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WORKFELLOWS 
 IN SOCIAL PROGRESSION 
 
BY TEE SAME AUTHOR 
 
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WORKFELLOWS 
 IN SOCIAL PROGRESSION 
 
 BY 
 
 KATE STEPHENS 
 
 depyiYj ds r ovetBog, 
 
 — Hesiod 
 
 Work is no blame. 
 
 But lack of work a shame. 
 
 flew lorft 
 
 STURGIS & WALTON 
 
 COMPANY 
 
 1916 
 

 Copyright, 1916 
 By STURGIS & WALTON COMPANY 
 
 Set up and electrotyped. Published, October, 1916. 
 
 /££ 
 
 DEC 16 1916 
 
 ©GI.A44681'i 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Pbologue: Is There Social Peogeession? . . 3 
 
 OuB CouNTEY Newspaper: the Genesis of 
 ITS Spieit 19 
 
 Forerunners of Women's Collegiate Educa- 
 tion: AND Mary Astell 83 
 
 Uses and Abuses of Two English Words: 
 Female; Woman 171 
 
 Plato's Imperishable Epigram: and its 
 Trail of Light 217 
 
 Fables of Bronze and Iron Ages: of To-day 241 
 
 "Tobacco Battered and Pipes Shattered 
 About Their Ears that Idly Idolize so 
 Base a Weed"; by Joshua Sylvester, Puri- 
 tan 287 
 
PROLOGUE: IS THERE SO- 
 CIAL PROGRESSION? 
 
The odd thing is that in spite, or perhaps by vir- 
 tue, of his absurdities man moves steadily upwards; 
 the more we learn of his past history the more 
 groundless does the old theory of his degeneracy 
 prove to be. From false premises he often arrives 
 at sound conclusions: from a chimerical theory he 
 deduces a salutary practice. 
 
 Preface to "Psyche's Task" 
 
 J. G. Feazee. 
 
 The study of history seems to me, of all others, 
 the most proper to train us up to private and pub- 
 lic virtue. . . . 
 
 I think that history is philosophy teaching by 
 example. 
 
 "Of the Study of History" 
 
 BOLINGBEOKE. 
 
 All our hopes of the future depend on a sound 
 understanding of the past. 
 
 "The Meaning of History" 
 Feedebic Haeeison. 
 
 for the centuries to be. 
 
 Of beauty and simplicity, 
 
 When wisdom, truth, and love shall reign, 
 
 And science slay disease and pain. 
 
 When all the nations shall be blent 
 Into one loving parliament, 
 When wars are done, and earth shall be 
 One peaceful, happy family. 
 
 "The Gates of Silence" 
 
 ROBEET LOVEMAN. 
 
PROLOGUE: IS THERE SO- 
 CIAL PROGRESSION? 
 
 **We are about where the ancients 
 were," said a noted critic of life and let- 
 ters — neighbor at Harvard University 
 of men who delighted to tell of evolution 
 from the ** first appearance of rudimen- 
 tary nerve systems in creatures as low as 
 star-fishes up to the most abstruse and 
 complex operations of human intelli- 
 gence.'* *'We are about where the an- 
 cients were,'' this critic said to me one 
 day, *^not advanced, surely. Their writ- 
 ers are not approached by any to-day. 
 I do not see evolution. In time recorded 
 by human writing men have not changed. 
 Minds are no closer in grasp nor deeper 
 in penetration." 
 
 ^*Look at the old-time Greeks," spoke 
 up another conservative. ^* Where do 
 you find a better mirror of the woe and 
 
 3 
 
4 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 passion of man than the Iliad? — ^where 
 so complete a consciousness of the moral 
 law as Sophocles' drama? — ^what so sat- 
 urated with knowledge of human nature 
 as Euripides ' plays ? — our politicians, do 
 they build as framers of Greek constitu- 
 tions and workers for the perfection of 
 Greek city-states built? — do artists put 
 before us such beauty as Pheidias and 
 his fellows blazoned in Athens? 
 
 '*What product of to-day is equal to 
 that of the mighty minds of old?'' con- 
 tinued the conservatives, *^when loftier 
 works interpreted alike populace and 
 thinker; when the Parthenon rose 
 through racQ enthusiasm, race religion 
 and race taste; when the pan-Athenaic, 
 folk-festival, meant all Greeks of the* city 
 of the Golden Grasshopper; when the 
 Greek commoner, conserving a corpo- 
 rate ideal, sensible of the values of his 
 folk legend and preservative of his fore- 
 fathers' bequest, found himself embodied 
 in his religion, his ethics, his art, his poli- 
 
IS THERE SOCIAL PROGRESSION? 5 
 
 tics ; when, in fact, wliat he thought and 
 did impelled to great embodiments. 
 
 ** Consider works of the Latin people," 
 the conservatives went on, *Hhe Eo- 
 mans, whose calmer minds wrote down 
 what life was telling before their eyes, 
 until the * Consolations' of Boethius 
 rounded into ten centuries the produc- 
 tiveness of a war-intoxicated race. 
 Since men set down their reflections on 
 papyrus and parchment, human capac- 
 ities have grown no stronger, no clearer, 
 nor have thought and action become 
 more directive." 
 
 **This may be true of the individual 
 mind," answers to-day's radical. ^*But 
 if we have no master-minds in art and 
 state-craft, no peaks rising to the SBther 
 of unapproached ideal, still general so- 
 cial conditions prove evolution. Men 
 and their activities are knit closer. 
 Sympathy is more universalized ; feeling 
 more collective. Democratizing society 
 has allowed play of men's social instinct, 
 
6 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 or turned their impulses into broader, 
 more rational channels, and pronounced 
 against inefficacious, ephemeral, self- 
 destructive individualism. Bound the 
 earth people are living on a higher plane. 
 The social will may not yet have become 
 sufficiently conscious and compelling to 
 give us heights towering above the plane. 
 Greece was a tiny group held together 
 by spiritual qualities, and, in what she 
 was not reversive, a prophet for nations 
 to follow. The world is not yet a purged 
 Hellas which it will become. 
 
 ** Human life averages higher than in 
 the days of Plato ; and doubtless chances 
 of recession are less. Bread, and circus 
 and human torture do not assuage now- 
 a-days, as they once pacified proletarians 
 of imperial Eome — a people degenerated 
 by militarism and economic conditions it 
 produces, and doomed by oriental in- 
 pourings either to eviction from lands 
 they had owned and cultivated to a city- 
 life of dependence on odd-jobbing and 
 
IS THERE SOCIAL PROGRESSION? 7 
 
 charity, or to stay by their lands and 
 become serfs. The ribald jokes of that 
 old city's populace in the years of its 
 imperial glory, the people's floating 
 stories reported by satirists, would not 
 in our day be endured. For the soul of 
 the people is higher. And as to con- 
 ditions in ancient Greece — ^let us not for- 
 get that in Athens, and elsewhere, much 
 of the drudgery and benumbing work 
 was done by slaves. 
 
 * * The measureless work of the world, ' ' 
 continues our radical, **and in saying 
 this we do not speak of the devastation 
 of war, the appalling destructiveness by 
 which the science of war is now impover- 
 ishing mankind, but of the quenchless 
 pain of the real work of the world — the 
 digging of earth; cutting and construc- 
 tion of stone and moulding and building 
 of metals; traffic of men and travel to 
 and fro; raising of crops, cleansing of 
 habitations ; feeding and clothing human 
 bodies — such daily reparative routines 
 
8 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 still burden the race's will, healthily at 
 times, and yet more often leaving neither 
 strength nor freedom for the mind's 
 nimble service. Our science, you know, 
 declares fatigue a toxin that kills brain 
 activity. Eepetitious drudgeries dwarf 
 the soul of the people, we say, by dead- 
 ening initiative, constructive effort. 
 They darken morals, also, for what 
 Aristotle wrote is true of all time, *A 
 man's constitution should be inured to 
 labor, but not to excessive labor, nor of 
 one kind only. He should be capable of 
 all the acts of a freeman.' 
 
 << * Wings unfurled sleep in the worm.' 
 Certain species of lepidoptera split and 
 cast many a skin in passing from early 
 larval life — before they reach the con- 
 spicuous beauty of 
 
 'the membraned wings, 
 So wonderful, so wide, 
 So sun-suffused, . . . things 
 Like soul, and nought beside.' 
 
IS THERE SOCIAL PROGRESSION? 9 
 
 By some such process — a crude simile, 
 I admit, but let it pass — hy some such 
 way men^s associated life may be mov- 
 ing, in the pain of its creeping towards 
 psychic freedom sloughing off character- 
 istics undesirable and destructive for 
 human living, and putting in their stead 
 characteristics better fitted for brother- 
 hood. 
 
 **0r, this merged individuality, this 
 social will, may be likened to a glacier, 
 pushing onward, crushing, grinding, pul- 
 verizing with limitless pain; but as it 
 moves clarifying and cooling and giving 
 off living waters. Still, in the on-shov- 
 ing centuries, even when stunted by wars 
 and exhausting labors, it is learning the 
 truth with more and more certainty, be- 
 coming more and more conscious of right 
 and practice of justice. What Wallace 
 called the cumulative effects of the ac- 
 quisition of knowledge does intermit- 
 tingly develop, and then a general ad- 
 vance astounds generations and gives 
 
10 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 an age of marked characteristics and 
 marked social progress. 
 
 *^ Inheriting civilizations of centuries, 
 we are not merely what Sir William 
 Temple, about the year 1690, called us — 
 we modern dwarfs, standing on a giant's, 
 the ancients \ shoulders, thus seeing more 
 and farther than he. William Wotton 
 hits nearer the truth: * Comparatively 
 speaking the extent of knowledge is at 
 this time vastly greater than it was in 
 former ages.' And mark the gain in 
 breadth and the spiritual results of dis- 
 semination since 1694 when Wotton 
 wrote this. The way has been long, the 
 pace slow, we repeat. But count what 
 the soul of the people has won! Social 
 ideals, sense of conduct, better codes of 
 duty, better codes of virtue. 
 
 *' 'But dig down: the Old unbury; thou 
 shalt find on every stone 
 That each Age hath carved the symbol of 
 what god to them was known ; 
 
IS THERE SOCIAL PROGRESSION? 11 
 
 Ugly shapes and brutish sometimes, but the 
 
 fairest that they knew ; 
 If their sight were dim and earthward, yet 
 
 their hope and aim were true.' 
 
 *^ To-day, with us, this secular, people's 
 will is striving through a compelling 
 social conscience, the conscience finally 
 pushed into a world-force in throes of 
 the Great Eeformation — through the 
 Eeformers' resistance to pressure upon 
 their liberties. Inseparably linked with 
 this conscience, also, is the old Puritan 
 idea of the commonwealth and its edu- 
 cation which would mark off the educa- 
 tion that confuses and weakens from the 
 education that clears and strengthens 
 and would make a new moral world for 
 all peoples, and better for this and future 
 generations, and wherever they may 
 have their habitations, all dwellers of 
 the earth. Our democratic, on-sweeping 
 will and conscience, our soul of the peo- 
 ple, so declares itself — that men and 
 
12 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 women of future generations, and even 
 of to-day, shall have such a common 
 weal and shall be more vigorous in 
 morals, mind and body, than peoples of 
 the past. 
 
 **A strange insight of the seventeenth 
 century forecast such possibilities for 
 our gift to the world spirit, when Wot- 
 ton wrote : ^ So some future Age, though, 
 perhaps, not the next, and in a Country 
 now possibly little thought of, may do 
 that which our great Men would be glad 
 to see done; that is to say, they may 
 raise real Knowledge, upon the Founda- 
 tions laid in this our Age, to the utmost 
 possible Perfection, to which it can be 
 brought by mortal Men in this imperfect 
 State.' 'This,' adds Wotton, 4s what 
 one would gladly hope should be reserved 
 for his own Posterity and his own Coun- 
 try. ' Have we enough of the old Puritan 
 spirit to develop such an inheritance 
 aright? 
 
 **That we are moving in steady im- 
 
IS THERE SOCIAL PROGRESSION? 13 
 
 provement and endeavor to make our 
 moral progress keep pace with material 
 progress is surely not an idle dream of 
 optimists — such as Anthony a Wood 
 would call ^magotie-headed.' Advance 
 in spiritual acquisition, founded on the 
 well-directed use and extension of prac- 
 tical arts of life, is not a mere vagary. 
 Kailways carry Krupp cannon far; but 
 they carry steel ploughs and pruning 
 hooks farther. Telegraph and telephone 
 may have borne messages that shattered 
 the peace of the world; but they also 
 carry to remotest corners teachings of 
 the solidarity and interdependence of all 
 earth's people. 
 
 **Even to-day's knowledge and inven- 
 tion, and our intelligent utilizing of them 
 for human advantage, old seers saw and 
 foretold. For instance, Joseph Glanvill 
 ventured in 'The Vanity of Dogmatiz- 
 ing,' 1661, to say; *I doubt not but pos- 
 terity will find many things, that are 
 now but Rumors, verified into practical 
 
14 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 Realities. It may be some Ages hence, 
 a voyage to the Southern unknown 
 Tracts will not be more strange than one 
 to America. To them, that come after 
 us, it may be as ordinary to buy a pair 
 of wings to fly into remotest Regions ; as 
 now a pair of Boots to ride a Journey. 
 And to confer at the distance of the 
 Indies by Sympathetick conveyances, 
 may be as usual in future times, as to us 
 in a literary correspondence.' In such 
 ways did prophets shine out in past 
 generations and hint at the realities that 
 forerun our conscious and positive pur- 
 suit of social well-being. 
 
 *^And still further afield — centuries 
 before Glan^ill — the * Chronicle of Lon- 
 don,' so long ago as the year 1203, sug- 
 gested such air visitors as a brilliant 
 material civilization in 1915 and 1916, 
 effected : * There were seyn f oules fleynge 
 in the eyre berynge in their billes 
 brennyng coles, whiche brenden manye 
 houses'; and again in 1221, *at which 
 
IS THERE SOCIAL PROGRESSION? 15 
 
 tyme fyry dragons and wykkes [wicked] 
 spirytes grete noumbre were seyn openly 
 fleyng in the eyre.' " 
 
OUR COUNTRY NEWSPAPER: 
 THE GENESIS OF ITS SPIRIT 
 
Yet still the New World spooked it in his veins, 
 A ghost he could not lay will all his pains; 
 For never Pilgrims' offshoot 'scapes control 
 Of those old instincts that have shaped his soul. 
 "Fitz Adam's Story," 
 James Russell Lowell. 
 
 The little county paper 
 
 From the old home town, ah me, 
 
 Has anybody died this week? 
 Let's open it and see. . . . 
 
 The editor is lazy and he don't get round much more 
 To gather up the items at the blacksmith shop and 
 
 store ; 
 But here are all the funerals, and the marriages are 
 
 told 
 In simple old-time sweetness of an English style of 
 
 gold. . . . 
 
 It hasn't much pretension and it's still the same old 
 
 thing 
 It used to be when childhood filled the world for us 
 
 with spring. 
 But how we watch and hunger for the little sheet 
 
 to come 
 Each week from Homely Corners where so many 
 
 friends are dumb. 
 
 The little county paper, 
 
 Oh, a welcome friend it is. 
 With all its quaint old gossip 
 
 Of a sweeter world than this! 
 
 "The Little Country Paper," 
 FoLGEB McKinsey in the Baltimore Sun. 
 
OUR COUNTRY NEWSPAPER: 
 THE GENESIS OF ITS SPIRIT 
 
 Our people who had the courage to 
 pioneer in this country and form their 
 government after their race institutions 
 had a certain inborn spirit. When they 
 made these United States and invited 
 over the less fortunate of the world to 
 share their good with them, we say, fore- 
 fathers and f oremothers of ours kept an 
 essential of theirs already enshrined in 
 their race customs, traditions, language 
 and literature — democratic, local, self- 
 government. 
 
 That self-government was funda- 
 mental in inhabitants of Britain nearly 
 two thousand years ago, Julius Caesar is 
 witness. In the year 55 b.c, about the 
 26th day of August, having sailed from 
 Port Itius in Gaul, now Boulogne in 
 
 19 
 
20 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 France, Caesar landed Roman legions on 
 that snug island off the continent of 
 Europe where, in coming generations, it 
 was fated our English stock and English 
 speech should evolve. * * He thought, ^ ' he 
 wrote, *4t would be well worth his while 
 merely to visit the island, see what the 
 people were like, and make himself ac- 
 quainted with the features of the coun- 
 try, the harbors and landing places. ' ' 
 
 This was not all the shrewd and am- 
 bitious Eoman purposed, however. He 
 sought popularity at home, the then 
 great capital and military centre of the 
 world, by conquest of the natives of 
 Britain, peoples celebrated, even in that 
 day, for their fierce love of freedom — 
 obdurate esteemers of liberty before all 
 other possessions. To such men and 
 women, enraged and horror-stricken, 
 assembled near the flat shore and open 
 beach between present-day Walmer and 
 Deal, Caesar set forth his heresy of im- 
 perialism, his principle of authority 
 
OUR COUNTRY NEWSPAPER 21 
 
 centring at Eome — ^the glory to the 
 swarming islanders in having the head 
 of their government at the capital city 
 of Italy. In that imperial town their 
 chief, a Roman, should dwell, and he and 
 his Eoman advisers should govern them 
 — alien, northern Britons that they were 
 — ^in all conditions of life and death. 
 
 The raw islanders would none of his 
 offering. They preferred home-bred 
 rulers and home-bred freedom. And 
 when CsBsar finally drew up his legions 
 to enforce his authority centring at 
 Eome, unnumberd Britons died in battle, 
 and others outright killed themselves, 
 rather than bow the knee to Eoman as- 
 sumption. But strength of arms won, 
 and the island in large part became a 
 Eoman province. 
 
 Through many years imperial gov- 
 ernors and legions held subject liberty- 
 loving Britons. Bloody wars, exhaust- 
 ing taxes, mutilation and starvation of 
 the body, every heinous means of reduc- 
 
22 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 tion and destruction a gross, material- 
 istic power visited upon those would-be- 
 local-self-governors. An individual, a 
 man or woman, counted not a souPs or 
 a body's worth, if only the imperial will 
 prevailed. Yet, some two hundred years 
 after Caesar's proclamation of conquest, 
 Hegesippus wrote, '^Britons never will 
 be slaves'' — ^his exact words were, 
 ^^Britanni quid esse servitus ignorabant, 
 soli sibi nati, semper sibi liberi." Cen- 
 turies again passed. The island called 
 other peoples across seas that wash its 
 fair shores. The new comers settled and 
 an amalgamation of bloods followed. 
 
 Over in Rome the state was dying of 
 its imperial megalomania. Still, the 
 idea itself seemed not yet ready for ex- 
 tinction ; and it set up an imperial order 
 in relations of the spirit of man to 
 eternity. The Christian community 
 centring at Eome, that is, gradually 
 grafting the mild, mystic, individual 
 
OUR COUNTRY NEWSPAPER 23 
 
 teachings of Jesus upon pomp and ritual 
 of the old Roman religion and imperial 
 Roman organization and administration, 
 became not content solely with other- 
 worldly preachings, but proclaimed the 
 sovereignty of their overseer, or bishop, 
 over all earth's people. So early as the 
 second century the tale was broached. 
 
 To English peoples a result of this 
 Roman claim was that with their accept- 
 ance, in the seventh century, of simple 
 precepts taught under Syrian skies, and 
 with their delight in fragments of the 
 Gospels and Prophets translated from 
 the Latin into their own rude tongue, 
 they perforce took Roman tradition and 
 zeal for imperial organization and au- 
 thority centring at Rome. This accept- 
 ance meant to the disrupted races of the 
 island a temporary abrogation of their 
 instincts. But in the secular process 
 with which the collective mind, the social 
 spirit, the justice of God pushes onward. 
 
24 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 they finally evolved a government — ^with 
 which the better systematized and more 
 stable church united. 
 
 In those days learning was in the keep- 
 ing of the church. Chronicles of the 
 time tell of dominating king and strong 
 noble, priest and monk. Karely do they 
 mention soil-dwellers — carl, villein and 
 simple, unpretentious commoners. Look 
 far in the writings of such imperialists 
 and you find little indwelling, heart- 
 warming, democratic fellow-feeling with 
 the folk, the estimate of the human 
 creature as a sole and complete unit 
 working out his individuality in this life 
 and needing at least a modicum of fructi- 
 fied, fulfilled desires this side his grave. 
 
 Nevertheless the idea of democracy, 
 self-government, still abode in that folk 
 of rugged English speech. All peoples 
 are democratic in their beginnings. 
 The difference between the democracy of 
 English stock and others is that, in spite 
 of absolutism supervening, in spite of 
 
OUR COUNTRY NEWSPAPER 25 
 
 such hindrances to its expansion as a 
 secular aristocracy preserved by primo- 
 geniture, from us the spirit can not be 
 torn out, so deep in our nature run its 
 roots. 
 
 In this fixity, this radication, we find 
 why democratic ideals inspired Eng- 
 land's government through centuries, 
 when state-paid preachings of the value- 
 lessness of the people retarded evolution. 
 Throughout hundreds of years, when the 
 church which might have been a benef- 
 icent tribunal was hardening into a 
 rapacious, intollerable tyrant, the Eng- 
 lish commons comforted themselves as 
 did a mouthpiece of theirs. Preacher 
 John Ball, of the fourteenth century, 
 who, says an old chronicler, * 'began a 
 sermon in this manner: 
 
 ''When Adam dolve and Eve span 
 Who was then a gentleman? 
 
 And continuing, ' ' says the chronicler, 
 **he sought to prove that from the begin- 
 
26 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 ning all were made alike by nature, and 
 that bondage or servitude was brought 
 in by unjust oppression of naughty men 
 against the will of God." 
 
 All such pleas for liberty as this we 
 have just cited have been smouldering 
 fires of the people 's spirit — fires covered 
 at times, as the Normans declared the 
 Saxons' should be — ^but bound to seek 
 the face of heaven wherever, in the race's 
 evolution, its offspring might settle to 
 pass their life-cycle of labor and love. 
 Wherever any chance-usurping power 
 might strive to curtail its individual 
 liberty, this native, would-be-self -govern- 
 ing-and self -ordering democracy of our 
 stock has been apt to warm to wrath 
 with a star-of-the-morning in hand, or to 
 volley its indignation in arrows, or pikes, 
 or muskets, or rifles to regain the liber- 
 ties of the English people, which, even 
 in Elizabeth's day, writers spoke of as 
 **antient." And upon whatever land 
 our race has taken root, democracy, re- 
 
OUR COUNTRY NEWSPAPER 27 
 
 gard for tlie individual being, has sprung 
 in the institutions of the soil and dwelt 
 there. The idea seems to be in us, an 
 essential factor of our race subconscious- 
 ness. 
 
 In early comers to America this devo- 
 tion to the democratic idea was strong. 
 That the infarers were a human unit, 
 trammeled by no social forms except 
 those that had brought and welded them, 
 dwelling upon a virgin land mysteriously 
 stretching its fragrant forests beyond 
 their exploring eye, increased such con- 
 victions. They were fresh for the effort 
 of working out mighty ideas and pushing 
 those ideas into human evolution. They 
 had left the old home with the winds of 
 the Great Keformation still cleansing 
 England's air, and when the Puritan 
 ideas of a commonwealth were stalking 
 abroad and in daylight. Habit of revolt 
 and stand for individual freedom had 
 become a part of their natures. A sense 
 of isolation born of the habit of opposi- 
 
28 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 tion had already stoicized, freed from 
 littleness and uplifted their souls. 
 
 But again we have to turn back, and 
 this time to the seers and learned of a 
 Semitic people dwelling thousands of 
 years ago in a land east of the Mediter- 
 ranean, who had set down the values of 
 the agricultural life. Their estimate 
 went into one of the greatest books the 
 world has ever read — a seminal book for 
 soil-tillers, the Bible. 
 
 And now, in the seventeenth century, 
 in this America, when the Puritan ideas 
 of a self-governing commonwealth were 
 abroad aihong the people, the sonorous 
 voice of the old Semitic writings, their 
 estimate of the soil-dweller, played a 
 master part.^ For the colonists of our 
 
 1 The self-governing instinct of the English people 
 had demanded translations of the Bible into their 
 own tongue after their acceptance of Christianity, 
 and after the time of Bede many fragments were 
 rendered. Such works, dating from the ninth cen- 
 tury, still exist. But Wycliffe in the year 1382 
 finally brought the entire Bible to English speech, 
 
OUR COUNTRY NEWSPAPER 29 
 
 Atlantic slope, besides inheriting the love 
 of individual liberty of their birth-land, 
 had seized upon and were worshipping 
 the records in which the ancient Semitic 
 folk, exultant in having a soil on which 
 to dwell, had inscribed their living. 
 
 Our colonists knew that conditions 
 about the Hebrews of old and themselves 
 had somewhat of identity — at one time 
 wanderers without a home, would-be 
 soil-dwellers seeking an abode, strong in 
 faith and courage and community of in- 
 terests, each with an undeveloped genius 
 for bringing ideals to the world's better- 
 ment. These later colonists had, too, as 
 Jeremiah tells of Israel, gone after the 
 Lord **in the wilderness," *4n a land 
 that was not sown." To found a theo- 
 
 when manuscript copies of parts of the work were 
 multiplied and eagerly bought. Then, after printing 
 came into use, Tyndale's and Coverdale's, and others' 
 versions, made the folk familiar with their pages 
 eighty years before the landing of our Pilgrims. The 
 Bible in its English dress, let us not forget, entered a 
 world where theology and its reformation were of 
 chiefest interest. 
 
30 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 cratic commonwealth was a great pur- 
 pose of theirs here in America. A God- 
 ruler of like conception to the old 
 Hebrews' was to be their mystic head, 
 and manifest vessels of his grace the 
 guiders of their commonwealth's affairs. 
 Thus our early American forefathers 
 brought the old, concrete-minded He- 
 brews' book to inhospitable shores and 
 fed themselves upon its manna. Those 
 stiff-necked, self-sacrificing, self-deny- 
 ing, little-asking forefathers and fore- 
 mothers of ours, in the blue and white of 
 whose nerves and the red of whose blood 
 was still vibrating love of liberty, love 
 of the loc^l-self -government that CsBsar 
 found ancient Britons and other north- 
 ern peoples ready to die for, and to suffer 
 more than death for — the liberty which 
 the imperial Roman idea, whether of 
 state or of church, had never been able 
 to kill out — that people, with such an 
 inheritance, took the informing soul of 
 the old Hebrew scriptures into their 
 
OUR COUNTRY NEWSPAPER 31 
 
 lives with the fervor that one people 
 will sometimes seize another's exalta- 
 tion. 
 
 In these colonists' view the Bible was 
 holy of holies, the veritable voice of God. 
 When, in the narrowness and material 
 comfortlessness of their lives they held 
 the book in their hands and with rever- 
 ence undid its leathern covers, they found 
 in its theocratic spirit governing all de- 
 tails of life a breadth of vision that en- 
 compassed the world. It opened before 
 their eyes heights of human aspiration, 
 and its simple, penetrating message 
 searched the depths of every human 
 heart. Countless of its precepts balmed 
 their ills. For did they not own all that 
 men needed to order themselves and their 
 affairs in this world and for the world 
 to come? No longer were their souls 
 comfortless. 
 
 The Old Testament, its simplicity, its 
 concreting of values, the high philosophy 
 of a part of it, bore to the Puritans espe- 
 
32 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 daily an ideal of life. In their instinc- 
 tive democracy they turned to records of 
 the heroic age of Israel, the generations 
 between Abraham and David, to those 
 days when 'Hhere was no king in Israel 
 bnt every man did that which was right 
 in his own eyes,'' and to the later theo- 
 cratic organization after the Captivity 
 when a court or synedrium and high- 
 priest governed Judaea, when laymen 
 gathered in synagogues to read sacred 
 writings and talk over their interpreta- 
 tion. Aside from these Puritans no 
 moderns have taken into their own lives 
 the stern sincerity and contempt for ma- 
 terial prosperity, the fervor for the 
 moral law tfiat informed the prophets of 
 that ancient people. 
 
 Upon the curving hills and amid the 
 forests of their new world these inf aring 
 colonists upbuilt an English Israel. 
 Many a New England farmer, housed in 
 greying timbers upon some wind-swept 
 height, worked the soil of his few acres, 
 
OUR COUNTRY NEWSPAPER 33 
 
 lived his elemental life and dignified his 
 sorrows and joys by his conviction of 
 their likeness to men's of holy writ — the 
 affliction of Jacob, the triumph of Jeph- 
 thah, the faith of David, the grief of Job, 
 and the three types of friends zealous 
 in comforting, pictured for all time, 
 Bildad and Eliphaz and Zophar — ^his 
 course made possible solely by the men- 
 tal resourcefulness and untiring indus- 
 try of a most marvellous *' help-meet," 
 his wife. The family itself, and similar, 
 neighboring families, formed an auton- 
 omous unit. 
 
 These people of the New World knew 
 that the old Hebrew prophets were the 
 Puritans of their times and people — ^to 
 be a prophet was to be a Puritan. They 
 knew that the inspired might be a simple 
 soil-tiller. So in this later life of theirs, 
 the New England farmer needed no 
 special nor artificial training to exalt 
 him to the service of his deity — ^to be a 
 Puritan was to be a prophet. Twice 
 
34 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 each day, needing no priest, separated 
 from divinity by no vail he read to his 
 listening family of thq people led by 
 Moses and face to face with the Al- 
 mighty. Self-instructed and self-con- 
 secrated, he was oftenest like the moral 
 reformer, Amos, of old, **a herdsman, 
 and a gatherer of sycamore fruit, ' ' whom 
 the Lord took as he followed the flock 
 and said, **Go, prophesy unto my peo- 
 ple. ' ' He might not be a poet in expres- 
 sion, as the Hebrew, but he was a poet 
 in soul; a thinker and ready to exhort 
 against voluptuousness — that the chosen 
 people might hear the word the Lord 
 had spoken. Sometimes, like the elder 
 Jacob, he combined religious fervor with 
 a shrewd and crafty individualism. 
 Conditions taught him. In consonance 
 with the physical atmosphere of his New 
 England, sternness and severity were 
 his mental and emotive climate. To gain 
 subsistence he had cleared his soil of 
 forests with unmeasured toil, ears quick- 
 
OUR COUNTRY NEWSPAPER 35 
 
 ening to hear the approach of a de- 
 stroyer ; and he had learned that axe and 
 saw ring finest when they strike the clos- 
 est knit and most enduring timber. 
 
 *'Who would true valor see, 
 
 Let him come hither ! 
 One here will constant be, 
 
 Come wind, come weather: 
 There's no discouragement 
 Shall make him once relent 
 His first avow 'd intent 
 
 To be a Pilgrim. 
 
 ** Whoso beset him round 
 
 With dismal stories, 
 Do but themselves confound; 
 
 His strength the more is. 
 No lion can him fright ; 
 He'll with a giant fight; 
 But he will have the right 
 
 To be a Pilgrim." 
 
 Solitariness was his lot. *^The king- 
 dom of God is within you." -Esthetic 
 symbols ensnared approaches to the 
 Divine, for, to such a religionist, when 
 
36 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 attention to material forms entered spir- 
 itual religion took wing. Eitual was 
 desecration. 
 
 And each neighbor of his, we say, 
 suffered the same contagion. Their 
 Master was about to come. Goodness, 
 justice should reign, and a righteous 
 world at last be theirs. They knew not 
 the day or hour Triumph might glori- 
 ously appear, perhaps in a month, a year 
 — so much was fulfilling the prophecy — 
 surely in the not far-off future. 
 
 Such was their faith and estimate of 
 values. A severe, narrow existence it 
 mightily sustained. Among those dwell- 
 ers, in this life they led — in no other 
 by any possible pretence — grew that 
 ** American conscience'' which has been, 
 and still is, a dominant moral power 
 round the whole earth — that American 
 conscience of which the warring states 
 of Europe sought, in 1914, '15 and '16, 
 the approval. 
 
 The great book, again, was at one with 
 
OUR COUNTRY NEWSPAPER 37 
 
 the agriculturalism to which the people's 
 lives were constrained. In its report of 
 the living of the elder people of the 
 Covenant, its estimates were often of the 
 real, primal things of life — so genuinely 
 part of the terrestrial passage of man 
 that terrestrial passage is not without 
 them. This fact squared exactly with 
 intense belief in elementals of daily life 
 that has characterized our English- 
 speaking peoples' strength and democ- 
 racy — ^their inheritance, we have said, 
 from peoples who had the trait before 
 they had heard of the Bible, who were 
 distinguished by it before the Bible was. 
 Heirs of this spirit, when once they had 
 grasped the book, they did not lose its 
 bed-rock for human living. 
 
 Birth of children, the life-events of 
 nearby dwellers, ploughing, planting, 
 harvesting, cattle-tending, the pursuit of 
 goods enough to live wholesomely, the 
 final debt we owe to the laws of nature, 
 and always and everywhere service and 
 
38 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 helpfulness to our neighbor — this was 
 the sum of the moral life as their democ- 
 racy saw it. This was the real triumph 
 of the individual, the best product of 
 duty for one's self and duty towards 
 one's neighbor. 
 
 Terah took Abram his son, and Lot the 
 son of Haran his son's son, and Sarai 
 his daughter-in-law, his son Abram 's 
 wife; and they went forth from Ur of 
 the Chaldees to go into the land of 
 Canaan ; and they came unto Haran, and 
 dwelt there. And again Abram took 
 Sarai his wife and Lot his brother's 
 son, and all their substance that they 
 had gathered and the souls that they had 
 gotten in Haran, and they went forth to 
 go into the land of Canaan ; and into the 
 land of Canaan they came. 
 
 These elder families, their souls got- 
 ten, their substance, their migration, 
 were worth note in the most sacred and 
 spiritual book the Puritan people knew. 
 That book should serve also to register 
 
OUR COUNTRY NEWSPAPER 39 
 
 souls born of their own. It should 
 record the great trinity — ^birth, mar- 
 riage, death — of each Puritan offspring 
 — a progeny strong, valiant, confident, 
 conquering, settling in Merrimac, Con- 
 necticut and Mohawk valleys; again 
 democratized in bands of dauntless, ad- 
 venturous, plodding pioneers trailing to 
 the broad Canaanitic bottom-lands of the 
 Ohio and Missouri; or, infused with a 
 flexible modernity and facing the further 
 difficulty and danger of trekking in wind- 
 jamming prairie-schooners towards the 
 Willamette ^s flood and the Golden Gate. 
 In many races a first use of writing 
 was in family annals, for instance among 
 the early Greeks and Irish, in records on 
 tombstones. The Bible's chronicling is 
 a complete example, both as the book 
 stood in its ancient form and in practical 
 uses among our English-speaking Puri- 
 tans. In those days, when the people 
 forming the colonies had broken from 
 the old home and church dominion, the 
 
40 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 Bible was their holiest possession. It 
 should be their family register. Their 
 reasoning was natural, inevitable, in- 
 deed, through need of the exact registry 
 that loosely knit church and state did 
 not keep. Of all places open to their 
 need for record that was the most abid- 
 ing. Those practical theorists were 
 unconscious of what their reasoning 
 gained through their religious satura- 
 tion. Their justification was in the 
 records of the Bible that chronicled the 
 worth of human lives, gotten and seeking 
 domicle, and in concrete phrase wrote 
 down a husbandman's spirit. 
 
 Thus .our *^antient-liberty' Moving 
 f oreparents nursed their human interests 
 and kept their human records. The 
 generations making their entries lived in 
 the faith that they were the heirs of the 
 early folk and beloved of the Lord. 
 Yellow sheets in the holy book of every 
 family conserving such treasures follow 
 the Old Testament pages. Time-saf- 
 
OUR COUNTRY NEWSPAPER 41 
 
 froned leaves, we say, blank save for the 
 faded ink of family entries, set forth, in 
 the uneven script of the hand unused to 
 the pen, material and speaking evidence 
 of the truth here bespoken. The very 
 act of inscription witnessed their belief 
 that they were a chosen people, a con- 
 tinued Israel. Not only certain of their 
 mental habits, often their given names 
 were from the old Jews — those Jews, we 
 repeat, whose family records foreran 
 their family records in the binding of 
 the book. The Old Testament had 
 gripped them more firmly than the New. 
 Thus our Puritans, extending their 
 love of local self-government, the in- 
 stinct for state-building that had char- 
 acterized their English forebears, and in 
 their constant reference for ordering 
 their affairs multiplying the simple cul- 
 ture of the great book they sanctified by 
 their worship, — thus the Puritans went 
 on accomplishing their mighty work for 
 the human spirit, and towards the end of 
 
42 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 the centuries they had distinguished by 
 their social progress, one of the hand- 
 maids of self-government — movable type 
 — sought popular distribution. A sig- 
 nificant history lies in the fact that the 
 first book printed in movable type was 
 the Bible ; and also in another fact, that 
 the people indelibly marked by the 
 Bible *s teachings were the first to make 
 the type their everyday servant. 
 
 When the distribution of this type 
 was completed and put at hand means 
 for speedy printing of records, country 
 newspapers gradually sprang from the 
 social soil of our American village and 
 town. A people democratized, inasmuch 
 as they had proved to all the world that 
 their conscious progress was through 
 free self-government, were secularizing 
 and confirming their faith in a hereafter 
 of ideal justice by endeavor to bring, so 
 far as humanly possible, equity to life 
 upon this earth. 
 
 Not so often now did family-annals, 
 
 I 
 
OUR COUNTRY NEWSPAPER 43 
 
 written in the old-home Bible, in its 
 blank leaves twixt Old Testament and 
 New, seem a nisi qua non. Those self- 
 governing state-builders took the right 
 not only to secularize their own family 
 records, but also to deliver to their local 
 press legends of neighboring patriarch 
 and matriarch — to write simple annals 
 of whatever good and ill might come to 
 every hearth whose blue smoke upcurled 
 in fragrant morning air and whose door 
 opened upon a green sward. 
 
 No pretence defaced such newsmonger- 
 ing. Faith in the human being and lo- 
 cal pride were its base. Its all-inclusive- 
 ness forbade snobbery. Spiritual needs, 
 economic needs and social needs lay still 
 in lines as simple as those of the early 
 people. And especially when our Civil 
 War came, and every community 
 marched forth its little band of brothers 
 for the front, and dire news flashed over 
 the wires after battles, and sympathy 
 for another ^s loss quickened and united 
 
44 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 all the neighborhood's people, a voice 
 must be at hand to tell the pride and pain 
 of every dweller. Each settlement must 
 have its newspaper and every man and 
 woman be its reader. 
 
 In such ways as these it happened that 
 the country newspaper and its personal 
 columns — ^which are the surging, purple 
 life-stream of its spirit — finally came to 
 voice country habits and habitudes; the 
 humanity that burgeons in a community 
 which takes on permanence; the folk- 
 humor that digs another in the ribs ; the 
 willing ear for another's sorrow or joy; 
 the helpfulness embedded in our hearts 
 toward those less fortunate than our- 
 selves. 
 
 Thus our country newspapers became 
 unconscious records, perhaps to-day the 
 sole records not self-conscious and hav- 
 ing to the student the interest of uncon- 
 scious speech. They are a simple order- 
 ing and organization of friendly neigh- 
 borhood news — ^not unlike that Froissart 
 
OUR COUNTRY NEWSPAPER 45 
 
 delightedly received when *Uhe squire 
 drew me apart into a corner of the 
 chapel/' or such as the Mermaid Tavern, 
 and London coffee houses of later cen- 
 turies, purveyed — such as forebears of 
 us Americans heard at the turnstile be- 
 tween fields yellow with grain and scarlet 
 with poppies, or at the post-seat of a 
 cross-road, at the town-pump and foun- 
 tain, or at the cornerstone of the farm, 
 or resting on the old settle of the wayside 
 inn, or at a raking of hay, or press of 
 cider, or full-moon corn-husking, or early 
 spring "sugaring-off"; or, again, at 
 those points especially warming to 
 tonguey gossip — ^the neighboring tavern 
 and country-store — and also to-day's 
 town club. 
 
 For portraiture the papers' columns 
 are of unexampled worth. You and I 
 have never seen Cherry Vale, nor Willow 
 Springs, nor Vinland nor Eudora. 
 Neither kith nor kin of ours dwell in 
 those groupings nestled close to Mother 
 
46 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 Earth and strengthened by the electric 
 current pulsing under her leafage.^ Yet 
 good it is to hear this end-of-the-week 
 news: 
 
 Ira Rothrock hulled 57 bushels of clover 
 seed last Saturday, which breaks the record 
 for one day's work in these parts. 
 
 Lloyd Duffee has received the nomination 
 for county surveyor. Success to him. 
 
 The Library supper was quite well attended 
 last Wednesday evening though the threat- 
 ening aspect of the weather together with bad 
 roads, seemed to keep a good many at home. 
 The supper was a bountiful repast, and very 
 appetizing. Six huge chicken pies graced 
 the tables. Their odor made one's mouth 
 water as the knife penetrated them. 
 
 J. Hammond lost a good horse last week — 
 one of his greys. 
 
 Ross Hughs, the road boss, got a horse and 
 buggy last Sunday and went to see his best 
 
 1 Thousands of years ago the faith pertained that 
 those who slept on the ground drew oracular wis- 
 dom from Earth. Homer, in the Iliad (xvi, 234), 
 ascribes such power to the Selloi, original dwellers 
 at Dodona, guardians of the oracle of Zeus : 
 
 'afi<l)l dh 2eXXo2 
 Sol valovs* viro(pr}Tai dvnrrSirodes X'^A'ci^ci'^tt*' 
 
OUR COUNTRY NEWSPAPER 47 
 
 girl. He says his best girl is his mother. 
 
 There was quite a number out at prayer 
 meeting Sunday night. 
 
 Grandma Davis was calling at George Gil- 
 ley's last week. 
 
 Most all the farmers are sowing wheat 
 again this year. 
 
 We are glad to report that Miss Nora 
 Metsker is giving general satisfaction in her 
 teaching No. 4 school. 
 
 The wedding bells will soon peal forth their 
 merry chimes in the east part of Vinland; 
 so boys, keep your eyes open. 
 
 The Simmons boys hauled their apples to 
 Eudora last week. 
 
 Otto Durrow is digging a well for G. M. 
 Norton. If anybody on earth can find water 
 in the bowels of the earth, it is Otto Durrow. 
 
 The Republican primary at Willow Springs 
 last Friday was well attended. William Mar- 
 shall was nominated for township trustee ; Les- 
 ter Flora for clerk, and Daniel Heuston for 
 treasurer. 
 
 Fred. Rumsey has been quite sick with ma- 
 larial fever, but is now able to sit up. 
 
 Mrs. Dr. Evans will go to her parents for 
 a visit to her childhood home in Vermont. 
 
 Misses Nettie Stone and Flora Gibbons 
 
48 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 spent the day with Miss Maggie McClanahan 
 Sunday. 
 
 The boys say Harry Roe is building an ad- 
 dition to his house, and they are sure he will 
 need someone to help him take care of it. 
 
 Your correspondent will plaster Mr. Mur- 
 phy's new house this week. 
 
 What suggestions of human interest 
 and pride in country quiet! To such 
 items ninety-nine in every hundred 
 readers turn when the paper comes to 
 the family living-room. Now and then 
 a man first seeks report from the market ; 
 but he excuses his peccadillo by the claim 
 that he wants to know *' quotations for 
 steers on the hoof." 
 
 The housemother finds reinvigoration 
 in such delightful columns. They bring 
 her near other patient adjusters whose 
 lives round, in lack of mental stimula- 
 tion, with her own. Days with her, the 
 everyday-of-life things, are apt to be a 
 treadmill, the giving of self to issues 
 
OUR COUNTRY NEWSPAPER 49 
 
 petty in their being and tremendous in 
 the bearing, to the wants of the helpless 
 in infancy and age, and to the infinite 
 work of child development, in short, the 
 giving of herself to homemaking. And 
 this when before her eyes the hand of 
 God, brushing the skies with color and 
 pouring liquid light on field and shrub 
 and tree, beckons her outside her door. 
 To lives so circumscribed the neighbor- 
 hood paper comes as a tonic, a recon- 
 ciler to a narrow lot. 
 
 The confining quality of their work, 
 we say, whets women's appetites for 
 companionship and increases their zest 
 for neighbor news. All offspring of the 
 great Pan yearn to be with their kind — 
 shut a large-winged moth in a summer 
 room, and soon you will find its compeers 
 clinging to the window screen; clever- 
 witted birds seek one another, so duller 
 sheep ; a horse must neigh to his fellow, 
 and even the puma will not be solitary. 
 
50 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 Likewise we human children of Pan, 
 especially those of us shut off, are a- 
 hunger for social converse. 
 
 The men's line in life has in it satis- 
 fying friction of soul against soul. 
 Obedient to it they move in the world's 
 spaciousness and contact with neighbor. 
 Driving in it enlarges and fills out their 
 minds, brings them in touch with the 
 manifold, refreshes by communion with 
 the general life. Not so the women's. 
 The food for their spirit is, after their 
 own gleanings, mainly self-evolved, 
 created in the depths of their inner life. 
 Of our ancestors ' use and worship of the 
 Old Testament we may not say the book 
 helped free each life of the people. The 
 Great Writ liberated the men. It did 
 nothing to deny a ruling preserved from 
 the ancients — the supremacy in the 
 family of a father however bad and 
 treasonable. Emphasis still remained 
 upon the oriental conception of women. 
 The book's exaltation, as our Puritans 
 
OUR COUNTRY NEWSPAPER 51 
 
 saw it, was not of women's spiritual life, 
 merely of their service tending to do- 
 mestic comfort and in a lavish, unintelli- 
 gent fecundity — a large percentage of 
 Puritan children died from undue drain- 
 age of maternal vitality. The Jews of 
 the Bible more often enslaved — some- 
 times with worshipful attitude, as men 
 at times to-day, nevertheless enslaved — 
 their women, and the misogynous senti- 
 ment of that old people,^ and of their 
 Puritan heirs, is disappearing in our 
 time only before the scientific and eco- 
 nomic truth that marks the forward 
 movement of our social will. 
 
 Now, another divagation: — It is well 
 known that citizens of larger towns are 
 apt to treat with light scorn our country 
 newspapers' interests. The well-deep 
 sympathy in recital of happenings to 
 
 1 To this day men of the synagogue pray, "0 Lord 
 God, Eternal King of the Universe, I thank thee that 
 thou hast not made me a woman." And women sub- 
 missively murmur, "0 Lord God, Eternal King of 
 the Universe, I thank thee that thou hast made me 
 according to thy will." 
 
52 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 fellow earth-dwellers that has grown in 
 human veins since our race evolved from 
 cave-dwellers, the humanity which 
 charms in the pages of Thomas Tusser 
 and Worthy Fuller and Izaak Walton — 
 when put in country papers excites the 
 burghers' risibles. Perhaps the big-city 
 people nurse a grudge of jealousy against 
 the villagers for so intimate, alluring 
 comment. Their derision is all the 
 stranger because the country papers' 
 wording is often that of the metropolitan 
 press. It is easy to see that when every 
 hamlet has its '* society," which is all its 
 folk, to report, the country paper has 
 universalized, has democratized the as- 
 sumption formerly affected by a few. 
 Take, for example, items from that one- 
 time paragon of personalities, the 
 Court Journal of London: 
 
 The Countess of Carysfort is at Elton Hall 
 in Huntingdonshire. Her Ladyship does not 
 intend visiting Glenart Castle this year, as 
 has been reported. 
 
OUR COUNTRY NEWSPAPER 53 
 
 The health of Lady Theodosia Springe Rice 
 has recently much improved. 
 
 The Earl of Shannon has been indisposed, 
 but we are happy to state his Lordship is re- 
 covering. 
 
 The Duchess of Canizzaro is still at Dover 
 where her Grace intends to remain until the 
 end of the month. 
 
 Lord and Lady Holland entertained a party 
 on Monday evening at Holland House to cele- 
 brate his Lordship's birthday. 
 
 Mrs. Phillip and her lovely daughter gave 
 a splendid ball and supper on Friday to a 
 distinguished party of fashionables and 
 literati. 
 
 Now, does this differ from the country 
 newspaper — except in names? Which 
 has real values? — those first racy jot- 
 tings of life going on round the little lo- 
 cal press of Laurel Town, or these meat- 
 iest selections from the Court Journal 
 some years back? Which has more hu- 
 man worth? which the finer merit of help- 
 fulness? — the larger life and intelli- 
 gence ? No healthy, normal being would 
 
54 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 prefer Mrs. Phillip's ** splendid balP' 
 with its "fashionables and literati" 
 (something bad in that phrase!) to the 
 Library supper where six huge, redolent 
 chicken pies nncrusted upon the table. 
 At that supper the * literati'' we may 
 be sure were not wanting — ^but, for the 
 time being, put snugly within the green- 
 curtained book-case — ^Irving and Whit- 
 tier and Longfellow, all well thumbed 
 by the neighborhood youngsters, Dick- 
 ens, Scott, and other confreres, and Wil- 
 liam of Avon cheek by jowl with a good 
 English version of Homer. Of Homer 
 that supper had the real humanity and 
 the real heartiness, and none but he, or 
 the great Shakespeare himself, could 
 write down its labor-founded laughter 
 and appetiteful history. ** There is 
 nothing better for a man than that he 
 should eat and drink, and that he should 
 make his soul enjoy good in his labour." 
 Miss Nettie Stone spent the day with 
 Miss Maggie McClanahan: the Duchess 
 
OUR COUNTRY NEWSPAPER 55 
 
 of Canizzaro is still at Dover where her 
 Grace purposes to remain. Chronicles 
 of the farmer ^s daughter amuse the 
 sophisticated. Yet who shall dogmatize 
 on value! No American, surely, the 
 bases of whose life are faith in the 
 divinity that dwells in work and workers. 
 Farmers' daughters have doubtless con- 
 tributed more of merit to human life than 
 duchesses. But even in these days of 
 strengthening democracy, meretricious 
 trappings rather than simple worth exalt 
 an old feudal title, given because of some 
 ancestor's vigor or depravity, and de- 
 press life more justly modelled. *^Lust 
 and falsehood, craft and traffic, prece- 
 dent and gold,'' sang Swinburne with 
 characteristic warmth: 
 
 *' Tongue of courtier, kiss of harlot, promise 
 
 bought and sold. 
 Gave you heritage of empire over thralls of 
 
 old." 
 
 Not yet, perhaps, through the influence 
 
56 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 of ideas foreign to liberty and democ- 
 racy, have we thorouglily within our 
 nation's blood conviction of the debilita- 
 tingness of pomp and of title — their 
 parasitic devouring the goods of the 
 weak and defenceless, their tawdry 
 ceremonials and symbolisms, their mil- 
 linery to catch the eye and hypno- 
 tize the sense and conceal spiritual 
 pinchbeckerie. Not yet are we seers 
 enough to estimate a human soul apart 
 from its trappings. In spite of Thack- 
 eray's kniving analysis there still lives 
 in our midst many a snob. 
 
 To the country newspaper some victim 
 of the inkpot now and then earns his 
 subscription by contribution of a weekly 
 budget. This we saw just now when the 
 reporter told of his job to plaster Mr. 
 Murphy's house this week. **Your 
 seribe" is known in many a community. 
 And how delicious his folk-humor ! How 
 luscious his details! Listen to one — 
 merely one — of his unnumbered and in- 
 
OUR COUNTRY NEWSPAPER 57 
 
 describable antics! If it has not the 
 jugglery of Touchstone, it has that pro- 
 vincial distortion of speech, which Dr. 
 Johnson found in Sir Hugh Evans ^ and 
 Dr. Caius' of ^^The Merry Wives of 
 Windsor'* — ** its power . . . even he that 
 despises it, is unable to resist'': 
 
 Oi waz sawin wood wan could mornin whin 
 wan av me gud frinds cum along, an bein 
 ankshus to kape up me akwayntunce shtoped 
 to tawk aphwile, an wuz makin phun av me 
 shpellin, an oi sed: o, begorra, an oi don't 
 bodthur me bed wud sitch a shmawl matthur, 
 for whin oim tellin the thrute oi gits that 
 exoited oi furgits me manurs intoirly, an awl 
 me gud owld shtep muthur wuz tachin me 
 wud grate panes, and a peace ava a hickory 
 three to pint it off wid and make me rispickt 
 hur an me privylidges. 
 
 Sumebody's ould jumpin-jak av a kow, bein 
 no kuller at awl, but awl white, an a bob tale 
 that's bin atin gras in ivry blissed man's 
 pasthure 2 munths an moar, wid dogs an 
 kussin flyin afthur the same, she's bein missed, 
 an sumebody must be atin bafe, be gorra, an 
 her gone intirely an suddint. 
 
58 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 Sum ave the byes ar ould batchlurz (which 
 last it's none av the phwalt av thimsilves, be 
 is said wid thrute) wint down ovar the gum- 
 bow path to the woods, an kilt an murthered a 
 koon of the animal kind, an sizzled him ovur 
 the koles til he wud do to ate wud kreem an 
 unyuns an a gud apytight. 
 
 Misthur Tuttle, that same bein the school 
 masthur, sint out the wurrud that amazed 
 us, bein the sad nuse that ** Henry Eggart 
 fell, an wuz lyin unkonshus sum hours'*; an 
 then he rilaved us awl moytily whin he sed it 
 wuz ashleep he fell. 
 
 Lloyd Grant got a foine gittar in his sox 
 on Chrismas mornin, oi am towld. An faith' 
 thair is moar gittars an fiddels an mandylins 
 in this saim nayburhud than in any ither av 
 its soize in the kunthry, an devil a tinkle av 
 um did oi iver heer yit. Give the owld mon 
 a serrynade, bys. 
 
 **We hope,'' wrote the Cherry Vale 
 correspondent of the Gazette, *^that 
 some of the good cooks of this vicinity 
 will study the premium list of the Doug- 
 las County Fair, and help make a dis- 
 play from this part of the county/' 
 
OUR COUNTRY NEWSPAPER 59 
 
 A heart-of- September sun looks down 
 upon the festival, held here under rough 
 roofs, yonder under the radiance of the 
 Lord of Light himself. Answering their 
 newspaper's call, what handiwork have 
 the women not sent to ^^help make a dis- 
 play from this part of the county!'' 
 Landscape and loghouse and ** crazy" 
 bedquilts, drawn-work scarfs, embroid- 
 ered centre-pieces wrought through long 
 summer afternoons — all come from cedar 
 chests and lavender-scented closets. 
 Deftly painted chocolate pots, tea-jars 
 and cups from china shelves ; children 's 
 portraits in crayon ; and flowers proces- 
 sioning from April apple-blossoms on 
 blue satin to October golden-rod on black. 
 
 Pears, also, of alabaster whiteness and 
 fineness of grain, and yellow-meated 
 peaches swimming in syrupy juices; 
 toothsome white bread ; the protein-bear- 
 ing brown loaf; snowy disks of ** moun- 
 tain'' cake and parallelograms of choco- 
 late and maple, brought to confines by 
 
60 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 plethoric mangoes and ^* apple-butter" 
 breathing spice. Those huge pigeon- 
 blood rubies you see over there are not 
 pigeon-blood rubies at all but merely- 
 moulded, Douglas County, currant jellies 
 — ^which might indeed market at the price 
 of rubies if the market could get them. 
 
 From garden and field the biggest ears 
 of yellow corn, and biggest ears of white 
 corn ; stalks so aspiring as to bear their 
 tassels above a man ahorseback ; bags of 
 wheat off land yielding fifty bushels of 
 plump red kernels to the acre. Then, 
 too, grapes from vineyard and pergola- 
 pulpy Concords, aromatic Delawares, 
 spicy Dianks, each sweet-scented globe 
 aping the sun in roundness, and conserv- 
 ing within its blooming skin the dews and 
 honeying warmth of a whole summer. 
 
 Yonder across the field stand cattle 
 and the lesser breeds, well-fed, well- 
 rubbed, patiently switching the assiduous 
 flies of autumn. And their owners shift 
 about substantially ruminating a stalk 
 
OUR COUNTRY NEWSPAPER 61 
 
 of grey grass and shaking head in assent 
 or dissent of opinion, while gentle- 
 handed judges stroke the merits of the 
 exhibit and tie on the ribbon won. Of 
 such material solidity is the fair. And 
 this is what '^your scribe" of a neighbor- 
 ing paper says of the occasion: 
 
 Nearly every one from this vicinity attended 
 the Fair last week, and all pronounced it a 
 success. 
 
 It may not be known, but we would like to 
 say that it was one of our neighbors who fur- 
 nished the greased pig for the Fair. Who 
 can beat it ? 
 
 Much honor is due John Blevins for the 
 grand display he made. He brought Grant 
 township to the front, and the contest between 
 Grant and Eudora being so close that the com- 
 mittee could not decide, a disinterested party, 
 Mr. Eben Baldwin, was called upon. He cut 
 it in the centre, giving each township one-half 
 the premium. 
 
 But the country paper has another 
 side, and one of its duties is to speak 
 with fellow-feeling, and due sense of the 
 
62 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 moral tone of the community, of tragic 
 circumstances — often inscrutable, mys- 
 terious, working in silence and indirec- 
 tion, seizing and drawing into its vortex 
 both young and old — the tragic circum- 
 stance of folk that walk with it in daily 
 ways, or come to lie with quiet hands 
 beneath the earth's protecting cover. 
 And youth ! — capricious, driven by some 
 misguiding, shadowy will from which no 
 power seems able to wrest them — they 
 are not fruits of cities alone, as these 
 following paragraphs show: 
 
 Several years ago two bright boys left 
 Pawpaw Grove. Many supposed they had 
 gone west, while others thought they would 
 come about again some time. The following 
 verse, which one of their friends lately re- 
 ceived, tells its own story. The moral every 
 parent who is raising boys for the world's 
 market, should carefully note : 
 
 "When John and I were boys 
 We were bad enough 'tis true; 
 Had fun, made lots of noise, 
 For that was all we had to do. 
 
OUR COUNTRY NEWSPAPER 63 
 
 "We never worked a single day, 
 Our parents didn't seem to care; 
 They'd never a single word to say, 
 Whether at home or elsewhere. 
 
 "John soon learned how to swear. 
 And I began to. badly curse, 
 And together, no matter where. 
 We boys grew worse and worse. 
 
 "The girls would sometimes say, 
 *Boys, you'll come to some bad end. 
 And then you'll have to run away. 
 Where no one will be your friend.' 
 
 "I said one day I would not work. 
 For my parents never taught me how, 
 I would be a burglar or a shirk. 
 Before I'd follow behind a plow. 
 
 "I always thought I was doing right. 
 While my parents never said a word. 
 In my course they seemed to delight. 
 And never for a moment demurred. 
 
 "John and I talked the matter before; 
 By fixing upon a certain night. 
 When we could turn the table o'er, 
 And leave the country in a flight. 
 
 "John took a horse and I a mule, 
 One night when it was very dark. 
 We thought it was the safest rule. 
 To go when the dogs wouldn't bark. 
 
 "So out of the country we went, 
 And never stopped to look behind, 
 
64 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 For neither of us had a single cent — 
 We would put up with fare of any kind. 
 
 "We travelled half next day and that night, 
 Without a bite of bread to eat; 
 We felt the keen demands of appetite. 
 And swore we never would be beat. 
 
 "The rest of the story is easy told. 
 But neither of us will ever tell — 
 For being brave and very bold, 
 We got five years in our state's hell." 
 
 In days immediately forerunning the 
 full-throated song now singing in our 
 midst, our country newspaper lacked 
 verse made by its readers. Still, not 
 wholly silenced lay the muse, and lisp- 
 ings did at times reach the editor — 
 faintly scented manuscripts from ladies 
 whose eyes had the unreal look of 
 dreamers, whose skin an anaemic trans- 
 parency, whose curls were a trifle set — 
 dames who spent their days behind re- 
 poseful green blinds, and, leaving the 
 protection of their homes, ventured down 
 the street a trifle conscious of their 
 progress. Or the song may have come 
 from preacher, or school-teacher, men 
 
OUR COUNTRY NEWSPAPER 65 
 
 cloistered like the women, and like them 
 finding solace in the lyric voice. Can 
 any one of these have been what Shelley's 
 discerning spirit clearly saw? 
 
 *'How many a rustic Milton has passed by, 
 Stifling the speechless longings of his heart, 
 In unremitting drudgery and care ! 
 How many a vulgar Cato has compelled 
 His energies, no longer tameless then, 
 To mould a pin, or fabricate a nail ! 
 How many a Newton, to whose passive ken 
 Those mighty spheres that gem infinity 
 "Were only specks of tinsel, fixed in heaven 
 To light the midnight of his native town!" 
 
 In place of the old-day poetry-corner 
 a quadrangle is now apt to stand with 
 the heading ^^Of Interest to Women," 
 or **The Woman's World" — as if inter- 
 ests of women were not as broad as 
 human life, and their world the whole 
 round world. In what the man-editor 
 conceives alluring to women you find 
 domestic engineering notes whiffing the 
 ozone of clean shelves ; the scent of corn- 
 
66 WOEKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 dodgers; receipts for sun-preserved 
 strawberries — true now, as of those of 
 Dr. Boteler in his day long-foregone; 
 ** Doubtless God could have made a better 
 berry, but doubtless God never did.'' 
 You find letters on home economics 
 formulated by some housemother 's clever 
 brain, after years of tests in her kitchen- 
 laboratory — advices, restated now and 
 democratized, but bringing to your mind 
 such books as the ** Ladies Cabinet'' and 
 ^* Closets of Delight" to which our fore- 
 mothers of the seventeenth century, per- 
 plexed by some problem in housewifery, 
 turned for an unraveling. 
 
 Looking back to what we first said of 
 the genesis of our country newspaper, 
 this, then, is undeniable : — If our English 
 ancestors had not founded their New 
 World settlements upon our race taste 
 for self-governing democracy and hus- 
 bandry, we should not be having the 
 beautiful, homely records our country 
 
OUR COUNTRY NEWSPAPER 67 
 
 newspapers are making to-day. If our 
 English forefathers had come to Amer- 
 ica as the French came, with need of 
 thaumaturgy and priest as middleman 
 between the individual and the Infinite 
 Will, and also with slight clinging to 
 racial family life — for the French drove 
 the fur trade, not agriculture, they 
 looked askance at the farmer and worked 
 to keep this country a wilderness, not to 
 cast it to uses of civilized life — if our 
 English forebears had come into the 
 wilderness without ideals of race purity 
 indestructibly in their heads and state- 
 building instincts of the old home in their 
 hearts, our people, we of the United 
 States themselves, should not have been. 
 In the English infare wives came with 
 husbands — ^women and men together, as 
 in the old times east of the Mediterra- 
 nean the Hebrew men and women went 
 forth from Ur to go into the land of 
 Canaan. Hand in hand they built their 
 narrow dwelling and stood forth as a 
 
68 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 family, their altar and covenant the old- 
 time mighty emphasizer of the family 
 and individual husbandman, the Bible — 
 which, we repeat, to their faith needed 
 no interpreter save their own conning 
 and independent thinking. That is, the 
 English man and woman stood by their 
 own strength. But they knew they stood 
 most lastingly when united in a family. 
 Thus the English foundation survives: 
 for that reason we are here. 
 
 Our Puritans wrought with the might 
 that lies in fidelity to principle, a fidelity 
 that grew in them to an abnormally 
 developed will — such as characterized 
 the Jew before history was written and 
 ever characterizes the Puritan of all 
 times and lands. For, to reiterate, they 
 had a dynamic religion, a generator of 
 power — ^not a religion of refuge: a re- 
 ligion that individualized, that strength- 
 ened the soul by prompting it to solitary 
 and independent seeking of The Eternal, 
 not a religion that enervated by commun- 
 
OUR COUNTRY NEWSPAPER 69 
 
 ity acquiescence to and repetition of 
 formulas. 
 
 Descendants of these Puritans dis- 
 tributed themselves over this continent 
 during generations, we say, and founded 
 villages and towns which have preserved 
 their old-time, self-governing principles 
 — ^towns in which still prevails the esti- 
 mate that human beings are equal in each 
 having the human quality; where no 
 aping of feudal ideas and disdain for 
 manual labor lords it, and judge and col- 
 lege professor run their own ** machine,'' 
 curry their own horse, carry home their 
 own beefstake, hoe their own thriving 
 garden ; where the dentist may have such 
 social recognition as the doctor, and the 
 cobbler of shoes live in the same standard 
 of physical ease as the cobbler of souls. 
 The Puritan progeny upbuilt communi- 
 ties, we repeat, where conventional prej- 
 udices and estimates of externals have 
 small influence; where living is simple, 
 housekeeping is homemaking, and the 
 
70 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 family's health, convenience and sense 
 of home-seclusion and protection and 
 interdependence, such as Whittier pic- 
 tured in his * * Snow-Bound, " rules. Of 
 such living, race ethics, language, cus- 
 toms are the core. Old English traits of 
 love of soil, love of fresh, humorous, red- 
 blood characteristics that grow out of 
 the soil — human nature modified by its 
 home-breeding facts and realities — guide 
 and bless the people. *'Come here with 
 your horses," sang a young blacksmith 
 advertising in his local paper with verses 
 of his own : 
 
 * ' Come here with your horses, your mares and 
 
 your mules, 
 And give me a chance to make noise with my 
 
 tools, 
 Very lonesome am I when my shop floor is 
 
 bare — 
 Even once in a year when no horses are there. 
 
 **Come in the winter, spring, fall and sum- 
 mer. 
 Drive into my shop every old and new comer, 
 
OUR COUNTRY NEWSPAPER 71 
 
 And if I can^t suit you and treat you dead 
 
 true, 
 No man in the state can place you a shoe. 
 
 **Ere you drive any farther it will pay you to 
 
 stop 
 At D. W. Wilson's Horseshoeing Shop/' 
 
 Such a people are not a class. They 
 are unconscious of any social order save 
 their own. Dwelling in town, village 
 and outlying lands, they are not burghers 
 subordinated to a small, aristocratic 
 body of directors ; not a peasantry whose 
 sole interest in this world is the soil and 
 its products. They are democratic self- 
 governors, owning the land they inhabit, 
 whatever human hands have put upon 
 it, and, greatest gift of all, filled to the 
 brain's brim with communal spirit and 
 the ideals of their race. They have the 
 sweet habit of mind of Americans, not 
 the sour habit of mind common in 
 foreigners, and they have the sweet habit 
 because of their opportunity to use their 
 
72 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 will and control or create their destiny — 
 the individual is not fretted or driven 
 back in his will by unconquerable powers. 
 This knowledge, which democracy 
 brings, gives them joy in living and love 
 for and interest in their fellows, as their 
 papers testify. They rejoice in fresh 
 sensibilities, what William James called 
 ** responsive sensibilities.'' **We of the 
 highly educated classes (so-called) have 
 most of us got far, far away from Na- 
 ture,'' added Mr. James. **We are 
 trained to seek the choice, the rare, the 
 exquisite exclusively, and to overlook 
 the common . . . and we grow stone- 
 blind and insensible to life's more ele- 
 mentary and general goods and joy." 
 
 Life is to them worth living. Given 
 their race ideas, a world before them to 
 make their own and no captious, arro- 
 gant will to say them nay, they are not 
 apt to suffer what the old theology called 
 minor *^ visible, carnal sins of gluttony 
 
OUR COUNTRY NEWSPAPER 73 
 
 and drunkenness, ' ' but rather sins which 
 ecclesiasts pronounced (when seen in 
 others than themselves) major — **pride, 
 malice, revenge," and ** venomous, tur- 
 bulent principles of a pitiful, crooked 
 wisdom," namely, independent action 
 and independent thinking. This peo- 
 ple's ** responsive sensibilities," their 
 hopes, ambitions, jealousies, their jocu- 
 larities and mellow, gleaming humor, 
 their local papers evidence through 
 letters and reports at election. Their 
 master-subject for thought, **How shall 
 we be governed? — ^by whom!" is a moral 
 stir, an electrolysis, purifying and mak- 
 ing hygienic many a fountain. The poli- 
 tician among them, at times intensely 
 individualistic, intent on the pressure he 
 may bring to further his aims, is com- 
 monly known root and branch to his 
 neighbors — ^but he presents no back- 
 ground to the stranger, and foreign ex- 
 cursionists, prejudging his life as lack- 
 
74 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 ing the social group, give him the name 
 of shallow egotist.^ 
 
 1 An unexpurgated, inedited history of the politics 
 of almost any of our small communities, would make 
 what its politicians might call "mighty interesting 
 reading." Here is a passage of amusing unction : 
 
 "Editor of the Tribune: — Ex- Judge O. Fasset and 
 *the boys' did come down to Baldwin — Johnny and 
 Barney and Levison, S. T. Hacher, Kinsmore, and 
 Senator Greer. The place, College Hall; the time, 
 last evening; the audience, small; the first speaker, 
 Morton. 
 
 "In self-defence Morton proceeded to show how 
 easily he could be deceived about the funds at hand. 
 He *got off the nest' several times and rambled 
 round, but Bro. Hacher and J. C. Lark brought him 
 back and held his nozzle to the bank. The probate 
 judge closed by an effort at ridiculing D. P. Twitchell. 
 The result was a painful abortion, and like Josh 
 Billings' rooster, he limped off the stage consider- 
 ably reduced.' 
 
 "The next was Barney, the county clerk, who would 
 have done well were it not for the lies he manufac- 
 tured about the Tribune selling out, which shows him 
 to be an ungrateful dog, as the Tribune has always 
 spoken well of him. His chances would be much 
 better if the people could forget that his office pays 
 him $3500 a year, and his hired help does all the 
 work for three hundred, while Barney loafs and 
 pockets the balance. 
 
 "Then came Levison who more than intimated that 
 it was very important he be elected county attorney, 
 in view of the underholt he had on cases pending. 
 
 "Then rose Judge Fasset with one hundred and 
 forty-four mouthfuls of articulate wind. He began 
 with Kinsmore and sponged him off by saying he 
 
OUR COUNTRY NEWSPAPER 75 
 
 Faith, such as the Old Testament in- 
 culcated, in ideals looking to race pres- 
 ervation, taught our people of inborn 
 
 ought to be re-elected because he had done his duty, 
 and when his party found that kind of a man they 
 ought to stick to him. But his eloquence lit up, and 
 sparkled like a rotten mackerel by moonlight, when 
 he came to let his 'gigantic intelleck' light down on 
 Johnny and Barney as faithful oflBcers, and Levison 
 as an able prosecutor, while 'I was judge.' A new- 
 comer who sat near me, in a whisper half audible, 
 said, 'Great heavens, was he ever judge?' 
 
 "'Yes, sir; eight years on the bench.' 
 
 "'Well, you Hesperus people beat the world. It 
 is the first time I ever knew a people to make a 
 judge entirely of guts and hair. They can't beat 
 that east of the Wabash.' 
 
 "The ex-judge tried to be witty by ridiculing Judge 
 Endry. He said the probate judge was an ignorant 
 blacksmith until he was a man grown, but 'Mrs. 
 Endry was a very estimable lady and had taken the 
 judge to her knee and learned him to read and write, 
 and he had made great progress.' This delicate and 
 tasteful allusion left the sympathies of the whole 
 audience in favor of Mrs. Fasset for what appeared 
 her failure to do as much for her lunkey as the 
 other good lady had done for hers. Just here my 
 Indiana man put in: 
 
 " 'You're coddin' me about that meat-head ever 
 bein' a judge, ain't you?' 
 
 " 'No, sir ; he was once judge of this judicial dis- 
 trict.' 
 
 "'Well, he must be out of a job, ain't he? — ^to be 
 going round like this! I have never seen it equaled 
 but once, sir. Old Bill Maxfield, an aristocratic old 
 
76 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 democracy to love the fields, and it kept 
 them to agriculture. In ethical schemes 
 of the older portion of the book, the 
 reward to a righteous life was, here and 
 now, rich herds and large families; 
 '* Blessings on thy basket and thy store, 
 the fruit of thy cattle, the increase of 
 thy kine, and the flocks of thy sheep, if 
 thou shalt hearken diligently to the voice 
 of the Lord thy God, to observe and to 
 do his commandments''; **The Lord 
 shall open unto thee his good treasure, 
 the heaven to give rain unto his land in 
 his season, and to bless all the work of 
 thy hand ; and thou shalt lend unto many 
 
 cuss, has a fine farm on the flats east of the Wabash, 
 and has it all ditched nicely. Old Bill don't weigh 
 more than ninety pounds, clothes and all; he is all 
 dried up, so there ain't oil enough in him to grease a 
 gimblet, and when he goes out to see his farm he 
 has a big lackey to go along. And when they come 
 to a ditch his lackey just spans the ditch with his 
 hands on one bank and his feet on the other, and 
 humps up a little like a bridge, and old Bill walks 
 right over, and keeps clean; but the other fellow gets 
 d — d nasty.' 
 
 "Our opposition people are glad to see the Tribune 
 go the whole ticket. We must have a bold paper.'* 
 
OUR COUNTRY NEWSPAPER 77 
 
 nations and thou shalt not borrow : And 
 the Lord shall make thee the head and 
 not the tail ; and thou shalt be above only 
 and thou shalt not be beneath; if that 
 thou hearken unto the commandments of 
 the Lord thy God/' 
 
 These were real and accountable teach- 
 ings. They gripped the mind that 
 esteemed them the voice of the world's 
 moral governor. About the time faith 
 in the relevancy of the Scriptures faded, 
 came a loss of reverence for country 
 dwelling and a flocking to towns. Ke- 
 birth of wonder at and reverence for an 
 Everlasting Truth, reaffirmation of the 
 old moralities in the moral and physical 
 world, reawakening of race conscious- 
 ness and race conception of nature, may 
 still be necessary to restore us to real- 
 ities. 
 
 How records of the simple country life 
 of Hebrew families, before the Hebrew 
 heart conceived desire for a king, acted 
 upon our early, liberty-loving American 
 
78 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 stock is clear. Not only the rigid and 
 spiritual monotheism of the writings 
 entered the people's life-blood as one 
 with their self-governing instinct, the 
 very phrasing passed into their every- 
 day speech. In order independently to 
 read the Bible, many a man and woman 
 learned the alphabet. The King James 
 version kept a masterpiece of English in 
 their hands, and, far better, in their de- 
 votion to its sanctity, its marvellous 
 English speech upon their lips. Non- 
 conformists, as Bunyan and Defoe in 
 England, wrote the purest Anglo-Saxon 
 of their day. 
 
 This impulse to learn to read in order 
 to con the Bible and to learn its phrase, 
 working long in the active brains and 
 free hearts of self-governors, spurred 
 them to knowledge and confirmed those 
 ideas ^ of education which the Great Ref- 
 
 1 When, under the inspiration of Protestant ethics, 
 European peoples began to read the Bible, each man 
 became conscious of a God that demanded no priest, 
 "that accepteth not the person of princes, nor ge- 
 
OUR COUNTRY NEWSPAPER 79 
 
 ormation had principled. Fervor to be 
 able to read the book went further, for 
 it expanded and warmed a passion for 
 all learning, and assisted in founding 
 state-supported schools. How, with 
 broadened action and sympathy, it has 
 cast among all men of earth ideas of 
 self-rule and education, we are to-day 
 seeing. 
 
 Off springing from this knowledge and 
 this fellow-feeling is our country news- 
 paper. Nowhere, one might say, is 
 there an open-minded press, voicing 
 every soul as its community's factor, 
 carrying the feeling of what Sir Thomas 
 Browne in another spirit called **the 
 
 gardeth the rich more than the poor — they are all 
 the work of his hands." Among such peoples the 
 democratic spirit continued to wax. Take for in- 
 stance Scotland: When the folk became Knoxite 
 and cotters found felicity in reading the Scriptures, 
 they turned from the taker of human life, the war- 
 rior, on the one hand, and the parasite on human 
 life, the monk, on the other, to united, pastoral life 
 and more democratic estimates of the people. And 
 the nation humanized so seriously that after a few 
 generations a poet of world-democratic sentiments, 
 Robert Burns, flowered in their midst. 
 
80 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 many-headed mass/' save where signifi- 
 cant Puritan sense and folk-qualities 
 have stirred the people, and built their 
 records. Modern journalism may have 
 sprung from satirical and political 
 pamphlet and diatribe, as certain writ- 
 ers claim. The genius of the country 
 newspapers' columns, however, is the 
 obverse of these — not malediction and 
 hate but neighbor interest and love. 
 
 To set down earthly careers in a 
 family Bible 's interleaving pages. Births, 
 Marriages, Deaths, is a custom now 
 foregone. Our country newspaper, not 
 unlike the Ark of the Covenant of the 
 old-time people, inasmuch as it jour- 
 neys through deserts and across Jor- 
 dans with the folk who made it, and 
 leaves a blessing upon whatever place 
 it rests — our country newspaper aptly 
 gives each family's history; and on its 
 pages its folk have come to rely. 
 
FORERUNNERS OF WOMEN'S 
 
 COLLEGIATE EDUCATION: 
 
 AND MARY ASTELL 
 
If worthie Ladies would but take such paine, 
 In studies that immortall glorie raise, 
 As they do often take in matters vaine 
 Deserving none at all, or little praise : . . . 
 And further, if they could with their owne pen, 
 Set forth the worthie praise of their owne kind, 
 And not to be beholding unto men, 
 Whom hate and envie often so doth blind, 
 To make us heare the good but now and then. 
 But ev'rie place full of their ill we find; 
 Then sure I judge, their praises would be such. 
 As hardly men should have attaind so much. 
 For many writers do not onely strive. 
 Too highly to extoll our sexes fame, 
 But that they thinke they must withall contrive. 
 To publish womens blemish and their blame; 
 As fearing haply, lest they might arrive. 
 By their most due desait, to greater name. 
 "Translation of Orlando Furioso, 1634," 
 Sir John Haeington. 
 
 'Twas a woman at first 
 
 (Indeed she was curst) 
 In knowledge that tasted delight. 
 
 And sages agree 
 
 The laws should decree 
 To tho, first possessor the right. 
 
 But men of discerning 
 
 Have thought that in learning 
 
 To yield to a lady was hard. 
 
 "Lines to Lady Mary Wortley Montague," 
 Alexandee Pope. 
 
 For knowledge is not an inert and passive princi- 
 ple, which comes to us whether we will or no; but it 
 must be sought before it can be won. . . . They who 
 do not feel the darkness, will never look for the light. 
 "History of Civilization in England," 
 Henry Thomas Buckle. 
 
FORERUNNERS OF WOMEN'S 
 
 COLLEGIATE EDUCATION: 
 
 AND MARY ASTELL 
 
 Education is Greek in its foundation. 
 Our modern education is outlined in 
 practices of worthies of Greece, seminal 
 thinkers, writers and workers for 
 youth's training in race ethics and race 
 ideas; founded, also, on practices of 
 Greek cities in preparing their young 
 men for civic life and cultivated leisure. 
 
 In the unrolling of old centuries these 
 Greek ideas of education passed south- 
 ward to flourishing city-states on the 
 African coast. Across the sea, also, to 
 Rome, and there under the practical 
 genius of it people found efficient serv- 
 ice. Rome sowed the seed still more 
 broadly. For instance, in the last 
 quarter of the first century of our 
 
 83 
 
84 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 era, under the influence of Agrieola, 
 military governor, Eoman schools 
 flourished in Britain. Later, in the re- 
 vival of Latin, education again sporadic- 
 ally enrooted and civilized centres of the 
 north — at the court of Charlemagne, in 
 what is now France, as the writings of 
 Alcuin and Eginhard testify ; at the court 
 of British Alfred the Great, according 
 to Asserts ''Deeds of Alfred," and, too, 
 by the evidence of Alfred himself. 
 
 Later amid the dwellers of monasteries 
 and nunneries, during the centuries of 
 intellectual stagnation, ideas of education 
 still continued concrete practices. But 
 in such environment they were shorn of 
 almost every Greek advantage, and, cut 
 off from constantly refreshing life 
 forces, they sank to the level of their 
 surroundings and became deformed and 
 denatured weaklings. 
 
 The idea of training the young in race 
 feeling and the thought contained in race 
 works, especially in literature, was, then, 
 
TORCH-BEARERS FOR WOMEN 85 
 
 one of the immeasurable gifts of Greece 
 to later times. So, to understand any 
 line of our modem education we have to 
 start with the passing of Europe from 
 dreaming, fictive and scholastic centuries 
 — ^to start with the times after Petrarch 
 and Boccaccio, the first men of note who 
 had ambition, however much they failed 
 in accomplishment, to read Greek liter- 
 ature in the original — ^we have to start 
 with the times called the Pagan Eenais- 
 sance, the change in life and traditions 
 that followed the revival of Greek learn- 
 ing and dissemination and love of Greek 
 ideas — a movement which had gained 
 strength for perhaps two hundred years, 
 and notable acceleration after the fall of 
 Constantinople in the year 1453, the se- 
 quent flight of scholars holding in their 
 arms treasures of old Greek writers, and 
 the settlement of these learned among 
 Greek-studying, and hence Greek-loving, 
 nations of Europe. 
 In the fifteenth century these western 
 
86 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 nations were coming to harmony with 
 the changed environment their awakened 
 intelligence had created. Their world 
 was moving in a new orbit and adapting 
 itself to a new life. Outwardly, in the 
 beautiful physical world invincibly estab- 
 lished by Copernicus, they were stimula- 
 ting their imagination by voyages and 
 tales of undiscovered lands. Through 
 such leaders as Erasmus, and directing 
 learning into Christian channels, they 
 were seeking interpretation of the won- 
 derful human life before their eyes. The 
 spiritual treasures which the stormy 
 politics of the time had set free — ^gifts of 
 the higher faculties of man — they were 
 seizing and absorbing with the avidity of 
 a youthful, ardent, seemingly insatiable 
 emotion. And the new printing press 
 was casting abroad seed ten thousand 
 fold. 
 
 Now, one of the most thoroughly alive 
 and active of European peoples in these 
 fourteenth and fifteenth centuries was 
 
TORCH-BEARERS FOR WOMEN 87 
 
 the remotest towards the west. In all 
 the stir and out-blossoming, the peoples 
 of Britain, our ancestors, had grasped 
 the old Greek idea of education afresh. 
 They called it ^^The New Learning.'' 
 Quite independently of what monasteries 
 and nunneries had practised in years 
 foregone, they seized it, this Greek idea 
 of education, with such earnestness, tak- 
 ing it out of the world of theory and 
 putting it in practice, that by the middle 
 of the sixteenth century little English 
 girls, in their country homes, were think- 
 ing, living, doing after Greek ethics. 
 They were also reading Greek prose- 
 poetry. In this fact is a point where our 
 European ancestors surpassed the old 
 Hellenes. For in Greece education had 
 been for one half of humanity alone. 
 Education of girls was purely domestic 
 in Hellas. Highly educated women num- 
 bered few, and seem for the most part 
 to have served for the entertainment and 
 pleasure of men, not for substantial 
 
88 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 influences on the great social will, and 
 in the everyday home, family, clan, united 
 and national life. 
 
 In our seeking results of this Eenais- 
 sance of education, in England, this New 
 Learning, we shall find most satisfying 
 its working-out in concrete instances. 
 These let us at once examine. 
 
 The home of Sir Thomas More, whose 
 fine figure you remember as Lord Chan- 
 cellor under Henry VIII, affords first 
 instances. Sir Thomas believed in the 
 education of women, and set forth his 
 faith in advice to a friend; this, remem- 
 ber, must have been before 1535, for in 
 that year he suffered death : 
 
 ** May you meet with a wife who is not 
 always stupidly silent, '' he wrote in 
 lively Latin verse, *'nor always prattling 
 nonsense. May she be learned, if pos- 
 sible. ... A woman thus accomplished 
 will always be drawing sentences and 
 maxims of virtue out of the best authors 
 of antiquity. She will be herself in all 
 
TORCH-BEARERS FOR WOMEN 89 
 
 changes of fortune, neither blown in 
 prosperity, nor broken with adversity. 
 You will find in her an even, cheerful, 
 good-humored friend, and an agreeable 
 companion for life. She will infuse 
 knowledge into your children with their 
 milk, and from infancy train them up to 
 wisdom. Whatever company you are 
 engaged in you will long to be at home, 
 and retire with delight from the society 
 of men into the bosom of one so dear, so 
 knowing, and so amiable. . . . You will 
 waste with pleasure whole days and 
 nights in her conversation, and be ever 
 finding out new beauties in her discourse. 
 She will keep your mind in perpetual 
 serenity, restrain its mirth from being 
 dissolute and prevent its melancholy 
 from being painful." 
 
 A man with such sentiments about 
 women would aptly be father of daugh- 
 ters who reflected his magnanimity. 
 That illustrious woman we call Margaret 
 Eoper, ** dearest Meg,'' ** sweet Meg," 
 
90 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 Sir Thomas addressed her in his letters, 
 was the eldest daughter of this high soul. 
 Her beautiful and picturesque figure, 
 whether in service of housekeeping, or 
 in London streets bursting through the 
 guard to speak once more to her father 
 as he went to prison, we have all seen in 
 our mind's eye, and with something of 
 love and awe and heightened conscious- 
 ness of what women have been and have 
 done. Margaret '^had a ready wit," 
 says an old author, ** quick conception, 
 tenacious memory, a fine imagination, 
 and was very happy in her sentiments 
 and ways of expressing herself. ' ' Born 
 in the year 1508, within the next two 
 years her sisters Elizabeth and Cecilia 
 followed her, both like her of many vir- 
 tues and a singularly able intelligence. 
 
 In the house of More, on the banks 
 of the Thames near London, there was 
 also a kinswoman, Margaret Clement, a 
 domestic in the household, whose letters 
 Erasmus, chief scholar of his time, com- 
 
TORCH-BEARERS FOR WOMEN 91 
 
 mended for their good sense and chaste 
 Latin. 
 
 Snch women as these, when they 
 married, took the same care of their 
 children's education that others had 
 taken of their own. We know this is 
 especially true of Margaret Eoper and 
 of Margaret Clement, whose daughters 
 carried the torch of the fundamental 
 training of women into the next century. 
 
 In these days there was also Katherine 
 Parr, to whose wisdom and balanced 
 faculties the will of her husband, Henry 
 VIII, bears lasting testimony. She, 
 after her marriage to the king, zealously 
 wrote Latin letters — and elegant Latin 
 they were — that her desire of having the 
 Bible understood by all the English 
 people might be fulfilled. 
 
 Yet another instance of the sixteenth 
 century educated woman is Elizabeth 
 Tudor, born in 1533, afterwards queen. 
 Of Elizabeth a master told who began 
 teaching her Greek when she was only 
 
92 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 fifteen, and continued even after she liad 
 come to the throne. **I believe/' said 
 this Eoger Ascham, **that besides her 
 perfect readiness in Latin, Italian, 
 French and Spanish, she readeth here 
 at Windsor more Greek every day than 
 some prebendary of this church doth 
 read Latin in a whole week. And that 
 which is most praiseworthy of all, within 
 the walla of her privy chamber she hath 
 obtained that excellency of learning, to 
 understand, speak and write, both wit- 
 tily with head and fair with hand, as 
 scarce one or two wits in both univer- 
 sities have in many years reached unto. ' ' 
 *^She was of an admirable ready wit,'' 
 says another contemporary, **very skil- 
 ful in all kinds of needlework, had an 
 excellent ear in music, played well upon 
 divers instruments. . . . The 5th of 
 September, 1566, she on a sudden made 
 an oration in Latin unto the whole Uni- 
 versity of Oxford, in the presence of 
 the Spanish ambassador. ' ' 
 
TORCH-BEARERS FOR WOMEN 93 
 
 Jane Grey, also, that exquisite, poetic 
 girl sacrificed to others' ambitions, en- 
 joyed a not unlike education: *^ Before 
 I went to Germany," wrote Ascham, *^I 
 came to Broadgate, in Leicestershire, to 
 take my leave of that noble Lady Jane 
 Grey, to whom I was exceedingly much 
 beholding. Her parents, the duke and 
 duchess, with all the household, gentle- 
 men and gentlewomen, were hunting in 
 the park. I found her in her chamber 
 reading 'Phaedon Platonis' in Greek, 
 and that with as much delight as some 
 gentlemen would read a merry tale of 
 Boccaccio. 
 
 ** After salutation and duty done, with 
 some other talk, I asked her why she 
 would lose such pastime in the park? 
 Smiling she answered me, *I wist all 
 their sport in the park is but a shadow 
 to that pleasure I find in Plato. Alas! 
 good folk, they never felt what true 
 pleasure meant.' 
 
 ** 'And how came you madam,' quoth 
 
94 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 I, ^to this deep knowledge of pleasure, 
 and what did chiefly allure you unto it, 
 seeing not many women, but very few 
 men, have attained thereunto T 
 
 ^' '1 will tell you,' quoth she, 'and 
 tell you a truth which, perchance, ye will 
 marvel at. One of the greatest benefits 
 that ever God gave me is that he sent 
 me so sharp and severe parents and so 
 gentle a schoolmaster. For when I am 
 in presence either of father or mother, 
 whether I speak, keep silence, sit, stand, 
 or go, eat, drink, be merry or sad, be 
 sewing, playing, dancing, or doing any- 
 thing else, I must do it, as it were, in 
 such weight, measure, and number, even 
 so perfectly as God made the world, or 
 else I am so taunted, so cruelly threat- 
 ened, yea, presently sometimes with 
 pinches, nips and bobs, and other ways 
 which I will not name for the honour I 
 bear them, so without measure mis- 
 ordered, that I think myself in hell 
 till time come that I must go to 
 
\ 
 
 TORCH-BEARERS FOR WOMEN 95 
 
 Master Elmer/ who teacheth me so 
 gently, so pleasantly, with such fair 
 allurements to learning, that I think all 
 the time nothing whilst I am with him. 
 And when I am called from him I fall 
 on weeping, because whatsoever I do else 
 but learning is full of grief, trouble, fear 
 and whole misliking unto me. And thus 
 my book hath been so much my pleasure, 
 and bringeth daily to me more pleasure 
 and more, that in respect of it, all other 
 pleasures, in very deed, be but trifles 
 and troubles unto me.' " 
 
 In intellectual training other women 
 of the time were as happy. We have 
 record that Joanna, daughter of the Earl 
 of Arundel, translated orations of 
 Isocrates and the Iphigenia of Euripides 
 into English ; and her sister, Mary, who 
 married the Duke of Norfolk, turned 
 Greek originals into Latin. 
 
 There was also the learned Margaret 
 Ascham, who in 1570, two years after 
 
 1 John Aylmer. 
 
96 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 the death of her husband Eoger, **to 
 advance,'' she said, *'the good that may 
 come of it," published her husband's 
 treatise which we know as * * The School- 
 master" — a book ** concerning the right 
 order of teaching and honesty of living, 
 for the good bringing up of children and 
 young men. ' ' 
 
 At this time, also, the four daughters 
 of Sir Anthony Cooke, tutor of Edward 
 VI, became famous. To this day they 
 are a wonder. The oldest, Mildred, born 
 in 1526, married Lord Burghley, after* 
 wards Lord Chancellor for Queen Eliza- 
 beth. Legend says she was so skilled 
 in Greek th^t she delighted in the works 
 of Basil, Chrysostom and other Greek 
 Fathers. Upon her death, forty-two 
 years after her marriage, her husband 
 set down what he called ** Meditations" 
 upon her life, and in his writing said: 
 ** There is no cogitation to be used with 
 an intent to recover that which never 
 can be had again, that is, to have my 
 
TORCH-BEARERS FOR WOMEN 97 
 
 dear wife live again in lier mortal body. 
 ... I ought to comfort myself with the 
 remembrance of her many virtues and 
 godly actions wherein she continued all 
 her life.'' 
 
 Lord Burghley goes on to tell some- 
 what of these virtues and actions. His 
 list amazes. For our edification we 
 should oftener lead this great-hearted 
 woman from the world of shades. Four 
 times in the year, *^ without knowledge 
 from whom it came," says her husband, 
 she sent, to all the prisons in London, 
 money to buy bread, cheese and drink 
 for four hundred persons. In those 
 days of irregular imprisonment — ^under 
 the prison privations and horrors then 
 possible — ^what eminent humanity! 
 
 Sundry times every year, also, she sent 
 shirts and smocks to poor people. Also 
 money to Oxford that fires might be kept 
 in St. John's College on Sundays and 
 holidays during winter, when without her 
 gift poor scholars would have gone acold. 
 
98 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 She sent, too, great numbers of books 
 to Cambridge and Oxford. She gave 
 out wool and flax to be distributed 
 among women for making into yarns, 
 and after the examination of their spin- 
 ning, she often gave back the yarn for 
 weaving into cloth. These were a part 
 of that good woman ^s godly deeds. 
 
 A sister of hers, Anna, when only 
 twenty-two, metaphrased from the Ital- 
 ian and published a book of sermons, 
 and later she translated from the Latin 
 Bishop Jewel's ** Apologia," *Hhe first 
 methodical statement of the position of 
 the Church of England against the 
 Church of R,ome, ' ' and sent her work to 
 that reformer with a letter in Greek. 
 And she became mother of a noble and 
 notable Puritan, Anthony Bacon, and of 
 his illustrious brother, Francis, Lord 
 Chancellor. 
 
 A third of these sisters, Elizabeth, 
 married Sir Thomas Hoby, famed as a 
 diplomat and translator, and upon his 
 
TORCH-BEARERS FOR WOMEN 99 
 
 death took for her second husband Lord 
 John Eussel, on whose monument in 
 Westminster she inscribed an epitaph in 
 Greek, Latin and English. A son of hers 
 was a confidential courtier of Queen 
 Elizabeth. Katherine, the fourth sister, 
 married Sir Henry Killigrew, who served 
 Elizabeth in difficult diplomatic mis- 
 sions. She was famed for her knowl- 
 edge of Hebrew, Greek and her own 
 Latin verse. 
 
 You doubtless note that much emphasis 
 falls on languages in the education of 
 these sixteenth century women, espe- 
 cially upon Greek. All tendencies were 
 then humanistic, we must remember. 
 Greek had lately come to the world 
 anew, and had astonished men with its 
 wealth of ideas, its analyses and pictures 
 of the varying phases of human experi- 
 ence. In its rich records the human mind 
 seemed to fare in all directions. 
 
 Then, moreover, study of Greek was 
 identified with the church reformation 
 
100 WOKKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 principle — a principle during the times 
 of which we speak gaining tremendous 
 headway. In the contest between ideas 
 of local distribution of powers, and ideas 
 of imperial concentration, Greek reason- 
 ing and Greek example afforded effective 
 artillery to Protesters against religious 
 imperialism. With the old church party 
 lay in that century such dread of Greek 
 scholarship that it worked out a horta- 
 tive Latin proverb — **Cave a Graecis, 
 ne fias haereticus," beware of the Greeks 
 lest you be made a heretic. 
 
 Men and women of those days learned 
 languages to enlarge their knowledge of 
 what mankind had done, to broaden their 
 interest in human achievement. Lan- 
 guages were to them a key to unlock 
 treasures; a medium for gaining ideas 
 and training to right thought. But we 
 must not forget that women of the time 
 also studied sciences, as sciences were 
 then known. Astronomy figures often 
 
TORCH-BEARERS FOR WOMEN 101 
 
 in their curricula; physics, also, and 
 philosophy and history. 
 
 But above all works the Bible in its 
 Greek and Hebrew forms, attracted 
 them. Those women dwelt, we must 
 remember, in a world saturated for cen- 
 turies with theology. They longed to 
 attain, through their intellect, under- 
 standing of the mysteries of their emo- 
 tional faith.^ The world of their time 
 put completest trust in special, plen- 
 ary inspiration of the Hebrew scriptures 
 — in whose account lay, let us not forget, 
 the story fabulizing the Tree of Knowl- 
 edge in the Garden of Eden, where the 
 woman was more anxious than the man 
 for the fruit. 
 
 We have been speaking of a few of 
 the women of this brilliant century, wo- 
 men whose lives deepened its thought 
 
 1 In all this ferment were those women studying 
 Church Fathers forgetful of what Jerome with strict 
 veracity, he said, recorded of the noble Paula and 
 her daugrhter Eustochium? 
 
102 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 and imagination and increased its radi- 
 ance. Eecords of others we must pass 
 by — and yet we would name Mary Sid- 
 ney, Countess of Pembroke ; Lady Mag- 
 dalen, mother of Lord Herbert of Cher- 
 bury, and *^holy George Herbert, and 
 correspondent of John Donne; spirited 
 Dorothy Osborne whose devotion blessed 
 Sir William Temple; the erratic Lady 
 Conway. But we must pass them all 
 save one whom no ethics suffer us to 
 omit — ^the celebrated Anne, daughter of 
 the Earl of Cumberland, who married 
 the Earl of Dorset and afterwards the 
 Earl of Pembroke. Her life, during 
 from 1590 tg 1676, linked the sixteenth 
 with the seventeenth century, and in its 
 early years had the felicity of a tutor in 
 the poet Daniels, an intimate of Shake- 
 speare. To many of us to-day she is 
 identified as the woman of whom the 
 vigorous-minded poet Donne, in one of 
 those sudden, home-thrusting phrases 
 which distinguish his work — ^in which 
 
TORCH-BEARERS FOR WOMEN 103 
 
 Donne said, ^ ^ She knew well how to dis- 
 course of all things, from predestination 
 to sleasilk.'' To her Eichard Brath- 
 waite dedicated ^^The English Gentle- 
 woman, '^ published in 1631, *^to her,'' 
 he wrote, ^* whose true love to vertue 
 hath highly ennobled herself e, renowned 
 her sexe, honoured her house. ' ' 
 
 * ^ She had a clear soul shining through 
 a vivid body,'' wrote another friend of 
 hers, Edward Eainbowe, a man whose 
 own mother numbered one more woman 
 trained in Hebrew, Greek and Latin. 
 *^ Although she was skilled in house- 
 wifery," Bishop Eainbowe goes on, **and 
 in such things in which women are con- 
 versant, yet her penetrating wit soared 
 up to pry into the highest mysteries 
 . . . although she knew wool and flax, 
 fine linen and silk, things appertaining 
 to the spindle and distaif, yet she could 
 open her mouth with wisdom." 
 
 Such were a few of many women who 
 distinguished the sixteenth century. 
 
104 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 Such, then, were the effects on woman- 
 kind of the education of women. An old 
 English author whose eyes saw and ears 
 heard those living latest, a man who 
 knew their works, characterizes these 
 women in a book he published in 1694, 
 and his characterization can not to-day 
 be gainsaid: **When Learning first 
 came up,'' and in this he refers to the 
 Eenaissance which we glimpsed in our 
 first paragraphs of this essay, **When 
 Learning first came up. Men fancied that 
 every Thing could be done by it, and 
 they were charmed with the Eloquence 
 of its Professors, who did not fail to set 
 forth all \is Advantages in the most 
 engaging Dress." **It was so very 
 modish,'' our author goes on to say, that 
 Plato and Aristotle, untranslated, were 
 ^'frequent Ornaments of Women's 
 Closets. One would think by the Effects 
 that it was a proper Way of Educating 
 of them, since there are no Accounts in 
 History of so many very great Women 
 
TORCH-BEARERS FOR WOMEN 105 
 
 in any Age, as are to be found between 
 the Years fifteen and sixteen hundred. ' * ^ 
 But the substantial support upon 
 which much of the success of this early 
 education-of-women movement hinged, 
 we must not overlook. These women 
 were oftenest of parents gifted with the 
 ample riches of inherited estates. They 
 
 I Not only in Britain and its legends of Margaret 
 of Anjou and her sustained intrepidity and high- 
 hearted struggle, but in other countries of Europe 
 were many eminent women — Anne of Britanny, the 
 two Margarets of Austria, others who had shown and 
 were showing marked capabilities; and Marguerite 
 of Navarre, chief patron of letters of the France of 
 her time. A woman, in this sixteenth century, 
 preached, according to records, in the cathedral of 
 Barcelona; a French "woman wrote on medical sub- 
 jects; Italian women, such as Beatrice and Isabella 
 d'Este, were learned in philosophy and jurispru- 
 dence; Olympia Morata filled her father's chair in 
 the University of Ferrara while he was ill; Angela 
 Merici went forth on a mission of education and 
 founded an order of teachers. These were a few out 
 of many. The movement penetrated even cloistered 
 seclusion and later nuns, such as Maria of Agreda, 
 1603-1665, wrote, and sometimes printed, canticles 
 on mystic subjects. The German Anna Maria von 
 Schurmann, 1607-1678, skilled in Hebrew, Syriac, 
 Arabic, Chaldaic, Greek, published what is said to 
 be the best exposition of tenets of a reformed, com- 
 munistic congregation to which she belonged. 
 
106 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 were able to employ tutors.^ At the very 
 time the women we have named became 
 illustrious through their broadened lives, 
 an inevitable sequent of humane learn- 
 ing, thousands of women with as great 
 native abilities, doubtless, remained in 
 uncultivated mental strength and seclu- 
 sion because their worldly circumstances 
 permitted no training, no education to 
 distinguish them and grant their natural 
 parts service. Even in the works of 
 Francis Bacon, learned son of the 
 learned Anna Cooke — in his reference 
 to education Bacon had in mind men's 
 education. We find no intimation that 
 a proper training for life is the right of 
 every child. Education for women in 
 
 1 Since writing the above I have met the same 
 facts stated in "The Boke named The Gouernour," 
 by Sir Thomas Elyot, 1490-1546, "Men having sub- 
 stance in goods by certain and stable possessions, 
 which they may apportionate to their own living 
 and bringing up of their children in learning and 
 vertues, may (if nature repugn not) cause them to 
 be instructed and furnished toward the administra- 
 tion of a public weale, that a poor man's son, only 
 by his natural wit, without other adminiculation or 
 aid, never or seldom may attain to the semblable." 
 
TORCH-BEARERS FOR WOMEN 107 
 
 the sixteenth century was for those 
 women rich enough to employ private 
 instructors. They did not *^set young 
 maidens to grammar schools/' wrote a 
 famous schoolmaster, Eichard Mulcaster, 
 whose works lie in the latter half of the 
 sixteenth century, *4t was a thing not 
 used in my country.'' 
 
 But in the next century, the seven- 
 teenth, there came an overturn in the 
 idea of women's education, even in the 
 education of women of wealth and 
 leisure. Why? What had happened? 
 The rule **They are most firmly good, 
 that best know why" of the Elizabethan 
 Sir Thomas Overbury had not failed. 
 After the world had seen the noble works 
 and distinguished excellence of those 
 women of the sixteenth century, what 
 could take such opportunities away? 
 
 During the sixteenth century fashion 
 had stamped education. Fashion is 
 fickle, and now withdrew her approval. 
 Education ebbed low in England in the 
 
108 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 seventeeth century. Intellectual life for 
 men as well as women had lost true 
 significance.^ 
 
 The seventeenth century was the cen- 
 tury of the Stuarts in England, and Eng- 
 lish life, especially in the later half-cen- 
 tury, suffered spiritual and material 
 maladies. Poison of the royal court 
 spread throughout the people. And the 
 later Stuart fashion was not for learn- 
 ing; nor for thinking; nor for honest, 
 upright, unselfish life ; nor for searching 
 any ancient writ whatever. Eakes of 
 both sexes held broad sway — for in- 
 
 1 Even the two universities stood at a low level of 
 intellectual strength. — in such inefficiency, in fact, 
 that men were for many years, and in many places, 
 discussing and determining the function of a univer- 
 sity, till, in the next century, they had come, in the 
 person of Dr. John Arbuthnot in "An Essay on the 
 Usefulness of Mathematical Learning," 1700, to lay- 
 ing down laws about what we now judge past discus- 
 sion, viz.: "Nobody at an University is to be taught 
 the practice of any rule without the true and solid 
 reason and demonstration of the same ... an Uni- 
 versity ... is designed for solid and true Learn- 
 ing. ... It is from the Universities that they must 
 come, who are to remedy the defects of the Arts, and 
 therefore nothing must be taken on trust there." 
 
TORCH-BEAKERS FOR WOMEN 109 
 
 stance, the Duchess of Cleveland, the 
 Duchess of Portsmouth, Nell Gwyn, and 
 their companion libertine, the king. To 
 such creatures education in any phase 
 was of tenest a mark for gibes, the mental 
 stimulation and training of women a butt 
 for scurrilities. It was, wrote Dryden 
 who was of it, a *4ubrique and adulterate 
 age." 
 
 In foregone centuries nunneries had 
 served as *' she-schools " *^ wherein," 
 said Thomas Fuller in his Church His- 
 tory, **the girls and maids of the neigh- 
 borhood were taught to read and work. ' ' 
 Such training young women needed, for 
 *Hhe sharpness of their wits and the 
 suddenness of their conceits, which their 
 enemies must allow unto them," declared 
 the ever-worthy divine, ** might by educa- 
 tion be improved into a judicious solid- 
 ity, and that adorned with arts which 
 now they want, not because they cannot 
 learn but are not taught them. ' ' This of 
 seventeenth century daughters. Seven- 
 
110 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 teentli century sons their parents of 
 ample means trained somewhat lightly, 
 by private tutors.^ To raise the plane 
 of the boys' instruction clear-eyed, 
 thoughtful men wrote treatises on edu- 
 cation that are distinguished to our day. 
 For they recognized the fall from the ele- 
 vation of the sixteenth century genera- 
 tions, and its meaning to the life of the 
 nation. 
 
 But Milton's tractate, published in 
 1644, plans only for what Milton names 
 **our noble and gentle youth," and calls 
 *'a complete and generous education that 
 which fits a man to perform justly, skil- 
 fully, and magnanimously all the offices, 
 both public and private, of peace and 
 
 1 Obvious results of these conditions Swift reported 
 in the next century, in his "Essay on Modern Edu- 
 cation"; "The current opinion prevails that the study 
 of Greek and Latin is loss of time; that the public 
 schools, by mingling sons of noblemen with those 
 of the vulgar, engage the former in bad company; 
 that whipping breaks the spirit of lads well born; 
 that universities make young men pedants; that 
 to dance, fence, speak French, and know how to 
 behave yourself among great persons of both sexes, 
 comprehends the whole duty of a gentleman." 
 
TORCH-BEARERS FOR WOMEN 111 
 
 war." Not in all the learned concision 
 of the tract is there one glimpse of edu- 
 cation for women, nor for the youth and 
 men less prosperous in worldly goods. 
 The development of these two ideas, the 
 education of women and of the people at 
 large, was fated to hang together. 
 
 Three years after Milton's publication, 
 the distinguished economist. Sir William 
 Petty, first English advocate of elemen- 
 tary trade schools and of other instruc- 
 tion of a practical character for the 
 democratic whole, declared that *^all 
 Children ,of above seven years old may 
 be presented to'' the education he advo- 
 cated, *'none to be excluded by reason 
 of the poverty and unability of their 
 Parents, for thereby it hath come to 
 passe, that many are now holding the 
 Plough, which might have beene made 
 fit to steere the State." 
 
 Sir William Petty probably first in 
 England argued for teaching girls 
 domestic science. One more quotation 
 
112 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 from *^The Advice of W. P. to Mr. 
 Samuel Hartlib for The Advancement of 
 some Particular Parts of Learning," 
 1647. ' ' We see Children, ' ' he says, ' ' to 
 delight in Drums, Pipes, Fiddels, Guns 
 made of Elder-sticks and bellowes noses, 
 piped Keyes, etc., for painting Flags and 
 Ensignes with Elder-berries and Corn- 
 poppy, making ships with Paper, and 
 setting even Nut-shells a swimming, 
 handling the tooles of workemen as soone 
 as they turne their backs, and trying to 
 worke themselves, fishing, fowling, hunt- 
 ing, setting sprengs and traps for birds 
 and other animals, making pictures in 
 their writing bookes, making Tops, Gigs, 
 and Whirligigs . . . with a million more 
 besides. And for the Females, they will 
 be making Pyes with Clay, making their 
 Babies Clothes, and dressing them there- 
 with, they will spit leaves on sticks, as 
 if they were roasting meate, they will 
 imitate all the talke and Actions which 
 they observe in their Mother and her 
 
TORCH-BEARERS FOR WOMEN 113 
 
 Gossips. ... By all which it is most 
 evident that Children do most naturally 
 delight in things and are most capable 
 of learning them." 
 
 During this seventeenth century, also, 
 John Locke, in his rich and suggestive 
 ** Thoughts on Education" recognized 
 the fact that the word ** children" meant 
 youngsters of both sexes. **The men- 
 tion of girls" brings sound advice for 
 their physical being. But Locke 's direc- 
 tions for teaching and training for life is 
 for boys — ^till *Hhe young gentleman be- 
 ing got within view of matrimony, it is 
 time to leave him to his mistress. ' ' But 
 not a word of the training of the mind 
 and emotion of the girl in whose charge 
 and direction his social system permitted 
 the young man to be *4eft." 
 
 An approximately true attitude of the 
 best this seventeeth century could offer 
 toward the education of women is illus- 
 trated by **The English G-entleman" and 
 ^*The English Gentlewoman," books 
 
114 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 Kichard Brathwaite put out about 1631. 
 For the English gentleman is a chapter 
 on the values of education. For the 
 English gentlewoman not a vestige, ex- 
 cept the dedication to which we have re- 
 ferred. 
 
 Another book also makes clear that 
 century's estimates — a book by the pro- 
 foundly world-wise first Marquis of 
 Halifax, published in 1688, the ** Lady's 
 New Year Gift, or Advice to a Daugh- 
 ter." It is a series of essays treating 
 of a wealthy woman's everyday govern- 
 ment of herself toward religion, husband, 
 family, children, domestics, and speaking 
 of conversation, friendship, censure, 
 vanity and affectation, pride, diversions, 
 dancing, but advising nothing of that 
 substance which, in the century before, 
 the sixteenth, was thought desirable and 
 essential for women of fine breeding — a 
 training in sound sentiment and general 
 knowledge, the substance of books seri- 
 
TORCH-BEARERS FOR WOMEN 115 
 
 ously treating the physical and spiritual 
 world. 
 
 The wit and reputation of the Marquis 
 of Halifax, his knowledge of men and 
 manners, his strength of characteriza- 
 tion, the times' scarcity of printed matter 
 recognizing women's need of advisory 
 instruction, sent his '* Advice" through 
 many editions in its own English and 
 in translations. Pointed, epigrammatic 
 phrases mark the work, as one might ex- 
 pect from the author's vivacious social 
 life. For instance, in advising '*my 
 dear" to cleave to a broad, rational 
 faith in which she had been bred, he 
 says, * * Eeligion is exalted reason, refined 
 and sifted from the grosser parts of it." 
 *'It is Morality improved and raised to 
 its height. ' ' ^ This daughter for whom 
 Lord Halifax affectionately wrote his 
 
 1 A sentence, it is curious to recall, forerunning 
 by almost two centuries Matthew Arnold's oft- 
 repeated definition of religion as morality touched 
 by emotion. 
 
116 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 book, later became mother of a son who 
 grew to be the worldly and brilliant Lord 
 Chesterfield. The estimate this son 
 made of his mother and her human 
 sisters you shall see further on. 
 
 One more testimony from this seven- 
 teenth century, and that from the works 
 of the ardent Bishop Burnet, whose busy- 
 body proclivities immeasurably hurt the 
 cause of the education of women. His 
 autobiography, 1710 (!), written toward 
 the end of his arduous lif e,^ tells of the 
 education of *^my children," of **my 
 sons,'' but makes not mention of his two 
 daughters. And then in his essay on 
 Queen Mai;y of England, wife of Prince 
 William of Orange, the bishop uncon- 
 sciously expresses himself by what he 
 does not say. Queen Mary, he wrote 
 after her death, * ^had read the best books 
 in the three languages that were almost 
 equally familiar to her." **Next to the 
 
 1 His "Thoughts on Education" were published 
 about 1668, when he was still a young man. 
 
TORCH-BEARERS FOR WOMEN 117 
 
 best subjects, ' ' that is religion, ' ' sbe be- 
 stowed most of her time on books of 
 history. . . . She was a good judge as 
 well as a great lover of poetry. . . . 
 So tender she was of poetry, . . . that 
 she had a particular concern in the de- 
 filement, or rather the prostitution of 
 the Muses among us.'' In this last 
 sentence the bishop must refer to the 
 drama of their day. ^*She went far in 
 natural history and perspective," he 
 continues, *^as she was very exact in 
 geography. She thought sublime things 
 too high flights for the sex'' — ^by these 
 last two words the bishop means women. 
 **The sex" ^^she oft talked of with a 
 liberty that was very lively,"^ further 
 testifies her ecclesiastical friend. 
 
 It would be interesting to match the 
 
 iThis phrase, "a liberty that was very lively ,** 
 recalls the second line of a popular rhyme charac- 
 terizing the royal family of that day: 
 
 "King William thinks all, 
 
 Queen Mary talks all, 
 
 Prince George drinks all. 
 
 And Princess Anne eats all." 
 
118 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 queen's lively talk against the convic- 
 tions of a subject of her realm, Mary 
 As tell, whose influence in all the years 
 since that time has far transcended that 
 of the queen. When Mary, the narrow- 
 natured queen, was talking '^with a 
 liberty that was very lively,'' Mary, the 
 large-natured subject, was making pro- 
 found deductions upon conditions con- 
 trolling their country-women. 
 
 But before we take up the work of this 
 great-hearted English woman, Mary 
 Astell, and the enduring significance of 
 what she said and did, let us turn for a 
 moment to France and to the then 
 French attitude toward educating 
 women. 
 
 In the sixteenth century, Montaigne 
 addressed his distinguished essay, **0n 
 the Education of Children," to a woman, 
 Diana of Foix. The writing was doubt- 
 less in behalf of Diana's son, and evi- 
 dences most engagingly, with citations 
 from learned ancients and also authors 
 
TORCH-BEARERS FOR WOMEN 119 
 
 of Montaigne's own time, what should 
 serve to prepare youth for polite life. 
 
 Later in France, between the years 
 1618 and 1650, the abilities of a woman 
 with a marked gift of social organization, 
 whom we know as the Marquise de Ram- 
 bouillet, very successfully brought to- 
 gether at her house diverse elements of 
 life in the French capital. Through the 
 foundation of such a union women be- 
 came a distinct power and influence. In- 
 stances pertained precisely as in Eng- 
 land : — ^Wealth was able to command in- 
 struction and to give daughters a thor- 
 oughly careful education. Such learning 
 had been possible to the coterie centring 
 at the Hotel Rambouillet and working a 
 lasting influence on French letters — 
 stamping French letters with a spirit re- 
 maining to our day. Among the mem- 
 bers was the sensible and proper Made- 
 leine Scudery, 1607-1701 ; the Madame de 
 Sevigne, 1626-1696, whose guardian fol- 
 lowed fashion and made her a learned 
 
120 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 lady ; also her wise and intimate life-long 
 friend, Madame de la Fayette, 1634-1692, 
 first of modern novel-writers definitely 
 to draw character and sentiment. 
 
 Doubtless a result of the dominance of 
 the Hotel Eambouillet assemblies was 
 the attempt at broadening the education 
 of French women generally — the attempt 
 seen, for instance, in Fontenelle's 
 ** Plurality of Worlds.'' In form of 
 conversations between a scientist and a 
 woman, this book trades upon the knowl- 
 edge that a title, even in France, would 
 catch the popular ear, and it makes the 
 woman a marchioness. **I have intro- 
 duced a lady, to be instructed in things 
 of which she never heard," say Fon- 
 tenelle in his preface, **and I have made 
 use of this fiction to render the book the 
 more acceptable and give encouragement 
 to gentlewomen" — ^note the encourage- 
 ment is to gentlewomen, not to women — 
 **by the example of one of their sex, who 
 without any supernatural parts or tine- 
 
TORCH-BEARERS FOR WOMEN 121 
 
 ture of learning, understood wliat was 
 said to her. ... I shall desire no more 
 of the fair sex than that they will read 
 this system of philosophy, with the same 
 application that they do a romance or 
 novel when they would retain the plot, or 
 find out all its beauties.'' 
 
 In France at this time lived a born 
 teacher, Madame de Maintenon, a wo- 
 man happiest when instructing, to whom 
 fate had granted the training of children 
 of Louis XIV. In the later eighties of 
 this seventeenth century, after Madame 
 de Maintenon had become the wife of 
 Louis XIV, she founded the school-con- 
 vent, St. Cyr, for poverty-stricken, noble- 
 blooded French girls — for their instruc- 
 tion in the conduct of life. The ideas 
 she used as basis of her work had al- 
 ready gone forth from English Milton 
 and Locke; and especially they were in 
 the less ordered ** Advice" of the Mar- 
 quis of Halifax. She seized upon and 
 applied suggestions of these writers, and 
 
122 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 in 1692 published lier first *'Avis aux 
 Demoiselles." With French brightness 
 and artful lightness she put her advices 
 in the form of dialogues — on such sub- 
 jects as devotion, good humor, friend- 
 ships, generosity, habit; or entitles by 
 proverbs, as **the opportunity makes the 
 thief," ''familiarity breeds contempt." 
 Delighting to teach, this woman kept up 
 her instruction into the next century, to 
 1715 or later. 
 
 Now let us turn back to England. In 
 this seventeenth century there had been, 
 we have seen, distinguished writings on 
 education from Milton, Petty, Locke. 
 After schoolmaster methods and experi- 
 ence others, also, were not lacking, for 
 instance Charles Hoole's. But among 
 them all words advocating solid and sub- 
 stantial provender for girls' minds are 
 difficult to find — except, perchance, those 
 of Sir William Petty 's offering. Women 
 growing to grace in these times and 
 
TORCH-BEARERS FOR WOMEN 123 
 
 subject to, or voluntarily seeking, the 
 discipline and rich mindedness of the 
 preceding century were few, and un- 
 doubtedly in families where traditions of 
 the sixteenth century **New Learning'' 
 still abode. 
 
 Yet, this century had women whose 
 native genius was not lost. There 
 was the exuberant, erratic Margaret, 
 Duchess of Newcastle, with a fertile pen. 
 There was the learned Dorothy Paking- 
 ton, to whom for many years report 
 ascribed the famous book **The Whole 
 Duty of Man. ' ' Among its numbers was 
 Katharine Philips, born in 1631, friend 
 of Dr. Jeremy Taylor, Cowley and Henry 
 Vaughn, a poetess called ** matchless'' 
 by her associates, ** perfect mistress of 
 the French tongue," an old author de- 
 clares, learned also in Italian — a lady 
 whom smallpox carried off before she 
 had reached middle age. She **owed 
 not her glory to a beauteous face. ' ' 
 
124 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 *'It was her radiant soul that shone within, 
 Which struck a lustre through her outward 
 
 skin; 
 That did her lips and cheeks with roses dye, 
 Advanced her height, and sparkled in her 
 
 eye." 
 
 Anne Killigrew, who penned this de- 
 scription of a sister singer, died also in 
 these times, in her twenty-fifth year, she 
 too from the terrible scourge of our 
 ancestors ^ — and of her Dryden sang a 
 song of sentiment so elevated and ex- 
 pression so exquisite, that Dr. Johnson 
 thought it the noblest ode in our lan- 
 guage: 
 
 • 
 **Art she had none," sang Dryden, **yet 
 
 wanted none, 
 
 For nature did that want supply . . . 
 
 ered from — as Dorothy Osborne just before her mar- 
 riage to William Temple, but with loss of her 
 beauty; and Lucy Apsley before her union with her 
 devoted John Hutchinson, "whose constancy God 
 recompensed by restoring her as well as she was be- 
 fore." 
 
TORCH-BEARERS FOR WOMEN 125 
 
 Such noble vigour did her verse adorn, 
 That it seem'd borrow 'd where 'twas only 
 born/' 
 
 But in the latter part of this seven- 
 teenth century, at the home of a mer- 
 chant of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, were 
 growing a heart and mind not quite 
 understood of the then poets, and of a 
 sort despised by the reigning court. 
 While Madame de Maintenon was work- 
 ing out her practical experiment, of 
 which we have spoken, at St. Cyr in 
 France, Mary Astell was maturing ideas 
 for the education of English girls. To 
 both English and French reformer 
 Locke *s great essay must have been rich, 
 in suggestion. Doubtless Mary Astell 
 read the work, published in 1690, when 
 she was about twenty-two, an age when 
 life turns to ideals and judgment ripens 
 for future work. 
 
 Mary Astell was without the self -dis- 
 trust and timidity that afflict women 
 whose lives are secluded. She had the 
 
126 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 character that forced what she thought 
 upon the world. She had also the un- 
 usual capacity of generating ideas, a 
 rarer gift than is commonly supposed. 
 She had a mother wit. Of one of her 
 books, *' Essays in Defence of the Female 
 Sex,'' published in 1696, she said, **most 
 men pronounce it a performance above 
 the ability of a woman," ** think the 
 style too masculine," but she *^ makes 
 bold to advance that let them form them- 
 selves with equal care, by the same 
 models, and they will no more be able to 
 discern a man's style from a woman's 
 than they can tell whether this was 
 written with a goose quill or a gander's." 
 Now, in the year 1697, this educated, 
 large-minded woman, then twenty-nine 
 years old, sympathetic with the needs of 
 her generation, understanding estimates 
 that had hardened and narrowed the 
 minds of her countrymen during the 
 seventeenth century just coming to an 
 end, moved by the lamentable lack of 
 
TORCH-BEARERS FOR WOMEN 127 
 
 facilities for women's education in her 
 day, this Mary Astell published in a 
 * * Serious Proposal to the Ladies for the 
 Advancement of Their True and Great- 
 est Interests'' plans for the formation 
 of a women's college. There were, you 
 will see, two great distinguishing marks 
 in this proposal; one, the democratic 
 idea of education for many, for those 
 unable to afford specific and costly in- 
 struction, the giving to many advantages 
 theretofore reserved for the few ; and the 
 other, the idea of the bringing forward 
 the personality of women, the right of 
 a woman to develop herself. 
 
 In Miss Astell's own words her plan 
 was **to erect ... a retreat from the 
 world for those who desire that advan- 
 tage, but likewise an institution and 
 previous discipline to fit us to do the 
 greatest good in it" — the world. That 
 is the keynote of her proposal for a 
 women's college — to fit us to do the 
 greatest good in the world. What better 
 
128 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 shall we find anywhere? An eminent 
 philosopher, Herbert Spencer, has told 
 us that the function of education is **to 
 prepare us for complete living." How 
 better is this definition than Mary As- 
 telPs? His is couched in scientific 
 phrase, hers in literary. Both are alike, 
 and both bear like fruits. Hers foreruns 
 his by more than two hundred and fifty 
 years. 
 
 **No vows nor irrevocable obliga- 
 tions," continued Miss Astell, were to 
 keep the members longer than they de- 
 sired. There was to be **a course of 
 solid, instructive preaching and catechiz- 
 ing," for '^ignorance and a narrow edu- 
 cation lay the foundation of vice. ' ' You 
 see her plan sketches a college not unlike 
 our modern houses of deaconesses. 
 Learning, however, was to prevail over 
 religious offices, and that marks the secu- 
 larity of her idea.^ 
 
 1 "I have often heard," wrote Miss Astell in her 
 "Essay in Defence of the Female Sex," "I have often 
 
TORCH-BEARERS FOR WOMEN 129 
 
 Mary AstelPs proposal was before the 
 world the last of the seventeeth century. 
 Fashion and its prejudices, * ' the usurpa- 
 tion of men and the tyranny of custom, ' ' 
 Miss Astell wrote, were against its ac- 
 ceptance. **The men, by interest and 
 inclination, are so generally engaged 
 against us,*' she said, **that it is not to 
 be expected that any one man of wit 
 should arise so generous as to engage in 
 our quarrel and to be the champion of 
 
 heard some of our considerable merchants blame the 
 conduct of our countrymen in this point, that they 
 breed our women so ignorant of business; whereas 
 were they taught arithmetic and other arts which 
 require not much bodily strength, they might supply 
 the places of abundance of lusty men now employed 
 in sedentary business; which might be a mighty 
 profit to the nation, by sending those men to em- 
 ployments where hands and strength are more re- 
 quired, especially at this time when we are in such 
 want of people. Besides that it might prevent the 
 ruin of many families, which is often occasioned by 
 the death of merchants in full business leaving their 
 accounts perplexed and embroiled to a widow and 
 orphans understanding nothing of the husband's and 
 father's business. That occasions the rending and 
 oftentimes the utter confounding of a fair estate; 
 which might be prevented if the wife but understood 
 merchants' accounts and were acquainted with the 
 books." 
 
130 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 our sex against the injuries and oppres- 
 sions of his own. Those romantic days 
 are over, and there is not so much as a 
 Don Quixote of the quill left to succor 
 distressed damsels." 
 
 But a knight did appear, a knight not 
 in inherited armor, but from the people, 
 a foresighted journalist and sympathizer 
 with losing causes, Daniel Defoe, from 
 boyhood an uncompromising fighter in 
 the war of the liberation of humanity. 
 Defoe advocated high schools for girls. 
 He amply acknowledged the ingenuity of 
 Miss Astell's plan, and set forth his own 
 ideas of how the college building should 
 be situated **to render intriguing danger- 
 ous ' ' — ^heaven save the mark ! — and what 
 the general regulations of an academy 
 for women should be. He would have 
 an act of parliament making it a felony 
 without clergy for a man to enter by 
 force or fraud into its house. 
 
 **I have often thought of it as one of 
 the most barbarous customs in the 
 
TORCH-BEARERS FOR WOMEN 131 
 
 world/* declared Defoe, **that we deny 
 the advantages of learning to women. 
 . . . Their youth is spent to teach them to 
 stitch and sew and make bauhles. They 
 are taught to read, indeed, and perhaps 
 to write their names or so, and that is 
 the height of a woman's education. . . . 
 The soul is placed in the body like a 
 rough diamond, and must be polished, 
 or the lustre of it will never appear ; and 
 it is manifest that as the rational soul 
 distinguishes us from brutes, so educa- 
 tion carries on the distinction and makes 
 some less brutish than others. . . . Why, 
 then, should women be denied the bene- 
 fit of instruction! If knowledge and 
 understanding had been useless addi- 
 tions to the sex, God Almighty would 
 never have given them capacities." It 
 *4ooks as if we denied women the ad- 
 vantages of education for fear they 
 should vie with the men in their improve- 
 ments." **The great distinguishing 
 difference which is seen in the world 
 
132 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 between men and women is in their 
 education. ... I can not think God 
 furnished them with . . . souls capable 
 of the same accomplishments with men, 
 and all to be only stewards of our houses, 
 cooks and slaves." What better knight 
 of the quill could Mary Astell have 
 found! 
 
 Eeinforced by Defoe's ^* Essay," Miss 
 Astell's suggestions were before the eyes 
 of English readers by 1699. Three 
 years passed and Anne came to the 
 throne. Plans of a college for women 
 appealed to this queen. They appealed, 
 also, to other women so established in 
 worldly goods as to be able to express 
 their convictions through material gifts. 
 Such women publicly endorsed the idea 
 of the college and offered money for its 
 realization. 
 
 Of all these f oreworkers, the one whose 
 identification with the proposal has been 
 best preserved to us was the beautiful 
 and exemplary Lady Elizabeth Hastings, 
 
TORCH-BEARERS FOR WOMEN 133 
 
 a born idealist, a woman of marked per- 
 sonality, an inheritor of a considerable 
 fortune — that woman of whom Eichard 
 Steele wrote bis famous *Ho love ber is 
 a liberal education ... it being tbe 
 nature of all love to create an imitation 
 of tbe beloved person in tbe lover/' 
 Tbis Elizabeth Hastings offered a con- 
 siderable sum to tbe new women's 
 college, toward its material expression. 
 * * Tbe scheme given in Miss Astell 's pro- 
 posal seemed so reasonable," said one 
 of ber contemporaries, **and wrought so 
 far upon a certain great lady, that she 
 had designed to give ten thousand 
 pounds towards erecting a sort of college 
 for the education and improvement of 
 the female sex ; and as a retreat for these 
 ladies who, nauseating the parade of the 
 world, might here find a happy recess 
 from the noise and hurry of it. But the 
 design coming to the ears of Bishop 
 Burnet" — this is the Bishop Burnet, 
 remember, whose essay on Queen Mary 
 
134 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 told of his lack of sympathy with radical 
 ideas of his time ^ — this Bishop Burnet 
 ^immediately sent to that lady/' Eliza- 
 beth Hastings, '^and so powerfully 
 remonstrated against it . . . that he 
 utterly frustrated the noble design. ' ' 
 
 A spiritual adviser, in other words, 
 appealed to Elizabeth Hastings' ideal- 
 ism. Her idealism worked through 
 religious lines. The women's college 
 lost her gift, without which it could not 
 establish itself. Eventually she be- 
 queathed to Queen's College, Oxford, a 
 large sum to support **poor scholars" 
 from twelve schools. It would be inter- 
 esting to know if this gift to Oxford, a 
 gift which to this day affords educa- 
 tional opportunities to men, not to 
 women, was money Elizabeth Hastings 
 had originally determined to appropriate 
 to Mary Astell's women's college. 
 
 1 Writers of the bishop's own time say he was 
 untruthful and indulged in malicious insinuation. 
 For instance, Swift wrote "Malice" alongside Bur- 
 net's account of Prior's start in life. 
 
TORCH-BEARERS FOR WOMEN 135 
 
 Eakish writers of those times, also, 
 invoked conservative sentiment and 
 threw their influence with that of the 
 bishop. The famous Tatler published, 
 insolently says its introduction, **for 
 entertainment of the fair sex in honor 
 of whom I have invented the title," used 
 the potent weapon of ridicule against 
 the plan of a college. Some real, or 
 fancied, condition of women was often 
 the butt of Eichard Steele, The Tatler's 
 chief writer; *^the most agreeable rake," 
 said a man of his day, **who ever trod 
 the rounds of indulgence. ' ' ^ 
 
 The Tatler of the 23rd of June, 1709, 
 jeered at Miss Astell, sketched her under 
 the names of **Platonne" and **Madon- 
 ella," and in the lubric expression com- 
 mon to the periodical, mocked at the 
 college she had suggested. The wits 
 treated the scheme with the sort of criti- 
 
 1 "I shall not carry my humility so far as to call 
 myself a vicious man," wrote Steele in The Tatler'a 
 last number (271), "but at the same time must con- 
 fess, my life at best is but pardonable." 
 
136 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 cism Swift called *^ coffee-house.'' Not 
 all their story, dated by the way from 
 White's Chocolate-house,^ is to-day 
 printable, according to present ideas of 
 decency. This, however, is the outline: 
 
 A troop of wags and libertines make 
 their way into the grounds of the college 
 presided over by **Madonella," **pro- 
 jectrix of the foundation," on the pre- 
 tence, after ** travelling England," of 
 wishing to bear the fame of **a Protes- 
 tant nunnery" to foreign lands. With 
 great show of '^ solemn impudence" the 
 invaders win over the inmates, and the 
 broad humor of the story makes it plain 
 that the sequent parental lives of the 
 women and the wags wiped out the col- 
 lege. You see the tale meant to make 
 the ideal absurd. 
 
 A few weeks after this elegant irony 
 The Tatler again refers to **Madon- 
 ella" as having *4aid a scheme of a 
 
 1 "The common rendezvous," says Swift in his 
 "Essay on Modern Education," "of infamous sharp- 
 ers and noble cullies." 
 
TORCH-BEARERS FOR WOMEN 137 
 
 college for young damsels; where (in- 
 stead of scissors, needles, and samplers), 
 pens, compasses, quadrants, books, man- 
 uscripts, Greek, Latin, and Hebrew are 
 to take up their time. Only on holidays 
 the students will, for moderate exercise, 
 be allowed to divert themselves with the 
 use of some light and valuable weapons,' ' 
 says the ridiculer, **and proper care will 
 be taken to give them at least a super- 
 ficial tincture of the ancient and modern 
 Amazonian tactics. ' ' 
 
 Such attention from The Tatler 
 evidence that serious discussion of 
 women's intellectual training affected its 
 world. Mary Astell's ideas had been 
 planted in the English people's mind — 
 not a warm soil, nor one ready at stimu- 
 lating new seed, but a soil, when once 
 a vigorous thought has enrooted, lending 
 nourishment for sure, steady growth. 
 
 This implanting, we must remember, 
 happened at the beginning of the 
 eighteenth century, when literature was 
 
138 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 finding new expression and new activ- 
 ities. In writers who made the Queen 
 Anne and immediately later times 
 famous, we may expect to find witnesses 
 of the germination of Miss Astell 's ideas. 
 Such were bringing messages. For in- 
 stance, while debauchees and pleasure- 
 haunters of London were ridiculing edu- 
 cation for women, Mary Pierrepont — ^we 
 know her better as Lady Mary Wortley 
 Montague — ^was making her translation 
 of Epictetus, and in July, 1710 — she then 
 numbered barely twenty-one years — ^was 
 sending it to Bishop Burnet. **My sex 
 is usually forbid studies of this nature," 
 she said in the letter that went with the 
 manuscript, * * and folly reckoned so much 
 our proper sphere, we are sooner par- 
 doned any excesses of that than the least 
 pretensions to reading or good sense. 
 We are permitted no books but such as 
 tend to the weakening and effeminating 
 of the mind. Our natural defects are 
 every way indulged, and it is looked 
 
TORCH-BEARERS FOR WOMEN 139 
 
 upon as in a degree criminal to improve 
 our reason, or fancy we have any. We 
 are taught to place all our art in adorn- 
 ing our outward forms, and permitted, 
 without reproach, to carry that custom 
 even to extravagancy, while our minds 
 are entirely neglected, and, by disuse of 
 reflections, filled with nothing but the 
 trifling objects our eyes are daily enter- 
 tained with." How much that that 
 young soul discriminatingly saw more 
 than two hundred years ago is apt for 
 us to-day! 
 
 The new ideas Joseph Addison also 
 reflects in the Spectator of 1711. 
 ** Women's amusements seem contrived 
 for them,'* says Mr. Addison, *^ rather as 
 they are women, than as they are reason- 
 able creatures. . . . The toilet is their 
 scene of business, and the right adjust- 
 ing of their hair the principal employ- 
 ment of their lives. The sorting of a 
 suit of ribbons is reckoned a very good 
 morning's work; and if they make an 
 
140 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 excursion to a mercer's or a toyshop, so 
 great a fatigue makes them unfit for any- 
 thing else all the day after. Their more 
 serious occupations are sewing and em- 
 broidery, and their greatest drudgery 
 the preparation of jellies and sweet- 
 meats. This, I say, is the state of ordi- 
 nary women; though I know there are 
 multitudes of those of a more elevated 
 life and conversation, that move in an 
 exalted sphere of knowledge and virtue, 
 that join all the beauties of the mind to 
 the ornaments of dress, and inspire a 
 kind of awe and respect, as well as love, 
 into their male beholders." 
 
 Ordinary wbmen, continued Mr. Addi- 
 son, in a later Spectator, ordinary 
 women ^^ consider only the drapery of 
 the species, and never cast away a 
 thought on those ornaments of the mind 
 that make persons illustrious in them- 
 selves, and useful to others. When wo- 
 men are thus perpetually dazzling one 
 another's imaginations, and filling their 
 
TORCH-BEARERS FOR WOMEN 141 
 
 heads with nothing but colors, it is no 
 wonder that they are more attentive to 
 the superficial parts of life than the solid 
 and substantial blessings of it. . . . In 
 a word, lace and ribbons, silver and gold 
 galloons, with the like glittering gew- 
 gaws are so many lures to women of weak 
 minds or low educations, and, when arti- 
 ficially displayed, are able to fetch down 
 the most airy coquette from the wildest 
 of her flights and rambles. ' ' 
 
 Mary AstelPs ideas worked still fur- 
 ther in Mr. Addison's mind, as the 
 Guardian of 1713, September 8th, 
 evinces. In reading the quotations, note 
 how completely the most accomplished 
 literary critic of his generation seems to 
 have forgotten the illumination of the 
 women of the sixteenth century. **I 
 have often wondered,'' says Addison, 
 '*that learning is not thought a proper 
 ingredient in the education of a woman of 
 quality or fortune. Since they have the 
 same improvable minds as the male part 
 
142 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 of the species, why should they not be 
 cultivated by the same method! Why 
 should reason be left to itself in one of 
 the sexes, and be disciplined with so much 
 care in the other ? ' ' Why, indeed ? 
 
 Years passed in these eighteenth cen- 
 tury discussions of the women's question. 
 Negation such as Bishop Burnet's and 
 Eichard Steele 's once more gained voice. 
 The great genius of Jonathan Swift 
 witnesses. In his admirably cogent 
 *^ Essay on Modern Education" Swift 
 speaks not a word about the education 
 of women, nor of boys at large — of rich 
 and noble boys alone. Moreover, in his 
 paper **0f the Education of Ladies" he 
 says, *'In this debate those whom we call 
 men and women of fashion are only to 
 be understood, not merchants, trades- 
 men, or others of such occupations, who 
 are not supposed to have a share in a 
 liberal education." This from Swift, a 
 man of tender and sympathetic heart for 
 the benighted and oppressed! But in 
 
TORCH-BEARERS FOR WOMEN 143 
 
 what we quote he undoubtedly reflected 
 all he saw and heard. 
 
 Lord Chesterfield, a man whose fame 
 now rests upon his ** Letters/' set out 
 still more pronounced opposition to 
 Mary AstelPs ideas. Chesterfield, you 
 will recall, was grandson of that Mar- 
 quis of Halifax whose book of ** Advice 
 to a Daughter," is referred to on fore- 
 going page 114. Fifty years after his 
 grandsire had written, Chesterfield as- 
 sumed — let us call it by its right name, 
 it was pure assumption even if he was a 
 man of brilliant wit and solid knowledge 
 — Chesterfield assumed to lay out a 
 *^ Female Province,*' * Whatever," he 
 magnificently declared *^has not been 
 particularly assigned by nature to ours'' 
 — to men's. ** Man's Province," he had 
 already proclaimed, ^4s universal, and 
 comprehends everything, from the cul- 
 ture of the earth, to the government of 
 it." **I leave 'em," he magnanimously 
 declares, as if the partition of human life 
 
144 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 and work lay at his will, **I leave 'em 
 [women] a mighty empire, Love, There 
 they reign absolutely, and by unques- 
 tioned right, while beauty supports their 
 throne. They have all the talents re- 
 quisite for that soft empire, and the 
 ablest of our sex can not contend with 
 'em in the profound knowledge and con- 
 duct of those arcana." Continuing his 
 theme he takes a glance at women in some 
 other phase than beauty ruling her em- 
 pire, and serenely posits that those **who 
 are deposed by years, or accidents, or 
 those who by nature were never qualified 
 to reign, should content themselves with 
 the private .care and economy of their 
 families, and the diligent discharge of 
 domestic duties." 
 
 Such balderdash Common Sense, or 
 The Englishman's Journal^ of London, 
 printed in the year 1737. To a reader 
 of to-day it carries no evidence that Lord 
 Chesterfield had his tongue in his cheek 
 when he wrote it — ^that like some of our 
 
TORCH-BEARERS FOR WOMEN 145 
 
 own times ' writers he was trying to stifle 
 thought by pretty and pretentious buf- 
 fooneries, by saying nothings elabo- 
 rately. The impudence with which he 
 would mould the lives of half the human 
 race he solemnly conceals. Later by 
 some eleven years, his real estimate of 
 women he set out in those ** Letters" 
 which are still a marvel of parental love, 
 ambition for offspring, and exquisite 
 observation of human life — ^letters which 
 create in the mind of the reflective reader 
 horror at possible results of the inculca- 
 tion of graces of manner. The follow- 
 ing is a part of what he said. In saying 
 it he not only made plain the mask that 
 Chesterfield himself wore, but published 
 also the artificiality of his times. Bear 
 in mind, when reading it, that the son to 
 whom this father wrote was then sixteen 
 years old ; 
 
 *^ Women, then, are only children of a 
 larger growth ; they have an entertaining 
 tattle, and sometimes wit; but for solid 
 
146 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 reasoning, good sense, I never knew one 
 in my life that had it, or who reasoned or 
 acted consequentially for four-and- 
 twenty hours together. . . . Their 
 beauty neglected or controverted, their 
 age increased, or their supposed under- 
 standings depreciated, instantly kindles 
 their little passions, and overturns any 
 system of consequential conduct, that in 
 their most reasonable moments they 
 might have been capable of forming. A 
 man of sense only trifles with them, plays 
 with them, humors and flatters them, as 
 he does with a sprightly, forward child ; 
 but he neither consults them about, nor 
 trusts them wijth serious matters ; though 
 he often makes them believe that he does 
 both ; which is the thing in the world that 
 they are proud of; for they love mightily 
 to be dabbling in business (which by the 
 way they always spoil) ; and being justly 
 distrustful, that men in general look 
 upon them in a trifling light, they almost 
 adore that man, who talks more seriously 
 
TORCH-BEARERS FOR WOMEN 147 
 
 to them, and who seems to consult them ; 
 I say, who seems; for weak men really 
 do, but wise men only seem to do it. No 
 flattery is either too high or two low for 
 them. They will greedily swallow the 
 highest, and gratefully accept the low- 
 est; and you may safely flatter any 
 woman, from her understanding down 
 to the exquisite taste of her fan. Women 
 who are either indisputably beautiful, 
 or indisputably ugly, are best flattered 
 upon the score of their understandings : 
 but those who are in a state of medi- 
 ocrity, are best flattered upon their 
 beauty, or at least their graces ; for every 
 woman, who is not absolutely ugly, 
 thinks herself handsome; but not hear- 
 ing often that she is so, is the more 
 grateful, and the more obliged to the 
 few who tell her so: whereas a decided 
 and conscious beauty looks upon every 
 tribute paid to her beauty only as her 
 due; but wants to shine, and to be con- 
 sidered on the side of her understand- 
 
148 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 ing. ... It is, therefore, absolutely 
 necessary to manage, please and flatter 
 them : and never to discover the least 
 marks of contempt, which is what they 
 never forgive." 
 
 Poor Lord Chesterfield! His charac- 
 terization betrays such a warping of soul 
 that it is not worth analysis, or refuta- 
 tion. What could any woman of sense do 
 but turn it aside with such merry words 
 as Portia's: ^^God made him, and there- 
 fore let him pass for a man. In truth 
 I know it is a sin to be a mocker : But 
 he ! ! r' In all Chesterfield wrote in this 
 ** Letter,'' there is, you see, no thought 
 that human nature is pliant, ductile, a 
 stampable thing, that it responds to its 
 environment — in short, that the women 
 this astute man of the world sketched re- 
 flected their training and the men who 
 surrounded them — that their world de- 
 manded falsities and lies and they had 
 met the call. And yet Chesterfield had 
 human sympathies, as those last words 
 
TORCH-BEARERS FOR WOMEN 149 
 
 he spoke testify; when a visitor entered 
 and lie had only life enough to murmur 
 ''Give Dayrolles a chair." 
 
 Starting out with a lately published 
 plan for a women's college, venturing un- 
 der Queen Anne to put the plan into ma- 
 terial expression, the eighteenth cen- 
 tury had, when more than a third of its 
 course was run, come to this estimate of 
 Chesterfield's. Its years that followed 
 brought manifold contentions for and 
 against the education of women. There 
 were many besmirched reputations^ — it 
 was an age when Dunciads and Letters 
 easily blackened names, in allusion, for 
 instance, to Mary Montague, Eliza Hay- 
 wood, Susanna Centlivre; and when 
 Pope aggravated his verse reference by 
 author's notes upon the '^profligate li- 
 centiousness of scribblers (for the most 
 part of that sex which ought least to be 
 capable of such malice and impudence)." 
 Still, whatever the report we may rest 
 assured of one truth — ^the women were 
 
150 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 as good as the men who vilified them and 
 made them a target for slander. 
 
 Out of the countless dead of the time 
 rise a close contemporary of Mary 
 Astell, who was also a noteworthy poet, 
 Anne Finch, Countess of Winchelsea; 
 and famous and witty Catherine Barton, 
 niece of Sir Isaac Newton, **to whom he 
 gave the best of education," testifies a 
 relative — Catherine Barton to whom 
 Swift in letters to Stella repeatedly re- 
 fers, **I love her better than anybody," 
 he at one time wrote. Then there was 
 the charming Molly Lepell, wife of Lord 
 Hervey — the '*Lord Fanny" and 
 * * Sporus ' ' of Pope. 
 
 Schools, builded somewhat after the 
 old-time convent model, were now not 
 uncommon for women. That genial 
 Scotsman, author of the ^^Art of Polit- 
 ical Lying" and the tracts of **John 
 Bull," Dr. John Arbuthnot, in his 
 ** Manifesto of Lord Peter" as to char- 
 acteristics of a consort, addressed **all 
 
TORCH-BEARERS FOR WOMEN 151 
 
 Mistresses of Boarding-Schools" — ^which 
 proves such schools. Ideals and ideas 
 informing their instruction stand forth 
 fairly in The Rambler of 1751, when 
 Dr. Samuel Johnson tells of * ' Mrs. Busy 
 . . . married at eighteen from a board- 
 ing-school, where she had passed her 
 time like other young ladies, in needle- 
 work, with a few intervals of dancing 
 and reading. ' ' Schools like this at which 
 **Mrs. Busy'* was bred, produced women 
 of types depicted in Fanny Burney's 
 '* Evelina,'' in Jane Porter's **Thad- 
 deus of Warsaw," in Eegina Eoche's 
 ** Children of the Abbey" — women char- 
 acters who complemented the desperate, 
 cadaverous, mystery-fraught villains of 
 the later Ann Radcliffe, precursor in the 
 art of exciting narrative. 
 
 No sketch of any subject discussed in 
 the last half of the eighteenth century 
 would be wholly human without witness- 
 ing what the Leviathan of Literature 
 declared. Just now we heard him telling 
 
152 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 of Mrs. Busy. Of the education of 
 women Boswell reports him saying; 
 '^^Some cunning men choose fools for 
 their wives, thinking to manage them, 
 but they always fail. . . . Depend upon 
 it, no woman is the worse for sense and 
 knowledge. . . . Men know that women 
 are an overmatch for them, and therefore 
 they choose the weakest or most igno- 
 rant. If they did not think so, they 
 never could be afraid of women knowing 
 as much as themselves. " * * He told me, ' * 
 solemnly adds Boswell, **he was serious 
 in what he said. ' ' 
 
 Elizabeth Carter, celebrated for her 
 solid learning, possibly embodied the 
 great Cham's estimate of what a woman 
 might be. She ** could make a pudding 
 as well as translate Epictetus," said the 
 Doctor, *^and work a handkerchief as 
 well as compose a poem.'* Two other 
 women of that day we should also call 
 back by mentioning — Elizabeth Griffith, 
 playwright and novelist and editor of 
 
TORCH-BEARERS FOR WOMEN 153 
 
 earlier women novelists, and Frances 
 Brooke, ingenious and versatile writer of 
 essays, novels and drama. 
 
 While these women were at work, Dr. 
 David Fordyce published, 1745, a * * Plan 
 of Female Education.'^ Dr. Fordyce 
 meant women's education — female at 
 that being a not uncommon vulgarity for 
 woman. Mary AstelPs ideas, you see, 
 were still turning and forcing to expres- 
 sion the thought of the time; *^It seems 
 the fate of our weak sex to be always 
 treated like children. You throw us 
 fine toys and gewgaws, to amuse us, and 
 when you see us taken with the shining 
 trifles, you carry us off in triumph, and 
 reduce us under the orders of domestic 
 discipline. ' ' 
 
 In this **Plan,'' the ideally educated 
 woman was trained by a tutor and guard- 
 ian, who allowed her ^^to go sometimes 
 into his study, and look in his books, 
 though he would have me very sober in 
 the use of them," the ideal explained, 
 
154 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 *'for he thinks a woman in a very dan- 
 gerous way who runs after the secrets 
 of learning. ' ' This guardian was * * will- 
 ing to gratify her curiosity, as long as 
 she kept within due bounds.'' What 
 *'due bounds'' in learning are no power, 
 save papal, has ever yet had the temer- 
 ity to define, though several have ven- 
 tured, and unnumbered men and women 
 have stood as sacrifices to the restric- 
 tion. The ^^female education" of Dr. 
 Fordyce's **Plan" was, it is plain, a 
 considerable advance on what Chester- 
 field and his mental, and sentimental, 
 kindred had announced. 
 
 About the.time Dr. Johnson was utter- 
 ing the sententia we have quoted, John 
 Bethune's ** Essay on Education" again 
 reverted to old prejudices. Women 
 **well deserve all the advantage that can 
 be had from books, in the way of enter- 
 tainment or improvements suited to 
 them," wrote Mr. Bethune, as if he had 
 communication with Omniscience and 
 
TORCH-BEARERS FOR WOMEN 155 
 
 knew what were "suited to them/' "yet 
 they have more powerful charms to 
 recommend than those of letters'' — an 
 echo, you see, of the sex-suggestion that 
 distinguished Chesterfield in his writings 
 quoted a few pages back, and a squint of 
 Chesterfield's afflictive myopia; an evi- 
 dence, too, how we humans pass on ideas, 
 evil as well as good. "Though nothing 
 is here said of the education of the ladies 
 in particular," the author continues, 
 "yet it is a very fit object of general at- 
 tention, in itself, and in respect to its 
 influence ... by their having almost 
 sole charge of children in the beginning 
 of life, and no small share of their edu- 
 cation afterwards." Smug mediocrity 
 essaying to speak of what it shows it- 
 self too ignorant to measure ! — smug pre- 
 tence expressing itself in platitudes and 
 jejune English! To Mr. Bethune the 
 education of one-half of the human race 
 was "a very fit object of general atten- 
 tion" because that half had sole charge 
 
156 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 of children and no small share of their 
 after training. 
 
 The education of women was now thor- 
 oughly bespoken — in spite of John Be- 
 thunes. Catherine Macaulay continued 
 its advance when she petitioned, in 1790, 
 in her ** Letters on Education *' against 
 the ** degrading differences in the cul- 
 ture of the understanding" of boys and 
 girls — ^which **can only suit with the 
 notion of a positive inferiority in the in- 
 tellectual powers of the female mind." 
 ^* Confine not the education of your 
 daughters to what is regarded as the 
 ornamental parts of it," she begged, 
 '^amusement' and instruction of boys 
 and girls ought to be the same." And 
 Mistress Macaulay 's sister-worker, 
 Hannah More, declared, **I call educa- 
 tion not that which smothers a woman 
 with accomplishments, but that which 
 tends to confirm a fine and regular sys- 
 tem of character — that which tends to 
 form a friend, a companion and a wife. 
 
TORCH-BEARERS FOR WOMEN 157 
 
 I call education not that which is made 
 up of the shreds and patches of useless 
 arts, but that which inculcates prin- 
 ciples, polishes taste, regulates temper, 
 cultivates reason, subdues the passions, 
 diverts the feelings, habituates to re- 
 flection, trains to self-denial, and more 
 especially that which refers all actions, 
 feelings, sentiments, tastes and passions 
 to common sense. ' ' 
 
 These, then, were estimates modern 
 centuries have recorded of the education 
 of women; the sixteenth with its splen- 
 dor of educated gentlewomen ; the seven- 
 teenth with the early waning and final 
 eclipse of such light ; the eighteenth start- 
 ing out with endeavor, under Queen 
 Anne, to put lately published plans of 
 women's colleges into material expres- 
 sion, in its unfolding years bringing to 
 the world many contentions for and 
 against the education of women, and 
 finally in its French Revolution proclaim- 
 ing the ** Rights of Man." Sequent of 
 
158 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 the ^^ Eights of Man''— the rights of 
 women — the nineteenth was to embody in 
 its democracy, in its application of long- 
 standing ideas of education, and in its 
 founding of women's colleges.^ 
 
 1 Discourses upon the injustices of the narrow edu- 
 cation of women found publication at times in our 
 American, New England, papers of the colonial 
 period, and pioneers in broader opportunities now 
 and then founded a "Female Academy" — for instance, 
 that of Miss Pierce in Litchfield, Connecticut, in 
 1792 — after the country had again settled to civil 
 life. But the general temper for fifty years after 
 the Revolution speaks in the Johnsonian English of a 
 letter to the Evening Post of New York: 
 
 May 19, 1814. 
 Mr. Editor, 
 
 Having seen a public notice in your paper that 
 the anniversary of the Philo Lexian Society was to 
 be celebrated on Tuesday evening, my curiosity led 
 me to the place ; nor was I ever more highly gratified. 
 The speakers insf)ired by the charms of a numerous 
 and brilliant female audience, and encouraged by the 
 confidence which attention naturally creates, poured 
 forth their sentiments in a style of truly animated 
 eloquence. With respect to the Forensic, on the ques- 
 tion, "Ought the benefits of a liberal education to be 
 extended to the Female sex?'* we may safely affirm 
 that a more suitable or more interesting subject 
 could not have been chosen. It was argued with the 
 greatest spirit and energy. Nor do we believe that 
 the cause of the sex was often more justly or more 
 ably defended, both as to strength of reasoning and 
 beauty of language, than by its youthful advocate. 
 
TORCH-BEARERS FOR WOMEN 159 
 
 Nearly one hundred years before the 
 great cataclysm of the French Mary As- 
 tell had sown the seed. That is the 
 way an idea grows in the slow-moving, 
 secular processes of the social mind, in 
 the progress of the spirit of a people. 
 First, there is the inception of the idea 
 in hearts and minds peculiarly fertile 
 for its seeding. The idea is produced, 
 that is, by some conjunction of circum- 
 stances peculiarly fitting for its forma- 
 tion — in the mind of some one of capac- 
 ity to generate ideas. Oftenest its 
 proclamation to the world is simple — 
 almost all greatness has Nazarene-like 
 foundation ; ^ ^ God hath chosen the weak 
 things of the world to confound the 
 things which are mighty.'' Doctors of 
 convention meet and press forward the 
 old as the only rational practice, and 
 
 The feeling and interest with which their cause 
 was espoused by him, evidently shewed, as the re- 
 spondent very justly remarked, that he too was in 
 search of his lovely Lucilla. 
 
 A Female Spectator. 
 
160 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 declare the new subversive of the very 
 foundations of the social temple. Cheek 
 by jowl with the idea walk negation and 
 scoff. But scoffs die out, and after gen- 
 erations the idea finds sturdy growth. 
 
 This history happened in the evolu- 
 tion of the collegiate education of 
 women. I have here shown how the idea 
 was set forth, how in measure it fared 
 at the hands of the doctors, and we are 
 now at the point where its success was 
 assured. With Mary Astell the educa- 
 tion of women as a distinct, formulated 
 idea begins its progress. Let us turn 
 back to her once more and see what con- 
 temporaries said of her: 
 
 A *^ great ornament of her sex and 
 country,'* one called her. Another said 
 she had **a piercing wit, a solid judg- 
 ment, and a tenacious memory." She 
 * * showed by her own example what great 
 things and excellences her sex was 
 capable of," declared another. The 
 turbulent Dr. Atterbury, a chief grace 
 
TORCH-BEARERS FOR WOMEN 161 
 
 of whose life was a singularly tender 
 affection for his refined and highly edu- 
 cated daughter ^ — Dr. Atterbury is re- 
 ported praising Miss AstelPs ** sensible 
 and rational way of writing." Her 
 book, ** Reflections upon Marriage," pub- 
 lished in 1700, a man of her time claims 
 to have been written ** with a vast deal of 
 wit and smartness," and to make per- 
 haps * * the strongest defence that ever yet 
 appeared in print of the rights and 
 abilities of the fair sex. ' ' ^ The italics 
 
 1 "My Dear Heart," he addressed her in his letters, 
 "Tis impossible to express the tenderness and con- 
 cern with which I think of you always," he once 
 wrote to her. 
 
 2 A short quotation from an appendix to the fourth 
 edition of this book will give further evidence of 
 Mary Astell's acute reasoning. In reading it we must 
 bear in mind that she wrote in Queen Anne's time: 
 
 " 'Tis true, through want of learning, and of that 
 superior genius which men, as men, lay claim to, 
 she [the author] was ignorant of the natural in- 
 feriority of our sex, which our masters lay down as a 
 self-evident and fundamental truth. She saw noth- 
 ing in the reason of things, to make this either a 
 principle or a conclusion, but much to the contrary; 
 it being sedition at least, if not treason, to assert it 
 in this reign. For if by the natural superiority of 
 their sex, they mean, that every man is by nature su- 
 
162 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 are not ours; they are in the book of 
 1752, 
 
 Gossip of the day attributed her ** Re- 
 flections" to **her disappointment in 
 a marriage contract with an eminent 
 
 perior to every woman, which is the obvious meaning, 
 and that which must be stuck to if they would speak 
 sense, it would be a sin in any woman to have do- 
 minion over any man, and the greatest queen ought 
 not to command but to obey, her footman: because 
 no municipal laws can supersede or change the law 
 of nature. So that if the dominion of the men be 
 such, the Salique law, as unjust as English men have 
 ever thought it, ought to take place over all the 
 earth, and the most glorious reigns in the English, 
 Danish, Castilian, and other annals, were wicked 
 violations of the law of nature. 
 
 "If they mean that some men are superior to 
 some women, this is no great discovery; had they 
 turned the tables they might have seen that some 
 women are superior to some men. Or had they been 
 pleased to remember their oaths of allegiance and 
 supremacy, they might have known that One Woman 
 is superior to all the men in these nations, or else 
 they have sworn to little purpose. And it must not 
 be supposed that their reason and religion would 
 suflFer them to take oaths contrary to the law of 
 nature and reason of things." . . . 
 
 "That the custom of the world has put women, 
 generally speaking, into a state of subjection, is not 
 denied; but the right can no more be proved from 
 the fact than the predominancy of vice can justify 
 it." . . . 
 
 "Again, if absolute sovereignty be not necessary 
 
TORCH-BEARERS FOR WOMEN 163 
 
 clergyman. ' ' This may be true, or again 
 it may be merely an instance of the 
 inclination of the world to find in sex 
 
 in a state, how comes it to be so in a family? Or if 
 in a family, why not in a state; since no reason can 
 be alleged for the one that will not hold more 
 strongly for the other? If the authority of the 
 husband, so far as it extends, is sacred and inalien- 
 able, why not that of the prince? The domestic 
 sovereign is without dispute elected, and the stipu- 
 lations and contract are mutual; is it not then 
 partial in men to the last degree, to contend for and 
 practice that arbitrary dominion in their families 
 which they abhor and exclaim against in the state? 
 For if arbitrary power is evil in itself, and an im- 
 proper method of governing rational and free agents, 
 it ought not to be practised anywhere; nor is it less 
 but rather more mischievous in families than in king- 
 doms, by how much 100,000 tyrants are worse than 
 one. What though a husband can not deprive a wife 
 of life without being responsible to the law, he may, 
 however, do what is much more grievous to a gen- 
 erous mind, render life miserable, for which she has 
 no redress, scarce pity, which is afforded to every 
 other complainant, it being thought a wife's duty to 
 suffer everything without complaint. If all men are 
 born free, how is it that all women are born slaves? 
 As they must be, if the being subjected to the in- 
 constant, uncertain, unknown arbitrary will of men 
 be the perfect condition of slavery." 
 
 Miss Astell finally closes her book with a sentence 
 referring to millennial days: "A tyrannous domi- 
 nation, which nature never meant, shall no longer 
 render useless, if not hurtful, the industry and un- 
 derstandin^B of one half mankind." 
 
164 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 affairs cause for any action of any 
 woman, and especially to find love disap- 
 pointments for spinsters. Her ** Essay 
 in Defence of the Female Sex,'' and 
 **Tlie Christian Religion as Professed 
 by a Daughter of the Church of Eng- 
 land" caused more comment in her day 
 than did the *^Eeflections." 
 
 **Her notions and sentiments of re- 
 ligion, piety, charity, humility, friend- 
 ship and all other graces which adorn 
 the good Christian were most refined 
 and sublime," says a sketch of her life 
 written shortly after she died. **And 
 although from the very flower of her 
 age she lived and conversed with the 
 beau monde, amidst all the gaiety, pomp 
 and pageantry of the great city ; yet she 
 well knew how to resist and shun those 
 infatuating snares, and wisely guarded 
 against all these temptations and evils. ' ' 
 . . . ** Though she was easy and affable 
 to others," her younger contemporary 
 continues, *'to herself she was some- 
 
TORCH-BEARERS FOR WOMEN 165 
 
 times perhaps oversevere. In absti- 
 nence few or none ever surpassed her, 
 for she would live like a hermit, for a 
 considerable time together upon a crust 
 of bread and water. . . . She very 
 rarely ate any dinner till night, and then 
 it was by the strictest rules of temper- 
 ance . . . and would frequently observe 
 that those who indulged themselves in 
 eating and drinking could not be so well 
 disposed or prepared either for study 
 or the regular and devout service of 
 their Creator.'' 
 
 What a brave, self-denying heart she 
 was ! Have in mind the sensibilities that 
 go with a generative imagination, and 
 then think what she must have suffered 
 in the insulting ridicule of the Dick 
 Steeles, and the nullifying of her project 
 by Bishop Burnets! She was faithful. 
 **A person who has truth and justice on 
 his side," she wrote, *' needs not be 
 afraid to combat on, though she should 
 be left to stand alone; for such an one 
 
166 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 does not stay to balance what's to be 
 got or lost in tbis world, by an honest 
 and generous action.'' 
 
 What a propulsive her effort to start 
 the first women's college more than two 
 hundred years ago! Her act doubtless 
 affected your life, our lives. If she had 
 not set forth such ideas, fruition might 
 not yet have come — for time, we re- 
 peat, is essential to work ameliorat- 
 ing changes. How her action urges us 
 to speak out the truth we see ! 
 
 Mary Astell knew that education is 
 what another has finely called it a spirit- 
 ual stimulation and solace, an inspira- 
 tion to endure the inevitable ills of life, 
 an anodyne when those ills prevail. 
 She saw these advantages. She was 
 generous and high-souled. She sought 
 that others might have them. She knew 
 that through education women would 
 gain sense of real values. She knew 
 that education would teach them to force 
 back the factitious and artificial which 
 
TORCH-BEARERS FOR WOMEN 167 
 
 are constantly striving to spring for- 
 ward. She would make evident real 
 things to be sought. 
 
 Grouping of women for collegiate 
 instruction is but one offshoot of that 
 democratic process that has been going 
 on for thousands of years — ^it is one of 
 the ways the race has learned of giving 
 to many privileges once reserved for a 
 few. It has taken long. Centuries are 
 mere hours in the social will. 
 
USES AND ABUSES OF TWO 
 
 ENGLISH WORDS FEMALE, 
 
 WOMAN 
 
{Valentine) — "I did not respect your intellect: 
 I've a better one myself; it's a masculine specialty." 
 "Yon Never Can Tell," 
 George Beenaed Shaw. 
 
 A man is seldom ashamed of feeling that he can 
 not love a woman so well when he sees a certain 
 greatness in her — ^nature having intended greatness 
 for men. But nature has sometimes made sad over- 
 sights in carrying out her intentions. 
 
 "Middlemarch," Geoeqe Eliot. 
 
 Nor should I complain of the intricacy of Greek 
 abbreviations and Gothic alphabet, since every day, in 
 a familiar language, I am at a loss to decypher the 
 Hieroglyphics of a female note. 
 
 "Autobiography," Edwaed Gibbon. 
 
 All human power is a compound of time and 
 patience. Powetful beings will and wait. ... In 
 the life of the soul, as in the physical life, there is 
 an inspiration and a respiration; the soul needs to 
 absorb the sentiments of another soul and assim- 
 ilate them. 
 
 "Eugenie Grandet," Balzac. 
 
USES AND ABUSES OF TWO 
 
 ENGLISH WORDS FEMALE, 
 
 WOMAN 
 
 WoKDs are winged, the old Greeks 
 used to say. Even in our less imagina- 
 tive vision we see them flying from soul 
 to soul. And when their journeyings 
 are protracted, when they fare through 
 generations, how startling the changes 
 of their meaning! How vastly their 
 subtle shifting of color may affect hu- 
 man life! Take, for instance, a single 
 noun of our English speech, and ideas 
 grouping round its singular and plural 
 within these last one hundred years: 
 woman; women. 
 
 Why are the two possessives — 
 woman's and women's — current and con- 
 tending? Why, instead of saying, for 
 
 171 
 
172 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 instance, Woman's Executive Board do 
 many of us now choose to say Women's 
 Executive Board? What endeavor to 
 truth and refine some thought first led 
 to the variation, and to its ten thousand 
 repetitions! Bias of temperament can 
 not explain it. Nor is one word easier 
 to pronounce than the other. 
 
 A hundred years ago, in America and 
 in England, popular usage chose the 
 singular, woman's. But since then has 
 grown a differentiation. Lately, for 
 example, ^^The Century Dictionary'* 
 printed woman's, **The Encyclopaedia 
 Britannica'' women's. Does the varia- 
 tion indicate a psychical difference be- 
 tween ourselves and our cousins over 
 the sea? We think so. A history, a 
 traceable and illuminative tale, lies be- 
 hind this seemingly trivial difference of 
 singular and plural, and helps make 
 plain the history and characteristics of 
 ourselves and our kin in England. Let 
 us in broad lines sketch what happened. 
 
MISUSED: FEMALE, WOMAN 173 
 
 In early centuries in England, 
 when the English language had become 
 a formed and completed speech, a ver- 
 nacular worth a translation of the Bible, 
 the words women, a plural with woman 
 for its singular, (already an amalgam of 
 wif and man) described one-half of 
 humanity. The English Bible which 
 John Wycliffe and his fellow workmen, 
 between the years 1360 and 1385, pre- 
 pared for the reading of English-speak- 
 ing people, gives no other than a normal 
 and rational use of the two words from 
 its second chapter of Genesis onward. 
 This is evidence of what dignity the 
 general usage must have been. But we 
 have also another witness for that time 
 in Greoifrey Chaucer and his Canterbury 
 Tales — in his ever-famous characters 
 and the words he puts in their mouths. 
 They were woman and women, normally. 
 
 In those days, you remember, convents 
 were often richly endowed women's 
 clubs, with doors standing open to 
 
174 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 women not inclined to marriage, to that 
 percentage of women whose natures 
 fitted them in no way for marital de- 
 pendence — just as monasteries stood 
 open for that percentage of men whose 
 natures fitted ill to married life. The 
 age was one of very considerable freedom 
 for women. Convents also stood with 
 open doors to women who, with inclina- 
 tion for marriage, lacked husbands be- 
 cause of the killing off of men, their death 
 in unceasing wars and the accidents of 
 civil life. Convents afforded a comfort- 
 able home. Their religious ritual rarely 
 overtaxed, on occasion, in fact, needed 
 a minimum, of time and thought. 
 Women members of those convent-clubs 
 found leisure not only for travel but for 
 sport. We could cite a number of in- 
 stances. Here is one: — 
 
 Of Dame Juliana Barnes, born about 
 1388, prioress of Sopewell nunnery, long 
 abode legends of learning, of her spirit, 
 her beauty, her love of out-door pas- 
 
MISUSED: FEMALE, WOMAN 175 
 
 times, **with which she used frequently 
 to recreate herself/^ says an old author, 
 *'and she was so well skilled . . . that 
 she wrote treatises of hawking, hunting, 
 fishing ^ ... so well esteemed that they 
 were printed and published in the very 
 infancy of the art of printing.^' Let 
 Prioress Juliana herself speak: ** In- 
 somuch that gentill men, and honest 
 persones," she wrote, *^have grete delite 
 in haukyng, and desire to have the maner 
 to take haukys. . . . Therefore thys 
 book folowyng in a dew forme shewys 
 veri knawlege of such plesure to gentill 
 men, and parsonys disposed to se itt." 
 Sopewell nunnery, we may add, had been 
 founded in 1140 by two devout women 
 who are said to have ** raddled boughs 
 of trees with wattles and stakes" for a 
 covering and to have passed their time 
 in acts of devotion and abstinence. The 
 usual history of such foundations fol- 
 
 1 Ruins of the nunnery still stand about twenty 
 miles northwest of London, near St. Albans and the 
 Ver, a little river yet famous for its trout. 
 
176 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 lowed. Eelaxation of strict rules and 
 subordination of spiritual inspiration to 
 physical comfort, had taken place before 
 the mettled Juliana came to its headship. 
 
 In those days common usage called a 
 woman, a woman, and women, women. 
 Such cases continued for years after — 
 for instance, in the marvellously racy 
 and delightful translation into English 
 of ** Chronicles of Froissarf made by 
 Lord Bemers *'at the comaundement of 
 oure moost highe redoubted souerayne 
 lorde kyng Henry viii,'' and finished in 
 the year 1531-32. 
 
 Ten years later than this, 1542, in a 
 virulent satire against women — a satire 
 so licentious as well as virulent that it 
 is to-day impossible of reading except 
 to the student of history — in **The 
 Schole Howse for Women," popular to 
 the degree that three printers had 
 license for its production, the words 
 woman and women appeared in normal 
 use. The author, Edward Gosynhyll, 
 
MISUSED: FEMALE, WOMAN 177 
 
 valiantly suppressed Ms name, but it 
 came out afterwards wHen he published 
 *^Mulierum Pean'' in amends for his 
 gross attack. And in a ** Defence of 
 Women,'' 1560, by a poor scholar at 
 Oxford, Edward More, woman and 
 women are rightly used, with perhaps an 
 occasional femynye. 
 
 Attacks upon women in these years 
 were, however, outdone when, in 1558,^ 
 the fiery spirit of John Knox blew **The 
 First Blast of the Trumpet against the 
 Monstrous Eegiment of Women." In 
 the view of certain leaders of the Great 
 Eeformation, domestic life and domestic 
 duties were the sole outlook for women. 
 That principles evolved in women's lives 
 were necessary, constructive factors in 
 a community's upbuilding and upkeep- 
 ing, did not weigh in the calculations of 
 many then eminent in church and state. 
 
 1 This year is notable as that in which one queen 
 of England, Mary, died, and another, Elizabeth, 
 came to the throne. These facts doubtless stirred 
 misogynists of the day. 
 
178 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 To their view the spirit of Puritanism 
 was engaged with affairs accorded to 
 men's side of life. Puritan reaction 
 from nunneries carried with seeming 
 freedom a severity of discipline for 
 women — for those who would lead a 
 single life expressing women's devotion 
 to their community by substantial, dig- 
 nified works; a severity, too, for those 
 who married, depriving them of centres 
 of women's works, counsels one with an- 
 other, and general club associations. 
 No longer could women solace them- 
 selves even with the busy needles, the 
 drawings, the writings, nunneries had 
 afforded ajid their community-group- 
 ings fostered.^ 
 
 1 This cutting-off had profound results through 
 many generations — domestic duties and life alone 
 opened to women; marriage held their only possibil- 
 ities for human work. Feeling was general that 
 when women did not marry their life must be 
 wholly barren. Because of the decimation of men 
 by war and adventure, we say, unmarried women 
 were cut off from active, constructive life and most 
 often came to be held as a sort of ineffective, upper- 
 servant, unpaid, unthanked, in the house of a mar- 
 ried sister, brother or friend. 
 
MISUSED: FEMALE, WOMAN 179 
 
 But however much ^*soiir John Knox" 
 wanted to instruct and confirm English 
 and Scottish peoples in the oriental 
 stand toward women — and he had a 
 measure of success — still his shrieking, 
 feverish hysteria cleanly kept to the 
 descriptive word than in general use. 
 A lovely voice, that of John Aylmer, 
 which sounded in answer to Knox, also 
 used women. ** Happening not long 
 agone,'' said Aylmer, *'to rede a lytle 
 Book straungely written by a straunger, 
 to prove that the rule of Women is out 
 of Eule, and not in a Common Welth 
 toUerable; and waying at the first what 
 harme might come of it, and feling at 
 the last, that it hath not a lytle wounded 
 the Conscience of some symple, and al- 
 most cracked the Dutie of true Obedi- 
 ence, I thought it more then necessary 
 to lay before Mens Eyes the Untruth of 
 the Argument, the Wekeness of the 
 Proufes, and the Absurditie of the 
 whole." 
 
180 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 In that sobriety — of woman and 
 women — our English tongue stood about 
 the middle of the sixteenth century. If 
 the word woman's meaning women's 
 and especially if female meaning solely 
 a woman, had been current among the 
 well-bred of Knox^s day, you may be 
 sure he would have used it — so pro- 
 nounced was his contempt toward 
 women, even toward those gentle crea- 
 tures upon whose generous self-efface- 
 ment his life-work and fame were built. 
 
 Later than Knox, say by half a cen- 
 tury, in 1590, Edmund Spenser, dedicat- 
 ing in the abject phrase of the time, his 
 ** Faerie Queene'' to Elizabeth **Queene 
 of England, Fraunce and Ireland and of 
 Virginia," declares of women *4n the 
 common'': 
 
 *'Vertuous women wisely understand, 
 That they were borne to base humilitie, 
 Unlesse the heavens them lift to lawfuU sover- 
 aintie.'' 
 
 And Shakespeare, in ** Love's Lab- 
 
MISUSED: FEMALE, WOMAN 181 
 
 our's Lost," 1594, refers to *^a child 
 of our grandmother Eve, a female; or 
 for thy more sweet understanding, a 
 woman." Touchstone's quirk told the 
 usage exactly — *Hhis female, which in 
 the common is — woman." 
 
 Thus things stood toward the end of 
 the sixteenth century. The version of 
 the Bible called **King James," pub- 
 lished in 1611, conserving simple dignity, 
 race purity of speech and the marvellous 
 distinction of our mother tongue — this 
 ** authorized version" kept up the natu- 
 ral and legitimate woman and women 
 through stories of Eve; of Rebecca 
 and Miriam; of the daughters of Zelo- 
 phehad, who, you remember, brought up 
 the question of their right to inheritance ; 
 of Deborah, a chief judge of Israel; of 
 that nameless sage, wife of Manoah and 
 mother of Samson, and her statement of 
 trust in the Almighty — still onward 
 through the sweet idyll of Euth and the 
 drama of Esther to **a woman of Sa- 
 
182 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 maria'' and so to the end. It was 
 woman, women. 
 
 When King James' Bible came to the 
 people's hands and strengthened their 
 hearts, and began doing what the Great 
 Book has ever done in such intimacies 
 — stir the human spirit to democracy — 
 many ancestors of ours entered west- 
 bound ships and left Europe bearing the 
 Bible's precepts in their hearts and its 
 printed pages in their hands as their 
 most precious possession. 
 
 But behind their bellying sails, in the 
 old English home, an order hostile to 
 democratic ideals was growing. **Now 
 make us a king to judge us like all the 
 nations" a fraction of the people clam- 
 ored. And finally Charles II ascended 
 the English throne. 
 
 Yet, even after the recall of the 
 Stuarts, we find clean, pure and right 
 use of words referring to women. 
 Take, for instance, a sentence from that 
 uncouth, rich-minded bachelor, Anthony 
 
MISUSED: FEMALE, WOMAN 183 
 
 a Wood of Oxford, when about 1670 he 
 wrote, *^Dr. Bathurst took his Place of 
 Vice-Chancellor, a man of Good Parts, 
 and able to do good Things, but he has 
 a Wife that scorns that he should be in 
 print; a Scornful Woman, scorns that 
 he was Dean of Wells ; no need of marry- 
 ing such a Woman, who is so conceited 
 that she thinks herself fit to govern a 
 College or University." 
 
 But, generally speaking, following the 
 establishment of Charles II a barbarism 
 settled over England. The people were 
 as Milton then described himself, . . . 
 **f alien on evil days, 
 
 On evil days though fallen, and evil tongues ; 
 In darkness, and with dangers compassed 
 round. ' ' 
 
 The court took color from the brazen 
 vulgarities of such creatures as the 
 Duchess of Cleveland in concerted action 
 with the king, and temperature from the 
 mercenary rakes of both sexes. The 
 
184 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 disease spread through English life and 
 degenerated English folk. English liter- 
 ature, especially the literature of the 
 stage, shown mainly with one light — 
 phosphorescent decay. English ver- 
 nacular reflected social conditions. Eng- 
 lish men, and even men of the finest 
 cultivation of their time, wrote them- 
 selves down speaking of mother and wife 
 and other women as females. In their 
 use, you see, the noun did not refer selec- 
 tively to a hen or a cow or a mare. It 
 referred solely to a female of the human 
 species. Indeed, in that day, females 
 was a mild appellative for women.^ A 
 subdued elegance is about the noun when 
 you compare it with the nauseating 
 
 "i^ Female was also wit according to Dryden's defi- 
 nition of vnt: "Thoughts and Words elegantly 
 adapted to the Subject" — ^the famous icit which 
 coursed, often viciously, through generations of Eng- 
 lish life; — beginning, according to Sir William Tem- 
 ple, "with that part of Conversation which was for- 
 merly left to those called Fools, and were used in 
 great families only to make the Company laugh/' it 
 finally lost its mordant vitality only before the pro- 
 founder, humaner, democratic spirit of the nine- 
 teenth century. 
 
MISUSED: FEMALE, WOMAN 185 
 
 speech with which, for instance, her 
 Grace of Cleveland hailed the author of 
 **The Country Wife'' in Pall Mall, or 
 with the language of the plays of the 
 time. At least it did not qualify sex 
 conditions, even if it openly reiterated 
 the fact of sex as the sole basis of human 
 association. 
 
 To the men of those generations, and 
 — since it has long been the habit of 
 women with minds benumbed by their 
 state of tutelage oftenest to accept men's 
 habit of mind — also to the women of that 
 day the noun female connoted a woman, 
 females, women. Women, or to use that 
 day's vernacular, females, it was com- 
 monly thought were those creatures fitted 
 almost solely for reproduction of the 
 species — their interests necessarily ovar- 
 ian, or allied to the ovarian — and, by 
 an equally sturdy logic, a God-made, 
 human thing for the toying of men in 
 their good-natured moments, or the butt 
 of their buUyings in their bad. Men of 
 
186 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 the time substantially said this. One, 
 for instance, echoed it when he laid out 
 what he called a ** Female Province," 
 which, he magnificently declared, is 
 ** whatever has not been particularly as- 
 signed by Nature to ' ' men ; whose prov- 
 ince, he proclaimed, '4s universal, and 
 comprehends everything from the culture 
 of the earth to the government of it." 
 
 Nature debarred women, according to 
 these men, from all but reproduction, 
 and lending to their amusement and 
 pleasure — and doing a large part of the 
 world's drudgery. Companioning the 
 usage of female in those years a man 
 was not called a male, men, males. It 
 was about women, as if sex were their 
 one distinctive characteristic and de- 
 scriptive, that the parlance fell — first 
 rising probably among red-blooded coun- 
 try folk where the word referred to 
 stocky breeders of the child; and after- 
 wards passing to men of fashion and 
 furthers of mode whose pursuit of women 
 
MISUSED: FEMALE, WOMAN 187 
 
 was their one interest, ambition and 
 work in life.^ A phase often in their 
 mouths, **the sex,'' meaning women, 
 told the true story of their thought and 
 deed. 
 
 **The sex,'' female, was an envelope, 
 an artificiality, a supposition, in which a 
 human being was concealed. The word 
 carried such import as to render women 
 painfully self-conscious. Eesults were 
 that females minced their movements, 
 cultivated almost inconceivable falsities 
 in manner and morals, fainted or wept 
 ** floods" on all occasions but that of con- 
 ventional compliment — weakness was 
 supposed to be a charm of the female 
 of the human species. They were beau- 
 teous — with cosmetics ; elegant — ^with 
 iron or board corsets; exquisite — ^with 
 
 1 By an atavism, possibly, survivals of the thinking 
 persist to-day. For example, a distinguished acad- 
 emician not long ago wrote of the word female's 
 use: "It struck men as somehow being more appro- 
 priate." Precisely — struck men of the Stuart day. 
 That is the crux of the whole matter, even when it 
 so strikes atavistic survivors to-day. 
 
188 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 cloying perfumes and ostentatious orna- 
 ment; weak — from lack of rational food 
 and clothing and healthful out-door exer- 
 cise — **what is but going in men being 
 accounted gadding in maids,'' wrote that 
 unprejudiced worthy, Thomas Fuller; 
 and oftenest they were ignorant of even 
 their mother tongue. The very phrase 
 by which they were named expected them 
 to be that — females — a thing in which 
 sex alone made appeal. You see what 
 falsity — a falsity old Ben Jonson would 
 have called * ' un-in-one-breath-utterable ' ' 
 — the word connoted. 
 
 And the women lived up to it, we re- 
 peat. They most often do live up to 
 what the world puts upon them. **Doch 
 grosse Seelen dulden still," wrote Schil- 
 ler. **In der Beschrankung," said an- 
 other, Goethe, **zeigt sich erst der 
 Meister" — in his limitation the master 
 first shows himself. English books, for 
 instance the wonderful pictures of man- 
 
MISUSED: FEMALE, WOMAN 189 
 
 ners in **Tom Jones,'' witness this. 
 
 To think rules to act. Man's conduct 
 is organically connected with his think- 
 ing. Changes in meaning of words are 
 index of spiritual changes of a people. 
 Our ancestors thought differently, and 
 in their characteristic English way said 
 what they thought — differently. Thus 
 their saying's significance. The word 
 females expressed the then conception. 
 But certain men among them escaped the 
 infection. In these the imagination of 
 our race abode and its inborn idealism 
 gleamed forth. The chaste Puritanism 
 of Milton's poems carries the rational 
 and legitimate word, woman. But once, 
 in ** Samson Agonistes," does female 
 appear other than normally, and then 
 the word means wife. Later on Defoe, 
 with his plea for the education of women, 
 and the radical Nonconformists gen- 
 erally were real precursors of the future. 
 
 Female was the estimate of women by 
 
190 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 men of that Stuart day obsessed by sex, 
 their world unnaturally saturated with 
 sexuality. Abuse of the word, and of 
 the women, went on, in spite of attempts 
 at purifying the social atmosphere, when 
 the cleaner part of the people drove the 
 Stuarts from the throne — ^went on, that 
 is, during the reign of William and Mary 
 of Orange. Still, even the undoubtedly 
 first agitator for the founding of 
 women's colleges, that protagonist of 
 women's rights, probably by the bye first 
 user of the phrase ** women's rights," 
 Mary Astell, in 1696, entitled one of her 
 books ** Essays in Defence of the Female 
 Sex" — doubtless because her ears heard 
 little else. 
 
 Female persisted during much of the 
 next century, the eighteenth, for Queen 
 Anne's courtiers had reacted to its use. 
 The rake-writers of her reign breathed 
 its atmosphere when they were boys, and 
 alas! absorbed the spirit it bore, and 
 down went the word in their Tatlers and 
 
MISUSED: FEMALE, WOMAN 191 
 
 Spectators — periodicals destined later 
 to bear the force of classics.^ 
 
 The vulgarity, often unconscious, 
 crystallizing in language the estimate of 
 one-half of the people by the other half, 
 prevailed in early American writing as 
 well as in British. It was a possession, 
 you see, of English-speaking peoples. 
 
 The word ran a course in England of 
 two hundred years. You find it even in 
 such writers of the nineteenth century 
 as Charles Lamb, for instance in his 
 essay on ^* Modern Gallantry" — of all 
 places! Also in Scott, in Jane Austen, 
 Borrow, Dickens, Thackeray and George 
 Eliot, writers tuned to certain linguistic 
 traditions of the eighteenth. Its use 
 persists still later in Stevenson and other 
 
 1 Yet in those days the Scottish "Gentle Shepherd," 
 Allan Ramsay, wrote woman: 
 
 "It shaws a spirit low an' common, 
 That wi' ill-nature treats a woman: 
 They're of a mak sae nice an' fair. 
 They must be manag'd wi' some care; 
 Respect them, they'll be kind and civil, 
 But disregarded, prove the devil." 
 
192 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 late Victorians. Smut is hard to rub 
 off even of a white mind. '* Men's judg- 
 ments are a parcel of tlieir fortunes.'' 
 
 These, then, are the changes of the 
 centuries: — First, in our early English 
 times, broadly, easily, sincerely, and in 
 accord with other uses of the language, 
 woman, women. Then, because of wide- 
 spread spiritual disease of the seven- 
 teenth century, coarsely, as if women 
 were sex beings alone, female, females. 
 
 But again a change worked out. In 
 early decades of the nineteenth century, 
 when the idea of amelioration of 
 women's condition had considerable im- 
 petus towa|*d realization, English and 
 Americans alike, when speaking of one- 
 half of humans, spoke of woman. No 
 longer was it **the sex," females, but a 
 reaction from the physical, to a sort of 
 philosophic abstraction, woman. Let us 
 take up this last usage and see how it 
 became current and what its currency 
 implied. Let us see, too, what the out- 
 
MISUSED: FEMALE, WOMAN 193 
 
 look is for ourselves and the future. 
 
 The English of to-day concrete their 
 mental operations. Originally the 
 Yankee was an Englishman. But he 
 sailed from England in pursuit of an 
 idea — at a time when the English more 
 commonly than now dealt in abstrac- 
 tions. Upon these western, American 
 shores he lived under a dominating idea, 
 and stamped upon others the spirit that 
 living of his created. 
 
 Through generations this American 
 drank abstractions with his mother-milk. 
 His old-time catechism stretched his 
 child-mind to as near approach to the 
 abstract as pitiless elders have ever 
 planned. His child- verse — to learn by 
 heart — both within his catechism and 
 without, was often abstract. His chief 
 theme, theology, was abstract. Theo- 
 crats, his clergy, whom he enlisted to 
 direct his course in this world, and highly 
 problematic fate in the world to come, 
 taught in abstract terms duties to ab- 
 
194 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 stractions more often than plainly- 
 spoken duties to concrete humanity. 
 Now and then only, in the grip of his 
 spiritual directors upon his personal 
 affairs, did he realize how concrete life 
 might be. And at last, after genera- 
 tions of such tensely drawn life, his 
 simple, other-worldly spirit — ^like the 
 spire of his meeting-house piercing a 
 pure and fine aether — ^his simple, uplifted 
 enthusiasm fought at last, in our great 
 Eevolution, for the mighty abstraction, 
 democracy — to which he gave the best 
 material expression possible to his day. 
 
 **His other-worldly spirit," we say, 
 ''his uplifted enthusiasm," **he fought." 
 No such action, and no such possession, 
 would have been possible to the man- 
 half of that world alone. Another half 
 equally aspired and equally labored. 
 Women throughout his land did heroic 
 work in their common cause — at the 
 spinning-wheel and loom, making into 
 
MISUSED: FEMALE, WOMAN 195 
 
 clothing what they had spun and woven, 
 laboring in field and stables and 
 dairy for food to reinvigorate the army. 
 They, too, faced defeat and death, often- 
 est in solitude and without the cheer and 
 inspiration of comrade enthusiasts. 
 
 Their blood-bought victory, the estab- 
 lishment of popular rights upon Amer- 
 ican soil, this people, men and women, 
 finally, in 1782, won. After a few years 
 the French developed their Eevolution. 
 During that terrible welter of orders, 
 our American forebears showed their 
 hearty faith in democracy by stretching 
 over the sea hands of fellowship to the 
 bourgeoisie fighting for '*the Eights 
 of Man.'' '*The Eights of Man" pro- 
 clamation was the French sequent to 
 our Declaration of the Fourth of July, 
 1776. 
 
 Now, in human society, the inevitable 
 corollary of *Hhe Eights of Man" would 
 be ''the Eights of Woman." The 
 
196 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 thought must come, the phrase must 
 arise. For in France, also, women did 
 great deeds toward the highest issues of 
 the nation's tragedy. 
 
 Living for a time among the strug- 
 gling French was an Irish-English 
 woman whom we know as Mary WoU- 
 stonecraf t. Gifted with fervor and inde- 
 pendence, Mary wrote a book, ** A Vindi- 
 cation of the Eights of Women. " It was 
 published in 1792, and doubtless owed its 
 existence at that moment to the author's 
 sympathies with the people of France — 
 sympathy with their struggle for **the 
 Eights of Man" — ^the word man in their 
 usage largely subsuming woman. The 
 very dedication of the book was to a 
 Frenchman — not to the memory of the 
 great English heart of Mary Astell, 
 which, one hundred years before had 
 prompted the faith and work of a 
 prophet in a wilderness of ridicule and 
 prejudice — ^not to Mary Astell, but to the 
 monstrous Talleyrand over whose facti- 
 
MISUSED: FEMALE, WOMAN 197 
 
 tious morality the lady's Irish suscepti- 
 bilities had for the moment warmed. 
 
 Mary WoUstoneeraft's book, her 
 ** Vindication of the Eights of Woman,'' 
 much read and much talked-of both at 
 the time it appeared and later, had far- 
 reaching influences upon English-speak- 
 ing advocates of broader interests for 
 women.^ The ' * Eights of Woman ' ' part 
 of the title appealed to an American 
 public still vigorously retentive of the 
 abstract right of our American Eevolu- 
 tion. Especially the title appealed to 
 such of our folk as felt the injustice 
 of our states' laws toward American 
 women. They inscribed the phrase upon 
 
 1 It undoubtedly influenced, for instance, our Phil- 
 adelphia novelist, Charles Brockden Brown, in his 
 dialogue upon our country-women's social and polit- 
 ical status, "Alcuin," published in New York in 1798 
 — a little book most clever and in argument aston- 
 ishingly like brochures of a hundred years later. 
 Brown talks of women quite as often a^ of females. 
 Nevertheless he testifies to the seemingly indelible 
 stain of the old-time word: "All intercourse between 
 them [men and women] is fettered and embarrassed. 
 On one side, all is reserve and artifice. On tho 
 other, adulation and affected humility." 
 
198 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 their banners. Under its caption a 
 women's party gradually formed. 
 
 All this happened in the first half of 
 the nineteenth century, we said, when 
 foreworkers of the women's party were 
 coming into the world. Susan B. An- 
 thony, than whom it would be difficult to 
 find a purer idealist, was a little girl 
 when the first of our states to act in the 
 reforms, undertook laws enlarging the 
 liberties of women — that married women 
 should own their own property, should 
 be legally able to make a will, carry on 
 a business,^ etc. These were also the 
 early years of Abby Kelly Foster, Lucy 
 
 1 A first removal of restriction was in 1821, when 
 the legislature of Maine authorized a wife deserted 
 by her husband to sue, make contracts, and convey 
 real estate as if unmarried. A like law obtained 
 shortly after in Massachusetts. Another concession 
 was enacted the 15th of February, 1839, so far away 
 from the first as Mississippi, and in December, 1846, 
 in Arkansas, to the effect that "any married woman 
 may become seised or possessed of any property, real 
 or personal, by direct bequest, demise, gift, purchase, 
 or distribution, in her own name and as if her own 
 property: provided, the same does not come from 
 her husband after coverture." 
 
MISUSED: FEMALE, WOMAN 199 
 
 Stone, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and other 
 protagonists of the women's party. 
 
 Tradition of abstractions, love of ab- 
 stractions, was, we say, among our nine- 
 teenth century agitators — it was with 
 Miss Anthony, for instance, whose men- 
 tal grasp was almost invariably through 
 an abstract term even in affairs of every- 
 day life. What so natural that the 
 reformers should continue a phrase al- 
 ready current from Mary Wollstone- 
 craft's book, and say Woman's Rights? 
 
 These foreworkers for ^^ woman'' may 
 have been conscious that to abstract 
 would serve to veil the unusualness, the 
 startling innovation of their demands — 
 the demand, for example, that the real 
 estate of the wife should not become 
 liable for the husband's debts. To 
 timid, unsympathetic, convention-ridden 
 minds the abstract noun would put more 
 remotely conditions for which the zealous 
 labored. *^ Woman" was very general 
 when it talked of that abstraction's 
 
200 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 ** Rights." *^ Woman'' did not point a 
 finger at a very common concrete being, 
 the unwaged cook, washer, ironer and 
 cleaner who spent her week-days in labor 
 at her husband's house and rested in his 
 church pew of a Sabbath. The abstract, 
 you see, could not readily offend conserv- 
 atives who talked about ** protected 
 woman-folks.'' Hearers might not be 
 alienated at the outset. 
 
 In that day it was not unusual for a 
 coterie, indeed at times a whole com- 
 munity, to ridicule or sneer at women 
 who lived any other life than what their 
 critics defined their ** proper sphere." 
 Think of the egotism, the assumption and 
 prejudice which would fix limitations 
 for one-half of humanity! Toward all 
 women a man by custom might, nay! 
 sometimes did (sometimes does?) prac- 
 tise an overbearing temper founded on 
 the superiority he assumed when he de- 
 fined ** sphere" limitations. We still 
 have records of women, of certain, for in- 
 
MISUSED: FEMALE, WOMAN 201 
 
 stance, of the New England stock, whom 
 God had endowed with some great gift, 
 some preponderant ability, in one in- 
 stance the mathematical — ^women whose 
 genius relentlessly drove them to its 
 exercise, endeavoring to conceal all 
 traces of the inflow of their heaven-sent 
 strength by locking themselves and their 
 work off from others' view and knowl- 
 edge, in order, as they confessed, to 
 escape the contempt which their every- 
 day associates poured upon them for 
 ''overstepping female modesty." 
 
 The word woman used as a descriptive 
 of one-half of the race made its way 
 through our country, helped, perhaps, 
 by a reactive horror and disgust at 
 female, females. Woman suffrage, 
 woman's rights became current and the 
 words still stand to-day in substantial 
 organizations of the women's party. 
 Some Englishman, probably John Stuart 
 Mill but it is not at hand exactly to say, 
 spoke of disabilities inherent in our use 
 
202 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 of the abstract term when he said that 
 the reason the women's party had, in 
 his day, made less progress in the United 
 States than in England, was owing to 
 the abstracting of the human being for 
 whom the party sought amelioration, 
 and the use of the abstract descriptive 
 upon the party's banners. 
 
 Now, upon the English mind, also, the 
 French Revolution, its ideas especially in 
 Mary Wollstonecraft's book, left the con- 
 viction that the social status of womeiL 
 must change. No Englishman was 
 more profoundly affected and exalted by 
 the radical ideas of the French Revolu- 
 tion — their, stirring the human spirit 
 to all-conquering reform — than Percy 
 Bysshe Shelley. Shelley had a genius 
 peculiarly sensitive to the humane ideas 
 cast abroad by the American and French 
 Revolts. He became their spokesman. 
 And the romantic movement of his time 
 — the rehabilitation of nature in human 
 life, the re-identification of nature and 
 
MISUSED: FEMALE, WOMAN 203 
 
 reason — underlay his work. His ad- 
 miration for the causes of Mary WoU- 
 stonecraft, whose daughter became his 
 second wife, was of real loyalty.^ 
 
 In Shelley's aerial verse we find the 
 attitude toward women that is in Mary's 
 ** Vindication of the Eights of Woman." 
 Moreover, we invariably find the philo- 
 sophic form, woman. In intense expres- 
 sion Shelley in **The Revolt of Islam'* 
 exclaims : 
 
 **Can man be free if woman be a slave T' 
 ^* Woman as the bond-slave dwells 
 
 Of man, a slave; and life is poisoned at its 
 wells." 
 
 ** Woman ! — ^she is his slave, she has become 
 
 A thing I weep to speak.*' 
 **Well ye know 
 
 What Woman is, for none of Woman born 
 
 1 "They say that thou wert lovely from thy birth. 
 Of glorious parents thou aspiring Child : 
 I wonder not — for One then left this earth 
 Whose life was like a setting planet mild, 
 Which clothed thee in the radiance undefiled 
 Of its departing glory. Still her fame 
 Shines on thee, through the tempests dark and wild 
 Which shake these latter days." 
 
204 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 Can choose but drain the bitter dregs of woe 
 Which ever from the oppressed to the oppres- 
 sor flow/' 
 
 ''The Revolt of Islam" Shelley wrote 
 in the year 1817. Thirty years after 
 this Alfred Tennyson was composing 
 '^The Princess." It may be worth not- 
 ing here that Tennyson was then a 
 bachelor, although *^ quasi-betrothed" to 
 Emily Sellwood whom he married long 
 after. **The Princess" is a poeni-ex- 
 pressing conservatively the larger view 
 of women that moved the British mind 
 during the years of its composition — 
 the larger view which, was impelling 
 Parliament* to enactments granting 
 women greater: liberties. Laws which 
 now seem to us the barest justice con- 
 servatives opposed the introduction of — 
 opposed with an ardor and strength of 
 prejudices thousands of years old, de- 
 bated at white heat, and at last suffered 
 the passing in the fifth decade of the 
 nineteenth century. Undoubtedly these 
 
MISUSED: FEMALE, WOMAN 205 
 
 parliamentary activities, daily news- 
 paper reports, public discussion, and 
 such modest books as ' * Can Woman Ee- 
 generate Society!'' '* Woman's Mis- 
 sion,'' '^Woman's Eights and Duties," 
 published in London in 1844, incited 
 Tennyson to picture his feudal ** Prin- 
 cess." Woman stood for women in his 
 poem, and also in these less-read books 
 we name. 
 
 So, also, woman stood in an article by 
 George Eliot in *^The Westminster Ee- 
 view," when she said, *^The man who 
 would deny to woman the cultivation of 
 her intellect, ought, for consistency, to 
 shut her up in a harem. If he recognize 
 in the sex any quality which transcends 
 the qualities demanded in a plaything or 
 handmaid — if he recognize in her the 
 existence of an intellectual life not essen- 
 tially dissimilar to his own, he must, by 
 the plainest logic, admit that life to 
 express itself in all its spontaneous 
 forms of activity." 
 
206 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 Tennyson ^s ** Princess'' was published 
 in 1847. George Eliot's article in 1852. 
 Between those dates and 1869, the year 
 of the publication of John Stuart Mill's 
 ** Subjection of Women," we find the 
 word women superseding woman as a 
 descriptive. How had the change come 
 about? Undoubtedly through the Eng- 
 lish people's feeling for the uses of 
 expediency, through emphasis in their 
 reforms of the value of the concrete. 
 Especially, as we said, long debates in 
 Parliament about acts affecting women's 
 legal status had educated the people's 
 ear to the plural form. Mill, himself, 
 had strong sense of values of the con- 
 crete — his invention and use of the word 
 utilitarianism goes to show that. He 
 emphasized such values under the leader- 
 ship, he said, of his wife.^ 
 
 1 "The steps in my mental growth for which I was 
 indebted to her," says Mill in his "Autobiography," 
 "were far from being those which a person wholly 
 uninformed on the subject would probably suspect. 
 It might be supposed, for instance, that my strong 
 
MISUSED: FEMALE, WOMAN 207 
 
 Since MilPs ^'Subjection of Women'' 
 came before the world, the word woman, 
 implying an abstract, has almost disap- 
 peared from English use. In this 
 country, however, a rather broad read- 
 ing of MilPs book, and even the founda- 
 tion of colleges, such as Vassar, Smith, 
 Bryn Mawr, for women — ^not for fe- 
 males, not for woman — seem to have 
 made little against the popularity of the 
 word. People continued it, woman. 
 They still do, in printed page, in pulpit, 
 on platform. 
 
 And when the churches of our country 
 awoke to recognition of the most sub- 
 convictions on the complete equality in all legal, po- 
 litical, social and domestic relations, which ought to 
 exist between men and women, may have been adopted 
 from her. . . . What is true is, that until I knew 
 her, the opinion was in my mind, little more than an 
 abstract principle. . . . That perception of the vast 
 practical bearings of women's disabilities which 
 found expression in the book on the 'Subjection of 
 Women' was acquired mainly through her. . . . 
 What was abstract and purely scientific was gen- 
 erally mine; the properly human element came from 
 her. . . . Her mind invested all ideas in a concrete 
 shape, and formed itself a conception of how they 
 would actually work." 
 
208 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 stantial factors furthering their work, 
 the word bequeathed by the French 
 Eevolution, using which Mary WoU- 
 stonecraft had followed radical, eight- 
 eenth-century, so-called atheistic philos- 
 ophers, stood at hand. With woman 
 the churches commonly connoted their 
 women's organizations. Therefore, to- 
 day we meet such phrases as Woman's 
 Executive Board, TFoma^'^^uxiliary, 
 in church affairs. Many another wo- 
 men's association also is dubbed with 
 the old abstract woman, whose members 
 are unconscious of the source of the 
 term and the irony of history they em- 
 body in its use. Perhaps, when we think 
 of the conventional prepossessions and 
 prejudices of many women, of their love 
 of class distinctions and caste barriers, 
 their ignorance favors their comfort. 
 At the time churches and other organi- 
 zations of our country began to utilize 
 women's energies and efficiency, we re- 
 peat, the abstract noun was the only half- 
 
MISUSED: FEMALE, WOMAN 209 
 
 way just and modest descriptive current. 
 Ladies, emphasizing caste distinction, 
 discordant with the democracy of Chris- 
 tianity, is manifestly ill-fitted for a 
 church association. The word, woman, 
 little more than a hundred years ago 
 dyed with the fierce red of French radi- 
 calism, is now in most conservative 
 company. 
 
 The concreting of the idea among us 
 in these times — the use of women instead 
 of woman — ^is due to a greater growth 
 in women's sympathies and women's 
 knowledge, to the evolving recognition 
 of the comradeship of women and men. 
 A broader democracy, a socializing of 
 mind and heart, is spreading round the 
 earth. That is, women are becoming 
 conscious of the unity of humanity, and 
 of themselves as a tremendous factor in 
 that unity. 
 
 This consciousness is a portentous 
 mental and moral stimulation which, we 
 say, women have heretofore lacked. 
 
210 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 Their secluded, solitary, little educated, 
 often idealess, grossly subjective lives — 
 lives, too, not infrequently subdued, year 
 in and year out, by the toxin of fatigue 
 from household routine; lives subdued, 
 also by the poison of ridicule if they 
 reached out after broader interests — 
 such lives the spirit of our times is 
 penetrating. It can penetrate women. 
 It can not penetrate the abstract woman. 
 Sentiment of unity, we repeat, of the 
 solidarity of poor and rich, ignorant and 
 wise, weak and strong, is abroad now as 
 a lively stimulus and contagion, and 
 coupled with its logical result, the con- 
 viction of , the right of the individual to 
 development, the right for "that life to 
 express itself in all its spontaneous 
 forms of activity." Such an outlook 
 women have not heretofore actively 
 realized. The woman of a life so nar- 
 row, so restricted, so emotionally equable 
 and subjective that she can not compre- 
 hend or sympathize with others' lives 
 
MISUSED: FEMALE, WOMAN 211 
 
 replete with vicissitude, is disappearing. 
 Not often now-a-days is a woman's ac- 
 tivity bounded by 
 
 *Hhe sugar and the tea, 
 The flannels and the soap, the coals, 
 The patent recipes for saving souls. 
 And other things: the chill dread sneer 
 Conventional, the abject fear 
 Of form-transgressing freedom/' 
 
 Over our country at large women are 
 dropping the abstract term belonging 
 to days when ignorance and prejudice 
 were proclaiming an abstract ^* sphere'' 
 and ironcast bounds for the human life 
 back of that figment, and are now seek- 
 ing to enroll themselves under women, 
 a word which implies that they are 
 thinking, active, human beings, with 
 human sympathies ; that they, with their 
 brothers, men, are co-learners of human 
 life, and, with their brothers, men, are 
 co-workers for human welfare in the 
 great vineyard of the earth; that they, 
 women, have intelligent interest in and 
 
212 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 are identified with the progress of their 
 human kind in spite of old desires and 
 misjudgments that sought to exclude 
 them — that they are one-half of human- 
 ity. 
 
 One-half of humanity women have been 
 since our remotest beginnings. But, 
 through the pain of centuries and mil- 
 lenia, in what halting and reversionary 
 fashion ! They could not, whatever their 
 effort, grasp the best, for man-made 
 laws of church and state taught them to 
 make themselves after what ignorance 
 of their needs and prejudices against 
 human liberty prescribed. 
 
 Female .signifying a woman is a vul- 
 garity happily passed. The abstract 
 term woman which Mary WoUstone- 
 craft and our American foreparents 
 adopted from French radicals had 
 mighty uses. It served as a rallying 
 cry for vast good. But at this hour, 
 now that women as a body are coming to 
 consciousness of their lives, their work, 
 
MISUSED: FEMALE, WOMAN 213 
 
 its values, to recognition of its dignity 
 at home and abroad, the word women, 
 connoting a body, is the trne and legiti- 
 mate expression of the sympathy and 
 spirit of our times. 
 
PLATO'S IMPERISHABLE EPL 
 
 GRAM: AND ITS TRAIL 
 
 OF LIGHT 
 
It is the empty things that are vast: things solid 
 are most contracted and lie in little room. 
 
 "Preface to 'Novum Organum/ " 
 Francis Bacon. 
 
 Whoever Converses much among the Old Books 
 will be some-hard to please among the New. 
 
 Books, like Proverbs, receive their Chief Value 
 from the Stamp and Esteem of Ages through which 
 they have passed. 
 
 "Essay upon the Ancient and Modern Learning," 
 
 Sib William Temple. 
 
 What is an epigram? a dwarfish whole, 
 Its body brevity, and wit its soul.i 
 
 "Poetical Register for 1802," 
 (Quoted by Heney Philip Dodd.) 
 
 1 A transformation from the Greek idea of the 
 epigram! Satire gradually crept in the verse's spirit 
 until, for insfance, with our English Pope and his 
 fellows, it became what this line tells. 
 
PLATO'S IMPERISHABLE EPI- 
 GRAM: AND ITS TRAIL 
 OF LIGHT 
 
 Aore/aas €Laadpu<s acTTqp efxo^' eWe yevoifjirjv 
 Ovpav6<Sf w<s TToAAois ofjifxaaiv €ts ere jSAeVw. 
 
 Thou gazest on the stars ! 
 Would I might be, 
 O star of mine, 
 
 The skies, 
 With myriad eyes, 
 To gaze on thee. 
 
 To the Greek epigram above, the trans- 
 lation underneath it and these few pages 
 are a sort of setting forth, one might 
 say, as to various modes of the crystalli- 
 zation of a gem. Or, seizing a brighter 
 fancy and borrowing from stellar 
 science, the versions given and others to 
 be added are a comet-like trail of lumi- 
 
 217 
 
218 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 nous dust attracted to, leastwise made 
 light-bearing because of the glory of the 
 head — certain of them at any rate given 
 radiance by that star of first magnitude, 
 Plato's most famous distich. 
 
 The impelling beauty of the Greek 
 epigram has never palled during the 
 twenty-two centuries since the divine 
 philosopher wrote it. Poets of finest 
 fibre and boldest strength have embodied 
 its emotion in longer singing. Nor has 
 its attraction ceased there. Unnum- 
 bered men and women in various times 
 and lands, their nerves tingling with its 
 perfection and seeming ease, have es- 
 sayed to verse it in their own tongue. 
 
 These facts I learned through a youth- 
 ful experience. For, when I was a stu- 
 dent in the University of Kansas, the 
 only collegiate junior to elect Greek and 
 therefore held by no trailing foot within 
 prescribed curricula but seizing what- 
 ever of Greek literature the large and 
 lucid learning of our Professor of Greek, 
 
PLATO'S IMMORTAL EPIGRAM 219 
 
 and his fine ardor for verity, put before 
 me — from sheer charm of what I found 
 going here and there through that litera- 
 ture 's delights and finding the interpre- 
 tation of the world its spirit must ever 
 have for those who enter its virid fields 
 seeking the real things of life — one day 
 in turning leaves of an old anthology I 
 chanced upon this great epigram of 
 Plato's and translated it as the English 
 verse stands above. The lines were only 
 two of thousands and tens of thousands 
 making strongest appeal to my enchanted 
 sense of what was great, what real in 
 literature. But when I met the epigram 
 I felt, as youth may feel when imagina- 
 tion is fired, that I must enter the song, 
 must make some attempt to say it in my 
 own speech — a verse so appealingly 
 short, it seemed possible to wing ascent 
 to its heaven by English pinions. 
 
 In those hours of saturation, I had 
 almost said intoxication, with the Greek 
 distillation of life, there was doubtless 
 
220 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 stirring within tlie spirit of the absorbed, 
 unselfconscious, American girl (if one 
 may be permitted to speak of one's 
 youth as of another being, another 
 world) — there was doubtless stirring 
 one of those growth-crises which come 
 to the lives of young people generously 
 nurtured, when, quite unforeseen, a new 
 sense of space unfolds, a new largeness 
 widens the horizon — ^when the fledgling 
 passes to fresh pastures of which life 
 before had vouchsafed no vision: 
 
 *'Es giebt in Menschenleben Augenblicke 
 Wo er dem Weltgeist naher ist als sonst/' 
 
 What others had wrought at translat- 
 
 > 
 
 ing, or paraphrasing, the two lines of 
 Plato I did not then know. Of all Greek 
 epigrams the verse stood to me as most 
 perfect in expressing the simplicity of 
 Greek art, its grace, its concise definite- 
 ness, its surpassing quality of propor- 
 tion, its effect of standing alone, sufficient 
 to itself, unaffected by outside life. The 
 
PLATO^S IMMORTAL EPIGRAM 221 
 
 poem made such a swift, clean flight to 
 the empyrean! Then there was its de- 
 licious diction. 
 
 And still another reason for the charm 
 the epigram might work upon a student 
 of the University of Kansas must lie in 
 the star-sown night-skies of that land, 
 rousing and lifting the imagination of 
 those children of men who look up to 
 them with loving curiosity — heavens 
 marvellous in their myriad effulgent 
 suns, the opalescent radiance of their 
 Milky Way and infinities known only to 
 the calculus of God. 
 
 The distich persisting in my memory, 
 some years later I sent my translation 
 to a magazine in which it was published.^ 
 Possibly the English words of a second 
 and later version more exactly interpret 
 their Greek cousins : 
 
 Thou gazest on the stars, 
 
 My star! 
 "Would I might be, 
 
 The skies 
 1 8crihner% May, 1889. 
 
222 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 With many eyes, 
 To look on thee. 
 
 Interest in the epigram from my 
 student essay in its lovely art, led me, 
 in general reading and through years, 
 to note translations, or if not exact 
 translations paraphrasing, or approxi- 
 mations of its imagination and diction, 
 in our poets of English speech — ^pass- 
 ages possibly inspired by Plato's dis- 
 tich, or at least near kin to it. The notes 
 perished by the wanderlust that is the 
 heart of all detached papers. Those 
 which follow are what I still have in 
 memory. 
 
 In the first place we ought to under- 
 stand that, as Diogenes Laertius quoting 
 Aristippus says. Aster (the third word 
 in the Greek poem, aster, means star) — 
 Aster was the name of a beautiful youth 
 with whom Plato studied the science of 
 the stars. The Greek Anthology of 
 Hugo Grotius (edited by Bosch, 1797) 
 puts it with Latin practicality: 
 
PLATO'S IMMORTAL EPIGRAM 223 
 
 *'In eum qui Stella vocatur 
 
 SteUa vides coeli stellas meus, o ego coelum 
 
 Si sim, quo te oeulis pluribus adspiciam. ' ' 
 
 If we begin with those confessing 
 themselves purely translations we may- 
 then take the often brilliant and very- 
 beautiful paraphrasings by our English 
 poets. 
 
 The first in time, so far as I now re- 
 call, is that of Thomas Stanley, who died 
 in 1678: 
 
 *'The stars, my Star, thou viewest: heaven 
 
 might I be, 
 That I with many eyes might gaze on thee.'* 
 
 A fine rendering, and one which has the 
 merit of keeping in the English the word 
 heaven, exact equivalent of the Greek. 
 A test of its excellence is that it seems 
 modern, of our own day; that is, it is 
 not circumscribed or limited by any 
 mannerism of speech of the translator's 
 day. Stanley was a cousin of Eichard 
 Lovelace — ^him of the famous, fastidious, 
 
224 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 cavalier **To Althea from Prison." He 
 was also a friend of James Shirley, 
 writer of the perennial 
 
 ''Only the actions of the jnst 
 
 Smell sweet, and hlossom in their dust" 
 
 — ^which we still put in our anthologies, 
 if not in our lives. A man of feeling for 
 letters and of real cultivation and wealth, 
 Thomas Stanley had a genuine lyric gift, 
 which he used in good measure for trans- 
 lating singers of other tongues. He 
 gave himself, also, to the aid of those 
 not so pecunious as himself. The pub- 
 lic eye of his own day he considerably 
 filled. A contemporary called him **the 
 glory and admiration of his time." Yet 
 by all but the long-visioned lover of 
 literature he is now forgotten. We are 
 calling him back to earth to-day because 
 of his beautiful rendering of Plato's two 
 lines. 
 
 Lord Neaves, *'a senator of the col- 
 lege of justices in Scotland," is perhaps 
 
PLATO'S IMMORTAL EPIGRAM 225 
 
 the next translator of whom I had record. 
 The Greek simplicity he presents in this 
 way: 
 
 *'My star, thou view'st the stars on high: 
 Would that I were that spangled sky, 
 That I, thence looking down on thee, 
 With all its eyes thy charms might see/' 
 
 Lord Neaves won higher honors in 
 codifying the laws of nations than in 
 writing metrical versions of Greek 
 poetry. The stars on high, where stars 
 commonly are, is palpably made to 
 rhyme with spangled shy. Still, let us 
 honor a great jurist who loved the quiet 
 of his study, **the mighty minds of old,'' 
 the ** never failing friends,'' and made 
 translations from the Greek his pastime 
 and delight. 
 
 Peculiarities of this Scottish lawyer's 
 version we find also in that of the witty 
 Irishman and poet, Thomas Moore — a 
 literary looseness or diffuseness, almost 
 lack of conscience to our more truth- 
 loving point of view. Moore's English 
 
226 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 versions from the Greek anthology are 
 often marked by a boyish nnconseions- 
 ness of Greek spirit and Greek form. 
 They gleam, one might almost say glit- 
 ter, with Celtic facility, and not infre- 
 quently echo English drawing-room 
 fashions of the end of the eighteenth and 
 early nineteenth century. Of Moore's 
 translation of the epigram I think we 
 find these defining facts true : 
 
 *'Why dost thou gaze upon the sky? 
 Oh ! that I were that spangled sphere, 
 And every star should be an eye, 
 To wonder on thy beauties here ! ' ' 
 
 Another version of the distich Sy- 
 monds, in ^ his ** Studies of the Greek 
 Poets ' ' ascribes to Frederick Farrar : 
 
 *' Gazing at stars, my star? I would that I 
 
 were the welkin, 
 Starry with infinite eyes, gazing forever at 
 
 thee!'' 
 
 The English welkin with its unusedness 
 and archaic feeling seems unfortunate, 
 
PLATO'S IMMORTAL EPIGRAM 227 
 
 for the words of Plato are simple, nat- 
 ural. Then, too, infinite and forever are 
 not in the Greek — just as Lord Neaves' 
 spangled shy, and Tom Moore 's spangled 
 sphere and wonder on thy beauties here 
 are not. And as for infinite eyes — a 
 Greek was too genuine in his feeling for 
 nature ever to say it — and he was also 
 too reverent. Strange that Symonds 
 with his sensitiveness and taste should 
 have quoted such a translation! 
 
 -If you lay beside it the rendering of 
 the late Goldwin Smith, you will see more 
 clearly the gifts of sincerity, fidelity, 
 simplicity that mark that distinguished 
 scholar's rendering; 
 
 *'Dost scan the stars! would I were those 
 
 skies, 
 To gaze upon thee with their myriad eyes!'' 
 
 Poetry, it is often said, is untranslata- 
 ble. Spontaneous welling of sensibili- 
 ties, an overflow of feeling impels the 
 poet to song. The translator can hardly 
 be excited by like spontaneity; his emo- 
 
228 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 tion must be secondary. When, there- 
 fore, we essay mirroring the man of the 
 original enthusiasm, we should, it would 
 seem, approach his work with such rev- 
 erence that we strip ourselves of our- 
 selves, so far as possible, and enter that 
 spirit of life of which he was a part. 
 Then, only, may we voice his feeling in 
 our phrase. That is, a translation seems 
 to be a bringing of the poet's knowledge, 
 comprehensiveness, sympathy, sensibil- 
 ity to speak through ourselves as his in- 
 strument — a flute if you will — not an ex- 
 pressing ourselves through his ideas. In 
 this opinion I may be differing with my 
 friend, Mr. Charles Fletcher Lummis, in 
 his admirable verse ^ recalling the great 
 distich : 
 
 *'Star of me, watching the mother skies 
 Where thine elder sisters be, 
 
 Would I were heaven with all its eyes — 
 All of its eyes on thee!" 
 1 In McClure's Magazine, February, 1911. 
 
PLATO^S IMMORTAL EPIGRAM 229 
 
 In passing from the solitary transla- 
 tions of this epigram to the often very 
 beautiful and suggestive paraphrasing 
 by our English poets, we should, in point 
 of time, take up those four lines in a son- 
 net which Palgrave, in his ^* Golden 
 Treasury'* ascribes to Joshua Sylvester. 
 The sonnet, by the bye, I do not find in 
 collections of Sylvester's poems printed 
 near his time, and others would deny it 
 him saying in none of his poems did he 
 reach such heights as the sonnet scales. 
 That is poor reasoning, even if facts bore 
 it out. Sylvester did climb with swelling 
 and reverberating song, as you may 
 easily see by turning to pages 304 to 307 
 of this book. The four lines of his para- 
 phrase which are the ninth, tenth, 
 eleventh and twelfth of the sonnet, read 
 in this wise : 
 
 **Were you the earth, dear Love, and I the 
 
 skies, 
 My love should shine on you like to the sun. 
 
230 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 And look upon you with ten thousand eyes 
 Till heaven wax'd blind, and till the world 
 were done." 
 
 Sylvester was born one year before 
 Shakespeare. The sonnet ascribed to 
 him, and unmistakably of his day, evi- 
 dences that this epigram of Plato's, so 
 perfect that it is modern to every age, 
 was familiar to the Elizabethans, and 
 even then stirring the human heart and 
 hand to work its gold into English wear. 
 
 Shakespeare himself seems to have 
 known its beauty. A critic has queried 
 whether the mighty genius of the poet 
 had not taken the conception and trans- 
 muted it, as that genius transmuted much 
 of the best of its earthly day and sealed 
 it in marvellous verse. For instance, in 
 reading the following lines in the sec- 
 ond scene of the third act of **Eomeo and 
 Juliet,'' you must, with a knowledge 
 of Plato's epigram, pause and reread, 
 and note the ascent of emotion, and won- 
 der if the Greek, or any translation 
 
PLATO'S IMMORTAL EPIGRAM 231 
 
 Shakespeare may have seen, played any 
 part in their composition: — 
 
 **And, when he shall die, 
 Take him and cut him out in little stars, 
 And he will make the face of heaven so fine, 
 That all the world will be in love with night, 
 And pay no worship to the garish sun.'' 
 
 Dodd, in this book **The Epigram- 
 matists," and quoting Steevens, I be- 
 lieve, calls attention to a play **The Wis- 
 dom of Doctor DodypoU," which was 
 acted before the year 1596. Editors of 
 Shakespeare have conjectured that 
 ** Romeo and Juliet'' was written in 
 1596. Impulse for our quoted passage 
 may, therefore, have been in this passage 
 of the forgotten play : 
 
 "The glorious parts of faire Lucilia, 
 
 Take them and joine them in the heavenly 
 
 spheres : 
 And fixe them there as an eternal light, 
 For lovers to adore and wonder at." 
 
 A far cry from that to Shakespeare's 
 
232 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 racy, clear-cut English and overwhelm- 
 ing emotion, you will say. But the 
 author of **The Wisdom of Doctor 
 DodypoU," as well as the author of 
 ^* Romeo and Juliet,'' may have known 
 Plato's epigram. The age of Jonson 
 and Drummond and Drayton was not 
 one to let its grace lie hid, as we said 
 above. In Shakespeare's restatement, 
 whatever the source of the conception, is 
 the new-bom outlook on life, the Eliza- 
 bethan strength of interpreting nature 
 at first hand, and a loveliness of phrase 
 that make the passage his own.^ 
 
 lA beautiful simile has appealed to us humans 
 since long befqre the days of Homer, master in simile. 
 Let us consider it for a moment. Passages that call 
 to mind the manner of Plato's two lines are as far 
 back as in the old Greeks when we have an unknown 
 poet singing in a way, only singing more simply and 
 purely, after the manner of this translation which 
 Moore made: 
 
 "I wish I could like zephyr steal 
 
 To wanton o'er thy mazy vest; 
 And thou wouldst ope thy bosom-veil, 
 
 And take me panting to thy breast! 
 
 "I wish I might a rose-bud grow 
 
PLATO'S IMMORTAL EPIGRAM 233 
 
 Not an Elizabethan but a Victorian 
 poet, Francis Bourdillon, has made a dis- 
 
 And thou wouldst cull me from the bower, 
 To place me on that breast of snow, 
 
 Where I should bloom, a wintry flower." 
 
 Sonnets to a mistress' eyebrows, and also such 
 similes, as for instance, Shakespeare's: 
 
 "O, that I were a glove upon that hand. 
 That I might touch that cheek!" 
 
 did not begin with modern times. Nor do they owe 
 their origin to the sentiment of chivalry, as often 
 claimed. Have we not just now seen an old Greek 
 poet talking in phrase as direct and untrammeled 
 as a neo-romanticist might use? And not unlike 
 expressions are among old Greek love tales and nov- 
 els. Also they are in the ancient writings of the 
 Hebrews. 
 
 A song of like and exquisite simile, if we may step 
 to the very bounds of digression, is by a certain Rob- 
 ert Burns, against whom one could never bring a 
 charge of borrowing from the Greek. The beauty 
 and lilt of the first of the verses, by an unknown 
 Scottish poet, are said to have so seized and warmed 
 Burns' fancy that he sang in pure and bird-like note 
 the equally beautiful second : 
 
 "G were my ^ove yon lilac fair, 
 Wi' purple blossoms to the spring; 
 
 And I, a bird to shelter there. 
 When wearied on my little wing! 
 
 How I wad mourn, when it was torn 
 By autumn wild, and winter rude! 
 
234 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 tinctly modern suggestion of tlie great 
 Greek's distich in the oft sung and oft 
 quoted : (^ 
 
 * * The Night has a thousand eyes 
 
 And the day but one ; 
 Yet the light of the whole world dies 
 With the setting sun. 
 
 * * The Mind has a thousand eyes 
 
 And the heart but one ; 
 Yet the light of a whole life dies 
 
 When love is done. ' ' 
 
 From this long wandering in pages of 
 other poets suggestive of Plato the poet 
 — from other similes of ardor to the real, 
 tentative embodiment of the great epi- 
 gram in -others' works — ^we turn to 
 
 But I wad sing on wanton wing, 
 When youthfu' May its bloom renewed. 
 
 O gin my love were yon red rose, 
 
 That grows upon the castle wa' ; 
 And I mysel' a drap o' dew, 
 
 Into her bonnie breast to fa' 
 Oh, there beyond expression blest, 
 
 I'd feast on beauty a' the night; 
 Seal'd on her silk-saft faulds to rest, 
 
 Tin fley'd awa' by Phoebus' light." 
 
PLATO'S IMMORTAL EPIGRAM 235 
 
 Samuel Taylor Coleridge ^s poem *^0n 
 an Autumnal Evening^' not only to find 
 the distich of Plato, but also a part of 
 that epigram by the unknown Greek poet 
 which, in the footnote, Moore translated 
 for us. *^To fan my love,'* wrote Cole- 
 ridge : 
 
 *^To fan my love I'd be the evening gale, 
 Mourn in the soft folds of her swelling vest, 
 And flutter my faint pinions on her breast! 
 On seraph wing I'd float a dream by night, 
 To soothe my love with shadows of delight; 
 Or soar aloft to be the spangled skies. 
 And gaze upon her with a thousand eyes." 
 
 And now at last we come to the supra- 
 mundane genius of Shelley closing the 
 ninth canto of his ethical cries in *^The 
 Eevolt of Islam" with the great epi- 
 gram's emotion: 
 
 **Fair star of life and love," I cried, **my 
 
 soul's delight, 
 Why lookest thou on the crystalline skies ? 
 O that my spirit were yon Heaven of night, 
 "Which gazes on thee with its thousand eyes !" 
 
236 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 When I began I forecast this writing 
 merely as a note setting forth interpre- 
 tations of Patd^s immortal lines. We 
 have gone far afield — sympathetic, asso- 
 ciative memories leap one upon another 
 when we once give the leash and bear us 
 far beyond the metes and bounds of mere 
 adducing comment. But the echoes of 
 Plato's great leit-motiv, to change our 
 simile, and the snatches of heaven-sent 
 song we have heard by the way, are am- 
 ple excuse for our wandering — if excuse 
 need be. 
 
 In old-time, student days in the Uni- 
 versity of Kansas, in our reading the 
 great Greek idealist,— yes, I make bold 
 to say, even in these times when ideal- 
 ism is often looked upon as a sort of in- 
 tellectual degeneracy, a variety of atav- 
 ism — I make bold to say, and quite meg- 
 aphonicly, we gloried in Plato's teach- 
 ings and in his marvellous art of writing 
 out his thoughts — ^we used, in those old 
 days, when meeting some conception, 
 
PLATO'S IMMORTAL EPIGRAM 237 
 
 idea, expression, we had deemed modern, 
 frequently to exclaim — quoting, I ven- 
 ture from memory to say, Emerson re- 
 ferring to Plato's supremacy in the 
 world of philosophy — **It is all in 
 Plato!" So, too, from what we have 
 here in these few pages seen is a most 
 distinguished and exalted simile, a su- 
 preme expression of idealizing love. 
 
FABLES OF BRONZE AND 
 
 IRON AGES: OF 
 
 TO-DAY 
 
I happened to see a living company of them 
 [ephemerae] on a leaf, who appeared to be in con- 
 versation. You know I understand all the inferior 
 animal tongues. 
 
 "To Madame Brillon of Passy," 
 Benjamin Franklin. 
 
 He that cannot contract the sight of his mind as 
 well as disperse and dilate it, wanteth a great faculty. 
 "Of the Advancement of Learning," 
 Fbancis Bacon. 
 
 Those loose Robes or common Veils that disguised 
 or covered the true Beauty of Poetry's features. . . . 
 This was done first by ^sop in Greek, but the Vein 
 was much more antient in the Eastern Regions, and 
 much in Vogue. 
 
 "Of Poetry," 
 • Sib William Temple. 
 
FABLES OF BRONZE AND 
 
 IRON AGES: OF 
 
 TO-DAY 
 
 Fables are the simplest of all stories. 
 They sprang into being before conscious 
 records of human history began, as soon, 
 probably, as early peoples of this * kittle 
 O, the earth," had a language large 
 enough to tell a story in. Long after, 
 when human life had read a meaning in 
 the fact that it is, and its significance had 
 gladdened the up-looking spirit of man, 
 re-telling of the stories brightened fire- 
 sides gleaming in caves, and helped 
 through dull, gloomy days men and 
 women whetting stone knives, and hew- 
 ing arrow-heads, and sewing hide-shirts. 
 Thousands upon thousands of years ago, 
 
 lAn essay written before the publication of an 
 article or two citing like illustrations. 
 241 
 
242 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 we say, at a time when all earth's mys- 
 teries in beast and tree, upon land and 
 sea, voiced to the primal folk an in- 
 alienable kinship with themselves, there 
 lived, in that early morning of our race, 
 the first inventors of the story. 
 
 They were fable-makers. They won- 
 dered: they brooded: they worshiped; 
 and became the primitive poets delight- 
 ing to bring to the soul of their people 
 what they had discovered. Naively 
 fashioning universal truths, they showed 
 what life had taught them by depicting a 
 neighbor's traits controlling some elder 
 brother of man. In other words, the 
 fable-mal^er, apt at weaving tales from 
 his own spirit and what his world had 
 written upon it, presented human char- 
 acteristics embodied in, or a human ex- 
 perience enacted among, creatures fa- 
 miliar to his listeners. Men and beasts, 
 we say, stood in more intimate kinship 
 than now, and the story's situation and 
 imagery were not far from their every- 
 
BRONZE AGE FABLES 243 
 
 day affairs. Such a tale was bound to 
 catch the attention of the less reflective 
 man and make him pause, wonder and 
 perhaps take lesson. For perhaps 
 human nature had then the weakness 
 that an Englishman lamented countless 
 centuries later, ** Nothing will go down, 
 if it be not seasoned with a tale." 
 
 Lacking every worldly artificiality 
 with which human traits stand forth in 
 our conscious literature, more simple 
 than Garden-of-Eden simplicity — for 
 into Eden man had entered, in the world 
 of those early days the beasts of the 
 fable-making poet felt and thought and 
 talked as humans. Author's and pub- 
 lic's simplicity was of life in cave and 
 lake-dwelling and the sunlit sward that 
 lay before the jungle. 
 
 Thus, doubtless, the early peoples of 
 our earth, far off in the dim mists of 
 old millenia, had the beginnings of 
 story-telling. Human imagination con- 
 structed and human love of the ideal vi- 
 
244 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 sion credulously accepted. Ages whose 
 factors we can not estimate passed in 
 the growth and habit. 
 
 This nascent literature, these fables, 
 may have been metaphor writ large. 
 Primitive men talk in metaphor ; for un- 
 developed peoples must express them- 
 selves in concrete form. The stories 
 may at first have lain in the naked sim- 
 plicity of a sentence, a complete undress 
 and freedom. But in time they waxed 
 in strength and length, and travelled 
 far — for generations of the human fam- 
 ily, led by divinities of the ideal, were 
 ever splitting off from parent stocks and 
 seeking lands to make their own. Rec- 
 ords of the tales the migrators put on 
 stones, on earthen and waxen tile, on 
 gold and silver cup, on papyrus, in carv- 
 ing and painting and tapestry. Almost 
 every land where a clan or tribe settled 
 and evolved their arts and governments 
 has remnants in keeping. 
 
 The tales journeying and expanding 
 
BRONZE AGE FABLES 245 
 
 in restful new homes, drew to them- 
 selves embellishments and conventions. 
 The human life that treasured them was 
 in every circle of the sun growing and 
 enriching. Fables thus, like all our 
 poetry, all our prose, all mental products, 
 became aggregations. But they are the 
 simplest of aggregations, and after all, 
 even in their broad diffusion they vary 
 little. Perhaps the folk through centu- 
 ries of the eld had the loyalty to first 
 form that characterizes children to-day 
 and insistently kept a crystallization of 
 a favorite story. What had become a 
 common possession of their tribe, they 
 probably safe-guarded with the instinct 
 of self-preservation, and would suffer 
 their recounters no deviation from the 
 form which emphasized their race man- 
 ners and customs, and their race art. 
 
 The original metaphor, of which we 
 spoke above, had somewhat of a didactic 
 aim, an evident moral. Therefore fables 
 must reduce rudimentary inductions of 
 
246 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 the mind of man — save tlie early cave- 
 man's inductions — ^to an ethical truth. 
 They must etch human gropings for a 
 moral order of life — ^when such an order 
 was vaguely conceived of. From the be- 
 ginnings, we say, the tendency of the 
 telling of a fable must have been what it 
 is to-day — practical teachings of ethical 
 relations of life. An instance is the 
 story of Eve and the serpent — at first 
 blush not showing conscious, open fic- 
 tion, but really a fabulizing of the sin 
 and sequent disaster of taking short cuts 
 to great accomplishment, rather than 
 working within The Law. Men's ethical 
 sense grew and in time forced the moral 
 of the tale to extend itself, until the de- 
 liberation, patent and confessed, became 
 what this fable teacheth, hac fabula 
 
 docet, o fJLvOo^ BrjXoL, 
 
 That those early story-tellers for the 
 people, ancients to those who are an- 
 cients to us, came to make fables with 
 deliberate intent, for the untrained 
 
BRONZE AGE FABLES 247 
 
 mind's deligM and instruction, is clear. 
 The Old Testament's book of Judges 
 preserves, in its ninth chapter, a most 
 striking and beautiful instance of con- 
 scious knowledge of such fiction and its 
 forceful application. Jotham, son of 
 Gideon, tells to the men of Sechem how, 
 *^The trees went forth on a time to 
 anoint a king over them'' . . . and 
 finally * ' The bramble said unto the trees, 
 If in truth ye anoint me king over you, 
 then come and put your trust in my 
 shadow: and if not, let fire come out of 
 the bramble, and devour the cedars of 
 Lebanon. ' ' 
 
 This fable is perhaps an early product 
 of the Hebrew genius. If not, but was 
 brought from the east in times of old 
 when the peoples of Mesopotamia and 
 their western neighbors, the people of 
 Judaea, had reciprocal relations of cul- 
 ture, at any rate it seems to have been 
 a folk-possession which the author of the 
 part of the book of Judges in which it 
 
248 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 is embedded, borrowed and applied. To- 
 day 's criticism pronounces the part 
 younger than the ninth century before 
 Christ. 
 
 After recorded time we hear of ^sop 
 composing and recomposing fables for 
 the Greeks — about the sixth century be- 
 fore Christ. But before ^ sop's day 
 such tales flourished among the Greeks 
 — we know from Homer and from the 
 earliest complete fable in European 
 literature, Hesiod's story of **The Hawk 
 and Nightingale.'' And the ^sopic 
 fable was the foundation idea of the cele- 
 brated satire on women of Simonides of 
 Amorgos — in its tracing the lineage of 
 ten different types of women back to ani- 
 mals. This Simonides is said to have 
 been a mature man in 693 b. c, 
 
 ^sop possibly heard recitations of 
 oriental apologues while in service at the 
 court of the Lydian king, Croesus. In 
 his century travellers were continually 
 passing between India and peoples of the 
 
BRONZE AGE FABLES 249 
 
 eastern Mediterranean. Possibly, from 
 some wandering pundit basking in the 
 luxury of Croesus' court, and his recital 
 of such tales as are ascribed to the 
 oriental Bidpai, ^sop gained his inspi- 
 ration for the fable and led to its restitu- 
 tion. That the tales were popular 
 among the later Greeks, Aristophanes' 
 comedies let us know; and another light 
 Plato brings us when he tells of Soc- 
 rates turning ^sopian tales into verse 
 in his final days in prison. 
 
 Centuries after the hunchback master 
 the fable took, at the hands of the Greek 
 Babrius, the form in which it abides to 
 this day. Just what that century was 
 no one can say. A German critic, Cru- 
 sius, says Babrius wrote in an age of the 
 Eoman emperors when taste agreed the 
 greatest virtue of a writer to be sim- 
 plicity. Not far from the days of Bab- 
 rius — some say before on the ground that 
 Phaedrus makes no mention of a cat while 
 Babrius tells various stories about that 
 
250 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 familiar fellow — Phaedrus, a Thracian 
 slave, wrought the innocuous tales into 
 Latin, for the moralizing Eoman's de- 
 light and instruction. 
 
 Thus the fable, that is, many of our 
 well-known fables, flourished, and always 
 best among peoples of southern latitudes 
 with whom they are said to have had 
 their birth. 
 
 Even after the days of the Judges, to 
 which we refer above, those fellow-dwel- 
 lers of the Greeks near the vine-clad 
 slopes of the Mediterranean, the He- 
 brews, kept on using the fable. With 
 their genius for the concrete they turned 
 about its ^oint and aiming merely to il- 
 lustrate men's higher life by the lower, 
 they called it the parable. It served for 
 imaginative appeal to the people, and be- 
 came of stupendous import. The book 
 of Jonah, for instance, ascribed to about 
 250 B. c, is a fable — a parable about so- 
 cial exclusives. 
 
 To the uses of the fable-parable the 
 
BRONZE AGE FABLES 251 
 
 New Testament brings a mightier wit- 
 ness: — **Tlie disciples said, Why speak- 
 est thou to them in parables? He an- 
 swered and said, Because it is given unto 
 you to know the mysteries . . . but to 
 them it is not given. . . . This people's 
 heart is waxed gross, and their ears are 
 dull of hearing, and their eyes have 
 closed. ' ' 
 
 Here abides evidence that the fable, 
 in those times, by profoundest wisdom, 
 served to reach the rudimentary mind of 
 men — ^when their ears were dull of hear- 
 ing and their eyes the Teacher would un- 
 close to the significance of life. 
 
 Thus peoples of old deliberately fos- 
 tered the fable, an early poem, for the 
 untrained mind's instruction and delight. 
 For that we moderns make it, and some- 
 times, even like present-day Arabs, for 
 grown-ups. But most we make it for 
 children, because a child loves a make- 
 believe world; he likes to escape this 
 world of hard facts and enter its life only 
 
252 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 througli his fancy. Then, also we make 
 it for the child because our conviction is 
 well-worn that the child in his growth 
 repeats the development of the race. 
 
 The first conception of a fable, we have 
 seen, is a sort of sly humor. The ancient 
 fable-maker would play an amusing light 
 round human characteristics, he would 
 lay hold of the grey matter of the aver- 
 age head and set in motion its zygomatic 
 muscles by making a crane, a lion, a 
 mouse, an earthen pot or a tree speak out 
 subject to laws controlling human kind 
 and seemingly humans alone. Thus the 
 fable becomes a deliberate make-believe, 
 a designed work of art with a meaning. 
 
 Classic writers, and by that we mean 
 the old Greek and Eoman, knew from 
 the instinctive sense of art that blessed 
 them that the fable should be a com- 
 plete unit, never at variance with sim- 
 pler conditions; and it should have the 
 honesty and power that come from famil- 
 iarity with, and easy knowledge of, 
 
BRONZE AGE FABLES 253 
 
 everyday life — a crow is a clever thief 
 and lie would steal cheese, a hare does 
 run swiftly, an ant is an industrious 
 layer-by. The story should, in other 
 words, be exact to truth — ^truth as it 
 would be if beasts thought and felt as 
 humans, and were to hold the recounters ' 
 pen. Thus the old writers produced 
 their fables. 
 
 And with incalculable success we re- 
 peat, — especially after the stories were 
 by oft-repetition set to the minds of the 
 Greeks. But the new workers moved 
 cautiously and with reserve. They had 
 moderation, the Greek golden mean. 
 Into this little art, as into their great- 
 est, they put the impersonality that 
 marks the classic expression. Not be- 
 cause they forecast their manner and 
 said they would and sat down with stylus 
 in hand to write it, did they do this. 
 They wrote the fable with the imper- 
 sonal note because that bore out their in- 
 born conception of art, that was their 
 
254 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 conception of life — and a racial concep- 
 tion of art, because it is a conception of 
 life, must work itself out even in expand- 
 ing a metaphor. What the teller thought 
 or felt, his views by the bye, his emotions, 
 in no wise figured in his story and could 
 not enter into the structure of his sen- 
 tences. 
 
 The art of the tale, to put it another 
 way, did not reflect the subject, was not 
 personal. It was objective. It pre- 
 sented a view of the outer world into 
 which the teller was not projected, not 
 reflected. It stood alone, apart from 
 subjective, interpretative feeling and im- 
 aginings infused into it. Its appeal was 
 by reflection to the typical, the general, 
 not by emotion to the individual. No 
 disturbing subjective excitement, no glow 
 nor tendency of the writer to exaggera- 
 tion warmed it. Personal feeling neither 
 touched nor set a nerve aquiver. Prob- 
 ability, exactness even to economy of 
 material, simplicity, universality were 
 
BRONZE AGE FABLES 255 
 
 in its appeal. That is, the art stood upon 
 a cool and calm intellectuality and truth 
 to general life. It must move by the 
 force inhering in its subject, by the sub- 
 ject's fitness for its purpose and the per- 
 fectness of presentation. This was as 
 true of the minor art of fable-making as 
 of the great art of the Greeks. Those 
 people viewed the body and soul not as 
 distinct, separate, but as forming one 
 unit, the human being as a whole. In 
 such a conception there can be no intense 
 emotion, no dominating *^ temperament,'' 
 no minor many-imaginings — merely col- 
 lective, generally social, race experience. 
 The modem, in contrast, demands a 
 fervor working in the writer's brain and 
 gaining its own spiritual expression. It 
 confesses to an appeal for the emotional 
 response and human interest of the 
 reader. It carries its own ** atmos- 
 phere ' ' of specific quality, unique aspect, 
 the personality of the teller comes for- 
 ward. It is individualistic and demo- 
 
256 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 cratic as to its sense of reserve. It acts 
 and gains by minute accumulated touches 
 of detail and by the contagion of excite- 
 ment. 
 
 Yet a popular fable might, and in the 
 old way, in stating a general truth, teach 
 a good part of the conduct of life. Take, 
 for instance, an old version of a fable, 
 probably among the oldest of fables — so 
 old that a Greek book of the second or 
 third century makes Sophocles deliver 
 an epigram in referring to it — the fable 
 of Helius, the Sun, and Boreas, the North 
 Wind. Plutarch, also, tells the tale in 
 his *' Precepts for the Married" to illus- 
 trate the persuading with soft ways — 
 '*this most women do," adds the phi- 
 losopher. 
 
 Our version follows closely and simply 
 the picturesque iambic telling of Babrius : 
 
 The North Wind and the Sun 
 
 **The story goes that a great strife 
 rose twixt the North Wind and the Sun, 
 
BRONZE AGE FABLES 267 
 
 as to wMcli of the two could take a gar- 
 ment of skin off a wayfaring rustic. 
 
 ** First Boreas blew as he blows in 
 Thrace, for he thought that by force he 
 could strip away the hide. But the fel- 
 low would not let go at all. On the con- 
 trary he shivered from the cold, and 
 binding his hands with the skin's edge, 
 drew it about him, got down against a 
 rock and bent his back to its projection. 
 
 ^*Then the Sun peeped out. First he 
 eased the man from the chill of the harsh 
 wind. Then he kept on sending warmth, 
 till a glow suddenly seized the wearer and 
 he stripped himself and tossed the gar- 
 ment aside. 
 
 ' * So was Boreas beaten in the contest. 
 The fable says, * Grentleness, child, before 
 passion. You will make your way by 
 persuasion rather than by force, what- 
 ever befalls you.' " 
 
 Now this fable is a deliberate story for 
 the untrained mind. Its moral is pal- 
 
258 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 pable, and its jumble of truth and fan- 
 tasy clear. It is a tale told in severely 
 simple Greek fashion, reserved, bearing 
 in its lines no appeal to the listener's 
 emotion. 
 
 From the English Sir Eoger L 'Es- 
 trange of more than two hundred years 
 ago, so-called *^ prince of translators," 
 from a book of his printed in London in 
 1694, we take a version that shows Greek 
 influence still controlling — ^yet our Eng- 
 lish imaginativeness will not let it off 
 purely and with the almost barren detail 
 of the Greek : ^ 
 
 ** There happened a Controversie be- 
 
 1 In the las%, half of the seventeenth century J2sop 
 had come into great vogue in England. Translations 
 into English verse, such for instance as John Ogilby's, 
 were not infrequent. Toward the end of the century, 
 in 1691, ^sop was "a book universally read and 
 taught in our schools," L'Estrange wrote, "the boys 
 break their teeth upon the shells, without even com- 
 ing near the kernel. They learn the fables by les- 
 sons, and the moral is the least part of our care in 
 a child's instruction." Such facts, L'Estrange con- 
 tinued, prompted to his translations — ^versions *l3eing 
 equally beautiful of their kind," wrote an English 
 contemporary, "with the verse of La Fountain." 
 
BRONZE AGE FABLES 259 
 
 twixt the Sun and the Wind, which was 
 the Stronger of the Two; and they put 
 the Point upon This Issue : There was a 
 Traveller upon the Way, and which of 
 the Two could make That Fellow Quit 
 his Cloak should carry the Cause. The 
 wind fell presently a Storming, and threw 
 Hail-Shot over and ahove in the very 
 Teeth of him. The Man Wraps himself 
 up, and keeps Advancing in spight of 
 the Weather: But this Gust in a short 
 Time Blew over ; and then the Sun Brake 
 out, and fell to Work upon him with his 
 Beams; but still he Pushes forward. 
 Sweating, and Panting, till in the End 
 he was forced to Quit his Cloak, and lay 
 himself down upon the Ground in a Cool 
 Shade for Belief: So that the Sun, in 
 the Conclusion, carry 'd the Point." 
 
 A version by the learned Chinese Mun 
 Mooy Seen-Shang, translated by his 
 pupil Sloth, is curiously severe and dy- 
 namic in its English dress : 
 
 **Sun with Wind mutually-wrangled 
 
260 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 strong weak both not mntually-yield ex- 
 tremely wished one compare high low 
 unexpectedly saw road-upon travelling- 
 man put-on-had a-cloak hurridly-hastily 
 and coming Sun said wonderful!! won- 
 derful extreme!! you I each self -call 
 great not can divide now coming-man 
 body put-on outside-cloak you I each put- 
 in-force magical-art can cause travell-er 
 put-off clothes he-who does gain with- 
 that mutually wagered the Wind then 
 first put-in-force plans great whirlwind 
 suddenly rose nearly-took travell-er out- 
 side-garment blew-fell. Travell-er by- 
 means-of hand defended-held obtained- 
 escape Wind plans since not could do and 
 come-to Sun make plans cloud-clear sky- 
 empty shining-splendour fierce-er sweat 
 flo wed-down two jaws hot-air difficult to- 
 sustain only-could put-off outer-garment 
 therefore Sun was gainer truly!! As 
 world-men in-vain cling-to blood-tem- 
 per's valor many lead-to have loss con- 
 
BRONZE AGE FABLES 261 
 
 trary not as soft-gentle measure strength 
 obtain no unlooked-for-evil.'' 
 
 In our country and to-day the story 
 would run somewhat after the following 
 version. In keeping with a supposed 
 mythopoeic sense of the less-developed, 
 it would speak from the mouth of an old- 
 fashioned nurse, probably a black 
 mammy. A reason of mammy's telling 
 it would also be that we feel the south 
 to be the native temperature of the fable. 
 Her story would bring in a bit of ego- 
 tism, make evident in a very patent 
 way the individuality of the teller — ^pos- 
 sibly with endeavor to touch up the 
 humor of the tale. It would appeal to 
 the feelings of the listener, stir and warm 
 the heart probably by engrossing details. 
 Its gain or basis of appeal would be 
 through the emotions, would not be 
 mainly intellectual that is to say. Still, 
 underneath our version of this old-time 
 
262 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 tale we must find that truth to human 
 life which the ancients always demanded, 
 which the child demands, and we grown- 
 ups, perhaps, in less degree. 
 
 Ole Mam Blizzaed and Mastah 
 Sunshine 
 
 Dat mornin ole Mam Blizzard an 
 Mastah Sunshine had dere quarrel wuz 
 a dreadful contensionin. 
 
 Ye see, honey, Mastah Sunshine riz 
 red an sleepy dis mornin I'se a tellin ye 
 about, an he looked to havin it all his 
 own way. Fer a time after sun-up he 
 wuz nigh shakin all de yallow light out 
 of does eyes of hisn. De birds wuz a 
 singin, de flowers wuz a blowin, an de 
 wind wuz as soft as cotton in de boll. 
 
 But jess dat minute de folks wuz rub- 
 bin dere eyes fer all de glory — puff! 
 puff!! puff!!! came ole Mam Blizzard 
 sailin along on a pack of clouds. An de 
 ole lady pulled a veil over Mastah Sun- 
 shine 's face quicker 'n you can wink. 
 
BRONZE AGE FABLES 263 
 
 Praps you don't know who ole Mam 
 Blizzard is, honey, de ole lady dat rides 
 high as de moon. She's from way far 
 up in Mountany. Way up in de moun- 
 tains, where de rivers all is ice, Mam 
 Blizzard lives, and all de little Blizzards. 
 De chillun hang up in bags roun de sides 
 o dere ma's cabin. 
 
 Who is de Blizzard chilluns' pa? 
 Laws sakes, honey, seems like as if it 
 wuz Mistah Wind-o- Christmas — ^him dat 
 comes hoUerin an tearin down de chim- 
 bley. But xactly I disremembers. 
 
 But dis mornin I'se tellin ye about, 
 ole Miss Blizzard wuz a ridin high in de 
 air an out for a fracas wif Master Sun- 
 shine. Dose two never could agree no 
 way — Mastah Sunshine an Mam Bliz- 
 zard. Dey's dat contrarious dat where 
 Mastah Sunshine is Mam Blizzard never 
 will abide, an Miss Blizzard bein by Mas- 
 tah Sunshine '11 never show his face. 
 
 Dis yere mornin I'se tellin ye about, 
 Mastah Sunshine sittin over dare in de 
 
264 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 sky, he call out sort o laughin like when 
 he see Miss Blizzard, an he say, **I'se 
 stronger dan you is.'' 
 
 ^* What's dat you says?" cry ole 
 Mam Blizzard, stopin short all a suddin 
 an rubbin her nigh ear with a weeny 
 piece o black cloud, ** What's dat you 
 says?" 
 
 '*I say I'se stronger dan you is," an- 
 swer Mistah Sunshine, an he wunk an 
 eye at pretty Miss Moon jess gettin to 
 bed behind de hill. 
 
 Ole Miss Blizzard wuz mad. *^You is 
 stronger, is you?" say she. 
 
 *'Yes, I is," say Mastah Sunshine. 
 
 '*Well, we '11 see," say de ole lady 
 settlin down on dem clouds o hern, **Now 
 here, Mastah Sunshine, here is Colonel 
 Lampster's ole black mammy, an declare 
 to goodness she's got on de Colonel's 
 bearskin coat. Now I say to you, Mastah 
 Sunshine," say ole Mam Blizzard, **I 
 say to you, if you can take dat dere coat 
 
BRONZE AGE FABLES 265 
 
 off dis yere mammy sooner 'n I can, den 
 you is stronger dan I is. " 
 
 Mastah Sunshine he stop a minute an 
 thunk, an den he agree to what de ole 
 lady say. An all dis yere time I wuz 
 lopin long de road for to see de doctor 
 on count o my punyin ague. 
 
 Sudden like, quicker 'n a lamb can 
 jerk his tail, Mam Blizzard began fer to 
 blow. My gumbo! how she blowed! 
 An spry ! an cole ! Down she come outn 
 de sky an up she lift one side you pa^s 
 ole bear coat. Den dis did n't doin no 
 good, roun she whisk an lift up tother. 
 Den up she stretch her hand under de 
 coat an pull at de collar. Den she go 
 fer de buttons an sack at em, an sack. 
 Den dis yere did n't doin no good, she 
 try an crope inside an almost done freeze 
 me. 
 
 But every time Miss Blizzard goes fer 
 dat bearskin, I'se dat chillin dat I pulls 
 it tighter. I don't hanker fer Mam Bliz- 
 
266 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 zard, honey. Me an she wuz always 
 mislikin. 
 
 Now bumbye, after a powerful pullin 
 an a haulin, an I all de time holdin on 
 to dat coat, Mam Blizzard get roarin 
 mad an begin fer to send bats o ice. 
 She think like I take off dat coat to 
 cover my head, an so she grab it. But 
 I jess dat contrarious dat I turns up the 
 coat tail, an on I goes cantalopin down 
 de road. 
 
 So fer nigh a half an hour Mam 
 Blizzard pestered me. De ole lady is 
 prouder dan de queen o Sheeny when she 
 set matchin diamond rings wif King 
 Solomon, an she think o dem chillun of 
 hern way up in Mountany, all hangin up 
 in bags roun de cabin walls, waitin fer 
 dere icecicle icecream, an she did n't 
 w^ant to be beat. 
 
 But bumbye Mastah Sunshine he poke 
 out his face a little, an say, say he, 
 **How 's you gettin along, Mam Bliz- 
 zard T* — an he sort o laugh like. 
 
BRONZE AGE FABLES 267 
 
 *^It 's a mighty spry nigger, dis yere 
 ole mammy," say Mam Blizzard talkin 
 back over de grey cloud she was hitchin 
 to de top of a cottonwood, **aii I don't 
 seem to get dat coat. I '11 try once more 
 howmsoever. ' ' 
 
 Den de ole lady crope np sly an quiet 
 like, an kind o go zip, an bat me on de 
 north side. Den she go zap, an bat me 
 on de south. Den again she go down 
 under de coat an rack me like de ague. 
 An all de time I jess keep on cagin an 
 holdin faster to dat coat. 
 
 By dis time Mam Blizzard wuz clean 
 indiginant, honey. She stop a minute an 
 scowl, an den she onhitch her grey cloud 
 and sail off behind de hickory grove. 
 Seemed like she 'd never speak to no- 
 body. 
 
 Den Mistah Sunshine, he try to show 
 how strong he wuz. First he let a wink 
 right square in front. I feels like a 
 waffle fresh from de iron an I onties my 
 head. Den he wunk on one side an I 
 
268 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 wuz dat hot I muss plumb onbutton dat 
 coat. He kep a wunkin. 
 
 All dis time I 'se cagin long de road, 
 but soon I 'se so done het all over dat 
 I clean took off dat bearskin coat an sit 
 down by de Sweetwater spring to cool. 
 
 So it wuz dat Mastah Sunshine won 
 over ole Mam Blizzard. He wuz 
 stronger dan de ole lady cordin to what 
 she offered, for he 'd taken you pa's ole 
 bear coat off your ole mammy. 
 
 Miss Blizzard wuz so shamed dat she 
 kep away and did n't show her face in 
 dese yere parts fer a coon's age after. 
 
 An ever .since dat mornin, honey, I 'se 
 been a noticin dat warm is powerfuUer 
 dan cole, an de white folks an de black 
 is stronger when dey smiles like Mastah 
 Sunshine dan when day scowls like ole 
 Mam Blizzard. 
 
 Take another famous fable and make 
 as simple an English version as the 
 
BRONZE AGE FABLES 269 
 
 Greek of the four-line choliambic of 
 Ignatius Diaconus^ — said by his editor, 
 Muller, to have flourished in the ninth 
 century. 
 
 The Grasshoppee and the Ant 
 **In frost time a Grasshopper asked food 
 
 of an Ant. 
 The Ant said to him, ^How is it you have 
 
 n't anyr 
 *In summer,' he returned, *I sing shrilly.' 
 'Dance in winter,' she said, * do not yearn 
 
 after food.' " 
 
 Our English William Caxton, a volu- 
 minous translator, **at Westmynstre In 
 the yere of oure Lorde m.cccc. Ixxxiij" 
 made a version of this ** Fable of the 
 Ant and of the Sygale" and opened as 
 well as closed its recital with 1 'envoy. 
 
 **It is good to purveye hym self in the 
 somer season of suche thynges wherof 
 he shalle myster and have nede in wynter 
 
270 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 season. As thou mayst see by this pres- 
 ent fable Of the sygalle whiche in the 
 wynter tyme went and demaunded of the 
 ant somme of her Corne for to ete. 
 
 *^And thenne the ant sayd to the 
 sygalle, what has thou done al the somer 
 last passed? And the sygalle answered 
 I have songe. 
 
 *'And after sayd the ante to her. Of 
 my corne shallt not thou none have. 
 And yf thou hast songe alle the somer 
 danse now in wynter. 
 
 **And therefore there is one tyme for 
 to doo some labour and werk. And one 
 tyme for to have rest. For he that 
 werketh not ne doth no good shal have 
 ofte at his teeth grete cold and lacke at 
 his nede." 
 
 The celebrated Sir Eoger tells the 
 same tale in his edition of 1694: 
 
 '*As the Ants were Airing their Pro- 
 visions One Winter, Up come a Hungry 
 
BRONZE AGE FABLES 271 
 
 Grasshopper to ^em, and begs a Charity. 
 They told him that he should have 
 Wrought in Summer, if he would not 
 have Wanted in Winter. Well, says the 
 Grasshopper, but I was not Idle neither ; 
 for I Sung out the Whole Season. Nay 
 then, said they, You shall e'en do Well 
 to make a Merry Year on 't, and Dance 
 in Winter to the Tune you Sung in 
 Summer. ' ' 
 
 You see it reads with Greek reserve 
 and simplicity notably retained. Like 
 other stories of L 'Estrange 's book its 
 excellence has kept it a living publication 
 to this day. Yet, now, and in our coun- 
 try, a Southern mammy would tell the 
 fable somewhat after this detailed and 
 abounding fashion: 
 
 MiSTAH HOP-O-GEASS AN MiSS AnT 
 
 One summer day Mistah Hop-o-grass 
 sit out in de yard yonder, an he harp 
 powerful loud. Dar he sit playin an 
 
272 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 singin from soon after sun-up till de 
 dew wet Ms whistle at night. 
 
 So Mistah Hop-o-grass wuz, an so wuz 
 he goin on, when Miss Ant come a-puUin 
 an a-haulin some kernels of com out 
 dere in the garden path. Now Miss Ant 
 come from a mighty respectable f ambly, 
 honey, an dis yere minute when Mistah 
 Hop-o-grass wuz playin his handsomest, 
 de ole lady's apron strings wuz wet wif 
 sweat. 
 
 When Mistah Hop-o-grass see Miss 
 Ant doin f er-sure wuk at de corn kernels, 
 up he fling hisself in de air, light like, 
 an, **0h. Miss Ant," he say, **why you 
 wuk dis fiije summer day? Don't you 
 see de sun is shinin? Stop you wukin 
 an play de flute wif me." 
 
 **Yes, Mistah Hop-o-grass," say Miss 
 Ant, **it is a mighty fine sunnner day, 
 an dat 's de raisin I 's layin up corn for 
 de cole winter day. ' ' 
 
 When Miss Ant say dat, Mistah Hop- 
 
BRONZE AGE FABLES 273 
 
 0-grass laugh and scrape his fiddle all de 
 louder. 
 
 So he go on playin all de summer. 
 An Miss Ant she wuk, wuk, haulin craps 
 into de Ant corn bins, milkin de ants' 
 cows an tendin de Ants' chillun. She 
 wus de busiest of all busy pussons. 
 
 But bumbye summer got clean spent. 
 Mastah Sunshine nigh forgot to get up 
 in de mornin. De nights wuz long. 
 Mistah Man an Miss Bee an Miss Ant 
 had done stowed away all de craps, an 
 Mistah an Miss Squirrel had put away 
 all de nuts in dere pantry. 
 
 Den ole Mam Blizzard turn herself 
 loose, an Andrew Jackson Frost and 
 Mastah Wind-o-Christmas got wukin, an 
 de Blizzard chillun open up all dere ma's 
 feather beds. Folks wuz a-shiverin, an 
 out doors nuthin handy but ice an snow. 
 
 When so cole it wuz, Mistah Hop-o- 
 grass got de stummuck-hunger ; an he 
 got it bad. He call to mind de warm 
 
274 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 summer day when lie wuz playin yonder 
 in de garden an Miss Ant wuz layin away 
 de kernels o corn. 
 
 **Ali! hah!'' say he, an up he spring 
 an off he go, hoppin over de snow to 
 make de ole lady a visit. He think to 
 get there bout de time she 'd be settin de 
 table f er dinner. 
 
 When Mistah Hop-o-grass come to 
 Miss Ant's cabin, honey, he knock on de 
 door, an he call, **How d'y do. Miss Ant? 
 How is you fambly! Is dey enjoyin de 
 corn you lay up?" 
 
 Now dis yere Miss Ant wuz a mighty 
 particular lady, honey. Dis day she wuz 
 washin dQ floor more 'n usual scrump- 
 tious, cause she wuz goin to have a quiltin 
 bee dat afternoon. When Mistah Hop- 
 o-grass knock an call out, up she got up 
 from her bucket o suds, an she say, say 
 she, ** Who's dar? Pears like dat 's 
 you, Mistah Hop-o-grass. What is it 
 yousayl Eh?" 
 
 *' Please, Miss Ant," call Mistah Hop- 
 
BRONZE AGE FABLES 275 
 
 0-grass from tother side de door, an his 
 speakin wuz thin fer de hollow in his 
 insides, **Miss Ant, I'se come to see yon. 
 Won't you give me some corn to eatT' 
 
 Miss Ant, she jus open de door a trifle 
 to see whether Mistah Hop-o-grass wuz 
 as thin as his speakin. De lady wuz a 
 wishin she had more corn 'n just enough 
 for her fambly. But she's obleeged to 
 say, **What wuz you a doin all de sum- 
 mer days, Mistah Hop-o-grass! What 
 wuz you a doin? Ehr' 
 
 *^0h, I 'se playin my harp an singin,'' 
 say Mistah Hop-o-grass tryin to bend 
 his cole legs an make a squeak on his 
 strings, **I 'se playin my banjo an 
 dancin. ' ' 
 
 *^Yes, you 's playin," say Miss Ant. 
 '^Settin on a high stalk o grass bendin 
 in de wind, settin on a high stalk o grass 
 bendin in de wind, spittin tobacco juice 
 an playin jews' harp! Dat 's what 
 you 's doin all summer long. Go way 
 now, Mistah Hop-o-grass, go way. I'se 
 
276 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 not Wilkin to lay up corn f er such lazy 
 coots as you. Keep on playin an dancin, 
 Mistah Hop-o-grass, keep on playin till 
 summer time come again.'' 
 
 So den, honey, Miss Ant shet de door 
 of her cabin an go on washin de floor f er 
 de ladies' quiltin bee dat afternoon. 
 
 Mistah Hop-o-grass wuz done flabber- 
 gasted. He try to dance to warm his 
 legs. An when night come he cuddle 
 hisself in de middle of a sweetgum tree. 
 But his sleep wuz poor his stummuck hol- 
 lered so loud, an he could n't play his 
 harp, nor sing, f er de pain dat wuz under 
 his apron. 
 
 Mistah -Hop-o-grass wuz like one o 
 dese yere atheletes, honey, always buzzin 
 bout his muscle, fer his health jus a 
 jumpin an a jumpin, always buildin up 
 plenty o leg, an neveh, in all his caper- 
 cuttin, doin one stroke of wuk. He wuz, 
 dis Mistah Hop-o-grass, always sittin on 
 de stool o do-nothin. He spoil his muscle 
 
BRONZE AGE FABLES 277 
 
 if he wuk. Den lie have nothin to buzz 
 about. 
 
 Seems like dere's two kinds of muscle, 
 honey, de muscle what God's wuk makes, 
 and de muscle dese yere atheletes gets 
 by never wukin. 
 
 If brevity is the soul of the fable, as 
 Lessing reiterates, and its greatest orna- 
 ment is to have none at all, the darkey 
 mammies are astray. Whatever grace 
 may be of their recounting, it is not con- 
 cision. And if *^the object of the fable 
 is the clear and forcible perception of 
 some moral truth, ' ' as the German fabu- 
 list further declares, possibly penning 
 the stories of our mammies loses its 
 main end and sets forth bad art. But 
 to those who have listened to such tales 
 their entrancing qualities never fail. 
 
 What Lessing, 1729-1781, worked and 
 talked against, and that more than thirty 
 years before Goethe wrote his version of 
 
278 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 the mediaeval ^^Eeinecke Fuchs," was tlie 
 endeavor of certain German writers of 
 the eighteenth century to imitate the 
 poetic and expansive and exuberantly 
 vivacious narrative of the French 
 La Fontaine, 1621-1695. The German 
 would stem the sprightly, Frenchifying 
 loquacity his brothers were essaying — 
 which ill-fitted the temper of their 
 Deutsch speech, to say nothing of fidelity 
 to the severity and plainness of the 
 Greek and Latin originals. 
 
 Yet these German imitators, as La 
 Fontaine before them, were conscious 
 that the brief, unadorned narratives, the 
 precision and conciseness of Babrius and 
 Phaedrus and their later imitators, did 
 not, and would not, please their eigh- 
 teenth century generation. They saw 
 that with French tact and French taste, 
 and for a modern society demanding 
 grace in its reading. La Fontaine had 
 turned old fables, and the earlier French 
 fabliaux, into the most popular poetry 
 
BRONZE AGE FABLES 279 
 
 of his day. He had adapted the old tale 
 of those people who were ancients to the 
 ancients, and had fitted it and made it 
 attractive to his generation, for all years 
 of their life. To-day our conception is 
 often La Fontaine's. 
 
 This colloquy concerning tales old as 
 the spirit of literature hardly necessi- 
 tates inclusion of the famous quarrel 
 which stirred Europe more than two 
 hundred years ago — ^the strife hetween 
 ancient and modern literary excellence, 
 a reacting from all-compelling estimates 
 of the Renaissance, a dispute which lives 
 to us in remains such as Jonathan Swift's 
 '^Battle of the Books." It may permit, 
 however, the laying alongside diif erences 
 between methods of ancient folk and a 
 method of to-day. 
 
 Literary history is a register of liter- 
 ary forms meeting turns of view in 
 human life. New environment demands 
 and produces new and fresh expression. 
 Every generation hungers for stories 
 
280 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 made for it, interpreting its view of life. 
 It wants its tales told in its own way of 
 thinking and feeling, limning in its 
 chosen lines and colors. The ways Cax- 
 ton, toward the end of the fifteenth cen- 
 tury, and Cavalier L 'Estrange, at the 
 end of the seventeenth, told our two 
 fables in England, mark a considerable 
 psychical difference. Changes in the 
 affairs of a people, often results of war, 
 evolve new desires and tastes. These 
 literature and art spring forward to 
 satisfy. For instance, in Prance, in the 
 twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the rise 
 of orders neither priest nor noble, the 
 coming of a part of the people to con- 
 sciousness' of themselves and their 
 worth, the social environment about 
 them and the polity of their times — ^this 
 caused the rapid development and spread 
 of a gay and folk-humorous compound 
 of the old fable and the novel of that 
 day, the famous racial fabliaux, little 
 realistic tales for common folk, brim- 
 
BRONZE AGE FABLES 281 
 
 ming with their spirit, sharply jesting at 
 pretensions of superiors and especially 
 mocking at women. Literature had been 
 a luxury. To read, or even to hear, the 
 telling of many new stories had been 
 most often, as in all feudal societies, for 
 the favored of fortune. 
 
 Another instance, and a notable one, 
 of the evolution of new tastes and new 
 demands of literature, is found in an 
 effect of the French Eevolution. Half 
 way between that great whirlwind and 
 to-day, a learned Scotchman complained 
 of the appeal to the people that books of 
 his time made — ^the change in substance 
 from the condensed, sedate and grave to 
 lighter pabulum for the unexercised, less 
 strengthened, less taste-developed mind. 
 The weakness he lamented was in fact 
 the endeavor of writers of the time to 
 meet the populace which eighteenth 
 century pronunciamentos for human 
 rights had made readers. Those peo- 
 ples' minds were the real thing his close 
 
282 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 thinking combated. What would he have 
 said to the watery diffuseness of to-day ! 
 — in our democratic land and times when 
 even those who do not think practice the 
 art of writing! 
 
 Our ages-old fables go to the very core 
 of human life and manners, as we said 
 in the beginning — to life's primary 
 points of view. They are ethical teach- 
 ings in each language's genius, smack- 
 ing of antiquity, preserving foundation 
 morals, and bearing somewhat the force 
 of a race's religion. In this fact, some- 
 one has said, is the reason why they run 
 through human history with such aston- 
 ishing persistence, and, thousands or 
 tens of thousands of years old, adapt 
 themselves to all peoples and scenes, and 
 evince the temperament of every people 
 that essays their re-telling. In what- 
 ever colonization a race undertakes go its 
 version of its folk-tales. Like com- 
 merce, each nation's fables — each na- 
 
BRONZE AGE FABLES 283 
 
 tion's telling of the fables — follow its 
 flag. 
 
 Wandering stars in the literary 
 heavens, someone has named the com- 
 moner fables. It is true. They move 
 in and out of the constellations of the 
 literature of various peoples, smaller 
 and less sparkling lights, but apparently 
 as enduring, and sometimes shining with 
 as clear a radiance as the very fixed and 
 burning suns of literature. 
 
TOBACCO BATTERED AND 
 
 PIPES SHATTERED BY 
 
 JOSHUA SYLVESTER, 
 
 PURITAN 
 
We Shoot at Manners, Wee would save the Men. 
 
 "Tobacco Battered and The Pipes Shattered 
 (about their Ears that idly Idolize so base and 
 barbarous a Weed; at leastwise over-love so loath- 
 some Vanitie ; ) by a Volley of Hot Shot thundered 
 from Mount Helicon." 
 
 Joshua Sylvesteb. 
 
 A little cloud out of the sea, like a man's hand 
 . . . and it came to pass . . . that the heaven was 
 black with clouds. 
 
 / Kings xviii, 44> 4^- 
 
 Though many men crack 
 Some of ale, some of sack 
 
 And think they have reason to do it; 
 Tobacco hath more 
 That will never give o'er 
 
 The honor they do unto it. 
 
 "Wit's Recreation," 1650. 
 
 Learn to smoke slow. The other grace is 
 To keep your smoke from people's faces. 
 
 Punch. 
 
TOBACCO BATTERED AND 
 
 PIPES SHATTERED BY 
 
 JOSHUA SYLVESTER, 
 
 PURITAN 
 
 Portuguese folks, wandering in Lis- 
 bon gardens about the middle of tlie 
 sixteenth century, gazed with curiosity 
 upon an herb of which voyagers to the 
 new-found land, America, brought 
 strange tales. Sailors, for instance, such 
 as were with Columbus, and later his- 
 torians themselves, told how some of the 
 new world people ** drank ^' the smoke 
 of the outlandish growth, inhaling it 
 through the nostrils by means of a hol- 
 low, forked cane (shaped like the letter 
 Y) or a straight reed called **tobago," 
 while others rolling it in dried blades of 
 maize, made a firebrand for the mouth. 
 The leaves powdered, report also went, 
 
 287 
 
288 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 they snuffed through a tube. Not one 
 tribe had the voyagers found ignorant of 
 such uses.^ 
 
 The herb, the story went on, was ver- 
 itably **holy,'' a cure-all for humanity's 
 ills, a precious saver of life and an en- 
 hancer of all that life may contain. So 
 it happened that leaves and seeds of this 
 **herba santa,'' this **herba panacea," 
 Jean Nicot, French ambassador, took 
 from Lisbon gardens, about the year 
 1560, and sent them as rare and precious 
 things to Catherine de Medici, queen- 
 mother of the French court. Laden with 
 mysterious messages, tobacco came for 
 those times to be the miraculous remedy 
 our mystified, hopeful human kind has 
 ever been seeking and proclaiming ^ — 
 
 1 When the Spaniards discovered the Aztecs of 
 Mexico, they were taking snuff, and one of the 
 Conquistadores tells how, after Montezuma had dined, 
 fair women brought him painted and gilded tubes 
 filled with liquid-amber and tobacco; and the mon- 
 arch took the smoke into his mouth, and after he 
 had done this a short time, fell asleep. 
 
 2 Other growths have suffered, or enjoyed, like 
 ascriptions. Asparagus, for instance, in what seems 
 
 i 
 
"TOBACCO BATTERED" 289 
 
 each discovery, whether of the elixir 
 vitaB, elixir of life, of two, three or more 
 centuries ago, or of ** vibrations" of to- 
 day, reflecting its time's mental temper 
 and science. 
 
 At the time of this first bringing-over 
 of tobacco, peoples of Europe did not 
 know so much of the uses of primitive 
 men as we to-day. They did not know 
 that scented products of the earth — 
 frankincense, cinnamon, balm, camphor, 
 even the very weed to which they were 
 ascribing wonderful cures — mankind had 
 burned * * in offering an offering made by 
 fire, of a sweet savour unto the Lord, ' ' ^ 
 to express their gratitude to the Good 
 Giver of Harvests and beg for further 
 blessings — they did not know that for 
 
 to have been a revival of its use in Europe, for it 
 was known to the ancient Greeks — asparagus is re- 
 ferred to in an English play, "The Sparagus Garden," 
 acted in Salisbury Court in 1635; "The vertues of 
 the precious plant Asparagus, and what wonder it 
 hath wrought in Burgundy, Almaine, Italy and 
 Languedoc before the herborists had found the skill 
 to plant it here." 
 1 Numbers xv, 13. 
 
290 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 thousands of years, so far back we have 
 no record of the beginning of the hom- 
 age, men had offered burnt sacrifices to 
 the Infinite Will compared with whose 
 power they felt their own and their 
 tribe's strength puny. Our European 
 forebears were unaware, we say, that re- 
 ligious feeling initiated tobacco smoking 
 and founded reports of its healing 
 strength; that the strange, red people 
 across the sea smoked to, *^ incensed,'' 
 the Great Spirit in fumes of their stone 
 and cane pipes ; that they had faith that 
 their medicine-man, by inhaling vapor of 
 the smouldering leaves and falling in the 
 mysterious ^ stupor it induced, gained 
 counsel from a god, and when the people 
 at large took it the dreams of their 
 drunkenness were inspired. For with 
 the Indians smoking served such great 
 occasions as the worship of the Al- 
 mighty, thanksgiving for harvests, and 
 solemnities of declaring peace and war. 
 Who brought the weed to our ances- 
 
"TOBACCO BATTERED" 291 
 
 tors dwelling in England no man knows. 
 One legend says Sir John Hawkins ^ bore 
 it over, and that Captain Richard Gren- 
 field and Sir Francis Drake were in Eng- 
 land first planters. Another repeats 
 how Sir Walter Raleigh initiated white 
 men's smoking, and the tale stiffens its 
 testimony by the well-known account — 
 told also by the bye of others of that 
 generation — how the knight's servant, 
 one day finding him puffing at his pipe, 
 cried out that his master was on fire and 
 hastily doused him with ale. 
 
 Another story attributes the carrying 
 of tobacco to England to Ralph Lane, 
 first governor of Virginia, in 1585. 
 Early settlers of Virginia began planting 
 the weed, records are clear. It soon be- 
 came a chief product and even currency 
 
 1 Sir John Hawkins in telling of his first voyage, 
 18 Oct. 1564-20 Sept. 1565, reports how the natives 
 "with a cane and a earthen cup in the end, with fire, 
 and the dried herbs put together, do suck through 
 the cane the smoke thereof; which smoke satisfieth 
 their hunger, and therewith they live four or five 
 days without meat or drink." 
 
292 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 of the colony. Such a value, and thus 
 established, undoubtedly appealed to 
 popular imagination. In England, at 
 any rate, shortly after the introduction 
 of tobacco smoking, demand for the leaf 
 became great. The rich burned it in 
 silver pipes ; the poor in nut shells with 
 a straw stem. Not men alone, women, 
 also, used it — and even children. 
 
 Satirists of manners of those times 
 refer to smoking as a fad for those who 
 would do the last smart trick. Ben 
 Jonson, for instance, in ^* Every Man 
 in His Humor, ' ' a play produced in 1598, 
 makes Cob say of Bobadil, *'He takes 
 this same filthy, rougish tobacco"; and 
 the braggart captain himself declares; 
 **I have been in the Indies, where this 
 herb grows, where neither myself, nor a 
 dozen gentlemen of my knowledge, have 
 received the taste of any other nutriment 
 in the world, for the space of one-and- 
 twenty weeks, but the fume of this 
 simple only: therefore, it cannot be, but 
 
"TOBACCO BATTERED" 293 
 
 'tis most divine. Further, take it in the 
 nature, in the true kind ; so, it makes an 
 antidote, . . . had you taken the most 
 deadly poisonous plant in all Italy. . . . 
 But I profess myself no quacksalver. 
 Only this much; by Hercules, I do hold 
 it, and will affirm it before any prince 
 in Europe, to be the most sovereign and 
 precious weed that ever the earth ten- 
 dered to the use of man. ' ' 
 
 .During the passing of these years 
 while tobacco was making in England 
 the conquest we have glanced, Joshua 
 Sylvester had been growing to manhood, 
 having ventured this life near the 
 '* flowery meadows'' of Kent in 1563 — 
 one year before Shakespeare came to 
 earth. The seriousness of Joshua's 
 career began early, for his parents died 
 when he was of tender growth. But the 
 family was of sterling stock, of the breed- 
 ing that estimates knowledge and values 
 trained thinking, and a maternal uncle, 
 William Plumbe, saw to it that the child 
 
294 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 was well-nurtured and entered at ten 
 under Master Saravia's instruction.^ 
 Doubtless in those days, on benches of 
 Saravia's school, where not to speak 
 French was to earn the fooPs cap at 
 meals, the boy gained foundation of the 
 language, Englishing poems from which 
 he was, in after years, to distinguish 
 himself. 
 
 Sylvester's lack of fortune led him, 
 when still a youth, to test his luck in busi- 
 ness. And '^Marchant Adventurer'' he 
 described himself when he was grown 
 to manhood — on the title page of his 
 
 1 Adrian Saravia was a zealous worker in the re- 
 formed churcl^ in Antwerp and Brussels until re- 
 ligious troubles forced him to carry his family from 
 the continent. He exemplified the notable fact that 
 zeal in education and church reformation in those 
 days went hand in hand. At Southampton he tem- 
 porarily took up the work common to the intellectual 
 exile, teaching, and became head of the grammar 
 school into which boy Joshua Sylvester entered as 
 a pupil. Afterwards the master went to the divinity 
 chair at Leyden, and later returned to England to 
 become one of the translators of the King James 
 Bible, and, in the words of Izaak Walton, "the happy 
 author of many learned tracts" and the "chief com- 
 fort" of the life of Richard Hooker. 
 
"TOBACCO BATTERED" 295 
 
 translations of French songs, 1591 and 
 1592, while in his dedication of a second 
 book loyalty to adventure prompted him 
 to declare, ^*If thou find me poore in 
 Poetrie, remember that is not my pro- 
 fession." 
 
 If poetry was at that time not Sylves- 
 ter ^s profession, it affected his life more 
 profoundly than mercantile enterprise. 
 To understand his work we have now to 
 go still further afield and speak of an 
 older contemporary of his, Guillaume de 
 Salluste du Bartas, a French poet, who/ 
 during his life enjoyed a most extensive 
 renown — whose zeal as a Huguenot, 
 after he had left the Eoman communion, 
 prompted him, in endeavor to bring to 
 French people knowledge of characters 
 of the Bible and the book's simple Chris- 
 tian teachings, to extended labor on a 
 series of poems. Most notable and com- 
 plete of this epic was **La Semaine,'' 
 or ^*The Week" of the creation of the 
 world — which so pleased the imagination 
 
296 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 and taste of his day that it went through 
 thirty editions in six years, and found 
 translations into Latin, German, Span- 
 ish, Italian and other languages; and 
 into English by Joshua Sylvester under 
 the title, **Du Bartas — ^his First Weeke; 
 or, Birth of the World, wherein in Seven 
 Dayes the glorious Worke of The Crea- 
 tion is divinely handled.'' Eeligious 
 sentiment was the soul of Du Bartas' 
 poems, the intense, church-reformatory, 
 Huguenot zeal then in France. 
 
 In those days French verse moulded 
 more easily than now into English song, 
 and Sylvester leaped into fame as trans- 
 lator of Du.Bartas' *^ Divine Weekes and 
 Workes. " ' * He was admirably qualified 
 for the task. No writer ever ventured to 
 mould the language more freely to his 
 will, coining words, when he did not find 
 them ready minted for his use, introduc- 
 ing new compounds, good, or bad, with 
 equal hardiness. ... He poured out his 
 verse with force as well as fluency. . . . 
 
"TOBACCO BATTERED" 297 
 
 There was a sweetness in the general flow 
 which deservedly entitled him'* ^ to An- 
 thony a Wood's report that he was 
 usually called by the poets of his time 
 ** Silver-tongued Sylvester.'' 
 
 Through such a history Sylvester be- 
 came the most popular poet of England 
 in the reign of James the First. Un- 
 doubtedly a reason of his popularity lay 
 in the religious ardor that distinguished 
 his works — the ardor which was in him 
 by gift of nature and in the works he had 
 most sympathetically translated. He 
 was a Puritan. A famous favorer of 
 Puritanism, Bishop Joseph Hall, bears 
 out these conclusions of ours when ad- 
 dressing Sylvester: 
 
 * * I Dare conf esse, of Muses more than Nine, 
 Nor list, nor can I envie none, but thine. 
 She, drench 't alone in Sion's sacred Spring, 
 Her Maker 's praise hath sweetly chose to sing, 
 And reacheth nearest th' Angels notes above. 
 Nor lists to sing, or Tales, or Wars, or Love." 
 
 1 Quoted from Robert Southey. 
 
298 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 In citing one witness after anotlier, as 
 we have just been doing, we are sensible 
 that we run the risk of losing the outline 
 of our subject in fragmentary detail. 
 But in bringing back and brushing clear 
 of the dust of centuries such a character 
 as Sylvester's, one so little upborne and 
 floated by light, histrionic qualities, one 
 so sound, so profound in values, scraps 
 of reports are most important. And 
 they are all we have. We must labor as 
 one who builds up a vase from unearthed 
 shards and endeavors to decipher for- 
 gotten legends painted upon them. Pen 
 fragments of those who saw the man, 
 and could be trusted to understand him, 
 or those who heard at first hand of what 
 he had done, are our best aids. 
 
 This poet, Sylvester, wrote Anthony a 
 Wood, **was much renowned by his most 
 virtuous fame, and by those of his pro- 
 fession, and such that admire poetry, 
 esteemed a saint on earth, a true Na- 
 thaniel, a Christian Israelite ... re- 
 
"TOBACCO BATTERED" 299 
 
 ligious in himself and family and cour- 
 ageous to withstand adversity.^' 
 
 *^ Queen Elizabeth had a respect for 
 Sylvester," further says Wood, *^King 
 James a greater, and Prince Henry 
 greatest of all. ' ' The prince was declar- 
 edly *^ Puritanic" and made Sylvester 
 his first poet-pensioner.^ Another of 
 Sylvester's patrons and friends was 
 Anthony Bacon, elder brother of the re- 
 nowned Francis, and so close a follower 
 of the Puritans that he lived long on the 
 continent, a trusted servant of Elizabeth 
 and on intimate terms with Beza and 
 other Protestant leaders. 
 
 Sylvester *'was very pious and sober" 
 continues Wood. *'But this must be 
 
 1 Preserved among the items of "anuyties" ex- 
 pended at the instance of the prince is this: "Mr. 
 Silvester at XX. 1, per ann. for twoe years XL." 
 The poet testifies to this patronage in an elegy en- 
 titled "Lachrymae Lachrymarum, or the Distilla- 
 tion of Teares shede for the untymely Death of the 
 Incomparable Prince Panaretus" (all-virtuous), writ- 
 ten when the heir-apparent died in Nov. 1612; 
 
 "This losse ( alas ! ) which unto all belongs. . . . 
 But more than most, to Mee, that had no Prop 
 But Henry's Hand, and, but for Him, no hope." 
 
300 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 known, that lie taking too much liberty 
 upon him to correct the vices of the 
 times . . . suffered several times some 
 trouble, and thereupon it was, as I pre- 
 sume, that his step-dame country did 
 ungratefully cast him off and became 
 most unkind to him." 
 
 **At length this eminent poet,'' further 
 says Wood, *'J. Sylvester (a name 
 worthily dear to the age he lived in) 
 died at Middleburg in Zeland on the 28th 
 of Sept., 1618, aged fifty-five; and had 
 this epitaph following made on him by 
 his great admirer, Joh. Vicars ^ . . . 
 
 1 This John Vicars may be he of whom Wood bears 
 testimony, "he was a most admirable linguist, and 
 the best for the oriental tongues in his time." The 
 name, John Vicars, appears, it has been noted, in 
 original proposals for printing the Polyglot Bible, 
 as one of the persons to prepare copy, correct the 
 press and otherwise manage that work. 
 
 Vicars also wrote other verses on Sylvester; 
 "Whose Life and Labours have few Equalls knowne, 
 Whose Saered-Layes his Browes with Bayes have 
 
 bound, 
 And, Him, his Ages Poet-Laureate crowned, 
 Whom Envy (scarce) could hate; Whom All admired, 
 Who Liv'd beloved and a Saint expired." 
 
"TOBACCO BATTERED" 301 
 
 but I think it was not put over his 
 grave": 
 
 *'Here lyes (Death's too-rich Prize) the Corps 
 
 interred 
 Of Joshua Sylvester, Du Bartas Peer : 
 A Man of Arts best Parts, to God, man, deer ; 
 In foremost Rank of Poets best preferred." ^ 
 
 In a volume of Sylvester's works 
 printed a few years after his death, the 
 printer-publisher speaks of * * the issue of 
 
 1 Death found Sylvester, however, still destined 
 to do notable work. His strength in translating 
 Du Bartas, and venturing to mould English freely, 
 in all probability incited Milton to his great story. 
 Milton was ten when Sylvester died. The older poet's 
 couplets must have sung appealingly to the finely 
 tuned ear of the boy — "a poet at ten," says John 
 Aubrey. The very printing of Sylvester's transla- 
 tion of Du Bartas, editions appearing through years, 
 was not far from where Milton dwelt with his father. 
 If we lay Sylvester's and Milton's work alongside, 
 we can not escape conclusions that the scriptural 
 themes Sylvester had sung in English couplets and 
 placed before Milton when a boy — for which, too, the 
 older poet had helped prepare and educate public 
 taste — we can not escape conclusion that the intense 
 conviction, the imagination and ambition of Milton 
 matured, consciously seized for subject of his song 
 what had been most popular and applauded in his 
 boyhood. 
 
302 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 that divine Wif both challenging time 
 and outwearing it. And more than one 
 hundred and sixty years later, in 1796, 
 The Gentleman's Magazine tells that 
 Sylvester's translation of Du Bartas' 
 '* Divine Weekes and Workes" was more 
 common than any volume of English 
 verse of the first part of the seventeenth 
 century. Strange! you exclaim. And 
 why did the confessedly most popular 
 poet of the first half of the seventeenth 
 century so wholly perish in his appeal 
 to later generations 1 One reason is that 
 Milton's genius had outshone the older 
 man's. Another reason lies in reactions 
 in politics ajid in religious and ethical 
 ideals. These often direct literary taste. 
 We have Anthony a Wood dwelling on 
 Sylvester's piety and sobriety of mind — 
 saying he was inflamed with that reli- 
 gious ardor which carries its principles 
 into affairs of life — ** taking liberty upon 
 him to correct the vices of the times . . . 
 he suffered trouble. ' ' Intense conviction 
 
"TOBACCO BATTERED" 303 
 
 and stalwart adherence to conviction 
 were not uncommon in practices of his 
 time. But later Stuarts made them un- 
 fashionable and nullified by ridicule. 
 Stuart influence debased English ethical 
 estimates ; effects of which influence long 
 survived the Stuarts' hold upon the Eng- 
 lish throne. Dryden, who in earlier 
 years expressed admiration for Sylves- 
 ter, echoes the change when, after ad- 
 dressing himself to royal will, he termed 
 Sylvester's translation of Du Bartas 
 ** abominable fustian." ^ 
 
 1 Ben Jonson's sonnet "To Mr. Joshus Silvester" 
 may be here worth quoting; 
 
 "If to admire were to commend, my praise 
 Might then both thee, thy work and merit raise: 
 But as it is, (the child of ignorance. 
 And utter stranger to all air of France,) 
 How can I speak of thy great pains, but err? 
 Since they can only judge, that can confer. 
 Behold! the reverend shade of Bartas stands 
 Before my thought, and, in thy right, commands 
 That to the world I publish for him, this: 
 Bartas doth wish thy English now were his. 
 So well in that are his inventions wrought, 
 As his will now be the translation thought. 
 Thine the original; and France shall boast. 
 No more those maiden glories she hath lost. 
 
304 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 Sylvester had, we say, after the man- 
 ner of Puritans, carried his religious 
 ardor and its supporting principles into 
 everyday affairs of life. His work evi- 
 dences this. For instance, at the end of 
 his laborious translation of Du Bartas' 
 extended works are subscribed these 
 intense lines translated from the fifth of 
 the Quadrains of Pibrac : 
 
 ''Say not My Hand This Work to End hath 
 
 brought, 
 Nor, This my Virtue hath attained to : 
 Say rather thus. This God by mee hath 
 
 wrought, 
 GOD^S Author of the little Good I doe.'' 
 
 A characteristic religious ardor we 
 find in Sylvester's independent poems. 
 It warms in his *' All's not Gold that 
 Glisters" to a large and beautiful defi- 
 nition of religion : 
 
 ''Reverend RELIGION, where 's the heart 
 That entertaines thee as thou art, 
 Sincerely, for thine own respect? 
 
"TOBACCO BATTERED" 305 
 
 Where is the Minde, Where is the Man, 
 May right be call'd a Christian; 
 Not formall, but in true effect? 
 
 ''Who, fixing all his Faith and Hope 
 On God alone, from sacred Scope 
 
 Of his pure Statutes will not stray ; 
 Who comes in Zeal and Humblenesse, 
 With true and hearty Singlenesse, 
 
 Willing to walk the perfect Way: 
 
 ''Who loves, with all his Soule and Minde, 
 Almighty God, All-Wise, AU-kinde, 
 
 All- whole, All-Holy, All-sufficing: 
 Who but One onely God adores 
 (Though Tyrants rage, and Satan rores) 
 
 Without digressing, or disguising: 
 
 "Who God's due Honour hath not given 
 To Other things, in Earth or Heav'n; 
 
 But bow'd and vow'd to Him alone; 
 Him onely serv'd with filiall Awe, 
 Pleas 'd and delighted in his Law, 
 
 Discoursing Day and Night thereon: 
 
 "Not, not for Forme, or Fashion sake, 
 Or, for a Time, a Show to make. 
 Others the better to beguile : 
 
306 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 Nor it, in Jest, to wrest or cite; 
 But in his heart it deep to write, 
 And work it with his hands the-while; 
 
 *' Loving his neighbour as himself e. 
 Sharing to him his Power, his Pelfe, 
 
 His Counsel, Comforts, Coats and Cates : 
 Doing in all things to his Brother, 
 But as Himselfe would wish from Other, 
 
 Not Offring Other what hee hates : 
 
 *' Whose Heart, inclin'd as doth behove-it, 
 Unlawfully doth nothing covet 
 
 (To any an offence to offer) : 
 But, just and gentle towards all, 
 Would rather (unto great, or small) 
 
 Than doe one wrong, an hundred suffer: 
 
 **Not thirsting Others Land or Life; 
 Nor neighing after Maid or Wife ; 
 
 Nor ayming any Injury ; 
 Neither of polling, nor of pilling. 
 Neither of cursing, nor of killing. 
 
 Neither of Fraud, nor Forgerie; 
 
 *^But will confess, if he offend. 
 Relent, Repent, and soon amend, 
 And timely render Satisfaction. 
 
"TOBACCO BATTERED" 307 
 
 Sure, his religion is not f ained, 
 Who doth and hath him Thus demeaned ; 
 Ay, deadly hating Evill-action. 
 
 Sylvester's profound religious feeling 
 again rises to rolling organ tones at the 
 end of the poet's ^'Little Bartas'*: 
 
 *'Supernall Lord, Eternal King of Kings, 
 Maker, Maintainer, Mover of all things, 
 How infinite ! How excellently rare ! 
 How absolute ! Thy works, Thy wonders are 1 
 How much their knowledge is to be desir 'd ! 
 How THOU, in all, to be of all admir'd !" 
 
 Eeligion and reformatory zeal inflamed 
 Sylvester. That is clear. Like senti- 
 ments must have prompted his great skit 
 on tobacco. Smoking, we have seen, had 
 become fashionable in England during 
 the years Sylvester was schooling and 
 merchant-adventuring. To smoke was 
 to do the last smart trick; and men and 
 women and children essayed it. Then, 
 too, there were shallow-brained, solemn- 
 faced people proclaiming the weed's 
 
308 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 curative powers. Dramatists Dekker, 
 Thomas Heywood and others, and also 
 Edmund Spenser in his ** Faerie Queen," 
 had referred to the herb — oftenest in 
 laudation. Sir John Beaumont when 
 only nineteen, 1602, had told in even 
 couplets of **The Metamorphosis of To- 
 bacco," addressing his ** loving friend 
 Master Michael Drayton": 
 
 **Let me the sound of great Tabaccoes praise 
 A pitch above those love-sicke Poets raise : 
 Let me adore with my thrice-happie pen 
 The sweete and sole delight of mortall men, 
 The cornu-copia of all earthly pleasure, 
 Where bank-rupt Nature hath consumed her 
 
 treasure ! 
 A worthie plant springing from Floraes hand, 
 The blessed offspring of an uncouth land ! 
 Breath-giving herbe ! none others I invoke 
 To help me paint the praise of sugred smoke. ' ' 
 
 Such were early praises of tobacco. 
 But already reaction had set in. Oppo- 
 sition to the ** sugred smoke" devel- 
 oped, and a stand against '*this imita- 
 
"TOBACCO BATTERED" 309 
 
 tion of the manners of savage people." 
 William Camden voiced this in saying 
 that by smoking English folk would de- 
 generate — ^^Anglorum corpora in bar- 
 barorum degenerasse videantur." And 
 outside England, in other countries, 
 hatred of tobacco was prohibiting it as an 
 abomination ; a pope or two even issuing 
 decrees against its use in churches. The 
 wheel of fortune had turned. The so- 
 called first smoker in England, Sir 
 Walter Ealeigh, was himself finally pass- 
 ing sombre years in prison under sen- 
 tence of death for conspiracy.^ 
 
 This evolving antagonism found its 
 first notable outbreak in **A Counter- 
 Blaste to Tobacco ' ' published in the year 
 1604, and written by the King of Eng- 
 
 1 James' hatred of tobacco, it has been said, has- 
 tened Raleigh's execution in 1618. Raleigh "hoped 
 to perswade the world that he dyed an innocent 
 man,'* wrote Dr. Robert Tounson, Dean of West- 
 minster, having been commanded by Lords of 
 the Council "to sett downe the manner of his death" ; 
 that day Raleigh "eate his breakfast hertily, and 
 tooke tobacco." 
 
310 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 land. James' **Blaste" dimmed some- 
 what of the glorious story enveloping 
 the **herba panacea" — even if it fanned 
 pipes to flame in protest. The king not 
 only wrote his great skit, he otherwise 
 emphasized his aversion by imposing on 
 tobacco a heavy tax, and, when English 
 farmers began to grow the herb, added 
 a law against **to misuse and misemploy 
 the soil of this fruitful kingdom. ' ' 
 
 **Our Peace hath bred wealth:"^ 
 wrote James: **And Peace and wealth 
 hath brought foorth a generall sluggish- 
 nesse, which makes us wallow in all sorts 
 of idle delights, and soft delicacies. . . . 
 There cannot be a more base, and yet 
 hurtfuU corruption in a Countrey, then 
 is the vile use (or other abuse) of taking 
 Tobacco." 
 
 ** Omnipotent power of Tobacco!" 
 . . . **Many in this kingdom have had 
 such a continuall use of taking this un- 
 
 1 Spelling and capitals in these excerpts follow an 
 old edition. 
 
"TOBACCO BATTERED'* 311 
 
 saverie smoke, as now they are not able 
 to forbeare the same, no more than an 
 olde drunkard can abide to be long sober, 
 without falling into an incurable weak- 
 nesse and evill constitution. ... It is, 
 as you use or rather abuse it, a branche 
 of the sinne of drunkenesse. . . . You 
 are not able to ride or walke the journey 
 of a Jewes Sabboth, but you must have 
 a reekie cole brought you from the next 
 poore house to kindle your Tobacco 
 with. . . . 
 
 **And for the vanities committed in 
 this filthie custome, is it not both great 
 vanitie and uncleanenesse, that at the 
 table, a place of respect, of cleanlinesse, 
 of modestie, men should not be ashamed, 
 to sit tossing Tobacco pipes, and puffing 
 of the smoke of Tobacco one to another, 
 making the filthie smoke and stinke 
 thereof, to exhale athwart the dishes, and 
 infect the aire, when very often, men 
 that aborrre it are at their repast? . . . 
 
 '^And is it not a great vanitie, that a 
 
312 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 man cannot heartily welcome his friend 
 now, but straight they must bee in hand 
 with Tobacco? ... he that will' refuse 
 to take a pipe of Tobacco among his 
 fellowes ... is accounted peevish and 
 no good company, even as they doe with 
 tippeling in the cold Easterne Coun- 
 tries. . . . 
 
 *^ Moreover, which is great iniquitie, 
 and against all humanitie, the husband 
 shall not bee ashamed, to reduce thereby 
 his delicate, wholesome, and cleane com- 
 plexioned wife, to that extremitie, that 
 either shee must also corrupt her sweete 
 breath therewith, or else resolve to live 
 in a perpetuall stinking torment. ' ' 
 
 Tobacco-smoking, declared King 
 James, is **a custome lothsome to the 
 eye, hatefuU to the Nose, harmfuU to the 
 braine, dangerous to the Lungs, . . . and 
 in the blacke stinking fume thereof, 
 neerest resembling the horrible Stigian 
 smoke of the pit that is bottomlesse. " 
 
 *^Such is the force of that naturall 
 
"TOBACCO BATTERED" 313 
 
 Self-love in every one of us," continued 
 the King, *^and such is the corruption 
 of envie bred in the brest of every one, 
 as we cannot be content unlesse we 
 imitate everything that our f ellowes doe, 
 and soe proove ourselves capable of 
 everything whereof they are capable, 
 like Apes, counterfeiting the maners of 
 others, to our owne destruction . . . the 
 generall good liking and imbracing of 
 this foolish custome, doeth but onely pro- 
 ceede from that affectation of noveltie, 
 and popular errour." 
 
 King James made plain the royal de- 
 testation of tobacco. A simple Puritan 
 subject of his, Joshua Sylvester, had like 
 hatred of ^ ^ the soveraine weede,' ' and he, 
 too, put forth a protest in *^ Tobacco 
 Battered and The Pipes Shattered 
 (about their Ears that idly Idolize so 
 base and barbarous a Weed; at least- 
 wise over-love so loathsome Vanitie;) by 
 a Volley of Hot Shot thundered from 
 Mount Helicon. '* When the poem was 
 
314 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 published is not clear. Lines in it would 
 show that it followed James' ^^Counter- 
 Blaste'': 
 
 ''When Our Alcides (though at Peace with 
 
 men, 
 At War with Vices) as His armed Pen, . . . 
 Hath, as with Arrowes, from His sacred Sides, 
 All-ready chac't These stinking Stympha- 
 
 lides". . .^ 
 
 Sylvester's seizure by intense convic- 
 tion and his courage in endeavoring to 
 correct vices of his time, his profound 
 religious feeling — these characteristics 
 of his must now have buoyed him. Ex- 
 cesses in what he termed a lately im- 
 ported custom of savages, self-indul- 
 gences that led his brothers to destruc- 
 tion, stirred him. **We Shoot at Man- 
 ners," he cried, **Wee would save the 
 
 1 The volumea from which these lines, the fore- 
 going quotations from Sylvester, and the excerpts 
 following were made, were printed in London in 
 1633 and 1641. Their frequent italics are omitted, 
 but spelling and capitals are kept; and punctua- 
 tion, so far as possible. 
 
"TOBACCO BATTERED" 315 
 
 Men.'' Those who read the poem can 
 not doubt the writer's moral earnestness, 
 his genuine and devoted ardor to work 
 reform. His ethics are undeniably sin- 
 cere and lofty. 
 
 To-day our first thought may be that 
 the wit of the verse is stronger than we, 
 ourselves, discover. Yet such was in 
 the mouth, and flowed in the ink, of 
 Marlowe, Green, Shakespeare, Ben Jon- 
 son, Drayton. Those people talked 
 straight forward. They were not apt at 
 vague abstractions and at calling up a 
 haze. They did not use analytic, scien- 
 tific, Greek and Latin words, in which 
 practical, racy thought is often fog- 
 bound to-day. Terse, homely phrase, 
 smacking of the soil, was their wont. In 
 such Sylvester makes clear his message. 
 A native quaintness and individual tang 
 are in every couplet. Indulging whim- 
 sicalities, his fantasy takes on added 
 warmth and his spirit bears fresh evi- 
 dence of conviction. 
 
316 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 Growls of this stern old English Puri- 
 tan appeal with double force to those of 
 us of to-day who believe in our right not 
 to be smoked — who believe in the per- 
 sonal liberty which refuses to permit 
 another to force stale, nauseating smoke 
 into mouths and lungs clean and inno- 
 cent of their use. To-day an American 
 citizen walking our streets, and even in 
 our parks, our post-offices and other 
 public buildings, has small chance for 
 sanitary clear air. A misguided boy is 
 apt to be before him puffing at a poison- 
 loaded cigarette, or, at his hand an alien 
 with a pipe or *^ brand," the offence of 
 which smells to heaven. 
 
 ** Needs must I band against the needless 
 Use 
 Of Don Tobacco and his f oule abuse : 
 Which (though in Inde it be an Herbe indeed) 
 In Europe is no better than a Weed ; 
 Which, to their Idols, Pagans sacrifice, 
 And Christians (heer) doe wel-nigh Idolize: 
 Which taking, Heathens to the Divels bow 
 
"TOBACCO BATTERED" 317 
 
 Their Bodies ; Christians even their Soules do 
 
 vow. . . . 
 Two smoakie Engines, in this latter Age 
 (Satans short Circuit; the more sharp his 
 
 rage.) 
 Have been invented by too-wanted "Wit, 
 Or rather, vented from th' Infernall Pit, 
 Guns and Tobacco-pipes, with Fire and 
 
 Smoak ; 
 (At least) a Third part of Mankind to choak: 
 (Which happely, th' Apocalyps fore-told) 
 Yet of the Two, Wee may (think I) be bold, 
 In som respects, to think the Last, the Worst, 
 (How-ever Both in their Effects accurst.) 
 For, Guns shoot from-ward, only at their 
 
 Foen; 
 Tobacco-Pipes, home-ward, into their Owne 
 (When, for the Touch-hole, firing the wrong 
 
 end, 
 Into our Selves the Poysons force wee send) ; 
 Those, in the Field, in brave and hostile 
 
 manner ; 
 These, Cowardly, under a Covert Banner : 
 Those, with Defiance, in a Threatful Terror; 
 These, with Affiance, in a wilfuU Error: 
 Those (though loud roaring, goaring deep, 
 
 quick ridding) 
 
318 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 These, stilly stealing, longer Languors breed- 
 ing; 
 
 Those, full of pain (perhaps) and fell de- 
 spight: 
 
 These, with false Pleasure, and a seem-delight 
 
 (As Cats with Mice, Spiders with Flies) full 
 rife. 
 
 Pipe-playing, dallying, and deluding Life. 
 
 /'Who would not wonder, in these Sunny- 
 Dayes 
 
 (So bright illightned with the Gospel's 
 Rayes) 
 
 Whence so much Smoak, and deadly Vapours 
 com, 
 
 To dim and damne so much of Christendome ? 
 
 But, wee must ponder too. These dales are 
 ThosQ 
 
 Wherein the Divell was to be let lose ; 
 
 And yawning broad Gate of that black Abyss 
 
 To be set ope, whose bottom bound-lesse is ; 
 
 That Satan, destin'd, evermore to dwell 
 
 In Smoakie Fornace of that darkesom Cell, 
 
 In Smoak and darkness, might inure and 
 train 
 
 His Own deer Minions, while they heer re- 
 main. . . . 
 
"TOBACCO BATTERED" 319 
 
 **Then, in Despite, who-ever dare say Nay, 
 Tobacconists, keep-on your course : you may, 
 If you continue in your Smoakie Ure, 
 The better far Hell's sulph'ry Smoak endure ; 
 And heerin (as in All your other Evill) 
 Grow neerer still and liker to the Divell : 
 Save that the Divell (if hee could revoke) 
 Would flee from filthy and unhealthy Smoak : 
 Wherein (cast out of Heave 'n for hellish 
 
 pride) 
 Unwilling Hee, and forced, doth abide: 
 Which, heerin worse than hee (the worst of 
 
 111) 
 You long-for, lust-for, ly-for, dy-for still. 
 For, as the Salamander lives in Fire, 
 You live in smoak, and without smoak expire. 
 
 '* Should it be question 'd (as right well it 
 
 may) 
 Whether Discovery of America 
 That New-Found World, have yeelded to our 
 
 Old 
 More Hurt or Good: Till fuller Answer 
 
 should 
 Decide the Doubt, and quite determine it, 
 Thus for the present might wee answer 
 
 fit: . . . 
 
320 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 '^But true it is, wee had this Trash of 
 Theirs, 
 
 Only in Barter of our broken Wares. 
 
 Ours, for the most part, carried out but sin; 
 
 And, for the most part, brought but Ven- 
 geance in : . . . 
 
 They carried Avarice, and Gold they got : 
 
 They carried Bacchus and Tobacco brought. 
 
 Alas, poor Indians! that, but English, None 
 
 Could put them down in their owne Trade 
 alone! . . . 
 
 ''Of All the Plants that Tellus bosom 
 yeelds, 
 
 [n groves, glades, gardens, marshes, moun- 
 tains, fields, 
 
 None so pernicious to Man's Life in knowne, 
 
 As is Tobacco, saving Hemp alone. 
 
 Betwixt which Two there seems great Sym- 
 pathy 
 
 To ruinate poor Adam's Progeny: 
 
 For, in them Both, a strangling vertue note, 
 
 And both of them doe work upon the Throte ; 
 
 The one, within it ; and without, the other ; 
 
 And th' one prepareth Work unto the tother. 
 
 For There doe meet (I meen at Gail and Gal- 
 lowes) 
 
"TOBACCO BATTERED" 321 
 
 More of these beastly, base Tobacco-Fel- 
 
 lowes, . . . 
 Sith 'tis their common Lot (so double- 
 
 choaked) 
 Just Bacon-like, to be hang'd up and smoaked : 
 A Destiny, as proper to befall 
 To morall Swine, as to Swine naturall. 
 
 ''Now, my first Puff shall but repell th' ill 
 favour 
 
 Of Place and Persons (of debauscht behav- 
 iour) 
 
 "Where 'tis most frequent : Second, shew you 
 will, 
 
 How little Good it doth: Third, how great 
 111. 
 
 'Tis vented most in Taverns, Tippling-cots, 
 
 To Ruffians, Roarers, Tipsie-Tostie Pots; 
 
 Whose Custom is, between the Pipe and Pot, 
 
 (Th' one Cold and Moist, the other dry and 
 Hot) 
 
 To skirmish so (like Sword and Dagger- 
 fight) 
 
 That 'tis not easie to determine right. 
 
 Which of their Weapons hath the Conquest 
 got 
 
 Over their Wits; the Pipe, or else the Pot. 
 
322 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 Yet 'tis apparent, and by proof express, 
 Both stab and Wound the Brain with Drunk- 
 enness : 
 For even the Derivation of the Name 
 Seems to allude and to include the same : 
 Tobacco, as rw paKxoi, one would say ; 
 To (Cup-god) Bacchus dedicated ay. . . . 
 
 ''0 Great Tobacco! greater than Great 
 
 Can, 
 Great Turke, Great Tartar, or Great Tam- 
 
 berlan ! 
 With Vulturs wings Thou haste (and swifter 
 
 yet 
 Than an Hungarian Ague, English Sweat) 
 Through all Degrees, flown far, nigh, up and 
 
 down; 
 From court to cart; from Count to country 
 
 Clown, 
 Not scorning Scullions, Coblers, Colliers, 
 Jakes-farmers, Fidlers, Ostlers, Oysterers, 
 Roagues, Gypsies, Players Pandars, Punks, 
 
 and All 
 What common Scums, in common-Sewers fall. 
 For, all, as Vassals, at thy beck are bent, 
 And breathe by Thee, as their new Element. 
 Which well may prove thy Monarchy the 
 
 Greater ; 
 
"TOBACCO BATTERED" 323 
 
 Yet prove not Thee to be a whit the better; 
 But rather Worse: for, Hell's wide-open Road 
 Is easiest found, and by the Most still 
 trod! . . . 
 * ' If then Tobaceoning be good : How is 't, 
 That lewdest, loosest, basest, foolishest, 
 The most unthrifty, most intemperate. 
 Most vitious, most debauscht, most desperate, 
 Pursue it most : The Wisest and the Best 
 Abhor it, shun it, flee it, as the Pest. . . . 
 
 *'My second Puff, is Proof How little Good 
 This Smoak hath don (that ever heer I cou'd) . 
 For, first, there's none that takes Tobacco 
 
 most. 
 Most usually, most earnestly can boast 
 That the excessive and continuall use - 
 Of this dry Suck-at ever did produce 
 Him any Good, Civill, or Naturall, 
 Or Morall Good, or Artificiall : 
 Unless perhaps they will alledge, it drawes 
 Away the 111 which still it Self doth cause. 
 Which course (meethinks) I can not liken bet- 
 ter 
 Than to an Usurer's kindness to his Debter; 
 Who under shew of lending, still subtracts 
 The Debters Owne, and then his own exacts; 
 Till at the last hee utterly confound-him. 
 
324 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 Or leave him worse and weaker than he f ound- 
 him. ... 
 
 **My Third and last Puff points at the great 
 
 Evill 
 This noisom Vapour works through wily 
 
 divell ; 
 If we may judge : if knowledge may be had 
 By their Effects, how things be good or 
 
 bad. . . . 
 For, first of all, it falls on his Good-name; 
 And so be-smears, and so be-smoaks the same, 
 That never after scarce discerned is 't. 
 Rare good Report of a Tobacconist: . . . 
 
 *'For, if a Swearer or a Swaggerer, 
 A Drunkard, Dicer, or Adulterer, 
 Prove a Tobbacconist, it is not much: 
 'Tis sutable, 'tis well beseeming Such : . . . 
 
 "But, let it be of any truly said, 
 Hee's great, religious, learned, wise or staid; 
 But hee is lately turn'd Tobacconist: 
 0! what a Blur! what an Abatement is 
 
 't! . . . 
 
 '*It ill beseems a Church, CoUedge or Court, 
 Or any place of any civill sort : 
 
"TOBACCO BATTERED'* 325 
 
 It fits Blasphemers, Euffians, Atheists, 
 Dam'd Libertines, to be Tobacconists: 
 Not Magistrates, not Ministers, not SehoUers, 
 (Who are, or should be, sins severe Comptrol- 
 lers) 
 Nor any wise and sober personage, 
 Of Gravity, of Honesty, of Age. . . . 
 
 '*Next the Good-name, now let the Body 
 show 
 What wrongs to it from our Tobacco flow : 
 For, as That is Man's baser Part indeed. 
 It is most basely handled by this Weed. . . . 
 
 **But the most certain and apparent 111 
 Is an 111 Habit which doth haunt them still ; 
 Transforming Nature from her native Mould : 
 For, Custom wee another Nature hold. 
 And this vile Custom is so violent, 
 And holds his Customers at such a Bent, 
 That tho thereby more hurt than good they 
 
 doubt : 
 To die for it, they can not live without. . . . 
 Yet doth the Custom (as wee likewise finde) 
 Dis-nerve the Bodie, and dis-apt the Mind. 
 
 '* First, in the Intellect, it d' outs the Light, 
 Darkens the House, th' understandings 
 Sight; . . . 
 
326 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 '*Next it decayes and mars the Memorie, 
 And brings it to strange Imbeeillitie. . . . 
 
 *' Touching th' Affections, they are tyr'd no 
 
 lesse 
 By this fell Tyrants insolent Excesse : . . . 
 Makes men more sudden, and more heed-less 
 
 heady. 
 More sullen sour, more stubbornely-unsteady, 
 More apt to wrath, to wrangle, and to braule ; 
 To give and take a Great offence, for 
 
 Small. . . . 
 
 ''But, if they say, that sometimes, taking it, 
 The Minde is fre'ed from some instant Fit 
 Of Anger, Grief e, or Feare; Experience tells 
 It is but like some of our Tooth-ake Spells, 
 Which for the present seem to ease the Pain, 
 But after, double it with more Rage again; 
 Because a little, for the time, it drawes, 
 But leaves behinde the very Root and Cause. 
 
 ** Lastly, the Conscience (as it is the best) 
 This Indian Weed doth most of all molest ; 
 Loading it daily with such Weight of Sin, 
 Whereof the least shall at the last com-in 
 To strict Account : the Losse of precious hours 
 Neglect of God, of Good, of Us, of Ours : 
 
"TOBACCO BATTERED" 327 
 
 Our ill Example, prodigall Excess, 
 
 Vain words, vain Oaths, Dice, Daring, Drunk- 
 enness, 
 
 Sloath, Jesting, Scoffing, turning Night to 
 Day, 
 
 And Day to Night ; Disorder, Disaray ; 
 
 Places of Scorn and public Scandall hanting ; 
 
 Persons of base and beastly Life frequent- 
 ing. . . . 
 
 This is the Eendez-vous, These are the Lists, 
 
 Where doe encounter most Tobacconists. . . . 
 
 *'The Last and least of all ToBAcco-harms, 
 Is to the Purse : which yet it so becharms. 
 That Juggler-like it jests-out all the Pelf, 
 And makes a Man a Pick-purse to him- 
 selfe. . . . 
 
 *'How juster will the Heav'nly God 
 Th' Eternall, punish with infernall Rod: 
 In Hell dark Fomace (with black Fumes to 
 
 choak) 
 Those, that on Earth will still offend in 
 
 Smoak? 
 Offend their Friends, with a Most un-Respect : 
 Offend "Wives and Children, with Neglect : 
 Offend the Eyes, with foule and loathsom 
 
 spawlings : 
 
328 WORKFELLOWS IN PROGRESSION 
 
 Offend the Nose, with filthy Fumes exhalings : 
 Offend the Eares, with loud lewd Execrations : 
 Offend the Mouth, with ugly Excreations : 
 Offend the Sense, with stupefying Sense: 
 Offend the Weake, to follow their Offence : 
 Offend the Body, and offend the Minde : 
 Offend the Conscience in a fearefuU kinde. 
 Offend their Baptisme, and their Second 
 
 Birth : 
 Offend the Majestic of Heaven and Earth. 
 
 ''Woe to the World because of such Of- 
 fences ; 
 So voluntaire, so voyd of all pretences 
 Of all Excuse (save Fashion, Custome, Will) 
 In so apparent, proved, granted, 111. 
 Woe, woe to them by Whom Offences come; 
 So scandalous to All our Christendom." 
 • 
 
 FINIS 
 
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 Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
 Treatment Date: Oct. 2009 
 
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