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OUTLINES 
 
 ME'N, WOMEN, AND THINGS. 
 
 BY / 
 
 MARY CLEMMER AJMES. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 PUBLISHED BY HURD AND HOUGHTON. 
 
 1873. 
 
?^ 10:3? 
 
 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1873, by 
 
 Mary Clemmeb Ames, 
 in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 
 
 RIVERSIDE, Cambridge: 
 
 STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED BY 
 H. 0. HOUGHTON AND COMPANY. 
 
To 
 
 MRS. PORTUS BAXTER, 
 
 OF VERMONT, 
 IN PRECIOUS MEMORY OF ONE GONE BEFORE, 
 
 ARE AFFECTIONA TEL Y DEDICA TED. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 I. Arlington ij^ May 1 
 
 II. Northern Vermont in August ... 9 
 
 rH. Newport in September 20 
 
 lY. Indian Summer in Virginia . ,* . , 37 
 
 V. Charles Sumner's Home . , . . 43 
 
 VI. Grand Duke Alexis in New York . . 56 
 
 Vn. A Rainy Morning in the Country . . 66 
 
 VIII. Margaret Fuller Ossoli .... 77 
 
 IX. A French Journalist 95 
 
 X. Fanny Fern 106 
 
 XI. Horace Greeley and Edwin Forrest . . 116 
 
 XII. Lola Montez 124 
 
 XIII. Things gone by 131 
 
 XIV. The Fallen Man 144 
 
 XV. Physical Basis of Statesmanship . . 155 -'' 
 
 XVI. Instinctive Philosophers and Statesmen 164 
 
 X\T:I. Pin-money 173 
 
 XVI n. Breadmaking 188 
 
 XIX. Our Kitchens 200 
 
 XX. Caste ijjt Sex 208/ 
 
 XXI. Woman Suffrage 225 
 
 XXII. Una and her Paupers 239 
 
 XXIII. Let us Live 247 
 
OUTLINES 
 
 OP 
 
 ME-N, WOMEI(, Al^D THmGS. 
 
 I. 
 
 AELINGTON IN MAY. 
 
 Arlington is a lovely spot. Virginia, with 
 all its vaunting, can hardly boast of a fairer 
 domain. From its slopes you look down upon 
 the valley of the Potomac. Beyond the lordly 
 river Washington stretches away to its crown- 
 ing Capitol. The great dome glitters through 
 the crystal-blue air, and high above it the God- 
 dess of Liberty holds tutelary guard over the- 
 newly consecrated land. This is the picture — 
 flecked here and there with breezy fields, and 
 open woods, and softly swelUng hills — which 
 we see from Arhngton. As we turned into the^ 
 old Alexandria road, I thought of something 
 that I saw not very long ago : a letter, the last 
 one written by Mary Custis from Arlington, to 
 Robert E. Lee, before she became his wife. 
 The letter of a happy girl to the man beloved 
 1 
 
2 OUTLINES. 
 
 and chosen to be the husband of her heart and 
 the ruler of her life, her eventful fate has given 
 to it a touching significance. It referred solely 
 to their approaching marriage and future life, 
 and was full of love, and hope, and religious 
 faith. The young officer, stationed for the time 
 at Old Point Comfort, seemed to be in posses- 
 sion of only narrow quarters. Yet the heiress 
 of Arhngton saw nothing formidable in this, 
 and counted it no sacrifice to leave the wide 
 halls of her home for the scanty conveniences of 
 a miUtary fortress. " When mother tcame, 
 why, they could make a bed in the sitting-room 
 for her; and as for a maid, if there was no 
 room, Mary Custis could do without one ! " 
 Rare self-abnegation for a Virginia heiress. 
 Then came pleasant gossips about the brides- 
 maids and groomsmen already at Arlington, 
 and maidenly fears as to how she should acquit 
 herseK through the trying ceremony ; followed 
 and finished with that exquisite humility of 
 love which always sees in the beloved one the 
 finer good, the diviner beauty, both of body 
 and of spirit, which, humble-hearted, it misses 
 in itself, only to recognize and worship in that 
 other self who is now the counterpart and 
 crown of all true existence. 
 
 She was unworthy of such great happiness ; 
 
ARLINGTON IN MAY. 3 
 
 but, because he deserved it all, the blessing of 
 God would descend upon their union. Indeed, 
 she felt that they could claim that benediction 
 of heaven promised to those who honored and 
 obeyed their parents, and sought to do the will 
 of their Heavenly Father. 
 
 On a certain day she would ride from Arhng- 
 ton on horseback and meet him at Alexandria. 
 Over this very road came the happy lovers. 
 Far and fair on every side stretched the sunny 
 lands which were their proud inheritance. Ar- 
 lington House opened wide its doors to these 
 beloved children. Its patriarchal trees waved 
 their summer welcomes. Slaves came thronging 
 from their cottages to greet their " dear Miss 
 Mary " and her handsome young husband. 
 
 What a summer day for these joyous hearts ! 
 Ineffable as its sunshine shone the promise of 
 their future. It was well for Mary Custis that 
 to her was given no " second sight " to divine 
 the sorrow of a far-off morning. Well that 
 those soft eyes, looking on, did not see these 
 gay old gardens and violet slopes sown thick 
 with human bones, and turfed with ten thou- 
 sand human graves ! When she wrote this let- 
 ter, in the sweet fullness of her heart, it was- 
 well she could not know that when her hair was- 
 white, and her heart old with many sorrows, a 
 
4 OUTLINES. 
 
 soldier would find this letter amid the treasures 
 left in the home from which she was banished 
 — banished because the husband for whose sake 
 she dreamed all gracious fortune would come 
 was an armed traitor^ fighting against the gov- 
 ernment which had covered him with honor. 
 She was innocent and lovely ; but the innocence 
 and loveliness of one could not avert the inevi- 
 table punishment of generations of wrong. This 
 letter, full of all girlish gentleness and love, 
 draws us in sympathy toward her who wrote 
 it ; yet we look on the graves of the dead, 
 beneath the protecting trees of Arlington, and 
 say. Far be that day when to Mary Custis, or 
 to her children, shall be given back the home 
 of her fathers ! 
 
 " It would be enough to make these dry 
 bones stir and come forth, armed with new 
 life," said a gentle voice at my side this morn- 
 ing, in the Soldiers' Cemetery at Arlington. 
 We stood on those wooded swards, looking down 
 through the widening vistas, and on every side, 
 reaching far out till they seemed to meet the 
 sky, were the graves of our soldiers. No hu- 
 man tongue, though touched with the inspira- 
 tion of angels, no word of man could move 
 with the eloquence of this silence. From the 
 fields of Manassas and Bull Run, from the 
 
 i 
 
ARLINGTON IN MAY. 5 
 
 thickets of the Wilderness, from the waste places 
 of Virginia, day by day, the nation gathered her 
 darlings, and laid them down to sleep upon 
 these peaceful slopes. Thousands are buried 
 here. Hundreds of thousands more, from the 
 Heights of Arlington to the bayous of the Gulf, 
 sow all the land — the soldiers who fought and 
 perished for liberty. Every grave is turfed, 
 and has at its head a white board, telling of 
 the " unknown," or giving the name, regiment, 
 and time of death of the soldier who sleeps 
 below. At the entrance of the avenues are 
 tablets, bearing inscriptions such as these : 
 
 ^' On fame's eternal camping-ground, 
 Our silent tents are spread, 
 And glory guards with solemn round 
 The bivouac of the dead." 
 
 ** Whether on the tented field or in the battle's van, 
 The grandest place for man to die 
 Is where he dies for man ! ^' 
 
 I never saw Arlington so silent and lonely 
 before. It is no longer the headquarters of 
 troops, but a silent temple amid the vast city of 
 the slain. The hush of the grave has touched 
 its threshold. The sanctity of the dead seems 
 to pervade its silence. The lower apartments 
 ^re all open to visitors, who walk about with 
 t^oftened voice and step. The rooms look old 
 
6 OUTLINES, 
 
 and worn, but are in no way defaced. Old 
 paintings still look down from the walls of the 
 drawing-room, and in the hbrary mouldy books 
 are securely locked away in antique cases. The 
 stag's head and antlers still deck the grand old 
 hall, and a sideboard remains to tell of ancient 
 cheer. Yet everywhere amid these reKcs of 
 family life, with their stories of a happy and 
 illustrious past, hang the records of our lost, 
 reminding us only of the lowly yet illustrious 
 dead. Beautiful Arlington, looking down upon 
 a landscape soft as Italy, may you never again 
 be the home of the living ! The birds come 
 earliest to your branches, and on your tender 
 slopes the sweet arbutus first wakes to life. In 
 your mossy moulds the violet distils its earliest 
 fragrance, and here, when Summer seems gone 
 from the world, she leans back to your sheltered 
 hills to say good-by. There can be no kindlier 
 spot in which the soldiers of our love may rest 
 after the march and the battle. There can be no 
 fitter place in all the world, than the domain of 
 the man who used such power to destroy her, for 
 the mausoleum of the nation. 
 
 Before me lies my first spray of traihng ar- 
 butus from the woods of Arlington. In South- 
 ern airs it caught its pinky bloom, filled its cells 
 with honey, and distilled its subtle fragrance: l 
 
ARLINGTON IN MAY. 7 
 
 yet it is twin to the arbutus tliat I used to find 
 amid the lush leaves and wonderful mosses of 
 the woods of New York. Don't make me sen- 
 timental, Arbutus, with your memories of earlier 
 Springs, from whose freshness neither time nor 
 care had brushed the first dew of youth ! You 
 are the very same. Arbutus ; you haven't grown 
 old a bit. And Spring comes back, fair and 
 young as ever. Time does not touch her bloom, 
 nor palsy her pulses. The same ecstasy thrills 
 in her veins, and in her myriad of delicate nerves 
 young life is all astir. 
 
 Her loving angels are abroad. They tint the 
 sky, soften the air, sail in the serene clouds. 
 They have touched the buds, wakened the blos- 
 soms, they renew the life of the living ; drop 
 their mantles to cover the graves of our dead. 
 How is it. Arbutus ? You have not changed, 
 neither has the Spring. We gaze on you with 
 the same eyes, caress you with the same fingers ; 
 yet we, we are not quite the same. Each suc- 
 ceeding Spring seems to touch a deeper Spring 
 of Ufe within us. Every time we welcome May 
 again we feel that we have gone down deeper 
 into the mystery of Being. Our years need 
 not be many to make us feel that they have 
 robbed us. They have heaped up treasure for 
 \ s. They have given us place and power, love 
 
8 OUTLINES. 
 
 and happiness. Yet they have buried our dead 
 and estranged our living. They now make us 
 feel what we have missed. They have taken 
 from us that which they can never restore — the 
 freshness, the promise of the beautiful begin- 
 ning ! Thus my Arbutus saith ? You sin as 
 you write, says Arbutus. My tender tints, my 
 spiritual perfume, renewed in primal freshness 
 Spring after Spring, are the promise of the 
 Everlasting Spring. 
 
II. 
 
 NORTHERN VERMONT IN AUGUST. 
 
 I FEAR I have nothing to say that you "will in 
 the least care to hear. I am just as fond of you 
 as ever, dear souls ; only I must own I am dis- 
 inclined even to tell you so. Do you know how 
 blessed it is to be quiet ? How much more 
 blessed it is to feel that you may be quiet in 
 peace, that no mortal living has any right to 
 demand that you shall break your peace by one 
 compulsory word or sound ? The latter bless- 
 edness I know not. I am at rest because I am 
 a runaway. I have run away from the world. 
 I am at peace because I will not be defrauded 
 of it utterly by the wear and tear, the fret and 
 hurry, the work and pain of mortal years lived 
 in the trampling thoroughfares of men. Here 
 am I watching a humming-bird oiling its gauzy 
 wings in a spruce tree beside my window (such 
 a charming sight), with not a word to utter 
 of the slightest importance whatever. Not a 
 thousand miles distant there is a little room 
 whose desk and books and pictures and lounge 
 
10 OUTLINES. 
 
 even are full of serious meditation on human 
 life and all that concerns it. Life has no phase 
 of joy or pain, of thought, action, or experience, 
 which has not been faithfully and often sor- 
 rowfully studied in that little room. 
 
 '' The low sad music of humanity," the re- 
 frain of toiUng millions of men and women, at 
 times seemed too heart-breaking to be borne ; I 
 the problems of human destiny too difficult and 
 conflicting to be solved by mortal mind ; the 
 very comprehension of human life more than 
 one could bear, sometimes, in that little room. 
 When I shut its door I shut human life — at 
 least, the ceaseless consideration of it — behind 
 me. If this could never be done, how could 
 one live ? From this aerie in the mountains 
 how can I reach down, take up its tangled 
 thread, draw it into where I am, and weave it 
 into the harmonies of thought ? I am not here 
 to think, but to rest ; here to grow strong by 
 fresh contact with the life-giving earth, to feed 
 the very pulsations of hf e from the deep breast 
 of the mighty mother. 
 
 I essay to speak ; but can think of nothing 
 but the brooks that I have waded and followed 
 — the sliining brooks, lined with moss, fringed 
 with ferns, arched with cedars, spruce, and pines, 
 thronged with trout, beautiful as flowers. I 
 
NORTHERN VERMONT IN AUGUST. 11 
 
 can see nothing but mountain tops and sunsets, 
 and many lakes, glittering between the hills. 
 Resplendent are these all to see ; but oh ! how 
 poor they show through the finest glitter of 
 words. Then it is heavenly to ''loaf " ; but it 
 is not much to tell about. If it is loafing to 
 bask on a bank, in the full blaze of the sun, 
 through an entire August afternoon, making in- 
 timate acquaintance with bugs and " things " 
 — the cunning workers of the ground and the 
 murmuring nations of the air — then am I a 
 bom loafer. I spend an afternoon in this fash- 
 ion whenever I can possibly get the chance. 
 All the Aunt Jemimas in creation might croak 
 around me about my waste of time, all the 
 same I'd cultivate my bugs. Let the sim burn 
 and tan me ; I " loaf " on in imperturbability 
 of soul. Pretty field-bugs, that live in the 
 grass, are such delightful society, compared 
 with tedious people. If you have never found 
 this out, do try. My closest companions dur- 
 ing the last month have been grasshoppers. 
 They will not leave or forsake me. There is 
 one actually hopping on my paper at this mo- 
 ment. The amount of time I spend in mend- 
 ing their legs and helping them out of tight 
 places should insure me their gratitude as the 
 benefactor of their race. '' Grasshopper, grass- 
 
12 OUTLINES. 
 
 Iiopper, give me some molasses ! " is the cliild's 
 cry. Now, unasked, tliey give me many other 
 tilings — analogies among the rest. I sat down 
 in an open field, the other day, amid grasshop- 
 pers as many as there are men in a State. The 
 air was full of them, the brook was full of them, 
 the grass was full of them, and by my side on 
 an immense flat stone they were holding a mass 
 meeting. They sat in rows, closer than the men 
 in the Philadelphia Republican Convention. It 
 was a serene looking assembly in mass. But 
 rery soon it gave evidence that it was not with- 
 out its excited individuals, its " disaffected mem- 
 bers." In sooth, it was not without its '' bolt- 
 ers." My ! When everything seemed to be 
 progressing peacefully, up would hop a bolter 
 and jump straight into the brook. Mad little 
 bolter, he slid along smoothly enough for a min- 
 ute ; then whirls, eddies, rocks were his. On 
 he dashed to his fate, straight into the mouth 
 of a big trout. 
 
 Lake Memphremagog is set like a mirror be- 
 tween the mountains of Canada and Vermont. 
 It has none of the warm sylvan beauty of Lake 
 George, or of the idylhc loveliness of Lake 
 Willoughby ; but it has a majestic, masculine 
 splendor AvhoUy its own. When the September 
 sun drops low, and cold, steely shadows creep 
 
NORTHERN VERMONT IN AUGUST. 13 
 
 . along the sides of the girdling evergreen moun- 
 tains, its deep, inky waters and lovely but 
 lonely shores take on the look of the lochs of 
 Scotland — blue, and cold, and solemn, like 
 them. Under the frowning Owl's Head you 
 feel as if you were sailing on Loch Achray and 
 looking up at Ben Venue. But it has blither 
 phases — long, bright vistas, filled with majesty 
 and splendor, touched here and there with tender 
 beauty. How I wish that I could transcribe them 
 for you, so that the dead type might glow if but 
 ever so faintly, with a reflection of the inexpress- 
 ible beauty of God's world. But I am more and 
 more impressed with the impotency of words in 
 reproducing Nature, either in form or color. 
 
 " Why do we ever attempt it ? " I ask a 
 friend. " A painter cannot see a sight like this 
 without the passionate desire to reproduce it in 
 form or tint ; or a writer, without the attempt 
 to portray it in words. Both know before they 
 begin that the best that they can do will be but 
 a mockery of the reality. What makes them 
 attempt it ? " 
 
 " The instinctive desire to share it with 
 others," was the answer. 
 
 The most attractive abode on the lake is that 
 of Sir Hugh Alan, M. P. This is a s\:ory-and- 
 a-half white cottage, standing on a hill, in a 
 
14 OUTLINES. 
 
 grove of white silver poplars, with the British 
 flag waving proudly from its summit. This 
 cottage, low and small, is nevertheless sup- 
 ported in true English state. When Sir Hugh, 
 with his guest. Lord Lismeth, and a retinue of 
 gay ladies, attend the little wooden church in 
 the sleepy hamlet of Georgetown, dreaming a 
 few miles further on, the fact is chronicled in 
 the Stanstead newspaper with all the solemn 
 empressement with which a sneeze of England's 
 queen is recorded in the " Court Journal." Sir 
 Hugh can go to church in his yacht. This lit- 
 tle bantam steamer is the only lively thing on 
 the lake. Compared with the graceful yachts 
 which float in Newport Harbor, it is what a 
 quacking duck is to a sailing swan. It quacks 
 and waddles ; but it waddles well. 
 
 Midway up the lake, on the Canada side, 
 Georgetown clings to the shore, a barren, 
 wooden, treeless little hamlet. . At the end of it 
 Magog — wooden, barren, and treeless, also, on 
 a larger scale — waits the coming of the " Lady 
 of the Lake," the only event of its Summer and 
 early Autumn day. In Winter its days have no 
 events. Here Mount Orford, the highest moim- 
 tain in Canada, holds guard. And, while the 
 boat turns, gazing back along the line of gird- 
 ling mountains, through the vistas of embow- 
 
NORTHERN VERMONT IN AUGUST. 15 
 
 ered islands, which dot with gleaming emerald 
 the sapphire of the lake, we see the towering 
 and cloven notch of mountains in which shines 
 that star of lakes. Lake Willoughby. The soil 
 on the Vermont shore of the lake seems to be 
 much softer, warmer, and richer than on the 
 Canada side ; it has none of the blue, stony look 
 of its precipitous banks, and this must account 
 for the massy luxuriance of the foliage which 
 covers its mountain sides, and crowns their sum- 
 mits, and curtains with the brilliant green of veil- 
 ing vines the gray old bowlders which crowd the 
 shore. The sun drops behind Orford a globe of 
 scarlet, and the old mountain grows very purple 
 in the face, and the top of his crown is edged with 
 fire. We like his looks, which are somewhat ex- 
 citing ; but the boat swings round and shuts him 
 from sight. Here is old " Sugar Loaf." Every 
 land that has a mountain at all is sure to have 
 a Sugar Loaf ; but not every one beside one 
 lake holds another on the top of his head. 
 That is what this Mountain Loaf does. High 
 above the rich cedars which skirt its sides, on 
 its very summit, a tranquil lake holds up its 
 mirror to the skies. The country folk call it 
 Concert Pond, prized by fishermen in proportion 
 to its difficulty of access, and to the choice qual 
 ity of its speckled trout. We pass Owl's Head, 
 
16 OUTLINES, 
 
 beloved of mountains, to find the pretty White 
 Mountain House at its base deserted, shut up, 
 save when visited by picnic parties. Inaccessi- 
 ble by road, and visited but by a single boat, its 
 actual loneliness and isolation have proved to 
 be too great for the average summer tourists. 
 Twilight on the waters deepens into the early 
 September night. The boat darts through the 
 darkness, in and out among the islands ; the 
 fishermen's huts fade out of sight on the shores ; 
 the shores merge into one dim and misty mass ; 
 Jay Peak is lost in the darkness of the skies ; 
 the little boy on my lap grows cold and still, 
 then with a quivering sigh asks, " Where the 
 big boat is going to, and if we will ever get 
 home." And when, at last, it touches Newport 
 pier, and I look back upon the dark water, shut 
 within the imprisoning mountains, I am surer 
 than ever that even in the sunshine Memphre- 
 magog, if one of the most beautiful, is also one 
 of the most solitary of lakes. 
 
 Borne by loving arms Alice Cary was brought 
 to this lovely lake-land during the last August 
 of her life. From this bay-window she looked 
 through a vista of maples out upon a broad ex- 
 panse of meadow-lawn, whose velvet turf is of 
 the most vivid malachite green, softened on its 
 further edge by a grove wherein the shades of 
 
NORTHERN VERMONT IN AUGUST. 17 
 
 spruce and pine, elm and maple, contrast and 
 blend. Beyond these woods Lake Memphre- 
 magog sets its glittering shield between the 
 hiUs. On its farther side green mountains arise 
 tiU they hold the white clouds on their heads. 
 Below, Jay Peak stands over four thousand feet 
 above the sea, while above, Owl's Head soars 
 over three thousand, covered with forest to its 
 summit. It is a picture fit for Paradise. Yet 
 it is but one glimpse amid many, of the in- 
 expressible beauty of this lake and mountain 
 country of the North. She, sitting here, looked 
 out upon this consummate scene ; looked with 
 her tender, steadfast eyes, across these emerald 
 meadows, to the lake shining upon her through 
 the opening hills, to the mountains, smiling 
 down on her from the distant heaven, their 
 keen amethyst notching the deep, deep blue of 
 a cloudless sky. The splendor of this northern 
 world fell upon her like a new divine revela- 
 tion. The tonic in its atmosphere touched her 
 feeble pulses ; the peace brooding in its still- 
 ness penetrated her aching brain with the 
 promise of a new life. Without, the world 
 was full of tranquillity ; within, it was full of 
 affection and the words of loving kindness. 
 Then she wondered (and her wonder was sad 
 with a hopeless regret) why Summer after Sum- 
 
18 OUTLINES. 
 
 mer, she had lingered in her city home, till the 
 crash and roar of the streets, coming through 
 her open windows, had filled body and brain 
 with torture. 
 
 '' How blind I was," she exclaimed. " I said 
 that I could not take the time from my work ; 
 and now life has neither time nor work left for 
 me. How much more, how much better I 
 could have worked had I rested. If I am 
 spared, how differently I will do. I will come 
 here every Summer and ZiV^." 
 
 Alas! before another Summer, the winter 
 snow wrapped her forever from the earthly 
 sight of this unutterable beauty. 
 
 Hers, from the beginning, was the fatal mistake 
 of so many brain-workers — that all time given 
 to refreshment and rest is so much taken from 
 the results of labor ; forgetting, or not realizing, 
 that the finer the instrument, the more fatal the 
 effects of undue strain, the more imperative the 
 necessity of avoiding over-wear and the per- 
 petual jar of discordant conditions ; forgetting, 
 also, that the rarest flowering of the brain has 
 its root in silence, and beauty, and rest. 
 
 Here in this window, whither, wasted and 
 suffering, she had been borne, she wrote her 
 " InvaUd's Plea " : — 
 
 " Summer ! my beautiful, beautiful Summer, 
 I look in thy face and I long so to live ; 
 
NORTHERN VERMONT IN AUGUST. 19 
 
 But, ah ! hast thou room for an idle new-comer, 
 With all things to take and with nothing to give ? 
 
 " With all things to take of thy dear loving-kindness, 
 The wine of thy sunshine, the dew of thy air ; 
 And with nothing to give but the deafness and blindness 
 Begot in the depths of an utter despair ? 
 
 "The little green grasshopper, weak as we deem her, 
 Chirps day in and out for the sweet right to live ; 
 And canst thou, O Summer ! make room for a dreamer, 
 With all things to take and with nothing to give ? 
 
 " Room only to wrap her hot cheek m thy shadows, 
 And all on thy daisy-fringed pillow to lie, 
 And dream of the gates of the glorious meadows, 
 Where never a rose of the roses shall die ? '* 
 
III. 
 
 NEWPORT IN SEPTEMBER. 
 
 I HAVE reached " the land where it is always 
 afternoon." Even when the morning sunshine 
 sphnters on the keen-blue waves of the bay, and 
 its expanse is full of motion and sound, there is 
 a quality in the atmosphere, a softness in its 
 light which falls upon you and pervades you 
 like the tranquillity of evening. It is born of 
 tempered elements. I cannot tell you what it 
 is ; but it is full of rest. It is not wonderful 
 that this is named the Isle of Peace, or that 
 tired people like to come here. As I take my 
 morning air-bath on this little family pier, I find 
 a fascination in these waters that will not let 
 me go. It soothes brain and nerves. It silences 
 the rush and roar of the great, hurrying world. 
 It says : " All things have rest from weariness. 
 All things have rest ; why should you toil 
 alone ? " I conclude that I won't. The truth 
 is, I can't. The result is, the mail closes, the 
 boat departs, and the light of heaven, the voices 
 of earth, the mesmerism of the waves, the pie- 
 
NEWPORT IN SEPTEMBER. 21 
 
 tures of human life, all thronging together void 
 and voiceless in the mind, have refused to take 
 on palpable shapes, and have disdained the fee- 
 ble offer of a stubby little pen to reveal them. 
 I'd send you the crown of the morning, if I could 
 An hour ago it looked like a storm, and the wind 
 blew perversely. It was only a make-believe of 
 the Nereids. They are busy now lifting up the 
 steely fog that covered the bay like a shield ; 
 and, as its edges break and curl and fly away to 
 the sun, they glitter like shreds of silver. Un- 
 derneath spreads the bay, a translucent sapphire. 
 In the bay float the jelly-fish — tremulous, 
 gleaming jewels. On the waves the fishing- 
 punts are putting out for their heavy shoals. 
 The bay-skiffs are all on the wing, darting from 
 the little household piers and dancing away for 
 a swing in the wake of some stately steamboat. 
 Row-boats, painted bright blue and red and 
 yellow, ai'e darting about in every direction, 
 full of boys and girls, whose happy voices come 
 back to us across the waters. 
 
 Down the harbor a little way the idle yachts 
 he dreaming with the sleeping gales, before they 
 begins their mid-day race. Beyond, past old 
 Fort Louis, a great school-ship from New York 
 has cast anchor. What a sight it is — the hun- 
 dreds of boys clinging like bees to its mighty 
 

 22 OUTLINES. 
 
 yards. High up in the bhie air, they look no 
 bigger than bees ; and I watch them dropping, 
 dropping like spiders down their ropy stairs. 
 Now four long black boats are dropped down 
 the ship's sides to the water. Now they are 
 filled with boys, and now they scull across the 
 bay for a race ; while a thousand boys on the 
 ship fill the air with their shouts and hurrahs. 
 Away out to the ocean these bright waters are 
 quick with human life. But human life upon 
 the wayes is not the noisy and tiresome thing 
 that it is upon the streets. The very motion — 
 clear, swift, and silent — is full of repose. It 
 reminds me of delicious Venice, that I never 
 saw. "What would be these primeval elements 
 alone, without the human presence, that loves 
 and suffers, rejoices and sins ? Midw^ay in the 
 bay hes the green island of Canonicut. I see a 
 church-spire, and clustering farm-houses, and 
 sunshiny meadows, and cattle grazing down to 
 the very shore. Below, the stone ramparts of 
 Fort Adams, with their mounted guns, rise from 
 the water ; and nearer Fort Louis lifts its gray 
 old head above the soft, purple " Dumpling " 
 hills. So perfect a picture of it as Higginson 
 has given us in '' Malbone " can never be made 
 again. He says : ''As you stand upon the 
 crumbKng parapet of old Fort Louis, you feel 
 
NEWPORT IN SEPTEMBER. 23 
 
 yourself poised in middle air ; the sea-birds 
 soar and swoop around you ; the white vessels 
 come and go ; the water is around you on all 
 sides but one, and spreads in pale-blue beauty 
 up the lovely bay, or in deeper tints southward 
 toward the horizon-lines. I know of no ruin in 
 America which Nature has so resumed ; it seems 
 a part of the original rock ; you cannot imagine 
 it away." 
 
 It is a single low tower, shaped like the tomb 
 of Csecilia Metella. But its stately position 
 makes it rank with the vast sisterhood of wave- 
 washed strongholds. It might be King Arthur's 
 Cornish Tyntagel ; it might be " the teocallis 
 tower of Tuloom." The pretty Mermaid car- 
 ried us over to it the other day — a perfect day. 
 She bore us into a moss-covered cove, and we 
 climbed the slippery rocks, led by a maid with 
 flowing hair and a scarlet petticoat. How gay 
 and picturesque she was against the gray old 
 summit, as she looked back and called us on ! 
 We sat down at last upon the broken parapet, 
 high above the water — a little company, each 
 of whom sent " long, long thoughts " of his and 
 her own silently out to the questioning waters. 
 We were enveloped in the marvelous atmos- 
 phere (fine, soft, sun-suffused, yet exhilarating) 
 which has made the climate of Newport famous 
 
24 OUTLINES. 
 
 for centuries. Across the bay, Newport soared 
 from shore to hill, lovely as that enchanted City 
 of the Sea portrayed in " Counterparts." At 
 either end of the islands far-away lawns run 
 from villa and chalet down to the bay, with 
 white yachts tossing by the pretty piers at their 
 feet. Just below us a pleasure-boat, filled with 
 a gay party, was running in and out among the 
 rocky islands and coves of the " Dumplings." 
 Before us a French corvette was lying in the 
 stream, its tri-color hanging disconsolate in the 
 still air, and its Gallic hands busy at work mak- 
 ing haste to leave an unfriendly port. On the 
 other side of us, the sheep were grazing on the 
 rugged slopes of Canonicut. Within the fort 
 Nature's wild blooms covered with grace the 
 debris at our feet. Roving bees hummed to us 
 with assiduous attempts at more intimate ac- 
 quaintance. Crickets trilled their slender horns 
 in the waving grasses, while all around us the 
 golden-rod on the crumbling bastions waved its 
 yellow sceptre and proclaimed to us that the 
 conquering Autumn had come, and taken captive 
 the Isle of Peace, no less than the lanes and 
 woods at home. 
 
 Ah, my dears, it is so hard to work here — 
 so very hard. I try ; but every day some lovely 
 gust of human kindness swoops me up and 
 
NEWPORT IN SEPTEMBER, 25 
 
 sweeps me away. Again the mail closes, the 
 boat goes, and — and you know the rest. 
 
 Let me think, and see if I can tell you a few 
 of the lovely things that have happened since I 
 stopped up yonder ; but, if I were to take up 
 again every sunny thread that I dropped, I 
 couldn't weave them into a picture at all. 
 
 There was the out-door lunch-party at Mrs. 
 Julia Ward Howe's country home, six miles 
 away. It was all that a lunch-party could be 
 on the fairest of August days, under the trees, 
 with a ruined mill at the foot of the hill ; and 
 handsome men and beautiful women and flower- 
 like girls basking on the grass ; and the most 
 genial of '' high-up " philosophical doctors from 
 Boston to hold them in a mild degree of awe, 
 and to preserve them from degenerating into too 
 absolute mutual admiration ; and with a host- 
 ess to whom '' Kant " is " light reading " and 
 the Sanskrit a pastime, dispensing chowder with 
 lavish ladle. I bear witness that she did it grace- 
 fully, generously, with those beautiful hands, 
 and without a hint of ink or of '' Moral Trigo- 
 nometry." Mrs. Howe is attractive anywhere. 
 Even on the platform she appears with a shy, 
 half-deprecating, half-bewildered air, as if she 
 herself could not quite make out why she was 
 there \ but nowhere else does she appear to 
 
26 OUTLINES. 
 
 such absolute adyantage as she does when dis- 
 pensing hospitality to her friends, in her own 
 demesne, in the midst of her young daughters, 
 each one of whom is a perfect wild-rose in her 
 fresh, girlish grace. 
 
 I will here ask IVIrs. Howe why, instead of 
 doling out her essays to scanty audiences, she 
 does not set them within book-covers and give 
 them to the world ? They belong to American 
 literature, and ought to take their place in it. 
 Nothing to compare with them in scholarship 
 and philosophical thought has been produced by 
 any American woman except Margaret Fuller. 
 At present the highest feminine gifts in this 
 land, as well as much of the mascuUne, through 
 the exigent demands of daily life and the curse 
 of the want of money, are devoured by that in- 
 satiable Moloch, the Press, who still cries for 
 more, but makes no record of the untold treasure 
 which he devours. How many grandly-endowed . 
 women sacrifice the rich vitality of their heart 
 and brain to this monster, day by day ; yet they 
 must pass and leave no enduring trace in the 
 world of art of all that they have thought, felt, 
 suffered, and given to their race. With all her 
 mental and spiritual wealth, no American wo- 
 man to-day is giving anything that will long en- 
 dure to the literature of her country. Thus, if 
 
NEWPORT IN SEPTEMBER. 27 
 
 there is one among us who can embody for the 
 world the best results of leisure, of culture, of 
 comprehensive thoiight, and of rarest woman- 
 hood, let us have it. 
 
 How I wish that I could transcribe for you 
 the splendor of "the Cliffs." But in these Sep- 
 tember days there hovers a light over sea and 
 shore which cannot be caught and imprisoned 
 in words. Wordsworth would not have sung of 
 " the light that never was on sea or land " had 
 he gazed out over this opaline ocean, over these 
 flickering shores, which in the same moment 
 concentrate and radiate the loveliest of unim- 
 agined, indescribable hues. The beach, two 
 weeks ago crowded with equipages and gay 
 people, the surf, alive with hundreds of shout- 
 ing and laughing bathers, are empty and for- 
 saken. The gale swept away the long line of 
 bathing-houses ; the pie and candy man has 
 gone to assist elsewhere in the destruction of 
 the human teeth and stomach ; but " the 
 Cliffs ! " — never in the July heats was their 
 beauty so absolute as in the perfect sunshine 
 under the perfect heaven of this September 
 morning ! Yonder, amid the abundant grass, 
 the peaceful cattle graze ; yonder a maple 
 beckons us toward it with a scarlet hand : 
 yonder wide beeches and elms spread out green 
 
28 OUTLINES, 
 
 tents under which we may rest. Amid these, 
 its face toward the sea, looks forth a home so 
 harmonious in outline, so poetical in aspect, 
 that it is hard to realize that the trail of death 
 and sorrow could ever pass through it, or that 
 those who inhabit it could ever be tired or sorry, 
 sick or lonesome, as at some time every mortal 
 who carries the burden of this human life must 
 be. Past hundreds of such homes, on and on 
 through the green grass, for miles winds the 
 narrow path of " the Cliffs." The absolute peace 
 of the green earth and its homes on one side ; 
 ragged rocks, evermore the ocean on the other. 
 What stories you would tell, little path, if you 
 only could ! What vows, what love you have 
 listened to, perhaps by those who uttered them 
 so long ago broken or outlived ! What beauty 
 you have seen, what purity, what sin ! What 
 human want, and loneliness, and sorrow, and 
 joy have told their stories to you ! At the boat- 
 house, over two miles from its beginning, the 
 path of "the Cliffs " ends. Here, above the shel- 
 tered cove where the little boats are chained to 
 the rocks, looking toward Brenton's Reef, where 
 the lightship tosses through the nights and days, 
 you may sit down, and with your gaze try to 
 follow the ocean out to where it meets the hori- 
 zon. To do this is to relinquish yourself to its 
 
NEWPORT IN SEPTEMBER, 29 
 
 spell, to be magnetized by its might. It draws 
 you outward into its infinity. You catch a 
 ghmpse of your own eternity. " Long, long 
 thoughts " are these which leave your soul to 
 travel out across its immense reaches of ever- 
 shifting space. No narrow street, no imprison- 
 ing walls limit or restrict your mind as it goes 
 on to the eternities. You are the same being 
 that you were yesterday in the stifling and 
 crowded city — the one who then felt so inade- 
 quate to live ; the one to whom life, with its 
 penalties, its losses, its pain, seemed so much 
 more than you could bear. How feeble seemed 
 your hold on human love, on thought, on spirit- 
 ual faith ! You are the very one — and now ! 
 How certain you are of everything sweetest, 
 truest, and best. Already you have passed 
 through " the sea change into something rich 
 and strange." You sat down beside it, weary 
 in body, weary in heart ; and unaware you 
 have abeady drawn into your veins something 
 of its inexhaustible life. This is one talisman 
 of the ocean, its boundless energy. Who can 
 approach its waves and not feel it and receive 
 it ! It electrifies you forever with its buoyancy 
 of life. Ages of storms camiot make it old. 
 After every tempest, it comes back and touches 
 your pulses and washes your feet with the smile 
 
30 OUTLINES, 
 
 of irrepressible youtli. Yet its very waves, as 
 they break before you, have something eternal 
 in their call. As you follow them, how sure you 
 feel that there is that in you which can never 
 end. How sure that the love and devotion of 
 your throbbing heart will survive when that 
 heart is still. How sure that the beings best 
 beloved — marred now by the infirmities of the 
 body and of the mind — will yet be given to 
 you some day redeemed and glorified and pure. 
 To those who seek it, there is a charm in 
 Newport beyond its fashion. The Ocean House 
 is closed. The gay pagoda, where the band 
 played a week ago, is silent. The great halls 
 and piazzas, then thronged with gay prome- 
 naders, are shut and deserted. No six-in-hand 
 now dashes along Bellevue. The Turk, with 
 his toys from Constantinople, has gone ; the 
 fashion shops have hurried back to Broadway ; 
 but Newport is lovelier far than when all the 
 denizens of Babylon were here. The cottagers 
 remain ; and the cottages, their flowers, their vel- 
 vet lawns, their hammocks swinging toward the 
 sea. Redwood Library — that perfect lijou of a 
 library — is still here, and more enticing than 
 ever. One may sit in an easy-chair and read al- 
 most any newspaper or review ad libitum. You 
 may look at the " Dying Tecumseh ; " or if you 
 
NEWPORT IN SEPTEMBER. 31 
 
 don't want to, at " Venus of Milo " and " Apollo 
 Belyidere." The fashion has gone ; but the ocean 
 remains, and the perfect days. There is a softer 
 iterance in its call than ever came to us in Sum- 
 mer. A light rests upon its waves and on its 
 shores which no language can interpret or trans- 
 figure. Along the roadside crowds of asters 
 look up at us through their purple eyes, while 
 all around them every knoll and meadow flames 
 with golden-rod. In the tree-tops the miracles 
 of color have begun. Autumn, in her first 
 ecstasy, has decked herself as for a carnival in 
 yellow and scarlet. From its floods the Island 
 has emerged as radiantly green as when June 
 was born. All around it run the opal lines of 
 the ocean ; all over it bends the intense blue of 
 the heavens, flecked with the ever-changing 
 splendor of the sailing clouds. Within, en- 
 throned are these superlative days, " Mediter- 
 ranean days," whose golden airs flow over you 
 and through you, full of the softness, without 
 the languor of the South. Here by my open 
 window, looking over Narragansett Bay to the 
 ruined forts which Higginson has so inimitably 
 portrayed, I am reading " Malbone." I should 
 never have read it if I had not come to New- 
 port. For, dipping into it in the '' Atlantic " one 
 day, I touched Malbone and recoiled. I have a 
 
82 OUTLINES. 
 
 constitutional hatred of a masculine Mormon. If 
 I had my way, there is not a willful, intelligent 
 man-Mormon in this land that should exist in it 
 a moment longer than it would take to drive him 
 out of it. But the Mormon whom I especially 
 detest flourishes outside of Utah, makes mischief 
 and havoc far from the walls of Salt Lake City. 
 He is especially detestable because, besides be- 
 ing a Mormon, he is a hypocrite. A Mormon 
 in practice, he yet pretends to be something else 
 and better. Malbone is a constitutional Mor- 
 mon. Nothing but laziness and the laws could 
 keep him from having a harem fuller than the 
 Sultan's. Missing this, he would console him- 
 self by prowling into other folds, and none 
 could be too sacred for him to invade. No 
 noble work or ambition absorbs his manhood. 
 All the subtlety of his intellect, all the graces 
 of his person, are valuable to him only as they 
 enable him to manipulate the hearts of women ; 
 and the sole study and profession of his life is 
 to make all women of any charm his slaves. If 
 any woman on earth is unfortunate, it is she 
 who loves with a woman's pure, sole love suclH 
 a man — a man who loves (?) her only while he 
 sees her, and forgets her altogether while kissing 
 the next woman that he meets. This is Mal- 
 bone, altogether contemptible from beginning to 
 
NEWPORT IN SEPTEMBER, 33 
 
 end. One is thankful that his victims are por- 
 trayed in such pale water-colors that one can 
 suffer less for them than if they were living 
 women, embodying in life-force their agony and 
 wrong. ''Malbone" and "Aunt Jane" are 
 real — the only vitalized characters in the book. 
 In reading it, one feels certain that the man 
 who wrote it ought to and can write a vastly 
 better one ; that where it is thin and weak it is 
 so through no paucity of material, but through 
 the hesitation of the author to use the material 
 that he had. It is written in delicious English. . 
 Its words are pure and limpid as this Newport 
 air. Its Proem is perfect. And in a hundred 
 exquisite touches it reveals and portrays the 
 varied loveliness of this enchanting place with 
 a sympathy and charm which has never been 
 surpassed. Opposite is the old " Hmiter 
 House," in which its scenes were placed ; a 
 noble old house, looking out through its trees 
 with wide-open doors, as if it had no secrets to 
 hide. All Summer it has been filled with 
 boarders — mothers and their children. Its 
 great hall runs straight through the middle, and 
 its front-door and back-door stand wide open 
 from morning till night. I look through it 
 now, away out to the bay. Any of us and 
 all of us race through it, down to the little 
 
34 OUTLINES, 
 
 pier behind the house* After reading Higgin- 
 son's poetic description of this old colonial man- 
 sion, I ran across the street and studied it — 
 its carved mahogany staircase ; the pineapple 
 above its back-door ; the dumpy cherubs on its 
 parlor wainscot, which, by the way, some bar- 
 barian has painted white ; even the spiral 
 stairs up which poor little Emilia is supposed 
 to have crept to the handsome but good-for- 
 nothing Turk in the attic. Now they are very 
 honest-looking stairs, without the suggestion of 
 secrecy ; their doors, opening on every hall, 
 matter of fact white doors, which look as if 
 they never could have shut in either tragedy 
 or shame. Colonel Higginson lives a few streets 
 back from the bay, in a cottage ornSe^ amid 
 flowering baskets, trees and vines, books and 
 pictures, as a poet should. The master of a per- 
 fect style, if he does not break his power on too 
 small matters, and waste it in petty punctilios, 
 he ought to give us the best American novel 
 since the days of Hawthorne. 
 
 It is Saturday, September 3, and the event 
 not only of the season of 1870, but of years, has 
 come to Newport. The Spouting Rock is send- 
 ing up water in cataracts, and a great storm at 
 sea has come up to the shores. All Newport 
 is at the ocean. For miles the ocean-road is 
 
NEWPORT IN SEPTEMBER. 35 
 
 thronged with equipages. Gentlemen and ladies 
 scale the cliffs on horseback, while thousands 
 stand and sit upon the rocks, silent with awe. 
 The sky is steely gray. The clouds hang low 
 and cold, rushing athwart and repelling each 
 other. The waves rise, roar, strike, and resist 
 each other; the elements are all at discord. 
 What is the matter with the ocean ? 
 
 " In name of great Oceanus, 
 By the earth-shaking Neptune's mace," 
 
 what is the matter ? A thousand Niagaras let 
 loose chase each other to our very feet. Great, 
 green, glittering walls of wave, they rise far 
 out, moving slowly, slowly on ; reaching higher, 
 higher, as they come ; till, full before us, quiv- 
 ering, toppling, they rush upon the rocks ; rise, 
 lash, break, and lash again, with stupendous 
 roar. Other waves, distinct and individual as 
 animate beings, dart up from the ocean, and, 
 with white manes far outspread, absolutely fly 
 above the water. Fleet, terrible is their race, 
 these chariots of the sea, with Triton their 
 trumpeter, till in swift collision they strike, and 
 lie shattered on the shoie. 
 
 Pan is not dead. The Ocean of God is 
 moved to its deepest cavern, crying aloud, as if 
 it knew the message which it this instant bears 
 of the folly and misery of man. This moment 
 
36 OUTLINES. 
 
 the electric cliord within it is repeating to the 
 world another of the awful tragedies of history, 
 as Napoleon III. the Man of Destiny, imbecile 
 and old, succumbs at last to fate ; and men 
 beloved, the sacrifice of kings, lie slain on a 
 hundred battle-fields. 
 
IV. 
 
 INDIAN SUMMER IN VIRGINIA. 
 
 Tell me, please, when Indian Summer comes. 
 The trouble is, I never found any one yet quite 
 certain when its perfect days dawn and fade 
 away from the world. It must be that Indian 
 Summer comes, and goes, and comes again, at 
 her own gracious and golden will, through all 
 the months of October and November. In early 
 October, when its scarlet conflagration spreads 
 from mountain to mountain, till they blaze from 
 base to summit ; when the first veil of mist 
 floats over their tops, and the first golden 
 nebulaB sails down the valleys ; when the physi- 
 cal and spiritual sense within us is first touched 
 by that coolness and stillness, that softness and 
 sadness, which, penetrating the fervor of the 
 later Summer, is Autumn- — then our news- 
 papers and our neighbors tell us that it is the 
 beginning of the Indian Summer. 
 
 But a whole month later, when the color 
 carnival is nearly, ended, when the intense scar- 
 lets and ambers have burned into ashen hues ; 
 
38 OUTLINES. 
 
 when the evergreen of pine and cedar, the 
 garnet of the oak, alone throw rich shadows 
 across lingering lichens and the purpling grays of 
 autumnal mosses ; when crows caw in dismantled 
 woods, and squirrels scamper through their 
 rustling lairs, and nuts drop into their russet 
 beds, and the crickets pipe their shrilly horn 
 in the yellow grass, and the wide atmosphere 
 seems palpitant with limpid gold, and the 
 finest pulses within us tremble, touched by 
 the finest phases of sight, and sound, and of 
 subtle fragrance — then from the hills, or the 
 heavens, we know not which, falls that dream- 
 like spell which seems to hold all things in 
 peaceful trance, and we stand as in a vision 
 amid the transfigured world. We are awed by 
 its miracle, and no one need tell us that it is 
 Indian Summer. This season reaches perfec- 
 tion amid the Virginian hills. It comes early 
 and lingers late. Its delicious coolness pervades 
 you like a presence before you behold a visible 
 token of its advent. I saw its first little scarlet 
 flag, waving from the top of a sumach tree, 
 weeks and weeks ago. It was not September 
 then. Yet it was on that grassy ridge, over 
 which the little red flag fluttered, that I caught 
 my first autumnal gHmpse for you. Through 
 the trees which fringed it I saw marvelous 
 
INDIAN SUMMER IN VIRGINIA. 39 
 
 glimpses of the Shenandoah, with its sea-green 
 gleam, flashing at intervals 'far up the valley ; 
 and on either side the first mountains of the 
 Blue Ridge lifted their softly-scolloped edges 
 toward the deeper sky. Yet it is not for these 
 that I would have you §ee what I saw. It is 
 very sentimental, you know, wandering about 
 searching for views ; and you and I wish to be 
 practical and wise ! Let no imagination touch 
 these broken ramparts, these deserted forts, 
 these high-piled earthworks, looking as if they 
 had been throAvn up but yesterday ; these rifle- 
 pits, these battered canteens, these flattened 
 bullets lying in the grass, these scattered graves. 
 Three years ago this fragrant wood-way was 
 alert with manly life. Great guns pointed to- 
 ward that lonely river ; bayonets glistened 
 above those low-boughed oaks. Five years ago 
 this hour I saw the sun set below these moun- 
 tains, swathing these steeps in peaceful light, 
 crowning with sacrificial glory ten thousand 
 men in line of battle before the foe. The fight 
 was deadly. Man mocked the peace of God 
 with the impotence of war. The shock of can- 
 non shook these hills. Shells ploughed the se- 
 rene ether with fiendish yell. Musketry rattled. 
 Everywhere around us were the dying and 
 the dead. Far as the sight could reach, along 
 
40 OUTLINES. 
 
 the white road, in ghastly line, moved "the 
 anguish-laden ambulance." Through the twi- 
 light, through the starlight, pierced the cry of 
 the wounded. My God ! Who that ever heard 
 it can forget ! 
 
 And noiv ? The sumach waves its scarlet 
 flag above that battle-ground. That battle- 
 ground where so many knightly hearts beat 
 and bled, where so many fair young lives went 
 down in sacrifice, was now gay with golden- 
 rod. The wild-rose blossomed in the covert of 
 the fort ; on the very edge of the rifle-pit the 
 evening primrose held up its cup of gold. And 
 now ? Through the purple haze we look away 
 to Maryland Heights and Loudon Mountain. 
 We lift our eyes to old South Mountain, and 
 behold still the furrows through its woods which 
 the batteries cut that day. Below us Antietam 
 Creek maunders through the meadows. There 
 is Burnside's Bridge, and, on the Sharpsburg 
 side, the ancient church into which the wounded 
 were carried from the battle-field. Here, in 
 God's quiet, sleep the dead of Antietam. The 
 dead ? It is the living who are dead ; who 
 are false to the cause for which they perished. 
 Ten thousand sleep together here. Look at 
 the long, long trenches ! They who are buried 
 in them, in such close embrace, died in the 
 
INDIAN SUMMER IN VIRGINIA. 41 
 
 thickest of the fight ; and no power can gather 
 their names from oblivion. ''Aged nineteen," 
 '' twenty," " twenty-one," and " twenty-two" ! 
 Thus we walk on, and on, and find no record 
 which tells that the soldier below lived twenty- 
 five earthly years. Was it not the flower of 
 the people, in truth, that perished for country 
 and the humanity of man. The battle still 
 goes on. The old, old battle of truth and false- 
 hood, of might with right, of corruption with 
 the incorruptible. On the anniversary of that 
 battle, when the nation agonized for its life, 
 demagogues, who have betrayed every sacred 
 principle for which these soldiers died, dared to 
 profane the silence of their rest by shouting 
 words of party rant and of political intrigue 
 above these graves. I looked on their bloated 
 faces, and beside them came other faces — 
 powder-grimed, death-pale, imploring-eyed — 
 the faces of men that I saw die. It was grief 
 unfeigned that cried : Was it for this, only tJiiSj 
 you perished, O my land's beloved ! O ye 
 living, do you realize the cost of every prize 
 which Freedom holds precious ? Then let us 
 dedicate ourselves anew to be worthy of our 
 heritage. Only through a manhood and a 
 womanhood consecrated, exalted, can we prove 
 to after ages that our dead died not in vain. 
 
42 ' OUTLINES. 
 
 It is through indiTidual. purity "that the na- 
 tion shall, under God, have a new birth of 
 freedom ; and that goyemments of the people, 
 for the people, shall not perish from the earth." 
 Since that September evening what superlative 
 days have trailed their splendors along these 
 mountain-sides ! They linger, still. As I see 
 the great pines on the mountain-tops dip their 
 needles in the gold of the ascending sun, I say, 
 " Another matchless morning ! It must be the 
 last ! " And when the sun drops down the 
 valley, and its sentinel mountains change 
 from amethyst to amber, and vale and river 
 are flushed vdth unimagined hues, I say " Italy 
 cannot more than mate this sunset ! But there 
 cannot be another ! " Yet the perfect days 
 have merged into weeks, and still the miracle 
 goes on. It is as if Summer — not the im- 
 passioned queen whose ensanguined death we 
 watched upon the mountain yonder ; but ano- 
 ther Summer, serener, softer than the first — 
 smiled in the very face of Winter, brightening 
 the world ere she leaves it forever. 
 
V. 
 
 CHARLES SUMNER'S HOIVIE. 
 
 The eastern sunsliine pouring down upon the 
 blooming city does not add its brightness to 
 any spot in Washington so pleasant as that 
 lying within the compass of Arlington Hotel, 
 Lafayette Square, and the Executive grounds 
 and mansion. In Winter, or Spring, or Autumn 
 the scene here is always metropolitan and beau- 
 tiful. Within this radius are the winter homes 
 of Mr. Sumner, Vice-President Colfax, Gen- 
 eral Fremont, General Irwin, General Butler, 
 General Bancroft, Secretary Belknap, Speaker 
 Blaine, Secretary Fish, and many other public 
 persons. The asphalte pavement scarcely sends 
 back a sound, yet it is covered with glittering 
 equipages and thronged with richly-dressed 
 women and children, while the ample halls of 
 the Arlington are perpetually sending forth a 
 gayly dressed and distinguished throng. 
 
 But in April, without warning, Lafayette 
 Square breaks into a sudden splendor which 
 makes all mortal splendor poor. The trees 
 
44 OUTLINES, 
 
 which line and arch the street on either side 
 take on a sudden glory which shames the bare 
 and chill arcades of their northern brethren. 
 Never was there a deeper depth of bloom than 
 that which draws and holds the vision in these 
 deep blossomed trees. I never gaze into them 
 without thinking what they would have been to 
 the eyes and souls of De Guerin and Thoreau. 
 They slowly sway their green pendants against 
 the gold of the evening sky, and the very 
 movement soothes one like the music of con- 
 tent. 
 
 The sunshine, glimmering through the green 
 roof of the park, enters the eastern windows of 
 a house opposite, and, hovering over its pictures 
 and works of art, seems to flood its rooms with 
 somewhat of that light which never was on sea 
 or shore. It needs all the potency of the east- 
 em sun to bring out upon these canvases the 
 full glory of color, and to suffuse the tints of 
 the artist with the vivid splendors of actual 
 Nature. On these walls hang original paint- 
 ings by Tintoretto, Sir Peter Lely, Sir Joshua 
 Reynolds, Sir Benjamin West, Gerard Douw, 
 Gainsborough, with a captivating collection of 
 proof engravings. In the large back parlor, 
 half-dining, half-drawing-room, the fine light 
 of the morning shines full upon one of the ma- 
 
CHARLES SUMNER'S HOME. 45 
 
 terial beauties of the court of Charles the Sec- 
 ond, and upon the portrait of Hannah More, 
 at thirteen, by Sir Joshua Rejmolds — two por- 
 traits of opposite types of womanhood, the 
 latter preeminent in intellectual beauty, show- 
 ing a face in coloring and expression never to 
 be forgotten. 
 
 On the easels in the bay-window we see a 
 group of Spanish officers in a Holland guard- 
 house. They are smoking their pipes and 
 holding up wine-cups in their exquisite hands, 
 as if reveling in mirth and " dreamful ease," in 
 utter oblivion of a Dutch guard-house. Oppo- 
 site, the Holland lacemaker sits in her open 
 porch. Without, there is a glimpse of summer 
 sky ; its tranquil light peers in and plays upon 
 her placid face. It is the realization of repose. 
 There is rest in the movement of the soft hands 
 weaving the thread above the pillow, and in 
 the very dog asleep at her side.. Between these 
 homely pictures of realistic life stands the 
 marble daughter of a king. 
 
 " She was so beautiful that, had she stood 
 On windy Ida by the oaken wood 
 Troy might have stood till now with happy days, 
 . . . And Psyche is her name in stories old.'' 
 
 An exquisite life-size marble, copied from the 
 antique original at Naples. 
 
'46 OUTLINES, 
 
 In a painting over the mantel a god is de- 
 scending to break the chains of a slave. Here 
 are a portrait of Benjamin Frankhn, busts of 
 Longfellov^ and of Everett, while engraved 
 heads of many of the masters of the world Ime 
 the wall from floor to ceiling. In another part 
 of the room fruits and flowers suggest beauty 
 and cheer. Everywhere there is color and 
 warmth. High ideas and the forms of beauty 
 are alike embodied in the tints and outlines of 
 art. Yet all are toned into harmony under one 
 artistic hand. Nothing seems too beautiful to 
 be enjoyed, and the aspect and atmosphere of 
 the room are not more poetical than homelike. 
 But the adjoining apartment is preeminently 
 the scholar's room. You pass its open threshold, 
 to stand bewildered, on the first glance, at its 
 profusion of bronzes, busts, statuettes in marble, 
 antique souvenirs, various vases, photographs, 
 engravings, and paintings. Yet the carpet un- 
 der your feet is true to the suggestions of Na- 
 ture, as all carpets should be — softly green as 
 the May turf, covered with golden stars, like the 
 dandelions dotting meadows. One side of the 
 room is hung with engravings from Turner; 
 and here is the ancient head of young Augustus, 
 from which all the portraits of the first Napo- 
 leon were modeled. Here is the marble bust of 
 
CHARLES SUMNERS HOME. 47 
 
 Mr. Sumner, taken in 1839, while lie was edi- 
 tor of the " American Jurist ; " here the winged 
 Mercury, the Venus of Milo, Hercules, Demos- 
 thenes, Pericles in his veiling helmet, with 
 kings, philosophers, and dreamers of many ages 
 and climes. Above the bookcase hangs a paint- 
 ing which pervades the entire room with its de- 
 licious atmosphere, It is an Italian landscape, 
 by Richard Wilson, the English Claude. 
 
 Apart from its exquisite coloring, it attracts 
 and holds one through " the subtle secret of the 
 air " — that depth of distance which draws the 
 sight on, and on, and on ; that marvel of per- 
 spective which seems to allure us into eternity 
 in the pictures of Turner. But the choicest 
 treasures lie out of sight, as choicest treasures 
 always do. When these softly shutting drawers 
 are opened, they show many a quaint illumi- 
 nated book ; a Bible bound in wood, written 
 on parchment by some monkish hand, with the 
 iron chain which held it to the ancient public 
 reading-stall still hanging to it. Here are me- 
 diaeval missals, wrought on vellum, with many 
 a flowering saintly device, bound in velvet and 
 clasped with gold, just as they were when some 
 lady prayed over them at the altar in the dim 
 past. Here is a diploma given from the Uni- 
 versity of Padua, generations since, which bears 
 
48 OUTLINES. 
 
 every mark of having been a family treasure. It 
 is bound in crimson velvet, its Latin printed in 
 gold, its pages illuminated with flowers as brill- 
 iant in tint as if they had just grown under an 
 artist's hands. The portrait of the y(Juth to 
 whom it was given looks forth from under this 
 gorgeous cover. . Fresh and fair in immortal 
 youth is this son of Padua, though all of him 
 mortal went back to dust long ago. 
 
 There is nothing on earth more stupidly dull 
 than an average autograph book. The vast 
 crop grown in Washington certainly has not 
 increased their value ; but here are faded names, 
 written on parchment scrolls, which stir a thou- 
 sand nameless memories. The very sight of 
 them seems to people the place with the men 
 and women who made the epochs of this world's 
 history. Here is a deed in Latin, signed by 
 Elizabeth, Queen of England. This overtopping 
 " E " and imperial flourish were traced by the 
 vain and haughty hand of the tyrannical queen. 
 I won't moralize over it ; but it has suggestions. 
 So also has this, the name of her brutal father, 
 Henry VIIL, traced by his own hand. Here is 
 a veritable letter Avritten by Catherine De Med- 
 icis to her son, Charles IX. ; and here the pic- 
 ture of this woman, great in guile — a handsome 
 woman, with a flattened head and a material 
 
CHARLES SUMNERS HOME, 49 
 
 face, and a stately form, cased within a closely 
 fitting robe, likes the scales of a serpent. Here 
 also is a letter from Mazarin to Fabri de Pei- 
 rese, written from Avignon, 1634, and another 
 from Richelieu to the Marquis of Breze, 1632. 
 And these are but a few of the names in this 
 priceless collection. It is like thrusting one's 
 hand back into a far-off age, and drawing 
 something out of its silence, to hft this little 
 book from the drawer wherein it lies. It is 
 called an " Album Amicorum," and was kept 
 by a Neapolitan nobleman, Camillus Cordoyn, 
 at Geneva, during the first half of the ITth cen- 
 tury. This town being on the highroad to Italy, 
 at that time, it was -a favorite stopping-place. 
 This album contains several hundred auto- 
 graphs of different nations, each with a motto 
 or sentiment attached. Among these are those 
 of German princes, French noblemen, English 
 Cavaliers, and Roundheads. This is the inscrip- 
 tion by the famous Lord Strafford, when a 
 young man, on his continental tour : '' Qui vivit 
 notus omnibus ignotus moritur sibi^ 1612." 
 John Milton, on his way back from Italy, 
 shortly before his return to England, wrote in 
 this book the last line of his own '' Comus," 
 which was already published before he began 
 his travels. 
 
 4 
 
50 OUTLINES. 
 
 Here it is in Washington to-day, 1871, its 
 freshness scarcely dimmed, as sensitive and deli- 
 cate in characters as the day on which they were 
 traced : — 
 
 " If virtue feeble were 
 Heaven itself would stoop to her.'^ 
 Coelum non animum muto dum trans mare curro. 
 
 Joannes Miltonius Anglus, Junii 10, 1639. 
 
 Here is John Bunyan's Bible with its worm- 
 eaten cover and well-worn brass knobs, and here 
 a book from Madame Pompadour's library, a 
 dainty thing — bound with faded rose-colored 
 watered silk, its cover chased in gold, illumi- 
 nated with vividly tinted flowers and her royal 
 coat of arms, meet memento of the imperious 
 and intellectual mistress of Louis Fifteenth. 
 Here is the original copy of Burns' '' Scots wha 
 hae wi' Wallace bled," in the clear bold writing 
 of the poet, and here the original manuscript 
 of Pope's " Essay on Man," with all the eras- 
 ures and interlinings added by the fastidious 
 writer, just as they were left by his pencil — 
 O ! how long ago at Twickenham — and here, 
 lying with others on the library table -in its 
 plain morocco cover and soft ribbons, looking 
 scarcely different from its mates, is a book once 
 owned by the haughty and unfortunate Earl of 
 Essex. What memories of passion and fury, 
 
CHARLES SUMMERS HOME. 51 
 
 of folly and fate, are recalled by these two little 
 names written ages ago by their owner, Robert 
 Essex ? 
 
 Here are the manuscripts of Edmund Burke 
 — letters written by his own hand, extending 
 through a length of years, carefully bound. 
 Great Britain has allowed to pass from her 
 keeping these treasures of the great master of 
 English eloquence, and they find a fitting shrine 
 in the house of another master as great as he. 
 In the same drawer there is a little old worn 
 schoolbook, with a schoolboy's name written 
 on the title-page in a schoolboy's scrawl , and 
 with a schoolboy's spiral flourish at the end. 
 The name is " John Dryden ; " and this little 
 old book, the one that he used when at West- 
 minster School, in 1646, is full of his Greek ex- 
 ercises, interlined throughout with Latin, trans- 
 lations of the Greek sentences, in the boy's own 
 hand. And the schoolboy's book of Old Eng- 
 land of 1646 is the precise prototype of the 
 schoolboy's book of Ne^ England in 1871. 
 
 Personally nothing could be more interest- 
 ing than the first small printed copy of the 
 '' Spring " of Thomson's Seasons, published in 
 1728. This is the author's copy — the one he 
 presented to the woman he loved. It was ac- 
 
52 OUTLINES. 
 
 companied with the following verses, on the fly- 
 leaf, written by his own hand : — 
 
 TO MISS YOUNG. 
 " Accept, loved Young ! this tribute due 
 To tender Friendship, Love and you; 
 And with it take what breathed the whole — 
 Oh, take to thine the Poet's soul! 
 
 • If Fancy here her power displays, 
 And if an heart exalts these Lays, 
 Thou fairest in that Fancy shine. 
 And all that heart is fondly thine. *' 
 
 On another page is copied a portion of a let- 
 ter from Thomson to this lady, whom he was 
 never permitted to marry. It has been said 
 that model love-letters are rare in this nine- 
 teenth century. They may have been in the 
 eighteenth ; but in this it transmits to us, at 
 least, one perfect. Its tender rhythm is not sur- 
 passed . by the most melodious lines in the 
 '* Castle of Indolence." 
 
 " Hagley, August 29, 1743. 
 " At the source of this water composed of some 
 pretty rills that purl beneath the roots of oaks there 
 is as fine a retired seat as love could wish. There I 
 often sit and with an exquisite mixture of pleasure 
 and pain, of all that love can boast of excellent and 
 tender, think of you. But why do I talk of sitting 
 and thinking of you there ? Wherever I am, how- 
 ever employed, I never cease to think of my lovehest 
 
CHARLES SUMNER'S HOME. 53 
 
 Miss Young. You are part of mj being ; you mix 
 with all my thoughts, even the most studious, and 
 without disturbing give them greater harmony and 
 spirit. Ah, tell me, do I not, now and then, steal a 
 tender thought from you? .... I would rather 
 live in the loneliest corner of London with you than 
 in the finest country retirement, and that too en- 
 livened with the best of society — without you. 
 
 " Think with friendship and tenderness of him 
 who with friendship and tenderness is all yours. 
 
 " James Thomson." 
 
 Even the doors of this room are hung with 
 pictures. We pass by the " Gate of Victory '* 
 into the hall, which is covered with photographs, 
 some many feet square, of the Coliseum, the 
 group of St. Peters, and the Vatican, and other 
 famous Roman and classical views. Beyond, 
 the door opens upon the parlor — a small, lus- 
 trous salon^ hung and carpeted in gold and azure, 
 illuminated with mirrors and paintings, looking 
 upon Lafayette Square — the lovely Nature 
 without, complementing and crowning the lovely 
 art within. 
 
 The house itself is a four-story brick dwelling, 
 wdth Mansard roof; attractive by its cheerful- 
 ness more than anything else. A bright band 
 of green grass holds it from the street, and vis- 
 ibly all that divides it from the Executive Man- 
 
54 OUTLINES. 
 
 sion is the square, full of trees and birds and 
 sunny children, which grow and rejoice between. 
 
 You have a glimpse of a small portion of 
 Charles Sumner's home. Its chief charm lies 
 in this, that it is the unique ard beautiful ex- 
 pression of an individual nature. Everywhere 
 it reveals the thought and feeling of its owner. 
 No house can be a home unless in some sense 
 this be true — unless its very furniture is im- 
 bued not only with the taste but the affection of 
 its possessor. In Washington there are elegant 
 and aesthetic houses ; but, as a rule, the abodes 
 of its public men are mere temporary stopping- 
 places or great upholstered show-shops, showing 
 little but the wealth or vulgarity of their own- 
 ers. A material and commercial smartness is 
 everywhere glaringly visible. This comes from 
 the fact that mere speculators, schemers, and 
 traffickers are so rapidly buying with money and 
 patronage the high places of public trust, once 
 filled by scholars, statesmen, and gentlemen. 
 
 It is impossible to recall the refined and 
 scholarly memories of Jefferson, Madison, the 
 two Adamses, Josiah Quincy, Edward Living- 
 ston, Edward Everett, and their peers, without 
 regret. They were the men who brought the 
 highest culture, the gentleness of gentleman- 
 hood, combined with political acumen and power, 
 
CHARLES SUMNER S HOME. 55 
 
 to the administration of public affairs. The 
 house just sketched is interesting as the home 
 of a scholar and statesman, one of the last of 
 that race of great scholars and statesmen so 
 rapidly passing away. 
 
VI. 
 
 GRAND DUKE ALEXIS IN NEW YORK. 
 
 " Broadway ! Broadway is delicious ! " said 
 an English lady. '' It is more intoxicating than 
 Paris. Its very atmosphere is like new wine." 
 All of us realize this at times. On an October 
 morning, perhaps, when the sea-breezes flutter 
 still in our garments, when the fragrance of the 
 pine forests linger with us, and all the freshness 
 that we caught amid the summer hills quickens 
 our steps and blooms on our faces — then, step- 
 ping on its pavement, '' Broadway is delicious." 
 Looking down Broadway upon such a morning, 
 reminds me always of Guido's '' Aurora." Gaz- 
 ing up above the glittering walls into the exhil- 
 arating air, it seems as if one must see her cour- 
 sers, with all the heralding graces, making their 
 pathway to the sun. But no. The graces are 
 all on the sidewalks ; so, too, are the horses. 
 Instead of spurning the clouds, they fall down 
 on the cobble-stones, and are seized by the 
 Society which takes care of horses and prepares 
 them for the Kingdom of Heaven. Yet, with 
 
GRAND DUKE ALEXIS IN NEW YORK. 57 
 
 all the perils of its pavements, Broadway is deli- 
 cious on an October morning. On such a morn- 
 ing we expected to see '' Alexis." I came home 
 from the country in season to see him ; and, 
 strange to tell, am not ashamed to own it. Most 
 of my friends, I find, seem to feel that there is 
 great merit in saying, '' Oh ! I didn't go to see 
 the Prince — it was a mere happen ; " or (with 
 a superior air), '' / don't run after princes." 
 Well, I don't ; but I like to look at them when 
 they look as well as Alexis, and have a face and 
 head so well worth studying as the pure type of 
 an historical race. I went on to Broadway on 
 purpose to see the son of the Emperor of Russia, 
 and am more than obliged to Mr. Brady for the 
 delightful seat in his gallery which gave that 
 fair Romanoff face and magnificent head to the 
 treasured pictures of memory. Every name 
 outside of our personal life is what association 
 makes it. Mere curiosity might lead a crowd 
 to gaze at the Prince of Wales in Broadway ; 
 but to-day his name could inspire no enthusi- 
 asm. He has out-lived the fairest promise of his 
 youth. His mother and poor Alexandra would 
 shed a wife's and mother's tears for him ; but it 
 would be better for England to-day if he were 
 dead. Eight centuries of kingly blood from 
 William the Conqueror, through Robert Bruce, 
 
58 OUTLINES. 
 
 and all the lumpish and rakish Georges, may 
 make him roj^al, but has failed to make him 
 noble. If we made geese of ourselves over him 
 to-day, it could only be for his mother's sake, or 
 because he is heir to her crown. Her son Arthur 
 Patrick aroused no enthusiasm in America. He 
 was a very tame yomig man ; well enough, but 
 no more. The most remarkable thing about 
 him was his shirt-collar, and that was ugly. 
 Royal blood, from William the Conqueror to 
 Albert the Good, have failed to produce in him 
 anything more than a perfectly common-place 
 young gentleman. I never went into Broadway 
 to behold him. It's a Prince I fancy, not princes. 
 The Romanoff of the nmeteenth century is a 
 sj)lendid creature. When the line o£ Ruric 
 ceased, nearly three centuries since, the Roma- 
 noff came forth from the people, powerful and 
 brutal, and made himself a king. Nearly three 
 centuries have gone, and he is still a king — an 
 absolute monarch over one of the largest empires 
 of earth. To-day he is strong, chivalrous and 
 gentle, stately and noble to behold. The young 
 man Alexis comes from a race of giants. Peter 
 the Great was a giant m frame as well as in 
 mind. The Empresses Anne and Elizabeth 
 were as strong as men. Catherine the Great, 
 with the power and passions of a man, could 
 
GRAND DUKE ALEXIS IN NEW YORK. 59 
 
 strike a man down with one blow of her hand. 
 The Emperor Nicholas, iron in muscle and will, 
 was the handsomest man in Europe. His son 
 Alexander, the present Emperor of Russia, is 
 scarcely less remarkable for manly beauty, and 
 in person and presence " every inch a king." 
 The wife of Nicholas, beautiful and good, was a 
 daughter of the almost divine Louisa of Prussia, 
 the loveliest victim ever immolated to the cruelty 
 of Napoleon the First. The present Empress of 
 Russia comes from a princely house famous for 
 the piety and graces of its daughters. Thus I 
 said this young man Alexis, whose cortege will 
 be here presently, inherits from his ancestors 
 many of the most powerful, some of the worst, 
 and some of the best traits in human nature. 
 Meanwhile, through the crystal air came the 
 distant throbbing of advancing drums and the 
 measured beat of marching feet The last Oc- 
 tober day in its matchless procession of perfect 
 days had gone by. It loitered long for his com- 
 ing ; but the ocean refused to give up Alexis. 
 Now November had hushed her storms for a 
 day, and hung out the brightest of blue banners 
 to salute him. It is worth a journey to New 
 York to see Broadway in all the bravery of an 
 ovation. The daily repeated chill of long delay 
 had failed to rob this of its splendor or majesty; 
 
60 OUTLINES. 
 
 for in miles on miles of concentrated, eager hu- 
 man life there is always majesty. Far as the 
 eye could see, up and down, Broadway was lit- 
 erally packed with human beings. Across the 
 street, Stewart's shop of marble, covering an 
 entire block, was lined at every window from 
 base to summit with ladies and children. From 
 the windows of other shops all goods had been 
 taken, and, tier on tier, to their tops, they were 
 lined with gayly-dressed women. 
 
 " Look there ! " exclaimed one gentleman to 
 another, in astonishment, at the sight of a great 
 Broadway shop-window, filled to the top with 
 feminine creatures. " That's the handsomest 
 show-window I ever saw." The ladies blushed 
 and looked discomfited at attracting such atten- 
 tion ; but they would not come down. They 
 would see the Prince. Men crowded the house- 
 tops, clung to the walls and steeples of the 
 churches ; and one man (there is always sure to 
 be one who must attract attention to his own 
 insignificant self, no matter what the occasion) 
 one man hung himself out from the spire of 
 Grace Church, and amused himself by keeping 
 humane mortals below in a perpetual fright lest 
 he should drop upon the pavement and smash 
 his foolish head. Flags flew from every house- 
 top ; pennons and devices floated out from ten 
 
GRAND DUKE ALEXIS IN NEW YORK. 61 
 
 thousand mndows ; boys stood on the street 
 holding aloft garlands and baskets of flowers, 
 from whose hearts stood forth in scarlet blos- 
 soms the name of " Alexis." Richly-dressed 
 ladies, in open carriages, sat at all the cor- 
 ners. At last the crowd began to push forward, 
 then to sway back before the advance of a 
 platoon of mounted policemen. Then came 
 more than a thousand policemen, in a solid body, 
 as one man ; then a regiment, with banners and 
 band ; then four regiments of young men, form- 
 ing a hollow square. In its centre, in a car- 
 riage drawn by four jet-black horses, with gold-* 
 mounted harness, rode the young man of the 
 hour. He sat head and shoulders above the 
 three other gentlemen in the carriage, and was 
 conspicuous, not for his attire, which was the 
 uniform of a lieutenant in the Russian navy, 
 but for his powerful stature, and for the height 
 of his head, which rose like a dome under its 
 " glory " of golden hair. People, thinking only 
 of the prince a moment before, forgot him in 
 admiration of the man. Handkerchiefs waved, 
 huzzas went up. Alexis bowed his head to his 
 friends. Thus, amid flowers and banners, beau- 
 tiful women, glad music, and the shouts of the 
 people, followed by miles on miles of mounted 
 and marching men, thousands of whom were as 
 
62 OUTLINES. 
 
 fair, as young, and as brave as himself, tlie son 
 of the Emperor of Russia entered the metrop- 
 ohs of the country to which he has proved so 
 devoted an ally. For, after all, until the mo- 
 ment that they saw his face, it was only the son 
 of the Emperor of Russia that the people waited 
 to see. He was not even the heir to its throne. 
 True, it had been told of him that his twenty- 
 two years had already compassed deeds of hero- 
 ism ; that he was a true sailor in a storm at 
 twelve years of age ; that he had rushed into 
 the water and saved a strange young girl from 
 drowning, at the risk of his life ; and these deeds 
 proved that he was more than a prince — a 
 man, with the inborn nobility of manhood in 
 him. Yet not for this was he honored. He 
 was welcomed for his father, who received an 
 American admiral with royal honor, who has 
 never spared money or pains, even in his recep- 
 tion of private American citizens, and who was 
 America's steadfast friend in her darkest hour. 
 It was New York welcoming Russia. Yet no 
 less the Archduke Alexis wins good-will for 
 himself wherever he goes. His striking person 
 and presence, combined with a singular mod- 
 esty of demeanor, disarms criticism, and inclines 
 the loudest " sovereign " citizen to pardon him 
 for having been born a prince, and to like him 
 
GRAND DUKE ALEXIS IN NEW YORK. 63 
 
 as a man. For this, personally, he will be the 
 longest remembered and admired — that, had 
 he not been the son of an emperor, no less he 
 would have commanded respect and admiration 
 as a man. 
 
 The Archduke Alexis is over six feet high, 
 with great breadth and depth of chest, an erect 
 carriage, and a head remarkable for its height 
 and development of reverence, veneration, and 
 benevolence. Whatever else he may forget to 
 do, he will never forget to say his prayers. The 
 upper part of his face is of remarkable beauty. 
 The hair, waving and golden, is cut short. His 
 forehead is intellectual, his eyes of deep blue, 
 large and full, with those swift scintillations of 
 everchanging expression which betray the soul 
 and make the finest charm of any human face. 
 The best of his face is its manhness. It is a 
 thoughtful, earnest face, the face of a man who 
 would be no less noble in trial and adversity 
 than amid all the splendors of fortune. His 
 hands are simply huge, and have the grip of a 
 Polar bear. At least, they are capable of bear- 
 ing more handshaking than ordinary hands. I 
 saw him go through with this American ordeal 
 the other evening. He did it with patience and 
 grace, if not with enthusiasm. It gave a sturdy, 
 unsentimental grasp to the daintiest kid-gloved 
 
64 OUTLINES, 
 
 hand outstretched to him. But the face of 
 Alexis told many stories during the process. 
 One instant it looked pleased, the next weary, 
 the next indifferent, and the next would brighten 
 again. " He is very handsome and agreeable," 
 said a young lady who danced with him ; 
 ''but he has the ugliest hand I ever saw." 
 And, if she makes the thin, sensitive, nervous 
 American hand her criterion, it is not strange 
 that she calls this giant fist ugly. It is an ugly, 
 honest hand, that looks as if it had travelled 
 down the Romanoff line from a day when the 
 Romanoffs were not "royal." If the Grand 
 Duke can't dance well, he can walk with a will. 
 Head and shoulders above all the company, he 
 
 went about with Miss on his arm. The 
 
 young lady was very graceful and pretty, in 
 blue crape, with a little blue feather and pink 
 aigrette in her hair. As the two went laughing 
 and chatting through the crowd, they were fair 
 to see. It was the story, old as the earth, of the 
 youth and the maiden. In their glorious young 
 manhood and womanhood both were royal. 
 We prose over the vanity of earthly honors ; 
 yet no less it is the splendor of life to be born 
 to its purple. It is of heaven to be young, 
 beautiful, and beloved. " I was young then^^ 
 Madame De Stael would say, and burst in tears, 
 
GRAND DUKE ALEXIS IN NEW YORK. 65 
 
 whenever, in exile or sorrow, she recalled the 
 glory of her youth. If it is the scion of an il- 
 lustrious race, the representative of a vast and 
 friendly power, the. son of an emperor, no less 
 it is youth, beauty, bravery, and manhood, 
 whom America welcomed in the young man 
 Alexis. 
 
 5 
 
vn. 
 
 A RAINY MORNING IN THE COUNTRY. 
 
 A RAINY morning in an old country home is 
 rich in compensations. Only in the country do 
 the real homes of the land remain unprofaned 
 and unmolested. The great city is full of 
 " residences," which change inmates every year. 
 Occupied by nomadic and transitory tribes, 
 precious memories and hfe-long associations 
 have no time to take root within their shallow 
 walls. They are merely stopping-places, in 
 which hundreds of successive families halt for 
 a season in their pilgrimage from the cradle to 
 the grave. They are prized according to their 
 rent, their modern conveniences, the fashion of 
 the street on which they stand. The old home 
 in the country is beloved because in it children 
 were born and died ; because in its old rooms 
 sons and daughters have grown from childhood 
 to man's and woman's estate ; because its doors 
 have closed behind them when they went forth 
 to meet their fate, and opened in tender welcome 
 when they returned in sorrow or in triumph 
 
A RAINY MORNING IN THE COUNTRY. 67 
 
 from the world. What if its ceilings are low, 
 its rooms old-fashioned, its antique furniture 
 glossy with time instead of veneering : here 
 Jenny was born, here Johnny died, here Tom 
 and Molly were married, here father and mother 
 grew old, and hither children and grandchildren 
 came to renew the youth and revive the joy of 
 the generation before. The old house is dear 
 because it is a home consecrated to a family 
 life, sanctified by all its love and suffering, 
 by grief outlived and by affection perpetually 
 renewed. 
 
 A rainy morning in such a house is a precious 
 season. To be sure the old rooster in the barn- 
 yard looks forlorn, and I am glad of it. His 
 tail is very wet and droopy, and he waves that 
 baton of power with a shade less of authority, 
 and reminds me less aggravatingly than usual 
 of Brigham Young, the only man on earth 
 whom I really wish to be hung. The rain dims 
 the jeweled leaves of the maples across the 
 street. The sunshine, that sent a thousand 
 gUttering lances through their scarlet and am- 
 ber masses yesterday, to-day has disappeared; 
 the mountains have merged into a sky of cloud ; 
 the rain beats on the near roof in myriad pulses, 
 which seem to keep time with the memories 
 that fill this old closet. It is an old closet, full 
 
68 OUTLINES. 
 
 of old books — the family books of one, two, 
 three generations. Here are the children's books 
 — painted, scrawled, thumbed, and old. The 
 children who laid them down are men and 
 tv^omen now. And one, the little girl who died, 
 is "a fair maiden in her Father's mansions." 
 The boy who brooded for hours over the ballad 
 of " Lucy Gray," and whose childhood was 
 filled with mournful conjectures concerning her 
 uncertain fate as stated in the closing verse in 
 the " Third Class Reader," — 
 
 "Yet some maintain that to this day 
 She is d living child," — 
 
 has lived to grow sick and sad over human 
 carnage, and to restore many a '' solitary child." 
 And the boy who painted his young ^'trainers " 
 such a deep blue, while he read, 
 
 " Oh! were you ne'er a school boy, 
 And did you never train? " 
 
 lived to more then " play march, march away," 
 and to face death bravely in many of his coun- 
 try's battles. Well, well, who would not be a 
 child again, if only to be drilled in the "Rhe- 
 torical Reader," and to feel the new thrill when 
 reading for the first time the " Burial of Sir 
 John Moore," and 
 
 ** On Linden, when the sun was low,'* 
 
A RAINY MORNING IN THE COUNTRY. 69 
 
 with the real quiver of the " rising and falling 
 inflection," and the exquisite pleasure of grow- 
 ing pathetic over the quaver in one's own voice, 
 to say nothing of the delicious tears at the 
 first consciousness of pathetic sentiment. 
 
 But, if one wants to note the varying fashion 
 in mere literary style, let me commend them to 
 the old magazines and annuals of vanished 
 generations. Here is an old " Museum," pub- 
 lished before I was born. Its front page is 
 garnished with a full-length .portrait of Wash- 
 ington Irving, in a frock-coat nearlj^ to his 
 ankles, boots with pointed toes, one thumb to 
 his chin, a seal in the fingers of one hand, and 
 a letter in the fingers of the other. A more 
 affected and absurd picture of a sensible man it 
 would be difficult to imagine. Yet it does not 
 equal the description of it, copied from " Fraser's 
 Magazine." It says : — 
 
 " From his steadfast gaze, and the smile of soft 
 delight which is lighting up his countenance, we 
 should think that he is thinking of the fair clime of 
 Andalusia^ and of the dark blue waters of the GuadaU 
 quiver. We know not if he be a smoher ; but, to 
 judge by his gentlemanly appearance he ought to be 
 one! Smoking is and ahvays has been a healthy 
 and fashionable English custom. There were schools 
 and professors estabHshed here for the purpose of 
 teaching the mystery of smoking, on the introduction 
 
70 OUTLINES. 
 
 of the Virginia weed ; and the mode of expiljicating 
 the smoke out of one's mouth is at present a shib- 
 boleth demonstrative of an English gentleman. TVe 
 could hardly conceive of anything in the shape of a 
 gentlemanly biped coming from the nondescript sav- 
 ages of America. We were, however, agreeably 
 surprised in Mr. Irving, who, from a nine days* 
 wonder, has become the greatest favorite," etc. 
 
 Touohing the present day, and yet not of it, 
 are Mrs. Lydia Maria Child's " Letters from 
 New York." They are, as all letters should 
 be, a reflection of their writer ; and being this, 
 are full of the sunshine of a sunny tempera- 
 ment, and the love of God and man and Nature. 
 Indeed, a denizen of to-day must marvel how 
 through any mere letters from New York could 
 be filtered so mucb of the fragrance and bloom 
 of field and wood, — so much of the light which 
 hovers over sea and shore. It proves not only 
 that to the heart that loves her Nature is never 
 wholly absent, even in the great city into which 
 she peers down between high housetops and 
 through scanty patches of barren land; but 
 also how since that day the great city has 
 grown, feeding upon Nature and hiding her 
 from sight. It reads like a romance to-day, 
 these words written in 1844 : " Wandering over 
 the fields between Hoboken and Weehawken, I 
 came upon the loveliest little clump of violets, 
 
A RAINY MORNING IN THE COUNTRY, 71 
 
 nestKng in the hollow of an old moss-grown 
 stump." Alas ! where that '' loveliest clump 
 of violets nestled " stone cellars strike far down- 
 ward to-day, and high walls pierce upward, 
 shutting humanity and its necessary vegetables 
 in, and Nature and violets wholly out. 
 
 To one who never saw Brooklyn, Jersey City, 
 Hoboken, save as blistering cities, it seems like a 
 story-book to read of them all in these glowing 
 pages as Elysian Fields, fringing and fanning 
 with vernal beauty and delicious breezes great 
 New York. It is harsh and hard, the inexora- 
 ble law of growth in a vast city, which, in pro- 
 portion to the advance of commerce and wealth, 
 shuts Nature out. With all its splendor and 
 resistless Hfe, New York is fast becoming one of 
 the loneliest places on the earth for a home. In 
 its aggregate it is great and grand ; in its individ- 
 ual life it is isolated and alone. The largest in- 
 dividual circle in it widens out but a little way. 
 The sweetest, truest, greatest heart that throbs 
 within its limit can cease to beat, nor yet be 
 missed. One of the loneliest sights on earth is 
 a funeral in Broadway. Year by year the resist- 
 less tide of change sweeps on, tearing up and 
 bearing on human sympathies and landmarks 
 with it. Where fountains played, and shade 
 trees swung their protectmg branches, and 
 
72 OUTLINES. 
 
 homes were sheltered a year ago, to-day shop- 
 signs are thrust out, and the great palaces of 
 trade push their heads high in air, and the 
 human crowds jostling below are more and more 
 strangers to each other. The days when Peter 
 Stuyvesant stumped about on his wooden leg, 
 and the Dutch burgomasters and their famihes 
 visited from '• stoop " to '' stoop," through all 
 the evening hours, are remote enough to belong 
 to another world. '' All, all are gone, the old 
 familiar places." But it is conlforting to learn 
 that the growth of the city is not exclusively in 
 houses, railroads, and bridges. 
 
 At least, we are better to the dogs than they 
 were when dear Mrs. Child wrote her letters 
 from New York. She says : '^ Twelve or fifteen 
 hundred of these animals have been killed this 
 summer. The manner of it strikes me as ex- 
 ceedingly cruel and demoralizing. The poor 
 creatures are knocked down on the pavement 
 and beat to death. Sometimes they are hor- 
 ribly mained, and run howling and limping 
 away. The company of dog-killers themselves 
 are a frightful sight, with their bloody clubs 
 and spattered garments." Though further 
 apart, after all, let us be grateful that we live 
 in the era of Mr. Bergh and of the '^ Society for 
 Prevention of Cruelty to Animals." 
 
A RAINY MORNING IN TEE COUNTRY. 73 
 
 Here is a venerable book, belonging to a 
 woman's library in a secluded New England 
 village, unknown of railroads forty years ago. 
 The staple of ladies' libraries in our day being 
 composed of very " light literature " and sensa- 
 tional novels of the frothiest description, it is 
 of interest to find out what sort of books our 
 grandmothers — the women who spun and wove 
 their own garments — read. This is one of 
 them : " The Life of Mrs. Elizabeth Carter," 
 of England. Gh, what a book for a rainy day ! 
 It transports me from my little closet of mouldy 
 books to the own room of this great woman 
 scholar of the eighteenth century, immediately 
 after breakfast, when she says : " My first care 
 is to water the pinks and roses which are stuck 
 in about twenty different parts of my room." 
 
 Besides, though contrary to constitutional 
 habit, I attempt to join her in her walks before 
 breakfast ; " sometimes on an open common, 
 then in the middle of a corn-field, then in a 
 close shady lane, never before frequented by 
 any animal but birds. Then she naively adds : 
 " When some civil swains pull off their hats, 
 and I hear them signifying that /am Parson 
 Carter's daughter, I had much rather be ac- 
 costed with, ' Good-morrow, sweetheart ; ' or, 
 * Are you walking for a wager ? ' " This Parson 
 
74 .^1 ^ ' OUTLINES. 
 
 Carter did a very sensible tiling. He educated 
 his children himself — his daughters as exten- 
 sively and thoroughly as his sons. He was re- 
 warded. His daughter Elizabeth was the delight 
 of his life and the comfort and support of his 
 old ao^e. When, throuo^h a dechne of his health 
 and spirits, he felt unequal to undertaking the 
 education of his youngest son, the arduous task 
 was assumed by his daughter. Though eagerly 
 sought by the most learned and brilliant society 
 of London, she resisted all importunities, and 
 secluded herself in the country for five years, 
 in order to fulfill this work. Yet, meanwhile, 
 in her leisure hours she fomid time to translate 
 " Epiotetus," a work which made her known to 
 the whole world of scholars. It was of this 
 book that the Archbishop of Canterbury after- 
 ward remarked to her : " Here, Madam Carter, 
 see how ill I am used by the world. Here are 
 my sermons selhng at half price; while your 
 ' Epictetus ' truly is not to be had under eigh- 
 teen shillings — only three shillings less than 
 -the original subscription." 
 
 It was at the urgent request of the Arch- 
 bishop of Canterbury and Bishop of Oxford 
 that she at last reluctantly undertook this work. 
 In reply to a le^tter asking her to write tjie Uf e of 
 Epictetus, she wrote to her friend, Miss Talbot, 
 
A RAINY MORNING IN THE COUNTRY. 75 
 
 1755 : " Whoever that somebody 7)r other is 
 to write the life of Epictetus, seeing I have a 
 dozen shirts to maJce^ I do opine, dear Miss 
 Talbot, that it cannot be I." 
 
 In 1756 her brother and pupil passed a 
 triumphant examination and entered at Cam- 
 bridge. Her biographer says : " Mr. Henry 
 Carter is, perhaps, the only instance of a student 
 at Cambridge who was indebted for his previ- 
 ous education wholly to one of the other sex ; 
 and this circumstance excited no small surprise 
 there, when, after his examination, it was asked 
 at what school he had been brought up." 
 
 In his extreme old age, her father became 
 wholly dependent upon her for personal care. 
 In reply to commiserating friends, she then 
 wrote : " I am much obliged to you for the 
 kind partiality which makes you regret my giv- 
 ing up my time to domestic economy. As to 
 anything of this kind hurting the dignity of 
 my head, I have no idea of it, even if the head 
 were of much more consequence than I feel it to 
 be. The true post of honor consists in the dis- 
 charge of those duties, whatever they happen 
 to be, which arise from that situation in which 
 Providence has fixed, and which we may be as- 
 sured is the very situation best calculated for 
 our virtue and happiness." 
 
76 OUTLINES, 
 
 I confess to a spontaneous liking for this 
 learned and gentle lady of the eighteenth cen- 
 tury. There is a charm in her sunny quietness 
 that rests one in this noisy day. She studied 
 and mastered Greek and many other languages 
 without ado. She translated Epictetus in a man- 
 ner which commanded the praise of the great- 
 est scholars in Europe ; but, therefore^ did not 
 disdain to make her father's shirts. The sew- 
 ing-machine makes it superfluous that any 
 woman should stitch her eyes out in our genera- 
 tion ; but the disposition, come to be deemed 
 almost a virtue, which scorns any labor of the 
 hands because it is labor, which turns with con- 
 tempt from the pleasant household tasks which 
 for so many centuries have been preeminently 
 woman's, calling that drudgery which adds so 
 much to the charm of home, is a repelling draw- 
 back to the finest of modern accomphshments. 
 
VIII. 
 
 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI. 
 
 THE FRIEND. 
 
 Not a generation has passed since the re- 
 morseless waves of the ocean swept IMargaret 
 Fuller Ossoli from human sight, and akeady 
 she wears the kistre of the historic woman. 
 This is remarkable for an American ; more re- 
 markable that this American is a woman. We 
 have our full share of men-heroes — heroes 
 whose deeds have made them worthy of the 
 Olympian days ; but the women whom we have 
 lauded the loudest have been essentially hum- 
 drum. Martha Washington was well enough. 
 She knitted stockings well and loved her hus- 
 band. Thousands of other women have done 
 the same, whose pictures do not hang in our 
 parlors or line our photograph albums. The 
 women who, by virtue of high . endowment, 
 would have made their names immortal through 
 lack of the mere chance of personal develop- 
 ment, have died and made no sign ; while the 
 women whom we have most delighted to honor 
 have been chiefly remarkable because they 
 
78 OUTLINES, 
 
 bore tlieir husbands' names. But the name of 
 Margaret Fuller is still spoken by those who 
 knew her in life with an enthusiam, a rever- 
 ence, a tenderness, which but few human beings 
 inspire ; and for which, amid the fragments of 
 her recorded thoughts, we search in yain for a 
 commensurate cause. She wrote suggestively 
 and well. On every page we see the results 
 of a wide and accurate scholarship, such as at 
 that time no other American woman, and but 
 few American men, had attained ; yet in her 
 there existed more than ordinary antagonism 
 between thought and its slow instrument of ex- 
 pression, the pen. Her swift and ductile mind 
 constantly outflew its halting paces. On her 
 written page we continually feel her limitations. 
 Her style is often involved, as if it stumbled for 
 lack of room amid its own crowd of treasures. 
 It is only occasionally, and that when she is 
 writing heart to heart to a friend, that her ex- 
 pression seems to reach the utmost measure of 
 her thoughts. Perhaps in her work on Italy, 
 written after she had grown on through the 
 deepest human experience, she attained to per- 
 fect freedom and power in the use of written 
 language. But this perfect flower of her mind 
 and heart perished with her. Thus in the frag- 
 mentary thought which she has left we find 
 
MARGARET FULLER OS SOLI THE FRIEND. 79 
 
 nothing adequate to her reputation. This 
 makes her wide and ever-widening fame the 
 more remarkable. It is another ilkistration of 
 the illimitable power of one great personality. 
 It proves how one rare individual, through the 
 pure force of its individuality, may live on and 
 on long after its human home has perished. In 
 looking back through the centuries, we find that 
 the fame of women has always been more purely 
 personal than that of men. Men have perpetu- 
 ated their names through their works and 
 deeds ; women, restrained in the use of their 
 powers, have been able to leave little more to 
 the world than the legacy of their lives. But 
 to these lives the human race will never cease 
 to pay homage. Thus Margaret Fuller never 
 wrote anything that was half as noble as her- 
 self. There was a pathetic charm in her nature 
 beyond the reach of her words ; yet her words 
 were often pathetic, and in oral speech were 
 most eloquent. Her dear friend, James Free- 
 man Clarke, says : ^' She did many things well, 
 but nothing so well as she talked. For some 
 reason or other, she could never deliver herself 
 in print as she did with her lips. Her conversa- 
 tion I have seldom heard equaled. Though re- 
 markably fluent and select, it was neither flu- 
 ency, nor choice diction, nor vrit, nor sentiment 
 
80 OUTLINES. 
 
 that gave it its peculiar power ; but accu'racy of 
 statement, keen discrimination, and a certain 
 weight of judgment, which contrasted strongly 
 and charmingly with the youth and sex of the 
 speaker. Her speech, though finished and true 
 as the most deliberate rhetoric of the pen, had 
 always an air of spontaneity which made it seem 
 the grace of the moment." Had her powers 
 taken their free course, she would have been an 
 orator in her own way, taking multitudes captive 
 by the wonder of her thought and the music of 
 her speech. Never in the remotest manner af- 
 fecting the tones or the gestures of men, this 
 woman would have used the transcendent gifts 
 which God had bestowed upon her as He had 
 given them to her. She herself says : " If I 
 were a man, the gift I would choose would be 
 that of eloquence. That power of forcing the 
 vital currents of thousands of human hearts into 
 one current, by the constrained power of that 
 most delicate instrument, the voice, is so intense 
 — yes, I would prefer it to a more extensive 
 fame, a more permanent influence." Not a 
 man, she was no less eloquent. But her great 
 gift, forced back upon herself, flowed out in full 
 force only to her friends. We are conscious of 
 its reflex power in her most familiar notes. In 
 her more labored works we rarely feel a thrill of 
 
MARGARET FULLER OS SO LI THE FRIEND. 81 
 
 the real inspirational eloquence which pervades 
 all her personal letters. Here we are constantly 
 surprised by her exhaustive culture, by her 
 wealth of illustration, by her almost universal 
 comprehensiveness of intellect, by the warmth 
 of her temperament, by the tenderness of her 
 heart. What could not such a soul give to 
 other souls, to whom she was allied by consan- 
 guinity of purpose, of pursuit, and of affection ? 
 Had she left no other record, that of Margaret 
 Fuller as a friend would have been sufficient to 
 have perpetuated her memory. She had a gen- 
 ius for friendship. Universal sympathy with 
 human nature was one of her most prevailing 
 characteristics. Her magnanimity, her large 
 intelligence, her tenderness made her not only 
 comprehend, but feel for every struggle of a 
 human heart. Her subtle, penetrating insight 
 pierced to the core of every being she met ; 
 thus she knew not only what it was, but what 
 it might be. She saw the sleeping germ of 
 beauty as well as of evil, and her mission to 
 every nature was to give to it the best ideal of 
 itself. There was no soul so lonely or abject 
 that she did not feel drawn toward it through 
 the virtue of its humanity. She was the be- 
 loved friend of the little child, of the aged, of 
 the sick and of the poor. But as the cherished 
 
82 OUTLINES. 
 
 associate and equal friend of many of the lead- 
 ing thinkers of her country and time, Margaret 
 Fuller's friendships assume more than a per- 
 sonal significance. They give to the world an- 
 other illustration of that illustrious race of 
 friendships between men and women of the 
 highest type which in every age have been 
 deeper, broader, and purer than the time in 
 which they existed. These friendships illustrate 
 also a still more significant fact in human his- 
 tory — viz.: that, despite the depravity which 
 has characterized the average dealings of men 
 toward women, even in the most depraved and 
 bigoted ages, the higher order of men and wo- 
 men met in absolute individual equality; and 
 that the personal power of the femininely grand 
 woman in herself has always been more power- 
 ful than tradition, prejudice, or custom. Mo- 
 nica and St. Augustine ; Susannah, and John, 
 and Charles Wesley — friends no less than 
 mother and sons ; Francis de Sales and Madame 
 De Chantal ; Fenelon and Madame Guyon ; 
 Madame Swetchine and Lacordaire ; Eugenie 
 and Maurice de Guerin ; Madame Roland and 
 the Girondists ; Hannah More and her mascu- 
 line contemporaries, — all illustrate a type of 
 friendships between men and women which has 
 done all that a human relation could do to exalt 
 
MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI THE FRIEND. 83 
 
 human nature and to embellish human life. 
 For love, the most powerful passion of human- 
 ity, is only exalted when it is born of friend- 
 ship. The lover must be first and always the 
 friend to be worthy to be the lover. To revere 
 and love the individual, the personal essence 
 which in its intrinsic quality separates the be- 
 loved being from every other in the universe, 
 is the only love which survives all time and 
 change. It is the only love which outlives 
 beauty and youth. It made even Abelard and 
 Heloise friends long after they had ceased to be 
 lovers. The charm to inspire it in man lives 
 only in the rarest woman. It made the soul of 
 Madame Recamier more beautiful than her face, 
 and her face was among the most beautiful in 
 the world. It made all her hopeless lovers live 
 and die her friends. It makes the picture of 
 herself and Chateaubriand, sitting by the same 
 fireside in their last days, one of the most at- 
 tractive in the history of human affection. The 
 splendor of his power, the passion of his intel- 
 lect were gone ; so too were the grace and glory 
 of her youth. He was decrepit, she was blind, 
 and both were old. They had outlived their 
 friends, outlived everything which had once 
 made their hves resplendent. The affection of 
 their hearts, the friendship of their souls, sur- 
 
84 OUTLINES. 
 
 viving youth, and passion, beauty and power, 
 alone remained unshaken and unchanged. We 
 pity the nature incapable of believing in this 
 perfect friendship existing between man and 
 woman. We find many such to pity. The 
 majority of people talk as if there were but two 
 extremes of relation which woman can sustain 
 to man. She must be a pretty, tricky, artful 
 creature, beguiling him of his reason, taking 
 him captive through his senses, the panderer to 
 his pleasures, at once his tjnrant and his slave ; 
 or she must arm herself against him, accuse him, 
 abuse him, as at once the sole author of her 
 wrongs, the source of all her miseries. The fair, 
 open land between, — the serene and sacred land 
 of friendship, wherein men and women may meet 
 in human sympathy, in kindred pursuits, in wide 
 thoughts, and in beneficent action, — we hear 
 constantly spoken of as a debatable if not im- 
 possible meeting-ground. It doubtless is, for 
 the people who express this opinion ; but never 
 has been and never will be to those men and 
 women who recognize and revere in each other 
 the equal human nature which each alike re- 
 ceives from God. Always man needs woman 
 for his friend. He needs her clearer vision, her 
 subtler insight, her swifter thought, her winged 
 soul, her pure and tender heart. Always wo- 
 
MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI THE FRIEND. 85 
 
 man needs man to be her friend. She needs 
 the vigor of his purpose, the ardor of his will, 
 his calmer judgment, his braver force of action, 
 his reverence, and his devotion. Thus the 
 mystic bond of sex which binds one half the 
 matter and spirit of the universe in counterpart 
 and balance to the other, gives even to the 
 friendship of man and woman its jfinest charm, 
 enabling each only through the other to pre- 
 serve the perfect equipoise of intellect and soul. 
 Such a friend was Margaret Fuller to the men 
 who still speak her name with reverent tender- 
 ness. To have been at once a personal impulse, 
 an intellectual inspiration in the lives of such 
 men as Freeman Clarke, Hedge, Alcott, Chan- 
 ning, Emerson, George Ripley, Horace Gree- 
 ley, Mazzini, was as high an individual privilege 
 as ever came to an American woman. As the 
 friend and helper of these men, her name will 
 live associated with the most marked revolution 
 in culture and ideas of her country and era. 
 Without subscribing to their tenets, to be just, 
 we must own that the transcendentalists of 
 New England have given a keener impulse to 
 thought (even in channels opposite to their 
 own), a wider direction to personal culture, and 
 a higher exaltation to personal character than 
 has been given in the same period by any other 
 
86 OUTLINES. 
 
 body of scholars and thinkers in America. 
 And when their history is dispassionately writ- 
 ten, as it will be some day, the central figure 
 amid this group of large-brained men will be 
 this large-brained and still larger hearted wo- 
 man. William Henry Channing says of her : 
 '' Of this body she was a member by grace of 
 Nature. Her romantic freshness of heart, her 
 craving for the truth, her discipline in German 
 schools had given definite form and tendency 
 to her ideahsm. On the other hand, very 
 strong common sense saved her from being vis- 
 ionary, while she was too well read as a scholar 
 to be caught by conceits, and had been too 
 sternly tried by sorrow to fall into fanciful ef- 
 feminacy. Men — her superiors in years, fame, 
 and social position — treated her with the frank- 
 ness due from equal to equal, not with the half- 
 condescending deference with which scholars are 
 wont to adapt themselves to women. They 
 prized her verdict, respected her criticism, feared 
 her rebuke, and looked to her as an umpire. 
 Very observable was it, also, how with her they 
 seemed to glow and brighten into their best 
 mood, and poured out in full measure what 
 they had but scantily hinted at in the circle at 
 large. In these conversations she blended in 
 closest union and swift interplay feminine re- 
 
MARGARET FULLER OSSOLL THE FRIEND. 87 
 
 ceptiyeness with masculine energy. She was 
 at once impressible and creative, impulsive and 
 deliberate, pliant in sympathy, yet firmly self- 
 centered, confidingly responsive, while com- 
 manding in originality. By the vivid intensity 
 of her conceptions she brought out in those 
 around her their own consciousness, and by the 
 glowing vigor of her intellect roused into action 
 their torpid powers. She Uved herself with 
 such concentrated force in moments, that she 
 was always effulgent with thought and affec- 
 tion. So tender was her affection that, like a 
 guardian genius, she made her friends' souls her 
 own and identified herself with their fortunes." 
 In closing his account of her life at Jamaica 
 Plain, this same beloved friend, who had known 
 her intimately from childhood, offers her as high 
 a tribute as man ever paid to the friendship of 
 woman : " The very thought of her roused 
 manliness to emulate the vigorous freedom with 
 which one was assured that, wherever placed, 
 she was that instant acting, and the mere men- 
 tion of her name was an inspiration of magnan- 
 imity and faithfulness and truth." 
 
88 OUTLINES. 
 
 THE T^'RITER. 
 
 Margabet Fuller's written use of lan- 
 guage was only limited when compared witli 
 her comprehensive thought and eloquence of 
 oral speech. When she used language to 
 illustrate her scholarship she was its master. 
 Her intellect was widely and keenly crit- 
 ical; it traversed and measured universal life, 
 equally the life of thought and the life of 
 human experience. What she said of Goethe is 
 preeminently true of herself. " She could see 
 all that others live," but then she felt it also. 
 When we remember that she brought this wide 
 vision, this almost limitless culture, with all 
 their opulence of suggestion and of illustration, 
 to bear upon every character and work that 
 she studied, we cease to wonder that in every 
 critical line which she has left we perceive the 
 touch of a master. In what language can be 
 found another criticism of Goethe at once so 
 intuitive, comprehensive, and critical, as hers, 
 when judged by the severest standard of art ? 
 It is neither a eulogy nor a rhapsody ; it is an 
 exhaustive analysis. She measured not only his 
 art, but the soul of his art ; not his work alone, 
 but the many-sided being of its author. She 
 gives us the whole of Goethe's character in a 
 
MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI THE WRITER. 89 
 
 siligle sentence : " Naturally of a deep mind and 
 shallow heart, he felt the sway of the affections 
 enough to appreciate their workings in other 
 men, but never enough to receive their regener- 
 ating influence." And again : " Of Goethe, as 
 of other natures where the intellect is too much 
 developed in proportion to the moral nature, it 
 is difficult to speak without seeming narrow, 
 blind, and impertinent. For such men see all 
 that others live ; and, if you feel the want of a 
 faculty in them, it is hard to say that they have 
 it not, lest next moment they puzzle you by 
 some indications of it. Yet they are not, know 
 not ; they only discern." Again: " Faust con- 
 tains the great idea of his life ; as, indeed, there 
 is but one great poetic idea possible to man — 
 the progress of the soul through the various 
 forms of existence." After a subtle analysis of 
 each of his various works, in the last paragraph 
 of this superb criticism she utters these last 
 words for Goethe : " Let us, not in surveying 
 his works and life, abide with him too much in 
 the suburbs and outskirts of himself. Let us 
 enter into his higher tendency, thank him for 
 such angels as Iphigenia, whose simple truth 
 mocks at all his wise Beschrankungen." 
 
 The fields of critical literature offer rich har- 
 vests to the intellect of women. To those en- 
 
90 OUTLINES. 
 
 dowed with the power of comparison and of 
 analysis, rather than the creative faculty, the 
 largest opportunity waits. The printing-presses 
 of the world throw off the embodied thought of 
 the age faster than it can be read, faster than 
 keen and accurately -balanced brains can weigh 
 and judge between the chaff and the grain. 
 Where in Margaret Fuller's time there was 
 critical labor for one thoroughly-trained analytic 
 mind there is now the labor and necessity for 
 hundreds. But the extensive culture, the thor- 
 ough mental discipline which enabled Margaret 
 Fuller to command a leading position as critic 
 of the greatest thinkers of the world, is just the 
 discipline which the majority even of our most 
 gifted women lack. It is not the want of native 
 power, nor the want of opportunity, nor the en- 
 vious prejudice of men, which debars women 
 from the places of personal independence and 
 influence which they covet, so much as it is their 
 own lack of accurate knowledge, of faculties dis- 
 ciplined to special uses. One born with the fac- 
 ulty divine may write rhymes and romance, if 
 one only knows the alphabet ; one may do no 
 small amount of showy and shammy work with 
 just a smattering of lore ; one may play brill- 
 iantly with things in general, without knowing 
 anything in particular ; but there is a vantage 
 
MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI THE WRITER. 91 
 
 ground of thought as well as of action, which no 
 mere show can reach, before which all shams fail. 
 In the highest degree to weigh, measure, com- 
 pare, analyze, and judge, involves not only the 
 natural power to do it, but a long discipline and 
 preparation of that power for its finest use. 
 The total lack of such discipline is the most dis- 
 tinguished fact in the average education of wo- 
 men. The numbers and names of their studies 
 are appalling. They know a little of many 
 things — nothing accurately or thoroughly. 
 How many women, called accomplished, who, 
 if orphaned or widowed, are totally unable to 
 earn a Hvelihood by instructing others in any 
 branch of knowledge which they have been 
 superficially taught. They are sure of nothing 
 that they have studied. They possess no knowl- 
 edge which they can make available; not a 
 single power trained to use, not a mental gift 
 which can command in gold an equivalent for 
 its service. Thus through their very training 
 inferior men are constantly taking the prece- 
 dence of superior women. However little a man 
 may know, he is usually sure of what he does 
 know. His power, if limited, is at least avail- 
 able ; and for success it is better to be able to 
 do one thing perfectly than a thousand indiffer- 
 ently. How many bright women we know 
 
92 OUTLINES. 
 
 who are earning their bread in subordinate 
 or menial positions solely through the want 
 of the mental training which, did they pos- 
 sess it, would bear them at once to higher 
 and better places. How many dull men we 
 know full of authority, influence, and money, 
 solely because their rather scanty powers were 
 trained to special use ; because they used them 
 steadfastly for a definite purpose. Positions of 
 responsibility and influence are constantly open- 
 ing to women who are fitted to fill them. A 
 few men maybe envious and jealous about it — 
 that is human nature ; but even now there is 
 nothing in their envy or jealousy which can- 
 prevent a woman from commanding the position 
 which she has fitted herself honorably to fill. 
 Then would it not be more effective if the lead- 
 ers who devote themselves to the interests of wo- 
 men should spend a little less time in lecturing 
 men, and a good deal more in the special training 
 of their daughters ? It is too late to atone for the 
 superficial education or the lack of education in 
 the women of the present generation, who are 
 already weighted with all the burdens of mature 
 life. But it is the hour to train the woman of 
 the coming generation ; to educate her for the 
 largest use of her faculties ; to give her that 
 special training, in whatever direction she shows 
 
MARGARET FULLER OS SOLI THE WRITER. 93 
 
 the most talent, which will make her mistress 
 of at least one of the arts of the world, which in 
 any emergency will enable her to be a self- 
 respecting, self-supporting being. Let her be 
 trained as her brother is trained, with a reserved 
 power to meet the vicissitudes of life. Then, if 
 she escapes, she is but the richer ; and, if not, 
 she may rejoice no less in the exceeding great 
 reward of faculties trained to noble service. 
 For such we commend Margaret Fuller as the 
 most illustrious example of scholarship in woman 
 which our country has yet given the world. 
 Not that we should not be sorry to see the girl 
 of our period writing Latin poems at eight years 
 of age, or digging out Greek roots before break- 
 fast, or in any way teaching her brain at the 
 expense of her digestion. This is not necessary. 
 In Margaret Fuller's early days it was supposed 
 that the head condescended to no relationship 
 with the stomach. We know better. We know 
 that there cannot be a healthy brain without a 
 healthy stomach, and that physical culture must 
 keep pace with all intellectual development. 
 But the unthinking prejudice against high 
 scholarship in woman has been, not that it 
 injured her stomach, but that in some very 
 unphysiological way it repressed her heart. 
 Nonsense ! A man may be a scholar or a 
 
94 OUTLINES, 
 
 thinker ; lie is no less manly, it don't hurt his 
 heart. A woman because she studies and thinks 
 is no less a human being ; but the onore^ in 
 the proportion which her whole nature grows. 
 Thus Margaret Fuller, illustrious as scholar and 
 thinker, is no less preeminent as a daughter, sis- 
 ter, wife, and mother. Her heart, as capacious as 
 her mind, compassed the fullness and sweetness 
 of every human relation. Thus in the double 
 perfect meaning we hold up her name as that 
 of the grand typical woman of our country and 
 time. 
 
IX. 
 
 A FRENCH JOURNALIST. 
 
 MADAME GUIZOT. 
 
 The woman journalist is not tlie outgrowth 
 of our own land and generation alone. In other 
 times and countries women have been associ- 
 ated with the press who might have been illus- 
 trious had not prejudice forbidden it. That 
 same prejudice robbed it of many others whose 
 special gifts would have added lustre to its 
 triumphs. It was the caste of sex which held 
 these gifts within the narrow limit of personal 
 correspondence ; even here, in at least two 
 instances, they have grown to be a supreme 
 inheritance to the realm of letters. Think what 
 journalists Madame De Sevigne and Lady Mary 
 Wortley Montague would have made ! The 
 genius of the woman whose name is recorded 
 above was of a much more- severe and lofty 
 type. Madame Guizot was the youngest of 
 that sober school of moralists which began with 
 La Rochefoucauld and La Bruyere, and which 
 included Vauvenargues and Duclos. She was 
 born Pauline de Meulons, in Paris, 1773. Her 
 father was the receiver-general for the district 
 
96 OUTLINES. 
 
 of Paris and tlie possessor of a large fortune. 
 Her mother was of an ancient family in P^ri- 
 gord, which had been represented in the Cru- 
 sades. Amid affluence and the most refined 
 surrounding the little Pauhne grew up a deli- 
 cate and thoughtful child. She was seven years 
 younger than Madame De Stael ; and the for- 
 cing and repressing process which distorted the 
 mental and spiritual deyelopment of that highly- 
 endowed woman in early youth were un- 
 known to the childhood and girlhood of Pauline 
 de Meulons. Also unknown to her were the 
 precocious ambition for display and the un- 
 healthy sensibility which marred the character 
 and happiness of her more brilliant friend. In 
 her extreme youth Pauline de Meulons felt the 
 shock of the Revolution of '87 and '89. Its 
 frightful spectacles shocked her sense of justice, 
 saddened her heart, and destroyed her youth ; 
 while it quickened all her faculties, made more 
 powerful a mind naturally strong, critical, in- 
 cisive, sensitive, and distinctively keen in its 
 perception of truth and its hatred of falsehood. 
 In 1790 her father died in poverty. While 
 surveying a fortune of milUons lost in debt, and 
 her own mother reduced to absolute want, her 
 moral force and natural energy sprang to the 
 rescue, and tears fell from her eyes when, for the 
 
A FRENCH JOURNALIST. 97 
 
 first time in her life, it occurred to her that she 
 might possess mental resources upon which she 
 could draw to retrieve the one and support the 
 other. She read slowly, she studied faithfully, 
 she perfected herself in the- use of the English 
 language. To begin, she wrote a novel, of 
 course. But truth, not fancy, was the essence 
 of her intellectual quality. She was born with 
 the faculty of acute, ahnost unerring observa- 
 tion. She was keenly sensitive to everything 
 weak, absurd, or false. She had creative 
 power ; but it subserved her analytical and 
 critical force. By natural endovmient she was 
 born a journahst. 
 
 In 1801, M. Suard estabhshed the " Publi- 
 ciste." It discussed politics, religion, literature, 
 and ideology, and was the keen foe of the 
 '' Journal des D^bats." At first, through the 
 friendship of M. Suard, the " Publiciste " was 
 opened to Mile. De Meulons. For nearly ten 
 years she contributed to its columns regularly 
 upon every topic within its range — ethics, so- 
 ciety, literature, the drama, novels, etc. She 
 even maintained sharp controversies with her- 
 self, under an assumed character, attacking and 
 defending lierseK with great acumen upon many 
 of the exciting themes which then agitated the 
 leading intellects of France. The two volumes 
 7 
 
98 OUTLINES. 
 
 of her " Conseils de Morale " are composed 
 almost exclusively of extracts made from these 
 ten years' contributions. Of some of these 
 Madame De Stael wrote to M. Suard : '' Pray 
 tell me if Mile. De Meulons is the author of the 
 frptgment on Vauvenargues, on Thibet, the 
 Enghsh, etc. ? They so far transcend the ordi- 
 nary efforts even of a gifted woman that I fan- 
 cied I detected your hand in the composition." 
 
 Mile. De Meulons herself, speaking of the 
 logical faculty in Borleau, says : ''In him it 
 was a delicate, sensitive, irritable organ, wounded 
 by a false sense, as a fine ear is wounded by a 
 false note, and rising in its wrath the moment 
 it received a shock ; " and Sainte-Beuve adds : 
 '' This same vivacity and vigilance of reasoning 
 Mile. De Meulons displayed during the singu- 
 larly active period of her journalistic career." 
 Like Madame De Condorcet, Madame Roland, 
 and many other celebrated French writers .and 
 thinkers of the eighteenth century, she reflected 
 the Latin mind through a loving study of its 
 masters. Sainte-Beuve says of her : " She had 
 something in common with Seneca — she touched 
 antiquity through the most modern of the 
 ancients." Like Seneca, she delighted to pre- 
 sent truth in the guise of paradox. She was 
 great in aphorisms. Many of the most profound, 
 
A FRENCH JOURNALIST. 99 
 
 whicli have given her moral counsels a perma- 
 nent place in literature, were gathered like un- 
 wrouglit gems from a great mine of miscellane- 
 ous articles. The most precious and permanent 
 were often found in some review of a silly 
 novel or insipid play ; but she left the mark of 
 greatness upon everything that she touched. 
 And it was not the one-sided greatness of mere 
 mental power ; it was greatness of character, as 
 well. At twenty-five she found herself over- 
 whelmed with domestic embarrassments. A 
 fortune of several millions laid in ruins. Upon 
 this, by her own unaided labors, she met all 
 claims, reserving nothing for herself but free- 
 dom from debt, earning day by day her own 
 support and her mother's. Through all these 
 ten years she sowed the most precious seed of 
 her thought and life — seed whose still-ripening 
 harvest is not yet all gathered in — seed sown in 
 humility, obscurity, and need, in the apparently 
 ephemeral soil of a Parisian newspaper. Then, 
 as to-day, the world did not lack croakers to 
 decry a woman's work ; nor the Job-friends, of 
 whom all workers possess so many, who bemoan 
 that, if you have gifts, you must '' waste them 
 on a newspaper." Above all this " venomous 
 compassion " she rose, as every great woman 
 should rise to-day, into a region of thought and 
 
100 OUTLINES. 
 
 action where it cannot touch her. She replied 
 once, in her '' Letter of a Female Journalist to 
 a Friend," published December 18th, 1807 : 
 " My articles are censured, are they, my friend ? 
 That, of course, is to their credit ; but you tell 
 me the censure extends to me personally — to 
 the stand I have taken as contributor to a jour- 
 nal, and especially as a critic of theatrical novel- 
 ties. I am reproached, therefore, with being a 
 woman, not surely with being a journalist ; for 
 those of my censors who know me know very 
 well why I am that. But do they not fear that 
 they may have wherewith to reproach them- 
 selves, if by words lightly uttered they succeed 
 in destroying, or, at least, in rendering more 
 difficult of exercise, the courage found requisite 
 for the sacrifice to whajt I considered a duty 
 of the conventionalities which my education and 
 habits had taught me to respect. I know 
 them, my friend, and so do you — these conven- 
 tionalities, which make the role of a journalist 
 the very oddest for a woman to choose, if, 
 indeed, it ever were adopted from choice. It 
 cannot, I assure you, appear as ridiculous to 
 these friends of yours as to me ; for they have 
 never seen it so near. If they knew, as well as 
 I, the grave interests at stake, the important 
 considerations to be weighed, the absurd griefs 
 
A FRENCH JOURNALIST. 101 
 
 to be consoled, and the still more absurd hom- 
 age to be accepted ; the buzz of petty passions, 
 whose noise invades a woman's very solitude ; 
 and if they could see, amid all this, a work to 
 be done without charm for the mind, or indem- 
 nification for the vanity, then they might say 
 what they thought, and think, if they pleased, 
 that I had undertaken this work for my own 
 pleasure. But let them not attempt to pity me, 
 for that would be as unreasonable as to blame." 
 
 One must pause before the simple dignity of 
 these words, so penetrated with the ideas of 
 duty and responsibility, as they recall the frivo- 
 lous assertion so frequently and so flippantly 
 made, that women enter every calling, especially 
 that of journalism, without preparation, without 
 forethought, without power, chiefly to gratify a 
 " hankering after notoriety or public applause." 
 
 In 1807 Mile. De Muelons, through fresh 
 domestic misfortune and impaired health, was 
 compelled to discontinue her journalistic labors 
 for a season. At this time she received a letter 
 written by an unknown hand, containing an offer 
 from the writer to supply articles for the " Pub- 
 liciste " in her place, which he would attempt 
 to make worthy of her as long as her own were 
 interrupted. After hesitation this offer was 
 accepted. And for months M. Guizot — then 
 
102 OUTLINES, 
 
 yery young and perfectly obscure — supplied to 
 the " Publiciste " miscellaneous, dramatic, and 
 literary criticisms in place of the ones that had 
 made the journal illustrious under the signa- 
 ture of P. Thus the after great historian and 
 statesman of France began his life of letters by 
 doing the work of a woman, to him personally 
 unkno^yn, under her own signature. Personal 
 acquaintance created a bond* between these two, 
 more powerful than age or conflicting opinion, 
 lasting as life, and not dissolv^ed in death. In 
 1812 they were married, and in mature life 
 Pauline de Meulons begins a new career. The 
 journalist is not lost, but merged in the com- 
 pleter woman. She was not defrauded of youth 
 at last, though it came to her somewhat past its 
 season, as it must to many. She who at twenty- 
 fiye wrote with the wisdom of age, at thirty- 
 nine wrote with the glow of youth warming 
 eyery conyiction. In the study of an intellect- 
 ual woman nothing is more interesting than to 
 trace the change wrought in her intellectual life 
 and labor through the perfect deyelopment of 
 her womanhood. In almost every instance it is 
 sufficient to yerify the belief that the great un- 
 derlying motiye force of the uniyerse is that of 
 sex. The greatest feminine writer can neyer 
 be a woman w^ho has stopped short of the com- 
 
A FRENCH JOURNALIST. 103 
 
 plete fulfillment of womanhood. Thus, after 
 more than ten years of intellectual work, which 
 would have reflected lustre upon the greatest 
 man, there came a time when the woman herself 
 was greater than the utmost that she had ever 
 done. As the grandest men are the most sim- 
 ple and childlike, so the grandest women are 
 the most womanly. If by reason of intellectual 
 power they are stronger than the mass, by so 
 much are they more powerful in every attribute 
 essentially feminine. The great man is never 
 so great to us as when we feel his grandeur 
 through the spontaneous revealing of a child- 
 like soul ; and an intellectual woman never so 
 potent as when we feel the magnetism of her 
 genius through the greatness of her heart. 
 Thus of the illustrious woman whose public 
 career is here so partially sketched it can truly 
 be said that her latest j^ears were her greatest. 
 Under the stress of necessity her intellect flow- 
 ered first ; later, in the holy atmosphere of 
 affection, her heart. In 1806 she wrote : " A 
 woman who has reached the end of youth must 
 not suppose that she has any further concern 
 with passion — not even with vanquishing it. 
 Her strength must henceforth lie in calm, and 
 not in courage." 
 
 Six years later, when she had done with 
 
104 OUTLINES. 
 
 youth, she loved and married a man intellect- 
 ually and spiritually her peer. She lived to 
 look into the face of her child ; then life and 
 the whole universe took on a value unknown 
 before. She became the writer of a new age. 
 The mother of a man, there dawned in her an 
 absolute perception of harmony and duty, of 
 faith and truth, of liberty and law, but dimly 
 guessed at in her maidenhood. '' Once a mother, 
 she felt the necessity of believing in a better 
 future and a perfectible humanity in the virtue 
 of those generations that would be contempo- 
 rary with her child." She wrote books for 
 children, she espoused the labors and convictions 
 of her eminent husband. She loved love, and 
 she loved to live. She, calm reasoner, — looking 
 into the face of husband and child, then into 
 the face of death, — felt a yearning and a re- 
 gret for which there was no speech. Into her 
 last hours were gathered a passion and a pathos 
 which youth never brought. 
 
 On the 1st of August, 1827, while her 
 husband was reading to her a sermon of Bos- 
 suet, on the Immortality of the Soul, she passed 
 from earth, and was buried, by her own desire, 
 according to the rites of the Reformed Church, 
 of which her husband was a member. 
 
 Sainte-Beuve says of her : " Thus died a 
 
A FRENCH JOURNALIST. 105 
 
 woman who has had no superior in our genera- 
 tion. The sentiment which she inspires is such 
 as can only be expressed in terms of respectful 
 admiration ; such that it seems almost a sin 
 against one who was always intent upon beings 
 rather than seeming^ to pronounce on her behalf 
 the words future or glory T 
 
X. 
 
 FANNY TERN. 
 
 Sara Payson Willis Pakton (Fanny Fern) 
 died October lOtli, 1872. Mr. Bonner, in the 
 New York "' Ledger," noticing her dangerous ill- 
 ness, which he said '' will carry immeasurable 
 sorrow to the hearts of our readers," added : 
 '' The following is the first article that Fanny 
 Fern ever wrote for the ' Ledger.' It was pub- 
 lished in the 'Ledger' of January 5th, 1856 — 
 over sixteen years ago. Since that day she has 
 never failed once to furnish an article for every 
 number of the ' Ledger.' We think no other 
 editor can say this of any contributor for the 
 same period of time." 
 
 In 1851 Fanny Fern found herself a widow 
 with two Uttle girls clinging to her for support 
 as well as care. In 1851 it must have been 
 harder for a woman to suddenly find herself 
 confronting the world, with only her brain and 
 hands and loving heart between her and want. 
 It is appalling enough now for any woman 
 accustomed to life-long dependence to suddenly 
 find all the responsibihties of bread-wimiing 
 
FANNY FERN. 107 
 
 and household support devolving on her own 
 unaided labor, although manifold opportunities 
 for that labor were undreamed of twenty years 
 ago. At that time the best educated of Ameri- 
 can women were educated for nothing in par- 
 ticular — unless to be school teachers, which, 
 of course, created, at least, a dozen teachers for 
 every school. But death and misfortune have 
 ever been remorselessly indifferent to the fancies 
 of the fastidious or to the prejudices of society. 
 In the abstract, lovely is the theory that a 
 woman should always be protected, always cared 
 for. But all the same as if they were nev^r 
 uttered, every day death strikes down the pro- 
 tector, or fatal conditions put him forever beyond 
 reach. Then, in the face of the finest theory, 
 woe to the woman standing alone who cannot 
 honorably take care of herself. 
 
 Fanny Fern, as a school girl in Catherine 
 Beecher's seminary, in Hartford, tore the leaves 
 out of her " Euclid " to curl her hair with. 
 Hartford still holds traditions of her girlish 
 escapades, tricks, and manners, but has pre- 
 served no record of her scholarship. In her 
 way, she probably was about the same sort of 
 scholar in the Hartford Seminary that Henry 
 Ward Beecher was in Amherst College, — 
 learning as little as possible from books, but 
 
108 OUTLINES, 
 
 everything from Nature, from human beings, 
 from her own acute faculties, electrical tempera- 
 ment, and deep, passionate heart. What it 
 was for such an one to find herself suddenly- 
 cast forth from a home of ease, a life of loye 
 and happiness — widowed and poor — no one 
 may tell but she who has sat down amid the 
 ashes of all earthly joy. To-day the world is 
 not over-kind to lonely womanhood. Least of 
 all is it to a womanhood so sharply defined in 
 its originahty or individuality that the very 
 force of its innate quality pushes it out of the 
 accustomed groove assigned to average woman- 
 hood. All that Fanny Fern suffered in those 
 early days of womanhood, none but God and 
 her own soul could ever know. It does not 
 follow that her ''friends," as worldly friends 
 go, were basely cruel beyond their kind, if they 
 did neglect, pass by, and shght the young 
 widow — proud, independent, poor, who to them 
 besides was probably erratic, hard to manage, 
 and '' queer." Nor does it prove that hers was 
 a malicious nature, because under its first keen 
 sense of neglect and injury, the passionate heart 
 in its need, the proud spirit in its poverty, flung 
 back in return resentment and defiance, bitter- 
 ness and even hate. It was a transient disturb- 
 ance. It was the stress of misfortune, the 
 
FANNY FERN 109 
 
 stirring of wrong, which wrought up the wrath 
 of her nature. She tossed off the foam of her 
 rage, leaving the pure wine below her, clear, 
 bright, effervescing. Thus she poured it out 
 in fullness and sweetness to the last. 
 
 Well, she did not want to go into a shop. 
 She could not teach school and live by it ; but 
 she could write an essay that was yet a sketch 
 — dancing, dashing, satirical, witty, human, 
 pathetic — a sketch which in that day, at least, 
 was a need in journalism ; a sketch for which 
 she alone in temperament and power had re- 
 ceived the patent ; a sketch which nobody else 
 on earth could write but Fanny Fern. She 
 wrote it. With poverty crouching on the 
 hearth, with her little girls tugging at her 
 skirts, with her fiery blood rushing through 
 her veins, all freighted with love of love and 
 hate of hate, she wrote it. Then she put it 
 into a little satchel, and sallied forth to sell 
 it. That must have been awful. There was 
 a relief in Avriting it. What a delicious first 
 vent it must have been for the flood-tide of 
 wrath and love that came rushing after. But 
 to go out to seek somebody else to find it pre- 
 cious — precious enough to pay money for it ; 
 to set a price on it ; that heart-throb, to ask 
 a price for it — that must have been awful. A 
 
110 OUTLINES. 
 
 man going from office to office to sell a poem 
 or a leader must be a sorry sight. A woman 
 compelled to peddle by voice and eye such a 
 ware must be a sadder sight still. She endured 
 many a supercilious glance, more than one re- 
 buff, of course, on her weary round. A woman 
 trying to sell her own composition from a bag, 
 no doubt appeared childish to these men of 
 affairs. The curly head, the little satchel, the 
 little sketch, did not look the least like business. 
 Beholding the three, what prophet of them all 
 could foresee that the dainty reticule with its 
 contents stood for one hundred and thirty-two 
 thousand copies of a single book ! She found 
 an astute purchaser at last. He liked the sketch, 
 took it, and paid her for it — fifty cents. 
 
 Its fresh fearlessness hit the " general read- 
 er ; " its yeining pathos touched ten thousand 
 hearts. Fanny Fern had hit the right nail on 
 the head ; it was a golden one. She struck 
 again and yet again, for twenty years — for six- 
 teen years never missing a single week. She 
 was fortunate in her publisher. Sagacious and 
 practical, she selected one not for his own fame, 
 who would consider it quite sufficient to stamp 
 his name on its title-page, and leave her book 
 to take its chance ; bi}t one whose reputation 
 would, in a degree, depend upon her own. Al- 
 
FANNY FERN. Ill 
 
 ready her " Fern Leaves " were scattered 
 through the length of the land. People shrugged 
 their shoulders ; but all the more they read 
 and bought. Critics said they were flippant, 
 sarcastic, irreverent, masculine, and bitter. 
 Nobody said they were lackadaisical, weak, 
 or stupid. No matter what was said, all the 
 more people bought them and read them. Of 
 the first volume of " Fern Leaves " seventy 
 thousand copies were sold in America. " Little 
 Ferns for Fanny's Little Friends," sold sixty- 
 two thousand in the United States, while forty- 
 eight thousand copies were sold in England 
 alone. 
 
 In touching child-life, as in nothing else, did 
 Fanny Fern prove the depth and tenderness of 
 her true womanhood. She might be unjust to 
 men, satirical to women ; but to a baby — no 
 matter how sour or woebegone — she was never 
 less than the mother. From first to last she 
 was the championess of childhood. Not a tor- 
 ment, not a stomach-ache, not a delight could 
 come to a child, or ever came to one, of which 
 she has not taken cognizance. It has no possi- 
 ble right that she did not defend, no error that 
 she did not tenderly forgive, no sorrow with 
 which she did not sympathize. With children, 
 so with mothers. Her own motherhood was the 
 
112 OUTLINES. 
 
 deepest and sweetest inspiration of her being. 
 Through her own mother-hfe she felt that of 
 all mothers. To the world at large Faimy 
 Fern may be a fierce hater of shams, a brusque, 
 masculine, and even naughty woman. To the 
 mother who has watched her child sicken and 
 die, who has buried the baby out of her bosom, 
 and cut Fanny Fern's loving grief over just such 
 a baby out of a newspaper, and hidden it in her 
 work-basket — to this mother (and I see her in 
 so many lonely homes) Fanny Fern is the most 
 lovesome of all mortal beings. 
 
 Broadway has given me two pictures of this 
 woman, which I shall always tenderly keep. 
 One is of the winter of 1859-60. Each bright 
 day one could see from afar that haughty head, 
 with its wealth of golden curls, and that peer- 
 less step, which had in it a fine disdain, that 
 I never saw equaled in woman. Always qui- 
 etly and elegantly dressed, she was striking by 
 force of her very presence. With strongly 
 marked features, a noble figure, and elastic 
 step, which yet carried with it the proud dig- 
 nity of a queen, she could not fail to attract a 
 second glance even from an unthinking stranger. 
 On either side walked a fair young daughter. 
 One, much taller than her mother, was espe- 
 cially noticeable for her wide blue eyes and 
 
 ^^ 
 
FANNY FERN. 113 
 
 long, fair curls. Within two or three years 
 she married and died, leaving, as a dying gift 
 to the mother whose heart was broken, a little 
 child of her own. 
 
 In time Broadway gave another characteris- 
 tic picture of Fanny Fern. In the bright au- 
 tumnal afternoon she walked Broadway with 
 the young daughter left, and the baby. Thus 
 I saw it one day in its nurse's arms. The 
 crowd wedged us all pat in a corner. Fanny 
 Fern was talking with baby. Obhvious of all 
 the world, she saw her kingdom in its eyes. 
 Such a transfigured face, such baby talk ! The 
 direst Calvinist could not despair of the '' final 
 salvation " of a woman who could look and talk 
 like that to a baby. It was of this child that 
 she wrote privately : " Our little Effie has 
 never been left with a servant ; and, although 
 to carry out such a plan has involved a sacri- 
 fice of much literary work, or its unsatisfactory 
 incompleteness, I am not, and never shall be,- 
 sorry. She is my poem." 
 
 As a writer she never reached her own high- 
 est mark, never wrote up to the highest level 
 of her powers. A passion for truth, a hatred 
 of shams, a contempt for pretense, slashed with 
 satire, sarcasm, humor, and wit, all electrified 
 by an abounding vitahty and an exuberant 
 8 
 
114 OUTLINES. 
 
 loye of miscliief and fun, marked every utter- 
 ance which she committed to print. Yet 
 scarcely less was everything that she wrote 
 veined with a deep, loving pity for human na- 
 ture, a delight in the natural world, of which 
 she was a happy interpreter. One could not 
 read the slighest sketch from her hand without 
 being conscious that it came from a strong and 
 honest heart, and from a head of unexhausted 
 power. Yet the conditions under which she 
 wrote, made it impossible that she should con- 
 centrate, elaborate, be continuously an artist, 
 although m one form of utterance she was ever 
 unapproached. -It was her lot, as it is the lot of 
 so many of the brave, bright, men and women 
 of this generation, to serve her day, to meet 
 the exigencies of the hour, to say the word that 
 the present demanded without reference to the 
 future. And she was true woman enough to 
 recognize the fact, and to modulate her life 
 upon it, that to he is higher than to say, even 
 though your word be said in a form of the finest 
 art ; and that to mould an immortal soul is the 
 divinest work that can come to woman or man. 
 This sketch is not written to invade the sanc- 
 tity of private grief or to pronounce judgment 
 upon its subject, either as woman or writer. 
 It is only an unstudied tribute to a represen- 
 
FANNY FERN. 115 
 
 tative woman, wlio was one of the earliest to 
 prove to American women that an honorable 
 independence is within the reach of all who 
 bring to bear upon any avocation to which they 
 are adapted the industry, the faithfulness, the 
 fearlesness, which characterized her ; a word of 
 tender regret for one whose bright exuberance 
 of life it has ever seemed could never go out ; 
 a woman who, whatever her missteps were in 
 struggling upward to its holiest standard, al- 
 ways, through all her days, loved the religion 
 of Jesus Christ, and loved little children. 
 
XI. 
 
 HORACE GKEELEY AND EDWIN FOKKEST. 
 
 Certainly no two men living were more 
 thoroughly known in every phase of their being 
 to their countrj^men than were Horace Greeley 
 and Edwin Forrest. Each in his own way per- 
 petually pubHshed himself. Each in distinc- 
 tive spheres of art illustrated the highest order 
 of talent of its kind. Each exemplified in his 
 daily walk and conversation opposing types of 
 manhood. Each in dying illustrated the law of 
 his whole existence. In death, the whole picture 
 of each life was seen in epitome. In life, the 
 success of each man was self-made This fact 
 aflfected each man according to his nature. It 
 made Mr. Greeley feel superior to all colleges, 
 and to all that colleges could bestow. It made 
 Mr. Forrest feel superior to all other men. Ed- 
 win Forrest loved a few men. Horace Greeley 
 was devoted to mankind. Forrest applied all 
 his vast energies to the delineation of art and 
 the gratification of himself. Greeley performed 
 gigantic labors in behalf of ideas, consumed with- 
 
HORA CE GREELEY AND ED WIN FORREST. 117 
 
 out stint every faculty and power he possessed 
 in the service of humanity. The centre of one 
 man's hfe, of his love and longing and labor, 
 was himself. The centre toward which the 
 other tended, through all yearning and effort, 
 was the upbuilding of human nature. This self- 
 centraUzation and this superiority to self -gratifi- 
 cation each man illustrated in every phase of his 
 life and of himself. Nowhere was it seen more 
 distiifctively or contrastingly than in their social 
 and domestic existence. Horace Greeley clung 
 to his wife through all fates and trials. An 
 organism too acutely strung to bear life's com- 
 mon ills without friction, pecuhar theories of 
 domestic economy, with prolonged years of ill 
 health, made it impossible, at times, that she 
 should make the home of her overladen hus- 
 band all that he needed. There were years, and 
 these the ones in which his toils pressed heav- 
 iest, when, through stress of circumstances, Mr. 
 Greeley scarcely had a home. Some of his 
 books were written amid discouragements and 
 in discomfort which would have appalled and 
 paralyzed any man less a Cato in his mould. 
 Many homes, bright, genial, full of gentle hearts, 
 opened to him ; but they were not his own. 
 
 Women gifted, good, and beautiful trusted 
 him, cared for him, and ministered in many 
 
118 OUTLINES, 
 
 ways to his weary life. No man could have felt 
 more exquisitely than he the ministries of such 
 souls. No woman ever was his personal friend, 
 trusting him, caring for him, who was not 
 helped by the word and deed of his compan- 
 ionship toward the truest and noblest woman- 
 hood. No praise higher than this can woman 
 offer to the memory of man. His friendships 
 were catholic, comprehensive, and abiding. 
 They held within their steadfast range some of 
 the most illustrious as well as some of the most 
 purely and sweetly domestic women of his time. 
 Amid these, while his wife afar vainly pursued 
 the mirage of health, he stood, in fact, a home- 
 less and solitary man. But he never faltered in 
 his work. He never swerved in his allegiance. 
 He loved one woman, was true to her. She was 
 the wife of his youth and the mother of his 
 children. When her last struggle came, as he 
 said, " in the darkest hour ; " when for thirty 
 sleepless nights and days he watched the last 
 earthly light go out in the lustrous eyes which 
 had enchanted and enchained his heart for more 
 than thirty years, he felt his own life wane 
 with it ; and when it had gone, he knew had 
 gone also both his power and his desire to live. 
 
 In the fuUness of his fame, in 'the prime of 
 his powers, and in the flower of a masculine 
 
EORA CE GREELEY AND ED WIN FORREST. 119 
 
 beauty rarely bestowed upon man, Edwin For- 
 rest, while the lion of the most exclusive Lon- 
 don society, married Catherine Norton Sinclair, 
 an Englishwoman, famous also for her beauty 
 and her gifts. The marriage predicted before 
 he left America, begun with such cloudless au- 
 guries, ended in a disgrace and wretchedness 
 never transcended. Husband and wife became 
 unreconcilable foes. Yet all records bear wit- 
 ness that they begun their life in New York 
 with every prospect of happiness. Their house 
 was a centre of fashionable, hterary, and artistic 
 society. Perhaps they were not worthy of the 
 rich estate to which they had been called, too 
 unclean for the holy sacrament to which he was 
 ordained sole priest and she sole priestess. One, 
 at least, was. He had received sole homage so 
 long he would not share it now — least of all 
 with his wife. She attracted admiration on her 
 own behalf. This he would not endure. Claim- 
 ing and practicing all license himself, he de- 
 manded of her the virtue which he outraged. She* 
 may have been a sinner, or may not. I know 
 nothing about it. But the world knows that 
 the crimes of which he accused her had made 
 his own life a shame. He accused his wife of 
 the vice which had made his own career noto- 
 rious, and then proceeded to punish her with 
 
120 OUTLINES. 
 
 ruthless cruelty which alienated from him for- 
 ever the sympathies of the better portion of 
 mankind. It was not because Edwin Forrest 
 was separated, or even divorced from his wife, 
 that made his after days so isolated ; but be- 
 cause he never ceased to his last day to perse- 
 cute with malignant cruelty the woman whom 
 he had sworn that he would love and cherish. 
 Had like punishment been meted to him ac- 
 cording to his sins, what would have been his 
 fate? It was his wife who procured the di- 
 vorce, forfeiting none of her rights or honors ; 
 and from that hour he never devoted half the 
 genius to the delineation of Shakespeare that 
 he did to the subterfuges that he hoped would 
 save him from the payment of her alimony. 
 Thus it came to pass that for years and years 
 he Kved on in the great mansion in Philadel- 
 phia not only a sohtary, but a desolate man. 
 Amid more wealth than he could ever consume, 
 amid books and statues and pictures — exqui- 
 site pictures of child-life — he was alone. - In 
 his home hung the picture of two little chil- 
 dren ; one bathing her naked feet in a brook — 
 the other stepping out of it with the sunlight 
 on her head. It is told of this man how for 
 hours he would shut himself away, gazing upon 
 this picture. He had wealth and fame and 
 
HORA CE GREELE Y AND ED WIN FORREST. 121 
 
 many honors. But no child bore his name 
 like a crown. No child-voice rained its music 
 through those lonely halls. No soul is so ut- 
 terly alone as that one who nurses in silence 
 and secret a soUtary passion, be it of love or 
 hate. Self-love and wife-hate, developed into 
 brooding and abiding passions, separated Ed- 
 * win Forrest from the brotherhood of man and 
 the true fellowship of pure women. No person 
 who ever heard him utter the tenderest pas- 
 sages of Othello, of Hamlet, or of Lear can 
 doubt his latent capacity to feel the deepest and 
 tenderest emotions of the human heart. He 
 comprehended beauty, sweetness, goodness, at 
 times even moral greatness. He loved pure 
 and tender ideals; but not with the abiding 
 love, with the overmastering force which could 
 hold his stormy passions in abeyance. Yet 
 this comprehension, this capacity made more 
 keen in him the consciousness of all that he had 
 missed and all that he had lost. They deep- 
 ened his solitude. They gave intensity to his 
 sense of isolation and to his misery. As he 
 lived, so he died — alone. How the iron soul 
 met the supreme messenger no soul may tell. 
 There was no one to seek the silent chamber 
 but a faithful servant. She waited long to hear 
 the heavy step on the solitary stair ; and when 
 
122 OUTLINES. 
 
 he came not, and she went to him, she found 
 that he had already met his fate. While dress- 
 ing, to begin the life of another day, the hand 
 forgot its cunning, the haughty head bowed to 
 its first and last conqueror, the soul of a master 
 void of tender glance or loving farewell or re- 
 prieve of warning struck out into the unknown. 
 What a contrast to the death hour of his great *' 
 contemporary. Death had robbed him before, 
 how keenly and closely. His dearest hope, his 
 life-long love had passed before him within the 
 vail. The final blow that smote him struck the 
 heart of the nation. It paused to lament its 
 friend. His foes forgot his foibles. His carica- 
 turists spoke only of his virtues. The daughters 
 who loved him to idolatrj^ hung upon his dying 
 breath, and the friend whose sacred affection 
 had followed and served him for more than 
 forty years received his last glance of recogni- 
 tion in tender farewell,^^as soul and body parted 
 forever. " I know that my Redeemer liveth," 
 was his first conscious exclamation as his soul 
 came back from the eclipse which precluded its 
 eternal morning. More than twenty years be- 
 fore, in the yearning of his first great grief, 
 when '' Pickie " died, he wrote : '' Now all that 
 deeply concerns me is the evidence that we 
 shall live hereafter ; and especially that we shall 
 
HORA CE GREELE Y AND ED WIN FORREST. 123 
 
 Kve with and know those we loved here." 
 Through storm and conflict and wounds unprec- 
 edented, the divine assurance was his. He 
 uttered it in the moments of final passage. 
 Who may measure the sublime satisfaction, the 
 utter content born of that divine verity, healer 
 of all mortal wounds, last, best hope of immor- 
 tality ! We who Hve know how attractive and 
 enchanting this world is. They who die alone 
 are sure that for its broken promises there can 
 be no fulfillment, no, nor recompense, save in 
 the full fruitions of an hereafter. 
 
 Every human life teaches one supreme les- 
 son. That of Edwin Forrest is that no man, 
 no matter how vast his resources or endow- 
 ments, is sufficient unto himself. While in the 
 life and death of Horace Greeley we are made 
 equally sure that the man who through his 
 own being yet lives for mankind, whatever his 
 weaknesses, will survive in the heart of the 
 humanity which he served ; and, whatever his 
 defeats, that he will find in death his final rec- 
 ompense and finest triumph. 
 
xn. 
 
 LOLA MONTEZ. 
 
 Lola Montez delivered her first lecture 
 after her last return from Europe in Mozart 
 Hall, New York City. Whether the story of 
 Lola's conversion brought them together to 
 see the " change," or if it were simply the 
 magnetism of the brilliant and naughty coun- 
 tess herself, I'm sure I don't know, but a more 
 refined and intelligent looking audience seldom 
 greets a metropolitan lecturer. Lola appeared, 
 looking as radiant as her beautiful portrait, 
 hung out on Broadway, and quite as young. 
 Those who expected to behold a passe woman, 
 whom they had heard of ever since they were 
 babies, a nervous skeleton of buried charms, 
 were astonished to see her, on the brilliant ros- 
 trum of Mozart Hall, looking not a day more 
 than twenty-five. This wonderful preservation 
 of youth may be attributed to a young, elastic 
 heart, which, in spite of time, the tear of travel, 
 and a thousand tornadoes of passion, revels in a 
 perpetual spring ; but quite as likely owed some 
 
LOLA MONTEZ. 125 
 
 of its perfection to sundry pastes and powders, 
 the famous receipts of which Lola published 
 for the benefit of the whole civilized feminine 
 world. The hthe grace of her form was dis- 
 played to advantage in its voluminous garb 
 of black velvet; a lace collar encircled the 
 throat ; cobweb laces fell over the arms, and 
 a pocket handkerchief of the same fascinating 
 fabric, floated in one delicate hand. She wore 
 no jewelry, not even a breastpin or ring, — a 
 bouquet of natural flowers being her only orna- 
 ment. In an aesthetic point of view, it was 
 worth more than the admittance fee simply to 
 look at so complete a specimen of nature and 
 art, without once thinking that you saw^'in her 
 the beautiful woman of the nineteenth century, 
 whose name in coming history (whether justly 
 or unjustly) will be coupled with those of Pom- 
 padour, De Maintenon and others of their class. 
 But when the great blue eyes grew scintillant 
 with smiles, and the electric voice in most ex- 
 quisite intonations vibrated through the great 
 hall in these words, — "I hope none of you 
 will accuse me of abusing the English," every 
 reputed sin of the speaker was forgotten, and 
 the audience, unconsciously, yet perfectly, 
 seemed to pass within the sphere of her con- 
 trol. Not an element of popularity was want- 
 
126 ' OUTLINES, 
 
 iug in this lecture. Wit, satire, sarcasm double 
 edged, yet sheathed in smiles ; history, politics, 
 religion ; quotations from Scripture ; anecdotes 
 of society, all followed each other in brilliant 
 succession. 
 
 She mixed with her careless gossip a strange 
 quantity of sagacious thought, and of earnest, 
 humane reflection. Rarely a man, and -very 
 rarely a woman, holds so complete a control 
 over the modulations of voice as did Lola. Ever 
 changing, its intonations were perfect and sweet 
 as they were infinite. In her physique ; in the 
 perfect abandon of her manner ; in her voice, 
 were hidden the secrets of her power. The 
 rest was centered in her head, rather than in 
 her heart. She had a most subtle perception 
 of character, a crystal intellect, and any quan- 
 tity of sang froid. The delicate skill with 
 which she played upon that harp of many 
 strings, a popular audience, proved her to be 
 the natural diplomat. She carried the audience 
 with her completely ; and when at last the vel- 
 vet robe, the laces, the bouquet of flowers, and 
 the rarely radiant face made their courtesy ing 
 exit, it was amid the most enthusiastic and 
 deafening applause. 
 
 Poor Lola Montez is dead. The newspapers 
 
LOLA MONTEZ. ' 127 
 
 gathered up tlie records of her death-struggle, 
 and the strange incidents of her most eventful 
 life, and made personal columns of the rarest 
 interest. They can tell no more new tales of 
 Lola. There will be no more erratic actions, 
 no more eccentric freaks, no more wild exploits 
 or doubtful liaisons to record of her. The beau- 
 tiful intrigante^ the clever diplomatist, the err- 
 ing, willful, wayward woman, the generous 
 and loving woman is dead. Her wondrous 
 wit and beauty and brightness have gone out 
 under the winter snow ; and the last story is 
 told, — " She died." If it must be any, may it 
 be men who shall now prove accusing disciples 
 with stones all ready to fling at her memory. 
 Let women be kind, and grant at least the 
 meed of a tear or a sigh for her, because she 
 was a woman. In reading the lives of the 
 world's famous women, — women who reigned 
 in society, in literature, in politics, women 
 whom men flattered, followed, worshipped, and 
 obeyed, — nothing in all the splendor of their 
 lives is so impressive as the story of its close. 
 Of all the gorgeous women of the past, no mat- 
 ter how great their dower of genius, of beauty, 
 or of power ; the great Elizabeth, the courtly 
 Maintenon, the glorious De Stael, all that can 
 be said at last, is, " She died." And in dying, 
 
128 OUTLINES. 
 
 how did tlie fashion of this world fade from the 
 once entranced vision ; how did its paltry gauds 
 slip from the loosed hands, and, at last, nothing 
 could suffice within those wasted fingers, saye 
 the Bible and the cross. This story of life was 
 repeated once more in all its wonderful signifi- 
 cance when the minister of Christ found the 
 most beautiful and gifted courtesan of the nine- 
 teenth century weeping oyer the story of the 
 Magdalen. Lola Montez, who once ruled a 
 kingdom and its king ; whose palace-home was 
 beautiful with all that wealth and art and loye 
 could layish ; who knew all the triumphs, the 
 yicissitudes, the sorrow, which wonderful beauty 
 and misdirected gifts can bring, had httle more 
 than enough to buy the narrow house which 
 sjielters her now in Greenwood, and that little 
 more she bequeathed to the society which sayes 
 in its tender charity the outcast women of this 
 city. " Baroness of Rosenthal," " Countess of 
 Landsfelt," titles which she had once been 
 proud to bear, she was equally willing to lay 
 aside at the door of the graye ; and '' Eliza Gil- 
 bert," her maiden name, was the one which she 
 chose to be recorded on her simple coffin. Lola 
 Montez died poor, but not friendless ; she was 
 surrounded by many who loyed her for the in- 
 herent sweetness of her nature ; and it is much 
 
LOLA MONTEZ. 129 
 
 to say of any one, which was truly said of her, 
 that those who knew her best loved her most 
 entirely. If she was erratic, high-tempered, 
 and irritable, she was also generous, forgiving, 
 and affectionate. The result of the former in- 
 firmities have been published largely to the 
 world ; but the acts, born of the latter, her 
 munificent charities, her deeds of ruth and 
 mercy to the poor and sorrowing, she never 
 blazoned ; yet we may believe that they found 
 a higher and purer record. In the main, the 
 public journals dealt gen.erously and justly with 
 her memory. If they did not att-empt to jus- 
 tify her faulty life, neither did they altogether 
 forget the misfortunes which controlled that 
 life, and which were sufficient to hide a multi- 
 tude of sins more heinous than hers. The New 
 York " Times," in its kind and truthful obitu- 
 ary, said " The sensation of helplessness which 
 she had experienced, and the indignities to which 
 it had subjected her, were the causes which first 
 directed her attention to the subject of some 
 profession in which she might attain an inde- 
 pendence. The stage is the aspiration of all 
 lorn womanhood, and towards the stage she 
 turned her best endeavors." It is a very easy 
 thing to denounce the life and character of 
 another. No high qualities are demanded to 
 
130 OUTLINES. 
 
 judge as the world judges. But it takes a 
 larger insight, a wider, saintlier charity to pene- 
 trate far back to the inevitable circumstances 
 which gave color and shape to that character 
 and life. All possibilities of goodness, as well 
 as of evil, lie m the soundless depths of such a 
 nature as Lola Montez. The atmosphere in 
 which it is forced to grow decides which shall 
 be warmed and sunned into blossoming, and 
 which siiall lie dormant forever. Think of 
 this, mother, when you look into the burning 
 eyes of the girl-child beside your hearth, whose 
 fathomless soul you have never sounded, whose 
 mysterious future you cannot foretell ! Bless 
 God, if you have grace to guard and guide her ; 
 left to herself and the world, what might she 
 become ? 
 
XTII. 
 
 THINGS GONE BY. 
 
 The cottage on Fourth Street is closed, and 
 its gate is fastened. I lean against its fence, 
 and try to make its trees and flowers seem as 
 they did one year ago. There is not a shrub 
 nor flower here that was not planted by a sin- 
 gle pair of hands ; not a plant but was loved by 
 one human heart. I try to bring that woman 
 back and make her real again. In no other 
 human being had I ever seen quite such in- 
 tensity, such tenacity of life, such wide-reach- 
 ing, irrepressible sympathies, such boundless 
 benevolence. How many wounds she bound 
 up, how many dying soldiers she nursed and 
 cherished, how many toilsome journeys she 
 took, how many sleepless nights she passed 
 for their sakes. Yet how many of all who re- 
 ceived life anew from her hands remember her 
 to-night ! Almira Fales was preeminently a 
 heroine of the war. Yet already her name 
 has gone by with her human life. It cannot 
 be put into words what that human life was to 
 
132 , OUTLINES, 
 
 her. How she loved to Hve ! How absohite to 
 her was every paljoable form of beauty. How 
 inseparable from her consciousness everything 
 that she saw and felt and loved. How close 
 she lived to Nature. " How she clung to this 
 green earth. Yet her door is shut, her gate 
 is closed. The trees and flowers which she 
 planted bloom on without her. That life so 
 intense, so real, so near, now by my utmost 
 effort I cannot touch it, nor feel it, nor reahze 
 it, although it still exists. That woman so 
 human, so living, so loving, that it seemed as 
 if she must live in our humanity forever, is as 
 remote to me this moment as the most distant 
 saint in the centuries, and intangible as the 
 furthest seraph in the heavens. What else can 
 so change our existence into the impalpable 
 substance of a dream as to have such a -life 
 with us, of us, full of human love and hope 
 and suffering, and then to exhale into the un- 
 substantial memory of a life gone by. The re- 
 flection of such a life might fall on one in any 
 place. Yet here it reminds me that in no other 
 city in the land do we walk so perpetually in 
 the shadow of persons and of events gone by 
 as in the city of Washington. 
 
 I sit down in the Red Room, and, looking 
 back to the time when Mrs. Adams dried the 
 
THINGS GONE BY. 133 
 
 executive linen and cotton above its bare floors, 
 what processions have trooped within its crim- 
 son hangings. Memory leaves no room to evoke 
 the courtly Mrs. Madison, the stately Mrs. 
 Polk, the statuesque Miss Lane, the statesmen 
 and beauties of generations and of administra- 
 tions before the war. To remember the people 
 who gathered here between Lincoln's first and 
 last reception is to recall more ghosts of things 
 gone by than one memory can conveniently 
 entertain. Lincoln's last reception ! Who that 
 was there will ever forget it, when statesmen, 
 generals, soldiers, common men, tearful women, 
 and little children passed beneath the blazeless 
 chandeliers, which had burned above so many 
 smiling crowds, to look for the last time on the 
 murdered Chief, whose melancholy eyes for the 
 first time refused their gentle, human smile. 
 
 But in Washington it is rarely the dead who 
 remind its of things gone by — it is the living. 
 The belle of a past administration comes back 
 expecting, without a doubt, to renew old con- 
 quests and to achieve new triumphs. The little 
 girls whom she left in short frocks she finds in 
 the places which she filled. She wonders what 
 ails the faces of her friends — she left them 
 smooth and young, she finds them lined and 
 old — and it does not occur to her that they 
 
134 OUTLINES, 
 
 are making the same comments on her own. 
 The man whom she refused in her imperious 
 youth, because he was poor and positionless, 
 she finds rich and powerful, with a fair wife by 
 his side, whom she cordially hates. The old 
 door-keepers at the Capitol, who used to swing 
 back the doors of the Diplomatic Gallery so 
 
 obsequiously at the very sight of Hon. 's 
 
 daughter, are now among things gone by. The 
 new ones, in the plain, middle-aged woman, 
 recognize no former belle. They challenge 
 her — ask her if she belongs to " a member's 
 family." The " open sesame " has gone from 
 her hands. She has no choice but to go to a 
 side gallery, or to go home — which, at present, 
 means the hotel. She still assumes " full dress," 
 lifts a bare and bony neck above a girlish corsage 
 of tulle, hangs the roses of June in her faded hair. 
 But in vain. She is a queen without a throne. 
 Her kingdom and her subjects are among the 
 things gone by. To the careless young genera- 
 tion about her she is '' only an old maid, who 
 was a belle once, mamma says." She leaves 
 the Capitol in disappointment and disgust ; and 
 she was a wise woman who said that she would 
 "never come back again." The woman of 
 letters, who achieved an ephemeral fame a 
 generation past, returns to early hamits with 
 
THINGS GONE BY, 135 
 
 the old ambition for adulation and power burn- 
 ing unabated in heart and brain. The public 
 men who courted and flattered her, the society- 
 dames who followed her for the favors of her 
 pen, are now among the things gone by. In- 
 stead of being alone in her special sphere, 
 attracting public attention and admiration to 
 herself as a solitary and exceptional genius, she 
 finds dozens of women who think, write, and 
 help shape public opinion, each claiming her 
 special work, her special audience, meeting the 
 demands of a later era of a younger generation. 
 She is no longer the lone particular star, at 
 which everybody turns to gaze both in public 
 and private assemblies. She walks lonely and 
 unheeded where she once moved the central 
 object of universal admiration. If she falls to 
 lamenting the giants forever departed ; if she 
 sees nothing but pigmies in their places ; if she 
 declares that there are no longer any great men, 
 nor any beautiful women ; that the new writers 
 are all '' weak," and writing '' in horrible taste," 
 it is very natural, but no less unfortunate ; for 
 every word she utters only assures us that she 
 has had her day, and belongs already to things 
 gone by. If a man who has held a high office 
 of public power comes back to his lost kingdom 
 (though, if he is a wise man, he never will), he 
 
136 OUTLINES. 
 
 finds the multitude, that once bowed down to 
 him, all worshipping the newly-arisen sun. Is 
 it possible ? One year ago he ruled the land ! 
 Perhaps millions of money and millions of lives 
 hung upon his word. All oflBce-hunters, all 
 favor-seekers, waited his call with obsequious 
 fear. All fashiondom rolled in its carriage to 
 his mansion in the West End. It is empty 
 enough now. He is solitary enough at present ; 
 he has time to eat, and a good deal to spare. 
 No impatient crowd now waiting all day for the 
 privilege to say " Just a word." No cringing 
 sycophant, lifting his hat in air to " ]Mr. Secre- 
 tary," meets him at every turn. They have 
 no use for him any longer. He has nothing 
 more for them ; and they show that they know 
 it by leaving him beliind and chasing his suc- 
 cessor. He already belongs to the things gone 
 by. The successful pohtician, whose ambition 
 may have leaped to the highest gifts in the 
 keeping of the people, learns suddenly some 
 day that the great tidal wave of fortune, which 
 has borne him so high without reaching the 
 highest mark, is already setting backward. It 
 has seemed so long such an easy thing to hold 
 the balance of popularity, to be a manager, a 
 leader, that no political triumph has seemed 
 impossible, no prize beyond his reach. It drops 
 
THIXGS GONE BY. 137 
 
 like a thunderbolt some day, the knowledge 
 that a new leader has arisen, that new com- 
 binations have been formed ; envy, jealousy, 
 rivalry, political hatred, — all are at work to 
 defeat the man who hitherto has outstripped 
 all competitors. He is no longer sure of his 
 friends. Men smile in his face, and stab his 
 reputation in the dark. They assert that he 
 has attained the utmost reward due his powers 
 or his service, and shall receive no more. Nor 
 will he. He has reached his utmost mark. The 
 wave of political favor, rolling backward, rises 
 no more. Thus political aspirants, at the very 
 floodtide of ambition, find that success has al- 
 ready rolled back among the things gone by. 
 
 A wife, in some moment of loneliness, comes 
 unawares to the consciousness that the love 
 which she dreamed of in her impassioned girl- 
 hood is already a thing gone by. She learns 
 this as she slowly accepts the fact that will not 
 be denied that the husband in whom her being 
 begins and ends can live without her. She learns 
 this as she waits the long hours through for one 
 who does not come. As she waits for him, she 
 recalls the hours long gone, when, with all the 
 ardor of a young man's first love, he swore to 
 her that she was all the world to him ! She 
 believed him — tender, credulous woman ! And 
 
138 OUTLINES. 
 
 he, in his first glamour, believed himself. How 
 bitter is her awakening ! How changed is all 
 the earth when she at last admits the fact that 
 his life has many objects ; that it is but a por- 
 tion of his nature which she holds ; that, if she 
 should drop from it forever, it would flourish on 
 no less — that he could live without her. He 
 loves her still. When he finds it convenient to 
 come, if he did not find her waiting for him in 
 the accustomed place, he would look at the 
 vacant little chair with a sense of injury. Per- 
 haps he gives her all the time left from crowd- 
 ing ambitions and hurrying cares. Why should 
 she ask for more ? Is she not his wife ? Ac- 
 cording to her nature, she submits to time's ir- 
 remediable law. Perhaps with reproaches and 
 tears, unfortunate woman ; perhaps in uncom- 
 plaining silence. In either case, she mourns for 
 something gone never to return — the freshness 
 of love's first consciousness, the rapture of its 
 dawning delight. It is love still ; but it is love 
 touched by the inevitable chill and change of 
 experience and of time. 
 
 The mother clings to her child, and feels that 
 she holds something in her arms that will need 
 her forever ; but the little girl grows away from 
 her love and cherishing to the nearer love and 
 care of another, and the little boy leaves her 
 
THINGS GONE BY. 139 
 
 behind. The man out in the great world may 
 live a life which his mother cannot fathom and 
 never share. He may treat her with reverent 
 care or condescending affection ; he may snub 
 and forget her ; but to the mother her child is 
 forever her child. She lives in the joy of his 
 babyhood, long gone by ; and thus it happens 
 that a noseless doll and a battered little boot, 
 that the baby played with or wore, cherished in 
 some secret drawer, is dearer to the woman's 
 heart than all the possessions which the man 
 has won in the world. Some of the loneliest 
 people whom I have ever known have borne 
 and nurtured children, only to be left in their 
 old age alone. They found all their joy in hving 
 over the years gone by ; and every date resolved 
 
 itself into the time '' when was a baby." 
 
 No fact of human existence impresses me so 
 profoundly as the individual loneliness of human 
 life. Amid the happiest relationships, amid the 
 most congenial of companionships, it is no less 
 significant. The dearest cannot follow us into 
 the depths of loss and of sorrow into which we 
 must sometimes go down. And this through 
 no lack of love, through no weakness of sym- 
 pathy, but from human inability. They cling 
 to us, they call to us, yet we die alone. And 
 many more than we dream of, and they often 
 
140 OUTLINES. 
 
 » 
 
 the tenderest and sweetest of souls, in the ulti- 
 mate sense, live alone. How often the dearest 
 experiences of our human lot are partial, tran- 
 sitory, and unsufficing. Every joy bears one 
 consummate flower which is never repeated. 
 Happiness, like beauty, grows to its supreme 
 moment ; tlien, however imperceptibly, wanes. 
 It is beauty, it is happiness still ; but some 
 change has touched it since its perfect hour. 
 The flower out with nature has its growth, its 
 perfection, its decline. No less does the human 
 flower, in body, in brain, in spirit, follow its 
 seasons. How beautiful, how brief they are. 
 With the keenest consciousness of the present 
 comes the keener consciousness of its passage. 
 Stay, beautiful youth ! Stay, thou entrancing 
 noon ! Stay, innocent love, supreme delight ! 
 Stay, calm thought, thou angel of peace ! While 
 we utter the cry, while we stretch out eager 
 hands to detain, the boon is already among the 
 things gone by. No entreaty can bring it back. 
 Rachel weeping for her children did not fill the 
 world with a deeper lamentation than the often 
 unuttered cry of the human heart calling for 
 the joy that was, but is not. Thus life is a per- 
 petual mausoleum. Every day the heart buries 
 its dead. Every day some cherished plan, some 
 silent hope, some dear desire, goes down to its 
 
THINGS GONE BY. 141 
 
 grave. We leave it behind. We go on, making 
 no outward sign of the inward loss. But soine- 
 where, sometime we sit down by the way, and 
 silently count over our losses. Then we ac- 
 knowledge that the treasure most deeply missed 
 and mourned is one of which the world has no 
 knowledge, and of which our words have made 
 no record. The past is always picturesque. 
 Time softens all asperities. It mellows all 
 crudeness. The passing discord, the painful 
 peculiarity, the personal repulsion which often 
 jars and hurts us in the intercourse of the 
 present lies dim and almost lost in the perspec- 
 tive of the past. Through its hallowing radi- 
 ance the beloved individual comes back to us 
 glorified from all defect. Life's supreme mo- 
 ments of blended bliss and pain lose their pangs 
 in time ; and in memory we live them over and 
 over again in ever new delight. Thus it is that 
 our dead are ever angelic. Thus it is that the 
 joy gone by is forever ideal and divine. 
 
 I have not been stringing pathetic sentiments 
 together for the sake of being pathetic ; but 
 have illustrated imperfectly the inexorable law 
 of human mutation, which we must all obey. 
 And this is the question evolved. How shall we 
 meet and bear its penalties ? With vmrest ? 
 with repining ? with futile rebellion ? or with 
 
142 OUTLINES. 
 
 serene philosophy and cheerful religion ? You 
 are beautiful to-day ; many worship you. You 
 will wake some morning to find your beauty 
 gone, your worshippers kneeling at other shrines. 
 You have power to-day — so much it seems to 
 you that the world, your world at least, could 
 not get on without you. Some day you will 
 come suddenly to the knowledge that your 
 power has gone, your burdens have dropped 
 upon other shoulders, your honors are worn by 
 •other men ; and the world, even your world, 
 gets on without you. 
 
 Life offers no lesson to mortals so hard to 
 learn, no lesson hiding in its truth so keen a 
 sting to self-love as this, that your prime has 
 passed, and that you must make room for 
 others ; that the flower of your beauty, the 
 flower of your genius are in their decline ; that 
 you must wait in the shadow, while the younger 
 bask in the splendor that you have left behind. 
 How few are ever willing to admit that their 
 time has come to learn it. Thus it is that we 
 see so many women refusing to grow old grace- 
 fully. Instead of wearing their years as a 
 crown, mellow and beautiful in the light of 
 their declining sun, they deck gray hairs and 
 wrinkles with a hideous counterfeit of youth. 
 This is why we see writers writing on reputa- 
 
THINGS GONE BY. 143 
 
 tions which they have long outlived ; writing 
 after they have ceased to have anything to say, 
 except to repeat what they said better years 
 and years ago. This is why we see men once 
 in power still imagining themselves important, 
 and in garrulous and impotent speech evoking 
 the ghosts of a dead reputation in the councils 
 of younger men. 
 
 And yet repose is not death. Rest has its 
 recompense as well as labor. Through every 
 mutation of our life we are followed by the 
 divine compensations. The noon has not passed, 
 but it soon will. In the afternoon let me renew 
 my life in the morning lives of younger souls 
 around me. Let me not begrudge them the 
 youth once so bounteously bestowed upon me. 
 They will rob no one, they will but be glad in 
 their own- share of the inheritance of being. 
 Then let me thank God that he gave me my 
 day — its niorning, its noon, its peaceful twi- 
 light shadow. Let me be glad that I had my 
 day, and thus with rejoicing take my place 
 among the things gone by. 
 
XIV. 
 
 THE FALLEN MAN. 
 
 We see pictures of the fallen woman at every 
 turn. In the pulpit, on the platform, we hear 
 her portrayed with an accuracy and an unctioxi 
 which makes our pulses stand still with pain 
 and horror. Why does nobody paint the fallen 
 man ? Why does no priestly voice call upon us 
 to weep over his downfall and his shame ? I 
 see him everywhere. He came into a shop in 
 Broadway, yesterday. His clothes were torn, 
 his feet were bare, his eyes were glaring with 
 the insanity of drunkenness. A wild animal 
 could scarcely have been more dangerous. 
 What a creature to go home to wife and chil- 
 dren ! He was only a fallen man of the most 
 degraded type. There is a fallen man who 
 never staggers in ragged clothes with bare feet. 
 He stands at the corners of streets ; he lounges 
 in the doors of hotels ; he emerges from drinking 
 and gambling saloons ; he comes out of the 
 house whose door leads to death. His fall is 
 graven on his face — in its haggard lii^es, in his 
 
THE FALLEN MAN. 145 
 
 sunken eyes, in his weary yet mocking look, from 
 which purity and peace and the possibility of in- 
 nocent happiness have gone. There is a fallen 
 man whose garb is faultless, whose face fails to 
 tell his story. He is never seen on forbidden 
 ground, never in questionable places. The 
 latch-string of gracious homes always hangs out 
 for him. Mothers are eager to commit to his 
 care their innocent daughters. Women beauti- 
 ful and idle seek him, and flatter him on to a 
 deeper fall. His fall is graven onlj^ on his soul ; 
 yet he is no less a fallen man. No less fallen, 
 because only he and his God knows that the 
 wreck of a life, the everlasting sorrow of a 
 lovely soul lie at his door. In the gay world 
 few reproofs are uttered, no tears are shed, for 
 ^the fallen man. While he wears fine clothes, 
 while he cames a full purse, society ignores 
 even the possibility of his fall. His victim is 
 shut out in shame ; but the woman who makes 
 a victim of Mm is a wearer of the purple of this- 
 world, a bearer of the pomp and triumph of life^ 
 Through so many ages man has been the ac- 
 knowledged seducer of woman, the fact has 
 been overlooked and forgiven that woman is 
 often the seducer of man. I know such a wo- 
 man — a woman of fashion, allied to a man high 
 in position. She is a woman of large personal 
 
 10 
 
146 OUTLINES. 
 
 and mental magnetism. For what good pur- 
 pose does she use it ? She uses it to " attract " 
 men from their allegiance to duty, honor, and a 
 pure love ! She boasted in a drawing-room 
 that " she never saw a married man whose love 
 she could not win away from his wife, if she 
 chose,'^'^ " My dear husband," said a fond lit- 
 tle woman, " you could not ; nobody could take 
 him from me." " The little simpleton ! " de- 
 clared the Lamia, afterward. " In less than six 
 months she came to me crying, begging me to 
 give her husband back to her ; that he neglected 
 her, that he upbraided her constantly because 
 she was not more like me. I don't want your 
 husband, I said ; I only wanted to show you that 
 I could do what I pleased, and to teach you not 
 to trust in any man's love." There is many a 
 Lamia. She stands the central figure of many 
 a social circle. In silken attire, in a luxurious 
 home, surrounded by all the. alluring accessories 
 of wealth and cultivation, herself fascinating, 
 if not beautiful, what wonder that she draws 
 within her charmed sphere the many homeless, 
 wifeless, dissatisfied men of her acquaintance ! 
 The power of a woman thus poised and sur- 
 rounded cannot be estimated. How does she 
 use it ? To inspire the man who basks in its 
 splendor to say, '' Such a home will I create for 
 
THE FALLEN MAN, 147 
 
 the woman I love, such a paradise for my chil- 
 dren " ? To encourage, to help him in the pur- 
 suit of the usefulness, the influence within the 
 reach of his honorable endeavor ? To make him 
 in love with the strong, brave, pure manhood 
 possible to him? No. She uses it solely to 
 make him " fall in love " with herself. All the 
 magnetism of her beauty, all the subtlety of her 
 brain, is used to satisfy the greed of her vanity, 
 the depravity of her passion for personal con- 
 quest. Does she know the issues in her life at 
 stake ? No matter. His wife, his children, the 
 woman who would die for him ? No matter. 
 His honor, his integrity, his self-respect ? No 
 matter. All together are not an atom in the 
 balance, weighed against her insatiate vanity. 
 He, all that he cherishes, may go to rack ; but 
 she must not be denied her triumph. Some 
 hour, when she takes off her gauds, she must be 
 able to say, " I conquered him." She must be 
 able to wliisper in secret to the weak creature 
 who is her '' bosom friend," " I conquered him. 
 He went down before me. I was astonished ! 
 I couldn't help it, dear ! How can I help it, if 
 so many men will fall in love with me ? " Does 
 the Lamia ever incur any danger ? No. The 
 Lamia can always take care of herself. She 
 plies her victim with beguiling flatteries ; she 
 
148 , OUTLINES. 
 
 bewilders him, between childisli smiles and ten- 
 der tears — never shedding enough of the latter 
 to make her nose red ; she astonishes him with 
 her subtle wisdom ; she is artlessness, she is 
 innocence, she is angelhood personified ; she is 
 Psyche and Circe combined. Then, after hay- 
 ing roused every slumbering impulse and pas- 
 sion of the man, if, in an unguarded moment, he 
 betrays his weakness, then she is majesty as- 
 tounded and virtue on a pedestal ! Then, when 
 no longer his own master, her bright doors open 
 and shut on him. He goes forth into the night, 
 out into the darkness. To what ? To whom ? 
 
 Who will say that woman is in no way re- 
 sponsible for the fallen man ? The woman who 
 walks the streets in open shame we may follow 
 with pitying lamentation. The woman who, 
 through the weakness of her will, through the 
 magnanimity of her affection, which can never 
 be measured or fathomed, stakes all her fate in 
 one frail human heart, gives more than her life 
 to one erring man, is one over whom the angels 
 in heaven must weep in compassion. 
 
 But she who, wearing the garments of afflu- 
 ence and of influence, still uses the gifts and 
 graces of her womanhood only as decoys to lead 
 men astray; who, in the guise of innocence, 
 would steal their birthright of honor, blur 
 
THE FALLEN MAN. 149 
 
 their perception of purity, demoralize their af- 
 fections, madden their passions ; and then, hav- 
 ing proved her power over them for all evil, 
 sends them forth into the world to betray and 
 to rob the weak and unfortunate — she is the 
 woman who is a disgrace to human nature. 
 God may pardon her ; but the woman who re- 
 spects herself, who loves woman, who honors 
 man, never can. Is it strange that the aver- 
 age estimate of women by men of the world is 
 so low ? that, herding together, they speak of 
 women in language which even they would 
 blush .that their mothers should hear ; that 
 each man, shutting from his memory the pure 
 angel of his earliest youth, sneers at virtue as a 
 fiction, at the purity of woman as a fable and a 
 dream ? 
 
 No one but his mother, his sister, or his wife 
 weeps for the fallen man. 
 
 This is one of the saddest mistakes of our 
 world ; one for which all humanity suffers — 
 viz., that purity, demanded imperatively of 
 woman, is deemed impossible to man. Where 
 is the safeguard to society ? Where its exalted 
 standard ? While men are left to believe, and 
 to act accordingly, that virtue, in the sense in 
 which it is expected of women, is not within 
 their power. The practical working of this 
 
150 OUTLINES. 
 
 theory makes each sex but the prey to the 
 other. This will always be, till the standard of 
 virtue in woman is made also the standard of 
 virtue in man. It was a great and pure man 
 who uttered these words : '' The world will 
 never be better till men subject themselves to 
 the same laws which they impose upon women.'* 
 It was a man said this. Were it a woman, all 
 the apostles of hcense would at once declare 
 that she said it, because, being a woman, she 
 could not know what man is. I do not forget 
 what human nature is, in its universal and 
 unchanging essence. I do not forget in its 
 best estate how frail it is, how easily over- 
 come ; nor forget the inevitable modifications 
 of life and character resulting from the vary- 
 ing laws of temperament, of sex, of physical 
 and mental organization. But neither the his- 
 tory of polygamy or of monogamy, Campbell's 
 " Philosophy of Marriage," or Leckey's " His- 
 tory of European Morals," or the history of the 
 whole life of man in every race, and through 
 every age from the beginning of the world till 
 now, can make me believe that man created in 
 the image of God, man immortal as his Sire, 
 man the head of all human intelligence, through 
 all his earthly life, is at best but little more 
 than a bundle of blind instincts and of lawless 
 
THE FALLEN MAN. 151 
 
 appetites, at whose mercy he is, which he is as 
 powerless to control as the beast at his feet. 
 This brutal idea is the underlying impulse of 
 polygamy, of all the lasciviousness, license, and 
 barbarism on the earth. The sister is taught, 
 whatever her temptation may be, that she must 
 be good ; the brother is left to believe that, 
 however he tries, he cannot help being bad. It 
 is expected of him that he will grow to be a re- 
 spectable man some day ; but before that event, 
 through the law of his nature, he must neces- 
 sarily be very wicked. The sister is taught 
 that she must preserve herself blameless for the 
 future husband to whose life she is to be the 
 crown ; the brother is left to spend the same 
 time " sowing his wild oats." To his wife he 
 is to bring no virginity of heart, no purity of 
 person, no record of a stainless past ! Many a 
 man looks into the eyes of the wife, who trusts 
 him as she does her God ; into the faces of his 
 daughters, who believe him to be scarcely 
 lower than the angels, with a secret remorse 
 which cannot be measured, as memory forces 
 in upon his thought what he has been, perhaps 
 what he is. With what shame he is conscious 
 that, if they knew his secret history, he would 
 stand transformed before their eyes ; that, to 
 remain what he is in their thoughts, he must 
 
152 OUTLINES, 
 
 hide forever from their knowledge the crimes 
 of his youth. Young man, remember this ! 
 The dearest reward that can come to you in 
 this world, is a real home — the loye and faith 
 and help of wife and children. Remember 
 this, while striving with foes without and foes 
 within. If you will^ you can live worthy of 
 your heritage. You can cherish a faith in hu- 
 man goodness ; you can cultivate personal 
 friendship with noble men and women ; you 
 can fill your life with honorable occupation and 
 cheerful recreation ; you can " steep your soul 
 in one pure love ; " and, trusting in God, you 
 will never be a fallen man. The grandest ob- 
 ject this side the throne of God is a perfect 
 man — a man powerful in brain, powerful in 
 frame, with conscience and will ruhng over the 
 animal force which makes the puissant basis of 
 his manhood. The saddest sight on earth, is 
 such a man in ruin. By the height of what he 
 might have been do we measure and deplore 
 the fall which makes him what he is. Passion 
 may be grand ; but it is passion in obedience. 
 Appetite is not ignoble till it debases the soul 
 and triumphs over purity. With our finest 
 theories we cannot make this crooked world 
 straight. But each one may make it so much 
 the better and brighter by at least the charac- 
 
THE FALLEN MAN. 153 
 
 ter of one individual. When shall we have 
 purity in our Uves ? When peace in our 
 hearts ? When joy in our homes ? It will 
 be when woman feels a deeper responsibility 
 for her personal power over every man who 
 comes within her influence ; when that power 
 is tested and controlled by a health}^ conscience 
 and a pure heart ; it will be when she ceases to 
 regard every man that she meets as the legiti- 
 mate prey to her vanity, as a tyrant to be turned 
 into a slave, as a Sampson to be shorn of his 
 strength. It will be when, with true recogni- 
 tion and reverence, she meets the roj^alty of 
 manhood with the royalty of womanhood, say- 
 ing : "If thou art the world's king, I am the 
 world's queen ! " It will be when man tests 
 all his relations with woman by the same 
 code of impartial honor which makes him hon- 
 orable among men. It will be when he who 
 scorns to be false to his comrade, will scorn 
 equally to be false to a woman ; when he shall 
 cease to stoop to subterfuge, to deceit, to false- 
 hood, to keep peace with numbers of women, 
 to each of whom he is personally commit- 
 ted, over all of whom he desires to exercise 
 a secret, illegitimate power. It will be when 
 each man seeks in each woman something of 
 that divine quahty of womanhood which even 
 
154 OUTLINES. 
 
 the basest man desires to find in his mother, in 
 his sister, in his wife. It will be when each 
 shall cease to say : " I will absorb, rule over, 
 possess this creature of God." It will be when 
 both shall seek in the other their noblest friend, 
 their truest and dearest companion ; when the 
 woman shall revere the man as man because he 
 is worthy of such honor, and the man revere 
 the woman as woman because she commands 
 his reverence before she wins his love. Then 
 we shall not have the cause that we now have 
 to weep over the fallen woman and to bow our 
 heads in shame before the fallen man. 
 
XV. 
 
 PHYSICAL BASIS OF STATESMANSHIP. 
 
 A PORTRAIT of Mr. Gladstone in a num- 
 ber of " Every Saturday " is very suggestive of 
 Mr. Fessenden. Indeed, it seems almost as if 
 it were Senator Fessenden, rounded out into 
 ampler life. It is what he would have been if 
 his body had equaled his brain. Of the two, 
 the English premier's head is less powerful in 
 development than that of the American senator. 
 There is less height, less width, less causative 
 fullness in the frontal dome. But any slight 
 discrepancy here is more than atoned for by the 
 capacious nostrils that give air to the brain- 
 cells, the great throat, the broad shoulders, the 
 grand enginery below which propels this brain 
 and sustains it. What might not Mr. Fessenden 
 have been with such physical adjuncts ? With 
 them he would have been still on the earth, and 
 in the Senate. He would have been building 
 up a grand record for history, recording for pos- 
 
156 OUTLINES, 
 
 terity works more immortal than the " Juyentns 
 Mundi." Here the pious thing to say would 
 be that he is '' better off " — so much better off 
 among the seraphim than in the Senate. I'm 
 not going to say it. I prefer an honest hobby 
 to dishonest cant ; and it is very dishonest cant 
 to be constantly attributing to the " Lord's 
 will " that for which we ourselves are to blame. 
 "V\Tien the minister said it, '' It is the Lord's 
 will, and marvelous in our eyes," I used to cry. 
 Now the same words in the most pathetic 
 quaver only move me to send him " Hall's 
 Journal of Health," or some other journal on 
 hygiene and dietetics equally sensible. It need 
 no longer be '' marvelous in our eyes " why so 
 many are cut off in the midst of their days. 
 Hygienic law cannot banish death ; but it can 
 prolong existence. This law of the Lord of life 
 and health defied and broken every day costs 
 the nation many of its most illustrious children. 
 We have more occasion to be concerned for the 
 bodies of our public men than for their brains. 
 If they took a little more intelligent care of the 
 former, there would be less trouble with the 
 latter ; and how many splendid lives would be 
 spared to the public service and to the hearts 
 that love them. It is the manner of all who 
 visited the Congi'esses of the last generation to 
 
PHYSICAL BASIS OF STATESMANSHIP. 157 
 
 come back to the new-winged Capitol, and in 
 its garnished chambers lament the Corinthian 
 and Doric halls of the old House and Senate, 
 and more the eloquence vanished and immortal, 
 of their most illustrious legislators. " If you 
 could only have seen Calhoun and Clay and 
 Webster ! If you could have heard them ! " 
 Well, I never heard them, and never saw them. 
 But I have giants of my own, whom I deplore 
 no less devoutly. Seven seasons in Washington 
 are suflBcient to make one a veteran, without 
 having seen the gods of the earlier decades. I 
 have attained the dignity of reminiscence. 
 
 In my little nook in the gallery I murmur of 
 changes ; inquire as sadly as Elia for " the old 
 familiar faces ; " and to the neophyte beside me 
 whisper of greatness gone, of giants departed, 
 with all the lamenting unction of a mourner 
 of the last generation. If, in addition, memory 
 compelled me to jnourn Webster, Clay, and 
 Calhoun, my grief would be too much, and I 
 should be obliged to stay at home. As it is my 
 dear " I," I will confess to you that to my vision 
 the Senate looks quite askew. I have tried to 
 adjust old seats and new senators with satisfac- 
 tion, and have failed. My private opinion 
 (which, as usual, I am making public) is, that a 
 number of these gentlemen might quite as well 
 
158 OUTLINES. 
 
 have stayed in their native wilds, or be still 
 pursuing destiny, " carpet-bag " in hand. It is 
 very evident that they do not belong here. It 
 is not in their poor power to reflect any lustre 
 upon one of the greatest legislative bodies of 
 the world. This being true, why are they here ? 
 Shall politics, trickery, and money buy seats for 
 third-rate men in this august assembly ? They 
 do. Mr. Muddlebrains takes his seat. He who 
 by the birthright of God would adorn it, serve 
 and honor his country in it, stays at home — at 
 least, that is where he very often stays. In 
 personal aspect the Senate has retrograded 
 within four years. Among all its -elders, one 
 looks in vain for two such '' grave and reverend 
 seigniors," two such grand old men, as Foots 
 and Collamer, of Vermont. Senator Cameron 
 carries his seventy years straight and stately as 
 a winter pine ; but he has not the noble head, 
 the open, large expression, the grandeur of 
 mien, which made these men the most senatorial 
 of senators. And who, looking down on his 
 wonted seat, can cease to mourn for Fessenden, 
 the great debater, the incorruptible statesman, 
 the irascible, sensitive, loving-hearted man ! 
 Not in his seat, it seems as if, waiting a mo- 
 ment, we should see him meditatively pacing 
 up and down behind it; or slowly slipping 
 
PHYSICAL BASIS OF STATESMANSHIP, 159 
 
 through the door of the cloak-room, his hands 
 in his pockets, his slight figure bent, his great 
 head — so much too great for the frame which 
 could not support it — always drooping forward, 
 as if weighed down with thought, his lips com- 
 pressed, his expression one of weariness, often 
 of pain. The longer we look the more we miss 
 his presence, and the more unreconciled we feel 
 to his untimely taking off. The longer we 
 listen to a dry dribble of talk, the more we long 
 to hear pierce the dullness one of his old keen, 
 incisive sentences, cutting straight to the mar- 
 row of things. Without him his long-time 
 generous antagonist, Sumner, finds no foe at 
 once so provocative and worthy of his speech. 
 Trumbull, more pugnacious and irate, lacks the 
 far sight and wide mental comprehension of 
 Fessenden. Charles Sumner still sits the grand- 
 est figure of the Senate. He sits as he sat years 
 and years ago. Life, which leaves its subtle 
 tracery on all our faces, has laid its hand heav- 
 ily on his, as it always does on the face of a 
 man or woman in whom existence is a battle, 
 not a dream. The evening gray has fallen 
 on his hair, the trace of many an inward and 
 outward conflict is graven in the strong feat- 
 ures ; but he has still unbroken what he had 
 in the beginning, that which is indispensable 
 
160 OUTLINES. 
 
 to the successful statesman and orator, — " the 
 physical basis of oratory." Without his six 
 feet of altitude and his thunderous " ayes and 
 noes," Charles Sumner could never have been 
 Charles Sumner. If he had been compelled 
 by feeble lungs and a defective throat to shriek 
 his dictum in a shrill treble or in a squeaking 
 pipe, he could never as a statesman have been 
 at once the king and the conqueror of an idea. 
 If he had been as little as Lord Russell, not 
 even Sydney Smith's excuse to the disappointed 
 farmers of Devonshire,-— " that he was naturally 
 bigger, but had been reduced by his labors in 
 the cause of reform," — could ever have given 
 him that personal impressment which now, by 
 filling the eyes and ears, more than fulfills the 
 prestige of his name. Without special premed- 
 itation, I have strayed back to the thought 
 from whence we started, — the physical basis of 
 the statesman. For lack of it Fessenden died. 
 For lack of it, and it only, he missed the high- 
 est intellectual success ; without its ministry 
 even his fine brain could not fulfill its loftiest 
 function. For lack of it some of the most in- 
 tellectual men in the Senate to-day are slowly 
 dying. This would be altogether too gloomy 
 to talk about if it were too late for remedy. 
 But it hes within human power to stay the 
 
PHYSICAL BASIS OF STATESMANSHIP. 161 
 
 prodigal waste of human life which marks us 
 as a people. Think of the havoc which death 
 has made among the most intellectual and illus- 
 trious of our race within two Uttle years ! Even 
 while I write, the land is mourning for one the 
 bravest and best beloved of its soldiers, who 
 lived through a hundred battles, to fall dead in 
 his prime. Looking at the magnificent phy- 
 sique of General Thomas, who can believe that 
 by the laws of Nature and God he should have 
 perished in the perfect flower of his years ? 
 Thus too many Americans perish. The Eng- 
 lish statesman, with his athletic habits and out- 
 of-door life, carries on his physical and intel- 
 lectual power unbroken beyond the years of 
 threescore and ten. Past that age we often find 
 him bearing the heaviest responsibilities and 
 fulfilling the most active duties of the public 
 service. 
 
 Thus, with scarcely any relaxation of intel- 
 lectual vigor. Lord Palmerston served his coun- 
 try to his eighty-second year. Lord Lyndhurst 
 made two of the most powerful speeches of his 
 life at the age of eighty-six, and died at the 
 age of ninety-three. He was an English Amer- 
 ican. If an American statesman was not dead 
 long before that time, the man who wanted his 
 place would declare that he ought to be. The 
 11 
 
162 OUTLINES. 
 
 rare American who lives to such an age is 
 usiiaUy spoken of as a second child, who has 
 long outlived his time. While the average 
 American statesman, no matter how superb the 
 stock of vitality with which he begins his ca- 
 reer, usually manages to consume it so prod- 
 igally and irrationally that, with bad air, bad 
 hours, and bad habits, exhaustive labors, and 
 inadequate relaxation and exercise, inordinate 
 ambitions, contests, and excitements, finds him- 
 self an aged man in middle life ; a victim to 
 incurable disease, or the ready prey to immi- 
 nent and hopeless paralysis. This is not a 
 very animating picture of American physical 
 deterioration, and the most painful feature of 
 it is that it is true. One thing I shall never 
 be able to understand : that is, how a being 
 arrogating to himself such immense superiority 
 as man, — one who in normal strength of nerve 
 and muscle and will often is so superior, — 
 should yet quite as often, through his entire 
 human existence, violate and outrage the laws 
 of his physical life, and in controlling impulse 
 and appetite show little more than the resisting 
 power of an idiot or the strength of a child. If 
 you are tempted to think this an exaggerated 
 statement, just recount the names of distin- 
 guished men who actually murdered themselves 
 
PHYSICAL BASIS OF. STATESMANSHIP. 163 
 
 by over-eating and drinking. How many thou- 
 sands more have done this whose names have 
 never been written. 
 
 Excepting, perhaps, a dozen really noble- 
 looking men, the United States Senate has 
 nothing to be proud of in its external aspect. 
 The remainder are a mussy and inferior looking 
 company. We have a right to be disappointed 
 in them. In the House of Representatives we 
 expect to see a heterogeneous assembly, typical 
 of many climates and conditions. But from the 
 Roman to the American Senate the inflexible 
 idea of a senator has been that of an eclectic, 
 eloquent, wise, and august man. If a man pos- 
 sessing no one of these qualities still by some 
 circumstance obtains a senator's seat, I know of 
 no patent that he holds to high esteem because 
 he has filched a name which he does not honor. 
 
XVI. 
 
 INSTINCTIVE PHILOSOPHERS AND STATESMEN 
 
 The one-eyed philosopher of the " Edict " 
 sees acutely on one side ; but he is as blind as 
 a bat on the other. His text is '' Mind's the 
 standard of the man ; " and he goes on to show 
 that he believes in brain and not in body, and 
 to prove that the instinctive philosophers be- 
 lieve wholly in body and not at all in brain. 
 According to his one eye, the '' Instinctives " 
 are a set of lunatics, who in this world of abso- 
 lute facts are yet content to lift their faces to 
 the sky, and swear incoherently by the repre- 
 sentative words of Truth, Justice, Mercy, and 
 Purity ; men who put words for ideas, instincts 
 for intellect, inspiration for reason ; despisers 
 of brain, whose chief strength lies in the use 
 of capital letters and exclamation points. Hav- 
 ing made these assertions, the one-eyed philoso- 
 pher of the " Edict " thinks that he has done the 
 clever thing, and feels much relieved. Is it not 
 a partial and one-sided thought which discusses 
 the mind of man independently of bodily con- 
 
PHILOSOPHERS AND STATESMEN. 165 
 
 ditions ? Is not a man's brain more dependent 
 upon his stomach than his stomach is upon his 
 brain ? We are no more all intellect than we 
 are all instinct. There is no fact more signifi- 
 cant than the dual life of the human being. 
 The " Edict " may publish another loose dis- 
 sertation on this material thought ; but it can- 
 not destroy its truth, that " man is man only 
 by virtue of his blood." If every thought in- 
 volves the death of an atom of the brain, its 
 exquisite loss can only be supplied by the vivid 
 current from the heart which feeds and vital- 
 izes it. If this be diseased and depraved, the 
 organ of thought is touched with its disease and 
 its depravity, and the very thought evolved is 
 more or less tainted and morbid. If '' mind " 
 — or, rather, character, the finest emanation of 
 the intellect and heart — " makes the standard 
 of the man," how puerile to discuss that stand- 
 ard while ignoring the contributive conditions 
 which fix irrevocably the quality of that mind 
 and character. Perhaps it is very clever in the 
 " Edict " to cry out : " Is there some one of the 
 organs in his square-built, well-put-together 
 body which gives him absolute truths by pro- 
 cess of secretion? Has he glands that would 
 give us a good bill to regulate the civil service 
 of the United States ? " But all this cleverness 
 
166 OUTLINES, 
 
 does not annihilate the fact that more than one 
 " absolute truth," and many '' bills " in Con- 
 gress have been defeated and destroyed through 
 the " processes " of diseased '' secretions " and 
 through " glands " which refused to perform 
 their functions. It is because we believe in 
 the supremacy of reason and of the moral facul- 
 ties that we insist that the highest health and 
 perfectibility of the human body is necessary 
 to their perfect development ; and insist upon 
 it as a general axiom no less because we re- 
 member several geniuses and a few saints who 
 managed to exist in bodies which were daily 
 insults to their souls. In this life, at least, the 
 spirit of man cannot act independently of the 
 material organs through whose medium alone 
 it finds human expression. Robust vitahty 
 may exist with a coarse brain and an obtuse 
 organism ; and a large brain of fine fibre for 
 a season may struggle and assert its inher- 
 ited power though impeded in its action by 
 vitiated blood. In defiance of morbid condi- 
 tions, it is able for a time to assert the laws of 
 its primal inheritance. I am thinking of two of 
 our own statesmen, born giants in intellectual 
 strength, who now in middle life are bowed 
 down with more than the infirmities of age. A 
 powerful intellect in a powerful body was God's 
 
PHILOSOPHERS AND STATESMEN. 167 
 
 birthright to each. If they have cherished the 
 first, tliey have outraged the last. They have 
 destroyed the perfect mechanism through which 
 only their intellects can act ; they have broken 
 Nature's sacred laws till they are objects of 
 pity, in their mental and physical pain — till 
 there is nothing left for them but suffering, and 
 the certain grave a few months further on. The 
 spasmodic action of their powerful minds is 
 like the fitful flare of a dying flame. In the 
 sudden and transient gleam we are painfully 
 reminded of what the steadfast light of such 
 intellects might have been, sustained by strong 
 and steady health. We can illy spare them 
 from the legislation of the nation. They should 
 have grown old in age and honors in its coun- 
 sels. Not the " weighty matter of govern- 
 ment," .nor judicial study, nor devotion to 
 '' reason," has made this impossible to them ; 
 but the transgression of physical law has 
 brought physical death as its swift, inevitable 
 consequence. Even the reasoning faculty, 
 which our one-eyed philosopher does not too 
 much exalt, cannot long exist unimpaired in 
 the defrauded and degraded body which he 
 despises. And, though he were to sneer on 
 through every column of the " Edict," it would 
 not annul the truth that temperance and cheer- 
 
168 OUTLINES. 
 
 ful health must form the basis of mental and 
 moral greatness. And though he, gratuitously, 
 utterly condemns and rejects our definition of a 
 great man, his condemnation is npt frightful. If 
 we have a great man, he is great from no intel- 
 lectual power solely. That he could be wholly 
 great without intellectual power, or if he were 
 not a master of knowledge, or of thought, no 
 one would declare. But all experience asserts 
 that the intellectual power must wear the 
 crowning more. Beyond the command of 
 knowledge, or of thought, a man must be 
 master of himself to be wholly great ; if not, 
 his imperfect greatness is a mockery and a 
 shame. That superlative purity of the moral 
 nature may exist with no commensurate intel- 
 lectual stamina we are all aware ; a man may 
 be great in goodness only, and through lack of 
 mental power totally unfit for the administra- 
 tion of public affairs. But what the public ser- 
 vice needs, what it demands bevond the force 
 of language to declare, is the absolute man : a 
 man in whom the moral forces are as perfectly 
 developed, as keenly conscious, as the quickest of 
 his intellectual faculties ; a man who, whether he 
 looks up, or down, or straight forward, can de- 
 clare that he loves truth and justice, mercy and 
 purity, and prove by his own character and in 
 
PHILOSOPHERS AND STATESMEN. 169 
 
 every public and private act that he does so 
 love. The one-eyed philosopher laughs, and 
 sets these words in the mouth of a school-boy, 
 to prove that they cannot make him great ; but 
 he takes nothing from their significance when 
 they are meant and when they are lived. Why 
 this outcry for despised '' goodness," for incor- 
 ruptible men in high places ? Because it is the 
 deepest need of the state. If the need were 
 for intellect, the demand would be for that; 
 the demand is for intellect exalted by con- 
 science. The government has never suffered for 
 lack of intellect in its administrators ; but it 
 has suffered and does suffer for their lack of 
 •conscience. We take it for granted that the 
 men who are sent to Washington to administer 
 affairs have brains ; we wish that we could 
 take it for granted that they have integrity 
 also. The truth is, there is a kind of '' smart- 
 ness " coupled with unscrupulousness which has 
 learned the trick of buying place and patron- 
 age, and eagerly pays the price for both, which 
 just now is uppermost. If the secrets of the 
 government in its various departments could be 
 published to the people, they would find that 
 what they need most in their public servants is 
 not mere intellect ; but a finer honor, a stainless 
 rectitude. They want men whose votes and 
 
170 OUTLINES. 
 
 influence can neither be bought nor sold. Is 
 it womanish and old-fashioned to demand such 
 men ? Not while the government remains mth 
 the people. Have we a Utopian ideal of ex- 
 cellence for men in public life ? Not at all. 
 But this is true : only men of positive moral 
 strength are equal to its exigences and its temp- 
 tations. Mr. Congressman came to Washing- 
 ton an honest man. In his quiet country home 
 he had never been tested beyond his strength ; 
 had never grown entirely away from a simple 
 and natural life. Once here, the evil forces of 
 an over-stimulated life begin to play with desire, 
 and conscience, and will. Undreamed of am- 
 bitions, a lust for gold and for power, take pos- 
 session of him. Besides, Mrs. Congressman 
 wants a coach as fine as Mrs. Senator's ; her 
 establishment must be as expensive, herself and 
 her children as lavishly arrayed. That all this 
 can be done with the congressional salary is 
 impossible. Now comes the test. Here is a 
 thousand dollars for a vote, and thousands more 
 to secure a man a place high in government 
 patronage ; the '' Whisky Ring," the " Treas- 
 ury Ring," and untold speculations. If he sells 
 himself to these interests through the weakness 
 of his will, this man, supposed to be legislating 
 for the people, becomes simply a political gam- 
 
PHILOSOPHERS AND STATESMEN. 171 
 
 bier, like any other gambler, living by bis mts 
 and the tricks of fraud and chance. We have 
 no romantic notion of asking congressmen to 
 emulate gods and angels, or of demanding their 
 freedom from human infirmity, or of asking 
 them to lift their faces to the sky to swear at 
 random their fealty to any lofty principle ; but 
 the people whom they represent have the right 
 to demand that they should have the moral 
 strength to refuse a bribe, and, striving with 
 evil forces within and without, yet be strong 
 enough to be true to that which is best in 
 themselves. 
 
 The ''Edict" portrays the " Instinctive Phil- 
 osophers and Statesmen " as " scorners of rea- 
 son " and of common sense, expending their 
 fervor in '' double-leaded invocations to Eter- 
 nal Justice," and in a frantic use of words to 
 which they apply neither meaning nor practice. 
 That the most profound words in human lan- 
 guage are often used idly and for mere effect 
 no one will deny. Thus used and abused, they 
 yet lose nothing of their distinctive significance. 
 They mean no less. If " words are the only 
 things that will last forever," it is because they 
 represent that in man which is eternal. They 
 are the visible signs of his finest emotions, of 
 his subtlest thoughts, of his rarest aspirations ; 
 
172 OUTLINES. 
 
 or they are tlie embodied types of the degrada- 
 tion and the slavery of his soul. To he that 
 which the highest words in human speech rep- 
 resent is the consummation of human character. 
 And to know what you mean, and to mean what 
 you say, requires more than a one-eyed or an 
 instinctive philosophy. 
 
xvn. 
 
 PIN-MONEY. 
 
 "Lady Sophia is to have £16,000 jointure 
 and <£400 pin-money," said Horace Walpole of 
 Lady Sophia Fermor, when she became the wife 
 of Lord Carteret, — a lady for whom (although 
 a younger son) Horace had dared to cherish 
 more than a passing fancy. While English law 
 has never hesitated to appropriate the whole of 
 the wife's fortune for her lord's benefit, Eng- 
 lish custom has always taken care to provide 
 her bountifully with pin-money. In this respect 
 the Englishwoman is more independent and 
 happy than her American sister. As a rule, 
 the English wife has the absolute control of a 
 certain sum appropriated to household expenses 
 and her own personal wants to a much greater 
 degree than the American woman. In this 
 respect, at least, she is freer, happier, and more 
 self-respecting. The very responsibility tends 
 to cultivate in her sound judgment, forethought, 
 foresight, and prudence in expenditure. A 
 creature treated as a child in the use of money 
 
174 OUTLINES. 
 
 will seldom have more tlian tlie judgment of a 
 cliild, albeit it be that of a child of larger 
 growth. 
 
 The very extravagance of a large class of 
 American women springs from this mode of 
 treatment. Impulsive as children in their de- 
 sires, they exhibit no more than the judgment 
 of children in their expenditures ; hence the 
 enormous "bills" which confront the husband 
 and father, filling him with wrath or despair, 
 in which state he is so often portrayed tearing 
 Ms hair or taking with violent hands his own 
 life. That men suffer much from the thought- 
 less extravagance of women is beyond question. 
 It is a fruitful source not only of unhappiness, 
 but of vice. Young men, deterred ' from mar- 
 riage by horrible forebodings of milliner, dress- 
 making, and furniture bills, enter into social 
 relations which blight their lives and in innu- 
 merable instances make a happy family life for 
 them impossible. If the girls of wealthy fam- 
 ilies were educated to a wise knowledge of the 
 uses and possibilities of money, to the responsi- 
 bilities which its possession involves, to habits 
 of thoughtful expenditure, with a definite in- 
 come settled upon them, within whose limit 
 they were to bring the gratification of their 
 personal wants, what a decrease there would be 
 
PIN-MONEY. 175 
 
 in the habit of careless, useless shopping ; in ex- 
 orbitant bills ; in a blind, reckless extravagance, 
 which neither knows nor counts the cost of any- 
 thing on which the fancy may happen to light ! 
 Our family monetary system in this country is 
 all wrong — in ten thousand instances igno- 
 rantly, carelessly, not willfully wrong ; no less its 
 hard penalty is paid by ten thousand unhappy 
 hearts, in society and at home. If its result is 
 extravagance and questionable modes of making 
 money, — is recklessness and suicide among the 
 more wealthy and f asiiionable ; in average Amer- 
 ican life its sequence is niggardliness, misunder- 
 standing, discontent, estrangement, and unhap- 
 piness. Money in some phase is one of the 
 most fruitful sources of unhappy family life, espe- 
 cially of unhappiness between husband and wife. 
 This is true, while American women as wives 
 are among the most indulged women on earth. 
 This is one trouble ; they are simply indulged^ 
 in greater or less degree ; and mere indulgence 
 necessarily infers dependence on one side and 
 supremacy on the other. It is the fitful emo- 
 tional kindness of a master ; not the just shar- 
 ing of an equal. This, carried into the minute 
 money-need of daily hfe between two persons 
 (so often mentally on a par) living in the re- 
 lation of husband and wife, is the source of im- 
 
176 OUTLINES, 
 
 measurable discord and sorrow. In this relation 
 impulse may be good when it happens to be 
 generous and tender ; but justice is better. 
 Just here is one of the most painful illustrations 
 of caste in sex, as developed in daily life. I 
 know men — good, kind, manly; who would 
 risk their Hves to save their wives in danger, 
 who love them, after their own fashion — to 
 whom it never occurs that their beloved are not 
 among the happiest and most blessed of women ; 
 who would declare me insane if I were to say 
 that they did their wives injustice and made 
 them unhappy every hour in tlie day. Yet I 
 do say it, and say it because I love the wives 
 better than the husbands ; although the latter, 
 as men go, are very admirable indeed. 
 
 There is Dove-eyes. She was one of the ten 
 thousand girls of whom North America has such 
 just occasion to be proud, — sensitive, refined, 
 intelligent, well-educated, self-supporting, high- 
 spirited, honorable, tender, loving, and lovable. 
 Dove-eyes was the daughter of necessity, and 
 for years had supported herself and helped 
 others by the honorable toil of her hands and 
 brain, when she succumbed to her especial fate 
 in the shape of Alexis, to her the Grand Duke 
 of all men — indeed, a god walking the earth. 
 Out of her woman's small pay she had saved a 
 
PIN-MONEY. 177 
 
 comfortable dot. When, as his wife, she en- 
 tered her Grand Duke's palace, which was small 
 and on an unfashionable street, she carried into 
 it from her own small earnings furniture to fur- 
 nish it, a handsome wardrobe, and a small bank- 
 account book of her own. But when she mar- 
 ried Alexis she gave up all her opportunity of 
 independent support. Henceforth she was to 
 work, and to work hard ; but she was to work 
 only for Alexis. He was her sole employer. 
 Did he pay her as justly as strangers had done ? 
 We shall see. While painting pictures, after 
 the manner of men in love, his favorite one had 
 been of the lovely time coming when she would 
 no longer have to toil for a living ; when it 
 would be his joy not only to provide for every 
 want, but to anticipate it before she knew it 
 herself ; and when her chief business would be 
 to put on her lovehest dress and freshest ribbons, 
 and wait for him with a smoking dinner ready, 
 which (in the picture) involved neither care nor 
 labor to cook. Nor did Alexis shirk the actual 
 demand upon himself necessary to the carrying 
 out of his desire. He was what in larder par- 
 lance is called " a bountiful provider." He 
 made handsome presents at intervals to his vrif e, 
 and he said : " My dear, if you want money, all 
 you have to do is to call on me." It sounded 
 
 12 
 
178 OUTLINES. 
 
 beautifully. What could be more generous? 
 Both were very much in love, and for a time all 
 was blessed. Alas ! the most ample trousseau 
 will wear out. Pretty wedding frocks will 
 grow old-fashioned and take on a look of antiq- 
 uity. Babies are little cherubs who need many 
 clothes, which they outgrow with a frightfully 
 rapid impunity. I am sorry for everybody who 
 has not a baby, yet no one will deny that it is 
 the most costly of all God's gifts. What suffer- 
 ing, what anxiety, what money it costs to convey 
 it safely from the jBrst tooth to the last one of 
 all dreadful baby diseases I Dove-eyes woke up 
 one day, to find that her last prettj^ dress had 
 been cut up for baby ; that the last cent of her 
 own little bank-stock had been paid out for 
 baby — for extra doctor visits, extra diet, extra 
 airings, for many nameless little needs, Avhich a 
 man would never dream of, but which are no 
 less necessary for that. Alexis would think 
 them unnecessary. Dove-ej^es believed them to 
 be indispensable — life itself to her and baby! 
 She woke up to the still more bitter conscious- 
 ness that she had not a cent of money that she 
 could call her own ; not a cent that she could 
 spend as her own necessity or judgment dictated. 
 This, hard to any woman, is especially so to a 
 woman who had always had her own indepen- 
 
PIN-MONEY, 179 
 
 dent resources, however small ; who had always 
 had her own small private fund, on which to 
 draw for her own personal necessities. Hard as 
 it was at first, she had tried to overcome her 
 reluctance to ask Alexis for money. " It was 
 foolish and over sensitive not to be willing to do 
 so," she said. It was wrong in her to feel as if 
 it made her seem like a poor dependent to come 
 and ask her husband for what she needed. Did 
 she not at home work as hard and for more hours 
 than he in his counting-room ? Indeed, her 
 work now was never done. It used to be she 
 could sit in the evening and read. Now baby 
 cried so she could not even listen to Alexis read 
 the evening paper, but had to carry baby off 
 out of his father's sight, that his cries might not 
 prevent his comprehending the evening news. 
 Had not Alexis said that '' all he had was 
 hers ? " She had tried to think of this, and to 
 ask for a few dollars just as if they were hers, 
 which he held in trust for her benefit. Alas ! 
 after the first or second trying, it was a miser- 
 able failure. She had asked when Alexis hap- 
 pened to be cross or short of money, and he 
 exclaimed : " Why, what have you done with 
 the last ? Gone already ? " She ventured to 
 say that it had gone to the doctor ; when Alexis 
 responded : " I must say, Dove-eyes, I think 
 
180, OUTLINES. 
 
 your fears for that child make you send for the 
 doctor oftener than is necessary." Dove-eyes 
 was not sure that she didn't. She tried to put 
 down her own sensitiveness, and still go to 
 Alexis for money when necessary. But so 
 often there were notes (oh ! how she dreaded 
 those dreadful notes ; they seemed to be forever 
 due) ; or he was "hard pushed ;" or, at last, 
 he exclaimed : '' Dove-eyes, I must say that I 
 think you spend some money unnecessarily, and 
 not with the best judgment in the world." As 
 he went over the little account of personal ex- 
 penditures, he found : " Charity, 50 cents." 
 '' Just now, charity, with us, must begin and 
 end at home," he exclaimed. This was too 
 much for Dove-eyes. The first time that he 
 had ever rebuked her with real harshness. She 
 poured floods of tears upon baby's head, in the 
 little cupboard aloft where she rocked him, un- 
 til even baby grew loving and dumb under 
 the piteous shower-bath. Dove-eyes never asks 
 Alexis for money now for any personal want 
 whatever ; though, in an abundant home, the 
 want of it is a perpetual thorn in her heart. 
 Amid plenty, she has not a penny that she can 
 call her own, to expend as she pleases without 
 rendering an account to her husband. Poor 
 Alexis ! He meant all that he said in the happy 
 
PIN-MONEY. 181 
 
 honeymoon days about " anticipating lier every 
 want." He intended to do so then. He intends 
 to do so still. Only, what man ever lived who, 
 by virtue of his masculinity, could anticipate 
 every need of a woman ? As a bachelor, with- 
 out an atom of personal experience in that di- 
 rection, he thought it would be delightful to 
 anticipate and provide for every want of his 
 lovely wife. How much the most economical 
 of woman's needs might cost he had not the 
 remotest idea. 
 
 Alas ! Dove-eyes' needs, in a very great 
 degree, only represent the wants of the house- 
 hold, the never-ending, ceaseless demand of the 
 family. To supply these always, smilingly, 
 spontaneously, ungrudgingly, under the stress 
 of difficulty, of business losses and business 
 worry, was not so easy. What wonder that, 
 amid all, the personal needs of the woman were 
 at last lost and overlooked altogether. Yet 
 never for a moment has Alexis meant to be. 
 other than generous to his wife. The failure 
 lies not in his intention, but in his fashion of 
 carrying it out. If in the beginning he had 
 said : " Dove-eyes, we are not rich : but, with 
 care and thrift and God's blessing, we may be- 
 come so. My average income is so much ; let 
 us divide it. Here is so much per year toward 
 
182 OUTLINES, 
 
 the payment of our home, so much for table, 
 with a margin for hospitality. Another (how- 
 ever small) for charity and for the rainy day. 
 So much for personal expenses, yours and mine. 
 Here is your pin-money, Dove-eyes. It is j^ours 
 absolutely. I shall never ask how you have 
 spent it, or if you have spent it at all ; but I 
 shall pay you your share just as regularly and 
 promptly as I would any other equal partner. 
 As we are prosperous, it shall be increased to 
 the limit of my ability. Our home is deeded 
 to you. Whatever may happen to me, you and 
 the children will not be homeless." What a 
 proud and happy Dove-eyes she would have 
 been ! What an impulse, what an incentive 
 would have been given her to cultivate pru- 
 dence, wisdom, and economy in this proof that 
 her husband trusted her, and acknowledged 
 her his equal partner in the life-long home 
 company. 
 
 ' As it is, Alexis wonders, with all his efforts 
 to make her happy, that Dove-eyes should so 
 often look worn and unhappy. Sickness, the 
 care of her children, the natural wear and tear 
 of human life, cannot account for all the sadness 
 looking forth from her soft eyes. Dove-eyes is 
 very much in love with Alexis still. There are 
 a hundred traits in his character to make and 
 
PIN-MONEY. 183 
 
 keep her in this all-suffering state. She never 
 misses an opportunity to tell her friends that he 
 is the " best man in the world." She believes 
 it, though she often makes the assertion with a 
 little inward sigh, which nothing outside of her 
 own heart hears. Yet, with all her love and 
 his, there is a shadow on their wedded lives, 
 which justice, just a little justice, added to the 
 love, could lift and disperse forever. 
 
 Alexis would think it most outrageous if 
 Dove-eyes were to call him to an account for 
 every penny he chooses to spend for cigars, for 
 newspapers (whose unnecessary and unmanage- 
 able accumulation is a household nuisance), for 
 his soda-water, his '' treats " to his friends, in 
 which she has no share ; his hundred unaccount- 
 able ways of spending money, in which mascu- 
 linity delights and for which it never renders 
 account. 
 
 If Dove-eyes called him to account (which 
 she never did), how he would resent it ! '' Isn't 
 it my money ? Don't I earn it ? I shall spend 
 it as I please ! " That is just what the man in 
 him would say ; and in these words all his 
 man's injustice to the woman whom he loves 
 would come in — "my money," not "our 
 money." Dove-eyes works. She works hard, 
 without wages. She does not earn money. " I 
 
184 OUTLINES. 
 
 give it to her," says tliis munificent Alexis. " I 
 mean to be a liberal as well as loving husband, 
 and give ker all of my money that she needs. 
 How much she needs, and for what she needs it 
 I am to be the judge. To be sure, she cannot 
 judge for me — how much I am to use as a per- 
 son, or for what purpose I am to use it. It is 
 not her right. I am man and master, and earn 
 it ; and shall say just how every cent of it shall 
 be spent." 
 
 In all that she has suffered and borne for 
 him, in the constant care and toil of years, the 
 wisdom, the self-denial, the economy with which 
 she has saved and garnered what he provided 
 — has she earned less than he ? 
 
 Even if this were possible, in giving herself, 
 her life, her love, her devotion for all time to 
 him, did she not relinquish forever the oppor- 
 tunity to earn or to accumulate for herself per- 
 sonally in any other profession ? Does he owe 
 her nothing for that ? In choosing the highest 
 of any profession on earth to woman — that of 
 the wife and mother, as her husband's partner 
 in every home interest — should he treat her 
 with fitful indulgence, even in little things, or 
 with the tender honor due to an equal ? Dove- 
 eyes feels that their home is "her husband's 
 house." She doesn't feel at liberty to spend one 
 
PIN-MONEY, 185 
 
 shilling out of tlie common fund for any charity 
 or any purpose dear to herself, because she must 
 tell Alexis, and she is almost sure that he would 
 find fault, or hint at her lack of judgment, till 
 she would be altogether miserable; and sure, 
 judging by treatment received, that she was per- 
 sonally little more than a mendicant in her hus- 
 band's home of plenty. 
 
 There are many Dove-eyes. There are many 
 Grand Dukes, whose name is not Alexis. Yet 
 men marvel at the unrest of American women, 
 and discourse with great eloquence and igno- 
 rance on the subject. 
 
 Let me astonish you anew, gentlemen, by as- 
 suring you that the lack of pin-money is at the 
 bottom of much of it. Dove-eyes will never do 
 any such thing ; but thousands of women do. 
 They start off in the most unthought of tan- 
 gents. '' Anything, anything," they say, " that 
 brain or fingers can devise, whereby I may earn 
 a httle money that will be my very own, that I 
 can do as I please with, unchallenged, or with- 
 out any man telling me that he gave it to me, 
 and that I must do just as he says with it or 
 do without it." 
 
 Not a man in the world, no matter how just, 
 how generous he is, can know how much his 
 wife (and the more sensitive and delicate she is 
 
186 OUTLINES. 
 
 the more so) must sometimes suffer tlirough the 
 very fact of financial dependence. You may be 
 truly the best husband in the world ; as a rule, 
 she may be glad that all her temporal blessings 
 flow to her through you ; and yet there will be 
 times when she will suffer through this con- 
 dition most keenly — when she would gladly 
 part with her dearest treasure to possess a little 
 money utterly her own, which she might use for 
 some purpose dear to her heart, without asking 
 any mortal for it as a gift. My dear brethren 
 of mankind, do you not see how much misery 
 you can make and can unmake in your own 
 homes ? After all, his use of money seems to 
 be the utmost test of a man's manhood ? Touch 
 his money-nerve, and you measure him in al- 
 most every other direction. Yet remember, it 
 is not so much the amount of money you share, 
 it is your way of sharing it, which makes her 
 happy or unhappy. 
 
 When you are tempted to patronize j^otir 
 wife, to make her feel in any ignoble way her 
 dependence on you, if you could but remember 
 one thing — that the true woman who gives 
 herself for life to be the wife of the best of men, 
 to love him, to suffer for him, to bear from him 
 all that a woman must, to toil and suffer for his 
 children, places him under a debt of gratitude 
 
PIN-MONEY, . 187 
 
 whicli no money on eartli can repay ! Consider- 
 ate care, love, honor, and justice can be the 
 only recompense. To be sure, you are a Grand 
 Duke. Nobody denies that ; you have only to 
 prove the patent to your rank. Leave your wife 
 to be Grand Duchess, and in her own realm 
 (which, surely, is not yours) let her reign with 
 equal freedom and in equal justice sovereign 
 over her own pin-money. Justice in the house- 
 hold coequal with love will do more than ten 
 thousand treatises to quell the public outcry 
 and soothe into peace the just discontent of 
 women. 
 
XVIII. 
 
 BREADMAKING. 
 
 '' Man cannot live by bread alone," it has 
 been written ; yet it is very certain that he can- 
 not live without it, and is but a poor creature if 
 it is not of good quality. This is what ails half 
 the men we meet. The women who pretend to 
 take care of them, and complain so much because 
 they have to do it, feed them on such wretched 
 bread, to say nothing of their other edibles, 
 that no wonder they are thin, yellow, haggard, 
 jerkey, and don't beheve in " woman's rights." 
 It is perfectly natural, if a man sees that the 
 woman he knows best has reached no high 
 standard of excellence in the arts peculiarly her 
 own, that he should doubt the capacity of all 
 women to fill the higher callings which even 
 now open but a contested sphere to their ambi- 
 tion and ejQfort. My good sisters, if you wish to 
 convert these masculine creatures to your most 
 progressive ideas, you must begin by feeding 
 them on good bread, which beginning will prob- 
 ably involve the necessity of knowing yourself 
 
BREADMAKING. 189 
 
 how to make it and bake it. Make it with your 
 own hands ; sponge it, mould it, bake it, this 
 poetic bread — fine celled, white, tender, and 
 sweet. Stir it, beat it, and bake it, this still 
 more delicious bread — brown, fragrant, life- 
 feeding, full of fibre for bone, full of phosphorus 
 for brain. With this perfect bread build up the 
 muscular, nutritive, and nerve systems of this 
 perturbed mortal, who does not believe in your 
 '' rights " ; and when you have thoroughly ^' re- 
 constructed " him on a sanitary basis, he will de- 
 clare to you of his own accord : " Do anything, 
 be anything you can. I make no objections, pro- 
 viding you continue to feed me on ambrosial 
 bread. It is fit for the gods." But, my poor 
 brethren of mankind, when I meditate on the 
 concoctions of saleratus, grease, and vicious 
 acids of all sorts which are given you to replen- 
 ish the lost atoms of your material bodies, though 
 it may not be in my power to admire you, I 
 could both pity and pardon any mental or moral 
 obliquity of which you might be guilty. The 
 human blood cannot be fed with poisons, or 
 even mth indigestible food, and yet the brain 
 and heart maintain strong and healthy action. 
 In knocking about the world, how long we live 
 and how far we go to eat one piece of superla- 
 tive bread. Among the Arabs poor bread is a 
 cause in law for divorce. 
 
190 OUTLINES. 
 
 Breadmaking in its perfection has become al- 
 most one of the lost arts. 
 
 Is there any other people who take such infi- 
 nite pains to be fine, and so httle to be comfort- 
 able ! One cause for this is that all household 
 service for women has fallen into disrepute. 
 Tlie science of domestic economy, than which 
 none requires finer qualities of brain and heart, 
 is now entirely ignored, under the contemptuous 
 epithet of '' drudgery," from which the chief ob- 
 ject of a woman's life must be to escape. One of 
 the most mischievous qualities of this ignorance 
 is that it is usually very proud of itself. I know 
 the matron of a public institution, who thinks it 
 very vulgar and unladylike to think or to know 
 anything about your food before you sit down 
 to it. One result of her sensibility is, that the 
 amount of hot saleratus-cakes, sour and leathery 
 bread, greasy and dried-up meats demolished 
 in this institution are appalling to contemplate. 
 Appalling because of the numbers of teachers, 
 young, half-fed girls, and orphaned httle chil- 
 dren who sicken and die for lack of nourish- 
 ing bread and seasonable fruits, while there is 
 enough worse than wasted in food that cannot 
 be eaten to procure both. This institution is 
 supervised by wealthy and intelligent women, 
 who supply everything for its inmates but prop- 
 
BREADMAKING. 191 
 
 erly cooked food. Probably it never occurred to 
 them to ask the matron if she ever visits the 
 kitchen. She does a great deal of praying ; 
 which is excellent so far as it goes, but never 
 went so far yet as to take the place of practice. 
 I believe religiously in the thorough physical 
 and intellectual education of girls. But that girl 
 is not educated, who, having mastered every 
 other science, is totally ignorant of the chemical 
 properties of a perfect loaf of bread ; and who 
 cannot, upon necessity, make such a loaf with 
 her own hands. The gauge of education is not 
 what we have studied ; it is that which our 
 learning has made us. The only measure of dis- 
 ciphne is its result. " What am I ? what can I 
 do ? what can I be for my own help and the help 
 of others ? " is the first question which every 
 young woman, on leaving school, should ask. 
 The most that the average girl who leaves the 
 average boarding-school can answer is, that she 
 is " finished." She is finished. Her digestive 
 organs are finished, her nerve system is finished, 
 her poor little muscles are finished, her feeble 
 brain is nearly finished. She is an overwrought, 
 hysterical, dyspeptic creature. She subsists on 
 pickles and preserves, hot cakes, strong coffee 
 and tea, and over-spiced meats. She has no 
 domestic nor physical education. She violates, 
 
192 OUTLINES. 
 
 without knowing it, the laws of human health 
 every hour of her life. Without one atom of the 
 development necessary to fulfill the true duties 
 of a womanly life, she is told, perhaps, by her 
 " pa" that her '' sphere is home," and that she 
 must stay there. No noble ambition, no useful 
 employment, no sweet home duties fill her days. 
 She spends most of her time crimping her hair, 
 eating candy, writing gushing letters, and dress- 
 ing for the coming man ; or she sits from morn- 
 ing till night in a cushioned chair embroidering 
 slippers and smoking-caps for this possible hus- 
 band; or she may study a French cook book 
 long enough to learn how to make a fancy cake 
 or concoction whereby to woo him through an 
 epicurean stomach, with an accompanying, " I 
 made it." But where is the maid whose mat- 
 rimonial line — whose pretty covert, " Please 
 marry me, sir," — is ever baited with a good 
 honest loaf of bread, kneaded and baked by 
 her own hands ? Instead of deeming it a deg- 
 radation or a misfortune that she does not 
 know enough to take care of her health under 
 ordinary circumstances, it is the supreme delight 
 of her existence to be '' in the hands of her phy- 
 sician," and to enjoy the perpetual felicities of 
 being '^ delicate." ''I am so delicate," said a 
 girl to me, in the same tone in which she would 
 
BREADMAKING. 193 
 
 have said, " I am so happy." " My daughter 
 is so delicate," we hear mothers exclaim. From 
 watering-place to water-cure, they go about 
 with their languishing burdens. It is " my 
 daughter," " my daughter," everywhere, al- 
 ways ; her weakness her delicacy, her innumer- 
 able ailments. It never occurs to these anx- 
 ious women that this very daughter is a living 
 protest against their own ignorance and inad- 
 equacy to fulfill the first duty of motherhood. 
 And here I make no allusion to inherited or 
 constitutional disorders, to which all may be 
 innocently liable ; but the functional ill-health 
 caused solely by false habits, false food, and ig- 
 norance of the laws of physical life. The trouble 
 is, it is fashionable to be delicate. A certain 
 undefined reproach is attached to robust health. 
 To be really elegant, really intellectual, accord- 
 ing to the accepted standard you must look " del- 
 icate." There are men as well as women who 
 believe that a certain appearance of sickliness is 
 indicative of high intellectuality ; as if a torpid 
 liver could ever supply blood and brain as weU 
 as an active one. What is worse, the odor of 
 sanctity has attached itself to wretched health. 
 At one time dyspepsia was a synonym for piety, 
 because nearly all clergymen had it. And eter- 
 nity alone will reveal the numbers of feeble and 
 
 13 
 
194 OUTLINES. 
 
 frightful sermons wHcli have been born of the 
 pickles and preserves fermenting together in the 
 dyspeptic stomachs of good men. And it will 
 take the same limitless length of duration to 
 inform the women of the world how much 
 they have done toward making clergymen an 
 enervated and sickly race of men, by the indi- 
 gestible mass of goodies with which the individ- 
 ual woman of all generations has persisted in 
 piling the plate of her '' beloved pastor." All 
 the early saints were " ashamed of their bod- 
 ies ; " and if many modern ones are not, they 
 ought to be. It was centuries before Christ 
 that the heathen Plotinus first declared himself 
 ashamed of his. After such cycles of time and 
 of knowledge have passed, it is a mournful fact 
 that so many Christians ought to be ashamed of 
 theirs for the same cause. The only pride which 
 the Latin Fathers took in theirs was in de- 
 claring what wretched tabernacles they were of 
 parchment skin, and bones that would scarcely 
 hold together. Ever since their day, saints and 
 sinners, each according to their fashion, have 
 done their best to punish and degrade the body 
 — the fair and marvelous human home which 
 God deems fit for an immortal spirit. Yet the 
 first hope of the race lies in the purity and perfec- 
 tion of the body. A brain of remarkable organ- 
 
BREADMAKING. 195 
 
 ization may accomplisli vast results for a time, 
 in defiance of vitiated blood and disordered 
 functions. But the most powerful brain, the 
 most exquisite nerve-life, cannot long exist un- 
 aided by an adequate muscular and nutritive 
 system. A mind perfectly powerful and har- 
 monious cannot inhabit a diseased and morbid 
 body. If, as a nation of dyspeptics, whose 
 brains flourish at the raw expense of their vital 
 forces, Americans have accomplished so much, 
 what would be the ratio of their performance 
 if their mental and physical development were 
 commensurate ? This brings us back to our 
 breadmaking — to bread as the deepest root 
 from which must grow the perfect flower of 
 body and brain. Never was a nation fed on 
 more wretchedly-made bread than ours. This 
 is man's wrong ; woman inflicts it. A man may 
 build a bigger ship than a woman ever can ; 
 but he never can make better bread than she 
 can, if she only will. Do you ask me if I be- 
 lieve in woman drudgery ? Never. Extreme 
 poverty involves a degree of drudgery which 
 can never be escaped. 
 
 God knows that there are poor, overworked 
 women whom no earthly power can help, unless 
 He lift from their weary shoulders their too 
 heavy burdens. I am not talking to them ; 
 
196 OUTLINES. 
 
 but to the woman who, with ordinary health 
 and adequate means of support, yet regards all 
 household care as so much '' drudgery," which, 
 in proportioil to her '' sense of superiority," she 
 must escape. If you are a drudge, it is not 
 because you are mistress of a house or a fam- 
 ily ; but because, being both, you lack the edu- 
 cation, the discipline, the devotion which only 
 can make you adequate to the highest duty and 
 dearest delight which can devolve on woman. 
 You are a drudge because you are too ignorant, 
 too indolent, or too indifferent to impart to 
 your servant the simplest lessons of intelligent 
 domestic service. Your house is disorderly, 
 your food vrretched. You fret, you complain, 
 you cry. Your husband scolds, perhaps swears. 
 You are all sickly. Your doctor bills are 
 enormous. Your sole consolation consists in 
 exchanging miseries with your female friends. 
 Suppose you possess the practical knowledge 
 to teach your servant how to prepare every 
 dish necessary to a perfectly supplied table ; 
 suppose you often made with your own hands 
 its white and brown and golden bread ; suppose 
 you devoted the time which you now spend in 
 crying and complaining in studying practical 
 hygiene and chemistry in their relations to 
 cooking (even then you would not be fright- 
 
BREADMAKING. 197 
 
 fully wise) ; suppose you gave the time now 
 consumed in nursing your sick children to stud- 
 ying the laws which govern their little bodies, 
 in learning the properties of the food necessary 
 to their nourishment ; suppose you spent one 
 quarter of the money which now goes to the 
 doctor, in securing them healthful amusements, 
 and the time which you now devote to worrying 
 your husband to mutual recreation and compan- 
 ionship ; would you be more or less of a drudge 
 than you are now ? There is something false 
 and wicked in the cry which denounces the 
 domestic duties of women as such^ which must 
 finally react upon and destroy itself. Let us 
 exalt our homes, if we would exalt ourselves, our 
 children, or the man whom we love. If we have 
 a home, let us deny the idea and prove it false in 
 our own personality that it is necessary/ to go 
 higher than that home, to neglect its duties, to 
 ignore its privileges, in order to secure the most 
 harmonious development, the widest culture, the 
 profoundest influence. 
 
 The increase and perfection of machinery- 
 have taken the distaff and the needle from the 
 hands of women. The decrease of marriages, 
 the changes in scientific and intellectual opin- 
 ion, are among the causes which every day are 
 opening and widening the employments and 
 
198 OUTLINES. 
 
 opportunities of tliat large and constantly in- 
 creasing class of women who are entirely depen- 
 dent upon their ov^n efforts and attainments, not 
 only for their subsistence, but for their place 
 as human beings in the world. What just 
 mind will say that all legal disabilities should 
 not be removed from their way ? that every em- 
 ployment and profession should not be opened 
 to them, to fill according to their culture and 
 capacity ? The world-wide change now going 
 on in the condition of women is but the natural 
 result of the primal law of growth and fruition. 
 Womanhood has not yet grown to its perfect 
 prime, has not yet borne its most consummate 
 flower. Growth and fruition do not involve 
 chaos or destruction ; but law and order, har- 
 mony and love. Then how querulous and 
 weak the outcry of fear for an impossible 
 future. No change can outpass its natural 
 limit. No change can wash away the inefface- 
 able life-marks, rooted in human experience, the 
 indestructible affections of the human heart, 
 eternal in their life, as the law and order of 
 God. 
 
 When woman ceases to be imprisoned by 
 necessity in a house falsely called a home ; 
 when she is no longer compelled to live in it a 
 slave for the mere chance of material subsist- 
 
BREADMAKING. 199 
 
 ence ; then she will gladly turn from the outer 
 turmoil of the world to a true home as her best 
 refuge and surest chance for happiness. Then 
 she will realize, as she never realized before, 
 that to make that home all that it should be, 
 all that it may be, demands not only the graces 
 of the heart, but the highest intellectual gifts 
 which a human being can cultivate. 
 
 To-day, that woman who brings the ripened 
 powers of a rich and disciplined intellect to the 
 ordering of every department of her household ; 
 who makes her home the centre of light, beauty, 
 and intelligence, drawing the weary and the 
 homeless into its radiance ; she who every 
 morning sends forth into the world a brave and 
 happy man ; who every day gathers into her 
 rejoicing arms joyous and beautiful children; 
 she who from the exceeding riches of her life 
 and love gives, yet is not impoverished ; who, 
 doing, being this, is a free woman, — free in 
 body, free in brain, free in spirit, free in the 
 largest right of her humanity, — she is the 
 crowned, the triumphant, the blessed woman. 
 
XIX. 
 
 OUR KITCHENS. 
 
 " Cooperative kitchens ! " Heaven for- 
 bid ! Heaven probably will not interfere ; but 
 surely women will. If there never was a house 
 large enough for two families, there never will 
 be a kitchen large enough for a dozen. It is 
 not strange that some women want to get rid 
 of their kitchens, such looking and smelling dens 
 as they are, and will always remain. Cowper 
 sung " The Sofa," and glorified the teacup. I 
 proclaim the kitchen, with a hearty desire to 
 rescue it from its abused condition. It is non- 
 sense for men to bemoan their grandmothers, 
 because they spun and wove, while we do 
 neither. If they worked perpetually, you may 
 be sure that it was because they had to, not be- 
 cause they wanted to do so. They would have 
 been just as glad to have availed themselves of 
 steam-looms and sewing-machines as a refuge 
 from endless drudgery as their granddaughters, 
 if they had only had them. Yet it would be 
 vastly better for our generation if we consulted 
 
OUR KITCHENS. 201 
 
 those dear old ladies oftener than we do ; better 
 if we imitated them more closely, not in their 
 piety only, which on the whole was of too self- 
 abnegating a sort, for it did injustice to some 
 of the best powers which God had given them 
 and increased the depravity of man in making 
 a bigger tjrrant of him than even nature in- 
 tended. But there is no 'danger of our imitat- 
 ing them too nearly in their personal interest 
 in their kitchens. It is for the woman of the 
 nineteenth century to hold in her development 
 the equal balance of physical and mental cul- 
 ture. She cannot do this and neglect her 
 kitchen. No matter how far at times she may 
 rise above it, it will always do her good to come 
 back to it ; and, if it is the kitchen that it ought 
 to be, she will ever feel dehght in returning to 
 its homely brightness and savory smells. I am 
 sorry for that woman who does not treasure in 
 her heart somewhere the memory of a beloved 
 kitchen. Perhaps it was grandmother's kitchen, 
 or mother's. ]\Iay be it was in the country. 
 You can hardly be happier in heaven than 
 when you played on its floor a little child. I 
 love such a kitchen ; not the discarded one of a 
 fine villa, but the honored kitchen of a thrifty 
 farm-house. It faces the east, and takes the 
 sun's first " good-morning." Thus its busiest 
 
202 OUTLINES. 
 
 hours are full of brightness, and its restful 
 afternoons full of ' serene light and peaceful 
 shadows. Its wide door opens on a grassy 
 yard, where " the old oaken bucket hangs in 
 the well." What a yard it is! Its clovery 
 grass is a paradise for bleaching ; its irregular 
 paths run through the dandelions down to the 
 garden whose luscious vegetables offer a daily 
 market for the ready hand, and out to the 
 orchard where the ruddy apples hang. There 
 ifi an old lilac bush by one window, a sweet-brier 
 by the other, while morning-glory bells cluster 
 about both. Beside one is a stand full of 
 plants, which in the winter flourish in the 
 morning sun. On its ledge there is a work 
 basket — a marvelous basket — into whose 
 depths I sometimes dive, through piles of stock- 
 ings, through bundles and bags, through scissors 
 and thimbles and pins, down to a needle-book 
 (certain to be at the bottom, if only through 
 my impetuous poking), in whose pocket I am 
 sure to find a whole literature of domestic rec- 
 ipes, heart-poems, and editorials on the state of 
 the nation. Beside it is a httle old chair with 
 a warm cushion. This is the mother's chair 
 and this the mother's corner, and not to be in- 
 vaded. Then the old kitchen has a deep fire- 
 place, a vast bake-oven, and a modern stove. 
 
OUR KITCHENS, 203 
 
 It has a great pantry, whose wide shelves are 
 filled with glittering milk-pans, all set for cream ; 
 and a store-room, in which you may find every- 
 thing for cheer, from the barrels of flour and 
 sugar, the rows of sweetmeats, dear to every 
 housewife's heart, to bunches of dried catnip 
 hung up for the cat, and pennyroyal enough 
 for every stomach-aching baby in town. The 
 old kitchen floor is painted a clear gray, bright- 
 ened by gay home-made mats. It has a deep- 
 throated clock, that rules its days ; a book-rack 
 filled with books and newspapers, and colored 
 prints on its walls. It has an arm-chair, a sew- 
 ing-chair, and a chintz-covered lounge. There 
 is nothing in it too fine for its place. It is only 
 a kitchen, after all, yet a joy to behold and to 
 enjoy. 
 
 There is a parlor in this house, proud in a 
 bright grandmother-made carpet, of the most 
 intense stripes ; in haircloth furniture, as shin- 
 ing as a beetle's back ; in a profuse pile of old 
 daguerreotypes and a new photograph book. On 
 its walls old gentlemen sit in venerable frames, 
 with high collars, stiff enough to break their 
 necks ; and old ladies sit in others, in mutf on- 
 leg sleeves and bristling caps, who look down 
 with mild severity on the chignons of their 
 descendants. When the minister comes, or 
 
204 OUTLINES, 
 
 the children from town, this parlor is opened 
 and furbished. But, somehow, sooner or later 
 all the company gravitate back into the old 
 kitchen ; for the glow, the cheer, the love are 
 . there. 
 
 Then I am in love with a kitchen in town. 
 If it is not as poetic as the country kitchen, it 
 is more convenient. My heart has thrilled with 
 delight at the sight of its bright yellow floor, 
 and exulted with conscious thrift while I turned 
 the faucets of its '' stationary tubs," and tested 
 the virtues of its " spacious range." Who can 
 portray the splendor of its pantry — its mugs 
 and jugs ; its " nests " of polished boxes, whose 
 covers shut in the priceless berries and spices of 
 the East; its rows of glass jars, filled with 
 glowing jellies — the ruby of the raspberry, 
 the purple of the blackberry, the crimson of 
 the currant ; its shelves of canned fruits ? 
 There are peaches for you ; tomatoes for you; 
 sweet corn in this can that will give you succo- 
 tash in January, and delude you with the make- 
 believe of an August feast. This kitchen's 
 window lets in the sunshine ; and its back-door 
 opens on a grassy plot, on which the clothes 
 may bleach, the dog may play, or the baby 
 roll. And all around the stone walks runs a 
 border of flowers : and, if morning-glories don't 
 
OUR KITCHENS, 205 
 
 hang on the window, they do on the fence. 
 There are but few city back-doors which do not 
 open on a yard as large as this. vShow to me 
 one pure with grass, fragrant with blossoms ; or 
 show me one nauseous with the debris and ref- 
 use of the house, and I will tell you the sort 
 of people who abide inside. You tell me that 
 my kitchen is not practical ? That I don't 
 personally know about it ? I know all about 
 it; which is more than I can say of anything 
 else. I know that every kitchen must have its 
 soapy days, its sudsy days, its codfishy days, 
 and even its cabbagy days — that, in spite of 
 its posies and spices, its odors must sometimes 
 be more pungent than pleasant ; but I know 
 also that we may open the windows, let the bad 
 air out and the blessed air in, and that through 
 and beyond everything remains the kitchen, all 
 that it should be, or nothing that it should be, 
 just as we have made it ! Everybody knows the 
 charm of a pleasant parlor. Every woman likes 
 to display her taste and refinement in it, accord- 
 ing to her means or culture. All its pretty nick- 
 nacks have a price for her heart which no money 
 could pay. Its statuettes and pictures, its soft 
 sofas and chairs, give us the refreshment of 
 beauty and the proffer of rest when the day's 
 work is done. The parlor is the crown of the 
 
206 OUTLINES. , 
 
 home ; but the kitchen is its heart. In the par- 
 lor may bloom the flower of its culture ; but the 
 root of its comfort is in the kitchen. The parlor 
 may reveal to us the exact standard of a wo- 
 man's taste ; but the unerring interpretation of 
 her disposition is the kitchen. Wealth or circum- 
 stance may place the actual labor and duty of 
 your daily life outside of your kitchen. Trained 
 servants may make it unnecessary that you 
 should fulfill its daily tasks with your own 
 hands. But has it ever occurred to you that, 
 however exempt yourself, some woman's life is 
 lived in your kitchen, and how much you may 
 add to that life by making your kitchen a pleas- 
 ant place to inhabit ? She is no less a woman 
 in all her native susceptibilities and needs be- 
 cause she is poor and does your work. Do you 
 realize how much every life takes on of the hue 
 of its surroundings ? And what a minister of 
 good as well as a minister of beauty you may 
 be when you make your kitchen perfect as a 
 kitchen^ as you have already made your parlor 
 as a parlor ? It cannot be measured, the 
 wretched health, the morbidness, the misery, 
 the vice even, which have had their birth in the 
 dark, unventilated dens which are called kitch- 
 ens, in which so many women drag on their 
 weary lives. And when the girl of our time 
 
OUR KITCHENS. 207 
 
 grows up to regard the kitchen of her home as 
 something more than a hole to be shunned, in 
 which Bridget was born to drudge ; when she 
 brings into it, instead, her caUco apron and 
 smihng face ; when she devotes to its service a 
 portion of the cultivated powers now wasted in 
 idleness, if not in sin, we' shall see the begin- 
 ning of that royal race of women for whom we 
 longingly wait and in whose advent we so de- 
 voutly believe. 
 
XX. 
 
 CASTE IN SEX. 
 I. 
 
 IN KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 Aeteh the disastrous result of Eve's first 
 nibble at the apple of the tree of knowledge, 
 and the awful penalty which it entailed upon 
 her daughters, it is not wonderful that for many 
 centuries they were too frightened to follow her 
 example. Nor should we fail in charity to the 
 sons of Adam (no one of whom is over fond of 
 work) to say that together they have done their 
 best to shut away the forbidden fruit of wis- 
 dom from their sisters, in bitter remembrance 
 of that first taste which cost Adam his spiritual 
 supremacy and fore-doomed every son of his to 
 the curse of labor. At any rate, ever since that 
 unlucky beginning man has done his best to 
 keep woman in ignorance ; and, after having 
 met with a very tolerable success in so doing, 
 with a charming and characteristic inconsist- 
 ency, he now declares that her lack of acquired 
 knowledge is the sign and seal of her mental 
 
CASTE IN SEX. — IN KNO WLEDGE. 209 
 
 inferiority to himself. In this arrogant declara- 
 tion he does not take cognizance of the fact that 
 through all the earlier ages of human existence 
 it was physictil force which held in abeyance 
 the brain and soul of the human race. The 
 creature the physically weaker was the subject 
 creature. In its abject condition intellect, spir- 
 ituality, aspiration went for naught. Out of 
 man's primal brutahty, out of his instinctive, 
 unrestrained appetite, muscle, and will, every 
 form of human servitude, every shade of human 
 ignorance has grown, 
 
 " At the beginning the earth was without form and 
 void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep. 
 The Spirit of God moved upon the face of the 
 waters. God said, Let there he light, and there was^ 
 lightr 
 
 The physical chaos of creation was not deeper 
 or more dreadful than the mental and moral 
 chaos which succeeded the Fall of Man. We 
 are just emerging from it. We have not yet 
 escaped it. But to-day, as at the beginning, it 
 is Spirit brooding over Matter — illuminating, 
 inspiring, triumphing over it — which brings 
 light into this troubled world. Two forces 
 have always pervaded the universe : the un- 
 seen and the seen, the material and the spirit- 
 ual. Man represents the material, woman the 
 
 14 
 
210 OUTLINES. 
 
 spiritual — the masculine and the feminine. 
 These forces are but just beginning to reign 
 together in equihbrium. Man has been wo- 
 man's master because he has been the physic- 
 ally stronger. Woman is ceasing to be man's 
 slave, because, in the equal development of the 
 human race, brain and soul in her are coming 
 to prevail over the merely selfish and material 
 in him. To-day the manliest man would be 
 ashamed to look into the eyes of the woman by 
 his side and tell her that he is the master, be- 
 cause he could knock her down with perfect 
 ease, and break her bones with much greater 
 facility than she could his. And yet, out of 
 man's brute nature, out of that most ignoble 
 in himself, has come his loudest assumption of 
 superiority, his longest and lowest tyranny. 
 Everj^ da}'' the human race is moving further 
 and further away from the supremacy of brute 
 power. Yet long ages to come must pass be- 
 fore woman can outgrow, mentally or morally, 
 the marks of her manacles. The man born and 
 bred a slave, even if freed, never loses wholly 
 the feeling or manner of a slave. The woman 
 born to physical subjection and degradation can 
 never seek or use knowledge as her birthright. 
 Never till she holds her sex in honor, as man 
 holds his, can she be his equal, even in her own 
 
CASTE IN SEX. -^ IN KNOWLEDGE. 211 
 
 realm. The deepest insult which can be shown 
 to a human being is to associate it solely with 
 material functions, with no cognizance and no 
 consideration of its intellectual and spiritual 
 power. This insult, through all ages, man has 
 offered to woman. That it has come from man 
 proves his inferiority to her in the very element 
 of her nature which he ignores and insults. She 
 has ever delighted to honor him in his loft- 
 iest attributes. She pays homage to his intel- 
 lect, his soul. She worships in him something 
 beyond sex, which will live glorious forever. 
 While she, reaching out through every impulse 
 of her heart, to the sweetest in human affection, 
 through every faculty of her brain, to the high- 
 est in nature and art — she to him has been 
 chiefly the creature of his pleasure. Being this, 
 whenever and howsoever she has proved her- 
 self to be morCf by so much he has deemed 
 himself defrauded, and proclaimed loudly that 
 she had outleaped her sphere. Man, mighty in 
 brute power, and by that enthralled to his 
 senses, through it has made woman his subject 
 and slave. That he might make her these 
 more utterly, he began by declaring that she 
 had no soul. She was naught but a body, and 
 that body was his. Struggling, aspiring under 
 such a ban, do you marvel that woman through 
 
212 OUTLINES. 
 
 soul and brain has wrought Httle ? Marvel 
 more that she has wrought anything. China 
 boasts of the most ancient civilization of earth. 
 Its system of scholarship is the most minute, 
 intense, and exhaustive in the world. Yet, 
 within a year an imperial mandate has gone 
 forth that no Christian teacher can open with- 
 in its walls a school for women; that every 
 one already established shall be closed. Is it 
 strange that the Chinese woman believes that, 
 if true to certain vows while living, after death 
 she will return to earth in the form of a man ? 
 To her, with his immunities, that seems reward 
 enough for all she suffers or loses here. Athens, 
 the home of beauty, the focus of learning, of 
 art, of aesthetic amusement, of pohtical freedom, 
 worshipping the form of woman on every shrine, 
 made her a prisoner in every home. Every 
 Greek pulse thrilled with life and action ; every 
 Greek heart throbbed strong with the passion 
 of freedom ; every Greek eye craved the divine 
 harmony of beauty ; yet the Athenian woman, 
 within sight of all, yearning for all, embodying 
 all, was shut into a sordid, slavish existence, 
 or seized freedom and culture at the price of 
 infamy. An Athenian, in open court, telling 
 how good a husband he was, began in this 
 wise : '' As a husband I rendered her situation 
 
CASTE IN SEX, —IN KNOWLEDGE. 213 
 
 agreeable, but as a woman she was left neither 
 the mistress of her fortune nor of her own 
 actions." 
 
 Nearly three hundred years ago a young girl 
 in Dijon, France, conceived the insane and pro- 
 fane idea that even girls should learn the alpha- 
 bet. She appealed to her father, who was a 
 member of the Provincial Parliament; and he 
 consulted four doctors of law, who decided that 
 it was " a demoniacal work for girls " either to 
 teach or to learn the alphabet. Whereupon 
 the sons of Dijon arose in riot, and stoned 
 Fran9oise de Saintonges for her wicked designs 
 upon the understandings of her sisters. She, 
 nothing daunted, took fifty Uvres, all she had, 
 hired a httle house, and with five other maid- 
 ens entered it. It took all her money to pay 
 her rent. " We have no beds," she said ; " but 
 we spend our nights in prayer," The craven 
 father relented sufficiently to send from his 
 abundant table cold victuals for herself and 
 maidens. They went on from the alphabet to 
 learn many other things. Twelve years from 
 that day on which they were stoned Dijon held 
 high carnival in their honor. Forth from their 
 humble house walked a hundred maidens, clothed 
 in white, while the bells of the city rang and the 
 people strewed flowers in their pathway. They 
 
214 OUTLINES. 
 
 were preceded by the entire Provincial Parlia- 
 ment, and by all tbe soldiers of the province, 
 to the stately building which stands to-day in 
 Dijon, a monument to the everlasting glory of 
 Fran^oise de Saintonges. 
 
 The first thing that the Pilgrims did, after 
 planting themselves in Boston, was to found 
 a school for boys. Their sisters cried so loud 
 for the forbidden fruit of knowledge that the 
 city elders were induced to open a high school. 
 Immediately its doors were thronged. With 
 ninety-nine boys two hundred eighty-six girls 
 appeared as candidates. Worse — after the al- 
 phabet and figures, they aspired to Latin and 
 Euclid. The city council met, and resolved 
 that this immoderate zeal for knowledge was 
 too much for the man-nature to bear. In eigh- 
 teen months the school was finally closed, be- 
 cause of its multitude of scholars of the pro- 
 scribed sex. 
 
 Yet no less a woman was the first instigator 
 of Harvard College. Lucy Downing, imbued 
 with the caste of sex into which she was born, 
 was one of the ten thousand women who sacri- 
 ficed themselves and their daughters for their 
 sons. She was the sister of Governor Win- 
 throp, of Massachusetts, and sent her daughters 
 into service, and lived poorly and meanly her- 
 
CASTE IN SEX. — IN KNO WLEDGE. 215 
 
 self, that '' her George " might be educated. 
 In October, 1636, she wrote from London to 
 her brother, the Governor : " If God should 
 call me, I could go far nimbler to New England 
 if a college could be established there, which, in 
 my opinion, would put no small life into the 
 plantation, besides being of incalculable benefit 
 to George. The result of this sisterly appeal 
 was that in 1636 the General Court of Boston 
 voted four hundred pounds to a college, to be 
 established in Cambridge. In 1640, second on 
 the list of the. first graduating class was George 
 Downing, the nephew of Governor Winthrop. 
 George Downing lived to serve with distinction 
 under Cromwell ; to be a " turn-coat " under 
 the Stuarts ; a baronet, and " a great man," 
 who snubbed his mother and refused her money 
 when, at the age of seventy-three, she asked 
 him for it. It was then that she wrote to one 
 of the sisters whom she had put out to service 
 for the sake of this brother : " Your brother 
 George has bought another totvn^ but more your 
 brother George will not hear of for me. He 
 says that it is only covetousness that makes me 
 ask for more." Yet in his unfilial thankless- 
 ness George Downing did not differ in spirit 
 from thousands of learned professors and popu- 
 lar ministers of the present day, who, having 
 
216 OUTLINES, 
 
 been educated at the cost of devout women, who 
 had left their own daughters untaught to edu- 
 cate other people's sons, now shut in the faces 
 of women the doors of the very colleges which 
 could never have existed without them. 
 
 n. 
 
 IN EDUCATION. 
 
 • After the fate of the first Boston high school 
 open to girls, it can hardly be accepted as proof 
 that the Boston woman was intellectually the 
 inferior of the Boston man, because as late as 
 the day of John Adams, while Harvard College 
 lavished all its opportunity of education upon 
 him, she was denied the privilege almost of 
 learning how to spell. Barely to read and write 
 decently, with the knowledge of dancing, at 
 that time made up the sum total of a woman's 
 education. Yet, in defiance of it, out of her 
 clear, strong head and deep, loving heart, Abi- 
 gail Adams wrote letters to her son, John 
 Quincy Adams, which, with her example, made 
 the strongest moral force in his education, and 
 which will live in literature as long as any 
 speech of her more liberally educated husband. 
 It proves how much more powerfully is one 
 
CASTE IN SEX. — IN EDUCATION. 217 
 
 human being individually than any statute of 
 law which proscribes it or oppresses it ; that in 
 all ages and conditions women have existed 
 who, through sheer mental and spiritual force, 
 have commanded wisdom and the reverence of 
 men m the very face of the sneer, " You are 
 only a woman." We need not go outside of our 
 own race or language to learn in defiance of 
 what ridicule and prejudice they did it. A few 
 sentences from Swift's famous letter " To a 
 Young Lady on her Marriage " will indicate to 
 what stage the education of women had ad- 
 vanced in the age of Queen Anne. He says : — 
 
 " It is a little hard that not one gentleman's daugh- 
 ter in a thousand should be brousfht to read or under- 
 stand her own natural tongue, or to judge of the 
 easiest books that are written in it ; as any one may 
 find who can have the patience to hear them, when 
 they are disposed to mangle a play or novel, where 
 the least word out of the common road is sure to dis- 
 concert them. And it is no wonder, when they are 
 not so much as taught to spell in their childhood, nor 
 can ever attain to it in their whole lives. 
 
 " I advise you, therefore, to read aloud more or 
 less every day to your husband, if he will permit 
 you, or to any other friend (but not a female one) 
 who is able to set you right ; and as for spelling, you 
 may compass it in time, by making collections from 
 the books you read. 
 
218 OUTLINES. 
 
 " I know very well that those who are commonly 
 called learned women have lost all manner of credit 
 by their impertinent talkativeness ; but there is an 
 easy remedy for this, if you once consider that, after 
 all the pains you may be at, you never can arrive in 
 point of learning to the perfection of a school-hoy. 
 
 " Your sex employ more thought and application 
 to be fools than to be wise or useful. When I reflect 
 on this, I cannot conceive you to be human creatures, 
 but a certain sort of species hardly a degree above a 
 monkey, who has more diverting tricks than any of 
 you, is an animal less mischievous and expensive, 
 might in time be a tolerable critic in velvet and bro- 
 cade, and, for aught I know, would equally become 
 them." 
 
 History has not recorded how refined or sen- 
 sitive by nature the English maiden was who 
 received this letter from Dean Swift; but any 
 woman of sensibility in the present day can 
 easily decide how much such a letter would en- 
 courage herself in the pursuit of learning. Only 
 sixty years ago Sidney Smith wrote that there 
 was no rational defense for the great disparity 
 between the education of men and women in 
 England. The advance is great ; yet to-day the 
 sphit of Caste in Sex prevails in the education 
 of women both in England and in America. 
 Never till the human race outgrows it can simple 
 justice be meted to woman in any life or work 
 
CASTE IN SEX. — IN EDUCATION 219 
 
 that she attempts. Never till she commands 
 her faculties and functions as man commands 
 his can she be judged justly in love, in learn- 
 ing, in labor, in creative art. Never till she has 
 outgrown and outUved the caste of sex in herself 
 can she command the high justice which all 
 women long for and a few so loudly demand. She 
 has yet to reahze — or, at least, to act as if she 
 reahzed — that, whatever ideal of excellence a 
 woman commands, she must command it as 
 woman, not as man. Ever since the world was 
 made, women have been abused for being 
 women, till the brightest of them have come to 
 despise their own sex, to apologize for it, to 
 abuse it, or to try to be above it. For centu- 
 ries a woman believed the highest compliment 
 a man could pay her was to tell her that she 
 was '' superior to her sex." If she was ambi- 
 tious and wanted to do something great, she 
 tried to do it like a man ; and, of course, made 
 a miserable failure. To-day the most '' ad- 
 vanced " women think it necessary to talk and 
 act like men, as if there were any special honor 
 in that ! A witty woman, anxious to impress a 
 man with her wit, in nine cases out of ten falls 
 to ridiculing her own sex, its weaknesses and 
 foibles. The man may laugh, he may even 
 admire her briUiancy, but by so much must she 
 
220 OUTLINES. 
 
 sink in his esteem, if tie holds her to his own 
 code of honor. If not too self-absorbed, she 
 would notice that he offers her no antithesis 
 in himself by ridicuhng his own sex. A man is 
 proud of being a man. He has pride of sex ; he 
 holds his own in honor. In nine cases out of 
 ten a man is true to all other men. He will 
 hide rather than expose the faults of men ; if 
 he cannot justify them, at least, he covers them 
 with silence. 
 
 A woman, if not ashamed or sorry that she 
 is a woman, is so imbued with the conviction 
 that her sex is held in latent contempt that she 
 deprecates or apologizes for it, if only to prove 
 to the man with whom she converses that she is 
 superior or indifferent to it, that by so much 
 she personally may rise in his estimation. A 
 race that does not believe in itseK can never 
 rise above the level of slavery. A sex false 
 to its own highest possibility, a sex not true 
 to itself, mast accept degradation. A woman 
 would despise a man who habitually ridiculed 
 or sneered at men, at whatever work they did 
 or attempted, however poorly done ; she would 
 despise him as a man false to his own sex, to 
 his own manhood. Is it any less false or des- 
 picable for a woman to do the same thing? 
 The unity of manhood makes half its grandeur. 
 
CASTE IN SEX. —IN EDUCATION 221 
 
 The iinkindness or indifference of woman to 
 woman makes half the weakness of womanhood. 
 When women are as true to women as men are 
 to men — when they hold their womanhood as 
 men hold their manhood — as a glory, not a 
 shame — then and not till then will they rise to 
 the dignity of a united, concentrated, distinctive 
 force in the universe. Not till then can the 
 masculine and feminine soul reign in harmony. 
 Then woman will be content and proud to 
 reign as woman ; she will have no desire to 
 rise above man, will see no special advantage 
 in being like him. She will hold the equi- 
 poise of the human race in abiding with him 
 his equal counterpart, and her glory will be 
 the glory of WOMAIN". That day is not yet. 
 Caste of sex in education, with its root far back 
 in the centuries, blossoms outside of all schools, 
 and bears baleful fruit in millions of htiman 
 homes. How often does a mother take her 
 growing girl and boy and teach to each as only 
 a mother can the mystery of the other's nature ? 
 How often does she teach each to revere the 
 attributes of the other, teach both that in the 
 very difference of their nature and lot they are 
 not to fear or despise, but to cherish and love 
 each other. Instead, as a rule, the boy is 
 simply left to take in prejudice and presump- 
 
222 OUTLINES. 
 
 tion on the score of his sex from a thousand 
 sources. How early the brother learns to lord 
 it over his sister, simply because his parents 
 allow him to do so. He robs her of her treas- 
 ures ; he shuts her out from pleasure with the 
 cry, " You sha'n't. You're a girl ! " He learns, 
 from a thousand careless words uttered every 
 day in his presence, that he is of greater account 
 than his sister, because he is a boy ; that he can 
 enjoy many things of which she is deprived, 
 because he is a boy ; that great hopes are cen- 
 tered in him, solely because he is a boy, and 
 very few in his sister, because she is a girl. She 
 may have the quicker intelligence ; but she is 
 cut short in her studies because she is a girl. 
 There may exist the same need that she should 
 be taught self-help as he ; yet she is left to grow 
 in helpless, untaught dej)endence, because she 
 is a girl. She may have the same longing as 
 he after free scope for her powers ; yet no less 
 they are dwarfed and denied, because she is a 
 girl. After such a process of education from 
 infancy, is it strange that the brother grows up 
 to believe that he is the superior being, not be- 
 cause he has given any proof of it whatever, 
 but solely because he is a man ? Or is it 
 strange that the sister begins the life of woman- 
 hood mentally maimed, crippled through all her 
 
CASTE IN SEX. — IN EDUCATION, 223 
 
 nature, feeble and aimless, when for not one 
 day of her existence has she been allowed to 
 forget that she is a girl, and solely because a 
 girl, proscribed in every sphere of development. 
 A man's arrogance and tyranny seldom begins 
 by his own fireside. It begins far back, when a 
 little boy he played with his sister. Not na- 
 ture, but his mother, with caste in sex, has 
 made him what he is, and made his sister what 
 she is. 
 
 Not long ago a boy ten years of age burst 
 into the room where I sat with his mother, and, 
 throwing his books upon the table with great 
 violence, his face flushed with passion, he ex- 
 claimed, — 
 
 " I'll never go inside of that schoolroom 
 again." 
 
 " What is the matter, Ernest ? " asked his 
 mother. 
 
 " They have given me a woman for a teach- 
 er ; and I won't be taught by a woman." 
 
 " Has she been unkind to you, Ernest ? " 
 
 " No ; but she is a woman. All the boys in 
 B. will laugh at me when they find out my 
 teacher is a woman. I never had a woman for 
 my teacher, and I never will." 
 
 " Don't you know that some of the greatest 
 men who have ever lived m the world were 
 
224 OUTLINES. 
 
 taught by women when they were much older 
 than you are, Ernest ? " I ventured to ask. 
 
 " I don't care," exclaimed this young citizen 
 of America. " / ain't agoin' to be ! Boo-hoo! 
 boo-hoo !" 
 
 '' There,,don't cry, Ernest," said his mother. 
 " If you feel so bad about it, you needn't go 
 any more. To-morrow I wiU look you up a 
 
 new school. I'm sorry, though, for Mr. 's 
 
 is one of the best in the city." 
 
 Hearing this. Master Ernest wiped his eyes 
 and his nose, seized his cap, and stamped forth 
 in triumph, to tell the boy next door that Mb 
 mother wouldn't send him to be taught by a 
 woman ! 
 
 The boy had passed one crisis in his life, to 
 travel (spiritually) downward toward mean- 
 ness and tyranny. Had his mother said : '' Er- 
 nest, I have perfect confidence in Mr. 
 
 and in the lady he has placed over you. You 
 must go to your teacher," the boy would have 
 learned two lessons — alas ! unlearned — which 
 would have changed his entire character : first 
 to obey his mother ; second, not to despise his 
 teacher because she is a woman. 
 
 Who can say that already in his heart the 
 boy does not despise his mother; or that when, 
 as a man, he shall despise her still more for 
 being a woman, she will not deserve her fate ? 
 
XXI. 
 
 WOMAN SUFFKAGE. 
 
 Dr. Bushnell admits too much in his state- 
 ment of the question in the first chapter of his 
 book to be able afterward to maintain his ar- 
 gument for hmitation and subjection with force 
 or even dignity. Once allow, as Dr. Bushnell 
 does, that women should be educated with men, 
 that the training of universities, the opportu- 
 nities of the learned professions should be open 
 to them, and after that it would be utterly- 
 useless for Dr. Bushnell or .any man to mark the 
 exact boundary of progression to a human be- 
 ing thus disciplined and educated. She alone 
 could find the limit in the constitution of her 
 own body and mind. When she had reached it 
 she alone could know; no outside mind, though 
 peering through the spectacles of a Doctor of 
 Divinity, could inform her. Her capacity could 
 be the only measure of her function. When he 
 first became aware that men and women were 
 being educated together in the colleges of Ober- 
 
 15 
 
226 OUTLINES. 
 
 lin and Antioch, Dr. Bushuell says : " I confess 
 with some mortification that when the thing was 
 fii'st done I was a little shocked even by the 
 rumor of it. But when I drifted into Oberlin, 
 ,and spent a Sunday there, I had a new chapter 
 opened that has cost me the loss of a consider- 
 able cargo of wise opinions, all scattered never 
 again to be gathered." All the danger and 
 wrong now predicted as the most direful result 
 of men and women participating in the right of 
 suffrage, was more than foretold as the inevi- 
 table result of their being educated in the same 
 schools. Dr. Bushnell says : " Our new codes 
 of training are even a surprise to us ; compel- 
 ling us to rectify a great many foohsh prejudices 
 that we supposed to be sanctioned as inevitable . 
 wisdom by long ages of experiences." Well, 
 Dr. Bushnell, if you live long enough, you will 
 find yourself compelled to rectify some more 
 very foolish and feeble prejudices which you 
 have set down on your pages as the very essence 
 of '^ inevitable wisdom." It is not likely that 
 you are very much more '' shocked " on the verge 
 of the '' Gulf of Female Suffrage " than you 
 were twenty years ago over the prospect of wo- 
 men and men going to school together. You de- 
 clare now that no harm, but " beneficial results," 
 have come from that. Suppose that you wait 
 
WOMAN SUFFRAGE. 227 
 
 till "woman's suffrage " is tried, before you de- 
 cide whether to work yourself into a very pain- 
 ful state of "horror," or to bestow u23on the 
 enfranchised sex your benign and smiling appro- 
 bation. No harm has ever yet befallen the world 
 through the open, honorable association of men 
 and AYomen, either in education, church, or state ; 
 but unutterable harm has come through their 
 covert and hidden relations in every age of the 
 world and in every sphere of Uf e. Woman in 
 politics ! Woman has always been in politics. 
 The question is not concerning the fact, but its 
 relations. Shall woman remain forever in gov- 
 ernment a covert, irresponsible, unacknowledged 
 force ; or shall she be trained to high, respon- 
 sible power — to be honored no less as woman^ 
 wife, mother, and friend,, because she represents 
 herself in the laws which concern her, her chil- 
 dren, her property, no less than man ? How 
 could Dr. Bushnell have proved more utterly 
 the weakness- of his own argument than by 
 taking refuge in* the proposition, that the princi- 
 ple of human liberty as embodied in the Decla- 
 ration of Independence is the " doctrine of the 
 woods," a " scheme of free-thinkers and ' ma- 
 lignants' like Rousseau and Voltaire." After 
 informing us that he does this " for the purpose 
 of taking down a little our egregious opinion of 
 
228 OUTLINES. 
 
 the suffrage," and that it will come to its end 
 and disa|)pear '^ within a comparatively short 
 run of time," no one need wonder that he turns 
 so lovingly to the Chinese, adding : " God for- 
 bid that they ever be so far captivated by our 
 dreadfully cheap way of suffrage as to give up 
 their cadetship way of promotion for it ; a plan 
 that has put the whole nation climbing upward, 
 and will keep it climbing to the end of the 
 world." And this from an evangelical clergy- 
 man concerning a people who, with hundreds of 
 thousands of authors and a literature reaching 
 back past the siege of Troy and the days of 
 Pericles, to-day, in the nineteenth century, mur- 
 ders half of its female children at birth ; and 
 who, with all its competitive examinations and 
 intense scholarship, has not a school nor a book 
 in all the land for the mothers of its people ! If 
 the ideas of republican freedom are only '' catch- 
 words of liberty ; " if the principles of the 
 people's government, bought at such cost of life 
 and treasure, are only " glittering generalities ; " 
 if we are to go back to ohgarchy, or '' one man 
 power," nothing more need be said either about 
 manhood or womanhood suffrage. But we may 
 ^hank God that no wave of an ecclesiastical hand, 
 nor stroke of florid pen, can blot out the princi- 
 iples of human government, dearer to the Ameri- 
 
WOMAN SUFFRAGE. 229 
 
 can people than life itself. It is only by deny- 
 ing the principles of that government that Dr. 
 Bushnell can escape their conclusions. Once 
 admit man's natural right to suffrage as a hu- 
 man being, and by no logical process can you 
 deny it to woman. 
 
 Dr. Bushnell takes vast credit to himself, and 
 calls on all women to note that he puts his ipse 
 dixit in a much pleasanter form, with less 
 '' pounding emphasis," than the apostles. He 
 adds : " Of course, Paul did not know every- 
 thing, whether about women or on any other 
 subject." After such a clerical admission, he 
 cannot well call any woman " unorthodox " or 
 "infidel," if she coincides. It is true that Dr. 
 Bushnell on every page shows a disposition to 
 put his lordly statements in the least disagree- 
 able manner possible. His intention is to be 
 verT/ generous ; but he is generous, patronizing, 
 tender even, in an overshadowing, Olympic 
 sort of fashion, that might be provoking if it 
 were not ridiculous. Personally full of amia- 
 ble feeling toward woman, he makes as many 
 concessions to her demands as are possible with 
 his unutterable man-conceit. The inexpressible 
 sense of superiority which he feels as man to 
 woman as woman, his delight in his own '' sway- 
 force," so pervades and prevails over him that, 
 
230 OUTLINES. 
 
 unconsciously, apparently, it makes him contra- 
 dict his own abstract statements of the question 
 on every page. Nothing could prove more 
 clearly than his book that what he calls '' a re- 
 form against Nature" is simply a reform — an 
 irrepressible protest from woman against man's 
 natural conceit, against his assumptions of supe- 
 riority as man over her -as woman. Of course, 
 this is nowhere more apparent than when Dr. 
 Bushnell speaks of woman's ministrations in the 
 Church. What a comment is it on the bigotry 
 of his brethren to say that Ms conclusions are 
 far in advance of most evangelical clergymen of 
 our day. How many of them to-day are willing 
 to give the largest interpretation to the words of 
 St. Paul? Who are willing to acknowledge 
 that many of the specific reasons, customs, and 
 laws on which those words were based have long 
 since passed away ; and that with them should 
 have passed their restrictions also ? Only God 
 can measure the narrowness, the littleness, the 
 personal meanness, which has ruled in the 
 Church under cover of the words of the great 
 Apostle ! What has not woman given to the 
 Christian Church ? She has lived for it, she 
 has died for it. The idols of her heart, the cost- 
 liest treasures of her fortune, she has conse- 
 crated to it. Through all ages she has been, in 
 
 J 
 
WOMAN SUFFRAGE. 231 
 
 the largest measure, its brain and its soul. Yet 
 to-night in how many Christian conference- 
 meetings and prayer-meetings could she rise to 
 tell in simple utterance "what the Lord has 
 done for her soul," without being challenged 
 and silenced by some sanctified masculine war- 
 den of the tenets of St. Paul ? I can count the 
 years on my hands since I heard a New England 
 pastor's wife, a holy woman, who rose to speak 
 a few words of personal experience in a Sab- 
 bath-evening prayer-meeting, silenced by one of 
 her husband's deacons. 
 
 It is amazing to see with what a majestic 
 sweep of the pen Dr. Bushnell disposes, in 
 three or four pages, of the great female reigns 
 of history. There is no argument here. The 
 greatest facts of the past are all ignored. The 
 reigji of the great Catherine of Russia, who in 
 her passions and administrative talents equaled 
 the most powerful man ; the reign of Maria The- 
 resa, whose gallant Hungarians shouted " We 
 will die for our king, Maria Theresa ; " the 
 reigns of the princesses of France, who ruled in 
 defiance of the Salic law, these and many others 
 Dr. Bushnell does not mention at all. He 
 could not, and yet prove that women-rulers 
 have been failures. If history proves anything, 
 it proves that women of one type have talent 
 
232 OUTLINES, 
 
 for government, and have been among tlie most 
 powerful rulers of the earth. But it suits Dr. 
 Bushnell's purpose to declare that none of these 
 sovereign women were great. Where they ap- 
 proximated to greatness, it was only because 
 they " reflected men ! " Elizabeth of England 
 was not a great ruler, because she showed 
 weaknesses as a woman. Judged by this stand- 
 ard, which man ruler among all was ever great ? 
 Do we find one, even among the most power- 
 ful, who did not at some time betray personal 
 littleness ? Then Frederic the Great was not a 
 great king, because he was a literary pedant, 
 and quarreled with Voltaire, and was shabby to 
 his sister. Napoleon was not great, because he 
 was devoured by envy, and was jealous of a 
 woman's intellect all his life. Surely, he was 
 not great when he so far forgot the gentleness 
 of a gentleman as to push Madame De Stael 
 behind him, that she might not enter a room 
 before him. 
 
 Dr. Bushnell discusses his question from be- 
 ginning to end entirely in reference to a theo- 
 retic man and woman. Most people carry an 
 ideal man and woman in their head. And 
 when the practical relations of the man and 
 woman of every day are discussed with refer- 
 ence only to these impossible ideals, we need 
 
WOMAN SUFFRAGE. ' 233 
 
 not marvel at any ridiculous conclusion. Dr. 
 Bushnell's '* woman " is a wondrous compound 
 of violet and mignonnette, of angelic and of im- 
 becile qualities. In one chapter she abides in " a 
 sphere of silence ; " in another she is a husband- 
 hunter of the leap-year sort ; in another she is 
 " elected to gentleness and patience," or '' to the 
 dreadful lot of violence and tyrant cruelty ; " 
 in every one she is an abject " subject." His 
 " man " roars loosely through every page of the 
 book. " Thunder " is a pet word with Dr. 
 Bushnell. He would make us believe that at 
 least every other man we meet is a Jupiter, 
 emitting thunderbolts at every breath. He 
 says . ''It is the heavy tread, the thundering 
 guttural voice^ the Jupiter-like air and expression 
 (and mayi is not to blame for these^^^^ [no, poor 
 fellow] that pass the law of female subordina- 
 tion. Then he gently asks his feminine com- 
 pound of botanical and seraphic properties, 
 " why she should wish to encroach upon this 
 man's thunder-force ? " Heaven forbid ! What 
 woman would not gladly perform a painful pil- 
 grimage, if so she could but find her Jove, and 
 then fall down and worship him ! Alas ! the 
 actual Jupiters are very scarce. Somehow the 
 average man has missed the godlike proportion 
 both in mind and stature. Very often he is 
 
234 OUTLINES. 
 
 little more than a bundle of unreasoning preju- 
 dices, opinions, and passions ; arrogating to him- 
 self utter supremacy simply through the fact 
 of being a man, not from any mental or moral 
 height which he has reached as an individual 
 soul. Yet no less '' this masculine half-being 
 must be allowed to sink into the bigger self 
 that he calls home, and be sheltered in the 
 womanly peace." He finds it very pleasant, yet 
 not more pleasant than the " womanly peace " 
 finds it to shelter and to love him. Few are 
 the women who would not choose to take this 
 *' half-being," disagreeable as he sometimes 
 finds it possible to make himself, and abide 
 in his protection as does he in her ministration. 
 It is not possible. No amount of fine theo- 
 rizing annuls the fact that tens of thousands 
 of women must shape their own fortunes and 
 take care of themselves. In England, in 1861, 
 840,000 married women supported themselves 
 and their children by their own labor. This is 
 a hard fact to set against Dr. Bushnell's rem- 
 edy of universal marriages, to be accomplished 
 through the workings of a gigantic matrimonial 
 intelligence office, and a perpetual leap-year 
 privilege accorded to woman to propose mar- 
 riage to men. If anything could astonish one in 
 Dr. Bushnell's book, it vfo^ld be that so wise a 
 
WOMAN SUFFRAGE, 235 
 
 man could be so foolish. Which would be the 
 more unwomanly in woman, to represent her^ 
 self as a human being and citizen, or to so far 
 outrage the finest instincts of her womanhood as 
 to offer herself, by indirect act or avowed word, 
 to a man who had never sought her ? What 
 more degrades woman to-day than that she so 
 often seeks marriage as a support? Why is 
 the holy sacrament of love, the sanctity of the 
 family state, so often prostituted and destroyed, 
 but because marriage is entered upon as a neces- 
 sity or a convenience ? And what can so place 
 marriage on its only true basis of mutual love, 
 mutual fitness, mutual esteem, as for woman to 
 make herself independent of it as a mere means 
 of subsistence ? 
 
 If woman was in fact the " subject " creat- 
 ure which Dr. Bushnell describes, she would 
 not demand for herseK and her children what 
 she demands to-day. After so many centuries 
 of travail, it would be a sad conclusion to come 
 to, that the human family had not struggled 
 upward to a higher and completer development. 
 Such development could not come to one half 
 of the human race alone. Amid all tlie blind 
 groping of women toward something brighter 
 and better, amid all the mistakes and extrava- 
 gances which they commit, the fact that woman 
 
236 OUTLINES. 
 
 as woman demands for herself the complete 
 right to herself, to the use of all her faculties as 
 a human being, is the most hopeful promise of 
 the time for the future of the whole human 
 family. Man for so many ages- has told her 
 what to do, what not to do, what she was capa- 
 ble of doing and being, what she was not capa- 
 ble of doing or being, that to hear her declare 
 for' herself what she can do, what she has a 
 right to do, what in God's good time she will 
 do, is an invasion on precedent which he does 
 not excuse or pardon. All his instincts and 
 prejudices are armed against such innoyation. 
 For this reason every magazme and newspaper 
 that we take up bristles with his deprecations, 
 his warnings, his sneers, his injunctions, and his 
 old, old story of what woman is and what she 
 is not. Just here lies the lesson which the men 
 of this age must learn. It is the core of the 
 whole " Woman Question.'' The time has 
 come for woman to decide for herseK what she 
 is and what she is not, to prove by opportimity 
 what she can do and what she cannot do. 
 Every human being carries the limitations of its 
 action in its own constitution. It holds in its 
 own consciousness the indice of its special, indi- 
 vidual work. No outside soul can decide what 
 that work is, — what its limitations are. No 
 
WOMAN SUFFRAGE. 237 
 
 woman could completely represent a man. No 
 man can represent a woman. He lias tried to 
 do it for centuries, and the result proves his 
 utter incapacity. His very difference from her 
 makes it impossible. The hour has come for 
 woman to represent herself. Heretofore man has 
 shut against her the gates of advancement and 
 of culture open to himself. He has oppressed 
 her with unequal laws, and then told her she 
 was his inferior. Heretofore she has been meas- 
 ured and judged without half a chance as a 
 human being. Hereafter she is to be measured 
 and judged by her chance. Hereafter her de- 
 velopment must be measured by the limits of 
 her physical and mental constitution. How far 
 those limits disqualify her for any employment 
 or place can only be proved by free competi- 
 tion. It remains yet to be proved what those 
 limits are. There may be a few mistaken 
 women, who imagine that some height is to be 
 gained by women seeking to be as men. Un- 
 derlying this excrescence is the vast underlying 
 need already voiced into a universal cry — the 
 woman's need of free development, growth, op- 
 portunity, as woman. Harmony of organiza- 
 tion, perfection of function, subtle fineness of 
 brain-fibre, earnestness of soul, devotion of 
 heart, spirituality untrammeledy must ever be 
 
238 OUTLINES, 
 
 the best feminine forces which she can bring to 
 the Avorld's service. No thoughtful, far-seeing 
 woman, however she may admit the justice of 
 equal suffrage, believes for one moment that 
 she can find her highest enfranchisement in the 
 casting of the ballot. 
 
XXII. 
 
 "UNA AND HER PAUPERS." 
 
 " Una and her paupers " is the designation 
 given by Florence Nightingale to her whose 
 name I once more lift up for the sake of other 
 women, especially for that of my own country- 
 women. Says Florence Nightingale of her : — 
 
 " One woman has died — a woman attractive, and 
 rich, and young, and witty ; yet a veiled and silent 
 woman, distinguished by no other genius but the 
 divine genius, working hard to train herself, in order 
 to train others to walk in the footsteps of Him who 
 went about doing good. 
 
 " She died, as she lived, at her post in one of the 
 largest workhouse infirmaries in this kingdom, the 
 first in which trained nursing has been introduced. 
 She is the pioneer of workhouse nursing. I do not 
 give her name ; were she alive, she would beg me 
 not. Of all human beings I have ever known, she 
 was (I was about to say) the most free from the 
 desire of the praise of men. But I cannot say the 
 most free, for she was perfectly free. I will therefore 
 call her Una, if you please ; for, when her whole life 
 and image rise before me, so far from thinking the 
 story of Una and her lion a myth, I say here is Una 
 
240 OUTLINES. 
 
 in real flesh and blood — Una and her paupers, more 
 untamable than lions." " She lived the life and died 
 the death of the saints and martyrs, though the 
 greatest sinner would not have been more surprised 
 than she to have heard this said of herself. In less 
 than three years she had reduced one of the most dis- 
 orderly hospital populations in the world to some- 
 thing like Christian discipline, such as the police them- 
 selves wondered at. She had led to be of one mind 
 and heart with her upward of fifty nurses and pro- 
 bationers. She had converted a vestry to the convic- 
 tion of the economy as well as the humanity of nurs- 
 ing pauper sick by trained nurses. She had converted 
 the poor-law board, a body not usually given to much 
 enthusiasm about Unas and paupers. She had dis- 
 armed all opposition, all sectarian zealotism ; so that 
 Roman Catholic and Unitarian, High Church and Low 
 Church, rose up and called her blessed. All, of all 
 shades of religious creed, seemed to have merged their 
 differences in her, seeing in her the one true essential 
 thing^ compared with which they acknowledged their 
 differences to be as nothing. 
 
 " In less than three years — the time generally 
 given to the ministry of that Saviour whom she so 
 earnestly strove closely to follow — she did all this. 
 She had the gracefulness, the wit, the unfailing cheer- 
 fulness — qualities so remarkable, but so much over- 
 looked in our Saviour's life. She had the absence of 
 all asceticism or mortification which characterized His 
 work, and any real work in the present day, as in his 
 day. 
 
" UNA AND HER PAUPERS." 241 
 
 ^' All last winter she had under her charge above 
 50 nurses, above 150 pauper scourers, from 1,290 to 
 1,350 patients, being from two to three hundred more 
 than the number of beds. All these she had to pro- 
 vide and arrange for, often receiving an influx of 
 patients without a moment's warning. Among them 
 were prostitutes, worn-out thieves, worn-out drunk- 
 ards. No small portioji of her work was to see that 
 the dissolute and desperate did not corrupt the young 
 
 and not hopelessly fallen How did she do it all ? 
 
 She did it simply by the manifestation of the life that 
 was within her, the trained, well-ordered life of doing 
 her Father's business, so different from the governing, 
 the ordering about, the driving prmciple. Every- 
 body recognized it — the paupers, the vestry, tfie 
 nurses, the poor-law board. The nurses would have 
 died for her, because they always felt that she cared 
 for them — for each one in herself — solely for their 
 well-being. Because she had no care of praise in her, 
 she had a greater power of carrying her followers 
 with her than any woman or man I ever knew 
 
 "We hear much of idle hands and unsatisfied 
 hearts. All England is ringing with the cry for 
 'Woman's Work,' and 'Woman's Mission.' Why 
 are there so few to do the work ? If any one would 
 know what are the lowest depths of human vice and 
 misery, would see the festering mass of decay of living 
 human bodies and human souls, and then would try 
 what one loving soul, filled with the spirit of her God, 
 can do to let in the light of God into this hideous 
 16 
 
242 OUTLINES. 
 
 well, let her study the ways and follow in the steps of 
 this one young, frail woman, who died to show us the 
 way, blessed in her death as in her life." 
 
 " Dear Agnes " she was called by high and 
 low, rich and poor. One who knew her always 
 wi'ites of her : — 
 
 " There are many who can look back upon her 
 from the time when, in her own bright home, in the 
 North of Ireland, she gave her days to tend the poor, 
 where her visit was looked for as a ray of light 
 beaming on body and soul. From those walks which 
 would have annihilated most young ladies she would 
 return, often amid drenching rains, as fresh as a rose 
 to the social evening circle, ever devoted to the 
 service and pleasure of all around her. 
 
 " We love to remember her in her home at Fahan, 
 by the side of Lough S willy, or among the glorious 
 rocks of Port Rush, or as she guided us over the 
 wide sea-floors of the Giant's Causeway ; but we 
 knew her better, and the memories of her are dearer, 
 as in after days she threaded the close courts and al- 
 leys of the back streets of our great city, when she 
 took voluntary share in the toils and cares and joys 
 of our London Bible Mission." 
 
 Yet of this young how^e missionary her sister, 
 who writes her menforials, says : '' Of her it 
 might indeed be said, whatever her hand found 
 to do she did it with her might. She saw — 
 
''UNA AND HER PAUPERS:' 243 
 
 what many, alas ! of the good and useful people 
 of the present day fail to see — that God may 
 be obeyed and glorified as truly in the, small 
 details of domestic life as in the greatest mis- 
 sionary work abroad." 
 
 Such a Hfe as this bears me back to the deep, 
 sweet fountains of womanly character which fed 
 my childhood — to such women as Susannah 
 Wesley, Mary Fletcher, Madame Guion, Cather- 
 ine Adorna, Ann and Sarah Judson, and Mar- 
 garet Prior, of New York. In this loud, egotis- 
 tical day it comes with a touch oi healing. It 
 is a benediction in the air, hushing discord into 
 peace. Listening to its lesson, in the presence 
 of God's poor and sick, one must maryel that so 
 many women of means, of leisure, who fill the 
 world with their outcry for '' opportunity" and 
 work, who rebel against the meagreness and lit- 
 tleness of their pursuits, do not see how broad are 
 the fields, how wonderful the harvest of bodies 
 and of souls, waiting, wasting for woman's touch 
 of mercy. I would not be understood as urg- 
 ing romantic, enthusiastic, untaught women into 
 any mode of hfe for which they are constitu- 
 tionally unfitted. But I wish it were in my 
 power (though I doubt if it is) to say one word 
 to make more desirable to the mass of dissatis- 
 fied, unoccupied, affluent women the education 
 
244 OUTLINES, 
 
 which would fit them for, in varied phases, a 
 life of benevolent labor. There is no more 
 painful sign of the times than the restlessness, 
 the dissatisfaction, the lamenting, and yet the 
 idleness of this class. Women who must work 
 for their living are saved a thousand horrors 
 which beset Fortune's (nominally) more fa- 
 vored children. " I envy you because you are 
 so 61Y.SJ/," said one. '' Oh ! if I only had some- 
 thing of importance to do^ to make me forget 
 little, miserable annoyances." Does that lovely, 
 unhappy woman see an " importance " worth 
 the seeking in the life of Sister Agnes ? It was 
 not an easy life. Oh ! no. Is that why so few 
 comparatively seek it ? Its rewards never take 
 the sound of public applause. Is that why 
 Florence Nightingale must cry : '' Oh ! daugh- 
 ters of God, are there so few to answer? " A 
 growing passion for publicity is fast becoming 
 the bane of American women. They scarcely 
 realize it ; yet it is becoming a prevailing fact 
 that no vocation seems to them to be worth 
 their seeking unless they think that in some 
 way it mil recompense them with applause or 
 '' fame." What a pitiful mistake ! I say this in 
 no way underrating the gift of utterance, the 
 power to embody in color or form any work 
 of imperishable genius. I am glad for every 
 
" UNA AND HER PAUPERS^ 245 
 
 woman who does well, be it on stage, or forum. 
 God never endows a creature with any gift 
 without his purpose — beyond man's finding 
 out. Yet no less the mass of women, aye, and 
 of men, must perform their life-work in silence. 
 They must do their work, whatever that work 
 may be, and find reward simply in its doing. 
 God is just. Woman has come to her day. 
 The feminine soul will take its half of the uni- 
 verse. Yet no less the women who thrill our 
 hearts, before whose very memory we bow in 
 reverence, have done their highest work uncon- 
 sciously. " They builded better than they knew." 
 Do you ask which of all is the happiest life ? 
 Then I say, from my heart, a consecrated one. 
 Be it ''in the world " (so called) or out of it, 
 in highway or by-way, as God wills, still a life 
 consecrated to a service better, higher, sweeter 
 than that of selfrcnjoyment or self -success. 
 We all want to be happy. We all seek per- 
 sonal joy as an instinct. Surely, God meant 
 it to be thus when He made us. Yet no less 
 He has set the deepest sources of joy outside 
 of self-indulgence — in love, obedience, devo- 
 tion, and duty. It may be a hard word, the 
 last; it has a chilly sound. Yet no less it 
 claims and possesses us more and more as our 
 
246 OUTLINES. 
 
 days go on. Impulse, desire, idolatry, aggres- 
 sive selfhood — one by one we lay them down. 
 We drop our weights as we go upward. Lo ! 
 the cross that we called Duty changes to our 
 crown. 
 
XXIII. 
 
 LET US LIVE. 
 
 I OPEliT my window upon the world just 
 wakened, and wonder if in any supreme mo- 
 ment I was ever thankful enough for the great 
 boon of existence. It is so wonderful to be alive ! 
 It is so blessed to live. " Yes," said a friend 
 to me once, "if we did not have to die ; but 
 this world which you delight in so much — the 
 trail of death is over it all." He had buried in 
 the earth the delight of his eyes and tlie love 
 of his life. Silence was my duty, standing 
 within the shadow of that loss. Yet I do not 
 delight in hfe because I am unacquainted with 
 grief. I am pervaded with the consciousness of 
 the impending mystery of death — the awful 
 change to the one taken, the desolation to those 
 left. I lift my weights and move on, often 
 with an unsteady step. I see my friends falter 
 and fall down beneath their crosses. Struggle, 
 strife, treachery, disappointment, loss, anguish, 
 hopelessness — the night-shade of huinan life — 
 I do not forget it ; I cannot. The very shadow 
 
248 OUTLINES. 
 
 that it casts — tlie long, long shadow, often 
 stretching across nearly all the weary space 
 from the cradle to the grave — makes me sure 
 that to few, very few is human life the boon 
 that it might be. I forgot nothing, not even 
 inherited taint, moral, intellectual, spiritual ; 
 the fate in temperament, which is the saddest 
 curse ent&,iled upon perverted humanity. But, 
 after weighing all in the balance, still I am 
 sure that just to live, under ordinary conditions, 
 is a privilege of which we but rarely make the 
 most ; a possibility to whose highest limit we 
 can but seldom rise. We find only at intervals 
 the inevitable doom a drawback to our joy. 
 Usually it is the care, the worry, the torment, 
 which Should not have occurred at all. We 
 have gone so far from Nature. Our lives are 
 so artificial, so false, or so petty. Our great 
 sorrows, like our great opportunities, stand far 
 apart, lonely landmarks in our lives. And it is 
 humiliating to sum up the meagre frets which 
 make the discontent and unhappiness of aver- 
 age dail}^ life. Your new dress fits miserably ; 
 therefore, for the time being, you must be 
 wholly miserable. John thumbs the walls and 
 bangs the doors, and you grow overwrought 
 and wretched. 
 Your husband comes home at night silent, 
 
LET US LIVE. 249 
 
 cold, or cross. All day you have been thinking 
 what a dear fellow he is. He did a splendid 
 deed yesterday, over which you fondly muse. 
 Nobody on earth is quite so fine, or noble, or 
 wholly to be adored as he. He opens the door. 
 Lo ! your god is a moody man. Something has 
 gone wrong — his digestion, very likely. He 
 ate a piece of pie in a restaurant at noon vile 
 enough to tear up mucous membrane and tem- 
 per together. He is blind to all the little love 
 surprises that you have lying in wait for him. 
 He knocks down your bouquet, smashes your 
 vase, bungles and bangs generally. In the 
 keen reaction of disappointment, you answer 
 him shortly or sharply. He in his turn says 
 something which indicates that he does not 
 think you altogether an angel. Either of you 
 would die for the other. No less, each wonders 
 for the moment how the other can be so dis- 
 agreeable. What a perfect evening you had 
 pictured to be spent together. You spend it 
 apart. It ends in tears and suUenness. You 
 dump your head on your pillow and wonder 
 why you were born. 
 
 You leave your work at night, thinking all 
 the way home what a dear wife awaits you 
 there. They are all present with you, a hun- 
 dred graces and goodnesses of hers, of whom 
 
250 OUTLINES. 
 
 nobody else dreams. You think of them, and 
 how much she loves you, till you wonder in 
 penitence how you could ever for a moment 
 have been neglectful or unkind. '' Never, never 
 will I be again," says the spontaneous heart as 
 you open your door on your angel at an unlucky 
 moment. She has just spanked Tom, and is 
 still shaking Susan. Such a day ! Servants, 
 children, markets, and shops all awry. She 
 is a darling. Some other time she will make 
 you sure of it, and beguile you with most 
 delicious chatter and laughter ; but not now. 
 She is wearied, worried, and irritable — over- 
 worked, in fine. You could soothe her in a 
 minute, if you would ; but you won't. You 
 believe in the ancient tradition that " a wife 
 should always meet her husband with a smile." 
 She should always hide her troubles out of his 
 sight. You remind her of this. You tell her 
 that she is " unreasonable." She retorts bit- 
 terly that she '' wishes you could be a woman 
 for an hour." With a superior air, you inform 
 her that you would not be a woman for a mo- 
 ment, upon any consideration. You spend the 
 evening away from home. Nevertheless, you 
 find your pantaloons mended in the morning, 
 and look upon them with a pricking of con- 
 science, that would deepen could you see the 
 
LET US LIVE, 251 
 
 sad tears that dropped into the stitches. You 
 over-eat, or under-eat, or eat at the wrong time. 
 Your headaches, your nerves are like needles, 
 your words are disagreeable, even while the 
 soul within you is yearning for perfection. 
 Perhaps, like poor Eugenie de Guerin, you 
 have a soul that " aflBlicts itself about the least 
 thing. A word, a memory, a tone of voice, a 
 sad expression, a nameless nothing, will often 
 disturb the serenity of your spirit — small sky 
 that the lightest cloud can tarnish." 
 
 The processions of the seasons pass on. The 
 constellations march through space. Days die 
 in serenity and are born in splendor. The uni- 
 verse lavishes its largess for your delight ; yet, 
 of the infinite that it gives, how little you take 
 in, how much less you assimilate. In what 
 poverty you abide. What scanty measure you 
 give out. 
 
 In what perception, or faculty, or emotion do 
 you rise to the supreme fullness of life ? You 
 are haunted with the consciousness of what you 
 miss, of what you have never reached. What 
 dulls and deadens and irritates you this mo- 
 ment ? Pickles and preserves, festering together 
 in your stomach, very likely. Dyspepsia may 
 be the penalty of long- violated laws. Or some 
 discord of noises, or of souls, which you cannot 
 
262 OUTLINES, 
 
 prevent. Something, a petty or mean little 
 something, doubtless; yet it is mighty enough 
 to undermine resolves, to defraud you of the 
 highest and finest essence of Hfe ; more, to rob 
 you of the possession of your highest and sweet- 
 est self. Nor is the victim scarcely ever wholly 
 to blame. The most exquisite flavor of daily 
 existence eludes us chiefly through the lack of 
 a prevailing and pervading courtesy in our con- 
 stant intercourse with each other ; through a 
 careless lack of tender consideration for the 
 temperamental differences and infirmities which 
 exist in all. —, — is " foolish and has notions ; " 
 
 that is reason sufficient why should be 
 
 crossed, and bv so much in no wise considered. 
 We dismiss the fact without study, without one 
 atom of tender feeling, and treat the victim ac- 
 cordingly. Think how many loudly-professing 
 '< friends " you have who never fail to repeat 
 a cutting, sarcastic, or even rude remark ; who 
 just as rarely speak to you one kind or encour- 
 aging word. It is a sad comment on human 
 nature that the one who repeats an unchari- 
 table speech is invariably considered sincere, 
 while the person who ventures to repeat or ex- 
 press a very kindly one is always open to the 
 suspicion of flattery. 
 
 This lack of courtesy, of sympathetic kind- 
 
LET US LIVE, 253 
 
 ness in little things, is surely the bane of aver- 
 age daily life. We see it, feel it, suffer from 
 it everywhere. It is as culpably palpable in the 
 highest council of the nation as it is in the 
 humblest household. 
 
 Yes, Swedenborg's doctrine is true. We in 
 our lower state are infested with demons — the 
 demons of selfishness, which hold us down from 
 the fullness and perfectness of human existence. 
 Yet the soul will not be defrauded altogether 
 of its birthright. Sometimes it soars and takes 
 possession of its high estate. Then you know 
 what it is to be glad to live. In some clear 
 dawn, in some still night, in some moment of 
 rest, when you possess your soul in peace, you 
 reahze it all — the bliss of being, the joy of 
 breathing, the ministry of hght, of color, of odor, 
 of sound, the ecstasy of inspiration, the presence 
 of God. What is it not, the heart in you that 
 loves and lifts its idol up into the light of 
 supernal faith, where it abides transfigured, 
 sanctified, and safe from sin ? What is it not, 
 this yearning for knowledge, this hunger for 
 the perfect, this reaching out toward the illim- 
 itable, this capacity to love, to suffer, to re- 
 nounce, to believe, to know, to aspire, and to 
 strive upward toward the aspiration? All this 
 may be shut in one weary frame, even under 
 
254 OUTLINES. 
 
 a stove-pipe hat or a fashionable bonnet. Every 
 breeze that stirs, every bird that sings, every 
 flower that blooms, every moment, with its ut- 
 most perfect possibility, — is my minister, a 
 portion of the universal joy of life. Get thee 
 behind me, world — the world of mean cares, 
 of self-love, of petty strifes, of poor ambitions ! 
 Give me that which is holy and eternal — the 
 kind word, the unselfish deed, the care for 
 others in Httle things, the charity that can 
 suffer and yet be kind, the affection which, 
 sweetening life and surviving death, is our only 
 foretaste of Heaven. 
 
 6 
 
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