III
A CENTURY’S RUN

We are a very young nation, yet we have a past. In popular acceptance we have little to live down, which should be a comfort. Just at present there is a tendency to be disrespectful toward the past, to smile at ancestral pretension, to humanize the Fathers of the Republic, to sneer at the straw and bones on the floor of King Arthur’s dining hall, to uncover the littleness of the ancient giants, to question the beauty of the ancient heroines. Probably this needed to be done, particularly in defence of the abused Present, which always hitherto has had a hard time of it. “Every age since the golden,” says George Eliot, “may be made more or less prosaic by minds that attend only to the vulgar and sordid elements, of which there are always an abundance, even in Greece and Italy, the favorite realms of the respective optimists.” The author of “Romola” was willing not to have lived sooner, and to possess even Athenian life “solely as an inodorous fragment of antiquity.”

But even the past, sinfully boastful and complacent as it appears, has rights which we must make some show of respecting, and we need not too effusively applaud the present. Possibly the one good excuse for finding out and confessing the whole truth about the past, is the need to show, at whatever cost, that neither all of our vices nor all of our virtues are entirely new. The passion for discovery is so strong that some one always is ready to prove that the most trite and fundamental of traits are absolutely novel, and the same passion appears in the unction with which the pretension is ridiculed and overthrown. I talked one day with a distinguished American historian, who confessed that the supreme difficulty for the commentator on human character and events was that arising from a tendency to “think disproportionately well of facts which he himself has discovered.” Admit this to be a human trait and we have a sufficient explanation of the ardor of the discoverer.

Now, no man can regard as insignificant any fact concerning woman, disproportionate as the importance of the fact may be made to appear in comparison with other facts concerning her, so that we have no greater difficulty in appreciating the noisy announcement of the New Woman than in appreciating the only less audible contention that there is no such appearance. Happily the foolish discussion is over. Only a few catch-words now remind us of the hopeless debate. Of course, Eve was the only new woman. She alone was incontrovertibly new; and to seek by trick of title to invest with newness any woman who came after her, was a frivolous and degenerate conspiracy. Not, indeed, that newness is intrinsically a defect, though heraldry and afternoon teas may be arranged upon that assumption; but in effect it is belittling, destructive of certain benefits of the doubt, insulting to the woman of the past and skeptical as to the woman of the present.

However, our national past and our national present are so full of superficial and even of fundamental contrasts, that if ever a merciful sentence is to be passed upon one who, peering through the “turbid media” of sociological analysis, mistakes the Zeitgeist for a new woman, it is in our own longitudes. Like a child growing up under the eye of an arrogant and pompous parent, we have, nationally, been made to feel from the beginning that we are new, even tentative, that we are unclassified, all but vagrant in the ethnological sense. It is possible that recent events will modify in certain important ways, external contemplation of us as a nation, that, in spite of certain new effects which we may be accused of producing, a consciousness and a recognition of our definite maturity may have some responsive effect in ourselves.

Meanwhile it is pleasantly easy to detect many interesting changes in the situation of the American girl within the span of the century. Whether she merely illustrates the social and political changes which have taken place, or, as we so often have been urged to believe, actually indicates why they have taken place, she presents a spectacle of peculiar interest, a spectacle which has so successfully piqued the analytical spirit of the period that it would be expounding the commonplace to do more than quickly sketch a few of the outlines.

We have seen her bidding good-bye to the schoolma’am at a time when any education was good enough for a girl,—good enough not only because neither the kitchen nor the drawing-room exacted Greek, but because heavier pabulum would utterly ruin her mental digestion; and we have seen her at a later time when no education is too good for her, bidding good-bye to an army of instructors at commencement time, radiant in her cap and gown, the class song ringing pleasantly in her ears, the breath of June in her life, with a crisp diploma to symbolize her triumphs. In fact, we have seen the morality of educating her dismissed as a settled question, and the matter of the quantity and quality left to the perhaps not easy but at least final arbitrament of her individual capacity.

We have seen her yield up to strenuous and inventive man, one by one, various and many offices once regarded as essentially domestic, and even as bounding that debatable domain, her “sphere”; we have seen the spinning wheel go into the garret and come down again years later, pertly polished, with pink ribbons on the distaff and spindle; we have seen the superseded milkmaid gathering bottled cream at the basement door, the superseded seamstress wearing a man-made jacket; and all without audible murmur at the displacement.

We have seen the trained nurse succeed Sairy Gamp, many nostrums disappearing gratefully in the transformation, and have found in the new sisterhood of bedside saints a cheering sign of a finer civilization, a prophecy of the future of medicine. We have seen the amanuensis penning “Paradise Lost” and law briefs and grave history and exhausting letters—the amanuensis celebrated in sentimental fiction and unsentimental commerce, fulfil the promise of her own invaluable service in the modern typewriter, whose little white fingers help move the lever of the great mercantile machine, without whom modern trade could scarcely stir, and whose taking away would rob all business life of an inestimably sweetening influence.

We have seen her needle placed in the jaws of a machine, and have seen her yoked with men in service to this iron master. We have seen her leave the fireside armchair to climb the tall stool of the counting-room and the railway station. We have seen the bodkin displaced by the scalpel, the lace cap by the mortar-board, the apron by the vestment. We have seen her emerge from the shadows of the sanctuary to speak in the councils of the elders, we have seen her hurry the breakfast dishes to go and vote.

We have seen her, once content to be the theme of art, become a master of every medium, even of architecture, and throwing aside at last, and without petulance, the insulting tributes that come under a sex label. We have seen her, once forbidden to read newspapers, successful in making them; committing errors, but under bad counsel and direction rather than by any failure of her own taste, and winning highest honors in journalistic art and conflict.

The philosophy of all these changes naturally is complex and difficult. It is a truism to remark that the danger always is of assuming that they mean more than they do. We perhaps instinctively measure a change by the mere picturesqueness of the contrast. We require to be reminded much that humanity changes very little from century to century, that whatever the appearances, great revolutions in human sentiment and motive probably have not happened. No student of human nature comes oftener upon any discovery than upon that of the simple persistence in the twilight of the century of the old human instincts that prevailed at the dawn. So that we need not think to find in all these new clothes any greatly different people. When the century’s clock strikes the hundredth year, and Father Time, acting as master of ceremonies, shouts “Masks off!” there, among all the masqueraders, are the same faces that have grown familiar in the every-day of life.

If the reader detects in this attitude any wish to escape the burdens of an explanation, an anxiety to dodge the awful Why? in all these outward modifications of Miss America, he, and especially she, is quite at liberty to do so, for, as I perhaps have indicated, and must repeat defensively from time to time, definitely to explain Miss America is farthest from my thoughts; though I cannot deny an intention, which doubtless appeared at an early stage, to express respectfully certain untested, and, it may be, actually impulsive, personal opinions regarding her. To refrain from exercising such a privilege under circumstances which forbid interruption would be superhuman.

More interesting to me at the moment are some appearances already fairly familiar, yet new in garb and situation. The young woman in new lights and new places has a natural fascination. I realized this vividly one day in the hotel of a Western city, when I became conscious that an unusual guest had arrived. She was a sturdy young woman, yet delicate of feature, with a mild, undismayed blue eye. She came swinging into the hotel, a darkey lad at her russet shoe heels with a telescope bag. She herself carried a sleek yellow satchel which she placed in front of the desk. She wrote her name in a firm, small hand, took a heap of letters handed to her by the clerk, and dropped into a near-by chair to open several of them with a quick flip of her gloved finger. In no way was she radically dressed. Her tailor-made suit was of a fine cloth, richly trimmed. Her clothes, like her manner, had not an unnecessary touch. Later, I saw her interviewing the porter, who presently was rolling three large sample trunks into one of those first floor rooms provided by certain hotels for the use of drummers, whose goods for display cannot well be taken upstairs. I saw her come in at different times with three different shopkeepers, and others came, evidently by appointment, to inspect many rolls of carpet which soon littered the display room.

“She’s a trump!” muttered the clerk, with an admiring glance across the corridor; “the best drummer Warp & Woof ever had. She succeeded one of their New York men, and she beat his orders by forty thousand dollars the first year. And there’s no fooling about her either. She doesn’t try to mesmerize the customers, though she’s pretty enough to do that if she cared to. She simply makes them want the goods, and she sells so square that she doesn’t have any trouble coming back to the same people.”

“Is she a single woman?” I asked. Something in this inquiry amused the clerk. Then he said: “Well, they say she’s engaged to a drummer for Felt, Feathers & Co., and that if they ever manage to get into Chicago at the same time they will get married.”

One day in mid-Missouri a lean, brown, bare-footed boy was driving me across country to a railway station. Suddenly the boy said: “We ain’t goin’ t’ have no dog show.”

“No?” The boy shook his head. Presently he added: “And that girl’s dead sore on this town.”

“What girl?” I demanded.

The boy turned to me with a look of incredulity. “Didn’t you see ’er?”

“You don’t mean that girl in the blue dress that was at the hotel breakfast this morning?”

“That’s her, yes.”

I remembered that she had very dark eyes, and no color; that she wore an Alpine hat and a neat gown, that she looked straight before her with an almost sullen expression when she spoke to the waiter.

“I drove her over to Bimley’s,” the boy said, “and she sat there where you are for two miles without saying a word. Then she turned at me quick and says, ‘Have you got a cigarette?’ and I said yes I had, just one. Then she said, ‘Have yer got a match?’ and I give her that, and she smoked for a long time without sayin’ anything. After a while she let out and said this was the meanest, low-down town she ever struck, that they was meaner’n dirt here, especially the college, and that she never wanted t’ see it n’r hear of it agin. Yer see, she goes from one town to another and gits up dog shows for the people that have fine dogs, and they have the town band, an’ lemonade an’ cake an’ prizes. Anyway, she had a hard time stirrin’ them up here; but she could have got through all right only for the president of the college. He said he wouldn’t let the girls go, and that settled it. They gave it up after this girl’d blown in a two days’ bill at the hotel, and she got mad and lit out. Well, she quieted down agin before we got to Bimley’s, and when we was in the hollow by Moresville I looked at her and she was cryin’.”

One other glimpse: Miss Linnett was the typewriter at Stoke Brothers’. At first she had been just the typewriter, coming highly recommended from the typewriter school. She appeared at the minute of nine and went away at the minute of five, unless one of the Stokes stayed beyond that hour, or late letters and the copying book delayed her. She unvaryingly dressed in black, wore her brown hair simply in a knot, and in the depth of winter always had a flower of some sort on her table. The elder Stoke was feeble, and his eyesight grew to be so poor that she read his letters to him. The junior Stoke would never let her take formal dictation, preferring to give her the gist of what he wanted to say and letting her put it in her own way. In this habit they both came greatly to depend upon her. After a time, too, her growing knowledge of the business induced the cashier and bookkeeper to go to her in certain contingencies, and she acquired, without either seeking or rejecting it, various discretionary powers in regard to the machinery of the business. If anything went wrong they resorted to Miss Linnett. If old Stoke forgot anything Miss Linnett was a second memory to him. If the younger Stoke was in a hurry he would hand over the letters to Miss Linnett to answer as she saw fit. She knew all the correspondents of the house and their prejudices. She knew the combination of old Stoke’s private safe after Stoke himself had forgotten it. She had a way of her own in putting away documents, and nobody ever thought of studying the scheme. She met all of these obligations with a dispassionate serenity, and everything she did was done with an easy and amiable quickness. She became the brain centre of the office. She was Stoke Brothers.

Then one night she broke down, fainted, there before old Stoke, who fell on his knees beside her and wept in real anguish while the little white bookkeeper ran for a doctor, and the cashier tremblingly fetched water to sprinkle her face. When she did not come the next day at nine the situation in the office was pitiful. Old Stoke was useless, and the younger Stoke shifted his letters from one hand to the other in utter misery. The bookkeeper and cashier fumbled through their work dazed and unstrung. In the days of doubt that followed the situation grew more gloomy. There was great excitement when one morning she came down town in a cab, white and fluttering, and, leaning on the bookkeeper’s arm, made her way from the elevator to the office. She smiled at the little group, accepted the homage quietly, insisted on showing them where certain papers were, promised them that she should be back very soon, and went away again, old Stoke patting her hand and telling her to be careful. At the end of the month she died.

“What did they ever do without her?” I asked when I had heard the story.

“They didn’t do without her. Stoke Brothers went out of business. I suppose they had been thinking of doing that; they were pretty well on in years—and they couldn’t get on without Miss Linnett.”

Yes, of all the changes that have marked this changeful century, of all the transformations, social, political and economic, that have affected the situation of women since the establishment of the Republic, that change is most significant and potent which has placed her so widely and so potently in business. Miss America is in business: patiently ambitiously, grotesquely, indispensably in business. The social changes have not been great,—indeed, one is often startled to find how slight they have been. Political changes, important and prophetic as they are, have not as yet sensibly affected the life of women in general; while the extraordinary extent of women’s entrance into business in co-operation with and competition with men, has had an unexampled effect upon the American girl’s domestic, social and political situation.

The American girl is not, as yet, very definitely conscious of this effect, although she has been told about it often and vehemently in one way or another. Unless she is writing a paper for her club she hasn’t time to think much about it. She enjoys business as distinguished from plain work. The idea of a business training rather piques the fancy of an era that has laughed away the tradition of a “sphere,” and the sort of young lady who in a past era would have no obligations beyond needlework, is found dabbling in shorthand and bookkeeping, as the princes learn a trade.

And so the scientific observer is greatly distressed at times by the thought that there must be a mighty readjustment before things can come out smooth again. You might think that the whole thing had come upon science unawares, that it was, in the phrase of a young woman who was not new, all “too rash, too unadvised, too sudden.” But no sound authority exhibits real worriment on this point. If it is man who complains, it is man who refuses to get along without her. From this time forth business is going to be a co-educational affair. We shall be told many times again that somehow all this will detract from woman’s charm, and whether we believe or mistrust so much, we shall, I suspect, go on taking the interesting risk.

By the natural processes of time, women, young and old, will, I suppose, like the rest of creation, continue to become better off. Doubtless this is optimism. Pessimism says that two and two make three. Sentimentalism says that two and two make five. It is optimism that is content, and with good reason, to say that two and two make four.

The traveller in a scurrying railroad train becomes familiar with few more thought-suggesting sights than the farm woman in the cottage door. She comes forward with her hands in her apron, if not with a baby on her arm. Sometimes she waves her hand to the unanswering train. Sometimes she leans against the door-post and looks, one might fancy wistfully, at the clattering cars, at the people who are going somewhere. Sometimes the doorway is in a cabin with one room. Sometimes the woman is slatternly, drooping; sometimes she has the glow of content. The spectator in the car cannot but wonder what are the emotions of the spectator in the doorway. Doubtless there is both envy and commiseration on each side. If the spectator in the cars sometimes pities the woman in the cabin door as one who is left out and left behind, the spectator in the cabin door sometimes pities the haste-hunted spectator who is being noisily flung about in the great loom of life.

To glance backward over a century is to feel that life constantly reiterates this situation. We all of us are roughly divided—very roughly, sometimes—into the two groups: the people in the cars and the people in the doorways. The look of things must go on being affected by the point of view. There is a view-point aloof from either situation, but it is not one which the merely human sojourner ever can be privileged to occupy.