■■f'---/-v »* 
 
 ^y.s' 
 
 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 
 
 
 UNITED STATES OP AMERICA. 
 
MENTAL LIFE AND CULTURE 
 
 ESSAYS AND SKETCHES, 
 
 EDUCATIONAL AND LITERARY. 
 
 BY 
 
 JULIA DUHRING, 
 
 AUTHOR OF " AMOR IN SOCIETY," " PHILOSOPHERS AND FOOLS, 
 " GENTLEFOLKS AND OTHERS." 
 
 EDITED BY HER BROTHER, 
 
 LOUIS A. DUHRING, M.D. 
 
 Philadelphia: 
 
 J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY. 
 
 1893. 
 
 ) 
 
T5 1^^^/ 
 
 Copyright, 1893, 
 
 BY 
 
 J. B. LippiNCOTT Company. 
 
 Printed by J. B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia. 
 
PEEFAOE. 
 
 To edit an incomplete literary production of a 
 deceased author must on all occasions prove a deli- 
 cate if not an embarrassing task, and especially so 
 when this function falls to the lot of an admiring 
 and affectionate brother, l^or does a long life 
 of the closest intellectual companionship between 
 the author and the editor render the labor in any 
 degree easier. 
 
 The work of gathering together the material for 
 publication was only begun by the author just 
 prior to the fatal illness. It has devolved upon me 
 to make selections from the miscellaneous manu- 
 script at hand to complete the volume. The ma- 
 terial is in the form of essays and sketches, which 
 may be classified as educational, psychological, 
 moral, critical, and literary. Some are brief, and 
 perhaps are merely suggestive, but I believe that 
 thoughts so expressed on such topics are none the 
 less valuable or interesting on that account. They 
 were written at different periods, some of them 
 many years ago, as the dates show, but, as these 
 give utterance to thoughts and opinions similar to 
 
iv PREFACE, 
 
 those more recently penned, they are of like in- 
 terest. Some of them were doubtless never in- 
 tended for publication, at least not in this form. 
 In all there is an ever-present, strong, deep- 
 flowing sentiment, pleading for the better care 
 of the mental faculties, especially for the moral 
 sense in its many and practical relations to the 
 well-being of the individual himself. Those on 
 educational problems constitute a connected series, 
 while the others might be classed under differ- 
 ent headings, but they all concern the higher 
 mental life, viewed chiefly from the subjective 
 stand-point. 
 
 The main desire of the author was ever to 
 endeavor to help men and women to a better 
 life through the medium of their moral sense. 
 It wae firmly held as a principle that they must 
 learn to know themselves, to recognize their 
 weakness as well as their strength, and to obtain 
 the mastery over themselves ; that they should be 
 taught to unfold and cultivate their individual 
 lives, thus bringing out the character with which 
 Nature had endowed them. It was further main- 
 tained that the moral nature, in all its goodness 
 and all its perversity, is the part of man best 
 worth analyzing and considering; and that the 
 development naturally following a better acquaint- 
 
PREFACE. V 
 
 ance with this sense tends to make men and 
 women not only wiser, but nobler, more con- 
 tented, and happier. Thus they must be shown 
 and made to comprehend the causes of their short- 
 comings, failures, and mistakes, before they may 
 hope to overcome them. These and kindred ideas 
 are illustrated in various themes, not only in this 
 book, but also throughout the previous volumes. 
 
 While the matter contained between the covers 
 must speak for itself, it may not be out of place 
 to volunteer the information that the thoughts 
 expressed emanate from an earnest, womanly, 
 and loving soul ; from a mature and philosophic 
 mind; from one thoroughly honest in her con- 
 victions, whose whole thought was applied to the 
 study of those problems which bear on the moral 
 qualities residing in human beings. In corrobo- 
 ration of this statement, the lessons and truths 
 permeating the essays constituting " Philosophers 
 and Fools" and " Gentlefolks and Others," both 
 published some years ago, may be incidentally 
 referred to. 
 
 A natural born student of the mind and 
 of people rather than of objective surround- 
 ings; educated liberally at home and abroad; a 
 comprehensive reader; proficient in many Ian- 
 
vi PREFACE. 
 
 guages ; a traveller, familiar with the people and 
 the best thought of all civilized countries, — the 
 author was eminently qualified to discuss those 
 questions to which she was attracted. The life 
 w^as devoted to studying, analyzing, and portraying 
 the many and varied subtle and complex work- 
 ings of the mind, particularly as they possessed 
 a direct and practical bearing, for good or for bad, 
 upon the character. The standard of conscience 
 was elevated, and her life was marked in the 
 highest degree by rectitude and purity in thought 
 and action. These attributes gave her at all times 
 the courage and strength to speak fearlessly, and 
 to contend for the principles she adhered to as 
 being of paramount importance for the welfare 
 of every one. 
 
 L. A. D. 
 
OONTEI^TS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 On Teaching 5 
 
 The Great Importance of the Primary School . . 9 
 
 Moral Influence in the School-Room a Potent Factor 15 
 
 Number and Kind of Studies 20 
 
 How SHALL Children be Instructed? 23 
 
 Classification of Pupils according to Intellect . 28 
 
 Relations of Teacher and Pupil 34 
 
 Public Examinations an Injury 41 
 
 A Child's Sensibilities 47 
 
 On Training Children 55 
 
 Be True to your Individuality 66 
 
 Not like Other People 71 
 
 On Regulating One's Life 75 
 
 Making Plans 79 
 
 Beginning but never Finishing 81" 
 
 On Believing in Luck 84 
 
 The Day-Dreamer 89 
 
 False Positions 94 
 
 Help for the Amateur Author 102 
 
 An Amateur Author's Impedimenta 106 
 
 A Literary Woman's Worst Misfortune 116 
 
 Where, When, and How to Write 119 
 
 The Best Writing 128 
 
 Originality in Reading 132 
 
 Pleasure in Books 138 
 
4 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 People of the Brain 145 
 
 Dull People's Wit 150 
 
 Mental Endowments 153 
 
 Aristocrats of Intellect 156 
 
 Genius and its Lack 159 
 
 Actors and Acting 165 
 
 The Critics Criticised 169 
 
 Defence of the Press 178 
 
 Matthew Arnold not a Poet 183 
 
 Walt Whitman's So-Called Poetry 190 
 
 Poetry is not Dead 196 
 
 Egypt and the Desert 199 
 
 Verboekhoven and his Studio 215 
 
 Favorite Flowers 221 
 
 Women Wage-Earners 226 
 
 Drunkenness a Crime 232 
 
 Happiness or Unhappiness 236 
 
 Some . Lessons of Life 239 
 
 The Word Soul 247 
 
 Some Thoughts on Religion 249 
 
 "Simplify thy Life" 253 
 
ON TEACHING. 
 
 "The Application of the Principles of Psychol- 
 ogy to the Work of Teaching" is the title given to 
 a proposed prize essay. Is there not rather too 
 much title here? The one word "teaching" ex- 
 presses the subject clearly enough. And why 
 psychology, when mind, soul, or spirit is quite as 
 good and so much more familiar? To you, a 
 student of the mind, nomenclature is of slight 
 importance. A score of words from as many dif- 
 ferent languages tell you one and the same fact. 
 You listen, make your own deductions, classify at 
 your convenience. But to the popular ear — the 
 one most important to reach — the case is different. 
 The names of sciences ought to be put into the 
 simplest possible form. 
 
 Why, for example, should there be this senseless 
 distinction made between mind and soul, — the latter 
 relegated to Sunday, the former to week-days? 
 Why this, when the two words mean precisely the 
 same thing ? Let us concede that simplicity in Ian- 
 
6 ON TEACHING. 
 
 guage, as in other matters, is the essence of good 
 sense. 
 
 Principles of psychology, while looking grander, 
 really means no more than laws of mind, or laws of 
 soul. The psychologist is simply one whose mind 
 has the faculty of reading human character. Man 
 to him is what fossils are to the paleontologist, what 
 the firmament is to the astronomer, what art is to 
 the artist. 
 
 Mind being in one sense man himself, the psy- 
 chologist esteems that fact the most momentous. 
 Principles of psychology, then, stands for the same 
 idea as laws of human nature. You will agree 
 with me that to read those laws is easy enough, 
 and that the hard thing to do is to apply such 
 reading to the coarse work of every-day life. 
 
 Teaching shares in this general limitation. You, 
 the teacher, may know exactly what a pupil needs — 
 what scores of pupils need — yet be wholly unable, 
 through circumstances, to put that knowing into 
 practice. A school, like any other organization, 
 requires many kinds of people for its support. In 
 the many are various grades of ideas, all of them, 
 naturally, regarded by their owners as sacred rights. 
 To simplify this recognized difficulty, the organizers 
 of schools ouffht to be chosen from anions^ the best 
 students of human nature in the community. 
 
ON TEACHING. 7 
 
 Teaching, as a principle, is limitless. It pre- 
 cedes birth, inasmuch as qualities of parents or 
 ancestors are transmitted to children. It never 
 ends with death, inasmuch as the influence of the 
 teacher extends far beyond visible life. 
 
 In childhood life is chiefly instinctive. There is 
 no reasoning, no conviction, no clashing of mind 
 and heart. Vagueness is our atmosphere. We 
 speak or do not speak, feel or do not feel, through 
 causes which, albeit very real, are to ourselves 
 unknown. Later, in recalling what might have 
 been done to help our childish groping, we are 
 thrilled with alternate pain and joy, — pain for 
 the good we missed, joy for the help we possibly 
 may give the childhood of other mortals. 
 
 Children have a marked instinctive personality. 
 To act upon that is to help them in the most 
 efficient way. The earliest, therefore most impor- 
 tant, teaching of children is, unfortunately, not in 
 the hands of the few who think, but of the many 
 who are thoughtless. Parents, to begin with, ser- 
 vants, secondly, have the sole care of children 
 during the most teachable years. What these two 
 factors do badly — far worse than omitting en- 
 tirely — teachers discover to their cost. 
 
 But teaching, like all other matters, is subject to 
 general society laws. The kind you and I and our 
 
8 ON TEACHING. 
 
 neighbors get depends upon the accident of birth, 
 of circumstances. The few wealthy people may 
 choose for their children any grade of school or 
 any kind of private teacher. The majority of 
 people, however, must accept whatever school the 
 community provides. 
 
THE GEEAT IMPOETANCE OF THE 
 PEIMAEY SCHOOL. 
 
 Public schools are of chief importance as to — 
 
 1. Their organization. 
 
 2. Classification of pupils according to intellect. 
 
 3. Relations of teacher and pupil. 
 
 4. Mode of examinations. 
 
 E'obody, strictly speaking, can be thoroughly 
 educated. Teaching, at best, is but an amelioration 
 of ignorance. Eecognizing this truth, schools 
 should be so organized as to give the utmost pos- 
 sible help to children. 
 
 First of all, let there be different education for 
 boys and girls. Studies, teachers, methods of re- 
 ward, of punishment— let all be strictly applicable 
 to sex. Boys are to be strengthened, hardened, 
 trained to be future world-combatants. The public 
 in a thousand various phases is to be their arena, 
 and careful preparation is imperative for even an 
 average vantage-ground there. For girls quite 
 another sort of life is in store ; wifehood, mother- 
 
10 IMPORTANCE OF THE PRIMARY SCHOOL. 
 
 hood, liome, — these are the words that express 
 woman's happiest destiny. 
 
 Whoever doubts this may go to the Hfe-records 
 of women who have carefully sounded the depths 
 of feminine human nature, women highly organ- 
 ized, whose clear thinking is balanced by ardent 
 feeling. The testimony, whether written or lived, 
 of such women gives the world its best guidance in 
 this question. 
 
 " L'ame n'a point de sexe, mais le corps en a un ; 
 et I'une ne doit pas empieter sur les droits de 
 Tautre." * 
 
 The public school has in it all the elements of 
 society at large. Boys show their manly preroga- 
 tives of strength, boldness, ambition, combative- 
 ness ; girls show their womanly ones of weakness, 
 timidity, romantic tendencies, love of peace. For 
 the great middle class this school gives the only 
 teaching it ever gets : hence the importance that 
 it shall combine the chief elements of training for 
 future men and women. 
 
 Schools here are more difficult to manage than 
 in other countries because of our mixed nationality. 
 This produces singularly complex character. Edu- 
 
 * " The soul has no sex, but the body has ; the one should not 
 encroach upon the rights of the other." — Mirabeau. 
 
IMPORTANCE OF THE PRIMARY SCHOOL. H 
 
 cation cannot eradicate inherited tendencies. In 
 one child we see combined the cool head of North 
 Germany and the warm sensibilities of Southern 
 France or Italy, — an inheritance of temperament 
 which means at once wealth and the cares that 
 wealth inevitably brings. In another we see pre- 
 dominant the phlegm of the Hollander, in another 
 the careless impulsiveness of the Irish, in still 
 others the self-complacency of the English, the 
 shrewdness of the Scotch, the sturdy thrift of the 
 Swiss. 
 
 American children show all the best and all the 
 worst results of mixed nationality. If they are 
 brighter than European children, they are, too, less 
 docile, less respectful, less teachable. There is too 
 much liberty in the atmosphere. Children, like 
 people, are the better for judicious restraint. " It 
 is happy for us," says De Mandeville, ^' to have fear 
 for a keeper as long as our reason is not strong 
 enough to govern our appetites." Children, very 
 naturally, have appetites chiefly. American chil- 
 dren have a native-born contempt for a keeper. 
 Left for the most part to wander at will, they 
 often browse upon unwholesome knowledge. The 
 clever ones develop usually into that shocking 
 species called "precocious," in whom knowing 
 much is synonymous with knowing evil. 
 
12 IMPORTANCE OF THE PRIMARY SCHOOL. 
 
 It is this want of a keeper in the home that 
 causes the chief difficulty in the school. N'ot, of 
 course, that open rebellion can take place; but 
 mental resistance to teaching is too common to be 
 even noticed. The child's mind must have respect 
 for a teacher before it can believe in and accept his 
 teaching. This respect does not come with the act 
 of going to school. It is a quality of the mind, one 
 akin to honesty and truthfulness, a moral part of 
 the child that must be guarded in the very earliest 
 years of home-life. 
 
 With the majority this respect is lacking. To 
 supply this lack the organizers of schools should 
 give the deepest attention to the primary classes. 
 It is these that give the first impetus both to mind 
 and to morals. There is no social duty higher than 
 this. School is greater in power than the church 
 by right of frequency, by the law of repetition. 
 Five days' teaching in proportion to one day's 
 gives naturally greater results. 
 
 The primary school is entitled to the best-trained, 
 the most experienced teachers, — men and women 
 capable of reading human character. With this, 
 gift there could be no conflict between teacher and 
 pupil, no forcing of knowledge down unwilling 
 throats. 
 
 The noblest result of your teaching is a positive 
 
IMPORTANCE OF THE PRIMARY SCHOOL. 13 
 
 interest in learning. This suggests the usual rou- 
 tine of non-psychological schools. Children are 
 made to study a certain book before their curiosity 
 in the subject is awakened. Under this regime 
 even the most conscientious among them get bat 
 little for their pains. Knowing the lesson means 
 a valiant struggle with words, a glib repeating of 
 them to the teacher, while of actual understanding 
 there is naught. To give children the principles 
 of spelling or of reading is to give the substance 
 that enables the mind to grow. 
 
 With the primary school lies the chief responsi- 
 bility. To give unwise training here is to commit 
 the child to years of school drudgery with only 
 bad results. Finally, when his education is said 
 to be finished, in what condition is his mind? 
 Twisted, distorted, injured, it is for all thinking 
 purposes wholly useless. Instead of wishing to 
 advance, it joyfully breaks the long-felt, irksome 
 bonds and plunges into physical delights that are 
 always at hand to tempt the escaped prisoner. 
 The primary school has the heaviest responsi- 
 bility. Whatever is neglected there becomes so 
 much the harder to teach in succeeding depart- 
 ments. Psychology gives a long list of good 
 things that the primary school might but does not 
 teach. 
 
14 IMPORTANCE OF THE PRIMARY SCHOOL. 
 
 1. The art of attention, — listening with earnest- 
 ness, with respect, with concentration of thought. 
 
 2. The art of observation, — of speech, of persons, 
 of facts, of those things printed in school-books. 
 
 3. The art of accuracy, — training children to 
 speak distinctly, concisely, neatly, and to recite in 
 the same manner. 
 
MOEAL INFLUENCE IN THE SCHOOL-EOOM 
 A POTENT FACTOR 
 
 Children show the same mixture of good and 
 had as is found in the same number of adults. 
 There is, however, this wide difference : in one 
 case eradication of bad is not to be expected ; in 
 the other, it is largely within the power of schools. 
 Taking the worst cases, — the children in whom 
 nature has put but a modicum of brain and a 
 barely perceptible moral sense, — it is found that 
 training produces a marked improvement. Hap- 
 pily, these worst cases are rarely found in public 
 schools. In general a hundred children taken from 
 the ranks are found to be fairly enough endowed 
 to be susceptible to good teaching. 
 
 As to what shall be called good, psychology 
 answers without hesitation. First in importance 
 should be moral philosophy. Children can just 
 as readily be impressed with the morale of school 
 as soldiers are with the morale of the army. 
 
 1st. A sense of the privileges of going to school. 
 
 2d. Respect for teachers. 
 
 3d. Personal responsibility. 
 
 15 
 
16 MORAL INFLUENCE IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 
 
 4th. Punishment for self-indulgence, whatever its 
 form. 
 
 Children are embryo citizens. What they will 
 most need in society the school ought to aim at 
 giving them. But, it may be argued, children are 
 like their elders ; even when convinced of what is 
 wholesome, they often perversely choose the other 
 kind. 
 
 Very true. But for these cases society provides 
 restraint and punishment. The school must do the 
 same. Its moral tone cannot be too high. And of 
 moral lessons the most efficacious is to make the 
 child pay the cost of his sloth, of his neglect, of 
 his passion. This paying is the basis of that all- 
 potent factor, self-control. The having or not 
 having this factor explains the two extremes in 
 society called success and failure. 
 
 To devise punishments for children calls for the 
 most thorough knowledge of human nature. That 
 they should act mainly upon the moral suscepti- 
 bility is granted. Where this moral force is defi- 
 cient, then, of course, other methods must be ap- 
 plied. The senses are to be appealed to, acted 
 upon. Privations of appetite, of sports, of inter- 
 course with companions, of anything that is a 
 special pleasure to the individual child, should be 
 the punishment. 
 
MORAL INFLUENCE IN THE SCHOOL- ROOM. 17 
 
 Punishment, whatever its kind, can be impressed 
 upon the mind as a means of gaining self-control. 
 A pupil of good mind, for instance, may be habitu- 
 ally careless in preparation. To find out the reason 
 and to insist upon its abolishment is effectually to 
 help an intellect that otherwise might come to do 
 more harm than good to the world. Taking chil- 
 dren as they are, it is evident that there is an 
 abundance of material that has grown mischievous 
 throuo;h absolute nesilect or bad culture. 
 
 Moral philosophy can be taught to young chil- 
 dren in two ways. The first, a practical one, is 
 through the prudent restraint that makes infrac- 
 tions of law, if not impossible, at least difficult. 
 The second is through punishment. Neglect, care- 
 lessness, disobedience, disrespect in speech or 
 manner, infringement of rules, each brings its just 
 consequences. To help the child to know himself 
 is the best knowledge school can give. To reach 
 the moral sense through the mind requires infinite 
 tact. There should be nothing forced, nothing 
 made puzzling, embarrassing, painful. 
 
 Ill-timed reproof makes a deep wound without 
 the least benefit to character. A well-endowed 
 child is something exquisitely tender, sensitive to 
 countless subtle influences from voice, manner, 
 speech. Yet he is no more liable to take shadow 
 
18 MORAL INFLUENCE IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM, 
 
 for substance tlian is an adult. He judges his 
 elders by instinct, through the subtlety called 
 presence. He is quick to discern irritation, dis- 
 couragement, or disgust in his superior. He feels 
 dimly what later as man he sees clearly, — viz., that 
 knowledo^e is fathomless. One science leads to 
 another, one tract of thought to other and still 
 broader tracts, until at last comes the conviction 
 that ignorance of most things is inevitable. 
 
 Character, on the contrary, has depths, can be 
 sounded. It is something real, tangible, a fact that 
 harmonizes with the lowest no less than with the 
 highest conditions of life. If the young child have 
 had practical moral training, he will later have no 
 difficulty in studying moral philosophy in a book. 
 Every one knows how easy it is to learn a thing 
 already understood as a principle. 
 
 School is the great antidote to the disastrous 
 influences of an ignorant home. Not that there 
 is lack of affection in parents, for, as Octave Feuillet 
 pithily writes, " II n'est pas tres difficile, en effet, 
 d'aimer ses enfants; il suffit de n'etre pas un 
 monstre."* It is not natural affections that are 
 wanting, it is mental light. Training in its sim- 
 
 * *' It is not a hard thing to love your own children ; not to do 
 so you would be a monster." 
 
MORAL INFLUENCE IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM. 19 
 
 plest, therefore its best, sense means developing 
 such powers as nature has given. That the mind 
 shall do good service, the moral sense must first 
 be acted upon. This law applies to the child the 
 same as to the adult. 
 
NUMBEE AND KIND OF STUDIES. 
 
 E'ext to moral influence the most weighty ques- 
 tion to decide is the numher and kind of studies. 
 Under actual conditions too much is attempted. 
 Sydney Smith used to accuse himself of having 
 consumed "cart-loads" of superfluous food; to- 
 day children may be pitied for having cart-loads 
 of knowledge emptied upon their heads. The 
 student of mature years must constantly guard 
 himself against mental excesses. Attracted by all 
 kinds of knowledge, one branch leading to another 
 and another, his danger is in yielding to these se- 
 ductive forms. Many a mind is absolutely lost to 
 the world through sheer dissipation of its native 
 forces. Too much of anything is the abuse that 
 destroys. In learning the law is as infallible as 
 in physics. 
 
 A mind is crowded with facts, with theories. 
 Endless vagaries springing out of such knowledge 
 produce hopeless confusion. Such a mind is a 
 mental rubbish-room. Everything is there, but 
 nothing at hand when wanted. 
 
 In schools the crying difficulty is — too much. 
 20 
 
NUMBER AND KIND OF STUDIES. 21 
 
 The knowledge given is far beyond digestion. The 
 poor little victims are mercilessly crammed. As 
 to what kind of studies, and how many, shall be 
 given to children, psychology speaks very plainly. 
 The studies are to be adapted to the mind, not the 
 mind to the studies. 
 
 What Heine wittily says of Latin and Greek is 
 suggestive as to other studies : " Was aber das 
 Lateinische betrifft so haben Sie gar keine Idee 
 davon, Madame, wie das verwickelt ist. Den 
 Romern wiirde gewiss nicht Zeit genug iibrig ge- 
 blieben sein die Welt zu erobern, wenn sie das 
 Latein erst hatten lernen sollen. Yom Griechi- 
 schen will ich gar nicht sprechen ; ich argere mich 
 sonst zu viel. Die Monche im Mittelalter hatten 
 sonst ganz Unrecht nicht, wenn sie behaupteten 
 dass das Griechische eine Erfindung des Teufels 
 sei. Gott kennt die Leiden die ich dabei ausge- 
 standen." 
 
 ^ " As to Latin, madam, you have no idea what a complicated 
 thing it is. Had the Romans themselves been obliged to learn 
 it, I am certain they would have had no time left for conquering 
 the world. As for Greek, I will not so much as speak of it ; it 
 would make me too angry. The monks of the Middle Ages were 
 not so far wrong when they asserted that Greek was a discovery 
 of the devil himself. God only knows what tribulations it has 
 caused me." — Reisehilder, vol. i. 
 
22 NUMBER AND KIND OF STUDIES. 
 
 Southey gives similar testimony. In a letter to 
 John Rickman in 1807 he wrote, " l^othing can 
 be so little calculated to advance oar stock of 
 knowledge as our inveterate mode of education, 
 whereby we all spend so many years in learning so 
 little. I was from the age of six to that of twenty 
 learning Greek and Latin, or, to speak more truly, 
 nothing else. The little Greek I had sleepeth, if it 
 be not dead, and can hardly wake without a miracle, 
 and my Latin, though abundant enough for all use- 
 ful purposes, would be held in great contempt by 
 those people who regard the classics as the scrip- 
 tures of taste." 
 
 The mind absorbs knowledge in proportion to 
 appetite. That children are not hungry for school- 
 books is not their fault. That they have a keen 
 relish of story-books and warm admiration for the 
 story-teller proves very clearly the modes in which 
 instruction might often be given. 
 
 Oral teaching is the most effectual means of 
 reaching young minds. Yet, as every one knows, 
 Latin, Greek, and other languages are quickly ac- 
 quired by the mind that thirsts for them. To learn 
 languages there must be an ear for them, just as 
 there must be for music. Without that ear the 
 study of languages is drudgery, unproductive of 
 the slightest good result. 
 
HOW SHALL CHILDEEN BE INSTEUCTED? 
 
 After the number and kind of studies comes the 
 problem, How shall these be taught? Here are 
 school-books, here are teachers, here are pupils: 
 how shall they be made to assimilate? 1st. To 
 make oral teaching the chief method in primary 
 classes is to solve the worst part of the difficulty. 
 2d. Recitations should give way to the pupil's ex- 
 planation in his own language of the pages studied. 
 A good speaker at once arrests the attention, 
 awakens interest, persuades the mind to follow the 
 subject. The chapter of history that in the book 
 seemed but a tedious repetition of names and dates, 
 a dreary narration of wars, conquests, and wars 
 over again, becomes under oral teaching as fasci- 
 nating as a story. People of far-off foreign lands 
 are thus portrayed so vividly that children learn to 
 think and talk about them as realities. 
 
 K a child can talk he can very soon be taught 
 to write. The much-dreaded "composition" can 
 be made as easy for some children as drawing or 
 music is for others. Children are like grown 
 
 23 
 
24 ^OW SHALL CHILDREN BE INSTRUCTED? 
 
 people. They like to do the things they can do 
 well. Natural bent, of course, decides what can 
 be done w^ith ease. The aim of schools should be 
 to help most effectually those to whom nature has 
 been most niggardly. 
 
 A child of good mind has many thoughts that 
 seek expression. Yet, unless taught how to find 
 this in simple natural writing, the good mind goes 
 to waste. It is a room full of things of varied use 
 and beauty, of which the key is missing. Compo- 
 sition is the key of the mind. Children are not 
 lacking in ideas. Every day brings to them certain 
 observations or experiences which should give the 
 motive of their composition. If the subject is to 
 be a mental one, let it be spelling, reading, geog- 
 raphy, — anything, in short, they are familiar with. 
 If the subject is to be a social one, let it be what 
 they see at home, in church, in school, or on the 
 street. To describe a house and its inmates may 
 seem trivial enough. But good and bad style can 
 just as readily be made apparent thus as in any of 
 the preposterous subjects so often given to children 
 to write about. 
 
 As proof of the unnatural, illogical mode ot 
 teaching composition, we need only look at the 
 letter-writing capacity of average school-children. 
 With ability to talk fluently, even sensibly enough, 
 
HOW SHALL CHILDREN BE INSTRUCTED? 25 
 
 they yet cannot put a tithe of that talk into civil- 
 ized writing. This results by no means from natu- 
 ral stupidity, but altogether from defective training. 
 The subject given is usually one on which the chil- 
 dren have no knowledge, and hence no thoughts. 
 To be obliged to write on an unknown topic results 
 in either absolute stupidity or servile copying, — 
 juvenile plagiarism. But composition orally taught 
 would be at once easy and agreeable. What is true 
 of composition is true of every other study. Words 
 are allowed to stand for ideas, memorizing for 
 reflection, recitation for explanation. Getting 
 through the book is erroneously assumed to be 
 knowing its contents. 
 
 Oral teaching is worth more than a whole library 
 of school-books. Put into practice with tact, with 
 eloquence, it is the best of all training influences. 
 The human voice, moved by brain and heart com- 
 bined, is irresistible. It is this persuading or con- 
 vincing of the child's mind that brings about a love 
 of study for its own sake. 
 
 To pull down is easier than to build up, — such 
 is the common reproach thrown at the idealist; 
 and in it are grains of truth. There are, how- 
 ever, two kinds of idealists,— the visionary and 
 the practical. The psychologist is of the latter 
 
 sort. As a reader of human nature he sees the 
 
 3 
 
20 -ffOTF SHALL CHILDREN BE INSTRUCTED? 
 
 defective side of even his own theories, his own 
 deepest convictions. Applying this to schools, 
 then, he pulls down nothing without pledging 
 something better in its place. All his theories can 
 be translated into practice. For instance, in the 
 present system of teaching he sees too many books, 
 too many recitations, too much frothy repetition of 
 words instead of solid understanding of subjects. 
 He sees that children acquire a vast amount of 
 smattering, but no love of learning for its own sake. 
 Graduating, taking their respective places in so- 
 ciety, they become what schools have made them, — 
 people at once superficial, pretentious, frivolous, 
 people clothed in the worst kind of ignorance, that 
 which cannot see itself. 
 
 The practical remedy for this ignorance is better 
 teaching. Beginning in the primary department, 
 teachers should be required to explain orally the 
 lesson of the hour, while pupils should be required 
 to give in their own words the facts of the lesson 
 studied. This plan, if consistently pursued, would 
 give the student his first need, — ability to put into 
 clear language the fact learned, or the thought 
 suggested by that fact. 
 
 Recitations, as at present conducted, ought to be 
 abolished. Children would soon learn the agree- 
 able truth that it is not knowledge that is dis- 
 
HOW SHALL CHILDREN BE INSTRUCTED? 27 
 
 tasteful, but the tedious repetition of vague words 
 on a topic they do not in the least understand. 
 Docile children are for the most part martyrs to 
 a cruel system of teaching. The other kind, whose 
 animal spirits are proof against any sort of coercion, 
 are commonly in a state of mental revolt. School 
 is to them a state of hateful bondage, to which 
 they submit only so far as self-interest makes it 
 expedient. 
 
CLASSIFICATIOK OF PUPILS ACCOHDING 
 TO INTELLECT. 
 
 How many children out of any one hundred have 
 good minds and a healthy moral nature ? So some- 
 body asks, with a covert sneer at higher education. 
 I do not know how many, nor do I care to know, 
 nor is it of the least importance to anybody save a 
 statistician, who finds his happiness in answers to 
 how many, how much. No, looking at teaching, it 
 is not of the least importance to know how many 
 bright children, how many dull ones, there are. 
 
 Responsibilities — for the conscientious — are many 
 and heavy on this bewildering planet of ours, but, 
 happily, they have a limit. With schools and 
 teachers there rests not the slightest responsibility 
 as to the mental endowments of children. The sole 
 problem is to educate, to train, and to develop such 
 faculties as nature may have given. Children, what- 
 ever their years, however big or little their mental 
 inheritance, are to be treated intelligently, honestly. 
 Above all, they are entitled to the strictest courtesy, 
 this being not in the least incompatible with all 
 
 28 
 
CLASSIFICATION OF PUPILS. 29 
 
 needful urging, persuasion, restraint. To be able to 
 give this treatment, classification according to in- 
 tellect is an absolute necessity. Many children are 
 very dull at their books. ^N'obody disputes it, nor, 
 indeed, would it be worth disputing. To find fault 
 with children for being dull would be as cruel as to 
 criticise their lack of personal beauty or their pedi- 
 gree. Whether pupils be bright or dull is of not 
 the slightest importance so long as they are not put 
 into the same class. My personal sympathies are 
 with the dull ones. The others are well able to take 
 care of themselves. 
 
 Clever children are clever largely through tem- 
 perament. It is not so much the result of greater 
 brain-power as of a facility in using what they have. 
 They are the practical little people in the school- 
 world. Given so many pages of so many books, 
 they learn quickly and recite with the coolness that 
 comes of self-confidence, — for, rest assured, bright 
 children have always plenty of this. They are 
 endowed with what a phrenologist would call self- 
 esteem, full, and consequently are not disconcerted 
 through fear of ridicule or criticism, which in 
 others is often the sole cause of failure. Bright- 
 ness of mind does not necessarily include depth. 
 In school it puts the child at the head of his 
 class, gives him an air of superiority, makes him 
 
30 CLASSIFICATION OF PUPILS. 
 
 quite an important personage. It is the same 
 quality that in society makes the brilliant person, 
 one who without mucli depth yet always appears to 
 advantage. Ready-witted, fluent of tongue, quick 
 to see opportunities, prompt to use them, such 
 persons reap all the benefits of self-assertion. 
 
 Dull children are of two kinds : first, those who 
 are self-distrustful, therefore timid, reserved, appear- 
 ing to disadvantage before others; second, those 
 who are dull because of inferior minds. In classify- 
 ing, these two kinds ought to be carefully separated. 
 The first are dull owing to temperament. They 
 are slow in committing to memory because more 
 interested in the ideas than in the words. Being 
 interested, their thoughts wander. They are un- 
 practical in study hour just as in other hours. In 
 recitations there is the same difficulty. Knowing 
 their own slowness, they are easily discomposed, 
 thrown off their balance. The lesson faithfully pre- 
 pared is badly recited, may appear not to have been 
 studied at all. A harsh tone in the teacher's voice, 
 glances from inquisitive eyes, smiles from sarcastic 
 lips, may frighten away from the memory every 
 vestige of the printed page. 
 
 To be slow at school by no means implies lack 
 in brain, but to appear so is as unfortunate in school 
 as in society. To be seemingly slow, even though 
 
CLASSIFICATION OF PUPILS. 31 
 
 possessed of quick sensibilities, often brin^i^s forth 
 ridicule or contempt from companions or teacher. 
 This causes a perverted state of the mind, ending 
 in dislike of study, shrinking from teachers, associ- 
 ations of mental worry and shame with school-life. 
 By putting into one class minds of similar calibre, 
 much of this danger is averted. The scholar, in- 
 stead of being hampered by a sense of inferiority, 
 is emboldened to put forth his strength, is made 
 happy by even partial success. The teacher, instead 
 of being harassed by the mixture of quick and 
 slow, can devote himself to the needs of the hour. 
 Knowing the degree of ability in the class, he can 
 confine his teaching strictly to that limit. Dul- 
 ness in one branch does not mean inferiority as 
 a whole; but it does mean emphatically that the 
 mind should have special help in that one branch, 
 help given with unflagging patience, with infi- 
 nite tact. Classifying minds is the sole method of 
 bringing about something special, selected, personal. 
 " Then only," says Bacon, " will men begin to know 
 their strength, when, instead of great numbers 
 doing all the same things, one shall take charge 
 of one thing and another of another." 
 
 In classes of mixed minds, education is ground 
 down into a system, great labor being followed not 
 only by proportionate exhaustion, but by very small 
 
32 CLASSIFICATION OF PUPILS. 
 
 intellectual results. If conviction on this point be 
 needed, we have but to look at masses of so-called 
 educated people all about us. How many of these 
 show anything harmonious, natural ? How many 
 have a true understanding of their own mental 
 capacities ? The system of classes usually in vogue 
 is more hurtful than helpful. It is a complicated 
 scheme, productive of weariness, exhaustion, or 
 distaste for learning. Teacher and scholar tend 
 to become antagonistic ; consequently, where there 
 ought to be assimilation there is conflict, where 
 there should be confidence there is distrust, in 
 place of energy and pleasure there is either mental 
 chafing or prostration. 
 
 Let the adult student recall his condition of mind 
 when forced to devote himself for days or months 
 to some distasteful mental occupation. Did he 
 under such conditions think learning a boon ? 
 Would it have helped the matter to be assured by 
 somebody holding over him a rod of reproof that 
 this irksome task would some day be of benefit? 
 That which would chafe and try to its utmost 
 limits the forbearance of an adult scholar, we inflict 
 upon a child, and then wonder at its perverseness. 
 Marvellous obtuseness ! So directly opposed is this 
 to nature's mode of action that we ought to be 
 surprised at the comparatively small number of 
 
CLASSIFICATION OF PUPILS. 33 
 
 idle, mischievous, rebellions school-cliildren in the 
 ranks. 
 
 If sick in body, children are exempted from 
 study. But whether the mind be sick or disturbed 
 few teachers take the trouble to inquire. If the 
 inquiry be made, the ailment is usually treated as 
 arising from sheer perversity. Teaching to be really 
 helpful ought to consider the entire child-nature, 
 not merely one part of it. In noticing the thrift 
 and energy shown to keep children well clad, well 
 drilled in all the little arts that conduce to good 
 outward appearance, I am not in the least surprised 
 that mental affairs come to occupy a secondary 
 place in their estimate of the world. 
 
 The closer the study of parents and guardians, 
 the better can children be understood. The desire 
 to know exists in every child's nature. The benef- 
 icent idea of teaching is to gratify that mental 
 desire. In those cases where all reasonable and 
 moral ways have been tried and found useless, it 
 were surely better to abandon than to persecute. 
 ^tsTature probably has some other design for children 
 who persistently refuse to accept book-learning. 
 
EELATIOII^S OF TEACHER AND PUPIL. 
 
 To say of another person, He understands me, is 
 to express the best of life's many good things, — 
 friendship. Children know this instinctively long 
 before they can put it into words. Even in cold re- 
 served natures, the kind that develop into eccen- 
 tricity, there is always a strong desire to be under- 
 stood. In school this desire is the foundation of 
 genuine progress. If the teacher can but bring 
 about this understanding between himself and his 
 pupils his success is assured. Unfortunately, teach- 
 ing shares the common fate of professions in having 
 many clumsy workers, men and women not called 
 but driven into the ranks. To procure teachers 
 well qualified, every State ought to have a psycho- 
 logical college. Here the chief study would be 
 human nature. 
 
 Children of quick sensibilities are usually timid, 
 self-conscious. School to them is but too often 
 synonymous with severity, with discouragement, 
 with humiliation. Conscientious preparation is apt 
 — possibly from sheer fright — to end in failure, 
 
 84 
 
RELATIONS OF TEACHER AND PUPIL. 35 
 
 which brings down harsh reproaches, sarcastic re- 
 buke. Such children need the moral help that 
 will enable them to overcome fear of others, the 
 ridicule of fellow-pupils, the covert criticism of 
 certain teachers. Self-respect can be taught by 
 pointing out means of strength. Timid children, 
 for instance, are afraid of themselves. They shrink 
 instinctively from saying openly what they think, 
 from doing what the heart prompts. Allowed to 
 grow unchecked, this becomes a morbid self-con- 
 sciousness that destroys personal force. 
 
 Fear of giving oftence, fear of appearing to dis- 
 advantage, fear of yielding to noble impulses, fear 
 multiform and incessant, haunts the mind. Self- 
 surveillance of this sort, while arising from perfectly 
 natural sources, is irksome, harassing, crippling. 
 
 To show such a child that in its seeming weakness 
 lies its actual strength, is to teach the best of mental 
 principles. Timidity comes mainly from imagina- 
 tion, but the same faculty that in childhood causes 
 fear, in maturity yields the power to penetrate, 
 analyze, discover. Psychology holds that in re- 
 garding the teacher's fitness character should bal- 
 ance with mental attainments. Every one knows 
 the sensation of receiving information from dis- 
 agreeable people. Slovenly speech, superciHous 
 looks, discourteous manner, irascible temper, are 
 
36 RELATIONS OF TEACHER AND PUPIL. 
 
 elements often so mingled with the information as 
 to make it worthless. 
 
 ]!^ow, school-children are daily receiving infor- 
 mation upon various subjects. "Whether this is to 
 be a tedious repetition of technical language or an 
 interesting account of things depends upon the in- 
 formant's manner. Psychology says, whatever else 
 is lacking in the teacher, see to it that he is tactful, 
 sympathetic. Affection, interest, zeal, attainments, 
 — these are good only when governed by courtesy. 
 This demands that neither word nor look shall ex- 
 press impatience with a child's blunders, surprise 
 at his ignorance, contempt for his failures. The 
 teacher's entire personality should say simply, I 
 wish to help you. The child's feelings are worth 
 more than anything he can be taught. Here it 
 is that the most conscientious teacher is apt to fail. 
 His earnestness often clashes with his pupil's ca- 
 pacity. Ambition in the instructor is good only 
 when controlled by courtesy. Harsh criticism often 
 kills the struggling thought; covert ridicule may 
 engender positive hatred. 
 
 To be competent for his post a teacher should be 
 well grounded in psychology. He must have in 
 himself what he aims at teaching. Unless personal 
 character supports his assertions, in vain will be his 
 talk of the pleasures of intellect, of the beauty of 
 
RELATIONS OF TEACHER AND PUPIL. 37 
 
 goodness. He wlio is sluggish, shallow, self-indul- 
 gent, can never awaken activity or enthusiasm in 
 another. The diiFerence of rank, too, should be 
 held steadily in view, consistently acted on. Com- 
 radeship between superior and inferior at once 
 destroys authority. This fact needs especial en- 
 forcement in American schools. A wise teacher 
 will never descend to comradeship with his pupils. 
 This principle might cost him popularity or affec- 
 tion, but would preserve the more important de- 
 sideratum, — authority. 
 
 Children in school, as at home, are often sub- 
 jected to martyrdom. Only highly-organized peo- 
 ple bear in mind the susceptibilities of the young. 
 To disregard these — as shallow, thoughtless people 
 are all the time doing — is to bring about the painful 
 conflicts which disgrace the family circle. Children 
 have precisely the same instinctive attractions, the 
 same antipathies, the same variations of mood, as 
 their elders. The teacher in school has the advan- 
 tage over the parent at home in the fact of less 
 familiarity. Cases of insubordination, if impar- 
 tially analyzed, would nine times out of ten result 
 in conviction of error on the part of the teacher. 
 
 Through ignorant handling a child's moral nature 
 becomes morbid. Duty, that vague yet mighty 
 word so often flung at the wayward child, is not 
 
38 RELATIONS OF TEACHER AND PUPIL. 
 
 always the beneficent peace-bringer moralists love 
 to portray. On the contrary, its exactions often tax 
 cruelly the moral energies of the experienced adult. 
 It would, then, be strange indeed if children should 
 be found at all hours disposed to yield cheerfully 
 their private wishes in favor of a task assigned. 
 The more susceptible the mind, the greater the ten- 
 dency to moods. In such cases extreme caution 
 should be practised before exacting method, prompt- 
 ness, unquestioning obedience. That a child's man- 
 ner should at times indicate coldness or indiffer- 
 ence by no means implies want of natural affection. 
 It may be simply because his soul rebels against a 
 code or a fashion. The teacher of discretion will 
 respect these variable currents of the inner life. 
 Under no provocation whatsoever will he handle 
 rudely what is finer than any instrument ever fabri- 
 cated in the material world. 
 
 Physical life and soul-life, although beginning 
 and ending at the same instant, are never impar- 
 tially treated. The latter is the proverbial step-child. 
 What Wieland remarks of the Abderites is singu- 
 larly applicable to millions of their blood-relations 
 about us : " The good people had never once 
 dreamed that the soul could have any other kind 
 of interest than the stomach, the liver, and all the 
 rest of man's physical organization." 
 
RELATIONS OF TEACHER AND PUPIL. 39 
 
 The bond between teacher and pupil often grows 
 to be one so firm that it outlives every other, and 
 for this good reason : all children are eager to learn 
 whatever best corresponds to their natural abilities. 
 "Whoever, then, discovers these abilities and minis- 
 ters to them becomes mentally related to the child, 
 — ^the learner. Mental kinship is the closest of 
 human ties. 
 
 The teacher, too, is entitled to every consider- 
 ation. Like all the world's workers, he has his 
 full share of struggle, harassment, exhaustion. Life 
 is hard, hardest for highly-organized people who 
 have their own complex selves to deal with in ad- 
 dition to the outer w^orld. A teacher shares this 
 universal hardness. He knows more than he can 
 give, sees more than his hands can reach. Of all the 
 rebuffs, vexations, and shocks he must endure, the 
 most trying is incapacity in his scholar,— incapacity 
 not merely to understand but to see any use in un- 
 derstandino^. What is to be done with such barren 
 soil? Psychology solves the question by bidding 
 us not to waste logic on the illogical mind, but to 
 point out other things it can do. 
 
 ^N'ot what you wish your pupil to be, but what 
 nature has fitted him for, should be your guide. 
 Private ambitions, whether in parents or in teach- 
 ers, must at all times give way to nature's voice. 
 
40 RELATIONS OF TEACHER AND PUPIL. 
 
 Cicero trying to make an orator of his son Marcus, 
 whose inclinations were all those of the soldier, 
 suffered the same disappointment that comes to 
 many a modern home. 
 
 In the work of teaching, as in other sciences, 
 honor comes in proportion to obstacles overcome. 
 Such honor often comes, too, as the reformer's, the 
 inventor's, the patriot's comes, — long after his life- 
 work is finished. 
 
PUBLIC EXAMINATIONS AN INJTJEY. 
 
 The idea of examinations is good. Parents like 
 to know, and ought to be told, what their children 
 have done in a given course of months. But this 
 " what," fairly investigated, would tell a very differ- 
 ent story from that of the usual public examination. 
 This stimulates the young mind without strengthen- 
 ing it. It is the same specious principle that leads 
 " intellectual" young women in society to cram for 
 conversation when expecting to meet certain people 
 noted in letters or science. One of this sort ad- 
 mitted recently that it took but a few hours to fill 
 her mind with facts enough to carry on a conversa- 
 tion upon any subject whatsoever. 
 
 Doubtless this impromptu knowledge may pass 
 current in society. But to the genuine scholar it 
 would be simply one of the many forms of intellect- 
 ual sham. Such a woman, young or old, is far more 
 objectionable than the illiterate one, who when 
 natural through honesty is never unpleasing. This 
 accounts for the common fact that intellectual men 
 
 so often marry women of inferior minds and breed- 
 
 4 41 
 
42 PUBLIC EXAMINATIONS AN INJURY. 
 
 ing. Of two extremes they prefer a natural woman 
 to an artificial one. 
 
 A mind stimulated in order to appear brilliant 
 on a particular occasion gains its object only by 
 losing something of greater value, its probity. The 
 same principle of sham that underlies social petti- 
 nesses is at work in public examinations. By this 
 means the best that the school is capable of— to 
 awaken love of learning for its own sake — is at 
 one stroke nullified. 
 
 Of Americans it may be said as justly as it was 
 once said of the ancient Eomans, '' You will find 
 the greater number of men both ready in conceiv- 
 ing and quick in learning; since such quickness 
 is natural to man; and as birds are born to fly, 
 horses to run, and wild beasts to show fierceness, 
 so to us peculiarly belong activity and sagacity of 
 understanding ; whence the origin of mind is said 
 to be from heaven. But dull and unteachable 
 persons are no more produced in the course of 
 nature than are persons marked by monstrosity and 
 deformities ; such are certainly but few." * 
 
 The noble idea of good work through patient 
 perseverance is corrupted by the desire for sudden 
 advancement, for fame at any price. To appear 
 
 * Quintilian, Inst. Orat., Book I. c. i. 
 
PUBLIC EXAMINATIONS AN INJURY. 43 
 
 well, to outshine classmates, to pose for admira- 
 tion, — all this exhibits vanity in its worst form, the 
 intellectual one. 
 
 The true aim of education is not to outshine 
 others, but to do fairly by one's own abilities. It 
 is to advance day by day, swiftly if possible, 
 steadily at all hazards, with a given task. That it 
 be not admirable in the eye of critics is of trivial 
 import in comparison with the approval of our own 
 conscience. The going on with fixed intent to 
 finish, the working in our best moods, the actual 
 worthy finishing, — such is the conduct of the genu- 
 ine student. Such, too, under teaching, can be made 
 the conduct of school-children. Under teaching as 
 now carried on there are many sham students, very 
 few genuine ones. 
 
 Some children who could speak eloquently enough 
 to one ear would be struck dumb before an audi- 
 ence. To judge intellect by this public display of 
 dumbness would thus be highly unjust. The bare 
 thought of an exhibition, of being called upon to 
 display mental ability and self-poise before a critical 
 audience, disturbs their equanimity. Their self-con- 
 sciousness has its rise in delicate sensibilities that 
 require the carefullest handling. Especially is this 
 the case with girls. Therefore public examinations 
 are for them far more injurious than for boys. 
 
44 PUBLIC EXAMINATIONS AN INJURY. 
 
 ^ Public examinations degrade the work of teach- 
 ing to the level of a show. Children are incited to 
 rehearse for a performance that overstrains natural 
 forces without yielding even so much as amusement. 
 In certain characters it fosters vanity, conceit, arro- 
 gance ; in certain others it results only in needless 
 humiliation, in hurtful bitterness of spirit. In the 
 studies for which they are specially fitted children 
 require no incentives, only guidance. In the other 
 kind they require the most skilful teachers, whose 
 help must be followed on the scholar's part by 
 patient plodding. 
 
 In education the only spur that psychology recog- 
 nizes is from a mental-moral source, — desire to learn, 
 the pushing forward to that goal with one's utmost 
 personal strength. Examination-day under psy- 
 chological teaching would become simply a sum- 
 ming up of character-records. Reward, whether 
 in the shape of marks, prizes, or simply words of 
 praise, would be given to pupils according to honest 
 work done in their respective classes. 
 
 Cramming might be called the representative of 
 false intellectual training, while competition stands 
 for the moral falsity. Both are injurious beyond 
 all power of words to portray. In schools, as in 
 society, the tendency is to be superficial. To stand 
 well before others, to be in such and such a class, 
 
PUBLIC EXAMINATIONS AN INJURY. 45 
 
 get certain marks, compete for this or that position, 
 outstrip companions, — these aims, while containing 
 germs of good, are not the positive good to be 
 sought. What has my child done towards character- 
 development? This is the question for parents to 
 ask and for the school to answer. 
 
 Hume sajs, " The great end of all human indus- 
 try is the attainment of happiness. For this were 
 arts invented, sciences cultivated, laws ordained, 
 and societies modelled by the most profound wis- 
 dom of patriots and legislators." Public schools 
 are without question the most important of these 
 " societies modelled." The training of a man de- 
 cides the question of happiness or the reverse. As 
 this training is, so are his home, his status in so- 
 ciety, in his profession, in business, in art, in me- 
 chanics. Whatever the natural abilities, training 
 determines their adaptation, their good or bad 
 working. 
 
 The organization of public schools in a State 
 ought to excite a keener interest than the election 
 of a governor. That it does not do so proves the 
 mental sluggishness of the masses and the crying 
 need for truer education of the new generation. 
 The knower of human nature alone can fathom 
 mental dangers, discover moral safeguards. He 
 alone combines the boldness of the reformer and 
 
46 PUBLIC EXAMINATIONS AN INJURY. 
 
 the charitable judgment of the philanthropist. 
 This power is the one that sets all other powers 
 in motion. Finally, the psychologist can say with 
 Quintilian, "But it is enough for me to point to 
 the subject; for I do not teach, but admonish those 
 who are to teach." 
 
A CHILD'S SENSIBILITIES. 
 
 Is it beneficial to tell a child that he has inherited 
 his grandfather's temper or his uncle's self-conceit ? 
 Often repeated it will cause a feeling in the child of 
 unrealness, a doubt as to his own accountability, a 
 mischievous tendency to throw the consequences of 
 his own passion or conceit upon said grandfather or 
 uncle. Or, if the sensibilities be deep, it may cause 
 a painful estrangement between the child and his 
 natural guardians. Day by day he grows more in- 
 different, more taciturn, more morose. Gradually 
 he is alienated from all that concerns home and its 
 inmates. 
 
 Home is no home to him in its truest, highest 
 sense. A stranger seeing him there would hardly 
 take him for a member of the family, so unfamily- 
 like are his ways. The child is himself unhappy ; 
 others are made unhappy by him ; the causes are 
 potent and natural. On the other hand, training 
 can do much for such a child. Granted that the 
 resemblance of character between child and an- 
 cestor exists, certainly it is no fault of the child's 
 that the traits inherited are not agreeable ones. 
 
 47 
 
48 ^ CHILD'S SENSIBILITIES. 
 
 Inheritance is much; education is more. A 
 nephew may inherit vanity and egotism from an 
 uncle. Everybody sees the resemblance between 
 the two, but everybody does not know what educa- 
 tion may have done to foster or counteract natu- 
 ral attributes. The uncle may have been wholly 
 debarred from refined home influences, left to 
 grow up amid dependants and sycophants. The 
 nephew may have had every advantage that ju- 
 dicious parents and teachers could yield. Could 
 we then in justice excuse in the nephew what we 
 could excuse in the uncle? Lenience for defects 
 or vices is in proportion to our knowledge of pre- 
 ceding causes. We can often tolerate disagree- 
 able traits of character from a sense of kindness or 
 pity. 
 
 The crowning benefit of training is self-guidance. 
 Obedience perverted becomes slavishness. Can a 
 child ever acquire self-reliance if taught to watch 
 every thought and wink of others before acting ? 
 Training demands, first of all, a critical inquiry as 
 to native qualities. "What is there to work with ? 
 to contend with ? to cultivate ? to strengthen ? to 
 enlighten? to repress? What are the natural at- 
 tributes of the child to be trained? How are 
 these to be improved, elevated? How shall we 
 prevent them from being injured, deteriorated? 
 
A CHILD'S SENSIBILITIES. 49 
 
 The question of decision is one of vital impor- 
 tance. 
 
 If this is to be cultivated, the child must be 
 taught not to consult parent, nurse, or teacher in 
 every trifle, but to use his own judgment, good or 
 bad. The gravest consequences of error often instil 
 invaluable lessons. Better to suffer many a morti- 
 fication in youth than to arrive at manhood without 
 decision of character. Training in its best sense is 
 simply showing another how to develop his own 
 character. All men are teachers ; all men are learn- 
 ers. How can we best reach the mind and heart of 
 one whom chance places under our guidance? is 
 the query which comes to almost every man and 
 every woman. 
 
 Let us imagine a woman who has reached matu- 
 rity earnestly endeavoring to help a young girl in 
 her teens. She might speak somewhat in this 
 form : That you love me, dear child, I well know. 
 Upon this I build my hopes of inducing you to 
 listen to what must sound extremely tedious to 
 your young ears. I wish to talk to you about 
 yourself, — your character. This one word means 
 everything belonging to you, — your thoughts, 
 wishes, aims, hopes, pleasures, manners, accom- 
 plishments. 
 
50 ^ CHILD'S SENSIBILITIES. 
 
 Whatever you think, do, or feel, when with others 
 or when alone, denotes character, shows what stuff 
 you are made of. What you are at this present 
 moment is the result of events over which you had 
 no control. What you become hereafter depends 
 upon yourself, your inner life and outward exer- 
 tions. 
 
 This I would impress upon you strongly that you 
 may quickly learn how to take criticism or cen- 
 sure. Accept these, whether coming from friend 
 or teacher, as directed not to you, but to your 
 faults. If told that your manner is unrefined, do 
 not commit the fatal mistake of disliking the per- 
 son who tells you. Remember, it is the manner 
 which is rebuked, not you. Try, dear child, to 
 make this distinction, to see the difference between 
 scolding and criticism. Those who love you best 
 are most anxious for your improvement, and evince 
 their love by seeking to remove the blemishes upon 
 your character. To direct your thoughts to the 
 training of yourself is my aim. 
 
 You are now of an age to observe, to reason upon, 
 to understand, to appreciate all that goes on in your 
 immediate circle. It is of the utmost importance 
 that you should have a clear idea of your own posi- 
 tion in that circle. Young as you are, you have 
 ideas, opinions, and tastes of your own. These 
 
A CHILD'S SENSIBILITIES. 51 
 
 make your position one of responsibility. Those 
 living with you derive either positive pleasure or 
 positive pain from your society ; those younger than 
 yourself are influenced either for good or for evil 
 by you. 
 
 In the family, children are companions as much 
 as grown people; clear thinking and good-breed- 
 ing are just as requisite in one as in the other. 
 Of all the attractions of our sex nothing equals 
 delicacy of feeling and gentleness of manner ; no 
 beauty, no learning, no accomplishment, can com- 
 pensate for their absence. The most perfect women 
 have this delicacy and gentleness by nature ; others 
 less favored must acquire it. That your manner is 
 not refined is perceptible to all ; but all do not see, 
 as your friends do, that your difficulty arises from 
 a quick, excitable disposition — untrained — not from 
 native coarseness. 
 
 To know the effect your vehemence of manner 
 produces upon others you have only to note how 
 you yourself are affected b}^ manner, how you in- 
 stinctively shrink from rudeness, how easily you are 
 swayed by tenderness. All are susceptible to man- 
 ner, although many people unaccustomed to express- 
 ing their thoughts could, probably, hardly tell why 
 they are alternately attracted and repulsed. 
 
 Home is the best place for the manifestation and 
 
52 ^ CHILD'S SENSIBILITIES. 
 
 judgment of character, for there people are them- 
 selves. If a stranger — himself refined — were to ob- 
 serve you, dear A., in your home during a single 
 day, he would know your one great defect. What 
 he would discover in one day your intimate friends 
 have known many days and years and been grieved 
 by it. This one great defect is lack of respect and 
 courtesy towards your parents. That you love 
 them deeply I know, for beneath the blemishes 
 which deface the exterior your heart is sound and 
 true. But your habitual manner implies a disre- 
 spect often verging upon contempt. 
 
 That coldness and indiflference sometimes actu- 
 ally exist between parents and children is sad 
 enough ; but that a child should love and be loved 
 and yet treat her parents with positive disrespect 
 is still worse. You cannot fail to see that your 
 temper is the root of the trouble. You are not 
 ignorant of what is due to those older than your- 
 self. You know the difiference between rudeness 
 and courtesy, crossness and amiability, loudness 
 and gentleness. You notice manner in others and 
 are affected, made comfortable or uncomfortable, 
 by it. 
 
 Have I not often heard you say to a member of 
 your own family, How cross you are ! It was easy 
 to see how thoroughly unhappy you felt. But what 
 
A CHILD'S SENSIBILITIES. 53 
 
 was your own state of mind, what your voice and 
 manner, when those words left your lips ? "Were not 
 you, too, cross ? Were you not committing the very 
 fault you blamed in another ? Here is the secret of 
 crossness, of discourtesy, — in your own untrained 
 character. This it is that gives yourself and those 
 who have you in charge trouble. 
 
 What is this thing we call temper ? Let us ana- 
 lyze it. As long as all goes well, that is, as long as 
 you are not thwarted in any of your wishes, at lib- 
 erty to go and come, study, dress, and visit accord- 
 ing to your own inclinations, you are amiable 
 enough. But things often go ill instead of well, 
 and then we have the test of temper. Perhaps 
 before you are up one hour you are requested to 
 do something you dislike ; perhaps many times in 
 the course of the day this occurs. Lo, what a change 
 in your face, your manner, your voice ! You are 
 transformed from a bright, laughing girl into a 
 scowling, angry one. You are womanly in appear- 
 ance and feeling, while extremely ignorant of a 
 woman's position. 
 
 You have been to school ten years, while, owing 
 to lack of home training, you are strangely defi- 
 cient in the first rudiments of letters. The strong 
 points in your character are all of a practical kind, 
 making you quick to see and comprehend every- 
 
54 A CHILD'S SENSIBILITIES. 
 
 thing pertaining to external life. In mental attri- 
 butes you are weak and childish. You have no 
 powers of reflection, no love of study. You do 
 what is required of you through affection for your 
 teachers, but have no conception of the value of 
 knowledo-e. You are io:norant and not ashamed of 
 your ignorance. 
 
ON TEAINING CHILDEEN. 
 
 Young people when bodily sound and high-bred 
 are the most charming of all human beings. Full 
 of vitality and vigor, of elastic step, showing in 
 every movement, in every tone of voice, enjoy- 
 ment of mere existence, they carry about with them 
 a cheery, invigorating atmosphere. This vitality is 
 a something indescribable, yet a thing to be enjoyed 
 even by utter strangers who pass it on the public 
 roadside. Young people bodily sound and high- 
 bred ! Do we of to-day give enough attention to 
 those two states ? Do we indeed value them at all 
 in proportion to other things ? Fine clothes, hand- 
 some houses, fast horses, princely yachts, athletic 
 games, and, above all, money, are by most young 
 people infinitely better understood, therefore more 
 valued, than bodily soundness and high-breeding. 
 
 Juvenile misanthropy is by no means uncommon ; 
 
 but it is satisfactory to know that the causes for it 
 
 are not unnatural. What results when a sensitive 
 
 child is exposed to a bad system of training? 
 
 Commanded without judgment, coaxed against 
 
 65 
 
56 ON TRAINING CHILDREN. 
 
 conviction, scolded unjustly, indulged * capriciously, 
 he lives through childhood in a state of wretched 
 vassalage. To crown his wretchedness, his masters 
 reproach him w^ith not being " bright and happy 
 like other children." Is happiness, then, a matter 
 of volition ? It might be so implied from the un- 
 feeling mode in which children are reproached with 
 being cross, fretful, or obstinate. These outbursts 
 are evident symptoms of unhappiness, protests of 
 nature against ill treatment of body or soul. 
 
 Children may be surrounded with the tenderest 
 care and solicitude and yet be always conscious of 
 a strong under-current of dissatisfaction, — a state of 
 feeling to which various names may be given, but 
 which probably arises solely from too meagre a spir- 
 itual diet. The young soul is hungry ; it absorbs 
 much and requires much, sometimes growing al- 
 most fierce in its cravings. But the proper food is 
 not always at hand, and there arise frequent bursts 
 of indignation at not being understood. 
 
 Such a child is reproached w^ith being quiet and 
 morose, not lively like other children. Is there 
 not good cause for that quietness and moroseness ? 
 Can a child force itself to be other than it is? 
 Unhappily, the experiment is too often tried, the 
 child being driven to make the attempt, as it were, 
 in self-defence; but the result is failure. ^Nature 
 
ON TRAINING CHILDREN. 57 
 
 may be resisted. Through fear and timidity and 
 dread of criticism and ridicule, the child may be 
 induced to do and to say strange things, things 
 foreign to its tastes and abilities. But revenge in 
 one form or another is sure to follow. 
 
 It is not strange that many clear brains should be 
 cynical upon the subject of education — in its mod- 
 ern progressive sense — when so many sights and 
 sounds give evidence of no substantial good result- 
 ing from it. When we see an ordinary servant-girl 
 evincing far more judgment in the management of 
 a child than the mother herself, we may be par- 
 doned for doubting whether a long course of the 
 best schools is the best preparation for the duties of 
 womanhood. To speak glibly of inefficient ser- 
 vants is a convenient cloak for the inefficiency of 
 many a household queen. Mothers are the chief 
 trainers of the human race. They have in their 
 hands the morale of intellect, conscience, and man- 
 ner. With those three intact, the special trainers 
 who follow the mother's regime find their way 
 plainly marked. 
 
 The majority of women in the well-to-do classes 
 
 are " well educated," as the phrase goes. In other 
 
 words, they Avere clothed, fed, and sent to school up 
 
 to a certain age. After that come wifehood and 
 
 motherhood, — the highest round of womanly ambi- 
 
 5 
 
58 ON TRAINING CHILDREN. 
 
 tion. To reach that round is one thing ; to main- 
 tain the position with dignity is another and a far 
 more difficult thing. In entering a family, do we 
 ask, Where was the mother educated? What 
 branches of science did she pursue ? How much 
 was expended upon masters? We ask nothing. 
 We simply give ourselves up to impressions; we 
 look, listen, feel ; we come away convinced without 
 having heard the argument. 
 
 To say what a woman should or should not learn 
 is impertinence to nature. Music and dancing are 
 as good for one as hooks and reflection for another. 
 Training, in a generous sense, looks to develop- 
 ment of natural traits as its end. The degree of 
 intellect a mother possesses is of far less impor- 
 tance than its soundness. A few ideas of healthy 
 growth are worth more to her than a whole cata- 
 logue of sciences and accomplishments. 
 
 Plutarch says, " It was not said amiss by Antis- 
 thenes, when people told him that one Ismenias was 
 an excellent piper, ' It may be so,' said he, ' but he 
 is but a wretched human being, otherwise he would 
 not have been an excellent piper.' And King 
 Philip to the same purpose told his son Alexander, 
 who once at a merry-meeting played a piece of 
 music charmingly and skilfully, ' Are you not 
 ashamed, son, to play so well ? For it is enough 
 
ON TRAINING CHILDREN. 59 
 
 for a king or prince to find leisure sometimes to 
 hear others sing, and he does the Muses quite honor 
 enough when he pleases to he but present while 
 others ens^as^e in such exercises and trials of skill.' 
 Many times when we are pleased with the work we 
 slight and set little by the workman or artist him- 
 self"* 
 
 Upon the same principle a mother derives far 
 greater honor from the management of her house- 
 hold than from her performances in music, painting, 
 embroidery, or authorship. A woman cannot have 
 too much culture; but a single accomplishment 
 may consume the time and strength due to the 
 home. A woman of culture could not be the mis- 
 tress of an illiterate, unrefined home. A woman 
 of accomplishments which would be the delight of 
 a social circle could not readily reconcile herself to 
 domestic confusion, discomfort, and neglect. 
 
 Accomplishments add nothing to a woman's char- 
 acter. Save in rare cases, they exhaust her strength 
 and breed only vanity or discouragement. It is not 
 uncommon to find parents expending means wholly 
 beyond their income upon the accomplishment 
 which the daughter never thinks of from the day 
 of her marriage. To play, to sing, to draw, are 
 
(JO ON TRAINING CHILDREN. 
 
 terms which excite a smile in the man of the world. 
 For courtesy's sake he permits himself to he bored, 
 while mentally drawing comparisons with the bril- 
 liant performances of professional artists. 
 
 Why are not school-girls more emulous in the 
 acquirement of judgment, wit, penetration, those 
 character-adornments which will elevate and grace 
 their entire future ? Why should girls be taught 
 that accomplishments are in any way essential to 
 education ? If gifted with marked abilit}^, let them 
 labor with enthusiasm at its development. In this 
 case it is a source of genuine delight to themselves 
 and to the world. To cultivate talents is a term 
 which in cultured society must oust the miserable 
 counterfeit called acquiring accomplishments. 
 
 To mothers of middle age, of fixed ideas, of self- 
 complacent principles, nothing can be said which 
 would in the least change their course. They are 
 what they are. They must be tolerated, held in 
 check, or pitied. To suggest change is in their 
 ears to find fault ; to intimate better management 
 of servants or children is to interfere; to hint at 
 more agreeable topics of conversation than the de- 
 tails of the domestic machine is to be over-fastidious. 
 Middle age cannot change its habits of thought and 
 feeling. Whatever its character, it desires to con- 
 tinue in it. 
 
ON TRAINING CHILDREN. 61 
 
 But to young mothers, those just starting upon 
 the most honorable of all careers, every thinker 
 has a right to submit his theory. Youth is pliable, 
 amenable to innovation, eager for progress, glad 
 to adopt plans which promise honor or happiness. 
 Young mothers cannot have the standard of 
 womanhood too high. Whatever the special attri- 
 butes of character, whatever the position in life, 
 every young mother may say to herself: My career 
 in life is settled. I have a home. What I make 
 that home depends mainly upon my character. 
 That I have a fair amount of grace and beauty I 
 am thankful; but that these will not make the 
 house comfortable I am hourly made aware of. 
 That I am happy now in my husband and children 
 is no warrant for the perpetuity of this happiness. 
 My own ignorance is daily forced upon my notice. 
 If before marriage there was need for intelligence, 
 gentleness, and tact, now there is the same need 
 tenfold augmented. Then my influence was indi- 
 rect ; now it is direct, positively good or bad. 
 
 If I am to reign supreme here in my domain, I 
 must first rule m^^self. If my husband is to supply 
 me with funds, he must have proof of my judicious 
 outlay. If my servants are to be well trained, my 
 supervision must be unrelaxing; if they are to 
 respect me, my knowledge must be equal to daily 
 
62 ON TRAINING CHILDREN. 
 
 demands upon it. If my son is to rely upon my 
 judgment, he must hear no silly speech, witness no 
 frivolous conduct. If my daughter is to imitate my 
 character, I dare not indulge in unreasonahle desires 
 or peevish remonstrances. 
 
 Patience with ignorance ranks highest among 
 household virtues. We dare not censure either 
 child or adult for sins springing from that source. 
 But patience does not render us pain-proof. Can we 
 avoid a shudder when we hear a mother narrating 
 before daughters of tender years a horrid deed ot 
 which human folly or crime is the ground-work ? 
 Why should they be prematurely enlightened as to 
 human depravity? The chief charm of girlhood 
 is ingenuousness. The certain result of familiarity 
 with the dark side of human nature is to awaken 
 suspicion and mistrust. If, through idleness or 
 unwise training, girls are over-curious, they can 
 readily learn all the details of crime. But it is 
 peculiarly inappropriate that the mother should lift 
 the veil from the guileless soul of the daughter. 
 
 The training that makes character is a psycho- 
 logical process. A. at two years shows traits which 
 cause serious discomfort to parents, nurse, and rela- 
 tives. Parental joy in the possession of a vigorous 
 boy is almost overbalanced by the marked tickle- 
 
ON TRAINING CHILDREN. ^3 
 
 ness, irritability, and self-will which characterize 
 the child. This at two years ! What will it be at 
 five, ten, fifteen years ? Yet this very boy in his 
 happy moods exercises a rare fascination over those 
 who understand him. His defects and peculiarities 
 are so clearly his by inheritance that he cannot be 
 other than he is. Where afiinity exists between 
 parent and child, inexhaustible patience on the part 
 of the former is the result. 
 
 Tolerance is an easy virtue when we sympathize 
 with the ofiender. A.'s mother, who knows her 
 child to be psj^chologically related to herself, feels 
 sure that he shares her tastes, feelings, likes, and 
 dislikes. A.'s father, who perceives in his two- 
 year-old son traits which have not the remotest af- 
 finity to his own character, may well look forward 
 to future years with forebodings. In such a case 
 natural affection may exist between father and 
 son ; care on the one side, duty on the other, and 
 community of interests, will undoubtedly promote 
 peace ; but without affinity there can never be that 
 intellectual communion which enables us to com- 
 prehend defects or perverseness. 
 
 We may expend earnest solicitude and ardent 
 affection upon a child, and yet if there be no 
 natural affinity we are continually baffled in our 
 attempts to read his mind and heart or win his 
 
64 ON TRAINING CHILDREN. 
 
 confidence. The child's strange freaks and whims, 
 the passion, the antipathies and sympathies, all the 
 odd ways which to the observer are so full of inter- 
 est, to A.'s father seem wholly unaccountable, — 
 nay, if the truth were told, distasteful. Impossible 
 to manage the boy ! exclaims the father when tried 
 beyond endurance by an ebullition of passion or a 
 fit of mulishness on the part of his young son. I 
 cannot find out what he wants ; and as for his will, 
 no human power can change it when once a thing 
 has been resolved upon, if it be only going into the 
 next room or opening a particular closet. The 
 casual visitor in the house may understand A. much 
 better than his own fiither, simply because he reads 
 him psychologically. 
 
 How late some things are learned! Possibly 
 only in maturity, after passing through a varied 
 discipline, does a man learn why he was so peculiar 
 a child ; why subject to moods, fancies, and humors ; 
 why averse to the common sports of his age and 
 sex: why so shy and self-conscious. He knows 
 now that these unchildlike traits arose from the 
 seeds of inherited ill health, — physical or psycho- 
 logical, — that this was ample cause for the over- 
 clouding of years which otherwise would have been 
 buoyant and happy. 
 
 With disease in the system, how can a child be 
 
ON TRAINING CHILDREN. 65 
 
 goocl-humored, gaj, joyous? How little genuine 
 sympathy there is with children, spite of all the pro- 
 fessions made ! How curious to reflect upon the 
 utter irresponsibility of children in all that pertains 
 to health, temperament, or tastes, and then note the 
 absolute ignoring of this fact by their elders ! How 
 these last urge, criticise, reprimand ! How they 
 vex and irritate the tender souls that come under 
 their influence ! 
 
 All this in the name of duty! As if it were 
 easy for children to do or not do, desire or not de- 
 sire ! The simple fact that children are as strongly 
 marked with individuality as their progenitors is 
 practically ignored. Sympathy, that faculty of un- 
 derstanding and feeling for another's trials, seems 
 to be one rarely dwelt upon when the relations be- 
 tween parent and child are discussed. E"ominally 
 there is a vast amount of love on the parental side : 
 virtually there is a vast amount of hurtful misap- 
 prehension and needless thwarting. 
 
BE TEUB TO YOUR INDIVIDUALITY.* 
 
 What a blessing if a. mind like Emerson's could 
 gain access to a child of ten years and instil into it the 
 strength that comes from such sentiments as these ! 
 " Believe your own thought, believe that what is 
 true for you in your private heart is true for all 
 men. . . . A man should learn to detect and watch 
 that deam of lis-ht which flashes across his mind 
 from within, more than the lustre of the firmament 
 of bards and sages. . . . Great works of art have 
 no more affecting lesson for us than this. They 
 teach us to abide by our spontaneous impression 
 with good-humored inflexibility. . . . The power 
 which resides in man is new in nature, and none 
 but he knows what that is which he can do, nor 
 does he know until he has tried. Not for nothing 
 one face, one character, one fact, makes much im- 
 pression on him and another none. This sculpture 
 in the memory is not without pre-established har- 
 mony. "We but half express ourselves and are 
 ashamed of that divine idea which each of us has." 
 
 Now, a child of ten could, of course, hardly com- 
 
 * Written in 1868. 
 66 
 
BE TRUE TO YOUR INDIVIDUALITY. 67 
 
 preliencl such ideas. But the spirit of them, if put 
 into language suited to his understanding, he could 
 appreciate. What an effect would be produced 
 upon a child of thoughtful, earnest temperament ! 
 How full of truth, of beauty, of strength, are these 
 words ! They seem to search the very soul and 
 compel it to long for genuine life. 
 
 " Sich selbst ausleben, das ist Alles,"* says Auer- 
 bach. But how to do it? Assuredly not by talk- 
 ing about it. There is only one way : by realizing 
 the sacredness of every moment, by being true to 
 the faintest breathings of conscience. 'Not where 
 we are, not what we do, but how we are, how we 
 do, is the question that concerns us. Where we are 
 born, what our talents, advantages, circumstances, 
 need never give us anxiety or doubt. Whatever 
 has been given, whatever withheld, we must recog- 
 nize that some power has placed us here, has 
 instructed us how to work. 
 
 We know always far more than we can accom- 
 plish. Because we are careless and unfaithful we 
 look beyond our sphere ; we long for other means, 
 circumstances, gifts. Our highest good is to know 
 wherein present duty lies. The past we cannot 
 recall or change. Whatever it has worked of good 
 
 * To live your individual life, this is all. 
 
68 BE TRUE TO YOUR INDIVIDUALITY. 
 
 or evil remains imperishable, eternal. But to-day 
 is yours, — with this alone you have to do, to this 
 you are to devote the strongest, the best within 
 you. What unspeakable happiness fills the soul 
 when the present is devoted to high purposes, — 
 when each moment is held in the hand as some- 
 thing holy, precious, inspired ! How dare we trifle 
 away these moments in unworthy occupations 
 when we know that immense results are enfolded 
 in one and all ! An eternity of woe or bliss may 
 lie in a single thought, suggestion, deed. Yet how 
 carelessly we flutter on, seeldng only that which is 
 fair, pleasant, easy ! 
 
 This bright, clear, life-giving flame within, — let 
 us watch it with zealous care, strive to direct every- 
 thing by its light. I^To thing is trifling. Our get- 
 ting up and lying down, our eating and drinking, 
 our doing, talking, thinking, — all are charged with 
 weighty consequences of which we can understand 
 the full importance only by reading our lives back- 
 ward. What we really are is known to ourselves 
 only : hence the world's opinion must ever be of 
 the smallest importance, if we wish to live truly. 
 What are you doing wdth your thoughts, con- 
 victions, talents, experiences, conceptions? This 
 alone should give you anxiety : upon it hangs 
 content or misery. 
 
BE TRUE TO FOUR INDIVIDUALITY. 69 
 
 Life for us begins with consciousness of individu- 
 ality. You must realize that you are one whose 
 being and doing shall be unlike that of any other 
 mortal, if you are true to self-conviction. However 
 similar your abilities or surroundings to those of 
 others, you know that in truth they are wholly dif- 
 ferent and that they can accomplish what no others 
 can. From moment to moment, hour to hour, live 
 and put the best of yourself into each. "When 
 this is done nothing else need trouble you, — you 
 shall know the full meaning of peace. As the 
 brain becomes stronger by frequent exercise, so 
 the conscience becomes clearer by obedience to its 
 laws. It is awe-inspiring to look back into past 
 years, to see what we might have been had con- 
 science been faithfully obeyed. Whatever we are 
 capable of conceiving, we are capable of doing if 
 we are but true, strong, faithful. But let there be 
 no useless moaning over the past. Cling to the 
 present, — it too will soon pass, — realize the full 
 value of the gift. N^ow, at this very instant, be 
 thankful for thought, conception, desire; bring 
 strength out of them all. 
 
 Those powers of which you feel possessed devote 
 to some noble purpose, spend your strength worthily. 
 Do you not know that at any instant death, de- 
 struction, calamity, may fall ? Do not, then, trifle. 
 
70 J^E TRUE TO YOUR INDIVIDUALITY. 
 
 indulge in ease and comfort. Gird yourself, stand 
 erect, prepared to do, to endure, to be true to convic- 
 tion, firm to principle. What others have done or 
 are doing should be no criterion for you. If you 
 are true to the light within, you will do only those 
 things you know to be right, whether others ap- 
 prove or not. Judge yourself unflinchingly, un- 
 sparingly, by your own conscience, intellect, expe- 
 rience. Shrink with horror from doing anything 
 against this judgment; regard it as transgression, 
 however leniently others may pass it by. What is 
 innocent for one may to another be a crime. Clear 
 and unmistakable judgment can be pronounced upon 
 ourselves only. We cannot be too tender, compas- 
 sionate, lenient, towards others; nor too severe, 
 exacting, determined, with ourselves. We know, 
 as no others can, how we are tempted and tried ; 
 we know also how we are urged, entreated, strength- 
 ened to overcome. How can pride, vanity, conceit, 
 exist in a soul that has once looked into itself? 
 
NOT LIKE OTHER PEOPLE. 
 
 Why do you want to be like other people ? Are 
 they so agreeable, so witty, so brilliant, so charm- 
 ing, so everything that is admirable, that you 
 should strive to be as they are ? You look tired, 
 seem weary, of this trying to mould yourself 
 after other human specimens ; and, after all, it 
 begins and ends with trying. The thing itself can 
 no more be done than you can make one horse like 
 another horse, one bird like another bird. That 
 animals, human or other, look alike, is nothing 
 to the point. With the far more important fact, 
 the mental character of men and women, lie the 
 immense, the unfathomable differences. Here it is 
 that you may justly protest, rebel, and exclaim, 
 Why should I wish to be like other people ? \ 
 
 Li clothes, in behavior, you do well to conform, 
 
 up to a certain point, to the customs of the day. 
 
 To avoid singularity in these matters is to gain the 
 
 independence that comes of being unnoticed. But 
 
 as to character, there is not one valid reason why 
 
 you should want to be like other people. On the 
 
 71 
 
72 ^OT LIKE OTHER PEOPLE. 
 
 other hand, there are the best of reasons, abso- 
 lutely vital ones, why you should not try to be like 
 them. To begin life with this egregious error is 
 to forge for yourself a complication of chains that 
 must hamper you at every step ; to continue life 
 from maturity up to middle age under this painful 
 IDressure is to be chafed, fretted, tormented. It is 
 living an absolutely false life, while everything 
 within cries out for a true life. You are alter- 
 nately goaded by your very self into escape from 
 bondage and humiliated by failure, by deep shame 
 over that failure. \ 
 
 The past has gone, and is beyond recall. Settle 
 that fact well in your mind, and do not cry over 
 it or bewail the irrevocable. Let it go; bury it! 
 Bury it, but do not forget it. In that remembrance, 
 bitter as it may be, lies your hope of a stronger life. 
 Do not procrastinate. Begin to day, at this very 
 moment, to ignore the old slavery, to act in the new 
 freedom. Be yourself, whatever happens. Think, 
 feel, act, in strict, unswerving accountability to 
 yourself Follow this regime conscientiously, per- 
 se veringly. Follow it through doubt and trial, 
 through ridicule, scorn, through suffering, if need 
 be, through martyrdom ! 
 
 Not to be like means to be something else. 
 What are you ? what is your position in the world ? 
 
NOT LIKE OTHER PEOPLE. 73 
 
 Ask yourself. "What by birth, what by training, 
 what by experience after becoming your own 
 master ? What, after these experiments of one or 
 of many kinds, are you fitted for? Are you a 
 social creature, adapted to society, its pleasures and 
 duties ? Or, are you a recluse, a thinker by prefer- 
 ence, therefore a solitary creature ? Eeflect well 
 upon all these points before you act. But having 
 begun to act, do not hesitate, waver, or slip back 
 into old slavish ways. 
 
 There may come a day when you cry. At last 
 it is over, ended ! What ? This trying to be like 
 other people. You have been foolish, lo ! these 
 many years, in trying to be what you were never 
 intended to be,— like other people. Now it is 
 over! The day came,— you recall it well; just 
 where you were, how the day looked, how you 
 thought, how you felt. You were at a gay foreign 
 summer resort, pretty, picturesque, idyllic even, 
 with its mountains, its forests, its sparkling waters. 
 But it was not a place for you ; it was for other 
 people. You felt yourself enervated, depressed, 
 isolated, crippled. You could not live mentally, 
 could not think. You saw yourself appearing 
 strange to the good people about you, unsympa- 
 thetic, unlovable, repellent. You suffered from 
 
74 ^OT LIKE OTHER PEOPLE. 
 
 that misapprehension ; for in your heart you had 
 only the kindliest, humanest feelings for the people 
 near you. You could not he like them, but were 
 constantly wishing you could do something for 
 them. But no, — it could not he, it was impossi- 
 ble. Impressionable to a painful degree, you were 
 bowed, bent, crushed, under the unhappy circum- 
 stances. 
 
 At last the light broke through the clouds! 
 You saw the truth, that you were not by nature 
 like other people. You did not belong to them, 
 ought not to be with them in the close, unavoidable, 
 yet restricted relations of life. You had nothing 
 against them. They were polite, kind, good, happy 
 in their families, in their amusements, in their pur- 
 suits. There was nothing in the least to object to 
 in them. The difficulty lay in you. You were 
 not like them, — that was the barrier, — an insuper- 
 able one for both sides. It was nobody's fault. It 
 was you who were in a false position : hence you 
 were unhappy, and, moreover, affected other people 
 unpleasantly. 
 
ON EEGULATING ONE'S LIFE. 
 
 Regulating one's life, — your life, my life, for in- 
 stance, — is there not something amazingly presump- 
 tuous in the attempt ? You are what you are partly 
 by inherited qualities, partly by training, partly by 
 your own efforts and self-indulgence mixed. On 
 heredity and training, alias education, in theory 
 most thinking people are in accord. On regulating 
 one's life, thinking people are so thoroughly in dis- 
 accord that the subject is of positively distracting 
 interest. Parents, teachers, preachers, lecturers, 
 journalists, authors, — all these have a direct and 
 enduring influence upon whole classes of people. 
 Where one man thinks for himself, tens of thou- 
 sands are only too well content to adopt opinions 
 the most convenient for daily use. 
 
 The one special principle of society here in our 
 
 own country is to regulate, in reason, one's life. 
 
 If this cannot be done absolutely well, it may at 
 
 least approximate to that. Your personal, natural 
 
 character must first be considered. In modern 
 
 education that personal fact is usually the last con- 
 
 75 
 
76 ON REGULATING ONE'S LIFE. 
 
 sidered. However, home and school trainmg, good 
 or bad, come to a close. You, man or woman of 
 twenty, are now at liberty to think for yourself, to 
 decide w^hat your life is to be. 
 
 Young women — save in a few so-called privi- 
 leged cases, when wealth and fashion decide the 
 career — have more of that liberty than they seem 
 to have; not so much as young men, of course, 
 but quite enough to decide whether they shall give 
 themselves over to social ambitions, to music, to 
 art, or to domestic routine. 
 
 Regulating your life means simply this : doing 
 your best to develop your strongest qualities. 
 Whether a mechanic or a philosopher, whether a 
 maid-servant or a fine lady, you are sure to have 
 something in you worth developing. The com- 
 mon, lazy phrase, " I have no gifts, no talents even ; 
 there is nothing I can do," only proves the lazy 
 conventional ^vay of educating children. The boy 
 who hates school might, with a wdse private in- 
 structor, become the most ardent lover of science, 
 of belles-lettres, of any one of the countless branches 
 of learning. 
 
 It is a common fact that the most deeply rever- 
 ent mind may dislike the cold forms of sectarian 
 religion. The most sensitive, love-craving woman 
 may, through fear or pride, appear haughty, indif- 
 
ON REGULATING ONE'S LIFE. 'J'J 
 
 ferent to men, when in society. Civilized life has 
 this curious effect upon certain people : it makes 
 them appear quite other than they are. A timid, 
 pensive woman of high breeding never shows to 
 advantage in society. A high-strung, affectionate 
 man may yet have so little self-assertion as to seem 
 to strangers indifferent, cold-hearted. Shyness is 
 not at all peculiar to woman. It is entirely mental, 
 therefore sexless. 
 
 Regulating one's life is so serious a matter that 
 it might well be called the ethical principle upon 
 which happiness depends. You who find it easy 
 to regulate your life are by nature strong, self- 
 reliant, therefore self-willed, self-satisfied. To see 
 what is expedient or reasonable is for you to do it 
 without consulting anybody else. Policy or good 
 breeding may make you careful not to offend your 
 neighbors, but on the whole you live your life 
 bravely. You may not be a great light, but in 
 your sphere, and even beyond it, you win respect. 
 People in general have neither time nor inclination 
 for analysis of character. They take their neigh- 
 bors as they seem, as they act, as they talk. In a 
 worldly sense, therefore, nothing is worse than to 
 confess to weakness, to error of any kind. 
 
 If you are ignorant of the art of regulating life, 
 you will naturally let somebody else do it for you, 
 
78 ON REGULATING ONE'S LIFE. 
 
 — your husband, your wife, your clergyman, your 
 favorite author, your intimate friend, — any one 
 who chances to be in authority at different epochs 
 in your life. If you are in the habit of thinking, 
 if you see something in yourself that seems w^orth 
 developing, if you are urged to strive, to do battle 
 in a special cause, tormented by your selfhood to 
 work towards a given end, then you are justified in 
 regulating your life yourself. 
 
 Inherited tendencies, well defined, or, quite as 
 likely, crossed and counter-crossed until they make 
 you appear as inconsistent as a Rousseau or a Mon- 
 taigne, will give you plenty to do. Early training, 
 too, will have been imperfect enough to provide 
 you with a vast amount of matter to be unlearned 
 in maturity. Finally, your own youthful follies, 
 your mistakes, your errors, your self-indulgences 
 of the stage beyond youth, all these, combined with 
 powerful and ceaseless influences from social sur- 
 roundings, will make regulating your life diflicult 
 enough. Yet the attempt is worth all your strength, 
 all your enthusiasm. It produces the best sort of 
 life. It saves from failure. 
 
MAKING PLANS. 
 
 First the idea, next the execution. Life worthy 
 the name consists of these two forces. These views 
 presuppose, of course, a fair amount of moral 
 stamina. With a certain moral force at bottom — a 
 force given at birth, and which, spite of mistakes, 
 follies, and neglects, clings to us till death — we 
 derive happiness from making plans. To regulate 
 one's self is the first of duties. Only after this 
 can any other self be helped. Our plans, then, 
 should be these : to be firm and steadfast in devel- 
 oping the stores in our brains. Most of us have 
 enough, more than enough, of mental accumula- 
 tion. As middle life is reached, the hour comes 
 for a giving out of what has been gathered. 
 
 O literary aspirant, whatever your sex, age, or 
 capacity, begin by being faithful to the gifts given to 
 you, by nature or acquired. You especially, woman 
 brought up in luxury but not finding your best 
 happiness in it, set aside trumpery and externals 
 until your brain has had fitting care. Begin with 
 that, give it the first hours, the best strength, the 
 
 79 
 
80 MAKING PLANS. 
 
 most conscientious handling. Habits of luxury 
 incited by a quick imagination are the mental 
 barriers, the leaden weights, that hold one down 
 to mediocrity. Fitted for a higher sphere in life, 
 you loiter in the lowlands of commonplace sub- 
 servience, in the enervating atmosphere of mean 
 pursuits, in the depressing companionship of un- 
 related minds. 
 
 To feel yourself well endowed enough to asso- 
 ciate with the best does not insure your place in the 
 intellectual world. You must show as well as feel 
 yourself, must show your mind as it is, give forth 
 its natural bent with whatever growth may have 
 come from training and experience. Give forth, 
 give liberally, unceasingly, give in many directions, 
 give at any cost, that man may see what you are 
 worth, what not. The what not will be especially 
 good for you. From that you will learn your place 
 in literature, what you cannot do, what you are to 
 concentrate your forces upon. The intellect has its 
 conscience, its morals, its development, its working, 
 and its work. The morals of the intellect are as 
 well worth study as the morals of nations. 
 
BEGINNING BUT NEYBR FINISHING. 
 
 Have you, dear reader, so far done nothing for 
 your fellow-creatures, although always intending, 
 expecting, to do much ? If so, confess it with its 
 causes, for the sake of those now living, and of 
 those who come after you. However humiliating 
 the task, it is a useful confession. Failure is an 
 ugly word. Lucky he who hears it only through 
 the outer world, yet who still believes in himself, 
 believes that other people, outside causes, have 
 brought it about. Yet this cannot always be 
 the case. There may lie before us, spread out 
 in damaging evidence, countless proofs of fail- 
 ure solely through our own fault. The intensity 
 of our suffering then no one save a similar vic- 
 tim can understand. One hears of a divine con- 
 tent, meaning that perpetual faith in self that be- 
 longs to the great artist, musician, or poet. They 
 who believe they have failed in life know all about 
 a diabolic discontent. 
 
 Yet why have so many failed in life ? The cause 
 is not necessarily vice, drunkenness, crime,— not 
 
82 BEGINNING BUT NEVER FINISHING. 
 
 any of the so-called cardinal sins. The source of 
 the intense horror of looking at and confessing life- 
 failure is that the eminently moral, no less than the 
 vicious, must admit, ^' I am a failure." The non- 
 entity of many lies in this simple fact, — beginning, 
 never finishing. The habit contracted in child- 
 hood, continued into youth, dragged on to middle 
 age, ends in an ignominious sense of failure. Amid 
 the wonderful appliances of modern education let 
 children be made to feel, first of all, their personal 
 responsibility in this matter, — beginning and finish- 
 ing. A book, a game, a bit of work, an experiment 
 on anything, in any direction, must be carried out, 
 ended ; this at whatever cost of patience or impa- 
 tience, satisfaction or disgust. It is the principle, 
 not the thing done, that is at stake ; that in the 
 child, for instance, determines whether a habit con- 
 tracted is to make or unmake the future man. 
 
 But children, grown people indeed, begin so 
 many useless, foolish things, — why insist upon 
 these being finished ? Here is precisely the point 
 at issue : children and grown people learn through 
 their own mistakes to discern the grand difierence 
 between wise and foolish. Two or three days, 
 weeks, or months spent over a senseless object are 
 not by any means wasted, if the worker learn from 
 it the art of reflection. "Why begin useless work, 
 
BEGINNING BUT NEVER FINISHING. 83 
 
 why undertake never so trifling a matter, without 
 previous thinking? Better far to be idle than to 
 spend strength on profitless work. 
 
 The artist must have his picture in his mind be- 
 fore he attempts to portray it with pencil or brush. 
 If he begin outwardly before the picture is matured 
 inwardly, he will end as many before him have 
 ended, — in non-entity. The same principle applies 
 to every other art, to every trade, mechanism, to 
 every pursuit, to every department of life, whether 
 mental or material. The kind of thing engaged in 
 is of little importance so far as character is con- 
 cerned. The point at once momentous and impres- 
 sive is, — finish one piece before beginning another. 
 
 The want of this principle has lost more than 
 one of the stranded men and women now either 
 clamoring for help or sunk in despondency. !N^o 
 hope for them ! Life can be lived but once. Years, 
 whether well or ill spent, exhaust the stock of vi- 
 tality allotted to each mortal. The lost cannot be 
 saved. But the young lives about us may be 
 helped ; the young, ignorant, blundering boys and 
 girls, — who abhor preaching in proportion as they 
 need it, — these are the ones to whom a principle is 
 worth more than all else the world can ofier. 
 
ON BELIEYING m LUCK. 
 
 "We like to close our eyes and dream of fair 
 women, of noble men, of angelic children. "We 
 like to fold our hands and think of the golden op- 
 portunities which are to bring to us comfort, luxury, 
 joy. We like to persuade ourselves that we are born 
 under a particular star, which accident precludes 
 the necessity of hard labor, of patient, plodding, 
 energetic action. We like to live in the present 
 hour, quaffing eagerly every drop of pleasure our 
 senses yield and deluding ourselves with the doc- 
 trine called natural rights. We, men and women, 
 like to do all these things, and at the end of the 
 doing come forward with preposterous impudence 
 and declare our belief in luck. It is a supersti- 
 tion of the grossest kind. It is inherited, as all 
 other superstitions are, from generation to gen- 
 eration. It taints natural impulses, encourages 
 idleness, fosters self-indulgence, and subverts reason 
 through sheer force of habit. 
 
 Of all stumbling blocks in the way of honest 
 work it is unquestionably the most formidable. 
 84 
 
ON BELIEVING IN LUCK. 85 
 
 The weak men and women are tripped up by it. 
 The strong ones, too, — although the ends they seek 
 are different, — are liable to the same tripping up. 
 A man believing in luck furnishes himself with 
 complete credentials as to honorable intent and 
 faithful application, whereas in truth he has not 
 made the first effort towards earning a reference in 
 the arena of work. With this belief wrapped close 
 to his heart, he accepts condescendingly the kind 
 of occupation requiring least attention and fatigue, 
 as a temporary make -shift. 
 
 Something must soon occur, is the refrain of 
 his thoughts. Something — in the form of gold, 
 of reputation, or of friends— will presently fall at 
 his feet and crave the favor of being picked up. 
 Somebody — indefinite as yet in nationality or in 
 character — will recognize the extraordinary merits 
 of his individuality and ofter a position and terms 
 equal to their grade. While thus hugging his 
 miserable superstition the years wear on, strength 
 ebbs, the brain grows rusty, and opportunities 
 vanish. The ennui bred of inertia spreads over 
 his entire nature and defies moral science. Facul- 
 ties of mind which exist without being used pro- 
 duce phantasms far worse to contend with than 
 actual physical ills. To dream of monsters is more 
 terrible than to encounter them bodily. 
 
86 ON BELIEVING IN LUCK. 
 
 The man thus believing in luck inculcates the 
 doctrine into wife, children, servants, and others 
 subjected to his influence. Without acknowledg- 
 ing, often indeed without perceiving, the fact, we 
 absorb opinions from those with whom we live. 
 Our nationality, our circumstances, our neighbor- 
 hood even, affect our tone of mind ; but the most 
 direct power swaying us proceeds from the human 
 beings we daily associate w^th. Choice is indeed 
 rarely permitted us. But if Nature subjects us to 
 pernicious influences, she furnishes us likewise with 
 eflacacious antidotes. Thus every being capable of 
 exercising thought may safely analyze the thing 
 called luck. According to results ascertained, let 
 him found principles, assert facts, and sow them 
 broadcast for the benefit of other beings. 
 
 Women, from their position, are perhaps less ex- 
 posed to the dangers of belief in luck than men ; 
 but they are not exempt. In the nursery, in the 
 home circle, at school, ideas and principles hold the 
 same importance for one sex as for the other. The 
 boy with his hobby-horse, the girl with her doll, 
 may both be made to understand that it is not 
 chance but carelessness that irreparably mutilates 
 the toy. 
 
 Girls imbued with this belief make no endeavor 
 
ON BELIEVING IN LUCK. 87 
 
 to acquire habits of industry and concentration. 
 They obey their elders from fear or necessity, con- 
 fidently expecting the day of emancipation when 
 they shall obey only the law of self. In the little 
 world of school their experiences are of precisely 
 the same intrinsic quality as those that await 
 them in society. Believing in luck permits them 
 to turn from every distasteful task and please them- 
 selves with visions of ease, of friends, of honor, 
 of admiration, all these without personal effort. 
 Launched into society, for the most part in our 
 country with slight safeguards save personal char- 
 acter, girls are in special need of sound doctrines. 
 Believing in such a false philosophy, they place 
 no dependence upon the qualities called self-control 
 and judgment, but rush recklessly in the wake of 
 others who chance to be ahead. Marriage being 
 the acme of luck, they make all minor things bend 
 to that end. 
 
 If a girl of sentiment, she revels in visions of 
 the hero who is to be conjured forth from chaos 
 for the express purpose of pouring love and devo- 
 tion at her feet. If of worldly tone, she is firm 
 in the conviction that she is destined to a high 
 social position, with aristocrats of both sexes ready 
 to do her homage. If inclined to overvalue gold 
 and glitter, she builds in fancy a structure so 
 
88 ON BELIEVING IN LUCK. 
 
 luxurious that it becomes the envy of half her ac- 
 quaintance. The knight who is to conduct her to 
 this splendor is of far less importance than the 
 splendor itself. The fortune which brings her gold 
 and luxury will, she thinks, bring her happiness as 
 well. 
 
 In the phases of life which follow matrimony the 
 same demoralizing belief leads to endless trouble. 
 Housekeeping in her estimation goes well or ill, not 
 by her personal management, but by luck. Pur- 
 chases, servants, children, everything in every de- 
 partment of her domain is subject to luck. To 
 argue with such a woman is utter waste of logic 
 and of all the cardinal virtues. The close of the 
 argument leaves the woman fully convinced, not 
 that she is in fault, but that she is the least com- 
 prehended and the worst abused of womankind. 
 To rise in the morning feeling that the day's entire 
 course is dependent upon chance is not conducive 
 either to domestic peace or to success in business. 
 Believing in luck is equivalent to believing that all 
 our personal affairs will work themselves ; that by 
 some unseen agency we shall be rich, comfortable, 
 and happy without care and assiduity. 
 
THE DAY-DREAMEE. 
 
 Trying to do many things usually results in doing 
 nothing well. The trying to do many things de- 
 scribes the mental part of the day-dreamer. To 
 dream is but a synonyme of to think. Even in very 
 prosaic characters, the so-called thinking is a very 
 mixed process, comprising self, wife, children, 
 household and business affairs, neighbors, friends, 
 church, charities, and the like. In the day-dreamer, 
 his so-called thinking is infinitely more complex. 
 In addition to positive needs of external life, family, 
 friends, business matters private and public, there 
 is the much more real, persistent, intense life 
 within. He is himself only when not in the actual, 
 tangible routine of his daily outer life. It matters 
 very little what that outer life is as to nationality, 
 rank, wealth, or poverty. He does not live at all 
 in the present. His most serious affair, his most 
 constant effort, is to lift himself out of his sur- 
 roundings into the romance and poetry of his own 
 mind. This realm is the perpetual, inalienable 
 home of day-dreams. 
 
90 THE DAY-DREAMER. 
 
 A day-dreamer may be born a prince. If so, he 
 spends his few hours of solitude in wishing himself 
 born to a lower position, that he might live the 
 happier life he dreams of He may be born a 
 peasant. If so, he turns away from his humble, 
 vulgar surroundings to dream of the beautiful 
 things he would see and enjoy, or of the great 
 deeds he would do, if only he had w^ealth and 
 rank. 
 
 These good people are not as useless as they 
 seem. Indeed, looked at from an artistic point, 
 they add much to the picturesque, romantic side of 
 human life. They have, apart from the dream- 
 faculty, usually other characteristics, — such as kind 
 hearts, conscientious principles, strong sympathies, 
 — which counteract the persistent inner craving 
 to neglect the real duties of the day and hour. 
 Fspecially is this noticeable in day-dreamers of 
 the female sex. Viewed as to their characters, 
 they are much weaker specimens than the dream- 
 ers of the opposite sex. A woman may long for 
 the hour of solitude which permits day-dreaming, 
 while forcing herself first to finish her daily rou- 
 tine of duties. "While thus trying to finish, she is 
 — in many thousands of cases — overtaken by sick- 
 ness, misfortune, old age; worst of all, by that 
 terrible ITemesis, the consciousness of years wasted, 
 
THE DAY-DREAMER. 91 
 
 wasted in struggling to do the wrong things. Com- 
 pared to that, old age is a pure, tranquil joy. 
 
 Thinking is the day-dreamer's life. He does 
 it incessantly, hence at many unseasonable times 
 when it mars the practical things which no one 
 can escape. Take a single day of his life ; for let 
 it be understood that he is not an imaginary 
 person, but a real living one. His personality is 
 painfully clear. It is sharply defined with all its 
 shadows and defects, with all its inconsistencies 
 and contrarieties. This personality is set before me 
 in its twofold nature, the bodily and the mental. 
 
 You, my friend, were born a day-dreamer. That 
 you could not help. You have all your life been 
 living the life of a day-dreamer. This you could 
 not help. You did not know you were what you 
 were by nature. But now, to-day, with your eyes 
 opened, knowing positively what you are, you are 
 justly held to account. I therefore arraign you 
 as a traitor to your inheritance of day-dreamer. 
 Your vocation is as clearly defined as that of artist, 
 musician, inventor. 
 
 To go back. Take a single day of this your 
 present life. In its main points a single day is 
 enough to show a person's whole life. In this 
 single day, then, you show the error of a lifetime. 
 
92 THE DAY-DREAMER. 
 
 You are trying not to be a day-dreamer, strug- 
 gling to escape what you were born for. Such 
 trying, such struggling, of course, availed nothing. 
 It simply exhausted you. There you lay on the 
 world's broad field, inert, helpless, unhappy. This 
 not because of a cruel fate, not because of your 
 own iniquity, but wholly because of a false con- 
 ception of things. Born a day-dreamer, you tried 
 to make the world believe you could do other 
 things better; whereas, had you lived the true, 
 honest life of a day-dreamer, you could have done 
 good work, would have been remembered, perhaps, 
 long after your days on earth had ended. 
 
 What is a day-dreamer ? One who thinks morn- 
 ing, noon, and night, who sees nothing in the world 
 save matter for thought. One who intuitively looks 
 outward only to absorb mentally. One who touches, 
 feels, experiences, only to bring all within the labo- 
 ratory of his mind. A day-dreamer is not, of ne- 
 cessity, a poet. There may be intense, ceaseless 
 thinking without the power of poetic expression. 
 But imagination there must be. It is, indeed, the 
 chief element of the day-dreamer's character. He 
 thinks of what was yesterday, or ages ago. He 
 thinks of what might or ought to be to-day. He 
 thinks of the possible good, bad, or beautiful of 
 
THE DAY-DREAMER, 93 
 
 to-morrow. ITot only to you but to every other 
 day-dreamer life is a tragedy of emotions. Let 
 those scoff who will at such sentiment, as they call 
 it. They scoff because they do not know what 
 emotions are. No one can understand, therefore 
 no one can sympathize with, the things unknown 
 to himself. 
 
FALSE POSITIONS. 
 
 You may be in one. Its source may be finance, 
 profession, marriage, love. Being in it, you chafe, 
 fret, worry, vex yourself with incessant questioning 
 to which comes no satisfactory answer. You are 
 tormented in thought, crippled in action. You find 
 your days but a weary repetition of a tedious les- 
 son, a painful dragging of disillusions, a martyr- 
 dom of the better self you believe in. Last and 
 worst, there come hours which force you to admit 
 that the bulk of your misery has sprung from your 
 own conduct. Whether this was simply weak or 
 actually wilful matters little as to results. To talk 
 of other people, of others' influence, is but moral 
 twaddle. The sole cause of your getting into a 
 false position is in yourself. 
 
 Do you want to know your own follies, you need 
 but look at, or listen to, your neighbors. Here is a 
 man whose grumbling tells exactly what his false 
 position is and how he got there. Things are look- 
 ing queer, he says. Try as I may to escape hin- 
 94 
 
FALSE POSITIONS. 95 
 
 derances to stead}^ work, I am forced back into a 
 false position. My struggling begins to seem a 
 sheer waste of strength. Once I had a permanent 
 hope, an absolute faith in my power to overcome. 
 To-day, under this last stroke, this ten-thousandth, 
 there comes over me that crushing sense of im- 
 potence, which, in every age, people attribute to 
 fatality, to the gods, to God. An easy way to dis- 
 pose of a vexing question, this putting on another 
 the responsibility that in reality should rest on 
 self. 
 
 False positions are peculiar to certain people. 
 They are always in them. No sooner are they out 
 of one, whether through their own struggles or 
 through the assistance of friends, than they tumble 
 into another. Age, experience, suffering, all seem 
 powerless to effect a cure. Why? To every 
 honest why? there is a satisfactory answer. 
 Whether this be found in one's self or elsewhere 
 matters little : the finding is the sole fact of im- 
 portance. One man gets into a false position vol- 
 untarily, deliberately, another is drawn in, pushed 
 in, dragged in by his neighbors. In the first in- 
 stance it may be erroneous judgment, perverse 
 sentiment, headlong passion. In the second in- 
 stance it is weak will acted upon by strong will. 
 It is in this weakness of will — a phase of character 
 
96 FALSE POSITIONS. 
 
 closely allied to crime — that are found the majority 
 of false-position victims. 
 
 Human failure, — mental, moral, social, — with its 
 melancholy train of disappointments and disillu- 
 sions, one and all, has its source partly in the in- 
 dividual, partly in heredity. Through ignorance 
 or non-doing a man brings upon himself the ills 
 he is now suffering under. Are we not frequently 
 forced into unspeakably painful positions simply 
 through choosing the wrong road? To accept 
 this or that proffer of friendship ; to go to this or 
 that country ; to act upon this or that impulse ; to 
 promise or to refuse to listen or to shut our ears ; 
 to obey or to violate personal judgment or con- 
 science ; to yield to the appeal of affection or the 
 cry of passion ; to deny the heart, to sear natural 
 longings with iron conventionality ; — of such mat- 
 ters is not the brain the sole arbiter? Does not 
 its decision bring about the true or the false 
 position ? 
 
 Here is a ruined merchant. He repeats on all 
 occasions to his credulous wife or indulgent friends 
 that it was bad luck. Outsiders who are not credu- 
 lous from affection know full well that bad luck is 
 but a name for certain ugly facts. Mr. X. was 
 careless, indolent, pleasure-loving. His principle of 
 life was to let other people do the work which he 
 
FALSE POSITIONS. 97 
 
 had the reputation of doing. Book-keepers and 
 salesmen gradually came to know more of the busi- 
 ness than the master himself. While endeavor- 
 ing to stave off, with every conceivable excuse, he 
 could not finally escape the hands of retribution, — 
 ruin for himself, wife, children. Broken in health, 
 unable to work, humiliated by enforced depen- 
 dence upon his family, he is daily goaded by the 
 cruel thorns of a false position. Does he or does 
 he not see the cause ? I^o one knows. He never, 
 whether to family or friends, uses any other word 
 save bad luck. 
 
 False positions as regards friends, acquaintance, 
 household, are full of interest. Consider the count- 
 less irritating results of taking a servant of bad 
 manners, of slovenly habits, of a chattering tongue, 
 of any one of those characteristics of which a sen- 
 sitive mind must detect the signs in a first inter- 
 view. You did notice them, but in an unlucky 
 moment of specious mental calculation allowed 
 reference to bear the palm over innate conviction. 
 Instead of following the latter unfailing guide, you 
 weakly yielded to somebody else's judgment. The 
 servant stayed with that somebody several years ; 
 hence must have good qualities, etc. False reason- 
 ing leads to false positions. You take the servant, 
 and from the first day to the last are annoyed, 
 
98 FALSE POSITIONS. 
 
 nagged, irritated, mortified, by precisely those char- 
 acteristics whose signs you read in the first inter- 
 view. 
 
 Easy enough to get rid of an objectionable ser- 
 vant ? ]N'ot so ; especially one well recommended. 
 A w^oman has a proper pride in not changing ser- 
 vants, a kindly interest in the one taken, a wish to 
 do what is fair and just to inferiors in station. To 
 describe the domestic tortures endured from con- 
 tact with a single coarse-natured servant w^ould be 
 impossible. It is a something to be felt, not de- 
 scribed. But a servant may be trained, taught, 
 improved ? Yes, but the nature of a servant can 
 no more be changed than can your own. And 
 reading yourself, you are forced to confess that in 
 the main points you are the same to-day as at the 
 beginning. If you were dreamy and indolent as 
 child, you are so as man, as woman; you are the 
 same in all the gradations of mental or moral con- 
 stitution. To refuse to obey mental instincts is for 
 yourself a series of daily exasperations. The char- 
 acter of a servant cannot be changed by training 
 or preaching. In spending your strength on the 
 hopeless task you but place yourself in another 
 false position. You are the harsh, hard mistress, 
 always finding fault, never satisfied, whereas, in 
 very truth, these results are but the inevitable 
 
FALSE POSITIONS. 99 
 
 clashings of your fine-grained nature with the 
 coarse one of your ill-chosen servant. 
 
 Another false position into which you may easily 
 get, is that of confidante to an unhappy friend. It 
 begins with sympathy on your part for certain mis- 
 fortunes. You listen, you give earnest attention, 
 heart-felt condolence; you are prompted to help 
 with advice, with means, with influence, with every 
 instrument within reach. This continues, goes into 
 years and years, until finally you are rudely awak- 
 ened from your dream of faithful friendship. You 
 discover that your friend's unhappiness is chronic. 
 His trials are not peculiar to himself but to the 
 race, his misfortunes are but the consequences of 
 his own unbalanced mind or perverted tempera- 
 ment. The case is a hopeless one, yet the moral 
 invalid cannot see it, is unable to grasp the fact, 
 clearly visible to others. 
 
 Society has plenty of these hopeless cases. The 
 one important lesson here is the efifect upon your- 
 self of this false position. Powerless to assist in 
 any tangible sense, you are yet drained to the 
 core by the incessant demand upon your sympa- 
 thies. Your position, doubtless, is ameliorated by 
 your discovery of its falseness, but you cannot 
 escape its miseries. At best, it can serve as a 
 
100 FALSE POSITIONS. 
 
 warning for future cases. To be drawn into a 
 friendship through sympathy instead of through 
 mental affinity results in many curious and vexa- 
 tious complications. 
 
 Here before you is a woman, living in the three- 
 fold misery of semi-poverty, dependence, and bitter 
 hatred towards the dead, — the last an ugly flaw 
 in a character otherwise admirable. It was en- 
 gendered by selfish extravagance on the part of a 
 mother. Left a widow with an ample portion for 
 self and children, she had, slice by slice, devoured 
 the capital intended to insure lifelong comfort 
 for all. The daughter never forgave the mother 
 this crime, as she calls it, and as she will continue 
 to call it until the end. To that alone, she cries, 
 I owe this my false position in life. My sense of 
 human justice does not permit of forgiveness for 
 the long series of cruelties thus inflicted upon me. 
 
 Yet, looked at by other eyes, not obscured by 
 hatred, her position appears different. Pride of 
 birth, love of ease, extravagant habits, — these, in 
 reality, are the causes of this woman's present 
 false position. These and one more important 
 factor, — that bitter hatred for the parent who was 
 the primal, but not the absolute, cause. This sen- 
 timent, overrunning everything, as a sentiment 
 easily may when unchecked by reason, — the power 
 
FALSE POSITIONS. IQl 
 
 to appreciate both sides, the enemy's as well as 
 our own, — this hatred finding a vent in invective, 
 poured incessantly upon ears friendly and other- 
 wise, may bring about social estrangement. So- 
 ciety has its own special sins and their inevitable 
 Nemesis. One thing, however, it preserves in- 
 tact, — a delicate sense of fitness. This, applied to 
 sentiment, makes disrespect to parents a breach of 
 propriety not to be forgiven. 
 
HELP FOE THE AMATEUR AUTHOE. 
 
 Why should you write ? is asked. Why should 
 anybody voluntarily write? Is there not already 
 enouoch, more than enous^h, of all thins-s written ? 
 So I thought in former years, but I do not think so 
 to-day. On the contrary, it seems to me that never 
 can there be too much of written thoughts, emo- 
 tions, sentiments, of mental conflicts, reverses, fail- 
 ures, victories. 
 
 'No one can divine what kind of written message 
 may prove helpful to another. You turn over a 
 page of a seemingly weak, useless book that by 
 chance has come into your hand. Suddenly you 
 note a sentence that attracts your interest, that 
 starts you off on an intellectual or ethical tramp 
 that proves of infinite benefit. Yesterday you 
 turned over one of those pages. The subject 
 written about had been worn threadbare, so you 
 thought at the outset. But presently the triteness 
 disappeared and you found a disagreeable truth be- 
 coming fixed upon your own personality. It was 
 102 
 
HELP FOR THE AMATEUR AUTHOR. 103 
 
 a mental flagellation needed to bring back your 
 vagrant imagination to the straight, solid plane of 
 actual life. It drove you into reflection, into wres- 
 tling with facts versus fancies. 
 
 The teaching intended for another had struck 
 home to you. The fantasy your own reason sternly 
 rebuked, but could not vanquish, suddenly received 
 an effectual blow from an outside source. Help 
 came, the tension was relieved, the conflict between 
 imagination and reality subsided. Therefore you, 
 my reader, who have all your life been given to 
 meditation, will surely say with me most heartily. 
 There cannot be too much expression of thought 
 in writing. "Write, write, continue to write, ye w^ho 
 feel it in you so to do. Let the pages go as they 
 are, crude, rough it may be, but perhaps suggestive. 
 Let them go together with the dreams of those 
 hours when they were written. Then life ahead 
 seemed delightfully long, overflowing with all sorts 
 of possibilities. The years are slipping by full 
 enough of opportunities, — slipping by, soon to be 
 gone forever. How much is left? perhaps you 
 question. J^ot much, at best, reason tells you. 
 This present moment now in your hand is all that 
 is certainty. Let them go, those odd pages, sketches, 
 or what not, intended for future use, future finish- 
 ing. Let them go forth in their triteness, their sin- 
 
104 HELP FOR THE AMATEUR AUTHOR. 
 
 cerity, perhaps only outlines of what once stood 
 completed before your mind. 
 
 But suddenly, it may be, the aspect of life changes. 
 Dreams no longer satisfy, reality must be touched, 
 grasped, held. Not what has been wished for, 
 craved, — no, this has gone as something purely 
 imaginative, as intangible as the blue ether above 
 you. Imagination plays us odd freaks. Until re- 
 cently perhaps it has been your will-o'-the-wisp, 
 leading you, ay, goading you into every path save 
 the tangible one of reality. IN'ow, youth gone, it is 
 serving you another trick — or purpose. It drives 
 you into feeling that life is coming near the close, — 
 that if anything is to come out of it, the life lived, 
 you must quickly let go the intentions and cravings 
 that once ruled you. 
 
 What lies there in those papers stored away for 
 future use represents yourself. It is the best you 
 could do at the time, whether last year or yester- 
 day. What more do you want ? Your craving for 
 something better, higher, nobler, more beautiful, 
 has kept you all these long years in bondage. 
 Give out now, to-day, what you have written. Do 
 not wait for the impossible, — in other words, for 
 your ideal, for what you think you could do better. 
 You may, perhaps, have no system in your mind. 
 
HELP FOR THE AMATEUR AUTHOR. 105 
 
 If SO, why try to make the world believe you have 
 what you have not ? System in writing is a good 
 thing, but good only when it is natural to the per- 
 son. Your system, however, or rather the lack of 
 it, would not be natural, and therefore would be 
 stiff, forced. 
 
 Poor, sensitive amateur author! You shrink 
 from sending to the publisher your bescribbled 
 crooked manuscript. You cannot bear the thought 
 of having such rough copy exposed to general 
 view in that big business house, beginning with 
 the literary reader and ending with the composi- 
 tor. You see them in your mind laughing at your 
 scrawls. You want to avoid this if you can. But 
 how? By rewriting sundry pages? Away with 
 such folly ! Have you not yet had humiliations 
 enough branded on your personality ? Enough of 
 these mistaken ideas. More than enough of the 
 finical weakness that mars the palpable end ! Let 
 go your manuscript I Whatever its look or its 
 substance, let it go as it is ! Suppose they do smile 
 or sneer. Can that hurt your manuscript, interfere 
 with the birth of your book ? Away with such 
 childish pettiness ! Once and for all time be your- 
 self, come what will. 
 
AN AMATEUE AUTHOE'S IMPEDIMEl^TA. 
 
 Day-dreams, delusions, illusions, impossibilities, — 
 are these, at last, recognized as impedimenta ? If 
 so, light begins to dawn, and that is at least a 
 beginning of progress. Here are some of an 
 amateur author's impedimenta : too many-sided a 
 character for strength; the tastes possibly of an 
 aristocrat, personally and socially ; the thoughts of 
 a student, an observer, a moralist, a critic, a pro- 
 ducer; the feelings of an artist, innate dislike of 
 straight lines, of prosaic utility, of stiiF, cold, color- 
 less people and things ; a craving for beauty, grace, 
 perfection of form and movement. Yes, all of these 
 are hinderances to mental life. 
 
 The amateur author in most instances fails to 
 live earnestly. Living in earnest is easy to talk 
 about. But doing it, — ah, try that for a single day, 
 and tell the result. One tremendous fact there is 
 to begin with. The idea of living in earnest must 
 be one's own property, not borrowed. This idea, 
 then, is a something born in one, always haunting, 
 always vexing, always tormenting. We cannot 
 
 106 
 
AN AMATEUR AUTHOR'S IMPEDIMENTA. 107 
 
 remember a time in our earliest child-life when it 
 was not in us. Call it music, call it art, call it liter- 
 ary aims, anything that means one's very self. 
 
 Has your past life been a failure ? If so, it is be- 
 cause instead of living in earnest, in accord with 
 your own idea, the native-born sacred vitality in 
 yourself, you have lived a mixed life. What other 
 people expected of you was much more earnestly 
 done than what your native mental instincts de- 
 manded. The past cannot be lived over again. 
 But the lesson — the bitter, hard, precious lesson — 
 of the past, keep that ! It is hard-won, but priceless. 
 It is the one thing that makes your living in earnest 
 to-day a glorious possibility. 
 
 To be numbered among impedimenta is the 
 lack of favorable conditions for mental work. By 
 such conditions the amateur writer understands 
 leisure, freedom from petty annoyances, domestic 
 and otherwise. That the mind shall work normally, 
 in brief, it is to be protected from the irritating 
 influences of daily prosaic life. First, household 
 companions may be entirely non-sympathetic as to 
 one's aims and pursuits. They listen more or less 
 patiently: politely would not be the right word. 
 Much easier for strangers to be polite, implying, 
 as the word does, concealment of real thought or 
 feeling. Hearing you speak of your literary aims, 
 
108 ^N AMATEUR AUTHORS IMPEDIMENTA. 
 
 for instance, a friend or an acquaintance would in- 
 stinctively repress his actual opinion of your ability 
 or disability. 
 
 Politeness is a semblance of all that is gentle, 
 sympathetic, acquiescent. It is this that makes 
 intercourse with strangers so much more agreeable 
 than that with domestic companions. The latter 
 may be incredulous as to your aims and pursuits 
 simply because they have seen so many of your 
 failures. As soon as they see any tangible results 
 of your mental life they will believe in it. There- 
 fore do not talk at home of your wishes, your 
 thoughts, your ambitions. Write instead of talk- 
 ing. Put the best part of yourself into writing. 
 There you are certain of your listener. Even if the 
 most caustic of critics, he must read carefully before 
 he attacks. 
 
 Impedimenta in yourself, impedimenta through 
 others, impedimenta through sickness, accidents, 
 travelling, impedimenta through disasters private 
 or public, — all these must have your closest study 
 before you can understand them. After the grasp- 
 ing of these varied impedimenta comes the con- 
 quering of them. There are many people to-day 
 quite old in years while so child-like in mind as 
 
 to think they might have been famous if . 
 
 Each person has his own precious private catalogue 
 
AN AMATEUR AUTHOR'S IMPEDIMENTA. 109 
 
 of ifs to show in self-justification for non-cloing. It 
 helps such persons to bear their social disappoint- 
 ment, their commercial bankruptcy, their art, lit- 
 erary, or stage failure. For the old there is often 
 nothing left to live on except these ifs. It would be 
 cruel to shake their belief. Better that they should 
 die in error than to recognize too late that life- 
 failure has been owing to their own ignorance. 
 
 For the young and for the middle-aged, however, 
 there is much to be done by way of help. Let them 
 learn first the meaning of impedimenta. Let them 
 get it thoroughly into their minds, into their actions, 
 into their whole personality. Only after that can 
 they, with mingled humility and earnestness, teach 
 others the meaning of impedimenta. To young 
 men and women who possess mental gifts an im- 
 mense importance attaches to first advisers. As in 
 music, in art, in foreign languages, the first teacher 
 is the all-important one. From him comes the 
 principle which is to develop the germ in the 
 scholar. Whether that germ be big or little, we 
 still need the best teacher for the first lessons. 
 
 So is it in literary life. You who begin need the 
 strongest teacher. By strongest, I mean the one 
 who starts from the very root of things, from your- 
 self, one who will make you feel that impedimenta 
 of infinite variety are a part of your life, of every 
 
110 AN AMATEUR AUTHOR'S IMPEDIMENTA. 
 
 life ; one who will convince you that progress is sim- 
 ply a steady, daily working in spite of impedimenta. 
 Imagination is often the source of literary failure. 
 Possessing a fair amount of imagination, one may 
 become interested in so many things that he fails 
 to do any one thing well. He is too many-sided 
 to develop fully any one side. He is attracted by 
 nature, by art, by people, by domestic or useful 
 occupations, — in brief, by everything the world 
 offers. An amateur author, then, if many-sided, 
 rarely produces any good work. The same mind 
 forced to work for bread would have produced a 
 hundredfold more. 
 
 When the amateur author is a woman, the im- 
 pedimenta are still more numerous. A sensitive 
 woman is usually timid, self-distrustful, therefore 
 yielding to those around her. She, for instance, 
 with a strong mental life persistently goading her 
 to produce, is yet hindered to an incredible extent 
 by family ties, — this assuming, of course, that her 
 family, say husband or brother, cannot be in exact 
 mental accord with her. Self-distrust, too, has a 
 peculiarly harassing effect on a woman of strong 
 mental organization. Thinking incessantly without 
 the natural outlet of production causes a damaging 
 overflow. 
 
AN AMATEUR AUTHORS IMPEDIMENTA, m 
 
 For instance, such a woman writes because she 
 cannot help it, but self-distrust makes her deem her 
 writing of no value for publication. She writes 
 and writes, but underrates her work. She shrinks 
 from seeking a market for it simply because of self- 
 distrust. This arises from what phrenologists call 
 small hope and large reverence. In a woman shel- 
 tered from rude contact wdth the world it produces 
 great respect for other people's ability, judgment, 
 wishes. From childhood to old age there is ahvays 
 the tendency to believe others better and wiser than 
 they are. 
 
 Writing of impedimenta, another big obstacle 
 comes to mind, — womanly pride in household mat- 
 ters ! How much mental life has an amateur au- 
 thor, if a woman, lost through that pride ! She 
 can estimate only too clearly, too nearly. She can- 
 not put that estimate into words, but she feels it, 
 a sharp, grinding, torturing instrument of self- 
 reproach. 
 
 Womanly pride ! Let her look at it boldly, fear- 
 lessly, and avow its results. Desire for an ideal 
 household ! That was the beginning. How long 
 ago ? When she first felt the pressure of responsi- 
 bility, at intervals in girlhood, afterwards during 
 longer periods in womanhood. Her native ideality 
 touched by household matters resulted in this, — a 
 
112 AN AMATEUR AUTHOR'S IMPEDIMENTA. 
 
 craving for spotlessness, prettiness, comfort for 
 highest and lowest about yon. 
 
 Domestic economy, under the modest alias of 
 home, seemed to be her first and most serious duty. 
 Until those endless petty recurring demands were 
 satisfied she thought it wrong to heed mental aspira- 
 tions. They were stoically thrust aside, compelled 
 to wait until home was in order. Ideality turned 
 towards the practical brings about this result, — a 
 many-sided creature, good for nothing in particular. 
 
 In a man it makes the vacillating, spasmodic, 
 erratic worker. He begins life ardently, tries many 
 things, ends in failure. In the woman it causes 
 ceaseless striving without accomplishing, ending in 
 cutting self-reproach. Ideality makes her see the 
 ought-to-be in domestic life, while that same ideality 
 hinders the doing of the ought-to-be-done. Result, 
 — clashing of thoughts, emotions, regrets, humilia- 
 tions. 
 
 The awaking from this day-dream — yes, it may 
 come after a while, but it may be late, very late, 
 for life-work. Impedimenta recognized are not so 
 easily thrown off. Family affections, conscience, 
 mental aims, social duties, so called, are a hamper- 
 ing to mental development, at once positive and 
 galling as chains. All these subject to ideality 
 make early womanhood a ceaseless struggle. Had 
 
AN AMATEUR AUTHORS IMPEDIMENTA. 113 
 
 hope been lost she could not have lived at all. Her 
 hope was to finish her practical duties and thus gain 
 the privilege of the non-practical author-life. Poor 
 little woman ! Timid, self-distrustful, humble to 
 excessive self-humiliation, she drags through all her 
 young-womanhood with these leading impedimenta 
 on body and soul. 
 
 Out of that suffering comes the truth that women 
 of such temperament should hear : Live your own 
 life bravely. Accept the penalties of that living, — 
 viz., harsh thoughts, bitter words, cruel slanders, all 
 the mental kicks and moral buffe tings that come 
 from the unthinking crowd. Bear everything, and 
 never give up trying to live your own life bravely. 
 Conscience is as likely to go astray in one direction 
 as in another. It may make bad seem good to 
 you. Most of us could recall countless occa- 
 sions when conscience, so called, led us away from 
 mental pursuits. Study was the work nature fitted 
 you for and urged you to do. It was therefore 
 your simple duty to keep on and on in that direc- 
 tion. But if you were a timid young girl, a self- 
 distrustful woman, were driven to and fro, now by 
 conscience, now by ideality, until finally you grew 
 into that strange character called a complex woman. 
 Your native qualities beaten and battered out of 
 shape, you could not appear otherwise than complex. 
 
114 AN AMATEUR AUTHOR'S IMPEDIMENTA. 
 
 Mental gymnastics are likewise impedimenta to 
 mental life. The amateur author has had more 
 than enough exercise of that sort. No wonder that 
 his writings are scrappy, jerky, helter-skelter. 
 Mental gymnastics are useful when taken moder- 
 ately. To continue them daily, hourly, is to spend 
 one's strength aimlessly. Taking numberless notes 
 is one most popular form of mental gymnastics in 
 which the amateur author indulges. 
 
 Too many notes are as crippling to the author as 
 too many models are to the artist. Suggestion is in 
 itself good, but over-suggestion results in a super- 
 fluity that ends in despair. The artist who knows 
 the art of finishing takes one model, not fifty, at a 
 time. The author does the same. Instead of heap- 
 ing up notes, he writes on one theme until the pages 
 take some sort of shape, and then lets them go, 
 polished or otherwise : the " otherwise" usually 
 makes the best w^ork, the kind that wins human 
 hearts. 
 
 Have you fallen into the pernicious habit of taking 
 notes ? Do you now and then, in a fit of virtuous 
 love of order, set to work to arrange, classify those 
 notes ? And all the time, while doing it, are you 
 protesting against the drudgery, vexing your mind 
 with the varied subjects rising up and spreading out 
 one after the other, one running into the other, 
 
AN AMATEUR AUTHOR'S IMPEDIMENTA. II5 
 
 overlapping confusedly, interminably, hopelessly? 
 Finally, after hours of arranging, so called, what is 
 the result ? Instead of one chapter in progress or 
 ended, you see before your wearied eyes a shapeless 
 mass of notes. Your brain is bewildered, irritated, 
 with the hydra-headed work, and in sheer disgust 
 flings itself into any frivolity as a relief from that 
 painful mental pressure. 
 
A LITERARY WOMAN'S WORST MISFORTUNE. 
 
 "What is it? Can it be missing matrimony? 
 No. Losing her fortune? No. Losing health? 
 No. Losing beauty ? No. Now, these are all very 
 serious, even lamentable, losses, but by no means 
 the worst. Missing matrimony is undoubtedly 
 what the world calls a dead failure. It looks upon 
 you with pity, yes, even as being unfortunate. A 
 long list of disadvantages arising therefrom, begin- 
 ning with the physical and ending with the moral, 
 might be adduced in proof. Somewhat the same 
 might be stated of losing fortune, of losing health, 
 of losing beauty. 
 
 But among misfortunes in general there is 
 always one that is the worst, as you yourself look 
 at it. I mean you, the woman of quick wit, 
 sensitive, of liberal education, of student tastes 
 and habits. Your worst misfortune is to find 
 yourself at middle age in a false social position. 
 Being there, you are without the companions — 
 friends so called — who belong to your kind of 
 character. An artist naturally has artist— or 
 116 
 
A LITERARY WOMAN'S WORST MISFORTUNE. 117 
 
 artistic — friends, not exclusively, but chiefly. So 
 it is throughout all ranks of genius, ability, pro- 
 fession, commerce, and the like. 
 
 You, then, the woman of literary qualities with- 
 out the production that usually follows, are in a 
 false position. Your printed works — whatever 
 their intrinsic value — known to the world, would 
 have brought to you certain acknowledgment. 
 Whether praise or censure or even cold indiflfer- 
 ence, your social position, at least, would have been 
 fixed. Being there, you doubtless could gradually 
 have formed a circle of friends. The stronger, the 
 more fearless your writings, the better established 
 your position. Your friends at home, your corre- 
 spondents abroad, your acquaintances everywhere, 
 would all be on a social plane. Knowing your 
 writings, people would know your character, be 
 repelled or attracted in accordance. In brief, 
 ^' like attracts like." To have near you the 
 friends you admire and love — people of both sexes 
 with whom you are en rapport — you must show 
 yourself mentally as you really are. To paint pic- 
 tures and hide them away in a closet would never 
 bring to an artist his two great needs, — self-develop- 
 ment and companionship. 
 
 You, would-be literary woman, who are so 
 situated as to be forced to talk, to occupy a place 
 
118 A LITERARY WOMAN'S WORST MISFORTUNE. 
 
 in society, to visit, to travel, to stay at home, 
 to correspond, — to do all these things contrary to 
 your natural self, — are enduring a woman's worst 
 misfortune. Whether your own fault now or the 
 fault originally of circumstances, matters little. 
 To trace misfortunes to a primal source is some- 
 times useful. The object here is simply to state a 
 fact in woman's social life. Eeasons for your false 
 position could of course be given, such as lack of 
 confidence in your native ability, in your training, 
 in your power to reach the heart of your contem- 
 poraries. But a truce to reasons. They belong to 
 another day, to another chapter. 
 
WHERE, WHEN, AND HOW TO WEITE. 
 
 A MIND of great sensitiveness often fancies that 
 writing out-doors would be exceedingly easy. But 
 upon trial it generally fails. Sky, atmosphere, birds, 
 trees, rocks, water, everything in external nature 
 affects such a mind like human faces and voices, 
 utterly preventing connected thought. The author 
 dreams, meditates, feels, but is under too much ex- 
 citement to write. For this last he must be in-doors, 
 in a room furnished mainly with books, the only 
 companionship that does not interfere with indi- 
 vidual thinking. N'ature maybe dearly loved, — we 
 may revel in the warm sunlight, the cool breeze, 
 the unfathomable firmament, the mysteries of vege- 
 tation, the ten thousand charms which each day and 
 hour unfold themselves to the appreciative mind, — 
 and yet love one other thing better. This thing is 
 the luxury called thinking. 
 
 Too much thought interferes with execution. 
 
 There are many to-day who would write more 
 
 readily if their minds were less wealthy. The 
 
 laws which govern the intellect are as unerring as 
 
 119 
 
120 WHERE, WHEN, AND HOW TO WRITE. 
 
 those which govern the physical world. In the first 
 place, intellect must be allowed unrestrained exer- 
 cise for its varied powers. Coercion, uncongenial 
 employment, or overtaxing must be conscientiously 
 avoided. Thought suggests thought. Hence the 
 incalculable value of communion with other minds, 
 although both reading and conversation must be 
 prized more for what they inspire than for their 
 direct information. 
 
 Thinking upon one topic frequently elucidates 
 another, and in all difficult questions there should 
 be great care not to worry or drudge. If a result 
 cannot be seen clearly, it must be set aside until the 
 mind has had an interval of rest. Enlightenment 
 often comes when least expected and under most 
 peculiar circumstances. By closely observing such 
 phenomena we learn the uselessness of forcing a 
 comprehension, be the subject what it may. 
 
 Intellect, with its innumerable subtleties and am- 
 plifications, must be taken as it is, and its weakness 
 no less than its strength skilfully handled. Mental 
 labor under healthful conditions is a source of calm 
 delight. When this is not the case, we may know 
 there has been imprudence, fatigue, or hurtful in- 
 dulgence. Much has been said about the discipline 
 of the intellect. It has its value, undoubtedly, but 
 it is often over-estimated. What does genius know 
 
WHERE, WHEN, AND HOW TO WRITE. 121 
 
 about discipline ? Is not the instinct of intellect, 
 like that of conscience, worth a thousand times 
 more than any teaching of school or of philosopher ? 
 Nature is the sole teacher who is wholly reliable. 
 Her ways are seldom the ways of men. Her direc- 
 tions are : first, to comprehend ; second, to develop ; 
 third, to use ; and fourth, to consecrate. 
 
 Each master in art, literature, or science origi- 
 nates his own method, one different from but better 
 suited to him than any other before heard of. The 
 various modes of working in the intellectual world 
 are most curious and instructive. Even among 
 minds of the highest order, no two follow the same 
 plan in the search for results. We should write 
 when moved to it, and at no other time. What 
 matters it if the work be crude, unfinished, un- 
 polished ? Is there anything in art which can be 
 pronounced finished ? 
 
 Why, then, all this lament about want of method, 
 application, concentration? The mind — i.e., the 
 soul — must work out its own salvation. If with 
 joy and hopefulness, it is well. If with fear and 
 trembling, we dare not murmur. One who writes 
 from inspiration cannot know what is to be his sub- 
 ject for the day. Is not the highest kind of writing 
 that which will do most for the author and most 
 for the reader ? As the past has been, so will the 
 
 9 
 
122 WHERE, WHEN, AND HOW TO WRITE. 
 
 future be. E'atural laws reassert themselves con- 
 tinually. 
 
 Looking around us to-day, do we not take in at a 
 glance all the works that will live beyond their age ? 
 If a book is to live it must represent not one man's 
 thoughts, but all men's thoughts. It must depict 
 not one age, but all ages. It must indicate not one 
 narrow line of conduct, but one broad enough for all 
 mankind to tread. It matters not which vehicle of 
 thought be chosen, whether essay, history, romance, 
 or poetry. The indispensable condition is that it 
 define principles applicable to man everywhere, 
 throughout all time. 
 
 The subject and the mode of expression once 
 chosen, change of scene, of habits, and of surround- 
 ings should be studiously avoided, l^othing is more 
 injurious to the intellect than being forced to take 
 in new impressions, see strange sights, or partake 
 of social amusements. The more secluded the life 
 of a writer, the more reliable his reflections. But 
 prior to this seclusion there must have been actual 
 'experiences of life, a living in the world and min- 
 gling with all varieties of characters. 
 
 He who would write thoughts which are to reach 
 the souls of his fellow-creatures must live as it were 
 a hundred lives. He must see much, feel strongly, 
 suffer acutely. He must realize in his own life the 
 
WHERE, WHEN, AND HOW TO WRITE. 123 
 
 extremes of joy and sorrow. He must evince the 
 power of fathoming the profoundest mysteries of 
 the soul. 
 
 In describing what he discovers, there must be 
 no mechanical effort, no labored eifect. All that 
 comes within the range of sensibility, passion, or 
 ideality must be felt and understood before it can 
 be adequately represented in print. IS'othing can 
 be described at will. All must be first known and 
 felt. 
 
 One who devotes himself to writing as to an art 
 should never write a line unless inspired. When 
 ITature urges us to a certain course she means some- 
 thing which we shall do well to heed. Inspiration 
 must be gladly welcomed at whatever hour she may 
 be pleased to present herself, and treated with the 
 utmost gentleness and delicacy. If any odd hour 
 could be used for the doing of the mind's behests, 
 such easy conquests would lose their value. Can 
 the musician compose by rule ? labor to express a 
 melody, break off, and renew it again at will ? Im- 
 possible ! He must, on the contrary, woo his muse 
 with most patient assiduity and count self-sacrifice 
 as joy, ere he can hope to win her gracious smiles. 
 To be limited in time, to know that at a certain 
 hour interruption will come, is enough to mar the 
 conceptions of a sensitive mind. Irritated, vexed, 
 
124 WHERE, WHEN, AND HOW TO WRITE. 
 
 despairing, it feels that without more independence 
 of character, more firmness to will and to do, its 
 object will never be attained. 
 
 A mind in a healthful condition never dreams of 
 asking, How much ability? How much can be 
 done ? Of what value ? It regards authorship as 
 simply the expression of ideas, principles, and fan- 
 cies which have been given by an unseen Giver. 
 It is not responsible for the abilities given, but only 
 for the use of them. 
 
 The new author has one great difficulty to con- 
 tend with. Whatever he writes with a view to 
 possible publication becomes formal, stiff, prosy, 
 different, so it seems to him, from what he writes 
 for his own eye. He feels a restraint similar to 
 that experienced by a sensitive man when in gen- 
 eral company. Thoroughly at ease when alone or 
 tete-a-tete with a friend, when in a crowd he is at 
 once conscious of restraint and discomfort. The 
 very differences of mind and character which he 
 instinctively perceives check his natural flow of 
 spirits. To a young author of sensitive mould the 
 public is a miscellaneous crowd which he shrinks 
 from mingling with. 
 
 Reproduction is one of the dangers into which a 
 young author is popularly supposed to be likely to 
 
WHERE, WHEN, AND HOW TO WRITE. 125 
 
 fall. He reads much, he is easily impressed. How 
 easy, then, exclaim his critics, to reproduce ! Must 
 it not be difficult to detach his own thoughts from 
 those of the masters he studies ? Upon this point 
 the author himself, if honest, must be the best 
 judge. When such a one speaks, it may be thus : 
 " Listen, dear critics, and believe me, if you can. If 
 you cannot, so much the worse, — not for me, but 
 for you. Eeproduction is a matter about which I 
 give myself no concern whatsoever." 
 
 " So much the more danger," says the critic. 
 
 " Perhaps so ; nevertheless, it is extremely pleas- 
 ant to be able to tell you that upon one point at 
 least my mind is wholly free from doubt and ap- 
 prehension. To any one else it might sound like 
 self-assurance, conceit, inflation, or what not. But 
 to you my thoughts flow out as to one before whom 
 there need be no more reserve than with myself. 
 I want your candid opinion of my work ; and how 
 can you give me this unless you know me as I am ? 
 So sure am I that my thoughts, sentiments, and 
 observations are my own, belonging to me by right 
 of nature, that the bare suggestion of obtaining 
 them from any other source calls up a smile of — 
 for me — unusual self-complacency. Would that I 
 were as sure of all else as of this fiict ! Whence 
 this intense, ever-present desire to meditate, if there 
 
126 WHERE, WHEN, AND HOW TO WRITE. 
 
 is no power within to conceive and produce? 
 Whence these ardent feelings, these earnest long- 
 ings, these profound regrets, if they do not origi- 
 nate within ? 
 
 " 'No, dear critic ; whatever resemblance my 
 thought may bear to that of another arises solely 
 from the affinity of mind and soul. I am not 
 tempted to steal, because already in possession of 
 more than I can well dispose of Once, I admit, 
 the fear of reproduction did exist in my mind, 
 for I could not avoid being struck with certain re- 
 semblances of thought and style. But after care- 
 fully sounding mind and conscience, analyzing all 
 that entered my mental laboratory, I unhesitatingly 
 enunciated the words, Il^ot guilty." 
 
 Upon the whole, this question of reproduction is 
 deeply interesting from a psychological point. How 
 far other minds act upon our own must always be 
 a matter of serious consideration. Nature unques- 
 tionably means that there shall be resemblances in 
 all her children. But in mental no less than in 
 physical attributes the variety in resemblances may 
 be infinite. In studying the records of other minds 
 we are continually coming upon thoughts that 
 startle us with their affinity to our own. Strange, 
 we murmur, I thought the same long ago. Yet 
 
WHERE, WHEN, AND HOW TO WRITE. 127 
 
 I never saw this man nor heard his sentiments 
 before. How does it happen that I find here my 
 own secret thought and cherished feeling expressed 
 by another ? 
 
 This meeting with congenial thoughts is the first 
 incentive to the habit of making quotations. Certain 
 ideas or sentiments make an impression. Without 
 stopping to ask why, we are seized with a desire to 
 transcribe and keep them near us. Page after page 
 of a book may be read with interest possibly, but 
 without any marked effect. Suddenly, without 
 apparent cause, we come upon a sentence which 
 attracts, rivets, electrifies. In this fact lies the 
 proof that the great advantage of reading is less 
 in what it actually gives us than in what it enables 
 us to do for ourselves. 
 
 In a book, picked up carelessly, it may be, we 
 read on until attention is fixed by a force beyond 
 our control upon a certain passage. Instantly 
 arises a desire to think and write upon the subject 
 suggested. In all this the will has no influence; 
 the desire, although excited by a fact or thought, 
 in reality arises from the character of the writer 
 himself. As his organization is, so he observes, 
 thinks, and feels ; but the ability to derive nutriment 
 from the thoughts of others without infringing 
 upon their domain depends upon moral force. 
 
THE BEST WEITING. 
 
 The scholar desires to have his researches stamped 
 in the purest language of his country and age. 
 "Whoever helps to form the national taste in litera- 
 ture merits the gratitude of the world of letters. 
 Naturally, then, we look to authors as the best prac- 
 tical instructors in the art of writing. And among 
 them we give allegiance to those who by their 
 printed works prove their knowledge and skill. 
 
 The critic gives his opinions upon manner and 
 matter, calls our attention to beauties or deformities, 
 pronounces judgment as to conception and execu- 
 tion, leads the indolent, unthinking crowd about 
 him into his own special area of vision ; and where 
 scholarship and nobility of character are the basis 
 of criticism, we owe a debt of gratitude for such 
 assistance. Yet, for the unbiassed, independent 
 opinion each student wishes to acquire for his own 
 mental portion, there must be a direct application 
 to books themselves. 
 
 How far character is revealed in an author's 
 writings cannot be positively decided. Possibly 
 128 
 
THE BEST WRITING. 129 
 
 the simplest solution is to say, The written page 
 tells us of the spirit or real part of the author, 
 while it in no way enlightens us as to his mode of 
 life. Koble sentiments may be on the page, while 
 the actual life is in some particulars ignoble. Or 
 the page may contain much coarseness and indeli- 
 cacy, while the author lives an excellent life. 
 
 Writing is to the mind what manner is to the 
 person. It may give the impression of something 
 either far nobler or far meaner than really exists. 
 Some writers would have far more influence if their 
 mode of life were not known. We find it hard to 
 give our teachers the reverence their writings claim 
 when the actual life is found to be sadly out of har- 
 mony with the principles inculcated. 
 
 Publishing a book by no means implies confessing 
 to the public. The public, composed as it largely 
 is of unthinking people, must be regarded by the 
 author in the light of a miscellaneous audience. 
 Many minds of a high grade are doubtless there 
 assembled, ready to listen and criticise. These, 
 however, are in the minority. The majority con- 
 sists of minds less mature than his own, who 
 would, consequently, be startled and discomposed if 
 they heard many of his theories or deductions. An 
 author, then, would instinctively withhold many of 
 
130 ^^^ 5^5fr WRITING. 
 
 his thoughts, not because they are hurtful to man- 
 kind, but because many immature minds would fail 
 to comprehend them. 
 
 All men are different. Intellectually, morally, 
 we cannot find even two who have had precisely 
 the same advantages of endowment or culture. 
 Such differences are inevitable. And so are the im- 
 passable differences between intellects and hearts 
 inevitable. 'Eo student would think of discussing 
 religion with his coachman ; no woman in society 
 would touch upon the subject of social ethics w^ith 
 her cook ; although in both cases there might be 
 a thorough appreciation of their special services. 
 Many people who are on a social equality with the 
 author might be utterly unable to enter into his 
 thoughts and feelings. The majority, in every com- 
 munity, comprehend only what they have been in 
 the habit of thinking about. 
 
 To be abashed in the presence of others is to 
 acknowledge ourselves more ignorant, more foolish, 
 or more wicked than they. Who standing among 
 his peers feels any doubts of his own ability, any 
 apprehensions as to the effect his personality pro- 
 duces ? Come what will of it, a writer should put 
 himself into his works. Only thus can he bequeath 
 to the world the powers given to him in trust at 
 birth. During many years of life we live as do 
 
THE BEST WRITING. 131 
 
 other animals, without knowing why or wherefore. 
 But if we pass this stage and enter " upon a life 
 characterized by reason, we dare not falsify the 
 testimony which reflection and observation call 
 forth. What the individual sees, feels, and knows 
 must in some shape be handed over to other indi- 
 viduals. 
 
 Every earnest soul might speak thus : My experi- 
 ence has been different from that of some others. 
 So also are my natural qualifications, and these are 
 facts over which I have had neither choice nor con- 
 trol. Thus far there is no responsibility. But in 
 the next aspect of this subject emerges the feature 
 which decides action. I, the individual, because of 
 the very difference in faculties and circumstances, 
 am required to add my quota to the fund called 
 humanity. It may not greatly help, but this is not 
 my affair. A finite being is not expected to see 
 infinity. If my life is to be of any value to other 
 lives, it must be lived without the slightest calcu- 
 lation. I must follow my impulses because they 
 are mine, not because they are believed to lead to 
 a given end. Fearless, outspoken thoughts, then, 
 are the only ones worthy a place in literature. 
 Noble, pure lives are the only ones worthy of re- 
 membrance in the hearts of our fellow-creatures. 
 
OEIGINALITY m BEADING.* 
 
 In taking up a book to read, how often we are, 
 as with people, far too good-natured for our own 
 comfort ! If any one doubt this assertion, memory 
 will straightway give a list of all those persons who 
 have bored him during past years, but whom he 
 listened or talked to because he thought they ex- 
 pected it and would be hurt if they did not receive 
 such attention. So with certain books, which from 
 the first half-dozen pages weary or irritate us. In- 
 stead of closing them at once, we have plodded on, 
 chapter after chapter, partly from curiosity, but 
 more from courtesy towards the author, — the feel- 
 ing which shrinks from judging before all the facts 
 are fairly known. Thus we often spend hours over 
 books that give us nothing but fatigue. 
 
 What makes us read these prosy books ? Other 
 people, the voices coming through newspapers, 
 magazines, and similar unreliable sources. Should 
 this curiosity awakened about a book by some 
 chance word be studiously repressed ? Is it un- 
 
 * Written in 1869. 
 132 
 
ORIGINALITY IN READING. I33 
 
 pardonable folly to neglect what we know is real 
 mental nourishment for very doubtful amusement ? 
 For of all friends the mental ones have most power 
 over us ; they are, too, upon the whole, our safest, 
 most reliable guides. It matters not how or where 
 we meet them. We neither observe their dress 
 nor care for their circumstances. We are not afraid 
 of offending them, we can call upon them at any 
 hour or in any mood. 
 
 1^0 pleasure is so entirely satisfying as the gain- 
 ing of new ideas. Sometimes, in the most unex- 
 pected places, we come upon facts which every one 
 ought to know, but which, hitherto, have escaped 
 our observation. This, then, is the great advantage 
 of liberal reading, of knowing many authors, many 
 languages : in each we may find something we 
 have sought in vain elsewhere. In this we find 
 the answer to the question. Is it unpardonable to 
 neglect what we know is good for what may prove 
 to be doubtful amusement ? To be a thorough 
 reader, no lifetime suffices ; but even partial ac- 
 quaintance with books is a thousand times better 
 than none. 
 
 Especially should it be enjoined upon young 
 women to read more generously, to devote more 
 attention to substantial nourishment, history, biog- 
 raphy, philosophy, science. With none of these 
 
134 ORIGINALITY IN READING. 
 
 problems, of course, can they become thoroughly 
 acquainted, but their energies will be enlarged and 
 strengthened; they will become better fitted, in 
 all respects, to cope with the daily duties of home 
 and society. New ideas are absolutely essential to 
 a healthy development of character. The mind 
 cannot stand still ; if not nourished with a judicious 
 means of exercise, it will seize an injudicious one. 
 Our young women have not too much but too 
 little knowledge for the ordinary purposes of life. 
 No amount of prosperity can indemnify for a bar- 
 ren intellect. Women, especially, stand in need of 
 this precious elixir called culture, confined, as they 
 often are, to an unvaried routine of home duties. 
 
 What should one read, is an often-asked ques- 
 tion. In my own case, nothing, I believe, has so 
 helped my mental development as the reading of 
 biography. It is like having a circle of wise and 
 loving friends ready at all times to come forward 
 with help, instruction, and encouragement. I have 
 never yet read any life of man or woman that I did 
 not derive positive benefit therefrom, feel myself 
 enlightened, cheered, strengthened. In the main 
 characteristics men are more alike than they think : 
 hence the value of penetrating other minds and 
 discovering the springs of action, capacity of 
 
ORIGINALITY IN READING. 135 
 
 thought, moral calibre. From what horrid fears 
 have I not been relieved by the words of com- 
 fort spoken by these dear friends; from what 
 complications guarded, from what dangers pre- 
 served ! 
 
 From biography to history the transition is easy. 
 In looking at the past, whether it be one or five 
 hundred years ago, the first difficulty which pre- 
 sents itself is the immensity of the prospect. Lost 
 in wonder, the eye and mind wander over space, for 
 a time incompetent to make any special observa- 
 tions. By degrees, however, the whole scene be- 
 comes more familiar ; the gazer, according to his 
 state of mind, finds his attention attracted to cer- 
 tain points. The whole history of even one human 
 life can never be written. The longest term of 
 years, the fullest amount of industry, would not 
 suffice for the work. For thought is the occupa- 
 tion which — acknowledge it or not — fills up the 
 greatest part of that life. And who shall be found 
 gifted enough to describe that process? If, then, 
 the complete history of one human being cannot 
 be written, what shall be said of communities com- 
 posed of myriads of these same beings ? 
 
 "Were all the thinkers of an age to apply them- 
 selves to writing its history, but a small portion of 
 
136 ORIGINALITY IN READING. 
 
 it would see the light. However many volumes 
 the historian fills, they are, nevertheless, his own 
 version, — the facts, incidents, follies, reforms, as he 
 apprehended them. From a number of versions, 
 however, we learn various facts, hear varied expla- 
 nations, surmises, theories. These taken into our 
 own minds — not absorbed merely to be repro- 
 duced, but subjected to an honest process of reflec- 
 tion — gradually result in what we call opinions 
 and principles. To read history thus is to learn 
 from the mistakes, absurdities, and shortcomings 
 of past ages the lessons that may help to elucidate 
 the difficulties of our own day. 
 
 Each age manifests its individual progress. Its 
 strong and true souls, its workers, search out and 
 use all they are capable of managing. The de- 
 scendants of these true souls, whether blood-related 
 or humanly related, profit by the toils and sacrifices 
 of their predecessors. In every age man shows 
 a great aptness in adapting himself to change in 
 learning to look upon miracles as things of course. 
 Surrounded by the most striking evidences of man's 
 inventive skill, we have daily proof of the num- 
 bers of mysteries yet unexplored. The scientific 
 truths once penetrated by only a handful of supe- 
 rior minds are to-day familiarly discussed by every 
 one. 
 
ORIGINALITY IN READING. I37 
 
 As Hume well says, The good or ill accidents 
 of life are very little at our disposal ; but we are 
 pretty much masters of what books we shall read, 
 what diversions we shall partake of, and what com- 
 pany we shall keep. 
 
 Whatever you read, rely upon your personal 
 instinct, follow nature in your choice of books as 
 closely as in choosing your friends. Look over a 
 catalogue, in or out of a library, and select. You 
 will need no one to tell you which subject interests 
 you, — history, fiction, science, music, religion, 
 drama. No matter which one it is, follow im- 
 plicitly the mind's direction. Following this course 
 for a given number of years, you will have no diffi- 
 culty in deciding of what your mind is capable. 
 Originality in reading precedes originality in think- 
 ing. In your own choice of books, then, there can 
 be no doubt, no hesitation. As to advising other 
 people, consult not your own taste at all, but that 
 of those who ask your advice. Above all things 
 do not recommend authors, but individual books. 
 All authors worth the name have different moods, 
 which may be read between the lines in their books. 
 
 10 
 
PLEASUEE IN BOOKS* 
 
 To come into the study, to glance at the shelves 
 laden with their precious freight, naturally gives 
 rise to the thought. What should we do without 
 them ? How unspeakably dull and lonely we 
 should feel if lacking these companions ! How 
 they nourish, sustain, and delight ! Can, in fact, 
 any living companionship compare with the last- 
 ing pleasure books aiFord ? From fellowship with 
 other mortals one may gain much strength and 
 happiness. But in the close, intimate, uninter- 
 rupted communion which books give we cannot 
 help feeling ourselves wonderfully soothed and en- 
 lightened. All we desire to know — and how in- 
 satiable is the desire in a born reader ! — of heart, 
 intellect, experience, we find expressed clearly and 
 definitely. Then, too, the never-to-be ignored ad- 
 vantage of books is that we can have our mental 
 food when hungry. At times the mere thought of 
 discussing philosophy, theology, or psychology is 
 
 * Written in 1869. 
 138 
 
PLEASURE IN BOOKS. 139 
 
 utterly distasteful. Conversation, even with the 
 wisest and best of mankind, is only weariness at 
 such times. We are not in the mood for contact 
 with the world. Bat with books how different! 
 Here is no compulsion, no effort of will or of con- 
 science, no sense of courtesy or of obligation, but 
 a spontaneous giving up one's self to enjoyment at 
 the most favorable hour and opportunity. Without 
 fear of interrupting or molesting, we go to our 
 chosen friend and commune leisurely, delightfully. 
 Is there not less drawback here than in any other 
 form of earthly happiness ? 
 
 With Ruskin, for instance, one volume was suf- 
 ficient to show me the calibre of mind and heart, 
 to convince me that here was a friend in whom 
 I could trust. Some readers would have gone 
 steadily through one volume after another. N'ot 
 so with me. I felt strongly attracted, knew he was 
 my friend, felt sure I could call upon him at any 
 moment and get the needed strength, advice, and 
 inspiration. Yet I left him for the time being 
 to pay attention to others in whom a temporary 
 interest had been awakened, perhaps by some of 
 Euskin's own words. Is not this often the case ? 
 But, however many others we may become ac- 
 quainted with through such wanderings, the au- 
 thor who has led us into these mental by-paths 
 
140 PLEASURE IN BOOKS, 
 
 must always remain what he was at the first. It is 
 not true, as some one has stated, that certain authors 
 are at one time everything to us, but afterwards 
 they can do nothing more, — that for us their 
 work is finished. No ; like friends, their mission 
 is endless. Upon finding that heart and mind 
 assimilate, we yield to the influence and think 
 of the author ever afterwards as a most valued 
 companion. 
 
 Books, then, give us the best of life's benefits. 
 Here, and only here, can there be close intimacy 
 with the noblest intellects. However poor our 
 station, however mean our trade, we can still in 
 leisure hours associate with the aristocrats of 
 thought. There are born thinkers, just as there 
 are born musicians and artists. Yet in early stages 
 there are weary hours of doubt, painful ones of 
 struggle. At this juncture the experience of pre- 
 vious thinkers comes to the rescue. Whoever 
 devotes his life to thinking must of necessity ac- 
 quire special skill. Choosing a master, then, in the 
 subject that most interests us, let us look for one 
 who has the greatest natural aptitude combined with 
 the widest experience. Let us take what we read 
 into our own brain laboratory, study with due 
 earnestness, and then — reject or utilize according 
 to conviction. 
 
PLEASURE IN BOOKS. 141 
 
 To return to the pleasure found in books. It is 
 twofold, for not only is the present hour gratified, 
 but the future is provided for by enlightenment. 
 What a meagre, wretched, wearisome thing exist- 
 ence must be for one who has never known com- 
 munion with other minds ! ]^o wonder is it that 
 people grow weary of the routine of physical life, 
 and sufiTer under the pressure of petty, daily-recur- 
 ring cares and annoyances. If happiness be deemed 
 essential for every child that comes into the world, 
 let parents and friends look to it that the mind be 
 well cared for, — not forced, crammed, or misdi- 
 rected, but dealt with fairly, honestly, and tenderly. 
 
 How a book of bold exploration, of indomitable 
 labor, invigorates one ! Its effect upon the mental 
 organization is that of the cold plunge-bath upon 
 the physical : it creates a healthy nervous current. 
 We realize of what difficult things we, though 
 human, are capable. It matters little how many 
 books are written upon the same subject. Readers 
 are as numerous as writers, and various are the 
 ways by which the ear and heart are gained. People 
 cannot feel interest in the same things at the same 
 time. Certain books are read and talked about, 
 but, to our own surprise, we feel no desire to see 
 them. This is not necessarily indifference to the 
 subject. Cares are, perhaps, weighing upon us, 
 
142 PLEASURE IN BOOKS. 
 
 certain thoughts fill our minds to the exclusion of 
 all else, duties demand our time and energy. So 
 the book now passed by unnoticed is later read 
 with eagerness; the subject now uncared for be- 
 comes after a while the absorbing thought. 
 
 How little idea some people have of the true 
 pleasure, the real value, in books ! Otherwise could 
 they ask. Why do you have so many books ? have 
 you read through these many volumes in your 
 library? Surely you could not finish them in a 
 lifetime ! Why purchase more before reading 
 these? Such people do not in the least compre- 
 hend the often made statement, that books are like 
 friends. We want them with us, around us, even 
 though we cannot know all in their hearts and 
 minds. As well say, Content yourself with one 
 friend until you have searched him through and 
 through ; it is folly to know so many men partially ! 
 Books are society; the}^ take the place of real, lov- 
 ing, feeling, companionable people, a few of whom 
 it may be our good fortune to know intimately, 
 but with whom, for the most part, we can only be 
 on friendly terms, and know their style, manner, 
 tone. If a book has suggested only one idea, has 
 it not performed a mission to us ? But books, 
 even the purest and most ennobling, cannot bring 
 comfort, peace, pleasure, or entertainment when 
 
PLEASURE IN BOOKS. 143 
 
 the soul is out of tune. At such periods they 
 will all be left untouched, unopened, or at least 
 they will not be enjoyed. When the soul is dis- 
 turbed or is at war with itself, whatever be the 
 cause, it is a mockery to seek peace from without, 
 from other minds. With books, as with the other 
 delights and joys of life, time and place are 
 everything. 
 
 Shall we find our pleasure in the old books, or in 
 the new ? In both, I answer. A new book is as a 
 guest just arrived from a foreign land. We give 
 it the warmest, most courteous welcome of which 
 we are capable. If we have heard its name pre- 
 viously, our interest is doubled. We feel as if it 
 had brought us a letter of introduction. To a 
 genuine lover of books a new book has a peculiar 
 fascination. It is a revelation from another mind, 
 and this is in no degree lessened if the author is 
 known to us, either personally or by reputation. 
 We may have known him in society, in the busy 
 working world, or on the street. But in this par- 
 ticular phase we have never yet known him. Our 
 interest, then, is aroused to see in what manner he 
 conducts himself, whether he will be more or less 
 interesting, wise, or agreeable than we expected. 
 What genuine pleasure in carrying a new book 
 
144 PLEASURE IN BOOKS. 
 
 home, as a thing of which we know not yet the 
 value, but amuse ourselves by imagining the 
 contents ! 
 
 But do not, my reader, if you would have pleas- 
 ure in books, be guilty of that abominable habit 
 of marking them. What if you do admire cer- 
 tain passages, appreciate certain thoughts and sen- 
 timents. Can you not enjoy them and profit by 
 them without disfiguring the book by pencil-marks ? 
 Is your appreciation of the author enhanced by 
 soiling the pages? Even if you find a personal 
 gratification in so doing, cannot the reflection that 
 there are others into whose hands the book may 
 come after you restrain you from such inconsider- 
 ate conduct ? ^Nothing is more irritating to a true 
 lover of books than to read one that has been thus 
 treated. There is a perpetual desire to quarrel 
 with the previous reader, — a feeling aggravated by 
 every fresh mark as the pages are turned. 
 
PEOPLE OF THE BRAIN. 
 
 People of the brain are the only ones who are 
 entirely satisfying. Let me explain. The people 
 we love are the men and women we think about, 
 desire for friends, wives, husbands, companions; 
 men and women on our own intellectual level, — 
 more than that, far more important even, — our 
 peers in the subtler qualities of character called 
 refinement, culture, good breeding. 
 
 But, says the w^orld, these are people of the 
 brain. Look long and far, spend your life in the 
 search, you will never find men and women who 
 come up to your ideal. The world is half right, 
 half wrong. People of the brain do exist, are, 
 perchance, close to us, can be had for the seeking. 
 If not found, — as is, alas ! too often the case, — it is 
 absolutely our own fault, — fault including igno- 
 rance, indolence, aimless drifting. 
 
 People of the brain mean simply the men and 
 women who are companionable, w^ho meet us on the 
 best ground of our own individuality, on the ground 
 of thought, of sentiment, of training. You want 
 
 145 
 
146 PEOPLE OF THE BRAIN. 
 
 too much, says the world; you must take people as 
 they are, not as you wish to have them. Very good 
 advice for attaining popularity, if that be your chief 
 object; not good, if you want companionship, that 
 highest kind of happiness. 
 
 Take friendship as a condition open to all, irre- 
 spective of birth, age, fortune, of those external 
 points of such tyrannic influence in the question of 
 marriage. Can we aim too high in choosing our 
 friends? Decidedly not. Indeed, it maybe said, 
 in all soberness, that our friends, so called, fail to 
 satisfy us because we have allowed ourselves to be 
 chosen instead of choosing, as we had the right to 
 do and ought to have done. 
 
 Look at your list of friends in the past and con- 
 fess how few were chosen by your own individual 
 tastes, how many were thrust upon you through 
 circumstances, — that is, your own weakness of will. 
 Kindness, sympathy, helpfulness, tenderness, — all 
 these may be liberally given, when needed by peo- 
 ple within our reach. But the sacred gift of friend- 
 ship ought never to be given until the noblest part 
 of the inner self is satisfied that it has met an equal. 
 This by no means asks for perfection. On the con- 
 trary, who among the imaginative class, people 
 avowedly hard to please, fastidious, is not painfully 
 conscious of his own personal defects and deficien- 
 
PEOPLE OF THE BRAIN. I47 
 
 cies? Ko; such a one, in seeking a companion, 
 asks, not for perfection, but for a striving after it, a 
 striving after something better than now is, whether 
 in education, in manner, or in mode of life. 
 
 People of the brain exist only in books; you 
 never meet them in real life; hence you have no 
 friends, lead too lonely a life : — so speaks the world. 
 But again it is only half right. "What if you are 
 lonely ? Life is not a pleasure-trip. If you take it 
 as such, middle age will find you in an unhappy 
 condition of satiety, disgust, and self-reproach. 
 Moreover, if you are without friends because of an 
 imaginative temperament that produces fastidious- 
 ness, you have an infallible cure at hand. 
 
 If imaginative, you must have the artist-nature. 
 Even if not a producer, you have the love of art 
 which makes the amateur or the critic; and, 
 w^hether the one or the other, you cannot suffer 
 from solitude. The man of imaginative tempera- 
 ment, whether artist or art-lover, knows well that 
 his ideal never can be embodied. Yet this knowing 
 does not prevent his being content in the society of 
 men and women of like temperament. Is it not 
 proverbial that we see no defects in those we love ? 
 This, however, implies a blindness which never 
 outlives passion. 
 
 Better to take it thus : the defects of those we 
 
148 PEOPLE OF THE BRAIN. 
 
 love do not annoy us because the foundation of 
 mutual love is similarity of temperament. Artists, 
 musicians, actors, for instance, have worldly inter- 
 course with various kinds of people, while really 
 feeling entirely at ease only with their fellow-artists. 
 Art of the highest kind is destined for solitude. 
 Men and women of artistic nature, then, do but 
 share the lot of their tribe. Their search for the 
 something corresponding to or, at least, approach- 
 ing the image in their own mind leads them into 
 out-of-the-way corners, where they meet none save 
 explorers like themselves. 
 
 Imaginative people are as necessary to society as 
 the practical kind, the so-called workers. In litera- 
 ture imagination is the source not only of poetry 
 but of the higher kinds of prose, as romance, the 
 drama, philosophy, and psychology. It produces 
 eloquence through the law of affinity. The lawyer 
 defending a murderer is temporarily in full sym- 
 pathy with his client. Imagination sets vividly be- 
 fore his mind the temperament, the temptation, the 
 opportunity, which led to the crime. It is not 
 that the lawyer is defending the latter, but that he 
 compels his mind to look on one side exclusively. 
 The keener his imagination, the more convincing 
 his argument, the more glowing and irresistible his 
 oratory. 
 
PEOPLE OF THE BRAIN. 149 
 
 Imaginative people are predestined to pensiveness, 
 melancholy, discontent, — words but partially expres- 
 sive of the states of mind they represent. The hap- 
 piest among them, perhaps the only happy ones of 
 their class, are those devoted to art. Here and here 
 alone may be found the opportunity and the per- 
 mission to express the demon of ideality, so per- 
 sistently goading the mind to discontent. In prac- 
 tical life imagination is a huge stumbling-block 
 against which mind, sentiment, and tastes are con- 
 tinually wounding themselves. 
 
DULL PEOPLE'S WIT. 
 
 It has occurred to me that it might be a comfort 
 to many good dull people to know, first, that they 
 have wit, and next where it lies. It would have 
 been so to me years and years ago, when I thought 
 myself helplessly dull and never dreamed of even 
 a slight compensation. I knew how unattractive 
 dull people were, how their mere presence cast a 
 shadow over some others, — I knew this, and some- 
 times imagined myself one of them. It was very 
 hard, was even a deep chagrin. But nobody ever 
 told me that dull people had wit, if you only knew 
 how to find it. Where? Below the surface, so 
 very far below that it never is seen at all by the so- 
 called bright, superficial people. Mental talking — 
 dull people's wit — shows itself there. You, for in- 
 stance, confess to yourself and perhaps to one other 
 self that you belong to the dull set. Yet how often 
 in solitary hours you have suddenly caught yourself 
 in mental talking, not brilliantly compared to some 
 other people, but brilliantly for you ! You think of 
 some one you admire, imagine yourself meeting 
 
 him, and lo, you are not dull. Your tongue finds 
 150 
 
DULL PEOPLE'S WIT. 151 
 
 plenty to say and just the right thing for the mo- 
 ment. What a pity, you muse, that my mental 
 talking should be so much better than my other 
 kind ! And that other kind is the only one cur- 
 rent in society ! Dull people are not wanted there. 
 They act as marplots, actually spoiling the natural 
 flow of fun and frolic. 
 
 iN'o, you do not belong in society, — you belong to 
 solitude. There and there only do you find your 
 wit, whatever its grade. There only does your 
 mental talking take place. There only do you 
 meet people to whom you can talk easily, fluently, 
 frankly. There you have not the least shyness, no 
 discomfort of any kind. There you meet people 
 on a plane. The position is one of equality, there- 
 fore of ease, of warmth, of masonic freedom. 
 Mental talking means mental companionship. 
 Probably you will never know the latter out of 
 solitude. Possibly, too, you may know it in real 
 life, — this last only upon one immutable condition : 
 self-development put into form. 
 
 Study, yes, hard, faithfully, year in, year out, 
 incessantly. Study books, study people, study na- 
 ture, study self,— this last the most diflicult subject 
 of all. But study is only the first step. The second 
 one is production. Exhibit your picture, print 
 your book, utilize your invention. Study is but 
 
152 DULL PEOPLE'S WIT. 
 
 the consuming of other students' knowledge : their 
 deductions, their discoveries, their earnestness, are 
 the fuel for your own mental fire. But to be only 
 a consumer is to be but a sorry student, — one alto- 
 gether useless both in his generation and after- 
 wards. The result of true study is to make a pro- 
 ducer. After the acquisition of mental means 
 comes the disbursement to others less advanced 
 than yourself. The same exactly applies to ma- 
 terial wealth. He who acquires a fortune imme- 
 diately seeks the best ways of spending it. 
 
 Take heart, then, dear dull people, who never 
 succeed in society, fashionable or other. That 
 your wit is not current enough for daily use, at 
 table or in drawing-room, does not prove its absence 
 from your mental estate. To see that you are one 
 of the dull people is in itself a proof of wit. That 
 it is not of the jovial, sparkling, rollicking sort 
 does not mean that it is worthless. To enjoy other 
 people's brilliancy shows a certain kind of wit in 
 you. There is the wit of appreciation as well as 
 the wit of providing. 
 
MENTAL ENDOWMENTS. 
 
 Who among living Americans is the man of 
 greatest intellect? asks the N^ew York Sun. First 
 of all, what is intellect? Who is to be the judge? 
 E'aturally, one and all among thinking men and 
 women of their own country. That is, the subject 
 of intellect can be reflected upon, criticised, judged, 
 precisely as other subjects may be. Every man 
 is at liberty to use such power of thought as he 
 possesses to discuss any subject. This, of course, 
 does not make his conclusions valuable to the 
 world at large. Yet he himself may be satisfied 
 that he sees enough for his own purpose. This, 
 for the most part, is applicable to average persons 
 of either sex. 
 
 To those above the average, — that is, to men and 
 women born w^ith a thinking mind and so situated 
 throughout life as to be enabled to cultivate that 
 native faculty, — to them come the most valuable con- 
 clusions. Therefore, to know the best that can be 
 known about human powers of thinking, you must 
 go to those who have made it their life study. Yet 
 
 even then you are not to be satisfied with the con- 
 
 11 153 
 
]54 MENTAL ENDOWMENTS. 
 
 elusions of one or even two individuals. You must 
 listen to many, in various countries, under varied 
 conditions, after countless experiments and experi- 
 ences, before you place confidence in their men- 
 tal opinions. This includes the whole subject of 
 criticism. 
 
 When are you yourself entitled to judge or to 
 pass criticism on the subject of intellect, as to the 
 minds of your contemporaries being small or great ? 
 When, in short, may you justly consider yourself 
 independent of other people's opinions ? For this 
 there is no age, no period, no possible limit. Self- 
 asserting people of either sex begin when yet chil- 
 dren to pronounce judgment on everything they see 
 or hear. Timid people are up to old age as shy 
 and shrinking in expressing their opinions, how- 
 ever strong, as they are shy and shrinking in man- 
 ner. Temperament never changes. It is a some- 
 thing born in men, inseparable from their lives. 
 After life-long struggle with it, the strongest char- 
 acter can at best only modify or conceal it. 
 
 A richly-dowered nature is like a large estate, — 
 capable of producing much, yet if badly managed 
 it becomes a source of endless worry and chagrin. 
 Look at the life-models close at hand. Select one 
 of the best mentally endowed persons of your 
 acquaintance. Let it be a woman. Intellect is 
 
MENTAL ENDOWMENTS. 155 
 
 sexless, — this is one, at least, of the non-disputed 
 questions of the day. Men have better chances 
 for developing their mental endowments, chiefly 
 because they are exempt from the endless household 
 duties that fall to the share of women. Then, again, 
 young women — save those who are strong enough 
 at the start to assert their mental force — -just when 
 their minds are freshest and strongest are expected 
 to be in and of the family. They have domestic 
 life, dress, varied accomplishments, church, society 
 claims, visiting in suburbs and country, etc. They 
 are in most cases simply overpowered by attempt- 
 ing too much. Their mental aspirations lead them 
 to make too many attempts in as many difterent 
 directions, including, it may be, history, philosophy, 
 fiction, poetry, ethics, as well as domestic and social 
 life. It is impossible to do any one thing well when 
 the mind is running on many different lines at one 
 time. 
 
AEISTOCEATS OF INTELLECT. 
 
 These stand so high above their fellow-men that 
 one may well hesitate before passing free comment. 
 Yet so grateful am I for their existence — in the 
 past, in the present — that it seems but simple jus- 
 tice to make some slight acknowledgment. The 
 realms of philosophy, fiction, poetry, history, sci- 
 ence, shine with the glorious insignia of these aris- 
 tocrats. The world does them reverence, gives 
 them their full meed of homage, — if not during 
 life, at least after death. They rule the world by 
 hereditary right. They have a hold upon it which 
 nothing can shake. Revolutions may occur, tem- 
 porary governments follow, but these are merely 
 interludes in history. The passions having abated, 
 people are swift to recognize their own true inter- 
 ests. However ignorant they themselves may be, 
 they must, by a natural law, stronger than even 
 passion or prejudice, bow to the power of in- 
 tellect. 
 
 The laws of a people may be imperfect, but they 
 are, after all, far better to live under than lawless- 
 156 
 
ARISTOCRATS OF INTELLECT. 157 
 
 ness. Whatever of good is found in them comes 
 from the highest intellects. For this good, sooner 
 or later, people universally are grateful. This sen- 
 timent produces loyalty to hereditary rights. 
 
 Every nation, every form of civilization, produces 
 its own kind of intellectual workers. Climate, 
 custom, mode of life, all tend to the development 
 of special doctrines, codes, opinions, conceptions. 
 But in the main thinkers are all the world over 
 alike. Delving into the mysteries of physical 
 life or exploring the depths of soul, one and all 
 are animated by the same desires, tormented by 
 the same doubts, stirred by the same hopes. Cos- 
 tume, language, habits, manners, all belong to a 
 particular nation or age. But thoughts, motives, 
 desires, sentiments, are universal, immutable. The}^ 
 were the same eighteen hundred years ago as 
 to-day; they are the same to-day as they will be 
 eighteen hundred years hence. 
 
 Aristocrats of intellect stand apart from their 
 fellows. They enter the world with a greater sup- 
 ply of brain-force ; they receive better care. The 
 native force and the training combined make them 
 stronger thinkers, stronger actors, than their fel- 
 lows. They do with ease what the plebeians of 
 intellect can do only after long mental drudgery. 
 With equal steadiness of purpose the first will far 
 
158 ARISTOCRATS OF INTELLECT. 
 
 outstrip the second. But if the plebeian excel in 
 that steadiness, he may reach the topmost round of 
 fame, while possibly his originally more favored 
 contemporary may be found languishing on the 
 way. 
 
GENIUS AND ITS LACK. 
 
 I LIKE this short, simple definition of genius : 
 " Genius is but the highest expression of nature. '^ * 
 Genius is but another name for originality. One 
 of the first proofs of its possession is the daring 
 to admire, to like, to enjoy what you recognize 
 as appropriate to yourself. There is but one 
 standard of genius, and that is the self that 
 throbs and speaks in you who write, who sing, 
 who invent, who paint, who carve, or what not. 
 Its first and last signs, its universal, perpetual, in- 
 fallible proofs, are an intense egotism. Tell me 
 of a person who shows that in some form, and I 
 should look for and expect to find genius, — latent, 
 struggling to bud, it may be, or already partially 
 developed. After long and ardent study of the 
 subject, I am fully convinced of the truth of the 
 statement. Belief in self, to the extent of disbe- 
 lief in everybody else, yields that mental strength 
 essential to personal independence. And solely 
 
 * Henry Giles, " Human Life in Shakspere." 
 
 169 
 
160 GENIUS AND ITS LACK. 
 
 through this personal freedom can any grade of 
 genius be evolved. 
 
 Genius is but one word out of many to express 
 selfhood. You yourself must help yourself No 
 one outside yourself can dictate what your work or 
 your play shall be. Genius is but another word 
 for mind, intellect, and the ego. Analyze one and 
 all and you find the same substance, — power of 
 thought. The gradations of thought mark the 
 epochs of primitive man and the ripe scholar. A 
 little intellect, a big intellect, a little soul, a big 
 soul, a weak selfhood, a strong selfhood, are all 
 terms purely relative. 
 
 Infinite in number, multiform in degree, are the 
 gifts of genius. The kind that evokes my highest 
 admiration is the practical one that develops its 
 natural strength in spite of every outward obstacle ; 
 and of these obstacles the greatest, the most for- 
 midable, are other people, — rivals, enemies, friends, 
 blood-relations. 
 
 I have been led to consider the definition of genius 
 through being conscious of my own lack of the gift. 
 Proof of that lack lies in an innate reverence for 
 other people of high grade, regard for their mental, 
 their practical, their scientific, their philanthropic, 
 their every kind of noble work. My admiration 
 
GENIUS AND ITS LACK. 161 
 
 for others prevents the self-development I dream 
 of. Literature fascinates me, art attracts me, high- 
 bred people charm me, — and all these interfere 
 fatally with literary work. 
 
 And you, be you man or woman, of like tem- 
 perament, born with the tendency to admire and 
 reverence other people, to believe instinctively that 
 they are your superiors in most things, likewise 
 have not the gift called genius. Accept the fact, 
 accept it and make the best of, ay, profit by it. 
 But not to possess genius means to possess some 
 other quality. For instance, after long years of 
 admiring and reverencing other people you come 
 to see something in yourself worth developing. 
 
 Here is a crucial test of that something being 
 worth the trouble. Belief in yourself for what 
 you are, — not a genius, no, but still a personality, 
 if developed, of intrinsic worth. If developed, 
 there is the point to fix your mind upon. As you 
 are to-day, it may be, you feel yourself of no use, 
 of no ornament, of no value to anybody, to any 
 circle. As you may be, whether next year or a 
 score of years hence, — that is the highest of all 
 problems for you to solve; not what your coun- 
 trymen or your contemporaries can do, but what 
 you yourself can, after training, do, be, or carry 
 out. This sort of personal responsibility in the 
 
162 GENIUS AND ITS LACK. 
 
 question of living is of infinitely greater moment 
 than genius. 
 
 Genius may do at a bound whatever it under- 
 takes under inspiration. Genius never asks per- 
 mission. It ignores precedent, defies criticism, 
 creates out of its own personality. How do you 
 know this ? asks the practical man. I know it, 
 answers genius, because it exists in myself There 
 is no fact on this visible earth of which I am so 
 certain as what this self tells me. 
 
 Genius struggling with his work is scoffed at by 
 the world. The work finished, that same world 
 falls on its knees and worships both work and 
 worker. Men or women with genius belong to the 
 world, ^o one asks or cares where they happened 
 to be born. The so-called selfishness of genius is 
 simply the intensity of a rare selfhood. 
 
 You who have no genius, but simply a strong 
 reverence for things that betoken mental beauty 
 and force, must learn the art of faithful, patient 
 working. Out of that will grow the encouragement 
 that leads to content and peace in your vocation. 
 Once thoroughly committed to your special groove, 
 you will never be fretted by the futile idea of wish- 
 ing yourself more gifted. You will be happy be- 
 cause of your self-development, of your doing as 
 well as possible what nature intended you to do. 
 
GENIUS AND ITS LACK. 163 
 
 Doing that, your life is a complete one. The great- 
 est genius can do no more. 
 
 Yet another view of genius strikes me. You 
 who bemoan your incapacity, your littleness, — what 
 have you done to test yourself as nature made you ? 
 How much of the littleness you recognize in your- 
 self is the result of idleness, of subservience, of 
 worldly custom ? Born, say, to a condition of ease, 
 surrounded by manifold temptations to mental 
 drifting, how do you know your own actual calibre ? 
 That you are nothing to-day is by no means a proof 
 that you may not become something to-morrow. 
 ITature's intentions are balked by manifold petty 
 obstacles in the shape, it may be, of affluence, lux- 
 ury, worldly influences. One way is open to every 
 one who chooses to consider personal responsibility. 
 To live your own life worthily, whatever your 
 condition of birth, whatever your mental calibre, 
 is the highest of human aims. Doing that, you 
 need not worry your mind concerning results. 
 
 Genius in a woman has a harder world-battle 
 to fight than genius in a man. The woman has 
 her natural timidity, modesty, self-depreciation, — 
 in short, all the drawbacks of her sex, — to fight. 
 Intellectual force is so uncommon in a woman's 
 writings that the crowd invariably expects the 
 
164 GENIUS AND ITS LACK. 
 
 woman who displays that force in her productions 
 to represent it also in her face, manner, conduct. 
 Hence that crowd is disappointed, quasi-indignant, 
 if a woman strong in writing is not strong in her 
 behavior. Thoughtless people cannot understand 
 that, while the mind may be strong, the heart may 
 be exquisitely susceptible. Genius requires tender 
 exhortation mingled with unceasing encourage- 
 ment. Especially does genius in woman need the 
 practical aid to be found, as a rule, only in a conjugal 
 companion. Intensity of thought and passionate 
 emotions rarely find forms of beauty unless aided 
 by the tact of world-wise men. Genius — whatever 
 its shape — vanquishes the prejudices of society, re- 
 vokes its most crushing verdicts. Yet genius does 
 not win its triumphs without some toil, patient 
 doing and undoing, stern self-denial. More than 
 any other must a woman of intellectual force show 
 her courage through silent endurance, through 
 tender hypocrisies, through heroic struggles be- 
 tween irksome social customs and her own ardent 
 sensibilities. 
 
ACTOES AND ACTING. 
 
 A GOOD play has the same effect upon me as a 
 good novel. For the time I am as much absorbed 
 in the page of life-history spread before me as if it 
 were real. One character amuses, another appeals 
 to the heart, another inspires repugnance. All the 
 mental faculties are in turn excited, all the soul- 
 chords touched and played upon. I come away very 
 tired , but feel that there is good reason for it. I have 
 enjoyed a great deal in a short time, and pleasure 
 of any kind is exhausting. Acting is an art which 
 specially deserves the title intellectual. It is not 
 only that the text must be learned by the actor ; he 
 must do much more than that. He must put him- 
 self into the mind, heart, and soul of the character 
 he personates. He must feel himself a king, a 
 slave, a hero, a villain, a lover. Feeling it he will 
 act it and sway the audience as with a magic wand. 
 But this feeling is not a voluntary matter, is not the 
 result of study even ; it is a direct effect of imagi- 
 nation. With this faculty an actor may confidently 
 throw himself into the breach and win distinction 
 in proportion to his fidelity to his cause and his 
 
 165 
 
166 ACTORS AND ACTING. 
 
 bravery in action. Without this faculty he is 
 merely an aspirant; no study, no application, no 
 devotion, can ever carry him beyond mediocrity. 
 
 Yet, even with this essential, much, very much 
 more is needed. A man might have the thorough 
 appreciation of his role resulting from a vivid 
 imagination and still be a poor actor. To do a 
 thing well requires not only a special faculty but 
 special development. So well fixed is this truth 
 in average minds that we learn to expect excellence 
 only where hereditary traits seem to sanction proba- 
 bility. For what does hereditary imply but an ac- 
 cumulation of tangible or of mental forces ? Under 
 ordinary conditions an actor's children look upon 
 acting as their natural element. Their voices, lan- 
 guage, movements, gestures, their games even, — 
 all indicate the direction of mind and feeling. 
 This continued through several generations, with 
 proportionate culture and fidelity to art as art, must 
 finally produce an actor or actress of genius. 
 
 Which country of the present epoch furnishes 
 the best actors and actresses? For, apart from 
 genius, apart from mental gifts of lesser grades, 
 nationality has a marked efiect upon this art. In a 
 country where classes are distinctly marked, as in 
 Europe, special attributes are handed down from 
 
ACTORS AND ACTING. 167 
 
 generation to generation. A tradesman's modes 
 of thought, of living, are adopted naturally by his 
 children. They take their several parts in the 
 household or in their social circle cheerfully and 
 easily, never dreaming of any change of position. 
 
 So in all the different branches of society, from 
 court-life to the lowest strata, manners, usages, and 
 modes of life are fixed by statute. Thoughts and 
 feelings adapt themselves readily to absolute cer- 
 tainty, and bring about correspondent results. An 
 artisan, born of artisan parents, bred to his art with 
 no other ambition than to perfect himself in it, will 
 of necessity make a better workman than one who 
 spends half his youth in trying different kinds of 
 occupation. The same law applies to every kind 
 of mental, or mechanical, or social pursuit. Apart 
 from the innate facility there must be a life-long 
 application to its development. This principle 
 insures excellence and yields a possibility of 
 perfection. 
 
 That genius on the stage should be so rare, so 
 isolated a fact, is inevitable, owing to the variety of 
 gifts demanded. A musician may be illiterate 
 while able to give full expression to his art. A 
 poet may be uncouth in personal presence yet thrill 
 the world with his song. A painter may be gro- 
 tesque in feature yet produce pictures of exceeding 
 
168 ACTORS AND ACTING. 
 
 beauty. A sculptor may be deformed yet create 
 forms of admirable symmetry and grace. But for 
 the actor, ability to act is merely one among 
 numerous essentials. As an imitator of human 
 nature, a reproducer of traits designed alternately 
 to amuse, instruct, enchant, and terrify, the actor 
 must start with a liberal supply of native attributes. 
 First, as to personal advantages, his form must be 
 shapely, agile, pliant, capable of expression through 
 movement, attitude, gesture; his features pleasing 
 through symmetry, attractive through adaptation 
 to sentiment, humor, passion ; his manner a forci- 
 ble exponent of both beauties and deformities of 
 character ; his voice of wide range, boundless flexi- 
 bility, prompt to interpret the diverse emotions of 
 comedy or tragedy. Il^ext, as to mental requisites, 
 he must combine swift apprehension with tenacious 
 memory, keen analysis with poetic fervor, logical 
 force with artistic delicacy. To see an actor pos- 
 sessing all these qualifications in a state of culture 
 can happen but seldom in a lifetime. 
 
THE CEITICS CEITICISED. 
 
 Reviews of books possess a strong interest for 
 all people of literary tastes. Whether the books 
 themselves are new or old, we like to hear how 
 they stand in the eyes of the critics. An author's 
 first book finds its way to the reviewer's table in 
 company with many others. Does the reviewer 
 ever think of the extreme anxiety with which the 
 young author awaits the opinion which is to seal 
 the fate of his first-born? ITot that the author 
 looks to the reviewer for a certificate of ability. 
 A man is not necessarily conceited because he feels 
 the existence of power within himself. He did not 
 create it, he never dreams of taking any credit to 
 himself on that score. He knows it just as he 
 knows his stature, his features, his manner. The 
 opinion of the public, then, makes not an iota of 
 difierence as regards the actual ability he pos- 
 sesses. But it makes a vast difiference in other 
 respects, and these make him keenly susceptible 
 to criticism. 
 
 Book-reviewers may be classified thus : honest, 
 
 flippant, non-committal. 
 
 12 169 
 
170 ^^^ CRITICS CRITICISED. 
 
 The representative of the honest type does not 
 pass judgment upon a book because of its title, its 
 publisher, its dress, its antecedents. He reads it 
 with unbiassed mind, and, speaking from an impres- 
 sion actually made, tells the world his opinion in 
 the best lano:uao:e he can command. While this 
 opinion is stamped with truth, it never deviates 
 from courtesy, never becomes tinctured with in- 
 tolerance, never makes the subject wince under 
 irascibility. 
 
 The reviewer of the class we may call flippant is 
 like a blase man of society. He has seen every- 
 thing, tried everything, felt everything. He refuses 
 to be interested or surprised; he is incapable of 
 being moved either to admiration or to indignation ; 
 he regards with studied contempt every new-comer 
 who is not heralded by external attributes or intro- 
 duced by some one of mark. Such a critic ridicules 
 sentiment and sneers at earnestness. His natural 
 manner is one of alternate gross exaggeration and 
 wilful misconstruction. Putting his shallow judg- 
 ment upon the matter in hand, he takes from it 
 whatever of solidity it may possess and pronounces 
 it purely ephemeral. 
 
 A reviewer of the flippant class has a withering 
 effect upon books. He makes them seem worse 
 than they are, because his readers see them through 
 
THE CRITICS CRITICISED. 171 
 
 his flippancy. He thus ignores not only the par- 
 ticular book under review, but all books. lie de- 
 grades the calling of letters simply through his 
 own unworthiness of belonging to it. To fall into 
 the hands of such a critic is like being exposed to 
 the gaze of a vulgar crowd. However great our 
 discomfort, we cannot escape the ordeal without 
 appearing to beat a retreat. We endure what is 
 unavoidable while mentally scorning our tor- 
 mentor. 
 
 Of this style of reviewing a book we give a few 
 illustrations from life. " ^ Essays on Social Life.' 
 The volume with the above title is remarkable in 
 two respects, — first, for its contents, and second, that 
 it was written by a woman. It consists of twelve 
 essays, entitled Education, Amusements, etc. 
 Strictly speaking, the essays are little more than 
 nicely-fitted mosaic-work of the thoughts of others. 
 Almost every page contains a quotation, and the 
 volume might be called Some of the best thoughts 
 of F. G. H. I. K., and many other authors." 
 
 Enough this to prove the charge of fiippancy. 
 To begin by saying a book is remarkable for its 
 contents, and in the next breath assert it to be 
 nicely-fitted mosaic- work of the thoughts of others, 
 is too palpable a contradiction to need comment. 
 A book made by inserting the thoughts of others 
 
172 THE CRITICS CRITICISED. 
 
 cannot be remarkable. Indeed, it must be quite 
 the reverse, — commonplace. IN'ow, if a book be 
 thus made, — merely " nicely-fitted mosaic-work," it 
 is but just to stamp it as belonging to the class 
 of compilations. By all means let the author hear 
 his work called by its right name. But to call it 
 remarkable and commonplace in the same breath 
 is flippancy of the most reprehensible kind. 
 
 Yet another illustration. The book under review 
 is one upon certain phases of human nature. After 
 mentioning the general purport of the volume, the 
 critic says, " The art of writing about so vague a 
 subject as human nature consists, in a great meas- 
 ure, in putting well-worn thoughts in a new setting ; 
 this approach to merit is hardly to be found in this 
 book, and there is not enough newly-discovered 
 truth to lighten up the somewhat verbose statement 
 of what has been thought out and uttered already 
 time out of mind." The flippancy here manifested 
 is, first, in designating human nature as a vague sub- 
 ject; second, in aflirming that the art of writing 
 about it consists in putting well-worn thoughts in a 
 new setting. Who save a critic of the flippant class 
 would dream of calling human nature a vague sub- 
 ject? Is there any man in existence who thinks 
 himself vague? who thinks the people around 
 him vague ? who thinks health, sickness, joy, and 
 
THE CRITICS CRITICISED. 173 
 
 sorrow vague ? who thinks war, famine, pestilence, 
 poverty, vague ? or wealth, luxury, and happiness 
 vague? Yet are not all of these very clear at- 
 tributes of human nature? If human nature is 
 vague, then nothing is distinct, nothing is definable, 
 nothing is describable. 
 
 Again, who if not flippant would assert that 
 writing about human nature requires merely the 
 putting of well-worn thoughts in a new setting ? 
 Little effort, indeed, would be required to make a 
 book, were this all. Instead of well-worn thoughts 
 in a new setting, we contend that writing upon 
 human nature demands prior thinking, feeling, 
 suffering, enjoying. We do not want well-worn 
 thoughts, but new experiences related by a new 
 individual. The setting is of far less consequence 
 than the thoughts themselves. Slight, indeed, 
 must be the appreciation of human nature as a 
 study, if it deem well-worn thoughts in a new set- 
 ting the highest round of the ladder in the mind's 
 observatory ! 
 
 A non-committal critic requires an interpreter. 
 He caresses and belabors with the same hand, and 
 performs both parts so calmly that we are at a loss 
 to divine his true sentiments. To illustrate : A 
 new book, the first one of its author, is under re- 
 
174 THE CRITICS CRITICISED. 
 
 view. " This is in no sense a remarkable book," 
 says the critic. 
 
 Yery well, says the author, mentally in perfect 
 agreement with the dictum. 
 
 Line second : " Its thought is healthy, its tone 
 unexceptionable, its 8tj\e vigorous." The author 
 looks again, and with a sentiment of surprise. The 
 first line had not led him to expect this drop of 
 elixir. 
 
 Line third : " Indeed, our only objection to it is a 
 negative one. It does not meet a demand that has 
 long been felt, and, after all, this is a tolerably safe 
 criterion in literary as well as in material products." 
 The author looks puzzled, and mutters to himself, 
 H'm ! the only objection a negative one ! Cer- 
 tainly this is more than I expected ! But what is 
 this about not meeting a demand that has long been 
 felt? Continuing his soliloquy, he says, I knew 
 nothing about a demand, and certainly had no 
 intention of meeting one. I wrote because the 
 thoughts came, not because I supposed they would 
 suit any particular person or purpose. I^othing 
 surely was farther from my intention than this. 
 Tracts, pamphlets, monographs, these I had always 
 understood were written to meet a special need or 
 situation. But a book I have hitherto looked upon 
 as just as appropriate for one period as for another. 
 
THE CRITICS CRITICISED. I75 
 
 It must have an aim, and if it have not, it merits 
 severe handling. But to have an aim means some- 
 thing wholly different from meeting a demand. 
 
 Line fourth : " There are here brought together 
 many excellent things bearing directl}^ or indirectly 
 upon the subject. The author gives a multitude of 
 extracts and from the best writers. For this we 
 may thank him. It is certainly more creditable 
 when a thought has been well expressed to quote 
 the expression entire than to steal the idea and mar 
 it in doing so." 
 
 The author sips the elixir, but finds it tastes bitter. 
 Again he soliloquizes : The critic likes my quota- 
 tions, it seems, but evidently supposes they have 
 been pressed into service to cover my own paucity 
 of ideas. I myself had supposed they were brought 
 forward in support of my own preconceived senti- 
 ments. Not one of the thoughts in those quota- 
 tions that had not pre-existed in my own mind. 
 Otherwise why should I have selected just those 
 thoughts and no others ? Is not sympathy the test 
 of our own feelings ? The expression, I grant wil- 
 lingly, is far superior to mine. The difference is 
 that between master and pupil. 
 
 Line fifth : " But is there nothing good in the 
 book? We answer, yes. The predominant prin- 
 ciples very nearly meet our own. Whatever we 
 
176 THE CRITICS CRITICISED. 
 
 may say of the originality of the author's thought, 
 no one will doubt the extent of his observations 
 or the general lucidity of his style." The elixir 
 has regained its original flavor. 
 
 Line sixth : " We are in doubt whether the author 
 intended any intimate connection between the dif- 
 ferent parts of this book or not. It might have 
 ended with Part I. and have fulfilled the promise 
 in the title, or it might have continued through 
 double the number of parts and have remained as 
 incomplete as it now is. On the whole, we are glad 
 that it did not choose the latter course." 
 
 Again the author is somewhat surprised, and 
 repeats involuntarily line fifth, which gives credit 
 for lucidity of style. Can this last exist if the 
 reader is left in doubt as to the connection between 
 the parts of the book ? As to the incompleteness 
 of the volume and the critic's satisfaction that there 
 are not double the number of parts, the author 
 cordially assents. To him the book is incomplete 
 in the fullest sense of the word; and as to making 
 it twice as long, he had too much consideration for 
 his readers and himself. 
 
 Line seventh : " However, although, as we say, 
 the book is not a remarkable one, it may be added 
 to the family library not only safely but profitably." 
 Finis ! 
 
THE CRITICS CRITICISED. 177 
 
 The above critique is one drawn from life. What 
 opinion of the volume could be gained from such 
 non-committal phrases ? Favor is so carefully 
 balanced with disfavor that the words might be 
 construed either way and make the same sense. 
 In the name of authors — ^young or old, good or 
 bad, brilliant or stupid — I protest against non- 
 committal critics ! 
 
DEFENCE OF THE PEESS* 
 
 Matthew Arnold's libel on the press of America 
 is so manifestly written under excessive irritation 
 that it hardly deserves calm criticism. Save under 
 such an abnormal condition it would be impossible 
 for a scholarly writer to make such an assertion as, 
 " On the whole, and taking the total impression and 
 effect made by them, I should say that if one were 
 searching for the best means to efface and kill in 
 a whole nation the discipline of respect, the feeling 
 for what is elevated, one could not do better than 
 take the American newspapers. The absence of 
 truth and soberness in them, the poverty in serious 
 interest, the personality and sensation-mongering, 
 are beyond belief" 
 
 Taking this alone, a thoughtless reader might 
 well believe it were time to suppress, if not the 
 whole newspaper fraternity, at least his own par- 
 ticular morning and evening papers. Taken, 
 however, by a thinking reader and with other 
 statements in the same article, that bitter sentence 
 of condemnation calls forth the observation that 
 
 * A reply to Matthew Arnold. Written in 1888. 
 178 
 
DEFENCE OF THE PRESS. 179 
 
 Mr. Arnold must have been very angry wlien he 
 wrote those words. 
 
 No one would assert that the press in America is 
 perfect. Seeing that men and women are behind 
 the printed pages, reasonable critics do not expect 
 superhuman qualities. Faults there are, of course, 
 plenty of them. Yet these seem few when we 
 think of the power of the press for good. Even its 
 exposures of vice are beneficial to the community. 
 That villany should be properly punished requires 
 a fearless showing up of the villain. But here it 
 may be said that newspapers, like novels, medical 
 books, or even philanthropic researches, are not in- 
 tended for children. The press of America, as a 
 whole, is to-day so immense a power for good that 
 it needs no praise, fears no censure. For enlight- 
 ening the people, for stimulating them to true prog- 
 ress, both mental and moral, the press is second 
 to no other force, whether school or church, law or 
 society. 
 
 All that Arnold says in harsh criticism about 
 America might apply to England, Germany, or any 
 other civilized country to-day. America differs 
 from others only in its youth, its vigor, its enthu- 
 siasm. Boastful because young— is true of a coun- 
 try as well as of men and women. Yet is not 
 England, is not Germany, is not France boastful, 
 
180 DEFENCE OF THE PRESS. 
 
 each in its own way? — a way naturally, because 
 of age, more prudent, more diplomatic, more reti- 
 cent, than that of America. At heart all countries 
 are the same. Human nature in America is not 
 one whit different from human nature in England. 
 
 Arnold himself says, " So far from solving our 
 problems successfully, we in England find ourselves 
 with an upper class materialized, a middle class 
 vulgarized, and a lower class brutalized." Take 
 heart, dear Americans ! I^o thing worse than that 
 frank statement about England to-day has ever 
 been, or can ever be, said about America to-day. 
 In very truth, a great writer is like a great speaker, 
 — he is but human. Hence under irritation — as 
 Arnold manifestly was when writing the above — 
 the great writer is liable to say disagreeable things 
 which he himself would afterwards earnestly wish 
 unsaid. A great writer is as liable to mental irrita- 
 tion as any lesser man. Mr. Arnold could hardly 
 help being irritated when he read in a morning 
 paper the very unpleasing description of himself 
 which he himself quotes. 
 
 Take this self-contradictory statement of the 
 American people : " In what concerns the solving 
 of the political and social problem they see clear 
 and think straight; in what concerns the higher 
 civilization they live in a fool's paradise." Could 
 
DEFENCE OF THE PRESS. 181 
 
 any country receive higher laudation than the first 
 half of that sentence ? If in the opinion of a for- 
 eigner America has indeed reached the height of 
 seeing and understanding " the political and social 
 problem," she may well be proud of such a reputa- 
 tion, may well be pardoned a little strutting and 
 spreading of wings. Few among the American 
 thinkers of to-day honestly believe their dear 
 country to have yet reached that exalted condition 
 mentioned by the eminent foreign thinker, for he 
 is quite right in stating that " There are plenty of 
 cultivated, judicious, delightful individuals there. 
 They are our hope and America's hope; it is 
 through their means that improvement must come." 
 
 Precisely these same words are to be said of Eng- 
 land, of Germany, of France. The masses in 
 America are what they are in every other country, 
 rude, blunt, uncultured, passionate, hence as a 
 whole meant to be governed by the few. Mental 
 superiority is to-day in America and in England no 
 less a force than in ancient or mediaeval history. 
 
 Again, consider carefully this statement which 
 has caused much needless albeit natural honest in- 
 dignation throughout the country. After saying of 
 England as well as of America that " a born lover 
 of ideas and of light could not but feel that the sky 
 over his head is of brass and iron," Mr. Arnold 
 
182 DEFENCE OF THE PRESS, 
 
 adds, " The human problem, then, is as yet solved 
 in the United States most imperfectly ; a great void 
 exists in the civilization over there ; a want of what 
 is elevated and beautiful, of what is interesting." 
 
 Alas for the feelings of the " born lover of ideas 
 and of light" in any country of the world ! This 
 " born lover" may be a poet or a poetic person of 
 either sex, may live in America or in Europe, but, 
 wherever he may live, he is ever the same isolated 
 being, whether poor or rich, who feels " that the 
 sky over his head is of brass and iron." 
 
 Complaints about the press not being moral 
 enough in tone, taking too much notice of wicked- 
 ness and crime, " ghoulish glee" over sensational 
 facts, adultery, divorce, et aL, are nonsense. What 
 is the press ? Eead the newspapers of a past cen- 
 tury and compare them with the history of that 
 same century. Do the same with the daily and 
 weekly newspapers of to-day. The press is not a 
 preacher, not an art-critic, not a musical authority, 
 not a philosopher. The press is no more than it 
 professes to be, — the faithful mirror of the day. Its 
 duty is to report, to state as clearly as may be what 
 actually takes place in the community and in its 
 neighboring or distant communities. Life as it is 
 to-day is the picture the press attempts to give the 
 public. 
 
MATTHEW AENOLD NOT A POET* 
 
 Poetry analyzed, dissected, becomes dull prose. 
 As well tear a butterfly to pieces, as well spread out 
 the leaves of an exquisite rose and lecture upon 
 the defunct beauties of insect and flower. Poetry 
 is as incapable of description as beauty or music. 
 Only a poetic mind can give a presentment of 
 poetry, a mind in which imagination predominates. 
 A poetic mind may produce a poet, an artist, a 
 romance-writer, a critic. In the case of the poet, 
 imagination must exist in excess of every other 
 attribute ; in the case of the critic, imagination is 
 held in check by reason. Here you find a philo- 
 sophic mind, one capable of recognizing both true 
 poetry and true psychology. A critic is by no 
 means to be expected to execute the thing, in art 
 or in literature, he criticises. In addition to those 
 natural qualities an able critic must have had lib- 
 eral opportunities to study the objects he criticises : 
 first the natural qualities, next the culture that 
 makes them available, trustworthy. 
 
 * Written in 1888. 
 
 183 
 
184 MATTHEW ARNOLD NOT A POET. 
 
 Is " Sohrab and Rustum" poetry ? The author 
 himself called it a narrative poem. If I were asked 
 to describe it frankly as it struck me on the first 
 reading, the answer would be : a dull tale told in 
 solemn, stilted, prosaic words. It is plain prose 
 spoiled by an attempted poetic effect. It is a com- 
 position the labor of which is perceptible in every 
 line, but specially irritating in its comparisons. 
 For instance, after the lines 
 
 "And from their tents the Tartar horsemen filed 
 Into the open plain ; . . . 
 As when some gray November morn the files, 
 In marching order spread, of long-neck'd cranes 
 Stream over Casbin and the southern slopes 
 Of Elburz, from the Aralian estuaries. 
 Or some frore Caspian reed-bed, southward bound 
 For the warm Persian sea-board — so they stream'd." 
 
 "Why bring in this simile about "long-neck'd 
 cranes" ? k It can add nothing to the impressiveness 
 of a great army of men marching, and spoils the 
 effect by breaking thought, — giving a fact of natural 
 history amid war and its dread passions. 
 
 Then follows the description of the army : 
 
 " The Tartars of the Oxus, the King's guard, 
 First, with black sheepskin caps and with long spears ; 
 Large men, large steeds ;" etc. 
 
 ^^ C,*M/l.>— vt V4 W- 1^* 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD NOT A POET. 135 
 
 Oddly enough, in all the twenty lines of this 
 picture of an Oriental army there is not a word to 
 indicate the faces and forms and passions of the 
 warriors. We read of their outer look : 
 
 «' Light men and on light steeds, who only drink 
 The acrid milk of camels, and their wells. . . . 
 Of the Tartars of Ferghana, from the banks 
 Of the Jaxartes, men with scanty beards 
 And close-set skull-caps." 
 
 We read of 
 
 "Kalmucks and unkempt Kuzzaks, tribes who stray 
 Nearest the Pole, and wandering Kirghizzes, 
 Who come on shaggy ponies from Pamere." 
 
 To give the garments without touching upon the 
 features or motives of the warriors is to leave out 
 the most forceful part. The second simile is singu- 
 larly out of place : 
 
 "As, in the country, on a morn of June, 
 When . . . 
 A shiver runs through the deep corn for joy." 
 
 Simile number three follows closely : 
 
 ** But as a troop of pedlars, from Cabool," 
 
 (here follow nine lines to illustrate how pedlars 
 cross a mountain,) 
 
 "So the pale Persians held their breath with fear.'* 
 13 
 
186 MATTHEW ARNOLD NOT A POET. 
 
 If that be poetry at all, I call it very weak. Why 
 go on ? The whole is simply a story narrated in 
 Sir John Malcolm's History of Persia, one far 
 better suited to prose than to poetry, — even of the 
 ringing inspired sort that carries you be}' ond prosaic 
 details, *• sheepskin caps," " troop of pedlars," etc. 
 
 ITo natural poet could choose a theme prosaic in 
 its nature. I^or could the natural poet compose 
 his lines if not in the mood, not inspired. In 
 " Sohrab and Kustum," from first to last, you feel 
 that the author first read about the subject, then 
 studied it, then composed the lines. The whole tone 
 is strictly prosaic, heavy, measured, much more 
 tedious than history. In the latter you do not ex- 
 pect poetic descriptions, but the imagination quickly 
 suggests them at mention of romantic incidents. 
 In reading a poem, on the contrary, you have a 
 right to expect. Not finding w^hat is promised, you 
 are disappointed, irritated. Why call prosaic lines 
 on a story related in a Persian history a narrative 
 poem ? 
 
 Brush aside tradition, clear your mind of the 
 critics, prosaic or poetic, turn away from the big, 
 thoughtless, dashing, live-for-to-day public ! This 
 done, take your favorite poets of old, Byron, Shelley, 
 and Keats. Drink again of the well-remembered 
 vivifying wells of poetry in those pages ! Drink 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD NOT A POET 187 
 
 deep draughts of the sparkling elixir ! Drink, 
 drink, until you feel yourself far, far away froni the 
 bustle and dust and worry of these present, work- 
 ing, pushing, money-getting days. This absorption 
 in your favorite poets, — those enthroned by the 
 twofold power of your mind and heart, — continue 
 it days and days, weeks and weeks, until you feel 
 yourself thoroughly saturated with the spirit of 
 poetry as you believe it to be. Then — after the ex- 
 citement has subsided, when you feel yourself calm 
 and dispassionate, yetlirmin your convictions as to 
 what poetry is and ought to be — then, I say, turn 
 to Matthew Arnold's poems. Read with all your 
 mind and heart; give yourself up unreservedly, 
 earnestly, and let your judgment speak freely its 
 verdict. 
 
 But Matthew Arnold is a Professor of Poetry 
 at Oxford, some one remarks. The title has a 
 superb sound. Take it, however, in its absolute 
 meaning, and what do you find ? Can any man 
 anywhere be or become a Professor of Poetry ? 
 Would it not be equally illogical to have a Professor 
 of Genius ? Poetry cannot be taught. Why, then, 
 have a professor for its teaching ? Poetry is mani- 
 festly the work of a poet. He, if any man, should 
 understand his art, hence be a teacher of it. Where 
 
138 MATTHEW ARNOLD NOT A POET. 
 
 is the poet who would consent to be a teacher 
 of his art? Would the idea, even in the greatest 
 straits of indigence, ever have entered the head of 
 a Bjron, a Shelley, a Keats ? 'No ; the poet is not 
 a teacher. He is a singer. His art is not acquired, 
 cannot be taught. As impossible for a poet to 
 impart his skill to another person — be he never 
 so receptive — as for a Beethoven or a Liszt to 
 impart his gifts. For a university to have a Pro- 
 fessorship of Poetry is an absurdity. That a man 
 should accept that chair is a proof of his lack of 
 poetic genius. 
 
 A poet is born as he is, a man mentally unlike 
 all other men, hence incapacitated for the ordinary 
 routine school, college, or professor discipline. He 
 learns intuitively what other men of prosaic nature 
 spend years of plodding over without learning at 
 all. A man can learn only those things his mind 
 is capable of learning. iJTature gives as she chooses. 
 What each man or woman has must be accepted as 
 final. 
 
 All the best things of certain so-called poets I 
 should call simply prose. This, for instance, of 
 Browning : 
 
 *' I count life just a staff to try the soul's strength, educe the 
 man — 
 Who keeps one end in view makes all things serve." 
 
MATTHEW ARNOLD NOT A POET. 189 
 
 Is there, then, higher genius in poetry than in 
 prose ? Two things have always heen very clear to 
 me : in poetry of the so-called best poets there is a 
 great deal of plain prose ; and in prose of the best 
 sort there is a vast amount of poetry. Where, then, 
 is the distinctive mark of greatness, of genius ? 
 
WALT WHITMAN'S SO-CALLED POETEY* 
 
 Open " Leaves of Grass" at random. Suppose the 
 first of the Leaves to be " Native Moments." The 
 title is good, — the only thing good, indeed, in the 
 verses, so called. Such moments come to every 
 man, to every woman. The kind of nature in those 
 moments is something for which we are only half 
 responsible. No one can change the brain or the 
 heart nature has given. At best, it can but be 
 modified by careful training. At worst, it but acts 
 out its iniquity or ferocity. " Native Moments," 
 then, are fitting to write about. The vulgar boor 
 has one kind, the sensitive poet another kind. 
 What we have a right to assert is that prose and 
 poetry should be relegated to their respective places 
 in literature. Read " Native Moments" and say in 
 which line or sentiment you see the faintest trace 
 of poetry. 
 
 "Give me the drench of my passions, give me life coarse and 
 rank." 
 
 * Written in 1883. 
 190 
 
WALT WHITMAN'S SO-CALLED POETRY. 191 
 
 This one line is quotation enougli to express the 
 idea. Let any one who desires "life coarse and 
 rank" take it. There is a superabundance of such 
 pasture in the world. It is not with a man's native 
 moments I would find fault. But to call plain, out- 
 spoken prose poetry, to set before us the common 
 every- day talk of a crude, coarse, prosaic thinker 
 and bid us bow to poetic genius, is absurd. Every 
 man has a right to live as he chooses. Every 
 woman has the same right. In this idea which 
 sounds all through " Leaves of Grass" Walt Whit- 
 man shows a strong, healthy nature. 
 
 But sound philosophic ideas are not to be con- 
 founded with poetic ones. A philosopher is one 
 thing, a poet another. They are no more the same 
 than a songstress and a woman preacher are the 
 same. When a philosopher, then, begins to poet- 
 ize, to put into verse what belongs to prose, it pre- 
 sents the appearance of sham. It is a putting on 
 of another man's garment, one too big, too fine, 
 wholly inappropriate, ludicrous, distasteful to a 
 sound mental judgment. Let the singers sing, and, 
 whatever fault we may find with the moral, we can 
 yet listen with patience or pleasure to the song. 
 When not singing the singer sinks to the common 
 level of human beings. 
 
 In the same way let the prose writer write in his 
 
192 WALT WHITMAN'S SO-CALLED POETRY. 
 
 clearest, most intelligible words the thoughts con- 
 ceived in his brain. He too when not writing is 
 but a common mortal. This is life, this is nature, 
 this is truth. What must we say when a prose 
 writer insists upon a continuous masquerade in a 
 poet's mantle ? 
 
 " I dance with the dancers and drink with the drinkers, 
 Tiie echoes ring with our indecent calls," etc. 
 
 The barefaced vulgarity of such lines would, of 
 course, be inaudible and invisible to a person of 
 avowedly low tastes. But that the framer of such 
 lines should claim the title of poet is effrontery at 
 once brazen and ridiculous. 
 
 Open again at random. " Song of Myself," 
 another promising title. If a man be stronger, 
 broader, more beautiful, more truthful, than the 
 herd, there is nothing better to write about than 
 self. But here less than in any other subject need 
 there be singing in prose. Philosophy is not fitted 
 for verse, — not even for the blankest of blank. 
 Let us see how Walt Whitman sings of himself. 
 
 "If you would understand me go to the heights or water-shore. 
 The nearest gnat is an explanation, and a drop or motion of 
 
 waves a key. 
 The maul, the oar, the hand-saw, second my words. 
 
 No shutter 'd room or school can commune with me. 
 But roughs and little children better than they. 
 
WALT WHITMAN'S SO-CALLED POETRY. I93 
 
 The young mechanic is closest to me, he knows me well, 
 The woodman that takes his axe and jug with him shall take 
 me with him all day," etc. 
 
 Plain, practical, prosaic taste, not to be cavilled at; 
 every man has full freedom to take from the world 
 what he best likes. The protest is merely this, — 
 not to call talking singing. To see all things, near 
 and far, high and low, good and bad, is the natural 
 bent of a thoughtful mind. To talk about or write 
 about them is fitting, laudable, the best indeed that 
 such a mind can do. 
 
 But whatever is done or undone in this busy, 
 whirling, mad world, let us each in his sphere, 
 with his strength, try to keep the law of congruity : 
 music from the musician for the music-loving man 
 or woman; art from the artist for the art-loving, 
 art-appreciating soul; intellect — its laws, capaci- 
 ties, products — for the intellectual, for men and 
 women born to think, trained to think, glad and 
 happy to think. 
 
 Of this divine law of congruity Walt "Whitman 
 has no conception. Indeed, he is the best personi- 
 fication of the incongruous that contemporary lit- 
 erature has to ofifer. Life-pictures he gives and 
 delights in giving. He is untiring in gazing, in 
 acting, overflowing with the vitality that uses every 
 atom of dust, every leaf of foliage, every beauty, 
 
194 WALT WHITMAN'S SO-CALLED POETRY. 
 
 every blot in mankind. Common things, ugly, 
 crawling, repulsive things, low, corrupted, hideous 
 things, — these are taken in and welcomed by his 
 mind as heartily as if they were things beautiful, 
 things poetic. 
 
 From " Song of Myself" take another sample at 
 random : 
 
 " The blab of the pave, tires of carts, sluff of boot-soles, talk of 
 the promenaders, 
 The heavy omnibus, the driver with his interrogating thumb, 
 the clank of the shod horses on the granite floor." 
 
 " The butcher-boy puts off his killing-clothes, or sharpens his 
 knife at the stall in the market. 
 I loiter, enjoying his repartee and his shuffle and breakdown." 
 
 Is this poetic? is this poetry? If so, what is 
 prose ? Or take lines from the " Song of the Open 
 Road :" 
 
 " Now I see the secret of the making of the best persons. 
 It is to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the 
 earth." 
 
 There can be no objection, certainly, to a man's 
 holding this creed of the savage, to his both hold- 
 ing and expressing it. But to call such lines poetry 
 is to misname, to stultify, to work confasion most 
 grievous. Again, in the same " Song of the Open 
 
WALT WHITMAN'S SO-CALLED POETRY, I95 
 
 Road" we find this most unwise, unsound, as well 
 as unpoetic analysis of wisdom : 
 
 " Here is the test of wisdom : 
 
 Wisdom is not finally tested in schools. 
 
 Wisdom cannot be pass'd from one having it to another not 
 having it. 
 
 Wisdom is of the soul, is not susceptible of proof, is its own 
 proof, 
 
 Applies to all stages and objects and qualities and is content, 
 
 Is the certainty of the reality and immortality of things, and 
 the excellence of things ; 
 
 Something there is in the float of the sight of things that pro- 
 vokes it out of the soul," 
 
 Could words be more untrue ? 
 
POETRY IS NOT DEAD* 
 
 Julian Hawthorne says, "A man who gives 
 himself up to poetry nowadays is regarded by the 
 average sense of the community as unpractical and 
 a little absurd. Eeligion and poetry are in the 
 highest sense identical, and the Bible is the great 
 poem of all time. Is it because religion has be- 
 come a mere thing of forms and traditions and 
 ' livings' and church steeples and impotent resent- 
 ment against Darwinism, that poetry is losing 
 honor and influence ?" f 
 
 Belief in the genius of Julian Hawthorne does 
 not imply agreement with all he says. For in- 
 stance, nothing that he and all the critics of Eng- 
 land and America combined could say would make 
 me believe that " poetry is losing honor and influ- 
 ence." Why should poetry be in this unhappy 
 plight ? Can beauty ever die out ? Can the grace 
 and charm of intellectual life ever grow old, de- 
 
 * Written in 18S8. 
 
 f The American Magazine, April, 1888. 
 196 
 
POETRY IS NOT DEAD. 197 
 
 crepit, hideous ? Not so. All the world agces that 
 beauty of person and beauty of soul are alike im- 
 mortal. One beautiful woman dies, many beautiful 
 women die. Beauty never dies. So w^ith poetry. 
 One poet dies, many poets die. Poetry itself is 
 perpetual. In every age there have been poets : 
 ours is no exception. Yet all people cannot recog- 
 nize poets. Men and women living in the world 
 driven by its hard logic of ways and means can 
 hardly be expected to see any poetry in life. ITev- 
 ertheless it exists, just as romance exists, possibly 
 close to the cynical observer's fireside. 
 
 Nothing is so diificult as to make people believe 
 in what they cannot understand. The musician 
 has his own world. The artist has another kind. 
 The inventor has still another. The society woman 
 has hers. The domestic wife and mother clings to 
 hers as the best. The philanthropist, or the devotee, 
 — in or out of convent, — has still another kind. 
 All men and women of any force, of any capacity 
 whatsoever, cling to what they are now doing or 
 wdsh to do as the best of life. And such doing is 
 the best. 
 
 Poetry can no more lose ground than beauty 
 or music can lose their influence. A born poetic 
 character — man or woman — is poetic to the end. 
 "While saying this and believing it devoutly, I do 
 
198 POETRY IS NOT DEAD. 
 
 not forget the hardness of life for poets and poetic 
 people. 
 
 Poetry, like painting, is judged according to the 
 mind that is appointed — ^by self or others — to criti- 
 cise. A new volume of poems is given to a critic, 
 whether of newspaper or of magazine. It makes 
 or does not make any particular impression. Yet 
 something of decided opinion must be given. A 
 very prosaic mind even may be called upon to 
 express poetic opinions. 
 
 Poets and poetry live to-day as they have ever 
 lived, as they will live on forever. If you think 
 you have an inkling as to their meaning, treasure 
 it as a something better than a costly house or a 
 sparkling jewel. Above all, see to it that you keep 
 that inkling intact, free from the rust of disuse, 
 from the affectations of sentiment and passion, from 
 the shams of conventional life. The faculty of see- 
 ing beauty is usually coexistent with a passionate 
 heart. It is the key to the artist-poet nature. You 
 see it in the highest t3'pes of actor, of musician, of 
 artist, of writer of fiction and of poetry. To know 
 what poetry is you need not be a poet. But your 
 mind must possess a poetic vein. 
 
EGYPT AND THE DESEET. 
 
 Oriental roving, — who takes a warm interest in 
 this? Assuredly not the busy, planning, driving 
 people who believe material existence the sole in- 
 centive to activity and the best reward of perse- 
 verance. They would deny point-blank that the 
 water of the ]N'ile could be different from that of 
 any other river ; would hold ancient temples and 
 palaces as so many worthless masses of stone, 
 hieroglyphics as far less interesting than the 
 daily newspaper ; would deem two or three months 
 of boat-life either an unpardonable waste of time 
 or drearily tedious. 
 
 Or, of the Desert, — what would be their version ? 
 Probably, a series of discomforts and privations 
 from beginning to end. They would tell of the 
 miseries of camel-riding; of the annoyances of 
 tent-life; of the extortions and treachery of the 
 Arabs ; of the sufferings incident to blazing suns, 
 hot south winds, fierce-driving sand-storms; of 
 frequent risks from robbers or assassins. 
 
 Yet to some other people — as a test, say those 
 
 199 
 
200 EGYPT AND THE DESERT 
 
 who once could, nay, who even now can, lose them- 
 selves in " The Thousand and One lights" — there 
 is a peculiar fascination in the bare thought of the 
 Orient. If you are one of that kind, you hail as a 
 rich and dearly-prized privilege the opportunity of 
 making the thought a reality. A natural reverence 
 for antiquity makes you enthusiastic in anticipation; 
 you ascend the Mle not for amusement but as if on 
 a pilgrimage to that deeply-interesting yet always 
 solemn re2:ion called Past As-es. Your stashes of 
 travel are slow and gradual enough to prepare your 
 mind for its new acquisitions. 
 
 You sail up the Nile in a dahabieh, and during 
 some days find ample occupation in the semi- 
 domestic drama enacted by the crew of Egyptians 
 and Kubians, the Maltese dragoman and servants, 
 and your own party. First of all, the narrow space 
 — the condensed comfort and discomfort — of your 
 quarters, and the domestic routine, so to speak, of 
 the journey. For, what with the meals, reading, 
 and studying, and the running out upon deck to see 
 the river sights, — the crocodiles, birds, " sakias" 
 and " shadoofs," the palm-trees, villages, and fel- 
 lahs on the shore, — the days pass with exceeding 
 rapidity. 
 
 And then the evenings on the Nile, — these alone 
 stand out as special epochs of subdued delight. 
 
EGYPT AND THE DESERT. 201 
 
 Can there be in any other land such deep flame- 
 colored sunsets, — sunsets followed by that won- 
 drous after-glow which neither pen nor canvas can 
 portray, which must be seen and felt to be under- 
 stood ? ^Never, perhaps, in any part of the Orient, 
 can you have so absolute a realization of Eastern 
 atmosphere as when sitting dreamily in that after- 
 glow. You linger in it until the last instant, you 
 part with it in the hope of witnessing another and 
 another. 
 
 Then there are sudden squalls, at times rending 
 the sails and threatening to capsize the boat, fre- 
 quent running aground, and, when there is no wind 
 to fill the sails, the curious process " tracking." 
 Seeing the crew walking along the shore Indian- 
 file dragging the boat up-stream by a rope, you 
 begin to think your progress is to be a slow^ and 
 laborious matter. Then come squabbles and ridic- 
 ulous contentions among the crew and servants, 
 detentions for the baking of bread and buying of 
 provisions. Least endurable of all the annoyances 
 is the concert of horrible discord performed nightly 
 by some of the crew ; one plays on a kind of pipe, 
 others beat drums, while the rest sing and clap their 
 hands in chorus, — altogether a savage monotony 
 of noise distracting in quality, seemingly endless 
 in quantity. 
 
202 EGYPT AND THE DESERT. 
 
 At last, after many days and nights of alternate 
 sailing, '* tracking," and " poling," the First Cata- 
 ract is reached. Then follows the usual excursion 
 into ISTubia, to see Philse — the Holy Island — and 
 those few miles of scenery beyond which make 
 you desire to go on to the Second Cataract. But 
 the Nile is to be descended and all the wonders of 
 its banks explored. And doing this you see that for 
 which no reading, no imagining, had fully prepared 
 you. Day by day you wander through ruins of 
 temples and temple-palaces, measure with eye and 
 mind those proportions w^hich only the closest 
 observation and oft-repeated visits can even par- 
 tially realize. IS'ever before have you had any 
 conception of height, of breadth, of massiveness, 
 of colossal grandeur. With mingled curiosity and 
 awe you ponder over those pictured walls setting 
 forth the religious beliefs and rites, the arts of 
 building, the war-adventures and triumphs, every 
 phase of out-door and in-door life as lived in 
 remote eras of history. And in those weird tombs 
 you see the individual lives of the owners repre- 
 sented with a detail and an accuracy which stamp 
 upon your mind ineftaceably the close kinship of 
 humanity however great the interval between their 
 lives. There are men, women, and children in their 
 work, in their amusements, in their joy, in their 
 
EGYPT AND THE DESERT. 203 
 
 sufferinoc, in all the scenes between life and death. 
 Even beyond this the pictures go, — just as mortals 
 of this era go, — representing confidently and defi- 
 nitely the hereafter according to the popular faith 
 of the country. 
 
 In short, history — of the very earliest epochs — is 
 here brought before your eyes as pictures are shown 
 to children. Whatever your actual condition of 
 mind, you are forced into learning much, into 
 thinking and believing still more. And mingled 
 with the wonders of ancient times are the ugly 
 facts of modern Egypt, — the oppression, ignorance, 
 poverty, squalor of its population. The Past and 
 the Present are here indeed difiicult to reconcile. 
 Upon the whole, as a rover — not as a philosopher 
 — you do not feel bound to reconcile such incon- 
 gruities, but simply give yourself full liberty to 
 look, to study, to be impressed, to dream. That 
 every day's journey adds to your life-store of 
 thought and feeling, that every new grain of that 
 acquisition awakens a deeper interest in things 
 heard of or imagined yet buried under the mighty 
 sands you tread, — of this you are sure. What if, 
 looking back through an intervening vista of years, 
 those days appear hardly more real than the child's 
 reading of Eastern tales ? Is not all " looking 
 back" a seeming unreality? Can yesterday or 
 
204 EGYPT AND THE DESERT, 
 
 last week be touched save in tliou2:ht and in feel- 
 
 ing? 
 
 The descent of the Mle accomplished, you visit 
 the Great Pyramids, which, strange to say, appear 
 to decrease in size as you approach; but once at 
 the base, their magnitude makes itself duly felt. 
 What a mob of Arabs here, all wishing to be en- 
 gaged as guides ! Selection being made, you and 
 your party begin the ascent of those huge stones ; 
 but your guides give your arms such tremendous 
 jerks at every step that you soon dispense with their 
 rude aid, and prefer clambering up alone, although 
 you find it a feat testing well the quality of lungs 
 and muscles. A brief repose enables you to take 
 in the fine prospect from the summit, and then 
 comes the descent, — a process more enjoyable than 
 the other. You do not grow dizzy, so you jump 
 down three or four steps and then sit down to feast 
 your eyes upon the view, the brilliant sky, and the 
 unique appearance of the Pyramid itself with its 
 dazzling rows of steps. At the base you partake of 
 a substantial luncheon, and then explore the interior 
 of the Pyramid, a performance by no means agree- 
 able either at the time or in recollection. Each 
 member of the party has a guide, and each guide a 
 lighted candle. You take the arm of your dusky, 
 wild-looking cavalier, and enter through a small 
 
EGYPT AND THE DESERT. 205 
 
 opening into a low, narrow, descending passage 
 paved with marble so highly polished that it is 
 well-nigh impossible to keep a foothold. You 
 grope through several corridors of this kind before 
 coming to a larger one where there is a steep ascent 
 on a very slippery inclined plane, with grooves for a 
 foothold every three or iov// feet. Here you must 
 perforce put your arms around your Arab escort, 
 and even then feel by no means safe, for on one side 
 seems to be an ugly precipice ; besides this, the air 
 is stiflingly close, and there are immense quantities 
 of sand and fine dust which choke you, — producing 
 altogether sensations of mingled awe and disgust. 
 At last the King's Chamber, the Queen's Chamber, 
 and other rooms are reached, — then the winding 
 passages again, then, best of all, the daylight and 
 the fresh air once more. You think it very solemn, 
 but very oppressive ; you are glad to have been in 
 there, but you do not want to go a second time. 
 
 Days in Cairo preparatory to crossing the Desert, 
 — these present novel and entertaining incidents. 
 What human activity, partly European, partly 
 Asiatic, is here in the streets and suburbs ! What 
 crowds of clamorous donkey-boys, Avith their know- 
 ing-looking, easy-gaited, tiny brutes, which they 
 push up amid deafening shouts and reckless scuf- 
 
206 EGYPT AND THE DESERT. 
 
 fling to the first stranger who presents himself in 
 the door-way! At first you think somebody is 
 being mobbed, but after a few days' acquaintance 
 with modern Egyptians and Arabs you find that 
 nothing can be done without this screaming and 
 hubbub. What picturesque scenes, in which 
 mosques and minarets, bazaars, camels, Arab 
 horses with gayly-attired riders, people of various 
 nationalities and tribes, burning sun, clouds of 
 dust, shady, groves, and cool breezes are oddly 
 mingled ! If a youthful traveller, — especially if a 
 woman, — you go with your party, see what they 
 see, do as they tell you to do. But in addition to 
 this there is another pleasure that falls to you, — 
 your own way of seeing and deducing things, of 
 taking mental sketches, one which perhaps only 
 years later brings forth fruit. At the time — and 
 this applies as well to a later period, when you visit 
 other famous cities of the Orient — all that you 
 clearly know is this : you are sojourning in that 
 Orient of which as a child you drank in such long, 
 deep draughts of allegory, romance, and poetry. 
 This you never lose sight of, spite of all the discom- 
 fort and fatigue inseparable from Oriental travel. 
 
 The Desert offers another phase of the Orient 
 which no one possessing the true spirit of roving 
 
EGYPT AND THE DESERT. 207 
 
 would willingly miss. Granted that the forty 
 days between Cairo and Jerusalem necessitate cer- 
 tain severe privations and some real anxieties, yet 
 may we not well include those for the sake of the 
 other side, — the great gain of new ideas and many 
 hoars of pleasure? Surely it is something to have 
 ridden on camels through many long days and 
 some still longer nights ! Not that the camel is 
 interesting as an animal. From the very first ac- 
 quaintance with him — a trial ride in Cairo — up to 
 the parting in Hebron, he seemed to you the very 
 incarnation of impatience, surliness, and ugly 
 snarling. Eight out of the nine travellers in your 
 party were ready, you think, to agree with Harriet 
 Martineau when she says, " The mingled expres- 
 sion of spite, fear, and hopelessness in the face of 
 the camel always gave me the impression of its 
 being, or feeling itself, a damned animal. I wonder 
 some of the old painters of hell did not put a 
 camel into their foreground, and make a tradi- 
 tional emblem of it." Indeed, recalling your own 
 sensations during that same Desert journey, you 
 pronounce it the most trying and exhausting mode 
 of travel ever attempted. The uncouth jerking 
 motion when rising or kneeling down for the 
 rider to mount or dismount is a process requiring 
 some moments of mental bracins^ before submit- 
 
208 EGYPT AND THE DESERT. 
 
 ting to it. Then their regular swaying, swinging 
 strides continued through many consecutive hours 
 produce a seeming dislocation both of bones and of 
 nerves. Yet, once started upon this desert journey, 
 there is no escaping the dromedary's back for the 
 greater part of the day ; for only the Bedouins or 
 those inured to their life could keep up with the 
 camel's stride. When towards evening you are 
 permitted to dismount and walk, it seems a com- 
 plete and blissful restoration to the poor, jerked- 
 about, harassed body. 
 
 !N'or can any one who has traversed the Desert 
 forget the blazing suns and glaring sands of many 
 of the days; and worse, far worse, is the burning 
 south wind, which often blows three successive 
 days. Imagine the w^hole caravan moving off 
 about six of a fine, cool April morning (which 
 ^' moving," by the way, is not done without a vast 
 amount of running about and vociferating on the 
 part of the Bedouins and European servants as 
 they take down and roll up tents, and gather up 
 beds, mattresses, pillows, tables, camp-stools, etc., 
 to be packed aAvay on the camels' backs until the 
 next camping-place is reached in the evening), 
 then imao-ine about nine a breeze as if from an 
 oven begininng to blow, and growing stronger and 
 hotter every hour until your face is literally baked, 
 
EGYPT AND THE DESERT. 209 
 
 your lips and mouth painfully parched. Added 
 to this, occasionally, is a persistent sand-drizzle, an 
 atmosphere of fine sand to breathe instead of air, 
 a sand which penetrates everything on you and 
 around you, even to the piece of bread or biscuit 
 you take for your luncheon. 
 
 Thirst — excessive, incessant, unquenchable thirst 
 — is another painful recollection of the Desert. 
 True, your supplies are supposed to be ample, and 
 at intervals you come to oases where clear, fresh 
 springs replenish your barrels and skins ; but even 
 this does not prevent an ever-present actual thirst, 
 or a continual recollection and anticipation of its 
 cravings. At times it seems as if neither tea nor 
 wine nor water could allay the sensation. You 
 look with longing eyes at the barrels of w^ater on 
 the baggage-camels ; water, water, is never absent 
 from your thoughts; even the absolutely muddy 
 water which some days is the only kind to be 
 had, you hold as a rare treat. And at such times, 
 when even this supply is known to be diminishing, 
 with what expectant anxiety all await the return of 
 the Arab who has been despatched on one of the 
 fleetest dromedaries of the caravan in search of 
 springs! This thirst,— excessive and incessant, — 
 was there nothing to assuage it ? Yes, one thing 
 there was, a nectar pure and cool and vivifying. 
 
210 EGYPT AND THE DESERT. 
 
 but one, alas, of which there was never enough 
 for the panting mortals who craved it. Often be- 
 fore had I tested its luscious properties, absorb- 
 ing pleasure and calmness with every drop of the 
 precious fluid. Delicate, amber-colored nectar ! I 
 see it before me now with its countless golden 
 globules reflecting the light, a beverage at once 
 odorous and tempting, and with eye drinking in 
 the beauty of the liquid, and nostril inhaling the 
 spicy perfume, taste is at last appealed to, — the 
 climax reached. Sensuous delight of the most 
 rare yet harmless kind fills the being, — in a single 
 instant all hunger, thirst, and fatigue vanish. 
 Seldom, indeed, can the senses of man be indulged 
 without a bitter residue of regret, satiety, or in- 
 ebriety ! Would you know the name of this nectar 
 which may well bear comparison with the mythical 
 drink of a by-gone age ? If so, ask for the orange, 
 — not that acid, tough-fibred, half-dried thing too 
 often called by that name, but the full-ripe, full- 
 flavored orange of tropical climes. 
 
 Then, too, I recall days at Akaba on the Eed Sea, 
 — days of bargaining with the Bedouins for drom- 
 edaries and escorts to go to Petra. Here it is 
 demonstrated very plainly that greed for gold is 
 by no means a quality peculiar to the European 
 
EGYPT AND THE DESERT. 211 
 
 race. In fact, these wandering Arabs, with appar- 
 ently so little need for money, seem animated by 
 the self-same spirit that prompts men in all other 
 parts of the world to take all they can get. But 
 in this case even gold will not avail in furthering 
 the wishes of you and your party. For, after eight 
 days' encampment at Akaba and endless palaver- 
 ing and quarrelling, Petra must be abandoned, be- 
 cause the Sheik who was to serve as your escort is 
 at war with the tribes there. 
 
 Then, too, come days and nights of risk, — lia- 
 bility of attack from tribes of Bedouins hostile to 
 those acting as our escort. The travellers are cau- 
 tioned to keep their dromedaries together as much 
 as possible, the gentlemen to keep their fire-arms 
 ready for use. Yet, through some natural perver- 
 sity of the dromedaries and the baggage-camels, 
 these days are just the ones when they seem most 
 inclined to straggle, to stop, to nibble the shrub- 
 bery, and to be in every way unruly. 
 
 These days of risk were greatest in going from 
 Damascus to Palmyra, a journey deemed somewhat 
 adventurous at that date. To the latest day of 
 existence you will never forget one sensation en- 
 dured, — that of sleepiness, overpoweringly painful 
 sleepiness, while travelling by night on the camel. 
 There were moments — many of them — when you 
 
212 EGYPT AND THE DESERT. 
 
 did nod, nod, nod, while the animal strode, strode, 
 swayed, swayed; but to sleep would have been 
 certain breaking of your neck. Fear of this alone 
 enabled you to bear the torture. 
 
 Yet, all in all, the privations and risks of the 
 Desert are fully counterbalanced by the actual en- 
 joyment mingling with them and the rich harvest 
 of memories added to life. 
 
 The pleasures of the Desert would make a long 
 list if drawn up by a rover capable of seeing and 
 profiting by the whole. Perhaps nowhere do we 
 find greater surprises as regards air, scenery, and 
 effects. If there are days of scorching heat and 
 driving sand, there are also days of deliciously cool 
 and bracing temperature. Indeed, the extraordi- 
 nary purity of the atmosphere is a continual sub- 
 ject of wonder ; so, too, are the clouds and show- 
 ers and sudden gales which vary the anticipated 
 monotony of the Desert. 
 
 And the scenery, — what more varied and pic- 
 turesque than those wild, narrow defiles of the 
 silent, mysterious mountain-ranges ! — rugged, steep 
 mountains, some portions rising to sharp, fanci- 
 ful peaks of every size, resembling in outline 
 Moorish architecture as seen in the honejxomb 
 stalactites of the Alhambra, and all of the most 
 
EGYPT AND THE DESERT, 213 
 
 varied and brilliant colors. The rocks and stones 
 on the road are likewise vividly tinted, and appear 
 as if washed by the waves. Interest and wonder 
 are constantly in play here in these rocky defiles, 
 yet there is a weirdness about them, and a heated 
 air enclosed as it were without chance of escape, 
 which would make encampment there even for one 
 day or one night insufferable. A sense of glad re- 
 lief accompanies the exit, and a positive rejoicing 
 ensues upon reaching one of those fragments 
 of Paradise called oases. Who that has passed 
 over this desert region does not preserve vivid 
 recollections of that model oasis, Wady Teiran ! 
 where there are luxuriant palms, delicate acacias, 
 grasses in the rock-clefts, and above all a deli- 
 ciously cool, clear stream running through the 
 centre, and inviting us to drink, drink long 
 draughts of the crystal beverage we never be- 
 fore so dearly valued. Only for one night is the 
 halt in this lovely spot, where so much rest, so 
 much enjoyment, are condensed into that brief 
 space. The Arabs make the encampment, then 
 kindle a brilliant fire, and seat themselves on the 
 ground around it with their never-failing pipes. 
 The travellers avail themselves of such meagre 
 comforts as saddle-bags afford, revel in plenty of 
 
214 EGYPT AND THE DESERT. 
 
 water, and take in the full beauty of the spot 
 until fatigue drives them to their couches. 
 
 The Desert crossed, and quarantine passed at 
 Hebron, another and wholly different phase of the 
 Orient begins. Dromedaries are exchanged for 
 horses, and, while tents are still retained, they 
 alternate with convents and semi-European, semi- 
 Asiatic inns. A summer passed in Palestine and 
 Syria implies a series of visits to historical — real 
 and traditional — places ; a roving over and dwell- 
 ing upon the mountains of Lebanon ; intercourse 
 with many people of various nationalities, tribes, 
 and religions. Scenes of exquisite natural beauty 
 alternate with scenes of grossest superstition; 
 places sacred to Christendom are disgraced by the 
 shameful squabbles of so-called Christians ; peace- 
 ful valleys are stained with fierce battles of Arab 
 tribes. In variety of actual fact and incident, in 
 association and historical interest, no other country 
 offers stronger attractions to the rover of imagina- 
 tive tendencies. 
 
VEEBOEKHOYEN AND HIS STUDIO* 
 
 Out the Chaussee de Haecht, one of the prin- 
 cipal streets of Brussels, where a great many artists 
 live, is a house bearing upon its door-plate the 
 name Eugene Yerboekhoven. There is a gate-way 
 and a wall enclosing a fine shady garden, with trees 
 and grass. Back of this stands the house itself, 
 which has more the appearance of a villa than of 
 a town house. Upon approaching the front door 
 you may be saluted, as we were, by a chorus of 
 dogs' voices coming from the right, the animals, 
 fortunately for timid persons, being chained. To 
 the ring at the bell a young girl with pleasing 
 manner answers, and, being properly accredited 
 visitors, we are at once shown to the studio. M. 
 Verboekhoven himself opens its door; we are pre- 
 sented in due form, and are invited in. A short, 
 elderly man with spectacles and rather reddish 
 face, dressed in gray, brush and palette in hand, 
 bows, and almost instantly reseats himself and 
 
 * Written in 1867. 
 
 215 
 
216 VERBOEKHOVEN AND HIS STUDIO. 
 
 begins to paint. He is hard at work upon a 
 medium-sized picture — a group of sheep. A slight 
 sense of surprise comes over us at the abruptness 
 of his manner, but this feeling instantly vanishes. 
 "We can but admire his enthusiasm. Almost every 
 day the poor famous man is interrupted in this 
 way. 
 
 After a few seconds, during which we are busy 
 in taking a general view of the place, M. Ver- 
 boekhoven, without even turning round, remarks 
 that he hopes his visitors will excuse him for 
 keeping on with his work. Whereupon we, of 
 course, reply that every one knows well how 
 valuable his moments must be, and so on. 
 
 The first sensation upon entering the studio is 
 that of delicious coolness. The apartment is a 
 large, lofty, square room, lighted from the roof, 
 with two doors, one where you enter and one 
 opposite leading to the goat- and sheep-stables, 
 where the models are kept. To be in such a room 
 is like experiencing a cool, fresh bath after the 
 heat and glare of the outside world upon a hot 
 August day. 
 
 How, you think, he must enjoy working in an 
 atmosphere so ideal in every sense as this! The 
 walls from top to bottom are covered with pictures 
 and sketches of all sorts, — all by his own hand, — 
 
VERBOEKHOVEN AND HIS STUDIO. 217 
 
 heads, figures, animals, but mostly the last. There 
 is also a fine plaster cast of a tigress and her cubs, 
 life-size. In another room, just across the passage, 
 precisely the same in size and appearance as the 
 one we are in, are more pictures and casts, every 
 inch of available space being covered. These two 
 rooms composing the studio are attached to the 
 dwelling, and were evidently built for the special 
 purpose to which they have been put. In the 
 second room, besides innumerable pictures and 
 studies of all sorts, are two very large paintings, 
 — one occupying the centre of the left side — 
 Rubens on horseback, life-size, and a landscape 
 with animals, — both superb pictures. 
 
 Some moments after we enter the second room, 
 to our surprise, the great artist comes in, without 
 his brush, and begins to converse pleasantly. At 
 first we naturally hesitate about entering into con- 
 versation, thinking it might detain or embarrass 
 him, but, finding that he really is inclined to play 
 the host, we gladly enough turn our attention from 
 the works to the man. He speaks in French ; he 
 understands a little English, he says, but has no 
 time to study it. 
 
 I speak of certain paintings of his which we 
 have seen in America, and of his reputation for 
 marvellous swiftness. " Ah," he replies, " I have 
 
 15 
 
218 VERBOEKHOVEN AND HIS STUDIO. 
 
 no greater facility than others for rapid painting. 
 I accomplish more because I work more. Every 
 morning at five I am at work, and from that till 
 dusk. Where others give six hours I give twelve, 
 — that is the only difference." " Yes, I have 
 worked hard," he repeats several times during 
 the conversation, but not as if attributing any 
 merit to himself. He states it in a simple, grave 
 manner as a fact, just as one might say it of 
 another. 
 
 Sculpture he has always admired more, and 
 taken more delight in it, than painting. His 
 father was a sculptor, and he himself had been 
 one at the outset. Even now he spends much time 
 with the clay during winter evenings. In this 
 room are several more casts, — a very fine lion and 
 a Yenus, which, we were subsequently told, the 
 artist uncovers only for specially favored visitors. 
 I could not help expressing surprise that he should 
 not have chosen sculpture rather than painting, 
 considering that he took more pleasure in it, and 
 that he regarded it as a higher art. His reply was 
 that it had been necessary to work for an existence, 
 and that he had made his reputation by his paint- 
 ings ; there was time for the one branch only, and 
 he had chosen the one that gave him bread and 
 butter. 
 
VERBOEKHOVEN AND HIS STUDIO. 219 
 
 Had he done anything in marble ? we question. 
 "Yes, a bust of myself," he replies, and he will 
 show it to us, with pleasure: It is in his dwelling, 
 but in a very poor place, where the light does not 
 fall upon it properly. 
 
 But before leaving this room he shows us some 
 studies of heads — sheep's, lambs', goats' — in every 
 variety of position. He explains how plainly na- 
 tionality is stamped upon the faces, and how differ- 
 ent each face is, — precisely as much difference as 
 in human countenances. With him it requires but 
 one glance to distinguish the Scotch, English, or 
 Flemish animal. "Ah," says he, "you have no 
 idea how much work there is in all these studies ; 
 again and again they must be made and remade 
 until the right expression and position are caught." 
 There is that in his voice which speaks of many 
 weary hours of toil and patience, — hours concern- 
 ing which none but himself knows. Apparently 
 M. Yerboekhoven is between sixty and seventy 
 years old, but, notwithstanding his unusual appli- 
 cation, he enjoys good health. The only sign of 
 feebleness one notices appears in his voice. Between 
 sixty and sixty-two he was quite blind for eighteen 
 months. Of this sad period, however, he does not 
 speak. 
 
 Our visit terminates with the view of the bust 
 
220 VERBOEKHOVEN AND HIS STUDIO. 
 
 up-stairs in his private parlor. To get up there 
 one must go through the studio again and into the 
 sheep-stable, where he introduces to us two splen- 
 did Scotch specimens, — " wild fellows," he says, 
 "just arrived." Here, too, are several little lambs, 
 white and gentle. Then we pass along a corridor 
 filled with paintings and up a flight of stairs. The 
 bust of himself is fine as a work of art, and the 
 marble is perfect, but as a likeness it appears flat- 
 tered. But from the transparency and purity of 
 marble do not almost all statues seem so? Besides, 
 Verboekhoven's face is not only reddish but also 
 pockmarked, though not badly. ITeither of these 
 blemishes appears in the marble. But the fact is 
 that Verboekhoven, like the true artist that he is, 
 idealizes, beautifies. 
 
FAVOEITE FLOWERS.* 
 
 Can we tell why our favorite flowers speak to us 
 as they do ? Were reason or botany the arbiter, it 
 would not be easy to point to one flower among 
 thousands — in woods or in garden — and say, Be- 
 hold my favorite ! Luckily, individual liking is far 
 more potent than science. By the verdict of that 
 liking we exclaim, Give me the rose and I am 
 content ! Let me inhale the breath of the wood- 
 bine and I crave none of Lubin's extracts ! Send 
 me a spray of trailing arbutus and the memory of 
 it lasts all through the summer ! 
 
 Why do people ramble through a garden in 
 search of a particular rose ? of a spicy carnation ? 
 of the tiny, bell-shaped, exquisitely-fragrant Ma- 
 hernia? We need but few flowers to satisfy us, 
 but these must meet our tastes. However simple, 
 unlearned, or strange these are to others, to our- 
 selves they yield ever-fresh delight. Why feel 
 ashamed of even the lowliest predilections ? Better, 
 indeed, try to keep them intact as at least one proof 
 
 * Written in 1870. 
 
 221 
 
222 FAVORITE FLOWERS. 
 
 of individualitj. Let every one enjoy flowers his 
 own way. I ask for one only of my favorites at a 
 time, the pleasure being thus concentrated. Many 
 forms, colors, and odors distract my faculties, scat- 
 ter my affection. 
 
 Did you ever see a large crepe myrtle in full 
 bloom ? I wish you could see one now before me 
 that has just reached perfection. What a ravishing 
 sight is that mass of pink blossoms in the dazzling 
 sunlight ! I can see it from my window, at a dis- 
 tance, but standing beside it, as I did a few min- 
 utes ago, the perfect beauty of it burst upon me 
 like a revelation. Had I not been so well drilled a 
 mortal I could have stood entranced. As it was, 
 things material pressed upon the aesthetic sense, 
 and while breaking off a small sprig there was the 
 felt necessity of absorbing much in a brief space. 
 Are not all the choicest gifts of the same fleeting 
 nature, warning us even in the hour of enjoyment 
 that there can be no permanency? A look, a 
 word, a smile, a pressure of the hand, — have not 
 these simple acts, when charged with sentiment, 
 procured for us some of the dearest moments of 
 existence? Yet what could be more evanescent, 
 less tangible ? Here for a few brief seconds sense 
 and soul are filled by these lovely flowers. I may 
 not see them again, but the remembrance is last- 
 
FAVORITE FLOWERS. 223 
 
 ing. I rejoice at having seen them, at having been 
 stirred by their beauty and fragrance. It is the 
 same with all that life has given and will continue 
 to give. 
 
 What singular beauty in a single leaf of this 
 myrtle ! Suspended each from its own special 
 point, the cluster is a marvel of transparency, deli- 
 cate tints, careless grace, l^o wonder the ancients 
 dedicated this flower to Venus ! Fitting emblem 
 of a sentiment which defies both discipline and 
 analysis. Farewell, sweet myrtle ! Bloom yet a 
 few days to charm other eyes and hearts, and then 
 fade away, like other fragrant blossoms immortal- 
 ized in memory. 
 
 Bouquets ! If of conventional type they give 
 me more pain than pleasure. The flowers are torn 
 from their native element of beauty and subjected 
 to rude mechanism. They are wired, bandaged, 
 yoked to sticks, forced to yield their sweetness to 
 cold Fashion's behest. They cause me discomfort 
 similar to that felt in a crowded room. The people 
 are all good of their kind, whether useful, hand- 
 some, witty, or graceful. All are worthy of respect, 
 some are to be admired, a few loved for their own 
 sake. Yet a mixed assemblage brings unpleas- 
 antly close a juxtaposition of voices, manners, gar- 
 ments, attitudes, all so interblended that personal 
 
224 FAVORITE FLOWERS. 
 
 identity is lost. The e^^e sees many forms, the ear 
 hears many confused tones, there is a general gri- 
 macing and gesticulation, with the result that for 
 the time being individual beauty and strength are 
 invisible. 
 
 Bouquets, indeed! Think of lowly violets 
 walled in by self-asserting geraniums ! Of the 
 aristocratic rose associated with the plebeian 
 dahlia ! Of the aromatic carnation consorted with 
 the scentless, flaccid petunia! Of dainty helio- 
 trope and gaudy tulip side by side ! Of drooping 
 lily-of-the-valley face to face with stately hyacinth ! 
 Of sturdy spruce or arbor-vitse enclosing the peer- 
 less camellia! Of delicate daphne overpowered 
 by tuberose ! It is, perhaps, less shocking to see 
 a number of kinds together, a gay miscellany of 
 form and color, than strong contrasts. But even 
 this is merely a result of taste vitiated by custom. 
 The incongruity itself is not one whit less annoy- 
 ing. 
 
 Bouquets ! Whether festive, domestic, or fune- 
 real, the flowers composing them are so distorted 
 from their natural selves that they affect me pain- 
 fully. Their odors are so intermingled that the 
 potency of each is impaired. I lose all sense of 
 pleasure, and am only unpleasantly affected by the 
 melange. Let every one choose his own flowers, 
 
FAVORITE FLOWERS. 225 
 
 and deal with them as he will. I shall not inter- 
 fere with others if they cherish the hydrangea, 
 the althea, the sunflower, nor remonstrate if they 
 ask for fifty varieties compressed into a plateau, 
 twisted into a crown, or built into a pyramid. 
 Only, dear friend, whoever you may be, do not 
 think me insensible to divine beauty if I refuse to 
 admire those mechanisms. Let me stipulate for 
 my favorite flowers, to be enjoyed in my own way. 
 Through the senses, through the intellect, through 
 the soul, let me absorb their delicious fragrance 
 and beauty, intoxicated with their potency. Even 
 if there are moments when I pass them with seem- 
 ing indifference, — as I might pass a lovely child or 
 not notice the glory of a sunset, — it does not mean 
 that love has waxed cold, but that the expression 
 of it is held in abeyance by some other interest. 
 Can we, indeed, in a world proffering so bewilder- 
 ing an array of attractions, both to sense and to 
 thought, be at all times impartial in our treatment 
 of the beautiful ? 
 
WOMEN WAGE-EARNEES. 
 
 Where are the schools that teach girls first of 
 all things the principles of self-support? They 
 certainly are needed in a community. Thousands 
 of young and even old women to-day are suffering 
 because of the lack in early youth of instruction 
 of this kind. If such schools do not exist, we may 
 be sure education so called is not the great good 
 that it pretends to be. It is not the boon it should 
 be. Take the young woman, for example, who has 
 been graduated from our public schools with highest 
 honors. Is she well equipped, as she should be, to 
 battle with the world, to be a wage-earner, if need 
 be, in woman's natural sphere ? Verily not. She 
 has, we may grant, an education so called, but not 
 the kind that will benefit her the most for the 
 domestic life she is sooner or later in all probability 
 to enter upon. Young girls are rarely taught 
 any handicraft in schools. They should be in- 
 structed in some trade, in some form of manual 
 work, or at least in housekeeping m one or more 
 of its several branches. 
 
WOMEN WAGE-EARNERS. 227 
 
 To-day or to-morrow our daughters may be 
 forced through circumstances to become wage- 
 earners. Through disaster they may be stripped 
 of their fortunes, be they big or little. Let each 
 woman ask herself, while there is still perhaps 
 time. What could I do to earn a living ? What 
 am I fitted for by my training? Education, 
 whether in public or private schools or in homes, 
 should first of all inculcate the idea and point to 
 the child the power and the means of self-sup- 
 port. This should be the first and most important 
 desideratum, and should be regarded as an essential 
 part of all education. 
 
 This doctrine means a radical change in the 
 present plan of education, exclaim a host of 
 teachers ! Yes, undoubtedly, but the principle at 
 stake is worthy of the change, however radical it 
 may at first seem. All will admit that the present 
 mode of education as an end to self-support is for 
 the majority a sad failure. Witness the thousands 
 of young women daily seeking employment un- 
 successfully in the spheres for which they have had 
 no special or thorough training. 
 
 Ignorance begets helplessness. Many women, 
 being ignorant of any special trade or work, 
 knowing how to do no one thing even moderately 
 
228 WOMEN WAGE-EARNERS. 
 
 well, howsoever humble the task may be, founder 
 in their helplessness, appealing to friends and the 
 public to save them, to help them. "Without thor- 
 ough knowledge on some practical subject, not 
 much can be done to give them the assistance they 
 crave. 
 
 Such a one applies to us for help, saying, " I 
 need money; what do you advise me to do?" 
 
 " What do you know how to do ?" 
 
 " I have had the usual school education, and 
 since ' finishing' I have been assisting at home." 
 
 " Do you like house occupation ? is there any one 
 part in the household management in which you 
 take interest or pride ?" 
 
 " No ; it seems great drudgery, a weary routine 
 that leaves me depressed and helpless." 
 
 " Outside of domestic affairs, then, what are your 
 accomplishments ?" 
 
 " I like teaching, I like nursing, I should like to 
 study medicine, — but I cannot leave home now; 
 my father is in feeble health. Can you not suggest 
 some means whereby I may earn a comfortable 
 living at home ?" 
 
 Ah! poor, pitiable woman, no longer young, 
 without a single accomplishment, unable to per- 
 form any office in the eyes of the world worthy of 
 special compensation, your case, like that of thou- 
 
WOMEN WAGE-EARNERS, 229 
 
 sands, is nigh helpless. You have had no educa- 
 tion to lit you to be a wage-earner ; you are pro- 
 ficient in absolutely nothing for which the world is 
 ready to pay you wages. The world does not 
 want your services, such as they are, because you 
 are in no way qualified. The fiiult, however, is not 
 in you, but in the kind of education that you have 
 had. 
 
 The clue to the vexed question as to how the 
 average woman shall earn wages is to be found in 
 the two familiar words. Domestic Service. This is 
 the most interesting and by far the most important 
 phase of the whole subject. That kind of wage- 
 earning is not merely open to all, but it is the 
 working-woman's most natural sphere. It is her 
 most healthful, useful, and profitable field of work. 
 Thoroughly understood, it is the best qualification 
 she can have for her highest possible social posi- 
 tion, — marriage. She begins at the lowest rung of 
 the domestic ladder, — housework. She has every 
 opportunity to rise in the world. Understanding 
 the best way of keeping a house clean, neat, at- 
 tractive, she becomes qualified for the next step 
 onward, to choose the kind of housework she pre- 
 fers or is best fitted for, whether this be cook- 
 ing, chamberwork, or sewing. 
 
230 WOMEN WAGE-EARNERS. 
 
 The English term '^ upper" parlor maid signifies 
 what we in the United States ought to recognize 
 in house-service, — namely, advancement in wages 
 and respect in proportion to skill, trustworthiness, 
 good manners. Such advancement leads naturally 
 to the one post most seriously needed in American 
 homes of the wealthy, — the housekeeper. A large 
 house with many servants is as much in need of a 
 housekeeper, other than the mistress, as a factory 
 is of a superintendent. That this post is so rarely 
 filled in private houses in this country accounts for 
 a well-known deplorable fact : the excessive " wear 
 and tear" of the mistress. The losses from this are 
 physical prostration, mental deterioration, gradual 
 decline of grace and beauty. 
 
 In cases of a medium household, comfortable 
 without wealth, the Glerman custom of engaging 
 a young lady who superintends the household, 
 under the mistress, is good. This custom, for a 
 small family or one of moderate wealth, might 
 readily be adopted in America. Immense bene- 
 fits would accrue directly to two people, — the mis- 
 tress and the assistant, — and indirectly to the 
 family and to the friends. It is not fair treatment 
 that the mistress of a household should be re- 
 quired to spend her strength and time over details 
 that a young assistant could attend to with profit 
 
WOMEN WAQE-EARNERS. 231 
 
 to both her character and pocket. Many good, 
 well-educated American women married say at 
 twenty are thoroughly ''worn out," therefore un- 
 attractive, at forty, simply through the excess of 
 household details. This is injustice to the woman 
 and to her family and friends. The problem of 
 domestic service is so interwoven with happy home 
 life that it calls for the most serious attention on 
 the part of social thinkers. The woman who does 
 her best to develop this question is of the greatest 
 positive value in her day to society. 
 
 It is not necessary here to touch upon exceptional 
 women; the artists, the students, the actresses, and 
 the like,— women endowed with special gifts that 
 stamp their career. Exceptional women, like ex- 
 ceptional men, need no hints, no social legislation. 
 They can always command both position and wages. 
 Like the exceptional women in society or art, 
 their sphere is decided by birthright or rare gifts. 
 But it is the non-exceptional, the good, willing 
 woman who has no special gifts and is not taught 
 any one useful occupation, who needs help. Do- 
 mestic economy is the all-important study that 
 Americans of both sexes are called upon to culti- 
 vate. 
 
DEUNKENNESS A CRIME. 
 
 Crime is the same whether in a savage or in a 
 Christian, in one sex or in the other. Among 
 savages there are many distinctions as to cruel or 
 ferocious disposition. One out of three is more 
 kind or more brutal than the others. Among civ- 
 ilized people it is precisely the same. There are 
 always the criminals and those capable of becoming 
 criminals. The tendencies to cruelty are incipient 
 crimes. Those tendencies either exist in certain 
 persons at birth, are inherited, or are grafted upon 
 the individual through vicious associations. Both 
 are potent, but especially the former. 
 
 " When I assert that vices are inseparable from 
 great and potent societies, and that it is impossible 
 that wealth and grandeur should subsist without 
 them, I do not say that the particular members of 
 them who are guilty of any should not be continu- 
 ally reproved, or not be punished for them when 
 they grow into crimes." So wrote De Mandeville, 
 and the two facts of the paragraph will doubtless 
 
 232 
 
DRUNKENNESS A CRIME. 233 
 
 hold good as long as the human race exists. Crime 
 is as much a part of mankind as virtue is a part: 
 restraint and punishment should follow as an es- 
 sential means of defence for the favored — but not 
 perhaps more virtuous — mortals who are not crim- 
 inals. 
 
 Crime is the same whether in Paris, in London, 
 or in New York. If the foreign street Arab seem 
 worse, it is only because he is more intelligent. 
 Given the criminal propensity, the more brain the 
 blacker the crime ; the same force of character — 
 alias brain — the greater the invention, the daring, 
 the crime. 
 
 Inherited tendencies are the same in one country 
 as in another. In England, in America, young 
 criminals of every grade are to be found. What is 
 civilization doing to-day to ameliorate or extermi- 
 nate crime? The criminal classes here are formi- 
 dable, especially so when the newness of the country 
 and its extraordinary prosperity are considered. Is 
 there even an attempt made topunish the drunk- 
 ard ? Is he taken away from home, prevented from 
 continuing the course of ruin ? Are the children 
 of drunken parents removed and cared for by town 
 or state ? The number of men in liquor — young 
 and vigorous men — one meets every day coming 
 
 out of saloons, on our thoroughfares, — and this 
 
 16 
 
234 DRUNKENNESS A CRIME. 
 
 at high noon, — shocks, repels, and saddens one. 
 These joung, strong, well -dressed men are the 
 fathers of the school-children we are spending 
 millions upon. Yet the example of such young 
 men — with bleared eyes, bloated faces, brutal pro- 
 pensities — must inevitably counteract all that the 
 best schools can do. l^o, civilization has done 
 nothing to prevent crime of this kind. Nothing 
 will be accomplished until it makes drunkenness, 
 if not a crime, at least a disgrace. 
 
 Years and years ago I became convinced that no 
 kind of so-called charity could ever be of lasting 
 good until drunkenness should be treated as a 
 crime. Of what use to have charitable institutions 
 for every sort of human ill, so long as the root of 
 suffering is left to spread its poisonous branches all 
 through social life ? But let drunkenness be pun- 
 ished with heavy fines, with imprisonment with en- 
 forced labor, and presently you will make men see 
 that they cannot continue with impunity to be 
 human fiends, wife- and children-starvers, wife- and 
 children-tormentors, wife- and children-murderers. 
 There is no other possible way to treat drunkenness. 
 Men and women who cannot control their appetite 
 for drink must be controlled by the state or civic 
 law. They must be punished for their crimes of 
 excess and brutality. 
 
DRUNKENNESS A CRIME. 235 
 
 The fight against an inherited taste seems end- 
 less, hopeless. How many years have you — ^you 
 who have inherited this tendency to crime — heen in 
 the fight ? Since the beginning of life itself, possi- 
 bly, although all through early years and middle 
 life you did not know the incubus that weighed 
 upon aim and endeavor, — ay, upon conscience 
 itself. You are drawn, dragged, driven from your 
 goal by the awful forces of circumstance, — the cross- 
 purposes of heredity added to your little social 
 world. 
 
 Soul-sore, indeed! Oh, the climbing, climbing 
 up to the peak your mind's eye discerned long 
 years ago ! There, far up, countless leagues away 
 from your actual foothold, is the goal that at the 
 start seemed so easy to reach. Joyously you set 
 off, confidently you went on and on, never for an 
 instant losing faith in your inner conviction; yet 
 where are you now ? Soul-sore, sick and faint from 
 the struggle with the world-forces you learned to 
 recognize all too late. Had you at starting in that 
 heyday of youth been told of the trials and ob- 
 stacles on the way, what a different career would 
 have been yours ! 
 
HAPPINESS OR UlSTHAPPINESS. 
 
 If required to answer in one sentence the ques- 
 tion, For whom is life not worth living? I should 
 say, For the one who asks this question. And 
 why this reply? The reasons are readily found. 
 Looking at the people about us, we notice few who 
 are disfigured physically, few cripples, few blind, 
 few starving, few who are maltreated. There are, 
 moreover, few who are incapacitated by nature for 
 gaining a living. Then why are there so many 
 suffering, unhappy people, so many who ask. Is 
 life worth living ? The answer to this momentous 
 question is to be found in the individual himself; 
 in the very one who makes the query. 
 
 Looking into the lowest stratum of society, the 
 men and women in menial positions, we find the 
 same characteristics existing here as in the highest 
 classes. If there is daily faithful work, wages are 
 proportionately given and the worker is content. 
 Doing his best to-day, the morrow is certain to 
 bring him more work and more skill in its exe- 
 cution. No one thus occupied is found to be un- 
 
 236 
 
HAPPINESS OR UNHAPPINESS, 237 
 
 happy. It is this daily faithful work— whether on 
 the road or in the artist's studio— that makes the 
 contented man. Look on the other side of society, 
 at the eager, craving, ease-loving, pleasure-seeking 
 men and women, and we see without looking far 
 vivid illustrations of unhappiness, and hence of 
 worthless lives. 
 
 Among the many causes of what may be termed 
 misery, lack of self-control is especially to be 
 cited. This must include the illnesses, bodily and 
 mental, arising from the use of stimulants and nar- 
 cotics, from excesses in food and pleasure, from 
 disappointments resulting from vanity and desire 
 for praise, and the like. Misery, in short, may be 
 defined as the fruit of wrong-doing, in which must 
 be distinguished that arising from our own conduct 
 and that resulting from the conduct of others. 
 Poverty, degradation of mind and heart, theft, 
 murder, lust, cruelty exercised by the strong over 
 the weak, and the entire list of human vices and 
 miseries, are, when analyzed, all traceable to natural 
 causes. Over these causes no earthly power can 
 prevail save self-control, the habit and will of the 
 individual. Success or failure, happiness or misery, 
 in life depends largely upon the use we make of this 
 potent factor, control,— the power of intelligence or 
 force over natural tendencies or weaknesses. With 
 
238 HAPPINESS OR UNHAPPINESS, 
 
 the exercise of self-control men and nations are en- 
 titled to respect, but without this power they are 
 weak and unworthy of esteem. 
 
 To be unhappy yourself is to make others so. 
 To live under the same roof with an unhappy 
 person is to live in purgatory. To associate with 
 unhappy people, whether in high life or in the 
 working-classes, is to be convinced that such a state 
 of mind is life's greatest curse. Happiness or con- 
 tentment — whichever name you may choose to give 
 it — is, then, a state of mind. To impress this obser- 
 vation upon the child, upon the man, the woman, 
 is to help people and to give them the clue to a 
 happy life. Life is worth living for him w^ho works 
 faithfully, steadily, unremittingly. Work is the 
 cure for unhappiness. Work is the remedy for 
 every phase of discontent. Work makes life beau- 
 tiful instead of repulsive. Work brings comfort of 
 body, culture to the intellect, peace to the soul. 
 Work is the paradise of mortal life. 
 
SOME LESSONS OF LIFE. 
 
 Intensity of thinking and feeling is perhaps, 
 after all, the best that the world can give us,— the 
 best that man can know of the condition we call 
 Life. What person can carry out his plans fully ? 
 Who can develop his ideas satisfactorily ? Who in 
 any way can express his being as the soul prompts ? 
 Must not the noblest endeavor of the noblest man 
 remain far short of the conception ? 
 
 To live and learn is a dictum trite enough and 
 simple enough, yet an astonishing number of per- 
 sons seem to find it not only difiicult but even 
 impossible. In vain are the grand lessons of life 
 preached to them, and in vain are they disappointed, 
 chagrined, rebuifed, and mortified. They see and 
 hear, are ready enough to criticise others who fall 
 into error, mischief, and folly, but as regards their 
 own afiairs they are incorrigible. 
 
 Ignorance, negligence, self-indulgence, — what 
 lessons do they not teach us ? And yet note how 
 the masses contrive to elude the unpleasant truths 
 and to live on superficially or recklessly. The les- 
 
 239 
 
240 SOME LESSONS OF LIFE. 
 
 sons learned from teachers and books have their 
 uses, no doubt, but those which really penetrate, 
 arouse, and excite our being are the practical ones 
 of daily life. These make us feel the humiliating 
 effect of ignorance, the incessant worry consequent 
 upon improvidence, the losses sustained through 
 carelessness, the ruinous effect of intemperance, the 
 certain results of wavering and irresolution. In 
 a word, life with its ten thousand varied phases 
 teaches us all we most need. Lessons come before 
 us daily, adapted to each individual capacity, so 
 that, justly considered, there can be no possible 
 excuse for ignorance or error. 
 
 Impartially investigated, the long list of so-called 
 misfortunes would be found to consist largely 
 of indolence, frivolity, extravagance, and ill-regu- 
 lated passions. And in beholding, as we contin- 
 ually do, the self-indulgence and laxity of prin- 
 ciple amid the so-called higher classes, among the 
 favored by education and fortune, we cannot won- 
 der at the degree of abasement too frequently 
 reached by the untrained, uncared-for, and poverty- 
 stricken masses. What a vain, hollow, and even 
 hypocritical sound must lessons of morality have 
 to the weak and suffering when promulgated from 
 the heights of luxurious ease and enjoyment! 
 And yet, natural as this seems, it cannot be denied 
 
SOME LESSONS OF LIFE. 241 
 
 that this sphere has its trials and temptations no 
 less than the other. 
 
 What is real and tangible in life save this mental 
 consciousness of our own being ? Living accord- 
 ing to the accepted standard of a million others, 
 never for an hour diverging from established cus- 
 tom, submitting in joy as well as in sorrow to an 
 imitation often absurd and sometimes contempti- 
 ble, men generally are in danger of forgetting that 
 there is such a thing as individual responsibility. 
 To escape from mental imprisonment should be 
 our chief thought and earnest longing. Nor is it 
 with any selfish view of enjoyment that this wish 
 should be harbored, but solely to obey a higher 
 command than any hitherto listened to. We 
 would be free, not to be idle and self-indulgent, 
 but for the sake of devoting our ability, what- 
 ever be its degree, to some useful purpose; of 
 giving the best of conscious life to the loftiest con- 
 ception of that intellect called " our own." 
 
 Partial decay does not necessarily impair the lus- 
 ciousness of the whole fruit. Thus, by removing 
 a certain portion, where the worm or decay has 
 destroyed, the rest may be eaten with impunity. So 
 in character, defects even if grave do not necessa- 
 
242 SOME LESSONS OF LIFE. 
 
 rily render it valueless or ugly. By veiling, exten- 
 uating, tolerating, or pitying, — removing morally 
 the unsightly or injurious part, — the man may be 
 esteemed and even loved. If perfection be found, 
 let us appreciate, reverence, or love with all the 
 warmth of which we are capable. But if there be 
 only partial goodness, soundness, or beauty, let us 
 also give of our respect and love. In proportion 
 it must undoubtedly be, but the principle will 
 enable us to find something in every one of our 
 fellow-creatures to honor as well as to rebuke. 
 
 To have an object in life means much for every 
 human being. For the thinking man it is the first 
 step to be taken bearing directly upon his happi- 
 ness. To have this is to possess something which 
 will cause forgetfulness of the unavoidable petty an- 
 noyances of the present. This, after all, is the main 
 need for men and women who have outgrown toys 
 and whose energies yet call for occupation. How 
 it quickens vitality and lends a new interest to 
 even the meaner details of a career to rise in the 
 morning and know there is one thing which no 
 one else could perform with the same pleasure 
 or skill, and which removes all inclination for 
 lounging or indolence ! To feel that the new day 
 is to bring healthful exercise of the soul's highest 
 
SOME LESSONS OF LIFE. 243 
 
 faculties; that, whatever the surroundings, the 
 mind is not to become subordinate to the many 
 time-killing expedients of the fashionable world or 
 of self-complacent mediocrity ; that, in defiance of 
 the pressure of custom and the enervating in- 
 fluences so prevalent in society, there is to be a 
 steady development of the mind's ruling idea: 
 — ^this is, indeed, living for an object ! 
 
 To the scholar meditation brings satisfaction 
 greater than that found in youth, in travel, in ad- 
 miration, or even in love. In all of those expe- 
 riences are hinderances, imperfections, fears. Each 
 passing year impresses the brevity of youth ; each 
 worldly advantage has its drawback. Travel brings 
 discomfort and anxiety to mar the effect of novel 
 sights and sounds. Society demands toil and much 
 sacrifice of individuality before it yields its pleas- 
 ures. Admiration never fails to awaken an inward 
 doubt as to merit. While love,— that intoxicating 
 essence, that idealized reality,— is not its fleeting 
 nature an ever-tantalizing joy ? But in meditation 
 there is nothing to mar, trouble, or fear. Every 
 moment brings not only its own special delight, 
 but also the assurance of countless additional ones. 
 With the intellect roused to action, the entire 
 world acquires a new and more vivid glow of 
 
244 SOME LESSONS OF LIFE. 
 
 interest. On the earth's surface, in the ocean's 
 depths, in the thronged firmament, in the entire 
 realm of the " Known" and the " Unknown," are 
 myriads of wonders awaiting our minds. 
 
 To some people impulses are more real than 
 houses, jewels, and raiment are to others. Hence 
 when such people are urged by an inexplicable 
 inner life to desert what they are engaged in and 
 put interest and vitality into another field, the 
 command cannot be disobeyed save at the cost of 
 self-respect and content. 
 
 An impulse always means something, and if we 
 fail to heed it we voluntarily reject one of the chief 
 sources of happiness. It must be genuine, a part 
 of the very self, coming as it does unlooked for, 
 uncalled for, unwished. When we understand how 
 it comes we shall likewise understand how we 
 breathe, move, think, enjoy, and sufier, how and 
 why we live. 
 
 How save through yielding to a strong inner 
 impulse have men and women in any age elevated 
 themselves above the mass ? Can the convention- 
 alist, the social slave, the sluggard, or the sensual- 
 ist, ever hope to develop his higher nature, that 
 which will give heart and intellect a chance for 
 supremacy ? 
 
SOME LESSONS OF LIFE. 245 
 
 I know of nothing that gives such pure delight 
 as helping a fellow-creature ; and the greatest mis- 
 take one can make is in thinking this can be done 
 only by means of money, food, or raiment. Inval- 
 uable as these are in certain cases, they are, after 
 all, but a very small portion of our available re- 
 sources. Sympathy, encouragement, hope, advice, 
 knowledge, affection, time, strength, and expe- 
 rience may all appropriately come under the head 
 of gifts. "Well for us, well for the world, if this 
 were borne in mind before pronouncing judgment 
 upon generosity or meanness. We should learn to 
 be more calm and lenient in judgment, — to look 
 less to the mere outward manifestation, and to 
 attach greater value to the entire character. 
 
 Some of the clearest minds and truest hearts 
 have fallen into a condition of being in which all 
 things seem to lose their identity and under delu- 
 sive names lead to error and misery. Whatever 
 of Eeason be given, let it be guarded with un- 
 wearied care and strengthened by every possible 
 means, so that when judgment becomes necessary 
 in an important hour it may be rendered unhesi- 
 tatingly. If Reason is to answer its end, it should 
 be untrammelled by any sense of pleasure, passion, 
 or gratified vanity. Clear and simple the question 
 
246 SOME LESSONS OF LIFE. 
 
 should come to us, Is the step we are about to 
 take right or wrong, wise or foolish ? Clear and 
 unmistakable in tone should come the reply, for or 
 against the action. 
 
THE WOED SOUL. 
 
 The human soul, mind, spirit, the ego ! Why so 
 many terms for the same thing ? After all these 
 centuries of thought in the same direction hy so 
 many hard students, is there not yet one word to 
 express what everybody acknowledges to himself? 
 You who read this, you who write this, we all well 
 know the intense, vivid, incessant vitality that starts 
 in yourself at the first moment of awaking to a 
 new day. You can recall it as it was in earliest 
 childhood, — in its chief qualities the same then as 
 to-day in your maturity. You have never ceased 
 wondering over its persistency in urging, driving, 
 goading you towards certain fixed points. Mind, 
 soul, spirit, the ego, the self, your self,— ah, what a 
 very simple fact it is when you call it hy that last 
 name! The youngest child can understand that 
 term, the profoundest philosopher can go no farther. 
 He may write many volumes on the ego and its rela- 
 tions to other ideas of the same mysterious essence, 
 yet never come any nearer to wisdom than the little 
 
 247 
 
248 THE WORD SOUL. 
 
 child who thinks, feels, enjo^^s, suffers, and is quite 
 certain of his own identity as a special fact. 
 
 Of all explorations in this w^onderful world of 
 ours, nothing can compare in interest and in value 
 to mankind with that of the soul. I select this word 
 because among all the other words for the same thing 
 it seems to express more of the wht)le fact, — the self. 
 Mind to most people means merely the thinking 
 machine, a something apart from heart, alias sensi- 
 bilities, feelings : as, in common parlance, a man 
 may have a good mind and a bad heart. All this 
 is needlessly confusing. Put it to yourself Your 
 mind is clear — in certain directions. It can see 
 and do, can receive and give out, in ways familiar 
 to yourself and a few others. The next point to 
 prove is in w^hat respect your heart or soul or spirit 
 is a distinct and separate faculty. 
 
 You are naturally either generous or close, — say 
 with your money, your sympathies, your possessions 
 of any kind. What makes you so ? Is it not the 
 impulse, either way, direct from your mind ? Is it 
 not there that impulses good and other are born, — 
 impulses meaning justice, charity, generosity, as 
 well as their antipodes ? Is your mind's outlook a 
 narrow, selfish one, your character is precisely that. 
 But the world's acceptance of the word mind is dis- 
 tinct from heart, while soul is different from either. 
 
SOME THOUGHTS ON RELIGION. 
 
 Prayer is nothing without holiness of life. In 
 vain shall we cling to the altars of the temple, to 
 human strength and sympathy, or even to works 
 of charity, if our souls are not in perfect accord 
 with the Most High. 
 
 Is not prayer an asking ? And can men dare to 
 ask for that which they make no effort of their own 
 to acquire ? 
 
 Is there sanctity in any of the offices of religion 
 so long as a man knowingly partakes of that which 
 injures body and soul ? 
 
 Can the deepest of sighs or the most fervent of 
 promises avail aught if there remain in the heart a 
 consciousness of wilful laxity in one even of the 
 fundamental principles of life ? 
 
 Of what avail the clasped hands, the suppliant at- 
 titude, the streaming eye, the fervent words,— any 
 
 17 249 
 
250 SOME THOUGHTS ON RELIGION. 
 
 or all of the evidences of devotion, — if the life be not 
 in harmony with selfhood ? Prayer is a mockery 
 unless this harmony exists. Why ask for aid when 
 within there is a fund of strength as yet untouched ? 
 
 Prayer is the highest phase of communion with 
 the Unseen. But this phase cannot be produced at 
 will. It is simply an effect of moral and mental 
 qualities in the individual. 
 
 Prayer — that unrestricted outpouring of the soul's 
 best life to the ear of the Most High — is a means 
 of which the time and mode of using must be left 
 to the choosing of each separate soul. If a place 
 for spiritual activity be found in the church, it is 
 well ; if in the home circle, in the sanctum, in pub- 
 lic works, in private charity, in social life, in teach- 
 ing, reforming, meditating, working, inventing, 
 studying, it is also well. 
 
 For what are we struggling, toiling, praying, 
 hoping ? We should restrain our impatience, look 
 calmly upon life as it is, do what in us lies, and for- 
 bear to murmur at the barriers which limit action. 
 We should concentrate our being into the highest 
 of which we can conceive, work conscientiously in 
 our appointed sphere, and strive unceasingly to see 
 
SOME THOUGHTS ON RELIGION. 251 
 
 more and more clearly through the veil which this 
 earthly habitation spreads before our eyes. 
 
 True life means the assimilation of action to con- 
 ception. :N'ot what we should like to be, but what 
 we feel :N"ature means and gives us the power to be, 
 should be our standard. 
 
 As living in its fullest sense is the best prepara- 
 tion for death, so the particular manifestations of 
 this living can be justified only by revelation from 
 within. :N'ot what we would fain do, but what w-e 
 feel specially urged to do by reason and conscience, 
 must decide our course at all periods of our exist- 
 ence. 
 
 The use we make of existence is a voluntary act, 
 strong or weak, good or bad, helpful or hurtful. 
 To appeal to the Most High to make us better, to 
 control our actions, to keep us from sin, is an evasion 
 of a far more difficult act, — the controlling of self 
 Our religious convictions should centre in this one 
 truth, — self-mastery. If we have not this we have 
 nothing. Without this force w^e are as infidels, as 
 heathens, as individuals to be feared, to be abhorred, 
 to be ostracized ; but with it we may claim a place 
 on a footing with the highest and best of men. 
 
252 SOME THOUGHTS ON RELIGION. 
 
 Humanity, as a system of philosophy, offers us 
 material for a lifetime of meditation and research; 
 but systems, however admirable as feats of logic, 
 are valuable only as aids and incentives to the study 
 of humanity. How is it possible to have never so 
 slight a conception of the meaning of the term 
 Divinity save through the human intellect ? Prim- 
 itive people paint the Deity or make stone images 
 of him, — and after whose likeness ? Man's, and no 
 other, and this because any other would be beyond 
 human ability. 
 
 Keligion, like love, should be held sacred, and 
 should never be permitted to enter into general 
 conversation. Who can say he understands these 
 two great mysteries ? Until he does, why should 
 they be dragged in and confounded with material 
 matters ? 
 
 IS'ot by what we believe, but by what we do, by 
 what we are, should we be judged. iTot the belief, 
 but the life, should be the standard for self and for 
 others, and whatever is doubtful should be sub- 
 mitted to this test. 
 
 Keligion without honest conviction is mockery. 
 
''SIMPLIFY THY LIFE. 
 
 (a vision.) 
 
 It came upon me suddenly, as if in answer to 
 certain thoughts which had been flitting through 
 my brain. Startled, bewildered, dazzled, I stood 
 as if transfixed, and during the few moments it 
 lasted I was unconscious even of breathing. It had 
 the form of a sage, — was tall, stately, slightly 
 bowed, with noble head, and soft, flowing, silvery 
 hair. Thought, experience, strife, suffering, had 
 worn deep lines and furrows in the face, and at the 
 first glance it struck me as the saddest I had ever 
 seen. But at the second look this impression wore 
 away. A peculiar, beautiful light diffused itself 
 over the head and countenance, removing every- 
 thing harsh or painful, putting strange and won- 
 derful meanings into those deep lines and furrows. 
 Power seemed given me to read them all. My 
 heart bounded at the thought, but the time was too 
 short for a close reading, and a hasty impression 
 was all I could retain. 
 
 It was as if I stood face to face with another soul, 
 
 253 
 
254 ''SIMPLIFY THY LIFE.'' 
 
 all earthly barriers removed, while the atmosphere 
 was pure and heavenly. The eyes searched mine, 
 held them fast, then the lips moved. Eagerly I 
 leaned forward, fearing something, some word, 
 might escape me, but there was no need. Each 
 sound was clear, perfect, and came without hesita- 
 tion or effort. Never had I heard such a voice, — 
 one so distinct, so mellow, so tender, — one so full 
 of soul ! The exact words I cannot recall, but the 
 sense remains ringing in my ears unceasingly. It 
 ran thus : 
 
 " My child, simplify thy life ! All thy weal here 
 and beyond depends upon this ! Thy soul is now 
 going through an ordeal. I see the struggles and 
 temptations, the weary efforts, efforts which will 
 avail thee naught as long as thou clingest to earthly 
 supports. Let go those weak, worthless threads 
 which bind thee to custom, and cling to the golden 
 chain which in rare moments thou art permitted 
 to see, and which is firmly stapled in Paradise. I 
 see the answer leaping from thy lips, — ' I would, I 
 would, but know not how nor where to begin !' 
 How ? "Where ? But I say to thee, my child, it 
 matters not how or where. Only begin, and w^ith- 
 out delay, for thy time is short. Look to it that 
 the moments and opportunities of each day escape 
 thee not! And think not to do this thino: without 
 
''SIMPLIFY THY LIFE.'' 255 
 
 much tribulation ! Many and acutely painful will 
 be the pangs, but only thus may the goal be won. 
 If at times they seem too hard to bear and thou art 
 tempted to succumb, remember the past, and, above 
 all, remember the present. Hast thou always been, 
 art thou now always, happy, serene, at peace wdth 
 thyself and with the unseen ? Hast thou not been, 
 art thou not even now, crushed by a Aveight called 
 * essentials,' but which thy inner self truly regardeth 
 as ' non-essentials' ? Under this weight hast thou 
 not had, hast thou not even now, much to endure ? 
 Hast thou not known the meaning of silent pain ? 
 In this new life to which I would lead thee there 
 is also pain, sorrow, disappointment, yet less in 
 degree than what thou hast already endured. 
 Behold thy encouragement ! Weep if thou wilt, 
 as the old, familiar landmarks one by one disap- 
 pear, but press on, on, on. At the end thy grief 
 shall be turned to joy, — to joy unspeakable !" 
 
 With these words the sage moved, and stretched 
 forth his hands towards me. I would fain have 
 seized them, but could not. A consciousness of 
 unworthiness came over me. Involuntarily I sank 
 upon my knees, bowed my head low. And then 
 the hands rested upon me with a gentle, firm 
 pressure, while the voice continued : 
 
 " May Heaven help thee, my child, in the work 
 
256 ''SIMPLIFY THY LIFE.'' 
 
 before thee ! To me has it been assigned to point 
 out, to guide, to urge, but, alas, only for a time ! 
 IIow long this influence may be permitted I cannot 
 tell, nor would it be well for thee to have such 
 knowledge. My experience is far beyond thine, 
 my discipline widely different, yet our souls are 
 related, and in their aspirations meet on common 
 ground. Farewell, — and remember my words, — 
 ^Simplify thy life!'" 
 
 I lifted my eyes, but saw naught. The sage had 
 vanished. I remained long on bended knees buried 
 in deep, solemn thought with palpitating heart. 
 Silence filled the room. The autumn twilight stole 
 gently in the western window. I threw open the 
 sash and took long draughts of the pure, fresh air, 
 which seemed charged with unwonted strength- 
 giving properties. 
 
 Yes, yes, thou art right. Thou hast given me 
 strength ; a new and better life is before me. 
 
 THE END.