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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



XI.

HOSPITALITY.

No home is genuine which is not also hospitable. Just as we must go out to get fresh life, we must welcome fresh life which comes in to us. And further than that it would be a poor nature which found no one to love outside the home circle. If we love any one we wish to share our life with our friend.

But it is impossible to be hospitable except by welcoming our visitors to our every-day life. If we depart much from our usual customs, our freedom is checked, and the visit becomes a burden, willingly borne, perhaps, for the time, but sure to be felt if often laid upon us.

A friend, well known in literary circles, inviting me to visit her in a Western city through which I was to pass on my way to another State wrote, "You must stay more than a day or two, for, if not, I shall have to give up my time to you, and I can't interrupt my daily work! I go into my library at nine o'clock every morning and stay till two. But in the afternoon I drive, and when in the evening my husband comes home from business and my children from school I give myself up to my family."

Upon this invitation I determined to stay a week. "You must not come into my library in the morning unless I invite you," said my friend laughing; "but there is another library adjoining your room where I shall not venture to disturb you without leave!"

I remember a home which opened very hospitable doors to me when I was a young girl,—that of a widow with two young daughters. They were in straitened circumstances, and could not effectively heat the large and handsome house left by the father of the family. "I ask you to come in the winter, my dear," the lady used to say to me, "because you live in the country and can sleep comfortably in a cold room: I ask my city friends to come in the summer." That, I think, showed a true spirit of hospitality. She gave what she had to those who could enjoy it. I shall never forget the cosy afternoons I have passed in her warm sitting-room, while one read aloud and the rest did fancy work, or sometimes the plainest of sewing. We read novels, some first rate, some second, or even third rate, without a thought of getting any benefit from them. But we chatted and laughed and enjoyed ourselves. Or sometimes some of us would go into town to a matinee, and coming home tingling with cold would find a hot and savory supper awaiting us in the bright dining-room, prepared by those who had stayed at home, and who were eager to hear everything about the play which we were eager to tell. There was no servant to trouble us, and we all enjoyed ourselves together in washing the dishes. We sat up as long as we pleased and toasted our feet, and in zero weather even wrapped up a hot brick to take to our chilly beds.

But this lady was not without ambition. She wished she could entertain more as other people did. She thought she ought to give some parties, especially as she liked to go to other people's entertainments. And so, on one occasion, she did give a party. It was a grand affair. The whole house was set in order and decorated. Caterers came from the city, and her tables were beautifully laid with exactly the same salads and cakes that she was in the habit of eating at other houses. Her cards of invitation were of the choicest style, and her house was filled with fashionable people, since, in spite of her reduced circumstances, she had a perfectly assured position in society, and there was also a respectable number of unfashionable people present, for she was too truly hospitable to leave out anybody she liked. She was a skillful manager, and succeeded in carrying through her undertaking for half the expense usual in such a case; but it cost her sleepless nights. Of course, "The labor we delight in physics pain," and I am sure she thoroughly enjoyed her grand party which everybody said was perfect in all its appointments. Nevertheless, her bills amounted to one sixth of the yearly income of the family, so that she never gave another party till later in life, when fortune suddenly smiled upon her again and put her in possession of a million. I do not condemn her party, but merely use it to point my statement that we cannot often exercise hospitality except as we admit our friends to our daily life.

A friend of mine who was making a tour of the South bethought her of a cousin in New Orleans whom she had not seen since the war. She wrote to her, "I am going to New Orleans for a week or two and wish you might find me a boarding-place near you, so that I could see you as well as the sights." The Southern cousin at once replied with a cordial invitation that the Northern cousin should visit her. The Northerner had no idea of making a convenience of her almost unknown relative, and declined; but the Southerner insisted that the visit would be a real favor to herself. "That is," she added, "if you can be comfortable in the way we live." The Northerner could hardly refuse longer, but having certain fastidious ideas, she was rather startled on reaching New Orleans to find that her cousin's family, in which there were eight children, lived in a house of five rooms! She felt, in spite of her precautions, she must be an intruder. But the husband of her cousin said sweetly, "Where there is room in the heart, there is room in the house," and she stayed, and had one of the most delightful experiences of her life.

I am afraid few Northerners judged by this standard can be said to have "room in the heart," though I remember gratefully a minister's family in Massachusetts who lived in a little house and with narrow means, and yet received with bright smiles all their friends from the towns around who chose to stay with them. A brother minister would drive over with his whole family and stay a few days, and no one ever suggested there was not room for everybody. All the young collegiate cousins took this home in their way on their vacation tramps, and brought with them as many of their classmates as chose to come, never thinking it necessary to give any warning of their approach. I have known as many as a dozen young cousins to be gathered in the house at one time, the boys from Yale and Amherst, girls from New York and Philadelphia, or from quiet country boarding-schools,—one indeed came all the way from London,—and they enjoyed themselves as much as the visitors in an English country-house. They did not "ride to the meet," of course, or attend a county ball; but they went blackberrying together, and they sang songs, and played duets, and had games of croquet, and read French, and acted Shakespeare under the apple-trees; they climbed a mountain, and rowed on the pond, and took long botanical expeditions. The minister's wife was herself a delectable cook, but she must have wrinkled her brow many a time in planning how to get enough bread and butter to go round even with the aid of the blackberries, and some of the young fellows had to sleep on the hay in the barn, though happily they had a natural bath-tub provided in a stream among the bushes behind the house.

The achievement of this hostess is the more notable because she was a New England housekeeper, and her standard of neatness was high. If she had attempted anything but the simplest manner of entertainment she would certainly have had nervous prostration. But her simplicity of living saved her, and she is still hale and hearty, though she has passed the limit of threescore and ten.

A friend who has lived much at the South, in speaking of the beautiful hospitality for which Southerners are distinguished, says that it comes partly from their easy way of taking life. They do not think it necessary to put the house in order because guests are coming, but let the guests take them as they find them. More than that, they are less given to "pursuits" than Northerners, and so less easily disturbed.

Believing, however, in the value of "pursuits," I have been interested in observing the manner of hospitality in a family among my friends. The family consists of the father, mother, and three grown-up daughters. All the daughters are earning their own living, and the mother is much occupied in household cares. It is a highly intellectual family. All are readers and keep abreast of the literature of the day. Beyond that, one or another of them is always studying German, or French, or history, or mineralogy, or taking up some social reform. Two of them find time to write acceptably for magazines. It would seem as if they could not have much leisure to entertain friends, yet their great rambling house, which stands in the midst of a shady old-fashioned yard and garden just outside the city, is seldom without a guest or two, and there never was a place where a tired soul and body could find sweeter rest. A cup and plate at table and a bed to sleep in are provided for the visitor, and so far there is not much trouble. The family meet at the table,—when convenient,—and there is plenty of delightful chat. One or another is often at leisure for a walk or a row or some other pastime, but no one appears to feel it necessary to give up any of her ordinary occupations for the sake of the visitor. I consider myself rather a particular friend of three of the family, yet I have often passed a Sunday there without seeing more than one of the three. The others had something to do on their own account. One of them, tired with her week's work, likes to rest all day in her own room. Another is an ardent Episcopalian, and wishes to follow all the church services from early morning through the evening. As there are so many agreeable people in the family one is not often obliged to be alone, but when left alone the sense of home comfort is only increased. There are plenty of lounges and easy-chairs; the large, comfortable tables are strewn with all the latest magazines; the bookcases are full of readable books, and the young ladies all have their individual collections of Soule's photographs, which are well worth lounging over. The fires are always bright within, and the long windows opening everywhere on piazzas and balconies command extensive and beautiful views. The rooms are sweet with flowers in winter, and the gardens are fragrant in summer. One can lounge and read all day, or take a walk, or do a dozen other things. The cheerful, interesting conversation at table, and in the odds and ends of time through the day, would be sufficient stimulus to all but the most exacting guests; while, as a matter of fact, there are always a few hours in the evening when everybody seems to be at leisure, and these form the social centre of the day. For my part I would much rather be entertained in this way than to have my footsteps dogged all day by some well-meaning and self-sacrificing devotee who tries conscientiously to amuse me.

One of the most hospitable homes I ever knew was made by two young ladies in Boston. One of them was a country girl of genius and refinement who came to the city to do literary work. Here she formed a friendship with another young lady who liked to pass most of the time in Boston for the sake of its advantages in music, art, and the theatre. Neither was rich, but together they had a very respectable income. They found a nice little flat of six convenient rooms in an accessible and pleasant but unfashionable street, and furnished it with exactly the things they wanted to use every day. The furnishings were thus simple, but they combined comfort and beauty, for both the young ladies had excellent taste. I am tempted to describe all their original and charming arrangements, only that would lead me too far. I will only speak of their hospitality which was perfect. They gave no parties nor even afternoon teas. How could they without a servant? Indeed, though they had the luxury of getting their own breakfast in their sitting-room at any hour of the day when they liked to eat it, they were too much in the habit of eating their dinner at any restaurant near which they might happen to be when they were hungry to have inaugurated any extensive housekeeping. Moreover, they could see their city friends whenever they chose for an hour or two at a time without the trouble of providing a feast or a band of music. They always had bread and butter and fruit and various appetizing knickknacks stored away, so that if a caller stayed till any one was hungry a sufficient lunch could be served on the spot.

But they exercised their hospitality chiefly for the benefit of their country friends whom they could not otherwise see. Many a nice old lady or bright young girl passed a week with them, who would otherwise have hurried through her season's shopping in a day and have had no time left for music or pictures. Most of these friends could amuse themselves very well through the day. If they did not know the way about, one of the hostesses conducted them to the libraries or museums as she went her own way to her daily occupation. There was always bread and cheese for them to eat if they chose, and if they cared for something more they could find it at a restaurant as their entertainers did, or they could cook it for themselves in the hospitable little kitchen. A folding bed could always be let down for them at night, and in times of stress another bed could be made on the sofa.

The hostesses spent little money or thought or time on their guests, except so far as they really wanted to do so, and yet they entertained great numbers of people most satisfactorily. They did not ask anybody to visit them from a sense of duty, but they always asked everybody they fancied they should like to see without a thought as to convenience, because it always was convenient to have anybody they liked with them. We know that men enjoy giving invitations in this free way, but they seldom have the power—for two reasons; either their wives are not satisfied to entertain the friends of their husbands in simple every-day fashion, or the husbands themselves are not satisfied to have them so entertained.

Every one knows the great difference between city and country hospitality. Very few people in the city appear to be really pleased to see an uninvited guest, and they are far less likely to invite guests, except perhaps when giving a party, than those of the same means in the country. They are not altogether to blame in this. There are so many more people to see in the city than in the country that every one becomes a new burden, and the friendship must be very close indeed that survives such a strain. But I fear it is also true that in the city the non-essentials of life have undue weight.



XII.

BRIC-A-BRAC.

Our lives are clogged with bric-a-brac. Every separate article in a room may be pretty in itself, and yet the room may be hideous through overcrowding with objects which have no meaning.

The disease of bric-a-brac I think, is due to two influences,—the desire of uncreative minds to create beauty, and the mania for giving Christmas presents. Both these influences have a noble source, and will probably reach more beautiful results at last. Any mind awake to beauty must try to create it, and if its power and originality are not very great, what can it do better than to apply itself to humble, every-day trifles and try to decorate them? This is certainly right, if the old principle of architecture is always remembered: "Decorate construction, do not construct decoration." A few illustrations of my meaning may be needed.

I am obliged to use blotting-paper when I write. I have always been grateful to a friend who sent me a beautiful blue blotting book, with a bunch of white clover charmingly painted on the first page. It gives me pleasure every time I write a letter. I am glad that one of my friends was artistic enough to embroider some fine handkerchiefs for me with a beautiful initial. One of my dearest possessions is the lining for a bureau drawer made of pale blue silk, with scented wadding tied in with knots of narrow white ribbon. This lies in the bottom of the drawer, and owing to the kindness of my friends shown at various times, I am able to lay upon the top of each pile of underclothing either a handkerchief case or a scent bag of blue silk or satin. Some of these trifles are corded with heavy silk, some are embroidered with rosebuds, some are ornamented with bows of ribbon, and altogether they make the drawer a "thing of beauty" which to me personally "is a joy forever," and they are never in anybody's way.

My friend has been less fortunate in the tributes of affection she has received. She has several elaborate and even pretty ties which she is obliged to append to her sofas and easy-chairs. They are believed to add to the harmony of coloring in her sitting-room, but they are very likely to be askew when the sofas and easy-chairs are in use; and as they always have to be rearranged during the process of dusting, they form an argument for delaying that duty as long as possible. She also has several head-rests and foot-rests, in which the embroidery is exquisite in itself, but which are so ill-contrived that they afford no rest to either head or foot. "They are worth having, though," she says, "because of their beauty, just as a picture is worth having though you cannot use it." "Yes," replies her husband, "they are worth having, but not worth having in the way. I do not want even the Sistine Madonna propped up in my easy-chair." Most of her friends are learning to paint, and many of them have chosen to give her at Christmas specimens of their progress mounted on pasteboard easels. These cover the tables and mantels and brackets of her sitting-room. "Ah!" she says softly, under her breath, "if they had only thought to paint book-marks instead One can never have enough book-marks. It would be delightful to have one in every book in the library, and the more beautiful the better, while the ugly ones, which perhaps come from our dearest friends, would be blessed for their usefulness besides being unobtrusive."

Sweet temper is certainly essential to a happy home; but if my friend were not too sweet tempered to hide these offerings from constant sight, her sitting-room would not be so exasperating a place. There is no room for a work-basket or a book on the tables. One is continually upsetting some frail structure, or tumbling over some well-meant aesthetic convenience.

Christmas presents are worse than any others. Even a hideous and useless gift offered at any other season may be acceptable, and we need not grudge it room, because being spontaneous, it represents love. But even the most genuine Christmas presents are becoming subject to the suspicion that they are given from a sense of duty, because gifts at that season have become a habit. I have no reason to suppose that any of my numerous kind friends grudge the Christmas presents they so generously give me; but I often find myself wondering how many of them would think of giving me anything as often as once a year if there were no special date to recall the custom to their minds.

Gifts would be far more likely to be spontaneous if they were never given regularly; if, for instance, we avoided giving anything next Christmas to anybody whom we had remembered this year—excepting always to little children, to servants, and to the poor—the three classes to whom we never venture to give bric-a-brac, knowing well they would laugh us to scorn instead of flattering us by calling our contributions "perfectly lovely." Now, when a gift is spontaneous, its value is quite irrespective of its use, but at the same time it is far more likely to be both beautiful and useful. We read a book that moves us. How we wish we could share it with one friend who particularly enjoys such a book! We send it to her, and it is exactly the thing she wants. On the other hand, Christmas is approaching. What shall we give our friend? She likes books. Well, then, here is a prettily bound volume which is well spoken of. We have no time to look farther, and we send it to her. She thanks us in a pretty note, but is too busy in writing a hundred notes of thanks to read the book then. It is laid by and perhaps forgotten.

We are making another friend an informal visit. We see that her needle-book is getting shabby. We hasten to get bits of kid and silk and flannel, and make her a new one with our daintiest stitches, and she is delighted. She uses it every day, and likes to remember that we thought of her comfort. But what shall we give her for Christmas? We think she has everything. We have too many friends to remember now, for time for such a dainty piece of sewing. Let us buy her some kind of an ornament. It is true that the French clock and the vases and the match receivers and two or three pictures on easels already crowd the mantel-piece, but there is an odd little bronze image which would not be amiss among them. It costs rather more than we can afford to pay, but we love her, and wish to give her something, and are at our wits' end to know what. She receives it graciously, and every time she dusts her ornaments she remembers us affectionately. "I don't grudge dusting this," she says sweetly to herself, "for my dear friend gave it to me, and I would do a great deal more than this for her." Of course, in a family where a servant dusts, the present is forgotten the moment it is placed on the shelf.

I remember the dearest of little girls who once made me a Christmas present of a purse of her own embroidering. The colors she chose were brilliant, but hardly beautiful; the material rather flimsy, the sewing was far beyond criticism, and if I had ever been rash enough to intrust any money to such a purse, I should have returned home penniless. But I was enchanted with the gift. I shall keep it as long as I live wrapped in the crumpled tissue paper in which this darling child folded it in her wish to make it look as attractive as possible. I can never even think of this gift without fancying the tiny unskillful fingers as they toilsomely labored over those silks that would catch and twist, and I think of the sweet brow and eyes which bent over the work, and am as sure as if I had seen it of the loving smile which hovered about the childish lips at the thought that she was going to give me a pleasant surprise.

But as this little maiden grew up the cares of Christmas multiplied. There came a time when she had money to spend, and a host of friends to spend it upon, and when she certainly had not time personally to conduct the making of the number of Christmas presents she thought necessary to bestow. She was much too loyal to leave me out on this occasion, and if I were to judge of the degree of her affection by the proportion of her money which she spent upon me, she must have regarded me still as one of her dearest friends. She gave me a pair of exquisite cut glass vases, which, when placed in the sunshine, were certainly most beautiful with the flashing of colors. Their outline too was a lovely curve, but unfortunately such that it was impossible to put any flowers in the vases. At the base they were too slender to receive even one rose-stalk, while they were so broad at the top that it would have required a whole nosegay to fill them. If I had had a vast empty drawing-room which was to be filled with bric-a-brac, I could have found a place for them; but they were too delicate for my tiny parlor where there is so little elbow-room that slight things are in danger of being overturned. Of course I prize the vases and love the giver, but I know she never would have given them to me but for the feeling that the time had come to make a present; and so, while I shall cherish the little purse as long as I live, I have resolved that if the vases are ever broken, I will not treasure the fragments.

From these two roots, the love of creating beauty and the desire to express love for our friends on the same day of every year, such luxuriant vines have grown that unless we prune them carefully we are in danger of being completely entangled by them. There are still, perhaps, some waste places which our useless bric-a-brac might make beautiful, and if we know any bare homes, let us by all means do something to brighten them; but let us not make for ourselves or give to our friends any small article which does not express use as well as beauty. We need not be at a loss if we remember Oscar Wilde's declaration that every article used in a house should be something which had given pleasure to the maker, that is, that it should be artistic. When all useful bric-a-brac has become beautiful, we shall no longer desire to make or possess beautiful bric-a-brac which is not useful. Of course I know that "Beauty is its own excuse for being," and I see in a fine picture, for instance, an appeal to the higher faculties which is more useful than usefulness. This I do not see in bric-a-brac, certainly not if the objects are to be so crowded in a small room that no one can see anything more than prettiness in them. Instead of my beautiful vases with their shifting lights, which do, after all, give me real pleasure sometimes when I am not too anxious lest I should break them, cut glass tumblers would have given me the same aesthetic enjoyment renewed at every meal. I might break a tumbler to be sure, but I should have the full enjoyment of it while it lasted.



XIII.

EMOTIONAL WOMEN.

A highly emotional young lady was once defending the reasoning powers of her sex at the dinner-table of a cultivated and fair-minded physician who finally took occasion to say sweetly to her: "No doubt the reason of women equals that of men; but I believe the trouble is that all men like a woman a little better if she is governed by feeling rather than by reason."

"Oh," said the young lady in a glow, "that is like saying that you would a little rather a woman would not be truthful!"

"I hope not," said the physician.

The friend who told me the anecdote added that of the two young ladies who were at the time members of the physician's family, there was no question that he greatly preferred the one who was most reasonable and least emotional!

Some one else tells me of a clever young lady who applied for a position as dramatic critic upon a newspaper. The editor recognized her ability and her knowledge of the drama, but he said he was afraid to employ a woman in such a department, lest her feelings should prevent her telling the exact truth. She would be biased herself, and praise the things she liked, and then she would have her personal favorites among the actors. The young lady who believed herself capable of justice was greatly hurt.

Are women really excessively emotional? And if so, is it well that they should be?

I suppose most people would agree that women are more emotional than men, and that this peculiarity comes in a great measure from their delicate physical organization, and in a great measure from the encouragement they get from men in indulging their feelings. Nobody admires a woman when her emotions reach the point of hysteria, and, in fact, those who have encouraged her up to that point are often least patient with her when the crisis comes. The general belief about hysteria is that it is caused by the culpable weakness of a selfish nature, and that is often true. But there are important exceptional cases becoming more and more numerous, where the parents have cultivated what they and their friends consider fine feelings so assiduously that the poor child is born helplessly weak and nervous, and a prey to every vibration in the spiritual atmosphere about her.

Now what are fine feelings? Jealousy, envy, hatred, and others of that class are not fine, and yet they are extremely common among those women who are sensitive and highly organized. They do belong more frequently than we sometimes think to the outfit of an emotional woman. A woman who would not hurt a fly has violent antipathies to excellent people. She would not hurt them either. She would delight in giving them food and clothing if they were in want. She wishes she need not hurt their feelings, but she usually does give pain, because her own feelings are paramount. The important point however is that she is unjust in her judgments. She exaggerates the faults of her foes, as well as the virtues of her friends, and widens every breach.

But we all know that jealousy and envy and hatred are wrong, even if we endeavor to dignify them with finer names, and all of us who have any moral purpose do make our stand against them.

When, therefore, we speak in praise of a woman's emotional nature, we are thinking of a nature in which generosity swallows up justice, and duty is forgotten, because "love is an unerring law." We cannot be too generous, or too loving, or too sensitive to beauty and honor.

But men are as generous and loving as women, so, after all, we do have something a little different from this in our minds when we speak of the emotional nature of women. Do we not mean that a woman is unreasonable?

Love can never be too great, but it is often unwise. All affectionate women who have reached middle age must have received many confidences from girls who have been mistaken in supposing themselves loved by men who have grown tired of them. A girl often suffers intensely in such a case, and it is hard to know how much is due to wounded love, and how much to wounded pride. I suppose most of us have been astonished to see how often when a girl's life seems both to herself and her friends to have been utterly wrecked she is capable of responding to a new lover, and if he proves to be a fine man, how full and fine her own life becomes. This is right, and most natural to the most emotional natures, that is, to those which answer most readily to outside influences. Yet we all have a feeling that sudden and frequent changes of this kind show a shallow character, and girls sometimes make a pathetic struggle to resist new possibilities of happiness, because they cannot bear to admit that the old love can die.

The weakness of character in this case comes from the being ready to love any one who will make us the central figure without regard to any more solid foundation. Such love comes from vanity and is good for nothing. A girl cannot be too careful to guard against such an emotion.

And then, why should a woman cease to love a man simply because she is disappointed to find that he does not love her? Many times the fault is her own. She has believed he loved her because she wished to believe so. But if she has loved him because he was worth being loved, she has a right to cherish that love even when she knows it is hopeless, provided she does not hurt other people. I think it is happily not often that an altogether hopeless love continues long in full vigor, but occasionally it does. If the old lover marries, the woman who cannot conquer her love certainly ought to separate herself as far from him as possible. Any fine theory of being able to be a silent providence in his life is sure to prove fallacious, and to bring suffering to somebody. And it is not best for her to say much to her own friends of her sorrow. She either pains them or tires them. Any love which causes her to do this is unreasonable. I suspect that some women find their love slipping away from them and try to hold it fast by the expedient of talking about it. No love that has to be held in that way is worth keeping. There are loves we should cherish just as there are others which we ought to cast out, but nothing is real which cannot be retained except by making ourselves a burden to other people.

Another unreasonable love is that which a woman feels for a man who has really treated her dishonorably. It is true that we do not love simply for merit. There are sympathies between men and women as between parents and children with which merit has little to do. One great reason that emotional women attract men is because they can make a hero out of such unheroic stuff. And why should we try always to see the exact reality as if that were nearer the truth than the same reality transfigured by ideal light? The more we believe in others, the better and happier we all are. A man full of faults, selfish, and even vicious, may be helped by a woman who trusts him. But when he has forsaken her, it is not often that she can be of much real service to him. She must indeed forgive him, but when she has genuinely forgiven him, the glamour of love will usually have disappeared. If she insists upon shutting herself up from other love for his sake, she should question herself as to the part sentimentality and perversity bear in her character.

Most of the best work done in the world is done in the face of what seem to be insurmountable difficulties. Our faith moves mountains. An impossible duty is done. The fact that women ignore the impossibility is their strongest power. This, I suppose, is what the physician meant when he said that men liked a woman a little better if she was not always governed by reason. "Love believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things." We all like to have such love as that lavished upon us. It is a noble love which glorifies the object by keeping in view all the time the ideal which is to be some day realized. It is something very different from the weak love which distorts the object simply because of its personal connection with us. But no doubt women who are weakly emotional in this way do have a great attraction for men, that is, so long as the man himself is an object of their emotions. Such women are pretty sure to have lovers when better and more unselfish women are overlooked. They do not wear very well, and men tire of them, especially when they exercise their emotions in new fields; and as wives (after marriage) and sisters and mothers they prefer the quieter and less impassioned women. But the great and ardent loves which influence a life still belong to the women of ardent feelings.

Ardent feelings well controlled,—that is our ideal; but how few women of strong feelings do control them well, and how few who have perfect self-control have very strong feelings!

Which shall we choose, the strong feelings or the self-control? We have not complete choice in the matter, for we must begin with the temperament we are born with. Others may choose to love or hate us for the temperament we are not responsible for, but what can we do for ourselves?

I believe the hardest task is that of the cool-blooded women. How are they to make themselves feel without becoming hypocrites? Pretending to feel any emotion is no help in feeling it. Nevertheless, we are not entirely helpless. There are ways of nourishing noble germs of feeling even when the natural soil is cold and dry.

One way is to clear the ground of weeds. A cool nature is sometimes peculiarly prone to envy and suspicion. A woman with little love of her fellow-creatures sits alone in her home day after day, and thinks of her own troubles and the shortcomings of her neighbors till it seems impossible to love anybody but herself. Such emotions as stir the dull current of her life are all selfish. But if she has the one saving virtue of being able to perceive her narrowness, the remedy is in her own hands. For she can go out and speak to somebody, and even a passing greeting sometimes sets the blood flowing afresh. And there is always somebody she can help, though, it may be only a child who is in some trifling difficulty. Every act of this kind makes another easier, and every such act nourishes the little germ of love in the heart. I have no doubt that persistence in doing small kindnesses for every one about her would be potent enough to transform the coldest of us into a woman glowing with love. Yet I cannot say I have ever seen such a transformation. I suppose that is because the cold nature does not perceive its coldness or desire to change. Still there are surely some of us who know that love in us is only a stunted plant, and who do sincerely desire its more luxuriant growth. Those of us who have ardent feelings towards our friends know that we are often worse than cold towards those we do not fancy. We sometimes, alas, take a certain pride in our sensitiveness in this particular. We justify our hatred for uncongenial people till we have fairly faced the truth that love is the law of our being, and that we must love our neighbor. Then, though we cannot change our temperament, yet by the doing of prosaic duties, the germ of love may be made to bud and blossom. At least do not let us allow the turmoil of every-day affairs to crowd out love. We have not time to see our friend. A letter written to us with love and care is hastily skimmed and thrown aside. We do not answer it for many weeks, and then our haste is our apology for saying nothing we really care for. And by and by the love grows faint. Perhaps our friend dies, and the package of affectionate letters we once saved as precious lies forgotten in a drawer. Our friend did not fail us, we should love her just as dearly again if we were with her daily, but the love has been crowded out.

Now, some of us are really overtasked with necessary work; but usually our hurry comes from our ambition or our indolence. If love were really first with us, we should find time for our friends.

But some of us are so placed that we are continually meeting new people whom we can warmly love. Now there is a limit to the number of people who can form a part of our daily life. It is possible to love a hundred people dearly, but it is not possible to talk intimately with a hundred people every day, or to write a hundred affectionate letters every week. But because we cannot cling closely to so many, let us not believe that we cannot cling closely to a few. Let us at least hold fast to a few friends, and without trying to form a part of the lives of the rest meet them all warmly when we do meet. We cannot love too much or too many people, and loving one helps us to love another, but we can only fully give ourselves to a few.

I seem to be speaking altogether of nourishing emotion, and we ought to nourish noble emotions. But the task set especially to women is to control less noble emotions. We know well enough what is our duty in regard to jealousy, envy, and so forth, though so many of us who mean to be good women do not make a very heroic struggle even here, and perhaps justify our weakness by the plea that our feelings are strong.

I will therefore speak particularly of some of our failings which lean to virtue's side. What is it, for instance, to be a sensitive woman? The highest women are exquisitely sensitive, they respond to beauty, to love, to truth, and goodness instantly. But suppose they also tremble at ugliness, and shrink from pain? The two kinds of sensitiveness do often exist together. The perfect woman would follow the example of Christ and look through outward ugliness and suffering to inward beauty and goodness, and would keep herself unspotted from the world not by shrinking from it, but by helping it upward.

But as we are imperfect, our sensitiveness shows itself most frequently in making us feel every jar to our pride and vanity. And we make a virtue of this. We ought to guard ourselves against such sensitiveness. It is a fault which lies very deep. It is almost impossible for a very sensitive woman to be just. In fancying wrong to herself she imputes wrong to everybody about her. In trying to shield herself she wounds others. She fears a slight was intended, and rather than submit to it, deliberately hurts some one who she knows may be innocent. Would it not be better to believe that the person who has hurt her is innocent, and submit to the slight even if it was intended? What harm can it do her to think a guilty person innocent? And what harm can a slight do her? But it always does harm to stoop to an ignoble feeling.

Let us at least be just. But the special accusation against women is that they are not just, and sometimes their special virtue is believed to be a romantic generosity which shuts out justice. Women are prone to be so generous to one person as to be unjust to another. They are strong partisans, and are determined to believe those they love always in the right. That seems like an amiable failing; but is it? Do we wish even our enemy to be wronged to save our friend? I think every high-minded woman would choose to be just, even if she must make her friend suffer; but it is very hard to live by that standard.

Most men who write novels describe women as ready to forgive the man who has forsaken them for another woman, but as implacable towards the rival however innocent she may be. There is too much truth in such a picture, but the best women know that good women are not so unjust. That Dorothea in her anguish at finding Will Ladislaw singing with Rosamund Lydgate should do her utmost to help Rosamund take a better stand is of course unusual, but it is not unnatural. That was a splendid kind of generosity which did indeed swallow up justice, but it was founded on justice, the justice which strove to restore all things to their true relations. If any girl is puzzled as to the true province of feeling, and wishes to know how to reconcile warm-heartedness and self-control, let her read the wonderful chapter in "Middlemarch" which describes the interview between Dorothea and Rosamund.

Wherever we have to choose between justice and generosity we must be just. Otherwise, our generosity is mere sentimentality. And it does no good even to the person on whom we lavish it. Perhaps justice in its highest sense includes generosity. It is just that the rich should help the poor, and more truly generous to give with that thought than with the feeling that one has done something meritorious in giving. It is also mere justice that in dealing with our fellow-creatures we should always think of them as they may be, as they ought to be, and not to remember simply what they are. Our faith in them helps them to rise, but not our pretense that they are right when they are wrong.

After all, however, who is perfectly balanced? There are worthy women who have all their feelings well in hand, who are pleasant to live with, and who do an immense amount of good in the world, and yet who never rise above common-placeness, and never lift anybody else much above the material plane. And there are other women so ardent and generous and loving that they seem to lend wings to everybody they meet, who are yet crushed and ruined themselves by the excess of their grief not only for their own sorrows, but for those of the whole world, until by and by they drag their dearest and most sympathetic friends down into the same abyss of woe.

How shall we keep the true balance? I believe that it always is kept by religious faith, though that too is frequently distorted. The one thing necessary to believe is that a good God rules the universe. There is no limit to the love we may give to such a being or to the creatures He has made, and there is no sorrow which cannot be comforted by the thought that love underlies it, and that it has a meaning though we cannot see it, and there is nothing else which is so sure a spur to duty.

Even this simple creed, however, is not possible to all of us. The upheavals in religious beliefs which this century has seen reach even emotional women and unthinking girls. We cannot believe a thing simply because we should like to believe it. Without this one article of faith, I believe happiness to be impossible, but we need not fail in our duty. A noble woman whose beautiful life is a benediction to all about her, but whose suffering has been intense, says that as her life has been an exceptionally favored one, it is impossible for her to believe in God. But she adds, "Though things are not for the best, we must make the best of them. We can always lighten somebody's burden." I believe she is wrong in saying things are not for the best, but there could be no more sublime resolution than to determine to do all we can to make wrong right.



XIV.

A QUESTION OF SOCIETY.

I cannot say how it is in other places, but every one who knows much of society girls in Boston must have been struck with a certain earnest note which sounds through all their frivolity. Few of them are satisfied to be simply society girls. They wish to identify themselves with some charity, or to make a thorough study of some art or science. It may be due to their Puritan ancestry, forbidding them to make pleasure the only business of life.

Many of them seem to be always on the eve of revolt and ready to give up society altogether. They join a Protestant sisterhood or even become Roman Catholics, or they enter a training-school for nurses. I heard only the other day of one of the loveliest "buds" of this season who has already decided that a society life is an unsatisfactory one, and who is almost prepared to go as a missionary to India.

A young girl told me not long ago that she was wretched at the thought she must soon leave school, for she dreaded the society life from which there seemed no escape. She wished to find some charitable work instantly which would be on the face of it so absorbing that it would be a complete excuse for her to refuse all invitations. She is only one among many who have the same feeling.

It is hard to know what to say to such a girl. Motives are so mixed that it is hard to stimulate the growth of the wheat without stimulating that of the tares also. Most serious women would regret to see any young friend become a mere society girl, but how far it is best for a girl to give up society it is not easy to say.

Circumstances make different duties. The pathway of some girls lies directly through society. At the suitable age their sisters, their mothers, and even their grandmothers have formally "come out," and have at once been overwhelmed with invitations to the best houses in the city. If such a girl has it in her mind to rebel against precedents she would do well to consider carefully what Holmes has said in another connection: "There are those who step out of the ordinary ranks by reason of strength; there are others who fall out by reason of weakness." For instance, a girl is painfully conscious of her plainness. Her sister was a beauty and made a sensation when she was introduced. The plain girl dreads the comparisons which will be made, and shrinks from the social failure which she foresees. Her feeling would justify her in making no attempt to get into society if she were outside the charmed circle, but it would probably be a weakness to yield to it since she is already within. Her objection is not to society but to the place she is likely to fill in it. Probably the finest discipline of her life will be in accepting her place. If she can forget herself, or, at least, remember that it makes no real difference what others think of her, she will soon gain the quiet ease which is sometimes even more winning than beauty. This will be an attribute of character, and every person's influence is needed in society who commands interest by essential rather than non-essential qualities. Then, if she is a wall-flower she is sure to have time to relieve the misery of some other wall-flower, and as there are always a good many uninteresting people at any party she will find her mission increasing upon her hands. When she has thoroughly conquered her dread of society she will have a right to reconsider the question and decide whether she can use her time to better advantage. If she retires before fighting her battle she will probably always look upon her beautiful sister's love of balls with self-righteous pity; but long before she gains her victory she will be likely to acknowledge that if she were pretty she would love balls too.

It is not lovely for any girl to assume that she is better than her parents. Many girls are better than their parents, and sometimes so much better that they would be blind indeed if they did not see it; but they ought to be very slow to act upon such a truth.

As a general thing they are not nearly so superior as they suppose they are. They think "Irreverence for the dreams of youth" always comes from "the hardening of the heart." But youth has some fantastic as well as some noble dreams, so that docility is a better quality than independence in a very young person. If a worldly minded mother inculcates worldliness in her daughter, the daughter certainly ought to stand firm against the teaching; but if the daughter merely thinks she would rather read Browning than go to a party which her mother wishes her to attend, I think it is best for her to go to the party, even if she is conscious that her mother's motive is a worldly one. I speak only of young daughters. If a girl follows her mother's wishes about society till she is twenty-four or five, and still retains her first aversion to it, it seems to me she has earned the right to be the judge of her own actions, and if she had been really docile and sweet-tempered all the way through, I believe the most worldly minded mother would be ready to yield. It is only when the daughter has combated her parents all the time that they believe her to be unreasonable and obstinate and deserving of coercion. The point is, that she must make her stand for a principle and not for a whim.

One reason that some girls fear society is that they feel awkward and have nothing to say. This is often the case with intellectual girls. They will not descend to the silly conversation which is more pleasing than it ought to be from the pretty girls of their set, and they know it would be out of place to talk of anything which really interests them. They do not want to be called blue-stockings even by young men they despise. But the agonies such girls suffer in society are unnecessary. There is no reason why any girl should talk very much. Of course if she is not a beauty or a graceful dancer she has no other way of attracting attention, but it is not necessary to attract attention. If she is quiet and unobtrusive and sweet-tempered she need not suffer from mortification even if she does not find much to enjoy. I remember a young girl whose great shyness made it a terror to her to meet any strangers. Besides this, she felt so little interest in commonplace people that she had no sufficient motive to subdue her fear. At last as she was on the point of refusing to go to a very small and informal tea party a friend not much older than herself talked seriously to her, explaining that her course would seem morbid and selfish to others, and might be so in truth. The young girl respected her friend, and making a heroic effort to control herself determined to accept the invitation. "I am going," she said to herself, "to show Ellen that I am not too obstinate to take her advice, and I don't care how I appear." So she sat still in a corner and listened to the conversation, which was indeed preternaturally stupid. She felt perfectly at her ease and was quite unconcerned about "making conversation." If anybody asked her a question she answered simply without cudgeling her brains for any wise or witty reply. By and by something was said which did attract her notice, and she actually made a spontaneous remark herself. She realized then that the worst was over. She never again felt such terror on entering a room, and though I never heard that she shone in society, she was always able after that to carry on her share of a conversation without anxiety. She simply laid herself aside for the time being and paid attention to what was going on.

But while it is usually best for a young girl to go into society which lies naturally in her way, it is a very different thing to push into society which lies outside of her path. It is necessary to speak strongly on this point. In every city the number of inhabitants who have lived in it since its foundation is, of course, very small, and they always form an aristocracy, jealous of interlopers. They generally are a law-abiding, conservative class, with some sterling qualities. They are superior to a great many people who would like to associate with them, but inferior to a great many others. Now, just at the circumference of this circle there is another circle equally good, intelligent, and refined, who see no reason why they should be shut out from the inner circle. There is no reason except that they did not first occupy the central ground. The aristocracy of the city is formed on the principle of "first come, first served," and the first will never relinquish their places to the new-comers. Why should the new-comers care? There are enough among them to make a society as good, intelligent, and refined as that from which they are shut out. Nevertheless, it is a human failing to prize what we cannot have, and some of the later comers look wistfully across the dividing line. They cannot cross it, but sometimes their daughters can. They send their daughters to the same schools with the daughters of the "four hundred," and the girls make friends with each other, and with a little skill the password may be learned and the young plebeian may find herself indistinguishable from a patrician. There are fathers and mothers who urge their daughters to make haste to occupy every coigne of vantage, and gradually advance into the heart of the enemy's country. I am not speaking now of those who are so vulgar as to intrigue for invitations, but simply of the ambitious who wish to accept an invitation given in good faith because it is a step upward in the social scale. Of course I would not say that such an invitation should never be accepted, for there is often congeniality between the hostess and her guest; but it is not worth doing violence to one's feelings for the sake of accepting it. We say that we do not consider the "four hundred" really superior to many other hundreds in the city. In that case let us treat them and their invitations with exactly the same courtesy and exactly the same indifference that we show to our other friends and their invitations. I think a young girl is always justified in objecting to be pushed into society even when her parents are eager to push her; yet if the matter is urged, it will probably be best for her to gratify her parents, even at the sacrifice of her own sensitiveness. It is not for her to judge her parents. Even if they are wrong, their fault may be like the vanity of a child, because they are still in the childish stage of education, while the daughter's higher development is entirely due to their efforts in her behalf.

There are girls whose religious convictions forbid society, and then they are obliged to withstand their parents from the outset; yet I think such convictions are uncommon where the parents do not share them. But there are other girls who sincerely believe that their time can be better spent than in going to parties and making calls. The conventions of society seem meaningless to them, and they know if they observe them all they will have no time or strength for anything else, while if they do not observe them they will be stigmatized as rude, odd, and even as self-conceited. One cannot read even the most sensible book on etiquette without being oppressed with the feeling that a terrible addition has been made to the moral law in the by-laws which treat of visiting cards, and every writer on etiquette says mildly but firmly that there is a reason for all the rules in the very nature of things, and that if any of us venture to disregard them and substitute our own reason, we simply show our incapacity for appreciating real refinement. A part of this is no doubt true. The rules of society are reasonable for those who give their whole time to society. When a lady has four hundred people on her visiting list, and a call must be made on each one every winter on pain of losing the acquaintance altogether, to say nothing of party calls and receptions and afternoon teas, it is clear that a language of pasteboard simplifies her duties very much. But for any one who has a definite work in life outside of society, attention to all these minor points is impossible, and we must either be shut out of society altogether or be allowed to enter it on our own terms. The women who have their living to earn have the matter decided for them. Even in the few cases where they are welcomed among the elite, their work must always take precedence of society demands. And the same thing ought to be true in the case of good mothers. The care of one's own children never ought to be given up for any conventional duty. But the hardest case is that of young girls who wish their lives to be in earnest, and who have as yet no imperative duties. No wonder they wish to make duties for themselves. Is there any guide in deciding how far they are bound to follow conventions? I know nothing better than the dictum of the Hegelians. "Make your deed universal, and see what the result will be." If everybody who finds afternoon teas a burden stayed away from them, would any harm be done? If everybody who objects to making calls refused to make them, would it not soon simplify life even for those who do like to make them? If all people who chanced to meet felt at liberty to be as friendly as they felt like being, without any formal preliminaries, who would be injured? The question of absolute right is answered when these questions are answered, and we ought not to let any writer on etiquette persuade us to the contrary. But it is not so easy to say how far it is wise for anybody, particularly for young girls, to set themselves against the customs of their own circle. They then give up the friends they would naturally make, and it is sometimes hard to find equally congenial friends in other circles. Many a girl who might have been happily married if she had not rebelled against conventionalities is left to lead a lonely life; and that not because young men value conventionalities, but because society makes people acquainted. She will some day be likely to regret that she missed her opportunities, unless she had some more definite reason for her course than the mere shrinking from the effort society requires.

Duties we make for ourselves are seldom entirely free from affectation. An ardent, active girl may easily become so interested in her charities and her studies that she may make a genuine plea that she is too busy for parties and calls; but perhaps she ought not to give up society duties until higher duties actually open before her. Is it not possible that society has some intrinsic worth, or that at all events it might have worth, if earnest people did their part? There is much to be done for the poor, but the poor are not the only ones to be helped. Sweetness of temper and honorable action tell as much sometimes in a game of cards as in an affair of state. The highest good anybody can ever do is to inspire others with a higher ideal, to raise the level of character. The specific act by which this is done matters little; in truth it is usually the result not of an act, but of a noble character influencing others unconsciously. One might give all her goods to feed the poor and not leave the world any better than she found it. On the other hand, I know a frank, light-hearted girl, whose whole mind seems to be absorbed in choosing the prettiest dresses she can find for her approaching debut, who is sure to be a factor in elevating every company she enters, because of her scorn of any form of meanness. She would not trouble herself to say anything bitter if one of her acquaintances did a mean thing; but the amazed tone in which she would utter the word "Fancy!" would inflict a punishment no culprit could escape.

Most of what is called society is no doubt poor and weak, and not worth much time or trouble. I think the girls whose pathway does not lead directly through it are perhaps to be congratulated. It is to be hoped that most women who reach the age of twenty-five will find something better to do than to give themselves up entirely to society. But though, as now constituted, its exactions are so heavy that it often seems as if it must be all or nothing, it need not inevitably be so. Society could be so conducted as to be a beautiful recreation instead of a business, and those who see this clearly can help to bring it about.

Society ought to give enjoyment in a refined way. Beautiful houses, beautiful dresses, music, cultivated voices in conversation, delicate wit, smiling faces, graceful dancing, all these things would make up an attractive picture to most of us if we could forget ourselves, and not feel that our shadow was the most prominent part of it. It could not take the place of our serious daily life, but it ought to supplement it.

The French writer Amiel has given the most beautiful description of ideal society, and I will quote it here. It would, I think, be a good plan for every girl who wishes to give up society to consider this picture well. If society were always like this, would you wish to give it up? If it is not like this, may it not be possible for you to help to make it so? Is there any better work laid ready to your hand? If so, do it, by all means. If not, is not this well worth doing?

It is thus that Amiel describes a small evening party: "Thirty people of the best society, a happy mingling of sexes and ages. Gray heads, young people, spirituelle faces. All framed in tapestries of Aubusson which gave a soft distance and a charming background to the groups in full dress.... In the world it is necessary to have the appearance of living on ambrosia and of being acquainted with only noble cares. Anxiety, want, passion do not exist. All realism is suppressed as brutal. In a word, what is called le grand monde presents for the moment a flattering illusion, that of being in an ethereal state and of breathing the life of mythology. That is the reason that all vehemence, every cry of nature, all true suffering, all careless familiarity, all open marks of passion, shock and jar in this delicate milieu, and destroy in a moment the whole fabric, the palace of clouds, the magic architecture raised by the consent of all.

"It is like the harsh cock-crow which causes all enchantment to vanish and puts the fairies to flight. These choice reunions act unconsciously towards a concert of eye and ear, towards an improvised work of art. This instinctive accord is a festival for the mind and taste, and transports the actors into the sphere of the imagination. It is a form of poetry, and it is thus that cultivated society renews by reflection the idyl which has disappeared....

"Paradoxical or not, I believe that these fleeting attempts to reconstruct a dream which pursues beauty alone are confused recollections of the age of gold which haunts the human soul, or rather of aspirations towards the harmony of things which daily reality refuses to us, and to which we are introduced only by art."



XV.

NARROW LIVES.

What is a narrow life? Its causes almost always lie in character. One either has a narrow nature, or is subject to some tyrant who has a narrow nature. In such cases there is little hope of remedy.

But in general circumstances are not responsible for a narrow life. Illness and poverty indeed are hard to resist, nevertheless I hope to show by actual examples that broad lives are lived by the sick and poor.

Once at the wish of a friend I was visiting I went to carry some comforts to a neglected almshouse on a Western prairie. In the insane ward I found a poor young fellow suffering from epilepsy. There had been some brutal treatment in the almshouse and he had tried to escape. Being overtaken he had fought for his liberty, and in consequence he was afterwards fastened with a chain and ball of many pounds' weight. He could not be cared for elsewhere, as his family was very poor, and though usually perfectly sane he had dangerous intervals. The management of the almshouse was culpably bad, and though about this time benevolent persons began to bestir themselves, and there was some amelioration of conditions, yet this young man was certainly placed in as narrowing circumstances as could surround a human being. He was poor to the degree of pauperism, he had an incurable disease and he was almost absolutely in the power of tyrants. Remembering that my friend wished to lend some books to those of the poor creatures who could read, I asked him if he liked to read. He said yes, that he was very fond of reading, but could not get any books. I asked him what kind of books he would like. "Well," he said slowly, "I should be glad of anything; but I think I should like best stories or biographies which would tell me how people who were put in hard places met their lives. For," he added pathetically, "I want to make the most I can of my life." I felt as he spoke that these were the most heroic words I had ever heard or that I ever should hear. I left the town in a few days, and my friend at the same time changed her residence, so I have never known his fate. But I am sure no circumstances could make a life inspired with such a feeling a narrow one.

Fortunately few people are so hemmed in by circumstances. But some of us think a single misfortune enough to crush us. How, for instance, is a woman prostrated by disease to make anything of the little life within her four walls?

I remember a woman who broke down at school and suffered so frequently from violent hemorrhages all her life, which was prolonged till she was nearly fifty, that she was seldom able to leave her room. Her home was on a farm a long distance from the village, so that it at first seemed as if she could not have even the ordinary alleviation of cheerful society in her more comfortable days. Another aggravation in her case was that she had an active temperament and strong mind. She had been fitting herself to be a teacher, and she had just the qualities which would have made her an admirable teacher, a clear intellect, quick observation, firm will, love of children, and a perfectly serene temper. She had wished to teach, partly because she thought she should find it an inspiring work, and partly because she wished to help the family. She saw this was not to be, that in spite of herself she must be a burden on the family. She met her altered circumstances with the same firm will and cheerful temper she had shown from childhood. If she must be a burden on others she would make that burden as light as she could. She would not suggest that any one should sit in her darkened room all day, however lonely she might be. She would not call upon others for the hundred little services not absolutely necessary, but still so very agreeable to one who is weak and helpless. On the other hand, she would not exert herself rashly in the vain endeavor to wait on herself when such an exertion was likely to injure her, and in the end to bring more care on other people. She always spoke cheerfully even when her voice could not rise above a whisper. She was ready to admit the sunshine the moment she could bear the light. As she lay alone she tried to think of some pleasant thing to say or do when any one should come in, and in this way she beguiled the tedious hours.

Of course she had her reward. No one could be unwilling to take care of one so unexacting. Moreover, although she often unavoidably taxed the strength of her friends, she did so much to make them happy that nursing her was a pleasant task. Her mother and sisters wished to be in her room as much as possible, not for her sake, but for their own enjoyment. She never asked them to read aloud to her, for instance, but she was such an appreciative listener that they could never be quite satisfied with reading any interesting book to themselves. They enjoyed it doubly with her wise and witty comments. She had a keen sense of humor which it has always seemed to me goes a long way in broadening any life,—and naturally everybody saved the best jokes to relate in her room. She was frequently too ill to laugh without danger of a hemorrhage, but she soon learned to control herself so that she laughed with her eyes alone. The girls from the village, instead of feeling it a duty to visit her in her sickness, considered it a privilege to be admitted to her room. When she was able to sit up they would come by twos and threes and bring their work and chat until she was tired. She had the kind of character which made gossip impossible with her, so that she always got at the very best her visitors had to give, and the very best of even a shallow girl is often worth something. Her friends, however, felt it was she who gave to them because of her uplifting power.

She was sometimes able to read and she carried on her education systematically, though necessarily with many interruptions. She had a gift for drawing and amused herself often in that way, though, it was always a sorrow to her that she had had too little instruction to produce anything of value to others. She was not altogether shut out from beauty. Her room gave her a view of the sunset every day, and she purposely left her curtain up for an hour in the evening to watch the march of the stars. She had the unspotted beauty of the snow in the winter, and of the grass and flowers in the summer. Sometimes she was even able to walk about the dooryard a little and gather flowers for herself. She always had a few house plants in which she took a strong interest, and which accordingly flourished.

She was a public-spirited woman and was glad to be made one of the trustees of the Public Library. She was one of the most efficient members of the board, though she was seldom strong enough to be driven as far as the library building.

She was determined that her sisters' lives should not be trammeled by her weakness. The fact that she could not go to a place was all the more reason why her sisters should go and tell her about it. One sister was a teacher who at first wished to take the neighboring district school rather than a much finer position in a distant city simply for the sake of being constantly with the beloved invalid. But the latter would not allow this. "I shall never be able to go West myself, you know," she said cheerfully, "but if you go and I have your letters every week, I shall know exactly what it is like. And you will be so much more entertaining in vacations than if you stay at home."

By the same course of reasoning the sick sister persuaded the teacher to go abroad to study a year when the opportunity came. "The photographs you bring home will mean a great deal more to me than any I could buy," she said. "I shall almost feel as if I had seen the pictures themselves." Every letter which came from the absent sister did inclose some imponderable unmounted photograph, with comments. The sister at home, studying these one by one, learned almost more of the meaning of the pictures than the one who saw their visible beauty. One of my friends says, "There is nothing which so destroys the aesthetic sense as to see too many beautiful pictures at once." This truth, perhaps, explains why so many people see all the great paintings of the world and yet have so little appreciation of any of them. At all events, our invalid did gain both happiness and spiritual insight from the hints of beauty she found in these humble little photographs.

I have before said that she was not left without companions. She also had friends in the highest sense. Having the leisure to make friendship a chief business of life she was able to be so much to her friends that however busy they might be they could not afford to neglect her. The day of leisurely letter writing seems to have passed by. But she had long hours by herself when she could write out the good and pleasant things she was thinking about. Her letters were lovely, and strong, and helpful, and each was written with such exquisite penmanship, with such easy lines of beauty, that it was like a work of art in itself.

She was not obliged even to forego the happiness of love. She had a young lover at the time her health failed. He would not believe at first that there was no cure for her. Her instinct had been so true that she had chosen a perfectly loyal lover whose love could not be shaken by misfortune. At last he was himself attacked by a terrible disease, and it was seldom possible for the two to meet after that. But they faced their trouble together. They said that if the time should ever come when they could be married they should rejoice; but if it never came they would be all they could to each other. Sometimes even letters were impossible between them, but their perfect reliance upon each other was a constant source of strength and happiness, and their rare interviews were true radiant points in their lives.

Of course no one would think of calling this woman's life a narrow one, and yet the only reason it was not so lay in herself.

I know another woman whose poverty would seem to many people an effectual bar to any breadth of life. As poverty is a relative term, I will state definitely that she receives less than three hundred dollars a year for teaching a difficult village school, and that the whole support of her frail and delicate mother has fallen upon her except that the two together own their heavily mortgaged little home. A servant being out of the question, she rises very early in the morning to do as much of the heavier housework as possible. Her washing, of course, has to be done on Saturday. Some of us in such a case would be content with a low standard of cleanliness—but she has an ideal, and her house and herself fairly sparkle with neatness. Her exquisite cooking is a special grace of economy, for it makes it possible that a frugal table should seem to be richly spread. Of course she and her mother must do their own sewing, and they do it so well that they always have the air of being dressed as ladies, with great simplicity, to be sure, but with excellent taste.

At this point, I fancy my readers will make one of two comments. They will say, "She must have an iron constitution," or "She must spend all her time on material things. She cannot have a moment for books or society or travel."

Now she has not an iron constitution. She suffered in her youth from a wasting disease, and her physician says she was nearer death than any person he ever knew to recover. This disease has left its traces upon her. There is hardly a year when she does not have to be out of school a week or two for illness, and of course sick headaches and trifling ailments of that kind have to be met every few days.

Nor is it true that the daily necessities absorb her whole life. Obviously, she cannot be a great reader, or rather it is fortunate she is not so, for if she spent all her little leisure over books, she would miss much that is inspiring in her life. But she does care for books, and particularly for the best books, though her school education was limited. She reads a tiny daily paper and always takes a leading magazine. She owns Shakespeare and Scott and Shelley, and knows them almost by heart. She borrows the best of her friends' books, and occasionally buys a cheap classic. She always has some volume of biography or travel from the Public Library, which she reads leisurely with her mother perhaps. It may take her a month to read some little volume of two or three hundred pages—such a volume as Bradford Torrey's "Rambler's Lease," or Dr. Emerson's memoir of his father—and possibly she may not be able in the end to quote any more fluently from these books than another who reads them through in an afternoon, although I think she usually is able, but her advantage is that she thoroughly enjoys the flavor of every sentence; her reading stimulates and encourages her and makes her happy.

She was one of the founders of the Book Club in the village, and as the Public Library grew out of that, there was considerable work to be done by some of the members, and of this she did much more than her share.

She is one of the most active members also of the Reading Club and the Natural History Club, two organizations which combine culture and society quite as effectually as the more ambitious circles in our cities. Her house is always hospitably open to either of these clubs, for she loves society and wishes to make the most of all the intelligent people in the place who belong to one or the other of them. Her sociability, however, carries her farther. She knows everybody in the town well enough for a bow and smile in passing, and that is no small achievement in a modern village where the population is so fluctuating. I would suggest that we try for a moment to recall the difference it makes in the cheerfulness of our day whether all the people we meet have a pleasant word for us or not; and then, I think, we shall see that her influence is by no means slight or worthless. Perhaps it is a little candle, but it throws its beams far.

She likes to go to see her friends, and she faithfully returns the semi-formal calls which cannot be avoided even in the most unfashionable centres. She makes her own callers heartily welcome, and even invites a friend or two to tea now and then. She is always hospitably ready to entertain visitors from a distance, and consequently she often has the pleasant variety of going away on a visit herself.

She likes to go to the public entertainments of the village. A sewing society, a Sunday-school picnic, or a fair attracts her. These are simple pleasures, but taken with such a spirit as hers, they are innocent and wholesome, even if they seem barren to an outsider.

She always does her part at all such gatherings. She is ready to serve on any committee. She will make delicious cake for a Grand Army supper, or sell flowers in aid of the Village Improvement Society. One would hardly expect her to have time for such duties, but one of the strong points in her character is that she never has any inclination to shirk a responsibility that belongs to her, and she is generous in her interpretation of her responsibilities. It has always interested me to see the persistency with which she pays the extra fraction of a cent when any expense is to be divided among several people. She knows the full value of a cent, for she has to count the cost of everything; but she evidently takes a brave pride in always doing a little more rather than a little less than justice requires her to do. She has perhaps too great a scorn of receiving help from anybody. She once acted as a substitute in school for a friend who was ill. The obliged friend insisted that she should receive the ten dollars which would otherwise have been paid to herself. But the independent young lady instantly took the money and invested it all in a beautiful piece of lace which she sent as a present to the convalescent. I know of no one who acts more thoroughly on the rule, "If you have but sixpence to spend, spend it like a prince, and not like a beggar."

She is a true lover of nature, without pretense or cant of any kind. She has an eye for flowers,—indeed her little garden is the delight of the neighborhood,—and she finds harebells on Thanksgiving Day and ferns in midwinter. She knows the minerals in the stone-walls, and likes to trace the course of old glaciers across the farms beyond the village. And she likes, too, to stroll through the woods, or to float in her dory on the river, without a thought of mineralogy or botany while she softly repeats poetry for which she has a real love.

Of course she has not a large margin of income for luxuries, but she does take a journey now and then, and she enjoys her journeys with a zest which would surprise many travelers.

She has not much money to give away; and yet she often adds a modest contribution to a subscription paper for some unfortunate neighbor. And she has lent her boat a hundred times to people who otherwise could not have one to use. More than that, she will go herself and row for some child or old person who cannot manage the oars, but who stands on the bank and looks wishfully at the river. I have never known anybody who owned a carriage to give half so much pleasure to other people with it, as she gives with her boat. She is always ready to "lend a hand." She has watched with a great many sick people, for instance. Most of her kindnesses are unobtrusive, and she forgets them the next day, but they make a definite addition to the comfort and happiness of the world.

"I always like to have Miss Amidon come in to spend the evening", said a nervous, critical, intellectual man, most of whose life had been passed among far more pretentious people in large cities, "there is such a sunny atmosphere about her."

Where does Miss Amidon get the strength to do so many good things? She is not a common woman of course, and yet there is nothing striking about her. She does nothing great. I have no reason to suppose that her teaching even is above the average. I think the rare quality in her character, however, is that she spends the little strength and money she has on essentials, and so there is always something to show for them.

I once had a friend who was told by several physicians that she had an incurable disease. Her own home was gone, and she did not wish to be dependent upon others. She had been a teacher, and she resolved to go on teaching. There would be months at a time when she would be obliged to rest, but then, with unfailing courage, she went back to her work. Once, when she was only able to sit up a few hours in the day, she took a position in a boarding-school, where her board was but a trifle, and was given to her for her instruction of one or two small classes which could recite in her room where she was propped up in an easy-chair.

She had a religious nature, and thought calmly of death, while she felt that in this world her plain duty was to make the most of her life. She bore her suffering without complaint, did not allow herself to be anxious, took all measures she could to alleviate her pain and to improve her health, and was then free to enjoy the few pleasures still within her reach. As a result, she grew better, and for half a dozen years was able to support herself well by teaching in a difficult school. In order to do this, however, she had to live within very narrow lines. Her disease was of such a nature, that her diet had to be confined almost entirely to one article. This made it seem best for her to live in a hotel where she could have little home life. And such a diet at times became almost nauseating. It was necessary for her to save all her strength for her daily work, so she had to put aside even the few pleasures otherwise within her reach. What made this the harder was that she had never taught from love of the work, though her fine intelligence and conscientiousness made her an excellent teacher.

"First, I have to consider my health," she said. "Then I must think of my work. And that does not leave much room for other things."

But for her determined and heroic observance of the laws of health, her life must have been a wreck. Her strong good sense not only saved her from being a burden to others, but enabled her to do a really valuable work for her scholars, which I have seldom known any one capable of doing so well. And all her friends were strengthened by the spectacle of her cheerful courage. The few years she won for herself by her steadfast struggle would have been well worth living, even if she had had no alleviations of her lot. But she gladly took such little pleasures as were in her pathway. She chose a pleasant room in the hotel with a wide outlook over the sea. She spent some happy hours with her favorite German books, and in a quiet, friendly way she made the acquaintance of any congenial people who came to the hotel. All this was not very much, perhaps, but yet it seems fine to me. So many of us would have spent our strength in mourning our hard fate! I am sure that all of us who had the privilege of knowing her must always think of her with reverence.