← catalogue

Girls and Women

by Harriet E. Paine · English · Gutenberg #20362 · 327,141 chars · public domain (US)

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Girls and Women
    
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.

Title: Girls and Women

Author: Harriet E. Paine


        
Release date: January 15, 2007 [eBook #20362]

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/20362

Credits: Produced by Curtis Weyant, Martin Pettit and the Online
        Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
        file was produced from images generously made available
        by Case Western Reserve University Preservation Department
        Digital Library)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GIRLS AND WOMEN ***




Produced by Curtis Weyant, Martin Pettit and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
file was produced from images generously made available
by Case Western Reserve University Preservation Department
Digital Library)






The Riverside Library for Young People

NUMBER 8


GIRLS AND WOMEN

BY

E. CHESTER

(Harriet E. Paine)

[Illustration: Publisher's logo]

_Copyright, 1890,_

BY HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO.

BOSTON AND NEW YORK

_All rights reserved._

_The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A._

Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Company.




CONTENTS


CHAPTER                                                   PAGE

   I. AN AIM IN LIFE                                         7

  II. HEALTH                                                24

 III. A PRACTICAL EDUCATION                                 38

  IV. SELF-SUPPORT.--SHALL GIRLS SUPPORT THEMSELVES?        49

   V. SELF-SUPPORT.--HOW SHALL GIRLS SUPPORT THEMSELVES?    63

  VI. OCCUPATIONS FOR THE RICH                              82

 VII. CULTURE                                               99

VIII. THE ESSENTIALS OF A LADY                             116

  IX. THE PROBLEM OF CHARITY                               127

   X. THE ESSENTIALS OF A HOME                             136

  XI. HOSPITALITY                                          154

 XII. BRIC-À-BRAC                                          165

XIII. EMOTIONAL WOMEN                                      173

 XIV. A QUESTION OF SOCIETY                                187

  XV. NARROW LIVES                                         201

 XVI. CONCLUSION.--A MISCELLANEOUS CHAPTER                 218


GIRLS AND WOMEN.




I.

AN AIM IN LIFE.


For the sake of girls who are just beginning life, let me tell the
stories of some other girls who are now middle-aged women. Some of them
have succeeded and some have failed in their purposes, and often in a
surprising way.

I remember a girl who left school at seventeen with the highest honors.
Immediately we began to see her name in the best magazines. The heavy
doors of literature seemed to swing open before her. Then suddenly we
heard no more of her. A dozen years later she was known to no one
outside her own circle. She was earning her living as book-keeper in a
large five-cent store! She led the life of a drudge, and that was not
the worst of it. She was a sensitive woman, and there was much that was
mortifying in her position. All her Greek and Italian books were packed
away. She knew no more of science than when she left school. At odd
minutes she read good novels, and that was all she had to do with
literature. Those who had expected much of her thought her life was a
failure, and she thought so too.

Yet there is another side to the picture. The aim she had set for
herself in life was not to be an author, though that idea had taken
strong hold on her, and she tried to realize it in spite of great
discouragements. This was her minor aim, but the grand aim with her had
always been to lead the divine life at whatever cost. It proved to cost
almost everything. Her utmost help was needed for her large family,
which was poor. Unusual as her success with editors had been, no girl of
seventeen could depend on a large income from magazines. A good salary
was offered her as book-keeper, and she accepted it.

She tried to continue her favorite occupation by rising early, but she
was not strong enough to go on long in that way. She sometimes had an
hour in the evening, but when she saw the wistful look in her mother's
face she would not shut herself up alone. At the rare times when she was
still free to choose she went back to her books and her pen, but she
could not do much, and at last she felt it would be better not to try.
It was simply a source of vexation, and she needed a serene mind above
all things.

The only way her life could open towards beauty or happiness at all was
by putting the true spirit into her daily work. With a resolute heart
she did this. No books were ever more beautifully kept than hers; every
figure was clear and perfect; every column was added without a mistake.
In short, she did her work like an artist.

To the sales-girls she was like a guardian angel. She might have written
good stories all her life without helping others half so much. Little,
weak, frivolous girls became strong, fine women simply from daily
contact with her. She did not realize that. She only knew that she loved
the girls and that they loved her. She did know that she helped her
family--with her money. Her spirit helped them unconsciously still more.

When at last she gave up the minor aim of her life, and no longer tried
to be learned or famous, she had her energies set free for many little
things which had previously been crowded out. It was easy now to find a
leisure hour to help any one who needed sympathy. There was time to
watch the beauty of the sunset or of the falling snow. If she had no
time to scramble through a volume of a new poet, she could still learn
line by line some favorite old poem, and let it sink into her heart, so
that it did its work thoroughly. If she could not find time to learn the
history of all the artists from the time of Phidias to the last New York
exhibition, yet when a beautiful picture was before her she could look
at it thoughtfully without feeling that she must hurry on to the next.
In this way, perhaps, she gained a more absolute culture than in the way
she would have chosen, a culture of thought and character which told on
every one who came near her.

She was always climbing up towards God, and his help never failed her.
The climbing was hard, yet the pathway was radiant with light. Those who
were stumbling along in the darkness by her side saw the light and were
able to walk erect.

I cannot say she was altogether happy with so many of her fine powers
unused. Perhaps she was not even quite right in sacrificing herself
completely. Sometimes she fostered selfishness in others while she tried
to cast it out of herself. But so far as she could see she had no
choice. If she had refused the sacrifice, it would have been by giving
up the grand aim of her life. Her minor aim was good in itself, but it
conflicted with something better. Those who did not know her life
intimately thought it a failure. Those who saw deeper knew that her
utter failure in what was non-essential had been the condition of
essential success.


I remember another brilliant girl who did win her way. She was poor and
plain and friendless, but she won wealth and fame and friends, and then,
with all this success, she blossomed into beauty. She had a struggle,
but she came out victorious. I think she was happy. She was glad to be
beautiful and to be loved. She had music and pictures and travel in
abundance, and she appreciated these things. She liked to give to the
poor, and she did give bountifully and with a grace and sweetness better
than the gift.

She painted pictures which everybody admired, and that pleased her. She
had dreamed of all this when a child. She had genius and she had
perseverance. Her aim was to be a famous artist, and she did not flinch
from any work or sacrifice which would help her to that end. So far all
was well, and she reached the goal. As there was nothing to prevent her
carrying out secondary plans at the same time, she could be cultivated
and charitable without giving up her great object.

She wanted to be good besides. She never deliberately decided for the
wrong against the right. And yet a noble life was not first in her
thoughts. When she was a school-girl she had a lover who was like a
better self. By and by he chose to study for the ministry, while she
went to the city to try her fortune. So far they shared every thought
and feeling and hope. She knew she was a better woman with him than with
any one else. But at last he was called to a remote country parish, and
for himself was satisfied with it. But she--how then could she be his
wife? Her heart was torn in the strife. Some women whose vision was
less keen would have married him, hoping that in some way they might
still carry out their own ambition. But she was at a critical point in
her career and she knew it. She had just begun to be known personally to
influential people, and her name was beginning to be known to the
public. She dared not risk leaving her post. She wrote her lover a
charming letter,--for she did love him,--and told him how it was. "When
I have won my victory," said she, "I shall be a free woman. And you will
love me just as much when I have more to give you than I have now. But
now I have my little talent confided to me, and I dare not fold it away
in a napkin." Her lover agreed to this, though it was hard for him. They
worked apart year after year. At last she was a free woman, with money
enough to live without work at all, and with fame enough to work when
and where she pleased. But gradually she cared less and less for the
objects of her lover's life. She would not own to herself that she had
failed in constancy to him. She always thought she was glad to see him
when he came to the city. But he felt the difference in her, though he
tried not to see it. She was far more beautiful than when he had first
loved her; but in the days when she was so plain and had worn shabby
dresses there had been an expression about her mouth which he missed
now. The lovely face was still eager with longing, but it had lost the
look of aspiration. Reluctantly, he admitted the change in her. At last
he told her what he felt, that she had ceased to love him. She had
deceived herself so far that she had not realized how idle her excuses
were for putting off the marriage from year to year. When the separation
came she felt a sharp pang--as much of mortification at her own failure
as of wounded love. Yet she consented to the separation, and she seemed
to be happy after it. She thought her life had been tragic, and that she
had made a heroic sacrifice of her love to the necessity which her
genius laid upon her to do a certain work in the world.

I should be afraid to say that she was altogether wrong. There are, no
doubt, some women who are meant to serve the whole world rather than the
little domestic circle. And yet she did give up what she had believed
the best part of herself. And her pictures, though they were admired,
lacked an indescribable something of which her first crude sketches had
given promise. I do not think that, after all, they did very much to
interpret beauty to the world. She had two aims in life, both good, but
she placed the first second, and the second first. Perhaps, on the
whole, she was happier for the choice she made. But she missed something
better than happiness which is always missed by those who make the lower
aim their object--she missed the aspiration for higher happiness.

I have seen many successful lives led by women who as girls showed very
moderate abilities, simply because they had one definite aim. I knew a
girl who became an excellent actress. She was a pretty girl with a
little talent. She was not poor, but she had an ambition to be on the
stage. She had the good sense to see that she was not a genius, but she
also had courage enough to persevere in using the ability she had. For
the first ten years she made so little apparent headway that even among
her acquaintances many people did not know she had ever acted at all. In
the mean time she had studied hard. She knew many popular plays by
heart, and had carefully watched other actresses. She was acquainted
with a number of theatrical people. She had always been at hand when a
manager wanted an extra peasant girl, or when a waiting maid was ill.
She had joined a small troupe traveling through the bleakest and
roughest parts of the Northwest in midwinter. By and by she was fitted
to be of use in a stock company. Then, after a few more years, she
achieved what she had been striving for. She was able to take the
slighter characters in the plays of Shakespeare. No one excelled her
here. No great actress would take so small a part, and no small actress
was willing to take such pains. Her power was unique and she was
indispensable. Her name was seldom on the play-bills, but she added
something to the culture of the world by making the interpretation of
Shakespeare more complete.

Her success came first from having a definite aim, and second, from
understanding herself sufficiently to aim at something within her power;
but happily it was also the highest thing within her power. She was both
humble and aspiring. She showed her humility in shrinking from no
drudgery, and satisfied her cravings for the ideal by doing the smallest
thing in the best way possible to her. She enjoyed even her drudgery
because she put the best of herself into it, but, more than that, she
knew it was leading her exactly in the direction she wanted to go. If
the drudgery had led to nothing she would have needed all the moral
power of our little book-keeper to save her from misery. Her own happier
life required some moral power, how much it is hard to say. A woman
might do all she did and be little the better for it. It would depend on
the aim she cherished in her heart. If she had no higher aim than to be
a good actress her life did not avail much. But if her acting was only
the minor aim, then her life was thoroughly noble as well as successful.
Her choice of a minor aim makes it probable that she also had the
highest aim. Otherwise she would have been either more or less humble.
She would either have wished to be a star actress or have been contented
with any trifling parts which brought her money and admiration.

The best happiness comes from our perseverance in following the grand
aim of life. But "the kind of happiness which we all recognize as such"
is generally that which comes from the successful pursuit of our minor
aim. Herbert Spencer says that every creature is happy when he is fully
using his powers. I have known a girl with a magnificent voice who
endured great hardships for a musical education, and who finally
accomplished her purpose and enchanted the world with her singing. She
was happy. Of course everybody expected her to be. But I have known
another girl, equally happy, carefully working in the laboratory to find
the water-tubes of a star-fish or the nerves of a clam. This girl said
to me with a face bright with enthusiasm, "When I first began to work
with Professor ---- in the laboratory it was as if I had been traveling
all my life in a desert land, and had suddenly come upon fountains of
fresh water." She was as poor and obscure as my singer was rich and
famous, but she was using her powers and was happy.

Of course the kind of happiness to be found even in secondary success
depends on the great aim of any life. In some cases it almost seems as
if the minor aim were the only one. The happiness it brings cannot go
very high, yet so far as a looker-on may judge it feels like happiness.
But most people--perhaps all, if we only knew it--do acknowledge the
grand aim in life, even though they make very little effort to reach
it. When they consciously neglect this for the minor aim, they are
uneasy and not thoroughly happy; but when the minor aim is good in
itself and is always made subservient to the higher, success there does
prove a well-spring of delight.

Spencer's remark is also true in the best sense, for no powers crave
exercise so much as the higher powers. If my singer had done a sinful
deed no applause could have made her happy. And, on a lower plane, if
she had lost the husband she dearly loved, even her art would not have
satisfied her.


It may seem as if I am choosing all my illustrations from among people
who have special gifts, and that nothing I say applies to the great army
of girls who will never be distinguished, and who are all the dearer for
not wishing to be so. I have not forgotten this, but I began with
striking illustrations because they are easiest to understand.

The grand aim of life should be the same for all, whether gifted or not.
But the particular aim must vary with the individual. Probably with five
girls out of ten the particular aim is to have a happy home. Once we
might have said nine girls out of ten, but the present tendency of
thought is to make girls ambitious,--too ambitious, it sometimes seems,
for the very best of life.

Of course selfishness shows itself in various ways, and the girl who
wishes to have a happy home without thinking how she shall make a happy
home may be more selfish than the girl who dreams of fame, but with the
understanding that the price of fame is, and ought to be, the giving of
some blessing to the world.

I know a delightful girl who seems to think of nothing but making others
happy from the moment when she meets her maid with a cheerful
"Good-morning," till she contrives that some less attractive girl shall
have the most desirable partner in the ball-room in the evening. She
gives her money and her time and her thought to the service of other
people. This is so natural to her that no one thinks of her as making it
a conscious aim, but the result is so beautiful as to suggest that it
would be the best aim for every girl. Nevertheless she has a still
higher aim, for sometimes the happiness of other people--at least their
visible happiness--clashes with some other duty. Then she does not fail.
She gives her hard refusal in pleasant but firm words, and she tells the
truth even if it makes some one wince. She is not a genius, but, on the
whole, I hardly know another girl so full of the best life. That her
highest aim is the true one is without question, and that her minor aim
is the true one for her must also be admitted. Whether it is so for all
is not quite clear. She has the natural gift which makes all her
ministrations to others acceptable, but every one is not so endowed.

She has a cousin as unselfish as she is whose capacity is entirely
different. She is a quiet, reserved, thoughtful girl, who always speaks
slowly. She is just and good-tempered, and is ready to give her time and
money when she sees she can be of use. But her thoughts move in other
channels. She has excellent mathematical abilities, and she is always
resolving some difficult problem. She hopes some day to do some work in
astronomy. Of course she would be glad to do some great work and be
known as a benefactor to mankind, but probably she works from love of
her work more than from the hope of doing good. She, too, is charming,
but it takes a long time to know her well.

Should one of these girls try to do the work of the other? Or is one
better than the other? I think not, since both look so steadily towards
the highest star in their field of vision. The minor aim of life must
always have reference to the gifts of the individual. Even visiting the
poor would become absurd if nobody did anything else.


If we believe in an overruling Providence we cannot of course say that
anything is by chance; but so far as we can see, failure in this
world--that is, failure to reach our minor aim--does sometimes seem to
be due to a trifling accident. Yet success is not so. If Byron, for
instance, awoke one morning and found himself famous, it was because he
had previously done the work which was suddenly recognized by the world.
Indeed, none of us need look for success who does not choose a definite
aim in life. And, more than that, no discouragement must turn us aside
from it. We may fail in the end then, but we shall have followed the
only possible path to success.


How shall we choose our aim? We know what our grand aim must be, and
that if we do our part there we shall not fail, for we shall have God to
help us; and we know that our minor aim must never be opposed to this.
But what shall our minor aim be, or shall we be content to drift without
any at all?

We must try to understand ourselves so far at least as to know what our
own powers and tastes are, and choose accordingly. A young girl hardly
knows her own bent. Then the uncertainty in regard to her marriage and
the great change that necessarily makes in her pursuits renders the
problem harder for her than for her brothers.

Most girls wish to be the centre of a happy home, but many of them are
very careless about the means of making themselves fit to be such a
centre. They think when love comes it will do everything, and it is true
that it will do wonders. But suppose a girl remembers that if she is
well she can make her family happier then if she is always
ailing,--suppose she remembers how much good housekeeping does to make a
home attractive; that if she is musical her singing will calm the
troubled waters, while if she is not her practicing will be a burden;
that there are some studies which bear directly on life and some others
which will be of infinite use to a mother in training her children,--is
she not more likely to have a happy home than if her aim had been less
definite?

But what of the girls who choose this aim and who never have a home?
Their lot is hard, but they may add happiness to some home not their
own. If they are not obliged to support themselves, they can probably
create some kind of a home for themselves, though not that of their
ideal. If they must earn their living, the problem is harder.
Circumstances may force them into a widely different path from that they
would have chosen. Then they must remember the grand aim of their lives,
and do the best work they can for the sake of it. Still, they may use
the home-making faculty in some measure in the humblest attic.

But there is a large and ever larger class of girls with other tastes
than domestic ones. Here, I think, the danger is greater than in case of
even the most unfortunate girls with domestic tastes; for tastes and
talents do not always agree. We have all known girls willing to practice
six hours a day who could never be musicians, and most girls think they
could write a book. Many people who are quite free to choose make too
ambitious a choice. It seems a part of the office of culture to correct
such ambitions. I have in mind a class of half-taught school-girls many
of whom fondly hoped to be poetesses; and I remember a class of highly
cultivated girls, who had had every advantage of education which money
could buy, who were full of anxiety on leaving school because they could
not see that they had capacity enough to do any work worth doing in the
world. The general verdict among them was that as they had money they
could give it to the poor, but that they had nothing in themselves. They
were as much too timid as the others were too confident.

A girl who has to earn her living has a safeguard, for which few are
very thankful. No one will pay her to indulge her tastes without
reference to her talents. She finds out gradually what _ought_ to be her
minor aim, for she discovers the special service she can render to the
world in return for what it offers to her. In most cases she wins a
reasonable measure of success and happiness.

But some of us are obstinate. We see one pathway we long to tread even
though it is beset with stones and briers. We are determined to take
that way, even if we never climb high enough to penetrate the low-lying
mists which darken it. We would rather pursue even a little way the
painful pathway which leads to the glorious mountain-top than to follow
an easier path to some lower summit. If we truly feel that, we do well
to take the path, for we have a right to forget ourselves for the sake
of our aim. But if we ask for success after all, it is mere blind vanity
which makes us so obstinate in our choice.

Let us remember that our direct usefulness in the world and most of our
conscious happiness will depend on our choosing and steadily pursuing as
our minor aim that for which our nature fits us, even if we wish our
nature had been different; while our utmost usefulness and our highest
happiness will depend on our clearness of vision in seeing, and our
unwavering fidelity in following, the grand aim of life.




II.

HEALTH.


Mr. Clapp says enthusiastically that we cannot imagine Rosalind or
Portia or Cordelia or Juliet with neuralgia or headache. And I believe
that Shakespeare's women have now taken the place of the more
lackadaisical and sentimental heroines of the past in the minds of many
girls.

Now that girls wish to be well, it is worth while to consider two
questions. First, why is health so important? Unless the answer to this
question is clear, how can any one be ready to sacrifice health to any
higher duty? Girls do sacrifice it frequently even when they know what
they are doing, but it is generally for a caprice, because they want to
dance later or skate longer, or study unreasonably; or sometimes they
cannot resist the temptation of food which is not convenient for them,
or they are willing to indulge their nerves too much, or it is too much
trouble not to take cold.

I wish every girl who knows that she does not live up to her light in
this respect would say to herself once a day for a month, "I ought to be
vigorously well if I want to do my part in the world, or to be in
thoroughly good spirits." I wish she would think of the meaning of what
she says, and then see if she does not do some things she is loth to do
and avoid some pleasing temptations. I believe a month's application of
this formula would give her a new insight into the value of health. I
speak not only of health, but of _vigorous_ health. We want to do our
part in the world, and that part ought to be our utmost. Agassiz could
work fifteen hours a day. Most of us could never do anything so
magnificent as that, and the attempt to do it would probably end in our
being unfitted to do any work at all. But suppose Agassiz had said,
"Twelve hours is too much for most men to work, so I can afford to be
careless of my surplus health as long as I have strength to work twelve
hours." The world would not only have lost much in the matter of his
discoveries, but the spirit of all his work would have been different. I
do not mean that it was necessarily the best thing for Agassiz even to
work fifteen hours a day on fishes. He might have given part of his time
to music, or friends, or novels, because he saw that, on the whole, such
recreation met the higher needs of life. But I mean that he was a man to
whom a full life was possible for fifteen hours a day, and that he would
have been wrong to be satisfied with less.

And now, second, _how_ shall girls be thoroughly well? The laws of
health are few and simple. They are so well understood by the parents
of this generation that it may seem a waste of time to allude to them
here. Yet I am writing for girls whose ideas are often vague.

One word in regard to the study of Physiology. It is a fine study. If a
girl thoroughly understands how her body ought to work in health, how
one organ acts with another, then, in case of any local disturbance, she
will probably be capable of seeing how, if the general tone of the
system is raised, the particular difficulty will disappear, and she will
no longer follow blindly rules she has learned by rote. Yet people learn
more by practice than by theory, and it is probable that the fascinating
study of Physiology is of more use intellectually than physically to
most school-girls. If they are allowed to dwell much on diseases of the
body instead of on its normal action, the study may be a positive injury
to them by leading to morbid conditions.

And now again, What are the essentials of health? Several things may be
regarded as equally necessary, so that I cannot lay down rules in
exactly the order of importance, yet it is purposely that I begin with

_Breathe fresh air._

Food is important, but we can live hours without taking food, while we
must have air every moment. Moreover, the oxygen of the air actually
nourishes the body as food does, by forming a part of the blood.

How shall we get fresh air? First, by spending all the time possible out
of doors, both in summer and winter, in storm and sunshine. Every one
acknowledges the advantage of exercise in the open air for its own sake;
but in New England we have not yet learned how far it is possible to
live in the open air. I was once at a country-house in Switzerland which
illustrates this ideal. The breakfast-table was spread on a terrace
shaded by plane-trees, outside the dining-room door. The table was then
cleared and books and work brought out. The family devotions were
conducted there. The students studied and wrote, the ladies sewed and
knit, and the maids prepared the vegetables for dinner which was also
eaten there. For six months in the year this was the ordinary course of
life. It would not, to be sure, be possible in all climates, but oftener
than we think.

Yet two thirds of our life must be passed in the house, and usually in
closed rooms on account of the cold. Now two persons cannot sit an hour
in one room before the air becomes vitiated. Most forms of ventilation
prove inadequate. M. was a vigorous young lady who made it a rule to
leave a window slightly open all the time she was at work, being careful
not to sit in the draught. But where this is not convenient, it is a
good plan to open a window wide every hour or two for a minute. I knew a
girl who tried that plan, but gave it up because it seemed so
ridiculous to jump up from her studies every little while for the
purpose. Yet nothing is worse than to sit still at one occupation for
several hours, and even the slight change of position would do one
almost as much good as the fresh air.

It is indispensable to have the window open through the night in every
sleeping-room. But here caution is needed, because when the body is
quiet a draught is a serious injury. Strips of wood across the open part
of the window will generally be sufficient protection. Some of you
shiver at the idea of breathing out of door air in the winter. You are
so cold! Do you know that the moment you begin to breathe it you begin
to grow warm from the increased action of the blood? But

_Do not take cold._

The results of colds are more serious than one likes to say.
Consumption, pneumonia, catarrh, deafness are some of their names. And
the whole tone of the system is lowered by them. But the over-careful
people are precisely those who suffer most from colds, because here, as
in so many other directions, the nerves have sway.

Now, most colds are taken in one of four ways: By sitting in a draught,
by becoming thoroughly chilled, by wetting the feet, and by breathing
raw air. But none of these things are necessarily injurious to a young
girl in ordinary health--_provided_ she at once does what she can to
counteract their effects. Move out of the draught, warm the body as
thoroughly as it was chilled, dry the feet before sitting down, and
cover the mouth with a veil so that the air is slightly warmed before
breathing. Then one need never stay in for the weather, even if one
already has a cold.

Of course there are very delicate girls who need special care, but I am
speaking to the average girl. Do not forget that a cold is a terrible
thing, but also remember that it can be avoided by a little care at the
right time, and by entire forgetfulness at other times.

_Take plenty of exercise._

The more you can exercise in the open air the better. And if you take
exercise you will find it possible to be out of doors on very cold days.
If you are not strong on your feet, perhaps you are strong in the
muscles for rowing. If you cannot row, perhaps you can ride. If you
cannot ride, perhaps you can drive. If you cannot drive, perhaps you can
exercise in the gymnasium. If you cannot do any of these things, do what
you can. Walk from your door to the street and back again. Do the same
thing over in fifteen minutes, and unless you are a miserable _bonâ
fide_ invalid your muscles will soon become more useful. Doing errands,
and going about to people who need you, will give you valuable exercise
for which you take no thought.

But some of you are too busy to exercise many hours a day in the open
air, and so you ought to be. The next best thing for you is housework.
Perhaps you do not like that because you see it under the wrong angle of
vision. Whether you like it or not, it is within reach of most of you,
and would do you good.

But suppose your books and your sewing are necessary and keep you busy
all day. Then you are to remember to change your position often. At the
end of every hour, when you open the window, take a few deep breaths,
stretch your arms and legs and fingers, and you will be better able to
go on with your task.

_Eat such food as you can thoroughly digest._

There are persons who are always troubled as to what they shall eat, and
who, with all their care, are always ailing. I do not want you to think
about your food so much that you can digest nothing, but I believe that
a very little observation will teach you what is good for you
individually. If you have a dizzy head, or rising of food, or a bad
breath, or uneasiness of the bowels, you may be pretty sure that you
have eaten something that disagrees with you, and by a little
watchfulness you may discover what it is and avoid it.

Food that you can digest very well when you are fresh may be much too
heavy for you when you are tired. And if you are thinking intently while
you eat, the blood is drawn from the stomach where it should be to the
brain where it should not be. Few people can digest vegetables not
thoroughly cooked, or fruit not thoroughly ripe. I think the study of
Physiology is of more practical hygienic value in teaching the absolute
necessity of using food that can be readily assimilated by the body, and
in showing how different foods should be combined to that end, than in
any other way. A little fish or meat, especially beef, considerable
bread, especially of the coarser grains, some vegetables, and fruit
according to individual organizations, make up the necessary daily fare.
A tired stomach should begin with soup. As for the thousand appetizing
viands set before us, each must decide for herself what to eat. As long
as you have none of the symptoms of indigestion, it is probably safe to
gratify the appetite and take delight in food without further care; but
if these symptoms appear, think first whether you were too tired, or had
too busy a brain to digest anything; next, whether anything you ate was
unripe or underdone, and finally, whether there was anything in the bill
of fare which had ever troubled you before. Then correct your future
practice accordingly, and think no more about it. Depend upon it, you
will soon be well, and, further, you will find, with mortification
perhaps, that some of the headaches you thought came from overtaxing the
brain, or from sensibility to the woes of the world, were really due to
improper food. As compensation for your mortification you will be a
more useful woman for your whole life.

_Work regularly with both body and mind._

Those who must work for self-support are probably, on the whole, in
better health than those who are free from necessity. A girl who stands
all day behind a counter runs some risks in health, but her chances are
still as good as those of the fine lady who broods over imaginary
ailments till they become real. To those who must work I have but little
to say, for they have a narrow margin of choice. There are several
suggestions to be made, however. If your work is physical, use a little
of your leisure every day in some mental occupation. The best thing is
to do some real studying. If you can only spend fifteen minutes every
day on history or literature or botany or French, you will find yourself
the better for it bodily, because it will give you an outlook beyond the
daily horizon, and take your thoughts from your own weariness. If you
have no leisure, or if your work is so exhausting that even fifteen
minutes of study seems burdensome, then keep some interesting novel of
good tone at hand, and read a little in that every day to change the
current of your thoughts. If you find, however, that you usually have
more than an hour for your novel, you may suspect that fifteen minutes
of study would not hurt you.

Do you know that you are never resting when you are thinking that you
are tired? When you are tired rest at once, if you can, by sitting or
lying down, or taking recreation, as experience has shown you to be
best. But then think no more about it. Perhaps you may be overworking.
If you truly believe this and see any possibility of saving yourself, do
so, even if you have to give up something which seems particularly
important. If you _must_ overwork,--and there are such cases, though
they are not so common as we think,--accept the condition as a part of
the discipline of life, rest whenever you can, and say and think as
little about it as you can. This advice is to save you from one form of
the nervous diseases which are the peculiar misfortune of our time.

If your work is sedentary take physical exercise in your leisure
time,--out of doors, if possible; but remember that housework is the
best substitute for that.

The women who are not obliged to work are those who most need this
precept. They can drive, and by and by they cannot walk. They can lie on
the lounge when they feel indisposed, and they lie there long after they
would get up if they had any work to do. They have the best chance for
complete physical development, but they have great temptations to
neglect their opportunities. Among the sweetest of such women there is
an alarming amount of nervous disease, which is, alas! at the foundation
a refined selfishness. To speak plainly, as one has said, we are all as
lazy as we dare to be, and these women have no check upon laziness. No
power of body or mind can be preserved without exercise, and the muscles
grow soft, and the moral fibre grows weak. These women are lovely, they
speak in gentle voices, and they never use a harsh word, but they rule
all about them with a rod of iron. Dr. Weir Mitchell, in his blunt way,
says that nervous diseases among women have destroyed the happiness of
more families than intemperance.

By and by the invalid cannot rally even if she has the will, but it is
hard to decide where responsibility ends. If your mothers or your aunts
are nervous invalids, do not judge them. Causes may have been at work
which you cannot see. Pity their terrible misfortune, and do all you can
to make them happy. But you, who have the added light of another
generation, are inexcusable if you fall into such a state.

How can you avoid it? It is easy to say, "Do not talk about your
headaches, or your delicate constitution;" but how are you to help
thinking about these things? Decide on regular daily work for
yourselves. If you are still school-girls and your head feels heavy in
the morning, think whether you would be justified in staying at home if
you were a teacher. Teachers have headaches too, but they seldom stay at
home for one, and they are seldom the worse for going to school.

When you leave school undertake some regular work. Take charge of the
marketing, or oversee the housekeeping for a year. Ask the officers of
the Associated Charities to give you something definite to do, and do it
regularly. If you are not fitted for visiting the poor, suppose you make
experiments in natural science. See what Lubbock did with ants, bees,
and wasps. There are thousands of such experiments to be tried, but few
people have the leisure for them. You may not understand your results,
but you can make the accurate observations which are absolutely
necessary before a great man can find out the laws which govern them.

Some mental work you must do. Of course you wish that. If you are in a
city like Boston, I will tell you what you will be tempted to do. You
will be tempted to sandwich your parties and calls and concerts with two
or three courses of morning lectures given by highly trained
specialists. In this way you will get a delightful society knowledge of
history and literature and art and science, but you will not really
exercise your mind very much. Your knowledge will be available for talk,
but not for thought. Go to the lectures by all means,--though perhaps
one course at a time will do; but be sure that every day at a fixed hour
you study the subject of the lecture by yourself, and make it thoroughly
your own.

Am I wandering from the topic of health? I think not, because during
the last fifty years we have learned almost all the laws of health, and
yet we are not much better than before, for our nerves are still on
edge. Now girls, even rich girls, can control their nerves, if they
begin soon enough, with will and intelligence. And nothing will help
them more than to have their bodies and minds constantly employed in
rational ways so that there is no room for nervous fancies.

_Take the rest you need._

It is hard to know how much you need. Some people must have more than
others. It is easy to be lazy on the one hand, and to be dissipated on
the other. Some people are injured by springing out of bed as soon as
they wake, and others by letting the time drift by while they doze. Some
one gives this good rule, "Decide when you ought to rise to make the
best use of your day. Make a point of rising at that time; but go to bed
earlier and earlier till you find out how much sleep you need in order
to be fresh at that hour in the morning." Such a rule would meet most
cases, but not all; for though regularity is as important for health as
for a wise life, it cannot be an iron regularity, especially if a girl
is at all delicate. I would give more flexible rules, though it is
harder to keep flexible rules than iron ones.

I have said before that when you are tired you should rest at once, if
you can. Rest completely, but not long. Half an hour on the sofa is
generally enough. Rise early, because an extra hour in the morning can
be better used than one later in the day, and if duties crowd you get
tired in remembering what you cannot do. But if you are not fresh in the
morning, go to bed earlier. If that does not meet the case, your
weariness probably comes from some other cause than insufficient rest.
Perhaps your room is not well ventilated, or you may suffer from
indigestion, or you may exercise your brain too much and your body too
little. If you sit over books or sewing all day, you will always be
tired however many hours you sleep. Most girls from fifteen to twenty
need about nine hours sleep. If you wish to rise at six, you ought to be
in bed at nine.

A few, a very few, of you must be invalids. You may have inherited a
wasting disease, an accident may have crippled you, or something else
beyond your control may have brought this misfortune upon you. But most
of you have it in your power to be well, and remember you will be doing
something morally wrong if you become feeble women.




III.

A PRACTICAL EDUCATION.


What is a practical education for a girl? Whatever will fit her for
life. The question and answer are trite. What will best fit a girl for
life? First of all a well-balanced character. I knew a girl who was a
good cook before she was ten years old; she had a genius for sewing; she
was an excellent scholar in school, and had musical talent, and yet
because of her capriciousness she never filled any place she was called
upon to fill in life, and her home was a place of discomfort to her
husband and children. Another girl, one of the noblest I ever knew, also
found the practical details of life easy, but she was always tossed
about from one occupation to another, and from one home to another,
because when she found every reality fall short of her ideal she had not
the good sense to work quietly to improve the matter, but went about
proclaiming her disgust. The first thing we all need is to have our
wills so trained that when we see the right, we may instantly do it, and
after that we need to be taught to see clearly what is right.

But as character may be formed in many ways why not form it by teaching
practical things? What, then, does a girl most need to learn?

To read, to cook, and to sew.

I put reading first, for though no civilized beings can live without
cooking and sewing, and we occasionally find good and gentle women who
cannot read, yet a woman of real character who can read can teach
herself any branch of housekeeping which she is convinced she ought to
know, while a cook cannot teach herself to read in any broad sense; for
by reading I do not mean pronouncing words. I want a girl to have a
taste for good reading. She may study the whole circle of the sciences
without reaching this end, or she may not have more than half a dozen
books in her library and yet learn the lesson. The practical advantage
of most of her studies in school depends on whether or no they lead to
this result. How many girls ever use chemistry, or physics, or geology,
or zoölogy in any practical way? Yet what a difference the study of all
these things makes in the kind of reading women enjoy! Who can learn
enough history in school to be equipped even to teach history? Every
teacher knows that to be impossible. But a girl who has studied history
properly in school, who has been taught to think about the influence of
men on nations and of nations on men, has open to her a vast
treasure-house of books which will add both to her usefulness and
happiness.

Some of you may think it is artful in me to propose this broad education
under the pretense of requiring that one learn to read, but it is not
so. I do believe in a very broad education for girls; but if I had to
choose between a broad education which had crammed a girl with
knowledge, yet left her without a love for good reading, and a very
narrow one which had awakened that thirst, I should choose the second.

But why do I call this a practical education? Before I answer the
question, I must say more on the subject of reading. A girl may enjoy
biography, history, travels, and science and yet not have a taste for
the best reading, that is, for true literature. She needs essays,
novels, and especially poetry. She needs to be able to decide what is
best and what is not; she must learn to respond to beauty and truth, and
to repel what is false and ugly. This is the practical education,
because it bears upon both happiness and character. It is practical as
it makes the most of life not only for the woman herself, but for those
about her. Bear in mind always that we have supposed her to have a high
character and a perfectly trained will. Such reading will develop her
judgment as to what is right.

But some women like to read too well. Their will is not perfectly
trained, and they would rather think out a domestic problem than act it
out. The education of books alone is so one-sided that we cannot
consider it practical; it must be supplemented by cooking and sewing.

At our present stage of progress cooking is more important than sewing.
Sewing can be more easily put out of the house than cooking; and in any
emergency sewing may be neglected from week to week without serious
consequences, while cooking must go on every day. Moreover, cooking is
by far the more healthful occupation, and one of the aims of a practical
education is to make healthy women.

I do not glorify cooking. I do not think a good cook is the highest type
of woman. I do not even think it is the duty of every woman to cook. But
cooking is certainly practical, ninety-nine women in a hundred have
occasion some time in their lives for this accomplishment, and if they
are married it is nearly indispensable for them to have a knowledge of
it for the comfort of their families.

Few women are born to be cooks, but most intelligent women can learn to
cook. It saves immense labor, however, if as girls they learn the art.
It is singular that so many who fancy they want to be chemists hate the
idea of going into their own kitchens to work. It is possibly because
they cannot choose their own hours for cooking. Cooking certainly
develops the mind as much as chemical experiments, and at the end of the
process you have something of direct service to mankind, which may or
may not be the case with work done in the laboratory.

Cooking, sewing, and housekeeping are essential for any woman, married
or unmarried, who wishes to make a home, and a home is the practical
goal of the majority of women. A woman who is neat and intelligent
generally proves to be a good housekeeper without special instruction;
but with cooking and sewing, "Who wishes to be a master must begin
betimes."

Arithmetic is a science which a girl needs to understand thoroughly--not
necessarily business arithmetic, which she can learn if occasion
requires, but the principles of arithmetic, and she should be able to
work in numbers quickly and accurately.

The tide of opinion is against me here. A boy must know arithmetic of
course, or how can he fulfill his destiny and make money? But a girl!
Nevertheless, no woman can manage a household properly, or even guide
her own affairs as a single woman, without a good knowledge of
arithmetic. Her money will be wasted, her servants will cheat her,
tradespeople will be demoralized by her. There may be so much money at
her command that she goes on serenely unaware of harm. She may perform
feats of charity, but what was meant to be a blessing becomes a curse
through her ignorance.

A millionaire who meant to give his daughter every advantage began as
usual with a French nurse and a German maid and a music master who could
command a fabulous price, while he engaged an artist of distinction to
oversee her untidy attempts at drawing. At last he remembered that she
ought to have a teacher in English, and a lady was engaged to teach
grammar and literature and history. "And arithmetic?" she asked. "A
little, perhaps. Girls need very little."

The millionaire's daughter came to take her lesson--a bright, handsome
girl, full of good nature. "I hate arithmetic, you know," she said
confidingly, shrugging her shoulders and puckering her brows. "And then,
what's the good of it for a girl?"

The teacher did not argue the question, but began her task. "If thirteen
yards of ribbon cost $3.25, how much will one yard cost?" As doing this
problem in her mind was quite out of Miss Malvina's power, she was
allowed paper and pencil. She wrinkled her forehead, curled her lip,
looked up and laughed, "I haven't the faintest idea, don't you know?" A
few judicious questions led her to see the necessity of dividing $3.25
by 13, and she went to work. After a season of struggle her countenance
cleared. "Upon my word, I've got the answer--25!" "Twenty-five what?"
"Twenty-five--why--twenty-five dollars!" "Wouldn't that be rather high
for ribbon?" asked the teacher. "Oh, I don't know," replied Miss
Malvina carelessly. "I'll tell you," she added triumphantly; "I should
tell them to give me the best, and I suppose they would know what I
ought to pay." This is hardly an extreme case. In the public schools the
girls still learn arithmetic,--perhaps they spend too much strength upon
it for the practical mastery they get; but in private schools the best
of teachers find it almost impossible to give girls a working knowledge
of the subject, because the tide of feeling is so strong against it.

By and by Miss Malvina's father found himself having trouble with his
workmen. There were strikes. The family received threatening letters.
Malvina's rosy cheeks grew pale. "I don't know what they want," she said
forlornly. "They say we are all so extravagant. I don't know what
difference that makes to them if we pay for what we buy. We never hurt
them. I wish we were not rich at all. It would be much nicer to be poor.
I should like to be a--what is it?--a commoner--or a communist or
something. Then nobody would be envious."

Now there was not a more generous girl in the world than Malvina. If she
had been afloat on a raft after a shipwreck she would have been the one
to give up her last ration of water to any one who needed it more. She
was ready to pour out money in any case of distress, but she had no
idea of its value, and none of her charities prospered, except so far
as her rosy, good-natured face could be seen, for that, to be sure, did
good like a medicine.

And she was not a stupid girl, though certainly not brilliant in
mathematics. If she had been taught that arithmetic is positively needed
by every girl, rich or poor, she could have learned all she needed to
know of figures to make her life a blessing to hundreds of people whom
she only injured for lack of such knowledge.

A vast amount of the daily comfort of people of narrow means depends on
the understanding the mother of a family has of accounts, so that the
real needs and pleasures may be provided for without the contraction of
debt. In a rich family the burden of the mother's incapacity for figures
does not fall directly on those dearest to her, but it has unconsciously
a far greater weight in the world at large, and is one of the chief
among the unrecognized elements causing the increasing bitterness
between the rich and the poor.

Let every girl, rich or poor, be required to keep her own accounts
accurately from the time she is old enough to have an allowance of even
ten cents a month, and there would be a perceptible amelioration in some
of the hardest of present conditions.

I believe that some music should be included in a practical
education,--certainly if a girl has a taste for it. The ability to sing
hymns and ballads, and to play accompaniments well, adds so much to the
happiness of a woman herself, and usually to that of her family, that it
ought to be considered as something more than an accomplishment. I
should not wish to be understood as limiting a musical education to
these requirements. I should like to have every girl carry her education
as far as she can without neglecting duties she feels more important.
Even when she has no musical talent, but merely a love for music, though
she cannot give much pleasure to others, I think she may get an
elevation of mind from stumbling through Beethoven and Wagner which is
worth the time she spends. Still, I think singing is of more practical
use than instrumental music, and the power to play simple things well
which is so rare is in most cases more to the purpose than to stumble
through Beethoven and Wagner.

Drawing is practical as it trains the eye and hand, but unpractical if
it leads a girl to think her commonplace pictures are works of art. It
seems to me that a good way for girls to study art is for them to look
at good pictures with older people who have taste and judgment, because
this gives them new resources of enjoyment. Of course when a girl has
special talent she needs the training which will give her the power to
produce, but this chapter is devoted to the general education of girls.

Every girl should study at least one science. Science trains the mind in
a different way from other studies. And one science sheds light on all
the rest. Then, anything which puts cheap pleasures within our reach is
a safeguard and a blessing. The happiness of life is no light thing, and
those who have tested it know how much simple happiness comes from the
pursuit of botany or ornithology or mineralogy.

It would be a great thing if every woman could be so well educated that
she could teach her own children, at least the main branches, up to the
time when they are twelve years old. This is by no means saying that it
is not well for many children to be sent to school, but it is calling
attention to a great privilege which some mothers and some children may
enjoy. What ought a woman to be able to teach her children? To read, in
the broad sense, to write a legible hand, and to speak correctly. She
ought to be able to teach them arithmetic, and also the rudiments of one
science, to give them in early life the right outlook upon the world
around them. She ought particularly to be able to give them fine
manners, but these belong to the moral training which was spoken of at
the beginning of the chapter. They do bear, however, on that part of the
social life which may not be distinctly moral, but which is of high
practical importance to one's success in life, as well as to one's
happiness. Many of the noblest women are shy and awkward except with
their special friends, and so are unfitted for practical life. Mothers
should remember this and make a determined effort to give children the
practice of meeting many people, though, of course, the kind of people
and the conditions under which they are to be met require careful
consideration.

As for the entirely moral qualities which contribute most to what is
usually called success in the world, they are probably courage, good
temper, thoughtfulness for others, perseverance, and trustworthiness.

And all this time I have said nothing of any use to be made of education
in earning a living. Yet is not that just what our education must do if
it is to be practical? I do not ignore this, and shall have more to say
of self-support elsewhere. But on the principle that we eat to live
rather than live to eat, I think even from a practical standpoint the
full development of a woman is of more consequence than the amount of
money she can earn. As far as the mere living goes, a practical woman
can live better on a little money than an unpractical one on much. When
her practicality comes from the high quality of her character, she will
lead the best possible life whether she be rich or poor, and I believe
the kind of culture I have outlined in this chapter will do something to
add happiness to goodness and usefulness.




IV.

SELF-SUPPORT.--SHALL GIRLS SUPPORT THEMSELVES?


I Once knew an agreeable girl whose great failing was her self-conceit.
She was sure she could do everything anybody could do. As she did not
look down on other people's efforts, she was amusing rather than
annoying. She was always ready to write a poem, or sing a song, or paint
a picture, and as she was a society girl and lived in a grand house, her
little doings were often favorably mentioned in the local papers, so she
may be pardoned for believing she had a variety of talents, though
nobody who read her poems or heard her songs agreed with her.

Then came a crisis in her affairs. She was thrown on her resources
without a moment's warning. She had to earn her living or starve. She
had plenty of energy, and was willing to work. She took a rapid review
of her powers. Then the scales fell from her eyes. She felt very
doubtful if there was one among her accomplishments which would furnish
bread for her. She would have said that all her conceit was gone. But
it was not so. As her need was so urgent, she tried to find work first
in one way and then in another. She was prepared to have the editors
reject her manuscripts, and she was not surprised that she could not
sell her pictures; but it was amazing to be told that her grammar and
spelling were faulty, and it was hard to see the amusement in the faces
of the art-dealers when they regarded her most cherished paintings.

No woman can earn a living without some mortifying experiences, but the
more conceited she is the more such experiences she meets, because she
is inclined to attempt things preposterously beyond her. So this poor
girl who had always held her head high was snubbed by everybody; she was
told the truth with brutal frankness, and in time she learned her
lesson. She was not a dull girl nor a weak girl. There was one thing she
could do well at the outset, though she had so little discrimination in
regard to herself that it did not occur to her that this would be her
lever for moving the world. She was a beautiful housekeeper.

She remembered this finally and acted accordingly. I cannot say that she
enjoyed her experience with a series of widowers, but she did her work
well and was paid for it. She also had a talent--strange to say it was
for drawing. She did not realize this either, for she could not
discriminate enough to see that her amateur work as an artist was at all
different from her amateur singing and playing. At first she had
thought she could do everything well, and then she thought she could do
nothing well. But by slow degrees, and through much tribulation, she
began to set her faculties in order, and when she found her germ of a
talent she cultivated it. Ten years later she was able to support
herself as an engraver.

By this time her one fault had vanished. She was simple and modest and
self-respecting, while she retained the courage and cheerfulness which
had made her attractive as a girl. "If you wish to cure a girl of
conceit," she once said to a friend, "let her try to earn her living. As
long as she does not ask to be paid, everybody will praise her work, but
let her offer to sell her services and then see!"

I have not told this story to discourage girls who wish to be
independent, but to show them the difficulties in their way. There is no
doubt that every girl should be able to support herself. This very case
makes it clear. But it does not seem to me equally clear that every girl
should support herself, and certainly, if she does, it requires great
judgment to select the way.

Fifty years ago women were very dependent, but now many avenues are open
to them, and perhaps they have been urged almost too much to earn their
own living. I will therefore speak of some circumstances in which it
seems to me a girl is to be excused from that.

1. If she is rich, I think there are two objections to her earning
money. One is trite and has been often answered. She should not take the
bread out of the mouths of those who need it. I do not think this a very
strong objection, because every one who works and produces anything adds
to the wealth of the world, and sets others free to work for new ends.
But one can do good service, without working for money, and, in point of
fact, a woman who chooses any of the common ways of earning money
usually does shut out some one else.

To illustrate: I knew two school-girls who were classmates, both
excellent girls. Martha was the best scholar in school. Lucy was rather
dull, though not conspicuously so. Martha wished to teach, as her mother
was a widow and poor. She applied for a situation in a neighboring town,
but was told that some one had been before her, and though the matter
was not then decided, the school was at last given to the first-comer,
who proved to be Lucy. Lucy's father was a well-to-do merchant whose
name was known to the committee, and this settled the question. Lucy
herself was quite innocent. She had no wish to interfere with Martha.
Nor had she any special wish to teach. But she wanted a new silk dress,
and she thought she should like to earn it. Her friends said she showed
the right spirit and encouraged her. Martha and her mother suffered the
most pinching poverty while Lucy was earning her dress, and when Martha
at last found a place she proved to be a wonderful teacher, while Lucy
was a commonplace one. It might, of course, have been the other way. If
Lucy had been the gifted girl, then she certainly ought to have used her
gifts, but not necessarily for money.

This is one of many instances which lead me to think that if girls who
are rich try to earn money they crowd out those who are poorer. They do,
however, gain some things so valuable as almost to offset this
objection; for instance, they are cured of conceit. I shall return to
this subject.

The other objection to the earning of money by the rich is, that there
is so much work to be done in the world which cannot in the nature of
things be done by those who have to earn their living, that the rich
cannot be spared for ordinary occupations. I shall give a special
chapter to the work of the leisure classes.

2. There are many families of moderate means where one daughter, at
least, can be supported at home without great sacrifices on the part of
any one. This is true of almost every family where a servant is kept,
for a mother and daughter together can usually do the work of a family
more quickly and better than the mother and a servant. Now, if a girl
has domestic tastes and is willing to work at home, it seems to me
better for her to stay there, even with very little money, than to try
to make herself independent elsewhere. If her tastes are not domestic,
it changes the case entirely. Then let her go out and use the powers
which have been given her.

3. A girl is sometimes needed at home by an invalid father or mother, or
she can help the children or make them happy. No general rule can be
laid down, because no two cases are alike, but it is often true that a
girl ought to give up not only earning money, but even using some of her
powers, for the sake of doing still better work at home. And there are
multitudes of instances in which she should not be urged to leave home
unless she wishes it.

Practically a home life is a good preparation for marriage, which will
be the lot of most girls. But though it is a good preparation, it is not
the best. Every girl needs a broader outlook on life than she can get in
her own home. If she is rich she can choose her way of getting it, by
travel, or in charities, or even through society. But the best knowledge
of the world is gained through the attempt to support herself. If her
occupation takes her into new sections of country, it also develops her
just as travel might do.

I am inclined to think that the ideal preparation for marriage would
demand half a dozen years between school and the wedding-day, divided
into three parts, given in order to a home life, to self-support, and to
travel.

It is often said that a girl ought actually to support herself before
she can be fitted to do so in case of an emergency. I remember the
daughter of a wealthy man who went into a counting-room and worked
several years for this reason. Her father said that as soon as she could
live on the income she earned he thought the experiment would have
succeeded and she might return home. At first it seemed as if it never
would succeed. She was a good accountant and earned a fair salary. But
she had been accustomed to spend more than most girls can earn, and she
was loth to reduce her expenses just when she was working for money. By
the end of the second year, however, she began to be tired of her work,
so she rigorously kept within her salary for the third year, and then
retired. Her experiment had been infinitely easier than if she had been
obliged to make it without having other resources, but she had learned
valuable lessons.

It seems to me that if a girl who need not work for money does so she
will do well to live on what she earns, at least for a time. To earn an
extra silk dress does not seem an adequate object. I think if our
accountant had gone on many years as she began she would not only have
taken the place needed by some one else, but she would have made other
accountants discontented because they could not dress as she did. She
would have raised the standard of luxury among them without adding
anything to their power to reach it.

I knew a young lady with a narrow income who for that reason chose to
teach in a large school where several other teachers were employed at
the same salary, namely, six hundred dollars. Everybody praised her
judgment and taste, for she appeared to be able to do so much more than
the rest with her money. Everybody said that six hundred dollars was a
fine salary for anybody who had the wit to use it. Some thought a
general reduction of salaries would not be amiss. Nobody knew of her
reserve. The other teachers tried their best to do as well, but they
grew discouraged and envious. Of course she was not to blame, but I
think that in general the common welfare is best served when the
wage-workers live on what they earn, at least while they are earning it.
The surplus can be laid aside for the time when they are at leisure.


But although I do not think that all girls should be urged to support
themselves, the majority must do so, or they will burden others. There
is also a large class of women who do not absolutely need to earn money,
who nevertheless will be better and happier to do so. Independence is
very sweet, and even if for love's sake a woman chooses to give it up,
it is more inspiring to make a deliberate sacrifice of it than to be
dependent because she must be. All homes are not happy, even where the
members of the family love each other and have a general purpose to do
right. Perhaps it may be said that few young people are satisfied
thoroughly with their homes. Would it not mean the destruction of the
ideal if they were? It would be terrible to them to have the home broken
up, and they do love their parents, but they think they could manage
better, and may be right in thinking so.

Now, if a girl at home has this feeling of unrest, she may be too ready
to marry the first suitor, because she thinks more about the ideal home
she can make than about the husband. If, on the contrary, she goes away
and earns her living, she will look around her with less prejudiced
eyes. If her home is really unhappy, she will be free from it. If its
troubles are merely superficial, she will find this out as soon as she
compares it with other homes. If she has not been willing to meet her
share of trial and responsibility, she will now find that a change of
place has not set her free, for the trouble was in herself. When she
does go back to her home it will be with very different appreciation of
it.

When a girl has become a woman her instinct leads her to long to be at
the head of her own home, whether she is married or unmarried. To be
absolute mistress even of one room in a lodging-house at the end of a
day's labor is often better to her than to be at the call of everybody
in her father's beautiful home where she is supposed to be at leisure
all day. And this is right. If a girl has been badly trained, how can
she help thinking she may do better than her mother does? If she has
been well trained, she ought to be able to do better than her mother,
for every generation begins at a higher point than the preceding. She
has much of her mother's experience to help her while she is still fresh
and strong and enthusiastic. There are very few women between the ages
of twenty-five and forty who can be thoroughly contented in any home of
which they are not the mistress, however patiently and nobly they may
conceal their feelings. After forty they are often so tired as to be
glad of any kind of a home.

Then there are women with special gifts. I am thinking now of one who
had a fortune, and yet chose to do the hard work of a physician. She had
the aptitude for the work and the means for thorough study. She was
among the most skillful physicians of her native city. She saved many
lives, and relieved much suffering. She gave her priceless services to
hundreds of poor people, but she did not give to those who could pay for
them. I think she was altogether right. The world was better because she
used her gift, and she was happier, as all are who exercise their
powers.

Perhaps she blocked the way of less fortunate physicians. But this was
because she gave a better gift than they could give. Certainly she had
a right to give it even to the rich whose money could only buy a part of
it. If she had served the rich without taking their money, she would not
only have sapped their self-respect, but she would have been a more
formidable obstacle in the way of poorer physicians. She would have been
offering a premium in money to those who employed her, whereas the only
premium she had a right to offer was her superior skill. It was because
she could give priceless services that she had so clear a right to fix a
price which she did not need.

Suppose another woman her equal by nature, but who had not had the means
for so complete an education, was set aside because she could not
compete with one who had both the nature and the education,--even then
the case would not be altered, for still the richer woman had a higher
gift to give than the poorer one. It would be a bitter trial to the
poorer woman to be met only by philosophy and religion; but if she were
a just woman, she could not say that her rich rival had not done right.

When a beautiful young society woman of Boston consents to play at a
concert every one feels it to be right, because few people can play so
exquisitely. When she gives her services for some charity there is an
especial fitness in it, since those who go to hear her wish to pay the
high prices for the rare treat, and would still wish to do so if she
were to keep the money for herself. But if she plays at a symphony
concert, she certainly has a right to be paid as others are. That is a
matter of self-respect. Why should she compete with other musicians on
any unnatural basis?

These instances will show what I mean by saying that a rich woman who
has a great gift has a right to use it in earning money, when if the
gift were smaller she might not be justified.

There are some qualities which are gained by self-support better than in
any other way. By receiving money in return for service, we learn what
our service is worth to others. We learn what we can do and what we
cannot do. We exchange self-conceit for self-respect. With a true
estimate of ourselves we learn how to estimate others more correctly. We
learn the real needs of the world and the way to meet them. In a word,
we learn justice.

It is generally supposed that the qualities in which men are superior to
women are justice and courage. Courage, too, is cultivated by
self-support. A woman who daily faces the outside world may not be
braver than one who faces the little world at home, but she probably
will be. At the last moment the woman at home may sometimes shirk a task
which seems formidable to her, though she may be ashamed of her
cowardice; but a woman who has agreed to do a certain thing for a
certain sum of money cannot shirk, however frightened she may be, and by
degrees she learns to subdue her terror and go cheerfully and calmly to
her work.

Furthermore, a woman who earns her money generally spends it more wisely
than when it is given to her. She may not be as economical in all ways
perhaps; but if she chooses to spend three dollars for a Wagner opera
ticket when she has a shabby bonnet, because she loves music, she may be
putting the true emphasis on her purchase, which she might not dare to
do if some one else supplied the money.

On the whole, I am inclined to think that most unmarried women, as well
as many who are married, should support themselves. Where the necessity
exists, it is base to shrink from doing one's part. When others of the
family must endure privation to keep her at home, it is seldom that home
is a girl's place. But I would not have a girl too eager to support
herself. And I would not have her urged unless there is necessity. Above
all, I would guard her from illusions.

It is not easy to earn one's living. It is true there are some
delightful modes of making money open to the fortunate few. But if one
earns all one spends,--which is the meaning of earning a living,--there
will always be hardships to meet. It is not best to anticipate trouble,
but it is cruel to let any girl try to make her way in the world with
the fancy that it will be easy. Yet most must make their own way, and
perhaps most of these have a fair share of happiness, for there are
compensations in all work done in the right spirit.




V.

SELF-SUPPORT--HOW SHALL GIRLS SUPPORT THEMSELVES?


And now how shall a girl choose her occupation? And how shall she be
fitted for it?

If she has a superb voice she may sing. If she has undoubted genius in
any direction her decision is easy, whatever difficulty there may be in
getting her education. Most people, however, have not genius. They can
do some things better than others, and it is of great importance to
their success and happiness that they should be able to use their
natural powers to the best advantage. Still their gifts are not great
enough to be perfectly clear at sight. It is only by careful cultivation
that they become really available, and if a mistake is made in the line
of one's education it is hard to repair it.

I think the course I have already described as practical for girls
should be the foundation for the education of all girls, save in a few
exceptional cases. If, in the end, a girl marries, her reading and
cooking and housekeeping are all necessary. How can she use these homely
accomplishments in earning a living?

They will not, to be sure, bring her a large income, but there is a
steadier demand for good work in these directions than in any others. So
a woman who has them is almost sure of a modest support. She need not go
out to service to be a cook. Who has seen the dignified and refined Mrs.
Lincoln giving lessons at the cooking-school without realizing that
cooking may be a fine art, or who has read the cook-book of Mrs.
Richards without perceiving that cooking may be an intellectual pursuit?

But these women are exceptions. I will take a humbler example. I knew at
school a stylish, energetic girl who was too dull to learn her lessons,
but who had the air of polish which comes from association with educated
people. Half a dozen years later she found herself obliged to earn her
living. She had a little money, and she risked it in leasing a good
house on a good city street which she filled with boarders. She worked
very hard, and she had much to discourage and disgust her. But she knew
how such a house ought to be kept, and she had the determination to keep
it in that way. It will be seen that she was a rare landlady. Some
landladies do not know how a house ought to be kept, and some have no
clear purpose of keeping it as it ought to be kept when they do know the
way. Therefore she had great success. There were always two applicants
for every vacant room. Higher and higher prices were offered her. At
last she bought her house. Then she laid aside money. By and by she had
a comfortable fortune. She might then have retired from business, but
she chose to go on. During the first five years of her career her
experience had been so bitter that only necessity kept her at her post.
But now she had learned how to meet her difficulties, and it was a real
pleasure to her to see how well she could do her work. It was the work
she was born to do, as certainly as Raphael was born to paint pictures.

Few women are so successful; but at the present stage of the world I
think it is true that no woman who thoroughly understands cooking and
housekeeping need fear that she cannot support herself if she must. I
knew a lady who excelled in these arts who was able to help her husband
in establishing a school. He was a fine teacher, but too individual to
work well in most schools. She took a dozen young people into the house
and gave them a delightful home. Her husband earned the living of the
family, and a very good living, too. She did little work with her hands,
and an assistant teacher was employed to care for the pupils out of
school. The housekeeping took but little time, and the lady was
apparently almost as free as when her husband had been struggling along
in a high school. But she understood so well what was needed that a word
here and a look there kept all things smooth, and her husband who had
seemed on the brink of ruin came out a successful man.

But all who can manage their own homes cannot manage those of others,
even if they are willing to do so. Suppose with all her practical
education our girl never shines as a cook or a housekeeper! I have
suggested that she should be so thoroughly grounded in primary school
work that she could teach her own children till they are twelve years
old. Then, if she has the natural power to discipline, she can, if need
be, teach a primary school. Now the number of primary schools to be
taught is vastly greater than in any other grade, because all pupils
must begin at the foot of the ladder, though most of them do not climb
to the top. And it is doubtful whether competition among teachers of
primary grades is proportionately great. I have heard of a leading
normal school principal who decided to train his own daughter for
primary work, because his experience showed him there was always a
demand for such work. He said truly, "There are few schools which will
pay much for unusual learning. Executive ability and tact in imparting
knowledge are most wanted, together, of course, with thorough grounding
in the rudimentary branches."

His daughter had both taste and talent for higher studies. He wished her
to indulge her taste. "But," he added, "she must buy this higher
knowledge as she would any other luxury, and not delude herself with
the idea that it will make much difference with her power of earning
money. If she earns her living by primary work, which requires little
study out of school, she will have leisure to pursue her own tastes. Of
course she may thus in time be fitted for higher work, and she may
prefer to do it, and may even earn more money by it, but she will then
do the work because it is her natural choice and not for the sake of the
money." So altogether I believe that any girl who has the foundation
education which will fit her for a home life will also be able to earn a
respectable living if the need arises.

I would not, however, have her stop there. A woman who has to work
wishes to work to the best advantage, both as to the amount of money she
earns, and the quality of the work she does. I believe every girl should
have the simple solid foundation I have indicated, but I also think that
in most cases a superstructure should be reared upon it, and that there
should be almost as many forms of superstructure as there are
individuals. Therefore, in choosing your occupation I will suggest this
rule: Do not despise the lowest drudgery which comes plainly in your
way; but always choose the highest work you are able to do.

For example, I knew a highly educated young lady who found it necessary
to teach. She hated the work, as many teachers do, and yet she had a
fine, forcible character, so that she did her work well. One day in a
moment of vexation she was heard to exclaim, "I would rather be a waiter
in a restaurant than teach school!" Now it happened that one of her
pupils did become a waiter in the very restaurant which had called out
the remark. And she made an excellent waiter. Her apron was always clean
and her hair was always smooth. She was quick and quiet in filling an
order, and modest and self-possessed and sweet-tempered. She did her
work well and used her leisure well, and she deserved great praise. But
in her case this was the best work open to her. She was a hopelessly
dull scholar, and she was awkward with her needle. Nor did she have the
kind of mind necessary to direct others. She could not have conducted a
boarding-house. She could, however, do her own little bit of work well.
Now what was fine in her would not have been fine in the teacher. To be
sure, it is a pity to teach if one hates it, more of a pity than to do
some mechanical work, because there is danger that the feeling may react
upon the scholars. Still, this woman had the necessary self-control to
do this good work. On the other hand, she was not attracted to any
inferior work for its own sake. She would have made an excellent
duchess. Her talents as well as her tastes fitted her for such a life.
But she had to earn her living, and so far as she or her friends could
see there was no direction in which she could work without finding it
intolerable. And so it seems to me she did right to choose the best work
open to her and do it as well as she could, and I think if she had
forsaken the school-room for the restaurant she would not have done what
was best either for herself or for others.

I have known an ignorant woman who kept a lodging-house with such
devotion that it was like a work of art. Its purity and freshness, its
warmth and light had a charm beyond that of comfort. Such work is to be
done, and it is not often done well, because the woman who does it is
below rather than above her task. "Let the great soul incarnated in some
woman's form, poor and sad and single, in some Dolly or Joan, go out to
service, and sweep chambers and scour floors, and its effulgent day
beams cannot be muffled or hid, but to sweep and scour will instantly
appear supreme and beautiful actions, the top and radiance of human
life, and all people will get mops and brooms; until lo, suddenly the
great soul has enshrined itself in some other form and done some other
deed, and that is now the flower and head of all living nature."

The lower work must be done, and often by the highest natures. It must
then be done willingly and with a recognition that it can be made a work
of art. But it should be deliberately chosen only by those to whom it is
the highest work. I have in mind a young man who might have been a
musician, but he would not practice, so he became a shoemaker. He had to
work harder as a shoemaker than he would have done as a musician, but it
was from hand to mouth. He did not have to work steadily towards a
future good. He had no gift but that of music, so that even if he had
been a musician he would have ranked far lower in the scale of manhood
than the shoemakers of the village; but he would have done the best he
could do, while as a shoemaker he was despicable.

I knew a good teacher, capable of taking responsibility, who hated it so
that she gave up work the moment she had acquired a miserable pittance.
She lived ever after a pinched life, whose chief source of happiness to
herself was the negative satisfaction of escaping responsibility; for
she was too poor to gratify any of her many beautiful tastes. She had
the power to lead a large, full life, but she had not the will and
courage to meet the obstacles in her way. She chose instead to stunt
herself and be a drudge. She swept her poor rooms clean, and she was
willing to sweep them, but I do not think she "swept them as to God's
law," for though she often made them "fine," I do not think she made
"the action fine."

But such a case is rare. More people choose work too high for them. We
all like to think we have some touch of genius, though we may be
discreet enough not to say so. But few of us have talents at all equal
to our tastes, and we must beware of trying to get our livelihood in the
direction of our tastes rather than of our talents.

One girl in ten thousand has the voice of a _prima donna_. Ten other
girls in ten thousand have voices so good that they believe them to be
like that of a _prima donna_. The first will succeed beyond her wildest
dreams. She will have fame and fortune. The other ten will have some
success, success which will seem great to the lookers on, but they will
have heart-breaking disappointments within their own breasts. A hundred
girls in the ten thousand have more talent for music than for most other
things, and if they are well educated, they may perhaps make a good
living as teachers, church singers, organists, or accompanists. This is
not what they hoped, but they do the work that belongs to them, and on
the whole may be counted successful. Another hundred like music, and can
learn enough to add to their enjoyment and to that of those about them.
They might even teach music, if the demand for teachers were not already
filled by those who have a greater gift. But now it is clear their bread
must depend on other work for which they have less taste. These are the
"betwixt and between" who are always fighting a battle between taste and
talent. They have a compensation,--they are less one-sidedly developed
than if all their talents were concentrated in one; but they hardly
realize this.

Now, how is the line to be drawn among the musical? Who are to earn
their living by music and who are to be amateurs? Especially as fifty of
our second hundred can with proper education easily excel fifty of the
first hundred who have less education. Who is to decide whether it is
prudent for a girl to spend all she has on a musical education with the
hope of making herself independent in the end? No one can decide
positively, but at least do not let any girl fancy that she is the one
of ten thousand or even one of the ten. And let her ask for the judgment
of more than one good musician before she is sure she belongs to the
first hundred. If she loves music supremely, it may be worth while for
her to spend everything on her education, even if she finally has to
support herself with her needle, for it will be its own reward, and
having tried to do what she believed to be her best, even her failure
will not be a failure of character.

If there is any occupation delightful in itself, there will always be
many people who will hope that they have talent enough to make it a
source of livelihood. We all wish to be musicians and artists and poets.
The most bitter disappointments come to those who try these paths and
fail. It has always seemed to me that where bread-winning is a
necessity, we ought first to secure the means of living in some humbler
way, and then there may be a chance to pursue these higher occupations
for their own sake, and not to degrade them by false methods which we
think will bring us money.

I have heard of a poor girl who had a genius for acting. She went out to
service while she was studying, she learned how to do housework well,
and she had that resource always left to her in case she should fail on
the stage. She succeeded, but she could not have succeeded if she had
insisted on acting at the outset.

I knew a girl who had ability as a story writer. Two positions were open
to her at the same time, one as a book-keeper, the other as writer for a
certain department in a third-rate magazine. She chose to be a
book-keeper, for she knew that if she took the magazine work she must
write whether in the spirit or not, and that the rank of the magazine
was such that she would have little encouragement to do her best. Of
course, as book-keeper she had very little leisure. Stories germinated
in her brain which she had no time to write; but when she was thoroughly
possessed by a story, she did find time to write it, and her work was
good. She chose to do the second best work for money, so that her best
work might not be degraded by the need of money.

Few persons have genius enough to undertake any artistic work if they
have a pressing need for the money they are to receive from it. With
ever so small an income from other sources, they may cheerfully try
their best and prove what they can do. But with no income at all, they
will be too greatly tempted to prostitute the talent they have. Yet "if
you cannot paint, you may grind the colors." Occasionally our cravings
for artistic work may partially be gratified by doing lower work in the
same line, and this may sometimes be a foundation for the higher work.

A young girl had an ardent desire to be an elocutionist. She had a good
voice, a flexible body, and some intelligence. She was willing to spend
every penny on her education. Fortunately she had an unusually fine
teacher, who told her the truth. He said, "You could easily learn the
little tricks of voice and gesture which bring applause from ignorant
people, and make one blush to be called an elocutionist, but you have
not the dramatic sense and can never be a great reader. What you need to
do is to study some literary masterpiece till you thoroughly appreciate
it, and then read it as simply and clearly as possible."

"But would anybody come to hear me read?" she asked.

"I am afraid not," he said; "but you could teach reading."

This had not been her ambition, but she had an earnest character and was
willing to read in the right way. She did take a place in a school and
became a power there. She taught her scholars how to use the breath, to
sit and stand easily and gracefully while reading, to enunciate
clearly, and pronounce correctly. Moreover, she taught them to read
noble poems instead of the flimsy showy jingles which had at first
attracted her. She never made any figure as a public reader, but she did
not regret serving the art she had learned to reverence on a lower
plane.

But, some one may say, suppose she had not been able to teach! She might
not have understood the art of controlling scholars even if she
understood what to teach them. In that case she might have been a
private reader to some elderly or infirm person. There is a demand for
private readers, but few can fill such a place, though we fancy
everybody can read. Even where there is intelligence so that one is a
pleasant reader, there are few who can manage the voice well enough to
read several hours in succession as is often desired.

A woman with artistic tastes will probably do better service in studying
ways of making beautiful homes or in lines of decorative work than by
striving to paint great pictures. Let her paint the pictures if she is
moved to do it and has time, and if they turn out to be great pictures
that will be well; but until her greatness has been proved, would it not
be better for her to depend for her support on the less ambitious
departments of her art, especially as a beautifully planned home gives a
higher artistic pleasure than second-rate painting?

It is strange that so few women are architects. Architecture is the
sublimest of arts, and yet it has room to employ humble talents. A
practical woman with a love of beauty, a mathematical mind, and a
knowledge of mechanical drawing would undoubtedly be a great help to an
architect in planning dwelling-houses. At any rate, as the matter stands
at present, very few interiors are either convenient or beautiful in
proportion to the money spent on them. A woman might not plan a public
building well, but her help is needed in all our homes, and especially
in tenement houses.

I once knew a woman who was a poet. Her songs were full of beauty and
helpfulness, but poetry is not lucrative. She took a position as teacher
of literature in a girls' school. There never had been such teaching as
hers in the school before. She showed the girls the poetic meaning of
the great writers, and gave them a moral and intellectual impulse which
lasted through life. Sometimes in an hour of inspiration she still wrote
poems. Her teaching was so excellent that she was sought after in other
schools. But she found that when she undertook too much her spirit
flagged. She could still teach, but she could not write. So she went
back to her first plan. Of course it was hard work. The girls were often
dull and unsympathetic. Yet her study of literature helped her in her
own great purpose of life, and the contact with youth was sometimes an
inspiration in itself. Usually, however, teaching is an injury to a
writer, because of the need of constantly adapting one's self to
inferior minds.

There are few women who can devote themselves to pure literature, and
few of these can earn a living by it; so, delightful as it is, it can
hardly be counted among the bread-winning occupations. But if a woman
thinks she can be satisfied to work regularly on a newspaper or a
magazine she may often earn a large income. If money or fame is her
object she must always sign her own name to everything she writes, as it
takes genius to coerce the public into admiration of anonymous work.

A great many women have found it well to be teachers, and most of their
work is conscientiously done, though few have the highest ideal so
constantly before them as to find pleasure in the work when their own
faults are of such a nature that success depends on overcoming them. A
firm, quick-witted woman, with sufficient self-reliance to relish
responsibility, is the only one who can be happy in a large school or at
the head of a small one. Now, those are the lucrative positions for
teachers, and, indeed, the positions in which the largest results can be
accomplished, and they ought to be filled by the finest women. But the
finest women must have certain other qualities. They need to be
thoughtful even more than quick witted; they must be able to balance
conflicting interests, and that is hard to reconcile with firmness; and
if they are modest and conscientious they rarely have the self-reliance
which makes responsibility anything but a grievous burden. Yet there are
teachers who have enough of all these contradictory qualities to succeed
in doing the difficult and admirable work if they are only willing to be
unhappy for the sake of doing something noble.

But some can never be disciplinarians, however determined their
character may be, principally, I think, because the true student must
usually be occupied with a train of thought which cannot be interrupted
from moment to moment to detect the petty tricks of insubordinate
pupils. So if you mean to be a teacher, think first whether you have
quick observation; then, are you firm, and are you willing to give your
whole heart to your work? If you can answer these questions favorably,
you may persevere in your attempt to make your way to the head of a
school, even if your first trial does not succeed. If you have not the
executive ability, then turn all your energy in other directions. There
are positions as assistants in grammar schools where any woman of good
education who is conscientious and persevering may in time work to
advantage, and though such positions are probably more mechanical than
any others, yet they often leave the teacher considerable freedom to
pursue her own tastes outside of school.

But if you feel that your temperament is essentially that of the
student, so that you could fill the place of assistant in some advanced
school, then give yourself to special studies. I would not say study
history exclusively for ten years, even if you have a taste for history,
because there are few schools where a teacher can be employed for
history alone. But suppose you spent half your time for twenty years on
history, and the other half on literature, languages, etc., you would
probably find some place open to you all the time, and at the end of
twenty years you might be fit for a college position, and much more fit
than if you had narrowed yourself to one study. In most cases the bent
in one direction is not so strong that the student cannot do many things
fairly well. The half dozen best scholars in most secondary schools are
usually the best in mathematics, in the sciences, in literature, and in
language. It is a good plan for such scholars to "level up" in every
direction. Two years' study in each line after leaving school will carry
them beyond the requirements of most schools,--though of course no
teacher can hope to succeed who does not study daily the branches she
teaches, to keep abreast of the times, and to make her teaching
fresh,--and if she is able to teach a variety of subjects she is pretty
sure to find an engagement in some of the many schools where only a few
assistants can be employed. And it is no small additional advantage that
her own mind is more evenly developed than that of a specialist.

Just now the demand for women to teach the sciences seems to be greater
in proportion to the supply than in any other direction. If a girl has a
natural taste for chemistry, zoölogy, or mineralogy, and cultivates it,
she is very sure to "put money in her purse." But the supply is
increasing, so this state of things may not last long.

No one thinks sewing an attractive means of livelihood, but where a girl
has a decided taste for the needle there are openings for her gifts. I
know a mother and daughter who support themselves in comfort by
embroidering dresses for the stage, and by giving lessons in the making
of fine laces. And I heard the other day of a farmer's daughter who came
to the city to work as a dressmaker, and who showed such taste and skill
that she soon commanded a salary of two thousand dollars for overseeing
an establishment. It is pleasant to add that she married a rich man of
refined tastes, and that she made a beautiful home for him, a centre for
all lovers of the fine arts.

A thousand occupations are now open to women. You can be a type-writer,
or a stenographer, or a private secretary, or saleswoman. You can keep a
bakery, or do city shopping for country ladies. But whatever you do,
keep these principles in mind:--

1. Do not drift into any work. Circumstances may force you to do
something unsuited to you, and then you must do your best; but where
even a narrow choice is left, try to weigh your own tastes and talents
truly, and choose something to which you are willing to give your
energies, and in which, if you work hard, there is reasonable hope you
will succeed.

2. Whether you like your work or not, make it something more than a
means of self-support. We all want "a broad margin to our lives," and we
may do our great life-work entirely outside of our work for bread. But
most of us necessarily put so much of our strength as well as our time
into earning our livelihood, that, if we are the women we ought to be,
that too must express our nobleness. We may not like our work, but we
can make it worth doing, even if we never gain a penny from it. Milton
was no doubt sorry to receive only £15 for "Paradise Lost," but we
should all be willing to starve in a garret to do work like that. It
ought to be the same with the humblest occupation. We should like to
earn something by it, but first we wish to have it worth more than
money, and it will be so if we work in the right spirit.




VI.

OCCUPATIONS FOR THE RICH.


In one of George Eliot's letters she says that her chief hope from the
higher education of women is that they will do much unproductive labor
which at present is either badly done or not done at all. But she
thought it would be unbecoming in her to say much publicly on that
subject, for she could not fail to know that her own genius set her
apart from other women and gave her a definite work to do.

For those who have simply many good powers without any dominating one
the case is different. The poor must use their gifts to gain bread; but
if they do not make their occupation the medium of higher work, they are
no better than the idle rich. The rich, instead of being excused from
work by circumstances, are the more bound to work, because they can
choose what is best in itself.

Where a girl has many equal gifts it may be well sometimes to have
several occupations; but it is usually best to choose some one form of
daily employment as the nucleus of her life, and to persevere with that
till she accomplishes something.

Most girls would choose to devote themselves to some charity. I will
speak of that in another chapter. Here I wish to say something of
occupations which can be followed only by those who are rich enough to
dispose of their own time, and which, though at first they may not seem
to be of much use to others, are indirectly among the most powerful
factors in the progress of the world.

In New England, at least, girls often stay in school till they are
twenty, and by that time they have learned the elements of chemistry,
physics, botany, zoölogy, physiology, geology, and astronomy. If they
have learned these thoroughly, the variety of studies is an advantage,
as one science throws light on all the rest. Yet of course they have
learned only the rudiments of any of these subjects, and if they try to
carry them all on after leaving school they can hardly do very good work
in any.

Suppose a girl decides that chemistry is the most fascinating of the
group. Then let her make a special study of that. She will know enough
of the other sciences to use them when she needs their help, or she may
wish to study minerals or plants or animals chemically. If she is rich,
she ought to carry on her study with special teachers till she reaches a
point where she can do original work. Then, let her have her own little
laboratory, and give some hours every day regularly to experiments.
"Original work" sounds terrifying to most girls; they think it requires
genius. It does take genius to gather the results of experiments into
laws. But as I have elsewhere suggested, the experiments must all be
first tried; and many a girl is neat and skillful and accurate enough to
do all the drudgery necessary, leaving the man,--or woman,--of genius
free for the higher work. True, it takes genius to know what experiments
to try. But a girl who has had special teachers is sure to know one
among them who is doing original work, and who wishes the days were
twice as long that he might try more experiments. Let her ask him to
trust some work to her. She may make some discoveries herself, but at
any rate she will do work which is needed.

I call to mind a case in point. A young lady had a great taste for
drawing, as well as a good scientific mind. She became acquainted with a
physician who was making original studies in the microscopic germs of
disease. They worked side by side. The physician detected the
animalcules and plants and crystals with the microscope, and explained
to her how he wanted them represented. She was intelligent enough to
understand his explanations and skillful enough to make the drawings.
His own drawings were too clumsy to convey his idea, but with her help
his observations were made available for others.

Suppose a girl enjoys botany. I know a woman who has made lichens the
study of a life-time. This has been a source of high culture as well as
of pleasure to herself, for, as she says, this is the most intellectual
family of plants, and no one can study their structure without being
brought face to face with profound questions. Moreover, this study has
opened her eyes and those of her friends to much beauty; for until we
begin to look at lichens we are often conscious of hardly more than a
dull wall of rock or the dead gray wood of old buildings, when in truth
every inch of their surface is decorated with rich forms and delicate
colors. She won a certain measure of fame by the discovery of a new
lichen, but she did better than that, she made one of the finest
collections in the United States for a local city museum, so that the
fruits of her labor were thus accessible to future lichenists; and she
gave much needed help to geologists in investigating fossil lichens.

Local collections of any kind are valuable. A young lady who
superintends the making of one in the town or village where she lives
will learn much herself, and she will attract many other young people to
pursue an innocent and healthful pleasure, so becoming a power in the
community. There are few such collections now in existence, and any girl
living in a small place who has a taste for science may act as a
pioneer. She can begin modestly with a single case at her own house, or,
better still, at the public library, and she will be surprised to see
how fast the museum will grow, and how useful and delightful it will
be.

If a woman likes to experiment with plants, let her study botany at the
Harvard Annex. There she will learn how many questions in vegetable
physiology are awaiting investigation. Darwin studied one twining plant
after another till he discovered the rate of motion for each. Dr.
Goodale tells us how to trace the motion of ordinary growth. But think
of the myriads of plants which have not yet been examined, any one of
which is likely to yield suggestive results.

If a woman loves flowers and does not care for botany, she has the whole
beautiful domain of horticulture open to her. Naturally she will have a
garden of her own and be connected with some flower mission. But she
might do more. A rich woman in the country who determined to make that
her principal work could easily interest every child in the community in
a garden, and by perseverance she might make the whole village blossom
with new beauty. In the city she might be the means of making the
balconies in whole streets lovely with growth.

I heard of a young lady not long ago who was raising spiders for the
purpose of studying their habits. If she is in earnest, and has the
intelligence to try experiments, she may some day contribute something
substantial to scientific knowledge. I have heard of another who is
raising snails, and of still another who makes a specialty of
caddis-flies. Most people consider such work innocent and amusing, but
it may easily be made more. Take the question of the antennas of
insects. It took the combined experiments of a German and an American to
discover that the plumed antennæ of the male mosquito vibrated
differently to different parts of the female's song, thus representing
an outward ear. Now, of the two hundred thousand known species of
insects, all of which have antennæ, probably less than fifty have been
examined with anything like patience. These organs apparently serve in
some cases for touch, and sometimes for smell. It will take years of
study by hundreds of people to make the experiments necessary to decide
on their relations to the senses and the brains of insects. When they
are thoroughly understood, some light may be thrown on our own brain and
senses.

Who but the rich can have leisure for such important experiments? Yet
any girl with a school knowledge of zoölogy could begin to work with
some common insect, and be all the better for spending several hours
every day in such a pursuit.

I know a lady devoted to zoölogy who has many opportunities to travel.
She comes home laden with rare specimens which she distributes to all
the people she knows who can appreciate them; and another who has given
several years past to the study of geology. She has now become so
accomplished as to have made an excellent geological map of the town she
lives in. Such a map is greatly needed in any town, but how few are to
be found!

Another lady who has a taste for mineralogy has unconsciously done good
in her own village by means of it. All the boys and girls in town are
ready to help her and have learned something from her. Her collection is
open to everybody. She has formed a club of ladies for the study of the
science in the winter evenings. There is a higher intellectual and moral
tone in the place because of this new interest.

Goethe makes one of his heroines a lover of astronomy; he represents her
as living quietly with her telescope, and passing night after night in
close study of the stars. There is something ideally beautiful in his
description of her.

One of my friends chose to give most of her time to music. Without being
a genius, she played remarkably well, and she made her work available
for others by playing the organ in a church which was rich, in
everything but money. I knew another fine pianist who gave lessons to
children who could not otherwise have had them. In both these cases the
ladies were as much bound by their self-imposed tasks as if they had
been earning their living, and their characters received almost as
great benefit; but it would not have been well that they should be paid
for their work. Why should they compete with those who needed the money?

Harriet Martineau was not rich, but when she settled down in her own
little country-house she had a competence. She made her study useful to
the people around her, as well as to the world. She was skilled in
political economy, and she took pains to present its knotty problems in
a clear and simple form to the untrained minds of her poor neighbors.

All women are not born to lecture even in this small way. But the study
of history, and still more of philosophy, does something more than to
broaden the mind of the student. A woman with a clear mind looks at
every subject more wisely than if she were half educated. Her judgment
has weight with every one she comes into contact with; but however
little her influence may be, it is likely to be on the right side. What
we are is so much more than what we do! Girls who are longing to do some
great thing are impatient when they are told this. It is so much easier
to measure what we do than what we are. I know a girl with a fine
intellect who loves to study, but who cannot quite give herself up to
study because she is haunted by the feeling that in this way she is
concentrating her life on herself. It is true there are learned women
who are very selfish, but it is not true that their learning makes them
so, certainly it is not, if they think and judge as well as learn. This
girl believes she ought to visit the poor, and some time she may do some
good in that way; but her natural aptitude is in another direction. If
she ever succeeds in so disciplining her intellect that she has just
views of life, she will have it in her power to exert a wide influence.
If she could, for instance, convince her imperious father and brothers
that there was something to be said on the side of their striking
workmen, she would indirectly do the poor more good than she could ever
do directly. Perhaps she could convince them. One reason that her father
is so eager to grind men down is because her mother is frivolous and
extravagant.

I call to mind a girl who has been studying art abroad for some years.
She has talent enough to earn her living by her work, if that were
necessary. As it is not, she has chosen to do a fine thing. She has made
copies of many of the great paintings of the world, and she has given
these to the quiet boarding-school where she was educated. The copies
are good enough to be a factor in the education of the girls who have
not yet seen the originals. She has also used her skill and taste in
selecting almost a thousand unmounted photographs from the great masters
for the same school. These she has arranged herself, mounting them and
writing out plainly on each card the name of the picture with that of
the artist and a few words referring to the time and place of the
painting. As arranged, these photographs form an illustrated history of
art.

Another girl perhaps chooses to study languages. When this leads to the
foreign literatures, it is one of the highest intellectual occupations
possible. But there are ways of making languages outwardly available. I
remember a friend at a custom-house who successively helped three
steerage passengers out of unknown troubles by speaking French, German,
and Italian with them, and interpreting to the officers, one of whom at
last turned with a laugh, saying, "I wonder if there are not any Chinese
about. This lady would be sure to help them."

Translation, as everybody knows, does not pay. A few very famous books
are brought out by the half dozen leading translators, and all others
must either lie unread or be translated by those who do not need any
money for their work. Yet there are books which ought to be translated,
though they will not pay. And how rare it is to translate well! Even
rarer than to write English well. If a woman is aware that she has grace
in expressing herself, and a delicate perception of the meaning of
words, and the power to comprehend the thought of a writer, then can she
do better with time and money than to perfect her knowledge of a
language so that she can make a good translation of some fine book which
would otherwise be neglected? If she should also have some poetic gift,
she might even translate poems which ought to be known. Probably no poem
was ever poetically translated for money.


There is another occupation for rich women more exclusively womanly--the
care of children. I remember a rich mother who did this work well. She
had a nurse, indeed, to relieve her of some of the drudgery, though she
did not shrink from this, too, when it was needed; but the greater part
of the day was passed with her children. She knew what words they heard
and what actions they saw. She identified herself thoroughly with them.
I will not say that she knew all their thoughts, but I think she knew
all they were willing to express to any one. She entered into their
games and taught them to play. But though she was so much with them she
did not let them feel that she had no other uses for her time. She read
or wrote or sewed at one end of the long nursery, while they played at
the other. She tried to develop their independence, and she trusted them
little by little, more and more, as she saw they had strength to take
care of themselves. She studied their characters, and gave much thought
to the way to correct their faults. Sometimes a single word of reproof
or command was the result of hours of thought, but they could not know
that. At last they seemed to be thoroughly self-governing. They did the
right thing instinctively, whether she was there to see them or not. If
they were in doubt they came of their own accord to ask her advice, not
requiring her command.

By degrees she separated herself from them for most of the day simply to
teach them self-reliance, not because she was tired of her task. The
hours of separation were still given to them. She thought of them and
studied for them, and planned ways of making herself most charming to
them when they were together again. In the end they were free strong men
and women, able to stand alone, and yet enthusiastically attached to
their mother, so that every pleasure was the dearer if she shared it.

If a woman has no children of her own, it often happens that she may do
this good work for her little brothers and sisters, or for her nieces
and nephews. Or, if there is no one among her kindred who needs her
care, there are always the orphan children.

If a woman of wealth and leisure adopts a child the experiment usually
fails. I have often wondered why, and I think I can see the reason. A
rich and cultivated woman who has also the large heart which leads her
to take a child belongs to the very highest development of the race.
The destitute waif is often from the dregs of the people. The distance
between them is too wide for sympathy. She trains this child as she
would train her own, and the child feels oppressed. Its faults are so
different from those of her own childhood, that she is overwhelmed by
them and quite at a loss how to meet them. And yet, it would be a pity
for her to repress the generous wish to help a child. I think such a
woman may sometimes find the child of educated parents, perhaps from
among her own circle of friends whom she can naturally help; and if she
will take two children instead of one, her task will be lightened for
they will help each other.

But if she finds it best to adopt one of the lowest class, she may still
succeed by remembering several things. 1. It is too much to expect to
train such a child to be a real companion, though in some rare cases
this may follow. Her main effort should be to awaken and guide the moral
nature, and to do this she must learn to look at the child from another
standpoint than her own prejudices. 2. She must give the child an
abundance of simple physical pleasures, and, if possible, companions of
about its own intellectual grade. 3. She must enter heartily into all
the child does, and endeavor to understand the workings of its mind.

Many young women who would hesitate to take the whole responsibility of
one child may find useful and pleasant employment for themselves by
teaching a class of children of the poor. They can teach them to sew or
to read, they can provide simple pleasures for them, and supplement the
work of the public schools in a hundred ways necessary in cases where
there is no adequate home life.

There is another great work to be done by rich women--that of giving a
higher tone to society. I knew a delicate woman who went to live in a
large and rapidly growing Western city. On account of her wealth and
connections all the leading people in the place called upon her at once,
and her house became a centre of society. She used her good taste in
making her home really beautiful--not showy or fashionable. Then she
opened it freely to congenial friends. Some of her visitors were society
people, but many were not. There were thoughtful teachers, clever young
collegians who had gone West to seek a fortune and had found drudgery
awaiting them instead, half a dozen unknown musicians and artists, and a
few educated Germans and Swedes whom fate had stranded far from home.
These people were welcome every day and at all hours. For this lady, who
had intellectual tastes, had been forced by the weakness of her eyes to
get her education from people rather than from books. So a perpetual
_salon_ was a pleasant thing to her. All who were invited to her home
had some moral or intellectual gift which made their company desirable,
not only to the hostess but to the other guests. The rich and poor met
together there, but not the cultivated rich and the uncultivated poor,
or the uncultivated rich and the cultivated poor. Consequently, the
conversation was real. A young professor would come in with the
"Atlantic Monthly," begging leave to read an article to her, and the
reading would begin without any superfluous remarks about the weather.
Others would come in, but the reading would go on and the discussion it
suggested. An artist would bring a new picture, and the conversation
would turn in a new direction. A musician would sing an air, and a quiet
German would be led to speak of his life in the Fatherland.

But with all her leisure, my friend found it a burden to keep up the
round of merely formal calls required of her. She did not wish to hurt
the feelings of any one, so she persevered for a while. She set apart
one day in a fortnight for a reception day. (You may be sure none of her
bright and interesting friends came then.) And once a fortnight she took
her card-case in hand and drove rapidly about the city, returning calls.
But she seldom called formally on anybody who had once been asked to her
_salon_. These were the people, she said to herself, who could
_understand_.

Her delicate health excused her from giving parties. Coffee and cakes
were always at hand for refreshment, and any caller was welcomed to
lunch or dinner if he happened to be at the house when the bell rang.
The dinners were always good, but no change was made for a visitor. She
always refused to go to parties or receptions, which she thought
insufferable except when there was dancing. But she could not escape the
burden of party calls. The difficulty in carrying out her plans was that
there was no definite line between her sheep and goats. There were some
with whom she had to be both formal and informal, and she knew it could
not be right for her to drop totally everybody whom she did not fancy.
Many other women had felt the same burdens too heavy to be borne, but
had seen no escape. She suggested a club-house for ladies in some
central part of the city which they all often passed in shopping. It
should be a comfortable resting-place, with restaurant, reading-room,
etc. It should always be open, but one afternoon in the week should be
considered a special reception day. That would give ladies a chance to
see each other with very little trouble. When a stranger came into town,
if it was thought she would be a congenial acquaintance, two members
were to call upon her and invite her to the club, and see that she was
properly introduced. Then she was considered one of their number, and
was free from the bondage of calls ever after. There were many other
regulations emancipating the members from the tyranny of unsocial
society. Of course many ladies objected to all this. Their idea of
society was the conventional one, and they continued to live on that
basis. Most of them were welcomed at the club, but its members did not
call upon them, or go to their parties, or give them parties in return,
always excepting parties with an object like music and dancing. Parties
had given place to informal gatherings like my friend's _salon_, where
something real could be said.

Now in an old city such a change could not be brought about so quickly.
It could only be made by a large number of leaders of society joining to
make it. No stranger nor young person could do much except to make her
own part of any conversation as worthy as possible. But the mothers can
lead the daughters, and the daughters, starting from a higher point, can
go on in the same way.

These are some of the many unproductive occupations in which rich women
may use their time well, without finding it necessary to compete with
their poorer sisters in earning money.




VII.

CULTURE.


"Culture comes from the constant choice of the best within our reach. It
belongs to character more than to acquirements, though a person of
culture usually has certain acquirements, for these are generally within
the reach of all those who earnestly wish for the best things."

A woman, for instance, may be a cultivated musician, and have a weak
character in some directions; but just so far as her music is of high
quality she must have chosen the best. She must have been patient and
energetic, and she must have been willing to practice fine music. I knew
a girl so brilliant that she was able to play a Beethoven sonata almost
at sight when she had studied music less than a year. But she did not
care for Beethoven. She preferred Offenbach, and she never became a
cultivated musician.

But though girls are apt to think of culture as something distinct from
character, they do after all acknowledge its moral side, for beautiful
manners are its first test. I see every day a young girl who seems to
have no special gift. Her delicate health has prevented her from
studying much, so although the wealth and position of her family have
made it possible for her to have the best teachers all her life, her
education is not far advanced. With all her piano lessons she will
stumble over the simplest march if any one is listening to her; she
replies to her French teacher in monosyllables; she has read few books:
and as for her arithmetic, children in the primary schools could put her
to shame. Nevertheless, she would everywhere be recognized at once as a
cultivated young lady. The simplicity, gentleness, and sweetness of her
manners, her truthfulness, modesty, and dignity count for far more than
French or music or literature even with those who lay most stress on
accomplishments. Such manners as hers are rare, and yet they are likely
to be found running through whole families. Her mother and her sister,
both of whom are cleverer than she, have almost equally fine manners,
though they miss the last touch of grace. Such manners come from the
choice of generation after generation. One woman after another has
chosen to be sincere, good-tempered, kind, and noble. The women who so
choose also choose the best in other ways. They read good books instead
of bad ones, they prefer a beautiful picture to a showy one, and
Beethoven to Offenbach. You may say that a girl of such a family cannot
help being cultivated: culture is inborn. So it is, because generation
after generation has chosen aright. Her own positive contribution to
the family is that last touch of grace. I think that comes from the fact
that she could not succeed in other directions as her mother and sister
did. The best within _her_ reach was in the direction of manners, though
I think she did not decide that consciously. It was the determination to
meet mortification with heroism, to turn aside from feelings of envy and
wounded vanity, which added the last exquisite charm to her manners.

That such manners are often found among people of some wealth may, I
think, be accounted for by choice. Though many poor people are not at
all responsible for their poverty, yet when generation after generation
choose the best things, including the best husbands and wives, some of
the sources of poverty are removed, and although such families are
seldom very rich, they are often in comfortable circumstances, and as
they use money as well as other things in the best way, and do not live
for show, they are really richer than others with the same means.

I think, on the whole, good breeding is found oftenest in families where
the fathers have been professional men for generations. A line of
ministers where each has chosen to do the highest work he knew, careless
of money, or a line of physicians where each has chosen to help his
fellow-men, leads down to a beautiful blossoming time.

But no class monopolizes fine manners. Sometimes they seem to belong
entirely to the woman herself, and no trace of them can be found in an
earlier generation. She chooses alone, and she accomplishes all that has
been accomplished for others by cultivated ancestors.

Truthfulness is essential to culture, which, without it, will be only a
veneer. I have had an opportunity to know well a large class of girls
selected from the most highly cultivated families in one of our cities.
Comparing them with other sets of less highly cultivated girls, I think,
on the whole, the standard of truth is higher among the first, though it
has never been my misfortune to find a low standard among girls.
Unhappily, however, these girls have been so encouraged to shirk
mathematics that they have little power to think justly and accurately
on many questions. Mathematics may be called narrow, but no one can have
sound intellectual culture without these mental gymnastics.

I believe, too, that science must have a larger place in the education
of girls if they are to be able to look at things in a broad way, and if
I am right in calling culture the result of choice, the fairness of
judgment which comes from broad views is more essential to it than any
special accomplishment.

A specialist is seldom really cultivated, just because he is a
specialist. Darwin when young was an enthusiast in music and poetry. But
after a life given exclusively to science, he was amazed to find that
Shakespeare was tedious to him. His services to the world were so great,
and the spirit in which he worked was so noble, that we can hardly
regret his course; but he said himself that if he could begin life again
he would read some poetry and hear some music every day, so that he
might not lose the power of appreciating these things. Goethe, who
stands at the opposite extreme, as the "many-sided," adds that one must
see something beautiful every day.

Women are seldom specialists however. Their danger is superficiality
through trying to do too many things. How can we be broad without being
superficial? I have elsewhere said that I believe the school education
should include the rudiments of many branches, and that these rudiments
should be so thoroughly mastered that the girl should be able to go on
with any study by herself. I think the education should be continued
along several lines, if possible. These will differ with different
women; but whatever they are, it is essential that a balance should be
kept between beauty and truth. Music, art, or poetry on the one hand,
and science or history on the other, seem to me to give what is most
needed. In Elizabeth Shepherd's books the formula _Tonkunst und
Arznei_--music and medicine--is often quoted, and so we should get the
proper balance. I do not think that an ardent girl who loves music art,
and poetry, and who hates history and science and mathematics, will ever
quite do herself justice if she carries on all three of her favorite
studies and ignores the others, even though her favorites are most
essential to culture. I think, however, that though mathematics cannot
be spared from the foundation of an education, it yields less culture on
the whole to students who have no taste for it than any other study, so
I do not advocate carrying it far, but history or some science would be
a good counterpoise for a mind given to the study of beauty alone.

A friend says we must all be one-sided, so that perhaps our best chance
is to have one hobby at a time and ride that to death, and then try
another, becoming at last two, three, or four-sided, though never
completely rounded. If that be the case, it seems to me a good thing to
choose some of our hobbies at least from among the subjects for which we
have most taste and talent. Now where the opportunities for culture have
been great, it often happens that girls grow discouraged. They see how
far away they are from perfection, and they conclude they are good for
nothing. Do not yield to such morbid feelings. Make your own estimate of
yourself, without regard to your wishes. You do in your heart know what
you can do well if you are willing to work.

Make your estimate silently. It will probably be too high, but you will
work in the right line. Then let half your work be in the direction in
which you think you may make your life outwardly effective; for
instance, if you are a Darwin let it be in the line of natural science.
Let the other half of your work be constantly varied. Suppose you have
chosen history as the study for a life-time, take as a companion study
something new every year,--first a science, then art, then literature,
then mathematics, then a language, etc., etc. For the fruit of culture
is to be and not to do; and what we are, intellectually at least,
depends even more on the breadth of knowledge which helps us to balance
conflicting judgments than on special knowledge which gives us accurate
judgment in details. Even in the moral world, are not the finest
characters those in whom many virtues are balanced rather than those in
which one virtue is distorted by being allowed exclusive sway? It is a
great thing to be generous, but not to be wasteful; it is great to be
gentle, but not to be weak.

The philosophers tell us, however, that all things move in an ascending
spiral. We do in order to be. What we are bears unconscious fruit in
what we do. A woman who is cultivated in the true sense exerts a
constant influence for good. One rich woman says, "I will not live to
myself," and gives clothing to ragged children. Another rich woman says
the same thing, and studies history and poetry and comes silently to
just conclusions about the relative value of clothes and thought. She
cannot be unjust to her smartly dressed maid, and her daily life lifts
her maid into a new moral atmosphere; or her gently expressed judgments
on all things are so unswervingly on the side of truth and love that her
father and brother become ashamed of their little tricks in business or
politics which they had once thought trifles. True culture does always
react on life.

And yet in one direction culture seems to weaken the moral fibre. The
kind of courage which leads to quick heroic action in great emergencies
is apt to be lost by the habit of balancing arguments for and against
action. The gentleness which comes from quiet study often makes one
incapable of decision when severity is necessary. I was shocked not long
ago by hearing a group of sweet, high-bred girls discussing the scene in
"William Tell" where the wife of the hero tries to prevent him from
going out with his bow and arrow while Gessler is in the neighborhood.
With one accord the girls thought Tell should have yielded to his wife's
wish. It is true she was right in regard to the danger, but Tell's
carelessness about it was so clearly the result of his high-minded
freedom from suspicion that it seemed as though every heart should beat
quicker at his nobleness. These girls have moral courage. I dare say
some of them would die at the stake rather than tell a lie. But it would
take a sharply defined test like that to rouse them. Too much thought
has made it difficult for them to take any risk through unconsciousness
of danger. They could not act freely and spontaneously, and they could
not even admire such action in others.

How shall we train our girls so that they may have just judgments and
yet not make them so introspective that the bloom shall be brushed off
the beauty of every action? Perhaps Emerson's suggestion, that every
young person should be encouraged to do what he is afraid to do, would
meet the case.


In a city like Boston there is a great temptation to undertake too many
lines of study at once. There are free lectures every day in the week
from men who have mastered their subjects, and it seems as if one might
lie still and drink in all knowledge without effort. There are lectures
in private parlors for those who are too delicate to go to a public
hall--elementary lectures, and advanced lectures and readings. But no
one ever became cultivated by going to lectures. If a girl would choose
a single course and study the subject between times by herself, then she
would really be the better for the instruction. I think the difficulty
of choice among many good things in the city is the reason that so many
earnest girls have dissipated minds. A woman in the city must be
constantly on her guard against this peculiar temptation.

Perhaps at this point it will do no harm to insert a few commonplace
rules for study.

Do not try to study too many things at once.

Try to do all your work thoroughly, even if you do not get beyond the
rudiments in anything.

Do not be in a hurry.

It is said that eagerness to finish things shows weakness. It certainly
leads to shallowness, "Without haste, without rest" was Goethe's motto.
I have heard of a woman who began to study botany at ninety. That shows
a mind so trained and cultivated that the soil could not be exhausted
with age. How good it was that she was still fresh enough to respond to
new thoughts! She might have learned as much botany in a course of
lectures when she was twenty, and have listened to a dozen other courses
at the same time, without half the delight and inspiration she had at
ninety; that is, receiving so many new ideas at once at twenty might
have made her mind more jaded than the gradual, steady unfolding of many
more ideas during a lifetime.

I know a lady of forty-five who within the last month has taken her
first piano lesson. She did not even know the meaning of the letters,
and yet she has already made wonderful progress. She will probably never
become a great player, though her fingers are unusually supple and she
has some musical ability. But even if she does not, a new world of
thought and beauty is opening to her.

I have just heard of another lady of seventy who went abroad for the
sake of learning the French language.

It is a great mistake to think that all we are to learn must be begun
before we are thirty lest we may not have a chance to make a practical
use of it. Culture is within and not without.


I hope that I shall have as many readers in the country as in the city,
and country people are not distracted with opportunities for culture.
Indeed, they often think they have none. I will tell you the stories of
three cultivated country women.

One lived on a farm a mile from the post-office, and there was not much
money for her to spend. There were half a dozen cultivated families in
the village including that of the minister, and among them were to be
found most of the books which make the best literature. She knew how to
use both these friends and these books, and at twenty she was better
read than her Boston cousins. As she did not see her friends often, she
was more careful to make every call tell, and her visitors said it was
delightful to go to see her, she had such fresh things to say to them
and such interesting questions to ask. She studied botany by herself and
became expert. She learned mathematics so well in the public school that
when she began to think she would like to see something of the world
outside her corner, she was able to get good places to teach. First,
she went to a seaside village and there she learned a thousand new
things. Then she spent a few years at the West, varying her route in
going and coming till she had seen a large part of her own country. By
this time she had saved enough money to go abroad and study quietly for
a year. Now, she had her French and German, and she saw pictures and
heard music and visited cathedrals and discovered how other people
lived. But by and by her sisters died, and she was needed at home. Of
course she was a great acquisition in the village, and she had many
sources of enjoyment in pursuing the studies she had begun. But she
wanted new thoughts too. She invited a friend to spend a month with her,
and when she found that her friend had made a study of chemistry she
sent for a few dollars' worth of chemicals and set up a satisfactory
laboratory in the barn. Naturally she made the acquaintance of every
desirable person who visited the village, and moreover her Boston
relatives were always eager to have her for a guest, as she was
interested in all their favorite pursuits in an entirely original way.

Another girl lived in one little town till she was thirty, and then
married a man of culture whose home was in the city. His sisters said
she was a beauty and had good taste in dress; and they thought these
things had captivated their brother. But first they had to own that she
was a woman of fine character, good-tempered, dignified, truthful and
modest, for these virtues flourish in the country quite as often as in
the city. But still, they knew that she had had no education, and they
expected no intellectual companionship. Then it proved that she had read
more thoughtfully than they had. They belonged to a dozen literary
societies, but the one little village Shakespeare Club had done good
work. The sisters always went to the theatre every week in the winter,
but the bride who could count on her fingers the plays she had heard,
had selected these so carefully that her taste was already well formed.
Then she proved to be musical. Small as the village was, there had been
one young lady in it who had had the best musical advantages. Our
heroine had not let this opportunity slip. She had not heard many
concerts, but she had practiced the best music. She had studied Latin,
of course, in the village high school, and French with a French lady who
spent her summers in the neighborhood. She had treated herself every
year to five dollars' worth of Soule's photographs, and she had studied
these so carefully that she really knew something of the great artists.

Then she had traveled! She had begun to teach in her own village when
she was eighteen, and every summer she had spent a little of her salary
in some interesting trip. As a teacher, she had taken advantage of
excursion rates to the great National Teachers' Institutes. In this way
she had visited most sections of the United States. And she had planned
her trips so thoughtfully that she had been alive to everything which
was to be seen. Once she had even taken the accumulations of several
years and spent her summer abroad. The sisters looked scornful at this.
How could anybody see anything worth seeing with an excursion party? Yet
they had to own that what we see depends on the eyes we have as much as
on our surroundings. She could not see everything in three months, but
she knew what she wanted to see, and she had thoroughly assimilated that
by much thought about it before and after the journey.

She had once spent six weeks at a summer school of languages, and had
devoted herself so energetically to German that she had been able to go
on reading it by herself, and thus in a few years she had become
familiar with some of the masterpieces of its literature. But the
sisters were most astonished when they found her reading Italian one
day--Dante, too, which was too hard for them. The explanation of this
was that for some years the Catholic priest in her native village had
been a good-natured Tuscan who had been glad to exchange Italian for
English with her.

You see, she had had no regular education and no money but what she
earned, yet by choosing the best within reach at all times she had
become as cultivated as her sisters-in-law who had had every
opportunity.

All women are not so fond of study; but they may be cultivated,
nevertheless. The finest manners I have ever seen belong to a woman who
has lived all her life in the house where she was born in a little town
in New England. She never went away to school, and has not the student
temperament, though she is gifted in every direction. She has a love of
beauty which has led her to make everything beautiful around her. She
has had little musical training, yet her playing and singing have always
had the indefinable musical quality. She has read a good deal,
especially of the best novels and poetry, but "All for love and nothing
for reward." She has traveled from time to time a little when she could
spare the money, but always for pleasure and not to improve her mind.

She has had no artistic training, but with meagre materials she arranges
tableaux which are famed throughout the county, and on every public
occasion in the village she decorates the Town Hall exquisitely. She has
added wonderfully to the happiness of the place by always following her
love of beauty, making everything she touches beautiful without any
pretense or even any consciousness of having a mission.

So women may be cultivated in the country as well as in the city. But
some one may say that the hard workers have no time for culture. It
does seem to be true that hard workers need to use more sagacity than
others not to let their work crowd out everything else. They have one
advantage. Nobody can be really cultivated without learning some one
thing thoroughly. This their work compels workers to do. And the
building is more important than its decoration, though without the
decoration it may be a sombre structure.

Now, hard workers obviously cannot study French and German and Italian
and music and art, at least all at once, and if they try and so crowd
out all their little leisure, they miss the better culture which is
within their reach. What must you who are hard workers take time to do?

1. Take a little time to think. Especially try to judge fairly in
every-day matters. Culture, demands balance of mind; but is not that as
good when it comes from thought as from study? If the subject in hand is
one of which you do not know enough to judge, study it, if you have
time. If not, suspend your judgment. That will show true culture. For
instance, do not be a violent partisan either for or against the tariff
unless you have carefully examined the arguments on both sides. Few
perhaps have time to do that. You will still have an opinion. The few
arguments you have studied all point in one direction. The people you
trust most believe in one measure. Very well, keep your opinion. If you
were a voter you might even vote in the way you believe to be best; but
do not allow yourself to be violent or to denounce everybody whose
judgment differs from yours.

2. Try to be enough at leisure to observe little courtesies. Hard
workers are in danger of being irritable and hurried and careless of the
trifles which add so much to the beauty and dignity of life. Of course
my injunction includes some social life. We get much of our best
intellectual as well as moral life from contact with others.

3. Keep open every avenue to beauty. You have no time to study, but read
a few beautiful and noble sentences every day. You have no time to
practice music; then it is doubly necessary to hear all you can and the
best that you can. And you can always look at beauty. There is always a
strip of blue sky with its stars at night. And there are few who could
not see a beautiful sunset almost every day in the year if they made it
a happy duty to look at it. I have often thought that any one who would
persist in seeing this one vision every day would be lifted up above
most of the turmoil of life.




VIII.

THE ESSENTIALS OF A LADY.


Within the last twenty-five years the wish to be considered a lady has
spread so among all classes of American women as to have become almost
ridiculous, as in the authentic case of the individual who presented
herself at the front door of a fine house, and describing herself as an
ash-_lady_, inquired for the _woman_ of the house. It has been so often
repeated that: "The rank is but the guinea's stamp," and that "A man's a
man for a' that," that all the ash-ladies and wash-ladies of the land
have hastily concluded that the term "lady" stands for nothing
substantial.

I will not say that a washer-woman may not be a lady. It is certainly
possible for her to have all the essentials of a lady. But such a case
is so rare that I think we are justified in taking the contrary for
granted till we have proof of the fact. Not there are washer-women so
truthful, unselfish, and noble in character that they are far superior
as women to many whom we may fairly call ladies. Such women usually have
self-respect enough to understand that they lose rather than gain
dignity in claiming to be anything they are not. The essential point in
life is not the being considered a lady. It is not even to be a lady,
though that is a beautiful thing. A woman is like a vigorous plant, with
strong roots firmly fixed in the soil and abundant fresh green leaves. A
lady is such a plant crowned by a beautiful blossom. You have sometimes
seen a plant, a geranium, for instance, which had lost all its leaves,
and yet bore at the top of its crooked stem a cluster of flowers. Such
flowers are not very beautiful. The thrifty plant without a blossom is
more beautiful. Of course my moral is this, that while the term "lady"
does mean something different from "woman," it is only as a crown of
womanhood that it is really significant.

Every girl should try to be a lady, however, and every girl who
sincerely tries will have some measure of success. I remember when I was
a girl, I once said to a high-bred woman, "Do you think, after all, that
Mrs. A. is much of a lady?" She replied so firmly as to crush me for the
time, "One is either a lady or she is not a lady." I supposed she was
right, and that there were no stages on the perilous upward path which
led to being a lady. I have changed my mind now. I think each of us may
have some virtues without having all the virtues. I think with Emerson
that in a society of gentlemen and ladies we shall find no complete
gentleman and no complete lady; and so I say that every girl who tries
to be a lady will have some measure of success. I do not mean that she
should try to be recognized as a lady. If she is one she will probably,
but not certainly, be so recognized. In a small community, where she can
be known personally, she will be sure of her place, but not in a large
town.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, speaking in England, said something to this
effect: "You think we have no classes in America because we have no
titles to distinguish them. But a barbed wire fence is as effectual in
keeping out intruders as one of boards, though you can see the boards
and the barbed wire is invisible."

Why is a barbed wire fence put up in America? Because there is a real
difference between coarse people and refined people, even when both have
the best intentions. To be sure there are other less valid reasons.
There are coarse people whom accident has put among the higher classes,
who make themselves ridiculous by putting up a fence between themselves
and poorer people even when the poor are refined. Nevertheless, there is
a true basis for distinction of classes. Only the distinction is not as
sharp as many would have it. The highly refined and the very coarse have
so little in common that they can never associate with comfort. But the
highly refined do not need barbed wire between themselves and those with
one degree less of cultivation. We can always reach one hand to those
below us, and if we reach the other to those above us, we shall be able
to lift the lower to our plane instead of sinking to theirs. Such a
chain of love, reaching from the lowest to the highest, is the ideal
society, and the highest man does not need to lift all his fellows up by
his unaided strength, because there is infinite help above him.

But in the unideal present most of us will sometimes be called upon to
stand outside the charmed circle of barbed wire which incloses more
fortunate mortals, in spite of all we can do for ourselves. We may be
better women than those within the circle, we may be better-educated,
more careful in our habits, and our manners may be finer, and yet we may
not have the magic word which would admit us. There is no doubt, for
instance, that blood and breeding do tell powerfully in refinement. I
can think of half a dozen women, however, of no birth at all in the
ordinary sense, and of no home education, who have blossomed into the
loveliest and most refined of women. In one case, the ancestors had for
generations been earnestly religious, so that the girl was really of
noble birth and predestined to refinement, though she had nothing to
help her in the world's estimation. But some of the girls came from
wretched homes, some of them did not even have good mothers, and one was
the illegitimate daughter of a servant girl. But they all had aspiration
and intellect, and their refinement was not only wonderful under the
circumstances, but wonderful under any circumstances. They were suitable
associates for the most exclusive ladies in our cities so far as genuine
refinement goes, only as their experience of life was much wider than
that of these carefully guarded dames, perhaps they would not have
assimilated very well with them after all.

Of course, the exclusive circles are suspicious of women whose
antecedents are like these, and perhaps they have a right to be
suspicious, because these girls were certainly exceptions to the rule.
At all events, none of us can help ourselves by grasping at a position.
We may, to be sure, get invitations sometimes if we are vulgar enough to
ask for them, but we shall find the barbed wire fence even in the
drawing-room to which we have been admitted. We must be content to stand
outside every circle till we are invited to enter it, and our
self-respect must heal our wounded pride.

One thing, however, we can do. We can quietly resist being patronized.
We are not often called upon to accept favors from those who are not our
superiors but who condescend to us because we are poor or obscure. It is
true we must be humble, and we need not resent such favors, but we must
beware of being flattered by the notice of any one who is simply rich or
powerful. When we recognize true superiority either in the rich or the
poor, we ought to be glad to acknowledge it. We can accept a favor from
those who are really above us, though we know we cannot return it. And
we can always be ready to do our best work for others whether they
slight us or not. That does not show a mean but a noble spirit.


What are the essentials of a lady?

A knowledge of the manners of the world is generally considered
necessary if one would be a lady. Even where customs themselves are
trivial, ignorance of them makes a woman awkward and self-conscious, so
that she does not have the grace we associate with a perfect lady.
Etiquette is superficial, it is true, but it has a genuine value. The
manners which belong instinctively to a woman of kindness and refinement
are a far better test of her real rank.

I think, on the whole, a lady is most quickly recognized by her purity.
Even a pure enunciation is a sign of a lady, for it gives a certain
beauty of speech rarely heard except among those not only carefully
educated, but brought up among those who have the same habits. And
nobody is quite willing to pronounce any one a lady who is not
exquisitely neat in her personal habits. These, to be sure, are only an
outward and visible sign, but they point clearly to something within.
Somebody is sure to remember a class of New England housekeepers who
spend all their time scrubbing floors and have no spirit left for
anything else, and ask if they have the visible stamp of a lady. The
idea of neatness is so distorted in them that we cannot admire it very
much, yet perhaps it is their one connecting link with refinement. Such
women, however, are, curiously enough, seldom particularly neat in their
personal habits. Their dress is often untidy, their hair uncombed, they
are careless about bathing, and their teeth are neglected. Personal
neatness is far more characteristic of a lady than neatness of
surroundings, and cleanliness is better than order. The lover of
"Shirley" says, "I have often seen her with a torn sleeve, but the arm
beneath it was white."

Somebody else will say that neatness is, after all, a luxury beyond the
means of poor people. How can you be clean when you do dirty work? It
takes either time or money. I know a wealthy lady who used to be poor,
who says that for years she could never afford as much washing as she
thought indispensable, and she was too much of an invalid to do her own
washing. Nevertheless, she was always a lady and always looked like one,
though her dresses were sometimes absurdly old-fashioned. I should say
that her love of neatness was so strong that she sacrificed less
important things to it, and always did reach a high standard, though not
the standard of luxury.

I know a gentleman whose lot has been to do the heaviest and dirtiest
work on a ranch for years, and yet his hands to the tips of his
fingernails look as if he had just come from a manicure's. I suppose he
has been determined that his hands should be clean and has been willing
to take the trouble to keep them so. Still, we ought to make some
allowance for poverty in our estimate of neatness. "Why are you building
an addition to your house?" asked one lady of another. "Oh, for Mr. B.'s
tooth-brushes," replied Mrs. B, carelessly. "When a man has been brought
up as Mr. B. has been, his tooth-brushes take up a great deal of room."

I have said all this of outward purity, because it is easier to speak of
this, but it is still more the purity of mind and character which
distinguishes a lady. In some classes of society even in America girls
are kept almost isolated chiefly to preserve their purity of thought.
Purity, even the purity of ignorance, is beautiful, but such purity has
not deep foundations, and I cannot think that girls are best guarded in
this way. Nevertheless, purity is so essential to a lady that such girls
will always be counted as ladies.

The love of beauty is characteristic of a real lady. This is recognized
in some measure. Girls are taught dancing and music and something of
art. They listen to good music even if they are not musicians, and they
look at good pictures if they cannot paint them. This is partly a matter
of fashion, but it has a genuine root. And so with the beauty of dress,
and of the home. Both these ought to be beautiful, but as few women are
artistic enough to design anything, they follow the fashion. In this way
they escape criticism from their companions who are like them. But the
moment ugly dress or furniture is out of fashion its ugliness is
apparent. I suppose most of us must be content to be tyrannized over
more or less by fashion, or by fashion and poverty combined, till we
develop greater genius in working out the problem of how to make our
surroundings beautiful. I would simply suggest that we should resist
fashions we know to be hideous, and try to follow those which commend
themselves to our sense of beauty.

The two forms of beauty which are free to all of us are, I think, most
neglected, and more neglected among those who are surest of their title
as ladies than among those of more modest pretensions. These are poetry
and nature. To read beautiful poems constantly and to learn them by
heart, and to look out day by day on the glory of the world--these
things give higher refinement than can be won by anything else merely
intellectual. And such a love of beauty usually has deep springs in the
moral nature.

Education has so much to do with refinement that we expect a lady to be
educated as a matter of course, at least in some directions, mathematics
and science being thus far not included. George Eliot says of Nancy in
"Silas Marner," that she often used ungrammatical language, and was not
highly educated, but that she was a thorough lady because she had
delicate personal habits and high rectitude.

This brings us to the deep foundations. A lady must be truthful. And the
outward marks of truthfulness are sometimes recognized when their source
is misunderstood. The lady wears real lace instead of a showy imitation.
If she cannot afford what is real, she goes without. She is as careful
about neat underclothing as neat dress. She does not pretend to
accomplishments she has not. Indeed, the modesty essential to a lady is
intimately connected with truthfulness. When she is wrong she does not
think it beneath her dignity to own it. She never allows blame which
belongs to her to fall on any one else. She makes no display. She wishes
to be loved for herself and not because she belongs to the "best set,"
so she does not take pains to introduce the names of great acquaintances
into her conversation. And of course she always tells the truth. She may
observe all these things simply because it is good form, but a truthful
woman will observe them without knowing they are good form, and she will
be the real lady.

But one may have all the qualities we have enumerated and yet miss the
charm we associate with the name "lady." A truthful person may not be
kind. A woman may love beauty and still be hard. A perfectly pure woman
may be unfeeling, perhaps all the more because she needs no charity
herself. But a woman who does not show consideration for others cannot
be an ideal lady. If she is considerate in a mechanical way, because she
knows a lady must be so, it does not amount to much. And some women do
all they can for others from a sense of duty. They study to make others
happy in even trivial ways. They are good women, and on the
whole--ladies. But the woman whose love for others is spontaneous, who
sheds the radiance of kindness about her because she cannot help it--she
is the lovely lady whose charm we all feel. Truth and love are the
eternal foundations of the character of a real lady.




IX

THE PROBLEM OF CHARITY.


I suppose every large-hearted girl wishes to do some work which will add
to the happiness of others, and most girls would like to do a little, at
least, outside of their own immediate circle. It seems to me that the
most beautiful charity is always that which is done within one's own
circle. There is the personal giving, the real denial of ourselves for
others, the doing of the duties which come to us rather than of those we
have fancifully chosen. And these duties are done for love.

Do you remember how Mrs. Pardiggle in "Bleak House" tried to interest
Esther and Ada in some great schemes for doing good by wholesale, and
how Esther modestly answered that they hardly felt equal to such great
things, but that they hoped if they were careful to do all they could
for those immediately about them their circle would gradually widen?
This is the ideal way to do good. You help your neighbor simply without
any pretense or self-consciousness. She helps her neighbor, and so on.
There need be no break in the chain from lowest to highest. Mrs. Whitney
has taught beautiful lessons of this kind in her stories, emphasizing
the theory of "nexts." I have often thought this was the only kind of
charity which did not injure the giver; for the moment we try to help
those perceptibly below us we are apt to be condescending and to feel a
secret pride. Probably this inward satisfaction accounts for the
readiness of many people to undertake forms of missionary work, though
they are by no means thoughtful of those around them. There has often
been bitter criticism of foreign missions to the heathen on this ground.
Part of it is, no doubt, just. But as bitter criticism might be made of
much noble work at home, like that of the Associated Charities, for
instance.

In Boston, it is said, there is not one woman of any standing in society
who is not interested in some charity. Most of their work is probably
genuine. It is done from a sincere wish to do the best thing--very
likely in many cases simply to ease the importunate New England
conscience, yet also, no doubt, with the hope of relieving suffering.
But we can hardly hope that much of it is ideal since the true charity
is "Not what we give but what we share."

The women who are readiest to give their money and even their time to
the desperately poor do not like to share their pew in church with some
quiet person whom they consider below them in the social scale. Some one
tells of a woman who spent all her time in going about among the poor
giving practical help, but who really cared so little about those she
helped that every day on her return from her rounds she amused the
family by satirizing her pensioners. She could not love them, perhaps,
and it may still have been an excellent thing for her to help them.
Nevertheless, this was not the ideal charity.

There are a great many girls who would like to do some definite
charitable work. They would like to be the founders of a great charity.
They are ambitious, and their ambition is, on the whole, a noble one.
Some of them are so sweet and generous to everybody about them that I
really think they might be trusted to do something on a large scale. One
of them might even oversee an orphan asylum; yet I do not think she
could be such a blessing to little children as is a woman I know who is
the matron of such an institution, for this woman had an unsympathetic
step-mother, and she learned through a lonely childhood how to pity
motherless children, and I heard a thoughtful woman say of her orphan
asylum, "It was a shabby place, but beautiful to me because there was
such a motherly atmosphere about it."

Others of these girls are too intolerant of everybody outside their own
particular set to be allowed to do any work for the poor except to give
money, and even then there is danger they may be so lifted up by a sense
of their own goodness that perhaps it would be better for them
personally to spend the money extravagantly, for then they would
certainly be ashamed of themselves. Nevertheless, the poor need their
money, so perhaps it is better they should give it.

This brings me to another point. In the country it is still possible to
keep to the ideal neighborly charity, but in the city there are quarters
where the misery is wholesale, and wholesale scientific methods must be
applied to relieve it. The Associated Charities in Boston, for instance,
do a kind of work which must be done unless we are willing to sit down
and let all the innocent suffer with the guilty. And many of the leaders
have the ideal spirit, and they hold up ideal standards for the visitors
of the poor, that is, they ask us to visit the poor with love in our
hearts. The work to be done in cities is so enormous that every woman of
leisure who feels the desire to help should certainly be encouraged to
do so, and I am even inclined to think that where so well-organized a
system exists as in the Associated Charities, it is a saving of energy
for her to put herself under its direction though not so wholly as to
allow her no means or leisure for her personal sphere of action to
expand naturally.

As long as we try to do the nearest duties there will always be failure
enough to keep us humble and to make it safe for us spiritually to
undertake something beyond. A girl tries to help her brothers, and
instead of admiring her for it they frankly tell her how far she fulls
short. But if she does a tithe as much for the poor she is likely to get
some thanks, more or less sincere, and all her circle of friends admire
her. This pleasant encouragement does her no harm as long as she has the
antidote of the family criticism, so I would let every ardent woman have
some outside work, and the Associated Charities will find room for every
worker. Some women can help children by teaching them and amusing them,
and this is the most efficient kind of work, for it prevents crime and
misery. Some can sew for the poor, some can cook, some can manage
tenement houses as Octavia Hill has done.

To give what we call practical help we must be practical ourselves. I
think if the busy housekeepers who do their own work have time to visit
the poor, their suggestions are of infinitely more value than any given
by rich ladies who are making a business of charity; but such women have
little time, so the rich must humbly try to take their place.

I know a charming girl whose mother does not allow her to go into the
kitchen. She found great difficulty at school in learning the weights
and measures, and at last her teacher asked her if she had ever seen a
quart measure, to which she replied doubtfully that she was not quite
sure. A few years hence she is certain to be what is called a "friendly
visitor." I have no question about her friendliness, and the poor will
bless her sweet face, especially when she gives them money freely, as
she can easily do, but I should not expect her to be able to give them
very useful advice about spending money--which they need still more. It
must not be supposed, however, that I scorn the kind of work she can do.
There is something better to be done for the poor than to teach them
economy--even a wise economy--it is to rouse their higher nature. I
should think that no one could be an hour with this young girl without
having some aspiration to be noble.

A beautiful and graceful woman has a unique work to do for the poor. It
is on the same principle that the Princess of Wales can give pleasure by
simply distributing the flowers in a hospital with her own hands. It is
possible for beauty to condescend without wounding. A woman who is not
outwardly attractive must do a different kind of work. The first brings
a poetic element into a dreary life, and may even in this way arouse the
aspiration for an unattainable ideal. But a plain and awkward woman may
be the inspiration of a still higher ideal by the radiance of her
goodness.

When girls ask me, as they often do, _what_ they shall do for others, I
find it impossible to answer. Their talents and their opportunities must
decide the particular form of work. But its real value will depend
entirely on what they are. I can only say that there is so much work to
be done that each must do all she can; that she must choose the thing
she can do best and persevere with that quietly, not trying to do many
kinds of work at once; that all she does must be done with love; and
that above all things she must not forget that her own circle of family
and friends shows plainly the centre from which God wishes her to begin
to work.

To the women who live in the country the circle widens naturally and
beautifully. If a neighbor is ill, one sends in delicacies to the
invalid, another offers to take care of the children, and a third acts
as watcher. When a drunkard reduces his family to destitution, one
neighbor sends a breakfast to them, another flannel for the baby,
another finds work for the oldest girl, and another pays the boys a
trifle for bringing wood and water. The cases of actual destitution are
so few that they can all be met in this way unless the sufferers are too
proud to let their wants be known; and even then there is sure to be
some real friend who goes to see them naturally without any thought of
being a friendly visitor, and thus comes to the rescue.

Charity in the country is the natural flower of a loving heart. If a
woman has a beautiful home in the country, it stands for a refining
influence for the whole village, for she usually opens it to those of
her neighbors who can appreciate it, since in the country there are not
too many people, and those of like tastes meet without regard to
differences of fortune.

A woman in the country who has even a collection of photographs of
beautiful pictures can easily make them a real blessing to many who have
no other avenue open to art. And so with books. One owns a copy of
Plato, another of Dante, another of Goethe, and these books circulate
freely among all who care to read them. They are better than a public
library where the books must be hurried back at a given date. They are
sometimes even better than large private libraries where the number of
books is distracting.

I know a young lady who is the only highly educated musician in a little
country village. She sings in the choir and makes the church service a
new thing. She good-naturedly steps in and trains the children in their
choruses for festival occasions. She has invited half a dozen young
fellows to form a glee club and sing one evening a week in her parlor.
They all have musical talent, and they are capable of appreciating her
attractive manners, but they had not before thought of any better way of
spending their evenings than in screaming about the streets. If a poor
girl has a good voice, this young lady finds time to teach her to sing.
I do not think it ever entered her mind that she was doing charitable
work. The work was directly in her pathway. She could do it, and having
a large, loving heart, she has done it. But there is no one in the
village who has done so much to raise the tone of life there.

So the improvement of a country town goes on exactly in proportion to
the loving-kindness of the people and their willingness to share
whatever material and mental treasures they may have. Perhaps the same
is true in the city; but the number of treasures to be shared, as well
as the number of people to share them, is so bewildering that it is next
to impossible to bring form out of the chaos without employing
scientific middlemen, and the fascination about helping others almost
vanishes.

Nevertheless, let us cling to the doctrine that


     "'T is love, 't is love, 't is love that makes the world go round,"


and even in the city we may all have hope.




X.

THE ESSENTIALS OF A HOME.


Better is a dinner of herbs where love is, than a stalled ox and hatred
therewith.

That is, it is the family which makes the home, and this is even truer
of the mother and her daughters than of the father and his sons.
Sometimes even one sunshiny spirit in a house transforms it, and where
all the family are in harmony there cannot fail to be a home in the best
sense.

But there are virtues and virtues. "I admire Miss Strong, indeed I love
her," I heard a lady say not long ago, "but I can't imagine her making a
beautiful home under any circumstances." Yet Miss Strong is gentle,
sweet-tempered, thoroughly unselfish and high-minded, quiet and
unobtrusive, neat and well-bred. Then what is wanting in Miss Strong?

"I think it will be best for Jenny to teach," wrote another lady in
regard to a young girl in whom she was deeply interested, and whose
gifts and graces she had been cataloguing at great length. "At least,
what else is there for a woman to do who is thoroughly feminine but not
at all domestic?"

We think of unselfishness as the first need of a woman who is to be the
presiding genius of a home; but both Miss Strong and Jenny are
conspicuously unselfish.

It seems that though a fine character, and particularly a loving one,
must be the foundation of the home, yet certain special qualities are
necessary. Among the thousands who have read "Robert Elsmere" does any
one feel that Catherine, with all her earnestness and deep love of
others, made her girlhood's home a pleasant place? She was ready to give
up a home of her own, thinking her mother and sisters needed her, and
yet her sister Rose, at least, was secretly longing to be free from the
constant influence of such severe moral standards. In short, Catherine
did not make her home comfortable.

Comfort, I think, enters into every idea of a home. We wish to be
unrestrained there. That, however, is a different thing from being
lawless. There must be moral restraints, even for the sake of the
comfort itself. Otherwise, the freedom of one interferes with the
freedom of another, and finally the reaction tells in the discomfort of
all.

Physical comfort is necessary in a home. Some of the best women do not
understand this. They are disgusted with the sarcasm that "The road to a
man's heart is through his dinner." That would be disgusting if it were
the whole truth. But we must all eat every day of our lives, and
appetizing food prettily served adds much to the comfort of the day.
Indeed, without it only a boor or a saint can be really comfortable.

Women who are good cooks are sometimes ill-tempered and refuse to
exercise their art. But discomfort in the matter of dinner usually comes
from a different kind of housekeeper. There are some women who think it
is a weakness to care about food. Their rule is, "Eat what is set before
you, asking no questions," a sufficiently good rule for those who are
dining, but a miserable one for the housekeeper to force upon others.
There are still other women who have a definite opinion as to diet. They
have studied food from a hygienic point of view, and they watch the
effect of every mouthful. Such a study ought to be useful, but in point
of fact it is a frequent source of discomfort. Nothing ever digests well
when our mind is concentrated on our digestion. One difficulty may be
this. The women who have turned their attention to this subject have
often done so because they were invalids. They find certain food
injurious to them and decide it is injurious to everybody. So a whole
healthy household is restricted to the invalid's bill of fare. The
housekeeper is so certain she is doing her duty, that she easily steels
her heart against the murmurs of her family, and the discomfort
continues. A thoroughly healthy woman, however, will provide all the
better for her family if she understands the effect of different
articles of diet.

To be comfortable, a house should be warm enough. Of course, I do not
mean that we need to breathe the superheated atmosphere which foreigners
criticise in most American houses. It is the mother of the family who
must correct this. She can easily do so, because she has it entirely in
her power to form the habits of her children in this particular, and it
is rarely the case that a man likes an overheated room until he has been
trained by his more sensitive wife to bear it.

But I mean that nothing physical takes from the comfort of a home so
much as chilliness. So long as we are warm enough we may relish a very
frugal dinner, but a feast is unappetizing in a cold room. Indeed, I
believe we may economize in anything better than in fuel. It gives a
great sense of comfort in going into a house to find it warm all
through. Many people, however, cannot afford such luxury. But if you can
only have one fire in the house, see that that is always burning; and if
it must be in the kitchen in the cooking-stove, keep the stove so bright
that its black ugliness is a centre radiating cheerfulness. There are
plenty of homes in which there is no need of stint, where through
carelessness and neglect there are times when everybody in the house is
shivering, while perhaps at other times half the rooms are at a red
heat.

I remember one of Charles Reade's heroes who was wavering between the
attractions of two women, and the novelist represents the simpler of
the two as being careful that there should always be a blazing hearth
when the lover came. This innocent device gave him a sense of comfort
which almost won his heart. It seemed to me a touch of truth.

We cannot all afford open wood fires, though their beauty and
healthfulness make us wish we could; but most of us can keep the "clear
fire" and the "clean hearth," which Mrs. Battle wisely considered the
proper preliminaries to the "rigor of the game."

Though we want warm homes, we do not want close ones. Most houses are
not very well ventilated, and if we keep our windows open in winter
weather, we must expect our bill for fuel to be a large one. Some of us
are too poor to disregard this fact, but most of us could probably
afford to save enough in our dress to meet what I may call this
necessary extravagance. I have seen a great many landladies who looked
so severe on seeing a window open in a room where the register was also
open, that the unhappy boarder felt at once like a culprit for even
desiring both warmth and fresh air at the same time. Once, however, I
had the good fortune to know a woman of different views. She bought a
house expressly with the intention of letting it to transient lodgers.
She found, as is common, that the furnace-heated air which passed
through the registers into the rooms came from the cellar. She
immediately made alterations, so that the fresh outside air should be
heated and carried over the house. "It costs more," she said, "but dear
me! what is expense to fresh air?" Moreover she said so much to her
lodgers about the necessity of fresh air, that all the windows in the
house were always streaming open. "I once knew a lady who died of
pneumonia from airing her room too much," said the landlady, "but that
was a beautiful death!"

I doubt whether there is comfort under a system of ventilation which
induces pneumonia, but it certainly is luxury as well as comfort to let
in all the fresh air we want and not to stint fuel.

Plenty of light is another essential in a home. Most city houses are
deficient in sunlight, and most of them, however richly furnished, are
accordingly depressing. Whether or not the dreams of socialists can ever
be realized we do not know, but none is more alluring than that of the
disappearance of blocks of houses. If every house could stand in the
midst of its own garden, the gain would be as great in inner comfort as
in outward beauty.

No one can tell the amount of near-sightedness caused by the effort to
read and write in our dark city houses. Rich people ought to be
extravagant in the matter of light. Corner lots are worth buying, and it
is worth while to live on "streets with only one side."

And when natural light fails let us have enough of the artificial. Even
the poor who cannot have electricity or gas hardly need economize here
with kerosene at its present rates. A kerosene lamp, to be sure, is not
often a beautiful or poetical object, but with the right kind of care
the vile odor may be suppressed, and though this involves an additional
burden for the housekeeper, light is too essential for the work to be
grudged. A sufficient number of _clean_ kerosene lamps will make a house
cheerful from one end to the other. Now I have often noticed that women
who are compelled to economize in little things are inclined to
economize in all things. They will strain their eyes for fifteen minutes
after it is too dark to sew, they will sit in a room dimly lighted by
one lamp when two are necessary to make it attractive, without stopping
to think that twelve or fifteen cents worth of oil would supply three
large lamps for a week! And in this way they sacrifice not only
cheerfulness, but opportunities for all the family to do easy and
comfortable work.

Cleanliness is as essential in a home as over-neatness is destructive to
it. There is nothing homelike in any room that is in perfect order; but,
on the other hand, there is little of the home feeling in a room that is
not bright and fresh with cleanliness. Tables littered with books,
chairs and sofas strewn with gloves and ribbons, and even a floor
encumbered with a prostrate doll or two, are cheerful; a trail of
leaves and mosses from a basket of woodland treasures is endurable dirt.
But dust in the corners which shows the dirt to be chronic and not
accidental, unwashed windows, dingy mirrors, etc., etc., have no
redeeming quality. It is a good thing for the mother of the family to
love order, but there is ample scope for that in keeping every closet
and drawer and box and basket in a dainty condition. However neat a room
may be, it is odious the moment an open drawer or closet reveals
disorder. The meaning of this is that the disorder which comes from
daily happy living is delightful, and that is what we see in the large
confusion of a room when in use; but the disorder which comes from
carelessness about finding a convenient place for everything, and from
laziness about putting things in their places when we have done using
them, is not beautiful.

For the kind of neatness which makes a home homelike we must have room
enough, but not too much room. This is rather a vague statement, I know,
but the actual measurements of a house should vary with circumstances;
for example, a large room with few people in it will always be stiff,
even if it is splendid; while a small room filled with useless
_bric-à-brac_ will be uncomfortable even with a solitary occupant. On
the subject of _bric-à-brac_ I feel strongly, and I will speak of it
more fully elsewhere.

But I do not include pictures in the term _bric-à-brac._ There ought to
be pictures in every home for their intrinsic value. Fortunately they
take up little room and are easily kept in order. Many of us do not
agree about pictures. Most Americans who buy oil paintings advertise
their want of cultivation in their choice, and even those who rigidly
confine themselves to engravings and photographs of the old masters do
not succeed much better. I remember a man, the son of a country
minister, who knew pictures only from the literary side. He was a great
reader, and had been familiar with the names of Raphael and Da Vinci and
Dürer from childhood. He knew well what were their masterpieces, and
when he went abroad he bought hundreds of photographs of these works.
His house was full of pictures; there was not one among them which was
not a copy of something really beautiful, and not one copy which had any
beauty in itself. This man had not the sense of beauty, though he had
the moral sense which led him always to wish for the best.

But all any of us can do is to express the best we know. The essential
quality in pictures in our own homes is that they should express the
best we ourselves have reached. Still, many pictures of high artistic
merit are wanting in the real home charm. I believe most of those which
hang on our walls and are always before our eyes should be cheerful in
character. I sympathize with the old abbess who chose to have her rooms
frescoed with Correggio's happy cherubs, and who liked to have
constantly before her, though in a convent, his goddess Diana, whose
smile some one has said is full of "resolute sweetness."

I remember once having to pass a bitter hour of waiting in the
drawing-room of a physician well known for his high culture. Every
picture in the room was a work of art, but every one was solemn and even
severe. Dante, Savonarola, the tombs of the Medici, etc., etc., afforded
no escape from sad thoughts. The only relief was in the sweet serenity
of Emerson's face, and even in this instance the most severe of all the
portraits had been chosen. There was not one point of color in any of
the pictures, but indeed most of us cannot afford paintings that are
good for anything, so I could not quarrel with that.

For a daily companion I would rather have a Raphael than a Michael
Angelo, and though for love I would slip in a Millet or two, I should
not want a room full of Millets.


The heavy furniture of a home should be comfortable first of all. The
chairs should not all be of the same size and height any more than the
people. Arm-chairs are better than rocking-chairs, as they are less in
the way. The furniture should not be light enough to be easily
overturned, but the castors should always run easily. A lounge is a
homelike piece of furniture, but let us hope it need not be much used.

A word more to the young woman who is choosing furniture for half a
life-time. Fancy you have it to dust! You may have an army of servants,
but certain patterns of furniture can never be kept clean. I remember
two friends who chose furniture at the same time. It was the era of
black walnut and green rep, and they chose sets looking much alike. But
in one case the walnut was elaborately carved,--by machinery, which made
it all the rougher,--and there were many little grooves to invite the
dust in the upholstery; while in the other case the wood was simply
moulded and polished, and the cloth was so put on that one or two
vigorous strokes of a brush would cleanse it. It is true that heavy wood
carved by hand is beautiful enough to repay us for its care, but that
being smoothly finished does not catch very much dust.


The evening should be the crown of the day in a home. There are few
homes where the evenings are as homelike as they could easily be. This
is partly because there are so many outside attractions both in the city
and country. Now I am not of those who think it praiseworthy to be
always at home. I was told the other day of a steady young man who had
not been out an evening in three years. I felt no enthusiasm about him.
I think outside interests are absolutely necessary for any fresh or
large life. But I think when we find ourselves going out as many as half
our evenings, we are really dissipated, unless the circumstances are of
a very unusual character, for we need as many as three or four evenings
in a week to develop true home life. But in stay-at-home families,
though the evenings are pleasant, I think they are seldom ideal. The
reason for this is that the days are so crowded. The father and mother
are tired, and, moreover, the father has no other time to read his
unnecessarily voluminous newspaper, and the mother has no other time to
do her unnecessarily elaborate sewing, while the children generally have
lessons to study. Even then, a cosy room, with plenty of fire and light,
where all the family meet together and feel no restraint, is a cheerful
though a silent place. And we cannot all escape overwork however
valiantly we fight our battle with non-essentials. Those who work ten
hours in a factory, for example, have very little space for the other
essentials of life, and there must be crowding. But some of us could
simplify the day and so find room for unmitigated enjoyment in the
evening. Sometimes sewing is pleasant in itself when cheerful
conversation or reading is going on about us. I suppose the mother's
work-basket will usually form an attractive nucleus in any home picture,
and if there is not too much or too anxious sewing, I believe most
women like it. And a moderate newspaper need not monopolize a whole
evening. There are occasionally times when a careless child should be
made to study a lesson at night. But the ideal evening at home is
social, and its occupations are such that all can join in them. For
myself I believe very fully in reading aloud. But in any household happy
enough to consist of father, mother, and children, any book read aloud
ought to be one which has some interest for all. The father and mother
may both be intensely interested in the philosophy of Hegel, but I
should not like to think they would ask the children to be quiet that
they might read it aloud to each other. Books of travel, biography,
novels, and poetry, appeal to all but the very young members of the
family who ought to be in bed betimes. Of course the children do not
take in everything in such books, but that is not necessary. If they
only understand enough for enjoyment, it is a healthful stimulus to meet
with something they do not understand. Perhaps the father and mother
will say regretfully that they have no other time for their special
studies. In the end the light literature may do them as much good as
solid work, but even if it does not, they can better lose something
themselves in intellectual development while their brood of children is
about them than to miss the full rounding of their home life. If they
live long, they will have too many quiet hours by themselves. In many
families, however, the youngsters are more ready for solid reading than
the older people. It is often the elder sister who has to give up her
German and science to read travels and stories to her parents as well as
to the children.

Drawing, fancy work, sewing, and whittling can all go on without
disturbing the reading, or a tired mother can lie on the lounge and
listen; but if any one must sit idle, reading may grow tedious, though
good plays in which each can take his part are generally enjoyed. I was
once in a home in Switzerland where the family spent most of the
evenings in reading Racine, Molière, and Corneille.


No home is complete without music. Even a large piano which has seen its
best days does not seem to be altogether a cumberer of the ground where
another equally bulky piece of furniture would be unendurable. But
unless some member of the family has decided musical ability, the best
use of a piano or organ in a home is to sustain the uncertain voices in
singing. Home singing is almost a necessity even where no one sings very
well. I should not wish to encourage the unmusical to display their
voices outside their own doors; but if half a dozen members of a family
are able to "carry a tune," and one of them can play a simple
accompaniment correctly, I think the singing of fine hymns and pleasant
ballads at home will prove most delightful to them all, besides bearing
good fruit morally and physically. A family happy enough to have a
little higher endowment, and a little more cultivation, so that one
plays a violin, one a flute, and so on, may have a little private
orchestra which may give as much enjoyment, and, all things considered,
may be as elevating, as the perfect work of great musicians. It seems to
me that any father and mother who wish the home to be dear to their
children can afford to spend money on music far better than on many
things considered more essential--clothes for, example.

But all the family circle ought be able to join in the evening
occupations. If only one is a musician, but a small part of each evening
can be given to music. On the other hand, I have no mercy for the young
lady who has had time and money lavished on her musical education, who
will not take the trouble to play to her brothers in the evening. If she
distrusts her powers she need never play to other people who may ask her
out of compliment; but when brothers ask their sisters to play, they
mean that they want the music, and they should have it.

Chatting is pleasant in the evening, and does not interfere with a dozen
other occupations. One can even read a newspaper or a novel while the
rest are talking. Little twilight chats by the fire when the children
confess their misdemeanors to their mother, or when the mother tells
stories to the children, are full of the spirit of home, and there
always ought to be some leisurely hours in every family when the father
and mother and the grandfather and grandmother can relate old
experiences to the younger generation. If the older people would only
remember to tell these tales for the sake of the younger and not to
gratify their own garrulity, so that they would dwell more on the events
and customs and people of the past which ought to have a permanent
interest, I believe such chat would always be of the highest value, and
that the young would like it as well as the old; but when it is mere
gossip about people long dead the young have a right to be restless.
There is always danger that chat will degenerate into gossip, so it is
not generally best to have too many evenings devoted entirely to
conversation.

The right kind of reading and music seem to me far better occupations
for home evenings than games. There is too much hard work in chess and
whist and too little sociability to make them in any way desirable.
Euchre and backgammon seem invented to pass away time, which is so
precious to most of us that we should like to feel we had something at
the end of an hour by which our lives were richer than at the beginning.
Yet games have their place. Young-people have their times of liking
them. If they really enjoy them and play with thorough good temper,
they get true recreation from them, and all innocent enjoyment has a
moral effect as valuable as the intellectual effect of a good book. So a
mother who wishes to make a true home for her children will not grudge
whole evenings spent in games which would be unspeakably wearisome to
her if played with people of her own age; indeed, the chances are she
will thoroughly enjoy such evenings, and be as interested in capping
verses or asking twenty questions as any of the youngsters, while if she
is a worn and anxious mother, such simple pastime may be the best
refreshment. I believe there is less to be said in favor of cards than
of other games, but I often think of the words of a friend, "We are
strict people," she said, "but when the boys were growing up and began
to be wild for cards, we played regularly every evening till they were
tired of it, and I think they did not care to play elsewhere."


If a home is to be ideal, it must contain a father and mother and
children. A lonely man or woman who is so unfortunate as not to have
this ideal home should, I think, try to find as many of its elements as
possible. A man should not live altogether at his club, and it is a pity
for a woman to live permanently with women alone. And a home is so
incomplete without children that it seems almost necessary that every
childless man or woman should adopt one or two. Unfortunately this is
often impossible, and then it becomes the more essential to seek for a
boarding-place where we may get a little of the cheer of other people's
children and at the same time practice some of the virtues which
children always call out in older people. No home is truly homelike in
which there is not a large hospitality. I have so much to say on this
head that I must leave it for another chapter.


I have said little about the qualities of character which make a happy
home. Beyond a loving nature, on which all the others rest, I know of
nothing more essential than a serene temper. Let a woman be "mistress of
herself, though china fall." The daily temptations to irritation are
incessant, and irritability will destroy the comfort of any home, even
if it is well warmed and lighted and furnished with easy-chairs and
sofas, even if everybody is high minded and ready to take part in
refined pleasures, and even if room is made in the family circle for a
host of agreeable friends.




XI.

HOSPITALITY.


No home is genuine which is not also hospitable. Just as we must go out
to get fresh life, we must welcome fresh life which comes in to us. And
further than that it would be a poor nature which found no on

Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/20362