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 LEJDTEKS 
 
 TO 
 
 THE JONESES. 
 
 s. 
 
 BY 
 
 TIMOTHY TITOOMB, 
 
 AUTIIOE OP '• LETTERS TO TOUNQ PEOPLE," "OOLD FOIL," " LESSOXS IX LIFE," 
 
 ETC., rro. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER, 124 GRAND STREET. 
 
 1863.
 
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 •■■-#*$^' 
 
 
 
 • 
 
 EjfTBBBD, according to Act of Congress, in the 
 
 year 1S6S, 
 
 BY CHAELES SCRIBNEE. 
 
 
 In the aerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern 
 
 District of New York. 
 
 
 JOHN F. TROW. 
 
 
 Ttnymr. axd sisuEOTTprK, 
 
 
 60 Greens streeC 

 
 H 
 
 n I 
 
 1 1 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 There is pretension in all works of a didactic 
 nature, while in those which are not only precep- 
 tive, but critical of character, motive and life, there 
 is an assumption of superiority on the part of the 
 author which can only fail of being oflfensivc by 
 being ignored. 
 
 The writer of the Titcomb Scries of Books has 
 always felt this, and, however little he may have 
 concealed himself, has hidden his head under the 
 shadow of a no7}i de plume. Tlic only apologies 
 which he oiFers for appearing as a censor and a 
 teacher, are his love of men, his honest wish to do 
 them good, and his sad consciousness that his nom- 
 inal criticisms of others are too often actual con- 
 demnations of himself. 

 
 Since the appearance of the author's "Letters 
 to The Young," in 1858, lie has received every year 
 a large number of letters from their readers, asking 
 for counsel in a wide variety of specific cases. 
 While the present volume was not intended as a 
 reply to these letters, it was naturally suggested by 
 them. The author has attempted in it to present 
 and criticise certain types of character and life, and 
 to furnish motives and means for then- improvement 
 and reform. In order to do this successfully, it 
 was found necessary to deal with personalities, to 
 which it was desirable to give " a local habitation 
 and a name;" and as the Smiths had been some- 
 what overworked by the literary guild, as represen- 
 tatives of the human race, it was determined to 
 address the Joneses of Jonesville, who, though rep- 
 resented in the well-known firm of Brown, Jones 
 & Robinson, were comparatively fresh in the field, 
 and endowed with the average amount of " human 
 nature." 
 
 Now, if the reader will so far favor the author 
 as to suppose that, when ^ young man, he taught 
 the district school in Jonesville, " boarding around " 
 according to the primitive New England fashion, 
 that he has kept himself acquainted with the lives 
 and fortunes of his old friends and pupils there,
 
 Preface. 7 
 
 that they have known something of him, and, 
 through an officious representative of tlie family, 
 have requested him to write them letters for the 
 public eye, which he had no time to write for their 
 private reading, — I say, if the reader will suppose 
 all this, he will supply all the necessary machinery 
 of the book, and the writer will have his justifica- 
 tion for the direct and homely talk in which he 
 indulges toward the family. 
 
 Springfield, October, 1863.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 THE FIRST LETTER. 
 
 PAOB 
 
 To Deacon Solomon Jones — Concerning his system of family 
 
 government, 13 
 
 THE SECOND LETTER. 
 To Mrs. Martha Jones (wife of Deacon Solomon) — Concern- 
 ing her system of family government, ... 27 
 
 THE THIRD LETTER. 
 To F. Mendelssohn Jones, Singing Master — Concerning the 
 
 influence of his profession on personal character, . 41 
 
 THE FOURTH LETTER. 
 To Hans Sachs Jones, Shoemaker — Concerning his habit of 
 
 business lying, 67 
 
 THE FIFTH LETTER. 
 To Edward Patson Jones — Concerning his failure to yield to 
 
 his convictions of duty, 71 
 
 THE SIXTH LETTER. 
 To Mrs. Jessy Bell Jones — Concerning the difficulty she 
 
 experiences in keeping her servants, .... 86 
 
 THE SEVENTH LETTER. 
 To Salathiel Fogg Jones, Spiritualist — Concerning the faith 
 
 and prospects of his sect of religionists, . . . lOO 
 1*
 
 10 Contents, 
 
 FAGB 
 
 THE EIGHTH LETTER. 
 To Benjamin Franklin Jones, Mechanic — Concerning his 
 
 habitual absence from church on Sunday, . . . 115 
 
 THE NINTH LETTER. 
 To Washington Allston Jones — Concerning the policy of 
 
 making his brains marketable, . . . . .128 
 
 THE TENTH LETTER. 
 To Rev. Jeremiah Jones, D.D. — Concerning the failure of his 
 
 pulpit ministry, . . . . . . .142 
 
 THE ELEVENTH LETTER. 
 To Stephen Girard Jones — Concerning the best way of spend- 
 ing his money, ........ 15T 
 
 THE TWELFTH LETTER. 
 To Noel Jones — Concerning his opinion that he knows pretty 
 
 much erery thing, 171 
 
 THE THIRTEENTH LETTER. 
 To RcFirs Choate Jones, Lawyer — Concerning the duties and 
 
 dangers of his profession, ...... 185 
 
 THE FOURTEENTH LETTER. 
 To Mrs. Royal Purple Jones — Concerning her absorbing de- 
 votion to her own person, 200 
 
 THE FIFTEENTH LETTER. 
 To Miss Felicia Hemans Jones — Concerning her strong de- 
 sire to become an authoress, . . . . .215 
 
 THE SIXTEENTH LETTER. 
 To Jehu Jones — Concerning the character and tendencies of 
 
 the fast life which he is living, 229
 
 Contents. H 
 
 PACE 
 
 THE SEVENTEENTn LETTER. 
 To Thomas Ar}*old Jones, Schoolmaster — Concerning the re- 
 quirements and the tendencies of his profession, . . 242 
 
 THE EIGHTEEXTn LETTER. 
 To Mrs. Rosa Hoppin Jones — Concerning her dislike of 
 
 routine and her desire for change and amusement, . 256 
 
 THE NINETEENTH LETTER. 
 To Jefferson Davis Jones, Politician — Concerning the im- 
 morality of his pursuits, and their effect upon himself 
 and his country, 269 
 
 THE TWENTIETH LETTER. 
 To Dr. Benjamin Rush Jones — Concerning the position of 
 
 himself and his profession, 284 
 
 THE TWENTT-FIRST LETTER. 
 To Diogenes Jones — Concerning his disposition to avoid 
 
 society, 299 
 
 THE TWENTY SECOND LETTER. 
 To Sacl M. Jones — Concerning his habit of looking upon the 
 
 dark side of things, 310 
 
 THE TWENTY-THIRD LETTER. 
 To John Smith Jones — Concerning his neighborly duties, and 
 
 bis failure to perform them, ..... 322 
 
 THE TWENTT-FOITRTH LETTER. 
 To Goodrich Jones, Jr. — Concerning his disposition to be 
 content, with the respectability and wealth which his 
 fatter has acquired for him, 335
 
 LETTERS TO THE JONESES. 
 
 THE FIRST LETTER. 
 
 COyCEIlNiyG HIS SYSTEM OF FAMILY GOVERNMEITT. 
 
 YOU are now an old man, and I do not expect that 
 anything I shall write to you will do you good. 
 I only seek, through what I say to you, to convey useful 
 hints and lessons to others. It is not a pleasure to me 
 to wound your self-love, or to disturb the complacency 
 which you entertain amid the wreck of your family 
 hopes. It is not delightful to assure you that yom- Ufe 
 has been a mistake from the beginning, and that your 
 children owe the miscarriage of their lives to the train- 
 ing which you still seem to regard as alike the offspring 
 and parent of Christian wisdom. If there were not
 
 14 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 others in the world who are making the same mistake 
 that you have made, and moving forward to the same 
 sad family disaster, yon should hear from me no word 
 that you could shape into a reproach. But you will 
 soon pass away, with the comforting assurance that 
 your motives, at least, were good ; and to these, your 
 only comforts, I commend you. 
 
 You were once the great man of Jonesville. You 
 then deemed it necessary to maintain a dignified de- 
 portment, to take the lead in all matters of public 
 moment, to manage the Jonesville church and the 
 Jonesville minister, and to exercise a general supervis- 
 ion of the village. There was not a man, woman, or 
 child in the village who did not feel your presence as 
 that of an independent, arbitrary power, that permitted 
 no liberty of will around it. You had your notions of 
 politics, religion, municipal affairs, education, social 
 life ; and to these you tried to bend every mind that 
 came into contact with you. You undertook to think 
 for your neighbors, and to impose upon them your own 
 law in all things. If one independent man spoke out 
 his thoughts, and refused to be bound to your will, you 
 persecuted him. You beset him behind and before, by 
 petty annoyances. You took aAvay his business. You 
 sneered at him in public and private. In this way, 
 you banished from Jonesville many men who would 
 have been an honor to it, and finally alienated from
 
 To Deacon Solomon Jones. 15 
 
 yourself the hearts of your own kindred. You drove a 
 whole village into opposition to yourself. You forced 
 them to a self-assertion that manifested itself in a mul- 
 titude of improper and offensive ways. If you opposed 
 a harmless dance at a neighbor's house, the villagers 
 revenged themselves by holding a ball at the tavern. 
 It took only a few years of your peculiar management 
 to fill Jonesville with doggeries and loafers, and to 
 prove to you that your village management had been a 
 sorry failure. 
 
 You seem to have conducted life upon the assimap- 
 tion that all the men in the world, with the single excep- 
 tion of Deacon Solomon Jones, are incapable of self- 
 government. It never has occurred to you, in any dis- 
 pute with a neighbor, or in any difficulty which ar- 
 rayed the public against you, that you could possibly be 
 in the wrong ; and it always has offended you to think 
 that any other Jones, or any other man, should dare to 
 controvert your opinions, or question your decisions. 
 And you were so stupid that, Avhen all your neighbors — 
 after much long-suffering and patient waiting upon your 
 whims — rebelled against you, and went to extremes to 
 show their independence of, and contempt for you, you 
 attributed the work of your own hands to the devil. 
 
 Deacon Jones, the Lord gave you brains, and Yan- 
 kee enterprise got you money ? Had there been 
 proper management on your part, Jonesville would be
 
 16 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 in your hands to-day ; but you are aware that by far 
 the larger proportion of your fellow citizens either do 
 not love you, or positively hate you. How has this 
 state of things been arrived at ? Do you flatter your- 
 self that you have been as wise as a serpent and harm- 
 less as a dove ? Do you honestly believe that the loss 
 of .your influence is attributable rather to the popular 
 than your own personal perverseness 1 I do not expect 
 to make you see it, but you really did your best to 
 make slaves of your fellows, and your fellows, recog- 
 nizing you as a tyrant, kicked over your throne, and 
 tumbled you into your chimney comer, where alone 
 you had the power to put your peculiar theories into 
 practice. 
 
 A man does not usually have one set of notions con- 
 cerning neighborhood government and another concern- 
 ing family government. You managed your own family 
 very much as you undertook to manage your village. 
 I can, indeed, bear witness that you gave your family 
 line upon line and precept upon precept, but I am not 
 so ready to concede that you trained them up in the 
 right way. Your family was an orderly one, I admit, 
 but I have seen jails and houses of correction that were 
 more orderly still. An orderly house is quite as liable 
 to be governed too much, as a disorderly house is to be 
 governed too little. 
 
 I always noticed this fact, with relation to your
 
 To Deacon Solomon Jones. 17 
 
 mode of family training. You enforced a blind obe- 
 dience to your commands, and never deemed it neces- 
 sary or desirable to give a reason for them. Nay, you 
 told your cliildren, distinctly, that it was enough for 
 them that you commanded a thing to be done. You 
 refused to give them a reason beyond your own wish 
 and will. You placed yourself between them and their 
 own consciences ; you placed yourself between them 
 and their own sense of that which is just and proper 
 and good ; nay, you placed yourself between them and 
 God, and demanded that they should obey you because 
 you willed it — because you commanded them to obey 
 you. 
 
 It is comparatively an easy thing to get up an 
 orderly family, on such a plan of operations as this. 
 A man needs only to have a strong arm, and a broad 
 palm, and a heart that never opens to parental tender- 
 ness, to secure the most orderly family in the world. 
 It is not a hard thing for a man who weighs two hun- 
 dred pounds, more or less, to make a boy who weighs 
 only fifty pounds, so much afraid of him as to obey his 
 minutest commands. Indeed, it is not a hard thing to 
 break down his will entirely, and make a craven of him. 
 I declare to you, Deacon Jones, that the most orderly 
 families I have ever knowTi were the worst governed ; 
 and one of these families was your own. You are not 
 the first man who has brought up " an orderly family,"
 
 18 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 and fitted them for the devil's hand by his system of 
 
 government. 
 
 Now will you just think for a moment what you did 
 for your children ? I know their history, and in many 
 respects it has been a bad one and a sad one. You 
 governed them. You laid your law upon them. You 
 forced upon them your will as their supreme rule of 
 action. They did not fear God half as much as they 
 did you, though, if I remember correctly, you repre- 
 sented Him to be a sort of infinite Deacon Solomon 
 Jones. They did not fear to lie half as much as they 
 feared to be flogged. They became hypocrites through 
 their fear of you, and they learned to hate you because 
 you persisted in treating them as servile dependants. 
 You put yourself before them and thrust yourself into 
 their life in the place of God. You bent them to your 
 will with those strong hands of yours, and you had " an 
 orderly family." 
 
 My friend, when I think of the families that have 
 been trained and ruined in this way, I. shudder. Your 
 children were never permitted to have any will, and 
 when they went forth from your threshold, they went 
 forth emancipated slaves, and untried children in the 
 use of liberty. When they found the hand of parental 
 restraint removed, there was no restraint upon them. 
 They had never been taught that most essential of all 
 government, self-government ; and a man who has not
 
 To Deacon Solomon Jones. 
 
 19 
 
 been taught to govern himself is as helpless in the 
 world as a child. A family may be orderly to a degree 
 of nicety that is really admirable, and still be as incapa- 
 ble of self-government as a family of idiots. Families 
 that might be reckoned by thousands have left orderly 
 homes, all prepared for the destruction to which they 
 rushed. 
 
 The military commander knows very well that he 
 says very little as to the moral character of his soldiers 
 when he says that they are under excellent discipline. 
 The drill of the camp may make the camp the most 
 orderly of places, but this drill does not go beyond the 
 camp, or deeper than the surface of the character. 
 Take from the shoulders of these soldiers the strong: 
 hand of military control, and you will have — as ordinary 
 armies go — a mass of swearing, gaming, drinking row- 
 dies, ready to rush into any excess. The state prison is 
 the most orderly place in the world. The drill is fault- 
 less. I know of no place where, among an equal number 
 of men gathered from the lower walks of society, there 
 are so few breaches of decorum ; yet, when the in- 
 mates reappear in society, they are not improved. You 
 imdertook to introduce a military drill, or prison drill, 
 or both, into your family ; and you failed, precisely as 
 generals and wardens fail. You never recognized the 
 fact that the essential part of a child's education is that 
 of teaching him the use of his liberty, under the control
 
 20 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 of his sense of that which is right and proper and laud- 
 able in human conduct. You did not undertake to de- 
 velop and enlighten that sense at all. You managed 
 your children instead of teaching them how to manage 
 themselves. You never appealed to their sense of 
 honor, or to their sense of right or propriety, as the 
 motive to any desirable course of conduct ; and when 
 you placed your command upon one of them, and he 
 dared to ask you after a reason, you crushed him 
 into silence by assuring him that he had nothing to do 
 with a reason. 
 
 It is not uncommon to hear the assertion that the 
 sons of ministers and deacons turn out badly. Statis- 
 tics show that the statement is too broad, and yet com- 
 mon observation unites in giving it some basis in truth. 
 It is not at all uncommon to see the children of excel- 
 lent parents — children who have been bred in the most 
 orderly manner — going straight to destruction the mo- 
 ment they leiJve the family roof and cease to feel 
 parental restraint. These parents feel, doubtless, very 
 much as you do, that it is all a mysterious dispensation 
 of Providence ; but it is only the natural result of their 
 style of training. 
 
 I know of public institutions for the reform of va- 
 grant children, that are celebrated for the delightful 
 manner in which those children are brought to square 
 their conduct by rule. They march like soldiers.
 
 To Deacon Solomon Jones. 21 
 
 They sing like machines. They enter their school- 
 room in silent files that would delight the eye of an 
 Indian warrior. They recite in concert the most com- 
 plicated prose and verse. They play by rule, and go 
 to bed to the ringing of a bell, and say the Lord's 
 prayer in unison. And they run away when they can 
 get a chance, and steal, and sweai', and cheat, and 
 prowl, and indulge in obscene talk, as of old. I know 
 of other public institutions of this kind, or, at least, one 
 other, that has no rule of action except the general 
 Christian rule within it. The children are taught to do 
 right. They are instructed in that which is right. 
 Their sense of that which is true and good and pure 
 and right and proper is educated, developed, stimulated, 
 and thus are the childen taught to govern themselves. 
 They govern themselves while in the institution, and 
 they govern themselves after they leave it. It is im- 
 possible to reform a vicious child without patiently 
 teaching that child self-government. All the drill of all 
 the masters and all the reformers in the world will not 
 reform a single vice of a single child ; and this show of 
 juvenile drill that we meet with in schools and charit- 
 able institutions is frequently — nay, I will say, general- 
 ly — a most deceitful thing — the spacious cover of a 
 system of training that is terribly worse than useless. 
 If dogs could talk, they could be taught to do the same 
 things in the same way ; but they would hunt cats and
 
 22 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 bark at passengers in the old fashion when beyond the 
 reach of their master's lash. 
 
 You will see, Deacon Jones, that your mode of 
 family training has introduced me to a field of discus- 
 sion as wide as it is important. It relates to public 
 institutions as well as to families, and to nations as 
 well as to public institutions. You and I, and all the 
 democrats of America, have been indulging in dreams 
 of democracy in Europe, but these dreams do not come 
 to pass, and are not likely to be realized at all. The 
 people of Europe have been governed. They know 
 nothing about self-government, and, whenever they 
 have tried the experiment, they have sadly failed. 
 That which alone imperils democracy in this country is 
 the loss of the power of self-government, and that 
 which alone prevents the establishment of democracy 
 in Europe is the lack of that power. The governing 
 classes of Europe will take good care to see that that 
 power be not developed. 
 
 But I return to this matter of family government, 
 and I imagine that, before this time, you have asked 
 me whether I have intended to sneer at orderly fami- 
 lies. I answer— not at all. There must be, without 
 question, more or. less repression of the irregularities 
 of young life, and of such rough passions as sometimes 
 break out and gain ascendency in certain natures ; but 
 this should be exceptional. I do not sneer at orderly
 
 To Deacon Solomon Jones. 23 
 
 families, but I like to see order growing out of each 
 member's sense of propriety, and each member's desire 
 to contribute to the general good conduct and harmony 
 of the family life. I like to see each child gradually 
 transformed into a gentleman or a lady, -with gentle- 
 manly or ladylike habits, through a cultivated sense 
 of that "which is proper, and good. I know that 
 children thus bred — taught from the beginning that 
 they have a stake and a responsibility in the family 
 life — used from the beginning to manage themselves — 
 are prepared to go out into the world and take care 
 of themselves. To them, home is a place of dignity, 
 and they will never disgrace it. To them, liberty is 
 no new possession, and they know how to use with- 
 out abusing it. To them, self-control is a habit, and 
 they never lose it. 
 
 Do you know what a child is. Deacon Jones ? Did 
 you ever think whence it came and whither it is go- 
 ing ? Did it ever occur to you that any one of your 
 children is a good deal more God's child that it is yours ? 
 Did you ever happen to think that it came from hea- 
 ven, and that it is more your brother than your child ? 
 Never, I venture to say. You never dream that your 
 children are your younger brothers and sisters, intrust- 
 ed to you by your common Father, for the pui-poses 
 of protection and education ; and you certainly never 
 treat them as if they were. You have not a child in
 
 24 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 the world wliose pardon you should not ask for the 
 impudent and most unbrotherly assumptions which 
 you have practiced upon him. Ah, if you could have 
 looked upon your sons as your younger brothers and 
 your daughters as your younger sisters, and patiently 
 borne with them and instructed them in the use of life 
 and liberty, and built them up into a self-regulated 
 manhood and womanhood, you would not now be alone 
 and comfortless. A child is not a horse or a dog, to 
 be controlled by a walking stick or a whip, imder all 
 circumstances. There are some children that, like 
 some dogs and horses, have vicious tendencies that 
 can only be repressed by the infliction of pain, but a 
 child is not a brute, and is not to be governed like a 
 brute. A child is a young man or a young woman, 
 possessing man's or woman's faculties in miniature, and 
 is just as sensitive to insult and injury and injustice as 
 in after years. You have insulted your children. You 
 have treated them unreasonably, and you ought not to 
 complain if they hold you in dislike and revengeful 
 contempt. 
 
 You never did anything to make your children love 
 you, and you cannot but be aware that the moment 
 that they were removed from your authority, you lost 
 all influence over them. Why could you not reclaim 
 that boy of yours, who madly became a debauchee, 
 and disgraced your home, and tortured your heart?
 
 To Deacon Solomon Jones. 25 
 
 Because jon had never made him love you, or given 
 him better motives for self-restraint than your own 
 arbitrary will. He had been governed from the out- 
 side, and never from the inside ; and when the outside 
 authority was gone, there was nothing left upon which 
 you had power to lay your hand. Why did your daugh- 
 ter elope with one who was not w^orthy of her ? She 
 did it simply because she found a man who loved her, 
 and gave her the consideration due her as a woman — a 
 love and a consideration which she had never found at 
 home, where she was regarded by you as the dependent 
 servant of your will. She was nothing at home ; and, 
 badly as she married, she is a better and a freer and 
 a happier woman than she would have been had she 
 continued with you. I wish to impress upon you the 
 conviction that these children of yours went astray, 
 not in spite of your mode of family training, but in 
 consequence of it. If I should wish to ruin my family, 
 I w^ould pursue your policy, and be measurably sure 
 of the desired result. 
 
 It is not pleasant for me to tell you these things, 
 but I am writing for the public, and can have no choice. 
 I tell you, and all who read these words, that, if you 
 do not get th<8 hearts of your childi-en, and build them 
 up in the right use of a liberty which is no more theirs 
 after they leave your roof than it is before, you will be 
 to them forever as heathen men and publicans. If
 
 26 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 they take the determination to go to destruction, they 
 will go, and you cannot save them. A child must have 
 freedom, "within limits which a variety of circumstances 
 must define, and be taught how to use it, and made 
 responsible for the right use of it. It is in this way 
 that self-government is taught, and in this thing that 
 self-government consists. All children, on arriving at 
 manhood and womanhood, should be the self-governed 
 companions and friends of their parents, and on going 
 out into the world, or losing parental control, should 
 not feel the transition in the slightest degree. No child 
 is trained in the right way who feels, when he steps 
 forth from the family threshold — an independent actor 
 — any less restraint than he felt the hour before. If 
 he does, he is in dantrer of falHng before the first 
 temptation that assails him.
 
 THE SECOND LETTER. 
 
 S'o Prs. glarlba lones {Mik of gracou Solomon). 
 
 COyCERNIXG HER SYSTEM OF FAMILY GOVEUNMENT. 
 
 SUPPOSE I have thought of you ten thousand 
 times within the last twenty years. I never see 
 a clean kitchen, or a trim and tidy housewife, or an 
 irreproachable " dresser," with its shming rows of 
 tin and pewter, or a dairy full of milk, or a cleanly 
 raked chip-yard, or polished brass andirons, flaming 
 with fire on one side and reflecting ugly faces on the 
 other, or catch a certain savory scent of breakfast on 
 a frosty morning, or see a number of children crowded 
 out of a door on their way to school, without thinking 
 of you. Thriving, busy, exact, scrupulous, neat, minute 
 in your supervision of all family concerns, striving to 
 have your own way without interfering with the dea- 
 con's, you have always lingered in my memory as a
 
 28 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 remarkable woman. You sat up so late at night and 
 rose so early in the morning, that it seemed as if you 
 never slept. There was a chronic alertness about yoii 
 that detected and even anticipated every occurrence in 
 and around the house. Not a door could be opened 
 or a window raised in any part of the house, however 
 distant it might be, without your hearing and identify- 
 ing it. Not a voice was heard within the house at any 
 time of the day or night that you did not know who 
 uttered it. Your soul seemed to have become the 
 tenant of the whole building, and to be conscious of 
 every occurrence in every part of it at every moment. 
 You not only knew what was going on everywhere, 
 but every part spoke of yoiir presence. 
 
 It was a curious way you had of maintaining the 
 family harmony without the sacrifice of your own 
 sense of independence. You really carried on a very 
 independent life within certain limits. You were aware 
 that, in the matter of will, the deacon, your husband, 
 was very obstinate, and that you could never hope to 
 dispute his empire. So you shrewdly managed never 
 to cross him where the course of his will ran strongest, 
 and to be sure that no one else crossed him. I remem- 
 ber very well your look of amazement and reproof 
 when you heard me treat with apparent irreverence 
 some of his most rigidly fixed opinions, and assail 
 prejudices which you knew were as deeply seated as
 
 To Mrs. Martha Jones. 29 
 
 his life. I enjoyed your look of amazement quite as 
 much as I did the deacon's anger, for it seemed to me 
 a very justifiable bit of mischief to break into a family 
 peace that "was maintained in this way. By humoring 
 and indulging your husband, in all matters over which 
 he saw fit to exercise authority, and by so closely 
 attending to everything else that he did not think of 
 it, you kept him in a state of self-complacency, and 
 were the recognized queen of a ^vide realm. 
 
 As I look back upon your life, I find but little to 
 blame you for. Wherever your errors have been pro- 
 ductive of mischief, they have been errors of ignorance 
 — mistakes — ^possibly excusable in the circumstances 
 under which they were committed. You loved your 
 children with all the tenderness and devotion of a irood 
 mother, but, in your anxiety that they should not cross 
 their father's will, and provoke his displeasure, you 
 became but little better than an irksome overseer to 
 them. You knew that if there was anything that your 
 husband insisted on, it was parental authority. You 
 knew that the strict ordering of his family was his pet 
 idea, and that family government, in the fullest mean- 
 ing and force of the phrase, was his hobby. This pet 
 idea — this hobby — you made room for in your family 
 plans. You knew that he was often unreasonable, but 
 that made no difiference. You knew that his will ran 
 strongest in that direction, and you made it your busi-
 
 30 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 ness to see that as few obstacles lay in its path as pos- 
 sible. On one side stood the deacon's inexorable laws 
 and rules and will, by which his children, of every age, 
 were to square their conduct. On the other stood those 
 precious children of yours, with all the wilfulness and 
 waywardness of children — with all their longing for 
 parental tenderness and indulgence — with moods which 
 they had never learned to manage, and tempers which 
 they did not know the meaning of ; and you became 
 supremely anxious that the deacon should not be pro- 
 voked by them to wrath, and that they should escape 
 the consequences of his displeasure. 
 
 WeU, what was the consequence ? This ceaseless 
 vigilance which you had learned to exercise over every 
 portion of the household economy, you extended to the 
 bearing and conduct of your children. You exercised 
 over them the strictest sm-veillance. You carried in 
 your mind and in your manners the dread of a collision 
 between them and their despotic governor. You tried 
 to save him from irritation and them from its conse- 
 quences. You kept one eye on him and another on 
 them, and nothing in the conduct of either party 
 escaped you. Your children, as they emerged from 
 babyhood, grew gradually into the consciousness that 
 they were watched, and that not a word could be 
 uttered, or a hand lifted, or a foot moved, without a 
 degree of notice which curtailed its liberty. It was
 
 To Mrs. Martha Jones. 31 
 
 repression — repression — nothing but repression — every- 
 where, for them. No hearty laugh, or overflowing, 
 childish glee, or noisy play for them, for fear that the 
 deacon might be disturbed. 
 
 At last, every child you had, in addition to the fear 
 of its father, came to entertain a dread of its mother. 
 I think your children loved you, or Avould have loved 
 you, had they not associated you forever with restraint. 
 If they played, you were near with your everlasting 
 " hush ! " If they sat down at table, they knew that 
 your eye was upon them — that you watched the position 
 of every head under the deacon's long " grace " — the 
 passage of every mouthful — the manner in which they 
 asked every question and responded to what was said 
 to them — the amount of food and diink consmned — 
 everything. They felt themselves wrapped up in — de- 
 voured by — a vigilant supervision that took from them 
 their liberty and their will, and with them, all feelings 
 of self-respect and self-possession. 
 
 It is not the opinion of your neighbors that either 
 your husband or yourself has had anything to do with 
 the ruin of your children. The deacon was so strict 
 and so efficient in his family government, and you were 
 so scrupulously careful in everything that related to 
 their manners at home and away, that they did not 
 imagine it possible that any bad result could naturally 
 flow from such training. I do not say that they are
 
 mistaken from any wash to blame you, but I must tell 
 you the truth. Your minute ■watchfulness and censor- 
 ship exercised over these children until you became 
 to them God, conscience, and will, were just as fatal 
 to a manly and womanly development as the deacon's 
 irresponsible commands. A boy that feels that every 
 word of his mouth and every movement of his body is 
 watched by one whose eye never sleeps, and whose 
 hand is ever ready to repress, becomes at last a 
 cowai'd or a bully. There are natures that will not 
 submit to this surveillance ; and when these become 
 weary of the pressure, they kick it aside, and parental 
 restraint — associated with all that is hatefid in slavery 
 — is gone forever. 
 
 Under the peculiar training and home influences to 
 which your children were subjected, there were but 
 two things that they were likely to become, viz. : 
 rebels or cravens. Tour children were naturally high- 
 spiri^d, like the deacon and yourself, and they became 
 rebels. Otherwise, they would have carried with them 
 thi'ough life the feeling that whatever show they might 
 put on — however much they might struggle against it — 
 they were imderlings. There are some men and some 
 women, probably, who, living through a long life 
 under favorable circumstances, recover from this early 
 discipline of repression, and this abject slavery of the 
 will, but they are few. They must be few. The
 
 To Mrs. Martha Jones. 33 
 
 negro who has once been a slave cannot, one time in 
 ten, refuse to take off his hat or bow to a white man. 
 He is never at home, w^hen placed on an equality with 
 him. He carries in his soul the badge of servility, and 
 he can no more thrust it from his sight or banish it 
 from his consciousness than he can change the color 
 of his skin. This is not because he is a negro, simply, 
 but because he has been a slave — because he has been 
 trained up to have no will, and to be controlled under 
 all circumstances by the wills of those who had him 
 in their power. 
 
 A child can be made the slave of a parent just as 
 thoroughly as a negro ever was made the slave of a 
 white man, and such a child can be just as everlastingly 
 damaged by parental or family slavery, as a bondman 
 can be by any system of bondage. A child can be made 
 as mean, and cowardly, and deceitful, and devoid of 
 self-respect, by a system of management which puts 
 a curb upon every action, as the devil himself could 
 possibly desire. This system of watchful repression, 
 and minute supervision, and criticism of every 
 action, among children, is utterly debilitating and 
 demoralizing. You intended no harm by it, madam. 
 Under the circumstances, it was a very natural thing for 
 you to do ; but I think you can hardly fiiil to see that, 
 unwittingly, you perfected the work of destruction in 
 
 your children which the deacon so thoroughly began, 
 
 2*
 
 34 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 and for which he woidd have been, without your 
 assistance, entirely sufficient. 
 
 Oh ! when will the world learn that children are 
 neither animals nor slaves ? When will the world 
 learn that children — the purest, sweetest, noblest, 
 truest, most sagacious creatures in the 's^^orld — with a 
 natural charter of liberty as broad as that enjoyed by 
 the angels — should be treated with respect ? When 
 shall this idea that all legitimate training relates to 
 the use of liberty — to the acquisition of the power of 
 self-goA^ernment — become the universal basis of family 
 policy ? 
 
 You ask me what I really mean by all this, for you 
 are a practical woman, and are not to be taken in by 
 a set of easily written phrases. Well, I will try to 
 explain, or illustrate, my meaning. I remember a 
 gathering at your house — a party of friends — to which 
 your children were admitted ; and I remember with 
 painful distinctness the telegraphic communication 
 Avhich you maintained with them during the whole 
 evening. If James got his legs crossed, or, in his 
 drowsiness, gaped, or if he coughed, or sneezed, or 
 laughed above a certain key, or make a remark, or 
 moved his chair, it was : " James, h — m ! " — " James, 
 h — ni ! " " James, h — m ! " And James was only one 
 of half a dozen whom you treated in the same way. 
 You began the evening with the feeling that you were
 
 To Mrs. Martha Jones. 35 
 
 entirely responsible for the behavior of those chil- 
 dren — -just fis much responsible as if they severally 
 were the fingers of your hand. You acted as if they 
 were machines which, for the evening, you had imder- 
 taken to operate? They felt that they were xmder 
 the eye of a vigilant keepei', and they did not dream 
 of such a thing as acting for themselves. They were 
 acting for you, and they did not know until they heard 
 your suggestive " h — m ! " whether they were right or 
 wrong. You undertook for the evening to be to them 
 in the stead of their sense of propriety ; and the com- 
 munication between them and you being imperfect, 
 they often offended. I know that your own good 
 sense will tell you now that this is not the way gentle- 
 men and ladies are made. 
 
 I was recently in a family circle where I witnessed 
 a most delightful contrast to aU this — where the sons 
 and daughters were brought up and introduced to me 
 by the father and mother ^^dth as much politeness and 
 cordiality as if they were kings and queens every one, 
 and with as much freedom as if the parents had not 
 the slightest doubt that the children — from the oldest 
 to the yoimgest — would bear themselves like ladies 
 and gentlemen. There was no forwardness on the 
 part of these children, as you may possibly suppose ; 
 yet there was perfect self-possession ; and each child 
 knew that he stood upon his own merits. I suppose
 
 36 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 that if any one of these children had indulged in any 
 impropriety during this interview — as not one of them 
 did — he would have been kindly told afterward, by one 
 of the parents, what he had done, and why he should 
 never repeat it. Yom' children (pardon me for saying 
 it) were always awkward in company, and for the 
 simple reason that they did not know whether they 
 were pleasing you or not. They had no freedom, and 
 were guided by no principle. Your will was their rule, 
 and your will, so far as it related to all the minutiaB of 
 behavior, was not thoroughly known ; so they were 
 always embarrassed, and always turning their eyes 
 toward you. Your entire system of management was 
 based on distrust, while that of the family with which 
 I contrast yours was foimded on trust. Your children, 
 while you could possibly keep your hold upon them, 
 were never permitted to outgrow their petticoats, 
 while those of the other family alluded to were put 
 upon their own responsibility just as soon as possible. 
 Is there any doubt as to which system of treatment 
 is best ? 
 
 Perhajis you, and many others who read this letter, 
 think that parental authority cannot be maintained 
 without its constant and direct assertion. If so, then 
 you and they are mistaken. I have known families 
 that possessed fathers and mothers who were honored, 
 admired, loved, almost worshiped — fathers and mothers
 
 To Mrs. Martha Jones. • 37 
 
 whose children dreaded nothing so much as to give 
 them pain — yet these same children knew no such word 
 as fear, and Avould have heen utterly ashamed to render 
 the assertion of parental authority necessary. Parents 
 and children were friends and companions — the children 
 deferring to the wishes and opinions of the parents, 
 and the parents consulting the happiness and trusting 
 the good sense and good intentions of the children. 
 Whenever I hear a young man calling his father " the 
 old man," and his mother " the old woman," I know 
 that the old man and the old woman are to blame 
 for it. 
 
 If your children had turned out well, it must have 
 been in spite of a system of training which was so far 
 from being education as to be its opposite. There was 
 no inner life organized ; there was no building up of 
 character ; there was no establishment in each child's 
 heart of a bar of judgment — no exercise in the use 
 of liberty ; but only restraint, only fear, only slavery. 
 
 I do not entertain those opinions of one variety of 
 disorderly families, which you and the deacon seem to 
 have entertained all your lives. I have never yet seen 
 the house where children were happy that did not 
 show evidences of disorder ; and a man is a fool, or 
 something worse, who quarrels with this state of 
 things. Where children have playthings, and where 
 they play with them, there must necessarily be disorder,
 
 38 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 and furniture more or less disturbed and defaced, and 
 noise more or less disagreeable, and litter that is not 
 highly ornamental. And before children have had an 
 opportimity to learn propriety of speech and deport- 
 ment — before they are educated — there will be in their 
 conduct — in playroom and parlor alike — -more or less 
 of irregularity and extravagance. Remarks will be 
 made that will shock all hearers ; laughs too boisterous 
 to be musical will be indulged in ; sudden explosions 
 of anger will occur, with other eccentricities of conduct 
 that need not be named. There are remedies for all 
 these — in time. "When, in the course of their educa- 
 tion, the sense of propriety is stimulated and strength- 
 ened, and pride of character is developed, these irreg- 
 ularities will disappear, and an orderly family will be 
 the consequence, each child having become its o^ii 
 reformer. 
 
 There was a feature of your family govenmaent 
 (which you held in common with your husband) that 
 made still more complete the slavery of your children. 
 It was the deacon's opinion, you will remember, that a 
 boy who was not too tired to play at ball, or slide 
 down hill, or skate, was not too tired to saw wood, and 
 it was his policy to direct all the excess of animal life 
 which his boys manifested into the channels of industry 
 and usefulness. You seconded this opinion, and main- 
 tained that a girl who was not too sleepy to make a
 
 To Mrs. Martha Jones. 39 
 
 doll's hat, or a doll's dress, was not too sleepy to hem 
 a handkerchief, or darn a stocking. So your children 
 never had what children call " a good time," Always 
 kept at work when possible, and ahvays restrained in 
 every exhibition of the spirit of play, home became an 
 irksome place to them, and childhood a dreary period. 
 Your children were never permitted to do anything to 
 please themselves in their own way. Everything was 
 done — or you insisted that everything should be done 
 — to please you, in your way. If one of your daugh- 
 ters sat down to rest, or resorted to a little quiet amuse- 
 ment, you stirred her at once by some petty command. 
 I was often tempted to be angry with you because 
 you would never give your children any peace. You 
 had always something for them to do, and something 
 that had to be done just at the very time when they 
 were enjoying themselves the best. 
 
 " Precept upon precept " is very well, in its way, 
 but principle is much better. The principle of right 
 and proper acting, fully inculcated, renders unnecessary 
 all precepts ; and until a child has fully received this 
 principle he is without the basis of manhood. The 
 earlier this principle is received and a child thrown 
 upon his own responsibility, and made to feel that he 
 is a man, lacking only years to give him strength and 
 wisdom, the safer that boy is for time and for eternity. 
 The moment a boy becomes morally responsible, he
 
 40 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 becomes in a most important sense — a sense which 
 you and the deacon never recognized — free. I do not 
 say that he is removed from parental control or 
 rational restraint, but that it is the business of the 
 parent to educate him in the principle of self-govern- 
 ment. A boy bred thus, becomes ten times more a 
 man than a boy bred in the way which has seemed 
 best to you ; and when he goes forth from the parental 
 roof he goes forth strong, and able to battle with life's 
 trials and temptations. Children long for recognition 
 — to do things for themselves — to be their own masters 
 and mistresses. Their play is all based on the assump- 
 tion that they are men and women, as, in miniature, 
 they are ; and, insisting on the right use of liberty, 
 and teaching them how to use it, they should have it, 
 restrained only when that liberty is abused.
 
 THE THIRD LETTER. 
 
 ^a J. ^ttxbelssobit |oius, Singing PHsitr. 
 
 CONCERNING THE INFLUENCE OF BIS PROFESSION ON PER- 
 SONAL CHARACTER. 
 
 ONCE heard the most reno-vraed and venerable of 
 all the professors of music in this comitry say 
 that he always warned his classes of young women to 
 beware of singing men, and, with equal emphasis, warned 
 his classes of young men to beware of singing women. 
 He alluded, of course, to professional singers, and I have 
 too much respect for his Christian character to suppose 
 that he was not thoroughly in earnest. The statement 
 will not flatter your self-conceit, but I inmiediately 
 thought of you, and the life you have led. You were 
 what people called a bright boy. Indeed, you were 
 what I should call a clever boy. You were quick, inge- 
 nious, graceful, skilful ; and your father and mother 
 told me, with ^Bvident pride, and in your presence,
 
 42 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 that you had a remarkable talent for music. " Felix 
 Mendelssohn could sing," they said, " and carry his 
 own part, before he was three years old." And Felix 
 Mendelssohn was brought out on aU possible occasions, 
 to display his really respectable gifts as a singer, and 
 was brought out so often, and was so much praised 
 and flattered, that, before he was old enough to know 
 much about anything, he had conceived the idea that 
 singing was the largest thing to be done in this world, 
 and that Felix Mendelssohn Jones had a very large 
 way of doing it. 
 
 Twenty years have passed away, and where and 
 what are you ? You are a singing master, with a lim- 
 ited income, and a reputation rather the worse for 
 wear. You have never been convicted of any flagrant 
 acts of immorality, but men and women have ticket- 
 ed you " doubtful." Careful fathers and mothers are 
 careful not to leave their daughters in your company. 
 Ladies who prize a good name above all other posses- 
 sions never permit themselves to be found alone with 
 you. There are stories floating about concerning your 
 intrigues, and the jealousy and unliappiness of your 
 wife. Everybody says you are an excellent singer, 
 that you understand your business, &c., &c., but all 
 add that you know nothing about anything else, that 
 they would not trust you the length of their arms, that 
 you are a hypocrite and a scapegrace,* that you ought
 
 To F. Mendelffohn Jones. 43 
 
 to be horsewhipped and hissed out of decent society, 
 that it is strange that any respectable man will hare 
 you in his family, and a great many other ugly things 
 which need not be related. I am aware that you have 
 warm friends, but not one among the men, unless it be 
 some poor fellow whose wife's name has been coupled 
 with yours in an uncomfortable way. Wherever you 
 go, there are always two or three women who become 
 your sworn partisans— women who have your name 
 constantly on their lips — who will not peaceably or 
 without protest hear your immaculateness called in 
 question — women who, somehow, seem to have a per- 
 sonal interest is estabhshing the uncompromising rigid- 
 ity of your virtue. I do not think very highly of 
 these women. 
 
 You are a handsome man, and how well you know 
 it ! You are a " dressy " man. There is no better 
 broadcloth than you wear, and no better tailor than 
 you employ. You are as vain as a peacock, and selfish 
 beyond all calculation. A stranger, meeting you in a 
 railroad car, or at a hotel, would not guess the manner 
 in which you get your money, and least of all would 
 he guess* that in your home, where you are a contempt- 
 ible tyi-ant, your wife sits meanly clad, and your chil- 
 dren eat the bread of poverty. 
 
 I have asked myself a thousand times why it is 
 that you and a large class of singing men and singing
 
 44 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 •women are thus among the most worthless of all 
 human beings. One would suppose, from the natm-e 
 of the case, that you and they would be among the 
 purest and noblest and best men and women in the 
 world. Music is a creature of the skies. It was on 
 the wings of music that the heaven-born song — " Peace 
 on earth : good will to men " — came down, and thrilled 
 Judea with sounds that have since swept around the 
 world. It is on the breath of music that our praises 
 rise to Him whose life itself, as expressed in the move- 
 ments of systems and the phenomena of vitality, is the 
 perfection of rhythmical harmony. It is music that lulls 
 the fretful infant to sleep upon its mother's bosom, 
 that gives expression to the free spirit of boyhood 
 when it rejoices upon the hOls, that relieves the tedium 
 of labor, that clothes the phrases by which men woo 
 the women whom they love, and that makes a flowery 
 channel through which grief may pour its plaint. It 
 stirs the martial host to do battle in the cause of God 
 and freedom, and celebrates the victory ; and " Avith 
 songs " as well as with " everlasting joy," we are told, 
 the redeemed shall enter upon their reward at last. 
 Why, one would suppose that no man could live and 
 move and have his being in music, Avithout being sub- 
 limated — etherealized — spiritualized by it — kept up in 
 a seventh heaven of purity and refinement. 
 
 This may all be said of music in general, but to me
 
 To F. MendelfTohn Jones. 45 
 
 there seems to be something peculiarly sacred in the 
 human voice. There is that in the voice which trans- 
 cends all the instruments of man's invention. It is one 
 of God's instruments, and cannot be surpassed or equal- 
 led. It is the natural outlet of human passion — the 
 opening through which — in love and hate, in grief and 
 gladness, in desire and satisfaction — the soul breathes. 
 It pulsates and trembles with that spiritual life and 
 motion which are born of God's presence in the soul. 
 It is not only the expression of all that is human in us, 
 but of all that is divine. 
 
 One would suppose, I repeat, .from the nature of 
 the case, that you and all the professional singing men 
 and singing women would be among the purest and 
 noblest and best men and women in the world, but 
 you and they are notoriously no such thing. On the 
 contrary, you are the mean and miserable profligate I 
 have already charged you with being, and many of 
 your associates are like you. In saying this, I do not 
 mean to wound the sensibilities of some singing men 
 and women who do not belong in your set. I know 
 truly Christian men and women who have devoted 
 their lives to music, but they are in no danger of being 
 confoimded with your crowd and class. They despise 
 you as much as I do, and regret as much as I do the 
 facts which have associated music with so much that 
 is mean and unworthy in character and conduct.
 
 46 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 It may be interesting to the public, if not to you, 
 to study into, the causes of this Avide-spread immorality 
 and worthlessness among those who make singing the 
 business of their lives. In your case, and in many 
 others, personal vanity has had more to do than anything 
 else. You were bred from the cradle to a love of 
 praise. Your gift for music was manifested early, and 
 your parents imdertook to exhibit you and secure 
 praise for you throughout all the years of your boy- 
 hood. You grew up with a constant greed for admira- 
 tion, and this grew at last into a passion, which has 
 never relinquished its hold upon you. You became 
 vain of your accomplishment, and vain of your personal 
 beauty, and vain of your whole personality. You 
 have been singing in church all your life, and giving 
 voice to the aspirations and praises of others, but, prob- 
 ably, there has never, in all that time, gone up from 
 your heart a single offering to Him who bestowed upon 
 you your excellent gift. You have, during all your life, 
 on all occasions, simg to men, and not to God. As 
 your voice has swelled out over choir and congregation, 
 you have been only thoughtful of the admiration you 
 were exciting in the minds of those who were listen- 
 ing, and have always been rather seeking praise for 
 yourself than giving praise to yom* Maker. 
 
 This love of admiration and praise has been, then, 
 the mainspring of your life ; and no man or woman
 
 To F. Mendelffohn Jones. 47 
 
 can be even decent with no higher motive of life than 
 this. With this motive predominant, you have grown 
 superlatively selfish. You refuse to share your earnings 
 with your wife and children, because such a policy 
 would detract from your personal charms, or your per- 
 sonal comforts. You quarrel with every man of your 
 profession, because you are afraid that he will detract 
 somewhat from the glory which you imagine has settled 
 around you. Your mouth is constantly filled with 
 detraction of your rivals. In the practice of your pro- 
 fession, you are thrown into contact with soft and sym- 
 pathetic women, who are charmed by your voice, and 
 your face, and your style, and your villainously smooth 
 and sanctimonious manners, and they become easy 
 victims to your desire for personal conquest. Thus 
 has music become to you only an instrument for the 
 gratification of your greed for admiration, and; among 
 other things, a means for winning personal power 
 over the weak and wayward women whom you 
 encounter. 
 
 Life always takes on the character of its motive. It 
 is not the music which has injured you : it is not the 
 music which injures any one of the great brotherhood 
 and sisterhood of vicious genius. There are those 
 among musicians who can plead the power of great 
 passions as their apology for great vices. No great 
 musician is possible without great j)assions. No man
 
 48 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 without intense human sympathies in all dii'ections can 
 ever be a great singer, or a great musician of any kind ; 
 and these sympathies, in a life subject to great exalta- 
 tions and depressions, lead their possessor only too often 
 into vices that degrade him and his art. But you are 
 not a great musician, and I doubt very much whether 
 you have great passions. I think you are a diddler 
 and a make-believe. I think your vices are affectations, 
 in a considerable degree, and that you indulge in them 
 only so far as you imagine they will make you inter- 
 esting. 
 
 Tlicre is something very demoralizing in all pursuits 
 that depend for their success upon the popular 
 applause. We see it no more in public singing than 
 in acting, and no more in acting than in politics. 
 I doubt whether more singers than politicians are 
 ruined by the character of then- pursuits. A man who 
 makes it the business of his life to seek office at the 
 hands of the people, and who administers the affairs of 
 office so as to secure the i:)opular applause, becomes 
 morally as rotten as the rottenest of your profession. 
 
 I never hear of an American girl going abroad to 
 study music, for the purpose of fitting herself for a 
 public musical career, without a pang. A musical 
 education, an introduction to public musical life, and a 
 few years of that life, are almost certain ruin for any 
 woman. Some escaj^e this ruin, it is true, but there
 
 are temptations laid for every step of their life. They 
 find their success in the hands of men who demand 
 more than money for wages. They find their personal 
 charms set over against the personal charms of others. 
 Their whole life is filled with rivalries and jealousies. 
 They find themselves constantly thro^vn into intimate 
 association oi; the stage with men who subject them- 
 selves to no Christian restraint — who can hardly be 
 said to have had a Christian education. They are con- 
 stantly acting in operas the whole dramatic relish of 
 which is found in equivocal situations, or openly licen- 
 tious revelations. In such • circumstances as these, a 
 woman must be a marvel of modesty and a miracle of 
 grace to escape contamination. I do not believe there 
 is a woman in the world who ever came out of a public 
 musical career as good a woman as she entered it. She 
 may have escaped with an imtarnished name — she may 
 have preserved her standing in society, or even height- 
 ened it, but in her inmost soul she knows that the 
 pure spirit of her girlhood is gone. 
 
 It is the dream, I suppose, of most women who 
 undertake a musical career, that, after winning money 
 and fame, they shall settle down mto domestic life 
 gracefully, and be happy in retirement. Alas ! this 
 is one of the dreams that very rarely " come true." 
 The greed for popular applause, once tasted, knows no 
 relenting. The public life of women unfits them for
 
 50 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 domestic life, and the contaminations of a public sing- 
 ing woman's position render it almost impossible for 
 her to be married out of her circle ; so that a woman 
 who sj^ends ten years on the stage usually spends her 
 life there, or does worse. I do not wonder at the old 
 professor's warning against singing women, or singing 
 men. It is enough to break do'vvn anj* man's or wo- 
 man's self-respect to be dependent for bread and repu- 
 tation upon the applause of a capricious public — to 
 devote the whole energies of one's being to the winning 
 of a few clappings of the hand and a few tosses of the 
 handkerchief, and to feel that bread, and success of the 
 life-purpose, depend on these few clappings and tosses. 
 I have a theory that it is demoralizing to pursue, 
 as a business, any graceful accomplishment which was 
 only intended to minister to the pleasure and recreation 
 of toiling men and women. I have not read history 
 correctly if it be not true that the artists of all ages 
 have been generally men of many vices. There have 
 been men of pure character among them always, but, 
 as a class, they have not been men whom we should 
 select for Sunday school superintendents, or as husbands 
 for our daughters. If you, Felix Mendelssohn Jones, 
 had been a tailor, and had worked hard at your busi- 
 ness, and only used your talent for music in the social 
 circle and the village choir on Sunday, and been just as 
 vain as you are to-day, you would have been a better
 
 To F. Mendelffohn Jones. 51 
 
 man than you are now, I think. I think this devotion 
 of your life to music has had the tendency, independ- 
 ently of all other influences, to make you intellectually 
 an ass and morally a goat. 
 
 Whether there is soundness in this theory or not, 
 singing as a pursuit must come under the general law 
 which makes devotion to one idea a dwarfing process. 
 A man who gives his life to music — who becomes 
 absorbed by it — and who really knows nothing else, 
 will necessarily be a very small specimen of a man. 
 The artist is developed at the expense of the man. 
 Music is thrown entirely out of its legitimate and 
 healthy relations to his life, and he makes that an 
 object and end of life which should only minister to an 
 end far higher. "When a man undertakes to clothe his 
 manhood from materials furnished by a single pursuit, 
 even when that pursuit is so pure and beautiful as that 
 of music, he runs short of cloth at once. I have no 
 doubt that one of the principal reasons why music has 
 such a dwarfing effect upon a multitude of those who 
 make it the pursuit of their lives, is, that it is so fasci- 
 nating and so absorbing — ^because it possesses such a 
 power to drive out from the mind and life everything 
 else. There is no denying the fact that, in the eye of 
 a practical business man, musical accomplishments in 
 men are regarded as a damage to character and a 
 hinderance to success. It is pretty nearly the universal
 
 52 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 belief that a man who is very much devoted to 
 music is rarely good for anything else. This may not 
 be true — and I doubt whether it is strictly true — but 
 it is true enough, and has always been true enough to 
 make it a rule among those who have no tune for nice 
 distinctions and exceptional cases. 
 
 I do not wonder, Felix Mendelssohn Jones, that 
 intellectually you are a dwarf. I do not wonder that 
 men who have nerve and muscle and common sense, 
 and practical acquaintance with the great concerns of 
 life, and a share in the world's earnest work, should 
 hold you in contempt for other reasons than those which 
 relate to your morals. What did you ever study 
 besides music ? Upon what subject of human interest 
 are you informed except music ? Upon what topic of 
 conversation are you at all at home unless it be music ? 
 Why is it that you have nothing to say when those 
 questions are discussed which relate to the political, 
 moral, social, and industrial life of the race or nation 
 to which you belong ? No man has a right to be more 
 a musician than a man, and no musician has a right to 
 complain when men who are men hold him in contempt 
 because he is the slave of an art of which he should 
 rather be the kingly possessor. There is a vast deal of 
 nonsense afloat in the world about being married to 
 music, or married to art, as if music were a woman of 
 a very seductive and exacting character, and musicians
 
 To F. Mendelffohn Jones. 53 
 
 were very gallant and knightly people who make it 
 their business to bend before a lifted eyebrow, and 
 follow the fickle swing of petticoats to death and the 
 worst that follows it. 
 
 There is another cause that has operated to make 
 you much less a man than you might have been under 
 other circumstances, and this is almost inseparable 
 from your life as a public singer. Your life has been 
 a vagabond life. You, in your hmnble way, passing 
 from village to village, have only had a taste of that 
 dissipation of travel which the more famous members 
 of your profession are obliged to suffer. From the 
 time a public singer begins his career until he closes it, 
 he has no home. He is never recognized as a member 
 of society. He is obliged to be all things to all men, 
 everywhere. He has no nationality. He shouts for 
 the stars and stripes in New York, but would just as 
 easily shout for the stars and bars wherever they float. 
 He is equally at home in England and France and 
 Italy, and salutes any flag under which he can win 
 plaudits and provender. He has no politics, he has no 
 religion, " to mention," he has no stake in permanent 
 society whatever. The institutions of Christianity, 
 public schools, educational schemes and systems, the 
 great, permanent charities, mimicipal and neighborhood 
 life — he has no share in all these. He rims from coim- 
 try to country and from capital to capital, or scours the
 
 54 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 country, and does not cease his travels until life or 
 health or voice is gone. It is impossible for any man 
 to be subjected to such dissipation as this without 
 receiving incalculable damage of character. He can 
 think of nothing but his profession under these cir- 
 cumstances. He can have no healthy social life, no 
 home influences, no recognized position in religious and 
 poHtical communities. He can be nothing but a comet 
 among the fixed stars and regularly revohdng systems 
 of the world, making a great show for the rather nebu- 
 lous head which he carries, occupying more blue sky 
 for a brief period than belongs to him, and then passing 
 out of sight and out of memory, leaving no track. 
 
 I might go further, and show how nearly impossible 
 it is for a public singer, who sings everything every- 
 where, who wanders over the world and lives upon the 
 breath of popular applause, whose life seems almost 
 necessarily made up of intrigues and jealousies, to be a 
 religious man. No matter what the stage of the theatre 
 or the platform of the concert room might be, or may 
 have been ; we know that now they are not the places 
 where piety toward God is in such a state of high culti- 
 vation that good people throng before them for reli- 
 gious motive and inspiration. The whole atmosphere 
 of a public singer's life is sensuous. Like the beggarly 
 old reprobate in Rome who obtained a living by sitting 
 to artists for his " rehgious expression," they coin their
 
 To F. Mendelffohn Jones. ' 55 
 
 Te Deums into dollars, and regard a mass as only a 
 style of music to be treated in a professional way for 
 other people who have sufficient interest in it to pay 
 for the service. Man is a weak creature, and it takes 
 a great many influences to keep him in the path of 
 religious duty, and preserve his sympathy with those 
 grand spiritual truths which relate to his noblest 
 development and his highest destiny. These influences 
 are not to be secured by a roving life, and constantly 
 shifting society, and ministering to the tastes and 
 seeking tlie favor of the vulgar crowd. 
 
 On the whole, Mr. Felix Mendelssohn Jones, I do 
 not wonder that you are no better than joM are. You 
 have really had more influences operating against you 
 than I had considered when I began to write this 
 letter to you. IsTevertheless, you ought to be ashamed 
 of yourself and institute a reform. Recast you life. 
 If you cannot settle down permanently in your profes- 
 sion in some town large enough to support you, and 
 become a decent husband to your wife and father to 
 your children, and take upon your shoulders yom- por- 
 tion of the burdens of organized society, why, quit 
 your profession, and go into some other business. I 
 know you furnish a very slender basis for building a 
 man upon, but you can at least cease to be a nuisance. 
 
 I know a good many musical men and women whom 
 music or devotion to music has not damaged ; but these
 
 66 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 men and women have entered as permanent elements 
 into the society in which they live, and are something 
 more than musicians. Singing is the most charming of 
 all accomplishments when it is the voice of a noble na- 
 ture and a generous culture ; and all music, when it pre- 
 serves its legitimate relations to the great interests of 
 human society, is refining and liberalizing in its in- 
 fluence. But when music monopolizes the mind of a 
 man ; when it becomes the vehicle through which he 
 ministers to his personal vanity ; when it either becomes 
 degraded to be the instrument for procuring his bread, 
 or elevated to the position of a master passion, it spoils 
 him. I pray that no friend or child of mine may 
 become professionally a singing man or singing 
 woman. All the circumstances that cluster about such 
 a life, all the influences associated with it, and the 
 great majority of its natural tendencies are against the 
 development and preservation of, a Christian style of 
 life and character, and, consequently, against the 
 best form of happiness here and the only form 
 hereafter.
 
 THE FOURTH LETTER. 
 
 STo Pans ^acbs |otrcs, ^Ijocmaktr. 
 
 CONCERNING UJS HABIT OF BUSINESS LYING. 
 
 YOU have always seemed to me to be an anoma- 
 lous sort of personage. On the street, you are 
 a respectable and decent man. I would take your note 
 for any sum you would be likely to borrow, and rely 
 upon its payment at maturity. Nay, I would accept 
 your Avord of honor at any time, when your coat is on 
 and the wax is off your lingers, with entire confidence. 
 You have been intrusted with responsibilities in civil 
 and social affairs, and have never betrayed them. You 
 are a good husbond, father, friend, and citizen, but you 
 stand behind your counter from morning imtil night, and 
 lie as continuously and cooUy as if you were a flowing 
 fomitain of falsehood. You will not assail me in the 
 street because I so plainly tell you this, for you know
 
 58 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 it is true, and that I like you too well to insult you. You 
 knoAV that you never made a pair of boots for me that 
 did not cost you more lies than they cost me dollars. 
 
 I have stood before you, on some occasions, thor- 
 oughly astonished at the facility and ingenuity and 
 boldness with which you lied your way out from among 
 the fragments of your broken engagements. The glib- 
 ness of your tongue, and the candor of your tone, and 
 the immovable sincerity of your features, and the half- 
 discouraged, half-wounded expression of face and 
 voice with which you apologized for your failure to 
 keep your pledges, were really overwhelming. I have 
 sometimes wondered whether you did not suppose you 
 were telling the truth — whether you had not, by some 
 odd hallucination, come to believe that the causes of 
 your failure to keep your pledges had a real and per- 
 manent existence. Never was so much sickness suffered 
 by journeymen shoemakers as by yours. Never had 
 shoemakers such sickly children, and never had shoe- 
 makers so many children born to them. It is a strange 
 fatality, too, that always keeps your best workmen on 
 a spree. I have never known any class of artisans 
 driak so much as those you employ. You are always 
 getting out of the right kind of leather at the wrong 
 time, or suffering by some occurrence that renders it 
 impossible for you to keep your promise and, at the same 
 time, make just such a pair of boots or shoes as you
 
 To Hans Sachs Jones. 59 
 
 feel particular about making for your particular cus- 
 tomers. You resort to the most transparent flattery to 
 keep your patrons good-natured, but there is not a man 
 or woman who enters your shop who believes a word 
 you utter. Day after day, and week after week, your 
 promises are broken with regard to a single job, and 
 your patrons smile in your face at the excuses which 
 your tongue holds ready at all times ; and you know 
 that they know you are lying. 
 
 You are not a sinner in this respect above all shoe- 
 makers, and shoemakers are not sinners in this respect 
 above all artisans and tradesmen. You happen to be 
 a very perfect specimen of a class of men wlio work 
 for the public in the performance of essential every- 
 day jobs in the various mechanical arts. They do not 
 all lie as much as you do, but many of them lie in the 
 same way, and for the same reason. They are not all 
 a.s cool about it as you are, and most of them are much 
 less fertile and skilful than you are, but lying is their 
 daily resort. 
 
 Now, what is there in your business, or in the rela- 
 tions to society of that class of employments to which 
 yours belongs, to develop the untruthfulness which all 
 must admit attaches to it in some degree ? In the 
 first place, you began business in a very small way, 
 and were able to keep your promises, never making 
 any that you did not intend to keep. Business in-
 
 60 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 creased, and you found among your best customers — 
 those whose patronage you most desired to retain — a 
 degree of unreasonable impatience which you could 
 not withstand. You were imperiously urged into 
 the making of pledges for the delivery of work 
 which you could not make, consistently with your 
 previously existing engagements. You were desirous 
 to please ; strong wills, backed by money, were 
 brought to bear upon you; the keeping of your 
 promise looked possible, even if not altogether prac- 
 ticable ; and you promised. You felt, however, that 
 somebody was to be disappointed, and you undertook 
 to find an excuse which would lift the burden, of 
 blame from your own shoulders. You did not dare 
 to stand before your customer a voluntary delinquent ; 
 so, when he came, and you were not ready to see him, 
 you justified yourself by throwing the blame upon 
 others, or upon circumstances over which you had no 
 control. He may have believed you at first, but his 
 faith in you soon wore out. 
 
 You learned, at length, that people loved to have 
 their work promised early, and that they wovild take 
 your apologies for failure goodnaturedly ; and you, 
 ran into the habit of promising work early, with the 
 expectation, if not the direct intention, to break your 
 promise. I have given you jobs when I knew you 
 lied while tab'ng them, and expected to lie a great
 
 To Hans Sachs Jones. 61 
 
 many times before you finished them. You have told 
 me repeatedly that work was nearly finished when I 
 knew it had not been begxm ; and all this for the 
 purpose of pleasing me, and saving yourself from 
 blame. You were not naturally untruthful, and you 
 are not imtruthfid now where your business is not 
 concerned, but in your business you have made false- 
 hood the rule of your daily life. Your promises are 
 always in advance of your power to perform, and 
 the breaking of them has become habitual. 
 
 It is painful to see a man — otherwise so respect- 
 able — unreliable in the place where men meet him 
 most ; for it weakens his hold upon the popular regard, 
 and cannot fail to depreciate his own self-re§pect. 
 You must feel ashamed, at times, to realize that your 
 word is not believed, and to know that you have not 
 a customer in the world who feels at all sure about 
 getting work done by you until it really is done and 
 in his hands. The kind of life you lead must also be 
 an exceedingly imcomfortable one. Now, my friend, 
 there is not the slightest necessity for this, and there 
 is no apology for it. It had a very natural beginning, 
 but you ought to have learned long ago that it was 
 not requisite either to your prosperity or your comfort. 
 You get your work in spite of your lying, and not 
 in consequence of it. That is the only thing people 
 have against you. They give you their custom because
 
 62 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 you are a good workman, and for nothing else ; and no 
 man leaves your shop for another except for the reason 
 that he cannot depend upon your word. You never 
 made a dollar or saved a friend by all the lies you 
 have told. Honesty, reliableness, truthfulness — these 
 are at a premium in all the markets of the world ; and 
 you have made yourself miserable and contemptible 
 throughout your life for nothing. Your business is 
 always at loose ends, everybody is crowding you, 
 many of them abuse you, and it all comes of your 
 promising to do work before it is possible for you to 
 do it. Not a decent man, whose custom is worth 
 keeping, enters your shop who would not wait your 
 time patiently, if he could rely upon having his job 
 upon the day promised. 
 
 I have no doubt that, as you read this letter, you 
 say to yourself that I talk as if a man could always 
 keep promises, honestly made, and as if there were 
 men in the world who never break promises. I know, 
 indeed, that there is no man who can so thoroughly 
 depend upon circmnstances, or so control them, as 
 always to be sure to keep his pledges. Sickness 
 happens to all. Calamity in some form comes to all. 
 Drunkenness sometimes overtakes a journeyman shoe- 
 maker, though, to tell the truth, such men are not com- 
 monly employed by masters who care about keeping 
 their word. Men of business punctilio, and regular
 
 To Hans Sachs Jones. 63 
 
 business habits, can always secure the best workmen. 
 It is only the unreliable masters who are obliged to ac- 
 cept unreliable hands, though I would by no means inti- 
 mate that I believe in yoiir representations concerning 
 the drunkenness of your workmen. Your men are shame- 
 fully beUed ; and if they knew how you slander them 
 they would rebel. No, I admit that the most prompt 
 and punctual men must fail, through unforeseen imped- 
 iments, to keep all their promises ; but such men do not 
 lie their way out of their difficulty, and are only the 
 more careful about making and keeping their engage- 
 ments afterward. 
 
 To me, one of the most admirable things in the 
 world is business punctilio. I think it is rare to find 
 very bad men among thorough business men. I do 
 not mean to say that a good business man is necessarily 
 religious, or even necessarily without \'ices. I mean, 
 simply, that it is difficult to be strictly honest in busi- 
 ness, and sensitive in all matters pertaining to business 
 engagements, and thoroughly punctual in the fulfil- 
 ment of all business obligations, and at the same time 
 to be loose in morals and dissipated in personal habits. 
 I have great respect for those rigid laws of the count- 
 ing room which regulate the dealings between man 
 and man, and which make the counting room as exact 
 in all matters of time and exchange as a banking house 
 — which ignore friendship, afiection, and all jjersonal
 
 G4 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 considerations whatsoever — which place neighbors 
 and brothers on the same platform with enemies 
 and aliens, and which make an autocrat of an accoxmt- 
 ant, who is, at the same time, strictly an obedient sub- 
 ject of his own laws. I say it is hard for a man to 
 enter as a perfectly harmonious element into this grand 
 system of business, and submit himself to its rigid 
 rules, and maiatain his position in it with perfect 
 integrity, and, at the same time, be a very bad man. 
 To a certain extent, he bows to and obeys a high 
 standard of life. He may not always recognize fully 
 the moral element which it embodies. He may take 
 a selfish view of the whole* matter ; but he cannot be 
 entirely insensible to the principle of personal honor 
 which it involves, or fail to be influenced by the per- 
 sonal habits which it enforces. Some of the best 
 business men I have ever known, have been the most 
 charitable men I have ever known. Men who have 
 acquired wealth by rigid adherence to business integ- 
 rity, and who have sometimes been deemed harsh 
 and hard by those with whom they have had business 
 relations, have shown a liberality and a generosity 
 toward objects of charity which have placed them 
 among the world's benefactors. Men who have 
 exacted the last fraction of a cent with one hand, in 
 the way of business, have disbursed thousands of 
 dollars with the other, in the way of charity.
 
 On another side of this subject, it may be stated 
 that it is not possible for a man to be careless in busi- 
 ness afiairs, or immindful of his business obligations, 
 without being weak or rotten in his personal character. 
 Show me a man who never pays his notes when they 
 are due, and who shuns the payment of his bills when 
 it is possible, and does both these things as a habit, 
 and I shall see a man whose moral character is, beyond 
 all question, bad. "We have had illustrious examples 
 of this lack of business exactness. We have had groat 
 men who were in the habit of borrowing money 
 without repaying it, or apologizing for not repaying 
 it. We have had great men whose business habits 
 were simply scandalous — who never paid a bill unless 
 urged and worried, and who expended for their per- 
 sonal gratification every cent of money they could lay 
 their hands upon. These delinquencies have been 
 apologized for as among the eccentricities of genius, or 
 as that immindfulness of small affairs which naturally 
 attends all greatness of intellect and intellectual effort ; 
 but the world has been too easy with them, altogether. 
 I could name great men — and the names of some of 
 them arise before the readers of this letter — who were 
 atrociously dishonest. I do not care how great these 
 men were. I do not cai'e how many amiable and 
 admirable traits they possessed. They were dishonest 
 and imtrustworthy men in their business relations.
 
 66 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 and that simple fact condemns them. I am ready- 
 to believe anything bad of a man who habitually 
 neglects to fulfil his business obligations. Such a 
 man is certainly rotten at heart. He is not to be 
 trusted with a public responsibility, or a rimi bottle, 
 or a woman. 
 
 Now, Mr. Hans Sachs Jones, you have customers 
 of this class. Will you permit me to ask you how 
 you like them? Some of these men are poor, but 
 quite as many of them are rich. You lied to them 
 a great many times before they made theu' little bills 
 with you, and they have lied to you a great many 
 times since. When you have had money to raise, 
 they have promised to furnish it to you, and then they 
 have failed to keep their pledges. Not unfrequently, 
 when you have upbraided them for disappointing 
 you, they have retorted by teUing you that you made 
 them wait for their work, and that it is perfectly 
 proper that you should wait for your pay. Their 
 reply was a fair one, so far as you were concerned. 
 It was just as much a matter of business honor that 
 you should keep your promises, as it was that they 
 should keep theirs. It was just as wrong for you to 
 promise your work before you could give it to them, 
 as it was for your customers to promise to pay you 
 before they could pay you, or before they intended 
 to pay you. In your heart, you think these men are
 
 To Hans Sachs Jones. 67 
 
 very mean, and in their hearts they think that you 
 are just as mean as they are, and they are right. Their 
 plea leaves you defenceless, and they banter and badger 
 you until you become disgusted with your business 
 and yourself. Oh ! if you had never given these 
 customers of yours an advantage over you, by your 
 constant failures to keep your word with them, you 
 would be worth a good many more dollars to-day" 
 than you are. 
 
 Then you should remember that you owe a debt 
 of honor to your guild. A very admirable thing 
 among tradesmen of the same class is that esprit de 
 corps which enables them to join hands in a recognized 
 community of honor and of interest, and to look upon 
 their trade as the kind mother that feeds them and 
 that deserves at their hands the treatment due from 
 grateful and chivalrous sons. You have doubtless 
 heard of associations of men engaged in much humbler 
 employments than yours (humbler in the world's judg- 
 ment), that really won the respect and admiration of 
 the communities in which they lived — men who felt 
 strengthened and ennobled by their association — men 
 who came by their association to feel the slightest 
 insult offered to their trade as a personal affront. I 
 say that this esprit de corps is a very admirable thing, 
 and, further, that it gives, or may give, a true dignity 
 to any honest calling under heaven. We do not have
 
 68 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 so much of this in this country as we ought to have. 
 All European countries are ahead of us in this matter, 
 principally, perhaps, for the reason that in those coun- 
 tries the acquisition and pursuit of trades are more 
 particularly a matter of legal regulation. Here a man 
 may set up a trade whether he ever learned it or not, 
 and few learn their trades thoroughly. It is more 
 difficult, therefore, to seciu'e community of feeling 
 among those engaged in the same pursuits here than 
 abroad ; but it is none the less desirable and necessary, 
 that, amon^ good workmen like yourself, there should 
 be brotherhood of feeling and interest — pride and 
 sympathy of guild. It would give ' you dignity, 
 protection, respectability ; and you would feel in 
 all your business transactions that, however reckless 
 you might be of disgrace to yourself, you have 
 no right to disgrace your business, or your brother- 
 hood. 
 
 I repeat, then, that you owe a debt of honor to 
 your guild. There are many men engaged in the 
 same calling with you who scorn the petty arts of 
 falsehood to which you resort. They are men of 
 character — men who never make a promise which they 
 do not intend to keep, and who faithfully and con- 
 scientiously strive to keep every promise which they 
 make. These are the men who give to your calling 
 all the respectability which it possesses. All labor
 
 To Hans Sachs Jones. 69 
 
 of the hands, pursued for bread, is honorable, and 
 honorable alike. One trade is respectable above 
 another only in consequence of the superior respecta- 
 bility of the class of men engaging in it. Now you 
 have a right, in a certain sense, to disgrace yourself; 
 but you have no right to disgrace your trade and 
 your guild. Your devotion to this idea should be 
 almost religious; for, in a certain degree, you have 
 the reputation of the whole class with which you are 
 identified in interest in your keeping, and you are 
 boimd by every principle of justice and honor not to 
 betray it. 
 
 I have not appealed, in what I have said to you on 
 this subject, to those higher motives of conduct which 
 grow out of your relations to the God of truth, nor do 
 I propose to. You know, just as well as I do, that 
 your system of business lying is morally wrong. I 
 simply wish, in closing this letter, to call your atten- 
 tion to the fact that you have arrived at the point 
 where your conscience ceases to trouble you. You 
 do not use profane language. You are shocked when 
 you hear others use it, but you are aware that many 
 of your acquaintances swear from habit, and, by 
 habitual swearing, have ceased to look upon their 
 profanity as profanity. They take the names of God 
 and Jesus Christ in vain, and call for curses upon the 
 heads even of their friends, without a thought of sin,
 
 70 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 and -without a twinge of conscience. Over a certain 
 region of their moral sense profanity has trampled, 
 until it has trampled the life all out of it. So, over a 
 certain region of your moral sense, these lies of yours 
 have trod their daily course, untU not a blade of grass 
 or a flower is left to give token of life, or breathe 
 complaint of the invaders. They have trampled out 
 all sensibility, and you lie without feeling it; and 
 when you are detected and indignantly rebuked, as 
 you sometimes are, you only feel your detection as 
 an inconvenience, which might have been avoided by 
 more ingenious lying. I beg you to discontinue this 
 ruinous practice, and see if sensibility will not once 
 more infoi-m those functions of your moral nature 
 which persistent abuse has indurated and rendered 
 useless. •
 
 THE FIFTH LETTER. • 
 
 €a (Ebbarb ^ttnsoit |otixs. 
 coNCEBNiNa nia failure to yield to ms convictions 
 
 OF DUTY. 
 
 AS I write your name, there comes before me the 
 vision of a fair-haired, blue-eyed boy, who 
 had been fed by smiles and pleasant words at home so 
 constantly that his whole nature had been sweetened 
 by them. I remember how you used to look up into 
 my face for recognition and for the greeting and the 
 smUe which you had learned to crave and to expect of 
 everybody. Into few faces did those expectant blue 
 eyes look in vain, for you were a universal favorite. I 
 remember that I was always so much impressed by 
 your pure and precious nature that I could never 
 resist the impulse to put my arm around you, and 
 draw you to my heart. It was easy to love you, and 
 sweet to be loved by you ; and those who knew your
 
 72 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 sainted mother knew why you were what you were 
 in personal and spiritual loveliness. That mother has 
 been dead a long time, but do you not sometimes 
 recall her reason for giving you the name of Edward 
 Payson ? Ah, yes ! I know that you must sometimes 
 remember that in her heart of hearts — even before you 
 were born — she dedicated you to the service of the 
 Saviour of men, and that she crowned you with a name 
 hallowed by a wide wealth of Christian associations, 
 that she might be reminded of her gift whenever she 
 pronounced it. The absorbing hope of her life was to 
 see you in the pulpit, and to hear you preach the 
 everlasting gospel. To compass this end, she would 
 have been willing to work her fingers to the bone ; 
 to live in want ; to deny to herself every worldly 
 pleasure ; nay, to lay down her life itself. She died, 
 as you know, without seeing the attauunent of the 
 object for which she had labored and prayed so 
 ardently. 
 
 "Well, you are a man ; and you are just as widely 
 a favorite to-day as you were when you were a boy ; 
 but you are not the man whom your mother prayed 
 you might become, and are not likely to be. That you 
 are stifling convictions of duty by the course which you 
 are pursuing eveiy man knows who remembers your 
 early training and the nature upon which that training 
 could not fail to leave its impress. You are a man whom
 
 To Edward Payfon Jones. 73 
 
 everybody loves — Avhom everybody praises — whom 
 everybody believes to be in a measure the subject of 
 Christian conviction — whom everybody believes to be, 
 within certain limits, controlled by Christian principle ; 
 yet, in an irreligious community, you have never, in a 
 manly way, declared youi'self in the possession and on 
 the side of personal Christianity. Under these circum- 
 stances, there are some things which it seems to me to 
 be my duty to say to you. Will you read them ? 
 
 Christianity is everything, or it is nothing — it is 
 divine, or it is nothing — it has a right to the entire 
 control of your life, or it has no claims at all. Is it 
 necessary that I should argue to you the transcendent 
 worth, the divine origin, or the grand claims of that 
 religion which made an angel of your mother, and 
 transformed the little room in which she died into 
 heaven's gateway ? Is it necessary for me to assure 
 you that these convictions of duty which haunt 
 you everywhere, which assert themselves in your 
 heart in every scene of questionable mirth and care- 
 less society, are not superstitions engendered by early 
 education in error ? Is it necessary that I should try 
 to prove to you that a life which does not acknowl- 
 edge a rule of action imposed by the Author of life 
 must necessarily be a life of transgression and the 
 fruits of transgression ? Not at all. You do not ask 
 me to do this. You know — you are entirely con-
 
 74 Letters to the Joncfes. 
 
 vinced — that you owe the devoted allegiance of your 
 heart, the obedience of your will, and the gift of your 
 life to that religion in which alone abides the secret 
 of the purification and salvation of yourself and your 
 race. You are convinced that, without Christianity, 
 this world would be as dark as the infernal shades — 
 that it alone gives significance to life — that it alone 
 can give such direction to its issues that they shall 
 rise to everlasting harmony and everlasting happi- 
 ness. 
 
 There are those around you who do not believe in 
 these things. They were not trained as you were 
 trained. Their mother was not your mother, and they 
 were not endowed wdth your nature. They do not 
 possess your pureness of insight. In short, they are 
 not, to any great extent, the subjects of religious con- 
 viction ; and yet you choose these men for your 
 associates and fellows. I ask you now whether you 
 consider it a manly thing for one like you, with your 
 convictions, to live like one who has no convictions — 
 whether you do not feel that you are really disgracing 
 yourself and depreciating your own seff-respect by 
 constantly refusing to yield your heart and life to 
 the claim of those convictions which never leave 
 you. 
 
 While 'you give such answers to these questions as 
 I know you cannot fail to give, and w^hile you half
 
 To Edward Payfon Jones. 75 
 
 resolve to yield to convictions which I know are press- 
 ing upon you now with redoubled force, you look 
 forward to the possible consequences of a change in 
 the motives and regulating forces of your life. Before 
 your imagination, glaring gloomily in the distance, 
 there stands a lion in the way. A hearty and uncon- 
 ditional surrender to your convictions would involve 
 changes in your social relations, in habits which liave 
 become endeared to you, in the general sources from 
 which you have drawn the satisfactions of your life. 
 You know that a change like this would bring with 
 it a pubHc declaration of your faith, and a publicly 
 formed union with those men and women who have 
 organized themselves into the Christian church. You 
 shrink from this with a sensitiveness of selfish pride 
 which ought to show you that you are very much 
 farther from being a Christian than you suppose your- 
 self to be, for, with all your consciousness of religious 
 convictions stifled, you are fondly cherishing the 
 fancy that you are already quite as good as Christians 
 average. 
 
 Now you know, my friend, that I do not entertain 
 a very extravagent opinion of the prerogatives of the 
 Christian church. No church has the power to save 
 you or me, or to say whether you or I shall be saved 
 or not. You know also that I am no propagandist of 
 sectarian doctrines and policies. If a church is a
 
 76 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 Christian church, that is enough. I do not care the 
 value of a straw by what name it calls itself. I look 
 upon it as a school of Christian disciples — of imperfect 
 men and women who have chosen Christianity as their 
 religion — their reforming motive and their rule of 
 life — the grand system of spiritual truths in which 
 they have garnered their hopes for this life and the 
 life to come — garnered their temporal and eternal satis- 
 factions. I do not believe in the infallibility of any 
 church, or in the sinlessness of any member of a church. 
 Nay, I do not believe that the act of uniting with 
 a church has in itself any saving grace whatever. 
 Church is not Christianity, and Christianity is not 
 church, in any practical sense. A man is probably 
 just as good a Christian the moment before joining a 
 church as he is the moment after ; but a Christian AviU 
 cast in his lot with Christians, if he possesses a decent 
 degree of manhood, and share with them in the Chris- 
 tian work of the world. 
 
 I know very well what the influences are which 
 restrain you from yielding to your convictions, and 
 from taking the public step which would naturally 
 follow such a surrender. You love praise. You 
 love to be loved by everybody, and you have very 
 strong friends among all sorts of people. The good 
 people praise you, and feel as if you, with your 
 straightforward life and pure habits, belonged to
 
 To Edward Payfon Jones. 77 
 
 them. The bad people love you, and feel that, by 
 your practical denial of the claims of Christianity, 
 you make their position respectable. But where do 
 you find your delights ? "Who are your cronies ? 
 Whose society do you seek ? When you feel inclined 
 to yield to your convictions of duty, whose are the 
 shrugging shoulders and the pitying smiles — whose 
 are the quiet jest and the banter and badinage which 
 come in quick vision to you, to shame and scare you ? 
 My friend, you do not love that which is characteristic- 
 ally Christian society. You love that which has no 
 Christian element in it except the element of decency ; 
 and you feel that to become the member of a Chris- 
 tian church would throw you out of sympathy with 
 men whose good will and good fellowship you count 
 among your choicest treasures. You cannot bear that 
 these men should think you weak and womanish. You 
 cannot bear to become the subject of their lenient and 
 charitable scorn. 
 
 Human friendship is very sweet. These ties that 
 bind heart to heai't — these sjTnpatbetic responses of 
 kindred natures — these loves among men glorify 
 human life ; but they not unfrequently form a Ijond 
 of imion so strong that one powerfid nature will, 
 through their aid, carry whithersoever it will — even 
 into the jaws of destruction — all the lives that are 
 joined with it. The ice upon the mountain side links
 
 78 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 rock to rock till the lightning or the earthquake 
 loosens the hold of the giant of the group, and it drags 
 them all into the valley below. Life nearly always 
 follows the current of its friendships or flows parallel 
 with it. If a man finds his most grateful companion- 
 ships among those who are irreligious — either nega- 
 tively or positively — he shows just what and where 
 his heart is. Like seeks and sympathizes with 
 like. 
 
 I ask you, Edward Payson Jones, to apply this test 
 to yourself. What kind of society do you delight in 
 most ? Do you love and cling to those most who best 
 represent to you the religion in which your mother 
 lived and died, or those who practically hold that 
 religion in very light esteem ? I ask you to apply 
 this test, because I think you are entertaining the idea 
 that, although you make no professions, you are quite 
 as good a Christian as those are who do. My friend, 
 you choose freely to give your most intimate friend- 
 ships to the worldlings by whom you are surrounded. 
 I state the fact, and leave you to your own con- 
 clusions. 
 
 There is another powerful influence which dissuades 
 you from yielding to your convictions. You are 
 absorbed in business. All the activities of your nature 
 are given to it. Great business responsibilities are 
 upon you, and your heart gives them glad entertain-
 
 . To Edward Payfon Jones. 79 
 
 ment, for they are full of promise to your ambition 
 and your desire for wealth. Business occupies nearly 
 all your Avaking thoughts, and even haunts your pil- 
 low and breaks your slumbers. It obtrudes itself uj^on 
 your family life, and monopolizes both your time and 
 your vital i^ower. Your heart is so full that you have 
 no room in it for another object. "VYife and children 
 and friends and business — these four ; but the greatest 
 of these, practically, is business. If you will candidly 
 examine yourself, you will see that I do not overrate 
 this power of business which shuts out from your heart 
 a guest Avho sits and shivers in its anteroom in the cold 
 society of your convictions. To make this matter still 
 worse, you are throAvn into contact with men in the 
 Avay of business upon whom you are, to a certain extent, 
 dependent for your prosperity, who hold Christianity 
 and its professed friends and possessors in contempt. 
 You cannot bear this contempt. These men, with their 
 business thoughts and schemes, break in upon your Sab- 
 baths, they tempt you, they familiarize your ears with 
 prof^inity, and invest you constantly with an atmosphere 
 of worldliness. You have in your present position no 
 defence against the influence of these associations. You 
 have never declared yourself upon the side of Christian- 
 ity, and these business friends of yours know it. They 
 recognize you as one of their own number, and treat 
 you accordingly ; and yet, you are foolish enough to
 
 80 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 believe, or to try to make yourself believe, that a man 
 can be just as good a Christian outside of the church 
 as inside of it ! Why, my friend, you are a man of 
 honor. However much disgusted and abused, your 
 nature is a chivalrous one. If you felt yourself iden- 
 tified with a great cause, would you betray it ? Have 
 you not often comforted yourself with the considera- 
 tion that, if you have failed to become what your 
 convictions have urged you to become, no one has 
 been harmed but yourself? 
 
 I have spoken of you as a man of honor. I think 
 you are sensitively such. I know of no man who more 
 thoroughly despises a mean and unmanly spirit, or a 
 mean and unmanly deed. If you were to see a man 
 who, for any reason, should cast his vote at an election 
 contrary to his convictions of political duty, or any 
 man who should stand upon the fence in an important 
 canvass and refuse to place himself on the side of the 
 right, or who, in a great public emergency, should 
 fail to perform his duty through absorbing devotion 
 to his private pursuits, you would think him a mean 
 man. You would despise particularly one whom you 
 knew to be the subject of strong political convictions, 
 which were so feebly pronounced that all parties claim- 
 ed him. I take your own standard and apply it to 
 you. I say, on the authority of your own best judg- 
 ments, that it is mean and immanly for you, with your
 
 To Edward Payfon Jones, 81 
 
 strong religious convictions, to refuse to stand by 
 them, and act up to them. It is mean and unmanly 
 for you to refuse to identify yourself with the society, 
 and assist in maintaining and forwarding the cause 
 of those whom, sooner or later, you deliberately 
 intend to join, and whom you feel and know to be in 
 the right. If you were not convinced of the truth, I 
 should be more charitable toward you. If there 
 remained anything to be done in shaping the judgment 
 of your intellect and your heart, you would have some 
 excuse ; but no such exigency exists. No, sir : you 
 are convinced ; but you flinch, and you refuse to stand 
 in a manly way by what you know and feel to be 
 right. 
 
 "While I thus blame .you, I pity you. I know 
 how much your heart bends before these words of 
 mine, and how impotent you feel for action in the 
 right direction. You almost feel as if your hands and 
 feet were tied. You almost feel as if you must follow 
 your old friendships — that they have fastened them- 
 selves to you by hooks of steel which cannot be 
 broken. You feel that your business is upon you, 
 and all its associations, and that neither can be lifted. 
 You feel that you really have no room in your life 
 for those exjieriences and those duties which accom- 
 pany the surrender of the heart to religion. You 
 feel yourself walled around by obstacles, and, what
 
 82 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 is really worse than this, you know that you gi'ow 
 more and more in love with the life you lead, and 
 less inclined to take the direction of your early train- 
 ing. The oath does not shock you as it once did ; 
 vulgarity is not as offensive as it once was ; you have 
 learned to look more leniently upon the vices of the 
 men by Avhom you are surrounded ; worldliness does 
 not seem so barren a form of life as formerly ; you 
 are charmed and excited by success ; and you cannot 
 deny to yourself the fact that, strong as your convic- 
 tions of duty are, your heart and your life are growing 
 more and more widely estranged from them. Where 
 do you suppose all this will end ? You have common 
 sense, and can judge as well as I. Do habits grow 
 weaker by long continuance? Are the cares of busi- 
 ness less absorbing as life advances ? Is moral con- 
 viction the stronger for constant denial and insult ? I 
 say, you have common sense, and can judge as well as 
 I. You know as well as I that this life of yours must 
 have a rupture with its surroundings — that your feet 
 must turn into another path — that you must yield 
 yourself a conquest to your convictions, or that your 
 life will be one of disaster, and that its end will be 
 wretchedness or an induration worse than wretched- 
 ness. 
 
 You are surrounded by a crowd of men and women 
 who do not regard life as a very serious thing. They
 
 To Edward Payfon Jones. 83 
 
 take it carelessly and gayly. You see the multitudes 
 rusliing along in the pursuit of baubles. Men live and 
 die, and there comes back no voice to tell whether they 
 sleep with the brutes or wake with the angels. Men 
 eat and sleep, and love and hate, and make display of 
 their equipage, and pursue their ambitions and indulge 
 in all the forms of vanity and pride, and all life comes 
 at last to seem like a sort of phantasmagoria — empty, 
 unreal, insignificant. You see that these convictions 
 of yours have no place in the multitude of minds 
 around you, and no place in the current of life by 
 which you feel yourself borne along. There are 
 moments, I suppose, when you doubt the soundness 
 of these convictions — when you half believe that you 
 are the victim of a morbid conscience, or of a super- 
 stitious impression. At such moments as these — when 
 the ti'icks of the world delude you most, come back 
 to your mother, and learn the truth. That life of 
 hers, so pure and unselfish and useful, and that death 
 of hers, so peaceful and triumphant, are realities. 
 They can never lie to you, and the moment you touch 
 them, you know that you touch somethmg divine — 
 something by the side of which all worldliness and 
 wealth and material success are chaff. 
 
 You will perceive, in what I have written to you, 
 that I have not imdertaken to convince you of any- 
 thing. I have not imdertaken even to deepen your
 
 84 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 convictions. I have simgly endeavored to reveal you 
 and your own experience to yourself, and to urge you 
 to yield to convictions which I know are striving to 
 gain the control of your life. I have simply urged 
 you to be true to yourself — to take a bold, manly, 
 consistent stand upon the side which you know to be 
 right — to be a Christian man in Christian society, 
 and to refuse longer to stand upon what you mistaken- 
 ly regard as neutral ground. Do you know that you 
 are abusing and ruining yourself? Do you reahze 
 that the passage of every day renders it less probable 
 that your convictions will ever gain the victory over 
 you? 
 
 I appreciate the struggle it would cost you to 
 welcome the new motive and change the policy and 
 issues of your life. The preacher may talk as he will 
 of the ease of the path of life and the ease of yielding 
 up the will, but you and I know that there is no ease 
 about it. We know that whatever may be the trvith 
 touching the doctrine of imiversal total depravity, it 
 is not natural for us to lead religious lives. It takes 
 sacrifice and fighting and heroism to do that. I know 
 it, and you know it. Easy to be a Christian man ? 
 It is mean for a man like you not to be one — it is 
 wrong for a man like you not to be one — ^but Heaven 
 knows it is not easy for you to be one, or you would 
 have been one long ago. !N'o, my friend ; it will be
 
 hard for you to be one, and it will grow harder every 
 year till you become one. But it pays, and when you 
 are once fairly on the right side, you will not care for 
 the struggle, for you will have good company, a clean 
 conscience, and an outlook into the far future unclouded 
 and full of inspiration.
 
 THE SIXTH LETTER. 
 
 CONCERKING TEE DIFFICULTY SEE EXPERIENCES IN 
 KEEPING HER SERVANTS. 
 
 'T has been stated to me, confidentially, that you 
 have had nineteen different cooks and thirteen 
 chambermaids in your house during the past year. 
 This may be slightly above the annual average. I 
 should hope so. I do not imderstand how flesh and 
 blood could endure such changes. Yet you live and 
 thrive ; and the new servants come and go at about 
 the usual number per month. Your husband grew 
 tired, long ago, with rasping against so much new 
 domestic material, but has learned fortitude by 
 practice. One or two attempts on his part to teU 
 you that there were women who kept their servants 
 for months and years without change, and to convince 
 you that it was possible that there were bad mistresses
 
 To Mrs. Jeffy Bell Jones. 87 
 
 in the world as well as bad servants, resulted in scenes 
 which will be avoided in future. Not if he were to see 
 a procession of young women entering your house and 
 emerging from it through all the weary year — not if 
 he were to hear a constant storm raging in the kitchen 
 and echoing throughout the passages and chambers, 
 would he ever intimate that you were not the paragon 
 of mistresses, and that your girls were not the mean- 
 est, dirtiest, sauciest pot-sl ewers that ever invaded an 
 abode of civilization. 
 
 No, JNIrs. Jones ; you will have it all your ovm Avay, 
 without any interference from him. He knows you are 
 in the wrong, and so do you ; but he will never tell 
 you so again. On the contrary, he will sympathize 
 with you after a fashion, and take your part in all your 
 quarrels and all your domestic diihculties ; but he will 
 quietly wish, meanwhile, that you had the faculty of 
 getting along pleasantly with your servants. I have 
 intimated to you that you know yourself to be in the 
 wrong. You are not a fool. On the contrary, you 
 are a very sharp, bright woman, and you cannot fail 
 to see that there is a reason, wtnewhere in your house^ 
 for your failure to keep your servants. Your neigh- 
 bor lives in the same climate that you do. The roof 
 of her house is covered by slate from the same quar- 
 ry ; her Stuart's stove is of the same size as yours ; 
 her laundry is no more convenient than yours ; her
 
 88 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 servants are no better fed than yours ; she gives no 
 better wages than you ; but she keeps her servants, 
 and you do not keep yours. "When one of her servants 
 marries, or sickens, or, for any reason, wishes to leave 
 her, fifty others stand ready to take her place, and she 
 has her pick of them all, while you are obliged to 
 take such as come, and such as feel compelled to come 
 after having heard that you are a hard mistress. For 
 you must know that masters and mistresses have 
 reputations among servants — reputations made up, 
 and weighed, and widely known. You, and a hun- 
 dred other women whom I know, have bad reputa- 
 tions among servants ; and when you deal with them 
 you are always obliged to deal with them under the 
 disadvantage which a bad reputation bears with it. 
 
 Suppose we have a little plain talk about these 
 matters, and see if we can get at an understanding 
 of them. You will pardon me if I tell you, in the 
 first place, that you are an opinionated person, which 
 is a mild way of stating that, in certain respects, you 
 arc very conceited. Your pet conceit is that you are a 
 model housekeeper, and your opinion is that you know 
 the best and only proper modes of doing the work in 
 your kitchen, and in your house generally. You have 
 your own way of doing everything. You have your 
 particular order, in which all things about you are to 
 be done. The machinery of your household arrange-
 
 To Mrs. Jefly Bell Jones. 89 
 
 ments, as it exists in your mind, is a perfect whole, and 
 every executive element that you introduce into it 
 must adapt itself to that machinery, or it is cast out 
 at once, or is so harassed that it casts itself out. Sup- 
 jDOse a girl enters your kitchen who understands her 
 business, but who has learned it under another mistress, 
 and a different household economy. She has learned to 
 do her work in a certain way, and after a certan order. 
 She has her notions as well as you. It is quite possible 
 that those notions may be in many respects better than 
 yours. You insist, however, from the moment she 
 enters your service, that she shall do your work in your 
 way. You do not wait to see results. You do not 
 wait to see how she Avill succeed if left entirely to her- 
 self, but you go into the kitchen with her, and superin- 
 tend every act. You give her no freedom, you encour- 
 age no independent effort ; you take the whole burden 
 on yourself, and insist that she shall be your machine. 
 "When she forgets your directions, or steps aside from 
 them, you find fault with her. She soon tires with this 
 sort of treatment, and you are told to look for another 
 girl. 
 
 I have told you that your pet conceit is that you 
 are a model housekeeper, and tried to show that your 
 difficulties with your servants grow out of your insist- 
 ing that they shall do everything in your way. I 
 think I may justly say, in addition, that there is a
 
 90 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 certain sensitiveness of will in your constitution 
 which aggravates these difficulties. You are impe- 
 rious. There is one spot in the world where you have 
 the right to rule — one spot where that will of yours 
 has the right to assert itself and make itself law. 
 Perhaj)s there is no other spot where your will is 
 recognized. Your house is your only domain. There 
 you are a queen, and you are sensitively alive to 
 all interference with your prerogatives. It frets 
 you to feel that there is any other person in the 
 house, with a will, who lias anything to do or say 
 about your domestic affiiirs. You do not feel that 
 a servant has a right to an independent opinion on 
 any subject connected with her service ; and when 
 any such opinion finds practical expression, it enrages 
 you. A servant may feel that if she does her work 
 well, in the way most convenient to her, she does 
 all that you can reasonably claim ; but you feel that 
 unless that work — in all its modes and particulars — 
 has followed the channel of your will, you have been 
 insulted in your own house. In short, madam, you 
 are " touchy," and when you are touched, you scold, 
 and when you scold, off goes your girl. You have 
 excellent pluck, however. I have never known you to 
 lament the loss of a servant. They were always such 
 terrible creatures that you were glad to get rid of them. 
 I do not know how you came to be just the sort of
 
 To Mrs. Jeffy Bell Jones. 91 
 
 mistress you are. You were a very pleasant little 
 girl, with a sweet temper. It has really puzzled me 
 to find out the reason for your peculiar development. 
 I suppose there must be an " ugly streak " in you 
 somewhere, but you did not show it when you were 
 a child. Your hair is red, I know (call it golden), 
 and your eyes black, but the hair is beautiful and soft, 
 and the eye has a world of love in it for the man it 
 worships and for his children. My theory is that 
 every nature which has any force in it will assert 
 itself somewhere, in some form, and that if it fails 
 to be recognized in society, it will make itself recog- 
 nized where there are none to dispute its claims. I 
 do not recall a single famous housekeeper, with a 
 splendid faculty for getting rid of servants, and a 
 bad reputation among them, who, at the same time, 
 was a woman widely recognized in society. If you, 
 Mrs. Jessy Bell Jones, were an acknowledged power 
 and authority in the social circle ; if you were a fine 
 musician with the opportunity to charm your friends ; 
 if you had a high degree of literary culture and were 
 received everywhere in literary circles as an ornament 
 or an equal ; if you possesed a recognized value out 
 of your house, or in your parlor, beyond other women 
 of your class or set, I think you would be content — 
 that your servants would get along well enough, and 
 that you would get along well enough with them.
 
 92 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 But you have turned housekeeper, and directed all 
 your energies and al^ your ambitions, and all your 
 will, into the channel of housekeeping ; and woe to 
 the servant who stands in your way. 
 
 Under these circumstances, there are a few prac- 
 tical questions which it would be well for you to ask 
 yourself. Do you feel that your system of manage- 
 ment pays ? Do you enjoy these constant troubles 
 with your servants ? Do you think your husband 
 enjoys them, and your irate or plaintive representa- 
 tions of them ? Do you not feel sometimes as if you 
 would be willing to give a good deal of money, and 
 put yoiirself to a good deal of trouble to get along as 
 smoothly with your girls as some of your neighbors 
 do ? Do you wish or erpect always to live the same 
 sort of life you are living now ? 
 
 In making up your answers to these questions, you 
 must remember that any change which may be made 
 must begin with yourself. If you are reaUy willing to 
 make sacrifices for the sake of peace and pei-petuity 
 in your domestic arrangements, you can have both ; 
 but you will be obliged to sacrifice your will, and a 
 good many of your pet notions concerning house- 
 keeping. If it is sweeter to you to have your will, 
 than it is to keep gii'ls steadily who will serve you 
 reasonably well, why, of course, that settles the 
 question ; though it is doubtful whether you would
 
 To Mrs. Jefly Bell Jones. 93 
 
 get so much of your will accomplished by sending 
 them away as you would by keeping them. 
 
 You must take certain facts into consideration 
 when you hire a servant. The most important is, 
 perhaps, that when you hire a servant you do not 
 buy a slave. You do not buy the right to badger 
 and scold her, to impose upon her unreasonable bur- 
 dens, or to treat her as if she were only an animal. 
 You are to remember, also, that there are two sides 
 to this relation of mistress and servant. Labor is not 
 a drug in this country yet, thank Heaven, and it is 
 quite as important to you that you have servants, as 
 it is to your girls that they do service. You and your 
 girls are under mutual obligations to treat each other 
 well. In England and on the Continent, where human 
 life, owing to peculiar circumstances, is in excess — a 
 condition which cannot possibly exist in healthily 
 constituted society — servants are born into families 
 often, and grow up dependants, forever attached 
 to the family name and interest. A good place and 
 a permanent one is equivalent to a treasure with them, 
 and they wUl make many sacrifices to preserve it, 
 Here, it is different. Labor is everywhere in demand, 
 and no girl ever steps out of your door without know- 
 ing that, -within a short space of time, she can easily 
 find another place, with a chance at least for better 
 treatment than you give her.
 
 94 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 There is another consideration to which I am sure 
 sufficient importance has not been attached. You 
 are a Protestant, as the majority of Americans are, 
 .and you know that servants who come to you, and 
 whom the most of us employ, are Catholics. It is 
 notorious and incontrovertible that your servants 
 are taught to consider you a heretic — a person who 
 has no religion, and who is bound as directly for 
 hell as if she were a murderess. It is cruel to teach 
 these ignorant women such horrible stuff, but they 
 are taught it. The Irish gui in your kitchen, who 
 perhaps does not know her alphabet — who probably 
 has not the first idea of the vital truths of Chris- 
 tianity — regards you and the whole community of 
 American Protestants with contemj^t, as the accursed 
 of God, and of those whom she supposes to be His 
 representatives on the earth. She has been bred to 
 this opinion, and it may be the only really strong 
 opinion she has in her mind. She has no doubt that 
 a drunken, profane, lying scoundrel, if he is only 
 in the Catholic church, has a better chance for heaven 
 than the purest Protestant that lives, because she has 
 been taught from childhood that there is no salvation 
 out of " the church." Now I say that women thus 
 bred cannot possibly entertain such a degree of respect 
 for you that they will take patiently your style of 
 treatment. It is notorious that they receive, even
 
 To Mrs. Jefly Bell Jones. 95 
 
 with abject humility, indignities from masters and 
 mistresses belonging to their church, while they exact 
 from Protestants the last ounce of that which is their 
 due as Christian women. I do not complain of this par- 
 ticularly, but I allude to it to show that you, and every 
 Protestant mistress in America, must necessarily labor 
 under disadvantages in the managjement of servants. 
 
 CD Kj 
 
 There is stiU another consideration which you and 
 all other mistresses should make, which is, that aU 
 girls who are good for anything must do their work in 
 their own way, or not do it well. One of the hardest 
 things in this world for any person who has brains, and 
 the power to use them, is to do another person's work 
 is another person's way. To most persons, the attempt 
 to do this is always disgusting, and often distressing. 
 It is only hacks and blockheads that can possibly sub- 
 mit themselves to the degradation which such a ser-vdce 
 involves. You must always be content with these, or 
 you must have servants who have some notions and 
 ways of their own. A servant may be a very humble 
 person, but she has her will, and her pride, and her 
 desire to be somebody in her place, just as much as 
 you have ; and she will not sell her right to entertain 
 an opinion and have her way in the little details of 
 her service for a dollar and seventy-five cents a week, 
 to you or anybody else. I must confess that I sym- 
 pathize with her in this thing. Among your servants
 
 96 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 you may reasonably require results economically at- 
 tained, but all that exactness which insists on dust- 
 ing a piano from the north to the south, or prescribes 
 the whole routine of a kitchen, to its minutest particu- 
 lar, and vigilantly maintains it, is an insult and a hard- 
 ship, and is certain to be regarded and treated as such 
 by every servant who is good for anything. 
 
 Now if you are willing to make all these con- 
 siderations, you can have servants and keep them. 
 If you are willing to consider that your servant is 
 not a slave, and has a right to the treatment due to 
 a rational woman, that you have no right to harass 
 her with your notions or your petulancies, that you 
 are imder as strong an obligation to treat her well as 
 she is to treat you well, that she has been bred to 
 consider you a heretic — one for whom God has no 
 respect and Heaven no home, that it is in the nature 
 of things impossible for a really capable and good 
 servant to do her work cheerfully and well when she 
 is required to do it in a way not her own, that in this 
 world of imperfection there are some things which 
 will be unpleasant " in the best regulated families," 
 that it is better to enjoy peace generally, than to 
 have one's will in unimportant particulars, — I say 
 that if you are willing to consider all these things, I 
 do not see why you may not keep your servants as 
 long as other people, and »have just as good a time
 
 To Mrs. Jefly Bell Jones. 97 
 
 with them. It will be very hard for you to break 
 into this thing, and I know of but one way for you to 
 proceed. Get a new cook — the best you can find — and 
 promise to pay her good wages. Then hold up your 
 right hand and swear in the presence of your husband 
 (who vnll record your oath with vmaffected delight), 
 that you will not enter your kitchen for a month, unless 
 it be to praise some particular dish, or tell the cook 
 how nicely everything looks in her domain. At the 
 end of the month, you will have learned that cooking 
 can be carried on in your family without your help, that 
 your cook is contented and pleased, that you are 
 happier than you have been for ten years, that you 
 have more time for reading and dressing and visiting, 
 and that the inconveniences attending a course like 
 this are much less than those which have thus far 
 accompanied your housekeeping life. I would not 
 prescribe constant absence from the kitchen as the 
 only safe course for all ; I simply say that it is the 
 only safe course for you. After a few months shall have 
 passed away, and you shall have come to love your new 
 way of life, it wUl be safe for you to take a general 
 oversight of your kitchen again. You must run, how- 
 ever, whenever you feel the old fever coming on. 
 
 Did you ever think how easy it would be to make 
 your pretty name — " Jessy Bell " — into Jezebel ? It 
 would be just as easy to transform your pretty nature
 
 98 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 into one which that name alone would fitly represent. 
 I do not account you one of those women, possessed 
 with the devil, who are as much the horror of husband 
 and children as of servants. You are not even one 
 of those women (from whom the gods defend me 
 and mine !) to whom the vision of a speck of dirt is 
 the cause of a convulsion and the inspiration of a 
 lecture that would friofhten anvthing but a clod out 
 of the house. Mysterious are the ways of women. 
 There be women who take delia^ht in bein<T miserable 
 and making others so ; who can scold, or cry, or howl, 
 or spit fire ; who would not be happy if they could 
 be ; who badger everybody — implacable, unreasonable, 
 abominable women, from whom all gentle womanhood 
 has departed. There be such women as these, I say, 
 and you have seen them. Will you permit me to tell 
 you that you are in great danger of becoming one of 
 them ? It is not hard for a woman in your circum- 
 stances, who has set up for model housekeeper, witli 
 a sensitive will and a determination to have every- 
 thing in her own way, to neglect the cultivation of 
 those goodnesses and graces which keep her spirit 
 soft, and keep it in sympathy with those who love her. 
 The secret of living comfortably in this world, 
 consists in making the best of such unpleasant things 
 as cannot be avoided. It is necessary for you to have 
 servants, and it is necessary for you to obtain your
 
 To Mrs. Jeffy Bell Jones. 
 
 99 
 
 servants from the same class that the rest of us do. 
 They are not a very reliable class of people, but they 
 have in them the labor that you want, and must have. 
 The question simply is, whether, under the circum- 
 stances, you will make yourself and your husband 
 miserable by insisting on that which you have never 
 yet succeeded in getting — perfect servants — the perfect 
 slaves of your will — or whether you will get the best 
 servants you can, make allowance for their short- 
 comings, and put up with their imperfect service for 
 the sake of peace. The way in which you answer this 
 question will determine everything concerning the 
 comfort of your home Hfe, and much concerning your 
 own personal character. The best way for you is to 
 confess — to yourself, at least — that you have been all 
 in the wrong, and to change your entire policy. Turn 
 your energies in some other direction. Be as good a 
 housekeeper as you can, imder the circumstances, and 
 be content with such modest attainments as servants 
 moderately intelligent and immoderately independent 
 will permit. Thus will Mrs. Jessy Bell Jones live long 
 and comfortably on the earth, rejoicing the hearts of 
 her husband and children, enjoying a good reputation 
 among the class on which she must depend for service, 
 taking comfort in ladylike pursuits, and avoiding the 
 imminent danger in which she stands of becoming 
 " Mrs. Jezebel Jones."
 
 THE SEVENTH LETTER. 
 
 ^a Sahtljitl ^o^^ |oncs, SpiritiTalbl. 
 
 CONCERNING THE FAITH AND PROSPECTS OF EIS SECT OF 
 
 RELIGIONISTS. 
 
 YOU happen to be one of the men ordained from 
 the foundation of the world to be a Spiritualist. 
 There are many unlike you who are Spiritualists, but 
 there are none like you who are not. You have all 
 that natural love of whal is novel and marvellous, and 
 that peculiar mixture of credulity and skepticism, and 
 that perverse disposition to run against the feelings 
 and prejudices of people, which would lead you to 
 embrace Spiritualism. Wherever I find a man who 
 possesses your peculiar nature and character, I always 
 find a Spiritualist ; for if Spiritualism does not come 
 to him, he goes to it. You were a Fourierite when I 
 first knew you, and you rode the hobby of Fourierism 
 until you rode it to death. Every "ism" that has
 
 To Salathiel Fogg Jones. loi 
 
 been started during the last twenty years has numbered 
 you among its champions. You were a zealous aboli- 
 tionist mitil abolitionism became popular, and then, with- 
 out turning against it, you seemed to lose your interest 
 in it. When Spiritualism made its appearance, I knew 
 , that you would be a Spiritualist, as well as I knew that 
 " fire, ascending, seeks the sun." It was the natural 
 thing for you. 
 
 I was not at all surprised, therefore, when you 
 caught me by the button-hole one day, at the corner 
 of a street, and announced to me the conviction that 
 you could demonstrate the immortality of the human 
 soul. You may, perhaps, remember the smile which 
 your announcement excited. I confess that it amused 
 me. You seemed as interested and pleased about the 
 matter as if you had never heard of such a thing as 
 immortality before. A book had been in your hands 
 ever since you could read, that told you all about it. 
 A belief in this immortality had incorporated itself 
 into the constitution and governments of all the power- 
 ful nations of the world ; had moulded civilization — 
 nay, had created civilization out of barbarism ; had 
 introduced into society its highest motives and its 
 most purifying elements ; had sustained the courage 
 and inspired the hope of multitudes of dying saints 
 and martyrs through all ages ; had surrounded you all 
 your life with the evidences of its vitality, and yet.
 
 102 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 you had but just satisfied yourself on the question, by 
 means of unaccountable raps on a table, in the dark, 
 which, through a Httle assistance of your own, had 
 spelled out, in bad orthography and worse syntax, an 
 insignificant sentence ! Here was a moral force that 
 had moved the world, yet it had not moved you ! 
 You — wiser, more acute, less credulous, less supersti- 
 tious — ^had waited to see a table dance before you 
 could believe in that realm of spiritual things which 
 has hung above and embraced you since you were 
 born, and which has always had a representative in 
 your own bosom ! 
 
 This has been one of the marvels of these latter- 
 day developments in Spiritualism : that men who have 
 been skeptical on all cognate subjects, and have resist- 
 ed all the moral and spiritual evidences of immortality 
 — resisted all the evidences gennane to the subject — 
 have bowed like bulrushes before the pipofs that come 
 to them from a mysteriously played banjo, or a com- 
 mon place message, pretended to be rapped out by a 
 friend on the other side of the river. It took Mate- 
 rialism to prove Spiritualism to these very acute m'en ; 
 and they thought that, because they had seen matter 
 moved by spirit, or what they supposed to be spirit, 
 they had made a prodigious advance. They have been 
 floored by proofs that do not add a hair's weight to 
 the faith of any genuine Christian in the world. They
 
 To Salathiel Fogg Jones. 103 
 
 think that they have made a discovery, and that Chris- 
 tians are afraid of it, when the truth is that they have 
 made no discovery whatever, and that Christians are 
 above it. The proofs of spirituality and of immortality, 
 to be foimd in what is called Spiritualism, are the 
 grossest that can possibly be produced, supposing them 
 to be genuine. They are proofs that deal with matter 
 exclusively, and appeal to the commonest and lowest 
 order of minds. It is you, my friend, who are behind 
 the age, and not the Christians at whose faith you 
 scoff, simply because you are not up to it and cannot 
 appreciate it. You receive a little thing because you 
 are not sufficient to receive a large one. 
 
 I do not intend, in the few paragraphs which I 
 propose to write to you, to undertake the overthrow 
 of your proofs of Spiritualism. I am willing, indeed, 
 to confess that I have witnessed, among much that was 
 undoubtedly the result of deception and jugglery, 
 phenomena which I could not rationally accoimt for 
 by any other theory than that Avhich assigns to them 
 a spiritual origin. But those jihenomena have never 
 contributed anything to my conviction that I am 
 immortal, and that there is a realm of spiritual exist- 
 ence which holds the product of unnumbered worlds 
 and the history of an eternity. They have never 
 made so much as a ripple on the surface of my faith. 
 Their apparent aim has been so limited, many of them
 
 104 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 have been so low and frivolous, some of them have heen 
 so vicious, and all have had so much more to do with 
 matter than with spirit, or with spiritual truth, that they 
 have never seemed worthy for an instant to have any 
 consideration as parts of any religious system, or as 
 opponents of any religious system. It is an insult to 
 common sense, no less than an offence to decency, to 
 compare the conglomerate trash which has been issued 
 as the teachings of the spirits with Christianity, as a 
 system of religion ; and it is a simple impossibility for 
 a true and hearty Cliristian to accept in the place of 
 his faith the peepings and the mutterings of a pack of 
 lying demons, whose deceptions and tricks are acknowl- 
 edged by their best friends. 
 
 The rule which the Author of Christianity an- 
 nounced, and which the common judgment of the 
 world has indorsed — that a tree is known by its fruits — 
 is one which it is now proper to apply to Spiritualism. 
 Fifteen years have passed since the new sect made its 
 first batch of proselytes. It is time to be looking for 
 the fruit of this tree, which, at the beginning, was 
 declared to be so full of golden promise. I ask you 
 if you have found Spiritualism j^articularly nourishing 
 to yourself. Are you a better man than you were 
 ten years ago ? How much progress have you made 
 toward real spirituality ? How much more devout is 
 vour worship of the Great God than it was before
 
 To Salathiel Fogg Jones. 105 
 
 you were convinced of the immortality of your o-v\ti 
 soul ? How much have your affections been purified, 
 your love of spiritual things strengthened, your lust 
 for sensual indulgence diminished, by this new faith 
 of yours ? Has your sense of moral obligation grown 
 stronger ? Has your benevolence increased ? Has 
 your love of all that is good and pure grown brighter, 
 while the sensual delights of your animal life have 
 faded ? These are important questions to you, and 
 they are very important questions to Spiritualism 
 itself. 
 
 I must be plain with you, and tell you that if 
 Spii-itualism has improved you I have failed to see it. 
 I do not see that you have even made any progress 
 intellectually. You pretend that Spiritualism reveals 
 great truths in which abide the seeds of progress and 
 perfection for a race, but these seeds do not germi- 
 nate in you. On the contrary, you seem content to 
 stand at the threshold of your new religion, and to 
 amuse yourself with the same insignificant phenomena 
 which first attracted your attention. I hear of your 
 holding weekly, or semi-weekly, sessions or " circles '' 
 where there are the ringing of bells, and playing of 
 guitars, and the scraping of fiddles, and the tipping of 
 tables, and the rubbing of faces, and the rapping of 
 knuckles. It is the same old story of a sort of frolic 
 or orgy with demons, and no step forward into a
 
 106 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 divine life. As it is with you, so is it with all that 1 
 have seen. I will not speak of the immoralities to 
 which Spiritualism has given origin or opportunity. 
 Free love is not a plant indigenous to Spiritualism. 
 It starts in human nature, and grows wherever there 
 is license. The doctrine of " affinities " is as old as 
 the race, and has found its advocates among the beastlv 
 of all races and the bad of all religions. I say I will 
 not speak of the immoralities which have been asso- 
 ciated with Spiritualism, because they are not peculiar 
 to it ; but I say that I cannot perceive that you make 
 the slightest progress intellectually — you or your friends. 
 You have always been busy with these little material 
 phenomena, which have no more spiritual significance 
 or vitality in them than there is in the grunts that 
 come from a pig-sty — not half as much as there is in a 
 concert by Christy's minstrels. Has Spiritualism 
 nothing more in it for you than this ? Is this the 
 highest food it has to offer you ? Why, you ought 
 to be intellectually a giant by this time. With immor- 
 tahty demonstrated to you, in daily communion with 
 the spiritual world, with vision clarified of all errors 
 and superstitions, you ought to have made advances 
 which would prove to an incredulous world that Spirit- 
 ualism has in it the seeds at least, of the intellectual 
 millennium. It is not necessary for me to tell you 
 that you have done no such thing. You have been
 
 To Salathiel Fogg Jones. 107 
 
 mixed up with two or three fanciful schemes for 
 social improvement, that have not had enough of 
 vitality in them to preserve them from quick degenera- 
 tion, and these schemes have absorbed all your 
 spiritual activities. Indeed, I think these " circles " 
 have been rather dissipating than edifying to you. 
 
 Literature has always been the record and the gauge 
 of every form of civilization, every system of philoso- 
 phy, and every scheme of religion ; and nothing is more 
 certain than that any religion which possesses vitality 
 will permeate and inform all the literature associated 
 with it, and create for itself a literature which is espe- 
 cially the product of its life. Thus, with the Bible for 
 its basis, Christianity has created a literature of its 
 own. An Alexandrian library could not contain the 
 books which cluster around the Bible, deriving from it 
 their sole inspiration and significance, and receiving 
 from it all their power, while there is not a book of 
 any kind written within the pale of Christian civiliza- 
 tion which is not modified by it. And literature is but 
 one of the forms of art in which the Christian religion 
 betrays the vitality of its central truths and ideas. 
 There is hardly a department of painting and sculpture 
 and architecture that does not have reference, at some 
 point, to it, while many departments are its direct out- 
 growth and oflEspring. It is time that Spiritualism, if 
 it possesses such claims and powers as are ascribed to
 
 108 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 it, should make its mark on literature and art. Has it 
 done so ? 
 
 I think that you cannot fail to regard the literature 
 that has been the direct and immediate outgrowth of 
 Spiritualism as, on the whole, of an exceedingly frivo- 
 lous, weak, and unworthy character. Spiritualism has 
 undertaken to deal with almost all forms of literary 
 art. It has put forth orations, philosophical disquisi- 
 tions, revelations concerning the unseen world, proph- 
 ecies of future events, and poetry. These produc- 
 tions purport to come from the spirits of departed men 
 and women, who assume to speak from actual knowl- 
 edge acquired in the realm of spiritual things. The 
 least that can be assumed by the Spiritualist is that 
 these utterances are the product of minds purified and 
 exalted by freedom from the grosser animal life into 
 which they were originally born, strengthened and in- 
 vigorated by direct contact with spiritual truth, and 
 inspired by the vision of those realities of which we 
 can only form, through guess and conjecture, the faint- 
 est idea. I say that this is the least that can be as- 
 sumed by the Spiritualist. It is the least that is as- 
 sumed by you, or any one of your associates, concern- 
 ing the utterances of your best spiritual correspond- 
 ents ; yet I defy you to point me to a smgle oration 
 originatmg in your circles that can compare with those 
 of Webster, or Burke, or Everett ; a smgle philosophi-
 
 To Salathiel YoEp, Jones. lc9 
 
 cal discourse that betrays the brains of a Bacon ; a 
 single revelation of the unseen world that can compare 
 with that of John ; or a single poem that is not sur- 
 passed many times by many poems from the pen of the 
 lamented Mrs. BrowTiing. You are lame in every field 
 in which, in accordance with your theories, you should 
 walk with kingly strides. You cannot hold in con- 
 tempt the literary judgments of the world ; and the 
 literary judgments of the world are against you. It is 
 the decided opinion of those whose opinion you are 
 bound to respect, that your theories of intellectual and 
 spiritual progress beyond the grave are shockingly dis- 
 proved by the products of the minds which pretend to 
 address us from it. There is nothing in the literature 
 of Spiritualism which, in power and beauty, and prac- 
 tical adaptation to the wants of men, and skilful use 
 of language, can compare with the literature written 
 before Spiritualism made its first rap. Do you doubt 
 it ? Look at the alcoves of the scholars and poets of 
 the world, and mark the shelves which your classics 
 occupy. They are not there at all, and their absence 
 is owing to the simple fact that they are not worthy to 
 be there. Literature is catholic. Literary men are not 
 particular as to the source from which great thoughts 
 come, and they will gather where they find them. 
 They have not found them in the literature of Spiritu- 
 alism. I state this as a fact, which you cannot deny ;
 
 110 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 and I appeal to the literary men of the -world as my 
 witnesses. 
 
 In the degree by which Spiritualism has failed to 
 produce a worthy literature of its own, has it failed to 
 incoi'porate itself as a vital force into any literature. 
 In a few English novels we have seen evidences of its 
 presence, but even there it has furnished only machine- 
 ry for mysteries and not ideas for life. No poet of 
 power has gone to it for his inspirations. While mAny 
 literati have been attracted to its marvels, and not a 
 small number of them have acknowledcced their faith 
 in the genuineness of its " manifestations," it finds no 
 record in the characteristic products of their pens. 
 And now, in view of all these facts, I declare my full 
 conviction that Spiritualism, notwithstanding all its 
 high pretensions and its ambitious efforts, has imported 
 no new intellectual food into the world, and brought 
 no increment to its intellectual life. Has heaven been 
 opened, my friend, to scatter crumbs and broken vict- 
 uals to children already fed with bread from the tree 
 of a nobler life ? Have the dead come back to prove 
 to you and me that they have only made progress 
 toward, or into, imbecility and idiocy ? Have the 
 angels of God forgotten to be wise, and the saints of 
 God learned to be silly ? Is a religion, or a system of 
 philosophy, or a revelation of whatever character, good 
 for anything, or worthy of a moment's consideration,
 
 To Salathiel Fogg Jones. m 
 
 which gives us nothing greater and more abounding in 
 vitaHty than what we have had before — nothing great 
 and vital enough to create a literature of its own, which 
 wUl command the respect of the world, and find its 
 way through various channels of life into all literature ? 
 You have common sense — or used to have. Answer 
 the question, 
 
 I remember very well the boast that you and your 
 friends made, a few years ago, that the world was 
 about to witness a new dispensation, through the min- 
 istry and the revelations of Spiritualism. "We had out- 
 grown Christianity, as the world once outgrew Juda- 
 ism, you declared, and so, burning up our soiled and 
 worn-out creeds, and casting ofi" the clothing of the 
 Christian church, which had grown too strait for us, 
 we were to emerge into a brighter light and a freer 
 and a nobler life. Well, have your boasts proved to 
 be well grounded ? You must not complain that I ask 
 you this question, and say that I do not give you time 
 enough, and refer me to the difficulty of the early steps 
 of Christianity. Spiritualism was born into a very 
 different age from that which witnessed the advent of 
 Christianity. There was no steamboat, no railroad, no 
 telegraph, no xmiversal newspaper, no printing press, 
 to wait upon the early steps of Christianity. The first 
 wail in the little village of Bethlehem that gave notice 
 of the advent of The Redeemer did not reach outside
 
 112 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 of the walls of the stable where he lay ; but through 
 the ministry of modern art — itself the child of Bethle- 
 hem's child — the first rap at Rochester was heard 
 throughout the nation. Every appliance of Christian 
 civilization has waited upon the early steps of Spirit- 
 ualism, and within fifteen years it has been sown 
 wherever steam and lightning can travel, and men can 
 read the language which they speak. It has been free 
 to do what it woiild. It has published what it Avould. 
 Prisons and scaffolds have not threatened those who 
 received and entertained and advocated it. It has 
 been patronized by the fashionable and the titled. 
 Royalty itself has lent its eyes and ears to its marv'els, 
 and petted the mediums through which they were 
 wrought. It has been brought fairly before the world, 
 and now, what have you to say of the results ? 
 
 Preliminarily, is it making progress to-day ? Does 
 it occupy as large a place in the public mind of this 
 country and of other countries as it did some years 
 ago ? Is it winning as many proselytes as it was 
 winning ten years ago ? Has it not already called to 
 itself its own, and ceased to be aggressive ? Is it not 
 already dying from lack of power to nourish and bless 
 those who have been attracted to it ? It is probable 
 that you would not answer these questions as I should, 
 yet it seems to me as if there could be but one answer 
 to them. I know that, as far as my acquaintance
 
 To Salathiel Fogg Jones. 113 
 
 reaches, Spiritualism is making neither proselytes nor 
 progress, and that many of those who were once its 
 most earnest defenders have grown cold toward it, or 
 careless of it. It has sho'vvii no power to fertilize so- 
 ciety, and no disposition to organize society for philan- 
 thropic effort. It has originated a few Utopian schemes 
 that promised great things for human harmony and 
 happiness, but they have fallen to pieces, light and 
 flimsy as they were, of their oavh dead weight. I can- 
 not point to anything that Spiritualism is really doing 
 to elevate, purify, and save mankind. I cannot find in 
 it that principle of love which uproots selfishness, or 
 leads the martyr to dare his death of fire. 
 
 Now, where is this effete Christianity which was to 
 be displaced by Spiritualism ? There never was a 
 period of fifteen years in its history when it made 
 more progress than it has made since Sjiiritualism was 
 announced. The greatest revival the world ever saw 
 has occurred during that period. It has planted its 
 feet in new fields, and is everywhere aggressive. This 
 Spiritualism, which was to supersede it, has hardly 
 been a fly in the path of its gigantic progress. It is 
 pusliing its silent, individual conquests, and organizing 
 its forces in the wdlds of the West, on the shores of 
 the Pacific, in Australia, and among the heathen nations 
 of the world. It is gaining new victories near the cen- 
 tres of its power. It gives no sign of decay. It is
 
 114 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 more and more widely recognized as the grand, saving 
 and reforming power of the world — as a religion to 
 live by and die by. It finds its way into governmental 
 institutions. It more and more pervades every kind 
 of literature, and you know that there is not a good 
 thing in Spiritualism that Christianity had not previ- 
 ously promulgated. 
 
 Thei'e are some of your friends who will deny that 
 Spiritualism opposes Christianity. Indeed, there are 
 some who claim that they are really the only enlight- 
 ened Christians in the world, Spiritualism having inter- 
 preted Christianity to them. You are too honest to 
 tell me this, I know, because you have talked very 
 differently to me many times. You know that if Spir- 
 itualism is not in opposition to Christianity, as a system 
 of religion and of salvation, there is nothing in it what- 
 ever. You know, and so do your friends, that Spirit- 
 ualism is at least in opposition to that form of Chris- 
 tianity which prevails in the world, and which marks 
 its progress by such marvellous evidences of its vitality 
 and power. 
 
 My friend, you are eating husks, when you might 
 have corn. Cut the delusion loose, for it is a dying 
 thing. There is nothing more in it for you or the 
 world — no more food, nor inspiration, nor light, nor 
 life, nor blessing. All the good fellows are going my 
 way. Come and join them.
 
 THE EIGHTH LETTER. 
 
 ^a §cnjamm d'ranhlin; |oiTts, glccljantr. 
 
 CONCERNIXG HIS HABITUAL ABSEN'CE FROM CHURCH ON 
 
 SUNDA Y. 
 
 I HAVE often wondered why you and so many 
 who are engaged in mechanical pursuits should be 
 so skeptical in all matters lying outside of the domain 
 of material things. There seems to be sonaething in 
 the constitution of the mechanical mind, or somethincr 
 in the nature of mechanical pursuits, which tends to 
 infidelity. It is notorious that, as a class, the mechan- 
 ics of this country, and pai'ticularly those who are 
 engaged in such branches as call for the most ingenuity 
 and skill, are given to unbelief. I cannot explain this. 
 I see the fact, as it exists in manufacturing commun- 
 ities and in the larger cities, and am entirely at a loss 
 to account for it. Why is it that constant dealing with 
 the laws of matter and second causes should so induce
 
 116 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 materialism, and so hide the Great First Cause, I do 
 not know. I only know that the coldest infidels I have 
 ever known — men the most utterly faithless in spii'itual 
 things — ^men skeptical on all subjects which touch reli- 
 gion and immortality, and revelation and God — are 
 mechanics, and that there seems to be something in 
 their pursuits, or in their mental constitution, which 
 makes them so. 
 
 The number of these men in every New England 
 community is large. We are a manufacturing people, 
 and the best and most influential minds in nearly all 
 our manufacturing towns are those of mechanics. I 
 have been surprised at the contempt in which religion 
 and its institutions are held in some New England 
 towns, where it is supposed that both are honored in 
 an unusual degree. The truth is that, throughout New 
 England, not more than one third of the people go to 
 church, or have anything to do with its support ; and 
 that third is very largely composed of farmers and 
 merchants. The mechanical and manufacturing inter- 
 ests, notwithstanding their great magnitude, contribute 
 compai'atively little to the maintenance of the institu- 
 tions of Christianity. None are more aware of the 
 truth of the statements which I make than Christian 
 mechanics, because they are constantly thrown into the 
 society of those of their own class whose cold and 
 sneering infidelity, and whose habitual disregard of the
 
 To Benjamin Franklin Jones. 117 
 
 Sabbath and all Christian institutions, are themes of 
 constant sorrow or annoyance to them. I am sorry to 
 believe that you add one to the number of these faith- 
 less men, and particularly sorry, because you have such 
 natural strength of mind that you cannot faU to have 
 great influence upon those who are nearest you — upon 
 your companions and your family. But I must leave 
 these general remarks, for I began with the intention 
 to say something to you upon your habit of staying 
 away from church on Sundays. 
 
 You told a friend of mine the other day that you 
 had not put your foot inside of a church for ten years. 
 You made the statement, he informed me, in a tone 
 which indicated contempt not only for the church 
 itself and the religion which it represents, but for all 
 the men and women who attend it. Now I like your 
 fr an kness. There is something in your position which 
 I cannot but respect. It is diflerent from that of the 
 majority of those who spend their Simdays in laziness 
 or pleasure. When they are questioned with relation 
 to their very questionable courses, they take the posi- 
 tion of culprits at once, and make their excuses, always, 
 however, protesting that they have the most profoimd 
 respect for religion and its institutions. They make a 
 merit of this respect, and put it forward as a substitute 
 for the thing itself. Fools may be taken in by this 
 sort of talk, but God and wise men can only have con-
 
 118 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 tempt for those who pretend to honor a religion whose 
 institutions they treat with persistent neglect. 
 
 If we speak to some of these men about their neg- 
 lect of attendance upon the Simday ministrations of 
 the church, they will say that they can worship God as 
 weU in the fields as they can in the sanctuary, — that 
 they can commune with Him quite as well alone, among 
 the beauties of nature, as in the great congregation, 
 surrounded by ribbons and artificial flowers. As inde- 
 pendent propositions, these may be sound. I will not 
 controvert them ; but when these men put them for- 
 ward, they do it for the purpose of skulking behind 
 them, and they know very well that they have no rela- 
 tion to their case. They know that they never wor- 
 ship God in the fields, and that they would be fright- 
 ened at the thought of any actual communion ynih 
 Him. Others will denounce the impurities and imper- 
 fections of the church, or find fault with the minister, 
 or certain of the leading members. All kinds of apol- 
 ogies are put forward by these poor men to delude 
 themselves and their neighbors with the belief that 
 they are really better than those who go to church — 
 that they have, at least, quite as much respect for reli- 
 gion as those who do. 
 
 All this talk disgusts me, for I know that there is 
 no sincerity in it. "When a man tells me that he re- 
 spects religion, I want to see him prove it in some
 
 To Benjamin Franklin Jones. 119 
 
 practical way. If he really respects religion, he will 
 give his life to it, and, as the smallest possible proof 
 of respect that he can render, he will scrupulously at- 
 tend upon its ordinances, and show to the world the 
 side upon which he washes his influence to count. No, 
 when men tell me that they respect religion and oflfer 
 in evidence only their studied and persistent absence 
 from aU Christian ministrations, I have simply to re- 
 spond that I do not respect them. They are a set of 
 hypocrites and humbugs. They talk about the hypoc- 
 risy of the church ! There is not such another set of 
 hypocrites in America, as those who, while professing 
 to respect Christianity, devote the Christian Sabbath 
 to their own selfish ease or convenience, and regiJarly 
 shun the assemblages of Christian men and women. 
 Sometimes they try to prove their sincerity by throw- 
 ing in their wives and children. They will tell people 
 that they hire a pew, and dress their wives and chil- 
 dren for the public, that they are willing that they 
 should attend church, and that they have too much 
 respect for religion to stand in anybody's way, while 
 by every Sunday's example, they plainly declare to 
 their wives and cluldi'en that they regard the church 
 and the religion which it represents as unworthy of the 
 attention of a rational man. 
 
 I repeat, then, that there is something m your 
 position Avhich I respect. You have brought yourself
 
 120 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 to the belief that Christianity is a dehision — a cheat. 
 You have no respect for religion, and do not hesitate 
 to express your contempt for it. All preaching is 
 blai'ney and cant to you ; all prayer is blatant nonsense 
 addressed to a phantom of the imagination. Practi- 
 cally, your companions in absence from the church on 
 Sunday occupy your most decidedly irreligious po- 
 sition, and their weakly lingering belief in the ti'uth 
 of Christianity, or in the possibility of its truth, (which 
 is all their "respect" means,) might as well, for any 
 practical purpose, be disbelief. You are really better 
 than those who pretend to respect religion, and who 
 treat it with the same contempt that you do, because 
 you are not a hypocrite. I address you then as the 
 most respectable and decent man of your class. 
 
 My desire is to give you one or two good reasons 
 for going to church which do not depend upon the 
 authenticity of Christianity, or upon the sacredness of 
 the Christian Sabbath at all. My first reason is that 
 unless a man puts himself into a fine shirt, polished 
 boots, and good clothes once a week, and goes out into 
 the public, he is almost certain to sink into semi-bar- 
 barism. You know that unless you do this on Sun- 
 day, you cannot do it at all, for you labor all the week. 
 There is nothing like isolation to work degeneration in 
 a man. There is nothing like standing alone, with no 
 place in the machinery of society, to tone down one's
 
 To Benjamin Franklin Jones. 121 
 
 self-respect. You must be aware that you are not in 
 sympathy with society. You are looked upon as an 
 outsider, because you refuse to come into contact with 
 society on its broadest and best ground. I tell you it 
 is a good thing for a man to wash his face clean, and 
 put on his best clothes, and walk to the house of God 
 with his wife and children on Sundays, whether he 
 believes in Christianity or not. The church is a place 
 where, at the least, good morals are inculcated, and 
 where the vices of the community are denounced. You 
 can afford to stand by so much of the church, and, by 
 doing so, say " Here am I and here are mine, with a 
 stake in the welfare of society, and an interest in the 
 good morals of society." My friend, this little oj^era- 
 tion gone through with every Simday would give you 
 self-respect, help you to keep your head above water, 
 and bring you into sympathy with the best society the 
 world possesses. A man needs to beautify himself 
 with good clothes occasionally to assure himself that ho 
 is not brother to the beast by the side of which he 
 labors during six days of every seven, and he needs 
 particularly to feel that he has place and consideration 
 in clean society. 
 
 Another reas^on why you should go to church on 
 Sunday is that you need the intellectual nourishment 
 and stimulus which you can only get there. I suppose 
 that you do not often consider the fact that the great-
 
 122 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 est amount of genuine thinking done in the world is 
 done by preachers. I suppose you may never have 
 reflected that, in the midst of all this din of business, 
 and clashing of various interests — in the midst of the 
 clamors " and horrors of war, the universal pursuit of 
 amusements, and the vanities and inanities of fashion, 
 and the indulgence of multitudinous vices, there is a 
 class of self-denying men, of the best education and 
 the best talents and habits, who, in their quiet rooms, 
 are thinking and writing upon the purest and noblest 
 themes which can engage any mind. Among these 
 men may be fovmd the finest minds which the age 
 knows — the most splendid specimens of intellectual 
 j)ower that the world contains. The bright consum- 
 mate flower of our American college system is the 
 American ministry. Among these men are many who 
 are slow — stupid, if you insist upon it — but there is not 
 one in one thousand of them who does not know more 
 than you do. You can learn something of them all, 
 while some of them possess more brains and more 
 available intellectual power than you and aU your re- 
 latives combined. I tell you that if you suppose the 
 American pulpit to be contemptible, you are very 
 much mistaken. You have staid away from it for ten 
 years. During all these ten years I have attended its 
 weekly ministrations, and I have a better right to 
 speak about it than you have, because I know more
 
 To Benjamin Franklin Jones. 
 
 123 
 
 about it. I tell you that I have received during these 
 ten years more intellectual nourishment and stimulus 
 from the pulpit than from all other sources combined, 
 yet my e very-day pursuits are literary while yours are 
 not. 
 
 There is something in the jJ^^rsuits of working men 
 — I mean of men who follow handicraft — which renders 
 some intellectual feeding on Sunday peculiarly neces- 
 sary. You work all day, and when you get home at 
 night, you can do nothing but read the news, and in- 
 dulge in neighborhood gossip. You are obliged to 
 rise early in the morning, and that makes it necessary 
 that you should go to bed early at night. You really 
 have no time for intellectual culture except on Sun- 
 day, and then you are too dull and tired to sit down 
 to a book. You always go to sleep over any book that 
 tajces your brain at all. You know that there is noth- 
 mg but the living voice which can hold your atten- 
 tion, and you know that that voice can only be heard 
 in the pulpit. The working man who shuns the pulpit 
 on the Sabbath, voluntarily relinquishes the only regu- 
 larly available intellectual nourishment of his life. 
 You need not tell me that the pulpit has no intellectual 
 nourishment for you. I know better. Philosophy, 
 casuistry, history, metaphysics, science, poetry — these 
 all are at home in the pulpit. All high moraUties are 
 taught there. All sweet charities are inculcated there.
 
 124 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 There are more argument and illustration brought to 
 the support and enforcement of religious truths than 
 all the other intellectual magazines of the world have 
 at command ; and, quarrel with the facts as you may, 
 you must go to church on Sunday, and hear the preach- 
 ing, or be an intellectual starveling. Your brain is 
 just as certain to degenerate — your intellect is just as 
 certain to grow dull — imder this habit of staying at 
 home from church, as a plant is to grow pale when 
 hidden away from the sun. 
 
 But you respond that you will not attend church 
 because you do not believe in the doctrines that are 
 preached there. Do you refuse to attend a political 
 meeting which a gifted speaker is to address, because 
 you are not of his way of thinking ? Do you stay 
 away from the lecture of a man who has brains, because 
 you cannot indorse his sentiments ? Why, you are 
 behind the age, man. The most jDopular lecturers of 
 America have for years been those who have repre- 
 sented the princij^les and sentiments of a small mi- 
 nority. Intellectual men have maintained their place 
 upon the platform when their persons and their princi- 
 ples were held in abhorrence by the masses whom they 
 addressed.- It is not necessary for me to mention 
 names, to prove this statement, for the facts are too 
 fresh and too notorious. Do you decline to attend a 
 circus because the performers differ with you as to the
 
 To Benjamin Franklin Jones. 125 
 
 number of horses it is proper for a man to ride at one 
 time ? Is it possible that you, who have been charging 
 bigotry upoja the church and its representatives so 
 long, are a bigoted man ? Is it possible that you, who 
 have denounced the American Christian ministry for 
 intolerance, are intolerant yourself? It looks like it. 
 
 My friend, you are lame in this matter. Your 
 j)Osition is a very weak one. It is not based in any 
 princi2:)le — it is based in prejudice. Besides, you are 
 not truthful when you say that the utterances of the 
 pulpit generally are incredible. I have been a const-ant 
 attendant at church all my life, and I declare without 
 hesitation that three quarters of the sermons I have 
 heard have been other than doctrinal sermons. The 
 majority of the sermons preached have their foimda- 
 tion in the eternal principles of right — in the broad 
 moralities to which you and every other decent man 
 subscribes. You know that, as a system of morals, 
 Christianity is faultless. You know that if the world 
 should live up to the morals of Christianity — we will 
 say nothing about it as a system of religion — there 
 would be no murder, no war, no slavery, no drimken- 
 ness, no licentiousness, no lying, no stealing, no cheat- 
 ing, no wrong, — that everywhere men would walk in 
 peace and concord and fraternal affection, and that the 
 golden rule would be the universal rule of life. The 
 pulpit is the spot of all others in the world where.
 
 126 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 through the wonderful agency of the human voice, 
 these morals are taught ; and do you tell me that you 
 will not go to church because you do not believe in 
 what is taught there ? You do believe in at least three 
 quarters of the teachings of the jDulpit. You do your- 
 self great wrong by holding yourself aloof from an 
 institution which would not only noui-ish your intellect, 
 but instruct and confirm you in those moralities which 
 are the only safeguard of that society which numbers 
 among its members your wife and children. 
 
 Perhaps you can afibrd, or feel that you can afibrd, 
 to teach your children that Christianity, as a system of 
 religion, is a cheat, but you cannot .afiord to confound 
 with it, and condemn with it, the moralities of Christian- 
 ity. You cannot afibrd to teach your children by words 
 or deeds that the great mass of the teachings of the pul- 
 pit are imworthy of consideration ; for their safety, their 
 respectability, their prosperity, their happiness, all de- 
 pend upon the adoption and j^ractice of Chiistian morals. 
 Do you teach them Christian morals ? Are you care- 
 ful to sit down on the Sabbath, or at any other time, 
 and instruct them in those moralities that are essential 
 to the right and happy issue of their lives ? My friend, 
 you have not the face to do any such thing, for your 
 position will not permit you to do it without shame. 
 Well, if you refuse to do it, who will ? Unhappily 
 your wife is quite as much under your influence as your
 
 To Benjamin Franklin Jones 127 
 
 children, and unless those children go to church on 
 Sunday, they wiU get no instruction in Christian 
 morals whatever, except such as they may pick up at 
 the public schools. 
 
 These children of yours are not to blame for being 
 in the world. They came forth from nothingness in 
 answer to your call, and they are on your hands. You 
 are responsible to them, at least, for their right train- 
 ing. You are in personal honor bound to give them 
 such instruction in morals as will tend to preserve to 
 them health of body and mind, and honorable relations 
 with society. How will you do it ? By telling them 
 that church-going is foolishness, and Sabbath-keeping 
 nonsense, and the teachings of the pulpit only the 
 tricks of pi'iestcraft and the amusement of blockheads ? 
 No, sir. You must take these children by the hand 
 and lead them to church, and show that there are, at 
 least, some things that come from the pulpit which 
 you respect. It will not be enough that you send them 
 and their mother. You must go with them, for, if 
 you do not, they will soon learn the realities of the 
 pulpit, and, in learning them, learn to pity you, and to 
 hold your intolerance in contempt. You must stand 
 by the pulpit as the great teacher of private and pub- 
 lic morality, or do an awful injustice to the children 
 for whose life and healthy education you are re- 
 sponsible.
 
 THE NINTH LETTER. 
 
 £^0 5H;ts^'mgton; ^Ilston lottos. 
 
 CONCERNING THE POLICY OF MAKING HIS BRAINS 
 MARKETABLE. 
 
 JUDGING from recent conversations vnXh. you, and 
 from many things I have heard about you, you 
 are not satisfied, with the results of your life, thus far. 
 You have tried various fields of efibrt, and have failed 
 of the success you sought in all. You know my honest 
 friendship for you, and the measurable respect which 
 I entertain not only for your intellectual gifts, but for 
 that high ideal of art and its mission which has been 
 the only bar to your reward. You wrote a novel, 
 which failed, simply because you refused to write one 
 which would succeed. You erected a standard in your 
 own soul, bowed to your standard, and then was dis- 
 gusted because the humanity upon which you had
 
 To Wafliington Allfton Jones. 129 
 
 turned your back would not applaud your doings. You 
 wrote a poem, classical without a doubt — powerful and 
 beautiful in its way beyond question — but, somehow, 
 the poem had no point of sjTiipathy with the age which 
 you believed ought to receive and love it. Behind 
 these two books you sat in imperial pride, disgusted 
 with a world which seemed so little in knowledge and 
 so low in feeling — so unable to appreciate you, and so 
 ready to give its applause to men of slenderer faculty 
 and shallower motive. Will you permit me to say to 
 you now, before it is too late, that the world will never 
 come to you, and that you must go to the world or die 
 voiceless ? 
 
 My friend, the world is not in want, just at this 
 time, of life-size portraits in oil, with all their stately 
 conventional accompaniments. The world happens to 
 want photographs, and will have nothing but photo- 
 graphs. You choose to stand by your pigments and 
 your canvas and your camel's hair, and to starve, while 
 all the world rushes by you to patronize the sun. You 
 imagine that it would degrade you to have anything to 
 do with photographs. Yoii would not make one — you 
 would not color one — you would not touch one with 
 one of your fingers, because your idea of art, or what 
 you choose to consider art, is so high, that you could 
 have nothing to do "svith the production of a photo- 
 graph without a sense of humiliation. You will die 
 6*
 
 130 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 rather than disgrace the art to which you are in honor 
 married, and degrade the standard you have erected 
 for yourself. Die, my friend, if it will be any satisfac- 
 tion to you ; but the world will never thank you for 
 it, and, moreover, will vote you a fool for your volun- 
 tary sacrifice. The only way for you is to meet the 
 want of the woi'ld and make photographs — make the 
 best photographs the world has seen — so that it shall 
 come to you and ask you to do it favors, and. beg 
 the privilege of paying you much honor and much 
 money. 
 
 I confess to you again that I have a measurable 
 respect for that ideal of art which refuses all com- 
 promise with popular prejudice, and, standing alone, 
 strives to compel the homage of the world, and failing, 
 stands in self-complacent pride to pity and despise 
 those who will not bow to it. Yet this ideal, upon 
 which the issue of your life seems to be turning, has in 
 it, to a fatal degree, the element of selfishness. My 
 friend, what is art but a minister ? What is art but a 
 vehicle by which you may transport the life which is 
 in you to the souls by which you are surrounded — for 
 their good, and not for yours ? Cut off from its rela- 
 tions to life — to the life which produces it, and that to 
 which it is addressed — standing by itself — what is art 
 but a phantom ? — a nothing with a name ? God has 
 endowed you with intellectual wealth. He has given
 
 To Walliington Allfton Jones, 131 
 
 you great powers, and set you upon a throne where 
 you can reason and judge and reach outward and up- 
 ward into great imaginations ; he has given you the 
 power to sj)eak and to sing. For wliat purpose ? Is 
 it that you may selfishly shut this wealth of yours into 
 a cofier, and close the lips of your utterance, from obe- 
 dience to a standard of art which has more reference 
 to you than to the world to which you owe service ? 
 You are rich and must dispense. Who gave you your 
 wealth ? Is it for you to stand and higgle with the 
 world about the form or style in which it shall receive 
 your gifts ? Is it for you to declare that the world 
 shall have none of your expression, unless it be accept- 
 ed in a certain form, which form shall have supreme 
 consideration ? 
 
 You have carried your reverence for your idea of 
 art and your contempt for those who will not regard it 
 so far that you cannot speak with patience of those 
 who succeed in the fields which have witnessed your 
 failure. You have learned to despise those whom the 
 world applauds, because you think the world's applause 
 can only be won by treachery to art. This contempt 
 for those who succeed is the logical result of your ovra 
 failure ; and now you sit alone, in selfish pride, a mar- 
 tyr, as you suppose, to your better ideal and your high- 
 er aim, the world imconscious meanwhile that you have 
 in you the power to move and bless it. You have told
 
 132 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 me tliat you distrust a book which sells, and have 
 spoken with undisguised contempt of men who carry 
 " marketable brains," as you were i:>leased to call 
 them. 
 
 And now we get at our subject. What are brains 
 good for that are not marketable ? My belief is that 
 a man who has brains is in duty bound to make them 
 marketable. My position is that unless mind, under 
 Christian direction and control, is marketable, it is use- 
 less ; and you must permit me to use the word market- 
 able in the largest sense. The world is as we find it 
 — not as we would have it. We write, we speak, we 
 paint, we give utterance to all forms of art, in order 
 to make the world richer and better ; and unless the 
 world will receive what we utter, and take it into its 
 life, it is not benefited, and our utterance is a failure. 
 There are doubtless a few great souls, laboring in some 
 difiicult departments of art, that must labor for the 
 few, and through these few find their way to the 
 world, but these are exceptional cases. Yours is not 
 one, for you have imdertaken only to address the 
 world at large, and it is your fault that you have 
 failed. You would not take the world as you found it. 
 You intended that the world should take you as it 
 'found you. You did not go to the world to sell, 
 throwing yourself into its markets, but you stood at 
 your own door, determined to compel the world to
 
 To Walhington Allfton Jones. 133 
 
 come to you and buy. The world did not come, and I 
 do not blame it. 
 
 In intellectual no less than in commercial affairs, 
 the market is the first consideration. The manufac- 
 turer never adopts one style of fabric as that to which 
 alone his efforts at production shall be devoted, but 
 studies the market, and shifts his machinery and modi- 
 fies his material in accordance with the indications of 
 the market. We hear of certain preachers who preach 
 great sermons, such as a few only love to hear, or have 
 the power to remember and appropriate. They have 
 no right to preach such sermons. If they have any 
 gold in them, they should reduce it to coin that will 
 pass current with the people. There is a stiff and 
 stilted set in occupation of many of the American pul- 
 pits, who suspect a preacher who is very popular, and 
 hold in contempt him who places himself in thorough 
 sympathy with the crowd around him that he may 
 reach and hold them, and who are particularly dis- 
 gusted with what they call " sensation preaching." It 
 seems better to them to preach to small congregations 
 than to draw large houses by making their preaching 
 marketable. Is this being all things to aU men, that 
 they may save some ? Not at all. It is being one 
 thing to a few men, whether they save any or not. St. 
 Paul iinderstood the matter of making his intellectual 
 gifts and his preaching marketable. We know writers
 
 134 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 of magnificent powers — some of them who are certainly 
 very greatly your superiors in mental acquisitions — 
 who are biirying their gifts in books that find no buy- 
 ers. These men might as well be horseblocks, so far 
 as the world is concerned. They are doing nothing 
 for the world. They have not consulted its market, 
 and appear to know and care nothing about its wants. 
 We know orators who never let themselves down to 
 minister to the desire of those whom they address to 
 be melted and moved, but who, with stately dignity, 
 insist on being rational and dull, and on driving from 
 them those whom they desire to hold. 
 
 You, my friend, sympathize with all these men, but 
 do you not see how much a selfish pride lies at the 
 basis of their action ? I give you and them credit for 
 that self-respect which shrinks from the tricks of the 
 mountebank and the demagogue, but I charge you and 
 them with a pride which is not consistent with the 
 position of the artist as a minister of life. With all 
 your nobleness of nature, you have never been able to 
 conceive of a higher motive of action, in a literary man, 
 than the ambition to achieve literary distinction. You 
 do not understand how a man can undertake a literary 
 enterpi'ise which has not literary reputation for its ob- 
 ject ; and when some book is uttered for the simple 
 purpose of doing good, by one who has it in him to do 
 great things for himself — a book which does not even
 
 To Wafliington AMon Jones. 135 
 
 pretend to literary merit beyond that which lies in 
 adapting means to ends — you curl your lip in contempt 
 for his voluntary degradation. He writes for a mar- 
 ket, and the world accepts him, and he does the world 
 good ; and if he did not write for a market, the world 
 would spurn him as it spurns you ; and he would be 
 deprived as you are of the privilege of doing the world 
 good. 
 
 I suppose you hug to yourself the delusion that 
 you are in advance of your age, and that what it fails 
 to appreciate, posterity will receive at its full value. 
 To leave out of consideration the selfishness of this 
 fancy — as if you and your reputation were the only 
 things to be taken into account — let me assure you that 
 the coming age Avill have its own heroes to look after, 
 and will stand a very small chance of stumbling upon 
 your dead novel and your still-born poem. Sir, the 
 only way for you to win the reputation which I know 
 you desire, is to throw your life — your fhinking and 
 acting self — into this age, as a power to uplift and 
 mould and bless it. You must come into the market. 
 Tou must shape your utterances to the want of the 
 times. You must be content to work for others, for- 
 getful of yourself, and to give to men, in cups from 
 which they wiU drink it, that hfe with which God has 
 filled you. 
 
 But you despise your age. The age has not treated
 
 136 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 you well. The age is vulgar and low and rude and 
 
 ungrateful. The age is mercenary and immoral. Your 
 
 wounded self-love has misled you, sir. You are living 
 
 iu the greatest age of the world, and your soul only 
 
 needs to be attuned to its great movements and events 
 
 to find itself coined into words for their majestic 
 
 music. 
 
 " Every age 
 Appears to souls who live in it (ask Carlyle) 
 Most unheroic. Ours, for instance, ours ! 
 The thinkers scout it and the poets abound 
 "Who scorn to touch it with a finger-tip ; 
 A pewter age — mixed metal, silver- washed ; 
 An age of scum, spooned off the richer past ; 
 An age of patches for old gaberdines ; 
 An age of mere transition, meaning nouglit 
 Except that what succeeds must shame it quite, 
 If God please." 
 
 And now, as I have broached Mrs. Browning upon 
 
 this point, I will go farther and let her sing the rest 
 
 of my paragraph : 
 
 " Nay, if there's room for poets in the world 
 A little overgrown (I think there is), 
 Their sole work is to represent the age — 
 Their age, not Charlemagne's — this live, throbbing age, 
 That brawls, cheats, maddens, calculates, aspires, 
 And spends more passion, more heroic heat, 
 Betwixt the mirrors of its drawing rooms, 
 Than Eoland with his knights at Eoncesvalles. 
 To flinch from modern varnish, coat, or flounce. 
 Cry out for togas and the picturesque. 
 Is fatal — foolish too. * * *
 
 To Wafliington Allfton Jones. 137 
 
 "Never flinch, 
 But, still unscrupulously epic, catch 
 Upon the burning lava of a song 
 The full-veined, heaving, double-breasted age ; 
 That, when the next shall come, the men of that 
 May touch the impress with reverent hand, and say, 
 ' Behold — behold the paps we all have sucked ! ' " 
 
 " This is living art, 
 Which thus presents and thus records true life." 
 
 Do what you can to make your age great. Be alike 
 its minister and its mouthpiece. Give yourself to your 
 age, and your age will take care of you, and the ages 
 to come will be the guardians of your fame. 
 
 When you spoke to me of " marketable brains," I 
 understood you of course to use the phrase in a lower 
 sense than that in which I have used it. I have not 
 adopted your meaning, simply because it walks in the 
 shadow of mine. A man who adapts the products of 
 his brain to the real wants of the world, is the man 
 who sells his books and makes money by them. You 
 ought to be sensible enough to know that a man who 
 writes from no higher motive than the desire to win 
 money, cannot meet the wants of the world, and that 
 he who writes a marketable book must necessarily be 
 something better than a mercenary wretch who would 
 sell all that is godlike in him for gold. Yet I will ad- 
 mit that the desire to win bread — nay, the ambition to 
 acquire a competent wealth — is, in its subordinate
 
 138 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 place, a worthy motive in impelling the artist to make 
 his brains marketable. Commerce puts its brains into 
 the market, and nobody cries out " shame," or hints at 
 humiliation. The brains of all this working, trading, 
 scheming world are in the market. These " marketable 
 brains " are the pabulum of progress everywhere ; and a 
 writer is good for nothing for the world who does not 
 understand what it is to work for a living — what it is 
 to expend life for the means of continuing life. Nay, 
 I would go farther, and say that God has, by direct 
 intent, compelled the worker in all departments of art 
 to make his brains marketable, imder penalty of 
 starving. 
 
 I know, my friend, that this is all very disgusting 
 to you. You feel that the artist ought to be king, and 
 that grateful men should only be too glad to do homage 
 and bring gifts to him. You are wrong. The people 
 are kings, and you are their servant. The law an- 
 nounced by the Great Teacher on this point is univer- 
 sal, and without exception. A man is felt to be great 
 only by reason of his power to minister to the life 
 aroimd him. Life licks the hand that feeds it. You 
 think it a degradation to go to the world with your 
 brains, adapting their product to the popular want, and 
 taking your pay in the currency of the coimtry ; but it 
 is this or something worse. Think of those kings of 
 the old English literature, who were obliged to sit and
 
 sneak in the anterooms of nobles, and beg the patron- 
 age of the rich and great, and become lickspittles for 
 the sake of the influence that would sell their books, 
 and give them position, and furnish them with bread 
 to starve on and a garret to die in. The world will 
 not buy what it does not want, and you are imreason- 
 able if you blame it. You thirst for the world's praise, 
 you need its money, you really envy the success of 
 others, and because praise and money and success are 
 denied you, you button your coat to your chin, turn up 
 your nose to the world, and, " grand, gloomy, and pe- 
 culiar," stand apart. 
 
 You mistake entirely if you suppose the world to 
 be a contemptible master ; and this failure to appre- 
 ciate the world — this persistent under-estimate of the 
 world — which you and all of your class entertain, is 
 enough to account for your failure. The Avorld deals 
 with practical life, and is guided by experience and 
 common sense. The world is at work to win bread 
 and raiment and shelter. The world digs the field, 
 and searches the seas, and trades, and manufactures, 
 and builds railroads and telegraphs and ships, and 
 prints and reads newspapers. The world is full of the 
 cares of government. The world fights battles and 
 pays taxes. The world is under a great pressure of 
 care and work. This working, trading, fighting, care- 
 ful world holds within itself the great, vital forces of
 
 society, the practical interests of humanity, the wisest, 
 brightest, noblest minds that live. And this world, for 
 which you have such contempt, is the only competent 
 judge of the artist, and is always the final judge of 
 art. " The light of the public square will test its val- 
 ue," said l^Iichael Angelo to the young sculptor whose 
 work he was examining. The remark was the bow of 
 a respectful servant to his master. You can write for 
 dillettanti if you choose — for an audience " fit, though 
 few " — for the fellows of the mutual admiration socie- 
 ty — and they will praise you ; but you know that if 
 you fail to get hold of this world which you aifect to 
 despise, you are powerless and without reward as a 
 literary man. 
 
 As I think of your kingly gifts of intellect, and of 
 the power there is in you to bless mankind, art itself 
 appears before me in the likeness of Him who wore 
 the seamless robe among humble disciples, and the 
 crown of thorns between thieves. Ah ! when art be- 
 comes the mediator between genius and the world, 
 then does it answer to its noblest ideal, and confer the 
 greatest glory upon the artist. You, in your realm, 
 are almost as incomprehensible and unapproachable 
 by the world as God was, before He expressed His 
 love and His practical good will through the gift of 
 The Beloved. He had wrought augustly in the heav- 
 ens, and filled the earth ^vdth glory. He had crowded
 
 To Wafliington Allfton Jones. 141 
 
 immensity with the tokens of His powei' and the ex- 
 pressions of His majestic thought ; but the world did 
 not see Him — would not receive Him — regarded Him 
 without reverence. Why should He not despise the 
 world ? Why, falling back upon the dignity of His 
 Godhood, and sufficient for himself, did He not spurn 
 the race Avhich so disgraced itself and Him ? Ah ! He 
 pitied. He respected the characteristics of the nature 
 He had made. He sent the choicest child of His Infin- 
 ite Bosom down into the world to wear its humblest 
 garb, and eat its homeliest fare, and perform its mean- 
 est oifices, and die its most terrible and disgraceful 
 death, that the world might drink through Him the 
 life of the Everlasting Father. My friend, send your 
 mediator into the world. Send the child of your 
 bosom, clad in humble garments — charged only with a 
 mission of love and practical good will to men. Let 
 me assure you that you can only bring the world to 
 love you and learn of you by making it the partaker 
 of your life through some expression of art wliich it 
 can appropriate, l^o matter if it die. It shall rise 
 again, and when it rises, rise to you, drawing all men 
 mito it and unto you.
 
 THE TENTH LETTER. 
 
 fo %tb. |cre;malj lottos, §.§. ' 
 
 CONCERNING TEE FAILURE OF HIS PULPIT MINISTRY. 
 
 I NEVER should have undertaken this letter to 
 you, had I not been requested to do so by one of 
 your professional brethren. It is not a pleasant thing 
 to find fault with people, particularly with those whose 
 faults are the results of natural organization. My object 
 in finding fault at any time, with any person, is reform ; 
 and you can never reform. You cannot make yourself 
 over again, into something difierent and better ; and 
 this ink of mine will be wasted, unless it shall address 
 other eyes than yours. The assurance that other eyes 
 will be interested in what I have to say to you deter- 
 mines me to write this letter. 
 
 Surveying the American pulpit, I find it occupied 
 by men who can legitimately be divided into two great
 
 To Rev. Jeremiah Jones, D. D. 143 
 
 _s. 
 
 classes, and these, for the present purpose, I will call 
 the poetical and the iinpoetical. I am not sure that 
 these designations are sufficiently definite, or even suffi- 
 ciently suggestive, but I can tell you what I mean by 
 them. The class which I denominate poetical is com- 
 posed of men who possess imagination, strong and ten- 
 der sympathies, profound insight into human character 
 and motive, and the power to attract to themselves the 
 affections of those around them. These men possess 
 also what we term individuality in an unusual degree — 
 a quality which carries with it the power to transmute 
 truth into life — to resolve systems into character — to 
 appropriate, digest, and assimilate all spiritual food 
 whatsoever, so that when they preach they do not 
 preach as the mouthpieces of a school, or a sect, or a 
 system, but as revelators and promulgators of a life. 
 These are the preachers who touch men, because they 
 preach out of their own life and experience. These 
 are the men who speak from the heart and reach the 
 heart — the men who possess what, for lack of a better 
 name, we call magnetism. The unpoetical class may 
 roughly be defined by the statement that they are the 
 opposites of the poetical. They have no imagination ; 
 they are not men of strong and tender sympathies ; 
 they do not possess fine insight (though some of them 
 possess a degree of cunning which is mistaken for it) ; 
 they have not the power to attract to themselves the
 
 144 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 affections of those around them ; they do not possess 
 true individuality (though they may have pecuUarities or 
 idiosyncracies which pass for it) ; and, in their utter- 
 ances, they are little more than the mouthpieces of 
 the systems and schools to which they are attached. 
 
 To the latter class I assign you without the slight- 
 est hesitation, because natxn-e has placed you in it. I 
 have no expectation that you will ever be different 
 from what you are. It is possible that some terrible 
 affliction or some great humiliation will soften your 
 character, and develop your heart, and quicken your 
 sympathies, but I could hardly pray for such discipline 
 as would be necessary to revolutionize your constitu- 
 tion. No sir ; you will probably live and die the same 
 sort of a man you always have been — useful in some 
 respects, self-complacent in all respects— an irreproach- 
 able, unlovable, sound, solid, dogmatic doctor of di- 
 vinity. 
 
 I give you credit for an honest Christian character 
 and purpose, but I should be false to my convictions 
 should I fail to tell you that I consider you aud all who 
 are like you to be out of place in the Christian puljiit. 
 Your religion is mostly a matter of intellect. You are 
 fond of preaching doctrine. You delight in what you 
 are pleased to denominate theology. You rejoice in a 
 controversy. You speak as by authority. You de- 
 nounce sin, as if you had never sinned, and never ex-
 
 To Rev. Jeremiah Jones, D. D. 145 
 
 pected to sin. You unfold what you call " the scheme 
 of salvation " as if it were a grand contrivance of the 
 Supreme Being to circumvent Himself — a marvellous 
 invention by which He is enabled to harmonize His 
 justice with His pity. You have a " system of truth " 
 to promulgate, and, in your mind, it seems essential 
 that this system should be accepted in all its parts as 
 the condition of salvation. You are, indeed, the spe- 
 cial guardian of the orthodoxy of your region. Alas ! 
 for the poor candidate for the Christian ministry who 
 may be obliged to pass under your examination ! Alas ! 
 for any person who may presume to decide that a man 
 can be a Christian without embracing your " system 
 of truth," or that religion is not quite as much a mat- 
 ter of the brains as of the heart ! You lug along into 
 this present age, to its scandal and its shame, to the 
 detriment and disgrace of the Christian cause, the old 
 Puritan idea that assent to a creed — that belief in cer- 
 tain dogmas — has more to do with the soundness of a 
 man's Christianity than an}i;hing else. You do not 
 ask, first and foremost, in your inquiries concerning a 
 man, whether his life is pure — pious toward God and 
 loving and benevolent toward men — ^but whether he is 
 sound in his " views." At this very moment, while 
 you are reading these words, you are wondering, not 
 whether I am a Christian man, loving and serving God 
 
 and men, but whether I am orthodox or heterodox in 
 
 1
 
 146 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 my " views ; " and becaiise I hold your frigid scholas- 
 ticism in contempt, you regard me as " loose " in my 
 " views," and, on the whole, dangerous in my teach- 
 ings. Tell me, doctor, if it is not so ? Have you not 
 been troubled more with doubts about my orthodoxy, 
 while reading this paragraph, than anything else ? 
 
 "Will you be offended if I reveal to you the nature 
 of your Sabbath ministrations, and endeavor to show 
 you why you cannot hope to accomplish very much for 
 your Master ? Your manner is not humble — your 
 spirit is not humble. You do not enter your church 
 on Sunday morning crushed with a sense of your 
 responsibility — feeling the need of aid and inspiration 
 — tilled Avith tender reverence toward God and love 
 toward man. Your utterances are those of a self- 
 sufficient man. Your prayers touch nobody. They 
 are full of sonorous phrases culled from the sacred 
 text ; they aboimd in passages of information ad- 
 dressed to the Deity ; they embrace all the objects of 
 Christian solicitude and labor ; they range the earth 
 through all the degrees of latitude and longitude for 
 subjects ; the sailor, the soldier, the heathen, the Jews, 
 the Roman Catholics and all other errorists, the for- 
 eign missionaries, the home missionaries, the civil au- 
 thorities-r-all these come in by catalogue. These 
 broad generalities of petition, which do not grow, as 
 you very well know, out of any immediate impulse
 
 To Rev. Jeremiah Jones, D. D. 147 
 
 of desire, but only out of a general impression of de- 
 sirableness, have not the slightest power to lead a con- 
 gregation in genuine prayer. The thing sounds well. 
 The words are well chosen and well pronounced, but 
 they do not lift a heart to its Maker, or give voice to 
 the aspirations of a single soul. 
 
 Your sermon is like your prayer, and carries with 
 it the idea that you are safe, and comparatively inde- 
 pendent. It is as if you were to stand in your pulpit, 
 and say : " Here am I, Rev. Jeremiah Jones, D. D., 
 safe, by the grace of God, forever, with a message to 
 deliver. Repent and believe what I believe, and you 
 will be saved ; refuse to repent and believe what I 
 believe, and you will be damned. Take things in my 
 way, see things as I see them, adopt my opinions and 
 my system, and you will be all right. If you do not, 
 then you will be all wrong, and I wash my hands of 
 all responsibility for your destruction." Salvation 
 would seem, in your scheme, to be a matter of ma- 
 chinery. You preach just what you were taught to 
 preach at the theological seminary, and have not taken 
 a single step in advance. It is the same old brain- 
 stuff, unsoftened by a better love, unfertilized by a 
 better experience, without life or the power to enrich 
 life. You put before your hearers a skeleton, and 
 hold them responsible for not seeing and admitting 
 that it is a beautiful form of life. You give them a
 
 system and a scheme, when they need a life and a 
 heart. You insist on driving them by threats to Him 
 who, with a different spirit and different policy, said 
 " Come imto me." 
 
 Do not understand me to blame you for all this, for 
 you cannot very well help it. I only state the matter 
 in detail, to prove that the pulpit is not the place for 
 you. You are honest enough, but you have no sensi- 
 bility. You have mind enough, but you have none of 
 that poetic or spiritual insight which enables other 
 men to seize the essence of that scheme of truths with 
 whose adjustment into form and system you so con- 
 stantly busy yourself. I once entered the study of a 
 preacher who had been for three months out of public 
 employment, and who, to demonstrate to me his in- 
 dustry, assured me that he had written during that 
 period thirty-six sermons. Indeed, he showed me the 
 pile. Now there was a job which you could have done 
 just as well as he, but neither you nor he, nor any 
 other man who could do it, is fit to write a sermon at 
 all. Moved by no special want of the souls aroxmd 
 him, taking no suggestions from the living time, he 
 wrote sermons — very sound sermons, doubtless — ^but 
 sermons with no more power in them to move men 
 than there is in a mathematical proposition. You seem 
 to feel that the truth is the truth, and that if you 
 promulgate it with an honest purpose, it is all that is
 
 To Rev. Jeremiah Jones, D. D. 149 
 
 necessary. Men occasionally find their way into your 
 pulpit, however, to whom your congi-egation give their 
 hearts before they have uttered ten sentences, and 
 why ? The heart instinctively acknowledges the cre- 
 dentials of its teacher. Therer is something about some 
 men, in the pulpit, which draws my heart to them at 
 once. I know by their beariog, by the sound of their 
 voices, by every emanation of their personality, that 
 their hearts are on a sympathetic level with all hu- 
 manity — that they are bowing tearfully under their 
 own bui'den while they help to bear mine — that they 
 are my fellows in temptation, in struggle, in aspira- 
 tion. 
 
 This poetic instinct — this power to reach through 
 words and phrases, and forms and types and figures, 
 and to grasp the naked truths of which they are only 
 the representatives — is essential to any man who feeds 
 the people. You are fond of creeds and catechisms ; 
 and those who listen to you are instructed in creeds 
 and catechisms ; but you might just as hopefully under- 
 take to make a living tree out of dry chips, as a 
 living Christian out of creeds and catechisms. This 
 poetic instinct or power is the solvent of creeds and 
 catechisms — the gastric juice that softens them into 
 chyle, and the absorbents that suck from them their 
 vital fluid for the soul's nourishment. But why do I 
 talk to you about this poetic faculty ? You do not
 
 150 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 understand me. You do not comprehend me at all. 
 You think that I am foggy and fanciful — transcenden- 
 tal and nonsensical ; but it is you — stolid pretender to 
 solidity and sound sense — who are foggy and fanciful. 
 You think and call yourself a matter-of-fact man, when 
 you are only a matter-of-form man. The poet .is the 
 man who touches facts. The poet is the man of com- 
 mon sense, who finds and reveals the inner life and 
 meaning of things ? The true poet in a free pulpit is 
 a man in his place, and no other man is fit for the 
 place. When the true poet speaks from the pulpit, the 
 people hear ; and they will hear gladly no other man. 
 He is the only man who can reveal a congregation to 
 itself. The great charm of The Great Teacher to the 
 woman at the well was His power to tell her all the 
 things that ever she did, and that was her sole recom- 
 mendation of Him to those of her friends whom she 
 invited into His presence. 
 
 There are not so many preachers of your class in 
 the world now as there were once, thank God ! It was 
 this brain Christianity — this intellectualism — this scho- 
 lasticism — that gave root to those great controversies 
 and schisms which disgraced Christianity, alike in the 
 judgment of history and the eyes of a faithless world. 
 Pride of theological opinion, sectarian partisanship, 
 strifes of words, splittings of hairs, formalisms, — these 
 have been the curse of Christianity and the clog upon
 
 To Rev. Jeremiah Jones, D. D. 151 
 
 its progress in all ages. You and those who are like 
 you have made a complicated and difficult thing of that 
 which is exquisitely simple. You have surrounded that 
 fountain which flows with a volume of sparkling bounty 
 for the cleansing and the healing of all hmnanity, 
 with hedges of words and forms, and conditions and 
 prejudices ; yet you are too blind to see it. But I see 
 your class fading out, and another and a better coming 
 in, and I mark with gratitude the change in the general 
 aspect of the Christian enterprise. The difterences 
 between sects are growing small by degi'ees and beau- 
 tifully less. Brother grasps the hand of brother across 
 the chasms which the fathers made. Xames do not 
 separate as they once did those whom the common re- 
 ception of the vital truths of Christianity has made one. 
 Love unites those whom logic and learning have long 
 dinded. And you, sir, with your dry doctrinal dis- 
 courses, your array of redemptive machinery, your de- 
 nunciations and threatenings, your fulminations against 
 opposing sects, your pride of opinion and your hard 
 and unpoetic nature, are out of place in a pulpit that is 
 already far in advance of you. 
 
 I I'ecently addressed a letter to an intelligent rela- 
 tive of yours concerning his habit of staying away from 
 the church on the Sabbath. I foimd serious fault with 
 him for his delinquencies in this respect. I undertook 
 to present to him sufficient reasons for reform, and
 
 152 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 prominently among those reasons I stated that he 
 needed the intellectual stimulus which, in his circum- 
 stances, he would only secure by attendance on the 
 ministrations of the pulpit. I do not retract what I 
 said to him at all. I should advise him to hear you 
 preach, rather than to hear nobody, spending his Sab- 
 baths in idleness ; yet I cannot hide from you the fact 
 that you and those who are like you are responsible to 
 a great extent for the thinly attended Christian meet- 
 ings of the Sabbath. I cannot help feeling that those 
 preachers who find themselves without power to draw 
 men to them by the beauty of their lives and charac- 
 ters, and by the adaptedness of their teachings to the 
 popular want, and by that magnetism of poetic or 
 spiritual sympathy which is the heavenly baptism, are 
 doing more than they imagine to depopulate the 
 churches. I confess to no small degree of sympathy 
 with those who prefer staying at home to hearing you 
 preach ; for though I am sometimes stirred intellectually 
 by you, I am never moved religiously and spiritually. 
 
 Look at the churches with me for a moment, my 
 reverend friend, and mark what you see. Here is a 
 church with a man in the pulpit of great intellectual 
 gifts and excellent scholarship. His sermons are 
 models of English composition. He is known in all 
 the churches as a sound man. Look over his congre- 
 gation : two, three, four, in a pew — old men, steady
 
 To Rev. Jeremiah Jones, D. D. 153 
 
 men, pious women — some asleeji — all decorous. You 
 will see the same sight fifty-two Simdays of the year. 
 The teaching is good enough, but there is no motion. 
 The instruction is sound, but there is no imj^ulse. How 
 many respectable, sleepy, sound preachers and churches 
 do you suppose there are in this country which show 
 no change from Sabbath to Sabbath and from year to 
 year, and which make no aggressive inroads upon the 
 worldly Hfe which environs them ? Well, here is 
 another church, whose preacher never was celebrated 
 for the soundness of his " views " — who, indeed, never 
 paid very much attention to his " views ; " but who tried 
 to do something — tried to introduce a new life into his 
 church and into the community in which he lived. 
 What is there about this man that draAVS the crowd 
 to him ? He is not so intellectual as his neighbor ; he 
 is not so good a scholar as his neighbor; he cannot 
 write so fine a sermon as his neighbor, but he draws a 
 church full of people. The young flock to him ; his 
 Sunday school is the largest to be found for many 
 miles around him, and his church is recognized as a 
 thing of power and progress. This man has reached 
 the hearts of his people, through the sympathies of his 
 poetic nature. He has touched them where they live 
 — not where they think. He has melted them, moulded 
 them, moved them. I tell you, sir, that thin churches 
 are very much attributable to thin ministers — not thin
 
 154 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 in brains, or scholarship, but thin in heart and thin in 
 human sympathy and thin in spirituality — thin where 
 they should be thickest. 
 
 You, Dr. Jones, and your brethren of the pulpit, 
 very rarely get honestly talked to from the pews, but 
 you could leam a great deal more from them than you 
 imagine, if they would talk to you honestly. You rarely 
 hear the truth. Your friends praise you, and your ene- 
 mies shim you. Let me say to you this : that when you 
 preach you preach with such an air of authority, and 
 such an assumption of superiority, and such an ap- 
 parent lack of sympathy with my weaknesses and 
 trials, that I find myself rising in opposition to you. 
 I think that all those hearts which have not schooled 
 themselves to accept your teachings as they are ren- 
 dered, are afiected as mine is. Do not deceive your- 
 self with the thought that these feelings are the off- 
 spring of depravity, for they are no such thing. They 
 are the spirit's protest against your right to teach. 
 Very differently do many other men affect me. Ah ! 
 well do I remember one, sleeping now within a few rods 
 of where I write, and waking uncounted miles away 
 beyond the blue ether that draws the veil between my 
 eyes and heaven, who took my heart in his hand when- 
 ever it pleased him. He had an intellect as bright and 
 keen and strong as yours, but his power was not in 
 that. He preached mere a sermon that a tasteful
 
 To Rev. Jeremiah Jones, D. D. 155 
 
 scholar would call brilliant, but his power was not in 
 the brilliancy of his sermons. His power was in his 
 sanctified, spiritualized humanity, that never blamed 
 but always pitied me, that took me in its charitable 
 arnfs and blessed me, that held my hand and gave me 
 loving felloAVship, that unselfishly poured out its life 
 that the life of all humanity might be raised to a higher 
 level. You are too great in your own estimation. Yon 
 are too much impressed with your own dignity. He 
 was Humility's personification, and carried a sense of his 
 unworthiness as a constant burden. Ah ! my friend, 
 have you not learned that the weak do not commit 
 their burdens to the strong ? Learn of your children, 
 then, who seek for refuge in their mother's slender 
 arms and not in yours. 
 
 I told you at the outset that I had no expectation 
 of reforming you, because it is not in you to be re- 
 formed. You lack the insight to apprehend spiritual 
 things ; you are harsh ; you are coarse ; you dwell in 
 forms and phrases ; you are constitutionally imperious ; 
 you are not sympathetic ; you are not tempted as other 
 men are. This lack of sympathy in your nature has cut 
 you off from participation in the severest trials and 
 struggles that ever visit the Christian soul. You cannot 
 have charity for others. But thei*e are some who will 
 read this letter and gather perhaps a valuable hint from 
 it. It will not have been written in vain if one
 
 156 Letters to the Joneles. 
 
 preacher leai*ns that his power and usefulness in the 
 pulpit do not reside either in the orthodoxy or the 
 heterodoxy of his " views," do not reside in any system 
 of theology or in any intellectual power, but do reside 
 in a spiritual life, which, acting through its sympathies, 
 by apprehension of and application to human need, 
 nourishes, elevates and spiritualizes human character.
 
 THE ELEYEN"TH LETTER. 
 
 CONCERNING TEE BEST WA T OF SPENDING EIS HONBT. 
 
 THE art least understood in this country, where 
 money is made easily and quickly, is that of 
 spending it wisely and well. Most men think that if 
 they could make money they would run the risk of 
 spending it properly ; and these same men criticise 
 their fortimate neighbors ; yet it is doubtless true that 
 the poor do not monopolize the wisdom of the world, 
 and that if they were to change places with the rich 
 money would be no better spent than it is now. There 
 are enough poor men who succeed, from time to time, 
 in getting rich, to show that wealth rarely brings with 
 it the wisdom which will dispense it with comfort and 
 credit to its possessor and with genuine benefit to the 
 world. Of how few men of wealth can it be said that
 
 158 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 they spend their money well! One is niggardly, 
 another is lavish ; one runs into sports and debauch- 
 eries, another into extravagance in equipage ; one apes 
 the fashionable, or does what he can to buy social 
 position, another separates himself from others by 
 using his money to thrust his personal eccentricities 
 before the public ; one expends thousands in ostenta- 
 tious charities, and there is occasionally one who im- 
 poverishes himself and his family by his improvident 
 beneficence. Caprice and impulse seem to govern the 
 spending of money more than principle, with the large 
 majority of those who have money to spend. 
 
 It is a good sign for a man who has made money to 
 take to spending it in any way that is not vicious. It 
 usually shows that he is getting over the excitement 
 of pursuit — that the pleasures of seeking wealth are 
 beginning to pall, and that his heart is looking for a 
 fresh delight. It seems to me to be a good sign, I say, 
 for a man to reach this point, for it proves that he is 
 not a miser. When a man can content himself with 
 a never-ending search for wealth, or rather, when a 
 rich man can be content "with the pleasure of adding to 
 wealth which he can never use, and which will be 
 most likely to damage his children, it is evident that he 
 possesses a very sordid nature, or that his character 
 has been made sordid by his absorbing pursuit of gain. 
 To begin to dispense with one hand what the other
 
 To Stephen Girard Jones. 159 
 
 has gained, and still may be gaining, is to assume a 
 healthy attitude. A man who does this is not spoil- 
 ing. 
 
 It happens in this country, where estates are not 
 entailed, that there are but a few families which, for 
 any considerable number of generations, remain rich. 
 Wealth, when left to voluntary management, is almost 
 imiformly dissipated in two or three generations, so 
 that the great-grandchild nearly always is obliged to 
 begin just where the great-grandfather did. Oftener 
 than otherwise, the reach of a fortune is briefer than 
 this. It is thus that men are not bred to the manage- 
 ment and the expenditure of wealth. Our rich men are 
 men who have made their money — men who have spent 
 their youth in learning how to make it, and spent the 
 strength of their years in making it. On becoming 
 rich, they find that there is one part of their education 
 which has been neglected, viz. : that which relates to 
 the best methods of spending money. Tliey ai'e not 
 misers ; they are not sordid men ; they would gladly 
 do something which shall prove to the world that they 
 are not altogether ungrateful for the handsome way in 
 which it has treated them. Moreover, there is a call 
 within them for repayment in comfort or some form 
 of satisfaction for the toU and care which it has cost 
 them to win wealth. Many a man on reaching wealth 
 has found himself confronted by the great problem of
 
 160 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 his life, and many a man, imable to solve it, has given 
 up the thought of spending, and gone back to money- 
 getting to seek his sole satisfaction in the excitement 
 of the pursuit. Not imfrequently the process of getting 
 money has been so absorbing, and has so shut out of 
 the mind all culture and all generous pleasure, that the 
 spending of money can fulfil no "want. 
 
 I have said thus much generally on this subject, my 
 friend, that you may attach sufficient importance to 
 what I have to say to you. You have been fortimate 
 in business. Your enterprise and industry have been 
 abundantly rewarded. All your adventures have been 
 prospered, and you are to-day the richest of all the 
 Joneses. What are you going to do wath your money ? 
 You have arrived at the point when this inquiry has, I 
 am sure, profound interest for you. You are not a 
 man who can be content with the life-long task of ac- 
 quisition. You wish to give an expression to your 
 wealth, for your personal satisfaction, and for the pur- 
 pose of adding privileges to the lot of those whom you 
 love. 
 
 In laying out your plans for spending money, the 
 first consideration is safety for yourself and your 
 family. Any plan which contemplates idleness or dissi- 
 pation for yourself or your children, is illegitimate, 
 and Tv^ll prove to be ruinous. I am not afraid that you 
 will ever become idle, or, even, that you will become
 
 To Stephen Girard Jones. 161 
 
 devoted to any form of vicious indulgence. Your 
 habits of industry and sobriety are well formed, and I 
 do not think that you are in any personal danger. The 
 danger relates entirely to your family. You had a 
 hard time when you were a boy, and through all your 
 early manhood woi'kcd severely. You have frequently 
 said to your friends that you did not intend that your 
 children should be subjected to as much hardship as 
 you had been. There is danger that your parental 
 tenderness will injure these children. Permit me to 
 ask what harm those early hardships of yours inflicted 
 upon you ? Was it not by the means of these hard- 
 ships that you learned to achieve your successes ? 
 Then why do you so tenderly deprecate hardships for 
 your children ? Let me warn you that through this 
 tenderness for your children your wealth Biay become 
 — ^nay, is quite likely to become — a curse to them. 
 
 This notion that wealth brings immunity from in- 
 dustry is the ruin of thousands every year. I do not 
 intend to convey the idea that your children shall all 
 work in the same way that you have done, bixt that 
 neither girl nor boy of yours shall ever receive the im- 
 pression that she or he can live reputably or happily 
 without the systematic and useful employment of their 
 minds, or their hands, or both. Give them all a better 
 education than you had, and subject them to the same 
 rigid rule* of labor and discipline which are applied to
 
 162 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 their jioorer classmates. Above all things teach them 
 that they must rely upon themselves for their position 
 in the world, and that all children are mean-spirited 
 and contemptible who base their respectability on the 
 wealth of their father. Give all your boys a business, 
 and assist them in it sparingly, and with great dis- 
 crimination. Let no son of yours " lie down " on you, 
 but make all the help you give them depend upon their 
 personal worthiness to receive it. Money won without 
 effort is little prized, and you may be sure that you 
 will get few thanks from your children for releasing 
 them from the necessity of industry. Nobody knows 
 better than you how necessary industry is to the com- 
 fort and pleasure of living, and it should be your 
 special care, in all your schemes for spending money 
 upon your family, that these schemes should involve 
 family employment or improvement. Better a thousand 
 tunes throw your money into the river, than permit it 
 to spoil your cliildren. 
 
 There is danger also to the community in which 
 you live, and to the himible men by whom you are 
 surrounded, in indiscreet benefactions. You are im- 
 pulsive ; your money now comes to you easily ; and it 
 is not hard for you to toss a gratuity to those wl>om 
 you know will be glad to receive it. Universal obser- 
 vation proves that money which does not cost any- 
 tliing is rarely well spent. Men will thank, you pro-
 
 To Stephen Girard Jones. 163 
 
 fusely for the dollar Avhich you give them for some 
 insignificant service, but that dollar is pretty certain to 
 be spent upon their vices, and to help to make them 
 beggars and flunkies. You, doubtless, find yourself 
 surrounded by men Avho would " sponge " you gladly 
 — wlio think and say that you could give them any 
 amount of money " and never feel it." It is possible 
 that there are a few mean-spirited Joneses who are 
 already wondering whether you intend to leave them 
 any money, or who have already asked you for " assist- 
 ance." Never dismiss an application for help without 
 examination ; but be careful how you give money to 
 those who are able to earn it. Never think it a dis- 
 grace to be thought mean and niggardly by those who 
 Avish to get your money, without rendering an equiva- 
 lent for it. 
 
 It is not necessary for me to tell you that no sub- 
 scription paper ever starts within five miles of you that 
 does not come to you before it completes its round. 
 Now do not get sick of the sight of these petitions. 
 The offices of charity are never complete, and public 
 spirit will always find work to do in fresh measures of 
 improvement. It is right that you, who have been so 
 abundantly prospered, should be abundantly charitable. 
 It is right that you, who have so large a stake in public 
 order and general prosperity, should minister gen- 
 erously to public improvement. The real danger with
 
 164 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 you, is, that you will give in such a way as to relieve 
 others of the burden of duty which they should carry. 
 Tliis, I confess, is not the common weakness of i*ich 
 men, but it would be their common error if the com- 
 munity were to have its will. There is a contemptible 
 spirit pervading the social body which would gladly 
 shirk the cost of supporting public charities and pub- 
 lic institutions and public improvements and throw it 
 upon rich men. You are the member of a church ; and 
 I am ashamed to say that there is quite a general feel- 
 ing among the members that you could pay the entire 
 expenses " without feeling it." I suppose you might 
 do this without suffering very much pecuniary incon- 
 venience from it ; but if you were to do it, it would 
 damage not only the church but you. The jealousy of 
 the very men who would gladly shirk expenses that 
 they would load upon your shovdders, would destroy 
 the hai-mony of the church and drive you from it. It 
 will sometimes fall to your lot to pay that which nig- 
 gardly souls refuse to pay, after the willing ones have 
 exhausted their ability. Stand squarely up to this 
 work, like the noble man you are. Never let it be seen 
 by the community that you have any desire to avoid ex- 
 penditures which it belongs to you to make. Do your 
 part scrupulously. Let every man see and feel that 
 while you will not relieve others of burdens which 
 belong to them, you are determined to carry all which
 
 To Stephen Girard Jones. 165 
 
 belong to you, to the last ounce. Let society ftel that 
 it can rely upon you at all times for that measure of 
 help which it belongs to you to render. 
 
 I am aware that I have told you but little as yet as 
 to the proper way of spending money, but I have nar- 
 rowed the field of inquiry. I have told you never to 
 spend it in such a way as to destroy the industrious 
 habits of your family or to feed the vices of the poor 
 men around you, or to foster a mendicant spirit among 
 your relatives, or to relieve general society from the 
 burdens Avhich should be equitably distributed among 
 its constituents. And now, let me go further and say 
 that all ostentation is vulgar. It is quite the habit of 
 men who become rich to show off their wealth by 
 building large and costly houses, and furnishing them 
 at great expense, and displaying luxurious equipage. 
 The men who do this are very rarely those who have 
 lived in fine hoiises, or had practical acquaintance with 
 luxurious domestic appointments ; but this seems to be 
 the only Avay in which they can give expression to 
 their wealth. It is, I admit, better than nothing. 
 Streets and biiilding sites are improved by it ; uphol- 
 sterers are benefited by it ; various tradesmen are en- 
 riched by it ; but, after all, ostentation is vulgar, and, 
 moreover, it is not to your liking at all. I know you 
 would not enjoy a splendid house ; but you would en- 
 joy a better one than you are in now — therefore, build
 
 166 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 it. You have good common sense and very little taste ; 
 therefore with only general directions, pass this busi- 
 ness into the hands of the best architect your money 
 can secure. Buy good taste, and simply insist on con- 
 venience and solidity. Build a house which will be in 
 good taste a hundred years hence, so that it may be 
 delighted in by your children and your grandchildren. 
 It may seem impertinent to tell a man who has been 
 shrewd enough to make money that he is not shrewd 
 enough to spend it, but unless you have good advice, 
 at every step of your progress, in starting an establish- 
 ment — that is, in building your house, furnishing it, 
 laying out your grounds, &c., &c., — you will be sure 
 to excite the ridicule of your friends, and bring morti- 
 fication to yourself. It is quite the habit of men who 
 have made money to grow self-sufficient, and to sup- 
 pose that because they have succeeded so well in one 
 department of effort, they are equal to any. A prac- 
 ticed eye can tell these men always, by the barren spots 
 and the uncultivated and unoccupied spots which their 
 management betrays. There will always be something 
 to show that the establishment belongs to the man, 
 and that the man does not belong to the establishment 
 — something to show by its incompleteness the incom- 
 pleteness of the owner's education — a libi-ary without 
 books, a palace without pictures, a garden without 
 flowers or fruits, luxury without comfort, or some-
 
 To Stephen Girard Jones. 167 
 
 thing of the sort. You can have such a place as this 
 very easily, by simply taking the whole matter into 
 your own hands, and assuming that you know all that 
 it is necessary to know at starting ; but far better will 
 it be for you, and far more for your credit, to assume 
 nothing — to assume that you know nothing, and to 
 look upon the building and equipment of an establish- 
 ment as a course of education. 
 
 I can imagine nothing more delightful or more use- 
 ful in family life than the two or three years of study 
 and development which attend the proper building of 
 a house, and the appointment of the details of a gene- 
 rous establishment. If you and your wife and your 
 sons and your daughters, beginning with the assump- 
 tion that you know nothing of the subject, devote 
 yourselves to study and conversation on domestic ar- 
 chitecture, and landscape gardening, and furniture and 
 books and pictures, seeking for information and sug- 
 gestions from every source, you will be surprised and 
 delighted to find in the end that you have entered into 
 a new life. You will find that you have grown quite 
 as rapidly as your house has gro"\vn, and that your 
 grounds and gardens have been developed no more 
 than your mind. You will learn, in short, how to 
 spend money upon yourself and yours, in a "sray which 
 ministers to your growth, your industry, and your hap- 
 piness. You are the pupils of the artists and scholars
 
 168 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 and artisans whom you employ, studj-ing under the most 
 favorable circumstances ; and you will find that an 
 education thus pleasantly inaugurated may be pursued 
 for life. It may be pursued in books, in society, in 
 travel. 
 
 There is much that I might say on this subject of 
 spending money as it relates to other people, in differ- 
 ent circimistances, but I am addressing you — a good 
 type of " our successful men," You will find that a 
 costly table uill give you the gout, and your children 
 the dyspepsia. Therefore live plainly. You will find 
 that luxurious clothing only ministers to the vanity of 
 your children ; therefore insist that it shall be simply 
 good and chaste and tasteful. You will find that your 
 personal necessities are limited, and that, unless you 
 permit your wealth to produce a brood of artificial 
 wants, you can neither expend your money upon your 
 children nor yourself. Have an eye to those around 
 you. The greatest kindness you can show to the poor 
 is to give them employment, and to pay them for it 
 well and promptly. No matter if you do not really 
 need their service. If they need your money, make a 
 service for them. Above all things, do not give them 
 money, unless calamity overtake them, or they become 
 unable to labor. I cannot too strongly insist that in 
 all your dealings with society, with the poor, and Avith 
 your children, you shall never depreciate in their minds
 
 To Stephen Girard Jones. 169 
 
 the value of money. Never permit yourself, by your 
 way of spending or bestowing money, to convey tlie 
 idea that money has cost you nothing ; for money is 
 sacred. It is the price of the labor of mind and body, 
 and by some person, at some time, somewhere, was dug 
 from the ground, or drawn from the sea. Because you 
 have been fortunate in accumulating it, you have no 
 right so to spend it as to convey to the public an in- 
 correct idea of its cost and true value. 
 
 After all, I imagine that you will find it very diffi- 
 cult to spend well that with Avhich Providence has fa- 
 vored you, in your home life, and in the ordinary char- 
 ities which appeal to you. In closing, will you permit 
 me to suggest that there is a class of charities and a 
 class of public objects which make special appeal to 
 you. The great majority of your fellow-citizens — even 
 those who possess what we denominate a competence, 
 — have nothing left to pay, after defraying the ex- 
 penses of their individual and home life, sPnd contrib- 
 uting their portion to the support of society and the 
 ordinary charities. For a great hospital, for a literary 
 or a religious institution, for a public library, for a 
 public gallery of art, they have nothing. These thmgs 
 exist through the contributions of such men as you, or 
 they do not exist at all. They are costly, and must be 
 bought by men of superabundant wealth. You are a 
 rational man, my friend, and know that already you
 
 170 
 
 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 have more wealth than you and your family can ad- 
 vantageously spend. You know, also, that it is always 
 best for a man to be his own executor. If you pro- 
 pose to do anything for the world, do it now. See to 
 the expenditure of your own money, and reap the satis- 
 faction of seeing your generation enjoying the fruit of 
 your benefactions. This waiting until death to give 
 away useless money is the height of folly. The money 
 is yours to sjDend : spend it, and thus multiply the 
 sources of your satisfaction. Do not wait until you 
 are dead to do a deed from which you have the right 
 to draw pleasure. Make what you can out of your 
 life, and get what satisfaction you can out of your 
 money. There are many chances that it will be wasted 
 or misapplied if you leave it to be administered after 
 you shall have passed away.
 
 THE TTVELFTII LETTER. 
 
 ^a Itocl |oiTts, 
 
 COKCERNIXG HIS OPJKIOy THAT HE KXOWS PRETTY MUCH 
 
 EVEIIYTHING. 
 
 I CANNOT tell whether you believe you know as 
 much as you pretend to know, or whether you 
 assume to know everything as a matter of policy. I 
 am simply aware that there is no subject presented to 
 you in practical science, in art, in philosophy, in mor- 
 als, in religion, in politics, in literature, in society, 
 upon which you do not assume to entertain a valuable 
 opinion, and that you pretend to be competent to direct 
 every affair, and guide and control every interest with 
 which you have anything to do. It seems to be a mat- 
 ter of principle with you to follow no man's lead, and^ 
 to refuse to admit for a moment that any man's lead 
 except your own can be woi-thy of following. I never 
 knew you to ask advice of anybody. It has always
 
 172 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 seemed as if you regard sucli a measure as an exhibi- 
 tion of weakness — one which would compromise y6ur 
 position, and bring you to personal disgrace. No : 
 you are authority on all subjects, an expert in all arts, 
 an adept in all affairs ; and I do not know of a position 
 for whose duties you would admit yourself to be in- 
 competent, from that of a milliner to that of a minister. 
 In all my dealings with the world I have noticed 
 that the wisest men make the smallest pretensions. 
 The prominent characteristic of all really great men is 
 teachableness — readiness to learn of everybody, respect 
 for the opinions of others, and modesty touching their 
 own attainments. Sir Isaac Newton was so far from 
 being a vain or pretentious man that he had the hum- 
 blest estimate of his own knowledge. Baron Hum- 
 boldt was as simple and unpretending as a child. 
 There are men among the living in this country — the 
 mention of whose names is not necessary to call up 
 their faces — whose exceeding simplicity is only equalled 
 by their exceeding wisdom. My friend, a pretentious 
 man is, by token of his pretentiousness, a charlatan, al- 
 ways. A man needs only to be wise to have learned 
 that no man in the world monopolizes its wisdom, and 
 that there is no man living who cannot teach him 
 something. Human faculty and Imman life are hardly 
 sufficient for learning one thing thoroughly. Each 
 man pursues his specialty, learning something of it
 
 To Noel Jones. 173 
 
 while he lives ; and though he may gather much in 
 general touching the specialties of others, he gets little 
 knowledge of detail out of his own walk. 
 
 You ought to have seen enough of the world to 
 know that it is full of larger men than you are, or can 
 ever hope to be. You ought to know enough of these 
 men, by this time, to understand that no pretension of 
 yours can raise you to their altitude, or bring you into 
 communion With them. The true position for you, and 
 for me, and for everybody — wise or simple — is that 
 of a learaer. Many years ago, as a young physician 
 was standing by the bedside of a sick little child in 
 the dirty hovel of one who was very poor, ho was 
 asked by a coarse-looking Irish Avoman who had come 
 in to do a neighborly ofiice, and was standing at the 
 opposite side of the bed, whether he thought the pa- 
 tient that lay gasping between them would live. He 
 replied that he did not think he could Hve until the 
 next morning. There was a shrewd twinkle in her 
 black eyes and a positive tone in her voice as she ex- 
 pressed an opposite opinion, and, at the same time, 
 gave her reasons for it. He went away, and thouglit 
 about it ; and the more he thought the more he became 
 convinced that this ignorant Irish woman had been a 
 better student of disease than he had, and that her 
 observation of previous cases must have been both in- 
 timate and extensive. He gave to her reasons their
 
 174 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 scientific significance, and before he reached his office 
 he had become prepared to meet what he had supposed 
 to be a dying patient a convalescent the next morning. 
 He did find the patient a convalescent, and left him, at 
 last, with a valuable addition to his knowledge of 
 s}Tnptoms, beyond what books and his own observa- 
 tion had ever taught him. He learned a second lesson 
 by this incident quite as valuable to him, personally, as 
 the first. It was, never to regard as valueless the 
 opinions of the ignorant when they were based on 
 observation, until he had given them a fair and thor- 
 ough investigation. 
 
 This ignorant woman had a right to her opinion. 
 She had earned it, for she had studied. She may have 
 knowTi nothing else particularly worth knowing, but 
 this golden bit of wisdom she had won, and the pro- 
 fessors and teachers of medicine everywhere would 
 have honored themselves by humbly learning it of her. 
 Every great and wise brain that lives bows to and 
 honors the humblest hand that brings it food and in- 
 spiration ; but the position which you assume is an 
 insult to all the humble life — not to say high life — by 
 which you are surrounded. There are one or two 
 things — perhaps half a dozen — which you know better 
 than others. Upon these, men come to you for infor- 
 mation ; but they know that of all others about which 
 you pretend to know so much you really know nothing.
 
 To Noel Jones. 175 
 
 Let your neighbors estimate you. They recognize you 
 as their superior in one or two points, only. Be tliank- 
 ful that there are one or two things which you really 
 know, and which you can offer in exchange for the 
 woi'ld of knowledge which the multitudinous life 
 around you has found and proved. You have your 
 specialties, and other men have theirs ; and they know, 
 and you ought to know and jDractically to acknowl- 
 edge', that every man you meet has just as much advan- 
 tage over you as you have over him. It is the habit 
 to speak sneeringly of the poverty of human knowl- 
 edge, but human knowledge is not poor in the aggre- 
 gate. It is the individual man that knows bo little ; 
 mankind knows much. Every secret of the earth and 
 the air and every treasure of human experience is in 
 some man's keeping. If every man could bring to a 
 common depository his special discovery, and the re- 
 sults of his particular thinking and working, and there 
 were a mind large enough to comprehend and syste- 
 matize the mass, with a life sufBciently long for the 
 enterprise, it would be found that human knowledge is 
 as great as humanity ifSelf. Those little books of wis- 
 dom contained in the minds of your humble neighbors, 
 my friend, are open to you, and you owe it to yourself 
 and them to read them with reverence. 
 
 I have said that the prominent characteristic of all 
 really great and wise men is teachableness. I may add
 
 176 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 to this that "without teachableness there can be no true 
 greatness, for greatness consists, not in great powers 
 alone, and not in genius alone, but in the power to 
 ap2)ropriate, and in the deed of appropriating, the wis- 
 dom made ready for it by other minds. For a great 
 man, a thousand minds are thinking, a thousand hands 
 are working, a thousand lives are living ; and the 
 results of all this thinking and working and living 
 come to him and pass into his life, contributing to his 
 growth and feeding his power. The canal that crosses 
 an empire, and feeds the roots of a score of springing 
 cities, and gives passage to the bread of a continent, 
 and swells the revenues of a state, has its unseen and 
 unacknowledged feeders, that collect its waters among 
 the mountains, and pour them into its trailing volume, 
 and keep it always full. A great man lays every mind 
 with which he comes into contact mider tribute. Great 
 listeners are such men — absorbent of every drop of 
 common sense and even the faintest spray of human 
 experience. Unerring ears have they, to distinguish 
 between the true and the false in the coins that are 
 tossed upon their counter. Finding a man who has 
 successfully pursued some specialty in knowledge or 
 art, they suck his mind as they would suck an orange, 
 throwing away cells and seeds, and drinking the juice 
 for nutriment and refreshment. Do you not see, my 
 friend, that it is not the policy of such men as these to
 
 To Noel Jones. 177 
 
 be pretentious ? They could not afford it, even were 
 they disposed to be. 
 
 The man who takes your position must necessarily 
 go through life at a disadvantage. Your policy di'ives 
 men from you. Pretentiousness is always and every- 
 where an insult to society. You repel the knowledge 
 that naturally flows to one who pretends to nothing. 
 Nobody goes to you with a suggestion, because your 
 attitude repels suggestions. You assume to possess all 
 the knowledge that you need. All that you learn out- 
 side of the specialty which absorbs the most of your 
 active power, you are obliged to learn by book, or by 
 some trick of indirection. You think that you can 
 only appear to be wise by assimiing to be wise ; and it 
 is possible that you are right. It is possible that you 
 impose upon a few who would otherwise hold you for 
 a very common sort of person ; but all the reputation 
 for wisdom you may secure, can never compensate for 
 what you lose by cutting off these voluntary supplies. 
 Water flows naturally into the humble, open spaces ; it 
 never seeks the mountains, except to run around them. 
 Self-love, self-conceit, pride of opinion — all these are 
 barriers to knowledge and barriers to success. During 
 your brief life, you have suffered from many grave 
 mistakes, which, had you been a teachable man, might 
 easily have been avoided. Your position repelled all 
 
 information voluntarily offered, and your pride forbade 
 8*
 
 J78 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 you to seek for it at the only a-vailable sources. You 
 have blundered through experiments Avhose results 
 could have been given you by a dozen of your neigh- 
 bors, who took a secret satisfaction in Avitnessing 
 your expensive failures. He is the wise man only who, 
 holding himself imselfishly tributary to the lives of 
 others, lays hold of, and appropriates, the wisdom won 
 by the life around him. It should be in life as it is in 
 science. If I read the record of a series of experi- 
 ments by which a certain scientific result is arrived at, 
 I do not feel myself humbled by the discovery, nor 
 humbled by using the discovery for my own advantage. 
 I contribute freely to my own work — I appropriate 
 freely the results of the work of others, as a member 
 of the great commonwealth of life. It is a noble thing 
 to teach ; it is a blessed thing to learn. 
 
 I have told you that there are probably one or two 
 things about which you know more than others, and 
 touching which your opinions are more valuable than 
 those of others. These things your talents have given 
 you. special power to learn ; and circumstances have 
 conspired to give you sufficient opportunity. There 
 are ten thousand things on which you assume to have 
 an opinion which you never can have a valuable opin- 
 ion upon. You have not those peculiar gifts which 
 will enable you to acquire experimental knowledge of 
 them. You pretend to know something of finance, for
 
 To Noel Jones. 179 
 
 instance, but it is not in you to comprehend finance. 
 No matter how much you may run against the busi- 
 ness M'orld — the whole of your financial wisdom will 
 consist of familiarity with common business forms, and 
 the grasp of the general fact that if a man spends more 
 tlian he earns he loses money, while if he earns more 
 than he spends, he is making it. You pretend to pos- 
 sess a good literary judgment and taste, but you may 
 study from this time until doomsday and you will 
 never, working by yourself, win either. A life of 
 study with relation to some arts will not win for you 
 what the instincts of some men will teach them in a 
 moment. You have your special knowledge. Talent 
 and opportunity have given it to you. There is an in- 
 definitely large range of life in which you can never 
 discover anything that Avill be of the slightest value to 
 you or to others. There is an indefinitely large range 
 of life through which you must be led by other minds, 
 or you will never explore them at all. The bird-fancier 
 with whom I walk in the fields is a humble person. I 
 may talk of literature, or art, or science, or politics, 
 and he will show no sign of interest or intelligence ; 
 but if I talk of birds he becomes my teacher — nay, for 
 the time, a king. The air around him is full of crea- 
 tures whose habits and characteristics he knows. lie 
 can pour out to me a tide of beautiful knowledge, for 
 the acquirement of which nature has given him the
 
 180 
 
 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 needed eyes and ears and apprehensions. He knows 
 the note of every bird, the nest of every bird, the 
 phimage of every bird. He has possessed himself of 
 their secrets, so that, imitating their language, and 
 taking the advantage over them which reason gives 
 him, he can entrap them. No uncommon bird, be it 
 never so small, can invade his neighborhood without his 
 detecting it ; and he marks the retirement of a family 
 from the region that they have frequented as if they 
 belonged to his own species, and had advertised their 
 departure. Now this man's knowledge may be humble, 
 but it is genuine ; and it is knowledge which, without 
 his help, you could not have acquired. Nay, you never 
 would have thought of studying birds any more than 
 you would the insects that slide up and down the sun- 
 beams before your door. 
 
 Knowledge is a very precious possession, and al- 
 ways dignifies its possessor. The theorists of all ages 
 have filled the world with words, and the pulpit and 
 the library and the school are thronged with words 
 that represent more or less of the material and the 
 spiritual worlds, but knowledge does not come from 
 the pulpit, or the library, or the school. To know a 
 thing is to live a thing — is to come into personal con- 
 tact and acquaintance with a thing through the use of 
 powers adapted to win acquaintance by contact. I 
 have seen grave doctors and literary men and clergy-
 
 To Noel Jones. 181 
 
 men and shrewd business men listen for hours to 
 the talk of a man who knew nothing but the habits 
 of a horse, and the means of making that animal the 
 kind and healthy servant of man ; and although he 
 could not construct a sentence of English elegantly, 
 they listened as intently as if he were reciting the 
 choicest poem in the language with the imction of a 
 Kemble, forgetful alike of his provincial pronuncia- 
 tion and his incorrect English. These men were learn- 
 ers. They had found a man who knew something. 
 He had been studying the horse all his life for them — 
 studying the horse in the stable ; and they were drink- 
 ing in that which they felt to be positive knowledge. 
 It was worth more than all the books on that subject 
 they had ever read, and worth more than all their ob- 
 servation, because they had not the proper powers for 
 studying the horse by contact. It is thus that every 
 man is studying something for every other man — gain- 
 ing absolute knowledge by contact with special depart- 
 ments of material existence, or by demonstrating spirit- 
 ual truth in personal experience. 
 
 If you really imagine that you know so much that 
 you do not need to seek advice or ask for knowledge at 
 the hand of even the humblest man with whom you 
 are thrown into relation, you must change your opin- 
 ion and your policy. You really know but very little, 
 and you cannot obtain any great addition to your posi-
 
 182 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 tiye knowledge without laying those under tribute 
 whose knowledge has been won as yours has been 
 won. Or if you imagine that you have powers adapted 
 to discovery and demonstration in all the varied fields 
 of knowledge, you must relieve yourself of that mis- 
 take. You have not even the powers necessary to 
 make a bird-catcher or a horse-tamer. It is not in you 
 to be either ; and when you fancy that you could be 
 a speaker of Congress, or a writer for the press, or a 
 preacher, or a secretary of the treasury, if you only 
 had the opportunity for the development or the trial 
 of your powders, you are simply permitting your self- 
 conceit to befool you. You thirst for all the honors, 
 and would be king. Be content with your specialty, 
 and bear me witness that even the bird-fancier and the 
 horse-tamer have dignity and honor which you have 
 hardly won in the higher field in which Providence has 
 placed you, and to which your powers are specially 
 adapted. Conquer your specialty, and take gratefully 
 from other hands the knowledge and wisdom w^hich 
 you have neither the time nor the power to acquire. 
 
 You do not know, I suppose, that your assumption 
 makes all w^ho are around you imcom fort able. You do 
 not give them their places. You permit to them no 
 prerogatives and no specialties. The very mother who 
 bore you is not permitted to select her own dress, and 
 the wife that endures you has her milliner and mantua-
 
 To Noel Jones. 183 
 
 maker prescribed to her. You are presumptuous 
 enough to believe that you know how to dress a 
 woman. Such presumption stuns me. I tremble when 
 I think how some women — gentle, albeit, as lambs, iu 
 the enjoyment of money and liberty — would spurn the 
 dictation of " the humble person who writes these 
 lines," if such dictation should invade the sanctities of 
 their wardrobe. Oh, Noel Jones ! You and I know 
 nothing about these things. Our opinion is not good 
 for anything on these subjects. I never bought but 
 one silk on my own responsibility, and the shout of 
 derision with which it was greeted by one inconsiderate 
 member of the family, and the mingled pity and con- 
 tempt expressed by the silence of the remainder, have 
 remained so terribly fresh in my memory that I have 
 never since presumed to take such a liberty. I meekly 
 carried it back, and begged the smirking clerk to take 
 it again, promising to trade it out in some other 
 way. And the women were right, as they usually are. 
 What did I know about a Avoman's dress ? What did 
 I know about colors that were " trying to the com- 
 plexion," and colors that harmonized with each other, 
 and colors and fabrics that harmonized with certain 
 ages and seasons, and colors and fabrics that harmo- 
 nized with other colors and fabrics that for economical 
 reasons were to be worn with them ? Nothing ; yet 
 it is my private opinion that I knew as much as you
 
 184 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 do. The tnith is that the amount of instinct contained 
 in a woman's little finger is worth more as a guide in 
 all matters pertaining to the female dress than your 
 wisdom and mine combined. Suppose the women 
 should undertake to dictate trousers to us ! I would 
 not wear a garment thus selected, on principle ; but 
 you — I think such an evidence of presumption on the 
 part of a woman would kill you outright. 
 
 No, Mr. Noel Jones, you do not know pretty much 
 everything. Indeed, you know but a very few things 
 thoroughly, and you would now know a great deal more 
 than you do if you had never pretended to know any- 
 thing. All sensible people measure you. They give 
 you credit for being an ordinarily acute and wise man 
 — the greatest drawback on your reputation being 
 your assumption of knoM-ledge that you do not possess, 
 while the only bar to your popularity resides in your 
 unwillingness to give to men and women the place and 
 consideration to which their specialties of talent and 
 knowledge entitle them.
 
 THE THIRTEENTH LETTER. 
 
 STo ^lufus Carafe |oncs, ITnfoscr. 
 
 i CONCERNING THE DUTIES AND DANGERS OF HIS PRO- 
 
 FESSION. 
 
 YOU have recently commenced the practice of a 
 profession of which I possess no intimate knoAvl- 
 edge. I know, generally, that it is a respectable pro- 
 fession, which requires in those who successfully pur- 
 sue it the best style of intellectual power, thorough 
 industry, and a vast amount of special learning. I 
 know that it is a profession which, in times of peace, 
 attracts to itself the most ambitious young men, be- 
 cause it affords the best opportunities for rising to 
 positions of influence and power. I know also, that, 
 while it is prostituted to the basest uses — as any pro- 
 fession may be — it fulfils a want in the establishment 
 of justice between man and man, and occupies a legiti- 
 mate and an important place in society. I can very
 
 186 
 
 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 honestly congratulate you on your connection with 
 this profession, and your prospects in it. Will you 
 read what an outsider has to say of its dangers and 
 duties ? 
 
 The principal — perhaps the only — dangers which 
 lie in your way relate to your personal character. I 
 regard you as a Christian young man, and I find you 
 in a profession which necessarily brings you into con- 
 tact with the meanest and the vilest elements in the 
 community. Almost every day of your life you find 
 yourself in communication with men whose motives are 
 vile and whose characters are base. You are obliged 
 to associate with them. You not unfrequently find 
 your interest and sympathies engaged in their behalf. 
 Almost the whole education of the court-room — to say 
 nothing of the office — is an education in the ways of 
 sin. It is there that murder and robbery and adultery 
 and swindling and cruelty and all the forms of crime 
 and vice are exposed, to their minutest details, and as 
 a lawyer, you are necessarily absorbed by these de- 
 tails. There is not a form of vice with which you are 
 not bound to become familiar. All the meannesses 
 and all the rottennesses of human nature and himian 
 character, and all the modes of their exhibition, must 
 come into contact with you, and leave their mark. 
 How this can be done without the blunting of your 
 sensibihties I do not know. How this can be done
 
 To Rufus Choate Jones. 187 
 
 without damaging, if not destroying, your moral sense, 
 is beyond my comprehension. I have heard very good 
 lawyers talk about the most shocking cases in a shock- 
 ingly professional way, and witnessed their amusement 
 with the details of some beastly case that had found 
 its way into the court-room. I should be sorry to think 
 that you could ever acquire such moral indifference, yet 
 I know that you may, and believe that you will, if you 
 do not guard yourself particularly against it. 
 
 It seems to rae quite impossible that a man should 
 have a professional interest in the details of a case of 
 crime without losing something of the moral repug- 
 nance with which the case would naturally inspire him. 
 I suppose that this loss of moral sensibility may not 
 necessarily be accompanied by actual depravity, yet it 
 is, nevertheless, an evil, for it destroys one of the bar- 
 riers to depravity. Any influence which familiarizes 
 the mind with sin and crime to such an extent that sin 
 and crime cease to fill the soul with horror or disgust, 
 is much to be deprecated. If you had a young son or 
 a young daughter, you would regard any event which 
 would bring their minds into familiarity with crime as 
 a calamity. It would probably be a greater calamity 
 to them than to you, but why it should be different in 
 kind, I cannot tell. I think you have only to look 
 around you, among your own profession, to find men 
 who have received incurable damage through their
 
 188 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 professional intimacy with sin. You know numbers 
 of lawyers who take an interest which is anything but 
 professional in the details of a case of shame that ought 
 to fill them with an abhorrence so deep that they 
 would gladly fly from it. 
 
 Again, constant familiarity with the weak and the 
 erring side of human nature destroys respect for human 
 nature itself. The more you learn of the members of 
 the legal profession, the more you will learn that great 
 numbers of them have ceased to respect human nature. 
 This seems to me to be one of the greatest calamities 
 that can befal any man. I do not wonder at this efiect 
 at all. There is no class of people in the world that 
 see so great cause to hold human nature in contempt 
 as the legal. They come into contact with men whom 
 the world calls honorable and good, and find in them 
 such traits of meanness, and such hypocrisy and dis- 
 honor, and such readiness to be crippled under tempta- 
 tion, and such untruthfulness under the pressure of 
 selfish interest, that they naturally enough conclude 
 that one man is about as bad as another, and that no 
 man is to be relied upon where his appetites or his 
 selfish interests are concerned. I say that I do not 
 wonder at this, but it is much to be deprecated ; and 
 I know of no way to avoid it, except by free associa- 
 tion with good men and innocent women and children. 
 When a man has lost his respect for human nature, he
 
 To Rufus Choate Jones. 189 
 
 has lost, necessarily, his respect for himself, for, 
 whether he wills it or not, he goes with his kind. 
 
 But there is another danger still which will assail 
 you — more subtle and more damaging than profes- 
 sional interest in crime or professional intimacy with 
 the worst side of human nature, and this is professional 
 interest in criminals themselves. I am sorry to say it, 
 but you will find yourself the professional defender of 
 men whom you know to be the foes of society — of 
 thieves, pickpockets, gamblers, murderers, seducers, 
 swindlers. You will find yourself either lying or 
 tempted to lie in order to shield from justice men 
 whom you know ought to be punished. You will find 
 yourself arrayed against law and order, against the 
 peace of the commonwealth, against the purity of so- 
 ciety, against morals and religion, in the defense of a 
 man whom you know to be guilty of the crime charged 
 against him, and deserving of the punishment attached 
 to it by the laws of the land. I say " you," because 
 I suppose you will naturally follow in the traok of the 
 principal members of your profession. Every criminal 
 is defended to the uttermost by men who are zealous 
 in their attemj^t to prove him innocent, and to shield 
 him from punishment. Great professional reputations 
 are sometimes acquired by sa\'ing from the gallows a 
 man whom everybody is morally certain ought to be 
 hung. A triumph of crime like this is quoted ad-
 
 190 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 miringly by the profession, and regarded with com- 
 placent triumph by the professional victor. I have 
 heard men talk by the hour to prove that to be true 
 which they and everybody else knew, in all moral cer- 
 tainty, to be false, and to demonstrate the innocence 
 of a man whom they knew to be guilty. Indeed, this 
 mode of proceeding has become a part of the ma- 
 chinery of the law, and is recognized as entirely legiti- 
 mate. "We hear, occasionally, of cases so bad that the 
 counsel engaged in the defence throw them up in dis- 
 gust ; but these are veiy rare, and I doubt whether 
 such a surrender is regarded as a fair thing by the 
 profession. 
 
 Now I ask you, before professional usage has had 
 time to warp your common sense, what must be the 
 effect upon the mind of an advocate, of throwing the 
 entire sum of his personal power — all his logic, all his 
 learning, all his sympathies and desires, all his interests 
 and all his earnestness — into the defence of a man 
 whom he has good reason to believe is a foe to law 
 and order, and justly deserving of punishment for a 
 breach of both ? What must be the effect of identify- 
 ing his own personal and professional reputation with 
 the success of a criminal, in his attempt to shield him- 
 self from justice ? What must be the effect upon his 
 mind of a triumph over the law for himself and for 
 him who has trampled it under his feet ? I know that
 
 To Rufus Choate Jones. 191 
 
 there is a specious style of argument in use in your 
 profession which takes the decision of a case out of the 
 hands of a criminal's professional defender, and gives 
 it to the jury before which he is to be tried. The 
 lawyers will say that an advocate has no right to decide 
 on the guilt of a man on trial — that his work is to 
 defend ; and that twelve men, whose business under 
 the law it is, will make the decision. This is strictly 
 professional talk — the talk of men who make a dis- 
 tinction between law and justice — the talk of men who 
 stand by that which is simply legal, and let justice and 
 right take care of themselves. These men would tell 
 you that if you were engaged in the defence of a per- 
 son whom you were morally certain was guilty of the 
 crime charged upon him, you would not be excusable 
 did you not do what you could to save him, by a resort 
 to every legal trick and quibble of which you might be 
 the master. This is precisely what they do. They 
 personally rejoice in the defeat of justice. Whenever 
 justice is defeated, and right denied or destroyed, in 
 " a court of justice," there is always present one lawyer 
 to rejoice personally over the fact — a lawyer whose 
 sympathies and success are identified with the triumph 
 of the wrong-doer. 
 
 I remember, when a lad, of witnessing an interview 
 between a couple of eminent lawyers, — each of whom 
 has come to great personal and political honor siuc^
 
 192 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 then, — which to my unsophisticated moral sense, was 
 quite shocking. One had been attending a term of 
 court in an adjoining county, for the management of 
 an important case in which both were interested. The 
 returning lawyer greeted his associate with a triumphant 
 flourish of his riding stick, and exclaimed — " We've 
 beaten them ! we've beaten them ! " Thereupon they 
 gleefully talked the matter over. It seemed very 
 sti-ange to me that they could rejoice at having " beaten 
 them," without the slightest reference to the matter 
 of justice and of right. If the man had been engaged 
 in a personal fight or a horse race, and had come ofi* the 
 winner, he would have expressed his triumph in the 
 same way, and with just as little reference to the moral 
 aspects and relations of the case. This was a profes- 
 sional triumph, and it did not matter, apparently, 
 whether justice had shared the victory with him, or 
 had been vanquished with his opponents in the suit. 
 This professional indifference to justice and to right, 
 acquired by the identification of your own personal 
 success with the safety and success of those whom you 
 know or believe to be criminals, is what I warn you 
 against. I tell you that this cannot be indulged in 
 without injury to you, and were it not an migrateful 
 and offensive task, I could refer you to illustrious in- 
 stances of legal depravity, induced by earnest defence 
 of the wrong. I could point you to eminent lawyers.
 
 To Rufus Choate Jones. 193 
 
 with whom lying is as easy as breathing — men who do 
 not scruple to misrepresent, misconstrue, prevaricate, 
 cheat, resort to all mean and imworthy subterfuges, 
 suppress, make use of all available means to carry a 
 point against law and good society and pure morals, in 
 favor of ruffians who deserve nothing better than the 
 halter or the prison. A lawyer has only to do this 
 thing to a sufficient extent with sufficient earnestness, 
 to lose both his sense of, and respect for, the right, and 
 to become morally worthless. 
 
 I suppose that you will tell me that I am a dreamer, 
 and that I am suggesting something that is entirely 
 impracticable, when I advise you never to permit your- 
 self to be professionally arrayed against justice. Your 
 seniors in the profession will smile contemptuously at 
 my suggestion, I know, and I will not blame them, for 
 I know how fatally they have been warped by their 
 practice. I take the broad ground that no man, what- 
 ever maybe his profession, has a moral right to defeat, 
 or to strive by all the means at his command, to defeat 
 the ends of justice in the community in Avhich he lives, 
 and that no man can consciously identify himself -with 
 the wrong, and fight earnestly for its triumph, without 
 inflicting incalculable damage upon his owti moral sense 
 and moral character, I do not believe that you — a 
 professional man — have a moral right to do in a court 
 of justice what I — not a professional man — have no
 
 194 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 moral right to do. I do not believe that you have a 
 moral right to stand up before a jury, and try to mis- 
 lead it by tricks of language, by quibbles of law, by 
 si^ringing of false issues, by engaging their s}Tnpathies 
 at the expense of their reason, and I know it is a moral 
 impossibility for you to do it without damage to your- 
 self. Mark my words : I do not advise you to leave a 
 client while you have a reasonable doubt of his guilt, 
 or a case where you have a reasonable doubt of its in- 
 justice ; but I say without hesitation that when you 
 become convinced that you can go no further in the 
 professional advocacy of a man or a cause, without 
 arraying yourself against right, against justice, against 
 the well being of society, you are bound, in duty to 
 God, the state, and yourself, to abandon that man or 
 cause ; and all the professional sophistry which you 
 and your professional brethren can muster can never 
 convince me to the contrary. 
 
 The fact that the money of thieves and scoundrels 
 will buy the best legal service to be had is notorious, 
 and it is but a short time ago that it appeared in evi- 
 dence, in a court of justice, that a certain crime was 
 committed by a man Avho, calculating his chances for 
 detection, relied upon a certain lawyer to " get him off." 
 Was that lawyer practically a friend or a foe to society ? 
 Had he a right professionally, or in any way, so to con- 
 duct himself as to encourage the commission of crime ?
 
 To Rufus Choate Jones. 
 
 195 
 
 But I leave this point for one closely related to it. 
 The whole tendency of your profession, as it seems to 
 me, is the substitution of a human for a divine rule of 
 action. I think that a lawyer naturally comes to view 
 every action and every man from a legal stand-point. 
 All your practical dealing with men is on a legal basis. 
 If there be a hole in the law, large enough to let 
 through your criminal client, you will pull him through. 
 A flaw in an indictment will spoil a case legally, while 
 morally and rationally it is not touched at all. You 
 feel justified in doing anything that is legal, to favor 
 your client, or your cause. Your conscience has come 
 to identify that which is legal with that which is right. 
 The law of the Lord is perfect ; the law of man is im- 
 perfect ; and your constant association with the latter, 
 naturally crowds the other out of sight. You measure 
 the actions of men by that prescriptive red tape of 
 yours, and the standard of right within your own soul 
 is degraded. 
 
 Litigation is one of the evils of the world, and is 
 voluntarily pursued more to secure personal will than 
 sound justice. There are many cases of doubt in which 
 a suit at law is entirely justifiable, not to say desirable ; 
 but you are already old enough to know that two- 
 thirds of the civil cases tried would never find their 
 way into court if simple justice were all that the liti- 
 gants were after. Selfish interest, personal greed,
 
 196 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 pride of purpose, wilfulness and waywardness — these 
 are the elements of litigation everywhere. Now it is 
 the misfortune of your profession that its revenue is 
 very largely dependent upon the selfishness and stub- 
 bornness of men. It is apparently for the personal 
 interest of every lawyer to foster a litigious spirit in 
 the community, and to nurse every cause of difference 
 between men. That this is done by the more disrep- 
 utable of your profession, I presume you will admit ; 
 and I am sure that you will not deny that the better 
 class of lawyers do not discourage litigation as much 
 as they might. My friend, here is a duty which I 
 exhort you not to avoid. If you can prevent a lawsuit 
 between citizens, in which no important end of justice 
 is involved, or settle a difference which is more a ques- 
 tion of personal will than of right, then, as a Christian 
 man, and a good citizen, you are bound to interfere at 
 whatever personal sacrifice. If I were to foster a legal 
 quarrel between neighbors, which my advice would 
 prevent, you would call me a bad neighbor and a bad 
 citizen. The fact that it is for your professional in- 
 terest that-neighbors quarrel does not relieve you from 
 the same opprobrium, for the same mean office. There 
 is no man in the world so well situated for promoting 
 the ends of peace between citizens as the lawyer, and 
 if he do not avail himself of his opportimities, then he 
 fails in the offices of good citizenship.
 
 To Rufus Choate Jones. 197 
 
 I hesitate to speak of one of the dangers to which 
 you are exposed, because it supposes that you can cease 
 to be a gentleman ; but you ■will find that, in the court- 
 room, lawyers not unfrequently indulge in practices 
 which, while they may be strictly legal, are not gentle- 
 manly. I declare to you that I have witnessed more 
 cowardly insolence in a court-room than in any other 
 place that pretended to be conti*olled by the laws of 
 decency. I have seen men whose years and positions 
 should have given them dignity, brow-beat and badger 
 and, in every way sufierable by a too indulgent court, 
 abuse old, simple-hearted men and honest women, 
 whose crime it was to be summoned as unwilling wit- 
 nesses by the party opposing them. I am not familiar 
 with bar-rooms or brothels, but I think it would be 
 hard to find in any of them such flagrant instances of 
 ill-breeding as are witnessed at every term of court in 
 every court-room in the land. I do not care how high 
 the lawyer stands who takes advantage of his position 
 to abuse the honest witnesses which the law places in 
 his hands for examination : — he is no gentleman. He 
 is a mean and cowardly scoundrel. Under the protec- 
 tion of the court, he indulges in practices so insulting 
 to honest and blamelesss men and women that all there 
 is within them of manhood and womanhood rises to 
 resent the indignity, yet they are powerless, and the 
 unwhipped coward rubs his hands over his clever boor-
 
 198 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 ishness and brutality. For your own sake — nay, for 
 decency's sake — be a gentleman in the court-room, and 
 do what you can to compel others to be gentlemen. 
 This gratuitous abuse of those who are so unfortunate 
 as to be summoned as witnesses, by the lawyers into 
 whose hands they fall, is the shame and disgrace of 
 your profession. 
 
 Rather a formidable array of dangers you will say, 
 I imagine ; and perhaps you will add that it is not a 
 very promising display of duties. 1 grant it, but I 
 seek the glory of your profession and the good of 
 yourself. The profession of the law, when it confines 
 itself to the ministry of justice, is one of the noblest 
 in which a man can engage. In that aspect, it is 
 worthy of the devotion of the best minds which the 
 coimtry produces ; but the profession of the law when 
 it is used in the prostitution of justice for hire, — when 
 it is freely lent, with all the personal resources of him 
 who practises it, to aid the notorious criminal to escape 
 the pvmishment due to his crimes, and to thwart the 
 adjustment of the right between man and man, is an 
 outrageous nuisance. I would have you remain what 
 I believe you now are — a Christian lawyer — a man 
 who can never forget that the royal right is above the 
 legal letter — that God lives, and claims a place in the 
 human soul, and that He refuses to live there side by 
 riide with venal falsehood. I would have you re tarn,
 
 To Rufus Choate Jones. 199 
 
 amid all the temptations of your profession, your love 
 of justice and of right, and your hatred of injustice and 
 wrong. I would have you guard yourself against con- 
 founding that which is right with that which is legal, 
 so that the latter shall always seem essentially the 
 former. I would have you maintain in all places the 
 demeanor of a gentleman. I would have you a good 
 citizen and not a promoter of litigation. I would have 
 you so pure, and upright, and honorable, and peace- 
 loving, that men shall refer their differences to you 
 rather than carry them into court. I do not wish to 
 appeal to any selfish motives, but my opinion is that 
 such a lawyer as I desire you to be, would command a 
 premium in all the markets of the world.
 
 THE FOURTEENTH LETTER. 
 
 Co ilrs. ^ognl |urpl£ lottts, ■ 
 
 CONCERNING HER ABSORBING DEVOTION TO HER OWN 
 
 PERSON. 
 
 I HAVE a great respect for the human body. As 
 a piece of vitalized mechanism it is the most ad- 
 mirable thing in the world. As the dwelling-place and 
 associate and minister of the human soul — the possess- 
 or of those exquisite senses through which that soul 
 feeds and breathes and receives knowledge and inspira- 
 tion — its first home — the vestibule of its immortality 
 — I give it honor. It is a thing of dignity — a sacred 
 tiiincr — sacred to its possessor, and sacred to those to 
 whom in sacred love it may be given. Whenever the 
 soul rises to a true appreciation of its own worth, it 
 pays honor to the body which bears it. Barbarism 
 wanders in negligent nakedness, but civilization, of 
 whatever type, honors the body — covers it from sight
 
 — drapes and jDrotects it with reference to ideas of 
 comfort and taste. Innocence, like that possessed by 
 infancy, may feel no shame without drapery, but vir- 
 tue, a very different thing, grows crimson when un- 
 covered. 
 
 The human body is a thing of beauty as well as of 
 dignity. All civilized natfons have recognized -this 
 fact, and all have striven, more or less effectually, to 
 reveal or enhance that beauty by dress. It costs 
 almost as much to clothe civilization as it does to feed 
 it ; and human ingenuity is taxed to its utmost, and all 
 departments of nature are laid under tribute, to pro- 
 duce the fabrics witn which civilization enrobes itself. 
 
 This domain of dress is one which Fashion has con- 
 quered and made peculiarly her own, and it ought to 
 be a matter of interest to you, madam, as I doubt not 
 it will be to people generally, to note how far that 
 power has sophisticated the idea of personal dignity on 
 which dress is based. Up to a certain point of beauty 
 of fabric and elaborateness of ornamentation, dress 
 can be carried legitimately, and with no violence to 
 personal dignity ; but beyond that point, there must 
 always come a resort to the barbaric idea, which must 
 necessarily bring personal degradation. Barbarism, 
 without any thought of personal dignity — of bodily 
 sacredness — has gratified its vanity and desire for dis- 
 tinction by means of marks and gaudy ornaments. It 
 9*
 
 202 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 has tattooed its skin, hung rings in its nose, worn beads 
 on its neck — at its girdle — at its knees, stuck feathers 
 in its hair, and daubed paint upon its face. This kind 
 of oroamentation — an exhibition of personal vanity — 
 is the highest expression of the highest idea which 
 barbarism has ever entertained concerning the human 
 body. This vanity touching the person, that feels 
 gratification in ornaments and trappings, has not the 
 slightest natural connection with that better idea which 
 finds in graceful drapery the refuge and shield of the 
 dignity belonging to the living tenement of the living 
 soul. You Avill see, therefore, that whenever fashion 
 carries dress to extremes, or beyond the point of gi\"ing 
 the body a graceful and becoming covering, it always 
 resorts to barbarism to help it out — to partial naked- 
 ness, or to jewels and precious stones and trinkets and 
 ribbons and laces and all possible sorts of ornaments. 
 The fashionable belle of Newport and Saratoga enters 
 the assembly room or the dining hall only to show that 
 she is sister of the South Sea Islander, and that the 
 same idea controls them both. 
 
 The curse of Eden seems to have been the subjec- 
 tion of the soul to the service of the body. When I 
 reflect upon the relative dignity and importance of the 
 soul and the body — the immortality of the one and the 
 mortality of the other, the heavenly alliances of the one 
 and the earthly alliances of the other, the Godlike ca-
 
 To Mrs. Royal Purple Jones, 203 
 
 pacities of the one and the brutal appetites of the 
 other — it astonishes me to realize that the soul's work 
 in this world is, in the majority of cases, simply that 
 of procuring food and raiment and shelter for the 
 body. It astonishes me to realize that under every 
 form of civilization the body is the soul's tyrant and 
 leads it by the nose. Naturally, the body is upper- 
 most in the general thought. Men must have food 
 and clothing and shelter, or die ; they must win all 
 these for their children, or lose them. So, under the 
 circumstances of our life, and the usages of our civili- 
 zation, the body is necessarily a constant topic of 
 thought. It is not strange, therefore, that the soul 
 often forgets that it is master, and loses sight of its 
 own dignity and destiny in its habitual devotion to 
 the satisfaction of bodily want. 
 
 But this, Mrs. Royal Purple Jones, is not your 
 trouble. You are not obliged to work for a living. 
 Your money has been earned for you by other hands, 
 and your devotion to your body is voluntary and not 
 compulsory. Your soul, with all its fine capacities, 
 and its possibilities of culture and of goodness, is the 
 willing and devoted slave of the body in which it 
 lives. Your person is the central motive of your life. 
 Now that I call your attention to the fact, will you tell 
 me, or attempt to realize to yourself, how much 
 thought and how much time you devote to the hair
 
 204 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 that adorns your head ? Hoav much of both do you 
 give to the little matter of eye-brows ? — how much to 
 your teeth ? — how much to your face as a whole, 
 with all the considerations of cuticular texture and 
 complexion ? — how much to your hands ? — how much 
 to your arms ? — how much to your neck ? — how much 
 to your feet ? — how much to your general configura- 
 tion ? Madam, you are in love with your own body, 
 and the keenest delight of your whole life consists in 
 having that body admired and praised. The sense of 
 personal modesty and dignity which flies to dress for 
 refuge has really no place in you. I do not mean that 
 you are an immodest woman, but that this sense of 
 personal sacredness has been overcome by personal 
 vanity so far that you dress rather to show than to 
 hide your body — to attract attention to your person 
 than to make it the modest and inconspicuous tene- 
 ment of your soul. What is it that most absorbs your 
 time ? What is it that most absorbs your money ? 
 Is it not dress ? Think of the silks that you buy, and 
 the study that you bestow upon their selection and 
 manufacture into garments ! Think of the hats and 
 the gloves and the jewelry, and of the intense and ab- 
 sorbing interest which attend their purchase and first 
 wearing ! Think of your constant observation and 
 criticism of the dress of your friends ! I. believe you 
 will admit to yourself, if not to me, that I have
 
 To Mrs. Royal Purple Jones. 205 
 
 found you out — that I know where you have your 
 Hfe. 
 
 When you attend a party, what is the highest ob- 
 ject you contemplate ? Do you attend for the purpose 
 of enjoying the conversation of dear friends, or to min- 
 ister to the pleasure of others by your own gifts of 
 conversation, or to enjoy the sight of pleasant faces, 
 or to hear music, or to engage in dancing, or such 
 other amusements as may be indulged in ? Is it for 
 all or any of these that you attend ? Is it not rather 
 to show your dress, and to display, for the admiration 
 of the gentlemen, and the enxj of the ladies like your- 
 self, your richly draped and elaborately ornamented 
 person ? Would you have a single motive to attend 
 a party if you were obliged to dress inconspicuously 
 and plainly ? Is it not true that your one absorbing 
 thought with relation to such attendance concerns the 
 dressing and adornment of your person ? And when 
 you return from it, do you think of anything except the 
 simple questions as to how you looked, and how you 
 compared or contrasted with certain other women who 
 unfortunately are as much devoted to their persons as 
 you are ? When you walk in the streets, what are you 
 thinking about ? Are you thinking of what you see 
 in the shop-windows, or what the shop-windows see on 
 you ? Are you not conscious that many eyes are 
 turned upon you to see what you take great pains to
 
 206 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 make attractive to all eyes ? "When you dress for 
 church, and when you enter the sacred edifice, wkat 
 thought is uppermost in your mind ? Is it a thought 
 which becomes the holy place, or is it still of the 
 drapery and the ornaments with which you have hung 
 your person ? Are you not filled everywhere — under 
 all circumstances — with these same vanities ? Do 
 they not haunt and hold you constantly ? 
 
 You need not blush and hang your head, because 
 you find that I know you better than you have hitherto 
 known yourself, for you have plenty of company. The 
 whole world of fashionable women is controlled by the 
 same thoughts and ideas that control you— a world of 
 women who, in the pursuit of personal adornment, 
 have adopted the ideas of barbarism, and have per- 
 sonally descended toward barbarism through such 
 adoption. You, madam, and all of your associates, 
 have, m your devotion to the dressing and bedizening 
 of your persons, degraded yourselves pitifully. The 
 whole number of fashionable female souls are but 
 slaves to the fading bodies in which they live. When 
 I look in upon a fashionable watering-place, and see 
 how dress and personal adornment absolutely monopo- 
 lize the time and the thought of the fashionable women 
 assembled there— when I witness the rivalry amon^ 
 them— the attempts to outshine each other in diamonds 
 and all the tributaries to costly dress— when I see their
 
 To Mrs. Royal Purple Jones. 207 
 
 jealousies, and hear their ill-natured criticisms of each 
 other, and then realize that these women are mothers 
 and those of whom mothers will be made, I have 
 opened to me a gulf of barbarous selfishness — a scene 
 of gilded meanness and misery — from which I shrink 
 back heart-sick and disgusted. Good Heaven, madam ! 
 what and who are you ? Are you all body and no 
 soul ? Is it decent business for a decent soul to be 
 constantly engaged — absorbingly occupied — in orna- 
 menting and showing oif for the gratification of per- 
 sonal vanity the body it inhabits ? Do you realize how 
 low you are fallen ? Do you realize that you are 
 come to the small and indecent business of getting up 
 your person to be looked at, admired, praised, — that 
 the most grateful satisfactions of your life are foimd 
 in this business, and that the business itself is but a 
 single moral remove from prostitution ? 
 
 If I have succeeded in picturing you to yourself, per- 
 haps you will be prepared to follow me into a contem- 
 plation of a few of the natural consequences of your in- 
 fatuation upon your character and liappiness. WiU 
 you look among your fashionable female acquaintances, 
 and find one who is making any intellectual progress? 
 The thing is impossible. There is nothing more con- 
 ducive to mental growth and development in devotion 
 to the keeping and dressing of the person of a woman, 
 than there is in the keeping and the grooming and
 
 harnessing of a pet horse. Look at a man who devotes 
 himself to a horse. He may be a very pleasant fellow, 
 and ordinarily intelligent, hut if he is enamored of 
 his animal, and gives himself np to his care and ex- 
 hibition, becoming what is known as a " horse man," 
 that ends his intellectual development. "When horse 
 gets highest in any man's mind, culture ceases. Noav, 
 madam, it would make no difference, practically, 
 whether you were devoted to the person of a horse, 
 or the person of a pet dog, or the person of Mrs. Royal 
 Purple Jones. The mind that engages in no higher 
 business, or that finds its highest delight in no higher 
 pursuit than that of grooming and disj^laying a beau- 
 tiful body, can make no progress into a nobler life. 
 Practically you will find this the case everywhere. 
 You will find that your fashionable friends do not 
 grow at all. They move along in the same old ruts, 
 prate of the same old vanities, go the same old rounds 
 of frivolity, and only become less sprightly and agree- 
 able as the years pass by. Just what you see in these 
 people, madam, I see in you. 
 
 There is another very sad result which comes natu- 
 rally from this devotion to your own person. You 
 are already grown supremely selfish. You have per- 
 mitted your personal vanity to control you so long that 
 you can really see nothing in the universe but your- 
 self. It seems proper and right that everybody should
 
 To Mrs, Royal Purple Jones. 209 
 
 serve you. Any labor that would soil or enlarge your 
 small white hands — any toil that would tax the powers 
 of your petted body — any service for others that would 
 draw you away from service to your own person — is 
 shunned. Your mother, your sisters, your friends, are 
 all laid imder tribute to you, and your petulance under 
 denial has made them your slaves. Absorbed by these 
 thoughts of yourself, devoted to nothing but yourself, 
 making room for no plans which do not relate to your- 
 self, you have come to regard yourself as the world's 
 pivotal centre. It does not occur to you at all that the 
 kind people around you can have any interests or plans 
 of their own to look after. All the fish must come to 
 your net, or you are unhappy ; and if those around you 
 are not made unhappy it is not because you do not try 
 to make them so. Sometimes you act like a miserable, 
 spoiled baby, and then, under the spur of jealousy, you 
 act like an infuriated brute. The tendency to this 
 shameful selfishness is natural and irresistible, in all 
 who devote themselves, as you have done, to the care 
 and exhibition of their persons. Others may cover it 
 from sight more than you do, by a more cunning art, 
 but it is there. It cannot be otherwise, and I cannot 
 conceive of a type of selfishness more nearly perfect 
 than that which the character of ahnost any fashion- 
 able woman illustrates. 
 
 There is still another result which naturally flows
 
 210 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 from supreme devotion to the person, viz : vulgarity. 
 Madam, I look anywhere in God's world for genuine 
 refinement and lady-like instincts and manners rather 
 than to fashionable society. True refinement and 
 gentle manners can never find their home ui any so- 
 ciety in which selfishness reigns. True refinement has 
 brains. True refinement has a heart. True refinement 
 always makes room in the world for others. True re- 
 finement has consideration for others. True refine- 
 ment does not find its satisfactions in the display and 
 adornment of the body. True refinement refuses to 
 be governed by fashion, having within itself a higher 
 and a purer law. True refinement shrinks from con- 
 spicuity and show. True refinement engages in no un- 
 worthy and unwomanly rivalries. You know that the 
 coarsest words you ever hear from the lips of women 
 — the harshest, meanest, worst things — the lowest ex- 
 pressions — you hear from the lips of those of your 
 own set. Yet mark the impudent hypocrisy of the 
 thing. You and your set assume to be the leaders of 
 society — the ton — the pattern women of the nation — 
 so far refined that all other women are counted vul- 
 gar ! My friend, (if you are not by this time become 
 my enemy,) how can you help becoming vulgar when 
 you have been nothing for years but your own groom ? 
 How can you help becoming low when you have 
 thought of nothing for years but your own person ?
 
 You are vulgar. All your pursuits are vulgar. Your 
 rivals and associates are vulgar, and your ambitions 
 are as vulgar as those of the horse-jockey. 
 
 I would not be misunderstood. I admire a well 
 dressed woman. I admire a beautiful woman, and I 
 thoroughly approve all legitimate efforts to render the . 
 person both of man and woman agreeable. Men and 
 women owe it to their own dignity to drape their per- 
 sons becomingly and well, and they can do this with- 
 out acquiring an absorbing passion for dress, or giving 
 any more than the necessary amo\mt of thought and 
 time to it. The fact is that a woman who is what a 
 woman should be has no need of elaborate personal 
 ornament to make her attractive. A pure, true heart, 
 a self-forgetful spirit, an innocent delight in innocent 
 society, a wish and an effort to please, ready ministry 
 to the wants of others, graceful accomplishments wil- 
 lingly used, sprightliness and intelligence, these are 
 passports to personal power. Relying upon these, 
 there is no woman whose person is simply and becom- 
 ingly dressed who is not well dressed. "With any or 
 all of these, the person becomes pleasing. 
 
 As I write, there comes to my memory the person 
 of a woman whom everybody loved and admired — 
 the most thoroughly popular woman I ever knew. 
 She was welcomed alike in fashionable and refined so- 
 ciety, and behaved herself alike in both. She was not
 
 212 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 beautiful, but she was charming. She never orna- 
 mented her person, but she was always well dressed. 
 A simple, well-fitted gown, and hair tastefully dis- 
 posed, were all one could see of any effort to make her 
 person pleasing, and these seemed to be forgotten, and, 
 . I believe, were forgotten, the moment she entered so- 
 ciety. When friends were aroimd her she had no 
 thought but of them — no desire but to give and receive 
 pleasure. If she was asked to sing she sang, and, if 
 it ministered to the pleasure of others, she sang pa- 
 tiently, eveii to weariness. She was as intelligent and 
 stimulating in sober conversation as she was playful in 
 spirit, and though she loved general society, and min- 
 gled freely in it, not a breath of slander ever sullied 
 her name, and not an emotion was ever excited by her 
 that did not do her honor. Every man admired and 
 honored her, and every woman — a much greater mar- 
 vel — spoke in her praise. Many a belle, dressed at the 
 height of fashion, entered her presence only to become 
 insignificant. Diamonds were forgotten and splendid 
 dress was unmentioned, while her sweet presence, her 
 self-forgetful devotion to the pleasure of others, and 
 her gentle manners, were recalled and dwelt upon with 
 unalloyed delight. 
 
 Madam, I have been painting from life. I have 
 painted you from life, and I have painted this friend 
 from life — a friend so modest and so unconscious of her
 
 charms that she -would weep with her sense of imworthi- 
 ness if she were told that I had attempted to paint her. 
 How does the contrast stiike you ? Do you not see 
 that you are a slave and that she is a free woman ? 
 Do you not see that she has entered into the eternal 
 realities of things, and that you Are engrossed in 
 ephemeral nothingnesses ? Do you not see that she is a 
 refined woman and that you are a coarse one ? Do 
 you not see that her unselfish devotion to the happi- 
 ness of others is beautiful, that her unconsciousness of 
 her charms is beautiful, that her simplicity is beauti- 
 ful, and that your selfishness and your devotion to 
 dress and your jealousy and your rivalries are all vul- 
 gar and ugly and hateful ? 
 
 It is complained of by many of your sex that men 
 regard woman as only a plaything — a creature to be 
 humored and petted and controlled, and indulged in as 
 a troublesome luxury. It is comjjlained of that woman 
 does not have her place as man's equal — as his friend, 
 companion, and partner. Are men entirely in the 
 blame for this opinion, to the limited extent in which 
 it is held ? Suppose men were to take you and such 
 as are like you as the subjects of their study : what 
 would be their conclusions ? Suppose they were thor- 
 oughly to comprehend your devotion to your own per- 
 son, — to realize the absolute absorption of all your 
 energies and all your time by the frivolous and mean
 
 214 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 objects that inthrall you — what would be their decis- 
 ion ? What does your husband think about it ? Ex- 
 cuse me for mentioning him, madam. I am aware that 
 he occupies a very small share of your attention, but, 
 really, the man who finds you in money has a right to 
 an opinion upon this point. You do not care what his 
 opinion is ? I thought so. You have ceased to love 
 him, and he has ceased to oppose you. It is impossible 
 for your husband to love you. It is impossible for any 
 man either to love or to honor a woman so selfish as 
 you are ; and your sex may blame you and those who 
 are like you for all the contempt which a certain class 
 of men feel for women. You degrade yourself to 
 the position of a showy creature, good for nothing 
 but to spend money. You teach men contempt for 
 your sex, and it is only the modest and intelligent 
 women whom you despise that redeem it to admira- 
 tion and love.
 
 THE FIFTEENTH LETTER. 
 
 €a piss ^dicm '§tmnns lottts. 
 
 COXCERNTKG HER STRONG DESIRE TO BECOME AN 
 AUTHORESS. 
 
 WHiL you permit me to reply publicly to the pri- 
 vate letter in which you have informed me 
 of your strong desire to engage in literary labor, as a 
 fonn of self-expression which embraces all your am- 
 bition and all your wish to do good ? Had yours been 
 the first letter of the kind that had reached my hand, I 
 should not have ventured to treat your case publicly ; 
 but I have received a hundred such, and many of these 
 came to me so reluctantly — after such a struggle with 
 inclination — that I am convinced that you are only one 
 of a class which numbers its thousands in every part 
 of the country. Indeed, the world is full of women 
 whose unsatisfied lives and whose overflowing natures 
 fill them with suggestions of ideal good, to be won in
 
 216 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 some field of art. If these women could use the pencil 
 or the chisel, many of them would be artists, or would 
 try to be artists ; but the pen is the only instrument 
 of expression with which their fingers are familiar, and 
 they come to regard it as their only resort. I have a 
 deep sympathy with this desire to write, and I am sure 
 that you will receive what I have to say to you as the 
 words of a friend. 
 
 You have a strong desire to write, you tell me. 
 Well, this desire to write may be associated with the 
 power to succeed as a writer, or it may not. The de- 
 sire to write is not even prima facie evidence of fit- 
 ness for writing. This desire, as I have already inti- 
 mated to you, is quite universal. One of the strangest 
 anomalies of human nature is exhibited in the general 
 desire to do those things which are the most difficult 
 to do. A little man desires to do the work of a large 
 man, and a large man desires to be thought nimble. 
 A man of slender limb desu*es to be an athlete. It is 
 very common for men to have a strong desire to sing 
 or to play upon a musical instrument who could not 
 sing or play with a century's practice, because they 
 have neither voice nor ear. I suj^pose that nine out of 
 ten of the students in our colleges have a strong desire 
 to be orators, and you know how much, or how little, 
 the desire amounts to. Most probably the student who 
 has the least desire to be. an orator of any one in his
 
 To Mifs Felicia Hemans Jones. 217 
 
 class is the one who is most certain to become one ; 
 and perhaps you will readily see that he who is con- 
 scious of possessing the orator's native power has least 
 occasion to desire it. Of the great multitude Avho 
 ^\rite, you know that only a few succeed. Nine out 
 of every ten fail — perhaps even a larger proportion 
 than this. A very few of these fail, doubtless, through 
 no real fault of their own, but through unfavorable 
 circumstances ; while the most of them find to their 
 mortification and their cost that their desire to write 
 misled them entirely with regard to the work which 
 nature intended them to do. So you see that I do not 
 think much of desire as a guide to one's work in the 
 world. Indeed, I think it the most imreliable index 
 ever consulted. 
 
 I think I understand the process through which 
 your mind is constantly passing. You take up a book, 
 from the pen of a favorite author, and you are refreshed 
 and nourished and inspired by it. You are exalted by 
 this communion with a highly vitalized and fruitful 
 mind, and feel yourself longing for action and expres- 
 sion of some kind. It is the most natural thing in the 
 world for you to desire, before everything else, to be a 
 writer. You admire the author Avho has inspired you. 
 You imagine that the mind that has within it the 
 power to work such marvels upon you must be a su- 
 premely happy mind. His jjosition of power seems 
 
 10
 
 218 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 very enviable to you, — if not enviable, very desirable. 
 The results of his efforts upon you are so good and so 
 wonderful that it seems to you as if it must be a glo- 
 rious thing to Tvork them. You long to do for others 
 what he has done for you. You long to be regarded 
 with love and admiration as an inspirer. This is the 
 same feeling that is excited in a sensitive mind by 
 public speakers. Thousands of very commonplace men 
 are excited by oratorical. efforts in the pulpit and on the 
 platform, to a strong desire to become public speakers. 
 The desire to be preachers, or orators, or lecturers, or 
 public debaters, is always excited in some minds by 
 listening to the diffei*ent varieties of public sjjeaking, 
 yet the most of these need only to try once to become 
 convinced that desire is a very poor index to power. 
 
 This desire to write is intimately connected with — 
 perhaps it is one of the expressions of— the longing 
 natural to every heart to be recognized. The heart 
 that loves men, and is conscious of the wish and the 
 power to bless them, longs for the recognition of men. 
 All of us who are good for anything have this longing. 
 We long for the recognition of our real value ; we long 
 for a place in the respect and the love of those around 
 us. It is not unfrequently true that those whose affec- 
 tions have been unsatisfied at home — whose plans of 
 domestic life have miscarried — or who are immediately 
 surrounded bv those who will not, or who cannot svm-
 
 To Mifs Felicia Hemans Jones. 219 
 
 pathize with them — who are every day associated with 
 those by whom they are undervahied — turn to the 
 public for that which has been denied them at home. 
 I do not know Avhether I hit your case in these remarks 
 or not, but I shouhl think it strange if I did not. It 
 is not common for a woman who is satisfied in her 
 alFections, who is surrounded by sympathetic friends, 
 and who holds a good position securely, to care for, or 
 even to think of recognition beyond. On the other 
 hand, it is very common for women whose domestic 
 surroundings and society are not satisfying to look to 
 other fields for recognition, and to none so commonly 
 as to that of authorship. 
 
 In your letter to me, you sj^eak of your wish to 
 do good by writing. I do not question the sincerity 
 of tliis wish. It may flow from the benevolence of 
 your nature, developed by Christian culture, or it 
 may have been inspired by the consciousness of 
 good received from the writings of others. But 
 you must remember that one's motives may be very 
 good while one's native gifts may be but poorly 
 adapted to literary eftbrt. Your motives decide noth- 
 ing as to your power. That you may readily see, 
 by looking at the pulpit, filled by men whose motives 
 are excellent, while the power of one half of them has 
 never found demonstration, and never will. I ha^e 
 sometimes thought that there were no preachers in the
 
 220 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 field who more uniformly have the noblest motives and 
 the most charming Christian spirit than those who 
 have not the slightest poAver in the pulpit. No person 
 should write without good motives, but good motives 
 alone never made a good book. Goodish books are 
 written in great numbers by people who write with 
 good motives and incompetent brains, but I suppose 
 you do not care to write such books as these. 
 
 I have made these remarks, not to prove to you 
 that you are incompetent to write a book, and not for 
 the purpose of making you believe that you are incom- 
 petent. I have made them for the simple purpose of 
 showing you that your strong desire to write, even 
 when backed by the purest and most benevolent mo- 
 tives, is no evidence that you can succeed. The world 
 is fall of the desire to do good and great things, and it 
 is not lacking in Avorthy motives. You are not pe- 
 culiar in these things. You share them to a greater 
 extent than you suspect Avith your neighbors. You 
 Avould probably be astonished to leai'n how many there 
 are among your immediate friends who have been 
 moved by the same desires that move you, yet you 
 may be able to see that not one of them could succeed 
 as a Avriter. There may be one among your friends, 
 too, Avho has not had any desires about the matter, but 
 who has written by a sort of natural necessity, Avith- 
 out recognition or publication. What do you think
 
 of such a "man as Theodore Winthrop, who wrote quite 
 a little library of books that could find no publisher 
 until he was killed, and that have now made him fa- 
 mous ? Such a rnan writes because it is a necessity of 
 his nature to write, and I venture to say that he never 
 sought advice on the subject. He certainly was not 
 checked in production because the publishers would not 
 print his books, and the public could not read them. 
 Still, it is possible that you have jTist the native gifts 
 that Avould command success in authorship, though I 
 wish you to feel that the probabilities are against you, 
 and to open your eyes to these probabilities. 
 
 "We will suppose that you have those native gifts 
 which, under favorable conditions, Avould enable you 
 to succeed, and we shall still have these conditions to 
 look after. The first of these is the possession of 
 something of genuine value to comraimicate. Your 
 power of expression may be unsurpassed, and your 
 style may be exceedingly attractive, but unless you 
 have something of value to convey, these will avail you 
 nothing. What have you of knowledge or Avisdom to 
 give to mankind ? How much have you thought and 
 felt and lived ? How much more have you thouglit 
 and felt and lived than those for whom you wish to 
 write ? Do you, in your character and in the general 
 results of your life, stand so far above the mass of 
 mind around you, as to be able to inspire it and to
 
 222 Letters to the Jonefes. . 
 
 lead it to liigher ground ? This question has a great 
 deal more to do with your success in authorship than 
 that which relates to the desire to write. This touches 
 the vitalities of the matter. Have you knowledge 
 which the world has not, and which the world needs ? 
 Has your life led you through such paths of expe- 
 rience and observation that you feel qualified to lead 
 or direct others ? 
 
 Another essential condition to success in authorship 
 is time. To write a brief poem, or a clever little essay 
 for a magazine or a newspaper, it does not require 
 much time. You can do this in the intervals of domes- 
 tic labor, and it would be rather a help than a hinder- 
 ance to labor. It would be quite likely to sweeten 
 labor, and give significance to leisure, to have on hand 
 the work of embodying in some good or graceful form 
 some good or graceful thought for other eyes, but this 
 would be playing at authorship. To succeed in a field 
 which numbers among its competitors the brightest 
 and best minds of the world — minds which devote all 
 their time to their Avork — involves the entire devotion 
 of one's time to the efibrt. Success in authorship can- 
 not be won without time. The man who gains the ear 
 of the world by the labor of ten years may be ac- 
 counted fortunate. It is possible that an author may 
 write a book very early in life which will be read, but 
 it will be forgotten within a shorter time than he
 
 To Mifs Felicia Henians Jones. 223 
 
 occupied in writing it. A book lives by its value — 
 by the amount of genuine life, or food for life, which 
 it contains ; and it takes time to collect this. Defoe, 
 the author of " Robinson Crusoe," was also the author 
 of more than two hundred other works, and it is more 
 than likely that you never heard of any of his books 
 except this that I have named. Yet this book was 
 among his last. It was written after many years of 
 authorship — the only book of all his life that had vi- 
 tality enough in it to survive him. It took nearly 
 sixty years of life, and more than thirty years of au- 
 thorship, to bring him where he could write Robinson 
 Crusoe. Mr. Motley, the now celebrated historiau, 
 began early as a novelist, and his book failed so signally 
 that when he emerged from his obscurity as a histo- 
 rian, nobody remembered the novel. Where do you 
 suppose Mr. Motley spent the ten years, more or less, 
 that divided the issues of the novel and the history ? 
 He spent them in his study, at his desk, in patient 
 labor, giving to his project the very best years of his 
 life. 
 
 Now will you ask yourself whether you have time 
 to give to a life like this ? Do you realize how much of 
 sacrifice it involves ? — sacrifice of health and society and 
 domestic pleasures ? Are your plainly indicated do- 
 mestic duties such as to permit you to devote yourself 
 to a life like this ? Is the time that it would absorb,
 
 224 Letters to the Joneies. 
 
 so entirely at jowr disposal, through abundance of 
 means for your support, that you could aftbrd to run 
 the risks of authorship ? This question of time is a 
 very imi3ortant one to a person who is poor. A writer 
 may devote one or two years to writing a good book, 
 and then look one or two years for a publisher, for the 
 best books by new authors have notoriously begged 
 for publishers. " Waverley " and " Uncle Tom's Cabin " 
 and " Jane Eyre " were all beggars for publishers. 
 You would not be apt to have a better fate. But sup- 
 pose, after the usual working and waiting, you were to 
 obtain a publisher. Then he waits for the proper time 
 to bring out your book. It may be three months ; it 
 may be a year. Six months after the day of publica- 
 tion he will give you a note for whatever may be due 
 you for copjTight, payable in four or six months from 
 its date. Do you think that this is an exaggeration ? 
 Every author knows it is not. It is the simple truth, 
 and many of them know that when the day of settle- 
 ment has come, their copyright has amounted to noth- 
 ing ; or they have found that their note, when they 
 were fortunate enough to get one, has not been paid 
 at maturity, on account of the failure of its maker. A 
 man must be rich and independent or poor and des- 
 perate, to afford to write a first book. There "are 
 hardly ten persons among the thirty millions of Ameri- 
 ca who rely on the writing of books for a liWng, and
 
 To Mifs Felicia Hemans Jones. 225 
 
 the most of those have a hard task of it. There is but 
 one way in which a person who is dependent upon his 
 labor for a li'sdng can write a book, and that is to write 
 it in the intervals of labor, which labor is devoted to 
 the simple purpose of getting a living. You will 
 readily see that a writer thus engaged is at work very 
 disadvantageously. 
 
 Another condition of successful writing is patience. 
 A man furnished with all the necessary means of sup- 
 port, and impelled to write by the desire which moves 
 you, and by your wish to do good, will find that, after 
 the labor of a few weeks, the desire dies out. The 
 imptilse to write, born of the inspiration of the books 
 Avhich one reads, is very fiery and very fine at the first, 
 but it is hard to stretch it over a period of six months 
 or a year, through weariness, and headache, and con- 
 finement, and doubt as to the result, and disgust with 
 the failure to satisfy one's own taste and judgment. 
 The man or the woman who writes on, after the origi- 
 nal inspiration has lost its impulse — labors on in the 
 drudgery of detail — in polishing, trimmhig, rewiiting 
 — comes at last to an irksome task, and is only sus- 
 tained in it by a self-sujiported determination. A fresh 
 interest will sustain labor, but when a book has been 
 fully constructed in the mind, and realized in the imagi- 
 nation, and nothing remains but the labor of writing 
 a limited amount from day to day for many months, 
 
 10*
 
 226 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 all of which writing must be done before one can get 
 any sympathy from others, it takes a will as patient 
 and ixnyielding as that which a besieging army needs 
 before a fortress that is to be approached by inches. 
 Do you possess this patience — this persistence — this 
 adamantine will — which will stand and command and 
 do after desire and inspiration are gone, and even the 
 motive of doing good has been discouraged ? 
 
 I have thus attempted to show you how easily you 
 may be misled as to your abilities by your desires, and 
 what the conditions of successful writing must be, ad- 
 mitting that your abilities are all that you suppose them 
 to be. I have exaggerated nothing, but tried to -give 
 you a foithful survey of the ground, so that if you still 
 feel impelled to undertake writing, you may approach 
 your task with a good understanding of its dilBculties. 
 If I were intent on discouraging you — if that were my 
 motive at all — I might go further, and speak of Avhat 
 are supposed to be the " satisfactions " of authorship'. 
 I might tell you that the article which so inspired you 
 probably left the author a disgusted man. It is more 
 than probable that the books which have pleased and 
 strengthened you most, are, at tliis very moment, re- 
 garded by the writer as unworthy of him, and alto- 
 gether unworthy of the purpose to which they were 
 addressed. I might tell you of the incompetent criti- 
 cism, the mean personal attacks, the careless condem-
 
 To Mifs Felicia Hemans Jones. 227 
 
 nations, and worst of all, the undiscriminating praises 
 which are every successful author's lot. But as you do 
 not propose to write to please yourself, and are actuated 
 solely by the desire to do good, the effort would be 
 irrelevant. It would be very painful to me to feel that 
 I had dissuaded any man or woman from a legitimate 
 career, or to know that I had turned aside any mind from 
 a walk of usefulness ; but I cannot but believe that 
 talk like this will save ten from failure for every one 
 whom it will deter from success. There are many men 
 and women who are always unsettled upon this matter. 
 They feel that they suffer hardsliip from circumstances 
 which prevent them from writing. I cannot but be- 
 lieve that an intelligent survey of the difficulties of 
 authorship, and a comprehension of the fallibility of 
 the signs of power to succeed, usually relied upon, will 
 settle this question forever in their minds. It is one 
 of the curses of life to feel that we are out of place, 
 and to feel that we might be doing something better 
 than that which engages our powers. The world is 
 full of the unsatisfied, multitudes of whom, I believe, 
 turn their eyes to the field of authorship with desire, 
 and with more or less of conviction that there are suc- 
 cess and satisfaction in it for them. These people will 
 never write, but they will always be thinking about 
 it ; and they need something to turn them back upon 
 their legitimate field for the satisfactions which they 
 
 9
 
 228 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 seek. I believe this letter M'ill hare an influence on 
 your mind, as well as on theirs. Of this, I feel meas- 
 urably certain : if you were born for an authoress, you 
 will iiud that within you which will set all my wisdom 
 aside, and push on. There is a consciousness of power 
 and a faith in success which I cannot define, but before 
 which I bow ; and if you have these — Heaven im- 
 parted — I bid you God speed. But do not, I beg you, 
 mistake a simple desire to write, which you share in 
 common with thousands, for the divine impulse to 
 which I allude.
 
 THE SIXTEENTH LETTER. 
 
 (To Itl^u |oms. 
 
 COXCERNING THE CHAR ACT Eli AND TENDEXCJES OF THE 
 FAST LIFE Wnicn HE IS LIVING. 
 
 I HAVE been watching you with painful solicitude 
 for the last five years. You were originally what 
 people call a wild boy, with no particular vices, but 
 with strong passions and a great overflow of animal 
 spirits. You came into manhood with a cigar in your 
 mouth and a reputation for " spreeing," in both of 
 which you apparently took a proud delight. You 
 abused every horse that you had the opjwrtunity of 
 driving, and particularly afiected a dashing turn-out. 
 You liked the society of sporting men, and took natu- 
 rally to their ways and their morals. You cut loose from 
 the influence of the Christian friends around you, and 
 broke the Sabbath, and frequented the haunts of vice, 
 and engaged in scenes of dissipation, and laughed at
 
 230 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 those who yielded themselves to the control of con- 
 science. You are a good-natured person enough, but 
 you are wicked, and while you maintain a place in 
 respectable society, you are regarded with fear by the 
 good and with suspicion by all. It is understood 
 among the women that you are not a pure man, and 
 it is known, by some of them, that you have abused 
 the confidence of more than one. All of your friends 
 have heard sad reports of your sins when beyond their 
 sight, and all regard you as a ruined man. 
 
 I wish to call your attention particularly to this 
 point, viz : that the community regard you as a ruined 
 man already. You do not imagine this to be the case, 
 at all. You have no idea that you are ruined, or that 
 you are to be ruined. You are not aware that you 
 have the reputation of being ruined. Now permit me 
 to set you before yourself. 
 
 You are not under the control of principle, in the 
 slightest degree. You have some notions of honor, 
 but they are entirely conventional. They would not 
 keep you from breaking your pledge to a woman, or 
 breaking her heart, and I say, therefore, that you have 
 no principle — not even the principle of personal honor 
 which you doubtless suppose you have. There is, 
 thus, nothing to restrain you from the most imscrupu- 
 lous means for securing your personal ends, and noth- 
 ing to stand between you and the gratification of your
 
 To Jehu Jones. 231 
 
 sensual desires, except the law. Now will you not 
 decide for yourself how far a man in this position is 
 from ruin ? Do you imagine that you are, to any ex- 
 tent, under the control of principle ? Does principle 
 restrain you from indulgence in strong drink ? Does 
 principle withhold you from association with lewd 
 women ? Does principle forbid your use of the pro- 
 fane oath or the obscene jest ? You know it does none 
 of these things. Then why do you fancy that you are 
 controlled by principle ? Why do you fancy that there 
 is anything within you to keep you from moral ruin ? 
 If you are not ruined to-day, you are pretty certain to 
 be very soon, because salvation involves reformation, 
 at which you scoff. 
 
 Lot me ask you to look around you, and see what 
 those have come to who began where you have begim. 
 There goes your neighbor with a blotched and burning 
 face and a stuffed skin, whose drink will just as cer- 
 tainly kill him as if it were arsenic. He stood once 
 where you stand to-day. He did not dream, ten years 
 ago, that he was ruined ; but he has taken no new step 
 to bring him where he now stands. He only continued 
 to do what he was already doing. There was no prin- 
 ciple to stand between him and destruction. He drank 
 with his friends occasionally, then he drank with them 
 habitually, then he drank alone to gratify a thirst 
 which drink had created, and which will never die
 
 232 
 
 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 while his vitiated body lives. Look at that other 
 neighbor of yours, with a dark red skin and a troubled 
 eye, who knows where he is going. It is not ten years 
 since he was not even suspected of drinking, but it 
 came out that he had learned in secret to love hot 
 liquors, and that he had set his heart against reform. 
 That man is in the straight road to hell and he knows 
 it, and you, on the same road, stop at the wayside re- 
 sorts and drink with him. Delirium tremens waits for 
 that man and is sure of him. Look at that little circle 
 of neighbors younger than those to whom I have called 
 your attention. Do you see how they are changing ? 
 Do you not see that they are gi'owing preternaturally 
 heavy, and that they are becoming more habitual in 
 their visits to the dram-shop and in the indulgence in 
 drink at home ? Have you any doubt as to where 
 they will be in the course of ten years more ? 
 
 Having looked at these, suppose you go with me to 
 visit certain others who have arrived at the close of 
 their journey. There sits one in his doorway — a mis- 
 erable wreck, filled with gouty pains, unable even to 
 taste of the liquor which has destroyed him, and loath- 
 ing the food which he has no power to digest. There 
 writhes another in tonnent — in a delirium whose hor- 
 rors are beyond conception, as they are beyond de- 
 scription. There sits another in the sun, from whom 
 the flesh has all fallen away — who is left feeble and flac-
 
 To Jehu Jones. 233 
 
 cicl and foolish — a poor, broken-down, diseased wretch, 
 beyond the reach of help. There sinks another in par- 
 alysis, a helpless mass of bloated flesh. 
 
 What do you think of these men, Mr. Jehu Jones ? 
 Does it seem as if that handsome face and those 
 shapely limbs erf yours could ever arrive at such degra- 
 dation ? You have only to keep along in the track 
 which you noAV follow, with no fears and no compunc- 
 tion of conscience, to pass through the various stages 
 of ruin which these men have presented to you. There 
 is but one end to a life of drink, and that is hell. It 
 matters little whether the popular doctrine of future 
 torment be admitted or not to make my statement 
 good. A body long abused by drink becomes all that 
 we can conceive of as hell. It is the dwelling-place 
 of torment — the home of horror. You see these men 
 on their way to ruin. You know just where they are 
 going, and I see you are going on the same road, to 
 the same end. Tell me whether you do not love drink 
 better to-day that you did five years ago. Tell me 
 whether it does not take more drink to satisfy you 
 than it did five years ago. Tell me whether you are 
 not drinking oftener than you did even two years ago. 
 Tell me whether you do not think of it oftener when 
 away from it than you did one year ago. Tell me 
 whether your conscience reproves you at all, and 
 whether, under the accumulating evidences of your
 
 234 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 essential ruin, you have felt the smallest alarm as to 
 what may be the result of your indulgence. I see 
 what you do not see — that you have acquired an appe- 
 tite for liquor. You used to drink it only when on a 
 frolic ; now you drink it every day. Now let me tell 
 you what all observation and experience teach — that 
 you i\dll love it more and more as the years pass away, 
 and will be less and less inclined to relinquish its use. 
 Why should I not speak of you then as a ruined man ? 
 There is another element that enters into your ruin. 
 You have, for the past five years, consorted with ruined 
 women. When you were younger, evil companions and 
 evil desires and curiosity led you into their society. 
 There were certain things in that society that disgusted 
 you then. To-day you are at home in it. Sir, you are 
 a beast. You delight in the company of women who 
 shame the names of mother, sister and wife — of pros- 
 titutes who sell for gold that which, in God's pure 
 economy, is sacred to love — of women whose touch is 
 pollution and whose hold upon you is danmation. Oh 
 Heaven ! Wlien I think of the young life aroimd me 
 that is permitting its feet to be directed into these 
 terrible paths of sin — when I consider how seductive 
 these paths are to youthful appetite and passion — when 
 I remember how opportunity invites from ten thousand 
 hiding-places — and when I realize that there is no vice 
 which so deadens or destroys the moral sense as that
 
 To Jehu Jones. 235 
 
 of licentiousness, I am sick and almost in despair. You 
 are old in this vice, but there are those around me who 
 are young in it, as you were once — boys, whose feet 
 hang upon the verge of a precipice more fearful than 
 death — young men — with Christian mothers and pure 
 sisters — whose characters are as base as their bodies 
 are diseased. Do you shrink from this vice, and from 
 the society which it involves ? Are you not in love 
 with it — so much in love with it that you do not enjoy 
 the society of pure women ? Are you not so much in 
 love with it that the society of pure women only brings 
 to you shameful suggestions ? And yet, you think you 
 are not ruined ! Sir, you are rotten. If mind were 
 subject to the laws of matter, and moral corruption 
 were accompanied by the phenomena which character- 
 ize physical decay, you would stink like carrion. 
 
 I have no words with which to express my sense 
 of the ruin which this single vice has wrought in you. 
 Men who drink are sometimes reformed, and if they 
 have not proceeded too far in their vice, they come 
 back to a self-respectful manhood. The taint left upon 
 the morals is not so deep that it cannot be eradicated ; 
 but a man who has been debauched by licentiousness, 
 is incurable. I do not mean that he cannot reform, 
 but that he must always be weak, and must always 
 carry with him a sense of degradation and shame. 
 
 Do you persist in believing that you are not ruined ?
 
 236 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 There is, of course, one aspect of your case in which 
 you are not. It is possible for you to reform, but 
 you have no idea of reforming. You base no hopes or 
 calculations on reformation. That is why I declare 
 you to be ruined. You voluntarily block up the only 
 way of escape from ruin. If a man, loving your wel- 
 fare, speaks to you of reformation, you are angry with 
 hira. If he ventures to reprove you for your vices, 
 you bid him mind his own business. You brace your- 
 self against every influence which is intended to reform 
 you. You join hands with those who are nearer the 
 grand catastrophe of their lives than yourself. You 
 scoff at temperance and purity in life. You laugh at 
 religion. You glory in your independence of all weak 
 and womanish notions of morals and of life, yet God 
 knows that in these weak and womanish notions of 
 morals and of life abides your only hope of deliverance 
 from a career whose end is certain disaster and misery. 
 Look at the poor women who share your debaucheries. 
 Are they ruined, or are they not ? How great a chance 
 does any one of them stand of reformation and a hap- 
 py life ? Can you not see that their lives are morally 
 certain to end in wreck ? Do you not know that their 
 steps tend directly into the blackness of darkness— 
 into a horrible tempest of remorse, whose bowlings 
 even now ring in their ears in the intervals of artificial 
 madness ? What are you better than they ? You are
 
 To Jehu Jones. 237 
 
 not better than they. They are your equals and your 
 companions, travelling the same path — bound to the 
 same perdition. ^ 
 
 Would to Heaven I could paint to your imagina- 
 tion the horrors of a lost life, that you and all who 
 may gaze upon the picture might shrink from the gulf, 
 and make haste to reach safer and higher ground ! I 
 would call up to your vision your former self — the un- 
 polluted boy and young man — full of life, and joy, 
 and generous impulses, with inclinations drawing you 
 toward sin, and pure influences from parents and home 
 and heaven dissuading you from it. I would show you 
 how, yielding to these better influences, you might now 
 be an honored member of society, with a virtuous wife 
 at your side, and pleasant children at your knee — with a 
 smiling heaven above you, a safe future before you, an 
 approving conscience within you — with conscious free- 
 dom from the slavery of thirst and desire — with self- 
 respect, and that strength which comes from the posses- 
 sion of the respect of others. I would show you all your 
 possibilities of excellence in manhood, of virtuous hap- 
 piness, of self-denying efibrt for the good of society, of 
 domestic delight, of faith and confidence in a great and 
 glorious future. And having shown you all these, I 
 would show you all those — lost. I would show you a 
 life that might have been that of an angel thrown away 
 — its physical health and resources wasted in debauch
 
 238 
 
 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 eries— its mind feasting only on impure imaginations, 
 and delighting only in impure society — its heart reeking 
 Avith corruption — its pure ambition dead — its present 
 controlled by animal appetites, rendered foul by in- 
 dulgence and fierce by their feverish food, and its 
 future overclouded by fear. I would show you a man 
 — the noblest being God has placed upon the earth — 
 thrown away — transformed into a beast — a gross, 
 unreasoning thing, that glories in its appetites, and 
 boasts of their indulgence — a being lost to decency, to 
 self-respect, to happiness, to good society, to God — 
 lost even to the poor inheritance of conscious shame. 
 
 A lost life ! What is it ? Theologians stickle about 
 words in describing the future of the vicious, but if 
 any theologian can tell me how a man can live the life 
 of a beast, subjecting his soul, with all its pure aspira- 
 tions and inspirations, to the service of lust, and throw 
 away his life in this miserable perversion, and be able 
 to look back upon it from the other side of the dark 
 river with anything but remorse, he will explain to me 
 the strangest anomaly of the moral universe. Sir, the 
 thing is impossible. A lost life is something that be- 
 longs to a lost soul. What is in store for such a soul, 
 of possible reform in the long ages which lie before it, 
 I cannot tell. I only know that it has lost its best 
 chance, and, so far as I know, its only chance, for ever- 
 lasting happiness. I only know that such a soul must
 
 To Jehu Jones. 239 
 
 go before its Maker a polluted thing, full of regret for 
 its life of folly and of sin, consciously out of harmony 
 with all pure and heavenly society, shorn by the death 
 of its body of every source of pleasure. I know that 
 you are losing your life — that you are marching straight 
 into the jaws of physical and spiritual destruction. 
 You refuse to reform. You scoff at reform. What 
 remains ? A life — ^lost ! My God ! "What a surren- 
 der of thy gift is this ! 
 
 It would be a gratification to me, sweeter than any 
 material success, to turn your feet into the path of vir- 
 tue ; but I have not much faith in so happy a result of 
 this expostulation. For many years I have watched 
 the career of such men as you. Death has reaped a 
 dozen crops of them within my short memory. The 
 young men who occupied ten years ago the position 
 which you occupy to-day, are nearly all of them dead. 
 One remains, here and there, a played-out man, whom 
 circumstances have restrained from going on to abso- 
 lute suicide. The rest have hidden their faces in the 
 grave, and no one speaks of them except as of men 
 who lost their lives. Look back, yourself, and see 
 how many of those with whom you have joined in 
 carousal and debauchery are now dead. They are 
 scattered all along the track of your dissipated life. 
 How many of your companions have reformed ? Can 
 you name one ? I hope you can name many, but if
 
 you can, you are more fortunate than I am. No, sir, I 
 have but little hope of saving you, though it "would 
 give me more joy than it would be jDossible for me to 
 express to be able so to present to you your situation 
 as to frighten you back from the precipice which you 
 are rapidly approaching. If any entreaty of mine 
 could save you, I would willingly get on my knees 
 before you, and beg you to save yourself by immediate 
 reform. I would do anything to arrest your progress 
 to destruction, and I would do anything to turn the 
 feet of those Avho are younger than you away from the 
 life which you are leading. 
 
 I have wi-itten you this public letter mainly to 
 arrest the attention and secure the salvation of those 
 who are tempted as you were, when younger, to for- 
 sake the path of temperance and purity. It is more 
 than likely that when you commence this letter, and 
 notice its drift, you will lay it down without reading 
 it. It is more than likely that many young men who 
 are not fallen, but who are liable to fall, will read the 
 whole of it. It is mainly for the use and the warning 
 of these men, that I have drawn your picture, and I 
 place it before them with hopefulness of a good result. 
 I would show them by your life whither license leads. 
 I would show them by your loss what illicit indulgence 
 costs. I would warn them by the disasters and death 
 of your friends to abstain from the intoxicating cup.
 
 To Jehu Jones. 241 
 
 and to shun the house of her whose steps take hold on 
 hell. Licentiousness, were it not the vuce of all ages, 
 might be called the s|>ecial vice of this age. Certain it 
 is that never in the history of Puritan America did this 
 vice reap to its infectious bosom such harvests of the 
 young as it is reaping now. Certain it is that this 
 vice never spread its temptations before the public 
 with such impunity as now. The commiinity seems to 
 be benumbed, discouraged by its boldness, strength, 
 and prevalence. It literally advertises itself in the 
 public streets, and no man lifts indignantly his voice 
 against it. Ruin and riot thrive. The dram-shop and 
 the brothel are everywhere, and into either of these no 
 man can go without endangering both his body and 
 his soul. You, Mr. Jehu Jones, will sometime know 
 how precious a possession is in the hands of these 
 young men — know when you would give the world, 
 were it yours, to win back the innocence and health 
 and peace which you will have forever lost — know 
 when you would esteem it a privilege to adjure them 
 to keep their bodies and their souls from the grasp of 
 those appetites which will have borne you into the 
 realm of despair. 
 11
 
 THE SEVENTEENTH LETTER. 
 
 ^a S^^onras ^rnolb |oncs, Schoolmaster. 
 
 CONCERNING THE REQUIREMENTS AND TEE TENDENCIES 
 OF EIS PROFESSION. 
 
 WHEN I review the life and character of Dr. 
 Thomas Arnold — to honor whom your name 
 was given to you — it is easy for me to imderstand why 
 he was so great a schoolmaster. He was a profoimd 
 scholar, surpassing iu attainments most of the profes- 
 sional men of his time. He was a rare historian, with 
 a minute knowledge and a philosophical appreciation 
 of modern times, and that mastery of antiquity which 
 enabled him to write a History of Rome that compe- 
 tent critics have characterized as " the best history in 
 tlie language." He was a theologian of the highest 
 class, paying but little respect to systems constructed 
 by men, but drawing directly from the fountain of all 
 theological knowledge — the Bible. Above all, he was
 
 To Thomas Arnold Jones. 243 
 
 a man — a large-hearted, catholic man — a gentle, loving 
 man — fall of enthusiasm — devoted to reform — in con- 
 stant communication with the best minds of his a<re 
 through a private correspondence, which astonishes all 
 who now look upon its record — a laborious, conscien- 
 tious, Christian man. Knowing all this of the man, it is 
 not surprising to me that he was the greatest school- 
 master of his generation, or that we cannot find his 
 peer among the schoolmasters of to-day. 
 
 I heard some years ago that you had " fitted " your- 
 self " for teaching " — that you proposed to make teach- 
 ing the business of your life. I know comparatively 
 little about you, personally, but I know what, in the 
 definitions of the day, fitting one's self for teaching 
 means. It is commonly understood that when a man 
 is " fitted for teaching," he is fitted to conduct recita- 
 tions in the various branches pursued in the ordinary 
 schools, having thoroughly gone through the usual text- 
 books himself. If a man knows grammar, he is " fit- 
 ted " to teach grammar. If a man has learned arith- 
 metic and natural philosophy, and astronomy and mor- 
 al science, as he finds them in the accredited text-books, 
 he is " fitted " to teach all those branches of learning. 
 "We hear constantly of young men and women who 
 are " fitting themselves for teaching," and we know 
 exactly what the process is. We hear often of those 
 who travel in foreign parts as a preparation for labor
 
 in the pulpit, and in other professions, but I do not 
 remember an instance of travel, imdertaken by man or 
 woman, as a preparation for teaching, " Fitness " for 
 teaching seems to consist solely in the ability to con- 
 duct recitations, and when this ability is compassed, so 
 that a candidate for the teacher's office is able to pass 
 an examination before a board more or less competent 
 for the service, he is " fitted for teaching." 
 
 It is true that teachers fitted in this way for their 
 work are competent to impart what, in the common 
 lanGfuasi-e of the time, is called " an education." With 
 all that is written intelligently on this subject of educa- 
 tion at the present time — and in my judgment the sub- 
 ject is better understood now than it has ever been be- 
 fore — it is astonishing how almost imiversally it is the 
 opinion that education consists in the cramming into a 
 child's mind the contents of a pile of text-books. I do 
 not think that I exaggerate at all when I say that three 
 quarters of the teachers of American youth practically 
 consider fitness for teaching to consist in the ability to 
 conduct recitations from the usual text-books, and that 
 three quarters of the people who have childi*en to be 
 educated regard education as consisting entirely in ac- 
 quiring the ability to answer such questions as these 
 teachers may propose from the text-books in their 
 hiuids. The larger view of teaching and of education 
 ia not the prevalent view. Teaching is conducted
 
 To Thomas Arnold Jones. 245 
 
 often by men who are not competent to do anything 
 else. They take up teaching as a preparation for other 
 work. A man teaches as a preparation for preaching 
 — as a stepping stone to something better — as a means 
 of earning money to enable him to learn some other 
 work. " Fitness for teaching " seems to come a long 
 time before fitness for anything else comes, and is cer- 
 tainly not regarded as indicating a very high degree 
 of intellectual advancement. 
 
 I have no means of knowing how far I have defined 
 your notions, or your attainments, in these statements, 
 but I have prepared you, certainly, for the proposition 
 that real fitness for teaching only comes with the most 
 varied and generous culture, with the best talents en- 
 thusiastically engaged, and the noblest Christian char- 
 acter. Dr. Arnold was a great schoolmaster simply 
 because he was a great man. His " fitness " for hear- 
 ing recitations was the smallest part of his fitness for 
 teaching. Lideed, it was nothing but what he shared 
 in common with the most indifierent of his assistants 
 at Rugby. His fitness for teaching consisted in his 
 knowledge of human nature and of the world, his pure 
 and lofty aims, his self-denying devotion to the work 
 which employed his time and powers, his lofty exam- 
 ple, his strong, generous, magnetic manhood. That 
 which fitted him peculiarly for teaching was precisely 
 that which would have fitted him peculiarly for any
 
 246 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 other high office in the service of men. His knowl- 
 edge of the oi'dinary text-books may not have been 
 greater than that which you possess. His excellence as 
 a teacher did not reside in his eminence as a scholar 
 and a man of science, though that eminence is imdis- 
 puted ; but in that power to lead and inspire — to rein- 
 force and fructify — the young minds that were placed 
 in his care. He filled those minds with noble thoughts. 
 He trained them to labor with right motives for grand 
 ends. He baptized them with his own sweet and 
 strong spirit. He glorified the dull routine of toil by 
 keeping before the toilers the end of their toil — a 
 grand character — that power of manhood of which so 
 noble an example was found in himself. 
 
 Now, my friend, how well fitted for teaching are 
 you, tried by the standard which I place before you in 
 the character of Dr. Arnold ? I do not ask whether 
 you are as great and good a man as Dr. Arnold. I do 
 not require that you should be as great and good as 
 he ; but I ask you whether you now regard, or wheth- 
 er you have ever regarded — save in the most general 
 sense — this matter of fitness for teaching as being 
 anything more than fitness to govern a school, and con- 
 duct recitations intelligently? Having acquired this 
 sort of fitness sufficiently to enable you to get a posi- 
 tion, are you pushing on in the pursuit of that higher 
 fitness which will give you the power of an inspirer of
 
 To Thomas Arnold Jones. 247 
 
 the youth who are placed in your charge ? That is the 
 question most interesting not only to your pupils, but 
 to you. Are you making progress as a man, by con- 
 stant culture ? Are you bringing your mind into com- 
 munication with other minds, that you may gain vital- 
 ity and force by contact and collision ? Are you read- 
 ing — studying — striving to lift yourself out of the dead 
 literalism of your recitation-rooms, so that you can win 
 higher groimd, whither you may call the young feet 
 that grow weary with plodding ? Outgrowing all 
 bondage to forms and technicalities and mere words 
 and names, have you mastered ideas, so that you caji 
 give vitaUty to your teachings ? Do tliese text-books, 
 to the mastery of which you devoted Bome years, and 
 in the exposition of which you now spend much of 
 your time, still enthrall you "with the thought that they 
 hold the secret of an education within thoir covers ; or, 
 standing above them, do you look down upon them as 
 rudimentary, and as things which, in the consummation 
 of an education, are left far behind ? 
 
 In the course of your owti education, you were, as 
 I happen to remember, placed under the tutelage of 
 several different masters. "VVUl you now look back 
 and recall them all, and tell me which of them you 
 remember with the most grateful pleasure ? ' Tell me 
 which of them all did you the most good — which of 
 them left the deepest mark upon your character, and
 
 248 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 accomplished most in building up and furnishing your 
 mind ? Was it the most learned man of them all, or 
 M-as it the wisest man ? Was it he who was most at 
 home in the text-books, or he whose mind was fullest 
 of ideas ? I know that you can give but one answer 
 to my question. The answer will be that he who was 
 the most of a man was the best teacher, and the name 
 of that one will always awaken your enthusiasm. You 
 have been peculiarly unfortunate if you have not, at 
 some time in your life, been imder a teacher who had 
 the power to inspire you to such an extent that all 
 study became a pleasure to you, and the school-room, 
 with its tasks and competitions and emulations, the 
 happiest spot which the earth held. And now, when 
 you look back to this man, or when you hear his name 
 mentioned, your mind kindles with a new fire, as if 
 you had touched one of the permanent sources of your 
 moral and intellectual life. Your best teacher was the 
 man who aroused you — who gave you high aims and 
 lofty aspirations — who made you think, and taught 
 you to organize into living and useful forms the 
 knowledge which he helped you to win. In short, he 
 was not the man who crammed you, but the man who 
 educated you — who educed those powers in which re- 
 side your real manhood. 
 
 I wish to impress upon you the great truth that 
 your excellence and success as a teacher depend en-
 
 To Thomas Arnold Jones. 249 
 
 tirely upon the style and strength of your manhood. 
 The ability to maintain order in a school, and to con- 
 duct recitations, with measurable intelligence, is not 
 extraordinary. It is possessed by a large number of 
 quite ordinary people, but that higher power to which 
 I have attempted to direct your attention is extraordi- 
 nary. The teachers are not many who possess it, or 
 who intelligently aim to win it. It is not a garment 
 to be put on and taken oft' like a coat, but it is the re- 
 sult of the loving contact of a generous nature with 
 those great and beautiful realities of which the text- 
 books only present us the dry definitions. Tlie great- 
 est naturalist of this country — perhaps the greatest of 
 any country — is a teacher whose equal it would be 
 hard to find among a nation of teachers ; and this is 
 true, not because he knows so much, but because he is 
 so much. No young mind can come within the reach 
 of his voice and influence without being touched by 
 his sublime enthusiasm. No pupil ever speaks of him, 
 save with brightened or moistened eyes. I have heard 
 women pronounce his name in many places, scattered 
 between Maine and the Mississippi, and always in such 
 terms of gratitude and praise that it has seemed as if 
 the brightest days which they recalled were not those 
 of childhood, and not those spent with parents, or lov- 
 ers, or husbands, but those passed at the feet of that 
 noblest of educators and inspirers — Agassiz.
 
 250 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 I have already intimated tliat this question as to 
 what kind of a teacher you are to be is quite as im- 
 portant to yourself as to your pupils. The character 
 of a schoolmaster has been, in the years that are past, 
 notoriously a dry one. It is really sad to see with how 
 little aiFection many old teachers are regarded by those 
 who were once their pupils. There are men Avho, hav- 
 ing spent twenty-five years of their lives in teaching, are 
 always spoken of by the boys who have been under 
 their charge as " old " somebody or other. " Old 
 Boggs," or " Old Noggs," or " Old Scroggs " has 
 stories told about him, and is never mentioned in terms 
 of respect — much less in terms of affection. Now why 
 is it that these men are remembered so lightly ? It is 
 simply because they are teachers, and not men. They 
 are all good scholars enough, but they have not that in 
 their characters and personalities that wins the love 
 and respect of their pupils. I suppose it must be ad- 
 mitted that there is something in the business of teach- 
 ing Avhich tends to make the character dry. The drudg- 
 ery and detail of teaching are hardly more interesting 
 than the drudgery and detail of the work of the faiTQ, 
 or of the kitchen. Indeed, I think the work of hand- 
 ling the rake and the hay-fork a more refreshing exer- 
 cise for the mind and body than that of turning over 
 and over again a verb, or a sum in simple addition, or 
 even a proposition in Euclid. This everlasting hand-
 
 To Thomas Arnold Jones. 251 
 
 ling of materials that have lost their interest is a very 
 depressing process, to a mind capable of higher work ; 
 and a mind that can interest itself in such work, and 
 find real satisfaction in it, is necessarily a dry and un- 
 lovely one. Do not misunderstand me with regard to 
 this latter statement. A teacher may be interested in 
 his routine of labor through the cfiect that he aims to 
 work upon the young minds before him, and he should 
 be intensely interested in it ; but there is a class of 
 teachers who seem to be really interested in the drudg- 
 ery of repetition, and these are always dry characters, 
 and they grow dryer and dryer until they die. 
 
 You have fitted yourself for teaching, in the usual 
 way. You are prepared, by the mastery of your text- 
 books, to " teach school." The probability is that you 
 win never have any pupils who will be as familiar with 
 these books as yourself, and, so far as maintaining 
 your position is concerned, you will have nothing to 
 do but to handle over and over again familiar and 
 hackneyed materials. Whatever there may be of moral 
 and mental nutriment in these materials, you have al- 
 ready appropriated and digested. There is in them no 
 further growth for you, and, so far as any good to you 
 is concerned, you might as well handle over so many 
 dry sticks. Exactly here is where a multitude of 
 teachers stop. They never take a step in advance.. 
 The work of teaching is severe, and when they are
 
 252 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 throngb with their daily tasks, they are in no mood for 
 study, or experiment, or intellectual culture in any 
 broad and generous sense. Any mind will stan-e on 
 such a diet as this, and the work of instruction be- 
 comes to such a mind degraded below the position of 
 an intellectual employment. I warn you against the 
 danger of falling into this xmfruitful routine, which is 
 certain to dwarf you, and give you a dry and unattrac- 
 tive character. You must make intellectual growth 
 and progress by the means of fresh intellectual food, or 
 you must retrograde. 
 
 There is another reason why the business of teach- 
 ing has a tendency to injure the character. While con- 
 tact with young and fresh natures tends to soften and 
 beautify character under some eircmnstances, I doubt 
 whether this influence is much felt by those who are 
 enscacred in teachins^. We take into our mouths some 
 varieties of fruits as a corrective, which would hardly 
 be regarded as the best of daily food. We take 
 medicines which operate kindly for a brief period, 
 but, if they are continued longer, the system becomes 
 accustomed to them, and they lose their medicinal 
 effect. It is thus with the influence of children. To 
 the literary man, or the man of business, the occasional 
 society of children and youth is very grateful and re- 
 freshing, but it soon tires, and if necessarily long con- 
 tinued, becomes irksome. A reaUy vigorous and healthy
 
 To Thomas Arnold Jones. 253 
 
 mind, forced to remain long in contact with the minds 
 of children, turns with a strong appetite toward matu- 
 rity for stimulus and satisfaction. Now you are obliged 
 to spend the most of your time with children, or those 
 whose minds are immature. You are almost constantly 
 with those who know less than you do, and in this so- 
 ciety you will be quite likely to forget — as many school- 
 masters have forgotten before you — that you are not 
 the wisest and most learned man in the world. It is 
 under these circumstances that pedants are made, alike 
 conceited and contemptible. To a mature mind, there 
 is no intellectual stimulus in the constant society of the 
 immature, and you are certain to become a dwarfed 
 man if you do not mingle freely in the society of your 
 equals and your superiors. I do not know of a man in 
 the world who, more than the teacher, needs the cor- 
 rective and refreshing and liberalizing influences of 
 general society and generous culture, to keep bim from 
 irreparable damage at the hand of his calling. You 
 must mix with thinking men and women, and you 
 must feed yourself with the products of fruitful lives, 
 in books, or your degeneration is certain ; and you 
 will come to be regarded as a dry, pedantic, iminterest- 
 ing man. 
 
 A man or a woman who does nothing but deal out 
 small facts to small minds is certain to become over 
 critical in small things. You have not been a school-
 
 254 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 master so long as to forget the peculiar emotion once 
 excited in you by the presence of a " school-ma'am." 
 Before this day of larger ideas, to be a school-ma'am 
 vraa to be a stiff, conceited, formal, critical character, 
 ■n'hich it was not altogether pleasant for a man to come 
 into contact with. There seemed to be something in 
 the work which these women performed that threw 
 them out of sympathy with the free and easy world 
 around them. They carried all the formal proprieties, 
 all the verbal precisenesses, all the pattern dignities of 
 the school-room, into society ; and one could not help 
 feeling that they had lost something of the softness 
 and sweetness and roundness that belong to the unper- 
 verted female nature. All this has been improved by 
 the modern correctives, but the reminiscence will help 
 you to comprehend one phase of the danger to which 
 you are exposed. I think that if the world were to 
 give its unbiassed testimony touching this subject, it 
 would say that it has foimd teachers to be men who 
 give undue importance to small details, and who seem 
 to lose the power to regard and treat the great ques- 
 tions which interest humanity most in a large and lib- 
 eral way. 
 
 And now, before closing, let me do the honor to 
 your position which I find it in my heart to give, for I 
 hold that position second to none. The Christian 
 teacher of a band of children combines the office of
 
 To Thomas Arnold Jones. 255 
 
 the preacher and the parent, and has more to do in 
 shaping the mind and the morals of the community 
 than preacher and parent united. The teacher who 
 spends six hours a day with my child, spends three 
 times as many hours as I do, and twenty-fold more 
 time than my pastor does. I have no words to express 
 my sense of the importance of your office. Still less 
 haA-e I words to express my sense of the importance 
 of having that office filled by men and women of the 
 purest motives, the noblest enthusiasm, the finest cvd- 
 ture, the broadest charities, and the most devoted 
 Christian purpose. "Why, sir, a teacher should be the 
 strongest and most angelic man that breathes. ISTo 
 man living is intrusted with such precious material. 
 No man livincr can do so much to set human life to a 
 noble tune. No man living needs higher qualifications 
 for his work. Are you " fitted for teaching ? " I do 
 not ask you this question to discourage you, but to 
 stimulate you to an effort at preparation which shall 
 continue as long as you continue to teach.
 
 THE EIGHTEENTH LETTER. 
 
 Co P'rs. liosa f opp'm |ottcs, 
 
 CONCERNING HER DISLIKE OF ROUTINE AND HER DESIRE 
 FOR CHANGE AND AMUSEMENT. 
 
 YOU, who were Rosa Hoppin, when I first met 
 you — a restless child — have married into the 
 great Jones family, and henceforward, through all 
 time, the blood of the Hoppins will mingle with that 
 of the Joneses. What changes will be wrought by 
 this combination of strange currents does not now 
 appear, though I suspect that they wUl not be strongly 
 marked. Indeed, I am inclined to believe that there 
 have been Hoppins in the family before, for I find 
 many Joneses who constantly remind me of the Hop- 
 pins, and any number of the Hoppins whose ways are 
 suggestive of the Joneses. 
 
 The children of the Hoppins do not differ in any 
 essential respect from the childi-en of the Joneses.
 
 To Mrs. Rosa Hoppin Jones. 257 
 
 Pretty nearly all children are, or might be, Hoppin s. 
 They live upon little excitements. They are constantly 
 on the alert for new sources of pleasure. They delight 
 in being away from home, in new and strange places. 
 They are miserable without society and miserable with- 
 out change. Children have no power of application 
 to the performance of duty, no sources of interest and 
 amusement within themselves — no love of work. They 
 grasp a new toy with eagerness, and tire of it before 
 it is broken. The moment they are compelled to sit 
 down, they seize upon a book, or ask for a story, or 
 whine with discontent. They are unhappy unless 
 something is going on for their amusement, or they 
 are going somewhere, or doing something, with amuse- 
 ment for their special object. The genuine Hoppins 
 rarely outgrow this disposition, but carry it with them 
 to their graves. The Hoppins do not sit down quietly 
 in their houses of an afternoon, unless compelled to do 
 so by circumstances. They are either in the street, or 
 at the house of a neighbor. In the evening, either 
 their houses are full of Hoppins, or they are out visit- 
 ing Hoppins, or attending some place of amusement, 
 or doing something at home to make them forget that 
 they are at home. Xothing so weighs down the spirit 
 of a Hoppin as home duty, and the confinement which 
 it involves. Children are half-hated because they inter- 
 fere with indulgence in the passion for going some-
 
 258 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 where and doing something pleasant, and husbands 
 become bores when they happen to love home, and 
 love to find there a thrifty and contented home-life. 
 
 You — Mrs. Rosa Hoppin Jones — are still a child. 
 You are married, and you have children, but I do not 
 see that you are changed at all. You have the same 
 love of novelty that possessed you when you were a 
 little girl — the same greed for change — the same hor- 
 ror of staying at home — the same fondness for " visit- 
 ing" — the same restless impatience with work — the 
 same desire for constant and varied amusement. You 
 are fond enough of dress, but dress does not absorb 
 you. You tire of the old dresses it is true, and greet 
 the new ones with genuine pleasure, but, after all, 
 dress is not your passion. Fine di'ess costs you too 
 much care and trouble, and personal vanity is not your 
 besetting weakness. You would willingly leave all 
 this matter of fine dress to Mrs. Royal Purple Jones 
 and her circle, if you could be permitted to have what 
 you call " a good time." You delight in a party, or a 
 picnic, or an excursion, or a play, or a pageant, or a 
 circus, or an Ethiopian concert, or a frolic of any kind ; 
 and you never pass a day at home, even when you have 
 around you the society you love best, without the sense 
 of irksomeness. You will either have your house full 
 of those who destroy all the sweet privacy and com- 
 munion of home-life, or you will invade the home-life
 
 of some other person — Hoppin or otherwise. And yet, 
 madam, I like you. You are not a disagreeable person 
 at all. Your nature is affectionate and pleasant, your 
 tastes are social, you are generous, and pure, and true- 
 , hearted — as much so as you were when you were a 
 child. Your husband is fond of you, and proud of 
 you. He has tried to adapt himself to you, and to take 
 delight in that which most interests you ; yet I can- 
 not but think that a man who carries his burden of 
 care would delight most in a quiet home, and in 
 the certainty of finding a contented wife in it, when- 
 ever he comes back from the work by which he sup- 
 ports it. 
 
 There are some women in the world — and you 
 seem to be one of them — who never heartily, and with 
 devoted purpose, enter upon the work of life. You 
 do what you are compelled to do by circumstances. 
 If circumstances should compel you to do nothing, you 
 would do nothing. All woi'k is an interference with 
 your favorite pursuits, or your mode of spending time. 
 Nothing would be more agreeable to you than to have 
 the privileges of going, and gadding, and seeking for 
 fresh amusements all your life. You certainly must 
 recognize a difference between yourself and many esti- 
 mable women of your acquaintance. You know many 
 women who, from choice, and on their individual re- 
 sponsibility, have undertaken a life-long task to which
 
 260 
 
 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 they cheerfally and systematically devote their powers. 
 They keep their houses, and understand the minutest 
 affairs connected with them. They devote themselves 
 to the right training, in body, mind and morals, of the 
 little ones born of them. In society, they are the re- 
 liable ones — the women of character and consideration. 
 They are women who use time for good ends, outside 
 of themselves, and who take delight in action — in the 
 useful employment of their powers. You must, I re- 
 peat, recognize a difference between yourself and these 
 women. They have their life in exertion ; you have 
 yours in amusement. You exercise no power, but find 
 your sweetest satisfaction in the varied impressions 
 that are made iipon your sensibilities. 
 
 There is another class of women from whom you 
 must find yourself differing very appreciably. I allude 
 to those whose greatest delight is in opportunities for 
 culture. If you read a book, you read it for the same 
 purpose that a child reads. You read only for amuse- 
 ment. You never read for instruction. The idea of 
 taking up a book for purposes of study, is one that 
 never occurs to yo\i ; and you have no delight in a 
 book that taxes your mind. Whatever you read must 
 amuse you — interest you — absorb you — or you lay it 
 down and call it stupid. There is no culture in such 
 reading as this — there is only dissipation. You read a 
 book for the same purpose that you attend a theatre,
 
 To Mrs. Rofa Hoppin Jones. 261 
 
 or engage in a frolic — for the simple purpose of having 
 your emotional nature excited, and your sensibilities 
 played upon. You never seek for mental nourishment 
 or mental exercise anywhere. Thus, though you read 
 a great deal, and really enjoy some works that are 
 enjoyable by sensible people, you gain nothing. You 
 read for momentary excitement, and win nothing of 
 permanent use. You cannot weigh a book. You can- 
 not even talk about a book, further than to say, that 
 you like it or dislike it. The philosophy or the lesson 
 of a novel or a poem is never grasped by you ; and 
 every book you read is to you just what Mother 
 Goose's Melodies are to the child, and no more. 
 
 You must also perceive a difference between your- 
 self, and those who love society for society's sake. 
 There are many women who love society because of 
 the mental stimulus it brings them — because, in the 
 presence of intelligent and sprightly men and women, 
 they feel themselves brightened and strengthened, and 
 because they find in such society the most grateful op- 
 portunity to act upon others. They are talking people 
 who think before talking, and who think Avhile they 
 talk. I have noticed that while you are exceedingly 
 fond of society, you always shun these people. You 
 can talk nonsense, after a fashion, but your special de- 
 light is in hearing other people talk nonsense ; and the 
 man or the woman in society who says the drollest
 
 262 
 
 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 things, and " runs on " in the wildest way, and does 
 the most to amuse you and to relieve you from the ne- 
 cessity of either thinking or talking, is the one who 
 monopolizes your attention. If you have any special 
 horror, it attaches to being cornered with a sensible 
 man or woman, and being expected to talk sense with 
 them. You see, therefore, that you do not go into 
 society with anything in your hand to pay for that 
 what you receive, except your agreeable person, your 
 willing ears, and your ready and complimentary laugh. 
 These make you popular enough ; but are you not just 
 a little ashamed to think that your love of society 
 would be destroyed if you could find in society none 
 ' but those who have brains and a disposition to use 
 them m sensible talk ? Are you not ashamed that all 
 social circles are stupid to you in the degree that they 
 are brilliant to the wise and the intellectual and the 
 ready-witted ? Are you not ashamed that the clever 
 buffoon of a company interests you most, and helps 
 you most to what you call " a good time." 
 
 You must also perceive that you are very different 
 from those women to whom home is the sweetest spot 
 on the earth. I know many women who have be- 
 come so much enamored of home that they will never 
 leave it willingly. They never go into society without 
 a sense of sacrifice. They cling to home as if they had 
 grown to it — as if every tendi-il of their heart-life had
 
 To Mrs. Rofa Hoppin Jones, 203 
 
 "wound itself around its pleasant things, and could only 
 be dislocated by violence. This love of home and this 
 self-confinement to its walls and its duties may become, 
 and often does become, an intensely morbid passion of 
 the soul — just as much to be deprecated as an unhealthy 
 love of change — but you cannot but feel that a sui)reme 
 love of home and devotion to its duties are very lovely, 
 and that the best women you know entertain tliis love 
 and this devotion far beyond yourself. Your home is 
 not your refuge, so much as the home of your neigh- 
 bor is. When you wish to be happy — when you feel 
 the need of some soothing and comforting influence — 
 you do not draw the curtains of your home about you, 
 and draw the loved ones of home closer to your heart, 
 but you rush to the house of a neighbor that you may 
 forget your troubles in the diversions of lively society. 
 Your life is not at hpme. Home is mainly your board- 
 ing place ; and if there were no such thing as " visit- 
 ing" to be done, you would feel life to be shorn of 
 most of its attraction. In short, you are never so much 
 at home as you are when you are not at home. You 
 are affected by a chronic mental uneasiness which pre- 
 vents you from remaining long in any place — especially 
 in any place to which a duty holds you. 
 
 I have thus endeavored to reveal you to yourself, 
 by calling your attention to the contrast which you — 
 consciously I must believe — present to four different
 
 f- 
 
 264 Letters to the Jonefcs. 
 
 classes of women worthy to be respected and loved, 
 namely : to those who, by definite purpose, have 
 devoted themselves to a life of active duty at home 
 and in society ; to those whose satisfactions are found 
 in culture and its opportunities ; to those who love 
 society for the mental stimulus and strength it im- 
 parts, and to those who are supremely in love with 
 home and its quiet enjoyments. To one of these four 
 classes, or to sundry or all of them combined, you 
 must know that the best women of this world belono: : 
 and I believe that you have sense enough to imderstand, 
 and sensibility enough to fcel that you are not of this 
 number. You are a frivolous woman, constantly on the 
 look-out for new sources of pleasure, and with no definite 
 purpose except to get along as easily as possible with 
 such duties as circumstances have forced upon you, and 
 to have just as many " good times " as circumstances 
 will permit you to have. 
 
 Will you permit me now to say, in all frankness, 
 that I believe you to be made for something better 
 than this ? You have qualities of body and mind and 
 
 heart out of which a noble woman may be made 
 
 qualities which I cannot help admiring any more than 
 I can help loving the light. Your nature is open and 
 frank, and you will admit at once evervthin^ I have 
 said concerning yourself You possess a pleasant tem- 
 per and a pure flow of animal spirits, and an affectionate
 
 nature, and a general desire that others may have just 
 as good a time as you have. But you get no mental 
 growth, you accomplish no worthy purpose, you are 
 not the steadily radiant centre of a worthy home life. 
 You are not doing a true woman's work in the world, 
 for husband, children and friends, or gaining a true 
 woman's wealth of character and culture. You are, as 
 I have told you before, a child, with children on your 
 lap and at your knee — children who do not very pro- 
 foundly respect you — children whose acute percep- 
 tions have already learned your weakness — children 
 who already treat you like a child. Are you never to 
 be a woman ? You ought not only to love home, but 
 you ouglit to be the abiding corner-stone of liome. 
 Your husband's house is not home \\'ithout your pres- 
 ence and your presidency. That restless mind of yours 
 should have steady work and healthy food. It should 
 have a business — work that will engage its powers in 
 the accomplishment of a worthy object — work that will 
 fill your time and make these " \'isits " of yours, and 
 these " good times " of yours, the healthy diversions 
 and not the absorbing pursuits of your life. There 
 is a Avorld of life and power in you. It only needs to 
 be held and trained and put to noble, womanly service. 
 I hope you are not so badly dissipated that your will 
 has lost the decision necessary to execute the wish 
 which I am certain now springs in your heai't.
 
 266 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 If you should undertake reform let me warn you 
 against a mistake that you will be quite likely to make. 
 There are not a few women in the world, considered 
 very useful and pious persons, who are useful and pious 
 in the same way that you are useless and dissipated. 
 They are just as fond of change and excitement as you 
 are, and, being of a religious turn of mind, they seek 
 religious excitements, and suppose themselves to be in 
 the path of duty. They attend a prayer meeting, or 
 make visits to the poor, or wait at a hospital, or go to 
 a benevolent sewing-circle, or distribute religious read- 
 ing, or minister to the sick, or attend a stranger's 
 funeral, for the change and the excitement which they 
 find in these things. They are just as fond of being 
 away from home as you are, and they seek excitement 
 and amusement for the same reason. I do not think 
 that I entertain more respect for them than for you. 
 Perhaps the sort of dissipation which they choose is 
 preferable to yours, but their motives can hardly be 
 called better. Some of these women nesrlect their 
 home duties very much, and they do it simply because 
 they cannot obtain in them the excitement and amuse- 
 ment which they seek. Many of them are out on what 
 they suppose to be purely religious or benevolent er- 
 rands, when they ought to be at home with their hus- 
 bands and children. Becoming like these women, you 
 would only change your style of dissipation, without
 
 To Mrs. Roia Hoppin Jones. 267 
 
 essentially changing your motive, or working a de- 
 sirable revolution in your home-life, 
 
 No ; you must learn the ditlicult lesson that in 
 routine lives the real charm of life and the essential 
 condition of progress and growth. That which is now 
 irksome to you, must be heartily recognized as essential 
 to your happiness. You must learn to be happy in the 
 performance of a daily round of duty at home, and 
 learn to be dissatisfied unless that daily round of duty 
 shall be performed. You must learn to take most 
 pleasure in those excitements which flow from action, 
 not passion. These excitements of sensibility in which 
 you have your life are legitimately only diversions from 
 routine. Ah ! this routine which is so hateful to you ! 
 Why — madam — routine is the road to heaven and God. 
 Routine is the pathway of the stars and the seasons, 
 the song of the tides, the burden of all the generations. 
 The clouds sing it to the meadow, the meadow to the 
 brook, the brook to the river, the river to the sea, and 
 the sea to the clouds again, in everlasting circles of 
 beauty and ministry. Routine is the natural path of 
 all true human life. It is in this path that the feet 
 grow strong and steady, and the soul adjusts itself 
 familiarly to its conditions. It is in this path only that 
 genuine peace and contentment are found ; and you 
 must, of stern and settled purpose, hold yourself to this 
 path imtil you feel the upward lift of its spiral round,
 
 268 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 and know that you are reaching a calmer atmosphere 
 and a more womanly because a diviner life. Xever be 
 afraid of routine. It has in it the secret of your refor- 
 mation and the condition of your success. 
 
 If you could but see, as I see, what a grace thought- 
 fulness would give your character, and could meas- 
 ure, as my imagination measures, the loveliness that 
 would come to you through the chastening of your 
 wayward impulses by work and self-devotion, I am sure 
 you would fall in love with the picture, and make any 
 saciifice to realize its truthfulness. It pains me to see 
 you so frivolous, so childish, so incapable of work, so 
 impatient of home restraint and routine, so fond of 
 wandering, so devoted to amusement and play ; for I 
 know that the time must come when those animal 
 spirits of yours will droop, when the little delights that 
 now entertain you will become insipid, and when you 
 will learn that your life has been wasted, in a child- 
 hood that rotted at last without ripening into woman- 
 hood.
 
 THE NINETEENTH LETTER. 
 
 ^0 liffcrson Jlabb loncs, |^olitiriaiT. 
 coycEnyiya the immorality of bis pursuits, and 
 
 THEIR EFFECT UPOX UIMSELF AXD HIS COUXTRY. 
 
 THE love of that which we call country is among 
 the highest and noblest passions of the soul. 
 The love that kindles into joyful enthusiasm at the 
 sight of the national symbol, that feels, personally, 
 every insult oftered to its object, that burns brightest 
 in absence, that is full of chivalry and bravery and self- 
 devotion, that sacrifices itself on battle fields, and 
 counts such sacrifice a joy and a glory, that lives even 
 after country is lost, and passes down through many 
 generations as a precious inheritance — this, if not reli- 
 gion, in one of its forms of manifestation, is certainly 
 its next of kin. Indeed, there is something of every 
 love, and of all love, in patriotism. Country is the 
 patriot's mistress, his father and his mother, his broth-
 
 er and his sister, his home, his teacher, his friend, his 
 treasure — the storehouse mto which he garners all his 
 affections — heavenly and human — all his interests, as- 
 pirations, hopes ; and when necessity demands it, he 
 turns his face and feet from mistress, father, mother, 
 brother, sister, home, friend, and treasure, and gives 
 himself to his country, in obedience to motives that 
 are hardly to be distinguished from the highest reli- 
 gious feelings and convictions which his bosom holds. 
 I think it would be hard to tell where, in the sublimer 
 walks of the soul, patriotism leaves off and religion be- 
 gins. In many of its humbler manifestations patriot- 
 ism doubtless halts this side of heaven, but when it be- 
 comes sacrificial, its incense curls around the pillars of 
 The Eternal Throne. 
 
 It is to Christian patriotism that we are to look for 
 all the motives which have any legitimate place in gov- 
 ernment, and the management of public affairs, yet it 
 is to patriotism that resort is rarely made. For the 
 selfishness of supremely selfish men has organized other 
 and baser motives, by which all public policy is fash- 
 ioned. The love of power and the love of office and 
 the love of money have all conspired in the organization 
 of parties, which live upon lies, and which unifonnly 
 die, at last, for lack of dupes, or perish of their own 
 corruptions. It is possible, of course, that two equally 
 patriotic men may differ widely in their views of pub-
 
 To JefFerfon Davis Jones. 271 
 
 lie policy^so widely that theii* opinions may furnish a 
 legitimate basis for opposite political parties. Theo- 
 retically, therefore, political parties have legitimate 
 ground to stand upon, but practically they are a curse 
 to the country. For the love of party has always 
 usurped the place of the love of coimtry. Everything, 
 on every side, is done in the name of patriotism, of 
 course ; but patriotism is made subservient to, and is 
 confounded with party interest. Men forget " our 
 country " in their mad devotion to " our side." It has 
 always been so ; I fear it will always be so. History 
 makes a imiform record of the fact that however patri- 
 otic the birth of a party may be, and however patriotic 
 may be the motives of the people who sustain it, it 
 passes early into the hands of designing men, whose 
 supremely selfish love of power controls its action and 
 directs its issues, solely for personal and party advan- 
 tage. 
 
 Every thorough politician in the world — every man 
 in whom love of party is stronger than love of coimtry 
 — every man in Mhom the love of power is the pre- 
 dominant motive — is a possible traitor. It matters not 
 what party he may belong to. I make the proposition 
 broad enough to embrace all parties, and believe in it, 
 as I believe in any fundamental truth of the Universe. 
 A politician is a man who looks at all public affairs 
 from a selfish stand-point. He loves power and office.
 
 272 Letters to the Joneles. 
 
 and all that power and office bring of cash and consid- 
 eration. Public measures are all tried by the standard 
 of party interest. A measure which threatens to take 
 away his power, or to reduce his personal or party in- 
 fluence, is always opposed. A measure which prom- 
 ises to strengthen his powei*, or that of the party to 
 which he is attached, is always favored. The good of 
 his coimtry is a matter of secondary consideration. 
 His venality and untruthfulness are as calculable, under 
 given circumstances, as if he Avere Satan himself. I 
 know of no person so reliably unconscientious as the 
 thorough politician, and there is no politician of any 
 stripe that I would trust with the smallest public in- 
 terest, if I could not see that his selfishness harmonized 
 with the requirements of the service. Therefore I say 
 that every politician is a possible traitor. There is not 
 a man in America w^ho loves his party better than his 
 country, or who permits party motives to control him 
 in the discharge of his duties as a citizen, who would 
 not betray his country at the call of his party. 
 
 I introduce my letter to you, Mr. Jefferson Davis 
 Jones, with these statements, that I may the more 
 easily show you to yourself, and justify my opinion of 
 you ; for it will be hard for me to convince you and 
 the public of your immorality. The public mind is 
 thoroughly sophisticated on this subject. The public 
 has a suitable horror of gambling with dice and cards,
 
 To Jefferlbn Davis Jones. 273 
 
 but is quite ready to call those most indecent and im- 
 moral games of chance which Wall street plays " oper- 
 ^ations in stocks." Nay, the public permits tliese oper- 
 ations to fix the prices of the property it holds in its 
 hands, and, indirectly, of the bread it cats. It is quite 
 as oblivious of the real character of the politicians who 
 lead it by the nose. A clever politician, who manages 
 to keep power in liis liands for personal and party ends 
 — who is imscrupulous in the choice of means for se- 
 curing his purposes — wlio is not even suspected of a 
 patriotic motive in any act of his life — is regarded 
 with a degree of admiration and esteem. He wins the 
 objects of his desire, and his success crowns his eftbrts 
 with respectability. Jefferson Davis, himself, linds it 
 for his personal and political interest to plunge the 
 country which has honored him into the most terrible 
 war known in history, and the people are filled with 
 horror at his treachery and his ingratitude. Jefferson 
 Davis Jones, actuated by the same motive, opposes 
 him ; and one is just as bad as the other, and owes to 
 circumstances, and not to his principles, the fact that 
 he is not in the other's shoes. If Jc-fierson Davis 
 Jones, who now prates of liberty and patriotism and 
 sundry party words and phrases, were in the dominions 
 of Jefferson Davis, he would be his most willing in- 
 strument, without the slightest change in the ruling 
 motive of his life.
 
 274 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 Do you not feel, sir, tliat this is so ? Do you not 
 know that to all intents and purposes you make mer- 
 chandise of your country ? Do you not regard, and 
 have you not for years regarded, politics as a grand, 
 exciting game of mingled chance and skill, at which 
 opposing sets of men play, not that advantage may ac- 
 crue to their country or its institutions, but that the 
 stakes of power and plimder may be won for selfish 
 use ? Of course you know this ; but it is not so much 
 a matter of course that you know this view to be im- 
 moral, and this treatment of your coimtry sacrilegious. 
 You have been bred to these things among men who 
 were honored and respected. You have learned to 
 gamble for power from men who first used you as their 
 tool. You have learned all the tricks of the political 
 hells. You pull wires, and play puppets, and veil your 
 selfish purposes behind sacred names, and lie to the 
 people whom you make your dupes. Open falsehood, 
 wicked innuendo, cunning evasion, shameless suppres- 
 sion, do^vnright fraud — not one of these instruments 
 do you hesitate to use when occasion demands for se- 
 curing your personal and party ends. I tell you,' sir, 
 that these lies and subterfuges, over which you laugh 
 and jest in private, are outrageous crimes against liber- 
 tj^ against good government, against a patriotic people, 
 against the public morals, against God. 
 
 What is this country that you are playing with so
 
 To Jeflerlon Davis Jones. 275 
 
 carelessly — whose interests you are making secondary 
 to your own ? It is the present home of thirty mil- 
 lions of people — the future home of uncounted hun- 
 dreds of millions of people, whose destiny is to be 
 shaped and decided in a great degree by the institu- 
 tions of the country, and the men who make and ad- 
 minister its laws. You cannot tamper with a single 
 human right without awaking the groans of whole 
 generations of men. You cannot cram a lie down the 
 public throat, and manage to incorporate that lie into 
 the public life, without vitiating the issues of that life 
 through all coming time. You and your friends can- 
 not lead the nation into mistakes of theory and practice 
 without leading it into certain and serious disaster. 
 This country, while I write these lines to you, is suffer- 
 ing indescribable evils from the influence of just such 
 men as you. The rebellicm which costs us hundreds 
 of thousands of priceless lives, and thousands of mil- 
 lions of treasure, is entirely the work of politicians ; 
 and if it should fail to be suppressed, and the national 
 honor should fall short of entire vindication, it will be 
 through the machinations of politicians. The people 
 of this country are patriotic and loyal, and their action 
 will, in the main, be patriotic and loyal, when they aro 
 not deceived by you and men like you. "We have only 
 politicians to fear. Selfish men have played their 
 games for power over this country too long ; and now
 
 276 
 
 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 we have the day of reckoning. Not a man falls in this 
 horrible vrax who does not owe his death to those 
 scheming politicians, who, in the past, have regarded 
 their country simply as a chess-board on which they 
 could play their game for power. 
 
 What is this country that you are playing with so 
 carelessly ? I ask again. It is that for which a mil- 
 lion men have voluntarily risked all of good that is 
 covered by the name of " life." It is that for which 
 the great and generous have been willing to relinquish 
 home delights, and home pursuits, and fond hopes and 
 expectations, taking upon themselves the burdens of 
 the camp, and yielding themselves to th£ sad chances 
 of the battle field. It is that for which a nation of 
 Christians has prayed before God with faithful per- 
 sistence, mentioning its name with tenderest love and 
 reverence, morning and night, among the names they 
 love best. It is the inheritance of our precious chil- 
 dren — an inheritance that may be one of honor — that 
 may be one of shame. It is the property of history. 
 Far down the vista of time, I see the man (whom it 
 requires no prophetic eye to see) whose mind will 
 weigh the character of this country, and whose pen 
 will give his judgment record. I see him sitting in the 
 light of a dawning millennium, while the lurid fires 
 that now fill the sky with flame only feebly light the 
 hem of the far horizon. You and I will have been dust
 
 five hundred years, when that calm pen shall begin its 
 story — a story which shall determine for all the follow- 
 ing generations of men whether you and I had a coun- 
 try or whether we died without one, or whether we 
 were worthy of one, — a story which shall tell whether 
 we wasted our inheritance — whether we bartered it 
 away for party advantage, or saved and sanctified it by 
 our patriotism. This man, so certainly unborn — so cer- 
 tain to live — has this country in his hands to present 
 to the great futurity of the world. lie has you and 
 me and all that we hold dear in his hands, and we can- 
 not help ourselves ; and this country of ours we hold 
 in trust for him. Shall we betray our trust, and damn 
 ourselves and our country together ? 
 
 That which gives me most apprehension for the fu- 
 ture of my country is the fact that its afi*airs are in the 
 hands of such as you, and are likely to be. Theoreti- 
 cally, we are a self-governing nation ; practically, we 
 are governed by designing politicians. Theoretically, 
 the people select their own candidates for office, and 
 elect them ; practically, every candidate for office is 
 selected by the politicians, the candidate himself being 
 of the number, and the people *are only used for voting, 
 and for confirming the decrees of their political lead- 
 ers. For fifty years this country has not been gov- 
 erned in the interests of patriotism, or been governed 
 by the people. For fifty years, patriotism has not
 
 278 
 
 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 ruled in "Washington, or in any of the political centres 
 of the nation. Occasionally, a true patriot has been 
 placed in power, but it has always been a matter of ac- 
 cident. Occasionally, a patriot has been " available " 
 for carrying out the purposes of the politicians, in 
 their strife for power. But often imbecility and rascal- 
 ity have been foimd " available," and politicians have 
 not failed to take advantage of the fact. Selfish party 
 men have ruled the country, and selfish party men are 
 trying to ruin it. It is beyond dispute that the politi- 
 cal leaders of the people of this country have uniform- 
 ly been men without religion, and without even the 
 pretension of religion. When a political man or a 
 candidate for office has been found to be religious, the 
 fact has been advertised as a remarkable one. Look 
 at the great political leaders ; then at the lesser ones ; 
 then at the whole brood of petty politicians who are 
 their tools and the recipients of their favors. You 
 know that you cannot find, in all the country, a class 
 of men less regardful of Christian obligation, or more 
 thoroughly the devotees of selfish interest. 
 
 Yet this is called a Chistian nation ! The theories 
 and the institutions of the country are Christian, but 
 the practice and the administration has as little to do 
 with Christianity as possible. Do you and your asso- 
 ciates, when laying out and prosecuting a political cam- 
 paign, ever consult Christianity,— either its dictates or
 
 To JefFerfon Davis Jones. 279 
 
 its interests ? Are you Christian in your treatment of 
 an opponent ? Are you particular to use only Christian 
 means in for-vvarding the interests of your candidates 
 and your party ? Do you push a Christian principle 
 any further than it will pay as a party principle ? Do 
 you not uniformly pander to the prejudices of the igno- 
 rant, and flatter the vices of the vicious, while, at the 
 same time, you hypocritically pretend to respect the 
 religious convictions of the better elements of society ? 
 Do you not mingle with the degraded, and court the 
 smiles of those who live upon social vices, and descend 
 to the meanest tricks to compass your ends ? You can 
 have bxit one answer to these questions. The political 
 machinery of this country — that by which elections are 
 carried, as they always are carried, in the interest of a 
 party — is simply and irredeemably unchristian. It has 
 not in it even the poor quality of decency. 
 
 I have talked in a general way to you about these 
 things, because you are only a representative of a 
 class, and because I am more interested in my country 
 than I am in either you or your class ; but it is proper 
 that I say something to you about the effect of your 
 political life upon yourself. You have probably seen 
 enough of it to learn that its lack of religious principle 
 is not attributable entirely to the fact that only bad 
 men engage in it. You have learned that many men 
 who have gone into political life good men, have come
 
 280 
 
 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 out of it bad men. You have seen Christian men there 
 who failed to maintain their integrity among the temp- 
 tations that assailed them. You have seen good men 
 elected to office, by a combination of influences, who, 
 in their selfish desire to retain their places have thrown 
 themselves into the hands of such as you, and have be- 
 come as mean and unprincipled as any of them. A 
 minister of the gospel, turned politician, Avill show the 
 degrading power of his new associations quicker than 
 any other man. There has seemed to be an impression 
 in the minds of Christian men that duplicity and trick- 
 ery are indispensable to a politician, and not only 
 necessary, but justifiable. It has been the practice to 
 recognize other than a Christian rule of action in polit- 
 ical afiairs, so that, after a Christian man has been in 
 political life sufficiently long, he usually wears out his 
 Christianity. It is impossible for a Christian to go 
 into political life, and stay there as a party man, and 
 join in the operation of party machinery, and retain a 
 conscience void of ofiense. 
 
 How is it with you ? I remember the time when 
 you were not only a patriot, but professedly a Chris- 
 tian. I remember when you first held office ; and of 
 the Christian patriotism which actuated you in your 
 first party strife I never had a doubt. You worked 
 faithfully and well for what you believed to be the 
 right. The selfish crowd with whom you now asso-
 
 ciate looked on with approval, because you helped 
 them ; but they regarded you as verdant, and knew 
 with measurable certainty that your generous zeal 
 would soon find rest in calculating selfishness. Your 
 term of oftice expired, and you were in want of ofiice 
 again, and then you found yourself in the hands of 
 those whom you had already learned were unprinci- 
 pled. They had called on you for money for party 
 purposes — money which you knew would be spent in 
 an uncliristian way, and you had given it to them. 
 You became aware that they had placed a market value 
 on your Christian character, and had calculated on the 
 amount that your patriotic unselfishness would add to 
 their capital. You learned then to Scheme with them. 
 You grew unscrupulous in the use of means. You 
 learned to regard politics as a game, and you deter- 
 mined to become a player. It took but a short time 
 for you to become an adept, and Avhen you had con- 
 quered the political trade thoroughly, you had become 
 a demoralized man. I do not think you a debauchee, 
 or a thief, or a murderer ; but you have lost your sin- 
 cerity, your moral honesty, your Christian purpose, 
 and your patriotism. I can hardly imagine a character 
 more utterly valueless than yours. You have come to 
 measuring everything by a party standard; Yon look 
 upon every public question, every matter of policy, 
 and every event, as a party man. You belong to that
 
 282 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 hellish brood of political buzzards who cannot hear of 
 a battle, or scent a rumor of war or of peace even, 
 without calculating first what party advantage can be 
 gained from it. 
 
 I suppose that if I were to give utterance to my 
 wishes and my aspirations touching the future of my 
 country, I should be called Utopian. But that which 
 is possible, and that which is desirable on every Chris- 
 tian and patriotic consideration, is not Utopian, and I 
 should be forever ashamed of being scared by the 
 taunt. This country is to be saved to freedom and to 
 happiness and justice, if saved at all, by the Christian 
 patriotism of its people, and by the institution, in the 
 place of party machinery managed by unprincipled 
 men, of some system of popular expression that shall 
 place good men in power, and bad men in prison, 
 where they belong. It is easy for you and your asso- 
 ciates to sneer,— easy to say that this is all imprac- 
 ticable, tliat the people cannot possibly prevent you 
 from pulling the wires, and that, moreover, you will 
 continue to use the people for your own selfish ends, 
 and use them with their consent. I say it is not im- 
 ])racticable, because it is in the line of Christian and 
 patriotic duty, and is not impossible. I say that this 
 change must be made, or we must, as a nation, be for- 
 ever going through financial revolutions, social convnl- 
 BJons, destructive wars, and all that terrible catalogue
 
 To Jefferfon Davis Jones. 283 
 
 of national calamities which attend the manasrement 
 of a nation for selfish ends. The Christian and patri- 
 otic men of this nation must rise, under Christian and 
 patriotic leaders, whom they shall choose, and depose 
 the infernal crew with which you hold association, or 
 we must, as a nation, drift along in a state of constant 
 social warfare, to land at last in anarchy. A nation 
 that is governed by its worst men, who have at com- 
 mand its worst elements for that purpose, must go to 
 wreck. Only the nation that governs its worst men, 
 and holds its worst elements in subjection, can live. 
 You must die, therefore, or the nation must die. 
 Which shall it be ?
 
 THE twe:n'tieth letter. 
 
 STo ^r. ^cnjamitt |iitsli |onts. 
 
 COKCERNING TEE POSITION OF HIMSELF AND HIS 
 PROFESSION. 
 
 I HAVE abundant reason to hold you in profound 
 and tender respect. Tour devotion to me in sick- 
 ^ness, your benevolent self-sacrifice among the poor, your 
 sympathy for the young and the weak, your uniform kind- 
 ness and politeness among all classes of people, and the 
 Christian spirit and the Christian counsel that you have 
 been able to bear into all those scenes of suffering among 
 •which your life is mainly passed, have won my reverent 
 affection. I have never heard you utter a coarse word 
 in the presence of a woman, or jest with coarse women 
 upon themes with which your profession makes you 
 unpleasantly familiar. You are a Christian gentleman ; 
 and may God bless you for all the comfort and cour- 
 age which you have borne to a thousand beds of suffer-
 
 To Dr. Benjamin Rufli Jones. 285 
 
 ing and dying, for all the pleasant words you have 
 spoken to the tender and the young, and for the excel- 
 lent personal example that, throughout all your life of 
 ministry, has made every act an exhortation to noble 
 endeavor and your presence a constant benediction ! 
 
 I have noticed, in my intercourse with you, your 
 profound respect for your profession. You have felt 
 that a share of its honor was in your keeping. A light 
 word spoken of it has been felt by you as a personal 
 insult. You have regarded it with more than the love 
 of a lover ; you have guarded its honor with more 
 than the sensitiveness and chivalry of a sou. You 
 have believed in it, and honestly labored to give to it 
 a high place in public esteem. This enthusiastic love 
 and admiration of your profession, which you have 
 brought down, without abatement, from the days of 
 early study, is accompanied by the most devoted fra- 
 ternal feeling toward your professional brethren. You 
 guard their honor jealously, and carry more than your 
 share of that esprii de corps which holds together the 
 band of physicians of which you are the best member. 
 This love of your profession, and this regard for those 
 who practise it, lead you, on all occasions, to take side 
 against the public in such medical disputes or contests 
 as may arise, and tempt you into positions which com- 
 promise your candor and betray your conscience. The 
 only place in which you have shown youi*self to the
 
 286 
 
 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 public as a weak man has been in the position of de- 
 fender of professional incompetency — a position taken 
 simply through an extravagant respect for your pro- 
 fession, and an incorrect view of the duty which you 
 owe to its practitioners. A professional brother, pros- 
 ecuted for mal-practice, is always sure that you will do 
 what you can to clear him. Any notorious case of in- 
 competent medical or surgical management, which the 
 public gets hold of, and tosses about, to the disgrace 
 of the profession and the physician who is responsible 
 for it, you always take up and treat tenderly. People 
 have learned that you will not patiently hear anything 
 reflecting upon your profession, or those who represent 
 it. This is all true with relation to what is known in 
 the world as " the regular profession." There is a 
 " regular " profession and there is an " irregular " pro- 
 fession. I do not know that your charities ever ex- 
 tended themselves far enough to embrace any member 
 of the medical fraternity who was not strictly " regu- 
 lar." If you have been devotedly friendly to all who 
 have practised in the regular way, you have been un- 
 compromisingly bitter toward all who have practised 
 in an irregular way, with or without regular diplomas. 
 The only bitterness I ever heard from your lips was 
 poured out upon the head of some " quack," or upon 
 quackery generally. I do not think that you ever, for 
 a moment, admitted to yourself that an irregular physi-
 
 cian had cured a case of disease, or could possibly pre- 
 scribe for a case of disease intelligently. You would 
 never admit the most intelligent quack that lives to a 
 professional or social equality with yourself. You 
 have only contempt for the whole brood, and for all 
 who have anything to do with them. You cannot 
 take yourself socially away from many whom you call 
 dupes to quackery, but, in your heart, you partly pity, 
 partly blame, and partly despise them all. 
 
 Now, my friend, you are not generally an unreason- 
 able man, and I insist on your taking good-naturedly a 
 few things I have to say to you. I know that you think 
 I have no right to touch upon a subject like this, but, as 
 a representative of the public, I know I have, and I pro- 
 pose to do it. Is the profession of medicine, practised 
 in the most regular way, by the most regular men, so 
 nearly perfect in its operations and results as to deserve 
 the enthusiastic respect which you accord to it ? Do you 
 lind medicine so uniformly successful and so reliable in 
 your own hands, with the best regularly acquired knowl- 
 edge to guide you in its exhibition, that you can have 
 any degree of certainty that you are doing the best thing 
 there is to be done ? Is the profession of medicine, as 
 it is understood and practised in this country, so rich 
 in knowledge that it can afford to shut out of itself 
 such truth as may flow to it through irregujar chan- 
 nels ? Is it so successful in the treatment of disease, 
 11*
 
 288 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 and so much more successful in the treatment of dis- 
 ease than various forms of iiregular practice, that it 
 has a right to condemn without exception or qualifica- 
 tion the irregular practitioner, and call him a quack ? 
 Sir, the ai'rogance of the position which medical men 
 assume, in this and other countries, is an insult to the 
 spirit of the age and the intelligence of the people, and 
 has been carried to the extreme of absolute inhumanity. 
 I have known a regular physician approach the victim 
 of an accident, and, when his immediate services were 
 needed, turn away from the wretch without lifting a 
 finger, simply because he saw that he should be obliged 
 to work in company Avith an irregular physician. I 
 have known an eminent regular physician go a hundred 
 miles to see a patient lying at the gates of death, with 
 a dozen hearts ready to break around her, and turn on 
 his heel without looking upon her face, and leave her 
 to die, not because he did not find a " regular " physi- 
 cian at her bedside, as a regular attendant, but because 
 that regular physician did not happen to belong to a 
 certain medical society ! 
 
 I repeat that you are not generally unreasonable, 
 and I should like to know wiiat you think of this. I 
 could multiply instances like these that I have given 
 you; and what do they prove? To my mind they 
 prove simply that esprit de corps in your profession has 
 degenerated into contemptible clannishness and parti-
 
 To Dr. Benjamin Rufli Jones. 289 
 
 sanship. I doubt whether you would decidedly con- 
 demn the acts to which I liave alluded, and have little 
 question that you would be guilty of similar ones on 
 occasion. You and your professional brethren act as 
 if you believe that you hold the exclusive right to ad- 
 minister medicine and get pay for it, as if you possess 
 exclusively all medical knowledge worth possessing, 
 and as if you mean to maintain your rights against all 
 disputants, by any available means. You are not alone 
 a mutual admiration society ; you are a mutual insur- 
 ance company. You mean to lord it, medically, over 
 the community, and over each other. No man of your 
 profession can step outside of the regular field to ex- 
 periment and prosecute inquiry without having his 
 heels tripped from under him. Every man must toe 
 the regular crack, or he is at once socially and profes- 
 sionally proscribed. Now I confers that this is spirited 
 and positive treatment, but it strikes me to be out of 
 keeping with the times, and inconsistent with the good 
 of the public. Moreover, what you call quackery and 
 the patronage of quackery, thrives on this treatment. 
 The freely thinking and independent men of your pro- 
 fession leave you, disgusted, and the people rebel. 
 
 Why should you and your associates set up for ex- 
 clusive possessors of medical wisdom ? You know very 
 well that all medicine is empiricism, and yoti know 
 
 that medicine has made advances only by empiricism. 
 13
 
 290 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 Your true policy is to take into your hands, and hon- 
 estly and faithfully try, all those remedies which have 
 received the indorsement of any considerable number 
 of intelligent men. Your duty is to have your eyes 
 constantly open for improvement, and to take it when 
 you can get it. Almost every system of quackery 
 imder heaven has been found to have in it some good 
 — some basis of truth — some valuable power or prin- 
 ciple, which it has always been the business of the 
 regular profession to seek out and incorporate into 
 their system. No man of sense believes in universal 
 remedies ; but because a remedy is not universal it is 
 not, therefore, valueless. Cold water cannot cure every 
 ill that flesh is heir to, but the fact that it can cure a 
 great many of them is just as well established as any 
 fact in natural philosophy. You, however, will not 
 use cold water, because cold water is used by quacks, 
 and because cold water is claimed by some quacks to 
 be a universal remedy. Preissnitz was a quack — re- 
 garded and treated by the medical profession as a 
 quack — but the world has recognized him as a philoso- 
 pher and a benefactor, and after the prejudices against 
 him shall have been outlived, that which he has done 
 for medicine will slowly, and under protest, be adopted 
 into regular practice. 
 
 You and your professional brethren have a very 
 hearty contempt for homoeopathy, but homcEopathy is to
 
 To Dr. Benjamin Rufli Jones. 291 
 
 do you and your friends good, in spite of yourselves. 
 No man of sense believes that allopathy is all wrong 
 and homoeopathy all right, but a man must be an idiot 
 to suppose that a system of medicine which has won 
 to itself large numbers of skilful men from the regular 
 profession, and secured the approval, when compared 
 directly with regular practice, of as intelligent people 
 as can be found in this or any other country, has noth- 
 ing of good in it. For you, without experiment, with- 
 out observation, without careful study, to call homoe- 
 opathy a system of unmitigated quackery, and to hold 
 those in contempt who practise and patronize it, is a 
 piece of the most childish arrogance. This is neither 
 the way of true science nor liberal culture. You may 
 be measurably certain that there is something in homoe- 
 opathy worthy, not only of your examination, but of 
 incorporation into your system of practice. It has 
 already modified your practice while you have been 
 talking and acting against it. You are not exhibiting 
 to-day a third as much medicine as you did before 
 homoeopathy made its appearance. It has killed the old 
 system of large dosing, let us hope, forever. This is a 
 fact ; and what you call no medicine at all has at least 
 shown itself to be better than too much medicine, even 
 when administered in the regular way. You say that 
 a homoeopathic dose cannot affect the human constitu- 
 tion, in any appreciable degree. A million men and
 
 292 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 women stand ready to-day to swear that, according to 
 their honest belief and best knowledge, they have 
 themselves been sensibly affected by homoeopathic 
 doses, and that, on the whole, they prefer homoeo- 
 pathic to allopathic practice in their families, judging 
 from a long series of results. 
 
 Now, what are you going to do with facts like 
 these ? You cannot dismiss them with a contemptu- 
 ous paragraph, and a wave of the hand, and maintain 
 your reputation as a candid man. If you are a free 
 man, and not under bondage to the most contemptible 
 old fogyism that the world ever gave birth to, you will 
 act as a free man. You will permit no man to limit 
 your field of experiment and inquiry, and allow no so- 
 ciety or clique to prevent you from extending medical 
 science over all the facts of medical science, wherever 
 you may happen to find them, I am the champion of 
 no one of the thousand " pathies " that occupy the field 
 of irregular practice, and I have alluded to two of 
 them only because they are prominent. I address you 
 simply as a catholic searcher after truth ; and I declare 
 my belief that the regular profession of medicine has 
 failed to keep pace with other professions — that medi- 
 cal science has lagged behind all the other sciences of 
 equal importance to mankind — simply because it would 
 not accept truth when it has been associated with the 
 error and the pretension that is so apt to accompany
 
 To Dr. Benjamin Rufli Jones. 293 
 
 the advent of truth in every field. The science of 
 medicine embraces, or should embrace, all the facts of 
 medicine, and when you, or your friends, proudly de- 
 cline to entertain a fact because it ^vas discovered by 
 an irregular empiric, you are not only false to science, 
 but false to humanity. 
 
 You cannot but notice a growing tendency in the 
 public mind to break away from the regular practice, 
 and to embrace some of the numberless forms of irreg- 
 ular practice. You notice this with pain, and so do I, 
 because I know that if the regular profession were to 
 pursue a different policy, the fact would be otherwise. 
 You must notice with peculiar pain that this defection 
 is not confined to the ignorant and the superstitious, 
 and that, more and more, it takes from you the intelli- 
 gent and the learned. Why will you be so stupid as 
 not to see that this waning of respect for the regular 
 practice is owing to the bigotry and intolerance of the 
 regular practice ? You assume too much — more than 
 you can carry. You assume to be the sole possessors 
 of the medical wisdom of the world. Every man who 
 does not practise in your way, though he may have 
 been a graduate of a regular medical college, you as- 
 sume the privilege of condemning as a quack ; and you 
 deny to him not only professional but social position. 
 You place all matters of professional etiquette before 
 the simplest humanities, and intend by your policy to
 
 294 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 • 
 
 coerce the public into your suj^port. The rules of 
 your associations are intended to hold their members 
 to the regular field, to compel them to fight all irregu- 
 lar practitioners out of the field, and to force the pub- 
 lic into the exclusive support of the regular practice. 
 It is a thorough despotism, and intended to be ; and is 
 so discordant with the free spirit of the time that the 
 public rebel, and many are driven into extremes of op- 
 position. 
 
 Do you ask me if I am a medical " Eclectic ? " 
 No ; I am nothing of the kind. I am a catholic, with 
 every prejudice, predilection, and sympathy of my 
 mind clinging to the regular practice. I have a con- 
 tempt which I cannot utter for all these " completed 
 systems" of irregular practice, which are built upon 
 some newly-discovered or newly-developed fact in medi- 
 cine. I have only contempt for the broad claims of 
 quackery in every field. When a man tells me that 
 the regular practice is murder, and that drugs are 
 never administered in allopathic doses with benefit, I 
 know simply that he is a fool. And when an adherent 
 of the allopathic school tells me that such and such 
 things cannot be, in the range of irregular practice, 
 which I know have been and are, I know he is a fool. 
 
 I write in my present strain to you, because I be- 
 lieve that through what is called the regular practice 
 the future substantial advances of medicine are to be
 
 To Dr. Benjamin Rufli Jones. 295 
 
 made. Medical science can only go about as fast as 
 you permit it to go. You are too well organized, you 
 have too many schools, you have too much power, to 
 permit any outside organization to get the lead, and to 
 become the standard authority of the world. Hy doc- 
 trine is that you should become the solvent of all the 
 systems, and not the uniform and bitter opponent of 
 everything that claims to be a system. You should 
 make your system one with universal science, one with 
 humanity, and not build a wall around it. When a 
 man gets so bigoted that he can say that a thing can- 
 not be true, because it is Hot according to his system, 
 he has become too narrow for the intelligent practice 
 of any profession. 
 
 The church is getting ahead of the medical profes- 
 sion, very decidedly. It is but a few years ago that 
 Christians of different sects had just as little toleration 
 for each other as the different sects of medical men 
 have now. There was one of these sects that was 
 " the regular thing,'* and those who de|)arted from it 
 were made to suffer socially. It was in this coimtry, 
 in a degree, as it is in England now. There is the es- 
 tablished church — the recognized church — and all the 
 Protestants outside of it are independents. These in- 
 dependents are looked down upon socially, and regard- 
 ed with a contempt quite as profound as that which 
 you feel for " quacks " and their " dupes ; " yet it is
 
 coming to be understood in England that the substan- 
 tial Christian progress of the time is being made by 
 the despised independents, and it is felt that by their 
 influence they are working a revolution in the estab- 
 lished church which will, at no distant day, give to it a 
 new vitality and a fresh impetus. You may fight this 
 revolution in medicine, but it is coming, and when it 
 shall come, you will find that what you call quackery 
 will fall before it. 
 
 You, possibly, suppose that there are no intelligent 
 and scientific men engaged in irregular medical prac- 
 tice. If there are not, it is the fault of your own 
 schools, for they have been educated in them by thou- 
 sands ; and the practical point at which I aim is this : 
 that you and they shall meet as scientific men, and that 
 as scientific men you and they shall reveal the results 
 of experiment and inquiry in your various fields of ob- 
 servation. I would have you win from them what 
 they have learned : I would have them win from you 
 what you have learned. I would have you and them 
 do this in behalf of medical science, and in the interest 
 of humanity. Until you become willing to do this, 
 you must occupy the position of despots and bigots — a 
 position which no profession, with science in one hand 
 and humanity in the other, can afford to occupy. At 
 present, you are creating quackery and stimulating 
 quacks at a rate which no other policy could possibly
 
 To Dr. Benjamin Rufli Jones. 297 
 
 effect. The means which you and your professional 
 brethren are employing to keep the medical practice 
 of the country in your hands, are certainly -working to 
 defeat your object. You must be more catholic and 
 more tolerant, or your profession, and every human 
 being interested in it, must suffer a range of evil con- 
 sequences which I cannot measure. The position which 
 you assume of holding a monopoly of all the medical 
 wisdom, all the medical science, all the poAver of intel- 
 ligent observation of disease, is a standing insult to the 
 age, and is certain to be punished. 
 
 I am aware that I am quite likely to be misunder- 
 stood and misconstrued by you, my friend, and by 
 those of your professional brethren who may read this 
 letter. You have been so much in the habit of calling 
 all irregular practitioners quacks and charlatans and 
 mountebanks — of looking upon them all as either ig- 
 norant or knavish, or both together, that you will be 
 quite apt to charge me with favoring charlatanry and 
 quackery. I ask you to associate with no knave or ig- 
 norant pretender. No man can more heartily despise 
 a pretender in medicine than I do, either in or out of 
 the regular profession ; and, between you and me, tlie 
 question is yet to be decided as to which side holds 
 the preponderance of ignorance and pretension. As 
 between licensed and unlicensed ignorance and preten- 
 sion, I have no choice. I simply ask you to admit the
 
 298 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 fact that there are just as good, true, scientific, honor- 
 able, and able men outside of the regular profession as 
 there are in it ; that all improvements in medicine 
 must come through empiricism ; that medical science is 
 one in its interests, aims, and ends, and that the people 
 have a right to demand that the profession •which has 
 its most precious interests in charge, shall not place be- 
 fore those interests its own partisan purposes and preju- 
 dices. I wish to have you see how utterly unworthy 
 of you, personally, is your professional bigotry, and to 
 induce you to do for your profession what you are so 
 ready to do in all the fields of popular reform.
 
 THE TWENTY-FIRST LETTER. 
 
 (To ^iogciics ^oncs* 
 
 CONCERKIKG JT/S VISPOSITIoy TO AVOID SOCIETY. 
 
 ISOMETDIES think that I am the only person 
 who understands and appreciates you, and the fact 
 I take to be flattering to ray discrimination, for all 
 the fools believe you to be a fool. There are compara- 
 tively few who know that behind your impassive spec- 
 tacles there are eyes full of kindliness and intelligence, 
 and that your shy manner and reticent mood cover a 
 heart that longs for love and a wealth of conscious in- 
 tellectual power that would rejoice in recognition. 
 Few care to study you, but everybody wonders why 
 you shun society. Few go toward you, because you go 
 toward nobody. I never should have known you if I 
 had not, by pure force of will, penetrated the armor 
 of cool indifference in which you have encased your-
 
 300 Letters to the Joneies. 
 
 self. I was determined to find you, and I found you. 
 I was not surprised to discover in you the average 
 amount of humanity, in its common powers and proper- 
 ties, and more than the average amount of sensitiveness 
 and gentleness. So soon as you saw that I understood 
 you, you surrendered yourself to me gladly, and we held 
 communion with one another, heart to heart. 
 
 The first cause that operated to make you a solitary 
 man was a sense of your incongruity with the ele- 
 ments of society, or with the elements of such so- 
 ciety as was around you. You looked upon the 
 young, and saw them absorbed by frivolities that had 
 no charm for you — engaged in pursuits which did not 
 interest you. There was but little animal life in you, 
 and no overflow of animal spirits ; so you had none of 
 the spirit of play ; and you could take no pleasure in 
 the insignificant things with which the spirit of play 
 interested itself. Whenever you were thrown among 
 those of your own years, you entered scenes that had no 
 meaning to you, so that you were always-oppressed Avith 
 the feeling that you were out of place. You knew that 
 your companions interfered with your pleasure, and natu- 
 rally thought that you interfered with theirs, forgetting 
 that they were thoughtless while you were thoughtful. 
 
 This consciousness of incongruity could not long be 
 entertained in your sensitive nature without very 
 serious self questionings. You began to ask yourself
 
 To Diogenes Jones. 301 
 
 why it was that you were an exception to the rule that 
 prevailed around you ; and the more you questioned 
 yourself, the more sensitive you became, until there 
 was not a feature of your face, or a part of your frame, 
 or a peculiarity of your speech and personal bearing, 
 that was not inquired of concerning the matter. The 
 result was an impulse to hide yourself from observa- 
 tion, and great reluctance to enter the society to which 
 your life naturally introduced you. Your conscious- 
 ness that there was something peculiar in your tem- 
 perament was a hinderance to you — it made you awk- 
 ward and stiff. While you felt yourself to be the pos- 
 sessor of more brains and more knowledge than most 
 of the young men around you, you despaired of appear- 
 ing to know anything. You had not the secret of self- 
 possession and confident bearing. Many were your 
 struggles with yourself at first, but at length you be- 
 came habitually a solitary man. You lost the small 
 measure of confidence which nature originally gave 
 you, lost your familiarity with the forms of social inter- 
 course, almost lost your self-resjDect. You could not 
 bear to be looked at, or spoken to. You retired 
 into yourself, and sought in self-communion or in stu- 
 dious pursuits for the satisfaction which your nature 
 craved. 
 
 I have already suggested the character of that 
 poverty of constitution which has made you what
 
 302 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 you are. You are not a thoroughly healthy man. 
 Either you are very weak naturally, with no ovei-flow 
 of animal life, or, by heavy drafts lapon your nervous 
 system, you have expended that life. Work, or study, 
 or both together, have exhausted your stock of vitality, 
 so that you have only just enough for the necessary 
 uses of life. Until men and women rise to a degree 
 of cultivation which few reach, it is not to be denied 
 that social life is made up of, or is carried on by, the 
 aggregate overflow of the animal life of society. It 
 may be a humiliating consideration, but it is true, that 
 where there is none of the spirit of play there is no 
 social life that is worth the name. Youth is generally 
 social because it is playful ; and as youth goes on to 
 middle life and old age, it generally becomes less social 
 because it becomes less playful. Playfulness is the 
 offspring of animal spirits. There are some men and 
 women who bubble throughout their whole lives with 
 this overflow, and are always cheerful and charming 
 companions. There are others who either never have 
 it, or who lose it by expenditure in work or study, and 
 who, as a consequence, become taciturn and imsocial. 
 Lambs in a pasture will run races in delightful groups, 
 and frolic by the hour ; but the dams that nurse them 
 and seek all day among the rocks for food manifest no 
 sympathy with them. In the healthy constitution, put 
 to healthy work, there seems to be a stock of animal
 
 To Diogenes Jones. 803 
 
 life and spirits sufficient for the individual, and a super- 
 abundant amount which is intended for social pur- 
 poses. You may look the world over, and you will 
 find that all men and all races of men in whom this 
 overflow of animal life is a characteristic are social, 
 and that aU men and races of men not characterized by 
 this overflow are unsocial. 
 
 Overflowing animal spirits form the stream on 
 which the social life of the world floats. If other evi- 
 dence of the fact were needed, than that which lies 
 upon the surface, it might be found in the eflTorts to 
 produce an artificial overflow at convivial parties. A 
 company of weary men sit down to pass an evening 
 together over a sui)per. They come together for the 
 simple purpose of enjoying a gay and social time. 
 They know very well that, independent of the contents 
 of certain bottles, they have no power of social enjoy- 
 ment of the kind they seek. They wish to bring back 
 the hilarity of youth, the carelessness of youth, the over- 
 flowing joyousness of youth ; but this they cannot do be- 
 cause their animal life is expended. So they get up the 
 best imitation they can of the departed motive power, 
 and a very sorry one it is. When the artificial stimulant 
 has worked its work, the company is social enough, and 
 hilarious enough, after a fashion, but the fashion is a dis- 
 astrous one. It will answer, however, as a proof of the 
 proposition that in overflowing animal spirits is to be
 
 304 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 found the medium of social intercourse — the menstruum 
 of all social materials. Even when social life starts 
 from a higher source — from the overflow of intellectual 
 life — it is greatly assisted by animal spirits, and those 
 men and women in whom there is an overflow of both 
 animal and intellectual life are, socially, the most valu- 
 able and attractive that the world contains. 
 
 You must have noticed, even in your limited obser- 
 vation, how much animal spirits will do in making a 
 man — very inconsequential otherwise — socially valu- 
 able. You must remember young men and women 
 with ordinary powers of intellect and not more than 
 ordinary personal attractions, who were deemed the 
 life of every party they entered, simply because they 
 had an overflow of animal spirits. If they were awk- 
 ward nobody minded it — least of all did they care for 
 it. They brought society a vessel full of life, and so- 
 ciety was grateful for it. You took into this same 
 society, perhaps, a mind well stored with learning, and 
 natural gifts superior to any, yet the empty pates 
 amused everybody, and set everybody talkmg, and 
 furnished the means and medium of social communion, 
 while you sat with your tongue tied, or retired in dis- 
 gust. Now imagine yourself possessed of the abound- 
 ing animal life which distinguishes some of your ac- 
 quaintances, united with the intellectual power and 
 culture Avhich distinguish yourself, and it will be easy
 
 to see that nothing could restrain you from society. 
 The ovei-flowing man must play, and he "will always 
 seek somebody to play with. If he does not under- 
 stand the conventionalities of society and the forms 
 and manners of social intercourse, he will good-natured- 
 ly blunder over them. He will be social, because he 
 must expend that which is in him in play. 
 
 I am aware that your case is not like all those which 
 result in self-exclusion from society, but I believe that 
 no case of such self-exclusion can be found in any man 
 who possesses a healthy overflow of animal spiiits. I 
 find that the disposition to shim society exists very 
 widely among students and studious men. I believe it is 
 the truth that most authors and writers avoid society, or 
 feel decidedly disinclined to it. Men who thus confine 
 themselves within doors and exliaust their nervous 
 energy in thought and composition, and with no vigor 
 from the open air, are necessarily without an overflow 
 of animal spirits ; and they Avill find themselves disin- 
 clined to society exactly in proportion to their sense of 
 exhaustion. Not unfrequently young women who have 
 been distinguished for their love of society and their 
 adaptedness to it lose both on becoming mothers of 
 families, and never enter society again as active mem- 
 bers. So it seems that just as soon as the animal life 
 sinks below a certain level, the disposition to play 
 naturally ceases, and the motive to enter society dies.
 
 306 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 And now you ask me for the remedy. You ask 
 me a hard question, and yet I believe that there is an 
 answer to it, though a fresh and overflowing supj^ly 
 of animal life is not to be had for the asking. Un- 
 doubtedly something can be done by attending to the 
 conditions of a vigorous animal life. Undoubtedly a 
 life in the open air among men would work a great 
 change in you, but circumstances will not permit this, 
 perhaps, and you seek for the next-best course. 
 
 I have said that overflowing animal spirits form 
 the stream on which the social life of the world floats. 
 To extend the figure, I may say that on this stream 
 some row while others ride, and the relative propor- 
 tion of rowers and riders does not vary essentially from 
 that which prevails on more material streams. The row- 
 ers are in the minority — the riders are in the majority, 
 and if you cannot row you must be content to ride, for 
 it is essential to your spiritual health that you enjoy 
 the air and sunlight and change which only the pas- 
 sengers upon this stream can win. If you possess no 
 superabundance of animal life, you must be content to 
 breathe the atmosphere furnished by others. You 
 may not be much interested in general society, and so- 
 ciety may not be very much interested in you, at first, 
 but I am sure that if you enter it and persistently re- 
 main in it, you will not fail to discover points of sym- 
 pathy between yourself and others from which re-
 
 freshing and enriching influences will be recei^'ed by 
 you. Society will take you away from your books 
 and break up your reveries, and that is precisely what 
 is needed. You need to be drawn out from yourself 
 and made to contribute something to the life and 
 wealth of others. 
 
 If directly entering general society seem too diiS- 
 cult or too distasteful, there are various indirect meth- 
 ods of entering it which are entirely practicable, and 
 which need not be disagreeable. Enter some field of 
 charitable effort, or public enterjjrise. Whenever a 
 man undertakes any effort for the good of the public, 
 whether in the broad field of Christian charity or the 
 equally broad field of public improvement, he at once 
 comes into sympathy with a certain number of men 
 and women who give him a cordial welcome. It is 
 only a point of sympathy that is needed to make you 
 feel at home in society. Society may be very attractive 
 to you, though you have but little poAver to contrib- 
 ute to its life, provided only that you find in it those 
 with whom you have been throAvn into sympathy. 
 Think of the effect upon your mind of meeting at the 
 bedside of some sad sufferer, or in some hovel of the 
 poor, a man on the same errand of mercy that took you 
 there. You know that you would feel immediately the 
 foi-mation of a tie of sjTnpathy between yourself and 
 him — would feel that he had reached your heart, that
 
 308 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 you had found his, and that thenceforward you could 
 meet with mutual esteem. Think of the effect of la- 
 boring side by side with men and women in any work 
 of Christian reform, or public education, or literary 
 culture. All work of this character, pursued in the 
 company of others, establishes sympathy between the 
 co-workers, and you have only to engage in it to weave 
 around yourself a net of social attractions that must 
 gradually draw you out from yourself. 
 
 You must contrive some scheme for meeting society 
 half-way. You are unlike most men who shun society 
 if you do not feel that it does not quite do its duty to 
 you, in not coming after you. You retire into your- 
 self, you take no pains to show that you possess the 
 slightest social value, you do not even exhibit that 
 interest in humanity generally, or in the commimity in 
 which you live, that leads you to efforts on their be- 
 half, yet, somehow, you feel that society ought to find 
 you out, and bring you out, and make itself agreeable 
 and valuable to you. You may rest assured that so- 
 ciety will never do any such thing. I know that you 
 have no native impulse to social communion — that the 
 spirit of play about which I have talked is gone out of 
 you even if you ever possessed it — but that which most 
 men do by impulse or natural desire, you must do by 
 direct purpose, and as a matter of duty. And you 
 must do this at once. The penalty of failure is the
 
 To Diogenes Jones. 309 
 
 gradual dwarfing of yourself and the sacrifice of all 
 power to influence others. You have a laudable desire 
 to be something and to do something in the world, and 
 know that you have within you the ability necessary to 
 accomplish your purposes, but without social sympathy, 
 you will never know what to do, or how to do for the 
 world, and the world will find it impossible to under- 
 stand and receive you.
 
 THE TWENTY-SECOND LETTER. 
 
 f Saul p. lows. 
 
 CONCERNma HIS HABIT OF LOOKING VPOIT THE DARK 
 SIDE OF THINGS. 
 
 SUPPOSE you imagine that I am about to endeav- 
 or to prove to you that there is no dark side to the 
 things of this life, or none worth your attention. You 
 are mistaken. Thfere is a dark side to every man's life, 
 and to the world's life, which I do not think it either pos- 
 sible or desirable to ignore — a dark side that is legiti- 
 mately a subject of melancholy contemplation. We live 
 in a world of want and disease, of sin and sorrow, of 
 disaster and death. Our souls, that think and feel, that 
 fear and hope, that despair and aspire, are associated 
 A\^th bodies which are subject to debasing appetites, 
 to derangement, to decay, to a thousand modes of suf- 
 fering incident to animal being. No mind of ordinary 
 BcnsibUity can look upon, or ought to look upon, the
 
 To Saul M. Jones. 311 
 
 evils which throng the path of humanity without deep 
 sadness. No man of humane instincts can realize, even 
 in an imperfect and faint degree, how the earth seethes 
 with corruption, and moral evil vies with physical dis- 
 organization and decay in the work of darkness and 
 destruction, without emotions of mingled sorrow and 
 horror — emotions that cannot be relieved by the en- 
 couraging reflection that the future promises an early 
 dissipation of the cloud that overshadows the world. 
 
 There are several reasons, however, why neither 
 you nor any person should dwell constantly upon the evil 
 that is in the world. The principal one is that no one 
 can regard it perpetually, with anything like a realizing 
 comprehension of that which he contemplates, without 
 morbid depression or absolute insanity. A man's duty 
 to humanity, no less than his duty to himself, demands 
 that he shall not depress his vital tone and weaken his 
 courage by the contemijlation of evils for which he is 
 not responsible, and for the cure or relief of which he 
 needs all the strength he possesses, or will find it pos- 
 sible to win. I suppose the angels of heaven, with 
 their quick sympathies, might make themselves most 
 unhappy over the woes of the world, and fill their 
 holy dwelling-place Avith lamentations, but I do not 
 believe they do, or that they ought to. The woes of 
 the world are not j^ut upon one man's shoulders, and 
 though we may feel them keenly we have no moral
 
 312 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 right to permit them to affect us farther than to make 
 our hearts tender in sympathy, and our hands active in 
 ministry. If dwelling upon the woes of others had 
 power in it to do them good, there would be excuse 
 for it, but it is the idlest of all painful indulgences. 
 No one is benefited by it, while your own misery, thus 
 awakened, is added to that which aAvakes it, and the 
 world is only the more miserable for your misery. 
 Thus your dejection is not only harmful to yourself, 
 but useless to the world. It is a gratuitous addition 
 to the aggregate of human woe, and widens the field 
 of misery for other eyes. 
 
 But these remarks have comparatively little prac- 
 tical application to yourself, or to others prone like 
 yourself to look upon the dark side of things. The men 
 and women are few who are permanently depressed by 
 the habitual contemplation of Avoes that do not person- 
 ally concern themselves. I have heard of persons 
 driven hopelessly insane by a contemplation of the 
 destiny of wicked men, and of others whose horror 
 over human condition has plunged them into Atheism, 
 or some other dark form of unbelief, but these are rare 
 cases. Almost all cases of permanent dejection and 
 of habitual refuge in shadow are the result of personal 
 trials, or of personal peciiliarities. Various causes have 
 contributed to make you a dejected man. I think 
 there is a natural lack of hopefulness in your constitu-
 
 tion. There are great differences among men in this 
 matter. Some, with naturally hopeful spirits, live 
 through a hard life, and see many bitter days, yet pre- 
 serve their buoyancy and their hopefulness to the last. 
 Others, with a comparatively easy life and surrounded 
 by pleasant circumstances, will grow sadder and sadder 
 until they sink into the grave. Natural temperament is 
 all-powerful to make some desponding under all cir- 
 cumstances, and others cheerful under any circum- 
 stances. Something of your condition is due, I do not 
 doubt, to this native deficiency, though I do not think 
 this deficiency so great as to be the responsible cause 
 of your calamity. 
 
 Disease is not unfrequently the cause of much of 
 the permanent dejection that afiiicts mankind. Hypo- 
 chondria is not uncommon, and this is a genuine dis- 
 ease that comes under the cognizance and treatment 
 of the physicians as legitimately as rheumatism, or 
 any other disease. And there may exist a general de- 
 pression of the vital energies in consequence of age, or 
 the disease of some of the organs concerned in diges- 
 tion, whose legitimate result is depression of spirits. 
 I cannot tell how much your condition is attributable 
 to causes of this character, but I do not doubt that 
 disease has its place among the causes. Still, neither 
 natural temperament nor disease have worked this work 
 
 alone. They have done something in furnishing favor- 
 14
 
 314 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 able conditions for the operation of other causes, with- 
 out being very active themselves. I have ilever been 
 able to find in your lack of hopefulness, or in any dis- 
 ease that has been permanently upon you, the reason 
 for that disposition to look upon the dark side of 
 things which has become the habit of your life. You 
 are probably not aware of this habit. You are prob- 
 ably not aware that you never utter a hearty laugh, 
 that you never confess to a moment of genuine enjoy- 
 ment, that you are never willing to acknowledge that 
 there is anything encouraging in your life and lot, that 
 you have for years persistently believed your health to 
 be in a failing condition, that you utterly refuse to 
 admit that there is any palliation of your misery in any 
 event that affects you. Your friends are aware that 
 you are in very comfortable circumstances, that not a 
 want is unsupplied, that love surrounds you with its 
 tireless ministries, and that, somehow, life has many 
 charms for you ; but you wonder at their perverseness, 
 or attempt in various ways to convince them of their 
 mistake. 
 
 I have spoken of your dejection as a habit, and I 
 think it is one, which a sufficient power and effort of 
 will can break up. I do not know, indeed, but you 
 have lost this power of will in a measure, but I 
 cannot think that it is entirely gone. You seem to 
 have plenty of reason and a sufficiency of will with
 
 To Saul M. Jones. 315 
 
 relation to other subjects ; and if you could have the 
 disposition to apply both to this, you could break up 
 your unhappy habit, I do not doubt. You have a habit 
 of watchfulness against evil, as if you did not intend 
 that Providence should ever catch you napping. You 
 guard yourself equally against joy, as if afraid of being 
 happier than you have any right to be. For many 
 years, you have kept a look-out for death, determined 
 not to be taken when off guard. This watchfulness 
 against evil and against joy, has been maintained till 
 it has become the habit of your life, and made you a 
 miserable slave. 
 
 Far be it from me to deny that you have suffered 
 severely by sickness, by early struggles with poverty, 
 and by the loss of those who were near and dear to 
 you. Indeed, the blows of Providence have been 
 neither few nor lightly inflicted ; but they have been 
 blows for which a kind Father has provided abundant 
 balm. No shame has befallen you. No dishonor has 
 come to you. Nothing has happened to you strange 
 to the lot of the hundreds of cheerful men whom you 
 meet. I do not doubt that these blows bent you as 
 grief always bends, but there was no sufficient reason 
 for their breaking you. They were not the expression 
 of infinite displeasure, and were not intended to fill 
 your life wnth gloom. Nay, you profess to believe 
 that all these precious lost ones of yours ai'e in heaven,
 
 316 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 and that soon you shall meet them there. I think you 
 are thoroughly honest in this belief, and that even your 
 griefs cannot be held accountable for your habit of 
 looking upon the dark side of things, and your per- 
 sistent discontent. 
 
 I look farther back than grief for the causes of 
 your sadness and deeper than disease. I believe that 
 the real and responsible cause of your dejection is the 
 religious training of your early life, and the ideas 
 which you now entertain of God and of duty. God 
 has never been to you an infinitely affectionate Father, 
 to whom you have been willing to give yourself up in 
 perfect trust, I do not question the honesty of your 
 reverence for Him, or the purity of your Avorship of 
 Him, but your fear of Him is of such a nature that you 
 seem always afraid that He wUl play you some trick 
 — that He will call for you before you are ready, or 
 that He only bears a joy to your lips in order, for some 
 disciplinary purpose, to dash it away. You do not, 
 like a child, trust Him — give yourself and all your 
 hopes and all your life up to Him. You have no ease 
 in Him — no peace in Him. You are on the constant 
 watch for yourself, seeking to fathom or foresee His 
 designs concerning yourself, and bearing — with your 
 poor, weak hands — the burden which only He can 
 carry without toil. God the judge — God the ruler — 
 God the providential dispenser — this is your God ; but
 
 To Saul M. Jones. 317 
 
 God the everlasting Father, full of all tender pity and 
 compassion, wooing you to His arms, asking you to 
 repose upon His bosom and give up to Him all your 
 griefs and trust Him for all the future, is a strange 
 God to you. Ah ! sir ! I am more sorry for you in 
 this great mistake and misfortune than my words can 
 tell. 
 
 I think you have always felt that it is wrong to be 
 cheerful. Your religion has been a joyless one. You 
 received in early life, I cannot doubt, the impression 
 that no person, realizing the brevity of life, the tremen- 
 dous realities of eternity, the consequences of sin and 
 the necessity of constant preparation for death and 
 readiness for every affliction, could possibly be cheer- 
 ful. Naturally reverent and constitutionally timid, tliis 
 kind of teaching planted itself so deeply in your spirit 
 that a better doctrine, assisted by your own reason, 
 has never uprooted it. To you, the most joyful peal 
 of bells comes only with suggestions of the grave, and 
 the touch of a baby's hand upon your cheek reminds 
 you only of its frailty and its doom. The earth has 
 been literally a vale of tears to you. As you have seen 
 the young overflowing with life and joy, and dancing 
 along a flowery pathway, you have sighed over them 
 with an inefiable pity. You have never dared to set 
 your aflections upon anything, for fear that it would 
 be taken away from you, or that, in some way, it would
 
 318 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 become a curse to you. You have looked upon life 
 simply as a period of discipline preparatory to a better 
 life, whose joy fulness must necessarily be in the ratio 
 of the joylessness of that which precedes it. Life has 
 appeared to you to be only a preparation for death, 
 and religion has been only something to die by. 
 
 Xow, my friend, I am very much mistaken if it be 
 not one of the special offices of Christianity to release 
 those who, through fear of death, have all their life 
 been subject to bondage — to make the future so clear 
 and attractive that it shall fill the present with joyfid 
 content. I know that we are directed to be ready for 
 death, when it shall come ; but how can a man be 
 readier than when engaged actively in pushing on the 
 great work of the world, and enjoying all the satis- 
 faction that must naturally flow from the consciousness 
 of a future forever secure ? 
 
 If your idea and your policy were to become prev- 
 alent in the world, the world would certainly become 
 more thoroughly a vale of tears than it has ever been, 
 — more than you imagine it to be. Such prevalence 
 would be universal paralysis. God is not interested, 
 exclusively, I imagine, with the small concerns of indi- 
 \aduals like yourself. He watches the life of nations 
 and the rise and growth of civilizations. One genera- 
 tion lays the corner-stone of the state, and a hundred 
 generations rear the superstructure, and numberless
 
 • To Saul M. Jones. 319 
 
 lives are swallowed up in the process. Lives and 
 destinies overlap each other, and one continues what 
 another begins. The thread of silk is not cut off be- 
 cause a single cocoon is exhausted. The single cocoon 
 is not missed, and if it were, there are a hundred to 
 take its place. Men do not live to themselves alone 
 — do not live with reference alone t-o that which, in 
 the Providence of God, may personally befall them. 
 There is a family, there is a posterity, there is a coun- 
 tiy, there is a world to live for ; — there are great enter- 
 prises to be engaged in wliich consult no period of sus- 
 pension short of the national death or the final con- 
 summation of all things. 
 
 "What headway do you think would be made in the 
 world's educational and rcfonnatory work by men 
 who, like you, think that there is not much use in 
 undertaking anything because death is so very near ? 
 Judge for yourself. Are you an active man in any of 
 the great Christian and humane movements of the 
 time ? Do you ever dream of putting your shoulder 
 to the wheel of progress ? No, sir. You are the sub- 
 ject of mental and spiritual paralysis ; and if the world 
 were made np of such as you, it would come to a dead 
 halt. You have lived in your old house until it is 
 tumbling down about your head, because it has seemed 
 as if anything like a permanent repair of it would 
 tempt Providence to take you away from it altogether.
 
 320 Letters to the Joneies. 
 
 You could tear the old house down and build a new, but 
 life seems so short and death so near that even the 
 suggestion of such an enterprise has appeared impious. 
 You have thought only of him who proposed to pull 
 down his barns and build greater, and of the end that 
 came before the barns were begun. The new gar- 
 ments which you put on are adopted with the sad 
 reflection that you shall probably never live to wear 
 them out, and every chastened pleasure which you put 
 fearfully to your lips is loaded with the thought that 
 you have possibly tasted it for the last time. 
 
 "What kind of a Christianity do you think this is 
 to commend to a careless world ? There can be no 
 question as to the relative comfort and happiness of 
 the worldling and yourself. The careless worldling, so 
 that he have no vice that burns his conscience, is a 
 happier man than you ; and if he be a man of active, 
 benevolent impulses, he is a more useful member of 
 society. This continual thoughtfulness touching your- 
 self, this constant carefulness of yourself, this perpetual 
 watching of events with relation to their bearing upon 
 youi-self, cannot fail to make you selfish, — or, rather, 
 cannot fail to shut out the thought of others and of the 
 great interests of the world at large. 
 
 I count that man supremely happy who, prepared 
 in his heart for every emergency, and every event, has 
 given himself in perfect trust to. the Great Disposer,
 
 To Saul M. Jones. 321 
 
 and addressed himself with a glad heart to the work 
 and the enjoyment of the present life. Such a man 
 makes no calculation for misfortune and watches not 
 for death, but does that which his hand finds to do, 
 knowing that if he does not enjoy the fruit of his labor, 
 others will, and content to take the il]s of life when 
 they come. Such a man sees woe only to do what he 
 can to alleviate it. There is light" in his eye, there is 
 life in his step. To me he is the pattern Christian of 
 the world. The bright side of things is with him so 
 bright that its radiance quite overpowers the darkness 
 of the other side. He is cheerful because he is free. 
 Is it too late, my friend, for you to be relieved of this 
 load of fear and carefulness and apprehension ? I think 
 not. I believe that this habit of your life can be 
 broken, and that many happy days can yet be yours — 
 days of calm joy undarkened by a single care or cloud, 
 days of heavenly hope and trust, and days of earnest, 
 far-reaching work.
 
 THE TWENTY-THIRD LETTER. 
 
 Co foljit ^mitlj |oncs. 
 
 COyCERNlKG iriS NEIGnBORLT DUTIES, AND HIS FAILURE 
 TO PERFORM TIIEM. 
 
 "IVTEXT to being a good husband and father, I con- 
 Jl\ sider it eveiy man's duty to be a good neigh- 
 bor, A good neighbor ! My heart brims with grati- 
 tude as I write the phrase, for memory, by her magic 
 call, summons to their places along the track of the 
 past a line of ministers M'hose homely and pleasant 
 faces are as familiar as those of Tn.y own family — min- 
 isters of good to me in a thousand ways, through 
 neighborly kindness. Among this long line of good 
 neighbors, all of whom I remember with grateful de- 
 light, there were some in whom the neighborly instinct 
 was as distinct, and characteristic, and original, as 
 the parental instinct, or the religious sentiment ; and I 
 hereby modestly announce myself as the original dis-
 
 To John Smith Jones. 323 
 
 coverer of this original neighborly instinct. Neighbor- 
 ly kindness has hitherto been regarded as the offspring 
 of a benevolent disposition, but such a theory degrades 
 it. It is a distinct growth from a separate seed, and 
 often thrives in people who are not remarkable for 
 general benevolence. When unhindered and thrifty, 
 it is, in some natures, the distinguishing characteristic. 
 Before I come to the treatment of your case, I re- 
 gard it as a neighborly duty to pay tribute to some of 
 those good neighbors whose deeds are forever em- 
 balmed in my heart. To that hearty, loving woman 
 who used to flit backward and forward between her 
 humble house and my childhood's home, lending more 
 than she borrowed, and always returning more, bring- 
 ing in tid-bits of her cooking to me, always sharing 
 her luxuries with the hand that cared for me, watching 
 with us all in sickness, and always declaring that she 
 had done nothing at all, and was, on the whole, 
 ashamed of the unworthiness and insignificance of her 
 offices, my tearful thanks ! Though for many years 
 she has walked in white, upon the heavenly hills, I 
 hope it is not too late to tell her that the man does not 
 forget her pleasant words and kind deeds to the boy, 
 and that the son, though he should live to be old and 
 gray-headed, will always hold in precious remembrance 
 her tender service to his mother. To that old saint 
 whom I used to see stealing across lots to carry food
 
 324 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 and clothing to needy homes, and entering the back 
 doors of those homes with many apologies for his in- 
 trusion, my acknowledgments for his beautiful lesson ! 
 To that kind woman who had a large family of bois- 
 terous boys, and who not only understood that boys 
 had good appetites, but that they particularly liked to 
 gratify them on the night after the annual Thanksgiv- 
 ing, and found attractions at her house superior to any 
 other in the neighborhood, I assume the privilege of 
 returning the thanks of at least twenty men besides 
 myself. And to him who took a young man's hand in 
 trouble, and giving him his faith and the voice of his 
 encouragement, and sacrificing something and risking 
 much, helped him over the hardest spot of his life into 
 the field of his life's successes, my reverence ! 
 
 Ah ! my good neighbors ! I did not dream hosv 
 numerous you were imtil I undertook to recall you. 
 Throughout all my life you have formed the circle 
 next to that which sits around my heart. I have 
 exchanged my morning greeting with you, have 
 walked to the house of God with you, have met you 
 at your tables and in my own home, have shared with 
 you the work of neighborly charity ; and, ever since I 
 can remember, some of the constant pleasures of my 
 life have come to me from you. In the days of dark- 
 ness, your gentle rap was at my door, your whispered in- 
 quiry was constant, your profiered service was always
 
 To John Smith Jones. 325 
 
 at hand. And when the Uttle form was carried out to 
 be laid under the flowers, there were fairer flowers 
 upon his bosom, that came from you, than have ever 
 grown above it since. You are my brothers and my 
 sisters, to whom I feel bound by a tie almost as sweet 
 and precious as that which binds me to those who fill 
 my home. 
 
 Exactly how this rhapsody will strike you, Mr. 
 John Smith Jones, I cannot tell. I do not think you 
 have looked to see whether you could identify yourself 
 with those of my good neighbors whom I have endeav- 
 ored to recall. It seems to me that you must be con- 
 scious that you are different in most respects from 
 your neighbors. You must be aware that most people 
 are good neighbors among tliemselves, as most people 
 are affectionate parents. The neighborly instinct is as 
 universal as the parental. Let so much as this, at least, 
 be said for human nature : that Avithout respect to 
 creed or culture, men and women are in the main good 
 neighbors. I have never yet seen the place where the 
 offices of good neighborhood were lacking. There is 
 not only the neighborly instinct engaged in this thing, 
 but there is a universal personal pride that fills out 
 where the instinct fails. It is generally understood 
 and felt that for one neighbor to help another in 
 trouble, and for one neighbor to make the path of an- 
 other neighbor pleasant, is forever a fit and good
 
 326 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 thing. This being recognized, it is felt that a gentle- 
 man will do that which is fit and good, and that, to 
 faU in neighborly well doing, is to fail to approve one's 
 self a gentleman. I think I know many supremely 
 selfish men who are always spoken of as good neigh- 
 bors. They have a sense of that which is fit and good. 
 They feel that no person who pretends to be a gentle- 
 man will fail to do that which is fit and good with rela- 
 tion to his neighbors. They feel that neighborhood 
 imposes certain duties upon them which they must 
 perform, or lose caste, not only with others, but M'ith 
 theniselves. They feel that it is not respectable to be 
 a bad neighbor. 
 
 I suppose there may be some neighborhoods in the 
 world that have no bad neighbor in them, but, nearly 
 always, though the many are right, there is one indi- 
 vidual in the wrong. Very few are the neighborhoods 
 in which there is not one person who is a bad neigh- 
 bor. In your neighborhood, Mr. John Smith Jones, 
 you are that neighbor. You are always in a quarrel 
 with somebody about a fence. You are always very 
 much afraid that somebody has encroached upon your 
 line, or is about encroaching upon your line. You 
 keep a miserable dog that worries all the horses that 
 pass your house, and renders it next to impossible for 
 anybody, except a courageous man armed with a cane, 
 to enter your door. You keep hens that enter the
 
 To John Smith Jones. 327 
 
 gardens of your neighbors, and scratch up seeds, and 
 rip open tomatoes, and wallow in flower beds, and 
 make a nuisance of themselves from May until Novem- 
 ber, leaving nobody in their vicinity in quiet possession 
 of his premises. You will not take care of your side- 
 walk in the winter, and I have thought that you take 
 a malicious satisfaction in hearing your neighbors curse 
 you as they hobble over the ice in front of your house. 
 You will join with your neighbors in no effort for 
 beautifying your street. Your consciousness that you 
 deserve ill at the hands of your neighbors leads you to 
 suppose that they are all banded against you, and shut- 
 ting yourself into your own castle, you look out upon 
 the little world of neighbors around you in defiance, and 
 full of the spirit of mischief. You do not care how 
 much you annoy them. You would feel uncomfortable 
 if you did not annoy them, and though your dog and 
 your hens are a perpetual plague to them, let but a 
 pet rabbit stray into your enclosure, and down comes 
 your musket, and the pet rabbit dies. . 
 
 How far you are to be blamed for this it is impos- 
 sible for me to say. I have no doubt that it is a legiti- 
 mate apology for you to say that nature did not endow 
 you with the neighborly instinct. There is really 
 something lacking in you in this respect, and, so far as 
 this want exists, there is an excuse for you. There is 
 a lack in your nature still further than this. You are
 
 328 
 
 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 not sensitive to feel how everlastingly disgraceful it is 
 to you to be at variance with your neighbors, and to 
 do those things which must necessarily make them 
 dislike you. I suppose that if this letter arrests your 
 attention, you will put in the further plea, or disregard- 
 ing my apologies for you, put in the exclusive plea 
 that your neighbors are quarrelsome, and interfere 
 with you. Let me say in reply to this that I do not 
 believe the man can be found who is always at variance 
 with his neighbors, who is not himself blamable for it. 
 I know men who are accounted good husbands, good 
 parents, and good men — perhaps religious men — who 
 are notorious as uncomfortable neighbors. I know 
 men of irreproachable morals of whom I never heard 
 a neighbor speak a kind word, hx such cases the 
 blame attaches to the unloved person always ; and if 
 any man who may read these words, feels that, as a 
 neighbor, he is not loved, let him take home to himself 
 the coRviction that he is the sinner, and that when he 
 shall be reformed his neighborhood wiU be reformed. 
 Quarrelsome neighbors are invariably little-minded 
 persons. A really noble mind never quarrels. A really 
 noble man or woman is never complained of as a bad 
 neighbor. 
 
 I think you are a worse neighbor than you were 
 when you were less prosperous. Poverty not un fre- 
 quently makes an excellent neighbor and an excellent
 
 To John Smith Jones. 329 
 
 neighborhood. When men and women are engaged 
 in a struggle for bread, and are obliged to depend upon 
 mutual assistance in sickness and the various emergen- 
 cies of life, they are very apt to be good neighbors. 
 When you were poor, you were a tolerable neighbor, 
 notwithstanding your want of the neighborly instinct 
 and other noble qualities ; but since you became an 
 independent man, all your show of a neighborly dis- 
 position has vanished. The sense of independence has 
 isolated you, and given your selfish pride the oppor- 
 tunity to assert and maintain its full sway over your 
 little spirit. Your house is in every sense your castle. 
 It stands as coldly and as lonely in the midst of the 
 neighborhood, and seems as thoroughly barred against 
 neighborly approach, as that of Sir Launfal, that 
 
 *' Alone in the landscape lay 
 Like an outpost of winter, dull and gray." 
 
 Your fences are high ; your screens are broad ; and 
 behind these you sit, and self-complacently make faces 
 at the world. If you borrow of nobody, nobody bor- 
 rows of you. Nobody goes near you, and you have 
 abundant time to indulge in the selfish contemplation 
 of your independence. 
 
 After all, is not this a small and miserable life that 
 you are living ? Does it satisfy you ? I am prepared 
 to hear that it does, but it would gratify me much to
 
 330 
 
 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 know that you are not so utterly selfish as to be con- 
 tented with it. Are there not times when you long for 
 neighborly sympathy — when the face of a loving and 
 kind neighbor, looking in at your door, bent upon some 
 office of good will, or even asking a favor, would seem 
 delightful to you ? If such times come, then are you 
 not only saveable but worth saving. Sooner or later 
 the time must come to every man who is worth saving, 
 when he will feel that life has no genuine satisfaction 
 outside of the love and respect of those who are around 
 him. Our only satisfying life is in the hearts of others. 
 You may content yourself with yoiu- family, but even 
 for the sake of your family — for the sake of holding 
 the respect of your family — you must sometimes long 
 for the love and respect of your neighbors. No 
 despised and hated man, conscious that he has legiti- 
 mately earned the dislike in which he is held — can long 
 maintain his self-respect ; and when this breaks down, 
 even the worst nature will cry out for help. It must 
 be that there are times when it would be a great relief 
 to you to do a neighbor a favor for the asking. 
 ^ I do not question the sincerity of your belief that 
 you have very bad neighbors. I do not doubt that 
 you honestly consider them the worst and meanest men 
 that ever constituted a neighborhood. I have no doubt 
 that they have shown their worst and meanest side to 
 you, and that, if the men were to be judged exclusively
 
 To John Smith Jones. 331 
 
 by the aspect which they have presented to you, their 
 pictures would not be flattering. But you should 
 remember that your position and your words and acts 
 have only been calculated to call forth that which is 
 evil in them. They have shown their worst side to 
 you, because you have shown only your worst side to 
 them. You have provoked their indifference, their 
 insolence, their petty revenges, their spiteful remarks, 
 their cold rebuffs, and all their unneighborly doings. 
 What there is of evil in them, they show to you, 
 because you have been only a bad neighbor to them. 
 Suppose, when you first entered your neighborhood, 
 you had been a generous, kind-hearted, neighborly 
 man, opening your house and heart to those aroimd 
 you, entering their houses, and in every possible way 
 showing good feeling toward them, and doing good 
 through various schemes of improvement ; do you 
 think you would have seen anything of this unpleasant 
 side of Avhich you now complain ?, If you have com- 
 mon sense, you know that all your neighbors would 
 have shown you nothing but good will, and that you 
 would have been loved and honored. 
 
 Now this good side of your neighbors, which I see, 
 and you do not, you must find. You can find it, and 
 though, for various reasons, it may seem to you now 
 that not one of them is amiable, you may learn that 
 there is not one of them who is not more worthy to
 
 332 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 be loved than you are. How is it that they love and 
 respect one another, while none of them respects and 
 loves you? "Why is it that you are selected as the 
 object of their united dislike ? Sir, you are the mean- 
 est man of the neighborhood, and yet you have times 
 of believing yourself abused, and of considering your- 
 self the only decent man among them all. You feel 
 that there is something in you that is loveable, and 
 that that something ought to be loved. That some- 
 thing whicli your wife has found, which your children 
 have found, which your mother found years ago, 
 should, you feel, secure the love and good will of your 
 neighbors. Are you the only man of all your neigh- 
 borhood who has loveable qualities that are hidden ? 
 All these men whom you have come to regard as bad 
 neighbors are a good deal more loveable than you are, 
 but they show their unlovely side to you, simply be- 
 cause you have shown your imlovely side to them. 
 Show the best part of your nature to them, and you 
 will be astonished to see how quickly they will become 
 lovely to you, through the exhibition of excellencies 
 whose existence has been hitherto hidden from you. 
 You have never shown anything but your hateful side 
 to them, and it is very stupid of you to suppose that 
 they will love that. 
 
 I imagine that this kind of talk will do you very 
 little good, but there are two motives which I can
 
 To John Smith Jones. 333 
 
 present to you that you can measui-e, and that, I 
 am sure, will commend themselves to your considera- 
 tion. With all your meanness, you are proud, and 
 you feel that there is something admirable in manli- 
 ness. Now your position as a neighbor is not a manly 
 one, but it is inexpressibly childish. Are you a man, 
 and do you shut yourself within the lines of your pos- 
 sessions, and quarrel about fences, and lines of boun- 
 dary, and encroachments ? Are you a man, and do 
 you rejoice in making yourself offensive to those around 
 you by petty annoyances ? Are you a man, and do 
 you stand ready to pounce upon any unlucky child or 
 pet of your neighbor the moment it enters your en- 
 closure ? Do you call such things manly ? Are you 
 not ashamed of your childishness ? The real man is 
 noble. He will himself suffer inconvenience rather than 
 annoy his neighbor. He will suffer wrong rather than 
 betray a small spirit of revenge. He will not permit 
 himself to be degraded by a quarrel that can be avoided 
 by any generous and self-denying act. By acts of jus- 
 tice and generosity he will compel the respect of his 
 neighbors, and vindicate his claim to manliness. You 
 have moral vision enough left to see all this, and sen- 
 sibility, I hope, to feel that a mean neighbor is no man, 
 but only a childish imitation of one. 
 
 The second motive which I present to you is more 
 selfish, even, than the first, and for that reason you can
 
 334 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 appreciate it better. A bad neiglibor.has no influence. 
 No man can move society, in any direction, who has lost 
 his hold upon these who are around him. You haA-e 
 isolated yourself, and you reap the consequences in your 
 loss of influence. You are without power upon the 
 world. With all your fancied independence, and with 
 all the power which money gives you, there is not a 
 man who would permit himself to be moved by you. 
 You must become a good neighbor if you would Avin 
 power over others for any purpose. As it is, you are 
 counted out of every ring, and have no power to call 
 a ring around yourself. 
 
 I wish I could, at least, make you and every other 
 man who reads these words feel that an unpleasant 
 neighbor is a nuisance. There is no good reason why 
 the word " neighborhood " should not be as sweet and 
 suggestive and sacred a word as " family." A neigh- 
 borhood is a congeries of homes, and the home spirit 
 of love and mutual adaptation and mutual help and 
 harmony should prevail in it. Home life itself is in- 
 complete without good neighborhood life, and every 
 man who poisons the latter is the enemy of every home 
 afiected by his act.
 
 THE TWENTY-FOURTH LETTER. 
 
 ^a dloobriclj |oncs, |r. 
 
 CONCERXIXG niS DISPOSITIOy TO BE COXTEyT WITH THE 
 RESPECTABILITY AKD WEALTH WHICU HIS FATHER HAS 
 ACQUIRED FOR HIM. 
 
 YOUR father, by a life of integrity and close and 
 skilful application to business, has made for him- 
 self a good reputation in the world, and become what 
 the world calls rich. He lives in a good house, moves 
 in good society, commands for his family all desirable 
 luxuries of dress and equipage, and holds a position 
 which places him upon an equality with the greatest 
 and best. He began humbly, if I am correctly in- 
 formed, and has won his eminence by the force of his 
 own life and character. I honor him. I count him 
 worthy of the respect of every man ; and I find myself 
 disposed to treat his family with respect on his account 
 — for his sake. This feeling toward his family, which 
 I find springing up spontaneously within myself, seems 
 to be quite universal. The world bows to the family
 
 336 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 of the venerable Goodrich Jones — bows, not to Mrs. 
 Jones, particularly, as a respectable woman, but to the 
 wife of Goodrich Jones — bows not to his children, as 
 voung men and women of intelligence and good morals, 
 but as young people who are to be treated with more 
 than ordinary courtesy because they are the children 
 of the rich and respectable Goodrich Jones. 
 
 This feeling of the world toward Mr. Goodrich 
 Jones' family is very natural. It is a tribute of respect to 
 a worthy old gentleman, and, so far as he is concerned, 
 is one of the natural rewards of his life of industry 
 and integrity. I notice, however, that the family of 
 Mr. Jones have come to look upon these tributes of 
 respect to them, on account of Mr. Jones, as quite the 
 proper and regular thing, and to feel that they are 
 really worthy of special attention, because Mr. Jones 
 commands it for himself. Instead of feeling a little 
 humiliated by the consciousness that they are treated 
 with special politeness, not because they are particu- 
 larly brilliant, or rich, or well-bred, but because they 
 are the family of a rich and respectable man, they are 
 inclined to feel proud of it. Plow they manage to be 
 vain of respectability and wealth won for them by 
 somebody beside themselves, I do not know ; but I 
 suppose their case is not singular. Indeed, I know 
 that the world is full of such cases, many of which 
 would be ridiculous were they not pitiful.
 
 To Goodrich Jones, Jr. 337 
 
 The thought that you, Goodrich Jones, Jr., are the 
 son of Goodrich Jones, and that you bear his name, 
 seems to form the basis of your estimate of yourself. 
 I have ah'eady given the reason why the world treats 
 you respectfully, but that reason need not necessarily 
 be identical with that which leads you to respect your- 
 self. If, owing to some circimistance or agency be- 
 yond your control, you were to be suddenly stripped 
 of all your ready money and other resources, and set 
 down in some distant city among strangers, what 
 would be your first impulse ? "Would you go to work, 
 and try to make a place for yourself? Would you be 
 willing to pass for just what you are — to be estimated 
 for just what there is in you of the elements of man- 
 hood, or would you endeavor to convince everybody 
 that you were the son of a certain very rich and re- 
 spectable Goodrich Jones, and try to secure considera- 
 tion for yourself by such representation ? I presume 
 you would pursue the same policy among strangers 
 that you pursue among friends. You have never made 
 an effort to be respected for works or personal merits 
 of your own. You push yourself forward everywhere 
 as the son of Goodrich Jones — indeed, as Goodrich 
 Jones, Jr. You have not only been content to live in 
 the shadow of your father's name, but you have been 
 apparently anxious to invite public attention to the fact 
 that you do. You have not only been content to live 
 
 15
 
 338 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 upon money which your father has made, but you seem 
 delighted to have it understood that you can draw 
 upon him for all you want. You seem to have no am- 
 bition to make either reputation or money for yourself. 
 On the contrary, I think you would look upon it as dis- 
 graceful for you to engage in business for the purpose 
 of winning wealth by labor. 
 
 Now will you permit one who has bowed to you 
 frequently for your father's sake to talk very plainly to 
 you for your own? Let me assure you, in the first 
 place, that all this respect which the world shows to 
 you is unsubstantial and imreliable. The man who 
 treats you with respect because your father is rich 
 would cease to treat you with respect if you were to 
 become poor. The man who bows to you because 
 yom- father occupies a high social position, would pass 
 you without recognition were your father, for any 
 reason, to lose that position. Let me assure you that 
 the world does not care for you any further than you 
 are the partaker of the money and the respectability 
 which have been achieved by your father. Nay, I will 
 go further, and say that, side by side with the defer- 
 ence which it shows for you on your father's account, 
 it cherishes contempt for one who is willing to receive 
 his position at second hand. You cannot complain of 
 this, for you place your claims for social consideration 
 entirely on your father's position. The negro slave is
 
 proud of the superior wealth of his master, and among 
 his fellow slaves, assumes a superior position in conse- 
 quence of wealth which is not his own. He belongs 
 to a splendid establishment, and, in his own eyes, wins 
 importance from the association. "When his master 
 fails, the slave sinks. No, sir, there is nothing reliable 
 in this consideration of the world for you. You are 
 only treated as a representative of the wealth and re- 
 spectability of another man, and if he were to become 
 displeased with you, and were to disown and disinherit 
 you, you would find yourself without a friend in the 
 world. 
 
 In the second place, your position is an unmanly 
 one. None but a mean man can be willing to hold his 
 position at second hand. I count him fortunate who 
 is born to pleasant and good social relations, and all 
 the advantages which they bring him for the develop- 
 ment of his personal character ; but I coimt him most 
 unfortunate who, bom to such relations, is willing to 
 hold them as a birthright alone. A man who is willing 
 to keeiJ a place in society which his father has given 
 him, through his father's continued influence, is neces- 
 sarily mean-spirited and contemptible. Every young 
 man of a manly spirit who finds himself in good so- 
 ciety, through the influence of others, will prove his 
 right to the place, and hold the place by his own 
 merits. No man of your age can consent to hold his
 
 340 
 
 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 social position solely through the influence of his father 
 without convicting himself either of imbecility or 
 meanness. If you had any genuine self-respect, you 
 -would feel that to owe to others what you are capable 
 of winning for yourself, and to be considered only as 
 a portion of a rich and respectable man's belongings, is 
 a disgrace to your manhood. 
 
 I suppose the thought has never occurred to you 
 that you owe something to your father for what he has 
 done for you. He gave you position. His name 
 shielded you through all your childhood and youth 
 from many of the dangers and disadvantages which 
 other yoimg men are forced to encounter. He gave 
 you great vantage ground in the work of life, and yon 
 owe it to him to improve it. If your name helps you, 
 you ought to do something for your name. If your 
 father honors you, you ought to honor him, and to do 
 as much for his name as he has done for yours. You 
 have no moral right to disgrace one who has done so 
 much for you ; for his reputation is partly in your 
 keeping. It would be an everlasting disgrace to him 
 to bring up a boy w^ho relied solely upon his father for 
 respectability. It would be a blot upon his reputation 
 to have a son so mean as to be content with a name 
 and fortune at second hand. I tell you, sir, that you 
 must change your plan and course of life, or people will 
 talk more and more of your unworthiness to stand in
 
 To Goodrich Jones, Jr. 341 
 
 your father's shoes, and express their wonder more and 
 more that so sensible and industrious a father could 
 train a son so inefficiently as he has trained you. 
 When this good father of yours shall die, you will be 
 thrown more upon yourself. You will have money, I 
 presume, and you will still sit in the comfortable 
 shadow of your father's name ; but the world changes, 
 and strangers Avill estimate you at your true value, and 
 those who knew your father will only talk of the sad 
 contrast between his character and your ovm. 
 
 I suppose you are not above the desire for the good 
 will of the world. Well, the world is made up of 
 workers. The great masses of men — and your father 
 is among the number — are obliged to depend upon 
 their own labor and their own force and excel- 
 lence of character for wealth and position. People do 
 not envy him, because he won all that he possesses by 
 his own skill and industry. He is universally admired 
 and esteemed, and you are enjoying some of the fruits 
 of this admiration and esteem in the politeness of the 
 world toward yourself ; but this will not always last. 
 You must mingle in the world's work, and cast in your 
 lot with your fellows, contributing your share of labor, 
 and taking what comes of it in pelf and position, or 
 else you will be voted out of the pale of popular sym- 
 pathy. The world does not love drones, and you must 
 cease to be a drone or it will never love you.
 
 342 Letters to the Joneies. 
 
 I suppose it is hard for you to realize that you are 
 not the object of envy among men, but I wish you 
 could for once feel the contempt which your parasitic 
 position excites even among men whom you deem 
 beneath your notice. There are many young men who 
 have been compelled to labor all their lives for bread, 
 that would shrink from exchanging places with you aa 
 from a loathsome disgrace. They would not take your 
 idle habits, your foppish tastes, your childish spirit, 
 and your reputation, for all your father's money ; and 
 these men, strange as it may seem to your mean spirit, 
 are moi'e resj^ected and better loved by the world than 
 yourself. I say that you are not above the desire for 
 the good Avill of the world ; but, if you would get it, 
 you must be a man. You must show that you have a 
 man's spirit, and that you are willing to do a man's 
 work. No idle man ever yet lived upon the wealth 
 won for him by others and at the same time enjoyed 
 the love of the world. 
 
 All this you will find out by-and-by without my 
 telling you, but then it may be too late for remedy. 
 You are now young, but, if you live, you will come at 
 length to realize that instead of being envied, you are 
 despised. You will make a sadder discovery, too, 
 than this. You will discover that you have as little 
 basis for self-respect as for popular regard. Years 
 cannot fail to reveal to you some things which youth
 
 To Goodrich Jones, Jr. 
 
 343 
 
 hides from you. You will find that the world is busy", 
 that you have no one to spend your time with, and 
 that the men who have power and public consideration 
 are men who have something to do besides killing time 
 and spending money. You will find that you are with- 
 out sympathy and companionship among the best 
 people, and when you ascertain the reason — for it will 
 be 80 obvious that you will not fiiil to see it — you will 
 learn that you are not worthy of their sympathy and 
 companionship. In short, you will learn to despise 
 yourself. 
 
 I have already spoken to you of the debt which 
 3'ou owe to your father, for what he has done for you. 
 There are some further considerations relating to your 
 family which I wish to oflTer, A family name and repu- 
 tation are things of life and growth. The character 
 which your father has made is a product of life, so 
 grand and far-spreading that his family sits beneath, 
 and is sheltered by it. It is the law of all vital prod- 
 ucts that they shall grow, or hold their ground against 
 encroachment, by what they feed upon. Food must 
 be constant, or death is sure to come, soon or late. 
 The character of your family — its power, position and 
 high relations — is the product of your father's vital 
 force, working in various ways. Not many years 
 hence, that force must stop its work. Your father will 
 die, and unless you take up his work and do it, tliLs 
 
 L
 
 344 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 family character will pine, and dwindle, and ultimately 
 sink in utter decay. 
 
 Look around you and see how some of the rich and 
 influential old families have died out, because there was 
 no man in them to keep them alive. The founder of 
 the family did what he could, raised his family to the 
 highest social position, gave them wealth, bequeathed 
 to them a good name, and died. The sons who fol- 
 lowed were not worthy of him. They were not men. 
 They were babies, who were willing to live upon their 
 family name, and who did live upon it until they con- 
 sumed it. It is sad to see a family name fade out as it 
 often does, through the failure of its men to feed it 
 with the blood of a worthy life ; and yours will fade out 
 in a single generation, if you do not immediately pre- 
 pare yourself to take up your father's work, and carry 
 it on. It is always pleasant and inspiring to see young 
 men who expect to inhei-it money entering with energy 
 upon the work of life, as if they had their fortunes to 
 make. It proves that they are men, and proves that 
 they are preparing to handle usefully the money that is 
 to come into their hands. It proves that they intend 
 to win respect for themselves, and to lay at least the 
 foundation of their own fortunes. "When I see such 
 men, I feel that the name of their families is safe in 
 their keeping, and that, for at least one generation, 
 those families cannot sink. The desire to be some-
 
 To Goodrich Jones, Jr. 345 
 
 body beside somebody's son, shows a manly dispo- 
 sition, which the world at once recognizes, and to 
 which it freely opens its heart. 
 
 I am aware that a young man in your position has 
 great temptations, and labors under great disadvan- 
 tages. We are in the habit of regarding a poor young 
 man, who has neither family name nor influence, as 
 laboring under disadvantages, and in some aspects of 
 his case, we regard him rightly. But he has certainly 
 the advantage of the stimulus which obstacles to be 
 overcome aiFord. The poor man sees that he must 
 make his ovm fortune, or that his fortune will not be 
 made at all ; and the obstacles that lie before liim only 
 stimulate him to labor with the greater efliciency. 
 "When I see a poor young man bravely accepting his 
 lot, and patiently and heroically applying himself to 
 the work of building a fortune and achieving a posi- 
 tion, I am moved to thank God for his poverty, for I 
 know that in that poverty he will ultimately discover 
 the secret of his best successes. 
 
 Your disadvantage is that position and wealth have 
 already been won for you. It is not necessary for you 
 to labor to get bread and clothing and a comfortable 
 home. These have already been won for you by other 
 hands. I do not deny that this condition of things 
 is naturally enervating. I confess that it takes much 
 good sense and an unusual degree of manliness to resist 
 
 15*
 
 346 Letters to the Jonefes. 
 
 the temptations to idleness which it brings ; but you 
 must resist them or suffer the saddest consequences. 
 You must labor in a steady, manly way to make your 
 own place in the woi'ld, as a fitting preparation for the 
 husbandry and enjoyment of the wealth which will 
 some day be yours. If you have not those considera- 
 tions in your favor which stimulate the poor man to 
 exertion, then you must adopt those which I have tried 
 to present to you. You must remember 'that to be 
 content with a position received at second hand, and 
 to live simply to spend the money earned by others, 
 is most unmanly. You must remember that you owe 
 it to your father and to your family name and fame, 
 to keep your family in the position of consideration and 
 influence in which he has placed it, and that it is cer- 
 tain to recede from that position unless you do. You 
 must remember that only by work can you win the 
 good will of the world around you, or win and retain 
 respect for yoiirself. 
 
 If the disadvantages of your position are great, 
 your reward for worthy work is also great. The 
 world always recognizes the strength of the tempta- 
 tions which attach to the position of a rich young man, 
 and awards to him a peculiar honor for that spirit which 
 refuses to be respected for anything but his own manli- 
 ness. I know of no young men who hold the good 
 wUl of the public more thoroughly than those who set
 
 To Goodrich Jones, Jr. 347 
 
 aside all the temptations to indolence and indulgence 
 which attend wealth, and put themselves heartily to the 
 work of deserving the social position to which they 
 are bom, and of earning the bread which a father's 
 wealth has already secured. You have but to will and 
 to work, nnd this beautiful reward will be yours.
 
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