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ILLUSIONS 
 AND DISILLUSIONS 
 
 Touching upon Topics 
 in Every Day Life 
 
 BY 
 
 EDITH C. JOHNSON 
 
 ^ymm^w® 
 
 PUBLISHED BY 
 
 EDITH C. JOHNSON 
 
 OKLAHOMA CITY, OKLAHOMA 
 1920 
 
\°v 
 
 
 COPYRIGHTED, 1920 
 
 BY 
 
 EDITH C. JOHNSON 
 
 BECKTOLD 
 PRINTING & BOOK MPO. CO^ 
 ST. LOUIS, U.S.A. 
 
 NOV -b 1920 
 ©CU601427 
 
TO THE MANY LOYAL FRIENDS 
 AND READERS WHOSE GEN- 
 EROUS ENCOURAGEMENT HAS 
 MADE PUBLICATION POSSIBLE, 
 THIS BOOK IS APPRECIATIVELY 
 DEDICATED BY THE AUTHOR. 
 
AUTHOR'S FOREWORD 
 
 The essays in this book have been selected from my 
 writings which have appeared daily in the Oklahoman 
 during the past two years. For the most part, I have 
 chosen the essays which have brought me the widest 
 response from my readers, those that have impelled 
 readers to say to me, *'I have had the very same 
 thoughts, though I did not put them into so many 
 words ^\ 
 
 In a single sentence we have the function of the 
 writer — to put other persons' ideas, thoughts and aspi- 
 rations into definite, readable form. Writers have no 
 monopoly on thoughts and ideas^ — ^which are the com- 
 mon property of mankind. Many of the most vital 
 thoughts in this volume have come to me from others, 
 who gave them out, consciously or unconsciously. 
 Thoughts and ideas come from everywhere. Really, we 
 live in a surging sea of thought. 
 
 In this, my first volume, I have discussed a good 
 many subjects which perplex men and women who are 
 much wdser than myself. My excuse for daring to an- 
 alyze them is that I lay no claim to special knowledge, 
 nor do I boast of any ability to offer the final solution. 
 I merely try to talk things over, rather intimatel}^ with 
 my readers, and to present my ideas in a simple, 
 straightforward and common-sense way. 
 
 Sometimes, my readers ask me how it is that I can 
 find so much to write about, how it is that, barring 
 emergencies, I can write 365 days in the year. If that 
 be a triumph of energy and industry, it is one that I 
 want to share fairl}^ with hundreds of friends and 
 
 5 
 
author's foreword 
 
 readers. One of the most delightful aspects of the 
 work that I am so happy to be doing is the great num- 
 ber of letters and messages and requests that come to 
 me, suggesting live topics, or asking for a discussion of 
 some given subject. When I first began to write these 
 daily essays, I had moments of terror when I wondered 
 how long I could keep them up. Now, I know that I 
 do not have to make any great effort to keep this work 
 going. Men, women, their emotions, their perplexities, 
 their ideas, together with the march of events in the 
 world, will keep the thing going for me. And not the 
 least of the many charms this work has for me is the 
 occasional discovery of myself. So often, it happens 
 that we do not know what we think, how we feel about 
 a subject, until we are forced to think about it, to mar- 
 shal our ideas and put down our thoughts. Then, we 
 find that beneath the superficial or mortal conscious- 
 ness, there is a deeper consciousness which comes for- 
 ward and in the most delightfully obliging manner 
 gives up all kinds of ideas and impressions we did not 
 dream were there. All the time, that deeper conscious- 
 ness has been quietly thinking, feeling, sorting, arrang- 
 ing, and it is no secret among the guild of writers, that 
 it is when they are able to tap the wells of that deeper 
 consciousness they do their best work. And after all, 
 it is not a personal consciousness, but a reflection of 
 the world consciousness, which is a very complex thing, 
 indeed, something concerning which the best of us can 
 understand but little, but about which all of us con- 
 stantly are trying to learn more. 
 
 E. C. J. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Page 
 
 Author's Foreword 5 
 
 Introduction » . 9 
 
 Are You Liked at Home ? 11 
 
 Women Prefer Plain Men 14 
 
 Sane Self -Interest * 17 
 
 Human Shock Absorbers 21 
 
 Good Talkers Can Be Made 24 
 
 Salesmanship for Wives 27 
 
 Ideal of ''Pansy Hill" 30 
 
 Personality Is The Key 33 
 
 Widowers, Can They Love Again? 36 
 
 Who Is The Greatest Woman? 39 
 
 Faith and Its Miracles 42 
 
 Appreciation As a Gift 45 
 
 ''Dangerous Age" In Men 48 
 
 Uses of Amiability 51 
 
 The Emotional Temperament 55 
 
 Cult of Simplicity . 58 
 
 Marriage : Why Men Fail 61 
 
 Marriage : Why Women Fail 65 
 
 "Thank You" Pays Dividends 69 
 
 Recreation for Housewives 72 
 
 Pity, Don't Condemn Snobs 75 
 
 Character is Power 79 
 
 Woman — Practical Poet ...*.... 82 
 
 Modern Chesterfields 86 
 
 Beauty of the Later Love 89 
 
 Wit Versus Silver Plate 92 
 
 7 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Page 
 
 Humor, The Saving Grace 95 
 
 Can Men Reform Wives? 98 
 
 What is True Culture? 102 
 
 Measuring Woman's Success 105 
 
 If You Could Live Again 109 
 
 Mistaken Self -Sacrifice 112 
 
 The Art of Growing Old 115 
 
 A Fortune in Friends 118 
 
 Looking Up Into the Sky 121 
 
 Roses and the Life of Man 125 
 
 What a Teacher Can Do 128 
 
 Gray Hairs and Opportunity 131 
 
 Business Women for Wives 134 
 
 Men ''Forgetting" to Propose 137 
 
 Poetry in Life 's Prose 140 
 
 Insignia of a Lady 144 
 
 After College— What? 147 
 
 The Cheerful Husband 150 
 
 Marriage and the Margin of Age 153 
 
 Glory of the Dinner Hour 156 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 I recently took a long dip in the Spectator, of Addi- 
 son and Steele, to make up my mind whether the Essays 
 are really classics or only classics that are dead and don 't 
 know it. This thing I soon found ; that time after time I 
 started upon a Spectator essay, resolved to read only a 
 part of it, to get its gist and apprehend its purpose, and 
 every time I read to the end. This is a pretty sure test 
 of the classic. 
 
 I have had exactly the same experience in reading 
 Edith Johnson's essays as they appeared in newspaper 
 form. Scanning the paper, with meager time at my dis- 
 posal, deeply interested in the events of the day, I would 
 say to myself, ' ' I will skip Miss Johnson this time ' '. But 
 if I read the first paragraph, I found it necessary to go 
 on to the end. I feel sure this same experience must 
 have come to thousands of her readers. She would be 
 the last to claim that this quality of her writing estab- 
 lishes it as classic; but it seems fair to say that it does 
 indicate a highly unusual power of interest and charm 
 in the art of writing. R. L. S. said that the first prin- 
 ciple of novel writing is to make every page interesting. 
 Miss Johnson makes every paragraph interesting, and 
 this is distinctly a greater achievement in the essay than 
 in the novel. 
 
 Miss Johnson seems to have no conscious style of writ- 
 ing. I am particular to use the word "seems". The 
 uncritical reader would probably say, if asked about her 
 style, that she has just a natural style. He could not 
 pay a higher compliment. He is speaking better than he 
 knows. Every practiced writer has a conscious style, 
 and if he succeeds in making it natural at last, he has 
 arrived at that perfection of art which conceals art. 
 
 But this quality of interestingness does not inhere in 
 style alone. Miss Johnson stays very closely with those 
 facts of life which are of daily and universal interest; 
 and since literature is the expression of life, she is always 
 expressing life, always saying things for the multitude 
 wliich the multitude cannot or does not say for itself. 
 
 9 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 Thus it comes about that she puts into adequate expres- 
 sion the nebulous thoughts of the many, so that each one 
 is moved to say, ''I have often thought just that". Yes, 
 he has often thought it, but it has been vague and 
 valueless; now it is fixed and permanent. 
 
 Her writings constitute, in fact, a philosophy of every 
 day life — in particular of the every day life of women. 
 She writes of women's problems with remarkable frank- 
 ness and freedom and therefore does not escape their 
 criticism. But on the whole the soundness of her views 
 is recognized, and it is not surprising to learn that when 
 a certain women's club recently voted its opinion as to 
 those persons who are entitled to mention among the 
 *' Who's Who" of this state. Miss Johnson's name won 
 the greatest applause of all. Perhaps the dominant note 
 of her championship of women is the claim of their 
 economic independence and the assertion of their in- 
 dividual personality. But she goes about it reasonably. 
 She is no man-hater, raging at her sex's wrongs. She 
 is not even a feminist — though, come to think about it, 
 perhaps she is. It depends on what you mean. If she 
 is, it is with satisfactory reservations. 
 
 But the woman question in all its angles is only one 
 phase of her wide-ranging literary production. She 
 wrote on every issue of the war, and supported every 
 good activity connected with it, with eager patriotism 
 and convincing power; she writes with equal poise of 
 home-making and of city-building ; she has a very facile 
 pen indeed for criticism in art; her interviews with 
 celebrities are interesting in every line, for they tell 
 us just what we wish to know; she appreciates the ma- 
 terial conquests of men, but stands staunchly for the 
 ideal; she writes of the emotional side of life with a 
 very rare insight, sympathy, and power. It is not 
 strange, then, that she is undoubtedly the most widely 
 read writer in the state and that her name is becoming 
 more and more widely known beyond its limits. 
 
 Every reader of this volume should remember that a 
 book of essays is not to be read at one sitting. 
 
 A. C. Scott. 
 10 
 
ARE YOU LIKED AT HOME? 
 
 OW do you stand in your own home ? Are you 
 popular with your own family, or is your good 
 reputation confined to the esteem that you win 
 from the world outside? 
 
 When you go away for a season, do the polite farewells 
 of your relatives conceal a secret sense of relief? Are 
 their protests of regret well-invented fictions, or do they 
 feel the regret they express? 
 
 When you return, is there a genuine expression of de- 
 light over your home-coming ?i Do your relatives look 
 upon your re-appearance as the coming of sunshine into 
 the family circle, or do they in their desire to be kindly, 
 have to try to make you feel a welcome that is not in 
 their hearts? 
 
 It makes little difference what a big figure you cut in 
 the world, if you cut a poor one at home. You may win 
 a national reputation for achievement, and still be a fail- 
 ure if those that are nearest to you cannot award you the 
 palm of success in your home relations and life. A man 
 may possess a genius so extraordinary as to make him 
 an international figure. Yet if his wife and children 
 do not listen for the sound of his voice eagerly, he likely 
 will not weigh very heavily in the scales of eternity. 
 No matter how popular a woman may be in society, how 
 forceful in club work, philanthropy and politics, her 
 achievements are a negligible quantity if she is not gra- 
 cious, gentle and lovable in her own circle; if her pres- 
 ence is not like a benediction within the four walls of 
 her home. 
 
 11 
 
ILLUSIONS AND DISILLUSIONS 
 
 When a man is running for office and his own district, 
 whether it be precinct, ward, county or state, returns a 
 vote against him, you may be pretty sure that there is 
 something wrong with that man. The home-folk very 
 probably know him. Most any of us, by the exercise of 
 a little cleverness can achieve a certain degree of favor 
 and popularity among people who know only our surface 
 manner and character. But it takes men and women 
 of pure purpose, fine disposition and sound character to 
 stand well among those who are in a position to know 
 them best. 
 
 The thing that really counts in this life is the estimate 
 that is put upon us by the members of our own families, 
 by our associates in business and the people in our home 
 town. 
 
 When I hear men and women complaining that they, 
 as prophets, are without honor in their own country, 
 that their talents and abilities are not appreciated, I 
 cannot help wondering if they are not overestimating 
 their own abilities and expecting deserts that do not 
 rightfully belong to them. If we do anything to de- 
 serve praise, we most certainly are going to get it. Nor 
 do we have to rush off to the ends of the world to make 
 a reputation for our abilities, if we have something that 
 is worth while. Look at William Allen White, Walt 
 Mason and Ed Howe. They have something the world 
 wanted and the world went to them. 
 
 You may go into a strange country, and armed with 
 certain talents and plenty of sophistication, you can put 
 yourself over. But what deep or lasting satisfaction 
 will that bring you, if you cannot put yourself over in 
 your own home? 
 
 12 
 
ARE YOU LIKED AT HOME? 
 
 What good will it do you to make a fortune out of 
 your town, if the people in it do not love and admire 
 you? The respect that you win from the world by rea- 
 son of your peculiar abilities is a pretty chilly thing, if 
 it is not accompanied by the love and admiration of the 
 people who make that success possible to you. 
 
 The only real and lasting honor and admiration that 
 can come to any of us must come from those that stand 
 nearest to us — the members of our families, our friends, 
 our associates and our townspeople. 
 
 If you are the prophet without honor in your own 
 country — don't blame the country — look into your own 
 heart. 
 
 13 
 
V/OMEN PREFER PLAIN MEN 
 
 HAT do women most admire in men? Doctor 
 Paola Mantegazza, the celebrated Italian an- 
 thropologist and pathologist, declares, in 
 ''The Book of Love", that the three mascu- 
 line qualities most admired by women are strength, 
 courage, and talent. 
 
 It is significant that no Avriter, no philosopher, puts 
 much faith in beauty as a source of masculine attrac- 
 tiveness. And despite his contention that ''all love 
 phenomena are ba.sed on and dominated by aesthetic 
 considerations". Doctor Mantegazza admits that sheer 
 beauty will not render a man charming to the majority 
 of women. In fact, most women are rather afraid of 
 masculine pulchritude. They hesistate long before 
 they will marry a handsome man with the expectation 
 of lifelong fidelity. 
 
 This element of fear, undoubtedly, has reconciled the 
 majority of women to the rather prevalent plainness in 
 men, despite the assertions of science that their daughters 
 must inherit their good looks from their fathers, and not 
 from them. For it has been pretty well demonstrated 
 that pretty girls have their fathers to thank for their 
 prettiness, and that beauty is perpetuated through the 
 male, not the female line. 
 
 Plain men, however, have not suffered from unpopular- 
 ity and their plainness has not been an appreciable 
 handicap to their success in either business or society. 
 In this respect, the sexes manifest a marked difference. 
 A woman's loveliness is her greatest asset. One might 
 
 14 
 
WOMEN PREFER PLAIN MEN 
 
 parody a famous line in poetry to read, '^ Beauty is of 
 man's life a thing apart; 'tis woman's whole existence". 
 
 Man's plainness, largely the result of our hustle, our 
 get-rich-quick methods, the strain and stress of commer- 
 cial competition, of too much smoking and too much 
 indiscriminate drinking, all of which have served to 
 stunt his growth and enfeeble his constitution, is gen- 
 erally atoned for by intelligence, good manners and 
 appearance. Even downright ugliness is frequently re- 
 deemed by an alert expression and an air of distinction. 
 A stern jaw often suggests strength of will, firmness of 
 character and latent reserve powers. In small eyes 
 there may lurk the fire of genius, or at least, the death- 
 less enthusiasm that accomplishes things. A wrinkled 
 brow will give evidence of deep thought and large pow- 
 ers of concentration. Good eyes will invariably atone 
 for rugged or irregular features. A short man can hold 
 himself with an upright smartness, and a tall well-set-up 
 figure will literally cover a multitude of small physical 
 imperfections. 
 
 The plainest man can make himself attractive by a 
 proper consideration for his dress. He can show his wit 
 in the choice of his tailor, and he can select clothes that 
 will give the impression of his being at once opulent, 
 artistic and business-like. Now, an orthodox writer 
 would, at this point, dilate on the hideousness of man's 
 dress, its utter lack of grace and want of color. Being 
 a free lance, I will declare that the average well-dressed 
 man never looked better than in his well-selected busi- 
 ness or lounge suit, and the present day military uni- 
 form, designed for its utility, with its olive-drab color 
 as a means of camouflage, is really a very stunning thing. 
 
 15 
 
ILLUSIONS AND DISILLUSIONS 
 
 It frequently happens that a plain man will have a 
 definite power of attraction for the loveliest of women. 
 It may be that she is attracted to her opposite, or it may 
 be that she will brook no rival near her throne. Then, 
 too, the trend of modern thought may have something 
 to say on the subject. The modern woman with her 
 newly-acquired freedom, her recent invasion of man's 
 world, her ideals of strenuous living, has no use for an 
 insipid man, though he may be as handsome as Apollo. 
 She can find no place in her affection for the scented ex- 
 quisite or the glorified dandy that charmed his lady in 
 the days of Watteau. Rather would she see him brown 
 and rough-hewn, and serenely unaware of his lack of 
 grace. She knows, too, that many a plain face and 
 form is the outward shell of a big soul, a keen brain and 
 a soaring ambition. She has more or less scorn for the 
 ''beauty man*'. 
 
 If civilization and big business had not marred them 
 in the making, we might have a good many more hand- 
 some, stalwart men. Our forbears handed down to us 
 a fairly rich legacy in the way of health, strength and 
 physical perfections. The Celts gave us dark eyes and 
 hair and clear, bright complexions. The Anglo-Saxon 
 contributed blue eyes, fair hair and skin and a tremend- 
 ous endurance. We owe no small debt to the Danish in- 
 vaders for their height, fine forms and splendid physique. 
 
 ''Man must make himself more manly in order to con- 
 quer the love of the daughters of Eve," says Doctor 
 Mantegazza. They will have to be regular Napoleons 
 and Caesars if they are going to conquer the women of a 
 future day. 
 
 16 
 
SANE SELF-INTEREST 
 
 YOU take an interest in yourself ? This is not 
 necessarily a foolish question, for the world 
 holds a good many persons who are not suffi- 
 ciently enterprising to take a genuine and 
 wholesome interest in themselves. Barring the desire 
 to have something to eat, a roof over their heads and a 
 few clothes, they are scarcely more concerned about their 
 own destinies than those of people they do not know. 
 Being interested in yourself does not infer either van- 
 ity or conceit. It simply means that you will make the 
 best of your environment, your talents and your oppor- 
 tunities. If you are interested in yourself, you will take 
 care to train your mind. You will not be content to use 
 10 per cent of your capacity. You will try to get a 100 
 per cent result. If you are interested in yourself, you 
 will not permit yourself to go through life and learn 
 nothing from your experiences. The purpose of experi- 
 ence is to develop men and women mentally and spirit- 
 ually. Some persons can travel around the world and 
 be none the richer on their return. Others are visited 
 with love, with sorrow, with disappointment, with oppor- 
 tunity, and yet remain static year after year. They do 
 not grow one whit wiser or kinder or more sympathetic. 
 They die with the same stock of ideas, feelings and 
 opinions that they carried around with them in their 
 youth. 
 
 If you are interested in yourself, you will take care 
 of your body. You will ascertain just what you can 
 endure, and you will not encroach upon the margin of 
 your health and strength. People who are top-heavy, 
 
 17 
 
ILLUSIONS AND DISILLUSIONS 
 
 that is people who have powerful minds and frail bodies, 
 have to conserve their forces carefully, or one blue day 
 they die at the top. Nor is it sufficient to strike a safe 
 balance between wear and repair. For if you are in- 
 terested in yourself, you will want to keep yourself not 
 only physically well, but physically attractive. You 
 will make personal cleanliness a part of your religion, 
 and you would as soon go without your dinner as your 
 bath. You will not wear just anything that strikes your 
 fancy. You will first ask yourself these questions : ' * Is 
 it appropriate? Is it becoming? Will it insure my 
 looking well-dressed? I cannot expect people to love 
 and admire me just for my mind and character. I must 
 be pleasing to the eye as well'*. 
 
 If you are properly interested in yourself you will 
 try to make friends wherever you are, for much of the 
 happiness of life is secured by means of pleasant asso- 
 ciations. 
 
 The easiest and surest way of making friends is to take 
 a sincere interest in others. Men and women instinct- 
 ively feel a friendly and unselfish interest whenever they 
 come in contact with it. If you want friends you will 
 first have to be one. Another thing — you will have to 
 be cheerful about it. Friendship is a plant that loves 
 the sun. It does not grow well under clouds. 
 
 How often we hear people say, ' ' I care for only a few 
 friends". That is a very mistaken and short-sighted 
 policy. We need all the friends that we can make. We 
 need to have people feeling kindly toward us. We need 
 to cast out love and cheer and favors on many waters if 
 we expect them to return to us in after days. The idea 
 that any human being can be so self-sufficient as to get 
 
 18 
 
SANE SELF-INTEREST 
 
 along without friends is the extreme of folly. Certain 
 rich men seem to cherish that notion. How lonely they 
 are when misfortune comes ! 
 
 If you are interested in yourself, you will make up 
 your mind to love your work. The other day a working 
 woman said to me : ' ' I love my work and I grow younger 
 with it". Now, if I were to tell you how she makes her 
 living you would probably say, ' ' Oh, I would loathe do- 
 ing that!" for her work is of a very taxing and fatigu- 
 ing character. But, making it, as she does, the means by 
 which she can radiate a bit of sunshine in her world 
 every day, the means by which she can help and serve 
 others, she cannot help being happy in that work. So 
 much heart and mind and sweetness does she put into it 
 that it becomes a constant source of inspiration to her. 
 
 If you are interested in yourself, you will try to be as 
 happy as you can. About nine-tenths of all the illness 
 in this world is due to unhappiness. A bitter hour acts 
 like a dose of poison. It filters through every pore of 
 your body, and it paralyzes the powers of the mind. 
 
 Happiness is a physical and mental cocktail. A smile 
 takes the edge off of care. A cheerful attitude makes 
 the thing that looked as if it might become a burden just 
 as ordinary circumstances of life. One of the greatest 
 problems of life is to fill our days with sunshine. Little 
 favors extended to others, the passing word of encour- 
 agement, unselfish deeds done in an open-hearted man- 
 ner, courtesies scattered by the way, a sincere and timely 
 appreciation of the other fellow's efforts, help to make 
 us as well as others happy. No pleasure can surpass 
 that of the consciousness of a strong and generous char- 
 acter. It is a solace for one's darkest hour. 
 
 19 
 
ILLUSIONS AND DISILLUSIONS 
 
 This may sound paradoxical, but it is true, neverthe- 
 less, that if you are not rightly interested in yourself 
 you cannot be genuinely interested in other people. 
 Sane self-interest is a distinctly human quality. If you 
 are sufficiently interested in yourself to make the very 
 best out of your life and talents, you will want others 
 to do likewise. No man can actually lift himself with- 
 out lifting others with him. That is one of the inexor- 
 able laws of life. 
 
 20 
 
HUMAN SHOCK ABSORBERS 
 
 SN 'T she a desperately uncomfortable person ? ' ' 
 
 a woman remarked of one of her friends. 
 
 ''No matter what happens she worries about 
 
 it. Everything in life is hard for her, not 
 
 because she is more unfortunate than others, but because 
 
 she takes it so. Wouldn't it be a blessing to her and 
 
 those about her if she could live more comfortably ? ' ' 
 
 Comfortable people are the shock absorbers of society. 
 By their good nature and their philosophical acceptance 
 of unpleasant facts and events, they seem to be able to 
 take the jar out of living, both for themselves and their 
 associates. They always seem to be ready to meet emer- 
 gencies, and not to be greatly disturbed by them. They 
 smile easily, though they do not giggle or laugh con- 
 tinually. 
 
 How many times you have been at a party where, 
 though the guests were clever enough, everybody ap- 
 peared to be on a strain ! The atmosphere had that op- 
 pressive feeling that precedes a storm. All the clever 
 people in the company were working just as hard as 
 they could to maintain their reputation for cleverness 
 and to entertain the group. Some of them were even 
 brilliant. Yet, between every one of their sallies, a 
 deadly silence would fall over the company and every- 
 body would be ill at ease. 
 
 Then, suddenly, one of those thoroughly comfortable 
 women would enter that tense room. Though she did 
 not make the slightest effort to be brilliant, everybody's 
 nerves relaxed under the influence of her spontaneity. 
 
 21 
 
ILLUSIONS AND DISILLUSIONS 
 
 Her remarks probably were quite commonplace. Yet, 
 who expects or wants one of those soothing, healing com- 
 fortable persons to be purveyors of wit? 
 
 Too many persons believe that the world can be saved 
 only by strife and turmoil; like, for instance, the 
 **reds". They cannot conceive of bettering conditions 
 amicably. They must tear down the whole structure 
 and rebuild in their own way. They want to set every- 
 body right in a minute. They have no conception of the 
 methods that are used by the comfortable people in 
 order to right some of this world's wrongs. They do 
 not, like the comfortable people, know just how far to go. 
 
 "You know I have principles", said a woman with a 
 militant air. So, indeed, should she have principles. 
 Everybody should have principles. However, there is 
 such a thing as being too noisy and insistent about your 
 principles, particularly in the ordinary touch-and-go of 
 life. These people who are so constantly aware of their 
 principles are very trying creatures. Never are they 
 able to see the humor in their own actions. Nor are they 
 ever capable of doing that eminently comfortable thing 
 — laugh at themselves. 
 
 "I just get up in the morning and I say to myself as 
 I start to work: 'Here is another beautiful day'." 
 
 You know, already, don't you, that she is one of the 
 comfortable women who no matter what happens is 
 ready to smile and speak a kind word to all human 
 creatures, regardless of their condition of life. If you 
 were in her place, you would probably think that you 
 were having a very hard time of it. But she doesn't 
 think so. She does not work merely to get a living, but 
 in her contacts with the public, to make others happy 
 
 22 
 
HUMAN SHOCK ABSORBERS 
 
 and comfortable. And you won't be surprised will you, 
 dearly beloved, when I tell you that every year she looks 
 younger than she looked the year before. How such 
 women do teach us the folly of ill-natured resistance! 
 How their everyday lives are an exposition of that good 
 old text: ''Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof". 
 
 Chronically uncomfortable persons wear out the pa- 
 tience and affection of their friends. Your friends are 
 quick to give you their help and sympathy when you 
 have some real sorrow or difficulty. The best and most 
 devoted to them, however, cannot forever put up with 
 irritability and complaining. Constant nagging will 
 wear out the staunchest friendship, just as it rends 
 asunder many a home. 
 
 When you look at the comfortable people, you wonder 
 why more of us do not imitate them, so great are their 
 rewards. They may not always make a million or 
 achieve worldwide fame. Nevertheless, they get through 
 life with less wear and tear on their minds and their 
 bodies. They enjoy more tranquility and happiness than 
 most of us. They draw friends to them continually and 
 they make everybody love them. 
 
 23 
 
GOOD TALKERS CAN BE MADE 
 
 HENEVER I accept an invitation to dinner or 
 to an evening party where the company does 
 not play cards, I find myself at a painful loss 
 for something interesting to say ' ', is the bur- 
 den of one reader's plaint. ' ' The longer I remain silent, 
 the more terrified I am. Sometimes I am so uncomfort- 
 able that I vow right then that I never will be guilty of 
 accepting another invitation. Can you suggest how I 
 may remedy this defect in myself?" 
 
 There are t^o classes of persons who fail at conversa- 
 tion. One includes those who suffer so keenly from 
 self-consciousness that they are frightened at the sound 
 of their own voices. The other class comprises those 
 who can think of nothing interesting to say. No remedy 
 can be prescribed for the first class of sufferers except 
 to assure them that intelligence, common sense and de- 
 termination, if exercised diligently, will work the miracle 
 and to reiterate that trite saying that if they will think 
 more of the pleasure and happiness of others and less 
 about themselves, they will likely find their tongues and 
 get along very well. 
 
 The ability to talk is much like the ability to write. If 
 you have something to write, you can find words in 
 which to write it. If you have something to say, you can 
 usually find a way to say it. For it is having something 
 to write or to say that makes the interesting writer or 
 talker. You are moved to comment upon the shallow- 
 ness of an acquaintance's conversation for precisely 
 the same reason that you throw aside a book, a magazine 
 
 24 
 
GOOD TALKERS CAN BE MADE 
 
 or newspaper with the remark: ''There is absolutely 
 nothing in that". Facility of expression will not con- 
 ceal poverty of thought. 
 
 It is a wise man who is eager to correct his deficiency 
 as a conversationalist and who will take the trouble to 
 effect the change, for men and women cannot overesti- 
 mate the advantage of being good talkers. A pleasant 
 manner of approach and the ability to talk entertain- 
 ingly and sympathetically will open the door to almost 
 every heart. A good talker is welcome in every com- 
 munity. Hostesses seek him for their dinner tables. 
 Men welcome him in their clubs. Wherever he goes, he 
 makes friends and he secures customers and clients. 
 Every man who is successful owes something of his 
 advancement to his ability to talk pleasingly and intel- 
 ligently, just as every man who is a failure must charge 
 up a part of his failure to his inability to present his 
 case. 
 
 You may be poor and you may feel that you have no 
 chance in life. You may have others dependent upon 
 you, and for that reason, you may not have been able 
 to go to school as much as you should have gone. Your 
 environment may be anything but inspiring. The people 
 about you may be flippant, slangy and slip-shod in their 
 speech. Your ears may be tortured with vulgarisms 
 such as: ''You bet your life", "Search me", "Well, 
 isn't that the limits' "Yes, I gave him the once over 
 and believe me, I don't think he is any great shakes". 
 Even so, you may train yourself to be a delightful talker 
 if in spite of the tearing-down influence of your associa- 
 tions, you will think carefully before you speak, if you 
 will read and observe and listen to every good talker 
 
 25 
 
ILLUSIONS AND DISILLUSIONS 
 
 3^ou meet. If you are sincerely ambitious, every good 
 book, every v^ell-written magazine or newspaper article 
 will be a help to you. 
 
 You see men and women who have unpleasant man- 
 nerisms, and a clumsy way of expressing themselves, al- 
 though you know they have had a good education and 
 some opportunity to associate with, people of refinement. 
 You wonder how they could have remained blunderers 
 all their lives. It is because they are too self-satisfied 
 to subject themselves to a severe self -analysis, or too lazy 
 for self-discipline. They take themselves as they find 
 themselves and they expect others to do the same. 
 
 There is no deep and dark mystery about being a good 
 talker. Anyone may cultivate the art of being a good 
 conversationalist who will take the trouble to do so. 
 Success as a talker is achieved by the same methods as 
 every other kind of success. Good talkers do not hap- 
 pen. They are evolved by thought, observation, study 
 and persistent effort. They must have as a background 
 a fair knowledge of the world's literature and history. 
 They must keep well up on current events. They must 
 do enough independent thinking to have a few ideas of 
 their own. Then, they must know how to clothe their 
 knowledge, their thoughts and ideas in an attractive 
 form. 
 
 To confess that you are not and cannot be a good con- 
 versationalist is tantamount to admitting that you will 
 not pay the price. 
 
 26 
 
SALESMANSHIP FOR WIVES 
 
 VERY one of us has something to sell. The 
 lawyer sells his knowledge of the law, his 
 ability to advise a client and to represent him 
 in the courts. The doctor sells his ability to 
 diagnose an ailment, his knowledge of the best means of 
 treating it, and perhaps, his skill as a surgeon. The 
 architect sells his ability to design a building and over- 
 see its construction. The engineer sells his capacity for 
 running a locomotive, the stenographer her skill as a 
 typist and her ability to look after the details of her em- 
 ployer's business. The writer sells ideas and his skill 
 in presenting them. Everybody that is anybody stands 
 ready to dispose of his product, his ideas or his service. 
 For this reason every man and every woman should be a 
 student of salesmanship. 
 
 ''What could I do with a knowledge of salesmanship?" 
 demands a wife who has not grasped the idea that like 
 all other workers she has something to sell and the more 
 skill she acquires in the selling, the happier and more 
 successful she will be. 
 
 Every wife ought to be a careful student of salesman- 
 ship. And if she would set herself to this task, I believe 
 in almost every instance it would do away with that all 
 too prevalent feeling that her work does not amount to 
 anything. She would come to understand that the only 
 person whose work does not amount to anything is the 
 one whose work is not well done. She would also see 
 that she is not a "dependent", that she by her skilled 
 service absolutely earns her living and the money she 
 has to spend. 
 
 27 
 
ILLUSIONS AND DISILLUSIONS 
 
 Do you know the four steps in making a sale? 
 
 They are to arouse interest, to create desire, to make 
 the sale, and to insure satisfaction. 
 
 The steps taken in consummating a marriage are iden- 
 tical with those in effecting a sale. Woman ^s first step 
 is to arouse the interest of an eligible man. The next is 
 to create in him a desire to marry her. Marriage is the 
 third step and satisfaction and happiness in married life 
 is the fourth and last. 
 
 Suppose that our heroine is safely married. What 
 does she sell her husband ? First, her personal devotion 
 to him, her ability to encourage his efforts in his busi- 
 ness or profession, and her power to inspire him. Her 
 second service is her ability to manage a home with effi- 
 ciency, and to make it attractive to him. The third of 
 her marketable wares is her capacity for bringing up a 
 family. Practically every man who marries expects that 
 he shall receive in return for his love, his support and 
 protection of his wife these three aforementioned things. 
 The woman who makes a failure of her marriage, sup- 
 posing that she has married the right kind of man, is 
 the woman who does not comprehend or practice these 
 fundamental principles of salesmanship. 
 
 Marriage, like any other kind of business, is the 
 science of service. This science a wife can apply through 
 her pov/er to create satisfaction and happiness in her 
 husband. Usually, we can tell at a glance the wife who 
 has this power to serve. She manifests it in her appear- 
 ance and her manner, in the skill and ease with which she 
 runs her home, in her husband's appearance of well- 
 being, in the good health, good conduct and the progress 
 of her children. 
 
 28 
 
SALESMANSHIP FOR WIVES 
 
 You have noticed, of course, that the successful sales- 
 man markets his goods with the same customers year 
 after year, and that seldom does he lose one. Though 
 his rivals may offer merchandise just as good, he knows 
 how to keep his customers in the attitude of wanting his 
 own particular line. So it is with the wife who is a 
 good saleswoman. She keeps her husband wanting her, 
 depending upon her, loving her, feeling that he could 
 not live without her, that her loss would be irreparable. 
 No other woman has any temptation for him. She is 
 the only woman in the world so far as he is concerned. 
 The same principle applies to her children. She con- 
 vinces them and keeps them convinced that she is the 
 best, brightest, cleverest, most sympathetic and under- 
 standing mother that ever lived. 
 
 Every woman who anticipates marriage, every woman 
 who is married, should have this motto graven on her 
 heart, ''She profits most who serves best", for that is 
 the epitome of salesmanship. 
 
 29 
 
IDEAL OF 'PANSY HILL" 
 
 HAVE just said to my wife that we will start 
 another 'Pansy Hill'." These interesting 
 words were uttered by a young professional 
 man who with his wife had just gone into a 
 city to make it their future home. Like a great many 
 other young couples, they had not yet made their mil- 
 lions and they could not indulge their rather aesthetic 
 taste in the selection of a home. Their little pile would 
 not buy the latest style of architecture, hard wood floors, 
 white enamel and grounds that had been done by a land- 
 scape gardener. But, loving beautiful things as they did, 
 they would content themselves with an unpretentious 
 cottage and small grounds which they would convert 
 into a Pansy Hill. 
 
 You never have heard of Pansy Hill, have you ? Well, 
 it is a little log house perched on a knoll and overlook- 
 ing the surrounding country, near Harriman, Tennes- 
 see. In the house lives an elderly couple, who by 
 thought and labor have made their modest cottage one 
 of the show places of Tennessee. The place is a riot 
 of bloom, pansies predominating. Men and women from 
 everywhere drive out to see it, and it is the envy of not 
 a few persons who make their homes in mansions. 
 
 Everybody cannot be rich, but everybody can create 
 beauty in his surroundings. The crucial test of true 
 gentility is not wealth but poverty. The real aristocrats 
 of this world keep a hold on the sweet courtesies of life, 
 and strive to create beauty around them even in time 
 of adversity. When they have to accept a condition that 
 
 30 
 
roEAL OP PANSY HILL'' 
 
 is not in harmony with their taste and ideas, they take 
 it and make the best of it. They are gloriously poor 
 while some other folk are hideously wealthy, and they 
 smile with gentle indulgence upon the latter and bitter- 
 ness does not enter their souls. 
 
 When people can take an old and unattractive house, 
 and make a Pansy Hill out of it, and when they remain 
 kind and dignified and gracious through the hard daily 
 test of contriving to make both ends meet, they are the 
 real thing. The possession of money shields a great 
 many men and women from having to take this test. 
 Life is made so easy for them that they have no oppor- 
 tunity to find out just how they would react if they 
 were subjected to the acid test of insufficient means. 
 
 Among the things that make the cities and towns of 
 a new country so attractive are the energy and the 
 initiative of the people who are making the prairie blos- 
 som like a rose. The love of beauty and cleverness are 
 made to take the place of much money, and some of the 
 most charming places are the smallest and humblest of 
 the town. The Pansy Hill idea, buttressed by fine char- 
 acter and good taste, is working many a miracle, and 
 as you ride through the streets, you feel this keenly and 
 you are grateful that it is so. 
 
 I like to think that the idea of good taste and char- 
 acter is growing in our nation, and that the refinements 
 of life count for a great deal more than the loose conduct 
 and extravagance which have become too popular among 
 us within the past few years. Customs may change, 
 new laws may be passed, fashions may come and go, but 
 our adjustment to everyday life always will remain our 
 own particular and personal business. And if we are not 
 
 31 
 
ILLUSIONS AND DISILLUSIONS 
 
 able to realize ourselves in the places that we are, we 
 will be a discordant people and our minds will be those 
 of pettish children, who are continually crying for things 
 they want that are out of their reach. 
 
 A Pansy Hill is bound to be ten time^ more interest- 
 ing than any mansion planned by a high-priced archi- 
 tect and furnished by a high-priced decorator, for the 
 personalities of its owners enter into it and become a 
 part of it, in a way that no scientifically planned and 
 made-to-order structure ever can be. And often there 
 is more of the real home spirit in places that have been 
 planned with love and beautified by sacrifice than in 
 some of the million-dollar places which adorn our cities 
 and towns. 
 
 Some of our citizens will laugh at my Pansy Hill phil- 
 osophy and call me ''sentimental". I shall not contra- 
 dict them, for I also believe that a great many sensible 
 women and brainy business men will agree with me 
 about it. Am I wrong? 
 
 32 
 
PERSONALITY IS THE KEY 
 
 LBERT HUBBARD had one pet expression— it 
 was "personality pins". In fact, Hubbard 
 was the first man in this country persistently 
 to preach the power of personality. His * ' Lit- 
 tle Journeys" and his "Philistine" were brimming over 
 with his observations on the influence wielded by per- 
 sonal force and charm. 
 
 What is personality? 
 
 Nobody in this world has been able to take its meas- 
 ure, or to lay down all the rules necessary for its culti- 
 vation. You can't draw a diagram of personality, nor 
 chart the limitless sea of its influence. 
 
 "We do know this — that every genuinely superior man 
 or woman is bound to be a personality. But God never 
 duplicates. Each is different from the other. So, if you 
 can actually decide what constitutes personality in one 
 man, that will not do you much good in determining 
 what it is or how it ought to operate in another. 
 
 Men are like God — they create in their own image. 
 
 If you conceive a great project, it is as Emerson says, 
 the lengthened shadow of yourself. 
 
 If you paint a portrait, you are bound to paint two, 
 one of yourself and a second of the sitter. 
 
 If you conceive a hero and set out to write his story, 
 you will unconsciously tell your own while you are 
 relating his. 
 
 It makes little difference what you do, you will photo- 
 graph yourself finally on the negative of your career. 
 
ILLUSIONS AND DISILLUSIONS 
 
 There was a time when any honest, upright, sober, 
 industrious citizen could make his way in this world with 
 a fair and dependable degree of success. 
 
 That time has passed— and added to a half dozen 
 virtues and abilities, sufficient to furnish forth a very 
 fair career, there must be today at least a half dozen 
 more — and the greatest of this number is that of per- 
 sonality. 
 
 For every personality that is born, there are ten that 
 are made — Shewed out of sheer intelligence, persistent 
 effort, keen observation and patient practice. 
 
 When we speak of the self-made man, we really mean 
 a self-made personality. 
 
 Many of us follow the slovenly habit of taking it for 
 granted that we are just about all right, and that we will 
 get through somehow as we are. This is the habit that 
 accounts for mediocrity — it is the habit to which effi- 
 ciency experts attribute 90 per cent of all failures, the 
 one that explains why the majority are only 25 per cent 
 as efficient as they might be. 
 
 Educators are just beginning to realize that it is as 
 necessary to instruct their pupils in the cultivation of 
 efficient personality as it is to teach them a, b and c. 
 
 For personality, or in other words, the power of per- 
 suasion, is that which determines the character and 
 color of our lives almost from the cradle. 
 
 It is the strongest and most attractive personality in 
 every family that receives the greatest favors, that is 
 given the most advantages. 
 
 As we grow up, personality begins to take effect in the 
 school room. Through its influence and persuasion, we 
 get on with our teachers, and we induce our playmates 
 
 34 
 
PERSONALITY IS THE KEY 
 
 to respect, not despise us. It is personality that per- 
 suades men to seek out women and women to marry 
 men. Personality is a large factor in the earning of our 
 wages. Through personality we get desirable persons to 
 accept our hospitality as well as to offer us theirs. It 
 persuades our friends and neighbors to yield us consid- 
 eration and social pleasure. Through personality we 
 secure the best loyalty and the most valuable service. 
 
 The man of personality binds other men to him with 
 hoops of steel. He fires them with his own enthusiasm 
 and fills them with his purpose. 
 
 Personality, more than any one other force, has the 
 power to purchase all the good things of life. Wealth 
 is not amassed, social position is not attained, honor is 
 not due, power does not flow, pleasure is not secured, and 
 the happiness of a harmonious life is not realized in its 
 fullness, except through the persuasion of personal force 
 and charm. 
 
 For personality is the key which opens every door. 
 
 Yet, how few of us take the trouble to forge that in- 
 strument ! 
 
 35 
 
WIDOWERS: CAN THEY LOVE AGAIN? 
 
 AN a woman who marries a widower hope to 
 have real love from him", asks a reader, *'or 
 has he only the warmed over kind to offer"? 
 That depends entirely upon the individual. 
 A very few men can love only once in their lives. The 
 greater number, however, can love as long as life lasts. 
 
 Every woman must be her own judge of how well a 
 man loves her. Nobody else can tell her that. There 
 is no reason, however, why she should have misgivings 
 because her suitor is a widower. The second wife is 
 usually better loved and better treated than the first. 
 Where the first wife wore serge, the second wears silk. 
 Though the first was expected to ''do her own work" 
 uncomplainingly, the second wife must be served. While 
 street cars are often good enough for first wives, their 
 successors usually have automobiles. The differential is 
 not necessarily due to the increased prosperity of the 
 husband. The widower has discovered that it is possible 
 for a man to lose a good wife. The husband seldom 
 thinks of that. 
 
 I once heard a very complacent ^\'ife say that the 
 woman who marries a widower must not expect that he 
 shall really love her; when she marries him she must 
 reconcile herself to the remains of his heart. 
 
 This type of women will not only spread this propa- 
 ganda among other women — she will do her best to con- 
 vince her husband, and all his friends, as well, being the 
 kind of woman who not only demands all of a man's 
 life while she is living, but all of his thoughts after she 
 is dead. 
 
 This reminds me of the story of a widower who mar- 
 36 
 
WIDOWERS: CAN THEY LOVE AGAIN? 
 
 ried a girl and took her to his home. Before the bride 
 had removed her hat, the husband had the termerity to 
 hand her a letter written by his first wife to be turned 
 over to his second and read by her at the outset of her 
 married life. The writer expressed the generous hope 
 that her successor would make her husband very happy. 
 There was not a definitely impolite or unkind line in it ; 
 yet it was so constructed that every word conveyed a 
 sting. Can you imagine a more subtle revenge for a 
 dying wife to take upon the unsuspecting woman who 
 might some day take her place? 
 
 One of the severest trials that confronts a woman 
 marrying a widower and one that she must keep locked 
 up in the innermost recesses of her soul is having to 
 look daily into the eyes of little children that reflect 
 neither her husband's nature nor her own. It is a noble, 
 high-minded and unselfish woman who makes up her 
 mind and holds to her decision that the children of a 
 former wife shall be treated as tenderly as if they were 
 her own, that she never will be revenged upon the dead 
 by striking at the living descendant of a former wife. I 
 am convinced that the chief reason whj^ most step- 
 mothers are so hard upon their stepchildren is their im- 
 pulse to take revenge upon the woman who has gone be- 
 fore. If it be true that the spirits of the dead are aware 
 of the thoughts, the purposes and acts of the living, what 
 anguish, what sufferings must be those of a mother, who 
 with the greater understanding of the immortal, can see 
 her children being punished for her sake ! It is also a 
 very severe tax upon a woman's generosity to take up 
 her abode in a house that has been arranged by an- 
 other woman's hands. It may be that her courage will 
 be tested by the portrait of the first Mrs. A. hanging 
 
 37 
 
ILLUSIONS AND DISILLUSIONS 
 
 upon the v/all. If she ventures into any of the darker 
 corners of attic or store-room she may find the first wife's 
 wedding veil, perhaps a picture of husband and wife 
 taken on the day of their wedding, the baby pictures of 
 their children, and most trying of all, momentoes and 
 letters of their early love. 
 
 The middle-aged widower who woos and wins a 
 younger woman is tremendously proud of himself. His 
 success is a forai of self-vindication that every man past 
 his first youth craves. It is tantamount to his saying to 
 the world of his acquaintances, "You see that even 
 though I am not as young as I once was, I am still a very 
 attractive man. This younger woman has fallen in love 
 with me which proves that I still am something of a 
 romantic figure". 
 
 Wives, that is some of them, have an aggravating way 
 of trying to convince their husbands that if they should 
 be made widowers, they might be accepted for their 
 money, their good dispositions, or other practical and 
 material reasons, though they never again will be mar- 
 ried for love. While no man ever wholly accepts this 
 theory, he often is tormented with doubt and uncertainty 
 until, after a decent period of mourning, he can once 
 more enter the lists and tilt a lance in the arena of love. 
 
 In the last analysis the man's temperament is the 
 deciding factor. There are men like Mark Lennan in 
 Galworthy's "The Dark Flovv^r" who are capable of 
 developing a high-class attack of the grand passion 
 several times in their lives. It is this type of man, made 
 widower, who after his deepest wounds of grief and loss 
 are healed, will fall desperately in love and who will lead 
 the object of his fervid, if not very youthful affection, 
 up the aisle of the church. 
 
 38 
 
WHO IS THE GREATEST WOMAN? 
 
 HO is the greatest woman in the world? Some- 
 body answers, Sarah Bernhardt, that gallant 
 woman of France, for whom age does not exist, 
 nor fear, nor sorrow. 
 
 Another will say Jane Addams, w^ho has created a 
 whole world of new ideas through Hull House. There 
 might be a thousand votes cast in a ''greatest woman" 
 contest for the unsullied spirit of Maude Adams, who 
 can lift you out of your workaday self into a wonderful 
 inner world of romance; for Edith Wharton, that su- 
 premely great writing genius; for Amelita Galli-Curci, 
 w^ho has astonished the world with her nightingale voice. 
 Yet who can say that any of these women are actually 
 greater than thousands of other women of great deeds, 
 great talents and great character w^ho live and die un- 
 known and unsung? 
 
 If there is one woman entitled to decoration for brave 
 service on the battlefield of life it is the kind, good, in- 
 telligent and dutiful woman about whom no one outside 
 a very small circle ever hears. She may not have great 
 beauty or genius to her credit, yet she may have some- 
 thing just as good. 
 
 This ordinary woman — that is what I will call her, be- 
 cause she is found everywhere — does not write a book, 
 sing in opera nor is she decorated for distinguished 
 service. 
 
 Her life history is singularly uneventful, not to her, 
 of course, but to the outside world. Once upon a time 
 this ordinary woman had all the freshness and beauty of 
 
 39 
 
ILLUSIONS AND DISILLUSIONS 
 
 youth. She dreamed her dreams like other women, and 
 part of those dreams did come true. That is to say, a 
 certain gallant young person (we will call him the 
 prince) told her the most fascinating story in the world. 
 He told her how she, just an ordinary maiden, was to 
 be a princess ; how she should be shielded from want and 
 care, and how she would be rapturously loved all the 
 days of her life. 
 
 The prospect was very enchanting. Without hesita- 
 tion she put her hand in that of the prince, and they 
 started out to see and learn life together. And life 
 was very beautiful for awhile, until the prince forgot to 
 kiss her as he came and went. The need of money de- 
 pressed their spirits. He never took her out to dinner 
 or a play — they could not afford that. 
 
 With none of those delightful, inspiring experiences 
 which punctuate the days of the world's famous women 
 the ordinary woman went right on uncomplainingly from 
 week to week, from month to month, from year to year, 
 sewing and mending and cooking and cleaning. She 
 did love pretty things, for somehow all women with 
 souls do love them. But the children were growing up 
 and must be educated. She must work a little harder 
 and deny herself a little more. ''Anything for their 
 sweet sakes", she always said with a smile, for they were 
 young and they must have their chance. 
 
 Sometimes she would look at her work-worn hands and 
 suppress a sigh when she recalled the rapturous love of 
 the prince, now a sober and grizzled man. Though her 
 step had lost its buoyancy, he was not so ready to guide 
 her over the sligtest roughness in the road. She would 
 have loved that little lift more than ever. Not that she 
 
 40 
 
WHO IS THE GREATEST WOMAN? 
 
 really felt the need of it, for, despite her frail physique, 
 she seemed with the passing years to have gathered a 
 wonderful strength. 
 
 Oh, the world is so full of these ordinary women ! 
 Their lives are brightened with so few gaieties. They 
 are strangers to those iridescent pleasures that color the 
 lives of their sister-women who have beauty, wealth, 
 fame and success. There is nothing so essentially 
 feminine as the longing for admiration. Those who re- 
 ceive it flourish like a bay tree, and those who are de- 
 prived of their woman's birthright suffer a certain in- 
 evitable starvation. It is a slow starvation, but it is 
 sure. 
 
 The ordinary, good, dutiful woman who deserves the 
 most usually receives the fewest flowers. Her devoted 
 service is taken for granted. It is nothing more than a 
 matter of course. We know that the machinery will 
 come to a stop if she is not there to keep it going. But 
 who considers that until she is gone? Because she does 
 keep it going, whether or not her effort is remarked ; be- 
 cause she labors incessantly without hope of praise or 
 much reward, she is the one real heroine. 
 
 All great women actresses, artists, writers, scientists 
 and reformers notwithstanding, the ordinary, good, kind, 
 dutiful woman is, when all's said and done, the great- 
 est woman in the world. 
 
 41 
 
FAITH AND ITS MIRACLES 
 
 ER head drooped wearily and her voice had a 
 hollow sound as she said, ' ' I have lost faith in 
 everything and everybody." One whom she 
 had trusted implicitly had defrauded her of 
 her hard-earned and pitifully small gains. 
 
 At the moment she thought she had lost faith, but she 
 had not. She simply could not have meant what she 
 said. To live without faith is an impossibility. It 
 would mean to go insane or to die. 
 
 Little do we realize it, but the majority of our acts 
 are based on faith. 
 
 You get up in the morning with faith that your wife 
 will have breakfast on the table in plenty of time for 
 you to eat it and get down to your work. 
 
 You board the street car with faith that the motor- 
 man and conductor will take you safely through the 
 streets to your store, factory or office, or if you happen 
 to own the good things that morey can buy, you step 
 into your motor car. You make the trip with faith that 
 your chauffeur will drive you through the streets and 
 land you safely at your destination. 
 
 You go into your place of business with faith in your 
 associates to ''carry on" with you, with faith in your 
 employer, if you belong to the salaried or wage-earn- 
 ing class. You work six days without a cent of pay, for 
 you have perfect faith in your employer's ability to 
 pay you on the seventh and in his integrity. You have 
 faith in your ability to accomplish the task that is set 
 before you, and you ought to have faith enough to do 
 that which you never have attempted before. 
 
 42 
 
FAITH AND ITS MIRACLES 
 
 Nobody ever has defined faith so accnratel}' as Paul, 
 who in writing his epistle to the Hebrews, said : '* Faith 
 is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of 
 things not seen" 
 
 The best part of life is made up of things that we 
 hope for, of desiring things which we cannot see. 
 
 Would we ever have had a single oil well if it had not 
 been for the steadfast faith of certain men? 
 
 No man ever saw the oil down in the earth until he 
 drilled and brought it to the surface. No man ever 
 knew it was there. When a man drills deep and strikes 
 the pa}^ sand, and the oil gushes forth and blackens the 
 derrick, that, indeed, is *'the substance of things hoped 
 for"; it is ''the evidence of things not seen". 
 
 Who must have more faith than the farmer ? Would 
 he plant a crop unless he had faith in the orderly course 
 of the seasons, in the rains of spring, in the ripening suns 
 of summer, in the harvest of fruit and grain as a reward 
 for his labors ? For months the farmer has no income, no 
 visible reward for his strenuous labors, but he works on 
 almost from sun to sun, with faith that he will reap as 
 he sowed. 
 
 W^hat woman would walk to the altar, by that one act 
 putting her whole future life in the hands of the man she 
 loves, if she did not have infinite faith in him? What 
 man would assume the responsibility of caring for one 
 woman for a life-time, if when he asked her to marry 
 him, he had not perfect faith in her? 
 
 Every invention which has contributed to the world's 
 progress and advancement is the materialization of faith. 
 Unbounded faith built the first steamboat. It made the 
 telephone and telegraph possible. It constructed the 
 
 43 
 
ILLUSIONS AND DISILLUSIONS 
 
 first automobile and it gave us the flying-machine. Of 
 course, faith without effort or performance, comes to 
 nothing. Men and women who fold their hands and sit 
 down to wait, like old Wilkins Micawber, for something 
 "to turn up" are doomed to disappointment. You can- 
 not conjure things into being done or happening. Faith 
 has no affinity for the lazy man. 
 
 Faith is force. Faith is power. Active faith makes 
 possible the impossible. For those who both labor and 
 believe, it works miracles every day. 
 
 44 
 
APPRECIATION AS A GIFT 
 
 HAT does your birthday mean to you! Is it a 
 season for receiving or giving? Does it re- 
 mind you to be thankful for the gift of life, so 
 thankful that you want to make it a time for 
 rejoicing, or do you feel like forgetting that there is 
 such a day in the year's calendar? 
 
 Did you ever hear of a woman who makes her birth- 
 day a day for giving, rather than receiving? 
 
 There is such an one in the world. For many years 
 she has observed a custom of spending the greater part 
 of the day, although she is a busy mother, giving happi- 
 ness to others by writing letters to oldtime friends and 
 near relatives. She makes a point of recalling in these 
 letters happy memories, of telling the recipients of the 
 beautiful thoughts she has had of them. Here is a para- 
 graph taken from one of these letters, written by her to a 
 much-loved aunt: 
 
 *' My mind is flooded with sweet memories of all the 
 years. Distinctly tinging the waves of this gentle tide, 
 adding warmth and color and all things lovely, are my 
 thoughts of you. I remember you as a happy school 
 girl with wonderful braids of hair. I remember you 
 grown older, casting shy glances at the boys, and buy- 
 ing your first pair of kid gloves — do you remember that ? 
 I remember you in the grace and beauty of your young 
 womanhood. I remember you in the old fashioned 
 ivory and gold parlor; remember you at the piano and 
 also at the organ — it seemed wonderful to me that you 
 should have both. Most of all I remember you on in- 
 
 45 
 
ILLUSIONS AND DISILLUSIONS 
 
 numerable occasions when you passed good things to eat 
 at our children's gatherings. I remember when you 
 came running down the steps to meet us when we came 
 to you on your wedding day and how you looked then, 
 rosy-cheeked, so full of life and so daintily clothed. Do 
 you recall the apron you wore? It was sheer white or- 
 gandie, prettily rui!led, the ruffles featherstitched with 
 gay zephyr, as was the fashion just then. I remember 
 you down through all the j'-ears, always constant and 
 true, always my ideal of perfect womanhood. You have 
 never guessed the hundredth part of what j^ou have been 
 to me, I am sure." 
 
 Imagine the happiness that must have come to the 
 aunt who received this exquisite letter, penned by a niece 
 who wrote to express her gratitude for the hours they 
 had spent together. How she must have glowed as she 
 read those pages of charming appreciation. Yet, how 
 few of us ever experience the joy of receiving such a 
 letter, or better still, of writing one. Yet, the very 
 poorest among us have both friends and kinfolk who have 
 exercised a gracious influence over our lives, and to 
 whom we might very well express the gratitude that 
 we ought to feel. How happy they might be made by a 
 letter of delicate appreciation ! Of course we all think 
 these beautiful things about our friends and relatives. 
 Too often, however, we keep such thoughts bottled up 
 within us instead of pouring them out, a libation to 
 friendship or affection. Some of us believe ourselves to 
 be too busy to write our thoughts, and many of us are 
 too reticent to express what we feel. 
 
 Nothing gives more pleasure to men and women who 
 are growing old than to have the successes and triumphs 
 
 46 
 
 if. 
 
 I 
 
APPRECIATION AS A GIFT. 
 
 of the past recalled to them. A man who has passed the 
 zenith of his powers and activities delights in being re- 
 minded of his past achievements, and a woman adores 
 being told how lovely she looked in a certain costume 
 or how charming she was on a particular occasion when 
 she was the center of interest. 
 
 What a beautiful plan of happiness for the older peo- 
 ple it would be if we would celebrate our birthdays, or 
 some other holiday, for that matter, by telling our most 
 beloved friends and relatives what they have meant to 
 us. I know a son who on his birthday writes to his 
 mother in just that way. He tells her how thankful he 
 is to be living. So it is with all her children. Is it sur- 
 prising that she keeps health and vigor and vivacit}^ at 
 almost four score years? 
 
 Love is the greatest of all beauty secrets and the most 
 perfect panacea for ill-health. When you see men, 
 women and children with a blighted look in their faces, 
 nine times out of ten it is because they are leading love- 
 less lives — that is, they neither give love nor receive it. 
 
 You sometimes wonder why it is that actors and 
 actresses, great singers, men and women famous for their 
 achievements keep their youth so long. It is because 
 they continually are inspired by praise and apprecia- 
 tion. Does not this simple fact contain an every-day-in- 
 the-year birthday hint for each one of us? 
 
 47 
 
"DANGEROUS AGE" IN MEN 
 
 OME years ago a Danish woman, Karin Mich- 
 aelis, wrote a volume of confessions that was 
 as startlingly intimate and personal as the con- 
 fessions of Saint Augustin, Benvenuto Cellini 
 or Jean Jacques Rousseau. The vogue for this book, 
 ''The Dangerous Age" was phenomenal. It was trans- 
 lated into a score of languages and a hundred editions 
 of it were sold. The world was amazed by the writer's 
 revelations. She declared that the most dangerous 
 epoch of a women's life was that which lies between 35 
 and 40. It was then, said Karin Michaelis, that woman 
 is most sorely tempted. It is then that she is most likely 
 to become the dupe of her emotions. The perils of youth, 
 she told us, were as nothing compared with those of 
 middle age. 
 
 A few months after the book was published, the phase, 
 ''dangerous age" became a byword. Middle-aged fem- 
 inine emotions were coldly laid on the dissecting table 
 and they were quite as ruthlessly analyzed. Strangely 
 enough, nobody in all these years has guessed that man, 
 too, has his dangerous age. Sometimes it comes upon 
 him as early as 40. Sometimes it arrives as late as 55. 
 However it may time its arrival, its advent is after he 
 has passed years of struggle and when he begins to real- 
 ize commercial or professional success. With his sons go- 
 ing into business, his daughters married, or off to col- 
 lege and his wife absorbed in society, clubs, charity or 
 suffrage, he begins to sit back and take his ease. Then, 
 it is that the old spirit of adventure begins to assert 
 itself, and he revolts against the routine that he has 
 faithfully followed for many years. He sees that his 
 
 48 
 
'' DANGEROUS AGE IN MEN 
 
 wife has sought and seemingly has found release and re- 
 lief from the routine of household responsibility in a 
 variety of outside interests. In his growing restless- 
 ness he wonders what pleasures and opportunities life 
 may hold for him in these, his riper years. One day, he 
 is surprised to discover that youthful beauty has a new 
 poignant charm for him, and that he is strangely eager 
 to revive the stirring emotions of his youth. Of course, 
 he loves his home and his wife as much, perhaps better 
 than he ever did. Yet, he suspects that he may not have 
 had his share of pleasure, and he recalls with a good 
 deal of satisfaction how as a young man, he patiently 
 bowed his head under the yoke of struggle, privation 
 and industry. Does not his youthful sacrifices to duty 
 entitle him to a certain compensation in his later years? 
 
 The woman who reaches middle age only to discover 
 a great and aching void in her life is a touching and 
 familiar figure. The ninety-and-nine among these 
 women find surcease from their restlessness in club life, 
 society, philanthropy and more recently, in polities. It 
 is only the one who forgets her obligation to her family, 
 her position in society, her influence for good as a 
 woman, and who ventures forth on the primrose path. 
 
 When a man arrives at the dangerous age it is harder 
 for him who has not so many restraining influences 
 thrown around him, not to break down the barriers and 
 go forth and loot the world. 
 
 When men marry in their early twenties or thirties, 
 so many tender things tie them to their homes, their 
 love of their little and helpless children, the delight of 
 seeing those children grow, their eagerness to provide 
 for them handsomel}^, their devotion to their still youth- 
 
 49 
 
ILLUSIONS AND DISILLUSIONS 
 
 fully charming wives. But, in middle age when those 
 same children have gone away to school or have married, 
 when their ideals have paled perceptibly, when their 
 wives, beloved though they are, no longer hold for them 
 a romantic interest, temptations that they once spurned 
 angrily, begin to appear in an alluring light. 
 
 It is a peculiar peril that besets men at the zenith of 
 their careers. With leisure and wealth and opportunity, 
 one sees them renewing their interest in society and ac- 
 quiring an unwonted fastidiousness in dress. They will 
 not admit it as freely as women, but the approach of age 
 is to them quite as fearsome a thing. There are hours 
 when life is to them as a gray symphony, and they ask, 
 ''What can the future hold for me?" 
 
 But, the very next moment, the most disenchanted of 
 men will assure himself that he never felt better, was 
 never younger. It is in middle life, he reminds himself, 
 that men write their greatest books, their sweetest songs 
 and their finest poems. It is in middle life that men ex- 
 press themselves in great commercial enterprises, that 
 they make their best laws, devise their most wonderful 
 inventions and achieve their largest liberties. Then, 
 why should they not long for youth's splendid visions? 
 Why should not the fog-bank be made glorious for them 
 by the moonlight, even as it was for Romeo? 
 
 And so they pass into middle life, or the dangerous 
 age, tortured by that now-or-never prospect. Most of 
 them get through it safely. And the others ? They grasp 
 the cup of golden elixir that is to make all life glorious. 
 For a time it sets their pulses throbbing. It seems to 
 restore youth's un jaded freshness of sensation. Then, 
 one day the cup cloys, and its bitter-sweet contents turn 
 to ashes on their lips. 
 
 50 
 
USES OF AMIABILITY 
 
 OOKING through a table of contents in a book 
 written to help men and women who aspire to 
 successful living, I find no less than seventy sub- 
 jects exhaustively treated, such as ^'The Man 
 and the Opportunity", ''Concentrated Energy", ''What 
 a Good Appearance Will Do", "A Fortune in Good 
 Manners", "The Self Improvement Habit", and so on, 
 ad infinitum. Not a word does the author say about a 
 good disposition and what an important factor it is in 
 the making of a happy and successful life. 
 
 It seems to me that we do not lay enough stress upon 
 the importance of cultivating a good disposition, nor 
 do we always appreciate what it means in our homes, in 
 business, or in social life. I have heard men and women 
 speak slightingly of a good disposition, as if any fool 
 could have one, as if the fine quality of amiability be- 
 longed to simpletons and weaklings. Nothing could be 
 a greater fallacy. With all the irritations and troubles 
 and disappointments that comes to us in the course of 
 our careers, it requires character to keep a sunny, 
 amiable disposition, and strength of purpose and self- 
 control. Any fool can lose his temper at slight provoca- 
 tion. Any clay-footed mortal can pout and have a fit 
 of sulks. Any congenitally weak creature can fret and 
 scold and live in a perpetual state of ill-humor. But 
 "he that is slow to anger is better than the mighty; 
 and he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city ' '. 
 One of the greatest of the underlying causes of child 
 delinquency is a bad disposition in the home. Chil- 
 
 51 
 
ILLUSIONS AND DISILLUSIONS 
 
 dren who are reared in homes where the atmosphere is 
 charged with anger, where the parents continually are 
 hurling ugly epithets at each other, where there is fight- 
 ing and quarreling and back-biting and bickering, have 
 not the shadow of a chance to grow up with good dis- 
 positions. With an example of quarrelsomeness always 
 before them, with irritability always in the air, they nat- 
 urally assume that such is the normal condition of fam- 
 ily existence, and they grow up, following in the foot- 
 steps of their parents, perhaps to establish homes of 
 their own. Through them the quarrelsome spirit often 
 is perpetuated from generation to generation, until one, 
 better and wiser than the others, strikes out in a saner 
 and better way. 
 
 You wonder why so many young people who have 
 comfortable homes are so eager to be "going", why they 
 never are content to sta}^ at home longer than it is neces- 
 sary to eat and sleep. A good many of those restless 
 young people are driven away by sullenness and quar- 
 reling. They cannot endure the angry looks that are ex- 
 changed by their parents, or the sharp words that pass 
 between the woman they call ''Mother" and the man 
 they call ''Father". Home becomes a horror to them. 
 No wonder they foregather in the dance-hall. No won- 
 der they go joy-riding and wander around until after 
 midnight, when they can hope to go home and find the 
 house still. It is perfectly natural that they should 
 make their escape as soon and as often as possible, and 
 that they should spend as much time as possible away 
 from the place they call home, but v/hich is no home, 
 at all. Many of the wretched mistakes that are being 
 made by the younger generation are directly traceable 
 
 52 
 
USES OF AMIABILITY 
 
 to the hideous dispositions of parents Avho have driven 
 their children into the street, and many a criminal in 
 our penitentiaries is the inevitable product of homes 
 that were fairly torn asunder by quarreling during- the 
 formative years of their lives. 
 
 One of the infallible indications of refinement is a 
 good disposition and one of the plainest marks of ''com- 
 monness" is the habit of quarreling and sharp speak- 
 ing, of nagging and complaining and fault-finding. To 
 cultivated minds, a bad disposition is an unfailing 
 symptom of vulgarity. Did you ever notice how "com- 
 mon" people speak to those they consider their inferiors? 
 Did you ever listen while the vulgar newly-rich give 
 their orders in Pullman cars, cafes or hotel dining 
 rooms? Did you ever observe how the "common" 
 mother speaks to her children, how the "common" man 
 addresses his wife? Did you ever notice on the con- 
 trary how men and women of cultivated natures and 
 good dispositions speak with the utmost politeness to 
 their children, to their servants and to such other per- 
 sons whose social status may not be quite as high as their 
 own? 
 
 The charm of a home where the heads of the family 
 have amiable dispositions is unfailing, and children 
 reared in such an atmosphere go out into the world, their 
 battle half won. Men and women who rule their own 
 spirits are ready to meet all classes of people and all 
 conditions in life. They are prepared for emergencies, 
 and unlike those of unruly tempers, who go to pieces at 
 the slightest provocation, they overcome a thousand ob- 
 stacles and they disarm their adversaries before the 
 latter know what has been done. 
 
 53 
 
ILLUSIONS AND DISILLUSIONS 
 
 We think a great deal about cultivating our minds, 
 and we spend years in the development of a certain tal- 
 ent we may have. But, how many of us think enough 
 about cultivating our dispositions? How many women 
 give serious and systematic thought to the training of 
 their natures? A good many — yes, but not enough. 
 How many men make a point of always speaking kindly 
 and amiably and politely to their wives, of keeping be- 
 fore their children the model of a good disposition ? We 
 wish there were more than there are. 
 
 A fine disposition protects one from a great deal of 
 unpleasantness. It raises a sort of friendly barrier be- 
 tween you and some other person's irritability. It wards 
 off many a sharp word and stinging sally. Irritable peo- 
 ple often are ashamed to "show themselves" before finer 
 natures, and the soft answer turns away wrath. 
 
 54 
 
THE EMOTIONAL TEMPERAMENT 
 
 HAT the emotional temperament is a danger- 
 ous temperament, that it is responsible for 
 most of the disasters from which the human 
 race has suffered", that emotional persons are 
 by nature untruthful, that they are cowards and can- 
 not bear pain, that being creatures of impulse, they are 
 generally blunderers, is the startling assertion made by 
 an English physician, writing in the London Hospital. 
 These emotional persons are more numerous than they 
 used to be, says the doctor, a fact that does not augur 
 well, he believes, for the future of the human race. 
 
 How this writer must feel the burden of his mortality ! 
 How slowly must his heart beat! How cold, how slug- 
 gishly must his blood run! How bleak must be his 
 laughter, if, indeed, he can laugh at all ! How cramped 
 must be his existence, how narrow his vision! Surely 
 no man who happens to read this indictment of the emo- 
 tional temperament will be depressed by it, for the 
 physician who must be a humdrum creature, is psycho- 
 logically incorrect. 
 
 What are the phenomena of the mind? Are they not 
 cognition, emotion and volition, or thought, feeling and 
 will ? Do not the emotions comprise feelings of restraint 
 as well as freedom ? Do they not include wonder, terror, 
 love, hate, self-complacency, the sense of power, love of 
 knowledge, the artistic feelings, the moral sense and a 
 score of others too numerous for mention here? What 
 incomplete and uninteresting creatures would we be if 
 our only mental functions were cognition and volition. 
 We would be dry as dust. 
 
 55 
 
ILLUSIONS AND DISILLUSIONS 
 
 Nothing worth while was ever accomplished in this 
 world without the stimulus of emotion. Emotional feel- 
 ing of a high order has been the basis of all philanthropic 
 enterprise just as that of a base order inspired the 
 Spanish inquisition. All artists, writers, musicians, in- 
 ventors and orators are emotional. Poetry is a beautiful 
 and rhythmical way of expressing emotion. 
 
 All great men and women are highly emotional, how- 
 ever self -controlled they may be. In fact, it is only the 
 fool or the mentally defective who permits his emotions 
 to run away with him. 
 
 The English like to assume that they are an unemo- 
 tional people. They are, it is true, a reticent people, and 
 restrained. If, indeed, they were unemotional, they 
 could not have produced century after century much of 
 the world's greatest literature. 
 
 To assert that emotional people are by nature un- 
 truthful is to be guilty of an absurdity. It takes an 
 emotional person, not only to see and understand things, 
 but to express them truly. As for saying that the emo- 
 tional man is a coward — what about those magnificent 
 young warrioi's of ours, those young enthusiasts who 
 scorned trenches and trench fighting, who going into the 
 open, swept everything before them, a singing, laugh- 
 ing, whistling horde, and carried away by valorous emo- 
 tion, plunged on until they brought the Huns to their 
 knees? 
 
 The world would be standing today just where it stood 
 after the creation, if it had not been for the power of 
 emotion. What is achievement unless it be emotion 
 translated into fact? ''Trust your emotions", says 
 Emerson. "Leave your theory as Joseph did his coat 
 
 56 
 
THE EMOTIONAL TEMPERAMENT 
 
 in the hands of the harlot, and flee'\ And he goes on to 
 warn us that a foolish consistency is the ''hobgoblin of 
 little minds", and he tells us that with consistency a 
 great soul can have nothing to do. 
 
 It is easy to believe that the English conmentator on 
 human emotions has stifled all of his. If one could 
 know him intimately, I suspect one would find him to 
 be one of those lugubrious persons who thinks life a 
 poor thing, at best. One would likely discover, too, that 
 he was almost insensible to pleasure, that his standard 
 of morals was utilitarian, that he considered feeling a 
 proper thing for blame, never for praise. 
 
 Emotion keeps the world on the move. It is the life 
 of the soul. Allowed to run riot, and without the guid- 
 ance of the will, it can ruin either an individual or a 
 nation. Russia is an example of emotional chaos, just 
 as was the French revolution. But properly controlled 
 and directed, emotion builds temples. It invents the 
 wireless and the airplane. It writes all the greatest 
 books and poems. It composes the divinest music, and 
 it wins the mightiest battles. Emotion can do one of two 
 things to a man — make him a fool or a god. 
 
 §7 
 
CULT OF SIMPLICITY 
 
 UEEN MARY, we read lately, issued an edict, 
 abolishing the heavy, ponderous court costume 
 which has held the socially elect in sartorial 
 bondage for many generations past. No more 
 will damsels and dowagers, presented to Her Majesty, 
 be compelled to drag after them yards upon yards of 
 heavy trains and walk backward into their treacherous 
 folds. No longer will their coiffures be burdened with 
 plumes. What a shock this setting aside of a time- 
 honored precedent may be to the shade of Queen Victoria 
 who, during her reign would not relax a ceremonial even 
 to the crossing of a T or the dotting of an I, we can only 
 imagine, for when the late monarch once made a law it 
 was to be for yesterday, today and forever, and nobody 
 ever dreamed of a change. 
 
 Throughout the civilized world Queen Mary will be 
 applauded for her decision in favor of greater simplicity. 
 In fact, simplicity is the keynote struck by aristocracy 
 everywhere. Ostentation is taken to be a sign of vul- 
 garity, the displa}^ of the newly rich. 
 
 The orgy of gorgeous dressing, semi-nudity and extra- 
 vagant display of the past few years has caused a re- 
 action in favor of all things that are beautiful in their 
 simplicity. 
 
 In my childhood it was a distinction to wear dia- 
 monds. It is no distinction today. Diamonds are now 
 being worn so commonly and by so many ignorant and 
 vulgar persons that they have lost much of their charm. 
 Instead of being reserved for wear upon ceremonial or, 
 
 58 
 
CULT OF SIMPLICITY 
 
 at least, semi-ceremonial occasions, you see them dis- 
 played indiscriminately in the morning and on the 
 plainest of gowns. It is no uncommon sight to see a 
 diamond and platinum bar-pin five inches long, set with 
 thousands of dollars worth of precious stones adorning 
 the plainest of serge frocks. 
 
 In this day, it seems that the only way to be con- 
 spicuous is to be inconspicuous, and the truest way to 
 be elegant is to be simple almost to excess. Therefore, 
 you see men and women of good breeding and position 
 avoiding the very things that people who have neither, 
 must have at any cost. 
 
 The words and the acts of certain men and women 
 who have lately acquired money are adding much to the 
 gaiety of nations, while at the same time they are causing 
 a powerful revulsion of feeling against all forms of os- 
 tentation and displaj^ 
 
 When the census taker approached a certain woman 
 and going through the usual formalities, asked, '^what 
 is your occupation?" the woman, drawing herself up 
 with a great show of indignation, replied, ''Why, we 
 belong to the idle rich ! ' ' Idleness and riches affording 
 her as they did an entirely new set of experiences, she 
 was very eager to have it known that she did not belong 
 to the class that toils and spins that it may eat. 
 
 "The art of art, the glory of expression and the sun- 
 shine of the light of letters is simplicity," Walt Whit- 
 man tells us in his preface to "Leaves of Grass." It is 
 a commonplace with us that the greatest persons always 
 are the simplest, that true worth feels under no necessity 
 to call attention to itself. It is the shallow person who 
 always is trying to impress you with his superiority. 
 
 59 
 
ILLUSIONS AND DISILLUSIONS 
 
 ''You shall stand by my side and look in the mirror 
 with me" — is the very essence of simplicity. All heroic 
 figures walk at their ease and without strut or flourish. 
 Their only pride is the measureless pride of the soul. 
 
 You enter a house and you wonder why it is so won- 
 derfully pleasing to you. That is because of its simplic- 
 ity. You look at a woman and you exclaim, ''what an 
 exquisite toilette ! ' ' The secret of it ? Simplicity, again. 
 
 We are beginning to see all over the world a new trend 
 toward simplicity. This v/as predicted generally as a 
 reaction from the war. Now we know that the war was 
 only a secondary cause of this growing love for things 
 that are real and simple, the primary cause being the 
 revolt of the best people against the absurdities of the 
 nouveau riches, who dressed up in marvelous grandeur, 
 have no place to go. 
 
 60 
 
MARRIAGE: WHY MEN FAIL 
 
 OME time ago, a judge in the superior court of 
 Chicago handed in his resignation, saying that 
 he was ''sick and tired of hearing divorce 
 cases" and adding the dismal note that "mar- 
 riage does not mean anything anymore". 
 
 This remark must have been made in a mood of pro- 
 found pessimism, for marriage means just as much as it 
 ever did. It means love and home and children ' and 
 companionship, however frequently parties to the mar- 
 riage contract may fail ignominiously. And for the 
 very i^eason that marriage, as an institution, means the 
 deepest and most beautiful things in this life, everybody 
 is intensely interested in marriage, why in the present 
 it so often is a failure, and how it may be made a suc- 
 cess. For the veiy reason that the world loves love and 
 the lover, the world finds in marriage, an inexhaustible 
 source of discussion and speculation. This discussion, 
 I believe to be one of the healthiest and most encouraging 
 signs of the times. For, as we discover the obscurer 
 causes for marriage failing of its best purposes, we 
 should see our way to making it a much happier and 
 more satisfactory human institution than it ever has 
 been in the past. 
 
 First of the subtler causes of failure in marriage on 
 the part of man is selfishness. Because he is man, the 
 superior sex, everybody must bow to his desires, whether 
 they be good or bad. Such a man usually has had a 
 foolish mother, a woman who has believed that nothing 
 in the world was good enough for her little tin god of a 
 
 61 
 
ILLUSIONS AND DISILLUSIONS 
 
 son. Naturally enough, he grows up with the idea of 
 exploiting women, first lights of love, then a Avife. This 
 type of man always can be detected by a glance at his 
 wife who invariably is a cowed creature, lack-luster, 
 dispirited and old long before her time. In former days 
 women of broken hearts and broken bodies went down to 
 their graves for their selfish spouses. Now, they get a 
 divorce. 
 
 Second in importance is the money question. It is a 
 very phlegmatic and obtuse woman who is not sensitive 
 over the division of money. Too many families have no 
 definite money policy. There is no regular allowance for 
 household expenses, no sum set aside for the wife's 
 private purse. Instead of the husband and wife going 
 over their accounts the first of each month in an amicable 
 and business-like manner, and planning what extra ex- 
 penses may be undertaken in the month to come, there 
 often is blaming and scolding on the part of the husband 
 and tears and recriminations from the wife. As an 
 aftermath, the wife broods over her hated economic de- 
 pendence and the tyranny of male man. If the husband 
 would take his wife into his confidence, provide for her 
 certain spending privileges, then make her feel that his 
 money was her money, to be properly used and sanely 
 conserved, there would be far fewer discontented, restive 
 women, and fewer cases in the divorce courts. 
 
 All women are hungry for love. Too often the rap- 
 tures of the honeymoon speedily deteriorate into the 
 stereotyped kiss of farewell and greeting, and after a 
 few months, a few years, the wife stretches out the arms 
 of her affection, only to draw them back empty again. 
 Her husband is too busy, too much occupied to make love 
 
 62 
 
MARRIAGE : WHY MEN FAIL 
 
 to her. Then sometimes, I suspect, it may be the very 
 creature comforts of marriage that kill romance in the 
 husband's heart. 
 
 One of the commonest mistakes of husbands is their 
 forgetfulness of good manners. It is marital laziness 
 rather than ignorance or innate selfishness which makes 
 a man neglectful of little courtesies when he is once 
 comfortably settled in married life. It is incomprehen- 
 sible to a sensitive woman that a man who never forgets 
 to be courteous to her in the street may be by no means 
 considerate in private life. She cannot understand why 
 marriage should change a man's outward attitude of 
 chivalry. He always may be patient and gracious when 
 she asks a favor of him. But what a woman longs to 
 have done for her is the thing for which she has not 
 specially asked. It would be very sweet to her if occa- 
 sionally he would offer to carry the baby up to bed, if 
 he would open the door for her, or place a comfortable 
 chair for her, or adjust the curtain' to shade her eyes. 
 
 We are always reading in advice-to-wives columns that 
 a wife always must be neat and attractive in her hus- 
 band's presence, that her dress must be immaculate and 
 that she must be as fragrant as a rose. Why is it that so 
 little is said about a husband's physical attractiveness? 
 Is it of no importance to his wife ? Many heartbreaking 
 letters have come to me from wives who abhorred their 
 husband's slovenliness, who were hurt and humiliated 
 beyond expression by their husband's aversion for reg- 
 ular and frequent ablutions and the latter 's willingness 
 to wear dirty, spotted, unpressed clothes. It is just as 
 distasteful to a fastidious woman to view an unshaven, 
 unkempt husband in a dingy bathrobe and run-down-at- 
 
 63 
 
ILLUSIONS AND DISILLUSIONS 
 
 the heel slippers as it is to a husband to look at his wife 
 with a neglected skin, hair done up in curlers and wear- 
 ing a faded kimono that properly belongs in a rag-bag. 
 Women can institute comparisons quite as well as men 
 can, and what is more, they do. 
 
 Thousands of American husbands of the better class 
 who are good to their wives in the sense that they are 
 kind to them and provide well for them, are indifferent 
 to their women-folk. They are proud of their wives, but 
 they are uninterested in them, in a strictly personal 
 sense. They are playing a tremendous game, and the 
 stakes are enormous, for in this country a man must 
 either win or he must fail. You hear it said that men 
 make their business their life because women demand it. 
 Indirectly, the women may be responsible, but actually 
 it is the pace of the country itself. Our men are gen- 
 erous, and they like to see their women ''have every- 
 thing in the world". The result is that they often are 
 more absorbed in the process by which they are enabled 
 to give their women everything than they are in the 
 women themselves. 
 
 "With W. L. George I believe that a great many men 
 might be model husbands if the}^ were not married. 
 There are times when the terrible respectability of mar- 
 riage palls upon the male creature, and he feels that he 
 somehow must break through, if only to assure himself 
 that he is not in bondage for life. The recrudescence of 
 the romantic spirit in middle life or shortly thereafter is 
 another common cause of failure, even after many years 
 of conjugal tranquility. 
 
 64 
 
^ 
 
 MARRIAGE: WHY WOMEN FAIL 
 
 ARRIAGE is still the great beginning, even now 
 as it Avas with Adam and Eve. After thou- 
 sands of years of human experience, it is sub- 
 ject to much the same conditions, and it is con- 
 fronted with almost the same perils it encountered 6,000 
 years ago. Adam and Eve, you remember, passed their 
 honeymoon in the Garden of Eden, and all their life 
 thereafter, among the tliorns of the wilderness. The chief 
 difference between marriage as we know it today and 
 marriage as it was experienced by our first father and 
 mother is the difference between georgette crepe and fig 
 leaves, between a mansion filled with period furniture 
 and taking up one's abode under the shelter of a rock, 
 between eating of the tree of know^ledge and dining off 
 roast capon and Romaine lettuce with salad oil. In other 
 words, time has changed only the outward and artificial 
 conditions, human nature having remained much the 
 same. It is still a struggle, calling for the exhibition 
 of the very best in human nature. It means larger free- 
 dom and greater responsibilities, and where the man 
 and the woman so live that the next generation shall be 
 a little better, the advancing years mean but a climax, 
 and age a rich harvest of memories. 
 
 Sometimes I wish that the wedding ring might have 
 inscribed in it the motto of the Prince of Wales, ''Ich 
 dien" (I serve) so that when w^omen enter into marriage 
 they might be readier to accept it, not as a state of servi- 
 tude, but an opportunity for service of the finest and 
 noblest kind. When a man marries, it is with the hope 
 
 65 
 
ILLUSIONS AND DISILLUSIONS 
 
 and expectation of having a home made for him com- 
 mensurate with his means. Thousands of men in all 
 classes, the clerk class as well as the capitalist class are 
 .exasperated when they discover that their wives cannot 
 or will not face the duties of wifehood and motherhood, 
 because they expect to be kept in semi-idleness, to be 
 petted and pampered and waited upon either by servants 
 or their men-folk. They are disgusted when they find 
 their women cannot or will not put a palatable meal on 
 the table, that they cannot or will not sweep and dust 
 a room competently, make a garment, darn or mend. 
 Such a disclosure is frightfully discouraging to a man 
 unless he has almost unlimited sums of money, and not 
 many men are so well off. No woman should become a 
 party to a marriage contract unless she will face the sit- 
 uation honestly and say to herself, "I have undertaken 
 to serve this man and to make him a home. It is up to 
 me to create order and comfort, harmony, happiness and 
 security, and if I cannot do that, I will not have earned 
 a faithful husband and all the good things of this life. ' ' 
 Happiness is not a purchasable commodity. The 
 American idea that "money makes the mare go" is re- 
 sponsible for many of our social and political ills. The 
 idea started some decades ago at the top, and it has 
 filtered down through every stratum of society. A great 
 deal of our present unrest may be traced to it. It has 
 inclined women all the more to be nervous, to take noth- 
 ing as immutable in their lives, to keep them in a state 
 of suspense in which they continually look forward to the 
 time when they will be rich, when they can climb to a 
 higher circle in society. Many a wife, tormented by her 
 unfulfilled desire for the luxuries of her neighbors, nags 
 
 66 
 
MARRIAGE: WHY WOMEN PAIL 
 
 her husband because he does not make as much money 
 and until he wishes there never was such a thing as mar- 
 riage and that all wives could be consigned to the shades 
 below. 
 
 The martyred air some women assume is enough to 
 drive a man to drink even when the market price is $35 
 a quart. Not a few socalled ' ' good women ' ' put on this 
 air of martyrdom when everything does not go to suit 
 them. They do it in the knowledge that there is nothing 
 against which a man feels so absolutely defenseless. I 
 have known men, really better human beings than their 
 wives, who were made to endure this intolerable pose on 
 the part of selfish women. The stronger of them take it 
 humorously when they are not too much exasperated by 
 it, and the weaker ones run away — just anywhere to find 
 relief from the stuffy atmosphere of injured virtue which 
 chokes them every time they enter their homes. Many 
 a man, under such circumstances has devoutly wished 
 that his wife were an out-and-out sinner so that for once 
 he might tell her in plain language just what he thought 
 of her. But, alas for the man, this type of woman never 
 abandons her strategic position of martyr — and the poor 
 man never gets his chance. 
 
 All day long, men are meeting people, in the streets, 
 in the cars, in their offices and stores. When night falls, 
 they have had. just about enough of human society, 
 barring occasional evenings for diversion, and they long 
 for a little peace and cheerful quiet within their own 
 four walls. Women who have been at home all day find 
 it difficult to understand this. If they have not used all 
 their surplus energy in cooking, cleaning, sewing and 
 nursing children, they look forward to the evening as a 
 
 67 
 
ILLUSIONS AND DISILLUSIONS 
 
 time for ''excitement." They want to play cards or 
 dance or go to the theater unmindful of the fact that 
 their spouses may be deadly tired. This difference of 
 aims is a fruitful source of discord. It irritates a man 
 who has put his whole mind and strength into his busi- 
 ness to be ''dragged out" when he does not feel like it, 
 and he readily jumps to the conclusion that his efforts to 
 make a success are not being appreciated and that he is 
 getting no encouragement at home. 
 
 One of the commonest shortcomings of women is to be 
 deficient in a practical knowledge of human nature. Men 
 are perfectly simple and sincere in being satisfied with 
 passionate love — it is their wives who tire of it quickly 
 and who try to gloss over their marital relations with a 
 lot of sentiment and sophistry, and who insist that their 
 husbands become interested in "higher things", that is, 
 music, poetry, literature and art. This type of woman 
 easily comes to believe that her husband does not under- 
 stand her, and she is often foolish enough to drop insin- 
 uating remarks to the effect that his tastes are not very 
 lofty and that his nature is too common to be in tune 
 with the "ideal". 
 
 Marriage is essentially woman's business, just as cre- 
 ating material wealth is man 's. It was instituted, not to 
 please man, but for her own protection and the welfare 
 of her children. That being so, it is a pity that more 
 w^omen do not make shining successes of marriage when 
 they have tolerably good material to work with, and that 
 so many wend their uncertain steps into a domestic rela- 
 tions court. 
 
 68 
 
'THANK YOU" PAYS DIVIDENDS 
 
 HAVE just read a story about two brothers who 
 have built up a tremendous business on ' ' thank 
 you ' '. Operating a chain of eight stores, their 
 sales have grown in a few years from $1 a day 
 to over $300,000 a year. The keynote of all their busi- 
 ness is — courtesy. It is a rule of their stores that if one 
 of their salesmen should forget to say ' ' thank you ' ' to a 
 purchaser, the latter may keep the goods and have his 
 money back. Nor will these two brothers tolerate a per- 
 functory expression of appreciation. Proprietors as well 
 as salesmen make a point of saying ''thank you" in a 
 manner and voice that carry conviction to their patrons. 
 Their ''thank yous" warm the hearts and cheer the 
 spirits of all their customers who do not need to be urged 
 to "call again". 
 
 Nor is business the only phase of life that profits by a 
 hearty "thank you". In many instances home-life 
 could be made much pleasanter and happier by a more 
 generous interchange of thanks. When a young man is 
 courting his sweetheart, she never dreams of taking all 
 his delightful courtesies and the little events he provides 
 for her pleasure as a matter of course unless she is an ill- 
 bred young woman. 
 
 "Thank you", she says with her most winning smile 
 as he assists her to put on or take off her wraps. After 
 a dinner or an evening at the theater, she would not 
 think of bidding him goodby without her thanks. The 
 gift of a bouquet or a box of candy inspires her grati- 
 tude. Yet, how often this delightful exchange of cour- 
 
 69 
 
ILLUSIONS AND DISILLUSIONS 
 
 tesy is forgotten just as soon as the ink is dry on the 
 marriage certificate ! How often all those little acts of 
 courtesy that made their period of courting and be- 
 trothal so delightfully fascinating are lost in the daily 
 humdrum of domestic life ! Without meaning to do so, 
 friend husband forgets to say "thank you" when his 
 wife renders him some affectionate little service, and 
 friend wife omits that word of appreciation when her 
 husband, still mindful of her pleasure, brings home to 
 her at evening a little remembrance, it may be only a 
 flower or one of those magazines women like. 
 
 Some years ago I visited a family composed of a 
 brother and a sister. If the latter asked that her brother 
 raise or lower the window, that he hand her a shawl or 
 her work basket, that he carry her letters to the mail, 
 his invariable answer was ''with pleasure". And that 
 one little phrase "with pleasure" was said in a tone in- 
 dicating that it gave him the liveliest personal satisfac- 
 tion to serve her in any way that he could. That broth- 
 er's gracious courtesy to his sister burned itself into 
 my memory and the way that he uttered that one phrase 
 and others of a similar nature produced on me an im- 
 pression that I never will forget. 
 
 We need more "thank yous" and more smiles in do- 
 mestic, social and business life. A hearty "thank you" 
 costs nothing and sometimes it pays big dividends. Cer- 
 tainly, it smoothes the way of all business. When you 
 make a purchase from a salesman or saleswoman who 
 hands you your change and your package with a cheer- 
 ful ' ' thank you ' ', you say to yourself, ' ' I will certainly 
 go there again". There are some salespeople so kind, so 
 solicitious, so helpful in their manner of giving you atten- 
 
 70 
 
tion as to make shopping a delightful experience. There 
 are others who produce the opposite effect. The latter 
 are heavy handicaps to the firms that employ them. 
 Where they cannot learn to give the public a polite con- 
 sideration they ought to make room for those who can. 
 
 A magazine editor who in his very young manhood 
 sold books for a living, said this to me one day: *'When 
 a book agent calls upon you in your office, I beg you to 
 thank him for calling before he leaves. You may not 
 want to buy his books, or you may not even have the 
 time to look at them — but in the name of humanity, 
 don't let him go without a kind word. Book agents are 
 the most persistently snubbed creatures in business. 
 And for the very reason that they are accustomed to re- 
 ceiving scant courtesy, a kindly ' thank you ' is something 
 no book agent will ever forget". 
 
 There is no excuse or occasion for impoliteness or dis- 
 courtesy. They have no place in civilized life. 
 
 Business men and business women — husbands and 
 wives — parents and children — brothers and sisters — 
 teachers and pupils — lovers and friends — plenty of smil- 
 ing, cordial "thank yous", generously and judiciously 
 distributed, pay big dividends in happiness and success. 
 
 71 
 
RECREATION FOR HOUSEWIVES 
 
 HE sense of duty that ''leans backward" is at 
 once, a pathetic and tragic thing. It is pa- 
 thetic because it is so sadly mistaken, and it 
 becomes tragic for the reason that so many un- 
 necessary evils are likely to follow in its train. It seems 
 to have an affinity for extremists, and not the least com- 
 mon of its victims is the housewife, who, lacking a proper 
 sense of proportion regarding her duty to herself and her 
 family, digs an early grave for herself by giving up all 
 amusement and recreation and working herself, literally, 
 to death. Here is a letter that came to me from a wife 
 and mother who is keenly disturbed over the problem of 
 her recreation, and who says: 
 
 **I am a woman in my twenties with four babies. I 
 do all of my own work except the washing. I make the 
 children 's garments and also my husband 's shirts. I am 
 not complaining — don't misunderstand me, for I thor- 
 oughly enjoy my children and my v/ork, and I believe 
 that the busiest people are the happiest. The one thing 
 that worries me is the problem of recreation. About 
 once in two weeks, I have my mother stay with the chil- 
 dren while I go to a moving picture theater. I love good 
 pictures and it is a great relief to sit down and relax. 
 Yet, all the time I am in the theater I feel as if I were 
 committing a crime against my family, and I ought not 
 to take time from my home when there are so many 
 things to be done there. On the other hand, I always 
 return from my little outings feeling greatty refreshed 
 and better able to go on with my work. What do you 
 
 72 
 
RECREATION FOR HOUSEWIVES 
 
 think about it? Am I wasting time that I should be 
 giving to my home and my husband?" 
 
 The only crime that this very good and conscientious 
 wife and mother is likely to commit is in not giving her- 
 self enough recreation for the welfare of her own fam- 
 ily and for her own good. Two things happen to the 
 woman who spends every waking hour on her household 
 duties — she overdraws her account, physically speaking, 
 and she deteriorates mentally. 
 
 For every law nature makes, she exacts a penalty for 
 its violation. Every time we break a law, nature takes 
 note of that fact, and sooner or later she renders an 
 accounting for all the nights of sleep we have lost, the 
 meals we were too busy to eat, the days when we ex- 
 hausted, not only our normal fund of strength and en- 
 ergy, but that which we hold in reserve. The bill is pre- 
 sented, and we must pay, sometimes in the coin of 
 exhaustion, sometimes in illness, and it may be with 
 our lives. 
 
 Every mother of a family has the future as well as 
 the present to think of. She owes it to her husband and 
 her children to take enough rest and recreation to keep 
 herself mentally and physically fit. What will it profit 
 her husband and her children who need her mothering 
 care until maturity if she exhausts herself by the time 
 she reaches middle life, with the result that she either 
 sinks into invalidism or is called to the other world? 
 No human being can live without a reasonable amount 
 of relaxation, and one of the commonest mistakes made 
 by the people of this country, men and women alike, is 
 to overwork and run up a bill to nature that they never 
 will be able to pay. 
 
 73 
 
ILLUSIONS AND DISILLUSIONS 
 
 The woman who never takes any pleasure loses her 
 youthfulness and beauty. She forfeits her charm and 
 becomes stale. 
 
 "I have not the strength to do all the housework that 
 I ought to do and all the sewing for my family, so I have 
 had to decide what is absolutely essential and what is 
 partially non-essential and make out my program ac- 
 cording to that", said a bright and sensible wife and 
 mother. ''My husband and my children prefer that I 
 should feel well and happy to having every nook and 
 corner immaculate. As the lesser of two evils, I do not 
 keep my house as clean as when I could afford to hire 
 some help". Devoted as she is to the interests of her 
 family, this woman strikes a happy balance by claiming 
 certain hours for rest and recreation, to go to an occa- 
 sional party or attend the theater. 
 
 Moderation is a great virtue. The nerves of a great 
 many women in this country are on a hair trigger be- 
 cause they never give themselves any rest or repose. I 
 have known women, who, while performing all the work 
 of their households, with the result that they always 
 were in a state of semi-exhaustion would embroider their 
 children's garments, and I once knew an over- worked 
 woman who embroidered her monogram on aprons she 
 made for kitchen wear. 
 
 The wiser wife and mother so arranges her program 
 that she reserves to herself a few hours for recreation 
 and pleasure, not once in a fortnight, but several times 
 a week. She is the better wife and mother for it. She 
 lives longer. She is healthier and happier, and her 
 children love her all the more. 
 
 74 
 
PITY, DON'T CONDEMN SNOBS 
 
 ROM time to time I receive requests to write on 
 the subject of snobs. Always, I am tempted 
 to accept the challenge ; first, because new 
 kinds and varieties of snobs always are de- 
 veloping, and second, I find from year to year, my ideas 
 concerning snobs undergoing some change. 
 
 Snobs and their snobbishness formerly provoked me 
 to anger. They no longer do. I have come to realize 
 that snobbishness is the result of personal limitations, of 
 ignorance, a narrow soul and a small mind. Instead of 
 condemning snobs for their snobbishness, we should pity 
 them. They merely are suffering from ' ' growing-pains ' ' 
 and they likely will feel better in some future day. 
 
 You may have thought that snobs are a self-satisfied 
 and self-confident lot. On the contrary, they are the 
 most uneasy and discomposed of persons. Continually 
 they are fearful of saying or doing something that may 
 not place them in the best possible light. They con- 
 stantly are tortured with fears, doubts and misgivings. 
 Judging by some of their actions, you would think that 
 their reputations, their social positions actually hung 
 by a thread. 
 
 This fear which pursues them like a Nemesis will ex- 
 plain snobs and many of the things they do. It explains 
 the woman who makes a pretense of not having seen her 
 neighbor who has not yet scaled so many rungs of the 
 social ladder. It explains the woman who trembles at 
 the thought of having her name appear in a guest-list 
 unless that list be composed of the names of her own set. 
 
 75 
 
ILLUSIONS AND DISILLUSIONS 
 
 It explains the mother of the bride who protests against 
 having the name of the groom's parents in the wedding 
 story because they are not as prominent socially as some 
 of the bride's friends. It explains the employer who 
 cannot bring himself to acknowledge courteously the 
 presence of one of his employes, outside of office hours. 
 It explains the man who is just a little bit ashamed to 
 take a girl out to dinner, no matter how pretty and gen- 
 tle and refined she may be, just because she happens ' * to 
 work". 
 
 I do not know whether to call it a comedy or a tragedy 
 — an incident I witnessed recently. 
 
 At a certain social gathering, three women, richly 
 dressed and much be jeweled, were standing in a group. 
 Their money was a decidedly recent acquisition. The 
 only thing they knew to do with it was to buy furs, dia- 
 monds in great profusion, houses with too much furniture 
 in them and expensive motor cars. Suddenly, their con- 
 versation, keyed to a note rather unpleasantly personal, 
 was interrupted by the friendly salutation of a fourth 
 woman whose face, manner, voice, dress and bearing be- 
 tokened gentility. Her gown and hat, it must be ad- 
 mitted, were not in the very latest fashion and her hands 
 were bare of rings. What did those three women do but 
 deliberated^ turn their too ample backs upon her — three 
 mongrels trying to snub a thorough-bred. 
 
 Easy money, I suppose, always will be the soil in which 
 snobbery flourishes. Easy money, without education or 
 native refinement is the mother of vulgarity, pretense 
 and ostentation. It has a way of clothing its makers in 
 garments of habit, thought and manner that are ill-fitting 
 to say the very least. 
 
 76 
 
PITY, don't condemn SNOBS 
 
 I do not believe that the newly rich American man 
 often is willingly a snob. Usually, it is the woman in his 
 family who drags him at the chariot wheels of her snob- 
 bery and who brings up his sons and daughters in the 
 faith. The average man who makes a success feels just 
 aj3 good as anybody. He is an elemental creature in this 
 — that he sees no reason why he should conciliate men 
 and women of loftier social position. They may have 
 more graceful manners, or they may speak better Eng- 
 lish, but they haven't any bigger house than he has, or a 
 bigger pile of rocks. Usually, he is too robust of nature, 
 too wholesome to sacrifice his self-respect to gain a doubt 
 ful end. 
 
 When you pause to consider that the general run of 
 intelligent people ha". ^ just about the same cares and 
 responsibilities, joys, s :tows and satisfactions, it seems 
 so pitiful that they shciild permit themselves to be di- 
 vided by superficial things. In the hour of death or in 
 the face of hunger all superficialities drop from us like 
 a garment, and we get down to first principles, made one 
 in our common humanity. 
 
 The true man seeks fame in this world, the snob 
 notoriety. The true man hopes to win a place in the 
 hearts of the people, while the snob is fully satisfied to 
 be in the public eye. The true man hopes to win the re- 
 spect and sincere admiration of his fellows. The snob's 
 ambition is to be envied by those who have less than he. 
 The true man waits to be sought out. The snob, who 
 imagines that everybody is secretly worshiping his 
 money, rushes in where an angel would fear to tread. 
 While he hugs to his soul the bright delusion that he is 
 exciting great interest and curiosity, he inspires nothing 
 
 77 
 
ILLUSIONS AND DISILLUSIONS 
 
 more enviable than the silent contempt of the wiser and 
 better-bred. 
 
 Thorough-bred men and women never are afraid to be 
 kind and courteous. They feel none of that uneasiness 
 in coming in contact with humbler persons which so 
 torments the snob. They never are afraid of imperiling 
 their social position by any act of human kindness, 
 though it be done to the lowliest creature. They can 
 stand apart from the worry and fret and glare of the 
 social scramble, unconcerned and secure. 
 
 78 
 
CHARACTER IS POWER 
 
 E WOULD rather have a small account with a 
 good name behind it than a large account in 
 the name of a man who did not stand for the 
 best things", declared a highly successful 
 banker. ' ' The bank account that is backed by character 
 is the account we are looking for". 
 
 More and more the business world is coming to value 
 character. More and more it asks less about a man's 
 technical skill than concerning his character and habits 
 of life. There was a day when a brilliant drunkard had 
 a pretty fair chance in business. That day is past and 
 gone. One of the first things an employer wants to 
 know about a prospective employe is the character of the 
 man and his habits. The first consideration with a 
 banker when he loans money is the character of the per- 
 son who seeks the loan, for he knows that the man of 
 character will pay his debts and meet his obligations at 
 whatever sacrifice to himself. Life insurance companies 
 are keenly interested in the character of men and women 
 who hold their policies, and they are extremely suspicious 
 of grafters and libertines. Men and women of known 
 character and established reputations are always in de- 
 mand in the business world. 
 
 Every city has its group of ''prominent citizens". 
 Most of them are men and women of character. Some 
 of them are not. 
 
 There is an "upper ten" or a "four hundred" in 
 society. In every group, whether it be in business, in 
 society, in the church, lodge, store or workshop, you will 
 
 79 
 
ILLUSIONS AND DISILLUSIONS 
 
 find men and women of character. They are marked 
 men and women and they stand out from the mass. They 
 may not have very much money, but they have something 
 that is more precious than gold. 
 
 What is superior character? 
 
 It is not to be gauged by the money you have, by the 
 clothes you wear, and sad to relate, it may not always be 
 determined by the position you hold in society. 
 
 Neither is it to be found in genius, if you are one of 
 those rare persons who has genius, or in talent or any 
 special ability. 
 
 There is many a millionaire who is a cheap scoundrel. 
 There is many an artist who is a cad. There are great 
 actresses and singers who are wholly without character. 
 Sooner or later they are all found out, and if nothing 
 worse happens to them, they fail in realizing by one-half 
 on their potentialities. 
 
 In a great financial panic in the middle of the last 
 century all the bank presidents of New York City held 
 a meeting one night. When they exchanged experiences 
 on the amount of specie that had been drawn from their 
 various banks during the day — some of them had lost as 
 high as 75 per cent of their deposits — Moses Taylor of 
 the City bank reported: ''We had $400,000 in our bank 
 this morning. Tonight, we have $470,000 ' '. So great was 
 the confidence of people in the character of Moses Tay- 
 lor that they had in many cases deposited in the City 
 bank money they had drawn from other banks. 
 
 How many young people realize that substantial suc- 
 cess depends more upon character than what they know 
 and what they have? 
 
 It was character that elected both Washington and 
 80 
 
CHARACTER IS POWER 
 
 Lincoln to the presidency, and I sincerely believe that it 
 is character, more than any other qualification that the 
 people of this country want in their chief executive. 
 They want honesty and sterling ability. They want no 
 tricksters or cheap politicians. They want one of whom 
 it may be said, that, ' ' The elements so mixed in him that 
 Nature might stand up and say to all the world, ' This is 
 a man ! ' ' * 
 
 There must be something in a man better than his 
 achievements ; something finer than his material wealth ; 
 something nobler than his genius; something more en- 
 during than fame. 
 
 Money and fame and culture and position are sources 
 of undoubted strength — today. But character is the one 
 dependable source of power yesterday, today and for- 
 ever. It is both a cause and a result. 
 
 81 
 
WOMAN— PRACTICAL POET 
 
 ^BNSPIRATION, true culture and refinement— 
 
 |n| these are the three great needs of the home. 
 
 S^J A great many people look upon personal cul- 
 ture as a strange, remote and unattainable 
 thing. The girl living in a small town, far removed from 
 the centers of fashion, the theaters, the opera and all 
 the luxuries that modern industry can offer, imagines 
 that life's best inspirations and personal culture are out 
 of her reach. The country woman, still more remote 
 from advanced schools, colleges and luxurious living and 
 the hard-working women in the city who never lift their 
 eyes above their daily round of monotonous household 
 duty assume likewise that culture is something quite 
 apart from them. 
 
 True culture and refinement are within the reach of 
 every human being, whatever his condition or station in 
 life. The poorest farm woman, the humblest w^orking 
 girl, the man who performs the roughest kind of labor 
 can be thoroughly cultivated if they so desire. There is 
 nothing mysterious or illusive in refinement of thought, 
 manner or speech that renders it accessible only to the 
 elect. Education and refinement of feeling are possible 
 to all men and women. In some of the simplest homes, 
 there resides the truest culture, the keenest sense of the 
 artistic, the utmost refinement of manner and speech. On 
 the contrary, one can meet crudeness and coarseness in 
 the finest mansions, a vulgarity of thought and a lack 
 of inspiration that will send a chill to the marrow of 
 one's bones. 
 
 For the uses of culture, it matters very little whether 
 82 
 
WOMAN — PRACTICAL POET 
 
 you have a rag carpet or an Axminster rug on the floor, 
 so long as the colors are harmoniously blended and it 
 serves the purpose to which it is put. It matters very 
 little whether the curtains at the window are of muslin 
 or the finest lace so long as they are clean, well made 
 and well hung. Many people have the idea that cheap 
 things cannot be beautiful, that artistic effects can be 
 achieved only by the expenditure of a great deal of 
 money. They believe that they cannot be well educated 
 unless they graduate from a college, travel extensively 
 and have a library containing a thousand books. They 
 forget that some of our greatest men have had nothing 
 more than a common school education, that artists often 
 spring from peasant stock. They overlook the fact that 
 self-made men of fine attainment were inspired to reach 
 out for the best things in the world, that some of them 
 bought books when they did not have enough money to 
 supply them with food and clothing. When he could 
 not afford to buy candles, Abraham Lincoln pored over 
 his few precious volumes during winter evenings by the 
 light of the fire. Josiah Wedgwood borrowed a copy of 
 Thomson's '^Seasons", learned it by heart, and out of 
 the inspiration he received from that one volume, he 
 passed from the modeling of butter crocks to the ex- 
 quisite potteries that bear his name. 
 
 It is true that multitudes of people have forsaken or 
 avoided the means of culture because caste is founded 
 to a great extent upon material prosperity. They be- 
 come disheartened when society exalts outward over in- 
 ward things, the material over the spiritual. Such con- 
 ditions have unfortunately alienated man from his 
 brother. They have sundered the ties of common hu- 
 
 83 
 
ILLUSIONS AND DISILLUSIONS 
 
 inanity. They have bred jealously, scorn and mutual ill- 
 will. The poor man has thought that he was in some 
 way radically different from the rich man, and for that 
 reason it was futile for him to aspire. The poor woman, 
 likewise, has been dismayed by the luxuries and oppor- 
 tunities of her wealthier sisters, and w^here she might 
 have seen diamonds had she been looking for them, she 
 has seen only the dust. 
 
 There is no valid reason, however, why any class or 
 condition of people should neglect the means of grace, 
 why they should tolerate in themselves or their children 
 rude speech, careless manners, personal slovenliness, or 
 why such characteristics should persist from one genera- 
 tion to the other. Also, there is no reason why courtesy, 
 cleanliness, delicacy, ease of manner and refinement 
 should not be habitual with the laboring multitude. Is 
 not a man more than dress or upholstery? Cannot the 
 spirit triumph over humble situations and defy the show 
 of the universe? 
 
 The burden of refining influence rests, of course, with 
 women. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that if all 
 the women in the world were destroyed, all the men 
 would be barbarians within a year. It is the woman who 
 has always aspired to and demanded the means of refine- 
 ment. It is she who lays the spotless white cloth and 
 arranges the bright silver. It is the woman who picks 
 the flower and puts it tenderly in a vase. It is the woman 
 who brings a bit of art or music in the home. The art of 
 dress would be unknown were it not for women. For 
 every true woman is a practical poet. By her gentleness, 
 by her domestic arts and refinements, she tames the 
 savage in her mate. 
 
 84 
 
WOMAN — PRACTICAL POET 
 
 One day I heard a man recalling the dulcet tones of 
 his mother's voice. As she passed her children in going 
 about her housework, she would give each one a swift 
 caress. Though she was compelled to do all the work 
 for a large family, washing, ironing, cooking, scrubbing, 
 sewing, mending, she at the same time schooled her chil- 
 dren in a classic appreciation of life. She so taught 
 them the means of grace that they have become as nat- 
 ural to them as breathing. They remember her as the 
 one most charming and magnetic woman in the world. 
 
 If we would all quit aping the rich man and trying 
 to outstrip our neighbors; if we would consecrate our 
 leisure and such sums as we could reasonably save from 
 our earnings to the means of culture such as the best 
 books, the best music, to congenial society, to the enjoy- 
 ment of the beautiful in art and nature and to the kindly 
 and sympathetic offices of humanity, we would no longer 
 stand accused of being a nation of superficial culture. 
 We would soon earn the right to be called the most 
 broadly cultivated people on earth. 
 
 85 
 
MODERN CHESTERFIELDS 
 
 LIHU ROOT has said that every lawyer should 
 read Blackstone's Commentaries once a year. 
 Mr. Root not only took his own counsel — he 
 actually wrote out the commentaries in long- 
 hand three times in his life. 
 
 Whether we be lawyers, doctors, business men or 
 laborers, there is one book which all of us would do well 
 to read once a year. Better still would it be to write it 
 and memorize it during the formative period of our lives. 
 That book is "Lord Chesterfield's Letters to His Son", 
 the most valuable treatise on manners and deportment 
 that ever was penned. More than that, it is an eloquent 
 argument for striving, and urging toward ambition. 
 Lord Chesterfield had no patience with men who did not 
 realize on their talents and opportunities. And his 
 words are the more convincing because they were ad- 
 dressed to a much beloved son. 
 
 For a long time I have believed that the business col- 
 leges of this country could teach nothing to their pupils 
 that would be more useful to them in their commercial 
 careers than the art of deportment. And the first col- 
 lege that adds a course in good manners to its curriculum 
 is going to make tremendous strides ahead of its rivals. 
 Suppose a college does graduate good typists ! How can 
 they render satisfactory service to their employers if 
 they do not know how to comport themselves? I have 
 seen typists who would never miss so much as the in- 
 sertion of a comma in their typing, but who had atrocious 
 manners. Such a woman is not only at a severe personal 
 
 86 
 
MODERN CHESTERFIELDS 
 
 disadvantage — she is a constant source of embarrass- 
 ment to her employer, who may never know how many 
 persons whose favor he desires, she inadvertently will 
 offend. 
 
 As you go about in the world you encounter some very 
 queer ideas about the function of good manners. Some 
 men seem to think that it is effeminate to exhibit beauti- 
 ful manners before their associates. Others labor under 
 the delusion that politeness is a time-waster. They hold 
 the idea that a short answer is a short cut in business, 
 that the way to be looked up to and respected is to be 
 abrupt and gruff. No philosophy ever was more falla- 
 cious. It may require a little more thought, but it takes 
 no more time to reply politely than it does to be curt. 
 
 There is no more interesting study than the psychology 
 of business procedure as it is applied by different busi- 
 ness men. A certain man of very large interests has not 
 a single chair in his reception room. It matters not how 
 long you must wait to see him, you are compelled to 
 stand. By the time you obtain an audience with him, 
 you are so weary and so much irritated that you want 
 to turn and go. What is this man's reason for making 
 you uncomfortable? Simply this — if he succeeds in 
 wearing and irritating the people who call to see him, 
 he believes that when they enter his private office, he will 
 have the advantage of them. They will be tired and 
 nervous, worried and out of sorts. Being unwearied and 
 unruffled himself, he is in a position to "get the best'' 
 of them. 
 
 Evidently, this man, who is a very thoughtful man, 
 fails to see that there is a reverse side to this situation. 
 I do not believe he has ever suspected that it is not wise 
 
 87 
 
ILLUSIONS AND DISILLUSIONS 
 
 to treat friend or foe alike. He has not counted upon 
 making enemies by his ungraciousness. He greatly un- 
 derestimates the value of friendship and the good will 
 of his fellow-men. If he were a clearer-sighted student 
 of psychology, he would know that you can make a bet- 
 ter deal with a man when he is in a good humor, when 
 he is comfortable physically than when he is not. 
 
 Dispatch is the soul of business and nothing contrib- 
 utes more toward dispatch than a civil manner. It 
 takes no more time to rise than to remain seated. A 
 pleasant ''Thank you" is said in a breath. No time is 
 lost in prefacing one's request with that gracious little 
 word ''Please" or to accede to a request with the phrase, 
 * ' With pleasure ' '. It is such a simple thing to open the 
 door for a departing caller, and it does help so much to 
 say with a smile, "I am glad that you came". 
 
 The Chesterfields make the conspicuous successes. You 
 seldom find one that fails. 
 
BEAUTY OF THE LATER LOVE 
 
 OW little consideration do we give to the beau- 
 ties of the later love. How thoughtless we are 
 in our common assumption that the only real 
 love matches are those of early youth. Young 
 love is an exquisite sentiment. It is a divine madness, 
 full of beauty and charm and flavor and fragrance. It 
 is like a rosy cloud hovering over the eastern horizon of 
 the early morning of life. Yet, its beauty is not so 
 gorgeous as the love that comes to man and woman when 
 they have lived beyond their first youth, who take to the 
 altar with them all the richness of a fine experience, the 
 wisdom that comes from lives well lived, and a depth 
 of romantic feeling and devotion such as boyhood and 
 girlhood cannot possibly know. 
 
 Some years ago while I was a reporter of society, a 
 cultivated gentlewoman, her soft white hair framing a 
 lovel}^ face came into my office one day and, with a good 
 deal of hesitation, asked me to make announcement of 
 her marriage which was to take place the following day. 
 
 ''What will my friends say about me?" she asked 
 v/hen she had finished giving me the story. 
 
 "They will say that they are delighted", I answered. 
 This delightful woman who had retained much of her 
 youthful energy and vivacity was marrying a man of 
 suitable age and position, and there was every reason to 
 assume that they would ''live happily ever after", an 
 assumption that has proved to be correct. Theirs has 
 been an exceptionally happy marriage. If ever two 
 
 89 
 
ILLUSIONS AND DISILLUSIONS 
 
 persons were looking peacefully and cheerfully toward 
 the fade-out of life's drama, if ever man and woman 
 lived in perfect harmony and in daily consideration of 
 their service to each other, they are the white-haired 
 couple whose wedding story I wrote with the keenest 
 pleasure some ten years ago. 
 
 No human tie can be of stronger tissue than the at- 
 tachment between a mature man and woman, who un- 
 hampered with young illusions, take each other for bet- 
 ter or for worse. 
 
 A young girl has too many illusions, she is too inex- 
 perienced, and the sex instinct counts for too much in 
 the love she gives to the man of her choice, for her love 
 to be as deeply founded as that of a woman of gi^ater 
 age. Curiosity is a factor in her thinking and feeling. 
 Adventure is another element. Where a young girl 
 yields to emotional feeling, an older woman makes a 
 deliberate choice. To the man who wins that older 
 woman I would say, "Is not that choice a subtle flat- 
 tery ? ' ' The woman is armed with experience and knowl- 
 edge. For that knowledge and experience she usually 
 has paid pretty dearly. It is extremely doubtful if the 
 inexperienced girl, who naturally enough is unable to 
 make comparisons, measures anything at its true worth. 
 
 Then, a girl's coquetry is but simple, while the 
 woman's coquetry is inexhaustible. She can satisfy a 
 score of demands made by a man 's vanity while a young 
 girl does well if she satisfies one. With her greater 
 power and dignity, with her greater understanding and 
 sympathy and tolerance, her ability to comfort where 
 a girl would only moan, she need not forfeit her girlish- 
 ness. We all know certain women who seem to possess 
 
 90 
 
BEAUTY OF THE LATER LOVE 
 
 a deathless gift of girlish spirits, which cling to them 
 until the end of life. 
 
 In the golden prime of a later love, when a man and 
 a women look out over life's poetic summit, they com- 
 bine with the fervor of the first passion that depth of 
 feeling which only experience can bring. Youth can 
 look only into the future, and a strange, unexplored 
 future at that. Maturity looks both ways, back into the 
 past, forward into the future, into the whole course of 
 romantic love. "This is love" they can say to each other 
 for they know whereof they speak. 
 
 No one has ever expressed this sentiment more beau- 
 tifully or more truly than Henry Ward Beecher in one 
 of his sermons where he says: "Love is the river of life 
 in this world. Think not that ye know it who stand at 
 the little tinkling rill, the first small fountain. Not un- 
 til you have gone through the rocky gorges, and not lost 
 the stream ; not until you Irave gone through the meadow, 
 and the stream has widened and deepened until fleets 
 could rise on its bosom; not until beyond the meadow 
 you have come to the unfathomable ocean, and poured 
 your treasure into its depths — not until then can you 
 know what love is". 
 
 If this be true, then only maturity can know and ex- 
 perience the full measure of love. Only in maturity can 
 men and women discover themselves in each other. The 
 younger people who read this may resent it. But those 
 who have reached life's summit or are approaching it, 
 will know^ the meaning of my words. 
 
 91 
 
WIT VERSUS SILVER PLATE 
 
 E'LL have tea and bread and butter sand- 
 wiches. Not a very heavy diet — ^but it will 
 do." "Do let me contribute some cake", 
 urged the friend in whose honor this festivity 
 was to be given. 
 
 "No, thank you, I couldn't possibly let you do that. 
 Everybody knows that I can afford bread and butter and 
 that I cannot afford cake. So, we will have the bread 
 and butter and if there are any on this list of forty who 
 are not satisfied with such light rations, well — I will 
 have to let them go." 
 
 If more women would assume so sensible an attitude 
 toward the discharge of their social obligations, there 
 would be a great deal more wholesome pleasure to be 
 enoyed in this life. 
 
 The first speaker had been a great belle in her girl- 
 hood. She had married a man in official life who was 
 not blessed with very much money. Very wisely, they 
 decided in the beginning to cut the scale of their living 
 to fit the cloth of their income, and to make no apologies 
 for the fact that they could not dress or entertain with 
 the same lavishness and beauty as their wealthier friends. 
 This, however, did not prevent them from thoroughly 
 enjoying their environment, from entertaining in their 
 own manner and from going about just as happily and 
 gaily as if they had been worth a million or two. For 
 what they lacked in elegance of equipment they fully 
 compensated for in personal charm and bright spirits. 
 
 92 
 
WIT VERSUS SILVER PLATE 
 
 The wife offered no excuses for the simplicity of her 
 wardrobe, nor for her bread and butter sandwiches and 
 tea. So delightful was the quality of her hospitality that 
 not one of her guests ever thought of comparing to her 
 disadvantage her simple menage with the handsome ap- 
 pointments of larger homes. 
 
 Half the people who feel themselves snubbed by so- 
 ciety actually are not snubbed, at all. They are the 
 victims of vain imaginings. They see slights where they 
 are not. Men and women of quality who once attain a 
 position need never lose it. Let the blows of outrageous 
 fortune descend upon them fast and thickly, they are 
 not on that account condemned to isolation unless they 
 create it of themselves. Yet, you hear such people be- 
 moaning the fickleness and cruelty of society. They are 
 not invited as they were. They are not sought out with 
 the same eagerness and persistence as in their palmier 
 days. Perhaps they are not so much sought, and with 
 good reason. Society is designed to be happy, light- 
 hearted and vivacious. It is not attracted by the peo- 
 ple who consider themselves victims. It keeps no crown 
 for the martyr. It seeks diversion and it demands that 
 it shall be amused. People who carry a burden of grief 
 and disappointment with them are out of place within 
 its folds. 
 
 Society is one vast system of reciprocity. You enter- 
 tain me and I entertain you. This is nothing more or 
 less than justice. Why should either man or woman ex- 
 pect to receive in lavish measure when they make no 
 effort to give? Even the most charming and gifted 
 persons wear out their welcome in the course of time. 
 
 93 
 
ILLUSIONS AND DISILLUSIONS 
 
 The most generous of hosts grow weary of asking the 
 same persons over and over when the latter make no 
 return in kind. 
 
 ''I simply cannot return the courtesies of wealthier 
 people", you often hear a woman say. Yes, she could 
 return them if she were not so hampered by false pride. 
 Of course, she cannot pay off her obligations in the coin 
 of lavish and sumptuous entertainment, but she can do 
 it in a smaller way. Some of the most delightful social 
 experiences of a lifetime are had in the simplest homes 
 that radiate kindliness and generous feeling, where wit 
 and humor are enthroned. 
 
 It would be very fine, of course, if everybod}^ could 
 live in a mansion, if all men and women could eat off of 
 Madeira embroidery laid over mahogany and drink out 
 of priceless cups. It would be still finer if all the people 
 who are gifted intellectually and artistically could have 
 material settings appropriate to them. But since artistic 
 and intellectual gifts do not always bring a very high 
 price in the market, those members of society who are 
 poor in material possessions and rich in spiritual things 
 should give of their kind of riches. Men and women in 
 artists' colonies develop a wholesome independence of 
 fine homes, floor coverings, furniture and silver dishes. 
 They know what some other people have only vaguely 
 suspected — that the only thing in this world of lasting 
 value is an idea, and ideas are their regular medium of 
 exchange. 
 
 Why cannot more of us trust to our wit to make our 
 homes pleasant and attractive? Wit is certainly more 
 satisfying and stimulating than endless cakes and ice- 
 creams. 
 
 94 
 
HUMOR, THE SAVING GRACE 
 
 HAT a saving grace is a sense of humor ! Humor- 
 ous men and women are the flowers of the 
 human race. What matters it that the world 
 never celebrates them as heroes and heroines? 
 It is enough that they can be with us, that they have a 
 genius for lightening so much that is heavy, that they 
 take the sting out of life. Life would be unbearable 
 without the comic element. We could not survive it half 
 so long. 
 
 It gives us a sense of relief in reading of a great event 
 in history like that of the trial of Lord Stafford, of his 
 marvelous speech and his stirring appeal to ''the saint 
 of heaven", to read also that the people at the trial ate 
 nuts and apples, talked and even laughed and betted on 
 the great question of his acquittal or condemnation. 
 That simple human element in the trial gives us a sense 
 of relief just when our nerves are taut. Nor is it sur- 
 prising that some persons could have found the heart 
 to eat or bet on such an occasion, for the average mind 
 cannot stand much concentration. It must and will have 
 relief. 
 
 One of the secrets of Shakespeare's greatness was the 
 relieving charm of his humor. Think of the grave- 
 digger's scene in Hamlet and the porter's dialogue with 
 several imaginary persons in the tragedy of Macbeth. 
 The person who is deficient in humor is bound to be 
 deficient in a practical knowledge of human affairs. The 
 two always go together. Such persons know little and 
 care less about the world of "cake and ale". Usually 
 
 95 
 
ILLUSIONS AND DISILLUSIONS 
 
 they are unsympathetic and intolerant and they take 
 little, if any, interest in "the easy, ordinary, shop-keep- 
 ing world ' '. 
 
 I cannot understand why it is that so many women are 
 lacking in a sense of humor unless it be that they live 
 more solitary lives than men, and that they experience 
 by no means so many contacts with people and events. 
 
 If all women had a sense of humor a great many more 
 of them would hold the love and interest of their hus- 
 bands and there would be far less domestic infelicity. 
 It is the woman who has no sense of humor that makes 
 mountains out of mole-hills, who cries because her hus- 
 band goes away in the morning without kissing her, who 
 imagines that he no longer loves her when he appears to 
 be more interested in his newspaper than in her. It is 
 the woman without a sense of humor who longs to parade 
 her knowledge before her husband and her friends. I 
 care not how brainy or scholarly a man may be, he is not 
 looking for a brilliant display of intellectual fireworks 
 when he goes home after a hard day's work. What he 
 wants is a play of humor, fun and brightness and good 
 cheer. He wants to be amused rather than instructed, 
 He wants to forget the battles of the day and the 
 anxieties of the morrow. Many a man has turned from 
 a too heavy, too serious wife to the ''wreathed smiles" 
 and effervescent spirits of "the other woman", not be- 
 cause he was willing to be an unfaithful husband, but 
 because he was so weary of his wife's ponderous talk 
 and manner, and he so longed for a taste of the lighter 
 side of life. 
 
 If you have a sense of humor, you can live through 
 anything. Few conditions in life are without their 
 
 96 
 
HUMOR, THE SAVING GRACE 
 
 funny aspects, and the person who can see the humorous 
 side to an unpleasant happening blesses himself and 
 everybody else. There are a surprising number of 
 things in this world to laugh at, not in a spirit of rid- 
 icule, not out of a superior attitude of mind, but in a 
 good humored acceptance of life's incongruities and the 
 pranks that fate persistently plays. 
 
 The very essence of true humor is love. As Carlyle 
 tells us, it is a sort of inverse sublimity, exalting, as it 
 were into our affections what lies below us, and drawing 
 down gently into our affections that which is above. 
 
 97 
 
CAN MEN REFORM WIVES? 
 
 HE woman who marries an ordinary two-cylin- 
 der man and who by the exercise of tact and 
 patient effort converts him into a fine six- 
 cylinder machine is one of the most interesting 
 phenomena of modern civilization. 
 
 The man who habitually has wasted his substance in 
 extravagant living is taken in hand by a practical woman 
 who in the nicest way in the world teaches him the value 
 of thrift, of getting the most for his money, and who 
 convinces him of the wisdom of saving a part of his in- 
 come. 
 
 Here is a man who did not enjoy good educational and 
 social opportunities in his youth. His manners need a 
 little polishing. He does not exactly know how to dress. 
 Along comes a clever woman who appreciates the sound- 
 ness of his character and who discerns in him far greater 
 possibilities than he ever has dreamed are his. With a 
 wisdom that is essentially feminine, she overlooks his 
 superficial shortcomings, and falls in love with the fine 
 manly spirit that to the casual observer may be obscured 
 by an unpolished exterior. Within a few years after 
 their marriage you notice that the man has come out 
 wonderfully, that he is beautifully dressed, that his man- 
 ners are delightful and that there is a new sparkle in 
 his eye. Well-timed and skillfully administered sugges- 
 tion have almost transformed him. 
 
 You have seen a third type — the man who never has ap- 
 peared to have much ambition. Year after year he had 
 plodded along and always in the same old rut. More 
 
 98 
 
CAN MEN REFORM WIVES? 
 
 successful men regard him as mediocre. He never will 
 get anywhere, they say. Nobody cares for his opinion. 
 He has no influence. Habitually, he is overlooked. Per- 
 haps he has reached middle age, has been once married, 
 and has been left a widower. As a widower, he is of less 
 consequence than ever. Then some canny little creature 
 with a clearer vision than the rest sees real possibilities 
 in him. Overjoyed to find somebody who believes in 
 him, who perceives elements of greatness in him, the 
 man marries her. And what happens? I need not tell 
 you, for you have seen it with your own eyes. The man 
 acts as if he had drunk of some powerful elixir. He 
 takes a new grip on his business. He finds a delight in 
 the society of his friends. He begins to make more 
 money than he ever thought of making. New interests 
 find a place in his life and all because of one small woman 
 who was wiser than the rest. 
 
 The transforming effect of woman's influence when it 
 is inspired by love is almost a commonplace. Thousands 
 of men literally are made over by it. Diamonds in the 
 rough are polished until they shine with a ray serene. 
 
 But, why is it that so few man are able to exercise a 
 civilizing influence upon their wives? Why is it that 
 superior husbands do not reform their inferior wives? 
 Why is it that commonplace wives almost invariably 
 remain commonplace even though they have the ad- 
 vantage of association with extraordinary men? 
 
 It is almost impossible for a man to alter the character, 
 the manners and the habits of a woman, first, because 
 he does not know how to go about it, and second, because 
 women do not take so kindly to criticism and suggestion 
 as do most men. 
 
 99 
 
ILLUSIONS AND DISILLUSIONS 
 
 When a man disapproves of his wife 's latest choice of 
 millinery, how does he express himself? Nine times out 
 of ten he will say to her bluntly, **what did you buy 
 that hat for?" 
 
 What does a woman say when she is striving to cul- 
 tivate her husband's taste in neckties? She will do one 
 of two things if she is a real woman. She will confiscate 
 the tie that does not suit her husband's peculiar style of 
 beauty and she will tell him that it has been lost, or that 
 it had worn so shabby that she gave it to the man who 
 does the chores. Or, admitting that the tie is still avail- 
 able, she will say in her softest manner, '^Dearie, don't 
 you think this other one is much more becoming to you ? ' ' 
 Cunningly, she drops a remark about what charming 
 manners Mr. Blank has and how gracefully he lifts his 
 hat and how pleased his wife always looks when he puts 
 her in their car. When he envies Jones who had to pay 
 an excess profits tax, she tells him that he is ten times 
 smarter than Jones, that his potentialities for success 
 are limitless, that all he needs in his business is more 
 confidence in himself. 
 
 It is a feminine gift — this talent for civilizing men 
 and giving them encouragement and inspiration and 
 bringing them to a realization of their best gifts. Men 
 have not the patience, and they will not take the trouble 
 to do it as it must be done. Women are hurt and of- 
 fended by their bluntness, and the man soon discovers 
 that his efforts to improve his wife result in more harm 
 than good. 
 
 The difficulty of a man's reforming his wife is in- 
 creased by her extreme sensitiveness. A woman can 
 take criticism from another woman when she will not 
 
 100 
 
CAN MEN REFORM WIVES? 
 
 take it from a man. If a man tells his wife that her hat 
 is not becoming, she most likely will do one of three 
 things. She will get mad ; she will have a crying fit ; or 
 she will ignore her husband's opinion in the fond belief 
 that he knows nothing about women's hats and that on 
 that basis his judgment is negligible. But, if her sister 
 or a woman friend assures her that she has made a poor 
 selection, she will take the hat back. 
 
 In this way, I believe, the difference may be explained. 
 It always has been woman's business to work with hu- 
 manity, to train her children, to uphold ideals to her 
 husband, to make life and living just as fine and beau- 
 tiful as she possibly can. Man's business, on the con- 
 trary, is to struggle with material forces, to till the 
 ground, to produce food, to span the river, to tunnel the 
 mountain, to establish lines of transportation, to create 
 financial systems and to institute government. To ac- 
 complish her ends, which usually are spiritual, woman 
 uses the soft word. To accomplish his ends, which usu- 
 ally are material, man must strike mightily, and with 
 his strong right arm. 
 
 101 
 
WHAT IS TRUE CULTURE? 
 
 WONDER if the tired mother and conscientious 
 housekeeper who seldom, if ever, finds time for 
 "cultural activities" realizes that good house- 
 keeping is the foundation of genuine culture 
 and that she is actually doing more to promote the cause 
 of culture than the woman who makes a specialty of self - 
 improvement clubs. 
 
 With no desire to disparage culture and improvement 
 clubs which have their proper functions, it is well for 
 women, particularly those w^ho "go in for culture" to 
 remember that the process of self-cultivation is too subtle 
 a thing to be affected by clubs. It is something that 
 grows in the individual through environment and edu- 
 cation — it cannot be suddenly grafted on from the out- 
 side. I am sure that is what Mr. John Kendrick Bangs 
 had in mind when he said to me during a recent visit that 
 the hope of this country was not so much in its great in- 
 dustries, its great w^ealth-producing institutions as in its 
 fine, patient wives and mothers, striving to do the utmost 
 for their children and in its teachers, who with no hope 
 of greater compensation than a living wage, work for 
 the creation of ideals. 
 
 Some of us have a queer idea of what culture is. Some 
 of us imagine that culture is in knowing a mezzotint 
 when you see it instead of being wise in ways that help 
 people to live decently and comfortably. Some of us 
 imagine that culture resides in knowing how many wives 
 Henry VIII had instead of knowing how to bake a good 
 loaf of bread, in being able to chatter glibly about the 
 
 102 
 
WHAT IS TRUE CULTURE? 
 
 poets of the Renaissance period, instead of having 
 mastered the art of laying an attractive table, of being 
 on speaking terms with the modern drama, rather than 
 in cultivating a fine cheerful spirit or a charming speak- 
 ing voice. 
 
 Every woman in this world can be *' cultured" though 
 she never attended college or belonged to a culture club. 
 The truly cultured woman is not the restless seeker after 
 new distractions, but the woman who keeps a clean 
 house, who puts good food on her table, who with a gen- 
 tie voice speaks correct English, and who does not save 
 up her good manners for "society", but exhibits them in 
 her home. There is more culture in a well arranged 
 table, laid with clean linen and china and bright silver, 
 with perhaps a single flower in the center than in all the 
 ''culture movements" in the world. There is more cul- 
 ture in a neat person, than in all the opinions concern- 
 ing world affairs that a woman can collect. There is 
 more culture in sweetness and amiability and refined 
 ways than in a knowledge of a dozen systems of phil- 
 osophy. There is more culture in knowing the meaning 
 of Millet's ''Gleaners" in understanding the struggle of 
 those three figures, the quick-moving girl, the slower 
 woman and the stiff-backed grandmother, all striving to 
 ward off hunger, than in owning the original. There 
 is more culture in knowing and practicing the simple 
 laws of hygiene than in covering up physical disintegra- 
 tion by artificial means. 
 
 A pretty good place to take a survey of American cul- 
 ture is the dressing room of a Pullman car. All you 
 have to do is to take a glance at your traveling sister's 
 personal belongings, at the condition in which she leaves 
 
 103 
 
ILLUSIONS AND DISILLUSIONS 
 
 the wash-basin for the woman who is to follow her, at 
 the way she tosses soiled towels on the floor, at the care- 
 lessness with which she smears her make-up all over the 
 place. If personal habits are not an indication of one's 
 degree of culture, I do not know what criterion we have. 
 
 What is a cultured home ? Is it not the home in which 
 character and habits of refinement are formed? Is it 
 not the home in which the children are taught to be hon- 
 est ? Is it not the home from which the man of the fam- 
 ily is ashamed to go out and play a mean business trick 
 upon his competitor, or make a dirty dollar by the exer- 
 cise of his brain? Is it not the home where kindness is 
 the keynote and where quarreling and bickering are re- 
 garded as unspeakably vulgar? 
 
 Culture, friends, is in the substance, not the shadow. 
 It resides in all fine and useful effort, rather than in 
 what some misguided persons are pleased to call *' ele- 
 gant leisure". And this I would like to impress upon 
 all men and women — culture is not to be had at the ex- 
 pense of some fellow-being who works for two that one 
 may loaf. 
 
 104 
 
MEASURING WOMAN'S SUCCESS 
 
 HAT constitutes a woman 's success ? Is it social 
 eminence? Is it conspicuous achievement in 
 business, artistic, professional or political life? 
 Or does the most substantial success come to 
 the loving and beloved woman, who makes it her supreme 
 office to cheer, encourage and inspire? Is the most suc- 
 cessful woman she who is ever ready with her sympathy, 
 who possesses exquisite refinement, unfailing good 
 humor, charming courtesy and grace in an infinite va- 
 riety ? 
 
 As we look over all the women of our acquaintance, 
 does it not seem that there are too many who deem it 
 enough to go out in the world just as a man does, and 
 make for themselves a considerable worldly success ? One 
 woman possessed of business sagacity may open a store, 
 buy and sell industriously, and at the end of the year, 
 have a very tidy profit. Another may become an expert 
 private secretary. A third may study law or medicine, 
 and rise in one of those professions. A fourth gifted 
 with remarkable talent for music attains international 
 fame. The number of women who are achieving success 
 in political life constantly is increasing. There are 
 women authors and women artists. There are women 
 devoting themselves to science. There are women trav- 
 eling to sell goods. 
 
 The majority of these women long to be successful as 
 women — there are only a few who don 't care about that. 
 Yet, a great many of those same women are losing sight 
 of a fact which is quite obvious to men, that is, that 
 
 105 
 
ILLUSIONS AND DISILLUSIONS 
 
 there are certain separate and distinct feminine attri- 
 butes which enter into the making of the womanly 
 woman. They fail to appreciate the value of womanly 
 graces. This lack of appreciation they betray in their 
 voice, their language, their manners and their dress. 
 They do not intend to allow themselves to become hard- 
 ened — they merely drift with the tide of modern influ- 
 ences and events. 
 
 No woman could ever afford to neglect the womanly 
 graces. She can afford that neglect less than ever today 
 when her life is cast so frequently in places where com- 
 petition is imminent, where keen commercial sagacity 
 tends to displace womanly tenderness, and intellectual 
 precision is too often cultivated at the expense of the 
 qualities of the heart. A manner of brisk efficiency does 
 very well in business, but it ought to be taken off and 
 put away with one 's street hat — it is anything but charm- 
 ing when it is carried into private life. 
 
 Is it not significant that we have not today any great 
 and immortal heroines in fiction such as were created by 
 Shakespeare and Sir Walter Scott? Shakespeare wrote 
 only two or three plays that did not have one perfect 
 woman in them. He gave us a score of exquisite char- 
 acterizations — Rosalind, Desdemonia, Hermione, Imogen, 
 Silvia, Viola, Helena and Virgilia — all conceived in the 
 mold of a queenly womanhood. Sir Walter Scott gave 
 us for our everlasting delight and refreshment such 
 lovely feminine characters as Ellen Douglas, Diana Ver- 
 non, Lilias Redgauntlet, Jeanie Deans and Flora Mclvor 
 — all of whom he invested with the highest qualities of 
 gentle womanhood. Our writers, it is true, draw for us 
 many portraits of lovely women, but they do not give us 
 
 106 
 
such vital characterizations. Is it that they have not 
 such great powers of interpretation ? Is it because they 
 cannot find the same inspiration in the noblest women 
 of our day? Or can it be that as the world has grown, 
 exquisite womanly characters have become so numerous 
 that they no longer attract attention ? 
 
 Certainly we would like to accept the third supposi- 
 tion as that which is nearest the truth. And if it be so, 
 it is the greater tribute to woman since it is no easy 
 task for her to keep herself charming when she is sur- 
 rounded with so many harsh, material influences. There 
 is no use denying the fact that all playing at precedence, 
 whether it be social, political; professional or commercial, 
 does not incline women to the cultivation of the purely 
 feminine graces. Fighting for worldly advantage, 
 struggling to win the almighty dollar is likely to be any- 
 thing but a softening process. Rather does it tend to 
 confirm the best of women in habits of thought and man- 
 ner that savor too strongly of the market-place. There 
 is danger, too, of arrogance among commercially or pro- 
 fessionally successful women, whom you sometimes hear 
 speaking of love with contempt. This arrogance of self- 
 sufficiency is very foolish, very unlovely. It is a terrible 
 menace to the woman-soul. 
 
 How are we women going to meet and ward off these 
 unfortunate influences? By remembering that affection 
 is woman's first grace, that refinement is her first duty, 
 that the power to cheer is her greatest privilege. 
 
 More good men and children go wrong from the lack 
 of affection at home than all other causes put together. 
 Harsh words have made many a drunkard and criminal. 
 Lack of sympathy and understanding have sent many 
 
 107 
 
ILLUSIONS AND DISILLUSIONS 
 
 a young girl to her fall. When a woman has the grace 
 of affection and she lavishes it upon her menfolk, she 
 gives them something bigger than any bank accounts 
 they can accumulate. When she lavishes it wisely upon 
 her children, she can defeat the most malignant influ- 
 ences. And, if it were not for the innate refinement of 
 women, this world would still be inhabited by barbaric 
 hordes. 
 
 If a woman's family and intimate friends cannot look 
 to her for sympathy, gentleness, cheerfulness and in- 
 spiration ; if she is not the soul of refinement ; if she does 
 not possess that endless variety of graces which we like 
 to think of as synonymous with queenly womanhood — 
 then she is a failure as a woman, however successful she 
 may be in other ways. 
 
 108 
 
IP YOU COULD LIVE AGAIN 
 
 HEY were speculating upon what they would 
 do if they had their lives to live over — a group 
 of a half dozen women, all well enough ac- 
 quainted to speak without restraint. Who of 
 us has not wished for an opportunity to live again 
 in the light of mature wisdom and experience? Which 
 one of us does not sometimes feel regret over some folly 
 of our youth, which we would not have committed had 
 we known better. Futile longing though it is, we would 
 all like to have that one more opportunity to work out 
 our destiny and we are sure that we would do it much 
 more successfully, if the chance were only ours. 
 
 ''If I had my life to live over, I would not be in such 
 haste to marry", said one — and what a common com- 
 plaint is that! ''I would try to know the man thor- 
 oughly before I cast my lot with his. I would restrain 
 my emotions long enough to let my head make the deci- 
 sion. I am a believer in long engagements. They are 
 not always favorable to marriage and so much the better, 
 for if an attachment will not stand the test of a long 
 betrothal, it will not stand the longer and greater test 
 of married life. More restrictions should be thrown 
 about marriage. It is much too easy to get a license and 
 find a minister who will tie the knot. Letting my heart 
 run away with my judgment has been the great mistake 
 of my life". 
 
 ''I can trace about nine-tenths of all my sorrows and 
 mistakes to snobbish notions of my youth ' ', declared the 
 second woman in the group. ''I seem to have been 
 
 109 
 
ILLUSIONS AND DISILLUSIONS 
 
 reared on a false sense of values. I was always looking 
 for the glittering, showy thing, not the real substance of 
 life. I believe this snobbish tendency was first en- 
 gendered in me by my mother, who if she made a gar- 
 ment for me would warn me not to let that fact be- 
 come known. I grew up believing that the only people 
 worth knowing were those prominent in society and those 
 who had plenty of money to spend. Worldly success, 
 both social and financial, was the one aim and goal of 
 my life. A loss of everything I had once deemed in- 
 valuable — money, position, the flattering attentions of 
 society — has made me a wiser woman than I was. The 
 very things of which I was formerly so enamored have 
 very little attraction for me now. I have learned that a 
 good many people of similar ambition live with much 
 profit to the dressmaker, the florist, the caterer, the mil- 
 liner and the confectioner, but with very little profit to 
 themselves. False standards of living, set up by snob- 
 bishness, have undermined many an otherwise sound 
 character. They discount genuineness, and place a pre- 
 mium upon the superficial. I have outgrown that kind 
 of folly and have begun my life all over again. I have 
 found peace in the discharge of simple duty, and happi- 
 ness in the quiet ways of home." 
 
 ''My greatest regret is that I did not take advantage 
 of my opportunity to secure a good education when it 
 was presented to me", said the third woman. ''In my 
 girlhood I was so obsessed with the desire to have a good 
 time that I never suspected the day might come when I 
 would need a sound education. As a result of my folly, 
 I am now striving to grasp certain fundamentals I 
 should have mastered in my youth. I am trying to ac- 
 
 110 
 
IP YOU COULD LIVE AGAIN 
 
 qnire mental habits that should have become second 
 nature to me when I was no more than 20 years old. I 
 am doing the very thing I was sure I would not do. I 
 am earning my living. If I had seized every chance for 
 self-improvement as I was maturing, life would be a 
 good deal easier for me now.'* 
 
 "If I had my life to live over again, I would have gra- 
 ciously accepted Destiny as she was revealed to me", de- 
 clared the fourth speaker. ''I would have taken her 
 hand and walked with her instead of resisting her with 
 all my might. For years I exhausted my strength trying 
 to out-general her. I seared my mind and wasted my 
 body trying to make her dance to my tune. I spent my 
 youth devouring biographies of the great and near-great, 
 and reading books on self-mastery and the conquest of 
 fate. Resolved that I would conquer the world and my 
 own destiny, I sweat blood in a series of futile efforts. 
 In my violence I almost destroyed myself. But since I 
 have made a friend instead of an antagonist of destiny, 
 I feel that I am beginning to make a little progress and 
 I am much happier than I ever have been." 
 
 What can we get from these four human stories ? Just 
 this — that we cannot think, feel or act at 20 as we will 
 at 40 — and learning how to live is what life is for. 
 
 Ill 
 
MISTAKEN SELF-SACRIFICE 
 
 l^jJWklNE of those dear mothers who longs to sacrifice 
 1^^^ everything to the happiness of her children 
 |3^i has written to me that with the high cost of 
 commodities she has been unable to buy a 
 spring hat and she has not so much as an old shape she 
 could trim up. 
 
 "After buying organdie dresses, slippers and ribbons 
 for my two girls", she says, "there is absolutely nothing 
 left for me. Because I have no hat, I am forced to staj'^ 
 at home. I cannot accept any kind of invitation, and I 
 cannot even go to church", she comments pathetically. 
 
 In her desire to be unselfish, what a mistake this 
 mother makes! Cannot she realize that the mother is 
 the head of the family, that she must take precedence 
 over her daughters, that a hat for herself is a necessity, 
 while organdie dresses and pretty slippers and ribbons 
 fall into the luxury class ? 
 
 Time after time we have seen mothers go shabby in 
 order to deck out their daughters like young princesses, 
 and what has been the result ? 
 
 The daughters in their youthful ignorance, naturally 
 enough reach the conclusion that they are superior to 
 their mothers, that good clothes are their proper due, 
 regardless of how their mothers dress. 
 
 Now, this one foolish assumption would be unfortunate 
 enough in itself, if no other evil resulted from a mother's 
 mistaken policy of abject self-sacrifice. But as things go 
 in this world, a whole train of little evils grow out of a 
 girl's idea that she is better than her mother. Very eas- 
 
 112 
 
ILLUSIONS AND DISILLUSIONS 
 
 ily, she falls into the way of thinking that her mother 
 does not need suitable clothes, that it is quite the proper 
 thing for her mother to stay at home from a tea or a 
 luncheon, a meeting of her club or a gathering in her 
 church. She solaces herself with the reflection that her 
 mother has had her day, that she, the young woman is 
 entitled to the right of way in all matters of family ex- 
 penditure, that there is nothing essentially improper or 
 unnatural about her being a lily of the field while her 
 mother toils and spins. 
 
 When a mother once permits her daughter to lose re- 
 spect for her, the girl, unless she possesses a good deal of 
 innate refinement and nobility of character, is likely to 
 speak disrespectfully to her mother and to treat her 
 mother with unconcern. Heartless impudence has fallen 
 to the lot of many an over-indulgent mother, who out of 
 a foolish desire to see her daughter beautifully gowned 
 and having the opportunity to move in a circle to which 
 the family has not been accustomed, just because she has 
 deliberately accepted the position of an inferior in her 
 own family, and has permitted herself to be snubbed. 
 ''How sharper than a serpent's tooth" becomes the bur- 
 den of her thinking, after the damage has been done, 
 when it is too late to recall the daughter to a proper 
 sense of values in the relation that she bears to her 
 mother, and when she has become so accustomed to 
 dressing beyond and above her station that she no 
 longer can be satisfied with simpler and more appropri- 
 ate clothes. 
 
 All children want to be proud of their parents. 
 
 "Mother, how pretty you look tonight!" 
 
 It is with a heart swelling with pride that a child looks 
 113 
 
MISTAKEN SELP-SACRIPICE 
 
 upon the mother^ who for some special occasion has 
 donned a new frock, or has taken greater pains than 
 usual with her toilette. Bitterness and shame have 
 silently eaten their way into many a childish heart be- 
 cause father and mother were careless about their ap- 
 pearance, because it did not seem to matter to them how 
 they looked to other eyes. 
 
 Mothers who go shabby to deck out their daughters, 
 cheat those very same daughters out of a child's dearest 
 source of pride — the pride they feel in their mothers, 
 their desire to see their own mothers stand favorable 
 comparison with the mothers of other girls. 
 
 Nothing means so much to a normal child as to be 
 proud of a parent. During the life of the parent, it is 
 a never-ending source of filial satisfaction, and it is a 
 beautiful memory after death. 
 
 Mothers — don't buy organdies and ribbons for your 
 daughters and go without decent hats and dresses for 
 yourselves. If you do, you will surely rue the day you 
 were so foolish. Not only will you lose the respect of 
 your children, and possibly your husband's, but you 
 will forfeit the respect of your neighbors and friends. 
 
 114 
 
THE ART OP GROWING OLD 
 
 CCASIONALLY you see an elderly man or 
 woman so interesting and so interested in what 
 is going on today, so cheerful and buoyant, so 
 charming of manner, attractively and appro- 
 priately dressed, that you wonder why everyone in the 
 world cannot grow old gracefully. 
 
 As a matter of fact, to grow old gracefully, you have 
 to begin when you are young. Growing old gracefully is 
 like learning a trade, acquiring a profession or getting 
 an education — it is not a thing to be attained in a few 
 weeks, months or even years, and it is extremely difficult 
 when it is begun late in life. Every time I hear young 
 people bewailing the disagreeable habits of their elders, 
 and criticizing the irritable tempers of the old people 
 in their family circle, justifiable as their criticisms may 
 be, I cannot h^lp wondering if they too, may not be 
 forming habits of mind, manner and speech which event- 
 ually will render them tiresome and disagreeable persons 
 when they reach old age. 
 
 The secret of growing old gracefully is to build a 
 beautiful and gracious character during the days of 
 one 's youth and maturity. The pretty young girl whose 
 jealousy and envy of her associates vents itself in sharp 
 criticism of their dress and conduct, position and posses- 
 sions; the middle-aged woman who gossips disagreeably 
 and rolls every bit of scandal she can hear like a sweet 
 morsel under her tongue; the man who swears at the 
 slightest provocation, who is irritable and captious, who 
 
 115 
 
ILLUSIONS AND DISILLUSIONS 
 
 commits little mean, treacherous acts — all of these are 
 preparing for an old age that will be hypercritical, fault- 
 finding, censorious, and unappreciative. For every time 
 they indulge themselves in an unkind act, in an ugly 
 humor, they are approaching just one step nearer to the 
 goal of an unloved and unlovely old age. 
 
 We have a right, I believe, to expect elderly men and 
 women to be the most tenderly appealing, the most 
 reassuring, the most comforting, the most kindly and 
 tolerant persons of earth. They have passed by that 
 time when the hyenas of passion tore them. They have 
 fought life's many battles, sometimes to win, sometimes 
 to lose. They have known sorrow and grief and disap- 
 pointment. They have experienced happiness and tri- 
 umph and success. They have dodged death and they 
 have conquered sickness. They have seen life ebb and 
 ebb and finally flicker out in their dearest, and their tears 
 have fallen into open graves. They have known love's 
 disillusionment and love's realization. They have spent 
 sleepless nights and joyous days. They have striven to 
 the very utmost of human striving, if they were men 
 and women of ambition and aspiration. They have seen 
 the very structures they built with so much labor crum- 
 ble and fall at their feet. Knowing life as they must 
 know it, how it is possible that they can be otherwise 
 than sympathetic and understanding and charitable? 
 To no human souls do we turn with such yearning for 
 sympathy and reassurance as to older men and women. 
 Yet, how often do they offer us the stones of folly and 
 sarcasm and complaining and bitterness when we hoped 
 for the bread of wisdom and kindness, the comforting 
 and reassuring word. 
 
 116 
 
THE ART OP GROWING OLD 
 
 Is the idea of swelling the ranks of disagreeable, un- 
 loved, unwanted old folk abhorrent to you? 
 
 Then, you must begin early to cultivate a life-long 
 habit of generous and thoughtful consideration of every- 
 body with whom you come in contact. 
 
 Beauty, brilliancy, talent, power, position, money will 
 stand you in hand when you are young. The world will 
 forgive you many disagreeable and unlovely traits of 
 character and ugly habits so long as you have your 
 youthful strength and magnetism. But it won't for- 
 give you when old age takes possession of you, and you 
 have nothing better to give than material things. 
 
 It is all very well to talk about revering old people, 
 but reverence is not prompted or governed by a sense 
 of duty. True reverence for the elderly and delight in 
 their presence can spring only from such sentiments of 
 love and loyalty and admiration as they, by their kind 
 hearts, gracious manners and good breeding, can in- 
 spire in us. 
 
 117 
 
A FORTUNE IN FRIENDS 
 
 ««|^^nE FRIENDS with everybody". Such is the 
 ra^Pj advice Charles M. Schwab gave the students 
 
 P^^^ of Princeton University when he stood be- 
 fore them and pointed them to the way of 
 building a successful life. 
 
 ''When you have friends", he said, "you know there 
 is somebody who will stand by you. You know the old 
 saying that if you have a single enemy you will find him 
 every^vhere. It doesn't pay to make enemies. Lead the 
 life that will make you kindly and friendly to everybody 
 about you, and you will be surprised at what a happy life 
 you will live." 
 
 Most of us think too little about the value of making 
 friends. When I write these words, I do not mean that 
 we should start out with the idea that we are going to 
 make friends whom we can use for our own selfish pur- 
 poses, for if we do that we soon will be found out, and 
 we will have no friends at all. We all know certain men 
 who have made a business of cultivating those persons 
 whom they believe will be useful to them, and how few 
 friendships such men enjoy. If we want to make friends 
 we should go about it in the hope of adding something 
 to the sum total of this world's happiness, and not with 
 the idea of securing selfish benefits for ourselves. 
 
 However, the fine things that may come to us through 
 the friendships we establish are not to be minimized. 
 
 Have you ever noticed that it is the man who has the 
 ability to make friends with all sorts and conditions of 
 people who is sought out by big business institutions and 
 
 118 
 
A FORTUNE IN FRIENDS 
 
 is entrusted with an important place? That man may 
 know absolutely nothing about that particular line of 
 business. But, the men who seek him consider his lack 
 of technical knowledge unimportant That is something 
 he can acquire. It is for his fine, rich personality that 
 the business wants him. Where at the start his tech- 
 nical knowledge may be negligible, his faculty for draw- 
 ing men to him will be worth many thousands of dollars 
 to the firm. And have you ever noticed that it is the 
 woman who creates an atmosphere of friendliness about 
 her who is in demand on all occasions? She may not 
 have very much money, and she may have only two or 
 three gowns, but she knows how to make others happy, 
 and that is what this world really wants. 
 
 It is worth while to give a little thought to those per- 
 sons who make friends wherever they go. It is worth 
 while noticing that they nearly always wear happy ex- 
 pressions, which is merely the outward, visible sign of 
 their goodness of heart. When they shake hands with 
 you, they do it heartily — they do not offer you a cold, 
 clammy, listless palm. There is a ring of sincerity in 
 their cordial words of greeting. There is a sort of aura 
 of amity about them which you sense instantly. You 
 are warmed, comforted, even electrified in their pres- 
 ence. No matter how weary or distracted you may have 
 been feeling, after basking in the glow of their friend- 
 liness, you say to yourself, ' ' What a good world this is, 
 after all". 
 
 In some periods of the lives of all of us, we stand in 
 sore need of friends. We are stricken with siclmess. 
 We lose our money. We face a crisis in our domestic 
 affairs or in our business life. The ones that we love 
 
 119 
 
ILLUSIONS AND DISILLUSIONS 
 
 best become afflicted, or they are taken from us. Then, 
 friendship comes to allay our sorrows, to lighten our 
 oppressions, to dispel our doubts, to clarify our troubled 
 minds. And when friendship does so lift the burden, 
 what an unspeakable blessing we know it to be. Any- 
 thing, everything seems endurable, and we take a new 
 grip on life. 
 
 Don't wait to accumulate a fortune before you begin 
 to make friends. Don't postpone it until you have se- 
 cured a certain amount of leisure. Don't put it off until 
 you become prosperous or prominent — for in the mean- 
 time your heart may dry up. Just take the opportuni- 
 ties that come to you in the course of your daily living 
 to smile, to say a kind and encouraging word, to render 
 some little personal service, to express some appreciation, 
 to radiate a love of all people. An open, lovable soul, 
 a rich heart, a kindly feeling toward everybody will 
 make you a millionaire in friendships though you may 
 have less money than anyone that you know. 
 
 120 
 
iii 
 
 LOOKING UP INTO THE SKY 
 
 YOU ever lie down on the grass and look up 
 into the sky? If you don't, you are missing 
 that which would do your heart and soul good. 
 Looking up into the vastness of blue heaven is 
 one way of escaping sharp trouble and slow anxiety. 
 With most of us, looking up into the sky is a lost art. 
 As we go about our business, we either keep our eyes on 
 the earth, or look straight ahead. Days, weeks and 
 months may pass without our once turning our glance 
 upward, which is the worst of all possible ways to live. 
 Things would go better in this world if more of us 
 would take an occasional view of the sky. Looking up 
 into the sky will do two things to you. Its vastness re- 
 minds you of the smallness of the world and the passing 
 value of mundane things. Suddenly, you realize how 
 narrow has been your human vision, how cramped and 
 prejudiced your mind. Then it comes to you that you 
 cannot keep a fair perspective if you persist in keeping 
 your eyes on the earth, on the quarrels and contests of 
 equally prejudiced human beings, and never turn your 
 eyes heavenward. 
 
 The second thing that looking into the sky can do for 
 you is to stimulate your imagination, and imagination 
 as we know, is the transmuting force of the world. 
 Imagination, combined with reason, is the basis of in- 
 vention. The Wright brothers had to imagine an airship 
 before they could start to build one. It was necessary 
 for Fulton to imagine a steamboat before he could get 
 one under way. In imagination the child plans what he 
 
 121 
 
ILLUSIONS AND DISILLUSIONS 
 
 will do when he grows to man's estate. The young girl 
 imagines how she will leave her home, either to marry or 
 follow a career. Actors, writers and artists always are 
 living in imagination that time when they will have 
 captivated the world. They study and work. They 
 labor until body and brain are numb. They forget 
 passing pleasure and material advantage. They sacrifice 
 everything for that future goal which they can see so 
 vividly far away though it may be. The politician 
 imagines himself a great statesman. The mother dreams 
 of what her children will attain at some future day. 
 Those who never grow^ w^eary of looking skyward are 
 those that finally reach the pot of gold at the rainbow's 
 end. It is the dispirited soul, he who succumbs to his 
 weariness and who forgets that he may look skyward 
 that droops and finally fails. 
 
 A reporter of the peace conference attributes Lloyd 
 George's strength at the peace table and his amazing 
 success in enforcing Great Britain's claims to the fact 
 that he occasionally slipped away from Paris, crossed 
 the channel, traveled to his rural villa and for several 
 days lay on the ground, looked up at the sky — and 
 thought. When he returned to Paris, his body refreshed, 
 his mind having a clearer view of the situation, he was 
 a match for them all. Certain other representatives at 
 the peace table, who never withdrew for an hour's re- 
 pose, or better still to look up into the sky, became con- 
 fused and lost ground. If you w^ill watch the best busi- 
 ness men in this country, and the best politicians, you 
 will notice that they give themselves a chance to think 
 things over, to right themselves, even though they take 
 some other method than looking up into the sky. 
 
 122 
 
LOOKING UP INTO THE SKY 
 
 If the haunting dread of possible failure visits you— 
 lie down on the grass and look up into the sky. Your 
 spirits are bound to revive and your sense of proportion 
 will be restored. I believe that the sky is that part of 
 creation which the God of nature made for the purpose 
 of comforting and inspiring man. I believe that men 
 would incline more to justice, that they would try to 
 be more scrupulous and compassionate, if once in a 
 while they would lift their eyes to the skies. You can 
 hardly turn your eyes from the earth to the heavens 
 without thinking of your future, what you will have to 
 take with you to the next world, and how you will enter 
 upon your life there. 
 
 Sensitive persons who long to find life more lovely and 
 harmonious may temporarily escape the clogging condi- 
 tions of their existence by looking up into the sky. 
 Those who are harassed and worried will find in its blue 
 infinity a blessed ecstacy of peace. Those who strive and 
 struggle for perfection will have their hopes renewed. 
 
 You hardly can look at the sky without realizing the 
 folly of being selfish, greedy, treacherous or spiteful and 
 without seeing at the same time the beauty in noble con- 
 duct, in a kindly, sweet-tempered life. The horror of 
 sordid living and thinking will grow upon you. You will 
 perceive that no happiness can lie in the direction of an 
 unvaried program of self-serving, that you will not ex- 
 tend the range of your ideals that way or get an inkling 
 of the divine. 
 
 If you have had the patience to read thus far, you 
 may say, *'Why, I have no time for such nonsense. The 
 woman does not know what she says". 
 
 Then, I will recall to you the life of Joseph, how his 
 128 
 
ILLUSIONS AND DISILLUSIONS 
 
 brethren seeing him approaching from the distance, said 
 in a tone of contempt, "Behold, this dreamer cometh. 
 Let us slay him and cast him into some pit and see what 
 will become of his dreams". When they could not slay 
 him they sold him into slaverj^ Little did they suspect 
 then that the day was to come when they would stand 
 before him, their peer, that he in his generosity would 
 forgive them and entertain them royally. 
 
 This experience of looking up at the sky, and seeing 
 things brighter and clearer and better, is just as real an 
 experience as eating or drinking. It gives you an in- 
 creased sense of the largeness and richness of life. It 
 brings you a deliverance beyond your dreams. 
 
 124 
 
ROSES AND THE LIFE OP MAN 
 
 ACH morn a thousand roses brings" sang 
 Omar as he looked out upon a Persian gar- 
 den. When we come to think of it, what 
 would this world be without its roses? Roses 
 have been loved by every generation since the beginning 
 of time. The ancients wove them into chaplets and used 
 them at every festival and sacrifice. Long before the 
 moderns tuned their lyres to sing of the beauty and 
 fragrance of roses, their loveliness was being celebrated 
 in Persia, Arabia, Greece and Rome. The Greeks and 
 the Romans so loved the rose that it was associated with 
 every important event in their lives, from the cradle to 
 the grave. The Egyptians once sent a whole shipload 
 of roses to a Roman emperor in the belief that they 
 would make the most acceptable tribute they could offer. 
 At Roman banquets the walls were hung with garlands 
 of roses, and every attendant wore them. Wealthy 
 Roman aristocrats emulated the example of emperors 
 by having their homes adorned with fresh roses every 
 morning during the season. We get our familiar ex- 
 pression, ''a bed of roses", from those Roman sybarites 
 who had their beds filled with roses instead of feathers 
 or down. Since that time, the bed of roses has been 
 synonymous with comfort, happiness and luxury. Not 
 only were roses used by the aristocrats — they were loved 
 and used by the people. The same girl who is making 
 her living as a stenographer today, made it in the time 
 of the Roman empire by making garlands of roses which 
 had a ready sale. Just as we send flowers to the dead, 
 
 125 
 
ILLUSIONS AND DISILLUSIONS 
 
 SO did the ancients pile them upon the catafalque. Roses 
 were considered so necessary for the commemoration of 
 the departed that those who were too poor to purchase 
 roses to put on the graves of their beloved w^ould place 
 a request over the tomb, asking the wealthy passerby to 
 bestow upon it the gift of a flower. Many wealthy per- 
 sons would make bequests to charitable institutions, pro- 
 viding that an offering of roses be made annually in 
 memory of the testators. 
 
 For centuries the rose has been the symbol of victory 
 and the conquering hero has been decorated with roses 
 upon his return from victorious wars. When the first 
 American troops marched through the streets of Paris 
 they walked over a carpet of roses, strewn in their way 
 by the French who were almost delirious wdth joy over 
 the coming of *4es Americains". Those same heroes 
 returning to America, were showered once more with 
 rosebuds, by their mothers, wives, sisters, sweethearts 
 and admiring friends. 
 
 Here is something all men know, though they some- 
 times forget it — that in cultivating flowers and growing 
 trees, they cultivate themselves. Man cannot work 
 without thinking, and when he works among roses, he 
 must perceive that he is, indeed, a part of nature, and 
 that if he is to achieve happiness or success, he must 
 co-operate with her. If the corner grocery infldel would 
 quit whittling and talking long enough to cultivate a 
 rose garden, he might in that garden discover the unity 
 and oneness of nature and the mastership which controls 
 and regulates all. For the man of nature who has seen 
 God in the burning bush of ripening autumn, and who 
 realizes that the same divinity is made manifest in the 
 
 126 
 
ROSES AND THE LIFE OP MAN 
 
 delicately flushed petal of the rose, senses his kinship 
 with flowers, trees, vine and shrubbery and for that 
 reason, he better understands his mission in the world. 
 It is good for us impecunious strugglers with the 
 dragging weariness of the world upon us to walk once in 
 a while in a rose garden and to be made to feel there 
 that we should take off our shoes, that being holy ground. 
 Grosser materialists we would be if it were not for 
 nature, the truest of idealists and the greatest of poets. 
 Once we get away from the city street, with its stone 
 and iron, she speaks to the imagination and creates in 
 us the very feelings the material world seeks to destroy. 
 In such moments we come to know that it is nature's 
 blue skies, her green trees and fields and her gardens of 
 roses that in the feverish rush of life keep us reasonably 
 sane. 
 
 127 
 
WHAT A TEACHER CAN DO 
 
 ON'T you make a plea to the school teachers 
 to instruct their pupils in kindness, polite- 
 ness and gentle speech?" mothers have asked 
 me again and again. Sometimes we wonder 
 if teachers realize what a tremendous influence they 
 exert over their pupils, if they understand what a force 
 they are for molding the lives of boys and girls. 
 
 Almost six hours a day, the best and most alert hours 
 of a child's life are spent in the school-room, under the 
 control and influence of a teacher. After a child has 
 reached the school age; the mother has not much more 
 opportunity to influence her children than has the 
 teacher. And the very fact that the school influence is 
 away from and outside the home renders it the more 
 profound. 
 
 As I look back over my life, I realize that I was 
 profoundly affected by three or four teachers to whom 
 I went to school. This, it seems to me is significant — 
 that the teachers I recall vividly and those who perma- 
 nently influenced my thinking, were those women who 
 continually filled me with the desire to be as fine as they 
 were themselves. All the rest remain a blank to me — 
 I could not even recall their names. I believe that this 
 is true of most persons. The good is a living memory 
 with us. The bad, unless it is very bad, and the indif- 
 ferent, pass from our minds. 
 
 When a teacher builds character while she is drilling 
 children in the rudiments of writing and geography and 
 arithmetic and spelling, she renders a service for which 
 
 128 
 
WHAT A TEACHER CAN DO 
 
 no money can pay. The teacher who holds up before her 
 pupils an example of politeness, kindness, honesty, fair- 
 ness and justice is performing a service that will not 
 only affect the lives of these children, but all the lives 
 that in any way touch theirs. For what does it profit 
 us if we recoive a one-sided education, if the mind is 
 cultivated to the neglect of the heart? What does it 
 matter if we assimilate all the learning of all the ages, 
 and have not fine dispositions and characters? As a 
 matter of fact, a keen, well-trained and highly educated 
 mind with no character or conscience to balance it, is the 
 most dangerous of all forces in the world. It can work 
 more havoc than 100 ignorant criminals. 
 
 The very children who have not been inspired to great 
 reverence for their parents will look up to a teacher and 
 try to imitate her if she be a woman of refiinement and 
 beautiful character. This is particularly true of boys 
 who easily form a semi-romantic attachment for a 
 teacher, especially if she is a woman of personal charm. 
 Little girls, too, sensitive and impressionable as they are, 
 are deeply affected by the atmosphere of the school-room 
 and either blight or blossom in it. A strident-voiced, 
 bad-tempered, coarse-natured woman in the school-room 
 is just as great a moral menace to the children as a 
 woman of fine nature and cultivated manners is uplift- 
 ing and inspiring to those under her care. 
 
 This much must be said about the obligation of the 
 teacher to exercise a noble influence over her pupils — 
 no teacher, however gifted can entirely overcome the in- 
 fluence of a bad and shiftless home. The time to begin 
 teaching children the golden rule and good manners is 
 in their babyhood. If a mother neglects her children for 
 
 129 
 
ILLUSIONS AND DISILLUSIONS 
 
 six years, she must not expect that the school teacher 
 shall undo all the damage she has done. The tendency 
 of woman to shift to the school-room the responsibilities 
 and duties they should be assuming is entirely too prev- 
 alent. Too many mothers are expecting the school 
 teacher to train their children in manners and morals 
 simply because they are too lazy to undertake that task. 
 This is the perfect combination — the mother teaching 
 her children kindness, politeness, fairness and- honesty, 
 and the teacher carrying along and amplifying that in- 
 struction — refinement and character in the home envi- 
 ronment, and the same things in the school. 
 
 130 
 
GRAY HAIRS AND OPPORTUNITY 
 
 HIS is a young man's world — that much is 
 plain", declared a man just past middle age, 
 with an air of profound discouragement. 
 ''The good places all go to the young folk, 
 and only the left-overs fall to men of my years". 
 
 There is no more pathetic sight in this world than 
 gray-haired men and women going about in search of 
 suitable positions and becoming more and more dis- 
 couraged as they are turned away, or are given in- 
 ferior jobs. 
 
 When one of these discouraged men comes to you for 
 advice, it is very easy from the vantage point of your 
 own competence to tell him to brace up, that if he wants 
 to land a good job he must look prosperous and cheer- 
 ful, that he must carry himself with an air of confidence, 
 and though he be rejected again and again he must not 
 permit himself to become discouraged, that he must go 
 right on in the assurance that he is destined to the reali- 
 zation of his best hopes. 
 
 It is not so easy, however, for your patient to take 
 this advice. It is not easy to be enthusiastic when you 
 have been turned down repeatedly. It is anything but 
 easy to look cheerful when money is growing scarcer 
 and scarcer, and prospects are by no means bright. 
 
 Added to the difficulties of the spirit are those of the 
 flesh. Men do not obtain a hearing readily when they 
 have passed their prime. The world of business is in- 
 terested in young men and their possibilities. The em- 
 ployer knows that a young man is more pliable than an 
 
 131 
 
ILLUSIONS AND DISILLUSIONS 
 
 old one, that he is quicker and more energetic, more 
 capable of assimilating new ideas. He also knows that 
 an old man feels like taking life more easily, that he is 
 not so willing to brave physical hardships or to endure 
 exposure, and that he will feel the effects of intense effort 
 much sooner than the young. 
 
 In the face of these conditions, what can an old man 
 do ? First, he must create an illusion of youth. If his 
 hair be white, he should keep it cropped closely. A 
 shaggy white head suggests that the possessor has seen 
 his best days. A few days grovrth of stubby white beard, 
 too, will add years to his appearance. It is sheer mad- 
 ness for the older man, looking for a job, to permit even 
 his best friend to see him with a day's growth of beard 
 on his face. If he has never formed the habit of good- 
 grooming, it will not be an easy task for him, when he 
 has passed middle-life and he is lacking the stimulus of 
 success. Yet, forming that habit may be a matter of 
 life or death to him, just a case of sink or swim. Un- 
 kempt hair, unclean clothing, sagging shoulders and a 
 slouching gait will kill any man 's chance of employment. 
 No employer wants to be greeted with signs of decrepti- 
 tude, and if he happens to be a young man himself, he 
 will be even more impatient with the appearance of old 
 age. One day I saw a man in financial difficulty, wear- 
 ing a coat, threefourths of the hem of which was ripped 
 out and hanging. While that man may not have been 
 able to buy a new suit, he could have had the hem sewed 
 back, if he had to do it himself. He could have had his 
 frayed cuffs turned in, though he w^ere obliged to be 
 his own tailor. 
 
 After a man has looked well to his outward appear- 
 
 132 
 
GRAY HAIRS AND OPPORTUNITY 
 
 ance, he must turn his attention to his mental attitude. 
 He must realize that he will stand a very poor chance of 
 landing a good position if when he is about to apply for 
 it, he says to himself, ' ' I really do not expect to get this 
 position — it's bound to go to a younger man. About all 
 I can do is to ask for it, and run the chance that it will 
 fall my way". For a flabby purpose will "buy" him 
 notliing. He dare not sag mentally or physically. He 
 must appear fresh, aggressive, self-sufficient. If they 
 have quite died, he must rekindle the fires of ambition. 
 He must have the courage to say to himself, as I heard 
 one of these more than middle-aged men in search of a 
 job, declare, *' Nothing can keep me down". 
 
 With all that we have learned within the last 25 years 
 about living longer and keeping younger, we have a long 
 way to go. The ancients must have known much more 
 about it than we do, for Adam lived 950 years, Enoch 
 365 years, Lamech 777 years and Jared 962 years. 
 
 What is wrong with our system that we lost our pep 
 and fire and ambition just at that point in life when we 
 begin to feel that we have learned how to live? 
 
 138 
 
BUSINESS WOMEN FOR WIVES 
 
 BUSINESS man who employs many young 
 women and who is not so busy counting his 
 profits that he has no time to think of the 
 future welfare and happiness of the women in 
 his employ, tries to impress upon them this fact which 
 is obvious to him — the more efficient a woman is in the 
 handling of her work, the higher type of man she at- 
 tracts and the better are her chances for making a good 
 marriage. 
 
 ''Every few weeks one of my girls leaves my service 
 to take a life job", he said to me. "I am very much 
 interested in their marrying well and happily. Close ob- 
 servation over a long period of years has convinced me 
 that the more skillful a girl is at her work, the higher 
 type of man she is likely to marry, while the girl who 
 is careless and slip-shod about her work usually attracts 
 a man of like caliber. 
 
 Every normal woman wants to marry, and she wants 
 to make the best marriage that she can. Therefore, the 
 far-seeing woman of business strives to attain the high- 
 est possible efficiency in her work, not only for the pur- 
 pose of making her services indispensable to her em- 
 ployer, not only for the reason that increased efficiency 
 means a bigger pay envelope and consequently, a greater 
 degree of comfort, security and pleasure for herself, but 
 with the idea of making herself both attractive and in- 
 teresting to the better class of men with whom she be- 
 comes acquainted in her business life. 
 
 A man^s opportunity for sounding a woman's char- 
 
 134 
 
BUSINESS WOMEN FOR WIVES 
 
 acter and disposition and for observing her ability is 
 ten times greater in business than in social life. The 
 woman in society appears only on occasions and then 
 usually on dress parade. She is in a position always to 
 put her best foot forward, and she has leisure to prepare 
 herself to present an excellent appearance. She is not, 
 like the business woman, under fire, all of the time. She 
 does not have to stand the test of the very early morning 
 hours when few of us are at our best. Neither is she 
 betrayed by a daily endurance run, and the wear and 
 tear upon her good looks and her disposition as a hard 
 working day comes to its close. 
 
 For the very reason that the business woman is bound 
 to become known for what she is by her men associates, 
 it behooves her to remember that insofar as she makes 
 good in business, men who come to know her naturally 
 will reach the conclusion that she could also make good 
 in home life. The business woman who is faithful to 
 her work, who is not continually asking for half -holidays 
 and extra hours off is not likely when she marries, to 
 gad about aimlessly at the expense of her home-life. The 
 business woman who is accurate, neat and painstaking 
 at her work probably will keep a neat, clean, well-ordered 
 home. If she is conscientious about her work and ever 
 watchful to promote the interest of her employers, the 
 chances are that she will be equally conscientious as a 
 wife, and that she will take a lively interest in the suc- 
 cess and progress of her husband. If she is invariably 
 courteous to men and women who call upon her em- 
 ployer, always trying to serve them in his absence, you 
 may depend upon it, she will cultivate her husband's 
 friends and entertain them cheerfully. The business 
 
 136 
 
ILLUSIONS AND DISILLUSIONS 
 
 woman who does not buy more than she can afford and 
 who is prompt in the payment of her debts does not 
 easily develop into the wife who continually nags her 
 husband for more spending money than he properly can 
 give her, nor will she run him into debt. When a busi- 
 ness woman keeps sweet in spite of the numerous and 
 sundry irritations that arise in business, and does not 
 lose her poise under ordinary provocation, she is not 
 likely to fly into a tantrum every time her husband hap- 
 pens to differ from her in opinion or fails to put in his 
 appearance for dinner at the appointed hour. The 
 woman who by her conduct and the quality of her work 
 wins and holds the respect of her employer, year in and 
 year out, is pretty sure to keep the respect of her hus- 
 band for a life-time. Also, the woman who manifests a 
 steady pride in her appearance, and who invariably is 
 immaculately neat and clean in store or office will not 
 fall readily into the kimono habit after marriage, or 
 neglect her hair, her skin, her hands and finger nails 
 when she has retired to the comparative seclusion of her 
 own home. 
 
 Since business has become Cupid 's first lieutenant and 
 more marriages are made every year through association 
 in the store, office and counting room than through ac- 
 quaintances in the ball room, the drawing room and on 
 the golf course, every woman of marriageable age who 
 has a pay envelope would do well to remember that as 
 she qualifies for success in her business career, so is she 
 likely to be judged as to her fitness for wifehood. 
 
 136 
 
MEN ''FORGETTING" TO PROPOSE 
 
 HERE is a little story, but a deeply human story 
 that has been written thousands of times. It 
 is the old, familiar story of the man who makes 
 ardent love to a girl, who flatters and cajoles 
 her, who says everything a lover can say excepting a 
 proposal of marriage, and who while prot^^sting his de- 
 votion with singular bravery, suddenly becomes timid 
 when it comes to signing his name to a love letter. 
 
 Many a young girl deludes herself with the strange 
 idea that the man who has the courage to declare his love 
 is such a modest, shrinking violet that he cannot possibly 
 have the hardihood to ask her to become his wife. 
 Strangely enough, it does not occur to her that the man 
 who possesses the prowess to tell her that she is the most 
 charming of creatures, that she is the only girl he ever 
 loved, that he does not know how he is to go on without 
 her, that he thinks of her in every waking hour, that his 
 love for her is like some rare and holy flame, might also 
 perform the heroic feat of asking her to marry him, if 
 that is what he really wants. 
 
 I am one who never could put much faith in that 
 diverting story of Miles Standish who was so timid that 
 he commissioned John Alden to propose for him to the 
 fair Priscilla. It is one of those pretty fictions that have 
 little to do with real life. It is not masculine to be 
 timid. I cannot believe there is one man worthy of the 
 name who fails in courage when he wants to declare him- 
 self. It is a pretty safe rule to follow, that if a man 
 has not enough spirit to propose marriage to the girl he 
 
 137 
 
ILLUSIONS AND DISILLUSIONS 
 
 loves, he won't have enough spirit to take good care of 
 her after he gets her. He is a weakling and she cannot 
 make anything else of him. If all of the young and in- 
 experienced women could be convinced of the truth of 
 this statement, there would be far fewer tragedies in the 
 form of broken hearts and ruined lives. 
 
 The very generosity of woman's nature beguiles her 
 into misunderstanding and mistake. She imagines that 
 the man, poor thing, njeeds to be courted, that he is suf- 
 fering for a little encouragement from her. I'll never 
 forget the pathetic appeal of a postal card note written 
 by a trusting girl to a man who doubtless had quite for- 
 gotten her in the light of another's beaming eyes. ''It 
 has been so long", she wrote, ** since I have heard a word 
 from you that I have made up my mind you must be 
 sick". Nothing is more difficult for the girl-heart to 
 grasp than the cruel possibility of her having been sup- 
 planted in the affections of a man to whom she has 
 given her heart. She can imagine a thousand ills and 
 evils that may have overtaken him. The last thing that 
 she can believe is that he never really cared for her and 
 that the minute she was out of his sight, he quite forgot 
 her. One time in a thousand the man will have been 
 sick, or for some other legitimate reason, unable to com- 
 municate with his sweetheart, but in the other 999 cases, 
 it will have been a matter of sheer indifference. 
 
 Despite the fact that women are fast achieving polit- 
 ical and industrial equality, men are still the lords of 
 this world. The man who loves is not afraid to tell it, 
 and the man who wants to marry will somehow summon 
 the courage to say that, too. 
 
 Here is something for girls to remember — no man fails 
 
 138 
 
MEN FORGETTING TO PROPOSE 
 
 to sign his name to a love letter because of forgetfulness. 
 There is something distinctly mean and small and sneak- 
 ing about the unsigned love letter, and it deserves the 
 same consideration that should be accorded the anony- 
 mous letter of attack. There is just one fitting place for 
 it and that is the waste basket. The writer of the un- 
 signed love letter is the same brand of coward as the 
 writer of the unsigned letter of abuse or attack. 
 
 Girls — don't waste your precious sympathy upon the 
 man who says everything but the one thing that you are 
 waiting for him to say. Many a sweet young girl has 
 gone to her doom because she took that one thing for 
 granted, because she believed that the man honestly loved 
 her though he failed to propose. 
 
 The only thing that makes a man too diffident to pro- 
 pose to a girl who is attractive and interesting to him is 
 his unwillingness to assume the care of a wife and pos- 
 sible family. No man who truly loves lacks the courage 
 to tell it, and no man who wants to make a woman his 
 wife will hesitate long before breaking the news to her. 
 
 139 
 
POETRY IN LIFE'S PROSE 
 
 HE impossible has happened. There has been 
 one man in the world who found "a perfect 
 wife". This is what he said of her in his last 
 will and testament: "I want to say to the 
 world that my wife, in my estimation, is the most perfect 
 woman I ever saw, heard or knew of. She is endowed 
 with marvelous courage, a very strong will, and an in- 
 tensely high ideal of honor. Her love has never at any 
 time diminished, but has grown always until I feel that 
 it has reached the point that can reasonably be consid- 
 ered the acme of perfect love. I am the richest of men 
 in that I am blest with the truest, the most honorable 
 and loving wife in the world". 
 
 This exquisite tribute to a wife was set down in the 
 will of the late Major Charles O. Baird of the 413th 
 Signal Corps battalion, who as the directing head of all 
 the telephone and telegraph lines used by the American 
 expeditionary forces in France worked under such high 
 pressure that he died of heart lesion. 
 
 To the newspaper reporters who besieged Mrs. Baird 
 in her little home in the borough of Queens, New York, 
 she asked smilingly, "Is it so strange for a man to love 
 his wife and then say as much?" 
 
 It is stranger than it ought to be. Real love between 
 man and woman should be the accustomed thing, not 
 a nine days' wonder. 
 
 If it transpires that a marriage is a failure, the world 
 usually assumes that it was a woman ^s fault. It was 
 refreshing to hear the mother of sons say a few days ago 
 
 140 
 
POETRY IN life's PROSE 
 
 that a good husband usually makes a good wife unless 
 the girl is of very unpromising material. She declared 
 that the majority of women change far less than men 
 after they are married, that a girl is just what she is, 
 whether she be single or married. Most men, on the 
 contrary, she asserted, put their best foot forward until 
 after they are married, when they unblushingly display 
 their true natures. 
 
 When asked how she had won and held the love of her 
 husband, *Hhe perfect wife" answered that she ''was 
 trying all the time to do those things that made my 
 loved one happy". 
 
 How many men or women put forth a conscious effort 
 all the time to make their loved ones happy ? How many 
 form the habit of taking their loved ones for granted ? A 
 thousand things claim their time, attention, energy and 
 thoughts. In the midst of a busy life, it is so easy to drift 
 along on the tide of events, assuming that those with 
 whom we live in close relation are well enough satisfied. 
 Men and women, at least most of them, do not mean to be 
 thoughtless or neglectful. They simply fail to under- 
 stand what claims love makes upon othei*s and what they 
 want it to mean. 
 
 Women are keen judges of "the little things that 
 count". And why should they not be? The world is 
 made up of ant-hills rather than mountains. Life is the 
 sum total of a great many small acts and occurrences, 
 varied occasionally by big events. Women are much 
 more discerning and fastidious about what men call mere 
 trifles than the latter usually suspect. 
 
 Women are expected to be eternally on the alert to 
 keep their husband's love. You read in all of the 
 
 141 
 
ILLUSIONS AND DISILLUSIONS 
 
 advice-to-women columns in the newspapers and maga- 
 zines that the wife must present a neat and attractive 
 appearance before her husband. Why should this rule 
 be one-sided? Why should there not be columns writ- 
 ten to men about ''How to Keep Your Wife's Love?" 
 There is many a husband who, by his personal careless- 
 ness, makes himself just as distasteful to his wife as she 
 is to him when she goes about in a faded kimono and 
 curl papers. It takes two to hold up the tone of a fam- 
 ily and renew the honeymoon from the first bridal day 
 to the golden wedding. 
 
 Before marriage, the man assumes that the woman at 
 his side is unable to step up the curbstone without his 
 gallant assistance. After marriage she may toil up 
 flights of stairs and carry heavy burdens. It may seem 
 like a little thing for a husband to offer to carry the 
 baby upstairs at night, but it is a little lift that will 
 touch the heart of almost any wife. Most husbands are 
 very courteous to their wives in public. They help them 
 in taking off or putting on their wraps. They step back 
 and permit their wives to pass through a door ahead. 
 It is in the privacy of home that a husband's courtesy is 
 put to the real test. If it be a veneer, he will save it for 
 public exhibition. If it be genuine, it is something 
 that, in the essentials, he never will forget to observe. 
 
 There ai^ times when a wife is as hungry for demon- 
 strations of love as is a little child. A woman is a 
 woman whether she lives in a log cabin or in a stone 
 mansion. Her nature craves little attentions, compli- 
 ments and courtesies. If men understood this need of 
 the feminine nature, this heart hunger of a wife for the 
 expressed approval of her husband, they would say and 
 
 142 
 
POBTRY IN LIFB*S PROSE 
 
 do a great many more little things for their wives that 
 they ordinarily do not so much as think about. Just a 
 little word of appreciation for the wife's new blouse, 
 for the hat she has so cleverly trimmed that she might 
 help her husband save, the delicious dish she has pre- 
 pared for dinner, the rearrangement of the furniture in 
 a room, and a dozen other things women do to make their 
 married life and their homes as successful as they can. 
 
 Why should the little courtesies and compliments and 
 appreciations that make a woman happy be discarded 
 after marriage? Why in the midst of the prose of 
 every-day living should husband and wife forget all the 
 poetry ? 
 
 Perfect love would not be so rare a phenomenon if 
 more husbands and wives, like Major and Mrs. Baird, 
 ''tried all the time to do those things which make the 
 loved one happy". 
 
 143 
 
INSIGNIA OF A LADY 
 
 ■TBr7|HAT is the first thing you notice about a soldier 
 
 ^^m in uniform ? Is it not the insignia he wears on 
 
 ^BP his coat? Do you not look for those signs 
 
 which indicate whether he is in the infantry 
 
 or the artillery, whether he is a lieutenant, a captain, a 
 
 brigadier or major general, or just a doughboy? Do 
 
 you not also look for those gold stripes on his arm which 
 
 indicate that he has seen service overseas? 
 
 Now, the soldier is not the only person in this world 
 who wears insignia. Nor is the only kind of insignia 
 that of army or nav>\ 
 
 Every woman displays certain insignia, though she 
 may be quite unaware of that fact. What are the in- 
 signia we expect to see displayed by a woman? Are 
 they not those of a lady? 
 
 What are the insignia of a lady? 
 
 Her dress, her manner and her speech. 
 
 Whenever you see a woman wearing the insignia of a 
 lady, she does not do so by attracting attention to her 
 costume, unless it be by its simple beauty, its elegance 
 and that quality we call good taste. The very moment 
 you look at a lady, you realize that she is in harmony 
 with her surroundings; that she is wearing that which 
 suits her, and that it is the right thing for the time and 
 place. You say to yourself, ' ' She looks like a lady ' '. She 
 has that something about every detail of her toilette 
 which suggests refinement and gentility. It is an art 
 to dress ''like a lady", but it is one that every woman, 
 
 144 
 
INSIGNIA OF A LADY 
 
 regardless of her opportunities or condition, can acquire 
 if she tries. 
 
 What of the insignia of manner? 
 
 In a word, courtesy, expressed by unfailing kindness 
 and thoughtfulness of others. 
 
 The woman who displays the insignia of a lady by her 
 manner never talks loud in the street. She is quiet, like- 
 wise, at public entertainments. No woman wearing the 
 insignia of a lady will talk while an artist is singing or 
 playing, or while a speaker is on his feet. She does not 
 turn around when there is some disturbance at the rear 
 of the room, nor does she stare as others enter or make 
 remarks about them. If she goes into the house of God, 
 she enters into the form of worship unostentatiously, and 
 she does not scribble in prayer or hymn book or mutilate 
 either one. She makes room if she can for others as they 
 enter, nor does she stubbornly cling to the aisle seat. 
 
 The woman wearing the insignia of a lady does not 
 rudely push ahead of others when entering a public 
 conveyance. If a man is so gallant as to give her his 
 seat, she murmurs a pleasant 'Hhank you". She will 
 offer her seat to an elderly woman or to one carrying a 
 baby. She is courteous to all salesmen and saleswomen 
 and she does not forget to speak to them a courteous 
 word of appreciation when she has been well served. She 
 is invariably polite in talking over the telephone, and 
 she knows that "Central's" trying task is rendered no 
 easier by the men and women who "bawl her out". She 
 stands in the presence of older persons and she lets an 
 older woman or a guest precede her through the door. 
 She is as courteous to the members of her own family as 
 she is to acquaintances and friends. And no matter 
 
 145 
 
ILLUSIONS AND DISILLUSIONS 
 
 what may be her heartaches, she tries to radiate cheer- 
 fulness. 
 
 Invariably you can detect a woman 's rank by her voice 
 and manner of speech. An exquisite voice and manner 
 of speaking are more engaging than beauty. In fact, 
 nothing gives one so severe a shock as to hear harsh, 
 strident tones or vulgar, low words issuing from the 
 lips of a beautiful woman. Slang, unless it be used with 
 great nicety and discrimination, creates an unpleasant 
 impression. As for loud laughter, it is but ''the noisy 
 testimony of the joy of the mob". In conversation, it is 
 well to talk often, but not to talk long, so that if you 
 fail to please, at least, you will not tire your hearer. 
 
 Harmonious and appropriate dress, invariable kind- 
 ness and courteous manners, a well-modulated voice and 
 pure diction — these are the insignia of a lady. And 
 she who displays them will be recognized as a lady 
 whether she be in Fifth Avenue, New York or in the 
 roughest frontier town in the whole country. 
 
 146 
 
AFTER COLLEGE— WHAT? 
 
 VERY year thousands of young girls come out 
 of finishing schools and colleges, wondering 
 what they will do next. They have a vague 
 sense of wanting to justify the time they 
 have given to their schooling since they left high 
 school and the money that has been spent upon them, 
 both to their families and to their conununities. Every 
 conscientious graduate is eager to make her educa- 
 tion function, and to make its value visible to the 
 home-folk and her friends. 
 
 What happens to the girl graduate who emerges from 
 finishing school or college, supplied with a lot of new 
 theories which she feels that she must somehow put into 
 use? 
 
 If she belongs to a prosperous family, she will be ex- 
 pected to fit back into the family circle and the com- 
 munity's social life. If she must go to work, nine times 
 out of ten, she has been permitted to come out of col- 
 lege with nothing definite and tangible to offer to an 
 exacting business world which in turn has nothing to 
 offer her in the way of a position that will harmonize 
 with her ambitions and ideals. 
 
 If she belongs to the first class, what can she do? 
 
 As a matter of fact, she does not know what to do 
 except to follow the lead of her parents. Her father, 
 who would have been utterly disgusted with a son that 
 refused to prepare himself for a chosen vocation, has 
 repeatedly discouraged his daughter from taking so 
 practical a course. He argnes that after she has been 
 
 147 
 
ILLUSIONS AND DISILLUSIONS 
 
 away at college for four years, he and her mother want 
 to have her at home with them, which is quite the natural 
 feeling for parents. He tells her that he has plenty of 
 money, and that she never will have to earn her own 
 way. "It is so delightful for your parents to have you 
 with them", the family friends say to her. She feels 
 that she does owe something in the way of personal 
 gratification, after all they have done for her. How 
 many girls are proof against arguments of parental af- 
 fection and the lure of a social career? If, indeed, they 
 were so, would we not love them less? 
 
 Let us suppose, on the contrary, that the girl grad- 
 uate decides that the wisest course she can pursue to 
 save herself from boredom, if she does not like society, 
 or to secure an income of her own, is to enter the business 
 world. 
 
 But, what is the first thing she asks of the business 
 world? Nine times out of ten you will hear her say, 
 "Oh, I want to do something interesting". What does 
 that mean? It means that she is not nearly so anxious 
 to undertake a work that will be genuinely useful and 
 constructive as something that will win instant applause 
 from the crowd. She wants a task in which she can ' ' ex- 
 press herself", one in which she can make "her per- 
 sonality felt". It is then she finds herself confronted 
 with a barrier — the business world is looking for gen- 
 uinely useful women who will work for their work's 
 sake, not for women whose dominant idea is to exploit 
 themselves. 
 
 "Since the home seems to be passing", said a mother, 
 "it is hardly worth while to train one's daughters to be 
 wives and homemakers, and yet, if they are in no im- 
 
 148 
 
AFTER COLLEGE — WHAT? 
 
 mediate necessity of making their own living, it does 
 not seem quite the thing to fit them for business or pro- 
 fessional life.'* 
 
 In the history of the world there never has been an 
 era so trying to young women, who cannot know whether 
 they are destined to be wives and mothers or women of 
 the workaday world. Suppose a girl prefers the career 
 of a wife and homemaker, and suppose she prepares her- 
 self for that. Society can offer her no guarantee that she 
 will marry. Or, on the other hand, suppose she is edu- 
 cated for a profession at her own request; then to her 
 own amazement and that of her friends, she may fall in 
 love and marry following her graduation, when she is 
 not much better prepared to take up homelife than her 
 domestically inclined sister was equipped for a commer- 
 cial career. 
 
 Countless young girls of the well-to-do class are left 
 to drift when they come out of school. Forgetting that 
 they are vital young creatures with the right to some- 
 thing more satisfying than a life of pleasure, we wonder 
 why they become reckless and offend Mrs. Grundy. 
 
 For the present there appears to be only one fair way 
 to meet this problem — I do not assume to solve it. That 
 way is to train thoroughly every girl for some gainful 
 occupation, and to permit her to follow that if she has 
 the will to do so. In that event, she will not be tor- 
 mented with the demon of futility, nor will she feel 
 that she must apologize to her family and to society if 
 she does not marry straightway. 
 
 149 
 
THE CHEERFUL HUSBAND 
 
 F I should ever marry again, I hope that I will 
 be so fortunate as to get a jolly man for a 
 husband", said a young widow who had di- 
 vorced a chronic grouch. ''There is nothing 
 more depressing than the companionship of a man who 
 is eternally in a bad humor. During the first years of 
 my married life, I used to spend hours trying to think 
 up interesting topics of conversation, and gathering up 
 cheerful little stories to tell my husband, always in the 
 hope that I could break through his gloom." 
 
 Ill-humor is the most contemptible of faults because 
 there is no excuse for it. The man who cultivates a 
 sullen temper is the most selfish of all human creatures. 
 He tears down everybody with whom he comes in con- 
 tact and his very presence distills a poison that blights 
 his associates. Many a wife who looks 60 at the age of 
 40 has aged prematurely because all during her married 
 life she has had to bear with a husband's ugly disposi- 
 tion, his carping criticisms, and scowls and snarling 
 comments. 
 
 Occasionally there is a man who thinks it is ''smart" 
 to make his wife afraid of him and w^ho with more or 
 less regularity stages a tantrum in order to keep her 
 "toeing the mark". He may be a "good provider". 
 He may not be otherwise brutal. But for all the fear 
 and uncertainty and anguish he causes her, he almost 
 might as well be an out-and-out villian — so much suffer- 
 ing does he cause. 
 
 I care not how talented a man is, if he says to himself, 
 
 150 
 
THE CHEERFUL HUSBAND 
 
 ''This world is my natural enemy, and I must keep an 
 eye on it ; I am going to watch my wife to see that she 
 does not betray me; I have no faith in friendship or 
 human kindness; nevertheless I am going to realize my 
 ambitions and get what I want" is swimming against 
 the current of the universe. His distrust of others breeds 
 distrust in them, and his hardness arouses their sus- 
 picions. With every step he takes he puts a handicap on 
 his efforts, and however great his material success, he 
 will never get the fullest enjoyment of it. How differ- 
 ent is the life of the man who says: ''This world and 
 our life in it is just about what we make it. Friendship 
 gravitates toward those w^ho deserve it and love is 
 returned a thousand fold". Good flows to that man on 
 every current, and a thousand unseen forces are set in 
 motion to carry him onward to his goal. 
 
 Ella Wheeler Wilcox once said that she wished a pro- 
 fessor or preceptress of optimism might be introduced 
 into every school in the world. As a matter of fact, the 
 science of loving humanity is more important than 
 higher mathematics, and the fine art of keeping cheer- 
 ful is more useful than a knowledge of a dozen foreign 
 languages. 
 
 In order to protect ourselves from other peoples' 
 glooms and ill-humor, we ought not to take their rude- 
 ness or complaining as personal to ourselves. We ought 
 to realize that men and women's grouches usually are 
 attributable to one of two causes, ill-health or lack of 
 wholesome training. On the other hand, we should ac- 
 cept the kindness of people and their efforts to rise above 
 their troubles as much for our benefit as their own sakes, 
 as personal favors. 
 
 151 
 
ILLUSIONS AND DISILLUSIONS 
 
 I have noticed this — that well-bred persons are seldom 
 complainers. There is a streak of commonness in peo- 
 ple who are persistently gloomy, grouchy or sullen, who 
 cannot make themselves or anybody else happy, who are 
 eternally suspicious of others, and who always can find 
 something to fuss or fret about. One of the truest evi- 
 dences of aristocracy is a courageous bearing through 
 the ups and downs of every-day life. 
 
 Let no husband delude himself with the notion that he 
 appears deep, profound or inscrutable when he main- 
 tains a sullen silence, and when he habitually opens his 
 lips only to criticise. Men of the highest wisdom make 
 a practice of maintaining a cheerful spirit and of seeing 
 the best, not the worst in their fellow-men. 
 
 152 
 
MARRIAGE AND THE MARGIN OF AGE 
 
 OW much difference should there be in the ages 
 of men and women who marry? Is happy 
 marriage possible between a man of mature 
 years and a very young woman? Can an 
 older woman and a very young man find permanent sat- 
 f action in each other? Does a margin of two to five 
 years promise the ideal basis for a successful union f Or, 
 is a difference of ten years more favorable to sustained 
 happiness ? 
 
 From five to ten years is probably the safest margin 
 of difference between the ages of husband and wife. As 
 she grows older the average woman does not preserve 
 the semblance of youth so well as her husband, unless 
 she happens to be one of those fortunate persons who 
 can take the utmost care of herself. When married 
 couples reach the meridian of life, that is, between 40 
 and 50 years of age, the husband often appears the 
 younger, a situation that is bound to inspire chagrin 
 in the wife, who nine times out of ten, comes to fear that 
 her spouse may be attracted to a more youthful form 
 and face. 
 
 The successful man of business is often a miracle of 
 freshness, youth and good looks until he is 60 years of 
 age, for the man who has brains enough to make a suc- 
 cess of his work has brains enough to not worry over 
 conditions he cannot help. The contrary is true of a 
 good many women who seem to find a voluptuous pleas- 
 ure in making themselves unhappy, in fretting over de- 
 tails and fussing over a thousand petty things which 
 
 153 
 
ILLUSIONS AND DISILLUSIONS 
 
 are quite , immaterial and irrelevant to the real business 
 of life. 
 
 There is something bordering on both the ridiculous 
 and the pathetic in those instances of abnormal love 
 where a woman of 40 or 50 falls desperately in love with 
 a man many years her junior. In almost every case 
 the passion that unites masculine May with feminine 
 December is inspired by a woman of extraordinary 
 brains, beauty or strength of character. The young 
 m.an is dazzled by the mistress of a thousand subtleties. 
 He is fascinated by her ability to bring out the best that 
 is within him. Older women who have this faculty for 
 attracting young men know how to make the shyest 
 youth shine with an effulgent glory. They have an in- 
 sinuating way of uncovering in a young and inexperi- 
 enced man such depths as he did not before suspect in 
 himself. 
 
 As men grow older their general tendency is toward 
 specialization. The tendency of the ripening woman, 
 on the contrary, is toward diversification. The more 
 brilliant the woman, the wider are her interests, among 
 which may be society, sports, art, literature, politics and 
 travel. She establishes a thousand points of contact with 
 people, and she learns a thousand ways to play upon 
 susceptible human nature. This fullness of knowledge 
 often renders her quite irresistible to a young man, pro- 
 vided she has also kept a certain amount of physical 
 exuberance and the fine faculty for making friends with 
 time. Women are usually drawn into affairs of this 
 unnatural kind in the hope of renewing the sensations of 
 their youth ; or having made a mercenary or disappoint- 
 ing marriage in their teens, they seek in a second and 
 
 154 
 
MARRIAGE AND THE MARGIN OF AGB 
 
 later union to experience the emotions they missed in 
 the springtime of their lives. It is doubtful if the 
 woman of 45 or 50 who is contemplating marriage with 
 a younger man ever hesitates on the point of her own 
 disillusionment, though she is almost sure to entertain a 
 fear that she may be supplanted later in his affections 
 by a woman nearer his own age. But, the chances are 
 that she may tire of her youthful lover even before he 
 has exhausted his resources of affection for her. 
 
 Disraeli's marriage was a happy exception to this rule. 
 Overwhelmingly ambitious, he secured through his wife 
 not only the money to consummate his ambitious, but 
 the ripe experience and the steady heart and hand of 
 a thorough woman of the world. Mrs. Disraeli adored 
 her "Dizzy" as she called him, and naturally so, for no 
 woman could have failed to be devoted to so brilliant and 
 charming a personality as the great English statesman. 
 
 Unions among men of ripe years and young women 
 stand a better chance of happiness, though they must 
 violate in some measure that natural law which decrees 
 that youth shall call to youth. Chauncey M. Depew, the 
 delightful octogenarian, and his younger wife seem to 
 have realized genuine happiness together. Luther Bur- 
 bank at the age of 62 married his secretary who at the 
 time was 30 years old. Where a young woman and an 
 older man are in accord temperamentally, it may be 
 possible for them to achieve a fairly happy and satis- 
 factory marriage. Any abnormal element entering into 
 marriage, however, is sure to be prejudicial to the ideal 
 happiness, for May naturally loves May, and December 
 loves December, and as Kipling would say, the twain 
 shall never meet. 
 
 155 
 
GLORY OP THE DINNER HOUR 
 
 REAKFAST is the poetry of eating." 
 
 ** Strong with the invigoration of sleep, 
 still animated with the intimacies of soap 
 and w^ater, a man comes to his breakfast 
 like a boy. A boy comes down like winged mercury 
 and takes his seat as if alighted on a heaven-kissing 
 hill. Breakfast is the work of Lucifer, Son of the 
 Morning, and no doubt caused the arrogance that 
 wrought his fall. Freshness sits at your right hand, 
 the dust of the day has not settled on your soul, and 
 you meet your fellows like morning stars shining at 
 each other. 'Good morning.' What a delightful 
 greeting! Did a 'Good evening' ever sound so musical 
 as 'good morning' when the first fragrance of coffee, 
 m'uffins and honey bursts upon the anticipating senses? 
 Tripping downstairs is almost like flying, and pulling 
 out one's chair gives the last fillup to the appetite. 
 Everything is welcome and welcoming." 
 
 Who but a man could have such sentiments? Who 
 but a man could approach the breakfast table feeling 
 and looking like a morning star? No female of the 
 species could be so sentimental. "Poetry of eating" — 
 indeed. Of all the repasts that take place in one round 
 of the clock, none is so songless, so lack-luster as break- 
 fast which is the very prose of pasturage. Luncheon 
 is only a shade less interesting, coming as it does between 
 the morning's effort and the afternoon's ennui and 
 
 156 
 
GLORY OF THE DINNER HOUR 
 
 fatigue. It is not until the tea-hour that feminine hu- 
 manity begins to feel salubrious, for tea with its delight- 
 ful tonic quality and aromatic fragrance is touched with 
 the enchantment of the closing day. 
 
 Breakfast never has held for us the interest that it 
 did for certain Englishmen during the last century. Be- 
 ing workers in America, devotees of the strenuous life, 
 we get ourselves out of bed, dress, drink our coffee and 
 hurry away to business. The only incident of the 
 American breakfast is the American newspaper, taken 
 without comment. 
 
 It never seems to have occurred to us to copy the de- 
 lightful breakfasts that were given by Sidney Smith. 
 We never have celebrated such morning festivities as 
 Daniel Webster wrote about in 1839 when he met at 
 breakfast in London ''Boz", Tom Moore, Wordsworth 
 and many other distinguished Englishmen. Men do not 
 give breakfasts in this country, and when women hold 
 them, they occur at 12 o'clock. 
 
 ' ' The wife who permits her husband to see her before 
 the luncheon hour does so at her peril", declared a man 
 who is wise in the ways of this world. Fine advice for 
 the plutocracy, but doubtful for the proletariat. There 
 is a large modicum of truth in it, however, and if Bal- 
 zac were here to consult about it, he likely would char- 
 acterize so daring a woman as either a philosopher or a 
 fool. Women are not at their best at breakfast. Only 
 children and men get up with the freshness of the morn- 
 ing upon them, and doubtless there would be fewer 
 domestic infelicities, if all households had cooks to pre- 
 pare breakfast for all husbands, and wives could post- 
 
 157 
 
ILLUSIONS AND DISILLUSIONS 
 
 pone their appearance until a kinder hour of the day. 
 
 As for dinner — ah, there is something warm, pagan, 
 exotic about dinner, when woman is in her element. 
 
 When a woman goes out to dinner with a man for the 
 first time, little does he imagine how much is going to 
 depend upon the way that dinner goes off. If he studies 
 the menu with the business-like manner that he would 
 scan the day's report of the markets, or a railroad time- 
 card, it bodes ill for future romance. But if he scans 
 the carte de jour to discover some delectable dish that 
 will tempt the illusive appetite of his divinity, if he in- 
 sists to the waiter that every dish shall be more skill- 
 fully, more exquisitely prepared than it ever was pre- 
 pared before, she is made secretly happy. One course 
 follows another, all too quickly until finally they sit 
 over their coffee, talking about the only thing that is 
 worth talking about — love — until the waiter brings the 
 bill. Then, if he glances at the bill nonchalantly, and 
 pays it like a prince, even though he be not very wealthy, 
 and arising from the table, he waves aside the waiter and 
 himself folds his Angelica in her cloak, she is suddenly 
 caught up into heaven among the rosy clouds of romantic 
 love. 
 
 But, who can think of love at breakfast? Who feels 
 like pouring out a libation to his Gillian? Who could 
 look raptly over the breakfast table into his Sylvia's 
 blue eyes? Over the breakfast table there falls none of 
 the gold and purple radiance which shines over the cere- 
 monial of dinner. Breakfast lacks the enchantments of 
 comradeship, the sense of romantic adventure shared 
 which one may feel at dinner. At breakfast there are no 
 
 158 
 
ILLUSIONS AND DISILLUSIONS 
 
 divine frivolities, no exquisite coquettries; there is no 
 snatching of the fearful and wonderful joys of dinner, 
 no hint of that mysterious paradise which came into be- 
 ing when "male and female created He them'*. 
 
 159 
 
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