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Lorsque le document est trop grand pour §tre reproduit en un seul cliche, il est film6 d partir de I'angSe supdrieur gauche, de gauche d droite, et de haut en bas, en prenant le nombre d'images ndcessaire. Les diagrammes suivants illustrent la mdthode. >y errata ed ^o tnt ne pelure, fipon d i 32X I f L 1 2 3 1 2 3 4 5 6 :\.j.-fe,M0if^iiiftLri^ubfi:*Li^^ * ■*Ti»**W»t •-^•^■— ^ •-**- '"' ' ••; Ai-' l&ooki bs %l(b. $. IE. Clark. WAYS AND MEANS OF CHRISTIAN EN- DEAVOR. $1.25. THE CHILDREN AND THE CHURCH. 76 ccnU. DANGER SKJNALS. 78 cento. YOUNG PEOPLE'S FRAYER-MEETINGS. 75 ct». LOOKING OUT ON LIFE. 75 cents. OUR BUSINESS BOYS. 60 cents. D. LQTHROP COMPANY, 364-366 Waihington Street, Boston. LOOKING OUT ON LIFE. A BOOK FOR GIRLS ON PRACTICAL SUBJECTS BASED ON MANY LErfERS FROM WISE MOTHERS ^ z REV. F. E. CLARK, D. D. PrenderJ of the Unittd Society of Christian Kndeavor; Author of" The Mossback Correspondence ^^ " Danger Signals," " Our Business Boys," " Ways c rd Means." " Young People's Prayer Meetings," etc., etc. t'i! & BOSTON D LOTHROP COMPANY WASHINGTON STREET OPPOSITI BKOMFIILD \ "^ -^xv^: it ' COPTBISBT, 1892< BT D. LoraBOP Compant. K ii.aa.- iL . » iMi>» w .i ^■^•rr"r-Trr.*rr~rKF?^^?^^ o '6 IBetikattti TO MY IDEAL OF A PERFECT WOMAN MY MOTHER WHO THIRTY-THREE YEARS AGO TO-DAY EXCHANGED EARTH FOR HEAVEN March 26, 1891. 1 1 1 BY WAY or INTRODUCTION. This book had its origin in a sincere desire to help the girls and youns; women of the present day to a nol>ler womauhoot:. If, after the manner of autlioi-s, any excuse Is needed for presenting it to the pnblic ilds |ffn-pose must be its sufflcient apology. Not because girls are suffering for good advice is this bool< offered them, but because every generation needs to have t\w old trutlis that relate to the outlook on life put in fresh guise. The loving counsel of wise mothers and women eminent In public life which is here incorporated will, I believe, add a new interest to the themes discussed. However small the value of the author's own words, the importance of the messages of otliers of whom he is merely the mouth- piece, are beyond question. These chapters were originally given as lectures to an audience embracing hundreds of girls and young women, and the somewhat colloquial form of aiUhess ban not been changed, as the author wishes to speuk to the audience that reads his book rather than merely to write for them. Some parts of these chapters have also appeared in JTie Ladies' Home Journal of Philadelphia, and The Oolden Rule of Boston. That in some cases they may be of service in bringing the Queen to her throne, lier kingdom and her crown, is the hope and prayer of the author. F. E. C. Boston, March, 18J2. iMi CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. A YOUNG woman's KIGHT8 CHAPTER II. A YOUNG woman's WKONOS CHAPTER III. ANXIOUS AND AIMLESS CHAPTER IV. FRIVOLITY AND FLIRTATION CHAPTER V. GETTING MARRIED CHAPTER VI. MOTHERS, SISTERS, DAUGHTERS . CHAPTER VII. THS QUEEN ON HER THRONE 32 58 84 107 129 161 m I » ^mwf\m v»aa Mifmtm t i i v m wt » »*mMmmu ' grTTr/r; .; u :" ' ■! ■ ■ ■ "gJ^^BM -' ig* -' 1 ■■■ LOOKING OUT ON LIFE. CHAPTER I. A YOUNG woman's EIGHTS. ITie Opinion of the Poets ~ Flattery and Calumny— Woman's right "to shave ani sing bass" — JTie Right to he Herself — Fashion's War on Individuality ~ In- dividualiiy not Oddity— A Girl's Capital— The Jiight to Independence — The Spirit of Self-Help — A Youtig Woman's "Niche" — Int. Ilectual Babies — Catching a Husband— Timothy Titcomb's Opinion— N. P. Willis' Tribute to his Mother — A Young Woman's Noblest Sight. I ^ A S we glance through the poets, ancient -^-*" and modern, we are surprised to find the varying estimates that are put upon woman- kind by the minstrels of the ages. Some paint 7 pa 8 A TOUNG WOVVN'S KIGHT8. her as an arigel just come down from heaven, others as a tempting fiend just come up from the pit. Even the same poet— in different mood — has many a various estimate of her of whom he sings. Thus Byron in one poem describes one of his fair visions in words that many of us would apply to the woman — mother, wife or gister — whom we loved best. «' She walks in beauty, like the light Of cloudless climes and starry skies; And all that's best of dark and bright, Meet in her aupect and her eyes." And in another one he declares : " What a strange thing is man ! and what a stranger Is woman ! What a whi-lwind is lier head And what a whirlpool full of depth and danger, Is all the rest about her." Lord Lansdown in heartless cynicism puts it this way : leaven, 3 from tmood whom scribes J of us wife or A YOUNG WOMAN 8 RIGHTS. " Mankind from Adam, have been women's foola, Women, from Eve, have been the Devil's tools : Heaven might have spared one torment when we fell ; Not left us women, or not threatened hell." While Charles McKay looking at the other side of the picture, writes : " Women may err, woman may give her mind To evil thoughts and lose her pure estate ; But for one woman who aiiVonts her kind By wicked passions and remorseless hate, A thousand make amends in age and youth, By heavenly pity, by sweet sympathy, By patient kindness, by enduring truth, By love, supremest in adversity." m ranger r, 1 puts it Milton, as some one has before pointed out, in the ninth book of Paradise Lost, when first he realizes the enormity of Eve's transgression, cries out : " O fairest of creation, last and best Of all God's works, creature in whom excelled Whatever can to si.^ht or thought be found. Holy, divine, good, amiable or sweet, How art thou lost ! How on a sudden lost." it > " 4 1 j.;:uts)««sRn(f^ . 10 A VOUNG woman's RIGHTS. And in the next book he, perceiving more and more his sin and hers, and their common fallen condition, exclaims: "Oh I why did God create at last This novelty on earth, this fair defect Of nature, and not fill the world at once With men as angels, without feminine." These apparent contradictions of the poets are very suggestive and significant, for they show us the many-sidedness of her of whom they sing. Tlie bard's keen vision sees t..d possibilities of a fiend or an angel, of a tormen- tor or an angel of light, of a tempting spirit or a messenger of God, in every woman. Not for the sake of speaking the usual words of flattery and the polite phrases which the sub- ject often calls forth would I take your time ; nor, on the other hand, would I waste it by re- peating the cutting sarcasm so often served up in one way or another which lash the supposed L.J.. nore and lu falleu t ice e." le poets or tliey F whom ees tiitj tormen- ipirit or 1 words the sub- r time ; i by ra- ved up apposed A YOUNG WOMAN 8 RIGHTS. 11 foibles of the sex ; but because there are in your keeping, young women, such vast opportunities, such princely fortunes, which you may either squander worse than recklessly, or use for the enrichment of the world, would I address you. Will you not give heed to these thoughts which, I pray, may do something toward build- ing up in each of you an earnest Christian womanhood ? In passing, an i since we have been speaking of the poets' view, let us notice the change that, during the centuries, has come over the writera who have turned their attention to you (and there is scarcely one who has not done so). It is a most encouraging sign. Juvenal in- forms us that " there are few disputes in life which do not originate with a woman," and Plautus that "a woman finds it much easier to do ill than well," and that " women have many faults, but of the many this is the greatest, that they please themselves too I t iW i 12 A YOUNG A 'OMAN'S RIGHTS. much and give too little attention to pleasing the men," and Virgil that " a woman is always changeable and capricious." These things are what heathen writers of greatest note had to say, and we find in them hardly a word of praise and honor. Cold, insinuating, heartless, vile words about womankind abound. But, thar'n God, Christianity has been at work in the world for eighteen hundred yeai-s, elevating and leavening, quickening and inspiring, and no class has so felt its touch as those whoui you represent; none should be so grateful ."« you that He whose mother was a Mary, and whose friends were the sisters of Bethany, made you as well as them His sisters and friends. As we read these cynical calumnies of heathen writers we feel what a wonderful change He has wrought who comforted the ./idow's heart at the gate of Nain, and raised the dead girl of Capernaum. Out of degradation worse than death has He raised womankind. The women iu. A YOUNG woman's BIGHTS. 18 of whom Tennyson and Longfellow sing are different creatures fi-ora the women of Virgil and Horace, because Christ lived and died. Now we feel that the words of our own Lowell are more true than those which heathen poet ever penned. *' Earth's noblest thing a woman perfected." Now we feel the force of Barrett's verse : " Not she with trslt'rous kiss her Saviour stup^, Not she denied him with unholy tongue ; She, while Apostles shrank, could danger brave, Last at his cross and earliest at his grave." But we have not time to linger over the poets, ancient or modern, if we make even an unimportant contributor to the most important subject of a young woman's rights. I trust that no enthusiastic friend of the political rights of woman who may read these addresses, will be disappointed becpuse I have nothing to say ' 'I i 14 A YOUNG woman's BIGHTS. about the rights of women to vote and attend the caucus and hohl office. ^ Important as these questions are, I believe that there are other rights that belong inherently and unquestion- ably to every young woman, wliich are more important still, and which are far more often overlooked. Dr. Holland in a half-bantering, yet in its purpose wholly serious lecture about women, stands up stoutly for a woman's right to shave and aing bass if she wants to do so ; "but," he adds, "while I claim the right of every woman to" sing bass, I confess that I should not care to see it exercised to any great extent, for I think treble is by all odds the finer and more attractive part of music. " Bass would be a bad thing for a lullaby, and could only silence a baby by scaring it. If I can witch the ears and win the hearts of men and women by doing that which I can do naturally and well, then I shall do best not to exercise my right to do that which I can only A YOUNG woman's RIGHTS. 16 do with difficulty and unnaturally and ill. . . . I will admit all the rights that any such womanclaima— all that I myself possess — if she will let me alone, and kbop her distance from me. She may sing bass, but I do not wish to hear her." And this leads us naturally to the fii-st right of a young woman which I would ask you to insist on — namely, the right to be herself. Have an individuality of your own ; be all that God meant you should be. Let no sentiment or fashion rob you of this right. ^ It is an inalienable one, and it is worth more to you than the ballot box and the caucus. There is just one person in the world who has your work to do, and she is called by your name. There is one place that no one of the millions of young women of America can fill except yourself. You can, to be sure, so dwarf and stunt yourselves that you may fill no useful place, but it will not be God's fault or nature's fault. You have every natural aptitude needed. '«.■ le A YOUNG WOMAN S RIGHTS. Whatever your voice, treble or alto, cracked or musical, there is a melody in some life which you can best awaken. But to do this you must be yourself, and not try to be a weak imitation of ten thousand others. It strikes me that this is one of the rights which the young woman of the present day is all too unwilling to insist upon. She always seems to be afraid of her own individuality. She must follow the prevailing fashion if it takes the last dollar out of her pocket, and the last ounce of strength out of her life. If bangs are the fashion, she is at once banged ; if frizzles are in vogue, she must at once be frizzled. If flounces are the things that other girls wear, then there is only one thing that she can wear ; and she hides hei-self under a Gainsborough hat or envelopes herself in a sugar scoop, according as the Gainsborough or the snp^ar scoop is the mode. Why, I have more respect for Mary Walker in her bloomers than I have for some fashionable girls, whose A YOUNG woman's RIGHTS. 17 d or rhich must ition ; this m of nsist own ■iling her It of is at must lings ' one n-self jrself ough have tmers i^hose ' . >> sole idea is to make dresaraakei-s' dummies of themselves. Not that 1 have any quarrel with bangs or frizzles or flounces or Gainsborough* (all these things are enveloped in too deep a mystery for the average man to understand them), but .1 have a quarrel with that for which they often stand — the total lack of individuality and appreciation of life's mission. Of this these things often tell. We have some patience with the sheep that jumps through a gap in the wall simply because another sheep has done the same thing, though it would be much easier to go another way by itself, but we expect more of a young woman than of a South-Down. Our Lord's question implies that she is better than a sheep. I would not have you understand that I mean by individuality something odd and outre, or pert and perverse. To be one's self is to be just what nature intended, nothing more, certainly ::, ■ I \H A V<)UN(J WOMAN 8 UUiHTS. nothing less. It is not to Btrain ftfter oddi- ties and quiddities, nor is it to cojty slavisldy some otiiur person's oddities. It is not to bend over backwards because otliers stoop forward, nor is it to cultivate the Grecian bt*nd because the ..eader of French society liappens to have a crook in her back. It is not to try to sing bass liecause most other girls sing treble, nor is it to try to sing treble simply Injcause others do, when nature hivs given you an alto voice. In fact, it seems to me that Mary Walker and her ilk and the butterflies of fashion who alwa3'8 paint themselves with the same spots that other butterflies affect, are all committing the same mistake — all are trying to be what God and nature did not intend they should be, one party because they wish to be different from the rest of the world, and the other because they cannot bear to be different. If God has given you a witty tongue and lively imagination, use them, but do not try to ape the wit of some one else. A YOIINO woman's Bir.HTS. !• If your place is amonR the hnulern of your set, do not fiiil to till it, but if it is in the rank and tile, remember that in ti^'htinfj the l«ttles of life m well as of the country, the private is needed fts well as the general, and do not envy his glittering epaulets. In fact, we need a great many more privates than generals. There are ft thousand men in every regiment and only one colonel. Remember, too, that the private soldier stands by himself; that he cannot do the general's work, but he must do his own. If your capital in life is only a pleasant smile, a soft voice, a bright face, a winning manner, and none to whom I 8l)eak have less, use them, every one, and use all you have, but use your own. Do not try to acquire the smile and voice and manner of some one else. If you do you will simper instead of smile, you will make eyes instead of shooting dangerous glance's, and you will really repel when you intend to atti-act. 20 A YOU^^G woman's RIGHTS. In short, insist on your personal, God-given right to be yourself. Another of your rights which, I hope, you will all insist upon, a right which is worth far more than your right to shave and sing bass, is your right to be self-reliant and in the best sense of the term, independent. I know that it is often said that woman should be like the vine, lithe and flexible, twin- ing around the masculine oak, covering up his defects and gracing his gnarled branches. I think this vine and oak simile has been over- done, but, admitting its force — and it has much force — let us remember that there is a vast difference between a healthy vine and a parasitic creeper. The vine flourishes wherever it is planted, and graces a wooden trellis or the blank side of a house as well as the living tree. It has its own roots in the ground, is fed by the sap which it collects foi itself, and bears its own A YOUNG woman's RIGHTS. fruit. The parasite always fer Is on the life of that against which it leans. It is nourished only by the sap of the stronger plant ; it uses the roots and leaves of the stronger plant to furnish it food; it has no independent life of its own ; it beai-s no fruit in itself ; it dimin- ishes the yield of that which supports it; in short, it is always a weakness and a nuisance ; it serves no purpose except the ornamental, and, when we know its true nature and character, it loses its doubtful claim to beauty. This, then, is what I mean to urge when I say insist on your right to be self-reliant and independent. Be a vine if you will, but do not be a parasite. Cling to a stronger nature by a thousand delicate tendrils, but have a root of your own, bear fruit of your own, do not sap the life of another to keep yourself alive. Have some other mission than the very equivocal one of being merely ornamental. Theji, if the sup- port on which you lean and around which your 22 A YOUNG WOMAN 8 RIGHTS. affections twine, fails, as fail it often does, you will not be torn up by the roots, but will be able, like the oak-tree itself, to live a useful, fruit-bearing life. I have many wise words to bring you upon this point from those who have kindly interested themselves in your welfare. I cannot begin to quote them all, but let me give you some. One whose name is a household word in two continents by reason of her labors in the tem- perance cause, writes as follows : " The point that most needs strengthening In a young woman's character is a noble, cheery, helpful spirit of self- help. The indivklualism of Christ's gospel needs devel- opment and application among our girls, and will enable them to save themselves and the republic." Another, also well known, and well loved wherever known, writes : " Self-rellanec is a point of character to be emphasized. Marriage is tlie natural and, In some cases, the desirable A YOUNG WOMAN 8 RIGHTS. and blessed ulUmate; but I take It that the Rlrls best qualltted to enter this holy estate and bravely meet Its duties and responsibilities are tliose for whom marriage was not the one aim of existence — who had a life to live outside of this - a plan of life It may be, at all events an earnest purpose." Another, an eminent edueator, whose daily life influences for good each day many young women, writes : " One way to strengthen character In young women, I think, Is to make them realize that life Is real, and that they have a niche to fill somewhere, and that It Is their business to be faitliful In the performance of every little duty as It comes to them. Many a house would be In deep distress If the daughter who thinks she does nothing, but who fills in all the little Insignificant places, was taken from It." How true that is I but such a daughter is never a parasite, however gentle and clinging and unobtrusive she is ; she is a fruitful vine, with a root of her own. "What I think needs strengthening in the Jfi li^ 24 A YOUNG WOMAN 8 RIGHTS. young women," writes another, " is decision of character. A strong determination to please God. to know the right and to do it, regardless of the opinion of the world." "It sometimes seems to me," are the wise words of another, " that we are bringing up a set of intellectual babies — if I may use such an ex- pression — utterly without self-reliance ; unable to think for themselves or depend upon them- selves. Life is made too easy — too smooth sail- ing ; when the time of decision comes, the girls are frightened or indifferent, and continue to do the easiest thing — to drift with the current." We must revolutionize our whole notions that a young woman has nothing to do but to angle for and catch a husband. Fishing is good for a recreation, but it is not well for too many to take it up as the serious and only busi- ness of life. There is much poetry surrounding the rippling trout-stream on the summer morn- ing, with the whispering woods and glimpses of A YOUNG V.'0MAN'8 BIGHTS. 25 blue sky overhead, and the romantic vistas of forest before and behind, but I iir.agine that the poor fellows on the Grand Banks who do nothing but fish for a living, find it dreary and often hopeless and unproductive toil. I am very sure that young women who have no resources within themselves, no independence of charac- ter, and no other means of employment except fishing for a husband in the whirlpool of society, m-.3t often be miserable and heart-broken. If they make this their sole business in life, too, they do not often succeed very well, but, while hoping to hook a leviathan, they often catch a gudgeon or a very small sprat. Timothy Titcomb has some wise advice on this point. He says: "Were I as rich as Croesus, my girls should have Bomethlng to do resularly, just as soon as they should become old enough to do anything. ... A woman helpless from any other cause than sickness is essentially a nuisance. There Is nothing womanly and ladylilte in helplessness. . . . Young woman, the glory of your :i: -tr: I 4 W 26 A YOUNG WOMAN 8 RIGHTS. life is to do something and be something. If you have the slightest desire to be loved; If you would be admired, respected, revered ; if you would have all sweet, human sympathies clustering around you, while you live, and the tears of a multitude of friends shed upon your grave when you die, you must be a working woman — living and working for others, and building up for yourself a cliaracter, strong, symmetrical, beautiful." Thus you will show the world the true love- liness, of woman's nature. Thus you will — '• Show us liow divine a thing A woman may be made." *' Each young lady has a specialty," writes to me one of your friends. " What is it ? " You think at once of painting, music, embroidery, or some of those nameless and wonderful things that are done with worsted and plenty of time. Tiiese things are well enough in their way, if there is talent and time for them at your dispo- sal ; but there is one specialty in which you all have the right to indulge. Nature fitted you for this specialty, God designed you for it, your bk^l A YOUNG woman's filUUTS. 2T own souls will never be satisfied unless you show the loveliness and divinely modest self- foigetfulness of a true woman's nature. " You can lighten your father's burdens," it has been well said. " Yon can restrain your brothers from vicious society. You can relieve your failing and faded mother of much care. You can gather the ragged and ignorant chil- dren at your knee and teach them something of a better life than they have seen. You can become angels of light and goodness to many stricken hearts. You can read to the aged. You can do many things that will be changed to blessings upon your own soul. Florence Nightingale did her work in her own place ; do your work in yourj, and your Father, who seeth in secret, shall reward you openl^y ." This chapter must not be closed without calling attention to the greatest glory and orna- ment of womanly character as it is of manly character — Christlikeness. There is no -one I Ik' t H W^ t8 A YOUNG woman's RIGHTS. word that expresses so much. Leave out this element and the chief charm is gone, the rose is despoiled of its fragrance, the crown has lost its purest gem. A well-known writer has ex- pressed himself none too strongly when he says of the godless woman : " There seems to he no light In her — no glory proceed- ing from her. There is something monatrous about an utterly godless woman. She is an unreasonable wor>an. She is an offensive woman. Even an utterly godless man, unless he be debauched and debased to the position of an animal, deems such a woman without excuse. He looks on her with suspicion. He would not have such a one take care of his children. He would not trust her. . . The boy that feels that his name is mentioned in a good mother's prayers, is comparatively safe from vice and the ruin to which It leads. The sweetest thought that N. P. WIUls ever penned grew out of a reference to his pious mother's prayers for him. Tossed by the waves in a vessel which was bearing him homeward, he wrote : " • Sleep safe, O wave-worn mariner, Nor fear to-night, nor storm, nor seal The ear of Heaven bends low to her, He comes to show who sails with me.' " A YOUNG WOMAN 8 RIGHTS. 29 For a moment before I close this subject let me call your attention to the fact that your highest right, young women, is also your high- est privilege. To you more than to any one class is committed the future of the kingdom of God. Our churches are made up of women in the proportion of three to one. Many of these are young women. Each one has not only her own influence to exert, but very largely decides what the life of some father, brother, son or lover siiall be ; whether it shall be a godly or a godless life ; »: e ; Your highest right to show the beauty of Christliness is also your highest privilege and heaviest responsibility. By you and such as you the kingdom of God may be established in all the land and for all time. Let me tell you an old story that has a lesson for every one of you. In a newly settled region of our land some m^ iw 80 A YOUNG woman's KIGHT8. men were raising the heavy frame-work of a mill. The united strength of all the men in the community was called into action. They raised the heavy frame-work part way, but could get it no further. Their utmost exertion could not raise it another inch. They could not let go or it would crush them. Their fail- ing strength could not hold it where it was much longer. In their extremity a messenger was sent for the women of the little village. In urgent haste they flocked to the scene. A little stream flowed between them and the mill. " Don't mind the water, come and help us," cried the fathers and brothers. They dashed through the stream, they stood beside the men, they lifted with all their might, and the timbers rose upright and fitted into their place, and all were safe. I believe this little story is prophetic. The Temple of the Kingdom of God is being raised, but all must lend a willing hand inspired by a A YOUNG woman's RIGHTS. 81 loving heart. The women are grandly coming to the front — in tempemnce effort, in church life, in Christian Endeavor Societies, in Sunday- school work, and above all by the uplifting in- fluences of a lovely, chaste, Christian example, the building is being reared and the capstone will surely be laid in God's good time- Have you a part in this good work? Are you lending your heart and word and influence to the cause of Christ, for God and home and native land? To do this is a young woman's noblest right. CHAPTER II. A YOUNG woman's WRONGS. What shall we do with Our Daughtenf — The Coming Woman— Openlnffs for Women—Some Imayinary Wronyt — Self- Inflicted Wrongs — An Inordinate Love of Imagin- ation — The Art of Pleasing — Love of Dress — T/te Peacock Girl — Keeping up Appearances— Narrow Views o/ Life — The Woman and the Poodle — Living up to their Blue China — What your SisUra have Done — The Consecrated Life. , AS a young woman's moat important rights are those which nature has conferred upon her, or which every young woman may hope to attain, so her deepest, deadliest wrongs are not those which man has inflicted upon her, or which any real or supposed disadvantage of sex has made inevitable, but they are wrongs 82 •iS A YOUNG woman's WU0N08. 88 Coming H>o)i(/« hnagin- — The V Viftea f up to I— The rights f erred n may irrongs m her, age of HfTOngB which she voluntarily inflicts upon herself. As her highest right is to be herself, to be "a per- feet woman, nobi/ planned," to be all that God intended, self-reliant, self-forgetful and above all truly Christian, so her greatest wrong is a degradation and lowering of her nature which maHes her less than she may l)e, less than (lod intended she should be. I admit that in the past, woman has not always had a fair chance, she has not had all her rights accorded her. She has been treated sometimes as the slave, and sometimei as the toy of man. Even now, in some respects, I do not think she is treated altogether fairly. She does not always receive as much pay for the same work as a man would receive. It is a harder struggle oftentimes for her to mount the ladder of busi- ness or professional success, but, thank God, all these unfair distinctions are passing away. In other respecta her rights and immunities and privileges are greater than of the most favored wrm 34 A YOUNG woman's WRONGS. man, and the unjust inequalities are being leveled so fast that we hardly need to consider them in comparison with the deadlier wrongs which a young woman may almost Jincou- Hciously inflict upon herself. Mrs. Mary A. Livermore, in her valuable book entitled, " What shall we do with our Daughters? " notes and ad- mits this glorious change which has been taking place in the outward condition of mankind, so frankly and finely, that I must quote a few sentences. Speaking of a book of Margaret Fuller's which, forty yeai-s ago, attracted her attention, sho mentions two mottoes at the head of the opening chapter; one underneath the other, one contradicting the other. ' " The first was an old-time adage, indorsed by Shakespeare, believed in by the world, and quoted in that day very generally. It is not yet entirely obsolete : " 'Frailty, thy name is woman.' // ■■I A YOUNG woman's WRONGS. 86 « Underneath it, and unlike it was the other : ' The Earth waits for her Queen.' " The f^i-st describes woman as she has been undei-stood in the past ; as she masqueraded in history; as she has been made to figure in literature, as she has, in a certain sense, existed. " The other propliesied that grander type of woman, toward which, to-day, the whole sex is moving — consciously or unconsciously, will- ingly or unwillingly — because the current sets that way, and there is no escape from it. "The hope of many is so centered in the ' coming man,' that the only questions of inter- est to them ajc those propounded by James Parton in the Atlantic Monthly: 'Will the coming man smoke?' 'Will he drink wine?' and so on to the end of the catechism. But let it not be forgotten that before this 'coming man ' will mal;e his appearance, his mpther will 86 A YOUNG woman's WRONGS. precede him, and that he will be very largely what his mother will make him." This question of the legal and social wrongs of womankind is one that we can safely dismiss as either already solved or so far on the way to solution that it need not greatly trouble us. As far as the laws of men stand in th;' way, you can be just about what you want to be, young women. If you desire an education, you can get as good a one at Smith or Wellesley or Vassar as your brothers can get at Amherst or Dartmouth or Williams. If you have artistic tastes there is no picture or sculptui-e gallery in the world that will reject your productions because you are a woman. If you are of a literary turn, the magazines and the publishers will take * good thing from you, and pay you as much F- > it as if you were a man. Charles Egl^iii, Craddock became at once twice the lion she was before, when it was found that she was an (' A YOUNG woman's WRONGS. 87 attractive young woman, instead of, as had been supposed, a merely masculine product of * the Tennessee mountains. To be sure, there are some kinds of business from which you are still debarred. You would hardly find it easy to obtain a situation as horse-car driver or coal-heaver or blacksmith; but I do not suppose you greatly hanker after such positions ; at any mte, you have an equal advantage of the other sex, since, for the most part, men are excluded from dressmakers' establishments and sick rooms, where the gentie hand and light foot of a nurse are required. No, you need not groan over any imaginary wrongs in thU year of grace. Whatever may have been true in the past, you, like your brother, may be the architect of your own fortune to-day. Your wrongs, like his, are those which you will inflict upon yourself. Let me faithfully call your attention to some of these. UgHMnMAP" 88 A YOUNG woman's WUONGS. ; ! 1 1 The first of a young woman's wrongs that I would mention is an inordinate love of admira- tion. This wrong is one of woman's rights perverted, to be suie, but it nevertheless becomes one of her chief wrongs, just iis most of the evils of the world are perverted virtues. A young man is not under the dominion of this perverted right to the same extent by any means. He very early finds that his success in the world depends upon sterling qualities of heart and bi-ain, and not upon his good looks or upon his powers of cajolery or flattery, or his ability to excite admiration. He finds that the boy from the country, with the cowhide boots and homespun jacket and un- couth manners, if he has integrity, good habits and a strong will on his side, is far more likely to succeed than the city-bred boy who lacks these qualities. The dude, with his arms akimbo, and ivory-headed cane, even if he plastera his hair upon his forehead in the most // A YOUNG woman's WRONGS. 89 approved style, finds very soon that these graces are not the open sesame of business prosperity ; and the rougher, sterner, more manly virtues are thus often developed at the expense of the gentleman. But with the girl it is different. She finds that she can wheedle an extra five dollars out of her father's pocket by looking pretty and with hug and kiss and coaxing manner more easily than in any other way. As she grows older she finds that these same bland- ishments—many of them exceedingly super- ficial — are her chief stock in trade. Personal attractions command a premium, while real, sterling worth of heart or brain fall below par, and very soon efforts io catch the passing applause of an admiring glance absorb aU the attention. ' > • I am very far from implying that the proper desire to please and attract is not most praiseworthy. The message which one of your friends sends to you through me is very true : ■ WW 40 A YOUNG woman's WRONGS. " A great art Is the art of pleasing. Let a young woman be lavish of her gifts and graces in this direction. Let her use all her wit and fascination in voice, manner and dress to please, that she may elevate and regenerate not society only, but the home." But, when we have said all this, it still remains true that this pleasant road, if pursued too far, runs always into a trap and snare. " One danger that seems to belong especially to girls, and which attracts them in childhood, is tb^ love of flattery," writes one, " and higher praise than they e&tti for every little thing they do. " When this is withheld, or a reproof admin- istered for neglect of duties, a flood of tears is apt to be the immediate result, and a general inability to meet the stern realities of life the ultimate result." "One of the greatest dangers lying in the path of a young woman," writes another, " is the great desire to obtain the approbation of the world. How often she seeks to have her A YOUNG woman's WRONGS. 41 IS vanity gratified by trying to excel in worldly affairs ! " And just here we come very close to a wrong that is more specific and more wide-spread than almost any other; the inordinate love of admiration as indicated by the undue attention to dress. It is a subject which a man may wall hesitate to attack, and had I simply my own words to bring I should certainly hesitate long before spea.ing; but scores of warnings have been sent me for you on this point, and, after what your mothers and teachers have written, I cannot but feel that it is a most important matter. We are not anchorites and we believe in no sumptuary laws to regulate the cut of your gown or the color of the ribbons in your bon- net, and 1 am sure that all your friends would agree with me when I say that it is a young woman's duty to dress attractively and as well as she can afford ; but we also believe that there 4S A YOUNG WOMAN 8 WltONGS. is something of vastly more importance than the cut of your gown and the color of your bonnet strings. You are committing a grievous wrong to a nature that was meant to be angelic, nay, rather godlike, when you center all atten- tion on the feathers that bedeck and on the flounces that will go out of fashion to-morrow. To seek admiration in this way only, is the surest way in the long run to lose respect and love. -»' i^'«^ ■.K-;u,;-:i:-L.F *s The peacock can spread the most gorgeous tail of any bird 1 know, but, as he goes strutting about, endeavoring to display every individual feather, he excites laughter rather than admira- tion, while the modest little native sparrow in delicate, unobtrusive suit of homely brown we love and rejoice in, as he poura forth his song, so full of springtime melody. Let me quote a few of the messages that have come to you on this point. Says one : " I think I never go about the stores of Bos- aMMIMlii A YOUNG WOMAN 8 WUONG8. 48 ton without being distressed at seeing girls of moderate circumstances (judging by appear- ances) hanging about counters where a.'-e dis- played the elegant laces, satins and velvets, for the reason that not more than one girl out of a hundred can afford to wear such costumes. I think the same thing is shown in that we con- stantly see behind counters and in the street, young women wearing velveteen and tawdry jewelry, where the same money would buy soft cloths which would be more ladylike and appropriate." ?/ - ; " First among the dangers," writes another, " I should put inordinate love of dress. I per- sonally know some who curtail their charities and more who go without suitable food that they may be as well dressed as their neighbors, and I very much fear that in many cases temp- tation assumes a darker guise." Another faithful Sabbath school teacher writes: r«R 44 A YOUNG WOMAN S WRONGS. ** In my own class in Sunday school one of my great troubles springs summer, autumn and winter, has been to make the girls forget their new clothes. I have always been thankful when the season of new clothes was over, for lessons were at a discount until the new clothes had been inspected. So many, too, buy poor, cheap stuff that won't last, and make it up in some flashy kind of a way, simply that they may look stylish. Style is enough to spoil any girl." Here are some stirring words : " One great danger is an overpowering desire to keep up appearances, prompting to wrong doing. "In one of the largest dry goods stores in Boston is a young lady clerk who receives but five dollars per week. She is pretty and enjoys society. What then? Every cent of the five dollars goes to pay for room and food ; cloth- ing is supplied by a good father living in the country who would be glad to have his A YOUNG WOMAN 8 WKONGS. 45 daughter at home, but Hhe likes the stir of Bos- ton. She is led by her love of display to flatter her friends — ladies and gentlemen — that tliey may invite her to entertainments and give her pretty things to wear. Her acquaintances out- side of Boston are led to believe that she has a very lucrative position. The result of her de- sire to appear better off than she is, is a lower- ing of her standard of moral l-ight leading to flattery and deception." I have time for but one more message : " In my opinion the great, even almost absorb- ing love of dress and display which young women cherish, and the time given for the minis- tering to their peraonal vanity, leads very many into recklessness and heartlessness, and to an utter distaste for the things which would profit their spiritual, intellectual and moral nature. This love for showy raiment and straining for its effect leads very many into some pitfall of immorality." .. -^nW;tWWJMM|^IIV«tMIMII s^msssemm *S*WT^'- 46 A VOUNO WOMAN 8 WUOMOS. • ) .1^. I beli^'ve that there is a world of truth in this last sentence. I have talked with some who know the seamy side of a great city's street life and they all assure me that love of dress has thousands of victims in the brothels, or among the street walkera of every large city. " What brought you here?" we ask of the degraded, fallen man ; and in nine cases out of ten the re- ply would be " Rum did it." " What brought you here?" Ask this of his companion, the degraded, fallen woman, and • ">st jis often the answer would come back : " . did it ; love of finery, the gewgaw, the ribbon, the flash jew- elry, the desire to keep up appearances did it. That took me the first step toward dishonor, and the rest came easy." And this leads us na.urally to another wrong which I fear some of you are likely to inflict upon yourselves and that is the tendency to narrowness and very contracted views of life and duty. You naturally live more within four // vmrummmm A YOUNG woman's WnONGS. 47 walls than your brothers, but do not let those four walla bound all your horizon. It is un- doubtedly of the utnioMt importance whether this piece of ribbon matches your complexion, but there are matters of greater importance. I have read of a young woman that spent two hundred days in learning to paint a carrot to hang upon the wall, and, if that carrot was painted well, it was a noble work compared with that which engrosses some lives. The story of the dry-as-du professor who spent all his life in studying the Greek particle, and when he died regretted that he had chosen such a wide field of study, instead of confining hia attention to the dative case was an old favorite in college. While it seems to be generally un- derstood that a man's aim in life is to subdue continents and build cities and conquer armies, a woman's chief end, as some look upon it, is to make tatting. >v ' I sometimes see a lady of fashion and wealth 1 48 A YOUNG WOMAN 8 WRONGS. I! ■'■ E 1 1, fl who seems to spend all her time over the poodle dog that rides by her side in the elegant car- riage. 'It is dressed and washed and combed and takes its airing as regularly as the lady herself, while there are thousands of immortal children perishing for lack of just this care ; and I sometimes wonder as I see the two, the woman and the poodle, sitting together — I won- der which hiw the widest outlook upon life. Some women seem to think that a large, gen- erous outlook upon life is almost unwomanly. They hardly know who the presiuont of the United States is, or who is the governor of their own commonwealth, and, as to such exciting events as have been taking place of late on the other side of the water, they are all rubbish to them. An interest in politics is considered mannish and unnatural, while to read Shakes- peare, or study political economy, or to be versed in science is thought to savor of the bluestocking. All knov/ledge is open to you. jtmsam A YOUNG woman's WRONGS. 49 If you do dwell within four walls most of your life, the best books and the highest, broadest life may come there, and dwell forever. Remember that first of all you are a human being, and that you have all the rights of a human being; that you are a woman second- arily. Remember that you will live as long, that you have as precious a soul to save, as mo- mentous questions to face, as any hero or heroine who ever lived. "Little girls," says Frances Power Cobbe in her most admirable book on the Duties of Women, "little girls may fitly play with toys and dress dolls, and chatter in the nursery for hours over some weighty concern of the baby house ; but it is a pitiful sight to see grown women making all life a child's play. Rise, I pray you, to the true dignity of a human being, to whom petty feelings and small vanities and servile, wheedling tricks must 1)8 repugnant and abominable." 50 A YOUNG woman's WUONGS. vi I M It. a. The dialogue over a China teapot, which Constance Cary Harrison puts into the mouths of two of her charactei-s, points most wittily the moral I would teach. " Is it not consummate ? " asks the husband. "It is indeed. O, Alger- non I do let us try to live up to it," responds the wife. Some women and men too, for that matter, have nothing nobler to live up to than a China teapot with a crack in it. It is one great danger of the modern life of women, whether they are rich or poor, that some such small, dwarfing ambition may be the goal of life. This age without muoh cynicism might be called the age of bric-Jl-bran, the age of expen- sive tidies and costly nothings — things well enough in their way, but not large enough to fill the soul. Oh 1 remember that there is some- thing better to live up to than cracked china and yellow lace and the last waltz or polka, or the latest crochet stitch. Nothing but God can fill the soul. '■ ^ r u A YOUNG woman's WRONGS. 51 Will it not help you in realizing this high ideal to remember what your sisters have been and done and dared? It has been well said that in every walk of life we should think of those who have most honored that particular station, and catch the inspii-ation of their lives. Thus the slave may proudly exclaim, "Frederick Douglas was a slave," the blacksmith may cry, "Elihu Burrett was a blacksmith," the shoe- maker, as he plies his awl, may remember that William Carey and Admiral Shovel and J. G. Whittier were shoemakers. Every woman may remember that as heroic, steadfast blood as ever flowed, has flowed in woman's veins. As liigh aims, as noble pur- poses as ever actuated human souls have in- spired the breasts of women. Jf you are of a literary turn and desire to have a name in lettei-8, do not be disheartened, but remember Charlotte Bronte and George Eliot were women. If you would be an artist, strive not ki 62 A YOUNG woman's WRONGS. for mediocrity, but for the highest place, re- membering Rosa Bonheur and Harriet Hosmer are women. If you love to study the works and plans of God's universe, remember that the gates of science are no more closed to you than to your brothers, for Caroline Herschel and Maria Mitchell were women. Does your heart burn with philanthropic zeal to do great things for your day and generation ? The way is fully open. You have not to blaze an unknown path, for Florence Nightingale and Dorothea Dix and Sister Dora were women. Do you feel within you the strivings of the spirit to do and dare great things for God? Just so has he striven with others who nobly yielded themselves and chose nothing less t^an God. Perpetua and Felicitas were women, and yet they, in the public arena, flinched not, nor denied their Lord by word or sign, when placed in the swinging net, to be gored to pieces by wild bulb. A VOUNG woman's WRONGS. 53 Or is it in the quiet home circle that you find your miHsion ? Most of you, I trust, will find your life-work there, for it is a life no less really rich and full than the life of the artist, philan- thropist and heroine. Is it your mission to cheer the aged father, to comfort the weary mother, to share a husband's cares or steady a baby's first, timid step ? I hope it may be for most of you. Then i-emember that ten thousand times ten thousand women who have been before you, have set the pattern of noble, modest woman- hood, full, symmetrical and well-rounded as any man's could be. Let me recall to your mind the familiar words of the noble wife of a noble president. Thus wrote Mrs. Garfield, ten years before her husband thought of being president : •< " I am glad to tell that out of the toti and disappoint- ment of the summer Just ended, I have risen up to a victory. I ^ ill ! 64 A YOUNG woman's WRONGS. " I read something like tliis tlie otlier day : ' There is no healthy thought without labor, and thought maices labor happy.' Perliaps tliis is tiie way I have been able to climb up higher. It came to me one morning when I was malving l)read. I said to myself : ' Here I am compelled to malte our bread this summer. Why not consider it a pi asant occupation, and malte it so by trying to see what perfect bread I can make? ' It seemed like an inspiration, and the whole of life grew brighter. The very sunshine seemed to be flowing down through my spirits Into the white loaves, aud now I believe ray table is furnished with better bread than ever before. And this old truth, old as creation, seems just now to have become fully mine — that I need not be the slave of toil, but its regal master, making whatever I do yield me its best fruits." There spoke out the true, largewsouled woman. Just as noble, just as honorable as the good breadmaker, as when she became the good president's wife. • ' I must dwell very briefly on my last point — the deadliest wrong you can inflict upon your- selves is to allow your souls to be corroded with the spirit of worldliness. There is nothing so foreign to a true womau's // A YOUNG woman's WRONGS. 65 nature as worldliness, godlessness. In a man it is unnatural, hardening and debasing; in a woman it is atrocious and horrible. As much as her finer nature raises her nearer the angels, so the deadening and blunting of this nature brings her nearer the devils than a man often falls. "I feel very keenly," writes one, "that even among some of our Christian girls there seems to be such an utterly indifferent attitude to a thoroughly consecrated life. They like to keep just as near the border as they can, so that their associates will not suspect they are trying to lead a Christian life." "Indecision in religious matters, hesitancy, want of singleness of aim, a desire to serve God and Mammon, a desire to make reservation," says another, "is one evil that girls, even Christian girls, are prone to." P, young women ! would that some word of mine might show you how a whole-hearted con- * ■•'J «^ 56 A YOUNG woman's WRONGS. secration to Christ glorifies and ennobles your treasure of womanhood. It does for the jewel of your life what the lapidary does for the rough, unsightly stone from the diamond mine ; it makes it glow with a heavenly light. There is nothing so distorted, and perverted, and deformed, as a godless womanhood ; there is nothing so beauti- ful and precious as a godly womanhood. If you care not for the redemption of your own soul, remember the other lives which your loss may involve. We mourn a disaster to a great ocean steamer, because so many millions of treasure were wasted, and because a thou- sand lives were imperiled. Let every godless woman remember, if she cares not for her o\/n distinction, that she imperils with herself a thousand other lives. If the deadly waters of woridliness and godlessness leak in, the fires of love, of home affection, of wifely and motherly devotion, will slowly but surely be extinguished ; the precious cargo of peace and good will and // A YOUNG woman's WRONGS. 57 modest, unselfish care for others, with which every true womanly life is freighted, and with- out which the world would be far poorer, will be lost, and a thousand lives, of those yet un- born, down to the third and fourth generation, will be imperiled. ^ CHAPTER III. ANXIOUS AND AIMLB88. Superfluous Womfn — I'rince Charming'* Advent — 7Tk« Fancy-work Girl— The Tendency to " Drift" — A Moral Uarkhone — B my nesa which is not Buslnes* — Accom- pliahmrnla and AcrompUahments — Aimlentnei* is Coward- ice — The Mouse as a test of Character — Weak Nerves no hoon to the Human Race — Courage not alone a Manly Virtue— Pure Men and Courageous Women — Semi' JnvaKfttsm — Romantic Sickness— The Fuel that feeds the Fires of a Wasted Life — Christian Womanhood. 6' rriHE anxious and aimless." Such, I -^ believe, were the epithets applied by one of the former governors of Massachusetts to the seventy thousand so-called superfluous women of Massachusetts, whom he advised to find a mission and a use for life by emigrating M --i_ ANXIOUS AND AIMLESS. ioent — The — A Mitral M — Accotn- * is Coward' yeak Nerves me a Manly wn — Semi- il that feeds anhood. Such, I pplied by mchusetta iperfliious kdvised to imigrating to the West. 1 believe that these words contain a libel on the vast majority of the pex. I do not think there are any more superfluous women than men. Most of yuu, 1 am veiy sure, are not anxious or aimless, but, becatise these words point out a frequent and prolific source of danger, and because I want you all to prove them more and more libellous and untrue, I wish to dwell upon them in this chapter. Your brother meets his temptations in the street and in the market, they are the tempta- tions of active life ; yours come from the very quietness and lack of stir in your lives, lives which are apt to degenerate into weak aimless- ness, a passive drifting with the current, which is supposed to bear every woman on to the harbor of matrimony, but which, if they allow themselves simply to drift, often leaves them, whether married or unmarried, stranded upon the sand-bar of a useless, fruitless life. " Your brother and his college mates tell you that their 1'' tfO ANXIOUS AND AIMLESS. Mi jl - ! f work has hardly begun with the receipt of diploma and degree," sayH Marion Harland. "Commencement day with thiira signifies the tii-8t Htep in the real career — the unclosing and flinging wide the gate revealing the highway of life." They have their life mapped out for thera- fjelves from the beginning, in some rough way ttt least. It is business, or the law, or medicine, or divinity ; there is a goal somewhere. There is an end for them to strive for. Alas ! it is too often not realized. They faint in the day of adversity, or t\irn from the noble aim in view t^ oJiase aii cynis-fatui.t or to bury themselves in the dirt of a gold mine, but it is very much even U 8ti.r^, as every high-spirited boy does, with a noble aim beckoning him on. But girls are at a disadvantage from the beginning in this respect. There is a hazy impression that some- time Prince Charming wiU come along and carry them off. m^ ANXIOUB AND AIMLESS. 61 iceipt of HAilHnd. litiea the ming and ^hwiiy of for thera- ugh way medicine, J. There ! it is too le day of 1 in view iiselves in luch even es, with a iris are at r in this ;hat some- and carry But supposing he does not come, what then ? " It is pitiable and instructive to busy people," continues the author of Eve's Daughtera, " to see the varieties of behavior in women who recog- nize th^j reality of the situation and seek to overcome its irksomeness. The majority and the most respectable of them begin to dabble industriously in something, it matters little what it is, so long as time and thought are engaged. A catalogue of the hundreds of species of what is known as 'fancy work,' to which this century alone has given birth, would show better than fifty formal treatises the prevalence of this dabbling, and the ingenuity with which the desire has been fed. " Crocheting, tatting, wax work, paper flowers, monochromatics, Kensington and outline em- broidery — time and memory would fail me, and patience would desert you were I to prolong the inventory. i J' > V "Such, and a thousand other inventions of I Ill W it ^g 62 ANXIOUS AND AIMLESS. play which is work and work which is play, are put forward in a fast succession of cheats to answer our question, ' What then ? ' " There is a certain teniporariness ir» the pursuits of women that is greatly to their d^ -advantage as compared with a an's work. Your brother takes up his calling, meaning to make a life busi- ness of it. If he intends to be a carpenter, he does not learn how to drive the plane and fit the mortise as a temporary expedient, ->nly to fill up the time until he shall be sent to Con- gress or dispatched on a foreign mission. If he studies medicine it is that he may spend his life in practicing medicine, not because he expects to be called to the bar one of these days. A young woman, on the other hand, too often takes up some employment as an expedient to kill time until Prince Charming appears, riding over the phvins to claim his own. Next to having no aim is it to have this temporary expedient and time-killer for an object in life. a ANXIOUS AND AIMLESS. 68 s play, are cheats to tie pursuits •advantage mr brother a life busi- rpenter, he ine and lit mt, 'inly to ant to Con- iion. If he Bnd hia life ; expects to A young n takes up ;o kill time ng over the having no pedient and Prince Charming may come, very likely he will ; but it will be all the better for him and for her if he finds the object of his search honestly and patiently doiiig some one thing for which she has fitted herself, rather than nervously starting up at every ring of the doorbell, think- ing that it marks the advent of the prince. "Among the great dangers which threaten young women," writes one whose name is as familiar to the world as any name in America, " it seems to me, if an outlook on life without a purpose, a tendency to drift, to magnify the present moment, to give undue attention to externals and trifles, to seek happiness rather than blessedness." ; , . , " A girl should have a motive, an aim in life," writes one of your teachers, whom many of you love and revere. " Aiming at nothing she too often hiti it." • . • ' ** :\ -,;--., " A plan in life is what everj*^ young woman needs," writes a noted temperance lecturer ; " a m ANXIOUtJ AND AIMLESS. plan in life and power to carry out that plan." • Of course this can only come from a true relation to and reliance on God. It is a good sign when the literary world will not accept Howeirs heroines as ideak of true womanhood, and when it cries out for something stronger. "They are beautiful, affectionate and almost morbidly conscientious," says Lippincott's Mag- azine for instance, in a recent criticism, in speak- ing of this novelist's feminine characters, " but they are idle, inconsequent, and more or less jealous, incapable of phUanthropy, hard thinking and decided action." I have scores of letters on this point, or re- lated matters which I have not time to give you. One o" your friends tells me she thinks there is a ver> great lack of decision of charac- ter in our girls of the present day, or that perhaps it would be better to say stability of character. ■A a ANXIOUS AND AIMLESS. u out that )m a true t is a good not accept ainauhood, ; stronger, ud almost jott's Mag- 1, in speak- jters, " but ore or less rd thinking loint, or re- me to give she thinks I of charac- ay, or that stability of " Girls lack moral backbone," writes the suc- cessful principal of a young ladies seminary. " One of my own girls says to me on this point, ♦Girls are all too much afraid of what others will say.' " But I must hurry on to tell you that Aim- lessness is, in my opinion, only one of a large family of sisters who usually travel iu company. One of these sisters is Idleness. I know that just her: many of you will protest and say : ♦' Whatever my faults, you can't lay this to my door. Why, I'm busy from morning to night. I am driven from the time school begins until vacation comes again, and then it isn't much better. I'm so busy that I can hardly find time to read my Bible or say my prayers." Ah! that is just it. There is a busyness which is ot business. There is an activity which is the veriest idleness, and that is the kind of idleness I most fear for you. What are you busy about? that is the ques- 1 a n MiiMiiwiMIMiiM m ANXIOUS AND AIMLESS. i tion. If you are too busy to read your Bible and good books, to think and pray, it is alto- gether probable that, with all your fancied hurry, you have a pair of those hands for which the old couplet tells us that "Satan finds some mischief still to do." " If our girls could only be induced to spend more time in prayer and meditation," writes one. " It is the same cry with the children as the older ones -'no time.' And in the busy whirl of everyday life it seems to me there is scarce any leisure for thinking. They will listen, receive what is said, and hurry on, but to think out anything for themselves, or really to take any part of their day for meditation, is a rare thing even among older ones, and so when asked a reason for an expressed belief or opinion, often the only one that comes is, ' peo- ple say so,' or something just as weak." A piece of advice which many of you need is: If you would not be idle, do not begin to ANXIOUS AND AIMLESS. lur Bible t is alto- fancied [or which lids some to spend I," writes tiildren as the busy e there is rhey will y on, but , or really iitation, is Bs, and so I belief or 8 is, ' peo- >» you need t begin to do so many things. The so called accomplish- ments of the sex ai^ often the direct promoters of idleness. It is not at all necessary that you should spend just so many hours a day in strumming the piano or wielding the paint brush, if you have no particular taste or talent in that direc- tion ; but it is necessary that you should re- member that there is a womanhood within you to cultivate, which is not at all dependent upon Chickering or Steinway. A true, noble woman may be too busy to cultivate the artist within her. She may not know the difference between an Old Master -i>d a tea-store chromo, but such a woman is never too busy to think and pray, and read that which will build up her soul. Take off the weights from the old eight-day clock that stands in the corner, and the hands will fly around at a great rate, exceedingly busy, we say, but the busier they are the less ^j^» iUittMWialiMiiiWHiiiiB Nita •tr 98 ANXIOUS AND AIMLESS. value they are, for their mission is not to fly around the dial, but to mark time. I am not decrying these accomplishments. They are all well in their way ; «'hey all may be made aids to a noble life, if there is a large worthy aim and motive pervading all ; but if they engross your minds to the exclusion of better things, they are hinderances and not helps, and the sooner you stop and think why you are here, and whither you are going, and what you are doirg, the sooner you may escape the charge of idleness. Paradoxical as it may seem, it is sometimes true, the less busy you are the less idle you are. To escape the charge of idleness, you must not only be doing something — you . must be doing something worthy of a human being. Another sister of Aimlessness is Cowardice. Courage is not thought to be a womanly virtue — more's the pity — and I suppoi^e that is the reason that cowardice, however reprehensible in ANXIOUS AND AIMLESS. )t to fly am not )r are all ade aids rthy aim ' engross r things, and the ire here, you are iharge of m, it is the less idleness, ig — you i human >wRrdice. ly virtue at is the ;nsible in a man, is considered rather amiable in a woman. To scream at the sight of a harmless mouse, and go into spasms over a spider, and have con- vulsions because of a striped snake on the garden walk, seem to be considered in the light of accomplishments rather than otherwise, and the confiding terror that catehes hold of the masculine arm at sight of a harmless cow in the pasture is supposed to show unsophisticated innocence. I do not think, however, that weak nerves should be cultivated as a boon to the human race, or that hysterics should be looked upon with any more favor than small-pox or mumps. They both are inevitable sometimes, but both disfigure and make unlovely the true woman. Not that I think that women are naturally more cowardly than men. All history proves the contrary. There are depths of courage in many a woman's breast, which only need the opportunity of a great occasion to reveal them- HJMiriiiMjfi'irfiiiTmTrtttiiWito^ 70 ANXIOUS AND AIMLESS. 'ii. selves. Witness the martyrs who have died for their faith, witness the heroic sacrifices of women in sick rooms and hospitals, witness the uncom- plaining heroism of many an invalid wearing her life away on a sick bed, with a smile on the face which sought to conceal from watchful friends the long anguish. " The noble behavior of the soldiers on the sinking Birkenhead," says Miss Cobb, " was not greater than was that exhibited by the twenty poor nuns who, in the Fninch Revolu- tion, stood together on the scaffold chanting the Te Deum, till, one by one, the sweet voices dropped in silence beneath the axe of the guillotine ; still the survivors sung on, with unfaltering lips, till the abbess, left alone, gave forth the last Amen, and the glorious hymn was over. Or to take another phase of courage. What man or woman is there who would not have found it easier to ride with the Six Hundred, in broad daylight, into the Valley (/ ANXIOUS AND AIMLESS. died for women uncom- wearing 3 on the watchful on the >, " was by the Revolu- ihanting it voices of the m, with ; alone, glorious }hase of ere who vith the 3 Valley of Death at Balaklava, than to have spent a night in the dark in that awful tSte-d-tSte of which we have read of Sister Dora and the man dying of small-pox ? " And yet, as Miss Cobb intimates, many of these same women might have shown the white feather on a very small provocation. The mouse on the chamber floor, the cow in country lane, might have been too much for their nerves, and have made those blanch whom the guillotine could not scare. So I feel like calling upon you all to under- stand and use the treasures of courage which are really yours. Just as we would say to a miserly millionaire, " Your money is youi-s only to use, not to liide in a napkin ; it is a shame for you to place your bonds in an iron box, while you bury the box. in the ground, when thousands are starving and nations are perish- ing for lack of the Gospel." So we say to you, young women, with your fund of real courage : "The world needs it. It is perishing for .MidMiMttM 72 ANXIOUS AND AIMLESS. lack of brave souIh who dare to go ahead and do great thingH for God. For humanity's sake, do not think that the soft, shrinking nature, afraid of its own shadow, afmid to speak a brave word or to do an unconventional deed, is peculiarly womanly and admirable. The world cannot be regenerated without the hpip of brave women as well as of brave men. It has been too long thought that courage was t prerogative of a man, virtue or purity of a woman. We shall never reach the true plain from which we can, altogether, men and women, with united effort, lift up humanity, until we realize this truth, that a man must be pure as well as brave, and that a woman must he brave as well as pure. As one of your friends finely pute it: "One of the principles which I am fond of enuncia- ting is that men should be pure as well as women, and that women should be courageous ■0 as well as men.'' ANXIOUS AND AIMLESS. 78 ♦' I believe that there ahoJild be equrtlity of the sexes in one particular at least, and that is in virtue, and that all women should insist on this 80 far as their influence reaches." How shall you attain this moral courage without having a great aim in view? The Bohaers who have a fort to storm or an order to carry out, are the soldiers who do not flinch. If they know not and care not for what they are fighting, they lack the very foundation of courage. You cannot make much of a hero out of a hired Hessian. Cowardice is almost always the sister of Aimlessness. " Womanly, unaffected, dignified frankness," writes another friend (and this is only another name for courage), "will allow a girl to express her convictions without losing the respect of her acquaintance. I know, from having tried it a good many times," she continues, " that a young lady loses no friendships worth retain- ing by saying : ' I made a resolve years ago timmtmMltiiiiimmmili jtfaMijMmr 1 - 1 r imTMri 74 ANXIOUS AND AIMLESS. I Unit I could never have anything- to do with men who were not true gentlemen at heart. Furthermore, I know that in our hands lies the power of working genuine reforms along this verv line." Says anotlier : " I tremble for two young girls whom I know, as 1 hear their names coupled with two young men, and see to all appearances th6 strong attachment existing between them, and the talk of marriage at no distant day. Both of the young men are ir- religious and intemperate. If every young woman would take a decided stand on the side of temperance, and refuse the attentions of a young man that drank, it would do more good than all the temperance lectures in the world." But that requires courage, and courage that is coupled with the highest aim to do right, cost what it may, for Christ's sake. Remember, my young friends, that it is your right and duty to be courageous as well as virtuous ; that // do with at heart, inds lies 118 along young ir names 1 see to . existing ige at no jn ' are ir- 7 young the Hide ions of a lore good le world.'' re that is right, cost smber, my and duty 3US ; that ANXIOUS AND AIMLESS. 76 courage is born of a high, noble aim, and that, ill the highest sense, you cannot bo pure with- out having the courage of virtue as well as ita spotloHsness. Another sister of Ainilessness is Invalidism, or semi-invalidism. The ill health of our American women is notorious. What is the cause? OverwKik? Yes, to some extent ; but underwork is a greater cause. Where ambi- tion, the straining at too large an aim, has one victim, aimlessness and idleness has two vic- tims. In many a New England farm kitchen, in many a nursc/N', there are doubtless women broken down pntniaturely by hard labor. But in many another house, humble or wealthy, are women c.^unJly broken down by the wearing effort to do r, ; iii,;g and do it gent/eelly ; by the worrj- f uivt;ing uo worthy aim, and living up to it. ' Tea"^ ynt ^rl honesty of purpose and practice," mu/s Marion Uaiiaud on this point. n LT"-'i>riirT'i>MHn" I 'I V. i 76 ANXIOUS AND AIMLESS. "and to call things by their right names. Show no charity to the faded frippery of senti- ment that prates over romantic sickliness. In- culcate a fine scorn for the desire to exchange her present excellent health for the estate of the pale, drooping human-flower damsel; the taste that courts the fascination of lingering consumption ; the sensation of early disease, induced by the rupture of a blood-vessel over a laced handkerchief, held firmly to her iily mouth by agonized parent or distracted lover." " I was cheered," she continues, " as by the finding of a treasure, the other day, at over- hearing a youiig girl say scornfully to a school- fellow : ' I should be ashamed to bo sickly I No 1 I won't call it delicate. It is very indeli- cate, to my way of thinking. I say the word out plainly — sickly. It is as much my duty to keep well as to keep clean. Of course acci- dents will happen in spite of precautions, but no one is proud of having fallen in the mud." // s names. of senti- less. In- exchange estate of msel; the lingering f disease, sel over a her iily id lover." as bj' the S at over- o a Bchool- bo sickly I rery indeli- ■ the word a my duty lourse acci- ,ution8, but ii»W»r»iWWF^va.-t-i**t^-**» - ..^H mfm "Little Lillie Lee," or the "Child Guard at Gen. Grant's Tomb," or " The Child Wife," or *' A Desperate Woman." Hoirible pictures of murder and violence decorate them all. It is a shame that we have to submit to an invasion of our homes by such literary diet; that the law does not at least abate this nuisance. If once a week regularly some city scavenger should open my front door and throw in a load of garbage from the gutter, or some ill-disposed person should thrust an adder into the letter- box, hoping .that my children would get stung, they would do me no greater wrong than these panderera to a cheap, vile taste that delights in murder, reduction, and adultery do when they thrust into my house their " Little Lillie Lee," their "Child Wives," and their "Desperate Women." If the desperate woman would come herself she could be turned over to the police. If Little Lillie Lee should come in person, I could send her to the Little Wanderers' Home; ANXIOUS AND AIMLESS. 81 but coming as they do, we need to exercise con- stant vigilance, fathers and mothers, lest they become, before we know it, the companions of our children. Of all the many wise words that have come for you on this point, I can read but from one letter. This good friend of yours says : " Our public library has altogether too many cheap story books kept for the use of children. I often hear such sentences as these from young women: 'I know nothing of history; hated it in school, and forgot it as soon as pos- sible, and never read it now. Biographies are dry ; I don't like travels, and I never read a word of Shakespeare in my life ; but I am a great reader; I always have a book in my hand.' I heard one young lady make all these statements not long ago, and so I asked her what she liked to read best. 'Ohl stories,' was the reply. Is it strange they have a wrong idea of life ; that their talk is chiefly about boys and having a good time ? " 82 ANXIOUS AND AIMLESS. I should tliink it very strange if with such an intellectual diet they ever had a more sensible tlought in their head. In these days it is no great credit to be seen with a book in your hand, unless that book is one of the best. I sometimes think, as I remember the floods of trash that issue from the press, that Cadmus was no great friend of the race, after all. And now, young friends, in a closing word let me plead with you very earnestly to respect your womanhood, and to fill your life full of noble aims and lofty purposes. Root out the weeds, but do not forget to fill the empty garden of your heart with flowers and fruits. Throw away the bad book, but take up the good book, just as soon as you lay the other down. Do not simply be busy, but be busy for a purpose, with a prize in view, with the long plan of a useful life to work out. Do not simply be brave, be brave that the world may lAMk ANXIOUS AND AIMLESS. 88 be better, by reason of your cheery courage. Do not simply be well and strong, be well and strong in order that something of your vigor and strength may pulsate through another life. Remember there is no such tiling as a super- fluous woman, as we sometimes hear them facetiously called, unless you choose to make yourself superfluous. There are high motives enough to go around among you all. There is a noble aim for every one. There is a Chris- tian womanhood for the most lowly and shrink- ing; and beyond this, if you comprehend all that the words imply, there is no higher destiny for a seraph or an archi\ngel. ■M ^ n \^ .»i.«a»>aiiai^iHi»j5si^aaK»;iriiiBae«a^BaiS^^ .•il,'**Mfl4^r-^i,«,-«iJvJfcJ,,j«Ss,fefei«»;.i^^ *Mm IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-S) 1.0 I.I »- IIIIM |50 •" IIIIM ^ m M 2.2 2.0 1.25 1.4 1= 1.6 6" Photographic Sciences Corporation w.. <^ 23 WEST MAIN STREET WEBSTER, N.Y. 14580 (716) 872-4503 I o CIHM/ICMH Microfiche Series. CIHM/ICMH Collection de microfiches. Canadian Institute for Historical Microreproductions / Institut Canadian de microreproductions historiques rj^v^%i-i**a*»«^'-**-4*Wii^i,fej(jiilS^ ii!' CHAPTER IV. PEIVOLlir AND FLIBTATION. OirlUh Wild 0at8-6irU mil he Girls -Keep the Heart clean -The Silly Dispensation- The Flirt -The flip- pant young Woman- The Orc.ce of Maidenhood- The ideal Oirl- Dignity a SN. FRIVOLITY AND FLIRTATION. 91 i She gets a liH is the way at 8he, in cal- ;m, prlncipleH, Ing, half-cyni- Iielpful, affec- replaced by a oves." thing much our girls, is I of maiden- f real mod- >s of speech, and some- cannot fail harm. Let f the ' ideal of youra. sombination > the unsul- I the hills, imselves to demand purity for purity in the young men with whom they clasp hands.' " " There is great danger," says another, " for the girls who are raised above the need of earn- ing their own living, lest they fall into frivolity. Within a month I heard the pastor of one of the largest and best suburban churches say that he had fifty girls in his congregation — most of them church members — who are too frivolous to be depended upon for any real, earnest church work. Their mothers are lovely women, deeply engrossed in various forms of ch&ritable work ; but the girls are too much taken up with dress, society, art and literary pursuits to count for much in church work." *'I have noticed," says another, "that one great danger lying in the path to noble woman- hood, is want of sobriety. Young ladies should cultivate dignity, as dignity is a safeguard of virtue." Of course this friend does not mean a stilted outward propriety, that is scrupulous 92 FRIVOLITY AND FUUTATION. simply about little matters of etiquette; she means, I knonr, a ladylike, dignified soul, which, while it may be full of rtunshine and glee and fun, has an instinctive horror of the loud and boisterous and immaidenly ; such pure sweet dignity is to the maiden soul what a rich fit- ting frame is to a rare and beautiful picture. It protects it from defacement and allows no careless, wanton hand to mar its beauty. ' -^ " If I were to impress any one thing more than another upon the young women of to-day," writes another, " it would be that they are lacking in womanly dignity. They need to be told that they hold themselves too cheap — so cheap, that young men treat them as they would a garment ; wear it a while and then cast it aside as useless. The absence of this grace of womanly dignity is a stepping-stone to a life of dishonor. If these same girls could hear the estimate of their character as expressed by these same young men, their ears would tingle." >N. TRIVOLITY AND FLIRTATION. 98 uette; she Boul, which, id glee and le loud and pure sweet t a rich fit- ful picture. allows no uty. thing more 1 of to-day," it they are need to be cheap — so \m as they ad then cast f this grace )ne to a life aid hear the tpressed by }uld tingle." I have implied that the frivolous girl and the flirt are usually synonymous names for the same being. If you could see a transverse sec- tion of the brain and heart of the frivolous girls, A8 you can sometimes cut into a tree and see the rings which mark the years of its growth, I sometimes think that after you get by the core of babyhood, you would find on each concentric ring the name of some young man. Last year's ring of growth bore the name of John, and the year before it was Charlie, and the year before Henry, and the year before William. School and church, home and mother — yes, and Christ himself — I say it reverently — has been crowded out, because there has been no room in that heart or head for anything but John or Charlie or Henry or William These rings of growth in the heart do not mark whole- some, natural likes or loves, but merely suc- cessive and usually heartless flirtations, which render callous the nature which should always 91 FRIVOLITY AND FLIRTATION. retain its childlike purity and freshness. " No tone in Nature's music," it has been said, " is sweeter than a child's laugh ; the gush of a stream that gurgles because it has no depths, no sullen pools, or foaming rapids. It is an oiTense to taste and feeling, when, like a dam built with- in the bed of. the brook, the child begins to long for a woman's name and triumphs. Grace and naturalness take flight hand in hand. Frank- ness is exchanged for slyness, the pure straight- forwardness of the look for the sidelong glance, the musical laugh for the simper. The unripe peach begins to blush outwardly, but to toughen within." "One great danger that young women are exposed to," writes a wise mother, " is in being on the street a great deal engaged in what may seem like harmless flirtation, but which some- times ends in most serious results. I have in mind a young lady who is much on the street while her mother thinks she is at the home of a ness. " No in said, " is gush of a 3 depths, no s an offense I built with- gins to long Grace and nd. Frank- lire straight- long glance, The unripe t to toughen women are *is in being n what may nrhich some- I have in n the street le home of a FRIVOLITY AND FLIRTATION. 95 friend. I believe she is an innocent girl now, but I tremble for what may happen to her if she is not awakened to a sense of her danger. Young friends, did you know that there is a class of harpies in the community that reckon on this trait of character, and hope to grow rich by luring you on in this same way which seems so innocent and so bedecked with flowers atfii-st?" A father told me, the other day, that he was horrified at finding that his little, innocent twelve-year-old girl had sent to her through the mails, an advertisement of a " handbook of flirta- tion." This book professed to give full direc- tions as to " how to win a lover," It told very minutely how to manage a handkerchief or fan flirtation. How one motion meant, " meet me on the corner," and anoth«.r. " T am yours," and a third, " I'll come when the old folks are out of the way," and other things too bad to speak or print. ^ " 96 FRIVOLITY AND FLIRTATION. I did not wonder that his soul was boiling with indignation to think that these serpents should get the names even of little girls in the primary school in order to teach them their devilish tricks ; and I mention this fact here, that the fathei-s and mothers, knowing that such vipera are crawling about the community, may beware of their slime and their sting. But, after all, young friends, the cure rests with you, not with your fathers or mothers. Your hearts are in your own keeping. If these rings of frivolous, heartless flirtation do mark your lives, you do not need to allow any more to grow. Next year's ring of growth may be pure and sweet and wholesome. There is a sound, inno- cent heart, I believe — the innocent heart of childhood — in every one of you, which is not overlaid or hidden completely by the frivolity and worldliness of subsequent years. Get back to that. It is the Bible rule : "> Except ye be converted and become as little children, pure, I I ST. '^as boiling ie serpents ;irl8 in the bhem their fact here, g that such unity, may ing. But, s with you, four hearts se rings of your lives, ■e to grow, e pure and iound, inno- at heart of rhich is not ;he frivolity . Get back ccept ye be Idren, pure, FBIVOLITV AKD FLIRTATION. 97 innocent, loving, tender, ye cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven." In the last chapter but one I told you about the sisters of Aimlessness. In this let me say a few words about some relatives (they are at least as near as first cousins) of Frivolity. One of these firet cousins of Frivolity is ex- aggeration in the use of words, and a very near relative of exaggeration is slang. . "I was walking along the street the other day,' says Dr. Holland, "when I met an ele- gantly dressed lady and gentleman upon the sidewalk. As I came within hearing of their voices — they were quietly chatting along the ^ay — I heard these words from the woman's lips : ' You may bet your life on that.' I was disgusted. I could almost have boxed her ears." "A woman who deals only in superlatives," he continues, " demonstrates at once the fact that her judgment is subordinate to her feelings, and that her opinions are entirely unreliable." 98 FEIVOLITY Ain> FLIRTATION. All language thus loses its power and signifi- cance. The same words are brought into use to describe a ribbon in a milliner's window, as are employed to do justice to Thalberg's execu- tion of Beethoven's most heavenly symphony. Let me insist upon this thing. Be more eco- nomical in the use of your mother tongue. It a thing is simply good, say so ; if pretty, say so ; if very pretty, say so; if fine, say so; if very fine, say so ; if grand, say so ; if sublime, say 80 ; if magnificent, „dy so ; if splendid, say so. These words all have different meanings, and you may use each one in referring to as many differ- ent objects, and not use the word perfect once. That is a very large word I This is the same vice at its root that leads the boor on the street or the hoodlum to be profane, the desire to overemphasize your words and give them a littlp temporary importance. Where you say a thing is "perfectly splen- did," or " too awfully good for anything," he ™Siilh » ii' i itjtewffiri i ' i y« w iiii«iiii ' -- :n^mi S. FRIVOLITY AND FLIRTATION. 99 nd signifi- t into use v^indow, as rg's execu- jymphony. more eco- igue. It a ty, say so ; ; if very blime, say id, say so. js, and you lany differ- fect once. s the same the street desire to ire them a ctly splen- thing," he will prefix a vile oath. Neither of you mean what you say, or know what you mean. This whole custom was satirized a few years ago by the sunflower aesthetics who exhausted all epithets and had recourse only to reduplica- tion to expi-ess their feelings; so that a thing became at last "too utterly utter" or "too too." Such ridicule ought to have shown the folly of this straining after hyperbole, but I am afraid it did not altogether accomplish its object. We must remember that this was a subject which our Lord himself did not think too insignificant for him to touch upon, since he tells us : " Let your conversation be yea, yea, and nay, nay, for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil." Two more fira^ cousins of Frivolity are Mesdames Gossip and Slander. One able- bodied gossip or slanderer is enough to break up a whole church, and inaugurate the vendetta in ^y community. 100 FRIVOLITY AND FLIRTATION. My soul loathes with a perfect loathing that one who from pure maliciousness takes up a tale against her neighbor, and I warn you, young friends, have nothing to do with such a one, be she young or old. Remember the same finger of God that wrote on the rock tablet " Thou shall not kill," also wrote " Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neigh- bor," and gossip is always next door to false witness. This is a habit that grows with what it feeds on. The young tattler is the middle- aged gossip, and the old sland- -er. Why, I know women and men, too, for that matter, who are as much wedded to their gossipy stories as any old tippler to his cups. It would be just as hard to reform one as the other. We have inebriate, asylums, where the poor fellow is shut away from the taste and smell and sight of liquor; we ought to have retreats for confirmed gossips, where they could never mingle again with their kind, for as sure ^ FRIVOLITY AND FLIRTATION. 101 ling that kea up a ram you, ith such a ruber the the rock >te " Thou thy ueigh- )r to false with what he middle- 10, for that I to their 3 his cups, one as the ms, where e taste and ht to have they could for as sure as they do they will find something to gossip about. In fact, their case is worse than the toper's, for while he may reg|^in a healthy stomach and an unvitiated appetite, the slan- derer's heart, even if touched by the spirit of God, will never lose the pits and scars which mar it. -...'s ■;■-;;.■ -• '■'- •:, I have seen such gossips, with whom you could not talk five minutes on any subject with- out hearing something bad of some one. Their neighbor across the way they have no good word for, the church they attend is full of cheats and shams. After a while they have no friends ; their sharp tongue makes acquaintances shy, and neighbors give them a wide berth. They become unhappy, moody, miserable, despicable, until at last they drop into an unwept grave, and every one breathes more freely, because they no longer pollute the common air. Bunyan's Pilgrim in the Interpreter's house saw a man very busy with a muckrake, gather- ISl' 102 FRIVOLITY AND FLIRTATION. ing together refuse and rubbish while all the time there hung over his head a golden crown, waiting for hiyi. But he never lifted his eyes to it. " But the man did neither look up nor regard, but raked to himself the straws, the small sticks and dust of the floor," says Bunyan. What a perfect description of the gossip and slanderer. She rakes together all the dirt she can find. In another person's character she tries to find it, in the ill-savory talk of the police court, in the reeking columns of the low newspaper. Wherever she finds it she gathere it together and saves it for future distribution. Marion Harland compares her to the carrion fl}' who only enjoys food after it is so rank that no decent person wants to touch it. " The gamin," she says, " who would not hearken to a story of a gc d little boy unless he might afterward be treated to one about two bad little boys, 'uncommon rum 'uns, you know,' was honest in the expression of this instinct. At [lie all the len crown, d his e3'e8 lok up nor itraws, the ys Bunyan. gossip and , lie dirt she ii-acter she talk of the of the low she gathera iistribution. the carrion rank that i it. "The hearken to IS he might vo bad little know,' was nstinct. At FRIVOLITY AND FLIllTATION. 103 heart he was a nascent vulture, and in his sim- plicity revealed the hankering after carrion." If these carrion flies were only bad little boys in the street we could take caro of them easily. Sometimes they live in a fine house, sometimes by mistake they get into the church, but you can tell them by their buzzing, by their fault- finding, by their back-biting, by the way they seek to sting, and by the way they are dia- trusted and disliked. - ^i.? ?* "One of the most attractive sights," says one whose words to the young are always wise, " is that of a young woman who not only will neither say nor hear ill of any one, but who takes especial pains to notice those vhom the crowd neglects. Suoh a woman is the ad- mired of all whose admiration is worth secur- ing. And now, young woman, if you are one of the sharp ones, and are tempted to say keen things, remember that you are in very great danger of injuring youi-self, not only in your r 104 FRIVOLITY AND FLIRTATION. own soul, but in the eyes of all those whom you imagine you are pleasing." But, after all, nearly related to Frivolity as are these evils, gossip, slander, loud talk and immodest behavior, there is the mother of them all, and I should not be doing my whole duty, did I not point her out to you. This mother of so numerous a family is Im- purity. The scarlet letter is somewhere to be found on the mother of this hateful brood. In Hawthorne's powerful story you remember the poor, sinful woman of the tale had to stand on the pillory all day with the blazing scarlet A imprinted on her breastf that all might see it. Ah I if we could always see it. We should shudder with affright and turn away as the old Puritans did from the hapless woman of the story. But the scarlet letter is there, perhaps, printed on the secret heart, where no eye but God's can see, but always there. Do not say it mmmsfm ^iPt-f^T^yp' FRIVOLITY AND PLIETATION. 106 ose whom rivolity as talk and 3r of them hole duty, nily is Im- here to he brood. In lember the Q stand on ; scarlet A ^ght see it. ^e should as the old man o£ the e, perhaps, no eye but lo not say it is a harmless flirtation ; do not call it mere loudness or brassiness or passing frivolity. Of course I am not speaking nOw of girlish glee or fun or effervescent of animal spiiits — all this I rejoice in. But wherever there is a taint of immodesty, the scarlet letter is always there, and you have begun to walk in the ways of her whose steps take hold on Death. Because of the preciousness of your treasure I urge you with all earnestness to guard it well. You are tossing away your Kohiuoor when you are dallying with temptation of this sort. The frivolous flirt throws her only jewel into the gutter for swine in human form to tread upon. The bloom on the peach once brushed off does not return. Paint it ever so skillfully, you cannot restore its bloom. The virgin lily once crumpled and bruised is never itself again, however you press out its white petals. The snow, smirched and blackened, is never again the symbol of purity that it was when it fell I 106 FRIVOLITY AND FLIRTATION. from heaven. Therefore I would say to you with words, burning hot, if I could compass them, Beware, beware, beware of the first step on the road that may lead you at last to the pilloiy, to take your place beside the outcast woman with the blazing scarlet letter ou her braast I 9. ay to you 1 compass I first step Last to the ;he outcast ter ou her CHAPTER V. QBTTINO MARBIBD. A aerlotu Topic — Before the Divorce Court — A pemwMiI ExperUnce — MiUom and We$U.v — Fear of being an old Maid — A Bival of Ouvier — A Hofue and a Home — Selling One's nelf for a Home— Do not marrn a Man to reform Him — A young Woman't OpporlunUv — Mena- gea f^om Mother$ — The Conclusion of the whole Matter. I HESITATE to approach this theme of get- ting married, not because it is of little importance, but because it is of such vast im- portance that I feel the need of divine guidance in treating it plainly but wisely. I hesitate also, because so much that is silly and weak and namby-pamby has been written and spi>ken 107 108 GBTTIMG MARRIKD. on the subject, that it has thus been almost en- tirely removed from the catef^ory of serious topics. The buffoon and the clown in the circus ring and the funny paragrapher have been given a monopoly of this subject, until it has been crowded out of serious conversation, and crowded into the facetious half-column of the weekly newspaper. If any one expects to find in these chapters a series of attempted witticisms or sharp sayings from the standpoint of the funny man, he will be disappointed, for it is with prayer and earn- estness and most serious purpose that I would talk to the girls about " Getting Married.** " Free-lovism,*' says Dr. Talmage, when speaking of the evils of divorce, "has struck the good ship Marriage from one side, and Mor- monism struck it from the other side, and hur- ricanes of liberalism have struck it on all sides, until the old ship needs repairs in every plank l a i m i n w i ' >WPI I I L^M* P J.JJJlJ. ' jW"!lT:lM.-W'^-;t^f.^ GETTING MARRIED. Ill lies bave nse regu- registrar. , I could ;he whole Etrded, so slight an he irrevo- )ronounce I together, but more ice I have g exactly ids that I )ne; I now is of even those who nhappiness more often fills the public eye, and his woes reach the public ear; but wliile an unhappy marriage is a misfortune to him, it is disaster to the woman. We sympathize with Socrates, forever berated by a termagant wife, and with Milton, who had the sore trial of a vixenish shrew added to his blindness, and with John Wesley, whose wife, it is said, used to make up faces at him from the pew, while he preached the Gospel from the pulpit; but, whereas we know all about one Socrates and one Milton and one John Wesley, there are ten thousand broken-hearted, neglected wives whom we never hear about. " A woman cannot afford to make a mistake," says the brilliant preacher I have already quoted. " If a man err in his selection, he can spend his evenings at the club, and dull his sensibilities by tobacco smoke; but woman has no club- room for refuge, and would find it difficult to habituate herself to cigars. If a woman make a mistake here, the probability is that nothing 112 GETTING MARRIED. but a funeral can relieve it. Divorce cases in court may interest the public, but the love- letters of a married couple are poor reading, ex- cept for those who write them. Pray God you may be delivered from irrevocable mistake." Then, in the first place, I would say : Do not marry a man for fear of remaining an old maid. One of your friends to whom I wrote puts this at the head of a long list of evilu to which she thinks you are subject, and she adds these noble words : '* Be brave to meet life as a single woman, if God wills it so, and desire to honor that position rather than fling away all that is most precious to every woman, for the sake of the world's opinion. While they laugh at us, they need us," she continues, *' so that we have the best of the bargain." That is most true. The world needs you all. It has little use for a broken-hearted wife, with the spirit crushed out of her by the kicks and neglect and unkind words of a masculine !imm$immm.: / 3"C^^- ■■}- '?^ 116 OBTTINO MARRIBD. c&ine to know him, you would find, like your little sister in the nursery, when she dissects her doll, that he was stuffed with saw-dust, or that he was a veiy cheap edition of Nature's noblest work, " bound," as has been wittily said, " in whole calf." Here is where the evil that I deplore, and am warning you against, usually starts. It is the attraction of a passing fancy magnified by an active imagination. A sad, sad disillusion too often follows. With the utmost seriousness I would say. Be very careful not to mistake a transitory fancy for lasting love. It Is an awful and solemn promise that you make at the marriage altar. Do not promise to love, honor ancj obey him in whom there is lit le to love and nothing to honor, and whom you can not obey wichout losing all self-respect. If only your happiness in this world were con- cerned, I might well utter this warning. If only the next forty years of your life hinged on this matter I might well occupy a pag^ in dis- mmSSSBtmiSBM Vib GETTTITO MARRIED. 117 id, like your she dissects saw-dust, or of Nature's t wittily said, le evil that I ainst, usually )as8ing fancy I. A sad, sad bh the utmost careful not to ting love. It hat you make omise to love, ere is lit le to v^honc you can jlf-respect. If )rld were con- 3 warning. If • life hinged on a page in dis- cussing it. But when it is remembered that the making or marring of eternal blessedness often hinges right here : that not forty but forty million years may depend upon this choice, the full import of the matter is un- derstood, t To quote Dr. Holland once more : " It is a shame that women have no more opportunities for a choice." " My own wife," he goes on to say, *'very fortunately g^t an excellent hus- band, but it is something for which she is to be g^teful to an overruling Providence, for her own knowledge had very little to do with it. I could have cheated her bej'ond all accouut. I tell you, men want studying for some years before you find them out, and it becomes you to run fdwer risks than most of your sex run in this business. It is a gooa deal of a step, this getting married, and I am very anxious that you should know a great many men, that you should get the one you love, that he should be :> im^MVlAX ■ 'i.^iiJ, ^ ' n s Mi!«i.fsimm,ii:\ ti , 4 : ■' '.g iw^ ' ji Ba Bi ' . ' . jiaumnfea agsBwc M 118 OETTIKO MARRIED. worthy of you, and that you should be happy all the days of your life." Again let me say to you, young ladies, do not marry simply for the sake of a home. If that is your sole object you will very likely get a roof to cover your head, but it may be anything but a home. A home to whi^h a drunkard comes reeling, with poisoned breath and inco- herent speech, is no home. A table with a swinish brute on one side, and a patient Gris* elda, who pours out his tea, on the other, '^oes not furnish a home. A shiftless, ne'er-do-well, who cannot support himself, much less a family, can never provide you a true home. There are ten thousand houses in every great city that enshrine no homes. In the home there must be respect and forbearance and mutual interests, and, above all, love. It may be ever so poor, without any bric-&-brac, with- out a single expensive tidy, with no grand piano, with no drapery at the windows and no Id be happy ladies, do not [)ine. If that likely get a y be anything I a drunkard lath and inco- table with a patient Gria- he other, '^oes I, ne'er-do-well, h less a family, ne. in every great In the home rbearance and , love. It may ric-^-brac, with- with. no grand indows and no GBTTINO MARRIED. 119 Brussels on the floor. It may contain only two straight-bo.cked chairs, a table and a stove, and yet be a true home, if on the secret altar the fires of love are kindled before marriage, and are allowed to burn freely aii^ cheerily after marriage. Now listen attentively, I beg of you, to this ringing r^.essage that has been sent you by one of my wise correspondents : *' One danger which threatens our young women is that of selling themselves. They work year after year, for very small wages, go home at night to small, uncomfortable rooms, sit down and think of the hard lines in which their lots are cast. Few take any interest in them, and they find life's work drudgery, and life itself almost a burden. They struggle on, trying to keep up appear- ances, and at last discouraged, sell their finer instincts and blunt their consciences, accepting — purely for a home and because they are so tired — the proffered protection (?) of those un- ■ ...: Xi: ; > ^. 'i isk4! m 3i4 ' \Am't ^ r 120 OBTTINO MARRIED. fit to associate with them, much less to call them wives. I know a young lady in the city who married a man who is not her equal, and from whom she is far removed in age, simply because he has money to spend in dressing her, and she is ♦ so tired ' of struggling alone. It is possible to live on very little, and be happy and independent on that little. In many cases it seems to me that all that is needed to help our girls is to make them less selfish, less bound up in thinking of their own lot in life ; to open to them the richness there is in life, the value of living and struggling when there is a purpose in it." These are noble words. I \*ish they might be written in fetters of gold and hung up in your chamber, where first of all in the mom- ing your eyes might fall on them, and thus realize the richness of every life that has a noble purpose running through it. That is the secret of it ; learn that secret, and your life. OBTTINO MARRIED. 121 ess to call in the city equal, and age, Biroply Iressing her, Alone. It is e happy and any cases it to help our tss bound up ; to open to the value of is a purpose \i they might I hung up in in the mom- sm, and thus 3 that has a That is the ind your life. with or without a husband, will be rich and fully blessed. Once more let me say, Bo not marry a man for the sake of reforming him. " If now," says Dr. Talmage, veiy wisely, " under the restraint of your present acquaintance he will not give up his bad habits, after he has won the prize you cannot expect him to do so. You might as well plant a violet in the face of a northeast storm with the idea of appeasing it. You might as well run a schooner alongside of a burning ship with the idea of saving the 8hip. The consequence will be, schooner and ship will be destroyed together. If by twenty-five years of age a man has been grappled bj^ntoxi- cants, he is under such headway that your at- tempt to stop him would be very much like running up the track with a wheelbarrow to stop a Hudson River express train. It is amaz- ing," he continues, ♦♦ to see how some women will marry men, knowing nothing about them. lai GETTING MAUUIUD. 1 No merchant would sell a hundred dollars' worth of goods on credit without knowing whether the customer was worthy of being trusted. No man or woman would buy a house with incumbrances of mortgages and liens and judgments against it uncanceled, and yet there is not an hour of the day or night for the last ten years, that there have not been women, by hasty marriages, intrusting their earthly happi- ness to men about whose honesty they know nothing, or who are incumbered with liens and judgments and first mortgages and second mortgages and third mortgages of evil habits." It is a terribly dangerous experiment that you am engaged in when you marry a rake for the sake of reforming him. But I will tall you of a plan that is perfectly i«afe and wise. Re- form him before you marry him. There is a chance to display all your powers and charms as a philanthropist and a reformer. Use them to the utmost. Beforehand you have evety- LL. idred dollars' lout knowing •thy of being d buy a houM and liens and and yet there it for the last een women, by earthly happi- isty they know with liens and 3S and second of evil habits." xperiment that aarry a rake for it I will tall you and wise. Re- im. There is a rers and charms ner. Use them ou have every- OKTTIKO MABUIKO. ^^^^^ thing in your favor, and let the young man know that if he cannot give up his cups he mi^st give you up ; if lie cannot keep away from the gambling-table, he must keep away from you ; that he must make a choice forever be- tween his roisterous companions and you. Give him time to see that this reformation is no tem- porary expedient for the sake of winning a bride, but that the heart and life and character are affected; then, if you love him, let him talk of marriage. God has given you this power to use for him. Every grace, every virtue, every charm, the mysterious halo, call it illusion or delusion if you will, that surrounds every maidenly attraction, is a God-given influ- ence put into your hands to regenerate the world. I have great respect and admiration for the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, and all organizations that have for their object the lift- ing up of the drunkard, and the rescuing of the boy from the rumnshop; but you have more iMMimm ■J9ttKW'.»U ! .iAu.- j-Mibi JJ.W.»,H«»f » te!M LHJHf. ' «u< ' JW. ' «m vm 5.! 124 OBTTINO MARRIED. power, if you would exercise it, in just this line than all the temperance societies in the world. Your argument with some young man will be more effective than the eloquence of John B. Gough ever was, or even the sweet persuasive- ness of Frances Willard. From your hands the pledge will be accepted when it would be spurned from mine. I have a strong regard for the White Cross Movement, and every effort that is made for social purity ; but your influ- ence will more quickly blot out the damning sin against which it aims than all the efforts of the Bishop of Durham and his co-laborers. I am heart and soul in sympathy with the Law and Order League, and every organization that has for its aim the suppression of vice ; but if we could only enlist you on the right side, if God would make you strong to speak the right word and do the brave deed, you could do more than all these societies put together, th > 2gh they were backed up by all the police and -3=SK»as— ._. ^"^B^^H^^MP^Wf^^^ GETTING MARRIED. 125 U8t this line the world. man will be of John B. persuasive- your hands it would be g regard for every effort t your infiu- the damning the efforts of o-laborers. I nth the Law inization that I vice; but if right side, if eak the right ;ould do more ether, th > :gh le police and militia of the world. If every young woman in the world should say to-day : " I will never marry a man who drinks ; I will never marry a man who is licentious ; I will never marry a dis- honest sharper; I will look before I leap into any man's arms, and know what I am doing "' ; I say, if every young woman should make that resolve, the slow and weary reforms which have been dragging their length through the ages would make a century's advance in an hour. I have dwelt upon this negative side of our subject so long, because positive truth underlies it all. Let me give you here the same message, couched in positive words, written by mothers who know well how to put the truth : " Choose," says one, "as the partner of your heart, your home, your life, a good, sound, clean-hearted man, who loves you, and wins your love by the development of tastes congenial with yours; a man whom, ^ a friend, you could esteem and -"WBSS^T?^'-^^ >-raeirtsiagaaoMiM deed, by high aspirations and the noblest aims in bringing up such a family. But we cannot believe that the humblest and most obscure mother, in God's sight, is any the less responsi- "-t».fe.«4'^^sjs: 184 MOTHERS, BI8TKB8, DAUOUTBRB. :l ■I 1 i ble for the training of those God has committed to her I CareleHsness in the mother often means wickedness in the daughter. And right here let there be an earnest word spoken to the mothers to make confidantes of their daughters, and to keep up these confiden- tial relations as long as life is spared. What a world of wretchedness and sin might have been escaped if to the mother's heani; the daughter always fled with every secret, knowing that nothing was too sacred to reveal to that loving ear. " I think," says a wise friend, " that one of the best safeguards for a young girl is to make a confidante of her mother in every little thing. When I overhear a young girl say, when asked not to tell anybody what has been told her, ' I shal' tell my mother, for I tell her everything,' I feel that that girl is safe." I have many messages from the mothers, of this tenor, of which I can quote but one or two : ** When American mothera shall have adopted ->4a ' ■ ^ w^ ' j^Aiiij- : ;;^ t0^ £R8. I committed )ften means irnest word ifidantes of le confiden- i. What a t have been te daughter owing that that loving , ** that one g g^rl is to every little ig girl say, at has been r I tell her afe." mothers, of one or two : lave adopted wifmm MOTHEBS, BI8TEBS, DAUGHTBBS. 185 a golden mean between the restraint imposed upon French girls and the unwise liberty per- mitted to our own, I believe few dangers will await our girls, even when they leave the home roof to earn their own living. And when mothers make, as too many do not, the daugh- ter's welfare first in their hearts, placing it before all social pleasures, before all public re* forms, before all church work even, and win their entire confidence, these dangers will be still further diminished. The girl who keeps no secret from her mother is a safe girl." From one who has written to the girls a long letter packed with wisdom, I must make room for a few of the many words I would quot«. "Our girls need mothers," she writes. "To how many of our mothers is their daughter's secret heart-life a sealed book? How many daughters, bright and sunny girls, will freely scatter confidences among their mates with the laughing injunction, 'Now don't you tell. I 186 MOTHERS, BISTERS, DAUGHTERS. wouldn't have mother know for anything!' And why ? Why and where and when, mother, was this little heart-cord snapped which once joined the young life to yours, heart of your heart, and soul of your soul? Did you once smile at the folly of their conceits, and call them foolish, and let the firat doubts of Mother's per- fect sympathy thrill the little heart with pain, and give the first separating stretch to the precious link binding you together as one? Oh, wise and Ic ng mothers I 'chum' with your children fi "le very beginning. Then will you hold them sweet and pure for yourself and for the Master, for time and eternity." I know that these pages reach a great num- ber of loving, devoted mothers, mothers who would gi^ 3 their lives for their daughters. Allow me to leave one question with them. Do you know your daughter now as you did when, a little tired, curly-haired romp, wearied with the day's play, she nestled at night in your ^rmr •'^^■^i^pi :r8. * inything ! * 31), mother, vhich once it of your i you once 1 call them 3ther'8 pei> with pain, ch to the r as one? lum ' with ng. Then )r yourself nity." ^eat num' others who daughters, them. Do 1 did when, sailed with it in your t IfOTHEUS, BISTERS, DAUGHTERS. 187 arms, or is she growing away from you as she grows older? Does she have her secrets now which you do not share, and confldences into which she does not want you to enter? Are your paths gradually diverging — she going one way and you another ? Oh 1 for her soul's peace and yours, get back into the same path with her, and walk with her, with even step. Any road in which her mother cannot walk by her side, is full of pitfalls and snares and thorns for the daugl ler, full of heartache and sorrow for the mother. Young America has many good points. Young America is bright and piquant and cheerful and usually good-natured, but rever- ence for elders and respect for parents are not two of his strong points, to whichever sex young America belongs. We have heard dim traditions of the way in which children of a past generation, let loose from school, took pains to be polite and respectful when their 138 MOTHERS, SISTERS, DAUGHTERS. I If ii 1 elders passed by. In other countries, we have even seen the rows of children on either side of the road, as the stranger went by, drawn up to pull the respectful forelock and drop the cour- tesy. But we never thought of looking for such a thing in America. We should be almost as much surprised by such polite .less and defer- ential respect, as by the sight of a white crow or a snowstorm in July. But I am not writing for the sake of berating the manners of the present generation, but for the sake of whisper- ing ill the eai-s of tiic girls : " Be very polite to, be very thoughtful of, be very tender to one person in the world, and that one a person whom you aro apt to treat with more disrespect and carelessness than any other — your own mother." I have two or three good reasons for urging this advice upon you most earnestly. In the first place, she knows more than you do, and her advice is entitled to respect. To be sure, she may not be able to play the piano as " t; J'!«aTOSB2g|^^-jvSr' »>mm" . ' f) i iHMi.,»,#ji^a B J.MH i; s i jjj i . rEBS. ies, we have sither side of drawn up to •op the cour- looking for lid be almost !ss and defer- k white crow Q not writing aners of the e cf whisper- a very polite ry tender to one a person are disrespect — your own good reasons lost earnestly, ore than you spect. To be the piano as MOTHERS, SISTBBS, DAUGHTERS. 189 well as you do, and perhaps cannot talk French at all. Very likely she isn't so fresh in arith- metic and geography, and possibly she makes a slip in grammar or pronunciation occasionally, for which you blush. But, after all, there is no doubt about it, she knows more than you, and her advice and counsel are worth heeding, as you will surely know when you get by the callow wisdom of girlhood. If you differ with her, it is most likely that she is right and you wrong. If you think she is old-fashioned, it is more probable that she is simply sensible, If you think she is straight- laced, it is extremely likely that she is only prudent, and you cannot with safety, even though it seems to you that she is an hundred years behind the times, as you sometimes say, forget that the fifth commandment reads: " Honor thy fathrir and thy mother." *' It is disheartening, dear girls," says Marion Harland, '4et one tell you who has thought His 140 MOTHBR8, 81BTBB8, DAUGHTERS. herself into a dull, fixed heartache on this suh- ject, to be swept aside by inches, or boldly removed from the board where one was, not so very long ago, a figure of some consequence. " We mothers, enriched by the experience of years, grown patient and wise through the dis- cipline of our long probation, beseech you to be charitable to our slowness and merciful to the stiff movement of mental muscles that copy with pain new postures and paces. "Mamma is antiquated in language and dress; in works and in ways non-progressive. Had she oh(»en to neglect you instead of her- self, had she given to her own studies and mental cultuie the hours devoted to drilling you in early tasks, had she kept pace with society in place of sitting out the long evenings and bright days in the nursery, had the stitches set in small frocks, trousera and coats gone toward furnishing her own wardrobe, you might have had less apparent cause to be a this sub- , or boldly vas, not 80 iquence. perience of gh the dis- 1 you to be iful to the t copy with guage and progressive, tead of her- tudies and to drilling pace with ag evenings the stitches coats gone ■drobe, you sause to be ^'T'mmmm^^m MOTHEBS, SISTBB8, DAUGHTfiBS. 141 ashamed of her. You would undoubtedly, had you survived the process, have now more and just I'eason to blush for your own defects." This leads me to lay that another good reason for obeying the fifth commandment in letter and in spirit, is that this same mother has, for a dozen or fifteen or twenty years, been making every sacrifice for you. The young man that picks up your handkerchief or helps you over a muddy crossing, you reward with a most bewitching smile and profuse thanks ; but what has he done or what would he sacrifice for you ? He would hardly throw away the stump of a cigar before he was done with it to please you ; and yet, the mother who has given all but life itself, and would give that if it was necessary, rarely sees such a smile on your face, and never heai-s such winning words of thanks and appre- ciation. Oh I these furrow-browed, Miiite-haired mothers, whom I sometimes see treated so cava- lierly by blooming daughters I " If the daughtero 142 M0THBE8, 8I8TBB8, DAUGHTERS. could only read the lesson of these furrows," I say to myself. Eveiy wrinkle tells of a grinding sacrifice : every white hair of a sleep- less night; every angularity of form, of a restless babyhood, and weeks when an anxious one bent over a sick child in the crib ; of days of watching and nights of unrest; of work in the kitchen and the ceaseless clatter of the sewing-machine treadle. All this story and countless other chapters of a similar tale are written in many a beautiful old face that I have seen. Girk, look into your mother's face and see if there is not such a story there, and if you can read it, that old face will have a beauty in it that you never suspected was there. Says the author of "The Marriage Rinpr": "The fallen at Chalons and Austeriitz and Gettysburg and Waterloo are a small number compared with the slain in the great Armageddon of Kitchen. You go out to the cemetery and you will see that the tombstones all read beautifully and "^mm IBS. I furrows," tells of a of a sleep- form, of a an anxious ib ; of days of work in bter of the story and Lar tale are that I have •'s face and , and if you beauty in it I. Says the '♦ The fallen ysburg and red with the of Kitchen, rou will see utifuUy and MOTHERS, SISTERS, DAUGHTERS. 148 poetically ; but if those tombstones would speak the truth, thousands of them would say, * Here lies a woman killed by too much mending and sewing and baking and scrubbing and scouring ; the weapon with which she was slain was a broom or a sewing-machine or a ladle.' " There is a good deal of truth in this, and I hope that before the cemetery is reached, these dear mothers, who have been for a score of years, more or less, wearing themselves out for you, will find themselves so relieved by your loving sympathy and help, that their last journey through the graveyard gates will be delayed for many a long day. There is a single other reason that I would urge upon you for this dutiful- respect and obedience which is so charming, it is that the one who has thus worn herself out for you has done it because she lovss you, and love can only be satisfied with answering love. You are starving your mother's heart when, by word or ^'«»^5iSfo«) 144 HOTHEB8, SI8TEBS, DAUGHTSRd. action, you seem to deny her your love. If she was actually starving for want of physical food how you would hasten to procure itl Every penny that you could earn or beg would go for this purpose, and you would esteem nothing too hard to do for her ; and yet I imagine that thei-e ara a good many hungry hearts that are not far from starvation for lack of a daughter's love. A word of sympathy ; a radiant smile, just one of them saved from the young man, and devoted to the mother; some want anticipated; a kiss of love ; an artless caress : all this is food that would keep alive many a famished heai't. Some day, I am sure, you will think of these things. I pray God that it may not be too late to pro- vide this food which keeps the heart from starving. Some day you will think of her as Bishop Thompson, in his reminiscences of boyhood, speaks of his mother. "• If I seat myself upon my cushion," he says, ** it is at her side ; if- 1 ^•nam.mi\mr'^i%u .vvj^-M. 'h^.v. EPJJ. ive. If she tysical food it I Every }uld go for nothing too e that there p are not far r's love. A just one of md devoted bted; a kiss Ls food that eart. Some hese things, late to pro- heart from r as Bishop of hoyhood, myself upon ir side; if- 1 MOTHBBS, BISTKB8, DAUGHTERS. 145 sing, it is to her ear ; if I walk the garden paths or meadows, my little hand is in my mother's and my little feet keep company with hei-s ; if I stand and listen to the piano, it is because my mother's fingers touch the keys; if I survey the wonders of creation, it is my mother who points out the object of my admiring attention ; if a hundi-ed cannon pronounce a national salute, I find myself clinging to her knees ; when my heart bounds with its best joy, it is because, at the performance of some task or the recitation of some verses, I receive a present from her hand. There is no velvet so soft as a mother's lap, no rose so lovely as her smile, no path so flowery as that imprinted with her footsteps." There is still another relative of yours, young ladies, whom I would ask you to consider. You regard him sometimes as a plague and a nuisance, T know ; but though I admit that he often is most exasperating, there is a better light in which to consider him. *'That little 146 MOTHERS, SISTERS, DAUGHTERS. brother of mine is such a bother ; " " That big brother is such a tease," I often hear some sister say. In an obituary notice that I once read, a young man was spoken of through a bad mis- print as the eldest " bother " of such and such a distinguished individual. I wish that these mis- takes and elisions of a letter might occur only at the printer's font and never in real life. " Let sisters not begrudge the time and care bestowed on a brother," writes one whose pithy words I have before had occasion to quote. "It is hard to believe that any boy that you know so well as your own brother can ever tui-n out anything very useful. WeU, he may not be a Moses. There is only one of that kind needed in six thousand years. But I tell you what, your brother will be either a blessing or a curse to society, and a candidate for happiness or wretchedness. Don't snub him. Don't de- preciate his ability. Don't talk discouragingly about his future. Don't tease him. Brothers j^Biaii SR8. MOTHBRS, SISTERS, DAUGHTERS. 147 " That big some sister nee read, a a bad tnis- and such a t these mis- occur only lUfe. e and care ^hose pithy to quote. Y that you ,n ever tura le may not I that kind I tell you leasing or a r happiness Don't de- Douragingly 1. Brothers and sisters do not consider it any harm to tease. That spirit abroad in the family is one of the meanest and most devilish. There is a teasing that is pleasurable, and is only another form of innocent raillery ; but that which provokes and irritates and makes the eye flash with anger is to be reprehended. It is the curse of innumer- able households that the brothers ';ease the sisters, and the sisters the brothers. Sometimes it is the color of the hair, or the shape of the features, or an affair of the heart. Sometimes it is by revealing a secret, or by a suggestive look, or a guffaw, or an ' Ahem.' Tease I tease ! tease ! Christ says, 'He that hateth his brother is a murderer.' Now when you, by teasing, make your brother or sister hate, you turn him or her into a murderer or murderess." Did you ever think of this, that probably that brother whom you apparently think so little of is fully as worthy a boy as that other girl's brother whom you think is "just nice " ? You u\ 148 MOTHBBS, SI8TEB8, DAU0HTRB8. do not think that he is, because you know him better, but probably there is some other girl who thinks at this moment that he is very near perfection, while she has a very moderate opin- ion of her own brother, whom you admire. It would be well if you should exchange eyes with her for a little while. There is much in your own brother that you have not discovei'ed. He is probably a bright, manly, courageous fellow, with all his faults, and I know you love him in your inmost heart, but I want to have you manifest that affection in more helpful ways. Do not always pair off with some other girl's brother ; do not make your own feel that he is of no account, and that you cannot enjoy your- self at a party or concert or lecture if ho is the only one who sits by your side, and goes home with you afterwards. Do you know why God has put you in the same family and given you a common father and mother? It did not come so by chance, ,,>VF„tlUl4i' , . 'KB8. I know him I other giii is very near derate opin- admire. It ge eyes with uch in your overed. He reous fellow, love him in o have you lelpful ways. J other girl's el that he is t enjoy your^ ture if ho is de, and goes it you in the mmon father 10 by chance, MOTHKBS, 8I8TEBS, DAUGHTEBS. 149 but that you might exert a sisterly influence over him, pure and sweet and wholesome; an influence that will raise him out of many a bog in which his coarser, masculine nature may otherwise get bemired. Very much of his true success in life will depend upon his ideal of womanhood. If that ideal is exalted, he can never become utterly debased. If that ideal is low or trivial, he cannot rise very high in the scale of manhood. His ideal of womankind will be very much what you show youi-self to be. You will be his gauge and standard of other women. Most likely your heart will be first touched by divine truth, and will first accept a Saviour's love. Be to him, then, such an example of maidenly Christliness that he cannot miss his way to the cross. It was to Lazarus' sister that our Lord first made the joyful announcement : " Thy brother shall rise again." Through you the Lord will speak to many a brather, telling him to rise from his sin 'I ini f i m i n 150 MOTHEB8, 8ISTEB8, DAC0HTKB8. and begin the new life, the true life of a true man. Let us always bear in mind how our bleased Lord dignified and exalted these earthly relationships. His mother Itote the name that many of you bear ; his dear friends were the sisters of the house of Bethany ; he thought the ruler's daughter of enough consequence to exert his supreme, miraculous power, and of the three whom he raised up to life she was one, and he has said, " Whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother and sister and mother." 1 kno'v of no stronger appeal to make to your womanly imfcures. Because of what He has done for you, because of the honor He has put upon you, because of the mighty influence He has given you to exert, as mothers, daughters, sisters, be true to your high calling in all these relations of life. " Show us how divine a thing A woman may he m.-'de." iiii-'Cu.-.-f^iiPirirV - TKRS. ife of a true nd how our these earthly le name that ids were the ) thought the lence to exert i of the three I one, and he B will of my same is my CHAPTER VII. THE QUEOM ON UEB TUBONB. Jiu Summona to the Throne — ITow Prtneeea Victoria teeeived it — The TTirone — Ml other Kingdoma inaig- niflcant — Falae Independence — Tlif Idea of Marriage — The Queen'a Scepter— What ia Love f — T)^ Teat of the Oem — The Pleaaant Oirl — The two Beara — The Queen'a Bobe—Her Wide Kingdom— A aelfiah Home— The Crown — Two Heavena both called Love. make to your t He has done las put upon ence He has i, daughters, ^ in all these Qg l^TEARLY fifty years ago, one morning in -*~ ^ June, two messengers, persons no less dis- tinguished, indeed, than the Lord Chamberlain of England, and the Archbishop of Canterbury, made their way from Windsor Palace, where William the Fourth had just breathed his last, to Kensington Palace, where the Princess Victoria 161 111: 152 THE QUKEN ON HBB THRONE. lived. Says the record, as quoted by Justin McCarthy: "They knocked, they rang, they thumped for a considerable time before they could rouse the porter at the gate; they were again kept waiting in the courtyard, then turned into one of the lower rooms, where they seemed forgotten by everybody. " They rang the bell, and desired that the attendant of the Princess Victoria might be sent to inform Her Royal Highness that they re- quested an audience on matters of importance. After another delay, and another rinj^'ng to inquire the cause, the attendant was summoned, who stated that the princess was in such a sweet sleep that she could not venture to disturb her. Then they said, ' We are come on business of state to the Queen, and even her sleep must give way to that.' " It did, and she did not long keep them waiting. There comes such a message to every young ME. by Justin rang, they before they ; they were yard, then where they ed that the ight be sent 'm!VTx:jf>^W^ws?¥:^NB. TH£ QUE]^N ON HEB THRONE. 155 b queen, she only show ,nd dignity, [lat was un- enly honors jean. Your the powers e not incon- I kitchen, or le Johnnie's or the tired g-gown and d throne to » call you is nonarch can he old king assume her ten millions 1 for ten mil- lions more. Though in the home where you live some gracious queen has reigned long and benignantly, you will not crowd her off by tak- ing your seat on the same throne. There is a chance for every royal character in this kingdom of home. You will not accuse me of narrowness of view, I am sure, or of hostility to woman's highest lights, when I say that, after all, your supreme place of influence is in the home. First cultivate yourself as a human being. Recognize your rights, remember the vastness of your influence, train yourselves for the ligh- est places ; this has been the burden of m}i de- sire for you ; and yet, while I hold to all this, and abate not a jot, I also I)elieve that your throne is in the home, that there alone you may exercise your highest powers, your queenliest i luence. The realm of authorship is open to you, to the lecture platform you may aspire, the highest places in almost all the professions are no longer walled away from the ambitious nam 156 THE QUESN ON HBR THBOKB. woman, yet it is no less true now than when Sarah made Abraham's tent a true home for him, or Rebecca oame from Padan Aram on camel-back to make Isaac's home happy, that the home is woman's throne. Whatever opportunities the future may open to you and your sisters — and I believe that they will be large and abundant — all other realms will be petty and insignificant, compared with the kingdom which you may rule from thi» tiirone. Let me call your attention to the opinion of some of your best and wisest f liends on this sub- ject. "The quiet home virtues need strength- ening," says one. ''Our colleges and other educational institutions are doing a great work in furnishing the army to fight the battles of life and to help make lovely homes, too ; but is there not danger, in this progressive age, of for- getting somewhat those homely domestic vir- tues, which help so truly to make up the blessed- ness of life ? " ^<8-«tl>Wiiij>. ■ ■ tai ii ii i i ii ' i i i jtia' I I I w tMi t m htamiiittmim ■ 1 m THE QUEKN ON HEE THRONE. 163 e seem to . tliHt cer- ful in im- ire a little e it to the rth?" we d drops a nd behold ulated fire ;hat it is a real gem , and in its y as ever, ay experi- difference ^e. s an angel his appear- scowl like tother asks her love is made of paste; it isn't the genuine article. The one who will spend a week working a pair of siispendei-s and a fancy hat-band for her lover, and snap out something about "bothersome brothers," when one who is thus related merely asks her to sew on a coat-button, may glitter and sparkle before marriage, but 1 should be afraid the first acid drop in life's cup after mar- riage would spoil the illusion and forever dim the sparkle. The apostle's rule for testing faith applies equally well to faith's twin virtue, love ; show me thy love without thy works, and I will show thee my love by my works. Let me wliisper this word iu your ear, my young friends : The sensible young man, the one who will make a good husbiind, thinks a great deal more than you are apt to suppose of good- nature and sweetness of disposition, and these, when genuine, are only the habitual expression of love. " How does she treat her mother ? " " How 164 THE QUEEN ON HEU TUKDNE. does she speak to her little brothers and sisters?" " How does she treat even the dumb dog and kitten on the hearth-rug?" Those are ques- tions which he asks himself about you, if he is wise, and he is always a*, .trering them as he sees how you live. You think he admires only the pink cheek and sparkling eye and the lithe figure and the new gown and brave bonnet, but I tell you, the young man is not quite such a simpleton, after all. He knows that a pink cheek, pretty as it is to look at, may become very unlovely when flushed with pettishness or anger, and that out of cherry lips may come most rasping and irri- tating chatter, that may make his whole life miserable. This young man often hns a jood deal more sense than you give him ciedit for ; and gentle, lovable, equable good-nature are qualities which make the homeliest face and figure beautiful. I have recently read in some newspaper, that (1 sisters?" b dog and are ques- )U, if he is iiem as he )ink cheek re and the 11 you, the leton, after )retty as it )vely when d that out g and irri- whole life fc'ds a 2ood ciedit for; nature are t face and spaper, that THE QUEEN ON HRE THRONE. 166 a traveler in Norway, a short time ago, carae to a village early one morning, and was struck by the air of gloom which pervaded the streets. Unable to speak a word of the language, he could II' )t ask the cause of this, and concluded that some sickness or financial trouble had fallen upon the community. Ah the day wore on to- ward noon, however, the houses were closed; shop-windows werj covered ; all trade and busi- ness ceased. "It is death, then," he said to himself. Presently he saw the people gathering for the funeral. There were the village official, the nobleman from the neighboring chfiteau, and apparently every man, woman and child in the village. It must be some dignitary of the cburch who is dead, or some county official. A": 'je AU)d watching the crowds passing down a lit* p ru-iKy street, he caught sight of the face of a Ff.'i jhman known to him. He beckoned h'H t:. him. " The town has lost some great magnafcB apparently?" " Ah, no! It is only a ' 166 THE QUEEN ON HEB THRONE. maiden who is dead. No, she was not rich or beautiful. But, oh I such a pleasant girl, mon- sieur. All the world seems darker now that she is gone." Was not that a funeral fit for a queen ? " I would give nothing for that man's religion whose very dog and cat were not the better for it," says Rowland Hill. I would give little for those womanly graces and attractions which did not make happier those within their influence. It requires a vast amount of sweetness to make the bitter cup of life tolerable, and mei-e beauty and outward grace cannot accomplish much in this direction, any more than an ex- quisite cup of wedgewood can make tolerable the bitter wormwood it contains. You have all heard of the two bears which the wise minister advisee the newly married couple to keep con- stantly in their home, bear and for-bear. There are othei-s besides newly married couples that need to keep these same bears in the home. MP^iiiiiiiiiiiiiiii ot rich or girl, mon- now that A fit for a I's religion better for e little for which did Dfiuence. eetness to and mere Eiccomplish lan an ex- e tolerable >u have all )e minister keep con- ar. There >uples that home. THE QUEBiN ON HEB THKONB. 167 "If you are a Baptist and your wife is a Pedobaptist," says Dr. Talmage, " don't go to splashing water in each other's faces ! If you are a Presbyterian and your husband is a Metho- dist, when he shouts ' Hallelujah' don't get ner- vous." And then he appropriately quotes Cow- per's stanza : " The kindest and the happiest pair Will find occasion to forbear; And something every day they live, To pity and perhaps forgive. " That a man married to a woman who never Consults his comfort and taste, and who does not keep herself as attractive after marriage as before marriage, that such a man does not stay at home from the club, he goes on to say, is no wonder. " It is a wonder that such a man does not go on a whaling voyage of three years, in a leaky ship." The queen's robe on state occasions is made r 168 THK QUEEN ON HER THRONE. of or tnanMd wrCfi ermine, which is regarded as emblematic of puiity. Let a character of spotless purity and holiness clothe you as with a garment as you wield the scepter of love on the throne of home. "Reverence and love for the character and Word of God, with earnest faith, that will give courage to obey and patient continuance to well-doing," is what you need, writes one of your friends. "I think the danger with young people," writes another, " is in being conformed to the things of the world ; having a fear of being strict and singular, they yield too quickly to thd world's opinion, thus losing the power for good which they might exert were they firm in their determination to do right, whatever the world may say." I have scores of just such messages for you from loving hearts that have seen clear into the core of this matter. regarded aracter of u as with »f love on racter and will give nuance to bes one of 5 people," led to the of being ickly to tha Br for good rm in their • the world rea for you clear into THE QUBEN ON HER THRONE. 169 As it is the queen's prerogative to wear the ermine, so it is yours to be clothed with these Christian graces — humility, modesty, purity ; they will make any face and ^ore attractive and lovable, and a» you go through life, though you may apparently attract very little attention, yet all true men and women, as they see you, will say to themselves 'r their inmost hearts, " There is a queen, and ciie is clothed in right royal apparel." Again, make your kingdom as wide as pos- sible. Queen Victoria does not rule over one little island alone. Canada, Australia, India and much of Africa acknowledge her sway. The influences of a good home can never be confined within four walls. If you are a true queen, however humble you may account youi^ self, a thousand unconscious subjects will be blessed by your rule. The Queen of England has never seen one in a thousand of her people, but there is not one of them all who is not 170 THE QUEEN ON HER THKONE. l)etter and happier because a pure, noble woman Bite upon the throne. You can selfishly use the best blessings that God ever conferred upon men, and you can use your home, even, for your own selfish gratification, making of it a social and exclusive club for two or three or half a dozen, and never thinking of the wide realm which it is your duty to bless. It is necessary to have a central tie 8ome^vhere, to be sure; to have a throne somewhere; some one home from which these good ...flnences ema- nate ; but it is no more possible for the true queen of a home to keep altogether within her own four walls than it is for the suu to shine all to itself, without distributing its light and warmth to half a score of distant planets. " You cannot always sit on your husband's knee," says your good friend, Titcomb, " for in . the first place it would tire him, and in the second place he would get sick of it. . . • I am acquainted with too many husbands and THE QUBE» CN HBK THRONE. 171 ONE. noble woman .fishly use the aferied upon nae, even, for iking of it a > or three or r of the wide bless. It is newhere, to be ire ; some one ..fluences ema- e for the true xer within her luu to shine all Its light and planets, ^rour husband's tcomb, " for in im, and in the c of it. y husbands and wives who, though all the world to each other, are nothing to the world. They gather com- forts about them, they bear dainties to each other's lips, they live and move and have their whole being in each other's love, and, shutting out all the world, live only for themselves. It is not unjust to say that this is one of the most dangerous and most repulsive forms of home life. It is selfishness, doubled, associated, in- stituted ; and it deserves serious treatment." Many a lovely queen needs to take these words to heart and enlarge her realm, not by dangling for lovers and seeking to bind a throng of personal admirers to her conquering chariot wheels, but by letting the sweet home influences of which she is the center stream out into the phllly atinosplHM'H of the w//»ld, upon the crowd of homeless ones around her. You who have beautiful homes, where plenty reigns and love decks every hour with flowers, remember the throng of homeless young men and women who r 172 THE QUEEN ON HER THRONE. walk our streets, and to whom a glimpse of such a home as yours would be a glimpse of heaven itself. You can be as selfish with the comforts of your home as the veiiest miser counting his gold. At the bar ot God you will have to ac- count for this talent — the art of home-making — and for making the sweet radiance of that home shine the furthest in this naughty world. We have talked about woman's throne, her scepter, her ermine, her wide kingdom — I need hardly remind you that there is a crown for her too. It does not visibly sparkle upon her brow, it cannot be weighed in a jeweler's scales, but it is no less real than Queen Victoria's, because less tangible than hers. To every one of you, with your rare and blessed opportunities to brighten and sweeten and gladden the world through the homes of which God has made you queens, to every one of you come the solemn words i"f the Son of THE QUEEN ON HBB THRONE. 173 e of such f heaven n forts of nting his ve to ac- e-making J of that ty world, irone, her — I need rn for her her brow, icales, but i, because God : " Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life." " Hold that fast that thou hast, that no man take thy crown." There is no cheap and easy process for turn- ing out queenly character, as clothes-pins are made by the gross. The loving friend, the helpful daughter, the patient sister, the good- natured, peace-loving schoolgirl, makes the queenly home-maker, and such a one, whether married or single, always finds her throne. " The earth waits for her queen." God calls for queenly characters. Answer this demand ; humanity needs you, young women. Respond to this call, for you can do much to prove to the world that — rare and 1 sweeten homes of every one he Son of " There arc two heavens, Both made of love — one Inconceivable Even by the other, so divine It Is; The other far on this side the stars, By men called Home." country Tillase ichool which, through lack oftaci atid knowledge on the part o( teachers and of intered on ih* part nf pareiili, had become almott worthlett. A new teacher, with a mind and method of her own, in enftaged for a term, and ihe sets at work with a determination to revolutionize the exiating condition of iningt. It requires a good deal of tact and management to eniisi parents and pupils in her plans, but site does it by quiet persist- ence, and the end of the term tees not only a remarkable change in the school, but in Ihe village itself. " As a general rule novels with a pur- pose are dry reading. There are brilliant ONLY MB. i2mo, 1.25. " We are taken back to the days when the watchman n ade his nightly rounds to call the hour and the state oi the weather. On his return from one of these rounds on a snnwy night, a good- hearted watchman finds a little fellow half starved and half froien, crouched against the little sentiy-box in whidi he iTmaelf found shelter between his roundi. exceptions, however, and one of these ii * Pouibilitie*. '" — A Itatiy A rgtu. The boy is taken home by the v'atchman, and the story follows him through early years and through his c perleiice as bound boy on a farm, and h . subsequent start- ing in life in a store in the ciiy whete he rises to l>e confidential clerk and at last paitner in the firm." — Natumai Ba^ tut, Pbila. BAKER (Ella M.). CLOVER LEAVES : A collection of Poems. Compiled and arranged by iC. G. B. ismo, cloth, i.oo; gilt edges, 1.25. A brief memoir tells the story of the short life of the young poet. which it appeals. " — Springfitld Kt^tA- licaH. " One rises from the perusal of thes* "The author of these poems was possessed, of the rarest loveliness of per- lon and character, and she has left behind jer a memory fragrant with blessing. tier verse was the natural outcome of icr beautiful soul ; its exceeding delicacy and sweetness are sufiicient to charm all who have the answering sentiment to poems with the feePinc of having been brought very near 10 a Christian woman's heart, and of having cau^ >t the utter- ances of a truly devout spirit. "^^0n«- tug' Star. SOLDIER AND SERVANT. i2mo, 1.25. " A pretty and helpful story of girl ife. Six or seven girls band themselves .ogether to cultivate their talents in the Dest possible manner, and to let their ight shine whenever and wherever thev an. The girls varv greatly, but each one is determined to do her best wiih the iiaterial that the Lord has given her. SEVEN EASTER LILIES. Their several successes and failures are told, and many lessons are drawn from their work." — Goidtu Ritlr, Boston. " The book is remarkably entertain- ii\g, sensible and spiritually stimulating. It IS the best book of the kind that we have seen in many moDlha." — C«iv*v gatioMalist. i2mo, 1.25. A story for girls, pure, sweet, and full of encouragement, and calculated to exert a strong influence for good. The author feels that there is somethinf; peculiarly sacred and tender about Easter lilies, partly, perhaps, from their assuciation with the day and season whose name they bear The story tells what became of seven lilies which were tended by as many different hands in different homes, and how the/ affected those homes by the silent lessons they taught. CHRISTMAS PIE STORIES. i2mo, illustrated, 1.25. Never was such a Christmas pie before, nor such plums ! Not one, but seven Jack Homer pulled out of that pie, and every plum was a Christmas story told by each member of the family from prandma down. The wonderfnl pie lost nothing in b»in' warmed over for Aunt Moneywort who was too ill to Im at the feast. '' '4gi^^.- J^ lSih^i^ ^^ 5e ichool which) interest on ih« wiiji a mind and :h a determination d deal of tact and it by quiet persist- the uhool, but in nd one ol these ■■ lutny Argui I by the watchman, him through early perience as bound . subsequent start- i the city whete he 1 clerk and at last —Naiimtal Bap- Compiled and .25. \priHcfitld RtftA- le perusal of thes* iif; of having been Christian woman's cau;t)t the utter- it spirit." — Mtrn- es and failures ara IIS are drawn from N Rult, Boston, larkably eniertain- ntually stimulating, if the kind that we lonths. " — CtHgri- niculated to exert a iiieihinf; peculiarly issociation with the :ame of seven lilies nes, and how they rated, 1.25. one, but seven Jack I story told by each osl nothing in b*in' Mt. SELECT LIST OF BOOKS. BABYLAND. BOUND VOLUMES. Edited by Charles Stuart Pratt and Ella Fariiian Pratt. Square 8vo, boards, each .75; cloth, i.oo. This is the one magazine in the world that combines the best amusiment for babiea and the best help fo? mothers. Uainty stories, tender poem«, wy )inRl«. pictures "autif ul : picturS funny. U.B« 'Yl*. h«avy paper, pretty cover. ,0 cents ■^ year. "The publishers, from long experi- ence, have come to understand pretty accurately what the babies like to look at in the way of pictures, and what they like to have read to them in the wav of stories. And that is why Babyland is what it Is, and why it appeals no strongly to little eyes and .little ears." — Botton Tranacrift. , , , ~.u " A handsome illustrated book. Xhe illustrations are as artistic as if made for alder and more critical readers. We have gilt away from ihe old idea that anvlhin^ IS good enough for children and now demand for tlieni the best in art and literature. That is the best way n edu- cate ihem into the best." — C*/», Fitld and Stock- man, Chicago. BAINBRIDGE (Lucy S.). ROUND THE WORLD LETTERS. i2mo, illustrated, she made implies. 1 he writer is a keen observer, and has h,id exceptional facili- ties for intelligent observation. The reader will feel that he has gained a won- derfully clear notion of the whole living and breathing world, while yet he has been fascinated and entertained as few romances could do ii."— T** H^aick- 1.50. " Mrs. Bainbridge's work is a book for all classes of readers, young or old, serious or gav. The reader will never forget that his ciceron. "round the world" is a Christian woman, while such is the charm of he' style every reader is fascinated. The book is a bril- hant photograph of the experiences and observations of an Intelligent woman in such a variety of Sicenes as such a lour aa BAINBRIDGE (W. P.). AROUND THE WORLD TOUR OF CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 8vo, illustrated with maps, 2.00 ' A universal survey of home and foreign evangelization, compiled from personal study upon the field of many lands and from conference wuh over a thousand missionaries. Several maps locate all leading mission stations of all denominations of all Protestant lands. . . . No work in this line, so com- plete and S'l reliable h?- ever been pub- lished in America, KneUnd or Europe." — Golden Rult, Boston. BELF-QIVINO. i2mo, illtistrated, 1.30 A story o( Chrimian niifnions, "The growth of missionary spirit, the strength of character by overcomiiiK diffi- culties, the glory of conseciaimn. the beauty of sacrifice, the blessed results of intelligent work, run throueh the fiction like bright •streams I liniimhflo'very mead- ows, and like reptiles among rtoivers, we see in midst of sacrifices the repuIiiT* spirit of the world and selfishness among missionaries, in self-seeking secretaries, in adventurers under cloak of missionary leal, in the meanness of gifts and iiiap- pic.i.itim- if «hi' work " ^ Our Church- man at H or*, Brooklyn ^■■i I I D. LOTHROP COMPANY'S ALLEN (Willis Boyd). PINE CONES. i2mo. illustrated, i.oa " Piiie Conea akeichM iIib adventurM of I doien wide-awake boys and giil> in th* wooda, along the atreams and over the mouniaina. It ia good, wlioleaonie read.iig that will make txiya nol>ler and giria gentler. It haa nothing of the over- goody flavor, but they are annply honest, live, healthy young fulka, wiih warm blond in their veina and good impuliie* in their hearta, and are out for a good time. 1 1 will make old blood run wanner and revive old liniea to hear them whoop and atie ihem scamper. No man or woman haa a right to grow loo old to enjoy seeing the young enjoy the apring dayaot life. It la a breeiy, juyoua, en- tertaining book, and we commend it to our young taadtt*." — CAkagv JnUr- Octau. SILVER RAQS. i2mo, illustrated, i.oo. " Silver Raga ia a continuation of Pine Conea and is quite aa delifthtful reading aa its predecessor. The story deacribes a jolly vacation in Maine, and the aayinga and doings of the city boya and girls are varied by short atories, siiu- poaed to be told by a good-natured ' Uncle Will.'" — TMt WatckiiMH, Boston. " Mr, Willis Boyd Allen ia one of onr fineal wriiera of juvenile flclion. There ia an open fiankneas in Mr. Allen'a charactera which render them quite aa novel aa they are intereating, and hia ainiplicity of style makea the whole alory aa tresh and breezy aa the pine woods thcmaelvea." — BostVH Htrtuii. THE NORTHERN CROSS. i2mo, illustrated, i.oo. " The Northern Croaa, a atory of the Boatnn Latin School bv Willia Boyd Allen, ia a capital book for boya. Be- ginninK with a drill upon Bnaton Com- mon, tne book continues with many inci- dents of school life. There are recita- tions, with their auccesaes and failures, drilla and exhibitiona. Over all ia Dr. Francis Gardner, the stem, eccentric, warm-hearted Head Master, whom once to meet waa to remember forever I The idea of the Northern Croas for young crusadera givca an iinagiiiaiy tinge to the healthy realism." — Botton Journal. "Mr. Willia Boyd Allen appeala to a large audience when he tells a story of the Boston f^aiin School in the last year of Master Gardnei's life. And even 'o those who never had the privilege of studying there the atnry ia plttasanl and lively." — Am/on Pffti. KELP : A Story of the Isle of Shoals. i2mo, illustrated, i.oo. Thia is the lateat of the Pine Cone Series and introducea the same charactera. Their adventures are nawon a lonely little island, one of the Shoals, where Ihev camp out and have a glorious time not unmarked by certain perilmia episodes which hriKhien the intereat of the atory. It ia really the best of a series of which all are delightful reading for young people. " It ia a healthful, clean, bright tmoV, fully through the veina of young read> which will make the blood course health- era.^' — Chicago lnUr-Octati. ANAGNOS (Julia R.). PHILOSOPHIC QUASTOR ; or, Days at Concord. i2mo, 60 cents. In thl^ unique book, Mrs. Julia R. Anagnna, one of the accomplished daughters of Julia Ward Howe, presents, under cover of a pleasing narrative, a sketch of the Emerson session of the Concord School of Philosophy. It has for its frontispiece an excellent picture of the building occupied by thia renowned school. "The seeker of philosophical truth, who is described aa the ahadowy figure of a young girl, is throughout very expres- sive of desire and appreciation. The im- pressions she receivea are those to which such a condition are most aensilive — the higher and more refined ones — and the resiuinsive thoughts concern the nature anri clviraeier of what is heard or felt. Mm. .Anagnoa haa written a prose poem. in which the laal two sessions of the Concord School of Philosophy, which include that in memory of Emerao and ita lecturers excite her feelinga and inapire her thought. It is aung in lofty straina that resemble those of the sacred woods and fount, and themselves are communi- cative of their spirit. It will be welcomed as an appropriate souvenir." — Bottom GItit. 1 blood run wanner J hear them whoop «r. No mail or o grow too old to K enjoy the tpriiig breeiy, joyou», en- we commend it to — Chicago InUr- Allen is one of oar lile flclion. There w in Mr. Allen'* der them quite ai iteresiiiig, and hit kes the whole aiory >8 the pine woods » HtnUd. ed, 1. 00. n Cross for young aginary linge to the Hoslonjoumal. Allen appeals to a he tells a story of lool in the last year , life. And even ~o id the privilege of nry is ploasanl and illustrated, i.oo. le characters. Their here they camp out >des which hrighien ich all are deiightfut tins of young read- tr-Ociau, Uncord. i2mo. iplithed daughters ot ve, a sketch of the or its frontispiece m >1. two sessions of the Philosophy, which urv of Emerso and !r feelings and inspire sung in lofty strains of the sacred woods iselves are communi- It will be welcomed souvenir." — Botlim SELECT LIST OF BOOKS. BATES (Clara Doy). iBSOP'S FABLES l\ersitied). Lungreii, (4) With 73 full-page illustrationt Sweeney, tiariics and Uassam. tjuarto^ awake young people."— Boaten Journal, " The illuHtiatiuns Introduce all classes of subiects, and are original and superior work. — Boston UI06*. by Garrett, cloth, 1.50. " Mrs. Hales ha" turned the wit and wisdom ill » doii-Mi ot ^sop's Fables into jolly rhythmical narratives, whose good humor will be appreciated by wide- BLIND JAKBY. Illustrated, i6mo, .50. (5) HEART'S CONTENT. 121110, 1.25. See Child Lore (Clara Doty Bates, editor). BATES (Katherine Lee). SUNSHINE. Oblong 32mo, illustrated by W. L. Taylor, .5a A little poem, In which the wild flowers and sunshine play their pari in driving away the bad temper of a little lass who had hidden away in the grass in a fit of sulks. SANTA CLAUS RIDDLE. A Poem. Square lamo, illus- trated in colors, paper, .35. See Wedding-Day Book (Katherine Lee Bates editor). BEDSIDE POETRY. Edited by Wendell P. Garrison. i6mo, plain doth, .75; fanqr cloth, I.oo. This collection it for the heme, and for a particular season. " Few fathert and motliers." says Mr. Garrison, " appreciate the peculiar value of the bedtime hour for confirming filial and parental affection, and for conveying reproof to ears never so attentive or resistlesss. Words said then sink deep, and the reading of poetry of a high moral tone and, at the same time, of an attractive character, it apt to plant seed which will bear good fruit in the future." "There is seldom a compilation of verve at once so wisely limited and so well extended, so choice in character and to fine in quality as Bedside Poetry, edi- ted by Wendell P. Garrison. He has chosen four-score pieces ' of a rather high order, the remembrance of which will bo a joy forever and a potent factor in the formation not merely of character but of literary taste.' Therefore he hat given Emerson and Cowper, Wordsworth, Leigh Hunt, Shelleyj- Southey, Coler- idge, William Blake, IJurns, Thackeray, I^owell, Tennyson, Shakespeare, Mrs. Hemans, Mrs. Kemble, Holmes, Whit- tier and Arthur Hugh dough. We find cheer and courage, truth and fortitude, puriiy and humor, and all the great posi- tive virtues, put convincingly in these lelections." — Sfring^itld Rtpublican. BELL (Mrs. Lucia Chase). TRUE BLUE, izmo, 10 illustrations by Merrill, 1.25. (5) The scene Is laid in the far West, and the incidents are such as could only occur in a newly developed country, where even children are taught to depend upon themselves. " Doe, the warm-hearted, in:pulsive copying by those who read her adven' heroine of the story, is an original char- tures and experiences." — 7?rtro«V ''•«« acter, and one whose ways are well worth I -^" ■■ "^«/-'(5.-«i;^.WL.....,..v-^ .-"•'■: ^isii. jV.;l-^»VW-*'■:^'j■*J^v. MBMHHM ■■