OUTLINES
OF
MEN, WOMEN, AND THINGS.
BY
MARY CLEMMER AMES.
NEW  YORK:
PUBLISHED BY HURD AND HOUGHTON.
ainbtriFe:.     V Rit8er i7 e   rt3.
-1873.




Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1873, by
MARY CLEMMER AMES;
in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.
RIVERSIDE, CAMBRIDGE:
STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED BY
H. O. HOUGHTON AND COMPANY.




To
MRS. PORTUS BAXTER,
OF VERMONT,
IN PRECIOUS MEMORY OF ONE GONE BEFORE,
ARE AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED.








CONTENTS.
-4 —
I. ARLINGTON IN MAY.....
II. NORTHERN VERMONT IN AUGUST...    9
III. NEWPORT IN SEPTEMBER.                     2. 20
IV. INDIAN SUMMER IN VIRGINIA...    37
V. CHARLES SUMNER'S HOME...       43
VI. GRAND DUKE ALEXIS IN NEW YORI..    56
VII. A RAINY MORNING IN THE COUNTRY..66
VIII. MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI...           77
IX. A FRENCH JOURNALIST....  95
X. FANNY FERN....                       106
XI. HORACE GREELEY AND EDWIN FORREST..116
XII. LOLA MONTEZ.......                   124
XIII. THINGS GONE BY..... 131
XIV. THE FALLEN MAN.....   144
XV. PHYSICAL BASIS OF STATESMANSHIP.      155
XVI. INSTINCTIVE PHILOSOPHERS AND STATESMEN    164
XVII. PIN-MONEY.....173
XVIII. BREADMAKING.....188
XIX. OUR KITCHENS......200
XX. CASTE IN SEX.....   20
XXI. WOMAN SUFFRAGE...        225
XXII. UNA AND HER PAUPERS....   239
XXIII. LET US LIVE.....         247








OUTLINES
OF
MEN, WOMEN, AND THINGS.
I.
ARLINGTON IN MAY.
ARLINGTON is a lovely spot. Virginia, with
all its vaunting, can hardly boast of a fairer
domain. From its slopes you look down upon
the valley of the Potomac. Beyond the lordly
river Washington stretches away to its crowning Capitol. The great dome glitters through
the crystal-blue air, and high above it the Goddess of Liberty holds tutelary guard over the,
newly consecrated land. This is the picture —
flecked here and there with breezy fields, and;
open woods, and softly swelling hills —which,
we see from Arlington. As we turned into the
old Alexandria road, I thought of something
that I saw not very long ago: a letter, the last
one written by Mary Custis from Arlington, to
Robert E. Lee, before she became his wife.
The letter of a happy girl to the man beloved
1




2                0 UTLINES.
and chosen to be the husband of her heart and
the ruler of her life, her eventful fate has given
to it a touching significance. It referred solely
to their approaching marriage and future life,
and was full of love, and hope, and religious
faith. The young officer, stationed for the time
at Old Point Comfort, seemed to be in possession of only narrow quarters. Yet the heiress
of Arlington saw nothing formidable in this,
and counted it no sacrifice to leave the wide
halls of her home for the scanty conveniences of
a military fortress. ~" When  mother came,
why, they could make a bed in the sitting-room
for her; and as for a maid, if there was no
room, Mary Custis could do without one! "
Rare  self-abnegation for a Virginia  heiress.
Then came pleasant gossips about the bridesmaids and groomsmen already at Arlington,
and maidenly fears as to how she should acquit
herself through the trying ceremony; followed
and finished with that exquisite humility of
love which always sees in the beloved one the
finer good, the diviner beauty, both of body
and of spirit, which, humble-hearted, it misses
in itself, only to recognize and worship in that
other self who is now the counterpart and
crown of all true existence.
She was unworthy of such great happiness;




ARLINGTON IN MAY.              3
but, because he deserved it all, the blessing of
God would descend upon their union. Indeed,
she felt that they could claim that benediction
of heaven promised to those who honored and
obeyed their parents, and sought to do the will
of their Heavenly Father.
On a certain day she would ride from Arlington on horseback and meet him at Alexandria.
Over this very road came the happy lovers.
Far and fair on every side stretched the sunny
lands which were their proud inheritance. Arlington House opened wide its doors to these
beloved children. Its patriarchal trees waved
their summer welcomes. Slaves came thronging
from their cottages to greet their " dear Miss
Mary" and her handsome young husband.
What a summer day for these joyous hearts!
Ineffable as its sunshine shone the promise of
their future. It was well for Mary Custis that
to her was given no " second sight" to divine
the sorrow of a far-off morning. Well that
those soft eyes, looking on, did not see these
gay old gardens and violet slopes sown thick
with human bones, and turfed with ten thousand human graves! When she wrote this let —
ter, in the sweet fullness of her heart, it was
well she could not know that when her hair was
white, and her heart old with many sorrows, a.




4               0 UTLINES.
soldier would find this letter amid the treasures
left in the home from which she was banished
banished because the husband for whose sake
she dreamed all gracious fortune would come
was an armed traitor, fighting against the government which had covered him with honor.
She was innocent and lovely; but the innocence
and loveliness of one could not avert the inevitable punishment of generations of wrong. This
letter, full of all girlish gentleness and love,
draws us in sympathy toward her who wrote
it; yet we look on the graves of the dead,
beneath the protecting trees of Arlington, and
say, Far be that day when to Mary Custis, or
to her children, shall be given back the home
of her fathers!
" It would be enough to make these dry
bones stir and come forth, armed with new
life," said a gentle voice at my side this morning, in the Soldiers' Cemetery at Arlington.
We stood on those wooded swards, looking down
through the widening vistas, and on every side,
reaching far out till they seemed to meet the
sky, were the graves of our soldiers. No human tongue, though touched with the inspiration of angels, no word of man could move
with the eloquence of this silence. From the
fields of Manassas and Bull Run, from  the




ARLINGTON IN  MAY.                  5
thickets of the Wilderness, from the waste places
of Virginia, day by day, the nation gathered her
darlings, and laid them  down to sleep upon
these peaceful slopes.  Thousands are buried
here.  Hundreds of thousands more, from  the
Heights of Arlington to the bayous of the Gulf,
sow all the land -  the soldiers who fought and
perished  for liberty.  Every grave is turfed,
and has at its head a white board, telling of
the " unknown," or giving the name, regiment,
and time of death of the soldier who sleeps
below.  At the entrance of the avenues are
tablets, bearing inscriptions such as these:
" On fame's eternal camping-ground,
Our silent tents are spread,
And glory guards with solemn round
The bivouac of the dead."
Whether on the tented field or in the battle's van,
The grandest place for man to die
Is where he dies for man! "
I never saw  Arlington  so silent and lonely
before.  It is no longer the headquarters of
troops, but a silent temple amid the vast city of
the slain. The hush of the grave has touched
its threshold. The sanctity of the dead seems
to pervade its silence. The lower apartments
are all open to visitors, who walk about with
softened voice and step.  The rooms look old




6                O UTLINES.
and worn, but are in no way defaced.  Old
paintings still look down from the walls of the
drawing-room, and in the library mouldy books
are securely locked away in antique cases. The
stag's head and antlers still deck the grand old
hall, and a sideboard remains to tell of ancient
cheer. Yet everywhere amid these relics of
family life, with their stories of a happy and
illustrious past, hang the records of our lost,
reminding us only of the lowly yet illustrious
dead. Beautiful Arlington, looking down upon
a landscape soft as Italy, may you never again
be the home of the living! The birds come
earliest to your branches, and on your tender
slopes the sweet arbutus first wakes to life. In
your mossy moulds the violet distils its earliest
fragrance, and here, when Summer seems gone
from the world, she leans back to your sheltered
hills to say good-by. There can be no kindlier
spot in which the soldiers of our love may rest
after the march and the battle. There can be no
fitter place in all the world, than the domain of
the man who used such power to destroy her, for
the mausoleum of the nation.
Before me lies my first spray of trailing arbutus from the woods of Arlington. In Southern airs it caught its pinky bloom, filled its cells
with honey, and distilled its subtle fragrance;




ARLINGTON IN MAY.              7
yet it is twin to the arbutus that I used to find
amid the lush leaves and wonderful mosses of
the woods of New York. Don't make me sentimental, Arbutus, with your memories of earlier
Springs, from whose freshness neither time nor
care had brushed the first dew of youth! You
are the very same, Arbutus; you haven't grown
old a bit. And Spring comes back, fair and
young as ever. Time does not touch her bloom,
nor palsy her pulses. The same ecstasy thrills
in her veins, and in her myriad of delicate nerves
young life is all astir.
Her loving angels are abroad. They tint the
sky, soften the air, sail in the serene clouds.
They have touched the buds, wakened the blossoms, they renew the life of the living; drop
their mantles to cover the graves of our dead.
How is it, Arbutus? You have not changed,
neither has the Spring. We gaze on you with
the same eyes, caress you with the same fingers;
yet we, we are not quite the same. Each succeeding Spring seems to touch a deeper Spring
of life within us. Every time we welcome May
again we feel that we have gone down deeper
into the mystery of Being. Our years need
not be many to make us feel that they have
robbed us. They have heaped up treasure for
us. They have given us place and power, love




8               OUTLINES.
and happiness. Yet they have buried our dead
and estranged our living. They now make us
feel what we have missed. They have taken
from us that which they can never restore - the
freshness, the promise of the beautiful beginning! Thus my Arbutus saith?  You sin as
you write, says Arbutus. My tender tints, my
spiritual perfume, renewed in primal freshness
Spring after Spring, are the promise of the
Everlasting Spring.




II.
NORTHERN VERMONT IN AUGUST.
I FEAR I have nothing to say that you will in
the least care to hear. I am just as fond of you
as ever, dear souls; only I must own I am disinclined even to tell you so. Do you know how
blessed it is to be quiet.?  How much more
blessed it is to feel that you may be quiet in
peace, that no mortal living has any right to
demand that you shall break your peace by one
compulsory word or sound?  The latter blessedness I know not. I am at rest because I am
a runaway. I have run away from the world.
I am at peace because I will not be defrauded
of it utterly by the wear and tear, the fret and
hurry, the work and pain of mortal years lived
in the trampling thoroughfares of men. Here
an I watching a humming-bird oiling its gauzy
wings in a spruce tree beside my window (such
a charming sight), with not a word to utter
of the slightest importance whatever. Not a
thousand miles distant there is a little room
whose desk and books and pictures and lounge




10                   UTLINES.
even are full of serious meditation on human
life and all that concerns it. Life has no phase
of joy or pain, of thought, action, or experience,
which has not been faithfully and often sorrowfully studied in that little room.
"The low sad music of humanity," the refrain of toiling millions of men and women, at
times seemed too heart-breaking to be borne;
the problems of human destiny too difficult and
conflicting to be solved by mortal mind; the
very comprehension of human life more than
one could bear, sometimes, in that little room.
When I shut its door I shut human life- at
least, the ceaseless consideration of it - behind
me.  If this could never be done, how could
one live? From this aerie in the mountains
how  can I reach down, take up its tangled
thread, draw it into where I am, and weave it
into the harmonies of thought?  I am not here
to think, but to rest; here to grow strong by
fresh contact with the life-giving earth, to feed
the very pulsations of life from the deep breast
of the mighty mother.
I essay to speak; but can think of nothing
but the brooks that I have waded and followed
- the shining brooks, lined with moss, fringed
with ferns, arched with cedars, spruce, and pines,
thronged with trout, beautiful as flowers. I




NORTHERN VERMONT IN AUGUST.  11
can see nothing but mountain tops and sunsets,
and many lakes, glittering between the hills.
Resplendent are these all to see; but oh! how
poor they show through the finest glitter of
words. Then it is heavenly to "loaf "; but it
is not much to tell about. If it is loafing to
bask on a bank, in the full blaze of the sun,
through an entire August afternoon, making intimate acquaintance with bugs and " things"
- the cunning workers of the ground and the
murmuring nations of the air-then am I a
born loafer. I spend an afternoon in this fashion whenever I can possibly get the chance.
All the Aunt Jemimas in creation might croak
around me about my waste of time, all the
same I'd cultivate my bugs. Let the sun burn
and tan me; I "loaf" on in imperturbability
of soul.  Pretty field-bugs, that live in the
grass, are such delightful society, compared
with tedious people. If you have never found
this out, do try. My closest companions during the last month have been grasshoppers.
They will not leave or forsake me. There is
one actually hopping on my paper at this moment. The amount of time I spend in mending their legs and helping them out of tight
places should insure me their gratitude as the
benefactor of theirarace.  " Grasshopper, grass



12               O UTLIN~ES.
hopper, give me some molasses!" is the child's
cry. Now, unasked, they give me many other
things - analogies among the rest. I sat down
in an open field, the other day, amid grasshoppers as many as there are men in a State. The
air was full of them, the brook was full of them,
the grass was full of them, and by my side on
an immense flat stone they were holding a mass
meeting. They sat in rows, closer than the men
in the Philadelphia Republican Convention. It
was a serene looking assembly in mass. But
very soon it gave evidence that it was not without its excited individuals, its " disaffected members."  In sooth, it was not without its " bolters."  My! When everything seemed to be
progressing peacefully, up would hop a bolter
and jump straight into the brook. Mad little
bolter, he slid along smoothly enough for a minute; then whirls, eddies, rocks were his. On
he dashed to his fate, straight into the mouth
of a big trout.
Lake Memphremagog is set like a mirror between the mountains of Canada and Vermont.
It has none of the warm sylvan beauty of Lake
George, or of the idyllic loveliness of Lake
Willoughby; but it has a majestic, masculine
splendor wholly its own. When the September
sfin drops low, and cold, steely shadows creep




NORTHERN VERMONT IN AUGUST.  13
along the sides of the girdling evergreen mountains, its deep, inky waters and lovely but
lonely shores take on the look of the lochs of
Scotland - blue, and cold, and solemn, like
them.  Under the frowning Owl's Head you
feel as if you were sailing on Loch Achray and
looking up at Ben Venue. But it has blither
phases - long, bright vistas, filled with majesty
and splendor, touched here and there with tender
beauty. How I wish that I could transcribe them
for you, so that the dead type might glow if but
ever so faintly, with a reflection of the inexpressible beauty of God's world. But I am more and
more impressed with the impotency of words in
reproducing Nature, either in form or color.
"Why do we ever attempt it?" I ask a
friend. " A painter cannot see a sight like this
without the passionate desire to reproduce it in
form or tint; or a writer, without the attempt
to portray it in words. Both know before they
begin that the best that they can do will be but
a mockery of the reality. What makes them
attempt it? 
"The instinctive desire to  share it with
others," was the answer.
The most attractive abode on the lake is that
of Sir Hugh Alan, M..   This is a story-anda-half white cottage, standing on a hill, in a




14             0OUTLINES.
grove of white silver poplars, with the British
flag waving proudly from its summit.  This
cottage, low and small, is nevertheless supported in true English state. When Sir Hugh,
with his guest, Lord Lismeth, and a retinue of
gay ladies, attend the little wooden church in
the sleepy hamlet of Georgetown, dreaming a
few miles further on, the fact is chronicled in
the Stanstead newspaper with all the solemn
empressement with whichla sneeze of England's
queen is recorded in the " Court Journal."  Sir
Hugh can go to church in his yacht. This little bantam steamer is the only lively thing on
the lake. Compared with the graceful yachts
which float in Newport Harbor, it is what a
quacking duck is to a sailing swan. It quacks
and waddles; but it waddles well.
Midway up the lake, on the Canada side,
Georgetown  clings to the shore, a barren,
wooden, treeless little hamlet. At the end of it
Magog - wooden, barren, and treeless, also, on
a larger scale - waits the coming of the " Lady
of the Lake," the only event of its Summer and
early Autumn day. In Winter its days have no
events. Here Mount Orford, the highest mountain in Canada, holds guard. And, while the
boat turns, gazing back along the line of girdling mountains, through the vistas of embow



NORTHERN VERMONT IN AUGUST.  15
ered islands, which dot with gleaming emerald
the sapphire of the lake, we see the towering
and cloven notch of mountains in which shines
that star of lakes, Lake Willoughby. The soil
on the Vermont shore of the lake seems to be
much softer, warmer, and richer than on the
Canada side; it has none of the blue, stony look
of its precipitous banks, and this must account
for the massy luxuriance of the foliage which
covers its mountain sides, and crowns their summits, and curtains with the brilliant green of veiling vines the gray old bowlders which crowd the
shore. The sun drops behind Orford a globe of
scarlet, and the old mountain grows very purple
in the face, and the top of his crown is edged with
fire. We like his looks, which are somewhat exciting; but the boat swings round and shuts him
from sight. Here is old " Sugar Loaf."  Every
land that has a mountain at all is sure to have
a Sugar Loaf; but not every one beside one
lake holds another on the top of his head.
That is what this Mountain Loaf does. High
above the rich cedars which skirt its sides, on
its very summit, a tranquil lake holds up its
mirror to the skies. The country folk call it
Concert Pond, prized by fishermen in proportion
to its difficulty of access, and to the choice qual
ity of its speckled trout. We pass Owl's Head,




16              0 UTLINEFS.
beloved of mountains, to find the pretty White
Mountain House at its base deserted, shut up,
save when visited by picnic parties. Inaccessible by road, and visited but by a single boat, its
actual loneliness and isolation have proved to
be too great for the average summer tourists.
Twilight on the waters deepens. into the early
September night. The boat darts through the
darkness, in and out among the islands; the
fishermen's huts fade out of sight on the shores;
the shores merge into one dim and misty mass;
Jay Peak is lost in the darkness of the skies;
the little boy on my lap grows cold and still,
then with a quivering sigh asks, " Where the
big boat is. going to, and if we will ever get
home."  And when, at last, it touches Newport
pier, and I look back upon the dark water, shut
within the imprisoning mountains, I am surer
than ever that even in the sunshine Memphremagog, if one of the most beautiful, is also one
of the most solitary of lakes.
Borne by loving arms Alice Cary was brought
to this lovely lake-land during the last August
of her life. From this bay-window she looked
through a vista of maples out upon a broad expanse of meadow-lawn, whose velvet turf is of
the most vivid malachite green, softened on its
further edge by a grove wherein the shades of




NORTHERN VERMONT IN AUGUST.  17
spruce and pine, elm and maple, contrast and
blend. Beyond these woods Lake Memphremagog sets its glittering shield between the
hills. On its farther side green mountains arise
till they hold the white clouds on their heads.
Below, Jay Peak stands over four thousand feet
above the sea, while above, Owl's Head soars
over three thousand, covered with forest to its
summit. It is a picture fit for Paradise. Yet
it is but one glimpse amid many, of the inexpressible beauty of this lake and mountain
country of the North. She, sitting here, looked
out upon this consummate scene; looked with
her tender, steadfast eyes across these emerald
meadows, to the lake shining upon her through
the opening hills, to the mountains, smiling
down on her from  the distant heaven, their
keen amethyst notching the deep, deep blue of
a cloudless sky. The splendor of this northern
world fell upon her like a new divine revelation. The tonic in its atmosphere touched her
feeble pulses; the peace brooding in its stillness penetrated  her aching brain with the
promise of a new  life. Without, the world
was full of tranquillity; within, it was full of
affection and the words of loving kindness.
Then she wondered (and her wonder was sad
with a hopeless regret) why Summer after Sum2




18                OUTLINES.
mer, she had lingered in her city home, till the
crash and roar of the streets, coming through
her open windows, had filled body and brain
with torture.
" How blind I was," she exclaimed.  " I said
that I could not take the time from my work;
and now life has neither time nor work left for
me.  How  much more, how  much better I
could have worked had I rested.  If I am
spared, how differently I will do. I will come
here every Summer and live."
Alas! before another Summer, the winter
snow  wrapped her forever from  the earthly
sight of this unutterable beauty.
Hers, from the beginning, was the fatal mistake
of so many brain-workers - that all time given
to refreshment and rest is so much taken from
the results of labor; forgetting, or not realizing,
that the finer the instrument, the more fatal the
effects of undue strain, the more imperative the
necessity of avoiding over-wear and the perpetual jar of discordant conditions; forgetting,
also, that the rarest flowering of the brain has
its root in silence, and beauty, and rest.
Here in this window, whither, wasted and
suffering, she had been borne, she wrote her
Invalid's Plea ":
"  Summer! my beautiful, beautiful Summer,
I look in thy face and I long so to live;




NORTHERN VERMONT IN AUGUST.  19
But, ah! hast thou room for an idle new-comer,
With all things to take and with nothing to give?
"With all things to take of thy dear loving-kindness,
The wine of thy sunshine, the dew of thy air;
And with nothing to give but the deafness and blindness
Begot in the depths of an utter despair?
"The little green grasshopper, weak as we deem her,
Chirps day in and out for the sweet right to live;
And canst thou, 0 Summer! make room for a dreamer,
With all things to take and with nothing to give?
"Room only to wrap her hot cheek in thy shadows,
And all on thy daisy-fringed pillow to lie,
And dream of the gates of the glorious meadows,
Where never a rose of the roses shall die? "




III.
NEWPORT IN SEPTEMBER.
I HAVE reached "' the land where it is always
afternoon."  Even when the morning sunshine
splinters on the keen-blue waves of the bay, and
its expanse is full of motion and sound, there is
a quality in the atmosphere, a softness in its
light which falls upon you and pervades you
like the tranquillity of evening. It is born of
tempered elements.  I cannot tell you what it
is; but it is full of rest. It is not wonderful
that this is named the Isle of Peace, or that
tired people like to come here. As I take my
morning air-bath on this little family pier, I find
a fascination in these waters that will not let
me go. It soothes brain and nerves. It silences
the rush and roar of the great, hurrying world.
It says: " All things have rest from weariness.
All things have rest; why should you toil
alone? "  I conclude that I won't. The truth
is, I can't.  The result is, the mail closes, the
boat departs, and the light of heaven, the voices
of earth, the mesmerism of the waves, the pic



NEWPORT IN SEPTEMBER.            21
tures of human life, all thronging together void
and voiceless in the mind, have refused to take
on palpable shapes, and have disdained the feeble offer of a stubby little pen to reveal them.
I'd send you the crown of the morning, if I could.
An hour ago it looked like a storm, and the wind
blew perversely. It was only a make-believe of
the Nereids. They are busy now lifting up the
steely fog that covered the bay like a shield;
and, as its edges break and curl and fly away to
the sun, they glitter like shreds of silver. Underneath spreads the bay, a translucent sapphire.
In the bay float the jelly-fish - tremulous,
gleaming jewels. On the waves the fishingpunts are putting out for their heavy shoals.
The bay-skiffs are all on the wing, darting from
the little household piers and dancing away for
a swing in the wake of some stately steamboat.
Row-boats, painted bright blue and red and
yellow, are darting about in every direction,
full of boys and girls, whose happy voices come
back to us across the waters.
Down the harbor a little way the idle yachts
lie dreaming with the sleeping gales, before they
begin their mid-day race. Beyond, past old
Fort Louis, a great school-ship from New York
has cast anchor. What a sight it is - the hundreds of boys clinging like bees to its mighty




22               OUTLINES.
yards. High up in the blue air, they look no
bigger than bees; and I watch them dropping,
dropping like spiders down their ropy stairs.
Now four long black boats are dropped down
the ship's sides to the water. Now they are
filled with boys, and now they scull across the
bay for a race; while a thousand boys on the
ship fill the air with their shouts and hurrahs.
Away out to the ocean these bright waters are
quick with human life. But human life upon
the waves is not the noisy and tiresome thing
that it is upon the streets. The very motion -
clear, swift, and silent- is full of repose. It
reminds me of delicious Venice, that I never
saw. What would be these primeval elements
alone, without the human presence, that loves
and suffers, rejoices and sins? Midway in the
bay lies the green island of Canonicut. I see a
church-spire, and clustering farm-houses, and
sunshiny meadows, and cattle grazing down to
the very shore. Below, the stone ramparts of
Fort Adams, with their mounted guns, rise from
the water; and nearer Fort Louis lifts its gray
old head above the soft, purple " Dumpling"
hills. So perfect a picture of it as Higginson
has given us in " Malbone " can never be made
again. He says: "As you stand upon the
crumbling parapet of old Fort Louis, you feel




NEWPORT IN SEPTEMBER.             23
yourself poised in middle air; the sea-birds
soar and swoop around you; the white vessels
come and go; the water is around you on all
sides but one, and spreads in pale-blue beauty
up the lovely bay, or in deeper tints southward
toward the horizon-lines.  I know of no ruin in
America which Nature has so resumed; it seems
a part of the original rock; you cannot imagine
it away."
It is a single low tower, shaped like the tomb
of Cecilia Metella.  But its stately position
makes it rank with the vast sisterhood of wavewashed strongholds. It might be King Arthur's
Cornish Tyntagel; it might be "the teocallis
tower of Tuloom."  The pretty Miermaid carried us over to it the other day- a perfect day.
She bore us into a moss-covered cove, and we
climbed the slippery rocks, led by a maid with
flowing hair and a scarlet petticoat. How gay
and picturesque she was against the gray old
summit, as she looked back and called us on!
We sat down at last upon the broken parapet,
high above the water - a little company, each
of whom sent " long, long thoughts " of his and
her own silently out to the questioning waters.
We were enveloped in the marvelous atmosphere (fine, soft, sun-suffused, yet exhilarating)
which has made the climate of Newport famous




24               0 UTLINES.
for centuries. Across the bay, Newport soared
from shore to hill, lovely as that enchanted City
of the Sea portrayed in " Counterparts."  At
either end of the islands far-away lawns run
from villa and chdlet down to the bay, with
white yachts tossing by the pretty piers at their
feet. Just below us a pleasure-boat, filled with
a gay party, was running in and out among the
rocky islands and coves of the " Dumplings."
Before us a French corvette was lying in the
stream, its tri-color hanging disconsolate in the
still air, and its Gallic hands busy at work making haste to leave an unfriendly port.  On the
other side of us, the sheep were grazing on the
rugged slopes of Canonicut. Within the fort
Nature's wild blooms covered with grace the
db6ris at our feet. Roving bees hummed to us
with assiduous attempts at more intimate acquaintance. Crickets trilled their slender horns
in the waving grasses, while all around us the
golden-rod on the crumbling bastions waved its
yellow sceptre and proclaimed to us that the
conquering Autumn had come, and taken captive
the Isle of Peace, no less than the lanes and
woods at home.
Ah, my dears, it is so hard to work hereso very hard. I try; but every day some lovely
gust of human kindness swoops me up and




NEWPORT IN SEPTEMBER.            25
sweeps me away. Again the mail closes, the
boat goes, and - and you know the. rest.
Let me think, and see if I can tell you a few
of the lovely things that have happened since I
stopped up yonder; but, if I were to take up
again every sunny thread that I dropped, I
couldn't weave them into a picture at all.
There was the out-door lunch-party at Mrs.
Julia Ward Howe's country home, six miles
away. It was all that a lunch-party could be
on the fairest of August days, under the trees,
with a ruined mill at the foot of the hill; and
handsome men and beautiful women and flowerlike girls basking on the grass; and the most
genial of " high-up " philosophical doctors from
Boston to hold theml in a mild degree of awe,
and to preserve them from degenerating into too
absolute mutual admiration; and with a hostess to whom " Kant " is " light reading " and
the Sanskrit a pastime, dispensing chowder with
lavish ladle. I bear witness that she did it gracefully, generously, with those beautiful hands,
and without a hint of ink or of " Moral Trigonometry."  Mrs. Howe is attractive anywhere.
Even on the platform she appears with a shy,
half-deprecating, half-bewildered air, as if she
herself could not quite make out why she was
there; but nowhere else does she appear to




26              OUTLINES.
such absolute advantage as she does when dispensing hospitality to her friends, in her own
demesne, in the midst of her young daughters,
each one of whom is a perfect wild-rose in her
fresh, girlish grace.
I will here ask Mrs. Howe why, instead of
doling out her essays to scanty audiences, she
does not set them within book-covers and give
them to the world? They belong to American
literature, and ought to take their place in it.
Nothing to compare with them in scholarship
and philosophical thought has been produced by
any American woman except Margaret Fuller.
At present the highest feminine gifts in this
land, as well as much of the masculine, through
the exigent demands of daily life and the curse
of the want of money, are devoured by that insatiable Moloch, the Press, who still cries for
more, but makes no record of the untold treasure
which he devours. How many grandly-endowed
women sacrifice the rich vitality of their heart
and brain to this monster, day by day; yet they
must pass and leave no enduring trace in the
world of art of all that they have thought, felt,
suffered, and given to their race. With all her
mental and spiritual wealth, no American woman to-day is giving anything that will long endure to the literature of her country. Thus, if




NEWPORT IN SEPTEMBER.             27
there is one among us who can embody for the
world the best results of leisure, of culture, of
comprehensive thought, and of rarest womanhood, let us have it.
How I wish that I could transcribe for you
the splendor of "the Cliffs." But in these September days there hovers a light over sea and
shore which cannot be caught and imprisoned
in words. Wordsworth would not have sung of
"the light that never was on sea or land " had
he gazed out over this opaline ocean, over these
flickering shores, which in the same moment
concentrate and radiate the loveliest of unimagined, indescribable hues. The beach, two
weeks ago crowded with equipages and gay
people, the surf, alive with hundreds of shouting and laughing bathers, are empty and forsaken. The gale swept away the long line of
bathing-houses; the pie and candy man has
gone to assist elsewhere in the destruction of
the human  teeth  and  stomach; but " the
Cliffs!"- never in the July heats was their
beauty so absolute as in the perfect sunshine
under. the perfect heaven of this September
morning! Yonder, amid the abundant grass,
the peaceful cattle graze; yonder a maple
beckons us toward  it with a scarlet hand:
yonder wide beeches and elms spread out green




28               O UTLINES.
tents under which we may rest.  Amid these,
its face toward the sea, looks forth a home so
harmonious in outline, so poetical in aspect,
that it is hard to realize that the trail of death
and sorrow could ever pass through it, or that
those who inhabit it could ever be tired or sorry,
sick or lonesome, as at some time every mortal
who carries the burden of this human life must
be.  Past hundreds of. such homes, on and on
through the green grass, for miles winds the
narrow path of "' the Cliffs." The absolute peace
of the green earth and its homes on one side;
ragged rocks, evermore the ocean on the other.
What stories you would tell, little path, if you
only could! What vows, what love you have
listened to, perhaps by those who uttered them
so long ago broken or outlived!  What beauty
you have seen, what purity, what sin! What
human want, and loneliness, and sorrow, and
joy have told their stories to you! At the boathouse, over two miles from its beginning, the
path of "the Cliffs " ends. Here, above the sheltered cove where the little boats are chained to
the rocks, looking toward Brenton's Reef, where
the lightship tosses through the nights and days,
you may sit down, and with your gaze try to
follow the ocean out to where it meets the horizon.  To do this is to relinquish yourself to its




NEWPORT IN SEPTEMBER.            29
spell, to be magnetized by its might. It draws
you outward into its infinity.  You catch a
glimpse of your own eternity. "Long, long
thoughts " are these which leave your soul to
travel out across its immense reaches of evershifting space. No narrow street, no imprisoning walls limit or restrict your mind as it goes
on to the eternities. You are the same being
that you were yesterday in the stifling and
crowded city - the one who then felt so inadequate to live; the one to whom life, with its
penalties, its losses, its pain, seemed so much
more than you could bear. How feeble seemed
your hold on human love, on thought, on spiritual faith! You are the very one - and now!
How certain you are of everything sweetest,
truest, and best.  Already you have passed
through " the sea change into something rich
and strange."  You sat down beside it, weary
in body, weary in heart; and unaware you
have already drawn into your veins something
of its inexhaustible life. This is one talisman
of the ocean, its boundless energy. Who can
approach its waves and not feel it and receive
it! It electrifies you forever with its buoyancy
of life. Ages of storms cannot make it old.
After every tempest, it comes back and touches
your pulses and washes your feet with the smile




80               OUTLINES.
of irrepressible youth. Yet its very waves, as
they break before you, have something eternal
in their call. As you follow them, how sure you
feel that there is that in you which can never
end. How sure that the love and devotion of
your throbbing heart will survive when that
heart is still. How sure that the beings best
beloved - marred now by the infirmities of the
body and of the mind - will yet be given to
you some day redeemed and glorified and pure.
To those who seek it, there is a charm  in
Newport beyond its fashion. The Ocean House
is closed. The gay pagoda, where the band
played a week ago, is silent. The great halls
and piazzas, then thronged with gay promenaders, are shut and deserted. No six-in-hand
now dashes along Bellevue. The Turk, with
his toys from Constantinople, has gone; the
fashion shops have hurried back to Broadway;
but Newport is lovelier far than when all the
denizens of Babylon were here.  The cottagers
remain; and the cottages, their flowers, their velvet lawns, their hammocks swinging toward the
sea. Redwood Library - that perfect bijou of a
library - is still here, and more enticing than
ever. One may sit in an easy-chair and read almost any newspaper or review ad libitum.  You
may look at the " Dying Tecumseh; " or if you




NEWPORT IN SEPTEMBER.             31
don't want to, at " Venus of Milo " and " Apollo
Belvidere." The fashion has gone; but the ocean
remains, and the perfect days. There is a softer
iterance in its call than ever came to us in Summer. A light rests upon its waves and on its
shores which no language can interpret or transfigure. Along the roadside crowds of asters
look up at us through their purple eyes, while
all around them every knoll and meadow flames
with golden-rod.  In the tree-tops the miracles
of color have begun. Autumn, in her first
ecstasy, has decked herself as for a carnival in
yellow and scarlet.  From its floods the Island
has emerged as radiantly green as when June
was born. All around it run the opal lines of
the ocean; all over it bends the intense blue of
the heavens, flecked with the ever-changing
splendor of the sailing clouds. Within, enthroned are these superlative days, " Mediterranean days," whose golden airs flow over you
and through you, full of the softness, without
the languor of the South. Here by my open
window, looking over Narragansett Bay to the
ruined forts which Higginson has so inimitably
portrayed, I am reading " Malbone."  I should
never have read it if I had not come to Newport. For, dipping into it in the " Atlantic " one
day, I touched Malbone and recoiled. I have a




32               OUTLINES.
constitutional hatred of a masculine Mormon. If
I had my way, there is not a willful, intelligent
man-Mormon in this land that should exist in it
a moment longer than it would take to drive him
out of it. But the Mormon whom I especially
detest flourishes outside of Utah, makes mischief
and havoc far from the walls of Salt Lake City.
He is especially detestable because, besides being a Mormon, he is a hypocrite.  A Mormon
in practice, he yet, pretends to be something else
and better.  Malbone is a constitutional Mormon. Nothing but laziness and the laws could
keep him from having a harem fuller than the
Sultan's. Missing this, he would console himself by prowling into other folds, and none
could be too sacred for him to invade.  No
noble work or ambition absorbs his manhood,
All the subtlety of his intellect, all the graces
of his person, are valuable to him only as they
enable him to manipulate the hearts of women;
and the sole study and profession of his life is
to make all women of any charm his slaves. If
any woman on earth is unfortunate, it is she
who loves with a woman's pure, sole love such
a man - a man who loves (?) her only while he
sees her, and forgets her altogether while kissing
the next woman that he meets.  This is Malbone, altogether contemptible from beginning to




NEWPORT IN SEPTEMBER.           33
end. One is thankful that his victims are portrayed in such pale water-colors that one can
suffer less for them than if they were living
women, embodying in life-force their agony and
wrong.  " Malbone" and "Aunt Jane" are
real - the only vitalized characters in the book.
In reading it, one feels certain that the man
who wrote it ought to and can write a vastly
better one; that where it is thin and weak it is
so through no paucity of material, but through
the hesitation of the author to use the material
that he had. It is written in delicious English.
Its words are pure and limpid as this Newport
air. Its Proem is perfect. And in a hundred
exquisite touches it reveals and portrays the
varied loveliness of this enchanting place with
a sympathy and charm which has never been
surpassed.  Opposite  is the  old " Hunter
House," in which its scenes were placed; a
noble old house, looking out through its trees
with wide-open doors, as if it had no secrets to
hide. All Summer it has been filled with
boarders -mothers and their children. Its
great hall runs straight through the middle, and
its front-door and back-door stand wide open
from morning till night. I look through it
now, away out to the bay. Any of us and
all of us race through it, down to the little
3




34               OUTLINES.
pier behind the house. After reading Higginson's poetic description of this old colonial mansion, I ran across the street and studied it -
its carved mahogany staircase; the pineapple
above its back-door; the dumpy cherubs on its
parlor wainscot, which, by the way, some barbarian  has painted. white; even the spiral
stairs up which poor little Emilia is supposed
to have crept to the handsome but good-fornothing Turk in the attic. Now they are very
honest-looking stairs, without the suggestion of
secrecy; their doors, opening on every hall,
matter of fact white doors, which look as if
they never could have shut in either tragedy
or shame. Colonel Higginson lives a few streets
back from  the bay, in a cottage ornee, amid
flowering baskets, trees and vines, books and
pictures, as a poet should. The master of a perfect style, if he does not break his power on too
small matters, and waste it in petty punctilios,
he ought to give us the best American novel
since the days of Hawthorne.
It is Saturday, September 3, and the event
not only of the season of 1870, but of years, has
come to Newport. The Spouting Rock is sending up water in cataracts, and a great storm at
sea has come up to the shores.  All Newport
is at the ocean. For miles the ocean-road is




NEWPORT IN SEPTEMBER.                35
thronged with equipages. Gentlemen and ladies
scale the cliffs on horseback, while thousands
stand and sit upon the rocks, silent with awe.
The sky is steely gray. The clouds hang low
and cold, rushing athwart and repelling each
other.  The waves rise, roar, strike, and resist
each other; the elements are all at discord.
What is the matter with the ocean?
" In name of great Oceanus,
By the earth-shaking Neptune's mace,"
what is the matter?  A thousand Niagaras let
loose chase each other to our very feet. Great,
green, glittering walls of wave, they rise far
out, moving slowly, slowly on; reaching higher,
higher, as they come; till, full before us, quivering, toppling, they rush upon the rocks; rise,
lash, break, and lash again, with stupendous
roar.  Other waves, distinct and individual as
animate beings, dart up from the ocean, and,
with white manes far outspread, absolutely fly
above the water. Fleet, terrible is their race,
these chariots of the sea, with  Triton their
trumpeter, till in swift collision they strike, and
lie shattered on the shore.
Pan is not dead.  The Ocean of God is
moved to its deepest cavern, crying aloud, as if
it knew the message which it this instant bears
of the folly and misery of man. This moment




36               OUTLINES.
the electric chord within it is repeating to the
world another of the awful tragedies of history,
as Napoleon III. the Man of Destiny, imbecile
and old, succumbs at last to fate; and men
beloved, the sacrifice of kings, lie slain on a
hundred battle-fields.




IV.
INDIAN SUMMER IN VIRGINIA.
TELL me, please, when Indian Summer comes.
The trouble is, I never found any one yet quite
certain when its perfect days dawn and fade
away from the world. It must be that Indian
Summer comes, and goes, and comes again, at
her own gracious and golden will, through all
the months of October and November. In early
October, when its scarlet conflagration spreads
from mountain to mountain, till they blaze from
base to summit; when the first veil of mist
floats over their tops, and the first golden
nebulae sails down the valleys; when the physical and spiritual sense within us is first touched
by that coolness and stillness, that softness and
sadness, which, penetrating the fervor of the
later Summer, is Autumn —then our newspapers and our neighbors tell us that it is the
beginning of the Indian Summer.
But a whole month later, when the color
carnival is nearly ended, when the intense scarlets and ambers have burned into ashen hues;




38               OUTLINES.
when the evergreen of pine and cedar, the
garnet of the oak, alone throw rich shadows
across lingering lichens and the purpling grays of
autumnal mosses; when crows caw in dismantled
woods, and  squirrels scamper through their
rustling lairs, and nuts drop into their russet
beds, and the crickets pipe their shrilly horn
in the yellow grass, and the wide atmosphere
seems palpitant with  limpid  gold, and  the
finest pulses within us tremble, touched by
the finest phases of sight, and sound, and of
subtle fragrance-then from the hills, or the
heavens, we know not which, falls that dreamlike spell which seems to hold all things in
peaceful trance, and we stand as in a vision
amid the transfigured world. We are awed by
its miracle, and no one need tell us that it is
Indian Summer.  This season reaches perfection amid the Virginian hills. It comes early
and lingers late. Its delicious coolness pervades
you like a presence before you behold a visible
token of its advent. I saw its first little scarlet
flag, waving from  the top of a sumach tree,
weeks and weeks ago.  It was not September
then. Yet it was on that grassy ridge, over
which the little red flag fluttered, that I caught
my first autumnal glimpse for you.  Through
the trees which fringed it I saw  marvelous




INDIAN SUMMER IN VIRGINIA.    39
glimpses of the Shenandoah, with its sea-green
gleam, flashing at intervals far up the valley;
and on either side the first mountains of the
Blue Ridge lifted their softly-scolloped edges
toward the deeper sky.  Yet it is not for these
that I would have you see what I saw. It is
very sentimental, you know, wandering about
searching for views; and you and I wish to be
practical and wise! Let no imagination touch
these broken ramparts, these deserted forts,
these high-piled earthworks, looking as if they
had been thrown up but yesterday; these riflepits, these battered canteens, these flattened
bullets lying in the grass, these scattered graves.
Three years ago this fragrant wood-way was
alert with manly life. Great guns pointed toward that lonely river; bayonets glistened
above those low-boughed oaks. Five years ago
this hour I saw the sun set below these mountains, swathing these steeps in peaceful light,
crowning with sacrificial glory ten thousand
men in line of battle before the foe. The fight
was deadly.  Man mocked the peace of God
with the impotence of war. The shock of cannon shook these hills. Shells ploughed the serene ether with fiendish yell. Musketry rattled.
Everywhere around us were the dying and
the dead. Far as the sight could reach, along




40             OUTLINES.
the white road, in ghastly line, moved "the
anguish-laden ambulance."  Through the twilight, through the starlight, pierced the cry of
the wounded. My God! Who that ever heard
it can forget!
And now? The sumach waves its scarlet
flag above that battle-ground. That battleground where so many knightly hearts beat
and bled, where so many fair young lives went
down in sacrifice, was now gay with goldenrod. The wild-rose blossomed in the covert of
the fort; on the very edge of the rifle-pit the
evening primrose held up its cup of gold. And
now? Through the purple haze we look away
to Maryland Heights and London Mountain.
We lift our eyes to old South Mountain, and
behold still the furrows through its woods which
the batteries cut that day. Below us Antietam
Creek maunders through the meadows. There
is Burnside's Bridge, and, on the Sharpsburg
side, the ancient church into which the wounded
were carried from the battle-field. Here, in
God's quiet, sleep the dead of Antietam.  The
dead? It is the living who are dead; who
are false to the cause for which they perished.
Ten thousand sleep together here. Look at
the long, long trenches! They who are buried
in them, in such close embrace, died in the




INDIAN SUMMER IN VIRGINIA.    41
thickest of the fight; and no power can gather
their names from oblivion.   "Aged nineteen,"
" twenty," " twenty-one," and " twenty-two "!
Thus we walk on, and on, and find no record
which tells that the soldier below lived twentyfive earthly years. Was it not the flower of
the people, in truth, that perished for country
and the humanity of man. The battle still
goes on. The old, old battle of truth and falsehood, of might with right, of corruption with
the incorruptible. On the anniversary of that
battle, when the nation agonized for its life,
demagogues, who have betrayed every sacred
principle for which these soldiers died, dared to
profane the silence of their rest by shouting
words of party rant and of political intrigue
above these graves. I looked on their bloated
faces, and beside them  came other faces —
powder-grimed, death-pale, imploring-eyed 
the faces of men that I saw die. It was grief
unfeigned that cried: Was it for this, only this,
you perished, 0 my land's beloved! 0  ye
living, do you realize the cost of every prize
which Freedom  holds precious?  Then let us
dedicate ourselves anew to be worthy of our
heritage.  Only through  a manhood and a
womanhood consecrated, exalted, can we prove
to after ages that our dead died not in vain.




42              OUTLINES.
It is through individual purity "that the nation shall, under God, have a new birth of
freedom; and that governments of the people,
for the people, shall not perish from the earth."
Since that September evening what superlative
days have trailed their splendors along these
mountain-sides! They linger still. As I see
the great pines on the mountain-tops dip their
needles in the gold of the ascending sun, I say,
1" Another matchless morning! It must be the
last!"  And when the sun drops down the
valley, and its sentinel mountains change
from  amethyst to amber, and vale and river
are flushed with unimagined hues, I say "Italy
cannot more than mate this sunset! But there
cannot be another! "  Yet the perfect days
have merged into weeks, and still the miracle
goes on. It is as if Summer —not the impassioned queen whose ensanguined death we
watched upon the mountain yonder; but another Summer, serener, softer than the firstsmiled in the very face of Winter, brightening
the world ere she leaves it forever.




V.
CHARLES SUMNER'S HOME.
THE eastern sunshine pouring down upon the
blooming city does not add its brightness to
any spot in Washington so pleasant as that
lying within the compass of Arlington Hotel,
Lafayette Square, and the Executive grounds
and mansion. In Winter, or Spring, or Autumn
the scene here is always metropolitan and beautiful. Within this radius are the winter homes
of Mr. Sumner, Vice-President Colfax, General Fremont, General Irwin, General Butler,
General Bancroft, Secretary Belknap, Speaker
Blaine, Secretary Fish, and many other public
persons. The asphalte pavement scarcely sends
back a sound, yet it is covered with glittering
equipages and thronged with richly-dressed
women and children, while the ample halls of
the Arlington are perpetually sending forth a
gayly dressed and distinguished throng.
But in April, without warning, Lafayette
Square breaks into a sudden splendor which
makes all mortal splendor poor. The trees




44               OUTLINES.
which line and arch the street on either side
take on a sudden glory which shames the bare
and chill arcades of their northern brethren.
Never was there a deeper depth of bloom than
that which draws and holds the vision in these
deep blossomed trees. I never gaze into them
without thinking what they would have been to
the eyes and souls of De Guerin and Thoreau.
They slowly sway their green pendants against
the gold of the evening sky, and the very
movement soothes one like the music of content.
The sunshine, glimmering through the green
roof of the park, enters the eastern windows of
a house opposite, and, hovering over its pictures
and works of art, seems to flood its rooms with
somewhat of that light which never was on sea
or shore. It needs all the potency of the eastern sun to bring out upon these canvases the
full glory of color, and to suffuse the tints of
the artist with the vivid splendors of actual
Nature. On these walls hang original paintings by Tintoretto, Sir Peter Lely, Sir Joshua
Reynolds, Sir Benjamin West, Gerard Douw,
Gainsborough, with a captivating collection of
proof engravings. In the large back parlor,
half-dining, half-drawing-room, the fine light
of the morning shines full upon one of the ma



CHARLES SUMNER'S HOME.              45
terial beauties of the court of Charles the Second, and upon the portrait of Hannah More,
at thirteen, by Sir Joshua Reynolds - two portraits of opposite types of womanhood, the
latter preeminent in intellectual beauty, showing a face in coloring and expression never to
be forgotten.
On the easels in the bay-window we see a
group of Spanish officers in a Holland guardhouse.  They are  smoking  their pipes and
holding up wine-cups in their exquisite hands,
as if reveling in mirth and " dreamful ease," in
utter oblivion of a Dutch guard-house. Opposite, the Holland lacemaker sits in her open
porch.  Without, there is a glimpse of summer
sky; its tranquil light peers in and plays upon
her placid face. It is the realization of repose.
There is rest in the movement of the soft hands
weaving the thread above the pillow, and in
the very dog asleep at her side. Between these
homely pictures  of realistic life stands the
marble daughter of a king.
" She was so beautiful that, had she stood
On windy Ida by the oaken wood
Troy might have stood till now with happy days,.    And Psyche is her name in stories old."
An exquisite life-size marble, copied from  the
antique original at Naples.




46               O UTLINES.
In a painting over the mantel a god is descending to break the chains of a slave. Here
are a portrait of Benjamin Franklin, busts of
Longfellow  and of Everett, while engraved
heads of many of the masters of the world line
the wall from floor to ceiling. In another part
of the room fruits and flowers suggest beauty
and cheer.  Everywhere there is color and
warmth. High ideas and the forms of beauty
are alike embodied in the tints and outlines of
art. Yet all are toned into harmony under one
artistic hand. Nothing seems too beautiful to
be enjoyed, and the aspect and atmosphere of
the room are not more poetical than homelike.
But the adjoining apartment is preeminently
the scholar's room. You pass its open threshold,
to stand bewildered, on the first glance, at its
profusion of bronzes, busts, statuettes in marble,
antique souvenirs, various vases, photographs,
engravings, and paintings. Yet the carpet under your feet is true to the suggestions of Nature, as all carpets should be — softly green as
the May turf, covered with golden stars, like the
dandelions dotting meadows.  One side of the
room is hung with engravings from  Turner;
and here is the ancient head of young Augustus,
from which all the portraits of the first Napoleon were modeled. Here is the marble bust of




CHARLES SUMNER'S HOME.           47
Mr. Sumner, taken in 1839, while he was editor of the " American Jurist;" here the winged
Mercury, the Venus of Milo, Hercules, Demosthenes, Pericles in his veiling helmet, with
kings, philosophers, and dreamers of many ages
and climes. Above the bookcase hangs a painting which pervades the entire room with its delicious atmosphere, It is an Italian landscape,
by Richard Wilson, the English Claude.
Apart from its exquisite coloring, it attracts
and holds one through " the subtle secret of the
air " — that depth of distance which draws the
sight on, and on, and on; that marvel of perspective which seems to allure us into eternity
in the pictures of Turner. But the choicest
treasures lie out of sight, as choicest treasures
always do. When these softly shutting drawers
are opened, they show many a quaint illuminated book; a Bible bound in wood, written
on parchment by some monkish hand, with the
iron chain which held it to the ancient public
reading-stall still hanging to it.  Here are mediaeval missals, wrought on vellum, with many
a flowering saintly device, bound in velvet and
clasped with gold, just as they were when some
lady prayed over them at the altar in the dim
past. Here is a diploma given from the University of Padua, generations since, which bears




48                 UTLINES.
every mark of having been a family treasure. It
is bound in crimson velvet, its Latin printed in
gold, its pages illuminated with flowers as brilliant in tint as if they had just grown under an
artist's hands. The portrait of the youth to
whom it was given looks forth from under this
gorgeous cover. Fresh and fair in immortal
youth is this son of Padua, though all of him
mortal went back to dust long ago.
There is nothing on earth more stupidly dull
than an average autograph book. The vast
crop grown in Washington certainly has not
increased their value; but here are faded names,
written on parchment scrolls, which stir a thousand nameless memories.  The very sight of
them seems to people the place with the men
and women who made the epochs of this world's
history.'Here is a deed in Latin, signed by
Elizabeth, Queen of England. This overtopping
E " and imperial flourish were traced by the
vain and haughty hand of the tyrannical queen.
I won't moralize over it; but it has suggestions.
So also has this, the name of her brutal father,
Henry VIII., traced by his own hand. Here is
a veritable letter written by Catherine De Medicis to her son, Charles IX.; and here the picture of this woman, great in guile - a handsome
woman, with a flattened head and a material




CHARLES SUMNER'S HOME.            49
face, and a stately form, cased within a closely
fitting robe, likes the scales of a serpent.  Here
also is a letter from  Mazarin to Fabri de Peirese, written from Avignon, 1634, and another
from Richelieu to the Marquis of Breze, 1632.
And these are but a few of the names in this
priceless collection. It is like thrusting one's
hand back into a far-off age, and  drawing
something out of its silence, to lift this little
book from the drawer wherein it lies.  It is
called an "Album  Amicorun," and was kept
by a Neapolitan nobleman, Camillus Cordoyn,
at Geneva, during the first half of the 17th century. This town being on the highroad to Italy,
at that time, it was a favorite stopping-place.
This album  contains several hundred autographs of different nations, each with a motto
or sentiment attached. Among these are those
of German princes, French noblemen, English
Cavaliers, and Roundheads. This is  the inscription by the famous Lord Strafford, when a
young man, on his continental tour:' Qui vivit
notus omnibus ignotus voritur sibi, 1612."
John  Milton, on his way back  from Italy,
shortly before his return to England, wrote in
this book the last line of his own " Comus,"
which was already published before he began
his travels.
4




50                 OUTLINES.
Here it is in Washington to-day, 1871, its
freshness scarcely dimmed, as sensitive and delicate in characters as the day on which they were
traced:
" If virtue feeble were
Heaven itself would stoop to her."
Cesium non animun muto dum trans mare curro.
Joannes Miltonius Anglus, Junii 10, 1639.
Here is John Bunyan's Bible with its wormeaten cover and well-worn brass knobs, and here
a book from  Madame Pompadour's library, a
dainty thing   bound with faded rose-colored
watered silk, its cover chased in gold, illuminated with vividly tinted flowers and her royal
coat of arms, meet memento of the imperious
and  intellectual mistress of Louis Fifteenth.
Here is the original copy of Burns' "Scots wha
hae wi' Wallace bled," in the clear bold writing
of the poet, and here the original manuscript
of Pope's "Essay on Man," with all the erasures and interlinings added by the fastidious
writer, just as they were left by his pencil —
O! how long ago at Twickenham -  and here,
lying with others on the library table in its
plain morocco cover and soft ribbons, looking
scarcely different from its mates, is a book once
owned by the haughty and unfortunate Earl of
Essex.  What memories of passion and fury,




CHARLES SUMNER'S HOME.           51
of folly and fate, are recalled by these two little
names written ages ago by their owner, Robert
Essex?
Here are the manuscripts of Edmund Burke
-letters written by his own hand, extending
through a length of years, carefully bound.
Great Britain has allowed to pass from  her
keeping these treasures of the great master of
English eloquence, and they find a fittirng shrine
in the house of another master as great as he.
In the same drawer there is a little old worn
schoolbook, with a schoolboy's name written
on the title-page in a schoolboy's scrawl, and
with a schoolboy's spiral flourish at the end.
The name is " JOHN DRYDEN;" and this little
old book, the one that he used when at Westminster School, in 1646, is full of his Greek exercises, interlined throughout with Latin translations of the Greek sentences, in the boy's own
hand. And the schoolboy's book of Old England of 1646 is the precise prototype of the
schoolboy's book of New England in 1871.
Personally nothing could be more interesting than the first small printed copy of the
"Spring " of Thomson's Seasons, published in
1728.  This is the author's copy-the one he
presented to the woman he loved. It was ac



52                   0 UTLINES.
companied with the following verses, on the flyleaf, written by his own hand:TO MISS YOUNG.
"Accept, loved Young! this tribute due
To tender Friendship, Love and you;
And with it take what breathed the whole -
Oh, take to thine the Poet's soul!
If Fancy here her power displays,
And if an heart exalts these Lays,
Thou fairest in that Fancy shine,
And all that heart is fondly thine."
On another page is copied a portion of a letter from  Thomson to this lady, whom  he was
never permitted to marry.   It has been said
that model love-letters are rare  in  this nineteenth century.  They may have been in the
eighteenth; but in this it transmits to us, at
least, one perfect. Its tender rhythm is not surpassed  by  the  most melodious  lines  in  the
" Castle of Indolence."
HAGLEY, August 29, 1743.
"At the source of this water composed of some
pretty rills that purl beneath the roots of oaks there
is as fine a retired seat as love could wish. There I
often sit and with an zexquisite mixture of pleasure
and pain, of all that love can boast of excellent and
tender, think of you. But why do I talk of sitting
and thinking of you -there?  Wherever I am, however employed, I never cease to think of my loveliest




CHARLES SUMNER'S HOME.             53
Miss Young. You are part of my being; you mix
with all my thoughts, even the most studious, and
without disturbing give them greater harmony and
spirit. Ah, tell me, do I not, now and then, steal a
tender thought from you?....  I would rather
live in the loneliest corner of London with you than
in the finest country retirement, and that too enlivened with the best of society- without you.
"Think with friendship and tenderness of him
who with friendship and tenderness is all yours.
" JAMES THOMSON."
Even the doors of this room  are hung with
pictures.  We pass by the " Gate of Victory "
into the hall, which is covered with photographs,
some many feet square, of the Coliseum, the
group of St. Peters, and the Vatican, and other
famous Roman and classical views.  Beyond,
the door opens upon the parlor - a small, lustrous salon, hung and carpeted in gold and azure,
illuminated with mirrors and paintings, looking
upon  Lafayette  Square —the lovely Nature
without, complementing and crowning the lovely
art within.
The house itself is a four-story brick dwelling,
with Mansard roof; attractive by its cheerfulness more than anything else. A bright band
of green grass holds it from the street, and visibly all that divides it from the Executive Man



54               0 UTLINES.
sion is the square, full of trees and birds and
sunny children, which grow and rejoice between.
You have a glimpse of a small portion of
Charles Sumner's home. Its chief charm lies
in this, that it is the unique ard beautiful expression of an individual nature. Everywhere
it reveals the thought and feeling of its owner.
No house can be a home unless in some sense
this be true -unless its very furniture is imbued not only with the taste but the affection of
its possessor. In Washington there are elegant
and aesthetic houses; but, as a rule, the abodes
of its public men are mere temporary stoppingplaces or great upholstered show-shops, showing
little but the wealth or vulgarity of their owners. A  material and commercial smartness is
everywhere glaringly visible. This comes from
the fact that mere speculators, schemers, and
traffickers are so rapidly buying with money and
patronage the high places of public trust, once
filled by scholars, statesmen, and gentlemen.
It is impossible to recall the refined and
scholarly memories of Jefferson, Madison, the
two Adamses, Josiah Quincy, Edward Livingston, Edward Everett, and their peers, without
regret. They were the men who brought the
highest culture, the gentleness of gentlemanhood, combined with political acumen and power,




CHARLES SUMNER'S HOME.            55
to the administration of public affairs.  The
house just sketched is interesting as the home
of a scholar and statesman, one of the last of
that race of great scholars and statesmen so
rapidly passing away,




VI.
GRAND DUKE ALEXIS IN NEW YORK.
" BROADWAY! Broadway is delicious! " said
an English lady.  " It is more intoxicating than
Paris. Its very atmosphere is like new wine."
All of us realize this at times.  On an October
morning, perhaps, when the sea-breezes flutter
still in our garments, when the fragrance of the
pine forests linger with us, and all the freshness
that we caught amid the summer hills quickens
our steps and blooms on our faces - then, stepping on its pavement, " Broadway is delicious."
Looking down Broadway upon such a morning,
reminds me always of Guido's " Aurora."  Gazing up above the glittering walls into the exhilarating air, it seems as if one must see her coursers, with all the heralding graces, making their
pathway to the sun. But no. The graces are
all on the sidewalks; so, too, are the horses.
Instead of spurning the clouds, they fall down
on the cobble-stones, and are seized by the
Society which takes care of horses and prepares
them for the Kingdom of Heaven. Yet, with




GRAND DUKE ALEXIS IN NE V YORK.  57
all the perils of its pavements, Broadway is delicious on an October morning. On such a morning we expected to see " ALEXIS." I came home
from the country in season to see him; and,
strange to tell, am not ashamed to own it. Most
of my friends, I find, seem to feel that there is
great merit in saying,' Oh! I didn't go to see
the Prince    it was a mere happen;" or (with
a superior air), "I don't run after princes."
Well, I don't; but I like to look at them when
they look as well as Alexis, and have a face and
head so well worth studying as the pure type of
an historical race. I went on to Broadway on
purpose to see the son of the Emperor of Russia,
and am more than obliged to M'r. Brady for the
delightful seat in his gallery which gave that
fair Romanoff face and magnificent head to the
treasured pictures of memory.  Every name
outside of our personal life is what association
makes it. Mere curiosity might lead a crowd
to gaze at the Prince of Wales in Broadway;
but to-day his name could inspire no enthusiasm. He has out-lived the fairest promise of his
youth.  His mother and poor Alexandra would
shed a wife's and mother's tears for him; but it
would be better for England to-day if he were
dead.  Eight centuries of kingly blood from
William the Conqueror, through Robert Bruce,




58               OUTLINES.
and all the lumpish and rakish Georges, may
make him royal, but has failed to make him
noble. If we made geese of ourselves over him
to-day, it could only be for his mother's sake, or
because he is heir to her crown. IIer son Arthur
Patrick aroused no enthusiasm in America. He
was a very tame young man; well enough, but
no more. The most remarkable thing about
him was his shirt-collar, and that was ugly.
Royal blood, from William  the Conqueror to
Albert the Good, have failed to produce in him
anything more than a perfectly common-place
young gentleman. I never went into Broadway
to behold him. It's a Prince I fancy, not princes.
The Roomanoff of the nineteenth century is a
splendid creature.  When the line of Ruric
ceased, nearly three centuries since, the Romanoff came forth from the people, powerful and
brutal, and made himself a king. Nearly three
centuries have gone, and he is still a king - an
absolute monarch over one of the largest empires
of earth. -To-day he is strong, chivalrous and
gentle, stately and noble to behold. The young
man Alexis comes from a race of giants. Peter
the Great was a giant in frame as well as in
mind.  The Empresses Anne and Elizabeth
were as strong as men. Catherine the Great,
with the power and passions of a man, could




GRAND DUKE ALEXIS IN 1YNEW  YORK.  59
strike a man down with one blow of her hand.
The Emperor Nicholas, iron in muscle and will,
was the handsomest man in Europe. His son
Alexander, the present Emperor of Russia, is
scarcely less remarkable for manly beauty, and
in person and presence "every inch a king."
The wife of Nicholas, beautiful and good, was a
daughter of the almost divine Louisa of Prussia,
the loveliest victim ever immolated to the cruelty
of Napoleon the First. The present Empress of
Russia comes from a princely house famous for
the piety and graces of its daughters. Thus I
said this young man Alexis, whose cortege will
be here presently, inherits from his ancestors
many of the most powerful, some of the worst,
and some of the best traits in human nature.
Meanwhile, through the crystal air came the
distant throbbing of advancing drums and the
measured beat of marching feet The last October day in its matchless procession of perfect
days had gone by. It loitered long for his coming; but the ocean refused to give up Alexis.
Now November had hushed her storms for a
day, and hung out the brightest of blue banners
to salute him. It is worth a journey to New
York to see Broadway in all the bravery of an
ovation. The daily repeated chill of long delay
had failed to rob this of its splendor or majesty;




60              OUTLINES.
for in miles on miles of concentrated, eager human life there is always majesty. Far as the
eye could see, up and down, Broadway was literally packed with human beings. Across the
street, Stewart's shop of marble, covering an
entire block, was lined at every window from
base to summit with ladies and children. From
the windows of other shops all goods had been
taken, and, tier on tier, to their tops, they were
lined with gayly-dressed women.
"Look there! " exclaimed one gentleman to
another, in astonishment, at the sight of a great
Broadway shop-window, filled to the top with
feminine creatures.  "That's the handsomest
show-window I ever saw."  The ladies blushed
and looked discomfited at attracting such attention; but they would not come down.  They
would see the Prince. Men crowded the housetops, clung to the walls and steeples of the
churches; and one man (there is always sure to
be one who must attract attention to his own
insignificant self, no matter what the occasion)
one man hung himself out from the spire of
Grace Church, and amused himself bykeeping
humane mortals below in a perpetual fright lest
he should drop upon the pavement and smash
his foolish head. Flags flew from every housetop; pennons and devices floated out from ten




GRAND DUKE ALEXIS IN NEW  YORK.  61
thousand windows; boys stood on the street
holding aloft garlands and baskets of flowers,
from whose hearts stood forth in scarlet blossoms the name of " Alexis."  Richly-dressed
ladies, in open carriages, sat at all the corners. At last the crowd began to push forward,
then to sway back before the advance of a
platoon of mounted policemen.  Then came
more than a thousand policemen, in a solid body,
as one man; then a regiment, with banners and
band; then four regiments of young men, forming a hollow square. In its centre, in a carriage drawn by four jet-black horses, with goldmounted harness, rode the young man of the
hour. He sat head and shoulders above the
three other gentlemen in the carriage, and was
conspicuous, not for his attire, which was the
uniform of a lieutenant in the Russian navy,
but for his powerful stature, and for the height
of his head, which rose like a dome under its
"glory " of golden hair. People, thinking only
of the prince a moment before, forgot him in.
admiration of the man. Handkerchiefs waved,
huzzas went up. Alexis bowed his head to his
friends. Thus, amid flowers and banners, beautiful women, glad music, and the shouts of the
people, followed by miles on miles of mounted
and marching men, thousands of whom were as




62              0 UTLIINES.
fair, as young, and as brave as himself, the son
of the Emperor of Russia entered the metropolis of the country to which he has proved so
devoted an ally. For, after all, until the moment that they saw his face, it was only the son
of the Emperor of Russia that the people waited
to see. He was not even the heir to its throne.
True, it had been told of him that his twentytwo years had already compassed deeds of heroism; that he was a true sailor in a storm at
twelve years of age; that he had rushed into
the water and saved a strange young girl from
drowning, at the risk of his life; and these deeds
proved that he was more than a prince - a
man, with the inborn nobility of manhood in
him.  Yet not for this was he honored. He
was welcomed for his father, who received an
American admiral with royal honor, who has
never spared money or pains, even in his reception of private American citizens, and who was
America's steadfast friend in her darkest hour.
It was New York welcoming Russia. Yet no
less the Archduke Alexis wins good-will for
himself wherever he goes. His striking person
and presence, combined with a singular modesty of demeanor, disarms criticism, and inclines
the loudest "sovereign" citizen to pardon him
for having been born a prince, and to like him




GRAND DUKE ALEXIS IN NEWT  YORK.  63
as a man. For this, personally, he will be the
longest remembered and admired — that, had
he not been the son of an emperor, no less he
would have commanded respect and admiration
as a man.
The Archduke Alexis is over six feet high,
with great breadth and depth of chest, an erect
carriage, and a head remarkable for its height
and development of reverence, veneration, and
benevolence.  Whatever else he may forget to
do, he will never forget to say his prayers. The
upper part of his face is of remarkable beauty.
The hair, waving and golden, is cut short.  His
forehead is intellectual, his eyes of deep blue,
large and full, with those swift scintillations of
everchanging expression which betray the soul
and make the finest charm of any human face.
The best of his face is its manliness. It is a
thoughtful, earnest face, the face of a man who
would be no less noble in trial and adversity
than amid all the splendors of fortune. His
hands are simply huge, and have the grip of a
Polar bear. At least, they are capable of bearing more handshaking than ordinary hands. I
saw him  go through with this American ordeal
the other evening. He did it with patience and
grace, if not with enthusiasm. It gave a sturdy,
unsentimental grasp to the daintiest kid-gloved




64              OUTLINES.
hand outstretched to him. But the face of
Alexis told many stories during the process.
One instant it looked pleased, the next weary,
the next indifferent, and the next would brighten
again. " Ie is very handsome and agreeable,"
said a young lady who danced with him;
"but he has the ugliest hand I ever saw."
And, if she makes the thin, sensitive, nervous
American hand her criterion, it is not strange
that she calls this giant fist ugly. It is an ugly,
honest hand, that looks as if it had travelled
down the Romanoff line from a day when the
Romanoffs were not "royal."  If the Grand
Duke can't dance well, he can walk with a will.
Head and shoulders above all the company, he
went about with Miss      on his arm. The
young lady was very graceful and pretty, in
blue crape, with a little blue feather and pink
aigrette in her hair. As the two went laughing
and chatting through the crowd, they were fair
to see. It was the story, old as the earth, of the
youth and the maiden. In their glorious young
manhood and womanhood both were royal.
We prose over the vanity of earthly honors;
yet no less it is the splendor of life to be born
to its purple. It is of heaven to be young,
beautiful, and beloved. "I was young then,"
Madame De Stael would say, and burst in tears,




GRAND DUKE ALEXIS IN NEW  YORK.  65
whenever, in exile or sorrow, she recalled the
glory of her youth. If it is the scion of an illustrious race, the representative of a vast and
friendly power, the son of an emperor, no less
it is youth, beauty, bravery, and manhood,
whom  America welcomed in the young man
Alexis.
5




VII.
A RAINY MORNING IN THE COUNTRY.
A RAINY morning in an old country home is
rich in compensations. Only in the country do
the real homes of the land remain unprofaned
and unmolested. The great city is full of
" residences," which change inmates every year.
Occupied by nomadic and transitory tribes,
precious memories and life-long associations
have no time to take root within their shallow
walls. They are merely stopping-places, in
which hundreds of successive families halt for
a season in their pilgrimage from the cradle to
the grave. They are prized according to their
rent, their modern conveniences, the fashion of
the street on which they stand. The old home
in the country is beloved because in it children
were born and died; because in its old rooms
sons and daughters have grown from childhood
to man's and woman's estate; because its doors
have closed behind them when they went forth
to meet their fate, and opened in tender welcome
when they returned in sorrow or in triumph




A RAINY MORNING IN THE COUNTRY. 67
from the world. What if its ceilings are low,
its rooms old-fashioned, its antique furniture
glossy with time instead of veneering: here
Jenny was born, here Johnny died, here Tom
and Molly were married, here father and mother
grew old, and hither children and grandchildren
came to renew the youth and revive the joy of
the generation before. The old house is dear
because it is a home consecrated to a family
life, sanctified by all its love and suffering,
by grief outlived and by affection perpetually
renewed.
A rainy morning in such a house is a precious
season. To be sure the old rooster in the barnyard looks forlorn, and I am glad of it. His
tail is very wet and droopy, and he waves that
baton of power with a shade less of authority,
and reminds me less aggravatingly than usual
of Brigham  Young, the only man on earth
whom I really wish to be hung. The rain dims
the jeweled leaves of the maples across the
street. The sunshine, that sent a thousand
glittering lances through their scarlet and amber masses yesterday, to-day has disappeared;
the mountains have merged into a sky of cloud;
the rain beats on the near roof in myriad pulses,
which seem to keep time with the memories
that fill this old closet. It is an,old closet, full




68                O UTLINES.
of old books - the family books of one, two,
three generations. Here are the children's books
— painted, scrawled, thumbed, and old. The
children who laid them  down are men and
women now. And one, the little girl who died,
is "a fair maiden in her Father's mansions."
The boy who brooded for hours over the ballad
of "Lucy  Gray," and whose childhood was
filled with mournful conjectures concerning her
uncertain fate as stated in the closing verse in
the " Third Class Reader," -
"Yet some maintain that to this day
She is a living child,"
has lived to grow  sick and sad over human
carnage, and to restore many a " solitary child."
And the boy who painted his young "trainers"
such a deep blue, while he read,
"Oh! were you ne'er a school boy,
And did you never train? "
lived to more then "play march, march away,"
and to face death bravely in many of his country's battles. Well, well, who would not be a
child again, if only to be drilled in the'"Rhetorical Reader," and to feel the new thrill when
reading for the first time the "Burial of Sir
John Moore," and
" On Linden, when the sun was low,"




A RAINY MORNING IN THE COUNTRY.  69
with the real quiver of the "rising and falling
inflection," and the exquisite pleasure of growing pathetic over the quaver in one's own voice,
to  say nothing of the delicious tears at the
first consciousness of pathetic sentiment.
But, if one wants to note the varying fashion
in mere literary style, let me commend them to
the old magazines and annuals of vanished
generations.  Iere is an old " Museum," published before I was born.  Its front page is
garnished with a full-length portrait of Washington Irving, in a frock-coat nearly to his
ankles, boots with pointed toes, one thumb to
his chin, a seal in the fingers of one hand, and
a letter in the fingers of the other. A more
affected and absurd picture of a sensible man it
would be difficult to imagine.  Yet it does not
equal the description of it, copied from " Fraser's
Magazine."  It says:"From  his steadfast gaze, and the smile of soft
delight which is lighting up his countenance, we
should think that he is thinking of thee fair clime of
Andalusia, and of the dark blue waters of the Guadalquiver. We know not if he be a smoker; but, to
judge by his gentlemanly appearance he ought to be
one!  Smoking is and always has been a healthy
and fashionable English custom. There were schools
and professors established here for the purpose of
teaching the mystery of smoking, on the introduction




70              0 UTLINES.
of the Virginia weed; and the mode of expilficating
the smoke out of one's mouth is at present a shibboleth demonstrative of an English gentleman. We
could hardly conceive of anything in the shape of a
gentlemanly biped coming from the nondescript savages of America.  We were, however, agreeably
surprised in 3Ir. Irving, who, from a nine days'
wonder, has become the greatest favorite," etc.
Touching the present day, and yet not of it,
are Mrs. Lydia Maria Child's "Letters from
New York."  They are, as all letters should
be, a reflection of their writer; and being this,
are full of the sunshine of a sunny temperament, and the love of God and man and Nature.
Indeed, a denizen of to-day must marvel how
through any mere letters from New York could
be filtered so much of the fragrance and bloom
of field and wood, -so much of the light which
hovers over sea and shore. It proves not only
that to the heart that loves her Nature is never
wholly absent, even in the great city into which
she peers down between high housetops and
through scanty patches of barren land; but
also how  since that day the great city has
grown, feeding upon Nature and hiding her
from sight. It reads like a romance to-day,
these words written in 1844: " Wandering over
the fields between Hoboken and Weehawken, I
came upon the loveliest little clump of violets,




A RAINY MORNING IN THE COUNTRY.  71
nestling in the hollow of an old moss-grown
stump."  Alas! where that "loveliest clump
of violets nestled" stone cellars strike far downward to-day, and high walls pierce upward,
shutting humanity and its necessary vegetables
in, and Nature and violets wholly out.
To one who never saw Brooklyn, Jersey City,
Hoboken, save as blistering cities, it seems like a
story-book to read of them all in these glowing
pages as Elysian Fields, fringing and fanning
with vernal beauty and delicious breezes great
New York.  It is harsh and hard, the inexorable law of growth in a vast city, which, in proportion to the advance of commerce and wealth,
shuts Nature out.  With all its splendor and
resistless life, New York is fast becoming one of
the loneliest places on the earth for a home. In
its aggregate it is great and grand; in its individual life it is isolated and alone. The largest individual circle in it widens out but a little way.
The sweetest, truest, greatest heart that throbs
within its limit can cease to beat, nor yet be
missed.  One of the loneliest sights on earth is
a funeral in Broadway. Year by year the resistless tide of change sweeps on, tearing up and
bearing on human sympathies and landmarks
with it.  Where fountains played, and shade
trees swung  their protecting  branches, and




72               OUTLINES.
homes were sheltered a year ago, to-day shopsigns are thrust out, and the great palaces of
trade push their heads high in air, and the
human crowds jostling below are more and more
strangers to each other. The days when Peter
Stuyvesant stumped about on his wooden leg,
and the Dutch burgomasters and their families
visited from  "' stoop " to " stoop," through all
the evening hours, are remote enough to belong
to another world.  "All, all are gone, the old
familiar places."  But it is comforting to learn
that the growth of the city is not exclusively in
houses, railroads, and bridges.
At least, we are better to the dogs than they
were when dear Mrs. Child wrote her letters
from New York. She says: " Twelve or fifteen
hundred of these animals have been killed this
summer.  The manner of it strikes me as exceedingly cruel and demoralizing.  The poor
creatures are knocked down on the pavement
and beat to death.  Sometimes they are horribly mained, and run howling and limping
away.  The company of dog-killers themselves
are a frightful sight, with their bloody clubs
and spattered  garments."   Though  further
apart, after all, let us be grateful that we live
in the era of Mr. Bergh and of the " Society for
Prevention of Cruelty to Animals."




A RAINY MORNING IN THE  COUNTRY. 73
Here is a venerable book, belonging to a
woman's library in a secluded New, England
village, unknown of railroads forty years ago.
The staple of ladies' libraries in our day being
composed of very " light literature " and sensational novels of the frothiest description, it is
of interest to find out what sort of books our
grandmothers - the women who spun and wove
their own garments  read.  This is one of
them: " The Life of Mrs. Elizabeth Carter,'
of England.  Oh, what a book for a rainy day!
It transports me from my little closet of mouldy
books to the own room  of this great woman
scholar of the eighteenth century, immediately
after breakfast, when she says: " My first care
is to water the pinks and roses which are stuck
in about twenty different parts of my room."
Besides, though contrary to  constitutional
habit, I attempt to join her in her walks before
breakfast; " sometimes on an open common,
then in the middle of a corn-field, then in a
close shady lane, never before frequented by
any animal but birds.  Then she naively adds:
"When some civil swains pull off their hats,
and I hear them  signifying that lam Parson
Carter's daughter, I had much rather be accosted with,' Good-morrow, sweetheart;' or,' Are you walking for a wager?' " This Parson




74               OUTLINES.
Carter did a very sensible thing. He educated
his children himself —his daughters as extensively and thoroughly as his sons.  He was rewarded. His daughter Elizabeth was the delight
of his life and the comfort and support of his
old age. When, through a decline of his health
and spirits, he felt unequal to undertaking the
education of his youngest son, the arduous task
was assumed by his daughter. Though eagerly
sought by the most learned and brilliant society
of London, she resisted all importunities, and
secluded herself in the country for five years,
in order to fulfill this work.  Yet, meanwhile,
in her leisure hours she found time to translate
" Epictetus," a work which made her known to
the whole world of scholars. It was of this
book that the Archbishop of Canterbury afterward remarked to her: " Here, Madam Carter,
see how ill I am used by the world. Here are
my sermons selling at half price; while your'Epictetus' truly is not to be had under eighteen shillings - only three shillings less than
the original subscription."
It was at the urgent request of the Archbishop of Canterbury and Bishop of Oxford
that she at last reluctantly undertook this work.
In reply to a letter asking her to write the life of
Epictetus, she wrote to her friend, Miss Talbot,




A RAINY MORNING IN THE COUNTRY. 75
1755: "Whoever that somebody or other is
to write the life of Epictetus, seeing I have a
dozen shirts to make, I do opine, dear Miss
Talbot, that it cannot be I."
In 1756 her brother and pupil passed a
triumphant examination and entered at Cambridge. Her biographer says: " Mr. Henry
Carter is, perhaps, the only instance of a student
at Cambridge who was indebted for his previous education wholly to one of the other sex;
and this circumstance excited no small surprise
there, when, after his examination, it was asked
at what school he had been brought up."
In his extreme old age, her father became
wholly dependent upon her for personal care.
In reply to commiserating friends, she then
wrote: "I am much obliged to you for the
kind partiality which makes you regret my giving up my time to domestic economy. As to
anything of this kind hurting the dignity of
my head, I have no idea of it, even if the head
were of much more consequence than I feel it to
be.  The true post of honor consists in the cischarge of those duties, whatever they happen
to be, which arise from that situation in which
Providence has fixed, and which we may be assured is the very situation best calculated for
our virtue and happiness."




76               OUTLINES.
I confess to a spontaneous liking for this
learned and gentle lady of the eighteenth century.  There is a charm in her sunny quietness
that rests one in this noisy day. She studied
and mastered Greek and many other languages
without ado. She translated Epictetus in a manner which commanded the praise of the greatest scholars in Europe; but, therefore, did not
disdain to make her father's shirts. The sewing-machine makes it superfluous that any
woman should stitch her eyes out in our generation; but the disposition, come to be deemed
almost a virtue, which scorns any labor of the
hands because it is labor, which turns with contempt from the pleasant household tasks which
for so many centuries have been preeminently
woman's, calling that drudgery which adds so
much to the charm of home, is a repelling drawback to the finest of modern accomplishments.




VIII.
MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI.
THE FRIEND.
NOT a generation has passed since the remorseless waves of the ocean swept MARGARET
FULLER OSSOLI from human sight, and already
she wears the lustre of the historic' woman.
This is remarkable for al American; more remarkable that this American is a woman.  We
have our full share of men-heroes - heroes
whose deeds have made them worthy of the
Olympian days; but the women whom we have
lauded the loudest have been essentially humdrum. Martha Washington was well enough.
She knitted stockings well and loved her husband. Thousands of other women have done
the same, whose pictures do not hang in our
parlors or line our photograph albums. The
women who, by virtue of high endowment,
would have made their names immortal through
lack of the mere chance of personal development, have died and made no sign; while the
women whom we have most delighted to honor
have been chiefly remarkable because they




78               0 UTLINES.
bore their husbands' names.  But the name of
Margaret Fuller is still spoken by those who
knew her in life with an enthusiam, a reverence, a tenderness, which but few human beings
inspire; and for which, amid the fragments of
her recorded thoughts, we search in vain for a
commensurate cause.  She wrote suggestively
and well.  On every page we see the results
of a wide and accurate scholarship, such as at
that time no other American woman, and but
few American men, had attained; yet in her
there existed more than ordinary antagonism
between thought and its slow instrument of expression, the pen. Her swift and ductile mind
constantly outflew its halting paces. On her
written page we continually feel her limitations.
Her style is often involved, as if it stumbled for
lack of room amid its own crowd of treasures.
It is only occasionally, and that when she is
writing heart to heart to a friend, that her expression seems to reach the utmost measure of
her thoughts.  Perhaps in her work on Italy,
written after she had grown on through the
deepest human experience, she attained to perfect freedom and power in the use of written
language. But this perfect flower of her mind
and heart perished with her. Thus in the fragmentary thought which she has left we find




MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI THE FRIEND. 79
nothing  adequate to  her reputation.  This
makes her wide and ever-widening fame the
more remarkable.  It is another illustration of
the illimitable power of one great personality.
It proves how one rare individual, through the
pure force of its individuality, may live on and
on long after its human home has perished. In
looking back through the centuries, we find that
the fame of women has always been more purely
personal than that of men. Men have perpetuated their names through  their works and
deeds; women, restrained in the use of their
powers, have been able to leave little more to
the world than the legacy of their lives. But
to these lives the human race will never cease
to pay homage.  Thus Margaret Fuller never
wrote anything that was half as noble as herself.  There was a pathetic charm in her nature
beyond the reach of her words; yet her words
were often pathetic, and in oral speech were
most eloquent. Her dear friend, James Freeman Clarke, says: " She did many things well,
but nothing so well as she talked. For some
reason or other, she could never deliver herself
in print as she did with her lips. Her conversation I have seldom heard equaled.  Though remarkably fluent and select, it was neither fluency, nor choice diction, nor wit, nor sentiment




80                OUTLINES.
that gave it its peculiar power; but acc-uracy of
statement, keen discrimination, and a certain
weight of judgment, which contrasted strongly
and charmingly with the youth and sex of the
speaker.  Her speech, though finished and true
as the most deliberate rhetoric of the pen, had
always an air of spontaneity which made it seem
the grace of the moment."   Had her powers
taken their free course, she would have been an
orator in her own way, taking multitudes captive
by the wonder of her thought and the music of
her speech. Never in the remotest manner affecting the tones or the gestures of men, this
woman would have used the transcendent gifts
which God had bestowed upon her as He had
given them to her.  She herself says: " If I
were a man, the gift I would choose would be
that of eloquence. That power of forcing the
vital currents of thousands of human hearts into
one current, by the constrained power of that
most delicate instrument, the voice, is so intense
-yes, I would prefer it to a more extensive
fame, a more permanent influence."  Not a
man, she was no less eloquent. But her great
gift, forced back upon herself, flowed out in full
force only to her friends.  We are conscious of
its reflex power in her most familiar notes. In
her more labored works we rarely feel a thrill of




MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI THE FRIEND. 81
the real inspirational eloquence which pervades
all her personal letters. Here we are constantly
surprised by her exhaustive culture, by her
wealth of illustration, by her almost universal
comprehensiveness of intellect, by the warmth
of her temperament, by the tenderness of her
heart.  What could not such a soul give to
other souls, to whom she was allied by consanguinity of purpose, of pursuit, and of affection?
Had she left no other record, that of Margaret
Fuller as a friend would have been sufficient to
have perpetuated her memory.  She had a genius for friendship.  Universal sympathy with
human nature was one of her most prevailing
characteristics.  Her magnanimity, her large
intelligence, her tenderness made her not only
comprehend, but feel for every struggle of a
human heart.  Her subtle, penetrating insight
pierced to the core of every being she met;
thus she knew not only what it was, but what
it might be.  She saw the sleeping germ  of
beauty as well as of evil, and her mission to
every nature was to give to it the best ideal of
itself. There was no soul so lonely or abject
that she did not feel drawn toward it through
the virtue of its humanity.  She was the beloved friend of the little child, of the aged, of
the sick and of the poor. But as the cherished
6




82              OUTLINES.
associate and equal friend of many of the leading thinkers of her country and time, MIargaret
Fuller's friendships assume more than a personal significance. They give to the world another illustration of that illustrious race of
friendships between men and women of the
highest type which in every age have been
deeper, broader, and purer than the time in
which they existed. These friendships illustrate
also a still more significant fact in human history- viz.: that, despite the depravity which
has characterized the average dealings of men
toward women, even in the most depraved and
bigoted ages, the higher order of men and women met in absolute individual equality; and
that the personal power of the femininely grand
woman in herself has always been more powerful than tradition, prejudice, or custom. Monica and St. Augustine; Susannah, and John,
and Charles Wesley- friends no less than
mother and sons; Francis de Sales and Madame
De Chantal; F6nelon and Madame Guyon;
Madame Swetchine and Lacordaire; Eugenie
and Maurice de Guerin; Madame Roland and
the Girondists; Hannah More and her masculine contemporaries,- all illustrate a type of
friendships between men and women which has
done all that a human relation could do to exalt




MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI THE FRIEND. 83
human nature and to embellish human life.
For love, the most powerful passion of humanity, is only exalted when it is born of friendship. The lover must be first and always the
friend to be worthy to be the lover.  To revere
and love the individual, the personal essence
which in its intrinsic quality separates the beloved being from every other in the universe,
is the only love which survives all time and
change.  It is the only love which outlives
beauty and youth.  It made even Abelard and
Heloise friends long after they had ceased to be
lovers. The charm to inspire it in man lives
only in the rarest woman. It made the soul of
Madame Recamier more beautiful than her face,
and her face was among the most beautiful in
the world. It made all her hopeless lovers live
and die her friends. It makes the picture of
herself and Chateaubriand, sitting by the same
fireside in their last days, one of the most attractive in the history of human affection. Thesplendor of his power, the passion of his intellect were gone; so too were the grace and glory
of her youth. He was decrepit, she was blind,
and both were old. They had outlived their
friends, outlived everything which had once
made their lives resplendent. The affection of
their hearts, the friendship of their souls, sur



84               0 UTLINES.
viving youth and passion, beauty and power,
alone remained unshaken and unchanged. We
pity the nature incapable of believing in this
perfect friendship existing between man and
woman.  We find many such to pity.  The
majority of people talk as if there were but two
extremes of relation which woman can sustain
to man. She must be a pretty, tricky, artful
creature, beguiling him  of his reason, taking
him captive through his senses, the panderer to
his pleasures, at once his tyrant and his slave;
or she must arm herself against him, accuse him,
abuse him, as at once the sole author of her
wrongs, the source of all her miseries. The' fair,
open land between, - the serene and sacred land
of friendship, wherein men and women may meet
in human sympathy, in kindred pursuits, in wide
thoughts, and in beneficent action, - we hear
constantly spoken of as a debatable if not impossible meeting-ground. It doubtless is, for
the people who express this opinion; but never
has been and never will be to those men and
women who recognize and revere in each other
the equal human nature which each alike receives from God. Always man needs woman
for his friend. He needs her clearer vision, her
subtler insight, her.sifter thought, her winged
soul, her pure and tender heart. Always wo



MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI THE FRIEND. 85
man needs man to be her friend. She needs
the vigor of his purpose, the ardor of his will,
his calmer judgment, his braver force of action,
his reverence, and his devotion.  Thus the
mystic bond of sex which binds one half the
matter and spirit of the universe in counterpart
and balance to the other, gives even to the
friendship of man and woman its finest charm,
enabling each only through the other to preserve the perfect equipoise of intellect and soul.
Such a friend was Margaret Fuller to the men
who still speak her name with reverent tenderness. To have been at once a personal impulse,
an intellectual inspiration in the lives of such
men as Freeman Clarke, Hedge, Alcott, Channing, Emnerson, George Ripley, Horace Greeley, Mazzini, was as high an individual privilege
as ever came to an American woman. As the
friend and helper of these men, her name will
live associated with the most marked revolution
in culture and ideas of her country and era.
Without subscribing to their tenets, to be just,
we must own that the transcendentalists of
New England have given a keener impulse to
thought (even in channels opposite to their
own), a wider direction to personal culture, and
a higher exaltation to personal character than
has been given in the same period by any other




86  OUTLINES.
body of scholars and  thinkers in  America.
And when their history is dispassionately written, as it will be some day, the central figure
amid this group of large-brained men will be
this large-brained and still larger hearted woman.  William Henry Channing says of her:
" Of this body she was a member by grace of
Nature.  Her romantic freshness of heart, her
craving for the truth, her discipline in German
schools had given definite form and tendency
to her idealism.  On the other hand, very
strong common sense saved her from being visionary, while she was too well read as a scholar
to be caught by conceits, and had been too
sternly tried by sorrow to fall into fanciful effeminacy.  Men-her superiors in years, fame,
and social position - treated her with the frankness due from equal to equal, not with the halfcondescending deference with which scholars are
wont to adapt themselves to women.  They
prized her verdict, respected her criticism, feared
her rebuke, and looked to her as an umpire.
Very observable was it, also, how with her they
seemed to glow and brighten into their best
mood, and poured out in full measure what
they had but scantily hinted at in the circle at
large. In these conversations she blended in
closest union and swift interplay feminine re



MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI THE FRIEND. 87
ceptiveness with masculine energy.  She was
at once impressible and creative, impulsive and
deliberate, pliant in sympathy, yet firmly selfcentered, confidingly responsive, while commanding in originality. By the vivid intensity
of her conceptions she brought out in those
around her their own consciousness, and by the
glowing vigor of her intellect roused into action
their torpid powers. She lived herself with
such concentrated force in moments, that she
was always effulgent with thought and affection. - So tender was her affection that, like a
guardian genius, she made her friends' souls her
own and identified herself with their fortunes."
In closing his account of her life at Jamaica
Plain, this same beloved friend, who had known
her intimately from childhood, offers her as high
a tribute as man ever paid to the friendship of
woman: " The very thought of her roused
manliness to emulate the vigorous freedom with
which one was assured that, wherever placed,
she was that instant acting, and the mere mention of her name was an inspiration of magnanimity and faithfulness and truth."




88                OUTLINES.
THE WRITER.
MARGARET FULLER'S written use of language was only limited when compared with
her comprehensive thought and  eloquence of
oral speech.  When  she used  language  to
illustrate her scholarship she was its master.
Her intellect was widely and  keenly  critical; it traversed and measured universal life,
equally the life of thought and the life  of
human experience.  What she said of Goethe is
preeminently true of herself.  " She could see
all that others live," but then she felt it also.
When we remember that she brought this wide
vision, this almost limitless culture, with all
their opulence of suggestion and of illustration,
to bear upon every character and work that
she studied, we cease to wonder that in every
critical line which she has left we perceive the
touch of a master.  In what language can be
found another criticism  of Goethe at once so
intuitive, comprehensive, and critical, as hers,
when judged by the severest standard of art?
It is neither a eulogy nor a rhapsody;- it is an
exhaustive analysis. She measured not only his
art, but the soul of his art; not his work alone,
but the many-sided being of its author.  She
gives us the whole of Goethe's character in a




MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI THE WRITER. 89
single sentence: " Naturally of a deep mind and
shallow heart, he felt the sway of the affections
enough to appreciate their workings in other
men, but never enough to receive their regenerating influence."  And again: "' Of Goethe, as
of other natures where the intellect is too much
developed in proportion to the moral nature, it
is difficult to speak without seeming narrow,
blind, and impertinent.  For such men see all
that others live; and, if you feel the want of a
faculty in them, it is hard to say that they haye
it not, lest next moment they puzzle you by
some indications of it.  Yet they are not, know
not; they only discern." Again: " Faust contains the great idea of his life; as, indeed, there
is but one great poetic idea possible to manthe progress of the soul through the various
forms of existence." After a subtle analysis of
each of his various works, in the last paragraph
of this superb criticism she utters these last
words for Goethe: "Let us, not in surveying
his works and life, abide with him too much in
the suburbs and outskirts of himself.  Let us
enter into his higher tendency, thank him for
such angels as Iphigenia, whose simple truth
mocks at all his wise Beschrankungen."
The fields of critical literature offer rich harvests to the intellect of women. To those en



90                 UTLINES.
dowed with the power of comparison and of
analysis, rather than the creative faculty, the
largest opportunity waits. The printing-presses
of the world throw off the embodied thought of
the age faster th'an it can be read, faster than
keen and accurately-balanced brains can weigh
and judge between the chaff and the grain.
Where in Margaret Fuller's time there was
critical labor'for one thoroughly-trained analytic
mind there is now the labor and necessity for
hundreds. But the extensive culture, the thorough mental discipline which enabled Margaret
Fuller to command a leading position as critic
of the greatest thinkers of the world, is just the
discipline which the majority even of our most
gifted women lack. It is not the want of native
power, nor the want of opportunity, nor the envious prejudice of men, which debars women
from the places of personal independence and
influence which they covet, so much as it is their
own lack of accurate knowledge, of faculties disciplined to special uses. One born with the faculty divine may write rhymes and romance, if
one only knows the alphabet; one may do no
small amount of showy and shammy work with
just a smattering of lore; one may play brilliantly with things in general, without knowing
anything in particular; but there is a vantage




MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI THE WRITER. 91
ground of thought as well as of action, which no
mere show can reach, before which all shams fail.
In the highest degree to weigh, measure, compare, analyze, and judge, involves not only the
natural power to do it, but a long discipline and
preparation of that power for its finest use.
The total lack of such discipline is the most distinguished fact in the average education of women. The numbers and names of their studies
are appalling. They know a little of many
things -nothing  accurately  or  thoroughly.
How many women, called accomplished, who,
if orphaned or widowed, are totally unable to
earn a livelihood by instructing others in any
branch of knowledge which they have been
superficially taught. They are sure of nothing
that they have studied. They possess no knowledge which they can make available; not a
single power trained to use, not a mental gift
which can command in gold an equivalent for
its service. Thus through their very training
inferior men are constantly taking the precedence of superior women. However little a man
may know, he is usually sure of what he does
know. His power, if limited, is at least available; and for success it is better to be able to
do one thing perfectly than a thousand indifferently. How many bright women we know




92               OUTLINES.
who are earning their bread in subordinate
or menial positions solely through the want
of the mental training which, did they possess it, would bear them  at once to higher
and better places. How many dull men we
know full of authority, influence, and money,
solely because their rather scanty powers were
trained to special use; because they used them
steadfastly for a definite purpose. Positions of
responsibility and influence are constantly opening to women who are fitted to fill them. A
few men maybe envious and jealous about itthat is human nature; but even now there is
nothing in their envy or jealousy which can
prevent a woman from commanding the position
which she has fitted herself honorably to fill.
Then would it not be more effective if the leaders who devote themselves to the interests of women should spend a little less time in lecturing
men, and a good deal more in the special training
of their daughters? It is too late to atone for the
superficial education or the lack of education in
the women of the present generation, who are
already weighted with all the burdens of mature
life. But it is the hour to train the woman of
the coming generation; to educate her for the
largest use of her faculties; to give her that
special training, in whatever direction she shows




MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI TEE WRITER. 93
the most talent, which will make her mistress
of at least one of the arts of the world, which in
any emergency will enable her to be a selfrespecting, self-supporting being. Let her be
trained as her brother is trained, with a reserved
power to meet the vicissitudes of life. Then, if
she escapes, she is but the richer; and, if not,
she may rejoice no less in the exceeding great
reward of faculties trained to noble service.
For such we commend Margaret Fuller as the
most illustrious example of scholarship in woman
which our country has yet given the world.
Not that we should not be sorry to see the girl
of our period writing Latin poems at eight years
of age, or digging out Greek roots before breakfast, or in any way teaching her brain at the
expense of her digestion. This is not necessary.
In Margaret Fuller's early days it was supposed
that the head condescended to no relationship
with the stomach. We know better. We know
that there cannot be a healthy brain without a
healthy stomach, and that physical culture must
keep pace with all intellectual development.
But the unthinking  prejudice against high
scholarship in woman has been, not that it
injured her stomach, but that in some very
unphysiological way it repressed her heart.
Nonsense! A  man may be a scholar or a




94              OUTLINES.
thinker; he is no less manly, it don't hurt his
heart. A woman because she studies and thinks
is no less a human being; but the more, in
the proportion which her whole nature grows.
Thus Margaret Fuller, illustrious as scholar and
thinker, is no less preeminent as a daughter, sister, wife, and mother. Her heart, as capacious as
her mind, compassed the fullness and sweetness
of every human relation. Thus in the double
perfect meaning we hold up her name as that
of the grand typical woman of our country and
time.




IX.
A FRENCH JOURNALIST.
MADAME GUIZOT.
THE woman journalist is not the outgrowth
of our own land and generation alone. In other
times and countries women have been associated with the press who might have been illustrious had not prejudice forbidden it. That
same prejudice robbed it of many others whose
special gifts would have added lustre to its
triumphs. It was the caste of sex which held
these gifts within the narrow limit of personal
correspondence; even here, in at least two
instances, they have grown to be a supreme
inheritance to the realm of letters. Think what
journalists Madame De Sevigne and Lady Mary
Wortley Montague would have made! The
genius of the woman whose name is recorded
above was of a much more severe and lofty
type. Madame Guizot was the youngest of
that sober school of moralists which began with
La Rochefoucauld and La Bruydre, and which
included Vauvenargues and Duclos. She was
born Pauline de Meulons, in Paris, 1773. Her
father was the receiver-general for the district




96               OUTLINES.
of Paris and the possessor of a large fortune.
Her mother was of an ancient family in PNrigord, which had been represented in the Crusades. Amid affluence and the most refined
surrounding the little Pauline grew up a delicate and thoughtful child. She was seven years
younger than Madame De Stael; and the forcing and repressing process which distorted the
mental and spiritual development of that highlyendowed  woman in  early  youth were  unknown to the childhood and girlhood of Pauline
de Meulons. Also unknown to her were the
precocious ambition for display and the unhealthy sensibility which marred the character
and happiness of her more brilliant friend. In
her extreme youth Pauline de Meulons felt the
shock of the Revolution of'87 and'89. Its
frightful spectacles shocked her sense of justice,
saddened her heart, and destroyed her youth;
while it quickened all her faculties, made more
powerful a mind naturally strong, critical, incisive, sensitive, and distinctively keen in its
perception of truth and its hatred of falsehood.
In 1790 her father died in poverty.  While
surveying a fortune of millions lost in debt, and
her own mother reduced to absolute want, her
moral force and natural energy sprang to the
rescue, and tears fell from her eyes when, for the




A FRENCH JOURNALIST.             97
first time in her life, it occurred to her that she
might possess mental resources upon which she
could draw to retrieve the one and support the
other.  She read slowly, she studied faithfully,
she perfected herself in the use of the English
language.  To begin, she wrote a novel, of
course.  But truth, not fancy, was the essence
of her intellectual quality.  She was born with
the faculty of acute, almost unerring observation. She was keenly sensitive to everything
weak, absurd, or false.  She  had  creative
power; but it subserved her analytical and
critical force.  By natural endowment she was
born a journalist.
In 1801, M. Suard established the " Publiciste."  It discussed politics, religion, literature,
and ideology, and was the keen foe of the
"Journal des D6bats."  At first, through the
friendship of M. Suard, the "Publiciste" was
opened to Mile. De Meulons.  For nearly ten
years she contributed to its columns regularly
upon every topic within its range - ethics, society, literature, the drama, novels, etc.  She
even maintained sharp controversies with herself, under an assumed character, attacking and
defending herself with great acumen upon many
of the exciting themes which then agitated the
leading intellects of France.  The two volumes
7




98               O UTLI.NES.
of her " Conseils de Morale" are composed
almost exclusively of extracts made from these
ten years' contributions.  Of some of these
M/adame De Stael wrote to M. Suard: "Pray
tell me if Mlle. De Meulons is the author of the
fragment on Vauvenargues, on  Thibet, the
English, etc.?  They so far transcend the ordinary efforts even of a gifted woman that I fancied I detected your hand in the con.position."
Mile. De Meulons herself, speaking of the
logical faculty in Borleau, says: " In him it
was a delicate, sensitive, irritable organ, wounded
by a false sense, as a fine ear is wounded by a
false note, and rising in its wrath the moment
it received a shock;" and Sainte-Beuve adds:
"- This same vivacity and vigilance of reasoning
Mlle. De Meulons displayed during the singularly active period of her journalistic career."
Like Madame De Condorcet, Madame Roland,
and many other celebrated French writers and
thinkers of the eighteenth century, she reflected
the Latin mind through a loving study of its
masters.  Sainte-Beuve says of her: " She had
something in common with Seneca- she touched
antiquity through the' most modern of the
ancients."  Like Seneca, she delighted to present truth in the guise of paradox.  She was
great in aphorisms. Many of the most profound,




A FRENCH JO URNALIST.            99
which have given her moral counsels a permanent place in literature, were gathered like unwrought gems from a great mine of miscellaneous articles. The most precious and permanent
were often found in some review of a silly
novel or insipid play; but she left the mark of
greatness upon everything that she touched.
And it was not the one-sided greatness of mere
mental power; it was greatness of character, as
well. At twenty-five she found herself overwhelmed with domestic embarrassments.  A
fortune of several millions laid in ruins. Upon
this, by her own unaided labors, she met all
claims, reserving nothing for herself but freedom  from  debt, earning day by day her own
support and her mother's. Through all these
ten years she sowed the most precious seed of
her thought and life - seed whose still-ripening
harvest is not yet all gathered in - seed sown in
humility, obscurity, and need, in the apparently
ephemeral soil of a Parisian newspaper. Then,
as to-day, the world did not lack croakers to
decry a woman's work; nor the Job-friends, of
whom all workers possess so many, who bemoan
that, if you have gifts, you must " waste them
on a newspaper."  Above all this " venomous
compassion" she rose, as every great woman
should rise to-day, into a region of thought and




100              OUTLINVES.
action where it cannot touch her. She replied
once, in her "Letter of a Female Journalist to
a Friend," published December 18th, 1807:
" My articles are censured, are they, my friend?
That, of course, is to their credit; but you tell
me the censure extends to me personally -to
the stand I have taken as contributor to a journal, and especially as a critic of theatrical novelties. I am reproached, therefore, with being a
woman, not surely with being a journalist; for
those of my censors who know me know very
well why I am that. But do they not fear that
they may have wherewith to reproach themselves, if by words lightly uttered they succeed
in destroying, or, at least, in rendering more
difficult of exercise, the courage found requisite
for the sacrifice to what I considered a duty
of the conventionalities which my education and
habits had taught me to respect.  I know
them, my friend, and so do you - these conventionalities, which make the role of a journalist
the very oddest for a woman to choose, if,
indeed, it ever were adopted from choice. It
cannot, I assure you, appear as ridiculous to
these friends of yours as to me; for they have
never seen it so near.  If they knew, as well as
I, the grave interests at stake, the important
considerations to be weighed, the absurd griefs




A FRENCH JOUxRNALIST.          101
to be consoled, and the still more absurd homage to be accepted; the buzz of petty passions,
whose noise invades a woman's very solitude;
and if they could see, amid all this, a work to
be done without charm for the mind, or indemnification for the vanity, then they might say
what they thought, and think, if they pleased,
that I had undertaken this work for my own
pleasure. But let them not attempt to pity me,
for that would be as unreasonable as to blame."
One must pause before the simple dignity of
these words, so penetrated with the ideas of
duty and responsibility, as they recall the frivolous assertion so frequently and so flippantly
made, that women enter every calling, especially
that of journalism, without preparation, without
forethought, without power, chiefly to gratify a
"hankering after notoriety or public applause."
In 1807 Mlle. De Muelons, through fresh
domestic misfortune and impaired health, was
compelled to discontinue her journalistic labors
for a season. At this time she received a letter
written by an unknown hand, containing an offer
from the writer to supply articles for the " Publiciste' in her place, which he would attempt
to make worthy of her as long as her own were
interrupted.  After hesitation this offer was
accepted. And for months M. Guizot — then




102              OUTLINES.
very young and perfectly obscure -  supplied to
the "Publiciste " miscellaneous, dramatic, and
literary criticisms in place of the ones that had
made the journal illustrious under the signature of P. Thus the after great historian and
statesman of France began his life of letters by
doing the work of a woman, to him personally
unknown, under her own signature.  Personal
acquaintance created a bond between these two,
more powerful than age or conflicting opinion,
lasting as life, and not dissolved in death. In
1812 they were married, and in mature life
Pauline de Meulons begins a new career.  The
journalist is not lost, but merged in the completer woman. She was not defrauded of youth
at last, though it came to her somewhat past its
season, as it must to many. She who at twentyfive wrote with the wisdom. of age, at thirtynine wrote with. the glow of youth warming
every conviction. In the study of an intellectual woman nothing is more interesting than to
trace the change wrought in her intellectual life
and labor through the perfect development of
her womanhood.  In almost every instance it is
sufficient to verify the belief that the great underlying motive force of the universe is that of
sex. The greatest feminine writer can never
be a woman who has stopped short of the com



A FRENCH JOURNALIST.           103
plete fulfillment of womanhood.  Thus, after
more than ten years of intellectual work, which
would have reflected lustre upon the greatest
man, there came a time when the woman herself
was greater than the utmost that she had ever
done.  As the grandest men are the most simple and childlike, so the grandest women are
the most womanly. If by reason of intellectual
power they are stronger than the mass, by so
much are they more powerful in every attribute
essentially feminine.  The great man is never
so great to us as when we feel his grandeur
through the spontaneous revealing of a childlike soul; and an intellectual woman never so
potent as when we feel the magnetism of her
genius through the greatness of her heart.
Thus of the illustrious woman whose public
career is here so partially sketched it can truly
be said that her latest years were her greatest.
Under the stress of necessity her intellect flowered first; later, in the holy atmosphere of
affection, her heart. In 1806 she wrote:'" A
woman who has reached the end of youth must
not suppose that she has any further concern
with passion   not even with vanquishing it.
Her strength must henceforth lie in calm, and
not in courage."
Six years later, when she had done with




104              OUTLINES.
youth, she loved and married a man intellectually and spiritually her peer. She lived to
look into the face of her child; then life and
the whole universe took on a value unknown
before. She became the writer of a new age.
The mother of a man, there dawned in her an
absolute perception of harmony and duty, of
faith and truth, of liberty and law, but dimly
guessed at in her maidenhood. " Once a mother,
she felt the necessity of believing in a better
future and a perfectible humanity in the virtue
of those generations that would be contemporary with her child."  She wrote books for
children,'she espoused the labors and convictions
of her eminent husband. She loved love, and
she loved to live. She, calm reasoner, - looking
into the face of husband and child, then into
the face of death, - felt a yearning and a regret for which there was no speech. Into her
last hours were gathered a passion and a pathos
which youth never brought.
On the 1st of August, 1827, while her
husband was reading to her a sermon of Bossuet, on the Immortality of the Soul, she passed
from earth, and was buried, by her own desire,
according to the rites of the Reformed Church,
of which her husband was a member.
Sainte-Beuve says of her: "Thus died a




A FRENCH JOURNALIST.          105
woman who has had no superior in our generation. The sentiment which she inspires is such
as can only be expressed in terms of respectful
admiration; such that it seems almost a sin
against one who was always intent upon beinmg,
rather than seeming, to pronounce on her behalf
the words future or glory."




X.
FANNY FERN.
SARA PAYSON WILLIS PARTON (Fanny Fern)
died October 10th, 1872.  Mr. Bonner, in the
New York " Ledger," noticing her dangerous illness, which he said " will carry immeasurable
sorrow  to the hearts of our readers," added:
" The following is the first article that Fanny
Fern ever wrote for the' Ledger.' It was published in the'Ledger' of January 5th, 1856over sixteen years ago. Since that day she has
never failed once to furnish an article for every
number of the'Ledger.' We think no other
editor can say this of any contributor for the
same period of time."
In 1851 Fanny Fern found herself a widow
with two little girls clinging to her for support
as well as care. In 1851 it must have been
harder for a woman to suddenly find herself
confronting the world, with only her brain and
hands and loving heart between her and want.
It is appalling enough now for any woman
accustomed to life-long dependence to suddenly
find all the responsibilities of bread-winning




FANNY FERN.               107
and household support devolving on her own
unaided labor, although manifold opportunities
for that labor were undreamed of twenty years
ago. At that time the best educated of American women were educated for nothing in particular   unless to be school teachers, which,
of course, created, at least, a dozen teachers for
every school.  But death and misfortune have
ever been remorselessly indifferent to the fancies
of the fastidious or to the prejudices of society.
In the abstract, lovely is the theory that a
woman should always be protected, always cared
for.  But all the same as if they were never
uttered, every day death strikes down the protector, or fatal conditions put him forever beyond
reach. Then, in the face of the finest theory,
woe to the woman standing alone who cannot
honorably take care of herself.
Fanny Fern, as a school girl in Catherine
Beecher's seminary, in Hartford, tore the leaves
out of her " Euclid " to curl her hair with.
Hartford still holds traditions of her girlish
escapades, tricks, and manners, but has preserved no record of her scholarship.  In her
way, she probably was about the same sort of
scholar in the Hartford Seminary that Henry
Ward  Beecher was in Amherst College,learning as little as possible from  books, but




108              OUTLINES.
everything from Nature, from human beings,
from her own acute faculties, electrical temperament, and deep, passionate heart.  What it
was for such an one to find herself suddenly
cast forth from a home of ease, a life of love
and happiness-widowed and poor- no one
may tell but she who has sat down amid the
ashes of all earthly joy.  To-day the world is
not over-kind to lonely womanhood. Least of
all is it to a womanhood so sharply defined in
its originality or individuality that the very
force of its innate quality pushes it out of the
accustomed groove assigned to average womanhood. All that Fanny Fern suffered in those
early days of womanhood, none but God and
her own soul could ever know. It does not
follow that her "friends," as worldly friends
go, were basely cruel beyond their kind, if they
did neglect, pass by, and slight the young
widow - proud, independent, poor, who to them
besides was probably erratic, hard to manage,
and "queer."  Nor does it prove that hers was
a malicious nature, because under its first keen
sense of neglect and injury, the passionate heart
in its need, the proud spirit in its poverty, flung
back in return resentment and defiance, bitterness and even hate.  It was a transient disturbance. It was the stress of misfortune, the




FANNY FERN.               109
stirring of wrong, which wrought up the wrath
of her nature.'She tossed off the foam of her
rage, leaving the pure wine below her, clear,
bright, effervescing.  Thus she poured it out
in fullness and sweetness to the last.
Well, she did not want to go into a shop.
She could not teach school and live by it; but
she could write an essay that was yet a sketch
— dancing, dashing, satirical, witty, human,
pathetic - a sketch which in that day, at least,
was a need in journalism; a sketch for which
she alone in temperament and power had received the patent; a sketch which nobody else
on earth could write but Fanny Fern.  She
wrote  it.  With  poverty  crouching  on  the
hearth, with her little girls tugging at her
skirts, with her fiery blood rushing through
her veins, all freighted with love of love and
hate of hate, she wrote it.  Then she put it
into a little satchel, and sallied forth to sell
it.  That must have been awful.  There was
a relief in writing it.  What a delicious first
vent it must have beel for the flood-tide of
wrath and love that came rushing after.  But
to go out to seek somebody else to find it precious -precious enough to pay money for it;
to set a price on it; that heart-throb, to ask
a price for it - that must have been awful.  A




110              0 UTLINES.
man going from office to office to sell a poem
or a leader must be a sorry sight. A woman
compelled to peddle by voice and eye such a
ware must be a sadder sight still. She endured
many a supercilious glance, more than one rebuff, of course, on her weary round. A woman
trying to sell her own composition from a bag,
no doubt appeared childish to these men of
affairs. The curly head, the little satchel, the
little sketch, did not look the least like business.
Beholding the three, what prophet of them all
could foresee that the dainty reticule with its
contents stood for one hundred and thirty-two
thousand copies of a single book! She found
an astute purchaser at last. He liked the sketch,
took it, and paid her for it - fifty cents.
Its fresh fearlessness hit the " general reader;" its veining pathos touched ten thousand
hearts.  Fanny Fern had hit the right nail on
the head; it was a golden one.  She struck
again and yet again, for twenty years-for sixteen years never missing a single week.  She
was fortunate in her publisher. Sagacious and
practical, she selected one not for his own fame,
who would consider it quite sufficient to stamp
his name on its title-page, and leave her book
to take its chance; but one whose reputation
would, in a degree, depend upon her own. Al



FANNY FERN.              111
ready her  "Fern  Leaves" were scattered
through the length of the land. People shrugged
their shoulders; but all the more they read
and bought.  Critics said they were flippant,
sarcastic, irreverent, masculine, and  bitter.
Nobody said they were lackadaisical, weak,
or stupid. No matter what was said, all the
more people bought them and read them.  Of
the first volume of " Fern Leaves" seventy
thousand copies were sold in America. " Little
Ferns for Fanny's Little Friends," sold sixtytwo thousand in the United States, while fortyeight thousand copies were sold in England
alone.
In touching child-life, as in nothing else, did
Fanny Fern prove the depth and tenderness of
her true womanhood. She might be unjust to
men, satirical to women; but to a baby -no
matter how sour or woebegone - she was never
less than the mother. From first to last she
was the championess of childhood. Not a torment, not a stomach-ache, not a delight could
come to a child, or ever came to one, of which
she has not taken cognizance. It has no possible right that she did not defend, no error that
she did not tenderly forgive, no sorrow with
which she did not sympathize. With children,
so with mothers. Her own motherhood was the




112             0 UTLINES.
deepest and sweetest inspiration of her being.
Through her own mother-life she felt that of
all mothers.  To the world at large Fanny
Fern may be a fierce hater of shams, a brusque,
masculine, and even naughty woman.  To the
mother who has watched her child sicken and
die, who has buried the baby out of her bosom,
and cut Fanny Fern's loving grief over just such
a baby out of a newspaper, and hidden it in her
work-basket - to this mother (and I see her in
so many lonely homes) Fanny Fern is the most
lovesome of all mortal beings.
Broadway has given me two pictures of this
woman, which I shall always tenderly keep.
One is of the winter of 1859-60. Each bright
day one could see from afar that haughty head,
with its wealth of golden curls, and that peerless step, which had in it a fine disdain, that
I never saw equaled in woman. Always quietly and elegantly dressed, she was striking by
force of her very presence.  With strongly
marked features, a noble figure, and elastic
step, which yet carried with it the proud dignity of a queen, she could not fail to attract a
second glance even from an unthinking stranger.
On either side walked a fair young daughter.
One, much taller than her mother, was especially noticeable for her wide blue eyes and




FANNY FERN.               113
long, fair curls. Within two or three years
she married and died, leaving, as a dying gift
to the mother whose heart was broken, a little
child of her own.
In time Broadway gave another characteristic picture of Fanny Fern.  In the bright autumnal afternoon she walked Broadway with
the young daughter left, and the baby.  Thus
I saw  it one day in its nurse's arms.  The
crowd wedged us all pat in a corner. Fanny
Fern was talking with baby.  Oblivious of all
the world, she saw her kingdom  in its eyes.
Such a transfigured face, such baby talk! The
direst Calvinist could not despair of the " final
salvation " of a woman who could look and talk
like that to a baby. It was of this child that
she wrote privately:  "Our little Effie has
never been left with a servant; and, although
to carry out such a plan has involved a sacrifice of much literary work, or its unsatisfactory
incompleteness, I am not, and never shall be,
sorry.  She is my poem."
As a writer she never reached her own highest mark, never wrote up to the highest level
of her powers. A passion for truth, a hatred
of shams, a contempt for pretense, slashed with
satire, sarcasm, humor, and wit, all electrified
by an abounding vitality and an exuberant
8




114              OUTLINES.
love of mischief and fun, marked every utterance which  she committed to  print.  Yet
scarcely less was everything that she wrote
veined with a deep, loving pity for human nature, a delight in the natural world, of which
she was a happy interpreter.  One could not
read the slighest sketch from her hand without
being conscious that it came from a strong and.honest heart, and from  a head of unexhausted
power. Yet the conditions under which she
wrote, made it impossible that she should concentrate, elaborate, be continuously an artist,
although in one form of utterance she was ever
unapproached. It was her lot, as it is the lot of
so many of the brave, bright, men and women
of this generation, to serve her day, to meet
the exigencies of the hour, to say the word that
the present demanded without reference to the
future.  And she was true woman enough to
recognize the fact, and to modulate her life
upon it, that to be is higher than to say, even
though your word be said in a form of the finest
art; and that to mould an immortal soul is the
divinest work that can come to woman or man.
This sketch is not written to invade the sanctity of private grief or to pronounce judgment
upon its subject, either as woman or writer.
It is only an unstudied tribute to a represen



FANNY FERN.               115
tative woman, who was one of the earliest to
prove to American women that an honorable
independence is within the reach of all who
bring to bear upon any avocation to which they
are adapted the industry, the faithfulness, the
fe-arlesness, which characterized her; a word of
tender regret for one whose bright exuberance
of life it has ever seemed could never go out;
a woman who, whatever her missteps were in
struggling upward to its holiest standard, always, through all her days, loved the religion
of Jesus Christ, and loved little children.




XI.
HORACE GREELEY AND EDWIN FORREST.
CERTAINLY no two men living were more
thoroughly known in every phase of their being
to their countrymen than were Horace Greeley
and Edwin Forrest. Each in his own way perpetually published himself. Each in distinctive spheres of art illustrated the highest order
of talent of its kind. Each exemplified in his
daily walk and conversation opposing types of
manhood. Each in dying illustrated the law of
his whole existence. In death, the whole picture
of each life was seen in epitome. In life, the
success of each man was self-made  This fact
affected each man according to his nature. It
made Mr. Greeley feel superior to all colleges,
and to all that colleges could bestow. It made
Mr. Forrest feel superior to all other men. Edwin Forrest loved a few men. Horace Greeley
was devoted to mankind. Forrest applied all
his vast energies to the delineation of art and
the gratification of himself. Greeley performed
gigantic labors in behalf of ideas, consumed with



HORA CE GREELEY AND ED WIN FORREST. 117
out stint every faculty and power he possessed
in the service of humanity. The centre of one
man's life, of his love and longing and labor,
was himself. The centre toward which the
other tended, through all yearning and effort,
was the upbuilding of human nature. This selfcentralization and this superiority to self-gratification each mal illustrated in every phase of his
life and of himself. Nowhere was it seen more
distinctively or contrastingly than in their social
and domestic existence. Horace Greeley clung
to his wife through all fates and trials. An
organism too acutely strung to bear life's common ills without friction, peculiar theories of
domestic economy, with prolonged years of ill
health, made it impossible, at times, that she
should make the home of her overladen husband all that he needed. There were years, and
these the ones in which his toils pressed heaviest, when, through stress of circumstances, Mr.
Greeley scarcely had a home. Some of his
books were written amid discouragements and
in discomfort which- would have appalled and
paralyzed any man less a Cato in his mould.
Many homes, bright, genial, full of gentle hearts,
opened to him; but they were not his own.
Women gifted, good, and beautiful trusted
him, cared for him, and ministered in many




118              OUTLINES.
ways to his weary life. No man could have felt
more exquisitely than he the ministries of such
souls. No woman ever was his personal friend,
trusting him, caring for him, who was not
helped by the word and deed of his companionship toward the truest and noblest womanhood. No praise higher than this can woman
offer to the memory of man. His friendships
were  catholic, comprehensive, and  abiding.
They held within their steadfast range some of
the most illustrious as well as some of the most
purely and sweetly domestic women of his time.
Amid these, while his wife afar vainly pursued
the mirage of health, he stood, in fact, a homeless and solitary man. But he never faltered in
his work. He never swerved in his allegiance.
He loved one woman, was true to her. She was
the wife of his youth and the mother of his
children.  When her last struggle came, as he
said, "in the darkest hour;" when for thirty
sleepless nights and days he watched the last
earthly light go out in the lustrous eyes which
had -enchanted and enchained his heart for more
than thirty years, he felt his own life wane
with it; and when it had gone, he knew had
gone also both his power and his desire to live.
In the fullness of his fame, in the prime of
his powers, and in the flower of a masculine




HORA CE GREELEY AND ED WIN FORREST. 119
beauty rarely bestowed upon man, Edwin Forrest, while the lion of the most exclusive London society, married Catherine Norton Sinclair,
an Englishwoman, famous also for her beauty
and her gifts. The marriage predicted before
he left America, begun with such cloudless auguries, ended in a disgrace and wretchedness
never transcended. Husband and wife became
unreconcilable foes.  Yet all records bear witness that they begun their life in New York
with every prospect of happiness. Their house
was a centre of fashionable, literary, and artistic
society. Perhaps they were not worthy of the
rich estate to which they had been called, too
unclean for the holy sacrament to which he was
ordained sole priest and she s6le priestess. One,
at least, was. He had received sole homage so
long he would not share it now -least of all
with his wife. She attracted admiration on her
own behalf. This he would not endure. Claiming and practicing all license himself, he demanded of her the virtue which he outraged. She
may have been a sinner, or may not. I know
nothing about it. But the world knows that
the crimes of which he accused her had made
his own life a shame. He accused his wife of
the vice which had made his own career notorious, and then proceeded to punish her with




120             OUTLINES.
ruthless cruelty which alienated from him forever the sympathies of the better portion of
mankind. It was not because Edwin Forrest
was separated, or even divorced from his wife,
that made his after days so isolated; but because he never ceased to his last day to persecute with malignant cruelty the woman whom
he had sworn that he would love and cherish.
Had like punishment been meted to him according to his sins, what would have been his
fate?  It was his wife who procured the divorce, forfeiting none of her rights or honors;
and from that hour he never devoted half the
genius to the delineation of Shakespeare that
he did to the subterfuges that he hoped would
save him from the payment of her alimony.
Thus it came to pass that for years and years-:
he lived on in the great mansion in Philadelphia not only a solitary, but a desolate man.
Amid more wealth than he could ever consume,
amid books and statues and pictures —exquisite pictures of child-life -he was alone. In
his home hung the picture of two little children; one bathing her naked feet in a brook -
the other stepping out of it with the sunlight
on her head. It is told of this man how for
hours he would shut himself away, gazing upon
this picture.  He had wealth and fame and




HORA CE GREELE Y AND ED WIN FORREST. 121
many honors.  But no child bore his name
like a crown. No child-voice rained its music
through those lonely halls. No soul is so utterly alone as that one who nurses in silence
and secret a solitary passion, be it of love or
hate.  Self-love and wife-hate, developed into
brooding and abiding passions, separated Edwin Forrest from the brotherhood of man and
the true fellowship of pure women. No person
who ever heard him  utter the tenderest passages of Othello, of Hamlet, or of Lear can
doubt his latent capacity to feel the deepest and
tenderest emotions of the human heart. He
comprehended beauty, sweetness, goodness, at
times even moral greatness.  He loved pure
and tender ideals; but not with the abiding
love, with the overmastering force which could
hold his stormy passions in abeyance.  Yet
this'comprehension, this capacity made more
keen in him the consciousness of all that he had
missed and all that he had lost. They deepened his solitude. They gave intensity to his
sense of isolation and to his misery. As he
lived, so he died - alone. How the iron soul
met the supreme messenger no soul may tell.
There was no one to seek the silent chamber
but a faithful servant.' She waited long to hear
the heavy step on the solitary stair; and when




122              OUTLINES.
he came not, and she went to him, she found
that he had already met his fate. While dressing, to begin the life of another day, the hand
forgot its cunning, the haughty head bowed to
its first and last conqueror, the soul of a master
void of tender glance or loving farewell or reprieve of warning struck out into the unknown.
What a contrast to the death hour of his great
contemporary.  Death had robbed him  before,
how keenly and closely.  His dearest hope, his
life-long love had passed before him within the
vail. The final blow that smote him struck the
heart of the nation.  It paused to la.ment its
friend. His foes forgot his foibles. His caricaturists spoke only of his virtues. The daughters
who loved him to idolatry hung upon his dying
breath, and the friend whose sacred affection
had followed and served him  for more than
forty years received his last glance of recognition in tender farewell, as soul and body parted
forever.  "I know that my Redeemer liveth,"
was his first conscious exclamation as his soul
came back from the eclipse which precluded its
eternal morning. More than twenty years before, in the yearning of his first great grief,
when " Pickie" died, he wrote: " Now all that
deeply concerns me is the evidence that we
shall live hereafter; and especially that we shall




HORACE GREELEY AND ED WIN FORREST. 123
live with and know those we loved here."
Through storm and conflict and wounds unprecedented, the divine assurance was his.  He
uttered it in the moments of final passage.
Who may measure the sublime satisfaction, the
utter content born of that divine verity, healer
of all mortal wounds, last, best hope of immortality! We who live know how attractive and
enchanting this world is. They who die alone
are sure that for its broken promises there can
be no fulfillment, no, nor recompense, save in
the full fruitions of an hereafter.
Every human life teaches one supreme lesson. That of Edwin Forrest is that no man,
no matter how vast his resources or endowments, is sufficient unto himself. While in the
life and death of Horace Greeley we are made
equally sure that the man who through his
own being yet lives for mankind, whatever his
weaknesses, will survive in the heart of the
humanity which he served; and, whatever his
defeats, that he will find in death his final recompense and finest triumph.




XII.
LOLA MONTEZ.
LOLA  MONTEZ delivered her first lecture
after her last return from  Europe in Mozart
Hall, New York City.  Whether the story of
Lola's conversion brought them  together to
see the "change," or if it were simply the
magnetism of the brilliant and naughty countess herself, I'm sure I don't know, but a more
refined and intelligent looking audience seldom
greets a metropolitan lecturer.  Lola appeared,
looking as radiant as her beautiful portrait,
hung out on Broadway, and quite as young.
Those who expected to behold a pass  woman,
whom they had heard of ever since they were
babies, a nervous skeleton of buried charms,
were astonished to see her, on the brilliant rostrum  of Mozart Hall, looking not a day more
than twenty-five.  This wonderful preservation
of youth may be attributed to a young, elastic
heart, which, in spite of time, the tear of travel,
and a thousand tornadoes of passion, revels in a
perpetual spring; but quite as likely owed some




LOLA MONTEZ.                125
of its perfection to sundry pastes and powders,
the famous receipts of which Lola published
for the benefit of the whole civilized feminine
world.  The lithe grace of her form was displayed to advantage in its voluminous garb
of black velvet; a lace collar encircled the
throat; cobweb laces fell' over the arms, and
a pocket handkerchief of the same fascinating
fabric, floated in one delicate hand. She wore
no jewelry, not even a breastpin or ring, - a
bouquet of natural flowers being her only ornament. In an msthetic point of view, it was
worth more than the admittance fee simply to
look at so complete a specimen of nature and
art, without once thinking that you saw in her
the beautiful woman of the nineteenth century,
whose name in coming history (whether justly
or unjustly) will be coupled with those of Pompadour, De Maintenon and others of their class.
But when the great blue eyes grew scintillant
with smiles, and the electric voice in most exquisite intonations vibrated through the great
hall in these words, — "I hope none of you
will accuse me of abusing the English," every
reputed sin of the speaker was forgotten, and
the  audience, unconsciously, yet perfectly,
seemed to pass within the sphere of her control. Not an element of popularity was want



126               O UTLINVES.
ing in this lecture. Wit, satire, sarcasm double
edged, yet sheathed in smiles; history, politics,
religion; quotations from  Scripture; anecdotes
of society, all followed each other in brilliant
succession.
She mixed with her careless gossip a strange
quantity of sagacious thought, and of earnest,
humane reflection.  Rarely a man, and very
rarely a woman, holds so complete a control
over the modulations of voice as did Lola. Ever
changing, its intonations were perfect and sweet
as they were infinite.  In her physique; in the
perfect abandon of her manner; in her voice,
were hidden the secrets of her power.  The
rest was centered in her head, rather than in
her heart.  She had a most subtle perception
of character, a crystal intellect, and any quantity of sang froid.  The  delicate skill with
which she played upon that harp of many
strings, a popular audience, proved her to be
the natural diplomat. She carried the audience
with her completely; and when at last the velvet robe, the laces, the bouquet of flowers, and
the rarely radiant face made their courtesying
exit, it was amid the most enthusiastic and
deafening applause.
Poor Lola Montez is dead.  The newspapers




LOLA MONTEZ.              127
gathered up the records of her death-struggle,
and the strange incidents of her most eventful
life, and made personal columns of the rarest
interest. They can tell no more new tales of
Lola. There will be no more erratic actions,
no more eccentric freaks, no more wild exploits
or doubtful liaisons to record of her. The beautiful intrigante, the clever diplomatist, the erring, willful, wayward woman, the generous
and loving woman is dead.  Her wondrous
wit and beauty and brightness have gone out
under the winter snow; and the last story is
told, -" She died."  If it must be any, may it
be men who shall now prove accusing disciples
with stones all ready to fling at her memory.
Let women be kind, and grant at least the
meed of a tear or a sigh for her, because she
was a woman. Ii reading the lives of the
world's famous women, — women who reigned
in society, in literature, in politics, women
whom men flattered, followed, worshipped, and
obeyed, - nothing in all the splendor of their
lives is so impressive as the story of its close.
Of all the gorgeous women of the past, no matter how great their dower of genius, of beauty,
or of power; the great Elizabeth, the courtly
Maintenon, the glorious De Stael, all that can
be said at last, is, " She died." And in dying,




128              OUTLINES.
how did the fashion of this world fade from the
once entranced vision; how did its paltry gauds
slip from the loosed hands, and, at last, nothing
could suffice within those wasted fingers, save
the Bible and the cross. This story of life was
repeated once more in all its wonderful significance when the minister of Christ found the
most beautiful and gifted courtesan of the nineteenth century weeping over the story of the
Magdalen.  Lola Montez, who once ruled a
kingdom and its king; whose palace-home was
beautiful with all that wealth and art and love
could lavish; who knew all the triumphs, the
vicissitudes, the sorrow, which wonderful beauty
and misdirected gifts can bring, had little more
than enough to buy the narrow house which
shelters her now in Greenwood, and that little
more she bequeathed to the society which saves
in its tender charity the outcast women of this
city. "Baroness of Rosenthal,"' Countess of
Landsfelt," titles which  she had once been
proud to bear, she was equally willing to lay
aside at the door of the grave; and " Eliza Gilbert," her maiden name, was the one which she
chose.to be recorded on her simple coffin. Lola
Montez died poor, but not friendless; she was
surrounded by many who loved her for the inherent sweetness of her nature; and it is much




LOLA MONTEZ.               129
to say of any one, which was truly said of her,
that those who- knew her best loved her most
entirely.  If she was erratic, high-tempered,
and irritable, she was also generous, forgiving,
and affectionate. The result of the former infirmities have been published largely to the
world; but the acts, born of the latter, her
munificent charities, her deeds of ruth  and
mercy to the poor and sorrowing, she never
blazoned; yet we may believe that they found
a higher and purer record.  In the main, the
public journals dealt generously and justly with
her memory.  If they did not attempt to justify her faulty life, neither did they altogether
forget the misfortunes which controlled that
life, and which were sufficient to hide a multitude of sins more heinous than hers.  The New
York " Times," in its kind and truthful obituary, said " The sensation of helplessness which
she had experienced, and the indignities to which
it had subjected her, were the causes which first
directed her attention to the subject of some
profession in which she might attain an independence.  The stage is the aspiration of all
lorn womanhood, and towards the stage she
turned her best endeavors." It is a very easy
thing to denounce the life and character of
another.  No high qualities are demanded to
9




130              OUTLINES.
judge as the world judges. But it takes a
larger insight, a wider, saintlier charity to penetrate far back to the inevitable circumstances
which gave color and shape to that character
and life. All possibilities of goodness, as well
as of evil, lie in the soundless depths of such a
nature as Lola Montez.  The atmosphere in
which it is forced to grow decides which shall
be warmed and sunned into blossoming, and
which shall lie dormant forever.  Think of
this, mother, when you look into the burning
eyes of the girl-child beside your hearth, whose
fathomless soul you have never sounded, whose
mysterious future you cannot foretell!  Bless
God, if you have grace to guard and guide her;
left to herself and the world, what might she
become?




XIII.
THINGS GONE BY.
THE cottage on Fourth Street is closed, and
its gate is fastened. I lean against its fence,
and try to make its trees and flowers seem as
they did one year ago. There is not a shrub
nor flower here that was not planted by a single pair of hands; not a plant but was loved by
one human heart. I try to bring that woman
back and make her real again.  In no other
human being had I ever seen quite such intensity, such tenacity of life, such wide-reaching, irrepressible sympathies, such boundless
benevolence. How many wounds she bound
up, how many dying soldiers she nursed and
cherished, how  many toilsome journeys she
took, how  many sleepless nights she passed
for their sakes. Yet how many of all who received life anew from her hands remember her
to-night! Almira Fales was preeminently a
heroine of the war. Yet already her name
has gone by with her human life.  It cannot
be put into words what that human life was to




132              OU]LIN'ES.
her. How she loved to live! How absolute to
her was every palpable form of beauty.  How
inseparable from her consciousness everything
that she saw and felt and loved. How close
she lived to Nature. How she clung to this
green earth. Yet her door is shut, her gate
is closed.  The trees and flowers which she
planted bloom  on without her.  That life so
intense, so real, so near, now by my utmost
effort I cannot touch it, nor feel it, nor realize
it, although it still exists. That woman so
human, so living, so loving, that it seemed as
if she must live in our humanity forever, is as
remote to me this moment as the most distant
saint in the centuries, and intangible as the
furthest seraph in the heavens. What else can
so change our existence into the impalpable
substance of a dream as to have such a life
with us, of us, full of human love and hope
and suffering, and then to exhale into the unsubstantial memory of a life gone by.  The reflection of such a life might fall on one in any
place. Yet here it reminds me that in no other
city in the land do we walk so perpetually in
the shadow of persons and of events gone by
as in the city of Washington.
I sit down in the Red Room, and, looking
back to the time when Mrs. Adams dried the




THINGS GONE BY.             133
executive linen and cotton above its bare floors,
what processions have trooped within its crimson hangings. Memory leaves no room to evoke
the courtly Mrs. Madison, the stately Mrs.
Polk, the statuesque Miss Lane, the statesmen
and beauties of generations and of administrations before the war. To remember the people
who gathered here between Lincoln's first and
last reception is to recall more ghosts of things
gone by than one memory can conveniently
entertain.  Lincoln's last reception! Who that
was there will ever forget it, when statesmen,
generals, soldiers, common men, tearful women,
and little children passed beneath the blazeless
chandeliers, which had burned above so many
smiling crowds, to look for the last time on the
murdered Chief, whose melancholy eyes for the
first time refused their gentle, human smile.
But in Washington it is rarely the dead who
remind us of things gone by —it is the living.
The belle of a past administration comes back
expecting, without a doubt, to renew old conquests and to achieve new triumphs. The little
girls whom she left in short frocks she finds in
the places which she filled. She wonders what
ails the faces of her friends   she left them
smooth and young, she finds them  lined and
old-and it does not occur to her that they




134             0 UTLINES.
are making the same comments on her own.
The man whom she refused in her imperious
youth, because he was poor and positionless,
she finds rich and powerful, with a fair wife by
his side, whom she cordially hates. The old
door-keepers at the Capitol, who used to swing
back the doors of the Diplomatic Gallery so
obsequiously at the very sight of Hon.'s
daughter, are now among things gone by. The
new ones, in the plain, middle-aged woman,
recognize no former belle.  They challenge
her - ask her if she belongs to "a member's
family."  The "open sesame " has gone from
her hands. She has no choice but to go to a
side gallery, or to go home - which, at present,
means the hotel. She still assumes " full dress,"
lifts a bare and bony neck above a girlish corsage
of tulle, hangs the roses of June in her faded hair.
But in vain. She is a queen without a throne.
Her kingdom and her subjects are among the
things gone by. To the careless young generation about her she is " only an old maid, who
was a belle once, mamma says."  She leaves
the Capitol in disappointment and disgust; and
she was a wise woman who said that she would
"never come back again."  The woman of
letters, who achieved an ephemeral fame a
generation past, returns to early haunts with




THINGS GONE BY.              135
the old ambition for adulation and power burning unabated in heart and brain. The public
men who courted and flattered her, the society
dames who followed her for the favors of her
pen, are now among the things gone by. Instead of being alone in her special sphere,
attracting public attention and admiration to
herself as a solitary and exceptional genius, she
finds dozens of women who think, write, and
help shape public opinion, each claiming her
special work, her special audience, meeting the
demands of a later era of a younger generation.
She is no longer the lone particular star, at
which everybody turns to gaze both in public
and private assemblies. She walks lonely and
unheeded where she once moved the central
object of universal admiration. If she falls to
lamenting the giants forever departed; if she
sees nothing but pigmies in their places; if she
declares that there are no longer any great men,
nor any beautiful women; that the new writers
are all " weak," and writing " in horrible taste,"
it is very natural, but no less unfortunate; for
every word she utters only assures us that she
has had her day, and belongs already to things
gone by. If a man who has held a high office
of public power comes back to his lost kingdom
(though, if he is a wise man, he never will), he




136              0 UTLINES.
finds the multitude, that once bowed down to
him, all worshipping the newly-arisen sun. Is
it possible? One year ago he ruled the land!
Perhaps millions of money and millions of lives
hung upon his word.  All office-hunters, all
favor-seekers, waited his call with obsequious
fear. All fashiondom rolled in its carriaoe to
his mansion in the West End. It is empty
enough now. He is solitary enough at present;
he has time to eat, and a good deal to spare.
No impatient crowd now waiting all day for the
privilege to say " Just a word." No cringing
sycophant, lifting his hat in air to " Mr. Secretary," meets him at every turn.  They have
no use for him  any longer.  He has nothing
more for them; and they show that they know
it by leaving him behind and chasing his successor. He already belongs to the things gone
by.  The successful politician, whose ambition
may have leaped to the highest gifts in the
keeping of the people, learns suddenly some
day that the great tidal wave of fortune, which
has borne him  so high without reaching the
highest mark, is already setting backward. It
has seemed so long such an easy thing to hold
the balance of popularity, to be a manager, a
leader, that no political triumph has seemed
impossible, no prize beyond his reach. It drops




THINGS GONE BY.              137
like a thunderbolt some day, the knowledge
that a new leader has arisen, that new  combinations have been formed; envy, jealousy,
rivalry, political hatred, —all are at work to
defeat the man who hitherto has outstripped
all competitors. He is no longer sure of his
friends.  Men smile in his face, and stab his
reputation in the dark.  They assert that he
has attained the utmost reward due his powers
or his service, and shall receive no more. Nor
will he. He has reached his utmost mark. The
wave of political favor, rolling backward, rises
no more.  Thus political aspirants, at the very
floodtide of ambition, find that success has already rolled back among the things gone by.
A wife, in some moment of loneliness, comes
unawares to the consciousness that the love
which she dreamed of in her impassioned girlhood is already a thing gone by. She learns
this as she slowly accepts the fact that will not
be denied that the husband in whom her being
begins and ends can live without her. She learns
this as she waits the long hours through for one
who does not come.  As she waits for him, she
recalls the hours long gone, when, with all the
ardor of a young man's first love, he swore to
her that she was all the world to him! She
believed him - tender, credulous woman! And




138              OUTLINES.
he, in his first glamour, believed himself. How
bitter is her awakening! How changed is all
the earth when she at last admits the fact that
his life has many objects; that it is but a portion of his nature which she holds; that, if she
should drop from it forever, it would flourish on
no less- that he could live without her. He
loves her still.  When he finds it convenient to
come, if he did not find her waiting for him in
the accustomed place, he would  look at the
vacant little chair with a sense of injury. Perhaps he gives her all the time left from crowding ambitions and hurrying cares. Why should
she ask for more?  Is she not his wife?  According to her nature, she submits to time's irremediable law.  Perhaps with reproaches and
tears, unfortunate woman; perhaps in uncomplaining silence. In either case, she mourns for
something gone never to return -  the freshness
of love's first consciousness, the rapture of its
dawning delight.  It is love still; but it is love
touched by the inevitable chill and change of
experience and of time.
The mother clings to her child, and feels that
she holds something in her arms that will need
her forever; but the little girl grows away from
her love and cherishing to the nearer love and
care of another, and the little boy leaves her




THINGS GONE BY.             139
behind.  The man out in the great world may
live a life which his mother cannot fathom and
never share. He may treat her with reverent
care or condescending affection; he may snub
and forget her; but to the mother her child is
forever her child. She lives in the joy of his
babyhood, long gone by; and thus it happens
that a noseless doll and a battered little boot,
that the baby played with or wore, cherished in
some secret drawer, is dearer to the woman's
heart than all the possessions which the man
has won in the world.  Some of the loneliest
people whom I have ever known have borne
and nurtured children, only to be left in their
old age alone. They found all their joy in living
over the years gone by; and every date resolved
itself into the time " when  - was a baby."
No fact of human existence impresses me so
profoundly as the individual loneliness of human
life. Amid the happiest relationships, amid the
most congenial of companionships, it is no less
significant. The dearest cannot follow us into
the depths of loss and of sorrow into which we
must sometimes go down. And this through
no lack of love, through no weakness of sympathy, but from human inability.  They cling
to us, they call to us, yet we die alone. And
many more than we dream  of, and they often




140               OUTLINES.
the tenderest and sweetest of souls, in the ultimate sense, live alone.  How often the dearest
experiences of our human lot are partial, transitory, and unsufficing. Every joy bears one
consummate flower which is never repeated.
Happiness, like beauty, grows to its supreme
moment; then, however imperceptibly, wanes.
It is beauty, it is happiness still; but some
change has touched it since its perfect hour.
The flower out with nature has its growth, its
perfection, its decline.  No less does the human
flower, in body, in brain, in spirit, follow its
seasons.  How beautiful, how brief they are.
With the keenest consciousness of the present
comes the keener consciousness of its passage.
Stay, beautiful youth! Stay, thou entrancing
noon! Stay, innocent love, supreme delight!
Stay, calm thought, thou angel of peace! While
we utter the cry, while we stretch out eager
hands to detain, the boon is already among the
things gone by. No entreaty can bring it back.
Rachel weeping for her children did not fill the
world with a deeper lamentation than the often
unuttered cry of the human heart calling for
the joy that was, but is not. Thus life is a perpetual mausoleum. Every day the heart buries
its dead. Every day some cherished plan, some
silent hope, some dear desire, goes down to its




THINGS GONE BY.              141
grave. We leave it behind. We go on, making
no outward sign of the inward loss. But somewhere, sometime we sit down by the way, and
silently count over our losses.  Then we acknowledge that the treasure most deeply missed
and mourned is one of which the world has no
knowledge, and of which our words have made
no record.  The past is always picturesque.
Time softens all asperities.  It mellows all
crudeness.  The passing discord, the painful
peculiarity, the personal repulsion which often
jars and hurts us in the intercourse of the
present lies dim and almost lost in the perspective of the past. Through its hallowing radiance the beloved individual comes back to us
glorified from all defect. Life's supreme moments of blended bliss and pain lose their pangs
in time; and in memory we live them over and
over again in ever new delight. Thus it is that
our dead are ever angelic. Thus it is that the
joy gone by is forever ideal and divine.
I have not been stringing pathetic sentiments
together for the sake of being pathetic; but
have illustrated imperfectly the inexorable law
of human mutation, which we must all obey.
And this is the question evolved, How shall we
meet and bear its penalties?  With unrest?
with repining? with futile rebellion? or with




142             0 UTLINES.
serene philosophy and cheerful religion? You
are beautiful to-day; many worship you. You
will wake some morning to find your beauty
gone, your worshippers kneeling at other shrines.
You have power to-day -so much it seems to
you that the world, your world at least, could
not get on without you. Some day you will
come suddenly to the knowledge, that your
power has gone, your burdens have dropped
upon other shoulders, your honors are worn by
other men; and the world, even your world,
gets on without you.
Life offers no lesson to mortals so hard to
learn, no lesson, hiding in its truth so keen a
sting to self-love as this, that your prime has
passed, and that you must make room  for
others; that the flower of your beauty, the
flower of your genius are in their decline; that
you must wait in the shadow, while the younger
bask in the splendor that you have left behind.
How few are ever willing to admit that their
time has-come to learn it. Thus it is that we
see so many women refusing to grow old gracefully. Instead of wearing their years as a
crown, mellow and beautiful in the light of
their declining sun, they deck gray hairs and
wrinkles with a hideous counterfeit of youth.
This is why we see writers writing on reputa



THINGS GONE BY.            143
tions which they have long outlived; writing
after they have ceased to have anything to say,
except to repeat what they said better years
and years ago. This is why we see men once
in power still imagining themselves important,
and in garrulous and impotent speech evoking
the ghosts of a dead reputation in the councils
of younger men.
And yet repose is not death. Rest has its
recompense as well as labor.  Through every
mutation of our life we are followed by the
divine compensations. The noon has not passed,
but it soon will. In the afternoon let me renew
my life in the morning lives of younger souls
around me. Let me not begrudge them the
youth once so bounteously bestowed upon me.
They will rob no one, they will but be glad in
their own share of the inheritance of being.
Then let me thank God that he gave me my
day - its morning, its noon, its peaceful twilight shadow. Let me be glad that I had my
day, and thus with rejoicing take my place
among the things gone by.




XIV.
THE FALLEN MAN.
WE see pictures of the fallen woman at every
turn. In the pulpit, on the platform, we hear
her portrayed with an accuracy and an unction
which makes our pulses stand still with pain
and horror. Why does nobody paint the fallen
man? Why does no priestly voice call upon us
to weep over his downfall and his shame? I
see him everywhere. He came into a shop in
Broadway, yesterday. His clothes were torn,
his feet were bare, his eyes were glaring with
the insanity of drunkenness. A wild animal
could scarcely have  been more dangerous.
What a creature to go home to wife and children! He was only a fallen man of the most
degraded type.  There is a fallen man who
never staggers in ragged clothes with bare feet.
He stands at the corners of streets; he lounges
in the doors of hotels; he emerges from drinking
and gambling saloons; he comes out of the
house whose door leads to death. His fall is
graven on his face - in its haggard lines, in his




THE FALLEN MAN.             145
sunken eyes, in his weary yet mocking look, from
which purity and peace and the possibility of innocent happiness have gone. There is a fallen
man whose garb is faultless, whose face fails to
tell his story. He is never seen on forbidden
ground, never in  questionable  places.  The
latch-string of gracious homes always hangs out
for him. Mothers are eager to commit to his
care their innocent daughters. Women beautiful and idle seek him, and flatter him on to a
deeper fall. His fall is graven only on his soul;
yet he is no less a fallen man.  No less fallen,
because only he and his God knows that the
wreck of a life, the everlasting sorrow of a
lovely soul lie at his door. In the gay world
few reproofs are uttered, no tears are shed, for
the fallen man. While he wears fine clothes,
while he carries a full purse, society ignores
even the possibility of his fall. His victim is
shut out in shame; but the woman who makes
a victim of him is a wearer of the purple of this
world, a bearer of the pomp and triumph of life.
Through so many ages man has been the acknowledged seducer of woman, the fact has
been overlooked and forgiven that woman is
often the seducer of man.  I know such a woman - a woman of fashion, allied to a man high
in position. She is a woman of large personal
10




1 46             OUTLINES.
and mental magnetism. For what good purpose does she use it? She uses it to " attract "
men from their allegiance to duty, honor, and. a
pure love! She boasted in a drawing-room
that "she never saw a married man whose love
she could not win away from his wife, if she
chose."  " My dear husband," said a fond little woman, " you could not; nobody could take
him from me."  " The little simpleton!" declared the Lamia, afterward. " In less than six
months she came to me crying, begging me to
give her husband back to her; that he neglected
her, that he upbraided her constantly because
she was not more like me. I don't want your
husband, I said; I only wanted to show you that
I could do what I pleased, and to teach you not
to trust in any man's love." There is many a
Lamia.  She stands the central figure of many
a social circle. In silken attire, in a luxurious
home, surrounded by all the alluring accessories
of wealth and cultivation, herself fascinating,
if not beautiful, what -wonder that she draws
within her charmed sphere the many homeless,
wifeless, dissatisfied men of her acquaintance!
The power of a woman thus poised and surrounded cannot be estimated. How does she
use it?  To inspire the man who basks in its
splendor to say, " Such a home will I create for




THE FALLEN MAN.             147
the woman I love, such a paradise for my children "?  To encourage, to help him in the pursuit of the usefulness, the influence within the
reach of his honorable endeavor? To make him
in love with the strong, brave, pure manhood
possible to him?  No.  She uses it solely to
make him " fall in love " with herself.  All the
magnetism of her beauty, all the subtlety of her
brain, is used to satisfy the greed of her vanity,
the depravity of her passion for personal conquest. Does she know the issues in her life at
stake?  No matter.  His wife, his children,, the
woman who would die for him?  No matter.
His honor, his integrity, his self-respect? No
matter. All together are not an atom in the
balance, weighed against her insatiate vanity.
He, all that he cherishes, may go to rack; but
she must not be denied her triumph.  Some
hour, when she takes off her gauds, she must be
able to say, " I conquered him."  She must be
able to whisper in secret to the weak creature
who is her " bosom friend," "I conquered him.
He went down before me. I was astonished!'
I couldn't help it, dear! How can I help it, if
so many men will fall in love with me?" Doesthe Lamia ever incur any danger? No. The
Lamia can always take care of herself.  She
plies her victim with beguiling flatteries; she



148             OUTLINES.
bewilders him, between childish smiles and tender tears - never shedding enough of the latter
to make her nose red; she astonishes him with
her subtle wisdom; she is artlessness, she is
innocence, she is angelhood personified; she is
Psyche and Circe combined. Then, after having roused every slumbering impulse and passion of the man, if, in an unguarded moment, he
betrays his weakness, then she is majesty astounded and virtue on a pedestal! Then, when
no longer his own master, her bright doors open
and shut on him. He goes forth into the night,
out into the darkness. To what? To whom?
Who will say that woman is in no way responsible for the fallen man? The woman who
walks the streets in open shame we may follow
with pitying lamentation. The woman who,
through the weakness of her will, through the
magnanimity of her affection, which can never
be measured or fathomed, stakes all her fate in
one frail human heart, gives more than her life
to one erring man, is one over whom the angels
in heaven must weep in compassion.
But she who, wearing the garments of affluence and of influence, still uses the gifts and
graces of her womanhood only as decoys to lead
men astray; who, in the guise of innocence,
would steal their birthright of honor, blur




THE FALLEN MAN.            149
their perception of purity, demoralize their affections, madden their passions; and then, having proved her power over them for all evil,
sends them forth into the world to betray and
to rob the weak and unfortunate    she is the
woman who is a disgrace to human nature.
God may pardon her; but the woman who respects herself, who loves woman, who honors
man, never can. Is it strange that the average estimate of women by men of the world is
so low? that, herding together, they speak of
women in language which even they would
blush that their mothers should hear; that
each man, shutting from his memory the pure
angel of his earliest youth, sneers at virtue as a
fiction, at the purity of woman as a fable and a
dream?
No one but his mother, his sister, or his wife
weeps for the fallen man.
This is one of the saddest mistakes of our
world; one for which all humanity suffers 
viz., that purity, demanded imperatively of
woman, is deemed impossible to man. Where
is the safeguard to society? Where its exalted
standard? While men are left to believe, and
to act accordingly, that virtue, in the sense in
which it is expected of women, is not within
their power. The practical working of this




150              OUTLINES.
theory makes each sex but the prey to the
other. This will always be, till the standard of
virtue in woman is made also the standard of
virtue in man. It was a great and pure man
who uttered these words: "'The world will
never be better till men subject themselves to
the same laws which they impose upon women."
It was a man said this.  Were it a woman, all
the apostles of license would at once declare
that she said it, because, being a woman, she
could not know what man is. I do not forget
what human nature is, in its universal and
unchanging essence.  I do not forget in its
best estate how frail it is, how easily overcome; nor forget the inevitable modifications
of life and character resulting from the varying laws of temperament, of sex, of physical
and mental organization. But neither the history of polygamy or of monogamy, Campbell's
" Philosophy of Marriage," or Leckey's " History of European Morals," or the history of the
whole life of man in every race, and through
every age from the beginning of the world till
now, can make me believe that man created in
the image of God, man immortal as his Sire,
man the head of all human intelligence, through
all his earthly life, is at best but little more
than a bundle of blind instincts and of lawless




THE FALLEN.MAN.             151
appetites, at whose mercy he is, which he is as
powerless to control as the beast at his feet.
This brutal idea is the underlying impulse of
polygamy, of all the lasciviousness, license, and
barbarism on the earth.  The sister is taught,
whatever her temptation may be, that she must
be good; the brother is left to believe that,
however he tries, he cannot help being bad. It
is expected of him that he will grow to be a respectable man some day; but before that event,
through the law of his nature, he must necessarily be very wicked.  The sister is taught
that she must preserve herself blameless for the
future husband to whose life she is to be the
crown; the brother is left to spend the same
time " sowing his wild oats."  To his wife he
is to bring no virginity of heart, no purity of
person, no record of a stainless past! Many a
man looks into the eyes of the wife, who trusts
him as she does her God; into the faces of his
daughters, who  believe  him  to be scarcely
lower than the angels, with a secret remorse
which cannot be measured, as memory forces
in upon his thought what he has been, perhaps
what he is.  With what shame he is conscious
that, if they knew his secret history, he would
stand transformed before their eyes; that, to
remain what he is in their thoughts, he must




152              0 UTLINES.
hide forever from their knowledge the crimes
of his youth.  Young man, remember this!
The dearest reward that can come to you in
this world, is a real home - the love and faith
and help of wife and children.  Remember
this, while striving with foes without and foes
within. If you will, you can live worthy of
your heritage. You can cherish a faith in human goodness; you  can  cultivate personal
friendship with noble men and women; you
can fill your life with honorable occupation and
cheerful recreation; you can " steep your soul
in one pure love;" and, trusting in God, you
will never be a fallen man. The grandest object this side the throne of God is a perfect
man- a man powerful in brain, powerful in
frame, with conscience and will ruling over the
animal force which makes the puissant basis of
his manhood.  The saddest sight on earth, is
such a man in ruin. By the height of what he
might have been do we measure and deplore
the fall which makes him what he is. Passion
may be grand; but it is passion in obedience.
Appetite is not ignoble till it debases the soul
and triumphs over purity. With our finest
theories we cannot make this crooked world
straight. But each one may make it so much
the better and brighter by at least the charac



THE FALLEN MAN.             153
ter of one individual.  When shall we have
purity in  our lives?  When peace  in our
hearts?  When joy in our homes?  It will
be when woman feels a deeper responsibility
for her personal power over every lman who
comes within her influence; when that power
is tested and controlled by a healthy conscience
and a pure heart; it will be when she ceases to
regard every man that she meets as the legitimate prey to lier vanity, as a tyrant to-be turned
into a slave, as a Sampson to be shorn of his
strength.  It will be when, with true recognition and reverence, she meets the royalty of
mlanhood with the royalty of womanhood, saying   " If thou art the world's king, I am the
world's queen! "  It will be when man tests
all his relations with woman by the same
code of impartial honor which makes him honorable among men. It will be when he who
scorns to be false to his comrade, will scorn
equally to be false to a woman; when he shall
cease to stoop to subterfuge, to deceit, to falsehood, to keep peace with numbers of women,
to  each of whom  he is personally committed, over all of whom he desires to exercise
a secret, illegitimate power.  It will be when
each man seeks in each woman something of
that divine quality of womanhood which even




154              OUTLINES.
the basest man desires to find in his mother, in
his sister, in his wife. It will be when each
shall cease to say: " I will absorb, rule over,
possess this creature of God."  It will be when
both shall seek in the other their noblest friend,
their truest and dearest companion; when the
woman shall revere the man as man because he
is worthy of such honor, and the man revere
the woman as woman because she commands
his reverence before she wins his love. Then
we shall not have the cause that we now have
to weep over the fallen woman and to bow our
heads in shame before the fallen man.




XV,
PHYSICAL BASIS OF STATESMANSHIP.
A PORTRAIT of Mr. Gladstone in a number of "Every Saturday " is very suggestive of
Mr. Fessenden. Indeed, it seems almost as if
it were Senator Fessenden, rounded out into
ampler life. It is what he would have been if
his body had equaled his brain.  Of the two,
the English premier's head is less powerful in
development than that of the American senator.
There is less height, less width, less causative
fullness in the frontal dome. But any slight
discrepancy here is more than atoned for by the
capacious nostrils that give air to the braincells, the great throat, the broad shoulders, the
grand enginery below which propels this brain
and sustains it. What might not Mr. Fessenden
have been with such physical adjuncts?  With
theml he would have been still on the earth, and
in the Senate. He would have been building
up a grand record for history, recording for pos



156              OUTLINES.
terity works more immortal than the " Juventus
Mundi."  Here the pious thing to say would
be that he is " better off "   so much better off
among the seraphim than in the Senate. I'm
not going to say it. I prefer an honest hobby
to dishonest cant; and it is-very dishonest cant
to be constantly attributing to the "Lord's
will " that for which we ourselves are to blame.
When the minister said it, " It is the Lord's
will, and marvelous in our eyes," I used to cry.
Now  the same words in the most pathetic
quaver only move me to send him  "Hall's
Journal of Health," or some other journal on
hygiene and dietetics equally sensible. It need
no longer be " marvelous in our eyes" why so
many are cut off in the midst of their days.
Hygienic law cannot banish death; but it can
prolong existence. This law of the Lord of life
and health defied and broken every day costs
the nation many of its most illustrious children.
We have more occasion to be concerned for the
bodies of our public men than for their brains.
If they took a little more intelligent care of the
former, there would be less trouble with the
latter; and how many splendid lives would be
spared to the public service and to the hearts
that love them. It is the manner of all who
visited the Congresses'of the last generation to




PHYSICAL BASIS OF STATESMANSHIP. 157
come back to the new-winged Capitol, and in
its garnished chambers lament the Corinthian
and Doric halls of the old House and Senate,
and more the eloquence vanished and immortal,
of their most illustrious legislators. " If you
could only have seen Calhoun and Clay and
Webster! If you could have heard them! "
Well, I never heard them, and never saw them.
But I have giants of my own, whom I deplore
no less devoutly. Seven seasons in Washington
are sufficient to make one a veteran, without
having seen the gods of the earlier decades. I
have attained the dignity of reminiscence.
In my little nook in the gallery I murmur of
changes; inquire as sadly as Elia for "the old
familiar faces;" and to the neophyte beside me
whisper of greatness gone, of giants departed,
with all the lamenting unction of a mourner
of the last generation. If, in addition, memory
compelled me to mourn Webster, Clay, and
Calhoun, my grief would be too much, and I
should be obliged to stay at home. As it is my
dear " I," I will confess to you that to my vision
the Senate looks quite askew. I have tried to
adjust old seats and new senators with satisfaction, and have failed. My private opinion
(which, as usual, I am making public) is, that a
number of these gentlemen niight quite as well




158              OUTLINES.
have stayed in their native wilds, or be still
pursuing destiny,." carpet-bag" in hand.  It is
very evident that they do not belong here. It
is not in their poor power to reflect any lustre
upon one of the greatest legislative bodies of
the world. This being true, why are they here?
Shall politics, trickery, and money buy seats for
third-rate men in this august assembly?  They
do. Mr. Muddlebrains takes his seat. He who
by the birthright of God would adorn it, serve
and honor his country in it, stays at home - at
least, that is where he very often stays. In
personal aspect the Senate has retrograded
within four years. Among all its elders, one
looks in vain for two such " grave and reverend
seigniors," two such grand old men, as Foote
and Collamer, of Vermont.  Senator Cameron
carries his seventy years straight and stately as
a winter pine; but he has not the noble head,
the open, large expression, the grandeur of
mien, which made these men the most senatorial
of senators. And who, looking down on his
wonted seat, can cease to mourn for Fessenden,
the great debater, the incorruptible statesman,
the irascible, sensitive, loving-hearted  man!
Not in his seat, it seems as if, waiting a moment, we should see him meditatively pacing
up and down behind it; or slowly slipping




PHYSICAL BASIS OF STATESMANSHIP. 159
through the door of the cloak-room, his hands
in his pockets, his slight figure bent, his great
head - so much too great for the frame which
could not support it - always drooping forward,
as if weighed down with thought, his lips compressed, his expression one of weariness, often
of pain. The longer we look the more we miss
his presence, and the more unreconciled we feel
to his untimely taking off. The longer we
listen to a dry dribble of talk, the more we long
to hear pierce the dullness one of his old keen,
incisive sentences, cutting straight to the marrow  of things. Without him  his long-time
generous antagonist, Sumner, finds no foe at
once so provocative and worthy of his speech.
Trumbull, more pugnacious and irate, lacks the
far sight and wide mental comprehension of
Fessenden. Charles Sumner still sits the grandest figure of the Senate. He sits as he sat years
and years ago.  Life, which leaves its subtle
tracery on all our faces, has laid its hand heavily on his, as it always does on the face of a
man or woman in whom existence is a battle,
not a dream.  The evening gray has fallen
on his hair, the trace of many an inward and
outward conflict is graven in the strong features; but he has still unbroken what he had
in th.e beginning, that which is indispensable




160              OUTLINES.
to the successful statesman and orator,-" the
physical basis of oratory."  Without his six
feet of altitude and his thunderous " ayes and
noes," Charles Sumner could never have been
Charles Sumner.  If he had been compelled
by feeble lungs and a defective throat to shriek
his dictum in a shrill treble or in a squeaking
pipe, he could never as a statesman have been
at once the king and the conqueror of an idea.
If he had been as little as Lord Russell, not
even Sydney Smith's excuse to the disappointed
farmers of Devonshire, —" that he was naturally
bigger, but had been reduced by his labors in
the cause of reform,"    could ever have given
him that personal impressment which now, by
filling the eyes and ears, more than fulfills the
prestige of his name. Without special premeditation, I have strayed back to the thought
from whence we started, - the physical basis of
the statesman.  For lack of it Fessenden died.
For lack of it, and it only, he missed the highest intellectual success; without its ministry
even his fine brain could not fulfill its loftiest
function. For lack of it some of the most intellectual men in the'Senate to-day are slowly
dying.  This would be altogether too gloomy
to talk about if it were too late for remedy.
But it lies within human power to stay the




PHYSICAL BASIS OF STATESMANSHIP.  161
prodigal waste of human life which marks us
as a people. Think of the havoc which death
has made among the most intellectual and illustrious of our race within two little years! Even
while I write, the land is mourning for one the
bravest and best beloved of its soldiers, who
lived through a hundred battles, to fall dead in
his prime.  Looking at the magnificent physique of General Thomas, who can believe that
by the laws of Nature and God he should have
perished in the perfect flower of his years?
Thus too many Americans perish.  The English statesman, with his athletic habits and outof-door life, carries on his physical and intellectual power unbroken beyond the years of
threescore and ten. Past that age we often find
him bearing the heaviest responsibilities and
fulfilling the most active duties of the public
service.
Thus, with scarcely any relaxation of intellectual vigor, Lord Palmerston served his country to his eighty-second year. Lord Lyndhurst
made two of the most powerful speeches of his
life at the age of eighty-six, and died at the
age of ninety-three. Hle was an English American.  If an American statesman was not dead
long before that time, the man who wanted his
place would declare that he ought to be. The
11




162              O UTLrNES.
rare American who lives to such an age is
usually spoken of as a second child, who has
long outlived his time.  While the average
American statesman, no matter how superb the
stock of vitality with which he begins his career, usually manages to consume it so prodigally and irrationally that, with bad air, bad
hours, and bad habits, exhaustive labors, and
inadequate relaxation and exercise, inordinate
ambitions, contests, and excitements, finds himself an aged man in middle life; a victim to
incurable disease, or the ready prey to imminent and hopeless paralysis.  This is not a
very animating picture of American physical
deterioration, and the most painful feature of
it is that it is true. One thing I shall never
be able to understand: that is, how a being
arrogating to himself such immense superiority
as man, - one who in normal strength of nerve
and muscle and will often is so superior, 
should yet quite as often, through his entire
human existence, violate and outrage the laws
of his physical life, and in controlling impulse
and appetite show little more than the resisting
power of an idiot or the strength of a child. If
you are tempted to think this an exaggerated
statement, just recount the names of distinguished men who actually murdered themselves




PHYSICAL BASIS OF STATESMANSHIP. 163
by over-eating and drinking. How many thousands more have done this whose names have
never been written.
Excepting, perhaps, a dozen really noblelooking men, the United States Senate has
nothing to be proud of in its external aspect.
The remainder are a mussy and inferior looking
company. We have a right to' be disappointed
in them. In the House of Representatives we
expect to see a heterogeneous assembly, typical
of many climates and conditions. But from the
Roman to the American Senate the inflexible
idea of a senator has been that of an eclectic,
eloquent, wise, and august man. If a man possessing no one of these qualities still by some
circumstance obtains a senator's seat, I know of
no patent that he holds to high esteem because
he has filched a name which he does not honor.




XVI.
INSTINCTIVE PHILOSOPHERS AND STATESMEN
THE one-eyed philosopher of the "Edict"
sees acutely on one side; but he is as blind as
-a bat on the other.  His text is " Mind's the
standard of the man;" and he goes on to show
that he believes in brain and not in body, and
to prove that the instinctive philosophers believe wholly in body and not at all in brain.
According to his one eye, the " Instinctives"
are a set of lunatics, who in this world of absolute facts are yet content to lift their faces to
the sky, and swear incoherently by the representative words of Truth, Justice, Mercy, and
Purity; men who put words for ideas, instincts
for intellect, inspiration for reason; despisers
of brain, whose chief strength lies in the use
of capital letters and exclamation points. Having made these assertions, the one-eyed philosopher of the " Edict " thinks that he has done the
clever thing, and feels much relieved. Is it not
a partial and one-sided thought which discusses
the mind of man independently of bodily con



PHILOSOPHERS AND STATESMEN. 165
ditions? Is not a man's brain more dependent
upon his stomach than his stomach is upon his
brain? We are no more all intellect than we
are all instinct. There is no fact more significant than the dual life of the human being.
The " Edict" may publish another loose dissertation on this material thought; but it cannot destroy its truth, that " man is man only
by virtue of his blood."  If every thought involves the death of an atom of the brain, its
exquisite loss can only be supplied by the vivid
current from the heart which feeds and vitalizes it. If this be diseased and depraved, the
organ of thought is touched with its disease and
its depravity, and the very thought evolved is
more or less tainted and morbid. If " mind"
- or, rather, character, the finest emanation of
the intellect and heart   " makes the standard
of the man," how puerile to discuss that standard while ignoring the contributive conditions
which fix irrevocably the quality of that mind
and character.  Perhaps it is very clever in the
" Edict " to cry out: " Is there some one of the
organs in  his square-built, well-put-together
body which gives him absolute truths by process of secretion?  Has he glands that would
give us a good bill to regulate the civil service
of the United States? " But all this cleverness




166              0 UTLINES.
does not annihilate the fact that more than one
" absolute truth," and many "bills" in Congress have been defeated and destroyed through
the "processes " of diseased " secretions " and
through "glands " which refused to perform
their functions. It is because we believe in
the supremacy of reason and of the moral faculties that we insist that the highest health and
perfectibility of the human body is necessary
to their perfect development; and insist upon
it as a general axiom  no less because we remember several geniuses and a few saints who
managed to exist in bodies which were daily
insults to their souls. In this life, at least, the
spirit of man cannot act independently of the
material organs through whose medium  alone
it finds human expression.  Robust vitality
may exist with a coarse brain and an obtuse
organism; and a large brain of fine fibre for
a season may struggle and assert its inherited power though impeded in its action by
vitiated blood. In defiance of morbid conditions, it is able for a time to assert the laws of
its primal inheritance. I am thinking of two of
our own statesmen, born giants in intellectual
strength, who now in middle life are bowed
down with more than the infirmities of age. A
powerful intellect in a powerful body was God's




PHILOSOPHERS AND STATESMEN. 167
birthright to each. If they have cherished the
first, they have outraged the last. They have
destroyed the perfect mechanism through which
only their intellects can act; they have broken
Nature's sacred laws till they are objects of
pity, in their mental and physical pain-till
there is nothing left for them but suffering, and
the certain grave a few months further on. The
spasmodic action of their powerful minds is
like the fitful flare of a dying flame. In the
sudden and transient gleam  we are painfully
reminded of what the steadfast light of such
intellects might have been, sustained by strong
and steady health. We can illy spare them
from the legislation of the nation. They should
have grown old in age and honors in its counsels.  Not the " weighty matter of government," nor judicial study, nor devotion to
"reason," has made this impossible to them;
but the transgression  of physical law  has
brought physical death as its swift, inevitable
consequence.   Even the  reasoning faculty,
which our one-eyed philosopher does not too
much exalt, cannot long exist unimpaired in
the defrauded and degraded body which he
despises. And, though he were to sneer on
through every column of the " Edict," it would
not annul the truth that temperance and cheer



168              OUTLINES.
ful health must form the basis of mental and
moral greatness. And though he, gratuitously,
utterly condemns and rejects our definition of a
great man, his condemnation is not frightful. If
we have a great man, he is great from no intellectual power solely.  That he could be wholly
great without intellectual power, or if he were
not a master of knowledge, or of thought, no
one would declare. But all experience asserts
that the intellectual power must wear the
crowning more.  Beyond  the command  of
knowledge, or of thought, a man  must be
master of himself to be wholly great; if not,
his imperfect greatness is a mockery and a
shame.  That superlative purity of the moral
nature may exist with no commensurate intellectual stamina we are all aware; a man may
be great in goodness only, and through lack of
mental power totally unfit for the administration of public affairs. But what the public service needs, what it demands beyond the force
of language to declare, is the absolute man: a
man in whom the moral forces are as perfectly
developed, as keenly conscious, as the quickest of
his intellectual faculties; a man who, whether he
looks up, or down, or straight forward, can declare that he loves truth and justice, mercy and
purity, and prove by his own character and in




PHILOSOPHERS AND STATESMENL   169
every public and private act that he does so
love.  The one-eyed philosopher laughs, and
sets these words in the mouth of a school-boy,
to prove that they cannot make him great; but
he takes nothing from their significance when
they are meant and when they are lived. Why
this outcry for despised " goodness," for incorruptible men in high places?  Because it is the
deepest need of the state.  If the need were
for intellect, the demand would be for that;
the demand is for intellect exalted by conscience. The government has never suffered for
lack of intellect in its administrators; but it
has suffered and does suffer for their lack of
conscience.  We take it for granted that the
men who are sent to WVashington to administer
affairs have brains; we wish that we could
take it for granted that they have. integrity
also.  The truth is, there is a kind of " smartness " coupled with unscrupulousness which has
learned the trick of buying place and patronage, and eagerly pays the price for both, which
just now is uppermost.  If the secrets of the
government in its various departments could be
published to the people, they would find that
what they need most in their public servants is
not mere intellect; but a finer honor, a stainless
rectitude.  They want men whose votes and




170              O UTLINES.
influence can neither be bought nor sold. Is
it womanish and old-fashioned to demand such
men?  Not while the government remains with
the people.  Have we a Utopian ideal of excellence for men in public life? Not at all.
But this is true: only men of positive moral
strength are equal to its exigences and its temptations.  Mr. Congressman came to Washington an honest man.  In his quiet country home
he had never been tested beyond his strength;
had never grown entirely away from  a simple
and natural life. Once here, the evil forces of
an over-stimulated life begin to play with desire,
and conscience, and will.  Undreamed of ambitions, a lust for gold and for power, take possession of him.  Besides, Mrs. Congressman
wants a coach as fine as Mrs. Senator's; her
establishment must be as expensive, herself and
her children as lavishly arrayed. That all this
can be done with the congressional salary is
impossible.  Now comes the test.  Here is a
thousand dollars for a vote, and thousands more
to secure a man a place high in government
patronage; the " Whisky Ring," the " Treasury Ring," and untold speculations.  If he sells
himself to these interests through the weakness
of his will, this man, supposed to be legislating
for the people, becomes simply a political gain



PHILOSOPHERS AND STATESMEN. 171
bier, like any other gambler, living by his wits
and the tricks of fraud and chance.  We have
no romantic notion of asking congressmen to
emulate gods and angels, or of demanding their
freedom from  human infirmity, or of asking
them  to lift their faces to the sky to swear at
random their fealty to any lofty principle; but
the people whom they represent have the right
to demand that they should have the moral
strength to refuse a bribe, and, striving with
evil forces within and without, yet be strong
enough to be true to that which is best in
themselves.
The " Edict" portrays the " Instinctive Philosophers and Statesmen" as "scorners of reason" and of common sense, expending their
fervor in "double-leaded invocations to Eternal Justice," and in a frantic use of words to
which they apply neither meaning nor practice.
That the most profound words in human language are often used idly and for mere effect
no one will deny. Thus used and abused, they
yet lose nothing of their distinctive significance.
They mean no less. If "words are the only
things that will last forever," it is because they
represent that in man which is eternal.  They
are the visible signs of his finest emotions, of
his subtlest thoughts, of his rarest aspirations;




172                UTLINES.
or they are the embodied types of the degradation and the slavery of his soul. To be that
which the highest words in human speech represent is the consummation of human character.
And to know what you mean, and to mean what
you say, requires more than a one-eyed or an
instinctive philosophy.




XVII.
PIN-MONEY.
"LADY SOPHIA is to have ~16,000 jointure
and ~400 pin-money," said Horace Walpole of
Lady Sophia Fermor, when she became the wife
of Lord Carteret, - a lady for whom (although
a younger son) Horace had dared to cherish
more than a passing fancy. While English law
has never hesitated to appropriate the whole of
the wife's fortune for her lord's benefit, English custom has always taken care to provide
her bountifully with pin-money. In this respect
the Englishwoman is more independent and
happy than her American sister. As a rule,
the English wife has the absolute control of a
certain sum appropriated to household expenses
and her own personal wants to a much greater
degree than the American woman.  In this
respect, at least, she is freer, happier, and more
self-respecting. The very responsibility tends
to cultivate in her sound judgment, forethought,
foresight, and prudence in expenditure. A
creature treated as a child in the use of money




174              OUTLINES.
will seldom have more than the judgment of a
child, albeit it be that of a child of larger
growth.
The very extravagance of a large class of
American women springs from  this mode of
treatment.  Impulsive as children in their desires, they exhibit no more than the judgment
of children in their expenditures; hence the
enormous "bills" which confront the husband
and father, filling him with wrath or despair,
in which state he is so often portrayed tearing
his hair or taking with violent hands his own
life.  That men suffer much from the thoughtless extravagance of women is beyond question.
It is a fruitful source not only of unhappiness,
but of vice. Young men, deterred from marriage by horrible forebodings of milliner, dressmaking, and furniture bills, enter into social
relations which blight their lives and in innumerable instances make a happy family life for
them impossible. If the girls of wealthy families were educated to a wise knowledge of the
uses and possibilities of money, to the responsibilities which its possession involves, to habits
of thoughtful expenditure, with a definite income settled upon them, within whose limit
they were to bring the gratification of their
personal wants, what a decrease there would be




PIN-MJ ONEY.             175
in the habit of careless, useless shopping; in exorbitant bills; in a blind, reckless extravagance,
which neither knows nor counts the cost of anything on which the fancy may happen to light!
Our family monetary system in this country is
all wrong - in ten thousand instances ignorantly, carelessly, not willfully wrong; no less its
hard penalty is paid by ten thousand unhappy
hearts, in society and at home. If its result is
extravagance and questionable modes of making
money, - is recklessness and suicide among the
more wealthy and fashionable; in average American life its sequence is niggardliness, misunderstanding, discontent, estrangement, and unhappiness. Money in some phase is one of the
most fruitful sources of unhappy family life, especially of unhappiness between husband and wife.
This is true, while American women as wives
are among the most indulged women on earth.
This is one trouble; they are simply indulged,
in greater or less degree; and mere indulgence
necessarily infers dependence on one side and
supremacy on the other.  It is the fitful emotional kindness of a master; not the just sharing of an equal. This, carried into the minute
money-need of daily life between two persons
(so often mentally on a par) living in the relation of husband and wife, is the source of im



176              0 UTLINES.
measurable discord and sorrow. In this relation
impulse may be good when it happens to be
generous and tender; but justice is better.
Just here is one of the most painful illustrations
of caste in sex, as developed in daily life. I
know  men-good, kind, manly; who would
risk their lives to save their wives in danger,
who love them, after their own fashion —to
whom it never occurs that their beloved are not
among the happiest and most blessed of women;
who would declare me insane if I were to say
that they did their wives injustice and made
them  unhappy every hour in the day. Yet I
do say it, and say it because I love the wives
better than the husbands; although the latter,
as men go, are very admirable indeed.
There is Dove-eyes. She was one of the ten
thousand girls of whom North America has such
just occasion to be proud, - sensitive, refined,
intelligent, well-educated, self-supporting, highspirited, honorable, tender, loving, and lovable.
Dove-eyes was the daughter of necessity, and
for years had supported herself and helped
others by the honorable toil of her hands and
brain, when she succumbed to her especial fate
in the shape of Alexis, to her' the Grand Duke
of all men - indeed, a god walking the earth.
Out of her woman's small pay she had saved a




PIN-MONEY.              177
comfortable dot. When, as his wife, she entered her Grand Duke's palace, which was small
and on an unfashionable street, she carried into
it from her own small earnings furniture to furnish it, a handsome wardrobe, and a small bankaccount book of her own. But when she married Alexis she gave up all her opportunity of
independent support.  Henceforth she was to
work, and to work hard; but she was to work
only for Alexis. He was her sole employer.
Did he pay her as justly as strangers had done?
We shall see. While painting pictures, after
the manner of men in love, his favorite one had
been of the lovely time coming when she would
no longer have to toil for a living; when it
would be his joy not only to provide for every
want, but to anticipate it before she knew it
herself; and when her chief business would be
to put on her loveliest dress and freshest ribbons,
and wait for him with a smoking dinner ready,
which (in the picture) involved neither care nor
labor to cook. Nor did Alexis shirk the actual
demand upon himself necessary to the carrying
out of his desire. He was what in larder parlance is called " a bountiful provider."  He
made handsome presents at intervals to his wife,
and he said: "' My dear, if you want money, all
you have to do is to call on me." It sounded
12




178              OUTLINES.
beautifully. What could be more generous?
Both were very much in love, and for a time all
was blessed. Alas! the most ample trousseau
will wear out. Pretty wedding frocks will
grow old-fashioned and take on a look of antiquity. Babies are little cherubs who need many
clothes, which they outgrow with a frightfully
rapid impunity. I am sorry for everybody who
has not a baby, yet no one will deny that it is
the most costly of all God's gifts. What suffering, what anxiety, what money it costs to convey
it safely from the first tooth to the last one of
all dreadful baby diseases! Dove-eyes woke up
one day, to find that her last pretty dress had
been cut up for baby; that the last cent of her
own little bank-stock had been paid out for
baby- for extra doctor visits, extra diet, extra
airings, for many nameless little needs, which a
man would never dream of, but which are no
less necessary for that. Alexis would think
them unnecessary. Dove-eyes believed them to
be indispensable -life itself to her and baby!
She woke up to the still more bitter consciousness that she had not a cent of money that she
could call her own; not a cent that she could
spend as her own necessity or judgment dictated.
This, hard to any woman, is especially so to a
woman who had always had her own indepen



PIN-MONEY.               179
dent resources, however small; who had always
had her own small private fund, on which to
draw for her own personal necessities. Hard as
it was at first, she had tried to overcome her
reluctance to ask Alexis for money.'" It was
foolish and over sensitive not to be willing to do
so," she said. It was wrong in her to feel as if
it made her seem like a poor dependent to come
and ask her husband for what she needed. Did
she not at home work as hard and for more hours
than he in his counting-room?  Indeed, her
work now was never done. It used to be she
could sit in the evening and read. Now baby
cried so she could not even listen to Alexis read
the evening paper, but had to carry baby off
out of his father's sight, that his cries might not
prevent his comprehending the evening news.
Had not Alexis said that "all he had was
hers? "  She had tried to think of this, and to
ask for a few dollars just as if they were hers,
which he held in trust for her benefit. Alas!
after the first or second trying, it was a miserable failure.  She had asked when Alexis happened to be cross or short of money, and he
exclaimed: "Why, what have you done with
the last? Gone already? " She ventured to
say that it had gone to the doctor; when Alexis
responded: "I must say, Dove-eyes, I think




180              0 UTLINES.
your fears for that child make you send for the
ddctor oftener than is necessary."  Dove-eyes
was not sure that she didn't. She tried to put
down her own sensitiveness, and still go to
Alexis for money when necessary. But so
often there were notes (oh! how she dreaded
those dreadful notes; they seemed to be forever
due); or he was "hard pushed;" or, at last,
he exclaimed: "Dove-eyes, I must say that I
think you spend some money unnecessarily, and
not with the best judgment in the world." As
he went over the little account of personal expenditures, he found: " Charity, 50 cents."
"' Just now, charity, with us, must begin and
end at home," he exclaimed.  This was too
much for Dove-eyes.  The first time that he
had ever rebuked her with real harshness. She
poured floods of tears upon baby's head, in the
little cupboard aloft where she rocked him, until even baby grew  loving and dumb under
the piteous shower-bath. Dove-eyes never asks
Alexis for money now for any personal want
whatever; though, in an abundant home, the
want of it is a perpetual thorn in her heart.
Amid plenty, she has not a penny that she can
call her own, to expend as she pleases without
rendering an account to her husband. Poor
Alexis! He meant all that he said in the happy




PIN-MONEY.               181
honeymoon days about " anticipating her every
want."  He intended to do so then. He intends
to do so still.  Only, what man ever lived who,
by virtue of his masculinity, could anticipate
every need of a woman?  As a bachelor, without an atom of personal experience in that direction, he thought it would be delightful to
anticipate and provide for every want of his
lovely wife. How much the most economical
of woman's needs might cost he had not the
remotest idea.
Alas! Dove-eyes' needs, in a very great
degree, only represent the wants of the household, the never-ending, ceaseless demand of the
family.  To supply these always, smilingly,
spontaneously, ungrudgingly, under the stress
of difficulty, of business losses and business
worry, was not so easy. What wonder that,
amid all, the personal needs of the woman were
at last lost and overlooked altogether. Yet
never for a moment has Alexis meant to be
other than generous to his wife. The failure
lies not in his intention, but in his fashion of
carrying it out. If in the beginning he had
said: "Dove-eyes, we are not rich: but, with
care and thrift and God's blessing, we may become so. My average income is so much; let
us divide it. Here is so much per year toward




182             OUTLINES.
the payment of our home, so much for table,
with a margin for hospitality. Another (however small) for charity and for the rainy day.
So much for personal expenses, yours and mine.
Here is your pin-money, Dove-eyes. It is yours
absolutely. I shall never ask how you have
spent it, or if you have spent it at all; but I
shall pay you your share just as regularly and
promptly as I would any other equal partner.
As we are prosperous, it shall be increased to
the limit of my ability. Our home is deeded
to you. Whatever may happen to me, you and
the children will not be homeless."  What a
proud and happy Dove-eyes she would have
been! What an impulse, what an incentive
would have been given her to cultivate prudence, wisdom, and economy in this proof that
her husband trusted her, and acknowledged
her his equal partner in the life-long home
company.
As it is, Alexis wonders, with all his efforts
to make her happy, that Dove-eyes should so
often look worn and unhappy. Sickness, the
care of her children, the natural wear and tear
of human life, cannot account for all the sadness
looking forth from her soft eyes. Dove-eyes is
very much in love with Alexis still. There are
a hundred traits in his character to make and




PIN-MONEY.               183
keep her in this all-suffering state. She never
misses an opportunity to tell her friends that he
is the " best man in the world."  She believes
it, though she often makes the assertion with a
little inward sigh, which nothing outside of her
own heart hears.  Yet, with all her love and
his, there is a shadow on their wedded lives,
which justice, just a little justice, added to the
love, could lift and disperse forever.
Alexis would think it most outrageous if
Dove-eyes were to call him to an account for
every penny he chooses to spend for cigars, for
newspapers (whose unnecessary and unmanageable accumulation is a household nuisance), for
his soda-water, his " treats " to his friends, in
which she has no share; his hundred unaccountable ways of spending money, in which masculinity delights and for which it never renders
account.
If Dove-eyes called him to account (which
she never did), how he would resent it! " Isn't
it my money?  Don't I earn it? I shall spend
it as I please! "  That is just what the man in
him would say; and in these words all his
man's injustice to the woman whom  he loves
would  come  in — " my  money," not " our
money."  Dove-eyes works.  She works hard,
without wages.  She does not earn money. " I




184              OUTLINES.
give it to her," says this munificent Alexis. " I
mean to be a liberal as well as loving husband,
and give her all of my money that she needs.
How much she needs, and for what she needs it
I am to be the judge.  To be sure, she cannot
judge for me - how much I am to use as a person, or for what purpose I am to use it.  It is
not her right.  I am man and master, and earn
it; and shall say just how every cent of it shall
be spent."
In all that she has suffered and borne for
him, in the constant care and toil of years, the
wisdom, the self-denial, the economy with which
she has saved and garnered what he provided
-has she earned less than he?
Even if this were possible, in giving herself,
her life, her love, her devotion for all time to
him, did she not relinquish forever the opportunity to earn or to accumulate for herself personally in any other profession? Does he owe
her nothing for that? In choosing the highest
of any profession on earth to woman -that of
the wife and mother, as her husband's partner
in every home interest - should he treat her
with fitful indulgence, even in little things, or
with the tender honor due to an equal? Doveeyes feels that their home is "her husband's
house." She doesn't feel at liberty to spend one




PIN-MONEY.               185
shilling out of the common fund for any charity
or any purpose dear to herself, because she must
tell Alexis, and she is almost sure that he would
find fault, or hint at her lack of judgment, till
she would be altogether miserable; and sure,
judging by treatment received, that she was personally little more than a mendicant in her husband's home of plenty.
There are many Dove-eyes. There are many
Grand Dukes, whose name is not Alexis. Yet
men marvel at the unrest of American women,
and discourse with great eloquence and ignorance on the subject.
Let me astonish you anew, gentlemen, by assuring you that the lack of pin-money is at the
bottom of much of it. Dove-eyes will never do
any such thing; but thousands of women do.
They start off in the most unthought of tangents. " Anything, anything," they say,'" that
brain or fingers can devise, whereby I may earn
a little money that will be my very own, that I
can do as I please with, unchallenged, or without any man telling me that he gave it to me,
and that I must do just as he says with it or
do without it."
Not a man in the world, no matter how just,
how generous he is, can know how much his
wife (and the more sensitive and delicate she is




186             O UTLINES.
the more so) must sometimes suffer through the
very fact of financial dependence. You may be
truly the best husband in the world; as a rule,
she may be glad that all her temporal blessings
flow to her through you; and yet there will be
times when she will suffer through this condition most keenly —when she would gladly
part with her dearest treasure to possess a little
money utterly her own, which she might use for
some purpose dear to her heart, without asking
any mortal for it as a gift. My dear brethren
of mankind, do you not see how much misery
you can make and can unmake in your own
homes? After all, his use of money seems to
be the utmost test of a man's manhood? Touch
his money-nerve, and you measure him in almost every other direction. Yet remember, it
is not so much the amount of money you share,
it is your way of sharing it, which makes her
happy or unhappy.
When you are tempted to patronize your
wife, to make her feel in any ignoble way her
dependence on you, if you could but remember
one thing-that the true woman who gives
herself for life to be the wife of the best of men,
to love him, to suffer for him, to bear from him
all that a woman must, to toil and suffer for his
children, places him under a debt of gratitude




PIN-MONEY.              187
which no money on earth can repay! Considerate care, love, honor, and justice can be the
only recompense. To be sure, you are a Grand
Duke. Nobody denies that; you have only to
prove the patent to your rank. Leave your wife
to be Grand Duchess, and in her own realm
(which, surely, is not yours) let her reign with
equal freedom and in equal justice sovereign
over her own pin-money. Justice in the household coequal with love will do more than ten
thousand treatises to quell the public outcry
and soothe into peace the just discontent of
women.




XVIII.
BREADMAKING.
" MAN cannot live by bread alone," it has
been written; yet it is very certain that he cannot live without it, and is but a poor creature if
it is not of good quality. This is what ails half
the men we meet.  The women who pretend to
take care of them, and complain so much because
they have to do it, feed them on such wretched
bread, to say nothing of their other edibles,
that no wonder they are thin, yellow, haggard,
jerkey, and don't believe in " woman's rights."
It is perfectly natural, if a man sees that the
woman he knows best has reached no high
standard of excellence in the arts peculiarly her
own, that he should doubt the capacity of all
women to fill the higher callings which even
now open but a contested sphere to their ambition and effort. My good sisters, if you wish to
convert these masculine creatures to your most
progressive ideas, you must begin by feeding
them on good bread, which beginning will probably involve the necessity of knowing yourself




BREADMIAKING.             189
how to make it and bake it. Make it with your
own hands; sponge it, mould it, bake it, this
poetic bread  fine celled, white, tender, and
sweet. Stir it, beat it, and bake it, this still
more delicious bread- brown, fragrant, lifefeeding, full of fibre for bone, full of phosphorus
for brain. With this perfect bread build up the
muscular, nutritive, and nerve systems of this
perturbed mortal, who does not believe in your
"rights "; and when you have thoroughly "' reconstructed" him on a sanitary basis, he will declare to you of his own accord: " Do anything,
be anything you can. I make no objections, providing you continue to feed me on ambrosial
bread.  It is fit for the gods."  But, my poor
brethren of mankind, when I meditate on the
concoctions of saleratus, grease, and vicious
acids of all sorts which are given you to replenish the lost atoms of your material bodies, though
it may not be in my power to admire you, I
could both pity and pardon any mental or moral
obliquity of which you might be guilty. The
human blood cannot be fed with poisons, or
even with indigestible food, and yet the brain
and heart maintain strong and healthy action.
In knocking about the world, how long we live
and how far we go to eat one piece of superlative bread.  Among the Arabs poor bread is a
cause in law for divorce.




190              OUTLINES.
Breadmaking in its perfection has become almost one of the lost arts.
Is there any other people who take such infinite pains to be fine, and so little to be comfortable! One cause for this is that all household
service for women has fallen into disrepute.
The science of domestic economy, than which
none requires finer qualities of brain and heart,
is now entirely ignored, under the contemptuous
epithet of " drudgery," from which the chief object of a woman's life must be to escape. One of
the most mischievous qualities of this ignorance
is that it is usually very proud of itself. I know
the matron of a public institution, who thinks it
very vulgar and unladylike to think or to know
anything about your food before you sit down
to it.  One result of her sensibility is, that the
amount of hot saleratus-cakes, sour and leathery
bread, greasy and dried-up meats demolished
in this institution are appalling to contemplate.
Appalling because of the numbers of teachers,
young, half-fed girls, and orphaned little children who sicken and die for lack of nourishing bread and seasonable fruits, while there is
enough worse than wasted in food that cannot
be eaten to procure both.  This institution is
supervised by wealthy and intelligent women,
who supply everything for its inmates but prop



BREADMAKING.               191
erly cooked food. Probably it never occurred to
them to ask the matron if she ever visits the
kitchen.  She does a great deal of praying;
which is excellent so far as it goes, but never
went so far yet as to take the place of practice.
I believe religiously in the thorough physical
and intellectual education of girls. But that girl
is not educated, who, having mastered every
other science, is totally ignorant of the chemical
properties. of a perfect loaf of bread; and who
cannot, upon necessity, make such a loaf with
her own hands.  The gauge of education is not
what we have studied; it is that which our
learning has made us. The only measure of discipline is its result. "What am  I? what can I
do? what can I be for my own help and the help
of others? " is the first question which every
young woman, on leaving school, should ask.
The most that the average girl who leaves the
average boarding-school can answer is, that she
is "finished."  She is finished. Her digestive
organs are finished, her nerve system is finished,
her poor little muscles are finished, her feeble
brain is nearly finished. She is an overwrought,
hysterical, dyspeptic creature. She subsists on
pickles and preserves, hot cakes, strong coffee
and tea, and over-spiced meats.  She has no
domestic nor physical education. She violates,




192              0 UTLINES.
without knowing it, the laws of human health
every hour of her life. Without one atom of the
development necessary to fulfill the true duties
of a womanly life, she is told, perhaps, by her
" pa" that her " sphere is home," and that she
must stay there. No noble ambition, no useful
employment, no sweet home duties fill her days.
She spends most of her time crimping her hair,
eating candy, writing gushing letters, and dressing for the coming man; or she sits from morning till night in a cushioned chair embroidering
slippers and smoking-caps for this possible husband; or she may study a French cook book
long enough to learn how to make a fancy cake
or concoction whereby to woo him through an
epicurean stomach, with an accompanying, "' I
made it."  But where is the maid whose nmatrimonial line — whose pretty covert, " Please
marry me, sir," —is ever baited with a good
honest loaf of bread, kneaded and baked by
her own hands? Instead of deeming it a degradation or a misfortune  that she does not
know enough to take care of her health under
ordinary circumstances, it is the supreme delight
of her existence to be " in the hands of her physician," and to enjoy the perpetual felicities of
being "delicate."  "I am  so delicate," said a
girl to me, in the same tone in which she would




BREADMAKING.                193
have said, " I am so happy."  "My daughter
is so delicate," we hear mothers exclaim. From
watering-place to water-cure, they go about
with their languishing burdens.  It is " my
daughter," " my daughter," everywhere, always; her weakness her delicacy, her innumerable ailments. It never occurs to these anxious women that this very daughter is a living
protest against their own ignorance and inadequacy to fulfill the first duty of motherhood.
And here I make no allusion to inherited or
constitutional disorders, to which all may be
innocently liable; but the functional ill-health
caused solely by false habits, false food, and ignorance of the laws of physical life. The trouble
is, it is fashionable to be delicate. A certain
undefined reproach is attached to robust health.
To be really elegant, really intellectual, according to the accepted standard you must look " delicate."  There are men as well as wolmen who
believe that a certain appearance of sickliness is
indicative of high intellectuality; as if a torpid
liver could ever supply blood and brain as well
as an active one. What is worse, the odor of
sanctity has attached itself to wretched health.
At one time dyspepsia was a synonym for piety,
because nearly all clergymen had it. And eternity alone will reveal the nunbers. of feeble and
13




194              OUTLINES.
frightful sermons which have been born of the
pickles and preserves fermenting together in the
dyspeptic stomachs of good men. And it will
take the same limitless length of duration to
inform  the women of the world how much
they have done toward making clergymen an
enervated and sickly race of men, by the indigestible mass of goodies with which the individual woman of all generations has persisted in
piling the plate of her "beloved pastor." All
the early saints were "ashamed of their bodies;" and if many modern ones are not, they
ought to be. It was centuries before Christ
that the heathen Plotinus first declared himself
ashamed of his. After such cycles of time and
of knowledge have passed, it is a mournful fact
that so many Christians ought to be ashamed of
theirs for the same cause. The only pride which
the Latin Fathers took in theirs was in declaring what wretched tabernacles they were of
parchment skin, and bones that would scarcely
hold together. Ever since their day, saints and
sinners, each according to their fashion, have
done their best to punish and degrade the body
-the fair and marvelous human home which
God deems fit for an immortal spirit. Yet the
first hope of the race lies in the purity and perfection of the body. A brain of remarkable organ



BREADMAKING.              195
ization may accomplish vast results for a time,
in defiance of vitiated blood and disordered
functions. But the most powerful brain, the
most exquisite nerve-life, cannot long exist unaided by an adequate muscular and nutritive
system. A mind perfectly powerful and harmonious cannot inhabit a diseased and morbid
body. If, as a nation of dyspeptics, whose
brains flourish at the raw expense of their vital
forces, Americans have accomplished so much,
what would be the ratio of their performance
if their mental and physical development were
commensurate?  This brings us back to our
breadmaking —to bread as the deepest root
from which must grow the perfect flower of
body and brain. Never was a nation fed on
more wretchedly-made bread than ours.  This
is man's wrong; woman inflicts it. A man may
build a bigger ship. than a woman ever can;
but he never can make better bread than she
can, if she only will. Do you ask me if I believe in woman drudgery?  Never. Extreme
poverty involves a degree of drudgery which.
can never be escaped.
God knows that there are poor, overworked
women whom no earthly power can help, unless
He lift from their weary shoulders their too
heavy burdens.  I am  not talking to them;




196              OUTLINES.
but to the woman who, with ordinary health
and adequate means of support, yet regards all
household care as so much " drudgery," which,
in proportion to her " sense of superiority," she
must escape. If you are a drudge, it is not
because you are mistress of a house or a family; but because, being both, you lack the education, the discipline, the devotion which only
can make you adequate to the highest duty and
dearest delight which can devolve on woman.
You are a drudge because you are too ignorant,
too indolent, or too indifferent to impart to
your servant the simplest lessons of intelligent
domestic service.  Your house is disorderly,
your food wretched.  You fret, you complain,
you cry. Your husband scolds, perhaps swears.
You are all sickly.   Your doctor bills are
enormous.  Your sole consolation consists in
exchanging miseries with your female friends.
Suppose you possess the practical knowledge
to teach your servant how to prepare every
dish necessary to a perfectly supplied table;
suppose you often made with your own hands
its white and brown and golden bread; suppose
you devoted the time which you now spend in
crying and complaining in studying practical
hygiene and chemistry in their relations to
cooking (even then you would not be fright



BREADMTIAKING.            197
fully wise); suppose you gave the time now
consumed in nursing your sick children to studying the laws which govern their little bodies,
in learning the properties of the food necessary.
to their nourishment; suppose you spent one
quarter of the money which now goes to the
doctor, in securing them healthful amusements,
and the time which you now devote to worrying
your husband to mutual recreation and companionship; would you be more or less of a drudge
than you are now?  There is something false
and wicked in the cry which denounces the
domestic duties of women as such, which must
finally react upon and destroy itself. Let us
exalt our homes, if we would exalt ourselves, our
children, or the man whom we love. If we have
a home, let us deny the idea and prove it false in
our own personality that it is necessary to go
higher than that home, to neglect its duties, to
ignore its privileges, in order to secure the most
harmonious development, the widest culture, the
profoundest influence.
The increase and perfection of machinery
have taken the distaff and the needle from the
hands of women.  The decrease of marriages,
the changes in scientific and intellectual opinion, are among the causes which every dayare
opening and widening the employments and




198              OUTLINES.
opportunities of that large and constantly increasing class of women who are entirely dependent upon their own efforts and attainments, not
only for their subsistence, but for their place
as human beings in the world.  What just
mind will say that all legal disabilities should
not be removed from their way? that every employment and profession should not be opened
to them, to fill according to their culture and
capacity?  The world-wide change now going
on in the condition of women is but the natural
result of the primal law of growth and fruition.
Womanhood has not yet grown to its perfect
prime, has not yet borne its most' consummate
flower. Growth and fruition do not involve
chaos or destruction; but law and order, harmony and love.  Then how  querulous and
weak the outcry of fear for an impossible
future.  No change can outpass its natural
limit. No change can wash away the ineffaceable life-marks, rooted in human experience, the
indestructible affections of the human heart,
eternal in their life, as the law and order of
God.
When woman ceases to be imprisoned by
necessity in a house falsely called a home;
when she is no longer compelled to live in it a
slave for the mere chance of material subsist



BREADMAKING.             199
ence; then she will gladly turn from the outer
turmoil of the world to a true home as her best
refuge and surest chance for happiness. Then
she will realize, as she never realized before,
that to make that home all that it should be,
all that it may be, demands not only the graces
of the heart, but the highest intellectual gifts
which a human being can cultivate.
To-day, that woman who brings the ripened
powers of a rich and disciplined intellect to the
ordering of every department of her household;
who makes her home the centre of light, beauty,
and intelligence, drawing the weary and the
homeless into  its radiance; she who every
morning sends forth into the world a brave and
happy man; who every day gathers into her
rejoicing arms joyous and beautiful children;
she who from the exceeding riches of her life
and love gives, yet is not impoverished; who,
doing, being this, is a free woman,- free in
body, free in brain, free in spirit, free in the
largest right of her humanity,- she is the
crowned, the triumphant, the blessed woman.




XIX.
OUR KITCHENS.' COOPERATIVE  kitchens! "  Heaven forbid! Heaven probably will not interfere; but
surely women will. If there never was a house
large enough for two families, there never will
be a kitchen large enough for a dozen. It is
not strange that some women want to get rid
of their kitchens, such looking and smelling dens
as they are, and will always remain. Cowper
sung " The Sofa," and glorified the teacup. I
proclaim the kitchen, with a hearty desire to
rescue it from its abused condition. It is nonsense for men to bemoan their grandmothers,
because they spun and wove, while we do
neither. If they worked perpetually, you may
be sure that it was because they had to, not because they wanted to do so. They would have
been just as glad to have availed themselves of
steam-looms and sewing-machines as a refuge
from endless drudgery as their granddaughters,
if they had only had them. Yet it would be
vastly better for our generation if we consulted




OUR KITCHENS.              201
those dear old ladies oftener than we do; better
if we imitated them more closely, not in their
piety only, which on the whole was of too selfabnegating a sort, for it did injustice to some
of the best powers which God had given them
and increased the depravity of man in making
a bigger tyrant of him than even nature intended.  But there is no danger of our imitating them too nearly in their personal interest
in their kitchens. It is for the woman of the
nineteenth century to hold in her development
the equal balance of physical and mental culture.  She cannot do this and neglect her
kitchen.  No matter how far at times she may
rise above it, it will always do her good to come
back to it; and, if it is the kitchen that it ought
to be, she will ever feel delight in returning to
its homely brightness and savory smells.  I am
sorry for that woman who does not treasure in
her heart somewhere the memory of a beloved
kitchen. Perhaps it was grandmother's kitchen,
or mother's.  May be it was in the country.
You can hardly be happier in heaven than
when you played on its floor a little child. I
love such a kitchen; not the discarded one of a
fine villa, but the honored kitchen of a thrifty
farm-house. It faces the east, and takes the
sun's first "good-morning."  Thus its busiest




202              O UTLINES.
hours are full of brightness, and its restful
afternoons full of serene light and peaceful
shadows.  Its wide door opens on a grassy
yard, where "the old oaken bucket hangs in
the well."  What a yard it is! Its clovery
grass is a paradise for bleaching; its irregular
paths run through the dandelions down to the
garden whose luscious vegetables offer a daily
market for the ready hand, and out to the
orchard where the ruddy apples hang.  There
is an old lilac bush by one window, a sweet-brier
by the other, while morning-glory bells cluster
about both.  Beside one is a stand full of
plants, which in the winter flourish in the
morning sun. On its ledge there is a work
basket    a marvelous basket - into  whose
depths I sometimes dive, through piles of stockings, through bundles and bags, through scissors
and thimbles and pins, down to a needle-book
(certain to be at the bottom, if only through
my impetuous poking), in whose pocket I am
sure to find a whole literature of domestic recipes, heart-poems, and editorials on the state of
the nation. Beside it is a little old chair with
a warm cushion. This is the mother's chair
and this the mother's corner, and not to be invaded.  Then the old kitchen has a deep fireplace, a vast bake-oven, and a modern stove.




OUR KITCHENS.              203
It has a great pantry, whose wide shelves are
filled with glittering milk-pans, all set for cream;
and a store-room, in which you may find everything for cheer, from the barrels of flour and
sugar, the rows of sweetmeats, dear to every
housewife's heart, to bunches of dried catnip
hung up for the cat, and pennyroyal enough
for every stomach-aching baby in town.  The
old kitchen floor is painted a clear gray, brightened by gay home-made mats.  It has a deepthroated clock, that rules its days; a book-rack
filled with books and newspapers, and colored
prints on its walls.  It has an arm-chair, a sewing-chair, and a chintz-covered lounge. There
is nothing in it too fine for its place. It is only
a kitchen, after all, yet a joy to behold and to
enjoy.
There is a parlor in this house, proud in a
bright grandmother-made carpet, of the most
intense stripes; in haircloth furniture, as shining as a beetle's.back; in a profuse pile of old
daguerreotypes and a new photograph book. On
its walls old gentlemen sit in venerable frames,
with high collars, stiff enough to break their
necks; and old ladies sit in others, in muttonleg sleeves and bristling caps, who look down
with mild severity on the chignons of their
descendants.  When the  minister comes, or




204              OUTLINES.
the children from town, this parlor is opened
and furbished.  But, somehow, sooner or later
all the company gravitate back into the old
kitchen; for the glow, the cheer, the love are
there.
Then I am in love with a kitchen in town.
If it is not as poetic as the country kitchen, it
is more convenient. My heart has thrilled with
delight at the sight of its bright yellow floor,
and exulted with conscious thrift while I turned
the faucets of its "stationary tubs," and tested
the virtues of its "spacious range."  Who can
portray the splendor of its pantry - its mugs
and jugs; its " nests " of polished boxes, whose
covers shut in the priceless berries and spices of
the East; its rows of glass jars, filled with
glowing jellies - the ruby of the raspberry,
the purple of the blackberry, the crimson of
the currant; its shelves of canned  fruits?
There are peaches for you; tomatoes for you;
sweet corn in this can that will give you succotash in January, and delude you with the makebelieve of an August feast.  This kitchen's
window lets in the sunshine; and its back-door
opens on a grassy plot, on which the clothes
may bleach, the dog -may play, or the baby
roll. And all around the stone walks runs a
border of flowers: and, if morning-glories don't




OUR KITCHENS.             205
hang on the window, they do on the fence.
There are but few city back-doors which do not
open on a yard as large as this. Show to me
one pure with grass, fragrant with blossoms; or
show me one nauseous with the debris and refuse of the house, and I will tell you the sort
of people who abide inside. You tell me that
my kitchen is not practical?   That I don't
personally know about it? I know all about
it; which is more than I can say of anything
else. I know that every kitchen must have its
soapy days, its sudsy days, its codfishy days,
and even its cabbagy days - that, in spite of
its posies and spices, its odors must sometimes
be more pungent than pleasant; but I know
also that we may open the windows, let the bad
air out and the blessed air in, and that through
and beyond everything remains the kitchen, all
that it should be, or nothing that it should be,
just as we have made it! Everybody knows the
charm of a pleasant parlor. Every woman likes
to display her taste and refinement in it, according to her means or culture. All its pretty nicknacks have a price for her heart which no money
could pay. Its statuettes and pictures, its soft
sofas and chairs, give us the refreshment of
beauty and the proffer of rest when the day's
work is done. The parlor is the crown of the




206              OUTLINES.
home; but the kitchen is its heart. In the parlor may bloom the flower of its culture; but the
root of its comfort is in the kitchen. The parlor
may reveal to us the exact standard of a woman's taste;. but the unerring interpretation of
her disposition is the kitchen. Wealth or circumstance may place the actual labor and duty of
your daily life outside of your kitchen. Trained
servants may make it unnecessary that you
should fulfill its daily tasks with your own
hands. But has it ever occurred to you that,
however exempt yourself, some woman's life is
lived in your kitchen, and how much you may
add to that life by making your kitchen a pleasant place to inhabit? She is no less a woman
in all her native susceptibilities and needs because she is poor and does your work. Do you
realize how much every life takes on of the hue
of its surroundings? And what a minister of
good as well as a minister of beauty you may
be when you make your kitchen perfect as a
kitchen, as you have already made your parlor
as a parlor?   It cannot be measured, the
wretched health, the morbidness, the misery,
the vice even, which have had their birth in the
dark, unventilated dens which are called kitchens, in which so many women drag on their
weary lives. And when the girl of our time




OUR KITCHENS.             207
grows up to regard the kitchen of her home as
something more than a hole to be shunned, in
which Bridget was born to drudge; when she
brings into it, instead, her calico apron and
smiling face; when she devotes to its service a
portion of the cultivated powers now wasted in
idleness, if not in sin, we shall see the beginning of that royal race of women for whom we
longingly wait and in whose advent we so devoutly believe.




XX.
CASTE IN SEX.
I.
IN KNOWLEDGE.
AFTER the disastrous result of Eve's first
nibble at the apple of the tree of knowledge,
and the awful penalty which it entailed upon
her daughters, it is not wonderful that for many
centuries they were too frightened to follow her
example. Nor should we fail in charity to the
sons of Adam (no one of whom is over fond of
work) to say that together they have done their
best to shut away the forbidden fruit of wisdom from their sisters, in bitter remembrance
of that first taste which cost Adam his spiritual
supremacy and fore-doomed every son of his to
the curse of labor. At any rate, ever since that
unlucky beginning man has done his best to
keep woman in ignorance; and, after having
met with a very tolerable success in so doing,
with a charming and characteristic inconsistency, he now declares that her lack of acquired
knowledge is the sign and seal of her mental




CASTE IN SEX. - IN KNO WLEDGE. 209
inferiority to himself. In this arrogant declaration he does not take cognizance of the fact that
through all the earlier ages of human existence
it was physical force which held in abeyance
the brain and soul of the human race.  The
creature the physically weaker was the subject
creature.  In its abject condition intellect, spirituality, aspiration went for naught.  Out of
man's primal brutality, out of his instinctive,
unrestrained appetite, muscle, and will, every
form of human servitude, every shade of human
ignorance has grown.
" At the beginning the earth was without form and
void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep.
The SPIRIT OF GOD moved upon the face of the
waters.  God said, Let there be light, and there was
light."
The physical chaos of creation was not deeper
or more dreadful than the mental and moral
chaos which succeeded the Fall of Man.  We
are just emerging from  it.  We have not yet
escaped it.  But to-day, as at the beginning, it
is Spirit brooding over Matter - illuminating,
inspiring, triumphing over it- which brings
light into this troubled  world.  Two  forces
have always pervaded the universe: the unseen and the seen, the material and the spiritual.  Man represents the material, woman the
14




210              O UTLINES.
spiritual - the masculine and the feminine.
These forces are but just beginning to reign
together in equilibrium. Man has been woman's master because he has been the physically stronger. Woman is ceasing to be man's
slave, because, in the equal development of the
human race, brain and soul in her are coming
to prevail over the merely selfish and material
in him. To-day the manliest man would be
ashamed to look into the eyes of the woman by
his side and tell her that he is the master, because he could knock her down with perfect
ease, and break her bones with much greater
facility than she could his. And yet, out of
man's brute nature, out of that most ignoble
in himself, has come his loudest assumption of
superiority, his longest and lowest tyranny.
Every day the human race is moving further
and further away from the supremacy of brute
power. Yet long ages to come must pass before woman can outgrow, mentally or morally,
the marks of her manacles. The man born and
bred a slave, even if freed, never loses wholly
the feeling or manner of a slave. The woman
born to physical subjection and degradation can
never seek or use knowledge as her birthright.
Never till she holds her sex in honor, as man
holds his, can she be his equal, even in her own




CASTE IN SEX.-IN KNOWLEDGE. 211
realm. The deepest insult which can be shown
to a human being is to associate it solely with.
material functions, with no cognizance and no
consideration of its intellectual and spiritual
power. This insult, through all ages, man has
offered to woman. That it has come from man
proves his inferiority to her in the very element
of her nature which he ignores and insults. She
has ever delighted to honor him in his loftiest attributes. She pays homage to his intellect, his soul. She worships in him something
beyond sex, which will live glorious forever.
While she, reaching out through every impulse
of her heart, to the sweetest in human affection,
through every faculty of her brain, to the highest in nature and art  she to him has been
chiefly the creature of his pleasure. Being this,
whenever and howsoever she has proved herself to be more, by so much he has deemed
himself defrauded, and proclaimed loudly that
she had outleaped her sphere. Man, mighty in
brute power, and by that enthralled to his
senses, through it has made woman his subject
and slave. That he might make her these
more utterly, he began by declaring that she
had no soul. She was naught but a body, and
that body was his. Struggling, aspiring under
such a ban, do you marvel that woman through




212              0 UTLINES.
soul and brain has wrought little?  Mlarvel
more that she has wrought anything.  China
boasts of the most ancient civilization of earth.
Its system of scholarship is the most minute,
intense, and exhaustive in the world.  Yet,
within a year an imperial mandate has gone
forth that no Christian teacher can open within its walls a school for women; that every
one already established shall be closed. Is it
strange that the Chinese woman believes that,
if true to certain vows while living, after death
she will return to earth in the form of a man?
To her, with his immunities, that seems reward
enough for all she suffers or loses here. Athens'
the home of beauty, the focus of learning, of
art, of sesthetic amusement, of political freedom,
worshipping the form of woman on every shrine,
made her a prisoner in every home.  Every
Greek pulse thrilled with life and action; every
Greek heart throbbed strong with the passion
of freedom; every Greek eye craved the divine
harmony of beauty; yet the Athenian woman,
within sight of all, yearning for all, embodying
all, was shut into a sordid, slavish existence,
or seized freedom and culture at the price of
infamy. An Athenian, in open court, telling
how  good a husband he was, began in this
wise: "As a husband I rendered her situation




CASTE IN SEX. - IN KNOWLEDGE. 213
agreeable, but as a woman she was left neither
the mistress of her fortune nor of her own
actions."
Nearly three hundred years ago a young girl
in Dijon, France, conceived the insane and profane idea that even girls should learn the alphabet.  She appealed to her father, who was a
member of the Provincial Parliament; and he
consulted four doctors of law, who decided that
it was " a demoniacal work for girls " either to
teach or to learn the alphabet. Whereupon
the sons of Dijon arose in riot, and stoned
Frangoise de Saintonges for her wicked designs
upon the understandings of her sisters. She,
nothing daunted, took fifty livres, all she had,
hired a little house, and with five other maidens entered it. It took all her money to pay
her rent. " We have no beds," she said; "but
we spend our nights in prayer." The craven
father relented sufficiently to send from his
abundant table cold victuals for herself and
maidens. They went on from the alphabet to
learn many other things. Twelve years from
that day on which they were stoned Dijon held
high carnival in their honor. Forth from their
humble house walked a hundred maidens, clothed
in white, while the bells of the city rang and the
people strewed flowers in their pathway. They




214              OUTL~NES.
were preceded by the entire Provincial Parliament, and by all the soldiers of the province,
to the stately building which stands to-day in
Dijon, a monument to the everlasting glory of
Frangoise de Saintonges.
The first thing that the Pilgrims did, after
planting themselves in Boston, was to found
a school for boys.  Their sisters cried so loud
for the forbidden fruit of knowledge that the
city elders were induced to open a high school.
Immediately its doors were thronged.  With
ninety-nine boys two hundred eighty-six girls
appeared as candidates.  Worse - after the alphabet and figures, they aspired to Latin and
Euclid.  The city council met, and resolved
that this immloderate zeal for knowledge was
too much for the man-nature to bear.  In eighteen months the school was finally closed, because of its multitude of scholars of the proscribed sex.
Yet no less a woman was the first instigator
of Harvard College. Lucy Downing, imbued
with the caste of sex into which she was born,
was one of the ten thousand women who sacrificed themselves and their daughters for their
sons. She was the sister of Governor Winthrop, of Massachusetts, and sent her daughters
into service, and lived poorly and meanly her



CASTE IN SEX. - IN KNO WLEDGE.  215
self, that "her George" might be educated.
In October, 1636, she wrote from London to
her brother, the Governor: "If God should
call me, I could go far nimbler to New England
if a college could be established there, which, in
my opinion, would put no small life into the
plantation, besides being of incalculable benefit
to George.  The result of this sisterly appeal
was that in 1636 the General Court of Boston
voted four hundred pounds to a college, to be
established in Cambridge. In 1640, second on
the list of the first graduating class was George
Downing, the nephew of Governor Winthrop.
George Downing lived to serve with distinction
under Cromwell; to be a " turn-coat" under
the Stuarts; a baronet, and "a great man,"
who snubbed his mother and refused her money
when, at the age of seventy-three, she asked
him for it. It was then that she wrote to one
of the sisters whom she had put out to service
for the sake of this brother: " Your brother
George has bought another town, but more your
brother George will not hear of for me. He
says that it is only covetousness that makes me
ask for mgore."  Yet in his unfilial thanklessness George Downing did not differ in spirit
from thousands of learned professors and popular ministers of the present day, who, having




216              O UTLINES.
been educated at the cost of devout women, who
had left their own daughters untaught to educate other people's sons, now shut in the faces
of women the doors of the very colleges which
could never have existed without them.
II.
IN EDUCATION.
After the fate of the first Boston high school
open to girls, it can hardly be accepted as proof
that the Boston woman was intellectually the
inferior of the Boston man, because as late as
the day of John Adams, while Harvard College
lavished all its opportunity of education upon
him, she was denied the privilege almost of
learning how to spell. Barely to read and write
decently, with the knowledge of dancing, at
that time made up the sum  total of a woman's
education. Yet, in defiance of it, out of her
clear, strong head and deep, loving heart, Abigail Adams wrote letters to her son, John
Quincy Adams, which, with her example, made
the strongest moral force in his education, and
which will live in literature as long as any
speech of her more liberally educated husband.
It proves how much more powerfully is one




CASTE IN SEX. - IN EDUCATION.  217
human being individually than any statute of
law which proscribes it or oppresses it; that in
all ages and  conditions women have existed
who, through sheer mental and spiritual force,
have commanded wisdom and the reverence of
men in the very face of the sneer, " You are
only a woman."  We need not go outside of our
own race or language to learn in defiance of
what ridicule and prejudice they did it. A few
sentences from  Swift's famous letter " To a
Young Lady on her Marriage " will indicate to
what stage the education of women had advanced in the age of Queen Anne. He says:" It is a little hard that not one gentleman's daughter in a thousand should be brought to read or understand her own natural tongue, or to judge of the
easiest books that are written in it; as any one may
find who can have the patience to hear them, when
they are disposed to mangle a play or novel, where
the least word out of the common road is sure to disconcert them. And it is no wonder, when they are
not so much as taught to spell in their childhood, nor
can ever attain to it in their whole lives.
"I advise you, therefore, to read aloud more or
less every day to your husband, if he will permit
you, or to any other friend (but not a female one)
who is able to set you right; and as for spelling, you
may compass it in time, by making collections from
the books you read.




218                  UTLINES.
"I know very well that those who are commonly
called learned women have lost all manner of credit
by their impertinent talkativeness; but there is an
easy remedy for this, if you once consider that, after
all the pains you may be at, you never can arrive in
point of learning to the perfection of a school-boy.
" Your sex employ more thought and application
to be fools than to be wise or useful. When I reflect
on this, I cannot conceive you to be human creatures,
but a certain sort of species hardly a degree above a
monkey, who has more diverting tricks than any of
you, is an animal less mischievous and expensive,
might in time be a tolerable critic in velvet and brocade, and, for aught I know, would equally become
them."
History has not recorded how refined or sensitive by nature the English maiden was who
received this letter from Dean Swift; but any
woman of sensibility in the present day can
easily decide how much such a letter would encourage herself in the pursuit of learning. Only
sixty years ago Sidney Smith wrote that there
was no rational defense for the great disparity
between the education of men and women in
England.  The advance is great; yet to-day the
spirit of Caste in Sex prevails in the education
of women both in England and in America.
Never till the human race outgrows it can simple
justice be meted to woman in any life or work




CASTE IN SEX. - IN EDUCATION.  219
that she attempts.  Never till she commands
her faculties and functions as man commands
his can she be judged justly in love, in learning, in labor, in creative art. Never till she has
outgrown and- outlived the caste of sex in herself
can she command the high justice which all
women long for and a few so loudly demand. She
has yet to realize- or, at least, to act as if she
realized - that, whatever ideal of excellence a
woman commands, she must command it as
woman, not as man. Ever since the world was
made, women  have  been abused for being
women, till the brightest of them have come to
despise their own sex, to apologize for it, to
abuse it, or to try to be above it. For centuries a woman believed the highest compliment
a man could pay her was to tell her that she
was "superior to her sex."  If she was ambitious and wanted to do something great, she
tried to do it like a man; and, of course, made
a miserable failure. To-day the most "advanced " women think it necessary to talk and
act like men, as if there were any special honor
in that! A witty woman, anxious to impress a
man with her wit, in nine cases out of ten falls
to ridiculing her own sex, its weaknesses and
foibles. The man may laugh, he may even
admire her brilliancy, but by so much must she




220               OUTLINES.
sink in his esteem, if he holds her to his own
code of honor.  If not too self-absorbed, she
would notice that he offers her no antithesis
in himself by ridiculing his own sex. A man is
proud of being a man. He has pride of sex; he
holds his own in honor.  In nine cases out of
ten a man is true to all other men.  He will
hide rather than expose the faults of men; if
he cannot justify them, at least, he covers them
with silence.
A woman, if not ashamed or sorry that she
is a woman, is so imbued with the conviction
that her sex is held in latent contempt that she
deprecates or apologizes for it, if only to prove
to the man with whom she converses that she is
superior or indifferent to it, that by so much
she personally may rise in his estimation. A
race that does not believe in itself can never
rise above the level of slavery.  A  sex false
to its own highest possibility, a sex not true
to itself, must accept degradation.  A  woman
would despise a man who habitually ridiculed
or sneered at men, at whatever work they did
or attempted, however poorly done; she would
despise him  as a man false to his own sex, to
his own manhood.  Is it any less false or despicable for a woman to do the same thing?
The unity of manhood makes half its grandeur.




CASTE IN SEX.- IN EDUCATION.  221
The unkindness or indifference of woman to
woman makes half the weakness of womanhood.
When women are as true to women as men are
to men - when they hold their womanhood as
men hold their manhood — as a glory, not a
shame - then and not till then will they rise to
the dignity of a united, concentrated, distinctive
force in the universe.  Not till then can the
masculine and feminine soul reign in harmony.
Then woman will be content and proud to
reign as woman; she will have no desire to
rise above man, will see no special advantage
in being like him. She will hold the equipoise of the human race in abiding with him
his equal counterpart, and her glory will be
the glory of WOMAN. That day is not yet.
Caste of sex in education, with its root far back
in the centuries, blossoms outside of all schools,
and bears baleful fruit in millions of human
homes. How often does a mother take her
growing girl and boy and teach to each as only
a mother can the mystery of the other's nature?
How often does she teach each to revere the
attributes of the other, teach both that in the
very difference of their nature and lot they are
not to fear or despise, but to cherish and love
each other.  Instead, as a rule, the boy is
simply left to take in prejudice and presump



222              OUTLINES.
tion on the score of his sex from  a thousand
sources. How early the brother learns to lord
it over his sister, simply because his parents
allow him to do so. He robs her of her treasures; he shuts her out from pleasure with the
cry, "You sha'n't. You're a girl!"  He learns,
from  a thousand careless words uttered every
day in his presence, that he is of greater account
than his sister, because he is a boy; that he can
enjoy many things of which she is deprived,
because he is a boy; that great hopes are centered in him, solely because he is a boy, and
very few in his sister, because she is a girl. She
may have the quicker intelligence; but she is
cut short in her studies because she is a girl.
There may exist the same need that she should
be taught self-help as he; yet she is left to grow
in helpless, untaught dependence, because she
is a girl.  She may have the same longing as
he after free scope for her powers; yet no less
they are dwarfed and denied, because she is a
girl.  After such a process of education from.
infancy, is it strange that the brother grows up
to believe that he is the superior being, not because he has given any proof of it whatever,
but solely because  he is a man?  Or is it
strange that the sister begins the life of womanhood mentally maimed, crippled through all her




CASTE IN SEX. - IN EDUCATION. 223
nature, feeble and aimless, when for not one
day of her existence has she been allowed to
forget that she is a girl, and solely because a
girl, proscribed in every sphere of development.
A man's arrogance and tyranny seldom begins
by his own fireside. It begins far back, when a
little boy he played with his sister. Not nature, but his mother, with caste in sex, has
made him what he is, and made his sister what
she is.
Not long ago a boy ten years of age burst
into the room where I sat with his mother, and,
throwing his books upon the table with great
violence, his face flushed with passion, he exclaimed, -
"I'll never go inside  of that schoolroom
again."
"What is the matter, Ernest?" asked his
mother.
" They have given me a woman for a teacher; and I won't be taught by a woman."
"Has she been unkind to you, Ernest?"
"No; but she is a woman. All the boys in
B. will laugh at me when they find out my
teacher is a woman. I never had a woman for
my teacher, and I never will."
" Don't you know that some of the greatest
men who have ever lived in the world were




224              O UTLINES.
taught by women when they were much older
than you are, Ernest? " I ventured to ask.
" I don't care," exclaimed this young citizen
of America.  "I ain't agoin' to be! Boo-hoo!
boo-hoo! "
" There, don't cry, Ernest," said his mother.
"If you feel so bad about it, you needn't go
any more. To-morrow  I will look you up a
new school. I'm  sorry, though, for Mr. -'s
is one of the best in the city."
Hearing this, Master Ernest wiped his eyes
and his nose, seized his cap, and stamped forth
in triumph, to tell the boy next door that his
mother wouldn't send him to be taught by a
woman!
The boy had passed one crisis in his life, to
travel (spiritually) downward  toward meanness and tyranny. Had his mother said: "' Ernest, I have perfect confidence in Mr.
and in the lady he has placed over you. You
must go to your teacher," the boy would have
learned two lessons    alas! unlearned    which
would have changed his entire character: first
to obey his MOTHER; second, not to despise his
teacher because she is a woman.
Who can say that already in his heart the
boy does not despise his mother; or that when,
as a man, he shall despise her still more for
being a woman, she will not deserve her fate?




XXI.
WOMAN SUFFRAGE.
DR. BUSHNELL admits too much in his statement of the question in the first chapter of his
book to be able afterward to maintain his argument for limitation and subjection with force
or even dignity. Once allow, as Dr. Bushnell
does, that women should be educated with men,
that the training of universities, the opportunities of the learned professions should be open
to them, and after that it would be utterly
useless for Dr. Bushnell or any man to mark the
exact boundary of progression to a human being thus disciplined and educated. She alone
could find the limit in the constitution of her
own body and mind.. When she had reached it
she alone could know; no outside mind, though
peering through the spectacles of a Doctor of
Divinity, could inform her. Her capacity could
be the only measure of her function. When he
first became aware that men and women were
being educated together in the colleges of Ober15




226              OUTLINES.
lin and Antioch, Dr. Bushnell says: " I confess
with some mortification that when the thing was
first done I was a little shocked even by the'rumor of it. But when I drifted into Oberlin,
and spent a Sunday there, I had a new chapter
opened that has cost me the loss of a considerable cargo of wise opinions, all scattered never
again to be gathered."  All the danger and
wrong now predicted as the most direful result
of men and women participating in the right of
suffrage, was more than foretold as the inevitable result of their being educated in the same
schools. Dr. Bushnell says: " Our new codes
of training are even a surprise to us; compelling us to rectify a great many foolish prejudices
that we supposed to be sanctioned as inevitable
wisdom by long ages of experiences."  Well,
Dr. Bushnell, if you live long enough, you will
find yourself compelled to rectify some more
very foolish and feeble prejudices which you
have set down on your pages as the very essence
of " inevitable wisdom." It is not likely that
you are very much more " shocked " on the verge
of the " Gulf of Female Suffrage" than you
were twenty years ago over the prospect of women and men going to school together. You declare now that no harm, but " beneficial results,"
have come from that. Suppose that you wait




WOMAN SUFFRAGE.             227
till "woman's suffrage " is tried, before you decide whether to work yourself into a very painful state of "horror," or to bestow upon the
enfranchised sex your benign and smiling approbation. No harm has ever yet befallen the world
through the open, honorable association of men
and women, either in education, church, or state;
but unutterable harm  has come through their
covert and hidden relations in every age of the
world and in every sphere of life. Woman in
politics! Woman has always been in politics.
The question is not concerning the fact, but its
relations. Shall woman remain forever in government a covert, irresponsible, unacknowledged
force; or shall she be trained to high, responsible power -to be honored no less as woman,
wife, mother, and friend, because she represents
herself in the laws which concern her, her children, her property, no less than man?  How
could Dr. Bushnell have proved more utterly
the weakness of his own argument than by
taking refuge in the proposition, that the principle of human liberty as embodied in the Declaration of Independence is the " doctrine of the
woods," a "scheme of free-thinkers and'malignants' like Rousseau and Voltaire." After
informing us that he does this " for the purpose'
of taking down a little our egregious opinion of




228              OUTLINES.
the suffrage," and that it will come to its end
and disappear "within a comparatively short
run of time," no one need wonder that he turns
so lovingly to the Chinese, adding: " God forbid that they ever be so far captivated by our
dreadfully cheap way of suffrage as to give up
their cadetship way of promotion for it; a plan
that has put the whole nation climbing upward,
and will keep it climbing to the end of the
world."  And this from an evangelical clergyman concerning a people who, with hundreds of
thousands of authors and a literature reaching
back past the siege of Troy and the days of
Pericles, to-day, in the nineteenth century, murders half of its female children at birth; and
who, with all its competitive examinations and
intense scholarship, has not a school nor a book
in all the land for the mothers of its people! If
the ideas of republican freedom are only " catchwords of liberty; " if the principles of the
people's government, bought at such cost of life
and treasure, are only " glittering generalities; "
if we are to go back to oligarchy, or " one man
power," nothing more need be said either about
manhood or womanhood suffrage. But we may
thank God that no wave of an ecclesiastical hand,
nor stroke of florid pen, can blot out the principles of human government, dearer to the Ameri



WOMAN SUFFRAGE.              229
can people than life itself. It is only by denying the principles of that government that Dr.
Bushnell can escape their conclusions.  Once
admit man's natural right to suffrage as a human being, and by no logical process can you
deny it to woman.
Dr. Bushnell takes vast credit to himself, and
calls on all women to note that he puts his ipse
dixit in a much pleasanter form, with less
"pounding emphasis," than the apostles. He
adds: "Of course, Paul did not know everything, whether about women or on any other
subject." After such a clerical admission, he
icannot well call any woman " unorthodox " or
" infidel," if she coincides. It is true that Dr.
Bushnell on every page shows a disposition to
Iput his lordly statements in the least disagreeable manner possible. His intention is to be
very generous; but he is generous, patronizing,
tender even, in  an  overshadowing, Olympic
-sort of fashion, that might be provoking if it'were not ridiculous. Personally full of amiable feeling toward woman, he makes as many
concessions to her demands as are possible with
his unutterable man-conceit. The inexpressible
sense of superiority which he feels as man to
woman as woman, his delight in his own " swayforce," so pervades and prevails over him that,




230              OUTLINES.
unconsciously, apparently, it makes him contradict his own abstract statements of the question
on every page.  Nothing could prove more
clearly than his book that what he calls " a reform against Nature " is simply a reform - an
irrepressible protest from woman against man's
natural conceit, against his assumptions of superiority as man over her as woman. Of course,
this is nowhere more apparent than when Dr.
Bushnell speaks of woman's ministrations in the
Church. What a comment is it on the bigotry
of his brethren to say that his conclusions are
far in advance of most evangelical clergymen of
our day. How many of them to-day are willing
to give the largest interpretation to the words of
St. Paul?  Who are willing to acknowledge
that many of the specific reasons, customs, and
laws on which those words were based have long
since passed away; and that with them should
have passed their restrictions also? Only God
can measure the narrowness, the littleness, the
personal meanness, which has ruled in  the
Church under cover of the words of the great
Apostle! What has not woman given to the
Christian Church?  She has lived for it, she
has died forit. The idols of her heart, the costliest treasures of her fortune, she has consecrated to it. Through all ages she has been, in




WOMAN SUFFRAGE.             231
the largest measure, its brain and its soul. Yet
to-night in how  many Christian conferencemeetings and prayer-meetings could she rise to
tell in simple utterance "what the Lord has
done for her soul," without being challenged
and silenced by some sanctified masculine warden of the tenets of St. Paul? I can count the
years on my hands since I heard a New England
pastor's wife, a holy woman, who rose to speak
a few words of personal experience in a Sabbath-evening prayer-meeting, silenced by one of
her husband's deacons.
It is amazing to see with what a majestic
sweep of the pen Dr. Bushnell disposes, in
three or four pages, of the great female reigns
of history. There is no argument here. The
greatest facts of the past are all ignored. The
reign of the great Catherine of Russia, who in
her passions and administrative talents equaled
the most powerful man; the reign of Maria Theresa, whose gallant Hungarians shouted "We
will die for our king, Maria Theresa;" the
reigns of the princesses of France, who ruled in
defiance of the Salic law, these and many others
Dr. Bushnell does not mention  at all. He
could not, and  yet prove that women-rulers
have been failures. If history proves anything,
it proves that women of one type have talent




232             OUTLINES.
for government, and have been among the most
powerful rulers of the earth. But it suits Dr.
Bushnell's purpose to declare that none of these
sovereign women were great. Where they approximated to greatness, it was only because
they " reflected men!"  Elizabeth of England
was not a great ruler, because she  showed
weaknesses as a woman. Judged by this standard, which man ruler among all was ever great?
Do we find one, even among the most powerful, who did not at some time betray personal
littleness? Then Frederic the Great was not a
great king, because he was a literary pedant,
and quarreled with Voltaire, and was shabby to
his sister. Napoleon was not great, because he
was devoured by envy, and was jealous of a
woman's intellect all his life. Surely, he was
not,great when he so far forgot the gentleness
of a gentleman as to push Madame De Stael
behind him, that she might not enter a room
before him.
Dr. Bushnell discusses his question from beginning to end entirely in reference to a theoretic man and woman. Most people carry an
ideal man and woman in their head. And
when the practical relations of the man and
woman of every day are discussed with reference only to these impossible ideals, we need




WOMAN SUFFRAGE.             233
not marvel at any ridiculous conclusion. Dr.
Bushnell's " woman" is a wondrous compound
of violet and mignonnette, of angelic and of imbecile qualities. In one chapter she abides in " a
sphere of silence; " in another she is a husbandhunter of the leap-year sort; in another she is
"elected to gentleness and patience," or " to the
dreadful lot of violence and tyrant cruelty;"
in every one she is an abject "subject."  His
"man " roars loosely through every page of the
book. "Thunder" is a pet word with Dr.
Bushnell. He would make us believe that at
least every other man we meet is a Jupiter,
emitting thunderbolts at every  breath. He
says: "It is the heavy tread, the thundering
guttural voice, the Jupiter-like air and expression
(and man is not to blame for these)," [no, poor
fellow] that pass the law of female subordination. Then he gently asks his feminine compound of botanical and seraphic properties,
"why she should wish to encroach upon this
man's thunder-force?"  Heaven forbid! What
woman would not gladly perform a painful pilgrimage, if so she could but find her Jove, and
then fall down and worship him! Alas! the
actual Jupiters are very scarce. Somehow the
average man has missed the godlike proportion
both in mind and stature. Very often he is




234              OUTLINES.
little more than a bundle of unreasoning prejudices, opinions, and passions; arrogating to himself utter supremacy simply through the fact
of being a man, not from any mental or moral
height which he has reached as an individual
soul. Yet no less "this masculine half-being
must be allowed to sink into the bigger self
that he calls home, and be sheltered in the
womanly peace." He finds it very pleasant, yet
not more pleasant than the " womanly peace "
finds it to shelter and to love him. Few are
the women who would not choose to take this;'half-being," disagreeable as he sometimes
finds it possible to make himself, and abide
in his protection as does he in her ministration.
It is not possible.  No amount of fine theorizing annuls the fact that tens of thousands
of women must shape their own fortunes and
take care of themselves. In England, in 1861,
840,000 married women supported themselves
and their children by their own labor. This is
a hard fact to set against Dr. Bushnell's remedy of universal marriages, to be accomplished
through the workings of a gigantic matrimonial
intelligence office, and a perpetual leap-year
privilege accorded to woman to propose marriage to men. If anything could astonish one in
Dr. Bushnell's book, it would be that so wise a




WOMAN SUFFRAGE.            235
man could be so foolish. Which would be the
more unwomanly in woman, to represent herself as a human being and citizen, or to so far
outrage the finest instincts of her womanhood as
to offer herself, by indirect act or avowed word,
to a man who had never sought her? What
more degrades woman to-day than that she so
often seeks marriage as a support?  Why is
the holy sacrament of love, the sanctity of the
family state, so often prostituted and destroyed,
but because marriage is entered upon as a necessity or a convenience? And what can so place
marriage on its only true basis of mutual love,
mutual fitness, mutual esteem, as for woman to
make herself independent of it as a mere means
of subsistence?
If woman was in fact the " subject" creature which Dr. Bushnell describes, she would
not demand for herself and her children what
she demands to-day. After so many centuries
of travail, it would be a sad conclusion to come
to, that the human family had not struggled
upward to a higher and completer development.
Such development could not come to one half
of the human race alone. Amid all the blind
groping of women toward something brighter
and better, amid all the mistakes and extravagances which they commit, the fact that woman




236              OUTLINES.
as woman demands for herself the complete
right to herself, to the use of all her faculties as
a human being, is the most hopeful promise of
the time for the future of the whole human
family.  Man for so many ages has told her
what to do, what not to do, what she was capable of doing and being, what she was not capable of doing or being, that to hear her declare
for herself what she can do, what she has a
right to do, what in God's good time she will
do, is an invasion.on precedent which he does
not excuse or pardon. All his instincts and
prejudices are armed against such innovation.
For this reason every magazine and newspaper
that we take up bristles with his deprecations,
his warnings, his sneers, his injunctions, and his
old, old story of what woman is and what she
is not. Just here lies the lesson which the men
of this age must learn. It is the. core of the
whole " Woman  Question."  The time has
come for woman to decide for herself what she
is and what she is not, to prove by opportunity 
what she can do and what she cannot do.
Every human being carries the limitations of its
action in its own constitution.  It holds in its
own consciousness the indice of its special, individual work. No outside soul can decide what
that work is, -what its limitations are. No




WOLMAN SUFFRAGE.            237
woman could completely represent a man. No
man can represent a woman. He has tried to
do it for centuries, and the result proves his
utter incapacity. His very difference from her
makes it impossible. The hour has come for
woman to represent herself. Heretofore man has
shut against her the gates of advancement and
of culture open to himself. He has oppressed
her with unequal laws, and then told her she
was his inferior. Heretofore she has been measured and judged without half a chance as a
human being. Hereafter she is to be measured
and judged by her chance. Hereafter her development must be measured by the limits of
her physical and mental constitution. How far
those limits disqualify her for any employment
or place can only be proved by free competition. It remains yet to be proved what those
limits are.  There may be a few  mistaken
women, who imagine that some height is to be
gained by women seeking to be as men. Underlying this excrescence is the vast underlying
need already voiced into a universal cry - the
woman's need of free development, growth, opportunity, as woman. Harmony of organization, perfection of function, subtle fineness of
brain-fibre, earnestness of soul, devotion of
heart, spirituality untrammeled, must ever be




238             OUTLINES.
the best feminine forces which she can bring to
the world's service. No thoughtful, far-seeing
woman, however she may admit the justice of
equal suffrage, believes for one moment that
she can find her highest enfranchisement in the
casting of the ballot.




XXII.
"UNA AND HER PAUPERS."
" UNA and her paupers" is the designation
given by Florence Nightingale to her whose
name I once more lift up for the sake of other
women, especially for that of my own countrywomen.  Says Florence Nightingale of her:" One woman has died - a woman attractive, and
rich, and young, and witty; yet a veiled and silent
woman, distinguished by no other genius but the
divine genius, working hard to train herself, in order
to train others to walk in the footsteps of Him who
went about doing good.
" She died, as she lived, at her post in one of the
largest workhouse infirmaries in this kingdom, the
first in which trained nursing has been introduced.
She is the pioneer of workhouse nursing. I do not
give her name; were she alive, she would beg me
not. Of all human beings I have ever known, she
was (I was about to say) the most free from  the
desire of the praise of men. But I cannot say the
most free, for she was perfectly free. I will therefore
call her Una, if you please; for, when her whole life
and image rise before me, so far from thinking the
story of Una and her lion a myth, I say here is Una




240               OUTLINES.
in real flesh and blood - Una and her paupers, more
untamable than lions."  "She lived the life and died
the death of the saints and martyrs, though the
greatest sinner would not have been more surprised
than she to have heard this said of herself. In less
than three years she had reduced one of the most disorderly hospital populations in the world to something like Christian discipline, such as the police themselves wondered at. She had led to be of one mind
and heart with her upward of fifty nurses and probationers.  She had converted a vestry to the conviction of the economy as well as the humanity of nursing pauper sick by trained nurses. She had converted
the poor-law board, a body not usually given to much
enthusiasm about Unas and paupers.  She had disarmed all opposition, all sectarian zealotism; so that
Roman Catholic and Unitarian, High Church and Low
Church, rose up and called her blessed. All, of all
shades of religious creed, seemed to have merged their
differences in her, seeing in her the one true essential
thing, compared with which they acknowledged their
differences to be as nothing.
"In less than three years —the time generally
given to the ministry of that Saviour whom she so
earnestly strove closely to follow —she did all this.
She had the gracefulness, the wit, the unfailing cheerfulness -qualities so remarkable, but so much overlooked in our Saviour's life. She had the absence of
all asceticism or mortification which characterized His
work, and any real work in the present day, as in his
day.




"UNA AND HER PAUPERS."               241
"All last winter she had under her charge above
50 nurses, above 150 pauper scourers, from 1,290 to
1,350 patients, being from two to three hundred more
than the number of beds. All these she had to provide and arrange for, often receiving an influx of
patients without a moment's warning.  Among them
were prostitutes, worn-out thieves, worn-out drunkards. No small portion of her work was to see that
the dissolute and desperate did not corrupt the young
and not hopelessly fallen.... How did she do it all?
She did it simply by the manifestation of the lfe that
was within her, the trained, well-ordered life of doing
her Father's business, so different from the governing,
the ordering about, the driving principle.  Everybody recognized it —the paupers, the vestry, the
nurses, the poor-law board. The nurses would have
died for her, because they always felt that she cared
for them- for each one in herself- solely for their
well-being. Because she had no care of praise in her,
she had a greater power of carrying her followers
with her than any woman or man I ever knew..
"We hear much of idle hands and unsatisfied
hearts. All England is ringing with the cry for'Woman's Work' and'Woman's Mission.' Why
are there so few to do the work?  If any one would
know what are the lowest depths of human vice and
misery, would see the festering mass of decay of living
human bodies and human souls, and then would try
what one loving soul, filled with the spirit of her God,
can do to let in the light of God into this hideous
16




242                oUTLINES.
well, let her study the ways and follow in the steps of
this one young, frail woman, who died to show us the
way, blessed in her death as in her life."
"Dear Agnes" she was called by high and
low, rich and poor. One who knew her always
writes of her: 
" There are many who can look back upon her
from the time when, in her own bright home, in the
North of Ireland, she gave her days to tend the poor,
where her visit was looked for as a ray of light
beaming on body and soul. From those walks which
would have annihilated most young ladies she would
return, often amid drenching rains, as fresh as a rose
to the social evening circle, ever devoted to the
service and pleasure of all around her.
" We love to remember her in her home at Fahan,
by the side of Lough Swilly, or among the glorious
rocks of Port Rush, or as she guided us over the
wide sea-floors of the Giant's Causeway; but we
knew herltetter, and the memories of her are dearer,
as in after days she threaded the close courts and alleys of the back streets of our great city, when she
took voluntary share in the toils and cares and joys
of our London Bible Mission."
Yet of this young home missionary her sister,
who writes her memorials, says: " Of her it
might indeed be said, whatever her hand found
to do she did it with her might.  She saw -




"UNA AND HER PAUPERS."    243
what many, alas! of the good and useful people
of the present day fail to see - that God may
be obeyed and glorified as truly in the small
details of domestic life as in the greatest missionary work abroad."
Such a life as this bears me back to the deep,
sweet fountains of womanly character which fed
my childhood —to such women as Susannah
Wesley, Mary Fletcher, Madame Guion, Catherine Adorna, Ann and Sarah Judson, and Margaret Prior, of New York. In this loud, egotistical day it comes with a touch of healing. It
is a benediction in the air, hushing discord into
peace. Listening to its lesson, in the presence
of God's poor and sick, one must marvel that so
many women of means, of leisure, who fill the
world with their outcry for " opportunity " and
work, who rebel against the meagreness and littleness of their pursuits, do not see how broad are
the fields, how wonderful the harvest of bodies
and of souls, waiting, wasting for woman's touch
of mercy. I would not be understood as urging romantic, enthusiastic, untaught women into
any mode of life for which they are constitutionally unfitted.  But I wish it were in my
power (though I doubt if it is) to say one word
to make more desirable to the mass of dissatisfied, unoccupied, affluent women the education




244              0 UTLINES.
which would fit them for, in varied phases, a
life of benevolent labor.  There is no more
painful sign of the times than the restlessness,
the dissatisfaction, the lamenting, and yet the
idleness of this class.  Women who must work
for their living are saved a thousand horrors
which beset Fortune's (nominally) more favored children.  " I envy you because you are
so busy," said one.  " Oh! if I only had something of importance to do, to make me forget
little, miserable annoyances." Does that lovely,
unhappy woman see an "importance" worth
the seeking in the life of Sister Agnes?  It was
not an easy life. Oh! no. Is that why so few
comparatively seek it? Its rewards never take
the sound of public applause.  Is that why
Florence Nightingale must cry: " Oh! daughters of God, are there so few to answer? " A
growing passion for publicity is fast becoming
the bane of American women.  They scarcely
realize it; yet it is becoming a prevailing fact
that no vocation seems to them  to be worth
their seeking unless they think that in some
way it will recompense them with applause or
"fame."  What a pitiful mistake! I say this in
no way underrating the gift of utterance, the
power to embody in color or form any work
of imperishable genius.  I am  glad for every




"UNA AND HER PAUPERS."           245
woman who does well, be it on stage, or forum.
God never endows a creature with any gift
without his purpose- beyond man's finding
out. Yet no less the mass of women, aye, and
of men, must perform their life-work in silence.
They must do their work, whatever that work
may be, and find reward simply in its doing.
God is just. Woman has come to her day.
The feminine soul will take its half of the universe.  Yet no less the women who thrill our
hearts, before whose very memory we bow in
reverence, have done their highest work unconsciously. "They builded better than they knew."
Do you ask which of all is the happiest life?
Then I say, from my heart, a consecrated one.
Be it "in the world " (so called) or out of it,
in highway or by-way, as God wills, still a life
consecrated to a service better, higher, sweeter
than  that of self-enjoyment or self-success.
We all want to be happy. We all seek personal joy as an instinct.  Surely, God meant
it to be thus when HE made us. Yet no less
HE has set the deepest sources of joy outside
of self-indulgence - in love, obedience, devotion, and duty. It may be a hard word, the
last; it has a chilly sound.  Yet no less it
claims and possesses us more and more as our




246              0 UTLINES.
days go on. Impulse, desire, idolatry, aggressive selfhood - one by one we lay them down.
We drop our weights as we go upward. Lo!
the cross that we called Duty changes to our
crown.




XXIII.
LET US LIVE.
I OPEN my window  upon the world just
wakened, and wonder if in any supreme moment I was ever thankful enough for the great
boon of existence. It is so wonderful to be alive!
It is so blessed to live. " Yes," said a friend
to me once, "if we did not have to die; but
this world which you delight in so much - the
trail of death is over it all."  He had buried in
the earth the delight of his eyes and the love
of his life. Silence was my duty, standing
within the shadow of that loss. Yet I do not
delight in life because I am unacquainted with
grief. I am pervaded with the consciousness of
the impending mystery of death  the awful
change to the one taken, the desolation to those
left. I lift my weights and move on, often
with an unsteady step. I see my friends falter
and fall down beneath their crosses. Struggle,
strife, treachery, disappointment, loss, anguish,
hopelessness - the night-shade of human lifeI do not forget it; I cannot. The very shadow




248              0 UTLINES.
that it casts -the long, long shadow, often
stretching across nearly all the weary space
from the cradle to the grave — makes me sure
that to few, very few is human life the boon
that it might be. I forgot nothing, not even
inherited taint, moral, intellectual, spiritual;
the fate in temperament, which is the saddest
curse entailed upon perverted humanity. But,
after weighing all in the balance, still I am
sure that just to live, under ordinary conditions,
is a privilege of which we but rarely make the
most; a possibility to whose highest limit we
can but seldom rise. We find only at intervals
the inevitable doom  a drawback to our joy.
Usually it is the care, the worry, the torment,
which should not have occurred at all.  We
have gone so far from Nature.  Our lives are
so artificial, so false, or so petty. Our great
sorrows, like our great opportunities, stand far
apart, lonely landmarks in our lives.  And it is
humiliating to sum up the meagre frets which
make the discontent and unhappiness of average daily life.  Your new dress fits miserably;
therefore, for the time being, you must be
wholly miserable.  John thumbs the walls and
bangs the doors, and you grow  overwrought
and wretched.
Your husband comes home at night silent,




LET US LIVE.            249
cold, or cross. All day you have been thinking
what a dear fellow he is. He did a splendid
deed yesterday, over which you fondly muse.
Nobody on earth is quite so fine, or noble, or
wholly to be adored as he. He opens the door.
Lo! your god is a moody man. Something has
gone wrong —his digestion, very likely. He
ate a piece of pie in a restaurant at noon vile
enough to tear up mucous membrane and temper together. He is blind to all the little love
surprises that you have lying in wait for him.
He knocks down your bouquet, smashes your
vase, bungles and bangs generally. In the
keen reaction of disappointment, you answer
him shortly or sharply. He in his turn says
something which indicates that he does not
think you altogether an angel. Either of you
would die for the other. No less, each wonders
for the moment how the other can be so disagreeable. What a perfect evening you had
pictured to be spent together. You spend it
apart. It ends in tears and sullenness. You
dump your head on your pillow and wonder
why you were born.
You leave your work at night, thinking all
the way home what a dear wife awaits you
there. They are all present with you, a hundred graces and goodnesses of hers, of whom




250            OUTLINES.
nobody else dreams. You think of them, and
how much she loves you, till you wonder in
penitence how you could ever for a moment
have been neglectful or unkind. " Never, never
will I be again," says the spontaneous heart as
you open your door on your angel at an unlucky
moment. She has just spanked Tom, and is
still shaking Susan. Such a day!  Servants,
children, markets, and shops all awry. She
is a darling. Some other time she will make
you sure of it, and beguile you with most
delicious chatter and laughter; but not now.
She is wearied, worried, and irritable —overworked, in fine. You could soothe her in a
minute, if you would; but you won't. You
believe in the ancient tradition that "a wife
should always meet her husband with a smile."
She should always hide her troubles out of his
sight. You remind her of this. You tell her
that she is " unreasonable."  She retorts bitterly that she " wishes you could be a woman
for an hour."  With a superior air, you inform
her that you would not be a woman for a moment, upon any consideration. You spend the
evening away from home. Nevertheless, you
find your pantaloons mended in the morning,
and look upon them with a pricking of conscience, that would deepen could you see the




LET US LV'E.              251
sad tears that dropped into the stitches. You
over-eat, or under-eat, or eat at the wrong time.
Your headaches, your nerves are like needles,
your words are disagreeable, even while the
soul within  you is yearning for perfection.
Perhaps, like poor Eugenie de Guerin, you
have a soul that "afflicts itself about the least
thing.  A word, a memory, a tone of voice, a
sad expression, a nameless nothing, will often
disturb the serenity of your spirit — small sky
that the lightest cloud can tarnish."
The processions of the seasons pass on. The
constellations march through space. Days die
in serenity and are born in splendor. The universe lavishes its largess for your delight; yet,
of the infinite that it gives, how little you take
in, how much less you assimilate. In what
poverty you abide. What scanty measure you
give out.
In what perception, or faculty, or emotion do
you rise to the supreme fullness of life? You
are haunted with the consciousness of what you
miss, of what you have never reached.  What
dulls and deadens and irritates you this moment? Pickles and preserves, festering together
in your stomach, very likely. Dyspepsia may
be the penalty of long-violated laws. Or some
discord of noises, or of souls, which you cannot




252              OUTLINES.
prevent.  Something, a petty or mean little
something, doubtless; yet it is mighty enough
to undermine resolves, to defraud you of the
highest and finest essence of life; more, to rob
you of the possession of your highest and sweetest self. Nor is the victim scarcely ever wholly
to blame.  The most exquisite flavor of daily
existence eludes us chiefly through the lack of
a prevailing and pervading courtesy in our constant intercourse with each other; through a
careless lack of tender consideration for the
temperamental differences and infirmities which
exist in all. -     is " foolish and has notions; "
that is reason  sufficient why -     should  be
crossed, and by so much in no wise considered.
We dismiss the fact without study, without one
atom of tender feeling, and treat the victim accordingly.  Think how many loudly-professing' friends" you have who never fail to repeat
a cutting, sarcastic, or even rude remark; who
just as rarely speak to you one kind or encouraging word. It is a sad comment on human
nature that the one who repeats an uncharitable speech is invariably considered sincere,
while the person who ventures to repeat or express a very kindly one is always open to the
suspicion of flattery.
This lack of courtesy, of sympathetic kind



LET US LIVE.               253
ness in little things, is surely the bane of average daily life. We see it, feel it, suffer from
it everywhere. It is as culpably palpable in the
highest council of the nation as it is in  the
humblest household.
Yes, Swedenborg's doctrine is true.  We in
our lower state are infested with demons - the
demons of selfishness, which hold us down from
the fullness and perfectness of human existence.
Yet the soul will not be defrauded altogether
of its birthright. Sometimes it soars and takes
possession of its high estate.  Then you know
what it is to be glad to live. In some clear
dawn, in some still night, in some moment of
rest, when you possess your soul in peace, you
realize it all —the bliss of being, the joy of
breathing, the ministry of light, of color, of odor,
of sound, the ecstasy of inspiration, the presence
of God.  What is it not, the heart in you that
loves and lifts its idol up into the light of
supernal faith, where it abides transfigured,
sanctified, and safe from  sin?  What is it not,
this yearning for knowledge, this hunger for
the perfect, this reaching out toward the illimitable, this capacity to love, to suffer, to renounce, to believe, to know, to aspire, and to
strive upward toward the aspiration?  All this
may be shut in one weary frame, even under




254               OUTLINES.
a stove-pipe hat or a fashionable bonnet. Every
breeze that stirs, every bird that sings, every
flower that blooms, every moment, with its utmost perfect possibility, - is my minister, a
portion of the universal joy of life. Get thee
behind me, world —the world of mean cares,
of self-love, of petty strifes, of poor ambitions!
Give me that which is holy and eternal - the
kind word, the unselfish deed, the care for
others in little things, the charity that can
suffer and yet be kind, the affection which,
sweetening life and surviving death, is our only
foretaste of Heaven.