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LETTER&S
TO
THIE JONESES.
BY
TIMOTHY  TITCOMB,
&UTIIOR OF "LETTERS TO YOUNG PEOPLE," "GOLD FOIL," "LESSOS IX LITE,"
ETC., ETC.
ELEVENTH EDITION.
NEW YORK:
CHARLES SCRIBNER, 124 GRAND STREET.
1864.




ENTBRED, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1868,
BY CHARLES SCRIBNER,
tn the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern
District of New York.
JOHN F. TROW,
PRINTER AND STEREOTYPEI,
50 Greene street.




PREFACE.
THERE is pretension in all works of a didactic
nature, while in those which are not only preceptive, but critical of character, motive and life, there
is an assumption of superiority on the part of the
author which can only fail of being offensive by
being ignored.
The writer of the Titcomb Series of Books has
always felt this, and, however little he may have
concealed himself, has hidden his head under the
shadow of a nom de plume. The only apologies
which he offers for appearing as a censor and a
teacher, are his love of men, his honest wish to do
them good, and his sad consciousness that his nominal criticisms of others are too often actual condemnations of himself.




6                  Preface.
Since the appearance of the author's "Letters
to The Young," in 1858, he has received every year
a large number of letters from their readers, asking
for counsel in a wide variety of specific cases.
While the present volume was not intended as a
reply to these letters, it was naturally suggested by
them. The author has attempted in it to present
and criticise certain types of character and life, and
to furnish motives and means for their improvement
and reform. In order to do this successfully, it
was found necessary to deal with personalities, to
which it was desirable to give " a local habitation
and a name;" and as the Smiths had been somewhat overworked by the literary guild, as representatives of the human race, it was determined to
address the Joneses of Jonesville, who, though represented in the well-known firm of Brown, Jones
& Robinson, were comparatively fresh in the field,
and endowed with the average amount of "human
nature."
Now, if the reader will so far favor the author
as to suppose that, when a young man, he taught
the district school in Jonesville, "boarding around"
according to the primitive New England fashion,
that he has kept himself acquainted with the lives
and fortunes of his old fiiends and pupils there,




Preface.                   7
that they have known something of him, and,
through an officious representative of the family,
have requested him to write them letters for the
public eye, which he had no time to write for their
private reading,-I say, if the reader will suppose
all this, he will supply all the necessary machinery
of the book, and the writer will have his justification for the direct and homely talk in which he
indulges toward the family.
SPRINGFIELD, October, 1863.








CONTENTS.
THE FIRST LETTER.
FAGS
To DEAcoN SOLOMON JONEs-Concerning his system of family
government,........    13
THE SECOND LETTER.
To MRS. MARTHA JONES (wife of Deacon Solomon)-Concerning her system of family government,...   27
THE THIRD LETTER.
To F. MENDELSSOHN JONES, Singing Master-Concerning the
influence of his profession on personal character,.   41
THE FOURTH  LETTER.
To HANS SACHS JONES, Shoemaker-Concerning his habit of
business lying,...   57
THE FIFTH LETTER.
To EDWARD PAYSON JoNEs-Concerning his failure to yield to
his convictions of duty,...   71
THE SIXTH  LETTER.
To MRS. JESSY BELL JONES-Concerning the difficulty she
experiences in keeping her servants,..86
THE SEVENTH LETTER.
To SALATHIEL FOGa JONES, Spiritualist-Concerning the faith
and prospects of his sect of religionists,...  100
1*




10                      Contents.
PAGI
THE EIGHITH LETTER.
To BENJAMIN FRANKLIN JONES, Mechanic-Concerning his
habitual absence from church on Sunday,...  116
THE NINTH LETTER.
To WASHINGTON ALLSTON JoNES-Concerning the policy of
making his brains marketable,.                   128
THE TENTH LETTER.
To REV. JEREMIAH JONES, D.D.-Concerning the failure of his
pulpit ministry,...                          142
THE ELEVENTH LETTER.
To STEPHEN GIRARD JONEs-Concerning the best way of spending his money,....                              157
THE TWELFTH LETTER.
To NOEL JONE —Concerning his opinion that he knows pretty
much everything,.......171
THE THIRTEENTH LETTER.
To RUFUS CHOATE JONES, Lawyer-Concerning the duties and
dangers of his profession,..                  185
THE FOURTEENTH LETTER.
To MRS. ROYAL PURPLE JONEs-Concerning her absorbing devotion to her own person,...200
THE FIFTEENTH LETTER.
To MIss FELICIA HEMANS JONES-Concerning her strong desire to become an authoress,.....215
THE SIXTEENTH LETTER.
To JxBU JONEs-Concerning the character and tendencies of
the fast life which he is living,...         229




Contents.                        11
PAGN
THE SEVENTEENTH LETTER.
To THOMAS ARNOLD JONES, Schoolmaster-Concerning the requirements and the tendencies of his profession,..  242
THE EIGHTEENTH LETTER.
To MRS. RosA HOPPIN JONEs-Concerning her dislike of
routine and her desire for change and amusement,.  256
THE NINETEENTH LETTER.
To JEFFERSON DAVIS JONES, Politician-Concerning the immorality of his pursuits, and their effect upon himself
and his country,.... 269
THE TWENTIETH LETTER.
To DR. BENJAMIN RUSH JONES-Concerning the position of
himself and his profession,..  284
THE TWENTY-FIRST LETTER.
To DIOGENES JoNE —Concerning his disposition to avoid
society,....                          299
THE TWENTY-SECOND LETTER.
To SAUL M. JONEs-Concerning his habit of looking upon the
dark side of things,.                             810
THE TWENTY-THIRD LETTER.
To JOHN SMITH JONE —Concerning his neighborly duties, and
his failure to perform them,... 822
THE TWENTY-FOURTH LETTER.
To GOODRICH JONES, JR.-Concerning his disposition to be
content with the respectability and wealth which his
father has acquired for him,   885








LETTERS TO THE JONESES.
THE FIRST LETTER.
la gjacon *olamon  onuts.
COYVCERNINGS HIS SYSTEM OF FAXMIL Y GO VERKMENT.
YOU are now an old man, and I do not expect that
anything I shall write to you will do you good.
I only seek, through what I say to you, to convey useful
hints and lessons to others. It is not a pleasure to me
to wound your self-love, or to disturb the complacency
which you entertain amid the wreck of your family
hopes. It is not delightful to assure you that your life
has been a mistake from the beginning, and that your
children owe the miscarriage of their lives to the training which you still seem to regard as alike the offspring
and parent of Christian wisdom. If there were not




14         Letters to the Jonefes.
others in the world who are making the same mistake
that you have made, and moving forward to the same
sad family disaster, you should hear from me no word
that you could shape into a reproach. But you will
soon pass away, with the comforting assurance that
your motives, at least, were good; and to these, your
only comforts, I commend you.
You were once the great man of Jonesville. You
then deemed it necessary to maintain a dignified deportment, to take the lead in all matters of public
moment, to manage the Jonesville church and the
Jonesville minister, and to exercise a general supervision of the village. There was not a man, woman, or
child in the village who did not feel your presence as
that of an independent, arbitrary power, that permitted
no liberty of will around it. You had your notions of
politics, religion, municipal affairs, education, social
life; and to these you tried to bend every mind that
came into contact with you. You undertook to think
for your neighbors, and to impose upon them your own
law in all things. If one independent man spoke out
his thoughts, and refused to be bound to your will, you
persecuted him. You beset him behind and before, by
petty annoyances. You took away his business. You
sneered at him in public and private. In this way,
you banished from Jonesville many men who would
have been an honor to it, and finally alienated from




To Deacon Solomon Jones.            15
yourself the hearts of your own kindred. You drove a
whole village into opposition to yourself. You forced
them to a self-assertion that manifested itself in a multitude of improper and offensive ways. If you opposed
a harmless dance at a neighbor's house, the villagers
revenged themselves by holding a ball at the tavern.
It took only a few years of your peculiar management
to fill Jonesville with doggeries and loafers, and to
prove to you that your village management had been a
sorry failure.
You seem to have conducted life upon the assumption that all the men in the world, with the single exception of Deacon Solomon Jones, are incapable of selfgovernment. It never has occurred to you, in any dispute with a neighbor, or in any difficulty which arrayed the public against you, that you could possibly be
in the wrong; and it always has offended you to think
that any other Jones, or any other man, should dare to
controvert your opinions, or question your decisions.
And you were so stupid that, when all your neighborsafter much long-suffering and patient waiting upon your
whims-rebelled against you, and went to extremes to
show their independence of, and contempt for you, you
attributed the work of your own hands to the devil.
Deacon Jones, the Lord gave you brains, and Yankee enterprise got you money?  Had there been
proper management on your part, Jonesville would be




16         Letters to the Jonefes.
in your hands to-day; but you are aware that by far
the larger proportion of your fellow citizens either do
not love you, or positively hate you. How has this
state of things been arrived at? Do you flatter yourself that you have been as wise as a serpent and harmless as a dove? Do you honestly believe that the loss
of your influence is attributable rather to the popular
than your own personal perverseness? I do not expect
to make you see it, but you really did your best to
make slaves of your fellows, and your fellows, recognizing you as a tyrant, kicked over your throne, and
tumbled you into your chimney corner, where alone
you had the power to put your peculiar theories into
practice.
A man does not usually have one set of notions concerning neighborhood government and another concerning family government. You managed your own family
very much as you undertook to manage your village.
I can, indeed, bear witness that you gave your family
line upon line and precept upon precept, but I am not
so ready to concede that you trained them up in the
right way. Your family was an orderly one, I admit,
but I have seen jails and houses of correction that were
more orderly still. An orderly house is quite as liable
to be governed too much, as a disorderly house is to be
governed too little.
I always noticed this fact, with relation to your




To Deacon Solomon Jones.           17
mode of family training. You enforced a blind obedience to your commands, and never deemed it necessary or desirable to give a reason for them. Nay, you
told your children, distinctly, that it was enough for
them that you conmmanded a thing to be done. You
refused to give them a reason beyond your own wish
and will. You placed yourself between them and their
own consciences; you placed yourself between them
and their own sense of that which is just and proper
and good; nay, you placed yourself between them and
God, and demanded that they should obey you because
you willed it-because you commanded them to obey
you.
It is comparatively an easy thing to get up an
orderly family, on such a plan of operations as this.
A man needs only to have a strong arm, and a broad
palm, and a heart that never opens to parental tenderness, to secure the most orderly family in the world.
It is not a hard thing for a man who weighs two hundred pounds, more or less, to make a boy who weighs
only fifty pounds. -o much afraid of him as to obey his
minutest commands. Indeed, it is not a hard thing to
break down his will entirely, and make a craven of him.
I declare to you, Deacon Jones, that the most orderly
families I have ever known were the worst governed;
and one of these families was your own. You are not
the first man who has brought up " an orderly family,"




18         Letters to the Jonefes.
and fitted them for the devil's hand by his system of
government.
Now will you just think for a moment what you did
for your children? I know their history, and in many
respects it has been a bad one aInd a sad one. You
governed them. You laid your law upon them. You
forced upon them your will as their supreme rule of
action. They did not fear God half as much as they
did you, though, if I remember correctly, you represented Him to be a sort of infinite Deacon Solomon
Jones. They did not fear to lie half as much as they
feared to be flogged.. They became hypocrites through
their fear of you, and they learned to hate you because
you persisted in treating them as servile dependants.
You put yourself before them and thrust yourself into
their life in the place of God. You bent them to your
will with those strong hands of yours, and you had " an
orderly family."
My friend, when I think of the families that have
been trained and ruined in this way, I shudder. Your
children were never permitted to have any will, and
when they went forth from your threshold, they went
forth emancipated slaves, and untried children in the
use of liberty. When they found the hand of parental
restraint removed, there was no restraint upon them.
They had never been taught that most essential of all
government, self-government; and a man who has not




To Deacon Solomon Jones.              19
been taught to govern himself is as helpless in the
world as a child. A family may be orderly to a degree
of nicety that is really admirable, and still be as incapable of self-government as a family of idiots. Families
that might be reckoned by thousands have left orderly
homes, all prepared for the destruction to which they
rushed.
The military commander knows very well that he
says very little as to the moral character of his soldiers
when he says that they are under excellent discipline.
The drill of the camp may make the camp the most
orderly of places, but this drill does not go beyond the
camp, or deeper than the surface of the character.
Take from the shoulders of these soldiers the strong
hand of military control, and you will have-as ordinary
armies go-a mass of swearing, gaming, drinking rowdies, ready to rush into any excess. The state prison is
the most orderly place in the world. The drill is faultless. I know of no place where, among an equal number
of men gathered from the lower walks of society, there
are so few breaches of decorum; yet, when the inmates reappear in society, they are not improved. You
undertook to introduce a military drill, or prison drill,
or both, into your family; and you failed, precisely as
generals and wardens fail. You never recognized the
fact that the essential part of a child's education is that
of teaching him the use of his liberty, under the control




20          Letters to the Jonefes.
of his sense of that which is right and proper and laud.
able in human conduct. You did not undertake to de.
velop and enlighten that sense at all. You managed
your children instead of teaching them how to manage
themselves. You never appealed to their sense of
honor, or to their sense of right or propriety, as the
motive to any desirable course of conduct; and when
you placed your command upon one of them, and he
dared to ask you after a reason, you crushed him
into silence by assuring him that he had nothing to do
with a reason.
It is not uncommon to hear the assertion that the
sons of ministers and deacons turn out badly. Statis.
tics show that the statement is too broad, and yet common observation unites in giving it some basis in truth.
It is not at all uncommon to see the children of excellent parents-children who have been bred in the most
orderly manner-going straight to destruction the mo.
ment they leave the family roof and cease to feel
parental restraint. These parents feel, doubtless, very
much as you do, that it is all a mysterious dispensation
of Providence; but it is only the natural result of their
style of training.
I know of public institutions for the reform of va.
grant children, that are celebrated for the delightful
manner in which those children are brought to square
their conduct by rule.  They march like soldiers.




To Deacon Solomon Jones.             21
They sing like machines. They enter their school.
room in silent files that would delight the eye of an
Indian warrior. They recite in concert the most complicated prose and verse. They play by rule, and go
to bed to the ringing of a bell, and say the Lord's
prayer in unison. And they run away when they can
get a chance, and steal, and swear, and cheat, and
prowl, and indulge in obscene talk, as of old. I know
of other public institutions of this kind, or, at least, one
other, that has no rule of action except the general
Christian rule within it. The children are taught to do
right. They are instructed in that which is right.
Their sense of that which is true and good and pure
and right and proper is educated, developed, stimulated,
and thus are the childen taught to govern themselves.
They govern themselves while in the institution, and
they govern themselves after they leave it. It is impossible to reform a vicious child without patiently
teaching that child self-government. All the drill of all
the masters and all the reformers in the world will not
reform a single vice of a single child; and this show of
juvenile drill that we meet with in schools and charit.
able institutions is frequently-nay, I will say, generally-a most deceitful thing-the specious cover of a
system of training that is terribly worse than useless.
If dogs could talk, they could be taught to do the same
things in the same way; but they would hunt cats and




22           Letters to the Jonefes.
bark at passengers in the old fashion when beyond the
reach of their master's lash.
You will see, Deacon Jones, that your mode of
family training has introduced me to a field of discus.
sion as wide as it is important. It relates to public
institutions as well as to families, and to nations as
well as to public institutions. You and I, and all the
democrats of America, have been indulging in dreams
of democracy in Europe, but these dreams do not come
to pass, and are not likely to be realized at all. The
people of Europe have been governed. They know
nothing about self-government, and, whenever they
have tried the experiment, they have sadly failed.
That which alone imperils democracy in this country is
the loss of the power of self-government, and that
which alone prevents the establishment of democracy
in Europe is the lack of that power. The governing
classes of Europe will take good care to see that that
power be not developed.
But I return to this matter of family government,
and I imagine that, before this time, you have asked
me whether I have intended to sneer at orderly fami.
lies. I answer-not at all. There must be, without
question, more or less repression of the irregularities
of young life, and of such rough passions as sometimes
break out and gain ascendency in certain natures; but
this should be exceptional. I do not sneer at orderly




To Deacon Solomon Jones.             23
families, but I like to see order growing out of each
member's sense of propriety, and each member's desire
to contribute to the general good conduct and harmony
of the family life. I like to see each child gradually
transformed into a gentleman or a lady, with gentle.
manly or ladylike habits, through a cultivated sense
of that which is proper, and good. I know that
children thus bred-taught from the beginning that
they have a stake and a responsibility in the family
life-used from the beginning to manage themselvesare prepared to go out into the world and take care
of themselves. To them, home is a place of dignity,
and they will never disgrace it. To them, liberty is
no new possession, and they know how to use without abusing it. To them, self-control is a habit, and
they never lose it.
Do you know what a child is, Deacon Jones? Did
you ever think whence it came and whither it is going? Did it ever occur to you that any one of your
children is a good deal more God's child that it is yours?
Did you ever happen to think that it came from heaven, and that it is more your brother than your child?
Never, I venture to say. You never dream that your
children are your younger brothers and sisters, intrust.
ed to you by your common Father, for the purposes
of protection and education; and you certainly never
treat them as if they were. You have not a child in




24          Letters to the Jonefes.
the world whose pardon you should not ask for the
impudent and most unbrotherly assumptions which
you have practiced upon him. Ah, if you could have
looked upon your sons as your younger brothers and
your daughters as your younger sisters, and patiently
borne with them and instructed them in the use of life
and liberty, and built them up into a self-regulated
manhood and womanhood, you would not now be alone
and comfortless. A child is not a horse or a dog, to
be controlled by a walking stick or a whip, under all
circumstances. There are some children that, like
some dogs and horses, have vicious tendencies that
can only be repressed by the infliction of pain, but a
child is not a brute, and is not to be governed like a
brute. A child is a young man or a young woman,
possessing man's or woman's faculties in miniature, and
is just as sensitive to insult and injury and injustice as
in after years. You have insulted your children. You
have treated them unreasonably, and you ought not to
complain if they hold you in dislike and revengeful
contempt.
You never did anything to make your children love
you, and you cannot but be aware that the moment
that they were removed from your authority, you lost
all influence over them. Why could you not reclaim
that boy of yours, who madly became a debauchee,
and disgraced your home, and tortured your heart?




To Deacon Solomon Jones,            25
Because you had never made him love you, or given
him better motives for self-restraint than your own
arbitrary will. He had been governed from the outside, and never from the inside; and when the outside
authority was gone, there was nothing left upon which
you had power to lay your hand. Why did your daughter elope with one who was not worthy of her? She
did it simply because she found a man who loved her,
and gave her the consideration due her as a woman-a
love and a consideration which she had never found at
home, where she was regarded by you as the dependent
servant of your will. She was nothing at home; and,
badly as she married, she is a better and a freer and
a happier woman than she would have been had she
continued with you. I wish to impress upon you the
conviction that these children of yours went astray,
not in spite of your mode of family training, but in
consequence of it. If I should wish to ruin my family,
I would pursue your policy, and be measurably sure
of the desired result.
It is not pleasant for me to tell you these things,
but I am writing for the public, and can have no choice.
I tell you, and all who read these words, that, if you
do not get the hearts of your children, and build them
up in the right use of a liberty which is no more theirs
after they leave your roof than it is before, you will be
to them forever as heathen men and publicans. If
2




26          Letters to the Jonefes.
they take the determination to go to destruction, they
will go, and you cannot save them. A child must have
freedom, within limits which a variety of circumstances
must define, and be taught how to use it, and made
responsible for the right use of it. It is in this way
that self-government is taught, and in this thing that
self-government consists. All children, on arriving at
manhood and womanhood, should be the self-governed
companions and friends of their parents, and on going
out into the world, or losing parental control, should
not feel the transition in the slightest degree. No child
is trained in the right way who feels, when he steps
forth from the family threshold-an independent actor
-any less restraint than he felt the hour before. If
he does, he is in danger of falling before the first
temptation that assails him.




THE SECOND LETTER.
IJ Ars.  arftila gonts (gift of etaron  oIOkmnIr).
CONCERNING HER SYSTEM OF FAMILY GOV ERNMENT.
SUPPOSE I have thought of you ten thousand
times within the last twenty years. I never see
a clean kitchen, or a trim and tidy housewife, or an
irreproachable "dresser," with its shining rows of
tin and pewter, or a dairy full of milk, or a cleanly
raked chip-yard, or polished brass andirons, flaming
with fire on one side and reflecting ugly faces on the
other, or catch a certain savory scent of breakfast on
a frosty morning, or see a number of children crowded
out of a door on their way to school, without thinking
of you. Thriving, busy, exact, scrupulous, neat, minute
in your supervision of all family concerns, striving to
have your own way without interfering with the deacon's, you have always lingered in my memory as a




28          Letters to the Jonefes.
remarkable woman. You sat up so late at night and
rose so early in the morning, that it seemed as if you
never slept. There was a chronic alertness about you
that detected and even anticipated every occurrence in
and around the house. Not a door could be opened
or a window raised in any part of the house, however
distant it might be, without your hearing and identifying it. Not a voice was heard within the house at any
time of the day or night that you did not know who
uttered it. Your soul seemed to have become the
tenant of the whole building, and to be conscious of
every occurrence in every part of it at every moment.
You not only knew what was going on everywhere,
but every part spoke of your presence.
It was a curious way you had of maintaining the
family harmony without the sacrifice of your own
sense of independence. You really carried on a very
independent life within certain limits. You were aware
that, in the matter of will, the deacon, your husband,
was very obstinate, and that you could never hope to
dispute his empire. So you shrewdly managed never
to cross him where the course of his will ran strongest,
and to be sure that no one else crossed him. I remember very well your look of amazement and reproof
when you heard me treat with apparent irreverence
some of his most rigidly fixed opinions, and assail
prejudices which you knew were as deeply seated as




To Mrs. Martha Jones.             29
his life. I enjoyed your look of amazement quite as
much as I did the deacon's anger, for it seemed to me
a very justifiable bit of mischief to break into a family
peace that was maintained in this way. By humoring
and indulging your husband, in all matters over which
he saw fit to exercise authority, and by so closely
attending to everything else that he did not think of
it, you kept him in a state of self-complacency, and
were the recognized queen of a wide realm.
As I look back upon your life, I find but little to
blame you for. Wherever your errors have been pro.
ductive of mischief, they have been errors of ignorance
-mistakes-possibly excusable in the circumstances
under which they were committed. You loved your
children with all the tenderness and devotion of a good
mother, but, in your anxiety that they should not cross
their father's will, and provoke his displeasure, you
became but little better than an irksome overseer to
them. You knew that if there was anything that your
husband insisted on, it was parental authority. You
knew that the strict ordering of his family was his pet
idea, and that family government, in the fullest meaning and force of the phrase, was his hobby., This pet
idea-this hobby-you made room for in your family
plans. You knew that he was often unreasonable, but
that made no difference. You knew that his will ran
strongest in that direction, and you made it your busi



30          Letters to the Jonefes.
ness to see that as few obstacles lay in its path as possible. On one side stood the deacon's inexorable laws
and rules and will, by which his children, of every age,
were to square their conduct. On the other stood those
piecious children of yours, with all the wilfulness and
waywardness of children-with all their longing for
parental tenderness and indulgence-with moods which
they had never learned to manage, and tempers which
they did not know the meaning of; and you became
supremely anxious that the deacon should not be provoked by them to wrath, and that they should escape
the consequences of his displeasure.
Well, what was the consequence? This ceaseless
vigilance which you had learned to exercise over every
portion of the household economy, you extended to the
bearing and conduct of your children. You exercised
over them the strictest surveillance. You carried in
your mind and in your manners the dread of a collision
between them and their despotic governor. You tried
to save him from irritation and them from its consequences. You kept one eye on him and another on
them, and nothing in the conduct of either party
escaped you. Your children, as they emerged from
babyhood, grew gradually into the consciousness that
they were watched, and that not a word could be
uttered, or a hand lifted, or a foot moved, without a
degree of notice which curtailed its liberty. It was




To Mrs. Martha Jones.              31
repression-repression-nothing but repression-every.
where, for them. No hearty laugh, or overflowing,
childish glee, or noisy play for them, for fear that the
deacon might be disturbed.
At last, every child you had, in addition to the fear
of its father, came to entertain a dread of its mother.
I think your children loved you, or would have loved
you, had they not associated you forever with restraint.
If they played, you were near with your everlasting
"hush! "  If they sat down at table, they knew that
your eye was upon them-that you watched the position
of every head under the deacon's long " grace "-the
passage of every mouthful-the manner in which they
asked every-question and responded to what was said
to them-the amount of food and drink consumedeverything. They felt themselves wrapped up in-devoured by-a vigilant supervision that took from them
their liberty and their will, and with them, all feelings
of self-respect and self-possession.
It is not the opinion of your neighbors that either
your husband or yourself has had anything to do with
the ruin of your children. The deacon was so strict
and so efficient in his family government, and you were
so scrupulously careful in everything that related to
their manners at home and away, that they did not
imagine it possible that any bad result could naturally
flow from such training. I do not say that they are




32          Letters to the Jonefes.
mistaken from any wish to blame you, but I must tell
you the truth. Your minute watchfulness and censorship exercised over these children until you became
to them God, conscience, and will, were just as fatal
to a manly and womanly development as the deacon's
irresponsible commands. A boy that feels that every
word of his mouth and every movement of his body is
watched by one whose eye never sleeps, and whose
hand is ever ready to repress, becomes at last a
coward or a bully.  There are natures that will not
submit to this surveillance; and when these become
weary of the pressure, they kick it aside, and parental
restraint-associated with all that is hateful in slavery
— is gone forever.
Under the peculiar training and home influences to
which your children were subjected, there were but
two things that they were likely to become, viz.:
rebels or cravens. Your children were naturally highspirited, like the deacon and yourself, and they became
rebels. Otherwise, they would have carried with them
through life the feeling that whatever show they might
put on-however much they might struggle against itthey were underlings. There are some men and some
women, probably, who, living through a long  life
under favorable circumstances, recover from this early
discipline of repression, and this abject slavery of the
will, but they are few. They must be few. The




To Mrs. Martha Jones.              33
negro who has once been a slave cannot, one time in
ten, refuse to take off his hat or bow to a white man.
He is never at home, when placed on an equality with
him. He carries in his soul the badge of servility, and
he tan no more thrust it from his sight or banish it
from his consciousness than he can change the color
of his skin. This is not because he is a negro, simply,
but because he has been a slave-because he has been
trained up to have no will, and to be controlled under
all circumstances by the wills of those who had him
in their power.
A child can be made the slave of a parent just as
thoroughly as a negro ever was made the slave of a
white man, and such a child can be just as everlastingly
damaged by parental or family slavery, as a bondman
can be by any system of bondage. A child can be made
as mean, and cowardly, and deceitful, and devoid of
self-respect, by a system of management which puts
a curb upon every action, as the devil himself could
possibly desire. This system of watchful repression,
and minute  supervision, and  criticism  of  every
action, among children, is utterly debilitating and
demoralizing. You intended no harm by it, madam.
Under the circumstances, it was a very natural thing for
you to do; but I think you can hardly fail to see that,
unwittingly, you perfected the work of destruction in
your children which the deacon so thoroughly began,
2*




34          Letters to the Jonefes.
and for which he would have been, without your
assistance, entirely sufficient.
Oh! when will the world learn that children are
neither animals nor slaves? When will the world
learn that children-the purest, sweetest, noblest,
truest, most sagacious creatures in the world-with a
natural charter of liberty as broad as that enjoyed by
the angels-should be treated with respect?  When
shall this idea that all legitimate training relates to
the use of liberty-to the acquisition of the power of
self-government-become the universal basis of family
policy?
You ask me what I really mean by all this, for you
are a practical woman, and are not to be taken in by
a set of easily written phrases. Well, I will try to
explain, or illustrate, my meaning.  I remember a
gathering at your house-a party of friends-to which
your children were admitted; and I remember with
painful distinctness the telegraphic communication
which you maintained with them during the whole
evening. If James got his legs crossed, or, in his
drowsiness, gaped, or if he coughed, or sneezed, or
laughed above a certain key, or make a remark, or
moved his chair, it was: "James, h-m! "-" James,
h-m!" "James, h-m!"  And James was only one
of half a dozen whom you treated in the same way.
You began the evening with the feeling that you were




To Mrs. Martha Jones.             35
entirely responsible for the behavior of those chil.
dren-just as much responsible as if they severally
were the fingers of your hand. You acted as if they
were machines which, for the evening, you had undertaken to operate? They felt that they were undei
the eye of a vigilant keeper, and they did not dream
of such a thing as acting for themselves. They were
acting for you, and they did not know until they heard
your suggestive " h-m! " whether they were right or
wrong. You undertook for the evening to be to them
in the stead of their sense of propriety; and the communication between them and you being imperfect,
they often offended. I know that your own good
sense will tell you now that this is not the way gentlemen and ladies are made.
I was recently in a family circle where I witnessed
a most delightful contrast to all this-where the sons
and daughters were brought up and introduced to me
by the father and mother with as much politeness and
cordiality as if they were kings and queens every one,
and with as much freedom as if the parents had not
the slightest doubt that the children-from the oldest
to the youngest-would bear themselves like ladies
and gentlemen.  There was no forwardness on the
part of these children, as you may possibly suppose;
yet there was perfect self-possession; and each child
knew that he stood upon his own merits. I suppose




36          Letters to the Jonefes.
that if any one of these children had indulged in any
impropriety during this interview-as not one of them
did-he would have been kindly told afterward, by one
of the parents, what he had done, and why he should
never repeat it. Your children (pardon me for saying
it) were always awkward in company, and for the
simple reason that they did not know whether they
were pleasing you or not. They had no freedom, and
were guided by no principle. Your will was their rule,
and your will, so far as it related to all the irinutise of
behavior, was not thoroughly known; so they were
always embarrassed, and always turning their eyes
toward you. Your entire system of management was
based on distrust, while that of the family with which'I contrast yours was founded on trust. Your children,
while you could possibly keep your hold upon them,
were never permitted to outgrow their petticoats,
while those of the other family alluded to were put
upon their own responsibility just as soon as possible.
Is there any doubt as to which system of treatment
is best?
Perhaps you, and many others who read this letter,
think that parental authority cannot be maintained
without its constant and direot assertion. If so, then
you and they are mistaken. I have known families
that possessed fathers and mothers who were honored,
admired, loved, almost worshiped-fathers and motters




To Mrs. Martha Jones.               37
whose children dreaded nothing so much as to give
them pain-yet these same children knew no such word
as fear, and would have been utterly ashamed to render
the assertion of parental authority necessary. Parents
and children were friends and companions-the children
deferring to the wishes and opinions of the parents,
and the parents consulting the happiness and trusting
the good sense and good intentions of the children.
Whenever I hear a young man calling his father " the
old man," and his mother " the old woman," I know
that the old man and the old woman are to blame
for it.
If your children had turned out well, it must have
been in spite of a system of training which was so far
from being education as to be its opposite. There was
no inner life organized; there was no building up of
character; there was no establishment in each child's
hehrt of a bar of judgment-no exercise in the use
of liberty; but only restraint, only fear, only slavery.
I do not entertain those opinions of one variety of
disorderly families, which you and the deacon seem to
have entertained all your lives. I have never yet seen
the house where children were happy that did not
show evidences of disorder; and a man is a fool,.or
something worse, who quarrels with this state of
things. Where children have playthings, and where
they play with them, there must necessarily be disorder,




d8          Letters to the Jonefes.
and furniture more or less disturbed and defaced, and
noise more or less disagreeable, and litter that is not
highly ornamental. And before children have had an
opportunity to learn propriety of speech and deportment-before they are educated-there will be in their
conduct-in playroom and parlor alike-more or less
of irregularity and extravagance. Remarks will be
made that will shock all hearers; laughs too boisterous
to be musical will be indulged in; sudden explosions
of anger will occur, with other eccentricities of conduct
that need not be named. There are remedies for all
these-in time. When, in the course of their education, the sense of propriety is stimulated and strengthened, and pride of character is developed, these irregularities will disappear, and an orderly family will be
the consequence, each child having become its own
reformer.
There was a feature of your family government
(which you held in common with your husband) that
made still more complete the slavery of your children.
It was the deacon's opinion, you will remember, that a
boy who was not too tired to play at ball, or slide
down hill, or skate,-was not too tired to saw wood, and
it was his policy to direct all the excess of animal life
which his boys manifested into the channels of industry
and usefulness. You seconded this opinion, and maintained that a girl who was not too sleepy to make a




To Mrs. Martha Jones.               39
doll's hat, or a doll's dress, was not too sleepy to hem
a handkerchief, or darn a stocking. So your children
never had what children call " a good time." Always
kept at work when possible, and always restrained in
every exhibition of the spirit of play, home became an
irksome place to them, and childhood a dreary period.
Your children were never permitted to do anything to
please themselves in their own way. Everything was
done-or you insisted that everything should be done
-to please you, in your way. If one of your daughters sat down to rest, or resorted to a little quiet amusement, you stirred her at once by some petty command.
I was often tempted to be angry with you because
you would never give your children any peace. You
had always something for them to do, and something
that had to be done just at the very time when they
were enjoying themselves the best.
"Precept upon precept" is very well, in its way,
but principle is much better. The principle of right
and proper acting, fully inculcated, renders unnecessary
all precepts; and until a child has fully received this
principle he is without the basis of manhood. The
earlier this principle is received and a child thrown
upon his own responsibility, and made to feel that he
is a man, lacking only years to give him strength and
wisdom, the safer that boy is for time and for eternity.
The moment a boy becomes morally responsible, he




40          Letters to the Jonefes.
becomes in a most important sense-a sense which
you and the deacon never recognized-free. I do not
say that he is removed from  parental control or
rational restraint, but that it is the business of the
parent to educate him in the principle of self-government. A boy bred thus, becomes ten times more a
man than a boy bred in the way which has seemed
best to you; and when he goes forth from the parental
roof he goes forth strong, and able to battle with life's
trials and temptations. Children long for recognition
-to do things for themselves-to be their own masters
and mistresses. Their play is all based on the assumption that they are men and women, as, in miniature,
they are; and, insisting on the right use of liberty,
and teaching them how to use it, they should have it,
restrained only when that liberty is abused.




THE THIRD LETTER.
c a.  rUelis/l n lomts, ^imxnu   tajifzr.
CONCERNING THE INFL ZUECE OF 11s PROFESSION ON PERL
SONAL CHARACTER.
ONCE heard the most renowned and venerable of
all the professors of music in this country say
that he always warned his classes of young women to
beware of singing men, and, with equal emphasis, warned
his classes of young men to beware of singing women.
He alluded, of course, to professional singers, and I have
too much respect for his Christian character to suppose
that he was not thoroughly in earnest. The statement
will not flatter your self-conceit, but I immediately
thought of you, and the life you have led. You were
what people called a bright boy. Indeed, you were
what I should call a clever boy. You were quick, ingenious, graceful, skilful; and your father and mother
told me, with evident pride, and in your presence,




42          Letters to the Jonefes.
that you had a remarkable talent for music. "Felix
Mendelssohn could sing," they said, " and carry his
own part, before he was three years old." And Felix
Mendelssohn was brought out on all possible occasions,
to display his really respectable gifts as a singer, and
was brought out so often, and was so much praised
and flattered, that, before he was old enough to know
much about anything, he had conceived the idea that
singing was the largest thing to be done in this world,
and that Felix Mendelssohn Jones had a very large
way of doing it.
Twenty years have passed away, and where and
what are you? You are a singing master, with a limited income, and a reputation rather the worse for
wear. You have never been convicted of any flagrant
acts of immorality, but men and women have ticketed you " doubtful."  Careful fathers and mothers are
careful not to leave their daughters in your company.
Ladies who prize a good name above all other posses.
sions never permit themselves to be found alone with
you. There are stories floating about concerning your
intrigues, and the jealousy and unhappiness of your
wife. Everybody says you are an excellent singer,
that you understand your business, &c., &c., but all
add that you know nothing about anything else, that
they would not trust you the length of their arms, that
you are a hypocrite and a scapegrace, that you ought




To F. Mendelffohn Jones.           43
to be horsewhipped and hissed out of decent society,
that it is strange that any respectable man will have
you in his family, and a great many other ugly things
which need not be related. I am aware that you have
warm friends, but not one among the men, unless it be
some poor fellow whose wife's name has been coupled
with yours in an uncomfortable way. Wherever you
go, there are always two or three women who become
your sworn partisans-women who have your name
constantly on their lips-who will not peaceably or
without protest hear your immaculateness called in
question-women who, somehow, seem to have a personal interest is establishing the uncompromising rigidity of your virtue. I do not think very highly of
these women.
You are a handsome man, and how well you know
it! You are a "dressy" man. There is no better
broadcloth than you wear, and no better tailor than
you employ. You are as vain as a peacock, and selfish
beyond all calculation. A stranger, meeting you in a
railroad car, or at a hotel, would not guess the manner
in which you get your money, and least of all would
he guess that in your home, where you are a contemptible tyrant, your wife sits meanly clad, and your children eat the bread of poverty.
I have asked myself a thousand times why it is
that you and a large class of singing men and singing




44           Letters to the Jonefes.
women are thus among the most worthless of all
human beings. One would suppose, from the nature
of the case, that you and they would be among the
purest and noblest and best men and women in the
world. Music is a creature of the skies. It was on
the wings of music that the heaven-born song-" Peace
on earth: good will to men "-came down, and thrilled
Judea with sounds that have since swept around the
world. It is on the breath of music that our praises
rise to Him whose life itself, as expressed in the move.
ments of systems and the phenomena of vitality, is the
perfection of rhythmical harmony. It is music that lulls
the fretful infant to sleep upon its mother's bosom,
that gives expression to the free spirit of boyhood
when it rejoices upon the hills, that relieves the tedium
of labor, that clothes the phrases by which men woo
the women whom they love, and that makes a flowery
channel through which grief may pour its plaint. It
stirs the martial host to do battle in the cause of God
and freedom, and celebrates the victory; and "with
songs " as well as with " everlasting joy," we are told,
the redeemed shall enter upon their reward at last.
Why, one would suppose that no man could live and
move and have his being in music, without being sublimated-etherealized-spiritualized by it-kept up in
a seventh heaven of purity and refinement.
This may all be said of music in general, but to me




To F. Mendelffohn Jones.           45
there seems to be something peculiarly sacred in the
human voice. There is that in the voice which transcends all the instruments of man's invention. It is one
of God's instruments, and cannot be surpassed or equalled. It is the natural outlet of human passion-the
opening through which-in love and hate, in grief and
gladness, in desire and satisfaction-the soul breathes.
It pulsates and trembles with that spiritual life and
motion which are born of God's presence in the soul.
It is not only the expression of all that is human in us,
but of all that is divine.
One would suppose, I repeat, from the nature of
the case, that you and all the professional singing men
and singing women would be among the purest and
noblest and best men and women in the world, but
you and they are notoriously no such thing. On the
contrary, you are the mean and miserable profligate I
have already charged you with being, and many of
your associates are like you. In saying this, I do not
mean to wound the sensibilities of some singing men
and women who do not belong in your set. I know
truly Christian men and women who have devoted
their lives to music, but they are in no danger ot being
confounded with your crowd and class. They despise
you as much as I do, and regret as much as I do the
facts which have associated music with so much that
is mean and unworthy in character and conduct.




46          Letters to the Jonefes.
It may be interesting to the public, if not to you,
to study into the causes of this wide-spread immorality
and worthlessness among those who make singing the
business of their lives. In your case, and in many
others, personal vanity has had more to do than anything
else. You were bred from the cradle to a love of
praise. Your gift for music was manifested early, and
your parents undertook to exhibit you and secure
praise for you throughout all the years of your boyhood. You grew up with a constant greed for admiration, and this grew at last into a passion, which has
never relinquished its hold upon you. You became
vain of your accomplishment, and vain of your personal
beauty, and vain of your whole personality. You
have been singing in church all your life, and giving
voice to the aspirations and praises of others, but, probably, there has never, in all that time, gone up from
your heart a single offering to Him who bestowed upon
you your excellent gift. You have, during all your life,
on all occasions, sung to men, and not to God. As
your voice has swelled out over choir and congregation,
you have been only thoughtful of the admiration you
were exciting in the minds of those who were listen.
ing, and have always been rather seeking praise for
yourself than giving praise to your Maker.
This love of admiration and praise has been, then,
the mainspring of your life; and no man or woman




To F. Mendelffohn Jones.           47
can be even decent with no higher motive of life than
this. With this motive predominant, you have grown
superlatively selfish. You refuse to share your earnings
with your wife and children, because such a policy
would detract from your personal charms, or your personal comforts. You quarrel with every man of your
profession, because you are afraid that he will detract
somewhat from the glory which you imagine has settled
around you. Your mouth is constantly filled with
detraction of your rivals. In the practice of your profession, you are thrown into contact with soft and sympathetic women, who are charmed by your voice, and
your face, and your style, and your villainously smooth
and sanctimonious manners, and they become easy
victims to your desire for personal conquest. Thus
has musie become to you only an instrument for the
gratification of your greed for admiration, and, among
other things, a means for winning personal power
over the weak and wayward women whom  you
encounter.
Life always takes on the character of its motive. It
is not the music which has injured you: it is not the
music which injures any one of the great brotherhood
and sisterhood of vicious genius.  There are those
among musicians who can plead the power of great
passions as their apology for great vices. No great
musician is possible without great passions. No man




48           Letters to the Jonefes.
without intense human sympathies in all directions can
ever be a great singer, or a great musician of any kind;
and these sympathies, in a life subject to great exalta.
tions and depressions, lead their possessor only too often
into vices that degrade him and his art. But you are
not a great musician, and I doubt very much whether
you have great passions. I think you are a diddler
and a make-believe. I think your vices are affectations,
in a considerable degree, and that you indulge in them
only so far as you imagine they will make you interesting.
There is something very demoralizing in all pursuits
that depend for their success upon the popular
applause. We see it no more in public singing than
in acting, and no more in acting than in politics.
I doubt whether more singers than politicians are
ruined by,he character of their pursuits. A man who
makes it the business of his life to seek office at the
hands of the people, and who administers the affairs of
office so as to secure the popular applause, becomes
morally as rotten as the rottenest of your profession.
I never hear of an American girl going abroad to
study music, for the purpose of fitting herself for a
public musical career, without a pang. A  musical
education, an introduction to public musical life, and a
few years of that life, are almost certain ruin for any
woman. Some escape this ruin, it is true, but there




To F. Mendelffohn Jones.             49
are temptations laid for every step of their life. They
find their success in the hands of men who demand
more than money for wages. They find their personal
charms set over against the personal charms of others.
Their whole life is filled with rivalries and jealousies.
They find themselves constantly thrown into intimate
association on the stage with men who subject themselves to no Christian restraint-who can hardly be
said to have had a Christian education. They are constantly acting in operas the whole dramatic relish of
which is found in equivocal situations, or openly licentious revelations. In such circumstances as these, a
woman must be a marvel of modesty and a miracle of
grace to escape contamination. I do not believe there
is a woman in the world who ever came out of a public
musical career as good a woman as she entered it. She
may have escaped with an untarnished name-she may
have preserved her standing in society, or even heightened it, but in her inmost soul she knows that the
pure spirit of her girlhood is gone.
It is the dream, I suppose, of most women who
undertake a musical career, that, after winning money
and fame, they shall settle down into domestic life
gracefully, and be. happy in retirement. Alas! this
is one of the dreams that very rarely " come true."
The greed for popular applause, once tasted, knows no
relenting. ( The public life of women unfits them for
3




50          Letters to the Jonefes.
domestic life) and the contaminations of a public singing woman's position render it almost impossible for
her to be married out of her circle; so that a woman
who spends ten years on the stage usually spends her
life there, or does worse. I do not wonder at the old
professor's warning against singing women, or singing
men. It is enough to break down any man's or woman's self-respect to be dependent for bread and reputation upon the applause of a capricious public-to
devote the whole energies of one's being to the winning
of a few clappings of the hand and a few tosses of the
handkerchief, and to feel that bread, and success of the
life-purpose, depend on these few clappings and tosses.
I have a theory that it is demoralizing to pursue,
as a business, any graceful accomplishment which was
only intended to minister to the pleasure and recreation
of toiling men and women. I have not read history
correctly if it be not true that the artists of all ages
have been generally men of many vices. There have
been men of pure character among them always, but,
as a class, they have not been men whom we should
select for Sunday school superintendents, or as husbands
for our daughters. If you, Felix Mendelssohn Jones,
had been a tailor, and had worked hard at your business, and only used your talent for music in the social
circle and the village choir on Sunday, and been just as
vain as you are to-day, you would have been a better




To F. Mendelffohn Jones.             51
man than you are now, I think. I think this devotion
of your life to music has had the tendency, independently of all other influences, to make you intellectually
an ass and morally a goat.
Whether there is soundness in this theory or not,
singing as a putrsuit must come under the general law
which makes devotion to one idea a dwarfing process.
A man who gives his life to music-who becomes
absorbed by it-and who really knows nothing else,
will necessarily be a very small specimen of a man.
The artist is developed at the expense of the man.
Music is thrown entirely out of its legitimate and
healthy relations to his life, and he makes that an
object and end of life which should only minister to an
end far higher. When a man undertakes to clothe his
manhood from materials furnished by a single pursuit,
even when that pursuit is so pure and beautiful as that
of music, he runs short of cloth at once. I have no
doubt that one of the principal reasons why music has
such a dwarfing effect upon a multitude of those who
make it the pursuit of their lives, is, that it is so fascinating and so absorbing-because it possesses such a
power to drive out from the mind and life everything
else. There is no denying the fact that, in the eye of
a practical business man, musical accomplishments in
men are regarded as a damage to character and a
hinderance to success. It is pretty nearly the Universal




52          Letters to the Jonefes.
belief that a man who is very much devoted to
music is rarely good for anything else. This may not
be true-and I doubt whether it is strictly true-but
it is true enough, and has always been true enough to
make it a rule among those who have no time for nice
distinctions and exceptional cases.
I do not wonder, Felix Mendelssohn Jones, that
intellectually you are a dwarf. I do not wonder that
men who have nerve and muscle and common sense,
and practical acquaintance with the great concerns of
life, and a share in the world's earnest work, should
hold you in contempt for other reasofs than those which
relate to your morals.  What did you ever study
besides music? Upon what subject of human interest
are you informed except music? Upon what topic of
conversation are you at all at home unless it be music?
Why is it that you have nothing to say when those
questions are discussed which relate to the political,
moral, social, and industrial life of the race or nation
to which you belong? No man has a right to be more
a musician than a man, and no musician has a right to
complain when men who are men hold him in contempt
because he is the slave of an art of which he should
rather be the kingly possessor. There is a vast deal of
nonsense afloat in the world about being married to
music, or married to art, as if music were a woman of
a very seductive and exacting character, and musicians




To F. Mendelffohn Jones.             53
were very gallant and knightly people who make it
their business to bend before a lifted eyebrow, and
follow the fickle swing of petticoats to death and the
worst that follows it.
There is another cause that has operated to make
you much less a man than you might have been under
other circumstances, and this is almost inseparable
from your life as a public singer. Your life has been
a vagabond life. You, in your humble way, passing
from village to village, have only had a taste of that
dissipation of travel which the more famous members
of your profession are obliged to suffer. From the
time a public singer begins his career until he closes it,
he has no home. He is never recognized as a member
of society. He is obliged to be all things to all men,
everywhere. He has no nationality. He shouts for
the stars and stripes in New York, but would just as
easily shout for the stars and bars wherever they float.
He is equally at home in England and France and
Italy, and salutes any flag under which he can win
plaudits and provender. He has no politics, he has no
religion, "to mention," he has no stake in permanent
society whatever.  The institutions of Christianity,
public schools, educational schemes and systems, the
great, permanent charities, municipal and neighborhood
life-he has no share in all these. He runs from count
try to country and from capital to capital, or scours the




54          Letters to the Jonefes.
country, and does not cease his travels until life or
health or voice is gone. It is impossible for any man
to be subjected to such dissipation as this without
receiving incalculable damage of character. He can
think of nothing but his profession under these circumstances. He can have no healthy social life, no
home influences, no recognized position in religious and
political communities. He can be nothing but a comet
among the fixed stars and regularly revolving systems
of the world, making a great show for the rather nebulous head which he carries, occupying more blue sky
for a brief period than belongs to him, and then passing
oit of sight and out of memory, leaving no track.
I might go further, and show how nearly impossible
it is for a public singer, who sings everything everywhere, who wanders over the world and lives upon the
breath of popular applause, whose life seems almost
necessarily made up of intrigues and jealousies, to be a
religious man. No matter what the stage of the theatre
or the platform of the concert room might be, or may
have been; we know that now they are not the places
where piety toward God is in such a state of high cultivation that good people throng before them for religious motive and inspiration. The whole atmosphere
of a public singer's life is sensuous. Like the beggarly
old reprobate in Rome who obtained a living by sitting
to artists for his " religious expression," they coin their




To F. Mendelffohn Jones.           55
Te Deums into dollars, and regard a mass as only a
style of music to be treated in a professional way for
other people who have sufficient interest in it to pay
for the service. Man is a weak creature, and it takes
a great many influences to keep him in the path of
religious duty, and preserve his sympathy with those
grand spiritual truths which relate to his noblest
development and his highest destiny. These influences
are not to be secured by a roving life, and constantly
shifting society, and ministering to the tastes and
seeking the favor of the vulgar crowd.
On the whole, Mr. Felix Mendelssohn Jones, I do
not wonder that you are no better than you are. You
have really had more influences operating against you
than I had considered when I began to write this
letter to you. Nevertheless, you ought to be ashamed
of yourself and institute a reform. Recast you life.
If you cannot settle down permanently in your profession in some town large enough to support you, and
become a decent husband to your wife and father to
your children, and take upon your shoulders your portion of the burdens of organized society, why, quit
your profession, and go into some other business. I
know you furnish a very slender basis for building a
man upon, but you can at least cease to be a nuisance.
I know a good many musical men and women whom
music or devotion to music has not damaged; but these




56          Letters to the Jonefes.
men and women have entered as permanent elements
into the society in which they live, and are something
more than musicians. Singing is the most charming of
all accomplishments when it is the voice of a noble nature and a generous culture; and all music, when it preserves its legitimate relations to the great interests of
human society, is refining and liberalizing in its influence. But when music monopolizes the mind of a
man; when it becomes the vehicle through which he
ministers to his personal vanity; when it either becomes
degraded to be the instrument for procuring his bread,
or elevated to the position of a master passion, it spoils
him. I pray that no friend or child of mine may
become  professionally a singing man or singing
woman. All the circumstances that cluster about such
a life, all the influences associated with it, and the
great majority of its natural tendencies are against the
development and preservation of a Christian style of
life and character, and, consequently, against the
best form  of happiness here and the only form
hereafter.




THE FOURTH LETTER.
no Van$ bthcs ionus, Intornihktr.
CONCERNING HIS HABIT OF BUSINESS LYING.
Y OU have always seemed to me to be an anoma.
lous sort of personage. On the street, you are
a respectable and decent man. I would take your note
for any sum you would be likely to borrow, and rely
upon its payment at maturity. Nay, I would accept
your word of honor at any time, when your coat is on
and the wax is off your fingers, with entire confidence.
You have been intrusted with ionsibilities in civil
and social affairs, and have never betra s  them. You
are a good husband, father, friend, and citizen, but you
stand behind your counter from morning until night, and
lie as continuously and coolly as if you were a flowing
fountain of falsehood. You will not assail me in the
street because I so plainly tell you this, for you know
3*




58          Letters to the Jonefes.
it is true, and that I like you too well to insult you. You
know that you never made a pair of boots for me that
did not cost you more lies than they cost me dollars.
I have stood before you, on some occasions, thor.
oughly astonished at the facility and ingenuity and
boldness with which you lied your way out from among
the fragments of your broken engagements. The glibness of your tongue, and the candor of your tone, and
the immovable sincerity of your features, and the halfdiscouraged, half-wounded expression of face and
voice with which you apologized for your failure to
keep your pledges, were really overwhelming. I have
sometimes wondered whether you did not suppose you
were telling the truth-whether you had not, by some
odd hallucination, come to believe that the causes of
your failure to keep your pledges had a real and permanent existence. Never was so much sickness suffered
by journeymen shoemakers as by yours. Never had
shoemakers such sickly children, and never had shoemakers so many children born to them. It is a strange
fatality, too, that always keeps your best workmen on
a spree. I have never known any class of artisans
drink so much as those you employ. You are always
getting out of the right kind of leather at the wrong
time, or suffering by some occurrence that renders it
impossible for you to keep your promise and, at the same
time, make just such a pair of boots or shoes as you




To Hans Sachs Jones.              59
feel particular about making for your particular cus
tomers. You resort to the most transparent flattery to
keep your patrons good-natured, but there is not a man
or woman who enters your shop who believes a word
you utter. Day after day, and week after week, youi
promises are broken with regard to a single job, and
your patrons smile in your face at the excuses which
your tongue holds ready at all times; and you know
that they know you are lying.
You are not a sinner in this respect above all shoemakers, and shoemakers are not sinners in this respect
above all artisans and tradesmen. You happen to be
a very perfect specimen of a class of men who work
for the public in the performance of essential everyday jobs in the various mechanical arts. They do not
all lie as much as you do, but many of them lie in the
same way, and for the same reason. They are not all
as cool about it as you are, and most of them are much
less fertile and skilful than you are, but lying is their
daily resort.
Now, what is there in your business, or in the relations to society of that class of employments to which
yours belongs, to develop the untruthfulness which all
must admit attaches to it in some degree?  In the
first place, you began business in a very small way,
and were able to keep your promises, never making
any that you did not intend to keep. Business in



60          letters to the Jonefes.
creased, and you found among your best customersthose whose patronage you most desired to retain-a
degree of unreasonable impatience which you could
not withstand. You were imperiously urged into
the making of pledges for the delivery of work
which you could not make, consistently with your
previously existing engagements. You were desirous
to please; strong wills, backed by money, were
brought to bear upon you; the keeping of your
promise looked possible, even if not altogether practicable; and you promised. You felt, however, that
somebody was to be disappointed, and you undertook
to find an excuse which would lift the burden of
blame from your own shoulders. You did not dare
to stand before your customer a voluntary delinquent;
so, when he came, and you were not ready to see him,
you justified yourself by throwing the blame upon
others, or upon circumstances over which you had no
control. He may have believed you at first, but his
faith in you soon wore out.
You learned, at length, that people loved to have
their work promised early, and that they would take
your apologies for failure goodnaturedly; and you
ran into the habit of promising work early, with the
expectation, if not the direct intention, to break your
promise. I have given you jobs when I knew you
lied while taking them, and expected to lie a great




To Hans Sachs Jones.              61
many times before you finished them. You have told
me repeatedly that work was nearly finished when I
knew it had not been begun; and all this for the
purpose of pleasing me, and saving yourself from
blame. You were not naturally untruthful, and you
are not untruthful now where your business is not
concerned, but in your business you have made falsehood the rule of your daily life. Your promises are
always in advance of your power to perform, and
the breaking of them has become habitual.
It is painful to see a man-otherwise so respectable-unreliable in the place where men meet him
most; for it weakens his hold upon the popular regard,
and cannot fail to depreciate his own self-respect.
You must feel ashamed, at times, to realize that your
word is not believed, and to know that you have not
a customer in the world who feels at all sure about
getting work done by you until it really is done and
in his hands. The kind of life you lead must also be
an exceedingly uncomfortable one.  Now, my friend,
there is not the slightest necessity for this, and there
is no apology for- it. It had a very natural beginning,
but you ought to have learned long ago that it was
not requisite either to your prosperity or your comfort.
You get your work in spite of your lying, and not
in consequence of it. That is the only thing people
have against you. They give you their custom because




62          Letters to the Jonefes.
you are a good workman, and for nothing else; and no
man leaves your shop for another except for the reason
that he cannot depend upon your word. You never
made a dollar or saved a friend by all the lies you
have told. Honesty, reliableness, truthfulness-these
are at a premium in all the markets of the world; and
you have made yourself miserable and contemptible
throughout your life for nothing. Your business is
always at loose ends, everybody is crowding you,
many of them abuse you, and it all comes of your
promising to do work before it is possible for you to
do it. Not a decent man, whose custom is worth
keeping, enters your shop who would not wait your
time patiently, if he could rely upon having his job
upon the day promised.
I have no doubt that, as you read this letter, you
say to yourself that I talk as if a man could always
keep promises, honestly made, and as if there were
men in the world who never break promises. I know,
indeed, that there is no man who can so thoroughly
depend upon circumstances, or so control them, as
always to be sure to keep his pledges.  Sickness
happens to all. Calamity in some form comes to all.
Drunkenness sometimes overtakes a journeyman shoe.
maker, though, to tell the truth, such meA are not commonly employed by masters who care about keeping
their word. Men of business punctilio, and regular




To Hans Sachs Jones.               63
business habits, can always secure the best workmen.
It is only the unreliable masters who are obliged to accept unreliable hands, though I would by no means intimate that I believe in your representations concerning
the drunkenness of your workmen. Your men are shamefully belied; and if they knew how you slander them
they would rebel. No, I admit that the most prompt
and punctual men must fail, through unforeseen impediments, to keep all their promises; but such men do not
lie their way out of their difficulty, and are only the
more careful about making and keeping their engagements afterward.
To me, one of the most admirable things in the
world is business punctilio. I think it is rare to find
very bad men among thorough business men. I do
not mean to say that a good business man is necessarily
religious, or even necessarily without vices. I mean,
simply, that it is difficult to be strictly honest in business, and sensitive in all matters pertaining to business
engagements, and thoroughly punctual in the fulfilment of all business obligations, and at the same time
to be loose in morals and dissipated in personal habits.
I have great respect for those rigid laws of the counting room which regulate the dealings between man
and man, and which make the counting room as exact
in all matters of time and exchange as a banking house
-which ignore friendship, affection, and all personal




64          Letters to the Jonefes.
considerations whatsoever-which  place neighbors
and brothers on the same platform  with enemies
and aliens, and which make an autocrat of an accountant, who is, at the same time, strictly an obedient subject of his own laws. I say it is hard for a man to
enter as a perfectly harmonious element into this grand
system of business, and submit himself to its rigid
rules, and maintain his position in it with perfect
integrity, and, at the same time, be a very bad man.
To a certain extent, he bows to and obeys a high
standard of life. He may not always recognize fully
the moral element which it embodies. He may take
a selfish view of the whole matter; but he cannot be
entirely insensible to the principle of personal honor
which it involves, or fail to be influenced by the personal habits which it enforces.  Some of the best
business men I have ever known, have been the most
charitable men I have ever known. Men who have
acquired wealth by rigid adherence to business integrity, and who have sometimes been deemed harsh
and hard by those with whom they have had business
relations, have shown a liberality and a generosity
toward objects of charity which have placed them
among the world's benefactors.  Men who have
exacted the last fraction of a cent with one hand, in
the way of'business, have disbursed thousands )f
dollars with the other, in the way of charity.




To Hans Sachs Jones.               65
On another side of this subject, it may be stated
that it is not possible for a man to be careless in busi.
ness affairs, or unmindful of his business obligations,
without being weak or rotten in his personal character.
Show me a man who never pays his notes when they
are due, and who shuns the payment of his bills when
it is possible, and does both these things as a habit,
and I shall see a man whose moral character is, beyond
all question, bad. We have had illustrious examples
of this lack of business exactness. We have had great
men who were in the habit of borrowing money
without repaying it, or apologizing for not repaying
it. We have had great men whose business habits
were simply scandalous-who never paid a bill unless
urged and worried, and who expended for their personal gratification every cent of money they could lay
their hands upon.  These delinquencies have been
apologized for as among the eccentricities of genius, or
as that unmindfulness of small affairs which naturally
attends all greatness of intellect and intellectual effort;
but the world has been too easy with them, altogether.
I could name great men-and the names of some of
them arise before the readers of this letter-who were
atrociously dishonest. I do not care how great these
men were. I do not care how many amiable and
admirable traits they possessed. They were dishonest
and untrustworthy men in their business relations,




66          Letters to the Jonefes.
and that simple fact condemns them. I am ready
to believe anything bad of a man who habitually
neglects to fulfil his business obligations. Such a
man is certainly rotten at heart. He is not to be
trusted with a public responsibility, or a rum bottle,
or a woman.
Now, Mr. Hans Sachs Jones, you have customers
of this class. Will you permit me to ask you how
you like them? Some of these men are poor, but
quite as many of them are rich. You lied to them
a great many times before they made their little bills
with you, and they have lied to you a great many
times since. When you have had money to raise,
they have promised to furnish it to you, and then they
have failed to keep their pledges. Not unfrequently,
when you have upbraided them  for disappointing
you, they have retorted by telling you that you made
them wait for their work, and that it is perfectly
proper that you should wait for your pay. Their
reply was a fair one, so far as you were concerned.
It was just as much a matter of business honor that
you should keep your promises, as it was that they
should keep theirs. It was just as wrong for you to
promise your work before you could give it to them,
as it was for your customers to promise to pay you
before they could pay you, or before they intended
to pay you. In your heart, you think these men are




To Hans Sachs Jones.              67
very mean, and in their hearts they think that you
are just as mean as they are, and they are right. Their
plea leaves you defenceless, and they banter and badger
you until you become disgusted with your business
and yourself.  Oh! if you had never given these
customers of yours an advantage over you, by your
constant failures to keep your word with them, you
would be worth a good many more dollars to-day
than you are.
Then you should remember that you owe a debt
of honor to your guild.  A very admirable thing
among tradesmen of the same class is that esprit de
corps which enables them to join hands in a recognized
community of honor and of interest, and to look upon
their trade as the kind mother that feeds them and
that deserves at their hands the treatment due from
grateful and chivalrous.sons. You have doubtless
heard of associations of men engaged in much humbler
employments than yours (humbler in the world's judgment), that really won the respect and admiration of
the communities in which they lived-men who felt
strengthened and ennobled by their association-men
who came by their association to feel the slightest
insult offered to their trade as a personal affront. I
say that this esprit de corps is a very admirable thing,
and, further, that it gives, or may give, a true dignity
to any honest calling under heaven. We do not have




68          Letters to the Jonefes.
so much of this in this country as we ought to have.
All European countries are ahead of us in this matter,
principally, perhaps, for the reason that in those coun.
tries the acquisition and pursuit of trades are more
particularly a matter of legal regulation. Here a man
may set up a trade whether he ever learned it or not,
and few learn their trades thoroughly  It is more
difficult, therefore, to secure community of feeling
among those engaged in the same pursuits here than
abroad; but it is none the less desirable and necessary,
that, among good workmen like yourself, there should
be brotherhood of feeling and interest-pride and
sympathy of guild.  It would  give  you dignity,
protection, respectability; and you would feel in
all your business transactions that, however reckless
you might be of disgrace to yourself, you have
no right to disgrace your business, or your brotherhood.
I repeat, then, that you owe a debt of honor to
your guild.  There are many men engaged in the
same calling with you who scorn the petty arts of
falsehood to which you resort. They are men of
character-men who never make a promise which they
do not intend to keep, and who faithfully and conscientiously strive to keep every promise which they
make. These are the men who give to your calling
all the respectability which it possesses. All labor




To Hans Sachs Jones.               69
of the hands, pursued for bread, is honorable, and
honorable alike.  One trade is respectable above
another only in consequence of the superior respectability of the class of men engaging in it. Now you
have a right, in a certain sense, to disgrace yourself
but you have no right to disgrace your trade and
your guild. Your devotion to this idea should be
almost religious; for, in a certain degree, you have
the reputation. of the whole class with which you are
identified in interest in your keeping, and you are
bound by every principle of justice and honor not to
betray it.
I have not appealed, in what I have said to you on
this subject, to those higher motives of conduct which
grow out of your relations to the God of truth, nor do
I propose to. You know, just as well as I do, that
your system of business lying is morally wrong. I
simply wish, in closing this letter, to call your attention to the fact that you have arrived at the point
where your conscience ceases to trouble you. Yor
do not use profane language. You are shocked when
you hear others use it, but you are aware that many
of your acquaintances swear from  habit, and, by
habitual swearing, have ceased to look upon their
profanity as profanity. They take the names of God
and Jesus Christ in vain, and call for curses upon the
heads even of their friends, without a thought of sin,




70           Letters to the Jonefes.
and without a twinge of conscience. Over a certain
region of their moral sense profanity has trampled,
until it has trampled the life all out of it. So, over a
certain region of your moral sense, these lies of yours
have trod their daily course, until not a blade of grass
or a flower is left to give token of life, or breathe
complaint of the invaders. They have trampled out
all sensibility, and you lie without feeling it; and
when you are detected and indignantly rebuked, as
you sometimes are, you only feel your detection as
an inconvenience, which might have been avoided by
more ingenious lying. I beg you to discontinue this
ruinous practice, and see if sensibility will not once
more inform  those functions of your moral nature
which persistent abuse has indurated and rendered
useless.




THE FIFTH LETTER.
G5 (bbfaxb  ag^son lonuse
CONCERNINfG HS1 FAILURE TO YIELD TO HIS CONVIOTIONS
OF DUTY.
S I write your name, there comes before me the
vision of a fair-haired, blue-eyed boy, who
had been fed by smiles and pleasant words at home so
constantly that his whole nature had been sweetened
by them. I remember how you used to look up into
my face for recognition and for the greeting and the
smile which you had learned to crave and to expect of
everybody. Into few faces did those expectant blue
eyes look in vain, for you were a universal favorite. I
remember that I was always so much impressed by
your pure and precious nature that I could never
resist the impulse to put my arm around you, and
draw you to my heart. It was easy to love you, and
sweet to be loved by you; and those who knew your




72         Letters to the Jonefes.
sainted mother knew why you were what you were
in personal and spiritual loveliness. That mother has
been dead a long time, but do you not sometimes
recall her reason for giving you the name of Edward
Payson? Ah, yes! I know that you must sometimes
remember that in her heart of hearts-even before you
were born-she dedicated you to the service of the
Saviour of men, and that she crowned you with a name
hallowed by a wide wealth of Christian associations,
that she might be reminded of her gift whenever she
pronounced it. The absorbing hope of her life was to
see you in the pulpit, and to hear you preach the
everlasting gospel. To compass this end, she would
have been willing to work her fingers to the bone;
to live in want; to deny to herself every worldly
pleasure; nay, to lay down her life itself. She died,
as you know, without seeing the attainment of the
object for which she had labored and prayed so
ardently.
Well, you are a man; and you are just as widely
a favorite to-day as you were when you were a boy;
but you are not the man whom your mother prayed
you might become, and are not likely to be. That you
are stifling convictions of duty by the course which you
are pursuing every man knows who remembers your
early training and the nature upon which that training
could not fail to leave its impress. You are a man whom




To Edward Payfon Jones.               73
everybody loves-whom  everybody praises-whom
everybody believes to be in a measure the subject of
Christian conviction-whom everybody believes to be,
within certain limits, controlled by Christian principle;
yet, in an irreligious community, you have never, in a
manly way, declared yourself in the possession and on
the side of personal Christianity. Under these circumstances, there are some things which it seems to me to
be my duty to say to you. Will you read them?
Christianity is everything, or it is nothing-it is
divine, or it is nothing-it has a right to the entire
control of your life, or it has no claims at all. Is it
necessary that I should argue to you the transcendent
worth, the divine origin, or the grand claims of that
religion which made an angel of your mother, and
transformed the little room  in which she died into
heaven's gateway? Is it necessary for me to assure
you that these convictions of duty  which  haunt
you everywhere, which assert themselves in your
heart in every scene of questionable mirth and careless society, are not superstitions engendered by early
education in error? Is it necessary that I should try
to prove to you that a life which does not acknowledge a rule of action imposed by the Author of life
must necessarily be a life of transgression and the
fruits of transgression?  Not at all. You do not ask
me to do this. You know-you are entirely con4




74          Letters to the Jonefes.
vinced-that you owe the devoted allegiance of your
heart, the obedience of your will, and the gift of your
life to that religion in which alone abides the secret
of the purification and salvation of yourself and your
race. You are convinced that, without Christianity,
this world would be as dark as the infernal shadesthat it alone gives significance to life-that it alone
can give such direction to its issues that they shall
rise to everlasting harmony and everlasting happiness.
There are those around you who do not believe in
these things. They were not trained as you were
trained. Their mother was not your mother, and they
were not endowed with your nature. They do not
possess your pureness of insight. In short, they are
not, to any great extent, the subjects of religious conviction; and yet you choose these men for your
associates and fellows. I ask you now whether you
consider it a manly thing for one like you, with your
convictions, to live like one who has no convictionswhether you do not feel that you are really disgracing
yourself and depreciating your own self-respect by
constantly refusing to yield your heart and life to
the claim  of those convictions which never leave
you.
While you give such answers to these questions as
I know you cannot fail to give, and while you half




To Edward Payfon Jones.              75
resolve to yield to convictions which I know are press.
ing upon you now with redoubled force, you look
forward to the possible consequences of a change in
the motives and regulating forces of your life. Before
your imagination, glaring gloomily in the distance,
there stands a lion in the way. A hearty and unconditional surrender to your convictions would involve
changes in your social relations, in habits which have
become endeared to you, in the general sources from
which you have drawn the satisfactions of your life.
You know that a change like this would bring with
it a public declaration of your faith, and a publicly
formed union with those men and women who have
organized themselves into the Christian church. You
shrink from this with a sensitiveness of selfish pride
which ought to show you that you are very much
farther from being a Christian than you suppose yourself to be, for, with all your consciousness of religious
convictions stifled, you are fondly cherishing the
fancy that you are already quite as good as Christians
average.
Now you know, my friend, that I do not entertain
a very extravagent opinion of the prerogatives of the
Christian church. No church has the power to save
you or me, or to say whether you or I shall be saved
or not. You know also that I am no propagandist of
sectarian doctrines and policies. If a church is a




76          Letters to the Jonefes.
Christian church, that is enough. I do not care the
value of a straw by what name it calls itself. I look
upon it as a school of Christian disciples-of imperfect
men and women who have chosen Christianity as their
religion-their reforming motive and their rule of
life-the grand system of spiritual truths in which
they have garnered their hopes for this life and the
life to come-garnered their temporal and eternal satisfactions. I do not believe in the infallibility of any
church, or in the sinlessness of any member of a church.
Nay, I do not believe that the act of uniting with
a church has in itself any saving grace whatever.
Church is not Christianity, and Christianity is not
church, in any practical sense. A man is probably
just as good a Christian the moment before joining a
church as he is the moment after; but a Christian will
cast in his lot with Christians, if he possesses a decent
degree of manhood, and share with them in the Christian work of the world.
I know very well what the influences are which
restrain you from yielding to your convictions, and
from taking the public step which would naturally
follow  such a surrender.  You love praise.  You
love to be loved by everybody, and you have very
strong friends among all sorts of people. The good
people praise you, and feel as if you, with your
straightforward life and pure habits, belonged to




To Edward Payfon Jones.            77
them. The bad people love you, and feel that, by
your practical denial of the claims of Christianity,
you make their position respectable. But where do
you find your delights?  Who are your cronies?
Whose society do you seek? When you feel inclined
to yield to your convictions of duty, whose are the
shrugging shoulders and the pitying smiles-whose
are the quiet jest and the banter and badinage which
come in quick vision to you, to shame and scare you?
3Iy friend, you do not love that which is characteristically Christian society. You love that which has no
Christian element in it except the element of decency;
and you feel that to become the member of a Christian church would throw you out of sympathy with
men whose good will and good fellowship you count
among your choicest treasures. You cannot bear that
these men should think you weak and womanish. You
cannot bear to become the subject of their lenient and
charitable scorn.
Human friendship is very sweet. These ties that
bind heart to heart-these sympathetic responses of
kindred natures-these loves among men glorify
human life; but they not unfrequently form a bond
of union so strong that one powerful nature will,
through their aid, carry whithersoever it will-even
into the jaws of destruction-all the lives that are
joined with it. The ice upon the mountain side links




78          Letters to the Jonefes.
rock to rock till the lightning or the earthquake
loosens the hold of the giant of the group, and it drags
them all into the valley below. Life nearly always
follows the current of its friendships or flows parallel
with it. If a man finds his most grateful companionships among those who are irreligious-either negatively or positively-he shows just what and where
his heart is.  Like  seeks and sympathizes with
like.
I ask you, Edward Payson Jones, to apply this test
to yourself. What kind of society do you delight in
most? Do you love and cling to those most who best
represent to you the religion in which your mother
lived and died, or those who practically hold that
religion in very light esteem?  I ask you to apply
this test, because I think you are entertaining the idea
that, although you make no professions, you are quite
as good a Christian as those are who do. My friend,
you choose freely to give your most intimate friendships to the worldlings by whom you are surrounded.
I state the fact, and leave you to your own conclusions.
There is another powerful influence which dissuades
you from  yielding to your convictions. You are
absorbed in business. All the activities of your nature
are given to it. Great business responsibilities are
upon you, and your heart gives them glad entertain



To Edward Payfon Jones.            79
ment, for they are full of promise to your ambition
and your desire for wealth. Business occupies nearly
all your waking thoughts, and even haunts your pil.
low and breaks your slumbers. It obtrudes itself upon
your family life, and monopolizes both your time and
your vital power. Your heart is so full that you have
no room in it for another object. Wife and children
and friends and business-these four; but the greatest
of these, practically, is business. If you will candidly
examine yourself, you will see that I do not overrate
this power of business which shuts out from your heart
a guest who sits and shivers in its anteroom in the cold
society of your convictions. To make this matter still
worse, you are thrown into contact with men in the
way of business upon whom you are, to a certain extent,
dependent for your prosperity, who hold Christianity
and its professed friends and possessors in contempt.
You cannot bear this contempt. These men, with their
business thoughts and schemes, break in upon your Sabbaths, they tempt you, they familiarize your ears with
profanity, and invest you constantly with an atmosphere
of worldliness. You have in your present position no
defence against the influence of these associations. You
have never declared yourself upon the side of Christian.
ity, and these business friends of yours know it. They
recognize you as one of their own number, and treat
you accordingly; and yet, you are foolish enough to




80          Letters to the Jonefes.
believe, or to try to make yourself believe, that a man
can be just as good a Christian outside of the, church
as inside of it! Why, my friend, you are a man of
honor. However much disgusted and abused, your
nature is a chivalrous one. If you felt yourself identified with a great cause, would you betray it? Have
you not often comforted yourself with the consideration that, if you have failed to become what your
convictions have urged you to become, no one has
been harmed but yourself?
I have spoken of you as a man of honor. I think
you are sensitively such. I know of no man who more
thoroughly despises a mean and unmanly spirit, or a
mean and unmanly deed. If you were to see a man
who, for any reason, should cast his vote at an election
contrary to his convictions of political duty, or any
man who should stand upon the fence in an important
canvass and refuse to place himself on the side of the
right, or who, in a great public emergency, should
fail to perform his duty through absorbing devotion
to his private pursuits, you would think him a mean
man. You would despise particularly one whom you
knew to be the subject of strong political convictions,
which were so feebly pronounced that all parties claim.
ed him. I take your own standard and apply it to
you. I say, on the authority of your own best judgments, that it is mean and unmanly for you, with your




To Edward Payfon Jones.             81
strong religious convictions, to refuse to stand by
them, and act up to them. It is mean and unmanly
for you to refuse to identify yourself with the society,
and assist in maintaining and forwarding the cause
of those whom, sooner or later, you deliberately
intend to join, and whom you feel. and know to be in
the right. If you were not convinced of the truth, I
should be more charitable toward you. If there
remained anything to be done in shaping the judgment
of your intellect and your heart, you would have some
excuse; but no such exigency exists. No, sir: you
are convinced; but you flinch, and you refuse to stand
in a manly way by what you know and feel to be
right.
While I thus blame you, I pity you. I know
how much your heart bends before these words of
mine, and how impotent you feel for action in the
right directioq. You almost feel as if your hands and
feet were tied. You almost feel as if you must follow
your old friendships-that they have fastened them.
selves to you by hooks of steel which cannot be
broken. You feel that your business is upon you,
and all its associations, and that neither can be lifted.
You feel that you really have no room in your life
for those experiences and those duties which accompany the surrender of the heart to religion. You
feel yourself walled around by obstacles, and, what




82          Letters to the Jonefes.
is really worse than this, you know that you grow
more and more in love with the life you lead, and
less inclined to take the direction of your early training. The oath does not shock you as it once did;
vulgarity is not as offensive as it once was; you have
learned to look more leniently upon the vices of the
men by whom you are surrounded; worldliness does
not seem so barren a form of life'as formerly; you
are charmed and excited by success; and you cannot
deny to yourself the fact that, strong as your convictions of duty are, your heart and your life are growing
more and more widely estranged from them. Where
do you suppose all thiq will end? You have common
sense, and can judge as well as I. Do habits grow
weaker by long continuance? Are the cares of business less absorbing as life advances? Is moral conviction the stronger for constant denial and insult? I
say, you have common sense, and can judge as well as
I. You know as well as I that this life of yours must
have a rupture with its surroundings-that your feet
must turn into another path-that you must yield
yourself a conquest to your convictions, or that your
life will be one of disaster, and that its end will be
wretchedness or an induration worse than wretchedness.
You are surrounded by a crowd of men and women
who do not regard life as a very serious thing. They




To Edward Payfon Jones.            83
take it carelessly and gayly. You see the multitudes
rushing along in the pursuit of baubles. Men live and
die, and there comes back no voice to tell whether they
sleep with the brutes or wake with the angels. Men
eat and sleep, and love and hate, and make display of
their equipage, and pursue their ambitions and indulge
in all the forms of vanity and pride, and all life comes
at last to seem like a sort of phantasmagoria-empty,
unreal, insignificant. You see that these convictions
of yours have no place in the multitude of minds
around you, and no place in the current of life by
which you feel yourself borne along. There are
moments, I suppose, when you doubt the soundness
of these convictions-when you half believe that you
are the victim of a morbid conscience, or of a superstitious impression. At such moments as these-when
the tricks of the world delude you most, come back
to your mother, and learn the truth. That life of
hers, so pure and unselfish and useful, and that death
of hers, so peaceful and triumphant, are realities.
They can never lie to you, and the moment you touch
them, you know that you touch something divinesomething by the side of which all worldliness and
wealth and material success are chaff.
You will perceive, in what I have written to you,
that I have not undertaken to convince you of anything. I have not undertaken even to deepen your




84         Letters to the Jonefes.
convictions. I have simply endeavored to reveal you
and your own experience to yourself, and to urge you
to yield to convictions which I know are striving to
gain the control of your life. I have simply urged
you to be true to yourself-to take a bold, manly,
consistent stand upon the side which you know to be
right-to be a Christian man in Christian society,
and to refuse longer to stand upon what you mistaken.
ly regard as neutral ground. Do you know that you
are abusing and ruining yourself?  Do you realize
that the passage of every day renders it less probable
that your convictions will ever gain the victory over
you?
I appreciate the struggle it would cost you to
welcome the new motive and change the policy and
issues of your life. The preacher may talk as he will
of the ease of the path of life and the ease of yielding
up the will, but you and I know that there is no ease
about it. We know that whatever may be the truth
touching the doctrine of universal total depravity, it
is not natural for us to lead religious lives. It takes
sacrifice and fighting and heroism to do that. I know
it, and you know it. Easy to be a Christian man?
It is mean for a man like you not to be one-it is
wrong for a man like you not to be one-but Heaven
knows it is not easy for you to be one, or you would
have been one long ago. No, my friend; it will be




To Edward Payfon Jones.              85
hard for you to be one, and it will grow harder every
year till you become one. But it pays, and when you
are once fairly on the right side, you will not care for
the struggle, for you will have good company, a clean
conscience, and an outlook into the far future inclouded
and full of inspiration.




THE SIXTH LETTER.
go A1lr  glosg Xta  l outs.
CONCERNING THE DIFFICULTY SfE EXPERIENCES IN
KEEPING HER SER VANTS.
IT has been stated to me, confidentially, that you
have had nineteen different cooks and thirteen
chambermaids in your house during the past year
This may be slightly above the annual average. I
should hope so. I do not understand how flesh and
blood could endure such changes. Yet you live and
thrive; and the new servants come and go at about
the usual number per month. Your husband grew
tired, long ago, with rasping against so much new
domestic material, but has learned fortitude by
practice. One or two attempts on his part to tell
you that there were women who kept their servants
for months and years without change, and to convince
you that it was possible that there were bad mistresses




To Mrs. Jeffy Bell Jones.           87
in the world as well as bad servants, resulted in scenes
which will be avoided in future. Not if he were to see
a procession of young women entering your house and
emerging from it through all the weary year-not if
he were to hear a constant storm raging in the kitchen
and echoing throughout the passages and chambers,
would he ever intimate that you were not the paragon
of mistresses, and that your girls were not the meanest, dirtiest, sauciest pot-slewers that ever invaded an
abode of civilization.
No, Mrs. Jones; you will have it all your own way,
without any interference from him. He knows you are
in the wrong, and so do you; but he will never tell
you so again. On the contrary, he will sympathize
with you after a fashion, and take your part in all your
quarrels and all your domestic difficulties; but he will
quietly wish, meanwhile, that you had the faculty of
getting along pleasantly with your servants. I have
intimated to you that you know yourself to be in the
wrong. You are not a fool. On the contrary, you
are a very sharp, bright woman, and you cannot fail
to see that there is a reason, somewhere in your house,
for your failure to keep your servants. Your neighbor lives in the same climate that you do. The roof
of her house is covered by slate from the same quar.
ry; her Stuart's stove is of the same size as yours;
her laundry is no more convenient than yours; her




88          Letters to the Jonefes.
servants are no better fed than yours; she gives no
better wages than you; but she keeps her servants,
and you do not keep yours. When one of her servants
marries, or sickens, or, for any reason, wishes to leave
her, fifty others stand ready to take her place, and she
has her pick of them all, while you are obliged to
take such as come, and such as feel compelled to come
after having heard that you are a hard mistress. For
you must know that masters and mistresses have
reputations among servants-reputations made up,
and weighed, and widely known. You, and a hundred other women whom I know, have bad reputations among servants; and when you deal with them
you are always obliged to deal with them under the
disadvantage which a bad reputation bears with it.
Suppose we have a little plain talk about these
matters, and see if we can get at an understanding
of them. You will pardon me if I tell you, in the
first place, that you are an opinionated person, which
is a mild way of stating that, in certain respects, you
are very conceited. Your pet conceit is that you are a
model housekeeper, and your opinion is that you know
the best and only proper modes of doing the work in
your kitchen, and in your house generally. You have
your own way of doing everything. You have your
particular order, in which all things about you are to
be done. The machinery of your household arrange



To Mrs. Jeffy Bell Jones.            89
ments, as it exists in your mind, is a perfect whole, and
every executive element that you introduce into it
must adapt itself to that machinery, or it is cast out
at once, or is so harassed that it casts itself out. Suppose a girl enters your kitchen who understands her
business, but who has learned it under another mistress,
and a different household economy. She has learned to
do her work in a certain way, and after a certan order.
She has her notions as well as you. It is quite possible
that those notions may be in many respects better than
yours. You insist, however, from  the moment she
enters your service, that she shall do your work in your
way.  You do not wait to see results.  You do not
wait to see how she will succeed if left entirely to herself, but you go into the kitchen with her, and superintend every act. You give her no freedom, you encourage no independent effort; you take the whole burden
on yourself, and insist that she shall be your machine.
When she forgets your directions, or steps aside from
them, you find fault with her. She soon tires with this
sort of treatment, and you are told to look for another
girl.
I have told you that your pet conceit is that you
are a model housekeeper, and tried to show that your
difficulties with your servants grow out of your insisting that they shall do everything in your way. I
think I may justly say, in addition, that there is a




90         Letters to the Jonefes.
certain  sensitiveness of will in your constitution
which aggravates these difficulties. You are impe.
rious. There is one spot in the world where you have
the right to rule-one spot where that will of yours
has the right to assert itself and make itself law.
Perhaps there is no other spot where your will is
recognized. Your house is your only domain. There
you are a queen, and you are sensitively alive to
all interference with  your prerogatives.  It frets
you to feel that there is any other person in the
house, with a will, who has anything to do or say
about your domestic affairs. You do not feel that
a servant has a right to an independent opinion on
any subject connected with her service; and when
any such opinion finds practical expression, it enrages
you. A servant may feel that if she does her work
well, in the way most convenient to her, she does
all that you can reasonably claim; but you feel that
unless that work-in all its modes and particulars —
has followed the channel of your will, you have been
insulted in your own house. In short, madam, you
are " touchy," and when you are touched, you scold,
and when you scold, off goes your girl. You have
excellent pluck, however. I have never known you to
lament the loss of a servant. They were always such
terrible creatures that you were glad to get rid of them.
I do not know how you came to be just the sort of




To Mrs. Jeffy Bell Jones.           91
mistress you are. You were a very pleasant little
girl, with a sweet temper. It has really puzzled me
to find out the reason for your peculiar development.
I suppose there must be an "ugly streak" in you
somewhere, but you did not show it when you were
a child. Your hair is red, I know  (call it golden),
and your eyes black, but the hair is beautiful and soft,
and the eye has a world of love in it for the man it
worships and for his children. My theory is that
every nature which has any force in it will assert
itself somewhere, in some form, and that if it fails
to be recognized in society, it will make itself recognized where there are none to dispute its claims. I
do not recall a single famous housekeeper, with a
splendid faculty for getting rid of servants, and a
bad reputation among them, who, at the same time,
was a woman widely recognized in society. If you,.Mrs. Jessy Bell Jones, were an acknowledged power
and authority in the social circle; if you were a fine
musician with the opportunity to charm your friends;
if you had a high degree of literary culture and were
received everywhere in literary circles as an ornament
or an equal; if you possesed a recognized value out
of your house, or in your parlor, beyond other women
of your class or set, I think you would be contentthat your servants would get along well enough, and
that you would get along well enough with them.




92          Letters to the Jonefes.
But you have turned housekeeper, and directed all
your energies and all your ambitions, and all your
will, into the channel of housekeeping; and woe to
the servant who stands in your way.
Under these circumstances, there are a few practical questions which it would be well for you to ask
yourself. Do you feel that your system of manage.
ment pays? Do you enjoy these constant troubles
with your servants?  Do you think your husband
enjoys them, and your irate or plaintive representa.
tions of them? Do you not feel sometimes as if you
would be willing to give a good deal of money, and
put yourself to a good deal of trouble to get along as
smoothly with your girls as some of your neighbors
do? Do you wish or expect always to live the same
sort of life you are living now?
In making up your answers to these questions, you
must remember that any change which may be made
must begin with yourself. If you are really willing to
make sacrifices for the sake of peace and perpetuity
in your domestic arrangements, you can have both;
but you will be obliged to sacrifice your will, and a
good many of your pet notions concerning house.
keeping. If it is sweeter to you to have your will,
than it is to keep girls steadily who will serve you
reasonably well, why, of course, that settles the
question; though it is doubtful whether you would




To Mrs. Jeffy Bell Jones.          93
get so much of your will accomplished by sending
them away as you would by keeping them.
You must take certain facts into consideration
when you hire a servant. The most important is,
perhaps, that when you hire a servant you do not
buy a slave. You do not buy the right to badger
and scold her, to impose upon her unreasonable burdens, or to treat her as if she were only an animal.
You are to remember, also, that there are two sides
to this relation of mistress and servant. Labor is not
a drug in this country yet, thank Heaven, and it is
quite as important to you that you have servants, as
it is to your girls that they do service. You and your
girls are under mutual obligations to treat each other
well. In England and on the Continent, where human
life, owing to peculiar circumstances, is in excess-a
condition which cannot possibly exist in healthily
constituted society-servants are born into families
often, and grow  up dependants, forever attached
to the family name and interest. A good place and
a permanent one is equivalent to a treasure with them,
and they will make many sacrifices to preserve it,
Here, it is different. Labor is everywhere in demand,
and no girl ever steps out of your door without knowing that, within a short space of time, she can easily
find another place, with a chance at least for better
treatment than you give her.




94          Letters to the Jonefes.
There is another consideration to which I am sure
sufficient importance has not been attached. You
are a Protestant, as the majority of Americans are,
and you know that servants who come to you, and
whom the most of us employ, are Catholics. It is
notorious and incontrovertible that your servants
are taught to consider you a heretic-a person who
has no religion, and who is bound as directly for
hell as if she were a murderess. It is cruel to teach
these ignorant women such horrible stuff, but they
are taught it. The Irish girl in your kitchen, who
perhaps does not know her alphabet-who probably
has not the first idea of the vital truths of Christianity-regards you and the whole community of
American Protestants with contempt, as the accursed
of God, and of those whom she supposes to be His
representatives on the earth. She has been bred to
this opinion, and it may be the only really strong
opinion she has in her mind. She has no doubt that
a drunken, profane, lying scoundrel, if he is only
in the Catholic church, has a better chance for heaven
than the purest Protestant that lives, because she has
been taught from childhood that there is no salvation
out of "the church."  Now I say that women thus
bred cannot possibly entertain such a degree of respect
for you that they will take patiently your style of
treatment. It is notorious that. they receive, even




To Mrs. Jefly Bell Jones.            95
with abject humility, indignities from masters and
mistresses belonging.to their church, while they exact
from Protestants the last ounce of that which is their
due as Christian women. I do not complain of this particularly, but I allude to it to show that you, and every
Protestant mistress in America, must necessarily labor
under disadvantages in the management of servants.
There is still another consideration which you and
all other mistresses should make, which is, that all
girls who are good for anything must do their work in
their own way, or not do it well. One of the hardest
things in this world for any person who has brains, and
the power to use them, is to do another person's work
is another person's way. To most persons, the attempt
to do this is always disgusting, and often distressing.
It is only hacks and blockheads that can possibly submit themselves to the degradation which such a service
involves. You must always be content with these, or
you must have servants who have some notions and
ways of their own. A servant may be a very humble
person, but she has her will, and her pride, and her
desire to be somebody in her place, just as much as
you have; and she will not sell her right to entertain
an opinion and have her way in the little details of
her service for a dollar and seventy-five cents a week,
to you or anybody else. I must confess that I sympathize with her in this thing. Among your servants




96           Letters to the Jonefes.
you may reasonably require results economically attained, but all that exactness which insists on dusting a piano from the north to the south, or prescribes
the whole routine of a kitchen, to its minutest particular, and vigilantly maintains it, is an insult and a hardship, and is certain to be regarded and treated as such
by every servant who is good for anything.
Now if you are willing to make all these considerations, you can have servants and keep them.
If you are willing to consider that your servant is
not a slave, and has a right to the treatment due to
a rational woman, that you have no right to harass
her with your notions or your petulancies, that you
are under as strong an obligation to treat her well as
she is to treat you well, that she has been bred to
consider you a heretic-one for whom  God has no
respect and Heaven no home, that it is in the nature
of things impossible for a really capable and good
servant to do her work cheerfully and well when she
is required to do it in a way not her own, that in this
world of imperfection there are some things which
will be unpleasant " in the best regulated families,"
that it is better to enjoy peace generally, than to
have one's will in unimportant particulars,-1 say
that if you are willing to consider all these things, I
do not see why you may not keep your servants as
long as other people, and have just as good a time




To Mrs. Jeffy Bell Jones.           97
with them. It will be very hard for you to break
into this thing, and I know of but one way for you to
proceed. Get a new cook-the best you can find-and
promise to pay her good wages. Then hold up your
right hand and swear in the presence of your husband
(who will record your oath with unaffected delight),
that you will not enter your kitchen for a month, unless
it be to praise some particular dish, or tell the cook
how nicely everything looks in her domain. At the
end of the month, you will have learned that cooking
can be carried on in your family without your help, that
your cook is contented and pleased, that you are
happier than you have been for ten years, that you
have more time for reading and dressing and visiting,
and that the inconveniences attending a course like
this are much less than those which have thus far
accompanied your housekeeping life. I would not
prescribe constant absence from the kitchen as the
only safe course for all; I simply say that it is the
only safe course for you. After a few months shall have
passed away, and you shall have come to love your new
way of life, it will be safe for you to take a general
oversight of your kitchen again. You must run, however, whenever you feel the old fever coming on.
Did you ever think how easy it would be to make
your pretty name-" Jessy Bell "-into Jezebel? It
would be just as easy to transform your pretty nature
V5




98          Letters to the Jonefes.
into one which that name alone would fitly represent.
I do not account you one of those women, possessed
with the devil, who are as much the horror of husband
and children as of servants. You are not even one
of those women (from whom the gods defend me
and mine!) to whom the vision of a speck of dirt is
the cause of a convulsion and the inspiration of a
lecture that would frighten anything but a clod out
of the house. Mysterious are the ways of women.
There be women who take delight in being miserable
and making others so; who can scold, or cry, or howl,
or spit fire; who would not be happy if they could
be; who badger everybody-implacable, unreasonable,
abominable women, from whom all gentle womanhood
has departed. There be such women as these, I say,
and you have seen them. Will you permit me to tell
you that you are in great danger of becoming one of
them?  It is not hard for a woman in your circumstances, who has set up for model housekeeper, with
a sensitive will and a determination to have everything in her own way, to neglect the cultivation of
those goodnesses and graces which keep her spirit
soft, and keep it in sympathy with those who love her.
The secret of living comfortably in this world,
consists in making the best of such unpleasant things
as cannot be avoided. It is necessary for you to have
servants, and it is necessary for you to obtain your




To Mrs. Jeffy Bell Jones.            99
servants from the same class that the rest of us do.
They are not a very reliable class of people, but they
have in them the labor that you want, and must have.
The question simply is, whether, under the circumstances, you will make yourself and your husband
miserable by insisting on that which you have never
yet succeeded in getting-perfect servants-the perfect
slaves of your will-or whether you will get the best
servants you can, make allowance for their shortcomings, and put up with their imperfect service for
the sake of peace. The way in which you answer this
question will determine everything concerning the
comfort of your home life, and much concerning your
own personal character. The best way for you is to
confess-to yourself, at least-that you have been all
in the wrong, and to change your entire policy. Turn
your energies in some other direction. Be as good a
housekeeper as you can, under the circumstances, and
be content with such modest attainments as servants
moderately intelligent and immoderately independent
will permit. Thus will Mrs. Jessy Bell Jones live long
and comfortably on the earth, rejoicing the hearts of
her husband and children, enjoying a good reputation
among the class on which she must depend for service,
taking comfort in ladylike pursuits, and avoiding the
imminent danger in which she stands of becoming
"Mrs. Jezebel Jones."




THE SEVENTH LETTER.
To *$1atljmil iogug laows, oPilt^itfuoot.
CONCERNING TEE FAITH AND PROSPECTS OF HIS SEOCT OP
RELIGIONISTS.
Y OU happen to be one of the men ordained from
the foundation of the world to be a Spiritualist.
There are many unlike you who are Spiritualists, but
there are none like you who are not. You have all
that natural love of what is novel and marvellous, and
that peculiar mixture of credulity and skepticism, and
that perverse disposition to run against the feelings
and prejudices of people, which would lead you to
embrace Spiritualism. Wherever I find a man who
possesses your peculiar nature and character, I always
find a Spiritualist; for if Spiritualism does not come
to him, he goes to it. You were a Fourierite when I
first knew you, and you rode the hobby of Fourierism
until you rode it to death. Every "ism" that has




To Salathiel Fogg Jones.            101
been started during the last twenty years has numbered
you among its champions. You were a zealous aboli.
tionist until abolitionism became popular, and then, without turning against it, you seemed to lose your interest
in it. When Spiritualism made its appearance, I knew
that you would be a Spiritualist, as well as I knew that
" fire, ascending, seeks the sun." It was the natural
thing for you.
I was not at all surprised, therefore, when you
caught me by the button-hole one day, at the corner
of a street, and announced to me the conviction that
you could demonstrate the immortality of the human
soul. You may, perhaps, remember the smile which
your announcement excited. I confess that it amused
me. You seemed as interested and pleased about the
matter as if you had never heard of such a thing as
immortality before. A book had been in your hands
ever since you could read, that told you all about it.
A belief in this immortality had incorporated itself
into the constitution and governments of all the powerful nations of the world; had moulded civilizationnay, had created civilization out of barbarism; had
introduced into society its highest motives and its
most purifying elements; had sustained the courage
and inspired the hope of multitudes of dying saints
and martyrs through all ages; had surrounded you all
your life with the evidences of its vitality, and yet,




102          Letters to the Jonefes.
you had but just satisfied yourself on the question, by
means of unaccountable raps on a table, in the dark,
which, through a little assistance of your own, had
spelled out, in bad orthography and worse syntax, an
insignificant sentence! Here was a moral force that
had moved the world, yet it had not moved you!
You-wiser, more acute, less credulous, less supersti'
tious-had waited to see a table dance before you
could believe in that realm of spiritual things which
has hung above and embraced you since you were
born, and which has always had a representative.in
your own bosom!
This has been one of the marvels of these latter
day developments in Spiritualism: that men who have
been skeptical on all cognate subjects, and have resisted all the moral and spiritual evidences of immortality
-resisted all the evidences germane to the subjecthave bowed like bulrushes before the proofs that come
to them from a mysteriously played banjo, or a common place message, pretended to be rapped out by a
friend on the other side of the river. It took Materialism to prove Spiritualism to these very acute men;
and they thought that, because they had seen matter
moved by spirit, or what they supposed to be spirit,
they had made a prodigious advance. They have been
floored by proofs that do not add a hair's weight to
the faith of any gepuine Christian in the world. They




To Salathiel Fogg Jones.           103
think that they have made a discovery, and that Chris.
tians are afraid of it, when the truth is that they have
made no discovery whatever, and that Christians are
above it. The proofs of spirituality and of immortality,
to be found in what is called Spiritualism, are the
grossest that can possibly be produced, supposing them
to be genuine. They are proofs that deal with matter
exclusively, and appeal to the commonest and lowest
order of minds. It is you, my friend, who are behind
the age, and not the Christians at whose faith you
scoff, simply because you are not up to it and cannot
appreciate it. You receive a little thing because you
are not sufficient to receive a large one.
I do not intend, in the few paragraphs which I
propose to write to you, to undertake the overthrow
of your proofs of Spiritualism. I am willing, indeed,
to confess that I have witnessed, among much that was
undoubtedly the result of deception and jugglery,
phenomena which I could not rationally account for
by any other theory than that which assigns to them
a spiritual origin. But those phenomena have never
contributed anything to my conviction that I am
immortal, and that there is a realm of spiritual exist.
ence which holds the product of unnumbered worlds
and the history of an eternity. They have never
made so much as a ripple on the surface of my faith.
Their apparent aim has been so limited, many of them




104          Letters to the Jonefes.
have been so low and frivolous, some of them have been
so vicious, and all have had so much more to do with
matter than with spirit, or with spiritual truth, that they
have never seemed worthy for an instant to have any
consideration as parts of any religious system, or as
opponents of any religious system. It is an insult to
common sense, no less than an offence to decency, to
compare the conglomerate trash which has been issued
as the teachings of the spirits with Christianity, as a
system of religion; and it is a simple impossibility for
a true and hearty Christian to accept in the place of
his faith the peepings and the mutterings of a pack of
lying demons, whose deceptions and tricks are acknoqwl.
edged by their best friends.
The rule which the Author of Christianity announced, and which the common judgment of the
world has indorsed-that a tree is known by its fruitsis one which it is now proper to apply to Spiritualism.
Fifteen years have passed since the new sect made its
first batch of proselytes. It is time to be looking for
the fruit of this tree, which, at the beginning, was
declared to be so full of golden promise. I ask you
if you have found Spiritualism particularly nourishing
to yourself. Are you a better man than you were
ten years ago? How much progress have you made
toward real spirituality?  How much more devout is
vour worship of the Great God than it was before




To Salathiel Fogg Jones.           105
you were convinced of the immortality of your own
soul? How much have your affections been purified,
your love of spiritual things strengthened, your lust
for sensual indulgence diminished, by this new faith
of yours? HIas your sense of moral obligation grown
stronger?  Has your benevolence increased?  Has
your love of all that is good and pure grown brighter,
while the sensual delights of your animal life have
faded?  These are important questions to you, and
they are very important questions to Spiritualism
itself.
I must be plain with you, and tell you that if
Spiritualism has improved you I have failed to see it.
I do not see that you have even made any progress
intellectually. You pretend that Spiritualism reveals
great truths in which abide the seeds of progress and
perfection for a race, but these seeds do not germinate in you. On the contrary, you seem content to
stand at the threshold of your new religion, and to
amuse yourself with the same insignificant phenomena
which first attracted your attention. I hear of your
holding weekly, or semi-weekly, sessions or "circles "
where there are the ringing of bells, and playing of
guitars, and the scraping of fiddles, and the tipping of
tables, and the rubbing of faces, and the rapping of
knuckles. It is the same old story of a sort of frolio
or orgy with demons, and no step forward into a
5*




106          Letters to the Jonefes.
divine life. As it is with you, so is it with all that 1
have seen. I will not speak of the immoralities to
which Spiritualism has given origin or opportunity.
Free love is not a plant indigenous to Spiritualism.
It starts in human nature, and grows wherever there
is license. The doctrine of " affinities" is as old as
the race, and has found its advocates among the beastly
of all races and the bad of all religions. I say I will
not speak of the immoralities which have been asso.
ciated with Spiritualism, because they are not peculiar
to it; but I say that I cannot perceive that you make
the slightest progress intellectually-you or your friends.
You have always been busy with these little material
phenomena, which have no more spiritual significance
or vitality in them than there is in the grunts that
come from a pig-sty-not half as much as there is in a
concert by  Christy's minstrels.  Has Spiritualism
nothing more in it for you than this?  Is this the
highest food it has to offer you?  Why, you ought
to be intellectually a giant by this time. With immor.
tality demonstrated to you, in daily communion with
the spiritual world, with vision clarified of all errors
and superstitions, you ought to have made advances
which would prove to an incredulous world that Spiritualism has in it the seeds at least, of the intellectual
millennium. It is not necessary for me to tell you
that you have done no such thing. You have been




To Salathiel Fogg Jones.             107
mixed up with two or three fanciful schemes for
social improvement, that have not had enough of
vitality in them to preserve them from quick degeneration, and  these  schemes have absorbed  all your
spiritual activities. Indeed, I think these "circles'
have been rather dissipating than edifying to you.
Literature has always been the record and the gauge
of every form of civilization, every system of philosophy, and every scheme of religion; and nothingis more
certain than that any religion which possesses vitality
will permeate and inform all the literature associated
with it, and create for itself a literature which is especially the product of its life. Thus, with the Bible for
its basis, Christianity has created a literature of its
own. An Alexandrian library could not contain the
books which cluster around the Bible, deriving from it
their sole.inspiration and significance, and receiving
from it all their power, while there is not a book of
any kind written within the pale of Christian civiliza.
tion which is not modified by it. And literature is but
one of the forms of art in which the Christian religion
betrays the vitality of its central truths and ideas.
There is hardly a department of painting and sculpture
and architecture that does not have reference, at some
point, to it, while many departments are its direct outgrowth and offspring. It is time that Spiritualism, if
it possesses such claims and powers as are ascribed to




108          Letters to the Jonefes.
it, should make its mark on literature and art. Has i'
done so?
I think that you cannot fail to regard the literature
that has been the direct and immediate outgrowth of
Spiritualism as, on the whole, of an exceedingly frivolous, weak, and unworthy character. Spiritualism has
undertaken to deal with almost all forms of literary
art. It has put forth orations, philosophical disquisitions, revelations concerning the unseen world, prophecies of future events, and poetry.  These productions purport to come from the spirits of departed men
and women, who assume to speak from actual knowledge acquired in the realm of spiritual things. The
least that can be assumed by the Spiritualist is that
these utterances are the product of minds purified and
exalted by freedom from the grosser animal life into
which they were originally born, strengthened and invigorated by direct contact with spiritual truth, and
inspired by the vision of those realities of which we
can only form, through guess and conjecture, the faintest idea. I say that this is the least that can be assumed by the Spiritualist. It is the least that is as.
sumed by you, or any one of your associates, concerning the utterances of your best spiritual correspcndents; yet I defy you to point me to a single oration
originating in your circles that can compare with those
of Webster, or Burke, or Everett; a single philosophi.




To Salathiel Fogg Jones.'109
cal discourse that betrays the brains of a Bacon; a
single revelation of the unseen world that can compare
with that of John; or a single poem that is not surpassed many times by many poems from the pen of the
lamented Mrs. Browning. You are lame in every field
in which, in accordance with your theories, you should
walk with kingly strides. You cannot hold in contempt the literary judgments of the world; and the
literary judgments of the world are against you. It is
the decided opinion of those whose opinion you are
bound to respect, that your theories of intellectual and
spiritual progress beyond the grave are shockingly disproved by the products of the minds which pretend to
address us from it. There is nothing in the literature
of Spiritualism which, in power and beauty, and prac.
tical adaptation to the wants of men, and skilful use
of language, can compare with the literature written
before Spiritualism made its first rap. Do you doubt
it? Look at the alcoves of the scholars and poets of
the world, and mark the shelves which your classics
occupy. They are not there at all, and their absence
is owing to the simple fact that they are not worthy to
be there. Literature is catholic. Literary men are not
particular as to the source from which great thoughts
come, and they will gather where they find them.
They have not found them in the literature of Spiritu.
alism. I state this as a fact, which you cannot deny;




110         Letters to the Jonefes.
and I appeal to the literary men of the world as my
witnesses.
In the degree by which Spiritualism has failed to
produce a worthy literature of its own, has it failed to
incorporate itself as a vital force into any literature.
In a few English novels we have seen evidences of its
presence, but even there it has furnished only machinery for mysteries and not ideas for life. No poet of
power has gone to it for his inspirations. While many
literati have been attracted to its marvels, and not a
small number of them have acknowledged their faith
in the genuineness of its " manifestations," it finds no
record in the characteristic products of their pens.
And now, in view of all these facts, I declare my full
conviction that Spiritualism, notwithstanding all. its
high pretensions and its ambitious efforts, has imported
no new intellectual food into the world, and brought
no increment to its intellectual life. Has heaven been
opened, my friend, to scatter crumbs and broken victuals to children already fed with bread from the tree
of a nobler life? Have the dead come back to prove
to you and me that they have only made progress
toward, or into, imbecility and idiocy?  Have the
angels of God forgotten to be wise, and the saints of
God learned to be silly? Is a religion, or a system of
philosophy, or a revelation of whatever character, good
for anything, or worthy of a moment's consideration,




To Salathiel Fogg Jones.           111
which gives us nothing greater and more abounding in
vitality than what we have had before-nothing great
and vital enough to create a literature of its own, which
will command the respect of the world, and find its
way through various channels of life into all literature?
You have common sense-or used to have. Answer
the question.
I remember very well the boast that you and your
friends made, a few years ago, that the world was
about to witness a new dispensation, through the ministry and the revelations of Spiritualism. We had outgrown Christianity, as the world once outgrew Juda.
ism, you declared, and so, burning up our soiled and
worn-out creeds, and casting off the clothing of the
Christian church, which had grown too strait for us,
we were to emerge into a brighter light and a freer
and a nobler life. Well, have your boasts proved to
be well grounded? You must not complain that I ask
you this question, and say that I do not give you time
enough, and refer me to the difficulty of the early steps
of Christianity. Spiritualism was born into a very
different age from that which witnessed the advent of
Christianity. There was no steamboat, no railroad, no
telegraph, no universal newspaper, no printing press,
to wait upon the early steps of Christianity. The first
wail in the little village of Bethlehem that gave notice
of the advent of The Redeemer did not reach outside




112         Letters to the Jonefes.
of the walls oT the stable where he lay; but through
the ministry of modern art-itself the child of Bethlehem's child-the first rap at Rochester was heard
throughout the nation. Every appliance of Christian
civilization has waited upon the early steps of Spirit.
ualism, and within fifteen years it has been sown
wherever steam and lightning can travel, and men can
read the language which they speak. It has been free
to do what it would. It has published what it would.
Prisons and scaffolds have not threatened those who
received and entertained and advocated it.  It has
been patronized by the fashionable and the titled.
Royalty itself has lent its eyes and ears to its marvels,
and petted the mediums through which they were
wrought. It has been brought fairly before the world,
and now, what have you to say of the results?
Preliminarily, is it making progress to-day? Does
it occupy as large a place in the public mind of this
country and of other countries as it did some years
ago?  Is it winning as many proselytes as it was
winning ten years ago? Has it not already called,to
itself its own, and ceased to be aggressive? Is it not
already dying from lack of power to nourish and bless
those who have been attracted to it? It is probable
that you would not answer these questions as I should,
yet it seems to me as if there could be but one answer
to them. I know that, as far as my acquaintance




To Salathiel Fogg Jones.              113
reaches, Spiritualism is making neither proselytes nor
progress, and that many of those who were once its
most earnest defenders have grown cold toward it, or
careless of it. It has shown no power to fertilize society, and no disposition to organize society for philanthropic effort. It has originated a few utopian schemes
that promised great things for human harmony and
happiness, but they have fallen to pieces, light and
flimsy as they were, of their own dead weight. I cannot point to anything that Spiritualism is really doing
to elevate, purify, and save mankind. I cannot find in
it that principle of love which uproots selfishness, or
leads the martyr to dare his death of fire.
Now, where is this effete Christianity which was to
be displaced by Spiritualism?  There never was a
period of fifteen years in its history when it made
more progress than it has made since Spiritualism was
announced. The greatest revival the world ever saw
has occurred during that period. It has planted its
feet in new fields, and is everywhere aggressive. This
Spiritualism, which was to supersede it, has hardly
been a fly in the path of its gigantic progress. It is
pushing its silent, individual conquests, and organizing
its forces in the wilds of the West, on the shores of
the Pacific, in Australia, and among the heathen nations
of the world. It is gaining new victories near the centres of its power. It gives no sign of decay. It is




114        Letters to the Jonefes.
more and more widely recognized as the grand, saving
and reforming power of the world-as a religion to
live by and die by. It finds its way into governmental
institutions. It more and more pervades every kind
of literature, and you know that there is not a good
thing in Spiritualism that Christianity had not previ.
ously promulgated.
There are some of your friends who will deny that
Spiritualism opposes Christianity. Indeed, there are
some who claim that they are really the only enlightened Christians in the world, Spiritualism having interpreted Christianity to them. You are too honest to
tell me this, I know, because you have talked very
differently to me many times. You know that if Spiritualism is not in opposition to Christianity, as a system
of religion and of salvation, there is nothing in it whatever. You know, and so do your friends, that Spiritualism is at least in opposition to that form of Christianity which prevails in the world, and which marks
its progress by such marvellous evidences of its vitality
and power.
My friend, you are eating husks, when you might
have corn. Cut the delusion loose, for it is a dying
thing. There is nothing more in it for you or the
world-no more food, nor inspiration, nor light, nor
life, nor blessing. All the good fellows are going my
way. Come and join them.




THE EIGHTH LETTER.
u NllJamin tfranhIia aouts, tzt11nic.
CONCERNING HIS HABITUAL ABSENCE. FROM CHURCH ON
SUNDA Y.
HAVE often wondered why you and so many
who are engaged in mechanical pursuits should be
so skeptical in all matters lying outside of the domain
of material things. There seems to be something in
the constitution of the mechanical mind, or something
in the nature of mechanical pursuits, which tends to
infidelity. It is notorious that, as a class, the mechan.
ics of this country, and particularly those who are
engaged in such branches as call for the most ingenuity
and skill, are given to unbelief. I cannot explain this.
I see the fact, as it exists in manufacturing communities and in the larger cities, and am entirely at a loss
to account for it. Why is it that constant dealing with
the laws of matter and second causes should so induce




116         Letters to the Jonefes.
materialism, and so hide the Great First Cause, I do
not know. I only know that the coldest infidels I have
ever known-men the most utterly faithless in spiritual
things-men skeptical on all subjects which touch religion and immortality, and revelation and God-are
mechanics, and that there seems to be something in
their pursuits, or in their mental constitution, which
makes them so.
The number of these men in every New England
community is large. We are a manufacturing people,
and the best and most influential minds in nearly all
our manufacturing towns are those of mechanics. I
have been surprised at the contempt in which religion
and its institutions are held in some New England
towns, where it is supposed that both are honored in
an unusual degree. The truth is that, throughout New
England, not more than one third of the people go to
church, or have anything to do with its support; and
that third is very largely composed of farmers and
merchants. The mechanical and manufacturing interests, notwithstanding their great magnitude, contribute
comparatively little to the maintenance of the institu-.tions of Christianity.  None are more aware of the
truth of the statements which I make than Christian
mechanics, because they are constantly thrown into the
society of those of their own class whose cold and
sneering infidelity, and whose habitual disregard of the




To Benjamin Franklin Jones.          117
Sabbath and all Christian institutions, are themes of
constant sorrow or annoyance to them. I am sorry to
believe that you add one to the number of these faithless men, and particularly sorry, because you have such
natural strength of mind that you cannot fail to have
great influence upon those who are nearest you-upon
your companions and your family. But I must leave
these general remarks, for I began with the intention
to say something to you upon your habit of staying
away from church on Sundays.
You told a friend of mine the other day that you
had not put your foot inside of a church for ten years.
You made the statement, he informed me, in a tone
which indicated contempt not only for the church
itself and the religion which it represents, but for all
the men and women who attend it. Now I like your
fran.kness. There is something in your position which
I cannot but respect. It is different from that of the
majority of those who spend their Sundays in laziness
or pleasure. When they are questioned with relation
to their very questionable courses, they take the position of culprits at once, and make their excuses, always,
however, protesting that they have the most profound
respect for religion and its institutions. They make a
merit of this respect, and put it forward as a substitute
for the thing itself. Fools may be taken in by this
sort of talk, but God and wise men can only have con



118         Letters to the Jonefes.
tempt for those who pretend to honor a religion whose
institutions they treat with persistent neglect.
If we speak to some of these men about their neglect of attendance upon the Sunday ministrations of
the church, they will say that they can worship God as
well in the fields as they can in the sanctuary,-that
they can commune with Him quite as well alone, among
the beauties of nature, as in the great congregation,
surrounded by ribbons and artificial flowers. As independent propositions, these may be sound. I will not
controvert them; but when these men put them forward, they do it for the purpose of skulking behind
them, and they know very well that they have no relation to their case. They know that they never worship God in the fields, and that they would be frightened at the thought of any actual communion with
Him.  Others will denounce the impurities and imperfections of the church, or find fault with the minister,
or certain of the leading members. All kinds of apologies are put forward by these poor men to delude
themselves and their neighbors with the belief that
they are really better than those who go to churchthat they have, at least, quite as much respect for religion as those who do.
All this talk disgusts me, for I know that there is
no sincerity in it. When a man tells me that he respects religion, I want to see him prove it in some




To Benjamin Franklin Jones.           119
practical way. If he really respects religion, he will
give his life to it, and, as the smallest possible proof
of respect that he can render, he will scrupulously attend upon its ordinances, and show to the world the
side upon which he wishes his influence to count. No,
when men tell me that they respect religion and offer
in evidence only their studied and persistent absence
from all Christian ministrations, I have simply t6 respond that I do not respect them. They are a set of
hypocrites and humbugs. They talk about the hypocrisy of the church! There is not such another set of
hypocrites in America, as those who, while professing
to respect Christianity, devote the Christian Sabbath
to their own selfish ease or convenience, and regularly
shun the assemblages of Christian men and women.
Sometimes they try to prove their sincerity by throwing in their wives and children. They will tell people
that they hire a pew, and dress their wives and chil.
dren for the public, that they are willing that they
should attend church, and that they have too much
respect for religion to stand in anybody's way, while
by every Sunday's example, they plainly declare to
their wives and children that they regard the church
and the religion which it represents as unworthy of the
attention of a rational man.
I repeat, then, that there is something in your
position which I respect. You have brought yourself




120          Letters to the Jonefes.
to the belief that Christianity is a delusion-a cheat.
You have no respect for religion, and do not hesitate
to express your contempt for it.  All preaching is
blarney and cant to you; all prayer is blatant nonsense
addressed to a phantom of the imagination. Practically, your companions in absence from the church on
Sunday occupy your most decidedly irreligious position, and their weakly lingering belief in the truth
of Christianity, or in the possibility of its truth, (which
is all their "respect" means,) might as well, for any
practical purpose, be disbelief. You are really better
than those who pretend to respect religion, and who
treat it with the same contempt that you do, because
you are not a hypocrite. I address you then as the
most respectable and decent man of your class.
My desire is to give you one or two good reasons
for going to church which do not depend upon the
authenticity of Christianity, or upon the sacredness of
the Christian Sabbath at all. My first reason is that
unless a man puts himself into a fine shirt, polished
boots, and good clothes once a week, and goes out into
he public, he is almost certain to sink into semi-barbarism. You know that unless you do this on Sun.
day, you cannot do it at all, for you labor all the week.
There is nothing like isolation to work degeneration in
a man. There is nothing like standing alone, with no
place in the machinery of society, to tone down one's




To Benjamin Franklin Jones.         121
self-respect. You must be aware that you are not in
sympathy with society. You are looked upon as an
outsider, because you refuse to come into contact with
society on its broadest and best ground. I tell you it
is a good thing for a man to wash his face clean, and
put on his best clothes, and walk to the house of God
with his wife and children on Sundays, whether he
believes in Christianity or not. The church is a place
where, at the least, good morals are inculcated, and
where the vices of the community are denounced. You
can afford to stand by so much of the church, and, by
doing so, say "Here am I and here are mine, with a
stake in the welfare of society, and an interest in the
good morals of society." My friend, this little operation gone through with every Sunday would give you
self-respect, help you to keep your head above water,
and bring you into sympathy with the best society the
world possesses. A man needs to beautify himself
with good clothes occasionally to assure himself that he
is not brother to the beast by the side of which he
labors during six days of every seven, and he needs
particularly to feel that he has place and consideration
in clean society.
Another reason why you should go to church on
Sunday is that you need the intellectual nourishment
and stimulus which you can only get there. I suppose
that you do not often consider the fact that the great6




122         Letters to the Jonefes.
est amount of genuine thinking done in the world is
done by preachers. I suppose you may never have
reflected that, in the midst of all this din of business,
and clashing of various interests-in the midst of the
clamors and horrors of war, the universal pursuit of
amusements, and the vanities and inanities of fashion,
and the indulgence of multitudinous vices, there is a
class of self-denying men, of the best education and
the best talents and habits, who, in their quiet rooms,
are thinking and writing upon the purest and noblest
themes which can engage any mind. Among these
men may be found the finest minds which the age
knows-the most splendid specimens of intellectual
power that the world contains. The bright consummate flower of our American college system is the
American ministry. Among these men are many who
are slow-stupid, if you insist upon it-but there is not
one in one thousand of them who does not know more
than you do. You can learn something of them all,
while some of them possess more brains and more
available intellectual power than you and all your relatives combined.  I tell you that if you suppose the
American pulpit to be contemptible, you are very
much mistaken. You have staid away from it for ten
years. During all these ten years I have attended its
weekly ministrations, and I have a better right to
speak about it than you have, because I know more




To Benjamin Franklin Jones.         123
about it. I tell you that I have received during these
ten years more intellectual nourishment and stimulus
from the pulpit than from all other sources combined,
yet my every-day pursuits are literary while yours are
not.
There is something in the pursuits of working men
-I mean of men who follow handicraft-which renders
some intellectual feeding on Sunday peculiarly necessary. You work all day, and when you get home at
night, you can do nothing but read the news, and indulge in neighborhood gossip. You are obliged to
rise early in the morning, and that makes it necessary
that you should go to bed early at night. You really
have no time for intellectual culture except on Sunday, and then you are too dull and tired to sit down
to a book. You always go to sleep over any book that
taxes your brain at all. You know that there is nothing but the living voice which can hold your attention, and you know that that voice can only be heard
in the pulpit. The working man who shuns the pulpit
on the Sabbath, voluntarily relinquishes the only regularly available intellectual nourishment of his life.
You need not tell me that the pulpit has no intellectual
nourishment for you.  I know better.  Philosophy,
casuistry, history, metaphysics, science, poetry-these
all are at home in the pulpit. All high moralities are
taught there. All sweet charities are inculcated there.




124         Letters to the Jonefes.
There are more argument and illustration brought to
the support and enforcement of religious truths than
all the other intellectual magazines of the world have
at command; and, quarrel with the facts as you may,
you must go to church on Sunday, and hear the preaching, or be an intellectual starveling. Your brain is
just as certain to degenerate-your intellect is just as
certain to grow dull-under this habit of staying at
home from church, as a plant is to grow pale when
hidden away from the sun.
But you respond that you will not attend church
because you do not believe in the doctrines that are
preached there. Do you refuse to attend a political
meeting which a gifted speaker is to address, because
you are not of his way of thinking?  Do you stay
away from the lecture of a man who has brains, because
you cannot indorse his sentiments?  Why, you are
behind the age, man. The most popular lecturers of
America have for years been those who have represented the principles and sentiments of a small minority. Intellectual men have maintained their place
upon the platform when their persons and their principles were held in abhorrence by the masses whom they
addressed.  It is not necessary for me to mention
names, to prove this statement, for the facts are too
fresh and too notorious. Do you decline to attend a
circus because the performers differ with you as to the




To Benjamin Franklin Jones.          125
number of horses it is proper for a man to ride at one
time? Is it possible that you, who have been charging
bigotry upon the church and its representatives so
long, are a bigoted man? Is it possible that you, who
have denounced the American Christian ministry for
intolerance, are intolerant yourself? It looks like it.
My friend, you are lame in this matter.  Your
position is a very weak one. It is not based in any
principle-it is based in prejudice. Besides, you are
not truthful when you say that the utterances of the
pulpit generally are incredible. I have been a constant
attendant at church all my life, and I declare without
hesitation that three quarters of the sermons I have
heard have been other than doctrinal sermons. The
majority of the sermons preached have their foundation in the eternal principles of right-in the broad
moralities to which you and every other decent man
subscribes. You know that, as a system of morals,
Christianity is faultless. You know that if the world
should live up to the morals of Christianity-we will
say nothing about it as a system of religion-there
would be no murder, no war, no slavery, no drunkenness, no licentiousness, no lying, no stealing, no cheating, no wrong,-that everywhere men would walk in
peace and concord and fraternal affection, and that the
golden rule would be the universal rule of life. The
pulpit is the spot of all others in the world where,




126         Letters to the Jonefes.
through the wonderful agency of the human voice,
these morals are taught; and do you tell me that you
will not go to church because you do not believe in
what is taught there? You do believe in at least three
quarters of the teachings of the pulpit. You do yourself great wrong by holding yourself aloof from an
institution which would not only nourish your intellect,
but instruct and confirm you in those moralities which
are the only safeguard of that society which numbers
among its members your wife and children.
Perhaps you can afford, or feel that you can afford,
to teach your children that Christianity, as a system of
religion, is a cheat, but you cannot afford to confound
with it, and condemn with it, the moralities of Christianity. You cannot afford to teach your children by words
or deeds that the great mass of the teachings of the pulpit are unworthy of consideration; for their safety, their
respectability, their prosperity, their happiness, all depend upon the adoption and practice of Christian morals.
Do you teach them Christian morals? Are you careful to sit down on the Sabbath, or at any other time,
and instruct them in those moralities that are essential
to the right and happy issue of their lives? My friend,
you have not the face to do any such thing, for your
position will not permit you to do it without shame.
Well, if you refuse to do it, who will? Unhappily
your wife is quite as much under your influence as your




To Benjamin Franklin Jones          127
children, and unless those children go to church on
Sunday, they will get no instruction in Christian
morals whatever, except such as they may pick up at
the public schools.
These children of yours are not to blame for being
in the world. They came forth from nothingness in
answer to your call, and they are on your hands. You
are responsible to them, at least, for their right training. You are in personal honor bound to give them
such instruction in morals as will tend to preserve to
them health of body and mind, and honorable relations
with society. How will you do it? By telling them
that church-going is foolishness, and Sabbath-keeping
nonsense, and the teachings of the pulpit only the
tricks of priestcraft and the amusement of blockheads?
No, sir. You must take these children by the hand
and lead them to church, and show that there are, at
least, some things that come from the pulpit which
you respect. It will not be enough that you send them
and their mother. You must go with them, for, if
you do not, they will soon learn the realities of the
pulpit, and, in learning them, learn to pity you, and to
hold your intolerance in contempt. You must stand
by the pulpit as the great teacher of private and pub.
lic morality, or do an awful injustice to the children
for whose life and healthy education you are re.
sponsible.




THE NINTH LETTER.
9r l asIiumtona %10s1o gonuts.
CONOERNING THE POLICY OF MAKVG HIS BRA.mIs
MARKETABLE.
UDGING from recent conversations with you, and
from many things I have heard about you, you
are not satisfied with the results of your life, thus far.
You have tried various fields of effort, and have failed
of the success you sought in all. You know my honest
friendship for you, and the measurable respect which
I entertain not only for your intellectual gifts, but for
that high ideal of art and its mission which has been
the only bar to your reward.  You wrote a novel,
which failed, simply because you refused to write one
which would succeed. You erected a standard in your
own soul, bowed to your standard, and then was disgusted because the humanity upon which you had




To Wafliington Allfton Jones.    129
turned your back would not applaud your doings. You
wrote a poem, classical without a doubt-powerful and
beautiful in its way beyond question-but, somehow,
the poem had no point of sympathy with the age which
you believed ought to receive and love it. Behind
these two books you sat in imperial pride, disgusted
with a world which seemed so little in knowledge and
so low in feeling-so unable to appreciate you, and so
ready to give its applause to men of slenderer faculty
and shallower motive. Will you permit me to say to
you now, before it is too late, that the world will never
come to you, and that you must go to the world or die
voiceless?
My friend, the world is not in want, just at this
time, of life-size portraits in oil, with all their stately
conventional accompaniments. The world happens to
want photographs, and will have nothing but photographs. You choose to stand by your pigments and
your canvas and your camel's hair, and to starve, while
all the world rushes by you to patronize the sun. You
imagine that it would degrade you to have anything to
do with photographs. You would not make one-you
would not color one-you would not touch one with
one of your fingers, because your idea of art, or what
you choose to consider art, is so high, that you could
have nothing to do with the production of a photo.
graph without a sense of humiliation. You will die
6*




130         Letters to the Jonefes.
rather than disgrace the art to which you are in honor
married, and degrade the standard you have erected
for yourself. Die, my friend, if it will be any satisfaction to you; but the world will never thank you for
it, and, moreover, will vote you a fool for your voluntary sacrifice. The only way for you is to meet the
want of the world and make photographs-make the
best photographs the world has seen-so that it shall
come to you and ask you to do it favors, and beg
the privilege of paying you much honor and much
money.
I confess to you again that I have a measurable
respect for that ideal of art which refuses all compromise with popular prejudice, and, standing alone,
strives to compel the homage of the world, and failing,
stands in self-complacent pride to pity and despise
those who will not bow to it. Yet this ideal, upon
which the issue of your life seems to be turning, has in
it, to a fatal degree, the element of selfishness. My
friend, what is art but a minister? What is art but a
vehicle by which you may transport the life which is
m you to the souls by which you are surrounded-for
their good, and not for yours? Cut off from its relations to life-to the life which produces it, and that to
which it is addressed-standing by itself-what is art
but a phantom?-a nothing with a name? God has
endowed you with intellectual wealth. He has given




To Waflington Allfton Jones.          131
you great powers, and set you upon a throne where
you can reason and judge and reach outward and up.
ward into great imaginations; he has given you the
power to speak and to sing. For what purpose? Is
it that you may selfishly shut this wealth of yours into
a coffer, and close the lips of your utterance, from obedience to a standard of art which has more reference
to you than to the world to which you owe service?
You are rich and must dispense. Who gave you your
wealth? Is it for you to stand and higgle with the
world about the. form or style in which it shall receive
your gifts? Is it for you to declare that the world
shall have none of your expression, unless it be accepted in a certain form, which form shall have supreme
consideration?
You have carried your reverence for your idea of
art and your contempt for those who will not regard it
so far that you cannot speak with patience of those
who succeed in the fields which have witnessed your
failure. You have learned to despise those whom the
world applauds, because you think the world's applause
can only be won by treachery to art. This contempt
for those who succeed is the logical result of your own
failure; and now you sit alone, in selfish pride, a martyr, as you suppose, to your better ideal and your higher aim, the world unconscious meanwhile that you have
in you the power to move and bless it. You hlave told




132         Letters to the Jonefes.
me that you distrust a book which sells, and have
spoken with undisguised contempt of men who carry
"marketable brains," as you were pleased to call
them.
And now we get at our subject. What are brains
good for that are not marketable? My belief is that
a man who has brains is in duty bound to make them
marketable. My position is that unless mind, under
Christian direction and control, is marketable, it is useless; and you must permit me to use the word marketable in the largest sense. The world is as we find it
-not as we would have it. We write, we speak, we
paint, we give utterance to all forms of art, in order
to make the world richer and better; and unless the
world will receive what we utter, and take it into its
life, it is not benefited, and our utterance is a failure.
There are doubtless a few great souls, laboring in some
difficult departments of art, that must labor for the
few, and through these few find their way to the
world, but these are exceptional cases. Yours is not
one, for you have undertaken only to address the
world at large, and it is your fault that you have
failed. You would not take the world as you found it.
You intended that the world should take you as it
found you. You did not go to the world to sell,
throwing yourself into its markets, but you stood at
your own door, determined to compel the world to




To Walhington Alliton Jones.    133
come to you and buy. The world did not come, and I
do not blame it.
In intellectual no less than in commercial affairs,
the market is the first consideration.  The manufacturer never adopts one style of fabric as that to which
alone his efforts at production shall be devoted, but
studies the market, and shifts his machinery and modifies his material in accordance with the indications of
the market. We hear of certain preachers who preach
great sermons, such as a few only love to hear, or have
the power to remember and appropriate. They have
no right to preach such sermons. If they have any
gold in them, they should reduce it to coin that will
pass current with the people. There is a stiff and
stilted set in occupation of many of the American pulpits, who suspect a preacher who is very popular, and
hold in contempt him who places himself in thorough
sympathy with the crowd around him that he may
reach and hold them, and who are particularly dis.
gusted with what they call " sensation preaching." It
seems better to them to preach to small congregations
than to draw large houses by making their preaching
marketable. Is this being all things to all men, that
they may save some?  Not at all. It is being one
thing to a few men, whether they save any or not. St.
Paul understood the matter of making his intellectual
gifts and his preaching marketable. We know writers




134         Letters to the Jonefes.
of magnificent powers-some of them who are certainly
very greatly your superiors in mental acquisitionswho are burying their gifts in books that find no buyers. These men might as well be horseblocks, so far
as the world is concerned. They are doing nothing
for the world. They have not consulted its market,
and appear to know and care nothing about its wants.
We know orators who never let themselves down to
minister to the desire of those whom they address to
be melted and moved, but who, with stately dignity,
insist on being rational and dull, and on driving from
them those whom they desire to hold.
You, my friend, sympathize with all these men, but
do you not see how much a selfish pride lies at the
basis of their action? I give you and them credit for
that self-respect which shrinks from the tricks of the
mountebank and the demagogue, but I charge you and
them with a pride which is not consistent with the
position of the artist as a minister of life. With all
your nobleness of nature, you have never been able to
conceive of a higher motive of action, in a literary man,
than the ambition to achieve literary distinction. You
do not understand how a man can undertake a literary
enterprise which has not literary reputation for its object; and when some book is uttered for the simple
purpose of doing good, by one who has it in him to do
great things for himself-a book which does not even




To Wafhington Allfton Jones.         135
pretend to literary merit beyond that which lies in
adapting means to ends-you curl your lip in contempt
for his voluntary degradation. He writes for a market, and the world accepts him, and he does the world
good; and if he did not write for a market, the world
would spurn him as it spurns you; and he would be
deprived as you are of the privilege of doing the world
good.
I suppose you hug to yourself the delusion that
you are in advance of your age, and that what it fails
to appreciate, posterity will receive at its full value.
To leave out of consideration the selfishness of this
fancy —as if you and your reputation were the only
things to be taken into account-let me assure you that
the coming age will have its own heroes to look after,
and will stand a very small chance of stumbling upon
your dead novel and your still-born poem. Sir, the
only way for you to win the reputation which I know
you desire, is to throw your life-your thinking and
acting self-into this age, as a power to uplift and
mould and bless it. You must come into the market.
You must shape your utterances to the want of the
times. You must be content to work for others, forgetful of yourself, and to give to men, in cups from
which they will drink it, that life with which God has
filled you.
But you despise your age. The age has not treated




136           Letters to the Jonefes.
you well. The age is vulgar and low and rude and
ungrateful. The age is mercenary and immoral. Your
wounded self-love has misled you, sir. You are living
in the greatest age of the world, and your soul only
needs to be attuned to its great movements and events
to find itself coined into words for their majestic
music.
" Every age
Appears to souls who live in it (ask Carlyle)
Most unheroic. Ours, for instance, ours!
The thinkers scout it and the poets abound
Who scorn to touch it with a finger-tip:
A pewter age-mixed metal, silver-washed;
An age of scum, spooned off the richer past;
An age of patches for old gaberdines;
An age of mere transition, meaning nought
Except that what succeeds must shame it quite,
If God please."
And now, as I have broached Mrs. Browning upon
this point, I will go farther and let her sing the rest
of my paragraph:
" ay, if there's room for poets in the world
A little overgrown (I think there is),
Their sole work is to represent the ageTheir age, not Charlemagne's-this live, throbbing age,
That brawls, cheats, maddens, calculates, aspires,
And spends more passion, more heroic heat,
Betwixt the mirrors of its drawing rooms,
Than Roland with his knights at Roncesvalles.
To flinch from modern varnish, coat, or flounce.
Cry out for togas and the picturesque,
Is fatal-foolish too.    *    *    *




To Waflhington Allfton Jones.    137
"Never flinch,
But, still unscrupulously epic, catch
Upon the burning lava of a song
The full-veined, heaving, double-breasted age;
That, when the next shall come, the men of that
May touch the impress with reverent hand, and say,'Behold-behold the paps we all have sucked!'"
"This is living art,
Which thus presents and thus records true life."
Do what you can to make your age great. Be alike
its minister and its mouthpiece. Give yourself to your
age, and your age will take care of you, and the ages
to come will be the guardians of your fame.
When you spoke to me of " marketable brains," I
understood you of course to use the phrase in a lower
sense than that in which I have used it. I have not
adopted your meaning, simply because it walks in the
shadow of mine. A man who adapts the products of
his brain to the real wants of the world, is the man
who sells his books and makes money by them. You
ought to be sensible enough to know that a man who
writes from no higher motive than the desire to win
money, cannot meet the wants of the world, and that
he who writes a marketable book must necessarily be
something better than a mercenary wretch who would
sell all that is godlike in him for gold. Yet I will admit that the desire to win bread-nay, the ambition to
acquire a competent wealth-is, in its subordinate




138          Letters to the Jonefes.
place, a worthy motive in impelling the artist to make
his brains marketable. Commerce puts its brains into
the market, and nobody cries out " shame," or hints at
humiliation. The brains of all this working, trading,
scheming world are in the market. These " marketable
brains " are the pabulum of progress everywhere; and a
writer is good for nothing for the world who does not
understand what it is to work for a living-what it is
to expend life for the means of continuing life. Nay,
I would go farther, and say that God has, by direct
intent, compelled the worker in all departments of art
to make his brains marketable, under penalty of
starving.
I know, my friend, that this is all very disgusting
to you. You feel that the artist ought to be king, and
that grateful men should only be too glad to do homage
and bring gifts to him. You are wrong. The people
are kings, and you are their servant. The law announced by the Great Teacher on this point is universal, and without exception. A man is felt to be great
only by reason of his power to minister to the life
around him. Life licks the hand that feeds it. You
think it a degradation to go to the world with your
brains, adapting their product to the popular want, and
taking your pay in the currency of the country; but it
is this or something worse. Think of those kings of
the old English literature, who were obliged to sit and




To Wafllington Allfton Jones.          139
sneak in the anterooms of nobles, and beg the patronage of the rich and great, and become lickspittles for
the sake of the influence that would sell their books,
and give them position, and furnish them with bread
to starve on and a garret to die in. The world will
not buy what it does not want, and you are unreasonable if you blame it. You thirst for the world's praise,
you need its money, you really envy the success of
others, and because praise and money and success are
denied you, you button your coat to your chin, turn up
your nose to the world, and, "grand, gloomy, and peculiar," stand apart.
You mistake entirely if you suppose the world to
be a contemptible master; and this failure to appreciate the world-this persistent under-estimate of the
world-which you and all of your class entertain, is
enough to account for your failure. The world deals
with practical life, and is guided by experience and
common sense. The world is at work to win bread
and raiment and shelter.  The world digs the field,
and searches the seas, and trades, and manufactures,
and builds railroads and telegraphs and ships, and
prints and reads newspapers. The world is full of the
cares of government. The world fights battles and
pays taxes. The world is under a great pressure of
care and work. This working, trading, fighting, careful world holds within itself the great, vital forces of




140          Letters to the Jonefes.
society, the practical interests of humanity, the wisest,
brightest, noblest minds that live. And this world, for
which you have such contempt, is the only competent
judge of the artist, and is always the final judge of
art. " The light of the public square will test its value," said Michael Angelo to the young sculptor whose
work he was examining. The remark was the bow of
a respectful servant to his master. You can write for
dillettanti if you choose-for an audience " fit, though
few "-for the fellows of the mutual admiration society-and they will praise you; but you know that if
you fail to get hold of this world which you affect to
despise, you are powerless and without reward as a
literary man.
As I think of your kingly gifts of intellect, and of
the power there is in you to bless mankind, art itself
appears before me in the likeness of Him who wore
the seamless robe among humble disciples, and the
crown of thorns between thieves. Ah! when art becomes the mediator between genius and the world,
then does it answer to its noblest ideal, and confer the
greatest glory upon the artist. You, in your realm,
are almost as incomprehensible and unapproachable
by the world as God was, before He expressed His
love and His practical good will through the gift of
The Beloved. He had wrought augustly in the heavens, and filled the earth with glory. He had crowded




To Wathington Allfton Jones.    141
immensity with the tokens of His power and the expressions of His majestic thought; but the world did
not see Him-would not receive Him-regarded Him
without reverence. Why should He not despise the
world? Why, falling back upon the dignity of His
Godhood, and sufficient for himself, did He not spurn
the race which so disgraced itself and Him? Ah! He
pitied. He respected the characteristics of the nature
He had made. He sent the choicest child of His Infinite Bosom down into the world to wear its humblest
garb, and eat its homeliest fare, and perform its meanest offices, and die its most terrible and disgraceful
death, that the world might drink through Him the
life of the Everlasting Father. My friend, send your
mediator into the world.  Send the child of your
bosom, clad in humble garments-charged only with a
mission of love and practical good will to men. Let
me assure you that you can only bring the world to
love you and learn of you by making it the partaker
of your life through some expression of art which it
can appropriate. No matter if it die. It shall rise
again, and when it rises, rise to you, drawing all men
unto it and unto you.




THE TENTH LETTER.
lo oZ6. geemiah Zottni, P.D.
CONCERNING THE FAILURE OF HIS PULPIT MINISTRY
NEVER  should have undertaken this letter to
you, had I not been requested to do so by one of
your professional brethren. It is not a pleasant thing
to find fault with people, particularly with those whose
faults are the results of natural organization. My object
in finding fault at any time, with any person, is reform;
and you can never reform. You cannot make yourself
over again, into something different and better; and
this ink of mine will be wasted, unless it shall address
other eyes than yours. The assurance that other eyes
will be interested in what I have to say to you determines me to write this letter.
Surveying the American pulpit, I find it occupied
by men who can legitimately be divided into two great




To Rev. Jeremiah Jones, D. D.    143
classes, and these, for the present purpose, I will call
the poetical and the unpoetical. I am not sure that
these designations are sufficiently definite, or even sufficiently suggestive, but I can tell you what I mean by
them. The class which I denominate poetical is composed of men who possess imagination, strong and tender sympathies, profound insight into human character
and motive, and the power to attract to themselves the
affections of those around them. These men possess
also what we term individuality in an unusual degreea quality which carries with it the power to transmute
truth into life-to resolve systems into character-to
appropriate, digest, and assimilate all spiritual food
whatsoever, so that when they preach they do not
preach as the mouthpieces of a school, or a sect, or a
system, but as revelators and promulgators of a life.
These are the preachers who touch men, because they
preach out of their own life and experience. These
are the men who speak from the heart and reach the
heart-the men who possess what, for lack of a better
name, we call magnetism. The unpoetical class may
roughly be defined by the statement that they are the
opposites of the poetical. They have no imagination;
they are not men of strong and tender sympathies;
they do not possess fine insight (though some of them
possess a degree of cunning which is mistaken for it);
they have not the power to attract to themselves the




144          Letters to the Jonefes.
affections of those around them; they do not possess
true individuality (though they may have peculiarities or
idiosyncracies which pass for it); and, in their utterances, they are little more than the mouthpieces of
the systems and schools to which they are attached.
To the latter class I assign you without the slight.
est hesitation, because nature has placed you in it. I
have no expectation that you will ever be diflfrent
from what you are. It is possible that some terrible
affliction or some great humiliation will soften your
character, and develop your heart, and quicken your
sympathies, but I could hardly pray for such discipline
as would be necessary to revolutionize your constitution. No sir; you will probably live and die the same
sort of a man you always have been-useful in some
respects, self-complacent in all respects —an irreproachable, unlovable, sound, solid, dogmatic doctor of divinity.
I give you credit for an honest Christian character
and purpose, but I should be false to my convictions
should I fail to tell you that I consider you and all who
are like you to be out of place in the Christian pulpit.
Your religion is mostly a matter of intellect. You are
fond of preaching doctrine. You delight in what you
are pleased to denominate theology. You rejoice in a
controversy. You speak as by authority. You denounce sin, as if you had never sinned, and never ex



To Rev. Jeremiah Jones, D.D.    145
pected to sin. You unfold what you call " the scheme
of salvation " as if it were a grand contrivance of the
Supreme Being to circumvent Himself-a marvellous
invention by which He is enabled to harmonize His
justice with His pity. You have a " system of truth "
to promulgate, and, in your mind, it seems essential
that this system should be accepted in all its parts as
the condition of salvation. You are, indeed, the special guardian of the orthodoxy of your region. Alas!
for the poor candidate for the Christian ministry who
may be obliged to pass under your examination! Alas!
for any person who may presume to decide that a man
can be a Christian without embracing your "system
of truth," or that religion is not quite as much a matter of the brains as of the heart! You lug along into
this present age, to its scandal and its shame, to,the
detriment and disgrace of the Christian cause, the old
Puritan idea that assent to a creed-that belief in certain dogmas-has more to do with the soundness of a
man's Christianity than anything else. You do not
ask, first and foremost, in your inquiries concerning a
man, whether his life is pure-pious toward God and
loving and benevolent toward men-but whether he is
sound in his "views." At this very moment, while
you are reading these words, you are wondering, not
whether I am a Christian man, loving and serving God
and men, but whether I wn orthodox or heterodox in
7




146          Letters to the Jonefes.
my " views; " and because I hold your frigid scholasticism in contempt, you regard me as " loose " in my
" views," and, on the whole, dangerous in my teach.
ings. Tell me, doctor, if it is not so? Have you not
been troubled more with doubts about my orthodoxy,
while reading this paragraph, than anything else?
Will you be offended if I reveal to you the nature
of your Sabbath ministrations, and endeavor to show
you why you cannot hope to accomplish very much for
your Master?  Your manner is not humble-your
spirit is not humble. You do not enter your church
on Sunday morning crushed with a sense of your
responsibility-feeling the need of aid and inspiration
-filled with tender reverence toward God and love
toward man.  Your utterances are those of a selfsufficient man.  Your prayers touch nobody.  They
are full of sonorous phrases culled from the sacred
text; they abound in passages of information addressed to the Deity; they embrace all the objects of
Christian solicitude and labor; they range the earth
through all the degrees of latitude and longitude for
subjects; the sailor, the soldier, the heathen, the Jews,
the Roman Catholics and all other errorists, the foreign missionaries, the home missionaries, the civil au.
thorities-all these come in by catalogue.  These
broad generalities of petition, which do not grow, as
you very well know, out of any immediate impulse




To Rev. Jeremiah Jones, D. D.    147
of desire, but only out of a general impression of desirableness, have not the slightest power to lead a con
gregation in genuine prayer. The thing sounds well.
The words are well chosen and well pronounced, but
they do not lift a heart to its Maker, or give voice to
the-aspirations of a single soul.
Your sermon is like your prayer, and carries with
it the idea that you are safe, and comparatively independent. It is as if you were to stand in your pulpit,
and say: "Here am I, Rev. Jeremiah Jones, D. D.,
safe, by the grace of God, forever, with a message to
deliver. Repent and believe what I believe, and you
will be saved; refuse to repent and believe what I
believe, and you will be damned. Take things in my
way, see things as I see them, adopt my opinions and
my system, and you will be all right. If you do not,
then you will be all wrong, and I wash my hands of
all responsibility for your destruction."  Salvation
would seem, in your scheme, to be a matter of machinery. You preach just what you were taught to
preach at the theological seminary, and have not taken
a single step in advance. It is the same old brainstuff, unsoftened by a better love, unfertilized by a
better experience, without life or the power to enrich
life.  You put before your hearers a skeleton, and
hold them responsible for not seeing and admitting
that it is a beautiful form of life. You give them a




148        Letters to the Jonefes.
system and a scheme, when they need a life and a
heart. You insist on driving them by threats to Him
who, with a different spirit and different policy, said
"Come unto me."
Do not understand me to blame you for all this, for
you cannot very well help it. I only state the matter
in detail, to prove that the pulpit is not the place for
you. You are honest enough, but you have no sensibility. You have mind enough, but you have none of
that poetic or spiritual insight which enables other
men to seize the essence of that scheme of truths with
whose adjustment into form and system you so constantly busy yourself. I once entered the study of a
preacher who had been for three months out of public
employment, and who, to demonstrate to me his industry, assured me that he had written during that
period thirty-six sermons. Indeed, he showed me the
pile. Now there was a job which you could have done
just as well as he, but neither you nor he, nor any
other man who could do it, is fit to write a sermon at
all. Moved by no special want of the souls around
him, taking no suggestions from the living time, he
wrote sermons-very sound sermons, doubtless-but
sermons with no more power in them to move men
than there is in a mathematical proposition. You seem
to feel that the truth is the truth, and that if you
promulgate it with an honest purpose, it is all that is
I  _ _,            _      _              __ _  _ 




To Rev. Jeremiah Jones, D. D.    149
necessary. Men occasionally find their way into your
pulpit, however, to whom your congregation give their
hearts before they have uttered ten sentences, and
why? The heart instinctively acknowledges the credentials of its teacher. There is something about some
men, in the pulpit, which draws my heart to them at
once. I know by their bearing, by the sound of their
voices, by every emanation of their personality, that
their hearts are on a sympathetic level with all humanity  that they are bowing tearfully under their
own burden while they help to bear mine-that they
are my fellows in temptation, in struggle, in aspiration.
This poetic instinct-this power to reach through
words and phrases, and forms and types and figures,
and to grasp the naked truths of which they are only
the representatives-is essential to any man who feeds
the people. You are fond of creeds and catechisms;
and those who listen to you are instructed in creeds
and catechisms; but you might just as hopefully undertake to make a living tree out of dry chips, as a
living Christian out of creeds and catechisms. This
poetic instinct or power.is the solvent of creeds and
catechisms-the gastric juice that softens them into
chyle, and the absorbents that suck from them their
vital fluid for the soul's nourishment. But why do I
talk to you about this poetic faculty?  You do not




150         Letters to the Jonefes.
understand me. You do not comprehend me at all.
You think that I am foggy and fanciful-transcendental and nonsensical; but it is you-stolid pretender to
solidity and sound sense-who are foggy and fanciful.
You think and call yourself a matter-of-fact man, when
you are only a matter-of-form man. The poet is the
man who touches facts. The poet is the man of common sense, who finds and reveals the inner life and
meaning of things? The true poet in a free pulpit is
a man in his place, and no other man is fit for the
place. When the true poet speaks from the pulpit, the
people hear; and they will hear gladly no other man.
He is the only man who can reveal a congregation to
itself. The great charm of The Great Teacher to the
woman at the well was His pooFer to tell her all the
things that ever she did, and that was her sole recommendation of Him to those of her friends whom she
invited into His presence.
There are not so many preachers of your class in
the world now as there were once, thank God! It was
this brain Christianity-this intellectualism-this scholasticism-that gave root to those great controversies
and schisms which disgraced Christianity, alike in the
judgment of history and the eyes of a faithless world.
Pride of theological opinion, sectarian partisanship,
strifes of words, splittings of hairs, formalisms,-these
have been the curse of Christianity and the clog upon




To Rev. Jeremiah Jones, D. D.    151
its progress in all ages. You and those who are like
you have made a complicated and difficult thing of that
which is exquisitely simple. You have surrounded that
fountain which flows with a volume of sparkling bounty
for the cleansing and the healing of all humanity,
with hedges of words and forms, and conditions and
prejudices; yet you are too blind to see it. But I see
your class fading out, and another and a better coming
in, and I mark with gratitude the change in the general
aspect of the Christian enterprise.  The differences
between sects are growing small by degrees and beautifully less. Brother grasps the hand of brother across
the chasms which the fathers made. Names do not
separate as they once did those whom the common reception of the vital truths of Christianity has made one.
Love unites those whom logic and learning have long
divided. And you, sir, with your dry doctrinal discourses, your array of redemptive machinery, your denunciations and threatenings, your fulminations against
opposing sects, your pride of opinion and your hard
and unpoetic nature, are out of place in a pulpit that is
already far in advance of you.
I recently addressed a letter to an intelligent relative of yours concerning his habit of staying away from
the church on the Sabbath. I found serious fault with.him for his delinquencies in this respect. I undertook
to present to him sufficient reasons for reform, and




152          Letters to the Jonefes.
prominently among those reasons I stated that he
needed the intellectual stimulus which, in his circumstances, he would only secure by attendance on the
ministrations of the pulpit. I do not retract what I
said to him at all. I should advise him to hear you
preach, rather than to hear nobody, spending his Sabbaths in idleness; yet I cannot hide from you the fact
that you and those who are like you are responsible to
a great extent for the thinly attended Christian meetings of the Sabbath. I cannot help feeling that those
preachers who find themselves without power to draw
men to them by the beauty of their lives and characters, and by the adaptedness of their teachings to the
popular want, and by that magnetism  of poetic or
spiritual sympathy which is the heavenly baptism, are
doing more than they imagine to depopulate the
churches. I confess to no small degree of sympathy
with those who prefer staying at home to hearing you
preach; for though I am sometimes stirred intellectually
by you, I am never moved religiously and spiritually.
Look at the churches with me for a moment, my
reverend friend, and mark what you see. Here is a
church with a man in the pulpit of great intellectual
gifts and excellent scholarship.  His sermons are
models of English composition. He is known in all
the churches as a sound man. Look over his congre.
gation: two, three, four, in a pew-old med, steady




To Rev. Jeremiah Jones, D. D.    153
men, pious women-some asleep-all decorous. You
will see the same sight fifty-two Sundays of the year.
The teaching is good enough, but there is no motion.
The instruction is sound, but there is no impulse. How
many respectable, sleepy, sound preachers and churches
do you suppose there are in this country which show
no change from Sabbath to Sabbath and from year to
year, and which make no aggressive inroads upon the
worldly life which environs them?  Well, here is
another church, whose preacher never was celebrated
for the soundness of his " views "-who, indeed, never
paid very much attention to his " views;" but who tried
to do something-tried to introduce a new life into his
church and into the community in which he lived.
What is there about this man that draws the crowd
to him? He is not so intellectual as his neighbor; he
is not so good a scholar as his neighbor; he cannot
write so fine a sermon as his neighbor, but he draws a
church full of people. The young flock to him; his
Sunday school is the largest to be found for many
miles around him, and his church is recognized as a
thing of power and progress. This man has reached
the hearts of his people, through the sympathies of his
poetic nature. He has touched them where they live
-not where they think. He has melted them, moulded
them, moved them. I tell you, sir, that thin churches
are very much attributable to thin ministers-not thin
7*
L__




154         Letters to the Jonefes.
in brains, or scholarship, but thin in heart and thin in
human sympathy and thin in spirituality-thin where
they should be thickest.
You, Dr. Jones, and your brethren of the pulpit,
very rarely get honestly talked to from the pews, but
you could learn a great deal more from them than you
imagine, if they would talk to you honestly. You rarely
hear the truth. Your friends praise you, and your enemies shun you. Let me say to you this: that when you
preach you preach with such an air of authority, and
such an assumption of superiority, and such an apparent lack of sympathy with my weaknesses and
trials, that I find myself rising in opposition to you.
I think that all those hearts which have not schooled
themselves to accept your teachings as they are rendered, are affected as mine is. Do not deceive yourself with the thought that these feelings are the offspring of depravity, for they are no such thing. They
are the spirit's protest against your right to teach.
Very differently do many other men affect me. Ah!
well do I remember one, sleeping now within a few rods
of where I write, and waking uncounted miles away
beyond the blue ether that draws the veil between my
eyes and heaven, who took my heart in his hand when.
ever it pleased him. He had an intellect as bright and
keen and strong as yours, but his power was not in
that. He preached more a sermon that a tasteful




To Rev. Jeremiah Jones, D. D.         155
scholar would call brilliant, but his power was not in
the brilliancy of his sermons. His power was in his
sanctified, spiritualized humanity, that never blamed
but always pitied me, that took me in its charitable
arms and blessed me, that held my hand and gave me
loving fellowship, that unselfishly poured out its life
that the life of all humanity might be raised to a higher
level. You are too great in your own estimation. You
are too much impressed with your own dignity. He
was Humility's personification, and carried a sense of his
anworthiness as a constant burden. Ah! my friend,
have you not learned that the weak do not commit
their burdens to the strong? Learn of your children,
then, who seek for refuge in their mother's slender
arms and not in yours.
I told you at the outset that I had no expectation
of reforming you, because it is not in you to be reformed. You lack the insight to apprehend spiritual
things; you are harsh; you are coarse; you dwell in
forms and phrases; you are constitutionally imperious;
you are not sympathetic; you are not tempted as other
men are. This lack of sympathy in your nature has cut
you off from participation in the severest trials and
struggles that ever visit the Christian soul. You cannot
have charity for others. But there are some who will
read this letter and gather perhaps a valuable hint from
it.  It will not have been written in vain if one




156          Letters to the Jonefes.
preacher learns that his power and usefulness in the
pulpit do not reside either in the orthodoxy or the
heterodoxy of his " views," do not reside in any system
of theology or in any intellectual power, but do reside
in a spiritual life, which, acting through its sympathies,
by apprehension of and application to human need,
nourishes, elevates and spiritualizes human character.




THE ELEVENTH LETTER.
la 9tIpa oimtr  Tow.
CONCERNING TEE BEST WAY OF SPENDIVG HIS MONE.
T   HE art least understood in this country, where
money is made easily and quickly, is that of
spending it wisely and well. Most men think that if
they could make money they would run the risk of
spending it properly; and these same men criticise
their fortunate neighbors; yet it is doubtless true that
the poor do not monopolize the wisdom of the world,
and that if they were to change places with the rich
money would be no better spent than it is now. There
are enough poor men who succeed, from time to time,
in getting rich, to show that wealth rarely brings with
it the wisdom which will dispense it with comfort and
credit to its possessor and with genuine benefit to the
world. Of how few men of wealth can it be said that




158          Letters to the Jonefes.
they spend their money well!  One is niggardly,
another is lavish; one runs into sports and debauch.
cries, another into extravagance in equipage; one apes
the fashionable, or does what he can to buy social
position, another separates himself from others by
using his money to thrust his personal eccentricities
before the public; one expends thousands in ostentatious charities, and there is occasionally one who impoverishes himself and his family by his improvident
beneficence. Caprice and impulse seem to govern the
spending of money more than principle, with the large
majority of those who have money to spend.
It is a good sign for a man who has made money to
take to spending it in any way that is not vicious. It
usually shows that he is getting over the excitement
of pursuit-that the pleasures of seeking wealth are
beginning to pall, and that his heart is looking for a
fresh delight. It seems to me to be a good sign, I say,
for a man to reach this point, for it proves that he is
not a miser. When a man can content himself with
a never-ending search for wealth, or rather, when a
rich man can be content with the pleasure of adding to
wealth which he can never use, and which will be
most likely to damage his children, it is evident that he
possesses a very sordid nature, or that his character
has been made sordid by his absorbing pursuit of gain.
To begin to dispense with one hand what the other




To Stephen Girard Jones.            159
has gained, and still may be gaining, is to assume a
healthy attitude. A man who does this is not spoil.
ing.
It happens in this country, where estates are not
entailed, that there are but a few families which, for
any considerable number of generations, remain rich.
Wealth, when left to voluntary management, is almost
uniformly dissipated in two or three generations, so
that the great-grandchild nearly always is obliged to
begin just where the great-grandfather did. Oftener
than otherwise, the reach of a fortune is briefer than
this. It is thas that men are not bred to the management and the expenditure of wealth. Our rich men are
men who have made their money-men who have spent
their youth in learning how to make it, and spent the
strength of their years in making it. On becoming
rich, they find that there is one part of their education
which has been neglected, viz.: that which relates to
the best methods of spending money. They are not
misers; they are not sordid men; they would gladly
do something which shall prove to the world that they
are not altogether ungrateful for the handsome way in
which it has treated them. Moreover, there is a call
within them for repayment in comfort or some form
of satisfaction for the toil and care which it has cost
them to win wealth. Many a man on reaching wealth
has found himself confronted by the great problem of




160         Letters to the Jonefes.
his life, and many a man, unable to solve it, has given
up the thought of spending, and gone back to money.
getting to seek his sole satisfaction in the excitement
of the pursuit. Not unfrequently the process of getting
money has been so absorbing, and has so shut out of
the mind all culture and all generous pleasure, that the
spending of money can fulfil no want.
I have said thus much generally on this subject, my
friend, that you may attach sufficient importance to
what I have to say to you. You have been fortunate
in business. Your enterprise and industry have been
abundantly rewarded. All your adventures have been
prospered, and you are to-day the richest of all the
Joneses. What are you going to do with your money?
You have arrived at the point when this inquiry has, I
am sure, profound interest for you. -You are not a
man who can be content with the life-long task of acquisition.  You wish to give an expression to your
wealth, for your personal satisfaction, and for the purpose of adding privileges to the lot of those whom you
love.
In laying out your plans for spending money, the
first consideration is safety for yourself and your
family. Any plan which contemplates idleness or dissipation for yourself or your children, is illegitimate,
and will prove to be ruinous. I am not afraid that you
will ever become idle, or, even, that you will become




To Stephen Girard Jones.          161
devoted to any form of vicious indulgence.  Your
habits of industry and sobriety are well formed, and I
do not think that you are in any personal danger. The
danger relates entirely to your family. You had a
hard time when you were a boy, and through all your
early manhood worked severely. You have frequently
said to your friends that you did not intend that your
children should be subjected to as much hardship as
you had been. There is danger that your parental
tenderness will injure these children. Permit me to
ask what harm those early hardships of yours inflicted
upon you? Was it not by the means of these hardships that you learned to achieve your successes?
Then why do you so tenderly deprecate hardships for
your children? Let me warn you that through this
tenderness for your children your wealth lay become
-nay, is quite likely to become-a curse to them.
This notion that wealth brings immunity from industry is the ruin of thousands every year. I do not
intend to convey the idea that your children shall all
work in the same way that you have done, but that
neither girl nor boy of yours shall ever receive the impression that she or he can live reputably or happily
without the systematic and useful employment of their
minds, or their hands, or both. Give them all a better
education than you had, and subject them to the same
rigid rules of labor and discipline which are applied to




162         Letters to the Jonefes.
their poorer classmates. Above all things teach them
that they must rely upon themselves for their position
in the world, and that all children are mean-spirited
and contemptible who base their respectability on the
wealth of their father. Give all your boys a business,
and assist them in it sparingly, and with great dis.
crimination. Let no son of yours "lie down" on you,
but make all the help you give them depend upon their
personal worthiness to receive it. Money won without
effort is little prized, and you may be sure that you
will get few thanks from your children for releasing
them from the necessity of industry. Nobody knows
better than you how necessary industry is to the comfort and pleasure of living, and it should be your
special care, in all your schemes for spending money
upon your family, that these schemes should involve
family employment or improvement. Better a thousand
times throw your money into the river, than permit it
to spoil your children.
There is danger also to the community in which
you live, and to the humble men by whom you are
surrounded, in indiscreet benefactions. You are im.
pulsive; your money now comes to you easily; and it
is not hard for you to toss a gratuity to those whom
you know will be glad to receive it. Universal obser.
vation proves that money which does not cost any.
thing is rarely well spent., Men will thank you pro



To Stephen Girard Jones.          163
fusely for the dollar which you give them for some
insignificant service, but that dollar is pretty certain to
be spent upon their vices, and to help to make them
beggars and flunkies. You, doubtless, find yourself
surrounded by men who would " sponge" you gladly
-who think and say that you could give them any
amount of money " and never feel it." It is possible
that there are a few mean-spirited Joneses who are
already wondering whether you intend to leave them
any money, or who have already asked you for " assistance." Never dismiss an application for help without
examination; but be careful how you give money to
those who are able to earn it. Never think it a disgrace to be thought mean and niggardly by those who
wish to get your money, without rendering an equivalent for it.
It is not necessary for me to tell you that no subscription paper ever starts within five miles of you that
does not come to you before it completes its round.
Now do not get sick of the sight of these petitions.
The offices of charity are never complete, and public
spirit will always find work to do in fresh measures of
improvement. It is right that you, who have been so
abundantly prospered, should be abundantly charitable.
It is right that you, who have so large a stake in public
order and general prosperity, should minister generously to public improvement. The real danger with




164         Letters to the Jonefes.
you, is, that you will give in such a way as to relieve
others of the burden of duty which they should carry.
This, I confess, is not the common weakness of rich
men, but it would be their common error if the community were to have its will. There is a contemptible
spirit pervading the social body which would gladly
shirk the cost of supporting public charities and publie institutions and public improvements and throw it
upon rich men. You are the member of a church; and
I am ashamed to say that there is quite a general feeling among the members that you could pay the entire
expenses "without feeling it."  I suppose you might
do this without suffering very much pecuniary inconvenience from it; but if you were to do it, it would
damage not only the church but you. The jealousy of
the very mien who would gladly shirk expenses that
they would load upon your shoulders, would destroy
the harmony of the church and drive you from it. It
v, ill sometimes fall to your lot to pay that which niggardly souls refuse to pay, after the willing ones have
exhausted their ability.  Stand squarely up to this
work, like the noble man you are. Never let it be seen
by the community that you have any desire to avoid ex.,
penditures which it belongs to you to make. Do your
part scrupulously. Let every man see and feel that
while you will not relieve others of burdens which
belong to them, you are determined to carry all which




To Stephen Girard Jones.           165
belong to you, to the last ounce. Let society feel that
it can rely upon you at all times for that measure of
help which it belongs to you to render.
I am aware that I have told you but little as yet as
to the proper way of spending money, but I have narrowed the field of inquiry. I have told you never to
spend it in such a way as to destroy the industrious
habits of your family or to feed the vices of the poor
men around you, or to foster a mendicant spirit among
your relatives, or to relieve general society from the
burdens which should be equitably distributed among
its constituents. And now, let me go further and say
that all ostentation is vulgar. It is quite the habit of
men who become rich to show off their wealth by
building large and costly houses, and furnishing them
at great expense, and displaying luxurious'equipage.
The men who do this are very rarely those who have
lived in fine houses, or had practical acquaintance with
luxurious domestic appointments; but this seems to be
the only way in which they can give expression to
their wealth.  It is, I admit, better than nothing.
Streets and building sites are improved by it; uphol.
sterers are benefited by it; various tradesmen are enriched by it; but, after all, ostentation is vulgar, and,
moreover, it is not to your liking at all. I know you
would not enjoy a splendid house; but you would en.
joy a better one than you are in now-therefore, build




166         Letters to the Jonefes.
it. You have good common sense and very little taste;
therefore with only general directions, pass this business into the hands of the best architect your money
can secure. Buy good taste, and simply insist on con
venience and solidity. Build a house which will be in
good taste a hundred years hence, so that it may be
delighted in by your children and your grandchildren.
It may seem impertinent to tell a man who has been
shrewd enough to make money that he is not shrewd
enough to spend it, but unless you have good advice,
at every step of your progress, in starting an establishment-that is, in building your house, furnishing it,
laying out your grounds, &c., &c.,-you will be sure
to excite the ridicule of your friends, and bring mortification to yourself. It is quite the habit of men who
have made money to grow self-sufficient, and to suppose that because they have succeeded so well in one
department of effort, they are equal to any. A practiced eye can tell these men always, by the barren spots
and the uncultivated and unoccupied spots which their
management betrays. There will always be something
to show that the establishment belongs to the man,
and that the man does not belong to the establishment
-something to show by its incompleteness the incompleteness of the owner's education-a library without
books, a palace without pictures, a garden without
flowers or fruits, luxury without comfort, or some




To Stephen Girard Jones.          167
thing of the sort. You can have such a place as this
very easily, by simply taking the whole matter into
your own hands, and assuming that you know all that
it is necessary to know at starting; but far better will
it be for you, and far more for your credit, to assume
nothing-to assume that you know nothing, and to
look upon the building and equipment of an establishment as a course of education.
I can imagine nothing more delightful or more useful in family life than the two or three years of study
and development which attend the proper building of
a house, and the appointment of the details of a generous establishment. If you and your wife and your
sons and your daughters, beginning with the assumption that you know nothing of the subject, devote
yourselves to study and conversation on domestic ar-.chitecture, and landscape gardening, and furniture and
books and pictures, seeking for information and suggestions from every source, you will be surprised and
delighted to find in the end that you have entered into
a new life. You will find that you have grown quite
as rapidly as your house has grown, and that your
grounds and gardens have been developed no more
than your mind. You will learn, in short, how to
spend money upon yourself and yours, in a way which
ministers to your growth, your industry, and your happiness. You are the pupils of the artists and scholars




168         Letters to the Jonefes.
and artisans whom you employ, studying under the most
favorable circumstances; and you will find that an
education thus pleasantly inaugurated may be pursued
for life. It may be pursued in books, in society, in
travel.
There is much that I might say on this subject of
spending money as it relates to other people, in differ.
ent circumstances, but I am addressing you-a good
type of " our successful men."  You will find that a
costly table will give you the gout, and your children
the dyspepsia. Therefore live plainly. You will find
that luxurious clothing only ministers to the vanity of
your children; therefore insist that it shall be simply
good and chaste and tasteful. You will find that your
personal necessities are limited, and that, unless you
permit your wealth to produce a brood of artificial
wants, you can neither expend your money upon your
children nor yourself. Have an eye to those around
you. The greatest kindness you can show to the poor
is to give them employment, and to pay them for it
well and promptly. No matter if you do not really
need their service. If they need your money, make a
service for them. Above all things, do not give them
money, unless calamity overtake them, or they become
unable to labor. I cannot too strongly insist that in
all your dealings with society, with the poor, and with
your children, you shall never depreciate in their minds




To Stephen Girard Jones.           169
the value of money. Never permit yourself, by your
way of spending or bestowing money, to convey the
idea that money has cost you nothing; for money is
sacred. It is the price of the labor of mind and body,
and by some person, at some time, somewhere, was dug
from the ground, or drawn from the sea. Because you
have been fortunate in accumulating it, you have no
right so to spend it as to convey to the public an incorrect idea of its cost and true value.
After all, I imagine that you will find it very difficult to spend well that with which Providence has favored you, in your home life, and in the ordinary charities which appeal to you. In closing, will you permit
me to suggest that there is a class of charities and a
class of public objects which make special appeal to
you. The great majority of your fellow-citizens-even
those who possess what we denominate a competence,
-have nothing left to pay, after defraying the expenses of their individual and home life, and contributing their portion to the support of society and the
ordinary charities. For a great hospital, for a literary
or a religious institution, for a public library, for a
public gallery of art, they have nothing. These things
exist through the contributions of such men as you, or
they do not exist at all. They are costly, and must be
bought by men of superabundant wealth. You are a
rational man, my friend, and know that already you
8




170         Letters to the Jonefes.
have more wealth than you and your family can advantageously spend. You know, also, that it is always
best for a man to be his own executor. If you propose to do anything for the world, do it now. See to
the expenditure of your own money, and reap the satisfaction of seeing your generation enjoying the fruit of
your benefactions. This waiting until death to give
away useless money is the height of folly. The money
is yours to spend: spend it, and thus multiply the
sources of your satisfaction. Do not wait until you
are dead to do a deed from which you have the right
to draw pleasure. Make what you can out of your
life, and get what satisfaction you can out of your
money. There are many chances that it will be wasted
or misapplied if you leave it to be administered after
you shall have passed away.




THE TWELFTH LETTER.
go uotd osaes.
CONCERNIING HIS OPINION THAT HE YNO WS PRETTY MUCB
EVER YTIING.
T   CANNOT tell whether you believe you know as
much as you pretend to know, or whether you
assume to know everything as a matter of policy. I
am simply aware that there is no subject presented to
you in practical Science, in art, in philosophy, in morals, in religion, in politics, in literature, in society,
upon which you do not assume to entertain a valuable
opinion, and that you pretend to be competent to direct
every affair, and guide and control every interest with
which you have anything to do. It seems to be a matter of principle with you to follow no man's lead, and
to refuse to admit for a moment that any man's lead
except your own can be worthy of following. I never
knew you to ask advice of anybody. It has always




172          Letters to the Jonefes.
seemed as if you regard such a measure as an exhibition of weakness-one which would compromise your
position, and bring you to personal disgrace. No:
you are authority on all subjects, an expert in all arts,
an adept in all affairs; and I do not know of a position
for whose duties you would admit yourself to be incompetent, from that of a milliner to that of a minister.
In all my dealings with the world I have noticed
that the wisest men make the smallest pretensions.
The prominent characteristic of all really great men is
teachableness-readiness to learn of everybody, respect
for the opinions of others, and modesty touching their
own attainments. Sir Isaac Newton was so far from
being a vain or pretentious man that he had the humblest estimate of his own knowledge. Baron Humboldt was as simple and unpretending as a child.
There are men among the living in this country-the
mention of whose names is not necessary to call up
their faces-whose exceeding simplicity is only equalled
by their exceeding wisdom. My friend, a pretentious
man is, by token of his pretentiousness, a charlatan, always. A man needs only to be wise to have learned
that no man in the world monopolizes its wisdom, and
that there is no man living who cannot teach him
something. Human faculty and human life are hardly
sufficient for learning one thing thoroughly.  Each
man pursues his specialty, learning something of it




To Noel Jones.                173
while he lives; and though he may gather mich in
general touching the specialties of others, he gets little
Knowledge of detail out of his own walk.
You ought to have seen enough of the world to
know that it is full of larger men than you are, or can
ever hope to be. You ought to know enough of these
men, by this time, to understand that no pretension of
yours can raise you to their altitude, or bring you into
communion with them. The true position for you, and
for me, and for everybody-wise or simple-is that
of a learner. Many years ago, as a young physician
was standing by the bedside of a sick little child in
the dirty hovel of one who was very poor, he was
asked by a coarse-looking Irish woman who had come
in to do a neighborly office, and-was standing at the
opposite side of the bed, whether he thought the patient that lay gasping between them would live. He
replied that he did not think he could live until the
next morning. There was a shrewd twinkle in her
black eyes and a positive tone in her voice as she expressed an opposite opinion, and, at the same time,
gave her reasons for it. He went away, and thought
about it; and the more he thought the more he became
convinced that this ignorant Irish woman had been a
better student of disease than he had, and that her
observation of previous cases must have been both intimate and extensive. He gave to her reasons their




174        Letters to the Jonefes.
scientific significance, and before he reached his office
he had become prepared to meet what he had supposed
to be a dying patient a convalescent the next morning.
He did find the patient a convalescent, and left him, at
last, with a valuable addition to his knowledge of
symptoms, beyond what books and his own observation had ever taught him. He learned a second lesson
by this incident quite as valuable to him, personally, as
the first. It was, never to regard as valueless the
opinions of the ignorant when they were based on
observation, until he had given them a fair and thorough investigation.
This ignorant woman had a right to her opinion.
She had earned it, for she had studied. She may have
known nothing else particularly worth knowing, but
this golden bit of wisdom she had won, and the professors and teachers of medicine everywhere would
have honored themselves by humbly learning it of her.
Every great and wise brain that lives bows to and
honors the humblest hand that brings it food and inspiration; but the position which you assume is an
insult to all the humble life-not to say high life-by
which you are surrounded.  There are one or two
things —perhaps half a dozen-which you know better
than others. Upon these, men come to you for information; but they know that of all others about which
you pretend to know so much you really'know nothing.




To Noel Jones.               175
Let your neighbors estimate you. They recognize you
as their superior in one or two points, only. Be thankful that there aie one or two things which you really
know, and which you can offer in exchange for the
world of knowledge which the multitudinous life
around you has found and proved. You have your
specialties, and other men have theirs; and they know,
and you ought to know and practically to acknowledge, that every man you meet has just as much advantage over you as you have over him. It is the habit
to speak sneeringly of the poverty of human knowledge, but human knowledge is not poor in the aggregate. It is the individual man that knows so little;
mankind knows much. Every secret of the earth and
the air and every treasure of human experience is in
some man's keeping. If every man could bring to a
common depository his special discovery, and the results of his particular thinking and working, and there
were a mind large enough to comprehend and systematize the mass, with a life sufficiently long for the
enterprise, it would be found that human knowledge is
as great as humanity itself. Those little books of wisdom contained in the minds of your humble neighbors,
my friend, are open to you, and you owe it to yourself
and them to read them with reverence.
I have said that the prominent characteristic of all
really great and wise men is teachableness. I may add




176         Letters to the Jonefes.
to this that without teachableness there can be no true
greatness, for greatness consists, not in great powers
alone, and not in genius alone, but in the power to
appropriate, and in the deed of appropriating, the wisdom made ready for it by other minds. For a great
man, a thousand minds are thinking, a thousand hands
are working, a thousand lives are living; and the
results of all this thinking and working and living
come to him and pass into his life, contributing to his
growth and feeding his power. The canal that crosses
an empire, and feeds the roots of a score of springing
cities, and gives passage to the bread of a continent,
and swells the revenues of a state, has its unseen and
unacknowledged feeders, that collect its waters among
the mountains, and pour them into its trailing volume,
and keep it always full. A great man lays every mind
with which he comes into contact under tribute. Great
listeners are such men-absorbent of every drop of
common sense and even the faintest spray of human
experience. Unerring ears have they, to distinguish
between the true and the false in the coins that are
tossed upon their counter. Finding a man who has
successfully pursued some specialty in knowledge or
art, they suck his mind as they would suck an orange,
throwing away cells and seeds, and drinking the juice
for nutriment and refreshment. Do you not see, my
friend, that it is not the policy of such men as these to




To Noel Jones.                177
be pretentious? They could not afford it, even were
they disposed to be.
The man who takes your position must necessarily
go through life at a disadvantage. Your policy drives
men from you. Pretentiousness is always and everywhere an insult to society. You repel the knowledge
that naturally flows to one who pretends to nothing.
Nobody goes to you with a suggestion, because your
attitude repels suggestions. You assume to possess all
the knowledge that you need. All that you learn outside of the specialty which absorbs the most of your
active power, you are obliged to learn by book, or by
some trick of indirection. You think that you can
only appear to be wise by assuming to be wise; and it
is possible that you are right. It is possible that you
impose upon a few who would otherwise hold you for
a very common sort of person; but all the reputation
for wisdom you may secure, can never compensate for
what you lose by cutting off these voluntary supplies.
Water flows naturally into the humble, open spaces; it
never seeks the mountains, except to run around them.
Self-love, self-conceit, pride of opinion-all these are
barriers to knowledge and barriers to success. During
your brief life, you have suffered from many grave
mistakes, which, had you been a teachable man, might
easily have been avoided. Your position repelled all
information voluntarily offered, and your pride forbade
8*




178         Letters to the Jonefes.
you to seek for it at the only available sources. You
have blundered through experiments whose results
could have been given you by a dozen of your neighbors, who took a secret satisfaction in witnessing
your expensive failures. He is the wise man only who,
holding himself unselfishly tributary to the lives of
others, lays hold of, and appropriates, the wisdom won
by the life around him. It should be in life as it is in
science. If I read the record of a series of experiments by which a certain scientific result is arrived at,
I do not feel myself humbled by the discovery, nor
humbled by using the discovery for my own advantage.
I contribute freely to my own work-I appropriate
freely the results of the work of others, as a member
of the great commonwealth of life. It is a noble thing
to teach; it is a blessed thing to learn.
I have told you that there are probably one or two
things about which you know more than others, and
touching which your opinions are more valuable than
those of others. These things your talents have given
you special power to learn; and circumstances have
conspired to give you sufficient opportunity. There
are ten thousand things on which you assume to have
an opinion which you never can have a valuable opin.
ion upon. You have not those peculiar gifts which
will enable you to acquire experimental knowledge of
them. You pretend to know something of finance, for




To Noel Jones.               179
instance, but it is not in you to comprehend finance.
No matter how much you may run against the business world-the whole of your financial wisdom will
consist of familiarity with common business forms, and
the grasp of the general fact that if a man spends mor
than he earns he loses money, while if he earns more
than he spends, he is making it. You pretend to possess a good literary judgment and taste, but you may
study from this time until doomsday and you will
never, working by yourself, win either. A life of
study with relation to some arts will not win for you
what the instincts of some men will teach them in a
moment. You have your special knowledge. Talent
and opportunity have given it to you. There is an indefinitely large range of life in which you can never
discover anything that will be of the slightest value to
you or to others. There is an indefinitely large range
of life through which you must be led by other minds,
or you will never explore them at all. The bird-fancier
with whom I walk in the fields is a humble person. I
may talk of literature, or art, or science, or politics,
and he will show no sign of interest or intelligence;
but if I talk of birds he becomes my teacher-nay, for
the time, a king. The air around him is full of creatures whose habits and characteristics he knows. He
can pour out to me a tide of beautiful knowledge, for
the acquirement of which nature has given him the




180         Letters to the Jonefes.
needed eyes and ears and apprehensions. He knows
the note of every bird, the nest of every bird, the
plumage of every bird. He has possessed himself of
their secrets, so that, imitating their language, and
taking the advantage over them which reason gives
him, he can entrap them. No uncommon bird, be it
never so small, can invade his neighborhood without his
detecting it; and he marks the retirement of a family
from the region that they have frequented as if they
belonged to his own species, and had advertised their
departure. Now this man's knowledge may be humble,
but it is genuine; and it is knowledge which, without
his help, you could not have acquired. Nay, you never
would have thought of studying birds any more than
you would the insects that slide up and down the sun.
beams before your door.
Knowledge is a very precious possession, and always dignifies its possessor. The theorists of all ages
have filled the world with words, and the pulpit and
the library and the school are thronged with words
that represent more or less of the material and the
spiritual worlds, but knowledge does not come from
the pulpit, or the library, or the school. To know a
thing is to live a thing-is to-come into personal con.
tact and acquaintance with a thing through the use of
powers adapted to win acquaintance by contact.  I
have seen grave doctors and literary men and clergy



To Noel Jones.               181
men and shrewd business men listen for hours to
the talk of a man who knew nothing but the habits
of a horse, and the means of making that animal the
kind and healthy servant of man; and although he
could not construct a sentence of English elegantly,
they listened as intently as if he were reciting the
choicest poem in the language with the unction of a
Kemble, forgetful alike of his provincial pronuncia,
tion and his incorrect English. These men were learners.  They had found a man who knew something.
He had been studying the horse all his life for themstudying the horse in the stable; and they were drinking in that which they felt to be positive knowledge.
It was worth more than all the books on that subject
they had ever read, and worth more than all their observation, because they had not the proper powers for
studying the' horse by contact. It is thus that every
man is studying something for every other man-gaining absolute knowledge by contact with special departments of material existence, or by demonstrating spiritual truth in personal experience.
If you really imagine that you know so much that
you do not need to seek advice or ask for knowledge at
the hand of even the humblest man with whom you
are thrown into relation, you must change your opinion and your policy. You really know but very little,
and you cannot obtain any great addition to your posit




182         Letters to the Jonefes.
tive knowledge without laying those under tribute
whose knowledge has been won as yours has been
won. Or if you imagine that you have powers adapted
to discovery and demonstration in all the varied fields
of knowledge, you must relieve yourself of that mistake. You have not even the powers necessary to
make a bird-catcher or a horse-tamer. It is not in you
to be either; and when you fancy that you could be
a speaker of Congress, or a writer for the press, or a
preacher, or a secretary of the treasury, if you only
had the opportunity for the development or the trial
of your powers, you are simply permitting your self.
conceit to befool you. You thirst for all the honors,
and would be king. Be content with your specialty,
and bear me witness that even the bird-fancier and the
horse-tamer have dignity and honor which you have
hardly won in the higher field in which Providence has
placed you, and to which your powers are specially
adapted. Conquer your specialty, and take gratefully
from other hands the knowledge and wisdom which
you have neither the time nor the power to acquire.
You do not know, I suppose, that your assumption
makes all who are around you uncomfortable. You do
not give them their places. You permit to them no
prerogatives and no specialties. The very mother who
bore you is not permitted to select her own dress, and
the wife that endures you has her milliner and mantua



To Noel Jones.               183
maker prescribed to her.  You are presumptuous
enough to believe that you know how to dress a
woman. Such presumption stuns me. I tremble when
I think how some women-gentle, albeit, as lambs, in
the enjoyment of money and liberty-would spurn the
dictation of "the humble person who writes these
lines," if such dictation should invade the sanctities of
their wardrobe. Oh, Noel Jones! You and I know
nothing about these things. Our opinion is not good
for anything on these subjects. I never bought but
one silk on my own responsibility, and the shout of
derision with which it was greeted by one inconsiderate
member of the family, and the mingled pity and con.
tempt expressed by the silence of the remainder, have
remained so terribly fresh in my memory that I have
never since presumed to take such a liberty. I meekly
carried it back, and begged the smirking clerk to take
it again, promising to trade it out in some other
way. And the women were right, as they usually are.
What did I know about a woman's dress? What did
I know about colors that were "trying to the complexion," and colors that harmonized with each other,
and colors and fabrics that harmonized with certain
ages and seasons, and colors and fabrics that harmonized with other colors and fabrics that for economical
reasons were to be worn with them? Nothing; yet
it is my private opinion that I knew as much as you
L 




184         Letters to the Joneles.
do. The truth is that the amount of instinct contained
in a woman's little finger is worth more as a guide in
all matters pertaining to the female dress than your
wisdom and mine combined.  Suppose the women
should undertake to dictate trousers to us! I would
not wear a garment thus selected, on principle; but
you-I think such an evidence of presumption on the
part of a woman would kill you outright.
No, Mr. Noel Jones, you do not know pretty much
everything. Indeed, you know but a very few things
thoroughly, and you would now know a great deal more
than you do if you had never pretended to know anything. All sensible people measure you. They give
you credit for being an ordinarily acute and wise man
-the greatest drawback on your reputation being
your assumption of knowledge that you do not possess,
while the only bar to your popularity resides in your
unwillingness to give to men and women the place and
consideration to which their specialties of talent and
knowledge entitle them.




THE THIRTEENTH LETTER.
TDo ufuts toafte otnes, Talogmr.
OONCERNING TtE DUTIES AND DANGERS OF HIS PROFESSION.
YOU  have recently commenced the practice of a
profession of which I possess no intimate knowledge. I know, generally, that it is a respectable profession, which requires in those who successfully pursue it the best style of intellectual power, thorough
industry, and a vast amount of special learning. I
know that it is a profession which, in times of peace,
attracts to itself the most ambitious young men, because it affords the best opportunities for rising to
positions of influence and power. I know also, that,
while it is prostituted to the basest uses-as any profession may be-it fulfils a want in the establishment
of justice between man and man, and occupies a legitimate and an important place in society. I can very




186         Letters to the Jonefes.
honestly congratulate you on your connection with
this profession, and your prospects in it. Will you
read what an outsider has to say of its dangers and
duties?
The principal-perhaps the only-dangers which
lie in your way relate to your personal character. I
regard you as a Christian young man, and I find you
in a profession which necessarily brings you into contact with the meanest and the vilest elements in the
community. Almost every day of your life you find
yourself in communication with men whose motives are
vile and whose characters are base. You are obliged
to associate with them. You not unfrequently find
your interest and sympathies engaged in their behalf.
Almost the whole education of the court-room-to say
nothing of the office-is an education in the ways of
sin. It is there that murder and robbery and adultery
and swindling and cruelty and all the forms of crime
and vice are exposed, to their minutest details, and as
a lawyer, you are necessarily absorbed by these details. There is not a form of vice with which you are
not bound to become familiar. All the meannesses
and all the rottennesses of human nature and human
character, and all the modes of their exhibition, must
come into contact with you, and leave their mark.
How this can be done without the blunting of your
sensibilities I do not know. How this can be done




To Rufus Choate Jones.             187
without damaging, if not destroying, your moral sense,
is beyond my comprehension. I have heard very good
lawyers talk about the most shocking cases in a shockingly professional way, and witnessed their amusement
with the details of some beastly case that had found
its way into the court-room. I should be sorry to think
that you could ever acquire such moral indifference, yet
I know that you may, and believe that you will, if you
do not guard yourself particularly against it.
It seems to me quite impossible that a man should
have a professional interest in the details of a case of
crime without losing something of the moral repugnance with which the case would naturally inspire him.
I suppose that this loss of moral sensibility may not
necessarily be accompanied by actual depravity, yet it
is, nevertheless, an evil, for it destroys one of the barriers to depravity. Any influence which familiarizes
the mind with sin and crime to such an extent that sin
and crime cease to fill the soul with horror or disgust,
is much to be deprecated. If you had a young son or
a young daughter, you would regard any event which
would bring their minds into familiarity with crime as
a calamity. It would probably be a greater calamity
to them than to you, but why it should be different in
kind, I cannot tell. I think you have only to look
around you, among your own profession, to find men
who have received incurable damage through their




188         Letters to the Jonefes.
professional intimacy with sin. You know numbers
of lawyers who take an interest which is anything but
professiorial in the details of a case of shame that ought
to fill them with an abhorrence so deep that they
would gladly fly from it.
Again, constant familiarity with the weak and the
erring side of human nature destroys respect for human
nature itself. The more you learn of the members of
the legal profession, the more you will learn that great
numbers of them have ceased to respect human nature.
This seems to me to be one of the greatest calamities
that can befal any man. I do not wonder at this effect
at all: There is no class of people in the world that
see so great cause to hold human nature in contempt
as the legal. They come into contact with men whom
the world calls honorable and good, and find in them
such traits of meanness, and such hypocrisy and dis.
honor, and such readiness to be crippled under tempta.
tion, and such untruthfulness under the pressure of
selfish interest, that they naturally enough conclude
that one man is about as bad as another, and that no
man is to be relied upon where his appetites or his
selfish interests are concerned. I say that I do not
wonder at this, but it is much to be deprecated; and
I know of no way to avoid it, except by free associa.
tion with good men and innocent women and children.
When a man has lost his respect for human nature, he




To Rufus Choate Jones.             189
has lost, necessarily, his respect for himself, for,
whether he wills it or not, he goes with his kind.
But there is another danger still which will assail
you-more subtle and more damaging than professional interest in crime or professional intimacy with
the worst side of human nature, and this is professional
interest in criminals themselves. I am sorry to say it,
but you will find yourself the professional defender of
men whom you know to be the foes of society-of
thieves, pickpockets, gamblers, murderers, seducers,
swindlers.  You will find yourself either lying or
tempted to lie in order to shield from justice men
who you know ought to be punished. You will find
yourself arrayed against law and order, against the
peace of the commonwealth, against the purity. of society, against morals and religion, in the defense of a
man whom you know to be guilty of the crime charged
against him, and deserving of the punishment attached
to it by the laws of the land. I say " you," because
I suppose you will naturally follow in the track of the
principal members of your profession. Every criminal
is defended to the uttermost by men who are zealous
in their attempt to prove him innocent, and to shield
him from punishment. Great professional reputations
are sometimes acquired by saving from the gallows a
man who everybody is morally certain ought to be
hung. A triumph of crime like this is quoted ad.




190          Letters to the Jonefes.
miringly by the profession, and regarded with com.
placent triumph by the professional victor. I have
heard men talk by the hour to prove that to be true
which they and everybody else knew, in all moral certainty, to be false, and to demonstrate the innocence
of a man whom they knew to be guilty. Indeed, this
mode of proceeding has become a part of the machinery of the law, and is recognized as entirely legitimate. We hear, occasionally, of cases so bad that the
counsel engaged in the defence throw them up in disgust; but these are very rare, and I doubt whether
such a surrender is regarded as a fair thing by the
profession.
Now I ask you, before professional usage has had
time to warp your common sense, what must be the
effect upon the mind of an advocate, of throwing the
entire sum of his personal power-all his logic, all his
learning, all his sympathies and desires, all his interests
and all his earnestness-into the defence of a man
who he has good reason to believe is a foe to law
and order, and justly deserving of punishment for a
breach of both? What must be the effect of identifying his own personal and professional reputation with
the success of a criminal, in his attempt to shield himself from justice? What must be the effect upon his
mind of a triumph over the law for himself and for
him who has trampled it under his feet? I know that




To Rufus Choate Jones.            191
there is a specious style of argument in use in your
profession which takes the decision of a case out of the
hands of a criminal's professional defender, and gives
it to the jury before which he is to be tried. The
lawyers will say that an advocate has no right to decide
on the guilt of a man on trial-that his work is to
defend; and that twelve men, whose business under
the law it is, will make the decision. This is strictly
professional talk-the talk of men who make a distinction between law and justice-the talk of men who
stand by that which is simply legal, and let justice and
right take care of themselves. These men would tell
you that if you were engaged in the defence of a person who you were morally certain was guilty of the
crime charged upon him, you would not be excusable
did you not do what you could to save him, by a resort
to every legal trick and quibble of which you might be
the master. This is precisely what they do. They
personally rejoice in the defeat of justice. Whenever
justice is defeated, and right denied or destroyed, in
" a court of justice," there is always present one lawyer
to rejoice personally over the fact —a lawyer whose
sympathies and success are identified with the triumph
of the wrong-doer.
I remember, when a lad, of witnessing an interview
between a couple of eminent lawyers,-each of whom
has come to great personal and political honor since




192          Letters to the Jonefes.
then,-which to my unsophisticated moral sense, was
quite shocking. One had been attending a term of
court in an adjoining county, for the management of
an important case in which both were interested. The
returning lawyer greeted his associate with a triumphant
flourish of his riding stick, and exclaimed-" We've
beaten them! we've beaten them! "  Thereupon they
gleefully talked the matter over.  It seemed very
strange to me that they could rejoice at having " beaten
them," without the slightest reference to the matter
of justice and of right. If the man had been engaged
in a personal fight or a horse race, and had come off the
winner, he would have expressed his triumph in the
same way, and with just as little reference to the moral
aspects and relations of the case. This was a professional triumph, and it did not matter, apparently,
whether justice had shared the victory with him, or
had been vanquished with his opponents in the suit.
This professional indifference to justice and to right,
acquired by the identification of your own personal
success with the safety and success of those whom you
know or believe to be criminals, is what I warn you
against. I tell you that this cannot be indulged in
without injury to you, and were it not an ungrateful
and offensive task, I could refer you to illustrious in.
stances of legal depravity, induced by earnest defence
of the wrong. I could point you to eminent lawyers,




To Rufus Choate Jones.             193
with whom lying is as easy as breathing-men who do
not scruple to misrepresent, misconstrue, prevaricate
cheat, resort to all mean and unworthy subterfuges,
suppress, make use of all available means to carry a
point against law and good society and pure morals, in
favor of ruffians who deserve nothing better than the
halter or the prison. A lawyer has only to do this
thing to a sufficient extent with sufficient earnestness,
to lose both his sense of, and respect for, the right, and
to become morally worthless.
I suppose that you will tell me that I am a dreamer,
and that I am suggesting something that is entirely
impracticable, when I advise you never to permit yourself to be professionally arrayed against justice. Your
seniors in the profession will smile contemptuously at
my suggestion, I know, and I will not blame them, for
I know how fatally they have been warped by their
practice. I take the broad ground that no man, whatever may be his profession, has a moral right to defeat,
or to strive by all the means at his command, to defeat
the erds of justice in the community in which he lives,
and that no man can consciously identify himself with
the wrong, and fight earnestly for its triumph, without
inflicting incalculable damage upon his own moral sense
and moral character. I do not believe that you-a
professional man —have a moral right to do in a court
of justice what I-Tnot a professional man-have no
9




194         Letters to the Jonefes.
moral right to do. I do not believe that you have a
moral right to stand up before a jury, and try to mislead it by tricks of language, by quibbles of law, by
springing of false issues, by engaging their sympathies
at the expense of their reason, and I know it is a moral
impossibility for you to do it without damage to yourself. Mark my words: I do not advise you to leave a
client while you have a reasonable doubt of his guilt,
or a case where you have a reasonable doubt of its injustice; but I say without hesitation that when you
become convinced that you can go no further in the
professional advocacy of a man or a cause, without
arraying yourself against right, against justice, against
the well being of society, you are bound, in duty to
God, the state, and yourself, to abandon that man or
cause; and all the professional sophistry which you
and your professional brethren can muster can never
convince me to the contrary.
The fact thatthe money of thieves and scoundrels
will buy the best legal service to be had is notorious,
and it is but a short time ago that it appeared in evidence, in a court of justice, that a certain crime was
committed by a man who, calculating his chances for
detection, relied upon a certain lawyer to " get him off."
Was that lawyer practically a friend or a foe to society?
Had he a right professionally, or in any way, so to conduct himself as to encourage the commission of crime?




To Rufus Choate Jones.               195
But I leave this point for one closely related to it.
The whole tendency of your profession, as it seems to
me, is the substitution of a human for a divine rule of
action. I think that a lawyer naturally comes to view
every action and every man from a legal stand-point
All your practical dealing with men is on a legal basis.
If there be a hole in the law, large enough to let
through your criminal client, you will pull him through.
A flaw in an indictment will spoil a case legally, while
morally and rationally it is not touched at all. You
feel justified in doing anything that is legal, to favor
your client, or your cause. Your conscience has come
to identify that which is legal with that which is right.
The law of the Lord is perfect; the law of man is imperfect; and your constant association with the latter,
naturally crowds the other out of sight. You measure
the actions of men by that prescriptive red tape of
yours, and the standard of right within your own soul
is degraded.
Litigation is one of the evils of the world, and is
voluntarily pursued more to secure personal will than
sound justice. There are many cases of doubt in which
a suit at law is entirely justifiable, not to say desirable;
but you are already old enough to know that twothirds of the civil cases tried would never find their
way into court if simple justice were all that the litigants were after.  Selfish interest, personal greed,




196          Letters to the Jonefes.
pride of purpose, wilfulness and waywardness-these
are the elements of litigation everywhere. Now it is
the misfortune of your profession that its revenue is
very largely dependent upon the selfishness and stubbornness of men. It is apparently for the personal
interest of every lawyer to foster a litigious spirit in
the community, and to nurse every cause of difference
between men. That this is done by the more disreputable of your profession, I presume you will admit;
and I am sure that you will not deny that the better
class of lawyers do not discourage litigation as much
as they might. My friend, here is a duty which I
exhort you not to avoid. If you can prevent a lawsuit
between citizens, in which no important end of justice
is involved, or settle a difference which is more a question of personal will than of right, then, as a Christian
man, and a good citizen, you are bound to interfere at
whatever personal sacrifice. If I were to foster a legal
quarrel between neighbors, which my advice would
prevent, you would call me a bad neighbor and a bad
citizen. The fact that it is for your professional interest that-neighbors quarrel does not relieve you from
the same opprobrium, for the same mean office. There.
is no man in the world so well situated for promoting
the ends of peace between citizens as the lawyer, and
if he do not avail himself of his opportunities, then he
fails in the offices of good citizenship.




To Rufus Choate Jones.            197
I hesitate to speak of one of the dangers to which
you are exposed, because it supposes that you can cease
to be a gentleman; but you will find that, in the courtroom, lawyers not unfrequently indulge in practices
which, while they may be strictly legal, are not gentlemanly. I declare to you that I have witnessed more
cowardly insolence in a court-room than in any other
place that pretended to be controlled by the laws of
decency. I have seen men whose years and positions
should have given them dignity, brow-beat and badger
and, in every way sufferable by a too indulgent court,
abuse old, simple-hearted men and honest women,
whose crime it was to be summoned as unwilling witnesses by the party opposing them. I am not familiar
with bar-rooms or brothels, but I think it would be
hard to find in any of them such flagrant instances of
ill-breeding as are witnessed at every term of court in
every court-room in the land. I do not care how high
the lawyer stands who takes advantage of his position
to abuse the honest witnesses which the law places in
lis hands for examination:-he is no gentleman. He
is a mean and cowardly scoundrel. Uinder the protection of the court, he indulges in practices so insulting
to honest and blamelesss tnen and women that all there
is within them of manhood and womanhood rises to
resent the indignity, yet they are powerless, and the
unwhipped coward rubs his hands over his clever boor



198         Letters to the Jonefes.
ishness and brutality. For your own sake-nay, for
decency's sake-be a gentleman in the court-room, and
do what you can to compel others to be gentlemen.
This gratuitous abuse of those who are so unfortunate
as to be summoned as witnesses, by the lawyers into
whose hands they fall, is the shame and disgrace of
your profession.
Rather a formidable array of dangers you will say,
I imagine; and perhaps you will add that it is not a
very promising display of duties. I grant it, but I
seek the glory of your profession and the good of
yourself. The profession of the law, when it confines
itself to the ministry of justice, is one of the noblest
in which a man can engage.  In that aspect, it is
worthy of the devotion of the best minds which the
country produces; but the profession of the law when
it is usea in the prostitution of justice for hire,-when
it is freely lent, with all the personal resources of him
who practises it, to aid the notorious criminal to escape
the punishment due to his crimes, and to thwart the
adjustment of the right between man and man, is an
outrageous nuisance. I would have you remain what
I believe you now are-a Christian lawyer-a man
who can never forget that the royal right is above the
legal letter-that God lives, and claims a place in the
human soul, and that He refuses to live there side by
side with venal falsehood. I would have you retain,




To Rufus Choate Jones.           199
amid all the temptations of your profession, your love
of justice and of right, and your hatred of injustice and
wrong. I would have you guard yourself against confounding that which is right with that which is legal,
so that the -latter shall always seem essentially the
former. I would have you maintain in all places the
demeanor of a gentleman. I would have you a good
citizen and not a promoter of litigation. I would have
you so pure, and upright, and honorable, and peaceloving, that men shall refer their differences to you
rather than carry them into court. I do not wish to
appeal to any selfish motives, but my opinion is that
such a lawyer as I desire you to be, would command a
premium in all the markets of the world.




THE FOURTEENTH LETTER.
Zo ilrs. gogaI 3, nrpIe gotrs,
CONCERNING RER ABSORBING DEVOTION TO HER O WY
PERSON.
T    AVE a great respect for the human body. As
a piece of vitalized mechanism it is the most ad-,mirable thing in the world. As the dwelling-place and
associate and minister of the human soul-the possessor of those exquisite senses through which that soul
feeds and breathes and receives knowledge and inspiration-its first home-the vestibule of its immortality
-I give it honor. It is a thing of dignity-a sacred
thing-sacred to its possessor, and sacred to those to
whom in sacred love it may be given. Whenever the
soul rises to a true appreciation of its own worth, it
pays honor to the body which bears it. Barbarism
wanders in negligent nakedness, but civilization, of
whatever type, honors the body-covers it from sight




To Mrs. Royal Purple Jones.             201
-drapes and protects it with reference to ideas of
comfort and taste. Innocence, like that possessed by
infancy, may feel no shame without drapery, but virtue, a very different thing, grows crimson when uncovered.
The human body is a thing of beauty as well as of
dignity. All civilized nations have recognized this
fact, and all have striven, more or less effectually, to
reveal or enhance that beauty by dress.  It costs
almost as much to clothe civilization as it does to feed
it; and human ingenuity is taxed to its utmost, and all
departments of nature are laid under tribute, to produce the fabrics witn which civilization enrobes itself.
This domain of dress is one which Fashion has conquered and made peculiarly her own, and it ought to
be a matter of interest to you, madam, as I doubt not
it will be to people generally, to note how far that
power has sophisticated the idea of personal dignity on
which dress is based. Up to a certain point of beauty
of fabric and elaborateness of ornamentation, dress
can be carried legitimately, and with no violence to
personal dignity; but beyond that point, there must
always come a resort to the barbaric idea, which must
necessarily bring personal degradation.  Barbarism,
without any thought of personal dignity-of bodily
sacredness-has gratified its vanity and desire for distinction by means of marks and gaudy ornaments. It
9*




202          Letters to the Jonefes.
has tattooedits skin, hung rings in its nose, worn beads
on its neck-at its girdle-at its knees, stack feathers
in its hair, and daubed paint upon its face. This kind
of ornamentation-an exhibition of personal vanityis the highest expression of the highest idea which
barbarism has ever entertained concerning the human
body.  This vanity touching the person, that feels
gratification in ornaments and trappings, has not the
slightest natural connection with that better idea which
finds in graceful drapery the refuge and shield of the
dignity belonging to the living tenement of the living
soul. You will see, therefore, that whenever fashion
carries dress to extremes, or beyond the point of giving
the body a graceful and becoming covering, it always
resorts to barbarism to help it out-to partial nakedness, or to jewels and precious stones and trinkets and
ribbons and laces and all possible sorts of ornaments.
The fashionable belle of Newport and Saratoga enters
the assembly room or the dining hall only to show that
she is sister of the South Sea Islander, and that the
same idea controls them both.
The curse of Eden seems to have been the subjection of the soul to the service of the body. When I
reflect upon the relative dignity and importance of the
soul and the body-the immortality of the one and the
mortality of the other, the heavenly alliances of the one
and the earthly alliances of the other, the Godlike ca



To Mrs. Royal Purple Jones.          203
pacities of the one and the brutal appetites of the
other-it astonishes me to realize that the soul's work
in this world is, in the majority of cases, simply that
of procuring food and raiment and shelter for the
body. It astonishes me to realize that under every
form of civilization the body is the soul's tyrant and
leads it by the nose. Naturally, the body is uppermost in the general thought. Men must have food
and clothing and shelter, or die; they must win all
these for their children, or lose them. So, under the
circumstances of our life, and the usages of our civilization, the body is necessarily a constant topic of
thought. It is not strange, therefore, that the soul
often forgets that it is master, and loses sight of its
own dignity and destiny in its habitual devotion to
the satisfaction of bodily want.
But this, Mrs. Royal Purple Jones, is not your
trouble. You are not obliged to work for a living.
Your money has been earned for you by other hands,
and your devotion to your body is voluntary and not
compulsory. Your soul, with all its fine capacities,
and its possibilities of culture and of goodness, is the
willing and devoted slave of the body in which it
lives. Your person is the central motive of your life.
Now that I call your attention to the fact, will you tell
me, or attempt to realize to yourself, how much
thought and how much time you devote to the hair




204         Letters to the Jonefes.
that adorns your head? How much of both do you
give to the little matter of eye-brows?-how much to
your teeth?-how much to your face as a whole.
with all the considerations of cuticular texture and
complexion?-how much to your hands?-how much
to your arms?-how much to your neck?-how much
to your feet?-how much to your general configuration? Madam, you are in love with your own body,
and the keenest delight of your whole life consists in
having that body admired and praised. The sense of
personal modesty and dignity which flies to dress for
refuge has really no place in you. I do not mean that
you are an immodest woman, but that this sense of
personal sacredness has been overcome by personal
vanity so far that you dress rather to show than to
hide your body-to attract attention to your person
than to make it the modest and inconspicuous tene.
ment of your soul. What is it that most absorbs your
time?  What is it that most absorbs your money?
Is it not dress? Think of the silks that you buy, and
the study that you bestow upon their selection and
manufacture into garments! Think of the hats and
the gloves and the jewelry, and of the intense and absorbing interest which attend their purchase and first
wearing!  Think of your constant observation and
criticism of the dress of your friends! I believe you
will admit to yourself, if not to me, that I have
___________________________




To Mrs. Royal Purple Jones.          205
found you out-that I know where you have your
life.
When you attend a party, what is the highest object you contemplate? Do you attend for the purpose
of enjoying the conversation of dear friends, or to minister to the pleasure of others by your own gifts of
conversation, or to enjoy the sight of pleasant faces,
or to hear music, or to engage in dancing, or such
other amusements as may be indulged in? Is it for
all or any of these that you attend? Is it not rather
to show your dress, and to display, for the admiration
of the gentlemen, and the envy of the ladies like yourself, your richly draped and elaborately ornamented
person? Would you have a single motive to attend
a party if you were obliged to dress inconspicuously
and plainly? Is it not true that your one absorbing
thought with relation to such attendance concerns the
dressing and adornment of your person? And when
you return from it, do you think of anything except the
simple questions as to how you looked, and how you
compared or contrasted with certain other women who
unfortunately are as much devoted to their persons as
you are? When you walk in the streets, what. are you
thinking about? Are you thinking of what you see
in the shop-windows, or what the shop-windows see on
you?  Are you not conscious that many eyes are
turned upon you to see what you take great pains to




206         Letters to the Jonefes.
make attractive to all eyes?  When you dress for
church, and when you enter the sacred edifice, what
thought is uppermost in your mind? Is it a thought
which becomes the holy place, or is it still of the
drapery and the ornaments with which you have hung
your person? Are you not filled everywhere-under
all circumstances-with these same vanities?  Do
they not haunt and hold you constantly?
You need not blush and hang your head, because
you find that I know you better than you have hitherto
known yourself, for you have plenty of company. The
whole world of fashionable women is controlled by the
same thoughts and ideas that control you-a world of
women who, in the pursuit of personal adornment,
have adopted the ideas of barbarism, and have personally descended toward barbarism  through such
adoption. You, madam, and all of your associates,
have, in your devotion to the dressing and bedizening
of your persons, degraded yourselves pitifully. The
whole number of fashionable female souls are but
slaves to the fading bodies in which they live. When
I look in upon a fashionable watering-place, and see
how dress and personal adornment absolutely monopolize the time and the thought of the fashionable women
assembled there-when I witness the rivalry among
them-the attempts to outshine each other in diamonds
and all the tributaries to costly dress-when I see their




To Mrs. Royal Purple Jones.    207
jealousies, and hear their ill-natured criticisms of each
other, and then realize that these women are mothers
and those of whom mothers will be made, I have
opened to me a gulf of barbarous selfishness-a scene
of gilded meanness and misery-from which I shrink
back heart-sick and disgusted. Good Heaven, madam!
what and who are you? Are you all body and no
soul? Is it decent business for a decent soul to be
constantly engaged-absorbingly occupied-in ornamenting and showing off for the gratification of per.
sonal vanity the body it inhabits? Do you realize how
low you are fallen?  Do you realize that you are
come to the small and indecent business of getting up
your person to be looked at, admired, praised,-that
the most grateful satisfactions of your life are found
in this business, and that the business itself is but a
single moral remove from prostitution?
If I have succeeded in picturing you to yourself, perhaps you will be prepared to follow me into a contemplation of a few of the natural consequences of your in.
fatuation upon your character and happiness. Will
you look among your fashionable female acquaintances,
and find one who is making any intellectual progress?
The thing is impossible. There is nothing more con.
ducive to mental growth and development in devotion
to the keeping and dressing of the person of a woman,
than there is in the keeping and the grooming and




208          Letters to the Jonefes.
harnessing of a pet horse. Look at a man who devotes
himself to a horse. He may be a very pleasant fellow,
and ordinarily intelligent, but if he is enamored of
his animal, and gives himself up to his care and ex
hibition, becoming what is known as a " horse man,"
that ends his intellectual development. When horse
gets highest in any man's mind, culture ceases. Now,
madam, it would make no difference, practically,
whether you were devoted to the person of a horse,
or the person of a pet dog, or the person of Mrs. Royal
Purple Jones. The mind that engages in no higher
business, or that finds its highest delight in no higher
pursuit than that of grooming and displaying a beautiful body, can make no progress into a nobler life.
Practically you will find this the case everywhere.
You will find that your fashionable friends do not
grow at all. They move along in the same old ruts,
prate of the same old vanities, go the same old rounds
of frivolity, and only become less sprightly and agreeable as the years pass by. Just what you see in these
people, madam, I see in you.
There is another very sad result which comes naturally from this devotion to your own person. You
are already grown supremely selfish. You have permitted your personal vanity to control you so long that
you can really see nothing in the universe but yourself. It seems proper and right that everybody should




To Mrs. Royal Purple Jones.    209
serve you. Any labor that would soil or enlarge your
small white hands-any toil that would tax the powers
of your petted body-any service for others that would
draw you away from service to your own person-is
shunned. Your mother, your sisters, your friends, are
all laid under tribute to you, and your petulance under
denial has made them your slaves. Absorbed by these
thoughts of yourself, devoted to nothing but yourself,
making room for no plans which do not relate to yourself, you have come to regard yourself as the world's
pivotal centre. It does not occur to you at all that the
kind people around you can have any interests or plans
of their own to look after. All the fish must come to
your net, or you are unhappy; and if those around you
are not made unhappy it is not because you do not try
to make them so. Sometimes you act like a miserable,
spoiled baby, and then, under the spur of jealousy, you
act like an infuriated brute.  The tendency to this
shameful selfishness is natural and irresistible, in all
who devote themselves, as you have done, to the care
and exhibition of their persons. Others may cover it
fiom sight more than you do, by a more cunning art,
but it is there. It cannot be otherwise, and I cannot
conceive of a type of selfishness more nearly perfect
than that which the character of almost any fashionable woman illustrates.
There is still another result which naturally flows




210          Letters to the Joneles.
from supreme devotion to the person, viz: vulgarity.
Madam, I look anywhere in God's world for genuine
refinement and lady-like instincts and manners rather
than to fashionable society.  True refinement and
gentle manners can never find their home in any society in which selfishness reigns. True refinement has
brains. True refinement has a heart. True refinement
always makes room in the world for others. True refinement has consideration for others.  True refinement does not find its satisfactions in the display and
adornment of the body. True refinement refuses to
be governed by fashion, having within itself a higher
and a purer law. True refinement shrinks from conspicuity and show. True refinement engages in no unworthy and unwomanly rivalries. You know that the
coarsest words you ever hear from the lips of women
-the harshest, meanest, worst things-the lowest expressions-you hear from the lips of those of your
own set. Yet mark the impudent hypocrisy of the
thing. You and your set assume to be the leaders of
society-the ton-the pattern women of the nationso far refined that all other women are counted vulgar! My friend, (if you are not by this time become
my enemy,) how can you help becoming vulgar when
you have been nothing for years but your own groom?
How can you help becoming low when you have
thought of nothing for years but your own person?




To Mrs. Royal Purple Jones.         211
You are vulgar. All your pursuits are vulgar. Your
rivals and associates are vulgar, and your ambitions
are as vulgar as those of the horse-jockey.
I would not be misunderstood. I admire a well
dressed woman. I admire a beautiful woman, and I
thoroughly approve all legitimate efforts to render the
person both of man and woman agreeable. Men and
women owe it to their own dignity to drape their persons becomingly and well, and they can do this without acquiring an absorbing passion for dress, or giving
any more than the necessary amount of thought and
time to it. The fact is that a woman who is what a
woman should be has no need of elaborate personal
ornament to make her attractive. A pure, true heart,
a self-forgetful spirit, an innocent delight in innocent
society, a wish and an effort to please, ready ministry
to the wants of others, graceful accomplishments willingly used, sprightliness and intelligence, these are
passports to personal power.  Relying upon these,
there is no woman whose person is simply and becomingly dressed who is not well dressed. With any or
all of these, the person becomes pleasing.
As I write, there comes to my memory the person
of a woman whom everybody loved and admiredthe most thoroughly popular woman I ever knew.
She was welcomed alike in fashionable and refined society, and behaved herself alike in both. She was not




212         Letters to the Jonefes.
beautiful, but she was charming.  She never ornamented her person, but she was always well dressed.
A simple, well-fitted gown, and hair tastefully disposed, were all one could see of any effort to make her
person pleasing, and these seemed to be forgotten, and,
I believe, were forgotten, the moment she entered society.  When friends were around her she had no
thought but of them-no desire but to give and receive
pleasure. If she was asked to sing she sang, and, if
it ministered to the pleasure of others, she sang patiently, even to weariness. She was as intelligent and
stimulating in sober conversation as she was playful in
spirit, and though she loved general society, and min.
gled freely in it, not a breath of slander ever sullied
her name, and not an emotion was ever excited by her
that did not do her honor. Every man admired and
honored her, and every woman-a much greater marvel-spoke in her praise. Many a belle, dressed at the
height of fashion, entered her presence only to become
insignificant. Diamonds were forgotten and splendid
dress was unmentioned, while her sweet presence, her
self-forgetful devotion to the pleasure of others, and
her gentle manners, were recalled and dwelt upon with
unalloyed delight.
Madam, I have been painting from life.  I have
painted you from life, and I have painted this friend
from life-a friend so modest and so unconscious of her




To Mrs. Royal Purple Jones.    213
charms that she would weep with her sense of unworthi.
ness if she were told that I had attempted to paint her.
How does the contrast strike you? Do you not see
that you are a slave and that she is a free woman?
Do you not see that she has entered into the eternal
realities of things, and that you are engrossed in
ephemeral nothingnesses? Do you not see that she is a
refined woman and that you are a coarse one? Do
you not see that her unselfish devotion to the happiness of others is beautiful, that her unconsciousness of
her charms is beautiful, that her simplicity is beauti.
ful, and that your selfishness and your devotion to
dress and your jealousy and' your rivalries are all vulgar and ugly and hatefull?
It is complained of by many of your sex that men
regard woman as only a plaything-a creature to be
humored and petted and controlled, and indulged in as
a troublesome luxury. It is complained of that woman
does not have her place as man's equal-as his friend,
companion, and partner.  Are men entirely in the
blame for this opinion, to the limited extent in which
i; is held? Suppose men were to take you and such
as are like you as the subjects of their study: what
would be their conclusions? Suppose they were thoroughly to comprehend your devotion to your own per
son,-to realize the absolute absorption of all your
energies and all your time by the frivolous and mean




214         Letters to the Jonefes.
objects that inthrall you-what would be their decis.
ion? What does your husband think about it? Excuse me for mentioning him, madam. I am aware that
he occupies a very small share of your attention, but,
really, the man who finds you in money has a right to
an opinion upon this point. You do not care what his
opinion is? I thought so. You have ceased to love
him, and he has ceased to oppose you. It is impossible
for your husband to love you. It is impossible for any
man either to love or to honor a woman so selfish as
you are; and your sex may blame you and those who
are like you for all the contempt which a certain class
of men feel for women.  You degrade yourself to
the position of a showy creature, good for nothing
but to spend money. You teach men contempt for
your sex, and it is only the modest and intelligent
women whom you despise that redeem it to admiration and love.




THE FIFTEENTH LETTER.
ao liXs  dRitcia  emans lrnts.
COyCERNING HER STRONG DESIRE TO BECOME AN
A UTHORESS
ILL you permit me to reply publicly to the pri.
vate letter in which you have informed me
of your strong desire to engage in literary labor, as a
form of self-expression which embraces all your ambition and all your wish to do good? Had yours been
the first letter of the kind that had reached my hand, I
should not have ventured to treat your case publicly;
but I have received a hundred such, and many of these
came to me so reluctantly-after such a struggle with
inclination-that I am convinced that you are only one
of a class which numbers its thousands in every part
of the country. Indeed, the world is full of women
whose unsatisfied lives and whose overflowing natures
fill them with suggestions of ideal good, to be won in




216          Letters to the Joneies.
some field of art. If these women could use the pencil
or the chisel, many of them would be artists, or would
try to be artists; but the pen is the only instrument
of expression with which their fingers are familiar, and
they come to regard it as their only resort. I have a
deep sympathy with this desire to write, and I am sure
that you will receive what I have to say to you as the
words of a friend.
You have a strong desire to write, you tell me.
Well, this desire to write may be associated with the
power to succeed as a writer, or it may not. The desire to write is not even prima facie evidence of fitness for writing. This desire, as I have already intimated to you, is quite universal. One of the strangest
anomalies of human nature is exhibited in the general
desire to do those things which are the most difficult
to do. A little man desires to do the work of a large
man, and a large man desires to be thought nimble.
A man of slender limb desires to be an athlete. It is
very common for men to have a strong desire to sing
or to play upon a musical instrument who could not
sing or play with a century's practice, because they
have neither voice nor ear. I suppose that nine out of
ten of the students in our colleges have a strong desire
to be orators, and you know how much, or how little,
the desire amounts to. Most probably the student who
has the least desire to be an orator of any one in his




To Mifs Felicia Hemans Jones.   217
class is the one who is most certain to become one;
and perhaps you will readily see that he who is conscious of possessing the orator's native power has least
occasion to desire it. Of the great multitude who
write, you know that only a few succeed. Nine out
of every ten fail-perhaps even a larger proportion
than this. A very few of these fail, doubtless, through
no real fault of their own, but through unfavorable
circumstances; while the most of them find to their
mortification and their cost that their desire to write
misled them entirely with regard to the work which
nature intended them to do. So you see that I do not
think much of desire as a guide to one's work in the
world. Indeed, I think it the most unreliable index
ever consulted.
I think I understand the process through which
your mind is constantly passing. You take up a book,
from the pen of a favorite author, and you are refreshed.
and nourished and inspired by it. You are exalted by
this communion with a highly vitalized and fruitful
mind, and feel yourself longing for action and expression of some kind. It is the most natural thing in the
world for you to desire, before everything else, to be a
writer. You admire the author who has inspired you.
You imagine that the mind that has within it -the
power to work such marvels upon you must be a supremely happy mind.  His position of power seems
10




218          Letters to the Jonefes.
very enviable to you,-if not enviable, very desirable.
The results of his efforts upon you are so good and so
wonderful that it seems to you as if it must be a glorious thing to work them. You long to do for others
what he has done for you. You long to be regarded
with love and admiration as an inspirer. This is the
same feeling that is excited in a sensitive mind by
public speakers. Thousands of very commonplace men
are excited by oratorical efforts in the pulpit and on the
platform, to a strong desire to become public speakers.
The desire to be preachers, or orators, or lecturers, or
public debaters, is always excited in some minds by
listening to the different varieties of public speaking,
yet the most of these need only to try once to become
convinced that desire is a very poor index to power.
This desire to write is intimately connected withperhaps it is one of the expressions of-the longing
~natural to every heart to be recognized. The heart
that loves men, and is conscious of the wish and the
power to bless them, longs for the recognition of men.
All of us who are good for anything have thislonging.
We long for the recognition of our real value; we long
for a place in the respect and the love of those around
us. It is not unfrequently true that those whose affections have been unsatisfied at home-whose plans of
domestic life have miscarried-or who are immediately
surrounded by those who will not, or who cannot sym



To Mifs Felicia Hemans Jones.   219
pathize with them-who are every day associated with
those by whom they are undervalued-turn to the
public for that which has been denied them at home.
I do not know whether I hit your case in these remarks
or not, but I should think it strange if I did not. It
is not common for a woman who is satisfied in her
affections, who is surrounded by sympathetic friends,
and who holds a good position securely, to care for, or
even to think of recognition beyond. On the other
hand, it is very common for women whose domestic
surroundings and society are not satisfying to look to
other fields for recognition, and to none so commonly
as to that of authorship.
In your letter to me, you speak of your wish to
do good by writing. I do not question the sincerity
of this wish. It may flow from the benevolence of
your nature, developed by Christian culture, or it
may have been inspired by the consciousness of
good received from the writings of others.  But
you must remember that one's motives may be very
good while one's native gifts may be but poorly
adapted to literary effort. Your motives decide nothing as to your power.  That you may readily see,
by looking at the pulpit, filled by men whose motives
are excellent, while the power of one half of them has
never found demonstration, and never will. I have
sometimes thought that there were no preachers in the




220       Letters to the Jonefes.
field who more uniformly have the noblest motives and
the most charming Christian spirit than those who
have not the slightest power in the pulpit. No person
should write without good motives, but good motives
alone never made a good book. Goodish books are
written in great numbers by people who write with
good motives and incompetent brains, but I suppose
you do not care to write such books as these.
I have made these remarks, not to prove to you
that you are incompetent to write a book, and not for
the purpose of making you believe that you are incompetent. I have made them for the simple purpose of
showing you that your strong desire to write, even
when backed by the purest and most benevolent motives, is no evidence that you can succeed. The world
is full of the desire to do good and great things, and it
is not lacking in worthy motives. You are not peculiar in these things. You share them to a greater
extent than you suspect with your neighbors. You
would probably be astonished to learn how many there
are among your immediate friends who have been
moved by the same desires that move you, yet you
may be able to see that not one of them could succeed
as a writer. There may be one among your friends,
too, who has not had any desires about the matter, but
who has written by a sort of natural necessity, without recognition or publication. What do you think




To Mifs Felicia Hemans Jones.   221
of such a man as Theodore Winthrop, who wrote quite
a little library of books that could find no publisher
until he was killed, and that have now made him famous? Such a man writes because it is a necessity of
his nature to write, and I venture to say that he never
sought advice on the subject. He certainly was not
checked in production because the publishers would not
print his books, and the public could not read them.
Still, it is possible that you have just the native gifts
that would command success in authorship, though I
wish you to feel that the probabilities are against you,
and to open your eyes to these probabilities.
We will suppose that you have those native gifts
which, under favorable conditions, would enable you
to succeed, and we shall still have these conditions to
look after. The first of these is the possession of
something of genuine value to communicate. Your
power of expression may be unsurpassed, and your
style may be exceedingly attractive, but unless you
have something of value to convey, these will avail you
nothing. What have you of knowledge or wisdom to
give to mankind? How much have you thought and
felt and lived?  How much more have you thought
and felt and lived than those for whom you wish to
write? Do you, in your character and in the general
results of your life, stand so'far above the mass of
mind around you, as to be able to inspire it and to




222          Letters to the Jonefes.
lead it to higher ground? This question has a great
deal more to do with your success in authorship than
that which relates to the desire to write. This touches
the vitalities of the matter. Have you knowledge
which the world has not, and which the world needs?
Has your life led you through such paths of experience and observation that you feel qualified to lead
or direct others?
Another essential condition to success in authorship
is time. To write a brief poem, or a clever little essay
for a magazine or a newspaper, it does not require
much time. You can do this in the intervals of domestic labor, and it would be rather a help than a hinderance to labor. It would be quite likely to sweeten
labor, and give significance to leisure, to have on hand
the work of embodying in some good or graceful form
some good or graceful thought for other eyes, but this
would be playing at authorship. To succeed in a field
which numbers among its competitors the brightest
and best minds of the world-minds which devote all
their time to their work-involves the entire devotion
of one's time to the effort. Success in authorship cannot be won without time. The man who gains the ear
of the world by the labor of ten years may be accounted fortunate. It is possible that an author may
write a book very early in life which will be read, but
it will be forgotten within a shorter time than he




To Mifs Felicia Hemans Jones.   223
occupied in writing it. A book lives by its value —
by the amount of genuine life, or food for life, which
it contains; and it takes time to collect this. Defoe,
the author of " Robinson Crusoe," was also the author
of more than two hundred other works, and it is more
than likely that you never heard of any of his books
except this that I have named. Yet this book was
among his last. It was written after many years of
authorship —the only book of all his life that had vitality enough in it to survive him. It took nearly
sixty years of life, and more than thirty years of authorship, to bring him where he could write Robinson
Crusoe. Mr. Motley, the now celebrated historian,
began early as a novelist, and his book failed so signally
that when he emerged from his obscurity as a historian, nobody remembered the novel. Where do you
suppose Mr. Motley spent the ten years, more or less,
that divided the issues of the novel and the history?
IHe spent them in his study, at his desk, in patient
labor, giving to his project the very best years of his
life.
Now will you ask yourself whether you have time
to give to a life like this? Do you realize how much of
sacrifice it involves?-sacrifice of health and society and
domestic pleasures? Are your plainly indicated domestic duties such as to permit you to devote yourself
to a life like this? Is the time that it would absorb,




224          Letters to the Jonefes.
so entirely at your disposal, through abundance of
means for your support, that you could afford to run
the risks of authorship? This question of time is a
very important one to a person who is poor. A writer
may devote one or two years to writing a good book,
and then look one or two years for a publisher, for the
best books by new authors have notoriously begged
for publishers. "Waverley " and " Uncle Tom's Cabin"
and "Jane Eyre" were all beggars for publishers.
You would not be apt to have a better fate. But suppose, after the usual working and waiting, you were to
obtain a publisher. Then he waits for the proper time
to bring out your book. It may be three months; it
may be a year. Six months after the day of publication he will give you a note for whatever may be due
you for copyright, payable in four or six months from
its date. Do you think that this is an exaggeration?
Every author knows it is not. It is the simple truth,
and many of them know that when the day of settlement has come, their copyright has amounted to nothing; or they have found that their note, when they
were fortunate enough to get one, has not been paid
at maturity, on account of the failure of its maker. A
man must be rich and independent or poor and desperate, to afford to write a first book.  There are
hardly ten persons among the thirty millions of Amneri
ca who rely on the writing of books for a living, and




To Mifs Felicia Hemans Jones.   225
the most of those have a hard task of it. There is but
one way in which a person who is dependent upon his
labor for a living can write a book, and that is to write
it in the intervals of labor, which labor is devoted to
the simple purpose of getting a living.  You will
readily see that a writer thus engaged is at work very
disadvantageously.
Another condition of successful writing is patience.
A man furnished with all the necessary means of support, and impelled to write by the desire which moves
you, and by your wish to do good, will find that, after
the labor of a few weeks, the desire dies out. The
impulse to write, born of the inspiration of the books
which one reads, is very fiery and very fine at the first,
but it is hard to stretch it over a period of six months
or a year, through weariness, and headache, and confinement, and doubt as to the result, and disgust with
the failure to satisfy one's own taste and judgment.
The man or the woman who writes on, after the original inspiration has lost its impulse-labors on in the
drudgery of detail-in polishing, trimming, rewriting
-comes at last to an irksome task, and is only sustained in it by a self-supported determination. A fresh
interest will sustain labor, but when a book has been
fully constructed in the mind, and realized in the imagination, and nothing remains but the labor of writing
a limited amount from day to day for many months,
10*




'226         Letters to the Jonefes.
all of which writing must be done before one can get
any sympathy from others, it takes a will as patient
and unyielding as that which a besieging army needs
before a fortress that is to be approached by inches.
Do you possess this patience-this persistence-this
adamantine will-which will stand and command and
do after desire and inspiration are gone, and even the
motive of doing good has been discouraged?
I have thus attempted to show you how easily you
may be misled as to your abilities by your desires, and
what the conditions of successful writing must be, admitting that your abilities are all that you suppose them
to be. I have exaggerated nothing, but tried to give
you a faithful survey of the ground, so that if you still
feel impelled to undertake writing, you may approach
your task with a good understanding of its difficulties.
If I were intent on discouraging you-if that were my
motive at all-I might go further, and speak of what
are supposed to be the " satisfactions" of authorship.
I might tell you that the article which so inspired you
probably left the author a disgusted man. It is more
than probable that the books which have pleased and
strengthened you most, are, at this very moment, regarded by the writer as unworthy of him, and altogether unworthy of the purpose to which they were
addressed. I might tell you of the incompetent criticism, the mean personal attacks, the careless condem



To Mifs Felicia Hemans Jones.   227.nations, and worst of all, the undiscriminating praises
which are every successful author's lot. But as you do
not propose to write to please yourself, and are actuated
solely by the desire to do good, the effort would be
irrelevant. It would be very painful to me to feel that
I had dissuaded any man or woman from a legitimate
career, or to know that I had turned aside any mind from
a walk of usefulness; but I cannot but believe that
talk like this will save ten from failure for every one
whom it will deter from success. There are many men
and women who are always unsettled upon this matter.
They feel that they suffer hardship from circumstances
which prevent them from writing. I cannot but be.
lieve that an intelligent survey of the difficulties of
authorship, and a comprehension of the fallibility of
the signs of power to succeed, usually relied upon, will
settle this question forever in their minds. It is one
of the curses of life to feel that we are out of place,
and to feel that we might be doing something better
than that which engages our powers. The world is
full of the unsatisfied, multitudes of whom, I believe,
turn their eyes to the field of authorship with desire,
and with more or less of conviction that there, are success and satisfaction in it for them. These people will
never write, but they will always be thinking about
it; and they need something to turn them back upon
their legitimate field for the satisfactions which they
9




228         Letters to the Jonefes.
seek. I believe this letter will have an influence on
your mind, as well as on theirs. Of this, I feel measurably certain: if you were born for an authoress, you
will find that within you which will set all my wisdom
aside, and push on. There is a consciousness of power
and a faith in success which I cannot define, but before
which I bow; and if you have these-Heaven imparted-I bid you God speed. But do not, I beg you,
mistake a simple desire to write, which you share in
common with thousands, for the divine impulse to
which I allude.




THE SIXTEENTH LETTER.'ro ltyu lonts.
OONCERNING TiHE CHARACTER AND TENDENCIES OF THE
FAST LIFE WHICH HE IS LIVING.
HAVE been watching you with painful solicitude
for the last five years. You were originally what
people call a wild boy, with no particular vices, but
with strong passions and a great overflow of animal
spirits. You came into manhood with a cigar in your
mouth and a reputation for "spreeing," in both of
which you apparently took a proud delight.  You
abused every horse that you had the opportunity of
driving, and particularly affected a dashing turn-out.
You liked the society of sporting men, and took natu.
rally to their ways and their morals. You cut loose from
the influence of the Christian friends around you, and
broke the Sabbath, and frequented the haunts of vice,
and engaged in scenes of dissipation, and laughed at




230         Letters to the Jonefes.
those who yielded themselves to the control of conscience. You are a good-natured person enough, but
you are wicked, and while you maintain a place in
respectable society, you are regarded with fear by the
good and with suspicion by all.  It is understood
among the women that you are not a pure man, and
it is known, by some of them, that you have abused
the confidence of more than one. All of your friends
have heard sad reports of your sins when beyond their
sight, and all regard you as a ruined man.
I wish to call your attention particularly to this
point, viz: that the community regard you as a ruined
man already. You do not imagine this to be the case,
at all. You have no idea that you are ruined, or that
you are to be ruined. You are not aware that you
have the reputation of being ruined. Now permit me
to set you before yourself.
You are not under the control of principle, in the
slightest degree.  You have some notions of honor,
but they are entirely conventional. They would not
keep you from breaking your pledge to a woman, or
breaking her heart, and I say, therefore, that you have
no principle-not even the principle of personal honor
which you doubtless suppose you have.  There is,
thus, nothing to restrain you from the most unscrupu.
lous means for securing your personal ends, and noth.
ing to stand between you and the gratification of your




To Jehu Jones.              231
sensual desires, except the law. Now will you not
decide for yourself how far a man in this position is
from ruin? Do you imagine that you are, to any extent, under the control of principle? Does principle
restrain you from indulgence in strong drink? Does
principle withhold you from association with lewd
women? Does principle forbid your use of the profane oath or the obscene jest? You know it does none
of these things. Then why do you fancy that you are
controlled by principle? Why do you fancy that there
is anything within you to keep you from moral ruin?
If you are not ruined to-day, you are pretty certain to
be very soon, because salvation involves reformation,
at which you scoff.
Let me ask you to look around you, and see what
those have come to who began where you have begun.
There goes your neighbor with a blotched and burning
face and a stuffed skin, whose drink will just as certainly kill him as if it were arsenic. He stood once
where you stand to-day. He did not dream, ten years
ago, that he was ruined; but he has taken no new step
to bring him where he now stands. He only continued
to do what he was already doing. There was no principle to stand between him and destruction. He drank
with his friends occasionally, then he drank with them
habitually, then he drank alone to gratify a thirst
which drink had created, and which will never die




232         Letters to the Jonefes.
while his vitiated body lives.  Look at that other
neighbor of yours, with a dark red skin and a troubled
eye, who knows where he is going. It is not ten years
since he was not even suspected of drinking, but it
came out that he had learned in secret to love hot
liquors, and that he had set his heart against reform.
That man is in the straight road to hell and he knows
it, and you, on the same road, stop at the wayside resorts and drink with him. Delirium tremens waits for
that man and is sure of him. Look at that little circle
of neighbors younger than those to whom I have called
your attention. Do you see how they are changing?
Do you not see that they are growing preternaturally
heavy, and that they are becoming more habitual in
their visits to the dram-shop and in the indulgence in
drink at home?  Have you any doubt as to where
they will be in the course of ten years more?
Having looked at these, suppose you go with me to
visit certain others who have arrived at the close of
their journey. There sits one in his doorway-a miserable wreck, filled with gouty pains, unable even to
taste of the liquor which has destroyed him, and loathing the food which he has no power to digest. There
writhes another in torment-in a delirium whose hor.
rors are beyond conception, as they are beyond de.
scription. There sits another in the sun, from whom
the flesh has all fallen away-who is left feeble and flack




To Jehu Jones.               233
cid and foolish-a poor, broken-down, diseased wretch,
beyond the reach of help. There sinks another in paralysis, a helpless mass of bloated flesh.
What do you think of these men, Mr. Jehu Jones?
Does it seem  as if that handsome face and those
shapely limbs of yours could ever arrive at such degradation? You have only to keep along in the track
which you now follow, with no fears and no compunction of conscience, to pass through the various stages
of ruin which these men have presented to you. There
is but one end to a life of drink, and that is hell. It
matters little whether the popular doctrine of future
torment be admitted or not to make my statement
good. A body long abused by drink becomes all that
we can conceive of as hell. It is the dwelling-place
of torment the home of horror. You see these men
on their way to ruin. You know just where they are
going, and I see you are going on the same road, to
the same end. Tell me whether you do not love drink
better to-day that you did five years ago. Tell me
whether it does not take more drink to satisfy you
than it did five years ago. Tell me whether you are
not drinking oftener than you did even two years ago.
Tell me whether you do not think of it oftener when
away from it than you did one year ago. Tell me
whether your conscience reproves you at all, and
whether, under the accumulating evidences of your




234         Letters to the Jonefes.
essential ruin, you have felt the smallest alarm as to
what may be the result of your indulgence.  I see
what you do not see-that you have acquired an appetite for liquor. You used to drink it only when on a
frolic; now you drink it every day. Now let me tell
you what all observation and experience teach-that
you will love it more and more as the years pass away,
and will be less and less inclined to relinquish its use.
Why should I not speak of you then as a ruined man?
There is another element that enters into your ruin.
You have, for the past five years, consorted with ruined
women. When you were younger, evil companions and
evil desires and curiosity led you into their society.
There were certain things in that society that disgusted
you then. To-day you are at home in it. Sir, you are
a beast. You delight in the company of women who
shame the names of mother, sister and wife-of prostitutes who sell for gold that which, in God's pure
economy, is sacred to love-of women whose touch is
pollution and whose hold upon you is damnation. Oh
Heaven! When I think of the young life around me
that is permitting its feet to be directed into these
terrible paths of sin-when I consider how seductive
these paths are to youthful appetite and passion-when
I remember how opportunity invites from ten thousand
hiding-places-and when I realize that there is no vice
which so deadens or destroys the moral sense as that




To Jehu Jones.                235
of licentiousness, I am sick and almost in despair. You
are old in this vice, but there are those around me who
are young in it, as you were once-boys, whose feet
hang upon the verge of a precipice more fearful than
death-young men-with Christian mothers and pure
sisters-whose characters are as base as their bodies
are diseased. Do you shrink from this vice, and from
the society which it involves? Are you not in love
with it-so much in love with it that you do not enjoy
the society of pure women? Are you not so much in
love with it that the society of pure women only brings
to you shameful suggestions? And yet, you think you
are not ruined! Sir, you are rotten. If mind were
subject to the laws of matter, and moral corruption
were accompanied. by the phenomena which characterize physical decay, you would stink like carrion.
I have no words with which to express my sense
of the ruin which this single vice has wrought in you.
MIen who drink are sometimes reformed, and if they
have not proceeded too far in their vice, they come
back to a self-respectful manhood. The taint left upon
fie morals is not so deep that it cannot be eradicated;
but a man who has been debauched by licentiousness,
is incurable. I do not mean that he cannot reform,
but that he must always be weak, and must always
carry with him a sense of degradation and shame.
Do you persist in believing that you are not ruined?




236          Letters to the Jonefes.
There is, of course, one aspect of your case in which
you are not. It is possible for you to reform, but
you have no idea of reforming. You base no hopes or
calculations on reformation. That is why I declare
you to be ruined.. You voluntarily block up the only
way of escape from ruin. If a man, loving your wel
fare, speaks to you of reformation, you are angry with
him. If he ventures to reprove you for your vices,
you bid him mind his own business. You brace yourself against every influence which is intended to reform
you. You join hands with those who are nearer the
grand catastrophe of their lives than yourself. You
scoff at temperance and purity in life. You laugh at
religion. You glory in your independence of all weak
and womanish notions of morals and of life, yet God
knows that in these weak and womanish notions of
morals and of life abides your only hope of deliverance
from a career whose end is certain disaster and misery.
Look at the poor women who share your debaucheries.
Are they ruined, or are they not? How great a chance
does any one of them stand of reformation and a happy life? Can you not see that their lives are morally
certain to end in wreck? Do you not know that their
steps tend directly into the blackness of darknessinto a horrible tempest of remorse, whose howlings
even now ring in their ears in the intervals of artificial
madness? What are you better than they? You are




To Jehu Jones.               237
not better than they. They are your equals and your
companions, travelling the same path-bound to the
same perdition.
Would to Heaven I could paint to your imagination the horrors of a lost life, that you and all who
may gaze upon the picture might shrink from the gulf,
and make haste to reach safer and higher ground! I
would call up to your vision your former self-the unpolluted boy and young man-full of life, and joy,
and generous impulses, with inclinations drawing you
toward sin, and pure influences from parents and home
and heaven dissuading you from it. I would show you
how, yielding to these better influences, you might now
be an honored member of society, with a virtuous wife
at your side, and pleasant children at your knee-with a
smiling heaven above you, a safe future before you, an
approving conscience within you-with conscious freedom from the slavery of thirst and desire-with selfrespect, and that strength which comes from the possession of the respect of others. I would show you all your
possibilities of excellence in manhood, of virtuous happiness, of self-denying effort for the good of society, of
domestic delight, of faith and confidence in a great and
glorious future. And having shown you all these, I
would show you all those-lost. I would show you a
life that might have been that of an angel thrown away
-its physical health and resources wasted in debauch



238          Letters to the Jonefes.
eries —its mind feasting only on impure imaginations,
and delighting only in impure society-its heart reeking
with corruption-its pure ambition dead-its present
controlled by animal appetites, rendered foul by indulgence and fierce by their feverish food, and its
future overclouded by fear. I would show you a man
-the noblest being God has placed upon the earththrown away-transformed into a beast-a gross,
unreasoning thing, that glories in its appetites, and
boasts of their indulgence-a being lost to decency, to
self-respect, to happiness, to good society, to Godlost even to the poor inheritance of conscious shame.
A lost life! What is it? Theologians stickle about
words in describing the future of the vicious, but if
any theologian can tell me how a man can live the life
of a beast, subjecting his soul, with all its pure aspirations and inspirations, to the service of lust, and throw
away his life in this miserable perversion, and be able
to look back upon it from the other side of the dark
river with anything but remorse, he will explain to me
the strangest anomaly of the moral universe. Sir, the
thing is impossible. A lost life is something that be.
longs to a lost soul. What is in store for such a soul,
of possible reform in the long ages which lie before it,
I cannot tell. I only know that it has lost its best
chance, and, so far as I know, its only chance, for everlasting happiness. I only know that such a soul must




To Jehu Jones.               289
go before its Maker a polluted thing, full of regret for
its life of folly and of sin, consciously out of harmony
with all pure and heavenly society, shorn by the death
of its body of every source of pleasure. I know that
you are losing your life-that you are marching straight
into the jaws of physical and spiritual destruction.
You refuse to reform. You scoff at reform. What
remains?  A life-lost! My God! What a surrender of thy gift is this!
It would be a gratification to me, sweeter than any
material success, to turn your feet into the path of virtue; but I have not much faith in so happy a result of
this expostulation. For many years I have watched
the career of such men as you. Death has reaped a
dozen crops of them within my short memory. The
young men who occupied ten years ago the position
which you occupy to-day, are nearly all of them dead.
One remains, here and there, a played-out man, whom
circumstances have restrained from going on to absolute suicide. The rest have hidden their faces in the
grave, and no one speaks of them except as of men
who lost their lives. Look back, yourself, and see
how many of those with whom you have joined in
carousal and debauchery are now dead.  They are
scattered all along the track of your dissipated life.
How many of your companions have reformed? Can
you name one? I hope you can name many, but if




240         Letters to the Jonefes.
you can, you are more fortunate than I am. No, sir, I
have but little hope of saving you, though it would
give me more joy than it would be possible for me to
express to be able so to present to you your situation
as to frighten you back from the precipice which you
are rapidly approaching.  If any entreaty of mine
could save you, I would willingly get on my knees
before you, and beg you to save yourself by immediate
reform. I would do anything to arrest your progress
to destruction, and I would do anything to turn the
feet of those who are younger than you away from the
life which you are leading.
I have written you this public letter mainly to
arrest the attention and secure the salvation of those
who are tempted as you were, when younger, to forsake the path of temperance and purity. It is more
than likely that when you commence this letter, and
notice its drift, you will lay it down without reading
it. It is more than likely that many young men who
are not fallen, but who are liable to fall, will read the
whole of it. It is mainly for the use and the warning
of these men, that I have drawn your picture, and I
place it before them with hopefulness of a good result.
I would show them by your life whither license leads.
I would show them by your loss what illicit indulgence
costs. I would warn them by the disasters and death
of your friends to abstain from the intoxicating cup,




To Jehu Jones.              241
and to shun the house of her whose steps take hold on
hell. Licentiousness, were it not the vice of all ages,
might be called the special vice of this age. Certain it
is that never in the history of Puritan America did this
vice reap to its infectious bosom such harvests of the
young as it is reaping now. Certain it is that this
vice never spread its temptations before the public
with such impunity as now. The community seems to
be benumbed, discouraged by its boldness, strength,
and prevalence.  It literally advertises itself in the
public streets, and no man lifts indignantly his voice
against it. Ruin and riot thrive. The dram-shop and
the brothel are everywhere, and into either of these no
man can go without endangering both his body and
his soul. You, Mr. Jehu Jones, will sometime know
how precious a possession is in the hands of these
young men —know when you would give the world,
were it yours, to win back the innocence and health
and peace which you will have forever lost-know
when you Would esteem it a privilege to adjure them
to keep their bodies and their souls from the grasp of
those appetites which will have borne you iito the
realm of despair,
11




THE SEVENTEENTH LETTER.
Do lramns rtolb ons naoImat.
CONCERNING THE REQUIREMENTS AND THE TENDENCIES
OF HIS PROFESSION.
W      CHEN I review the life and character of Dr.
Thomas Arnold-to honor whom your name
was given to you-it is easy for me to understand why
he was so great a schoolmaster. He was a profound
scholar, surpassing in attainments most of the profes.
sional men of his time. He was a rare historian, with
a minute knowledge and a philosophical appreciation
of modern times, and that mastery of antiquity which
enabled him to write a History of Rome that competent critics have characterized as " the best history in
the language."  He was a theologian of the highest
class, paying but little respect to systems constructed
by men, but drawing directly from the fountain of all
theological knowledge-the Bible. Above all, he was




To Thomas Arnold Jones.            243
a man-a large-hearted, catholic man-a gentle, loving
man-full of enthusiasm-devoted to reform-in constant communication with the best minds of his age
through a private correspondence, which astonishes all
who now look upon its record-a laborious, conscientious, Christian man. Knowing all this of the man, it is
not surprising to me that he was the greatest schoolmaster of his generation, or that we cannot find his
peer among the schoolmasters of to-day.
I heard some years ago that you had "fitted " yourself " for teaching "-that you proposed to make teaching the business of your life. I know comparatively
little about you, personally, but I know what, in the
definitions of the day, fitting one's self for teaching
means. It is commonly understood that when a man
is "fitted for teaching," he is fitted to conduct recitations in the various branches pursued in the ordinary
schools, having thoroughly gone through the usual textbooks himself. If a man knows grammar, he is " fitted " to teach grammar. If a man has learned arithmetic and natural philosophy, and astronomy and inoral science, as he finds them in the accredited text-books,
he is " fitted " to teach all those branches of learning.
We hear constantly of young men and women who
are "fitting themselves for teaching," and we know
exactly what the process is. We hear often of those
who travel in foreign parts as a preparation for labor




244          Letters to the Jonefes.
in the pulpit, and in other professions, but I do not
remember an instance of travel, undertaken by man or
woman, as a preparation for teaching. " Fitness " for
teaching seems to consist solely in the ability to con.
duct recitations, and when this ability is compassed, so
that a candidate for the teacher's office is able to pass
an examination before a board more or less competent
for the service, he is " fitted for teaching."
It is true that teachers fitted in this way for their
work are competent to impart what, in the common
language of the time, is called " an education." With
all that is written intelligently on this subject of education at the present time-and in my judgment the subject is better understood now than it has ever been before-it is astonishing how almost universally it is the
opinion that education consists in the cramming into a
child's mind the contents of a pile of text-books. I do
not think that I exaggerate at all when I say that three
quarters of the teachers of American youth practically
consider fitness for teaching to consist in the ability to
conduct recitations fiom the usual text-books, and that
three quarters of the people who have children to be
educated regard education as consisting entirely in acquiring the ability to answer such questions as these
teachers may propose from  the text-books in their
hands. The larger view of teaching and of education
is not the prevalent view.  Teaching is conducted




To Thomas Arnold Jones.            245
often by men who are not competent to do anything
else. They take up teaching as a preparation for other
work. A man teaches as a preparation for preaching
-as a stepping stone to something better-as a means
of earning money to enable him to learn some other
work. " Fitness for teaching" seems to come a long
time before fitness for anything else comes, and is certainly not regarded as indicating a very high degree
of intellectual advancement.
I have no means of knowing how far I have defined
your notions, or your attainments, in these statements,
but I have prepared you, certainly, for the proposition
that real fitness for teaching only comes with the most
varied and generous culture, with the best talents enthusiastically engaged, and the noblest Christian character. Dr. Arnold was a great schoolmaster simply
because he was a great man. His "fitness " for hearing recitations was the smallest part of his fitness for
teaching. Indeed, it was nothing but what he shared
in common with the most indifferent of his assistants
at Rugby. His fitness for teaching consisted in his
knowledge of human nature and of the world, his pure
and lofty aims, his self-denying devotion to the work
which employed his time and powers, his lofty example, his strong, generous, magnetic manhood. That
which fitted him peculiarly for teaching was precisely
that which would have fitted him peculiarly for any




246          Letters to the Jonefes.
other high office in the service of men. His knowl.
edge of the ordinary text-books may not have been
greater than that which you possess. His excellence as
a teacher did not reside in his eminence as a scholar
and a man of science, though that eminence is undisputed; but in that power to lead and inspire-to reinforce and fructify-the young minds that were placed
in his care. He filled those minds with noble thoughts.
He trained them to labor with right motives for grand
ends.  He baptized them  with his own sweet and
strong spirit. He glorified the dull routine of toil by
keeping before the toilers the end of their toil-a
grand character-that power of manhood of which so
noble an example was found in himself.
Now, my friend, how well fitted for teaching are
you, tried by the standard which I place before you in
the character of Dr. Arnold? I do not ask whether
you are as great and good a man as Dr. Arnold. I do
not require that you should be as great and good as
he; but I ask you whether you now regard, or whether you have ever regarded-save in the most general
sense-this matter of fitness for teaching as being
anything more than fitness to govern a school, and conduct recitations intelligently? Having acquired this
sort of fitness sufficiently to enable you to get a position, are you pushing on in the pursuit of that higher
fitness which will give you the power of an inspirer of




To Thomas Arnold Jones.           247
the youth who are placed in your charge? That is the
question most interesting not only to your pupils, but
to you. Are you making progress as a man, by constant culture? Are you bringing your mind into communication with other minds, that you may gain vitality and force by contact and collision? Are you reading-studying-striving to lift yourself out of the dead
literalism of your recitation-rooms, so that you can win
higher ground, whither you may call the young feet
that grow weary with plodding?  Outgrowing all
bondage to forms and technicalities and mere words
and names, have you mastered ideas, so that you can
give vitality to your teachings? Do these text-books,
to the mastery of which you devoted some years, and
in the exposition of which you now spend much of
your time, still enthrall you with the thought that they
hold the secret of an education within their covers; or,
standing above them, do you look down upon them as
rudimentary, and as things which, in the consummation
of an education, are left far behind?
In the course of your own education, you were, as
I happen to remember, placed under the tutelage of
several different masters. Will you now look back
and recall them all, and tell me which of them you
remember with the most grateful pleasure? Tell me
which of them all did you the most good-which of
them left the deepest mark upon your character, and




248        Letters to the Jonefes.
accomplished most in building up and furnishing your
mind? Was it the most learned man of them all, or
was it the wisest man? Was it he who was most at
home in the text-books, or he whose mind was fullest
of ideas? I know that you can give but one answer
to my question. The answer will be that he who was
the most of a man was the best teacher, and the name
of that one will always awaken your enthusiasm. You
have been peculiarly unfortunate if you have not, at
some time in your life, been under a teacher who had
the power to inspire you to such an extent that all
study became a pleasure to you, and the school-room,
with its tasks and competitions and emulations, the
happiest spot which the earth held. And now, when
you look back to this man, or when you hear his name
mentioned, your mind kindles with a new fire, as if
you had touched one of the permanent sources of your
moral and intellectual life. Your best teacher was the
man who aroused you-who gave you high aims and
lofty aspirations-who made you think, and taught
you to organize into living and useful forms the
knowledge which he helped you to win. In short, he
was not the man who crammed you, but the man who
educated you-who educed those powers in which reside your real manhood.
I wish to impress upon you the great truth that
your excellence and success as a teacher depend en



To Thomas Arnold Jones.            249
tirely upon the style and strength of your manhood.
The ability to maintain order in a school, and to conduct recitations, with measurable intelligence, is not
extraordinary. It is possessed by a large number of
quite ordinary people, but that higher power to which
I have attempted to direct your attention is extraordinary. The teachers are not many who possess it, or
who intelligently aim to win it. It is not a garment
to be put on and taken off like a coat, but it is the result of the loving contact of a generous nature with
those great and beautiful realities of which the textbooks only present us the dry definitions. The greatest naturalist of this country-perhaps the greatest of
any country-is a teacher whose equal it would be
hard to find among a nation of teachers; and this is
true, not because he knows so much, but because he is
so much. No young mind can come within the reach
of his voice and influence without being touched by
his sublime enthusiasm. No pupil ever speaks of him,
save with brightened or moistened eyes. I have heard
women pronounce his name in many places, scattered
between Maine and the Mississippi, and always in such
terms of gratitude and praise that it has seemed as if
the brightest days which they recalled were not those
of childhood, and not those spent with parents, or lovers, or husbands, but those passed at the feet of that
noblest of educators and inspirers-Agassi.
11*




250         Letters to the Jonefes.
I have already intimated that this question as to
what kind of a teacher you are to be is quite as important to yourself as to your pupils. The character
of a schoolmaster has been, in the years that are past,
notoriously a dry one. It is really sad to see with how
little affection many old teachers are regarded by those
who were once their pupils. There are men who, having spent twenty-five years of their lives in teaching, are
always spoken of by the boys who have been under
their charge as "old" somebody or other.  "Old
Boggs," or "Old Noggs," or "Old Scroggs" has
stories told about him, and is never mentioned in terms
of respect-much less in terms of affection. Now why
is it that these men are remembered so lightly? It is
simply because they are teachers, and not men. They
are all good scholars enough, but they have not that in
their characters and personalities that wins the love
and respect of their pupils. I suppose it must be ad.
mitted that there is something in the business of teaching which tends to make the character dry. The drudgery and detail of teaching are hardly more interesting
than the drudgery and detail of the work of the farm,
or of the kitchen. Indeed, I think the work of handling the rake and the hay-fork a more refreshing exercise for the mind and body than that of turning over
and over again a verb, or a sum in simple addition, or
even a proposition in Euclid. This everlasting hand



To Thomas Arnold Jones.            251
ling of materials that have lost their interest is a very
depressing process, to a mind capable of higher work;
and a mind that can interest itself in such work, and
find real satisfaction in it, is necessarily a dry and unlovely one. Do not misunderstand me with regard tc
this latter statement. A teacher may be interested in
his routine of labor through the effect that he aims to
work upon the young minds before him, and he should
be intensely interested in it; but there is a class of
teachers who seem to be really interested in the drudgery of repetition, and these are always dry characters,
and they grow dryer and dryer until they die.
You have fitted yourself for teaching, in the usual
way. You are prepared, by the mastery of your textbooks, to " teach school." The probability is that you
will never have any pupils who will be as familiar with
these books as yourself, and, so far as maintaining
your position is concerned, you will have nothing to
do but to handle over and over again familiar and
hackneyed materials. Whatever there may be of moral
and mental nutriment in these materials, you have already appropriated and digested. There is in them no
furthei growth for you, and, so far as any good to you
is concerned, you might as well handle over so many
dry sticks. Exactly here is where a multitude of'teachers stop.  They never take a step in advance.
The work of teaching is severe, and when they are




252          Letters to the Jonefes.
through with their daily tasks, they are in no mood for
study, or experiment, or intellectual culture in any
broad and generous sense. Any mind will starve on
such a diet as this, and the work of instruction becomes to such a mind degraded below the position of
an intellectual employment. I warn you against the
danger of falling into this unfruitful routine, which is
certain to dwarf you, and give you a dry and unattractive character.  You must make intellectual growth
and progress by the means of fresh intellectual food, or
you must retrograde.
There is another reason why the business of teaching has a tendency to injure the character. While contact with young and fresh natures tends to soften an.
beautify character under some circumstances, I doubt
whether this influence is much felt by those who are
engaged in teaching. We take into our mouths some
varieties of fruits as a corrective, which would hardly
be regarded as the best of daily food.  We take
medicines which operate kindly for a brief period,
but, if they are continued longer, the system becomes
accustomed to them, and they lose their medicinal
effect. It is thus with the influence of children. To
the literary man, or the man of business, the occasional
society of children and youth is very grateful and refreshing, but it soon tires, and if necessarily long continued, becomes irksome. A really vigorous and healthy




To Thomas Arnold Jones.           253
mind, forced to remain long in contact with the minds
of children, turns with a strong appetite toward maturity for stimulus and satisfaction. Now you are obliged
to spend the most of your time with children, or those
whose minds are immature. You are almost constantly
with those who know less than you do, and in this society you will be quite likely to forget-as many schoolmasters have forgotten before you-that you are not
the wisest and most learned man in the world. It is
under these circumstances that pedants are made, alike
conceited and contemptible. To a mature mind, there
is no intellectual stimulus in the constant society of the
immature, and you are certain to become a dwarfed
man if you do not mingle freely in the society of your
equals and your superiors. I do not know of a man in
the world who, more than the teacher, needs the corrective and refreshing and liberalizing influences of
general society and generous culture, to keep him from
irreparable damage at the hand of his calling. You
must mix with thinking men and women, and you
must feed yourself with the products of fruitful lives,
in books, or your degeneration is certain; and you
will come to be regarded as a dry, pedantic, uninteresting man.
A man or a woman who does nothing but deal out
small facts to small minds is certain to become over
critical in small things. You have not been a school.




254         Letters to the Jonefes.
master so long as to forget the peculiar emotion once
excited in you by the presence of a " school-ma'am."
Before this day of larger ideas, to be a school-ma'am
was to be a stiff, conceited, formal, critical character,
which it was not altogether pleasant for a man to come
into contact with. There seemed to be something in
the work which these women performed that threw
them out of sympathy with the free and easy world
around them. They carried all the formal proprieties,
all the verbal precisenesses, all the pattern dignities of
the school-room, into society; and one could not help
feeling that they had lost something of the softness
and sweetness and roundness that belong to the unperverted female nature. All this has been improved by
the modern correctives, but the reminiscence will help
you to comprehend one phase of the danger to which
you are exposed. I think that if the world were to
give its unbiassed testimony touching this Subject, it
would say that it has found teachers to be men who
give undue importance to small details, and who seem
to lose the power to regard and treat the great questions which interest humanity most in a large and liberal way.
And now, before closing, let me do the honor to
your position which I find it in my heart to give, for I
hold that position second to none.  The Christian
teacher of a band of children combines the office of




To Thomas Arnold Jones.           255
the preacher and the parent, and has more to do in
shaping the mind and the morals of the community
than preacher and parent united. The teacher who
spends six hours a day with my child, spends three
times as many hours as I do, and twenty-fold more
time than my pastor does. I have no words to express
my sense of the importance of your office. Still less
have I words to express my sense of the importance
of having that office filled by men and women of the
purest motives, the noblest enthusiasm, the finest culture, the broadest charities, and the most devoted
Christian purpose. Why, sir, a teacher should be the
strongest and most angelic man that breathes.- No
man living is intrusted with such precious material.
No man living can do so much to set human life to a
noble tune. No man living needs higher qualifications
for his work. Are you " fitted for teaching? " I do
not ask you this question to discourage you, but to
stimulate you to an effort at preparation which shall
continue as long as you continue to teach.




THE EIGHTEENTH LETTER.
go Uslu BorgK ngRin lonts,
CONCERNING HER DISLIKE' OF ROUTINE AND HER DESIRE
FOR CHANGE AND AMUSEMENT.
Y OU, who were Rosa Hoppin, when I first met
you-a restless child-have married into the
great Jones family, and henceforward, through all
time, the blood of the Hoppins will mingle with that
of the Joneses. What changes will be wrought by
this combination of strange currents does not now
appear, though I suspect that they will not be strongly
marked. Indeed, I am inclined to believe that there
have been Hoppins in the family before, for I find
many Joneses who constantly remind me of the Hoppins, and any number of the Hoppins whose ways are
suggestive of the Joneses.
The children of the Hoppins do not differ in any
essential respect from the children of the Joneses.




To Mrs. Rosa Hoppin Jones.    257
Pretty nearly all children are, or might be, Hoppins.
They live upon little excitements. They are constantly
on the alert for new sources of pleasure. They delight
in being away from home, in new and strange places.
They are miserable without society and miserable without change. Children have no power of application
to the performance of duty, no sources of interest and
amusement within themselves-no love of work. They
grasp a new toy with eagerness, and tire of it before
it is broken. The moment they are compelled to sit
down, they seize upon a book, or ask for a story, or
whine with discontent.  They are unhappy unless
something is going on for their amusement, or they
are going somewhere, or doing something, with amuse.
ment for their special object. The genuine Hoppins
rarely outgrow this disposition, but carry it with them
to their graves. The Hoppins do not sit down quietly
in their houses of an afternoon, unless compelled to do
so by circumstances. They are either in the street, or
at the house of a neighbor. In the evening, either
their houses are full of Hoppins, or they are out visiting ioppins, or attending some place of amusement,
or doing something at home to make them forget that
they are at home. Nothing so weighs down the spirit
of a Hoppin as home duty, and the confinement which
it involves. Children are half-hated because they inter.
fere with indulgence in the passion for going some



258         Letters to the Jonefes.
where and doing something pleasant, and husbands
become bores when they happen to love home, and
love to find there a thrifty and contented home-life.
You-Mrs. Rosa Hoppin Jones-are still a child.
You are married, and you have children, but I do not
see that you are changed at all. You have the same
love of novelty that possessed you when you were a
little girl-the same greed for change-the same horror of staying at home-the same fondness for " visiting"-the same restless impatience with work-the
same desire for constant and varied amusement. You
are fond enough of dress, but dress does not absorb
you. You tire of the old dresses it is true, and greet
the new ones with genuine pleasure, but, after all,
dress is not your passion. Fine dress costs you too
much care and trouble, and personal vanity is not your
besetting weakness.  You would willingly leave all
this matter of fine dress to Mrs. Royal Purple Jones
and her circle, if you could be permitted to have what
you call " a good time." You delight in a party, or a
picnic, or an excursion, or a play, or a pageant, or a
circus, or an Ethiopian concert, or a frolic of any kind;
and you never pass a day at home, even when you have
around you the society you love best, without the sense
of irksomeness. You will either have your house full
of those who destroy all the sweet privacy and communion of home-life, or you will invade the home-life




To Mrs. Rofa Hoppin Jones.    259
of some other person —oppin or otherwise. And yet,
madam, I like you. You are not a disagreeable person
at all. Your nature is affectionate and pleasant, your
tastes are social, you are generous, and pure, and truehearted-as much so as you were when you were a
child. Your husband is fond of you, and proud of
you. He has tried to adapt himself to you, and to take
delight in that which most interests you; yet I cannot but think that a man who carries his burden of
care would delight most in a quiet home, and in
the certainty of finding a contented wife in it, whenever he comes back from the work by which he supports it.
There are some women in the world-and you
seem to be one of them-who never heartily, and with
devoted purpose, enter upon the work of life. You
do what you are compelled to do by circumstances.
If circumstances should compel you to do nothing, you
would do nothing. All work is an interference with
your favorite pursuits, or your mode of spending time.
Nothing would be more agreeable to you than to have
the privileges of going, and gadding, and seeking for
fresh amusements all your life. You certainly must
recognize a difference between yourself and many estimable women of your acquaintance. You know many
women who, from choice, and on their individual responsibility, have undertaken a life-long task to which




260          Letters to the Jonefes.
they cheerfully and systematically devote their powers.
They keep their houses, and understand the minutest
affairs connected with them. They devote themselves
to the right training, in body, mind and morals, of the
little ones born of them. In society, they are the re.
liable ones-the women of character and consideration.
They are women who use time for good ends, outside
of themselves, and who take delight in action-in the
useful employment of their powers. You must, I repeat, recognize a difference between yourself and these
women. They have their life in exertion; you have
yours in amusement. You exercise no power, but find
your sweetest satisfaction in the varied impressions
that are made upon your sensibilities.
There is another class of women from whom you
must find yourself differing very appreciably. I allude
to those whose greatest delight is in opportunities for
culture. If you read a book, you read it for the same
purpose that a child reads. You read only for amusement. You never read for instruction. The idea of
taking up a book for purposes of study, is one that
never occurs to you; and you have no delight in a
book that taxes your mind. Whatever you read must
amuse you-interest you-absorb you-or you lay it
down and call it stupid. There is no culture in such
reading as this-there is only dissipation. You read a
Dook for the same purpose that you attend a theatre,




To Mrs. Rofa Hoppin Jones.    261
or engage in a frolic-for the simple purpose of having
your emotional nature excited, and your sensibilities
played upon. You never seek for mental nourishment
or mental exercise anywhere. Thus, though you read
a great deal, and really enjoy some works that are
enjoyable by sensible people, you gain nothing. You
read for momentary excitement, and win nothing of
permanent use. You cannot weigh a book. You cannot even talk about a book, further than to say, that
you like it or dislike it. The philosophy or the lesson
of a novel or a poem is never grasped by you; and
every book you read is to you just what Mother
Goose's Melodies are to the child, and no more.
You must also perceive a difference between yourself, and those who love society for society's sake.
There are many women who love society because of
the mental stimulus it brings them-because, in the
presence of intelligent and sprightly men and women,
they feel themselves brightened and strengthened, and
because they find in such society the most grateful opportunity to act upon others. They are talking people
who think before talking, and who think while they
talk. I have noticed that while you are exceedingly
fond of society, you always shun these people. You
can talk nonsense, after a fashion, but your special delight is in hearing other people talk nonsense; and the
man or the woman in society who says the drollest




262        Letters to the Jonefes.
things, and "runs on" in the wildest way, and does
the most to amuse you and to relieve you from the ne.
cessity of either thinking or talking, is the one who
monopolizes your attention. If you have any special
horror, it attaches to being cornered with a sensible
man or woman, and being expected to talk sense with
them. You see, therefore, that you do not go into
society with anything in your hand to pay for that
what you receive, except your agreeable person, your
willing ears, and your ready and complimentary laugh.
These make you popular enough; but are you not just
a little ashamed to think that your love of society
would be destroyed if you could find in society none
but those who have brains and a disposition to use
them in sensible talk? Are you not ashamed that all
social circles are stupid to you in the degree that they
are brilliant to the wise and the intellectual and the
ready-witted? Are you not ashamed that the clever
buffoon of a company interests you most, and helps
you most to what you call " a good time."
You must also perceive that you are very different
from those women to whom home is the sweetest spot
on the earth.  I know many women who have become so much enamored of home that they will never
leave it willingly. They never go into society without
a sense of sacrifice. They cling to home as if they had
grown to it-as if every tendril of their heart-life had




To Mrs. Rofa Hoppin Jones.          263
wound itself around its pleasant things, and could only
be dislocated by violence. This love of home and this
self-confinement to its walls and its duties may become,
and often does become, an intensely morbid passion of
the soul-just as much to be deprecated as an unhealthy
love of change-but you cannot but feel that a supreme
love of home and devotion to its duties are very lovely,
and that the best women you know entertain this love
and this devotion far beyond yourself. Your home is
not your refuge, so much as the home of your neighbor is. When you wish to be happy-when you feel
the need of some soothing and comforting influenceyou do not draw the curtains of your home about you,
and draw the loved ones of home closer to your heart,
but you rush to the house of a neighbor that you may
forget your troubles in the diversions of lively society.
Your life is not at home. Home is mainly your boarding place; and if there were no such thing as " visiting" to be done, you would feel life to be shorn of
most of its attraction. In short, you are never so much
at home as you are when you are not at home. You
are affected by a chronic mental uneasiness which prevents you from remaining long in any place-especially
in any place to which a duty holds you.
I have thus endeavored to reveal you to yourself,
by calling your attention to the contrast which youconsciously I must believe-present to four different




264         Letters to the Jonefes.
classes of women worthy to be respected and loved,
namely: to those who, by definite purpose, have
devoted themselves to a life of active duty at home
and in society; to those whose satisfactions are found
in culture and its opportunities; to those who love
society for the mental stimulus and strength it imparts, and to those who are supremely in love with
home and its quiet enjoyments. To one of these four
classes, or to sundry or all of them combined, you
must know that the best women of this world belong;
and I believe that you have sense enough to understand,
and sensibility enough to feel that you are not of this
number. You are a frivolous woman, constantly on the
look-out for new sources of pleasure, and with no definite
purpose except to get along as easily as possible with
such duties as circumstances have forced upon you, and
to have just as many " good times" as circumstances
will permit you to have.
Will you permit me now to say, in all frankness,
that I believe you to be made for something better
than this? You have qualities of body and mind and
heart out of which a noble woman may be madequalities which I cannot help admiring any more than
I can help loving the light. Your nature is open and
frank, and you will admit at once everything I have
said concerning yourself. You possess a pleasant temper and a pure flow of animal spirits, and an affectionate




To Mrs. Rofa Hoppin Jones.    265
nature, and a general desire that others may have just
as good a time as you have. But you get no mental
growth, you accomplish no worthy purpose, you are
not the steadily radiant centre of a worthy home life.
You are not doing a true woman's work in the world,
for husband, children and friends, or gaining a true
woman's wealth of character and culture. You are, as
I have told you before, a child, with children on your
lap and at your knee-children who do not very profoundly respect you-children whose acute perceptions have already learned your weakness-children
who already treat you like a child. Are you never to
be a woman? You ought not only to love home, but
you ought to be the abiding corner-stone of home.
Your husband's house is not home without your presence and your presidency. That restless mind of yours
should have steady work and healthy food. It should
have a business-work that will engage its powers in
the accomplishment of a worthy object-work that will
fill your time and make these "visits " of yours, and
these " good times" of yours, the healthy diversions
and not the absorbing pursuits of your life. There
is a world of life and power in you. It only needs to
be held-and trained and put to noble, womanly service.
I hope you are not so badly dissipated that your will
has lost the decision necessary to execute the wish
which I am certain now springs in your heart.
12




266         Letters to the Jonefes.
If you should undertake reform let me warn you
against a mistake that you will be quite likely to make.
There are not a few women in the world, considered
very useful and pious persons, who are useful and pious
in the same way that you are useless and dissipated,
They are just as fond of change and excitement as you
are, and, being of a religious turn of mind, they seek
religious excitements, and suppose themselves to be in
the path of duty. They attend a prayer meeting, or
make visits to the poor, or wait at a hospital, or go to
a benevolent sewing-circle, or distribute religious reading, or minister to the sick, or attend a stranger's
funeral, for the change and the excitement which they
find in these things. They are just as fond of being
away from home as you are, and they seek excitement
and amusement for the same reason. I do not think
that I entertain more respect for them than for you.
Perhaps the sort of dissipation which they choose is
preferable to yours, but their motives can hardly be
called better.  Some of these women neglect their
home duties very much, and they do it simply because
they cannot obtain in them the excitement and amusement which they seek. Many of them are out on what
they suppose to be purely religious or benevolent errands, when they ought to be at home with their husbands-and children. Becoming like these women, you
would only change your style of dissipation, without




To Mrs. Rofa Hoppin Jones.           267
essentially changing your motive, or working a de.
sirable revolution in your home-life.
No; you must learn the difficult lesson that in
routine lives the real charm of life and the essential
condition of progress and growth. That which is now
irksome to you, must be heartily recognized as essential
to your happiness. You must learn to be happy in the
performance of a daily round of duty at home, and
learn to be dissatisfied unless that daily round of duty
shall be performed.  You must learn to take most
pleasure in those excitements which flow from action,
not passion. These excitements of sensibility in which
you have your life are legitimately only diversions from
routine. Ah! this routine which is so hateful to you!
Why —madam-routine is the road to heaven and God.
Routine is the pathway of the stars and the seasons,
the song of the tides, the burden of all the generations.
The clouds sing it to the meadow, the meadow to the
brook, the brook to the river, the river to the sea, and
the sea to the clouds again, in everlasting circles of
beauty and ministry. Routine is the natural path of
all true human life. It is in this path that the feet
grow strong and steady, and the soul adjusts itself
familiarly to its conditions. It is in this path only that
genuine peace and contentment are found; and you
must, of stern and settled purpose, hold yourself to this
path until you feel the upward lift of its spiral round,




268         Letters to the Jonefes.
and know that you are reaching a calmer atmosphere
and a more womanly because a diviner life. Never be
afraid of routine. It has in it the secret of your reformation and the condition of your success.
If you could but see, as I see, what a grace thoughtfulness would give your character, and could measure, as my imagination measures, the loveliness that
would come to you through the chastening of your
wayward impulses by work and self-devotion, I am sure
you would fall in love with the picture, and make any
sacrifice to realize its truthfulness. It pains me to see
you so frivolous, so childish, so incapable of work, so
impatient of home restraint and routine, so fond of
wandering, so devoted to amusement and play; for I
know that the time must come when those animal
spirits of yours will droop, when the little delights that
now entertain you will become insipid, and when you
will learn that your life has been wasted, in a childhood that rotted at last without ripening into womanhood.




THE NINETEENTH LETTER.
aro dirsotn  labis Gonus, olitidmar.
CONCERNING THE IMMORALITY OF HIS PURSUITS, AND
THEIR EFFECT UPON HIMSELF AND HIS COUNTRY.
T HE love of that which we call country is among
the highest and noblest passions of the soul.
The love that kindles into joyful enthusiasm at the
sight of the national symbol, that feels, personally,
every insult offered to its object, that burns brightest
in absence, that is full of chivalry and bravery and self.
devotion, that sacrifices itself on battle fields, and
counts such sacrifice a joy and a glory, that lives even
after country is lost, and passes down through many
generations as a precious inheritance-this, if not religion, in one of its forms of manifestation, is certainly
its next of kin. Indeed, there is something of every
love, and of all love, in patriotism. Country is the
patriot's mistress, his father and his mother, his broth



270          Letters to the Jonefes.
er and his sister, his home, his teacher, his friend, his
treasure-the storehouse into which he garners all his
affections-heavenly and human-all his interests, asE
pirations, hopes; and when necessity demands it, he
turns his face and feet from mistress, father, mother,
brother, sister, home, friend, and treasure, and gives
himself to his country, in obedience to motives that
are hardly to be distinguished from the highest religious feelings and convictions which his bosom holds.
I think it would be hard to tell where, in the sublimer
walks of the soul, patriotism leaves off and religion begins. In many of its humbler manifestations patriotism doubtless halts this side of heaven, but when it becomes sacrificial, its incense curls around the pillars of
The Eternal Throne.
It is to Christian patriotism that we are to look for
all the motives which have any legitimate place in government, and the management of public affairs, yet it
is to patriotism that resort is rarely made. For the
selfishness of supremely selfish men has organized other
and baser motives, by which all public policy is fashioned. The love of power and the love of office and
the love of money have all conspired in the organization
of parties, which live upon lies, and which uniformly
die, at last, for lack of dupes, or perish of their own
corruptions. It is possible, of course, that two equally
patriotic men may differ widely in their views of pub



To Jefferfon Davis Jones.            271
lie policy —so widely that their opinions may furnish a
legitimate basis for opposite political parties. Theoretically, therefore, political parties have legitimate
ground to stand upon, but practically they are a curse
to the country. For the love of party has always
usurped the place of the love of country. Everything,
on every side, is done in the name of patriotism, of
course; but patriotism is made subservient to, and is
confounded with party interest.  Men forget "our
country " in their mad devotion to " our side.'  It has
always been so; I fear it ill always be so. History
makes a uniform record of the fact that however patriotic the birth of a party may be, and however patriotic
may be the motives of the people who sustain it, it
passes early into the hands of designing men, whose
supremely selfish love of power controls its action and
directs its issues, solely for personal and party advantage.
Every thorough politician in the world-every man
in whom love of party is stronger than love of country
-every man in whom the love of power is the predominant motive-is a possible traitor. It n/atters not
what party he may belong to. I make the proposition
broad enough to embrace all parties, and believe in it,
as I believe in any fundamental truth of the Universe.
A politician is a man who looks at all public affairs
from a selfish stand-point. He loves power and office,




272         Letters to the Jonefes.
and all that power and office bring of cash and consid.
eration. Public measures are all tried by the standard
of party interest. A measure which threatens to take
away his power, or to reduce his personal or party in.
fluence, is always opposed. A measure which promises to strengthen his power, or that of the party to
which he is attached, is always favored. The good of
his country is a matter of secondary consideration.
His venality and untruthfulness are as calculable, under
given circumstances, as if he were Satan himself. I
know of no person so reliably unconscientious as the
thorough politician, and there is no politician of any
stripe that I would trust with the smallest public in.
terest, if I could not see that his selfishness harmonized
with the requirements of the service. Therefore I say
that every politician is a possible traitor. There is not
a man in America who loves his party better than his
country, or who permits party motives to control him
in the discharge of his duties as a citizen, who would
not betray his country at the call of his party.
I introduce my letter to you, Mr. Jefferson Davis
Jones, with these statements, that I may the more
easily show you to yourself, and justify my opinion of
you; for it will be hard for me to convince you and
the public of your immorality. The public mind is
thoroughly sophisticated on this subject. The public
has a suitable horror of gambling with dice and cards,




To Jefferfon Davis Jones.           273
but is quite ready to call those most indecent and immoral games of chance which Wall street plays " operations in stocks."  Nay, the public permits these operations to fix the prices of the property it holds in its
hands, and, indirectly, of the bread it eats. It is quite
as oblivious of the real character of the politicians who
lead it by the nose. A clever politician, who manages
to.keep power in his hands for personal and party ends
-who is unscrupulous in the choice of means for securing his purposes-who is not even suspected of a
patriotic motive in any act of his life-is regarded
with a degree of admiration and esteem. He wins the
objects of his desire, and his success crowns his efforts
with respectability. Jefferson Davis, himself, finds it
for his personal and political interest to plunge the
country which has honored him into the most terrible
war known in history, and the people are filled with
horror at his treachery and his ingratitude. Jefferson
Davis Jones, actuated by the same motive, opposes
him; and one is just as bad as the other, and owes to
circumstances, and not to his principles, the fact that
he is not in the other's shoes. If Jefferson Davis
Jones, who now prates of liberty and patriotism and
sundry party words and phrases, were in the dominions
of Jefferson Davis, he would be his most willing instrument, without the slightest change in the ruling
motive of his life.
12*




274          Letters to the Jonefes.
Do you not feel, sir, that this is so? Do you not
know that to all intents and purposes you make merchandise of your country?  Do you not regard, and
have you not for years regarded, politics as a grand,
exciting game of mingled chance and skill, at which
opposing sets of men play, not that advantage may accrue to their country or its institutions, but that the
stakes of power and plunder may be won for selfish
use? Of course you know this; but it is not so much
a matter of course that you know this view to be immoral, and this treatment of your country sacrilegious.
You have been bred to these things among men who
were honored and respected. You have learned to
gamble for power from men who first used you as their
tool. You have learned all the tricks of the political
hells. You pull wires, and play puppets, and veil your
selfish purposes behind sacred names, and lie to the
people whom you make your dupes. Open falsehood,
wicked innuendo, cunning evasion, shameless suppression, downright fraud-not one of these instruments
do you hesitate to use when occasion demands for securing your personal and party ends. I tell you, sir,
that these lies and subterfuges, over which you laugh
and jest in private, are outrageous crimes against liberty, against good government, against a patriotic people,
against the public morals, against God.
What is this country that you are playing with so




To Jefferfon Davis Jones.         275
carelessly-whose interests you are making secondary
to your own? It is the present home of thirty millions of people-the future home of uncounted hundreds of millions of people, whose destiny is to be
shaped and decided in a great degree by the institutions of the country, and the men who make and administer its laws. You cannot tamper with a single
human right without awaking the groans of whole
generations of men. You cannot cram a lie down the
public throat, and manage to incorporate that lie into
the public life, without vitiating the issues of that life
through all coming time. You and your friends cannot lead the nation into mistakes of theory and practice
without leading it into certain and serious disaster.
This country, while I write these lines to you, is suffering indescribable evils from the influence of just such
men as you. The rebellion which costs us hundreds
of thousands of priceless lives, and thousands of millions of treasure, is entirely the work of politicians;
and if it should fail to be suppressed, and the national
honor should fall short of entire vindication, it will be
through the machinations of politicians. The people
of this country are patriotic and loyal, and their action
will, in the main, be patriotic and loyal, when they are
not deceived by you and men like you. We have only
politicians to fear.  Selfish men have played their
games for power over this country too long; and now




276         Letters to the Jonefes.
we have the day of reckoning. Not a man falls in this
horrible war who does not owe his death to those
scheming politicians, who, in the past, have regarded
their country simply as a chess-board on which they
could play their game for power.
What is this country that you are playing with so
carelessly? I ask again. It is that for which a million men have voluntarily risked all of good that is
covered by the name of " life." It is that for which
the great and generous have been willing to relinquish
home delights, and home pursuits, and fond hopes and
expectations, taking upon themselves the burdens of
the camp, and yielding themselves to the sad chances
of the battle field. It is that for which a nation of
Christians has prayed before God with faithful persistence, mentioning its name with tenderest love and
reverence, morning and night, among the names they
love best. It is the inheritance of dur precious children-an inheritance that may be one of honor-that
may be one of shame. It is the property of history.
Far down the vista of time, I see the man (whom it
requires no prophetic eye to see) whose mind will
weigh the character of this country, and whose pen
will give his judgment record. I see him sitting il the
light of a dawning millennium, while the lurid fires
that now fill the sky with flame only feebly light the
hem of the far horizon. You and I will have been dust




To Jefferfon Davis Jones.          277
five hundred years, when that calm pen shall begin its
story-a story which shall determine for all the follow.
ing generations of men whether you and I had a coun.
try or whether we died without one, or whether we
were worthy of one,-a story which shall tell whether
we wasted our inheritance-whether we bartered it
away for party advantage, or saved and sanctified it by
our patriotism. This man, so certainly unborn-so certain to live-has this country in his hands to present
to the great futurity of the world. He has you and
me and all that we hold dear in his hands, and we cannot help ourselves; and this country of ours we hold
in trust for him. Shall we betray our trust, and damn
ourselves and our country together?
That which gives me most apprehension for the future of my country is the fact that its affairs are in the
hands of such as you, and are likely to be. Theoretically, we are a self-governing nation; practically, we
are governed by designing politicians. Theoretically,
the people select their own candidates for office, and
elect them; practically, every candidate for office is
selected by the politicians, the candidate himself being
of the number, and the people are only used for voting,
and for confirming the decrees of their political leaders. For fifty years this country has not been governed in the interests of patriotism, or been governed
by the people. For fifty years, patriotism  has not




278           Letters to the Jonefes.
ruled in Washington, or in any of the political centres
of the nation. Occasionally, a true patriot has been
placed in power, but it has always been a matter of accident.  Occasionally, a patriot has been "available"
for carrying out the purposes of the politicians, in
their strife for power. But often imbecility and rascality have been found " available," and politicians have
not failed to take advantage of the fact. Selfish party
men have ruled the country, and selfish party men are
trying to ruin it. It is beyond dispute that the political leaders of the people of this country have uniformly been men without religion, and without even the
pretension of religion. When a political man or a
candidate for office has been found to be religious, the
fact has been advertised as a remarkable one. Look
at the great political leaders; then at the lesser ones;
then at the whole brood of petty politicians who are
their tools and the recipients of their favors. You
know that you cannot find, in all the country, a class
of men less regardful of Christian obligation, or more
thoroughly the devotees of selfish interest.
Yet this is called a Chistian nation! The theories
and the institutions of the country are Christian, but
the practice and the administration has as little to do
with Christianity as possible. Do you and your associates, when laying out and prosecuting a political campaign, ever consult Christianity,-either its dictates or




To Jefferfon Davis Jones.          279
its interests? Are you Christian in your treatment of
an opponent? Are you particular to use only Christian
means in forwarding the interests of your candidates
and your party? Do you push a Christian principle
any further than it will pay as a party principle? Do
you not uniformly pander to the prejudices of the ignorant, and flatter the vices of the vicious, while, at the
same time, you hypocritically pretend to respect the
religious convictions of the better elements of society?
Do you not mingle with the degraded, and court the
smiles of those who live upon social vices, and descend
to the meanest tricks to compass your ends? You can
have but one answer to these questions. The political
machinery of this country-that by which elections are
carried, as they always are carried, in the interest of a
party-is simply and irredeemably unchristian. It has
not in it even the poor quality of decency.
I have talked in a general way to you about these
things, because you are only a representative of a
class, and because I am more interested in my country
than I am in either you or your class; but it is proper
that I say something to you about the effect of your
political life upon yourself. You have probably seen
enough of it to learn that its lack of religious principle
is not attributable entirely to the fact that only bad
men engage in it. You have learned that many men
who have gone into political life good men, have come




280         Letters to the Jonefes.
out of it bad men. You have seen Christian men there
who failed to maintain their integrity among the temp.
tations that assailed them. You have seen good men
elected to office, by a combination of influences, who,
in their selfish desire to retain their places have thrown
themselves into the hands of such as you, and have be.
come as mean and unprincipled as any of them. A
minister of the gospel, turned politician, will show the
degrading power of his new associations quicker than
any other man. There has seemed to be an impression
in the minds of Christian men that duplicity and trickery are indispensable to a politician, and not only
necessary, but justifiable. It has been the practice to
recognize other than a Christian rule of action in political affairs, so that, after a Christian man has been in
political life sufficiently long, he usually wears out his
Christianity. It is impossible for a Christian to go
into political life, and stay there as a party man, and
join in the operation of party machinery, and retain a
conscience void of offense.
How is it with you? I remember the time when
you were not only a patriot, but professedly a Christian. I remember when you first held office; and of
the Christian patriotism which actuated you in your
first party strife I never had a doubt. You worked
faithfully and well for what you believed to be the
right. The selfish crowd with whom you now asso.




To Jefferfon Davis Jones.         281
ciate looked on with approval, because you helped
them; but they regarded you as verdant, and knew
with measurable certainty that your generous zeal
would soon find rest in calculating selfishness. Your
term of office expired, and you were in want of office
again, and then you found yourself in the hands of
those who you had already learned were unprincipled. They had called on you for money for party
purposes-money which you knew would be spent in
an unchristian way, and you had given it to them.
You became aware that they had placed a market value
on your Christian character, and had calculated on the
amount that your patriotic unselfishness would add to
their capital. You learned then to scheme with them.
You grew unscrupulous in the use of means. You
learned to regard politics as a game, and you determined to become a player. It took but a short time
for you to become an adept, and when you had conquered the political trade thoroughly, you had become
a demoralized man. I do not think you a debauchee,
or a thief, or a murderer; but you have lost your sincerity, your moral honesty, your Christian purpose,
and your patriotism. I can hardly imagine a character
more utterly valueless than yours. You have come to
measuring everything by a party standard. You look
upon every public question, every matter of policy,
and every event, as a party man. You belong to that




282         Letters to the Jonefes.
hellish brood of political buzzards who cannot hear of
a battle, or scent a rumor of war or of peace even,
without calculating first what party advantage can be
gained from it.
I suppose that if I were to give utterance to my
wishes and my aspirations touching the future of my
country, I should be called Utopian. But that which
is possible, and that which is desirable on every Christian and patriotic consideration, is not Utopian, and I
should be forever ashamed of being scared by the
taunt. This country is to be saved to freedom and to
happiness and justice, if saved at all, by the Christian
patriotism of its people, and by the institution, in the
place of party machinery managed by unprincipled
men, of some system of popular expression that shall
place good men in power, and bad men in prison,
where they belong. It is easy for you and your associates to sneer,-easy to say that this is all impracticable, that the people cannot possibly prevent you
from pulling the wires, and that, moreover, you will
continue to use the people for your own selfish ends,
and use them with their consent. I say it is not impracticable, because it is in the line of Christian and
patriotic duty, and is not impossible. I say that this
change must be made, or we must, as a nation, be for.
ever going through financial revolutions, social convulsions, destructive wars, and all that terrible catalogue




To Jefferfon Davis Jones.          283
of national calamities which attend the management
of a nation for selfish ends. The Christian and patriotic men of this nation must rise, under Christian and
patriotic leaders, whom they shall choose, and depose
the infernal crew with which you hold association, or
we must, as a nation, drift along in a state of constant
social warfare, to land at last in anarchy. A nation
that is governed by its worst men, who have at command its worst elements for that purpose, must go to
wreck. Only the nation that governs its worst men,
and holds its worst element6 in subjection, can live.
You must die, therefore, or the nation must die.
Which shall it be?




THE TWENTIETH LETTER.'Go  x  j Baenamxr BustJ lonts.
CONCERNING TEE POSITION OF HIMSELF AND HIr
PROFESSION.
HAVE abundant reason to hold you in profound
and tender respect. Your devotion to me in sickness, your benevolent self-sacrifice among the poor, your
sympathy for the young and the weak, your uniform kind.
ness and politeness among all classes of people, and the
Christian spirit and the Christian counsel that you have
been able to bear into all those scenes of suffering among
which your life is mainly passed, have won my reverent
affection. I have never heard you utter a coarse word
in the presence of a woman, or jest with coarse women
upon themes with which your profession makes you
unpleasantly familiar. You are a Christian gentleman;
and may God bless you for all the comfort and courage which you have borne to a thousand beds of suffer



To Dr. Benjamin Rufll Jones.    285
ing and dying, for all the pleasant words you have
spoken to the tender and the young, and for the excellent personal example that, throughout all your life of
ministry, has made every act an exhortation to noble
endeavor and your presence a constant benediction!
I have noticed, in my intercourse with you, your
profound respect for your profession. You have felt
that a share of its honor was in your keeping. A light
word spoken of it has been felt by you as a personal
insult. You have regarded it with more than the love
of a lover; you have guarded its honor with more
than the sensitiveness and chivalry of a son. You
have believed in it, and honestly labored to give to it
a high place in public esteem. This enthusiastic love
and admiration of your profession, which you have
brought down, without abatement, from the days of
early study, is accompanied by the most devoted fra.
ternal feeling toward your professional brethren. You
guard their honor jealously, and carry more than your
share of that esprit de corps which holds together the
band of physicians of which you are the best member.
This love of your profession, and this regard for those
who practise it, lead you, on all occasions, to take side
against the public in such medical disputes or contests
as may arise, and tempt you into positions which com.
promise your candor and betray your conscience. The
only place in which you have shown yourself to the




286          Letters to the Jonefes.
public as a weak man has been in the position of de.
fender of professional incompetency-a position taken
simply through an extravagant respect for your profession, and an incorrect view of the duty which you
owe to its practitioners. A professional brother, pros.
ecuted for mal-practice, is always sure that you will do
what you can to clear him. Any notorious case of in.
competent medical or surgical management, which the
public gets hold of, and tosses about, to the disgrace
of the profession and the physician who is responsible
for it, you always take up and treat tenderly. People
have learned that you will not patiently hear anything
reflecting upon your profession, or those who represent
it. This is all true with relation to what is known in
the world as "the regular profession."  There is a' regular " profession and there is an " irregular " profession. I do not know that your charities ever extended themselves far enough to embrace any member
of the medical fraternity who was not strictly "regular." If you have been devotedly friendly to all who
have practised in the regular way, you have been uncompromisingly bitter toward all who have practised
in an irregular way, with or without regular diplomas.
The only bitterness I ever heard from your lips was
poured out upon the head of some " quack," or upon
quackery generally. I do not think that you ever, for
a moment, admitted to yourself that an irregular physi



To Dr. Benjamin Rufll Jones.         287
cian had cured a case of disease, or could possibly prescribe for a case of disease intelligently. You would
never admit the most intelligent quack that lives to a
professional or social equality with yourself. You
have only contempt for the whole brood, and for all
who have anything to do with them. You cannot
take yourself socially away from many whom you call
dupes to quackery, but, in your heart, you partly pity,
partly blame, and partly despise them all.
Now, my friend, you are not generally an unreasonable man, and I insist on your taking good-naturedly a
few things I have to say to you. I know that you think
I have no right to touch upon a subject like this, but, as
a representative of the public, I know I have, and I propose to do it. Is the profession of medicine, practised
in the most regular way, by the most regular men, so
nearly perfect in its operations and results as to deserve
the enthusiastic respect which you accord to it? Do you
find medicine so uniformly successful and so reliable in
your own hands, with the best regularly acquired knowledge to guide you in its exhibition, that you can have
any degree of certainty that you are doing the best thing
there is to be done? Is the profession of medicine, as
it is understood and practised in this country, so rich
in knowledge that it can afford to shut out of itself
such truth as may flow to it through irregular channels? Is it so successful in the treatment of disease,
11*




288        Letters to the Jonefes.
and so much more successful in the treatment of dis.
ease than various forms of irregular practice, that it
has a right to condemn without exception or qualifica.
tion the irregular practitioner, and call him a quack?
Sir, the arrogance of the position which medical men
assume, in this and other countries, is an insult to the
spirit of the age and the intelligence of the people, and
has been carried to the extreme of absolute inhumanity.
I have known a regular physician approach the victim
oft an accident, and, when his immediate services were
needed, turn away from the wretch without lifting a
finger, simply because he saw that he should be obliged
to work in company with an irregular physician. I
have known an eminent regular physician go a hundred
miles to see a patient lying at the gates of death, with
a dozen hearts ready to break around her, and turn on
his heel without looking upon her face, and leave her
to die, not because he did not find a " regular " physician at her bedside, as a regular attendant, but because
that regular physician did not happen to belong to a
certain medical society!
I repeat that you are not generally unreasonable,
and I should like to know what you think of this. I
could multiply instances like these that I have given
you; and what do they prove? To my mind they
prove simply that esprit de corps in your profession has
degenerated into contemptible clannishness and narti



To Dr. Benjamin Rufh Jones.    289
sanship. I doubt whether you would decidedly condemn the acts to which I have alluded, and have little
question that you would be guilty of similar ones on
occasion. You and your professional brethren act as
if you believe that you hold the exclusive right to administer medicine and get pay for it, as if you possess
exclusively all medical knowledge worth possessing,
and as if you mean to maintain your rights against all
disputants, by any available means. You are not alone
a mutual admiration society; you are a mutual insurance company. You mean to lord it, medically, over
the community, and over each other. No man of your
profession can step outside of the regular field to experiment and prosecute inquiry without having his
heels tripped from under him. Every man must toe
the regular crack, or he is at once socially and professionally proscribed. Now I confess that this is spirited
and positive treatment, but it strikes me to be out of
keeping with the times, and inconsistent with the good
of the public. Moreover, what you call quackery and
the patronage of quackery, thrives on this treatment.
The freely thinking and independent men of your profession leave you, disgusted, and the people rebel.
Why should you and your associates set up for exclusive possessors of medical wisdom? You know very
well that all medicine is empiricism, and you know
that medicine has made advances only by empiricism.
13




290         Letters to the Jonefes.
Your true policy is to take into your hands, and honestly and faithfully try, all those remedies which have
received the indorsement of any considerable number
of intelligent men. Your duty is to have your eyes
constantly open for improvement, and to take it when
you can get it. Almost every system of quackery
under heaven has been found to have in it some good
-some basis of truth-some valuable power or principle, which it has always been the business of the
regular profession to seek out and incorporate into
their system. No man of sense believes in universal
remedies; but because a remedy is not universal it is
not, therefore, valueless. Cold water cannot cure every
ill that flesh is heir to, but the fact that it can cure a
great many of them is just as well established as any
fact in natural philosophy.  You, however, will not
use cold water, because cold water is used by quacks,
and because cold water is claimed by some quacks to
be a universal remedy. Preissnitz was a quack-regarded and treated by the medical profession as a
quack-but the world has recognized him as a philosopher and a benefactor, and after the prejudices against
him shall have been outlived, that which he has done
for medicine will slowly, and under protest, be adopted
into regular practice.
You and your professional brethren have a very
hearty contempt for homceopathy, but homeopathy is to




To Dr. Benjamin Rufh Jones.    291
do you and your friends good, in spite of yourselves.
No man of sense believes that allopathy is all wrong
and homceopathy all right, but a man must be an idiot
to suppose that a system of medicine which has won
to itself large numbers of skilful men from the regular
profession, and secured the approval, when compared
directly with regular practice, of as intelligent people
as can be found in this or any other country, has nothing of good in it. For you, without experiment, without observation, without careful study, to call homceopathy a system of unmitigated quackery, and to hold
those in contempt who practise and patronize it, is a
piece of the most childish arrogance. This is neither
the way of true science nor liberal culture. You may
be measurably certain that there is something in homceopathy worthy, not only of your examination, but of
incorporation into your system  of practice. It has
already modified your practice while you have been
talking and acting against it. You are not exhibiting
to-day a third as much medicine as you did before
homoeopathy made its appearance. It has killed the old
system of large dosing, let us hope, forever. This is a
fact; and what you call no medicine at all has at least
shown itself to be better than too much medicine, even
when administered in the regular way. You say that
a homoeopathic dose cannot affect the human constitution, in any appreciable degree. A million men and




292          Letters to the Jonefes.
women stand ready to-day to swear that, according to
their honest belief and best knowledge, they have
themselves been sensibly affected by homoeopathic
doses, and that, on the whole, they prefer homoeopathic to allopathic practice in their families, judging
from a long series of results.
Now, what are you going to do with facts like
these? You cannot dismiss them with a contemptuous paragraph, and a wave of the hand, and maintain
your reputation as a candid man. If you are a free
man, and not under bondage to the most contemptible
old fogyism that the world ever gave birth to, you will
act as a free man. You will permit no man to limit
your field of experiment and inquiry, and allow no society or clique to prevent you from extending medical
science over all the facts of medical science, wherever
you may happen to find them. I am the champion of
no one of the thousand " pathies " that occupy the field
of irregular practice, and I have alluded to two of
them only because they are prominent. I address you
simply as a catholic searcher after truth; and I declare
my belief that the regular profession of medicine has
failed to keep pace with other professions-that medical science has lagged behind all the other sciences of
equal importance to mankind-simply because it would
not accept truth when it has been associated with the
error and the pretension that is so apt to accompany




To Dr. Benjamin Rufll Jones.         293
the advent of truth in every field. The science of
medicine embraces, or should embrace, all the facts of
medicine, and when you, or your friends, proudly de.
cline to entertain a fact because it was discovered by
an irregular empiric, you are not only false to science,
but false to humanity.
You cannot but notice a growing tendency in the
public mind to break away from the regular practice,
and to embrace some of the numberless forms of irregular practice. You notice this with pain, and so do I,
because I know that if the regular profession were to
pursue a different policy, the fact would be otherwise.
You must notice with peculiar pain that this defection
is not confined to the ignorant and the superstitious,
and that, more and more, it takes from you the intelligent and the learned. Why will you be so stupid as
not to see that this waning of respect for the regular
practice is owing to the bigotry and intolerance of the
regular practice? You assume too much-more than
you can carry. You assume to be the sole possessors
of the medical wisdom of the world. Every man who
does not practise in your way, though he may have
been a graduate of a regular medical college, you assume the privilege of condemning as a quack; and you
deny to him not only professional but social position.
You place all matters of professional etiquette before
the simplest humanities, and intend by your policy to




294          Letters to the Jonefes.
coerce the public into your support.  The rules of
your associations are intended to hold their members
to the regular field, to compel them to fight all irregular practitioners out of the field, and to force the public into the exclusive support of the regular practice.
It is a thorough despotism, and intended to be; and is
so discordant with the free spirit of the time that the
public rebel, and many are driven into extremes of opposition.
Do you ask me if I am a medical "Eclectic?"
No; I am nothing of the kind. I am a catholic, with
every prejudice, predilection, and sympathy of my
mind clinging to the regular practice. I have a contempt which I cannot utter for all these "completed
systems" of irregular practice, which are built upon
some newly-discovered or newly-developed fact in medi.
cine. I have only contempt for the broad claims of
quackery in every field. When a man tells me that
the regular practice is murder, and that drugs are
never administered in allopathic doses with benefit, I'
know simply that he is a fool. And when an adherent
of the allopathic school tells me that such and such
things cannot be, in the range of irregular practice,
which I know have been and are, I know he is a fool.
I write in my present strain to you, because I believe that through what is called the regular practice
the future substantial advances of medicine are to be




To Dr. Benjamin Rufli Jones.          295
made. Medical science can only go about as fast as
you permit it to go. You are too well organized, you
have too many schools, you have too much power, to
permit any outside organization to get the lead, and to
become the standard authority of the world. My doctrine is that you should become the solvent of all the
systems, and not the uniform and bitter opponent of
everything that claims to be a system. You should
make your system one with universal science, one with
humanity, and not build a wall around it. When a
man gets so bigoted that he can say that a thing cannot be true, because it is not according to his system,
he has become too narrow for the intelligent practice
of any profession.
The church is getting ahead of the medical profession, very decidedly. It is but a few years ago that
Christians of different sects had just as little toleration
for each other as the different sects of medical men
have now. There was one of these sects that was
"the regular thing," and those who departed from it
were made to suffer socially. It was in this country,
in a degree, as it is in England now. There is the established church-the recognized church-and all the
Protestants outside of it are independents. These independents are looked down upon socially, and regarded with a contempt quite as profound as that which
you feel for "quacks " and their " dupes; " yet it is




296         Letters to the Joneles.
coming to be understood in England that the substan.
tial Christian progress of the time is being made by
the despised independents, and it is felt that by their
influence they are working a revolution in the established church which will, at no distant day, give to it a
new vitality and a fresh impetus. You may fight this
revolution in medicine, but it is coming, and when it
shall come, you will find that what you call quackery
will fall before it.
You, possibly, suppose that there are no intelligent
and scientific men engaged in irregular medical practice. If there are not, it is the fault of your own
schools, for they have been educated in them by thousands; and the practical point at which I aim is this:
that you and they shall meet as scientific men, and that
as scientific men you and they shall reveal the results
of experiment and inquiry in your various fields of observation. I would have you win from them what
they have learned: I would have them win from you
what you have learned. I would have you and them
do this in behalf of medical science, and in the interest
of humanity. Until you become willing to do this,
you must occupy the position of despots and bigots-a
position which no profession, with science in one hand
and humanity in the other, can afford to occupy. At
present, you are creating quackery and stimulating
quacks at a rate which no other policy could possibly




To Dr. Benjamin Rufh Jones.          297
effect. The means which you and your professional
brethren are employing to keep the medical practice
of the country in your hands, are certainly working to
defeat your object. You must be more catholic and
more tolerant, or your profession, and every human
being interested in it, must suffer a range of evil consequences which I cannot measure. The position which
you assume of holding a monopoly of all the medical
wisdom, all the medical science, at the power of intel.
ligent observation of disease, is a standing insult to the
age, and is certain to be punished.
I am aware that I am quite likely to be misunderstood and misconstrued by you, my friend, and by
those of your professional brethren who may read this
letter. You have been so much in the habit of calling
all irregular practitioners quacks and charlatans and
mountebanks-of looking upon them all as either ignorant or knavish, or both together, that you will be
quite apt to charge me with favoring charlatanry and
quackery. I ask you to associate with no knave or ignorant pretender. No man can more heartily despise
a pretender in medicine than I do, either in or out of
the regular profession; and, between you and me, the
question is yet to be decided as to which side holds
the preponderance of ignorance and pretension. As
between licensed and unlicensed ignorance and preten.
sion, I have no choice. I simply ask you to admit the




298          Letters to the Jonefes.
fact that there are just as good, true, scientific, honorable, and able men outside of the regular profession as
there are in it; that all improvements in medicine
must come through empiricism; that medical science is
one in its interests, aims, and ends, and that the people
have a right to demand that the profession which has
its most precious interests in charge, shall not place before those interests its own partisan purposes and prejudices. I wish to have you see how utterly unworthy
of you, personally, is your professional bigotry, and to
induce you to do for your profession what you are so
ready to do in all the fields of popular reform.




THE TWENTY-FIRST LETTER.
Ga liogeiezs lonis.u
COXCERNING iIS DISPOSIrTON TO  AVOID SOCIETY.
SOMETIMES think that I am the only person
who understands and appreciates you, and the fact
I take to be flattering to my discrimination, for all
the fools believe you to be a fool. There are comparatively few who know that behind your impassive spectacles there are eyes full of kindliness and intelligence,
and that your shy manner and reticent mood cover a
heart that longs for love and a wealth of conscious intellectual power that would rejoice in recognition.
Few care to study you, but everybody wonders why
you shun society. Few go toward you, because you go
toward nobody. I never should have known you if I
had not, by pure force of will, penetrated the armor
of cool indifference in which you have encased your




300         Letters to the Jonefes.
self. I was determined to find you, and I found you.
I was not surprised to discover in you the average
amount of humanity, in its common powers and properties, and more than the average amount of sensitiveness
and gentleness. So soon as you saw that I understood
you, you surrendered yourself to me gladly, and we held
communion with one another, heart to heart.
The first cause that operated to make you a solitary
man was a sense of your incongruity with the elements of society, or with the elements of such society as was around you.  You looked upon the
young, and saw them absorbed by frivolities that had
no charm for you-engaged in pursuits which did not
interest you. There was but little animal life in you,
arid no overflow of animal spirits; so you had none of
the spirit of play; and you could take no pleasure in
the insignificant things with which the spirit of play
interested itself. Whenever you were thrown among
those of your own years, you entered scenes that had no
meaning to you, so that you were always oppressed with
the feeling that you were out of place. You knew that
your companions interfered with your pleasure, and naturally thought that you interfered with theirs, forgetting
that they were thoughtless while you were thoughtful.
This consciousness of incongruity could not long be
entertained in your sensitive nature without very
serious self questionings. You began to ask yourself




To Diogenes Jones.              301
why it was that you were an exception to the rule that
prevailed around you; and the more you questioned
yourself, the more sensitive you became, until there
was not a feature of your face, or a part of your frame,
or a peculiarity of your speech and personal bearing,
that was not inquired of concerning the matter. The
result was an impulse to hide yourself from observation, and great reluctance to enter the society to which
your life naturally introduced you. Your consciousness that there was something peculiar in your temperament was a hinderance to you-it made you awkward and stiff. While you felt yourself to be the possessor of more brains and more knowledge than most
of the young men around you, you despaired of appearing to know anything. You had not the secret of selfpossession and confident bearing.  Many were your
struggles with yourself at first, but at length you became habitually a solitary man. You lost the small
measure of confidence which nature originally gave
you, lost your familiarity with the forms of social intercourse, almost lost your self-respect. You could not
bear to be looked at, or spoken to.  You retired
into yourself, and sought in self-communion or in studious pursuits for the satisfaction which your nature
craved.
I have already suggested the character of that
poverty of constitution which has made you what




302         Letters to the Jonefes.
you are.  You are not a thoroughly healthy man.
Either you are very weak naturally, with no overflow
of animal life, or, by heavy drafts upon your nervous
system, you have expended that life. Work, or study,
or both together, have exhausted your stock of vitality,
so that you have only just enough for the necessary
uses of life. Until men and women rise to a degree
of cultivation which few reach, it is not to be denied
that social life is made up of, or is carried on by, the
aggregate overflow of the animal life of society. It
may be a humiliating consideration, but it is true, that
where there is none of the spirit of play there is no
social life that is worth the name. Youth is generally
social because it is playful; and as youth goes on to
middle life and old age, it generally becomes less social
because it becomes less playful. Playfulness is the
offspring of animal spirits. There are some men and
women who bubble throughout their whole lives with
this overflow, and are always cheerful and charming
companions. There are others who either never have
it, or who lose it by expenditure in work or study, and
who, as a consequence, become taciturn and unsocial.
Lambs in a pasture will run races in delightful groups,
and frolic by the hour; but the dams that nurse them
and seek all day among the rocks for food manifest no
sympathy with them. In the healthy constitution, put
to healthy work, there seems to be a stock of animal




To Diogenes Jones.               303
life and spirits sufficient for the individual, and a superabundant amount which is intended for social pur.
poses. You may look the world over, and you will
find that all men and all races of men in whom this
overflow of animal life is a characteristic are social,
and that all men and races of men not characterized by
this overflow are unsocial.
Overflowing animal spirits form  the stream  on
which the social life of the world floats. If other evidence of the fact were needed, than that which lies
upon the surface, it might be found in the efforts to
produce an artificial overflow at convivial parties. A
company of weary men sit down to pass an evening
together over a supper. They come together for the
simple purpose of enjoying a gay and social time.
They know very well that, independent of the contents
of certain bottles, they have no power of social enjoyment of the kind they seek. They wish to bring back
the hilarity of youth, the carelessness of youth, the overflowing joyousness of youth; but this they cannot do because their animal life is expended. So they get up the
best imitation they can of the departed motive power,
and a very sorry one it is. When the artificial stimulant
has worked its work, the company is social enough, and
hilarious enough, after a fashion, but the fashion is a dis.
astrous one. It will answer, however, as a proof of the
proposition that in overflowing animal spirits is fo be




304         Letters to the Jonefes.
found the medium of social intercourse-the menstruum
of all social materials. Even when social life starts
from a higher source-from the overflow of intellectual
life-it is greatly assisted by animal spirits, and those
men and women in whom there is an overflow of both
animal and intellectual life are, socially, the most valuable and attractive that the world contains.
You must have noticed, even in your limited observation, how much animal spirits will do in making a
man-very inconsequential otherwise-socially valuable. You must remember young men and women
with ordinary powers of intellect and not more than
ordinary personal attractions, who were deemed the
life of every party they entered, simply because they
had an overflow of animal spirits. If they were awkward nobody minded it-least of all did they care for
it. They brought society a vessel full of life, and society was grateful for it. You took into this same
society, perhaps, a mind well stored with learning, and
natural gifts superior to any, yet the empty pates
amused everybody, and set everybody talking, and
furnished the means and medium of social communion,
while you sat with your tongue tied, or retired in disgust. Now imagine yourself possessed of the abounding animal life which distinguishes some of your acquaintances, united with the intellectual power and
culture which distinguish yourself, and it will be easy




To Diogenes Jones.              305
to see that nothing could restrain you from society.
The overflowing man must play, and he will always
seek somebody to play with. If he does not understand the conventionalities of society and the forms
and manners of social intercourse, he will good-naturedly blunder over them. He will be social, because he
must expend that which is in him in play.
I am aware that your case is not like all those which
result in self-exclusion from society, but I believe that
no case of such self-exclusion can be found in any man
who possesses a healthy overflow of animal spirits. I
find that the disposition to shun society exists very
widely among students and studious men. I believe it is
the truth that most authors and writers avoid society, or
feel decidedly disinclined to it. Men who thus confine
themselves within doors and exhaust their nervous
energy in thought and composition, and with no vigor
from the open air, are necessarily without an overflow
of animal spirits; and they will find themselves disinclined to society exactly in proportion to their sense of
exhaustion. Not unfrequently young women who have
been distinguished for their love of society and their
adaptedness to it lose both on becoming mothers of
families, and never enter society again as active members. So it seems that just as soon as the animal life
sinks below  a certain level, the disposition to play
naturally ceases, and the motive to enter society dies.




306        Letters to the Jonefes.
And now you ask me for the remedy. You ask
me a hard question, and yet I believe that there is an
answer to it, though a fresh and overflowing supply
of animal life is not to be had for the asking. Undoubtedly something can be done by attending to the
conditions of a vigorous animal life. Undoubtedly a
life in the open air among men would work a great
change in you, but circumstances will not permit this,
perhaps, and you seek for the next best course.
I have said that overflowing animal spirits form
the stream on which the social life of the world floats.
To extend the figure, I may say that on this stream
some row while others ride, and the relative proportion of rowers and riders does not vary essentially from
that which prevails on more material streams. The rowers are in the minority-the riders are in the majority,
and if you cannot row you must be content to ride, for
it is essential to your spiritual health that you enjoy
the air and sunlight and change which only the pas.
sengers upon this stream can win. If you possess no
superabundance of animal life, you must be content to
breathe the atmosphere furnished by others.  You
may not be much interested in general society, and society may not be very much interested in you, at first,
but I am sure that if you enter it and persistently remain in it, you will not fail to discover points of sympathy between yourself and others frmoi which re



To Diogenes Jones.             307
freshing and enriching influences will be received by
you.  Society will take you away from your books
and break up your reveries, and that is precisely what
is needed. You need to be drawn out from yourself
and made to contribute something to the life and
wealth of others.
If directly entering general society seem too difficult or too distasteful, there are various indirect methods of entering it which are entirely practicable, and
which need not be disagreeable. Enter some field of
charitable effort, or public enterprise.  Whenever a
man undertakes any effort for the good of the public,
whether in the broad field of Christian charity or the
equally broad field of public improvement, he at once
comes into sympathy with a certain number of men
and women who give him a cordial welcome. It is
only a point of sympathy that is needed to.make you
feel at home in society. Society may be very attractive
to you, though you have but little power to contribute to its life, provided only that you find in it those
with whom you have been thrown into sympathy.
Think of the effect upon your mind of meeting at the
bedside of some sad sufferer, or in some hovel of the
poor, a man on the same errand of mercy that took you
there. You know that you would feel immediately the
formation of a tie of sympathy between yourself and
him-would feel that he had reached your heart, that




308         Letters to the Jonefes.
you had found his, and that thenceforward you could
meet with mutual esteem. Think of the effect of laboring side by side with men and women in any work
of Christian reform, or public education, or literary
culture. All work of this character, pursued in the
company of others, establishes sympathy between the
co-workers, and you have only to engage in it to weave
around yourself a net of social attractions that must
gradually draw you out from yourself.
You must contrive some scheme for meeting society
half-way. You are unlike most men who shun society
if you do not feel that it does not quite do its duty to
you, in not coming after you. You retire into your.
self, you take no pains to show that you possess the
slightest social value, you do not even exhibit that
interest in humanity generally, or in the community in
which you live, that leads you to efforts on their behalf, yet, somehow, you feel that society ought to find
you out, and bring you out, and make itself agreeable
and valuable to you. You may rest assured that society will never do any such thing. I know that you
have no native impulse to social communion-that the
spirit of play about which I have talked is gone out of
you even if you ever possessed it-but that which most
men do by impulse or natural desire, you must do by
direct purpose, and as a matter of duty. And you
must do this at once. The penalty of failure is the




To Diogenes Jones.            309
gradual dwarfing of yourself and the sacrifice of all
power to influence others. You have a laudable desire
to be something and to do something in the world, and
know that you have within you the ability necessary to
accomplish your purposes, but without social sympathy,
you will never know what to do, or how to do for the
world, and the world will find it impossible to under.
stand and receive you.




THE TWENTY-SECOND LETTER.'Co *ant MN;. louts.
CONCERNING HIS HABIT OF LOOKING UPON TEE DARK
SIDE OF THINGS.
SUTPPOSE you imagine that I am about to endeavor to prove to you that there is no dark side to the
things of this life, or none worth your attention. You
are mistaken. There is a dark side to every man's life,
and to the world's life, which I do not think it either possible or desirable to ignore-a dark side that is legitimately a subject of melancholy contemplation. We live
in a world of want and disease, of sin and sorrow, of
disaster and death. Our souls, that think and feel, that
fear and hope, that despair and aspire, are associated
with bodies which are subject to debasing appetites,
to derangement, to decay, to a thousand modes of suffering incident to animal being. No mind of ordinary
sensibility can look upon, or ought to look upon, the




To Saul M. Jones.             311
evils which throng the path of humanity without deep
sadness. No man of humane instincts can realize, even
in an imperfect and faint degree, how the earth seethes
with corruption, and moral evil vies with physical dis.
organization and decay in the work of darkness and
destruction, without emotions of mingled sorrow and
horror-emotions that cannot be relieved by the encouraging reflection that the future promises an early
dissipation of the cloud that overshadows the world.
There are several reasons, however, why neither
you nor any person should dwell constantly upon the evil
that is in the world. The principal one is that no one
can regard it perpetually, with anything like a realizing
comprehension of that which he contemplates, without
morbid depression or absolute insanity. A man's duty
to humanity, no less than his duty to himself, demands
that he shall not depress his vital tone and weaken his
courage by the contemplation of evils for which he is
not responsible, and for the cure or relief of which he
needs all the strength he possesses, or will find it possible to win. I suppose the angels of heaven, with
their quick sympathies, might make themselves most
unhappy over the woes of the world, and fill their
holy dwelling-place with lamentations, but I do not
believe they do, or that they ought to. The woes of
the world are not put upon one man's shoulders, and
though we may feel them keenly we have no moral




312         Letters to the Jonefes.
right to permit them to affect us firther than to make
our hearts tender in sympathy, and our hands active in
ministry. If dwelling upon the woes of others had
power in it to do them good, there would be excuse
for it, but it is the idlest of all painful indulgences.
No one is benefited by it, while your own misery, thus
awakened, is added to that which awakes it, and the
world is only the more miserable for your misery.
Thus your dejection is not only harmful to yourself,
but useless to the world. It is a gratuitous addition
to the aggregate of human woe, and widens the field
of misery for other eyes.
But these remarks have comparatively little practical application to yourself, or to others prone like
yourself to look upon the dark side of things. The men
and women are few who are permanently depressed by
the habitual contemplation of woes that do not personally concern themselves.  I have heard of persons
driven hopelessly insane by a contemplation of the
destiny of wicked men, and of others whose horror
over human condition has plunged them into Atheism,
or some other dark form of unbelief, but these are rare
cases. Almost all cases of permanent dejection and
of habitual refuge in shadow are the result of personal
trials, or of personal peculiarities. Various causes have
contributed to make you a dejected man.  I think
there is a natural lack of hopefulness in your constitu



To Saul M. Jones.                313
tion. There are great differences among men in this
matter.  Some, with naturally hopeful spirits, live
through a hard life, and see many bitter days, yet preserve their buoyancy and their hopefulness to the last.
Others, with a comparatively easy life and surrounded
by pleasant circumstances, will grow sadder and sadder
until they sink into the grave. Natural temperament is
all-powerful to make some desponding under all circumstances, and others cheerful under any circumstances. Something of your condition is due, I do not
doubt, to this native deficiency, though I do not think
this deficiency so great as to be the responsible cause
of your calamity.
Disease is not unfrequently the cause of much of
the permanent dejection that afflicts mankind. Hypochondria is not uncommon, and this is a genuine disease that comes under the cognizance and treatment
of the physicians as legitimately as rheumatism, or
any other disease. And there may exist a general depression of the vital energies in consequence of age, or
the disease of some of the organs concerned in digestion, whose legitimate result is depression of spirits.
I cannot tell how much your condition is attributable
to causes of this character, but I do not doubt that
disease has its place among the causes. Still, neither
natural temperament nor disease has worked this work
alone. They have done something in furnishing favor.
14




314          Letters to the Jonefes.
able conditions for the operation of other causes, without being very active themselves. I have never been
able to find in your lack of hopefulness, or in any disease that has been permanently upon you, the reason
for that disposition to look upon the dark side of
things which has become the habit of your life. You
are probably not aware of this habit. You are probably not aware that you never utter a hearty laugh,
that you never confess to a moment of genuine enjoyment, that you are never willing to acknowledge that
there is anything encouraging in your life and lot, that
you have for years persistently believed your health to
be in a failing condition, that you utterly refuse to
admit that there is any palliation of your misery in any
event that affects you. Your friends are aware that
you are in very comfortable circumstances, that not a
want is unsupplied, that love surrounds you with its
tireless ministries, and that, somehow, life has many
charms for you; but you wonder at their perverseness,
or attempt in various ways to convince them of their
mistake.
I have spoken of your dejection as a habit, and I
think it is one, which a sufficient power and effort of
will can break up. I do not know, indeed, but you
have lost this power of will in a measure, but I
cannot think that it is entirely gone. You seem to
have plenty of reason and a sufficiency of will with




To Saul M. Jones..           315
relation to other subjects; and if you could have the
disposition to apply both to this, you could break up
your unhappy habit, I do not doubt. You have a habit
of watchfulness against evil, as if you did not intend
that Providence should ever catch you napping. You
guard yourself equally against joy, as if afraid of being
happier than you have any right to be. For many
years, you have kept a look-out for death, determined
not to be taken when off guard. This watchfulness
against evil and against joy, has been maintained till
it has become the habit of your life, and made you a
miserable slave.
Far be it from me to deny that you have suffered
severely by sickness, by early struggles with poverty,
and by the loss of those who were near and dear to
you.  Indeed, the blows of Providence have been
neither few nor lightly inflicted; but they have been
blows for which a kind Father has provided abundant
balm. No shame has befallen you. No dishonor has
come to you. Nothing has happened to you strange
to the lot of the hundreds of cheerful men whom you
meet. I do not doubt that these blows bent you as
grief always bends, but there was no sufficient reason
for their breaking you. They were not the expression
of infinite displeasure, and were not intended to fill
your life with gloom. Nay, you profess to believe
that all these precious lost ones of yours are in heaven,




316         Letters to the Jonefes.
and that soon you shall meet them there. I think you
are thoroughly honest in this belief, and that even your
griefs cannot be held accountable for your habit of
looking upon the dark side of things, and your persistent discontent.
I look farther back than grief for the causes of
your sadness and deeper than disease. I believe that
the real and responsible cause of your dejection is the
religious training of your early life, and the ideas
which you now entertain of God and of duty. God
has never been to you an infinitely affectionate Father,
to whom you have been willing to give yourself up in
perfect trust. I do not question the honesty of your
reverence for Him, or the purity of your worship of
Him, but your fear of Him is of such a nature that you
seem always afraid that He will play you some trick
-that He will call for you before you are ready, or
that He only bears a joy to your lips in order, for some
disciplinary purpose, to dash it away. You do not,
like a child, trust Him-give yourself and all your
hopes and all your life up to Him. You have no ease
in Him-no peace in Him. You are on the constant
watch for yourself, seeking to fathom or foresee His
designs concerning yourself, and bearing-with your
poor, weak hands-the burden which only Me can
carry without toil. God the judge-God the rulerGod the providential dispenser-this is your God; but




To Saul M. Jones..             317
God the everlasting Father, full of all tender pity'and
compassion, wooing you to His arms, asking you to
repose upon His bosom and give up to Him all your
griefs and trust Him for all the future, is a strange
God to you. Ah! sir! I am more sorry for you in
this great mistake and misfortune than my words can
tell.
I think you have always felt that it is wrong to be
cheerful. Your religion has been a joyless one. You
received in early life, I cannot doubt, the impression
that no person, realizing the brevity of life, the tremendous realities of eternity, the consequences of sin and
the necessity of constant preparation for death and
readiness for every affliction, could possibly be cheerful. Naturally reverent and constitutionally timid, this
kind of teaching planted itself so deeply in your spirit
that a better doctrine, assisted by your own reason,
has never uprooted it. To you, the most joyful peal
of bells comes only with suggestions of the grave, and
the touch of a baby's hand upon your cheek reminds
you only of its frailty and its doom. The earth has
been literally a vale of tears to you. As you have seen
the young overflowing with life and joy, and dancing
along a flowery pathway, you have sighed over them
with an ineffable pity. You have never dared to set
your affections upon anything, for fear that it would
be taken away from you, or that, in some way, it would




318          Letters to the Jonefes.
become a curse to you. You have looked upon life
simply as a period of discipline preparatory to a better
life, whose joyfulness must necessarily be in the ratio
of the joylessness of that which precedes it. Life has
appeared to you to be only a preparation for death,
and religion has been only something to die by.
Now, my friend, I am very much mistaken if it be
not one of the special offices of Christianity to release
those who, through fear of death, have all their life
been subject to bondage-to make the future so clear
and attractive that it shall fill the present with joyful
content. I know that we are directed to be ready for
death, when it shall come; but how can a man be
readier than when engaged actively in pushing on the
great work of the world, and enjoying all the satisfaction that must naturally flow from the consciousness
of a future forever secure?
If your idea and your policy were to become prevalent in the world, the world would certainly become
more thoroughly a vale of tears than it has ever been,
-more than you imagine it to be. Such prevalence
would be universal paralysis. God is not interested,
exclusively, I imagine, with the small concerns of individuals like yourself. He watches the life of nations
and the rise and growth of civilizations. One generation lays the corner-stone of the state, and a hundred
generations rear the superstructure, and numberless




To Saul M. Jones.              319
lives- are swallowed up in the process. Lives and
destinies overlap each other, and one continues what
another begins. The thread of silk is not cut off because a single cocoon is exhausted. The single cocoon
is not missed, and if it were, there are a hundred to
take its place. Men do not live to themselves alone
-do not live with reference alone to that which, in
the Providence of God, may personally befall them.
There is a family, there is a posterity, there is a country, there is a world to live for;-there are great enterprises to be engaged in which consult no period of suspension short of the national death or the final consummation of all things.
What headway do you think would be made in the
world's educational and reformatory work by men
who, like you, think that there is not much use in
undertaking anything because death is so very near?
Judge for yourself. Are you an active man in any of
the great Christian and humane movements of the
time P Do you ever dream of putting your shoulder
to the wheel of progress? No, sir. You are the subject of mental and spiritual paralysis; and if the world
were made up of such as you, it would come to a dead
halt. You have lived in your old house until it is
tumbling down about your head, because it has seemed
as if anything like a permanent repair of it would
tempt Providence to take you away from it altogether.




820         Letters to the Jonefes.
You could tear the old house down and build a new, but
life seems so short and death so near that even the
suggestion of such an enterprise has appeared impious.
You have thought only of him who proposed to pull
down his barns and build greater, and of the end that
came before the barns were begun. The new garments which you put on are adopted with the sad
refleotion that you shall probably never live to wear
them out, and every chastened pleasure which you put
fearfully to your lips is loaded with the thought that
you have possibly tasted it for the last time.
What kind of a Christianity do you think this is
to commend to a careless world?  There can be no
question as to the relative comfort and happiness of
the worldling and yourself. The careless worldling, so
that he have no vice that burns his conscience, is a
happier man than you; and if he be a man of active,
benevolent impulses, he is a more useful member of
society. This continual thoughtfulness touching your.
self, this constant carefulness of yourself, this perpetual
watching of events with relation to their bearing upon
yourself, cannot fail to make you selfish,-or, rather,
cannot fail to shut out the thought of others and of the
great interests of the world at large.
I count that man supremely happy who, prepared
in his heart for every emergency, and every event, has
given himself in perfect trust to the Great Disposer,




To Saul M. Jones.               321
and addressed himself with a glad heart to the work
and the enjoyment of the present life. Such a man
makes no calculation for misfortune and watches not
for death, but does that which his hand finds to do,
knowing that if he does not enjoy the fruit of his labor,
others will, and content to take the ills of life when
they come. Such a man sees woe only to do what he
can to alleviate it. There is light in his eye, there is
life in his step. To me he is the pattern Christian of
the world. The bright side of things is with him so
bright that its radiance quite overpowers the darkness
of the other side. He is cheerful because he is free.
Is it too late, my friend, for you to be relieved of this
load of fear and carefulness and apprehension? I think
not. I believe that this habit of your life can be
broken, and that many happy days can yet be yoursdays of calm joy undarkened by a single care or cloud,
days of heavenly hope and trust, and days of earnest,
far-reaching work.




THE TWENTY-THIRD LETTER.
lga otr  mimt lonts.
CONCERNINGlS NEIGHBORLY DUTIE9S AND HIS FAIL RE
TO PERFORM THEM.
N EXT to being a good husband and father, I consider it every man's duty to be a good neighbor. A good neighbor! My heart brims with gratitude as I write the phrase, for memory, by her magic
call, summons to their places along the track of the
past a line of ministers whose homely and pleasant
faces are as familiar as those of my own family-ministers of good to me in a thousand ways, through
neighborly kindness. Among this long line of good
neighbors, all of whom I remember with grateful de.
light, there were some in whom the neighborly instinct
was as distinct, and characteristic, and original, as
the parental instinct, or the religious sentiment; and I
hereby modestly announce myself as the original dis



To John Smith Jones.             323
coverer of this original neighborly instinct. Neighborly kindness has hitherto been regarded as the offspring
of a benevolent disposition, but such a theory degrades
it. It is a distinct growth from a separate seed, and
often thrives in people who are not remarkable for
general benevolence. When unhindered and thrifty,
it is, in some natures, the distinguishing characteristic.
Before I come to the treatment of your case, I regard it as a neighborly duty to pay tribute to some of
those good neighbors whose deeds are forever embalmed in my heart. To that hearty, loving woman
who used to flit backward and forward between her
humble house and my childhood's home, lending more
than she borrowed, and always returning more, bringing in tid-bits of her cooking to me, always sharing
her luxuries with the hand that cared for me, watching
with us all in sickness, and always declaring that she
had done nothing at all, and was, on the whole,
ashamed of the unworthiness and insignificance of her
offices, my tearful thanks! Though for many years
she has walked in white, upon the heavenly hills, I
hope it is not too late to tell her that the man does not
forget her pleasant words and kind deeds to the boy,
and that the son, though he should live to be old and
gray-headed, will always hold in precious remembrance
her tender service to his mother. To that old saint
whom I used to see stealing across lots to carry food




324         Letters to the Jonefes.
and clothing to needy homes, and entering the back
doors of those homes with many apologies for his intrusion, my acknowledgments for his beautiful lesson!
To that kind woman who had a large family of boisterous boys,.and who not only understood that boys
had good appetites, but that they particularly liked to
gratify them on the night after the annual Thanksgiving, and found attractions at her house superior to any
other in the neighborhood, I assume the privilege of
returning the thanks of at least twenty men besides
myself. And to him who took a young man's hand in
trouble, and giving him his faith and the voice of his
encouragement, and sacrificing something and risking
much, helped him over the hardest spot of his life into
the field of his life's successes, my reverence!
Ah! my good neighbors! I did not dream how
numerous you were until I undertook to recall you.
Throughout all my life you have formed the circle
next to that which sits around my heart. I have
exchanged my morning greeting with you, have
walked to the house of God with you, have met you
at your tables and in my own home, have shared with
you the work of neighborly charity; and, ever since I
can remember, some of the constant pleasures of my
life have come to me from you. In the days of darkness, your gentle rap was at my door, your whispered inquiry was constant, your proffered service was always




To John Smith Jones.             325
at hand. And when the little form was carried out to
be laid under the flowers, there were fairer flowers
upon his'bosom, that came from you, than have ever
grown above it since. You are my brothers and my
sisters, to whom I feel bound by a tie almost as sweet
and precious as that which binds me to those who fill
my home.
Exactly how this rhapsody will strike you, Mr.
John Smith Jones, I cannot tell. I do not think you
have looked to see whether you could identify yourself
with those of my good neighbors whom I have endeavored to recall. It seems to me that you must be conscious that you are different in most respects from
your neighbors. You must be aware that most people
are good neighbors among themselves, as most people
are affectionate parents. The neighborly instinct is as
universal as the parental. Let so much as this, at least,
be said for human nature: that without respect to
creed or culture, men and women are in the main good
neighbors. I have never yet seen the place where the
offices of good neighborhood were lacking. There is
not only the neighborly instinct engaged in this thing,
but there is a universal personal pride that fills out
where the instinct fails. It is generally understood
and felt that for one neighbor to help another in
trouble, and for one neighbor to make the path of another neighbor pleasant, is forever a fit and good




326         Letters to the Jonefes.
thing. This being recognized, it is felt that a gentle.
man will do that which is fit and good, and that, to
fail in neighborly well doing, is to fail to approve one's
self a gentleman. I think I know many supremely
selfish men who are always spoken of as good neigh.
bors. They have a sense of that which is fit and good.
They feel that no person who pretends to be a gentle.
man will fail to do that which is fit and good with relation to his neighbors. They feel that neighborhood
imposes certain duties upon them which they must
perform, or lose caste, not only with others, but with
themselves. They feel that it is not respectable to be
a bad neighbor.
I suppose there may be some neighborhoods in the
world that have no bad neighbor in them, but, nearly
always, though the many are right, there is one individual in the wrong. Very few are the neighborhoods
in which there is not one person who is a bad neighbor. In your neighborhood, Mr. John Smith Jones,
you are that neighbor. You are always in a quarrel
with somebody about a fence. You are always very
much afraid that somebody has encroached upon your
line, or is about encroaching upon your line. You
keep a miserable dog that worries all the horses that
pass your house, and renders it next to impossible for
anybody, except a courageous man armed with a cane,
to enter your door. You keep hens that enter the




To John Smith Jones.             327
gardens of your neighbors, and scratch up seeds, and
rip open tomatoes, and wallow in flower beds, and
make a nuisance of themselves from May until November, leaving nobody in their vicinity in quiet possession
of his premises. You will not take care of your sidewalk in the winter, and I have thought that you take
a malicious satisfaction in hearing your neighbors curse
you as they hobble over the ice in front of your house.
You will join with your neighbors in no effort for
beautifying your street. Your consciousness that you
deserve ill at the hands of your neighbors leads you to
suppose that they are all banded against you, and shutting yourself into your own castle, you look out upon
the little world of neighbors around you in defiance, and
full of the spirit of mischief. You do not care how
much you annoy them. You would feel uncomfortable
if you did not annoy them, and though your dog and
your hens are a perpetual plague to them, let but a
pet rabbit stray into your enclosure, and down comes
your musket, and the pet rabbit dies.
How far you are to be blamed for this it is impossible for me to say. I have no doubt that it is a legitimate apology for you to say that nature did not endow
you with the neighborly instinct.  There is really
something lacking in you in this respect, and, so far as
this want exists, there is an excuse for you. There is
a lack in your nature still further than this. You are




328         Letters to the Jonefes.
not sensitive to feel how everlastingly disgraceful it is
to you to be at variance with your neighbors, and to
do those things which must necessarily make them
dislike you. I suppose that if this letter arrests your
attention, you will put in the further plea, or disregarding my apologies for you, put in the exclusive plea
that your neighbors are quarrelsome, and interfere
with you. Let me say in reply to this that I do not
believe the man can be found who is always at variance
with his neighbors, who is not himself blamable for it.
I know men who are accounted good husbands, good
parents, and good men-perhaps religious men-who
are notorious as uncomfortable neighbors.  I know
men of irreproachable morals of whom I never heard
a neighbor speak a kind word.   In such cases the
blame attaches to the unloved person always; and if
any man who may read these words, feels that, as a
neighbor, he is not loved, let him take home to himself
the conviction that he is the sinner, and that when he
shall be reformed his neighborhood will be reformed.
Quarrelsome neighbors are invariably little-minded
persons. A really noble mind never quarrels. A really
noble man or woman is never complained of as a bad
neighbor.
I think you are a worse neighbor than you were
when you were less prosperous. Poverty not unfre.
quently makes an excellent neighbor and an excellent




To John Smith Jones.            329
neighborhood. When men and women are engaged
in a struggle for bread, and are obliged to depend upon
mutual assistance in sickness and the various emergencies of life, they are very apt to be good neighbors.
When you were poor, you were a tolerable neighbor,
notwithstanding your want of the neighborly instinct
and other noble qualities; but since you became an
independent man, all your show of a neighborly disposition has vanished. The sense of independence has
isolated you, and given your selfish pride the opportunity to assert and maintain its full sway over your
little spirit. Your house is in every sense your castle.
It stands as coldly and as lonely in the midst of the
neighborhood, and seems as thoroughly barred against
neighborly approach, as that of Sir Launfal, that
" Alone in the landscape lay
Like an outpost of winter, dull and gray."
Your fences are high; your screens are broad; and
behind these you sit, and self-complacently make faces
at the world. If you borrow of nobody, nobody borrows of you. Nobody goes near you, and you have
abundant time to indulge in the selfish contemplation
of your independence.
After all, is not this a small and miserable life that
you are living? Does it satisfy you? I am prepared
to hear that it does, but it would gratify me much to




330        Letters to the Jonefes.
know that you are not so utterly selfish as to be con.
tented with it. Are there not times when you long for
neighborly sympathy-when the face of a loving and
kind neighbor, looking in at your door, bent upon some
office of good will, or even asking a favor, would seem
delightful to you? If such times come, then are you
not only saveable but worth saving. Sooner or later
the time must come to every man who is worth saving,
when he will feel that life has no genuine satisfaction
outside of the love and respect of those who are around
him. Our only satisfying life is in the hearts of others.
You may content yourself with your family, but even
for the sake of your family —for the sake of holding
the respect of your family-you must sometimes long
for the love and respect of your neighbors.  No
despised and hated man, conscious that he has legitimately earned the dislike in which he is held-can long
maintain his self-respect; and when this breaks down,
even the worst nature will cry out for help. It must
be that there are times when it would be a great relief
to you to do a neighbor a favor for the asking.
I do not question the sincerity of your belief that
you have very bad neighbors. I do not doubt that
you honestly consider them the worst and meanest men
that ever constituted a neighborhood. I have no doubt
that they have shown their worst and meanest side to
you, and that, if the men were to be judged exclusively




To John Smith Jones.           331
by the aspect which they have presented to you, their
pictures would not be flattering. But you should
remember that your position and your words and acts
have only been calculated to call forth that which is
evil in them. They have shown their worst side to
you, because you have shown only your worst side to
them. You have provoked their indifference, their
insolence, their petty revenges, their spiteful remarks,
their cold rebuffs, and all their unneighborly doings.
What there is of evil in them, they show to you,
because you have been only a bad neighbor to them.
Suppose, when you first entered your neighborhood,
you had been a generous, kind-hearted, neighborly
man, opening your house and heart to those around
you, entering their houses, and in every possible way
showing good feeling toward them, and doing good
through various schemes of improvement; do you
think you would have seen anything of this unpleasant
side of which you now complain? If you have common sen'se, you know that all your neighbors would
have shown you nothing but good will, and that you
would have been loved and honored.
Now this good side of your neighbors, which I see,
and you do not, you must find. You can find it, and
though, for various reasons, it may seem to you now
that not one of them is amiable, you may learn that
there is not one of them who is not more worthy to




332         Letters to the Jonefes.
be loved than you are. How is it that they love and
respect one another, while none of them respects and
loves you? Why is it that you are selected as the
object of their united dislike.? Sir, you are the meanest man of the neighborhood, and yet you have times
of believing yourself abused, and of considering yourself the only decent man among them all. You feel
that there is something in you that is loveable, and
that that something ought to be loved. That something which your wife has found, which your children
have found, which your mother found years ago,
should, you feel, secure the love and good will of your
neighbors. Are you the only man of all your neighborhood who has loveable qualities that are hidden?
All these men whom you have come to regard as bad
neighbors are a good deal more loveable than you are,
but they show their unlovely side to you, simply because you have shown your unlovely side to them.
Show the best part of your nature to them, and you
will be astonished to see how quickly they will become
lovely to you, through the exhibition of excellencies
whose existence has been hitherto hidden from you.
You have never shown anything but your hateful side
to them, and it is very stupid of you to suppose that
they will love that.
I imagine that this kind of talk will do you very
little good, but there are two motives which I can




To John Smith Jones.             333
present to you that you can measure, and that, I
am sure, will commend themselves to your consideration. With all your meanness, you are proud, and
you feel that there is something admirable in manliness. Now your position as a neighbor is not a manly
one, but it is inexpressibly childish. Are you a man,
and do you shut yourself within the lines of your possessions, and quarrel about fences, and lines of boundary, and encroachments? Are you a man, and do
you rejoice in making yourself offensive to those around
you by petty annoyances? Are you a man, and do
you stand ready to pounce upon any unlucky child or
pet of your neighbor the moment it enters your en.
closure? Do you call such things manly? Are you
not ashamed of your childishness? The real man is
noble. He will himself suffer inconvenience rather than
annoy his neighbor. He will suffer wrong rather than
betray a small spirit of revenge. He will not permit
himself to be degraded by a quarrel that can be avoided
by any generous and self-denying act. By acts of jus.
tice and generosity he will compel the respect of his
neighbors, and vindicate his claim to manliness. You
have moral vision enough left to see all this, and sensibility, I hope, to feel that a mean neighbor is no man,
but only a childish imitation of one.
The second motive which I present to you is more
selfish, even, than the first, and for that reason you can




334        Letters to the Jonefes.
appreciate it better. A bad neighbor has no influence.
No man can move society, in any direction, who has lost
his hold upon these who are around him. You have
isolated yourself, and you reap the consequences in your
loss of influence. You are without power upon the
world. With all your fancied independence, and with
all the power which money gives you, there is not a
man who would permit himself to be moved by you.
You must become a good neighbor if you would win
power over others for any purpose. As it is, you are
counted out of every ring, and have no power to call
a ring around yourself.
I wish I could, at least, make you and every other
man who reads these words feel that an unpleasant
neighbor is a nuisance. There is no good reason why
the word " neighborhood " should not be as sweet and
suggestive and sacred a word as " family." A neighborhood is a congeries of homes, and the home spirit
of love and mutual adaptation and mutual help and
harmony should prevail in it. Iome life itself is incomplete without good neighborhood life, and every
nan who poisons the latter is the enemy of every home
affected by his act.




THE TWENTY-FOURTH LETTER.
go dJjbr4k goatE, ar.
CONCERNING HIS DISPOSITION TO BE CONTENT WITH THE
RESPECTABILITY AND WEALTH WHICH HIS FA THER HAS
ACQUIRED FOR HIM.
Y OUR father, by a life of integrity and close and
skilful application to business, has made for himself a good reputation in the world, and become what
the world calls rich. He lives in a good house, moves
in good society, commands for his family all desirable
luxuries of dress and equipage, and holds a position
which places him upon an equality with the greatest
and best. He began humbly, if I am correctly informed, and has won his eminence by the force of his
own life and character. I honor him. I count him
worthy of the respect of every man; and I find myself
disposed to treat his family with respect on his account
-for his sake. This feeling toward his family, which
I find springing up spontaneously within myself, seems
to be quite universal. The world bows to the family




336        Letters to the Jonefes.
of the venerable Goodrich Jones-bows, not to Mrs.
Jones, particularly, as a respectable woman, but to the
wife of Goodrich Jones-bows not to his children, as
young men and women of intelligence and good morals,
but as young people who are to be treated with more
than ordinary courtesy because they are the children
of the rich and respectable Goodrich Jones.
This feeling of the world toward Mr. Goodrich
Jones' family is very natural. It is a tribute of respect to
a worthy old gentleman, and, so far as he is concerned,
is one of the natural rewards of his life of industry
and integrity. I notice, however, that the family of
Mr. Jones have come to look upon these tributes of
respect to them, on account of Mr. Jones, as quite the
proper and regular thing, and to feel that they are
really worthy of special attention, because Mr. Jones
commands it for himself. Instead of feeling a little
humiliated by the consciousness that they are treated
with special politeness, not because they are particularly brilliant, or rich, or well-bred, but because they
are the family of a rich and respectable man, they are
inclined to feel proud of it. How they manage to be
vain of respectability and wealth won for them  by
somebody beside themselves, I do not know; but I
suppose their case is not singular. Indeed, I. know
that the world is full of such cases, many of which
would be ridiculous were they not pitiful.




To Goodrich Jones, Jr.           837
The thought that you, Goodrich Jones, Jr., are the
son of Goodrich Jones, and that you bear his name,
seems to form the basis of your estimate of yourself.
I have already given the reason why the world treats
you respectfully, but that reason need not necessarily
be identical with that which leads you to respect yourself. If, owing to some circumstance or agency beyond your control, you were to be suddenly stripped
of all your ready money and other resources, and set
down in some distant city among strangers, what
would be your first impulse? Would you go to work,
and try to make a place for yourself? Would you be
willing to pass for just what you are-to be estimated
for just what there is in you of the elements of manhood, or would you endeavor to convince everybody
that you were the son of a certain very rich and respectable Goodrich Jones, and try to secure consideration for yourself by such representation? I presume
you would pursue the same policy among strangers
that you pursue among friends. You have never made
an effort to be respected for works or personal merits
of your own. You push yourself forward everywhere
as the son of Goodrich Jones-indeed, as Goodrich
Jones, Jr. You have not only been content to live in
the shadow of your father's name, but you have been
apparently anxious to invite public attention to the fact
that you do. You have not only been content to live
15




338         Letters to the Jonefes.
upon money which your father has made, but you seem
delighted to have it understood that you can draw
upon him for all you want. You seem to have no ambition to make either reputation or money for yourself.
On the contrary, I think you would look upon it as disgraceful for you to engage in business for the purpose
of winning wealth by labor.
Now will you permit one who has bowed to you
frequently for your father's sake to talk very plainly to
you for your own? Let me assure you, in the first
place, that all this respect which the world shows to
you is unsubstantial and unreliable.  The man who
treats you with respect because your father is rich
would cease to treat you with respect if you were to
become poor. The man who bows to you because
your father occupies a high social position, would pass
you without recognition were your father, for any
reason, to lose that position. Let me assure you that
the world does not care for you any further than you
are the partaker of the money and the respectability
which have been achieved by your father. Nay, I will
go further, and say that, side by side with the deference which it shows for you on your father's account,
it cherishes contempt for one who is willing to receive
his position at second hand. You cannot complain of
this, for you place your claims for social consideration
entirely on your father's position. The negro slave is




To Goodrich Jones, Jr.            339
proud of the superior wealth of his master, and among
his fellow slaves, assumes a superior position in consequence of wealth which is not his own. He belongs
to a splendid establishment, and, in his own eyes, wins
importance from the association.  When his master
fails, the slave sinks. No, sir, there is nothing reliable
in this consideration of the world for you. You are
only treated as a representative of the wealth and respectability of another man, and if he were to become
displeased with you, and were to disown and disinherit
you, you would find yourself without a friend in the
world.
In the second place, your position is an unmanly
one. None but a mean man can be willing to hold his
position at second hand. I count him fortunate who
is born to pleasant and good social relations, and all
the advantages which they bring him for the development of his personal character; but I count him most
unfortunate who, born to such relations, is willing to
hold them as a birthright alone. A man who is willing
to keep a place in society which his father has given
him, through his father's continued influence, is necessarily mean-spirited and contemptible. Every young
man of a manly spirit who finds himself in good society, through the influence of others, will prove his
right to the place, and hold the place by his own
merits  No man of your age can consent to hold his




640         Letters to the Jonefes.
social position solely through the influence of his father
without convicting himself either of imbecility or
meanness.  If you had any genuine self-respect, you
would feel that to owe to others what you are capable
of winning for yourself, and to be considered only as
a portion of a rich and respectable man's belongings, is
a disgrace to your manhood.
I suppose the thought has never occurred to you
that you owe something to your father for what he has
done for you.  He gave you position.  His name
shielded you through all your childhood and youth
from many of the dangers and disadvantages which
other young men are forced to encounter. He gave
you great vantage ground in the work of life, and you
owe it to him to improve it. If your name helps you,
you ought to do something for your name. If your
father honors you, you ought to honor him, and to do
as much for his name as he has done for yours. You
have no moral right to disgrace one who has done so
much for you; for his reputation is partly in your
keeping. It would be an everlasting disgrace to him
to bring up a boy who relied solely upon his father for
respectability. It would be a blot upon his reputation
to have a son so mean as to be content with a name
and fortune at second hand. I tell you, sir, that you
must change your plan and course of life, or people will
talk more and more of your unworthiness to stand in




To Goodrich Jones, Jr.             341
your father's shoes, and express their wonder more and
more that so sensible and industrious a father could
train a son so inefficiently as he has trained you.
When this good father of yours shall die, you will be
thrown more upon yourself. You will have money, I
presume, and you will still sit in the comfortable
shadow of your father's name; but the world changes,
and strangers will estimate you at your true value, and
those who knew your father will only talk of the sad
contrast between his character and your own.
I suppose you are not above the desire for the good
will of the world.  Well, the world is made up of
workers. The great masses of men-and your father
is among the number-are obliged to depend upon
their own labor and their own force and excellence of character for wealth and position. People do
not envyjim, because he won all that he possesses by
his own skill and industry. He is universally admired
and esteemed, and you are enjoying some of the fruits
of this admiration and esteem in the politeness of the
world toward yourself; but this will not always last.
You must mingle in the world's work, and cast in your
lot with your fellows, contributing your share of labor,
and taking what comes of it in pelf and position, or
else you will be voted out of the pale of popular sympathy. The world does not love drones, and you must
cease to be a drone or it will never love you.




342          Letters to the Jonefes.
I suppose it is hard for you to realize that you are
not the object of envy among men, but I wish you
could for once feel the contempt which your parasitic
position excites even among men whom you deem
beneath your notice. There are many young men wbo
have been compelled to labor all their lives for bread,
that would shrink from exchanging places with you as
from a loathsome disgrace. They would not take your
idle habits, your foppish tastes, your childish spirit,
and your reputation, for all your father's money; and
these men, strange as it may seem to your mean spirit,
are more respected and better loved by the world than
yourself. I say that you are not above the desire for
the good will of the world; but, if you would get it,
you must be a man. You must show that you have a
man's spirit, and that you are willing to do a man's
work. No idle man ever yet lived upon the wealth
won for him by others and at the same time enjoyed
the love of the world.
All this you will find out by-and-by without my
telling you, but then it may be too late for remedy.
You are now young, but, if you live, you will come at
length to realize that instead of being envied, you are
despised.  You will make a sadder discovery, too,
than this. You will discover that you have as little
basis for self-respect as for popular regard. Years
cannot fail to reveal to you some things which youth




To Goodrich Jones, Jr.           343
hides from you. You will find that the world is busy,
that you have no one to spend your time with, and
that the men who have power and public consideration
are men who have something to do besides killing time
and spending money. You will find that you are without sympathy and companionship among the best
people, and when you ascertain the reason-for it will
be so obvious that you will not fail to see it-you will
learn that you are not worthy of their sympathy and
companionship.  In short, you will learn to despise
yourself.
I have already spoken to you of the debt which
you owe to your father, for what he has done for you.
There are some further considerations relating to your
family which I wish to offer. A family name and reputation are things of life and growth. The character
which your father has made is a product of life, so
grand and far-spreading that his family sits beneath,
and is sheltered by it. It is the law of all vital products that they shall grow, or hold their ground against
encroachment, by what they feed upon. Food must
be constant, or death is sure to come, soon or late.
The character of your family-its power, position and
high relations-is the product of your father's vital
force, working in various ways.  Not many years
hence, that force must stop its work. Your father will
die, and unless you take up his work and do it, this




344          Letters to the Jonefes.
family character will pine, and dwindle, and ultimately
sink in utter decay.
Look around you and see how some of the rich and
influential old families have died out, because there was
no man in them to keep them alive. The founder of
the family did what he could, raised his family to the
highest- social position, gave them wealth, bequeathed
to them a good name, and died. The sons who followed were not worthy of him. They were not men.
They were babies, who were willing to live upon their
family name, and who did live upon it until they consumed it. It is sad to see a family name fade out as it
often does, through the failure of its men to feed it
with the blood of a worthy life; and yours will fade out
in a single generation, if you do not immediately prepare yourself to take up your father's work, and carry
it on. It is always pleasant and inspiring to see young
men who expect to inherit money entering with energy
upon the work of life, as if they had their fortunes to
make. It proves that they are men, and proves that
they are preparing to handle usefully the money that is
to come into their hands. It proves that they intend
to win respect for themselves, and to lay at least the
foundation of their own fortunes. When I see such
men, I feel that the name of their families is safe in
their keeping, and that, for at least one generation,
those families cannot sink. The desire to be some.




To Goodrich Jones, Jr.           345
body beside somebody's son, shows a manly disposition, which the world at once recognizes, and to
which it freely opens its heart.
I am aware that a young man in your position has
great temptations, and labors under great disadvantages. We are in the habit of regarding a poor young
man, who has neither family name nor influence, as
laboring under disadvantages, and in some aspects of
his case, we regard him rightly. But he has certainly
the advantage of the stimulus which obstacles to be
overcome afford. The poor man sees that he must
make his own fortune, or that his fortune will not be
made at all; and the obstacles that lie before him only
stimulate him to labor with the greater efficiency.
When I see a poor young man bravely accepting his
lot, and patiently and heroically applying himself to
the work of building a fortune and achieving a position, I am moved to thank God for his poverty, for I
know that in that poverty he will ultimately discover
the secret of his best successes.
Your disadvantage is that position and wealth have
already been won for you. It is not necessary for you
to labor to get bread and clothing and a comfortable
home. These have already been won for you by other
hands.  I do not deny that this condition of things
is naturally enervating. I confess that it takes much
good sense and an unusual degree of manliness to resist
15*




346         Letters to the Jonefes.
the temptations to idleness which it brings; but you
must resist them or suffer the saddest consequences.
You must labor in a steady, manly way to make your
own place in the world, as a fitting preparation for the
husbandry and enjoyment of the wealth which will
some day be yours. If you have not those considerations in your favor which stimulate the poor man to
exertion, then you must adopt those which I have tried
to present to you. You must remember that to be
content with a position received at second hand, and
to live simply to spend the money earned by others,
is most unmanly. You must remember that you owe
it to your father and to your family name and fame,
to keep your family in the position of consideration and
influence in which he has placed it, and that it is certain to recede from that position unless you do. You
must remember that only by work can you win the
good will of the world around you, or win and retain
respect for yourself.
If the disadvantages of your position are great,
your reward for worthy work is also great.  The
world always recognizes the strength of the temptations which attach to the position of a rich young man,
and awards to him a peculiar honor for that spirit which
refuses to be respected for anything but his own manliness. I know of no young men who hold the good
will of the public more thoroughly than those who set




To Goodrich Jones, Jr.          347
aside all the temptations to indolence and indulgence
which attend wealth, and put themselves heartily to the
work of deserving the social position to which they
are born, and of earning the bread which a father's
wealth has already secured. You have but to will and
to work, and this beautiful reward will be yours.