1 
 
 IBetngjiud Pottu^ 
 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 
 
 ),....! a 
 
 - 
 
 Chap. &i>r 'Copyright No.,. 
 ShelldSsa 
 
 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 
 
 
"LIFE" SERIES. 
 
 Love took up the glass of Time, and turn'd it in his 
 
 glowing hands ; 
 Every moment, lightly shaken, ran itself in golden 
 
 sands. 
 
 Love took up the harp of Life, and smote on all the 
 
 chords with might; 
 Smote the chord of Self, that, trembling, pass'd in 
 
 music out of sight. 
 
"LIFE" SERIES. 
 <«- 
 
 Lowell Times.— The books are very beautiful, and 
 excellently adapted for simple gifts. Their value, 
 however, is in their contents: self-development, 
 helpfulness, unselfishness, great-hearted manliness. 
 
 The House Beautiful, By William C. Gannett. 
 
 As Natural as Life, By Charles G. Ames. 
 
 In Love with Love, By James H. West. 
 
 A Child of Nature, By Marion D. Shutter. 
 
 Power and Use, By John W. Chadwick. 
 
 Being and Doing, By Various Authors. 
 
 Farther On, By Various Authors. 
 
 Love Does It All, By Ida Lemon Hildyard. 
 
 Baltimore American. — There is a strengthening, 
 tranquil, uplifting power in these little books that 
 makes one cherish for them, when they have been 
 enjoyed and laid aside, the warm, grateful senti- 
 ment with which we treasure dear friends. 
 
 Cloth, beveled, neatly stamped, each 50 cents. 
 
 Special white and gold edition, full gilt edges, in box, 
 
 each ft cents. 
 
 Descriptive circular on application. 
 
 <*- 
 
 *#* For sale by booksellers, or sent, postpaid, on 
 receipt of price, by 
 
 JAMES H. WEST, Publisher, Boston, Mass. 
 
BEING AND DOING. 
 
To Be ! to Do ! To have the zeal to climb 
 O'er all the shocks of Fate to zones sublime ! 
 To know that Time's successes, — praise and blame, — 
 Are transient fires however tierce they flame ; 
 That soon and late are equal, — death and birth, — 
 And love's sweet dominance alone of worth; 
 That toil and struggle and pain's agony- 
 Are nothing if the inner eye but see ! 
 To realize, though cumbered in earth's ooze, 
 That there are heights with ever vaster views 
 To which the soul is hasting, freed from strife ! — 
 This is the spirit's pole-star — this is life. 
 
Being and Doing 
 
 FIVE LIFE -STUDIES 
 
 William C. Gannett, Arthur M. Tschudy, 
 
 Paul R. Frothingham, Samuel M. Crothers, 
 
 James M. Leighton. 
 
 
 OSTON 
 
 James H. West, Publisher 
 174 High Stbeet 
 
 FGEIVED 
 
**f!l 
 
 * 
 
 Copyright, 1897, 
 By JAMES H. WEST. 
 
cO 
 
 Three camels, o'er the desert sands, 
 Bore travelers from distant lands. 
 When far domes gleamed through hazy air, 
 One said, — It is a time for prayer. 
 
 Alighting, in his camel's shade 
 Each bowed him to the earth and prayed. 
 And each one named his soul's desire 
 To him who gave men hearts of fire. 
 
 The first one prayed, — My purpose bless, 
 Give this world's honor its success. 
 Prolong my days. As I grow old 
 Increase my lands, my friends, my gold. 
 
 The second said, — Forgive my sin, 
 That I thy heaven at last may win. 
 O'er life's last wreck my soul would rise, 
 To walk with thee in Paradise. 
 
 The last one prayed, — O Heart above ! 
 Whose ways are hid, but hid in love, 
 Give me through labor, rue and strife, 
 To enter deeper into life. 
 
 — Bwight M. Hodge. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Culture without College 9 
 
 By William C. Gannett. 
 
 Accepting Oubselves 35 
 
 By Authur M. TSCHUDY. 
 
 Beauty of Character 61 
 
 By Paul R. Fjrothingham. 
 
 MAKING THE BEST OF It 83 
 
 By Samuel M. Crothees. 
 
 Winter Fires 95 
 
 By James M. Leighton. 
 
CULTURE WITHOUT COLLEGE. 
 
 BY 
 
 William C. Gannett. 
 
Very early, I perceived that the object of life is to 
 grow. — Margaret Fuller, 
 
 Progress, in the sense of acquisition, is something; 
 but progress in the sense of being is a great deal more. 
 To grow higher, deeper, wider, as the years go on; to 
 conquer difficulties, and acquire more and more power; 
 to feel all one's faculties unfolding, and truth descend- 
 ing into the soul,— this makes life worth living. 
 
 — James Freeman Clarke. 
 
 I have a stake in every star, 
 
 In every beam that fills the day; 
 All hearts of men my coffers are, 
 
 My ores arterial tides convey; 
 The fields, the skies, the sweet replies 
 
 Of thought to thought are my gold-dust: 
 The oaks, the brooks, and speaking looks 
 
 Of lover's faith and friendship's trust. 
 
 "All mine is thine," the sky-soul saith: 
 " The wealth I am, must thou become; 
 Kicher and richer, breath by breath, 
 Immortal gain, immortal room ! " 
 And since all his mine also is, 
 
 Life's gift outruns my fancies far, 
 And drowns the dream in larger stream, 
 As morning drinks the morning star. 
 
 — David A. Wasson. 
 (8) 
 
CULTURE WITHOUT COLLEGE. 
 
 One boy and one girl can go to Harvard 
 College or Wellesley, to Ann Arbor or 
 Cornell, while a thousand boys and girls can- 
 not go : let not the thousand think that culture 
 without college is impossible for them. It is 
 well to always remember this ; and well, in con- 
 nection, to say over to ourselves now and then 
 certain homely old truths about education which 
 we are apt to forget; old truths which those 
 who go to school, and those who are through 
 school, and those who hardly ever have had a 
 chance for school, all equally need to bear in 
 mind; homely truths which the schoolmasters 
 and the school books comparatively little em- 
 phasize, yet which are more important than 
 anything which they do emphasize ; truths 
 about the fundamental education, that which 
 underlies all other education, and which all 
 
10 CULTURE WITHOUT COLLEGE. 
 
 the rest is for, and which goes on independently 
 of time and place, equally in school and out 
 of it, equally in term-time and in vacation, 
 equally in youth and in age. But this is the 
 word to keep to the front: One girl and one 
 boy can go to Harvard or Wellesley, while a 
 thousand cannot: let not the thousand think 
 that culture without college is impossible for 
 them. 
 
 Of the thousand, however, many may hurry 
 to say, that they do not care for " culture," 
 anyway. Yet " culture " is but a sort of glory- 
 word for " education." There is a flower hint 
 in " culture " that suggests not only the process 
 of growing and unfolding, but the beauty of 
 the blossom and the service of the fruit at 
 last. When men laugh at it, their very mis- 
 spelling — "culchur" — shows that what they 
 laugh at is not the real thing, but some dwarf 
 or caricature that apes the real thing. No one 
 who is wise laughs at true culture. Everyone 
 who is wise wants it. Everybody who is wise 
 tries for it. Culture is that which turns the 
 little, sour, wild crab-apple of the roadside into 
 the apple of the orchard. Culture is that 
 which turns the clumsy apprentice into the 
 
CULTURE WITHOUT COLLEGE. 11 
 
 workman who honors his calling and is honor 
 to it. Culture is that which transforms the 
 wilful child of five years into the earnest boy 
 of ten, the self -controlling man of twenty, the 
 helper of men at thirty, the loved of men at 
 fifty. Culture is that which takes a mind in 
 its crab-apple, 'prentice, uncontrolled stage, 
 and trains it into a steady power to see, to 
 grasp, to retain, to compare, to judge, and 
 to find the law in the fact. Nobody really 
 laughs at this. The laugh comes in when this 
 large, inspiring word is used for a varnish of 
 make-believe wisdom, or when it is dwarfed 
 to mean a bookish education only, or — 
 dwarf of a dwarf — a mere text-bookish educa- 
 tion, such as the high school and college are 
 sometimes thought to give, and sometimes do 
 give. 
 
 Yet if to-day they give no more than that 
 it is the fault of the boy and girl rather than 
 of the school. Our colleges and high schools 
 have much yet to learn, but no one knows 
 this so well as themselves. The educators 
 were never so wise as now in suspecting their 
 own methods, and never more in earnest to 
 find out better ones. By all means go to 
 
12 CULTURE WITHOUT COLLEGE. 
 
 college, if you can; or if, when young, you 
 could not go, give your boys and girls the 
 chance you missed. That is an uncolleged 
 parent's glory, — to give his child the educa- 
 tion that he himself missed. Go to college, 
 especially if you have to pinch in order to go 
 and get through; for that pinch on the money 
 side is apt to halve the dangers and double 
 the profits of college. Go all the more for that. 
 Go, because the college is a greenhouse for 
 the mind, where its faculties can be started 
 and trained more quickly than outside. But, 
 after all, the great crops on which the country 
 feeds are not started, still less do they grow, 
 in the greenhouses ; no more do the great 
 faculties of mental and moral nature have 
 vital need of college training. And, whether 
 you go or not, keep two main facts in mind: 
 this, first, that education chiefly depends on 
 the boy, not on the place, even when the 
 place is the best college in the land; and 
 this, second, that in the boy or girl it depends 
 more on the will power than the brain power. 
 And what do these two facts hint but that 
 culture can be won outside of a college by 
 means which nearly all of us can master? 
 
CULTURE WITHOUT COLLEGE. 13 
 
 So I repeat it again : while one boy and one 
 girl can go to Harvard or Wellesley, and a 
 thousand cannot, let not the thousand think 
 that culture without college is impossible. 
 
 (Etmcarum Ins mainlg in Efyctt Groups 
 
 of i^aijtts. 
 
 Rather let each one of the thousand think 
 just the reverse, and think often, — culture 
 without college is possible, and possible for 
 me! Keep that motto bright on the mind's 
 inner wall. It is possible, because the main 
 of education lies in self-disciplines, — self- 
 disciplines in certain habits that are the 
 tap-roots of both mind and character. Parents, 
 teachers, friends, employers, home, school, 
 workshop, travel, never make one grow : they 
 only offer ns materials for growth. "Each for 
 himself'' is the inevitable law of the actual 
 growing. Xo one can assimilate the materials 
 and make mind from them except one's self, 
 just as no one can digest another's dinner 
 for him. Education is always at bottom a 
 self-discipline ; and all of us, to speak exactly. 
 are u self-made n or self-grown men. What 
 
14 CULTURE WITHOUT COLLEGE. 
 
 is more, these tap-root habits lie at the bottom 
 of everybody's culture, and are the same for 
 all. College men and uncolleged need them 
 alike. Rich men and poor men need them 
 alike. Talent and genius need them as much 
 as the ordinary mind. 
 
 What are they, these tap-root habits ? They 
 lie in three groups. First, and underlying all, 
 those habits by which we adjust the powers 
 within us to each other, — self-control and 
 temperance, courage to bear, courage to dare, 
 concentration, energy, perseverance. Do you 
 call these mental, or do you call them moral, 
 habits ? Practically, they are both. They 
 make the tap-root of both mind and character. 
 It is they that compact the man into a unit, 
 into a "person." And without them high 
 success in any life-path is impossible. One 
 cannot go far in book-knowledge without them, 
 cannot go far on in his trade without them, — 
 of course, cannot rise far toward nobleness 
 without them. Without them the average 
 man dooms himself to remain all his life a 
 half-failure. Without them talent is lop- 
 sidedness and genius top-heaviness, — sources 
 of downfall rather than of rise. But with 
 
CULTURE WITHOUT COLLEGE. 15 
 
 theni, whether one be dull or talented, every 
 year of life sees growth, advance, uprise. 
 
 Next, another group, — those habits by which 
 we adjust ourselves to other people, — habits 
 of justice, of sympathy, of modesty, of courtesy, 
 and of the public spirit which begins in self- 
 forgetting for those we love and widens into 
 self-forgetting for all whom we can help. 
 And, besides these two, a third group, — those 
 habits by which we adjust ourselves to our 
 ideals, habits of loyalty to truth as truth, of 
 delight in beauty as beauty, of reverence for 
 goodness as goodness. In this last group we 
 reach conscious religion. 
 
 As we name these great names one by one, 
 the feeling rises in us, — these surely are the 
 main things in culture : to have these habits 
 is to have vigorous mind, firm character, high 
 tastes. Specialties of knowledge and of art 
 are good, but these are worth more than any 
 specialty the college can give. Think them 
 over once again, these man and woman-making 
 habits, — the power of self-control, the power 
 to dare and to bear, the power to face obstacles, 
 to stand firm and to push hard; the splendid 
 power of centering one's whole mind in fixed 
 
16 CULTURE WITHOUT COLLEGE. 
 
 acts of attention ; the power to side instinctively 
 with right against the wrong, to side with the 
 weak against the strong, to side with public 
 against private ends; the power to love the 
 perfect, and to obey with answering joy a call 
 to come up higher. This, this is the real 
 "culture." And he who strengthens these 
 powers in himself is a well-educated man. 
 Now all these noble powers can be attained 
 without high school or college. Then culture 
 without college is possible, and possible for me. 
 
 Wqz Wqxzz t&mfrerg: (I) <&nz'% OTtorfe* 
 
 Who are the teachers that teach these things 
 to us, — us who cannot go to Harvard or 
 Cornell ? The chief teachers, also, are three, — 
 Work, Society, Books; and the greatest of the 
 three is one's work. To our work we owe 
 more education than to anything else in life, 
 spite of the hard names we sometimes give 
 it. Work makes mind ; work makes character. 
 No work, no culture. It matters less than we 
 are apt to think what the work is, so that it 
 be hard enough to require will, attention and 
 honor to do it. Of all the educating forces. 
 
CULTURE WITHOUT COLLEGE. 17 
 
 a steady need to do something promptly, 
 persistently, accurately, and as well as we can, 
 stands paramount, because nothing else so 
 vitalizes those primary roots of mind and 
 character, — the habits that came first upon 
 our list. " Every man's task is his life- 
 preserver/' Emerson reminds us : he means our 
 soul's life. The workless people are the 
 worthless people, even to themselves. What 
 wealth gives, or should give, is choice of work, 
 never exemption from it. A man born rich is 
 born into danger. He, as also the man quick 
 to win riches, must make himself trustee for 
 causes not his own, or else his riches become 
 his doom. In our land, at least, a " gentleman," 
 whatever else he is, must be a good workman ; 
 that is, one who has something to do, who can 
 do it well, and who always does it well. 
 To-day the daughter, also, of wealth elects a 
 task to save her soul's life. To be an 
 " educated" woman, she has to have capacity 
 to do well some good work or other, and to 
 be a true woman, she has to stand for that 
 capacity exercised, for good work well done. 
 
 Well done; for, if our work is to teach us, 
 it must be good work, — good as we can do. 
 
18 CULTURE WITHOUT COLLEGE. 
 
 The culture in it is proportioned to the 
 quality of it, — not the absolute quality, but 
 the quality as proportioned to our power. 
 And good work means, first or last, and 
 often both first and last, hard work. The 
 master-workmen in any trade or profession 
 have always been hard workmen. The actor 
 Kean was a master on the stage : it is said 
 that he practised two days on a single line; 
 but, when he spoke the five words, they 
 melted the house to tears. Hard work did 
 that. Euskin is a master in the art of 
 making sentences. He tells us he has often 
 spent several hours in perfecting a single 
 period. Hard work, again. Edward Everett 
 Hale is a master in the art of writing short 
 stories. To write the well-known story, "In 
 His Name," he took a journey in Europe, 
 ransacked a Lyons bookshop for old pamphlets, 
 studied the history of poisoning, shut himself 
 up a week or two in a country house, and 
 then, says he, "I was ready to go to work." 
 George Eliot was a mistress in the art of 
 writing a long story. She spent six weeks 
 in Florence before beginning "Komola," in 
 order to catch the trick of language among 
 
CULTURE WITHOUT COLLEGE. 19 
 
 the common people of the city; and her 
 husband said that, before writing " Daniel 
 Deronda," she read a thousand books on Jewish 
 history. Hard work, that ; and she was a 
 genius, too ! Darwin was a master-workman 
 in science. In his scrap of autobiography he 
 explains the success of his book, " The Origin 
 of Species," by two causes : (1) It was so 
 slowly written. More than twenty years of 
 collection and arrangement of facts preceded 
 its publication, and that publication was his 
 fifth rewriting. First came a short, condensed 
 statement, then another, then a long, full 
 statement, then an abstract from this, and at 
 last, abstracted from this abstract, came the 
 book. What patient labor ! Yet Darwin was 
 a man before whose genius all the men of 
 science in the world stand in reverence. And 
 (2) for years it was his "golden rule," as he 
 calls it, to note and study every fact that 
 seemed opposed to his theory. The result of 
 this rule was that his book, when it appeared, 
 was a sifted argument presented at its strongest, 
 anticipating most of the objections that were 
 raised to it. Hard work, all this, as he himself 
 knew well; for it was himself who said: 
 
20 CULTURE WITHOUT COLLEGE. 
 
 "Whenever I have found out that I have 
 blundered, and when I have been contempt- 
 uously criticised, and even when I have been 
 over-praised, it has been my greatest comfort 
 to say to myself, ( I have worked as hard and 
 as well as I could, and no man can do more 
 than this.'" 
 
 Such instances hint how master-workmen 
 educate themselves by and in their work to 
 be the masters. And if this be true in book- 
 making, it is no less true of any humbler 
 task. Have you read what Mrs. Garfield once 
 wrote to her husband, the man who was to 
 be President ? "I am glad to tell you that, 
 out of all the toil and disappointments of the 
 summer just ended, I have risen up to a 
 victory. I read something like this the other 
 day: ' There is no healthy thought without 
 labor, and thought makes the labor happy/ 
 Perhaps this is the way I have been able to 
 climb up higher. It came to me one morning 
 when I was making bread. I said to myself: 
 'Here I am, compelled by an inevitable 
 necessity to make our bread this summer. 
 Why not consider it a pleasant occupation, 
 and make it so by trying to see what perfect 
 
CULTURE WITHOUT COLLEGE. 21 
 
 bread I can make ? ? It seemed like an inspira- 
 tion, and the whole of life grew brighter. 
 The very sunshine seemed flowing down 
 through my spirit into the white loaves; and 
 now I believe my table is furnished with 
 better bread than ever before. And this 
 truth, old as creation, seems just now to have 
 become fully mine, — that I need not be the 
 shirking slave of toil, but its regal master, 
 making whatever I do yield its best fruits." 
 
 It is a great comfort and inspiration amid 
 long, hard tasks to remember all this, and to 
 say to one's self: "Why, this is a going-to- 
 college for me : and this particular task is the 
 day's lesson. I am not a drudge, but a pupil : 
 let me do this thing as well as I can, and 
 there is education, ' culture/ in it for me." 
 The sense of quantity that lies in the task 
 may tire and age us, — it often does : the 
 sense of high quality put into the task 
 refreshes and makes us young. Many of us 
 contrive to miss the joy by not doing the 
 work well enough to secure it. 
 
22 CULTURE WITHOUT COLLEGE. 
 
 (2) <Sorietg* 
 
 The second teacher for those of us who 
 cannot go to college is Society. And, as with 
 the head teacher, Work, we scarcely realize 
 how much we owe this tireless assistant, and 
 how much more it can teach than it does, if 
 we will let it. Probably no eye meets eye, 
 no hand clasps hand, no two voices mingle in 
 a minute's conversation without some actual 
 interchange of influence, unconscious, if not 
 conscious. Think, then, of the education 
 always going on for good or for ill! A 
 wilderness of varied character stretches around 
 us in every social circle. The heroes and the 
 villains of the novels walk our streets, and 
 we ourselves' are the stuff that Shakspere's 
 plays are made of. The carpenter and the 
 carpentress, the grocer and the grocer's wife, 
 the parson and the lawyer, and the broods of 
 playing children, hold more texts than any 
 text-book. These are the novels and plays 
 and text-books alive: books are men and 
 women potted and canned, as it were. If we 
 can only read well these neighbors of ours, 
 each, like a bit of Scripture, is " profitable 
 
CUIiTUBE WITHOUT COLLEGE. 23 
 
 for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for 
 instruction in righteousness''; and the best 
 among them are ••inspired of God*' to reveal 
 to us — what? Ourselves, our own unknown 
 
 possibilities, the sleeping powers within us. — 
 and to make us come up higher. " Our chief 
 want in life. — is it not somebody who can 
 make us do what we can? x \Ye are easily 
 great with the loved and honored associate." 
 As if unexplored wastes of human nature lay 
 within us, waiting for some Livingston or 
 Kane to come that way. The opening of 
 Africa's heart dates from a Livingston's 
 advent ; so a capacity in us may date from a 
 definite meeting or conversation with some 
 fellow-man. 
 
 The more persons we really can "meet/ 3 
 then, the better for us. With an individual 
 as with a town or a nation, civilization is pro- 
 portioned to inter-communication. How many 
 do we touch ? How large is our social horizon ? 
 ••'Every man my schoolmaster n is a motto for 
 wise men, and a motto that makes one a wise 
 man. Of Daniel Webster it was said that he 
 never met a stable-boy without extracting 
 from him some bit of information that was 
 
24 CULTURE WITHOUT COLLEGE. 
 
 worth remembering. If "here is a person 
 with some message for me" be the feeling 
 with which we are wont to meet strangers, 
 the result in four years may be worth one 
 year of a college, — so great is the daily income 
 of such a man's mind as compared with that 
 of one who instinctively shuts himself up to 
 a stranger. 
 
 Among men thus trained and enriched are 
 those we put on the school committee, send 
 to the legislature, elect to be Mayor and 
 Governor and possibly President, — or make 
 Overseer of the very college that, as boys, 
 they longed, but could not afford, to go to. 
 Possibly President : the sum of Lincoln's whole 
 schooling was hardly one year, but Lincoln 
 knew men. ,And three or four others of our 
 Presidents were also log-cabin boys. And 
 should we ask them about their schooling, 
 these leaders might answer: "My schooling? 
 I have had none to speak of. My schoolmasters 
 have been the men and women I have met in 
 parlors, in the church, in the caucus, in the 
 shop, the counting-rooms, on 'change. One 
 taught me manners : one taught me tact. She 
 raised my standards of justice and truthfulness 
 
CULTURE WITHOUT COLLEGE. 25 
 
 and honor: he widened my ideas of public 
 spirit. This one showed me how to save time 
 in my work, and that one how to spend my 
 leisure to advantage ; and many a man and 
 many a woman has served to warn me by 
 making my mistakes for me. I have seldom 
 long faced a neighbor without facing a teacher." 
 He who can say such things was born for 
 an education, and will get it, whether he go 
 to a college or not. 
 
 But to get it, this profit from persons, one 
 must really meet them, — meet, and not merely 
 encounter, — meet them, and not merely their 
 outside. How is it these head-scholars, in 
 the school without books, manage to extract so 
 much from others ? Some by a gift of eyes 
 to see to the inside of a neighbor. Others 
 by a genius for geniality, — that is, letting 
 others cordially into the inside of one's self. 
 But as in work, so in society, few win a 
 great success without conscious, deliberate aim. 
 Genius helps greatly, but even for genius there 
 is no royal road to an art, — and this is a 
 fine art, to extract a good education out of 
 society. It takes bravery, modesty, sympathy 
 and high choices. Bravery to conquer shyness, 
 
26 CULTURE WITHOUT COLLEGE. 
 
 if one has it. For some poor fellows it takes 
 campaigns of suffering to conquer shyness. If 
 we are shy, we had better launch ourselves 
 into the party, though we drift to the wall 
 forlorn; better send ourselves to the dancing- 
 school, though we only dare to dance with the 
 little girls; better join a conversation-club 
 and talk, though we hear our heart thump 
 when we try; better make ourselves tell the 
 story at table, until we can tell it, and others 
 can hear it, without a shudder. By and by we 
 shall hug and bless ourselves for this bravery. 
 But through it all keep the holy spirit of 
 shyness - — modesty ; for modesty gives the 
 passport to the doors of the better and best 
 in society. The clean, kind heart is needed, 
 too; for this admits one past the mere doors, 
 and past the reception-rooms of courtesy, to 
 the inner living-rooms of mind and heart. 
 And still the high choice is needed which 
 habitually seeks and companions the best side 
 of a man, and which instinctively tries to 
 make friends among those brighter and nobler 
 than one's self. Four things, — it takes them 
 all; bravery, modesty, sympathy, and high 
 choices in comradeship. Have these, and you 
 
CULTURE WITHOUT COLLEGE. 27 
 
 will have the fine art of making neighbors, 
 and of making your way quickly to the best 
 in a neighbor. And men and women in loving 
 faculties of approval will confer on you an 
 invisible degree, "Master of Hearts/' — as 
 honorable as any the colleges give. 
 
 (3) Banks. 
 
 And now a word about the third teacher 
 who waits to teach us boys and girls and 
 men and women who cannot go to college. 
 His name is Books. He is the same great 
 teacher that they have in colleges ; but in 
 this day he goes about the country, teaching 
 everybody. He goes to the big city and every 
 alley in it, teaching. He goes to the little 
 village and every cottage in it, teaching. He 
 will teach just what one wishes to hear, — all 
 manner of trash, all manner of vileness, if one 
 wants that. He does teach a vast deal of 
 mental dissipation, and leads many minds into 
 very bad company. On the other hand, there 
 is no end to the good things he will teach, if 
 one wants them. He will teach us history. 
 He will teach us science. He will teach us 
 
28 CULTURE WITHOUT COLLEGE. 
 
 the love of noble literature. He will teach 
 us how to think well, how to talk well, how 
 to write well. And he will stand to us in 
 place of good society, if we cannot otherwise 
 command it; for in books we can visit in 
 impersonal fashion the best of the race. He 
 will almost bring the college to us who cannot 
 go to it, if we are willing to study under 
 him patiently and steadily and with high aims. 
 But once more, it takes the patience, the 
 steadiness, the high choices, and the hard work, 
 or else he can do little for us. The young 
 man ready to pay that price for his help will 
 make for himself three Golden Rules : — 
 
 I will be a reader; 
 
 I will read best books; 
 
 I will read best books in the best way. 
 
 "I will be a reader": that means, no day 
 shall make me so tired that I will not find 
 an hour,— if not an hour, a half -hour; if not 
 a half, then a quarter; if not a quarter, then 
 five minutes — in which I will read something. 
 With many of us the odd minutes of ten 
 years are enough to make the difference 
 between an educated and an uneducated man. 
 The odd minutes of one winter or summer can 
 make the difference between two good solid 
 
CULTURE WITHOUT COLLEGE. 29 
 
 books taken into us and none at all taken in. 
 The odd minutes of to-morrow can make the 
 difference between a rich day and a poor day 
 for our minds. The men on exchange grow 
 rich on "margins": it is margins of time well 
 used that give us mental riches. How many 
 opulent minds have taught that secret ! There 
 were Franklin, Theodore Parker, Lincoln,— all 
 of them poor boys with horny hands and 
 candlelight, no more ; there were Faraday, 
 Chambers, Stephenson. Many and many a 
 boy starting with good eyes, a fair mind, a 
 strong will, and his odd minutes, has become 
 an intellectual capitalist. Many a boy, — and 
 how about girls ? Let me quote from Far 
 and Near, a j ournal for working-girls : — 
 
 "A young mother said: 'I haven't read a 
 book in three months. I can't with the 
 children.' But her neighbor across the way, 
 with one more child, had read many volumes 
 in that time by always keeping a book in her 
 work-basket, ready to catch up at odd minutes. 
 She seasoned her darning and mending with 
 literature. Lucy Larcom, when a mill-girl in 
 Lowell, carried a book in the big pocket of 
 her apron, and records specially the fact that 
 she read Wordsworth's poems and many of 
 
30 CULTURE WITHOUT COLLEGE. 
 
 Shakspere's plays in spare minutes amid the 
 clatter of spindles. Another lady told the 
 writer that she read Carlyle's i French Revolu- 
 tion' and Taine's ( English Literature/ while 
 waiting for her husband to come to dinner. 
 She was her own housemaid, and kept the 
 books close at hand in the dining-room." 
 
 But, of course, if I am to reach culture, 
 the books that I read must be "best books" — 
 not bad, not even pretty good, but the best 
 my mind is able to absorb. That is our 
 second Golden Rule. In this happy day of 
 cheap literature beware of the literature of 
 cheap quality. Each age begets out of its 
 very civilization its own new temptation, some 
 new form of dissipation. The saloon at the 
 corner is only about two hundred years old. 
 The newspaper on the table in every home is 
 hardly fifty years old; but the " newspaper 
 habit " has already become a direful dissipation 
 for many of us, — partly because the papers 
 are so good. We could not live without them ; 
 but their toothsome scrappiness, taken as 
 mental " square meals," bewilders attention, 
 shallows the judgment, fritters the memory, 
 steals the growing-time. It is the " newspaper 
 habit" that does the harm. Too much news- 
 
CULTURE WITHOUT COLLEGE. 31 
 
 paper will spoil one for magazines. Too much 
 magazine will spoil one for a solid book. Our 
 margins are small. How shall we use them? 
 It is easy to use them all up, and have 
 nothing to show. Look out the words " Index 
 Expurgatorius " in the cyclopaedia to see what 
 they mean, and then make a private Index 
 Expurgatorius, on which a great many innocent 
 books as well as all bad books shall be 
 registered, — innocent books which are not 
 innocent for you and for me, because our 
 time-margins are small. If I am a boy, 
 the question on which my education is apt 
 to turn is this : Shall the newspaper be 
 the staple of my reading ? If I am a girl, 
 the turning-question is : Shall love-stories be 
 the staple of my reading ? Am I a grown 
 man or woman, the turning, or perhaps the 
 turned, question is, What sort of books lie 
 waiting on my table for the leisure hour at 
 night, and what do I read on Sunday 
 afternoons ? In our public libraries seventy 
 to eighty-five per cent, of the books taken 
 out are classed as "juveniles and fictions." If 
 my library book is often in that seventy per 
 cent., one thing is sure, — I am no candidate 
 for " culture," Whereas the habit of absorbing 
 
32 CULTURE WITHOUT COLLEGE. 
 
 three or four "real" books each year, and 
 year by year, goes far in ten years toward 
 making the gentleman, making the lady. 
 
 Of absorbing them, I say; for "I will read 
 best books in the best ivay." This, our last 
 rule, can be put in one word, — read and 
 ruminate ! Read and ruminate ! A book that 
 gives no cud to chew is scarcely worth 
 reading once ; a book worth reading, of which 
 one does not chew the cud, has scarcely been 
 read. 
 
 To end, let us lay up in mind a bracing 
 word from John Stuart Mill : " They who 
 know how to employ opportunities will often 
 find that they can create them, and what we 
 achieve depends less on the amount of time 
 we possess than on the use we make of our 
 time. Several great things which this genera- 
 tion is destined to do will assuredly be done 
 by persons for whom society has done far less, 
 to whom it has given far less preparation, than 
 those whom I am now addressing." If that 
 be true in England, how much more true here 
 in the Land of Opportunity ! Work, Society, 
 Books, — with these three teachers, and a will 
 to get the best from them, culture without 
 college is possible, and possible for me. 
 
ACCEPTING OURSELVES. 
 
 by/ 
 AETHUE M. TSCHTJDY. 
 
Endurance is the crowning quality, 
 
 And patience all the passion of great hearts. 
 
 — Lowell. 
 
 I walked one morn and met a brier, 
 Sharper than blades of fire : 
 The morning sky flushed roses. 
 Fie, fie, thou thorny provocation ! 
 I'll set thy angry habitation 
 Blooming with posies. 
 
 Against thy barbed and bristling fence 
 I hurl my heart, till thence 
 Bleed miracles of power: 
 Then on thy prickles, will ye, nill ye, 
 With wonder or with shame to fill ye, 
 I'll grow a flower. 
 
 — James Vila Blake. 
 
 It would be a poor result of all our anguish and our 
 wrestling, if we won nothing but our old selves at the 
 end of it — if we could return to the same blind loves, 
 the same self-confident blame, the same light thoughts 
 of human suffering, the same frivolous gossip over 
 blighted human lives, the same feeble sense of that 
 Unknown towards which we have sent forth irrepres- 
 sible cries in our loneliness. Let us rather be thank- 
 ful that our sorrow lives in us as an indestructible 
 force, only changing its form, as all forces do, and 
 passing from Pain into Sympathy — the one poor 
 word which includes all our best insight and our best 
 love, *— George Eliot* 
 
 (34) 
 
ACCEPTING OURSELVES. 
 
 Phe man who exclaimed, " I accept the 
 * universe," is to be laughed at for his 
 conceit or approved for his philosophy accord- 
 ing to the point from which his exclamation 
 is viewed. If the assertion were made in all 
 reverence and seriousness, it surely must be 
 looked upon as most profoundly religious. 
 Nine-tenths of all professing Christians in this 
 Christian land, nine-tenths of all religious 
 people in the world, do not accept the 
 universe. 
 
 One of the most deeply religious men of 
 the world, — one of the fathers of the true 
 faith, — the noble Epictetus, made it his pre- 
 eminent aim to persuade men to take the 
 inevitable things of life faithfully and lovingly. 
 That is truly to accept the universe. But how 
 many people do accept^ after this fashion, what 
 
36 ACCEPTING OURSELVES. 
 
 is inevitable ? How many accept thus the 
 drought which has halved their crop, or the 
 malaria which has stolen the bloom from their 
 cheeks, — or even the rain which has stopped 
 their picnic? The highest ascent in religious 
 practice, the profoundest reach of religious 
 theory, must be achieved before a man does in 
 truth accept the universe. But then he knows 
 what is the peace passing understanding! 
 
 This acceptance of the universe carries with 
 it an acceptance of the events of life, an 
 acceptance of people,— above all, an acceptance 
 of ourselves. We, too, are part of the 
 inevitable, — we with our inherited fortunate or 
 unfortunate dispositions ; with impulses, good 
 or bad, that took their rise in remote ancestors ; 
 we whose physical atoms obey the pull of 
 gravity like all other atoms ; we in whom the 
 struggle betwixt inward function and outward 
 circumstance is waged as in all other organic 
 bodies. And we — each of whom is a micro- 
 cosm, a universe in little — must accept our- 
 selves if we do in truth accept the larger 
 universe; must bear with ourselves faithfully 
 and lovingly, as we bear with soil and seasons, 
 with stormy Marches and atomic changes. 
 
ACCEPTING OURSELVES. 37 
 
 " For man hath all which Nature hath, but more, 
 And in that more lie all his hopes of good." 
 
 Consider even the matter of physical form 
 and feature. Jesus tells us that our stature 
 is fixed for us by forces beyond our control. 
 In a broad way this declaration is unquestion- 
 able, although there are vices which, if indulged 
 in, will dwarf a man's size, and occupations 
 which, if their influence be not corrected, will 
 crook or stunt a man's body. These allowances 
 made, it remains true that no amount, either 
 of virtue or hygiene, can cause a man to grow 
 tall who is fated by inheritance to remain 
 short, or give light hair and rosy cheeks to a 
 woman dowered by birth with a darker beauty. 
 Within these broad limits stands the physical 
 self which a man or woman must learn to 
 accept faithfully and lovingly, or be forever 
 barred from one of the highest felicities of 
 religion. And I know that the issue at stake 
 here is not small. Laugh you may, at the 
 folly of sighing over one's looks, yet it is 
 not a slight but a weighty folly. Some of 
 the bitterest moments of rebellion that many 
 souls pass through are the moments when 
 
38 ACCEPTING OURSELVES. 
 
 they reject, revile arid hate their own looks. 
 Where envying and strife are, says the good 
 St. James, there is not the wisdom that 
 descendeth from above, but confusion and 
 every evil work. Yet, of all envying, what 
 is more bitter, what leaves the heart more in 
 confusion, than this which is involved when 
 a man rebels against his ugly features or his 
 insignificant person ? Surely, however, here is 
 practical impiety; for here is rejection of and 
 contempt for that part of the universe which 
 comes nearest and counts most to the man. 
 If there is one thing which such a man must 
 do if he is ever to gain the peace of God, it 
 is to learn to accept himself: tall or short, 
 stout or thin, with abundant locks or bald 
 crown, with dull or flashing eyes, sallow or 
 rosy cheeks: accept himself as he is, account 
 it right, and give thanks. 
 
 Not an easy act of faith, this, — true; but 
 one which the masters of the world achieved 
 before they attained the felicity of true 
 children of God. 
 
 And as it is with looks, so is it with 
 talents. A man must accept what ability he 
 has ; and be contented therewith, if he would 
 
ACCEPTING OURSELVES. 39 
 
 not lose one great opportunity for happiness. 
 But this he cannot do, you may reply, because 
 no man can be happy if he believes himself 
 inferior. According to De Tocqueville, "the 
 passion for equality in democratic communities 
 is ardent, insatiable, insistent, invincible." 
 And, I would add, it is not political equality 
 alone that is thus ardently demanded, but 
 intellectual equality as well, moral equality; 
 that equality which will enable a man to feel 
 himself the peer of any other man. 
 
 I would say not a word against this passion 
 for equality. In it I see not only vast 
 promise of incessant effort to improve, but 
 also a stern rebuke to the thoughtlessness 
 which ignores or underrates the point wherein 
 equality or superiority does actually exist. A 
 rebuke of this kind I myself once received. 
 The " Teutonic" was in mid-ocean. The day 
 had been cold, the breeze stiff, and the good 
 ship was plunging through an angry sea. 
 Suddenly, in the gloom of the evening, the 
 top-sail broke away, and was quickly blown 
 into streamers. The boatswain's shrill whistle 
 leaped above the warring of the wind and 
 sea; the sailors, in response, filed stolidly on 
 
40 ACCEPTING OURSELVES. 
 
 deck, climbed the swaying mast, edged their 
 way out on the slippery arm, and, standing 
 firmly there while the great ship swung them 
 wildly to and fro almost into the trough of 
 the foaming wave, they gathered in the 
 tattered sail, worked their way safely back- 
 ward to the mast and downward to the deck, 
 apparently as unconcerned as if they were 
 treading the walks of firm-set streets. In 
 their act they accomplished what not a man 
 among the distinguished doctors, lawyers, pro- 
 fessors and ministers whom we had aboard 
 could have done. If, now, these royal sailors 
 felt in their inmost soul a something which 
 would permit them to own themselves no 
 man's inferior, shall we say they acted with 
 reason, or without ? Difference they would of 
 course acknowledge; inability to do hundreds 
 of things as well as others do them; but 
 inferiority at every point, inferiority in essential 
 nature, taken in its widest bearing, I doubt 
 if it were possible for them or for any other 
 human being to acknowledge. 
 
 Here I find my first reason why every man 
 should accept his talents and be content 
 therewith. In some directions those talents 
 
ACCEPTING OURSELVES. 41 
 
 are excellent; they make him a peer of the 
 realm. I know they do not so exalt him in 
 the conventional ranking set down by bine- 
 books, or in the hasty judgments which 
 neighbor passes upon neighbor. But both of 
 these classifications are discredited constantly 
 by the issue of events and by the insight of 
 wisdom. Many an accident on the street 
 exalts the lowly and humbles the proud; 
 many a disease or distress shows that power 
 exists not where the blue-books pretend that 
 it should exist exclusively, but where the 
 instinct of democracy places it, — in the mass 
 of men; in all men. 
 
 How inadequate may be even the most 
 trusted measurements of intellectual and moral 
 value, we are being taught by the changed 
 estimates which the modern method of writing 
 history is setting upon men and events. 
 These later and better histories are reducing 
 kings, generals, and statesmen, to a lower rank, 
 and exalting inventors, students, farmers, and 
 mechanics, to a higher. They teach that the 
 destiny of states waits not on one kind of 
 work, but upon all kinds ; that the cutting 
 of a canal may have consequences as far- 
 
42 accepting ourselves. 
 
 reaching as the winning of a battle; that the 
 discovery of a bleaching process may more 
 than compensate for the loss of a colony. 
 When we sit in judgment upon ourselves we 
 need to judge in the spirit of these later 
 histories. If we could discharge our minds of 
 the narrow, temporary, conventional ideas of 
 worth, and recognize the truth that every 
 necessary work may be greatly done ; that each 
 human being is endowed with special gifts 
 for some one or more certain but unfamed 
 posts of honor, we should find good reasons 
 why every man should look upon his own 
 ability and reverence and accept it with 
 cheerfulness. 
 
 But, you exclaim, this is talking vaguely. 
 Here we have, on one hand, men who do 
 telling work at every turn : there, on the other, 
 those who fail at whatever they attempt. Is 
 it possible for these latter to be content and 
 accept themselves with gratitude ? I hope 
 not. Occasion for discontent with himself 
 every man has ; and so long as a man sees 
 that he is blundering he ought to have the 
 grace to condemn himself vigorously; there 
 is no other known way of increasing the 
 
ACCEPTING OURSELVES. 43 
 
 sum total of talent in the world. But let 
 the discipline be administered in faith, and 
 cheerfully. Let him who recognizes his 
 weakness not lose heart. Let him, like a true 
 lover, take himself for better or for worse. 
 
 Suppose this self be poor in wit, in talent 
 to create or appreciate, — what then ? This, 
 I answer: accept it cheerfully, nothing doubt- 
 ing, as a skilful teacher accepts a backward 
 pupil, saying to yourself, My work is to turn 
 this dullard self into a wise and ready man. 
 In "the sounding labor-house vast of being," 
 my task is to transform my own folly into 
 wisdom. And every man has that task set 
 him; only it is not the same kind of folly — 
 happily for the world — that each is given to 
 transform. Here is the millionaire, whose 
 talent for accumulation needs little mending; 
 here the great orator, the poet, and the 
 philosopher, whose talents in their ways need 
 no bettering. But, in other ways, what 
 improvement these men are all called upon 
 to make ! what stupidity, in sawing a board, 
 driving a horse, speaking to a child, treating 
 a wife, do they exhibit ! In the household 
 even of their shining talents, the poor, maimed, 
 
44 ACCEPTING OURSELVES. 
 
 dull, ugly child has not been omitted. It is 
 there to be cared for with exceeding care; it 
 is there to be changed by love and patience 
 and wisdom into a strong, alert, noble man. 
 If they are to be truly thankful to God for 
 their household of talents, they must be 
 thankful for the defective as well as the 
 perfect; must accept the imperfect, indeed, 
 as their grandest opportunity, their dearest 
 blessing, since it enables them to be co-workers 
 with God in the fashioning of that toward 
 which all creation moves — a pure, perfect 
 soul. 
 
 And I believe we ought to accept ourselves 
 even in our wickedness in this same spirit. 
 If we believe in the universe, if we believe 
 in God, we must believe there was some good 
 reason for planting men in this world in their 
 imperfect state. There prevails too largely 
 the feeling, either implied or expressed, that 
 the best thing God could have done was to 
 have planted here a world filled with perfect 
 men and women. The very conception of 
 heaven as it used to be held, with its spotless 
 saints and untemptable angels, was an uncon- 
 scious arraignment of God for what he had 
 
ACCEPTING OURSELVES. 45 
 
 made possible in this world. The only way 
 in which we can retrieve that unconscious 
 accusation against God is to realize that not 
 perfection reached but perfection pursued is 
 the best possible state in which man or angel 
 can exist. Once we attain unto this, which 
 I believe to be the nobler theology, then we 
 have ample reason for accepting ourselves 
 with gladness, wicked though we be. If the 
 truth should be forced upon us that there is 
 a deep vein of cowardice, or deceit, or lust, in 
 our heart, shall we thereupon be utterly cast 
 down and put out of all conceit and pride in 
 ourself ? I opine not. This wickedness reveals 
 the essential work we were put into this 
 world to do. It shows us where our character 
 yet remains to be made. It marks the point 
 at which our ancestors left the task of soul- 
 creating unfinished. It discovers the incom- 
 pleted statue which God has handed on to us 
 to chisel at. Why, then, shall we not receive 
 this God-assigned task cheerfully ? Why not 
 accept this much -to -be -bettered self with 
 gladness ? 
 
 What is here said is not intended to 
 weaken for one instant the strain of con- 
 
46 ACCEPTING OURSELVES. 
 
 science or of culture. If we truly accept 
 ourselves we accept conscience and all. The 
 human self viewed in its broadest outlines 
 includes, together with the powerful impulses 
 which lead to what is low, the incessant 
 drawing which lifts to what is high. To 
 accept that first part of one's self to the 
 exclusion of this second part, and be content, 
 is what makes a man a villain, dissolute, or a 
 hypocrite. But to know that one's nature is 
 full of ignorance and wickedness against 
 which culture and conscience must wage a 
 ceaseless warfare, and be content to fight the 
 good fight, — this makes a man wise, happy, 
 and devout. Believe me, there is a sense in 
 which it is the height of presumption to be 
 dissatisfied because you are in part ignorant 
 and wicked. Jesus exclaimed, "Why callest 
 thou me good? There is none good but one, 
 that is God." To rebel against our wicked 
 nature is to assert a claim to that which is 
 the prerogative of the Almighty alone. I 
 would have earnest people who grow morbid 
 over their faults think of this. They ought 
 to be a little more modest; they ought to be 
 willing to be one of the great democracy of 
 
ACCEPTING OURSELVES. 47 
 
 erring souls, not moan because they do not 
 belong to an aristocracy of souls made perfect. 
 In good time, we may dare believe, the great 
 laws of conscience and culture will lift all 
 men nearer to that blessed rank; but in the 
 present, we may doubt not, some splendid 
 use is being served in men's democratic 
 incompleteness. 
 
 For a possible instance, do we not take too 
 short a view if we look at either our virtues 
 or our vices in the perspective of our own 
 lives alone ? There is a sense in which a 
 man as an individual does not exist at all, 
 just as there is a sense in which the heart 
 does not exist as a separate entity. The 
 heart is truly a heart only when it is one 
 organ in a great organism, — giving and 
 taking, having its very life and being in the 
 whole of which it is an integral part. So 
 with you and me. We do not live to 
 ourselves alone ; by ourselves alone we are 
 not. We live by and in and for the state, 
 the neighborhood, the family. How may we 
 be of greatest use as an organ in this social 
 organism ? If it be best for the whole that 
 in this present period we should be strong in 
 
48 ACCEPTING OURSELVES. 
 
 one trait and weak in another, in order that 
 we may balance or offset or be an object- 
 lesson to some one opposite in character, why- 
 may we not be content with our incomplete- 
 ness, biding the time when God shall give us 
 another part to play ? "I am debtor both to 
 the Greeks and to the Barbarians; both to 
 the wise and unwise." I think Paul should 
 have added, "both to the righteous and to 
 the unrighteous." For where is the man who 
 does not owe part of his moral growth to 
 the influence which the sins of others have 
 had upon him ? I never see a drunkard 
 reeling through the street but the sight 
 deepens my horror of intemperance ; I never 
 hear another tell a lie but I am shamed and 
 disgusted for every lie I have told; I never 
 witness an outbreak of vicious temper without 
 gaining an added power of self-control over 
 my own temper. Am I then not debtor to 
 the wicked ? 
 
 Correspondingly, if I am thus indebted to 
 the wickedness of others, are they not indebted 
 to my wickedness ? Is God not making the 
 wrath of men to praise him ? Shall I 
 not then accept myself cheerfully ? Under 
 
ACCEPTING OURSELVES. 49 
 
 Nature's evolutionary processes, shall I not 
 look upon myself, even in my incompleteness, 
 as a helpful factor in the universal progress ? 
 
 Truly, for you or me to use such doctrine 
 as this to lull our conscience to sleep in the 
 matter of some sin which it is possible for 
 us to throw off, would be monstrous. But to 
 use the doctrine to save ourselves from 
 morbidness concerning our shortcomings ; to 
 encourage us under our repeated failures in 
 our aspirings after the impossible ; to give us 
 the humility to praise God for the great gift 
 of being, though there be dross mixed with 
 its gold, — thus to use the doctrine seems to 
 me not monstrous but the part of highest 
 wisdom. Some way must be found by which 
 the world of erring men can come to accept 
 themselves lovingly and reverently, and this 
 doctrine opens the way. 
 
 And it opens a way, too, by which they can 
 come gladly to accept themselves in age and 
 sickness. A proud man is likely to feel a 
 certain contempt for himself when sick. Or, 
 if he turn valetudinary, and take a certain 
 pride in his sickness, then the world holds 
 him in contempt. And, of all hard things, 
 
50 ACCEPTING OURSELVES. 
 
 we know that to learn to grow old gracefully 
 is one of the hardest. Hard, very hard is it 
 to bear gracefully the failing of the senses, 
 the bending of the back, the wrinkling of the 
 face, the blearing of the eyes. But sickness 
 and old age are what you and I must learn 
 to accept, and accept graciously if we are 
 indeed to accept ourselves. This is that 
 awful inevitable for which Epictetus tried so 
 ardently to prepare us. 
 
 Here, moreover, our own will plays little 
 part, or plays it only in a far-reaching way. 
 Here our being passes largely from reign of 
 the moral into the reign of natural law. 
 Here vital, chemical and physical processes 
 take us in hand, and make us not wholly, but 
 largely, what we are. Here, therefore, it is 
 primarily a question whether we can willingly 
 accept ourselves as the laws of God fashion 
 us. 
 
 To grow gray, that is our doom. To detect 
 the hand become unsteady; to observe the 
 memory fail; to discover an organ that is 
 defective ; or to find out the predisposition 
 along which the fatal disease will creep, — 
 this is to know ourselves. And to accept the 
 
ACCEPTING OURSELVES. 51 
 
 selves so known, with undaunted courage, and 
 to do our work in the world nevertheless, 
 with steadfast faith in God's love, — this, 
 methinks, is to attain the measure of the 
 stalwart man. Emerson, in his address on 
 the history of the town of Concord, declares 
 that what chiefly interested him in the annals 
 of its early wars is the grandeur of spirit 
 exhibited by a few Indian chiefs. One, in 
 the midst of awful torture, being asked how 
 he liked the war, replied : " I find it as 
 sweet as sugar to Englishmen." There was 
 a true hero; and there was shown the spirit 
 which you and I must have, when the 
 tortures of age and disease come upon us, if 
 we are to take our place among the sublime 
 victors who have accepted every joy and 
 every misery which pertains to the inevitable 
 self, and find the acceptance sweet. 
 
 If, however, we are thus really to find the 
 blessedness latent in these hard passages of 
 our lives, we must beware, again, of taking 
 too short-sighted a view. Not the least part 
 of that charm which inheres in the philosophic 
 mind is due to its power of contemplating 
 events in their remote bearings, and so of 
 
52 ACCEPTING OURSELVES. 
 
 discovering purposes and benefits which do 
 not appear to shorter vision. In the case of 
 disease, for instance, there appears to the 
 short vision only the physical suffering and 
 the social derangements which it causes, — 
 business injured, housekeeping disturbed, 
 pleasures interrupted, sleep lost, beauty 
 marred. But to the long vision there appears 
 something far different — something the most 
 glorious to be named. For has not sickness 
 brought into play the tenderest of all human 
 emotions ? has it not given scope to the most 
 beautiful self-sacrifice ? has it not stimulated 
 the human mind to some of its grandest 
 efforts and bequeathed to heroism some of 
 its sublimest names ? If, then, to be ill 
 is to contribute to such issues, who would 
 not look upon himself, even in illness, as 
 acceptable ? 
 
 I know how bitter is the medicine here 
 commended to fevered lips. It is almost like 
 urging us to be proud of humiliation; to be 
 glad of weakness. The world is accustomed 
 to praise the hero; what praise has it ever 
 bestowed upon him who calls out the 
 heroism? Of Florence Nightingale it has 
 
ACCEPTING OURSELVES. 53 
 
 written volumes : what of the stricken soldiers 
 who gave the heroine her opportunity? They, 
 through the weakness which brought them 
 to death's door, made the heroism possible. 
 Looking at themselves as a part of the 
 completed drama of human life, had they not 
 reason to be content that it was given them 
 to be necessary if supine actors in so glorious 
 a triumph? If to us the lot has fallen to be 
 the invalids whose need of service gives the 
 strong and tender their opportunity to serve, 
 can we not accept our lot and be glad ? 
 Through us is enlarged the splendor of 
 human life. Is not that much ? 
 
 And there is more yet to observe in this 
 connection, if we have the long vision. 
 Especially is there more to observe in con- 
 nection with old age. " Everything is pros- 
 pective, and man is to live hereafter/' said 
 Emerson. It is the constant shutting of 
 one's eyes to that distant prospect which 
 makes it so hard for people in old age to 
 accept themselves. They cannot keep in 
 mind that every stage of life affords some 
 needful experience to a soul destined to 
 infinite development. They think of old 
 
54 
 
 ACCEPTING OURSELVES. 
 
 age as the passing away of power, forgetting 
 
 that 
 
 u Age brings opportunity no less 
 Than Youth, though in another dress." 
 
 A man who has failed in business, and 
 finds the seventies stealing upon him, is likely 
 to feel that he has staked his all and lost. 
 While he holds such a view of himself, self- 
 contempt is inevitable. And it will be 
 inevitable to millions unless they can grasp 
 and hold a view of human destiny which 
 extends beyond the confines of earth. The 
 greater number of old people are poor or sick 
 or obscure. If death brought the conclusion 
 of all opportunity, their lot would indeed be 
 anything but satisfactory. But if a man 
 believes that it does not bring the conclusion 
 of all opportunity, he will scorn to measure 
 his worth by what he is able to achieve in 
 seventy paltry years. He will hold that these 
 years, even the latest of them, are mere years 
 of youth. One decade, he will say, exercises 
 one set of faculties ; another decade, another ; 
 but, be it the first or last of his earth-term, it 
 is but a preparation still, some opening scene 
 
ACCEPTING OURSELVES. 55 
 
 of the first act in Life's drama. Having 
 infinite capacities, the soul needs infinite 
 experiences. The soul needs the delight of 
 a first love, but needs no less the sorrow 
 of a last grief. An old man bearing up 
 courageously under the biting pangs of sciatica 
 is as glorious a sight as the young athlete 
 dashing to an Olympic victory. Courage and 
 endurance are needed in both contests, and if 
 the soul be immortal it is a matter of no 
 moment whether these virtues be given their 
 testing when the body is young and lithe or 
 when it is old and stiff. 
 
 To a humanity which measures the worth 
 of life by the opportunities of earth, the 
 possibilities of old age will not be looked 
 forward to as desirable or honorable; but to 
 a humanity which measures value in the light 
 of eternity, old age with its rich and peculiar 
 experiences will be looked upon as infinitely 
 precious. " Certain it is," exclaims Martineau, 
 "that to the open mind fresh gleams enter 
 to the last; strange stirrings of diviner 
 sympathies, waves of thin transparent light 
 flitting through the spaces of the aged mind, 
 like the aurora of the north across the wintry 
 
56 ACCEPTING OURSELVES. 
 
 sky." A man who can look upon this flitting 
 light as a 
 
 " forward-reaching sense 
 Of some more noble permanence" 
 
 will, even amid the deprivations of old age, 
 still be able cheerily to accept himself. For 
 the fighting of battles, the conduct of business, 
 the offices of friendship, the duties of a 
 household, he may have ceased to be of large 
 value ; but for the reaping of those experiences 
 which are to send him forth into some other 
 " sounding labor-house vast of being," he knows 
 himself to be still rich in capacity; justly 
 to be honored of himself and of all who can 
 properly estimate the worth of the soul. 
 
 It may be that, after all has been said that 
 can be said, some of us may still remain 
 dissatisfied with ourselves. But let even this 
 fact be turned — though it may seem paradox- 
 ically — into a reason for accepting our 
 imperfect selves with gladness. This insatiable 
 desire for better and ever better achievement 
 is the strongest proof of all that there enters 
 into our being an element of the infinite. At 
 our command are boundless resources; our 
 
ACCEPTING OURSELVES. 57 
 
 achievements, reckoned as God would reckon 
 them, are many and priceless ; yet, the higher 
 we climb, the more we aspire ! It must be 
 because we are divine. Nothing less than 
 infinite being could be so insatiable. It is 
 the deep within our own soul calling to the 
 deep beyond — it is the angel forever homeless 
 amid the human — it is the God dissatisfied 
 with the man — that bars us from perfect 
 content. 
 
 Who, then, remembering his divine descent, 
 and looking forward to the sublime heritage 
 into which he is yet to enter, will not 
 henceforth bear himself with noble pride ! 
 In each is more than royal blood, and before 
 each lies a grander than kingly state. 
 
BEAUTY OF CHARACTER. 
 
 Paul K. Fkothingham. 
 
Grant me to become beautiful in the inner man. 
 
 — Socrates. 
 
 So nigh is grandeur to our dust, 
 
 So near is God to man, 
 When duty whispers low, " Thou must," 
 
 The youth replies, " I can." 
 
 — Emerson. 
 
 Take thou no thought for aught save truth and right, 
 
 Content, if such thy fate, to die obscure. 
 
 Youth fails, and honors; fame may not endure, 
 And lofty souls soon weary of delight. 
 
 Keep innocence; be all a true man ought; 
 Let neither pleasure tempt nor pain appall. 
 
 Who hath this, he hath all things, having nought; 
 Who hath it not, hath nothing, having all. 
 
 — Lewis Morris. 
 
 " To get on, to get honor, to get honest." 
 
 — Quoted by Archdeacon Farrar. 
 
 An ideal perfection is the only ultimate reason for 
 existence. If we do not turn our faces thitherward, 
 our lives, however full of shows and business and 
 plans and works they may be, are without rational 
 significance ; while if we do thus turn our faces, there 
 are at bottom no more puzzles or cares or anxieties 
 for us; in our heart of hearts there is a peace and joy 
 that no reverses or disappointments can ever disturb 
 or mar. — William M. Salter. 
 
 (60) 
 
BEAUTY OF CHARACTER. 
 
 The subject of Moral Beauty is so high, it 
 * suggests such divine possibilities, that one 
 must confess at the outset the impossibility 
 of doing it justice. We all recall, for we all 
 have been strangely attracted by, the old Jewish 
 precept, " Worship the Lord in the beauty of 
 holiness." That, we instinctively feel, is the 
 very highest kind of worship. Here Pagan 
 and Christian, infidel and believer, are at one. 
 Socrates, it is said, once breathed the prayer, 
 " Grant me to become beautiful in the inner 
 man." And our own Emerson said he looked 
 for the coming of a new teacher who " shall 
 show that the Ought, that Duty, is one thing 
 with Science, with Beauty, and with Joy." 
 
 There is nothing unusual, therefore, nor 
 strained, in applying the term beautiful to 
 
62 BEAUTY OF CHARACTER. 
 
 character. Just as we speak of certain 
 aspects of nature as beautiful, or certain 
 forms of physical life or development, so 
 there are certain types of goodness and 
 ethical development that are fitly described 
 by no other word. A thought may be more 
 beautiful than a thing; and a feeling more 
 full of mystic charm than any outward 
 manifestation. There are some characters 
 that are just as decidedly beautiful as an 
 autumn sunset is beautiful, or a bit of 
 landscape, or a flower with its rich and 
 delicate tints. Goodness, that is to say, 
 is, under certain conditions, beautiful: or, 
 rather, Goodness at its best — in its truest 
 development — is B eauty . 
 
 The identity of the two in human thought 
 is almost as old as thought itself; as 
 old, certainly, as deep and intelligent and 
 earnest thought. In his " History of European 
 Morals" Mr. Lecky tells us that "the close 
 connection between the good and the beautiful 
 has been always felt, so much so that both 
 were in Greek expressed by the same word; 
 and in the philosophy of Plato moral beauty 
 was regarded as the archetype of which all 
 
BEAUTY OF CHARACTER. 63 
 
 visible beauty is only the shadow or image." 
 "We all feel," Mr. Lecky adds, "that there 
 is a strict propriety in the term Moral 
 Beauty. We feel that there are different 
 forms of beauty which have a natural 
 correspondence to different moral qualities, 
 and much of the charm of poetry and 
 eloquence rests upon this harmony." 
 
 Before presenting the elements that go to 
 make the beauty of the moral life, a broad 
 and necessary limitation should be noticed. 
 It is this : 
 
 The mere fact that a life is moral does 
 not insure that it is beautiful. In fact, some 
 perfectly true and upright and faithful people 
 lack perceptibly this very quality. A man 
 may keep all the commandments ; his actions 
 may be approximately faultless ; he may ask, 
 with reason, "What lack I yet?" and at 
 the same time he may really lack this one 
 thing — the element of beauty. For this is 
 an added element. 
 
 Kor do we ignore this distinction in our 
 customary way of speaking. We describe 
 certain people as having strong characters, 
 or energetic characters, or pure and r lofty 
 
64 BEAUTY OF CHARACTER. 
 
 characters : but when we speak of a beautiful 
 character we mean something more than any- 
 one of these, — more even, it may be, than 
 the sum of them. We refer to a certain 
 mystic halo or subtle grace or delicate aroma 
 that pervades the whole life and seems 
 to transfigure all the actions that come 
 from it. 
 
 But just what are the attributes that 
 constitute moral beauty ? This is the utmost 
 we may attempt to show: we can never 
 describe or define beauty itself. Whether it 
 be the beauty of a graceful wild animal, 
 or of a piece of music, or of a bit of 
 sculpture, it is equally indescribable. Emerson 
 recognized this fact when he apostrophized 
 it as 
 
 " Thou eternal fugitive 
 Hovering over all that live." 
 
 We feel rather than understand the beauty 
 of a human life. In the clear consciousness 
 of it we are not accustomed to ask why or 
 how it is. The mere fact is enough. There 
 are some persons whom we feel at once to 
 be possessed of a certain charm. We are 
 
BEAUTY OF CHARACTER. 65 
 
 subdued and chastened by their presence, even 
 as we are subdued and chastened when we 
 stand before a Madonna by Raphael or 
 Murillo. There seems something within and 
 around these people that is imparted to us 
 in a smile or a touch of the hand, or in a 
 look from the eyes or a casually spoken 
 word. We may not know them well; we 
 may not be cognizant of any great work they 
 have done or are doing; we may not even 
 have heard that they are distinguished for 
 integrity or honesty of purpose : but, for all 
 that, we realize that they have somewhat 
 about them which, for want of a better term, 
 we call beauty of character. 
 
 I. There is probably no one thing that 
 contributes more, in a superficial way, to 
 make people beautiful morally, than symmetry, 
 or evenness of development; or what may be 
 better called harmonious completeness. 
 
 This is what so often contributes to beauty 
 in the outward world, and in all forms of 
 physical life. We consider a statue beautiful 
 which is symmetrical — well-proportioned. It 
 is the same with the human figure. It is 
 this, too, which makes one animal beautiful 
 
66 
 
 BEAUTY OF CHARACTER. 
 
 rather than another. The nice adjustment of 
 means to ends, the full and equal play of 
 life in all its parts, is what charms us, for 
 instance, in the greyhound or the deer; 
 whereas, the clumsiness, the heavy unevenness, 
 the apparent lack of adaptation, is what robs 
 such a creature as the elephant of all 
 attractiveness. 
 
 It is not difficult to see how precisely this 
 applies to character. If there is one thing 
 that robs character of all beauty, it is lack of 
 harmonious, symmetrical development. Where 
 great gaps exist; when violent outbursts may 
 come at any moment; when no dependence 
 can be placed that the good-will of to-day will 
 not be succeeded by indifference to-morrow, 
 there surely will be found no beauty. 
 
 And most of us know people who are 
 unbeautiful for this very reason. We cannot 
 depend upon them. As friends they lack 
 constancy, and that most attractive and 
 winning trait, loyalty. As acquaintances they 
 are prone to take offence and consider 
 themselves slighted. Each time we meet 
 them, we are obliged to put out delicate 
 feelers^ a§ certain plants do, in order to 
 
BEAUTY OF CHARACTER. 67 
 
 discover just what their mood or general 
 attitude is to-day. 
 
 Then, too, there are people who are so one- 
 sided, so unbalanced, so full of hot prejudices 
 and whims, — though all the time well-meaning 
 and upright, — that in talking with them we 
 find ourselves always endeavoring to avoid 
 certain subjects. We feel as if we were on 
 the edge of a volcano. "How will he 
 interpret this remark ? " we think. " I hope 
 she was not offended by that," we say. It 
 does not need to be said that such people 
 lack moral beauty. They may be good, 
 honest, faithful; but they are not beautiful 
 in character. 
 
 The people who are this have, first of all, 
 symmetry, evenness of development. As the 
 saying is, We always know where to find 
 them. We can always trust them not to be 
 offended at fancied slights. In disposition, as 
 in outward action, they are equable and 
 uniform. And the beauty of such character as 
 this is, literally, the "beauty of holiness." For 
 the literal meaning of holiness is wholeness. 
 The holy man or woman — though we too 
 often forget this — j§ -the whole man. Qr 
 
68 BEAUTY OF CHARACTER. 
 
 woman. That is to say, it is the man or 
 woman who is well-rounded, who is evenly 
 proportioned, who can not only be depended 
 upon by others, but who can depend upon 
 himself not to be overcome by weakness 
 of temper, or influenced by trivial daily 
 temptations. 
 
 This, too, is what is meant by the " full- 
 grown" or "perfect" man. The two are 
 synonymous. A person cannot in any true 
 sense approximate perfection who is so dwarfed 
 and puny in some of his characteristics that 
 he sways and falls before the storms of his 
 own strong and selfish impulses. 
 
 We must beware, therefore, of carrying 
 over into the moral world the tendency that 
 so predominates in the spheres of industry 
 and education. In them we aim to specialize. 
 We set our workmen to perfecting minute 
 portions of a manufactured article, such as 
 making, not whole pins, but the heads or 
 points of pins; not whole shoes, but portions 
 of the soles or portions of the uppers of 
 shoes : and we call those workmen skilled 
 who do their one part well. In colleges 
 we have our elective systems; and he is 
 
BEAUTY OF CHARACTER. 69 
 
 considered best equipped for life's battle who 
 knows some single subject perfectly. 
 
 Not so in character, however. Would you 
 approach moral beauty ? Would you make 
 your character more and more beautiful ? 
 Then make yourself more and more full of 
 harmony and proportion. Do not exaggerate 
 and add to the development of traits that 
 are already strong within you, and well 
 marked, even though they are noble traits ; 
 but find out where you are weak, study the 
 parts that are undeveloped, and encourage 
 them into fuller, richer, better life. 
 
 II. The beauty of the moral life is always 
 attended by a certain peace or repose, which 
 seems to breathe of attainment and to tell of 
 struggles that are ended because victory has 
 been won. 
 
 It is said that two of the greatest pieces 
 of sculpture the world has ever known are 
 the statue of Zeus by Phidias, — to die 
 without having seen which was considered a 
 calamity, — and the "Moses" of Michelangelo. 
 Yet in both, so I have read, the artists 
 portrayed power in repose. The statues 
 represent the serenity of conscious strength 
 
70 BEAUTY OF CHARACTER. 
 
 as contrasted with its active employment. 
 And it is precisely this repose, or serenity 
 of power, that goes to form beauty of 
 character. 
 
 A life is most moral when it is struggling 
 with temptation. It is beautiful, however, 
 only when the struggle is practically ended 
 and the peace of victory declared. Thus, 
 the actual morality of an act is said to be 
 measured by the amount of difficulty in the 
 face of which it is performed, — just as the 
 skill of the oarsman is evinced by the 
 magnitude of the waves in the midst of 
 which he can keep his boat afloat, or the 
 prowess of the fighter by the number of 
 enemies against whom he can successfully 
 defend himself. But the element of beauty 
 comes only when the skiff of life has been 
 rowed across the waves and rides in the 
 quiet harbor of assured mastery over all 
 life's eddies of passion and whirlpools of 
 despair. 
 
 We shall realize clearly the truth of this 
 distinction if we consider for a moment 
 certain actual characters of the past or 
 present and see wherein their relative beauty 
 
BEAUTY OF CHARACTER. 71 
 
 lies. Take for instance two lives that were 
 both strongly moral, both in conscious touch 
 with eternal verities, both exerting deep and 
 wide-reaching influence on their age. I refer 
 to Carlyle and Emerson, — who have been 
 aptly termed "the frown and the smile of 
 the nineteenth century." 
 
 How universally we point to the life of 
 Emerson as the more distinctly beautiful ! 
 The character of Carlyle was grand and 
 noble, full of intense power and whirling 
 indignation against the wrongs and abuses 
 in society, strenuous and stern for what was 
 just and true. But that very strenuousness 
 and identification with contest and bitter 
 struggle makes his life appear to us less full 
 of beauty. The very calmness, the quiet, 
 placid self-containment of Emerson makes us 
 give his life the higher rank. Emerson was 
 his own "new Teacher," and his whole 
 character spoke of the identity between the 
 Ought, or Duty, and Beauty itself. 
 
 Thus it always is. The genuine beauty 
 of morality comes as a final result of moral 
 struggles. It is attainment, not aspiration; 
 fruition, not growth. For this reason, sorrow 
 
72 BEAUTY OF CHARACTER. 
 
 and suffering, hardships and trials, are spoken 
 of so often as beautifiers of character. True, 
 they do not always result thus. When the 
 sorrow is too heavy to be borne; when the 
 trial strains our powers of endurance until they 
 snap and leave us petulant and pessimistic; 
 when the hardship is so great as to embitter 
 us, then the result has been moral ugliness. 
 Nor is there anything more gruesome in the 
 moral life than the ugliness that has been 
 generated thus. 
 
 But when the victory is with the other 
 side, then the result is, almost without 
 exception, greater beauty. If we ponder over 
 those persons who seem to us the most truly 
 beautiful in character, we shall find them to 
 be those who, in patience, have suffered and 
 borne great weights of sorrow, difficulty, 
 disappointment. Some one once said that he 
 never saw a really beautiful face without 
 thinking, "I wonder what special form of 
 suffering or sorrow that person has been 
 called upon to endure." So, I think, more 
 than often, when we come into touch with 
 persons who are, as we feel, really beautiful 
 morally, we are conscious that in one form 
 
BEAUTY OF CHARACTER. 73 
 
 or another they have fought with nature or 
 with fate, and, after a bitter, perhaps a 
 protracted struggle, have triumphed and are 
 the peaceful masters of themselves. Around 
 them floats a mystic light. And, as we are 
 awed and quieted by any great masterpiece 
 in art, so we feel a benediction descending 
 upon us when we meet such characters. To 
 live near them is perpetual encouragement; 
 for there is power connected with this phase 
 of beauty that weaves itself around us and 
 lifts us into a calm serenity that is of and 
 from itself. 
 
 A striking anecdote illustrating this power 
 is told in connection with one of those moods 
 of popular frenzy through which Paris has 
 so often passed. Great throngs of people, it 
 is said, were surging through the streets and 
 public squares. They were eager — frantic, 
 indeed — for violence and bloodshed, and were 
 rushing, swaying onward bent on hideous 
 outrage. Suddenly a corner was reached and 
 turned, and there, directly before them, — 
 there as though it were stepping forward to 
 meet them, — was the statue of Saint Vincent 
 de Paul. Not one of that thirsting mob but 
 
74 BEAUTY OF CHARACTER. 
 
 knew the story of that saintly life. A 
 strange hesitancy seized those raging souls. 
 An unexpected sense of shame not only 
 caught but held them. There was a vague 
 struggle, a half-conscious effort to push ahead, 
 and then the great crowd seemed to grow 
 limp and wavering, until at last it melted 
 apart, unnerved for violence. Something of 
 the peace that formed the beauty of that 
 pure life had stolen from his very statue and 
 had mastered them. 
 
 III. There are other things that contribute 
 greatly to beauty of character, and even 
 create it, like the lines and swift touches 
 that seem suddenly at the last to transform 
 and complete an entire picture. 
 
 There is, for instance, the attribute of 
 feeling ; of delicate, sensitive perception. No 
 matter how gracefully developed a soul may 
 be, no matter how much quiet, peaceful power 
 it may have, without this it can have no 
 genuine beauty. And by feeling, or sensitive- 
 ness, is meant not the readiness with which 
 we ourselves receive a hurt, but the quickness 
 with which we perceive the possibility of 
 not the delicacy that makes us 
 
BEAUTY OF CHARACTER. to 
 
 over-sensitive personally, but the higher sort 
 of delicacy that enables us to realize how 
 others feel. Surely half the heart-aches of 
 the world, and more than half its bitter 
 and vindictive feelings, are the results of 
 unintentional thrusts ; of careless, unconscious, 
 but none the less genuine blows that we 
 inflict on others. 
 
 "Why will people be so foolish as to take 
 offence ? " we often say. All too seldom we 
 ask ourselves, "Why need we have been so 
 thoughtless, and why cannot we in the future 
 give more consideration to these people who 
 do feel, and who suffer secretly ? " Xo more 
 delicate beauty of character can be found 
 than that which people have who are thus 
 quick and sure to read the hopes, the pains, 
 the sorrows of others. 
 
 The friend we value most is the one who 
 seems always to know how we feel, and why 
 we feel so, and who is ready with generous 
 sympathy and kindly help, as though actually 
 seeing our heart-aches and counting our throbs 
 of painful memory. Some people seem to 
 have this quality of sensitiveness to others'* 
 unspoken needs and feelings, in much the same 
 
76 BEAUTY OF CHARACTER. 
 
 way that some are sensitive to atmospheric 
 changes. And this soul-sensitiveness can be 
 cultivated. In large part it is habit. Nor 
 is there, probably, any single feature, that 
 can be more easily acquired by any one, 
 which is at the same time so sure to impart 
 a touch of genuine moral beauty. 
 
 IV. Sensitiveness to others' feelings is of 
 course but a phase of that larger and deeper 
 quality which is the greatest of all character 
 beautifiers. I refer to what is commonly 
 called Love, but which, in this connection, 
 may be better described as a humane and 
 gentle spirit. Whoever has this, and has it 
 fully, naturally, deeply, has many, if not most, 
 of those other qualities without which beauty 
 is never found. For love is ever the fulfilling 
 of the law, and it gives to life that quiet 
 peace, that gentle charm, of which all beauty 
 is so eloquent. 
 
 How poor and weak seem even our best 
 phrases upon this subject ! How little we 
 can suggest of the actual beauty that moral 
 life is capable of possessing! Think of the 
 noblest lives you have ever known or ever 
 
BEAUTY OF CHARACTER. 77 
 
 read of; count over all their virtues, all their 
 graces, all their high and excellent qualities: 
 they are all faint adumbrations of the central 
 glory of its beauty. 
 
 And as there is no higher, no more 
 entrancing form of beauty than moral beauty, 
 so there can be no higher calling for any one 
 than to carve well the statue of his character, 
 making it fair and beautiful of proportion. 
 For this great end our powers were given 
 us — our powers of steady endurance, of high 
 ambition, of worthy appreciation. They are 
 not ours simply to the end that we may carve 
 out for ourselves huge fortunes, that shall 
 melt away at the touch of death; nor to 
 achieve proud reputations, though these are 
 well. They are ours that we may shape 
 ourselves in beauty. 
 
 When we employ these powers on lower 
 things we are like artists who waste their 
 talents in idle and useless work. There is a 
 suggestive incident told of Michelangelo. It 
 is said that in January of 1494 a most 
 unusual storm swept over Florence, leaving 
 snow upon the ground from four to five feet 
 deep, — a very exceptional occurrence in that 
 
78 BEAUTY OF CHARACTER. 
 
 warm climate. The weak and worldly Piero 
 de Medici was at that time ruler of the city, 
 and his word was law. Seeing the snow he 
 sent for Michelangelo, took him away from 
 his workshop, where he was carving figures in 
 enduring marble at which future generations 
 should gaze in wonderment, and bade him 
 form a snow-statue in the court-yard of 
 the palace. When it was done, he was so 
 delighted that he brought the artist to sit 
 at his own table. 
 
 Think of it ! the greatest creative genius 
 in the world wasting its powers on material 
 that another morning's sun would melt away. 
 Yet so it often is in life. In obedience to 
 our own selfish commands and foolish pride, 
 and our worldly ambition, we put our hands 
 to works and devote our energies to materials 
 that are as fleeting as the mist, as unstable 
 as the snow, and that vanish with the hour 
 that gave them birth. But to shape our 
 characters in beauty is an enduring work, 
 that calls for reverent devotion. 
 
 We bow humbly before those who can put 
 upon the canvas the visions of beauty that 
 float before their imaginations. We honor and 
 
BEAUTY OF CHARACTER. 79 
 
 remember those who could take the still, cold 
 marble and chisel it into features full of holy 
 feeling. But let the canvas be a human life, 
 the vision of beauty a dream of purity, of 
 integrity, of holiness, and how much grander 
 is the result ! Before the artist of the soul 
 we bow with deepest reverence. In the pres- 
 ence of moral beauty we feel the holiest awe. 
 
MAKING THE BEST OF IT. 
 
 BY 
 
 Samuel M. Crothebs. 
 
They have half-way conquered Fate 
 Who go half-way to meet her. 
 
 — Lowell. 
 
 When the bright sun shines, 
 
 Then let thy heart be gay: 
 
 But when the day declines, 
 
 Let thy heart yield the cheerful ray 
 
 Which it hath stored the live-long day. 
 
 — James Vila Blake. 
 
 What though the radiance which was once so bright 
 Be now forever taken from my sight, 
 
 Though nothing can bring back the hour 
 Of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower — 
 
 We will grieve not, rather find 
 
 Strength in what remains behind: 
 
 In the primal sympathy 
 
 Which, having been, must ever be; 
 
 In the soothing thoughts that spring 
 
 Out of human suffering; 
 
 In the faith that looks through death, 
 In years that bring the philosophic mind. 
 
 — Wordsworth. 
 
 Whom neither shape nor danger can dismay, 
 ~Not thought of tender happiness betray ; 
 Who, not content that former worth stand fast, 
 Looks forward, persevering to the last, 
 From good to better, daily self-surpassed. 
 
 (82) 
 
MAKING THE BEST OF IT 
 
 " The best is yet to be — 
 The last of life, for which the first was made." 
 
 — Brovming. 
 
 Good, better, best,— that is the way life 
 ought to be. But oue does not have to 
 be much of a cynic, or to have lived very 
 long, to doubt whether this is the common 
 experience. To the majority of people life 
 presents a decided anti-climax. It begins with 
 the superlative. The youth craves the very 
 best and most beautiful ; he is a devotee of 
 the ideal; a believer in the perfect. And he 
 believes that what he cares for must be his 
 by right. It seems natural that to him 
 should come the finest joys. He is not 
 satisfied with what is merely good enough ; 
 
84 MAKING THE BEST OF IT. 
 
 he scorns the commonplace. So much does 
 he live in the superlative that, were he not 
 a complete optimist, he would be a complete 
 pessimist. He cannot conceive of a middle 
 ground. 
 
 But with maturer years there comes a 
 change. The man outgrows the illusion that 
 the best things necessarily belong to him. 
 Then he listens to expediency and common 
 sense. I am not able, he says, to get the 
 best things which I have longed for, — yet I 
 need not take the worst. I must learn to 
 get as much as I can from what may possibly 
 be a bad bargain. I will compare one thing 
 with another ; and practical wisdom consists 
 in acting in the light of such comparison, 
 and of habitually choosing the better rather 
 than the worse. 
 
 And here, it must be acknowledged, is 
 the basis for much admirable and practical 
 morality. It is the morality, however, not of 
 the idealist, " whose soul sees the perfect," 
 but of the man of good sense, who recognizes 
 what is practicable. It is illustrated in the 
 Old Testament book of Proverbs. Here we 
 are told, not of the best, but only of the 
 
MAKING THE BEST OF IT. 85 
 
 better. There is a cool comparison of one line 
 of conduct with another, but no enthusiasm. 
 Eighteousness is better than injustice; wisdom 
 is better than folly; a lowly spirit is better 
 than pride. 
 
 This is the characteristic attitude of the 
 man in active life who is engaged in balancing 
 one thing against another. 
 
 But there is still another stage of experience. 
 The active life past, its interests begin to 
 fail. The mind seeks something positive. 
 The man says, I no longer claim as my right 
 the best things; I no longer care to compare 
 myself with others and to say that what I 
 have is better than what they have. I must 
 be content if I can say that I have found 
 some things that are good. They may not be 
 ideally good; they may not be comparatively 
 good; yet such as they are they are mine, 
 and I must accept them. Perhaps they are 
 good enough — at any rate it will not help 
 matters to call them bad. "When we grow 
 old," some one has said, "we learn to conceal 
 our griefs." 
 
 The man I have in mind is not one 
 who plunges into gloomy pessimism. He has 
 
86 MAKING THE BEST OF IT. 
 
 not swerved in his loyalty to righteousness. 
 Only, as he goes on, the glow has faded 
 away and he works under a leaden sky. Life 
 has not fulfilled its first promise. He has no 
 use, any more, for the superlative. He still 
 obeys the moral law, but he has lost the 
 spring of moral enthusiasm. 
 
 But now, though this is a common experience, 
 we need not accept it as necessary. I believe 
 it is possible so to live that the superlative 
 shall be at the end rather than at the 
 beginning. Looking forward to such a life, 
 one may say, "the best is yet to be." 
 
 Our discovery of this kind of life comes 
 in the very midst of our disappointment. 
 When we fail in attaining what we most 
 desire, we exclaim in a tone of resignation, 
 "We must make the best of it." 
 
 Could we but know it, that phrase contains 
 a deeper meaning, that may transform our 
 existence and bring victory from defeat. 
 
 The youth says : " I shall receive the best 
 things. They shall come to me without effort 
 of my own. They are mine by right." And 
 when they do not come thus, he feels that 
 he has been cheated. 
 
MAKING THE BEST OF IT. 87 
 
 The strong man says : " I will make the 
 best of what I have." And in those words 
 is the triumph of will over fate. 
 
 For, the best things are not the things 
 which we find, but the things which we 
 make. They do not come to us unasked. 
 They are the result of effort. God does 
 not give us heaven; he only gives us the 
 materials out of which we may make heaven. 
 His best creations are those in which he 
 works through man, inspiring his effort and 
 enlisting his will. The most bountiful gifts 
 of nature are not the best things. Nature 
 furnishes but the raw material; man is the 
 artist whose touch gives the imperishable 
 value. 
 
 Matthew Arnold's lines contain a truth to 
 be pondered : 
 
 "Know, man hath all that Nature hath, but more; 
 And in that more lies all his hope of good. 
 
 Man must begin, know this, where Nature ends." 
 
 People have often dreamed of a primitive 
 paradise where men dwelt in effortless bliss. 
 But Milton, when he tried to picture Adam 
 
88 MAKING THE BEST OF IT. 
 
 and Eve driven out of the garden into the 
 wide world, was, in spite of his theology, 
 unable to make the event seem tragical. It 
 came to them rather as an enfranchisement 
 than as a curse. 
 
 "Some natural tears they dropped, but wiped them 
 soon; 
 The world was all before them, where to choose 
 Their place of rest, and Providence their guide." 
 
 When the archangel tells Adam how, instead 
 of the joys of ignorant innocence, he is to 
 have henceforth the achievements of manly 
 virtue, he adds, 
 
 " Then wilt thou not be loth 
 To leave this paradise, but shait possess 
 A paradise within thee, happier far." 
 
 The aim of all moral culture is to produce 
 this paradise within us ; and the test of 
 spiritual insight is in the perception that it 
 is happier far than any paradise dependent 
 on outward circumstances. 
 
 Now, when we have come to the thought 
 that the best things must be made, we see 
 the true progression in life. One good thing 
 
MAKING THE BEST OF IT. 89 
 
 after another is presented to us and taken 
 away. These are but incentives and challenges 
 to our creative spirits. So nature acts upon 
 the artist. She does not satisfy him, she 
 Stimulates his genius. She shows him glimpses 
 of beauty to make him dream of something 
 still more beautiful, and to set him to work 
 to realize his dream. 
 
 So youth gives but foretastes. It has its 
 natural joys, which come unbidden, and which 
 as unexpectedly vanish. But the lasting 
 blessedness is a creation of the soul, which 
 consciously gives itself to the work of making 
 good things better, and which is not satisfied 
 except with the service of the Best. 
 
 We do not talk so much as people once 
 did about men being born free. We see that 
 true liberty is an achievement. One must 
 earn it before he can truly enjoy it. 
 
 When we see any very beautiful thing we 
 are apt to say : How rare and costly must 
 have been the materials out of which it was 
 made. But the true artist can make beauty 
 out of common things. His touch gives 
 them worth. In this lies the meaning of 
 the beatitudes. 
 
90 MAKING THE BEST OF IT. 
 
 We say that we desire happiness and it 
 has not been given us. We have been 
 cheated out of what belongs to us. 
 
 The answer is : If you want happiness, 
 why don't you make it ? All the materials 
 are at your hands. You can make it, just as 
 all the saints have made it. Do not stand 
 any longer as victims of fate, but as creators 
 of the future. 
 
 The early Christians took the cross on 
 which their master had suffered, and changed 
 it from the symbol of shame to the symbol 
 of salvation. So every one of us may do. 
 We may use our very sorrows for the 
 upbuilding of character. 
 
 Let ours be the artist's perception. "Here 
 is my life," let each of us say; "what can 
 I make of it?" 
 
 And the answer is, You can make, if you 
 will, the very best thing of it. You have 
 known what failure means, and pain, and 
 disappointment. Out of your consciousness 
 of personal loss you may have, created within 
 you, a capacity for sympathy fine and far 
 reaching. Because you have been acquainted 
 with grief you may have patience and strength 
 
MAKING THE BEST OF IT. 91 
 
 which will make you capable of truest service. 
 The things you have lost were not the best; 
 the best things are those which you may 
 gain. Age crowns the work which youth 
 had only begun. 
 
 The blessed life is a growing life. It may 
 grow to the end. assimilating new elements, 
 and making, out of them, new grace. There 
 are no circumstances without their divine 
 possibilities. Each difficulty overcome is an 
 increase of strength. The life of faithful 
 service brings with it a deathless hope. TVe 
 do not accept it with dull resignation as 
 merely "good enough." It is full of high 
 promise. Watching its upward course we 
 feel sure that "the best is yet to be." 
 
WINTER FIRES. 
 
 BY 
 
 James M. Leighton. 
 
Earth's crammed with heaven, — 
 
 But only he who sees takes off his shoes. 
 
 — Mrs. Browning. 
 
 Thou art not lone — there' s sunshine left. 
 
 — Mendelssohn'' s Spring Songs. 
 
 The rose blooms now. But man postpones, or re- 
 members. He does not live in the present, but with 
 reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless of the 
 riches that surround him, stands on tip-toe to foresee 
 the future. He cannot be happy and strong until he 
 too lives with Nature in the present, above time. 
 
 — Emerson. 
 
 Unto thy broken cisterns wherefore go, 
 
 While from the secret treasure-depths below, 
 
 Fed by the skiey shower, 
 
 And clouds that sink and rest on hill-tops high, 
 
 Wisdom, at once, and Power, 
 
 Are welling, bubbling forth, unseen, incessantly ? 
 
 Why labor at the dull mechanic oar, 
 
 When the fresh breeze is blowing, 
 
 And the strong current flowing, 
 
 Bight onward to the Eternal Shore ? 
 
 — A. H. Clough. 
 
 In the heart we hear ever the ringing voice, 
 
 " We were born for something better ! " 
 And that inner voice, we may well believe, 
 Will never the hoping soul deceive. 
 
 — Schiller. 
 (94) 
 
tt&fc 
 
 WINTER FIRES. 
 
 "The prologue of life is finished at twenty: then 
 come five acts of a decade each, and the play is over; 
 with now and then a pleasant or tedious afterpiece, 
 when half the lights are put out and half the orches- 
 tra is gone." — Oilier Wendell Holmes. 
 
 "As age comes on I can cheer my own wintry 
 days with sunbeams gathered from the Springtime of 
 young people and from the smiling faces of children. 
 This will save me from the shame of casting a shadow 
 across their life; the light of my face will be a reflec- 
 tion of their own." — Charles G. Ames. 
 
 When I arose in the morning and looked 
 out of my window upon the season's first 
 snow-clad landscape, the scenes of the Winter 
 previous were so vividly recalled that for a 
 moment I found it hard to believe there had 
 
96 WIXTEE, FIRES. 
 
 been any Summer. It seemed as if I had only 
 dreamed in the night of long days and flowers 
 and birds and out-of-door delights with friends, 
 and that I had awakened to find the earth in 
 the midst of Winter, just as it was when I fell 
 asleep the evening before. The very tracks 
 made by people early abroad looked familiar; 
 the driving snow seemed normal and seasonable. 
 There involuntarily arose in my heart the same 
 longing for summer weather and fragrance, for 
 busy nest-builders and honey-gatherers, that I 
 always experience towards the end of long and 
 cold Winters ; and I said, " I wish it were last 
 March, and the Summer w^ere just ahead instead 
 of receding behind me " — for there flashed just 
 then through my mind the consciousness that a 
 beautiful Summer, long in fact, and short only 
 in fancy (because pleasures are fleeting), had 
 intervened between the end of last Winter and 
 the beginning of this : a Summer which I would 
 gladly live over again because it brought so 
 much happiness and so little sorrow to me. 
 
 I do not remember so sudden and sharp a 
 transition from Summer to Winter as this one 
 of which I am writing. I do not recall ever 
 seeing, in this latitude, tender plants spared so 
 
WIXTER FIRES. 97 
 
 long by the autumn frosts ; their blooms visited 
 by bees, as I saw them one day, and, the next, 
 enshrouded in snow. It is not likely that this 
 occurred, the year I am recording, for the first 
 time, yet I venture to say it is a rare circum- 
 stance. 
 
 At any rate, now, the Summer was ended. 
 All life in nature was, for a time, translated 
 or suspended. Beauty and song and richness 
 remained only in the storehouse of memory and 
 the structure of character. The warmth and 
 glow of Summer had given place to chill winds 
 and shudderings. ]STow there was more night 
 than day. 
 
 But, though Summer carries away with it 
 so much that is good and enjoyable, it does 
 not leave us desolate. Winter brings us gifts 
 upon its snowy wings, to compensate us for the 
 deprivations to which it subjects us. The sun- 
 beams which to-day reach us may fail to warm 
 us sufficiently; but we build cheerful fires on 
 our hearths, and maintain a glow and warmth 
 which are not artificial, but are sunbeams stored 
 ages ago in the coal-measures, and laid up year 
 by year in the solid wood of the oaks and 
 maples we prepare for our winter fires. Our 
 
98 WINTER FIRES. 
 
 earth, turns its face away from the sun in mid- 
 afternoon, and the long shadow settles down 
 upon us ; but still the beams of the sun give 
 us light through the oil in our lamps and 
 the gas in our reservoirs, which are the sun- 
 beams of long-past ages transformed and im- 
 prisoned until the genius of man set them free 
 and struck them once more into flame to supply 
 his need. 
 
 We take great comfort around our winter 
 fires. There are joys and pleasures peculiar to 
 long winter evenings which even the howling of 
 the storm outside seems to enhance. Our winter 
 advantages and pleasures are not so easy to gain, 
 perhaps, as those of Summer. We cannot main- 
 tain winter fires but by special efforts. We must 
 at least trim our lamps and lay fuel on our 
 hearths. In Summer, comfort may be found 
 under the shade of a tree, without toil, and in 
 the bounty of Nature; but in Winter it costs 
 both toil and money to maintain our cosy 
 corner. And much of the toil is of the nature 
 of drudgery; for who likes to trim lamps and 
 carry out ashes ? 
 
 Yet our winter comforts and advantages, in 
 some respects, surpass those of Summer. We 
 
WINTER FIRES. 99 
 
 live a more intimate home-life about our winter 
 fires than when we have all-out-of-doors in which 
 to range. From touring and seeing we settle 
 down to sociability and reading. Pleasures, 
 instead of being sought in fields and woods, are 
 brought in-doors. Instead of a posy-garden, 
 where weeds persist and make much back-aching 
 work, there are a few favorite plants in window- 
 seats, the care of which seems to be more inti- 
 mate than that bestowed upon garden-beds. 
 
 Once we have kindled our winter fires, we 
 settle down to the enjoyment of our comforts 
 and pleasures, and serenely do our daily tasks, — 
 and wait for the return of the balmy winds and 
 perfect days of another Summer. 
 
 To us all, if we live long enough, comes a 
 time when we must light our winter fires, or sit 
 cheerless and cold-hearted and regretful of life's 
 Summer. When youth's fires are burned out, 
 when its beauty is gone and its enthusiasm 
 silenced, then must we light iv inter fires and sit 
 in their glow and warmth. I can imagine no 
 other chill and desolation equal to that suffered 
 by the man or woman who has neglected to 
 store, in mind and heart, fuel for the winter 
 fire. One who has lived and served so that he 
 
100 WINTER FIRES. 
 
 is loved by many; who has loved and worked 
 and borne with a cheerful spirit ; who has treas- 
 ured all the best of life in memory and built 
 character of sound principles ; who has nourished 
 faith in good and confidence that it will lead 
 to a blessed destiny ; who, moreover, has estab- 
 lished within his group of habits that of occu- 
 pying the mind with reading and thought, and 
 the hands with work and the heart with kind- 
 liness for his fellow-men, — he has stored an 
 abundance of fuel for the winter fire, which 
 will give both light and warmth as it burns 
 upon life's altar. 
 
 Nothing is so cheerless as a winter • fire of 
 soggy wood ; a sputtering, smoking hearth, with 
 neither light nor warmth. Nor much better is 
 the brief flash and faint glow produced by a 
 handful of dry sticks thrown upon smouldering 
 embers. The darkness which follows is blacker, 
 and the chill colder, after the flare is burned 
 out. 
 
 There is no good cheer, no glow, no light, but, 
 instead, a flickering, smoky flame, on the heart's 
 altar of him who has chiefly regrets, grievances, 
 hard feelings, failures and follies, with which to 
 feed the fires of life's winter, Nor is there any 
 
WINTEB FIKES. 101 
 
 sight so pathetic as that of the uneasy, fussy, 
 despondent person, with scanty store of fuel in 
 mind and heart for the winter fire, — scratching 
 up a trifling excitement, or running after a 
 shaving of distraction, laying them upon the 
 smouldering, blackened coals Y^hich remain of 
 life's burned-out fires, and then trying to fan 
 them into a flame which must depend for its 
 feeble light and glow upon success in finding 
 enough sticks and shavings within the social 
 range to keep it alive. The fagots which such 
 people gather are the petty details of neigh- 
 borhood gossip. The stories of Mary Wilkins 
 depict this phase of New-England life, which is 
 by no means uncommon. She pictures men and 
 women living the narrowest conceivable lives, 
 with no intellectual stimulus, no social incentive, 
 no temptations, but a treadmill round of work, 
 a childish petulance at trifles, a pathetic patience 
 and an unhealthy, introspective religious ex- 
 perience. The atmosphere of the stories Miss 
 Wilkins writes is, for me, depressing, funereal. 
 There is no glow, no warmth, on the hearth- 
 stones of those small houses, nor in the hearts 
 of the men and women that sit around them and 
 knit and nod, 
 
102 WINTER FIRES. 
 
 There are two facts relating to Winter of 
 which few people have knowledge. 
 
 One is, that Winter is actually shorter than 
 Summer by seven days. In the astronomical 
 division, the period from the 20th of March to 
 the 22d of September is 186 days, while that 
 from the 22d of September to the 20th of March 
 is 179 days. 
 
 The second is, that on December 21st the 
 earth is actually nearer the sun by 3,000,000 
 miles than it is on the 21st of June. We receive 
 less heat from the sun in Winter, not because it 
 is farther away, but because its rays fall with a 
 long slant upon the earth; while in Summer 
 they fall more directly upon us. 
 
 Life's Summer is actually longer than its 
 Winter. From birth until the prime of life is 
 passed is at least fifty years of a healthy per- 
 son's life ; while from the summit of life's prime 
 to the end of this mortal career is thirty or, at 
 most, forty years, with rare exceptions. And, 
 unless some chronic disease makes life misera- 
 ble, there ought to be many bright, comfortable 
 and happy years during life's winter season. 
 The warmth and cheer of life depend upon lat- 
 itude rather than longitude ; upon breadth rather 
 
WINTER FIRES. 103 
 
 than length. We may be farther from the source 
 of blessedness in life's Summer than in its 
 Winter. And though in youth and prime we 
 experience more of the energy and glow of 
 being, because its beams fall more directly upon 
 us, yet in life's Winter, when its slanting rays 
 yield us less comfort of body and vigor of mind, 
 we may light our winter fires of resignation, 
 cheerfulness, faith and hope ; and, if we have 
 had the wit to store fuel to maintain them, our 
 Winter may be not the least serene period of 
 our lives. 
 
 I love the Summer, the long bright days, the 
 beauty and wonder of plant-life, the movements 
 and songs of birds and insects. But, knowing 
 that Winter comes, I gather and preserve a 
 store of plants, and note many things relating 
 to summer life, for winter study and arrange- 
 ment ; and so keep in touch with the Summer, 
 and preserve my longing for its return alive and 
 active. I want to lay in treasures for my life's 
 Winter, and fuel for its fires, so that I may keep 
 a warm heart, a cheerful mind, and a sympathy 
 in touch with the spirit of progress and the lives 
 of my fellow-creatures. 
 
 Some of the most companionable persons I 
 
i04 WINTER FIRES. 
 
 have known were in life's winter solstice, but 
 their winter fires burned brightly because they 
 had memories stored full of sound wisdom, 
 and hearts enriched with cheerfulness and 
 affection, and spirits in touch with those around 
 them, from whose lives they gathered many 
 a favor and blessing to feed the flames which 
 gave light and warmth in the short days of 
 life's Winter. 
 
 There are indeed many experiences which burn 
 up much of the material we might wish to save 
 for our winter fires. But there is always some- 
 thing of value left from every such catastrophe. 
 A severe sickness, for example, which is a burden 
 of pain and weakness and danger and anxiety, 
 may so burn out the vital powers of the body 
 that they never recover their former vigor, and 
 life-long invalidism is the result. But even such 
 an illness brings to the one that experiences it 
 somewhat which, when it is fanned into flame, 
 warms and lights the heart in which it is 
 cherished. Sickness and helplessness bring 
 out all the latent kindliness and ministration 
 of friends and neighbors. The wealth and 
 warmth of their compassion are experienced, 
 and they become more closely and kindly the 
 
WINTER FIRES. 105 
 
 friends of the suffering one than they would 
 have become under circumstances which could 
 not touch the sympathies nor involve self- 
 spending and caring for others. 
 
 There is no one who would not agree that 
 health is a great price to pay for even so rich a 
 boon as hearts' pity and love ; a price never vol- 
 untarily paid by any one. I only argue that the 
 best gifts of our fellow-men are often bestowed 
 upon us in our times of greatest need, and that 
 this best, if adequately valued by its recipient, 
 will be one of the brightest of the glowing 
 memories upon the winter hearthstone. Dis- 
 aster and misfortune and death, though they 
 leave in ruins some of our most important inter- 
 ests and dearest hopes, are not unrecompensed 
 loss, since men and women are touched and 
 softened by the feeling of one another's infirm- 
 ities. The sympathetic generosity which impels 
 us to share our resources with those that have 
 lost all or nearly all of their ow r n, enlarges us, 
 makes us wondrous kind, binds us together, 
 heart to heart and interest to interest. 
 
 Grief over the death of beloved friends is an 
 experience which, in many natures, consumes 
 much that is essential to winter fires : consumes 
 
106 WINTER FIRES. 
 
 that serene, hopeful spirit, and that cheerful 
 demeanor, which shed light and warmth upon 
 all that gather around them. There is a spirit 
 and trust which transmute grief into consolation 
 and warm the desolate heart with the glow of 
 gratitude and peace. That spirit and mood are 
 revealed in the following words of an aged man, 
 who writes : 
 
 "When I think of the friends by whose kindness 
 and love my life has been enriched and blest through 
 all these years, I often feel that, if I have done no 
 other good than to call out the kindness which I have 
 experienced from them, I have not lived in vain. May 
 we all lay up treasures of this kind, looking back upon 
 the past, not with sorrowful regrets for what is gone, 
 but with thankfulness for the richer gifts into which 
 it has ever been transmuted by time, change and death, 
 our friends losing their lives only to find them trans- 
 formed and glorified, laying down their dying mem- 
 bers in the dust, and rising from them spiritual and 
 immortal beings. As such, may we cherish always 
 the remembrance of them from each new experience 
 when it passes away, carrying with us the better 
 thought and life to which it has helped us. So with 
 every friend who passes from this to a more perfect 
 form of being. May we cherish in our heart of hearts 
 a new and dearer companionship as we advance in 
 years, compassed about more and more by a cloud of 
 heavenly witnesses. So may we live in them and they 
 
WINTER FIRES. 107 
 
 in us, our lives more and more hid with them in God. 
 And, when this life of faith and hope is resolved into 
 sight, and that which is in part is done away, then 
 shall the shadows be removed from our eyes, and we 
 shall know even as we are known." 
 
 That mind must be cold and cheerless which 
 opens only towards the past, and through which 
 circulates only the atmosphere of the tomb. 
 There is no way so sure of kindling a glow in 
 the heart as putting it in sympathetic touch 
 with other hearts. There are friends and asso- 
 ciates who are glad to bring their sympathy and 
 cheerfulness to add to the fuel of our winter 
 fires, if we will not persist in smothering them 
 with the ashes of our defeats and disappoint- 
 ments, and quenching them with the snows of 
 our complaints. Instead of huddling around 
 cold hearths, appropriate your share of the light 
 and warmth of the great human heart. Your 
 share is indicated by your needs. If there is 
 a spark of cheer and hope in the heart, instead 
 of vainly trying to fan it into a feeble flame of 
 piety and comfort for self alone, use it to kindle 
 a flame in another heart colder and more cheer- 
 less than your own. Your faintest spark of 
 cheer and hope may kindle a grateful glow upon 
 some smouldering hearth. 
 
 / 
 / 
 
108 WINTER FIRES. 
 
 " If the world seems cold to you, 
 
 Kindle fires to warm it ! 
 Let their comfort hide from view 
 
 Winters that deform it. 
 Hearts as frozen as your own 
 
 To that radiance gather; 
 You will soon forget to moan, 
 
 'Ah, the cheerless weather ! ' 
 
 "If the world's a wilderness, 
 
 Go build houses in it ! 
 Will it help your loneliness 
 
 On the winds to din it ? 
 Raise a hut, however slight; 
 
 Weeds and brambles smother; 
 And to roof and meal invite 
 
 Some forlorner brother. 
 
 "If the world's a vale of tears, 
 
 Smile till rainbows span it ! 
 Breathe the love that life endears, 
 
 Clear of clouds to fan it ! 
 Of your gladness lend a gleam 
 
 Unto souls that shiver; 
 Show them how dark Sorrow's stream 
 
 Blends with Hope's bright river." 
 
 When gathering fuel for our winter fires 
 we must not neglect to foster a deep trust in 
 the whole make and outcome of life ; for that 
 
WINTER FIRES. 109 
 
 burns steadily after much, that is material and 
 temporal is consumed. The spirit that believes 
 in the best; that looks on the bright side of 
 life ; that bravely bears ills if they befall, and 
 walks unfalteringly and carefully in the shadow 
 if it lowers, in firm faith that in the Infinite 
 Providence everything works together for good 
 to them that love good; and that is confident 
 that eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor the 
 heart of man conceived, the things that God 
 hath in keeping for them that love and trust 
 him, — such a one is persuaded that neither 
 death nor life, nor things present nor things to 
 come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor any 
 other creature, can separate the children of God 
 from his love. Such a one maintains a fire upon 
 life's altar which all the waters of affliction can- 
 not quench ; a fire which lights up every cloudy 
 sky, and illumines every dark pathway. 
 
 There is an old song that I love, which voices 
 this calm, confident trust in God and in the 
 whole make of things: 
 
 " Oh, don't be sorrowful, darling, 
 Oh, don't be sorrowful, pray; 
 For, taking the year together, my dear, 
 There isn't more night than day. 
 
110 WINTER FIRES. 
 
 " 'Tis cloudy weather, my dear one, 
 Time's waves they heavily run; 
 But, taking the year together, my dear, 
 There isn't more cloud than sun. 
 
 u And God is God, my faithful, 
 Of the night of death so grim ; 
 And the gate that leads out of life, good wife, 
 Is the gate that leads to Him." 
 
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 Cloth, beveled, neatly stamped, price 50 cents. 
 
 Contents: 1. The Complete Life ; 2. The Helper-On ; 3. Moral 
 Purpose; 4. The Deification of Man; 5. Equilibrium; 6. "The 
 Holy Spirit." 
 
 Chicago Evening Journal. — Every word the author in- 
 dites is golden, and should be read by young and old. Such 
 books are genuine uplifts of heart and mind, and when we 
 get to heaven, if we ever do, through earth's sordid dust 
 and mire, we shall have men like James H. West to thank 
 for finding our way there. 
 
 Boston Evening Traveller. — Remarkable for uplifting 
 and vitalizing power. 
 
 Christian Register. — Mr. West shows a sympathy with 
 nature, a poetic and a spiritual sense of the divine forces 
 that are working in nature and in man. The moral tone 
 Is always earnest, and the moral ideal is high. 
 
Pamphlets, 16 to 32 pages each, some of them 
 illustrated. 
 
 Topics of To-day. 
 
 Essays and Lectures on Important Themes of Evolu- 
 tion and Society, by Prof. John Fiske, M. J. Savage, 
 John W. Chadwick, Dr. Lewis G. Janes, E. D. Cope, 
 Ph.D., and others. 
 
 Ten Cents Each. 
 
 1. HERBERT SPENCER: His life and personal character- 
 
 istics. By Daniel Greenleaf Thompson. 
 
 2. CHARLES ROBERT DARWIN : His ancestry, life, and 
 
 personal characteristics. By John W. Chadwick. 
 
 3. SOLAR AND PLANETARY EVOLUTION : How suns and 
 
 worlds come into being. By Garrett P. Serviss. 
 
 4. EVOLUTION OF THE EARTH: The story of geology; 
 
 how the world grew. By Dr. Lewis G. Janes. 
 
 5. EVOLUTION OF VEGETAL LIFE : How does life begin? 
 
 By William Potts. 
 
 6. EVOLUTION OF ANIMAL LIFE : The evidences. By 
 
 Rossiter W. Raymond, Ph.D. 
 
 7. THE DESCENT OF MAN: His ancestral line; duration 
 
 of human life on the planet. By E. D. Cope, Ph.D. 
 
 8. EVOLUTION OF MIND : The mind and the nervous system , 
 
 the nature of mind. By Robert G. Eccles, M.D. 
 
 9. EVOLUTION OF SOCIETY : Growth of the family, city, 
 
 State ; domestic relations. By James A. Skilton, Esq. 
 
 10. EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY : Origin of religious beliefs ; 
 
 ancestor and nature worship. By Z. Sidney Sampson. 
 
 11. EVOLUTION OF MORALS : How altruism grows out of 
 
 egoism ; the proper balance. By Dr. Lewis G. Janes. 
 
 12. PROOFS OF EVOLUTION : From geology, embryology, 
 
 rudimentary organs, etc. By Nelson C. Parshall. 
 
 13. EVOLUTION AS RELATED TO RELIGIOUS THOUGHT : 
 
 Design ; miracle. By John W. Chadwick. 
 
 14. THE PHILOSOPHY OF EVOLUTION : Its relation to 
 
 prevailing systems. By Starr Ho yt Nichols. 
 
 15. THE EFFECTS OF EVOLUTION ON THE COMING CIV- 
 
 ILIZATION : Social schemes tested. By M. J. Savage. 
 
 16. THE SCOPE AND PRINCIPLES OF THE EVOLUTION 
 
 PHILOSOPHY : Human needs. By Dr. Lewis G. Janes. 
 
 17. THE MORAL AND RELIGIOUS ASPECTS OF HERBERT 
 
 SPENCER'S PHILOSOPHY. By Sylvan Drey, 
 
18. THE RELATIVITY OF KNOWLEDGE : Sense-perception ; 
 
 the Unknowable. By Robert G. Eccles, M.D. 
 
 19. A STUDY OF MATTER AND MOTION : With quotations 
 
 from many authorities. By Hon. A. N. Adams. 
 
 20. PRIMITIVE MAN: Earliest races; cave-men; mound- 
 
 builders ; first tools. By Z. Sidney Sampson. 
 
 21. GROWTH OF THE MARRIAGE RELATION: Polygamy; 
 
 polyandry ; monogamy ; divorce. By C. Stantland Wake. 
 
 22. EVOLUTION OF THE STATE : Growth of family, tribe, 
 
 clan, city; the State's final form. By John A. Taylor. 
 
 23. EVOLUTION OF LAW : How law begins ; statute and judge- 
 
 made law; customs and law. By Prof. Rufus Sheldon. 
 
 24. EVOLUTION OF MEDICAL SCIENCE: Supernatural 
 
 ideas ; sanitary science. By Robert G. Eccles, M.D. 
 
 25. EVOLUTION OF ARMS AND ARMOR : Nature's methods ; 
 
 final universal peace. By John C. Kimball. 
 
 26. EVOLUTION OF THE MECHANIC ARTS : Development 
 
 of the hand; inventions; labor. By J. A. Skilton, Esq. 
 
 27. EVOLUTION OF THE WAGES SYSTEM : Wages the out- 
 
 growth of slavery. By Prof. George Gunton. 
 
 28. EDUCATION AS A FACTOR IN CIVILIZATION : Pagan, 
 
 Catholic and Protestant ideas. By Caroline B. Le Row. 
 
 29. EVOLUTION AND SOCIAL REFORM. I. The Theological 
 
 Method. By John W. Chad wick. 
 
 30. EVOLUTION AND SOCIAL REFORM. II. The Socialistic 
 
 Method. By William Potts. 
 
 31. EVOLUTION AND SOCIAL REFORM. III. The Anarch- 
 
 istic Method. By Hugh O. Pentecost. 
 
 32. EVOLUTION AND SOCIAL REFORM. IV. The Scientific 
 
 Method. By Daniel Greenleaf Thompson. 
 
 33. ASA GRAY : His life and work. By Mrs. Mary Treat. 
 
 34. EDWARD LIVINGSTON YTOUMANS. The Man and his 
 
 work. By Prof. John Fiske. 
 
 "The mode of presentation seems to me admirably adapted 
 for popularizing Evolution views." — Herbert Spencer. 
 
 "Entirely admirable."— Boston Times. 
 
 "Extremely entertaining and instructive."— BrooklynCitizen. 
 
 "Excellent, succinct, interesting."— Public Opinion. 
 
 "One rarely finds so much of value made so interesting." 
 Buffalo Express. 
 
 * # * All books and pamphlets mentioned in these pages for 
 sale by booksellers, or sent, postpaid, on receipt of price by 
 
 JAMES H. WEST, Publisher, 
 
 174 High Street, Boston. 
 
Two Books of Large Value. 
 
 Sociology. 
 
 The Growth, Welfare, and Social Relations of Man. 
 
 By Prof. John Fiske, Prof. George Gunton, Prof. 
 Kufus Sheldon, Dr. Kobert G. Eccles, Dr. Lewis G. 
 Janes, and others. Cloth, 412 pages, $2.00. 
 
 The Scope and Principles of the Evolution Philosophy ; The 
 Relativity of Knowledge; Primitive Man; Growth of the 
 Marriage Relation ; Evolution of the State ; Evolution of Law ; 
 Evolution of Medical Science ; Evolution of Arms and Armor ; 
 Evolution of the Mechanic Arts ; Evolution of the Wages Sys- 
 tem; Education as a Factor in Civilization; The Theological 
 Method in Social Reform; The Socialistic Method in Social 
 Reform ; The Anarchistic Method in Social Reform ; The Sci- 
 entific Method in Social Reform; Life of Asa Gray; Life of 
 E. L. Youmans. 
 
 " A very brilliant book indeed. One can here get at the core 
 of all the dominant isms." — Minneapolis Journal. 
 
 " A great educational work. There is a whole world of in- 
 formation in these papers."— Brooklyn Standard- Union. 
 
 Evolution. 
 
 The Origin of Worlds and the Ascent of Life. 
 
 By Prof. E. D. Cope, Ph.D., Dr. Lewis G. Janes, 
 Dr. Kobert G. Eccles, John W. Chadwick, M. J. 
 Savage, and others. Cloth, 408 pages, $2.00. 
 
 Life of Herbert Spencer; Life of Darwin; How Suns and 
 Planets Grew; Evolution of the Earth; Vegetal Evolution; 
 Evolution of Animal Life ; The Descent of Man ; Evolution of 
 Mind; Evolution of Society; Evolution of Theology; Evolu- 
 tion of Morals ; Proofs of Evolution ; Evolution as related to 
 Religious Thought ; The Philosophy of Evolution ; The Effects 
 of Evolution on the Coming Civilization. 
 
 " Scholarly and instructive. We commend the book."— New 
 York Sun. 
 
 "A simple but accurate exposition of the evolutionary phi- 
 losophy."— Science {New York). 
 
 *#* For sale by booksellers, or sent postpaid on receipt of price. 
 
[Second Thousand.] 
 
 Uplifts of Heart and Will. 
 
 In Prose and Verse. 
 
 By JAMES H. WEST, 
 
 Author of "The Complete Life," "In Love with Love," etc. 
 
 "It takes a soul to move a body. 
 * * Life develops from within" 
 
 PRESS NOTICES : 
 
 London Inquirer.— Helpful and interesting. The fact that a 
 second thousand has been called for will be some guarantee of 
 such a book's claim to notice. 
 
 Sacramento Record -Union. — One of the most earnest vol- 
 umes we have ever seen ; marked by an originality that renders 
 it peculiarly attractive. 
 
 Fall River Monitor. — They touch upon the many experiences 
 of the ordinary daily life ; they have a wide comprehension of 
 man's needs, and a still wider, deeper sympathy with his 
 aspirations, his spiritual gains and losses. 
 
 London Christian Life.— A book good for both old and young 
 and for all alike. 
 
 Yale Literary Magazine.— The poems included in the book 
 are impressive, many of them being of a high order. 
 
 Woman's Tribune. — Not dogmatic, deeply reverent, appeal- 
 ing to the divine within the human soul, calling it to the 
 heights of larger helpfulness and blessedness. 
 
 Cleveland World— A. beautiful little volume, free from cant, 
 and full of love, truth, and broad hunianitarianism. 
 
 American Hebrew. — Prose and verse that will surely appeal 
 to an ever-widening circle of readers. It is gratifying to know 
 that a new edition has been demanded. 
 
 London Christian World.— Full of very helpful and finely 
 uttered things. The poems have in them a thrill of intense 
 reality. 
 
 Boston Herald.— One is very strongly impressed with the 
 sincerity and reality of expression. 
 
 The Unitarian. — The earnestness, indeed the eagerness, of 
 the writer cannot fail to quicken a helpful and elevating 
 aspiration in the heart of every reader. 
 
 Cloth, bevelled, red edges, 106 pages, 50 cents. 
 
 * # * For sale by booksellers, or sent postpaid, on receipt of price. 
 
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