Regarding the Habit of Exaggeration
During your visit here with my niece, I became much interested in you.
Zoe had often written me of her affection for you, and I can readily understand her feeling, now that I have your personal acquaintance.
You have no mother, and your father, you say, absorbed in business, like so many American fathers, seems almost a stranger. Even the most devoted fathers, rarely understand their daughters.
Now, I want to take the part of a mother and write you to-day, as I would write my own daughter, had one been bestowed upon me with the many other blessings which are mine.
I could not ask for a fairer, more amiable, or brighter daughter than you, nor one possessed of a kinder or more unselfish nature.
You are lovable, entertaining, industrious, and refined.
But you possess one fault which needs eradicating, or at least a propensity which needs directing.
It is the habit of exaggeration in conversation.
I noticed that small happenings, amusing or exciting, became events of colossal importance when related by you.
I noticed that brief remarks were amplified and grew into something like orations when you repeated them.
I confess that you made small incidents more interesting, and insignificant words acquired poetic meaning under your tongue.
And I confess also that you never once wronged or injured any one by your exaggerations—save yourself.
Zoe often said to me, "Isn't it wonderful how Elsie's imagination lends a halo to the commonest event," and all your friends know that you have this habit of hyperbole in conversation.
Now, in your early girlhood, it is lightly regarded as "Elsie's way." Later, in your maturity, I fear it will be called a harsher name.
When you come to the time of life that larger subjects than girlish pranks and badinage engage your mind, it will be necessary for you to be more exact in your descriptions of occurrences and conversations. Besides this, there is the heritage of your unborn children to consider. I once knew a little girl who possessed the same vivid imagination, and allowed it to continue unchecked through life. She married, and her son, to-day, is utterly devoid of fine moral senses. He is a mental monstrosity—incapable of telling the truth. His falsehoods are many and varied, and his name is a synonym of untruth. He relates, as truth, the most marvellous exploits in which he really never took part, and describes scenes and places he has never visited, save through the pages of some novel.
His lack of moral sense has blighted his mother's life, and she is wholly unconscious that he is only an exaggerated edition of herself.
I think, as a rule, such imaginations as you possess belong to the literary mind. I would advise you to turn your attention to story-writing, and in that occupation you will find vent for your romantic tendencies.
Meanwhile watch yourself and control your speech.
Learn to be exact.
Tell the truth in small matters, and do not allow yourself to indulge in seemingly harmless white lies of exaggeration.
There are times when we should refrain from speaking all the truth, but we should refrain by silence or an adroit change of subject. We should not feel called upon to relate all the unpleasant truths we know of people.
When asked what we know of some acquaintance, we are justified in telling the worthy and commendable traits, and saying nothing of the faults.
Therefore, while to suppress a portion of the truth is at times wise and kind, to distort it, or misstate facts, is never needed and never excusable.
When you and Zoe came from your drive one day you were full of excitement over an adventure with a Greek road merchant.
As you told the story, the handsome peddler had accosted you at the exit of the post-office and asked you to look at his wares.
When you declined he became familiar, paid a compliment to Zoe's beauty, and assured her that a certain lace shawl in his possession would be irresistible draped about her face.
Then he had pursued the carriage on his wheel and continued to "make eyes" and pay compliments to the very gate of my home, where he abandoned the chase.
The facts were, according to further investigation, that the man paid a simple trade compliment in reference to the shawl and its becomingness to a pretty face, mounted his wheel and rode away, as it happened, in the same direction you and Zoe were taking.
Again, you related a bit of repartee between Zoe and a caller, which I had chanced to over-hear, and out of two short sentences you made a small brochure, most amusing, but most untrue.
It was complimentary to both Zoe and her caller, yet it was not the conversation which took place, and therefore was not truthful.
These are trifling incidents, yet they are the straws, telling that the wind blows from the marsh-lands of inexactness—not from the mountain tops of truth.
Once a woman loses a sense of the great value of absolute truthfulness, she has blurred the clear mirror of her soul.
Put yourself upon a diet of facts, my sweet young friend, and cure this propensity, harmless enough now, but dangerous for your future.
Watch your tongue that it does not say five or six when it should say two, or yards when it should say inches.
Even in the smallest matters, practise the habit of being exact.
You will thank me for this advice sometime, even if it seems unreasonable to you to-day, and remember, I would not take the liberty or the trouble to so advise you, did I not love you and feel anxious for your welfare.
Who Has Learned Her Origin
Your despairing letter lies before me. I wish you were here, my dear child, that I might talk from my heart, instead of writing from it. I am sorry that the secret, so long hidden, has been revealed to you, and in such a despicable manner.
An anonymous letter always carries with it the venom of a serpent. I have long known your history, though the world generally believed you to be the actual daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Marchmont, who adopted you when you were scarcely one week old.
No daughter ever received more affection or better care than these good people gave you. Mrs. Marchmont lived always with a fear in her heart that you might learn your history from some idle or malicious lip, and before she died begged me to be your comforting friend, if that hour ever came, which has now arrived.
As your mother's nearest friend, it is natural you should turn to me in your crucial hour of pain. And in reply to your questions regarding the truth of this anonymous assertion, I will tell you all I know.
Your own mother was well born, and a girl of great beauty and charm. She was of foreign blood, and her parents, after the foreign custom, selected for her, at the age of seventeen, a man of mature years and unattractive personality, but some fortune. The family lived in a seaport town, and your mother attracted the eye of a young seafaring man, holding a government position. An intense and uncontrollable love sprang up between them. Your mother had been kept in ignorance of God's great law of sex attraction, its purpose and its results, and she was like a new-born babe towed on the sea of her own suddenly awakened emotion.
It was arranged that your mother was to elope with her lover on his next arrival in port. All plans were to be made by him during the voyage on which he went forth, after a stolen interview with your mother. He was lost at sea, and all on board the ship perished with him. Mr. and Mrs. Marchmont chanced to be sojourning in the place at the time of your birth. Mr. Marchmont had longed for a child, and the tragic story came to his ears through the physician of your mother's family, and he and his wife decided to adopt you and take you to America.
I was the one friend who shared with Mrs. Marchmont the story of your birth. Other friends knew she had adopted a child, and of course all sorts of rumours were afloat for a time. Mr. Marchmont's nephew was particularly unfriendly, I remember, as he had believed himself heir to his uncle's estate until your adoption.
Some three years ago I chanced to be in the seaport town where you were born, and I made quiet inquiries about your mother. I learned that she had recently died, leaving a husband and three children. I hunted up the children, and found them to be most uninteresting and ordinary. The oldest daughter I met and studied. She was plain and commonplace in appearance, and the other children were dull and unattractive.
The husband was the elderly man selected by your grandparents. Just how he had been led to accept the second place in your mother's life, and whether he had known of the tragedy, I could not learn without asking more questions than I deemed wise.
But what I want to impress upon your mind by this recital is, your own divine inheritance of love, the inheritance which has bestowed upon you physical beauty, mental power, and rare qualities of heart and soul. I know few women so endowed by the Creator as you. I know of few young girls—in fact, not one—I would so gladly and proudly claim as a daughter, or wish a daughter to be like, as your lovely self.
When I read your letter, with its wild expressions of self-abasement and despair and regret that you were in the world, where, you seemed to believe, you had no right to be, I could not help picturing to myself the dull face and disagreeable personality of your half-sister, the child whom you no doubt believe has a greater right than yourself on earth. Now whatever society has decided is legal and right for human beings, you must not forget that God also has made rules, and that those rules must first be obeyed, before the rules of man can be regarded as perfect.
God's first law, regarding the propagation of the human species, is that the mother must be dominated by a supreme and ruling emotion to give to the world the highest type of a child.
Your mother loved your father with all her heart and soul. She was a young girl, ignorant of the world. She thought of her lover as her rightful mate, and lived but for the hour when he should rescue her from the unhappy fate arranged by unwise and sordid-minded parents.
Your father loved her, and they were in God's sight more truly husband and wife than the soulless and loveless ceremony of the law made her and her legal husband afterward.
It is a great misfortune that your parents lacked the self-control which is necessary to every well-balanced human being who seeks for the fullest development. It is a sad thing that over your life this shadow of unlegalized birth must rest.
But were I given the choice to-day to be what you are, or what your sister is, and what thousands of children born of loveless marriages are, I would not for one second hesitate in my choice.
The world needs marriage laws to keep any order in society.
The wisely reared and well-balanced woman will keep herself in womanly reserve for her legal husband.
Your mother, by a moment's weakness and loss of self-control, left a blight upon her life for ever, and a shadow upon yours.
But do not for one instant think of yourself as anything but a child of God, endowed with all the wealth of the spiritual kingdom, whatever the law may withhold from you here.
You are legitimized by love, your sister is legitimate by law. She is illegitimate in the sight of heaven, you in sight of earth.
Be glad of your beautiful nature and beautiful qualities, and do not spoil them by despondency or pessimism.
Think of yourself as if you were a child of Adam and Eve, born before the serpent appeared, when there was no law but the law of love to govern two souls, drawn together by irresistible attraction.
The best and highest qualities of two human beings meet and mingle in your nature. Do you suppose the great Creator of all things regards you as base born, when he has so endowed you with all that makes woman lovable and charming.
Live up to your divine inheritance, my dear girl. Make the world better for your presence in it, and bear your sorrow with that resignation and philosophy which all human beings must cultivate if they do not wish to become weak repiners when they face the sorrows of life.
Look the world squarely in the eyes, and feel no shame.
Your mother's marriage to the man she detested, and the birth of children conceived in loathing, were acts which in my mind called for more shame on her part than your own birth. Both were misfortunes for her, since only by living an orderly, controlled, and lawful life can any human being find happiness or self-respect in the world.
But when we come to the close analysis of motives and impulses, many an act the world condemns is far less reprehensible than other acts which meet its loud acclaim.
You have received from the vast spiritual realms about us your rarely beautiful qualities. Go forth and give them to humanity.
Be strong, be good, be brave, be happy.
No one and nothing can harm you but your own mind.
The world, as we encounter it, is but an echo of our own strong convictions. Respect yourself absolutely, believe in yourself absolutely, and the world will respect you and believe in you.
Say to yourself every hour, "I am God's divine creature," and no one will dare look you in the eyes and say you are anything less than that.
The arms of infinite love enfold you—have no fear.
Young Lady Contemplating a Career as a Journalist
Your interesting letter regarding your future plans has been food for my thoughts ever since its receipt this morning.
I remember when you were my guest a year ago that you told me you felt like a big bird in a small cage. Every time you tried to spread your wings you were bruised by bars. Your home environment with its few duties and small responsibilities, your church and your charities, failed to give you full opportunity for the exercise of all your vital forces.
I knew then that you were longing for a career, and I felt confident that some word would come from you before long, announcing a change in your life.
I was prepared to hear one of two things—that you were soon to be married, or that you had decided to enter the dramatic profession. When a young and attractive woman grows restless and eager for change, she is, unconsciously to herself, sending out a challenge to Fate to create new conditions in her life. Despite the fact that no male member in the "Fate" family has ever attained prominence in the eyes of the world, and that the three sisters have claimed so much power over the destinies of the human family, a little investigation will prove that they never make any pronounced move without calling in the aid of Cupid.
Cupid is their prime minister, and we all know that prime ministers are the power behind the throne of rulers.
When you sent out your eager thoughts for "something to happen," to change the monotony of your existence, I knew the Fate sisters were quite likely telegraphing Cupid that his assistance was needed to quiet a small riot in the human family.
Once they set Cupid busy with a human heart, the Fates need give it no further attention. When Cupid reports that his work with the heart is finished, then the Angel of Resignation or the Angel of Death must finish the task.
Knowing you to be particularly fond of the theatre as a distraction, I had thought you might essay the rôle of society actress, confounding appreciation for talent, as so many women do; and when your letter opened with the announcement that you were about to give me a great surprise, I was prepared to hear that you were billed to appear in a walking rôle, with a road company, next season, with promises of greater things "soon afterward."
But I confess to absolute surprise, as I read on, and learned that your career was to lead you, not through Lovers' Lane, not before the footlights, but along the hurly-burly byways and highways of American newspaper work, beginning with interviews and reporting. Allow me to quote from your letter before me.
"I do not imagine I have talent save the talent for work. I am, as you know, well educated, as that expression goes to-day. I have always found expression with the pen an easy mode of communicating my impressions and ideas.
"I am observing, and I have a keen sense of humour, and I have (so people tell me) an agreeable personality. I know the value of correct dressing, and I am not oversensitive. That is, I am not one who will go down at the first rebuff. I have the real American spirit, which makes me believe myself as good as anybody, and you know my family name is one to buoy up that impression. Therefore, it seems to me I cannot fail to attain some degree of success. I am sure to obtain entrée to people and functions, and I can describe what I see and hear in attractive form. I shall shrink at no task, however difficult, and stop at no obstacle.
"I am determined to make a success as a reporter and a correspondent, and after I have achieved something in that line I may look to an editorial position; and who knows but my fertile imagination, coupled with the experiences sure to come to me, may develop the great American novelist the world is waiting?"
This is all interesting and admirable reasoning.
But, having seen much of the world, and known much of the various types of young women writers and reporters and correspondents, I feel like discussing the subject of your profession with you. At the instigation, perhaps, of some editor who makes the mistake of thinking success must be reached through sensationalism, you may be tempted to make your pen, not mightier, but more cruel than the sword.
I remember once upon a time meeting a young woman who had come, unbidden by the hostess, to "write up" a social function where a number of celebrated people were congregated.
Her employer had sent her to the house, telling her to obtain an entree by fair means or foul; and as she was well dressed and quiet in manner, she was not repulsed by an amiable hostess. This lady realized that the reporter has his or her living to make, and must be either helped or hindered by the willingness or unwillingness of people to furnish material for copy. Being informed that the young woman was "literary," and chancing to stand near her for a few moments, I asked her the nature of her work.
The young woman looked a trifle embarrassed, as she answered: "Well, to tell you the truth, I write a good many disagreeable and nasty things about people, especially people in public life. The editors who take my work will have that kind. I have essayed better things, and they would not touch them. So I am compelled to write the stuff they do want. I must make a living." When I read the "stuff" in question, I was inclined to doubt the assertion of the writer that "she must make a living." The world would be the better should she and all her kind cease to exist. Ridicule, falsehood, and insinuation were the leading traits of the young woman's literary style. Costumes and personalities were caricatured, and conversations and actions misstated. The entire article would have been libelous, had it not been too cowardly to deserve so bold a word.
It is useless for any man or woman to assert that such reportorial work is done from necessity. The blackmailer and the pickpocket have as much right to the plea, as the newspaper masked-assassin, with the concealed weapon of a pen.
If you are ever asked by any editor to do this reportorial stiletto work, let me urge you to take to professional burglary, rather than consent to write what such an employer demands.
It is far less despicable to rob houses of things of mercantile value, than to rob characters and reputations and personalities. Again, when you are sent out upon a commission to obtain an interview with any person, obtain what you seek and take nothing else away with you.
Just as you would scorn to pawn the watch of the famous actress which you may find lying on the table as you pass out, so scorn to sell any personal speech she may have carelessly dropped in your hearing which you know was not intended for publication. Petty larceny is not a noble feature of interviewing. Even though a facility for selling such dishonestly gained property to advantage be yours, do not convince yourself or be convinced that larceny should be included in your reportorial duties.
I recollect speaking with you once upon the difficulties young women encountered who attempted to win honours in a dramatic career. You felt that the necessity to cater to the ideas and wishes of inferior minds, in representing a character on the stage, would be one of the hardest phases of stage life to meet.
"To be loud and spectacular where I wanted to be refined and subtle," you said, "just to catch some rough audience and fill the house, would be insupportable. And yet I know actresses ofttimes must do that very thing, to keep a foothold in the profession."
I am wondering how you will meet what seems to me a more humiliating rôle, when you are sent out by an editor to gain an entree to some person who does not wish to be interviewed.
Will you, when refused entrance at the front door, go in at the rear and hobnob with the servants? will you spy, and watch and wait on street corners, and hide yourself in hallways, and intercept and surprise, and congratulate yourself when you have trapped your prey? That is the shameful pathway which nowadays leads to what is called "successful newspaper work."
You need to realize the facts before you enter the profession. Were you my daughter, I am certain I should feel much less concern were you to enter the theatrical field.
And yet if you choose to stand by your ideals, and retain your self-respect, you can do so, and succeed in journalism.
If you have, as you say, observation, expression, humour, and ambition, you can create a style of your own: which will not necessitate the loss of all womanly sense of decency and pride in dealing with your fellow beings. It might be well for you to cultivate and add to the list of your qualities appreciation of all that is best in human nature and worthiest of respect. If you understand the law of concentration and demand, you can obtain an entrance to the people you wish to see, through the front hall and a properly engraved card.
If that fails, a polite and frank note, stating your purpose and intimating your self-respecting ideas of your profession, may prove effective. Once establish your reputation as an interviewer who is not a highwayman in disguise, and you will achieve tenfold the success your less reputable confrères gain in the long run. Try and remember always that fame, glory, or even crime, do not destroy all human sensibilities, or render the possessor invulnerable to the thrust of a pen.
The greatest warrior who ever conquered armies has still the power to feel hurt when he sees some personal blemish or misfortune described in print.
You would never be guilty of saying to any man's face, "How hideous your harelip renders you"—and why should you go from his presence and make such a statement to the whole world concerning him? One of the most gifted men America ever claimed was driven from his native land by the cruel, bald, and heartless personalities of newspaper critics, who seemed to consider it necessary to comment on his physical infirmities whenever his genius was mentioned.
During the lifetime of one of England's great literary women, an American correspondent who had been given an interview in her home described her as possessing the "face of a horse." Surely this was agreeable reading for a gifted woman whose genius had delighted thousands!
It has sometimes seemed to me that theatrical road life with a one-night-stand company would be less brutalizing to the finer sensibilities, and less lowering to the ideals of a young girl, than the method of work required of many newspaper reporters in America to-day. The editor who scores the actress for lax morals seems often to ignore the fact that there is a mental as well as a physical prostitution.
Look to it that you do not trail your banner of noble womanhood in the dust, at the demand of any editor or syndicate. Keep your purity of pen, as well as your chastity of body, and believe no man who tells you that you will get on better in the world by selling either. There is room higher up.
A Former Maid
Curiously enough, my dear little Nanette, I was thinking about you, and wishing to know something of you, the very day your letter came.
Of many who have been helpers in my employ, you were one of the few who seemed to care more for me than for the wages I paid.
There was between us that ideal condition which I wish might exist between all employers and employees. You wanted the work you were fitted to do, and I wanted such work done. You were glad of the money it brought you, and I was glad to recompense you. You wanted appreciation and sympathy and consideration aside from your earnings, and I wanted a personal interest in my affairs, and a friendly wish to please me, aside from the mere work well done. You never seemed to me less womanly or less refined because you were a wage-earner, and I did not represent to you oppression or monopoly merely because I paid the money and you received it. I took you into my confidence in many ways, and you made me feel I was your friend as well as your employer. We enjoyed cosy chats, and yet you no more desired or wished to be present at my social functions than you desired me to enter into all your merrymakings and pleasures. You were, in fact, one of the most agreeable and sensible women I have ever known in any station in life. And now you write me that you are engaged to be married, and ask me to give you counsel in a very serious matter.
Together with your other excellent qualities, you have possessed economy and prudence.
At the age of twenty-five you have a tidy bank-account, the savings of eleven years. This money is increasing, year by year, and drawing a small interest.
Now comes your lover, a hard-working and sober young man, so you say, but earning only a small salary as a clerk.
He has met with some reverses, and is temporarily embarrassed. He wants you to lend him a few hundred dollars, and he will pay you the same interest you are now receiving, but you fear it would be unwomanly on your part to take this interest money. At the same time you feel a reluctance to break in upon your savings, which you had planned to use in helping establish a home. You want to befriend your lover, and you want to be wise and careful, and so you write to me, your old-time adviser, for counsel. I fear I may hurt your feelings in what I am about to say.
I have seen much of the world, and have studied humanity in many phases and in many classes.
There is one type of man I have never yet known to be strong, reliable, and trustworthy,—a man for a woman to lean upon in times of trouble and sorrow,—a man I would like to see any friend take for a life companion,—and that is the young man who asks a loan of money from a woman he loves, or one who loves him. Believe me, there is some lack of real moral fibre in such a man.
A husband and wife many years married, and united by common interests, may become so one in purpose and thought that a common purse would be as natural to them as a common dinner-table.
With mutual interests, planning for their future and the future of their children, there could be no talk of "My money" and "Your money" between them.
But before marriage, or immediately after, the man who begins to ask a woman for the use of her purse, should be distrusted by her. He could not broach such a subject unless he lacked a certain refined strength which makes a manly man a woman's protector by nature. Even where no sentiment exists between a man and a woman, the really strong men of the world never become borrowers from women. If through friendly interest and affection some woman compelled such a man to take a loan, he would know no rest or peace of mind until he had liquidated the debt.
When a man is a woman's lover, and asks her to advance money to him for any reason, she may as well realize at once the reed on which she will lean if she accepts him for a life companion. To deceive herself for a moment with the idea that he will be a staff of strength, is but to delay disillusion. A vital quality is left out of his character.
He is but one step removed from the man who seeks a woman because she has money. And he is the most despicable of the human race.
I have known three women of different social positions to lend money to their lovers.
One man invested it and lost it, and never made an effort to reimburse the lady, who broke her engagement in consequence, after two unhappy years. Another went away owing the money, and was never again heard from. The third married the unwise woman who had loaned him her competence, and continued to look to her for support.
Therefore, my dear Nanette, I would urge you to think twice, and yet a third time, before you lend your fiancé your savings.
Tell him frankly that you will feel more respect for him if he is willing to sacrifice comfort and save from his own income enough to lift the debt he has incurred, and that you are sure he will feel less humiliated as time goes by if he is not financially in debt to you. If he were to fall ill tell him it would be your first impulse to devote your money to his care; but while he is able-bodied and well, you do not like to have him lean on you for aid.
You can judge something of the man's character by the way he receives this statement from you.
And whatever may result, even if it is the end of your engagement, do not grieve your heart away over it. Better far to have the end come now than to marry a dependent and shiftless man, who will humiliate your pride by a thousand and one mean traits. The moment a young wife becomes the financial head of a household, and the man depends upon her to keep the family free from debt, sentiment and romance fly from the windows of the heart, and poor Cupid goes away with his head under his wing. This situation might befall people long married, as I said before, without causing disaster, because the wife would have years of other experiences stored up in memory, to maintain her respect for her husband.
The natural instinct of a manly man is to be the protector and the breadwinner. He loves to shield and support the woman of his choice. If she has any talent or profession which gives her satisfaction to pursue, and which yields her an income, he will, if broad-minded and sympathetic, place no obstacle in her path so long as this vocation is no barrier to their domestic happiness. But he is sensitive to her assuming any of the financial burdens of life.
If circumstances render it necessary for her to do so, he suffers keenly, and the utmost delicacy and consideration on her part alone can save him from utter humiliation.
This is the attitude of the manly man, my dear Nanette, the man who makes the good husband and father.
The unselfish, broad-minded and considerate wife will lead a husband to think of her right to aid in the establishment and maintenance of a home when she is able to do her part. But the man who makes a good husband never suggests it as her duty, or asks her to advance money.
It is commendable in you to wish to aid in making a home. It is unmanly in your lover to ask you to help him pay his debts. Beware of the lover who asks for or accepts a loan.
Regarding His Son and Daughter
My dear Cousin Wilton:—You have no idea how your letter took me back to my merry girlhood, when you and I resided in the same neighbourhood, and I was the concern of your precociously serious mind. Yes, indeed, I do realize what a mistake you made in living the repressed life you did all those early boyhood years. What a pity your parents reared one of your sensitive and imaginative nature in the gloomy old doctrines of a depressing religion, which so misrepresented the God of love: and how odd that your father and mine should have been born of the same parents, educated in the same schools, and yet be no more alike in beliefs or methods of life than two people of a different race and era.
And again it is not strange, when we realize that hundreds of generations lie back of both parents, and innumerable ancestors of both father and mother contribute their different mentalities to the children in a family. Back of that is the great philosophy of reincarnation—the truth of which impresses me more and more each year I live.
Do you recall your horror the first time I told you I had read a book on reincarnation, and confessed that it had made me anxious to study the theory?
You said I was a pagan and a heathen, and that I would surely be damned forever unless I turned to the way of salvation.
And do you recall your misery when I seized you one evening at your birthday party (you were twenty), and dragged you about the room in a waltz? That is, I waltzed, while you hobbled about like a lame calf, much to the amusement of most of the company.
There were more who sympathized with my views of life than with yours. You were such a wet blanket on our youthful spirits. Your ever-blazing lake of brimstone did not even serve to warm the blanket.
I have been gratified to watch your growth the last ten years.
You have so changed your point of view, which indicates your real worth and progressive good sense. And when you tell me that you have for years regretted your lost opportunities for natural and moral pleasure, and that you suffered beyond your power to describe in those old days in conquering your desire to dance and play games, it brings the tears of mingled rage and pity to my eyes. Rage at the old theology, and pity for the poor children whose lives were shadowed by it.
And now what you tell me of your son and daughter proves another of my theories true, and shows me how nature revenges its wrongs.
Children, my dear Wilton, especially the offspring of strong characters, inherit the suppressed tendencies of their parents. They bring into action the unexhausted impulses and the ungratified desires of those parents.
The greatest singers are almost invariably the offspring of mothers or fathers who were music hungry, and who were given no complete gratification of this craving.
The poet, you will find, is the voice of an artistic-natured parent, who was forced to be emotionally dumb.
And the proverbial clergyman's son is merely the natural result of the same cause. He is charged with the tendencies and impulses which his father crucified.
That your son loathes study, and hates church-going, and adores a brass band and a circus, and runs away to the races, does not in the least surprise me. Nor that your sixteen-year-old daughter grows hysterical at the sound of dance music, and prefers a theatrical show in your village hall to a Sunday-school picnic, and is mad to become an actress.
They are your own wronged and starved emotions personified, and crying out to you for justice.
The very best thing for you to do with the boy is to put him into a gymnasium and a football team as soon as possible. Offer no opposition when he wants to see a good horse-race. Urge him to go, and ask him to tell you all about it when he returns. Begin right now to get close to the heart of your children.
Once you do that, once you convince them you are near enough to their lives to understand their needs and to try and gratify their natural longings, all your worries will take wing and fly away; for your children will cease to hide and cloak their actions and natures, and they will no longer wish to deceive or attempt to defy you.
Send your daughter where she can learn dancing, in company with other refined and well-bred young people. You have so far emancipated yourself from your old superstitions and beliefs that this action on your part will not antagonize the desirable members of your congregation.
Only a remnant of the old bigots and intolerants are to be found in any congregation of intelligent people of to-day.
If that remnant is shaken out of its winding-sheet by being antagonized, you may galvanize it into life.
At all events, do not endanger the peace of your home and the happiness of your children, for fear of antagonizing a few parishioners of arrested spiritual development.
Give your son and daughter an outlet for the youthful vitality which is like steam: a moving power when used, dangerous and destructive when pent up.
Take young Wilton and Rebecca into a room, and talk the whole matter over.
Tell them how deeply you love them, and how you have just come to realize the mistake you have made in trying to eradicate from them the natural desire for wholesome pleasure instead of giving it proper avenues of expression.
Say frankly that you see your error, and that you intend to rectify it.
Ask their coöperation, and appeal to their good taste and affection not to mortify or humiliate you in your position of clergyman, by overstepping the bounds of decorum or discretion.
Lead them to talk of their ambitions and desires, and, as consistently as you can, gratify them.
Let your daughter come to me for a season. I will help to reshape and modify her ideals of enjoyment to some degree.
I am sure if she sees a few of our best spectacular plays, and hears good music, and enjoys beautiful rhythmic dancing, she will not be so carried away with the travelling show.
I will acquaint her with some of the commonplace facts concerning the lives of theatrical people, and show her the frayed tinsel and worn faces by daylight. This will do more for her than all your sermons on the dangers of a theatrical career.
The young heart is fascinated with the thought of danger and temptation.
It is repelled by the commonplace and the ugly.
When you talk to a young mind in a whisper and behind locked doors about a temptation to be avoided, you but give edge to appetite and curiosity.
When you bring the temptation out into the glare of sunlight, and speak of it in presence of the whole world, you dispel the illusion.
I will gather together some data concerning the sporting men of America, and send your son. I will also mail him the sporting papers regularly. Let him talk and read openly about the subject, and it will lose half its weird charm.
He, too, should learn to dance, swim, fence, and ride. His bounding vitality needs directing in wholesome channels. I have never understood the prejudice against dancing.
To me, it is a form of religious praise of the Creator of youth, health, vitality, and grace. I have always loved dancing, and the exercise, besides being eminently beneficial to the health and wonderfully conducive to grace is, to my thinking, highly moral in its effect. Its only danger lies in wrong associations, and these seem to threaten young people who are restricted from the enjoyment in their homes and among their rightful companions.
I cannot help thinking that Loie Fuller should have a niche in the hall of fame, among the "Immortals," for having given the last century her exquisitely beautiful creations in dancing.
No woman has given us a great epic, or a great painting, or a great musical composition, but she has given us a great dance-poem, which is at the same time a painting and a song. Oh, you poor starved, blind soul, to be deprived of such beautiful spectacles. How I pity you, and how I pray you to give your children the privileges you have missed through a belittling idea of your Creator.
Do you fancy God would punish beautiful young Rebecca for dancing, any sooner than he would blight the willow-tree for waving its graceful arms to the tune the wind-harps play?
Come up out of the jungles of ignorance and bigotry, my dear cousin, and live on the hilltops and bring your children with you. For there you will all find yourself nearer to God and to humanity.
Formerly Miss Winifred Clayborne
I am glad that for once you have written and asked my advice before you began your course of action.
You wrote me after you entered Vassar and asked me what I thought of your doing so.
You wrote me after you married Doctor McAllister, and asked me what I thought of that. My reply was a wedding gift and a telegram of good wishes. Now, after three years of married life, you write again and ask me to decide a question which has caused some discussion between you and the doctor.
"He did not take my view of the matter at first," you say, "but he does now. Still, I feel that I would like another unprejudiced opinion before I take the contemplated step. You knew I left college before finishing my course. I was in love and the doctor urged me not to make him wait another year. He said I knew enough to make him happy, and so I consented."
Then you proceed to tell me that you have never regretted this step, and that you have the best husband in the world. But you have decided musical gifts, and before meeting the doctor you intended going abroad to cultivate them after you finished at Vassar. This old ambition has taken hold of you again, and you want to join a friend, one of your classmates, who sails in June to study art in Europe. You desire to take a two or three years' course, and then you will be equipped with an accomplishment which could be made a profession if necessity demanded.
"One never knows what the future holds," you say, "and it is the duty of every woman to make the most of herself." Both remarks are as true as they are trite. An almost graduate of Vassar should be more original in expressing herself.
But there is another duty a woman should not forget—the duty to stand by her marriage vows and to make her husband a good wife. It seems the doctor did not eagerly approve your idea at the beginning. I am glad he did not. Unless a wife is in a precarious state of health or has an ailing child, I always suspect the honesty of a husband who cheerfully seconds her suggestion of a protracted absence from home.
When a man shows no regret at having his wife away for an entire season, there is something wrong with his heart.
Love does not find its home there, or he could not speed her going so far, and for so long a time, at the bidding of ambition or pleasure. You evidently have won the doctor over by argument, and made him feel that he is selfish to tie you down or clip the wings of your ambition. The American husband is so fearful of seeming a tyrant. "He realizes now," you say, "that a woman has the right to develop the talents God gave her just as a man does, and that it is a wrong against her 'higher self' to crush down these ambitions. He realizes, too, that this separation means greater powers of usefulness for me in the future, and greater opportunities for pleasure. It will be a long and lonely time for both of us, as I shall only come home once or twice and the doctor may not be able to go over at all, though I hope he will. But the expense of my studies will of course be great, and we shall both need to economize. It is my intention to start a little conservatory after I return and take a few high-priced pupils. In that way I can reimburse our expenditure."
But can you, my dear Winifred, reimburse your mutual losses in other ways? You do not seem to realize what such a separation may mean. You are both young and both attractive. I know now that you are beginning to be angry at my suggestion, but, fortunately, you cannot interrupt me, and you must hear what I have to say.
Of course you are not a frivolous flirt, or a silly-headed creature with no ideals or principles. You have nothing of the adventuress in your composition, but you are a young woman, with personal charms and talents, and life will be unutterably desolate for you if you make a recluse of yourself. You will be surrounded by people of artistic temperaments and tastes, and I know, if you do not, that many of these people do lack ideals, and some of them lack principles and take pride in the fact. "Art for art's sake, life for pleasure's sake," is their motto. The entire situation will be full of danger for you. But far more danger will surround your husband. A man's temptations are always greater than a woman's. That is, there are more temptations in his pathway, from the fact that he is by nature and environment less guarded and protected, and the penalties for folly are less severe. And of all men, unless it is a clergyman, a physician is most exposed to temptation. He is the confidant of hysterical women and the sharer of domestic secrets. Many a woman believes she is ill only because she desires the sympathy of her doctor, just as many a woman fancies herself disturbed with religious agitation only because she wants the society of her minister.
Of course a doctor of any character or principle does not compromise his reputation or disgrace his calling readily. I hear Doctor McAllister spoken of as a man of high standing, and his picture shows a well-balanced head and an honest, manly face. But "A man's a man for a' that," my dear Winifred.
We must accept facts as they exist all about us, and we must not demand of half-evolved human beings what we would expect of wholly divine creatures. It is an unnatural position for a man to be separated from the wife he loves for months and years.
Unless he is sustained by intense religious beliefs, extreme sympathy or sorrow for her (as he might be were she compelled by some great trouble or duty to be absent), it is impossible for him not to grow in a measure forgetful of his ideals of constancy, and to drift into bachelor habits of distraction. Men do a thousand and one things for amusement which no woman could or would. Gilded and glittering halls of vice are inviting the inspection and patronage of men who are left at home by journeying and pleasure-seeking wives.
I know this terrible statement to be absolutely true—gambling-houses and dens of infamy speak of their "best season" when wives leave town for summer outings, just as a farmer speaks of his harvest season when crops are ripe. I do not suppose your husband will seek the companionship of gamblers or depraved souls during your absence. Men as seemingly high and strong as he have fallen so low, but I do not believe he will. Yet, so long as we know such conditions exist, and so long as men as a class take the liberties they do when left to find distraction and entertainment, it seems to me little less than criminal when a young wife like yourself deliberately leaves her home and husband for the sake of any possible attainment.
You have no right to marry a man and then to make his happiness and his comfort secondary to your ambitions.
If he had neglected you, if he failed to support you, if he was not loyal to you, it would be different.
But you say he is "the best of men," and that you never have regretted marrying him.
Then let me beg of you to stand by him, as a wife should, and to make what progress in your music you can at home, and wait until your husband can accompany you before you go abroad to study.
The highway of divorce is crowded with the student wives who have been "abroad to study," leaving their husbands at home to earn the money. Do not be one of them.
There are greater things than a satisfied ambition, and a clean, happy, united married life is one.