There are many indications to show an increasing divergence of tastes between our rapidly changing generations. Each set of young people seem to differ more sharply from their parents than they, in their youth, similarly differed.

Moreover, there are a number of persons who do not marry, and yet have a right to live—yes, and to enjoy living.

Men have long ago solved this problem to their own satisfaction. They leave home early; they have learned in cabin, camp and club to live in groups, without women; and many, with an apartment of their own as a base, seem to find enough society in visits among their friends.

But women are only beginning to realize that it is possible to live, yes, and to have a "home," even if one has not, in the original sense, "a family." The amount of happiness that really congenial friends can find in living together is fully as great as that of some marriages; and quite outside of daily contact in the household remains that boundless field of strength, stimulus and delight which comes of true social contact.

But the machinery of life is all arranged for married couples; who rightly constitute the majority; and the unmarried woman is not allowed for. She is, however, rapidly awakening to the fact that she has an actual individual existence—as well as a potential marital existence; and is learning how to use and enjoy it.



PLAYTIME

AUNT ELIZA

(This was done by two persons, in alternate lines, as a game.)

Seven days had Aunt Eliza Read the Boston Advertiser, Seven days on end; But in spite of her persistence Still she met with some resistance From her bosom friend.

Thomas Brown, the Undertaker, Who declared he'd have to shake her, Daily called at ten; Asking if dear Aunt's condition Would allow of his admission, With his corps of men.

Aunt Eliza heard him pleading, Ceased an instant from her reading, Softly downward stole; Soon broke up the conversation, Punctuating Brown's oration, With a shower of coal.



THE CRIPPLE

There are such things as feet, human feet; But these she does not use; Firm and supple, white and sweet, Softly graceful, lightly fleet, For comfort, beauty, service meet— There are feet, human feet, These she does with scorn refuse— Preferring shoes.

There are such things as shoes—human shoes; Though scant and rare the proof; Serviceable, soft and strong, Pleasant, comely, wearing long, Easy as a well-known song— There are shoes, human shoes, But from these she holds aloof— Prefers the hoof!

There are such things as hoofs, sub-human hoofs, High-heeled, sharp anomalies; Small and pinching, hard and black, Shiny as a beetle's back, Cloven, clattering on the track, There are hoofs, sub-human hoofs, She cares not for truth, nor ease— Preferring these!



THE FORERUNNER

A MONTHLY MAGAZINE

BY

CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN AUTHOR, OWNER & PUBLISHER

1.00 A YEAR .10 A COPY

Volume 1. No. 6 APRIL, 1910 Copyright for 1910 C. P. Gilman

The human soul is built for the love and service of the whole world. We confine it to the love and service of five or six persons, and the salvation of one.



WHEN THOU GAINEST HAPPINESS

When thou gainest happiness, Life's full cup of sweetest wine; Dost thou stop in grieving blind Over those dark years behind? Bitter now, rebellious, mad, For the things thou hast not had— Before everything was thine?

Dost not rather wonder why Nearing blaze of joy like this, Some prevision had not lit Those dark hours with hope of it? That thou couldst in patient strength Have endured that sorrow's length— Nothing—to the coming bliss!

Now, awaken! Look ahead! See the earth one garden fair! See the evils of to-day Like a child's faults put away! See our little history seem Like a short forgotten dream! See a full-grown rising race Find our joy their commonplace! Find such new joy of their own As our best hopes have not known! And take shame for thy despair!



MARTHA'S MOTHER

It was nine feet long.

It was eight feet high.

It was six feet wide.

There was a closet, actually!—a closet one foot deep—that was why she took this room. There was the bed, and the trunk, and just room to open the closet door part way—that accounted for the length. There was the bed and the bureau and the chair—that accounted for the width. Between the bedside and the bureau and chair side was a strip extending the whole nine feet. There was room to turn around by the window. There was room to turn round by the door. Martha was thin.

One, two, three, four—turn.

One, two, three, four—turn.

She managed it nicely.

"It is a stateroom," she always said to herself. "It is a luxurious, large, well-furnished stateroom with a real window. It is not a cell."

Martha had a vigorous constructive imagination. Sometimes it was the joy of her life, her magic carpet, her Aladdin's lamp. Sometimes it frightened her—frightened her horribly, it was so strong.

The cell idea had come to her one gloomy day, and she had foolishly allowed it to enter—played with it a little while. Since then she had to keep a special bar on that particular intruder, so she had arranged a stateroom "set," and forcibly kept it on hand.

Martha was a stenographer and typewriter in a real estate office. She got $12 a week, and was thankful for it. It was steady pay, and enough to live on. Seven dollars she paid for board and lodging, ninety cents for her six lunches, ten a day for carfare, including Sundays; seventy-five for laundry; one for her mother—that left one dollar and sixty-five cents for clothes, shoes, gloves, everything. She had tried cheaper board, but made up the cost in doctor's bills; and lost a good place by being ill.

"Stone walls do not a prison make, nor hall bedrooms a cage," said she determinedly. "Now then—here is another evening—what shall I do? Library? No. My eyes are tired. Besides, three times a week is enough. 'Tisn't club night. Will not sit in the parlor. Too wet to walk. Can't sew, worse'n reading—O good land! I'm almost ready to go with Basset!"

She shook herself and paced up and down again.

Prisoners form the habit of talking to themselves—this was the suggestion that floated through her mind—that cell idea again.

"I've got to get out of this!" said Martha, stopping short. "It's enough to drive a girl crazy!"

The driving process was stayed by a knock at the door. "Excuse me for coming up," said a voice. "It's Mrs. MacAvelly."

Martha knew this lady well. She was a friend of Miss Podder at the Girls' Trade Union Association. "Come in. I'm glad to see you!" she said hospitably. "Have the chair—or the bed's really more comfortable!"

"I was with Miss Podder this evening and she was anxious to know whether your union has gained any since the last meeting—I told her I'd find out—I had nothing else to do. Am I intruding?"

"Intruding!" Martha, gave a short laugh. "Why, it's a godsend, Mrs. MacAvelly! If you knew how dull the evenings are to us girls!"

"Don't you—go out much? To—to theaters—or parks?" The lady's tone was sympathetic and not inquisitive.

"Not very much," said Martha, rather sardonically. "Theaters—two girls, two dollars, and twenty cents carfare. Parks, twenty cents—walk your feet off, or sit on the benches and be stared at. Museums—not open evenings."

"But don't you have visitors—in the parlor here?"

"Did you see it?" asked Martha.

Mrs. MacAvelly had seen it. It was cold and also stuffy. It was ugly and shabby and stiff. Three tired girls sat there, two trying to read by a strangled gaslight overhead; one trying to entertain a caller in a social fiction of privacy at the other end of the room.

"Yes, we have visitors—but mostly they ask us out. And some of us don't go," said Martha darkly.

"I see, I see!" said Mrs. MacAvelly, with a pleasant smile; and Martha wondered whether she did see, or was just being civil.

"For instance, there's Mr. Basset," the girl pursued, somewhat recklessly; meaning that her visitor should understand her.

"Mr. Basset?"

"Yes, 'Pond & Basset'—one of my employers."

Mrs. MacAvelly looked pained. "Couldn't you—er—avoid it?" she suggested.

"You mean shake him?" asked Martha. "Why, yes—I could. Might lose my job. Get another place—another Basset, probably."

"I see!" said Mrs. MacAvelly again. "Like the Fox and the Swarm of Flies! There ought to be a more comfortable way of living for all you girls! And how about the union—I have to be going back to Miss Podder."

Martha gave her the information she wanted, and started to accompany her downstairs. They heard the thin jangle of the door-bell, down through the echoing halls, and the dragging feet of the servant coming up. A kinky black head was thrust in at the door.

"Mr. Basset, callin' on Miss Joyce," was announced formally.

Martha stiffened. "Please tell Mr. Basset I am not feeling well to-night—and beg to be excused.

She looked rather defiantly at her guest, as Lucy clattered down the long stairs; then stole to the railing and peered down the narrow well. She heard the message given with pompous accuracy, and then heard the clear, firm tones of Mr. Basset:

"Tell Miss Joyce that I will wait."

Martha returned to her room in three long steps, slipped off her shoes and calmly got into bed. "Good-night, Mrs. MacAvelly," she said. "I'm so sorry, but my head aches and I've gone to bed! Would you be so very good as to tell Lucy so as you're going down."

Mrs. MacAvelly said she would, and departed, and Martha lay conscientiously quiet till she heard the door shut far below.

She was quiet, but she was not contented.

*

Yet the discontent of Martha was as nothing to the discontent of Mrs. Joyce, her mother, in her rural home. Here was a woman of fifty-three, alert, vigorous, nervously active; but an automobile-agitated horse had danced upon her, and her usefulness, as she understood it, was over. She could not get about without crutches, nor use her hands for needlework, though still able to write after a fashion. Writing was not her forte, however, at the best of times.

She lived with a widowed sister in a little, lean dusty farmhouse by the side of the road; a hill road that went nowhere in particular, and was too steep for those who were going there.

Brisk on her crutches, Mrs. Joyce hopped about the little house, there was nowhere else to hop to. She had talked her sister out long since—Mary never had never much to say. Occasionally they quarreled and then Mrs. Joyce hopped only in her room, a limited process.

She sat at the window one day, staring greedily out at the lumpy rock-ribbed road; silent, perforce, and tapping the arms of her chair with nervous intensity. Suddenly she called out, "Mary! Mary Ames! Come here quick! There's somebody coming up the road!"

Mary came in, as fast as she could with eggs in her apron. "It's Mrs. Holmes!" she said. "And a boarder, I guess."

"No, it ain't," said Mrs. Joyce, eagerly. "It's that woman that's visiting the Holmes—she was in church last week, Myra Slater told me about her. Her name's MacDowell, or something."

"It ain't MacDowell," said her sister. "I remember; it's MacAvelly."

This theory was borne out by Mrs. Holmes' entrance and introduction of her friend.

"Have you any eggs for us, Mrs. Ames?" she said.

"Set down—set down," said Mrs. Ames cordially. "I was just getting in my eggs—but here's only about eight yet. How many was you wantin'?"

"I want all you can find," said Mrs. Holmes. "Two dozen, three dozen—all I can carry."

"There's two hens layin' out—I'll go and look them up. And I ain't been in the woodshed chamber yet. I'll go'n hunt. You set right here with my sister." And Mrs. Ames bustled off.

"Pleasant view you have here," said Mrs. MacAvelly politely, while Mrs. Holmes rocked and fanned herself.

"Pleasant! Glad you think so, ma'am. Maybe you city folks wouldn't think so much of views if you had nothing else to look at!"

"What would you like to look at?"

"Folks!" said Mrs. Joyce briefly. "Lots of folks! Somethin' doin'."

"You'd like to Iive in the city?"

"Yes, ma'am—I would so! I worked in the city once when I was a girl. Waitress. In a big restaurant. I got to be cashier—in two years! I like the business!"

"And then you married a farmer?" suggested Mrs. Holmes.

"Yes, I did. And I never was sorry, Mrs. Holmes. David Joyce was a mighty good man. We was engaged before I left home—I was workin' to help earn, so 't we could marry."

"There's plenty of work on a farm, isn't there?" Mrs. MacAvelly inquired.

Mrs. Joyce's eager eyes kindled. "There is so!" she agreed. "Lots to do. And lots to manage! We kept help then, and the farm hands, and the children growin' up. And some seasons we took boarders."

"Did you like that?"

"I did. I liked it first rate. I like lots of people, and to do for 'em. The best time I ever had was one summer I ran a hotel."

"Ran a hotel! How interesting!"

"Yes'm—it was interesting! I had a cousin who kept a summer hotel up here in the mountains a piece—and he was short-handed that summer and got me to go up and help him out. Then he was taken sick, and I had the whole thing on my shoulders! I just enjoyed it! And the place cleared more that summer'n it ever did! He said 'twas owin' to his advantageous buyin'. Maybe 'twas! But I could 'a bought more advantageous than he did—I could a' told him that. Point o' fact, I did tell him that—and he wouldn't have me again."

"That was a pity!" said Mrs. Holmes. "And I suppose if it wasn't for your foot you would do that now—and enjoy it!"

"Of course I could!" protested Mrs. Joyce. "Do it better 'n ever, city or country! But here I am, tied by the leg! And dependent on my sister and children! It galls me terribly!"

Mrs. Holmes nodded sympathetically. "You are very brave, Mrs. Joyce," she said. "I admire your courage, and—" she couldn't say patience, so she said, "cheerfulness."

Mrs. Ames came in with more eggs. "Not enough, but some," she said, and the visitors departed therewith.

Toward the end of the summer, Miss Podder at the Girls' Trade Union Association, sweltering in the little office, was pleased to receive a call from her friend, Mrs. MacAvelly.

"I'd no idea you were in town," she said.

"I'm not, officially," answered her visitor, "just stopping over between visits. It's hotter than I thought it would be, even on the upper west side."

"Think what it is on the lower east side!" answered Miss Podder, eagerly. "Hot all day—and hot at night! My girls do suffer so! They are so crowded!"

"How do the clubs get on?" asked Mrs. MacAvelly. "Have your girls any residence clubs yet?"

"No—nothing worth while. It takes somebody to run it right, you know. The girls can't; the people who work for money can't meet our wants—and the people who work for love, don't work well as a rule."

Mrs. McAvelly smiled sympathetically. "You're quite right about that," she said. "But really—some of those 'Homes' are better than others, aren't they?"

"The girls hate them," answered Miss Podder. "They'd rather board—even two or three in a room. They like their independence. You remember Martha Joyce?"

Mrs. MacAvelly remembered. "Yes," she said, "I do—I met her mother this summer."

"She's a cripple, isn't she?" asked Miss Podder. "Martha's told me about her."

"Why, not exactly. She's what a Westerner might call 'crippled up some,' but she's livelier than most well persons." And she amused her friend with a vivid rehearsal of Mrs. Joyce's love of the city and her former triumphs in restaurant and hotel.

"She'd be a fine one to run such a house for the girls, wouldn't she?" suddenly cried Miss Podder.

"Why—if she could," Mrs. MacAvelly admitted slowly.

"Could! Why not? You say she gets about easily enough. All she's have to do is manage, you see. She could order by 'phone and keep the servants running!"

"I'm sure she'd like it," said Mrs. MacAvelly. "But don't such things require capital?"

Miss Podder was somewhat daunted. "Yes—some; but I guess we could raise it. If we could find the right house!"

"Let's look in the paper," suggested her visitor. "I've got a Herald."

"There's one that reads all right," Miss Podder presently proclaimed. "The location's good, and it's got a lot of rooms—furnished. I suppose it would cost too much."

Mrs. MacAvelly agreed, rather ruefully.

"Come," she said, "it's time to close here, surely. Let's go and look at that house, anyway. It's not far."

They got their permit and were in the house very shortly. "I remember this place," said Miss Podder. "It was for sale earlier in the summer."

It was one of those once spacious houses, not of "old," but at least of "middle-aged" New York; with large rooms arbitrarily divided into smaller ones.

"It's been a boarding-house, that's clear," said Mrs. MacAvelly.

"Why, of course," Miss Podder answered, eagerly plunging about and examining everything. "Anybody could see that! But it's been done over—most thoroughly. The cellar's all whitewashed, and there's a new furnace, and new range, and look at this icebox!" It was an ice-closet, as a matter of fact, of large capacity, and a most sanitary aspect.

"Isn't it too big?" Mrs. MacAvelly inquired.

"Not for a boarding-house, my dear," Miss Podder enthusiastically replied. "Why, they could buy a side of beef with that ice-box! And look at the extra ovens! Did you ever see a place better furnished—for what we want? It looks as if it had been done on purpose!"

"It does, doesn't it?" said Mrs. MacAvelley.

Miss Podder, eager and determined, let no grass grow under her feet. The rent of the place was within reason.

"If they had twenty boarders—and some "mealers," I believe it could be done! she said. "It's a miracle—this house. Seems as if somebody had done it just for us!"

*

Armed with a list of girls who would agree to come, for six and seven dollars a week, Miss Podder made a trip to Willettville and laid the matter before Martha's mother.

"What an outrageous rent!" said that lady.

"Yes—New York rents are rather inconsiderate," Miss Podder admitted. "But see, here's a guaranteed income if the girls stay—and I'm sure they will; and if the cooking's good you could easily get table boarders besides."

Mrs. Joyce hopped to the bureau and brought out a hard, sharp-pointed pencil, and a lined writing tablet.

"Let's figger it out," said she. "You say that house rents furnished at $3,200. It would take a cook and a chambermaid!"

"And a furnace man," said Miss Podder. "They come to about fifty a year. The cook would be thirty a month, the maid twenty-five, if you got first-class help, and you'd need it."

"That amounts to $710 altogether," stated Mrs. Joyce.

"Fuel and light and such things would be $200," Miss Podder estimated, "and I think you ought to allow $200 more for breakage and extras generally."

"That's $4,310 already," said Mrs. Joyce.

Then there's the food," Miss Podder went on. "How much do you think it would cost to feed twenty girls, two meals a day, and three Sundays?"

"And three more," Mrs. Joyce added, "with me, and the help, twenty-three. I could do it for $2.00 a week apiece."

"Oh!" said Miss Podder. "Could you? At New York prices?"

"See me do it!" said Mrs. Joyce.

"That makes a total expense of $6,710 a year. Now, what's the income, ma'am?"

The income was clear—if they could get it. Ten girls at $6.00 and ten at $7.00 made $130.00 a week—$6,700.00 a year.

"There you are!" said Mrs. Joyce triumphantly. "And the 'mealers'—if my griddle-cakes don't fetch 'em I'm mistaken! If I have ten—at $5.00 a week and clear $3.00 off 'em—that'll be another bit—$1,560.00 more. Total income $8,320.00. More'n one thousand clear! Maybe I can feed 'em a little higher—or charge less!"

The two women worked together for an hour or so; Mrs. Ames drawn in later with demands as to butter, eggs, and "eatin' chickens."

"There's an ice-box as big as a closet," said Miss Podder.

Mrs. Joyce smiled triumphantly. "Good!" she said. "I can buy my critters of Judson here and have him freight 'em down. I can get apples here and potatoes, and lots of stuff."

"You'll need, probably, a little capital to start with," suggested Miss Podder. "I think the Association could—"

"It don't have to, thank you just the same," said Mrs. Joyce. "I've got enough in my stocking to take me to New York and get some fuel. Besides, all my boarders is goin' to pay in advance—that's the one sure way. The mealers can buy tickets!"

Her eyes danced. She fairly coursed about the room on her nimble crutches.

"My!" she said, "it will seem good to have my girl to feed again."

*

The house opened in September, full of eager girls with large appetites long unsatisfied. The place was new-smelling, fresh-painted, beautifully clean. The furnishing was cheap, but fresh, tasteful, with minor conveniences dear to the hearts of women.

The smallest rooms were larger than hall bedrooms, the big ones were shared by friends. Martha and her mother had a chamber with two beds and space to spare!

The dining-room was very large, and at night the tables were turned into "settles" by the wall and the girls could dance to the sound of a hired pianola. So could the "mealers," when invited; and there was soon a waiting list of both sexes.

"I guess I can make a livin'," said Mrs. Joyce, "allowin' for bad years."

"I don't understand how you feed us so well—for so little," said Miss Podder, who was one of the boarders.

"'Sh!" said Mrs. Joyce, privately. "Your breakfast don't really cost more'n ten cents—nor your dinner fifteen—not the way I order! Things taste good 'cause they're cooked good—that's all!"

"And you have no troubles with your help?"

"'Sh!" said Mrs. Joyce again, more privately. "I work 'em hard—and pay 'em a bonus—a dollar a week extra, as long as they give satisfaction. It reduces my profits some—but it's worth it!"

"It's worth it to us, I'm sure!" said Miss Podder.

Mrs. MacAvelly called one evening in the first week, with warm interest and approval. The tired girls were sitting about in comfortable rockers and lounges, under comfortable lights, reading and sewing. The untired ones were dancing in the dining-room, to the industrious pianola, or having games of cards in the parlor.

"Do you think it'll be a success?" she asked her friend.

"It is a success!" Miss Podder triumphantly replied. "I'm immensely proud of it!"

"I should think you would be," aid Mrs. MacAvelly.

The doorbell rang sharply.

Mrs. Joyce was hopping through the hall at the moment, and promptly opened it.

"Does Miss Martha Joyce board here?" inquired a gentleman.

"She does."

"I should like to see her," said he, handing in his card.

Mrs. Joyce read the card and looked at the man, her face setting in hard lines. She had heard that name before.

"Miss Joyce is engaged," she replied curtly, still holding the door.

He could see past her into the bright, pleasant rooms. He heard the music below, the swing of dancing feet, Martha's gay laugh from the parlor.

The little lady on crutches blocked his path.

"Are you the housekeeper of this place?" he asked sharply.

"I'm more'n that!" she answered. "I'm Martha's mother."

Mr. Basset concluded he would not wait.



FOR FEAR

For fear of prowling beasts at night They blocked the cave; Women and children hid from sight, Men scarce more brave.

For fear of warrior's sword and spear They barred the gate; Women and children lived in fear, Men lived in hate.

For fear of criminals to-day We lock the door; Women and children still to stay Hid evermore.

Come out! You need no longer hide! What fear ye now? No wolf nor lion waits outside— Only a cow.

Come out! The world approaches peace, War nears its end; No warrior watches your release— Only a friend.

Come out! The night of crime his fled— Day is begun; Here is no criminal to dread— Only your son!

The world, half yours, demands your care, Waken, and come! Make it a woman's world, safe, fair, Garden and home!



NURSERY-MINDEDNESS

Where do we get our first training in the field of common behavior, our earliest and strongest impressions of ethics?

In the nursery, in the early environment of the little child, in the daily influences that affect the opening mind; or, to put it in a phrase hallowed by poetic imagery, "at our mother's knee." We are accustomed to think highly of these early influences. Almost any man will say that his mother taught him what was right—it was his own evil nature that drove him wrong. So believing, we perpetuate these influences unchanged from age to age, and it is small wonder we think human nature to be inherently perverse if it continues to show such poor results from such good education.

Suppose for a moment we take down one more old idol, and look into his record, examining the environment of the little child as dispassionately as we would examine the environment of a college student.

The child is born into an atmosphere of personality, which is essential, and reared continuously in that atmosphere, which is not so essential. Owing to these early impressions; so deep and ineffaceable, he grows to look at human life with a huge "I," and an almost as large "My Family," in his immediate foreground; so out of drawing as to throw the whole world into false perspective, seen as a generality, dim, confused and distant.

In this atmosphere of unbroken personality, he repeats continually the mistakes of the early savage, the animistic tendency we should as a race have long since outgrown. The family with the male head was the great hotbed of early religions.

In this primitive group, unchecked by any higher authority of king or governor, arose ancestor-worship—that unnatural religion which erases the laws of life and bids the chicken feed the hen—or rather the rooster. No matriarchal cult would have made that mistake. The patriarch owned his women, owned his children, owned all the property; he gave and took away at his pleasure. Therefore, looming vast in unchecked pride, he erected sacrificial religions all his own, demanding sons to perform sacred rites in his honor; and grew so inflated with superiority that he thanked his patriarchal God and Father every day that he was not born a woman.

This Personality has cast its shadow across heaven. It has deified its own traits and worships them. Through blind and selfish eyes it has mis-seen and misrepresented God, and forced dark dogmas on its children, age after age. Each child of us, though really born to the broad light of a democratic age, is reared in the patriarchate. Each child of us sees the father, dispenser of benefits, arbiter and ruler of the family; and, so reared, each child of us repeats from generation to generation the mistakes of personality.

The basic law of the patriarchal system was obedience, and is yet. The child's first ethical lesson is in the verb "to obey." Not with any convincing instance of right or wrong, though life bristles with them, but as the duty of submission. He is not taught to observe, to relate, to make his inference, to act, and to note results. He is taught that his one duty is not to think, observe, or experiment, but to do what he is told.

This is a convenient habit for those in authority; but not conducive to any true development of the ethical sense. We are turned out into a world of cause and effect, with no knowledge, no experience, no guide whatever, but the painfully acquired habit of doing what some one else tells us. We are not taught to study right and wrong conduct, to understand it, to see the wisdom of the one and the folly of the other.

The child's first notion of "being good" is either sheer inaction or prompt submission. What we call "a good baby" is one who does absolutely nothing. Here we have an explanation of the amazing inertia of people in general; of the smug immobility of those shining lights "the best people." We all have been taught—rigorously taught in our infancy—that to "keep quiet" was a virtue; and we keep quiet through life. This is one clear instance of our nursery-mindedness.

We are reared in a black and white world: sharp wrong,—to do almost anything amusing, and particularly and most of all, To Disobey; sharp right,—to do nothing whatever, and particularly and best of all, To Obey. We come out into a world that is all colors of the rainbow in every shade and blending, where the things people tell us to do are mostly wrong, and to do right requires the most strenuous and independent activity. Greatly are we hindered in the work of life to-day by our mis-taught infancy.

In the narrow round of family life, the inevitable repetitions, the natural ruts of usage, the child has forced upon him the conservatism he should have every help to out-grow. Habit uncriticized and unresisted; convention an unquestioned good; these are the rules of the little world. How he hates it! How he longs for something different—for something to happen! The world is full of differences and happenings, but he is helpless to meet them—he has been only trained in narrow routine.

The oldest status in life, that of serving woman, is about him in his infancy. That mother should do for him is right and natural, but why should his mother be waiting on these other persons? Why is she the house-servant as well as the mother? If she is but a fashionable person in gay attire, he still has about him women servants. He cannot think as yet, but he accepts from daily contact this serving womanhood as natural and right, grows up to demand it in his household and to rear his children in its shadow; and so perpetuate from age to age the patriarchal error.

Then deep into this infant soul sinks the iron weight of what we call Discipline. We women, having small knowledge of child-nature or world-nature, never studying nature at all, but each girl-mother handed on from nursery to nursery, a child teaching children, we undertake to introduce the new soul to life!

We show him, as "life," the nursery, kitchen and parlor group in which we live. We try to teach him the behavior required by these surroundings. Two of the heaviest crosses to both the child and mother lie in his bi- and tri-daily difficulties with clothing, and prolonged initiation to the sacred mysteries of the table. We seek, as best we may, to bend the new soul visiting this world to a correct fulfilment of the polite functions of our domestic shrine; and we succeed unhappily well. We rear a world of people who put manners before morals, conventions before principles, conformity before initiative. Sorely do we strive with the new soul, to choke questionings and crush its resistance.

"Why?" says the child, "Why?" protesting with might and main against the mummery into which he is being forced.

"Because Mother says so!" is the reason given. "Because you must obey!" is the duty given; and to enforce the command comes punishment.

Punishment is a pitiful invention arbitrarily inserted in place of consequence. Its power is in giving pain. Its appeal is to terror. We, immovable and besotted in our ancient sanctuaries, deliberately give pain to little children, deliberately arouse in them that curse of old savagery, blind fear. To compel behavior which we cannot explain even to ourselves, to force the new wine of their young lives into the old bottles of our traditional habits, we keep alive in the little child an attitude of mind the whole world should seek to outgrow and forget forever.

The ethics of the nursery does not give us laws to be learned and understood; relations of cause and effect for instructive practice; matters of general use and welfare not to know and practice which argues a foolish ignorance. It gives command purely arbitrary and disconnected; their profit is not visible to the child; and their penalties, while painfully conspicuous, bear no real relation to offences.

Besides being arbitrary and disconnected, the penalties we give our children have this alarming weakness—they are wholly contingent upon discovery. No whipped child is too young to learn that his whipping did not follow on the act—unless his mother knew he did it. Thus with elaborate care, with trouble to ourselves and anguish to the child, we develop in him the attitude of mind with which our criminals, big and little, face the world—it is not what you do that matters—it is being found out. This is not the position of the thinking being—it is nursery-mindedness.

Pain and terror we teach our babies, and also shame. The child is pure, innocent, natural. One of the first efforts of nursery culture is to smear that white page with our self-made foulness. We labor conscientiously and with patience, to teach our babies shame. We degrade the human body, we befoul the habits of nature, we desecrate life, teaching evil and foolish falsehood to our defenceless little children. The "sex-taboos" of darkest savagery, the decencies and indecencies of primitive convention, we have preserved throughout the ages in our guarded temple of ancient idols, and in that atmosphere we rear the child.

The heaviest drag on progress is the persistence of race-habits and traditions, once natural and useful, but long since outgrown. The main stronghold of this body of tradition is in that uneducated, undeveloped, unorganized, lingering rudiment of earlier social forms—the woman-servant group of primitive industries, in which our children grow.

We have cried out against the crushing restriction of old religions; and, going farther, have seen that these religions have their strongest hold on the woman and the child. It is here suggested that it is not the religion that keeps down the woman and renews its grip on each new generation of children, but that it is the degraded status of the woman and her influence on the child which made possible such religions in the first instance, and which accounts for their astonishing persistence in modern times.

In the atmosphere of the nursery each child re-learns continually the mental habits of a remote and lowly past. His sense of duty is a personal one, it is obligation; and justified when we attempt to justify it by the beneficent services of the parent. This parental religion naturally pictures God as a parent—a father of course, and people as his children. We, as his children, are to love and serve and glorify him, and he to take care of us, parentally.

Coming out into the world of which he has been taught nothing, the young man finds no corroboration whatever for this theory. He does not see the alleged grounds of the religious views given him, and so he drops his religion altogether.

If he had early been shown God in a thousand beautiful common instances, as ever-present, unescapable, and beneficent Law—the sure, sound constant force of life, then he would find the same God still visibly at work in the world of love and labor, and not lose his religion by outgrowing his nursery.

Instead of personal gratitude for personal service as a cause for good behavior, he should be shown that his parents and teachers serve him and other children because so best is the human race improved; and that he, and the other children, owe their life's service to the same great body, to the human race. This ideal would need neither patching nor enlargement, but would last unbroken through life.

Our nursery-bred consciences suffer personally for personal sins, with morbid keenness, but are stone blocks of indifference to the collective sins which are the major evils of life to-day. A man may pointed out to us as a wholesale malefactor, a dealer in bad meat, a poisoner of the public mind through a degraded press, an extortioner, liar, doer of uncounted evil; we reply that he is a "moral man"—that his personal relations are excellent; and, if one continues to complain, we say, "What has he done to you?"

Personality is the limit of our moral sense, the steady check to growth in ethical understanding, as it is in economics, and in art. The normal growth of the human soul to-day is into a wide, fluent, general relation with mankind; and a deeper more satisfying and workable conception of God than we ever knew before. In our nursery-mindedness we face the problems of civic morality, catching visible offenders and shutting them in a closet, sending them supperless to bed, hurting and depriving them in various ways, as blindly, stupidly and unprofitably as a woman spanks her child.

Children reared in a democratic, scientific, broadly educative atmosphere, would grow up able to see the absurdity of our primitive institutions—but such an atmosphere does not originate in and cannot be brought into the nursery.

As an inevitable reaction from nursery-government, the child finds joyous relief in sheer riot and self-will. The behavior of our boys in college shows well their previous uneducated and ill-educated condition. The persistence of "hazing" among twentieth century persons old enough to go to school, shows the weakness of nursery culture. This is a custom prevalent among low savage races, known as "initiation by torture." Its reason—if it ever had any—was to outdo nature's cruelest and most wasteful methods, and to prepare for a life of struggle and pain by a worse experience to begin with. About the age of puberty, when body and mind are both sensitive, this pleasant rite took place. Those who survived it, habituated to cruelty and unreason, were thereby fitted to live cruel and unreasonable lives—and did so.

Race-customs, as old as this, die hard. They have to be understood, condemned, opposed, and educated out of us. Our small children get no such education. They, as a class, get no influence tending to uplift and develop their sociological status. Clever and "well-trained" they may be; well-loved and well—at least, expensively-dressed. But as soon as they escape the nursery bounds, out pops the primeval savage, unrestrained. These young students, with their revolting practices, ought to know that they are in the social stage with cannibalism, voudooism, fetich-worship; and to be hot with shame at their condition. It is the race's babyhood,—a drooling, fumbling, infantile folly—manifested almost to adult age. That it endures is due to our nursery-mindedness.

About the little child should cluster and concentrate the noblest forces of our latest days, our highest wisdom and deepest experience, our most subtle skill. Such wisdom, skill and experience do not exist in the average young woman, albeit a mother; still less in her low-class, ignorant serving-maids. A wider, deeper love would desire better environment for the child, more foresight and more power would provide it. But our love, though intense, is narrow and largely childish—the mother has not long left the influence of her own nursery; and neither wisdom nor power grew there. Some day our women will see this. They will understand at last what womanhood is for, and the power and glory of civilized motherhood. They will see that the educative influences of the first few years are pre-eminently important, and prepare for them as assiduously as they prepare to give a college education to older children.

The baby is a new human soul, learning Life. He should have about him from the first, Truth and Order, with a sequence of impressions which great minds have labored to prepare. He should have his mother's love, his father's care, his brother's and sister's society; his home's seclusion; and he should also have from his earliest days, a place to share with many other children, and the love and care and service of such guides and teachers as are most fit to help the growing of the world.

We have gone far indeed in those things we learn after we leave home. In our trades and professions, our arts and sciences, in the broad avenues of the world's life, we have made great progress—albeit hampered always to some extent by our nursery-mindedness.

But in our own personal relations we are stagnant, hide-bound, inert. Our littleness, our morbidness, our self-consciousness, our narrowness, our short-sightedness, our oppressive, insistent, omnipresent personality—all these still crush us down. Bumptious with a good child's complacency, grieving with a bad child's remorse, indifferent and rebellious as ill-trained children are, we live unawakened among social laws. We enjoy when we can; we suffer much—and needlessly; but we seem incapable of taking hold of our large world-questions and settling them.

It is only an apparent limitation. We are quite capable were we but taught so. What hinders us is Nursery-Mindedness.



A VILLAGE OF FOOLS

There was a certain village, a little village on a little stream; and the inhabitants thereof were Fools.

By profession they were tillers of the soil; and they kept beasts, beasts of burden, and beasts to furnish meat. They lived upon the products of their tillage, and upon the beasts, and upon fish from the stream.

The Wise said, "This is a good village. There is land to furnish food, and beasts in plenty, and a good stream flowing steadily from the tree-clothed hills. These people should prosper well."

They did not know that the people of the village were Fools; Utter Fools. Observe now their Foolishness! They cut down the trees of the hills to make their fires withal; many and great fires, without stint or hindrance; and presently there was no more any forest upon the hills to cover them. Then the moist breath of the cloud-building forest was dried away; and the thick wet sponge about the roots of the forest was dried away; and the snow slid down the hills as it slides down steep roof gables; and the rain ran down the narrow valleys as it runs down gutter pipes; and the village was swept by floods in flood time, and lay parched and thirsty in the dry season. And the people of the village called the flood an Act of God, and they called the drought an Act of God; for they were Fools.

Their fields they tilled continuously, for they needs must eat; gathering from the good ground year after year, and generation after generation, till the ground became sour and stale, and was bad ground and bore no fruit.

"Surely," said the Wise, "they will gather from the stables of their beasts and from the village that which shall enrich their soil and make it bear fruit again."

They did not know that the people of the Village were Fools.

Thus did they with their beasts. They kept them thick in their village; draught animals and burden-bearers; and from the defiled streets arose a Plague of Flies, and tormented the people, so that they fell sick of divers diseases. And they themselves crowded together ever more thickly, till all the village became unsavory and unfit for human habitation. Then they arose, wagging their heads sagaciously; and with vast labor and expense they gathered together from their stables and their habitations all that which should enrich the soil and produce fruit again; and they poured it carefully into the stream. Now this was the stream from which they drank; and when they drank their diluted diseases they fell sick anew, and many died.

Also the fish fed upon this filth, and they also absorbed diseases; and the people fed upon the fish which had fed upon the filth, and again fell sick, and many died.

And those who died they carefully wrapped up in many coverings and laid in the ground—them and their diseases with them—that the seeds thereof might be fostered eternally, and continually came forth anew.

But the Wise burned their dead in clean fire, cherishing their memories in their hearts, but not their slowly deteriorating remains in the dark earth. And the wise kept their forests as a wild garden, planting as well as reaping; having wood therefrom at need, and always the green beauty and the cool shade, the moist winds and carpet of held water over the hill slopes.

Their streams were pure and steady, tree shadowed and grass bordered from end to end; for a tree beareth food as well as a field, and is planted in a moment and the young tree cometh up as the old tree dieth.

And their fields they fed continually, so that they bore more rather than less from year to year, and they prospered and did not die of hand-made diseases.

But they knew not their own wisdom, for these things it seemed to them that even Fools might see, and do accordingly.

Neither did the Fools know their own foolishness.



WHAT DIANTHA DID

CHAPTER VI.

THE CYNOSURE.

It's a singular thing that the commonest place Is the hardest to properly fill; That the labor imposed on a full half the race Is so seldom performed with good will— To say nothing of knowledge or skill!

What we ask of all women, we stare at in one, And tribute of wonderment bring; If this task of the million is once fitly done We all hold our hands up and sing! It's really a singular thing!

Isabel Porne was a cautious woman, and made no acclaim over her new acquisition until its value was proven. Her husband also bided his time; and when congratulated on his improved appearance and air of contentment, merely vouchsafed that his wife had a new girl who could cook.

To himself he boasted that he had a new wife who could love—so cheerful and gay grew Mrs. Porne in the changed atmosphere of her home.

"It is remarkable, Edgar," she said, dilating repeatedly on the peculiar quality of their good fortune. "It's not only good cooking, and good waiting, and a clean house—cleaner than I ever saw one before; and it's not only the quietness, and regularity and economy—why the bills have gone down more than a third!"

"Yes—even I noticed that," he agreed.

"But what I enjoy the most is the atmosphere," she continued. "When I have to do the work, the house is a perfect nightmare to me!" She leaned forward from her low stool, her elbows on her knees, her chin in her hands, and regarded him intently.

"Edgar! You know I love you. And I love my baby—I'm no unfeeling monster! But I can tell you frankly that if I'd had any idea of what housework was like I'd never have given up architecture to try it."

"Lucky for me you hadn't!" said he fondly. "I know it's been hard for you, little girl. I never meant that you should give up architecture—that's a business a woman could carry on at home I thought, the designing part anyway. There's your 'drawing-room' and all your things—"

"Yes," she said, with reminiscent bitterness, "there they are—and there they might have stayed, untouched—if Miss Bell hadn't come!"

"Makes you call her "Miss Bell" all the time, does she?"

Mrs. Porne laughed. "Yes. I hated it at first, but she asked if I could give her any real reason why the cook should be called by her first name more than the seamstress or governess. I tried to say that it was shorter, but she smiled and said that in this case it was longer!—Her name is Diantha—I've seen it on letters. And it is one syllable longer. Anyhow I've got used to Miss Bell now."

"She gets letters often?"

"Yes—very often—from Topolaya where she came from. I'm afraid she's engaged." Mrs. Porne sighed ruefully.

"I don't doubt it!" said Mr. Porne. "That would account for her six months' arrangement! Well, my dear—make hay while the sun shines!"

"I do!" she boasted. "Whole stacks! I've had a seamstress in, and got all my clothes in order and the baby's. We've had lot of dinner-parties and teas as you know—all my "social obligations" are cleared off! We've had your mother for a visit, and mine's coming now—and I wasn't afraid to have either of them! There's no fault to be found with my housekeeping now! And there are two things better than that—yes, three."

"The best thing is to see you look so young and handsome and happy again," said her husband, with a kiss.

"Yes—that's one. Another is that now I feel so easy and lighthearted I can love you and baby—as—as I do! Only when I'm tired and discouraged I can't put my hand on it somehow.

He nodded sympathetically. "I know, dear," he said. "I feel that way myself—sometimes. What's the other?"

"Why that's best of aIl!" she cried triumphantly. "I can Work again! When Baby's asleep I get hours at a time; and even when he's awake I've fixed a place where he can play—and I can draw and plan—just as I used to—better than I used to!"

"And that is even more to you than loving?" he asked in a quiet inquiring voice.

"It's more because it means both!" She leaned to him, glowing, "Don't you see? First I had the work and loved it. Then you came—and I loved you—better! Then Baby came and I loved him—best? I don't know—you and baby are all one somehow."

There was a brief interim and then she drew back, blushing richly. "Now stop—I want to explain. When the housework got to be such a nightmare—and I looked forward to a whole lifetime of it and no improvement; then I just ached for my work—and couldn't do it! And then—why sometimes dear, I just wanted to run away! Actually! From both of you!—you see, I spent five years studying—I was a real architect—and it did hurt to see it go. And now—O now I've got It and You too, darling! And the Baby!—O I'm so happy!"

"Thanks to the Providential Miss Bell," said he. "If she'll stay I'll pay her anything!"

The months went by.

Peace, order, comfort, cleanliness and economy reigned in the Porne household, and the lady of the house blossomed into richer beauty and happiness; her contentment marred only by a sense of flying time.

Miss Bell fulfilled her carefully specified engagement to the letter; rested her peaceful hour in the morning; walked and rode in the afternoon; familiarized herself with the length and breadth of the town; and visited continuously among the servants of the neighborhood, establishing a large and friendly acquaintance. If she wore rubber gloves about the rough work, she paid for them herself; and she washed and ironed her simple and pretty costumes herself—with the result that they stayed pretty for surprising periods.

She wrote letters long and loving, to Ross daily; to her mother twice a week; and by the help of her sister's authority succeeded in maintaining a fairly competent servant in her deserted place.

"Father was bound he wouldn't," her sister wrote her; "but I stood right up to him, I can now I'm married!—and Gerald too—that he'd no right to take it out of mother even if he was mad with you. He made a fuss about your paying for the girl—but that was only showing off—he couldn't pay for her just now—that's certain. And she does very well—a good strong girl, and quite devoted to mother." And then she scolded furiously about her sister's "working out."

Diantha knew just how hard it was for her mother. She had faced all sides of the question before deciding.

"Your mother misses you badly, of course," Ross wrote her. "I go in as often as I can and cheer her up a bit. It's not just the work—she misses you. By the way—so do I." He expressed his views on her new employment.

Diantha used to cry over her letters quite often. But she would put them away, dry her eyes, and work on at the plans she was maturing, with grim courage. "It's hard on them now," she would say to herself. "Its hard on me—some. But we'll all be better off because of it, and not only us—but everybody!"

Meanwhile the happy and unhappy households of the fair town buzzed in comment and grew green with envy.

In social circles and church circles and club circles, as also in domestic circles, it was noised abroad that Mrs. Edgar Porne had "solved the servant question." News of this marvel of efficiency and propriety was discussed in every household, and not only so but in barber-shops and other downtown meeting places mentioned. Servants gathered it at dinner-tables; and Diantha, much amused, regathered it from her new friends among the servants.

Does she keep on just the same?" asked little Mrs. Ree of Mrs. Porne in an awed whisper.

"Just the same if not better. I don't even order the meals now, unless I want something especial. She keeps a calendar of what we've had to eat, and what belongs to the time of year, prices and things. When I used to ask her to suggest (one does, you know: it is so hard to think up a variety!), she'd always be ready with an idea, or remind me that we had had so and so two days before, till I asked her if she'd like to order, and she said she'd be willing to try, and now I just sit down to the table without knowing what's going to be there."

"But I should think that would interfere with your sense of freedom," said Mrs. Ellen A Dankshire, "A woman should be mistress of her own household."

"Why I am! I order whenever I specially want anything. But she really does it more—more scientifically. She has made a study of it. And the bills are very much lower."

"Well, I think you are the luckiest woman alive!" sighed Mrs. Ree. "I wish I had her!"

Many a woman wished she had her, and some, calling when they knew Mrs. Porne was out, or descending into their own kitchens of an evening when the strange Miss Bell was visiting "the help," made flattering propositions to her to come to them. She was perfectly polite and agreeable in manner, but refused all blandishments.

"What are you getting at your present place—if I may ask?" loftily inquired the great Mrs. Thaddler, ponderous and beaded.

"There is surely no objection to your asking, madam," she replied politely. "Mrs. Porne will not mind telling you, I am sure."

"Hm!" said the patronizing visitor, regarding her through her lorgnette. "Very good. Whatever it is I'll double it. When can you come?"

"My engagement with Mrs. Porne is for six months," Diantha answered, "and I do not wish to close with anyone else until that time is up. Thank you for your offer just the same."

"Peculiarly offensive young person!" said Mrs. Thaddler to her husband. "Looks to me like one of these literary imposters. Mrs. Porne will probably appear in the magazines before long."

Mr. Thaddler instantly conceived a liking for the young person, "sight unseen."

Diantha acquired quite a list of offers; places open to her as soon as she was free; at prices from her present seven dollars up to the proposed doubling.

"Fourteen dollars a week and found!—that's not so bad," she meditated. "That would mean over $650 clear in a year! It's a wonder to me girls don't try it long enough to get a start at something else. With even two or three hundred ahead—and an outfit—it would be easier to make good in a store or any other way. Well—I have other fish to fry!"

So she pursued her way; and, with Mrs. Porne's permission—held a sort of girl's club in her spotless kitchen one evening a week during the last three months of her engagement. It was a "Study and Amusement Club." She gave them short and interesting lessons in arithmetic, in simple dressmaking, in easy and thorough methods of housework. She gave them lists of books, referred them to articles in magazines, insidiously taught them to use the Public Library.

They played pleasant games in the second hour, and grew well acquainted. To the eye or ear of any casual visitor it was the simplest and most natural affair, calculated to "elevate labor" and to make home happy.

Diantha studied and observed. They brought her their poor confidences, painfully similar. Always poverty—or they would not be there. Always ignorance, or they would not stay there. Then either incompetence in the work, or inability to hold their little earnings—or both; and further the Tale of the Other Side—the exactions and restrictions of the untrained mistresses they served; cases of withheld wages; cases of endless requirements; cases of most arbitrary interference with their receiving friends and "followers," or going out; and cases, common enough to be horrible, of insult they could only escape by leaving.

"It's no wages, of course—and no recommendation, when you leave like that—but what else can a girl do, if she's honest?"

So Diantha learned, made friends and laid broad foundations.

The excellence of her cocking was known to many, thanks to the weekly "entertainments." No one refused. No one regretted acceptance. Never had Mrs. Porne enjoyed such a sense of social importance.

All the people she ever knew called on her afresh, and people she never knew called on her even more freshly. Not that she was directly responsible for it. She had not triumphed cruelly over her less happy friends; nor had she cried aloud on the street corners concerning her good fortune. It was not her fault, nor, in truth anyone's. But in a community where the "servant question" is even more vexed than in the country at large, where the local product is quite unequal to the demand, and where distance makes importation an expensive matter, the fact of one woman's having, as it appeared, settled this vexed question, was enough to give her prominence.

Mrs. Ellen A. Dankshire, President of the Orchardina Home and Culture Club, took up the matter seriously.

"Now Mrs. Porne," said she, settling herself vigorously into a comfortable chair, "I just want to talk the matter over with you, with a view to the club. We do not know how long this will last—"

"Don't speak of it!" said Mrs. Porne.

"—and it behooves us to study the facts while we have them."

"So much is involved!" said little Mrs. Ree, the Corresponding Secretary, lifting her pale earnest face with the perplexed fine lines in it. "We are all so truly convinced of the sacredness of the home duties!"

"Well, what do you want me to do?" asked their hostess.

"We must have that remarkable young woman address our club!" Mrs. Dankshire announced. "It is one case in a thousand, and must be studied!"

"So noble of her!" said Mrs. Ree. "You say she was really a school-teacher? Mrs. Thaddler has put it about that she is one of these dreadful writing persons—in disguise!"

"O no," said Mrs. Porne. "She is perfectly straightforward about it, and had the best of recommendations. She was a teacher, but it didn't agree with her health, I believe."

"Perhaps there is a story to it!" Mrs. Ree advanced; but Mrs. Dankshire disagreed with her flatly.

"The young woman has a theory, I believe, and she is working it out. I respect her for it. Now what we want to ask you, Mrs. Porne, is this: do you think it would make any trouble for you—in the household relations, you know—if we ask her to read a paper to the Club? Of course we do not wish to interfere, but it is a remarkable opportunity—very. You know the fine work Miss Lucy Salmon has done on this subject; and Miss Frances Kellor. You know how little data we have, and how great, how serious, a question it is daily becoming! Now here is a young woman of brains and culture who has apparently grappled with the question; her example and influence must not be lost! We must hear from her. The public must know of this."

"Such an ennobling example!" murmured Mrs. Ree. "It might lead numbers of other school-teachers to see the higher side of the home duties!"

"Furthermore," pursued Mrs. Dankshire, "this has occured to me. Would it not be well to have our ladies bring with them to the meeting the more intelligent of their servants; that they might hear and see the—the dignity of household labor—so ably set forth?

"Isn't it—wouldn't that be a—an almost dangerous experiment?" urged Mrs. Ree; her high narrow forehead fairly creped with little wrinkles: "She might—say something, you know, that they might—take advantage of!"

"Nonsense, my dear!" replied Mrs. Dankshire. She was very fond of Mrs. Ree, but had small respect for her judgment. "What could she say? Look at what she does! And how beautifully—how perfectly—she does it! I would wager now—may I try an experiment Mrs. Porne?" and she stood up, taking out her handkerchief.

"Certainly," said Mrs. Porne, "with pleasure! You won't find any!"

Mrs. Dankshire climbed heavily upon a carefully selected chair and passed her large clean plain-hemmed handkerchief across the top of a picture.

"I knew it!" she proclaimed proudly from her eminence, and showed the cloth still white. "That," she continued in ponderous descent, "that is Knowledge, Ability and Conscience!"

"I don't see how she gets the time!" breathed Mrs. Ree, shaking her head in awed amazement, and reflecting that she would not dare trust Mrs. Dankshire's handkerchief on her picture tops.

"We must have her address the Club," the president repeated. "It will do worlds of good. Let me see—a paper on—we might say 'On the True Nature of Domestic Industry.' How does that strike you, Mrs. Ree?"

"Admirable!" said Mrs. Ree. "So strong! so succinct."

"That certainly covers the subject," said Mrs. Porne. "Why don't you ask her?"

"We will. We have come for that purpose. But we felt it right to ask you about it first," said Mrs. Dankshire.

"Why I have no control over Miss Bell's movements, outside of working hours," answered Mrs. Porne. "And I don't see that it would make any difference to our relations. She is a very self-poised young woman, but extremely easy to get along with. And I'm sure she could write a splendid paper. You'd better ask her, I think."

"Would you call her in?" asked Mrs. Dankshire, "or shall we go out to the kitchen?"

"Come right out; I'd like you to see how beautifully she keeps everything."

The kitchen was as clean as the parlor; and as prettily arranged. Miss Bell was making her preparation for lunch, and stopped to receive the visitors with a serenely civil air—as of a country store-keeper.

"I am very glad to meet you, Miss Bell, very glad indeed," said Mrs. Dankshire, shaking hands with her warmly. "We have at heard so much of your beautiful work here, and we admire your attitude! Now would you be willing to give a paper—or a talk—to our club, the Home and Culture Club, some Wednesday, on The True Nature of Domestic Industry?"

Mrs. Ree took Miss Bell's hand with something of the air of a Boston maiden accosting a saint from Hindoostan. "If you only would!" she said. "I am sure it would shed light on this great subject!"

Miss Bell smiled at them both and looked at Mrs. Porne inquiringly.

"I should be delighted to have you do it," said her employer. "I know it would be very useful."

"Is there any date set?" asked Miss Bell.

"Any Wednesday after February," said Mrs. Dankshire.

"Well—I will come on the first Wednesday in April. If anything should happen to prevent I will let you know in good season, and if you should wish to postpone or alter the program—should think better of the idea—just send me word. I shall not mind in the least."

They went away quite jubilant, Miss Bell's acceptance was announced officially at the next club-meeting, and the Home and Culture Club felt that it was fulfilling its mission.



[Untitled]

I gave myself to God.— With humility and contrition, In sacrifice and submission. "Take me! Do not refuse me! Order me—govern me—use me! Nothing I ask for my own— I pray to be thine alone!—" And God smiled.

I gave myself to mankind.— With sorrow and sympathy deep, With pity that would not sleep. "To serve you and save you, brothers! To give my life for the others! I ask no price—no place— I seek but to help the race!—" And God smiled.

I gave myself to Myself.— In the knowledge that opens power; In the truth's unfolding hour; In the glory of service free; The joy that such life can be:— My life—that is never done! For my neighbor and I are One!— And God smiled.



OUR ANDROCENTRIC CULTURE; or, THE MAN-MADE WORLD

VI.

GAMES AND SPORTS

One of the sharpest distinctions both between the essential characters and the artificial positions of men and women, is in the matter of games and sports. By far the greater proportion of them are essentially masculine, and as such alien to women; while from those which are humanly interesting, women have been largely debarred by their arbitrary restrictions.

The play instinct is common to girls and boys alike; and endures in some measure throughout life. As other young animals express their abounding energies in capricious activities similar to those followed in the business of living, so small children gambol, physically, like lambs and kids; and as the young of higher kinds of animals imitate in their play the more complex activities of their elders, so do children imitate whatever activities they see about them. In this field of playing there is no sex.

Similarly in adult life healthy and happy persons, men and women, naturally express surplus energy in various forms of sport. We have here one of the most distinctively human manifestations. The great accumulation of social energy, and the necessary limitations of one kind of work, leave a human being tired of one form of action, yet still uneasy for lack of full expression; and this social need has been met by our great safety valve of games and sports.

In a society of either sex, or in a society without sex, there would still be both pleasure and use in games; they are vitally essential to human life. In a society of two sexes, wherein one has dictated all the terms of life, and the other has been confined to an extremely limited fraction of human living, we may look to see this great field of enjoyment as disproportionately divided.

It is not only that we have reduced the play impulse in women by restricting them to one set of occupations, and overtaxing their energies with mother-work and housework combined; and not only that by our androcentric conventions we further restrict their amusements; but we begin in infancy, and forcibly differentiate their methods of play long before any natural distinction would appear.

Take that universal joy the doll, or puppet, as an instance. A small imitation of a large known object carries delight to the heart of a child of either sex. The worsted cat, the wooden horse, the little wagon, the tin soldier, the wax doll, the toy village, the "Noah's Ark," the omnipresent "Teddy Bear," any and every small model of a real thing is a delight to the young human being. Of all things the puppet is the most intimate, the little image of another human being to play with. The fancy of the child, making endless combinations with these visible types, plays as freely as a kitten in the leaves; or gravely carries out some observed forms of life, as the kitten imitates its mother's hunting.

So far all is natural and human.

Now see our attitude toward child's play—under a masculine culture. Regarding women only as a sex, and that sex as manifest from infancy, we make and buy for our little girls toys suitable to this view. Being females—which means mothers, we must needs provide them with babies before they cease to be babies themselves; and we expect their play to consist in an imitation of maternal cares. The doll, the puppet, which interests all children, we have rendered as an eternal baby; and we foist them upon our girl children by ceaseless millions.

The doll, as such, is dear to the little boy as well as the girl, but not as a baby. He likes his jumping-jack, his worsted Sambo, often a genuine rag-doll; but he is discouraged and ridiculed in this. We do not expect the little boy to manifest a father's love and care for an imitation child—but we do expect the little girl to show maternal feelings for her imitation baby. It has not yet occurred to us that this is monstrous.

Little children should not be expected to show, in painful precocity, feelings which ought never to be experienced till they come at the proper age. Our kittens play at cat-sports, little Tom and Tabby together; but little Tabby does not play she is a mother!

Beyond the continuous dolls and their continuous dressing, we provide for our little girls tea sets and kitchen sets, doll's houses, little work-boxes—the imitation tools of their narrow trades. For the boy there is a larger choice. We make for them not only the essentially masculine toys of combat—all the enginery of mimic war; but also the models of human things, like boats, railroads, wagons. For them, too, are the comprehensive toys of the centuries, the kite, the top, the ball. As the boy gets old enough to play the games that require skill, he enters the world-lists, and the little sister, left inside, with her everlasting dolls, learns that she is "only a girl," and "mustn't play with boys—boys are so rough!" She has her doll and her tea set. She "plays house." If very active she may jump rope, in solitary enthusiasm, or in combination of from two to four. Her brother is playing games. From this time on he plays the games of the world. The "sporting page" should be called "the Man's Page" as that array of recipes, fashions and cheap advice is called "the Woman's Page."

One of the immediate educational advantages of the boy's position is that he learns "team work." This is not a masculine characteristic, it is a human one; a social power. Women are equally capable of it by nature; but not by education. Tending one's imitation baby is not team-work; nor is playing house. The little girl is kept forever within the limitations of her mother's "sphere" of action; while the boy learns life, and fancies that his new growth is due to his superior sex.

Now there are certain essential distinctions in the sexes, which would manifest themselves to some degree even in normally reared children; as for instance the little male would be more given to fighting and destroying; the little female more to caring for and constructing things.

"Boys are so destructive!" we say with modest pride—as if it was in some way a credit to them. But early youth is not the time to display sex distinction; and they should be discouraged rather than approved.

The games of the world, now the games of men, easily fall into two broad classes—games of skill and games of chance.

The interest and pleasure in the latter is purely human, and as such is shared by the two sexes even now. Women, in the innocent beginnings or the vicious extremes of this line of amusement, make as wild gamblers as men. At the races, at the roulette wheel, at the bridge table, this is clearly seen.

In games of skill we have a different showing. Most of these are developed by and for men; but when they are allowed, women take part in them with interest and success. In card games, in chess, checkers, and the like, in croquet and tennis, they play, and play well if well-trained. Where they fall short in so many games, and are so wholly excluded in others, is not for lack of human capacity, but for lack of masculinity. Most games are male. In their element of desire to win, to get the prize, they are male; and in their universal attitude of competition they are male, the basic spirit of desire and of combat working out through subtle modern forms.

There is something inherently masculine also in the universal dominance of the projectile in their games. The ball is the one unescapable instrument of sport. From the snapped marble of infancy to the flying missile of the bat, this form endures. To send something forth with violence; to throw it, bat it, kick it, shoot it; this impulse seems to date back to one of the twin forces of the universe—the centrifugal and centripetal energies between which swing the planets.

The basic feminine impulse is to gather, to put together, to construct; the basic masculine impulse to scatter, to disseminate, to destroy. It seems to give pleasure to a man to bang something and drive it from him; the harder he hits it and the farther it goes the better pleased he is.

Games of this sort will never appeal to women. They are not wrong; not necessarily evil in their place; our mistake is in considering them as human, whereas they are only masculine.

Play, in the childish sense is an expression of previous habit; and to be studied in that light. Play in the educational sense should be encouraged or discouraged to develop desired characteristics. This we know, and practice; only we do it under androcentric canons; confining the girl to the narrow range we consider proper for women, and assisting the boy to cover life with the expression of masculinity, when we should be helping both to a more human development.

Our settled conviction that men are people—the people, and that masculine qualities are the main desideratam in life, is what keeps up this false estimate of the value of our present games. Advocates of football, for instance, proudly claim that it fits a man for life. Life—from the wholly male point of view—is a battle, with a prize. To want something beyond measure, and to fight to get—that is the simple proposition. This view of life finds its most naive expression in predatory warfare; and still tends to make predatory warfare of the later and more human processes of industry. Because they see life in this way they imagine that skill and practice in the art of fighting, especially in collective fighting, is so valuable in our modern life. This is an archaism which would be laughable if it were not so dangerous in its effects.

The valuable processes to-day are those of invention, discovery, all grades of industry, and, most especially needed, the capacity for honest service and administration of our immense advantages. These are not learned on the football field. This spirit of desire and combat may be seen further in all parts of this great subject. It has developed into a cult of sportsmanship; so universally accepted among men as of superlative merit as to quite blind them to other standards of judgment.

In the Cook-Peary controversy of 1909, this canon was made manifest. Here, one man had spent a lifetime in trying to accomplish something; and at the eleventh hour succeeded. Then, coming out in the rich triumph long deferred, he finds another man, of character well known to him, impudently and falsely claiming that he had done it first. Mr. Peary expressed himself, quite restrainedly and correctly, in regard to the effrontery and falsity of this claim—and all the country rose up and denounced him as "unsportsmanlike!"

Sport and the canons of sport are so dominant in the masculine mind that what they considered a deviation from these standards was of far more importance than the question of fact involved; to say nothing of the moral obliquity of one lying to the whole world, for money; and that at the cost of another's hard-won triumph.

If women had condemned the conduct of one or the other as "not good house-wifery," this would have been considered a most puerile comment. But to be "unsportsmanlike" is the unpardonable sin.

Owing to our warped standards we glaringly misjudge the attitude of the two sexes in regard to their amusements. Of late years more women than ever before have taken to playing cards; and some, unfortunately, play for money. A steady stream of comment and blame follows upon this. The amount of card playing among men—and the amount of money lost and won, does not produce an equivalent comment.

Quite aside from this one field of dissipation, look at the share of life, of time, of strength, of money, given by men to their wide range of recreation. The primitive satisfaction of hunting and fishing they maintain at enormous expense. This is the indulgence of a most rudimentary impulse; pre-social and largely pre-human, of no service save as it affects bodily health, and of a most deterring influence on real human development. Where hunting and fishing is of real human service, done as a means of livelihood, it is looked down upon like any other industry; it is no longer "sport."

The human being kills to eat, or to sell and eat from the returns; he kills for the creature's hide or tusks, for use of some sort; or to protect his crops from vermin, his flocks from depredation; but the sportsman kills for the gratification of a primeval instinct, and under rules of an arbitrary cult. "Game" creatures are his prey; bird, beast or fish that is hard to catch, that requires some skill to slay; that will give him not mere meat and bones, but "the pleasure of the chase."

The pleasure of the chase is a very real one. It is exemplified, in its broad sense in children's play. The running and catching games, the hiding and finding games, are always attractive to our infancy, as they are to that of cubs and kittens. But the long continuance of this indulgence among mature civilized beings is due to their masculinity. That group of associated sex instincts, which in the woman prompts to the patient service and fierce defence of the little child, in the man has its deepest root in seeking, pursuing and catching. To hunt is more than a means of obtaining food, in his long ancestry; it is to follow at any cost, to seek through all difficulties, to struggle for and secure the central prize of his being—a mate.

His "protective instincts" are far later and more superficial. To support and care for his wife, his children, is a recent habit, in plain sight historically; but "the pleasure of the chase" is older than that. We should remember that associate habits and impulses last for ages upon ages in living forms; as in the tree climbing instincts of our earliest years, of Simian origin; and the love of water, which dates back through unmeasured time. Where for millions of years the strongest pleasure a given organism is fitted for, is obtained by a certain group of activities, those activities will continue to give pleasure long after their earlier use is gone.

This is why men enjoy "the ardor of pursuit" far more than women. It is an essentially masculine ardor. To come easily by what he wants does not satisfy him. He wants to want it. He wants to hunt it, seek it, chase it, catch it. He wants it to be "game." He is by virtue of his sex a sportsman.

There is no reason why these special instincts should not be gratified so long as it does no harm to the more important social processes; but it is distinctly desirable that we should understand their nature. The reason why we have the present overwhelming mass of "sporting events," from the ball game to the prize fight, is because our civilization is so overwhelmingly masculine. We shall criticize them more justly when we see that all this mass of indulgence is in the first place a form of sex-expression, and in the second place a survival of instincts older than the oldest savagery.

Besides our games and sports we have a large field of "amusements" also worth examining. We not only enjoy doing things, but we enjoy seeing them done by others. In these highly specialized days most of our amusement consists in paying two dollars to sit three hours and see other people do things.

This in its largest sense is wholly human. We, as social creatures, can enjoy a thousand forms of expression quite beyond the personal. The birds must each sing his own song; the crickets chirp in millionfold performance; but human being feels the deep thrill of joy in their special singers, actors, dancers, as well as in their own personal attempts. That we should find pleasure in watching one another is humanly natural, but what it is we watch, the kind of pleasure and the kind of performance, opens a wide field of choice.

We know, for instance, something of the crude excesses of aboriginal Australian dances; we know more of the gross license of old Rome; we know the breadth of the jokes in medieval times, and the childish brutality of the bull-ring and the cockpit. We know, in a word, that amusements vary; that they form a ready gauge of character and culture; that they have a strong educational influence for good or bad. What we have not hitherto observed is the predominant masculine influence on our amusements. If we recall once more the statement with regard to entertaining anecdotes, "There are thirty good stories in the world, and twenty-nine of them cannot be told to women," we get a glaring sidelight on the masculine specialization in jokes.

"Women have no sense of humor" has been frequently said, when "Women have not a masculine sense of humor" would be truer. If women had thirty "good stories" twenty-nine of which could not be told to men, it is possible that men, if they heard some of the twenty-nine, would not find them funny. The overweight of one sex has told in our amusements as everywhere else.

Because men are further developed in humanity than women are as yet, they have built and organized great places of amusement; because they carried into their humanity their unchecked masculinity, they have made these amusements to correspond. Dramatic expression, is in its true sense, not only a human distinction, but one of our noblest arts. It is allied with the highest emotions; is religious, educational, patriotic, covering the whole range of human feeling. Through it we should be able continually to express, in audible, visible forms, alive and moving, whatever phase of life we most enjoyed or wished to see. There was a time when the drama led life; lifted, taught, inspired, enlightened. Now its main function is to amuse. Under the demand for amusement, it has cheapened and coarsened, and now the thousand vaudevilles and picture shows give us the broken fragments of a degraded art of which our one main demand is that it shall make us laugh.

There are many causes at work here; and while this study seeks to show in various fields one cause, it does not claim that cause is the only one. Our economic conditions have enormous weight upon our amusements, as on all other human phenomena; but even under economic pressure the reactions of men and women are often dissimilar. Tired men and women both need amusement, the relaxation and restful change of irresponsible gayety. The great majority of women, who work longer hours than any other class, need it desperately and never get it. Amusement, entertainment, recreation, should be open to us all, enjoyed by all. This is a human need, and not a distinction of either sex. Like most human things it is not only largely monopolized by men, but masculized throughout. Many forms of amusement are for men only; more for men mostly; all are for men if they choose to go.

The entrance of women upon the stage, and their increased attendance at theatres has somewhat modified the nature of the performance; even the "refined vaudeville" now begins to show the influence of women. It would be no great advantage to have this department of human life feminized; the improvement desired is to have it less masculized; to reduce the excessive influence of one, and to bring out those broad human interests and pleasures which men and women can equally participate in and enjoy.



HIS AGONY

A Human Being goes past my house Day after day, hour after hour, Screaming in agony. It is dreadful to hear him. He beats the air with his hands, blindly, despairingly. He shrieks with pain. The passers-by do not notice him. The woman who is with him does not notice him. The policeman does not notice him. No ambulance comes ringing. No doctor rushes out of a house—no crowd collects. He screams and screams. No one notices him. I bear him coming again. It is terrible—one day after another. I look out of my window. Yes—the same Human Being—the same agony. I cannot bear it. I rush down—out into the street. I say to the woman who is with him— "Why do you not do something?" She says there is nothing to be done. She resents my interference. She is a hired person, hired by the owner of the Human Being. That is why no one does anything— We dare not interfere with the Owner. He is a very young Human Being, That is why no one notices— We are used to the sound of agony and the indifference of hired persons.



COMMENT AND REVIEW

The spread of social ethics among the medical profession is cause for great rejoicing. Long and justly celebrated as benefactors of humanity, and upholding with devotion the high ideals of their profession, they have now begun to widen their usefulness and extend their ideals under the general social awakening of our time.

Social sanitation is a rapidly extending process; as fast as our discoveries reveal the nature of disease or new remedies therefor, our governments, local and national, are beginning to safeguard the community.

In the general movement to lengthen and strengthen human life, doctors are necessarily most prominent because of their special knowledge. They have long been necessary. they have become more and more valuable, but their usefulness is still checked (as is true of all of us) by the persistence of conservatism and old ideas.

Very recently the advance of bacteriological science has thrown new light on a group of especially dangerous diseases; and still more recently the doctors themselves, with a splendid exertion of social conscience against tradition and habit, have begun to disseminate this new light to the general public.

Those special payments of the "wages of sin," spoken of in varying euphemisms, most commonly as "social diseases" are now better understood by physicians; and they are making noble efforts to spread this understanding among the people. Their efforts are gravely hindered by two obstacles; one the professional tradition known as "the medical secret," the other the universal prevalence of that primordial superstition—the sex tabu.

This last belongs to the very deepest sedimentary deposit in the human mind. The first rules the lowest savage peoples began to make were the sex tabus and food tabus. Secrecy, mystery, all manner of childish hocus pocus, were used to establish these primitive ideas; and the weight of that black past is upon its yet.

The less developed a race, the less educated a class, the more solemn and earnest they are in preserving the sex tabus; whereas with wide scientific knowledge this field of facts is seen to be like others; important and worth understanding; but not as special arcana to be concealed and avoided.

If the doctors come forward to tell us how the typhoid bacillus is disseminated, how dangerous it is, and how it is to be avoided, we are interested, grateful, and more or less willing to profit by the instruction. But when they try to tell us how the gonococcus attacks humanity, how dangerous it, and how it is to be avoided, we say, "Sh! That is something you mustn't talk about!"