Lessons in Life Part 3

QUARLES.

"Beauty is truth, truth beauty." KEATS.

I have every reason to believe that G.o.d loves Shakers, but I do not think He admires them. I do not see how He can; but perhaps this is not a competent reason to offer in the premises. I saw a wagon-load of what I supposed to be Shakers of both s.e.xes, riding along the street, the other day; and I wondered what I should think of them if I had made them. I think I should have been about equally vexed and amused to see the lines that I had made beautiful, disguised, and every grace-giving swell of limb and bust, upon which I had exercised such exquisite toil, carefully hidden. They sat up very straight and prim, in a very square wagon, behind a square-trotting horse, driven by "right lines" in a pair of hands that seemed to grow out of the driver's stomach, while his elevated, rectangular elbows cut rigidly against the air on either side. It was a vision for a painter--a house painter-- "a painter by trade." The long-haired, meek-looking men, with their flat-crowned, broad-brimmed hats, straight coats and neutral colors, and the women with their sugar-scoop bonnets, white kerchiefs and straight waists, looked like a case of faded wax-figures, in prison uniform, that had "come down to us from a former generation."

I heaved a sigh as the wagon-load of mortified and badly-dressed flesh pa.s.sed out of sight, and wondered if the souls inside of those bodies were as angular as their covering. I did not believe it--I do not believe it. I have no doubt that underneath those straight waistcoats hearts have throbbed at the sight of woman and child, and longed for home and family life, with yearnings that could not be uttered. Those straightlaced sensibilities have been thrilled by beauty, and bathed in the grace and glory of the life around them. Trees have whispered to them, flowers have looked up and rebuked them, brooks have called to them with laughter, rivers have smiled upon them in suns.h.i.+ne, the great sky has bent over them with infinite tenderness and fulness of beauty, and they have felt what they could not define. It was something very wrong, they supposed, and so they b.u.t.toned their straight jackets around them, turned their eyes away from beholding vanity, and thought they had done an excellent thing. I know that those young women, with their abominable clothing outside, and their crushed and abused sympathies inside, are unhappy, unless they have all been mercifully transformed into fanatics. It is useless to tell me that a man can ignore or trample to death the strongest pa.s.sion of his nature--the strongest, the purest, and the most enn.o.bling--and be a happy man. It is useless to say that a man or woman can walk through a world of beauty--themselves the most beautiful of all things--and bind themselves up in unbecoming drapery, and smother all their impulses to express the beauty with which G.o.d inspires them, and do it with content and satisfaction. It cannot be done.

So, when this wagon-load of Shakers drove out of sight, I heaved a sigh, for I knew that not to be unhappy in the life which was typefied in their dress and establishment, would be a greater misfortune, essentially, than dissatisfaction and discontent would be. If they were happy in their life, they must have become perverted in their natures, or indurated beyond the susceptibility to receive the impressions of healthy men and women. If G.o.d ever put any thing majestic and n.o.ble into a man, and gave him a fitting frame for it, He never intended that it should be hidden in a meal-bag, or permanently quenched under a smock-frock. In the infinite variety which he has introduced into human character and into human forms and faces, there is no warrant for dressing men in uniform, but a most emphatic protest against it. If G.o.d made woman beautiful, He made her so to be looked at--to give pleasure to the eyes which rest upon her--and she has no business to dress herself as if she were a hitching-post, or to transform that which should give delight to those among whom she moves, into a ludicrous caricature of a woman's form.

I repeat that I have every reason to believe that G.o.d loves Shakers, but I do not think He admires them. If G.o.d admires the bodies He has made, He cannot admire them when they are covered by the Shaker dress, for it spoils the looks of them, and differs essentially from the plan which He pursues in draping all other forms of life. There is no grace about it, and no beauty of color.

G.o.d admires clouds, I doubt not, when painted by the setting sun, and stars flas.h.i.+ng in the heavens, and the flowers of myriad hues that are scattered over the earth, but if these are objects of His special admiration, as they are of ours, what can He think of a drab Shaker bonnet? What can He think when man and woman, the glory and crown of His creation, are entirely overtopped and thrown into the shade by birds and bees and blossoms, and go poking around the world in unexampled and ingeniously contrived ugliness? What does He think of men and women who take that pa.s.sion of love, which was intended to make them happy, and give them sweet companions.h.i.+p, and bear young children to their arms, and trample it under their feet as an unholy thing, and to welcome to their hearts, in its stead, blackness, and darkness, and tempest? What does He think of lives out of which are shut all meaning and all individuality, and all love and expression of beauty, and all vivifying, liberalizing, and humanizing experience?

I owe no grudge to the Shakers. I like their apple sauce, (they ask a thrifty price for it,) and have faith in the genuineness and the generation, under favorable conditions, of their garden seeds; but I object to their style of life and piety, and to every thing outside of Shakerdom which looks like it. I object to this whole idea, (and the Shakers have not monopolized it,) that G.o.d takes delight in the voluntary personal mortification of His children, and that He approves of their going about, sad-faced and straight-laced, studiously avoiding all temptation to enjoy themselves.

I have seen a deacon in the pride of his deep humility. He combed his hair straight, and looked studiously after the main chance; and while he looked, he employed himself in setting a good example. His dress was rigidly plain, and his wife was not indulged in the vanities of millinery and mantua-making. He never joked. He did not know what a joke was, any further than to know that it was a sin. He carried a Sunday face through the week. He did not mingle in the happy social parties of his neighborhood. He was a deacon. He starved his social nature because he was a deacon. He refrained from all partic.i.p.ation in a free and generous life because he was a deacon. He made his children hate Sunday because he was a deacon. He so brought them up that they learned to consider themselves unfortunate in being the children of a deacon. They were pitied by other children because they were the children of a deacon. His wife was pitied by other women because she was the wife of a deacon. n.o.body loved him. If he came into a circle where men were laughing or telling stories, they always stopped until he went out. n.o.body ever grasped his hand cordially, or slapped him on the shoulder, or spoke of him as a good fellow.

He seemed as dry and hard and tough as a piece of jerked beef.

There was no softness of character--no juiciness--no loveliness in him.

Now it is of no use for me to undertake to realize to myself that G.o.d admires such a character as this. I do not doubt that He loves the man, as He loves all men; but to admire his style of manhood and piety is impossible for any intelligent being. It lacks the roundness and fulness, and richness and sweetness, that belong to a truly admirable character. Such a man caricatures Christianity, and scares other men away from it. Such a man ostentatiously presents himself as one in whose life religion is dominant. It is religion that is supposed to rub down that long face, and inspire that stiff demeanor, and to make him at all points an unattractive and unlovable man. Of course it is not religion that does any thing of the kind, but it has the credit of it with the world, and the world does not like it. It looks around, and sees a great many men who do not pretend to religion at all, and yet who are very lovable men. If religion can transform a pleasant man into a most unpleasant one, and change a free, bright, and happy home into a dismal place of slavery, and blot out a man's aesthetic and social nature, the world naturally thinks that getting religion would be almost as much of a misfortune as getting some melancholy chronic disease, and I do not blame it. It is not to be wondered at that the world should mistake, very much, the true nature of Christianity, when Christians themselves entertain such grievous errors about it.

I suppose G.o.d is attracted to very much the same style of character that men are. Christ loved a young man at first sight, who lacked the very thing essential to his highest manhood. But He loved the kind of man He saw before Him. He was upright, frank-hearted, open-minded, and bright; and "Jesus beholding him, loved him." There are men whom one cannot help loving and admiring though they lack a great many things--things very "needful" to make them perfect men. Now I put it to good, conscientious, Christian men and women, whether they do not take more pleasure in the society of a warm-hearted, generous, chivalrous, well-fed, man of the world, than in the society of any of that cla.s.s of Christians of whom the deacon I have mentioned is a type. I know they do, and they cannot help it. There is more of that which belongs to a first-cla.s.s Christian character in the former than in the latter, and if I were called upon to test the two men by commanding them respectively to sell what they have and give to the poor, I should be disappointed were the deacon to behave the best. A character which religion does not fructify--does not soften, enlarge, beautify, and enrich--is not benefited by religion--or, rather, has not possessed itself of religion. G.o.d loves that which is beautiful and attractive in character, just as much as we do, and it makes no difference where he sees it. He does not dislike the amiable traits of a sinner because he is a sinner, nor does he admire those traits of a Christian which we feel to be contemptible, simply because they belong to a Christian. A Christian sucked dry of his humanity, is as juiceless and as flavorless as a sucked orange, and I believe that G.o.d regards him in the same light that we do. He will save such I doubt not, for their faith; and, in the coming world, they will learn what they do not know here; but the question whether they are as well worth saving as some of their neighbors, may, I think, be legitimately entertained. In saying this, I mean to be neither light or irreverent. I mean simply to indicate that some men are worth a great deal more to themselves and to their fellows than others.

So, when I look abroad upon the world, and see men shaving their heads, and wearing nasty hair s.h.i.+rts, and shutting themselves up in cells, and living lives of celibacy, and when I see women retiring from the world which they were sent to adorn, populate, and bless, and Shakers driving around in square wagons and studiously ugly garments, and Christians who should know better abandoning all the bright and cheerful things of life, and feeling that there is merit in mortification, I cannot but feel that G.o.d looks down upon it all with sadness and pity. After doing every thing in His power to make His children happy--after filling the world with good things for their use, and giving them abundant faculties for enjoying them--after endowing them with beauty, and a sense of that which is beautiful--it must be sad to Him to see them wandering about in strange disguises, hugging to their half-rebellious hearts the awful mistake that, however much they may suffer, they are gaining favor thereby in the sight of their Maker. Of course, I believe in self-denial, and in the n.o.bility of self-denial, for the good of others; but I believe that all self-denial that partakes of the character of penance, in whatever form and under whatever circ.u.mstances it may develop itself, is always a thing of mischief, and always a thing of error. It has its basis in the miserable theory that there is something in the pa.s.sions and appet.i.tes with which G.o.d has const.i.tuted man that is essentially bad--a theory as impious as it is injurious--as fatal to all just conceptions of the divine Being and of man's relations to Him, as to all human happiness.

Every thing which is truly admirable is good, and good and desirable in the degree by which it is admirable. A beautiful face and form are admirable, and just as good as they are admirable-- just as good in their element of beauty. They are good for that quality, and in that quality, which excites our admiration. A beautiful bonnet, a beautiful dress, a beautiful brooch or necklace, are all admirable, and good because they are admirable, or good because every thing admirable is necessarily good. A family over which the father presides with tender dignity, and in which the mother moves with love's divinest ministry--where the faces of innocent children are s.h.i.+ning, while their voices make music sweeter than the morning songs of birds--is admirable, and it is good in all those respects which make it admirable. A well-dressed man or woman is admirable, and that thing is good in itself which makes them so. A man who carries his heart in his hand, who deals both justly and generously by men, who bears a sunny face and pleasant words into society, whose cultured mind enriches freely all with whom it is brought into relation, who has abundant charity for the weak and erring, and who takes life and what it brings him contentedly, is an admirable man, and good in all the points which make him admirable. A house that presents a harmonious and handsome interior to the eye of the pa.s.senger, and whose exterior combines equal convenience and elegance, is admirable, and, by that token, good.

Now these very simple propositions have their correlatives, which it is not necessary to set down in order, any further than fairly to ill.u.s.trate my point. Things that are not admirable are not good. If the dress of a Shaker is not admirable, it is not good.

If that sort of life which is led in a cloister, by monks or nuns, is not admirable, it is not good. If a man who professes to be a Christian lives a life out of which is shut all with which an unsophisticated humanity sympathizes--a life barren of attractive fruit--a life bare in all its surroundings--a life with no genial outflow and expression--a life of n.i.g.g.ardly negatives rather than of generous positives--then that life is not admirable, and if it be not admirable it cannot be good in those respects. A man may carry along with such a life as this a spotless conscience and a strict devotion to apprehended duty, and these may be admirable and good, but the other characteristics cannot be either; and however much G.o.d may approve his honest heart and honest endeavor, He cannot admire the style of manhood in which they have their dull and difficult ill.u.s.tration. The idea that I wish definitely to convey is this: that on the basis of a right heart, G.o.d would have us build up a bright, generous, genial, expressive Christian character, and use gratefully and gladly all those things which He has prepared to make life cheerful and admirable. I believe a saint ought to have a better tailor than a sinner, and be in all manly ways a better fellow. I believe a true Christian should be in every thing that const.i.tutes and belongs to a man the most admirable man in the world.

I have an idea that G.o.d looks with the same kind of contempt on the prominent characteristics of certain styles of Christian men and women, that men of the world do. There is nothing admirable in cant and whine, and nasal psalm-singing, and men whose hearts are livers and whose blood is bile; and I cannot believe that He blames people for not admiring them, and not being attracted to them. I do not believe that an admirable Christian life is repulsive to the men of the world. I believe that wherever the human mind recognizes a rounded, chastened, rich, and outspoken Christian character, whether it belong to manhood or womanhood, it admires it, and feels attracted to it, by the degree in which it admires it. I believe, moreover, that the Christianity which discards as vanities those things which G.o.d has provided for the pleasure of His children, and mortifies the love of beauty, and adopts the theory that G.o.d is pleased with penance, and degrades, abuses, and traduces the body to win greater sanct.i.ty of soul, and finds a sin in every sweet of sense, is a b.a.s.t.a.r.d Christianity.

G.o.d is not the G.o.d of the dead, but of the living.

LESSON VII.

THE RIGHTS OF WOMAN.

"Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard Are sweeter; therefore ye soft pipes play on; Not to the sensual ear, but, more endeared, Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tones."

JOHN KEATS.

"I am as free as Nature first made man." DRYDEN.

"What she wills to do or say Seems wisest, virtuousest, discreetest, best." MILTON.

It was the sarcastic remark of a crusty old parson of Connecticut that woman has the undoubted right to shave and sing ba.s.s, if she chooses to do so. I question the right of bearded man to shave himself, and I will not concede that woman has a superior right, based on inferior necessities; but believing that man has an undoubted right to sing ba.s.s, I am inclined to accord the same right to woman. Woman is a female man, and there is no reason that I know of why she should not have the same rights, precisely, that a male man has. I claim for myself, and for man, the privilege of singing treble, under certain circ.u.mstances; and why should I not accord to woman the right to sing ba.s.s? The brave old chorals of Germany would hardly be sung with much effect were the airs denied to the masculine voice, yet if it be man's prerogative to sing ba.s.s, it is surely woman's to sing treble. If it be usurpation for her to grope among the gutturals of the masculine clef, it is gross presumption for him to attempt to leap the five-rail fence that stands between him and high C. I put this consideration forward for the purpose of stopping every caviller's mouth upon the subject, until I present arguments of a broader and more comprehensive character, in support of woman's right to sing ba.s.s.

It is claimed by those who deny woman's right to sing ba.s.s that she is needed for the treble and alto parts. Needed by whom?

Needed by man? But who gave man the right to set up his needs as the law of woman's life? If man needs treble and alto, I hope he may get them. He has the undoubted right to sing both parts to suit his own fancy, or to hire others to do it for him. Man needs b.u.t.tons on his s.h.i.+rts, and clean linen, but for the life of me I cannot see why that need defines a woman's duty in any respect.

Let him do his own was.h.i.+ng, and sew on his own b.u.t.tons. Suppose a woman should need to have hooks and eyes sewed upon her dress, as some of them do, sometimes, after taking a very long breath, would that determine it to be man's duty to sew them on? "It is a poor rule that will not work both ways." This is one of the ill.u.s.trations of man's selfishness--that he sets up his needs as the rule by which the rights of one-half of the human race are to be determined.

This same selfishness of man will demand that I reconsider this talk, and will accuse me of sophistry. It will declare that I do not state the case fairly. It will say that woman needs money with which to buy her dresses and procure her food, and strong hands to labor for her and protect her, and that these needs do indeed define man's duty with respect to her. But I place all this on the ground of gallantry and humanity. Of course, we are all very glad to do these things, you know,--we who have human feelings--but woman has no right to them, based upon her need--particularly if she be a woman who insists, as I do, upon her indefeasible right to sing ba.s.s. I know that it helps things along for a woman to look after a man's linen and b.u.t.tons, and do his fine work generally, because she seems to have a kind of natural knack at the business. I am aware that it is exceedingly pleasant to hear a woman sing treble, if she sings it well, but I am talking, be it remembered, of woman's right to sing ba.s.s. Let us stick to the question.

The enemies of this highest among the rights of woman are fond of alluding to the fact that only here and there a woman can be found who wishes to avail herself of her right, and practically to enter upon the work of singing ba.s.s. The large majority of women prefer to sing the soprano, while a few, of moderate views, adopt alto as a kind of compromise. But what has this fact to do with the matter of right in the premises? Most people prefer beef-steak without onions, but I never knew that fact to be brought forward as an argument against the right of a man to eat it with onions. It is possible, indeed, that if people were more accustomed to eating beef-steak with onions, or those savory vegetables were less objectionable in their style of perfume, there would be a majority in favor of the a.s.sociated luxuries. We must remember, too, in considering this aspect of the question, that woman is, to a certain extent, a creature of whims. (She is exceedingly apt to adopt a practice because it is fas.h.i.+onable.) If it were fas.h.i.+onable for woman to sing ba.s.s, how long would it be before the lower tones would find full development? And how long would it be before the men themselves would repeat those words of the immortal bard:--

"Her voice was ever soft, Gentle and _low_,--An excellent thing in woman"?

After all, this sort of argument against woman's right to sing ba.s.s answers itself. If the preference of women generally for the soprano and alto be a good reason for their confining themselves to the performance of those parts, then a change of preference would be a valid reason for their leaving them. If individual right goes with general preference, then the pillars of the universe are uprooted, or we have no pillars worth mentioning. I suppose that women generally prefer in-door to out-of-door employments--labor that draws less upon muscle, and more upon ingenuity and delicate-fingered facility; but that settles nothing as to their right to engage in muscular toils in the open air. The German peasant-woman has labored out-of-doors for many generations.

The result has been the gradual approach to each other of her hips and shoulders, the extinguishment of that portion of her person known as the waist, and some noticeable flatness over the cerebral organs; but the German peasant-woman has her right, and that is worth any sacrifice, you know. If she prefers hoeing cabbages to spinning flax, who shall hinder her? If all women should prefer hoeing cabbages to spinning flax, or any variety of yarn, who shall hinder them? So far as man is concerned, woman has a right to grow her shoulders just as near her hips, and wear a head as flat as she pleases. In short, the general preference of women with respect to any thing decides no question of individual right, whatever.

I will not admit that the general preference of women for private life imposes any obligation upon any woman to abstain from public life, or affects in any way her right to enter upon public life. I am aware that one would not like to have one's wife or sister an opera-singer, or a public dancer, or a preacher, or a doctor in general practice, or a circus-rider, or a popular lecturer, or an actress; but I am talking about the question of right. Most women would shrink from war--from its fatigues, its dangers, its b.l.o.o.d.y strife; but Joan of Arc a.s.serted her right to go into war; and her name is engrossed upon the scroll of fame. All women have the same right to go to war that she had. I confess that I should like to see a regiment of women six feet high, officered by women, all dressed in Balmorals ill.u.s.trating the national colors, marching to battle in as close order as the peculiarity of their garments would permit, and accompanied by a corps of cavalry in sidesaddles.

Such an a.s.sertion of woman's right would be grand beyond description. I should not care to live on very intimate terms with the colonel of the regiment, but I don't know as that has any thing to do with this question.

I was talking, however, about the right of women to sing ba.s.s, and must go on. It is declared by those who oppose this right that woman has no natural organs and apt.i.tudes for ba.s.s. This is the strong-point of the enemy, but it amounts to nothing. If woman fails, apparently, in organs and apt.i.tudes for this part, it only shows what long years of abuse will accomplish. Let us never forget in this discussion that woman is only a female man, that there is no such thing as "s.e.x of soul," and that woman's vocal organs are built exactly like man's--as much like man's as her hands and her feet and her head are like his--a little smaller, perhaps,--that's all. It is a familiar fact, I presume, that the little colts born of South American dams take to ambling as their natural step, simply because the men of South America have taught the fathers and mothers of these colts to amble through uncounted generations. Now in North America we train horses to trot, and the consequence is that amblers are scarce, and in most cases have to be educated to their gait. This is the way in which nature adapts herself to popular want and popular usage. The large variety of apples which load our orchards were developed from the insignificant crab, and the peach was the child of the almond, or the almond of the peach--I have forgotten which. Now I suppose (with some feeble doubts about it) that man and woman started exactly together, that her singing treble better than she does ba.s.s results from usage, and that her singing treble rather than ba.s.s was purely a matter of accident at first. All a.n.a.logy teaches me that if she had begun on ba.s.s, and the other part had been given to man, we should be hearing today of Ma'lle Patti, "the charming new baritone," and "the magnificent ba.s.so," Madame Jenny Lind Goldschmidt, while admiring crowds would toss flowers to Carl Formes, "the unapproachable soprano," or Mario, "the king of contraltos."

I suppose that those who maintain that woman has no natural organs and apt.i.tudes for singing ba.s.s, would say that she has no natural organs and apt.i.tudes for boxing and playing at ball. Just because woman holds her fists the wrong side up, as if she were kneading bread rather than flesh, it is claimed that she was not made for the "manly art of self-defence," and from the wholly incompetent facts that she cannot throw a ball three feet against a common north-west wind, and is not as fleet as a deer, it is judged that she has no right to engage in base-ball. But suppose all women had been accustomed to boxing and playing ball as much as the men have been; would they not have arrived at corresponding excellence? I know that as women are now (and they please me exceedingly) they have not muscle to "hit from the shoulder" with force sufficient to make them formidable antagonists; and I am aware that they lack something in the length of limb requisite for the rapid locomotion of the ball-ground; but they have never had a chance. See what the washerwomen have done for themselves. They seem to be a separate race of beings, for they all have large arms, and shoulders that would do honor to Tom Sayers. I have seen negro slave women at work in the field, with a muscular development that would be the envy of a Bowery boy. The washerwoman and the field slave show what can be done by cultivation. I know that their style of figure is not quite so attractive as I have seen, and I know that wherever there is an extraordinary tax upon muscle there is an extraordinary repression of mind and blunting of the sensibilities, but it must be remembered that we are talking about rights, now. I claim and maintain, (I may as well come out with the whole of it,) that a woman has a right to do any thing she chooses to do, with perhaps the unimportant exception of becoming the father of a family.

The truth is that women have never had a fair chance. They can do any thing they are trained to do. The proper physical culture of woman, carried on through a competent number of generations, would develop her beyond all our present conceptions. She would be likely to arrive at a high condition of muscle and a low condition of mind, very unlike our present idea of the n.o.blest type of womanhood; but very possibly our ideals of womanhood are conventional, or traditional. She has hands, and has a right to use them; a tongue, and the right to wag it in her own way; powers corresponding to those of man in all important respects, and the right to develop and employ them according to her taste and choice. I deny, to man, the privilege of defining the rights and duties of woman. A woman is mistress of her own actions and judge of her own powers and apt.i.tudes; and if any woman thinks that she can do a man's work better than what society considers her own, then she has an undeniable right to do it, if she can get it to do, and is willing to accept the work with the conditions that attend it.

I am a firm believer in "woman's rights"--especially her right to do as she pleases. It is possible that, before the law, she is not in possession of all her rights, but all wrongs in this direction will be corrected as time progresses. I speak particularly at this time of her right to sing ba.s.s, because it is a representative right, and covers, as with a lid, a whole chest full of others.

Yet while I claim this right, I confess that I should not care to see it exercised to any great extent, for I think that treble is, by all odds, the finer and more attractive part in music. Is it worth while to exercise the right of singing ba.s.s, when it costs a good deal to get up a voice for it, and when treble comes natural and easy, and is very much pleasanter to the ear? Ba.s.s would be a bad thing for a lullaby, and could only silence a baby by scaring it. If I should have committed to me the melodies of the world, I would care very little about my right to sing those subordinate parts that gather around them in obedient harmonies. At least, I think I would, unless some upstart man should deny my right to sing any thing but melodies. If it were committed to me to sing like a bird, I would not care, I think, to exercise my right to roar like a bull. If I can witch the ears and win the hearts of men and women by doing that which I can do easily and naturally and well, then I shall do best not to exercise my right to do that which I can only do difficultly, and unnaturally, and ill.

Woman, in my apprehension, is the mistress, not alone of the melody of music, but of the melody of life. Whatever it may be possible to do by cultivation and a long course of development, it is doubtful whether a woman would ever sing ba.s.s well. I am aware that she has the right, and the organs, but I question whether her ba.s.s would amount to any thing--whether it would be worth singing.

When women talk with me about their right to vote, and their right to practise law, and their right to engage in any business which usage has a.s.signed to man, I say "yes--you have all those rights."

I never dispute with them at all. Indeed, you see how I have put myself forward as the defender of these same rights; yet I should be sorry to see them exercised by the women I admire and love.

It is all very well to say that the presence of woman at the ballot-box would purify it, and restrain the manners of the men around it; but I have seen enough of the world to learn that all human influence is reciprocal and reactionary. Man and the ballot-box might gain, but woman would lose, and men and the ballot-box themselves would lose in the long run. The ballot-box is the ba.s.s, and it should be man's business to sing it, while woman should give him home melody with which it should harmonize.

In the matter of rights, I suppose that I should not differ materially with any strong-minded woman; but I have always observed that the most truly lovable, humble, pure-hearted, G.o.d-fearing and humanity-loving women of my acquaintance, never say any thing about these rights, and scorn those of their s.e.x who do. I have never known a woman who was at once satisfied in her affections and discontented with her woman's lot and her woman's work. There is a weak place, or a wrong place, or a rotten place, in the character or nature of every woman who stands and howls upon the spot where her Creator placed her, and neglects her own true work and life while claiming the right to do the work and live the life of man. I will admit all the rights that such a woman claims--all that I myself possess--if she will let me alone, and keep her distance from me. She may sing ba.s.s, but I do not wish to hear her. She is repulsive to me. She offends me.

I believe in women. I believe they are the sweetest, purest, most unselfish, best part of the human race. I have no doubt on this subject, whatever. They do sing the melody in all human life, as well as the melody in music. They carry the leading part, at least in the sense that they are a step in advance of us, all the way in the journey heavenward. I believe that they cannot move very widely out of the sphere which they now occupy, and remain as good as they now are; and I deny that my belief rests upon any sentimentality, or jealousy, or any other weak or unworthy basis. A man who has experienced a mother's devotion, a wife's self-sacrificing love, and a daughter's affection, and is grateful for all, may be weakly sentimental about some things, but not about women. He would help every woman he loves to the exercise of all the rights which hold dignity and happiness for her. He would fight that she might have those rights, if necessary; but he would rather have her lose her voice entirely, than to hear her sound a ba.s.s note so long as a demi-semi-quaver.

LESSON VIII.

AMERICAN PUBLIC EDUCATION.

"Keen are the pangs Advancement often brings. To be secure, Be humble. To be happy, be content." JAMES HURDIS.

"For not that which men covet most is best; Nor that thing worst which men do most refuse.

But fittest is that each contented rest With that they hold." SPENSER.

"Men have different spheres. It is for some to evolve great moral truths, as the Heavens evolve stars, to guide the sailor on the sea and the traveller on the desert; and it is for some, like the sailor and the traveller, simply to be guided."--BEECHER.

A venerable gentleman who once occupied a prominent position in a leading New England college, was remarking recently upon the difficulty which he experienced in obtaining servants who would attend to their duties. He had just dismissed a girl of sixteen, who was so much "above her business" as to be intolerable. The girl's father, who was an Englishman, called upon him for an explanation. The employer told his story, every word of which the father received without question, and then remarked, with considerable vehemence: "_It is all owing to those cursed public schools_." The father retired, and the old professor sat down and thought about it; and the result of his thinking did not differ materially from that of the father. It was not, of course, that there was any thing in the studies pursued which had tended to unfit the girl for her duties. It was very possible indeed for the girl to have been a better servant in consequence of her intelligence. There was nothing in English grammar or the multiplication table to produce insubordination and discontent.