sang Eve. "Ah, there they are! I am so tired that I could fall asleep here, if there were but a reed to lean against!"

"Appoggiatevi a me" sighed a murmurous voice in her ear, with musical monotone.

A little shiver ran over Eve, but no soul saw it; in an instant she knew the sound that had all day haunted the sea-turn; yet she could neither smile nor be angry at Luigi's simplicity; with a peremptory motion of her hand, she only waved him away, and fortified herself among her companions, who, thoroughly awakened, made the night ring as they wended along. They rallied Eve, then grew vexed that she refused the sport, and kept silence awhile, only to break it with gayer laughter, elate with life while half the world was stretched in white repose. At length they paused to rest in the lee of a cottage that seemed more like a hulk drawn up on shore than any house, but matted from ground to chimney in a smother of woodbine.

"A picturesque place," said one of the chevaliers.

"And a picturesque body lives in it," replied another. "The beauty of the fisher-maidens. I have seen her out upon the flats at low tide digging for clams, barefooted, the short petticoats fluttering, a handkerchief across her ears,—and outline could do no more."

"I have seen her, too," said Eve. "Though she lives in the belt of sunburn, she is white as snow,—milk-white, with hazel eyes. She has hair like Sordello's Elys. She is a girl that dreams. Let us serenade her till she sees visions."

And Eve's voice went warbling lightly up, till the others joined, as if the oriole in his hanging nest not far away had stirred to sing out the seasons of the dark.

"The hours that bear thy beauty prize Star after star sinks numbering,— The laden wind at thy lattice sighs To find thee slumbering, slumbering!

"Ah, wantonly why waste these hours That love would fain be borrowing? Soon youth and joy must fall like flowers, And leave thee sorrowing, sorrowing!

"Ye fleeting hours, ye sacred skies, Sweet airs around her hovering, Oh, open me the envied eyes Your spells are covering, covering!

"Or only, while the dew's soft showers Shake slowly into glistening, Let her, O magic midnight hours, In dreams be listening, listening!"

And their voices blended so together as they sang, and the plunge of the sea came on the east-wind in such chiming chord, that they never heeded the old mandolin whose strings in humble remoteness Luigi struck to their tune. But mingling the sound of the sea and the sound of the strings in her memory, it seemed to Eve that Luigi was fast becoming the undertone of her life.

* * * * *

But Luigi was not to be abashed. Faint heart never won fair lady, he said to himself, in some answering apophthegm. And thereat he summoned his reserves.

At noon of the next day, Eve, having run down-stairs into the room where her mother sat, stood before her during the inspection of the attire she had proposed as possible for an approaching masquerade some weeks hence. She wore a white robe of classic make, and over its trailing folds her bright hair, all unbound from the heavy braids, streamed in a thousand ripples of scattered lustre, the brown breaking into gold, the gloss lurking in tremulous jacinth shadows, tresses like a cascade of ravelled light falling to her feet, shrouding her in a long and luminous veil,—such "sweet shaken hair" as was never seen since Spenser and Ariosto put their heads together.

"Come sta?" said some one in the doorway. And there stood Luigi, having deposited his tray of images on the steps, holding up a long string of birds'-eggs blown, tiny varicolored globes plundered from the thrushes, bobolinks, blue-jays, and cedar-birds, and trembling upon the thread as if their concrete melody quivered to open into tune.

For an indignant instant Eve felt her seclusion unwarrantably violated; she turned upon the invader with her blushes, and the venturesome Luigi blenched before the gaze. Still, though he retreated, a part of him remained: a slender brown hand, that stretched back in relief against the white door-post, yet suspended the pretty rosary; and there it caught Eve's eye.

Now it was Euterpe that Eve was to represent at the masquerade; and what ornament so fit and fanciful as this amulet of spring-time, whose charm commanded all that hour of freshness, fragrance, and dew, when the burdened heart of the dawn bubbles over with music? Yet the enticement was brief. Eve looked and longed, and then hurriedly turned her back upon the tempting treasure, her two hands thrusting it off. "Behind me, Satan!" cried she, tossing a laugh at her mother; and Paula, the stately servant who had followed her down, signified to Luigi that the door awaited his movements.

Then the hand quietly withdrew, and his footstep was heard upon the threshold. It was arrested by a sound: Eve stood in the doorway, gathering her locks in one hand, and blushing and smiling upon him like sunshine, whether she would or no.

"You are very kind," said she, hesitating, and fluttering out the broad, snowy love-ribbon that was to ornament her lute, "but, if you please,—indeed"—

"Indeed, the Signorina cares not for such bawbles," said Luigi, sadly, covering her with his gaze. Then he turned, mounted his tray again, and went slowly down the street, forgetting to cry his wares.

Perhaps, after this, Luigi felt that his situation was desperate; perhaps despair made him bold,—for, having already spoiled Eve's pleasure for the day, that same evening found him in her mother's garden, half hidden in the grape-vines, and watching the movements in the lighted room opposite, through the long window, whose curtain was seldom dropped.

It was a gay old town in those days, kind to its lads and lasses, and if the streets were grass-grown, it seemed only that so they might give softer footing to the young feet that trod them. Almost every night there was a festival at one house or another, and this evening the rendezvous was with Eve. The guests gathered and dallied, the dancers floated round the room, the lovers uttered their weighty trifles in such seclusion or shadow as they could secure, the voices melted in happy unison. Eve, with snowy shoulders and faultless arms escaping from the ruffle of her rosy gauzes, where skirt over skirt, like clinging petals, made her seem the dryad of a wild rose-tree just rising and looking from her blushing cup, Eve flitted to and fro among them, and, all the time, Luigi's gaze brooded over the scene. Sometimes her shadow fell in the lighted space of turf, and then Luigi went and laid his cheek upon it; it passed, and he returned once more to his hiding-place, and the dark, motionless countenance, with its wandering, glittering eyes, appeared to hang upon the dense leafage that sheltered all the rest of him like a vizard in whose cavities glowworms had gathered. And more than once, in passing, Eve delayed a moment, and almost caught that gaze; she was sensible of his presence there, felt it, as she might have felt an apparition, as if the eyes were those of a basilisk and she were fascinated to look and look again, till filled with a strange fear and unrest. It grew late; by-and-by, before they separated, Eve sang. It would have been impossible for her to say why she chose a luscious little Italian air, one that many a time at home, perhaps, Luigi had heard some midnight lover sing. Through it, as he listened now, he could fancy the fountain's fall, the rustle of the bough, the half-checked gurgle of the nightingale, upon the scented waft almost the slow down-floating of the scattered corolla of the full-blown flower. The tears sparkled over his face, first of delight, and then of anger. Something was wanting in the song,—he missed the passionate utterance of the lover standing by the gate and pouring his soul in his singing.

Suddenly the room was startled by the ring of a voice from the garden, a voice that outbroke sweet and strong, that snatched the measure from Eve's lips, flung a fervor into its flow, a depth into its burden, and carried it on with impetuous fire, lingering with tenderness here, swift with ardor there, till all hearts bounded in quicker palpitation when the air again was still. For deep feeling has a potency of its own, and all that careless group felt as if some deific cloud had passed by.

As for Eve, what coquetry there was in her nature was but the innocent coruscation of happy spirits, the desire to see her power, the necessity of being dear to all she touched. Far from pleasant was this vehemence of devotion; the approach of it oppressed her; she comprehended Luigi as a creature of another species, another race, than herself; she shrank before him now with a kind of horror. That night in a nervous excitation she did not close an eye, and in the morning she was wan as a flower after rain.

This state of things found at least one observer, a personage of no less authority in household matters than Paula, the tall and stately woman of Nubian lineage who had been the nurse of Eve, and who every morning now stood behind her chair at breakfast, familiarly joining in and gathering what she chose of the conversation. Erect as a palm-tree, slender, queenly, with her thin and clearly cut features, and her head like that of some Circassian carved in black marble, she had a kinship of picturesqueness with Luigi, and could meet him more nearly on his own ground than another, for her voice was as sweet as his, and he was only less dark than she. Breakfast over, she took her way into the garden, set open the gate, and busied herself pinching the fresh shoots of the grape-vine, too luxuriant in leaves. She did not wait long before Luigi came up the side-street, his tray upon his head, his gait less elastic than beseemed the fresh, fragrant morning. Paula stepped forward and gave him pause, with a gesture.

"Sir!" said she, commandingly.

Luigi looked up at her inquiringly. Then a pleasant expectation overshot his gloomy face; he smiled, and his teeth glittered, and his eyes. Instantly he unslung his tray and set it upon the level gate-post.

"Sir," said Paula, "do you come here often?"

"Tutti i giorni," answered Luigi, scarcely considering her worth wasting his sparse and precious English upon.

"You come here often," said Paula. "Will you come here no more?"

Luigi opened his eyes in amaze.

"You will come here no more," said Paula.

"Chi lo,—who wishes it?" stammered Luigi.

"My mistress," answered Paula, proudly, as if to be her servant were more than enough distinction, and to mention her name were sovereign.

"Who commands?" he demanded, imperatively.

"Still my mistress."

"She said—Tell me that!"

"She said, 'Paula, if the boy disturbs us further, we must take measures.'"

"The Signorina?"

"Her mother."

"Not the Signorina, then!" And Luigi's gloomy face grew radiant.

"She and her mother are one," replied Paula.

Luigi was silent for a moment. One could see the shadows falling over him. Then he said, softly,—

"My Paula, you will befriend me?"

Paula bridled at the address; arrogant in family-place, she would have assured him plainly that she was none of his, to begin with, had he been an atom less disconsolate.

"Never more than now!" said she, loftily.

Luigi did not understand her; her tone was kind, but there was a "never" in her words.

"I should be the most a friend," said Paula, unbending, "in urging you to forget us."

"Ah, never!"

"Let me say. Can you read?"

"Some things," replied Luigi quickly, his brow brightening.

"Can you write?"

"It may be. Alas! I have not tried."

"You see."

There was no appeal from Paula's dictatorial demeanor.

"Dio! I am unfit! Ah, Jesu, I am unfit! But if she cared not—if I learned"—and he paused, striving now for the purest, most intelligible speech, while his face beamed with his smiling hope.

"Listen," interposed Paula, with the dignity of the headsman. "You have no truer friend than me at this moment, as some day you will discover. Come, now, will you do me a favor?"

"Di tutto cuore!"

"Then leave us to ourselves."

"Not possible!" cried Luigi, stung with disappointment.

"What would you do, then? Would you wear her life out? Would you keep her in a terror? She has said to me that she must go away. It suffocates one to be pursued in this manner. You are not pleasant to her. Hark. She dislikes you!" And Paula bent toward him with uplifted finger, and, having delivered her stroke, after watching its effect a moment, reared herself and adjusted her gay turban with internal satisfaction.

Luigi cast his eyes slowly about him; they fell on the smooth grass-plats rising with webs of shaking sparkle, the opening flowers half-bowed beneath the weight of the shining spheres they held, the brilliant garden bathed in dew, the waving boughs tossing off light spray on every ravaging gust, the far fair sky bending over all. Then he hid his face against the great gate-post, murmuring only in a dry and broken sob,—

"C' e sole?"

Paula herself was touched. She put her hand on his shoulder.

"It is a silly thing," said she. "Do not take it so to heart. Put it out of sight. There is many a pretty tambourine-tosser to smile upon you, I'll warrant!"

But Luigi vouchsafed no response.

"Come," said she, "pluck up your courage. You will soon be better of it."

"Non saro meglio!" answered Luigi. "I shall never be better."

He lifted his head and looked at her where she stood in the light, black, but comely, transfixing her on the burning glances of his bold eyes. "In your need," said he, "may you find just such friend as I have found!" The words were of his native language, but the malediction was universal. Paula half shivered, and fingered the amulet that her princely Nubian ancestor had fingered before her, while he spoke. Then he bowed his head to its burden, fastened the straps, and went bent and stooping upon his way, repeating sadly to himself, "And does the sun shine?"

* * * * *

A week passed. Part of another. Eve saw no more of Luigi, but was yet all the time uncomfortably conscious of his espionage. He was hardly a living being to her, but, as soon as night fell, the soft starry nights now in which there was no moon, she felt him like a darker film of spirit haunting the shadow. In the daytime, sunshine reassured her, and she remained almost at peace.

She was sitting one warm afternoon at the open window up-stairs, looking over a box of airy trifles, flowers and bows and laces, searching for a parcel of sheer white love-ribbon, a slip of woven hoarfrost that was not to be found. There was none like it to be procured; this was the night of the little masquerade; it was indispensable; and immediately she proceeded to raise the house. In answer to her descriptive inquiry, Paula, who every noon nestled as near the sun as possible, responded in a high key from the attic a descriptive negative; neither had her mother, waking from a siesta in the garden, seen any white gauze folderols. The three voices made the air well acquainted with the affair.

However, Eve was not to be baffled; she remembered distinctly having had the love-ribbon in her hands on the day she first proposed the dress; it must be found, and she sat down again at the open casement, intrenched behind twenty boxes of like treasure, in any one of which the thing might have hidden itself away, while her mother came up and established herself with a fan at the other window, and Paula, descending from her perch, rummaged the neighboring dressing-room.

On the opposite side of the street stretched a long strip of shaven turf, known as the Parade, yet seldom used for anything but summer-evening strolls, and below its velvet terraces, in a green dimple, lay a pool, borrowing all manner of umberous stains from the shore, and yet in its very heart contriving to reflect a part of heaven. Languishing elm-trees lined its edge, and beneath the boughs, whose heavily drooping masses seemed like the grapes of Eshcol, rude benches offered rest to the weary.

On one of these benches now sat a person profoundly occupied in carving something into its seat. If he could easily have heard the voices in the dwelling opposite, he had not once glanced up. Now and then he paused and leaned his head upon the arm that lay along the rail, then again he pursued his task. Once, when his progress, perhaps, had exceeded expectation, or the striking of a clock beneath some distant spire announced no need of haste, he laid down his knife, left his occupation, and came to lean against the low fence beneath Eve's window and gaze daringly up. Eve did not see him. Her mother did, and held her breath lest Eve should turn that way, and, having directed Eve's glance elsewhere, shook her fan at the bold boy. But there was no insolence in Luigi's gaze. He seemed merely wishing that his work should be marked; and, having attracted fit attention, he returned quietly to the bench and the carving once more.

At length the sun hung high over the west, preparing to fall into his hidden resting-place that colored all the cloudless heaven with its mounting tinge. Luigi rose and inspected his work. Then again he crossed the street and stood below Eve's window. It was a long time that he leaned with his arms folded on the bar of the low paling. Perhaps he meant that she should look at him. She had closed the last of her receptacles, and, dismissing the matter, for want of better employment, her scissors were tinkering upon a tiny hand-glass with a setting thickly crusted in crystals, a trifle that one clear day a sailor diving from her father's ship had found upon the bottom of the sea,—a very mermaid's glass dropped in some shallow place for Eve herself, a glass that had reflected the rushing of the storm, the sliding of the keel above, the face of many a drowning mariner. Careless of all that, at the moment, she held it up now to the light to see if further furbishing could brighten it, and as she did so was hastily checked. She had caught sight of a dark face just framed and mirrored, the sad eyes raised and resting on her own, luminous no more, but heavy, and longing, and dull with a weight of woe. At the same moment, Paula, who had by no means abandoned the lost love-ribbon, cried from within,—

"Well, Miss, the lutestring has been spirited away, and no less. I've searched the house through, and nobody has it."

"Qualcheduno l' ha," breathed a sweet, melancholy tone from below; and they turned and saw it in Luigi's hands, the frosty film of gossamer. He held it up a moment, pressed it to his lips, folded it again into his breast; and if it was plain that somebody had it, it was plainer still that somebody meant to keep it. And then, as if twin stars were bending over him out of the bluest deeps of heaven, Luigi kept Eve's eyes awhile suspended on his despairing gaze, and without other word or gesture turned and went away.

* * * * *

Many days afterward, when it was certain that the little foreign image-vender had indeed departed, Eve stole over to the bench beneath the lofty arches of the elm-tree, all checkered with flickering sunlight, and endeavored to read the sentence carved thereon. It was at first undecipherable, and then, the text conquered, not easy for her to comprehend. But when she had made it hers, she rose, bathed with blushes, and stole away home again, feeling only as if Luigi had laid a chain upon her heart.

Years have fled. The little legend yet remains cut deep into the wood, though he returns no more, and though, since then, her

"Part in all the pomp that fills The circuit of the summer hills Is that her grave is green."

Rain and snow have not effaced its intaglio, nor summer's dust, nor winter's wind; and if you ever pass it, you yet may read,—

AMOR QUE A NULLO AMATO AMAR PERDONA.

* * * * *

COMMUNICATION.

Whether virtue can be taught is a question over which Plato lingers long. And it is a curious illustration of the different eyes with which different men read, that some students of Plato are confident he answers the question in the affirmative, while others are equally sure that he gives it an unqualified negative. "Plato," says Schwegler, "holds fast to the opinion that virtue is science, and therefore to be imparted by instruction." "We are told," says Burgess, one of Bohn's translators, "that, as virtue is not a science, it cannot, like a science, be made a subject of teaching." Professor Blackie, again, an open-minded and eloquent scholar, cannot doubt that virtue may be verbally imparted, nor, therefore, that the great Athenian thinker so believed and affirmed.

What is the voice of common sense and the teaching of history touching this matter? Can a liberal and lofty nature be included in words, and so passed over to another? Elevation of character, nobility of spirit, wealth of soul,—is any method known, or probably ever to be known, among men, whereby these can be got into a text-book, and then out of the text-book into a bosom wherein they had no dwelling before? Alas, is not the story of the world too full of cases in which the combined eloquence of verbal instruction, vital influence, and lustrous example, aided even by all the inspirations of the most majestic and moving presence, have failed utterly to shape the character of disciples? Did Alcibiades profit greatly by the conversation of Socrates? Was Judas extremely ennobled by the companionship of Jesus? Was it to any considerable purpose that the pure-minded, earnest, affluent Cicero strewed the seeds of Stoic culture upon the wayside nature of his son? Did Faustina learn much from Antoninus Pius, or Commodus from Marcus Aurelius?

I think we must assume it as the judgment of common sense that there neither is nor is likely to be any educational mortar wherein a fool may be so brayed that he shall come forth a wise man. The broad, unequivocal sentence of history seems to be that whoever is not noble by nature will hardly be rendered so by art. Education can do much; it can foster nobilities, it can discourage vices; but literal conveyance of lofty qualities, can it effect that? Can it create opulence of soul in a sterile nature? Can it cause a thin soil to do the work of a deep one? We have seen harsh natures mellowed, violent natures chastened, rough ones refined; but who has seen an essentially mean nature made large-hearted, self-forgetful, fertile of grandest faiths and greatest deeds? Who has beheld a Thersites transformed into an Achilles? Who a Shylock, Iago, or Regan changed into an Antonio, Othello, or Cordelia, or a Simon Magus into a Paul? What virtue of nature is in a man culture may bring out; but to put nature into any man surpasses her competence.

Nay, it would even seem that in some cases the finest openings and invitations for what is best in man must operate inversely, and elicit only what is worst in him. Every profoundest truth, when uttered with fresh power in history, polarizes men, accumulating atheism at one pole, while collecting faith and resolve at the other. As the sun bleaches some surfaces into whiteness, but tans and blackens others, so the sweet shining of Truth illumines some countenances with belief, but some it darkens into a scowl of hate and denial. The American Revolution gave us George Washington; but it gave us also Benedict Arnold. One and the same great spiritual emergency in Europe produced Luther's Protestantism and Loyola's Jesuitism. Our national crisis has converted General Butler; what has it done for Vallandigham?

It were easy to show that the deepest intelligence of the world concurs with common sense in this judgment. Its declaration ever is, in effect, that, though Paul plant and Apollos water, yet fruit can come only out of divine and infinite Nature,—only, that is, out of the native, incommunicable resources of the soul. "No man can come to me," said Jesus, "except the Father draw him." "To him that hath shall be given." The frequent formula, "He that hath ears to hear, let him hear," is a confession that no power of speech, no wisdom of instruction, can command results. The grandest teacher, like the humblest, can but utter his word, sure that the wealthy and prepared spirits will receive it, and equally sure that shallow, sterile, and inane natures will either not receive it at all, or do so to extremely little purpose.

And such, as I read, is the judgment of Plato; though, ever disposed to explore the remote possibilities of education, he discusses the subject in a tentative spirit, as if vaguely hoping that more might, through some discovery in method, be accomplished by means of doctrine. But in the "Republic" his permanent persuasion is shown. He there bases his whole scheme of polity, as Goethe in the second part of "Wilhelm Meister" bases his scheme of education, upon a primary inspection of natures, in which it is assumed that culture must begin by humbly accepting the work of Nature, forswearing all attempt to add one jot or tittle to the native virtue of any human spirit.

It is always, however, less important for us to know what another thinks upon any high matter than to know what is our own deepest and inevitable thought concerning it; for, as the man himself thinketh, not as another thinketh for him, so is he: his own thoughts are forces and engines in his nature; those of any other are at best but candidates for these profound effects. I propose, therefore, that we throw open the whole question of man's benefit to man by means of words. Let us inquire—if possible, with somewhat of courage and vigor—what are the limits and what the laws of instructive communication.

And our first discovery will be that such communication has adamantine limitations. The off-hand impression of most persons would probably be that we are able to make literal conveyance of our thought. But, in truth, one could as soon convey the life out of his veins into the veins of another as transfer from his own mind to that of another any belief, thought, or perception whatsoever.

Words are simply the signs, they are not the vehicles, of thought. Like all signs, they convey nothing, but only suggest. Like all signs, they are intelligible to none but the initiated. One man, having a certain mental experience, hoists, as it were, a signal, like ships at sea, whereby he would make suggestion of it to another; and if in the mental experience of that other be somewhat akin to this, which, by virtue of that kindred, can interpret its symbol, then only, and to the extent of such interpretation, does communication occur. But the mental experience itself, the thought itself, does not pass; it only makes the sign.

If, for example, I utter the word God, it conveys nothing out of my mind into the mind of you, the reader; it simply appeals to your conception of divinity. If I attempt to explain, then every word of the explanation must be subject to the same conditions; not one syllable of it can do more than merely appeal to somewhat already in your mind. For instance, suppose I say, God is love; what then is done? The appeal is shifted to another sign; that is all. What my own soul, fed from the vital resources and incited by the vital relationships of my life, has learned of love, that my thought may connect with the word; but of all this nothing passes when it is uttered; and the sound, arriving at your ear, can do no more than invite you to summon and bring before the eye of your consciousness that which your own soul, out of its divine depths and through the instruction of vital relationship, has learned and has privily whispered to you of this sacred mystery, love. Just so much as each one, in the inviolable solitudes of his own consciousness, has learned to connect with this, or with any great word, just that, and never a grain more, it can summon. And if endeavor be made to explain any such by others, the explanation can come no nearer; it can only send words to your ear, each of which performs its utmost office by inviting you to call up and bring before your cognizance this or that portion of your mental experience. But always what answers the call is your mental experience, no less yours, no less wedded to your life, than the blood in your arteries; it cannot be that of any other.

And the same is true, or nearly the same, respecting the most obvious outside matters. Suppose one to make merely this statement, I see a house. Now, if the person addressed has ever had experience of the act of vision, if he has ever seen anything, he will know what see means; otherwise not. If, again, he has ever seen a house, he will know what house denotes; not otherwise. Or suppose, that, not knowing, he ask what a house is, and that the first speaker attempt to explain by telling him that it is such and such a structure, built of brick, wood, or stone; then it is assumed that he has seen stone, wood, or brick, that he has seen the act of building, or at least its result;—and in fine, the explanation, every syllable of it, can do no more than appeal to perceptions of which the questioner is assumed to have had experience.

We do, indeed, gain an approximate knowledge of things we have never seen. For example, I have an imperfect notion of a banian-tree, though I have never seen one; but it is only by having seen other trees, and by having also had the perceptions to which appeal is made in describing the peculiarities of the banian. So he who is born blind may learn so much concerning outward objects as the senses of touch, hearing, smell, and taste can impart to him; and he may profit by verbal information to such extent as these perceptions enable him. But the perception itself, and so thought, faith, and in fine all mental experience whatsoever, whether of high order or low, whether relating to objects within us or to objects without, take place only in the privacy of our own minds, and are in their substance not to be transferred.

Observe with precision what is here said. The mental experience of each man, if it be of any spiritual depth, has transacted itself in his nature in virtue, to a most important degree, of spiritual relationship with other human beings. There never was an act of development in any man's soul that did not imply a humanity, and involve the virtue of social affinity. I should be dumb, but for the ears of others; I should be deaf, that is, my human ear would be closed, but for human voices; and there is no particle of human energy, and no tint of human coloring, for which we are not, in part, indebted to vital human fellowship. Nevertheless, of this experience, though in the absence of social connection it could not have occurred, not one jot nor tittle can be made over to another by means of words. It can hoist its verbal signal, and the like experience in other souls may interpret the sign; it can do no more.

Men may, indeed, commune; that is, they may by verbal conference enter mutually into a sense of an already existing unity of inward experience; and there are other and eminent uses of words, of which more anon; but here let it be noted with sufficient emphasis that of minds there can be no mixture, and that speech can make no substantive conveyance of any mental product from one mind to another. Each soul must draw from its native fountains; though we must never forget that without conversation and social relationship its divine thirst would not have been excited.

Therefore, in the midst of all warmest and quickest verity of social nearness, there is a kind of sacred and inviolable solitude of the soul. We speak across to each other, as out of different planets in heaven; and the closest intimacy of souls is like that of double stars which revolve about each other, not like that of two lumps of clay which are squeezed and confounded together.

So much, then, concerning the limits of verbal communication. Words, we say, are not vehicles. No perception, no mental possession, passes from mind to mind. You can impart to another no piece of knowledge whose main elements were not already in his mind, no thought which was not substantially existent in his consciousness before your voice began to seek his ear. Instructors may, indeed, put a pupil in the way to obtain fresh perceptions, and more rarely a wise man may put an apt disciple in the way to obtain deeper insights; but, after all, the learner must learn; the learner must for himself behold the fact, with the eyes of body or of soul; and he must behold it as it is in itself, not merely as it is in words.

Hence the new scheme of school-education. Agassiz says, in substance,—"If you would teach a boy geography, take him out on the hills, and make the earth herself his instructor. If you would teach him respecting tigers or turtles, show him tiger or turtle. Take him to a Museum of Natural History; let him always, so far as possible, learn about facts from the facts themselves." Judicious and important advice. And the basis of it we find in what has been set forth above, namely, that words convey no perception, whether of physical or of spiritual truth.

It follows, therefore, that only he whose soul is eloquent within him will gain much from any eloquence of his fellow. Only he whose heart is a prophet will hear the prophet. A divine preparation of the nature, divine activities of the soul, precede all high uses of communication. Though Demosthenes or Phillips speak, it is the hearer's own spirit that convinces him. Conviction cannot be forced upon one from without. Hence the well-known futility of belligerent controversy. No possible logic will lead a man ahead of his own intelligence; neither will any take from him the persuasions which correspond to his mental condition. A good logical pose may sometimes serve to lower the crest of an obstreperous sophist, as boughs of one species of ash are said to quell the rattlesnake; but with both these sinuous animals the effect is temporary, and the quality of the creature remains unchanged.

Even though one be sincerely desirous of advancing his intelligence, it is seldom, as Mr. Emerson has somewhere said, of much use for him to carry his questions to another. He of whom insight is thus asked may be sage, eloquent, apt to teach; but it will commonly be found, nevertheless, that his words, for some reason, do not seem to suit the case in hand: admirable words they are, perhaps, for some cases closely analogous to this, it may be for all such cases, and it is a thousand pities that the present one does not come within their scope; but this, as ill luck will have it, is that other case which they do not fit.

And yet, despite these iron limits, communication is not only one of the especial delights, but also one of the chief uses, of human life. As every spiritual activity implies fellowship, so does almost every thought, almost every result of spiritual activity, imply some speech of our fellows. Voices and books,—who would be himself without them? I do not believe myself to have now in my mind one valuable thought which owes nothing to the written or spoken thought of other men, living or dead.

How, then, is it that the speech of our fellows renders us aid? What are to us the uses of the words of others?

And here be it first of all frankly acknowledged, that there is much speech of no remarkable import, in itself considered, which yet serves good ends. There is much speech whose office is simply to refresh the sense of fellowship. It will not make a good leading article; but the leading article which subserves equal uses is not to be contemned. So much are men empowered by each other, that any careless, kindly chat which gives them the sense of cordial nearness gives also warmth and invigoration. Better than most ambitious conversation is the light, happy, bubbling talk which means at bottom simply this:—"We are at home together; we believe in each other." Words are good, if they only festoon love and trust. Words are good, if they merely show us that worthy natures do not suspect us, do not lock their closets when we are in the house, do not put their souls in dress-costume to meet us, but leave their thoughts and hearts naked in our presence, and are not ashamed. Be it mine sometimes to sit with my friend when our mere nearness and unity of spirit are felt by us both to be so utterly eloquent, that, without silence, we forbear to set up any rivalry to them by grave and meditated speech,—observing, it may be, a falling leaf toyed with by the wind, and speaking words that drop from the lips like falling leaves, and float down a zephyr that knows not which way to blow. Some of the sweetest and most fruitful hours of life are these in which we speak half-articulate nothings, merely airing the sense of fellowship, and so replete with this wealth of vital intimacy that we have room for nothing more.

But our aim is to regard communication as an instruction, and to consider the more explicit and definite uses of words.

And of these the first, and one of the chief, is based upon the very limitations which have been set forth,—upon the very fact that words are not vehicles. I have said that there is a certain divine solitude of the soul; and of this solitude the uses are infinitely great. The absolute soul of humanity, we hold, seeks to insphere itself in each person, though in each giving itself a peculiar or individual representation; and only as this insphering takes place are the ends of creation attained, only so is man made indeed a human life. Therefore must we draw out of that, out of that alone; therefore truth is permitted to come to us only out of these infinite depths, albeit incitement, invitation, and the ability to draw from these native fountains may be due to social connection. Because our life is really enriched only as the absolute soul gives itself to us, therefore will it suffer us no otherwise than by its gift to supply our want. And as it cannot give itself to us save in response to a felt want, a seeking, an inward demand, it belongs to the chief economies of our life to bring us to this attitude of inward request, to this call and claim upon the resources of our intelligence.

Now words come to us as empty vessels, which we are to fill from within; and in making for this purpose a requisition upon the perpetual contents of reason, conscience, and imagination, we open a valve through which new spiritual powers enter, and add themselves to our being. If the word God be sometimes spoken simply and spontaneously, a youth who hears it will be sure upon some day, when the sense of the infinite and divine stirs vaguely within him, to ask himself what this word means, to require his soul to tell him what is the verity corresponding thereto; and precisely this requisition is what the soul desires, for only when sought may its riches be found. The utilities of words in this kind are deserving of very grave estimation. Words teach us much, but they teach less by what is in them than by what is not in them,—less by what they give to us than by what they demand from us.

It is, therefore, one of the grand services of communication to bring us to the limits of communication, making us feel, that, ere it can go farther, there must occur in us new stretches of thought, new energies of hope, faith, and all noble imagining. It were well, therefore, that, among other things, we should sometimes thank God for our ignorance and weakness,—thank Him for what we do not understand and are not equal to; for with every fresh recognition of these, with every fresh approach to the borders of our intelligence, we are prepared for new requisitions upon the soul. As in a pump the air is exhausted in order that the water may rise, so a void in our intelligence caused by its own energy precedes every enrichment. Hence he who will not admit to his heart the sense of ignorance will always be a fool; he who is perpetually filled with self-sufficiency will never be filled with much else. And from this point of view one may discern the significance of that doctrine of humility which belongs equally to Socratic thinking and Christian believing.

It follows, too, that we need not laboriously push and foist upon the young our faith and experience. Aside from direct vital influence, which is a powerful propagandist, our simple, natural, inevitable speech will cause them to do much better than learn from us, it will cause them to learn from their own souls. And however uncertain may be a harvest from questions asked of others, a great question rightly put to one's self not only must be fruitful, but carries in it a capacity for infinite fruitfulness; while the longer and more patiently and persistently one can wait for an answer, the richer his future is to be. I am sure of him who can put to his heart the great questions of life, and wait serenely and vigilantly for a response, one, two, ten years, a lifetime, wellnigh an eternity, if need be, not falling into despondencies and despairing skepticisms because the universe forbears to babble and tattle its secret ere yet he half or a thousandth part guesses how deep and holy that secret is, but quietly, heroically asking and waiting. And toward this posture of asking the profound and vital words assist us by being heard,—which is their first eminent use to us.

Secondly, they serve us greatly, when they simply cause a preexisting community of thought to be mutually recognized. It is much to bring like to like, brand to brand, believing soul to believing soul. As several pieces of anthracite coal will together make a powerful heat, but separately will not burn at all, so in the conjunction of similar faiths and beliefs there is a wholly new effect; it is not at all the mere sum of the forces previously in operation, but a pure product of union. "My confidence in my own belief," said Novalis, "is increased infinitely the moment another shares it with me. The reason is obvious. You and I have grown up apart, and have never conferred together; our temperaments, culture, circumstances are different; we have come to have certain thoughts which seem to us true and deep, but each of us doubts whether these thoughts may not be due to his peculiarities of mind, position, and influence. But to-day we come together, and discover, that, despite these outward diversities in which we are so widely unlike, our fundamental faiths are one and the same; the same thoughts, the same beliefs have sprung into life in our separate souls. Instantly is suggested a unity underlying our divided being, a law of thought abiding in mind itself,—not merely in your mind or mine, but in the mind and soul of man. What we arrive at, therefore, is not merely the sum of you and me, the aggregate of two men's opinions, but the universal, the absolute, and spiritually necessary. Such is always the suggestion which spontaneous unity of faith carries with it; hence it awakens religion, and gives total peace and rest."

But the faiths which are to be capable of these divine embraces must indeed be spontaneous and native. Hence those who create factitious unity of creed render these fructifications impossible. If we agree, not because the absolute soul has uttered in both of us the same word, but because we have both been fed with dust out of the same catechism, our unity will disgust and weary us rather than invigorate. Dr. Johnson said he would compel men to believe as he and the Church of England did, "because," he reasoned, "if another differs from me, he weakens my confidence in my own scheme of faith, and so injures me." Now this speech is good just so far as it asserts social dependence in belief; it is bad, it is idiotic or insane, so far as it advocates the substitution of a factitious and artificial unity for one of spiritual depth and reality. The fruits of the tree of life are not to be successfully thieved. In dishonest hands they become ashes and bitterness. He who has more faith in an Act of Parliament than in God and the universe may be a good conventional believer; but, in truth, the choice he makes is the essence of all denial and even of all atheism and blasphemy.

Let each, then, bring up out of his own soul its purest, broadest, simplest faith; and when any ten or ten thousand find that the same faith has come to birth in their several souls, each one of them all will be exalted to a divine confidence, and will make new requisitions upon the soul which he has so been taught to trust. Thus, though we tell each nothing new, though we merely demonstrate our unity of consciousness, yet is the force of each many times multiplied,—dimless certitude and dauntless courage being bred in hearts where before, perhaps, were timorous hesitation and wavering.

The third service of words may be compared to the help which the smith renders to the fire on his forge. True it is that no blowing can enkindle dead coals, and make a flame where was no spark. True it is that both spark and bellows will be vain, if the fuel is stone or clay. And so no blowing will enkindle a nature which does not bring in itself the fire to be fanned and the substance that may support it. But in our being, as at the forge, the flame that languishes may be taught to leap, and the spark that was hidden may be wrought into blaze.

Simple attraction and encouragement,—there is somewhat of the marvellous in their effects. Physiologists tell us, that, if two liquids in the body are separated by a moist membrane, and if one of these fluids be in motion and the other at rest, that which rests will of its own accord force its way through the membrane and join the one which flows. So it is in history. Any man who represents a spiritual streaming will command and draw into the current of his soul those whose condition is one of stagnancy or arrest. Now courage and belief are streamings forward; skepticism and timidity are stagnancies; panic, fear, and destructive denial are streamings backward. True, now, it is, that any swift flowing, forward or backward, attracts; but progressive or affirmative currents have this vast advantage, that they are health, and therefore the healthy humanity in every man's being believes in them and belongs to them; and they accordingly are like rivers, which, however choked up temporarily and made refluent, are sure in the end to force their way; while negative and backward currents are like pestilences and conflagrations, which of necessity limit themselves by exhaustion, if not mastered by happier means.

We may, indeed, note it as a nicety, that the membrane must be moist through which this transudation is to take place; and I admit that there are men whose enveloping sheath of individualism and egotism is so hard and dry, so little interpenetrated by candor and the love of truth, as to be nearly impervious to noble persuasion; and were whole Missouris of tidings from the highest intelligence rushing past them, they would still yawn, and say, "Do you get any news?" as innocently as ever.

Nevertheless, history throbs with the mystery of this influence. A little girl slumping by her mother's side awoke in a severe thunder-storm, and, nestling in terror near to the mother, and shrinking into the smallest possible space, said, trembling, "Mother, are you afraid?" "No, my dear," answered the lady, calmly. "Oh, well," said the child, assuming her full proportions, and again disposing herself for sleep, "if you're not afraid, I'm not afraid," and was soon slumbering quietly. What volumes of gravest human history in that little incident! So infinitely easy are daring and magnanimity, so easy is transcendent height of thought and will, when exalted spiritually, when imperial valor and purpose breathe and blow upon our souls from the lips of a living fellow! Not, it may be, that anything new is said. That is not required. What another now thrills, inspires, transfigures us by saying, we probably knew before, only dared not let ourselves think that we knew it. The universe, perhaps, had not a nook so hidden that therein we could have been solitary enough to whisper that divine suggestion to our own hearts. But now some childlike man stands up and speaks it to the common air, in serenest unconsciousness of doing anything singular. He has said it,—and lo, he lives! By the help of God, then, we too, by word and deed, will utter our souls.

Get one hero, and you may have a thousand. Create a grand impulse in history, and no fear but it will be reinforced. Obtain your champion in the cause of Right, and you shall have indomitable armies that charge for social justice.

More of the highest life is suppressed in every one of us than ever gets vent; and it is this inward suppression, after making due account of all outward oppressions and injuries, which constitutes the chief tragedy of history. Daily men cast to the ground the proffered beakers of heaven, from mere fear to drink. Daily they rebuke the divine, inarticulate murmur that arises from the deeps of their being,—inarticulate only because denied and reproved. And he is greatest who can meet with a certain pure intrepidity those suggestions which haunt forever the hearts of men.

No greater blunder, accordingly, was ever made than that of attempting to render men brave and believing by addressing them as cowards and infidels. Garibaldi stands up before his soldiers in Northern Italy, and says to them, (though I forget the exact words,) "I do not call you to fortune and prosperity; I call you to hardship, to suffering, to death; I ask you to give your toil without reward, to spill your blood and lie in unknown graves, to sacrifice all for your country and kind, and hear no thanks but the Well done of God in heaven." Did they cower and go back? Ere the words had spent their echoes, every man's will was as the living adamant of God's purpose, and every man's hand was as the hand of Destiny, and from the shock of their onset the Austrians fled as from the opening jaws of an earthquake. Demosthenes told Athens only what Athens knew. He merely blew upon the people's hearts with their own best thoughts; and what a blaze! True, the divine fuel was nearly gone, Athens wellnigh burnt out, and the flame lasted not long; but that he could produce such effects, when half he fanned was merest ashes, serves all the more to show how great such effects may be.

Before passing to the last and profoundest use of communication, I must not omit to mention that which is most obvious, but not most important,—the giving of ordinary informations and instructions. These always consist in a suggestion to another of new combinations of his notions, new societies in his mind. Thus, if I say, Fire burns, I simply assert a connection between fire and burning,—the notion of both these being assumed as existing in the mind of the person addressed. Or if I say, God is just, I invite him to associate in his mind the sentiment of justice and the sense of the infinite and omnipotent. Now in respect to matters of mere external form we usually confide in the representations of others, and picture to ourselves, so far as our existing perceptions enable us, the combinations they affirm,—provided always these have a certain undefined conformity with our own experience. But in respect to association, not of mere notions, but of spiritual elements in the soul,—of truths evolved by the spiritual nature of man,—the case is quite different Thus, if the fool who once said in his heart, "There is no God," should now say openly, (of course by some disguising euphemism,) "God is an egotist," I may indeed shape an opinion accordingly, and fall into great confusion in consequence; but my spiritual nature does not consent to this representation; no real association takes place within me between the sense of the divine and the conception of egotism. Such opinion may have immense energy in history, but it has no efficiency in the eliciting and outbuilding of our personal being; these representations, however we may trust and base action upon them, serve us inwardly only to such degree as our spiritual nature can ally itself with them and find expression in them. It is simply impossible for any man to associate the idea of divinity with the conception of selfishness; but he may associate the notion of Zeus or Allah or the like with that or any other conception of baseness, and out of the result may form a sort of crust over his spiritual intelligence, which shall either imprison it utterly, or force it to oblique and covert expression. And of this last, by the way,—and we may deeply rejoice over the fact,—history is full.

Yet in this suggestion toward new societies in the soul, in this formal introduction to each other of kindred elements in the consciousness, there may be eminent service. It is only formal, it does not make friendship, it leaves our spirits to their own action; but it may prepare the way for inward unities and communities whose blessedness neither speech nor silence can tell.

Finally, there is an effect of words profounder and more creative than any of these. As a brand which burns powerfully may at last ignite even green wood, so divine faiths, alive and awake in one soul, may appeal to the mere elements, to mere possibilities, of such faiths in other souls, and at length evoke them by that appeal. The process is slow; it requires a celestial heat and persistency in the moving spirit; it is one of the "all things" that are possible only with God: but it occurs, and it is the most sacred and precious thing in history.

Every human soul has the absolute soul, has the whole truth, significance, and virtue of the universe, as its lawful and native resource. Therefore says Jesus, "The kingdom of heaven is within you"; therefore Antoninus, "Look inwards, within is the fountain of truth"; therefore Eckart, "Ye have all truth potentially within you." All ideas of truth dwell in every soul, but in every soul they are at first wrapped in deep sleep, in an infinite depth of sleep; while the base incense of brutish lives is like chloroform, or the fumes of some benumbing drug, to steep them ever more and more in oblivion. But to awaken truth thus sleeping in the soul is the highest use of discipline, the noblest aim of culture, and the most eminent service which man can render to man. The scheme of our life is providentially arranged with reference to that end; and the thousand shocks, agitations, and moving influences of our experience, the supreme invitations of love, the venom of calumny, and all toil, trial, sudden bereavement, doubt, danger, vicissitude, joy, are hands that shake and voices that assail the lethargy of our deepest powers. Now it is in the power of truth divinely awakened in one soul to assist its awakening in another. For as nothing so quickly arouses us from slumber as hearing ourselves called upon by name, so is it with this celestial inhabitant: whoever by virtue of elder brotherhood can rightly name him shall cause his spirit to be stirred and his slumber to be broken.

Let him, therefore, in whom any great truth is alive and awake, enunciate, proclaim it steadily, clearly, cheerily, with a serene and cloudless passion; and wherever a soul less mature than his own lies open to the access of his tones, there the eye-fast angels of belief and knowledge shall hear that publication of their own hearts, and, hearing, lift their lids, and rise into wakefulness and power.

Seldom, indeed, is any voice, though it be in its origin a genuine voice of the soul, pure and impartial enough, enough delivered from the masks of egotism and accident, to be greatly competent for these effects. Besides which, there are not a few that have closed their ears, lest they should hear, not a few that are even filled with base astonishment and terror, and out of this with base wrath, to find their deafness assailed. And still further, it must be freely owned that our natures have mysterious elections, and though one desire openness of soul as much as folly fears it, yet may it happen that some tint of peculiarity in the tone of a worthy voice shall render it to him opaque and unintelligible.

Yet let us not fear that the product of any sacred and spiritual sincerity will fail of sufficient uses. If a deep, cordial, and clarified nature will but give us his heart in a pure and boundless bravery of confession,—if, like autumn plants, that cast forth their seeds, winged with down, to the four winds of heaven, or like the blossoms of spring and early summer, that yield up their preciousness of pollen to the forage of bees, and even by being so robbed attain to the hearts of neighbor-blossoms, and accomplish that mystery of fructification which is to make glad the maturer year,—if so this inflorescence of eternity that we name a Noble Man will yield up the golden pollen of his soul, even to those that in visiting him seek but their own ends, and if so he will intrust winged words, words that are indeed spiritual seeds, purest, ripest, and most vital products of his being, to the winds of time,—he will be sure to reach some, and they to reach others, and there is no telling how far the seminal effect may go; there is no telling what harvests may yellow in the limitless fields of the future, what terrestrial and celestial reapers may go home rejoicing, bearing their sheaves with them, what immortal hungers may be fed at the feasts of earth and heaven, in final consequence of that lonely and faithful sowing. As in the still mornings of summer the earliest awakened bird hesitates to utter, yet utters, his solitary pipe, timidly rippling the silence, but is not long alone, for quickly the melodious throb begins to beat in every tree-top, and soon the whole rapturous grove gushes and palpitates into song,—even so, thus to appearance alone and unsupported, begins that chant of belief which is destined to heave and roll in billows of melodious confession over a continent, over a world. Thus does a faith that has lain long silent in the hearts of nations suddenly answer to the note of its kind, astonishing all bystanders, astonishing most of all the heart it inhabits. For, lo! the tree-tops of human life are full of slumbering melodies, and if a song-sparrow pipe sincerely on the hill-sides of Judea, saying, after his own fashion of speech, "Behold, the divine dawn hath visited my eyes," be sure that the forests of far-off America, then unknown, will one day reply, and ten thousand thousand throats throbbing with high response will make it mutually known all round the world that this auroral beam is not for any single or private eye, but that the broad amber beauty of spiritual morning belongs to man's being, and that in man's heart, by virtue of its perennial nature, is prophesied the day whose sun shall be God and its earth heaven.

* * * * *

HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS.

BY CHRISTOPHER CROWFIELD.

IX.

In the course of my papers various domestic revolutions have occurred. Our Marianne has gone from us with a new name to a new life, and a modest little establishment not many squares off claims about as much of my wife's and Jennie's busy thoughts as those of the proper mistress.

Marianne, as I always foresaw, is a careful and somewhat anxious housekeeper. Her tastes are fastidious; she is made for exactitude: the smallest departures from the straight line appear to her shocking deviations. She had always lived in a house where everything had been formed to quiet and order under the ever-present care and touch of her mother; nor had she ever participated in these cares more than to do a little dusting of the parlor-ornaments, or wash the best china, or make sponge-cake or chocolate-caramels. Certain conditions of life had always appeared so certain that she had never conceived of a house without them. It never occurred to her that such bread and biscuit as she saw at the home-table would not always and of course appear at every table,—that the silver would not always be as bright, the glass as clear, the salt as fine and smooth, the plates and dishes as nicely arranged as she had always seen them, apparently without the thought or care of any one,—for my wife is one of those housekeepers whose touch is so fine that no one feels it. She is never heard scolding or reproving,—never entertains her company with her recipes for cookery or the faults of her servants. She is so unconcerned about receiving her own personal share of credit for the good appearance of her establishment, that even the children of the house have not supposed that there is any particular will of hers in the matter,—it all seems the natural consequence of having very good servants.

One phenomenon they had never seriously reflected on,—that, under all the changes of the domestic cabinet which are so apt to occur in American households, the same coffee, the same bread and biscuit, the same nicely prepared dishes and neatly laid table always gladdened their eyes; and from this they inferred only that good servants were more abundant than most people had supposed. They were somewhat surprised when these marvels were wrought by professedly green hands, but were given to suppose that these green hands must have had some remarkable quickness or aptitude for acquiring. That sparkling jelly, well-flavored ice-creams, clear soups, and delicate biscuits could be made by a raw Irish girl, fresh from her native Erin, seemed to them a proof of the genius of the race; and my wife, who never felt it important to attain to the reputation of a cook, quietly let it pass.

For some time, therefore, after the inauguration of the new household, there was trouble in the camp. Sour bread had appeared on the table,—bitter, acrid coffee had shocked and astonished the palate,—lint had been observed on tumblers, and the spoons had sometimes dingy streaks on the brightness of their first bridal polish,—beds were detected made shockingly awry,—and Marianne came burning with indignation to her mother.

"Such a little family as we have, and two strong girls," said she,—"everything ought to be perfect; there is really nothing to do. Think of a whole batch of bread absolutely sour! and when I gave that away, then this morning another exactly like it! and when I talked to cook about it, she said she had lived in this and that family, and her bread had always been praised as equal to the baker's!"

"I don't doubt she is right," said I. "Many families never have anything but sour bread from one end of the year to the other, eating it unperceiving, and with good cheer; and they buy also sour bread of the baker, with like approbation,—lightness being in their estimation the only virtue necessary in the article."

"Could you not correct her fault?" suggested my wife.

"I have done all I can. I told her we could not have such bread, that it was dreadful; Bob says it would give him the dyspepsia in a week; and then she went and made exactly the same;—it seems to me mere wilfulness."

"But," said I, "suppose, instead of such general directions, you should analyze her proceedings and find out just where she makes her mistake,—is the root of the trouble in the yeast, or in the time she begins it, letting it rise too long?—the time, you know, should vary so much with the temperature of the weather."

"As to that," said Marianne, "I know nothing. I never noticed; it never was my business to make bread; it always seemed quite a simple process, mixing yeast and flour and kneading it; and our bread at home was always good."

"It seems, then, my dear, that you have come to your profession without even having studied it."

My wife smiled, and said,—

"You know, Marianne, I proposed to you to be our family bread-maker for one month of the year before you married."

"Yes, mamma, I remember; but I was like other girls; I thought there was no need of it. I never liked to do such things; perhaps I had better have done it."

"You certainly had," said I; "for the first business of a housekeeper in America is that of a teacher. She can have a good table only by having practical knowledge, and tact in imparting it. If she understands her business practically and experimentally, her eye detects at once the weak spot; it requires only a little tact, some patience, some clearness in giving directions, and all comes right. I venture to say that your mother would have exactly such bread as always appears on our table, and have it by the hands of your cook, because she could detect and explain to her exactly her error."

"Do you know," said my wife, "what yeast she uses?"

"I believe," said Marianne, "it's a kind she makes herself. I think I heard her say so. I know she makes a great fuss about it, and rather values herself upon it. She is evidently accustomed to being praised for her bread, and feels mortified and angry, and I don't know how to manage her."

"Well," said I, "if you carry your watch to a watch-maker, and undertake to show him how to regulate the machinery, he laughs and goes on his own way; but if a brother-machinist makes suggestions, he listens respectfully. So, when a woman who knows nothing of woman's work undertakes to instruct one who knows more than she does, she makes no impression; but a woman who has been trained experimentally, and shows she understands the matter thoroughly, is listened to with respect."

"I think," said my wife, "that your Bridget is worth teaching. She is honest, well-principled, and tidy. She has good recommendations from excellent families, whose ideas of good bread it appears differ from ours; and with a little good-nature, tact, and patience, she will come into your ways."

"But the coffee, mamma,—you would not imagine it to be from the same bag with your own, so dark and so bitter; what do you suppose she has done to it?"

"Simply this," said my wife. "She has let the berries stay a few moments too long over the fire,—they are burnt, instead of being roasted; and there are people who think it essential to good coffee that it should look black, and have a strong, bitter flavor. A very little change in the preparing will alter this."

"Now," said I, "Marianne, if you want my advice, I'll give it to you gratis:—Make your own bread for one month. Simple as the process seems, I think it will take as long as that to give you a thorough knowledge of all the possibilities in the case; but after that you will never need to make any more,—you will be able to command good bread by the aid of all sorts of servants; you will, in other words, be a thoroughly prepared teacher."

"I did not think," said Marianne, "that so simple a thing required so much attention."

"It is simple," said my wife, "and yet requires a delicate care and watchfulness. There are fifty ways to spoil good bread; there are a hundred little things to be considered and allowed for that require accurate observation and experience. The same process that will raise good bread in cold weather will make sour bread in the heat of summer; different qualities of flour require variations in treatment, as also different sorts and conditions of yeast; and when all is done, the baking presents another series of possibilities which require exact attention."

"So it appears," said Marianne, gayly, "that I must begin to study my profession at the eleventh hour."

"Better late than never," said I. "But there is this advantage on your side: a well-trained mind, accustomed to reflect, analyze, and generalize, has an advantage over uncultured minds even of double experience. Poor as your cook is, she now knows more of her business than you do. After a very brief period of attention and experiment, you will not only know more than she does, but you will convince her that you do, which is quite as much to the purpose."

"In the same manner," said my wife, "you will have to give lessons to your other girl on the washing of silver and the making of beds. Good servants do not often come to us; they must be made by patience and training; and if a girl has a good disposition and a reasonable degree of handiness, and the housekeeper understands her profession, she may make a good servant out of an indifferent one. Some of my best girls have been those who came to me directly from the ship, with no preparation but docility and some natural quickness. The hardest cases to be managed are not of those who have been taught nothing, but of those who have been taught wrongly,—who come to you self-opinionated, with ways that are distasteful to you, and contrary to the genius of your housekeeping. Such require that their mistress shall understand a least so much of the actual conduct of affairs as to prove to the servant that there are better ways than those in which she has hitherto been trained."

"Don't you think, mamma," said Marianne, "that there has been a sort of reaction against woman's work in our day? So much has been said of the higher sphere of woman, and so much has been done to find some better work for her, that insensibly, I think, almost everybody begins to feel that it is rather degrading for a woman in good society to be much tied down to family-affairs."

"Especially," said my wife, "since in these Woman's-Rights Conventions there is so much indignation expressed at those who would confine her ideas to the kitchen and nursery."

"There is reason in all things," said I. "Woman's-Rights Conventions are a protest against many former absurd, unreasonable ideas,—the mere physical and culinary idea of womanhood as connected only with puddings and shirt-buttons, the unjust and unequal burdens which the laws of harsher ages had cast upon the sex. Many of the women connected with these movements are as superior in everything properly womanly as they are in exceptional talent and culture. There is no manner of doubt that the sphere of woman is properly to be enlarged, and that republican governments in particular are to be saved from corruption and failure only by allowing to woman this enlarged sphere. Every woman has rights as a human being first, which belong to no sex, and ought to be as freely conceded to her as if she were a man,—and first and foremost, the great right of doing anything which God and Nature evidently have fitted her to excel in. If she be made a natural orator, like Miss Dickenson, or an astronomer, like Mrs. Somerville, or a singer, like Grisi, let not the technical rules of womanhood be thrown in the way of her free use of her powers. Nor can there be any reason shown why a woman's vote in the State should not be received with as much respect as in the family. A State is but an association of families, and laws relate to the rights and immunities which touch woman's most private and immediate wants and dearest hopes; and there is no reason why sister, wife, and mother should be more powerless in the State than in the home. Nor does it make a woman unwomanly to express an opinion by dropping a slip of paper into a box, more than to express that same opinion by conversation. In fact, there is no doubt, that, in all matters relating to the interests of education, temperance, and religion, the State would be a material gainer by receiving the votes of women.

"But, having said all this, I must admit, per contra, not only a great deal of crude, disagreeable talk in these conventions, but a too great tendency of the age to make the education of women anti-domestic. It seems as if the world never could advance, except like ships under a head-wind, tacking and going too far, now in this direction, and now in the opposite. Our common-school system now rejects sewing from the education of girls, which very properly used to occupy many hours daily in school a generation ago. The daughters of laborers and artisans are put through algebra, geometry, trigonometry, and the higher mathematics, to the entire neglect of that learning which belongs distinctively to woman. A girl cannot keep pace with her class, if she gives any time to domestic matters; and accordingly she is excused from them all during the whole term of her education. The boy of a family, at an early age, is put to a trade, or the labors of a farm; the father becomes impatient of his support, and requires of him to care for himself. Hence an interrupted education,—learning coming by snatches in the winter months or in the intervals of work. As the result, the females in our country-towns are commonly, in mental culture, vastly in advance of the males of the same household; but with this comes a physical delicacy, the result of an exclusive use of the brain and a neglect of the muscular system, with great inefficiency in practical domestic duties. The race of strong, hardy, cheerful girls, that used to grow up in country-places, and made the bright, neat, New-England kitchens of old times,—the girls that could wash, iron, brew, bake, tackle a horse and drive him, no less than braid straw, embroider, draw, paint, and read innumerable books,—this race of women, pride of olden time, is daily lessening; and in their stead come the fragile, easily fatigued, languid girls of a modern age, drilled in book-learning, ignorant of common things. The great danger of all this, and of the evils that come from it, is that society by-and-by will turn as blindly against female intellectual culture as it now advocates it, and, having worked disproportionately one way, will work disproportionately in the opposite direction."

"The fact is," said my wife, "that domestic service is the great problem of life here in America; the happiness of families, their thrift, well-being, and comfort, are more affected by this than by any one thing else. Our girls, as they have been brought up, cannot perform the labor of their own families, as in those simpler, old-fashioned days you tell of; and what is worse, they have no practical skill with which to instruct servants, and servants come to us, as a class, raw and untrained; so what is to be done? In the present state of prices, the board of a domestic costs double her wages, and the waste she makes is a more serious matter still. Suppose you give us an article upon this subject in your 'House and Home Papers.' You could not have a better one."

So I sat down, and wrote thus on

SERVANTS AND SERVICE.

Many of the domestic evils in America originate in the fact, that, while society here is professedly based on new principles, which ought to make social life in every respect different from the life of the Old World, yet these principles have never been so thought out and applied as to give consistency and harmony to our daily relations. America starts with a political organization based on a declaration of the primitive freedom and equality of all men. Every human being, according to this principle, stands on the same natural level with every other, and has the same chance to rise according to the degree of power or capacity given by the Creator. All our civil institutions are designed to preserve this equality, as far as possible, from generation to generation: there is no entailed property, there are no hereditary titles, no monopolies, no privileged classes,—all are to be as free to rise and fall as the waves of the sea.

The condition of domestic service, however, still retains about it something of the influences from feudal times, and from the near presence of slavery in neighboring States. All English literature, all the literature of the world, describes domestic service in the old feudal spirit and with the old feudal language, which regarded the master as belonging to a privileged class and the servant to an inferior one. There is not a play, not a poem, not a novel, not a history, that does not present this view. The master's rights, like the rights of kings, were supposed to rest in his being born in a superior rank. The good servant was one who, from childhood, had learned "to order himself lowly and reverently to all his betters." When New England brought to these shores the theory of democracy, she brought, in the persons of the first pilgrims, the habits of thought and of action formed in aristocratic communities, Winthrop's Journal, and all the old records of the earlier colonists, show households where masters and mistresses stood on the "right divine" of the privileged classes, howsoever they might have risen up against authorities themselves.

The first consequence of this state of things was a universal rejection of domestic service in all classes of American-born society. For a generation or two, there was, indeed, a sort of interchange of family strength,—sons and daughters engaging in the service of neighboring families, in default of a sufficient working-force of their own, but always on conditions of strict equality. The assistant was to share the table, the family sitting-room, and every honor and attention that might be claimed by son or daughter. When families increased in refinement and education so as to make these conditions of close intimacy with more uncultured neighbors disagreeable, they had to choose between such intimacies and the performance of their own domestic toil. No wages could induce a son or daughter of New England to take the condition of a servant on terms which they thought applicable to that of a slave. The slightest hint of a separate table was resented as an insult; not to enter the front-door, and not to sit in the front-parlor on state-occasions, was bitterly commented on as a personal indignity.

The well-taught, self-respecting daughters of farmers, the class most valuable in domestic service, gradually retired from it. They preferred any other employment, however laborious. Beyond all doubt, the labors of a well-regulated family are more healthy, more cheerful, more interesting, because less monotonous, than the mechanical tolls of a factory; yet the girls of New England, with one consent, preferred the factory, and left the whole business of domestic service to a foreign population; and they did it mainly because they would not take positions in families as an inferior laboring-class by the side of others of their own age who assumed as their prerogative to live without labor.

"I can't let you have one of my daughters," said an energetic matron to her neighbor from the city, who was seeking for a servant in her summer vacation; "if you hadn't daughters of your own, maybe I would; but my girls a'n't going to work so that your girls may live in idleness."

It was vain to offer money. "We don't need your money, Ma'am, we can support ourselves in other ways; my girls can braid straw, and bind shoes, but they a'n't going to be slaves to anybody."

In the Irish and German servants who took the place of Americans in families, there was, to begin with, the tradition of education in favor of a higher class; but even the foreign population became more or less infected with the spirit of democracy. They came to this country with vague notions of freedom and equality, and in ignorant and uncultivated people such ideas are often more unreasonable for being vague. They did not, indeed, claim a seat at the table and in the parlor, but they repudiated many of those habits of respect and courtesy which belonged to their former condition, and asserted their own will and way in the round, unvarnished phrase which they supposed to be their right as republican citizens. Life became a sort of domestic wrangle and struggle between the employers, who secretly confessed their weakness, but endeavored openly to assume the air and bearing of authority, and the employed, who knew their power and insisted on their privileges. From this cause domestic service in America has had less of mutual kindliness than in old countries. Its terms have been so ill understood and defined that both parties have assumed the defensive; and a common topic of conversation in American female society has often been the general servile war which in one form or another was going on in their different families,—a war as interminable as would be a struggle between aristocracy and common people, undefined by any bill of rights or constitution, and therefore opening fields for endless disputes. In England, the class who go to service are a class, and service is a profession; the distance between them and their employers is so marked and defined, and all the customs and requirements of the position are so perfectly understood, that the master or mistress has no fear of being compromised by condescension, and no need of the external voice or air of authority. The higher up in the social scale one goes, the more courteous seems to become the intercourse of master and servant; the more perfect and real the power, the more is it veiled in outward expression,—commands are phrased as requests, and gentleness of voice and manner covers an authority which no one would think of offending without trembling.

But in America all is undefined. In the first place, there is no class who mean to make domestic service a profession to live and die in. It is universally an expedient, a stepping-stone to something higher; your best servants always have something else in view as soon as they have laid by a little money,—some form of independence which shall give them a home of their own is constantly in mind. Families look forward to the buying of landed homesteads, and the scattered brothers and sisters work awhile in domestic service to gain the common fund for the purpose; your seamstress intends to become a dress-maker, and take in work at her own house; your cook is pondering a marriage with the baker, which shall transfer her toils from your cooking-stove to her own. Young women are eagerly rushing into every other employment, till female trades and callings are all overstocked. We are continually harrowed with tales of the sufferings of distressed needle-women, of the exactions and extortions practised on the frail sex in the many branches of labor and trade at which they try their hands; and yet women will encounter all these chances of ruin and starvation rather than make up their minds to permanent domestic service. Now what is the matter with domestic service? One would think, on the face of it, that a calling which gives a settled home, a comfortable room, rent-free, with fire and lights, good board and lodging, and steady, well-paid wages, would certainly offer more attractions than the making of shirts for tenpence, with all the risks of providing one's own sustenance and shelter.

I think it is mainly from the want of a definite idea of the true position of a servant under our democratic institutions that domestic service is so shunned and avoided in America, that it is the very last thing which an intelligent young woman will look to for a living. It is more the want of personal respect toward those in that position than the labors incident to it which repels our people from it. Many would be willing to perform these labors, but they are not willing to place themselves in a situation where their self-respect is hourly wounded by the implication of an inferiority which does not follow any other kind of labor or service in this country but that of the family.

There exists in the minds of employers an unsuspected spirit of superiority, which is stimulated into an active form by the resistance which democracy inspires in the working-class. Many families think of servants only as a necessary evil, their wages as exactions, and all that allowed them as so much taken from the family; and they seek in every way to get from them as much and to give them as little as possible. Their rooms are the neglected, ill-furnished, incommodious ones,—and the kitchen is the most cheerless and comfortless place in the house. Other families, more good-natured and liberal, provide their domestics with more suitable accommodations, and are more indulgent; but there is still a latent spirit of something like contempt for the position. That they treat their servants with so much consideration seems to them a merit entitling them to the most prostrate gratitude; and they are constantly disappointed and shocked at that want of sense of inferiority on the part of these people which leads them to appropriate pleasant rooms, good furniture, and good living as mere matters of common justice.

It seems to be a constant surprise to some employers that servants should insist on having the same human wants as themselves. Ladies who yawn in their elegantly furnished parlors, among books and pictures, if they have not company, parties, or opera to diversify the evening, seem astonished and half indignant that cook and chambermaid are more disposed to go out for an evening gossip than to sit on hard chairs in the kitchen where they have been toiling all day. The pretty chambermaid's anxieties about her dress, the time she spends at her small and not very clear mirror, are sneeringly noticed by those whose toilet-cares take up serious hours; and the question has never apparently occurred to them why a serving-maid should not want to look pretty as well as her mistress. She is a woman as well as they, with all a woman's wants and weaknesses; and her dress is as much to her as theirs to them.

A vast deal of trouble among servants arises from impertinent interferences and petty tyrannical exactions on the part of employers. Now the authority of the master and mistress of a house in regard to their domestics extends simply to the things they have contracted to do and the hours during which they have contracted to serve; otherwise than this, they have no more right to interfere with them in the disposal of their time than with any mechanic whom they employ. They have, indeed, a right to regulate the hours of their own household, and servants can choose between conformity to these hours and the loss of their situation; but, within reasonable limits, their right to come and go at their own discretion, in their own time, should be unquestioned.

As to the terms of social intercourse, it seems somehow to be settled in the minds of many employers that their servants owe them and their family more respect than they and the family owe to the servants. But do they? What is the relation of servant to employer in a democratic country? Precisely that of a person who for money performs any kind of service for you. The carpenter comes into your house to put up a set of shelves,—the cook comes into your kitchen to cook your dinner. You never think that the carpenter owes you any more respect than you owe to him because he is in your house doing your behests; he is your fellow-citizen, you treat him with respect, you expect to be treated with respect by him. You have a claim on him that he shall do your work according to your directions,—no more. Now I apprehend that there is a very common notion as to the position and rights of servants which is quite different from this. Is it not a common feeling that a servant is one who may be treated with a degree of freedom by every member of the family which he or she may not return? Do not people feel at liberty to question servants about their private affairs, to comment on their dress and appearance, in a manner which they would feel to be an impertinence, if reciprocated? Do they not feel at liberty to express dissatisfaction with their performances in rude and unceremonious terms, to reprove them in the presence of company, while yet they require that the dissatisfaction of servants shall be expressed only in terms of respect? A woman would not feel herself at liberty to talk to her milliner or her dress-maker in language as devoid of consideration as she will employ towards her cook or chambermaid. Yet both are rendering her a service which she pays for in money, and one is no more made her inferior thereby than the other. Both have an equal right to be treated with courtesy. The master and mistress of a house have a right to require respectful treatment from all whom their roof shelters; but they have no more right to exact it of servants than of every guest and every child, and they themselves owe it as much to servants as to guests.

In order that servants may be treated with respect and courtesy, it is not necessary, as in simpler patriarchal days, that they sit at the family-table. Your carpenter or plumber does not feel hurt that you do not ask him to dine with you, nor your milliner and mantua-maker that you do not exchange ceremonious calls and invite them to your parties. It is well understood that your relations with them are of a mere business character. They never take it as an assumption of superiority on your part that you do not admit them to relations of private intimacy. There may be the most perfect respect and esteem and even friendship between them and you, notwithstanding. So it may be in the case of servants. It is easy to make any person understand that there are quite other reasons than the assumption of personal superiority for not wishing to admit servants to the family-privacy. It was not, in fact, to sit in the parlor or at the table, in themselves considered, that was the thing aimed at by New-England girls,—these were valued only as signs that they were deemed worthy of respect and consideration, and, where freely conceded, were often in point of fact declined.

Let servants feel, in their treatment by their employers, and in the atmosphere of the family, that their position is held to be a respectable one, let them feel in the mistress of the family the charm of unvarying consideration and good manners, let their work-rooms be made convenient and comfortable, and their private apartments bear some reasonable comparison in point of agreeableness to those of other members of the family, and domestic service will be more frequently sought by a superior and self-respecting class. There are families in which such a state of things prevails; and such families, amid the many causes which unite to make the tenure of service uncertain, have generally been able to keep good permanent servants.