ciass_:Ea_LMA 
 
 Book A.(o 
 
 COFVRIGHT DEPOSnV 
 
LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 BY 
 FREDERIC ROWLAND MARVIN 
 
 "Give all to love; 
 Obey thy heart; 
 Friends, kindred, days. 
 Estate, good-fame. 
 Plans, credit, and the Muse, — 
 Nothing refuse." 
 
 — Emerson. 
 
 BOSTON 
 
 SHERMAN, FRENCH & COMPANY 
 
 1911 
 

 
 Copyright, 1911 
 Sherman, French &• Company 
 
 ICI.A300012 
 
TO 
 
 MY BEI.OVKO WIFB 
 
 PERSIS 
 
 "O happy they! the happiest of their kind! 
 Whom gentler stars unite, and in one fate 
 Their hearts, their fortune, and their beings blend." 
 
 Thompson. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 The farmer who requested to be buried in 
 Petrarch's grave that his dust might mingle with 
 that of the poet, could not secure to himself so 
 great an honor even though he offered one hun- 
 dred crowns of gold for the privilege. He 
 sought for himself a distinction that in no way 
 belonged to him, and that could not under any 
 possible circumstances be other than offensive to 
 all lovers of art and letters. But when Lafayette 
 sent for earth from Bunker Hill that it might be 
 placed over his body after its interment, the se- 
 lectmen of Boston saw at once the beauty and 
 propriety of his request. They took earth from 
 the spot where General Warren fell, and with it 
 forwarded to Lafayette's agent a certificate stat- 
 ing that it was earth from one of the most sacred 
 of places. The certificate was signed by three 
 of the oldest men in Boston, all of whom felt that 
 their names were honored by being thus associ- 
 ated with the glory of the new republic. 
 
 In these pages I seek for myself no foreign 
 distinction to which I may lay no rightful claim. 
 I endeavor only to associate my name with those 
 friendly studies which are natural to all lovers of 
 good books who delight in quiet evenings spent in 
 the library with such volumes as dear old Charles 
 Lamb used to touch with reverence and kiss with 
 tenderness. Fletcher said this for me and for all 
 who love good books long ago when he wrote: 
 
PREFACE 
 
 "That place that does 
 Contain my books, the best companions, is 
 To me a glorious court, where hourly I 
 Converse with the old sages and philosophers." 
 
 With some consciousness of my many limita- 
 tions and of the imperfections in my work, I yet 
 offer to my readers a literary fare that has filled 
 for me many a long winter evening with delight, 
 and that I truly hope may bring pleasure to 
 others. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. LOVE AND LETTERS ..... 1 
 
 II. THE GOOD NEIGHBOR ... 93 
 
 III. SILENCE 109 
 
 IV. NOBLE DEEDS OF HUMBLE MEN 151 
 
 V. THE COLLEGE AND BUSINESS 
 
 LIFE .........:. 161 
 
 VI. OLD AGE ........... 187 
 
 VII. CULTURE 223 
 
 VIII. VICISTI GALILEE . , .. . • 235 
 
LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 *0 yepov, owTts fceivov avrjp aXaXi] fi€VO<i i\6o)V 
 ayyeAAwv Tretaeie yvvalKoi re (cat <f>LXov viov, 
 aXX' dAAto5 KO/xcS^s K€Xpr]fi€voL av8pe<i aXrjrai 
 xf/evhovr'y ov8' iOeXovcrw aXrjOea fivOrjaaaOai. 
 '^Os 8e k' dA7/T€iJwv 'l6dKr]<; cs Srjfxov iKrjTai, 
 iXOwv es SeffTTOtvav e/x^v aTrar^Aia ^d^ei. 
 Tj 8' €11 SeiafievT] c}>lX€€l kol eKacrra /xeraAAa, 
 Kat ot oSvpofievrj pXecf)dp(jiv oltto SaKpva mirTei, 
 T] ^e/xi5 ecTTt ywatKOs, ctt^v Trocrts dXXoO' oXrjTai. 
 
 Homer. 
 Ah, wasteful woman ! she who may 
 On her sweet self set her own price, 
 Knowing he cannot choose but pay — 
 How has she cheapened Paradise! 
 How given for naught her priceless gift; 
 How spoiled the bread and spilled the wine. 
 Which, spent with due, respective thrift 
 Had made brutes men and men divine! 
 
LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 WHEN Mrs. Lewes, the legal wife of G. H. 
 Lewes, died in England some time ago, 
 an old story, false and even absurd in every 
 detail, was revived. It was asserted that Mr. 
 Lewes had deliberately deserted his wife, moved 
 thereto by the powerful intellect and personal 
 qualities of the gifted author of "Adam Bede." 
 Mrs. Lewes was rehabilitated and readomed, 
 and the only logical inference that could be 
 drawn from the tender and pathetic words 
 spoken over her grave and published from one 
 end of England to the other was that she was 
 a much abused woman. The real facts in the 
 case were set forth in a statement which appeared 
 in The London Times. It was made by an 
 Edinburgh lady who was well acquainted with 
 both Mr. Lewes and George Eliot. A due re- 
 gard for truth as well as a sense of justice re- 
 quires that the statement which was signed by 
 E. Katharine Bates, and which is not so widely 
 known as could be wished, should be published 
 whenever the opportunity presents itself. The 
 statement runs thus: 
 
 "Some years ago I was taking tea with Mr. and 
 Mrs. Charles Lewes, (he being the son of George 
 Henry Lewes, to whom George Eliot left her MSS. 
 and most of her possessions,) and the conversation 
 turned upon the subject to which your remarks re- 
 fer. I had often heard some such suggestions 
 
2 LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 made, and had greatly desired to know the truth 
 of the matter. That afternoon Mr. Charles Lewes 
 accompanied me downstairs to the hall door, and 
 by a sudden and overpowering impulse I was led 
 to ask him whether it were true that his father 
 had left his mother owing to the influence of 
 George Eliot. *It is a wicked falsehood,' was his 
 answer. 'My mother had left my father before he 
 and George Eliot had ever met each other. George 
 Eliot found a ruined life, and she made it into a 
 beautiful life. She found us poor little motherless 
 boys, and what she did for us no one on earth 
 will ever know ' ; and his whole face lighted up with 
 emotion, and the tears came to his eyes as he said 
 this to me. He then continued in these words: 'I 
 am the son of the woman who people say was 
 wronged by George Eliot and by my father. I have 
 told you the real truth of the matter, and you have 
 my authority to repeat it wherever and whenever 
 such a statement is made again in your presence.' " 
 
 It will be generally admitted that the question 
 asked was anything but delicate. Only the 
 closest friendship saved it from being a piece 
 of unqualified impertinence. Yet it is well for 
 us and for the memory of the dead that the 
 question was asked. It was asked none too 
 soon. Not long after the interview the useful 
 and gentle life of Mr. Charles Lewes came to an 
 end in far-away Egypt. 
 
 Lewes, according to those who knew him best, 
 was not what is commonly called "a magnetic 
 man"; strangers found Kim cold and unrespon- 
 sive. The Rev, O. B. Frothingham, who for 
 
LOVE AND LETTERS 3 
 
 many years represented more than any one else 
 in all the English-speaking world what is known 
 as "The Free Religious Movement," had some- 
 thing of the same temperament. He was con- 
 scious of the barrier that nature, reenforced by 
 a studious disposition and fine culture, had 
 erected between himself and ordinary men and 
 women. To his friend, Mr. Chadwick, he la- 
 mented the "thin sheet of ice" that deterred many 
 worthy and earnest souls from reaching him with 
 their sympathy and moral support. Mr. Lewes 
 does not seem to have been either aware of his 
 aloofness or generous enough to regret the dif- 
 ficulty experienced by the uninitiated in ap- 
 proaching him. Moncure D. Conway, who knew 
 him well, did not discover in his face anything 
 hke "sweetness and light"; and he tells us in 
 his "Autobiography" that Lewes "did not have 
 a pleasing voice nor any look of sensibility; 
 but," he adds, "there was always a quick atten- 
 tion on his part and deference whenever George 
 Eliot said anything," 
 
 There must have been something personally 
 attractive in the character and companionship 
 of the man who could win the heart of such a 
 woman as George Eliot. The portrait which is 
 commonly reproduced does not represent him as 
 in any wise physically attractive — some pictures 
 make him even repulsive. But by common agree- 
 ment he was a man of rare conversational powers 
 and of pleasing address. Perhaps it was 
 Mr. Lewes' literary work and standing that 
 
4) LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 first interested George Eliot. Certainly it 
 was his offer of literary assistance, based upon 
 an early discovery of her unusual ability, that 
 led to her recognition by the public as a woman 
 of genius and a writer of great promise. Had 
 she never known Mr. Lewes the recognition 
 might have been delayed, but it could hardly 
 have lingered a very long time. Her first in- 
 clination was in the direction of philosophy. 
 She was a student of Comte, translated "Lehen 
 Jesu," and assisted Dr. Chapman in the con- 
 duct of the Westminster Review. It was Lewes 
 who first discovered her genius in the realm of 
 fiction, and it was through his advice and en- 
 couragement that her serious attention was given 
 to the construction of the novel. His offer of 
 assistance was not hastily accepted, nor was his 
 efi^ort to make her acquaintance immediately suc- 
 cessful. She shrank from publicity of every 
 kind, and a wall of natural reserve had to be 
 in some measure demolished before the two 
 gifted writers could meet in friendly conversa- 
 tion. No doubt the peculiar social position of 
 Mr. L'gwes had much to do with her early re- 
 luctance to make his acquaintance, and to profit 
 by his offer of literary assistance. But the 
 offer was based upon a real admiration for her 
 genius, and a sincere and honorable desire to be 
 of , service to one peculiarly gifted, and whose 
 views and tastes were in many respects strik- 
 ingly in accord with his own. She was inter- 
 ested in many different departments of thought 
 
LOVE AND LETTERS 6 
 
 and learning. She was a good linguist. Her 
 translation of Feuerbach's "Essence of Chris- 
 tianity" had won for her the admiration of 
 scholarly men and women. And, added to all 
 this, her religious opinions and attitude must 
 have helped to recommend her to the unbeliev- 
 ing mind of Mr. Lewes. She had departed 
 from the faith of her childhood, and had em- 
 braced, if not in its entirety, at least in its es- 
 sential features, the doctrines of Auguste Comte. 
 The Edinburgh Review described her, in review- 
 ing her work after her death, as "the first great 
 godless writer of fiction that has appeared in 
 England, and perhaps in Europe." The Re- 
 view did not intend to use the term "godless" in 
 any oifensive sense; it employed the word as the 
 one best fitted to describe the real attitude of the 
 woman toward what is commonly called religion. 
 It was not contended that she was opposed to 
 God, but only that she did not believe that He 
 had any real existence. The Review continued: 
 
 "In the world of earnest art, George Eliot is the 
 first legitimate fruit of our modern atheistic pietism; 
 and as such she is an object of extreme interest, 
 if not to artistic epicures, at any rate to all anxious 
 inquirers into human destiny. For in her writings 
 we have some sort of presentation of a world of 
 high endeavor, pure morality, and strong enthusi- 
 asm, existing in full force, without any reference 
 to, or help from, the thought of God." 
 
 It seems to us that George Eliot's attitude 
 toward religion, giving that word its usual mean- 
 
6 LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 ing, accounts in some measure for the fascina- 
 tion which Mr. Lewes felt in the society and 
 conversation of the gifted writer who was for 
 so many years his true though not his legal 
 wife. They were of one heart and of one soul. 
 Their union, notwithstanding its status in 
 English law, the many unfortunate embarrass- 
 ments to which it gave rise, and the unfavora- 
 ble comments which it evoked, was ethically a 
 true marriage, noble and in every way honorable. 
 When Mr. Lewes met Marian Evans he was 
 in a peculiar position. He was legally the hus- 
 band of a woman with whom he did not live, and 
 whose conduct had absolved him from all respon- 
 sibility for her support and happiness. His 
 wife, who was a woman of great personal beauty, 
 but as well most wayward and reckless, had some 
 years before eloped with a lover. Upon her 
 protestations of repentance, he had forgiven her, 
 and received her back into his home as his wife. 
 This was, of course, a condonation of her crime 
 which prevented him, when she again eloped, 
 from obtaining a divorce. He could not marry 
 so long as his wife in name, though no longer 
 such in reality, lived. For some time Mr. Lewes 
 and Marian Evans hesitated, not certain what 
 course it was best to pursue, but at last, after 
 consultation with friends, they determined to join 
 their fortunes without the sanction of the church, 
 and to face for the great love they bore each 
 other the social disfavor that they knew must 
 be encountered. From that time on in the 
 
LOVE AND LETTERS 7 
 
 friendly circle in which they moved, George Eliot 
 was known and honored as Mrs. Lewes. 
 
 The life of George Eliot in the home of Mr. 
 Lewes must have been in no small measure a 
 happy one ; and yet, no doubt, there was mingled 
 with its gladness some degree of mental distress 
 and loneliness growing out of its firm and de- 
 termined protest against social injustice and a 
 narrow and conventional ethical system. In 
 this belief I am encouraged by the opinion of 
 Mr. Frederick Locker-Lampson freely expressed 
 in his book, "My Confidences": 
 
 "I am sure that she (George Eliot) was very 
 sensitive, and must have had many a painful half 
 hour as the helpmate of Mr. Lewes, by accepting 
 the position in which she had placed herself in op- 
 position to the moral instincts of most of those whom 
 she held most dear. Though intellectually self- 
 contained, I believe she was singularly dependent on 
 the emotional side of her nature. With her, as 
 with nearly all women, she needed a something to 
 lean upon. ... I have an impression that she 
 felt her position acutely, and was unhappy." 
 
 When the legal Mrs. Lewes died it was thought 
 that a marriage according to law would be 
 eff'ected at once, and it was rumored that such 
 a union had taken place. But the two, already 
 accustomed to regard themselves as husband and 
 wife, and unwilling to discredit the existing rela- 
 tionship by any formalities that might cast dis- 
 credit upon sincere affection and a pure life, 
 
8 LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 continued to live together "after the Lord's holy 
 ordinance," though not after the less important 
 ordinance of man. There was also a natural 
 shrinking from further publicity. Both Mr. 
 Lewes and George Eliot were constantly before 
 the world, and their social relations had been the 
 subject of much gossip. It is not surprising 
 that they shrank from figuring in another sen- 
 sational affair for the entertainment of idle and 
 foolish people and an army of brazen-faced 
 newspaper reporters. They seem to have cared 
 little for the praise and even less for the cen- 
 sure of the world. They did not wish to be lions, 
 and in each other's society they found ample 
 companionship and happiness. 
 
 Another story of George Eliot and George 
 Henry Lewes is the uncommon one which Mr. 
 Richard C. Jackson told Walter Pater, and 
 which Mr. Wright has preserved in his "Life 
 of Pater." The story runs thus: 
 
 "One day (in 1854) at a dinner party, George 
 Eliot being among the guests, somebody happened 
 to observe that George Henry Lewes was seriously 
 ill, and without a soul in the house to wait upon him. 
 George Eliot pricked up her ears, and then saying, 
 hurriedly, 'Please excuse me, I must go,' she left 
 the table. She made her way straight to Lewes' 
 house and knocked at the door. After she had 
 waited a considerable time the sick man put his 
 head out of the bedroom window and enquired who 
 was there. 
 
LOVE AND LETTERS 9 
 
 " 'It is I, Miss Evans/ cried George Eliot. 'I 
 have come to nurse you. Let me in, and I ■vron't 
 leave the house till you are better.* " 
 
 Mr. Jackson went on to say that that was the 
 true story of the origin of the intimacy between 
 George Eliot and George Henry Lewes ; that 
 the love between them was purely platonic; and 
 that they never occupied together the same bed- 
 room. Those who wish to do so can believe 
 Mr. Jackson's story, but the world will never 
 accept it, for the very good reason that it be- 
 littles both George Eliot and Mr. Lewes, and also 
 for the further reason that it lacks the stamp of 
 truth. 
 
 It was a shock to the entire English-speaking 
 world when, after Lewes' death, George Eliot 
 married Mr. John Walter Cross, a merchant in 
 London, who was twenty years her junior. 
 She married him in a Christian church, and, 
 worst of all, signed her name "Marian Evans, 
 spinster," thus ignoring Lewes and confessing 
 that her relations with him had not been "after 
 the Lord's holy ordinance." It was, no doubt, 
 a sad climax to a life of great achievement. The 
 dream and the romance, so idealistic and beauti- 
 ful, faded away in the dull drab of a rainy day 
 in some desolate moorland. The woman who 
 had not for twenty years believed that there was 
 a God took His name upon her lips in the most 
 fashionable church in London, bowed her head 
 when the priest recited the prayer, and so far 
 
10 LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 as we can discern subscribed to what she did not 
 believe, and left the temple of religion "a shat- 
 tered idol." 
 
 George Eliot rested so firmly upon Mr. Lewes 
 for her ethical courage that when he was with 
 her no more she was unable to maintain an inde- 
 pendence which she never possessed apart from 
 him. She rested so entirely upon his compan- 
 ionship that when she was deprived of it the 
 necessity for other support was absolute. This, 
 I think, explains in some measure her marriage 
 with a man twenty years her junior, her implied 
 confession that her relations with Mr. Lewes 
 were not what they should have been, and her 
 practical recantation which we have no reason 
 to believe was sincere. She had acquired wealth 
 and fame, and she had conquered prejudice and 
 public disapproval. That conquest, however, 
 had been won with Mr. Lewes by her side, and 
 without his companionship it could not have been, 
 maintained. His death meant for her complete 
 personal collapse in everything resembling social 
 and ethical independence. 
 
 Many foolish and self-righteous attacks have 
 been made upon the character of George Eliot. 
 Among these may be mentioned a book by the 
 Rev. W. L. Watkinson, called "The Influence of 
 Scepticism on Character," from which I excerpt 
 these unworthy lines: 
 
 "It was with this all-important institution (mar- 
 riage) that George Eliot trifled, and by consenting 
 to live with a man whose wife was still alive she 
 
LOVE AND LETTERS 11 
 
 lent her vast influence to the lowering in the na- 
 tional mind of the sense of marital obligation which 
 involves the happiness and dignity of millions." 
 
 " The two chosen representatives of the superior 
 morality set aside truth for a lie, preferred their 
 own will and pleasure to purity and justice, and 
 exalted their lawless fancy above a palpable public 
 duty, and lived together in adultery." 
 
 "The wronged wife in the background always 
 makes herself felt; the torn veil is on the floor no 
 matter what gaieties may be going on, and one is 
 conscious of a sickening sensation all through the 
 history." 
 
 "The wronged wife," indeed ! Few men would 
 instance the life of the first Mrs. Lewes as one 
 of unmerited suffering because of an unkind hus- 
 band's cruelty. The sanctimonious Mr. Watkin- 
 son must certainly have known that his words 
 were false. If there ever was a woman who did 
 not place her own will and pleasure above the 
 happiness of others, and who refused to place 
 these above purity and justice, that woman was 
 George Eliot. 
 
 The editor of the Christian World, a paper 
 published in London, is of the same opinion with 
 the Rev. Mr. Watkinson. These are the words 
 of an anonymous contributor which he approves 
 and prints : 
 
 "George Eliot preached the doctrine of renun- 
 ciation — ^the doctrine of self-sacrifice — ^the doctrine 
 
12 LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 of breaking the neck of inclination, though stiff as 
 steel, under the foot of duty: but it was not given 
 to her to give a transcendent example of this Chris- 
 tian virtue in her own life." 
 
 Mr. Lewes was certainly a true and loving hus- 
 band to George Eliot, which fact inclines us all 
 the more to the belief that he was the same kind 
 of a husband to the unhappy wife who deserted 
 him for a lover. Let George Eliot herself speak 
 in this connection: these are her words, which 
 cast a strong and beautiful light upon her rela- 
 tion to Mr. Lewes: 
 
 "What greater thing is there for two human souls 
 than to feel that they are joined for life to 
 strengthen each other in all labor, to rest on each 
 other in all sorrow, to minister to each other in all 
 pain, to be one with each other in silent, unspeakable 
 memories at the moment of the last parting." 
 
 In truth the relation which these two sustained 
 to each other was precisely the kind described by 
 George Eliot in her words above cited. It was 
 all that love could ask, and it was all that purity 
 and justice could require. 
 
 Interesting in this connection is the story of 
 the divorce of Lady Millais from the dis- 
 tinguished art-critic, John Ruskin, and of her 
 marriage with the great artist who has immortal- 
 ized her rare beauty upon many a canvas known 
 to lovers of whatever pleases the cultivated taste 
 and imagination in all lands. In Lady Millais 
 Nature provided the artist with face and figure 
 
LOVE AND LETTERS 13 
 
 such as painters and sculptors delight to imitate 
 in colors and reproduce in marble. But not only 
 was she one of the most beautiful of women, she 
 was as well marvellously brilliant and fascinating 
 as a conversationalist. "She was a handsome, 
 tall young woman," wrote one who knew her well, 
 "with rosy cheeks and wavy black hair." Ruskin 
 was much older than she, but he fell deeply in 
 love with her; and she, then Euphemia Gray, a 
 young and gay Scottish beauty, obeyed her par- 
 ents, and gave the hand that sculptors delighted 
 to contemplate to a man honest as the daylight, 
 but often crabbed and opinionated, and in many 
 ways ill-suited to her artistic, joyous, and mer- 
 curial temper. The marriage was not a happy 
 one. Her heart and spirits failed, and Ruskin 
 could not but see that he had made one of the 
 saddest of mistakes. All the world knew that he 
 was a man of just spirit and kind heart. He 
 did what he could to comfort and cheer his young 
 wife, but the fates were against him. He was 
 too wise a man not to know what Richter had 
 known before him, that "the Fates and Furies 
 glide with linked hands over life not less surely 
 and swiftly than do the Graces and Sirens"; and 
 he was as well too wise a man to contend against 
 manifest destiny when at last arrived the auspi- 
 cious moment for a noble and kindly self-sacri- 
 fice. 
 
 In 1854 John Millais was for a time with Rus- 
 kin in Scotland. He painted Ruskin standing 
 by the Falls of Glenfinias. The two men were 
 
14 LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 companionable and happy together. Long hours 
 were spent in the most delightful fellowship. 
 But Ruskin could not be blind to the fact that 
 the young girl who by parental arrangement was 
 his wife, but who had almost nothing in common 
 with him, had in the society of the artist a new 
 life. The enthusiasm ripened into love. With a 
 generosity as astonishing as it was noble, John 
 Ruskin placed the beautiful hand of the young 
 wife in that of his friend, and, with a voice trem- 
 ulous with emotion, gave them both his kindly 
 blessing. A decree of nullity dissolved the old 
 marriage that was not made in heaven, and on 
 the third of June, 1855, the new union of Mil- 
 lais and Mrs. Ruskin was celebrated at Dower's 
 Well, Ruskin himself being present when his for- 
 mer wife pronounced the solemn words that made 
 her the life-long companion of another. 
 
 There is, I think, in all literature no paragraph 
 more touching than that in which Cotton Mather 
 records his renouncement of the holiest of human 
 affections, at what he believed to be the call of 
 a Divine Love. He may have had before his 
 mental vision the ancient story, so familiar to him 
 and to men of his way of thinking, of the trial 
 of Abraham's faith at Jehovah- j ireh, when the 
 aged patriarch stretched out his hand to slay his 
 son at the command of God. Our New Eng- 
 land fathers were great literalists — they too 
 often followed the letter rather than the spirit. 
 Mather was a man of many pitiable mistakes, 
 as the early annals of Massachusetts make only 
 
LOVE AND LETTERS 15 
 
 too clear. If ever a human soul was surely mis- 
 taken, this old Puritan preacher who thought 
 to please his Heavenly Father by renouncing a 
 dying wife was above aU others deceived. This is 
 the sad paragraph: 
 
 "When I saw to what a point of resignation I 
 was now called of the Lord, I resolved, with His 
 help, therein to glorify Him. So, two hours be- 
 fore my lovely consort expired, I kneeled by her 
 bedside, and I took into my two hands a dear hand, 
 the dearest in the world. With her thus in my 
 hands, I solemnly and sincerely gave her up unto 
 the Lord: and in token of my real Resignation, I 
 gently put her out of my hands, and laid away a 
 most lovely hand, resolving that I would never 
 touch it more. This was the hardest, and perhaps 
 the bravest action that ever I did. She . . . 
 told me that she signed and sealed my act of resig- 
 nation. And though before that she called for me 
 continually, she after this never asked for me any 
 
 Whether Ruskin is to be approved or disap- 
 proved will depend upon conditions underlying 
 the decree of nullity, and which cannot be dis- 
 cussed in this place. If the grounds were real 
 and sufficient there remains nothing to be said. 
 To the decree Ruskin consented, and to it the 
 courts also agreed, and therefore there remains, 
 I think, no ground for public discussion, even 
 were such discussion seemly. 
 
 Mr. Alger has well written in his "Friendships 
 of Women.": 
 
16 LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 "The banes of domestic life are littleness, falsity, 
 viilgarity, harshness, scolding vociferation, an in- 
 cessant issuing of superfluous prohibitions and or- 
 ders, which are regarded as impertinent interfer- 
 ences with general liberty and repose, and are 
 provocative of rankling or exploding resentments. 
 The blessed antidotes that sweeten and enrich domes- 
 tic life are refinement, high aims, great interests, 
 soft voices, quiet and gentle manners, magnanimous 
 tempers, forbearance from all unnecessary com- 
 mands or dictation, and generous allowances of 
 mutual freedom. Love makes obedience lighter 
 than liberty. Man wears a noble allegiance, not as 
 a collar, but as a garland. The Graces are never 
 so lovely as when seen waiting on the Virtues; and, 
 where they thus dwell together, they make a 
 heavenly home." 
 
 Love must have in it something larger and no- 
 bler than passion. There must be oneness of 
 sympathy, and delight in companionship founded 
 upon a common ideal in life. Only through such 
 an ideal is it possible to rise above the vulgar lit- 
 tlenesses that make life barren. There seems to 
 have been in the united lives of Lewes and the 
 author of "Adam Bede" the ideal described. We 
 find it in lesser degree, and yet as distinctly, in 
 the love that made forever one the common des- 
 tiny of Sir John Millais and the beautiful woman 
 who was once the mismated wife of Ruskin. 
 This same ideal (though the marriage was in this 
 case perfectly regular if we leave out of sight its 
 clandestine and "runaway" features) may be dis- 
 
LOVE AND LETTERS 17 
 
 covered also in the one life and aspiration of 
 Robert and Elizabeth Browning. 
 
 Whatever is out of the common ordes of things 
 is sure to draw down upon itself more or less ad- 
 verse criticism. No greater harshness of judg- 
 ment was apportioned to Lewes than was at an 
 earlier period meted out to Martin Luther. 
 Thousands of good men and women looked with 
 the utmost abhorrence upon the marriage of the 
 Reformer, himself a monk, with a nun who was 
 under a vow of "perpetual chastity." In how 
 different a light that marriage now presents it- 
 self to us in this later age of the world! There 
 was discovered some years ago in the Schloss 
 Mainberg, not far from the city of Schweinfurt- 
 on-the-Main, a valuable relic: it is the drinking 
 cup which Lucas Cranach painted and gave to 
 Luther on his wedding day. It is to us a very 
 sacred treasure, but once it would have, been re- 
 garded as not only of no value whatever as a 
 memento, but as an accursed thing associated 
 with the adulterous union of two persons who 
 had no moral right to live together as husband 
 and wife. Both monk and nun were wedded to 
 the church. The binding obligation of the com- 
 pact that thus joined them could be dissolved by 
 death alone. Only Luther's followers, few in 
 number, dared view the matter in a different 
 light ; yet the time approaches when over all our 
 earth the marriage of Luther will seem the right 
 and natural thing it most certainly was. The 
 time will alsa come when in the case of Lewes, 
 
18 LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 as in that of the Reformer, the spirit will take 
 precedence over the letter, and the conventional 
 will be lost sight of in a just and reasonable view 
 of marriage. But the world will always find it 
 hard to forgive George Eliot for the painful dis- 
 loyalty to Lewes that connects itself with her 
 second marriage. The union of Mr. Lewes and 
 George Eliot wronged no one; it made two won- 
 derful and beautiful lives happy; it added grace 
 and sweetness to a home that was ideal; and it 
 gave to the world literature that might other- 
 wise have been, in part at least, denied it. Fool- 
 ish is the remonstrance of an unenlightened con- 
 science that lays such undue stress upon mere 
 form. 
 
 "Marriage is a matter of more worth 
 Than to be dealt with by attorneyship." 
 
 What Luther thought of his wife may be 
 learned from his will, which was discovered in 
 the archives of the Evangelical Synod of Hun- 
 gary. To her he leaves all his property because 
 *'she has always treated me as a pious and faith- 
 ful wife should treat her husband; because she 
 has always loved me, respected me, and taken 
 care of me ; and because — Heaven be thanked for 
 that rich blessing — she has given me five living 
 children and educated them." He states still an- 
 other reason for bequeathing all that he has to 
 her: "Because I will not that she shall be de- 
 pendent of the children, but the children shall 
 be dependent of her, for they shall respect and 
 
LOVE AND LETTERS 19 
 
 obey her, such as the commandment of God says." 
 Evidently through all the ages there runs one 
 law coming to life in good hearts under what- 
 ever faith or civilization. That law was at work 
 in Greek and Roman days as it was later in Ger- 
 many, and still later in England. Pliny the 
 younger wrote in his letter to the aunt of his 
 wife Calpurnia these words that should be oftener 
 printed and read: 
 
 "She loves me, the surest pledge of her virtue; 
 and adds to this a wonderful disposition to learn- 
 ing, which she has acquired from her affection to 
 me. She reads my writings, studies them, and even 
 gets them by heart. You would smile to see the 
 concern she is in when I have a cause to plead, 
 and the joy she shows when it is over. She finds 
 means to have the first news brought her of the 
 success I meet with in court. If I recite anything 
 in public, she cannot refrain from placing herself 
 privately in some comer to hear. Sometimes she 
 accompanies my verses with the lute, without any 
 master except love, the best of instructors. From 
 these instances I take the most certain omens of 
 our perpetual and increasing happiness, since her 
 affection is not founded on my youth or person, 
 which must gradually decay, but she is in love with 
 the immortal part of me." 
 
 Always the essence of whatever is good will be 
 found not in the form but in the thing itself. 
 Religion, no matter what may be the system of 
 theology embraced, is of the spiritual nature; so 
 also is Love, when also a thing of the heart. In 
 
20 LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 the right-minded it is a pure flame and will honor 
 "sanctimonious ceremonies," demanding as well 
 where these may be had that they shall "with full 
 and holy rite be ministered"; but never where no 
 fault may be imputed, and yet these may not be 
 observed, as in the case of Lewes and George 
 Eliot, will the enlightened soul, through the false 
 shame of a cowardly conscience, prove untrue to 
 a supreme aflfection. Marriage in its highest and 
 best sense is founded upon, and is the natural 
 expression of, a supreme affection. This it is 
 our poets have in mind when they write of "the 
 marriage of souls." It endures after the pas- 
 sion associated with its beginning is no more, and 
 it remains even when marriage in its ordinary 
 sense and significance does not supervene. After 
 the death of Washington Irving there was found 
 a lock of hair and a miniature which through long 
 years he had cherished. He never forgot the 
 young girl to whom, when a youth, his heart 
 was given. She was snatched away by death, 
 but he always regarded himself as hers. The 
 first supreme affection is of the spiritual essence 
 of marriage, though it may be no marriage in 
 the usual sense of the word has ever taken place. 
 But sometimes it so happens that the first union 
 is not that of a supreme affection; then there 
 yet remains sufficient room for its later blessing, 
 and Avhat we call the second marriage may be in 
 an ideal sense the first. Thus it was with John 
 Stuart Mill, in whose "Autobiography" are these 
 words : 
 
LOVE AND LETTERS 21 
 
 "Between the time of which I have spoken and 
 the present, took place the most important events 
 of my private life. The first of these was my mar- 
 riage, in April, 1851, to a lady whose incomparable 
 worth had made her friendship the greatest source 
 to me both of happiness and of improvement, during 
 many years in which we never expected to be in 
 closer relation to one another. Ardently as I could 
 have aspired to this complete union of our lives at 
 any time in the course of my existence at which 
 it had been practicable, I, as much as my wife, 
 would far rather have foregone that privilege for- 
 ever than have owed it to the premature death of 
 one for whom I had the sincerest respect, and she 
 the strongest aflPection. That event, however, hav- 
 ing taken place in July, 1849, it was granted to 
 me to derive from that evil my own greatest good, 
 by adding to the partnership of thought, feeling, 
 and writing which had long existed, a partnership 
 of our entire existence. For seven and a half years 
 that blessing was mine; for seven and a half only! 
 I can say nothing which could describe, even in 
 the faintest manner, what that loss was and is. 
 But because I know that she would have wished it, 
 I endeavor to make the best of what life I have 
 left, and to work on for her purposes with such 
 diminished strength as can be derived from thoughts 
 of her, and communion with her memory." 
 
 The phraseology here was, no doubt, sug- 
 gested to the mind of Mill by a long acquaint- 
 ance with the teachings of Comte, to which he 
 in large measure subscribed. Winwood Reade, 
 who was an avowed disciple of the French philos- 
 
22 LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 opher, represents one of the characters in his 
 book, "The Outcast," as addressing a friend who, 
 like Mill, mourned the death of an almost idol- 
 ized wife, in these words: 
 
 "Preserve her memory; place her image on the 
 altar of your heart; believe that she is the witness 
 and judge of your actions and your thoughts; then 
 your life will be noble and pure. Love without 
 hope, then your love will be to you as a religion, 
 for none so nearly approaches the love that is di- 
 vine." 
 
 Very interesting in this connection is the Mar- 
 riage Document which Mr. MiU composed and 
 signed in the stillness and seclusion of his library. 
 No one can read the Document without perceiv- 
 ing how noble was Mr. Mill's idea of marriage: 
 
 "6th March, 1851. 
 "Being about, if I am so happy as to obtain her 
 consent, to enter into the marriage relation with 
 the only woman I have ever known with whom I 
 would have entered into that state; and the whole 
 character of the marriage relation as constituted 
 by law being such as both she and I entirely and 
 conscientiously disapprove, for this among other 
 reasons, that it confers upon one of the parties to 
 the contract, legal power and control over the per- 
 son, property, and freedom of action of the other 
 party, independent of her own wishes and will; I, 
 having no means of legally divesting myself of 
 these odious powers (as I most assuredly would do 
 if an engagement to that effect could be made 
 legally binding on me), feel it my duty to put on 
 
LOVE AND LETTERS 23 
 
 record a formal protest against the existing law of 
 marriage, in so far as conferring such powers; and 
 a solemn promise never in any case or imder any 
 circumstances to use them. And in the event of 
 marriage between Mrs. Taylor and me I declare it 
 to be my will and intention, and the condition of 
 the engagement between us, that she retains in all 
 respects whatever the same absolute freedom of 
 action, and freedom of disposal of herself and of all 
 that does or may at any time belong to her, as if 
 no such marriage had taken place; and I absolutely 
 disclaim and repudiate all pretence to have acquired 
 any rights whatever by virtue of such marriage. 
 
 "J. S. Mill." 
 
 Mr. Mill gives us In his "Autobiography" a 
 number of beautiful allusions to the spiritual 
 and intellectual worth of his wife, and many 
 acknowledgments of his indebtedness to her in 
 both his life and his work. He seemed to find 
 satisfaction and comfort in these allusions and 
 acknowledgments. In this he is not alone. 
 Literature is full of examples of the most 
 pathetic tenderness. Where the marriage- 
 union is what it should be, death cannot destroy 
 it. The "final catastrophe" which we await with 
 what composure we can command may even in- 
 crease the strength of love by subtracting from it 
 such perishable elements as are of this earth 
 alone. How many authors know, as did John 
 Stuart Mill, that their success is that of an- 
 other's brain — another's, yet their own. The 
 writer of these lines is well assured that whatever 
 
24 LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 of worth or beauty it may have been given him 
 to provide for the feast of life can be traced 
 without doubt or hesitancy to the dear compan- 
 ionship of a wife who is the gladness of his ex- 
 istence and the inspiration of his working hours. 
 
 Dr. Gumey, who was Mr. Mill's physician, is 
 authority for the statement that Mr. Mill per- 
 sisted in living at his residence in Avignon, 
 though he knew that the place was unwhole- 
 some. He refused to have the trees about the 
 house cut down for fear the nightingales would 
 be driven away ; and he would not leave Avignon 
 because it was there he had lived with his wife 
 through all those happy days he so delighted to 
 remember. In the cemetery just beyond the city 
 he had laid to rest all that was mortal of that 
 dear wife; and, though erysipelas, of which Mr. 
 Mill died, was known to be endemic in the valley 
 where the house was situated, he would not go far 
 from the tomb of his wife, which it was his 
 custom to visit several times in a week. His de- 
 votion to the memory of his wife at last cost him 
 the few years he might have reasonably counted 
 upon for work. Sad years they would have been, 
 beyond all doubt, but they might have been use- 
 ful to the world. 
 
 Francis Ellingwood Abbot, whose death at his 
 own hands closed most tragically a life of rare 
 scholarship and of the finest aspirations, thus ded- 
 icated his book, "The Syllogistic Philosophy," to 
 which he had given so many years of the most 
 careful investigation: 
 
LOVE AND LETTERS 25 
 
 TO THE MEMORY 
 
 OF 
 
 MY WIFE 
 
 IN WHOSE DIVINE BEAUTY OF CHARACTER 
 
 LIFE AND SOUL 
 
 I FOUND THE GOD I SOUGHT 
 
 OCT. 18, 1839: OCT. 23, 1893 
 
 SHE MADE HOME HAPPY, AND WAS ALL THE WORLD 
 TO ME. 
 
 It seems to the writer of this paper that Dr. 
 Abbot comes as near as any one ever can to a 
 demonstration of personal immortality. Where 
 he leaves the question, so far as can be seen, we 
 shall all of us have to leave it. An interesting fact 
 in connection with his argument is that of the 
 perpetual influence of the thought of his wife in 
 both the discussion and the conclusions arrived at. 
 Her death impressed him very much as that of 
 Mrs. Mill impressed her husband; in both cases 
 the relationship was intensely spiritual; in both 
 cases the memory was almost of the nature of a 
 religion. It was the memory of a "divine beauty 
 of character, life and soul." Mr. Mill did not 
 believe in immortality, while Dr. Abbot did; but 
 both realized their highest aspirations in wedded 
 love. Mr. Alger has well said in his "Friend- 
 ships of Women," "As the ferment of passion 
 ceases, the lees settle, and a transparent sympa- 
 thy appears, reflecting all heavenly and eternal 
 things." Of course the accidents and circum- 
 stances of love change, as everything in life shows 
 
26 LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 us. The passionate elements, blissful but unrest- 
 ful, fade, and slowly the tranquil orb of a spir- 
 itual love rises in the clear evening of declining 
 years. Ebers makes one of the characters in his 
 novel, "An Egyptian Princess," say that love is 
 always the same thing, and that people will love 
 in every age as Sappho loved. There is a sense 
 in which that is true; and yet human develop- 
 ment, which includes the unfolding of the pas- 
 sions, like a mighty river moves on, now in stately 
 grandeur and now in foam and torrent, until at 
 last the sea is reached and all the noise and tur- 
 moil of life are forever hushed. 
 
 There are those who represent married love as 
 little more than an idealization of the sensual 
 nature. They tell us that the spiritual element 
 came in with the asceticism of early Christianity, 
 when everything connected with the body was 
 pronounced evil. But certainly love was not all 
 of it sensual in the old Greek and Roman days, 
 though, as Mr. Finck has pointed out in his 
 "Primitive Love and Love-Stories," the popular 
 belief has always been to the contrary. Finck 
 quotes from Robert Wood's "Essay on the Origi- 
 nal Genius and Writings of Homer," printed in 
 1775, these words: "Is it not very remarkable 
 that Homer, so great a master of the tender and 
 pathetic, who has exhibited human nature in al- 
 most every shape and under every view, has not 
 given a single instance of the powers and effects 
 of love, distinct from sensual enjoyment, in the 
 'Iliad' ?" Well, whatever may or may not be true 
 
LOVE AND LETTERS 27 
 
 of Homer's account of love in his day and in 
 still more remote times, there certainly are to be 
 found in ancient literature examples of romantic 
 and spiritual love between the sexes. Of course 
 the spiritual is often associated with the sensual, 
 very much as it is in our own day, and in the 
 lives of men and women personally known to 
 us. Pericles and Aspasia may have been great 
 sinners, but between them there was something 
 vastly different from mere sensual gratification. 
 Pericles was not a fool to be taken with a simper 
 and a smile. He was an illustrious orator, states- 
 man and warrior who for forty years was at the 
 head of affairs in Athens. Aspasia, if she was 
 a courtesan in any sense that may be attached 
 to that word, was, nevertheless, a woman who 
 could converse with Socrates about such themes 
 as interested his great mind. Is it to be believed 
 that her home, the centre of the finest culture 
 and the most brilliant conversation, was only the 
 cover for mere animal enjoyment.? When Seneca 
 asked, "What can be sweeter than to be so dear 
 to your wife that it makes you dearer to your- 
 self," had he in mind nothing more than those 
 attractions that might have rendered Pauhna 
 pleasing to the sensuahst.? The phrase, common 
 in that day, "As pale as Seneca's Paulina," re- 
 pels the charge that mere sensual attraction was 
 the foundation of all domestic life in Greek and 
 Roman days. When the reformer Phocion 
 had drunk the hemlock, his body was refused 
 burial in Attic soil. No Athenian might kindle 
 
28 LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 the funeral pyre. But his wife, faithful to him 
 after his death as during his life, came with her 
 handmaids and Canopion, whose name Plutarch 
 has preserved, and removed the body beyond the 
 frontier. There she obtained fire, and the 
 funeral pile was lighted. When the obsequies 
 were ended she did not neglect the customary 
 libations. Then that noble wife gathered up the 
 bones of the one she loved more than any other 
 person living or dead, and, in the darkness of 
 night, she took them to her own house in Athens. 
 Plutarch records that she buried the bones of her 
 husband beneath her own hearthstone, and over 
 them breathed this prayer: "Blessed hearth, to 
 your custody I commit the remains of a good 
 and brave man; and, I beseech you, protect and 
 restore them to the sepulchre of his fathers when 
 the Athenians return to their right minds." 
 
 Of all loves, married love is the best. It has 
 in it nothing of the lover's "cruel madness" and 
 nothing of his "wild delight," but it has in it 
 great peace and kindness. It is full of abiding 
 confidence and of that beautiful accord which 
 makes two lives to be but one. A visitor to the 
 home of Wordsworth wrote : "I saw the old man 
 walking in the garden with his wife. They were 
 both quite old, and he was almost blind; but they 
 seemed like sweethearts courting, they were so 
 tender to each other and so attentive." There 
 is a sunset love in its way quite as beautiful as 
 is the more often praised love of youth's early 
 morning. Poets of long ago celebrated it in 
 
LOVE AND LETTERS 29 
 
 songs we translate and retranslate with en- 
 thusiasm into every language all over the world. 
 Thus Paulus Silentiarius sang of "Love in Old 
 Age" — and he was not alone, for with him sang 
 immortal ones whose voices sound out as sweetly 
 and as full of melody to-day as once they 
 sounded in the ears of generations long gone to 
 rest: 
 
 "Let others boast of charms divine. 
 The agile step and graceful air; 
 More lovely is thy wrinkled face. 
 And threads of silver in thy hair. 
 
 I'd rather fold thee in my arms 
 
 Than press the sweetest maid that lives; 
 
 Thy winter brings more warmth of love 
 Than all her youthful summer gives." ^ 
 
 As ordinary and even trivial words when trans- 
 lated into tender music capture the most sluggish 
 imagination and infuse into it new life, so a com- 
 mon nature transfigured with beauty wins its 
 way to the hardest heart. WeU writes the world's 
 great poet: 
 
 "All orators are dumb when beauty pleadeth." 
 
 There is a beauty no artist can transfer to 
 canvas, and no sculptor carve in marble ; a beauty 
 we cannot behold with the eye, nor describe with 
 pen or voice ; a beauty we can only feel as an un- 
 defined presence. Not all souls are sensitive to 
 
 ^Marvin: "Flowers of Song from Many Lands," p. 75. 
 
30 LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 its Influence. A certain spiritual clairvoyance Is 
 necessary in order to find it out, but when once 
 discovered, its power over its discoverer is resist- 
 less. We wonder what a certain woman could 
 discern in a man who seemed to us dull and pro- 
 saic, that induced her to leave all and follow him. 
 She was not deceived. There were qualities in 
 his character and presence we could neither see 
 nor appreciate. A very shrewd and practical 
 man said : "Judged by the wisdom of this world, 
 and by the rules and maxims of policy, I am a 
 fool to think of marrying the woman whose name 
 I have spoken ; but I tell you honestly, that I 
 would cheerfully part from all I have and all I 
 hope to have, might I but call her 'wife.' " She 
 was twenty years older than he, and socially his 
 inferior; but they married and lived happily to- 
 gether. George Eliot writes: "It is a deep 
 mystery — the way the heart of man turns to one 
 woman out of all the rest he's seen." It may be a 
 deep mystery, but it would be a deeper one were 
 it otherwise. 
 
 Yet the anonymous author of "The History 
 and Philosophy of Marriage" believes that man 
 is by nature a polygamist, and that, left to him- 
 self, under whatever religion or civilization, he 
 inclines to more than one woman. He may love 
 one woman more than any other, but he is never 
 or seldom under the control of what has been 
 •called a "supreme aff'ection" — that is to say, 
 an exclusive affection. In his "Contarini Flem- 
 ing," Lord Beaconsfield expresses a very differ- 
 
LOVE AND LETTERS 31 
 
 ent belief when he tells us that "To a man who 
 is in love the thought of another woman is unin- 
 teresting, if not repulsive." That may be a 
 strong way of expressing the exclusiveness of 
 the supreme affection, but it accords with the 
 general conviction of mankind, and it seems to 
 be sustained by what we know of social relations 
 in every age and land. There is a difference be- 
 tween the East and the West. Oriental marriage 
 is, as compared with marriage in England and 
 America, a carnal and unspiritual relationship. 
 The songs that celebrate it are voluptuous, and 
 concern themselves for the most part with sen- 
 sual gratification. The ideal element is want- 
 ing, and so also is that supreme affection which 
 centres in one love that endures because ideal 
 rather than carnal. It is true of love as of 
 religion, which is somewhat of the same nature, 
 that the earthly passes away with the disappear- 
 ing of youth, health, and material beauty; while 
 the spiritual continues even when the person 
 loved has long ceased to live. The love that 
 enabled Ruskin to choose happiness for his wife 
 rather than for himself was surely of an un- 
 selfish nature, and we must acknowledge it to 
 have been such whether we approve or disapprove 
 of his great surrender. 
 
 If again the reader's attention may be di- 
 rected to the life and character of John Stuart 
 Mill, it is quite to the point to add that with 
 Mr. Mill love was something that not only sanc- 
 tified the relation of the sexes and lifted it into 
 
32 LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 the realm of the ideal, but that also diffused 
 in the heart a sentiment of kindness that dis- 
 posed its possessor to be helpful to others. No 
 sooner was Mill dead than Herbert Spencer pub- 
 lished the fact that Mill had offered to guar- 
 antee his publisher against loss by publishing his 
 (Spencer's) works, although those works com- 
 batted some of Mr. Mill's own views. Mr. 
 Mill's life was full of a generous kindness, but 
 that kindness, at least in its outward expression, 
 was not a birthright. He was not naturally 
 approachable. He was regarded as cold, un- 
 sympathetic and distant. Only the select few 
 were at home in his society. His later and more 
 mature life, so rich in friendship and breadth 
 of sympathy, he owed to that transforming love 
 which lighted up for him the entire world. Even 
 after the transformation there was still within 
 him an element that at times awakened in others 
 a spirit of antagonism. No sooner was Mr. 
 Mill dead than another man having nothing of 
 Spencer's friendship openly attacked Mill's 
 reputation in a most vicious manner. Mr. James 
 Hayward, a translator of "Faust" and a man 
 of considerable ability, denounced Mr. Mill in 
 The London Times as "an apostle of the phi- 
 losophy of unbelief," and a man of impure doc- 
 trine and life. To this the Rev. Stopford 
 Brooke replied from his pulpit of a Sunday 
 morning. But Mr. Hayward was not to be 
 silenced so easily; he printed at his own cost a 
 rejoinder in the shape of an open letter to Mr. 
 
LOVE AND LETTERS 33 
 
 Brooke In which he repeated his attack with aug- 
 mented fury. There were those who thought 
 the point well taken when Mr. Hayward addressed 
 to the preacher these caustic words : "Mr. Mill's 
 scepticism certainly forms one reason among 
 many why his praises should not have been ex- 
 ceptionally and ostentatiously heralded from the 
 pulpit of one of the Queen's chaplains." Surely 
 the pulpit was not the place for that able de- 
 fense, since Mr. Mill's views were not those which 
 a Queen's chaplain would be expected to sup- 
 port when he put on the surplice and undertook 
 to recite the Athanasian creed. The preacher 
 was in that matter as far removed from honesty 
 as was George Eliot when she celebrated her 
 second marriage in a Christian church and with 
 a Christian service. But Mr. Brooke's vindi- 
 cation expressed the feeling of cultivated men 
 and women, and was in itself a noble argument. 
 Of course the charge of immorality was based 
 upon Mill's long years of friendship with the 
 married woman who was afterward his wife; but 
 those years furnished, in truth, no argument; 
 for they were unmarked, so far as any human 
 being ever knew, by the slightest departure from 
 purity in word or deed. The sermon, though 
 in a wrong place, still shows how vitally Mill 
 had seized upon the public mind, and how deeply 
 he had impressed the hearts of men. Something 
 had changed him from the cold, unsympathetic 
 thinker he was by nature, and had given him an 
 affectionate place in the great Soul of Humanity. 
 
34 LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 It was beyond all doubt the transforming love of 
 the gracious and noble woman through whom at 
 last he came to view life in its entirety. 
 Shelley wrote in his Journal : 
 
 "Beware of giving way to trivial sympathies. 
 Content yourself with one great afFection — ^with a 
 single mighty hope; let the rest of mankind be the 
 subjects of your benevolence, your justice and, as 
 human beings, of your sensibility; but as you value 
 many hours of peace, never suffer more than one 
 ever to approach the hallowed circle." 
 
 Shelley's philosophy, which is not so selfish as 
 at first appears, was, consciously or otherwise, a 
 governing principle in the lives of the men and 
 women whose personal attachments we have 
 studied. It is true that neither Lewes nor Mill 
 was indifferent to the feelings, desires and neces- 
 sities of mankind. The work which John 
 Stuart Mill performed in his study, surrounded 
 by his books, was one that had for its chief end 
 the improvement of the condition of the common 
 people. Neither of these men refused to con- 
 fer with unpretending and lowly persons. Yet 
 never did they wear their hearts upon their sleeves, 
 for daws to peck at. A serene and noble re- 
 serve shielded them from those wasteful intru- 
 sions that cheapen life and exhaust power, while 
 a supreme affection satisfied the profoundest de- 
 sire and demand of iJie heart. To make use 
 of a vulgar but expressive phrase that comes to 
 us from a popular magazine, "We commonly live 
 
LOVE AND LETTERS 35 
 
 all over the lot." Too many interests render 
 the mind unfit for the faithful and competent 
 care of any one of them that may appear more 
 important than the others. So is it with a heart 
 that, loving undiscriminatingly, never knows 
 what a true and noble attachment really means. 
 Few in this materialistic age of the world 
 think of turning to the life of Jonathan Edwards 
 for a story of sentiment and romance ; and yet 
 not many pictures of pure love and exalted pur- 
 pose are more attractive than is that in which 
 the great philosopher and the Puritan maiden 
 are brought before us in all the strength and 
 sweetness of a supreme love that had within it a 
 spiritual light exalting it above merely earthly 
 attachments, and making it in a very true sense 
 religious. Edwards first saw Sarah Pierrepont 
 when she was a child of only thirteen summers, 
 but even then there was something in her presence 
 that distinguished her from other women of her 
 years. Edwards tells us that notwithstanding 
 her tender age she awakened in his heart a deep 
 and permanent affection that was to have a won- 
 derful influence over all his subsequent life, and 
 that was to enrich and ennoble her own life 
 as well. She has been described as the possessor 
 of "a rare and lustrous beauty both of form and 
 features." With this beauty. Dr. Dwight tells 
 us, "there was joined a loveliness of expression, 
 the combined result of goodness and intelligence." 
 Another writer tells us that "there was a beau- 
 tiful and natural religious enthusiasm of a mystic 
 
36 LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 character that illuminated and ennobled her 
 face, and gave to even her common life a charm 
 that captivated Edwards from the first moment 
 of his meeting with her." When Edwards was in 
 his twentieth year he wrote of Sarah Pierrepont, 
 then in her thirteenth, this memorable passage, 
 which Dr. Chalmers called one of the most elo- 
 quent in all our English language : 
 
 "They say there is a young lady in New Haven 
 who is beloved of that great Being who made and 
 rules the world, and that there are certain seasons 
 in which this great Being, in some way or other 
 invisible, comes to her and fills her mind with ex- 
 ceeding sweet delight, and that she hardly cares for 
 anything except to meditate on Him; that she ex- 
 pects after a while to be received up where He is, 
 to be raised up out of the world and caught up 
 into heaven; being assured that He loves her too 
 well to let her remain at a distance from Him al- 
 ways. There she is to dwell with Him, and to be 
 ravished with His love and delight forever. There- 
 fore, if you present all the world before her, with 
 the richest of its treasures, she disregards and 
 cares not for it, and is unmindful of any pain or 
 affliction. She has a strange sweetness in her 
 mind, and singular purity in her affections; is most 
 just and conscientious in all her conduct; and you 
 could not persuade her to do anything wrong or 
 sinful, if you would give her all the world, lest she 
 should offend this great Being. She is of a won- 
 derful calmness, and universal benevolence of mind; 
 especially after this great God has manifested Him- 
 self to her mind. She will sometimes go about 
 
LOVE AND LETTERS 37 
 
 from place to place singing sweetly; and seems to 
 be always full of joy and pleasure, and no one 
 knows for what. She loves to be alone, walking in 
 the fields and groves, and seems to have some one 
 invisible always conversing with her." 
 
 Thus did the young man Jonathan Edwards 
 picture to himself the physically and spiritually 
 beautiful Sarah Pierrepont. The more he saw 
 of her the more he loved her. They were en- 
 gaged, and he urged that the marriage should 
 not be too long delayed. "Patience," he wrote 
 her, "is commonly esteemed a virtue, but in this 
 case I may almost regard it as a vice." When 
 they were united, only a few months before his 
 ordination, she was but seventeen years of age. 
 Edwards had made no mistake. The lovely girl 
 who held such wonderful communion with God, 
 and whose marvellous beauty was equally that 
 of person and of the spiritual nature, proved 
 herself to be no idle dreamer. She made her 
 husband's home at Northampton all it was in 
 the power of any woman to make it. As a 
 mother the record of her life challenges admira- 
 tion at every turn. When her distinguished 
 husband had increased his fame and had come to 
 be regarded as a guide and leader in both intel- 
 lectual and spiritual things, she moved by his 
 side in all essential matters his companion and 
 equal. Whitefield spent a few days in her home, 
 and left his testimony for succeeding generations 
 that in all his wanderings he had "never seen a 
 sweeter couple." 
 
S8 LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 Edwards' external life was barren of adorn- 
 ment; his home was plain; his table was simple; 
 and his labors were scarcely appreciated by the 
 uninstructed men and women for whom, during 
 a large part of his ministry, he toiled. An 
 ecclesiastical dispute in which he was wholly in 
 the right disturbed his peace of mind, and drove 
 him from the pulpit of a church in which he 
 was deeply interested. We should none of us 
 like to live as he lived, without art, travel, and 
 the conveniences of modern civilization. Nothing 
 could persuade us to go back to the tallow 
 candle, the well in the back yard, and the weekly 
 instead of the daily paper. We could not get on 
 with a Concord coach since we have come to know 
 the luxury of the steam railroad and of the 
 automobile. We live in a better world than that 
 in which Edwards lived. But in domestic life 
 we do well if we are as fortunate and as happy 
 as was he, notwithstanding all the beauty and 
 comfort that enter our homes and make them 
 attractive. His intellectual life was one the 
 world will long remember, but his heart found 
 its deepest satisfaction in a love that made the 
 glory of public achievement seem poor, if not 
 actually unattractive. The storm of discussion 
 might rage without, but it could never reach that 
 home of love. 
 
 What shall be said of Warren Hastings, whom 
 Lord Macaulay has immortalized in one of the 
 noblest essays our language has known or is 
 likely to know for many a year to come.? Few 
 
LOVE AND LETTERS 39 
 
 of all the readers who have enjoyed that classic 
 remember that the great Governor-General of 
 India had in his life a romantic experience that 
 entitles him to a place with the worthy ones who 
 have illustrated for others the lasting power of 
 the supreme aiFection. The lady who was later 
 his wife was, when he first met her, the wife of 
 a German Baron who, notwithstanding his title, 
 was an artist, if the painting of very indifferent 
 miniatures can make one an artist. Like the 
 English painter Millais, our German Baron was 
 an interested party in what has been facetiously 
 called "the placing of a wife." But the English 
 painter was a man of genius who received his 
 wife as a gift of friendship from her husband, 
 while the German Baron sold his wife for money 
 which the distinguished Governor-General was 
 only too glad to pay. Buskin's wife respected 
 her husband though she did not love him ; but 
 the beautiful consort of our second-rate and mer- 
 cenary Baron Imhoif despised her lord and 
 master as any self-respecting woman would have 
 done in her distressing place. 
 
 The story is this: Hastings met the Baron 
 and his wife on the ship that transported him 
 to India, where he served his country in a way 
 that made him deserve more at her hands than 
 he received, but not more than he would have 
 received had there been no Impeachment and no 
 wrongs leading up to that Impeachment. The 
 Baroness Imhoff was a woman of genius and ac- 
 complishments ; and Hastings was a man of rare 
 
40 LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 ability and fascination. It is not surprising that 
 they came to love each other. But perhaps 
 matters would have progressed no further had 
 not Hastings fallen ill. Through all his sick- 
 ness on the Duke of Grafton, for that was 
 the name of the ship, the Baroness nursed him 
 with womanly delicacy and tenderness ; and long 
 before the voyage was ended the two were prac- 
 tically pledged to a united life. There were no 
 bitter words exchanged between husband and 
 lover, nor was there any thought of a duel. Our 
 Baron of the brushes and paint-pot had more 
 need for money than for a wife; and, in truth, 
 a wife like the Baroness Imhoff was to him an 
 impediment and nothing more, unless her charms 
 could be turned to financial profit. They were 
 capable of such conversion; and the new rela- 
 tion sustained by the accomplished woman was 
 due to the tenderest love on the part of Hast- 
 ings and equally to the most sordid selfishness 
 on the part of her husband. Governor-General 
 Hastings and the Baroness ImhofF lived together 
 only after the successful prosecution of the suit 
 against her husband for divorce. In 1777 the 
 divorce was obtained, and soon after the lovers 
 were united in marriage. The Baron rejoiced 
 in the possession of a much larger fortune than 
 his art, if such it might be called, had ever 
 brought him, and with the improvement of his 
 financial condition he disappears from view, and 
 we hear no more of him. For nearly fifty years 
 
LOVE AND LETTERS 41 
 
 Hastings and his wife by purchase lived together 
 in happy wedlock. Of her Macaulay wrote, 
 "She had an agreeable person, a cultivated mind, 
 and manners in the highest degree pleasing." 
 That she was as the distinguished essayist de- 
 scribed her to be is in some measure proved by 
 the favor she found in the sight of such accom- 
 plished and good women as Fanny Bumey and 
 Hannah More, and also by the regard for her 
 which King George HI. and Queen Charlotte 
 entertained. Hastings loved her with a manly 
 and tender affection. Of her he wrote when for 
 a brief season separated from her, "Yesterday 
 morning I held in my arms all that my heart 
 holds dear; O my Marian, I love you more by 
 far than life! When shall I again see you.?" 
 She was much younger than he, and she sur- 
 vived him many years, through all of which she 
 remained his widow, faithful to his memory as 
 she had been faithful to him during the happy 
 years of their wedded life. 
 
 Emerson's line, "All men love a lover," has 
 become a proverb. Love is everywhere recog- 
 nized as the primitive and everlasting passion, 
 universally felt. With it our race began its 
 career, and through its Divine allurements that 
 race has continued to inhabit a planet that were 
 else desolate as the dead moon that at night lights 
 with borrowed glory the vast expanse above our 
 heads. In this supreme passion earth and heaven 
 seem united: 
 
42 LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 "In heaven ambition cannot dwell, 
 Nor avarice in the vaults of hell; 
 Earthly these passions, as of earth. 
 They perish where they have their birth; 
 But Love is indestructible." 
 
 Old Egypt and our new Republic that was 
 but yesterday bom into the family of nations 
 are welded together in the eternal circle of this 
 passion. It is not long ago that there was 
 dug up in Chaldea an ancient love letter traced 
 in clay. The clay, baked in an oven, had 
 hardened until it was so firm and enduring that 
 not a line nor even a letter could be effaced 
 without great effort. How old is that love 
 letter? No one knows. But of this we may be 
 sure; it was written more than two thousand 
 years ago. The young woman lived, so far as 
 we can discover, in Sippera; and her lover was 
 a resident of Babylon. The epistle reads thus: 
 
 "To the lady Kashbuya says Gimil Marduk this: 
 May the Sun God of Marduk afford you eternal 
 life. I write that I may know how your health is. 
 Oh, send me a message about it. I live in Babylon 
 and have not seen you, and for this reason I am 
 very anxious. Send me a message that will tell 
 me when you will come to me, so that I may be 
 happy. May you live long for my sake." 
 
 That old clay love letter, written so many 
 hundreds of years ago, is not very unlike, ex- 
 cept in its ancient phrasing, the tender missives 
 of later times. Here are words of noble affection 
 
LOVE AND LETTERS 43 
 
 written by Charles I. to Henrlette Marie, 
 daughter of Henry IV. of France, when she was 
 coming to join him: 
 
 "Dear Heart: I never knew till now the good 
 of ignorance, for I did not know the danger thou 
 wert in by the storm before I had assurance of thy 
 happy escape, we having had a pleasing false re- 
 port of thy safe landing at Newcastle, which thine 
 of the 19th of January so far confirmed us in that 
 we were at least not imdeceived of that hope till 
 we knew certainly how great a danger thou hast 
 passed, of which I shall not be out of apprehension 
 until I have the happiness of thy company. 
 
 "For indeed I think it not the least of my mis- 
 fortunes that for my sake thou hast run so much 
 hazard. But my heart being full of admiration 
 for thee, affection for thee, and impatient passion 
 of gratitude to thee, I cannot but say something, 
 leaving the rest to be read by thee out of thine own 
 noble heart. Charles R." 
 
 Henry IV. was an enthusiastic lover, but I 
 cannot say that he was a very constant or faith- 
 ful lover. Here are three letters that he ad- 
 dressed to his "Dear Heart," Madam de Lian- 
 court :, 
 
 "My Beautiful Love: Two hours after the ar- 
 rival of this messenger, you will see a cavalier who 
 loves you very much; they call him the King of 
 France and of Navarre, an honorable title certainly, 
 but very troublesome — that of your subject is much 
 more delightful; the three together are good with 
 any sauce, and I am resolved to give them up to 
 
44 LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 no one. (This 12th September, from our delicious 
 deserts of Fontainebleau.) " 
 
 "My True Heart, . . . You declare that 
 you love me a thousand times more than I love you. 
 You have lied, and you shall maintain your lie with 
 the arms which you have chosen. ... I shall 
 not see you for ten days — it is enough to kill me. 
 I will not tell you how much I mind: it would make 
 you too vain," 
 
 "My Darling Love, — March 1st. The fields are 
 much sweeter than the town. Good-morning, my 
 all!" 
 
 Some of the best love letters that have been 
 preserved, viewed as literature, are from royal 
 lovers. Why is it that a class of men who so 
 seldom succeed in literature as such are so pe- 
 culiarly successful in these delicate missives of 
 the heart .f* 
 
 Thus Cromwell addressed his wife, who forgot, 
 as many a wife has done since his day and as 
 many a wife will do in the future, how full the 
 mind and heart of a public man may be of great 
 affairs and great services: 
 
 "My Dearest: I have not leisure to write much; 
 but I could chide thee that, in many of thy letters, 
 thou writest to me that I should not be unmindful 
 of thee and thy little ones. Truly, if I love you 
 not too well, I think I err not on the other hand 
 much. Thou art dearer to me than any creature, let 
 that suffice. I rest thine 
 
 "Oliver Cromwell." 
 
LOVE AND LETTERS 45 
 
 lAfter twenty years of happy married life 
 Washington thus gently chided his anxious wife : 
 
 "My Dearest Life and Love: You have hurt 
 me, I know not how much, by the insinuation in 
 your last that my letters to you have been less fre- 
 quent because I have felt less concern for you. 
 The suspicion is most unkind. Have we lived al- 
 most a score of years in the closest and dearest 
 conjugal intimacy to so little purpose that on the 
 appearance only of inattention to you, and which 
 you might have accounted for in a thousand ways 
 more natural and more probable, you should pitch 
 upon that single motive which alone is injurious 
 to me.'' 
 
 " I have not, I own, wrote so often to you as I 
 wished and as I ought, but think of my situation 
 and then ask your heart if I be without excuse. We 
 are not, my dearest, in circumstances most favorable 
 to our happiness; but let us not, I beseech you, idly 
 make them worse by indulging in suspicions and 
 apprehensions which minds in distress are but too 
 apt to give way to. Your most faithful and tender 
 husband. G. W." 
 
 Here are equally tender and beautiful words 
 written by Edgar Allan Poe to his wife in a time 
 of great trial: 
 
 "My Dear Heart, My Dear Virginia: Our 
 mother will explain to you why I stayed away from 
 you this night. Of my last great disappointment 
 1 should have lost my courage but for you, my little 
 darling wife. I shall be with you to-morrow, and 
 be assured until I see you, I will keep in loving 
 
46 LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 remembrance your last words and your fervent 
 prayer. May God grant you a peaceful summer 
 with your devoted Edgar." 
 
 Love letters are a literature in themselves, and 
 are wholly unlike other kinds of composition. 
 Their writers, with marvellous delicacy, place 
 upon paper what nothing could induce them to 
 say with the living voice. Though the writer 
 be no poet, yet is his letter crowded with fine fig- 
 ures of rhetoric, metaphors, and sentimental and 
 impassioned bursts of feeling. Not infrequently 
 the composition deepens to a religious intensity 
 that touches the thought with something like 
 inspiration. Letters of every kind but those of 
 love go out of fashion. Telegraph and tele- 
 phone have rendered unnecessary much of our 
 ordinary correspondence. Business letters are 
 now typewritten by clerks and scribes of one 
 kind or another; but always the love letter is a 
 personal matter. No woman could endure a 
 machine-made love letter. The charm of style, 
 the delicate suggestiveness, must come from the 
 very hand of the man beloved. 
 
 What could be more beautiful than these im- 
 passioned lines, so full of devotion, which Gari- 
 baldi sent to his wife at a time when the eyes 
 of all Europe were upon him, and when every 
 moment was precious: 
 
 " Your face, my little one, is with me every hour, 
 encouraging and solacing me when my heart sinks 
 low with fears of what may be. I thought I had 
 
LOVE AND LETTERS 47 
 
 tasted all the sweetness of love's cup when I first 
 embraced my Anita, the mother of my children, in 
 a silence that was an ecstasy; but now I know that 
 there are peaks higher than the Alps, and that there 
 is a heaven higher and purer and sweeter than any 
 I first explored in the ardor of youth. God keep 
 you, my darling, and restore me to your arms." 
 
 Women of active and vigorous mind are 
 usually endowed with pronounced sexual in- 
 stincts, and are warm-hearted and affectionate, 
 though there are such exceptions as George 
 Sand and certain other French women of genius 
 who, though irregular in their social relations, 
 are yet incapable of anything like true and en- 
 during love. The case is somewhat different 
 with men. It is strange that so many intellectual 
 men are physically incapacitated for married 
 life. Ruskin, of whom mention has been made, 
 was in some measure an illustration of what we 
 have in mind. The case of Carlyle is also in- 
 teresting in this connection. Perhaps Carlyle 
 might have mended matters for himself and for 
 his gifted wife as weU, had he been able in early 
 married life to place the hand of his wife in 
 that of Edward Irving, who surely loved her and 
 whose life might have been very different had 
 he shared it with her. Cowper, the English 
 poet, was beset by gentle attentions that would 
 have been withheld had the real state of the case 
 been known. And even John Stuart Mill, whose 
 noble and beautiful love is celebrated in his own 
 account of his life, loved with a love that was 
 
48 LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 bejond all doubt largely of the soul. Sterne 
 declared that he "must always have a Dulcinea 
 dancing' in his head" ; but it may be said with 
 truth that for him no Dulcinea ever elsewhere 
 long wooed him with "poetry of motion." In 
 his cold and contracted heart there was scant 
 space for terpsichorean charm of any kind. 
 Sterne could write of love as few men could 
 write, but of the thing itself he knew little. 
 Balzac has been regarded as a man of loose life, 
 but a large part of his licentiousness was on paper 
 only. His libertinism, like that of Sterne, was 
 mostly a matter of pen and ink. He coveted for 
 himself, it would seem, what most men call shame, 
 but the will was vastly ahead of the deed. Yet 
 for all-in-all his life was, no doubt, far from be- 
 ing what good men and women like to contem- 
 plate. To writers such as we have described the 
 dream of love is largely of the nature of literary 
 capital. But it must not come too near to the 
 man himself, nor may it become too real. Lan- 
 dor wrote what these believed, that "absence is 
 the invisible and incorporeal mother of ideal 
 beauty." 
 
 The violent passion of youth, when "Nature, 
 red of tooth and fierce of claw, only looking to 
 the perpetuation of the species, blindly drives 
 men and women to each other with irresistible 
 force," to employ the picturesque and strong 
 words of Mr. T. P. O'Connor in a recent maga- 
 zine article, is what we commonly call love. And 
 yet this lower, though most essential, attraction 
 
LOVE AND LETTERS 49 
 
 of the sexes, that our novelists and poets have so 
 constantly in mind, is not love at all in the best 
 sense of that word. Not infrequently the term 
 stands for simple unadorned lust which, though 
 it is not without its mission, is described with 
 propriety only in medical and scientific works. 
 No one will deny to George Sand rare talent, and 
 we may say genius, for her gifts of insight and 
 expression are marvellous. John Stuart Mill was 
 not astray when he wrote: "As a specimen of 
 purely artistic excellence, there is in all modern 
 literature nothing superior to the prose of 
 Madame Sand, whose style acts upon the nervous 
 system like a symphony of Hayden or Mozart." 
 Yet in the last analysis the stories of the gifted 
 author of "Indiana" and "Mauprat" do not de- 
 scribe love. In them we have animal appetite 
 and social revolt, but we look in vain through 
 their pages for that enduring love which unites 
 in one life — ^tender, self-sacrificing, and true — 
 the single destiny of one man and the one woman 
 of his choice. A few short tales like "Fadette" 
 or "Fran9ois the Waif" may not be open to 
 criticism, but these only make more apparent the 
 truth of what has been said by the sharp contrast 
 which they present. 
 
 There was a singular propriety in Madame 
 Dudevant's selection of a masculine name for her 
 literary personality. She played a man's part. 
 It was she who plotted the elopement, and cap- 
 tured the weak and willing Alfred de Musset. 
 Hers was all the courage and determination. 
 
50 LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 With him she shared the demand for social and 
 domestic liberty, but hers alone was the uncom- 
 promising purpose and the strong will. Eliza- 
 beth Barrett Browning's "Recognition," addressed 
 to George Sand, gives us the close association 
 of strong will with womanly passion and feeling ; 
 but it implies a conflict between the feminine na- 
 ture and the assumed masculine role of which we 
 discover no suggestion in the life of the woman. 
 
 "True genius, but true woman ! dost deny 
 Thy woman's nature with a manly scorn. 
 And break away the gauds and armlets worn 
 By weaker women in captivity? 
 Ah, vain denial! that revolted cry 
 Is sobbed in by a woman's voice forlorn: 
 Thy woman's hair, my sister, all unshorn, 
 Floats back dishevelled strength in agony. 
 Disproving thy man's name; and while before 
 The world thou burnest in a poet-fire. 
 We see thy woman-heart beat evermore 
 Through the large flame. Beat purer, heart, 
 
 and higher, 
 Till God unsex thee on the heavenly shore, 
 Where unincarnate spirits purely aspire." 
 
 While it is one of the chief purposes of mar- 
 riage to transmit life and all that renders life 
 desirable to future generations, such transmission 
 is by no means the only end and intent of mar- 
 riage. Doubtless two lives may be sometimes 
 united to the advantage of both where there is 
 not even a possibility of happiness, but it will be 
 found that few men and hardly one woman wiU 
 
LOVE AND LETTERS 61 
 
 be able long to endure the bondage of so un- 
 natural a union. To the human heart happiness 
 is the very breath of life. We may not be able 
 to say with Pope that it is "our being's end and 
 aim," but experience proves it to be an essential 
 element in well-being. There have been noble 
 characters matured in darkness, but for one such 
 there have been thousands of stunted characters 
 that came to their ruin through want of light. 
 We must have some measure of happiness; with- 
 out it the man is as a plant deprived of hght. A 
 happy home is no idle dream of the poet. In 
 every age and land the heart of man demands it 
 as an essential and supreme good. Domestic hap- 
 piness may not be what Cowper calls it, "the 
 only bliss of Paradise that has survived the fall," 
 but it certainly is that without which life must 
 lose no small part of its value. Home is, or 
 should be, the place of confidence, where there 
 are no masks and no suspicions. In every lan- 
 guage under the sun the human heart voices 
 through some proverb its conscious need of, and 
 its delight in, the domestic circle. It is said of 
 an Enghshman's house, "it is his castle"; and 
 again they tell us that "home is always home, be 
 it never so homely." The French proverb runs, 
 "To every bird its nest is fair." The German 
 cries, "East and West, the home is best." In 
 many a Spanish rhyme we read that "the smoke 
 of one's own house is better than the fire of an- 
 other's." 
 
 The "Love Letters of Mary Wollstone- 
 
52 LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 craft," addressed to Gilbert Imlay, show us how 
 love may blind at once both mind and heart. Im- 
 lay was a worthless voluptuary and a cruel senti- 
 mentalist who lived for the hour, with no thought 
 of either responsibility or consequences. He had 
 little to recommend him beyond good looks and 
 a pleasing presence. Yet a woman of remark- 
 able mind, noble and affectionate heart, and rare 
 courage could so deceive herself with regard to 
 his character as to render possible the astonish- 
 ing letters that chronicle at once her shame and 
 his worthlessness. With him for a time she lived, 
 and with him she would have lived all her days 
 had he been able to return in even a limited degree 
 the wealth of noble passion and pure love which 
 she so generously bestowed upon him. There 
 were no legal ties to make him responsible for her 
 maintenance and for that of her child and his. 
 Had there been such ties her proud spirit would 
 have scorned a support reluctantly rendered by a 
 faithless lover; though it may be she would have 
 thought it just and in every way right that a 
 father should provide in some measure at least for 
 the education of his own daughter. When Imlay 
 began to forsake the noble woman whose love he 
 had won, it was their child that sustained her fail- 
 ing confidence. She wrote him from Paris, where 
 she was living without him: 
 
 "Since my arrival here, I have found the German 
 lady of whom you have heard me speak. Her first 
 child died in the month; but she has another about 
 the age of my Fanny, a fine little creature. They 
 
LOVE AND LETTERS 63 
 
 are still but contriving to live — earning their daily 
 bread — yet, though they are but just above pov- 
 erty, I envy them. She is a tender, affectionate 
 mother — fatigued even by her attention. However, 
 she has an affectionate husband in her turn, to ren- 
 der her care light and to share her pleasure. 
 
 "I will own to you that, feeling extreme tender- 
 ness for my little girl, I grow sad very often when 
 I am playing with her, that you are not here to 
 observe with me how her mind unfolds and her little 
 heart becomes attached. These appear to me to be 
 true pleasures — and still you suffer them to escape 
 you, in search of what we may never enj oy." 
 
 Mary WoUstonecraft was an idealist, but the 
 men and women of whom this world has heard 
 much and for whom it cherishes the largest ad- 
 miration, have been found, not among the unim- 
 aginative and matter-of-fact toilers, but among 
 the sons and daughters of inspiration. It is the 
 "breath of their inspiration" that is "the life of 
 each generation." The Sacred Writer exclaims, 
 "Where there is no vision, the people perish." 
 He had in mind, of course, things spiritual, but 
 his statement holds good for the entire world of 
 mental and ethical realities. The sentimental 
 side of life is as real as is the commercial or the 
 severely scientific; and equally real is the ideal. 
 The materialist wiU have no universe he cannot 
 put into a crucible and melt down, yet all around 
 him is the beauty of another world — a beauty 
 that challenges at every point the clear, cold and 
 exacting analysis of physical science. 
 
54 LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 Of all the idealizing elements in our human 
 economy love comes first and lingers longest. 
 Certainly for the woman of whom we are now 
 writing it wrought a marvellous transformation, 
 changing common dross into pure gold; making 
 from ordinary material a model of everything 
 noble and of real worth in the possibilities of our 
 human nature. Even positive proof of Imlay's 
 infidelity led her not so much to blame him as to 
 censure her own conduct. Her letters of love 
 addressed to him are not unlike the letters of 
 Heloise in their self-eifacing devotion. 
 
 So has it been with the daughters of Eve from 
 the very beginning of time ; and so, no doubt, will 
 it be so long as life endures. It was this same 
 wonder-working love that made Bonnie Prince 
 Charlie seem to the heart of Louise of Stolberg 
 so worthy a man when certainly he was nothing 
 of the kind. And yet, perhaps, she was not so 
 greatly deceived after all; for it was with little 
 or no difficulty that she later installed in her af- 
 fections the brilliant but austere Alfieri. And no 
 sooner was the poet gone from our earth than a 
 sweet-tempered and lovable painter whose pictures 
 no one will ever greatly covet stepped with proud 
 assurance into that poet's place. The Countess 
 of Albany did not break her heart over any of 
 these. The Bonnie Prince was fifty-two and she 
 was but twenty when the priest united them in a 
 marriage with which Heaven had little to do. 
 The marriage has been described as that of "a 
 golden beauty with hazel eyes and a wild-rose 
 
LOVE AND LETTERS 55 
 
 skin" to "a gaunt, elderly man of red, bloated 
 face, made redder by the contrast of a white 
 wig and the reflection from a crimson silk suit 
 crossed with the Ribbon of the Garter." An 
 older description of the Prince represents him as 
 "dull, thick, silent-looking about the lips which 
 were purplish, with pale-blue eyes tending to a 
 watery greyness, and having something inex- 
 pressibly sad, gloomy, helpless, vacant and debased 
 in the whole face." Vernon Lee vouches for the 
 later description, which is taken from a crayon 
 portrait of the time and, no doubt, from hfe. 
 The husband was jealous of his lovely wife of 
 *'golden beauty," and not without cause. It is 
 not in the least surprising that when she awoke 
 in the morning and found by her side a man 
 drunk as only a Scotchman can be, she wished 
 for a very different awakening and for the sweet 
 embrace of another whose name, it may be, she 
 even then knew only too well. The husband's 
 savage jealousy became more exacting. Her 
 room could be entered only through his, and he 
 was insolent and vulgar enough to declare that 
 he was "resolved that the succession should not be 
 dubious." That she concerned herself little about 
 his very inconsequent succession the sequel of her 
 life makes clear. The fortunes of the House of 
 Stuart became odious in her sight. Insult upon 
 insult, crowned by a drunken attempt upon her 
 unhappy life, broke the last link.^ 
 
 1 "The Stuarts must not be allowed to die out !" was the 
 cry of the French Ministry towards 1772. That House 
 
56 LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 A supreme affection means for most of us one 
 true marriage, and one only. In this lies the 
 secret of monogamy. Perhaps it is not quite 
 true, though we have Lord Beaconsfi eld's word 
 for it, that "to the man in love, the thought of 
 another woman is uninteresting, if not re- 
 pulsive"; but it certainly is true that a supreme 
 affection which is the only right foundation for 
 marriage means as well an exclusive affection. 
 Love is the fire in this human life of ours whereat 
 we warm our hearts, and so give them cheer in a 
 world where there are so many things to distress 
 and affright. Thus, in finer words, Mrs. Brown- 
 ing expresses this same thought : 
 
 "Yet love, mere love, is beautiful indeed. 
 And worthy of acceptation. Fire is bright. 
 Let temple bum, or flax! An equal light 
 Leaps in the flame from cedar-plank or weed. 
 And love is fire; and when I say at need, 
 I love thee . . . mark . . . / love thee! 
 
 in thy sight 
 I stand transfigured, glorified aright, 
 With conscience of the new rays that proceed 
 
 could be of service to France, for against England a Pre- 
 tender would be a priceless weapon. But unless Charles 
 Edward could be induced to marry, that House would 
 most certainly die, for his brother had become a priest 
 when he was father only of an illegitimate daughter. 
 Charles Edward had always refused to marry, so a pen- 
 sion of forty thousand crowns was offered, and at once 
 he married Louise, the nineteen-year-old daughter of 
 Prince Gustavus Adolphus of Stolberg-Gedern, Prince of 
 the Empire, who was kiUed in the battle of Leuthen. 
 
LOVE AND LETTERS 57 
 
 Out of my face toward thine. There's nothing 
 
 lowi 
 In love, -when love the lowest; meanest creatures 
 Who love God, God accepts while loving so; 
 And what I feel across the inferior features 
 Of what I am, doth flash itself, and show 
 How that great work of Love enhances Nature's." 
 
 The morganatic marriage is defined as a mar- 
 riage in which one of the contracting persons is 
 of a much, higher rank than is the other, and in 
 which it is agreed that the person of humbler 
 station shall make no claim for himself or her- 
 self or for the children of such marriage upon 
 the title, standing, or property of the person of 
 more exalted rank. Thus defined, the mor- 
 ganatic marriage, though it may be a contemptible 
 and unjust depriving of an honest wife of her 
 natural rights and dignity as wife and a wronging 
 of the children, is not of necessity what is in 
 common phrase immoral. But the morganatic 
 marriage is not infrequently a temporary union. 
 The Prince, when the time arrives for him to 
 enter upon the responsibility and dignity of sov- 
 ereignty, must repudiate his morganatic family 
 and marry a woman of a rank approaching his 
 own. The first marriage (call it morganatic or 
 what you will) is a true and real marriage, but 
 the second is bigamous. It is a pitiful thing that 
 a sovereign should be called upon to repudiate 
 an affectionate wife, and children that look to 
 him for name and place, in order that he may rule 
 
58 LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 over a nation that calls itself Christian. That 
 adultery should be trusted to provide an heir for 
 the throne where a pure and honest marriage is 
 repudiated is a marvellous thing in this late age 
 of the world's history. Even still more aston- 
 ishing is the fact that distinguished prelates in 
 a Christian church who insist upon the sacredness 
 of the seventh commandment account their sov- 
 ereign so far superior to their God that royalty 
 may be allowed to set aside the sacred command 
 without rebuke. These prelates assist at the cor- 
 onation, and one of their number is, by virtue of 
 his station, expected to place the crown upon the 
 royal head. 
 
 The Archduke Francis, who will, in all proba- 
 bility, become the Emperor of Austria before 
 many years, is united in morganatic marriage 
 with the Countess Sophie Chotek de Chotkowa. 
 She is represented as a very plain woman, but as 
 a woman of great accomplishments and wonderful 
 tact. A recent author described her as "sallow 
 and scrawny," but he admitted her remarkable 
 ability. She it was who changed the rollicking 
 and roistering Prince into a serious, shrewd, and 
 subtle man — into the hope of Austria. Mr. 
 Alexander Powell, in the Travel Magazine for 
 June, 1910, has this to say of the marvellous 
 influence of this wonderful woman over the com- 
 ing ruler of Austria: 
 
 "It was a reformed rake who knelt on the prie 
 dieux in the little Reichstadt chapel to take the 
 marriage vows. It was the subtlest diplomat in 
 
LOVE AND LETTERS 59 
 
 Europe who rose to take his place in the shadows 
 of the Imperial throne, there to pull the strings 
 which control the utterances of statesmen, the move- 
 ments of fleets and armies and the policies of na- 
 tions. Already he has repainted the map of South- 
 eastern Europe and set every Continental chancellery 
 in an uproar. The empire is under his thumb as 
 completely as Egypt was under that of Lord Cro- 
 mer. He it was who tore up the Treaty of Berlin 
 and, blowing the pieces in the faces of the signatory 
 Powers, coolly annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina to 
 the empire. It was he who backed up Ferdinand 
 of Bulgaria in his successful revolt against Ottoman 
 rule and he who stiffened the backbone of Austria 
 in its belligerent reception of the Russian protests." 
 
 It is represented that the Archduke is devoted 
 to his wife and children, and that he will never 
 under any circumstances desert them. But we 
 shall see of what stuff he is made when he is called 
 to the sovereignty of his great country. 
 
 The Sacred Writer associates the vision of 
 God with purity of heart in that wonderful beati- 
 tude, "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall 
 see God." Under the shadow of so gracious a 
 promise there has grown up that noxious plant 
 of priestly sowing known as Sacerdotal Celibacy. 
 There is more in the name than is indicated, for 
 the associating of sexual life with uncleanness is 
 responsible for religious virgins and various kinds 
 of unwholesome saints. These, and more like 
 them, are men and women of polluted minds and 
 hearts ; they have no knowledge of the Divine 
 
60 LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 Vision that comes with love for God and a clean 
 life. It was Gregory the Great who gave the 
 Christian priesthood its first serious impulse in 
 the direction of celibacy and who crowned vir- 
 ginity as a thing in itself peculiarly pleasing to 
 a holy God. And this he did with the writings 
 of the Apostle Paul open before him. In that 
 Apostle's First Epistle to Timothy we read that 
 a Bishop must be "the husband of one wife" — 
 that is to say, "of but one wife," for in his day 
 polygamy was common. This same Apostle 
 warned the church that in the latter times seduc- 
 ing spirits should speak "lies in hypocrisy, having 
 their consciences seared with a hot iron, for- 
 bidding to marry." There had been something 
 of the kind among pagan peoples, and all the 
 more readily, therefore, did the church, which in 
 many places had directly succeeded heathenism, 
 accommodate itself to the views and requirements 
 of Gregory the Great and his coadjutors. But, 
 nevertheless, celibacy of the clergy came very 
 gradually. It was opposed to human nature, for 
 everywhere and at all times men and women dis- 
 cover in each other the source of a common felic- 
 ity. From the union of the sexes springs not 
 only life itself, but that which gives to life all 
 that is noblest and purest. 
 
 Celibacy was not actually imposedupon the clergy 
 as a binding obligation before the time of Pope 
 Hildebrand; and he, observing its harmful effect 
 on the church, contemplated revoking his own or- 
 der. His successors, however, insisted upon celi- 
 
LOVE AND LETTERS 61 
 
 bacy, and as a natural consequence impurity soon 
 prevailed. Those among the clergy who aspired 
 to sacred honors embraced at once the single life, 
 devoid of those domestic cares and duties that 
 interfere with the pursuit of such rewards as are 
 sought after by personal ambition. The power 
 of the clergy was greatly increased. Nuns re- 
 ceived the same veneration that had once clothed 
 Vestals with sacred glory in the ardent imagina- 
 tion of ignorant people to whom nuns and other 
 religious persons were often called to minister, 
 and to whom they did minister with a self-abne- 
 gation and devotion strangely at variance with 
 the greed of place and power so common at that 
 time in religious circles. Everywhere there was 
 a lowering of the standard of sexual morality, 
 and a development of most degrading semi-re- 
 ligious pruriency. In the "Dialogues" of Greg- 
 ory the Great, Ursinus, a priest, is represented 
 as having lived an unnatural life ; for forty years 
 he dwelt with his wife as a brother might properly 
 live with a sister, abstaining during the entire 
 time from the nearer intimacy of married life. 
 At last, when he was nigh unto death, his wife, 
 moved by affection for one who was her husband 
 in little else than name, and not being certain that 
 he was still alive, placed her hand near his per- 
 son. Instantly he shrank from her touch, ex- 
 claiming, "Get hence, woman! — a little fire re- 
 mains — away with the straw!" Of Leo I. this 
 monstrous falsehood is told: A woman, upon a 
 certain occasion, kissed his hand, and he was so 
 
62 LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 inflamed by the touch of her lips that, to punish 
 himself, he deliberately cut the hand off. 
 
 Instances of emasculation are very common in 
 the chronicles of the saints. Origen submitted 
 to mutilation, and he was sure he had Divine 
 authority for his act. He found in the Gospel 
 according to Matthew these words over which he 
 brooded long, "There be eunuchs which have made 
 themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of Heaven's 
 sake." Origen was a venerable father of the 
 Church, a theologian, and a philosopher, and the 
 author of valuable Commentaries on the Scrip- 
 tures. Why should not his example be imitated? 
 It was imitated, not only because religion seemed 
 to approve, but because it fell in with a spirit of 
 luxury as vile as it was sentimentally pious. Chil- 
 dren were castrated to qualify them for singing 
 in the Papal Choir. Castrato and musico del 
 Papa were, in the minds of the common people, 
 the same thing. "Because of their sacred 
 wounds," said a wise doctor, "these blessed ones 
 sing like the angels in Heaven." Later the art 
 of castration was carried to perfection. Voltaire 
 tells us that in his day the following words were 
 to be seen at Naples over the doors of certain 
 barbers, "Qui f, castrano maramgliosamente i 
 puti" — "Here boys are castrated in a most ad- 
 mirable manner." This was certainly an improve- 
 ment upon the self-castration of Origen. The 
 fine soprano solos which charm the worshipers in 
 Italian churches are sung by eunuchs. The op- 
 era-singer Velluti, whose musical performances 
 
LOVE AND LETTERS 63 
 
 delighted all Europe, was, when a child, castrated 
 for the choir of the Papal Chapel at Rome. 
 Sometimes the devil was defeated in his machina- 
 tions, but not always. 
 
 Evil spirits not infrequently appeared in the 
 form and with the face of a woman. Such 
 appearances were most deadly. When St. 
 Pachomius and St. Palaemon were convers- 
 ing together in the desert, a young monk, 
 wild with anguish and terror, ran to them, and, 
 falling down at their feet, declared that a woman 
 of surpassing beauty had entered his cell and 
 seduced him, after which she had miraculously 
 vanished, leaving him well nigh dead upon the 
 ground. Having told his tale of woe, he ran 
 out into the desert and was seen no more. An- 
 other ending of the story is that the monk reached 
 the next village, where he leaped into the open 
 furnace connected with the public baths, and so 
 perished. It was the old story, "The woman 
 whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of 
 the tree, and I did eat." The anchorites, erem- 
 ites, recluses and hermits of the ages of credulity 
 lived an unnatural life of repression, and woman, 
 that should have provided the sweetest compan- 
 ionship, furnished temptation only. The re- 
 pression revenged itself upon these unclean as- 
 pirants for a spurious holiness. There is in 
 Lecky's "History of European Morals" an elo- 
 quent and familiar passage that should not be 
 passed over in treating of this subject: 
 
64 LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 "With such men, living such a life, visions and 
 miracles were necessarily habitual. All the ele- 
 ments of hallucination were there. Ignorant and 
 superstitious, believing as a matter of religious con- 
 viction that countless demons filled the air, at- 
 tributing every fluctuation of his own temperament 
 and every exceptional phenomenon in surrounding 
 nature to spiritual agency; delirious too, from soli- 
 tude and long-continued austerities, the hermit soon 
 mistook for palpable realities the phantoms of his 
 brain. In the ghastly gloom of the sepulchre, 
 where, amid mouldering corpses, he took up his 
 abode; in the long hours of the night of penance, 
 when the desert wind sobbed around his lonely cell, 
 and the cries of wild beasts were borne upon his 
 ear, — visible forms of lust or terror appeared to 
 haunt him, and strange dramas were enacted by 
 those who were contending for his soul. An 
 imagination strained to the utmost limit, acting upon 
 a frame attenuated and diseased by macerations, 
 produced bewildering psychological phenomena, 
 paroxysms of conflicting passions, sudden alterna- 
 tions of joy and anguish, which he regarded as 
 manifestly supernatural. Sometimes, in the very 
 ecstasy of his devotion, the memory of old scenes 
 would crowd upon his mind. The shady groves 
 and soft voluptuous gardens of his native city would 
 arise, and, kneeling alone upon the burning sand, 
 he seemed to see around him the fair groups of 
 dancing-girls, on whose warm, undulating limbs and 
 wanton smiles his youthful eyes had too fondly 
 dwelt. Sometimes his temptation sprang from re- 
 membered sounds. The sweet licentious songs of 
 other days came floating on his ears, and his heart 
 was thrilled with the passions of the past." 
 
LOVE AND LETTERS 65 
 
 The life these men lived confused in their minds 
 all distinction between purity and impurity. 
 Shakspeare knew well the difference: 
 
 "Love comforteth like sunshine after rain. 
 But lust's effect is tempest after sun; 
 Love's gentle spring doth always fresh remain; 
 Lust's winter comes ere summer half be done; 
 Love surfeits not, lust like a glutton dies; 
 Love is all truth, lust full of forged lies !" 
 
 Venus and Adonis. 
 
 Alp and Andes, the Rocky Mountains of North 
 America and the Mountains of the Moon that are 
 not in the moon at all, but in the tropical forests 
 of Africa, from which they extend to the arid 
 wastes of the Abyssinian Desert, have been pushed 
 up from the central fires in the heart of the earth. 
 So it is with our human nature. From the brutal 
 and ferocious passions of wild animals we have 
 come at length to the white snow-fields of a pure 
 love that, seeing God, sees also what is Godlike 
 in man, who is described as "the image of God." 
 The most exalted love of which we are capable 
 is rooted in something we do not like to contem- 
 plate. But is the pure heart less pure or less 
 worthy of regard because of its mean beginning ? 
 It was Professor Huxley who said that speech 
 was only so much transmuted mutton. Are then 
 the songs of all the great singers who have 
 charmed the world nothing but a httle muscular 
 tissue.? Are all our virtues only transfigured 
 vices? Does the law of the correlation of forces 
 
66 LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 apply as well to things spiritual? There have 
 been those who maintained that the devout prayer 
 of a gentle mother might be expressed in chemical 
 terms were our instruments and processes suffi- 
 ciently fine; but it is hard to believe that the 
 beautiful poems, great paintings, and imperish- 
 able books are merely transmuted physical force 
 and nothing more. It is true that under all the 
 glory of the spiritual there is a coarse material, 
 but the two are not the same. Love unites the 
 pure in heart, and to them there comes the won- 
 derful vision of God that had its rise, no doubt, 
 through long ages of development, from those 
 animal fires that underlie the entire world of 
 living creatures; but snow-fields and central fires 
 are not one and the same thing. A great change 
 has come through the line of development, and 
 the beast has in large measure retired; the man 
 stands forth, the majestic creature he not only 
 is, but is yet to become. There is something 
 more than the correlation of forces in the making 
 of Homer, Euclid, Dante, Luther, and Michael 
 Angelo. The persistence, transmutability, and 
 indestructibility of force will not fully explain 
 these. Above the brutal passion that serves to 
 perpetuate race and species, and that is sometimes 
 cruel, and always selfish, there rises as the snowy 
 mountain above the hot earth from which it 
 springs, a love that, if not wholly unselfish, is yet 
 noble, pure, and gentle when compared with its 
 unattractive starting-place. Between these are 
 many grades ranging all the way from animal 
 
LOVE AND LETTERS 67 
 
 appetite to manly devotion and womanly affec- 
 tion. And above these again tower other heights 
 that few tread, but that show to all how great are 
 the possibilities of our human nature. There are 
 angelic loves and loves celestial that lead up to 
 a love no child of earth can ever fully under- 
 stand, because it is Divine. "The glory of the 
 celestial is one, and the glory of the terrestrial 
 is another." There is a love that remakes the 
 man, changing him into *'the same image from 
 glory unto glory, even as by the Spirit of the 
 Lord," until all the old is consumed and "the face 
 shines as the sun and the raiment is white as the 
 light." Beyond this no man may go, for the 
 solitary heights, though they look down in bless- 
 ing, invite not our human approach. 
 
 The dying Bunsen, looking into the eyes of 
 his wife, who was bending over him, said, "In thy 
 face I have seen the Eternal !" There are natures 
 so rare and pure that they scarcely cloud the 
 heavenly love that transfigures them. Through 
 characters thus transparent we behold God. The 
 dying Bunsen was not alone. Dr. Abbot inscribed 
 this same vision of the heart upon the stone that 
 marked his wife's grave. Mrs. Browning knew 
 it well, and who has better described it than she 
 in these lines from "Aurora Leigh" : 
 
 "In that great square of the Santissima, 
 There drifted past him (scarcely marked enough 
 To move his comfortable island-scorn), 
 A train of priestly banners, cross and psalm. 
 
68 LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 The white-veiled, rose-crowned maidens holding 
 
 up 
 Tall tapers, weighty for such mists, aslant 
 To the blue luminous tremor of the air. 
 And letting drop the white wax as they went 
 To eat the bishop's wafer at the church; 
 From which long trail of chanting priests and 
 
 girls 
 A face flashed like a cymbal on his face. 
 And shook with silent clangor brain and heart. 
 Transfiguring him to music. Thus, even thus 
 He too received his sacramental gift 
 With eucharistic meanings; for he loved." 
 
 The supreme love of husband and wife, per- 
 fectly mated or nearly so, is in the nature of 
 things religious ; there is within it a spiritual ele- 
 ment. The wafer of Divine Communion is not 
 far removed from the "sacramental gift" of love. 
 To this great truth other gifted ones beside Bun- 
 sen bear witness. Edwards saw it as a vision of 
 transcendent spiritual beauty in the face of Sarah 
 Pierrepont. The Girondist Roland, surrounded 
 by the fierce political convulsions of his age, be- 
 held it in the gaze of Jeanne Philipon. Every- 
 where and always the same spiritual yet passionate 
 love clothes itself in the same spiritual beauty. 
 
 Parkman describes certain Indians who go 
 through the form of marriage with their fish-nets. 
 An Oriental writer describes the marriage of a 
 Chinese lady to a beautiful vase covered with red 
 flowers. The vase was a substitute for the son 
 of a wealthy mandarin to whom she had been 
 
LOVE AND LETTERS 69 
 
 engaged, and who died just before the contem- 
 plated marriage. She had vowed that she would 
 never wed another man ; and so, to keep her vow, 
 she determined to "put herself out of the market" 
 by marrying a piece of pottery. It is a custom 
 with the Khatris, when a man has lost his second 
 wife, to marry an Ak plant, so that when he takes 
 another woman for his wife she may not die. 
 These marriages are only methods of evading real 
 marriage, for though some of the persons thus 
 married do marry again, the most of them do not, 
 and all of them are excused, if they so wish, from 
 any future alliance. Even the man who marries 
 the Ak plant that a third wife may not die, not 
 infrequently neglects to find for himself the third 
 wife. 
 
 It may be love between the sexes, especially in 
 early life, has come to have in some measure a 
 pathological cast because of the peculiar phe- 
 nomena which it exhibits — its effect upon appe- 
 tite, sleep, and occupation, as well as upon the 
 voice and the senses. There is a somewhat hu- 
 morous account of a young scion of nobility in 
 the England of other days whose various pas- 
 sions so amused his tutor that that gentleman 
 made, according to current tradition, a somewhat 
 facetious report of them in their influence upon 
 the young man's health, to the mother. The 
 young nobleman was the Duke of Hamilton, and 
 his tutor was a certain Dr. Moore, of whom we 
 should never have known anything but for the 
 loves of this most susceptible young Duke. The 
 
70 LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 Duke was eighteen and had just fallen a victim 
 to a pair of black eyes that unfortunately be- 
 longed to a married lady. Dr. Moore made this 
 most interesting report to the young man's 
 mother : 
 
 "This is the third passion the duke has had since 
 we crossed the sea. His various passions generally 
 affect his appetite^ and I can make a pretty good 
 guess at the height of his love by the victuals he 
 refuses to eat. A slight touch of love puts him 
 immediately from legumes and all kinds of jardi- 
 nage. If it rises a degree higher he turns up his 
 nose at fricassees and ragouts. Another degree 
 and he will rather go to bed supperless than taste 
 plain roasted veal or poulets of any sort. This is 
 the utmost length to which his passion has ever 
 come hitherto, for when he was at the court with 
 Mile. Marchenville, though she put him entirely 
 from greens, ragouts and veal, yet she made no im- 
 pression on his roast beef or mutton appetite. He 
 fed plentifully upon these in spite of her charms. 
 I intend to make a thermometer for the duke's pas- 
 sion with four degrees — (1) greens, (2) fricassees 
 and ragouts, (3) roast veal and fowls, (4) plain 
 roast mutton or beef — and if ever the mercury 
 mounts as high as the last I shall think the case 
 alarming." 
 
 Mr. Roosevelt and certain other ill-informed 
 agitators have protested in season and out of 
 season against an imaginary catastrophe which 
 has received the name of "race suicide." It is 
 represented that the intentional sterility of mod- 
 
LOVE AND LETTERS 71 
 
 em marriage endangers the continuance, at least 
 in some parts of our world, of the human race. 
 This protest against the circumscribing of the 
 domestic circle is seconded by military authorities 
 because they find it difficult where the family is 
 small to obtain a sufficient number of young men 
 for the army and for the navy. The census re- 
 turns for 1900 show the population of France to 
 be about 38,600,000, which is an increase of only 
 330,000 over 1896. To this small increase Paris 
 and its suburbs gives 290,000, the greater part 
 of which number is due to foreign immigrants, 
 so that the rest of France gives an increase of 
 only 40,000. This result when compared with 
 the returns from England, Austria, Italy, and 
 especially Germany, furnishes some cause for anx- 
 iety. 
 
 There is, however, another side to the so-called 
 "race suicide" question. Mothers do not wish 
 to feed the military glory of France, nor do they 
 desire to feed that of any other nation with their 
 own sons. The needs of the army and of the 
 navy do not appeal to them under the circum- 
 stances named. The very fact that boys are 
 wanted for such uses seems to them to furnish 
 an excellent reason why boys should be hard to 
 obtain. The old cry of patriotism with which 
 the authorities were wont to fool the unwary has 
 lost much of its power. Large families are not 
 so desirable as are good ones ; and good families 
 are not so likely to be large. Woman's function 
 is not simply to bear children, but also to rear 
 
7a LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 them; and that not as food for powder, but as 
 the supporters of society and good government. 
 I doubt if the world would be in any wise injured 
 were no children to be born during the next 
 three years. The earth is well populated in all 
 those portions where life is possible without great 
 hardship. The increased cost of living has a de^ 
 cided tendency to restrict the size and open-hand- 
 edness of the family. Comparatively few men 
 can afford to marry in early life unless the bride 
 brings a generous bestowment in money, and so 
 it has come to pass that the dowry is an actual 
 necessity. This necessity, of course, increases 
 with the increasing size of the family. 
 
 This unnatural state of things introduces no 
 small amount of wrong thinking and feeling. 
 The sacredness of the family is in a measure de- 
 stroyed. Children are not welcomed where they 
 should be anticipated with maternal affection. In 
 France matrimonial sterilization is not unpopu- 
 lar. Zola tells his readers, in "Fecondite," that 
 there are twenty thousand women in France who 
 for purposes of their own have submitted to be 
 unsexed. Statements to the same effect are made 
 by Leon Daudet in "Les Morticoles," and by 
 CamiUe Pert in "Les Floriferes.'* These figures 
 may be exaggerated, but the number is beyond 
 all question large. The operation is held in fa- 
 vor not only because some women wish to escape 
 the peril and burden of motherhood, but because 
 in many cases the money is not sufficient for the 
 requirements of a large family. A question arises 
 
LOVE AND LETTERS 73 
 
 in this connection as to the right of parents to 
 bring children into the world where there can be 
 little or no hope of providing for them. 
 
 Havelock Ellis, in his "Sex in Relation to So- 
 ciety," calls attention to the resemblance between 
 some of the hetairoe and many of the leaders in 
 the "Woman's Rights Movement" of the present 
 time. These women of ancient Greece would have 
 been fascinating and wonderful in any country 
 or age. We have come to regard the word 
 hetaircE as the equivalent of "prostitute," because 
 the relation which the more cultivated hetavroe 
 sustained to the brilhant men of art, letters, and 
 jurisprudence was in part sexual. The word 
 hetaira means "friend" or "companion," and had 
 in it at first nothing of a dishonorable nature. 
 These women were in a sense the radical reformers 
 of their day. Most of the women of Greece, and 
 of all other countries at that time, were ignorant 
 and held under great social restraint; but these 
 women refused to be social puppets; they de- 
 manded place and influence. The only way at 
 that time to obtain what they earnestly coveted 
 and resolutely demanded was the one way, with 
 all its unfortunate features, which they boldly 
 took and ably pursued. Aspasia was a worthy 
 representative of her class, both in the refinement 
 and elevation of her mind and in the charm of 
 her person. She was interested in whatever looked 
 to the emancipation of her sex, and she used 
 her wonderful influence with her distinguished 
 "friends" in that direction. Leaena was a woman 
 
74o LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 of the same class. Her name has been preserved 
 because of her great service nobly rendered to her 
 fellow-conspirators. She bit off her tongue so 
 that no torture could make her reveal the names 
 of those who were associated with her in a common 
 plot. Thargelia accompanied Xerxes when he in- 
 vaded Greece. Her talents and training were 
 such that he engaged her to negotiate with the 
 Court of Thessaly, and she with no difficulty cap- 
 tivated the king of that country, and married 
 him. One of these brilliant women established at 
 Athens a house that we in these days tolerate 
 with averted face. But there was this remark- 
 able difference between her establishment and the 
 baser ones of our modem cities — she gave pub- 
 licly lectures to her girls, and to their visitors 
 as well. In these lectures she treated of rhetoric 
 and philosophy, and her ability was such that 
 Socrates, Alcibiades, Pericles and other distin- 
 guished men listened to her with delight, and often 
 discussed with her questions of great importance 
 to the State. It may be that she incited the war 
 against Samos, and certainly she was a potent 
 factor in the conflict with Megara. At last her 
 power became so great that the virtuous women 
 of Athens accused her before the Areopagus, and 
 it was with difficulty that her life was saved ; but it 
 was saved, and the lectures continued. Hip- 
 parchia's career was equally remarkable. She 
 was the Cynic philosopher's mistress, and suc- 
 ceeded Crates as a professor of the Cynic philos- 
 ophy. 
 
LOVE AND LETTERS 76 
 
 Baechis, the dear friend of Hyperides, was pre- 
 sented, in token of her learning, with a costly 
 necklace which was coveted by well nigh all the 
 women of Athens. The one fragment of Hy- 
 perides which has survived the ravages of time is 
 that eloquent man's oration over the remains of 
 Baechis. Greater than all these was Lais, the 
 beautiful Sicilian. She was a slave when Apelles 
 saw her carrying water which she had drawn from 
 a well. He was captivated by her beauty, and 
 bought her at once. He gave her an education, 
 and day by day she advanced in learning until 
 she was acknowledged to be the most brilliant 
 woman in all the learned society of Greece. Then 
 he freed her, and established her at Corinth with 
 "a circle of lovely girls" of whom she was in 
 charge. Hers was a house of prostitution, but 
 it had a regular school where the arts and de- 
 bauchery were both taught. To it came attract- 
 ive pupils from Lesbos, Phoenicia, and the Islands 
 of the JEgean. Lais rose to great fame and 
 fortune. She spent her money freely in adorn- 
 ing the city, and the citizens wished to possess 
 her statue. The sculptor Myron was given a 
 commission to model "the woman of all women 
 the most beautiful" ; but when the artist came to 
 study her charms he was himself so dazzled by 
 them that, though he was old and infirm, he threw 
 himself and all his earthly possessions at her feet. 
 She spumed him and his gold. In no wise 
 daunted, he repaired to a celebrated perfumer 
 who dyed his hair and beard, and rejuvenated his 
 
76 LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 dilapidated person. Thus tricked out, he re- 
 newed his suit only to be again repulsed. She 
 called him an old fool, and such beyond all ques- 
 tion he certainly was. But with all her haughty 
 magnificence, Lais had no power to prevent Time 
 from despoiling her of her beauty. The merci- 
 less years wrinkled her brow and frosted her hair, 
 and there was no perfumer who could do more for 
 her than an other and more seasonable one had 
 done for her once spumed would-be lover. Her 
 money faded away with her charms, and all we 
 know of her old age is learned from Epicrates, 
 who represents her as a drunken hag wandering 
 about the Corinth that once desired to plant her 
 statue in its public square, seeking to sell for a 
 pittance what once vast sums were wont to pur- 
 chase. Perhaps in those bitter days she remem- 
 bered how once in the height of her splendor 
 Xenocrates won his wager and successfully re- 
 sisted her though she displayed her every charm. 
 From his side she rose with the cry, "I wagered 
 to rouse a man, not a statue !" Plato derided 
 her ruined beauty when she was old with these 
 cruel lines : 
 
 "Once at Greece proud Lais mocked, — 
 
 With gay lovers laughed all day; 
 Now these lovers come no more. 
 
 Mirth and song are passed away. 
 Venus, take this glass from me, 
 
 Since I old and wrinkled grow; 
 What I am I would not see, 
 
 What I shall be would not know." ^ 
 
 ^Marvin: "Flowers of Song from Many Lands," p. 85. 
 
LOVE AND LETTERS 77 
 
 Phryne was wiser in her day and generation, 
 for she was less prodigal of her beauty. Thus it 
 was she preserved to the last both her fortune and 
 her fame. Her wealth, all of it won by evil 
 ways, was fabulous ; so great was it that when 
 Alexander destroyed Thebes, she offered to re- 
 build the city if the citizens would commemorate 
 her generosity. She did not ask a statue; all 
 she demanded was an inscription. This the citi- 
 zens of Thebes refused, though the fair courtesan 
 had numbered among her lovers the most gifted 
 men of her day. Hyperides the orator, Apelles 
 the painter, and Praxiteles the sculptor were 
 among her acknowledged lovers. It was to her 
 Praxiteles gave the crowning work of his genius 
 — ^his Cupid. Both he and Apelles reproduced 
 in all the glory of their faultless art the naked 
 beauty of Phryne. Story, himself a sculptor of 
 rare grace and charm, knew by an artistic in- 
 stinct what was the sweet delight Praxiteles felt 
 when he turned to Phryne, who stood by his side, 
 and said, "See! It is done; and forever your 
 lovely face and form, my Phryne, shall live in 
 marble for all the ages to view." Story has 
 shaped the scene in verse : 
 
 "A thousand silent years ago. 
 The twilight, faint and pale. 
 Was drawing o'er the sunset-glow 
 Its soft and shadowy veil, 
 
 When from his work the sculptor stayed 
 His hand, and, turned to one 
 
78 LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 Who stood beside him, half in shade. 
 Said, with a sigh, * 'Tis done. 
 
 'Thus much is saved from chance and change. 
 
 That waits for me and thee; 
 Thus much — how little! — from the range 
 
 Of Death and Destiny. 
 
 'Phryne, thy human lips shall pale. 
 
 Thy rounded limbs decay, — 
 Nor love nor prayers can aught avail 
 
 To bid thy beauty stay: 
 
 'But there thy smile, for centuries. 
 
 On marble lips shall live, — 
 For art can grant what love denies. 
 And fix the fugitive. 
 
 'Sad thought! nor age nor death shall fade 
 
 The youth of this cold bust, 
 When the quick brain and hand that made. 
 
 And thou and I are dust! 
 
 'When all our hopes and fears are dead. 
 
 And both our hearts are cold. 
 And love is like a tune that's played. 
 
 And life a tale that's told, 
 
 'This senseless stone, so coldly fair. 
 
 That love nor life can warm. 
 The same enchanting look shall wear, 
 The same enchanting form. 
 
 'Its peace no sorrow shall destroy; 
 Its beauty age shall spare; 
 
LOVE AND LETTERS 79 
 
 The bitterness of vanished joy, 
 The wearing waste of care. 
 
 'And there, upon that silent face. 
 
 Shall unborn ages see 
 Perennial youth, perennial grace. 
 
 And sealed serenity; 
 
 'And strangers, when we sleep in peace. 
 
 Shall say, not quite unmoved, — 
 "So smiled upon Praxiteles 
 
 The Phryne whom he loved." 
 
 Praxiteles flourished about 352-336 B. C, in 
 the age of Philip and Demosthenes. His techni- 
 cal skill was something wonderful : "The limbs of 
 his figures were so soft that you seemed to 
 see the pulse of life and the quivering muscle." 
 Not before his time did Aphrodite put off her 
 drapery, but when he appeared she showed her- 
 self naked. Two old Greek lines which I have, 
 in my "Flowers of Song," rendered into English 
 run thus : 
 
 "Paris has seen me naked, Anchises and Adonis too. 
 But when did the great Praxiteles my undraped 
 beauty view?" 
 
 Why should she enquire.? Was her surprise, 
 then, so great? The Princess Borghese, who 
 was no saint, sat to Canova for a model, and 
 being asked if she did not feel a little uncom- 
 fortable, answered, "No, there was a fire in the 
 room." Perhaps Aphrodite was trifling even 
 
80 LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 as was the beautiful sister of Bonaparte. What 
 Paris may have known, or what may have been 
 the relation of the goddess to Anchises or 
 Adonis, concerns us little; but Praxiteles knew 
 her, at least in marble, too well for us to share 
 her feigned surprise. 
 
 Notwithstanding the decadent condition of 
 Greek life there were those who regarded the 
 undraped form as harmful, and who with Gyges 
 (Herodotus I, 8) held that "with her clothes a 
 woman puts off her modesty." The early 
 chaster idea passed gradually to the freer until 
 the painter Polygnotus first painted women with 
 transparent garments. It was not difficult then 
 for Phidias to place the lad Pantarkes tying his 
 head with a fillet (Pausanius 5, II) near his 
 Homeric Zeus, even though it was well known 
 that the lad was a boy-favorite of Phidias, for 
 the sexual violation of boys came to be an every- 
 day affair with the Greeks. 
 
 Who was Phryne? She was a poor girl of 
 Thespiae who, because of her great beauty, had 
 become enormously rich at the expense of the 
 finest culture of the land and the age. At 
 Delphi her statue was placed by the side of that 
 of King Philip of Macedon. A philosopher, 
 seeing it there, exclaimed, "Behold a consecrated 
 gift of the wantonness of the Greeks." Over- 
 beck views the matter in a different light, for 
 he tells us that "Praxiteles understood very well 
 how to express a more delicate perception : the 
 
LOVE AND LETTERS 81 
 
 goddess in the woman." ^ By that I under- 
 stand an ability to spiritualize the material form, 
 which does not seem to me so wonderful. Every 
 lover does as much in his mind if he be a pure 
 man. Every noble love transforms and adorns. 
 It gives both insight to the artist and a new 
 beauty to what he would adorn. The Greeks 
 worshipped material beauty; and the gods also, 
 it would seem, were wild over this same kind of 
 human splendor, for they snatched Ganymede, 
 who was the fairest of mortals, and on that 
 Trojan youth poured out all the joy of their 
 glorious life. It was beauty, and that alone, 
 that made one fit to dwell with the gods. The 
 Greeks were, however, all wrong in their theory 
 of the nude in art. It is the adorned and partly 
 concealed, and not the entirely undraped form, 
 that acts as an excitant to the sexual instinct. 
 Artists' models know this, and account themselves 
 safe when entirely nude. The authoress of 
 "Studies of the Human Form" tells her readers 
 that it was her practice to disrobe as soon after 
 entering the artist's studio as possible. The evil- 
 minded men and women who in large cities con- 
 duct vile exhibitions for money understand this 
 matter. The Cyprians of Paris and New York 
 are in long skirts. 
 
 An early commentator on Genesis makes the 
 Fall of Man to be a sexual catastrophe. Adam, 
 
 i"Geschichte der Griechischen Plastik," 1870, Vol. 2, p. 
 35. 
 
82 LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 we are informed, represented the mind, and Eve 
 stood fdr the sensual nature. It was contended 
 that before the creation of Eve, the first man 
 Adam contained in his person both sexes. It 
 was the coming of Eve that introduced sin. The 
 life of Adam was purely intellectual until Eve 
 was created; he was occupied with knowledge to 
 the entire neglect of his body. With his death 
 the race must disappear. Therefore, in order 
 to provide for the continuance of the human race, 
 God made also the woman. God divided the 
 two sexes in the man, taking from his rib the 
 sexual part of his nature, and forming from it 
 Eve. Then it was the two sexes became con- 
 scious, and, the one knowing of the other's 
 presence, they both realized that they were 
 naked. Only when the race became aware of its 
 sexual function and destiny could it arrive at 
 any feeling of its need for covering. Later that 
 feeling of nakedness and of need for covering 
 was overcome and put away by the bodily nature 
 represented in Eve; but the intellectual nature 
 which finds its representative in Adam has always 
 contended for the reserve and propriety of gar- 
 ments. As the intellect must rule the passions, 
 so must the man command the woman. Thus 
 some of the old-time commentators expounded 
 the problem of sex. There are a number of 
 Oriental couplets of more than ordinary interest 
 that set forth the beginning of sex, and, because 
 these are peculiarly apropos, I venture to add 
 
LOVE AND LETTERS 83 
 
 yet this one translation from my "Flowers of 
 Song from Many Lands." 
 
 "From dead and senseless earth Almighty God 
 created man: 
 But woman made He from man's body by diviner 
 plan. 
 
 And thus on earth began the wondrous miracle of 
 
 sex, 
 The human heart to fill with joy, the empty head 
 
 to vex. 
 
 Man was the first in dim creation's dark and an- 
 cient line; 
 
 But woman is the softer, sweeter, clearer, more 
 divine. 
 
 The Lord from inorganic earth made man for toil 
 
 and strife. 
 And moulded then from living clay young Adam's 
 
 lovely wife." 
 
 Of course any excursion into Oriental regions 
 must lead us far from the present field of in- 
 vestigation. The study of Latin and Greek 
 contributions to the subject in hand covers all 
 the ground necessary. The sexual perversity 
 and as well the moral triumphs of those great 
 lands from which we derive so much of our 
 language, and so much also of all that is su- 
 premely good in literature, must suffice. There 
 is but little that concerns us that may not be 
 studied to advantage in the history and literature 
 
84 LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 of the lands of Virgil and Homer. The belief 
 entertained by some that those mines of wisdom 
 are now well nigh exhausted is a mistaken one, 
 for they are still rich in all that pleases imagina- 
 tion and delights the mature judgment. 
 
 John Nevizan recounted in his "Nuptial 
 Grove" thirty-four essentials to womanly beauty ; 
 and without these, so he tells us, no woman may 
 be called perfect. All these our author declares 
 were the possession of Helen. Her beauty 
 caused other women to hate her, which will not 
 seem strange when one considers how anxious 
 are women to excel in beauty of person and 
 charm of manner. Of her lovers we need say 
 little. Their names and exploits are known to 
 all, and are the themes of song and story. The 
 poets understood her character, and never hesi- 
 tated in describing her. The land of Sandalion 
 got its name from Helen's sandal, which she 
 lost in that place when she fled from Paris, who 
 would have forced her. Her "willing mind," 
 of which Ovid sings, does not seem to have in- 
 jured her in the eyes of the men and women of 
 her day.^ They made her a goddess, and raised 
 to her fame and glory a temple, beneath which 
 (so Pausanius tells us) both Menelaus and Helen 
 were buried. This does not, however, comport 
 
 1 "One Theseus (if I hit the name) before 
 
 Had borne this fair one from her native shore. 
 Theseus was young: and can you think the dame 
 Return'd a virgin from so fierce a flame? 
 Call it a rape; yet Helen sure was kind: 
 Repeated rapes betray a willing mind." 
 
LOVE ANC LETTERS 85 
 
 with the story that she was hanged by the paid 
 servants of a woman whose husband had been slain 
 in the Trojan war. After she had become divine 
 many fables about her were invented. It was 
 represented that Nemesis, being impregnated by 
 Jupiter, laid an egg, and that Leda, finding this 
 egg, sat on it and hatched Castor, Pollux, and 
 Helen. A rival fable represents Nemesis to have 
 laid an egg; Mercury took the egg, carried it 
 to Lacedsemon, and placed it in Leda's bosom. 
 Thus came the fair Helen; and this was the 
 reason that Leda adopted her as her daughter. 
 
 Helen is made to say in Euripides that Juno, 
 to punish Paris for not giving her the victory in 
 the contest of beauty between Helen and herself, 
 deprived him of Helen. But she was, after all, 
 not so cruel as to leave him wholly without con- 
 solation, for she gave him a living image of 
 Helen which was formed of the air, and 
 which could in every way dissemble and imitate 
 the beautiful daughter of Tyndarus. 
 
 "Juno enrag'd at loss of beauty's prize, 
 Robb'd Priam's son of me, his promis'd bride. 
 And in my stead gave him an airy phantom. 
 Bearing my semblance. And this the cheated boy 
 Press'd to his breast, thinking he me enjoy'd. 
 Vain thought!" 
 
 Paris can hardly be said to have been pun- 
 ished, for he was well pleased with the phantom, 
 and found it impossible to distinguish it from 
 the true Helen. But the Trojans, not knowing 
 
86 LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 the one Helen from the other, were sometimes 
 pleased with the woman and sometimes with the 
 image, and so after angry words they came to 
 blows. 
 
 I am in no wise surprised at the exploits of 
 Paris, but I have always been amazed at the in- 
 fatuation of Demosthenes. That most illus- 
 trious orator fell desperately in love with the 
 beautiful but disreputable Lais, and so great was 
 the passionate folly of the man that he made 
 a journey to Corinth upon an errand of his 
 own in no wise creditable to his learning and to 
 his gray hairs. Aristippus, who is described as 
 "a very genteel and polite man," and who was 
 certainly a man of great wit and elegant man- 
 ners, counted himself also among her lovers. 
 He was not, however, sentimental, for when he 
 was told that the courtesan did not love him, 
 he said, "Wine and fish do not love me, and yet 
 I feed on them with pleasure." But Lais, with 
 all her beauty and accomplishments, was in no 
 wise what would be called "squeamish," for 
 among her followers was Diogenes surnamed the 
 Cynic. The extreme indecency of this man may 
 be doubted, but he was not the kind of a person 
 whose society one of delicate tastes could long 
 enjoy. I do not know whether it is true or 
 only a very good story that he lived in a tub, 
 but for the brief time he lived with Lais he was 
 most decidedly in need of a bath. He is repre- 
 sented as having a torn or patched cloak, a 
 greasy beard, and no shirt. 
 
LOVE AND LETTERS 87 
 
 That the Emperor Caligula entertained his 
 horse at supper, and introduced the animal to 
 the most distinguished men of the day as his 
 friend and guest, seems to us a strange and mon- 
 strous thing; but it certainly was not so aston- 
 ishing as was the apotheosis of the prostitute 
 Lamia, the depth of whose infamy is indicated 
 by her name. A king lifted her from the 
 street, and placed her beside him upon the 
 throne. To provide a present for his mistress 
 he taxed Athens a sum equal to $250,000 in 
 our money ; and the citizens not only paid it, 
 but builded for her a temple when she had been 
 deified as Venus Lamia. Think of this, and 
 then let the mind contemplate the pure love of 
 Darius, the last king of the Persians, for his 
 wife. Call to mind his prayer to the gods for 
 the success of Alexander, who was his enemy, 
 because Alexander did not slay that wife when 
 she was in his power, but treated her with the 
 utmost courtesy. 
 
 Reflect upon Tiberius Gracchus and his wife 
 Cornelia. She, when a widow, refused a king be- 
 cause the ashes of her husband pressed too 
 heavily upon her heart. Let the mind dwell upon 
 Dominicus Catalusius, Prince of Lesbos, and his 
 leprous wife. Though disease had deformed 
 her face and made her presence repulsive to 
 others, he still encircled her with the tenderest 
 love of a husband. Nor would he be deterred 
 from her society by any fear of contagion. 
 Consider the heroic love of Arria, the wife of 
 
88 LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 Caecina Paetus, celebrated in Martial's Epi- 
 gram. When her husband was condemned to 
 die by his own hand, seeing that he hesitated, 
 she seized the dagger and plunged it into her 
 own breast. Then, withdrawing it, she pre- 
 sented it to her husband, saying with a smile, 
 "It is not painful, Pfetus." 
 
 "When to her husband Arria gave the steel, 
 
 Which from her chaste, her bleeding breast she 
 drew. 
 She said: 'My Paetus, this I do not feel, 
 
 But, oh! the wound that must be given by 
 you!'" 
 
 "How sweet to the soul of man," said Hiero- 
 cles, "is the society of a beloved wife ! When 
 wearied and broken down by the labors of the 
 day, her endearments soothe, her tender cares 
 restore him. The solicitudes and anxieties and 
 heavier misfortunes of life are hardly to be 
 borne by him who has the weight of business 
 and domestic vexations at the same time to con- 
 tend with. But how much lighter do they seem, 
 when, after his necessary vocations are over, he 
 returns to his home and finds there a partner 
 of all his griefs and troubles, who takes, for his 
 sake, her share of domestic labor upon her, 
 and soothes the anguish of his soul by her com- 
 fort and participation." When one comes 
 upon words like these from the dim and lonely 
 past, how can he doubt that in ancient Greece 
 and Rome the same tender love made domestic 
 
LOVE AND LETTERS 89 
 
 life pure and beautiful, even as we find it to 
 be to-day in Christian England and America? 
 Euripides shows us in his "Alcestis" that long 
 ago as now there was that in a pure and true 
 love between the sexes that could sanctify the 
 little cares of life, and that could help men to 
 bear with fortitude the more distressing ills of 
 human existence. The story of Pastus and 
 Arria is only another part of the same noble and 
 touching revelation. 
 
 There is a Supreme Affection that is not only 
 pure, but that creates purity by its very pres- 
 ence. With contempt it gazes, when gaze it 
 must, upon the evil infamy of lust and brutal 
 appetite. It is an Affection worthy alone to be 
 called Love. Resplendent with the golden light 
 of the City not builded with hands, it wears 
 upon its brow the ineffable smile of its Creator. 
 
 We are now come to the end of our journey, 
 and must bid adieu alike to the bright and beauti- 
 ful spirits that have made the way delightful, and 
 to those dark presences whose records are painful 
 to contemplate. Their names are in history, 
 but where are they themselves? They are gone 
 from a world that can never forget them. Long, 
 long ago Villon mused as we are now musing, 
 and in his lovely "Ballade of Dead Ladies" he 
 asked the same question that we have asked. 
 We can make no better conclusion to our ex- 
 cursion than the one we have already at hand in 
 Rossetti's translation of Villon's "Ballade" ; 
 
90 LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 "Tell me now in what hidden way is 
 Lady Flora the lovely Roman? 
 Where's Hipparchia^ and where is Thais, 
 Neither of them the fairer woman? 
 Where is Echo, beheld of no man. 
 Only heard on river and mere, — 
 
 She whose beauty was more than hu- 
 man? 
 But where are the snows of yester-year? 
 
 Where's Heloise, the learned nun. 
 For whose sake Abeillard, I ween. 
 
 Lost manhood and put priesthood on? 
 (From love he won such dule and teen!) 
 And where, I pray you, is the Queen 
 
 Who willed that Buridan should steer 
 
 Sewed in a sack's mouth down the Seine? 
 
 But where are the snows of yester-year? 
 
 White Queen Blanche, like a queen of lilies. 
 With a voice like any mermaiden, — 
 
 Bertha Broadfoot, Beatrice, Alice, 
 
 And Ermengarde the lady of Maine, — 
 And that good Joan whom Englishmen 
 
 At Rouen doomed and burned her there, — 
 Mother of God, where are they then ? 
 
 But where are the snows of yester-year? 
 
 Nay, never ask this week, fair lord. 
 
 Where they are gone, nor yet this year. 
 
 Save with thus much for an overword, — 
 But where are the snows of yester-year?" 
 
II 
 
 THE GOOD NEIGHBOR 
 
 "The Master said, 'It is virtuous manners which 
 constitute the excellence of a neighborhood.' " 
 
 — Confucius. 
 
 "Fellow Citizens: I presume you all know who 
 I am. I am humble Abraham Lincoln." 
 
 — From an Address by Lincoln. 
 
THE GOOD NEIGHBOR 
 
 I ONCE knew, long years ago, a man of large 
 wealth who lived in a modest house in a quiet 
 little village. His home contained rare books 
 and delightful pictures, but these he did not 
 idolize, nor did he make any selfish use of them. 
 He was not what is commonly called a book- 
 worm, for his chief satisfaction in life was not 
 a matter of books but of men. He was loved 
 by all, and no man envied his good fortune. 
 The poor were drawn to him by many acts of 
 courtesy and kindness. Young men assembled 
 in his library to converse with him about litera- 
 ture, art, and the humanities. They felt the 
 enthusiasm of his spirit, and were in a measure 
 transformed by the adoption of his ideals. 
 Places of evil-resort disappeared because they 
 could not thrive under his disapproval. The 
 village fathers, influenced by his public spirit, 
 became aware of the neglected condition of the 
 streets and of the town hall. Everywhere men 
 were set to work digging sewers and relaying 
 bricks and stones in long-neglected sidewalks. 
 A course of lectures brought distinguished men 
 and women to the village. Emerson discoursed 
 in the Congregational church, and late into the 
 evening conversed with the young people of the 
 village beneath our good neighbor's roof, en- 
 deavoring to awaken in their minds a generous 
 delight in noble things. Two weekly papers, 
 
 gs 
 
&4 LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 the one Republican and the other Democratic, 
 for years expressed, in not over decorous phrases, 
 certain very decided opinions with regard to each 
 other, but they both underwent a marvellous 
 change of heart, and, though they continued to 
 favor different political measures, they revised 
 their vocabularies and laid hold of the olive 
 branch. There had been a vulgar strife between 
 a Presbyterian church and a rival Episcopal 
 church situated on the next block. Both were 
 agreed in only one thing — a hearty disapproval 
 of the Unitarian church which fronted the town 
 hall and was exasperatingly prosperous. Under 
 the strong and kindly injfluence of the good 
 neighbor, the old religious (or irreligious) ani- 
 mosity and sectarian bigotry faded out, and the 
 three churches united in a public effort to im- 
 prove the condition of the poor and to reshingle 
 the leaky roof of the village school. A free cir- 
 culating library resulted from our friend's per- 
 sonal effort and generous subscription. The 
 cemetery, a mile north of the village, had been 
 neglected. At his suggestion a new fence was 
 builded, the walks were regraveled, and certain 
 headstones that had fallen were replaced. An- 
 cient inscriptions, well nigh illegible through 
 age, were recut, and sunken graves were re- 
 mounded. Now a village improvement society, 
 of which he was founder and first president, cares 
 for the sacred field where "the rude forefathers 
 of the hamlet sleep," and the cemetery has be- 
 
THE GOOD NEIGHBOR 95 
 
 come a beautiful park in which men and women 
 delight to walk of a summer evening. 
 
 The life of the good man (he likes best to be 
 called "the good neighbor") has been quiet and 
 inconspicuous, but it has accomplished much. 
 With the large fortune which he inherited he 
 might have builded himself a palace in some gay 
 and brilliant city; he might have purchased a 
 swift and luxurious yacht ; he might have wasted 
 time in vulgar indolence or in vicious self-in- 
 dulgence at Saratoga or Newport ; he might have 
 missed the pure delight and noble service of the 
 worthy life he lived. Had he inherited wealth 
 when a very young man it is more than likely 
 an automobile would have seemed to him a thing 
 more to be desired than the love and respect of 
 his fellowmen; or that the gratification of 
 political ambition would have had for him a 
 charm beyond his power to resist. As it was, 
 wealth came in early mid-life, after much reading, 
 some religious experience, and a few years of 
 calm and thoughtful study of social needs and 
 possibilities. He asked himself the question, 
 "How can I use to the greatest advantage for 
 myself and others the little Hfe that for so brief 
 a season I may call my own?" He answered the 
 question thus, "By so identifying my life with 
 that of my race as to live over and over again 
 in the ennobled lives of my fellowmen." I am 
 reminded of the high and holy ambition of 
 George Eliot: 
 
96 LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 "Oh^ may I join the choir invisible 
 Of those immortal dead who live again 
 In minds made better by their presence: live 
 In pulses stirred to generosity. 
 In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn 
 For miserable aims that end with self. 
 In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like 
 
 stars. 
 And with their mild persistence urge man's search 
 To vaster issues — so to live is heaven: 
 To make undying music in the world. 
 Breathing as beauteous order, that controls 
 With growing sway the growing life of man." 
 
 Human life is brief, and before its days are 
 actually numbered its vigor and zest are ex- 
 hausted. Yet its possibilities are immense. The 
 great achievements of history are rooted in 
 single lives. The unselfish life alone endures. 
 
 There dwelt years ago in Amesbury, Massa- 
 chusetts, another man who was celebrated as a 
 good neighbor. His name was Henry Taylor, 
 and he was a friend of the poet Whittier. The 
 best account we have of Taylor's life was written 
 by Whittier for a village paper. Unlike the 
 other neighbor of whom I have written, Henry 
 Taylor had little money, though he had enough 
 to keep him from want. He was not a man of 
 affairs. On the contrary, he was a mystic and 
 dreamer who led the quiet and simple life of an 
 unlettered workingman. He was no scholar, nor 
 yet was he a great reader. Mr. Whittier thinks 
 Taylor's entire library did not contain more than 
 
THE GOOD NEIGHBOR &7 
 
 eight or ten books, among which were a volume 
 of Emerson's Essays, Alger's "Poetry of the 
 Orient," and a copy of the New Testament. 
 Whittier loaned him a copy of Plato which he 
 read with pleasure but did not care to retain. 
 The New Testament was his constant companion. 
 The words of Jesus were always with him, but 
 his understanding of them was different from 
 that of the surrounding Christian world. His 
 religion was one of absolute quietude; Whit- 
 tier describes it as "a religion of ineffable 
 calm blown over by no winds of hope or fear." 
 He had no anxiety about either the present or the 
 future. To him the material universe was an 
 unreal but beautiful pageant. He believed that 
 he had already attained unto "the rest that re- 
 maineth for the people of God," and which he 
 identified with the Oriental Nirvana. Yet Henry 
 Taylor was in every way a good neighbor. He 
 was kindness itself. He was wise and far-sighted 
 in judgment and advice. He had a passion for 
 helping men. The calmness of his life was con- 
 tagious. The tones of his voice were reassur- 
 ing. Men in desperate straits came to him and 
 were dissuaded from suicide; they unburdened 
 their consciences in his presence; they even 
 sought at his hand absolution; and from his 
 quiet home they returned to the world with new 
 hope and courage. He was never morose or 
 despondent. Trouble, sickness and death could 
 not appal him. He seemed to take frightened 
 souls into his bosom. It is said that the dying 
 
98 LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 lost all fear of death In his presence. His dwell- 
 ing became a temple; and to hundreds of his 
 fellow men he was something more than a priest. 
 Whatever may be thought of his philosophy, 
 no one will deny that his life was beautiful. 
 
 There are as many kinds of neighbors as there 
 are men and women, and we have room for all. 
 God never created two mountains of the same 
 height, nor did He ever make two rivers of pre- 
 cisely the same length. There is nothing like 
 sameness in the thought of God. Uniformity 
 is a sort of blasphemy. We should preserve and 
 cultivate personal traits and even eccentricities. 
 Losing these, we fall back into the common stock 
 of nature out of which we were taken. The mat- 
 ter-of-fact neighbor was after the Lord's own 
 heart, but none the less was Heaven pleased with 
 the mystic and dreamer. 
 
 It is not so much by what we do that men 
 are helped as by what we are. Words and deeds 
 are discounted, but the man himself remains and 
 becomes an indisputable fact of which no argu- 
 ment can dispose. He gives significance to the 
 universe, and from his thinking all things derive 
 shape and color. It was not what the mystic 
 and dreamer of Amesbury had of earthly goods 
 that made him a kind and useful neighbor. He 
 had little to give apart from what he was in 
 himself. "Do you know, sir, that I am worth 
 a million sterling.?" said a great capitalist to 
 John Bright. "Yes, sir, and I know that it is 
 all you are worth," replied the distinguished 
 
THE GOOD NEIGHBOR 99 
 
 commoner. The man with his million sterling 
 was worth little indeed. "Silver and gold have I 
 none," exclaimed an apostle, "but such as I have 
 give I thee." yV^hat he had was worth more than 
 money. 
 
 Man is at his best in society, and apart from 
 some form of society he degenerates, unless, in- 
 deed, he be one of those rare specimens of his 
 race that, like certain flowers of the desert, 
 thrive in solitude. There are men who should 
 dwell apart from the world, and who can help 
 their fellows only from a distance. Not many 
 such are to be found within the narrow space of 
 a single generation, but the long history of the 
 centuries records the names of a multitude of 
 brilliant men and women who were recluses. 
 Solitude is not always "the country of the un- 
 happy." It has been even the delight of not a 
 few. Cowper sighed for "a lodge in some vast 
 wilderness." Audubon was happy alone with his 
 rifle in the forest. Thoreau was equally happy 
 in his log house by Walden water. *'I lose half 
 of my soul in losing solitude," wrote Maurice de 
 Guerin. Again he wrote, "My God, close my 
 eyes ; keep me from the sight of the multitude." 
 The brothers of La Trappe find silence and soli- 
 tude quite to their minds. "In this world," said 
 Schopenhauer, "there is much that is very bad, 
 but the worst thing in it is society." Yet not- 
 withstanding all this and much more, it is still 
 true that it is not good for most men to be 
 alone. Comte was not astray when he wrote, 
 
100 LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 "He deserved not to be born who thinks he was 
 born for himself alone." Even the few men and 
 women who were made for solitude still lived, if 
 they were of noble nature, not for themselves 
 alone, but for others. In most of us the old 
 savage reappears when once we cease to touch 
 shoulders and keep step. It is ours to render 
 society, from which few can be safely removed, 
 not only tolerable but attractive and helpful. 
 Here comes in the benign office of the good 
 neighbor who need not be the intimate friend of 
 all, but who must be the agreeable companion 
 of some, and a wholesome life-giving presence to 
 many. My neighbor is not merely the man or 
 woman whose house adjoins mine. Not space 
 but social proximity has to do with the making 
 of the neighbor. There must be first of all 
 human qualities that "shew a heart within blood- 
 tinctured, of a veined humanity." Not oneness 
 of opinion, but breadth of sympathy is essential. 
 No faith, religious or political, can be good for 
 a man when once it begins to separate him from 
 his race. Religion means, "again I bind." 
 We are bound to God only by "the cords of a 
 man." "Every man for himself, and the devil 
 take the hindermost," means something even 
 worse than savage life. Nothing but "universal 
 social cohesion" prevents the devil from taking 
 every one of us. 
 
 In every small district there is likely to be 
 some gentle spirit that finds delight in Nature — 
 delight not only for self, but for others as well. 
 
OLD AGE 197 
 
 we ever so fond of the gentle but cruel sport, 
 it is not at all likely we shall have anything re- 
 sembling his skill. He made artificial flies the 
 year before he died, without spectacles and with- 
 out the assistance of others. No doubt Izaak 
 Walton attributed the old angler's long life to 
 out-door occupations, and especially to angling. 
 Walton said, "God never did make a more calm, 
 quiet, innocent recreation than angling," but I 
 should like to know the opinion of the trout and 
 of the other fish that he and Jenkins and men 
 of their way of thinking captured. Byron took 
 a very different view of the matter when he wrote : 
 
 "And angling, too, that solitary vice, 
 Whatever Izaak Walton sings or says; 
 The quaint, old, cruel coxcomb, in his gullet 
 Should have a hook, and a small trout to pull 
 it. 
 
 Age will come to all of us if we live long 
 enough to experience its discomforts, but that 
 period need not be, and certainly it should not 
 be, one of distress if we have health and are lifted 
 above the burden of want. Wise were the words 
 of Sir Theodore Martin spoken by him in the 
 Inaugural Address which he delivered when he 
 became rector of St. Andrew's University : 
 
 "It is not years that make age. Frivolous pur- 
 suits, base passions unsubdued, narrow selfishness, 
 vacuity of mind, life with sordid aims, or no aim 
 at all — ^these are the things that bring age upon 
 the soul. Healthful tastes, an open eye for what 
 
198 LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 is beautiful and good in nature and in man, a happy 
 remembrance of youthful pleasures, a mind never 
 without some active interest or pursuit — these are 
 the things that carry on the feelings of youth even 
 into years when the body may have lost most of 
 its comeliness and its force." 
 
 Sir Theodore Martin knew whereof he spoke, for 
 when he uttered those wise and wholesome words 
 he was himself in his ninetieth year. When he 
 was a very old man he was still strong of mind 
 and body — stronger, beyond aU question, than 
 many a younger man who listened to his dis- 
 course. 
 
 How about tobacco? Well, there are in our 
 world as many opinions with regard to the use 
 of "the weed" as there are men to entertain those 
 opinions. Where there is so little agreement I 
 would not be over-confident, and yet I have an 
 opinion the nature of which will be understood 
 when I express a willingness to discuss it over a 
 fragrant cigar with anyone who does not agree 
 with me. Tobacco used with moderation will, I 
 think, injure but few, while it is a very great 
 comfort to a large number of men. Used with- 
 out moderation it is in nearly every case an in- 
 jurious agent. I smoke as a general thing three 
 cigars a day, one after lunch and two in the 
 evening. I have never discovered that my three 
 cigars a day have ever hurt me in any way. 
 
 Everyone knows the charming lines written by 
 the old English poet George Wisher, who flour- 
 ished in the time of James I. Wisher was a 
 
OLD AGE 199 
 
 kind and friendly man, and withal a man of cour- 
 age who espoused the cause of the common people. 
 After the Restoration our poet found himself in 
 duress for three long years. I wonder much if 
 in all that time he had sweet companionship in 
 those delicate clouds of tranquillizing smoke he 
 celebrated for us all so well in his delightful 
 song: 
 
 "Tobacco's but an Indian weed. 
 Grows green at morn, cut down at eve; 
 
 It shows our decay. 
 
 We are but clay — 
 Think of this when you smoke tobacco. 
 
 The pipe that is so lily-white. 
 Wherein, so many take delight. 
 
 Is broke with a touch. 
 
 Men are but such — 
 Think of this when you smoke tobacco. 
 
 The pipe that is so foul within 
 
 Shows how man's soul is stained with sin; 
 
 And then, the fire 
 
 It doth require! 
 Think of this when you smoke tobacco. 
 
 The ashes that are left behind 
 Do serve to keep us all in mind 
 
 That unto dust 
 
 Return we must — 
 Think of this when you smoke tobaoco. 
 
200 LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 The smoke that doth on high ascend 
 Shows how man's life must have au end. 
 
 The vapor's gone, 
 
 Man's life is flown — 
 Think of this when you smoke tobacco." 
 
 At a banquet of dealers in tobacco in St. Louis 
 some years ago Col. Ingersoll made one of 
 the most eloquent of all his eloquent addresses. 
 With these words he brought the address to a 
 close, and I think they are words that we should 
 never allow time to erase from the literature of 
 our land: 
 
 "Four centuries ago, Columbus, the adventurous, 
 on the blessed island of Cuba, saw happy people 
 who rolled leaves between their lips. Above their 
 heads were little clouds of smoke. Their faces 
 were serene, and in their eyes was the autumnal 
 heaven of contentment. These people were kind, 
 innocent, gentle and loving. The climate of Cuba 
 is the friendship of the earth and the air, and of 
 this climate the sacred leaves were born — leaves that 
 breed in the mind of him who uses them the cloud- 
 less happy days in which they grew. These leaves 
 make friends and celebrate with gentle rites the 
 vows of peace. They have given consolation to 
 the world. They are the friend of the imprisoned, 
 of the exile, of workers in mines, of fellers of trees, 
 of sailors on the deep sea. They are the givers of 
 strength and calm to the vexed and weary minds of 
 those who build with thought and rear the temples 
 of the soul. They tell of rest and peace. They 
 smooth the wrinkled brows of care, drive fear and 
 misshapen dread from out the mind and fill the 
 
OLD AGE 201 
 
 heart with hope and rest. Within their magic warp 
 and woof some potent spell imprisoned lies that, 
 when released by fire, does softly steal within the 
 fortress of the brain and bind in sleep the captured 
 sentiments of care and grief. These leaves are the 
 friends of the fireside and their smoke-like incense 
 rises from myriads of happy homes. Cuba is the 
 smile of the sea." 
 
 It is said that Sir Isaac Newton was smoking 
 in his garden at Woolsthorpe when the apple 
 fell. Dr. Parr was never without his pipe, which 
 was half -filled with salt. He even took his pipe 
 into drawing-rooms, where he smoked with a 
 good-natured and vulgar vanity. Charles Lamb, 
 Carlyle, and Tennyson were inveterate smokers. 
 General Grant smoked the strongest cigars he 
 could obtain. Tobacco-smoking is a social en- 
 joyment, while the use of the opium-pipe is quite 
 the reverse. Several smokers of opium may re- 
 cline in the same room, but each smoker is wholly 
 concerned with himself. A little conversation 
 there may be at first, but soon each smoker draws 
 himself like a snail into his own shell, and all is 
 silence and repose. The little conversation at 
 the beginning becomes, so soon as the drug takes 
 effect, sententious and laconic ; and the choice bits 
 of foolish wisdom that are passed from smoker 
 to smoker would not be bad literature for Judge 
 or Fuck. 
 
 Some kind of a stimulant man must have. It 
 is well, I think, to recognize that fact, and to 
 set about finding him something less harmful than 
 
202 LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 opium or gin. Napoleon, like Dr. Johnson, was 
 a confirmed tea drinker. So was Gladstone, who 
 confessed that "he drank more tea between mid- 
 night and daybreak than any other member of 
 the House of Commons, and that the strongest 
 brew of it never interfered with his sleep." The 
 Dietetic and Hygienic Gazette has this interest- 
 ing excerpt: 
 
 "The dish of tea was one of the most important 
 factors in Johnson's life. Proficiency in the gentle 
 art of tea brewing was regarded by him as an 
 essential attribute of the perfect woman, and there 
 can be no doubt that his female friends (and their 
 name was legion) did their best to gratify his amia- 
 ble weakness. 
 
 "Richard Cumberland tells us that his inordinate 
 demands for his favorite beverage were occasionally 
 difficult to comply with. On Sir Joshua Reynolds 
 reminding him that he had already consumed eleven 
 cups, he replied: 'Sir, I did not count your glasses 
 of wine; why should you number my cups of tea."** 
 adding laughingly and in perfect good humor: 
 'Sir, I should have released our hostess from any 
 further trouble, but you have reminded me that I 
 want one more cup to make up the dozen, and I 
 must request Mrs. Cumberland to round up my 
 score.' 
 
 "When he saw the complacency with which the 
 lady of the house obeyed his behests he said cheer- 
 ily: 'Madam, I must tell you, for your comfort, 
 you have escaped much better than a certain lady 
 did a while ago, upon whose patience I intruded 
 greatly more than I have yours. She asked me 
 
OLD AGE 203 
 
 for no other purpose than to make a zany of me 
 and set me gabbing to a parcel of people I knew 
 nothing of; so^ madam, I had my revenge on her, 
 for I swallowed five and twenty cups of her tea.' 
 
 "Cumberland declared that his wife would gladly 
 have made tea for Johnson 'as long as the New 
 River could have supplied her with water/ for it 
 was then, and then only, he was seen at his happiest 
 moment." 
 
 Tea is a stimulant, and like coffee and cocoa, 
 has a three-fold effect — on the circulation, on 
 the spinal cord, and on the brain. It increases 
 the flow of blood through the brain cells and 
 supplies them with extra nutriment. This again 
 results in quickened thought. If by the use of 
 this stimulant thought could be turned on when 
 needed and could be again turned off when no 
 longer required, tea would be an ideal drink. 
 Unfortunately, intellectual activity is kept up 
 when the tired brain requires sleep, and thus it 
 comes to pass that large quantities of Dr. John- 
 son's strong brew may prove even more harmful 
 than tobacco or spirits when used intemperately. 
 Tea, coffee, and cocoa promote a feeling of well- 
 being which is certainly most delightful, and it 
 is not surprising that exhausted brain-workers 
 have been tempted to use them immoderately. 
 In preparing tea the leaves should never be boiled 
 or stewed. The boiling water should in every 
 case be poured on the leaves, and after standing 
 for a few minutes should be again poured off. 
 Tea should not be taken at the same meal with 
 
204 LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 flesh-meat, for it toughens the fibre of the meat 
 and so renders it more or less indigestible. Bishop 
 Berkeley, the distinguished philosopher whose 
 theory of the nonexistence of matter has never 
 been demolished, however much the experience 
 of man may incline to a different explanation of 
 the universe, was even more fond of tea than 
 was Dr. Johnson. He expired drinking his fa- 
 vorite beverage. One evening he and his family 
 were sitting and drinking tea together, — he on 
 one side of the fire, and his wife on the other, 
 and his daughter making the tea at a little round 
 table just behind him. She had given him one 
 cup, which he had drunk. She had poured out an- 
 other which he left standing some time. "Fa- 
 ther," she asked, "will you not drink your tea?" 
 Upon his making no answer, she stooped forward 
 and looked at him, and found that he was dead. 
 That was certainly a most beautiful way of dy- 
 ing — quietly, with neither pain nor sad farewell, 
 encircled by the loved ones, and with the hand 
 resting upon a cup of refreshing beverage. 
 Berkeley directed in his will that his body should 
 be kept above ground more than five days, and 
 until it became offensive. It was to remain un- 
 disturbed and covered by the same bedclothes, in 
 the same bed, the head raised upon pillows. 
 Henry Ward Beecher was fond of strong coffee. 
 The poet Schiller found himself better able to 
 compose when he had before him on the table a 
 few partly decayed apples; and when he could 
 not have these he wanted coffee or champagne. 
 
OLD AGE 205 
 
 The elder Kean had with him at the theatre 
 brandy and beef -tea which he drank between the 
 acts; he adapted, so it is said, his dinner to the 
 part he must play. Mrs. Jordan took calf's- 
 foot-jelly dissolved in sherry. Gladstone when 
 he did not drink tea took egg beaten up in sherry. 
 Nearly every man uses in one way or another 
 tobacco. And what a blessing the weed is to 
 thousands of our race. Listen to Boswell as he 
 sings the praise of the various kinds of snuff: 
 
 "O snuff! our fashionable end and aim, 
 Strasburgh, Rappee, Dutch, Scotch, whate'er thy 
 
 name; 
 Powder celestial! quintessence divine! 
 New joys entrance my soul, while thou art mine. 
 By thee assisted, ladies kill the day,. 
 And breathe their scandal freely o'er their tea; 
 Not less they prize thy virtues when in bed; 
 One pinch of thee revives the vapored head. 
 Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze. 
 Glows in the stars, and tickles in the sneeze." 
 
 It was tobacco and not literature that made the 
 name of John Nicot famous. His two books and 
 the first French Dictionary, of which he was the 
 compiler, could, never have saved from oblivion 
 his worthy name. It was his introduction of the 
 plant into France, and the adoption of his name 
 as that of the oil contained in the leaves of the 
 plant, that made Nicot's name familiar wherever 
 the word "nicotine" is used. 
 
 No doubt many users of tobacco have injured 
 
206 LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 their health and shortened their Hves by immod- 
 erate use of the plant ; but surely the abuse of a 
 thing furnishes no valid argiunent against its 
 reasonable enjoyment. Nicot introduced some 
 measure of contentment into the pleasant land of 
 France when he introduced to its citizens the weed 
 he loved so well. Moderately used, tobacco 
 soothes the nerves and promotes peace. I do 
 not know who wrote the famous "Recipe for Con- 
 tent," but surely it is well worth remembering, 
 and Nicot may be regarded as the first mixer 
 of its wholesome ingredients: 
 
 "Into a neat little room, all cozy and tight, 
 Put two large glasses of Southern light; 
 And an ounce of tobacco and a good easy chair. 
 Then thicken with volumes all spicy and rare. 
 Flavor with prints in the usual way 
 And serve to the taste, on a dull rainy day." 
 
 Tobacco, so beloved by the old, is itself a much 
 older plant than most of those who smoke and 
 chew its leaves suppose. We may laugh if we 
 will at the grotesque conceit that Noah was in- 
 toxicated with tobacco and not with wine, but 
 nevertheless it seems to have something of the 
 solemnity of a Greek Church "tradition." Dr. 
 Yates, simple-minded man, tells us that he saw a 
 picture of a smoking party in one of the ancient 
 Egyptian tombs. The author of a little book 
 on tobacco, published in London in 1859, admits 
 that Yates may have seen the picture of a smok- 
 ing party which he describes, but he slyly insin- 
 
OLD AGE 207 
 
 uates that the original draughtsman was beyond 
 all doubt not an ancient, but a modem Egyptian 
 — some mischievous urchin of recent times who, 
 tampering in sport with a real antique, "builded 
 better than he knew," and cheated an unsuspect- 
 ing archaeologist. It has also been suggested 
 that the old Egyptian glass-blowers may be re- 
 sponsible for this most absurd of blunders. 
 
 We do not now use very much snufF, though it is 
 still manufactured for royalty abroad and for 
 Italian ecclesiastics. But everywhere men, and 
 some women as well, smoke. Alcohol is even more 
 common than tobacco. It has filled the world 
 with its sorrow and gladness, and I fear that the 
 sorrow is much in excess of the gladness. Dis- 
 raeli consumed large quantities of champagne 
 jelly. Thomas Paine was too fond of spirits for 
 his own good, and so also was President Pierce, 
 who was a very excellent man nevertheless. Poe, 
 it is whispered, sometimes trifled with opium, not 
 satisfied with things to drink. 
 
 About alcoholic beverages there is, despite the 
 tragedy that is never far away, much of romance 
 and good-fellowship. But the Indian weed seems 
 to eclipse all other stimulants in the delightful 
 literature that gathers about it. And it adds 
 something to its praise that there cleaves to its 
 fragrant leaves so little of painful tragedy. 
 
 As we advance in life time seems to fly with an 
 ever increasing speed. And it is well that it is 
 so. Our happiest years, which are usually those 
 of early Hfe, linger as if loath to depart; but 
 
208 LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 our more helpless years, those of "the lean and 
 slippered pantaloon," appear as anxious to be 
 gone as does life itself, so like from first to last 
 "an empty dream." Even when old age has be- 
 come a great burden its years still appear swift: 
 
 "The more we live, more brief appear 
 Our life's succeeding stages, 
 A day to childhood seems a year. 
 And years like passing ages. 
 
 Heaven gives our years of fading strength 
 
 Indemnifying fleetness; 
 And those of youth a seeming length 
 
 Proportioned to their sweetness." 
 
 When the end comes there often comes with 
 it an imperative demand for rest. So urgent is 
 the demand in some cases that the aged sufferer 
 is unable to resist its pressure, and in a moment 
 of weakness, it may be, he takes his own life. 
 Lecky, in his "Map of Life," calls attention to a 
 touching epitaph which he saw in a German 
 churchyard : 
 
 "I will arise, O Christ, when Thou callest me; but 
 oh! let me rest awhile, for I am very weary." 
 
 If we live long enough it is not unlikely that we 
 shall even wish for death. There is an old Irish 
 legend that illustrates that fact: In a certain 
 lake in Munster, it is said, there were two islands ; 
 into the first death could never enter, but age and 
 sickness, and the weariness of life, and parox- 
 
OLD AGE 209 
 
 ysms of fearful suffering were all known there, 
 and they did their work till the inhabitants, tired 
 of their immortality, learned to look upon the 
 opposite island as upon a haven of repose. 
 They launched their barks upon its gloomy wa- 
 ters; they touched its shore, and they were at 
 rest. 
 
 With Plotinus, I thank God that my soul is 
 not imprisoned within an immortal body, for in 
 that case I should know a new mortality more to 
 be feared than the one of which I now have 
 knowledge. From every agony possible to man 
 death furnishes a sure escape. A deathless body 
 would mean living death. And yet men would 
 close and fasten as with bolts of steel the one 
 door without which hope were impossible. They 
 would inscribe over the cradle of every infant 
 the words that Dante saw over the Place of Doom. 
 I could not wish to live were it not permitted me 
 to die. 
 
 Yet nevertheless there is a sense in which body 
 and mind alike are under the dominion of death. 
 Auguste Comte said in a moment of depression, 
 "Death governs the living." He may not have 
 really believed the sovereignty of death so vast, 
 but that was what he said, and in a very impor- 
 tant sense the saying is true. Through the long 
 years we are engaged in warding off death. 
 Thousands of men are in bondage all their days 
 through fear of death; and the very persons 
 who reprove them for this fear, and who en- 
 deavor to rescue them from its baneful influence, 
 
210 LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 are themselves in many cases in bondage to the 
 same dark dread. Porta was a distinguished 
 surgeon at the University of Pavia. When, as 
 sometimes happened, a patient died on the oper- 
 ating table through the depressing influence of 
 fear, Porta would, in a transport of rage, throw 
 the instruments to the floor, shouting, "Cowards 
 die from fear!" Was the surgeon himself then 
 so brave a man? Ah, he also had his phobia. 
 He knew moments of the deepest depression. 
 Yet still it is true that great age often brings 
 its own sweet release, and the fear dies before 
 the coming of death itself. And sometimes the 
 martial spirit common in youth returns late in 
 life, and the familiar lines of Browning become 
 an experience : 
 
 "Fear death? — ^to feel the fog in my throat, 
 The mist in my face, 
 When the snows begin, and the blasts denote 
 I am nearing the place. 
 
 I was ever a fighter, so — one fight more. 
 
 The best and the last! 
 I would hate that death bandaged my eyes, 
 and forbore. 
 And bade me creep past. 
 No! let me taste the whole of it, fare like my 
 peers. 
 The heroes of old." 
 
 Dr. Crothers, a distinguished physician who 
 has given the best years of his life to the study 
 
OLD AGE 211 
 
 of the psychological features of disease and also 
 to the cure of the drug habit, has propounded 
 a theory not wholly new, but still unlike any other 
 in the results which must follow its acceptance. 
 He wrote in a medical journal: **There are 
 many reasons for believing that we carry around 
 with us great reserve powers and unknown ener- 
 gies which are seldom used, and that in old age 
 appeal to these powers may give a certain vigor 
 entirely unexpected which lengthens out life and 
 practically overcomes disease." These "reserve 
 powers and unknown energies" are, it is to be 
 supposed, different from what is known as the 
 subconscious self, but concerning that matter it 
 is not necessary that we should speculate. Dr. 
 Crothers tells us that did men but realize the hid- 
 den powers they have always with them the "deep- 
 est despondency would disappear from the 
 continuous desire and effort to rise above it." 
 In other words, this appeal may flood old age 
 with a joy in life when, under ordinary circum- 
 stances and in most men, it has departed with the 
 vigor of early days. This theory, which is not 
 without some evidence to sustain it, is yet new, 
 and must await the results of further investiga- 
 tion; but it certainly presents an alluring hope. 
 Think what it really means to flood the sterile 
 places of old age with the revitalizing tides of 
 joy and expectancy, and to exterminate the rank 
 and noxious weeds of despondency, doubt, and 
 suspicion. We plant flowers over graves, but 
 stiU the graves remain. Is this new theory an- 
 
212 LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 other planting of flowers over graves, or is there 
 here an actual revitalizing and a resurrection of 
 the man? Time only can answer that question. 
 But still, one way or the other, old age, as has 
 been shown, need not be utterly sad and lonely. 
 Very much depends upon temperament, which 
 is but another name for natural heritage, and 
 over that we have no control. All we can do 
 with it is to accept of it in whatever form it 
 comes, and so to make of it the best use we can. 
 
 Much of the loneliness of age is occasioned by 
 the death of early friends and companions. The 
 man who survives these in a certain sense survives 
 himself. New friends are not easily made after 
 one has reached the age of fifty. And with the 
 loneliness of declining years there comes a con- 
 sciousness of the approach of a loneliness even 
 deeper than any of which we have made mention 
 — the loneliness of death. 
 
 "A lonely hour is on its way to each. 
 To all; for death knows no companionship." 
 
 All the supreme places and conditions of life 
 are lonely. Thousands of men may die in battle 
 within a very circumscribed area and at the same 
 time, yet to each man death comes as a solitary 
 event. Our associations are superficial when com- 
 pared with our isolations. Since, then, we cannot 
 escape the great solitudes of our existence, is it 
 not well that we give some time to their consid- 
 eration? We may, if we will, look Destiny in 
 the face, and thus acquaint ourselves in advance 
 
SILENCE 117 
 
 motive-engines and rattling car-wheels did not 
 make sufficient noise. Think of a man who could 
 travel around the country stirring up the crowd 
 to take an interest in himself and in his magazine 
 bj making a racket with his mouth. What a 
 way to advertise a magazine or a paper! Sup- 
 pose all the magazines in the land were to send out 
 vociferous representatives to create a hubbub de- 
 structive alike of sanity and physical health. 
 Under such tumult and outcry men's minds and 
 nerves must deteriorate. 
 
 Perhaps the physician is the man to whom we 
 should look for suggestions calculated to abate 
 the nuisance of which we write, and from which 
 we in common with thousands suffer. Dr. H. 
 A. Boyce, the superintendent of the Kingston 
 General Hospital and one of the leading physi- 
 cians of Canada, while abroad visited an institu- 
 tion where patients suffering from nervous 
 disorders are cared for. He tells us in a paper 
 which he read at a meeting of the Canadian 
 Hospital Association held in Montreal on March 
 25, 1910, and which was printed in the Medical 
 Record of September 10, 1910, that what most 
 impressed him in the institution he visited was 
 the care taken to secure freedom from all unneces- 
 sary noises. He was requested while in the build- 
 ing to modulate his voice so that the patients 
 might not be disturbed. He said among other 
 things, in speaking of certain American hospitals 
 for the care of persons afflicted with diseases of 
 the nervous system: 
 
118 LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 "A friend of mine who was a patient in one of 
 the largest hospitals in one of the largest cities of 
 this continent, a hospital that deservedly enjoys a 
 continental reputation, told me that its associations 
 to her would always be crystallized in its personi- 
 fication of not only perpetual motion, but noisy per- 
 petual motion. When this is the impression given 
 by one of the best institutions what must be that 
 made by the rank and file." 
 
 My own experience runs in the same direction. 
 We are a noisy nation. In aU our streets are 
 motor cars of every imaginable kind, making 
 every sort of a noise from a faint whisper to a 
 roar. They bellow, yell, shriek, and groan. All 
 night you may hear them in the streets, and not 
 a chauffeur or car-owner can be found who has 
 the slightest regard for the rights of others. 
 But, after all has been said, it still remains true 
 that no sound is so cruel and evil in its results as 
 is the untutored and unrestrained human voice. 
 I have sometimes thought it might be in every 
 way a blessing, were it only agreeable to public 
 feeling, could the vocal organs of the worst 
 offenders be extirpated. Think of the relief it 
 would bring to this world were the entire race 
 of stump-speakers deprived of that instrument of 
 torture our anatomists call the larynx. The 
 heavy mortality might be urged as an objection, 
 but even this some of us could view with equa- 
 nimity. 
 
 If we ever succeed in suppressing the rude and 
 barbarous sounds that render life in large cities 
 
SILENCE 119 
 
 uncomfortable and even dangerous to health, it 
 must be with the cooperation of physicians and 
 men of scholarly temper and attainments. In 
 the Dutch city of Utrecht there is what is be- 
 lieved to be an absolutely noiseproof room. 
 Heretofore it was Professor Wilhelm Wundt, of 
 the psychological laboratory of Leipsig, who had 
 come nearest to the scientific elimination of all 
 sound from an inclosed space, but Professor 
 Zwaardemaker, of Utrecht University, has gone 
 one step further and he has communicated details 
 of his achievement to the Amsterdam Royal Acad- 
 emy of Science. 
 
 For an absolutely noiseproof room it is essen- 
 tial not only that no sound shall penetrate it 
 from without, but also that it shall resist sound 
 propagation, reflection and refraction within. 
 The first problem is comparatively easy to solve. 
 The walls of Professor Zwaardemaker's room con- 
 sist of six layers alternately of wood, cork and 
 sand. There are two spaces, one between the 
 second and the third layer and one between the 
 fourth and fifth, from which the air has been 
 extracted. The inner walls are of porous stone 
 covered with a kind of horsehair cloth known as 
 trichopiese, a Belgian invention which is sound- 
 resisting and is widely used in Belgium in tele- 
 phone booths. The walls are pierced by acous- 
 tically isolated leaden rods. The roof is com- 
 posed of layers of lead, wood, asphalt, paper, 
 sea grass and cork. The floor is of marble and 
 is covered with a thickly woven Smyrna carpet. 
 
120 LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 An unsympathetic writer said, in describing the 
 apartment: "A tomblike silence forever reigns 
 in this elaborate room, which will be used only 
 for clinical studies." In truth, the room is one 
 pleasant to be in whether for rest or for study ; 
 and the time will surely come when in all our 
 large cities such rooms will be found. 
 
 Gross materialism is at the foundation of no 
 small part of the noise we encounter in the every- 
 day living of the average man. The general 
 tendency of materialism is in the direction of 
 coarseness and rudeness: the coarse and rude are 
 usually clamorous and tumultuous. Men who care 
 nothing for the arts care no more for the ameni- 
 ties. They see no reason why one who is able 
 to storm the world should ever think of attacking 
 it in any other way. They are unable to under- 
 stand why an able-bodied man should interest 
 himself in things that call for delicacy and fine- 
 ness of perception. 
 
 Imagination is as essential to civilization as 
 are firmness and endurance. Without it you may 
 have strong men, but they will be savages. One 
 savage will make more noise than a thousand 
 gentlemen, but with all his noise the poor savage 
 is only a savage and nothing more. George 
 William Curtis wrote, "Until we know why the 
 rose is sweet, or the dew drop pure, or the rain- 
 bow beautiful, we cannot know why the poet is 
 the best benefactor of society. The soldier fights 
 for his native land, but the poet touches that land 
 with the charm that makes it worth fighting for." 
 
SILENCE 121 
 
 The finer elements give value to life. Not the 
 man who shouts himself hoarse over some popular 
 idol, but the man who in silence and alone pierces 
 to the core of things is the real man, and he will 
 endure when aU the empty drum-heads no more 
 resound. 
 
 Neither fine personal culture nor yet anything 
 resembling the best there is in art is likely to 
 come of a republic. The rule of the average 
 man, who is without other training than that 
 which comes of a daily struggle with the hard 
 necessities of life, will be marked by the noise 
 and tumult by which he has been all his days 
 surrounded. You might as well expect an unin- 
 structed man to paint a great picture as to bring 
 into existence and sustain noble and enduring in- 
 stitutions. The rude clamor of vulgar strife for 
 such poor returns as must always engage the 
 attention of untutored men, can produce only 
 self-exploitation and political chaos. 
 
 Emerson said no truer thing than this, "The 
 gentleman and lady make no noise." Fineness 
 of touch indicates fineness of feeling. When 
 John O'KeefFe described a fellow author as "all 
 puff, rattle, squeak, and ding-dong," he described 
 under the figure of a steamboat making final 
 preparation for the voyage, an ill-bred and bad- 
 mannered man wanting that ultimate efflorescence 
 of civilization we call culture. Nothing meaner 
 was ever said of Thomas Moore than this that 
 Arthur Symons said: "Moore's trot, gallop, and 
 jingle of verse has, no doubt, its skill and its 
 
122 LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 merit; but its skill is not seldom that of the cir- 
 cus-rider, and its merit no more than to have 
 gone the due number of times around the ring 
 without slackening speed." When a man need- 
 lessly slams the door, making every panel rattle 
 and every nerve in my body frantic, I know with- 
 out further evidence that I am in the presence of 
 a rude fellow from whom I shall do well to escape 
 so soon as possible. 
 
 The new machine not yet perfected is noisy; 
 when the machine shall have become sufficiently 
 improved it will accomplish more and do its work 
 in a better way, but there will be no more of the 
 old-time clatter of its badly adjusted parts. It 
 is so also with these human machines. Schopen- 
 hauer had all this in mind when he wrote: "I 
 have ever been of opinion that the amount of 
 noise a man can support with equanimity is in 
 inverse proportion to his mental powers, and may 
 be taken, therefore, as a measure of intellect 
 generally. If I hear a dog barking for hours 
 on the threshold of a house, I know well enough 
 what kind of brains I may expect from its in- 
 habitants." 
 
 To a thoughtful mind the silence of Nature is 
 even more impressive than are the convulsions and 
 tornadoes that startle and affright. The un- 
 trained imagination is filled with surprise and 
 wonder when fierce winds lash the ocean into 
 wild and ungovemed fury ; but to poet and 
 artist the serene glory of sunrise and the gentle 
 approach of evening twilight present an attrac- 
 
SILENCE 123 
 
 tion quite as pleasing as are the more exceptional 
 displays of natural force. In the great world 
 of human life of which we are a part the same 
 thing is true. To a finely attuned temper and 
 a cultivated mind there is an impressiveness in 
 the silence of the right man at the right time 
 that no display of passion can equal. The 
 silence of our Saviour not only surprised Peter, 
 but impresses and will always impress men by 
 the fine eloquence of its rebuke. "Study to be 
 quiet," wrote an apostle. Few of us, with all 
 our study, have yet acquired much of that Di- 
 vine skill. Even into our worship we have in- 
 troduced a self-assertion that savors of self-will; 
 we have invented pomps and splendors that 
 belittle in the minds of men the greater majesty 
 of Heaven. It may be that those who call them- 
 selves "Friends" have in the simplicity of their 
 manners and worship made religion unattractive 
 and divested it of a beauty that might well belong 
 to it; but it is also true that in our gorgeous 
 rituals and ostentatious services we have lost sight 
 of that spiritual beauty which is described in the 
 Sacred Writings as "the beauty of holiness," 
 and for the cultivation of which old-fashioned 
 meditation and aloneness-with-God are essential. 
 Our sermons are too often mere displays of 
 learning and eloquence. Our prayers lack rever- 
 ence and sincerity. Our sacred songs are fre- 
 quently only musical exercises so arranged as to 
 display the excellent voices in the choir-loft. We 
 who know so little have so much to say to God 
 
124 LOVE, AND LETTERS 
 
 that we have neither inclination nor time to at- 
 tend to the things He would say to us. 
 "Silence," wrote Carlyle, "is deep as Eternity, 
 speech is shallow as Time." Before his day the 
 Swiss said, "Sprechen ist silbem, Schweigen ist 
 golden.'* Our best thoughts come of silence, 
 without some measure of which we can never be 
 anything but fools. How then, can a wise man 
 delight in noise.? 
 
 There is that in noise which belittles a man, 
 and renders him vulgar and offensive. Children 
 make a noise in order that they may attract 
 attention. It is an early display of the "old 
 Adam" of egotism. For the same reason "chil- 
 dren of a larger growth" remain children all 
 their days. Vulgar persons cannot be still one 
 moment unless they are fast asleep. Culture dif- 
 fers from rudeness in this, that it puts the man 
 in possession of himself, gives him self-control and 
 quiet habits. The largest part of every man 
 remains unused for the reason that the man does 
 not possess very much of himself. He is an un- 
 reclaimed morass upon which no substantial 
 structure may be builded. Yet men see that 
 training is a beautiful thing, and they would have 
 it appear to their neighbors that they have come 
 to possess it. But no one will mistake the noisy 
 appurtenances that are displayed for the gold 
 and silver of that noble refinement which the 
 ancients likened to a rose. That flower was con- 
 secrated to Harpocrates, the god of silence; 
 and to the men of early days it was a symbol of 
 
SILENCE 125 
 
 peace and quietness. Suspended over the table 
 at a banquet, the Romans regarded it as a guar- 
 antee that nothing said by the guests would be 
 elsewhere repeated. To noise about what was 
 said sub rosa was a gross betrayal of confidence. 
 So also the rose came to be carved above con- 
 fessionals in many parts of Europe to show how 
 strict should be the privacy observed; how silent 
 the priest should remain into whose ear so many 
 secrets are breathed. Over the urns that con- 
 tained the ashes of their dead they scattered the 
 sacred flower as a symbol of the silence and peace 
 of that last sleep which they called "the rest." 
 Drummond, the Scotch poet, often spoke of the 
 rose as an emblem of that long repose for which 
 he sighed; and he requested that upon the stone 
 over his grave might be carved these lines : 
 
 "Here Damon lies, whose songs did sometimes 
 grace 
 The murmuring Esk: — may roses shade the 
 place." 
 
 I have often wished there might be established 
 in our turbulent United States a Society of the 
 Rose (Centifolia, I should say) for the cultiva- 
 tion of silence. There was once such a society 
 at Amadan, in Persia, and of it Zeb, the Eastern 
 philosopher, has left a lovely story which has 
 been rendered into English by Madame de La- 
 tour: 
 
 "The Society (it was called an Academy) had 
 the following rules: Its members must think much. 
 
126 LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 write a little, and be as silent as possible. The 
 learned Zeb, celebrated through all the East, find- 
 ing that there was a vacancy in the Society, en- 
 deavored to obtain it for himself, but arrived, 
 unfortunately, too late. The Society was annoyed 
 because it had given to power what belonged to 
 merit; and the president, not knowing how to ex- 
 press a refusal without mortifying the assembly, 
 caused a cup to be brought which he filled so full 
 of water that a single drop more would have made 
 it run over. The wise philosopher understood by 
 that emblem that no place remained for him, and 
 was retiring sadly when he perceived a rose petal 
 at his feet. At that sight he took courage, seized 
 the petal, and placed it so delicately on the water 
 that not a drop escaped. At this ingenious allusion 
 to the rules of the Society the whole assembly 
 arose, and, gazing with delight upon the wise man, 
 signified to him their acceptance of him as a fellow 
 member. Not a word was said, but all was under- 
 stood." 
 
 There are indications that the authorities in 
 some of our large cities are beginning to realize 
 their responsibility in the matter of unnecessary 
 noise. There have been instances in which the 
 municipal authorities have stopped certain night 
 noises in the neighborhood of hospitals. Such an 
 instance occurred in Birmingham, England, a 
 few years ago, when the city clock near the hos- 
 pital, which loudly chimed each quarter of the 
 hour to the distraction and hurt of the patients, 
 was not permitted to sound its notes in the night 
 hours. 
 
SILENCE 127 
 
 There is now in the City of New York "The 
 Society for the Suppression of Unnecessary 
 Noise" which, though it has existed only four 
 years, is doing effective work. Some of the 
 noises made by steamboats are useless, and a few 
 of these have been suppressed in the harbor of 
 New York. "Hospital streets" have had warning 
 signs posted near them, requesting that as little 
 noise as possible be made in the neighborhood. 
 School children have been instructed by the agents 
 of the Society in the gentle art of quietness, which 
 is only the art of generous consideration for oth- 
 ers. It is to be hoped that at no distant day the 
 Society will succeed in suppressing the horrible 
 and in every way obnoxious Fourth of July 
 racket, thus reducing the number of casualties 
 which at present it is appalling to contemplate. 
 
 Dr. Forbes Winslow was in his day, which was 
 not so very long ago, a distinguished specialist 
 in disorders of the mind and diseases of the nerv- 
 ous system. Because I refer in this paper to the 
 opinion of another physician I feel the more free 
 to quote here the words of Dr. Winslow even 
 though I know that to some of my readers what 
 he has to say must appear extravagant. Thus 
 he wrote a short time before his death: 
 
 "By a simple arithmetical calculation it can be 
 shown the exact year when there will be more in- 
 sane persons in the world than sane. We are 
 gradually approaching, with the decadence of youth, 
 near proximity to a nation of madmen. An insane 
 world is looked forward to by me with certainty in 
 
128 LOVE, AND LETTERS 
 
 the not far distant future. The human race is de- 
 generating." 
 
 What noisy turbulence a world-wide lunatic 
 asylum would bring with it! I cannot share Dr. 
 Winslow's fear, nor can I look forward to a time 
 when our human race will go stark mad. But 
 I believe, with Dr. Winslow, that in many places 
 our race has degenerated; and no one can doubt, 
 I think, that the race is capable of still greater 
 degeneration. We as a nation are now experi- 
 menting with the theories of the brilliant and 
 fantastic Rousseau — ^theories expressed in many 
 places, but more especially in his famous book, 
 "The Social Contract." It would have been 
 much better for our world had the Frenchman 
 stuck to his watch-making, and left philosophy 
 to others ; though, in truth, his "Confessions" is 
 a human document of no little value to mature and 
 thoughtful minds. His theory of government 
 has done, and will continue to do, much harm. 
 The common people, untrained and in every way 
 unfit to exercise the functions of government, are 
 trusted with all the complicated and difficult ma- 
 chinery of the State. They are now at work 
 with vast noise and wild enthusiasm on the fool's 
 experiment of self-government. What will come 
 of it."^ Well, something very like the turbulence 
 of Dr. Winslow's world-asylum. One may hear 
 even now something of its noise. Plato was wiser 
 than our witty Frenchman. This is what he has 
 to say, or rather what he makes Socrates say : 
 
SILENCE 129 
 
 "Citizens . . . you are brothers, yet God 
 has framed you differently. Some of you have the 
 power of command, and these he has composed of 
 gold, wherefore also they have the greatest honor; 
 others of silver, to be auxiliaries; others again, who 
 are to be husbandmen and craftsmen, he has made 
 of brass and iron; and the species will generally 
 be preserved in the children. But as you are of 
 the same original family, a golden parent will some- 
 times have a silver son, or a silver parent a golden 
 son. And God proclaims to the rulers, as a first 
 principle, that before all they should watch over 
 their offspring, and see what elements mingle with 
 their nature; for if the son of a golden or silver 
 parent has an admixture of brass and iron, then 
 Nature orders a transposition of ranks, and the eye 
 of the ruler must not be pitiful towards his child 
 because he has to descend in the scale and become 
 a husbandman or an artisan; just as there may be 
 others sprung from the artisan class, who are raised 
 to honor, and become guardians and auxiliaries. 
 For an oracle says that when a man of brass or iron 
 guards the State, it will then be destroyed." 
 
 This is royal wisdom come down from distant 
 ages, but there is a Divine Wisdom even more 
 ancient in the words of the Preacher: "Woe 
 unto thee, O land, when thy king is a child." 
 Woe unto whatever land is ruled by brass and 
 iron. A Latin line too often quoted tells us that 
 the voice of the people is that of God. It is 
 nothing of the kind. Counting noses will give 
 us no Divine Wisdom. 
 
 Religion owes as much to silence as silence owes 
 
130 LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 to it. It was only when the Patriarch was sur- 
 rounded by silence that he could hear the voice 
 of God. "Commune with your heart," wrote 
 the Psalmist, "and be still." "Be still," said the 
 Eternal, "and know that I am God." How many 
 eremites and holy men have sought the knowledge 
 of God, not in schools and books, but in the 
 stillness of their own hearts. The history of the 
 Christian Church is full of beautiful instances of 
 the acquirement of the knowledge of divine things, 
 not by the rude clamor of discussion, but by the 
 cultivation of a quiet spirit. Our Saviour sought 
 the silence of the hills, and was all night in prayer 
 that He might thus refresh his soul and acquire 
 strength for the great mission of His wonderful 
 and blessed life. And what humanizing and civ- 
 ilizing results have come to the world through 
 these seasons and lives of silence and soli- 
 tude. Alone in caves and desert places the Sa- 
 cred Scriptures and the ancient classics were 
 translated into living languages that men could 
 read. Some of these recluses were themselves gen- 
 tle and inspiring poets whose words have com- 
 forted and instructed the hearts of men in all 
 succeeding ages. 
 
 Saint Simeon, the hermit, who was bom in 
 Aleppo, where with wealthy and distinguished 
 parents he passed his youth, was a noble instance 
 of literary as well as of spiritual devotion. When 
 a young man he went to Alexandria, where after 
 only six years of study he became one of the 
 learned men of the world. It was in Alexandria 
 
SILENCE ISl 
 
 that he found the new faith and became a Chris- 
 tian. Every effort was made to prevent him from 
 going into the desert, but nothing could shake 
 his determination. He lived many years on a 
 rugged clijff over-hanging the banks of the Eu- 
 phrates. Alone he thought and prayed, and 
 composed some of the most lovely lines of verse 
 that have come down to us from the past. One 
 sees at once his love of solitude and silence in 
 his poem, "The Sabbath Morning." He sings: 
 
 "Sweet Sabbath morning! — On my wakeful ear 
 No eager voices rush; all is still here! 
 Save when some early songster, singing near. 
 Comes to delight me, warbling strong and clear." 
 
 It was not unbroken silence that this saint in- 
 sisted upon, for to him the bird-song was pleas- 
 ing. He longed for and sought stillness of the 
 soul: the same stillness the Friends or Quakers, 
 so unhke him in faith, hold to be essential to 
 spiritual growth. 
 
 This sense of need that leads the anchorite to 
 seek some measure of silence is not peculiar to 
 those who receive the Christian faith. There are 
 thousands of Buddhist monks and hermits in 
 India who place greater emphasis upon the im- 
 portance of silence than do Christian hermits. 
 Oriental literature is full of devout and mystical 
 poems that recommend and call for quietness of 
 spirit. The Buddha was himself a religious re- 
 cluse, though he had his disciples, and associated 
 in some measure with his fellow men. The quiet- 
 
132 LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 ness of all God's operations as compared with 
 those of His creatures is a favorite theme with 
 Eastern poets. Thus sings an Oriental mystic: 
 
 "In silence wise men oft great things have to per- 
 fection brought; 
 And fools as oft have made a most tremendous 
 noise for naught. 
 
 The mighty sky-wheel rolls about its axis without 
 
 sound : 
 The weaver's rickety spool rattles its clattering 
 
 course around. 
 
 This wooden bobbin only a small piece of linen 
 
 yields : 
 That azure one with starry veil o'erspreads 
 
 heaven's boundless fields." 
 
 Mohammed was a child of solitude and silence. 
 His visions came to him when he was far out on 
 the desert. It was there, surrounded by natural 
 desolation, that he discovered the spiritual deso- 
 lation of his time and country. On wild and 
 lonely Mount Hara, near Mecca, he received his 
 first revelation, and from that deserted and re- 
 mote elevation he went forth proclaiming to an 
 idolatrous world the One God of Islamism. 
 
 Apuleius tells us, in his "Golden Ass," that he 
 was able to pray to the Goddess Isis because of 
 the silence of the night. The great prayers of 
 all ages and of all religions have demanded 
 tranquillity of spirit; they were possible only in 
 the hush of a calm and undisturbed temper to 
 
SILENCE 183 
 
 which the stillness of surrounding nature in many 
 cases contributed much. Prayer is the very heart 
 of religion. There can be no religion without 
 this inner communion of the soul with God. 
 What is called "natural religion" is, in so far 
 as it is prayerless, no religion at all. Religion 
 without prayer is only philosophy, and has noth- 
 ing whatever to do with the deep places of spir- 
 itual experience. Can anyone think of such 
 prayers as those of Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, 
 Saint Bernard, Loyola, Fox, Wesley, and George 
 Miiller in connection with natural religion? 
 Great achievements are born of a deep serenity 
 of the soul. Our Saviour was most of the time 
 during the evenings of the last week of his life 
 alone. He sought the silence of mountain and 
 wilderness, and wandered about among the olive- 
 groves and the gardens, his soul coming into 
 closer and closer relations with the Heavenly Fa- 
 ther. Max Miiller calls religion "a perception of 
 the Infinite." Herbert Spencer tells us that re- 
 ligion is "awe in the presence of the majesty of an 
 inscrutable power in the universe." Dr, Lyman 
 Abbott has, I think, come even closer to the mean- 
 ing of the word; he tells us that "religion is the 
 play of the Infinite on the finite in the moral 
 realm." Is it not "the life of God in the soul 
 of man?" And is not that life one of repose in 
 light, of which serenity is an essential element? 
 
 The material that seems so substantial passes 
 away; only the things that pertain to the spir- 
 itual nature endure. Tyre and Sidon were cities 
 
134 LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 of wealth and splendor; they bought and sold, 
 and their streets were lined with stately palaces: — 
 
 "Where now are the ships of Tarshish, the mighty 
 ships of Tyre?" 
 
 The poet answers his own question: 
 
 "There is no habitation; the mansions are defaced. 
 No mariners of Sidon unfurl your mighty sails; 
 No workmen fell the fir-trees that grow in 
 
 Shenir's vales, 
 And Bashan's oaks that boasted a thousand years 
 
 of sun. 
 Or hew the masts of cedar on frosty Lebanon." 
 
 Athens taught the world, and to-day the world 
 acknowledges her supremacy. The Parthenon is 
 but a ruin, yet the Greek spirit lives, and will live 
 so long as men are ruled by the mind and not by 
 the body. "Still Greece is queen: still Greece is 
 goddess. A counting house passes away : a school 
 remains. What man or city lives by bread alone 
 must perish." 
 
 But while it is true that the things of the mind 
 come first and are of the greater importance; 
 while it is true that the poet's prayer that God 
 would give, were it only for a brief season, a 
 mind "crystal clear as the blue sky" Is a worthy 
 one, still it is a great mistake to educate at ran- 
 dom. It is a grave error to so educate young 
 men and young women that they must be forever 
 after unhappy in the humble places they are called 
 to fill. Education alone will confer neither recti- 
 
SILENCE 135 
 
 tude nor happiness. It is not true that knowl- 
 edge is power at all times and in all places. It 
 has rendered many a man both weak and 
 miserable. We all remember the story of the 
 blacksmith. His eyes were opened to the risks 
 he was incurring in his impromptu and rude 
 surgical operations, and never again could he 
 be persuaded to do the work he had been so ready 
 to do before he had been taught the nature and 
 possible results of those surgical operations. 
 Festus said to Paul, "Much learning doth make 
 thee mad." He was mistaken, and yet beyond 
 all doubt much learning has more than once over- 
 thrown reason. There are too many helps up- 
 ward, and not enough methods of getting rid of 
 the ignorant and worthless. Huxley is right in 
 advising us to take away artificial props. Let 
 the stupid and incompetent descend. So long as 
 labor-unions and unions of various kinds can 
 secure for good and bad work the same compen- 
 sation there will be no good work of any kind. 
 
 Thousands of young men have no use for 
 "higher education." To them such education is 
 not a blessing but a curse. The training should 
 be fitted to the station in life. We are in no 
 pressing need of poets, artists, and songsters. 
 Hundreds of men are starving in all three call- 
 ings. We want good mechanics, and men who 
 are able and willing to work in useful occupations. 
 But republican institutions are not favorable to 
 service of any kind. Where all are equal no man 
 or woman is wilHng to be a servant. The very 
 
136 LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 name is despised. The cook, the chambermaid, 
 and the laundress are insulted when you describe 
 them as servants. The ash-man has become trans- 
 mogrified into an ash-gentleman, and the sales- 
 woman must be addressed as saleslady. 
 
 We are a rude and noisy nation, self-assertive, 
 over-fond of the dollar, and impatient of delay 
 in arriving at results. No doubt we have stalwart 
 virtues and many generous instincts, but we are 
 a young nation, and have the faults of youth, 
 with some other faults that are not peculiar to 
 early life. If we ever come to anything like the 
 culture of older nations it must be through the 
 same channel of escape of which they availed 
 themselves. As there are, as has been pointed out, 
 many words in our language that by their sound 
 suggest their meaning, so there are words that by 
 their derivation suggest the spirit that gave them 
 currency. Our word "hurrah," which some de- 
 rive from one root and some from another, has 
 been thought to mean etymologically "to whirl." 
 There is a sense of rotary motion in the sound 
 of the word. Later research derives it from a 
 Turkish term, meaning "to kill." It is in reahty 
 a battle-cry, full of sound and fury. In the days 
 of the Crusades the shout "hurrah" betokened 
 and presaged dire slaughter. What a word it 
 is that we as a people have adopted to signify 
 national enthusiasm and public applause. Com- 
 pare it with the gentle "banzai" (success) of the 
 Japanese. When I was in Germany I was aston- 
 ished at the great love of art, and especially of 
 
SILENCE 137 
 
 music, which the people at all times manifested. 
 The arts go together. Music leads on to archi- 
 tecture, and these two are never far away from 
 painting and sculpture. We as a nation have 
 accomplished little with any of the fine arts. We 
 shall never accomplish much with them unless we 
 acquire a more tranquil spirit. 
 
 Music, though a fine art, and closely related to 
 all the fine arts, is still in a way very different 
 from painting and sculpture, as Professor Jules 
 Combarieu has pointed out in his "Music, its 
 Laws and Evolution." 
 
 "Music is the only popular art. It draws its sub- 
 stance from social life, as a plant draws its substance 
 from the soil into which its roots plunge. There is 
 no popular painting, no popular sculpture. Archi- 
 tecture is too comphcated an art, too loaded with 
 technical knowledge and archaeology, and too much 
 subjected to the prejudices of luxury or to special 
 needs, to be the spontaneous product of a com- 
 munity. To music alone, and to its younger sister, 
 poetry, belongs this privilege. 
 
 "Such are the principles we shall elucidate when 
 reviewing different peoples and ages. Taking as 
 our basis the first proposition, that music is the art 
 of thinking in sounds, we shall reserve to ourselves 
 the right of adding this, which is founded on ob- 
 servation: Musical thought is the manifestation of a 
 general and deep instinct, more or less hidden, but 
 everywhere recognisable in humanity." 
 
 After the above statement we have this summary : 
 
138 LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 "Music — a synthesis of sounds not to be confused 
 with purely sonorous phenomena — has a meaning un- 
 translatable into verbal language; it is formed by a 
 thought without concepts, rhythmically constructed, 
 of which we cannot anywhere find the equivalent." 
 
 Referring again to the subject of music, it is 
 worth while to remember in this connection the 
 part music plays in the expression of the emo- 
 tions. Music is the modem method of giving 
 utterance to whatever is finest in feeling and in 
 the emotions. It was through plastic art that 
 the ancients voiced the deep experiences, the hopes, 
 desires, and forebodings of the human heart. 
 The mediaeval world made use of painting for 
 the same end. Each art has its own peculiar 
 excellence, but of them all music is certainly the 
 finest, — the most ethereal and delicate. The finer 
 the physical organization, the more offensive the 
 corruption that takes place in that organization 
 after death. The decay of a human body is 
 much more loathsome than is the disintegration 
 of the body of one of the lower animals. So is 
 it also with the arts. The finer the art, the more 
 distressing is its degradation. President Lowell 
 of Harvard University thinks that in the United 
 States music is suffering a progressive degenera- 
 tion. He said in an address before the Music 
 Teachers' National Association in the winter of 
 1910, at Boston : 
 
 "One can hardly fail to be struck by the pro- 
 gressive degeneration of the popular taste in music. 
 
SILENCE 139 
 
 We have music — good music. The taste of culti- 
 va,te(i people in Boston has been immensely helped 
 by the Symphony Orchestra. But what I refer to 
 is the popular taste in music. T^iis means not only 
 the great mass, but even educated people who make 
 no pretense of knowing music." 
 
 "Our people are totally deficient in the power of 
 expressing any of the finer qualities of emotion in 
 common. Their effort takes a conventional form 
 which is barren, meagre and poor. The most ef- 
 fective and natural form of expressing emotion is 
 music. The place of real expression of emotion at 
 alumni dinners has been taken by organized cheer- 
 ing. That shows that men who have the highest 
 education we can give are wholly lacking in those 
 more delicate qualities of expressing emotion. 
 
 "I speak advisedly when I say progressive degen- 
 eration. For thirty years expression has become 
 shallower and feebler. There was practically no 
 cheering when I was in college. If we are right in 
 saying that music is the natural form of expressing 
 emotion at the present day, this present condition of 
 music is a sign that educated people as a rule have 
 no emotions that are worth expressing or that they 
 are signally deficient in the art of expressing emo- 
 tion. The latter, I think, is true." 
 
 To plunder music of its sweet and gracious 
 ministry to the finer side of man's nature is to 
 rob the heart of one of its greatest treasures. 
 It is to defile a sacred thing. Rude and vulgar 
 songs that catch the ear, and that require no 
 cultivation of any kind, are the foes of all good 
 
140 LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 music. President Lowell said in the address from 
 which we have already quoted: 
 
 "One of the saddest things is to go into a gather- 
 ing of college men or even alumni and hear the 
 kind of music they have at their dinners. It is 
 ragtime and ragtime of very poor quality. They 
 seem to care very little for good music. What they 
 want is a catchy song, something they can join in 
 after exhausting their voices in organized cheering. 
 Of all the means of expressing emotion, organized 
 cheering is the worst from every point of view. It 
 is bad for the throat for one thing. It has less 
 modulation, less means of expressing degrees and 
 varieties of emotion of any kind than any other 
 form of expression except a fog horn," 
 
 Every word in the above paragraph is true. 
 Could any concurrence of tuneful sounds be more 
 rude than is the variety called, most fittingly, 
 "rag-time" music.'* Think of a hundred or more 
 young men from a university or a seminary of 
 learning of whatever kind giving expression to 
 their feelings in music of that sort. Think of 
 those young men screaming out in shrill tones 
 the "college yell," which is nothing but a suc- 
 cession of meaningless noises; brutal sound sug- 
 gestive of animal excitement and nothing more. 
 The uneducated human voice, whether displayed 
 in "rag-time" songs, the college yell, the Indian 
 war-whoop, or in those strident tones that mark 
 the low-bom everywhere, is distressing to the cul- 
 tivated mind and ear. There is in it no thought 
 
SILENCE 141 
 
 of anything like courtesy, training, or fine feel- 
 ing. 
 
 A writer in the Interstate Medical Journal for 
 December, 1910, expresses himself thus: 
 
 "We are now speaking of the American voice, 
 which has a chromatic scale no other voice possesses, 
 and so many irritating qualities that, were a nerve 
 removed from the healthiest body and subjected to 
 the pricking of its many stridencies, we are quite 
 sure it would wriggle at once with an activity that 
 could not be interpreted as aught but a mild pro- 
 test. Now, can it be said that an occasional noise 
 such as emanates from a motor car, a street car, or 
 from a factory whistle, can play the same havoc 
 with our powers of resistance that is effected by 
 the uninterrupted iteration of a noise that follows 
 us even into the sanctity of our homes? Surely, 
 the American voice as it falls upon our ears must 
 make for so tight a clutch on our nerves that the 
 combined effect of all other noises dwindles into 
 comparative insignificance." 
 
 "Let us allow our friend to go to his favorite 
 haunts in search of the cure his tortured nerves de- 
 mand — those nerves that unwittingly subjected 
 themselves throughout the day to all the city noises, 
 including the ubiquitous and omnipresent vocal 
 harshness in street and business houses — and what 
 alleviation of his perturbed condition is effected? 
 Again he hears tones that soothe not, sounds that 
 seem to issue from the top of the head after cir- 
 cuitous journeys through the narrowest of passages, 
 and a vocalism that is so high-pitched that all its 
 
142 LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 nasalities act upon his sensitiveness as would pin 
 pricks. Still ignorant of the reason why his spirits 
 continue to be ruffled he wanders homeward, and the 
 peace that comes to his tired brain during sleep is 
 again rudely jarred." 
 
 It would not be difficult to substantiate the 
 statement made by President Lowell with regard 
 to the selection of popular and inferior music 
 for the entertainment of guests at receptions and 
 public gatherings. Here is the programme of 
 musical pieces rendered during a reception given 
 by Governor Dix of New York at the official 
 mansion in Albany, a few hours after his in- 
 auguration. The pieces are not what would be 
 called "rag-time," but surely they are not clas- 
 sical, nor are they even elegant: 
 
 March — Bunch of Roses Chapi 
 
 Selection — Madame Sherry Hoschna 
 
 Potpouri — The Girl in the Train Fall 
 
 Fantasia — Bright Eyes Klein 
 
 Gems from Naughty Marietta Herbert 
 
 Medley — Remick's Hits Redfield 
 
 Intermezzo — Pensee D'Amour Latan 
 
 Selection — Dollar Princess Spink 
 
 Valse Lente — Cupid's Caress Roberts 
 
 Finale — Tales of Hoffman OflPenbach 
 
 To the finely organized temperament of Scho- 
 penhauer the foolish conversations of uninformed 
 and thoughtless persons brought not only weari- 
 ness but great vexation of spirit. "Conversation 
 with others," said the uncompromising thinker, 
 
SILENCE 14)3 
 
 ^'leaves an unpleasant tang; the employment of 
 the soul in itself leaves an agreeable echo." 
 Again he said, "The jabber of companies of 
 men is as profitless as the idle yelping of packs 
 of hounds." So also, in his little hut on Walden 
 Pond, thought the poet and naturalist, Henry 
 David Thoreau. He would pass entire days in 
 silent communion with Nature. Whatever of 
 noise and bustle in life forced itself upon Scho- 
 penhauer utterly failed of reaching his secret 
 soul. There is something sad to the ordinary 
 man in the thought of living alone, especially 
 as age advances, and even more sad is it to die 
 alone, — to pass silently into the everlasting si- 
 lence unattended and with no friend at hand. 
 But Schopenhauer was not an ordinary man. 
 He died as he had lived, with his ears closed to the 
 babble of empty voices. Aristotle reports that 
 Satyrus stopped his ears with wax when he was to 
 plead a cause so that he might not be thrown off 
 his guard by the retorts of enemies. Schopen- 
 hauer was determined that the powers of his mind 
 should not be frittered away by foolish speech. 
 To the end he resisted vain conversation and 
 empty noise, and he died as he had lived. The 
 physician who attended him stepped from the 
 room, and returned after but a minute or two. 
 On his return he found the philosopher dead. 
 Sitting in the comer of the sofa, with a smile 
 upon his face, his still open eyes gazed as if he 
 were alive upon the gilded statuette of the Buddha 
 upon the mantel-piece. A great treasure to 
 
144* LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 Schopenhauer was a copy of the Upanishads 
 (the Latin translation of Anquetil Duperron, 
 which was published at Strassburg in 1802). 
 The system advanced in that work is, as all read- 
 ers know, one of pantheism. I have often won- 
 dered at the strong hold this system, in one form 
 or another, has upon superior minds. Of the 
 Upanishads he wrote: "It is the most profita- 
 ble and the most elevating reading which (the 
 original text excepted) is possible in the world. 
 It has been the consolation of my life, and it will 
 be the consolation of my death." Standing by 
 Schopenhauer's grave in the cemetery at Frank- 
 fort, I thought of the little band of remarkable 
 men who gathered about that grave the early 
 spring day when our philosopher was laid to 
 rest. "There is something," said one of them, 
 "that tells us he has found satisfaction for his 
 solitude." Let us hope that so strange a jour- 
 ney ended at last in peace. Commenting upon 
 the burial of Schopenhauer, my friend of earlier 
 days with whom I have passed many pleasant 
 hours, and who himself now rests beneath the 
 hallowed shades of Mount Auburn, William 
 Rounseville Alger, said in his "Genius of Soli- 
 tude," "If the Christian heaven be a verity, he 
 is there with the Saviour who revealed the God of 
 the parable of the Prodigal Son. ... If 
 that heaven be only the dream he thought It, then 
 he is where he aspired to be, with Kapila, Sakya 
 Muni, and the other conquering kings of mind. 
 
SILENCE 145 
 
 Went in the unknown destiny of the All, clasped 
 in the fruition of Nirwana." 
 
 "As the truest society approaches always 
 nearer to solitude," wrote Thoreau in his "Con- 
 cord and Merrimack Rivers," "so the most ex- 
 cellent speech finally falls into silence. Silence 
 is audible to all men, at all times, and in all 
 places. . . . AH sounds are her servants and 
 purveyors, proclaiming not only that their mis- 
 tress is, but is a rare mistress, and earnestly to 
 be sought after." 
 
 Plutarch has recorded that the citizens of 
 Athens upon a certain occasion gave a feast and 
 thereto invited the ambassadors of the King of 
 Persia. The conversation was most animated. 
 Much wine loosened many tongues, and things 
 that should not have been even hinted at were 
 freely discussed. Zeno, the Stoic, was present, 
 but he remained so quiet that many were unaware 
 of his presence. Surprised at his silence, the 
 guests pressed him to drink. When, after sev- 
 eral cups, he still remained silent, the ambassa- 
 dors, who were well acquainted with his reputa- 
 tion for learning, enquired of Zeno what report 
 they should make to their Royal Master. The 
 sage replied, "Say there was an old man in 
 Athens who could hold his tongue." It is a 
 great thing to be able to control so unruly a 
 member. Genius is often associated with silence, 
 but never with loquacity. Learning makes no 
 noise. Brass bands and tinsel indicate a low 
 order of intelligence. Yet multitudes are de- 
 
146 LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 ceived by sound and fury, and follow without 
 thought the popular hero until in time he ex- 
 plodes and there is an end of him. Silence is a 
 vast ocean into which at last all the discordant 
 streams of speech find rest. No one associates 
 Eternity with the thought of noise. The poets 
 describe its vast expanse, voiceless and serene, as 
 the end of all the rush and tumult of man's little 
 life on earth. The philosophers go more deeply 
 into the science of the subject, though, doubtless, 
 even they might learn some things of more or less 
 importance from their romantic neighbors the 
 poets, who sing the truth into our hearts while, 
 more laboriously, these toiling sons of the earth 
 discourse to our understanding in the duller terms 
 of the intellect. 
 
 Preyer defines silence as a state of uniform 
 minimum excitation of the auditory nerve-fibres, 
 and joins issue with Fechner and others who deny 
 its claim to be regarded as a positive form of 
 sensation at all. Fechner distinguishes between 
 the effect of absence of light upon the eye, and 
 that of absence of sound upon the ear; black he 
 regards as a sensation, silence as an absence of 
 all sensation. Preyer points out, on the con- 
 trary, that the two cases are in every way anal- 
 ogous, and that the auditory organ never sinks, 
 any more than the retina, below the zero of sen- 
 sation. The pressure of the fluid contents of the 
 labyrinth, and the flow of blood through the 
 vessels, must give rise to sensations of which we 
 are unconscious only because of their uniform- 
 
SILENCE 147 
 
 ity, their constancy, and their low degree of 
 intensity. Silence, when the attention is con- 
 centrated on the sense of hearing, is found to 
 vary in degree, just as the blackness of the visual 
 field, when light is excluded from the eye, has 
 been observed to vary ; but the complete absence 
 of sensation is obviously incapable of varying. 
 
IV 
 NOBLE DEEDS OF HUMBLE MEN 
 
 "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. 
 
 "Among the Germans of the forest, when a young 
 man came of age, he was solemnly invested with 
 shield and spear. The ceremony of Knighthood at 
 first was nothing more. Every man of gentle birth 
 became a knight, and then took an oath to be true to 
 God and to the ladies and to his plighted word; to 
 be honorable in all his actions; to succor the op- 
 pressed." 
 
 — The Martyrdom of Man. 
 
NOBLE DEEDS OF HUMBLE MEN 
 
 TT has always seemed to me that a book 
 -■• chroniding the deeds of courage and self- 
 sacrifice that are constantly performed by men 
 and women in humble stations and in out-of-the- 
 way places in life would be well worth writing. 
 When I prepared the chapter on "Heroes of 
 Humble Life" in my volume "The Companion- 
 ship of Books," ^ I had in mind some such work, 
 and I viewed the chapter as an experiment in 
 that direction. The thought was never followed 
 up, and yet so great has been my interest in the 
 matter that I have from time to time clipped from 
 the daily papers articles and paragraphs that 
 seemed to me to record in striking terms the noble 
 and daring exploits of obscure men and women. 
 A book of the kind, extended to three or even 
 four hundred pages, could not but increase one's 
 respect for our human race, and reassure the soul 
 in moments of discouragement and despondency. 
 The heart-breaking selfishness of the world is too 
 dense and extended to be ignored, and yet there 
 is another side to both individual and social life. 
 Paragraphs such as those about which I am now 
 writing show, often in beautiful colors and high 
 relief, the intrinsic nobleness and magnificent 
 possibilities of human nature. They make it 
 clear that the disinterested spirit and heroic 
 temper of earlier ages, which we so greatly ad- 
 
 1 Published by G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York, 1906. 
 151 
 
152 LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 mire, are not dead; and that all about us are 
 men and women of heroic proportions, though of 
 obscure and lowly life. The hour still finds the 
 man awaiting the divine call; and Duty is as 
 cheerfully performed now as it was in the earlier 
 centuries when cruelty, oppression, and persecu- 
 tion inspired fortitude and increased the power of 
 faith. 
 
 Take for instance the splendid heroism of an 
 Alpine guide who something like ten years ago 
 proved himself, in all that makes a chivalrous 
 and fearless manhood, the equal of the bravest 
 soldier who ever faced the foe on field or flood. 
 Professor Nasse was well-known, not only in 
 Berlin, where was his home, but throughout the 
 scientific world, as one of the most intrepid and 
 successful mountain climbers. With Dr. Boch- 
 ardt, a man of like fame and spirit, and two 
 guides. Professor Nasse ascended one of the 
 most difficult of all the Alpine peaks. The four 
 men roped together were crossing the Piz Baine, 
 on their return from their climb. The guides 
 considered a snow bridge before them perfectly 
 safe, and accordingly the four men proceeded 
 to cross it, when suddenly it gave way and the 
 leading guide and Professor Nasse fell into the 
 crevasse. Nasse had the rope around his chest 
 and hung in mid-air. The strain upon his chest 
 was very great, and it was evident that life could 
 not be long sustained unless the pressure could 
 be in some measure lightened. 
 
 For half an hour man and guide hung sus- 
 
NOBLE DEEDS OF HUMBLE MEN 153 
 
 pended thus in mid-air, the guide bringing all 
 his weight to bear upon the chest of Professor 
 Nasse. The guide could have hung there till 
 rescued, but every moment brought death nearer 
 to Nasse. This the guide fully understood. 
 Bravely, without hesitation, he deliberately drew 
 from his belt the knife which he always carried, 
 and cut the rope that bound him to Professor 
 Nasse. In an instant the pressure was removed, 
 and Nasse swung free, but alas! he was dead. 
 That the guide, of course, could not have known, 
 as the pressure of the rope prevented Nasse from 
 speaking. As a stone drops into an abyss, so 
 the guide plunged into the depths below and dis- 
 appeared. The other guide and Dr. Bochardt 
 were now able to pull the body of Nasse up. 
 Many hours later the hero who had faced death 
 so bravely was found uninjured. He struck in 
 his descent a mass of soft snow that covered a 
 ledge of ice, and so broke the force of a fall of 
 more than fifteen hundred feet. 
 
 No one can read of an act like that, performed 
 in the face of almost certain death, by an obscure 
 guide, without realizing that the heroic elements 
 in our common humanity are very far from being 
 extinct. Alas, that the deed should be so soon 
 forgotten! Less valorous exploits of distin- 
 guished military leaders are recorded upon the 
 page of history, and are celebrated in song and 
 story, but we do not even know the name of the 
 noble and intrepid guide. 
 
 Only seven years ago, William Phelps, of Rich- 
 
154j love and letters 
 
 mond, Kentucky, and James Stansbury, of In- 
 dianapolis, were cleaning the interior of an eight- 
 foot upright boiler in the Cerealine Mills. They 
 were humble men who earned a meagre living. 
 No one dreamed that under a red flannel shirt 
 of the cheapest quality, and not over clean at 
 that, beat the lion-heart of as noble a hero as 
 ever breathed the breath of life. While the two 
 men were working an employee turned on the 
 steam, thinking the cock was tight; it leaked, 
 and the scalding steam poured in on the two men. 
 The only exit was up a ladder to a man-hole 
 in the top. Both jumped for the ladder. 
 Phelps reached it first, took one step and stopped. 
 He sprang aside and shouted: "You first, Jim; 
 you are married, and I have no wife and no 
 children dependent upon my toil." Stansbury 
 escaped, but Phelps, standing aside for the sake 
 of the wife and the little children, was cooked to 
 death. 
 
 Over the body of General John E. Wool, in 
 Oakwood cemetery, Troy, N. Y., stands, visible 
 for miles around, the tallest monolith that art 
 ever shaped in this country for either the living 
 or the dead. I never heard that any costly mon- 
 ument was erected over the grave of William 
 Phelps to commemorate a holy deed of most beau- 
 tiful heroism and Christ-like love. No doubt 
 Wool was a brave soldier, and will be remembered 
 in history as he should be; but to my thinking, 
 nothing in all his military career compares in 
 
NOBLE DEEDS OF HUMBLE MEN 155 
 
 splendor with the brave deed and noble death of 
 that obscure workman. 
 
 There lives unknown save for a few newspaper 
 paragraphs, in Morristown, New Jersey, a crip- 
 ple named Joe Gilligan, who ten years ago was 
 run over by a trolley car in Brooklyn. One leg 
 was cut off above the knee and the other below 
 the knee, and his right arm was also amputated. 
 A poor mutilated body is that of Joe Gilligan, 
 but it holds the noble and beautiful soul of a 
 true hero worthy of a place with the bravest and 
 best. June the nineteenth, in the year nineteen 
 hundred and eight, that wreck of a human body 
 swam out in Gravel Pit pond and saved the lives 
 of two children who had overturned their boat 
 and were drowning. Joe was sitting with other 
 boys under a tree out of sight of the pond. He 
 had removed his artificial legs and was showing 
 them to several lads, when he heard the frantic 
 call for help. To that call he responded in- 
 stantly. He had no time to put on his wooden 
 legs, but running as he had learned to do upon 
 his stumps, Joe made his way to the pond, shout- 
 ing, "Hold fast! I'm coming!" He swam out, 
 grasped the two boys and pulled them apart. 
 With the one hand — it was all he had — ^he held 
 one boy above the water and managed to get him 
 ashore. Then he returned and caught the other 
 boy just as he was relaxing his hold upon the 
 overturned boat and was slipping into the water. 
 He saved both the children who, after they had 
 
156 LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 revived, picked up the poor, little mutilated body 
 and carried it with grateful tears to its humble 
 home. 
 
 I have in a drawer to my study table a number 
 of newspaper clippings, all of which are radi- 
 antly beautiful with like stories of nobleness and 
 daring. Another lad, only fourteen years of 
 age at the time, saved six drowning persons, and 
 then refused to give his name to the reporter, 
 saying: "I do not want to be printed; I only 
 did my duty." His name should be remembered, 
 and though he withheld it, I give it to the world 
 — it was William McGrane. 
 
 The story of the heroism of Mrs. Wilson, who, 
 in 1872, after her husband had been disabled, as- 
 sumed command of his ship and brought it safely 
 to port in the face of the greatest perils, is well 
 worth recording. The following account of her 
 exploit was printed in an English journal in 
 July, 1872:* 
 
 "The ship Sharron, 1,800 tons, of St. John, N. B., 
 Wilson master, sailed from New York with a gen- 
 eral cargo on February 14, 1872, bound for Liver- 
 pool, She encountered a terrific gale on the Banks 
 of Newfoundland, the cargo shifted and the ship 
 was hove on her beam ends. A terrible sea was 
 running, and they had to cut away masts to right 
 the ship. The mizzen-mast broke off below deck 
 with all attached, and all above main-mast gone. 
 Captain Wilson had his shoulder broken, and dis- 
 
 1 Reprinted in the New York Tribune, Dee. 3, 1880. 
 
NOBLE DEEDS OF HUMBLE MEN 157 
 
 located his collar-bone; the chief officer and part 
 of the crew were disabled. 
 
 "Mrs. Wilson, wife of the captain, who had lived 
 on board ship with her husband seven years, saw 
 the danger, and although a young woman, with no 
 captain or officer to depend on, assumed charge, 
 being a good sailor and skillful navigator. The men 
 had confidence in her and obeyed her commands, and 
 when she said, 'Boys, our lives are in danger; let us 
 stick together, and all of us work with a will; I 
 will take my husband's place, and take you to some 
 port,' the sailors knew our heroine's courage, and 
 said, 'Aye, aye; we will obey to a man.' The men 
 were divided into four watches; pumps were 
 sounded, and the ship was found to be leaking badly. 
 "When clear of the wreckage, our heroine shaped 
 her course for Bermuda. Having but little sail 
 left, and only a foremast complete, she rigged up a 
 jurymast. The wind headed her off so that she 
 could not make the harbor. Her husband was not 
 able to assist her from the effects of his injuries, 
 but they held a consultation and deemed it best to 
 put the ship before the wind and go to St. Thomas, 
 at which place they arrived in safety on March 13, 
 being twenty-one days that our heroine had charge 
 of the ship and crew. Many heartfelt prayers went 
 up to heaven from those grateful men — hard toilers 
 of the sea — that land was reached and they had 
 been saved through the courage of a woman, 
 
 "On reaching St. Thomas Mrs. Wilson was ad- 
 mired by all for her courage and wonderful pres- 
 ence of mind. The Sharron was repaired at St. 
 Thomas and sailed for Liverpool on May SO. 
 Mrs. Wilson was the recipient of an elegant gold 
 
158 LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 chain and locket, with a ship in full sail on one 
 side, her monogram on the other, presented by the 
 English Consul, and many other valuable presents 
 from the merchants of St. Thomas. On her de- 
 parture flags were hoisted on every flag-staif on 
 the island, cannons were fired from the English 
 Consul's house and the shipping in port let to the 
 breeze all their bunting in honor of our heroine. 
 The Sharron arrived in Liverpool June 30, after a 
 pleasant trip of thirty days. Mrs. Wilson was 
 again received with cheers, and in her honor a 
 dinner was given in the North Western Hotel on 
 Lime street, where about seventy-five guests sat 
 down. After dinner she was presented with a 
 purse of gold and numerous presents from mer- 
 chants and friends in Liverpool." 
 
 I throw out a suggestion to my fellow authors 
 — why not collect these instances of nobleness 
 and daring in a book that shall have permanence 
 and that shall be an inspiration to all who read 
 its pages. A Harvard professor once pressed 
 upon my attention the need there was for a 
 Biographical Dictionary of Unusual Characters 
 — a sympathetic and just dictionary. I think 
 the book I suggest would be worth more to the 
 world. 
 
 After God, human nature is the most beautiful 
 thing of which we have knowledge, and deeds 
 such as I have instanced in this brief paper help 
 us to believe what it is not always easy to be- 
 lieve, that man, with all his sin and shame and 
 failure, was still made in the Divine image, and 
 retains that image, and can never lose it. 
 
y 
 
 THE COLLEGE AND BUSINESS LIFE 
 
 "When President Walker, it must be now nearly 
 thirty years ago, asked me in common with my col- 
 leagues what my notion of a university was, I an- 
 swered, 'A university is a place where nothing useful 
 is taught; but a university is possible only where 
 a man may get his livelihood by digging Sanscrit 
 roots.' What I meant was that the highest office 
 of the somewhat complex thing so named was to dis- 
 tribute the true Bread of Life, the pane d'egli 
 angeli, as Dante called it, and to breed an appetite 
 for it; but it should also have the means and appli- 
 ances for teaching everything, as the mediaeval uni- 
 versities aimed to do in their trivium and quad- 
 rivium." — Lowell. 
 
 "May God confound thee for thy theory of ir- 
 regular verbs !" 
 
 — An Old Grammarian's Curse. 
 
THE COLLEGE AND BUSINESS LIFE 
 
 THE death of Marshall Field, at the Holland 
 House, in the city of New York, January 
 16, 1906, raises the question of the utility of 
 a college education. Mr. Field was one of the 
 greatest among the famous merchants who have 
 acquired colossal fortunes and wielded world- 
 wide power. He began life in a very humble 
 way, and rose to a position of commercial impor- 
 tance by the exercise of those common virtues 
 which we so easily despise but which are abso- 
 lutely essential to success in every worthy enter- 
 prise. He was industrious, patient, and faith- 
 ful, and to these good qualities he added sound 
 judgment and business courage. He was the 
 son of a New England farmer, and his early 
 days were passed in a little village in Western 
 Massachusetts. Some education he had from 
 the public school and a local academy, but he 
 never prepared for college, and was acquainted 
 with only such popular literature as naturally 
 attracts the youthful mind whatever may be the 
 poverty of its surroundings and the meagreness 
 of its advantages. When the lad was seventeen 
 years old he commenced his business career in 
 a shop at Pittsfield, Mass., where he remained 
 four years. At the age of twenty-one he went 
 to Chicago, and he there continued in business up 
 to the time of his death, which occurred soon after 
 he had passed his seventy-first birthday. When 
 161 
 
162 LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 he was forty-six years old he was able to found 
 the Field Columbian Museum with a gift of 
 $1,000,000, and to contribute to the University 
 of Chicago the princely sum of $450,000. At 
 the time of his death he was conducting the 
 largest wholesale and retail dry goods business 
 in the world. 
 
 The writer of this paper is not inclined toi 
 minimize the value of a college education. He 
 matriculated in three colleges, from one of which 
 he was graduated. Later he prepared for his 
 professional career at a theological seminary. 
 But his predilections have nothing to do with 
 the subject here discussed. Of course men have 
 succeeded in all branches of learning and indus- 
 try both with and without classical training; but 
 the writer believes, from years of observation and 
 from extensive reading, that the importance of 
 a college education has been greatly exaggerated. 
 Presidents of educational institutions have strong 
 personal reasons for magnifying the value of a 
 curriculum; and with the rapid increase of com- 
 petition between colleges those reasons tend to 
 become ever more and more personal and strenu- 
 ous. 
 
 The college president of fifty years ago was 
 selected and appointed because of his intellectual 
 and moral fitness for a position which he hon- 
 ored more than he was in turn honored by that 
 position. He was not, as now, a "hustler," but 
 a distinguished scholar and a cultivated gentle- 
 
COLLEGE AND BUSINESS LIFE 163 
 
 man. The man who in these days would be ac- 
 counted successful as the head of a wealthy edu- 
 cational institution must know how to extract 
 money from the pockets of rich men. The old- 
 time president sustained close social and educa- 
 tional relationships with the students, but the 
 modern president is more at home under the roof 
 of a railroad magnate than in the class room. 
 His ofSce is in a Pullman car, and he is chiefly con- 
 cerned about athletics and regattas and not about 
 the branches of learning taught in his institu- 
 tion. All this must be taken into account when 
 one endeavors to find out the real value of college 
 training to our modem life. 
 
 Insignificant colleges with meagre endowments 
 and few students are compelled to compete in 
 some measure with larger and stronger institu- 
 tions of learning. You will find unknown col- 
 leges having scarcely the equipment of a high 
 school advertising ludicrously bombastic cur- 
 ricula. One little college planted in a small 
 village out on the prairies announces instruc- 
 tion in Sanskrit, Tamil and Syriac languages 
 and literatures. It maintains a chair of archae- 
 ology and also one of international law. An- 
 other college has more than intimated that it is 
 ready to name itself after some generous bene- 
 factor. There are twenty colleges in the United 
 States where there is need for one; and nineteen 
 out of the twenty supply little or no service 
 beyond that which any high school might render. 
 
164? LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 In the writer's opinion much of the money given 
 to so-called institutions of learning in this 
 country is wasted. 
 
 No one is now confined to the university in his 
 search for an education. The world is full of 
 books and papers of every description written in 
 many languages. In every city, and, indeed, in 
 most villages of importance, may be found a 
 good library. Thousands of libraries are free 
 to all who wish to use them. Even commercial 
 life in our modem world has its educational side; 
 and ordinary men who do not regard themselves 
 as instructed beyond the common requirements 
 of their trades, know more about many things of 
 a purely literary nature than could have been 
 known by accomplished scholars a century ago. 
 The college of to-day is only one of many ave- 
 nues to an enchanted world of wisdom and 
 beauty into which whoever will may enter. 
 There are in America hundreds of reading and 
 study clubs that are in a very real sense seats 
 of learning for their members. The writer had 
 upon his desk while preparing this paper the 
 printed prospectus of study for one year, put 
 out by the Pine Hills Fortnightly Club of Al- 
 bany, N. Y. — an association of ladies who meet 
 every two weeks during winter months for the 
 discussion of literary and other topics in which 
 they have interested themselves. The Pine Hills 
 Fortnightly Club, it is true, cannot confer de- 
 grees, but it can and does confer that for which 
 every degree should stand. 
 
COLLEGE AND BUSINESS LIFE 165 
 
 The real value of a degree is to be found only 
 in the education it should imply, and of which it is 
 a certification. Apart from the education a de- 
 gree is of purely ornamental value. Yet how 
 many young men after attending college return 
 home with degrees of which they are vainglorious, 
 while they never consider the greater value of that 
 which they have bartered for such empty and 
 trivial honors as are within the gift of a faculty 
 or a board of trustees. Thousands of young 
 people enter college with generous heart and 
 clean life, and return to the early fireside or 
 go out into the world ruined in body and mind. 
 During all the time the youth was sowing wild 
 oats, the much-travelled and well-dined president 
 was concerned only about the income of his in- 
 stitution. On paper his chair is that of "Mental 
 and Moral Philosophy," but in reality it is that 
 of "Dollars and Cents." 
 
 It may be argued that professors share with 
 the president the responsibility of caring for the 
 moral and physical welfare of students. It 
 would seem right that those who guide the minds 
 and direct the studies of young men should have 
 as well some part in forming their characters and 
 shaping their destinies. But consider how little 
 opposition the faculties of most colleges have 
 presented to those brutal atrocities which we call 
 *'hazing." A writer in a New York paper 
 facetiously suggested that every life insurance 
 policy should carry with it an increased premium 
 for members of the Freshman class, as the risk 
 
166 LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 incurred would seem to be greater than that In- 
 curred in the insuring of ordinary men and 
 women. It cannot be denied that manslaughter, 
 if not murder, has been committed many times 
 under the hazing system which presidents and 
 professors deplore, but do not even attempt to 
 prevent. In the Medical Record for March 
 10, 1906, it was stated that a student in a 
 medical college in Nebraska was about to sue 
 the faculty for $50,000 on the ground that as 
 the result of hazing he was rendered incapable 
 of pursuing his college course. He was 
 dragged, so it was reported, from the classroom 
 by Sophomores who intended to throw him into 
 a ventilating shaft. He fought and was kicked 
 in the back, his spine was injured, and he has 
 had to use crutches ever since. Some time ago 
 a young man in a Western college was thrown 
 into the river and narrowly escaped drowning. 
 In another college two young men were exposed 
 all night to a winter storm in an open field, 
 and one of them died of pneumonia. From an 
 Oregon paper under date of February 28, 1909, I 
 extract the following statement that speaks for 
 itself : 
 
 "Cowering in a padded cell, a young man whose 
 parents are pioneer residents in this city shivers at 
 the sound of a step in one of the corridors of the 
 State Asylum for the Insane, to which he has been 
 committed as the result of being hazed by upper 
 classmen at the University. He was ducked in an 
 icy bath^ and when he emerged from the frigid 
 
COLLEGE AND BUSINESS LIFE 167 
 
 water his reason had fled. He graduated from the 
 High School last June and entered the University 
 at the opening of the fall semester. He was a 
 brilliant student in the High School, and up to the 
 day of the hazing had occupied a prominent posi- 
 tion in his class at college. By selling newspapers 
 and doing odd jobs out of school hours he saved 
 $1,000 with which to put himself through the Uni- 
 versity." 
 
 President Roosevelt, after approving an order 
 of Colonel Hugh L. Scott, who was at the time 
 in charge of the Military Academy at West 
 Point, dismissing eight cadets from the Academy 
 for hazing, reopened the case and changed the 
 sentence of six of the cadets to suspension for 
 one year. In less than twelve months from the 
 date of the President's interference a cadet on 
 sentry duty was attacked by a party of young 
 men wearing the uniform of the United States, 
 and so severely injured that he was confined for 
 some time to the post hospital. This time the 
 offenders were, after a fair trial, dismissed from 
 the Academy and from the service of their 
 country. 
 
 The New York Sun of April 12, 1910, con- 
 tained an account of a young lady who as 
 a consequence of brutal hazing, initiative to mem- 
 bership in a Greek Letter society connected 
 with a High School, had to be placed in a sani- 
 tarium. She was forced to eat raw oysters 
 coated with sugar, drink kerosene, swallow 
 macaroni boiled in soapsuds, and then take into 
 
168 LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 her stomach highly seasoned catsup and tabasco. 
 This monstrous treatment her tormentors ac- 
 counted a pleasant diversion. 
 
 A wealthy gentleman once told the writer of 
 this paper that he rejoiced greatly when his only 
 son decided to leave college and enter commercial 
 life. He had been very anxious about his son, 
 for he knew the young man carried a revolver 
 and intended to use it should the necessity arise. 
 
 When I was a young man, baseball and foot- 
 ball were wholesome and innocent recreations 
 attended by no great peril to either life or limb, 
 but now they are little less than campaigns of 
 brutality conducted for money, and often result 
 in the serious injury and even death of some of 
 the players. Football had to become so out- 
 rageous a scandal that good men in all depart- 
 ments of life cried out against it in the winter 
 of 1905 and 1906, before college authori- 
 ties took any steps in the matter, and even then 
 they moved with hesitancy and great reluc- 
 tance. 
 
 The flying wedge has been in large measure 
 stopped, but the abominable mass play continues. 
 Notwithstanding every improvement, the list 
 of dead and injured for the Season of 1909 was 
 the largest for nine years. Thirty boys were 
 killed, including eight college players, twenty 
 high-school boys, and two members of athletic 
 clubs. The injuries were divided among one 
 hundred and seventy-one college men, forty 
 school players, and five members of athletic 
 
COLLEGE AND BUSINESS LIFE 169 
 
 clubs. Twenty-five persons suffered internal 
 injuries; nineteen had dislocated ankles; nine- 
 teen had concussion of the brain; and the same 
 number had fractured ribs. Fifteen legs and 
 nine arms were broken, while twelve collar bones 
 were cracked. There were fifteen cases of torn 
 ligaments and thirteen fractured shoulders. 
 
 The gifted author, Walter Pater, was, when 
 at school, injured by a playmate who gave him 
 a brutal kick. For a number of weeks he was 
 confined to his bed, and even to the last day of 
 his life the injury was manifest in a peculiar 
 defect in his gait. 
 
 It is just that we should say in this connection 
 what is certainly true, that the vices, such as 
 intemperance, unclean conversation and behav- 
 ior, gaming and evils of the kind, are not now 
 so prevalent in our colleges as they were a cen- 
 tury or more ago. There is an unpublished 
 letter bearing the date of June 4, 1767, by 
 the Rev. Jonathan Ashley, who was at the time 
 pastor of a church in Westfield and also of a 
 church in Deerfield, Mass., in which are the fol- 
 lowing words that would be beyond all doubt a 
 libel were they written of any college to-day : 
 
 "It is probable before this time you have heard 
 of another instance of y® great corruption of our 
 College. Several of the chief gentlemen's sons in 
 the Government have been supposed to have been 
 criminally conversant with a lewd woman, whom it 
 is said they kept secreted in a chamber in the town 
 which was hired by one of the students." 
 
170 LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 We do not lay the stress upon personal re- 
 ligion that good men in earlier generations 
 placed upon piety in college-life, but neverthe'- 
 less, our colleges are purer and more temperate. 
 
 What has been said and what remains to be 
 said is to no extent the result of any failure 
 to appreciate the great good accomplished 
 by colleges, much less is it the result of hostility 
 to them and their work. The writer of this 
 paper has had practical acquaintance with col- 
 lege life. He is also acquainted with noble and 
 highly educated men who have given many years 
 to the training of the young for honorable and 
 useful Hves. The writer has in view not the de- 
 struction but the reformation of college life. 
 He would see abuses corrected and a better state 
 of things inaugurated. To that end he not only 
 states some of the evils he deplores, but endeavors 
 to render more apparent what all admit and 
 yet few seriously consider, that the college is 
 only a means and never in any sense of the word 
 an end. The ablest and best men this world has 
 known have, many of them, had no acquaintance 
 with college life. Indeed the writer believes he 
 can make a list of distinguished men who never 
 attended college, that cannot be matched by any 
 catalogue of great men whose names are upon 
 college rolls. 
 
 Shakspeare began life with no other education 
 than that which the Free Grammar School 
 at Stratford-upon-Avon was able to give him. 
 Bunyan, George Fox, and Spinoza, all of 
 
COLLEGE AND BUSINESS LIFE 171 
 
 them great men, were self-taught. Jacob 
 Boehmen, the German mystic, never at- 
 tended a school; all his education he obtained 
 by his own unassisted effort. He rose from the 
 humblest station in life to be the inspiration of 
 Sir Isaac Newton, who was guided to more than 
 one of his great discoveries by the study of 
 Boehmen's "The Three Principles." William 
 Carey without the help of any college became 
 one of the most learned of Oriental linguists. 
 He translated the Scriptures into Bengali and 
 Hindustani, and compiled grammars and dic- 
 tionaries in Mahratta, Sanscrit, Punjab, Telugu, 
 and Bhatana. Alexander Pope, whose "Essay 
 on Man" will live so long as our language en- 
 dures, and whose delightful translation of Homer 
 can never lose its charm, commenced life with 
 no education that would seem to promise such 
 results. His later education, which was large, 
 was entirely self -acquired. Lord Byron was ed- 
 ucated at a day-school in Aberdeen and at a 
 school in Harrow, but he never matriculated in 
 either Oxford or Cambridge. Robert Bums was 
 self-taught. William Falconer, the poet of 
 "The Shipwreck" and the compiler of "The 
 Nautical Dictionary," was the son of a poor 
 and illiterate barber. He led a mariner's life, and 
 was lost at sea in the Aurora, of which he was 
 the purser. His entire education came from the 
 use he made of his spare moments, which were 
 spent in reading and study. Hood and Mac- 
 kenzie were, neither of them, college-instructed. 
 
172 LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 Nelson, the great British admiral, attended the 
 High School at Norwich and afterwards went to 
 school at North Walsham, but he was not a 
 bright scholar. Charles Dickens, after receiving 
 a meagre education, studied law, but he never 
 had much instruction in the classics. John 
 Stuart Mill received a superb education without 
 the aid of any college. David Livingstone, the 
 distinguished missionary and explorer, and 
 Henry Stanley, who found him in the heart of 
 Africa, were, neither of them, prepared for the 
 work of life in any of the English seats of 
 learning. Hugh Miller was a man of large ac- 
 quaintance with natural science, but no college 
 contributed in any way to his worth and fame. 
 John Hunter, the anatomist and surgeon, stood 
 at the head of his profession without the aid of 
 a college. Robert Stevenson, the builder of 
 twenty lighthouses, was self-educated. Charles 
 H. Spurgeon's name is known in every land. He 
 was in some ways the greatest preacher of his 
 age ; for more than forty years he addressed the 
 largest congregation in the world, and thou- 
 sands of his sermons were every month distrib- 
 uted in many lands. But Spurgeon's educational 
 advantages were limited. His name cannot 
 be found in any catalogue of college-gradu- 
 ates. Andrew Carnegie has filled the English- 
 speaking world with good libraries, and right it 
 is that he should do so, for books were his only 
 university. 
 
 Among Americans we name first the greatest 
 
COLLEGE AND BUSINESS LIFE 173 
 
 of them all, Washington. The capitol of our 
 Republic is in the beautiful city that bears his 
 name and that is made even more beautiful by 
 its association with his glorious life. What col- 
 lege would not rejoice to number among its most 
 illustrious sons the Father of our Country! 
 He was indebted to no college for any part of 
 that marvellous equipment of both mind and 
 moral nature that made him the supremely great 
 man the entire world acknowledges him to have 
 been. Next to Washington comes in our early 
 history Benjamin Franklin, who acquired his ed- 
 ucation in a printing office; an education which 
 he enlarged by extensive reading, but which was 
 never improved by any college. Andrew Jack- 
 son and Millard Fillmore were self-educated men. 
 Abraham Lincoln had little schooling apart from 
 his knowledge of law. Henry Clay and Stephen 
 A. Douglas went to a common school. Horace 
 Greeley, the founder of the New York Tribune, 
 was, perhaps, the greatest editor this or any 
 other country has ever produced, but he was en- 
 tirely self-educated. Charles A. Dana, who 
 created the New York Sun, and Samuel Bowles 
 of the Springfield Republican, were not college 
 men. Robert Fulton, John Ericsson, an Ameri- 
 can by adoption, and Thomas A. Edison rose to 
 their exalted positions by their own unassisted 
 effort. Cyrus W. Field, who gave us the sub- 
 marine cable uniting two great continents, started 
 in life with only a common-school education. 
 Washington Irving, the poet Whittier, and some 
 
174. LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 of our most successful authors, famous for grace 
 of style and charm of personality, never attended 
 a coUege. William Cullen Bryant entered 
 Williams College, but left at the close of the 
 Sophomore year. George Peabody, the distin- 
 guished philanthropist, won the love of both 
 England and America without a college degree. 
 Many distinguished men, as Mr. E. J. Swift 
 has pointed out, made a poor record in college. 
 To use Mr. Swift's words: 
 
 "The finer individual qualities are often late in 
 revealing themselves. It is the older, racial tenden- 
 cies that rule in childhood. Irritation at restraint, 
 irresponsibility and primitive indolence, are to be 
 expected. Some mature slowly and are called stu- 
 pid. George Eliot learned to read with difficulty. 
 Thorwaldsen, the sculptor, spent three years in one 
 class in the village school; Burger, the poet of 
 German ballads, required several years to learn the 
 Latin forms; and Alfieri, the Italian poet, was dis- 
 missed by his teachers, so backward was he. Were 
 it necessary, the list might be indefinitely extended 
 by adding Newton, Byron, Ibsen, Walter Pater, 
 Pierre Curie and others. Sometimes seeming stu- 
 pidity is due to interest in subjects outside the lit- 
 tle circle round which the tethered children are al- 
 lowed to graze. Fulton, Watt and Sir Humphry 
 Davy, in early childhood, were already busy with 
 experiments which were to be told to children after 
 the teachers who called them stupid were forgotten. 
 Tolstoy, Goethe and Dean Swift were refused their 
 degrees because they failed in their university ex- 
 aminations, and, for the same reason, Ferdinand 
 
COLLEGE AND BUSINESS LIFE 175 
 
 Brunetiere was denied admission to the Ecole Nor- 
 male Superieure. At Cambridge, also. Sir William 
 Thomson was not a wrangler though one of the 
 examiners admitted that the successful competitor 
 was not fit to cut pencils for Thomson. When 
 asked why he had delayed so long on one of the 
 problems which he himself had discovered, Thom- 
 son replied that, having forgotten that it was one 
 of his own inventions, he had worked it as a wholly 
 new problem. Later it was learned that the win- 
 ner of the prize wrote the solution from memory. 
 Thomson's failure to win the Cambridge honor be- 
 cause of the unusual memory of one of his com- 
 petitors, illustrates an important class of cases in 
 which the examination system completely collapses. 
 Justus von Liebig, whose father was compelled to 
 remove him from the gymnasium because of his 
 wretched work, attributed his failure in the school 
 to his utter lack of auditory memory. He could 
 remember little that he heard. Yet his teachers 
 never discovered this." ^ 
 
 A few years ago the late Francis H. Leggett, 
 a wealthy wholesale grocer in the city of New 
 York, made public the fact that he had not in 
 his entire force of six hundred clerks a single 
 college graduate. A reporter for Printer's Ink, 
 a paper published at the time by Mr. George P. 
 Rowell in the same city, called upon Mr. Leggett 
 at his office and obtained from him a statement 
 with regard to his experience with college gradu- 
 ates. Mr. Leggett said that "through thirty 
 years of business life he had endeavored to give 
 1 Mr. E. J. Swift in Harper's Magazine. 
 
176 LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 college men the preference, believing that a lib- 
 eral education ought to be valuable in business." 
 After that long and faithful experiment he de- 
 cided that graduates of colleges were not as a 
 general rule good business men. He found them 
 disinclined to begin at the bottom, but without 
 the ability to begin elsewhere. They had a con- 
 tempt for drudgery. They were unwilling to 
 render humble services. In some cases they ac- 
 tually thought four years in a literary college 
 more than an equivalent for many years of the 
 best business experience. 
 
 Mr. Leggett found also that the college man's 
 education "had dealt with things so far removed 
 from business life and practice that he was 
 hardly on a par with a boy from the public 
 schools so far as useful knowledge was concerned, 
 while he was hampered by whatever foppish illu- 
 sions his college life may have given him." Mr. 
 Leggett discovered that the college graduate 
 knew algebra, but had almost no knowledge of 
 arithmetic. He could work out a difficult prob- 
 lem if you would give him time, but he could 
 not think rapidly when questions in arithmetic 
 were up for consideration. "Business," said Mr. 
 Leggett, "is founded upon arithmetic — quick 
 mental arithmetic that will yield results in a mo- 
 ment." Colleges pay no attention to arithmetic 
 and the common branches of every-day educa- 
 tion. They assume that the three R's were mas- 
 tered before the young man entered upon his 
 college life. But a man may know Latin and 
 
COLLEGE AND BUSINESS LIFE 177 
 
 Greek and yet be unable to speak and write his 
 own language correctly. In college many things 
 are taught that are of no use in business life, 
 and the young man entering upon his college 
 career knows little of the hard reality of the 
 world in which he must live. He knows all that 
 there is to be known about a dead language and 
 people that passed away long centuries ago, but 
 he has scant knowledge of his own country. 
 When he leaves college he is too old to learn what 
 should have been learned when he was a child. ^ 
 
 "The colleges," said Mr. Leggett, "misedu- 
 cate. They teach nothing but book knowledge. 
 College professors have been steeped in the col- 
 lege traditions." Being further pressed by the 
 
 1 The following excerpt from The Dial, a paper always 
 friendly to colleges and college men, throws upon the fail- 
 ure of colleges to develop a high moral tone and the abil- 
 ity to earn a living in some useful employment, this sad, 
 but instructive light: 
 
 "The college-man in the 'bread line' is a spectacle that 
 saddens and that moves to reflection. College education 
 is more and more striving to coordinate itself with the 
 demands of modern life and industry, the sciences are 
 ousting the old-fashioned 'humanities,' the principles of 
 trade and commerce are taught, and to an increasing ex- 
 tent the practical is taking precedence of the ideal. And 
 yet we are told by a mission worker in the slums of New 
 York (we refer to Mr. E. C. Mercer and his Columbia 
 University address on 'College Graduates on the Bowery') 
 that one night he counted thirty-nine college men of his 
 acquaintance in the Bowery 'bread line,' while another 
 investigator found four hundred college men in the Bowery 
 in a single night. Under the old educational regime a 
 college-bred pauper was an almost unheard-of anomaly. 
 Can it be that, after all, the most practical things are in 
 some danger of proving the most useless?" 
 
178 LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 reporter who was himself in nowise hampered by 
 any tradition, and whose business proficiency 
 was the result of his own industry, and not of 
 any college training, Mr. Leggett said, "What 
 colleges teach is not only valueless, but actually 
 harmful to the youth who intends entering com- 
 mercial life. The college graduate, thrown into 
 the business world, knows less than the boy who 
 is forced to leave school and earn his living at 
 fifteen; while he has a false estimate of his 
 ability that makes him disdainful of the work 
 that would be the means of teaching him 
 business." 
 
 Mr. Leggett's statement is worthy of con- 
 sideration. It is that of a successful business 
 man who has had large experience. The con- 
 clusion to be drawn from it is that classical col- 
 leges are not helps but hindrances to young men 
 who wish to enter business life. They train 
 their minds in the direction of professional life, 
 and create tastes and inclinations at variance 
 with the hard and matter-of-fact duties and re- 
 quirements of the life they elect to lead. Business 
 colleges are in large measure free from these 
 objections, but there are among such institutions 
 none that take rank with the best classical col- 
 leges, unless medical, legal and theological col- 
 leges and seminaries are to be classed with busi- 
 ness schools. Scientific and mining schools, the 
 Polytechnic Institute at Troy, N. Y., the Mili- 
 tary Academy at West Point, and the Naval 
 
COLLEGE AND BUSINESS LIFE 179 
 
 Academy at Annapolis, do not come under Mr. 
 Leggett's strictures. 
 
 Under the heading "A Severe Indictment," the 
 Educational Review reprinted from the Argonaut 
 (San Francisco) in the autumn of 1910 an appar- 
 ently frank and yet severe criticism of the col- 
 lege graduate. The charge was one of down- 
 right incapacity. It may be the arraignment 
 was too sweeping, but its perfect agreement with 
 the statement of Mr. Leggett's experience is 
 certainly very striking: 
 
 " 'In recruiting its service, says the Argonaut, 
 speaking of its own experience, 'trial has again and 
 again been made of the college-bred youth, but 
 never with any approach to success. We have never 
 yet been able to find a college-bred youth, without 
 a long subsequent practical drill, who could write 
 clean English, or who could even write a hand 
 which the printer could read. Not one of those 
 from Frank Pixley down, whose work in the Ar- 
 gonaut lias been an element in its character and in- 
 fluence, has been a man of college breeding. This 
 remark applies to other publications of the country 
 representative of journalism in its higher rank. It 
 is only a few months ago that there was assembled 
 at a dinner table in the Century Club at New York 
 a little group representing the very highest forces 
 in American journalism — including the editor of 
 Harper's Weekly, the then editor of the Century, 
 and others of equal note — ^when, through a chance 
 inquiry, it developed that only one present was a 
 college-bred man/ " 
 
180 LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 Students in American colleges, unlike those 
 in English institutions of learning, seem to take 
 little interest in the responsibilities of public life 
 and of the government under which they live. 
 They are more concerned about dead nations 
 than about the living one with which they are 
 themselves connected. The professors themselves 
 incline in the same direction; they seldom take 
 any direct part in the political life around them. 
 Yet surely to all who live under the Stars and 
 Stripes the United States should be more in- 
 teresting and more important than are the 
 Greece and Rome of earlier days. The writer 
 does not forget that Ex-President Roosevelt and 
 President Taft are college men, and that there 
 are other representatives of college life high up 
 in public confidence and honor, but these are 
 rather the exception than the rule. 
 
 It is too much to ask of any young man in 
 the ordinary walks of life and with ordinary 
 mental endowments, that he pass through school, 
 after that spend four years in a classical col- 
 lege, and then take two or three years in a legal 
 or medical college before he begins to acquire 
 the real training for work which is in a large 
 measure the experience which comes of the work 
 itself. The man begins work too late. His 
 tastes and opinions are already fixed, and they 
 are not fixed in the line of his occupation. His 
 mind has lost much of its elasticity. What fol- 
 lows .?* This, that our colleges should teach 
 young men the things which are useful in busi- 
 
COLLEGE AND BUSINESS LIFE 181 
 
 ness as well as the things which are essential to 
 professional life. A university is such in name 
 only that has not in its equipment a good com- 
 mercial college. Harvard University should be 
 able to furnish a suitable education for both a 
 Ralph Waldo Emerson and a Marshall Field — 
 the one a prince in the realm of letters, and the 
 other a prince equally as great in that of com- 
 mercial achievement. We are not of Horace 
 Greeley's opinion, "of aU horned cattle, deliver 
 me from the college graduate," but we are of 
 Mr. Leggett's opinion that the young man's 
 training should have some definite relation to his 
 life-work. 
 
 There was in the old-time colleges a serious 
 fault in large measure corrected by our modem 
 elective system of education. The college of 
 fifty years or more ago was a huge impersonal 
 machine into which minds of every kind, with 
 no thought whatever of individual peculiarities, 
 were ruthlessly cast, to be turned out, so far as 
 possible, alike in every respect. The one end 
 always in view was the creation of Latin and 
 Greek scholars. The mind that could not be 
 classically educated was accounted stupid. Cul- 
 tivated mediocrity was the order of the day, and 
 whatever remotely resembled genius was vigor- 
 ously discouraged. Balzac was driven from 
 several schools because his wonderful mind could 
 not be run through the educational hopper of 
 that time. His masters, one and all, set him 
 down for a fool. We now know that the fools 
 
182 LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 were in the professorial chairs, and that a young 
 man of great ability was despised and thrust 
 out because public instructors had not the keen- 
 ness of mental vision to discover his real worth. 
 Read "Louis Lambert," and see how bitter was 
 Balzac's struggle with a number of incompetent 
 teachers. The experience of the young man 
 Coleridge was not wholly unlike that of the youth 
 who was to become one of the greatest of French 
 novelists. Pestalozzi, when a boy, was named 
 "the dunce" because he could not spell. His 
 teachers could spell correctly, and great was their 
 influence in their educational circles, but now, 
 while all the world knows of Pestalozzi, who can 
 tell us anything about his teachers ! Charles Dar- 
 win was afraid to send his son to school. He 
 wanted the child's mind developed along the line 
 of his natural abilities. He distrusted the popu- 
 lar educational theories. He was right, and our 
 old system of instruction was all wrong. For 
 every class above the Freshman a full elective 
 course should be prepared. It has been truly 
 said, "The elective system is nothing more than 
 a recognition of the duty of the university to 
 offer instruction in many fields." Latin and 
 Greek are good, but they are no better in their 
 places than are French and German in theirs. 
 
 The literatures of Rome and Greece can never 
 lose their charm, but there is no reason why mod- 
 em languages should not rank with the languages 
 of Plato and Virgil. 
 
 Culture is of many kinds. AH over the civil- 
 
COLLEGE AND BUSINESS LIFE 183 
 
 ized world new fields of knowledge and new av- 
 enues of usefulness invite the thoughts and 
 energies of man. It is a hard and hurtful ex- 
 perience to have to spend the precious years of 
 youth in acquiring a peculiar kind of knowledge 
 not wanted in the actual business of life, and, per- 
 haps, distasteful to the learner. I have seen 
 "finishing schools" drill in music young ladies 
 who not only had no delight in the kind of music 
 that was taught them, but were repelled by every 
 sort of music worth knowing. It was once be- 
 lieved that no one could be a lady who was not 
 able to slaughter at public functions and "pink 
 teas" the great masters of immortal song. The 
 day of that kind of folly is passing away. The 
 masters will escape, and the public will be spared 
 many miserable hours of torture by the rising 
 of the sun of common-sense upon the darkness 
 of "finishing schools." Some of the ablest 
 preachers know little Greek and less Hebrew. 
 Not a few of our best lawyers were educated at 
 the common school, and prepared for a profes- 
 sional career in the office of a good attorney. 
 Not all distinguished surgeons have wasted time 
 over conic sections. He who knows well some 
 useful thing and turns his knowledge to account 
 in helpful words and deeds may be described as 
 leading a successful life. Such a life should be 
 recognized as noble and sufficient. The office of 
 an educational institution is to help the indi- 
 vidual to be of service to his race. Such insti- 
 tutions are means to a common end, but they are 
 
184 LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 never an end in themselves. Education is educa- 
 tion still, even though secured extra muros. Mr. 
 Crane tells us, in his book on Education, that 
 knowledge is the knowing of important things. 
 But what one man finds important another thinks 
 well nigh worthless. Some distinguish between 
 the useful and the beautiful, accounting the one 
 more important than the other. But whatever 
 kind of knowledge enriches a man's mind becomes 
 a part of that man's education. It does not fol- 
 low that a craftsman is an ignorant man because 
 he does not know the things that a philosopher 
 should understand. In the end no line separates 
 the useful from the beautiful. Every kind of 
 useful knowledge has its own beauty, and every 
 beautiful thing is useful. 
 
OLD AGE 
 
 MaTjyv ap* 61 yipovrvi evxovrai Oaveiv, 
 yrjpa<i ^eyovres koX fiaKpbv xpoJ'ov fitov. 
 '^Hv 8' eyyvi eXOrj ddvaro's, ov8els /SovAcrai 
 6vr]<TKCLV, TO yrjpas 8* ovkIt* €(tt' avToh fiapv. 
 
 "Honorable age is not that which standeth in 
 length of time, nor that is measured by number of 
 years: but Wisdom is the grey hair unto men, and 
 an unspotted life is old age." 
 
 — Wisdom, iv, 9' 
 
OLD AGE 
 
 WHEN the hills, touched with frost in the 
 early autumn, put on their beautiful 
 robes, and all the forests are clothed in scarlet 
 and gold, there is an attraction as strong and 
 as gentle as any subtle influence that haunts the 
 opening of spring-time or pervades the slum- 
 berous summer, heavy with heat and resplendent 
 with canopies of living green. To know Nature 
 at her best one must find her early and leave her 
 late. Of the little villages in New England what 
 can one know who has not seen in the month of 
 May the apple-blossoms white like snow upon the 
 overburdened boughs, and watched in the dreamy 
 mists of Indian-summer the yellow sunsets fade 
 into the purple shadows of October and Novem- 
 ber twilights. Every season has its peculiar 
 beauty, and of each the words of an American 
 poet are true: 
 
 "To one who in the love of Nature 
 Holds communion with her visible forms. 
 She speaks a various language." 
 
 When the mind can comprehend that language 
 and understand its message, the roaring winds of 
 mid-winter have as sweet a music when forests 
 bow them to the snowy earth and tall pines are 
 splintered by the blast, as have the gentler voices 
 of the spring-time in "the leafy month of June." 
 The truth in Nature is the same truth we find in 
 187 
 
188 LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 human life. Youth has its own peculiar attrac- 
 tion; so has manhood, stout-hearted, self-confi- 
 dent, and robust; and none the less has slowly 
 advancing age. That the last of life is in no 
 way behind the beginning in rich compensation, 
 the gentle Wordsworth knew right well when, by 
 the quiet shores of Rydal Lake, he wrote those 
 beautiful lines so often quoted, and yet of which 
 we never weary: 
 
 "Old age serene and bright. 
 And lovely as a Lapland night. 
 Shall lead thee to thy grave." 
 
 Lines like these bring to mind the Bible phrase, 
 "A good old age," and they suggest as well the 
 consoling picture of the aged patriarch leaning 
 upon his staff in the opening of his tent amid 
 the soft shadows of the Syrian landscape, wor- 
 shiping God after the manner of his ancestors 
 with the simple faith of those early days. We 
 admire Shakspeare's description of old age, but 
 never for so much as a moment is it to be com- 
 pared with the brief and exquisite story of the 
 closing scene in the life of Jacob as we have it 
 in the ancient book of Genesis: "Then when 
 Jacob had made an end of commanding his sons, 
 he gathered up his feet into the bed, and yielded 
 up the ghost, and was gathered unto his people," 
 How simple, tender, and strong is the narrative. 
 It is not true, as the English dramatist would have 
 us believe, that for the most part life is but a 
 stale and unprofitable thing; that men foUow 
 
OLD AGE 189 
 
 only the bubble reputation ; and that at last there 
 remains for all one melancholy end, to drop 
 through a few years of senile folly into unre- 
 corded graves: 
 
 "The lean and slippered pantaloon, 
 With spectacles on nose, and pouch on side; 
 His youthful hose well saved, a world too wide 
 For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice. 
 Turning again toward childish treble, pipes 
 And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all, 
 That ends this strange, eventful history. 
 Is second childishness and mere oblivion; 
 Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything." 
 
 We turn from this much admired, but sad and 
 one-sided picture of decay, to contemplate the 
 devout Simeon who waited in Jerusalem for 
 the consolation of Israel. It was revealed unto 
 the aged saint that he should not see death before 
 he had seen the Lord's Christ. And he, waiting, 
 not for "second childishness and mere oblivion," 
 but for the fulfilment of the Divine Promise and 
 that blessed consolation of Israel upon which his 
 heart fed through the long expectancy of the 
 years, came into the Temple, "and when the 
 parents brought in the child Jesus, to do for him 
 after the custom of the law, then took he him 
 up in his arms, and blessed God, and said, 'Lord, 
 now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace ac- 
 cording to thy word; for mine eyes have seen 
 thy salvation.' " Longfellow has, in his lovely 
 romance of "Hyperion," these wise and tender 
 words : 
 
190 LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 "For my part, I grow happier as I grow older. 
 When I compare my sensations and enjoyments 
 now with what they were ten years ago, the com- 
 parison is vastly in favor of the present. Much 
 of the fever and fretfulness of life are over. The 
 world and I look each other more calmly in the 
 face. My mind is more self-possessed. It has 
 done me good to be somewhat parched by the heat 
 and drenched by the rain of life." 
 
 Thus, no doubt, by nature as well as by re- 
 ligious agencies were the mind and heart of the 
 venerable man prepared for the wonderful vision 
 of the consolation of Israel that came to him in 
 the aftermath, when the parching heat and drench- 
 ing rain of life had crowned the hill-sides with a 
 harvest of hope. And as the little child Jesus 
 nestled confidingly in his loving arms, and from 
 under the dark lashes of those Judean eyes the 
 "Light of the world" shone tenderly and sweetly 
 upon his believing heart, must not all his life 
 have seemed a blessed preparation for so heav- 
 enly a disclosure.? To him the discipline of the 
 years must in the end have covered themselves 
 with the mantle of thanksgiving. The discord- 
 ant voices of passion had long been hushed, and 
 the feverish dreams of ambition were no more. 
 Instead of enthusiasm he had experience, hardest 
 of all things to acquire. To him the spiritual 
 world had become real. 
 
 Such has been in some measure the experience 
 of earnest men in all ages and in all lands. The 
 mirage glitters only in the light and heat of mid- 
 
OLD AGE 191 
 
 day; the approach of evening dispels the illu- 
 sion. So when the shadows fall and life draws 
 near its end, some things are more distinctly per- 
 ceived. There is a certain ease and mellowness 
 of companionship in riper years. The horizon 
 is broader, the sympathies are more general, and 
 the feeling and purpose of the man more catho- 
 lic. Anxiety for victory has given place to re- 
 gard for truth. A distinguished writer has said 
 that no one can understand Shakspeare before 
 the age of forty has been reached. Up to that 
 time it is quite possible to admire the dramatist, 
 but no one under forty can comprehend his mean- 
 ing or enter into his spirit. I verily believe there 
 are some things not in literature alone or in 
 philosophy, but in life and the spiritual domain 
 that can never be learned from books and colleges, 
 and that only the years can impart to the willing 
 mind. 
 
 The approach of age should always bring with 
 it moral rest, which is only another name for 
 peace. Positive happiness is not absolutely essen- 
 tial; a man may forego this, and yet lead a 
 strong, noble, and beautiful life. Some of the 
 best characters in history have known much of 
 sorrow, and have been themselves ripened into 
 what they were by that very sorrow. I suppose 
 it is the increasing desire and need for rest of 
 both body and mind, and for peace of heart which 
 should come with the years, that makes Words- 
 worth, so little cared for by the young, a favor- 
 ite poet with elderly persons, and especially with 
 
192 LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 the contemplative. Watson has very much the 
 same thought in his lovely poem, "Wordsworth's 
 Grave" — a poem which has immortalized his 
 name with the English-speaking world: 
 
 "Not Milton's keen, translunar music thine; 
 
 Not Shakspeare's cloudless, boundless human view ; 
 Not Shelley's flush of rose on peaks divine; 
 
 Nor yet the wizard twilight Coleridge knew. 
 
 What hadst thou that could make so large amends 
 For all thou hadst not and thy peers possessed, 
 
 Motion and fire, swift means to radiant ends? 
 Thou hadst, for weary feet, the gift of rest. 
 
 From Shelley's dazzling glow or thunderous haze. 
 From Byron's tempest-anger, tempest-mirth, 
 
 Men turned to thee and found — not blast and blaze. 
 Tumult of tottering heavens, but peace on earth. 
 
 Not peace that grows by Lethe, scentless flower. 
 There in white langours to decline and cease; 
 
 But peace, whose names are also rapture, power. 
 Clear sight, and love: for these are parts of 
 peace." 
 
 What old age shall be must in considerable 
 measure depend upon the use one makes of early 
 years and mid-life. When a man is old his mind 
 reverts to early days. Old habits of thought 
 will not relinquish their hold. The man of 
 eighty forgets what happened yesterday, but he 
 recalls his childhood. How often in the hour of 
 death, when the mind is clouded and the physical 
 
OLD AGE 193 
 
 faculties impaired, memory leaps the chasm of the 
 years, and the old man is again surrounded by 
 the scenes of his youth. We need not fear and 
 we should not repine. Rather should we be 
 grateful for what we have enjoyed, and for that 
 Infinite Mercy in which we shall do well to con- 
 fide. 
 
 "As the bird trims her to the gale, 
 I trim myself to the storm of time; 
 I man the rudder, reef the sail. 
 Obey the voice at eve obeyed at prime: 
 'Lowly faithful, banish fear. 
 Right onward drive unharmed; 
 The port, well worth the cruise, is near. 
 And every wave is charmed.' " 
 
 Montaigne would have it that we are old at 
 forty ; and he cites the case of the younger Cato, 
 who said to those who would prevent him from 
 taking what little he thought was left of his 
 life, "Am I now of an age to be reproached that 
 I go out of the world too soon?" Cato was only 
 forty-eight, and yet he thought himself superan- 
 nuated. There is no standard by which we may 
 measure the years. One man is old early in life, 
 and another is loaded with fruit far into the win- 
 ter. The Scripture measure is three-score-and-ten, 
 but in these times, because our lives are so well pro- 
 tected, we reach a much greater age; and some 
 are well and active in both body and mind after 
 ninety and even more years. I had a delightful 
 conversation with Julia Ward Howe when she 
 
194} LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 was not far from ninety, and, though she was 
 reminiscent, she was still full of hope and enthu- 
 siasm. She lived to be a little over ninety-one, 
 and to the end she possessed a clear mind. She 
 was full of joy and of gladness in life long after 
 physical infirmity had rendered active participa- 
 tion in the world of affairs impossible. She said, 
 "People wonder why I don't die ; but how can 
 I, when I have eight great-grandchildren to see 
 started in life ?" 
 
 Some are ready for the work of life at a very 
 early age, but not all are so favored. It was 
 Montaigne's opinion that "our souls are adult 
 at twenty as much as they are ever like to be, 
 and as capable then as ever." Alexander was 
 but thirty-three when he "wept for want of more 
 worlds to conquer" ; Hannibal was only thirty- 
 six when he gained the battle of Cannas, and 
 threatened even the Imperial City ; Charlemagne 
 was master of France and of a part of Germany 
 at twenty-nine ; Raphael was not thirty when they 
 called him the "divine" Raphael; Calvin was im- 
 mortal before he was twenty-eight; Pope trans- 
 lated the Iliad before he had reached his 
 twenty-fifth year; Isaac Newton was at the sum- 
 mit of his fame at thirty ; Harvey was not thirty- 
 four when he discovered the circulation of the 
 blood; Byron had written his greatest poems 
 before he was thirty-four, and he was in his grave 
 at thirty-seven; Mozart died at thirty-five; John 
 Jay was Chief Justice of New York at thirty-two. 
 But though youth is full of great achievement, 
 
OLD AGE 195 
 
 age is not, therefore, wholly wanting in deeds 
 of worth and renown; and in counsel and advice 
 it greatly surpasses not only youth but mid-life 
 as well. 
 
 Old age was not a sad or a melancholy thing 
 to Mrs. Barbauld. She had lost most of the 
 friends of her early life, and she has left it on 
 record that she was lonely. After the death of 
 Mrs. Taylor, whom she loved most of all, she 
 consented to leave her solitary home, and to live 
 the remaining years of her life with an adopted 
 son. But death came to her before she could 
 make the change. She died sitting quietly in her 
 chair. Her literary life ended only with her 
 natural life. She was over seventy when she 
 wrote the little poem called "Octogenary Reflec- 
 tions." It is now among the forgotten frag- 
 ments of the world's good literature, but once it 
 was well known and greatly admired. She is 
 remembered and will always be remembered by 
 those beautiful lines which she called "Life," and 
 which are to be found in nearly every anthology : 
 
 "Life, we've been long together, 
 Through pleasant and through cloudy weather: 
 'Tis hard to part when friends are dear; 
 Perhaps 'twill cost a sigh, a tear; 
 Then steal away, give little warning. 
 Choose thine own time. 
 
 Say not good-night, but in some brighter clime. 
 Bid me good-morning." 
 
 Wordsworth used often to repeat those lines ; 
 Tennyson called them "sweet verses"; and 
 
196 LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 Madame d'Arblay in her old age told Crabb 
 Robinson that every night when she went to rest 
 she said those lines over to herself. 
 
 To the last all these whose names we have 
 mentioned delighted themselves in noble associa- 
 tions, took pleasure in the beauty of song and in 
 the common gladness of those who surrounded 
 them, and were keenly alive to such opportunities 
 for service as came to them even in old age. 
 Thus to grow old is truly beautiful. It is to 
 age as the trees age, putting on autumnal splen- 
 dors with the approach of frost and snow. 
 Anna Letitia Barbauld knew what it was to be 
 lonely, for she had not only parted in the course 
 of nature from early friends, but, being a woman 
 of letters, her companionships even in mid-life 
 must have been restricted. She tells us that she 
 was lonely, but nevertheless we see in all we know 
 of her life that no part of it was without some 
 measure of satisfaction. The Psalmist, who 
 thought that old age was only another name for 
 three-score-and-ten, writing of it said, "Our 
 strength is labor and sorrow." No doubt the 
 labor and sorrow are often found, but we 
 do well to put far from us so much of both as 
 we can. If the labor must be, let it be with as 
 little friction as possible. We may not live to 
 be as old as Henry Jenkins, who died at the ripe 
 age of one hundred and sixty-nine years and 
 who was a fisherman angling in the brooks and 
 water-courses of his dearly loved England even 
 when he was a hundred and forty years old. Be 
 
OLD AGE 197 
 
 we ever so fond of the gentle but cruel sport, 
 it is not at all likely we shall have anything re- 
 sembling his skill. He made artificial flies the 
 year before he died, without spectacles and with- 
 out the assistance of others. No doubt Izaak 
 Walton attributed the old angler's long life to 
 out-door occupations, and especially to angling. 
 Walton said, "God never did make a more calm, 
 quiet, innocent recreation than angling," but I 
 should like to know the opinion of the trout and 
 of the other fish that he and Jenkins and men 
 of their way of thinking captured. Byron took 
 a very different view of the matter when he wrote : 
 
 *'And angling, too, that solitary vice. 
 Whatever Izaak Walton sings or says; 
 The quaint, old, cruel coxcomb, in his gullet 
 Should have a hook, and a small trout to pull 
 it. 
 
 Age will come to all of us if we live long 
 enough to experience its discomforts, but that 
 period need not be, and certainly it should not 
 be, one of distress if we have health and are lifted 
 above the burden of want. Wise were the words 
 of Sir Theodore Martin spoken by him in the 
 Inaugural Address which he delivered when he 
 became rector of St. Andrew's University: 
 
 "It is not years that make age. Frivolous pur- 
 suits, base passions unsubdued, narrow selfishness, 
 vacuity of mind, life with sordid aims, or no aim 
 at all — these are the things that bring age upon 
 the soul. Healthful tastes, an open eye for what 
 
198 LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 is beautiful and good in nature and in man, a happy 
 remembrance of youthful pleasures, a mind never 
 without some active interest or pursuit — these are 
 the things that carry on the feelings of youth even 
 into years when the body may have lost most of 
 its comeliness and its force." 
 
 Sir Theodore Martin knew whereof he spoke, for 
 when he uttered those wise and wholesome words 
 he was himself in his ninetieth year. When he 
 was a very old man he was still strong of mind 
 and body — stronger, beyond all question, than 
 many a younger man who listened to his dis- 
 course. 
 
 How about tobacco .f* Well, there are in our 
 world as many opinions with regard to the use 
 of "the weed" as there are men to entertain those 
 opinions. Where there is so little agreement I 
 would not be over-confident, and yet I have an 
 opinion the nature of which will be understood 
 when I express a willingness to discuss it over a 
 fragrant cigar with anyone who does not agree 
 with me. Tobacco used with moderation will, I 
 think, injure but few, while it is a very great 
 comfort to a large number of men. Used with- 
 out moderation it is in nearly every case an in- 
 jurious agent. I smoke as a general thing three 
 cigars a day, one after lunch and two in the 
 evening. I have never discovered that my three 
 cigars a day have ever hurt me in any way. 
 
 Everyone knows the charming lines written by 
 the old English poet Greorge Wisher, who flour- 
 ished in the time of James I. Wisher was a 
 
OLD AGE 199 
 
 kind and friendly man, and withal a man of cour- 
 age who espoused the cause of the common people. 
 After the Restoration our poet found himself in 
 duress for three long years. I wonder much if 
 in all that time he had sweet companionship in 
 those delicate clouds of tranquillizing smoke he 
 celebrated for us all so well in his delightful 
 song: 
 
 "Tobacco's but an Indian weed, 
 Grows green at morn, cut down at eve; 
 
 It shows our decay, 
 
 We are but clay — 
 Think of this when you smoke tobacco. 
 
 The pipe that is so lily-white. 
 Wherein, so many take delight. 
 
 Is broke with a touch. 
 
 Men are but such — 
 Think of this when you smoke tobacco. 
 
 The pipe that is so foul within 
 
 Shows how man's soul is stained with sin; 
 
 And then, the fire 
 
 It doth require! 
 Think of this when you smoke tobacco. 
 
 The ashes that are left behind 
 Do serve to keep us all in mind 
 
 That unto dust 
 
 Return we must — 
 Think of this when you smoke tobaoco. 
 
200 LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 The smoke that doth on high ascend 
 Shows how man's life must have an end. 
 
 The vapor's gone^ 
 
 Man's life is flown — 
 Think of this when you smoke tobacco." 
 
 At a banquet of dealers in tobacco in St. Louis 
 some years ago Col. IngersoU made one of 
 the most eloquent of all his eloquent addresses. 
 With these words he brought the address to a 
 close, and I think they are words that we should 
 never allow time to erase from the literature of 
 our land: 
 
 "Four centuries ago, Columbus, the adventurous, 
 on the blessed island of Cuba, saw happy people 
 who rolled leaves between their lips. Above their 
 heads were little clouds of smoke. Their faces 
 were serene, and in their eyes was the autumnal 
 heaven of contentment. These people were kind, 
 innocent, gentle and loving. The climate of Cuba 
 is the friendship of the earth and the air, and of 
 this climate the sacred leaves were born — leaves that 
 breed in the mind of him who uses them the cloud- 
 less happy days in which they grew. These leaves 
 make friends and celebrate with gentle rites the 
 vows of peace. They have given consolation to 
 the world. They are the friend of the imprisoned, 
 of the exile, of workers in mines, of fellers of trees, 
 of sailors on the deep sea. They are the givers of 
 strength and calm to the vexed and weary minds of 
 those who build with thought and rear the temples 
 of the soul. They tell of rest and peace. They 
 smooth the wrinkled brows of care, drive fear and 
 misshapen dread from out the mind and fill the 
 
OLD AGE 201 
 
 heart with hope and rest. Within their magic warp 
 and woof some potent spell imprisoned lies that, 
 when released by fire, does softly steal within the 
 fortress of the brain and bind in sleep the captured 
 sentiments of care and grief. These leaves are the 
 friends of the fireside and their smoke-like incense 
 rises from myriads of happy homes. Cuba is the 
 smile of the sea." 
 
 It is said that Sir Isaac Newton was smoking 
 in his garden at Woolsthorpe when the apple 
 fell. Dr. Parr was never without his pipe, which 
 was half -filled with salt. He even took his pipe 
 into drawing-rooms, where he smoked with a 
 good-natured and vulgar vanity. Charles Lamb, 
 Carlyle, and Tennyson were inveterate smokers. 
 General Grant smoked the strongest cigars he 
 could obtain. Tobacco-smoking is a social en- 
 joyment, while the use of the opium-pipe is quite 
 the reverse. Several smokers of opium may re- 
 cline in the same room, but each smoker is wholly 
 concerned with himself. A little conversation 
 there may be at first, but soon each smoker draws 
 himself like a snail into his own shell, and all is 
 silence and repose. The little conversation at 
 the beginning becomes, so soon as the drug takes 
 effect, sententious and laconic ; and the choice bits 
 of foolish wisdom that are passed from smoker 
 to smoker would not be bad literature for Judge 
 or Puck. 
 
 Some kind of a stimulant man must have. It 
 is well, I think, to recognize that fact, and to 
 set about finding him something less harmful than 
 
202 LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 opium or gin. Napoleon, like Dr. Johnson, was 
 a confirmed tea drinker. So was Gladstone, who 
 confessed that "he drank more tea between mid- 
 night and daybreak than any other member of 
 the House of Commons, and that the strongest 
 brew of it never interfered with his sleep." The 
 Dietetic and Hygienic Gazette has this interest- 
 ing excerpt: 
 
 "The dish of tea was one of the most important 
 factors in Johnson's life. Proficiency in the gentle 
 art of tea brewing was regarded by him as an 
 essential attribute of the perfect woman^ and there 
 can be no doubt that his female friends (and their 
 name was legion) did their best to gratify his amia- 
 ble weakness. 
 
 "Richard Cumberland tells us that his inordinate 
 demands for his favorite beverage were occasionally 
 difficult to comply with. On Sir Joshua Reynolds 
 reminding him that he had already consumed eleven 
 cups, he replied: 'Sir, I did not count your glasses 
 of wine; why should you number my cups of tea?* 
 adding laughingly and in perfect good humor: 
 'Sir, I should have released our hostess from any 
 further trouble, but you have reminded me that I 
 want one more cup to make up the dozen, and I 
 must request Mrs. Cumberland to round up my 
 score.' 
 
 "When he saw the complacency with which the 
 lady of the house obeyed his behests he said cheer- 
 ily: 'Madam, I must tell you, for your comfort, 
 you have escaped much better than a certain lady 
 did a while ago, upon whose patience I intruded 
 greatly more than I have yours. She asked me 
 
OLD AGE 203 
 
 for no other purpose than to make a zany of me 
 and set me gabbing to a parcel of people I knew 
 nothing of; so, madam, I had my revenge on her, 
 for I swallowed five and twenty cups of her tea.* 
 
 "Cumberland declared that his wife would gladly 
 have made tea for Johnson 'as long as the New 
 River could have supplied her with water,' for it 
 was then, and then only, he was seen at his happiest 
 moment." 
 
 Tea is a stimulant, and like coffee and cocoa, 
 has a three-fold effect — on the circulation, on 
 the spinal cord, and on the brain. It increases 
 the flow of blood through the brain cells and 
 supplies them with extra nutriment. This again 
 results in quickened thought. If by the use of 
 this stimulant thought could be turned on when 
 needed and could be again turned off when no 
 longer required, tea would be an ideal drink. 
 Unfortunately, intellectual activity is kept up 
 when the tired brain requires sleep, and thus it 
 comes to pass that large quantities of Dr. John- 
 son's strong brew may prove even more harmful 
 than tobacco or spirits when used intemperately. 
 Tea, coffee, and cocoa promote a feeling of well- 
 being which is certainly most delightful, and it 
 is not surprising that exhausted brain-workers 
 have been tempted to use them immoderately. 
 In preparing tea the leaves should never be boiled 
 or stewed. The boiling water should in every 
 case be poured on the leaves, and after standing 
 for a few minutes should be again poured off. 
 Tea should not be taken at the same meal with 
 
S04 LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 flesh-meat, for it toughens the fibre of the meat 
 and so renders it more or less indigestible. Bishop 
 Berkeley, the distinguished philosopher whose 
 theory of the nonexistence of matter has never 
 been demolished, however much the experience 
 of man may incline to a different explanation of 
 the universe, was even more fond of tea than 
 was Dr. Johnson. He expired drinking his fa- 
 vorite beverage. One evening he and his family 
 were sitting and drinking tea together, — ^he on 
 one side of the fire, and his wife on the other, 
 and his daughter making the tea at a little round 
 table just behind him. She had given him one 
 cup, which he had drunk. She had poured out an- 
 other which he left standing some time. "Fa- 
 ther," she asked, "will you not drink your tea?" 
 Upon his making no answer, she stooped forward 
 and looked at him, and found that he was dead. 
 That was certainly a most beautiful way of dy- 
 ing — quietly, with neither pain nor sad farewell, 
 encircled by the loved ones, and with the hand 
 resting upon a cup of refreshing beverage. 
 Berkeley directed in his will that his body should 
 be kept above ground more than five days, and 
 until it became offensive. It was to remain un- 
 disturbed and covered by the same bedclothes, in 
 the same bed, the head raised upon pillows. 
 Henry Ward Beecher was fond of strong coffee. 
 The poet Schiller found himself better able to 
 compose when he had before him on the table a 
 few partly decayed apples ; and when he could 
 not have these he wanted coffee or champagne. 
 
OLD AGE 205 
 
 The elder Kean had with him at the theatre 
 brandy and beef -tea which he drank between the 
 acts ; he adapted, so it is said, his dinner to the 
 part he must play. Mrs. Jordan took calf's- 
 foot- jelly dissolved in sherry. Gladstone when 
 he did not drink tea took egg beaten up in sherry. 
 Nearly every man uses in one way or another 
 tobacco. And what a blessing the weed is to 
 thousands of our race. Listen to BosweU as he 
 sings the praise of the various kinds of snuff: 
 
 "O snufF! our fashionable end and aim, 
 Strasburghj Rappee, Dutch, Scotch, whate'er thy 
 
 name; 
 Powder celestial! quintessence divine! 
 New joys entrance my soul, while thou art mine. 
 By thee assisted, ladies kill the day,. 
 And breathe their scandal freely o'er their tea; 
 Not less they prize thy virtues when in bed; 
 One pinch of thee revives the vapored head. 
 Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze, 
 Glows in the stars, and tickles in the sneeze." 
 
 It was tobacco and not literature that made the 
 name of John Nicot famous. His two books and 
 the first French Dictionary, of which he was the 
 compiler, could, never have saved from oblivion 
 his worthy name. It was his introduction of the 
 plant into France, and the adoption of his name 
 as that of the oil contained in the leaves of the 
 plant, that made Nicot's name familiar wherever 
 the word "nicotine" is used. 
 
 No doubt many users of tobacco have injured 
 
206 LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 their health and shortened their lives by immod- 
 erate use of the plant ; but surely the abuse of a 
 thing furnishes no valid argmnent against its 
 reasonable enjoyment. Nicot introduced some 
 measure of contentment into the pleasant land of 
 France when he introduced to its citizens the weed 
 he loved so well. Moderately used, tobacco 
 soothes the nerves and promotes peace. I do 
 not know who wrote the famous "Recipe for Con- 
 tent," but surely it is well worth remembering, 
 and Nicot may be regarded as the first mixer 
 of its wholesome ingredients: 
 
 "Into a neat little room, all cozy and tight. 
 Put two large glasses of Southern light; 
 And an ounce of tobacco and a good easy chair. 
 Then thicken with volumes all spicy and rare. 
 Flavor with prints in the usual way 
 And serve to the taste, on a dull rainy day." 
 
 Tobacco, so beloved by the old, is itself a much 
 older plant than most of those who smoke and 
 chew its leaves suppose. We may laugh if we 
 will at the grotesque conceit that Noah was in- 
 toxicated with tobacco and not with wine, but 
 nevertheless it seems to have something of the 
 solemnity of a Greek Church "tradition." Dr. 
 Yates, simple-minded man, tells us that he saw a 
 picture of a smoking party in one of the ancient 
 Egyptian tombs. The author of a little book 
 on tobacco, published in London in 1859, admits 
 that Yates may have seen the picture of a smok- 
 ing party which he describes, but he slyly insin- 
 
OLD AGE 207 
 
 uates that the original draughtsman was beyond 
 all doubt not an ancient, but a modem Egyptian 
 - — some mischievous urchin of recent times who, 
 tampering in sport with a real antique, "builded 
 better than he knew," and cheated an unsuspect- 
 ing archaeologist. It has also been suggested 
 that the old Egyptian glass-blowers may be re- 
 sponsible for this most absurd of blunders. 
 
 We do not now use very much snuff, though it is 
 still manufactured for royalty abroad and for 
 Italian ecclesiastics. But everywhere men, and 
 some women as well, smoke. Alcohol is even more 
 common than tobacco. It has filled the world 
 with its sorrow and gladness, and I fear that the 
 sorrow is much in excess of the gladness. Dis- 
 raeli consumed large quantities of champagne 
 jelly. Thomas Paine was too fond of spirits for 
 his own good, and so also was President Pierce, 
 who was a very excellent man nevertheless. Poe, 
 it is whispered, sometimes trifled with opium, not 
 satisfied with things to drink. 
 
 About alcoholic beverages there is, despite the 
 tragedy that is never far away, much of romance 
 and good-fellowship. But the Indian weed seems 
 to eclipse all other stimulants in the delightful 
 literature that gathers about it. And it adds 
 something to its praise that there cleaves to its 
 fragrant leaves so little of painful tragedy. 
 
 As we advance in life time seems to fly with an 
 ever increasing speed. And it is well that it is 
 so. Our happiest years, which are usually those 
 of early life, linger as if loath to depart ; but 
 
208 LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 our more helpless years, those of "the lean and 
 slippered pantaloon," appear as anxious to be 
 gone as does life itself, so like from first to last 
 "an empty dream." Even when old age has be- 
 come a great burden its years still appear swift: 
 
 "The more we live, more brief appear 
 Our life's succeeding stages, 
 A day to childhood seems a year, 
 And years like passing ages. 
 
 Heaven gives our years of fading strength 
 
 Indemnifying fleetness; 
 And those of youth a seeming length 
 
 Proportioned to their sweetness." 
 
 When the end comes there often comes with 
 it an imperative demand for rest. So urgent is 
 the demand in some cases that the aged sufferer 
 is unable to resist its pressure, and in a moment 
 of weakness, it may be, he takes his own life. 
 Lecky, in his "Map of Life," calls attention to a 
 touching epitaph which he saw in a German 
 churchyard : 
 
 "I will arise, O Christ, when Thou callest me; but 
 oh! let me rest awhile, for I am very weary." 
 
 If we live long enough it is not unlikely that we 
 shall even wish for death. There is an old Irish 
 legend that illustrates that fact: In a certain 
 lake in Munster, it is said, there were two islands ; 
 into the first death could never enter, but age and 
 sickness, and the weariness of life, and parox- 
 
OLD AGE 209 
 
 ysms of fearful suffering were all known there, 
 and they did their work till the inhabitants, tired 
 of their immortality, learned to look upon the 
 opposite island as upon a haven of repose. 
 They launched their barks upon its gloomy wa- 
 ters; they touched its shore, and they were at 
 rest. 
 
 With Plotinus, I thank God that my soul is 
 not imprisoned within an immortal body, for in 
 that case I should know a new mortality more to 
 be feared than the one of which I now have 
 knowledge. From every agony possible to man 
 death furnishes a sure escape. A deathless body 
 would mean living death. And yet men would 
 close and fasten as with bolts of steel the one 
 door without which hope were impossible. They 
 would inscribe over the cradle of every infant 
 the words that Dante saw over the Place of Doom. 
 I could not wish to live were it not permitted me 
 to die. 
 
 Yet nevertheless there is a sense in which body 
 and mind alike are under the dominion of death. 
 Auguste Comte said in a moment of depression, 
 "Death governs the living." He may not have 
 really believed the sovereignty of death so vast, 
 but that was what he said, and in a very impor- 
 tant sense the saying is true. Through the long 
 years we are engaged in warding off death. 
 Thousands of men are in bondage all their days 
 through fear of death; and the very persons 
 who reprove them for this fear, and who en- 
 deavor to rescue them from its baneful influence. 
 
210 LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 are themselves In many cases in bondage to the 
 same dark dread. Porta was a distinguished 
 surgeon at the University of Pavia. When, as 
 sometimes happened, a patient died on the oper- 
 ating table through the depressing Influence of 
 fear. Porta would, In a transport of rage, throw 
 the Instruments to the floor, shouting, "Cowards 
 die from fear!" Was the surgeon himself then 
 so brave a man? Ah, he also had his phobia. 
 He knew moments of the deepest depression. 
 Yet still it is true that great age often brings 
 its own sweet release, and the fear dies before 
 the coming of death Itself. And sometimes the 
 martial spirit common In youth returns late In 
 life, and the familiar lines of Browning become 
 an experience : 
 
 "Fear death? — ^to feel the fog in my throat, 
 The mist in my face. 
 When the snows begin, and the blasts denote 
 I am Hearing the place. 
 
 I was ever a fighter, so — one fight more. 
 
 The best and the last! 
 I would hate that death bandaged my eyes, 
 and forbore, 
 And bade me creep past. 
 No! let me taste the whole of it, fare like my 
 peers. 
 The heroes of old." 
 
 Dr. Crothers, a distinguished physician who 
 has given the best years of his life to the study 
 
OLD AGE ail 
 
 of the psychological features of disease and also 
 to the cure of the drug habit, has propounded 
 a theory not wholly new, but still unlike any other 
 in the results which must follow its acceptance. 
 He wrote in a medical journal: "There are 
 many reasons for believing that we carry around 
 with us great reserve powers and unknown ener- 
 gies which are seldom used, and that in old age 
 appeal to these powers may give a certain vigor 
 entirely unexpected which lengthens out life and 
 practically overcomes disease." These "reserve 
 powers and unknown energies" are, it is to be 
 supposed, different from what is known as the 
 subconscious self, but concerning that matter it 
 is not necessary that we should speculate. Dr. 
 Crothers tells us that did men but realize the hid- 
 den powers they have always with them the "deep- 
 est despondency would disappear from the 
 continuous desire and effort to rise above it." 
 In other words, this appeal may flood old age 
 with a joy in life when, under ordinary circum- 
 stances and in most men, it has departed with the 
 vigor of early days. This theory, which is not 
 without some evidence to sustain it, is yet new, 
 and must await the results of further investiga- 
 tion; but it certainly presents an alluring hope. 
 Think what it really means to flood the sterile 
 places of old age with the revitalizing tides of 
 joy and expectancy, and to exterminate the rank 
 and noxious weeds of despondency, doubt, and 
 suspicion. We plant flowers over graves, but 
 still the graves remain. Is this new theory an- 
 
212 LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 other planting of flowers over graves, or is there 
 here an actual revitalizing and a resurrection of 
 the man? Time only can answer that question. 
 But still, one way or the other, old age, as has 
 been shown, need not be utterly sad and lonely. 
 Very much depends upon temperament, which 
 is but another name for natural heritage, and 
 over that we have no control. All we can do 
 with it is to accept of it in whatever form it 
 comes, and so to make of it the best use we can. 
 
 Much of the loneliness of age is occasioned by 
 the death of early friends and companions. The 
 man who survives these in a certain sense survives 
 himself. New friends are not easily made after 
 one has reached the age of fifty. And with the 
 loneliness of declining years there comes a con- 
 sciousness of the approach of a loneliness even 
 deeper than any of which we have made mention 
 — the loneliness of death. 
 
 "A lonely hour is on its way to each. 
 To all; for death knows no companionship." 
 
 All the supreme places and conditions of life 
 are lonely. Thousands of men may die in battle 
 within a very circumscribed area and at the same 
 time, yet to each man death comes as a solitary 
 event. Our associations are superficial when com- 
 pared with our isolations. Since, then, we cannot 
 escape the great solitudes of our existence, is it 
 not well that we give some time to their consid- 
 eration? We may, if we will, look Destiny in 
 the face, and thus acquaint ourselves in advance 
 
OLD AGE 213 
 
 with the "lonely hour," and we may thus in some 
 measure disarm it of its terrors. Every man 
 should learn to be alone without discomfort to 
 himself. Gibbon wrote, "On the approach of 
 spring I withdraw without reluctance from the 
 noisy and extensive scene of crowds without com- 
 pany and dissipation without pleasure." We 
 need not tarry for the spring. Each day brings 
 with it its own opportunity : 
 
 "Sometime between the dawn and dark. 
 
 Go thou, O friend, apart, 
 That a cool drop of heaven's dew 
 
 May fall into thy heart. 
 Thus, with a spirit soothed and cured 
 
 Of restlessness and pain, 
 Thou mayest, nerved with force divine, 
 
 Take up thy work again." 
 
 There have been many definitions of old age, 
 but perhaps the best of them all is that which 
 represents it as the period in life when a man 
 no longer adjusts himself to his environment. 
 The difficulty with this definition is that it is, 
 under certain limitations, as applicable to infancy 
 as to old age. And still further, sickness as 
 well as age may render the adjustment impossible. 
 According to Dr. George M. Beard ("Legal Re- 
 sponsibility in Old Age") the productive periods 
 in man's life grade themselves thus: 
 
 The Brazen decade is between 20 and 30. 
 The Golden decade is between 30 and 4*0. 
 The Silver decade is between 40 and 50. 
 
214. LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 The Iron decade is between 50 and 60. 
 The Tin decade is between 60 and 70. 
 The Wooden decade is between 70 and 80. 
 
 The best and most productive period, it would 
 appear, is the fifteen years between the ages of 
 thirty and forty-five. And in that period the 
 best two years, which must of course be as well 
 the best in a man's entire life, are the two be- 
 tween thirty-eight and forty. There are many 
 exceptions to the rule, but take the world and 
 the ages into account, and I think the general 
 results of investigation will indicate the period 
 of time named as usually the best for work of 
 whatever kind in the life of man. The procre- 
 ative function in woman ceases between forty and 
 fifty, which is just the period when the physical 
 and mental powers begin to decline. Thus it 
 comes to pass that we are spared the misfortune 
 of an earth largely peopled by underlings. 
 
 In 1888 the following table of brain-workers 
 was prepared. The men named were at the time, 
 most of them, living, and possessed of the vigor 
 of their faculties. The table is useful as show- 
 ing, what most students of biometry know, that 
 brain-work is favorable to longevity: 
 
 George Bancroft, Historian , ,. 87 
 
 F. A. P. Barnard, College President 79 
 
 J. S. Blackie, Scholar 79 
 
 John Bright, Statesman 77 
 
 Robert Browning, Poet 76 
 
 Robert E. Bunsen, Chemist 77 
 
OLD AGE 215 
 
 M. E. Chevreul, Chemist 102 
 
 J. D. Dana, Geologist 75 
 
 Jefferson Davis, Statesman 80 
 
 Ignatius DoUinger, Theologian 89 
 
 John Ericsson, Engineer 85 
 
 Octave Feuillet, Author 76 
 
 David D. Field, Lawyer 83 
 
 W. E. Gladstone, Statesman. 79 
 
 Jules Grevy, Statesman . 81 
 
 Oliver W. Hohnes, Poet 79 
 
 Leo XIIL, Pope 78 
 
 H. F. Manning, Cardinal 80 
 
 J. Louis Meissonier, Painter 76 
 
 James McCosh, Metaphysician 77 
 
 J. H. Newman, Cardinal 87 
 
 Richard Owen, Anatomist 84? 
 
 Andrew P. Peabody, Clergyman 77 
 
 J. L. A. Quatref ages. Naturalist 78 
 
 Alfred Tennyson, Poet ..>... 79 
 
 Ambroise Thomas, Composer. 77 
 
 Guiseppe Verdi, Composer 74 
 
 Thomas E. Vermilye, Clergyman 85 
 
 R. W. Weir, Painter. 85 
 
 J. G. Whittier, Poet 84 
 
 T. D. Woolsey, Publicist 87 
 
 Dr. Nascher, a New York physician, tells us 
 that while the debility of old age cannot be pre- 
 vented, some of its effects may be relieved, the 
 mental attitude may be improved, and the vigor 
 of earlier days may be in some slight degree re- 
 stored. The cause of senile debility is to be found 
 
216 LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 in the waste of muscle, cartilage, bone, and nerve 
 tissue consequent on impaired metabolism. 
 Whatever benefits the mental condition improves 
 the debility. Growing old is in great measure 
 due to mental influences, and yet those influences 
 are in turn largely due to the physical changes 
 named. Dr. Nascher, with no thought of es- 
 thetics, recommends phosphorus and arsenic, and 
 would introduce various hygienic and dietetic 
 measures. These would, no doubt, in some de- 
 gree lessen the waste of tissue that brings about 
 the decrepitude of old age. Small doses of 
 morphine are followed by marked improvement, 
 and where age is far advanced the drug habit 
 need give no concern. An intellectual life wards 
 ofi^ in some measure the approach of old age, as 
 has been shown not only in the table just given, 
 but in many other tables, and very forcibly in 
 the following synopsis: 
 
 AVERAGE LENGTH OF LIFE 
 
 Years. 
 
 Poets Q6 
 
 Painters and sculptors 66 
 
 Musicians 62 
 
 Novelists 67 
 
 Superior officers 71 
 
 Philosophers 65 
 
 Historians 73 
 
 Inventors 72 
 
 Political agitators 69 
 
 Statesmen 71 
 
OLD AGE 217 
 
 The four most important natural indications 
 of long life are: 1. Descent, at least on one 
 side, from long-lived parents. 2. Serenity and 
 cheerfulness of disposition, with which is asso- 
 ciated contentment. 3. A well-proportioned 
 physical frame. 4*. The habit of sleeping long 
 and soundly. 
 
 The physical features which indicate a long 
 life are large heart, lungs, digestive organs, and 
 brain; a long body with comparatively short 
 limbs ; a long hand with a somewhat heavy palm 
 and short fingers ; a deeply seated brain, as indi- 
 cated by a low orifice to the ear; blue hazel 
 or brown hazel eyes; large, open, and free nos- 
 trils, which indicate large lungs. 
 
 Women live longer than men, and the mar- 
 ried out-live the single. The longer life of 
 woman is, no doubt, due in great measure to her 
 domestic retirement. The coming woman, with 
 her new public and political duties, will find the 
 emancipation of her sex attended with a de- 
 creasing length in life. A happy marriage pro- 
 motes cheerfulness and contentment, both of 
 which favor longevity. 
 
 The following rules, it seems to the writer, 
 lived up to, will greatly favor longevity: 
 
 1. Sleep eight hours. 
 
 2. Sleep on your right side. 
 
 3. Have the window of your bedroom open 
 most of the night. 
 
 4. Have your bedstead slightly removed from 
 the wall. 
 
218 LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 5. Let your bath in the morning be at the 
 temperature of the body. 
 
 6. Eat sparingly of meat. 
 
 7. Observe moderation in the use of alcohol. 
 
 8. Exercise in the open air every day. 
 
 9. Allow no animals to sleep in your bed- 
 room. 
 
 10. See that you have some variety in your 
 life. 
 
 11. Take for yourself a sufficient number of 
 holidays. 
 
 12. Limit your ambition. 
 
 13. Drink freely of pure cool water, but avoid 
 iced-water. 
 
 14. Restrain your passions. 
 
 Old age may be divested of many of its dis- 
 abilities, but it can never be other than lonely. 
 The old man in out-living his friends has, as 
 has been already said, out-lived himself. He 
 finds it hard to affiliate with the young, and the 
 men of his own years are gone from him for- 
 ever. His mind, soon wearied by even trivial 
 things, wearies as well of the isolation, and in 
 many cases death itself becomes even attractive. 
 Thus in his swan-song a poet complains that 
 Death has entirely forgotten him : 
 
 "Go to your nests, rooks, in the windy trees. 
 And vex not me with your ill-omened caw; 
 I am too old to live beneath Fear's law; 
 Hopes fever me no longer nor doubts freeze. 
 Half I forget what makes the blackbird sing 
 So loud in spring. 
 
OLD AGE 219 
 
 The earth grows old around me; planets wane; 
 
 April's green glamour is spread out in vain; 
 
 The rose sends nets of fragrance from her tree. 
 
 But in her webs of beauty takes not me; 
 
 Out of the road I never turn my feet 
 
 For search of moonwort or of meadowsweet. 
 
 The sea sings loud for youth. I hear it moan, 
 Counting its rocky ramparts stone by stone, 
 And all the green-haired people of the waves 
 They do but make wild music over graves. 
 The graves of broken ships and drowned men. 
 And cities that the sea has ta'en again. 
 
 I hate the gulls and terns that dip and cry 
 About the white cliffs, along the sundering sea. 
 Or I should hate, if hate had not passed by. 
 Even as love has, and forgotten me. 
 Time has outdistanced my slow feet — behold, 
 I have outlingered Death. I cannot die; 
 I am too old." 
 
VII 
 
 CULTURE 
 
 "The Middle Ages had their wars and agonies, 
 but also intense delights. Their gold was dashed 
 with blood, but ours is sprinkled with dust. Their 
 life was inwoven with white and purple, ours is one 
 seamless stuff of brown." 
 
 — Ruskin. 
 
 "Live with the gods." 
 
 — Marcus Aurelius. 
 
CULTURE 
 
 THE word "culture" is not easily defined. 
 Webster is more witty than wise when he 
 tells us that "culture is the act of cultivating." 
 He reminds us of the physician who wa^ sure 
 that death was "substantially the loss of life." 
 We are told that culture means production, but 
 the words are not synonymous, for it is possible 
 to produce the fruit of folly and ignorance. 
 We are again Informed that culture means ad- 
 vancement, and yet one may advance in the 
 wrong direction. Principal Sharp says that 
 *'culture is the educing or drawing out of what 
 is potential in man." It Is the training of his 
 faculties and energies, and the directing of them 
 to their true ends. For all practical purposes 
 Principal Sharp's definition is entirely satisfac- 
 tory, unless it be objected that it is in reality 
 a description rather than a definition. 
 
 The word training covers all the distance be- 
 tween a civilized man and his savage ancestors. 
 In a state of nature we possess in embryo those 
 faculties of mind and powers of body which, 
 when trained, become the creators and exponents 
 of civilization. There were potentially in our 
 savage ancestors, as they ran naked through the 
 forests, the English Magna Charta, the com- 
 monly received translation of the New Testa- 
 ment, the plays of Shakspeare, and the Ameri- 
 can Declaration of Independence. There is in 
 223 
 
224* LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 our human nature a wonderful wealth of intel- 
 lectual material, irrespective of everything re- 
 sembling spiritual experience. 
 
 We must distinguish between culture and mere 
 polish. The two are often confounded, the one 
 with the other, and yet they are entirely differ- 
 ent things. Polish is superficial, that is to say, 
 it has to do with the surface only, while culture 
 is a change in quality. The distinction is clear 
 enough in matters connected with social life. 
 It requires more than a French finishing school 
 to make a lady, and more than a gold-rimmed 
 eye-glass to make a gentleman. One is neither 
 lady nor gentleman so long as the moral nature 
 remains uncultivated. As well might an uncul- 
 tivated patch of ground be taken for a garden. 
 A gentleman is a gentleman at heart or he is not 
 one in any sense of the word. A true lady is 
 gentle, modest, conciliatory, cordial, thoughtful 
 of others, kind to her servants, and charitable 
 in her judgments. But in all this there is some- 
 thing more than the developing of mere natural 
 resources. Doubtless the possibilities of an oak 
 are inclosed by the shell of the acorn, but light, 
 air, and moisture have entered into the account. 
 The light of sun and star, summer-rain and 
 winter-frost, and all the juices of the earth are 
 in that tree. A thousand outside influences 
 unite with inward possibilities to make us what we 
 are. Man is in a certain sense an epitome of the 
 universe, for all its forces and substances enter 
 into the mystery of his being. He is one with 
 
CULTURE a26 
 
 these. The old English poet Herbert knew 
 this when he wrote of man : 
 
 "He is in little all the sphere. 
 Herbs gladly cure our flesh, because that they 
 Find their acquaintance there." 
 
 We are from the intellectual point of view 
 Svhat we are able to perceive. The Spirit said 
 to boastful Faust, "Thou'rt like the spirit whom 
 thou can'st comprehend — not me!" and Faust 
 replied : 
 
 "Not thee? 
 Whom then? 
 I, God's own image ! 
 And not rank with thee!" 
 
 But the Spirit condescended to no answer, 
 and simply vanished. We are what we are able 
 to perceive and comprehend. And it should be 
 added that training is essential to the develop- 
 ment of perception. The sailor will with un- 
 assisted eye derive more knowledge of a passing 
 ship far away than a landsman can gather with a 
 powerful glass. Where we see only confusion 
 the artist perceives exquisite beauty. A woman 
 visiting the studio of Turner looked intently at 
 one of his pictures and said, "Mr. Turner, I 
 go often to the place you have painted, but never 
 do I see what you represent upon that canvas." 
 "Ah, Madam," replied the artist, "don't you 
 wish you could see it?" You turn to a noble 
 poem, every line of which throbs with beauty, 
 
226 LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 but the poet found his splendor in the dust. 
 You walked directly over it without discovering 
 what the poet saw under his feet and all about 
 him. Beauty is everywhere, but there must be 
 a trained and educated eye with which to dis- 
 cover it. 
 
 "The poem hangs on the berry-bush. 
 When comes the poet's eye, 
 And the street is one long masquerade 
 When Shakspeare passes by." 
 
 A man like Emerson lives in a realm of beauti- 
 ful perceptions: 
 
 "Let me go where'er I will 
 I hear a sky-born music still: 
 It sounds from all things old. 
 It sounds from all things young. 
 From all that's fair, from all that's foul. 
 Peals out a cheerful song. 
 It is not only in the rose. 
 It is not only in the bird, 
 Not only where the rainbow glows. 
 Nor in the song of woman heard. 
 But in the darkest, meanest things 
 There alway, alway something sings. 
 
 'Tis not in the high stars alone. 
 Nor in the cups of budding flowers. 
 Nor in the redbreast's mellow tone, 
 Nor in the bow that smiles in showers. 
 But in the mud and scum of things 
 There alway, alway something sings." 
 
CULTURE 2Sn 
 
 You think you hear music, but perhaps what 
 you hear with the dull, untrained ear is little 
 better than jangling discord as compared with 
 the delicious melody the true musician hears. 
 Sailor, artist, poet, musician are all products of 
 different kinds of culture. We may add the 
 saint if we will, for to this same process of train- 
 ing may be referred all his fineness of moral per- 
 ception, strength against temptation, holiness of 
 disposition, and loftiness of purpose. Behind 
 the beauty of his life, and inseparably associated 
 with it, is the austere reality of duty. No man 
 ever dreamed himself into either earthly or 
 heavenly wisdom. No man ever wished himself 
 into a character. If one would have these he 
 must endure hardness; and to the hardness there 
 must be added continuance in welldoing. There 
 is in morals a certain "squatter sovereignty" 
 whereby continued exercise of a grace or virtue 
 renders that grace or virtue the possession of the 
 man who exercises it. Shakspeare makes one 
 of his characters advise that if one be without 
 a virtue he assume it. Therein lies a world of 
 philosophy. Assume the virtue long enough, 
 and moral "squatter sovereignty" perfects the 
 title. True culture has in it a certain element 
 of hardness, to which is added continuance. The 
 Sacred Writer puts it in a line: "Having done 
 all, stand." 
 
 It should be said that the higher forms of 
 culture imply sympathy. Such culture is to be 
 found only where advanced civilization prevails. 
 
228 LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 "Every man for himself" is the motto of savage 
 hf e ; "United we stand" is that of an enlightened 
 community. "No man liveth unto himself, and 
 no man dieth unto himself." We are one race, 
 and have common interests. True culture is 
 altruistic. And so it comes to pass that in the 
 end it is one with civilization. 
 
 The literatures of ancient- Greece and Rome 
 are so fragmentary and, to us, so unreal that 
 there is now difficulty in believing they were 
 once adequate for the intellectual expression of 
 a living people. Our literature will suffer no 
 such change. The printing-press imparts to 
 even the' most Avorthless book a stamp of immor- 
 tality. Of all competitions the most strenuous 
 is that of authorship. Merchants compete with 
 traders of their own time only, while the author 
 must compete with not only the. living but with 
 the dead of all lands and ages. Every new 
 century increases the emulation, and but for the 
 art of printing not one of the thousands of 
 modem writers could hope for even the most tran- 
 sitory remembrance. Here is our great ad- 
 vantage over the ancients. The press so in- 
 creases the number of copies and so distributes 
 them that no misfortune will ever be able to 
 entirely destroy the book that has once been pub- 
 lished. Countless works known to men and 
 women in ancient Greece have either wholly or 
 partly disappeared. Where are the lost plays of 
 ^schylus and Sophocles.? Every copy of a 
 book was laboriously written out by a human 
 
CULTURE 229 
 
 hand, and of course there could be but few copies 
 of any single book — ^there were never enough of 
 these to insure immortality. Time and disaster 
 smote them, and they perished. It is very dif- 
 ferent with us. The press gives to even the 
 meanest production of the human mind its im- 
 primature; and to the "Let it be printed!" is 
 added the sure and impressive word, "Forever." 
 The printing press is quite as likely to prove 
 a foe as to show itself a friend of culture. Even 
 as Nature favors alike the trained and experi- 
 enced physician and the callow empiric, making 
 no distinction between them, even so does the 
 impartial press give to both good and bad in 
 literature the stamp of permanence. It is true 
 that the popularity of both will not be the same, 
 and that the classic will be at all times more or 
 less obtainable while other and less important 
 works will sink into obscurity, but Gutemberg's 
 discovery gives and will continue to give to all 
 published books something resembling an even 
 chance. 
 
 Leibnitz thought that the press, by preserving 
 so many unworthy books, would become in time 
 an evil rather than a benefit to the world. He 
 believed that the press, by bestowing an indis- 
 criminate immortality upon modem books, would 
 in a large measure destroy the worth of that 
 immortality. The Water Poet tells us that the 
 greatest names in English literature owe their 
 continued existence to paper and type, and that 
 for want of these the great names of ancient 
 
230 LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 times have either perished or suffered some 
 ecHpse. Thus our old Water Poet sings, and 
 that we have his song is due for the most part 
 to the advantage which printing gives : 
 
 "In paper many a Poet now survives, 
 Or else their lines had perished with their lives. 
 Old Chaucer, Gower, and Sir Thomas More, 
 Sir Philip Sidney who the laurel wore; 
 Spenser and Shakspeare did in art excel. 
 Sir Edward Dyer, Greene, Nash, Daniel, 
 Silvester, Beaumont, Sir John Harrington; 
 Forgetfulness their works would over-run, 
 But that in Paper they immortally 
 Do live in spite of Death, and cannot die. 
 
 And many there are living at this day 
 Which do in Paper their true worth display. 
 As Davis, Drayton, and the learned Donne, 
 Johnson and Chapman, Marston, Middleton, 
 With Rowley, Fletcher, Wither, Massinger, 
 Heywood, and all the rest where'er they are. 
 Must say their lines but for the paper sheet 
 Had scarcely ground whereon to set their feet." 
 
 Greece and Italy were in. ancient times the 
 true home of culture. Other countries, as Egypt 
 and the lands of the far East, developed some- 
 thing of plastic and literary art, though nothing 
 that might be compared with the artistic evolu- 
 tion of Athens and Rome. Greece is no longer 
 the seat of learning, nor is she closely connected 
 with fine artistic advancement; but Italy remains 
 to-day as of old the center of a world-culture 
 
CULTURE 231 
 
 that draws to itself from all over the earth the 
 lovers of whatever is noble and beautiful in feel- 
 ing and expression. An American poet, Mr. 
 Robert Underwood Johnson, has voiced this de- 
 light of the cultivated mind in all that modem 
 as well as ancient Italy means to those who un- 
 derstand and love beauty for its own sake: 
 
 "Oh, to be kin to Keats as urn with urn 
 
 Shares the same Roman earth ! — to sleep, apart. 
 Near to the bloom that once was Shelley's heart. 
 Where bees, like lingering lovers, re-return; 
 Where the proud pyramid. 
 To brighter glory bid. 
 Gives Cestius his longed-for fame, marking im- 
 mortal Art. 
 
 Or, in loved Florence, to repose beside 
 Our trinity of singers! Fame enough 
 To neighbor lordly Landor, noble Clough, 
 And her, our later sibyl, sorrow-eyed. 
 Oh, tell me — not their arts 
 But their Italian hearts 
 Won for their dust that narrow oval, than the 
 world more wide ! 
 
 So might I lie where Browning should have lain. 
 
 My 'Italy' for all the world to read. 
 Like his on the palazzo. For thy pain. 
 In losing from thy rosary that bead, 
 England accords thee room 
 Around his minster tomb — 
 A province conquered of thy soul, and not an 
 Arab slain!" 
 
VIII 
 
 VICISTI GALILEE 
 
 "Julian alone attempted to upbuild pagan society 
 on strange lines of ethics, philosophy, and mysti- 
 cism. A narrow-visioned Don Quixote, he strove 
 after an impossible goal. But like Don Quixote, 
 he, too, was a noble character appealing to the 
 imagination, and it is fitting that his dying voice (so 
 the legend goes) called forth 'the sun, the sun!' — 
 a cry to the ideal." 
 
 — George S. Hellman. 
 
 "Thou hast conquered, O pale Galilean, 
 The world has grown gray at thy breath." 
 
 • — Swinburne. 
 
VICISTI GALILEE 
 
 THE genuineness of the traditional last 
 words of the Roman Emperor, Flavins 
 Claudius Julian, may be doubted. The Apos- 
 tate, for so they named him when he renounced 
 the poor figment of Christianity which prevailed 
 in his day, is reported to have exclaimed in the 
 moment of death, "Vicisti, Galilaee!" — Thou hast 
 conquered, O Galilean! These traditional last 
 words rest mainly upon the authority of Theo- 
 doretus (111:25), though reenforced by the less 
 important authority of other writers. The cry 
 of despair attributed to the dying monarch lends 
 itself with wonderful facility to well nigh every 
 kind of artistic and literary eflFect. Swinburne's 
 "Last Oracle" turns it to marvellous account: 
 
 "Dark the shrine and dumb the fount of song thence 
 welling. 
 Save for words more sad than tears of blood that 
 said: 
 'Tell the king, on earth has fallen the glorious 
 dwelling, 
 And the watersprings that spake are drenched 
 and dead. 
 Not a cell is left the God, no roof, no cover; 
 
 In his hand the prophet Laurel flowers no more.' 
 And the great king's high sad heart, thy true last 
 lover, 
 Felt thine answer pierce and cleave it to the core. 
 And he bowed down his hopeless head 
 In the drift of the wild world's tide, 
 
236 LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 And dying, 'Thou hast conquered/ he said, 
 'Galilean/ he said it, and died." 
 
 The over-dramatic effect of the "Vicisti, 
 Galilaee!" awakens something more than mere 
 suspicion that after all the Emperor may never 
 have said anything of the kind ; and yet, true or 
 false, the picturesqueness of the phrase disarms 
 adverse criticism. The other last words, though 
 quite as venerable, and far more likely to be 
 authentic, have never prevailed, and never can 
 prevail against the dramatic force and poetic 
 beauty of the "Vicisti, Galilee!" The other 
 last words, tame and commonplace, but probably 
 genuine, are, *'Sun, thou hast betrayed me!" 
 When Julian turned from following the Galilean 
 he became a worshiper of the sun. The sun 
 was the source of all terrestrial life. From it 
 sprang beauty and gladness. It smiled upon 
 the sleeping earth, and the light of day filled the 
 heavens with glory. Field and forest were astir, 
 the flowers exhaled their sweetest odors, and man, 
 his every step quickening with fresh energy, 
 went forth to achieve new conquests, and to de- 
 light himself with increased possessions. Primi- 
 tive idolatry in every land turned its face heaven- 
 ward, and with reverential posture and praying 
 lips saluted sun, moon, and stars. Gibbon 
 quotes Julian's philosophic discourse with his 
 friends during his last hours, and represents the 
 Emperor as reaffirming his belief in the doctrines 
 of Pythagoras and Plato. He said that his soul 
 
VICISTI GALLILtEE 237 
 
 would soon be united with the Divine Substance 
 of the Universe. He still had faith in the Sun 
 though he reproached that deity with having de- 
 ceived him. 
 
 The scene that followed the fatal wounding 
 of the Emperor, and the sudden destruction of 
 his every hope and plan touching the restoration 
 of Paganism, must have been more than simply 
 impressive. Ammianus Marcellinus, who was 
 with the army at the time, and should, therefore, 
 have had exact knowledge of the last moments of 
 Julian, likens the scene to that which Plato 
 draws of the death of Socrates. It must, how- 
 ever, be remembered that the historian's predi- 
 lections were strongly on the side of the Em- 
 peror. 
 
 Julian's childhood was passed under influences 
 nominally religious but in reality selfish, ambi- 
 tious, and cruel. Yet his early education in- 
 cluded a knowledge of the Sacred Scriptures and 
 of what may be described as the technique of 
 public worship and church-government. The 
 Christian Faith as held by Constantius II. was 
 neither an attractive nor a helpful system of 
 religious belief. On the contrary, it was brutal 
 and savage — not much better than the Paganism 
 it had supplanted. Constantius was himself far 
 from being a brilliant exemplar of the virtues 
 upon which he insisted. His mind was ill-formed 
 and stupid, and, as such minds usually are, stub- 
 born and intractable. He was lacking in rev- 
 erence for sacred things. Without authority 
 
238 LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 and with neither moral nor intellectual fitness he 
 aspired to be both leader and absolute ruler of 
 the early church. Without troubling himself 
 about councils he exalted and deposed whomsoever 
 he would, requiring in all things complete and 
 unhesitating submission to his autocratic will. 
 He was one of the earliest of a long line of spir- 
 itual bosses, ruling with narrow-minded severity 
 the humiliated consciences of his fellow-men. 
 He called himself "Lord of the Universe," and 
 for the old title, "His Majesty," or its equivalent, 
 he substituted the meaningless, and it may be 
 blasphemous, appellation of "His Eternity." 
 Under his misrule violence and greed were every- 
 where. 
 
 It is not surprising that under such influence 
 and surrounded by such disorder, Julian early 
 doubted the truth of a faith that, calling itself 
 after the name of Christ, was yet represented 
 by advocates and followers who made no secret 
 of their shameful and vicious living. There is 
 some reason for believing that he was not wholly 
 sincere when under such tutelage as has been de- 
 scribed, he made profession of his faith in the 
 religion of the Galilean. Why should he have 
 been sincere.? On every side were dishonesty 
 and all kinds of wrong^doing. The most sacred 
 things were despised and venerable usages were 
 disregarded. His attendance upon divine serv- 
 ice, his zeal in the study of the ApostoHc Writ- 
 ings and in the erecting of shrines to the martyr 
 Mamas, and his performance of certain clerical 
 
VICISTI GALLIL^E 239 
 
 functions connected with the public worship of 
 his day, may all have been due, as Theodoret 
 believes, to a slavish fear of Constantius. His 
 very life depended upon his espousal of the new 
 faith, and every selfish interest inclined him in 
 the same direction. There were cogent reasons 
 why he should inwardly despise the faith he 
 had publicly espoused — reasons growing out of 
 certain peculiarities of his temperament. He 
 had inherited from a cultivated and pleasure- 
 loving mother a fondness for the beautiful in 
 art and letters. Guided by the refined taste of 
 his congenial and faithful instructor, the aged 
 Mardonius, he had learned to understand and 
 enjoy the superb literature of ancient Pagan 
 Greece. He sat with delight at the feet of 
 Homer and Hesiod. To him *Iliad' and 'Odyssey' 
 were more than epic poems; they were religious 
 literature, alive with the charm and glory of a 
 mythology that made an almost resistless appeal 
 to his imagination. His heart was with the old 
 order of things. Temples and statues were a 
 perpetual delight, as were also theatre and 
 Academy. Poets and philosophers were his 
 companions and friends. With absorbed atten- 
 tion he heard the rhapsodists recite to the tinkle 
 of the harp the marvellous story of Troy. The 
 pictures of Xenxis and the statues of Parxi- 
 teles charmed him. The Odes of Pindar and the 
 pages of Herodotus were forever sounding in his 
 ear. Is it, then, astonishing that the young 
 Juhan did not in his heart love a faith that op- 
 
24Q LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 posed all these, and that sought to substitute for 
 the spell of their enchantment a rude and fanatical 
 priesthood? 
 
 The first indication of revolt against the barren 
 and desolate thing misnamed Christianity which 
 he had outwardly, and it may be under pressure, 
 embraced, is to be found in the heed which he 
 gave to the predictions of the soothsayer of 
 Nicomedia. The young man, unable to explain 
 those predictions upon natural grounds, was in- 
 clined to view them as of divine origin. To him 
 they appeared quite as wonderful and more im- 
 pressive than the miracles recorded in the New 
 Testament. There is mention in history of a 
 secret conference with certain Platonic philoso- 
 phers who claimed to be able to introduce the 
 human soul into the immediate presence of the 
 gods. These philosophers were men of large 
 acquaintance with the world and with human 
 nature. In the unfolding of their philosophical 
 tenets they surrounded themselves with an elegant 
 and refined mystery peculiarly fascinating to 
 the poetical imagination and cultivated tastes 
 of Julian. They flattered him with their rever- 
 ential courtesy and by the kindly and gracious 
 way in which they fostered his genius, which 
 they were not slow in discovering. They en- 
 couraged him to seek the assistance of Edesius 
 of Pergamus, who was at that time the leader 
 of their school. Edesius conducted the youth 
 to the Temple of Hecate, the mysterious divinity 
 whom the ancients sometimes identified with 
 
VICISTI GALLILiEE 241 
 
 Diana of "the moonlight splendor of the night," 
 and sometimes with Proserpine the goddess of 
 darkness, secrecy, and witchcraft who visited the 
 earth at night. Her approach was made known 
 by the barking of dogs, those animals being able 
 to see her form before it became visible to men. 
 The marvellous disclosures of that Temple were 
 more than Julian could withstand. There are 
 reasons for believing that he visited the adjoin- 
 ing shrine of Apollo, but of that we have no 
 positive information. In the Temple of Hecate, 
 a pinch of sacred incense having been burned to 
 purify the reason, there appeared in flame and 
 smoke what Julian seems to have received with 
 neither question nor doubt as the Divine Pres- 
 ence. What was it that Julian saw, and that so 
 greatly influenced his after life? Various con- 
 jectures have been offered, but among them that 
 of a purely subjective or mental image resulting 
 from the influence of narcotic vapors mingling 
 with the fragrant smoke of burning incense has 
 of late years secured the largest favor. Virgil's 
 description of the Pythoness under the power 
 of inspiration shows how completely the human 
 mind could at times come under the control of the 
 "divine fury" known to ancient Roman worship. 
 
 "Her color changed; her face was not the same 
 And hollow groans from her deep spirit came. 
 Her hair stood up; convulsive rage possessed 
 Her trembling limbs, and heaved her laboring 
 
 breast. 
 Greater than human kind she seemed to look^ 
 
U2 LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 And with an accent more than mortal spoke, 
 Her staring eyes with sparkling fury roll, 
 When all the god came rushing on her soul. 
 At length her fury fell; her foaming ceased. 
 And ebbing in her soul, the god decreased." 
 
 Sometimes the worshiper shared with the in- 
 spired women of the temple or of the cave their 
 mental excitement. Hypnotic control is another 
 possibility. It may be the Divine Presence was 
 represented to the stimulated imagination by a 
 beautiful woman trained to perform her part in 
 the religious enchantment. All these sources of 
 impression were known in some way and in some 
 degree to the religous worship and service of the 
 ancients. Trickery and fraud were not infre- 
 quently made use of, and sometimes natural 
 forces and agents were unwittingly pressed into 
 service by men who believed them to be super- 
 natural. There has been recently discovered, so 
 it is reported, the secret of the "eternal flames" 
 that burned from year to year without any visi- 
 ble renewing of fuel upon the altar of Zoroaster 
 on the "Sacred Isle" in the Caspian Sea, where 
 the founder of the fire-cult preached his re- 
 ligious doctrines. The altar was situated di- 
 rectly over a deposit of natural gas. Neither 
 the prophet nor his followers had any knowledge 
 of the gas, which had probably been lighted by 
 accident, and which, when once lighted, con- 
 tinued to burn year after year. The mysterious 
 flame, sustained with apparently no renewal of 
 material for combustion, was easily mistaken for 
 
VICISTI GALLIL^E 243 
 
 a celestial fire kindled and supported in attesta- 
 tion of the doctrine and faith taught and served 
 at the altar. A fire that burned for only a 
 brief time authenticated the mission of Elijah 
 and occasioned the overthrow of the priests of 
 Baal. How much more convincing to men living 
 under a primitive civilization must have ap- 
 peared the "eternal flames" that required, so far 
 as could be discovered, neither care nor fuel. 
 Were those men and women who centuries ago 
 adored that mystical fire fools or impostors? 
 They were neither. They made the best use 
 of the limited knowledge within their reach. 
 More could not have been required of them. I 
 cannot believe that the Infinite Mercy held them 
 accountable for a light that never illuminated 
 their darkened understanding, and for opportuni- 
 ties they never enjoyed. What to them was a 
 perpetual miracle is to us a natural phenomenon ; 
 and doubtless some things that now strike us as 
 supernatural will in future years seem common- 
 place and quite within the power of the ordinary 
 forces of the world to accomplish. Others will 
 view them without surprise and explain them 
 without difficulty. We do not know what Julian 
 saw in the Temple of Hecate, but whatever it 
 was, we are told that the first time he saw it he 
 was filled with fear and instinctively made the 
 sign of the cross. At once the entire display 
 vanished, and where had been celestial glory was 
 only empty air. Twice the same sign dissolved 
 the pageant. Surprised at this, Julian ex- 
 
244 LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 claimed, "After all, then, the Christian sign has 
 power!" The philosophers who had him in 
 training were not in the least disconcerted. 
 "Noble prince," said they, "do you think that 
 you have frightened the gods? They fear 
 nothing. They vanished because they were un- 
 willing to associate with a profane person." 
 The explanation, sophistical and disingenuous 
 as it appears to us, satisfied the eager and inex- 
 perienced mind of the young JuKan, and the sign 
 was not repeated. Again a supernatural 
 splendor illuminated the sacred recesses of the 
 Temple, and a mysterious voice, possibly the 
 musical echo of his own desires or of his excited 
 imagination, or, it may be, the unscrupulous 
 work of one versed in the art of ventriloquism, 
 sounded in his ears, and it was revealed to him 
 he should soon ascend the throne and destroy 
 the religion of the Galilean. 
 
 Constantius died November 3d, A. D. 355, and 
 three days later Julian was declared Cassar. 
 His sword and his pen were equally at the serv- 
 ice of the faith he loved. Above all things he 
 desired to restore the ornate splendor of the 
 old order, and to give again to the discrowned 
 gods their lost dignity; he would rekindle the 
 sacred fire upon altars that had grown cold, and 
 rebuild the ruined temples. We are in posses- 
 sion of a body of literature, largely controver- 
 sial, that he left to the world and that proves 
 beyond question the sincerity of his purpose, 
 while it exhibits the fine scholarship and beauti- 
 
VICISTI GALLILiEE 245 
 
 ful training that won for him the admiration of 
 many who neither sympathized with his faith 
 nor desired the success of his plans. If we put 
 aside the thought of his defection and consider 
 his books as hterature we cannot fail of being 
 impressed with their strength, reasonableness, 
 and moderation. His orations and epistles ex- 
 hibit great natural ability, and in but few places 
 are they disfigured by bitterness of spirit or a 
 vindictive temper, which is much more than can 
 be said for most of the polemics of his day. 
 He had what has been called "the saving grace 
 of humor." He was quick-witted, good at re- 
 partee, and able to condense much important 
 material within a narrow compass. His knowl- 
 edge of jurisprudence and his acquaintance with 
 the art of governing men astonishes when we 
 consider the age in which he lived and the cir- 
 cumstances by which he was surrounded. Yet 
 with all these rare attainments, his understanding 
 of history and human nature, and his skill in 
 dialectics and philosophy, he failed entirely in 
 grasping the genius of the age in which he lived. 
 The signs of the times he could not read. The 
 ornate, artistic, literary, and beautiful Pagan- 
 ism of his mind had no reality in the world 
 around him. He idealized with a poet's fancy 
 the vulgar and commonplace. The gods were 
 dead but he knew it not. His mistake was radi- 
 cal and its cost was great. Desiring the good 
 of his fellow-men, he yet antagonized their best 
 interests and identified his brief reign with an 
 
246 LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 unworthy and declining cause. The Chris- 
 tianity of his time was miserably corrupt, and 
 in some respects the Paganism it supplanted was 
 its superior; still it was true then as it is now 
 that the hopes of both the world and of the in- 
 dividual gather around and center in the cross 
 of the triumphant Galilean. 
 
 That the Emperor resorted to severe measures 
 in his effort to overthrow the church and re- 
 store the worship of the gods is conceded, but it 
 should be remembered to the credit of the man, 
 and for a correct understanding of the end he 
 had in view, that those measures were always 
 regretted and were resorted to only when in his 
 opinion sanguinary means could not be avoided. 
 In one of his Epistles he wrote: 
 
 "Again and again I charge all votaries of the true 
 worship to do no wrong to the Galilean masses, 
 neither to raise hand nor direct insult against them. 
 For those who go wrong in matters of the highest 
 import deserve pity, not hatred, for religion is ver- 
 ily chiefest of goods, and irreligion the worst of 
 evils." 
 
 Again he wrote in an Epistle: 
 
 "By the gods, I want no Galilean killed, or wrong- 
 fully scourged, or otherwise injured. Godly men 
 I do desire to he encouraged, and I plainly say they 
 ought to be encouraged. This Galilean folly has 
 turned almost everything upside down: nothing but 
 the mercy of the gods has saved us all. There- 
 fore we ought to honor the gods and godly men and 
 cities." 
 
VICISTI GALLILJEE 247 
 
 Sozomenus, who lived in the first half of the 
 fifth century, says, in his "Ecclesiastic a His- 
 torian'* that Julian "while minded in every way 
 to support Paganism, accounted the compul- 
 sion or punishment of unwilling worshipers ill- 
 advised." St. Jerome tells us that Julian's sys- 
 tem was "a gentle violence that strove to win, 
 not drive." Crosius thinks the Emperor "was 
 guilty of assailing Christianity by craft rather 
 than by repression," and that he "wanted to 
 make converts by stimulating ambition rather 
 than by playing upon the fears of men." 
 
 Julian strove in every way to make severity 
 unnecessary. Yet he must have been at times 
 sorely provoked to vengeance by the violence 
 and insolence of his enemies, some of whom 
 spared him not but upon every occasion held him 
 up to the derision of the world. Gregory 
 named him with Cain, Ahab, Herod, and the 
 Sodomites. This last comparison was made in 
 the face of the well-known fact of his exceptional 
 temperance and chastity. He lived with almost 
 austere moderation in an age of rampant vice. 
 There are verses extant in which he is described 
 as a "slayer of souls," "Satan's foul sink of 
 crime," and a "tyrant accursed." Public 
 prayers were offered for his destruction. Yet, 
 if history may be believed, Julian was ever slow 
 to retaliate. Few petitions, it would seem, were 
 put up for his conversion. His destruction was 
 the one thought and wish of his adversaries. 
 The boast was openly made by men who viewed 
 
248 LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 prayer as a kind of magic that Julian would be 
 prayed to his death. Libanius, the Sophist whom 
 Julian addressed as his "Dearest Brother," wrote : 
 "Does any one desire to know who was the man 
 that killed the Emperor? I know not his name, 
 but that he was none of the avowed and armed 
 enemy there is clear proof." Libanius insinu- 
 ates that the assassin was a Christian. 
 
 Julian's effort to reform Paganism was the 
 result of his early Christian education. The 
 light of the Galilean had rendered the darkness 
 and deformity of the old Paganism intolerable. 
 It was Julian's purpose to engraft upon the re- 
 ligion of the gods the ethics or morals of Chris- 
 tianity. To that end he insisted that priests 
 should lead holy lives ; they were to relieve the 
 distresses of their fellow men, to do good to all 
 men, to avoid all wicked actions and all indecent 
 language. They were to give their time to 
 study and to the worship of the gods. Three 
 times each day they were to attend the temple 
 with which they were connected. And only the 
 pious and virtuous were to be elevated to the 
 priesthood. "Such," to use the words of Milner 
 "was the fire which the Apostate stole from 
 heaven, and such was his artifice in managing 
 it." ^ Julian established schools for the educar 
 tion of young men, and he also founded hos- 
 pitals, because, to use his own words, "the 
 Galileans relieve both their own poor and ours." 
 But the religion of the gods was a dead religion, 
 
 1 "History of the Church of Christ," Chap. VIII. 
 
VICISTI GALLIL^E 249 
 
 and no misguided effort could infuse into its 
 heart the fire of hfe. 
 
 That Julian despised the Christianity of his 
 day, which was very unlike the religion of Jesus 
 in many of its most salient features, is not 
 strange. But that so bright a mind was wholly 
 blind to the power of the Cross in any shape it 
 could assume is truly astonishing. Julian was 
 a philosopher and well-wisher of his race. He 
 had a religious nature and desired to see virtue 
 prevail. But the ^.rguments he advanced against 
 the new and rising faith were neither forcible 
 nor in any measure original. They were old and 
 had been refuted many times. They were 
 founded upon a complete misconception of Chris- 
 tianity and an irrational idealization of the old 
 Pagan cult, 
 
 Julian died, wounded in battle, at the age of 
 thirty-four, A. D. 363. Tradition has it that in 
 the moment of death he threw up into the air a 
 handful of his own heart's blood, exclaiming, 
 "Vicisti, Galilaee!" — "Thou hast conquered, O 
 Gahlean !" 
 
 Fantastic is the tale, and yet in it there is a 
 truth at once sad and glorious. Could Julian 
 return from the dark shadows of the grave, would 
 he not rejoice with us all in that bitter defeat 
 which was in the end so great a victory? Let us 
 say with Ibsen in his play of "The Emperor 
 Julian" : 
 
 "Here lies a splendid broken tool of God." 
 
250 LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 ADDENDUM 
 
 It may be Julian had in the Temple of Hecate 
 some such experience as was vouchsafed the 
 initiant into the mysteries of Eleusis. These are 
 described by Apuleius and Dion Chrysostome, 
 who themselves passed through the truly awful 
 ceremony. After entering- the grand vestibule 
 of the mystic shrine, the aspirant was led by 
 the hierphant, amidst surrounding darkness and 
 incumbent horrors, through all those extended 
 aisles, winding avenues, and gloomy adyta men- 
 tioned by the writers named as belonging to the 
 mystic temples of Egypt, Eleusis, and India. 
 The metempsychosis was one of the leading prin- 
 cipia taught in those temples, and the first stage 
 in the induction of the new aspirant represented 
 the wanderings of the benighted soul through 
 the mazes of vice and error before initiation.^ 
 Presently the ground began to rock beneath his 
 feet, the whole temple trembled, and strange and 
 dreadful voices were heard through the midnight 
 silence. To' these succeeded other louder and 
 more terrific noises, resembling thunder; while 
 quick and vivid flashes of lightning darted 
 through the cavern, displaying to his view many 
 ghastly sights and hideous spectres emblematical 
 of the various vices, diseases, infirmities, and 
 calamities incident to that state of terrestrial 
 bondage from which his struggling soul was now 
 
 1 "It was a rude and fearful march through night and 
 darkness." — Stohceus. 
 
VICISTI GALLIL^E 251 
 
 going to emerge, as well as of the horrors and 
 penal torments of the guilty in a future state. 
 
 At this period, all the pageants of the system 
 of worship represented, all the train of gods 
 both supernal and infernal, passed in awful suc- 
 cession before him; and a hymn, called "The- 
 ology of the Gods," recounting the genealogy 
 and functions of each, was sung. After this the 
 whole fabulous detail was solemnly recited by the 
 mystagogue; a divine hymn in honor of Eter- 
 nal AND Immutable Truth was chanted, and 
 the profounder mysteries commenced. And now, 
 arrived on the verge of death and initiation, 
 everything wears a dreadful aspect; it is all hor- 
 ror, trembling, and astonishment. An icy chilli- 
 ness seizes his limbs; a copious dew, like the 
 damp of real death, bathes his temples ; he stag- 
 gers, and his faculties begin to fail. Then the 
 scene is of a sudden changed, and the doors of 
 the interior and splendidly illuminated temple 
 are thrown wide open. A miraculous and divine 
 light discloses itself, and shining plains and flow- 
 ery meadows open on all hands before him. Ar- 
 rived at the bourn of mortality, after having 
 trod the gloomy threshold of Proserpine, the ini- 
 tiant passed rapidly through all the surrounding 
 elements ; and at deep midnight beheld the sun 
 shining in meridian splendor.^ The clouds of 
 mental error and the shades of real darkness 
 being now alike dissipated, both the soul and the 
 
 i"Apuleii Metamorphosis," lib. ii. v. i. p. 273. Edit. 
 Bipout, 1788. 
 
252 LOVE AND LETTERS 
 
 body of the initiated experienced a delightful 
 feeling of divine repose. While the soul, puri- 
 fied with lustrations, bounded in a blaze of glory, 
 the body dissolved in a tide of overwhelming 
 transport. Plato says, "The aspirants saw celes- 
 tial beauty in all the dazzling radiance of its 
 perfection. They joined in the glorified chorus, 
 and were admitted to the beatific vision ; they were 
 initiated into the most blessed of all mysteries.'* 
 
OCT 9 
 
 13H 
 
One copy del. to Cat. Div. 
 
 OCT 9 
 
 \<m