienced in- 
 structors. At a time when the pupil needs direction
 
 1 54 Evcry-Day Topics. 
 
 and inspiration, if he ever does, he is left almost entirely 
 to himself, or to those whose experiences of life are so 
 limited that they are not accepted as directors, and 
 whose lack of character framed upon experience forbids 
 the exercise of influence. The average tutor is very 
 rarely an instructor. The pupil's business is to acquire 
 from books the power to answer questions, and the 
 tutor's business is to ask the questions and mark the re- 
 sults to the pupil in his answers. Automata could prob- 
 ably be built to do the work of the tutor, in all essential 
 particulars, and in such a case the result to the pupil 
 would be much the same that it is now a wretched 
 grind, in which the chief interest attaches rather to the 
 marks than to the studies. 
 
 Now, if the power to answer questions is the chief end 
 of man, or the chief end of education, if marks can be 
 made, or are ever used, to measure manhood, or power 
 to reason or to do, the present system is much nearer 
 right than we suppose it to be. But the truth is that 
 marks tell nothing about a student, except about his 
 power to acquire from a book, and his power to recite 
 glibly what he has acquired. For it must be remem- 
 bered that many a young man has not the power to re- 
 cite in a class-room, in the presence of his mates, what 
 he has faithfully learned, and is thus made to suffer in 
 his marks, and, consequently, in his standing, for a fault 
 of temperament for which he is not responsible. The 
 matter of teaching is, as a rule, left out of the tutor's 
 functions. His business is to hear recitations, in studies 
 in which he gives neither direction nor assistance. He 
 is a marker ; that is his special business. If " no boy 
 ever loved the man who taught him Latin," whose fault 
 would it be likely to be ? The truth is that when the 
 tasks of college are irksome and hateful it is the teacher's 
 fault, as a rule ; for it is within the power of any com-
 
 Education and Industry. 165 
 
 pctent teacher to make any study delightful. When 
 students are properly introduced to an author, or a 
 study, and are really directed or led by a sympathetic 
 and competent mind, they are happy in their work, and 
 it is the universal testimony of students that the young 
 tutor is the hard man of the college. They much prefer 
 to be in the hands of the older men. They are treated 
 more like men by the older teachers, and less like ma- 
 chines. They prefer to be in the hands of men who 
 seem interested to find out what they know, and careless 
 to learn what they don't know, and to trip them upon 
 opportunity. 
 
 It seems to us that a great deal too much of college 
 work is put upon young men, who may be very acute 
 and very learned, but not very wise ; and that the sys- 
 tem of marking, as at present pursued, is very poorly 
 calculated to nourish the self-respect of the young men 
 subjected to it. It also forces into prominence a motive 
 of study which is anything but the best. The great 
 business of the student is, not to acquire knowledge and 
 discipline and power, but to get marks. This motive is 
 absolutely forced upon him, and it is a mean and child- 
 ish one, and he knows and feels it, too, very much at 
 the expense of his self-respect. His standing in his class, 
 the reports of his position to his parents, even his power 
 to stay in the college at all, depend upon his marks. 
 Marks are the ghosts that haunt him by night, and the 
 phantoms that track him by day. Now he knows, and 
 everybody knows, that men cannot be ticketed off justly 
 in this way, and he may know that he is ten times the 
 man that another student is who may win better marks, 
 through his facility in committing to memory, and re- 
 citing off-hand. We have said that the motive forced 
 upon him is a childish one. We know many students 
 who feel this keenly, and who believe with us that if
 
 l66 Eveiy-Day Topics. 
 
 students were treated more like men by professors inter- 
 ested in them and in their progress, any apparent need 
 for treating them like children, that may at present exist, 
 would pass away. 
 
 We have said, also, that the student's power to stay in 
 college at all depends upon his marks. This is the most 
 astounding thing connected with this whole matter. The 
 only remedy that seems to have been devised for the 
 treatment of a slow student, by these great public edu- 
 cational institutions whose real business is to educate 
 him, is to drop him ; and to drop him is, nine times in 
 ten, to discourage him and ruin him. Can anything 
 more lame and impotent in the way of a conclusion be 
 imagined? The result is absolutely rascally and crim- 
 inal. It is a natural outcome, however, of the mechani- 
 cal system which we regard as essentially vicious. The 
 college seems to be regarded by its faculty as a great 
 mill, into which the boys are turned as a grist. Every- 
 thing that will not go through the hopper is thrown away, 
 no matter what personal powers and aspirations, or 
 what family hopes may go with it. 
 
 Of course we understand the conveniences of the 
 marking system. It throws the responsibility of the 
 student's progress upon himself, and entirely relieves the 
 faculty. That is a very great convenience to the 
 faculty but, as the college is paid for educating him, it 
 is hardly fair to the student himself, or his family. Then 
 it is so much easier to judge a man by his power to re- 
 cite a lesson, than it is by his power to solve an intellec- 
 tual problem, or to do an intellectual piece of work of 
 any kind! Then, still again, it is a kind of work that 
 can be trusted to young men, who have just gone through 
 the process and are accustomed to the machinery in- 
 deed, are products of it ! 
 
 Gentlemen of the college, is there not some better
 
 Education and Industry. 167 
 
 way a way that will make more and harder work for 
 you, perhaps, but a way that will more thoroughly nour- 
 ish the sense of manhood among your students, and give 
 them a nobler motive for work than that which you force 
 them to regard as the principal motive a nobler motive 
 which will make study a joy, and invest them with a 
 feeling of dignity and a sentiment of self-respect ? To 
 treat students like gentlemen, and less like children or 
 machines, and to come more into contact with them as 
 guides and teachers, and less as task-masters, would, in 
 our opinion, make better students out of them and ex- 
 ceedingly better men. We cannot doubt, we may say, 
 in closing, that too much college work is given to young 
 men to do. Their work is drudgery, perhaps, v/hich the 
 older men would gladly escape, but no work done in 
 college should be drudgery, if pursued with the right 
 spirit and policy, and with adequate intelligence. 
 
 Teachers and Task-Masters. 
 
 We are sorry for the man who did not have, at some 
 period of his childhood or youth, one teacher who filled 
 him with the enthusiasm of study, and brought him into 
 love with knowledge and into a genuine delight in the 
 use of his intellectual powers ; one teacher to state it 
 briefly who understood his business. For, with all the 
 advances made in the theories and methods of educa- 
 tion, and all the elevation of educational standards, it 
 is, and remains, true, that the poorest work done in the 
 world is done in the school-room. 
 
 In the first place, there is no competent idea of what 
 education really is, in the average teacher's mind. His 
 whole training has misled him, and his own instincts and 
 common sense have in no way corrected his educational 
 influences. His work has been the careful and indus- 
 trious mcniori/.ini: of the materials of his tcxt-bouks, and
 
 1 68 Every -Day Topics. 
 
 he has no idea of educating others except by the sama 
 process. He has never been taught ; he has simply 
 been tasked. He is, consequently, a dry man, without 
 enthusiasm and without ideas ; and the work that he 
 does is simply that of a task-master. A preacher, in 
 order to succeed, must not only be an enthusiast, but 
 he must be profoundly interested in the kind of material 
 that comes to his hand to be molded and influenced, 
 and in the processes through which he acts upon it. He 
 exercises all the ingenuities of address and handling, to 
 win attention, and is never satisfied until he has awak- 
 ened a profound interest in the topics that engage his 
 efforts. Every live preacher has his own way of work, 
 and accounts it a misfortune to find himself lapsing 
 into the mere mechanisms of his profession. So unlike 
 him is the average teacher, that a pupil is always sur- 
 prised to find him an interesting person, who gets out- 
 side of his mechanical routine of duty. A teacher's 
 duty, as it is commonly understood, is to keep order and 
 hear recitations. Beyond this, he is to mark progress 
 in education, as he most incompetently understands it, 
 by arithmetical formulae. Nothing more uninteresting 
 and mechanical can be imagined than the usual routine 
 of school. 
 
 Parents often wonder why their children are not inter- 
 ested in their studies. Why ! in the way in which their 
 studies are conducted, it is quite impossible that they 
 should be interested. The marvel is that they have suf- 
 ficient interest in their tasks to pursue them at all. 
 Machine education is no more interesting than machine 
 preaching. It is simply a long, dry grind, which chil- 
 dren are glad to get through with, and upon which they 
 look back with anything but pleasure and satisfaction. 
 
 The ordinary teacher will naturally inquire what we 
 would have. It is very hard to tell an incompetent man
 
 Edticalion and Industry. 169 
 
 what he cannot himself see, of the requirements of his 
 own calling ; but we have a very definite idea of what 
 we desire, and of what we believe to be needed. In the 
 first place, no pupil should ever undertake a study to 
 which he has not been properly and competently intro- 
 duced. The nature of the study, its relations to all other 
 study and to life, the proper methods of pursuing it, the 
 literature connected with it all these should be presented 
 and explained in such a way that a pupil on beginning has 
 some idea of what he is undertaking, and the reasons 
 for his undertaking it. Then, from this time, the edu- 
 cator is to remember that he is less a task-master than a 
 teacher, and that if his pupils do not get along well, it is 
 mainly his fault. If they have been properly presented 
 to the study, and their way into it has been made inter- 
 esting by his intelligent and enthusiastic leading, they 
 will be interested ; otherwise, not. We have known 
 pupils to go through years of study in the mathematics 
 without understanding anything as they ought to do, 
 and, at last, to bring their study to a most fruitless and 
 unsatisfactory termination, simply because they had a 
 teacher who regarded himself as only a task-master, and 
 would never take the time and pains to teach them and 
 make the steps of their progress plain. No man is fit 
 to teach who will leave a pupil floundering in and 
 through a study for the want of intelligent help and di- 
 rection. It is a teacher's business to teach, and not to 
 leave his pupils to find out what they can themselves, 
 and hold them responsible for their own instruction. 
 Pxlucation is not the result of memorizing facts, nor 
 wholly of understanding and arranging them, of course ; 
 but so long as we study text-books, and practically re- 
 cord our progress by means of them, there is no such 
 inspirer as an intelligent, sympathetic and enthusiastic 
 teacher. 
 
 8
 
 1 70 Every -Day Topics. 
 
 The public have not held teachers to their true re- 
 sponsibility. We send a young lad or a young girl to 
 school, and find that, while we are paying out a great 
 deal of money for them, they are gaining nothing. We 
 complain, and are informed that our children are not in- 
 dustrious, that they do not seem interested in their 
 studies, that they are absorbed in play, etc., etc. In 
 ninety-nine cases in a hundred, our disappointment is 
 entirely the fault of the teacher. He or she is simply 
 incompetent for the duty they have undertaken. A first- 
 class teacher always has good pupils. Lack of interest 
 in study is always the result of poor teaching. We send 
 a boy to college, and find that he regards his studies as 
 a grind that he is only interested in getting good 
 marks, and that he is getting no scholarly tastes, and 
 winning no scholarly delights. We inquire, and find 
 him in the hands of a young tutor, without experience, 
 who really pretends to be no more than a task-master, 
 and who knows nothing, and seems to care nothing, 
 about the office of teaching. The placing of large 
 masses of young men in the hands of inexperienced per- 
 sons, who do not pretend to do more than to set tasks 
 and record the manner in which they are performed, 
 without guidance or assistance, is a gross imposition of 
 the college upon a trusting public, and it is high time 
 that an outcry so determined and persistent is raised 
 against it that it shall procure a reform. 
 
 College Trustees and Professors. 
 We suppose there are few successful professional and 
 literary men who do not receive many letters from the 
 young, asking for their advice on matters relating to a 
 career. There is a sense of ignorance and a yearning 
 for direction among large masses of bright and ambi- 
 tious young men, that seek for satisfaction in a great
 
 Education and Industry. 171 
 
 variety of ways. Now, there is no influence that goes 
 so far with these as an example. They are pecuUarly 
 inspired by a great practical life, which wins, or drives 
 its way successfully through the world ; and the call for 
 prescriptive advice is simply a declaration of the ab- 
 sence of inspiring example within the immediate vision 
 of the applicants. It is as natural for a young man to 
 look for a model, and to put himself under the influence 
 of an inspiring personality, as it is to breathe ; and 
 when and where this inspiration is wanting, we shall 
 always find young men seeking for counsel. 
 
 In view of what seem to be the facts of the case, we 
 are compelled to believe that this matter is made small 
 account of in the appointment of college officers. To 
 begin with the trustees: we would like to inquire what 
 motives usually prevail in determining their election. 
 It happens that there are, here and there, boards of 
 trustees at the head of our literary institutions, made up 
 of men who are really inspiring powers upon the stu- 
 dents and professors alike ; and it is notorious that there 
 are others, and perhaps, the majority, who are held by 
 both in contempt. They are ignorant, incapable of good 
 except as they may be led by the faculties under them, 
 niggardly, short-sighted, conservative, illiberal, and with 
 no more apprehension of the high duties of their office 
 and the march of improvement, and the growing necessi- 
 ties and requirements of the times, than they would be 
 if they were made of wood and iron. A board of trus- 
 tees of this stamp is, of course, a clog upon any institu- 
 tion. How many boards like this, held either in good- 
 natured or ill-natured contempt by the professors and 
 students under them, have we in the country ? We fear 
 that there are a great many, made up of men who have 
 been placed in trust because they have influence in the 
 financial world because they have money and need to
 
 1/2 Every -Day Topics. 
 
 be flattered into leaving endowments because they have 
 intrigued for the eminence which has been bestowed 
 upon them because they have shown themselves wise 
 in scheming for themselves in fields that have no alliance 
 Avith learning. 
 
 Now, the college trustee ought to be a man, not only 
 of learning, but of an eminence that grows, and can only 
 grow, out of learning, or in association with it a man 
 who knows the needs of a college not only because he 
 has been through it, but because he knows the world, 
 takes the measure of his time, sees the drift of progress, 
 apprehends opportunities. He should be a man whose 
 presence is an inspiration a man whose life, blossoming 
 with culture and crowned with success, is a stimulant 
 and a tonic upon all the college life, alike of professors 
 and students. The difference in the influence of a board 
 of trustees, made up of men of whom such a man is the 
 type, and one made up of the ordinary trustee material, 
 is so great that the observing outsider can only wonder 
 that the prevalent absurdity can live for a year. We 
 should like to know how many boards of faculty are at 
 this moment making all their progress in spite of stupid 
 trustees, who lie back in their breeching like mules flap- 
 ping their hybrid ears in protest ! 
 
 Something was said in the editorial pages of this 
 magazine last month on the need of literary men as 
 professors of literature in our colleges. The article of 
 Professor Beers upon Yale, which appeared in Scribfwr 
 some months a;^o, recognized the literary bent of the 
 Cambridge students as a somewhat distinctive charac- 
 teristic of Harvard, though he attributed it to another 
 cause than the influence of Lowell and Longfellow. A 
 recent editorial in the New York Jimes took strong 
 ground in favor of literary men in literary professorships. 
 
 But there is a wider view to take of this whole subject.
 
 Education and Industry. 173 
 
 The college professor, as a rule, is bound up in his 
 specialty. He has but one side to him, and that is 
 always turned toward the college. He has no side 
 turned toward the world. He teaches within the walls 
 what he has learned, and betrays no fructification of 
 thought and life in production. He gets into his rut, 
 which grows deeper and deeper with the passing years 
 until, at last, his head sinks below the surface, and he 
 loses sight of the world and the world of him. Now, the 
 difference in their influence upon a student, between 
 such a man as this and one who writes successfully or 
 preaches successfully or speaks successfully or inves- 
 tigates successfully in new fields, must be, in the nature 
 of things, very great. To the professor who has met the 
 world's life in any way, and won a place in the world's 
 thought and regard, and become an outside power and 
 influence, the student turns as naturally for instruction 
 and inspiration as a flower turns toward the sun. Even 
 a single professor in an academic institution, who shows 
 by attractive production that his learning has really fruc- 
 tified his mind, will have more influence in determining 
 the college life, and that which goes out from it, than all 
 the rest of the faculty put together. The students know 
 that they are to meet and, if possible, to master life. 
 There is not a bright one among them who docs not 
 know that his learning will avail him little if it does not 
 give him practical power ; so that every exhibition of 
 that power among those who teach him leads and in- 
 spires him. 
 
 Suppose such a man as George William Curtis were 
 at the head of a college department a man ready and 
 gracefid in speech, acute in politics, facile and accom- 
 ])lished in ail literary expression, familiar with history, 
 courteous and happy in social intercourse what would 
 be the effect upon the students under him, compared
 
 174 Every -Day Topics. 
 
 with that of a professor who only knows the duties of his 
 chair, and who is but a helpless baby outside of it ? To 
 ask the question is to answer it, and cover our whole 
 argument. The culture and drift of the college would 
 be toward him, not at all because he would be a teacher, 
 but because he would be an inspirer. Take such a man 
 as Julius Seelye, who has just been elected to the presi- 
 dency of Amherst a man who is a recognized power in 
 the pulpit who presents the argument for Christianity 
 to the wise men of India who demonstrates the fact 
 that, although he is a teacher and a preacher, he is quite 
 capable of statesmanship in the halls of national legis- 
 lation, and compare his influence upon a body of stu- 
 dents with that of the average college president. 
 
 The simple truth is, that there is nothing which our 
 colleges need more than men of public power and influ- 
 encemen who can not only teach their specialties, bul', 
 by their life and example, point the way to usefulness, 
 and influence upon the world men who have a side for 
 the world as well as for the college, and who, by their 
 knowledge of the world, and the practical ways of reach- 
 ing it and acting upon it, are able to guide and inspire 
 as well as to instruct and enrich. 
 
 An Aspect of the Labor Question. 
 There is probably no country in which heredity has 
 played so unimportant a part in the national employ- 
 ment as it has in America. No true American child 
 thinks the better of a calling from the fact that his father 
 has followed it. In European countries, especially upon 
 the continent, men inherit the trades and callings of 
 their fathers. Here, they are quite apt to despise them 
 and to leave them. Our farmers' boys and the sons of 
 our blacksmiths and carpenters all try for something 
 higher for an employment that may be considered
 
 Education and Industry. 175 
 
 more genteel. This is the result of certain ideas that 
 were early put afloat in the American mind, and have 
 been sedulously cultivated in the newspapers, in books 
 prepared for the young, and in the public schools. Every 
 boy has been told more than once indeed, most boys 
 have had it drilled into them that the Presidency of the 
 United States is within their reach ; that it is a part of 
 their business to raise themselves and better themselves ; 
 especially, to raise themselves above the condition to 
 which they were born. Somehow or other, in the nur- 
 ture of these ideas there have been developed certain 
 opinions, with relation to the different callings of life, 
 as regards gentility, respectability, and desirableness 
 for social reasons. The drift of the American mind has 
 been away from all those employments which involve 
 hard manual labor. The farm is not popular with the 
 American young man. The idea of learning a useful 
 trade is not a popular one with the typical American 
 lad, or even with his parents. If he get a liberal educa- 
 tion, he must become a professional man. If he get a 
 tolerable education, he must become a semi-professional 
 a dentist perhaps, or the follower of some genteel em- 
 ployment of that sort. He drifts away from his farm 
 into some of the centres of trade and manufactures ; he 
 becomes a clerk in a store, or a teacher of a school, or a 
 practiser of some art that relieves him from the drudgery 
 of the farm and has an air of greater respectability. 
 
 The young man's sisters are affected by the same 
 ideas. Housework, to them, is low work, menial work. 
 It is not respectable. They go into factories, they be- 
 come what are denominated " sales-ladies." Even the 
 poor people who have hard work to keep body and soul 
 together are affected by these same notions. We know 
 of families where the daughters arc not taught to sew, 
 where they are instructed in none of the niore useful arts,
 
 1/6 Every -Day Topics. 
 
 and where they aspire to raise themselves to protessions 
 of various sorts, to anything but manual work. The 
 consequence is that in days of business depression, when 
 labor is hard to procure, and those who have money are 
 obliged to cut off some part of their luxuries, these peo- 
 ple are stranded in gentility and their genteel notions, 
 and are the most helpless part of our population. They 
 can do nothing useful, and are absolutely cut off from 
 all sources of revenue. Some of the most pitiful cases 
 we have met during the past five years have been cases 
 of this character. One lady tells us : " My girls are 
 as good as anybody's girls ! " a statement which we 
 deny, because they are not able to make their own 
 dresses or cook their own food. And the fact that her 
 girls are as good as anybody's girls is regarded as a mat- 
 ter of pride, when they are as helpless as babes, and 
 when they are actually ashamed to undertake any useful 
 work whatever, unless that work happen to square with 
 their notions of gentility. 
 
 We feel that this is all a mistake. Heaven forbid that 
 we should suppress any man's or any woman's aspirations 
 after excellence or after improvement of personal posi- 
 tion. We understand all this, and sympathize with it 
 all. But it is not possible that the whole American peo- 
 ple can rise out of ordinary, useful L'Tbor, into high posi- 
 tion. It is not possible that every lad who goes to a dis- 
 trict school can become President of the United States. 
 These useful employments on the farm and in the shop 
 of the mechanic lie at the basis of all our national pros- 
 perity. This work must be done, and somebody must 
 do it and those who are best adapted to it must do it. 
 No greater wrong can be done to a lad than to lift him 
 from the employment to which he is best adapted into 
 something which seems to him to be higher. In these 
 days, the foreigner is the man, as a rule, who docs the
 
 Education and Industry. lyy 
 
 work. In travelling over the country, if one loses a shoe 
 from a horse, the chances are many that the blacksmith 
 he will find at the wayside will be an Irishman. The old 
 Yankee blacksmith has " gone out," as we say, and wo 
 arc to-day dependent upon the person we import from 
 Europe for the work that is necessary to carry on the 
 farm, for the work that is necessary to carry on our man- 
 ufactures, both in a large and in a small way, for the 
 work of the kitchen, and for all the service of the house- 
 hold. 
 
 It is very hard for a man who has been bred an Ameri- 
 can to conceive of such a thing as over-education for 
 what are known as the common people. Yet there is 
 something in the education of our common people, or 
 something in the ideas which have been imbibed in the 
 course of their education, which seems to unfit them for 
 their work, which makes them discontented, which dis- 
 turbs them, and makes it well-nigh impossible for them 
 to accept the conditions of the lot into which they are 
 born, and the employments which have been followed 
 by their parents. It has become, indeed, a very serious 
 matter, and deserves the profound attention of our edu- 
 cators and political economists. If by any study or any 
 chance we could learn the cause of these great changes 
 and obviate it, it would be a boon to the American peo- 
 ple. As it is to-day, the avenues to what are called gen- 
 teel employments are choked with the crowds pushing 
 into them from our public schools. Young men with 
 ;;ood muscles and broad backs are standing behind shop- 
 men's counters, who ought to be engaged in some more 
 manly pursuits, who would have a better outlook before 
 them and would have a better life and more self-respect, 
 if they were doing a man's work behind a plough or be- 
 hind a plane. There are women in large numbers striv- 
 ing for genteel employments, who would be a thousand 
 8*
 
 178 Every -Day Topics. 
 
 times better in body and inind, if they were engaged in 
 household work. There are men and women even in 
 hard times, when they hardly know where their next 
 meal is coming from, and have not the slightest idea 
 how they are to procure their next new garment, who 
 are still very difficult to please in the matter of work, and 
 who will crowd their daughters into stores and shops, 
 rather than apprentice them to dress-makers where they 
 may learn a useful trade and earn increased wages. In 
 the meantime, the more sensible foreigner is picking up 
 industriously and carefully all the threads dropped in 
 those industries which were once purely American, and 
 the Americans pure and simple are becoming ruinously 
 and absurdly genteel. 
 
 Great Shopkeepers. 
 There are certain advantages that come to the com- 
 munity through the existence of great fortunes. There 
 is no doubt that it is better for a man to hire a house of 
 one who owns a hundred houses than to hire the only 
 house a man owns. The Astors are good landlords, be- 
 cause their money is all invested in houses. The rent- 
 ing of houses is their business. Their estates are large 
 gigantic, in fact, and, so that they get a good tenant, 
 and a constant one, they are content with a moderate 
 percentage on their investment. They have money 
 enough to keep their property in good repair, and they 
 do not feel compelled to press a tenant to the highest 
 possible price. There are certain advantages that come 
 to the community and the country through such a for- 
 tune as that of Commodore Vanderbilt, invested and 
 managed as he invests and manages it. A man whose 
 fortune lifts him above the temptation to steal, and who 
 possesses large organizing and administrative capacities, 
 may be a genuine public benefactor, in the handling of
 
 Education and Industry. ly) 
 
 great corporate interests. There is no question, we 
 suppose, that the great railroad over which Commodore 
 Vanderbilt has exercised control for the last decade, 
 has been better managed for the country and the stock- 
 holders than it ever was before. The road has been 
 improved, it has been well run, it has accommodated 
 the public, it has paid its employes, it has paid dividends, 
 it has paid its interest. 
 
 It is true, also, that there must be large accumulations 
 of capital in private hands, in order that the people may 
 get many of the necessaries of life cheaply. The book 
 that a man buys for five dollars may, and often does, 
 cost fifty thousand to prepare for the press. The shirt- 
 ing that a laboring man wears can only be purchased 
 cheaply because some man, or combination of men, 
 have been willing to risk half a million or a million of 
 dollars in the erection and appointment of a mill. The 
 simple plated service of a mechanic's tea-table could 
 only be produced at its price in an establishment costing 
 immense sums of money, and employing large numbers 
 of men, who arc equally benefited with the purchasers 
 of the ware produced. There are a thousand ways in 
 which great capitalists are of daily benefit to the world. 
 
 New York has just been called upon to bury its great 
 shopkeeper. The name of A. T. Stewart was known 
 throughout the v>orld. He had amassed a colossal for- 
 tune, he had lived a reputable life, he had done, and he 
 was doing at the time of his decease, a larger business 
 in his way than any other man in the world. Wc have 
 no criticisms of the man to offer. He made his immense 
 accumulations by what is called " legitimate trade ; " he 
 did what he would with his own ; he left it as he chose to 
 leave it. We share the common disappointment that he 
 who seemed so competent to win money for his own 
 benefit failed to dispose of it in such a way as to re-
 
 I So Every-Day Topics. 
 
 dound to his everlasting renown. We are sorry for his 
 own sake, and the city's sake, that he did not associate 
 with his name some great gift to the pubUc, which would 
 embalm him in the affectionate memory of a people from 
 whose purses he took the profits that made him super- 
 fluously rich. It would have been a good thing for him 
 to do, but he has lost his chance, and there is nothing to 
 be said or done about it. 
 
 This, however, may be said and this is what we 
 started to say his business was one which he did not 
 do, and could not do, without a depressing influence 
 upon all who were dependent upon the same business 
 for a livelihood. His great establishment was a shadow 
 that hung over all the others in the town. The man 
 with ten or twenty thousand dollars ; the man with a 
 hundred thousand dollars ; the man with one thousand 
 dollars, each, alike, was obliged to compete with this 
 man, who had millions outside of the necessities of his 
 enormous business. The hosier, the hatter, the woman 
 in her thread-and-needle shop, the milliner, the glove- 
 dealer, the carpet-dealer, the upholsterer, all were 
 obliged to compete with Stewart. If he had followed a 
 single line of business, it would have been different ; but 
 he followed all lines. Wherever he saw a profit to be 
 made, in any line of business that was at all congruous 
 with dry-goods, he made it. He thus became a formi- 
 dable competitor with half the shopkeepers in New 
 York. His capital made it possible for him to ruin men 
 by the turn of his hand to fix prices at which every- 
 body was obliged to sell at whatever loss. However 
 proud the New Yorker may have been of his wonderful 
 establishment and there is no doubt that it was pretty 
 universally regarded with pride it is easy now to see 
 that our business men at large would be in a much better 
 condition if that establishment had never existed. If all
 
 Education a?id Industry. i8i 
 
 the money that has gone to swell his useless estate had 
 been divided among small dealers, hundreds of stores, 
 now idle, would be occupied, and multitudes of men 
 now in straitened circumstances, would be comparatively 
 prosperous. 
 
 But it is said that he employed a great many people. 
 Yes, he did ; but did he pay them well? Would they 
 not have been better paid in the employ of others. The 
 necessities of his position, and his ambition, compelled 
 him to pay small prices. The great mass of those who 
 served him worked hard for the bread that fed them, and 
 the clothes that covered them. The public bought 
 cheaply ; the outside dealers suffered ; the employds 
 laid up no money, and Mr. Stewart got rich. Under the 
 circumstances, and under the necessities of the case, was 
 it desirable that he should get rich ? We think not ; 
 and we think that the final result of this great shop- 
 keeping success is deplorable in every way. It has ab- 
 sorbed the prosperities of a great multitude of men and 
 women. New York would be richer, happier, more 
 comfortable, more healthy in all its business aspects, if 
 the great store at Tenth Street had never been built. 
 Five hundred men who invest their little capital in the 
 varied lines of business, and pay their modest rent, and 
 devote their time to their affairs, content with profits that 
 give them and their families a fair living and a few sav- 
 ings for a rainy day, are certainly better for a city than 
 a single Stewart, who absorbs their business and leaves 
 them in distress. 
 
 No, we want no more great shopkeepers. We trust 
 we may never have another Stewart ; and we say this 
 with all due respect to his memory and the marvellous 
 skill with which he managed his affairs. Such fortunes 
 as his, won in such a way, can never be accumidatcd 
 without detriment to the t:eneral business of a citv like
 
 1 82 Every-Day Topics. 
 
 ours. They do nobody any good ; they do a great mul- 
 titude of people an irremediable injury. 
 
 Industrial Education. 
 There are certain facts of current history which give 
 great importance to the subject of industrial education. 
 It is notorious, in the first place, that the old system of 
 apprenticship has almost entirely gone into disuse. How 
 the American artisan gets the knowledge and skill which 
 enable him to work at a trade, is not obvious. In one 
 way or another he manages to do - it ; but the approach 
 to a mechanical employment has practically ceased to 
 be through an old-fashioned apprenticeship. Among 
 the causes that have conspired to procure the abandon- 
 ment of the old system, may first be mentioned the influ- 
 ence of common schools. Quarrel with the fact as we 
 may, it cannot be successfully denied that the influence 
 of common schools has been to unfit those subjected to 
 their processes and social influences for the common 
 employments of life. The lad who has made a successful 
 beginning of the cultivation of his intellect, docs not 
 like the idea of getting a living by the skilful use of his 
 muscles, in a mechanical employment. It does not ac- 
 count for everything to say that he gets above it. It is 
 enough that he likes the line of intellectual development 
 in which he finds himself, and has no taste for bodily 
 labor. So he goes further, or stopping altogether, seeks 
 some light employment demanding his grade of culture 
 or tries to get his living by his wits. Mechanical em- 
 ployments are passing more and more into the hands of 
 foreigners. General Armstrong, of the colored college 
 at Hampton, in a recent search for blacksmiths' shops 
 at the North where he might safely place a number of 
 Indian lads, found no Americans to deal with. Every 
 blacksmith was an Irishman.
 
 Education and Industry. 183 
 
 If it is asked why there is not a universal effort made 
 for the reinstatement of the apprentice-systems, we re- 
 ply that that there is a very ugly lion in the way. An 
 item of news which has just gone the round of the papers 
 states the case as it stands. A piano-maker complained 
 that he could not get men enough to do his work, the 
 reason being that his men belonged to a society that had 
 taken upon itself to regulate the number of apprentices 
 he could be permitted to instruct in the business. They 
 had limited this number to one utterly insufficient to 
 supply the demand, and he was powerless. They had 
 even cut down the number, recently, so that there was 
 no way for him but to import his workmen, already in- 
 structed, from abroad. In brief, there is a conspiracy 
 among society-men, all over the country, to keep 
 American boys out of the useful trades ; and industrial 
 education is thus under the ban of an outrageous despot- 
 ism which ought to be put down by the strong hand of 
 the law. It is thus seen that while the common school 
 naturally turns the great multitude of its attendants away 
 from manual employments, those who still feel inclined 
 to enter upon them have no freedom to do so, because a 
 great army of society-men stand firmly in the way, over- 
 ruling employer and employed alike. 
 
 Now, there are two points which we would like to 
 present : 
 
 1. The public school, as at present conducted, not only 
 does not fit boys and girls for the work of taking care of 
 themselves and their depejidents, but absolutely hinders 
 them from undertaking it, ok engenders ideas that are 
 impracticable or misleading. 
 
 2. That the public has to pay in some 7vay for all the 
 ignorance of practical life in which the public school 
 leai'es its pufiils. 
 
 The pauperism that grows out of this ignorance is an
 
 1 34 Every-Day Topics. 
 
 almost intolerable burden upon the public purse. Th 
 crime that attends it is so notable that all who are 
 familiar with the subject know that a very large percen- 
 tage of culprits and convicts never learned a trade. 
 When a man of low moral sense and weak will finds that 
 he knows no trade by which he can make a living, he be- 
 comes a thief by a process as natural as breathing. Pau- 
 perism and crime are, therefore, the inevitable result of 
 ignorance in the way of taking care of one's self and 
 earning one's living. The question of expense is one 
 which an intelligent and enterprising public ought easily 
 to settle. This ignorance is to cost money. Shall this 
 money be paid for the purpose of removing the igno- 
 rance, and obviating the necessity for pauperism and 
 crime, or shall it be paid for the pauperism and crime? 
 
 We know, or appreciate, the practical difficulties that 
 stand in the way of a system of industrial schools, sup- 
 ported by public tax, but surely if it is needed impera- 
 tively needed American ingenuity will be sufficient to 
 give it practical direction, and secure a satisfactory re- 
 sult. Our good neighbors in Boston have been trying to 
 do something, more particularly for the girls. They 
 have introduced not only plain sewing into their school, 
 but the making of dresses and other garments. Only 
 two hours of each week arc devoted to the matter, and 
 twenty-nine special teachers employed, but the results 
 are most encouraging. Mrs. Jonathan Sturges and her 
 associates in the Wilson Industrial School for Girls, of 
 this city, more than a year ago appealed to the New 
 York Board of Education oij behalf of the project of in- 
 troducing sewing into our public schools here, and 
 backed their appeal by this quotation from a Boston re- 
 port : " Every girl who passes through the Boston 
 schools now receives three years' instruction in various 
 kinds of needlework, and is capable of being an expert
 
 Education and Industry. 185 
 
 seamstress. It is said the benefits resulting from this 
 instruction are seen in the appearance of the children's 
 clothing in the schools, and are felt in thousands of 
 homes." Now, we ask our Board of Education if they 
 have anything to show, in their reports of the last ten 
 years, that is calculated to give a practical man or 
 woman the pleasure and satisfaction to be found in such 
 an announcement as this. Can they not see that what 
 these girls in Boston have learned in this way, with a 
 comparatively small expenditure of time and money, is 
 of incalculable value ? What is a little less of algebra, 
 or geography, or even of arithmetic, by the side of this 
 surpassing gain ? 
 
 Well, our Board reported against Mrs. Sturgcs, 
 though Commissioner Wheeler presented a minority re- 
 port in favor, very much to his credit ; and now wc 
 assure our good friends of the Board that this subject 
 will not down, and that the times and the public exigency 
 demand that they shall take the matter up again, and 
 treat it effectively in the interest of the public welfare, 
 safety and economy. Their own nautical school in- 
 dorses the principle involved. Even the Normal Col- 
 lege and the College of the City of New York may, in 
 one sense, be considered industrial schools. Teacliin;; 
 is an industry, and these institutions, supported at the 
 public charge, are mainly devoted to preparing men 
 and women for the pursuit of that industry. It would be 
 the brightest feather that New York ever won for her 
 cap if she would establish a great free industrial school, 
 in which boys could get instruction in the mechanic arts, 
 so that every poor boy could learn a trade. 
 
 There certainly is no good reason why we should not, 
 at least, do for our girls what Boston has done for hers, 
 even if the boys are obliged to wait awhile longer.
 
 1 86 Every 'Day Topics. 
 
 Industrial Education Again, 
 To those who look intelligently and thoughtfully upon 
 the popular life of the nation, a certain great and nota- 
 ble want manifests itself a want that is comparatively 
 new, and that demands a new adjustment of our educa- 
 ting forces. At the time when the public school system 
 of our country was founded, nearly everybody was poor, 
 and the girls of every family, in the absence of hired ser- 
 vice, were necessarily taught, not only to knit and sew, 
 but to cook and keep the house. Then w-omen could 
 not only weave but make up the garments which they 
 wore, and keep them in repair. At the same time, boys 
 were taught to do the farm work of their fathers, and, in 
 case they chose a mechanical employment, they entered 
 an apprenticeship, under regulations well understood 
 and approved at the time. In short, there were ways 
 by which every and girl and boy could learn to take care 
 of themselves and the families that afterward came to 
 them. 
 
 Various changes have come over the country since 
 that day. In the first place, a great change has been 
 made in the course and amount of study in the schools 
 themselves. So great has been the pressure of study 
 upon the schools of some of our cities, that physicians 
 have united to protest against it as a prolific source of 
 insanity. Girls, for instance, cannot fulfil the require- 
 ments of their teachers and have any time at home to 
 learn any of the household arts which are so necessary 
 to them, not only as waives and mothers, but as maidens 
 having only to take care of themselves. Boys are ab- 
 sorbed by their studies in the same way, and the ap- 
 prenticeship system has been given up ; our foreign 
 mechanics have, through their trades unions, entered 
 into a thoroughly organized conspiracy against it. A
 
 Education and Industry. 187 
 
 boy is not at liberty now to decide what handicraft lie 
 will learn, because the boss is shamefully in the hands 
 of his despotic workmen, and the workmen decide that 
 the fewer their number the better wages they will get. 
 Their declared policy is to limit apprenticeships to the 
 smallest possible number. 
 
 The result of these changes for some of which the 
 public school is itself responsible is the great and nota- 
 ble want to which we have alluded, viz., the lack of suf- 
 ficient knowledge, or of the right kind of knowledge, on 
 the part of boys and girls, to take care of their own per- 
 sons and to earn their own living. Girls grow up with- 
 out learning to sew, and multitudes of them do not know 
 how to mend their own garments. Boys leave the public 
 schools without fitness for any calling whatever, except 
 it may be some one which calls into requisition that 
 which they have learned of writing and arithmetic. 
 Some sort of clerkship is what they try for, and a me- 
 chanical trade is the last thing that enters their minds. 
 .So we import our mechanics, and they legislate against 
 the Yankee boy in all their trades unions. 
 
 The pul)lic hardly needs to learn that the result of the 
 indisposition and inability to learn trades among Ameri- 
 can boys is about as disastrous as can be imagined. It 
 is found that in the prisons, almost universally, the 
 number of criminals who never learned a trade to those 
 who are skilled workmen is as six to one. The army of 
 tramps who have infested the country for the last few 
 years is largely composed of men who have had no in- 
 dustrial education whatever. These men, who beg at 
 our doors, are mainly men who never learned a trade, 
 and who can handle nothing but a sho\el. A New York 
 clergyman, possessing a large family of boys, recently 
 declared from his pulpit that he intended that every lad 
 of his family should learn some mechanical employment,
 
 1 88 Every -Day Topics. 
 
 by which, in an emergency, he could get a living. He 
 was right. It is in the emergencies of life it is when 
 men find themselves helpless and without the power of 
 earning money that they slip into crime, and become 
 the tenants of prisons and penitentiaries. 
 
 So the American people must, sooner or later, be 
 driven to the establishment of industrial schools. To 
 learn how to work skilfully with the hands must become 
 a part of common education. Rich and poor alike 
 should be taught how to work, for it is quite as likely 
 that the rich will become poor as that some of the poor 
 will become rich ; and that is, and always must be, a 
 poor education which fails to prepare a man to take care 
 of himself and his dependents in life. We understand 
 what to do with criminals. We confine them and set 
 them to learning a trade, especially the young criminals. 
 The reform schools never leave out the element of man- 
 ual industry. Why is it not just as legitimate to teach the 
 virtuous how to take care of themselves without crime as 
 it is the vicious ? 
 
 Indeed, there is no place where men can learn to work 
 so well as in schools, where they can be taught the prin- 
 ciples of mechanics. We visited a shop recently where 
 hoisting apparatus is made "blocks" or " tackle," as 
 it is called but there was not a man in the shop, from 
 the master down, who could explain the principle and 
 power of the pulley. They had learned their business of 
 some routine mechanic who had no intelligence in the 
 principles of his art, and they were obliged to confess to 
 a stranger that they were ignorant of the nature of their 
 work, and, consequently, without the power to make 
 any improvement in it. Now, if the money spent in edu- 
 cation really unfits the great majority for the work of 
 life, or, rather, fails to fit them for work, why should we 
 go further in this direction ? There are practical difficul-
 
 Education and Industry. 189 
 
 tics in plenty, but the thing has already been success- 
 fully tried in more than one country, and this is an inven- 
 tive nation. The cost is the real difficulty the cost and 
 the indifference of the public mind. We have made a 
 sort of god of our common school system. It is treason 
 to speak a word against it. A man is regarded as a foe 
 to education who expresses any doubt of the value of it. 
 But we may as well open our eyes to the fact that in 
 preparing men for the work of life, especially for that 
 work depending upon manual skill, it is a hindrance and 
 a failure. To learn to make a painted wagon is almost to 
 cover the field of the mechanic arts. To draw a wagon 
 upon paper in whole and in working parts, to build and 
 finish the wood-work, to forge and file the iron-work, to 
 go through all the joinery of one and the welding and 
 adaptation of the other, to smooth and paint the surface, 
 is to achieve a preparation for almost any trade, involv- 
 ing construction from similar materials. It is not so 
 complicated and difficult a matter as one would at first 
 suppose. We have agricultural schools of a high grade, 
 and find the national account in them, but we need a 
 great deal more, for the health and welfare of the youth 
 of the nation an industrial school in every ward of 
 every city, and a similar school in every village, sup- 
 portetl at the public expense. ,
 
 TOWN AND COUNTRY. 
 
 Life in Large and Small Towns. 
 
 IT is said, by those who have good opportunities of 
 judging, that fifty thousand strangers spent last win- 
 ter in this city. Every hotel and every boarding-house 
 was full. Of these fifty thousand, probably more than 
 half were permanent boarders for the winter, while the 
 remainder were merchants, coming and going on errands 
 of business. The fact shows that New York is becom- 
 ing more and more regarded as the great capital of the 
 country, and is beginning to hold toward the country the 
 same relation that London holds to Great Britain, and 
 Paris to France. This latter fact ineans more than win- 
 ter boarding : it means that New York is coming to be 
 regarded as a desirable home for all who have money 
 enough made to enable them to live at leisure. The 
 Ca^fornian who has become rich has, in many instances, 
 brought his family to New York, and bought his house 
 on Fifth Avenue. The country manufacturer who has 
 grown to be a nabob in his little village, domiciles him- 
 self on Alurray Hill, that his family may have a better 
 chance of life than they get in the narrow village. 
 
 What is true of the commercial capital of the country 
 is also true, to a considerable extent, of the political. 
 Washington has grown to be a beautiful city and noth- 
 ing has more directly ministered to its growth than the 
 gathering to it from far and near of wealthy and culti-
 
 Toivn and Coiuitry. 191 
 
 vated families, who have sought it as a residence and a 
 resort. New York, the commercial capital, and Wash- 
 ington, the political, will, for many years, divide be- 
 tween them those families whom wealth, instead of bind- 
 ing to the place where its stores were acquired, has made 
 migratory. Those who wish to hear the best operas and 
 witness the best acting, and who desire to be where the 
 best in art of all kinds is to be found, and especially 
 those whose tastes are commercial, will come to New 
 York ; while those who are fond of politics, and the pe- 
 culiar social life that reigns at a political centre, will go 
 to Washington ; and it is hard to say which will have the 
 better home. Few who have not kept themselves famil- 
 iar with Washington can appreciate the long strides 
 she has made, during the past few years, in population, 
 and in all desirable conditions as a residence. Her cli- 
 mate, her lovely position, her possession of the national 
 Government, the residence she gives to the high officials 
 of the nation and the representatives of other nations, 
 conspire to make her one of the most attractive cities in 
 America. 
 
 But we do not undertake to represent the beauties and 
 attractions of the two cities. They do not seeni to need 
 our help ; but we would like to say a word about those 
 conditions of life in small towns which make these 
 changes of residence desirable. Interested in New 
 York, it is pleasant for us to see it prospering and grow- 
 ing, but our interest in its growth docs not blind us to 
 the fact that it ought not to grow because life within it 
 is more significant and fruitful than it is in the country. 
 It seems to us a great mistake for a man to leave the 
 region where he makes his money to spend it and his 
 lite in another. If the life he leaves is not significant 
 to him, it is quite likely to he his fault more than that of 
 anv and all other men. For he has had the monev more
 
 192 Every- Day Topics. 
 
 than others to enrich the character of the hfe around 
 him ; and the possesion of that money has placed upon 
 him the burden of certain duties which he has left un- 
 performed. Wealth acquired in any modest locality 
 belongs there, by a certain right, for it cannot exist 
 there for a moment without assuming certain very defi- 
 nite relations to the popular needs and the public good. 
 To take money away from where it has been made is to 
 impoverish all the life of the community. It reduces its 
 means of living and its possibilities of progress. It not 
 only takes bread and clothing from the poor, but it re- 
 duces all its means of social improvement. 
 
 The city of Cincinnati has recently held another mu- 
 sical festival, and won to herself the glory of surpassing 
 New York and Washington in musical culture and the 
 power of producing great musical works. It cannot be 
 hard to see that the life of Cincinnati has been made so 
 significant to its people that they can have no temptation, 
 however rich they may be, to go to New York or Wash- 
 ington 10 live. A commercial town that can give up a 
 week to music, and furnish all the money and the time 
 necessary to produce a great musical triumph, has no 
 call to go elsewhere to find a more interesting life than 
 it secures at home. People are much more apt to go to 
 Cincinnati to live than to go away from there, because it 
 is an honor to live there, and to be associated with the 
 generous life and development of the place. 
 
 What we say of Cincinnati illustrates all that we have 
 to say about the smaller towns and cities. Men of 
 wealth who have sense enough to long for a better life 
 than they can find in their little city or village are to 
 blame for not making the life around them as good as they 
 want it to be. There is not a city or a village in America 
 that has not within itself in its men and women and 
 money the means for doing some good, or noble, or
 
 Tozvn and Country. 193 
 
 interesting thing, that shall lift its life above the common- 
 piace, and hold its own against all the attractions of 
 metropolitan life. Where a man makes his money there 
 he should make his home, and, as a rule, it will be 
 mainly his fault and that of his family if he cannot spend 
 his life there with profit and satisfaction. 
 
 Village Improvement Societies. 
 
 There are just about four months in the year in which 
 an ordinary country village is a pleasant place to dwell 
 in, viz. : from May to September. The muddy streets 
 and sidewalks of autumn and spring, and the icy and 
 snowy ways of winter, render it uncomfortable for walk- 
 ing or driving. The foliage and herbage of summer 
 cover up the ugly spots, and the greenery of the growing 
 months transforms the homeliest details into the pleas- 
 ant and picturesque. The moment the greenery disap- 
 pears, dilapidated fences, broken-down sheds, unkept 
 commons, neglected trees, and all the tolerated uglinesses 
 of the village assert themselves. The village is beauti- 
 ful no longer. There are thousands of villages scattered 
 over the country in which there has never been a public- 
 spirited attempt made to reduce their disorder to order, 
 their ugliness to beauty, their discomforts to comfort. 
 Every man takes care, or does not take care, of his own. 
 There is no organic or sympathetic unity, and the vil- 
 lages, instead of being beautiful wholes, are inharmo- 
 nious aggregations. Some paint and some do not paint. 
 Some keep their grounds well, and others do not keep 
 their grounds at all. Unsightly wrecks of vehicles, of- 
 fensive piles of rubbish, are exposed here and there, and 
 every man apparently feels at liberty to make his be- 
 longings as unpleasant to his neighbor as it pleases 
 him. No public sentiment of order is developed ; no 
 9
 
 194 Every -Day Topics. 
 
 local pride is fostered ; there is apparently no desire for 
 beauty or convenience that goes one step beyond one's 
 home in any case. 
 
 It is, therefore, with great gratification that we notice 
 here and there the organization of Village Improvement 
 Societies, and the beautiful work which they are accom- 
 plishing. Wherever they have been in existence long 
 enough to accomplish anything, shade trees are planted 
 by the side of the highways ; old, neglected commons 
 are fenced in, graded and planted ; sidewalks are laid in 
 all the streets, and a public intcresi in order and beauty 
 is developed, which makes every man more careful of 
 his own. Two villages, of which we happen to know, 
 have been quite transformed within two or three years 
 by the operations of these organizations ; and their be- 
 neficent and beautiful work, already done, will insure to 
 their localities a certain amount of beauty and conven- 
 ience for the next hundred years. They have not been 
 met by tlic public apathy that they anticipated, and they 
 have been enabled, by subscriptions, fairs and festivals, 
 to raise sufficient money for the work they have insti- 
 tuted, while individual citizens have co-operated with 
 them in tlicir schemes. 
 
 Tliere is no good reason why every considerable vil- 
 lage of the country should not be made convenient, 
 healthful, and beautiful, by the operations of such socie- 
 ties as these. There is no good reason why a public 
 feeling of pride should not be engendered by them, and 
 an earnest purpose developed to make each village more 
 attractive than its neighbor. Selfish interest is all on 
 the side of the societies ; for improvement in beauty and 
 comfort means improvement in value. Emulation be- 
 tween neighbors and between villages is excited, and 
 niggardly property-holders are shamed into efforts to 
 contribute to the popular desire for harmony. This is
 
 Town and Country. 195 
 
 not a theory ; it is experience ; for, wherever they have 
 been tried, these societies have done the work and exer- 
 cised the influence we have stated. 
 
 Again, these societies are agencies of culture. De- 
 veloping a public spirit and a feeling of local pride, they 
 cannot fail to bear fruit in other and higher directions. 
 Public and domestic architecture will be the first to feel 
 the effect of the new sentiment. Men will build pretty 
 houses, in tone with the new order of things. New am- 
 bition will be developed with relation to public buildings 
 and their surroundings. The new town-hall will be bet- 
 ter than the old. The new church will be an ornament 
 and a glory, which the old one was not. Lyceums, 
 reading-clubs, and libraries, arc just as natural an out- 
 growth of a public spirit engendered by these societies, 
 and a public culture nourished by them, as they are, 
 themselves, the outgrowth of a public necessity. 
 
 There is really nothing more sadly wanted in the vil- 
 lage life of America, than the organization of its best 
 materials for purposes relating to the common good. So 
 many people must always spend their lives in villages ; 
 and those lives, in countless instances, are so barren 
 and meaningless, so devoid of interest, so little sympa- 
 thetic, that any means which promises to improve that 
 life, should secure the most earnest attention. There is 
 no reason why every village should not be alive with in- 
 terest in its own culture and its own affairs, or why vil- 
 lage life should not be crowded with attractions that 
 have the power to hold every villager to his home. There 
 are multitudes who never dream that their village can 
 be anything more to them than a place of shelter and 
 labor. They never dream that a village can be the cen- 
 tre of a culture as sweet and delightful as any city pos- 
 sesses, or, that they have any duty or office in making it so. 
 
 We trust that the work of making the villages bcauti-
 
 1 96 Every-Day Topics. 
 
 fill, which has been so auspiciously begun by the socie- 
 ties for improvement, will be extended until every village 
 in the land will have its Association, and experience the 
 natural results. It is a work in which men and women 
 can unite and in which, indeed, women may lead if they 
 will ; for none are more interested in it, and what comes 
 of it, than women. Our villages are built. The forma- 
 tive stage is passed, and another Centennial ought to 
 iind every American village the home of order and com- 
 fort, and of a life very far advanced beyond the present 
 in social culture and happiness. 
 
 Village Reform. 
 
 So great was the interest excited all over the country, 
 last year, by a brief article in this department on " Vil- 
 lage Improvement Societies," that we have undertaken, 
 by the best means within reach, to satisfy the desire for 
 knowledge upon the subject. We have received letters 
 from every part of the country wishing for information 
 the latest from the interior of Texas. Unhappily, the 
 thing most wanted is what wc know least about, viz. : 
 modes of organization and operation. If, in those New 
 England towns that now have societies in successful 
 operation, intelligent reports and histories could be pre- 
 pared and published, they v/ould be of incalculable bene- 
 fit to the country. What the beginners want literally 
 by thousands is to know just how to do it, or just 
 how somebody else has done it. 
 
 The articles which Colonel Waring has written for this 
 magazine, and which are now in course of publication, 
 are designed as helps suggestions inspirations. So 
 intelligent and practical a man as Colonel Waring can- 
 not write uninterestingly upon a topic so harmonious 
 with his tastes and pursuits as this. The farming and
 
 Town and Country. 197 
 
 village populations of the country will find much of in- 
 terest and profit in his papers. His views of the desira- 
 bleness of farm villages, in place of the isolation which 
 makes the farm so hateful to the young and so barren to 
 the old, are not new to those who are familiar with this 
 department of the magazine ; but they arc very impor- 
 tant, and will need to be published many times again. 
 
 There are, probably, a thousand villages in this coun- 
 try that will, this year, form village improvement socie- 
 ties, moved thereto by these papers and by the article 
 that suggested them ; and the fact seems to us one of 
 the most encouraging and delightful in the social and 
 domestic history of the time. The local organization of 
 taste, the building up of local rivalries in matters of 
 order and beauty, the doing any wise thing for making 
 attractive the smaller centres of population these all 
 are so intimately connected with popular development 
 and elevation and content, that they might well engage 
 the work of social missionaries and receive the money of 
 moribund millionnaires. 
 
 After all, the thing to be done ought not to be difficult. 
 Americans are usually ^ery much at home in matters of 
 organization. The wisest heads are easily got together, 
 and when they really are the wisest heads, they easily 
 work together. The first thing wanted is wisdom and 
 taste. The second on the list is money all of it that 
 can be obtained, because there is always use for more 
 than can be had. Wilh these prerequisites in hand or 
 at hand, so many things will present themselves to be 
 done that it will be hard to determine what shall have 
 the first attention. It should not be difficult to decide 
 that the first interests to be consulted are those of health 
 and comfort. If there are any nuisances any breeders 
 of disease they should be put out of the way at once. 
 Then every village wants good sidewalks. Most ^Vnieri'
 
 1 98 Every - Day l opics. 
 
 can villages are quagmires in the spring and autumn, in 
 which a man can never walk with dry feet and clean 
 trowsers, and in which a lady cannot walk at all. Ex- 
 actly at this point, and on this improvement, is where 
 the township and the village come to a dead halt. The 
 farmers who occupy the outlying agricultural acreage of 
 a township are not willing to pay a dollar in taxes for the 
 improvement of the village. They may be willing to do 
 something for the ri^ad ; but for the sidewalk, nothing. 
 On the sidewalk, thenj will come the first expensive work 
 of a village improvement society. To gain time, tree- 
 planting should go alopg with this. After this come 
 parks, fences, fountains no end of things. 
 
 The operations of a society of this kind will secure an 
 indirect result of good aUiiost commensurate with that 
 which is direct. It becomes an educator, an inspiration, 
 a motive, a reproof, an example. A slatternly door-yard, 
 fronting a new and well-graded sidewalk, is a discord 
 that will probably be discovered and corrected by its 
 owner. Such a movement calls universal attention to in- 
 dividual defects, and inspires a common pride. Beyond 
 this, it develops a catholic, public spirit. On the im- 
 provement of the village all can unite, and in this very 
 delightful enterprise, spreading fiom village to village 
 until it becomes national, men can forget that they are 
 partisans, either in politics or religion, and come to- 
 gether, as neighbors and friends, to work alike for them- 
 selves and one another. 
 
 Thin Living and Thick Dying. 
 
 If any reader of this article will take General Walker's 
 Statistical Atlas, based on the results of the Ninth Cen- 
 sus, and turn to the page which represents the mortality 
 from consumption, he will be startled to see that, over
 
 Toivn and Country. 199 
 
 an immense area of the Northern American territory, 
 one-fifth of all the deaths that occur are in consequence 
 of this fell disease. The whole of Maine and New Hamp- 
 shire, the most of Vermont, Massachusetts, and Con- 
 necticut, and all of Northern New York, show that two 
 thousand,, out of every ten thousand who die, owe their 
 death to consumption ; while, in very much larger areas 
 about the great lakes, the deaths from this disease range 
 from one thousand four hundred to two thousand in every 
 ten thousand. If Asiatic cholera were to claim in these 
 unfortunate regions, in a single year, as many victims as 
 consumption does, it would be regarded as a terrible 
 epidemic perhaps, as an awful visitation from heaven. 
 It would be a great benefit to New England and all the 
 regions associated with her in this sad scourge, to know 
 how far the dangers of their inhospitable climate can be 
 avoided by a change in diet and regimen. Our own opin- 
 ion is that consumption can be driven from New Eng- 
 land in three generations. Let us try to get at some of 
 the facts in her case. 
 
 The first fact is that her climate is very severe. In 
 truth, consumption seems to be inseparable from the 
 New England climate, and to be associated with all cli- 
 mates that resemble her own in the northern parts of the 
 country. Wherever the frost comes early and the win- 
 ters are hard, and the springs are slow, there consump- 
 tion makes its home. The next fact in the case is that 
 certain ideas in regard to diet and regimen have pre- 
 vailed in New England, especially among rural popula- 
 lations, which ignore these facts of climate. Where so 
 much of life's fuel is required to keep a man warm, there 
 has never been enough taken in to repair the waste of 
 labor. In these consumptive districts, we have had a 
 large population proverbially and notoriously given to 
 hard and constant toil, and as proverbially and notori-
 
 200 Every-Day Topics. 
 
 ously frugal in their way of living. Their sleeping-rooms 
 have not been warmed ; it has been considered quite 
 effeminate to dress heavily, and almost disgraceful to 
 favor one's self in the matter of work. In short, the 
 people have not eaten enough of nourishing food ; they 
 have not dressed warmly enough ; they have slept in 
 temperatures altogether too low, and lived too much in 
 their unventilated kitchens. 
 
 A man does not need to be old to remember the time 
 when all New England was infatuated with Sylvester 
 Graham's notions concerning food. The New England 
 colleges were hot-beds of consumption. Many of their 
 students made long tramps while fasting in the morning, 
 and came back to breakfasts that were suicidally meagre. 
 They died by scores, by hundreds. Graham was a 
 man of brains, but he was a man of mischievous hob- 
 bies ; and instead of helping New England, as he most 
 conscientiously endeavored to do, he harmed her griev- 
 ously. It is true that there has been a great change in 
 the popular opinion, but this has not yet fully pervaded 
 the rural districts. In the towns, the people live better ; 
 and students have learned that they must cat, and eat 
 well, in order to keep themselves in health and to be 
 able to do good work. 
 
 At the tables of how many farmers and mechanics, we 
 wonder, is the buckwheat breakfast gone into disgrace ? 
 We readily recall the time when uncounted multitudes 
 of families broke their fast of twelve hours and faced the 
 work of a blustering winter day with nothing but greasy 
 buckwheat cakes and molasses ! ' They might almost as 
 well have eaten sawdust ; and what had they for dinner ? 
 Boiled salt-pork and potatoes, and for supper boiled salt- 
 pork and potatoes again cold, and made palatable with 
 vinegar! Ah, we forget the pie the everlasting pie, 
 with its sugary centre and its leathery crust the one
 
 Town and Country. 20i 
 
 titillation of the palate that made life tolerable. Good 
 bread and butter or milk, abundant fruit, beef and mut- 
 ton, nutritious puddings all these things have been 
 within the reach of the people of New England, for they 
 have always been the thriftiest people in the world ; but 
 they have cost something, and they have not really been 
 deemed necessary. The people have not realized that 
 what they regarded as luxuries were necessaries, and 
 that the food upon which they have depended for protec- 
 tion from the climate, and for the repair of the wastes of 
 labor, has been altogether inadequate, and has left them 
 with impoverished blood and tuberculous lungs. 
 
 For, after taking into account all the influence of 
 heredity, which is made much of ir. treating of the 
 causes of phthisis, insufficient nourishment is responsi- 
 ble alike, in most instances, for the deposit of tubercle 
 and the inflammation to which it naturally gives rise. 
 There are many men, who, by a change of living, ren- 
 der the tubercles already deposited in their lungs harm- 
 less. Vitality becomes so high in its power that it 
 dominates these evil influences, and they live out a 
 fairly long life with enemies in their lungs that are ren- 
 dered powerless by the strength of the fluid that fights 
 them. We have seen consumption cured again and 
 again by the simple process of building up the forces of 
 vitality through passive exercise in the open air, and the 
 supply of an abundance of nutritious food ; and we have 
 no doubt that it can be prevented in most instances by 
 the same means. 
 
 No human body can long endure the draught made 
 upon it by a cold climate and by constant labor, unless 
 it is well fed, well clothed, and well housed. Some- 
 where deterioration will show itself, and in New England, 
 nay, all over the kingdom of Great liritain it is the 
 same, where the people are worse fed than here the 
 9*
 
 202 Evcry-Day Topics. 
 
 poverty of blood shows itself in the deposit of tubercu- 
 lous matter in the lungs. There should be by this time 
 some improvement in New England, in consequence of 
 the increased intelligence of the people ; but so long as 
 many of them are running westward, and their places 
 are taken by an ignorant foreign population, it is not 
 likely that the statistics will show much improvement for 
 a great many years to come. If our physicians could 
 only be paid for preventing disease, and could be per- 
 mitted to prescribe for each family its way of living, 
 there would be but little difficulty in routing from its 
 stronghold that most fatal and persistent enemy of hu- 
 man life, which we call consumption. 
 
 From Country to City. 
 
 It is presumable and probable that there arrives in 
 New York City every day a considerable number of let- 
 ters from the country, making inquiry concerning what 
 it is possible for a countryman to do here in the way of 
 business, and asking advice upon the question of his re- 
 moval to the city. Every citizen of New York, with 
 country associations, is applied to for information and 
 counsel with regard to sucli a "change of base," and 
 the matter seems worth the few words a careful and can- 
 did observer may have to say about it. 
 
 It is well, at the beginning, to look at the reasons 
 which move people to a desire to make the change. 
 The first, perhaps, are pecuniary reasons. A man living 
 in a country town looks about him, and can discover no 
 means for making money in a large way. Everything 
 seems petty. The business of the place is small, and 
 its possibilities of development seem very limited. A 
 few rich men hold everything in their hands, and a young 
 man, with nothing for capital but his youth and health
 
 Toivn and Coinitry. 203 
 
 and hope and ability, feels cramped feels, in fact, that 
 he has no chance. His savings must be small and slow, 
 and a lifetime is necessary to lift him to a point where 
 monev will give him power. It seems to him that if he 
 could get into the midst of the great business of the 
 world he could find his chance for a quicker and broader 
 development of wealth ; and in this connection, or with 
 this fancy, he writes a letter to his city acquaintance, 
 asking for his advice upon the matter. 
 
 Another is smitten by a sense of the dryness and pet- 
 tiness of the social life he is surrounded by in the coun- 
 try, and the small opportunities he has for personal sat- 
 isfaction and development. To be able to live among 
 picture-galleries and in the vicinity of great, open libra- 
 ries ; to have the finest theatres and the most attractive 
 concert-halls at one's door ; to be where the best minds 
 reveal themselves in pulpit and on platform in public 
 speech ; where competent masters stand ready to teach 
 every science and every art ; to live among those whose 
 knowledge of the world is a source of constant satisfac- 
 tion and culture ; to be at the very fountain-head of the 
 intellectual, social, and politico-economical influences 
 that sweep over the country ; to feel the stimulus of 
 competition and example, and to live in an atmosphere 
 charged with vital activity all this seems such a con- 
 trast to the pettiness and thinness and insignificance of 
 village life, that the young man, realizing it, sits down 
 and writes to his city friend, inquiring what chance there 
 would be in the city for him. The country seems small 
 to him ; the city, large. He feels the gossip that flutters 
 about his ears to be disgusting and degrading, and chafes 
 under the liondage imposed by his neighbors through their 
 surveillance of, and criticism upon, all his actions. He 
 wants more liberty, and for some reasons would really 
 like to Ije where he is less known and less cared for.
 
 204 Every-Day Topics. 
 
 There is still another class of country-people who long 
 for a city life, and whose aspirations and dispositions 
 are very much less definite and reasonable than those 
 to whom we have alluded. They are not so particular 
 about business or about wealth, nor do they care defi- 
 nitely about superior social privileges, or about the cul- 
 ture more readily secured in the city than in the coun- 
 try. They are simply gregarious. They like a crowd, 
 even if they have to live in " a mess." They are so fond 
 of living in a multitude that they are willing to sacrifice 
 many comforts to do it. Once in the city, no poverty 
 will induce them to leave it. They have no interest in 
 life outside of the city. These usually get to the city in 
 some way without writing letters of inquiry. 
 
 Now, it has probably surprised most inquirers to re- 
 ceive uniformly discouraging answers to their questions. 
 For, indeed, no man knows the trials of city life but 
 those who have left quiet homes in the country and tried 
 it. The great trial that every man from the country ex- 
 periences on coming to the city, even supposing he has 
 found employment or gone into business, relates to his 
 home. His thousand dollars a year, which in the coun- 
 try would give him a snug little house and comfortable 
 provision, would get him in the city only a small room 
 in a boarding-house. The two thousand dollars that 
 would give him something more than a comfortable 
 home in the country, would give him in the city only a 
 better boarding-house. The three thousand that would 
 give him in the country a fair establishment, with horses 
 for his convenience and amusement, would in the city 
 only give him a small ''flat" in a crowded apartment- 
 house ; and the five thousand in the country that would 
 give him the surroundings of a nabob, would only pay 
 the rent of a house on Fifth Avenue. The country rich 
 man can live splendidly on from five to ten thousand
 
 Town and Country. 205 
 
 dollars a year, while the city rich man spends from 
 twenty thousand to fifty thousand dollars a year. City 
 incomes look large, but relatively to city expenses they 
 are no larger than the country incomes. The man who 
 lives in the city has experienced the remediless drain 
 upon his purse of the life which he lives, and feels that 
 the risk which a business man runs of coming into un- 
 known circumstances is very great. He feels that, unless 
 his country friend knows just how he is going to meet 
 that drain, he will be safer where he is. City life is 
 naturally merciless. It has to take care of itself, and 
 has all it can do to meet its own wants. If a man from 
 the country comes into it, and fails, he must go to the 
 wall. Friends cannot save him. A city looks coolly 
 upon a catastrophe of this kind, for it is an every-day 
 affair, and the victim knows perfectly well that he can 
 neither help himself nor get anybody else to help him. 
 So the city friend, knowing the risks and the needs of 
 city life, dreads to see any country friend undertake 
 them. Then, too, the faithful records of city life show 
 that the chances are largely against financial success in it. 
 The man of society who is attracted from the country 
 to the city usually fails to calculate his own insignificance 
 when he encounters numl^ers. The man of social con- 
 sideration in the country needs only to go to the city to 
 find so many heads above his own that he is counted of 
 no value whatever. "Who is he?" "What is he?" 
 and " What has he done?" are cjuestions that need to 
 be satisfactorily answered before he will be accepted, 
 and even then he will need to become a positive force 
 of some sort in society to maintain his position. City 
 society is full of bright and ])ositi\'e men and women, 
 and the man and woman frcnn tlie country bring none of 
 their oUl neighborhood prestige with them to help them 
 throuirh.
 
 2o6 Every -Day Topics. 
 
 To sum up what the city man really feels in regard to 
 the coming of his country acquaintances to the city, it 
 would be not far from this viz. : 
 
 1st. The chances for wealth are as great, practically, 
 in the country as in the city, and the expenses of living 
 and the risks of disaster much less. 
 
 2d. The competitions of city life and the struggles to 
 get hold of business and salaried work are fearful. No 
 man should come to the city unless he knows what he is 
 going to do, or has money enough in his hands to take 
 care of himself until he gets a living position or becomes 
 satisfied that he cannot get one. Even to-day, with the 
 evidences of renewed prosperity all around us, there are 
 probably ten applications on file for every desirable 
 place, and no man living here could help a friend to a 
 place iinless he could create one. 
 
 3d. That the social privileges of the city may be 
 greater while the opportunities of social distinction and 
 the probabilities of social consideration are much less 
 than they are in the country. 
 
 4th. That in many respects there is nothing in the 
 city that can compensate for the pure pleasures of coun- 
 try scenery and country life and neighborhood associa- 
 tions. 
 
 5th. That a city man's dream of the future, particu- 
 larly if he ever lived in the country, is always of the 
 country and the soil. He longs to leave the noise and 
 fight all behind him, and go back to his country home to 
 enjoy the money he may have won.
 
 ABOUT WOMAN. 
 
 Woman and Her Work. 
 
 WE often hear it said that there are many men en- 
 gaged in work that women could do as well, and 
 that women ought to be in their places. If we go into 
 Stewart's store, we shall see quite an army of young men 
 engaged in the sale of articles that call for little exercise of 
 muscle in the handling articles which women are quite 
 competent to handle and to sell and it is common to 
 hear the reniark that these men ought to be engaged in 
 some muscular pursuit, and that women ought to do 
 their present work. But do we remember how many 
 hours a day these men are obliged to be on their feel ? 
 Do we remember how impossible it is for women to 
 stand all day without serious damage to themselves, 
 especially if they be young and in the formative period 
 of their lives ? Woman is endowed with a constitution 
 and charged with a function which make it quite impos- 
 sible for her to do certain classes of work for which her 
 mind and her hands, if wc consider them alone, are en- 
 tirely sufficient. Not impossible, perhaps, for she un- 
 douljtedly docs much that inthcts infinite damage upon 
 her, and those that are born of her. 
 
 The effects upon woman and u])on the race, through 
 her, of teniale employment constitute a great subji,'Ct, 
 wliich cannot be competently treated in an editorial, but
 
 2o8 Every-Day Topics. 
 
 we can at least call the attention of employers to the 
 needs of women engaged in doing their work. All em- 
 ployments involving long periods of standing upon the 
 feet are bad for women, and this all intelligent employ- 
 ers, if they are humane as well, will remember. No 
 woman should be obliged to stand all day. Women who 
 set type, and stand while doing it, like men, invariably 
 acquire physical ills that at last become unbearable. 
 Factory work which involves long periods of standing 
 upon the feet is ruinous to health. Employers should 
 remember that the girls engaged in their service must 
 have periods of rest, in a sitting position, or wear them- 
 selves out, or make themselves unfit for the duties and 
 functions of women. Even constrained positions while 
 sitting, with no liberty of movement upon the feet, are 
 bad for women. The restraints that are often put upon 
 them in great establishments, with regard to their atten- 
 tion to matters that call for privacy, are terrible foes to 
 health. To compel a woman to run the gauntlet of a 
 great company of men to reach the seclusions necessary 
 to her is a brutal cruelty, for which any employer ought 
 to be ashamed, and legally punished. 
 
 It has been a dream of certain men and women whom 
 we know, that women need only to be developed through 
 a number of generations to enable them to engage in a 
 large variety of employments now exclusively pursued 
 by men. They have almost quarrelled with those disa- 
 bilities that now attach to the sex. They have quite 
 quarrelled with those who insist that those disabilities in- 
 here in the nature of woman, and can never be removed. 
 There are those who say that woman has a right to do 
 anything she can do. There are women who insist on 
 this right. This goes without saying, of course, provided 
 they will qualify the claim a little. 
 
 A woman has a right to do everything she can do, pro-
 
 About Woman. 209 
 
 vided she does nothing which will unfit her for bearing 
 and raising healthy children. The future of the nation 
 and the race depends upon the mothers, and any woman 
 who consents to become a mother has no moral right to 
 engage in any employment which will unfit her for that 
 function. We speak, of course, of women whose circum- 
 stances give them the control of themselves. It is piti- 
 ful to think that there are multitudes who have no choice 
 between employments that unfit them for motherhood 
 and want. It is pitiful to think that there are mothers 
 who live their whole married lives in conditions which 
 utterly unfit them for the functions and responsibilities 
 of maternity. 
 
 We have a theory, which, we regret to say, is not only 
 unpopular among a certain class of women, but exceed- 
 ingly offensive to them, viz., that every one of them 
 ought to be the mistress of a home. Women have a 
 fashion in these days of rebelling against the idea that 
 marriage is the great end of a woman's life. They claim 
 the right to mark out for themselves and achieve an in- 
 dependent career. We appreciate the delicacies of their 
 position, and we bow to their choice and their rights ; 
 nevertheless, we believe that in the millennium women 
 \\ ill all live in their homes, and that men will not only 
 do that which is now regarded as their own peculiar 
 work, but much of that which is now done by women. 
 There has been in these late years a great widening out 
 of the field of women's employments. We have been 
 inclined to rejoice in this " for the present necessity," 
 but we are sure the better time is to come when man, the 
 real worker of the world, will do the work of the world, or 
 all of it that is done outside of home, and that woman 
 will, as wife and daughter and domestic, hold to the house 
 and to that variety of employments which will best con- 
 bcrve her health and fit her for the duties and (lcli''hts of
 
 2IO Every- Day Topics. 
 
 wifehood and the functions of motherhood. Quarrel 
 with the fact as she may, woman's rights must all and al- 
 ways be conditioned on her relations to the future of hu- 
 manity. She has no right, as a woman, to do anything 
 that will unfit her to be a mother. She may be com- 
 pelled to do some things for bread that will militate 
 against her in this particular; but this will be pitiful, 
 and the legitimate subject of all the ameliorating influ- 
 ences that practical humanity can command. 
 
 We understand, appreciate, and respect that pride of 
 independence which moves women to desire to achieve 
 the advantage of self-support, as a release from the ne- 
 cessity of marriage. We give assent to her demand for 
 the privilege to develop herself in her own way, and to 
 do those things to which she finds her powers adapted ; 
 but we must exceedingly lament that degree of indepen- 
 dence, and even that love of it, which interfere with mar- 
 riage. Anything which renders the sexes less necessary 
 to each other, or renders them less desirable to each 
 other, is much to be deprecated. Now, there is no ques- 
 tion that some of the pursuits which have been adopted 
 by women in these latter days of freedom unfit them in 
 many ways for wifehood and for maternity. There is, 
 perhaps, no better test for the propriety and desirable- 
 ness of a woman's calling than the marriage test. A 
 woman can say, if she chooses : " I will not marry. I 
 prefer the life of a maiden. I will take the liberty it 
 gives me, and live the life that seems best to me, and 
 cut myself forever loose from all responsibility for the 
 future of my race." We say she can say this, if she 
 chooses, and then settle the matter with Him who made 
 her a woman ; but if she holds her heart open to men, 
 and considers herself a candidate for love and marriage, 
 she has no moral right to touch any employment tliat 
 will detract from her modest maiden delicacy, or that
 
 About Woman. 2 1 1 
 
 will in any degree unfit her for domestic life and all the 
 responsibilities that go with marriage. Further than 
 this, she positively owes it to the world, to herself, and 
 to the possible husband and children of her future, to 
 seek for that kind of employment and that variety of 
 culture which will fit her for marriage and maternity. If 
 public or professional life furnishes this employment and 
 culture, they will be legitimate for her, and not other- 
 wise ; and the same may be said of all the employments 
 of men to which women may be attracted. Alas ! that 
 there should be so many whom circumstances make 
 impotent for any choice in the matter of their lives and 
 destinies ! 
 
 Men and Women, 
 
 Among all the burdens that woman is called upon to 
 bear, there is none that can be made so galling to her 
 as the burden of dependence. Man is usually, in the 
 life of the family, the bread-winner. However much he 
 may be helped by woman in the economies of home life, 
 he is usually the one who earns and carries the money 
 on which the family subsists. Whatever money the 
 woman wants comes to her from his hands, as a rule. 
 Now, this money can be given into her hands in such a 
 way that she cannot only preserve her self-respect, but 
 rejoice in her dependence ; or it can be given to her in 
 such a way that she will feel like a dog when she asks for 
 it and when she receives it in such a way that she will 
 curse her dependence, and mourn over all the shame and 
 humiliation it brings to her. We are sorry to believe that 
 there are multitudes of wives and daughters and sisters, 
 who wear fine clothing and who fare sumptuously every 
 day, who would prefer to earn the money they spend to 
 receiving it froni the ungracious and inconsiderate luunls 
 upon which they depend.
 
 212 Every- Day Topics. 
 
 If we had entitled this article " A Study of Husbands," 
 it would have led us more directly, perhaps, to our main 
 purpose ; but the truth is that what we have to say has 
 to do with dependent women in all the relations of life. 
 It is natural for woman, as it is for man, to desire to 
 spend money in her own way to be free to choose, and 
 free to economize, and free to spend whatever may be 
 spent upon herself or her wardrobe. It is a delightful 
 privilege to be free, and to have one's will with whatever 
 expenditures may be made for one's own conveniences 
 or necessities. A man who will interfere with this free- 
 dom, and who will deny this privilege to those who de- 
 pend upon him, is either thoughtless or brutal. We 
 know and women all know men who are very gener- 
 ous toward their dependents, but who insist on reserv- 
 ing to themselves the pleasure of purchasing whatever 
 the women of their households may want, and then 
 handing it over to them in the form of presents. The 
 women are loaded with nice dresses and jewelry, and 
 these are bestowed in the same way in which a Turk 
 lavishes his favors upon the slaves of his harem. Now, 
 it is undoubtedly very gratifying to these men to exer- 
 cise their taste upon the necessities and fineries of their 
 dependent women, and to feast themselves upon the 
 surprises and the thanks of those receiving their favors ; 
 but it is a superlatively selfish performance. If these 
 women could only have had in their hands the money 
 which these gifts cost, they would have spent it better, 
 and they would have gratified their own tastes. A man 
 may be generous enough to give to a woman the dresses 
 and ornaments she wears, who is very far from being 
 generous enough to give her money, that she may freely 
 purchase what she wants, and have the great delight of 
 choosing. 
 
 This is one side not a very repulsive one of man's
 
 About Woman. 213 
 
 selfishness in his dealings with women ; but there is an- 
 other side that is disgusting to contemplate. There are 
 great multitudes of faithful wives, obedient daughters, 
 and "left over" sisters, to whom there is never given a 
 willing penny. The brute who occupies the head of the 
 family never gives a dollar to the women dependent 
 upon him without making them feel the yoke of their 
 dependence, and tempting them to curse their lot, with 
 all its terrible humiliations. Heaven pity the poor 
 women who may be dependent upon him women who 
 never ask him for money when they can avoid it, and 
 never get it until they have been made to feel as meanly 
 humble as if they had robbed a hen-roost ! 
 
 There is but one manly way in treating this relation 
 of dependent women. If a man recognizes a woman as 
 a dependent, and he niust do so, so far, at least, as his 
 wife and daughters are concerned, he acknowledges 
 certain duties which he owes to them. His duty is to 
 support them, and, so far as he can do it, to make them 
 happy. He certainly cannot make them happy if, in all 
 his treatment of them, he reminds them of their depen- 
 dence upon him. Wc know of no better form into 
 which he can put the recognition of his duty than that 
 of an allowance, freely and promptly paid whenever it 
 may be called for. If a man acknowledges to himself 
 that he owes the duty of support to the women variously 
 related to him in his household, let him generously de- 
 termine how much money he has to spend upon each, 
 and tell her just how much she is at liberty to call upon 
 him {or, per annum. Then it stands in the relation of a 
 debt to the woman, which she is at liberty to call for 
 and to spend according to her own judgment. We have 
 watched the working of this plan, and it works well. 
 We have watched the working of other plans, and they 
 do not work well. We have watched, for instance, the
 
 214 Every -Day Topics. 
 
 working of the plan of the generous husband and father, 
 who says : " Come to me for what you want whenever 
 you want it. I don't wish to limit you. Some years 
 you will want more, and some less." This seems very 
 generous ; but, in truth, these women prefer to know 
 about what the man thinks they ought to spend, or 
 about what he regards as the amount he can afford to 
 have them spend. Having gained this knowledge by a 
 voluntarily proffered allowance, they immediately adapt 
 their expenditures to their means, and are perfectly con- 
 tent. It is a comfort to a dependent woman to look 
 upon a definite sum as her own as one that has been 
 set aside for her exclusive use and behoof. 
 
 A great multitude of the discomforts that attach to a 
 dependent woman's lot arise from the obtuseness and 
 thoughtlessness of the men upon whom they depend. 
 There are some men so coarsely made that they cannot 
 appreciate a woman's sensitiveness in asking for money. 
 They honestly intend to do their duty even to deal 
 generously by the women dependent upon them ; but 
 they cannot understand why a woman should object to 
 come to them for what they choose to give her. If 
 they will ask their wives to tell them frankly how they 
 can improve their position, these wives will answer that 
 they can do it by putting into their hands, or placing 
 within their call, all the money per annum which they 
 think they can afford to allow them, and not to compel 
 them to appeal to their husbands as suppliants for 
 money whenever they may need a dollar or the quarter 
 of one. 
 
 The absolutely brutal husband and father will hardly 
 read this article, but we recall instances of cruelty and 
 insult toward dependent women that would make any 
 true man indignant in every fibre. A true woman may 
 legitimately rejoice in her dependence upon a true man.
 
 Aboiit Woman. 2 1 5 
 
 because he will never make her feel it in any way ; but 
 a brute of a husband can make a true woman feel her 
 humiliation as a dependent a hundred times a day, until 
 her dependence is mourned over as an unmitigated 
 curse. 
 
 Woman's Winter Amusements. 
 
 We have many reasons, in the direct testimonials that 
 have come to us, for believing that an article which we 
 published in this department a year or two since, on 
 " Winter Amusements," was remarkably suggestive and 
 stimulating in the establishment of clubs for culture and 
 recreation. We spoke specially of reading clubs, " Shak- 
 spere clubs," etc. The project was entered upon in a 
 great many towns throughout the length and breadth of 
 the land, and great good has come of it. To open a 
 still wider field of intellectual recreation and instruction 
 is the object of this article. 
 
 In a certain country town, which we need not name, 
 there was established last year a " Rome Club." A 
 considerable number of intelligent ladies, moved thereto 
 by the existence of a literary club among their husbands 
 and brothers, gathered together and formed a club 
 among themselves for the study of historical cities. 
 Rome was chosen as the first city to be investigated 
 its pagan history, its Christian history, its art in various 
 departments, its relations to the world at various epochs, 
 etc., etc. Subdivisions of the larger topics were made, 
 and each woman was given a branch to study, with the 
 duty to write out her conclusions and results, and to 
 read them at the weekly meetings of the club. It is 
 declared to us by one who watched the developments of 
 the enterprise that, as the result of that winter's most 
 interesting work, this town contains the largest number 
 of women who know everything about Rome than any
 
 21 5 Every -Day Topics. 
 
 town in the United States can boast. Every available 
 library was ransacked for material, books were over- 
 hauled that were black with the undisturbed dust of a 
 century, knowledge was organized, put into form, and 
 communicated ; and when the winter closed, the women 
 found not only that they had been immensely interested, 
 but that their field of knowledge had been very much 
 enlarged. 
 
 This year, this same club will take up another city. 
 Whether it will be London, or Paris, or Jerusalem, or 
 Athens, or Venice, we do not know, and it does not 
 matter. But what a mine of interest and instruction 
 lies before them in any of these ! How very small do 
 the ordinary amusements of a town look by the side of 
 the employments of such a club as this ! What a cure 
 for gossip and neighborhood twaddle is contained in 
 such a club ! What an enlargement of the sphere of 
 thought comes of such amusements and employments ! 
 How the whole world, through all its ages and among 
 all its scenes and peoples, becomes illuminated with a 
 marvellous human interest, to women who study it to- 
 gether, and with a certain degree of competition, in this 
 way ! 
 
 Well, a club for the study of the great historical cities 
 can be formed anywhere, and there ought to be a thou- 
 sand of them formed this winter. Wherever there may 
 be women who find life something of a bore, when follow- 
 ed in the ordinary way, wherever there may be women 
 who have leisure that hangs heavily upon their hands, 
 or a round of tasteless courtesies to go through with, 
 wherever there may be women whose minds are starving 
 while they execute the routine of housekeeping duties, 
 there will be found the materials for such a club as this. 
 They would be better daughters, wives and mothers, for 
 the culture that would be won by such a club, and be
 
 About Woman. 217 
 
 saved the everlasting yearning for an impossible career 
 that seems to be moving so many women's souls at the 
 present time. Life is good and duty is good, if we only 
 give them flavor. Porridge without salt may be nutri- 
 tious, but it is not palatable. The great want of the 
 clever women we are rearing in such numbers, is not so 
 much a public career as a palatable private one. A 
 round of humdrum household duties, or around of fash- 
 ionable courtesies within the rigid rules of etiquette, 
 becomes tasteless to any woman. What better can she 
 do for profit or for pleasure than to season her life with 
 society in the pursuit of knowledge ? 
 
 Of course, enterprises of this kind are not necessa- 
 rily confined to the study of cities. Countries may be 
 studied with the same advantage perhaps even with 
 greater advantage. A special topic may be taken up. 
 At this time much is written upon art. It is practically 
 a new topic in this country. Wc, as a nation, are now 
 making our beginnings in art. The greatest sculptors and 
 painters America has produced are living men to-day. 
 Art has no history here. Art, historically, then art in its 
 relations to civilization art in its influence upon personal 
 character art as an outgrowth of life and a power upon 
 life furnishes a subject that may well interest a group 
 of women for a winter, not only, but for many winters. 
 We know of girls who are as much interested in works 
 of political econom)' as if they \\ere novels. We can 
 hardly imagine anything more interesting to a club of 
 bright girls who have left school, than a winter in politi- 
 cal economy. The subject may be pursued, simply as 
 a matter of social reading and discussion ; or each may 
 be charged with gathering the distinguishing views of 
 given writers, and presenting them in brief. 
 
 The great point is to get together, and to become in- 
 terested together in some region of knowledge, or art, or
 
 2 1 8 Every -Day Topics. 
 
 exalted human concern. Life with men is active, excit- 
 ing, exhausting. The club life of men is very rarely 
 intellectual, and very rarely in any way elevating. Much 
 of it debases and curses, with its eating and drinking, 
 and its selfish separation from the family life. A wom- 
 an's club should always be an addition to the family 
 life, and so transform a home into a temple. There are 
 many women in the world who wish they were men. 
 There is not one man who wishes he were a woman. The 
 simple reason is that woman has not yet learned how to 
 give flavor to her life. We do not believe that God has 
 made the lot of the sexes unequal. When woman shall 
 make the most and best of her life, she will spend no 
 time in wishing for a coarser nature and a rougher lot 
 than her own. Let her avail herself of the means at her 
 hand for making her life interesting, and the work will 
 be done. That she may conquer the realm that legiti- 
 mately is hers, we put the club in her hand and beg her 
 to use it.
 
 THE CURSE OF PAUPERISM. 
 
 The Pauper Poison. 
 
 'T^HERE is not a more humiliating characteristic of 
 * human nature than its aptitude for pauperism. It 
 is aUke discouraging and disgusting. It is now publicly 
 declared, by responsible professional men, that the ma- 
 jority of those who receive medicines at the free dispen- 
 saries in this city are able to pay for them, and pretend 
 to be poor simply to avoid paying for them. It is also 
 declared that between thirty and thirty-five per cent, of 
 our population are receiving medical attendance gratui- 
 tously. Instances are detailed in which genteelly dressed 
 men and women, and persons known to be possessed of 
 considerable real estate, have begged for medicine. 
 
 Now, this is only an indication of the presence of a 
 moral poison, distributed throughout the whole Ameri- 
 can people. It may not be as prevalent here as it is 
 abroad ; but it must be remembered that it has not had 
 so long a time to work. They are all manifestations of 
 tlie pauper poison, however these multiform attempts 
 that are made to get something for nothing. The old 
 " dead-head system " on the railroads, not entirely done 
 away with now, was only a branch of pauperism, and it 
 is astonishing to see how many jieople there are to-day 
 who are willing to part with self-respect in order to get 
 a free pass on a railroad or a steamboat. To enjoy a
 
 220 Every-Day Topics. 
 
 ride, the expense of which comes out of somebody else, 
 is, to the ordinary human soul, exceeding sweet. If the 
 willing and rejoicing dead-head is to be found plentifully 
 scattered through good society, it must not be wondered 
 at that among the humbler classes his equivalent is met 
 with at every turn. This whole matter of " tipping" 
 waiters, and of waiters expecting to be " tipped," is a 
 very marked manifestation of the poison of pauperism. 
 A man steps into a restaurant to purchase and con- 
 sume a meal. He finds a waiter at his side whose busi- 
 ness it is to wait upon him. It was for this service that 
 he was hired by the proprietor, and he is paid for it what 
 his labor is worth. At any rate, his service is reckoned 
 into the bill of the customer, and when that bill is paid, 
 the customer's obligations are all discharged. Never- 
 theless, there stands the expectant waiter, who hopes to 
 be twice paid for his work, or, rather, hopes to receive 
 something for nothing. The whole army of waiters have 
 become, in their souls, beggars. Their little arts of extra 
 attentiveness are the arts of beggary, and nothing else. 
 Their practical and obtrusive pauperism is a nuisance to 
 the community, as well as a curse to them. Manhood 
 goes out as the fee, unearned, comes in. Manhood stays 
 out of one whose expectation is always hankering for a tip. 
 
 We have said that the waiter is paid for his service by 
 his employer, but this is not always so. The proprietor 
 himself is often a pauper. He tries to get something for 
 nothing. He charges full prices for his food, and cheats 
 the waiter out of his wages, that he may compel him to 
 collect them of his customers. He not only practises 
 the arts of the pauper himself, but he actually forces 
 Lis waiters into practical pauperism. 
 
 The spoils doctrine, as it has been held and practised 
 in party politics for the last thirty years, is a pauper doc- 
 trine. It has grown out of the almost universal wish to
 
 The Curse of Pauperism. 221 
 
 get a living, or to get rich, at the public expense. To 
 get a chance at the public money, men have been "will- 
 ing to sell their independence, to do the dirty work of 
 ambitious politicians, and to become morally debased 
 to an utterly hopeless extent. Men have hung to cor- 
 porations in the same way, and they cannot yet be shaken 
 off from them. To get something for nothing to get 
 something for less than it is worth to get something 
 without paying for it its equivalent in good, honest work, 
 especially if it could be taken from the Government or a 
 corporation this has been the shameful greed of the age, 
 and it is only pauperism. It comes from the genuine 
 ])oison. It is a direct and legitimate development of 
 the moral scrofula which taints the blood of the country. 
 The signs of the poison arc everywhere. They are 
 notably wherever there is a spirit of speculation. Wall 
 street is the very paradise of pauperism its paradise or 
 its hell, it matters little which. Wherever there is a man 
 who is getting something for nothing receiving it, not 
 as a dire necessity, but gladly and as a matter of policy 
 there is a pauper. There are multitudes of churches 
 that insist that their ministers shall be paupers. They 
 never establish a thorough business relation between 
 themselves and their teachers, but it is a gift by whatso- 
 ever the latter may be benefited. Unhappily, there are 
 too many ministers who accept the position gladly. Of 
 course, there is a \'ital distinction between the gifts that 
 flow toward a public teacher as manifestations of the 
 popular affection, and gifts that are doled out to him be- 
 cause it is thought that he needs them. The first can be 
 received with honor ; but the second cannot be received, 
 in any case where the money has been honestly earned, 
 without the disgrace of the recipient and the moral dam- 
 ;i,rc of the donor. But it happens that multitudes of 
 ministers are actually trained for pauperism. In a cer-
 
 222 Every-Day Topics. 
 
 tain notable theological school, which now contains one 
 hundred and ten students, there are ninety young men 
 who are receiving aid. What method is it possible to pur- 
 sue with these men, so sure to destroy their independence 
 and manliness, as this ? How easy it will be for these 
 men, having once accepted alms and lived on that which 
 has cost them nothing, to go on in that course, and how 
 horrible it is to have inorc than half of the clergy trained 
 up to a love of dependence rather than to a hatred of it ! 
 We have the poison of pauperism here at the very foun- 
 tain-head of what we regard as the highest and best in- 
 fluences. 
 
 We have no doubt that these representations will seem 
 overwrought to those who have not accustomed them- 
 selves to examining and thinking upon the subject, but 
 they are not overwrought. The subtlety of this pauper 
 poison enables it to enter ten thousand forms of life, and 
 to hide itself behind innumerable disguises. Wherever 
 there is a man who desires to get something without 
 rendering its equivalent in money or work a man, we 
 mean, who has the equivalent to render there is a pau- 
 per. It matters nothing that he wears good clothes, or 
 occupies a good position. The poison is in his soul, 
 eating out if it has not already eaten out his manhood. 
 
 The Disease of Mendicancy. 
 
 An English paper, in some recent utterance, re- 
 minded the American nation of the appearance of an 
 unmistakable evidence that it is growing old. It pos- 
 sesses "the tramp." The war left with us, as war 
 always leaves in every country, a great number of men 
 utterly demoralized. The hard times have cut them 
 loose from remunerative work, and they have become 
 rovers, nominally looking for employment, but really
 
 TJie Curse of Pauperism. 223 
 
 looking for life without it. They have lost their self- 
 respect, if they ever had any ; lost their love of steady in- 
 dustry, lost all desire for independence, lost their sense 
 of manhood and of shame, and have imbibed the incura- 
 ble disease of mendicancy. We mistake the nature of 
 the case entirely, if we suppose that better times and 
 fair wages for all, would cure these men and relieve the 
 country of their presence and their support. Leprosy is 
 not more incurable than mendicancy. When the dis- 
 ease has once fastened itself upon a man when, through 
 long months or years, he has willingly and gladly lived 
 on the industry of others, and roamed around without a 
 home he becomes a hopeless case, and nothing but the 
 strong arm of the law can make him a self-supporting 
 man. 
 
 The same is true of the dead-beat, who is only "the 
 tramp" of the city. He is not so humble a man as the 
 country tramp. He dresses better and supports him- 
 self by different methods. He is the man who wants to 
 get to Boston or Baltimore, where he has friends. He 
 is the man who has just arrived from the South, having 
 run as far as New York to get away from the yellow fever, 
 or whatever trouble may be in progress there at the date 
 of his application. He is the man who wishes to get 
 money to bury his wife or child. Or, he is about to receive 
 funds, but is in a starving condition, and wants some- 
 thing to assist him in " bridging over." If you happen 
 to have been born in Vermont, he comes to you as a 
 Vermonter. Perhaps he comes to you because you and 
 he happen to have the same name. There is no end to 
 the lies he can tell and docs tell. We have some very 
 genteel and high and mighty dead-beats in New York, 
 who never stoop to beg, but rise to borrow, and forget 
 to pay. We know of one woman here, claiming to be 
 productively literary, who apparently lives well on the
 
 224 Every-Day Topics. 
 
 funds which a bright and sweet-faced daughter borrows 
 for her. Now, all tliese people are hopelessly diseased. 
 They can never be restored to sound manhood and 
 womanhood. What is worse than all the rest is that 
 they perpetuate their mendicancy through their families. 
 So we have the tramps and the dead-beats, and the 
 regular old-fashioned paupers, and they are all alike 
 with some exceptions, perhaps, in favor of the regular 
 old-fashioned paupers ; for now and then there is one of 
 these who, much against his will, has been forced by 
 circumstances into pauperism. 
 
 What are we to do with these people ? How is this 
 disease to be treated ? Tlicsc questions demand an 
 early answer, for the evils to which they relate are in- 
 creasing with alarming rapidity. There is the general 
 feeling that they v.'ill take care of themselves, so soon as 
 prosperous times shall return ; but, as we have already 
 said, this is a mistake. The dead-beat will never re- 
 form. The tramp will be a tramp for life, shifting from 
 country to city as his comforts may demand, and ready 
 to be led into any mischief which will give him " grub " 
 and grog. .There ought to be, this very winter, in every 
 State in the Union, such laws passed as will restrain the 
 wanderers, and force them to self-support in some public 
 institution. A standing commission of vagrancy should 
 be instituted in every large city and every county in the 
 land ; and institutions of industry established for the 
 purpose of making these men self-supporting, and of 
 curing them of their wretched disease. We have lunatic 
 asylums, not only for the benefit of the lunatics, but for 
 the relief of the community ; and among the dead-beats 
 and tramps we have an enormous number of men who 
 are just as truly diseased as the maddest man in Utica, 
 or at the Bloomingdale Asylum. Something must be 
 done with them, and done at once, if we arc to have any
 
 The Curse of Pauperism. 225 
 
 comfort by day or safety by night ; for men who are so 
 demoralized as to beg from choice and lie by profes- 
 sion, have but to take a single step to land in ruffianism. 
 Already they intimidate, and rob and murder, to get the 
 means to support their useless lives. 
 
 It is only last year that we heard of a force of five 
 hundred of them approaching a Western city, to the 
 universal alarm of the inhabitants. The disclosures' 
 connected with the recent fraudulent registration in this 
 city show how easy it is, under the lead of demagogues, 
 to assemble them by tens of thousands at any point de- 
 sired, and how readily they can be induced to perjure 
 their souls for bread and beer. These facts menace both 
 our homes and our liberties. It is not a tramp, here and 
 there, such as we have at all times ; but it is an army of 
 tramps that can be brought together on the slightest oc- 
 casion, for any deed of rascality and blood which it may 
 please them to engage in. The evil has come upon 
 us so noiselessly so almost imperceptibly that it is 
 hard for us to realize that we are tolerating, and feeding 
 for nothing, a huge brood of banditti, who will ultimately 
 become as monstrous and as disgraceful to our country 
 and to Christian civilization as the banditti of Greece or 
 Southern Italy. 
 
 The one fact which we wish to impress upon the peo- 
 ple, and upon legislators, in this article, is that the c\il 
 which we are describing and commenting upon is not 
 one that will cure itself is not one that will be cured by 
 national prosperity is not one that will be cured by 
 driving tramps from one State into another and is a 
 hopelessly demoralizing mental disease. It must be 
 taken hold of vigorously, and handled efficiently and 
 wisely. There is not a month to be lost. Thus far in 
 the history of the country we have been singularly free 
 from anv pauperism but that which we have imported 
 10*
 
 226 Every -Day Topics. 
 
 from the great European repositories of pauperism. 
 But matters have changed. The tramps are not all 
 foreigners. They are, to a very considerable number, 
 our own American flesh and blood, and unless we are 
 willing to see the country drift into the condition of the 
 older peoples of the world, where mendicancy has grown 
 to be a gigantic burden and curse, and pauperism a 
 thing of hopeless heredity, we must do something to 
 check the evil, and do it at once. 
 
 The Public Charities. 
 
 There comes to our table a little volume from the pen 
 of Mr. S. C. Hall, entitled " Words of Warning, in 
 Prose and Verse, addressed to Societies for Organizing 
 Charitable Relief and Suppressing Mendicity." It is an 
 exceedingly sentimental little book, and, if it had been 
 written by an author less venerable than Mr. Hall, it 
 would seem impertinent. But Mr. Hall is very much in 
 earnest, and takes the liberty of his years to scold as well 
 as to warn. His quarrel seems to be with the societies 
 that, before giving, wish to investigate the circumstances 
 of the applicant for alms : 
 
 " You teach us how to shirk the beggar tribe, 
 And tell us to give nothing, but subscribe. 
 Of course \vc can't pay double, so we do 
 The business part of charity through you." 
 
 Here follows a sharper paragraph : 
 
 " ' Give nought to common beggars ' that's the rule ; 
 The Alpha and Omega of your school ; 
 You bid us send all suppliants to your door ; 
 When sad or sick, or desolate or poor ; 
 After inquiry duly made, you give 
 To such as pending the proceedings live !
 
 The Curse of Pauperism. 227 
 
 Mr. Hall proceeds to cite a good many cases, or sup- 
 posable cases, which go to show that societies are slow, 
 and he says, still in rhyme : 
 
 '' Better a score of times be ' taken in," 
 Than let one suffering sinner die in sin 
 Than hear the coroner to-morrow say, 
 ' Died starved,' of one you might have saved to-day." 
 
 It is a long and formidable arraignment which he makes 
 of the " organizations," ending with the following 
 charges : 
 
 ''They give to Mercy a perpetual frown, 
 And Hope they keep with broken anchor down. 
 To Charity they lend the garb she scorns, 
 And Love himself eternal Love they crown, 
 Not with the sacred nimbus, but the thorns ! " 
 
 To Mr. Hall's poetical efforts, he adds some " Words of 
 Warning " in prose, in which he expresses the belief 
 that the organizations which engage his opposition " dry 
 up the natural channel of the heart, check or destroy 
 sympathy for suffering, make indifference to woe excusa- 
 ble, if not obligatory," etc., etc. 
 
 We have thus tried to give the drift of our friend's 
 little book, and we can only respond that, imperfect as 
 the organizations are, and professionally indifferent and 
 dilatory as they are too apt to become, they are, on the 
 whole, very much better managers and counsellors than 
 he is. It is very nice to yield to one's benevolent im- 
 pulses ; it is good to be developed in the high benigni- 
 ties ; there is no pleasure greater than that which is born 
 of personal beneficence ; but if, in order to compass 
 these advantages to ourselves, we are certain to develop 
 a thousand liars and make as many paupers, do not our 
 satisfaction and improvement become somewhat expen- 
 sive to the community ? Indeed, it is quite possible to
 
 228 Every -Day Top ics. 
 
 make our benevolence the most selfish quality we pos- 
 sess. We can easily imagine men who selfishly hug to 
 themselves the delight of giving, right and left, to those 
 who excite their sympathy and pity, while they shut 
 their eyes to the falsehoods and tricks which they have 
 encouraged. 
 
 It is very sad to remember that the " organizations " 
 of which Mr. Hall speaks so bitterly have had their ori- 
 gin in a great, commanding, public necessity. If nine 
 beggars in ten had ever been proved to be true objects 
 of charity, then we could afford to give without investi- 
 gation ; but it is perfectly well understood that more 
 than nine beggars in ten are liars, and that impulsive and 
 indiscriminate giving, even to those who are worthy, de- 
 moralizes them. It is appalling to think that wherever 
 a charitable door is opened, whether it lead to a benevo- 
 lent individual or a benevolent society, the throng that 
 enter are mainly shams and cheats. 
 
 The physicians of New York have had their attention 
 called recently to the abuses of the free dispensaries of 
 medicines. They were satisfied that multitudes were 
 availing themselves of the benefits of the free dispensa- 
 ries who could afford to pay for their medicines. A 
 visitor of the Association for Improving the Condition of 
 the Poor took up the matter, and investigated one hun- 
 dred and fifty-two cases. Of sixty-two male applicants, 
 twenty-three were not found at all they had given 
 wrong addresses. Twenty families reported wages per 
 week of from three to eighteen dollars, while their rent 
 per month was from nine to twelve dollars. Only six of 
 the sixty-two were found to be without means. Of the 
 ninety females who applied, thirty-five gave wrong ad- 
 dresses, and could not be found. Only six of the 
 whole number the same as in the case of the males 
 were found to be without means. Cleaners, laun-
 
 The Curse of Pauperism. 229 
 
 dresses, paper-folders, cigar-makers, cap-makers, artifi- 
 cial flower makers, etc., were represented among the 
 applicants who were found with family wages going as 
 high in some instances as twenty dollars a week. So 
 here were twelve out of one hundred and fifty-two indi- 
 viduals applying for a certain form of aid who really had 
 a claim for aid, and a hundred and forty who could have 
 paid for that which they lied to obtain for nothing ! 
 
 Now, if we arc to learn anything from this investiga- 
 tion, it is that, by following the advice of such amiable 
 enthusiasts as Mr. Hall, we encourage eleven applicants 
 for charity in the most rascally falsehood and deception, 
 while we really help only one who is worthy of our alms. 
 Can we afTord this, even if it should happen to help us 
 in the development of a beneficent life ? We think not. 
 Nay, we may go farther and say that no man has a moral 
 right in such a community as ours to take the matter of 
 giving into his own hands, unless he is willing to devote 
 all the requisite time to investigating the cases to which 
 he takes the responsibility of ministering. Just as soon 
 as he undertakes to do this, the first fact he will meet is 
 the impossibility of obtaining the addresses of his bene- 
 ficiaries. Fifty-eight out of one hundred and fifty-two 
 who begged for medicine lied concerning the places 
 where they lived. The chances are that every one of 
 these persons had money, or was engaged in some pur- 
 suit of which he or she was ashamed. It is fair to con- 
 clude, at least, that if any agent of the dispensary were 
 really to find out the circumstances of these persons, he 
 would adjudge them unworthy of aid. Needy people are 
 not apt to cover up the circumstances which will sub- 
 stantiate their claims to charity. This matter has been 
 tried a great many times, and after a man has gone, in 
 vain, all over town to find the objects of charity who 
 have cheated him into helping them, and then carefully
 
 230 Every -Day Topics. 
 
 thrown him ofif their scent, he begins to think very well 
 of " organization " that red rag which so stirs up the 
 Bull in the venerable English poet. 
 
 Such "organization" as we have, in most of the 
 American cities, is sufficiently open to criticism, with- 
 out doubt. We have altogether too much of it, and too 
 much of the competitive element in it ; but wise and 
 kindly managed organization gives us our only safety in 
 dealing with pauperism. Individual giving may be very 
 pleasant to Mr. Hall and his friends, but it is sure to 
 make a great deal of work in the long run for the societies 
 whose policy and work he contemns. The time seems to 
 be past when sentimentality can be used with safety in 
 the administration of charitable relief. 
 
 Once I\Iore the Tramp. 
 
 is very strange that no more vigorous measures are 
 taken for the abatement of what is very properly called 
 " the tramp nuisance." It is strange, because the nui- 
 sance is as great in the country as it is in the city, and 
 there is no section and no interest that would not be 
 served by a sweeping measure of suppression. A feel- 
 ing has undoubtedly existed that much of the tramping 
 is attributable to the bad times that men are wandering 
 in honest search of employment. This feeling should be 
 corrected by this time. If anything is notorious now, it is 
 that ninety-nine tramps in a hundred an overwhelming 
 proportion, at any rate would not work at any wages, if 
 they could. The experiment tried in Massachusetts by 
 detectives exposes the utter hoUowness of the pretence 
 that these fellows desire work. They scorn work and 
 scout the idea of engaging in it. They coolly propose to 
 live upon the community, and to " cat their bread in the 
 sweat of other men's faces," and to do, this in perpctiio.
 
 The Curse of Pauperism. 231 
 
 In the city, where these parasites prefer to spend the 
 winter, it is not so very hard to get along with them. 
 They are an offensive, dirty, disgraceful set to have 
 around, it is true. One shrinks from contact with them 
 shivering in their abominable rags and dirt and feeds 
 them with cold victuals at his basement door, but he is 
 not afraid of them. In the country, during the summer, 
 and near the great lines of travel, the tramp is a different 
 being. Whatever of enterprise there may be in him is 
 exhibited during that season. Then he can steal eggs, 
 rob hen-roosts, bully women and children who find 
 themselves unprotected at home while the men arc in 
 the fields, set forests on fire, and commit burglaries and 
 murders whenever it may be desirable and convenient. 
 They rove in bands. We have seen them in forests dur- 
 ing the past winter near inland cities a dozen of them 
 smoking and lounging beside a fire made of stolen wood. 
 They are to be counted by tens of thousands, and they 
 stand ready to go into any mischief into which the dem- 
 agogue with money in his pocket may see fit to lead 
 them. They are the very lowest layer of the proletariat 
 a class whose existence in America has been declared 
 again and again, and in no case more distinctly and de- 
 plorably than in the labor-riots of last year. No diffi- 
 culty can rise between labor and capital at which these 
 fellows will not be ready to " assist." They stand wait- 
 ing, a great multitude, to join in any mob that will give 
 them the slightest apology for pillage, and the safety in 
 robbery that comes of numbers. We have no doubt that 
 they would have been glad to sign a petition for the pas- 
 sage of the Bland silver bill. 
 
 We cannot do what the French Government once did 
 under similar circumstances banish fifty thousand of 
 them to colonial servitude ; and it is a great pity that we 
 cannot. If we could gather the whole disgusting multi'
 
 232 Every -Day Topics. 
 
 tude, wash them, put new clothes upon them, and under 
 miHtary surveillance and direction set them to quarrying 
 stone, or raising corn and cotton for ten years, we might 
 save some of them to decency and respectability, and 
 relieve the honest people of the country of their pres- 
 ence and their support. If we cannot do this, however, 
 there are things we can do. Every State in the Union 
 can gather these men, wherever found, into work-houses, 
 where they can be restrained from scaring and preying 
 upon the community, and made to earn the bread they 
 eat and the clothes they wear. It is necessary, of course, 
 to throw away all sentimentality in connection with them. 
 The tramp is a man who can be approached by no mo- 
 tive but pain the pain of a thrashing or the pain of 
 hunger. He hates work ; he has no self-respect and no 
 shame ; and, by counting himself permanently out of 
 the productive and self-supporting forces of society, he 
 counts himself out of his rights. He has no rights but 
 those which society may see fit of its grace to bestow 
 upon him. He has no more rights than the sow that 
 wallows in the gutter, or the lost dogs that hover around 
 the city squares. He is no more to be consulted, in his 
 wishes or his will, in the settlement of the question as to 
 what is to be done with him, fiian if he were a bullock in 
 a corral. 
 
 Legislation concerning this evil seems to have been 
 initiated in various States, but at this writing we cannot 
 learn that anything effective has been done. It would 
 be well if the States could work in concert in this mat- 
 ter ; but one great .State like New York, or Pennsylvania, 
 or Ohio, has only to inaugurate a stringent measure to 
 drive all the other states into measures that shall be its 
 equivalent. The tramp whose freedom is imperilled in 
 New York, will fly to New Jersey or New England, and 
 New Jersey and New England will be obliged to protect
 
 The Curse of Pauperism. 233 
 
 themselves. So one powerful state can compel unan- 
 imity of action throughout the country. The legislature 
 of New York had a bill up a year ago which came to 
 nothing. We hope the present session will see some- 
 thing done, but legislators have so many things to do 
 besides looking after the public safety and the public 
 morality, that we are quite prepared to hear that tliis 
 matter will be overlooked. But something must be done, 
 somewhere, very soon, if we propose to have anything 
 like safety and comfort in our homes, or to relieve our- 
 selves of a great burden of voluntary, vicious, and even 
 malicious pauperism. 
 
 Pauperizing the Clergy. 
 
 We had occasion, in a recent article on the general 
 topic of pauperism, to speak of the bad influences of 
 charitable aid when rendered to young men preparing 
 for the Christian ministry. As everything we said was 
 conceived in a spirit of the warmest friendliness toward 
 the profession, we were not quite prepared for the acrid, 
 not to say contemptuous, criticism with which it was re- 
 ceived by a portion of the religious press. W^e had sup- 
 posed that the desirableness of independent means in 
 the acquisition of an education, for any profession, was 
 beyond controversy. We had supposed that clergy and 
 laity alike regarded it a misfortune to a young man to be 
 in any way obliged to accept aid in preparing himself 
 for the work of his life. Indeed, they undoubtedly so 
 regard it still ; and if it is for any other reason than that 
 it tends to degrade and pauperize him, we have not 
 learned it. 
 
 But one religious paper, which ought to be ashamed 
 of its childishness, has undertaken to controvert this 
 very widely held opinion. We have not its words before
 
 234 Every -Day Topics. 
 
 us, but the point it makes is that if it pauperizes a young 
 man to have his education given him, it will pauperize 
 him equally whether it is given him by the hand of 
 charity or by the hand of his parents ! Another religious 
 paper copies this with approval ! We should do both 
 papers great injustice if we should assume that they do 
 not know better than this. The sophistry is so puerile that 
 one feels humiliated in being compelled to expose it. A 
 man who takes the responsibility of introducing a child 
 into existence assumes certain duties and obligations 
 which place him in relations to his offspring such as he 
 holds to no other human being. The child possesses 
 certain rights in his father's labor, his acquired capital, 
 his home, his conditions, that can never be alienated ex- 
 cept by his crimes. Among these rights is that of a prep- 
 aration for the work and duty of life. Now, the differ- 
 ence between the position of a boy who feels that in his 
 education he is receiving his natural and legal right, and 
 of one who knows that his education comes to him as a 
 gift of charity to helplessness, is about as wide as can be 
 conceived. Nobody knows this any better than the 
 charity student himself. If he is manly, his position 
 galls and worries him, and he is never happy until he has 
 in some way paid off his debt. If he is not manly, it has 
 a powerful influence in making him a pauper for life. 
 We say, then, that the religious paper which declares 
 that the influence of charitable aid is the same as pa- 
 rental is not candid. It knows better and ought to be 
 ashamed of itself. 
 
 More plausable, and more candid without doubt, is a 
 correspondent of a secular paper who compares the stu- 
 dent at West Point with the charity student. At West 
 Point, a young man receives not only his tuition, but his 
 support, without charge ; and the influence of this educa- 
 tion is not regarded as a pauperizing one. On the con-
 
 TJic Curse of Pauperism. 235 
 
 trary, it is looked upon as a most honorable and stimu- 
 lating one. Now, why should not an education bestowed 
 by the Government have the same effect upon the mind 
 of the recipient as one bestowed by the gifts of the be- 
 nevolent ? We may state as a fact that it does not, and 
 that everybody is conscious that it docs not. We may 
 assume, therefore, that there is a sound reason for this 
 difference in the facts. The Government thinks it worth 
 its money to have an educated body of men, learned in 
 the art of war, to be always ready for service. This body 
 of men, in surrendering themselves to discipline, and 
 holding themselves ready for what is expected of them, 
 have the consciousness of rendering an equivalent for 
 what they receive. They are ready to pay their debt in 
 the only way in which it is desired to be paid, or can be 
 paid. The aid they have received is in no possible sense 
 a charity. It is given by the country for a considera- 
 tion ; it is accepted by the student who perfectly under- 
 stands the nature of the equivalent he renders. 
 
 There are those, undoubtedly, who would undertake 
 to point out a parallel between the church and the Gov- 
 ernment, and to maintain that the young man who gives 
 himself to the church renders an equivalent for all the 
 church may do for him, in preparing him for service. 
 We are not, however, talking about what may or might 
 be, or what ought to be. We are talking about what is, 
 and the simple fact is that the aid given to the students 
 for the ministry is, and is felt to be, charitable aid. It 
 carries no such self-respect with it as is entertained by 
 the son who is educated by his father's money, in the 
 enjoyment of a heaven-bestowed right, and no West 
 Point pride, bred in an institution that takes no note of 
 rich or poor, but identifies itself with the governmental 
 interest and honor. 
 
 Wliatevcr we may have written upon this subject, first
 
 236 Every- Day Topics. 
 
 or last and we have written a good deal upon it we 
 have had at heart the interest of the Christian ministry. 
 The body is disgraced by a large and not rapidly dimin- 
 ishing mass of men who occupy in their parishes the 
 position of paupers. How and when they became 
 willing to be the constant recipients of gifts we do not 
 know. 
 
 We do not think they are the sons of men who were 
 able to give them an education. We do not think they 
 are men who wrought out their own education. We 
 have no doubt that they are men who began by being 
 helped, and who, to the disgrace of their profession, 
 have remained willing to be recipients of charity from 
 year to year. If there is a man in this world who 
 should be in independent circumstances it is the Christian 
 teacher. Generous support is a matter of right, and any 
 minister who will consent to receive the payment for his 
 work with even the smell of charity upon it, is a pauper. 
 This is what we ask for a body of men who hate char- 
 ity as it relates to themselves, who are " touchy " as it 
 concerns their business rights, and who compel their 
 parishes to understand that their money has its equiva- 
 lent in ministerial work as truly as in any work. This, 
 too, is what we ask for a body of young men who will 
 be willing to wait five years that they may earn money 
 rather than touch a dollar of "help " a body that will 
 enter the pulpit mortgaged to no society of old women 
 of either sex, and with a sincere hatred of all the in- 
 fluences that tend to degrade their profession in the eyes 
 of a practical business world. And we cannot conceive 
 how anybody can find fault with these views and wishes 
 and motives of ours, unless they touch to consciousness 
 a pauper spirit witTiin himself.
 
 The Curse of Pauperism. 237 
 
 The Dead-Beat Nuisance. 
 
 We hear a great deal of the " tramp nuisance," but 
 this is very largely confined to the country. Men out of 
 work, with no families to tie them to any particular spot, 
 and men demoralized by army experiences, who would 
 not work if they could, added to the great pauperized 
 mass that is afloat at all times, tramp from town to town, 
 and beg or steal according to their depth of degrada- 
 tion to eke out their miserable and meaningless lives. 
 But there is another nuisance confined mainly to the 
 cities, of which the country knows but little, that grows 
 larger and larger with each passing month. The dead- 
 beat is a product of the town, and harder to handle and 
 cure than the tramp. 
 
 The processes by which the dead-beat is made are 
 various. A young man of bad habits goes on to worse, 
 until, as business becomes slack, he is discharged. From 
 that day forth his clothes grow shabby. He begins to 
 borrow from those who knew him in better days, with 
 the promise and, at first, with the purpose of paying ; 
 but at last he wears out his friends, and begins to prey 
 upon society at large. He has no resource but borrow- 
 ing^borrowing on the basis of any story that he can 
 invent. He wants money to bury his wife, his child, to 
 feed a starving family, to get to some place where he has 
 friends. Many pretend to belong in the South, and are 
 only anxious to get back. Many in New York have just 
 come from the South, their trunks pawned for passage- 
 money and they want to get to Boston. Some are just 
 from a hospital, where they have for a long time been 
 ill. They have been dismissed without money, and 
 want to reach their friends. The ingenious lies that are 
 peddled about New York, in any single day, by men and
 
 238 Every-Day Topics. 
 
 women fairly well dressed, for the purpose of extorting 
 from sympathetic and benevolent people, sums varying 
 from one dollar to twenty-five dollars, would make a series 
 of narratives quite sufficient to set up a modern novelist. 
 So earnestly and consistently are these stories told that 
 it is next to impossible to realize that they are not true ; 
 yet we suppose that the experience of the general public, 
 like all the private experience with which we are ac- 
 quainted, proves that ninety-nine times in a hundred 
 they are pure, or most impure inventions. 
 
 The genteel female dead-beat is, perhaps, the hardest 
 to get along with. She puts on airs and dignities. She 
 talks of her former fortune, and of her expectations. 
 She has sources of income at present shut up, but sure 
 to be opened in time. Or she has a small income, terri- 
 bly inadequate, at best, but not yet due. She wants 
 something to bridge over the gulf that yawns between 
 the last dollar and the next. Sometimes she lubricates 
 her speech with tears, but dignity, and great self-respect- 
 fulness, and a beautiful show of faith in God and man, 
 are her principal instruments ; and it takes a purse that 
 shuts like a steel trap to withstand her appeals. Some 
 of these women selfishly stay at home, or in some nice 
 boarding-house, and push out their children, and even 
 their young and well-educated daughters, to do their 
 borrowing for them. One whom wc know confessedly 
 a non-attendant at any church rails at the church for 
 not supporting her. " Pretty followers of Jesus Christ!" 
 she thinks the church members are. 
 
 The moment a man begins to lie for the purpose of 
 getting money, or for the purpose of excusing himself 
 for the non-payment of a debt, that moment he changes 
 from a man to a dead-beat. We thus have dead-beats 
 in business, as well as out of business men who " shin" 
 from day to day, and never know in the morning how
 
 The Curse of Pauperism. 239 
 
 they are to get through. They live constantly by expe- 
 dients. Of course, it cannot take long to reduce them 
 to dead-beats of the most disgraceful stamp. 
 
 A statement has been made by one of our most truth- 
 ful public men, that there is in this city a house that har- 
 bors the professional dead-beat, and furnishes him with 
 romances to be used in the practical extortion of money. 
 In this house there is a book kept, in which are recorded 
 the names of benevolent men and women, with all their 
 histories, traits, weak points, etc. These romances and 
 this knowledge are imparted in consideration of a cer- 
 tain percentage of the money collected through their 
 use. Whether we call this organized beggary or organ- 
 ized robbery, it matters little. The fact itself is enough 
 to put every man upon his guard, and to make him de- 
 cline (as a fixed rule, never to be deviated from, except 
 in instances where his own personal knowledge warrants 
 him in doing so) to give anything to anybody who comes 
 to him with a story and an outstretched palm. Ninety- 
 nine times in a hundred the story is a lie, and the teller 
 of it a professional dead-beat, who deserves to be kicked 
 from the door. Personally, we have never known a case 
 in New York City of this sort of begging or borrowing 
 that was not a fraud. The money loaned never comes 
 back, or the beggar by some forgetfulness comes round 
 again. 
 
 The only safe way to manage these importunate and 
 adroit scamps is cither to turn them over to the investi- 
 gation of some society, or to call a policeman. Fortu- 
 nately, there is in a large number of houses the District 
 telegraph, by the means of v.hich a policeman can be sum- 
 moned in a minute or two, without the visitor's knov/l- 
 ed;.';e. In many instances the policeman will know his 
 man at tirst sight. ICvcry dollar gi\en to these leeches 
 upon the social body is a direct encouragement to the
 
 240 Every-Day Topics. 
 
 increase of the pauper population ; and, if the matter is 
 still regarded carelessly, we shall, in twenty years, be as 
 badly off as Great Britain in this particular. What we 
 give goes for rum, as a rule, and we not only foster idle- 
 ness, but we nourish vice and crime. We need to make 
 a dead set against tramps in the country and dead-beats 
 in the city, if we wish to save our children from a reign 
 of pauperism, only less destructive of the prosperity and 
 the best interests of the country than the reign of war.
 
 TEMPERANCE. 
 
 Temperance Education. 
 
 BY the vote of our city Board of Education, on the 
 sixth of November last, the English school-book, 
 prepared by Benjamin Ward Richardson, called " The 
 Temperance Lesson-Book," was adopted among the 
 text-books which our city teachers are at liberty to use. 
 We hope there are a good many teachers in the city who 
 are willing to take up this book and teach it to their 
 classes, for there is no doubt that boys go out into the 
 dangers of the world lamentably ignorant of those that 
 await them among the drinking-shops. We are sorry 
 that this instruction must come into the schools through 
 special text-books, though it is better that it come in 
 this way than not at all. It must come, at last, into all 
 competent schools, but when that point shall be reached, 
 it will come in books on physiology and political econ- 
 omy, in a natural and perfectly legitimate way. A spe- 
 cial text-book on temperance may be well enough in the 
 absence of the general books, in which the topic has its 
 appropriate place and space ; but it is like a text-book 
 on opium-eating. In short, the incompetence of the 
 books on physiology and political economy has forced 
 the friends of temperance into the use of this make-shift, 
 which is surely a great deal better than nothing. 
 
 There is, probably, no hallucination so obstinate as 
 II
 
 242 Every-Day Topics. 
 
 that which attributes to alcoholic drink a certain virtue 
 which it never possessed. After all the influence of the 
 pulpit and the press, after all the warning examples of 
 drunkenness and consequent destruction, after all the 
 testimony of science and experience, there lingers in the 
 average mind an impression that there is something good 
 in alcohol, even for the healthy man. Boys and young 
 men do not shun the wine-cup as a poisoner of blood 
 and thought, and the most dangerous drug that they can 
 possibly handle ; but they have an idea that the temper- 
 ance man is a fogy or a foe to a free social life, whose 
 practices are ascetic, and whose warnings arc to be 
 laughed at and disregarded. Now, in alcohol, in its va- 
 rious forms, we have a foe to the human race so subtile 
 and so powerful that it destroys human beings by the 
 million, vitiates all the mental processes of those who 
 indulge in it, degrades morals, induces pauperism and 
 crime in the superlative degree when compared with all 
 other causes, corrupts the homes of millions and makes 
 hells of them, and wastes the national resources more 
 certainly and severely than war ; yet so little have the 
 writers upon physiology and political economy regarded 
 this vital and economical factor in human affairs, that 
 the friends of temperance have been obliged to get up 
 and push a special text-book upon it ! Verily, they 
 must be a brilliant set of men ! Hereafter no text-book 
 on either physiology or political economy should be 
 adopted in any school in the country that does not com- 
 petently treat of the alcohol question. 
 
 It is a cruel thing to send a boy out into the world un- 
 taught that alcohol in any form is fire and will certainly 
 burn him if he puts it into his stomach. It is a cruel 
 thing to educate a boy in such a way that he has no adc- 
 (}uate idea of the dangers that beset his path. It is a 
 mean thing to send a boy out to take his place in so-
 
 Temperance. 243 
 
 ciety, without understanding the relations of temperance 
 to his own safety and prosperity, and to the safety and 
 prosperity of society. Of course, the great barrier be- 
 tween the youth and correct knowledge the great mys- 
 tifier and misleader is respectable society. This is 
 practically saying to the young, pretty universally, that 
 wine is a good thing. Fine dinners are never given with- 
 out it, and good men and women drink it daily. They 
 do not get drunk, they may be conscientious and religi- 
 ous, and many of them not only do not regard wine- 
 drinking as harmful, but as positively beneficial. The 
 boy and the young man see all this, and think, naturally, 
 that those who have experience in drink should know 
 better about its results than those who let drink alone. 
 
 Now, what we want to do in our schools is to do away 
 with the force of a pernicious example, and a long-cher- 
 ished error, by making the children thoroughly intelli- 
 gent on this subject of alcohol. They should be taught 
 the natural effect of alcohol upon the processes of ani- 
 mal life. 1st. They should be taught that it can add 
 nothing whatever to the vital forces or to the vital tissues 
 that it never enters into the elements of structure, and 
 that, in the healthy organism, it is always a burden or a 
 disturbing force. 2d. They should be taught that it inva- 
 riably disturbs the operation of the brain, and that the 
 mind can get nothing from alcohol of help that is to be 
 relied upon. 3d. They should be taught that alcohol 
 inflames the baser passions, blunts the sensibilities, and 
 debases the feelings. 4th. They should be taught that 
 an appetite for drink is certainly developed l)y those 
 who use it, which is dangerous to life, destructive of 
 health of body and peace of mind, and in millions of in- 
 stances ruinous to fortune and to all the high interests 
 of the soul. 5th. Tlicy should lie taught that the rrinv^-- 
 and pauperism of society llow as naturally from alcoliol
 
 244 Evcry-Day Topics. 
 
 as any effect whatever naturally flows from its compe- 
 tent cause. 6th. They should be taught that drink is 
 the responsible cause of most of the poverty and want 
 of the world. So long as six hundred million dollars are 
 annually spent for drink in this country, every ounce of 
 which was made by the destruction of bread, and not 
 one ounce of which has ever entered into the sum of 
 national wealth, having nothing to show for its cost but 
 diseased stomachs, degraded homes, destroyed industry, 
 increased pauperism, and aggravated crime, these boys 
 should understand the facts and be able to act upon 
 them in their first responsible conduct. 
 
 The national wealth goes into the ground. If we could 
 only manage to bury it without having it pass thitherward 
 in the form of a poisonous fluid through the inflamed 
 bodies of our neighbors and friends, happy should we be. 
 But this great, abominable curse dominates the world. 
 The tramp reminds us of it as he begs for a night's lodg- 
 ing. The widow and the fatherless tell us of it as they 
 ask for bread. It scowls upon us from the hovels and 
 haunts of the poor everywhere. Even the clean, hard- 
 working man of prosperity cannot enjoy his earnings 
 because the world is full of misery from drink. The more 
 thoroughly wc can instruct the young concerning this 
 dominating evil of our time, the better will it be for them 
 and for the world. Let us use the " temperance lesson- 
 book" wherever we may. Let parents demand that it 
 shall be used, and particularly let all writers upon phy- 
 siology and political economy for schools take up the 
 subject of alcohol, and treat it so candidly, fully, and 
 ably that their books shall no longer be commentaries 
 on their own incompetency to fill the places whose func- 
 tions they have assumed.
 
 Temperance. 245 
 
 Social Drinking. 
 
 A few weeks ago, a notable company of gentlemen 
 assembled in the ample parlors of the venerable and 
 much beloved William E. Dodge, in this city, to listen to 
 an essay by Judge Noah Davis on the relations of crime 
 to the habit of intemperate drinking. The company was 
 notable for its respectability, its number of public men, 
 and the further fact that it contained many who were 
 well known to be wine-drinkers unattached to any tem- 
 perance organization. No one could have listened to 
 Judge Davis's disclosure of the facts of his subject with- 
 out the conviction that it was a subject worthy the atten- 
 tion of every philanthropist, every political economist, 
 and every well-wisher of society present, whether tem- 
 perance men or not. These facts, gathered from many 
 quarters, and from the best authorities, were most signi- 
 ficant in fastening upon the use of alcohol the responsi- 
 bility for most of the crimes and poverty of society. 
 Some of them were astounding, even to temperance 
 men themselves, and there were none present, we pre- 
 sume, who did not feel that Judge Davis had done a rare 
 favor to the cause of temperance in thus putting into its 
 service his resources of knowledge and his persuasive 
 voice. How many were convinced by the facts detailed 
 that evening that they ought to give up the habit of so- 
 cial drinking, we cannot tell. The probabilities are that 
 none were so moved, for this habit of social drinking, or 
 rather the considerations that go with it, are very des- 
 potic. Tlie idea that a man cannot be hospitable with- 
 out the offer of wine to his guests is so fixed in the minds 
 of most well-to-do people in this city that they will per- 
 mit no consideration to interfere with it. People in the 
 country, in the ordinary walks of life, have no concep-
 
 246 Every -Day Topics. 
 
 tion of the despotic character of this idea. There are 
 literally thousands of respectable men in New York who 
 would consider their character and social standing seri- 
 ously compromised by giving a dinner to a company of 
 ladies and gentlemen without the offer of wine. It is not 
 that they care for it themselves particularly. It is quite 
 possible, or likely, indeed, that they would be glad, for 
 many reasons, to banish the wine-cup from their tables, 
 but they do not dare to do it. It is also true that such 
 is the power of this idea upon many temperance men 
 that they refrain altogether from giving dinners, lest their 
 guests should feel the omission of wine to be a hardship 
 and an outrage upon the customs of common hospitality. 
 
 We have called these things to notice for a special 
 reason. The company of wine-drinkers who made up 
 so large a portion of the number that filled Mr. Dodge's 
 rooms on the occasion referred to must have been pro- 
 foundly impressed by the revelations and arguments of 
 Judge Davis. They could not have failed to feel that by 
 these revelations they had been brought face to face with 
 a great duty not, perhaps, the duty of stopping social 
 drinking, and all responsible connection with it, but the 
 duty of doing something to seal the fountains of this 
 drink which has contributed so largely to the spread of 
 crime and poverty and misery. A man must, indeed, 
 be a brute who can contemplate the facts of intemper- 
 ance without being moved to remedy them. They are too 
 horrible to contemplate long at a time, and every good 
 citizen must feel that the world cannot improve until, in 
 some measure, the supplies of drink are dried up. 
 
 Our reason for writing this article is to call attention 
 to the fact that there is something about this habit of 
 social wine-drinking that kills the motives to work for 
 temperance among those who suffer by coarse and de- 
 structive habits of drink. Temperance is very rarely
 
 Temperance. 247 
 
 directly labored for by those who drink wine. As a rule, 
 with almost no exceptions at all, the man who drinks 
 wine with his dinner does not undertake any work 
 to keep his humble neighbors temperate. As a rule, 
 too, the wine-drinking clergyman says nothing about 
 intemperance in his pulpit, when it is demonstrably the 
 most terrible scourge that afflicts the world. There 
 seems to be something in the touch of wine that para- 
 lyzes the ministerial tongue, on the topic of drink. 
 
 We fully understand the power of social influence to 
 hold to the wine-cup as the symbol of hospitality. It is 
 one of the most relentless despotisms from which the 
 world suffers, and exactly here is its worst result. We 
 do not suppose that a very large number of drunkards 
 are made by wine drunk at the table, in respectable 
 homes. There is a percentage of intemperate men 
 made undoubtedly here, but perhaps the worst social 
 result that comes of this habit is its paralyzing effect 
 upon reform its paralyzing effect upon those whoso 
 judgments are convinced, and whose wishes for society 
 are all that they should be. It is only the total abstainer 
 who can be relied upon to work for temperance who 
 ever has been relied upon to work for temperance ; and 
 of Mr. Dodge's company of amiable and gentlemanly 
 wine-drinkers, it is safe to conclude that not one will 
 join hands with him in temperance labor with Judge 
 Davis's awful facts sounding in his ears who does not 
 first cut off his own supplies. 
 
 The Way we Waste. 
 
 One of the facts brought prominently before the world 
 during the last few years is, that France is rich. The 
 ease with which she has recovered from the disastrous 
 war with Prussia, and the promptness with which she has
 
 248 Every-Day Topia; 
 
 met, not only her own, but Prussia's enctrti^tvn* expenses 
 in that war, have surprised all her sister naticans. Every 
 poor man had his hoard of ready money, which he was 
 anxious to lend to the State. How did he get it ? How 
 did he save it ? Why is it that, in a country like ours, 
 where wages are high and the opportunities for making 
 money exceptionally good, such wealth and prosperity 
 do not exist ? These are important questions at this time 
 Avith all of us. 
 
 Well, France is an industrious nation, it is said. But 
 is not ours an industrious nation too ? Is it not, indeed, 
 one of the most hard-working and energetic nations in 
 the world ? We believe it to be a harder-working nation 
 than the French, with not only fewer holidays, but no 
 holidays at all, and with not only less play, but almost 
 no play at all. It is said, too, that France is a frugal na- 
 tion. They probably have the advantage of us in this ; 
 yet, to feed a laboring man and to clothe a laboring man 
 and his family there must be a definite, necessary ex- 
 penditure in both countries. The difference in wages 
 ought to cover the difference in expenses, and probably 
 does. If the American laborer spends twice as much, 
 or three times as much, as the French, he earns twice 
 or three times as much ; yet the American laborer lays 
 up nothing, while the French laborer and small farmer 
 have money to lend to their Government. Their old 
 stockings are long and are full. The wine and the silk 
 which the French raise for other countries must be more 
 than counterbalanced by our exported gold, cotton, and 
 breadstuffs, so that they do not have any advantage over 
 us, as a nation, in what they sell to other nations? We 
 shall have to look farther than this for the secret we are 
 after. 
 
 There lies a book before us, written by Dr. William 
 Ilargreaves, entitled, "Our Wasted Resources." We
 
 Temperance. 249 
 
 wish that the politicians and political economists of this 
 country could read this book, and ponder well its shock- 
 ing revelations. They are revelations of criminal waste 
 the expenditure of almost incalculable resources for 
 that which brings nothing, worse than nothing, in return. 
 There are multitudes of people who regard the temper- 
 ance question as one of morals alone. The men who 
 drink say simply, " We will drink what we please, and 
 it's nobody's business. You temperance men are pesti- 
 lent fellows, meddlesome fellows, who obtrude your tup- 
 penny standard of morality upon us, and we do not want 
 it, and will not accept it. Because you are virtuous, 
 shall there be no more cakes and ale ? " Very well, let 
 us drop it as a question of morality. You will surely 
 look at it with us as a question of national economy and 
 prosperity ; else, you can hardly regard yourselves as 
 patriots. We have a common interest in the national 
 prosperity, and we can discuss amicably any subject on 
 this common ground. 
 
 France produces its own wine and drinks mainly 
 cheap wine. It is a drink which, while it does them no 
 good, according to the showing of their own physicians, 
 does not do them harm enough to interfere with their in- 
 dustry. Their drinking wastes neither life nor money as 
 ours does, and they sell in value to other countries more 
 than they drink themselves. During the year 1870, in 
 our own State of New York, there were expended by 
 consumers for liquor more than one hundred and six mil- 
 lions of dollars, a sum which amounted to nearly two- 
 thirds of all the wages paid to laborers in agriculture and 
 manufactures, and to nearly twice as much as the re- 
 ceipts of all the railroads in the State, the sum of the 
 latter being between sixty-eight and sixty-nine millions. 
 The money of our people goes across the bar all the time 
 faster than it is crowded into the wickets of all the rail- 
 1 1*
 
 2 50 Evcry-Day Topics. 
 
 road stations of the State, and where does it go ? What 
 is the return for it ? Diseased stomachs, aching heads, 
 discouraged and slatternly homes, idleness, gout, crime, 
 degradation, death. These, in various measures, are ex- 
 actly what we get for it. We gain of that which is good, 
 nothing no uplift in morality, no increase of industry, 
 no accession to health, no growth of prosperity. Our 
 State is full of tramps, and every one is a drunkard. 
 There is demoralization everywhere, in consequence of 
 this wasteful stream of fiery fluid that constantly flows 
 down the open gullet of the State. 
 
 But our State is not alone. The liquor bill of Penn- 
 sylvania during 1870 was more than sixty-five millions 
 of dollars, a sum equal to one-third f the entire agri- 
 cultural product of the State. Illinois paid more than 
 forty-two millions and Ohio more than fifty-eight mil- 
 lions. Massachusetts paid more than twenty-five mil- 
 lions, a sum equal to five-sixths of her agricultural pro- 
 ducts, while the liquor bill of Maine was only about four 
 millions and a quarter. Mr. Hargreaves takes the fig- 
 ures of Massachusetts and Maine to show how a prohib- 
 itory law does, after all, reduce the drinking ; but it is 
 not our purpose to argue this question. 
 
 What we desire to show is, that, with an annual ex- 
 penditure of $600,000,000 for liquors in the United 
 States and all the figures we give are based upon offi- 
 cial statistics it should not be wondered at that the 
 people are poor. Not only this vast sum is wasted ; not 
 only the capital invested is diverted from good uses, and 
 all the industry involved in production taken from bene- 
 ficent pursuits, but health, morality, respectability, in- 
 dustry and life are destroyed. Sixty thousand Americans 
 annually lie down in a drunkard's grave. It were better 
 to bring into the field and shoot down sixty thousand of 
 our young men every year, than to have them go through
 
 Temperance . 251 
 
 all the processes of disease, degradation, crime, and de- 
 spair through which they inevitably pass. 
 
 With six hundred millions of dollars saved to the 
 country annually, how long would it take to make these 
 United States rich not only, but able to meet, without 
 disturbance and distress, the revulsions in business to 
 which all nations arc liable ? Here is a question for the 
 statesman and the politician. Twenty-five years of ab- 
 solute abstinence from the consumption of useless, and 
 worse than useless, licjuors, would save to the country 
 fifteen billions of dollars, and make us the richest na- 
 tion on the face of the globe. Not only this sum be- 
 yond the imagination to comprehend would be saved, 
 but all the abominable consequences of misery, disease, 
 disgrace, crime, and death, that would flow from the 
 consumption of such an enormous amount of poisonous 
 fluids, would be saved. And yet temperance men are 
 looked upon as disturbers and fanatics ! And we are 
 adjured not to bring temperance into politics ! And 
 this great transcendent cpiestion of economy gets the go- 
 by, while we hug our little issues for th'e sake of party 
 and of office ! Do we not dcscr\e advcr':ity ?
 
 DOMESTIC ECONOMY. 
 
 Regulated Production. 
 
 TN a recent number of The Popular Science Monthly^ 
 * we find an important and suggestive article from 
 the pen of O. B. Bunce, which attempts to enforce the 
 policy of " regulated production." There is no question 
 that the popular doctrine that the supply is always reg- 
 ulated by the demand, and that demand will always 
 elicit supply, does not work with the requisite nicety 
 or sensitiveness. A demand springs up, let us say, 
 for paper. Immediately hundreds of mills start into 
 action, each anxious to do its utmost to meet that de- 
 mand with supply. They are operated night and dav, 
 and before they can feel the subsidence of the demand, 
 the market is glutted. Then the mills are reduced to 
 half time, or the gates are shut down altogether. Thou- 
 sands of workmen and workwomen are either reduced in 
 wages, or deprived of all wages ; and then, of course, 
 comes distress. They cease to be consumers of any- 
 thing but the bare necessaries of life, and thus every in- 
 terest with which they hold relations is made to suffer 
 with them. They buy no cloth, they live in the cheapest 
 quarters, they drop all luxuries, and their over-produc- 
 tion becomes, in every respect, a popular disaster. The 
 demand brought the supply, but the supply for a year 
 was produced in six months.
 
 Domestic Economy. 253 
 
 We all remember with what opposition the introduc- 
 tion of labor-saving machinery was met in England, 
 The laboring classes had an instinct that there was some- 
 where in it mischief for them. In this country less op- 
 position has been manifested, because the labor market, 
 until within a few years, has not been over-supplied. In 
 the development of a new realm there has been enough 
 for everybody to do. It was not long ago in this coun- 
 try that the instincts of labor began to apprehend trou- 
 ble from over-production. The labor-saving machinery 
 was all invented, however, and in use, and the only rem- 
 edy that seemed to offer was a reduction of the hours 
 of labor the shortening of the day's work. This could 
 not work well, because it was not universal, and it was 
 a clumsy resort in every respect. No manufacturer, 
 paying a fixed sum for eight hours' work, could compete 
 with another who paid only the same sum for ten, eleven 
 and twelve hours' work. The matter got into the hands 
 of demagogues, guilds and societies have endeavored to 
 control the capitalists, and there has grown out of it a 
 long train of mischiefs. 
 
 Of this one fact, all men at this time have come to be 
 well aware, viz., that we have the machinery and the 
 labor for producing more of the ordinary materials re- 
 quired in civilized life than we can sell. The further 
 fact, to which we have already alluded, that "the law 
 of demand and supply " works clumsily, and often dis- 
 astrously, when left to itself, is also pretty definitely 
 apprehended. There would seem, therefore, to be no 
 alternative policy but that of " regulated production." 
 That this is possible in limited spheres has already been 
 abundantly proved. There is at this time in Massachu- 
 setts a society of paper-makers who are intelligently and 
 successfully " regulating " the production of their mills. 
 They understand that if they run their mills day and
 
 254 Every -Day Topics. 
 
 night they will produce paper in such quantities as to 
 raise the price of stock and reduce the price of paper, 
 as well as glut the market. So, by keeping the supply 
 as nearly even with the demand as possible, they manage 
 to run their mills half time that is, only in the day- 
 time and to make a profit on which they and their em- 
 ployes can live. This is what may be called " regulated 
 production ; " and we know of no reason why the policy 
 may not be adopted by every manufacturing interest in 
 the country. 
 
 The Government, of course, can have no voice in this 
 regulation, but it can be of incalculable assistance in 
 rendering it intelligent. It can ascertain approximately, 
 at least how much paper, in all its varieties, how much 
 muslin, how many shoes, how much woollen cloth, how 
 many sewing-machines, reapers, ploughs, hoes, shovels, 
 how much cutlery, how many hats, are made and sold 
 in a single year. It can also ascertain the producing 
 capacity of the respective groups of manufactories, and 
 thus reduce to the simplest sum in arithmetic the prob- 
 lem of regulated production. This sum, intelligently 
 ciphered out, nothing remains but honest co-operation, 
 free and frank intercommunication, and fraternal loyalty. 
 Our American Silk Association, for instance, with its 
 printed organ, its regular meetings, its thorough intelli- 
 gence in all matters relating to the supply of the raw 
 material and the demand for the manufactured product, 
 can so regulate the production of silk that the whole in- 
 terest can be kept in a healthy condition. 
 
 Mr. Bunce cites the combination of the coal companies, 
 which recently exploded, with such disastrous results, as 
 a perfectly legitimate one, provided it had been entered 
 into in order to prevent an over-production of coal. We 
 heartily coincide in this opinion, and presume to add 
 that if this had been the only motive of the combination
 
 Domestic Economy. 255 
 
 it would not have exploded. The combination to pre- 
 vent an over-production is not only legitimate it is nec- 
 essary. The attempt to force prices and profits on coal, 
 in order to sustain a speculation in railroad stocks, or to 
 bolster up roads that have no legitimate basis, was what 
 burst the combination. Such evils will always correct 
 themselves, though, in the correction, they inflict great 
 disasters. The consumers of Pennsylvania cannot suffer 
 without inflicting injury upon the manufacturers of New 
 England and New York, who get their coal for less than 
 it costs to produce it. Regulated production, with all 
 that it promises, means, however, contentment with 
 modest profits a toning down of the old greed for sud- 
 den and enormous wealth. It means also the entrance 
 upon untried fields of enterprise, increased intelligence, 
 and a development of skill. A limitation in quantity 
 will bring an improvement in quality, every man trying 
 his best to lead the market, or to make his market sure. 
 We know that when a manufacturing interest is enor- 
 mous, like that of iron or cotton cloth, it is difficult to 
 associate the capital involved; but it can be done ought 
 to be done must be done. 
 
 The Chinese in California. 
 
 We have all had our laugh over Bret Harte's " Heathen 
 Chinee," and particularly over the passage which de- 
 clares " We are ruined by Chinese cheap labor," and 
 which also contains the record of Ah Sin's discomfiture 
 at the hand of Bill Nye, for the crime of holding more 
 aces in his sleeve than his antagonist. Bill Nye's course 
 of reasoning, and the " remedial agency" which he so 
 promptly adopted in the case cited, form the finest sat- 
 ire on the California enemies of the Chinaman that was 
 ever uttered. We have all read, too, ' Miss Malony on
 
 256 Every-Day Topics. 
 
 the Chinese Question," which, though given in charac- 
 teristic prose, is not inferior in its way to Mr. Harte's 
 poem. These two satirical and humorous productions 
 have in them a vast amount of truth and common sense. 
 In the latter, Mrs. Dodge touches the question of na- 
 tional prejudice, and in the former, Mr. Harte deals 
 with the question of industrial and political economy. 
 
 A few months ago we published two articles on the 
 Chinese in California. One of them, written by a lady, 
 was a record of personal experience in the employment 
 of Chinese servants. The other treated of the general 
 subject of Chinese immigration, in its social, industrial 
 and political aspects. We have waited for a reply to 
 these communications, because there are always two 
 sides to every question ; and we supposed that the 
 Chinese would have friends enough who were willing to 
 speak a just, if not a kind word for them. We have 
 waited up to the time of writing this article, in vain, and 
 we propose to say a word for ourselves such a word as 
 a man may say on general principles, with perhaps an 
 inadequate knowledge of facts. 
 
 The Irish immigrant we mean only the ignorant and 
 laboring Irish immigrant has always hated any race and 
 any nationality that has been brought into competition 
 with him in common labor. The negro has always been 
 the Irishman's bete noir, quite independently of his color. 
 It seems to be natural for an Irishman to hate a negro, 
 and the hatred comes entirely from the fact that he re- 
 gards him as a competitor in common labor. Here, in 
 New York, we have had a small specimen of the hatred 
 of an Irishman for an Italian not that the Italian has 
 base blood in him, or is his enemy in matters of religion, 
 for the Italian is his Catholic brother, and the fellow- 
 countryman of his Pope. He is simply jealous of him 
 as a laborer ; and the Italians would only need to settle
 
 Domestic Economy. 257 
 
 in New York in sufficiently large numbers to develop 
 this jealousy into violent and disgraceful manifestations. 
 We state these facts simply in illustration of the way in 
 which the Irishman would naturally regard the importa- 
 tion of 1 50,000 Chinese laborers at San Francisco. With 
 his nature, and his adoption of the idea, either that he 
 has a right to all the common labor that is to be done, 
 or that any other common laborer will interfere with his 
 prosperity, it would be impossible for him to look upon 
 Chinese immigration with anything but disfavor. This 
 disfavor he would manifest in the way in which he mani- 
 fests it toward the negro and the Italian. " We are 
 ruined by Chinese cheap labor," he would say, and, 
 therefore, he would " go for that heathen Chinee." 
 
 So, whatever of Irish opposition there may be in San 
 Francisco to the importation of the Chinaman, and 
 whatever of maltreatment the latter may suffer from 
 Irish boots and Irish influence, are sufficiently explained. 
 The Irishman would be most unlike himself if he failed 
 to look upon the Chinaman precisely as he looks upon 
 the African and the laboring Italian. He does not op- 
 pose him with brutal weapons because he is a heathen, 
 for he would treat the Catholic Italian in the same way, 
 under the same circumstances ; but because he and the 
 Chinaman have the same thing to dispose of, viz.: com- 
 mon labor. 
 
 There is still another influence which is naturally hos- 
 tile to the Chinaman. This influence is not so powerful 
 here as it would be England. We allude to the influence 
 of the trades unions. The members of these societies 
 are, by their institutions and policy, necessarily the foes 
 of any body of laborers who remain outside of their lines 
 and beyond their control. It is not necessary that this 
 body of laborers should be Chinese. It is only neces- 
 sary that they should be laborers who choose to be indc
 
 258 Every -Day Topics. 
 
 pendent of them. This fact is illustrated every day in 
 the year in New York. All the persuasives are employed 
 and all the penalties are imposed which can be used 
 with safety to keep men from working in " wild shops," 
 whose proprietors choose to manage their own business. 
 The abuse of the tongue, social ostracism, and, in too 
 many instances, violence, are resorted to, to bring and 
 hold men within their own ranks. It is not the Irishman, 
 the Italian, the Chinaman, or the negro, that the trades 
 unions care for, as such, but it is the independent la- 
 borer, who works at whatever, and at whatever wages, 
 he may choose. Now it is impossible that these organi- 
 zations should regard with favor the importation of an 
 alien population, possessing rare ingenuity and adap- 
 tiveness to a wide circle of industry, yet entirely outside 
 of their possible control. 
 
 We are not upon the ground, and it is impossible for 
 US to judge how much of the enmity to the Chinese that 
 reigns at San Francisco is attributable to the two causes 
 that have been mentioned. That enough of it to make 
 these Chinese very uncomfortable and unsafe is to be 
 traced to these causes, nobody can doubt, though he 
 may live on the other side of the globe. If it were all 
 wiped out, we fancy that the " heathen Chinee" would 
 be very comfortable in California. 
 
 It is tossed in the teeth of the Chinaman that he is a 
 heathen, that he is an opium-eater, that he sends his 
 money home, that he does not bring his wife and family 
 with him, but does bring prostitutes ; that he is filthy, 
 that the quarters he inhabits are breeders of disease, 
 that he is a gambler, etc. It is a fair question to ask, in 
 the face of these charges, whether the treatment meted 
 out to this heathen has been such that he sees a marked 
 superiority of Christianity over heathenism. About how 
 impressive is the Christian lesson imparted to a heathen
 
 Domestic Economy. 259 
 
 by the unrebukcd toe of a hoodlum's boot ? What would 
 a heathen naturally think of a Christianity that greets 
 him with a howl on his landing, and follows him with dis- 
 criminating laws and regulations, and public contempt, 
 and private, unhindered abuse during all the time of his 
 residence ? The charge of heathenism is just a trifle ab- 
 surd. And, again, if the Chinaman smokes opium, who 
 drinks whiskey ? If he has prostitutes, whose unrebuked 
 example does he follow ? If he sends money home, it 
 is precisely what the Irish have been doing, in the most 
 filial, brotherly and praiseworthy way for the last cen- 
 tury. If he comes to California without his wife, he does 
 simply what tens of thousands of Californians have done 
 since immigration into the State began. If he is a gam- 
 bler, how long is it since gambling went out of fashion 
 in California ? If his quarters are filthy, why does not 
 the health board, or why do not the city authorities, at- 
 tend to their duties ? 
 
 We ask these questions not because we suppose they 
 decide anything, but because, in our ignorance, wc 
 would like to know. In the East, the prejudice against 
 our heathen brother John in California seems a little un- 
 reasonable, and we want more light. We have been in 
 the habit of welcoming all other nationalities. We are 
 strangely insensitive to the importation of thousands of 
 criminals and scamps and scalawags from Europe, and 
 we cannot yet feel sure that the importation of the 
 Chinaman is not a better thing, on the whole. He cer- 
 tainly is industrious, he minds his own business, and, so 
 far as we have seen him here, he does an honest day's 
 work, which is more than can be said of a good many 
 Christian laborers whom we have around us. Of one 
 thing, at least, we are sure. No people can hold a large 
 body of men in contempt, and regard them with hatred, 
 and treat them like beasts, without demoralizing them-
 
 26o Every-Day Topics. 
 
 selves. That thing has been tried, and tried in this 
 country, too. The Californians cannot afford to have the 
 Chinaman with them, unless they can treat him like ?. 
 man. They must either do this, or the Chinaman must 
 go. To hold a fellow-man in fixed contempt, to spit upon 
 him unrebuked, simply because he is of another race, or 
 is supposed, in the competitions of life, to interfere with 
 one's prosperity, is simply to lapse from Christianity into 
 barbarism. And that, in its own time, will produce re- 
 sults in which the Chinese will not be interested, except 
 as observers.
 
 SOCIAL FACTS, FORCES AND REFORMS. 
 
 Acting under Excitement. 
 
 THERE is great fear, on the part of some amiable 
 persons who write for the public, lest, in certain 
 excited movements of reform, there should be those who 
 will take steps for which they will be sorry. They argue, 
 from this, that it is not best to have any excitement at 
 all, and especially that nothing should be done under 
 excitement. It so happens, however, that the path of 
 progress has always been marked by sudden steps up- 
 ward and onward. There are steady growth and steady 
 going, it is true, but the tendency to rut-making and 
 routine are so great in human nature, that it is often only 
 by wide excitements that a whole community is lifted 
 and forwarded to a new level. Men often get into the 
 condition of pig-iron. They pile up nicely in bars. They 
 are in an excellent state of preservation. They certainly 
 lie still, and though there is vast capacity in them for 
 machinery, and cutlery, and agricultural implements 
 though they contain measureless possibilities of spindles 
 and spades there is nothing under heaven but fire that 
 can develop their capacity and realize their possibilities. 
 There are communities that would never do anything 
 but rot, except under excitement. A community often 
 gets into a stolid, immobile condition, which nothing 
 but a public excitement can break up. This condition
 
 262 Every-Day Topics. 
 
 may relate to a single subject, or to many subjects. It 
 may relate to temperance, or to a church debt. Now, it 
 is quite possible that a man under excitement will do the 
 thing that he has always known to be right, and be sorry 
 for it or recede from it afterward ; but the excitement 
 was the only power that would ever have started him on 
 the right path, or led him to stop in the wrong one. It is 
 all very well to say that it would be a great deal better 
 for a drunkard, coolly, after quiet deliberation and a ra- 
 tional decision, to resolve to forsake his cups than to 
 take the same step under the stimulus of social excite- 
 ment and the persuasions of companionship and fervid 
 oratory; but does he ever do it? Sometimes, possibly, 
 but not often. Without excitement and a great social 
 movement, very little of temperance reform has ever 
 been effected. Men are like iron : to be moulded they 
 must be heated ; and to say that there should be no ex- 
 citement connected with a great reform, or that a reform 
 is never to be effected through excitement, is to ignore 
 the basilar facts of human nature and human history. 
 
 At the present time there is a great temperance reform 
 in progress. Men are taking the temperance pledge by 
 tens of thousands. They go around with glad faces and 
 with ribbons in their button-holes. They sing their 
 songs of freedom from the power that has so long and so 
 cruelly enslaved them. It is said, of course : " Oh, this 
 will not last. It is only a nine days' wonder. Many of 
 these people are now drinking in secret, and soon the 
 most of them will be back in their old courses." The 
 most of them possibly. It is not probable, however, 
 that the most of them will recede. Suppose half of them 
 remain true to their pledges ; does not that pay? We 
 should have had none of them without the excitement, 
 and to have had a great mass of brutal men, who have 
 long disgraced and abused their wives and children,
 
 Social Facts, Forces and Reforms. 263 
 
 sober for a month, or for six months, was surely a good 
 thing. It was at least a ray of sunshine in a great multi- 
 tude of dark lives. The point we make, is, that the al- 
 ternative of a reform through popular excitement is no 
 reform at all. And we make the further point that a 
 man who will not sympathize with a reform because of 
 the excitement that accompanies it, is, ninety-nine times 
 in a hundred, a man who does not sympathize with the 
 reform on any ground ; and the hundredth man is usu- 
 ally an impracticable ass. 
 
 Let us take this matter of paying church debts by 
 what has become known as the Kimball method. A 
 church builds a house of worship. It costs more than 
 the original estimate, or some important members have 
 failed in the expected or pledged subscription, or, worse 
 than all, debt has been incurred with the eyes open and 
 by intent. It has been carried along for years, the 
 whole organization groaning with the burden. To a few 
 it has become intolerable. They see the church dwin- 
 dling. They see strangers frightened away by this skele- 
 ton in the closet ; they see their pastor growing gray and 
 careworn or utterly breaking down, and, knowing that 
 nothing stands in the way of the usefulness and happi- 
 ness of their church but the debt, they cast about for 
 help. We will say that in most instances the church is 
 able to pay the debt, provided every man will do his 
 duty ; but it so happens that every man will not do his 
 duty, except under some sort of social excitement, which 
 Mr. Kimball or his helper supplies. Now, it is simply a 
 question between paying a debt and not paying it at all. 
 It is not practically a question between paying in one 
 way or another. 
 
 This method has been tried many times, with the most 
 gratifying success. In one brief half-day, by means of 
 everybody doing his part under the influence of elo-
 
 264 Every-Day Topics. 
 
 quence and social excitement, debts have been lifted 
 and churches made free. Churches and congregations 
 have sung and wept over their success, and with the joy 
 that came of duty done and sacrifice made for the Mas- 
 ter. Just here steps in the critic. He has known noth- 
 ing of the burden that the church has carried. He knows 
 nothing of the happiness that has come from the sacri- 
 fices made, or of the hopes that have been born of them. 
 He only knows that it is probable that men and women, 
 under the excitement of the occasion, have subscribed 
 in some instances more than they could afford to sub- 
 scribe. Therefore, in the opinion of the critic, a public 
 excitement for the purpose of securing the payment of a 
 church debt is wrong. The critic does not take into 
 account the fact that without the excitement the debt 
 not only would not, but could not be paid. He does not 
 take into account the fact that the willing part of the 
 church has been most unjustly burdened with this debt 
 for years, and that nothing under heaven but an excite- 
 ment will stir the unwilling part of the church to do its 
 duty. Of course he does not take into account the fur- 
 ther fact that no sacrifice is too great to the man who 
 appreciates the sacrifice that has been made for him, 
 and for which he can only make a poor return, at best. 
 
 To the critics of this method of paying church debts 
 who object to it on account of its profanation of the Sab- 
 bath, no better reply can be made than that of one who 
 found occasion to defend himself in their presence. 
 " We are told," said he, " that it was permissible in the 
 olden time for a man to relieve his ass on the Sabbath 
 day, when the animal had fallen into a ditch, and I an? 
 only trying to relieve a multitude of men and women 
 who have been asses enough to stumble into a church 
 debt." The answer is a good one, and justifies itself.
 
 Social Facts, Forces and Reforms. 265 
 
 The Cure for Gossip. 
 
 Everybody must talk about something. The poor 
 fellow who was told not to talk for the fear that people 
 would find out that he was a fool, made nothing by the 
 experiment. He was considered a fool because he did 
 not talk. On some subject or another, everybody must 
 have something to say, or give up society. Of course, 
 the topics of conversation will relate to the subjects of 
 knowledge. If a man is interested in science, he will 
 talk about science. If he is an enthusiast in art, he will 
 talk about art. If he is familiar with literature, and is 
 an intelligent and persistent reader, he will naturally 
 put forward literary topics in his conversation. So with 
 social questions, political questions, religious questions. 
 Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth spcaketh. 
 That of which the mind is full that with which it is fur- 
 nishedwill come out in expression. 
 
 The very simple reason why the world is full of gossip, 
 is, that those who indulge in it have nothing else in them. 
 They must interest themselves in something. They 
 know nothing but what they learn from day to day, 
 in intercourse with, and observation of, their neighbors. 
 What these neighbors do what they say what happens 
 to them in their social and business affairs what they 
 wear these become the questions of supreme interest. 
 The personal and social life around them this is the 
 book under constant perusal, and out of this comes that 
 pestiferous conversation which we call gossip. The 
 world is full of it ; and in a million houses, all over this 
 country, nothing is talked of but the personal affairs of 
 neighbors. All personal and social movements and con- 
 cerns are arraigned before this high court of gossip, are 
 retailed at every fireside, are sweetened with approval or 
 12
 
 266 Every-Day Topics. 
 
 embittered by spite, and are gathered up as the com- 
 mon stock of conversation by the bankrupt brains that 
 have nothing to busy themselves with but tittle-tattle. 
 
 The moral aspects of gossip are bad enough. It is a 
 constant infraction of the Golden Rule ; it is full of all 
 uncharitableness. No man or woman of sensibility 
 likes to have his or her personal concerns hawked about 
 and talked about ; and those who engage in this work 
 are meddlers and busybodies who are not only doing 
 damage to others are not only engaged in a most un- 
 neighborly office but are inflicting a great damage upon 
 themselves. They sow the seeds of anger and animosity 
 and social discord. Not one good moral result ever 
 comes out of it. It is a thoroughly immoral practice, 
 and what is worst and most hopeless about it is, that 
 those who are engaged in it do not see that it is immoral 
 and detestable. To go into a man's house, stealthily, 
 when he is away from home, and overhaul his papers, 
 or into a lady's wardrobe and examine her dresses, would 
 be deemed a very dishonorable thing ; but to take up a 
 man's or a woman's name, and besmirch it all over with 
 gossip to handle the private affairs of a neighbor around 
 a hundred firesides why, this is nothing ! It makes con- 
 versation. It furnishes a topic. It keeps the wheels of 
 society going. 
 
 Unhappily for public morals, the greed for personal 
 gossip has been seized upon as the basis of a thrifty 
 traffic. There are newspapers that spring to meet every 
 popular demand. We have agricultural papers, scien- 
 tific papers, literary papers, sporting papers, religious 
 papers, political papers, and papers devoted to every 
 special interest, great and small, that can be named, 
 and, among them, papers devoted to personal gossip. 
 The way in which the names of private men and women 
 are handled by caterers for the public press, the way in
 
 Social Facts, Forces and Reforms. 2G7 
 
 which their movements and affairs are heralded and dis- 
 cussed, would be supremely disgusting were it not morft 
 disgusting that these papers find greedy readers enough 
 to make the traffic profitable. The redeeming thing 
 about these papers is, that they are rarely malicious 
 except when they are very low down that they season 
 their doses with flattery. They find their reward in 
 ministering to personal vanity. 
 
 What is the cure for gossip ? Simply, culture. There 
 is a great deal of gossip that has no malignity in it. 
 Good-natured people talk about their neighbors because, 
 and only because, they have nothing else to talk about. 
 As we write, there comes to us the picture of a family of 
 young ladies. We have seen them at home, we have 
 met them in galleries of art, we have caught glimpses of 
 them going from a bookstore, or a library, with a fresh 
 volume in their hands. When we meet them, they are 
 full of what they have seen and read. They are brim- 
 ming with questions. One topic of conversation is drop- 
 ped only to give place to another, in which they are 
 interested. We have left them, after a delightful hour, 
 stimulated and refreshed ; and during the whole hour not 
 a neighbor's garment was soiled by so much as a touch. 
 They had something to talk about. They knew some- 
 thing, and wanted to know more. They could listen as 
 well as they could talk. To speak freely of a neighbor's 
 doings and belongings would have seemed an imperti- 
 nence to them, and, of course, an impropriety. They 
 had no temptation to gossip, because the doings of their 
 neighbors formed a subject very much less interesting 
 than those which grew out of their knowledge and their 
 culture. 
 
 And this tells the whole story. The confirmed gossip 
 is always either malicious or ignorant. The one variety 
 needs a change of heart and the other a change of pas-
 
 268 Every-Day Topics. 
 
 tore. Gossip is always a personal confession either of 
 malice or imbecility, and the young should not only 
 shun it, but by the most thorough culture relieve them- 
 selves from all temptation to indulge in it. It is a 
 low, frivolous, and too often a dirty business. There are 
 country neighborhoods in which it rages like a pest. 
 Churches are split in pieces by it. Neighbors are made 
 enemies by it for life. In many persons it degenerates 
 into a chronic disease, which is practically incurable. 
 Let the young cure it while they may. 
 
 The Philosophy of Reform, 
 
 It is the habit of men who regard themselves as 
 " radicals," in matters relating to reform, to look upon 
 the Christian and the Christian Church as " conserv- 
 ative," when, in truth, the Christian is the only reformer 
 in the world who can lay a sound claim to radicalism. 
 The Church has lived for eighteen hundred years, and 
 will live until the end of time, because it holds the only 
 radical system of reform in existence, if for no other 
 reason. The greatness of the founder of Christianity is 
 conspicuously shown in his passing by social institu- 
 tions as of minor and inconsiderable importance, and 
 fastening his claims upon the individual. The reform 
 of personal character was his one aim. With him, the 
 man was great and the institution small. There was 
 but one way with him for making a good society, and 
 that was by the purification of its individual materials. 
 There can be nothing more radical than this ; and there 
 never was anything there never will be anything to 
 take the place of it. It is most interesting and in- 
 structive to notice how, one by one, every system of 
 reform that has attempted to "cut under" Christian- 
 ity has died out, leaving it a permanent possessor of the
 
 Social Facts, Forces and Reforms. 269 
 
 field. The reason is that Christianity is radical. There 
 is no such thing as getting below it. It is at the root of 
 all reform, because it deals with men individually. 
 
 We suppose that it is a matter of great wonder to 
 some of our sceptical scientists that Christianity can live 
 for a day. To them it is all a fable, and they look with 
 either contempt or pity upon those who give it their 
 faith and their devoted support. If they had only a 
 little of the philosophy of which they believe themselves 
 to possess a great deal, they would see that no system 
 of religion can die which holds within itself the only 
 philosophical basis of reform. A system of religion 
 which carries motives within it for the translation of bad 
 or imperfect character into a form and quality as divine 
 as anything we can conceive, and which relies upon this 
 translation for the improvement of social and political 
 institutions, is a system which bears its credentials of 
 authority graven upon the palms of its hands. There 
 can be nothing better. Nothing can take the place of 
 it. Until all sorts of reformers are personally reformed 
 by it, they are only pretenders or mountebanks. They 
 are all at work upon the surface, dealing with matters 
 that are not radical. 
 
 It is most interesting and instructive, we repeat, to 
 observe how all the patent methods that have been 
 adopted outside of, or in opposition to, Christianity, for 
 the reformation of society, have, one after another, gone 
 to the wall, or gone to the dogs. A dream, and a few 
 futile or disastrous experiments, are all that ever come 
 of them. Societies, communities, organizations, melt 
 away and are lost, and all that remains of them is their 
 history. Yet the men who originated them fancied that 
 they wore radicals, while they never touched the roots 
 cither of human nature or human society. The most 
 intelligent of those who abjure Christianity have seen
 
 270 Every-Day Topics. 
 
 all this, and have been wise enough not to undertake 
 to put anything in its place. They content themselves 
 with their negations, and leave the race to flounder along 
 as it will. 
 
 We suppose it is a matter of wonder to such men as 
 these that Mr. Moody and Mr. Sankey can obtain such 
 a following as they do. They undoubtedly attribute it 
 to superstition and ignorance, but these reformers are 
 simply eminent radicals after the Christian pattern, 
 who deal with the motives and means furnished them 
 by the one great radical reformer of the world Jesus 
 Christ himself. They are at work at the basis of 
 things. To them, politics arc nothing, denominations 
 are nothing, organizations are nothing, or entirely sub- 
 ordinate. Individual reform is everything. After this, 
 organizations will take care of themselves. No good so- 
 ciety can possibly be made out of bad materials, and 
 when the materials are made good, the society takes a 
 good form naturally, as a pure salt makes its perfect 
 crystal without superintendence. They are proving, 
 day by day, what all Christian reformers have been 
 proving for eighteen centuries, viz., that Christian re- 
 form, as it relates to individual life and character, pos- 
 sesses the only sound philosophical basis that can be 
 found among reforms. Christian reform, with all its 
 motives and methods, is found to be just as vital to-day 
 as it ever was. It is the same yesterday, to-day, and 
 forever. There are a great many dogmas of the Church 
 whose truth, or whose importance, even if true, it would 
 be difficult to prove ; but the great truths, that human- 
 ity is degraded, and can only be elevated and purified 
 by the elevation and purification of its individual con- 
 stituents, are evident to the simplest mind. Men know 
 that they are bad, and ought to be better ; and a mo- 
 tive or a series of motives to reformation, addressed
 
 Social Facts, Forces and Reforms. 271 
 
 directly to this consciousness is not long in achieving 
 results. The radicalism of Christianity holds the secret 
 of revivals, of the stability of the Church, of the growth 
 and improvement of Christian communities. All things 
 that are true are divine. There can be no one thing 
 that is more divinely true than any other thing that is 
 true. Christianity is divine, if for no other reason than 
 that it holds and monopolizes the only radical and phil- 
 osophical basis of reform. The criticisms of all those 
 \vho ignore these facts are necessarily shallow and un- 
 worthy of consideration ^just as shallow and just as 
 worthless, as the dogmatism inside the Church which at- 
 tributes the power of Christianity to those things which 
 are not sources of power at all. Christianity must live 
 and triumph as a system of reform, because it goes to 
 the roots of things, and because, by so doing, it proves 
 itself to be divinely and eternally true. 
 
 The Reconstruction of National Morality. 
 
 A time of war is always a time of corruption. The 
 earnest public is absorbed by public questions and pub- 
 lic movements. Values are shifting and unsettled. Con- 
 tracts are made in haste, and their execution escapes, in 
 the distractions of the time, that scrutiny and criticism 
 which they secure in calmer periods. There are ten 
 thousand chances for undetected frauds at such a time 
 which do not exist in the reign of peace. All the selfish 
 elements of human nature spring into unwonted activity, 
 and the opportunities for large profits and sudden wealth 
 are made the most of This is the case in all climes and 
 countries. America does not monopolize the greed and 
 mendacity of the world. Even in despotic Russia, with 
 Siberia in the near distance and harsher punishments 
 closer at hand, the contractor cannot keep his fingers
 
 2/2 Every-Day Topics. 
 
 from his country's gold. Rank growths of extravagance 
 spring into life ; artificial wants are nourished ; the old 
 economies go out, and the necessities of a new style of 
 living force men into schemes of profit from which they 
 would shrink under other circumstances. The public 
 conscience becomes debauched, and the public tone of 
 morality debased. 
 
 Upon results like these the uncorrupted men look 
 with dismay or despair. Where is it all to end ? The 
 nation is sick from heart to hand ; how can it be cured ? 
 The answer is now, happily, not far to seek. A ring of 
 rogues gets the metropolis into its hands. They rule it 
 in their own interests. Their creatures are in every 
 office. They reach their power out upon the State. 
 With uncounted money, every dollar of which they 
 have stolen, they control elections, bribe legislators, and 
 buy laws that shall protect them and their plunder. 
 They build club-houses, summer resorts, steamboats- 
 all that can minister to their sensual delights, and find 
 multitudes to fawn upon their power and pick up the 
 crumbs of patronage that fall from their tables. But 
 the day of reckoning comes to them, and the boastful 
 leader who defiantly asks, " What are you going to do 
 about it?" runs away. All these men are wanderers, 
 self-exiled. Nay, they are prisoners to all intents and 
 purposes shut out from the only world which has any 
 interest for them. There is not a man in Sing Sing who 
 is not nearer home, who is any more shut away from 
 home, than Tweed and his fellow-conspirators. Cor- 
 ruption, once the courted goddess of New York City, is 
 not to-day in the fashion. So much, at least, has been 
 done. 
 
 If we look out upon the country, we shall find the 
 process of reformation going on. A gigantic interest, 
 baleful in every aspect, pits itself against the demands
 
 Social Facts^ Forces and Reforms. 273 
 
 of the Government for revenue. Men who have held 
 good positions in business circles stand confessed as 
 cheats, tricksters, scoundrels. The whiskey rings that 
 have defrauded the Government in untold millions are 
 falling to pieces under the steady pressure of exposure, 
 and stand revealed in all their shameful shamelessness. 
 They appear before the bar of law and public opinion 
 and plead guilty in squads almost in battalions. And 
 still the work goes on. Still, in the nature and tendency 
 of things, it must go on, till all these festering centres of 
 corruption are cauterized and healed. So with the Canal 
 Ring, and so with corporation rings of all sorts all over 
 the country. The tendencies of the time are toward 
 reform. The attention of the country is crowded back 
 from illegitimate sources of profit upon personal econ- 
 omy and healthy industry. It is seen, at least, that cor- 
 ruption does not pay, and that, in the end, it is sure of 
 exposure. 
 
 There is another set of evils that have grown naturally 
 out of the influences of the war. Petty peculations have 
 abounded. Wages have been reduced, and those em- 
 ployers in responsible positions, whose style of living 
 has been menaced or rendered impossible by the reduc- 
 tion of their means, have been over-tempted to steal, or 
 to attempt speculation with moneys held and handled in 
 trust. Thief after thief is exposed, many of them men 
 whose honesty has been undoubted, until all who are 
 obliged to trust their interest in the hands of others 
 tremble with apprehension. But this is one of those 
 things which will naturally pass away. Every exposure 
 is a terrible lesson not only to employers, but to the 
 employed. The former will be careful to spread fewer 
 temptations in the way of their trusted helpers, by hold- 
 ing them to a closer accountability, and the latter will 
 learn that every step outside the bounds of integrity is
 
 274 Every -Day Topics. 
 
 sure of detection in the end ; that the path of faithful- 
 ness is the only possible path of safety and of peace. 
 This is not the highest motive to correct action, it is 
 true, but it will answer for those who are tempted to 
 steal, and who are not actuated by a better. 
 
 It will be evident that we are not alarmed or dis- 
 couraged by the exposure of rascality in high places 
 and low, which greet our eyes in almost every morning's 
 newspaper. These exposures are the natural product 
 of healthy reaction, the preliminary steps toward the 
 national cure. So long as fraud, peculation, and defec- 
 tion exist, the faster these exposures come the better. 
 Every exposure is a preacher of righteousness, an evan- 
 gel of reform. The more dangerous all rascality and 
 infidelity to trust can be made to appear, the better for 
 society. In any cutaneous disease, the more we see of 
 it the better. It is before it appears, or when it is sunk 
 from the surface, that it is most dangerous to the sources 
 of life and the springs of cure. 
 
 Double Crimes and Oxe-Sided Laws. 
 
 A little four-page pamphlet has recently fallen into 
 our hands, entitled " Crimes of Legislation." Who wrote 
 it, or where it came from, we do not know ; but it 
 reveals a principle so important that it deserves more 
 elaborate treatment and fuller illustration. These we 
 propose to give it, premising, simply, that the word 
 " crimes" is a misnomer, as it involves a malicious de- 
 sign which does not exist. "Mistakes in Legislation" 
 would be abetter title. 
 
 There are two classes of crimes. The first needs but 
 one actor. When a sneak-thief enters a hall and steals 
 and carries off an overcoat, or a man sits in his count- 
 ing-room and commits a forgery, or a ruffian knocks a
 
 Social Facts, Forces and Reforms. 275 
 
 passenger down and robs him, he is guilty of a crime 
 which does not necessarily need a confederate of any 
 sort. The crime is complete in itself, and the single 
 perpetrator alone responsible. The second class of 
 crimes can only be committed by the consent or active 
 aid of a confederate. When a man demands, in contra- 
 vention of the usury laws, an exorbitant price for the 
 use of money, his crime cannot be complete without the 
 aid of the man to whom he lends his money. When a 
 man sells liquor contrary to the law, it involves the con- 
 sent and active co-operation of the party to whom he 
 makes the sale. He could not possibly break the law 
 without aid. The same fact exists in regard to a large 
 number of crimes. They are two-sided crimes, and 
 necessarily involve two sets of criminals. 
 
 In the face of these facts, which absolutely dictate 
 discriminative legislation that shall cover all the guilty 
 parties, our laws have, with great uniformity, been one- 
 sided for the double crime as well as for the single. 
 The man who lends money at usurious rates is ac- 
 counted the only guilty party in the transaction. The 
 borrower may have come to him with a bribe in his 
 hand to induce him to break the law may have been 
 an active partner in the crime and still the lender is 
 the only one accounted guilty and amenable to punish- 
 ment. The man who sells intoxicating liquors contrary 
 to law could never sell a glass, and would never buy 
 one to sell, but for the bribe outhcld in the palm of 
 his customer ; yet the law lays its hand only upon the 
 seller. 
 
 Now, if we look into the history of these one-sided 
 laws for double crimes, we shall learn that they are 
 precisely those which we find it almost, or quite, im- 
 possible to enforce ; and it seems never to have been 
 suspected that, so long as they are one-sided, there is
 
 2/6 Every -Day Topics. 
 
 a fatal flaw in them. Our legislators have seemed to 
 forget that, if liquor is not bought, it will not be sold ; 
 that if usurious rates for money are not tendered, they 
 cannot possibly be exacted ; that if irregular or contin- 
 gent fees are not offered to the prosecutors of real or 
 doubtful claims, the prosecutors are without a motive to 
 irregular action. So powerful is the sympathy of con- 
 federacy in crime between these two parties, although the 
 confederacy is not recognized by law, that it has been 
 almost impossible to get convictions. The rumbuyer 
 will never, if he can help it, testify against the rum- 
 seller. Unless the victim of the usurer is a very mean 
 man, he will keep his transactions to himself. It is 
 really, among business men, a matter of dishonor for a 
 borrower to resort to the usury law to escape the pay- 
 ment of rates to which he had agreed, and it ought to 
 be. 
 
 Usury is a double crime, if it is a crime at all. Rum- 
 selling contrary to law is a double crime, and no pro- 
 hibitory law can stand, or even ought to stand, that 
 does not hold the buyer to the same penalties that it 
 holds the seller. The man who bribes the seller to 
 break the law is as guilty as the seller, and if the law 
 does not hold him to his share of accountability, the 
 law cannot be respected and never ought to be respected. 
 It is a one-sided law, an unfair law, an unjust law. Men 
 who are not able to reason it out, as we are endeavoring 
 to do here, feel that there is something wrong about it ; 
 and it is safe to predict that, until the moral sentiment 
 of a State is up to the enactment of a two-sided law that 
 shall cover a two-sided crime, no prohibitory law will 
 accomplish the object for which it was constituted. 
 
 Prostitution is one of the most notable, and one of 
 the most horrible of the list of double crimes. It is 
 always a double crime by its nature ; yet, how one-
 
 Social Facts^ Forces and Reforms. lyj 
 
 sided arc the laws which forbid it ! Is a poor girl, who 
 has not loved wisely, and has been forsaken, the only 
 one to blame when beastly men press round her with 
 their hands full of bribes enticing her into a life of in- 
 famy ? Yet she alone is punished, while they go scot 
 free. And yet we wonder why prostitution is so preva- 
 lent, and why our laws make no impression upon it ! 
 Some ladies of our commonwealth have protested 
 against a proposed law for some sort of regulation of 
 prostitution putting it under medical surveillance. And 
 they are right. If men who frequent houses of prosti- 
 tution are permitted to go forth from them to scatter 
 their disease and their moral uncleanness throughout 
 a pure community, then let the women alone. In a 
 case like this, a mistake of legislation may amount to a 
 crime. We do not object to medical surveillance, but 
 it should touch both parties to the social sin. No law 
 that does not do this will ever accomplish anything 
 toward the cure of prostitution. We have some respect 
 for Justice when she is represented blindfold, but when 
 she has one eye open and that one winking she is 
 a monster. 
 
 Our whole system of treating double crimes with one- 
 sided laws, our whole silly policy of treating one party 
 to a double crime as a fiend, and the other party as an 
 angel or a baby, has been not only inefficient for the 
 end sought to be obtained, but disastrous. The man 
 who offers a bribe to another for any purpose which in- 
 volves the infraction of a law of the State or nation is, 
 and must be, an equal partner in the guilt ; and any law 
 which leaves him out of the transaction is utterly un- 
 just on the face of it. If it is wrong to sell liquor, it is 
 wrong to Iniy it, and wrong to sell because, and only be- 
 cause, it is wrong to buy. If prostitution is wrong, it is 
 wrong on both sides, and he who offers a bribe to a weak
 
 2/8 Every-Day Topics. 
 
 woman, without home or friends or the means of life, ta 
 break the laws of the State, shares her guilt in equal 
 measure. Law can never be respected that is not just. 
 No law can be enforced that lays its hand upon only 
 one of the parties to a double crime. No such law ever 
 was enforced, or ever accomplished the purpose for 
 which it was enacted ; and until we are ready to have 
 double laws for double crimes, we stultify ourselves by 
 our unjust measures to suppress those crimes. Our wit- 
 nesses are all accomplices, the moral sense of the com- 
 munity is blunted and perverted, and those whom we 
 brand as criminals look upon our laws with contempt 
 of judgment and conscience. 
 
 The Better Times. 
 
 We were much impressed by a recent remark, attribu- 
 ted to Governor Morgan, that under certain circum- 
 stances, which were mentioned, but which it is not 
 necessary to recall, he did not see why the American 
 people could not enjoy a period of prosperity lasting ten 
 or twelve years. That which impressed us was the rec- 
 ognition, by an experienced business head, of the peri- 
 odicity of prosperity in this country. We go headlong 
 into business from a period of depression, run a certain 
 round, and then down we go again, to rise and fall in- 
 definitely in the same way. That has been the history 
 of American business as far back as we can remember. 
 The question never seems to arise whether this periodicity 
 is necessary, or can be avoided ; but every time we work 
 up to a crash to a great and wide-spread financial dis- 
 aster from which we slowly recover, again to repeat 
 the old mistakes, and receive the accustomed punish- 
 ment. 
 
 Is this lamentable periodicity necessary ? We cann(>t
 
 Social Facts^ Forces and Reforms. 279 
 
 believe that it is. When we suffer as a community, it 
 is because, as a community, we have done wrong. When 
 legitimate business is properly done, and not improperly 
 overdone ; when credits are not illegitimately extended, 
 and speculation is not indulged in ; when public and cor- 
 porate trusts are managed without corruption ; when 
 true economy is practised in public and private life, a 
 great financial calamity, or crash, is simply impossible. 
 What Governor Morgan, or any other wise and observ- 
 ing man, foresees as one of the consequences of the 
 revival of business, is a development of the spirit of 
 speculation, a growth of fictitious values, an over-pro- 
 duction of manufactures, a multiplication of middle- 
 men, a wide extension of credit, a feverish thirst for 
 large profits, a stimulation of extravagant habits, an in- 
 creasing love of luxury. There is but one natural and 
 inevitable end to all these, and that is disaster. It 
 comes just as naturally as death follows a competent 
 poison. There is no mystery about it whatever ; and 
 the strange thing is, that a nation of men are so much 
 like a nation of children that it will not learn. 
 
 The better times for which we have waited so long 
 that we had almost become hopeless, seem to have 
 dawned at last. Business has revived. The spindles 
 whirl again ; the merchant has his customers ; once more 
 that which is produced finds a ready market ; and once 
 more there is labor for the workman, and bread and 
 clothing and shelter for the labor. After the terrible 
 lesson we have received, it is a good time to talk about 
 the future. Are we to go on again in the old way, and 
 fill up, within a limited period of years, the old measure 
 of foolishness, and tumble again into the old conse- 
 quences ? 
 
 It is not necessary that we should do so. We have, 
 from sheer necessity, begun to be economical. Let us
 
 2 So Every -Day Topics, 
 
 continue so. Let us build smaller houses ; let us furnish 
 them more modestly ; let us live less luxuriously ; let us 
 tune all our personal and social life to a lower key. We 
 have bravely begun reform in public and corporate af- 
 fairs. Let us continue this, and vigilantly see to it that 
 our trusts are placed in competent and honest hands. 
 We are committed to a reform in the civil service a 
 reform which will extinguish the trade of politics that 
 has done so much to debauch and impoverish the coun- 
 try. Let us see to it that this reform is thoroughly ef- 
 fected. Our cobble-houses have tumbled about our ears ; 
 let us not rebuild them. Our speculations lie in ruin, 
 with the lives and fortunes they have absorbed. Our 
 fictitious values have been extinguished ; let us not try 
 to relight the glamour that made them. Our long cred- 
 its and our depreciated currency have wrought incalcu- 
 lable evils ; let us not continue them. Let us cease to 
 deal in paper lies, and pay in gold our honest debts. 
 Above all, let us be content with modest gains, cease 
 trying to win wealth in a day, and get something out of 
 life besides everlasting work and worry. Fully one-half 
 of our wants are artificial, and these terrible struggles 
 for money are mainly for the supply of wants that we 
 have created. 
 
 A great many people, as the better times come on, 
 will pull from their hiding-places the worthless securi- 
 ties, or insecurities, which they were once tempted to 
 buy, and which now are not worth the paper they were 
 printed on. They will lament that they had not invested 
 their money in what they knew to be safe, rather than in 
 that which seemed to be safe, but which promised a 
 large return. The worthless railroad bonds and manu- 
 facturing stocks that now lumber the coffers of the rich 
 and poor alike will serve as mementoes of the popular 
 folly, and as grave and impressive lessons for the future.
 
 Social Facts, Forces and Reforms. 281 
 
 Those who invested for income are without their income, 
 and regret, when it is too late, that they were tempted 
 by a large promised percentage to forsake the path of 
 safety. The Government bond went abroad for a buyer, 
 and is good to-day. The railroad bond was bought at 
 home, and is good for nothing. 
 
 And now, when money is beginning to be made again, 
 is the time for a resolve to be also made that something 
 shall always be sacrificed to security that for safety's 
 sake, the large return shall be renounced, and the mod- 
 est return accepted. The time for building railroads on 
 bonds, for the benefit of rings and directors and con- 
 tractors, we trust has passed away. The time for mul- 
 tiplying machinery beyond the wants of the country has 
 also passed, else our people are quite foolish enough to 
 deserve all the disaster that will follow a recurrence to 
 the old policy. Let every man try to do a safe, legiti- 
 mate business, live within his income, and invest his 
 profits in genuine securities, and there is no reason why 
 our prosperity may not be permanent. 
 
 Indications of Progrkss. 
 
 To the eye of experience, there is always something 
 pathetic in the hopeful and self-confident energy with 
 which a young man of generous impulses and purposes 
 strikes out into life. With faith in God, faith in him- 
 self, faith in human progress, faith in the influences and 
 instrumentalities of reform, he goes to his work deter- 
 mined upon leaving the world a great deal better than 
 he found it. He throws himself into his enterprises with 
 zeal and abandon, and, after twenty or twenty-five years, 
 wakes up to a realization of the fact that the world has 
 not been very greatly improved by his efforts, and that 
 it is not very likely to be improved by them. He has
 
 282 Every -Day Topics. 
 
 arrested no great tide of iniquity, he has not enlightened 
 the hiding-places of ignorance, he has not resuscitated the 
 dead, he has not righted the wrong. If not utterly dis- 
 couraged, he goes on with his work because he loves it, 
 because it seems to be his duty to do so, or, because, after 
 all his lack of success, his faith in progress refuses to be 
 killed, though " the good time coming " slinks away from 
 his vision, among the shadows that brood over the future. 
 To help such men as these, and all those who profess 
 to believe that the world is growing worse, rather than 
 better, it is well, once in a while, to call attention to the 
 indications of progress. The first that present them- 
 selves to one engaged in literary pursuits are those re- 
 lating to the moral tone of literature. How often we are 
 called upon in these days to apologize for the indecencies 
 of the older writers ! How threadbare has become the 
 plea that they represented their time ! We do not doubt 
 that Rabelais could once have been tolerated in what was 
 regarded as decent society, but no one can read him 
 now without a handkerchief at his nose. Sterne was 
 very funny and he was very nasty so nasty that no 
 father of to-day would dare to read him to his daughters. 
 Fielding, "the father of English fiction," would, if he 
 were living to-day, be shunned by his children. What 
 sort of a figure would Matthew Prior make in the litera- 
 ture produced in 1877 ? Why, the indecent poet of to- 
 day is obliged to publish his own books ! No respect- 
 able publisher will contaminate his shelves, even with 
 his name. It matteis little how many dramas Tennyson 
 may write in these latter days, or how much he may at- 
 tempt to give them the ancient form and flavor they 
 will always lack one element that of indelicacy. He 
 leaves coarseness, indecency, the double entente, forever 
 behind. They belonged to another age, and all these 
 facts show that we have made a great advance.
 
 Social Fads, Forces and Reforms. 283 
 
 Owing mainly to the wretched assumptions of dog- 
 matic theology and the presumptions of priestly power, 
 the literary men and women of former days were scoff- 
 ersopen, aggressive, defiant enemies of Christianity. 
 Now, although there is lamentation on every side that our 
 greatest literary producers are wanting in faith that they 
 withhold their affectionate and trustful allegiance to the 
 Christian religion, and regard the Church as the conser- 
 vator of a great mass of superstitions, the scoffers are 
 few. We do not believe there was ever a time when the 
 great majority of literary men and women held so kindly 
 an attitude toward the Christian faith as they hold to- 
 day. They are recognizing the fact that there is some- 
 thing in it a very powerful something in it, some- 
 where and something in it for them, if they could but 
 clear it of its husks, and fmd the divine meat and mean- 
 ing of it. They feel their lack of faith to be a misfortune. 
 Now, the difference between this attitude and that of 
 such a man, say, as Voltaire, or Thomas Paine, marks 
 a great advance. We still have Bradlaughs, it is true ; 
 but, though we tolerate them, and listen to them, they 
 have a very shabby following. 
 
 The changes that have occurred in the Church itself 
 are very remarkable evidences of progress. For the last 
 three hundred years the world has carried on an organ- 
 ized rebellion against priestcraft, and has been slowly 
 but surely releasing itself from slavery. The supersti- 
 tion of witchcraft has departed from it. It is true that 
 we still try men for heresy, and tie their legs with creeds, 
 but the followers of Calvin do not burn the descendants 
 of Servelus. They " suspend" them " from the minis- 
 try" a mode of hanging wliich is not only quite harm- 
 less, but rather honorable than otlicrwisc. The preju- 
 dices between sects have notal)ly been broken down 
 within the last fifty years a result which inevitably fol-
 
 284 Every -Day Topics. 
 
 lowed the decline of belief in the overshadowing and all- 
 subordinating importance of theological formulas. Men 
 are trying to get at the centre and essence of Christianity 
 as they never were trying before ; and they find that the 
 more closely they approach the centre, the more closely 
 they get together. 
 
 In the world's politics, we still have war, but how 
 modified is even this awful relic of barbarism ! How 
 jealous of it has the Christian world become ! How it 
 questions it ! How it strives in a thousand ways to miti- 
 gate its horrors and inhumanities ! What a shout it sends 
 up when two great nations meet and calmly settle by ar- 
 bitration a question which in any previous age would 
 have been a cause of war ! The duel, too, is in dis- 
 grace. Slavery is abolished nearly everywhere on the 
 face of the globe. Prisons have been reformed. The 
 insane, formerly forsaken of man, and supposed to be 
 forsaken of God, arc tenderly cared for by every Chris- 
 tian state. A thousand charities reach out their helpful 
 hands to the unfortunate on every side. The nations are 
 brought every day nearer to one another, in the inter- 
 changes of commerce, and in the knowledge of, and re- 
 spect for, one another. Popular education is augment- 
 ing its triumphs and enlarging its area every day. And 
 this record of improvement is sealed by vital statistics 
 which show that the average duration of human life has 
 been slowly but indisputably increasing from decade to 
 decade. 
 
 The world improves, but it improves as the tree grows, 
 " without observation." The work of one man's life is 
 small when applied to twelve hundred millions of peo- 
 ple, but it tells in the grand result. We discover a great 
 nest of corruption in our Government, and are tempted 
 to despair, but we break it up. There are so many vi- 
 cious men around us that we feel as if the world were go-
 
 Social Facts, Forces and Reforms. 285 
 
 ing to the dogs, yet the recoil and outcry and protest we 
 make show that we are more sensitive to the apprehen- 
 sion of what is bad than we were formerly. The world 
 improves, and the man who cannot see it, and will not 
 see it, has a very good reason for suspecting that there 
 is something morally at fault in himself. 
 
 An Epidemic of Dishonesty. 
 
 It is the habit of the Protestant Christian world to hold 
 what are called " concerts of prayer " for certain objects 
 for colleges, for the spread of Christiantity, for Sun- 
 day-schools, for missions, etc. Indeed, we write this 
 article in what is known as " the week of prayer," every 
 day having assigned to it some special object or subject 
 of petition. There can be no impropriety in this, and we 
 only wish that those who hold the direction of the mat- 
 ter were more ready to see the crying needs of the time 
 as they rise and assert themselves. Just now we arc 
 having a great epidemic of dishonesty. In private life it 
 seems as if we were watching a game of ten-pins. We 
 stand at the head of the alley and see the balls as they 
 rumble down toward the straight-backed fellows at the 
 other end, and there is a ten-stroke every time. Some 
 of the pins stagger about a good deal before they go 
 down, or lean against the " dead wood " for awhile, but 
 they fall at last, and we find that the man whom we 
 don't like is winning the game. 
 
 Men who have held, not only trusts of money, but the 
 faith and confidence of the Christian community, one 
 after another fall from their high positions, bringing ruin 
 not only to themselves, but to all beneath and around 
 them. Some of the very men who have hillicrto been 
 engaged in the concerts of prayer to which we have al- 
 luded are to-day in the state prison. Fiduciaries, fairly
 
 286 Every -Day Topics. 
 
 garlanded with domestic and social affections, standing 
 high upon the church records, and bearing names that 
 were pass-words into the best society, have, one after 
 another, tumbled into infamy. Breaches of trust, prac- 
 tices of fraud, downright thieving pursued through a 
 series of years these have become so common that we 
 expect to find a new case in every morning's paper. In- 
 surance companies are wrecked by their managers ; 
 bankers and brokers "re-hypothecate" securities on 
 which they have loaned money ; city officials steal funds 
 collected from drunkard-makers and run away, and 
 but the story is too familiar and too discouraging and 
 disgusting to be rehearsed in all its details. 
 
 Certainly we have seen enough of these shocking cases 
 of individual crime to become convinced that the public 
 mind is diseased, and that we have an epidemic of dis- 
 honesty. Exactly how it has come to us we cannot tell. 
 We suspect that the paper lie upon which we have lived 
 so many years has had something to do with it ; and now, 
 confirming our opinion concerning the nature and preva- 
 lence of the disease, we are shamed by the most wide- 
 spread and astounding exhibition of the spirit of public 
 repudiation. Every honorable American must hang his 
 head in shame to see not only whole States legislating 
 their debts, or portions of their debts, out of existence, 
 but to see in Congress the Congress of the United States 
 a disposition to tamper with the national honor and the 
 public credit. 
 
 At this present writing the much-talkcd-of silver-bill 
 has not been passed a bill which practically provides 
 for the payment of the public debt at the rate of a little 
 more than ninety cents on the dollar. Nothing but the 
 most stupendous foolishness or the wildest hallucination 
 can prevent any man who is engaged in forwarding this 
 shocking business from seeing that he is sapping the
 
 Social Facts^ Forces and Reforms. 287 
 
 national credit, tainting the national honor, inflicting in- 
 calculable damage upon the business world, and con- 
 victing himself of being a thief. It is profoundly humil- 
 iating to know that there are men enough in Congress 
 who favor this abominable scheme to make it doubtful 
 whether it can be blocked by a presidential veto. To 
 find powerful newspapers, powerful politicians, men who 
 regard themselves as statesmen, whole sections of the 
 country, carried away by this madness nay, rather 
 bearing it boastfully, and insisting that it is not only 
 sound statesmanship, but the highest political honesty 
 is simply astounding. Words can do no justice to the 
 surprise and indignation of the honest patriotism of the 
 country in contemplating this horrible lapse from the 
 national dignity and honor. 
 
 There is one good result that will come of this busi- 
 ness, and as it will come in the form of punishment to 
 those who have tampered with the public credit, it will 
 not be regretted in any quarter that now lifts its voice in 
 protest. There are States that can never borrow any 
 more money. Perhaps it will be well for them that they 
 cannot, but it is quite possible that they may see the 
 time when they will be glad for some purpose to dis- 
 count the future a little. Certainly, the West and South 
 will find it very much harder to borrow money in the fu- 
 ture than they have in the past. This they must expect, 
 so far as foreign capital is concerned, for that capital is 
 very sensitive ; and if New England or New York cap- 
 ital goes West or South for investment, it can only de- 
 mand a ruinous rate of interest, for it can never know 
 when its claims may be repudiated altogether. These 
 States are all paying a higher rate of interest than would 
 be necessary if their credit were good. Nothing is bet- 
 ter understood than the fact that a good, trustwortlr^ 
 security can get money at half the rates that the Wes-
 
 288 Every-Day Topics. 
 
 and South have been paying for years. All sins of repu- 
 diation go home to roost, and if this country should be 
 so base as to undertake to pay its debts at ninety cents 
 on the dollar, it will be obliged to pay more than it will 
 gain by the proceeding the next time it may undertake 
 to borrow money in the markets of the world. Retribu- 
 tion for all wrongs of this kind is as certain as the sun's 
 rising and setting. 
 
 In the meantime, we submit that it would be a good 
 plan to have some concert of action among our Chris- 
 tian communities in regard to preaching down, or pray- 
 ing for the removal of, this awful epidemic of dishonesty. 
 It is certainly important and menacing enough to ae- 
 mand one day in the year before us for its own special 
 treatment. Let the heathen rest for a little. Let dog- 
 matic theology rc3t for a little. Let us hold up in this 
 matter of trying heretics for a week or so, until at least 
 the members of the Church can be trusted with the funds 
 of the church, not to speak of the money of widows and 
 orphans. We say this in no spirit of banter or mockery. 
 We say it because the church has insisted altogether too 
 much on matters that do not at all take hold of charac- 
 ter and life. The head of Christendom is orthodox 
 enough. It is the heart, the character, the life that are 
 heteredox, and until these are reached in the way that 
 they are not reached now, and have not been reached 
 for years, our epidemic will continue and settle down 
 into a national disease like the goitre in Switzerland and 
 leprosy in Arabia. 
 
 Familiarity. 
 
 Of all the sources of bad manners, we know of none 
 so prolific and pernicious as the license of familiarity. 
 There is no one among our readers, we presume, who 
 has not known a village or a neighborhood in which all
 
 Social Facts^ Forces and Reforms. 289 
 
 the people called one another by their first or Chris- 
 tian names. The " Jim," or " Charley," or " Mollie," or 
 " Fanny," of the young days of school-life, remain the 
 same until they totter into the grave from old age. Now, 
 there may be a certain amount of good-fellowship and 
 homely friendliness in this kind of familiar address, but 
 there is not a particle of politeness in it. It is all very 
 well, within a family or a circle of relatives, but when it 
 is carried outside, it is intolerable. The co-utesies of 
 life are carried on at arm's length, and no*^ n a familiar 
 embrace. Every gentleman has a right to the title, at 
 least, of " Mister," and every lady to that of " Miss " or 
 "Mistress," even when the Christian name is used. 
 For an ordinary friend to address a married woman as 
 " Uolly " or " Mary," is to take with her an unpardon- 
 able liberty. It is neither courteous nor honorable ; in 
 other words, it is most unmannerly. We have known 
 remarkable men, living for years under the blight of 
 their familiarly used first names men whose fortunes 
 would have been made, or greatly mended, by removing 
 to some place where they could have been addressed 
 with the courtesy due to their worth, and been rid for- 
 ever of the cheapening processes of familiarity. How can 
 a man lift his head under the degradation of being called 
 "Sam" by every man, young and old, whom he may 
 meet in the street? How can a strong character be car- 
 ried when the man who bears it must bow decently to 
 the name of" Billy? " 
 
 This is not a matter that we have taken up to sport 
 with. We approach it and regard it with all seriousness, 
 for this feeling and exhibition of familiarity lie at the 
 basis of the worst manners of the American people. We 
 arc not asking, specially, for reverence for age or high 
 position, but for manhood and womanhood. The man 
 and woman who have arrived at their majority have a- 
 13
 
 290 Every-Day Topics. 
 
 right to a courteous form of address, and he who with- 
 holds it from them, or, presuming upon the intimacies 
 of boyhood, continues to speak to them as still boy and 
 girl, is a boor, and practically a foe to good manners. 
 We suppose the Friends would object to this statement, 
 but we do not intend to embrace them in this condemna- 
 tion. They look at this matter from a different stand- 
 point, and base their practice upon certain considera- 
 tions which have no recognition in the world around 
 them. We think they are mistaken, but their courteous 
 way of speaking the whole of the first name is very dif- 
 ferent from the familiar use of names and nicknames of 
 which we complain. There is no use in denying that 
 the free and general use of first names, among men and 
 women, in towns and neighborhoods, is to the last de- 
 gree vulgar. Gentlemen and ladies do not do it. It is 
 not a habit of polite society, anywhere. 
 
 There is a picture we have often contemplated, which 
 would impress different men in different ways, of a 
 family now living in this city a picture which is, to us, 
 very beautiful and very suggestive. A gentleman of the 
 old school, somewhat reduced in circumstances, persists 
 in living, so far as his manners are concerned, "like a 
 king." Every night he and his sons, before dining, put 
 themselves into evening dress. When dinner is an- 
 nounced, the old gentleman gives his arm to his vener- 
 able wife and leads her to the table. The other mem- 
 bers of the family preserve the same manners that they 
 would practise if they were dining out, or if friends were 
 dining with them. At the close of the meal, the old 
 man and his sons rise, while the mother and daughters 
 withdraw, and then they sit down over their cups, and 
 have a pleasant chat. Now, the average American will 
 probably laugh at this picture, as one of foolish and 
 painful formality, but there is a very good side to it
 
 Social Facts ^ Forces and Reforms. 291 
 
 Here is a family which insists on considering itself made 
 up of ladies and gentlemen, among whom daily associa- 
 tion is no license for familiarity, or the laying aside of 
 good and constantly respectful manners toward one 
 another. There is undoubtedly a great deal of bad 
 manners in families, growing out of the license engen- 
 dered by familiarity bad manners between husband 
 and wife, and between parents and children. Parents 
 are much to blame for permitting familiarity to go so far 
 that they do not uniformly receive, in courteous forms, 
 the respect due to them from their children as gentlemen 
 and ladies. 
 
 Of the degrading familiarity assumed by conscious in- 
 feriors, it is hardly necessary to speak. Nothing cures 
 such a thing as this but the snub direct, in the most 
 pointed and hearty form in which it can be rendered. 
 
 " The man that hails you ' Tom ' or ' Jack," 
 And proves by thumps upon your back 
 
 How he esteems your merit, 
 Is such a friend that one had need 
 Be very much his friend, indeed, 
 To pardon or to bear it." 
 
 Men do pardon and bear this sort of thing altogether 
 too much for their own peace, and the best good of the 
 transgressors. The royal art of snubbing is not suffi- 
 ciently understood and practised by the average Ameri- 
 can gentleman and lady. Considering the credit our 
 people have for boldness and push, they yield to the 
 familiar touch and speech of the low manners around 
 them altogether too tamely. Every gentleman not only 
 owes it to himself to preserve his place and secure the 
 courtesy that is his by right, but he owes it to society 
 that every aggressive, bad-mannered man shall be 
 taught his place, and be compelled to keep it.
 
 292 Every-Day Topics. 
 
 Social Needs and Social Leading. 
 
 The social potentialities of the average American vil- 
 lage are quite beyond any man's calculation. It would 
 be difficult to find any village in the country which has 
 not the materials and the forces of the best civilization 
 and culture. If these forces and these materials were 
 not under restraint if they were only free to follow their 
 natural impulses and courses, there would be universal 
 progress. The fact, however, is that almost universally 
 the agencies concerned in raising the social life of a 
 community are, for various reasons, held in check, or 
 altogether repressed. 
 
 Let us try to paint a typical village. It shall consist, 
 say, of a thousand people, more or less. The village has 
 its two or three little churches, and these have their pas- 
 tors^men of fair education and faultless morals. Still 
 further, the village has one or two physicians and a law- 
 yer. In addition to these, there is the postmaster, who 
 is usually a man of activity and influence ; there is the 
 rich man of the village ; there are the three or four men 
 who are only less rich than he ; there are the young, 
 well-educated families of these well-to-do people ; there 
 are a dozen women who are bright in intellect, and who 
 read whatever they can lay their hands on ; there is a 
 fair degree of worldly prosperity, and the schools are 
 well supported. One would say that nothing is needed 
 to make it a model village full of the liveliest and 
 brightest social life, and possessing all the means and 
 institutions of intellectual culture and progress. To re- 
 peat a phrase with which we began, the social potentiali- 
 ties of the village are incalculable. All the agencies, 
 and materials and appurtenances for a beautiful social 
 life and growth seem to exist, yet the fact probably is 
 that the village is socially dead.
 
 Social Facts^ Forces and Reforms. 293 
 
 If we look into the condition of things, we shall find 
 that the little churches are, through their very littleness 
 and weakness, jealous of each other ; that their pastors 
 are poor and are kept upon a starving intellectual diet ; 
 that the doctors and the lawyer are absorbed in their 
 professions ; that the rich men are bent upon their 
 money-getting and money-saving, and that all the young 
 people are bent upon frivolous amusements. The vil- 
 lage has no public library, no public hall, no public 
 reading-room, no lyceum, no reading-clubs, no literary 
 clubs, and no institutions or instituted means for foster- 
 ing and developing the intellectual and social life of the 
 villagers. 
 
 We have seen exactly this condition of things in a vil- 
 lage many times, and we have seen, under all these 
 possibilities and the hard facts of apparent indifference 
 or social inertia associated with them, a universal desire 
 for something better. We have seen churches ashamed 
 of their jealousies and the meagre support accorded to 
 their ministers. We have seen young people dissatis- 
 fied with their life, and wishing that it could be changed, 
 and we have seen our dozen of bright, reading women 
 ready and longing to make any sacrifice for the produc- 
 tion of a better social atmosphere. Nay, wc believe that 
 the average American village is ready for improvement 
 ready to be led. 
 
 The best social leading is the one thing lacking. Some- 
 times it does not need even this only some fitting oc- 
 casion that shall bring people together, and reveal the 
 under harmonies which move and the sympathies which 
 bind them. The probabilities are that there is not a vil- 
 lage in America that needs anything more than good 
 le.iding to raise its whole social and intellectual life in- 
 c;il(;ulal>ly. The village that is most dead and ho})eless 
 needs but one harmonizing, unselfish, elevated will to
 
 294 Every- Day Topics. 
 
 lead and mould it to the best life and the best issues. 
 We cannot illustrate this power of leading better than by 
 citing the results of the recent mode of raising church 
 debts. One of the two or three men who have become 
 famous for raising church debts goes into a pulpit in the 
 morning and stands before a bankrupt congregation. 
 He is told before he enters the building that every eiifort 
 has been made to raise the debt, but in vain ; that, in- 
 deed, the people have not the money, and could not 
 raise the required sum if they would. Yet, in two hours 
 every dollar is subscribed, and the whole church sits 
 weeping in mute and grateful surprise. No advantage 
 whatever has been taken of them. They have simply, 
 under competent leading, done what they have all along 
 wanted to do, and what they have known it was their 
 duty to do. 
 
 Any man who has ever had anything to do in organiz- 
 ing the social life of a village has, we venture to say, been 
 surprised, amid what seemed to be universal stagnation, 
 to find how general was the desire for reform. Every- 
 body has been ready. All were waiting for just the right 
 man to set them going, and he only needed to say the 
 word, or lift and point the finger. 
 
 It is not necessary to break up any legitimate family 
 feeling that may exist in churches, or to interfere with 
 social cliques and " sets," or to break down any walls 
 between classes. We talk now only of the general so- 
 cial and intellectual life which brings people together in 
 common high pursuits, and gives a village its character 
 and influence. It is only from this life that a strong and 
 efficient public spirit can come. A village must hold a 
 vigorous general life outside of sects and cliques and 
 parties, before it can make great progress, and it is as- 
 tonishing how quickly this life may be won by the righJ- 
 leading.
 
 Social Fads, Forces and Reforms. 295 
 
 We write this article simply to call the attention of 
 that resident, or those residents of any village, who will 
 naturally read it, to their own duty in this matter. The 
 chances are that they live in a village whose life is split 
 into petty fragments, and devoted to selfish, or frivolous, 
 or brutal pursuits. We assure them that all the people 
 need is good leading, and that there must be one among 
 them who has the power in some good degree of leading, 
 organizing, and inspiring a united and better life. It is 
 not an office in which personal ambition has any legiti- 
 mate place that of social leadership. Any man who 
 enters upon it with that motive mistakes his position, and 
 hopelessly degrades his undertaking. But wherever there 
 is a sluggish social life, or none at all that is devoted to 
 culture and pure and elevating pursuits, somebody and 
 it is probably the one who is reading this article is neg- 
 lecting a duty, from which he is withheld, most probably, 
 by modesty. We assure him that if he is really fit for 
 his work, he will find an astonishing amount of promis- 
 ing material ready and waiting for his hands. 
 
 Marriage as a Test. 
 
 If Nature teaches us anything, it is that the life-long 
 marriage of one woman to one man is her own ordina- 
 tion. The sexes, in the first place, are produced in so 
 nearly equal numbers that provision is made for just 
 this. Then the passion of love makes the one woman 
 and the one man supremely desirable to each other, so 
 that to the man or the woman moved by it, all men and 
 women, other than the object beloved, are comparatively 
 of no value or attractiveness whatever. It is the supreme 
 desire of a man in love to possess and forever to hold 
 the object of his love. On this passion of love of one 
 man for one woman, and one woman for one man, is
 
 296 Every-Day Topics. 
 
 based the institution of the family, which we regard, in 
 common with the mass of society, as the true social unit. 
 It seems to us that nothing can be more demonstrable 
 than that the family which grows out of what we call 
 Christian marriage is, in all ways, better adapted to 
 secure safety, comfort, happiness, and morality to the 
 community, than any substitute that was ever tried or 
 was ever imagined. The consummation of love is the 
 production of offspring. The family is the institution 
 which protects and rears within an atmosphere of nat- 
 ural affection the children born of love. The care and 
 support of children are thus in the family brought upon 
 the hands of those who are responsible for their intro- 
 duction into life. 
 
 We call this Christian marriage, and the family a 
 Christian institution ; but, in establishing these institu- 
 tions as such, Christianity has done nothing more than 
 to re-enact laws of nature written with great plainness. 
 The growth of the family is as natural as the growth of 
 a plant. Mutual love, whose supreme motive is mutual 
 possession, ultimates in the production of offspring, 
 whom it is a joy to rear under a separate roof, subject to 
 the economies of a home. It is in a home constituted 
 in this way that the human virtues are best cultivated, 
 that the finer affections are most naturally developed, 
 and that those attachments are formed and those senti- 
 ments engendered which make life a beautiful and sig- 
 nificant thing. The associations of the family and home, 
 in which a man is reared, are the most inspiring that he 
 knows ; and a man whose childhood knew no home, 
 knows and feels that he has lost or missed one of the 
 great satisfactions and one of the most sweetening and 
 uplifting influences of his life. The history of millions 
 of human lives stands ready to attest the salutary influ- 
 ence of home, and the unnicasurable loss that comes to
 
 Social Facts, Forces and Reforms. 297 
 
 all men who are deprived of it. It is a case past argu- 
 ing. We need only to appeal to the universal conscious- 
 ness. Nothing is better understood, or more widely ad- 
 mitted, than that home, based on the life-long marriage 
 of one woman to one man, and the family that naturally 
 grows out of such a union, is the great conservative in- 
 fluence of the world's best society. Its government, its 
 nurture, its social happiness, its delightful influences 
 and associations, make it the brightest, loveliest, holiest, 
 divincst thing that grows from any impulse or affection 
 of human nature under the sanctions of Christianity. 
 
 A few days ago we received a letter from a correspon- 
 dent, asking us to do for the Oneida Community what 
 we had permitted a contributor to do for the followers 
 of George Rapp to write, or procure to be written, a 
 complete exposition of its principles and practices. We 
 respectfully decline to do any such thinij. The amount 
 of dirt involved in an exposure of the Oneida Commu- 
 nity's views of marriage and the practices that go with 
 them would forbid the enterprise. This community 
 stands condemned before the world, tried simply by the 
 marriage-test. It revolutionizes the family out of exis- 
 tence. It destroys home, and substitutes for what we 
 know as Christian marriage something which it calls 
 " complex marriage." We know by the phrase some- 
 thing of what it must be, but its abominations are too 
 great to be spread before the general reader. Into sucli 
 a sea of irredeemable nastiness no editor lias a right to 
 lead his readers. 
 
 How remarkable it is that whenever an enthusiast in 
 religion gets new light, and adopts what he considers 
 " advanced views," he almost invariably begins to tam- 
 per with marriage ! In this tampering he always betrays 
 the charlatan, and sufficiently warns all who are tempted 
 to follow him to beware of him. There is no better test 
 13*
 
 2c,8 Every-Day Topics. 
 
 of a new system or scheme of life than its relation to 
 Christian marriage. If it tampers with that it is always 
 bad, and can by no possibility be good. The Shakers 
 form a community built on this rotten foundation. They 
 destroy the family, root and branch. They have no 
 place for love, and enter into a determined and organ- 
 ized fight with the God of Nature, who, by the strongest 
 passions and impulses He has ever implanted in the 
 human soul, has commanded them to establish families 
 and homes. Shakerism is good for nothing if it is not 
 good universally if it ought not to be adopted univer- 
 sally. But universal adoption would be the suicide of a 
 race, and a race has no more right to commit suicide 
 than a man. Besides, the damming of one of the most 
 powerful streams in human nature only sets the water 
 back to cover the banks it was intended to nourish and 
 to drain. It is too late to talk about the superior sanctity 
 of the celibate. We have no faith in it whatever. The 
 vow of chastity simply emphasizes in the mind the pas- 
 sion it is intended, for spiritual reasons, to suppress, and 
 fixes the attention upon it. The Shaker, in denying love 
 to himself and all the hallowed influences that grow out 
 of family and home, gains nothing in holiness, if he do 
 not lose irretrievably. He is the victim of a shocking 
 mistake, and he disgraces himself and his own father 
 and mother by his gross views of an institution before 
 whose purity and beneficence he and his whole system 
 stand condemned. 
 
 Of course we do not need to allude to the Mormon. 
 His views of marriage revealed, of course are simply 
 beastly. But these new schemes of life, religion and 
 philosophy are constantly springing up. It is very dif- 
 ficult for any system of socialism to establish itself with- 
 out tampering with marriage, and one of the best argu- 
 ments against all sorts of communities and phalansteries
 
 Social Facts, Forces a7id Reforms. 299 
 
 and what-nots of that sort, is that the family, as a unit, 
 is unmanageable within them. They can take in and 
 organize a miscellaneous mass of individuals, and pro- 
 vide some sort of a dirty substitute for marriage, but the 
 family bothers them. It is a government within a gov- 
 ernment, that they cannot get along with. So the mar- 
 riage-test is a good one in all cases of the kind. 
 
 Popular Despotism. 
 
 There is a popular theory that a despotism always 
 consists of the arbitary and oppressive rule of the many 
 by one, or a few, and it seems hard for the people to 
 realize that the only despotisms or tryannies that we have 
 in this country are popular. 
 
 We have had recent occasion to observe an instance 
 of this. A gentleman employed, through the head of a 
 Broadway establishment, a paper-hanger for three or 
 four weeks. Now, a paper-hanger does not need to be 
 a man of genius. His papers are selected for him, and 
 he has simply to put them on so that they will remain. 
 There can be, of course, such a thing as a poor paper- 
 hanger, but nobody would ever dream of placing the 
 calling very high in the realm of what is denominated 
 "skilled labor." When the gentleman was called upon 
 to pay the bill, he found that his paper-hanger had been 
 making ten dollars a day. Inquiring into the matter, 
 he ascertained that the man was a "society man." Pro- 
 testing against the injustice of paying to a paper-hanger 
 three or four times as much per diem as he was paying 
 his carpenters and painters, the answer was, that it 
 could not be helped, that the men were bound to- 
 gether and pledged to each other, and nobody could be 
 had to do the work more cheaply. The gentleman, of 
 course, submitted to the robbery, for such it essentiallv
 
 30D Every- Day Topics. 
 
 was. There was not the value of ten dollars a day in 
 the work, and every penny taken over and above the 
 value was an extortion, an abuse of power, an essen- 
 tial outrage and theft. 
 
 Now, if capital were to combine to fix the unjust price 
 of a barrel of flour, or, if any one man could monopo- 
 lize a market and arbitrarily raise the price of the neces- 
 saries of life, and should do this relentlessly, without the 
 slightest reference to intrinic values, our paper-hanger 
 and his brother paper-hangers would very readily under- 
 stand the nature of the case. It is precisely like their own. 
 One has labor to sell, the other has flour and sugar ; and 
 both are guilty of immoral and despotic conduct. Practi- 
 cally, however, there are no combinations of capital for 
 oppressing consumers. Coal companies and railroad cor- 
 porations, in their competitions with each other, make 
 arrangements which they never loyally adhere to and are 
 always breaking ; and speculators, in their struggles with 
 each other, get up " corners " in wheat and other neces- 
 saries of life ; but they are always short-lived, and all 
 honorable business men denounce them. The principle 
 that lies at the basis of all organized attempts to raise 
 the price either of labor or merchandise above that 
 which, in a perfectly free competition, is fixed by the 
 laws of demand and supply, is a principle of despotism, 
 and essential robbery and wrong. This is a despotism 
 or a tyranny practised by the many upon the few a 
 popular despotism. 
 
 Of course, all tyrannies are wrong in their nature, and 
 all tyrannies, being founded in wrong, must be supported 
 by wrong. Tyranny must have its laws and regula- 
 tions. If a high price for a certain kind of work is to 
 be maintained by a society, then that society must keep 
 itself small. The number of apprentices must be lim- 
 ited. The competition must not be free. The wants
 
 Social Facts^ Forces and Reforms. 301 
 
 and interests of the public and the rights of the public 
 are never to be considered. All that is to be consid- 
 ered is the interest, or what seems to be the interest, of 
 the organization. The number of workmen must be 
 kept small, so that the supply can meet the demand 
 with the power to dictate its own arbitary price. In all 
 this action and attitude of the trade-union the public is 
 the sufferer ; but there comes a time when the society 
 becomes despotic upon its own members, and even upon 
 those of the same craft who do not choose to be society 
 men. We have just passed through a period of business 
 depression. There has been no profit in doing business, 
 and men have been glad to get work at any price. But 
 they have not been permitted to work at any price. The 
 laws of the society have forbidden them. They have been 
 driven from their work, forced into strikes that were 
 more foolish and arbitrary and brutal than we can de- 
 scribe, and made to contribute for the support of men 
 who were quite willing to work and earn their living at 
 the market price. Begun in wrong based in wrong 
 what wonder that the end has often been riot, and vio- 
 lence, and bloodshed ! The simple truth is that it is 
 all wrong from beginning to end. No body of men, no 
 guild, no handicraft, has the moral or social right to 
 erect itself into a despotism, and, by a set of rules, shut 
 itself off from the operation of those laws which govern 
 all trade under the rights of a perfectly free competition. 
 Of the effects of that despotism which reduces all ex- 
 cellence to the level of all ignorance and unskilfulness, 
 we do not need to speak. To fix the wages of all men 
 within a society at one figure, is to offer a premium for 
 imbecility, and to strike a crushing blow upon the self- 
 respect and the amour proprc of those who have thouglit 
 it worth while to become better workmen than thcil 
 fellows.
 
 302 Every -Day Topics. 
 
 It is a hard word to say, but the trade-union is a 
 nursery of that monster whose shadow sometimes dark- 
 ens the earth with menace, and which men call " The 
 Commune." Now, nothing so foul, nothing so disgust- 
 ing, nothing so base, nothing so iniquitous and outra- 
 geous, was ever conceived in the womb of time begot- 
 ten of the devil as " The Commune." It can never 
 live in this country for a day. It can never live in any 
 country that has three million land-holders. Its brief 
 reign in France was confined to Paris. It made no more 
 progress among its five million land-owners than fire 
 would make upon the waves of the ocean. Commu- 
 nism in France is dead, and all that we mean to say 
 about it in this connection is, that the trade societies 
 are the natural nurseries of the Commune, and we say 
 this to show the rottenness of their basis. At Pitts- 
 burg the strikers took possession and engaged in the 
 destruction of property not their own, and the materials 
 of the Commune mingled with them as naturally as one 
 stream of water mingles with another. The whole sys- 
 tem that leads to violence like this is necessarily a sys- 
 tem of demoralization. This undertaking to control 
 the labor of a class against the competitions and inter- 
 ests of a whole country, to regulate that labor and its 
 prices in all their details, to reduce and to raise to one 
 standard of reward all the varied degrees of skill and 
 excellence, and to order everything for the benefit of 
 the society as against all other society, even to the exer- 
 cise of hardship upon the members and violence upon 
 all opposing or non-consenting forces, is a most efficient 
 training for the Commune. It tends toward it it pre- 
 pares and educates, or sophisticates the mind for it ; 
 and if our late hard times have in any degree and we 
 believe that they have in a great degree weakened the 
 hold of these societies upon the different trades, let us
 
 Social Facts^ Forces and Reforms. 303 
 
 thank God for at least one great and good result of their 
 coming, and take courage. 
 
 The Social Evil. 
 
 There are some topics which an editor does not like to 
 write upon which the people do not like to read about; 
 but when they relate to a great social danger they are 
 forced on the public attention, and must be discussed 
 with such inoffensivencss of language as may be possi- 
 ble in a frank and forcible treatment of them. The late 
 Grand Jury, which found it in the line of its apprehended 
 duty to recommend the establishment of regulated pros- 
 titution, has forced the topic upon the press, and it 
 must be met and disposed of. 
 
 It is noteworthy that at a time when a most determined 
 effort is making, not only in England, but all over the 
 Continent, for the doing away of the laws which in Eng- 
 land exist under the name of the *' Contagious Diseases 
 Act," and, in other countries, under equally insignificant 
 and innocent titles, there should be widely scattered, but 
 determined efforts to give those laws an asylum in 
 America. There have been as many as three or four 
 attempts to establish regulative laws in Washington, 
 three in New York, one in Cincinnati, one in St. Louis 
 successful, but now repealed one in Pennsylvania, and 
 one in California. These attempts have been initiated 
 and made in various ways. Boards of Health have had 
 something to do with the matter. Committees on Crime 
 and Prison Reports have recommended sucli laws ; and 
 the advocates of the change have sought to accomplish 
 their purposes through legislative enactments and city 
 charters. The presentation of the Grand Jury in tliis 
 city is the latest attempt in tliis direction ; and now, on 
 behalf of common decency and public morality, and on
 
 304 Every-Day Topics. 
 
 behalf of all right-thinking men, and absolutely all wo- 
 men, we beg leave to enter our most emphatic protest. 
 
 We do not question the motives of the Grand Jury 
 There is a class of good men who, apprehending the im- 
 mensity of the social evil, and absolutely hopeless of its 
 cure, have come to the conclusion that the best way is 
 to regulate that which they cannot suppress to recog- 
 nize in law, and regulate by law, a bestial crime which 
 no penalties have been sufficient to exterminate. These 
 men mean well. They embrace in their number many 
 physicians and scientific men. They support their posi- 
 tion by a thousand ingenious arguments ; but the great 
 crowd that stand behind these men silent, watchful, and 
 hopeful ready with votes, ready with money is made 
 up of very different materials, and actuated by very dif- 
 ferent motives. They are men who desire to commit 
 crime with impunity to visit a brothel without danger 
 of apprehension and without danger of infection. They 
 are the cold-blooded, scoffing foes of social purity. 
 There is not one of them who does not desire to have 
 prostitution "regulated" on behalf of his own beastly 
 carcass. 
 
 The effect of these regulative laws on all European so- 
 ciety has been precisely that which, in the nature of the 
 case, might have been anticipated. During the existence 
 of Christian society, all commerce of the sexes outside 
 of the obligations and liberties of Christian marriage, has 
 been regarded and treated as a crime. " Thou shalt 
 not commit adultery " has been transcribed from the 
 tables of stone upon every statute-book of every Christian 
 State. Now^ the very first effect of an instituted at- 
 tempt, on the part of the State, to regulate by law a well- 
 defined crime, not only against the civil but the moral 
 law, is to lower the standard of the public morality. To 
 legalize vice, even to the extent of regulating it as an
 
 Social Facts^ Forces and Reforms. 305 
 
 evil, is to make it in a degree respectable. To regulate 
 a vicious calling carried on only to the everlasting ruin 
 of all who are engaged in it is to recognize it as a call- 
 ing, and legitimize it. We say that the evil effects of this 
 legislation on European society might have been antici- 
 pated by any but the blind. It was in the nature of the 
 case that the tone of the public morality would be low- 
 ered by it. When, added to this terrible result, the 
 people found themselves released from the fear of infec- 
 tion, through the medical supervision of the wretched 
 women whose legitimized calling provided for their bes- 
 tialities, they were ready to accept their new privileges. 
 The morality of Paris, of Brussels, of Berlin, of Vienna 
 of all the great Continental centres has been absolutely 
 honeycombed with sexual corruption. Morality low- 
 ered, increased immunity from danger effected, and the 
 beast in man was let loose to have its own way. The 
 translation of a vice into an evil is the transformation of 
 a thing to be blamed into a thing to be pitied and de- 
 plored. Recognizing that evil as a necessity, we have 
 only to take one more step to make it an ordination of 
 heaven. 
 
 " Well, what would you do ? " inquire the advocates of 
 regulation. " Here is a great evil. We suppress it in 
 one quarter, and it springs to life in another. It has as 
 many heads as Hydra. The diseases which it engenders 
 are poisoning the children who are innocent. They arc 
 reducing the physical tone of the nation, and thus di- 
 minishing the average years of life." Yes, we know all 
 this ; but how do you e.\pect to treat effectually a two- 
 sided crime with one-sided laws ? Who spreads disease 
 among the children, or transmits it to them? The wo- 
 men ? Not at all. It is the class for which you have 
 no law the class which, nine cases in ten, brought the 
 women down to dissolute habits the class which, with
 
 3o6 Every-Day Topics. 
 
 bribes in its hands, makes prostitution as a calling pos- 
 sible. The men go free. You propose to let them go 
 free. For them you have no registration, no medical 
 inspection, no. surveillance, no restraints, and no penal- 
 ties of any sort. The bald injustice of the thing is a 
 temptation to profanity. There is not a woman in the 
 land, bad or good, who does not feel it to be such. To 
 undertake by law to regulate what we call the social evil, 
 is to undertake to provide facility and safety for the 
 overbearing passions of the young, and the incorrigible 
 lecher grown old in his vice. It is practically to dis- 
 courage marriage by debasing the moralities and the 
 respect for woman in which only true marriage is possi- 
 ble. It is to transform American society, socially the 
 most pure of any on the earth, into the semblance and 
 substance of that which prevails in Paris, Vienna, and 
 Berlin. It is indefinitely and immeasurably to increase 
 the moral side of the evil, which you and all good people 
 deplore, by legitimizing it, and by diminishing its physi- 
 cal dangers. The laws you propose would be brush 
 heaped upon a bonfire. 
 
 If we are to have laws, let us have just laws. In the 
 first place, let us not talk about a voluntary crime as a 
 necessary and incurable evil. That is demoralization at 
 the start. In the second place, let us have for all two- 
 sided crimes two-sided laws. Prostitution is a two-sided 
 crime. It is not possible without a confederate or a com- 
 panion. Make the same law for one that you make for 
 the other, and see how long prostitution would last. Do 
 this, and prostitution would be reduced seventy-five per 
 cent, in twenty-four hours. Station a policeman at every 
 brothel. Compel every man who enters to register his 
 name and residence, and report himself to the medical 
 authorities every three days for a month. Provide the 
 same penalties, the same restrictions, the same disgraces
 
 Social Facts, Forces and Reforms. 307 
 
 and painful humiliations for one party that you do for 
 the other, and then see what would come of it. There 
 is something curative in this proposition, because it is 
 indubitably just ; and the reason why prostitution has 
 grown to its alarming dimensions is simply and only be- 
 cause the laws relating to it are unjust. No legislation 
 which takes into consideration only one of the guilty 
 parties can possibly thrive. It never ought to thrive. 
 It is an outrage upon the criminal who is discriminated 
 against. It is an outrage upon the common sense of 
 justice. 
 
 When our grand juries, and our boards of health, 
 and our medical conventions, and our legislators are 
 ready for regulative laws which embrace both parties 
 in the social crime, we shall be with them for such 
 laws will not be simply regulative they will be curative. 
 Until then, we call upon all good people to oppose as 
 they would oppose fire, or plague, or invasion, every at- 
 tempt to give us the regulative laws that have debased 
 all Europe, and from which many of the best Europeans 
 arc trying to release themselves. 
 
 The Popular Wisdom. 
 
 A discussion has recently been brought to a close in 
 The Nineteenth Century, under the title, "A Modern 
 Symposium," on the question : " Is the popular judg- 
 ment in politics more just than that of the higher 
 orders ? " The leading participants in this discussion 
 were Messrs. (iladstone, Crcy, Hutton, Lowe, and Lord 
 Arthur Russell. The most that seems to be proved is 
 that much may be said on both sides, though the pre- 
 ponderance of opinion seems to be on the affirmative 
 side of the cjucstion. Much is made in the discussion of 
 the parliamentary history of the last seventy years, in its
 
 3o8 Every -Day Topics. 
 
 exhibition of the popular judgment upon pohtical mat- 
 ters. After all, Mr. Lowe puts the matter in a nutshell 
 when he says : " Take two persons, one from the lower 
 and one from the higher classes, and propose to them 
 any political question ; which will be likely to give you 
 a right answer, the man who has had some kind of edu- 
 cation, or the man who has not passed beyond a very 
 moderate acquaintance with reading and writing, prob- 
 ably somewhat the worse for wear ? " The massing or 
 multiplication of ignorance can hardly amount to wis- 
 dom. The best men will do the best thinking and the 
 best work. 
 
 We have in this country, as they have in England, the 
 curse of trades-unions, and it seems to us that the man- 
 agement of these in America has pretty conclusively 
 proved that what would be called in England the "lower 
 orders" have the very poorest judgment. Certainly, no 
 educated, intelligent man, or body of men, would pur- 
 sue the course of these men in the management of their 
 interests. Nothing more utterly suicidal can be imag- 
 ined than the policy which inaugurates and perpetuates 
 strikes, and organizes for labor a struggle with capital as 
 its enemy. In the long depression of industrial interests 
 from which this country has suffered, we have seen cap- 
 ital keeping labor employed, sometimes at a loss, never 
 at a profit, and always for the benefit of labor, while 
 labor has quarrelled with its bread and butter. Even 
 imder these extreme circumstances, laborers have struck 
 for higher wages, and compelled the closing of mills and 
 the shutting down of gates ; and when business has re- 
 vived, and capital has at last won its chance for a mod- 
 est remuneration, the most unreasonable demands from 
 labor have made its enterprise a torment. Nothing more 
 unfair than the demands of labor, and nothing more un- 
 wise than its action, can be imagined. Everybody but
 
 Social Facts, Forces and Reforms. 309 
 
 the laborers themselves have seen that they have done 
 themselves harm and not good, and that the result of 
 their policy has been bad upon every interest involved. 
 Certainly we are not to regard the outcome of trades- 
 unions in this country as an evidence of the superiority 
 of the judgment of the common people in politics. Men 
 who manage their own affairs so badly can hardly be re- 
 garded as fit men to guide the state. Men who are in- 
 capable of seeing that other interests besides their own 
 must thrive, or the latter can have no basis of thrift, 
 could not be trusted with legislation. 
 
 We doubt whether there was ever a time in the history 
 of the country when Congress was more a representative 
 of the popular will than at present, and we have good 
 reason to believe that the nation has never seen the time 
 when every good interest was in such dread of Congress 
 as it is at present. If Congress could not meet again 
 for the next five years, there is hardly an interest or a 
 class in the community that would not feel profoundly 
 relieved. The members of both houses have, in so 
 many instances, come from their constituencies so pos- 
 sessed by and charged with crude theories of govern- 
 ment and finance, based in popular ignorance and 
 caprice, that the country at large has no faith in them. 
 The popular estimate of the silver question and the soft 
 money question, in many localities that make themselves 
 felt in Congress, is absolutely dangerous to every politi- 
 cal, commercial and industrial interest. There are mul- 
 titudes to-day who honestly believe that the resumption 
 of specie payments is a great public calamity that an 
 honest dollar is a curse to a poor man^that the poor 
 man is harmed by the fact that a dollar in paper is as 
 good as a dollar in gold. Still the heresy lingers in the 
 popular mind in many localities that money can, by 
 some process, be made cheap, so that by some hocus-
 
 3IO Every -Day Topics. 
 
 pocus the poor man can get hold of it without paying 
 its equivalent for it. They do not reason upon the 
 subject at all. They seem incapable of understanding 
 that no value can be acquired without paying for it, and 
 that a good dollar will buy just as much more of the 
 commodities of life as it is dearer than a " cheap dollar." 
 They have but to look back a few years to the time of 
 cheap money ; their labor, it is true, commanded 
 nominally a large price, but their rent was twice what it 
 is now, and food and clothing were proportionately 
 dearer than they are now ; but this seems to teach them 
 nothing. They seem incapable of comprehending the 
 fact that by an unchangeable law money will command 
 only what it is worth, and will certainly command from 
 them what it is worth. They have an idea that there 
 should be more money when it is the testimony of all 
 who know that the volume of money is quite large 
 enough for all purposes, only it cannot be had without 
 rendering an equivalent for it. It has to be worked for 
 and earned, but when it is acquired it is good money, 
 without any discount, competent to enter the markets of 
 the world on even terms. 
 
 The popular estimate and treatment of the silver ques- 
 tion are as wild as the popular estimate and treatment of 
 the soft money question. The effect that silver was to 
 have upon the laboring man's interests was to be little 
 less than miraculous. It was to increase his debt-paying 
 power. No wise financier could see how this was to be 
 done. Nobody wanted the silver to handle, and nobody 
 wants it now, when he can get gold or paper, but there 
 v.ere sections of the people represented in Congress 
 who believed there was in silver a panacea for their 
 financial ills ; but they have learned that a silver dollar 
 costs as much as any other dollar, and that its coinage 
 does nothing toward putting it into their pockets. So
 
 Social Facts^ Forces and Reforms. 3 1 1 
 
 the dollars which everybody dislikes accumulate in tlic 
 treasury, and go on accumulating, for the business 
 world has no use for them. 
 
 Nearly all these financial schemes have had their 
 birth in ignorant brains, have been adopted by igno- 
 rant people, and pushed in Congress by demagogues 
 fresh from the people, and sworn to the service of those 
 who sent them. These men, representing these people, 
 are the bane and terror of the country, in all its great 
 interests and enterprises. So true is this that the one 
 danger that stands as a menace of all national prosper- 
 ity and safety is Congress. We dread Congress as we 
 do pestilence. It is a stench and an abomination. It 
 was well that the writers of " A Modern Symposium " 
 did not appeal to the present conduct of American af- 
 fairs for evidence of the superiority of the political wis- 
 dom of the common people. They certainly would 
 have appealed in vain. Everything in our history shows 
 us that brains, well cultivated, are needed for govern- 
 ment. In great crises, when the moral element is in- 
 volved, when right and wrong are to be decided upon, 
 and the patriotic sentiment and impulse are to be 
 appealed to, the people can be trusted ; but of the 
 science of government, of true political wisdom, and of 
 the knowledge of political economy, they are as innocent 
 as children, and cannot be trusted to take care of them- 
 selves. 
 
 A Word on Politics. 
 
 As both political parties have at various times declared 
 themselves in favor of a reform in the Civil Service, we 
 shall not be accused of dabbling in party politics by an 
 allusion to the subject. It is true that neither party has 
 shown itself to be in thorough earnest. The men on 
 both sides who run the political machine arc very much
 
 3 1 2 Every -Day Topics. 
 
 averse to this reform. They talk in their organs ver> 
 contemptuously about "doctrinaires," and "impracti- 
 cable schemes," and about the application to democratic 
 institutions of a rule of action transplanted from the mo- 
 narchical and aristocratic government of Great Britain ! 
 
 Those who have read the President's Annual Message, 
 and have carefully considered his somewhat elaborate 
 treatment of this subject, will hardly find anything new 
 or impressive in what we may offer here ; but Presidents' 
 messages are read so little, or so carelessly, that the 
 bread may well be broken to the multitude by other 
 hands. The subject is an easy one to argue. There is 
 no man living who, before an audience of intelligent and 
 non-partisan persons, can justify the old mode of politi- 
 cal appointment to office. Every consideration is against 
 it. The rewarding of party service by the gift of office 
 is, in the first place, a direct corruption of morals in all 
 concerned. It is the patent substitution of a base mo- 
 tive in political work for a patriotic one ; and wherever 
 and in whatever measure it prevails, it degrades pol- 
 itics and debases character, so that the very process 
 of earning office by party work unfits for the public ser- 
 vice with which it seeks to be rewarded. In any fair 
 man's mind, the fact that a man has done some powerful 
 politician's dirty work for the sake of getting an office 
 which has been promised him, would be enough to con- 
 demn him as most unfit to hold any office in the gift of 
 the Government. 
 
 Opposition to Civil Service reform comes only from 
 party politicians who have dirty work to do^and by 
 dirty work we mean simply the work which they are 
 ashamed to do for themselves. How to pay for this 
 work without taking the money out of their own pockets is 
 the question. If there were some other way besides tlie 
 bestowal of public office, they would take the people's
 
 Social Facts, Forces and Reforms. 313 
 
 side of this matter, and we should have the reform fullj 
 and at once. But, in truth, they see no way of getting 
 their own work done except by paying office for it. So 
 they are opposed to the reform, and throw all possible 
 obstacles in its way. In this they are aided, of course, 
 by all their whipper-snappers up and down the land. 
 Let it be understood that the advocates of reform simply 
 ask that the Government shall have the advantage of the 
 same rules of business that are practised and enjoyed 
 by a private man or corporation. No business concern 
 would prosper, or be considered safe for a day, whose 
 affairs were carried on by a set of officials and opera- 
 tives wh ) had received their places, not because of any 
 fitness for their work, but from corrupt considerations 
 of favoritism. The fact that reform is entirely practi- 
 cable is demonstrated by the history of the same reform 
 in Great Britain, where office was formerly bestowed 
 both as a reward of party service and as the gift of per- 
 sonal favoritism. The reform met the same opposition 
 there that it is meeting here ; but it is complete, and all 
 are not only satisfied, but delighted with it. 
 
 It should be remembered, also, in the consideration of 
 this subject, that the effect of " the machine " is not only 
 disastrous to the efficiency of the public business, but 
 tliat it reacts mischievously upon the political life of the 
 country. If there were no such thing as " the spoils of 
 office," a very different set of men would naturally find 
 themselves in possession of the political machinery. It 
 is the base men the men who are open to mercenary 
 considerations, the men who arc after rewards of various 
 sorts, and who are working in the private interest of 
 others as well as themselves who control the primaries, 
 and drive from influence those who cannot become yoke- 
 fellows with political understrappers and gamblers. The 
 great masses of the people are honest, and desire to deal
 
 314 Every -Day Topics. 
 
 honestly with poHtical afifairs ; but they have not at al\ 
 the machinery of pohtics in their hands, and they are led 
 by a set of political tricksters into campaigns the bottom 
 motives of which are utterly base and shameful. Take the 
 last political campaign in New York. The Democratic 
 party was divided on the question simply as to who 
 should control it. It was a fight as to what set of personal 
 influences should have the precedence. The Republican 
 party ran a ticket nominated by the machine a ticket 
 notoriously unpopular, every influence of which would 
 be delivered against Civil Service reform set up and 
 approved by the arch opponent of that reform. That an 
 administration fully committed to this reform should be 
 compelled, for the sake of consolidating its party and 
 keeping it in harmony for its next year's work, to labor 
 for the success of this ticket, was the most disgusting and 
 humiliating dish of political crow that any administration 
 was ever called upon to cat. Voting, in these last years, 
 has become simply a choice of evils. Men have party 
 preferences, and desire to see their party succeed. They 
 find themselves hampered, however, by the machine, 
 with never a good ticket ; and in their votes they nomi- 
 nally approve of men and methods which are offensive or 
 unsatisfactory to them. So true is this, that Mr. Evarts 
 will be obliged to look among the " scratchers," whom 
 he taunted with " voting i:i the air," for the indorsement 
 of that part of the message of his chief which is devoted 
 to the matter of Civil Service reform. 
 
 Congress can do no better work than in keeping alive, 
 by a generous and just appropriation, the Civil Service 
 Commission, established several years ago. It seems 
 that, notwithstanding the practical suspension of the 
 presiding Commission, examinations have been kept up 
 at various points, and especially in New York, with the 
 very happiest results. We say Congress can do no bci
 
 Social Facts^ Forces and Reforms. 315 
 
 ter work than this, for it is in the line of pohtical purity 
 and departmental efficiency. The obstructionists can 
 have no hope that this reform is going backward. They 
 may find a Grant who will grow lukewarm in their favor, 
 or a Conkling to cook crow for his own party, but these 
 will prove to be only temporary advantages. The reform 
 is based upon right. It is on the side of a sound busi- 
 ness policy in public administration. It has the good 
 will of good and unselfish men. It is only opposed by 
 base men by selfish men, who have something to make 
 out of the bestowal of office as a political or personal 
 favor. The people believe in it, and the people will 
 have it if not by this Congress and this administration, 
 then by others, some time and soon. 
 
 A Hopeful Lesson. 
 
 Our Northern people have a great deal of impatience 
 with the manner in which the Southerner treats the 
 negro, and all those who teach or specially befriend him. 
 They cannot appreciate, or admit, the fact that the 
 Southerner can be conscientious in this treatment, and 
 that he may honestly and earnestly believe that he is 
 doing God and his country good service in keeping the 
 negro from his vote, and even bulldozing or shooting 
 him to secure that end. We know that Southern men 
 who stand well in the Church have said, with all hearti- 
 ness and without any apparent question of conscience, 
 that it is better that a negro should be killed than that 
 he should be permitted to vote. That multitudes of 
 them have been killed in order to keep them, and scare 
 others, from the polls, seems to be a notorious fact, that 
 is testified to by innumerable living witnesses. To at- 
 tribute this awful outrage exclusively to inhumanity, 
 brutality, and blood-thirstiness is to fail utterly to ap'
 
 3i(J Every -Day Topics. 
 
 predate the situation. The Southerner is tremendously 
 in earnest in his hatred of the North and its ideas, and 
 in his beUef that to proscribe the negro is to save South- 
 ern society from the greatest peril that can befall it. 
 Love of home, of children, of posterity even, is one of 
 the most powerful motives in the perpetration of wrongs 
 upon the black race which fill the Northern mind with 
 horror and indignation. 
 
 We have a lesson at hand which may perhaps give 
 our Northern people a charitable view of the Southern 
 sentiment, and inspire them with hope of a great and 
 radical change. We draw this from a work recently is- 
 sued by the author. Miss Ellen D. Larned, which seems 
 to be a careful, candid, and competent history of Wind- 
 ham County, Connecticut. It appears that, in 1831, 
 Miss Prudence Crandall, a spirited, well-known, and 
 popular resident of the county, started a school for girls 
 at Canterbury Green. The school was popular, and wa3 
 attended not only by girls from the best families in the 
 immediate region, but by others from other counties and 
 other States. Among these pupils she received a colored 
 girl. She was at once told by the parents of the white 
 children that the colored girl must be dismissed, or that 
 their girls would be withdrawn from her establishment. 
 Miss Crandall must have been a delightfully plucky 
 woman, for she defied her patrons, sent all their chil- 
 dren back to them, and advertised her school as a board- 
 ing-school for " young ladies and little misses of color." 
 Of course the people felt themselves to be insulted, and 
 they organized resistance. They appointed a committee 
 of gentlemen to hold an interview with Miss Crandall, 
 and to remonstrate with her. But that sturdy person 
 justified her course and stood by her scheme, as well sbc 
 might. It was her business, and it was none of theirs. 
 The excitement in the town was without bounds. A
 
 Social Facts, Forces and Reforms. 317 
 
 town-meeting was hastily summoned " to devise and 
 adopt such measures as would effectually avert the nui- 
 sance, or speedily abate it, if it should be brought into 
 the village." 
 
 In 1833, Miss Crandall opened her school, against the 
 protest of an indignant populace, who, after the usual 
 habit of a Yankee town, called and held another town- 
 meeting, at which it was resolved : 
 
 " That the establishment or rendezvous, falsely denominated a 
 school, was designed by its projectors as the theatre ... to 
 promulgate their disgusting doctrines of amalgamation and their 
 pernicious sentiments of subverting the Union. These pupils 
 were to have been congregated here from all quarters, under th- 
 false pretence of educating them, but really to scatter fire-brands, 
 arrows, and death among brethren of our own blood." 
 
 Let us remember that all this ridiculous disturbance 
 was made about a dozen little darkey girls, incapable of 
 any seditious design, and impotent to do any sort of 
 mischief. Against one of these little girls the people 
 levelled an old vagrant law, requiring her to return to 
 her home in Providence, or give security for her main- 
 tenance, on penalty of being " whipped on the naked 
 body." At this time, as the author says : 
 
 " Canterbury did its best to make scholars and teachers uncom- 
 fortable. Non-intercourse and embargo acts were put in suc- 
 cessful operation. Dealers in all sorts of wares and produce 
 agreed to sell nothing to Miss Crandall, the stage-driver declined 
 to carry her pupils, and neighbors refused a pail of fresh water, 
 even though they knew that their own sons had filled her well with 
 stable refuse. Boys and rowdies were allowed unchecked if not 
 openly encouraged to exercise their utmost ingenuity in mis- 
 chievous annoyance, throwing real stones and rotten eggs at the 
 windows, and following the school with hoots and horns if it ven- 
 tured to appear in tlie street."
 
 3 1 8 Every-Day Topics. 
 
 Miss Crandall's Quaker father was threatened with 
 mob violence, and was so terrified that he begged his 
 daughter to yield to the demands of popular sentiment ; 
 but she was braver than he, and stood by herself and 
 her school. Then Canterbury appealed to the Legisla- 
 ture, and did not appeal in vain. A statute, designed 
 to meet the case, was enacted, which the inhabitants re- 
 ceived with pealing bells and booming cannon, and 
 " every demonstration of popular delight and triumph." 
 This law was brought to bear upon Miss Crandall's fa- 
 ther and mother, in the following choice note from two 
 of their fellow-citizens : 
 
 " Mr. Crandall, if you go to your daughter's, you are to be 
 fined $ioo for the first offence, $200 for the second, and double it 
 every time. Mrs. Crandall, if you go there, you will be fined, 
 and your daughter Alinira will be fined, and Mr. May and those 
 gentlemen from Providence (Messrs. George and Henry Benson), 
 if they come here, will be fined at the same rate. And your 
 daughter, the one that has established the school for colored fe- 
 males, will be taken up the same way as for stealing a horse, or 
 for burglary. Her property will not be taken, but she will be put 
 in jail, not having the liberty of the yard. There is no mercy to 
 be shown about it." 
 
 Soon afterward. Miss Crandall was arrested and taken 
 to jail. Her trial resulted in her release, but her estab- 
 lishment was persecuted by every ingenuity of cruel in- 
 sult. She and her school were shut out from attendance 
 at the Congregational church, and religious services held 
 in her own house were interrupted by volleys of rotten 
 eggs and other missiles. The house was then set on fire. 
 The fire was extinguished, and in 1834, on the 9th of 
 September, just as the family were going to bed, a body 
 of men surrounded the house silently, and then, with 
 iron bars, simultaneously beat in the windows. This, 
 of course, was too much for the poor women and girls.
 
 Social Fads, Forces and Reforms. 319 
 
 Miss Crandall herself quailed before this manifestation 
 of ruffianly hatred, and the brave woman broke up her 
 school and sent her pupils home. Then the people held 
 another town-meeting, and passed resolutions justifying 
 themselves and praising the Legislature for passing the 
 law for which they had asked. 
 
 All this abominable outrage was perpetrated in the 
 sober State of Connecticut, within the easy memory of 
 the writer of this article. It reads like a romance from 
 the dark ages, yet these people of Canterbury were good 
 people, who were so much in earnest in suppressing 
 what they believed to be a great wrong, that they were 
 willing to be cruel toward one of the best and bravest 
 women in their State, and to resort to mob violence, to 
 rid themselves of an institution whose only office was to 
 elevate the poor black children who had little chance of 
 elevation elsewhere. Now this outrage seems just as im- 
 possible to the people of Canterbury to-day as it does 
 to us. The new generation has grown clean away from 
 it, and grown away from it so far that a school of little 
 colored girls would, we doubt not, be welcomed there 
 now as a praiseworthy and very interesting institution. 
 The Connecticut girls who go South to teach in colored 
 schools should remember or recall the time when they 
 would not have been tolerated in their work in their own 
 State, and be patient with the social proscription that 
 meets them to-day. The world moves ; the old genera- 
 tion passes away ; the new generation strikes in ahead, 
 and the time can hardly be far distant when the negro 
 will find himself at home in the South. When the 
 white man learns that a " solid South," made solid by 
 shutting the negro from his vote, makes always a solid 
 North, and that the solid North always means defeat, it 
 will cease to be solid, and then the negro's vote will be 
 wanted by two parties, and his wrong will be righted.
 
 320 Evcry-Day Topics. 
 
 In view of the foregoing sketch of Northern history, we 
 can at least be charitable toward the South, and abun- 
 dantly hopeful concerning the future. 
 
 The Shadow of the Negro. 
 
 The history of negro slavery, extending from its begin- 
 ning in Portugal over a period of four hundred years, 
 and involving the exportation by violence from their 
 African homes of forty millions of men, women and 
 children, is one of exceeding and unimaginable bitter- 
 ness. It is too late to criminate those who were respon- 
 sible for beginning the slave trade, and for perpetuating 
 the system of bondage that grew out of it. Many of 
 them were conscientious, Christian men, who worked 
 without a thought of the wrong they were doing. Some 
 of them, as we know, really believed they were benefit- 
 ing the negro, by bringing him out of a condition of bar- 
 barism into the enlightening and purifying influences of 
 Christianity. For many years negro slavery prevailed 
 in this country, and greatly modified the institutions 
 and the civilization of a large portion of it. It became, 
 at last, the exciting cause of the greatest civil war known 
 in the history of the world ; and when that war brought 
 abolition, it gave to the black race in America not only 
 freedom, but citizenship. The question as to what all 
 these centuries of wrong and of servitude have done for 
 the negro is not a difficult one to answer, but what they 
 have done for the enslaving race is not so evident with- 
 out an examination. The black man has been a menial 
 so long that he has lost, in a great degree, his sense of 
 manhood and his power to assert it. The negro carries 
 within him the sense that his blood is tainted that he is 
 something less than a man, in consequence of the black- 
 ness of his skin. lie may be whitened out, so that only
 
 Social Facts, Forces and Reforms. 321 
 
 the most practised eye can detect a trace of the African 
 in him, but the consciousness of the possession of this 
 trace haunts him like the memory of a crime, and to 
 charge it upon him is to abase him and cover him with 
 a burning shame. The readiness of the negro, in all the 
 States, to be content with menial offices in the service 
 of the white man, comes undoubtedly from the fact 
 that such offices relieve him from all antagonism. They 
 put him in a position free from the pretension to 
 equality, where he is at peace. We hear it said that 
 the negro is a natural menial a natural servant but 
 the truth is that, if the negro were only relieved from 
 the burden of contempt in which his blood is held, his 
 special adaptation to menial work would disappear at 
 once. 
 
 The harm that slavery did to the white man was one 
 that touched him internally and externally, at most im- 
 portant points. It vitiated his sense of right and wrong. 
 Through its appeal to his interests, it made a system 
 based in inhumanity and standing and working in direct 
 contravention of the Golden Rule, seem to be a humane 
 and Christian institution, to be maintained by argument, 
 by appeal to the authority of the Bible, and by the sword. 
 This, of course, was an immeasurable harm, from which 
 only a slow recovery can be reached. Another evil re- 
 sult of slavery to the white man was the disgrace that 
 came to labor through its long years of association with 
 servitude. No people can be prosperous who despise 
 labor, and who look upon it as something that belongs 
 only to a servile class. Any people that, for any cause, 
 have lost the sense of the supreme respectability of labor 
 any people that, for any cause, have come to regard an 
 unproductive idleness as desirable and respectable, have 
 met with an immeasurable misfortune. The shadow of 
 the negro not only rests upon the white man's sense of 
 14*
 
 322 Every-Day Topics. 
 
 right, not only on the white man's idea of labor, but 
 upon his love of fair play. There is something most 
 unmanly in the disposition to deny any man who has not 
 harmed us a fair chance in the world. Are we, all over 
 this nation, giving the negro a fair chance ? It was not 
 his fault that he was born to slavery. It was not his act 
 that released him from it. Notwithstanding all his years 
 of servitude and wrong, he did not revolt when his op- 
 portunity came, but bore his yoke with patience until it 
 was lifted from his shoulders. He did not wrest from 
 unwilling hands his boon of citizenship. Now, however, 
 as we look into our hearts, we find that political rights 
 were conferr-^d upon him rather from an abstract sense 
 of justice than for any love of the negro, or any equal 
 place that we have made for him in our hearts and heads 
 as he stands by our side. The North, to-day, is true to 
 the negro rather in its convictions than in its sympathies. 
 It never in its heart has admitted the negro to equality 
 with the white man. It may consent to see the white 
 man beaten by the negro in a walking-match at Gil- 
 more's Garden, but at West Point the smallest measure 
 of African blood places its possessor under the cruellest 
 and most implacable social ban. So long as this fact 
 exists so long as the Northern v/hite man utterly ex- 
 cludes the negro from his social sympathies, and refuses 
 to give him a fair chance in the world to secure respecta- 
 bility and influence, it poorly becomes him to rail at his 
 Southern brothers who do the same thing, and are only 
 a little more logical and extreme in their expressions of 
 contempt. The shadow of the negro lies upon the North 
 as upon the South. It has obscured or blotted out our 
 love of fair play. We do not give the negro a chance. 
 It was recently stated in one of our metropolitan pulpits, 
 by a minister of wide experience and observation, that 
 he had never heard in any country better speeches made
 
 Social Facts, Forces and Reforms. 323 
 
 than were recently made in this city by four colored 
 men, who spoke on behalf of the freedmen. He gave 
 them the highest place in all the powers and qualities 
 that go into the making of eloquence. At Hampton, the 
 negro is proving himself to be not only most sirsceptible 
 to cultivation, but to be possessed of a high spirit of self- 
 devotion. Under the charm of this most useful institu- 
 tion the African ceases to be a " nigger," and achieves a 
 self-respect and a sense of manhood that prepare him for 
 the great missionary work of elevating his race. It can- 
 not be disputed that the great obstacle that stands to- 
 day in the way of the negro is the white man, North and 
 South. The white man in this country is not yet ready to 
 treat the negro as a man. The prejudice of race is still 
 dominant in every part of the land. We are quite ready 
 in New York City to invite Indians in paint and feathers 
 into social circles, from which the negro is shut out by a 
 social interdict as irreversible as the laws of the Mcdcs 
 and Persians. If the negro is a man, let us give him the 
 chance of a man, the powers and privileges of a man. 
 It is not necessary for us to give him our daughters in 
 marriage, although he has given a good many of his 
 daughters to us, as all mulattodom and quadroondom 
 abundantly testify. It is not necessary for us to make 
 an ostentatious show of our conversion to just and hu- 
 mane ideas in regard to him. We should like to see the 
 time when the preacher to whom we have alluded would 
 feel at liberty to invite one of these orators whom he 
 praised to occupy his pulpit, and when such an orator 
 would feel at home there and seem at home there. 
 When this time arrives, in the coming of the millen- 
 nium, all other relations between the two races may be 
 safely left to adjust themselves.
 
 324 Every- Day Topics. 
 
 The Political Machine, 
 
 It is readily observable that the protests against the 
 political machine and the efforts on behalf of civil-ser- 
 vice reform, as a practical outcome of that protest, orig- 
 inate in the cities. People in the country follow their 
 political leaders, without serious question, and do not 
 come much into contact with the bad results which they 
 do so much to secure. The one or two men in each town 
 who are relied upon at head-quarters to do the party 
 work, get office, it is true, but that seems to be because 
 they are "fond of politics ; " and as the office has so 
 long been the reward of party work, it is looked upon as 
 quite the regular and legitimate thing. The city is al- 
 most the only place where the authority of the political 
 leader is questioned. He looks to the country towns for 
 loyalty to his policy and decrees, and relies upon them 
 to carry his ends in the State. The managing men of 
 the small towns are always in confidential correspond- 
 ence with head- quarters, and their work is done so 
 quietly and cleverly that the country voter is never made 
 to feel the yoke, or led to suspect that he is the tool of 
 a corrupt cabal of office-holders and office-seekers. 
 
 In the city, especially the great city, the machinery 
 comes more to the surface. Here we find a class of 
 professional politicians. Their business is politics. 
 There may be some, above them, who are working for 
 power, without any thought of office, but they know that 
 every man under them is at work for what he can make 
 out of the business. Some work with very small aspira- 
 tions and expectations. There are wheels within wheels, 
 and there are those who work for so small a consideration 
 as their drink. They furnish the machinery of all elec- 
 tions. They attend and manage the primary elections
 
 Social Facts, Forces and Reforms. 325 
 
 and caucuses. They do the party work, and will permit 
 no one else to do it. Good men are often reproached 
 with their neglect of political duty, especially as it re- 
 lates to what are called " the primaries." The reply to 
 this reproach is that no good man can undertake to have 
 anything to do with the primaries unless he belongs to 
 " the machine," without the loss of self-respect. Indeed, 
 all attempt to have anything to do with them, in the 
 way of influencing their policy and results, is useless. 
 If any clear-headed gentleman doubts this, let him try 
 it. He only needs to do this once to be convinced. It 
 has been tried many times, and always unsuccessfully. 
 Even in our Statcn Island suburb, the machine has 
 proved too strong for our excellent friend, ]\Ir. George 
 W. Curtis, and will have none of him. It has been tried 
 here in the city. The moment a good man enters a 
 meeting where a primary is held, the whole crowd know 
 him. 
 
 The latest instance reported to us was by the victim 
 himself. He had been reproached for neglecting his 
 duty, so he was moved to do it. He attended a primary, 
 and found the leaders in consultation in a private room. 
 His position was such that they could not deny him en- 
 trance, and they immediately informed him that he must 
 act as chairman. He protested that he wished to be at 
 liberty to speak to such questions as might arise. The 
 protest was hushed by the assurance that if he wished to 
 speak he could call some one else to the chair. The 
 meeting was called to order, and he was elected. Im- 
 mediately a man jumped to his feet and moved the ap- 
 pointment of a list of delegates to a certain convention, 
 and the " question" was called from all parts of the house. 
 Our virtuous chairman was caught in a trap, and had to 
 put the question. As soon as it was decided, as it was 
 tuiii. con. in favor of tlic nominations, another member
 
 326 Every -Day Topics. 
 
 rose and moved that the meeting should immediatelj 
 adjourn, as the weather was warm ! So our friend had 
 his labor for his pains, and the men who had used him 
 took great pleasure in showing how respectable their 
 meeting was by publishing his name as its chairman, 
 and thus doing what they could to make him seem to 
 approve a list of political scalawags ! 
 
 " But if all good men would unite, they could have 
 their own way." That is a mistake. If all good men 
 would unite, all bad men would do the same, and the 
 bad men would draw for voters to help them through, 
 from all parts of the city, as there would be nothing ille- 
 gal in outsiders voting at a primary. It is their business 
 to outvote the good men, and they do it every time, be- 
 cause they have the whole machine of the city to do it 
 with, and have no scruples to stand in their way, such as 
 the good men have. Now do our country friends see the 
 point at which we are aiming, when we advocate a re- 
 form in the civil service ? Can they not see that just so 
 long as office is the reward of party work, just so long 
 party work will and must be done by office-seekers, who 
 work for their party from the basest motives ? Politics 
 can never be purified in this country until there is a re- 
 form in the civil service. Such purification is practically 
 impossible, until office ceases to be the reward, practi- 
 cally contracted for, of party service. 
 
 Political Training. 
 
 It is the general conviction that, sooner or later, we 
 are to have a reform in our Civil Service. It is more 
 than this. There is a general determination that there 
 shall be such a reform. The fair and sensible men of 
 all parties all men who are not given over to partisan- 
 ship all men who have ceased to believe that politics is
 
 Social Facts^ Forces and Reforms. 327 
 
 a trade, to be pursued for personal gain, irrespective of 
 the public good believe in this reform, and look for- 
 ward hopefully, and even impatiently, to the time of its 
 accomplishment. But the question concerning men and 
 materials for this reform does not seem to have occurred 
 to these people. The fact that there is no competent 
 school for the preparation of men for public life, is one 
 which does not seem to have presented itself to them. 
 
 At present, men enter upon nearly every sphere of 
 public life without the slightest special preparation for 
 it. If a man can make a fair speech, if he is an adept 
 at the pulling of wires, if by any tact in organization and 
 in the working of party machinery in local elections he 
 manages to win a degree of power and prominence, he 
 becomes a candidate for office. He may know nothing 
 whatever of the political history of his country, or of 
 other countries. He may lack intelligence in all the 
 great questions of political economy. He may even fail 
 in a competent understanding of the issues involved in 
 his own election. If he goes to Congress, he is simply 
 placed at school, and is supported at the public charge. 
 By the time he is well in his seat, and has become fitted 
 for service, some other demagogue, as ignorant as he 
 was at first, supersedes him, and he retires. He goes to 
 Congress in the first place, not because he is fit for its 
 duties, but because he wants the office, and manages to 
 get it. He retires as soon as he has learned something, 
 that another ignoramus, who has outmanaged him at 
 home, may receive an education at the public expense. 
 
 These statements are so well established in the politi- 
 cal history of the country and the time, that they cannot 
 be disputed. And here the question naturally arises 
 concerning the preparation of the country for the reform 
 which it would so gladly see effected. Where are we to 
 find the men who have made politics, in all its scientific
 
 328 Every-Day Topics. 
 
 and practical departments, a long and careful study ? 
 What shall the new requirements be ? and how shall we 
 train men to meet them ? Have we already a body of 
 men, sufficiently large and sufficiently conversant with 
 scientific and practical politics, to meet the require- 
 ments of a reform ? We fear that this last question 
 must be answered in the negative, and must continue to 
 be so answered until some means are established to train 
 men for the public service. 
 
 We have our military and naval schools for training 
 men for the army and navy. After their graduation, 
 they may go into civil life, but, in time of war, they are 
 the first we call upon to organize and lead the forces of 
 the country. They alone truly understand the business. 
 They have been instructed in all the details of organiza- 
 tion, subsistence, engineering, and active war. Now, we 
 cannot understand why the men engaged in legislation 
 and administration in the civil service of the Govern- 
 ment do not need as careful a training as those who are 
 called to its military and naval service. The knowledge 
 demanded covers a wider field. The principles involved 
 are a thousand times more complex. International law 
 and polity, political economy, finance, the relations of 
 the Federal Government to the States, the relations of the 
 States to each other, constitutional history and constitu- 
 tional law, diplomacy, and a vast aggregate of recorded 
 usage and technical detail all these need to be under- 
 stood by the men in office. How are men to be grounded 
 in the principles of government, and to acquire even 
 the elements of this vast range of knowledge ? At pres- 
 ent, the only education we give them is in active service. 
 We are not only at the expense of their subsistence and 
 tuition, but we are at the still greater expense of their 
 blunders. 
 
 Well, we do not propose another West Point, or an-
 
 Social Facts^ Forces and Reforms. 329 
 
 other Annapolis. It would not be well, we presume, to 
 establish a governmental school of politics. There are 
 insuperable objections in the way. The partisans of free 
 trade and protection, for instance, could never agree on 
 the style of political economy to be taught. But there 
 is no good reason why Yale and Harvard, or any other 
 college, for that matter, should not have a department 
 of politics, which should give a solid three years* course 
 of study. There is no reason why a man should not go 
 before a high examining board at Washington, from such 
 a school as this, and win his certificate of fitness for pub- 
 lic office. There are a thousand good reasons why such 
 a man should receive the suffrages of the people for any 
 office which they wish to fill. 
 
 Aside from all direct influence upon governmental leg- 
 islation and administration, the effect of the training 
 which such a school would give would exercise a most 
 beneficent influence upon the country. If the men who 
 are trained there never enter office, they will add to the 
 popular intelligence, and raise the public standard and 
 the public tone. They will not only help to leaven the 
 mass, but they will place the Government under intelli- 
 gent criticism. Under their iniluence, the demagogue 
 would be subjected to a fearful discount. Their pres- 
 ence in public affairs and their distribution throughout 
 the country would, of themselves, do much to reform a 
 service that has sunk into deserved contempt. Ignorant 
 men would be ashamed to show themselves in such a 
 light. The simple establishment of such a school would 
 call the attention of the public to the gross abuses from 
 which they have suffered, and they would be glad to be 
 represented by men who would not only serve the coun- 
 try well, but would honor them. 
 
 There is still another view to be taken of this matter. 
 We can ima'^ine no training to be more fruitful in ils
 
 330 Every -Day Topics. 
 
 solid culture to young men of means than this would be. 
 Neither law nor medicine nor theology offers to the 
 young man who does not wish to enter those professions, 
 and who is not content with his accomplished academic 
 course, so fine a field for useful culture as this school 
 would afford, and we believe it would be thronged with 
 students from the best classes of society. What better 
 can be given to a young man than a thorough knowledge 
 of statesmanship and citizenship ? It would be better 
 than travel ; it would furnish a splendid basis for literary 
 life and literary acquisition. It would fit and furnish 
 him for society. 
 
 So, whether we look at such a school, with its regu- 
 larly established corps of professors and its great cur- 
 riculum, as a training-school for politicians, statesmen 
 and diplomatists, or as a means of popular instruction 
 and elevation, or as a minister to individual culture, it 
 is in every way desirable. What institution will be the 
 first to inaugurate it ? What institution will first spring 
 to satisfy the need of a great reform, and furnish the 
 country with a means of culture so devoutly to be 
 prayed for ? 
 
 A Reform in the Civil Service, 
 
 We have several times had occasion to speak of the 
 small influence of the voting population of the country, 
 in the shaping of political affairs. For half a century, 
 two great political machines have managed the voters. 
 Men have been nominated and elected to office, now in 
 the interest of this machine, and then in the interest of 
 that. Issues have been made up between the machines 
 and fought out, but the decisions which the votes of the 
 people have aided to make, whatever they may have 
 meant to the people, have meant but one thing to the
 
 Social Facts^ Forces and Reforms. 331 
 
 men who have run the machine, viz., office and that 
 which goes with office power and patronage. For 
 these last fifty years, the pohtics of the country have 
 been run mainly in the interest and by the power of two 
 great bands of office-holders and office-seekers. The 
 motives of pay and plunder and power have been dom- 
 inant. It has been perfectly well understood that office 
 was the reward of party service. The small politician 
 who has done the dirty work of the successful candidate 
 for Congress, has been rewarded with a post-office, or a 
 clerkship, or a place in the custom-house. The more 
 ambitious have received consulships or foreign minis- 
 tries. We have been disgraced at home and abroad by 
 the appointment of men lacking every element of fitness 
 for their positions. Politics has become a business a 
 trade. 
 
 Now, these facts are so notorious and so shameful 
 that no respectable man has had the " cheek" to deny 
 them or to justify them. Both parties have pretended, 
 in many ways and places, to favor a reform, but we have 
 never had the slightest belief in their sincerity. We 
 mean the machines when we speak of parties ; and we 
 have doubted them simply because it is not in the na- 
 ture of the machines to commit hari-kari. The old- 
 fashioned politician is a machine-man, always, and he 
 knows nothing of carrying on the business of a political 
 campaign, except on the machine principle of " you 
 tickle me ; I tickle you." So, when, in the planks of a 
 platform established by a political convention of the old- 
 fashioned machine-men, we discover one declaring for a 
 reform in the civil service, we know that it means notli- 
 ing. Wc know that the plank has been put into the 
 platform to deceive the people with the special end in 
 view of strengthening the machine. 
 
 It so happens now that we have a President who be-
 
 33- Every -Day Topics. 
 
 lieves in a reform in the civil service, and who took the 
 platform on which he was elected to his high office at its 
 word. He is engaged in carefully and conscientiously 
 fulfilling his pledges. Now the sincerity of the machine- 
 politicians of his own party may be gauged by the pro- 
 ceedings of a recent political convention, which not only 
 refused to endorse his action, but was at infinite pains to 
 insult him in the person of the stanchest and most influ- 
 ential friend of his policy. Mr. George William Curtis 
 happens to think that there is something in American 
 politics superior to the machine. He is not only not an 
 office-seeker, but he is a man who is known to have de- 
 clined high office in the hope of serving his country better 
 on the platform and by the press. The history of that 
 convention, in its slavish and brutal subserviency to the 
 policy and will of a single machine-politician, is one of 
 the most disgraceful in our annals ; but it betrays the 
 real spirit of the machine, and ought to be very useful to 
 the people of the country. The machine-man spits upon 
 reform and reformer alike. All the machine-men hate 
 reform, simply because reform is death to them. Mr. 
 Conkling cannot possibly love Mr. Curtis, but Mr. Cur- 
 tis will be sufficiently comforted by the respect and af- 
 fection of all the good people of the country whose 
 good opinion of the machine has died out. He may 
 further be comforted in the fact that, whoever may 
 own the present, the future is his ; for this is a question 
 that can never be eliminated from the politics of the 
 country, until it has achieved a sweeping and per- 
 manent triumph. No man who believes in national 
 progress can fail to believe in a reform in the civil 
 service. 
 
 How is this reform to be brought about ? Let us give 
 up all thought that it will, or can, be accomplished by 
 the political machine. The professional politician of
 
 Social Facts ^ Forces and Reforms. 333 
 
 the old or the present school, the machine-man who be- 
 lieves in him, the party press which supports him 
 these will do nothing. Worse than this : when brought 
 face to face with the reform, and made to declare them- 
 selves, they will give us another Rochester Convention 
 bitter, malignant, disgraceful. 
 
 There is a large section of the American press which 
 has no affiliation with the machine. Happily, this ques- 
 tion of civil-service reform may be regarded as out- 
 side of the pale of party politics. Both the political 
 machines have undertaken to manage it, with the hope 
 of ultimately killing it, and getting what they can out of 
 it while it is dying. They are not in earnest in their 
 support of it, and cannot be, in the nature of things. 
 Happily, we say, the question is outside of party poli- 
 tics. It is so by its nature, and so by the fact that both 
 parties nominally adopt it and actually hate it. It is 
 thus lifted out of the party fight, and becomes a question 
 of public morals and of pure patriotism. As such, it 
 can be treated by every independent political newspaper, 
 by every literary magazine or journal, by every religious 
 periodical of whatever sect, by the preacher in his pul- 
 pit, the lecturer upon his platform, the author in his 
 books. The editor and the '' magazinist " have been 
 publicly insulted. If they have any right to speak in 
 this matter, it is time for them to assert it. 
 
 The hope of the country is in the development of a 
 sentiment among the voting population which will make 
 it impossible for the machine to have its way. The 
 country is not now so seriously divided, on any great 
 issues, that it cannot afford to take hold of this reform, 
 and achieve it by whatever legitimate machinery it may 
 be able to place in service. The reform once achieved, 
 the American people will be forever free from the basest 
 inllucnces that enter into our politics. What better
 
 334 Every -Day Topics. 
 
 thing can this generation do than to leave the business 
 of the country in the hands which are best fitted to carry 
 it on, to put in foreign service men who will honor our 
 country by their accomplishments and their high per- 
 sonal character, and kill out the shameful traffic in pub- 
 lic othce ?
 
 MATTERS OF DOMESTIC CONCERN. 
 
 Houses and Things. 
 
 MR. CLARENCE COOK has lately said so much about 
 houses, and the things that go to make them com- 
 fortable and beautiful, that the rest of us have been glad 
 to stand respectfully among the audience, and let him 
 do all the talking. A man of positive ideas, and a 
 graceful and forcible way of expressing them, is not so 
 frequently met with that we can afford to miss even his 
 smallest utterance. But Mr. Cook would have people 
 think for themselves. One of his aims is to stimulate in- 
 dependent thinking, and so to make every home, in its 
 fulfilment of wants and its expression of tastes, a fresh 
 and original growth. He would have us cut loose from 
 the conventional, and look around for ourselves to find 
 the natural and the picturesque. He would have us do 
 away with shams and imitations, and have only that which 
 is honest in structure and appearance. Specially would 
 he teach us to do our own thinking. 
 
 So we propose to think independently a little, espe- 
 cially with relation to certain appointments of the house 
 which, in these latter days, arc suffering abuse, as it 
 seems to us. The first thing to be spoken of is the car- 
 pet. We like a handsome rug. We like an inlaid fioor. 
 A handsome rug upon an inlaid floor is a beautiful thing 
 to look at. In a warm climate it is not only beautiful.
 
 33^ Every -D.iy Topics. 
 
 but fitting. A rug upon matting, during the cooler 
 months, in tropical latitudes, is charming for many rea- 
 sons ; but for our cold country we like a carpet ingrain, 
 Brussels, velvet no matter what something that covers 
 the floor. A wooden floor needs a great deal of service 
 to keep it in presentable condition, and should be pol- 
 ished as often as one's boots, especially in latitudes where 
 the boots have nails in them. Where the slipper is con- 
 stantly worn, it is a very different thing. A hard pol- 
 ished floor, or a wooden staircase, is not a pleasant 
 thing to walk on. It is slippery and noisy, and a rug is 
 always kicking up at the edges, especially where there 
 are children. We like a well-carpeted house the 
 thicker the carpet the better especially during the se- 
 vere winter months. A great deal is said about carpets 
 as dust-catchers and disease-absorbers, and all that ; 
 but we very much doubt whether a well-swept and well- 
 kept carpet is worse than a rug, in any particular. No 
 one has at all demonstrated that it is worse, and in our 
 climate it certainly is more comfortable than any other 
 floor surface that is possible. 
 
 Furnaces, too, are abused, and open fires are advo- 
 cated. Now, we have had a good deal of experience, 
 with furnaces not only, but with open fires. In the 
 first place, open fires are incompetent to heat our houses. 
 In the second place, they are exceedingly dusty ; and it 
 somehow happens that the men who are very much afraid 
 of the dust of the carpet set aside the dust argument 
 when they talk about open fires. There is nothing that 
 fills either carpets, or rugs, or atmosphere with dust so 
 quickly as the open fire. The dust of a good furnace is 
 the dust of the outside atmosphere no more. An open 
 fire is picturesque. It is cozy and home-like and orna- 
 mental ; but when the outside temperature is at zero, 
 mere picturesqueness will not answer. When a man is
 
 Matters of Domestic Concern. 337 
 
 shivering, it will not comfort him to know that he is as 
 picturesque as his fire, as he bends over it and pokes it. 
 Furnaces are comfortable there's no denying it. Car- 
 pets are comfortable too, and carpets and furnaces are 
 going to live. 
 
 Even our plumbing is complained of, and men are 
 taught to look back to a clumsy wash-stand and a big 
 basin, and a heavy pitcher, as things that were pretty 
 and sensible, and in every way more desirable than the 
 modern hot and cold water that comes and goes with the 
 turning of a cock or the lifting of a gate. Now it always 
 seemed to us that a big water-pitcher was an awkward 
 thing for a strong man to handle, to say nothing about a 
 weak woman. Bathing the hands and face at an old- 
 fashioned wash-stand pouring water out of pitchers 
 into basins, and out of basins into slop-jars seems to us 
 to be a very clumsy business, compared with that mode 
 of introducing and dismissing water which has come in 
 with " modern improvements." So we believe in plumb- 
 ing, and not only don't believe it will ever be done away 
 with, but are sure that it will go on unto perfection. 
 
 The mistake of this era in the history of " household 
 art and home decoration," lies, it seems to us, in the at- 
 tempt to do too much with furniture. Ruskin, in one of 
 his books, distinguishes between building and architect- 
 ure. There are certain structures in which architecture 
 should never be attempted. A grain-elevator, a store- 
 house, a barn these are buildings, and architecture is 
 out of place in them. There is no more reason why they 
 should be beautiful than there is why a meal-sack should 
 be Ijeautiful, or a wheelbarrow, or a coal-cart. So it seems 
 to us that there may be, and that there are, certain items 
 of furniture which we may legitimately excuse from the 
 duty of picturesqucness. If our carpets are less beauti- 
 ful than rugs upon bare floors, if furnaces are less inter-
 
 338 Every -Day Topics. 
 
 esting than open fires, if the old-fashioned wash-bowl 
 and pitcher are more picturesque than the plumber's 
 substitute, what of it ? In which direction shall we make 
 our sacrifices ? Toward comfort and convenience, or 
 toward the picturesqueness of ruder times and smaller 
 means ? We advocate comfort and convenience, and 
 leave others to do as they choose. The modern advo- 
 cacy of beauty, in connection with all articles of furni- 
 ture and household convenience, reminds one of the 
 child who insists on making play of everything who 
 cannot take a mouthful of food, or do an act of ser- 
 vice, without making it in some way a source of amuse- 
 ment. 
 
 To come to the practical point, a home may be inter- 
 esting without being more than moderately beautiful, 
 and may be more than moderately beautiful without 
 being interesting at all. If we rely entirely upon furni- 
 ture for the interest of a house if we make furniture 
 picturesque at the price of comfort and convenience, our 
 homes may be made interesting in a moderate way, pro- 
 vided we follow out our individual ideas, and do not fall 
 back upon the conventionalisms of the manufacturers. 
 But the most interesting things in a house should never 
 be its furniture. Given convenient furniture, that shall 
 be picturesque when convenient, the question whether a 
 home shall be greatly interesting relates mainly to other 
 things to books, pictures, objects of art, bric-a-brac, 
 and treasures of various sorts, in fact or in association. 
 We can point to homes whose furniture attracts no at- 
 tention whatever, but which are absorbingly interesting 
 through the artistic products of its members. The more 
 the culture and taste of cultured and tasteful people are 
 expressed in their homes, through various modes and 
 forms of art, the more interesting those homes will be ; 
 and the more a guest is compelled to forget furniture.
 
 Matters of Domestic Concern. 339 
 
 except as it answers to the higher harmonies of the 
 house, the better. The best things of an interesting 
 home are never bought of a furniture dealer, though the 
 most beautiful may be. 
 
 Good Talking. 
 
 There is an impression among people who talk and 
 write that the art of conversation has died, or is dying 
 out ; that there are not as many remarkable talkers in 
 the world as there were, and that the present generation 
 will leave no such records of brilliant conversation as 
 some of its predecessors have done. We suspect that 
 the impression is a sound one, and that for some reason, 
 not apparent on the surface, less attention has been be- 
 stowed upon the art of talking than formerly. It maybe 
 that the remarkable development of the press which has 
 given opportunity for expression to everybody, with a great 
 audience to tempt the writer, has drawn attention from 
 an art demanding fine skill, with only the reward of an 
 audience always limited in numbers, and an influence quite 
 incommensurate with the amount of vitality expended. 
 
 Still, there are doubtless many who would like to be 
 good talkers. Social importance and consideration are 
 perhaps more easily won by the power of good talking 
 than by any other means, wealth and the ability to keep 
 a hospitable house not excepted. A really good talker 
 is always at a social premium, so that a knowledge of 
 the requisites of good talking will be of interest to a 
 great many bright people. For it must be confessed that 
 men's ideas of the art are very crude and confused. 
 When we talk of " the art of conversation," people really 
 do not know what we mean. They do not know what 
 the art is, or how it may be cultivated ; or, indeed, that 
 it is anything more than a natural knack.
 
 340 Every-Day Topics. 
 
 The first requisite of a good talker is genuine socia\ 
 sympathy. A man may not say, out of some selfish mo- 
 tive, or some motive of personal policy, " Go to ! I will 
 become a good talker." He must enjoy society, and 
 have a genuine desire to serve and please. We have all 
 seen the talker who talks for his own purposes, or talks 
 to please himself. He is the well-known character the 
 talking bore. The talker who gets himself up for show, 
 who plans his conversations for an evening, and crams 
 for them, becomes intolerable. He lectures : he does 
 not converse ; for there is no power of a talker so de- 
 lightful as that of exciting others to talk, and listening 
 to what his own inspiring and suggestive utterances have 
 called forth. Genuine social sympathy and a hearty de- 
 sire to please others are necessary to produce such a 
 talker as this, and no other is tolerable. Social sympa- 
 thy is a natural gift, and there is a combination of other 
 gifts which constitute what may be called esprit, that 
 are very essential to a good talker. This combination 
 includes individuality, tact and wit the talents, apti- 
 tudes, and peculiar characteristic charm which enable a 
 man to use the materials of conversation in an engaging 
 way, entirely his own ; for every good talker has his 
 own way of saying good things, as well as of managing 
 conversation based on his esprit. 
 
 Yet it is true that there are no good talkers who de- 
 pend upon their natural gifts and such material as they 
 get in the usual interchanges of society. For the mate- 
 rials of conversation we must draw upon knowledge. No 
 man can be a thoroughly good talker who does not know 
 a great deal. Social sympathy and " the gift of gab" 
 go but a short way toward producing good conversation, 
 though we hear a great deal of this kind of talk among 
 the young. Sound and exact knowledge is the very basis 
 of good conversation. To know a great many things
 
 Matters of Domestic Concern. 341 
 
 well is to have in hand the best and most reliable mate- 
 rials of good conversation. There is nothing like abun- 
 dance and exactness of knowledge with which to furnish 
 a talker. Next to this, perhaps, is familiarity with polite 
 literature. The faculty of quoting from the best authors 
 is a very desirable one. Facts are valuable, and thoughts 
 perhaps are quite as valuable, especially as they are 
 more stimulating to the conversation of a group. The 
 talker who deals alone in facts is quite likely to have the 
 talk all to himself, while the man who is familiar with 
 thoughts and ideas, as he has found them embodied in 
 literature, becomes a stimulator of thought and conver- 
 sation in those around him. Familiarity with knowl- 
 edge and with the products of literary art cannot be too 
 much insisted on as the furniture of good conversation. 
 
 Beyond this, the good talker must be familiar with the 
 current thought and events of his time. There should 
 be no movement in politics, religion and society that 
 the good talker is not familiar with. Indeed, the man 
 who undertakes to talk at all must know what is upper- 
 most in men's minds, and be able to add to the general 
 fund of thought and knowledge, and respond to the 
 popular inquiry and the popular disposition for discus- 
 sion. The man who undertakes to be a good talker 
 should never be caught napping, concerning any current 
 topic of immediate public interest. 
 
 How to carry and convey superiority of knowledge and 
 culture without appearing to be pedantic, how to talk 
 out of abundant stores of information and familiarity 
 with opinion without seeming to preach, as Coleridge 
 was accused of doing, belongs, with the ability to talk 
 well, to " the art of conversation." It has seemed to us 
 that if young people could only see how shallow and 
 silly very much of their talk is, and must necessarily be, 
 so long as they lack the materials of conversation, they
 
 342 Every -Day Topics. 
 
 would take more pains with their study, would devote 
 themselves more to the best books, and that, at least, 
 they would acquire and maintain more familiarity with 
 important current events. To know something is the 
 best cure for neighborhood gossip, for talk about dress, 
 and for ten thousand frivolities and sillinesses of society. 
 Besides, a good talker needs an audience to understand 
 and respond to him, and where is he to find one if there 
 is not abundant culture around him ? 
 
 The Amusements of the Rich. 
 
 The average rich man and woman, in adult life, have, 
 it must be confessed, rather a stupid time of it. If they 
 do not have a country-house, to which they have bound 
 themselves for the summer ; if, when they break up in 
 the spring, they can wander where they please, they 
 manage to get along pretty well. The man attends his 
 club in winter ; the woman goes her society-round, and in 
 the summer they are free. The theatre does not have 
 many attractions for the old resident. His society means 
 dinners, receptions, dress ; and it comes at last to be a 
 bore, from which he retires in disgust to that which is 
 still worse himself. Here and there among them there 
 is a hobby-rider, who manages to interest himself in some 
 trifle, and so gets rid of his time. Often without culture, 
 nearly always without a stimulus to industry, his lazy 
 hours hang upon his hands, and he is glad of the change 
 which summer brings him. We really do not see what 
 can be done for him. He is usually too old to learn any- 
 thing especially that he must go out of himself into some 
 sort of service to others, in order to sharpen his interest 
 in life, and win the content that he lacks. 
 
 The amusements of the adult rich can hardly be called 
 amusements at all, for any pursuit that is entered upon
 
 Matters of Domestic Concern. 343 
 
 for the simple purpose of killing time does not deserve 
 that name. Amusement, or play, should be a sponta- 
 neous, recreative exercise of the faculties and emotions, 
 during the intervals of work. Amusement, in order to 
 be genuine, must be entered upon with hearty zest ; and 
 very few, except the young, and the adults who have 
 some active and regular pursuit, are capable of this. A 
 life of absolute leisure is, as a rule, a life without amuse- 
 ment. The young engaged in study, and the maturer 
 men and women who are in active life, are the only 
 ones who enjoy the conditions of amusement. 
 
 True amusement is of two kinds, viz. : active and pas- 
 sive. The active and weary man and woman those 
 who exhaust every day their vital energies in work take 
 naturally to passive amusement. A lady of our acquaint- 
 ance, engaged daily in severe intellectual tasks, says 
 that nothing rests her like seeing other people work. 
 For this she goes to the theatre, and the play upon her 
 emotions there rests, and recreates her. Indeed, it is 
 the emotional side of the nature, and not the active, 
 which furnishes play to those who are weary with the use 
 of their faculties. This fact covers the secret of the 
 popular success of what is called emotional preaching. 
 People who have been engaged all the week in exhaust- 
 ing labor of any kind do not take kindly to a high intel- 
 lectual feast on Sunday. They want to be moved and 
 played upon. This rests and interests them, while the 
 profound discussion of great problems in life and religion 
 wearies and bores them. They arc not up to it. They 
 are weary and jaded in that part of their nature which 
 such a discussion engages. The emotions which have 
 been blunted and suppressed by tlicir pursuits are hun- 
 gry. So every form of amusement that truly meets 
 their wants must be emotive, and must leave them free 
 to rest in those faculties which are weary.
 
 344 Every-Day Topics. 
 
 On the other hand, the young, who are brimming 
 with animal Hfe, and who fail to exhaust it in study, call 
 for active amusements, and they must have them. And 
 here the parent is in danger of making a great mistake. 
 Unless a boy is a milk-sop, he must do something or 
 die. If he cannot do something in his home, or in the 
 homes of his companions, he will do something else- 
 where. It is only within a few years that parents have 
 begun to be sensible upon this matter. The billiard- 
 table, which a few years ago was only associated with 
 dissipation, now has an honored place and the largest 
 room in every rich man's house. The card-table, that 
 once was a synonym of wickedness, is a part of the rich 
 man's furniture, which his children may use at will, in 
 the pursuit of a harmless game. A good many manufac- 
 tured sins have been dethroned from their fictitious life 
 and eminence, and put to beneficent family service on 
 behalf of the young. Athletic sports, such as skating, 
 boating, shooting, ball-playing, running and leaping, 
 have sprung into great prominence within the past few 
 years amusements of just the character for working off 
 the excessive vitality of young men, and developing their 
 physical power. This is all well a reform in the right 
 direction. Much of this is done before the public eye, 
 and in the presence of young women, which helps to re- 
 strain all tendencies to excesses and to dissipation. 
 
 The activities of young women take another direction, 
 and nothing seems to us more hopeful than the pursuits 
 in which they engage. The rich young woman in these 
 days, who does not marry, busies herself in tasteful and 
 intellectual pursuits. The reading-club, the Shakspere- 
 club, the drawing-class, and kindred associations, em- 
 ploy her spare time ; and now there is hardly a more 
 busy person living than the rich young woman who is 
 through with her boarding-school. The poor, who sup-
 
 Matters of Domestic Concer/i. 345 
 
 pose that the rich young woman leads an idle life, are 
 very much mistaken. The habits of voluntary industry 
 now adopted and practised by the young women of 
 America, in good circumstances, are most gratefully sur- 
 prising. One of them who is not so busy during the 
 winter that she really needs a recuperating summer, is 
 an exception. Our old ideas of the lazy, fashionable girl 
 must be set aside. They are all at work at something. 
 It may not bring them money, but it brings what is much 
 better to them the content that comes of an earnest 
 and fruitful pursuit. It may take the form of amuse- 
 ment, but it results in a training for self-helpfulness and 
 industry. 
 
 So, while not much can be done for the adult in this 
 matter of amusement, much is done for the young, and 
 much that will help to give us a generation of older men 
 and women, who will not be content with the poor bus- 
 iness of killing time. For it must be remembered that 
 while the young women "assist "at the athletic games 
 of the young men, the young men are indispensable to 
 the intellectual associations of the young women. They 
 meet together, and stimulate and help each other ; 
 and it does not seem possible that either party should 
 ever subside into those time-killers who haunt the clubs 
 established for men, or those jaded women who drag 
 themselves around to dinners and lunches and thronged 
 assemblies. 
 
 15*
 
 MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 Scientific Foolishness. 
 
 WE have been exceedingly amused by an article 
 from the pen of Professor Grant Allen, published 
 in a recent number of the Fortnightly Review, and en- 
 titled " A Problem in Human Evolution." In conse- 
 quence of the opposition which Mr. Darwin's theory has 
 met with, concerning the causes which, in the course of 
 the development of man from his hirsute anthropoid an- 
 cestors, have despoiled him of his hairy covering, Pro- 
 fessor Allen says : " It seems highly desirable, therefore) 
 to prop up Mr. Darwin's theory by any external supports 
 which observation or analogy may suggest, and, if possi- 
 ble, to show some original groundwork in the shape of 
 a natural tendency to hairlessness, upon which sexual 
 selection might afterward exert itself, so as to increase 
 and accelerate the depilatory process when once set up." 
 So the writer goes to work in the highly " desirable" 
 enterprise of propping up Mr. Darwin's theory that men 
 were not made, but were developed from a lower form 
 of life, as it was embodied in a hairy animal. The prob- 
 lem to be solved is : " How did men get rid of their 
 hair ? " Well, how do you suppose it was done ? It was 
 done mainly by lying down on it. The most hairless 
 portion of the body is the back, and the professor thinks 
 that, as man assumed the erect position in walking, he 
 became an animal lying less and less on its belly, and
 
 Misccllaneojis. 347 
 
 more and more upon its back, so that the growth of the 
 hair was checked, or the hair itself was worn away. The 
 manner of wrapping and protecting the human infant is 
 also supposed to have had something to do with the ef- 
 fect. After a few had got rid of their hair, hairlessness be- 
 came popular, and what artificial denudation had begun, 
 sexual selection completed. Bare skins were too strong 
 for bear-skins, and the hair-wearers were left out in the 
 cold. Now, we submit that there never was a specula- 
 tion more irredeemably nonsensical than this. And it is 
 gravely put forth in a journal of the best class as worthy 
 of respectful reading and consideration ! Those who be- 
 lieve that man was created by an all-wise power who gave 
 to the skin the beauty and delicacy which distinguish it 
 from the hairy integuments of the brute creation, are 
 accused very freely by the scientific world of credulity, 
 but there are very few among them who are sufficiently 
 addled to accept Professor Allen's speculations upon 
 this topic as worth the paper they were written on. A 
 child on reading them would naturally ask why, if lying 
 upon the back should produce the results attributed to 
 it, would not lying on the back of the head affect the 
 covering of that portion of the human structure in the 
 same way. Now, it so happens that where the weight 
 of the head rests the most heavily, the hair sticks the 
 tightest. When a man grows bald, he grows bald on the 
 top of his head, where he gets no pressure whatever. 
 Now, not one of our hairy ancestors ever lay down on 
 his back without his head, and the head with all its 
 weight, was pressed upon the hair. Docs it not occur 
 to Professor Allen as strange that pressure, as a depila- 
 tory, should be so partial in its operation ? Nay, does 
 it not seem strange to him that tlie same agent which 
 denudes the body of its hair acts as a genuine tightener 
 of that covering upon the head ?
 
 348 Every -Day Topics. 
 
 Speculation is cheap, so let us indulge in a little. As- 
 suming as sound the theory that we are descended from 
 a hairy anthropoid ape, we must admit that we started 
 from rather a savage condition. Why is it not possible 
 that the hair was pulled out in fighting ? What with 
 active hair-pulling, and the cicatrices of wounds received 
 in combat, it is not difficult to conceive of a hairy man 
 or woman pretty well cleaned off. So, as a hairless 
 skin began to be appreciated as a badge of bravery, it 
 furnished "a ground-work upon which sexual selection 
 might afterward exert itself." Is there anything unrea- 
 sonable in this ? Isn't it about as scientific as Professor 
 Allen's hypothesis ? We take out no patent on it, and 
 T/te Fortnightly is welcome to it. 
 
 But we have a better speculation than that one, which 
 Professor Allen went all around without seeing, and the 
 only rational one in the case. If we were writing for the 
 object which inspires Professor Allen's efforts, viz., that 
 of " propping up " Mr. Darwin's theory, we should speak 
 of the probable and entirely natural effect of clothing 
 upon the human frame. Hairy brutes suffer with cold as 
 men do who have no hair. When man began to be man, 
 with the hair on, he began to be bright enough to kill 
 animals and take their skins off. Then he became bright 
 enough to supplement his own hair with the hair he had 
 captured. At last he began to wear clothes as a regu- 
 lar habit. As soon as he did this he rendered the hair 
 upon his own person unnecessary, and nature ceased to 
 produce it, as nature ceased to furnish eyes to the fishes 
 that take up their homes in the Mammoth Cave. Na- 
 ture is full of analogies which teach us that when a 
 function is superseded it ceases. Now, how is that for 
 a theory ? Is it not a good deal more rational than 
 Professor Allen's ? We state it to show how easy it is to 
 build a theory which shall, in all respects, be as rational
 
 Miscellaneous. 349 
 
 as those gravely put forth by men who chiin to be scien- 
 tific. And we do claim that this theory is a better one 
 than Professor Allen's, in all respects, for his own pur- 
 poses. 
 
 Still, we do not believe in it. We have never yet seen 
 anything that looks like proof that we were not created 
 by a direct act of the Almighty. We believe that man 
 was made originally with a hairless skin for beauty's 
 sake, and because he was endowed with the ability to 
 manufacture his own clothing, and with the power to 
 tint and fashion it in correspondence with his ideas of 
 fitness and attractiveness. There is no more reason for 
 doubting that man began to exist by a direct act of 
 creation, endowed with all his present characteristics of 
 form and natural covering, than that life began to exist on 
 the earth in any form. Somewhere, behind all the links 
 of causation, exists the causeless cause, incomprehensi- 
 ble to us, but possessing intelligence and consciousness 
 out of which our own consciousness and intelligence are 
 born, and without which they never could have existed. 
 
 The Tax for Barharism. 
 
 The world groans with poverty. Wherever, in the 
 cities of the Old World or the New, a well-dressed, 
 comfortable man moves through a street, the hand that 
 asks for alms is extended to him. He can hardly walk a 
 block without being painfully reminded that there is a 
 great world around him that lives in mean conditions, 
 from hand to mouth. The tax upon a benevolent man's 
 sensibilities is constant and most depressing. The con- 
 sciousness that, while he is enjoying the reward of hon- 
 est labor, there arc millions whose minds are charged 
 with anxiety concerning the barest necessaries of life, is 
 full of bitterness. It matters not that the most of thii
 
 350 Every- Day Topics. 
 
 poverty is the result of vice and improvidence, for that 
 only makes the matter more hopeless. The immediate 
 causes of this poverty are apparent enough, and great 
 efforts are made in various directions for destroying 
 them ; but the reformers work against what seem to be 
 almost hopeless disadvantages. 
 
 There is one cause of the world's poverty, however, 
 which the ordinary mind very rarely considers. We rec- 
 ognize the personal vices of men, but we pay little re- 
 gard to the vices of governments. To-day the world is 
 spending on war on national contests for power, and on 
 the preparations for possible contests in the future 
 enough to feed the poor of the world. England, France, 
 Germany, Italy, Spain, are full of soldiers. Russia and 
 Turkey and the minor powers immediately interested 
 are, at the present writing, absorbed in a great and aw- 
 ful war. The thoughts, policies, energies, resources of 
 all Europe seem to be absorbed in this barbarous busi- 
 ness. England is jealous of Russian progress in the 
 East. France is smarting" under the sting of lost pres- 
 tige, and watching her opportunity for revenge. Ger- 
 many, conscious that her old enemy is not yet humbled, 
 holds her army organized, and ready for another trird. 
 Italy is drawing the life-blood of her people to sustain a 
 standing force that shall make her power respected by 
 the subtle agencies which are contriving its destruction. 
 Spain, herself the field for easy revolution, is pouring 
 out her treasure and her blood in trying to preserve her 
 precious island of Cuba. The American people are still 
 staggering under the terrible burdens which their recent 
 civil war laid upon their shoulders. The waste of life, 
 the waste of labor, the waste of the materials of life, the 
 waste of the hoarded results of labor, produced by these 
 gigantic quarrels and these stupendous preparations for 
 quarrels, cannot be calculated.
 
 Miscellaneous. 3 5 1 
 
 It is easy to say this and see this ; yet, right here in 
 America, tiiere are many men who look upon a European 
 war as a godsend to our industry and our commerce ! 
 It is a grave mistake. The world is now so closely 
 woven together in commercial interest and sympathy, 
 that no war can occur without carrying its depressing in- 
 fluence to every nation, state, county, town, and fire- 
 side on the civilized globe. The country that, in the 
 necessity of war, buys our goods to-day, will to-morrow, 
 in consequence of its war, be either weakened or bank- 
 rupt, and our customer will be gone. The time of de- 
 pression and adversity through which this nation has 
 been passing for the past five years, and from which it 
 has recently emerged, has produced its result in Europe. 
 Every country with which we trade has severely felt our 
 reverses, and the hard times we have talked of here have 
 been the common topic in London, Liverpool, Man- 
 chester, Paris, Lyons, and the other commercial and 
 manufacturing centres. Those producing and trading 
 peoples of Europe thought they made something out of 
 our war, hut what they made is gone. If we make any- 
 thing out of a European war, wc shall lose it all in five 
 years. Any war that cripples them will cripple us. In 
 short, war is never profitalile to anybody. It is not a 
 legitim.nte business. It is a barbarous business. It is a 
 constant drag upon the prosperity, not only of the na- 
 tions immediately involved in it, but of the world ; and 
 the whole world has a vital interest in bringing it to an 
 end. There is not a poor man in America who will not 
 be made poorer by a European war. Its suspension of 
 productive industry, its destruction of vital resources, 
 its waste of valuable material, are all losses from the 
 world's wealth, and all the world will feel them. War, 
 too, IS a natviral breeder of vice. What a legacy of\i(X', 
 of idleness, ot immorality, has war left to us I Where
 
 352 Every -Day Topics. 
 
 did all our wretched army of tramps come from ? 
 Whence has come all this overwhelming accession to the 
 ranks of pauperism ? These frequent murders and sui- 
 cides and robberies, in what did they directly or indi- 
 rectly originate ? These are all the natural children of 
 war. We cannot outlive them in a generation. We 
 never can outlive them, entirely. Why, if we could do 
 away with all war, and with all standing armies for half 
 a century, the world would become so comfortable and 
 respectable that it would not know itself. 
 
 Well, war, let it be remembered, is not the outgrowth 
 of Christianity. It is its constant disgrace. It is a relic 
 of that barbarism from which, in our vanity and self- 
 complacency, we fancy that we have retired. It is the 
 attempt to settle political and even religious questions 
 by might. It rises in no essential dignity above the 
 struggle which two dogs indulge in for a bone. It is the 
 way in which savage tribes settle a dispute. It is the 
 duel, now pretty universally under condemnation, un- 
 dertaken by states. It is brutal, not human. It is the 
 work of barbarous men or savage animals, and not of 
 Christian peoples. 
 
 It has been the habit of the world to laugh at peace 
 men and peace congresses, but they, after all, are right. 
 It is, of course, the duty of a nation to defend itself; 
 this we suppose all men will admit. The law of self- 
 preservation is a law universally recognized ; but in these 
 days the cases are very few in which arbitration, honestly 
 entered upon with a desire for the preservation of peace, 
 cannot settle any question that may arise between dif- 
 ferent nations. Even if Christian considerations do not 
 avail for the purpose, the absolute bankruptcy and ruin 
 of the great governments of the world, through the taxes 
 of barbaric war, must ultimately drive them to the set- 
 tlement of international questions by international ar-
 
 Miscellaneous. 353 
 
 bitration. The nations of the world arc now too near 
 together, and too strongly and immediately sympathetic, 
 to permit the warlike and semi-barbaric among them to 
 indulge in the arbitrament of war. We cannot afford 
 war in this country, and we cannot afford to permit 
 others to indulge in it. It is out of place in our civiliza- 
 tion. 
 
 The Drama. 
 
 In an article published some years ago, we recognized 
 the drama as an institution that had come to stay as an 
 important factor in the social and intellectual life of the 
 people as a source of much pleasure, and a possible 
 source of much culture. Since that day, the drama has 
 had its place in this magazine. We have criticised it 
 freely, we have commended heartily what has seemed to 
 be praiseworthy, and our notices of famous actors and 
 actresses have presented the public with much interest- 
 ing, instructive, and stimulating personal history. It 
 seems to us that theatres are improving, and that there 
 is much less that is objectionable in their conduct and 
 influence than formerly. We have been witnesses to the 
 fact, right here in New York, that the cleanest and best 
 plays have been the most successful. Plays without any 
 equivocal situations in them plays that leave no stain, 
 and excite no unwholesome imaginations have run for 
 months, and made their managers rich. 
 
 Now, these facts are weighty in the work of reforma- 
 tion. Whenever the time comes in the history of the 
 stage that dirt does not pay, it will cease to be presented. 
 There are, undoubtedly, theatres in New York which 
 cater to the lower tastes of the crowd, but there are cer- 
 tainly theatres here that studiously avoid oHcnding the 
 cars of polite and Christian people with double entente.
 
 3 54 Every-Day Topics. 
 
 and profanity, and irreverence. There is undoubtedly 
 an increasing attendance upon the theatre among refined 
 and religious people, and we rejoice in the fact, for it is 
 full of promise for the theatre itself, and for the bodily 
 and mental health of those who are attracted to it. The 
 undiscriminating abuse of theatres the attempt to drive 
 good people away from them is a damage to the cause 
 of morality in any community. The undiscriminating 
 condemnation of actors is a gross and inexcusable injus- 
 tice, and when this condemnation comes from a minis- 
 ter of the gospel of charity, what can it do but drive the 
 whole fraternity away from all religious influence and all 
 sense of religious obligations ? Yet there are Christian 
 ministers who do this over the brims of their wine-cups, 
 foolishly fancying that the cherished habit of their lives 
 is absolutely righteous, when it is more baleful to the 
 world in the influences and results of a single day, than 
 all the theatres and actors of the world are in a decade. 
 It is not in this way that the world is to be bettered. 
 If the drama is among us, and is come to stay and 
 none will dispute this then it is our business to make 
 the best of it, and to do all in our power to make it pure. 
 We are always, in our patronage of it, to offer a pre- 
 mium for literary and personal purity. A play that is 
 bad should always be severely let alone. An actor or 
 an actress whose character is notoriously bad should be 
 shunned. We would no sooner sit before the foot-lights, 
 giving countenance and support to a courtesan, than we 
 would consent to meet her in society. She is a dishonor 
 to her craft, and a disgrace to the stage. Her presence 
 is pollution. To pet and patronize such a creature as 
 this is to disgrace ourselves, no matter how great her 
 genius may be. It is by discriminating between virtu- 
 ous and vicious plays, and virtuous and vicious players, 
 that the stage is to be kept pure and ennobling in its in-
 
 Miscellaneous. 355 
 
 fluence, and not by condemning everything and every- 
 body connected with it. 
 
 The old and familiar claim that the theatre is '* a 
 school of morals," so far as it was intended to declare it 
 to be an educational institution, with morality for its ob- 
 ject, was without any foundation whatever. The thea- 
 tre is never ahead of the people who patronize it. If it 
 has any definite aim, it is to please to reflect the tastes, 
 the moralities, the opinions, and the enthusiasms of those 
 who attend it. No theatre can be run unless it pays, 
 and, as money must be the first object, such plays must 
 be presented as attract the crowd. Plays that are offen- 
 sive repel the crowd, so that the constant study of man- 
 agers is to ascertain the tastes and wishes of the people. 
 The tastes of those who attend the Madison Square 
 Theatre are very different, doubtless, from those of the 
 people who used to throng the old Bowery, but it is a 
 fact worth noting that those who attend the worst thea- 
 tres are treated, most commonly, to plays which appeal 
 to the best sentiments and moods of their audiences. 
 Poetic justice is insisted upon in the dhwucincnt of all 
 plots, before audiences of the lower class. It is only 
 thoughtful people who will tolerate plays that do not 
 " come out right." 
 
 Public opinion and public taste are the master and 
 mistress of the stage. It is but a short time since it was 
 proposed to produce a Passion Play in New York. Now, 
 a play representing on the boards of a theatre the Pas- 
 sion of our Lord could have no apology or justification 
 save in the ignorant devotion of those producing it. No 
 such apology or justification exists in New York, and 
 public opinion rose against the project and vehemently 
 protested. The manager who had it in hand bowed re- 
 spectfully to the pu])lic voice and withdrew it. Tlie 
 incident is a good illustration of the power of public
 
 356 Every -Day Topics. 
 
 opinion over the theatre. The truth is that the hfe of 
 the theatre depends on its power to please the pubhc, 
 and it is bound by every consideration of interest to re- 
 flect the moral sense and moral culture of those upon 
 whom it depends for support. It is for this reason that 
 we have no fears of a bad moral result of the theatre 
 upon the public. If an immoral actress wins a great 
 success in New York, it is not because she has debauched 
 New York, but because New York is tolerant of immo- 
 rality. If a bad play succeeds in a New York theatre, it 
 is because there is not moral sense enough in those who 
 witness it and in the public press to rebuke it and drive 
 it from the boards. The better and purer the patronage 
 of any theatre may be, the better will that theatre be- 
 come, in every variety of influence which a theatre can 
 exert ; and it is delightful to believe that the dramatic 
 instinct, which is the source of so much pleasure to so 
 many good people, can be gratified without danger of 
 pollution. 
 
 The Nihilists. 
 
 To the average American, the name of "nihilist" is 
 a name of horror. It is identified with all that is repul- 
 sive in infidelity, and all that is damnable in crime. To 
 the ordinary mind, a nihilist is a bad man, or a bad wo- 
 man, who does not at all understand or weigh political 
 questions, and who is insane enough to suppose that good 
 can come of desperate measures, however poorly adapted 
 they may be to secure the end sought. The nihilist 
 commits a murder apparently in a wanton mood, and 
 apparently for the sake of murder only ; wc do not un- 
 derstand the motive, or the bearing of the deed, and we 
 can only regard it with horror and execration. By 
 one thing, however, we have all been surprised in this 
 connection, viz., the bravery and the loyalty to their
 
 Miscellaneo us. 357 
 
 confederates with which the nihiUsts have met the 
 consequences of their crimes. Nothing approaches this 
 courage and constancy but Christian martyrdom. There 
 is another thing that has surprised us, viz., the fact that 
 nihiUsts are found in the highest families, and not in- 
 frequently among the best women of Russia. With these 
 latter facts in mind, it is quite time for us to suspect that 
 the nihihst is not quite the bad person we have supposed 
 him to be, and to inquire into his character, his poUcy, 
 and his motives. 
 
 We have been much interested and instructed by Mr. 
 Axel Gustafson's article on this topic in the Naiional 
 Quarterly Review for July, and it seems to us that the 
 American people, no less than the cause of truth and hu- 
 manity, are under great obligations to him for his masterly 
 setting forth of the facts concerning this terrible political 
 sect. We cannot undertake in this article to present 
 more than the conclusions at which the reader arrives in 
 its perusal. We may say at the beginning that Mr. Gus- 
 tafson does not argue the case for the nihilists, but pre- 
 sents his facts and his documentary evidence in such a 
 way that no candid man can conclude the reading of his 
 paper without feeling tiiat the best and noblest men of 
 Russia are in the ranks of the nihilists. The men who 
 love liberty in Russia, the men who would like to see 
 their nation enfranchised from the yoke of irresponsible 
 personal government, the men who wish to see Russia 
 progressing in the path of freedom from political and 
 ecclesiastical tyranny, the men of noble aspirations for 
 themselves and their country, the men of ideas and of 
 courage and self-sacrifice, arc nihilists. It is true that 
 most of these look upon Christianity, as it is presented 
 to them in the doctrines and forms of the Russian 
 Church, as a worse than useless system of religion, but 
 who is to blame for that ? It is true, also, that the ni-
 
 358 Every -Day Topics. 
 
 hilist regards murder as a duty for which he is willing 
 to sacrifice his own life, but who is to blame for that ? 
 It must be remembered that there is no lesson of des- 
 perate violence, and even of indiscriminate wrong, that 
 he has not learned of his own government. He has been 
 used all his life to seeing men banished, or murdered by 
 his government, on suspicion of opposition to Czarism. 
 He knows that no opinion or word of his, favoring the 
 freedom of the people, or the subordination of the gov- 
 ernment to the good of the people, will receive a mo- 
 ment's toleration. He has but to speak a word for him- 
 self or his nation, and the hounds of the government are 
 set at once upon his track, and then he goes to prison, 
 or to Siberia, or to the gallows. There can be no 
 question, we suppose, that the sweetest blood of Russia 
 is freezing in Siberia, and that, however mistaken the 
 nihilists may be in their methods, they hold among 
 their members the noblest souls of Russia. They have 
 adopted the method of terrorism as absolutely the only 
 one at their command. Free discussion has no home in 
 Russia. A slip of the tongue, even, is rewarded with 
 imprisonment or something worse, so that these men and 
 women, with a courage and a self-sacrifice that find few 
 examples in modern history, devote themselves to the 
 dangerous task of liberating their country from its double 
 form of slavery. 
 
 We cannot do better here than to quote some of the 
 authoritative declarations of the nihilist organs. They 
 arc taken from different documents, and explain them- 
 selves. 
 
 " Surely the liberty we crave and strive toward is not exorbi- 
 tant ; we only desire the right to free expression of our thoughts, 
 the right to act independently and in accordance with our convic- 
 tions ; to have a voice in the State's affairs, and to know that our 
 persons are protected against official whims. These, surely, are
 
 Miscellaneous. 35Q 
 
 elementary rights of mankind, rights to which we are entitled he- 
 cause of our being human, and for whose vindication we call our 
 biothers' aid." 
 
 " What would we do with a constitution under present circum- 
 stances ? So long as the country is denied all justice, r constitu- 
 tion would be of no use to it. Let us be given justice without 
 distinction of persons, and we shall be satisfied. But if the State 
 chariot goes on as before, an old programme must be maintained ; 
 it is Death to the court camarilla and to all criminal officials." 
 
 " We execrate personal government especially, because it has 
 outraged by all its acts every feeling of justice and honor ; be- 
 cause it systematically opposes freedom of thought, speech and 
 education ; because it supf)orts for egotistical reasons social cor- 
 ruption and political immorality, since it finds in these both sup- 
 port and accomplices ; because it makes law and justice the instru- 
 ments of its personal interests ; because it exhausts the material 
 forces of the land, and lives at the expense of the welfare of com- 
 ing generations ; because by its home and foreign policy it has 
 brought about a breach between our land and the rest of Europe ; 
 and because, after being weakened and martyred, we are ex- 
 posed to the derision and contempt of our enemies." 
 
 " The problem of the socialistic revolutionary party is the sub- 
 version of the present form of government, and the subjection of 
 
 the authority of the State to the people The transfer 
 
 of the State power to the hands of the people would give our his- 
 tory quite another direction. A representative assembly would 
 create a complete change in all our economic and State relations. 
 Once let the Government be deposed, and the nation would ar- 
 range itself far better, may be, than we could hope." 
 
 These declarations do not read like the words of blood- 
 thirsty, and unreasoning, and unreasonable fanatics. 
 They are the words of men who " mean business," it is 
 true, but of men who simply want what the American in- 
 herits as his birthright. The American, in judging these 
 brave men and women, should remember that the prev- 
 alent idea in Russia is that the people were made for the 
 Government, and not the Government for the people. 
 These nihilists differ with the prevalent idea, and so are 
 in disgrace, and not only in disgrace, but in constant dan-
 
 360 Every -Day Topics. 
 
 ger of imprisonment, banishment, or death. They have 
 been driven in their desperation to adopt the govern- 
 mental poUcy of terrorism and cruelty. They meet 
 threat with threat, terror with terror, death with death, 
 because the Government, with the total suppression of 
 free discussion, leaves them no other weapons to fight 
 with. We wish there were a better course for these 
 noble souls to pursue, but we judge them not. Their 
 methods seem harsh sometimes almost fiendish but 
 they know what they are after, and they appreciate the 
 awful risks they run. They have undertaken to redeem 
 their country from misrule a great task in which we 
 wish them entire success. We profoundly regret that 
 they feel compelled to use the same machinery of ter- 
 rorism and murder with which their government seeks 
 for their overthrow, but we cannot do less than sympa- 
 thize in their great object, and admire their courage and 
 self-devotion. 
 
 Cheap Opinions. 
 
 There is probably nothing that so obstinately stands 
 in the way of all sorts of progress as pride of opinion, 
 while there is nothing so foolish and so baseless as that 
 same pride. If men will look up the history of their 
 opinions, learn where they came from, why they were 
 adopted, and why they are maintained and defended, 
 they will find, nine times in ten, that their opinions are 
 not theirs at all that they have no property in them, 
 save as gifts of parents, education, and circumstances. 
 In short, they will learn that they did not form their own 
 opinions that they were formed for them, and in them, 
 by a series of influences, unmodified by their own reason 
 and knowledge. A young man grows up to adult age in 
 a Republican or Democratic family, and he becomes 
 Republican or Democrat in accordance with the ruling
 
 Miscellaneous. 361 
 
 influences of the household. Ninety-nine times in a 
 hundred the rule holds good. Like father, like son. 
 Children are reared in the Catholic Church, in the 
 Episcopal, Unitarian, Presbyterian, Baptist, Methodist 
 Church, and they stand by the Church in whose faith 
 and forms they were bred. They become partisans, 
 wranglers, defenders on behalf of opinions, every one 
 of which they adopted without reason or choice. Touch 
 them at any point, and they bristle with resistance, often 
 with offence ; yet they borrowed every opinion they 
 hold ! If they had all been changed about in their 
 cradles, we should have the same number of partisans, 
 only our present Republican would be a Democrat, our 
 Roman Catholic would be our Methodist, and so on 
 through all the possibilities of transformation. 
 
 Opinions acquired in the usual way are nothing but 
 intellectual clothes left over by expiring families. Some 
 of them are very old-fashioned and look queerly to the 
 modern tailor ; but they have the recommendation of 
 being only clothes. They do not touch the springs of 
 life, like food or cordial. Certainly they are nothing to 
 be proud of, and they are not often anything to he 
 ashamed of. Multitudes would not be presentable with- 
 out them, as they have no faculty for making clothes 
 for themselves. The point we make is, that opinions 
 acquired in this way have very little to do with charac- 
 ter. The simple fact that we find God-fearing, God-lov- 
 ing, good, charitable, conscientious, Christian men and 
 women living under all forms of Christian opinion and 
 church organization, shows how little opinion has to do 
 with the heart, the affections and the life. Yet all our 
 strifes and all our partisanships relate to opinions which 
 we never made, which we have uniformly borrowed, and 
 which all Christian history has demonstrated to be of 
 entirely subordinate import opinions often which those 
 16
 
 362 Every-Day Topics. 
 
 who originally framed them had no reason to be proud 
 of, because they had no vital significance. 
 
 When we find, coming squarely down upon the facts, 
 what cheap stuff both our orthodoxy and our heterodoxy 
 are made of ; when we see how little they are the 
 proper objects of personal and sectarian pride ; when 
 we apprehend how little they have to do with character, 
 and how much they have to do with dissension and all 
 uncharitabieness ; how childish they make us, how sen- 
 sitive to fault-finding and criticism ; how they narrow 
 and dwarf us, how they pervert us from the grander and 
 more vital issues, we may well be ashamed of ourselves, 
 and trample our pride of opinion in the dust. We shall 
 find, too, in this abandonment of our pride, a basis of 
 universal charity cheap, and not the best, but broad 
 enough for pinched feet and thin bodies to stand upon. 
 If we inherit our opinions from parents and guardians 
 and circumstances, and recognize the fact that the great 
 world around us get their opinions in the same way, we 
 shall naturally be more able to see the life that underlies 
 opinion everywhere, and to find ourselves in sympathy 
 with it. We heard from the pulpit recently the state- 
 ment that when the various branches of the Christian 
 Church shall become more careful to note the points of 
 sympathy between each other than the points of differ- 
 ence, the cause of Christian unity will be incalculably 
 advanced ; and that statement was the inspiring word of 
 which the present article was born. 
 
 We can never become careless, or comparatively 
 careless, of our points of difference, until we learn what 
 wretched stuff they are made of; that these points of 
 difference reside in opinions acquired at no cost at all, 
 and that they often rise no higher in the scale of value 
 than borrowed prejudices. So long as "orthodoxy" of 
 opinion is more elaborately insisted on in the pulpit than
 
 Miscellaneous. 363 
 
 love and purity ; so long as dogmatic theology has the 
 lead of life ; so long as Christianity is made so much a 
 thing of the intellect and so subordinately a thing of the 
 affections, the points of difference between the churches 
 will be made of more importance than the points of 
 sympathy. Pride of opinion must go out before sympa- 
 thy and charity can come in. So long as brains occupy 
 the field, the heart cannot find standing room. When 
 our creeds get to be longer than the moral law ; when 
 Christian men and women are taken into, or shut out of, 
 churches on account of their opinions upon dogmas that 
 do not touch the vitalities of Christian life and character ; 
 when men of brains are driven out of churches or shut 
 away from them, because they cannot have liberty of 
 opinion, and will not take a batch of opinions at second- 
 hand, our pride of opinion becomes not only ridiculous, 
 but criminal, and the consummation of Christian unity 
 is put far off into the better future. 
 
 With the dropping of our pride of opinion which 
 never had a respectable basis to stand upon our re- 
 spect for those who are honestly trying to form an opin- 
 ion for themselves should be greatly increased. There 
 are men who are honestly trying to form an opinion of 
 their own. They are engaged in a grand work. There 
 are but few of us who are able to cut loose from our be- 
 longings. Alas ! there are but (cw of us who are large 
 enough to apprehend the fact that the opinions of these 
 men are only worthy of respect as opinions. We can 
 look back and respect the opinions of our fathers and 
 grandfathers, formed under the light and among the cir- 
 cumstances of their time, but the authors of the coming 
 opinions we regard with distrust and a degree of un- 
 charitablcness most heartily to be deplored. We are 
 pretty small men and women, anyway.
 
 364 Every-Day Topics, 
 
 Too Much of It. 
 
 As the world grows older, and the materials of knowl- 
 edge are multiplied, and the employments of life are 
 subjected to the widest and intensest competitions, the 
 ordinary individual seems to be quite overmatched by 
 his circumstances. The average man is not " sufficient 
 for these things," and the intellectual aliment that is 
 provided for him is altogether in excess of his demands 
 altogether ahead of the possibilities of his consump- 
 tion. We go on producing profusely in all departments, 
 mostly of non-essential material, and the process of 
 gathering is a process of selection. 
 
 Let us take, for instance, our morning newspaper. 
 No man can read one of our great New York dailies 
 through, and digest its contents, and have time or 
 strength left for other duties. He can only pass his eyes 
 over, and very indistinctly gather and remember the 
 leading matters of news. It is a huge jumble, in the 
 main, of unimportant facts facts that have no relation 
 to his life. Now, any newspaper man knows that the es- 
 sential matters in his columns can be crowded into one- 
 tenth of the space that they occupy, and that he fills his 
 columns with material that it is a waste of any man's 
 time to read. He must compete with his neighbor, there- 
 fore he must give acres of space to trash. Few can read 
 it, and nobody would miss it, or be the poorer or worse 
 for losing it. 
 
 Who will give us the newspaper that will print only 
 that which is worth reading only that which people will 
 remember reducing it all to its compactest form ? The 
 late Samuel Bowles, of Springfield, probably came near- 
 est to doing exactly this thing of all who have under- 
 taken it. This, at least, was what he definitely tried to
 
 Miscellaneous. 365 
 
 do to "boil down" everything. He was often known 
 to apologize for a long article on the ground that he had 
 no time to write a short one. The thing he accomplished 
 was so unexampled that his paper was regarded as a 
 model ; and it achieved a national reputation, though 
 published in a little city of only thirty thousand people. 
 If his successors stand by this idea, they will make their 
 newspaper as much a success as he did. One page of a 
 small paper is enough to furnish a record of any day's news 
 of everything that it is desirable to see or remember. 
 
 There was a time when a minister was obliged to fur- 
 nish pretty much all the intellectual pabulum of his par- 
 ish. His people had little to read, and they read little. 
 He was the only scholar, and he preached long sermons, 
 and they either liked them or could stand them. Now 
 a long sermon is, in ninety-nine cases in a hundred, a 
 mistake. It is not desired on the part of the people, and 
 it is in no way needed by the people. They are glad 
 when it is finished, and know that for all practical pur- 
 poses it had been better finished from fifteen to thirty 
 minutes earlier. When they have received the idea of a 
 sermon, they can dispense with the exposition of its va- 
 rious phases and the dilutions and illustrations that go 
 with it. In short, the people nowadays have a great 
 abundance of intellectual stimulus outside of the pulpit, 
 and they want their sermons boiled down, as much as 
 they do their newspapers. It is not that they want less 
 in them they want all they can get, and all that the 
 best man has it in him to gue ; but they want it in 
 smaller space. The pulpit sin of talking too much is 
 pretty universal. We do not know of a minister in the 
 whole round of a pretty wide acquaintance v,ho is ac- 
 cused of talking too little. 
 
 The theatres are even more open to criticism on these 
 matters than the newspaper and the pulpit. How many
 
 Z^ Every-Day Topics. 
 
 persons does any one suppose there are in any theatre in 
 New York, on any night, who are not glad when the 
 play of the place and the evening is over ? One of the 
 great drawbacks on theatre-going and concert-going and 
 opera-going is that they last so long that they bore a 
 man. When that which was intended to be an enter- 
 tainment and an amusement becomes tedious and tire- 
 some, it ceases, of course, to answer its intention. We 
 believe we express the universal feeling when we say 
 that our public amusements are wearisome except to the 
 fresh few who have no need of them. Three hours in a 
 hot and crowded hall, at the end of a day of labor, are 
 too many, and we have no doubt that many more would 
 attend amusements if it were not that the last half of 
 their continuance becomes simply a period of weary and 
 impatient endurance. The way in which a tired audi- 
 ence jumps from a preacher's " Amen" for the door, is 
 only equalled by the rush which begins before the fall of 
 the curtain of the theatrical or operatic stage. 
 
 Look, for another instance, at the amount of stuff that 
 enters into what we are pleased to call our social life. 
 The hen that undertook to "spread herself " over a 
 bushel of eggs was a fair type of the modern woman who 
 undertakes to keep up her social relations with a great 
 city-full of women. What is called the "social tax" 
 upon women is something enormous. There are hun- 
 dreds of thousands of women who are weary all the time 
 with the work of keeping up relations with each other, 
 that are never flavored with the element of friendship. 
 No good comes of it that we know of, or ever heard of. 
 It consists entirely of calling, and is never so pleasant 
 in its experiences as when the caller fails to find the 
 lady called on at home. If a lady can succeed in making 
 twenty calls in an afternoon, in consequence of finding 
 only ten ladies at home, she accounts it a most success-
 
 Miscellaneous. 367 
 
 ful performance of her social duties, and boasts of it as 
 a good thing well got along with. We know of nothing 
 that wants boiling down any more than our social life. 
 It needs this concentrating process to make it significant 
 not only, but to make it endurable. It is good for nothing 
 as it is, and it is a weariness to flesh and spirit alike. 
 
 We are glad to see that so many great and able men 
 have gone to making primers, so that the essential 
 knowledge embraced in the treatises of philosophers and 
 the records of scientific investigators may be brought in 
 simple and easily available forms within the reach of all. 
 We must all go to primer-making, for there is not enough 
 of any man or of any life-time to be spread over such 
 spaces, and diluted with such inanities and non-essen- 
 tials as seem to prevail in every department of human 
 interest. The days grow no longer as the world grows 
 older, but the interests, the employments, the amuse- 
 ments of the world are increased ten-fold, so that they 
 must be concentrated and reduced in order that they 
 may preserve their proper relations to each other, and 
 to the capacities of life and time. 
 
 European Travel. 
 
 The number of Americans travelling in Europe during 
 the last year has been very large. This continued inter- 
 est in Europe, which seems really more fresh and strong 
 with every passing year, is a good sign, and can only re- 
 sult in good to our country. Our sea-side hotels are the 
 only sufferers from this annual flight, but they manage to 
 prosper in spite of it, so that we cannot spend much sym- 
 pathy upon them. America has now become such a nation 
 of travellers that Europe has arranged itself in many 
 regions for her special accommodation. Beds are made, 
 tables are set, waiters are trained, with special reference
 
 368 Every-Day Topics. 
 
 to American wants and tastes, and no American can ar- 
 rive anywhere without understanding that he is welcome, 
 and has been looked for and carefully provided for, 
 
 Americans have been much accused, both at home and 
 abroad, of pride and vainglory in their country. It is 
 true that the average American grows up with the idea 
 that his country is, in all respects, the most remarkable 
 and desirable country that the sun shines on that it has 
 the longest rivers, the highest mountains, the broadest 
 prairies, the most notable resources in mines and soils, 
 the best institutions, and the brightest, the best-educated, 
 the happiest, and the most prosperous people on the 
 face of the globe. We suppose this unreasoning pride 
 of country is not peculiar to Americans. The average 
 Englishman is about as bigoted in his national pride as 
 he can be, and so is the average Frenchman, while the 
 German regards them both with a measure of contempt, 
 as he indulges in his habitual glorification of ''Vatcr- 
 laiid." There is no cure for this overweening national 
 vanity but travel. Shut a nation off by itself, as the 
 Chinese have been separated from the world in the years 
 gone by, and it naturally becomes to itself " The Cen- 
 tral Flowery Kingdom," and all other nations are " out- 
 side barbarians." Self-idolatry is the besetting sin of all 
 peoples shut up to themselves, and nothing has done so 
 much to modify the American national vanity as the 
 travel of the last few years. 
 
 However grand in its natural features America may 
 be, and however vast in its material resources, these pe- 
 culiarities are hardly legitimate subjects of pride, and 
 in the presence of what man has done in Europe, the 
 American grows ashamed of his vanity of what God has 
 done for him, and acquires a more modest estimate of 
 himself and of his grade and style of civilization. The 
 great cathedrals, the wonderful cities, the collections of
 
 Miscellaneous. 369 
 
 :irt, the great highways, even the ruins of the ancient 
 buildings, minister to his humiUation by showing him 
 how far other nations, new and old, surpass his possi- 
 bilities of achievement. When a man is thoroughly hum- 
 ble in the presence of his superiors, or in the presence 
 of work that overmatches his power and skill, he nat- 
 urally becomes not only teachable, but an active and 
 interested learner. Europe to-day is a great inspirer to 
 America and a great teacher. It is true that she gets 
 but little of her political inspiration from Europe, but 
 her instruction and inspiration in art are almost entirely 
 European. In architecture, painting, sculpture, and even 
 in literature, European ideas are dominant. 
 
 So this great tide of life that goes out from us every 
 year does not return without that which abundantly re- 
 pays all its expenditure of time and money. For in all 
 this impression of European superiority in many things, 
 there is very rarely anything that tends to wean the 
 American from his home. The conventionalities of old 
 society, and habits and customs that had their birth in 
 circumstances and conditions having no relations to his 
 life, do not tend to attract the American from his home 
 love and loyalty. He usually comes back a better Amer- 
 ican than he goes away, with the disposition only to avail 
 himself of what he has learned to improve himself, his 
 home and his country. The American, bred to great 
 social and political freedom, cannot relinquish it, and 
 can never feel entirely at home where he does not enjoy 
 it. He perfectly understands how a European can come 
 to America and be content with it as a home, because he 
 can shape his life according to his choice, but he cannot 
 understand how an American can emigrate to Europe 
 and make a satisfactory home there, because the social 
 and political institutions would be felt as a yoke to him, 
 and a burden. 
 
 16*
 
 ^7^ Every -Day Topics. 
 
 To leave out of all consideration the matter of utility, 
 we know of nothing in the whole round of recreative 
 experiences so pleasure-giving as European travel. A 
 man of culture, visiting for the first time the old homes 
 of art and story, experiences about as much of pleasure 
 as this world has to give. To see new peoples and strange 
 scenery is a great delight ; and to do this, having nothing 
 else to do far removed from business cares, and even the 
 possibility of other employment is to see them under the 
 most enjoyable conditions. Indeed, we know of no better 
 reward for the labor of many years than the ability it 
 should secure to visit Europe as a sight-seer. It is often 
 thrown as a reproach at the American that he goes abroad 
 quite ignorant of what is worth seeing in his own coun- 
 try, but this is unjust. In the first place, many of the 
 things quite worth seeing in America are very difficult to 
 reach. To all the scenes of Europe, the way is paved 
 with conveniences, and often strewn with luxuries. The 
 great mountains and caiions and geysers of the far West 
 are difficult to reach. A man almost literally takes his 
 life in his hand when he visits them, and his experiences 
 are full of hardship. In Switzerland, there is a better 
 road over the highest mountain-pass than America can 
 show in her parks, and the treasures of art which Europe 
 has to show are of a kind which an American cannot find 
 at home. From the time an American starts from home, 
 including his passage of the Atlantic, until he returns and 
 once more greets his native land, he experiences around 
 of pleasures procurable in no other way. He comes back 
 full of new ideas, he is rested, he is refreshed and every 
 way improved ; and he is ready, as we are, to give the great 
 army of his countrymen who yearly follow in his track 
 to repeat his experiences a hearty " God speed ! "

 
 
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