You need to realize the facts before you enter the profession. Were you my daughter, I am certain I should feel much less concern were you to enter the theatrical field.

And yet if you choose to stand by your ideals, and retain your self-respect, you can do so, and succeed in journalism.

If you have, as you say, observation, expression, humour, and ambition, you can create a style of your own: which will not necessitate the loss of all womanly sense of decency and pride in dealing with your fellow beings. It might be well for you to cultivate and add to the list of your qualities appreciation of all that is best in human nature and worthiest of respect. If you understand the law of concentration and demand, you can obtain an entrance to the people you wish to see, through the front hall and a properly engraved card.

If that fails, a polite and frank note, stating your purpose and intimating your self-respecting ideas of your profession, may prove effective. Once establish your reputation as an interviewer who is not a highwayman in disguise, and you will achieve tenfold the success your less reputable confreres gain in the long run. Try and remember always that fame, glory, or even crime, do not destroy all human sensibilities, or render the possessor invulnerable to the thrust of a pen.

The greatest warrior who ever conquered armies has still the power to feel hurt when he sees some personal blemish or misfortune described in print.

You would never be guilty of saying to any man's face, "How hideous your harelip renders you"—and why should you go from his presence and make such a statement to the whole world concerning him? One of the most gifted men America ever claimed was driven from his native land by the cruel, bald, and heartless personalities of newspaper critics, who seemed to consider it necessary to comment on his physical infirmities whenever his genius was mentioned.

During the lifetime of one of England's great literary women, an American correspondent who had been given an interview in her home described her as possessing the "face of a horse." Surely this was agreeable reading for a gifted woman whose genius had delighted thousands!

It has sometimes seemed to me that theatrical road life with a one-night-stand company would be less brutalizing to the finer sensibilities, and less lowering to the ideals of a young girl, than the method of work required of many newspaper reporters in America to-day. The editor who scores the actress for lax morals seems often to ignore the fact that there is a mental as well as a physical prostitution.

Look to it that you do not trail your banner of noble womanhood in the dust, at the demand of any editor or syndicate. Keep your purity of pen, as well as your chastity of body, and believe no man who tells you that you will get on better in the world by selling either. There is room higher up.



To Nanette

A Former Maid

Curiously enough, my dear little Nanette, I was thinking about you, and wishing to know something of you, the very day your letter came.

Of many who have been helpers in my employ, you were one of the few who seemed to care more for me than for the wages I paid.

There was between us that ideal condition which I wish might exist between all employers and employees. You wanted the work you were fitted to do, and I wanted such work done. You were glad of the money it brought you, and I was glad to recompense you. You wanted appreciation and sympathy and consideration aside from your earnings, and I wanted a personal interest in my affairs, and a friendly wish to please me, aside from the mere work well done. You never seemed to me less womanly or less refined because you were a wage-earner, and I did not represent to you oppression or monopoly merely because I paid the money and you received it. I took you into my confidence in many ways, and you made me feel I was your friend as well as your employer. We enjoyed cosy chats, and yet you no more desired or wished to be present at my social functions than you desired me to enter into all your merrymakings and pleasures. You were, in fact, one of the most agreeable and sensible women I have ever known in any station in life. And now you write me that you are engaged to be married, and ask me to give you counsel in a very serious matter.

Together with your other excellent qualities, you have possessed economy and prudence.

At the age of twenty-five you have a tidy bank-account, the savings of eleven years. This money is increasing, year by year, and drawing a small interest.

Now comes your lover, a hard-working and sober young man, so you say, but earning only a small salary as a clerk.

He has met with some reverses, and is temporarily embarrassed. He wants you to lend him a few hundred dollars, and he will pay you the same interest you are now receiving, but you fear it would be unwomanly on your part to take this interest money. At the same time you feel a reluctance to break in upon your savings, which you had planned to use in helping establish a home. You want to befriend your lover, and you want to be wise and careful, and so you write to me, your old-time adviser, for counsel. I fear I may hurt your feelings in what I am about to say.

I have seen much of the world, and have studied humanity in many phases and in many classes.

There is one type of man I have never yet known to be strong, reliable, and trustworthy,—a man for a woman to lean upon in times of trouble and sorrow,—a man I would like to see any friend take for a life companion,—and that is the young man who asks a loan of money from a woman he loves, or one who loves him. Believe me, there is some lack of real moral fibre in such a man.

A husband and wife many years married, and united by common interests, may become so one in purpose and thought that a common purse would be as natural to them as a common dinner-table.

With mutual interests, planning for their future and the future of their children, there could be no talk of "My money" and "Your money" between them.

But before marriage, or immediately after, the man who begins to ask a woman for the use of her purse, should be distrusted by her. He could not broach such a subject unless he lacked a certain refined strength which makes a manly man a woman's protector by nature. Even where no sentiment exists between a man and a woman, the really strong men of the world never become borrowers from women. If through friendly interest and affection some woman compelled such a man to take a loan, he would know no rest or peace of mind until he had liquidated the debt.

When a man is a woman's lover, and asks her to advance money to him for any reason, she may as well realize at once the reed on which she will lean if she accepts him for a life companion. To deceive herself for a moment with the idea that he will be a staff of strength, is but to delay disillusion. A vital quality is left out of his character.

He is but one step removed from the man who seeks a woman because she has money. And he is the most despicable of the human race.

I have known three women of different social positions to lend money to their lovers.

One man invested it and lost it, and never made an effort to reimburse the lady, who broke her engagement in consequence, after two unhappy years. Another went away owing the money, and was never again heard from. The third married the unwise woman who had loaned him her competence, and continued to look to her for support.

Therefore, my dear Nanette, I would urge you to think twice, and yet a third time, before you lend your fiance your savings.

Tell him frankly that you will feel more respect for him if he is willing to sacrifice comfort and save from his own income enough to lift the debt he has incurred, and that you are sure he will feel less humiliated as time goes by if he is not financially in debt to you. If he were to fall ill tell him it would be your first impulse to devote your money to his care; but while he is able-bodied and well, you do not like to have him lean on you for aid.

You can judge something of the man's character by the way he receives this statement from you.

And whatever may result, even if it is the end of your engagement, do not grieve your heart away over it. Better far to have the end come now than to marry a dependent and shiftless man, who will humiliate your pride by a thousand and one mean traits. The moment a young wife becomes the financial head of a household, and the man depends upon her to keep the family free from debt, sentiment and romance fly from the windows of the heart, and poor Cupid goes away with his head under his wing. This situation might befall people long married, as I said before, without causing disaster, because the wife would have years of other experiences stored up in memory, to maintain her respect for her husband.

The natural instinct of a manly man is to be the protector and the breadwinner. He loves to shield and support the woman of his choice. If she has any talent or profession which gives her satisfaction to pursue, and which yields her an income, he will, if broad-minded and sympathetic, place no obstacle in her path so long as this vocation is no barrier to their domestic happiness. But he is sensitive to her assuming any of the financial burdens of life.

If circumstances render it necessary for her to do so, he suffers keenly, and the utmost delicacy and consideration on her part alone can save him from utter humiliation.

This is the attitude of the manly man, my dear Nanette, the man who makes the good husband and father.

The unselfish, broad-minded and considerate wife will lead a husband to think of her right to aid in the establishment and maintenance of a home when she is able to do her part. But the man who makes a good husband never suggests it as her duty, or asks her to advance money.

It is commendable in you to wish to aid in making a home. It is unmanly in your lover to ask you to help him pay his debts. Beware of the lover who asks for or accepts a loan.



To The Rev. Wilton Marsh

Regarding His Son and Daughter

My dear Cousin Wilton:—You have no idea how your letter took me back to my merry girlhood, when you and I resided in the same neighbourhood, and I was the concern of your precociously serious mind. Yes, indeed, I do realize what a mistake you made in living the repressed life you did all those early boyhood years. What a pity your parents reared one of your sensitive and imaginative nature in the gloomy old doctrines of a depressing religion, which so misrepresented the God of love: and how odd that your father and mine should have been born of the same parents, educated in the same schools, and yet be no more alike in beliefs or methods of life than two people of a different race and era.

And again it is not strange, when we realize that hundreds of generations lie back of both parents, and innumerable ancestors of both father and mother contribute their different mentalities to the children in a family. Back of that is the great philosophy of reincarnation—the truth of which impresses me more and more each year I live.

Do you recall your horror the first time I told you I had read a book on reincarnation, and confessed that it had made me anxious to study the theory?

You said I was a pagan and a heathen, and that I would surely be damned forever unless I turned to the way of salvation.

And do you recall your misery when I seized you one evening at your birthday party (you were twenty), and dragged you about the room in a waltz? That is, I waltzed, while you hobbled about like a lame calf, much to the amusement of most of the company.

There were more who sympathized with my views of life than with yours. You were such a wet blanket on our youthful spirits. Your ever-blazing lake of brimstone did not even serve to warm the blanket.

I have been gratified to watch your growth the last ten years.

You have so changed your point of view, which indicates your real worth and progressive good sense. And when you tell me that you have for years regretted your lost opportunities for natural and moral pleasure, and that you suffered beyond your power to describe in those old days in conquering your desire to dance and play games, it brings the tears of mingled rage and pity to my eyes. Rage at the old theology, and pity for the poor children whose lives were shadowed by it.

And now what you tell me of your son and daughter proves another of my theories true, and shows me how nature revenges its wrongs.

Children, my dear Wilton, especially the offspring of strong characters, inherit the suppressed tendencies of their parents. They bring into action the unexhausted impulses and the ungratified desires of those parents.

The greatest singers are almost invariably the offspring of mothers or fathers who were music hungry, and who were given no complete gratification of this craving.

The poet, you will find, is the voice of an artistic-natured parent, who was forced to be emotionally dumb.

And the proverbial clergyman's son is merely the natural result of the same cause. He is charged with the tendencies and impulses which his father crucified.

That your son loathes study, and hates church-going, and adores a brass band and a circus, and runs away to the races, does not in the least surprise me. Nor that your sixteen-year-old daughter grows hysterical at the sound of dance music, and prefers a theatrical show in your village hall to a Sunday-school picnic, and is mad to become an actress.

They are your own wronged and starved emotions personified, and crying out to you for justice.

The very best thing for you to do with the boy is to put him into a gymnasium and a football team as soon as possible. Offer no opposition when he wants to see a good horse-race. Urge him to go, and ask him to tell you all about it when he returns. Begin right now to get close to the heart of your children.

Once you do that, once you convince them you are near enough to their lives to understand their needs and to try and gratify their natural longings, all your worries will take wing and fly away; for your children will cease to hide and cloak their actions and natures, and they will no longer wish to deceive or attempt to defy you.

Send your daughter where she can learn dancing, in company with other refined and well-bred young people. You have so far emancipated yourself from your old superstitions and beliefs that this action on your part will not antagonize the desirable members of your congregation.

Only a remnant of the old bigots and intolerants are to be found in any congregation of intelligent people of to-day.

If that remnant is shaken out of its winding-sheet by being antagonized, you may galvanize it into life.

At all events, do not endanger the peace of your home and the happiness of your children, for fear of antagonizing a few parishioners of arrested spiritual development.

Give your son and daughter an outlet for the youthful vitality which is like steam: a moving power when used, dangerous and destructive when pent up.

Take young Wilton and Rebecca into a room, and talk the whole matter over.

Tell them how deeply you love them, and how you have just come to realize the mistake you have made in trying to eradicate from them the natural desire for wholesome pleasure instead of giving it proper avenues of expression.

Say frankly that you see your error, and that you intend to rectify it.

Ask their cooeperation, and appeal to their good taste and affection not to mortify or humiliate you in your position of clergyman, by overstepping the bounds of decorum or discretion.

Lead them to talk of their ambitions and desires, and, as consistently as you can, gratify them.

Let your daughter come to me for a season. I will help to reshape and modify her ideals of enjoyment to some degree.

I am sure if she sees a few of our best spectacular plays, and hears good music, and enjoys beautiful rhythmic dancing, she will not be so carried away with the travelling show.

I will acquaint her with some of the commonplace facts concerning the lives of theatrical people, and show her the frayed tinsel and worn faces by daylight. This will do more for her than all your sermons on the dangers of a theatrical career.

The young heart is fascinated with the thought of danger and temptation.

It is repelled by the commonplace and the ugly.

When you talk to a young mind in a whisper and behind locked doors about a temptation to be avoided, you but give edge to appetite and curiosity.

When you bring the temptation out into the glare of sunlight, and speak of it in presence of the whole world, you dispel the illusion.

I will gather together some data concerning the sporting men of America, and send your son. I will also mail him the sporting papers regularly. Let him talk and read openly about the subject, and it will lose half its weird charm.

He, too, should learn to dance, swim, fence, and ride. His bounding vitality needs directing in wholesome channels. I have never understood the prejudice against dancing.

To me, it is a form of religious praise of the Creator of youth, health, vitality, and grace. I have always loved dancing, and the exercise, besides being eminently beneficial to the health and wonderfully conducive to grace is, to my thinking, highly moral in its effect. Its only danger lies in wrong associations, and these seem to threaten young people who are restricted from the enjoyment in their homes and among their rightful companions.

I cannot help thinking that Loie Fuller should have a niche in the hall of fame, among the "Immortals," for having given the last century her exquisitely beautiful creations in dancing.

No woman has given us a great epic, or a great painting, or a great musical composition, but she has given us a great dance-poem, which is at the same time a painting and a song. Oh, you poor starved, blind soul, to be deprived of such beautiful spectacles. How I pity you, and how I pray you to give your children the privileges you have missed through a belittling idea of your Creator.

Do you fancy God would punish beautiful young Rebecca for dancing, any sooner than he would blight the willow-tree for waving its graceful arms to the tune the wind-harps play?

Come up out of the jungles of ignorance and bigotry, my dear cousin, and live on the hilltops and bring your children with you. For there you will all find yourself nearer to God and to humanity.



To Mrs. Charles McAllister

Formerly Miss Winifred Clayborne

I am glad that for once you have written and asked my advice before you began your course of action.

You wrote me after you entered Vassar and asked me what I thought of your doing so.

You wrote me after you married Doctor McAllister, and asked me what I thought of that. My reply was a wedding gift and a telegram of good wishes. Now, after three years of married life, you write again and ask me to decide a question which has caused some discussion between you and the doctor.

"He did not take my view of the matter at first," you say, "but he does now. Still, I feel that I would like another unprejudiced opinion before I take the contemplated step. You knew I left college before finishing my course. I was in love and the doctor urged me not to make him wait another year. He said I knew enough to make him happy, and so I consented."

Then you proceed to tell me that you have never regretted this step, and that you have the best husband in the world. But you have decided musical gifts, and before meeting the doctor you intended going abroad to cultivate them after you finished at Vassar. This old ambition has taken hold of you again, and you want to join a friend, one of your classmates, who sails in June to study art in Europe. You desire to take a two or three years' course, and then you will be equipped with an accomplishment which could be made a profession if necessity demanded.

"One never knows what the future holds," you say, "and it is the duty of every woman to make the most of herself." Both remarks are as true as they are trite. An almost graduate of Vassar should be more original in expressing herself.

But there is another duty a woman should not forget—the duty to stand by her marriage vows and to make her husband a good wife. It seems the doctor did not eagerly approve your idea at the beginning. I am glad he did not. Unless a wife is in a precarious state of health or has an ailing child, I always suspect the honesty of a husband who cheerfully seconds her suggestion of a protracted absence from home.

When a man shows no regret at having his wife away for an entire season, there is something wrong with his heart.

Love does not find its home there, or he could not speed her going so far, and for so long a time, at the bidding of ambition or pleasure. You evidently have won the doctor over by argument, and made him feel that he is selfish to tie you down or clip the wings of your ambition. The American husband is so fearful of seeming a tyrant. "He realizes now," you say, "that a woman has the right to develop the talents God gave her just as a man does, and that it is a wrong against her 'higher self' to crush down these ambitions. He realizes, too, that this separation means greater powers of usefulness for me in the future, and greater opportunities for pleasure. It will be a long and lonely time for both of us, as I shall only come home once or twice and the doctor may not be able to go over at all, though I hope he will. But the expense of my studies will of course be great, and we shall both need to economize. It is my intention to start a little conservatory after I return and take a few high-priced pupils. In that way I can reimburse our expenditure."

But can you, my dear Winifred, reimburse your mutual losses in other ways? You do not seem to realize what such a separation may mean. You are both young and both attractive. I know now that you are beginning to be angry at my suggestion, but, fortunately, you cannot interrupt me, and you must hear what I have to say.

Of course you are not a frivolous flirt, or a silly-headed creature with no ideals or principles. You have nothing of the adventuress in your composition, but you are a young woman, with personal charms and talents, and life will be unutterably desolate for you if you make a recluse of yourself. You will be surrounded by people of artistic temperaments and tastes, and I know, if you do not, that many of these people do lack ideals, and some of them lack principles and take pride in the fact. "Art for art's sake, life for pleasure's sake," is their motto. The entire situation will be full of danger for you. But far more danger will surround your husband. A man's temptations are always greater than a woman's. That is, there are more temptations in his pathway, from the fact that he is by nature and environment less guarded and protected, and the penalties for folly are less severe. And of all men, unless it is a clergyman, a physician is most exposed to temptation. He is the confidant of hysterical women and the sharer of domestic secrets. Many a woman believes she is ill only because she desires the sympathy of her doctor, just as many a woman fancies herself disturbed with religious agitation only because she wants the society of her minister.

Of course a doctor of any character or principle does not compromise his reputation or disgrace his calling readily. I hear Doctor McAllister spoken of as a man of high standing, and his picture shows a well-balanced head and an honest, manly face. But "A man's a man for a' that," my dear Winifred.

We must accept facts as they exist all about us, and we must not demand of half-evolved human beings what we would expect of wholly divine creatures. It is an unnatural position for a man to be separated from the wife he loves for months and years.

Unless he is sustained by intense religious beliefs, extreme sympathy or sorrow for her (as he might be were she compelled by some great trouble or duty to be absent), it is impossible for him not to grow in a measure forgetful of his ideals of constancy, and to drift into bachelor habits of distraction. Men do a thousand and one things for amusement which no woman could or would. Gilded and glittering halls of vice are inviting the inspection and patronage of men who are left at home by journeying and pleasure-seeking wives.

I know this terrible statement to be absolutely true—gambling-houses and dens of infamy speak of their "best season" when wives leave town for summer outings, just as a farmer speaks of his harvest season when crops are ripe. I do not suppose your husband will seek the companionship of gamblers or depraved souls during your absence. Men as seemingly high and strong as he have fallen so low, but I do not believe he will. Yet, so long as we know such conditions exist, and so long as men as a class take the liberties they do when left to find distraction and entertainment, it seems to me little less than criminal when a young wife like yourself deliberately leaves her home and husband for the sake of any possible attainment.

You have no right to marry a man and then to make his happiness and his comfort secondary to your ambitions.

If he had neglected you, if he failed to support you, if he was not loyal to you, it would be different.

But you say he is "the best of men," and that you never have regretted marrying him.

Then let me beg of you to stand by him, as a wife should, and to make what progress in your music you can at home, and wait until your husband can accompany you before you go abroad to study.

The highway of divorce is crowded with the student wives who have been "abroad to study," leaving their husbands at home to earn the money. Do not be one of them.

There are greater things than a satisfied ambition, and a clean, happy, united married life is one.



To Mrs. Charles Gordon

Concerning Maternity

I have tried to imagine myself in your place, as you requested, before answering your letter.

To be the mother of two children, and to know that a third may be added before the fifth anniversary of your wedding, is for the most maternal of women a situation requiring rare patience and much philosophy.

I know that your strength is depleted, that you are nervously unstrung, and I can understand your despondent state of mind.

It seems to you that all romance and sentiment in life is being sacrificed to breeding the species. You feel that you have some personal privileges as a wife and a woman, not less than a mother.

Like yourself, I do not believe woman's only mission in life to be the production of offspring, yet I consider motherhood the highest privilege accorded her who has for it the right physical and moral qualities.

Only strong, sensible, and healthy women should become mothers, and it is a mistake for even such as they to be kept constantly in that occupation.

You possess all the requisites, and you ought to bring fine children into the world, since you married the man you loved, and have been happy with him.

But I can understand your reluctance to pass through the ordeal which modern motherhood in civilized races means, for a third time, in so short a period. But try and take another view of the situation.

Benjamin Franklin was the fifteenth child of a poor tallow chandler. It is altogether probable that his coming seemed a misfortune to his mother, taxed with the care of such a brood. Think what the world would have missed had he not come to earth.

Then think of this unborn child as something wonderful and divine, given to you to perfect. Believe it is to be the greatest blessing to you and to the whole world.

Cultivate love and protection in your heart for it.

Tell yourself every hour of the day that the God of love will not desert you or deprive you of strength and courage for your ordeal. That he will be ever near, and sustain and comfort you.

Desire all beautiful and good qualities to be given your child, and resolutely turn away from the contemplation of anything that is hideous, or unwholesome, or depressing.

Look for pleasing objects, read cheerful and uplifting books, and from infinite space call to you all ministering influences.

Consider how short a time, when compared to the span of human life, expectant motherhood occupies, and realize the vastness of its influence upon the nature of the child, and through that nature upon all humanity.

Once you grasp that consciousness, you will feel your closeness to the Creator of all things.

Indeed, there is no other being on earth so nearly Godlike in power as the mother who realizes what her influence over her unborn child may be.

The hard and painful path for you to walk is but a short one compared to the long roadway to eternity for your child.

Perhaps some great statesman, or some great artist, or some great scientist or philosopher is lying under your heart, and it is in your power to make or mar his development. Perhaps a Joan of Arc, or a Rosa Bonheur, or a Martha Washington will crown you with pride.

Such genius and influence for good as the world has never before known, from mortal sources, may be given to it through your unborn child. How wonderful your privilege, how vast your power!

Only a few short months, and then the growing wonder of a child's unfolding mind, to beautify your days.

Think of it in this way, dear little tired and nervous woman, and God and all his angels will hover over you, I know, and all will be well with you.

My prayers are with you.



To Mr. Alfred Duncan

Concerning the Ministry

And so you have changed your plan of life and, instead of becoming an experimenter with the flesh, are going to be a healer of souls.

And what do I think about it? I am glad you are not to be an M.D. There is an era coming when the doctor will be a prehistoric creature. Oh, it is far, far away, but already the most progressive minds have ceased to regard the family physician as an infallible being.

Medicine has made the least progress of any of the sciences in the last few centuries.

Credulity has cured more people than pills.

Were you to study medicine, I should advise you to take up surgery, osteopathy, electricity, the Kneippe Cure, milk diet, and all the various methods of stimulating circulation; for the people who patronize these treatments are increasing, as the powder and pill patrons are on the decrease.

Then, too, I should urge you to make a careful study of mental and spiritual methods of cure, that you might be wholly equipped for the dawn of the new age. You are a young man, and you will probably live to see a wonderful change in the treatment of disease, and to find the physician of the old school relegated to the historian.

But just as carefully you should now survey the religious horizon, before beginning your studies for the ministry.

It is utterly useless to stand with lifted eyes and say, "The faith of my parents is good enough for me—good enough for all mankind."

Had the children of ancient Salem said that, and their children repeated it, you would probably be lighting faggots at this moment to roast a "witch," instead of a brother of the opposite creed.

The narrow, intolerant old dogmas have been forced into elasticity by the later generations, and the broadening work still goes on.

It makes no difference how satisfied you may be with a prospective lake of fire for your enemies, the congregations you are to address will not listen to that style of sermon as did your grandparents.

Only the ignorant minds to-day harbour ideas of cruelty and revenge in connection with a Creator.

Thinkers find such theories inconsistent with religious belief. Individual thought is leading to individual faith.

Where once I believed in a universal church for all the world, I now believe in a separate creed for each soul, one fashioned to suit his own particular need, with the underlying basis of love for all created things as its foundation.

Let each man worship in his own way, and follow his own ideal of duty to God and humanity.

If it is the pleasure of one to give up all his worldly goods, and to go and live and labour among the poor, wish him Godspeed; but if another keeps his place among men of affairs, makes money honestly, and uses it unselfishly, let him, too, have your blessing, since he is setting a good example for the worldly-minded. If one man finds himself nearer to God on Sunday by going out and peacefully enjoying the beauties of nature and the association of his kind, do not try to convince him that he is on the highway to perdition because he does not sit in a pew and listen to depressing sermons.

The day is over for that type of clergyman to succeed.

Make a study of the needs of men to-day, and suit your sermons to those needs.

Men need to know more of the wonders of God's universe. Talk to them in a brief, concise, interesting manner of the recent discoveries of science, and their frequent remarkable corroboration of the old religious theories. Thousands of years ago, in Egypt and India, wise men said that metals and all created things possessed life, and were a part of one great immortal whole, of which man was the highest expression.

Science is "discovering" and proving the truth of many statements made by those old seers and savants. Call the attention of the men of to-day to this fact, and set them thinking on the wonders of the immortal soul.

The man of to-day is an egotist regarding his scientific achievements. He has grown to think of himself as a giant before whose material success all other things must give way. He believes that he has discovered, invented, photographed and made profitable all the "facts" of the universe, and is inclined to regard with intolerance any idea beyond his own mechanical domain.

Tell him how much was divined thousands of years ago, and lead him to realize the mighty depths of the unsounded ocean of his own being.

To know your own triple self, body, mind, and spirit, and to make yourself a complete man, with the body beautiful, the mind clear, the spirit radiant, is better than to have all the Bibles of the ages, in all their ancient languages, at your tongue's tip.

Help men to the building of character, which shall enable them to be honest in street and mart, unselfish in home and society, and sympathetic to their fellow pilgrims.

Salvation is gained as a house is built, brick by brick, day after day, not by spasmodic efforts one day in the week, and the destruction of that effort in the remaining six.

And each man must be his own mason, and select and lay his own bricks. All the clergyman can do is to act the part of overseer.

The man who goes to another, and expects his prayers to save him, is like the mason who expects the "boss" to do his work, while he draws the pay. Do no man's task—physical, mental, or spiritual. That is not friendship or religion. Your work is to stimulate others to do their own work, think their own thoughts, and live their own lives.

The world to-day demands facts to sustain faith.

Spiritual facts are to be obtained.

Find them: for once convinced of the continuation of life beyond the grave, and of the necessity to earn its privileges, by self-conquest and character-building, humanity will rise "from the lowly earth to the vaulted skies," and will realize that this earth is but the anteroom to larger spheres of usefulness.

Go forth and find—go forth and find, and do not be afraid to strike out of beaten paths and avoid ruts. Cultivate spiritual courage. It is what few clergymen possess, and it will give you individuality at least.

Preach the religion of happy harmonious homes. Make men and women realize that heaven must begin here, in order to continue farther on, and that the angelic qualities, of love, sympathy, goodness, appreciation, must be rehearsed in the body, before they can be successfully enacted in full-dress angel costume with wings.

God will not care for the eternal praises sung about his throne by a man who swears at his wife on earth, or a wife who nags her husband and children. It is no use expecting a role in a continuous performance of happiness in heaven, if you do not learn one line of the part on earth.

Make your congregations think of the necessity to live their religion in earth's commonplace daily situations.

That is the religion the world needs.



To Mr. Charles Gray

Concerning Polygamy

All that you say, regarding the excitement over the seating of your Salt Lake Senator, is quite true.

I have visited your city, and have made the acquaintance of many of your people, and I know the private life of the gentleman you sent to represent you in Washington is beyond reproach.

He is a good husband, a good father, a good citizen. He was born of a polygamous father and mother, and his childhood's home was a happy one. He was educated in the belief that it was wrong for a man to cohabit with any woman not his wife, but right for him to marry many wives.

He has not married many wives, however, and does not intend to. His private life, his domestic life and his financial record are all clean and clear of stain.

So much cannot be said of many other Senators and Representatives at our capitol.

Good women are horrified when seeking government positions to find how the sacrifice of virtue is demanded as payment for influence.

These statements cannot be evaded or denied. Let one who questions them investigate the conditions existing in Washington in the past and to-day.

What a record it would be were every girl and woman who had been led into the path of folly by married Senators and Representatives to come forth and tell her story!

There are clean, decent, high-minded men in both houses. There are good citizens, good patriots, good men there.

But so long as one married seducer and misleader of women retains a seat in either house unmolested, so long as one man stays who is unfaithful to his marriage vows, the opposers of the Senator from Utah should base their objections on other than moral grounds.

But despite the facts you bring to bear on your argument, that polygamy leads to more morality in the homes of the land than our present conditions illustrate, I must disagree with you.

I am opposed to polygamy. Any social arrangement which licenses men to possess several women, to give full rein to their desires, is a block to the wheels of progress.

Not until man learns the lesson of self-control, as woman has learned it, will humanity reach its highest development.

Not until man ceases to place himself on a par with the unreasoning male animal, when he argues on the subject of the sexual relations, will he become the master of circumstance he is meant to be.

One man and one woman living sexually true to each other is the ideal domestic life. Better strive toward that ideal, and fail and strive again, than to lower it and accept license and self-indulgence as the standard, under some religious name.

Polyandry and polygamy are both evidences of a crude and half-evolved humanity.

They belong to a society which has not learned the law of self-control as a part of its religious creed and the march of progress. The light of science makes havoc of all such primitive conditions.

You tell me that your father was the husband of three wives, and that all lived under one roof in sisterly love, and that you never heard an unkind word spoken in your home, and that all three wives loved you as a son. You tell me your father held high ideals of womankind, and that the existence of a fallen woman was impossible in your community.

Now I contend that any woman who accepts less than the full loyalty of the man to whom she gives herself for life has fallen from woman's highest estate. She lowers not only herself, but the whole sex.

To take a third of a man's love, and to share his physical and mental and spiritual comradeship with two other wives, is far more immoral, to my thinking, than to take the whole of a man without legal authority.

It drags down and belittles woman in the eyes of man. It is useless to contend that such conditions lead to respect.

There is too much of the big male I, and the little female you, in the arrangement. There is too much of the old idea that God made man, and accident made woman, for man's use. There is too much of self-indulgence for the man, and repression for the woman,—a condition which has blocked the highest development of the race for centuries.

Meanwhile, I think it a great pity that society does not hold the expectant mother in the same reverence as in your community. That is certainly a lesson we can learn from the Mormons. And that explains why your children, born of polygamous mothers, are stronger physically, and more universally endowed mentally, than the average children in the world at large.

Mothers were guarded and protected and revered, and children were made welcome, and no such crime as darkens our own social world—the crime of destroying embryo life—was known in your midst.

It is a glorious heritage to give a child this parental love and welcome. It lasts through eternity.

But it does not seem to me that it is necessary to have polygamy prevail in order to produce right conditions for the propagation of offspring. In time the world will realize the importance of teaching men and women how to become good parents.

It will learn, too, the magnificent results to be obtained from one moral code for both sexes, and this result could never be obtained in a polygamous community.



To Walter Smeed

Concerning Creeds and Marriage

Before you left us, I realized that you and my pretty secretary were finding matters of mutual interest.

Therefore, I am not surprised that you are thinking seriously of her as a future companion.

Rosalie is a charming, intelligent, warm-hearted, excellent girl, and there is no reason why she would not make you a good wife, save the one you mention—the difference in your creeds.

You are a Roman Catholic, Rosalie is a devout Protestant.

Were the cases reversed, and were you the Protestant and Rosalie the Catholic, I should say the chances of happiness were greater than as conditions now stand.

As a rule, the most religious man is more liberal than the religious woman. And when marriage between a Roman Catholic and a Protestant is the question, there is need of greater liberality on the part of the Protestant than on that of the Catholic.

Why? Because with the Protestant there is no consideration to be thought of outside of his or her own convictions and feelings.

With the Catholic, the power of the Church and the law regarding the rearing of the children in its faith walks beside the contracting party, sits at the table, and sleeps on the marital couch.

There is no happiness for the husband or wife who has entered into such a marriage, after the arrival of children, unless the laws of the Church are obeyed.

When the wife is a Catholic, the fact that she is a good woman and true wife satisfies the Protestant husband, as a rule, and he makes no objection to her carrying out the contract with her Church regarding the education of the children.

If they are as moral and good as their mother, he does not care what faith occupies their hearts or in what way they worship God.

But to the mother this is a matter of vital importance.

Woman is by nature more devout than man.

Woman is by nature more tyrannical than man.

Take those two characteristics, and add to them the tendency of many women to bigotry and intolerance, and it makes the matter of creeds vital in marriage.

Rosalie is broader-minded than many women, yet she is devoted to the Congregational Church, and rarely misses attendance.

It will be an easy matter for her to accept your faith for yourself and to allow you to attend your own church, and she is, I am sure, broad enough to go with you occasionally, if you request it.

But when she becomes a mother, and the children's minds are unfolding, I doubt her willingness to have them brought up in any faith save her own.

To an unwedded girl in love, a child is a very indistinct creature.

To a mother, it is a very real being.

I have seen men as deeply in love as you are, with women as liberal-minded as Rosalie, become very unhappy after marriage through the opposite ideas of the wife regarding the education of children.

You must remember how much more closely a mother's life is entwined about her children, and how much more of their association usually falls to her than to the father.

This is especially true of daughters, and is true of sons up to a certain age.

You can understand, I am sure, how much more companionship a mother would find in children who accepted her faith and attended her church than in those whose spiritual paths led in another direction.

I know Rosalie realizes that a good life, not a certain creed, leads to the goal she seeks, after this phase of existence closes, and she does not ask you to change your faith. But while she would also believe her children were on the road to that goal, she would want them to walk through her path and by her side.

It will be hard to relinquish the woman you love, to-day, for the children who might not come to-morrow.

Yet I can give you the counsel you asked on this matter only from my personal observation of similar unions.

I should advise you to try an absence of some duration, and to forget Rosalie if you can, since you have not yet declared yourself.

Better a little temporary sorrow than a life of discord.

As you grow older your religion will, in all probability, gain a stronger ascendency over your nature, and the church to which you belong is very tenacious in its hold upon its members.

Rosalie is not of a yielding nature, and as I said before, she is more devoted to her church than most young women of the day.

The physical phases of your love blind you now. But these phases are only a part of the tie which must bind husband and wife to make love enduring through all of life's vicissitudes.

There must be mental companionship, and to be a complete union there must be sympathy in spiritual ideas.

The very young do not realize this fact, but it is forced upon the mature.

Marital love is like a tree. It first roots in the soil of earth, and then lifts its branches to the heavens. Unless it does so lift its branches it is stunted and deformed, and is not a tree. Unless it roots in earth it is not a tree, but an air-plant or a cobweb.

You want to be sure the tree you are thinking to make a shelter for your whole life, will have far-reaching and uplifting branches, and will not be merely an earth-bound twig.

Since your church permits no second marriage save by the door of death, do not make a mistake in your first.

Take a year, at least, of absence and separation, and think the matter over.



To Sybyl Marchmont

Concerning Her Determination to Remain Single

It is with genuine regret that I learn of your determination to send my nephew out of your life. Wilfred is a royal fellow, as that term is employed by us. He is what a man of royal descent in monarchies rarely proves to be,—self-reliant, enterprising, industrious, clean, and with high ideals of woman.

Eight years ago I declined a request of his for a loan, and told him my reasons—that I believed loans were an injury to our friends or relatives. My letter seemed to arouse all the strength latent in his nature, and he has made a remarkable record for himself since that time. I have known that he was deeply in love with you for the last two years, and I had hoped you would listen to his plea. He tells me that you imparted your history to him, and that you say it is your intention to remain single, as you would not like to bring children into the world to suffer from the stigma upon your name. He has shown me your letter wherein you say, "I am not in fault for having to blush for the sins of my parents; but I would be in fault if my children had to blush for the blemish upon the name of their grandparents. I do not feel I could meet their questioning eyes when they asked me about my parents. I can better bear the loss of the personal happiness of a home and a husband's love."

Wilfred is just the man to protect you and to keep the world at a distance, where it could not affect your life by its comments. He regards your birth in the same light that I do, and would rather transmit your lovely qualities of soul and mind to his descendants than the traits of many proudly born girls who are ready to take him at the first asking: for you must know how popular he is with our sex.

I can not believe you are insensible to his magnetic and lovable qualities, but, as you say, you have been so saddened by the sudden knowledge of your history that it has blunted your emotions in other directions. I can only hope this will wear away and that you will reconsider your resolve and consent to make Wilfred the happy and proud man you could, by becoming his wife.

Never forget that God created love and man created marriage.

And to be born of a loveless union is a darker blight than to be born in love without union.

But what I want to talk about now, is your determination to live a single life and to devote yourself to reclaiming weak and erring women. You are young to enter this field of work, yet at twenty-four you are older than many women of thirty-five, because you have had the prematurely ripening rain of sorrow on your life. I know you will go into the work you mention with the sympathy and understanding which alone can make any reformatory work successful. Yet you are going to encounter experiences which will shock and pain you, in ways you do not imagine now.

You are starting out with the idea of most sympathetic good women, that all erring souls of their own sex fall through betrayed trust, and broken promises, and misplaced love. Such cases you will encounter, and they will most readily respond to your efforts for their reformation. But many of those you seek to aid will have gone on the road to folly through mercenary motives, and this will prove a vast obstacle.

When a woman sells to Mammon, under any stress of circumstance, that which belongs to Cupid, there is something left out of her nature and character which renders the efforts of the reformers almost useless. You know all real, lasting reform must come from within. The woman who has once decided that fine apparel, and comfort, and leisure, are of more value to her than her virtue usually reaches old age or disease before the reformer can even gain her attention. You will find many such among your protegees, and you may as well leave them to work out their own reformation, and turn your energies to those who long for a better life.

It is that longing which means real reformation. To paraphrase an old couplet—

The soul reformed against its will Clings to the same old vices still.

I do not believe in a forced morality, save as a protection to a community. I believe in it as a legal fence, but it possesses no value as a religious motive. It helps to save society some annoyance, but it does not materially improve the condition of humanity. Such improvements must come from the desire of men and women to reach higher standards. So, after you have planted a little seed in the mind of the mercenary Magdalene which may in time sprout and grow, pass on, and find those who have gone wrong from other causes, and who are longing for a hand to lead them right.

And of all things do not expect a girl who has lived in the glare of red lights, and listened to the blare of bands, and worn the ofttimes becoming garb of folly, and stimulated her spirits with intoxicants—do not expect her, I say, to suddenly be contented with quiet and solitude, and drudgery, and cheap, unlovely garments, and goodness. Give her something to entertain her and to occupy her mind, give her something to live for and hope for and to be pleased over, besides the mere fact of reformation. The opium victim, you must remember, can not at once partake of wholesome food and be well and happy in the thought that he has given up his drug. Neither can the folly victim. The standards of happiness and contentment which the moral woman has always found satisfactory, she too often considers sufficient for the sister who has wandered from the path. But they are standards which, once lost, must be gained step by step, painfully and slowly. They are not reached by a bound. As much as possible keep your reformed sister's mind from dwelling on the past, or from talking of her mistakes and sins. Blot them from her memory by new and interesting plans and occupations. The way to live a new life is to live it.

And our thoughts and conversation are important parts of living. Instead of praying aloud to God to forgive her sins, show the God spirit in yourself by forgiving and forgetting and helping her to forget.

And now a word about yourself.

You are twenty-four, lovely, sympathetic, fond of children and animals, wholesome and normal in your habits, without crankiness, and popular with both sexes. While there are many wives and widows possessed of these qualities, there seems to be some handicap to the spinster in the race of life who undertakes to arrive at middle age with all the womanly attributes. Almost invariably she drops some of them by the wayside. She becomes overorderly and fussy—so that association with her for any length of time is insupportable—or careless and indifferent. Or she may grow inordinately devoted to animal pets, and bitter and critical toward children and married people.

She may develop mannish traits, and dress and appear more like a man than a feminine woman.

She may ride a hobby, to the discomfort of all other equestrians or pedestrians on the earth's highway. She may grow so argumentative and positive that she is intolerant and intolerable. And whichever of these peculiarities are hers, she is quite sure to be wholly unconscious of it, while she is quick to see that of another. Now watch yourself, my dear Sybyl, as you walk alone toward middle life; do not allow yourself to grow queer or impossible. It was God's intent that every plant should blossom and bear fruit, and that every human being should mate and produce offspring. The plant that fails in any of its functions is usually blighted in some way, and the woman who fails of life's full experiences seems to show some repellent peculiarity. But she need not, once she sets a watch upon herself; she has a conscious soul and mind, and can control such tendencies if she will.

It is unnatural for a woman to live without the daily companionship of man. The superior single woman must make tenfold the effort of the inferior wife, to maintain her balance into maturity, because of her enforced solitude. As the wife-mother grows older she is kept in touch with youth, and with the world, while the opportunities for close companionship with the young lessen as a single woman passes forty, unless she makes herself especially adaptable, agreeable, and sympathetic.

And this is what I want you to do. At twenty-four it is none too soon to begin planning for a charming maturity.

If you are determined upon a life of celibacy, determine also to be the most wholesome, and normal, and all around liberal, womanly spinster the world has ever seen.

Peace and happiness to you in your chosen lot.



To Mrs. Charles Gordon

Concerning Her Sister and Her Children

No, my dear Edna, I do not think it strange that you should seek advice on this subject from a woman who has no living children.

It seems to me no one is fitted to give such unbiased counsel regarding the training of children as the woman of observation, sympathy, and feeling, who has none of her own.

Had I offspring, I would be influenced by my own successes, and prejudiced by my own failures, and unable to put myself in your place, as I now do.

A mother rarely observes other people's children, save to compare them unfavourably with her own. I regret to say that motherhood with the average woman seems to be a narrowing experience, and renders her less capable of taking a large, unselfish view of humanity.

The soldier in the thick of battle is able to tell only of what he personally experienced and saw, just in the spot where he was engaged in action.

The general who sits outside the fray and watches the contest can form a much clearer idea of where the mistakes occurred, and where the greatest skill was displayed.

I am that general, my dear friend, standing outside the field of motherhood, and viewing the efforts of my battling sisters to rear desirable men and women. And I am glad you have appealed to me while your two children are yet babies to give you counsel, for I can tell you where thousands have failed.

And I thank you and your husband for reposing so much confidence in my ideas.

I think, perhaps, we had better speak of the postscript of your letter first. You ask my opinion regarding the chaperon for your sixteen-year-old sister, who is going abroad to study for a period of years. Mrs. Walton will take her and keep her in her home in Paris, and Miss Brown also stands ready to make her one of three young girls she desires to chaperon and guide through a foreign course of study in France and Germany.

You like the idea of having your sister in a home without the association of other American girls, until she perfects herself in French, but you are worried about Mrs. Walton's being a divorced woman. Miss Brown, the spotless spinster, seems the safer guide to your friends, you tell me.

I know the majority of women would feel that a single woman of good standing and ungossiped reputation was a safe and desirable protector for a young girl.

The same majority would hesitate to send their girls away with a divorced woman.

But as I remarked in the beginning, I have stood outside the fray and watched similar ventures, and I have grown to realize that it is not mere respectability and chastity in a woman which make her a safe chaperon for a young girl,—it is a deep, full, broad understanding of temperaments and temptations.

Had I a daughter or a sister like your sweet Millie, I would not allow her to live one year under the dominion of such a woman as Miss Brown for any consideration. Why? because Miss Brown is all brain and bigotry. She is narrow and high, not deep and broad.

She is so orthodox that she incites heresy in the rebellious mind of independent youth. She is so moral she makes one long for adventure. She would not listen to any questioning of old traditions, or any speculative philosophizing of a curious young mind, and she would be intolerant with any girl who showed an inclination to flirt or be indiscreet.

Your sister Millie is as coquettish as the rose that lifts its fair face to the sun, and the breeze, and the bee, and expects to be admired. She is as innocent as the rose, too, but that fact Miss Brown would never associate with coquetry.

She would class it with vulgarity and degeneracy. Miss Brown is a handsome woman, but she has no sex instincts. She does not believe with the scientist, "that in the process of evolution it is only with the coming of the sex relation that life is enabled to rise to higher forms."

She believes in brain and spirit, and is utterly devoid of that feminine impulse to make herself attractive to men, and wholly incapable of understanding the fascination that Folly holds out to youth. She has never experienced any temptation, and she would be shocked at any girl who fell below her standard.

She would carefully protect Millie from danger by high walls, but she would never eradicate the danger impulse from her nature by sympathetic counsel, as a more human woman could.

Mrs. Walton is a much better guide for your sister.

She ran away from boarding-school at seventeen, and married the reckless son of a rich man. She had a stepmother of the traditional type, and had never known a happy home life. She was of a loving and trusting and at the same time a coquettish nature, and she attracted young Walton's eye while out for a walk with a "Miss Brown" order of duenna. The duenna saw the little embryo flirtation, and became very much horrified, and preached the girl a long sermon, and set a close watch upon her actions.

There was no wise, loving guidance of a young girl's life barque from the reefs of adventure. It was homily and force. The result was, that the girl escaped from school before six weeks passed, and married her admirer.

He was fifteen years her senior, a reckless man of the world, even older in experience than in years. He proved a very bad husband, but his young wife remained with him until his own father urged her to leave him. She was quietly divorced, and has lived abroad almost ever since, and holds an excellent position in the French capital, as well as in other European centres, and she is most exemplary in her life. Mr. Walton is now an inmate of a sanitarium, a victim of paresis.

I can imagine no one so well fitted to exert the wisest influence upon Millie's life as Mrs. Walton.

There is a woman who has run the whole gamut of girlish folly, and who knows all the phases of temptation. She knows what it is to possess physical attractions, and to be flattered by the admiration of men, and she has passed through the dark waters of disillusion and sorrow. She would be the one to help Millie out of dangerous places by sympathy and understanding, instead of using sermons and keys.

She would mould her young, wax-like character by the warmth of love, instead of freezing it by austere axioms.

Miss Brown would make an indiscreet young girl feel hopelessly vulgar and immodest; Mrs. Walton that she understood all about her foolish pranks, and was able to lead her in the better paths.

Miss Brown prides herself upon never having lost her head with any man.

Mrs. Walton is like some other women I have known, who have made mistakes of judgment. She lost her head, but in the losing and the sorrow that ensued she found a heart for all humanity.

There are women in this world whose cold-white chastity freezes the poor wayfarer who tries to find in their vicinity rest and comfort and courage.

Other women cast a cooling shadow, in which the sun-scorched pilgrim finds peace—the shadow of a past error, from which spring fragrant ferns and sweet grasses, where tired and bleeding feet may softly tread.

Mrs. Walton's life casts the shadow of divorce on her pathway, but it is only the warm, restful shadow of a ripening and mellowing sorrow. Do not fear to have Millie walk in it.

It will be better for her than the steady glare from a glacier.

I find I have said so much about your sister that I must reserve my counsel about your children for another letter.

Your postscript was brief, but pregnant with suggestion, and called for this long reply.

I shall write you again in a few days.



To Mrs. Charles Gordon

Concerning Her Children

Your wish to have your son, who is now four years old, begin to develop the manly qualities, and your oldest daughter, who has reached the mature age of three, start wisely on the path to lovely womanhood, is far from being premature.

"The tree inclines as the twig is bent," we are told.

Most mothers wait until the tree is in blossom before they begin to train its inclination.

Your boy is quite old enough to be taught manly pride, in being useful to you and his sisters.

Such things are not successfully taught by preaching or scolding or punishing; but are more easily inculcated by tact and praise, object-lesson and play.

A four-year-old boy is all ears when his father's praises and achievements are recounted. Any father, save a brute, is a hero in the eyes of his four-year-old son. I am sure Mr. Gordon has many admirable traits you can use as interesting topics.

Tell little Charlie how proud you are to have a son who will be like his father, and attend to the needs of and look after the interests of his mother and sisters.

Make him think that to be of service to you or his sisters is one of the first steps toward manhood, as indeed it is.

When he performs any small kindness, praise his manliness.

Teach him to open doors, and to make way for women and elders, as a part of manly courtesy.

Speak with gentle disapproval of the unfortunately common type of American boy who pushes women and older people aside to scramble into public conveyances and secure a seat before them.

Say how proud you are that your son could not be guilty of such unmanly conduct.

When you are walking with him, call his attention to any woman or child or poor man in trouble, and if his services can be of use, urge him to offer them.

I saw one day a small boy spring to the aid of an old coloured woman who had dropped a lot of parcels in the street, and I thought it was a certain evidence that his mother was a rare and sweet woman. For the manners of little boys are almost invariably what their mothers make them.

Awake early in his heart a sympathy for the deformed, the crippled, and otherwise unfortunate beings.

There is no other country where such vulgar and heartless curiosity, and even ridicule, is bestowed upon grotesque or unsightly types of humanity, as in America.

A little dwarfed girl in New York City committed suicide a few years ago because she was so weary of being laughed at and ridiculed by her associates in the street and at school.

Think of that, in this Christian age, and in the metropolis of America!

An old street peddler was set upon by school-children and so annoyed and misused that he became insane.

Another was injured by street children—the children of the public schools—and died from the effects of their abuse.

This is the fault of mothers who have never deemed it their duty and privilege to awaken the tender and protective qualities in the character of their children.

Speak often to your boy of the pathos of dumb animals dependent upon human thoughtfulness for food, drink, and decent usage.

Say what a privilege it seems to you to be able to befriend them, and to be a voice for them in making others realize their duty to our dumb brothers.

Obtain interesting books on natural history and read stories of animal life to your boy. Instruct him in the habits of beast, bird, and insect, and talk to him of the wonderful domestic instincts and affections in many of our speechless associates. The exhilaration of the wild bird, and the happiness of the deer and the hare in the woods and fields, call to his mind day by day. It will be more gratifying to you when he is man grown to feel he is the loving friend and protector, rather than the skilled hunter of bird and beast.

The higher order of man does not seek slaughter for amusement. He realizes that he has no right to take, save for self-protection, that which he cannot give.

Make your son a higher order of man by developing those brain cells and leaving the destructive and cruel portions of the brain to shrink from lack of use.

Even in his play with his inanimate toys, you can be arousing the best or the worst part of your boy's nature.

The child who whips and screams at his hobby-horse usually, when a man, whips and bellows at his flesh and blood steed.

Tell him the play-horse is more easily managed by coaxing and petting, and that loud voices make it nervous and frightened.

Suggest water and feed at suitable times, and express sorrow for the horses with no kind boys to look out for them.

Start a humane society in the nursery and make your boy president and your little girl honorary member, and act as treasurer and secretary yourself.

Give him a medal when he offers food to a hungry street animal or speaks to a driver cruel to his horse, or performs any other kind act. This will be interesting play to your children, and it will be sowing seed in fallow ground.

Your baby girl is already old enough to take pride in picking up the toys she scatters, and putting her chair where it belongs. Make it a part of your hour of sport with her to help her do these things. She will not know she is being taught order.

I learned this lesson from a famous author whose baby son was anxious to play about the library where his father was at work.

The first act of the toddler was to toss all the books in sight upon the floor and to sit down and turn the leaves, hunting for pictures. This performance interested him for half an hour, when he proceeded to seek new fields of action.

"But now let us have great fun putting all the books back just where we found them," cried the tactful father, with a wink and a laugh, which made the child believe he was to enjoy the sport of his life. And it was made sport by the foolish pranks of the father who knew how little it took to interest a child.

The next day, and the next, the same fall and rise in the book market took place, but on the fourth day the father was too deeply engrossed in work to assist in the replacing of the books: when, lo! the small lad, after a wistful waiting and unanswered call, proceeded to put the books all back alone.

The first important brick in the foundation wall of order was laid.

So you can teach your little girl all the womanly habits of method, and order, and neatness, and system, if you have the patience to act the part of playmate with her a few moments daily.

As she grows in understanding and years, keep yourself at her side, her nearest friend. Let her feel that she can express her every thought to you, and that every question which presents itself to her developing mind, you will seek to answer to the best of your ability.

Be her confidant, her adviser, her friend, and let her find pride and happiness in doing things for you.

Never act as maid or domestic to your daughter.

Be the queen and make her your first lady-in-waiting, and show her the courtesy and appreciation her position demands from royalty. She will be a better daughter, and a better wife and mother, later in life, if you do not make the mistake of the average American mother of waiting upon her from the cradle to the altar. Let her grow up with the quiet understanding that you are to be first considered, in matters social and financial. Your wardrobe must be as well looked after as her own, and if there is to be economy for one, let her practise it.

The daughter who has a whole household sacrificing and toiling for her pleasures is spoiled for a wife and woman. The most admirable young women I have known—and I have known many—are those who were taught to take it as a matter of course that the mother was first to be considered, and lovingly served.

Do not be afraid of making your daughter vain by telling her the attractive features she may possess.

Some one else will if you do not, and it is well for her to hear it from lips which may more successfully offer counsel afterward. A certain confidence in her own charms gives a sensibly reared young woman a poise and self-possession which is to be desired. A touch of feminine vanity renders a woman more anxious to please, and more alert to keep always at her best.

But beware of having her acquire egotism. Silly conceit is the death-blow to higher attainments and to all charm.

Teach your daughter early the accomplishment of listening well. She will be certain to please if she understands its value.

A woman who looks the converser in the eyes, and does not allow her glance to wander and become distrait, and who does not interrupt before the recital is finished, can be sure of popularity with both men and women.

Give both your son and daughter confidence in themselves and belief in their power to achieve. There is tremendous power in the early inoculation by the home influence of self-confidence, when it is tempered by modesty and consideration for others.

Remember whatever in your own bringing up seems to-day unfortunate, and avoid it in the training of your children.

Remember whatever was good and helpful, and emulate it.



To Miss Zoe Clayborn Artist

Concerning the Attentions of Married Men

I am sure, my dear niece, that you are a good and pure-minded girl, and that you mean to live a life above reproach, and I fully understand your rebellion against many of the conventional forms which are incompatible with the career of a "girl bachelor," as you like to call yourself. But let us look at the subject from all sides, while you are on the threshold of life, in the morning of your career, and before you have made any more serious mistakes than the one you mention.

For it was a mistake when you accepted Mr. Gordon's telephone message to lunch alone with him at a restaurant, even though you knew his wife might not object.

Mr. and Mrs. Gordon are happily married, parents of several children. They are broader and more liberal and more unselfish than most parents, and they went out of their path to extend courtesies to you, a young country girl—at first because you were my niece, then because they liked you personally.

When I first wrote Mrs. Gordon that you were to open a studio in Chicago after your course of study in the East, she expressed deep interest in you, and seemed anxious to have you consider her as a friend—always ready to act as a chaperon or adviser when you felt the need of wiser guidance than your own impulses.

Mrs. Gordon knew that your experience of the world was limited to a country village in the West, and two years' study at the Pratt Institute. While there she knew you boarded with a cousin of your mother's, and enjoyed the association and privileges of the daughters of the home.

To start alone in Chicago, and live in your studio, and dine from a chafing-dish, and sleep in an unfolded combination bureau and refrigerator—has more fascinations to your mind than to Mrs. Gordon's. She was reared in comfort, bordering on luxury, and while her early home life was not happy, she enjoyed all the refinements and all the privileges of protected girlhood.

She knows city life as you cannot know it, and, although she discards many of the burden-some conventions of society, she realizes the necessity of observing some of its laws.

She wanted you to feel that you had the background of a wholesome home, and the protection of clean, well-behaved married friends in your exposed situation; her attitude to you is just what she would want another woman to hold toward her daughter, were she grown up and alone in a large city.

You have been her guest, and she has been your good friend. Mr. Gordon admired you from the first, and that was a new incentive for this most tactful and liberal of wives to befriend you. She always cultivates the women he likes.

This is excellent policy on the part of a wife. If the husband has any really noble qualities or possesses a sterling character, he will appreciate and respect his wife's confidence, and never violate it; and added to this, he will usually become disillusioned with the women he has admired from a distance, when he sees them frequently at too close range.

A wife can make no greater mistake than trying to fence her husband about and obtruding high walls between him and the women he admires. Far better bring them near and turn on the calcium light.

Mr. Gordon is a born lover of the fair sex, a born gallant. He is, at the same time, a clean, self-respecting man. But he has grown a trifle selfish and a bit vain of late years.

He does not fully realize what the interesting family of children he shows with such pride to his friends has meant to their mother.

It has not occurred to him that to be the mother of three children, the youngest one year old, after six years of married life, has required a greater outlay of all the mental, moral, and physical forces than has been demanded of their father.

He is a good husband,—yet he is not the absolutely unselfish and liberal and thoughtful husband that Mrs. Gordon is wife.

If she seemed to you at all nervous, or less adaptable to your moods than he, you should stop and consider the many causes which might have led to this condition.

You are young, handsome, gifted, and unconventional, and all these things appeal to men. You can attract all the admirers you want, and more than you need, to enlarge your ideas of life, and extend your knowledge of human nature.

You say your ambition is to know the world thoroughly,—that it will aid your art.

I think that is true, if you do not pass the border-line and lose your ideals and sacrifice your principles. Once you do that, your art will lose what it can never regain.

And remember this, my dear girl, no human being ever lived or ever will live who gained anything worth having by sacrificing the golden rule. In your search for knowledge of the world, and acquaintance with human nature, keep that motto ever before your soul's sight, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."

You say Mr. Gordon said or did nothing in that tete-a-tete luncheon his wife might not have heard or seen, but the fact that he talked entirely about you and art, and other universal subjects, and seemingly avoided any reference to his wife and children, surprised you.

And now you are wondering if you did wrong to accept this invitation. Never accept invitations of any kind from married men, unless the wife or some member of the family is included.

No matter how willing the wife may be to have you enjoy her husband's company, avoid tete-a-tete situations with benedicts.

You say you are not egotistical enough to imagine Mr. Gordon had any hidden motive for wanting to be alone with you, or for seemingly forgetting in his conversation that he was a husband and father. Yet I can see that in a measure it disillusioned you.

You do not ask a man to fling his wife and children at the head of each woman he meets, but you like him to recognize their existence.

You are a young, romantic girl seeking the ideal.

You want to find happy wives and husbands,—men and women who have sailed away from the Strands of Imagination to the more beautiful land of the Real, from whose shores they beckon you, saying: "Here is happiness and great joy. Come and join us, and feel no fear in flinging the illusions of youth behind you."

If married men only knew that is what young women are seeking,—if married women only knew that is what young men are seeking, what reconstruction would take place in the deportment of husbands and wives!

Never yet did a married woman indulge in flirtatious or sentimental converse with a bachelor without lowering herself and all women in his heart of hearts.

Never yet did a married man seem to forget his domestic ties in the presence of single women without losing a portion of their respect, however they may have been flattered by his attentions.

In every man's heart, in every woman's, is this longing to find husbands and wives who are satisfied and happy and proud, above all other things, of their loyalty.

It would be well for you to keep this fact before the minds of the men you meet. You can, in a small way, do your little toward educating on this subject the married men you encounter. And you can save yourself some embarrassing experiences.

It is no compliment to you if the husband of your friend, or a stranger, falls in love with you.

It is an easy matter for a young, attractive woman to infatuate irresponsible men.

It is a far greater compliment to you when women respect and trust you, and when you help elevate the ideals of weak men regarding your sex.

You can study the whole Encyclopedia of Manhood without breaking through the glass doors of your friend's bookcases. And you can live a free, unconventional life without sacrificing one principle, though you may ignore some customs. It is not the custom in conventional society for young women to go to theatres or dinners alone with young men. Yet I am perfectly willing you should join the large army of self-supporting, self-respecting, and well educated girls who do these things. You have been reared with that American idea of independence, and with that confidence in your ability to protect your virtue and good name, which carries the vast majority of our young women safely through all the vicissitudes of youth, and sends them chaste wives to the altar. Our American men understand this attitude of our girls, and half of them respect it, without being forced to, as the other half can be, if woman so wills.

There is no reason, to my thinking, why you should not enjoy the companionship of interesting bachelors and widowers, and take the courtesies they offer, with no chaperon but your own pride, taste, and will. So long as you know, and these men know, that you are doing nothing and going nowhere you need remember with shame or regret, the next day, just so long you are on no dangerous path.

But you must draw the line at married men, happy or unhappy. Any confidential, tete-a-tete companionship of a single woman with a married man cheapens her in the eyes of all other men and women.

It is a simpler matter to drift into free and easy manners and call them "bohemian" than to cleanse your reputation of their stain, or lift your mind from the mire to which they inevitably lead.

Once a woman begins to excuse her lawless conduct on the ground of her "artistic temperament," there are no depths to which she may not sink.

Take pride in being at once independent yet discreet; artistic, yet sensible; a student of men, yet an example of high-minded womanhood; an open foe to needless conventions, yet a staunch friend of principles; daring in methods, yet irreproachable in conduct; and however adored by men, worthy of trust by all women.

Do not take the admiration of men too seriously. Waste no vitality in a rage over their weaknesses and vices. Regard them with patience and inspire them to strive for a better goal than self-indulgence.

You can safely take it for granted that many who approach you with compliments for your charms, and pleas for your favours, would make the same advances to any other attractive girl they chanced to encounter.

Too many young women mistake a habit for a grand passion. And they forget, while they are studying man, that he is studying woman, and testing her susceptibility to flattery and her readiness to believe in his simulated infatuation.

Do not fall into the error of so many young country girls in a large city, and imagine you can establish new laws, create a new order of things, and teach men new lessons.

A great city is like an ever-burning fire,—the newcomers who thrust in their fingers will be scorched and scarred, but the fire will not be changed or extinguished.

Keep out of the fire.

There is no reason why you should scar yourself or smoke your garments while keeping comfortably warm.



To Mr. Charles Gordon

Concerning the Jealousy of His Wife After Seven Years of Married Life

I have read your letter with care. I can readily understand that you would not appeal to your wife's mother in this matter upon which you write me, as she has been the typical mother-in-law,—the woman who never gets along well with her children, and who never wants others to succeed where she fails. I recollect your telling me how she marred the wedding ceremony, by weeping and fainting, after having nagged her poor daughter during twenty years of life, and interfered with her friendships, through that peculiar jealousy which she misnamed "devoted love."

And now you are afraid that your wife is developing the same propensity, and you ask me to use my influence to cure her of it in its incipiency. You think I stand closer to Edna than any other friend.